He could have. But He did not.
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He might have. But it might not have been noticed by the press.
And I am not sure that it could ever be proved either way.
All this reporting about church gatherings… does not take into account whether it was worship, or just gathering, or whether the people concerned actually believed God was protecting them. Or whether they were just being foolish, and reckless. Or even whether they have identified the right God?
There are so many variables involved. Which is why most churches closed…
That’s the trouble with God (faith) there are no certainties, and there are always mitigating (excuses) circumstances when it doesn’t come out as your (my) faith expects.
Richard
Guys. God CAN NOT intervene. He does not. Ever. It would show in the stats. The incarnation, of and by and in the Spirit, is now US. It has been since the first couple of ripples died out a hundred ripples ago. He can not because He will not because He does not and they are all commutative. That is an absolute, iron-clad, bank on it, certainty. Which does not invalidate faith in the slightest as Christians have known for all of those ripples. The Cloud of Unknowing anyone? To say that He could intervene is meaningless. Useless. To know that He does not is lurchingly, frighteningly, challengingly liberating. Is, generates, one of the greatest loops, a tsunami, of cognitive dissonance. Demands courage of us. Together. Collective courage. On top of, to face, the tiger burning incandescent bright white honesty.
His will be done.
Mr Gillett, have you been able to meet with family or friends for Sunday at home?
I think God can prevent things from happening. He prevented the Israelites from being killed by the Egyptians by the Red Sea and God prevented the apostles from entering Asia Minor until the appointed time and so on.
However, in scripture I only seeing these interventions at specific times and I don’t think they readily play out. I especially don’t think they play out often.
We see the Christians being told to flee the wrath of the abomination of desolation and for them to flee into the mountains. They gave up meeting in their homes and fled.
Also the apostles despite being able to heal others seemed as if they could not heal themselves. Paul told Timothy to pray and drink alcohol to help with his stomach problems and did not just send another apostles there.
We are also told to be innocent as doves and wise as serpents. There is a way to still fellowship and remain innocent of sin and wiser than just allowing everyone to get sick.
There are Christians dying everyday from violence and diseases of affluence and random things like dengue, the flu, and the corona virus.
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A three and a half thousand year old myth vs. reality. Why mention it at all?
Oh, my–Blake? You have so many allusions that you’re over my head.
Thanks for your input.
When I was 18, my dad gave me some very good insight. I was attending a secular college, and an agnostic professor challenged me to provide proof for God. I don’t think he expected any–he was just trying to get me to think. Up to then, my diet of fundamentalist Christian books from Danny Orliss to the Sugar Creek Gang was character, but not thought, building. I told my dad that I thought that the cumulative effect of unexplained phenomena in the world was enough to believe. Dad, stemming from a course he took in Hope College at my age, told me a definite, “no.” There is nothing absolutely provable as a miracle, he said. Yet, he was one of the most pious and Christ like men I ever knew. That stood me in good stead for future wrangling with science and life.
I’m curious to learn more about your own background. You said that you came from a very strict group, years ago. Thanks.
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I don’t believe exodus is a myth. I don’t think the way it’s wrote out is done to encourage it as a mythological reading like the poetry books or the stories in the beginning of genesis. I still believe 100% in the supernatural and god interventions. I just think the story has to be wrote in a way that’s evident.
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Those are hardly the only possibilities, and that is hardly the only way of framing the question.
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There is a wide, wide theological world to romp around in between Richard’s “God will always protect the faithful” and Martin’s “God never does any such thing…” Just so lurkers here know that these theological extremes don’t represent all there is to see of faith.
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Your dad inspires me yet, thanks Randy. I was a strict, Sabbatarian, binitarian, Old and New Covenant, Messianic, Millennialist, Anglo-Israelite, grammatico-historical, prophecy fanatic ‘progressively’ from age 15 in '69 to '95, when the cult - Herbert W. Armstrong’s Pasadena based Worldwide Church of God - deconstructed itself and I followed.
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Your epistemology is not mine Mi, like my Muslim colleagues whom I love. I’m the only Caucasian in the business. We all meet in the middle regardless.
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: ) ohhhhh I don’t know Mervin. Most tend to Richard’s epistemology here. I’m the true outlier. But there is nothing rationally or faithfully extreme in my epistemology. Don’t worry about the lurkers, the little ones. They need to know that regardless of how utterly uncaring the cosmos is, there is always room for faith. I am living proof of that. Thanks be to God.
Hopefully not here in our forum. And even hopefully not overall. I’m pretty sure that Richard looks both ways before he crosses the street (therefore apparently ‘lacking the faith’ that God can or will protect him from any oncoming traffic). So I maintain that Richard himself doesn’t even consistently believe what he himself is stating here. And so I think would also be true of most believers around the world.
I think most here at Biologos might actually be closer to your view - that God does not “intervene” in empirically [statistically] detectable ways. But I know that I, at least, balk at extending that general truism into universal claims that God “never does” or “can’t do” this or that. It’s enough for me to observe that God does not ordinarily do things for us (at least not in some recognizably miraculous way) that we can be expected to do for ourselves.
[yet another added edit: there is much theology to explore in that I am in Christ and acknowledge there is nothing (of things or events) that is somehow done apart from Christ or independently of him. So even our own taking care as we cross streets is, I maintain, part of God’s protection of us. … but that is a topic of exploration in other threads.]
Amen to that. No need for such condescension toward lurkers, though. Many of them will be giants of faith with greatly needed lessons for us (or for me anyway!).
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All points taken Mervin. Especially the latter. My apologies lurkers!
We both [edit] the same way! Nice bit of Humean moral psychology that!
You are the epitome of balance, but I shall not balk. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
In His transcendent immanence.
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I think that my dad also felt that God frequently intervened (perhaps more for maturing us), but not detectably.
I have actually met some Armstrongians (? correct descriptor?) who refused to deconstruct. They were very nice people. They definitely felt I was outside the fold, but very caring.
With all your allusions, do you have a strong literature background?
I’m curious what you think (maybe another thread) of George Macdonald’s works (he influenced Lewis a lot). --such as “Justice” in his Unspoken Semons. He has some interesting ways of describing worship which I think are relevant to this thread. I remember reading from “The Boyhood of Ranald Bannerman” that God’s principle task of worship was to serve those around you–that reading the Bible or praying could be a form of idolatry if we took them as first. In a way, interacting with those nearest to you is an act of worship.
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You haven’t left Him anything to do.
So I guess you think that His will is only done if some human does it?
And Christ? Just human also?
God is self isolating!
Richard
I’m a total poseur Randy. I’m very superficially read. I’m ashamed to say that I encountered Macdonald some 12 years ago and liked him very much and was aware of his influence on Lewis but have not read his works. He influence C. Baxter Kruger I recall, who helped WCG come in to the fold. Aye, Armstrongites? There is a spectrum of deconstruction indeed, a Gaussian distribution. I’m four standard deviations to the left. Very nice people. We were all very close.
For me God nods and smiles mutely in the pitch dark across the oubliette where I’m shackled.
I’m orthodox Richard. Christ was fully human in person and nature and fully divine in nature.
“God is self isolating!” : ) aye, apart from in Christ and ineffably by the Spirit.
What impresses me more is the degree to which you believe in your own infallibility. I lack the kind of confidence that would permit me to ignore not only the medical experts but theological experts who disagree with you.
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