Judging

[Justin Kissel]

LIUDMILLA

Thank you for posting more!

Seraphim Reeves,

(I'm a former long-distance student of Bob's... some of his disciples still post over at Theologyonline). Yeah, Bob does have a lot of peculiar ideas. He's a theonomist and a Mid-Acts Pauline-Grace dispensationalist (at the same time... scratches head). He believes in "righteous judging" and even "righteous hate". He also does indeed believe that God can repent, change his mind, etc. The idea that God can change his mind is usually called the Open View (or some similar phrase using the word "open"). There was a small but apparent push in the baptist movement a couple years ago to push this idea, but it got squashed from what I hear. I think Greg Boyd is someone who affirms the open view.. he'd probably be the "biggest fish". There are others, though, like Bob Enyart, Bob Hill (Enyart's teacher/pastor, who ordained Bob but with whom he had a falling out.), etc. After I left Bob as a teacher, some of us over at theologyonline used to call those who were die-hard disciples of Bob "Enyartians," so enyartianism might not be too foreign a word to use about his teachings.

Btw, I read The Plot the whole way through and I didn't dance on my kitchen table. (those who have heard some of Bob's talk about this manuscript will understand what I mean)

[Seraphim Reeves]

Justin,

I have heard of "open theology" before (it's usually pushed undert he banner of cleansing Christianity from "pagan hellenic philosophy" if I remember correctly), and have some suspicions as to what motivates it.

I think for a long time, the living experience of God has been missing from western varieties of Christianity. Whether it is God becoming an abstraction (not so much Thomas Aquinas' fault as it was the latter scholastics...but I do think at least the seeds of this were in Aquinas, since many of his western contemporaries had big problems with his theology...he was seen as the "modernist" of his day), or more controversially put, the cessation of real asceticism (which is supposed to be common not simply to monks, but to Christians in general), the ways of knowing God and understanding His revelation of Self were lost or otherwise diminished.

Idolatry is, fundamentally, the dumbing down of the divine, until what one is worshipping is no longer God by any means. In the desert of Sinai, the Israelites were not worshipping "baal" or some foreign god...rather they fashioned an idol that supposedly represented the Lord (under the syncrestic form of a gold calf, an image common to the Egyptians and the various pagan peoples occupying the Levant).

Since "Moses' God" became an abstraction or seemed "far off" for many western Christians, this gave rise to various abberant movements (our modern golden calfs)...thus, the rise of the charismatic movement, or things like "open theology", which make God more "human" and hense more approachable. What is sad, is that such a theology undermines the genuine way God did make Himself more approachable; the assumption of a human nature.

I also think to an extent this explains the popularity of neo-judaizing in many Protestant circles (and not just in those made up of Jewish converts to Calvin) - while there is a fundamental evil at the heart of Judaism as it now exists, there is still something of an "Orthodox" understanding of God left amongst those "Orthodox" Jews (a recognition of God's unknowability and trancendence, and complete dissimilarity to the creation...yet, His energetic revelation of Himself to His people in a way they can grasp at.)

Seraphim