We Fools Assume to Exist

The problem that attends extreme forms of Calvinism--God sends his Church to preach salvation to a world whose inhabitants are predestined in their fates independently of the Church's actions--is a problem that exists only because the elements of God's thought processes are here being subject to human presumption.  This "problem" is really of a piece with "Can God make a stone so heavy that he could not lift it?"

We have choices when faced with the "heavy stone" problem: We can dismiss it out of hand as impiety; we can call it a "mystery"; or we can distill it to a simple statement of the underlying question.  The underlying question can actually split into as many parts as there are discrete elements to the question.

That is, for one, "What is a stone but an object created and maintained continually in its existence by God?" or, to put it another way, "How can a stone exist, other than in a state of being continually lifted by God?"  We might as well dispense with the formalities and maintain that there is no "reason" (or ascertainable cause) for anything to exist.

Similarly, we can dispense with the idea of an infinitely large stone such that an omnipotent God could not lift it.  The surmise itself rests on the unrecognized presumption that the God in question has obligingly created an infinite space (itself an "impossibility") in which to accommodate the stone.  And on and on it goes....

And so also it goes with the dimension of time.  Time as a concept is presented to us in the Genesis account.  With the waters roaring, God says "Let there be light."  God selects an instant to say that--how?  If time can be measured in smaller and smaller and infinitely smaller increments, would God not be--to apply the "heavy stone" logic--still going about seizing on the correct instant?

The problem in all such questions is really just a matter of presumption.  For us to ask how God does this or that rests invariably on our conceptualization of elements of Creation.  Those conceptualizations are necessarily estimates.  If we are to attempt responsibly to address questions about God--including the above-mentioned Calvinism quandary--then we must reckon with the "screen" of estimates.  This screen can work both ways, and it is a fundamental twisting of Scripture to assume otherwise.

For example, God travels to Sodom to see who is worthy to be saved (after listening to Abraham's estimate of the number.)  Abraham, no less than Calvin, knows that all people were made by a good God and that all are--if tested against God--sinful and worthy of destruction.  Abraham does not need to go to the city to examine the matter, but apparently God does.  This is us being treated to a display of God's condescension, not his limitation.

In our world, if we are both reverent and courageous enough to accept it, God is greater than us not only because he can know more, but also because he can know less, and still be God--as represented most valuably in Jesus.  We do God no honors by attributing to him an infinite share of the knowledge we fools assume to exist.