Quote:
Originally Posted by SpeakersCorner
I may have shared that experience years back. If so, I apologize. But it has really stayed with me.
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Hi SC! How you doing? I really enjoyed your last post. I understand what you are getting at and I think there may be something to it.
I think Tomes's point was that Lee left out that God could not be lonely in the full sense because the Father always had the Son.
I think the whole question comes down to what we mean when we say God "lacks" something. It's quite an ontological idea. It can't mean there is shortage in himself, because he is the originator of everything. Only he can, ultimately, meet his own needs, if he has any. A guy on a desert island may lack a shelter, but it's not a lack in himself, he just needs to build it. So actually he is the resource by which he meets his needs. Except he didn't create the trees and rocks he uses to make shelter. In God's case, he is the originator of everything, only he can get the ball rolling to produce everything that comes back to him. So when you say God "lacks" something you always have to remember that he does everything to meet the "lack." He didn't
find something outside himself to meet it. He
conceived it inside himself and made it.
I think this goes back even to the Trinity. The Father was never alone because he had the Son. This is what the lonely God theory neglects. But actually the Bible says the Son was begotten, so even the Son came out of God. I believe the Son is basically God's self-image, the way he sees himself, as another Person. So God's relationship with the Son is in some sense his relationship with himself. So when the Son died, the Father didn't die, but his self-image did. In that sense God experienced "dying to his self," as he asks us to every day.
My point is not deep ontology but just that God is the originator of everything. So his "lack" if any should be seen as something he and only he can meet himself. Who else can do it? Us? Well, he made us. He's the Alpha and Omega. We can't come up with anything he didn't think of first. Still..
Listen to I am Not Alone by Kari Jobe