You point out that you find some statements made about God and mankind as difficult to understand because they seem to have no sensible meaning. An example you give is: how can man have free will and God at the same time knows the future and in fact controls it. These two positions seem diametrically opposed and there is no way to resolve the issue.

The point you raise has been debated many times in the past. It can be troubling to someone who is genuinely trying to come to terms with his faith and his relationship with God. But it depends to a large degree how we phrase the question. The way it stands now and the way you interpret it is that God’s infallible knowledge and human freedom are incompatible. But let’s unpack this a little and see what the alternatives are.

We could actually say that because God infallibly knows and controls the future, this ensures that humans can exercise free will and responsibility for their actions. Now, suppose that in fact God’s knowledge and mankind’s freedom are incompatible. This implies that one of the two propositions is faulty and untrue.

Let’s consider the possibility that God does not infallibly know or control the future. Then something else does and that something is not man – for obvious reasons – but someone else. You could even claim that it is chance that controls the future – everything happens through chance but we still retain the illusion of our free will. If that were true then firstly, God is lessened as someone else is above Him and controls and directs the affairs of the world. The world is outside God’s control. If things are outside God’s control then they are outside everyone else’s control, including you. And so, you have just witnessed the evaporation and disappearance of your free will if God is not in total control and knowledge of the future.

If God does not control the universe completely then the universe is chaotic (it seems we’ve heard that song before) then everything is run by random chaos and humans cannot control anything and be responsible for anything. There goes any hope for moral behavior. You see, paradoxically, if the universe is not controlled by God, you end up with no freedom and with no basis for any morality of any sort. The statements that we considered above – God’s control and man’s freedom – are not opposed to each other but necessary complements of each other.

Much of our thinking about God and the world is shallow and when it is analyzed a little more deeply we realize that rationality and God cannot be opposed because God is the basis and foundation of rationality. Unfortunately, many of us do not take the time or trouble to dig deeper and we end up with all kinds of conundra.

Of course, the central mystery for Christians is the dogma of the Trinity. By the way, the term dogma has acquired a pejorative aura as something that is forced onto unwilling people. This is not correct. There are two terms used for knowledge within our faith. One of these is dogma and the other is kerygma. Kerygma is the knowledge that is presented to people who do not believe but who are searching. It involves argumentation, presentation of evidence in an effort to state some of the beliefs of the faith to those who are still uncertain. Here the foundation lies on the rational arguments for the truth of the teaching. Dogma refers to teachings and knowledge that are accepted by believers. These teachings embrace the mystery of belief and acceptance through the gift of faith. Rationality is still embraced but it is buttressed with tradition, with faith, with reliance on the scriptures, with reliance on God.

Some have said that the doctrine of the Trinity is an unnecessary mystification which does not contribute to a better understanding of how God is.

Allow me to start with some experiences common to most of us.

Consider the world and you. Most of us would say that these are two separate entities and yet, when we look a little closer, we will see that they are not as separate as we sometimes claim them to be. You and the world interpenetrate each other and a brief reflection will underline this for us.

You are not a totally independent and isolated body. You take in the world into you (food) and you, for example breathe out carbon dioxide which is used by the world to make more food in terms of plants, sugars, etc. There is a very deep interdependence between you and the world. When Jesus blesses the wine and the bread he says that when we partake of them we are taking in his body and blood. To a lot of people this seems like a magical mystification but when we look at it a little more deeply, we will see a consistency here with creation.

Whenever we take in food, what happens to it? It becomes part of our body, it is transformed into ‘body’. At the Eucharist, the behavior of creation, which comes from God, is consonant with what Christ says. The bread and wine do, indeed, become the body of Christ and his blood within us, as we partake of it. There is nothing ‘strange’ or magical here. It is nature behaving as it was intended to.

Many examples of a dependence and interaction in our world can be given but I will give one more and this one from the world of music. You can strike the middle C on your piano and you will hear a note which corresponds to 256 vibrations per second. But what is produced is not simply a note corresponding to this – there are other vibrations which are part of this C note and these are called the overtones. These overtones indwell in the note that we call middle C.

What I am saying with the examples I have given, and there could be many, many more, is that the world is not separable but in fact, its main characteristic is that it is very much a participatory world with many interactions between the components of this world. The world is much richer and more nuanced than a cursory glance tells us.

Each of us starts his or her life in the body of another being – our mother. This ‘other person’ fed me, and participated in my growth and development until one day I was physically separated. But even then, the separation was not total and complete. I still, in a sense, co-habitated, with this other person – my mother – and will always do so. You see, my identity, my emotions, my learning and growth, my language all came from the outside. Ironically, the things that make me be me, come from outside of me.

Even time exhibits this inter-relationship. We normally think of past, present, and future as totally separable aspects of existence and yet, this is not so. There was a movie about a fellow who, on waking up, would not remember anything from yesterday. He was starting from a fresh slate each day. This, obviously, brought chaos into his life.

There is an intimate relationship between past, present, and future and if we cut it out, this will bring disaster in its wake. The present builds on the past and the present is the foundation for the future. They are interconnected and cannot be separated or we end up with chaos. Without this interdependence, even change would not be identifiable by us. Again, we have an illustration of the fact of interdependence of seemingly separable things which we call time.

This is the way the world is structured and we deny this in return for a loss of meaning and purpose. This interdependence is echoed through a call that we are to love others, because in a very deep sense, if we do not love others, we lose our identity, our being. As the commandment in Deuteronomy says – love your neighbor as your self. It is your neighbor who gives substance to your being, who forms you into who you are. If you cut these ties, you are committing spiritual suicide.

We treat the world as separable items because this enables us to, in a sense, to control, the world. This is the technique used in reductionism whereby we separate complex structures into their simpler components so that we can learn about them in order to control them. This is a power play that we have used very successfully against nature but there is a price to pay for this as we are starting to realize in terms of damage to nature and damage to our very psyches. The world is not made up of separable items.

There is a word that is used in theology to describe this interpenetration, this dwelling within, this deep relationship and relational character of reality that is God The word is perichoresis and we will see in the next letter how the doctrine of the Trinity addresses and deals with these observations of nature and what it tells us of how God is.

Sincerely,
Bar-Abbas