The CBE Scroll

Comment by Adrienne

June 4, 2009 @ 11:30 pm

I was very pleasantly surprised when I read this portion of the book. Too bad most churches don’t share the same views regarding hierarchy that are expressed here.

Comment by MathLady2X

June 7, 2009 @ 12:30 pm

This is an awesome book. I recommend this book heartily. CBE should offer it in its own bookstore.

Comment by jlp

June 7, 2009 @ 4:23 pm

We don’t need power over the other because we are always looking out for the best. Hierarchy would make no sense among us. Actually, this is your problem, not ours.”

This explains what I have always thought about the Trinity – that they are always looking out for each other’s best interests so they don’t need hierarchy.

Comment by Robyn

June 9, 2009 @ 11:10 am

JLP said: “that they are always looking out for each other’s best interests so they don’t need hierarchy.”

Which is EXACTLY what marriage between believers and relationships in the body of Christ should be as well.

Comment by Liz

June 9, 2009 @ 6:28 pm

Sounds wonderful and when we have a taste of that nothing else satisfies.

Comment by Odysseus

June 9, 2009 @ 8:14 pm

I loved this book. It hit me at such a crucial place in my journey. I have been exploring (internalizing, actually) my Celtic heritage and it’s emphasis on the goodness of all life; that God is the Light and Life within all light and life, that this book just reinforced it. I wept over and over again. I yearn for that type of relationship. Call it the ‘lost romantic’ within me, but I think that it is more of a holy calling, a remembrance, deep within me.

Thank you for posting it.

~~~
In the Grace of the Three in One,

OD

Comment by Trevor

June 9, 2009 @ 9:34 pm

Don’t you just love it when people’s hearts are touched and that longing for God alone to satisfy our deepest inner need for relationship with Him and with one another is being met. Yes, this book has touched so many people that we get to hear about so there must be innumerable others whose stories of reconciliation are still out there. The underlying message of grace is so rich and is brought about by the author’s own experience of discovering God again after both horrific childhood experiences and the depth of his own personal failings. Love these men who listen to their wives and receive help and instruction from them as they share the journey of life together and write their own living letters as a couple.

Comment by Joel Osterman

June 11, 2009 @ 9:36 pm

You know what I really loved about the Evangelical response to this book. I loved the fact that the church attacked the way that William Young portrayed God. They didn’t feel comfortable with his portrayal of God as a woman. Do I believe that God is a woman no but I believe in the art of story telling. The book was a heart warming read. But I really love the explanation of law verses grace in the last paragraphs. I even love the mention that we always tend to move toward law in our churches today. We tend to be more legalistic than we think we are and we turn that in to our “Christianity” over a God full of grace and love and longs to have a relationship with us without rules that govern it but love. Yes God is just and by love I mean that we obey His commands after all Jesus said, “If you love Me than you will obey My commands.”

Comment by Frank

June 12, 2009 @ 10:53 am

Well, one of these days, when I can spare the time, I would like to read THE SHACK in its entirety, instead of excerpts. But truth is, since our last full discussion on the Trinity, I have been using my free time to concentrate on further, deeper studies on this key doctrine of the Christian Faith. So I have been reading and meditating on, in addition to the Scriptures, Millard Erickson’s GOD IN THREE PERSONS, Alan Torrance’s PERSONS IN COMMUNION, and Thomas F. Torrance’s THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF GOD: ONE BEING, THREE PERSONS. And though a challenging study, a very enrichening one as well.

But there is a paragraph from Thomas F. Torrance’s book that struck me as being appropriate to the current discussion and so I thought I would share it with you:

Let it be repeated that the God who has revealed himself to us in the Gospel as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is not a God who lives for himself alone, but who lives his all-sufficient divine Life in love for others and has poured out his love without reserve in the gift of his only begotten Son to us as our Saviour, and in the Holy Spirit who sheds abroad that very love in our hearts. This does not imply, as we have taken care to show, that God is conditioned by, far less constituted through, his relation to us who are quite other than he is, for he is already concerned with Others eternally and inherenty in himself, in the three-fold otherness of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in their Love for one another and Communion with [one] another. It is from the free ground of that transcendant otherness in himself in his Triune Being, that God freely and spontaneously creates others outwith himself. This free-flowing unconditioned outgoing movement of his Being means that God refuses to be shut off from us in his unapproachable Majesty, infinite otherness and incomprehensibility. He makes himself really accessible to us, and does so not only in communicating himself to us in the incarnation of his Son, but in imparting to us Holy Spirit in such an utterly astonishing way as to actualise among us his self-giving to us as the Lord and at the same time to effect our receiving of him in his self (THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF GOD, p. 150).

Comment by Frank

June 12, 2009 @ 11:01 am

Oops! My eye played a trick on me, resulting in the last sentence quoted from Torrance being incomplete. So here is the complete sentence:

“He makes himself really accessible to us, and does so not only in communicating himself to us in the incarnation of his Son, but in imparting to us his Holy Spirit in such an utterly astonishing way as to actualise among us his self-giving to us as the Lord and at the same time to effect our receiving of him in his self-giving.”

Comment by jlp

June 12, 2009 @ 9:43 pm

But I really love the explanation of law versus grace in the last paragraphs

So did I.

Comment by jlp

June 13, 2009 @ 8:07 am

Frank,

You would love “The Shack.”

Comment by Francine

June 13, 2009 @ 2:46 pm

yes Frank I agree with JLP you should read it because you would love it. I bought it last year mainly because I was reading negative things about it in some circles and heard it was baned from some Christian bookstores. I was curious about what was in it to cause them to ban the book. I left it on the book shelf for a few weeks because I was afraid to read it because of husband and mother dying and didn’t want to read about death and sadness. However, I did read it and I really enjoyed it, because it explained so many thing in human terms. I also understood why it would be baned as soon as Pappa opened the door as a woman. The author later explained why he appeared as a woman instead of a man. Some people can’t relate with God because of their earthly fathers. I have a friend that refuses to call God father because her father (who was a deacon in their church) abused her as a child. She would relate to a woman more. I loved the way the three interacted with each other in a united way of thought and wills as one. The way the Trinity really is. I also liked the way the author explain why God doesn’t stop bad things from happening. It may be fiction but the author does understand the ways of God. We can know of God but that doesn’t mean we know God.
This book does cause a person to think is the way I picture God right.

Comment by jlp

June 13, 2009 @ 3:09 pm

I think the Christians who won’t read this book because God is portrayed as a woman are missing on something really special.

Comment by Frank

June 13, 2009 @ 9:00 pm

Okay, JLP and Francine, I yield! I promise that, as soon as possible, I will buy, borrow, or commandeer a copy of “The Shack” and read it. But I hope you will cut me some slack; I am really busy studying and writing during my free time, such as it is.

For example, our Adult Class at church is examing Church history in the light of Rev 1-3, and we are to write a short essay on a key person, event, movement, etc. And I am working on an essay, “Athanasius: Defender of the Trinitarian Faith,” which I am attempting to write from an egalitarian perspective.
I am also, with some real concern, working on a two part essay, “The Law, The Gospel, and Modern Christianity,” addressing what I see as a potential, divisive teaching in my church.

There are some people, formerly Catholics, who have come under the influence of SDA tyoe teaching regarding the Ten Commandments and strict Sabbath observance. They now believe that the Roman Catholic arbitrarily changed the true day of worship, and so we should no longer worship on Sunday for that reason.

Consequently, they are convinced that our church ought to live by this eternal, moral law of God if it is to obey and worship God in a holy and appropriate way. However, because of what the NT says in Matt. 5:17-20; 1 Cor. 9:19-23; Gal.4:21-5:1; and Col. 2:16-19 that they are mixing and confounding the Old and New Covenants, the Mosaic Law and the Law of Christ in way that can lead to the legalism and spiritual bondage that both Peter and Paul warn us about.

So please pray for me as I write and share this essay with these people. For I want to speak and do the truth in love, not in pride, nor in harsh self-righteousness. “Truth without love kills, but love without truth is a lie.”

Comment by Frank

June 13, 2009 @ 9:46 pm

And if I may as an after thought, state I am still studying T.F. Torrance’s THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF GOD: ONE BEING, THREE PERSONS, and enjoying it immensely. I may even write another essay on the Trinity after this study, but a positive exposition of the doctrine, not another critique of the Semi-Arianism promoted by Grudem and Ware.

And I have just finished reading an interesting statement by Torrance about how we should think about the Three Divine Persons, based on the Nicene Creed itself. Let me know what you think about this:

What then does it mean to think of the three divine Persons specifically as ‘Father’, ‘Son’, and ‘Holy Spirit’? This was a question that had kept cropping up in the Church since the Arian controversy when attempts were made to speak of divine Fatherhood and Sonship on the analogy of human fatherhood and sonship. While there is certainly a figurative or metaphorical ingredient in the human terms ‘father’ and ’son’ as they are used in divine revelation, they are to be understood in ways that point utterly beyond what we mean by ‘father’ and ’son’ among ourselves and thus utterly beyond all sexist connotations and implications. Both the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit are incomprehensible mysteries which are not explicable through recourse to human modes of thought. Hence, as Athanasius and Gregory Nazianzen insisted, we must set aside all analogies drawn from the visible world in speaking of God, helpful as they may be up to a point, for they are theologically unsatisfactory and even objectionable, and must think of ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ when used of God as imageless relations. ‘Father’, Gregory pointed out, ‘is the name of the relation in which the Father stands to the Son, and the Son to the Father’, but such that it is an ineffable relation which exceeds and transcends human powers of imagination and conception, so that we may not read the creaturely content of our human expressions of ‘father’ and ’son’ analogically into what God discloses of his own inner divine relations. Hence Gregory Nazianzen, like Athanasius, insisted that they must be treated as referring imagelessy, that is in a diaphanous or ’see through’ way, to the Father and the Son without the intrusion of creaturely forms or sensual images into God. Thus we may not think of God as having gender nor think of the Father as begetting the Son or of the Son as begotten after the analogy of generation or giving birth with which we are familiar among creaturely beings (“Three Persons, One Being,” THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF GOD, pp. 157-158).

I am sorry for the length of the quote, but I believe Torrance addresses some of the points brought up by Francine (89440) in a profound way. And since I’ve been so close in studying his words, I may not see some things you all might perceive by the Spirit and so I need your help to see it from a fresh perspective.

Comment by Jamie

June 14, 2009 @ 6:05 pm

I’m a latecomer to “The Shack” myself. It’s a GREAT book! : )

I love this line:

““Chain of command? That sounds ghastly!” Jesus said.”

; ) Indeed, ghastly.

Sometimes (well, more often than not, actually) I think we in the Christian community have a difficult time allowing other Christians to have a differing opinion on theological matters that are non-salvational in character.

I know this is all about the most important thing that matters in this world and the next — but especially it seems to me from the anti-woman preaching/teaching — complementarian front — they are so legalistic and rules driven that their tolerance level for an opposing view is way out of whack for what would be expected from a reasonable person.

I’m just reminded of this because of the impact “The Shack” has had.

I’m also just grateful that people aren’t burned at the stake anymore because unfortunately in some areas of Christiandom the author would be on the fire. Again, some Christians just don’t want anyone to disagree with them. Despite their public “Lord, Lord!” they exhibit actually a profoundly weak kind of faith.

Most Christians don’t even understand Who they are worshipping!:

Most think God is male, they think the Holy Spirit is a “symbol” for God and not a Person, and they think Jesus is Christian.

“The Shack” certainly helps shake off these false notions!

How interesting that Christian fiction is doing far MORE to educate Christians than some churches are!

PS: How do non-Christians view Christians? A few Sundays ago our Pastor informed us over 80% say Christians are “hypocritical” and “judgmental”. Sounds to me the church needs to be much better at self-reflection and where they’ve gone wrong rather than accusations at outsiders who are “sinners”.

Comment by Gloria

June 16, 2009 @ 10:55 am

I hope it doesn’t take a “pastor” telling christians that people think their kind are hypocritical and judgmental for them to figure it out. XD

If it does, those Christians have been spending WAY too much time in a church building. Supposedly we believe that we’re supposed to spread the love of God in a tangible way, but a lot of Christians just hole themselves up in a Christian subculture in the name of being “not of the world” (I grew up in the thick of this subculture myself). That is just sickening to me. The institutional church with buildings and liturgies, christian bookstores, paid pastors, christian record labels… It’s not what God had in mind. You cannot convince me that this is what Jesus wanted when he was training his disciples.

I still believe in the Church – as in the Body of Christ, but I’ve had enough of what Christianity has become.

Unfortunately, I feel like I’ve been so trained by the modern “church” to equate the “spiritual” with an emotional response or with simply thinking ABOUT God that I don’t even know how to relate to and experience God anymore. What IS spiritual? How do we go about having a relationship with God sans religion? I suppose my faith has been damaged a bit by not knowing who or what to trust… I can read the bible, but what interpretation should I adhere to? I don’t want to put God in a box.

Comment by Fae

June 16, 2009 @ 12:06 pm

I was crying while I read the quote from THE SHACK this morning. I NEED to read this book ! Thanks !

Comment by Donald Guffey

June 17, 2009 @ 8:58 am

” The Shack” for me was honestly one of the most life changing books ( second to well, the Bible pretty much) that I have ever read. As to the negative backlash it received, I attribute that to a sort of theological insecurity than I do to any real substance. God being portrayed as a women is explained in detail in the book and not to offer any spoilers or anything he is also revealed as a man later in the book. The fact of God being revealed as a woman never bothered me. I found this aspect to be very refreshing and it ministered to me in a very beautiful way. The fact is that God is neither male nor female and that he is not only our father but our mother, sister and brother, meaning that whatever we lack, God is! Seeing this portrayed in a book like the shack is one of the most wonderful works I think I’ve ever seen. Eugene Peterson is right on when he said that this book has the potential to do in our generation what the ” Pilgrims Progress” did in its generation, a marvellous read indeed.

Comment by Lori

June 22, 2009 @ 11:37 am

Francine in 89440:

[em]I bought it last year mainly because I was reading negative things about it in some circles and heard it was baned from some Christian bookstores. I was curious about what was in it to cause them to ban the book.[/em]

That’s about what happened to me. I kept seeing all these negative comments about it on blogs and internet boards. Since the people being so negative were mainly patriarchs/evangelicals, I knew the book was probably worth reading. I was exactly right. It was the best book I’ve read in a long time, certainly the best Christian book.

And yes, having been raised in the patriarchal church, it felt weird reading about God as a woman. Once I got over my hang-up, though, I realized that it was actually a great idea. God is Spirit; He/She has no gender. That’s just something He created in humans. Therefore, why shouldn’t God be shown as a woman?

I also loved the author’s rebuff of the “Trinity subordination” heresy. He did an absolutely wonderful job of boiling it down so that the average reader can understand why it’s such a wrongheaded theory. I now reccommend this book to everyone I can.

Comment by JLP

June 26, 2009 @ 4:01 pm

I read the book because of this blog. Without this blog, I wouldn’t have bothered. This book really encouraged me and answered a lot of difficult questions I had, I’m grateful Trevor chose to blog about this.

Comment by Wilma

July 9, 2009 @ 7:27 pm

The best books I’ve ever read on the Trinity are both by Kevin Giles: “The Trinity & Subordinationism” which also deals with today’s gender debate, and “Jesus and the Father” in which Mr. Giles shows how the hierarchical view of the Trinity is not orthodox. Far from being dry theology, these books are very edifying and uplifting.