I officially begin my D.Min work in Emerging Culture from George Fox Seminary August 28. 26 days and counting. Trying to prepare myself, I have purchased the books for the class and have begun to read them. One that I am reading this week is entitled Relational Holiness.
Early in the book, the authors are attempting to explain the importance of how relationships in our day-to-day life impact our life, and for the believer our expression of our faith. Relationships are necessary for life, and this postmodern expression of life fits nicely with Christian traditions that speak of the Spirit interacting with our spirit.
They go on to say that in this same vein, God is relational. They state:
…God is also present and acting relationally. No one, including God, is wholly independent or isolated from others. God is not entirely independent, because God is love, and love is expressed in relationships. Relationships require a kind of dependence if they are true relationships.
To exist, of course, God does not depend upon creatures. God was not born and will not die; God does not depend upon others in order to be. Rather, to say that God is dependent is to affirm the relational dependence that love requires. To rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn requires an experiential dependence. A God of love desires and seeks this kind of dependent relation.
God is open to and affected by others, because the Creator and the creatures enjoy mutual relations. To say that these relations are mutual is to say that God interacts with us and we interact with God. Mutuality is not the same as equality, however. God is not another mortal; there are numerous differences between the Creator and the creatures. But the wonder of it all is that the God of the universe enjoys give-and-take relations with every creature who lives.
Our descriptions of God will not and cannot be exhaustive. While Christians believe that some important things can be said about their Maker and Savior, they typically don’t claim to have given a full explanation of what divinity entails. Nevertheless, more and more people believe that the description of God as relational resides at the heart of how best to describe the Lover of us all. And they believe that this description can be enormously helpful in teaching us what it might mean to love one another.
Some of this concerns me. First, to say that God is not entirely independent, seems almost heretical. God is completely independent. And yet completely relational. But that is the beauty of the Trinity. He was completely independent because he is God. He is completely relational in the context of a co-eternal, co-equal expression of the trinity. But God does not depend on us. He is whole and complete without us. Our relationships are modeled after the Trinity. Does God reach out and love us and express that love towards perfectly in the death of Christ on the Cross? Absolutely. But he does not NEED that to have a relationship with us.
Also, to say that “God is open to and affected by others” borders on Open Theism. God cannot love us any more than he already does. The perfect expression of His love for us, again, is found in the cross. God does not change his mind. He can’t. His sovereignty doesn’t allow it. He knows all, when it will happen, how it will happen, and what our role in the events will be. We may touch his heart through our prayers, devotion and obedience to Him, but he is not in shock and awe about what or how we do things.
Does that mean he doesn’t understand us, or express love to us in ways specific and special to us and our make up and personality? No. I believe he knows exactly how to show love to us that is unique to us.
What think ye? Did I misunderstand the written text? How relational is God?
