God of the Past – Part 2

Article “Pannenberg on the Past” previously published

Part 2 (continued from July 28)

The first thing to see is that Pannenberg asks us to abandon completely the defective Cartesian model of existence—the clock model.  God is not the clock maker, putting the thing called creation together; winding up the springs, and letting it run.  Every model that postulates the entry of evil into a perfect creation assumes this “clock” model.  Somewhere along the way, something happened to the mechanism and bad things got into the works.  Maybe it was human beings that mucked up the machinery.  Maybe it was the Devil and his minions.  Maybe it was “fate” or “chance” or whatever we cannot explain.  But the model is the same.  God made it once, a long time ago, and now it runs, rather imperfectly.  Evil got in the oil.

Pannenberg asks us to put all this mechanical modeling aside.  He says something entirely different.  Suppose for the sake of argument, that the creation is not complete, that creation is not a noun but rather a verb, an activity begun in the past but continuing unabated in the present.  God creates.  Continuous action in the present.  Not “God created” or “the creation” as though something once came into being and now is as a result of the causal chain stretching forward from its previous state, but rather, that what is (present tense) is at this moment because it is being at this very moment created ever anew.  Existence is not the result of activity in the past that perpetuates itself into the present but rather, God sustains this present existence through His moment by moment creating.  The immanence of God is not limited to His singular presence among us.  The immanence of God is an ontological statement, expressing the utter dependence of the entire creation on His sustaining power and will at this precise moment of existence, and at the next, and the next.  “In Him we live and move and have our being” takes on a much deeper, and awesome, meaning.  Right now God is creating what is.

Of course, what is being created right now is a very mixed bag.  Some good, some evil, some we’re not so sure about.  So how does this view of immanence relieve God of the culpability for evil, you ask?  Pannenberg has suggested that the true meaning of the creation (since it is in the process of being created every single moment) cannot be known for what it really is while it is in process.  You must wait until the end to see how each moment of the creating renewal finally takes shape.  It is sort of like trying to imagine the taste of a fine burgundy while the grapes are ripening on the vine, or while they are being mashed, or put in casks, or bottled, or aged.  The true taste of the wine depends on all these things, and many, many more, each of which determine its final character.  But only at the very end can we pull the cork, pour the red liquid, put it to our lips and say, “Now I know what a great burgundy is. This was worth waiting for”.  And if something as simple (or complex) as the taste of wine can take 20 years before we know the true results, the real meaning, just imagine how long the wait must be to see the true results of the process of creating all that is.

Actually, we have already been told what the true results will be.  God’s kingdom will prevail.  God’s children will rejoice.  Fellowship will be re-established.  Jesus’ message makes clear that we need not fear the results. But we’ll have to wait because the process of creating is not yet complete.

So what about evil acts?  What about Job?  Plotinus, a theologian of sorts who lived after Plato and before Augustine, postulated that evil resulted from mistakes made by demi-gods that were responsible for producing the creation as it passed through ten layers of preparation.  Much of Plotinus’ thought has been dismissed today.  But perhaps it is worth rescuing one critical idea – that creation is a process passing through stages which, along the way, entail events and actions that at that particular stage take on the appearance of the character of evil.  This may not get God off the hook for ultimate culpability (we have one more card to play in that arena), but it does force us to look beyond our current assessment for the evaluation of evil.

“What do you mean?” you might ask.  “You can’t possibly be suggesting that what we consider evil is somehow just a development on the way to good?  That rape, murder, genocide, environmental destruction, mass disasters are just stages of creative good?  This is no better than saying that freedom is an illusion.  Are you suggesting that evil is an illusion?”

No, evil is real.  Sin is real.  And God recognizes it for what it is.  It is not an illusion.  But what it means is not altogether clear to us now even though its hideousness is apparent.  Do you suppose that the Devil is so stupid that he would deliberately incite the crowds to call for Jesus’ crucifixion if he knew in advance that the crucifixion was the very event that would bring about his downfall?  Isn’t it much more plausible that the Devil did not know the true meaning of this evil act?  That he pushed for the death of God’s only Son because he believed that it was to his advantage, to his victory.  And yet, God had the final say in even this most hideous of all evil acts.  The true meaning of this evil act was unspeakable good.  God knew.  Neither the Devil nor we had a clue.  Our moment of interpretive evaluation was limited by the temporal conditions of our existence.  And when Jesus said, “It is finished,” we all believed that he meant he had failed.  He died.  Everyone knew he died.  It was over.  No one thought that God could make anything out of this tragedy.  But He did.  He created anew the entire realm of existence, providing us with insight into its ultimate meaning, in that moment three days later when God created Jesus alive.  Evil became the platform for creative good.

Does that excuse the evil?  No, and God as judge says “No.”  Does that justify the evil?  No, again.  Evil acts are not justified simply because God can make something good out of their consequences.  What it does is cause a change in our perspective in terms of understanding and explanation.  And this is why Pannenberg’s insight can help us solve the riddle of the past.

We often say that the past is fixed, the present fluid, and the future undetermined.  The logic of our concept of free choice rests on this ordinary understanding about the connection between time and action.  How often do we lament that we cannot undo the past?  The framework of law, the idea of consequences and punishment, the structure of historical research are all predicated on the static nature of the past.  Of course, science fiction authors have exploited the desire to change our own histories by inventing the somewhat illogical notion of a time machine.  But philosophers and theologians should reject such a concept as self contradictory since it carries such impossible implications as the ability to move through time to a point where I could prevent the birth of my paternal grandfather (which of course would mean that I would not have been born in the first place).  So we are confined at least on one side of the time division by the inflexibility of the past.  What is done is done, and cannot be undone.  And yet Pannenberg is suggesting that in at least one sense this is not true.  The past can be undone.   Perhaps not re-made but rather re-connected.  For in at least one sense, God can re-new the past by connecting the fixed actions of past events to new, and sometimes rather startling, future consequences – consequences that were not at all obvious when the action in the past was consummated.  God does have a time machine, but it is not one that allows Him to travel along a continuum of events.  That image of time, as a linear sequence of causal events, must be abandoned.  The Greek view of time as a river is wrong.  God’s time machine is located solidly here, in the present, but it is able to weave a future fabric from the strands of the past in gloriously unexpected ways.

God can re-new (create anew) anything.  There is no element of the present that is not created anew in the next moment.  That is what it means to say that God is the ontological ground of being – not once in the past at Creation, but right now, in the present as He holds, sustains, and renews all that is, moment by moment.  God’s immanent domain makes anything possible, including the re-connection of causal consequences from past actions.  If God’s immanent domain is the actual sustaining power of this realm of existence from one moment to the next, then the causal connections which proceed from the past into the present are also directly dependent on the divine will.  Effects follow from causes not due to their inevitable causal connection, not because they are self-propelling, but because the sustaining will of the Father precipitates them.  In this model, a miracle is nothing more than God choosing not to sustain the expected causal connection, but rather to re-distribute the cause of the past to a new effect in the present.  The raising of Lazarus is miraculous because it is not the expected consequence of dying.  But it is nothing more than completely ordinary if we view it as the re-connection between past causes and present consequences (effects).  It is no more or less miraculous than the moment by moment continuance of gravity or the motion of electrons in an atom’s nucleus.  In fact, as modern theoretical physicists are becoming more accustomed to say, the regular continuance of the universe from one second to the next is nothing short of a miracle of the highest magnitude.  Anyone with the slightest appreciation of sub-atomic physics is quite likely to believe in the unseen power of a sustaining God.  Electrons “show up” only when you look for them.  The largest component of everything that is is empty space.  Explanations of the universe depend on built-in “uncertainty.”  Martin Heidegger expressed it well with his fundamental question of all philosophy and science, “Why is there anything rather than nothing at all?”

So what about free choices?  Are the causal connections between our free choices and the resulting effects any less miraculous – or less ordinary?  If the existence of everything is renewed moment by moment through the immanent domain of the Father, and this is considered perfectly ordinary in spite of the fact that it is entirely an act of will, why should our choices be any less an act of will that connects the strands of the past to undetermined effects in the present?

In order to appreciate the full impact of this revelation, we need to spend a moment considering the nature of time.  Just suppose that there is no ex-temporal existence; that the essential quality of existing is being temporal.  Certainly we have no difficulty with this view when it comes to our existence and the existence of everything in the universe.  In fact, the only place where we even try to contemplate ex-temporal existence is when we think about God.  How we came to ascribe ex-temporal existence to God is a long story.[1]  But for the moment, let us put that history aside and ask what it would mean if God were also a temporally existing being.  The first consequence would be an end to the rhetoric about foreknowledge and predetermination.  God certainly knows a lot more than we do.  He knows everything that can be known (this is what omniscience means).  But if my free choice contains the possibility of unexpected connections between past determinants and future consequences, then the actual outcome of the choice cannot be known until the choice is made, until it becomes real.  Of course, I might anticipate all the possible effects but that does not make them real.  They are only hypothetical possibilities.

Since God knows everything that can be known, God knows all the hypothetical possibilities.  He holds all the strands of the past in His hands, waiting to connect them through immanent domain to the effects in the present.  But until I act, those strands in at least one crucial sense, are not real.  They are only possible realities, not actual reality.  In this sense, time is more like a branching tree rather than a flowing river.  It is not a single stream of events flowing toward me, moving from the future to the present and into the past.  It is rather that I stand at a growth node on a branch.  There are many, many possible directions for the branch to grow. Out of all those possibilities, my act will initiate one direction as opposed to many other possible directions and the branch will grow in that direction until I come to the next node.  The direction of growth is not fixed in advance.  The branch does not exist out there in the future.  It is growing as I choose.  Just like Alice in Wonderland, the path unfolds before me as I take the steps forward. In this regard, my choices are truly free since the shape of the future is actually created through my choices.  God, of course, can anticipate all the possible directions.  My own past actions and the past actions of all creation, incline me in some directions.  I am in that sense pre-determined.  Not all logical possibilities are real possibilities.  I cannot decide in the next moment to fly.  For example, I am highly likely to make choices that will do me harm if I have been pre-determined by growing up in an alcoholic family.  I am conditioned by my color, my economic status, my place of birth.  From the Christian perspective, sin plays a dominant role in circumscribing my choices.  And the results of the cumulative effects of sinful acts throughout human history are the context of any choice that I might make today.  But while these pre-determining conditions affect my choices, they do not eliminate my choices.  And insofar as I have some options left to me, those options are possibilities that I create as realities when and only when I exercise them.

Once exercised, my choices form the fabric called reality.  They become real, a part of the past, a strand in God’s hand.  Then they are available to, and dependent upon, His will to connect them to the next moment of creation.  In this sense, I too am a creator.  While God alone creates ex nihilo, I have true creative power (the image of God?) to bring into existence something that did not exist before, namely, the consequence of my freely chosen act.  That the conditions of my existence and the nature of my humanity circumscribe this act does not make it any less free or any less creative.  It is the one arena of the miraculous that I initiate every moment.  And it is perfectly ordinary to do so.  If we had the time here, we might give some consideration to what this new model of creating means for the traditional notion of ex nihilo.  The Greeks stumbled over this because they could not imagine making something out of nothing.  But perhaps ex nihilo has more to do with the absence of past pre-determinants than it does with the physical nothingness.

How does this help us to deal with the problem of evil?  It should be obvious that evil, as a possibility, is one of the directions that my branching choices can take.  My creative acts can be evil and, in fact, often are.  Human culpability is not exculpated because of the determining conditions of my choices, for I could always choose otherwise.  Evil is not the only possibility.  And because my choices are in this crucial sense truly free, because they are creations of new reality, I am culpable for their consequences.  The problem of evil certainly rests on the shoulders of Man.

If we reflect on the implications of this statement for a moment, we see that the weight of my evil choices (my sins) is far, far greater than I usually consider.  The adage, “If it doesn’t harm anyone else, why not do it?” can no longer be a moral guide.  Every one of my choices creates a new beginning, a radically different future than other possible futures.  The repercussions of my acts will be passed down from generation to generation.  They will spill out into the farthest reaches of the Universe.  They will alter forever the direction of reality.  My choices matter, not just to me, not just to my circle of influence, but to everyone and everything that will ever exist.  The entire world rests on my shoulders now, in this moment of decision.  And this is a weight that none of us can bear.  Is it any wonder that God hates sin?  Do you now appreciate the magnitude of our guilt and the depth of God’s solution to our guilt?

But what about those “other” evil events?  What about those evil events which seem not to be connected to human choices?  Natural disasters, global tragedies, cosmic disarray?  What is God’s role in these?

In some sense, the present universe is out of control.  Deliberately.  I believe that the Bible teaches that the ultimate responsibility for this present chaos rests on the collective actions of finite beings, both human and non-human, who made choices that introduced the accumulating effects of chaos into this reality.  Not all of those choices were made by Man, but Man certainly played a major role.  Today we live with the advancing results of centuries of compounded deliberate evil choices.  The range of our possibilities is narrowing as these cumulative effects shape the future.  As an illustration, we might consider for a moment the cumulative effects of deforestation, now hundreds of years after the events of cutting down trees.  Who would have imagined that cutting trees would put the entire planet in peril when the forests stretched beyond sight?  Yet it was true then, just as we see the truth now.  Still, we burn the rainforest at astounding rates, pushing the cataclysm ahead of us, faster and faster.  If we knew all of the ramifications of the centuries of sins committed by Mankind and other finite beings, I believe we would be aghast at the scope of the effects.  I believe we would find more than adequate explanation for much of what we now consider “natural” evils.  Clearly, evil is unnatural.  It is not what God created (creates) or intended.  That His immanent domain carries the consequences of past evil acts forward with each moment of re-creation can only be understood if we see what Pannenberg suggests.  The game is not up yet.  God is steering this ship in spite of our collective efforts to sink it into the depths.  But how God steers this leaking craft is not obvious to those of us who are concerned only with opening another hole in the hull.  Our perspective is myopically human.  Paul suggests so in Romans where he hints that “all creation groans” in expectation of salvation.  This game is not just about humanity.  It is about reality.

If this is an adequate, although somewhat truncated, explanation for the evils of our existence, then we seem to still be left with one crucial question.  Didn’t God know that creating beings like us would lead to all this chaos?  And if He did know, and He created us anyway, isn’t He still responsible?

If God is temporal, then His choices are also temporal.  The difference between created beings and God, the uncreated Being, is not the difference between time and timelessness but rather the difference between limited time and unlimited time (eternity).  God gets to deal with temporal reality forever.  That includes the temporal reality before any created existence came into being; the time when only God existed.  Sometime during that temporal existence when only God existed, He created other existing things.  Of course, He knew all of the possibilities that could occur once those beings were created.  He could hypothesize about every contingency.  But those possibilities were not real since they did not exist at that point in time.  God, in His infinite wisdom, must have concluded that creating, as opposed to not creating, was the correct righteous action to take, since God did create.  He must have decided that this was the correct action in spite of His hypothesizing about the possible outcomes of His action.  Perhaps this is what it means to say that God provided a means of salvation through His son “before the foundations of the Universe.”  He always knew that this present state was a possibility, and He planned His own contingent actions in light of that possibility.  But that does not make it reality.  It only becomes reality when those possibilities are exercised into existence.

God created beings that were capable of acting with free choice.  One of the possible outcomes of creating beings like this is that they choose in ways that are not consistent with the wishes of the Creator.  If those choices are not pre-determined (either by creative fiat, divine omniscience, or divine infallibility), but are rather the exercise of genuine creativity, bringing into being something that did not exist beforehand, then the only culpability that God has for the results of such actions is that God created the fabric that made such possibilities possible.  That is to say, God created beings that could chose.  Does this make God responsible for the choices they make?  When my children make choices that bring evil consequences into existence, am I responsible?  The answer to that question is “Yes” and “No.”  I am responsible for their existence since my actions brought them into existence.  I am responsible for their development since I am the parent. And insofar as their existence and their development provide the backdrop for the choices that they make, I am responsible for their choices.  But parents usually are not put on trial for the sins of their adult children.  We recognize that culpability usually belongs to the perpetrator, not to the progenitor.  So while I am responsible as a parent for my role in the sins of my offspring, I am not responsible for the creative acts they choose to bring such sins into existence.  Sins are individual matters, with both individual and corporate consequences, performed within a fabric that is both individual and corporate.  I share in the blame if I have failed to perform my actions of generation and development correctly, but that is not the same as personal moral culpability for the evil choice of my offspring.   It seems no different for God the Father.

He is the creator.  His creation, in all its aspects, has chosen to rebel.  If He had been imperfect in His creation or His development or His love or His patience with the rebellious creation, then He would share in the blame, just as I would share in the blame for my children’s sins.  But unlike me, God is the perfect Father.  His creation was Good; His development was perfect, His love unchanging, and His patience everlasting.  Yet, in spite of all that, His children, both human and non-human, rebelled.  And they carried with them in those acts of rebellion all of the creation into chaos.

Today, God sustains the creation through His immanent domain in a sort of voluntary chaos.  It is chaotic because evil exists as a reality.  Choices have been made and will continue to be made that bring evil consequences into existence.  This is the epitome of chaos, since sin itself is the most illogical thing in the universe.  But this present existence is voluntary chaos.  It is not chaos run amuck.  It is not out of control.  God is still the sustainer of existence.  He is finally, ultimately in control.  At the moment, His method seems to be to voluntarily allow the consequences of the accumulation of evil creative acts to be perpetuated.  Of course, we have no idea how much His hand has restrained the actual possibilities of evil.  We only know that evil is with us now.  And God has voluntarily chosen to let it run its course, to let us have our way and the results of our way, until such time as He chooses not to renew the connections between the past and the future.  God is in charge.  We just can’t see quite how.  But we have glimpses, hints, and intuitions about His control.  Our task is to bring into existence a reality that is more in line with His direction for the future than with our current course.  Pannenberg’s suggestion that we will not see how the pieces all fit together until the end helps us to muster the courage to make one more choice for Good and propel reality in God’s direction.  We are co-creators of the future.  Fortunately, He will prevail.  The ultimate end is not in doubt.  Therefore, the real question of responsibility lies ahead of us.  God has asked us to join Him in creating something that has never before existed.  The future.

Topical Index: Pannenberg, past, time, part 2

[1] The history of this idea begins with the Greek philosopher Heraclitus and finds its way through Plato into the medieval theologian Boethius who influenced Aquinas.  The idea is thoroughly Greek, not Judeo-Christian.  But it has held sway for centuries because it is so firmly tied to an entire methodology of dealing with God’s attributes, the via negativa.