more thoughts on the social God

I can relate to those individuals Migliore (i mentioned him in my last post) describes who struggle with language/philosophical issues. In the context of the traditional theological discussions surrounded my growing up, I sometimes felt the same gap between the historical God and my personal experiences with God. The work of determining doctrine is a very personal activity. It is where human understanding meets the person of God. A person’s theology of God is the result of their studies and experiences; and it directly relates to how they are to live out their life. That makes it easy to empathize with the victims of injustice. It would be difficult to not allow such experiences to affect one’s ideas of the One who is omnipotent. The danger is in allowing our interpretations of our personal encounters with God and with the world to trump biblical absolutes about God. We cannot allow our individual inclinations to modify scriptural evidence of the fixed and essential attributes of God. Scripture states that God is love; this means that love does not define God, but that God defines love. Other absolute definable qualities of God are found in the Bible, such as: “God is Light”, “God is Spirit”, the elements of the Trinity, and Christ’s death and resurrection acts. God is intrinsically relational. He is in harmony with His triune nature and He interacts and seeks union with us. While searching for truth, we must honor the unconditional characteristics of God and consider the unique ways in which He reveals himself to each of us personally. We should also consider that In a way, all of our theologies are wrong (or at least incomplete) because the infinite God cannot be confined by our finite systems of thought.