Partnering with God: Exploring Collaboration in Open and Relational Theology

By SacraSage Press

The idea that we can partner with God strikes some people as audacious. Others consider it pretentious. Some may think it's downright blasphemous!

Can creatures actually can partner with God?

This book answers that question... in the affirmative. The responses vary and the proposals provoke new insigh

• Language: English
• Publisher: SacraSage Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781948609418

Book preview

Introduction

The title of this book, Partnering with God, will strike some readers as audacious. Others will consider it pretentious. Some may think it’s downright blasphemous!

After all, who can really claim to partner with God?!

This book answers that question. The responses vary and the enclosed proposals provoke new insights. This book breaks new ground.

As editors, we want to say what we don’t mean by partnering with God. We don’t mean that creatures are equal to their Creator. We differ from God in many ways, so equality with deity is not something we think possible.

We also don’t mean partnership implies that we can function without God’s creative influence, empowering, or love. We’re not entirely independent beings who exist without help from God and others. In fact, it’s in God that we live and move and have our being. Without God, we can do nothing.

By partnering, we mean that our choices, actions, and agency play a role alongside God’s activity in the world. We can cooperate (or not) with our Creator. We’re potential collaborators, conspirators, and co-creators. To join with God means we contribute to the unfolding of existence. Actually, we believe that is our divine calling and part of what it means to be made in the image of God.

Partnering with God has other meanings too. And a myriad of dimensions. The essays in this book explore this diversity. We’re happy to present this amazing array of essays!

Some essays are theoretical, exploring theological, philosophical, biblical, or scientific dimensions of partnership. Others are personal, practical, even poetic. Some essayists explore partnership applied to daily life.

We think this diversity is a strength. The essays cover more topics than a book of uniform essays could. What unites their diversity is the common cause of pondering partnership with the divine.

These writings align with a particular theological perspective called open and relational theology. This broad umbrella includes many ideas, movements, and thinkers. There’s plenty of room for disagreement in what Alfred North Whitehead called the adventure of ideas. But open and relational thinkers share at least two commitments:

1. The relational in open and relational theology stands for the idea that God is affected or influenced by creatures and creation. We make a difference to the divine. This is reflected in how our prayers influence God, how we treat each other and creation itself affects God’s activities, our cooperation for salvation, and more. God receives what we do into the ongoing divine experience. This means, among other things, our actions ultimately matter. In short, God is relational.

2. The open in open and relational theology points to the ultimacy of time’s flow. God and creation face an open and yet to be determined future. In fact, there is no future, if by that word we mean a state of affairs already fully settled and knowable. Instead, we and God move forward in time and choose among possibilities, options, and opportunities. The future is open.

Open and relational thinkers explore other ideas too, such as God’s love, creaturely agency and freedom, a relational world, personal and social action, God’s presence and power, and so on. While most—but not all—of these essays are written from a Judeo-Christian standpoint, their amazing variety demonstrates the wide appeal of this theological perspective. To dive deeper, check out the resources available on the website of the Center for Open and Relational Theology (c4ort.com). You can also explore Tom’s new book, Open and Relational Theology: An Introduction to Life-Changing Ideas (SacraSage, 2021)!

To create some structure, we have grouped the essays into three sections: principles, practice, and personal. The principles section provides some foundational information on partnering with God from various perspectives: theological, philosophical, biblical, scientific, etc. The section on practice applies some of these principles—and others—in concrete ways to demonstrate the diverse applications and understandings of partnering with God. The last section contains inspirational narratives and insights which reveal the profound impact that partnering with God has on individuals, families, and communities. These three sections are not mutually exclusive. For example, some essays on the practical aspects also contain principles and personal anecdotes, and some testimonial accounts conclude with broader principles and exhortation. While not rigorous, this editorial attempt at structure serves as a guide that leads you through this invigorating book. And we end with an artistic flourish: a poetic portrayal of partnering with God and an invitation for us to do the same.

Finally, we express our gratitude to the essayists and others who have made this Partnering with God project a reality. As the reader will notice, some essayists have shared deeply personal stories, which make this important topic come truly alive. We appreciate the trust and courage that takes. We have talked amongst ourselves about how much we have enjoyed reading and editing the essays. We consider it a privilege to partner with God and with such intelligent and creative people!

Here’s to better understanding and living partnership with God,

Tim Reddish, Bonnie Rambob, Fran Stedman, and Thomas Jay Oord

Principles

Beauty Desires You

Andre Rabe

God desires more than a business partner; he desires your flesh where divine possibilities seek existence.

Beautiful possibilities are calling you, and you have something essential for these to be realized. The creative process by which possibilities become actualities has much to do with your desire. I’m excited to explore the relationship between possibilities, who you are, your desires, and the creative process by which beauty can find a home in your existence.

In Greek mythology, the god Kairos was pictured as a fast-running athlete with a lock of hair on his forehead. It was said that he moved so fast that you could only grasp him as he ran towards you; the moment he passed, it was too late. And so Kairos was used to symbolize opportunity. Desire prepares us to grab Kairos by his lock of hair. There is something unique about who you are, the moment you find yourself in, and the opportunities open to you.

We are all part of an enormous cosmic story filled with surprising twists and turns. The beauty, diversity, and complexity we see around us are astonishing. Some find the uniqueness of life on earth so surprising that they consider it an anomaly. Many others, including myself and the author of the gospel of John, believe there is an underlying logic to this beauty.

John speaks about the mind of God, the logos, becoming flesh. This event has become known as the incarnation. The idea was scandalous for it apparently confused the utter unapproachable holiness of God with the ordinary, tangible material of human life. The fact that God is a separate entity, completely other from creation, is ancient in origin but still rather popular today. John introduces a completely new perspective: a God who is entangled in our existence, not so much a distant personality as a present possibility seeking actualization in our lives. Although the historic Jesus is unique, he came to unveil a process of incarnation that is ongoing in all creation. How, then, does the logos that John speaks of, this divine logic, become manifest in reality?

Let’s first consider the nature of possibilities. Modern science tells us that the early stages of our universe consisted of simple elements in clouds of gas. If anyone could have witnessed this early stage, they would never have imagined that from these simple and lifeless elements would come butterflies and butternuts, much less the phenomenon of consciousness! Our cosmic story has a clear trajectory towards greater diversity, beauty, and complexity that cannot be explained from a purely materialistic perspective. Something else draws creation forward. Beyond the visible is a realm vibrating with creative possibilities, inviting the seen to transcend itself. I think this is what John intuitively knew, and he named it the Logos—the logic or mind of God.

The history of our cosmos is the story of this partnership between immaterial mind and material reality. This relentless unfolding of creative novelty eventually produced something so complex that it could contemplate its own existence and appreciate the beauty of the universe that produced it—human consciousness. The advent of consciousness marks a new chapter in this cosmic drama, for it allows for the creation of meaning and so opens up the inner story of our cosmos. Where would this radically new capacity lead?

Well, the direction was not clear at first. This new chapter—the emergence of human consciousness—seemed to produce a new intensity of both good and evil. Human history includes both beauty and horror, love, and violence. How can the movement towards beauty and goodness be assured while humans have the freedom to be creatively evil? Is it possible for humans to move freely in the same direction as John’s divine logos? The story of Jesus answers that question with a resounding Yes! As a human, just like us, He consistently chose to partner with God, to realize the good and the beautiful. Was he an anomaly? Did Jesus come to boast and show us what we could never be? No! He unveiled what is possible for each of us.

What is it about human consciousness that intensifies both good and evil? This brings us to our second consideration—the role of human desire.

Desire moves us. It can be intense, persistent, and more persuasive than rationality. In its twisted form, it becomes jealous, deceitful, and even murderous. All religions are keenly aware of the dangers of desire. Buddhism, for instance, sees desire as the source of suffering. There is something true about that view, but there are also positive aspects to desire. Desire for the good of another is at the heart of loving relationships. Many heroic stories are of those who intentionally gave themselves for the benefit of others. Having similar desires or interests as others is the very basis of growing friendships. The desire for meaning and knowledge has propelled our civilizations forward. I can go on and on, but I hope the point is clear: desire can be both destructive and positively creative.

What is different about human consciousness that makes desire such a powerful force? Consciousness of self, if not uniquely human, is highly developed in humans. The anthropologist/philosopher Rene Girard showed how desire does not originate in self but, actually, forms a sense of self. Self originates in desire rather than desire in the self. This gives us new insight into the very operation of desire. If someone withholds what I desire, I perceive it not only as a lack of the object I desire, but as a lack of being—an attack on my self! It also means that pursuing my desires can become irrationally intense, for what I’m actually pursuing is a sense of self that satisfies. Girard brilliantly showed how much of our desires are unconsciously mirrored from, or mediated by, others whose being we desire. Advertisers exploit this knowledge and suggest that if only you bought their product, you would become the person you always wanted to be!

Jesus seemed to have understood this dynamic movement between desire, a sense of self, and the relationships we find ourselves in. He consciously chose the one "for whom all things are possible" to be the source of his desires and, consequently, the source of his being. He does not do his own will (desire), but his very sustenance is to do the will of him who sent him (John 4:34). Jesus only does what he sees the Father doing (John 5:16).

How does he see the Father? How does this process work? This brings us to our last consideration: the creative process.

The four gospels tell us that Jesus often drew aside. I think Jesus himself gives us some insight into this practice of solitude when he teaches about the branches abiding in the vine and concludes by saying: If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want, and it will be done for you (John 15:7).

Remaining, or as some translations have it, abiding, suggests something more than an occasional visit. It speaks of being at home—at peace. Just as a branch does not worry about putting out its own roots, but simply abides in the vine, we can find a place in which there is no consciousness of lack, and abide there.

In the Greek language in which the text was written, the rest of the sentence follows a simple sequence, namely: you will desire, you will ask, it will be created.

The desires born from this place of abiding are not formed by a sense of lack. Rather, they are birthed from peace and contentment. It is here where I find my connection to the vine, to my source, here where I do not sustain my own identity but discover myself as part of divine life, that a new kind of desire is born. For this desire is motivated by the superabundance of the God of possibility, rather than my sense of inadequacy. Remember, we are considering how Jesus cultivated divine desires in order to manifest divine possibilities.

Can you see how this practice of abiding in Christ, of letting go of all the pursuits and demands of everyday life and simply resting in the presence of God, not only brings peace but prepares us for unique moments of opportunity that will come our way? Desire will sharpen our recognition, and will embolden us to ask, and it will be our Abba’s delight to give us the desires of our heart (see Ps 37:4).

So much of our identities, individually and nationally, have been formed by a sense of lack and the twisted desire to take from others what we think we lack in ourselves. Jesus modelled a new way of being. Perceiving God as the superabundant source of possibilities, and living from that sense of fullness by giving ourselves for the benefit of others, restores the trajectory of this cosmic story. The incarnation continues . . . in you!

Question: Can desire be a creative force?

Andre Rabe is Professor of Theology at Mimesis Academy (https://www.mimesis.academy) and Doctoral Student in Open and Relational Theology at Northwind Theological Seminary. Rabe is the author of numerous books, including Creative Chaos. He blogs at alwaysloved.net

Resources:

A variety of related resources: https://alwaysloved.net

Online theological program: https://www.mimesis.academy

Podcast: https://qyourapodcast.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AlwayslovedNet

A Cosmic Love Story

Michael M. Rose

Love is at the heart of the Cosmos. The God-who-loves invites us to embrace and enter this evolutionary love story. In loving well, we partner with God and others towards a hopeful, equitable, sustainable future.

I really like good stories. I like stories that inspire beauty, resilient hope, redemption, and restorative justice. Our shared stories tell us where we come from and what we value. The stories we tell each other, for good or ill, shape our worldview. They influence the relationships we have with others who are like us—or different from us—and how we relate to the physical world around us. Two examples of prominent stories that provide shape to our worldview are science and religion.

Our best stories are not static and change as new insights become available and better fit the audience’s context. Science shifts with tested ideas and as more information becomes available. Consider the change from the clockwork universe of Newton, to Einstein, to quantum physics.

Changes to religious stories happen too. Changes of circumstances, like the Jewish diaspora scattering Jews throughout Europe, challenging them to re-imagined Judaism apart from the land and Temple. Stories have changed within Christianity, like the split between the Eastern and Western Church, or the Reformation, or Copernicus and Galileo who turned the previous geocentric worldview on its head.

Today there are as many as thirty-thousand different Christian denominations, each with its perspective. Within the folds of the most faithful Christian denominations, many people are wrestling with the implications of big ideas like evolution and quantum science for their faith.

While grateful for the faith of the Church Fathers, like Augustine, Aquinas, and the Reformers, they knew nothing of evolution or quantum physics—or the implications they would have for our thinking about God and the world. This doesn’t mean we scrap these voices from our story. We let go of the dogmatic adherence to the aspects that no longer fit how we now understand things to be and allow the trajectory of their faith, with its insight and beauty, to guide us into new stories. Faithful to this trajectory, we re-contextualize our inherited wisdom for a quantum world.

Many are discovering the mutually beneficial relationship between good science and good spirituality. There is a realization that both deal with the cosmos and experiences within it but from different vantage points. Science offers some mind-blowing revelations concerning the cosmos, while spirituality can help us find our place and meaning as part of it. Healthy faith can bring a different way of knowing that adds soulfulness alongside a naturalistic way of knowing. Such stories anchor us in concrete ways to the physical and spiritual realities of the cosmos.

Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) was fascinated by the natural sciences and recognized the long, slow pattern of evolution within the cosmos. He saw God active within evolution and identified a pattern of attraction, connection, complexity, and consciousness within the big history of evolution.

From the Big Bang origin of the Universe, Teilhard reflected on how basic elements would combine with other elements to create more complex material. Teilhard suggested that the fundamental attraction between these elements was a kind of energy—specifically, Love (Eros) energy. This simple, primal attraction formed the basis for increasing complexity to manifest new things in the cosmos.

For Teilhard, God and the cosmos are entangled, and God inspires and empowers the law-like regularities, including the evolutionary process. He coined the word "Christogenesis" to describe the co-creative relationship between God and created life in the march of evolution toward greater love and wholeness. Teilhard was inspired deeply by the idea that all things are held together in Christ (Col 1:17b).

For approximately 14 billion years, the continually-expanding cosmos of galaxies, stars, nebulae, planets, and black holes showcase an ongoing evolutionary story. It started small and simple, becoming more complex, with potential for novelty at each step.

In the fullness of time, life emerges and, in time, life produces consciousness, and for the first time, the Cosmos becomes conscious of itself. The pinnacle of this conscious life is the human being. Humans continued to evolve and become even more creative and complex. Humans begin fashioning and using tools (the spear to the microchip), and more complex relationships and communities are examples of increasing complexity. The Cosmos, now conscious in human beings, can now influence its own evolution and the entire planet because of the intimate relationship between humanity and its home.

As complexity and consciousness expand, so does the human capacity for more complex expressions and experiences of love. As we experience love in deeper ways, we stretch to express this love around us. We discover that love begets love. We begin to awaken that in every moment, we can choose from a host of possibilities to love, ones that are consistent with what we have available to us, the context of the situation, and God’s grace.

For Teilhard, at the core of everything is love. He saw the God-who-is-love shimmering at the very heart of matter itself. From Teilhard’s perspective, the direction of the evolution of the Cosmos is towards ultimate love (Omega). The God-who-is-love calls us, encouraging and empowering us towards more love.

Some of our best (and worst) love stories are about God. God expresses love to humans and within the Cosmos through relational, self-giving love. Thomas Jay Oord explores this with his idea of Essential Kenosis. Oord asserts that God’s essence is love, and all of God’s attributes flow from God’s love. This means God can’t act against God’s nature of love. God has to love because that is who God is.

Again, Oord helps us land this big idea of love. He defines love as intentionally acting, both empathetically and sympathetically in response to others (including God), in ways that promote overall well-being. We get to partner with God as we choose to love in every moment of every day. To choose love is to lean into every moment for maximizing love.

God loves by self-giving. God affords others freedom and self-motivation, and direction. God doesn’t control us or the Cosmos. While love doesn’t control, it encourages, empowers, and coaxes us towards the greatest love possible. The God-who-is-love at work in the world presents us with a host of possibilities to live love and, in choosing to love, we co-create with God.

The Cosmos, pickled with the God-who-is love, helps us recognize our relatedness to one another and creation. The Cosmos’ trajectory, and the faithful intuitions of those who have come before us, point to an unfolding creation held together and animated by love energy. Love is the metaphysical current of the cosmos and, with it, the sacred invitation to join in by becoming love. We, the Cosmos-now-conscious, are invited to participate in the Christification of the Cosmos. Through self-giving love, we partner with God to form Christ’s body in the Cosmos towards wholeness through love in Christ (Eph 1:10).

Our imaginations are awash with love stories of personal sacrifices, heroic acts, and the like. These can indeed be genuine and inspiring, but it is essential that we don’t discount the kind of love that occurs daily. Often seen as the mundane, the many actions we do every day can also be genuinely loving. The day-to-day of serving others in our families with laundry, ironing, cleaning the cat box, or wiping a runny nose are all acts of love. Loving might be bearing with each other while we deal with our stuff, and to forgive and be forgiven. It is both the giving and receiving of love. Loving is visiting a sick friend, volunteering in the community, or shoveling our neighbor’s sidewalk. In everyday life, we can partner with God by loving as best as we are able.

When we use our power (influence and resources) to work for a vibrant, just, and equitable planet, we partner with God. We partner with God as we act to advocate for the poor, those who suffer injustice, discrimination, and racism. The things we do for the those often considered least, we do for Christ.

When we choose to love, we quite naturally resist the pull of greed, retributive violence, indiscriminate consumption, and exploitation of people and the planet.

In this love story, our choices and actions—big or small—matter.

Through a compelling story, shaped by both science and religion, Teilhard presents us with an invitation to partner with God to help shape our collective future, which began and will culminate in love. The Cosmos current is a relational, self-giving, Other-empowering love. And we are invited to live our lives as a gift for others. Partnering with God in love shapes our new story—connecting us in more tangible ways to ourselves, to one another, our planet, the Cosmos, and God.

Question: With divine love at the very heart of the Universe, in what tangible ways might you partner with God as you live life? (Don’t despise small beginnings)

Michael Rose serves as a spiritual director and grief specialist in Alberta, Canada. He earned his M.Min at St. Stephen University, New Brunswick, Canada. He is the author of Becoming Love: Avoiding Common Forms of Christian Insanity (2012) and shares his faith-inspired musings on IamSignificant.ca.

How Scripture is a Partnership with God

William Yarchin

Partnership with God: we miss the message of Scripture if we don’t get this one thing about it.

Scripture is God’s word. How can the Scripture itself be understood as a partnership with God? Strange as it sounds, this is something about the Bible that’s actually easy to demonstrate by paying attention to two things: (1) What the Bible says, and (2) How it says it.

1) What the Bible Says About Partnership with God

In the very first pages of the Bible, we read the famous story of God’s creation of the heavens and the earth. At first, anything that gets created directly results from God’s own initiative and agency when God alone creates time, the sky, and the terrestrial surfaces (Gen 1:3–10).

But then God speaks to the earth, inviting it to vegetate vegetation, which is a literal translation of the Hebrew. The earth responds by bringing forth vegetation (Gen 1:11–13), and then the earth responds to God’s further invitation by bringing forth creatures to live on the land (Gen 1:20–25). These are actions performed by specific parts of God’s creation, and God recognizes them as parallel with God’s own actions: And God saw that it was good. When God lastly creates humans, they are endowed with God’s own image as a special partnership for tending the rest of God’s creation as a garden.

So the Bible begins by consistently characterizing the relationship of God with creation as a partnering between God and God’s creatures to maintain and enhance a fruitful world.

Partnerships, however, work best only when all parties work together in collaboration. God’s creatures possess degrees of freedom to make choices about their responses to God’s partnership invitation. According to the biblical story, the God-creation-human collaboration begins to break down as humans make choices that ruin the world with violence. God’s grief over this takes the form of a global catastrophe—the great flood—that ultimately brings about a recommitment to the partnership in an everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth (Gen 9:16).

The story moves on. The people of the earth pursue their own interests, and God works to align their pursuits with God’s own purposes for the earth. For example, the tower of Babel story concludes with the people of the world developing a wide variety of languages and cultures as they spread across the face of the earth. This global human diversity is depicted as something God achieved—The Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth (Gen 11:8)—by working through the impulse of (even errant) human decisions—Come, let us build ourselves a city (Gen 11:8). Very early on, the Bible establishes a pattern of human ambitions and decisions interwoven with divine purposes as the fundamental framework for the divine-human partnership that will continue through the rest of the story.

In this pattern of partnership, God works through the nitty-gritty realities of life to create possibilities that will advance God’s purposes of blessings for the earth. For example, in Genesis we are told that Abraham and Sarah are too old to have children. In their culture that would be the end of the line for them, leaving no future legacy. But God works with them through a covenant (which is an agreement to partnership), and their family line continued, against all odds. Their descendants eventually came to be known as the Israelites, who also agree to a partnership in covenant with God. According to the Torah, these covenant partnerships assign to the people of Israel a particular purpose among the nations: they are to be a blessing for other peoples (Gen 12:1–3) as a priestly kingdom, mediating the blessings of God’s rule to all the other nations of the earth (Exod 19:4–6). In the light of the Israelites’ solemn declaration at Mount Sinai, it is no stretch to call this a partnership: All that the Lord has spoken, we will do (Exod 24:7).

From this point onward, the Bible’s larger story line follows the ups and downs of this collaboration. The Israelites are enjoined to align themselves with God’s purposes in keeping with the terms of the covenant agreement in order to know peace and prosperity. But when they chose to turn aside from God’s concern for the vulnerable and the poor—a covenant expectation—the disastrous consequences of their choices worked themselves out, in accordance with the terms of the partnership. This is what the Bible calls God’s judgment.

The Old Testament prophets revealed that God’s judgment can open new opportunities for God’s people to make better choices that are aligned with God’s purposes by pursuing justice and righteousness. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, God declared through Jeremiah, announcing the salvation God purposed to bring out of the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem (Jer 31:33). Later, when the pagan king Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon, another prophet announced that God was using that king’s self-interested policies to open up a possibility for the preservation of Israel: He is my shepherd, and he shall carry out all my purpose to restore Jerusalem (Isa 44:28). And once restored, a newly redeemed Israel will understand itself as God’s servant, A light to the nations, that the Lord’s salvation may reach to the end of the earth (Isa 49:6).

This is missional partnership, something that Jesus liked to call the kingdom of heaven. Jesus offered himself as a model of this partnership with God in his self-giving ministry, and he called his followers to do likewise: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations . . . (Matt 28:19). We could say more, but we can already see that partnership with God is so huge in the Bible we might even call it the fundamental theme of Scripture.

2) How the Bible Speaks about Partnership with God

The Christian Bible speaks in three major modes: as prophetic Scripture, as apostolic Scripture, and as liturgic Scripture.

In the Old Testament, prophetic Scripture begins with the story of the formation of God’s covenant people. As mediated by the prophet Moses, the story itself becomes instruction about how to be God’s people. This instruction is not aimed solely at the Israelites of ancient times, but—even more deliberately—to all who would read the story for generations to come. Story-as-instruction inelegantly but accurately unpacks the word Torah. In the Bible, the history books come right after the Torah, and they are likewise part of prophetic Scripture. The writers narrate the extended story of God’s covenant people in order to urge later readers to partnership-alignment with God’s desires for the world’s well-being. Persuading readers into that alignment is also why the orations of Israel’s prophets were written and collected into books bearing their names (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc.). In prophetic Scripture, God speaks through prophets—from Moses to Malachi—who obediently declare the word of the Lord, and also through scribes who faithfully copy their words, conveying them to later generations of readers. In short, prophetic Scripture itself is a phenomenon of partnership with God.

In the New Testament, apostolic Scripture begins with the story of the formation of God’s new covenant people through the ministry of Jesus. In the hands of gospel writers like Luke, the story itself becomes instruction about how to be God’s people: . . . so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed (Luke 1:4). The story tells of Jesus sending forth apostles to spread their Lord’s message, to establish churches throughout the Mediterranean world, and to sustain those churches with letters of instruction. Apostolic Scripture (gospels, Acts, epistles) conveys the words of writers who understand themselves as partners with God to advance God’s kingdom. So the record of their words (that is, the New Testament) is itself a phenomenon of partnership with God.

Liturgic Scripture are those biblical books written for God’s people to use during worship. Worship is referenced throughout the Bible as an exercise in partnership with God: God’s people sing prayers and praise as God draws near. Ancient Israelites used psalms to give expression for their struggles in faith (How long, O Lord?) and triumphs in faith (For his mercy is everlasting). These psalms were written and collected as the book of Psalms with the purpose of extending participation in worship to later generations. Much the same is true of the book of Revelation, which the resurrected Jesus explicitly commissioned John to write for church gatherings, containing powerful words and images of God’s people in worship.

The Christian Bible concludes, then, with a book that is itself the product of partnership with God, written by John to support such co-working. And that is a fairly accurate way of understanding Scripture as a whole. The Bible is itself something that God and humans, working together in collaboration, have created in order to inspire and sustain all of us working in partnership with God. In its pages everyone is invited to join in collaboration with God, manifesting the image of God that makes us human.

Question: How might these ideas about the Bible change the way we read it?

William Yarchin (Ph.D., Claremont Graduate School) is the Dean’s Endowed Professor of Biblical Studies at Azusa Pacific University. He is the author of History of Biblical Interpretation: A Reader (Baker Academic, 2011) and daily rides a bicycle along the California coast.

Means and Ends When the Future is Open

Daniel J. Ott

The future is open, so ends are unpredictable. Mind your means.

The 1986 Roland Joffé film, The Mission, starring Jeremy Irons and Robert De Niro, tells the story of an eighteenth-century Jesuit mission among the Guaraní in South America. After several failed attempts, a small group of Spanish priests earn the trust of the Guaraní and establish a school and a church. Then in 1750, the Treaty of Madrid reapportions the land on which the mission stands to the Portuguese who intend to enslave the Guaraní. The Jesuits resist through international courts, but eventually troops march on the mission to take the land and enslave the people. One priest leads an armed resistance. Another holds mass and leads the new Christians out in solemn procession. All are slaughtered.

The movie closes with a Portuguese official discussing the events with a papal emissary. We must work in the world; the world is thus, says the government official. The cardinal responds, No, thus have we made the world. Thus have I made it.

One of the common elements of open and relational theologies is the belief that the world is not determined from without. The living beings active in the world make the world. We make the world. You make it. I make it. Some open and relational theologians would want to say that we are co-creators of the world with God—that we partner with God in making the world. But, of course, God is not our partner if we slaughter the innocent! So, perhaps we should limit our claims about God’s activity in the world. I like to use the word God when I’m pointing to moments of liberation and creative transformation. When we see meaning and purpose pooling up and gaining momentum, that’s God. When we see love outshining hate, that’s God. I’m not sure how helpful it is to even bring God into the equation when we see ends that we associate with God being thwarted. Perhaps then, it’s better to take full responsibility. Thus have we made the world. Thus have I made it.

If God does not make the world and determine what happens, it follows that the future is genuinely open and not predetermined by God. God neither knows nor determines the future. Philosopher William James says that there are three basic attitudes that people have toward the future. Most of us are very familiar with the first two. There are the optimists. They believe that the future will be better. Even if God’s ends seem thwarted for the time being, things will work out. The sun will come out tomorrow. Then, there are the pessimists. We might even call them fatalists. They are the ones who repeat with that cynical government official, We live in the world; the world is thus. James calls the third group meliorists. He writes, Melorism treats salvation as neither inevitable nor impossible. It treats it as a possibility, which becomes more and more of a probability the more numerous the actual conditions of salvation become. Meliorists