God of the Gaps

Many people have a ‘God of the gaps’ theology. God is presented as their answer for everything unknown to humankind. The problem with this approach is that humankind is constantly learning more and more about the world and many of its mysteries are being solved or finally understood- and, I must say, at an amazing rate. Surely there will always be mysteries to be solved, but is this fact simply because of the present limitations of our collective knowledge, understanding, or skill?

If the only place for God is to be our answer to things we currently do not understand, then, the more we learn about our world, the less relevant God becomes to us. This may be why many Christians ‘kick against the goads’ of our growing scientific body of knowledge and are forever trying to demonstrate that scientific evidence is 'no evidence at all' (just a conspiratorial attempt to sidetrack the God question evoked by the supposed 'gaps'). 

What if folks are wrong to embrace the God of the gaps in the first place? What if God gave us our various gifts for inquiry and our determined curiosity because God desires for us to better understand the workings of God's world? What if God delights in seeing humans peering into the wonders of God's amazing creative work and even tinkering with it in order to understand how God did it and how to join God in God's creative work? What if the only thing missing in many laboratories is praise and glory to God at the end of a good day's work (and most everything else is a noble pursuit)?

No. In the end, I do not find the God of the gaps to be a very mighty ‘God’. God is Lord of everything, not simply 'the gaps'.

*For more on this theme, see Bonhoeffer's, Letters and Papers From Prison (Tegel- 30 April 1944).

Universalism

I've reprinted a comment made by author and Episcopal pastor Robert Farrar Capon. I noticed that Rob Bell suggests to his readers that they explore a book by Capon (The Mystery of Christ) at the end of his Love Wins. Funny this is, as I was reading Bell's book (my first time reading Bell), I actually thought: "This guy must have read Robert Capon at some time." My sense is that Bell and Capon are basically on the same page. (Capon is quite imaginative, poetic and engaging- like Bell). Here's what Capon writes on the subject Bell explores in Love Wins:

“I am and I am not a universalist. I am one if you are talking about what God in Christ has done to save the world. The Lamb of God has not taken away the sins of some — of only the good, or the cooperative, or the select few who can manage to get their act together and die as perfect peaches. He has taken away the sins of the world — of every last being in it — and he has dropped them down the black hole of Jesus’ death. On the cross, he has shut up forever on the subject of guilt: “There is therefore now no condemnation. . . .” All human beings, at all times and places, are home free whether they know it or not, feel it or not, believe it or not.

“But I am not a universalist if you are talking about what people may do about accepting that happy-go-lucky gift of God’s grace. I take with utter seriousness everything that Jesus had to say about hell, including the eternal torment that such a foolish non-acceptance of his already-given acceptance must entail. All theologians who hold Scripture to be the Word of God must inevitably include in their work a tractate on hell. But I will not — because Jesus did not — locate hell outside the realm of grace. Grace is forever sovereign, even in Jesus’ parables of judgment. No one is ever kicked out at the end of those parables who wasn’t included in at the beginning.”

I find this statement very thought-provoking: "But I will not — because Jesus did not — locate hell outside the realm of grace."