I could not sleep very long tonight so I got up, had some of my favorite cold cereal and explored Blogstream. Wow, all I can say is there are a lot of depressed people writing some very “interesting” things on their blogs. I could only take so much of it. Even when I was very far away from the Lord I had a low tolerance for whining and complaining. It seems to me that most of the personal web logs are opportunities for people who have some facility with language and who are overcome by melancholy to “express” themselves. Then it seems like others of like mind and spirit travel-blog congratulating one another on their misery. Like I said, I could only take so much of it. I had to come back here to TFD and write something uplifting.

Did you know that God does miracles? He does. Maybe you have experienced one of God’s miracles—I have. But, have you ever wondered about the different levels of miracles? If not, maybe now you will.

Level 1 (Top Category)

The highest rank among miracles is held by those events in which something is done by God which nature could never do. Examples of this would be if the sun were to reverse its course. The resurrection of Jesus and of the believers is a Level 1 miracle.

Level 2

The second level of miracles is held by those events in which God does something which nature can do, but not in its normal order. It is normal for humans to see but not to see after going blind or to walk after being paralyzed by a de-habilitating accident. God at times does such miraculous works.

Level 3

The third level of miracles occurs when God does what usually is done by the working of nature, but without the normal operation of the principles of nature. An example of this is when a person is cured by divine intervention from an illness which could be cured naturally or if rain were to be sent by God independently of the normal course of nature. Another example is when God protects one of your loved one’s when they are doing foolish things (e.g. teenagers!).

Ah, I feel so much better. I feel uplifted and encouraged because I know that God loves me and can intervene supernaturally in my life. I don’t have to be mired in my misery, frustration and misfortune. I personally would rather pray and expect God to make a difference in my life than to pour out my whining heart in a blog-post. Need a miracle? I recommend prayer.

In a previous post I looked at how God can cause us to do His will without violating our free will, now I would like to explore a different aspect of this topic and that is how God does things.

The first we need to realize that God is involved. The Deists believed that the universe was like a big clock and God was the clock maker. God had made the clock, wound it up and let it go. They believed that there was a God but He was a distant and remote God who operated the universe by His natural laws. Now there is a certain truth to this view of God. God has created the universe and established certain physical and moral laws by which things run. However, God is also intimately involved in the planning, ordering and fulfillment of events in the universe. The deeper question to consider is how does He do this? More specifically, do all things happen by necessity meaning that they could not happen otherwise or is there also room for contingent events that are not determined by necessity? The answer, I believe, is that there are both necessary and contingent events. Yet, the follow-up question would be, if God is in charge and intimately involved in the planning, ordering and fulfillment of events, how can there be contingency? Well, I am not brazen enough to say that I can fully answer this question, but I can point us toward an answer.

Scripture

Scripture indicates that there are contingent events, meaning that humans have free will. In fact, I would make the case that the Bible would be morally meaningless if God had not granted mankind free will. Additionally, God could not hold man accountable for his sins if everything that man did was by necessity. That would be like punishing or rewarding a robot for doing what it was programmed to do. On the other hand the Bible indicates that “The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases” Proverbs 21:1. Therefore, in the Bible you have both man’s free will (contingency) and God’s necessity standing side-by-side.

A Possible Answer

When considering this conundrum we should first remind ourselves that by God’s will He actually does things. The God of the Bible is not the Deist God. God decides on a course of action and decrees that it should happen. However, God’s will also extends to the way which is right and fitting for a thing to be done. This means that God does things through the nature of the things that He is affecting. For instance, He causes stones to move through the forces of gravity, inertia and seismic activity. Another way of saying this is that God moves necessary events by necessity and contingent events contingently. In the case of man, God moves humans without violating our free will. Now check out this quote:

“And therefore it would be more repugnant to the Divine motion, for the (human) will to be moved of necessity, which is not fitting to its nature; then for it to be moved freely which is becoming of its nature.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa I-II, Q. 11, Art. 4.

Did you catch that? Aquinas actually said that it would be “repugnant” for God to move the human will by necessity. If Aquinas is correct--and I think he is--then God not only gave us free will, He respects our freedom. Now, I don’t understand exactly how God does everything—after all He is God—but I do love the fact that it is repugnant to God to violate the human will. Do I hear an “amen?”

You can go to your local Christian bookstore and get all kinds of literature on prayer. Sometimes you can get so much stuff that you can confuse yourself and instead of learning things that enhance your prayer life, you end up discouraged and disillusioned about prayer. So, I would like to propose the Big Five keys to effective prayer from the medieval church. Why not? Everybody else publishes books on prayer; why not let the “old guys” have a shot at it? Check it out, what do ya gotta’ lose?

1. Confidence

The Bible teaches us that we can go “boldly to the throne of grace” (Heb. 4:16). Now that Jesus is on the throne in heaven and He is our Advocate and wise intercessor, we can have every confidence that God hears and answers our prayers. We don’t need to grovel and mire ourselves down in false humility.

2. Rectitude

Rectitude in prayer means that it should be fitting. A Christian theologian named Damascene said that “to pray is to ask fitting things of God.” One of the reasons we don’t get our prayers answered is that we often ask for things that are not good for us (James 4:3). This is why it is very wise to pray along the lines of the Lord’s Prayer. I am not saying that you have to say it repetitively. Rather, the Lord’s Prayer was given as a model or guide for proper prayer. Why not use the Master’s model prayer for your heavenly requests? Augustine said, “If we would pray rightly and fittingly, we should say nothing else but what is contained in this prayer of our Lord.” That’s good advice.

3. Order

God is a good of order. We can see this in creation and in God’s Word. Therefore, we should show proper order in our prayer life. How? Well, we should first of all ask for those things that will enhance and benefit our spiritual lives rather than our temporal lives. Of course, we can and should ask for those things that are temporal (e.g. jobs, food, clothing, healing, etc.). However, we show proper order in our prayers when we make our spiritual lives the top priority. We should also remember to pray for God to bless and increase the spiritual lives of others.

4. Devotion

Our prayers should be fervent and full of devotion to God. Now get this-- sometimes our fervency and devotion wanes when our prayers are too long. Jesus warned us against praying at unnecessary length, Matthew 6:7 (NIV) “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.” Consequently, brevity of prayer with fervency is much more effective. Augustine put it this way, “Beware of praying with many words: it is fervent attention that secures a hearing.”

5. Humility

Our prayers, of course, should be humble (Ps 102:17). Don’t forget the story that Jesus told of the publican and the Pharisee in Luke 18:10-14. Christian humility is the attitude that does not presume that we can do things just in our own strength, but trusts God to help us in all things.

There you go, how about that, see the old guys knew a thing or two about prayer.

Paul had a wonderful way of putting things into perspective. In 1 Corinthians 13 he writes to the Corinthian church and lets them know that there are things that are more important than the charismatic gifts. Spiritual gifts, he notes are helpful and they build up the body of Christ, but they are pretty much useless unless they are accompanied by love (or “charity” in the older English). His writings have helped many churches get perspective on the things that really matter. However, Paul ends 1 Corinthians 13 with a very interesting statement:

1 Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Now, I would suggest that we all agree that love is the greatest virtue—it just seems right. However, why? Why is it greater than faith and hope? Together these are classically called the “Theological Virtues” which means that they are dependent upon God Himself—without Him true Christian faith, hope and love could not exist. But, again, why does Paul say that love is the greatest? Allow me to take a stab at providing some reasons.

First, the Greatest Intellectual Virtue

The way one determines the greatness of a virtue comes from its object. For example, if the object of my life is to collect antique car parts, it may be a nice pursuit and it may even be profitable for me; however, very few people would consider collecting car parts the most noble of personal pursuits. On the other hand, someone who dedicates himself to assisting starving children as the object of their life would be said to have a noble pursuit. It is the object that determines the greatness. Consequently, the highest object of our intellect is the consideration of the ultimate cause of all things, which is God. We call this pursuit the pursuit of wisdom. Therefore, the greatest intellectual virtue is not science (which has the causes of nature as its object) but wisdom. History is replete with stories of how individuals and nations that had great science but little wisdom ended up doing very destructive things (e.g. Nazi Germany). Hence it should be such that wisdom exercises judgment over all the other intellectual virtues and directs them to their proper uses.

Faith, Hope and Love

Faith, hope and love all have as their object God Himself. As you know, faith must have an object—biblically it is not some sort of disconnected power force like the Star Wars “force.” God is the object of Christian faith--specifically expressed in the life, death and resurrection of Christ for our redemption. These things are what we believe in. Likewise, the object of our hope is literally the “blessed hope” of Christ’s appearing. Hope is not wishful thinking about a future possibility. It is the tangible, but as of yet, not visible consummation of the Kingdom of God. Love, of course, is the love of God. Why then is love considered greater than faith and hope?

One answer is that after Christ has returned, there will no longer be any need for faith and hope. However, another answer goes a little deeper. Love, by its very nature, causes the lover to come closer to the object. While both faith and hope are of things not possessed, love in a very real way takes possession of the beloved within the lover. We see this in romantic relationships. When lovers are parted, they think a lot about their beloved and hold them in their “hearts” as dear to them. Both lover and beloved are drawn by desire to be with one another (“parting is such sweet sorrow”). Likewise, those that love God are drawn to Him and have a wonderful union with Him. And this is why, I suggest, love is the greatest virtue.

1 John 4: 16 …God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.

A genus is a class of objects divided into several subordinate species; it is a class more extensive than a species. Thus in the animal kingdom the lion, leopard, tiger, cat, and panther are species of the Cat kind or genus.

The Bible indicates unequivocally that God is not like man:

Numbers 23:19 - "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent;

Malachi 3:6a "For I am the LORD, I change not."

1 Timothy 6:15-16 (God) "alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see."

John 4:24 “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
(Jesus defines what a spirit is like) Luke 24:39 "Touch me and see; a ghost [Greek, pneuma, "spirit"] does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”

Man belongs to the genus of mammals and is the species of Homo Sapiens (literally meaning “wise man”). God, however, is not part of any genus and He is a species unto Himself. Therefore, while man is like God, God is not like man. For instance, we say that a statue is like a man, but we do not say that a man is a statue. All creatures that God has created can be said in some way to be like God; but not that God is like any creature. It is just that man is in a very special way like God; however, again, God is not like man.

Aquinas reflects on the genus issue by noting: “God is not related to creatures as though belonging to a different genus, but as transcending every genus, and as the principle of all genera.” (Summa, I, 4, 3)

If we reflect on this we can see that since God is in no specific genus (no general class at all); therefore, he transcends all genera. God transcends all creatures vastly more than any creature in one genus can transcend any creature in another genus. For example, a cat which is a brilliant and highly tuned predator transcends many other creatures of lower genera. However, God is transcendent beyond all genera because He is the creator and source of all of them. He is truly transcendent. On the other hand, though He is not in a genus, he is the sustainer of all life. In this way we can speak of God as truly immanent in all of His creation. He is somewhat like light. Light has no color but it can be with and reveal all colors. Without God sustaining all things, they would cease to exist.

Colossians 1: 16-17 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.