Natural vs. Supernatural; Judgment vs. Grace

Don: Last week, in discussing Jesus’s statement that he is “the resurrection and the life” Jeff noted that resurrection marks the dispensation—the end—of natural law. Mankind was created as part of a supernatural world, and to that world we shall return upon the restoration of our relationship with God.

The two trees in the Garden of Eden represent two cosmic realities: The Tree of Life is the tree of the infinite, of love, grace, and the supernatural; while the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the tree of the finite, of cause and effect, of the natural world and of natural law. The Tree of Life is the tree of everlasting life; the Tree of Knowledge is the tree of death.

David pointed out that Adam and Eve had literally and figuratively been led down the supernatural garden path into the natural world of consequences, of cause and effect. God had warned them of the consequences if they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: “In the day that you shall eat of it, you shall surely die” he warned them. They exercised their free will to ignore the warning. God elaborated on the consequences (the effect) after the event (the cause) in Genesis (3:14-19).

It is clear that God wanted Mankind to live in an eternal, timeless, nonlinear, non-consequential, supernatural world. But sin introduced the finite, the time-bound, and the consequential—it introduced the concept of judgment. The Old Testament is the story of judgment. But Jesus came to effect a reversal of the judgment and the restoration—the resurrection—of Man’s former state. He proclaimed a new birth, a new creation, to restore the eternal, the timeless, the non-linear, and the non-consequential—in short, he sought to supplant the natural law to which we are accustomed with supernatural law—with the way of grace.

The suspension of natural law can be seen in many ways in the story of the restoration in scripture. In the new heaven and earth, for example, there is no night. The natural world’s cycle of night following day and so on does not exist in a supernatural world illumined by God’s presence. The predatory hierarchy of the natural world, where lion eats lamb, does not apply in the new world—there is no food chain. There are no tears, pain, or death, and the consequences of Man’s fall, as stated in Genesis 3, no longer apply: “There will no longer be any curse.…” (Revelation 22:3).

Cause and effect is completely reversed in the new heaven and earth. The living water which was promised to the woman at the well in John 4:14: “… whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life” is seen in Revelation 22:1 as coming from the throne of God:

Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

The suspension of the natural law is not just something that is going to happen eventually. Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of heaven to be here and now, therefore the reversal of the natural law has already begun. It can be seen through miracles such as the defiance of gravity, the reversal of death and decay, and the control of weather. But natural law does not just apply to nature: It applies to social law, as well. Innocence will take precedence over maturity, “… the last shall be first, and the first last” (Matthew 20:16), “He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39) and so on. Economic law will also be affected:

If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. (Matthew 5:40-42)

This is radical change. On the face of it, the Old Testament seems remarkable for the severity of its concept of revenge and retribution. For example, here is a selection from the personal injury law of the Old Covenant:

“He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death. But if he did not lie in wait for him, but God let him fall into his hand, then I will appoint you a place to which he may flee. If, however, a man acts presumptuously toward his neighbor, so as to kill him craftily, you are to take him even from My altar, that he may die.

“He who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.

“He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death.

“He who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.

“If men have a quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist, and he does not die but remains in bed, if he gets up and walks around outside on his staff, then he who struck him shall go unpunished; he shall only pay for his loss of time, and shall take care of him until he is completely healed.

“If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property.

“If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. (Exodus 21:12-25)

But in fact, the Old Testament punishments were radically reduced in severity compared to the time before them, when the slightest infringement might well be met with mass destruction. Nevertheless, Jesus radicalized the law by infinite orders of magnitude in the supernatural world of the kingdom of heaven. For example:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. (Matthew 5:38-39)

This is the way of grace—the ultimate suspension of natural consequence, the reversal of the law of cause and effect.

How can the concepts of grace and judgment be reconciled? Scripture gives us the rich concept of supernatural fire that does not consume but rather restores, regenerates, resurrects, and refines—that burns away the dross to reveal the pure gold. It is the fire of grace. Fire that consumes as it burns, on the other hand, is the fire of natural law. The difference is explained thus:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 1:18-25)

… And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,… (Romans 1:28)

It seems that God will give up on us if we willfully reject his grace but, at heart, he does not want to give up on us. The profession of human wisdom is the result of eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It leads to worship of the creature rather than of the creator. It is the way of the law, the way of death. The fruit of the Tree of Life restores and resurrects; it leads to worship of the creator rather than of the creature; it leads us to recognize that we are sinners in need of God’s grace and to be thankful for that grace.

David: Were we set up—led down the Garden path so as to fall over the edge of the cliff; led to sin—just so that God could exercise his grace and save us? The Lord’s Prayer asks God not to lead us into temptation. Why? Why should God lead us into temptation, other than to set us up to sin? Isn’t that Satan’s job? Why is it necessary that we ask God not to lead us astray?

Charles: In the beginning of the redemptive story of salvation, the story of revelation, God revealed himself as the “I am” to Moses through the supernatural, non-consuming Burning Bush. The “I am” is a source of consternation to us. It is all-encompassing and confusing because we apply “I am” to ourselves. The heart of man tends to take pride in his accomplishments in life, to presume that any beneficence in the world is of his own making.

In the supernatural existence in the Garden of Eden before the Fall, this pride was not present. Since the Fall, pride has been the major source of our mistakes. Faith requires the suspension of pride, of the sense that we can create our own beneficence and don’t need God’s. Our lack of faith consistently gets us into trouble, whereas faith can get us through trouble. The Old and New Testaments have plenty of examples. Lazarus is one whose faith in Jesus saw him through; the three Hebrew worthies put into the furnace by Nebuchadnezzar had faith in God even if the fire were to have consumed them.

We tend to apply the “I am” to ourselves, and it gets us into trouble. Without the examples given to us in scripture, we would not have the context for judgment. In God’s time, ultimately, there will be a judgment, and our sin of pride—of thinking we can be God—is a question of will: Shall our will be done, or God’s? The latter requires the swallowing of pride. It is an enormous leap for us, but the greater one’s faith, the easier it is to take.

Kiran: If I were to keep my child essentially a prisoner but in a magnificent estate and my child eventually grew restless at being confined, even in such luxury, would my child not ask me why s/he was so confined, and want to see the world outside? Should my child not be able to choose for itself? Surely God knew that Adam and Eve would reach such a point, hence his creation of a place of darkness for them to go to after they left the Garden—but God was with them in the darkness, too. The Prodigal Son reached such a point also, and his father never deserted him either. But as a loving parent God had to allow his children to exercise their free will and choose to leave.

Charles: Without free will, we would be robots—automatons. If he created Man in his image and likeness, then Man must have free will, since God does.

Don: Does free will only operate in the natural world, or in the supernatural world also?

Alice: We think the natural law gives us freedom, but the Bible says we are not free until Jesus sets us free. So the supernatural world is where true freedom reigns.

Charles: I don’t interpret the Lord’s Prayer as implying that God leads us into temptation. I think that line in it means “Please protect us from ourselves and our tendency to go our own way—don’t let us be tempted, and help us to avoid evil”.

David: I agree, but it again brings into question (in my mind, anyway) the reliability of the Bible when God’s apparent word can be so obtuse. To me, the most interesting of the “I am” statements is “I am the God of all mankind.” But reliance on the Bible (or the Koran, etc.) as the source of God’s word belies that statement, since a majority of Mankind has never been exposed to the Bible (or the Koran, etc.) and therefor can have no communion, no relationship, with the God whose word is purported to be contained in that scripture.

I agree that total submission to the will of God is what God wants, but I cannot agree that submissiveness can only be understood and learned via the Bible (etc.) All the great religions incorporate humility before God as a central tenet of their faith. Christians kneel. Muslims prostrate themselves. Hindu sadhus cover their naked bodies in ashes. Humility is one of ten sacred qualities attributed to the Buddha of Compassion, as “a natural by-product of supreme spiritual attainments that transcends the ego, just as are the four noble states of mind—love, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity” http://www.meaning.ca/archives/archive/art_buddhist-humility_C_Yu_Hsi.htm.

My point is that the human heart has within it the knowledge that pride is bad and humility is good. We don’t need examples in the Bible or anywhere else. We know it; it is ingrained in all of us.

Charles: If that is so, then how does one choose who to worship, or what law to follow? Atheists might say we should worship ourselves. If there is an original creative cause and authority, then it seems to me very important to decide which one it is as revealed through scriptures.

Michael: It seems that natural and supernatural law function in separate contexts—the natural in this life and the supernatural in the afterlife. What makes grace so wonderful is that it is a supernatural element that works in the natural world.

Kiran: Life becomes much easier and happier when we accept that the supernatural is working in our natural lives. Love—the kind of ultimate love described by Jesus as turning the other cheek and so on—is a supernatural element that can be applied in the natural world. Jesus’ death is the ultimate example of such love. We are born selfish but we are also born with the spirit (a supernatural being) of grace and love inside us, and we are capable of living by grace and love, hard as it may be. When we do, the result is a world of great beauty—it is heaven on earth.

Michael: Can grace suspend judgment right now, instead of waiting for the End Time?

Charles: Perhaps it depends on the individual’s degree of faith. By faith, I mean total trust in and acceptance of God. Suspension of the self, turning the other cheek, stepping serenely into the furnace, are all a matter of perfect faith. If we have it, perhaps judgment is suspended; but who has—who can have—that degree of faith?

Robin: Jesus expressed it at Gethsemane, when he said “Not my will, but thy will be done”.

Charles: The metaphors and underlying truths of the Old Testament are as relevant today as they were in antiquity. They reveal truths about God’s mercy and judgment and importantly they do so on a scope and time scale that transcend our limited personal existence. The revelations about God and Man in the books of Jonah and Nahum are as relevant to the individual as they are to the church or to a nation. They also reveal that we need not worry so much about being born in the wrong place—a place that has not seen a Bible—because that’s God’s plan and prerogative to worry about. We have no hope of understanding it, we can only accept it.

Parenthetically: I am not certain that it was God’s idea that the only way for revelation to occur was through the written word (i.e., The Law, The Bible, etc.) Indeed, in God’s time he apparently knew that it would be necessary for his word to become flesh and dwell among man and for his word to continue to dwell through the Holy Spirit in the flesh of the life of his church. As I have suggested previously, the Creator’s final judgment against the creature’s disobedience and evil is to come at the end of the Age; that is, when the Word has been fully revealed as measured on God’s scale and in God’s time. It always has been (and will forever remain) God’s sole prerogative to grant mercy and salvation to his creation and to determine both how and when his word is fully revealed and what consequences might come to creatures who chose to reject it of their own free will. My point is that both the written word and the word made flesh appear to be clear that there will indeed be a consequence to that choice.

Temptation is the result of our pride. Sin is a choice. Temptation and sin are not things being dangled in front of us by God.

David: We seem to agree that free will provides a means by which temptation can work. But it has to exist in the supernatural world as well as in the natural world. If not, the kingdom of heaven would be a prison, where everything is coerced. In retrospect, with the benefit of hindsight, it may be a shame that Adam and Eve chose to leave Paradise for an unknown world that turns out to be its antithesis, but we have to have the right to choose. We can hope to choose total and eternal submission to the will of God and avoid another Fall, but it can never be guaranteed that we won’t. Free will is an essential element of life, natural or spiritual.

Don: So did God have no choice but to create the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Without it, there would have been nothing to choose, so Adam and Eve’s free will would have been hypothetical rather than functional. Must there be an alternative to God for free will to be operational?

David: Does God have free will? In the New World when we are one with God than we will be one with his will. Will it be free? Perhaps “Lead us not into temptation” is the Becoming God of process theology or the Omega God of Omega Point Theory (they are the same thing) asking us not to lead him into temptation!

Kiran: Faith in a God of magic who will grant selfish wishes was not the faith of the Hebrew worthies. Theirs was a faith that no matter what happened to them in this life, they had faith in a God they knew they could not understand. We do not and cannot understand the supernatural.

Robin: All created beings have free will. Rebellion was invented in heaven by angels with choice. But since God is holy, perfect, and the essence of love, it makes sense to choose to submit to his will. Lucifer and Adam and Eve made a bad choice but I’m not sure that to take away the ability to make a bad choice would be an expression of supreme love.

Charles: “I am” is complete, the alpha and omega inclusive, perfect unity. What was the unity that preceded the “creation” of the universe and all linear time? Theologians have “anthropomorphized” the generative unity conceptually in the Trinitarian Godhead, a concept that itself demands a both a suspension natural law on one level and its ultimate acceptance on another. The concept of the trinity is of a perfect and timeless generative unity—alpha and omega complete—father, son, and holy spirit. If such a generative cause intended, though the creation of the universe, to expand that perfect unity (or if that unity is inclusive of all of linear time and creation) then it makes sense that the creation, including man, would have all of the attributes of the cause, including free will. Perhaps God created man for fellowship in order to manifest his perfect unity. “Perfect” fellowship requires that man choose to be in community with God and surrender to his will and plan. The alternative—a profane, selfish and prideful creature—is antithetical to such community and fellowship. Willfulness, like cancer, leads ultimately to destruction.

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