In Reply to: Re: Great, wise, patience-proving post of yours OT2 posted by Pastor Don on January 19, 2010 at 17:11:49:
Pastor Don:
Yeah, that's a wonderful Psalm!
Two of my favorite thinkers, Isacc Newton and Immanuelle Kant, believed that, if you posited philosophically an infinite God, you must also posit a Universe infinite as well in time and space, made at once, "up and running" (light both "reaching its target", and continuing to emit from its sources) by the Triune and infinite God, and inhabited first by angels, and then by man.
Then the Fall(s) came; whatever the timetable was for that tragedy.
I do not believe in the "Big Bang", per se, except to say that, God spoke everything into existence, giving free will to creatures He chose to do that for, and planning a "punctuated sovereignty" (Phil 2), if you will (seen from a human perspective.
I think that it is very possible that the "red shift" is evidence that an event took place, which migh be symbolyzed in a very beggardly way by a 3-D curve on an assymptote; that time itself, and light, was almost infinitely faster at the instance of creation, and has been slowing down ever since, in a measurable manner based on planetary orbit measurements. Past 100 million light years we must rely on brightness, instead of large calculations based on the Pythagorean Theorem.
Romans 1:20 says we are all "without excuse" concerning God's eternal power and deity. His creation speaks of it--He is big enough to have done it just as the Scripture states He did, and His Triune personality speaks of His eternality in communion and fellowship with Himself--perfect love, cooperation, understanding and peace; all within Himself, before the beginning.
Wow!
And, I'm also on board about the church being both organization and organism. It has to be both.
OT2