InSlaveryToChrist
Puritan Board Junior
Samuel you remind me so much of a dear friend .
I can't untangle precise theological issues so will leave that for others, but perhaps the flip side of your inability to see meaning because there is no 'necessity' to it, is to wonder at the 'most communicable' nature of the Most Good: the bountifulness with which God gives -- simply because He IS, good, fully self realised and needing nothing, having all to give.
I wonder if many of our struggles in loving God arise because of confusion about His 'necessary' glory. I hope someone will correct me if I am wrong, but surely it does not consist in and is not 'maintained' by our giving worship to Him. It is true that we can never, on a paradigm of His needing to act for His own sake, find a reason for His mercy to us -- trying to find one reduces God to our dependent: seeking to give Him that sort of glory is a terrible burden for the creature to bear. He is not seeking something in us. He is giving to us. Even the grace to worship Him is a gift by which He is giving us Himself. His glory simply abounds to this gift, and we get to be the recipients.
Seven vials hold Thy wrath: but what can hold
Thy mercy save Thine own Infinitude,
Boundlessly overflowing with all good,
All lovingkindness, all delights untold?
Thy Love, of each created love the mold;
Thyself, of all the empty plenitude;
Heard of at Ephrata, found in the Wood,
For ever One, the Same, and Manifold. . .
(Christina Rossetti)
Heidi, I think I'm starting to get a clue of what you're talking about. When I read your posts, time after time you refer to God's goodness as having this inherent pleasure of communication. It seems like you wanna say God loves to share His goodness with others, because that is the very nature of His goodness. And if it's the nature of His goodness, and goodness is what defines God, being communicable with His goodness is necessary to God -- necessary, because therein is part of what makes Him both fulfilled and glorious.
Thank you so much, Heidi! All along, I was studying wrong fields of God, when I should have digged into the nature of His goodness. Thank you for your patience and care!