God's Free Will

[Brian Blankenship]

We speak alot of man's free will. My question is this. What are ways in which God uses His free will?

[Hans Deventer]

We speak alot of man's free will. My question is this. What are ways in which God uses His free will?

Creating the world and us. Defining by what means we can be saved. Judging those that refuse salvation. Determining who get healed on prayer and who don't. And probably a myriad of other instances that we don't have a clue about.

[G R 'Scott' Cundiff]

We speak alot of man's free will. My question is this. What are ways in which God uses His free will?

Brian, I think this is an insightful question. If we believe that God already knows the future, or that in every circumstance there is only one possible way for God to see his will done, then God has the least free will of all. If we believe God is working in this world to bring things to pass and has a specific outcome in mind and is patiently working to that end, then we see God as truly having free will to interact with a humanity who has actually been given free will.

[Ryan Scott]

I think it's a powerful example of free will that God has left us to work within the system of creation God set in place. It would be easy for God to just make things as they should be; I am quite thankful that God respects us enough to let us discover how things should be in partnership with God.

[Thomas Oord]

Brian,

This is one of my favorite subjects! Thanks for starting the thread. Here are a few comments...

Karl Barth championed divine freedom above all other divine attributes. I think he erred in this, because of what this championing implies about divine love. It implies, for instance, that love is fundamentally a matter of the divine will and secondarily of the divine nature. If God can choose not to love, there is no fundamental reason God should love steadfastly.

I think God is free in some ways and not free in others.

God is NOT free ...
to stop loving.
to stop existing.
to stop being triune.
to lie.
to stop knowing all things knowable.

But I think God IS free...
to love in a variety of ways depending on the circumstances.
to exist in a variety of ways.
to interact in Trinity in diverse ways.
use all of the knowledge God has in various ways.

I believe that God's nature is unchanging, which means that even God cannot change God's own nature. But God's experience changes in the interactive relations God has with others. To say it in terms of freedom: God is not free to be other than God. But God is free to act in various ways consistent with God's unchanging nature.

Assuming that I am free while writing this but not free to act outside the limits of creaturehood... : )

Tom

[Charles W Christian]

Brian,

This is one of my favorite subjects! Thanks for starting the thread. Here are a few comments...

Karl Barth championed divine freedom above all other divine attributes. I think he erred in this, because of what this championing implies about divine love. It implies, for instance, that love is fundamentally a matter of the divine will and secondarily of the divine nature. If God can choose not to love, there is no fundamental reason God should love steadfastly.

I think God is free in some ways and not free in others.

God is NOT free ...
to stop loving.
to stop existing.
to stop being triune.
to lie.
to stop knowing all things knowable.

But I think God IS free...
to love in a variety of ways depending on the circumstances.
to exist in a variety of ways.
to interact in Trinity in diverse ways.
use all of the knowledge God has in various ways.

I believe that God's nature is unchanging, which means that even God cannot change God's own nature. But God's experience changes in the interactive relations God has with others. To say it in terms of freedom: God is not free to be other than God. But God is free to act in various ways consistent with God's unchanging nature.

Assuming that I am free while writing this but not free to act outside the limits of creaturehood... : )

Tom

Tom -
I had a response, but I changed it after I read your post again.

I think God's freedom is a big deal, and I think that God's love is what it is because of God's freedom. I may be sounding a little more like Barth here (but not too much), but I guess I am trying to be careful not to box God's love into a certain corner in a way that limits God's freedom too much. Of course, I start with a presupposition that God is wholly other than us, but God is also imminent, with us. God's "otherness" would presuppose the need for some act on God's part to provide a way to demonstrate God's love in a way meaningful to the creation God loves.

God never ceases to be love, but it seems that God never ceases to be free in how God chooses to demonstrate that love.

Maybe it's not a very different perspective I'm taking here, but it seems to be a matter of emphasis.....

Thanks,

Charles

[Charles W Christian]

Brian,

This is one of my favorite subjects! Thanks for starting the thread. Here are a few comments...

Karl Barth championed divine freedom above all other divine attributes. I think he erred in this, because of what this championing implies about divine love. It implies, for instance, that love is fundamentally a matter of the divine will and secondarily of the divine nature. If God can choose not to love, there is no fundamental reason God should love steadfastly.

I think God is free in some ways and not free in others.

God is NOT free ...
to stop loving.
to stop existing.
to stop being triune.
to lie.
to stop knowing all things knowable.

But I think God IS free...
to love in a variety of ways depending on the circumstances.
to exist in a variety of ways.
to interact in Trinity in diverse ways.
use all of the knowledge God has in various ways.

I believe that God's nature is unchanging, which means that even God cannot change God's own nature. But God's experience changes in the interactive relations God has with others. To say it in terms of freedom: God is not free to be other than God. But God is free to act in various ways consistent with God's unchanging nature.

Assuming that I am free while writing this but not free to act outside the limits of creaturehood... : )

Tom

Tom (again) --
OK, maybe here's where I get snagged. Your said: God is free in some ways, but not free in others....

Well, that gets into ontological assumptions that are massive for all of us, of course. And, ironically, like Barth we are forced to turn a long glance toward special revelation (but unlike Barth we don't have to do so exclusively :-)) to "get" some of this.

God is unchanging, yes. God is free, yes. God is love, yes. God is unchanging in his changeableness in how God displays His love(?) -- This could be right, too.....

I don't believe God is bound to love in a manner that pleases me (or you, etc.). This is where some of process thought would depart from other modes of thinking, right? God is complete in His "God-ness" without creation; God seems to freely choose to create as a manner God chooses to convey/share/demonstrate God's love, in my view.....


Wow, maybe I got jumbled again.... we'll see....

Blessings,
Charles

[Brian Blankenship]

Tom (again) --
OK, maybe here's where I get snagged. Your said: God is free in some ways, but not free in others....

Well, that gets into ontological assumptions that are massive for all of us, of course. And, ironically, like Barth we are forced to turn a long glance toward special revelation (but unlike Barth we don't have to do so exclusively :-)) to "get" some of this.

God is unchanging, yes. God is free, yes. God is love, yes. God is unchanging in his changeableness in how God displays His love(?) -- This could be right, too.....

I don't believe God is bound to love in a manner that pleases me (or you, etc.). This is where some of process thought would depart from other modes of thinking, right? God is complete in His "God-ness" without creation; God seems to freely choose to create as a manner God chooses to convey/share/demonstrate God's love, in my view.....


Wow, maybe I got jumbled again.... we'll see....

Blessings,
Charles

Charles, Is the :- )) a smiley face with a double chin? If so, it must be mine!:laughing

[Brian Blankenship]

Specifically the incarnation so that Jesus would be crucified, shed His blood, becoming the ultimate sacrifice for our sins,.... ultimately boxing Himself in...

Gets us out of the box(that is the pine box!). What do you think of God's exercise of free will here?

[Brian Blankenship]

Besides crucifixion, are there times when God specifically boxes himself in,... just so He can show His power or His love to us, just so He can keep us from being boxed in... to break us out and set us free?

[Thomas Oord]

Tom (again) --

I don't believe God is bound to love in a manner that pleases me (or you, etc.). This is where some of process thought would depart from other modes of thinking, right? God is complete in His "God-ness" without creation; God seems to freely choose to create as a manner God chooses to convey/share/demonstrate God's love, in my view.....

Wow, maybe I got jumbled again.... we'll see....

Blessings,
Charles

Charles,

I think we're closer on this than we might think. But I want to make a few comments that may seem to suggest we differ more strongly than we do.

Process thought doesn't say that God has to love in ways that pleases me. It says that God loves no matter if I'm pleased with that love.

But what is relevant here is the question of whether God has the freedom to contradict God's own nature. Most Wesleyans say that God doesn't have this kind of freedom. Most Wesleyans say that God's nature precedes God's will.

Most Reformed folk say that God's will precedes God's nature. In this, they are Barthian. Like Barth, they champion God's freedom (will) over God's nature.

The typical response from Reformed folks to Wesleyans who say that God's nature precedes God's will is that Wesleyans think they know too much about God. Reformed folks pull out Barth's line that God is wholly other.

My major beef with the Reformed notion is that placing God's will prior to God's nature is actually making a claim about who God is: God is free. And, therefore, the phrase that God is wholly other is really functioning in such a way as to affirm God's freedom above all. What Reformed folk deny to others (statements about who GOd really is) they allow for themselves (by implying that God's will is an essential characteristic of God).

I'm committed to making constructive statements about God's nature. And I think these statements are best made as faith claims about who God really is. This means that I'm subject to criticism from those who want a wholly other God who is essentially incomprehensible. But to quote something I've written elsewhere, I respond that "we must be wary of worshiping the wholly other God, for we never know who the devil he may be."

As far as God being complete without "needing" a creation, I definitely affirm God's completeness in this way. In this, I part with some process folk. But I also affirm that God has always been related to some world or another. I affirm that God does not need a world in order to exist, without also affirming the problematic doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.

I think that God has great freedom in how God creates. But I think creating is part of God's nature. I think that God has great freedom in how God loves. But I think loving is an essential and necessary part of God's nature. For me, God's nature precedes God's will, but this doesn't mean that God has no will at all. It doesn't mean that God is an automaton.

Well, this went longer than I had planned. But I hope that it helps explain my rationale for thinking that God is not in all ways free.

Enjoying the conversation...

Tom

[Thomas Oord]

Besides crucifixion, are there times when God specifically boxes himself in,... just so He can show His power or His love to us, just so He can keep us from being boxed in... to break us out and set us free?


Brian,

The idea that God is "boxed in" has always intrigued me. It is often used to discount claims about who God really is. And yet Christians inevitably continue making these claims, even when rebuking others for placing boxes around God.

Perhaps we should just admit that we have to use the language, ideas, and experiences at our disposal when we talk about God. And perhaps our best strategy in using these tools is not to worry about how they box in God. Rather our strategy should be to compare various "boxes" and opt for the best "box" on the table. Ideally, that box would best fit with scripture, reason, tradition, and our contemporary experiences.

Tom

[Hans Deventer]

I'm committed to making constructive statements about God's nature. And I think these statements are best made as faith claims about who God really is. This means that I'm subject to criticism from those who want a wholly other God who is essentially incomprehensible.

I agree we can't trust a God who is essentially incomprehensible. Yet I do believe we can't understand most of what God does, or to be more precise, why He DOESN'T do a lot of things.

The only thing I ultimately know of Him is that in order to save us, He chose the most costly way I can imagine. Which makes me agree with Paul: "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?"

In other words, God is love, but it is almost as if that statement says more about love than about God, were it not for this one Man that put the concept in flesh and bones.

Ultimately, that is all I have, whether I'll die in the comfort of my home, surrounded by loved ones, or in the gas chambers of a new Auschwitz or anything in between. I don't know what tomorrow will bring on this earth and I don't really know much more about God than the above. And it seems that's what we'll have to make do with.

So I'm a bit weary of all those statements about God that make it look like we've got Him in our pocket. We don't. Not even remotely. He is indeed the Wholly Other, but for Christ. That's why I am a Christian. Agnostic in many ways, but believing the One who said He is the truth, the way and the life.

[Thomas Oord]

So I'm a bit weary of all those statements about God that make it look like we've got Him in our pocket. We don't. Not even remotely. He is indeed the Wholly Other, but for Christ. That's why I am a Christian. Agnostic in many ways, but believing the One who said He is the truth, the way and the life.

Hans,

Thanks for the good response. I also worry about too easily believing that we've got God figured out. But I worry just as much about claims to mystery about God's attributes. Either end of this epistemic pendulum seems inadequate.

I can agree with the notion that without Christ we cannot know that God is love -- providing that we have a very expansive notion of what we mean when we talk about Christ.

Often, this phrase means that only those who have cognitive access to information about Jesus of Nazareth also have adequate basis for affirming that God is love. This seems to be the thrust of Karl Barth's early theology. But the view that people must have cognitive access to information about Jesus of Nazareth before they have grounds for believing that God is love, I would argue, cannot be sustained biblically. It undermines all OT claims about divine love, and it undermines the claims about divine love found in other religions.

However, if we understand Christ as omnipresent, as always existed, as accessible by all creatures even if not clearly or unambiguously known, then I can agree that Christ is sufficient for our knowledge that God is love.

But this kind of expansive view of Christ takes the punch out of the other claim that God is wholly other. For this expansive understanding of Christ seems synonomous with the claim that Christ is God. This means that God is NOT wholly other, if God was in Christ reconciling the world.

Our Wesleyan tradition supports the view I'm proposing in its doctrine of prevenient grace. Taken expansively, our doctrine of prevenient grace undermines the Barthian interpretation of God as wholly other that I have been criticizing.

The best interpretation, in my view, of the phrase that God is wholly other is the interpretation that this phrase reminds us that we are not divine. Only God has the characteristics we want to ascribe deity -- almightiness, omnipresence, relentless love, omniscience, everlasting, etc.

But this more modest interpretation fits pretty well when one drops the adjective "wholly" from the phrase "wholly other."

After all, if God is love and if God calls us to be imitator of divine loving, God cannot be wholly other -- in the sense of entirely different from us. If God were wholly other in this sense, the call to love could just as well be the call to hate. For hate and love would have no analogies with our understandings.

Enjoying this discussion...

Tom

[Charles W Christian]

Charles,

I think we're closer on this than we might think. But I want to make a few comments that may seem to suggest we differ more strongly than we do.

Process thought doesn't say that God has to love in ways that pleases me. It says that God loves no matter if I'm pleased with that love.

But what is relevant here is the question of whether God has the freedom to contradict God's own nature. Most Wesleyans say that God doesn't have this kind of freedom. Most Wesleyans say that God's nature precedes God's will.

Most Reformed folk say that God's will precedes God's nature. In this, they are Barthian. Like Barth, they champion God's freedom (will) over God's nature.

The typical response from Reformed folks to Wesleyans who say that God's nature precedes God's will is that Wesleyans think they know too much about God. Reformed folks pull out Barth's line that God is wholly other.

My major beef with the Reformed notion is that placing God's will prior to God's nature is actually making a claim about who God is: God is free. And, therefore, the phrase that God is wholly other is really functioning in such a way as to affirm God's freedom above all. What Reformed folk deny to others (statements about who GOd really is) they allow for themselves (by implying that God's will is an essential characteristic of God).

I'm committed to making constructive statements about God's nature. And I think these statements are best made as faith claims about who God really is. This means that I'm subject to criticism from those who want a wholly other God who is essentially incomprehensible. But to quote something I've written elsewhere, I respond that "we must be wary of worshiping the wholly other God, for we never know who the devil he may be."

As far as God being complete without "needing" a creation, I definitely affirm God's completeness in this way. In this, I part with some process folk. But I also affirm that God has always been related to some world or another. I affirm that God does not need a world in order to exist, without also affirming the problematic doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.

I think that God has great freedom in how God creates. But I think creating is part of God's nature. I think that God has great freedom in how God loves. But I think loving is an essential and necessary part of God's nature. For me, God's nature precedes God's will, but this doesn't mean that God has no will at all. It doesn't mean that God is an automaton.

Well, this went longer than I had planned. But I hope that it helps explain my rationale for thinking that God is not in all ways free.

Enjoying the conversation...

Tom

Tom -
Thanks for the feedback. A few quick responses:

1) I'm not a Reformed theologian, obviously, yet I don't think God's transcendence has to imply that God is totally incomprehensible as your post seems to suggest. There are Wesleyan theologians who make a bigger deal of God's transcendence than Process thought does, as you know. I think a great contribution of Process thought to this conversations comes in causing us to look more closely at the imminence of God than much of Wesleyan theology (or Evangelical theology) has in the past. However, I think Process goes too far in the direction of imminence and jeopardizes one of the very goals you're trying to communicate. Namely, it risks reducing God's love to something quite less than what is revealed and experienced in our own expressions of love -- maybe causing our love to sort of "outrank" God's love instead of being an expression that flows from God's love, etc. I'm not the only Wesleyan to say that, as you know, and so your categorization of ___=Wesleyan and ___=Reformed in some of your post seems overstated a bit to me, with all due respect (you know you're my homey)....

2) You said, "Most Wesleyans believe that God's nature precedes God's will." This is not the whole picture, it seems to me. Rather, it seems that most Wesleyans (and good number of Reformed folks) seem more comfortable saying, "God's will flows from God's nature", or better, "God will act in accordance with God's nature and God's nature is expressed in God's will."

3) I agree with you that God doesn't contradict God's own nature. I think the question is how love and freedom "interact" or express themselves in God's own nature. That's a tough one....Even my 9 yr old struggles with that, and he's quite the philosopher...seriously....

4) Back to God as "wholly other".... You're right that there are contradictions in many Reformed expressions of this. This is why it seems to me that one can, as a Wesleyan/Arminian come to a "better way" -- a middle way, perhaps -- a via media --:-) without compromising the freedom of God (making God so "bound" to creation that God seems to lose a sense of otherness on the one hand) and without compromising the fullest expressions of God's love on other hand....I think this is more inkeeping with the narrative of Scripture: this wholly other God chooses imminence: God comes near from far away. Such love!

This is helpful to me. Thanks for bearing with me (even though you seemed to explicitly be calling me a Reformed Barthian; which I'm not; but we're cool, really :basic07:basic05 I know I studied with some Reformed dudes, but they were far more Wesleyan than they themselves would admit....:basic03).... Thanks for the discussion.

Blessings,
Charles

[Charles W Christian]

Hans,


The best interpretation, in my view, of the phrase that God is wholly other is the interpretation that this phrase reminds us that we are not divine. Only God has the characteristics we want to ascribe deity -- almightiness, omnipresence, relentless love, omniscience, everlasting, etc.

But this more modest interpretation fits pretty well when one drops the adjective "wholly" from the phrase "wholly other."

After all, if God is love and if God calls us to be imitator of divine loving, God cannot be wholly other -- in the sense of entirely different from us. If God were wholly other in this sense, the call to love could just as well be the call to hate. For hate and love would have no analogies with our understandings.

Enjoying this discussion...

Tom

Tom -
Transcendance is a good word here, isn't it? It may be better than saying "wholly other" in some ways, perhaps. God's ways, nature, etc. transcend our own. God's "condescension" (descending with us or to us) then becomes the way by which we understand and experience (and share) "love."

Both Wesleys seemed to express things this way at times. Even Calvin before them (see his Commentary on John, for instance) seemed to say something like this.

This is way in which God is both "far" (transcendent) and "near" (imminent)....

Charles

[Thomas Oord]

Tom -
Thanks for the feedback. A few quick responses:

1) I'm not a Reformed theologian, obviously, yet I don't think God's transcendence has to imply that God is totally incomprehensible as your post seems to suggest. There are Wesleyan theologians who make a bigger deal of God's transcendence than Process thought does, as you know. I think a great contribution of Process thought to this conversations comes in causing us to look more closely at the imminence of God than much of Wesleyan theology (or Evangelical theology) has in the past. However, I think Process goes too far in the direction of imminence and jeopardizes one of the very goals you're trying to communicate. Namely, it risks reducing God's love to something quite less than what is revealed and experienced in our own expressions of love -- maybe causing our love to sort of "outrank" God's love instead of being an expression that flows from God's love, etc. I'm not the only Wesleyan to say that, as you know, and so your categorization of ___=Wesleyan and ___=Reformed in some of your post seems overstated a bit to me, with all due respect (you know you're my homey)....

2) You said, "Most Wesleyans believe that God's nature precedes God's will." This is not the whole picture, it seems to me. Rather, it seems that most Wesleyans (and good number of Reformed folks) seem more comfortable saying, "God's will flows from God's nature", or better, "God will act in accordance with God's nature and God's nature is expressed in God's will."

3) I agree with you that God doesn't contradict God's own nature. I think the question is how love and freedom "interact" or express themselves in God's own nature. That's a tough one....Even my 9 yr old struggles with that, and he's quite the philosopher...seriously....

4) Back to God as "wholly other".... You're right that there are contradictions in many Reformed expressions of this. This is why it seems to me that one can, as a Wesleyan/Arminian come to a "better way" -- a middle way, perhaps -- a via media --:-) without compromising the freedom of God (making God so "bound" to creation that God seems to lose a sense of otherness on the one hand) and without compromising the fullest expressions of God's love on other hand....I think this is more inkeeping with the narrative of Scripture: this wholly other God chooses imminence: God comes near from far away. Such love!

This is helpful to me. Thanks for bearing with me (even though you seemed to explicitly be calling me a Reformed Barthian; which I'm not; but we're cool, really :basic07:basic05 I know I studied with some Reformed dudes, but they were far more Wesleyan than they themselves would admit....:basic03).... Thanks for the discussion.

Blessings,
Charles

Charles,

Thanks for the good response. I was NOT trying to say that you are a Reformed theologian! I can see how my post may have been interpreted as implying that. But that wasn't my intent.

I was, however, trying to distinguish between a generally Wesleyan way and a generally Reformed way. And in my opinion, Barth's views on God -- especially the view that God is wholly other -- fits most comfortably in the Reformed tradition. I think Barth himself would heartily agree.

I'm totally with you on your second point. I want to say what you have in quotes. These statements are the outgrowth of the position I'm offering.

With regard to point number four, I'm trying to offer a via media. In my view, the extreme positions are 1) God is entirely free and has no constraints [Barth's view] and 2) God is entirely bound by God's own nature and thus has no freedom whatsoever. My view affirms that God cannot contradict God's own nature, but I also claim that God has expansive freedom given that nature.

A final point (and I think this relates to your other post): I have come to find the categories of transcendence and immanence largely unhelpful. In my mind, they are not descriptive enough. Far too often they are used to denote spatial distinctions (I.e., the transcendent God is up there and the immanent God is here with us). So I tend to shy away from using them. (Aside: a book written by two of my friends that illustrates the inadequacy of these categories is 20TH CENTURY THEOLOGY [Olson and Grenz]). But, generally speaking, I want to affirm God as both transcendent and immanent -- depending on how these are defined.

Sorry again for writing in a way that implied that you were a Reformed thinker!

Tom

[Hans Deventer]

After all, if God is love and if God calls us to be imitator of divine loving, God cannot be wholly other -- in the sense of entirely different from us. If God were wholly other in this sense, the call to love could just as well be the call to hate. For hate and love would have no analogies with our understandings.

True. I don't know if the following picture is helpful at all, but I kind of see it in a mathematical way:

If God is A, and we are B, then the intersection of A & B would be where God's revelation is, especially in Christ, but as you noticed, not limited to Him (Rom 1:20).

That means we indeed have some knowledge of God, and can have some idea of what it means to love, enough to follow. But there is still a large part of Him we know nothing of.

To me, THE challenge of the Christian faith is to learn to trust the God of whom we know and understand so little, yet who did create that "intersection" in such a way as to enable us to follow and trust Him.

I also compare it to a jigsaw puzzle. We have lots of pieces missing, but we do know that the ones we have are true and real.

As I read my Bible, from Gen 1 to Rev 22, I read one huge attempt of God to make us trust Him. (a word I prefer much over "believe in" anyway).

Trust implicates some knowledge, but not enough, otherwise you don't need to trust. That, I think, is the human predicament.

[Thomas Oord]

Hans,

Thanks. I like this. I'm sure we could tease out some differences between us, but this visual helps us to avoid the extreme of claiming either that we know God completely or that we have absolutely no knowledge of God.

Tom

[Gina Stevenson]

As far as God being complete without "needing" a creation, I definitely affirm God's completeness in this way. In this, I part with some process folk. But I also affirm that God has always been related to some world or another. I affirm that God does not need a world in order to exist, without also affirming the problematic doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.

You know, tho' no theologian, I've written quite a bit. One of my songs speaks to this. The verses speak of our needing to talk to God, we need someone to listen, et cetera, and then the chorus goes [had said "phrase," but ended up writing the whole chorus here]:

"Talk to Me, Talk to Me, I am list'ning, My Child to thee.
Before you call me [scriptural ref for this] I will answer,
For I know just what you need.
Talk to Me, Talk to Me, for I need you, as you need Me,
And I love you ... yes, I love you ...
Talk to Me, talk to Me."


Now, we know---as you've stated here---God doesn't have a "need" for us in that He cannot exist as what/who He is without us but, perceiving it as a self-imposed need, He does love His creation, longs to commune with them, and so there is this "need," tho' He could be God without it, fulfilling His "needs" in other ways other than via His creation.

So, in spite of someone possibly hearing this and dissing it, suggesting God has "no needs," I just had to write it this way ... and then "splain" in the description of how the song came about [which I usually have along with any songs I've written over the years].

Having said that, right now is when I rather wish I could put some of the tunes up with some of the words I've noted now & then; that makes a difference when it comes to music, not just reading lyrics, but hearing the accompanying melody.

[Thomas Oord]

Gina,

Thanks for chiming in! I'm happy that you and I agree that there are some ways in which God doesn't need us. But there are also ways that God does need us. Like you, I think God needs us if God's desire for us to have a loving relationship will be fulfilled.

Example: I want my wife and daughters to love me. This want implies some need on my part. After all, in order for us all to have the optimum loving relationship, I need for them to love me (and of course, I must love them).

I think God's needs are very similar. Of course, God will love us no matter what we do. But God cannot accomplish some goals if we don't respond appropriately to God's loving calls in our life. One of God's goals is that we have a right and loving relationship with God and others. God needs our proper responses for God's needs to be fulfilled.

Tom