Dr Ken Baker

Sometimes, the language of scripture feels like it’s coming at us with a torch in hand. “Our God is a consuming fire,” it says, and we flinch. Fire is dangerous. Fire burns. Fire changes everything it touches. And yet, here it is—not just somewhere in the Bible, but whispered into our lives, into the places we hide, into the corners we think are safe.

The fire is not a threat designed to punish us from afar. It’s closer than that. It’s the heat that melts away our hardened assumptions. The warmth that reminds us there is no corner of ourselves that God cannot enter. The flame that, if we allow it, purifies our grasping, our self-protective habits, our need to control. God as fire is not about burning us up in anger—it’s about burning away the dead wood, so new growth can emerge.

Think about a campfire. You throw in twigs and kindling. It’s bright, it’s transformative, and it cannot help but change the things around it. And if we’re honest, that’s exactly what God’s presence does. God’s love doesn’t leave things the same. It illuminates the darkness, it warms the cold places in us, but it also exposes the rot we’d rather ignore. That’s the consuming part: God’s fire consumes the parts of life that can’t carry the weight of love, mercy, and truth.

And yet, there’s a tender paradox here. Fire destroys, but it also lights. Fire warms. Fire invites us closer. God’s fire is not arbitrary; it is personal. It longs not for our fear, but our flourishing. It is the flame that refines, that frees, that calls us into a life of greater clarity, compassion, and courage.

So, what would it look like to walk into this fire willingly? To let the consuming warmth touch our anxieties, our regrets, the old narratives we cling to? Not because God wants us to suffer, but because God wants us awake, alive, fully present. Perhaps this fire is already in us—the spark of conscience, of curiosity, of longing that refuses to let us settle for less than the love we were made to carry.

Let us not hide from the fire. Let us not douse the flame in fear. Let us step closer, knowing that even as the fire consumes, it also lights a path toward peace, toward justice, toward wholeness.

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Prayer

God of the flame,
come close to us as the fire that warms without destroying, that exposes without condemning.
Burn away the things in us that keep us small, fearful, or divided.
Melt the walls we’ve built around our hearts so love can flow freely.
Ignite the sparks of courage, hope, and joy that have lain hidden beneath ash.

Teach us to walk into your light without fear, to let your consuming love transform us gently, powerfully, and without end.
May our lives reflect your fire in kindness, mercy, and boldness, so that what we touch may also be warmed, healed, and made new.

Amen.

Why How We Read the Bible Matters More Than Ever

Let me begin with a confession.

Most church arguments are not really about what the Bible says.
They’re about how we’re reading it.

We argue about ethics.
We argue about doctrine.
We argue about culture, politics, sexuality, authority, identity.

And underneath almost every one of those debates is a deeper question:
What counts as authority—and how does it actually work?

That’s where the Wesleyan Quadrilateral comes in.

Now, if that phrase already makes your eyes glaze over—stay with me. Because what John Wesley was doing wasn’t academic hair-splitting. It was deeply practical. It was pastoral. And frankly, it might be one of the most useful tools the Church has right now.

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Scripture at the Centre — But Not Alone

Here’s the headline, and let’s get it clear from the start:

For Wesley, Scripture is central. Non-negotiable. Decisive.

Not one voice among many.
Not a conversation starter.
Not a resource we weigh against our preferences.

Scripture is the norming norm of Christian faith.

But—and this is crucial—
Wesley never believed Scripture was meant to be read in isolation.

He knew something we sometimes forget:
no one reads the Bible without lenses.

The only question is whether we acknowledge those lenses or pretend they don’t exist.

So Wesley read Scripture with reason, within tradition, and tested by experience.

Not as competitors.
As companions.

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The Quadrilateral Isn’t a System — It’s a Habit

One of the biggest mistakes we make is treating the Wesleyan Quadrilateral like a diagram.

Four boxes.
Four equal sources.
Pick your favourite.

That was never Wesley’s intention—and not what actually happens in real ministry.

The Quadrilateral is not a theory.
It’s a practice.
A way of holding authority faithfully.

Think of it less like a committee and more like an ecosystem.

Scripture speaks.
Reason helps us understand.
Tradition keeps us from amnesia.
Experience tells us whether the gospel is actually doing what it promises to do.

And Scripture remains at the centre—always.

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Why This Matters for Ministers Today

Now here’s where this gets real.

If you’re training for ministry—or already in it—you will face moments where:

• Scripture seems clear… but people are hurting.
• Tradition offers wisdom… but culture has shifted.
• Experience is powerful… but potentially misleading.
• Reason complicates things you wish were simple.

And in those moments, the temptation is always imbalance.

Some ministers retreat into defensive biblicism:
“Just preach the text. Don’t think too much.”

Others drift into experience-driven theology:
“Well, this is how it feels, so this must be what God is doing.”

Some lean heavily on tradition:
“This is how we’ve always understood it.”

Others trust reason alone:
“If it doesn’t make sense to modern people, discard it.”

Wesley offers another way.

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Scripture: Letting the Text Set the Agenda

For Wesleyan ministry, Scripture doesn’t just support sermons.
It initiates them.

That means letting the text confront us—not just confirm us.

Wesley read the Bible expecting it to do something:
to awaken sinners,
to heal the wounded,
to provoke repentance,
to form holy love.

And here’s the hard truth for ministers:
The Bible cannot transform us if we only use it to reinforce what we already believe.

A Wesleyan minister learns to ask:
What is this text doing?
What kind of people is it trying to form?
Where does it resist my instincts?

That’s not liberalism.
That’s obedience.

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Reason: Loving God with the Mind

Now let’s talk about reason—because this is where some Christians get nervous.

Wesley didn’t see reason as a threat to faith.
He saw it as a gift from God.

Without reason:

• you can’t read a text responsibly,
• you can’t distinguish genre,
• you can’t recognise metaphor,
• you can’t apply Scripture wisely.

Reason doesn’t judge revelation.
It serves it.

For ministers today, that means:

• paying attention to context,
• engaging scholarship without fear,
• learning from psychology, science, and history,
• refusing easy answers when lives are at stake.

If Scripture is God’s Word,
then intellectual honesty is an act of reverence.

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Tradition: Remembering We’re Not the First

Here’s another ministerial danger: thinking we’re the first ones to face hard questions.

Tradition reminds us:
the Church has been wrestling with Scripture for two thousand years.

Wesley loved the early Church.
He read the Fathers constantly.
He trusted the collective wisdom of the Body of Christ across time.

Tradition doesn’t replace Scripture.
It keeps us humble.

It asks:
How have faithful Christians read this before?
What dangers have they already named?
What insights did they learn the hard way?

For ministers, tradition is not a cage.
It’s a guardrail.

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Experience: Testing the Fruit

And then there’s experience—the most powerful and most dangerous of the four.

Wesley took experience seriously because the gospel makes promises.

It promises freedom.
It promises transformation.
It promises love.

So Wesley asked a very practical question:
Is this interpretation actually producing holy lives?

Experience doesn’t create truth.
It verifies it.

But here’s the key Wesleyan distinction:
experience must be discerned, not obeyed.

Ministers don’t ask,
“How does this feel?”

They ask,
“What kind of people is this forming?”

Does it lead to love?
Does it deepen humility?
Does it increase justice, mercy, and holiness?

If not, something has gone wrong—no matter how sincere the experience.

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Real Ministry Happens in the Tension

Now let me be honest.

The Wesleyan Quadrilateral does not make ministry easier.

It makes it faithful.

Because real ministry happens where:

• Scripture challenges culture,
• experience challenges abstraction,
• tradition challenges novelty,
• reason challenges laziness.

And the task of the minister is not to collapse that tension,
but to hold it.

That’s leadership.
That’s discernment.
That’s pastoral courage.

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Why This Matters Right Now

We are living in a moment of hermeneutical crisis.

Some Christians weaponise Scripture.
Others apologise for it.
Some absolutise experience.
Others distrust it entirely.

The Wesleyan way says:
We can do better.

We can be biblical without being brittle.
We can be thoughtful without being detached.
We can be Spirit-led without being chaotic.
We can be traditional without being trapped.

That’s not compromise.
That’s maturity.

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A Final Word to Ministers and Candidates

If you are training for ministry, here’s the invitation:

Don’t ask only,
“What do I believe?”

Ask,
“How do I discern?”

Because your people won’t just need your convictions.
They’ll need your judgment.

They’ll need someone who can read Scripture faithfully,
think clearly,
listen deeply,
and lead humbly.

John Wesley didn’t give us a shortcut.
He gave us a way of life.

Scripture at the centre.
Read with reason.
Rooted in tradition.
Tested by experience.

Not because it’s tidy.
But because it’s true.

And maybe—just maybe—that’s the kind of ministry this moment is calling for.

There is a persistent temptation among religious communities to assume that faithfulness always means being ahead—morally, spiritually, culturally. We tell ourselves that if we are God’s people, then surely we are leading the way. But history, scripture, and lived experience suggest something far more uncomfortable: it is entirely possible for those who speak most confidently about God to lag behind what God is already doing in the world.

Sometimes the wider culture gets there first.

This is not because culture is infallible or because God has outsourced holiness to secular institutions. It is because God is not confined to ecclesial borders, doctrinal gatekeeping, or denominational self-understanding. God moves—often quietly, often stubbornly—toward life, dignity, healing, and truth long before the church has found the courage to follow.

The biblical pattern is unmistakable. Again and again, God is already at work beyond the recognised boundaries of the “faithful.” Cyrus, a Persian king with no interest in Israel’s theology, is named God’s anointed. The Good Samaritan—religiously suspect, socially excluded—becomes the moral centre of Jesus’ parable. The Spirit falls on Gentiles before Peter has time to draft a position paper. In each case, the religious insiders are left scrambling to catch up with a God who refuses to wait for permission.

Yet we persist in acting surprised when it happens again.

There are moments—many of them—when the surrounding culture demonstrates a deeper commitment to protecting human dignity than the church. When movements for racial justice, disability rights, or the safeguarding of children arise from outside ecclesial structures, while churches debate wording, liability, or “tone.” There are times when women find their voices amplified in public life while religious institutions remain stuck defending silence as holiness. There are seasons when psychologists and physicians show greater attentiveness to the integration of mind, body, and trauma than preachers who still reduce suffering to spiritual failure.

And there are moments—urgent, existential moments—when scientists, activists, and indigenous communities cry out for care of the earth, while churches hesitate, worried that creation care sounds suspiciously political.

In these moments, religious communities often respond defensively. We warn about secularism. We lament moral decline. We reassure ourselves that we are the guardians of timeless truth. But what if the discomfort we feel is not persecution, nor compromise, nor cultural hostility—but conviction?

What if God is already calling the world forward, and we are the ones dragging our feet?

This is not an argument for uncritical celebration of every cultural shift. The culture, like the church, is capable of cruelty, idolatry, and self-deception. But neither does the church possess a monopoly on moral insight or spiritual attentiveness. When love, justice, mercy, truth-telling, and compassion emerge—wherever they emerge—they bear a family resemblance to the God revealed in Jesus.

The tragedy is not that God continues to move without us. God has always done that. The tragedy is that we so often mistake institutional preservation for faithfulness, certainty for obedience, and control for holiness. We become experts in guarding the past while God is busy calling creation toward a future we did not design.

This is how churches can claim to speak for God while resisting God’s forward pull. How we can quote scripture while ignoring its trajectory. How we can defend “biblical values” while missing the biblical God, who consistently sides with the poor, the outsider, the wounded, and the earth itself.

Jesus reserved his sharpest words not for pagans but for religious leaders who were impeccably orthodox and profoundly out of step with the movement of God. “You search the scriptures,” he said, “because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” The problem was not devotion to scripture. It was the refusal to let scripture lead them somewhere new.

God’s call is rarely static. It presses forward—toward deeper love, wider mercy, greater truthfulness. And that call does not pause while the church holds committee meetings. If we refuse it long enough, the call will still go out, but we may find ourselves hearing it echoed back to us from voices we once dismissed as “outside.”

The question, then, is not whether God is active in the world. The question is whether we are willing to recognise that activity when it unsettles us. Whether we have the humility to admit that sometimes the Spirit gets there first. Whether we can repent not only of personal sins but of collective resistance to growth.

Faithfulness, in the end, may look less like standing firm and more like catching up. Less like defending our position and more like listening for a voice that has already moved on, calling us forward into a wider, riskier, more generous love.

God is still speaking. God is still calling. The only real danger is not that the world might move ahead of the church—but that the church might become so convinced of its own righteousness that it no longer notices God walking past, beckoning, without it.

Much of contemporary Christianity speaks as though God arrives late to the human story—after the sinner repents, after belief is correctly articulated, after moral boundaries are sufficiently secured. Grace, in this telling, is reactive. Conditional. Triggered by the right words or the right posture.

John Wesley offered a far more unsettling claim: God gets there first.

Prevenient grace—literally, “grace that comes before”—insists that God is already at work in every human life prior to awareness, assent, or belief. Long before conversion narratives are narrated, God has been stirring conscience, longing, resistance, imagination. Grace is not a prize for the faithful; it is the atmosphere in which faith becomes possible at all.

This is not theological sentimentality. It is a disciplined refusal to shrink God’s mercy to the size of our certainties.

Wesley understood what much of the modern church seems desperate to forget: if grace does not precede human response, then salvation subtly becomes a human achievement. The moment grace is made dependent on correct belief, moral performance, or ideological alignment, it ceases to be grace at all. It becomes reward.

Prevenient grace, by contrast, dismantles spiritual meritocracy. It declares that no one stands on neutral ground before God. There are no godless spaces, no grace-free people, no spiritually vacant lives waiting for Christians to arrive with God in tow. God is already there—often ahead of us, often outside our systems, often working through people and places the church has learned to distrust.

This is where prevenient grace becomes deeply disruptive.

If God is already active in the lives of those we label “lost,” then evangelism shifts from conquest to recognition. The task is no longer to bring God, but to help people name the God who has been quietly present all along. The church becomes less a gatekeeper of divine access and more a witness to divine initiative.

Sad to say, religion often functions as a substitute for transformation. Prevenient grace refuses that substitution. It insists that God’s work cannot be contained within institutional borders or doctrinal correctness. Grace leaks. It overflows. It shows up in unexpected wisdom, moral courage, artistic truth, and even in holy resistance to religion itself.

I think most of us get this intuitively. And that ‘getting’ resonates not because it lowers the bar of faith, but because it tells the truth about how grace actually operates in real lives—through doubt, through questions, through disillusionment, through belonging before believing. We know and believe… we trust that God is not threatened by uncertainty because God has already secured the relationship.

A church shaped by prevenient grace would sound very different from many of our current public witnesses.

It would speak less anxiously about cultural decline and more confidently about divine faithfulness. It would stop confusing boundary-drawing with holiness. It would recognise that moral formation is not achieved through fear but through sustained encounter with love. It would approach disagreement not as evidence of apostasy but as a site where grace is still patiently at work.

Most importantly, it would recover humility.

Prevenient grace leaves no room for spiritual superiority. If God met me before I could choose God, then my faith is never grounds for boasting. I am not “in” because I was wiser, braver, or more obedient. I am in because God is relentlessly gracious. The only appropriate response to such grace is gratitude—and generosity toward others still finding their way.

In an age of theological tribalism and moral absolutism, prevenient grace is not a soft option. It is a demanding one. It asks us to trust God more than we trust our mechanisms of control. It asks us to believe that the Spirit is more active than we are. It asks us to loosen our grip on outcomes and return to faithfulness.

Grace goes first.
Grace stays longer.
Grace works deeper than we can see.

The church would do well to remember that before we ever reached for God, God had already reached for us—and never let go.

I just saw notice of a Theology Podcast with the wonderful debate question: Is the Bible’s diversity a problem or a gift? What are your thoughts?

The Bible’s diversity is not a problem to be solved but a gift to be received—though it becomes a problem when we expect from it what it never claimed to be.

If Scripture were meant to function as a single, flattened system of propositions, then its plurality of voices, genres, and theological tensions would indeed be an embarrassment. But the Bible presents itself not as a monologue dropped from heaven, but as a long, communal witness to God’s self-disclosure across time, culture, crisis, and hope. Its diversity is therefore not accidental; it is intrinsic to its authority.

Several observations sharpen this.

First, biblical diversity reflects incarnation rather than dictation. God’s word comes to us through poets, prophets, priests, sages, evangelists, and apostles—each situated, limited, and addressing concrete circumstances. The result is not chaos, but polyphony. The unity of Scripture is not found in uniformity of expression but in a shared gravitational centre: the God who creates, liberates, judges, forgives, and ultimately reveals himself in Christ. Diversity is the cost—and the glory—of revelation that takes human history seriously.

Second, diversity invites discernment rather than mere compliance. Scripture repeatedly places texts in conversation, even in tension: Proverbs beside Job, Chronicles beside Samuel–Kings, James beside Paul, John beside the Synoptics. This forces readers to mature. We are not allowed to remain children who quote verses as rules; we must learn to weigh, interpret, and ask what faithfulness looks like here. The Bible trains wisdom, not just obedience.

Third, diversity guards against idolatry of interpretation. A flat Bible is easily weaponised; a diverse Bible resists being conscripted by any single ideology. When Scripture speaks in many registers, it frustrates our desire to make God say only what we already believe. This is not weakness but moral strength. It keeps the community humble, provisional, and attentive.

Fourth, the diversity of Scripture mirrors the diversity of the people of God. The canon already contains voices from the margins and the centre, the wounded and the powerful, the faithful and the furious. That means contemporary readers—across cultures, genders, and social locations—can find both recognition and challenge. Unity is achieved not by erasing difference but by holding it together under the rule of love.

Of course, diversity does raise real questions. Not every biblical voice carries the same weight in Christian theology, and not every command can be transposed directly into every context. But this is precisely where the gift lies: Scripture presses us toward Christological reading, ethical maturity, and dependence on the Spirit. It refuses to let us outsource responsibility to the text itself.

In short, the Bible’s diversity is a feature, not a flaw. It is the sign that God has chosen relationship over reduction, formation over control, and wisdom over simplicity. The task of faith is not to silence Scripture’s many voices, but to learn how to listen to them together—patiently, reverently, and in love.

QUESTION- Love the thought. Was talking last night and asked the question, “Jesus said, ‘the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath’. What if we applied that to other aspects of scripture? How could we do “faith expressing itself through love” honouring scripture without being tied to rules?”

Any thoughts – this has so many implications and is a live wrestle for me presently.

KB- This is a rich and serious question, and you’re right: it opens a fault-line that runs through almost everything we do with Scripture.

Jesus’ sabbath saying is not a marginal pastoral aside; it is a hermeneutical revolution. He is not abolishing Torah, but relocating it. The law is no longer the controlling centre around which human life must contort itself. Human flourishing in covenantal relationship with God becomes the interpretive horizon within which the law finds its meaning. The sabbath is revealed not as an end in itself, but as a gift whose truth is tested by whether it actually gives life.

If that logic is allowed to travel—and Jesus clearly intends it to—then Scripture as a whole is no longer a closed rule-system but a living witness whose authority is exercised teleologically rather than mechanically. The question subtly but decisively shifts from “What rule applies?” to “What is this text for?”

That move reframes “faith expressing itself through love” (Gal 5:6) as more than moral sentiment. Love becomes a criterion of interpretation, not merely an outcome of obedience. In Paul, love is not what happens after the rules are kept; it is the reality that fulfils the law because it participates in God’s own life. This is why he can say both that the law is holy and that it cannot give life. Its holiness lies in its direction, not its exhaustiveness.

Practically, this suggests several implications.

First, Scripture is honoured most faithfully when it is discerned rather than applied. Discernment assumes prayer, community, humility, and attentiveness to concrete lives. Rules can be applied without love; discernment cannot proceed without it. This preserves Scripture’s authority while refusing to absolutise our interpretations.

Second, obedience becomes relational rather than regulatory. The controlling question becomes: What kind of people are we being formed into by this reading? If a supposedly “biblical” stance reliably produces fear, exclusion, cruelty, or moral evasion, then something has gone wrong—not because Scripture has failed, but because it has been treated as sabbath for itself rather than for people.

Third, continuity with Scripture is maintained through trajectory rather than repetition. Jesus does not simply restate sabbath law; he intensifies its intent by healing, restoring, and re-humanising. Likewise, fidelity today may mean moving beyond the letter in order to remain faithful to the direction of the Spirit who gave it. This is not relativism; it is covenantal faithfulness under new conditions.

What makes this a “live wrestle” is that it removes the false safety of rule-keeping without abandoning discipline. It asks more of us, not less. Love is far more demanding than law because it cannot hide behind precedent. It must answer, here and now, for what it does to real people.

Seen this way, theology really does belong in a laboratory rather than a construction site. Not because truth is provisional in the sense of disposable, but because it is tested—against Christ, against the fruits of the Spirit, against the cruciform pattern of God’s self-giving love.

The sabbath was made for humanity. Scripture, too, is given for life. The challenge—and the grace—is learning to trust that love is not the enemy of faithfulness, but its deepest form.

QUESTION: I can see how the idea of testing theological theories would be attractive, but could there be some kind of qualifying test or set of questions before we set people loose in the theology lab? And just as labs operate on principles related to heat and chemical reaction, can we agree that there are still some “permanent things”?

KB: This is a perceptive—and necessary—pushback. You’re naming the shadow side of the “theology as laboratory” metaphor: experimentation without shared controls quickly becomes ideological improvisation, baptised as faithfulness. Your instinct is sound. A laboratory without governing laws is not a place of discovery but of explosion. So yes—there must be qualifying questions, shared commitments, and “permanent things.” But the key is what kind of permanence we are talking about.

A first qualifying test might be Christological rather than ideological: Does this proposal cohere with the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus—especially as revealed in his self-giving love, enemy-embrace, and refusal of coercive power? This immediately places limits on nationalist or domination-shaped “innovation,” however biblically accessorised it may be. Christian theology is not free to experiment with visions of power that contradict the crucified Messiah.

A second test is fruit-oriented, drawing straight from Jesus and Paul: What kind of people does this theology reliably produce? Does it yield love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, humility—or does it normalise fear, grievance, scapegoating, and moral aggression? This is not a soft criterion; it is a rigorous one. In a lab, results matter more than rhetoric.

Third, there is a communal and historical test: Can this claim be recognised as Christian not only by us, here and now, but in conversation with the whole church across time and place? This doesn’t mean innovation is forbidden—Wesley himself is proof otherwise—but it does mean innovation must argue its case in the presence of the saints, not merely against caricatures of them.

And yes, there are permanent things—not as brittle rules, but as governing realities, rather like gravity or thermodynamics in a lab. Among them I would name:

• The primacy of love as the fulfilment, not the negation, of truth
• The irreducibility of the incarnation: God meets us in flesh, history, and particular lives
• The cross as the definitive revelation of God’s character and way with the world
• The resurrection as God’s “yes” to life, hope, and renewal rather than retrenchment
• The Spirit as the living interpreter of Scripture, not a license to override it.

These are not variables to be tested; they are the conditions under which testing can occur. What your concern highlights—especially in a Wesleyan context—is that holiness without love becomes control, and innovation without holiness becomes ideology. The tradition at its best has always insisted on both disciplined boundaries and generous hope.

So perhaps the theology lab needs a sign on the door: All experiments must be conducted in the presence of Christ, under the rule of love, for the sake of human flourishing and the glory of God. That doesn’t shut the lab down. It makes it safe enough to be genuinely creative.

“Elect according to the foreknowledge of God.”
It sounds like a velvet rope. A whispered list. Names checked, others waved away. For many modern hearers, the word elect lands with a thud—heavy with theological gatekeeping and cosmic favouritism. God as bouncer. Heaven as members’ club.

But what if Peter means something far stranger, and far more hopeful?

The first thing to notice is that foreknowledge is not the same as foreordination. To know in advance is not to coerce in advance. Parents know their children well enough to anticipate trouble and tenderness alike, but knowledge does not negate freedom. Indeed, the better the love, the deeper the knowing—and the lighter the grip. Foreknowledge, here, is not a script but an intimacy.

Peter is writing to fragile communities, scattered and anxious, not to theological elites congratulating themselves. “You are elect,” he tells them, not as a badge of superiority but as a reassurance of belonging. The word functions pastorally before it functions metaphysically. It answers the question every marginalised community asks: Do we matter? Are we seen?

Election, in this sense, is not about exclusion but vocation. To be chosen is not to be spared suffering; Peter is painfully clear about that. It is to be entrusted with a calling—to embody holiness, to practise love under pressure, to bear witness in a bruised world. Election is not a cushion; it is a commission.

And crucially, election in the New Testament is almost always corporate before it is individual. Israel is chosen for the sake of the nations. The church is called for the life of the world. The grammar of grace is expansive. God chooses some in order to reach many. Divine love, like light, does not narrow as it focuses; it intensifies so that it may spread.

Foreknowledge, then, is not a sorting algorithm. It is God’s eternal attentiveness to every possible future, every fragile freedom, every real contingency. The God who knows ahead of time is not the God who locks outcomes in place, but the God who is never caught unprepared by human choice. Grace is responsive, not brittle. Love adjusts.

This rescues election from cold determinism and turns it into something dynamic and relational. God’s knowing is not the knowing of a chess grandmaster manipulating pieces, but the knowing of a lover who anticipates, responds, suffers, and hopes. The future is genuinely open, yet never godless. Nothing surprises God into indifference.

Read this way, “elect according to the foreknowledge of God” becomes a statement not about who is in and who is out, but about the shape of divine faithfulness. God commits in advance to work with real people in real time, without overriding their freedom or abandoning their failures. Election names God’s stubborn refusal to give up on the world.

Which means the most dangerous misuse of election is triumphalism. The elect are not the morally superior, the doctrinally correct, or the spiritually safe. They are those caught up in God’s risky project of healing, reconciliation, and love. If election does not make us more humble, more generous, more hopeful about others, then we have not understood it at all.

Perhaps the truest test of any theology of election is this: does it widen our compassion or shrink it? Does it produce gratitude or anxiety? Does it make room for surprise?

Peter’s scattered believers were not being told they had won a cosmic lottery. They were being told that their lives—precarious, ordinary, unfinished—were already held in a knowing love older than time and wider than fear.

Elect, yes.
But never alone.

Here’s the thing: a faith built on fear will always confuse obedience with appeasement. When God is imagined primarily as a cosmic finger-shaker—clipboard in hand, disappointment always one misstep away—religion becomes a performance. Say the right words. Believe the right things. Don’t ask the wrong questions. And above all, don’t mess up. That kind of faith may keep people in line, but it rarely makes them whole.

What if the point was never about pleasing a divine judge in the sky? What if faith was always meant to be relational rather than transactional—less about earning approval and more about waking up to presence? A living faith doesn’t begin with anxiety about the afterlife; it begins with attentiveness to this life. It changes how we see our neighbors, our enemies, our bodies, our politics, our tables. It doesn’t wait for heaven to matter. It insists that transformation starts now or it doesn’t start at all.

Which brings us to our ongoing obsession with “literal truth,” as though flattening ancient stories into modern fact-checking exercises somehow honors them. We have confused seriousness with literalism, faithfulness with rigidity. In doing so, we’ve managed to strip sacred stories of their poetry, their danger, and their power. Symbol, metaphor, and myth were never signs of ignorance; they were tools of depth. They carried meaning that facts alone cannot hold.

When we demand that every sacred story function like a newspaper article, we aren’t defending faith—we’re shrinking it. We reduce mystery to mechanics. We trade wisdom for certainty. And then we act surprised when younger generations walk away, not because the stories are too challenging, but because we’ve made them too small to be true.

Faith was never meant to be an exercise in intellectual defensiveness. It was meant to open us—to awe, to humility, to compassion. Stories that are symbolic aren’t evasive; they are expansive. They invite participation, not mere agreement. They ask not, “Did this happen exactly this way?” but “What is this calling forth in us now?” That question is far more dangerous—and far more transformative.

And if all of this sounds abstract, it isn’t. Because at the center of it all is a radical claim: that God is not most fully honored by correct beliefs, but by fully lived lives. If God is the source of life, then shrinking ourselves—through fear, shame, or rigid dogma—is not devotion. It’s distortion. If God is the source of love, then love that is cautious, calculating, or withheld is not holiness. It’s self-protection dressed up as piety.

To live fully and love wastefully—without guarantees, without scorekeeping, without first asking who deserves it—is not moral recklessness. It is spiritual fidelity. It is the refusal to reduce faith to control. It is the courage to believe that love is not something we ration in order to remain righteous, but something we pour out in order to remain human.

This kind of faith will not make everyone comfortable. It dismantles the systems that rely on fear. It questions the authorities who benefit from certainty. It invites people into a spirituality that looks suspiciously like freedom—and freedom is always risky.

But maybe that’s the point. A faith that doesn’t change how we live, how we love, and how we tell the truth about our stories isn’t protecting God. It’s protecting us. And God, if God is anything like the source of life and love we claim to worship, has never seemed particularly interested in being protected.