Heart of the Living God
Love, Free Will, Foreknowledge, and Heaven / A Theology on the Treasure of Love
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Grand Canyon Hiking Preface Tie up your sneakers. We’re gonna have some fun! I care. I am writing this to my family, friends and colleagues...first of all. I admit it up front. I am just a soldier in the muck and mire of life, with a lot of mud on my boots. But now I am on vacation. Let’s go on a hike. I have tried very hard to relate this to you, to share it with passion and warmth, for this is about the heart of the living God. Some of this has origins in the most complex of fatiguing academic cogitations, and I do want to make a contribution. But that is no fun. So I thought, if I cannot make this fun, what is the point? I chose to relate, not coddle or cuddle...I mean relate as though we were chums with a few hours to spare on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. I want to share and get personally involved. So the book itself is less than 100 pages. Easy, yes? But the sub-strata is connected to 1,500+ years of heated debate and even persecution...a Grand Canyon, and so there is 150 pages of resources if you want to strike out on your own. This work is a companion to my larger ethics book, Would You Lie to Save a Life?.[1] There is an ethical “fine line”
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About the Book
Maness asks us to “tie up our sneakers, for we are going to have some fun as we hike into the Grand Canyon of Love. Love is the treasure of life. It is Love all the way. Nothing else really matters outside of Love. Best of all, our Love will only get better in heaven.” The treasured ability to have loving relationships is God’s gift to us in our Imago Dei—the image of God we all share. Likewise, what we know of Love this side of heaven is but a dusty image of what God experiences. “I want to get personally involved,” says Maness. “Can we have a free-will relationship with anyone, even God, if all of what we do and think is settled? I don’t think so. Love is greater than that, and I shall prove that, and that is indeed a Grand Canyon.” Manes brings some of the brain-splitting complexities of this to light with good humor, introduces dynamic foreknowledge, and challenges Classical Theism’s avoidance of Love. And he exposes some foul play in the process. That’s the first half of the book. For those wanting to strike out on their own (wanting to see more of the depth and diversity of the Grand Canyon), the second half contains reviews of about 60 major authors, a 4,000+ Abysmal Bibliography, and a huge index to just about everything in the book. Maness has thrown a gauntlet before the Classical Theists. So … tie up your sneakers and take a hike with Michael G. Maness as he walks with you into the Grand Canyon. see more at www.PreciousHeart.net
About the Author
Maness grew up in Southern California and migrated to Texas in 1972. After a short stint in the U.S. Air Force, Maness earned a B.A with a double major in Bible and Counseling at the Criswell Bible College from 1978 to 1985. This was a time of dire poverty and much struggle. He went on to earn a M.Div. with languages from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth in 1990, 1,600 hours of clinical from the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education at Shannon Hospital in San Angelo in 1992, became certified as a Suicide/Crisis Intervention Counselor for MHMR in the Concho Valley in 1991, and a D.Min. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in 1997. He has received specialized training with the Texas Dept. of Human Services in Child Protective Services and with Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) in Cultural Diversity, Safe Prisons crisis intervention program, and in TDCJ’s Post Trauma Staff Support team. He has traveled throughout the United States and to several countries including Belgium, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. He is the Senior Clinical Chaplain at the Gib Lewis Texas State Prison and a Certified Correctional Chaplain with the American Correctional Chaplains Association. He is also a member of the American Correctional Association, Lions Club International, the Evangelical Theological Society, and several other state and national organizations. He has written on a large variety of topics, both published and unpublished, and much of the work of his pen can be seen at his web site: www.PreciousHeart.net His interests focus on matters that affect the heart...the precious heart.