Linguistically: a “performative utterance”; not just idle talk, but a word that accompanies or causes actions?

But though parts of the Bible suggest this, do God’s words always, in what actually “Comes to pass” in real life, lead in an immediate way, to actions? A kingdom “soon”? We are assured they will eventually. Though in the meantime, there is apparently some slack here … that Ward, so far in our partial summary, does not acknowledge.

So too a space between God’s essence or will, and his performance or actual attributes in the world?

Sounds like a good nominalist approach to me. In fact it reminds me (the way you describe it, Kyle) exactly of Ockham’s view on Covenant and “words.”

On the positive side, it does base us on a well-researched and written document, the Bible. And even as a written covenant, or contract. Therefore, when we sign up, we have a (fairly) clear written contract; and (more or less) know what we are signing onto.

Here – as the Protestant Reformation liked to constantly point out – these is less danger of signing onto an open-ended discussion or a variable. To a free-ranging discussion that can seen good … until a preacher starts delivering his – say political, or personal, even ideosyncratic – ideas, theology, “traditions of mere men,” and even mere individuals, as the word of “God.”

To be sure, an open-ended theology is exciting, as an essentail academic freedom; especially one apparently free of “covenant” obligations.

Yet of course, there is a very common abuse here. First 1) the churchgoer hears ideas invoked in the name of “God,” and thinks he knows what he is signing up for: something based on the “God” of the Bible. But then finds – too late in the case of cults, and too-individualististic theologies – that he or she really signed up for … the personal theology (and even psychology and agenda) of a particular preacher.

So that, indeed, when a preacher or theologian (especially in private only) cuts himself off from a strictly biblical, even convenantial sense of “God,” there is a slight advantage: we have now a wider sphere to God. But there is also a common abuse here: an individual is now … playing God. Presenting his own ideas, in a way that will be perceived as having the authority of a written contract, three thousand years of tradition … without however, the usual safeguards in place.

That is why and how, cult leaders can have so much influence.

So again: if someone wants to seek and non-covenential theology, even a non-biblical one? No doubt there is a need for such things. But perhaps the only honest way to do this, is to publically present it, not as a voice of “God.” Since indeed, “God” is a term that is widely defined in the common mind, as a character from one particular document: the Bible. Whereas, a non-covenential theology, is not coming strictly, from that perspective.

In the early days of critical theology, certain figures devised other terms, therefore. They developed a vocabulary that recalled the old terms of authority – but that, in the name of honesty, also frankly signaled a slight difference: speaking not of “God,” but the “deity”; the “ineffable”; the Divine Nature; etc.. Divine Providence, etc..

Terms that in fact were developed in France and England. Especially, in the time of say, Edwards. And that were used in some of the early foundational documents of the United States.