A Professor of Religious Studies, Most Rev. Latunji Lasebikan, says God uses any method in doing things, no matter how questionable it may appear to man.
Lasebikan stated this on Friday while delivering the 13th Inaugural Lecture of Ajayi Crowther University, Oyo.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the lecture was entitled: ‘The Madness of God: An Examination of Divine Obsessive Compulsive Disorder’.
NAN also reports that Lasebikan was the Bishop of Ondo Diocese and Archbishop of Ondo Ecclesiastical Province of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) and also served as Dean of the church.
“The madness of God is about God doing His things in not only unpredictable ways, but using totally unconventional methods, sometimes too odd to look sensible.
“That was the basis of Pauline theology of the Cross. While it is plausible that God would want to save humanity, it is strange and awkward that He would do that by means of the Cross.
“This is because there is nothing fascinating and alluring about it. It is ludicrous that God would want to bring about salvation through the Cross,” he said.
According to the cleric, God’s ways are totally undemocratic, unpredictable and incomprehensible, adding that it can be awkward, strange, bizarre and unusual to human style.
“If a man, in all his wisdom, will approach issues the way God does, psychiatrists will quickly conclude that he is suffering from a form of mania.
“But the truth is that whatever God chooses to do, He does it at all cost. He is unstoppable and unquestionable. He feels compelled to do and He can use any method, no matter how questionable it is.
“God’s approach to save man from sin appears to be nonsensical. It is sheer madness to have allowed His son go through torture and death eventually for a sin he did not commit.
“Only a foolish mind, an unintelligent and confused mind would have used the Cross as a means to such a critical issue as human salvation,” he said.
Lasebikan further explained that despite the strange ways in which God works, He has demonstrated that He is a being beyond our imagination and description.
“And if truly He is the one who has created the prophets for which reason they behave in strange ways, then it will be understandable that their roots are in the supernatural.
“We must accept that the area of the divine, that is, the supernatural, is inviolate and human efforts cannot tamper with it or obliterate God from the world He has created,” he said.
The don said that the summary of it was that prophets were not mad in just the same way as God is not, though their creative abilities make it difficult for them to be understood.
“They do things in unconventional, strange and unorthodox ways that raise eyebrows. Surely, they are unique and uncommon, which set them apart from every other person,” he said.
Earlier, Prof. Dapo Asaju, the Vice-Chancellor of the institution, said that Lasebikan was invited to take up an appointment as professor of Old Testament Studies in the university.
Asaju said that Lasebikan had always left behind a very rich legacy of humility, truthfulness and integrity everywhere he worked.
