Is God not "Perfect"?

[4HisChurch]

How does one answer those who say God is not perfect and that He has made mistakes? How do we get, theologically, from the Old Testament which says things like “God regretted” having done something and the New Testament theology which says that God is perfect, infallible, ineffable, etc?

 

[jpjd]

Or worse than not perfect, here is a verse telling of God planning to do evil:

Jonah 3:10

When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way,
he repented of the evil that he had threatened to do to them;
he did not carry it out.

 

[chaunceygardner]

Or worse than not perfect, here is a verse telling of God planning to do evil:

Jonah 3:10

When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way,
he repented of the evil that he had threatened to do to them;
he did not carry it out.

It is not God but man, who has an imperfect understanding of God, that is the problem. Moving from the OT to the NT one can see that man’s understanding of God matures, and that maturing process has continued to this day. We attribute “mistakes” to God because we are applying human criteria to His actions. In reality, the actions that appear imperfect are initiated by people who either disobey Him, misunderstand Him, or mis-apply His commandments and teachings. The imperfection is ours, not God’s.

In Jonah, God is not "planning’ to do evil but threatens to take action due to the evil ways of others. He then gives them the opportunity to change and “repents” (does not carry out) His threat in response to the repentance of the people of Nineveh (“they turned from their evil way”). If anything that shows me that God is forgiving and loving, not evil.

 

[John92]

To the Jonah quote - it’s using “evil” in an older sense, in the sense of a “harmful deed”, so God could be said to “do evil to sinners”, for example.

In general, God is beyond human perception, but we attribute human characteristics to him so that we may better understand him - better to understand imperfectly than to be awed by his ineffability and lose faith in understanding him at all! So in the Old Testament in particular God is given human emotions - “regret” or “anger” or “sorrow” or what-have-you - but this was just the way the ancient Israelites tried to understand God and the way God chose to reveal himself. Even today we speak of God being “disappointed in” or “angry towards” sinners, but these are mere human words that come nowhere near expressing the mysteries of the divine nature.

 

[w2bp88]

In my RCIA group one girl said that she thinks God is a learning God. That he can learn as he goes along and she likes that about Him. I thought that was ridiculous. If he is still learning how is he all-knowing? If we are just trial and error then how is He God? This got my annoyed.

 

[j2c99]

In my RCIA group one girl said that she thinks God is a learning God. That he can learn as he goes along and she likes that about Him. I thought that was ridiculous. If he is still learning how is he all-knowing? If we are just trial and error then how is He God? This got my annoyed.

Yeah I totally agree. God is not a learning God in the human sense; we as HUMAN BEINGS are learning creatures, especially about God and His mysterious ways. We will never fully grasp “who is God” and how does He works in totality.

On to another point, my understanding and many Catholics I’ve read talk about this subject is that the Catholic Church is a living, growing “organism”, so to speak. As time progresses, new things are discovered and then proclaimed by the Magisterium as whole learning for the Church and its members. It grows, morphs, changes, in certain respects, as time gos on. It’s not some landlocked rigid guideline that is stuck in 100 AD, yet it always holds true to provided revelation without denying the truths that Jesus originally said and continues to provide to His Church. This link’s post talks about it a little better than I can, since I’m just a lowly RCIA member too

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