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Bookcat
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Kate
Why are you hear on these forums?
Why are you hear on these forums?
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TheTrinitySaves
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- He did it because he was bored, then soon after he came to love his creations.
- Agreed.
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NM505StKate
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This is why I said god is a concept. Wouldn’t Yahweh need some physical traits when it supposedly talked to the likes of Abraham? How about when Yahweh wrestled Jacob? Or when Yahweh couldn’t defeat an army because of iron chariots?
Maybe the idea of god has changed over time. Through anthropological evidence we know the ancient Hebrews were polytheistic. So maybe Yahweh was a specific god in the pantheon. After time and changing of leaders Yahweh “grew” into a more over arching thing. From just, say, a volcanic god of war to a singular being to the “eternal” concept we have today?
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edward_george
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That would imply he didn’t always love, which contradicts his immutability. Where do you get that God was bored?
-Fr ACEGC
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TheTrinitySaves
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This is getting dangerously out of line with jewish and christian teaching, and that comes from me, whom gets into numerous disagreements with people on this forum.
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Wesrock
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Except Christian belief is tied to the New Testament. Not that we should disregard the Old, but that the Old cannot be properly understood or interpreted outside the context of the New Testament. The New Testament is necessary for interpreting the old; anything else is interpreting out of its entire context. As Christians see it, the Jews do not accept all of the available revelation, and so there interpretations should not be given higher or necessarily equal authority. Though I do say they are not useful.
Why do you say that God is not good? Evil is permitted, yes, but there being evil is incidental to creation, though we must still admit that there being evil in the world was intentional on God’s part on some level.
Classical theology sees God as Subsistent Being, and existence (which is entirely what God is) as being inherently good. That is, the act of existing (or being) is equatable with goodness, at least in so far as a being exists. All positive aspects of existence are created. What we call “evil” in any sense is a privation of existence. That is, what God positively creates is in itself good, but the privations (or lack) in the way a thing exists are “evils”. So all created things are Good, leaving evil as existing in the privations but not being created as some type of separate substance.
I’m rushing now, trying to wrap this up to do something off the computer, but I’ll see if I can wrap this up. Anyway, the goodness mentioned above is not strictly speaking a moral goodness, but moral goodness is one facet of this conception. To start simply, take a triangle drawn by a five year old, compared to one made with a straight-edge by an architect, compared to one printed out by a computer with an absurdly high number of pixels. The triangle drawn by the five year old is “less good” than the one drawn by the architect, which is still “less good” than the one created by the computer. To be a “good” triangle is to instantiate triangularity well. No material triangle will ever instantiate the perfect triangle in all of its perfections, but the better it instantiates what it is the more good it is.
You can do this with physical attributes (which have nothing to do with morality, and even something that physically instantiates a type of thing poorly is still that type), but you can also do it with behaviors. A good squirrel will store acorns for winter. A squirrel that doesn’t store acorns for winter, or stores rocks instead, is not a good squirrel, at least in terms of behavior, as part of what it is to be a good squirrel is to make sure it gets its nutrition, which for a squirrel means storing food for winter hibernation (over simplifying here, but still). Even so, we’re still not in the realm of moral behavior.
Moral behavior or ethics only comes into play with rational beings like humans. To be a good moral human is to make voluntary choices that live up to the natural ends of being both an animal (food, procreation, etc…) and (as what’s seen as being more important) a rational, social being (pursuit of truth, love (to will the good of others), goodness in other things), etc… So, what makes human morality is living up to what it is to be human, not our physical features, but to make free choices that live up to the ends and purposes natural to what it is to being human.
To be a good triangle is not the same as what it is to be a good squirrel, and to be a good squirrel is also not the same as what it is to be a good human. Neither, then is what it means to be a good human what it means for God to be good, even if we were to consider God as just another creature among creatures. But furthermore, God is not a creature among creatures. He is on a whole different than plane of being that everything else, such that it cannot actually be accurately spoken about. Some refrain from speaking of him in positive terms whatsoever, so as to not use terms used in finite thought or for finite creatures for something completely beyond that. But we can say that God is good, not to imply he is a human moral agent, but because he is “TO BE”, full stop, and to be is good. But furthermore, we also do say that God loves, because God wills the good of others, as he wishes to draw things to himself.
Okay, I need to wrap this up now, for real. But ultimately God would not permit imperfections in creation if it were not to better manifest his glory and goodness, or to make creation more like himself. To some degree, we won’t have full knowledge of those purposes until the end of time, though I will add that Saint Thomas Aquinas has some compelling thoughts on this he wrote in the Summa Contra Gentiles, and I may be able to write more on that later, but needless to say, I think there are good and compelling responses made throughout history which may (or may not) persuade you (and certainly Saint Thomas is not the only one to make a response), but can I show you a conclusive, mathematical proof? No, I cannot.
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Wesrock
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The Bible itself says that the Jews and Israelites repeatedly went into polytheism, so I don’t see an issue with the anthropological evidence at all. It’s consistent.
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Bookcat
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You can read all about how to understand Scripture in various works of Theology, the Catechism, Trent Horns book, and the Catholic Answers main site…
You do not seem interested in Catholic Answers but something else…
Not going to continue going round and round with ya.
I bid you good evening…
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TheTrinitySaves
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Yes they went into sin all the time by worshipping false idols (King ahab for example), but I do not think that is what she is suggesting, Shes suggesting that God was part of a group of gods. And the other gods have been forgotten or lost except for the one we have now.
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Vonsalza
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Vermont. The answer is Vermont.
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Usagi
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Exactly. The human understanding of God has expanded over time. God Himself did not change, we who believe in Him would say, but over the millennia we have gone from telling very anthropomorphic stories of Him to using the language of philosophy to express just how different from us He really is.
From what I’ve read, there is indeed some evidence that the names “Yahweh” and “El” were applied to specific gods among a Canaanite pantheon before being adopted for the God of Israel. Likewise, the early Hebrews/Israelites seem to have moved from polytheism to henotheism (acknowledging Yahweh as their God and the best and strongest, but not necessarily discounting the existence of other nations’ gods) to universal monotheism (recognizing Yahweh as the one God of everyone, even their enemies). We can see some of these developments over the course of the documents that make up the Old Testament. Again, believers would say that this was a movement toward greater understanding of a reality that had always been true, rather than a change in the actual nature and status of God Himself.
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Vonsalza
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:clapping::clapping::clapping:
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NM505StKate
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I give some evidence to support my assertions.
jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-birth-and-evolution-of-judaism
patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2013/02/polytheism-in-the-bible/
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NM505StKate
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PRmerger
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I feel this is similar to a 5 year old, upon being told that he needs to be vaccinated, saying, “I think the whole ‘this will make you equipped to fight some diseases’ to be just ridiculous. What does it mean to be ‘equipped to fight some diseases’ even mean?”
He can reject the idea because, hey, he doesn’t understand how getting pierced with a needle will stimulate an immune response, and that’s ridiculous…but all that shows is his inability to grasp a complex concept.
And his rejection of this is illogical. “I don’t understand therefore it’s absurd” is, frankly, absurd.
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