I don’t know why you think I’m suggesting God does not require us to trust Him.
To be fair, it sounded that way when you said Calvin’s God is no more monstrous than that of St.Thomas.
Calvin’s God, for all intensive purposes, appears to predestine people to hell for reasons entirely outside their own ability to control. Spauline is correct when he says that Calvin’s God, using double-predestination, esentially says that some will go to hell no matter what they do or don’t do, even before God considers what they will do. God’s judgement, in this Calvinisitc sense, is simply an irresistable predestination for which people can do absolutely nothing to avoid-- and it’s a very cruel doctrine.
I don’t think St.Thomas’s God (our Catholic God) actually does that. God fore-ordains the paths that we are to walk in and then allows us the freedom of choice whether or not we will walk in these paths. And even though God knows in advance that some will obey and some will not, he always offers his grace freely to them and they are entirely responsible for their own actions when they disobey God. Futhermore, regardless of whether we obey or disobey God’s will, God’s will shall be accomplished-- which is what makes him
omnipotent.
Gottle of Geer:
I’m not talking about that - that He is to be trusted, & and that it is a sin not to believe Him, goes without saying; my point was that there is no appeal from the judgement of God to any other. Which I would have thought also went without saying. Unless, of course, there is a God Whose Will can override the Will of God ? Which is absurd.
I think it goes deeper than this to be honest. I think when God asks us to trust him, he willingly sets himself up to be in a position that he trusts in us too-- even though he knows in advance that we will break his trust.
In a certain sense one could say that confronted with our human freedom, God decided to make Himself “impotent.” And one could say that God is paying for the great gift bestowed upon a being He created “in his image, after his likeness” as noted in Genesis 1:26.
Before this gift, God remains consistent, and places himself
before the judgment of man,
before an illegitimate tribunal which asks him provocative questions: “Then you are a king?” as noted in John 18:37
“Is it true that all which happens in the world, in the history of Israel, in the history of all nations, depends on you?”
Therefore, the condemnation of God by man is not based on the truth, but on arrogance, on an underhanded conspiracy.
Isn’t this the truth about the history of humanity, the truth about our century?
In our time the same condemnation has been repeated in many courts of oppressive totalitarian regimes.
And isn’t it also being repeated in the parliaments of democracies where, for example, laws are regularly passed condemning to death a person not yet born?
God is always on the side of the suffering. His
omnipotence is manifested precisely in the fact that
he freely accepted suffering. He could have chosen not to do so. He could have chosen to demonstrate his
omnipotence even at the moment of the crucifixion.
In fact, it was proposed to him: “Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe” in Mark 15:32.
But he did not accept that challenge. The fact that he stayed on the cross until the end, the fact that on the cross he could say, as do all who suffer: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” in Mark 15:34 has remained in human history the
strongest argument.
If the agony on the cross had not happened, the truth that God is Love would have been unfounded.
Gottle of Geer:
Trust is not the issue - the absolute & unbounded authority of God, from which there is no appeal whatever, is the issue. God is an Absolute Ruler - not some godlet one can appeal from.
No. Trust
is the issue. It’s the
core issue in fact. But this trust isn’t about whether we can trust God or not-- of course we can trust God and the crucifixion proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt. The issue is whether God can trust us or not. And it’s precisely when we break God’s trust in us that we end up getting into trouble.
Gottle of Geer:
When God has spoken - that is the end of the matter: all that remains, is for His creatures to obey Him.
Would you obey God if you didn’t trust him?