Why did God decree Death?

[George720]

The Mystery of Evil is what we call it, because without evil as fallen men born into the death of Adam, we are unmotivated to do good in this life… In our sight, a life that goes only well, with prosperity and success and pleasure, is a life of abandonment by God… It is not or naught that Christ said “In the world, you will find tribulations, but the Peace I give you is not of this world…” We do not see this life so much as an educational process in personal growth, although that does transpire in a way, but as a way of knowing for ourselves the reason for our place in the age to come… God knows already, but we will know by means of what we have done in this fallen life… Ontological, not intellectual, knowledge…

Suffering is the only way to follow Christ, for when one takes up one’s cross, that means clearly the taking up of an instrument of torture unto death as one’s way of living out our Baptism into Christ’s Death on the Cross as we embrace our Baptism into Christ…

Salam seems to be arguing for death as something decreed by God and thereby justified on earth for man to do - eg The killing of others is justified by God’s decree commanding death… But He said of His Own Death that it must needs come, but WOE to him through WHOM it comes… eg It is never justified by God…

So we have two religious cultures where one rejects killing and the other embraces is as God’s decree - Hence my entry into the conversation here…

geo

 

[SalamKhan]

IF there is NO matter, what is the content of imaginal praxis?

Dimensions; height, width, depth, etc.

NO creation grasps the Essence of God, not Saints, not Prophets, not any…

Of course, I did not say they did. Re-read what I said.

That feels like a distinction without a difference…

I suggest reading Ibn Arabi & Mulla Sadra’s views on Barzakh, the intermediate or imaginal realm.

Yes…

Nice to meet someone who recognized the difference…

That was not a large clue for most…

From my understanding, Orthodox Christians don’t believe in original sin, but they do they still believe that death is a punishment?

 

[George720]

From my understanding, Orthodox Christians don’t believe in original sin,
but do they still believe that death is a punishment?

We understand that the Original Sin of Adam caused his death…
That this death is passed on to all mankind…
Not as a punishment, but as the effect of unrepented sin…

geo

IF there is NO matter, what is the content of imaginal praxis?

Dimensions are all derived from material reality…

geo

 

[George720]

I suggest reading Ibn Arabi & Mulla Sadra’s views on Barzakh,
the intermediate or imaginal realm.

Assigning levels of reality is the problem…
Participation in reality by imaginal realms being understood as having “more” reality than that which they imagine when imagination itself is subject to material dimensionality, even though imagination itself CAN be a part of the hierarchical causation which brings material things into existence, is but vanity - And yes, it is well known in philosophical circles, as the great chain of metaphysical being -

So let me ask you a single question: What is its praxeological import? And concomitantly, how can we actually know this ‘reality’ and its practical outworking?

geo

 

[SalamKhan]

Assigning levels of reality is the problem…

Mulla Sadra’s gradation of being, is based on the Sufi doctrine of unity of being (imagine existence as the ocean, God being the ocean itself, and the existence of everything besides God being the waves of the ocean), and Suhrawardi’s intensity of lights (for example the light of the sun in comparison to a lightbulb). In this way, God is pure existence, and everything else derives their existence from Him.

Here is what Ibn Arabi had to say about imagination:
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

So let me ask you a single question: What is its praxeological import?

We can only know through experience. For both the common people and spiritual elite, for example, it is through dreams. For the saints, it is through mystical revelation (kashf) and for the prophets, through divine revelation (wahy).

 

[George720]

In this way, God is pure existence,
and everything else derives their existence
from Him.

Another key difference, for we hold that God is not existent but is instead the Creator of existence - eg Supra-existent in a manner unknowable to man… Who can give existence and can take it away from any existing thing…

More and less existent is not a part of our understanding…
No one is more or less existent than anyone else…

I will try to read your attachment - Thank-you…

It looks pretty sketchy to read right now…

geo

 

[fhansen]

One reason is to show us our limitations, our dependency on Something “bigger”, the author of life, outside of ourselves, because fallen man tends to run proud. And that pride is the source of spiritual death, aka the “death of the soul” as the church puts it, that parallels physical death.

 

[Latin]

So we have two religious cultures where one rejects killing and the other embraces is as God’s decree.

I believe, you are correct George, there are two religious theory, one is God rejects killing and God did not decree Adam to sin and the other theory is, God decrees killing and He decreed Adam’s sin.
.
CCC 390 EXPLAINS THE ROOTS OF THE TWO RELIGIOUS THEORIES

Genesis 3 uses figurative (Synonymes: metaphorical, non-literal, symbolic, allegorical) language.

CCC 390 The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, …

.
Catholic Encyclopedia : Evil
“But we cannot say without denying the Divine omnipotence, that another equally perfect universe could not be created in which evil would have no place.”

310 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it?
With infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world in a state of journeying towards its ultimate perfection, 314 through the dramas of evil and sin .
.
As we see above: God decreed and designed/ planned in this world the dramas of evil and sin .
.
The Mystery of Predestination by John Salza explains;

If God wills to permit a person to resist His grace, He grants him a sufficient, and not an efficacious grace.

FOR EXAMPLE
Page 113: However, the Church teaches that God infused Adam with sufficient grace to resist temptation and to perform his duties with charity.
God, however, willed to permit Adam to reject His grace and to sin.” – His wisdom He so ordered the events of his sin, which He decreed form all eternity.

.
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Divine Providence explains;

His wisdom He so orders all events within the universe that the end for which it was created may be realized.

He directs all, even evil and sin itself, to the final end for which the universe was created.

Evil, therefore, ministers to God’s design (St. Gregory the Great, op. cit., VI, xxxii in “P.L.”,

.
God decreed and designed/ planned Christ’s death on the cross. 1 Pet.1:19 He was destined before the foundation of the world … Acts 2:23 Jesus delivered up according to definite plan …

.
“The Divine will is cause of all things that happens, as Augustine says (De Trin. iii, 1 seqq.). Therefore all things are subject to fate.

The same is true for events in our lives. Relative to us they often appear to be by chance.
But relative to God, who directs everything according to his divine plan, nothing occurs by chance.

Hence if this divine influence stopped, every operation would stop.”
Every operation, therefore, of anything is traced back to Him as its cause.” (Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III.)
.
CCC 303 The sacred books powerfully affirm God’s absolute sovereignty over the course of events.
.
As we see above: His wisdom He so decreed and orders all/ every event within the universe, even evil and sin itself, to the final end for which the universe was created.
.
God bless

 

[Neithan]

I like Rumi, from an aesthetic point of view. Although Adam and Eve forfeited their original exemption from death we can see that God always brings a greater good, and has made death the means of our salvation through Jesus Christ. Without the resurrection, death is a deterministic end that makes us just another animal with no clear reason for rational existence in a physical body, let alone persistence beyond it. Decreeing “pure souls & dark souls” seems similar to double predestination (some created for heaven, others for hell) and inconsistent with free will.

 

[SalamKhan]

Another key difference, for we hold that God is not existent but is instead the Creator of existence

I’m aware, the Ismaili Shiahs too hold that God is beyond existence and non-existence.

More and less existent is not a part of our understanding…
No one is more or less existent than anyone else…

If God is absolute and pure existence, the existence of everything else beside Him is derivative and relative. That being said, compare the gradation of being to the intensity of lights, or the Neoplatonic heirarchy of beings.

 

[SalamKhan]

Decreeing “pure souls & dark souls” seems similar to double predestination (some created for heaven, others for hell) and inconsistent with free will.

To put it simply, free will refers to our choice & the ability to act given by God. Our actions are influenced either internally, by our rational, irascible, or appetitive faculties, or they are influenced externally. With regards to the latter, we are not accountable simply for our ability to act (as this is given by God), because we may be coerced to act, and so we are accountable for our choices.

As for predestination:

Masnavi Rumi Poetry (مثنوی مولانا جلال الدین رومی): (Masnavi Book 3: 24) Infidelity and Predestination

One of tawḥid ’s basic implications is that everything comes from the One and returns to the One. The “origin and return” ( mabdaʾ wa maʿād ) is a major theme in both philosophy and Sufism, though many interpreters of Rumi, especially from the Indian subcontinent, seem to have been unaware of its importance. A number of them have proudly thought that Rumi anticipated Darwinian evolution. In fact, he is explaining the ascent of the individual soul to God, beginning with the inanimate stage of existence, then the vegetal, animal, human, and beyond. This is a standard discussion in philosophical texts and in contemporary Sufi authors such as ʿAziz Nasafi, though no one other than Rumi explained it with such captivating language. The very notion of “return” ( maʿād )—the third principle of Islamic faith after tawḥid and prophecy ( nobuwa )—demands that nothing can rise up to God without having come down from him in the first place. He created human beings in his own form ( ṣurat ), as the hadith tells us, but the divine attributes can only be actualized and realized gradually. It is because people have descended from God in stages (to which Rumi refers, as in Maṯnawi III, l. 560 ff.) that they are then able to ascend from the mineral and plant stages (in the womb), to the animal stage (in infancy and childhood), to the human level (as adults observing the necessities of human goodness), and then to even higher levels, following Mohammad in his Night Journey, the meʿrāj . Borāq, the steed that takes the seeker on the meʿrāj , is nonexistence, for at each stage, the limitations of the previous stage disappear. This is not a physical meʿrāj , like vapor to the sky, but a spiritual climb, like that of an embryo to intelligence. “The Borāq of nonbeing is a fine steed! When you are not , it takes you to Being!” ( Maṯnawi IV, ll. 552-55). To put this whole discussion in a nutshell, “Form comes out from Formlessness, then it returns, ‘for unto Him we are returning’ [Q. 2:156]” ( Maṯnawi I, l. 1141; Chittick, 1983, pp. 72-82).

Source- RUMI, JALĀL-AL-DIN vii. Philosophy – Encyclopaedia Iranica

The dark souls are those who have failed to climb.

 

[George720]

Evil, therefore, ministers to God’s design (St. Gregory the Great, op. cit., VI, xxxii in “P.L.”,

This is the crux - In this fallen life that we live, there is indeed both Good and evil, and God is the author of Good, and is not the author of evil, and moreover, the evil that exists does so for the sake of the Good - As Gregory affirms, tactually ministers to the Good, although it does so without knowing that it is so doing…

Salam’s thrust is that God DECREED death, and by this he said that he meant that God called death into existence, as a central feature of His creation… Hence evil and death in Salam’s view are justified because God decreed their existence… Which is radically different from the Christian view that death and evil are deprivations of Life and the Good, and as such have no inherent substance, because deprivation is simply an absence as a result of an action…

In terms of Islam, such a view justifies all evil and all manner of killing inflicted for the sake of God, whereas in terms of Christianity, no evil and no killing are justified… It is one of the fundamental differences between the two faiths…

Death, you see, first occurred in the Garden…
Only then did it occur in the world…
The expulsion of Adam from the Garden was done so that death could not become immortalized by its partaking of the Tree of Life…

Death is not God’s will…
Salam thinks it is and was decreed by God…
In praxeological terms, his idea justifies the means of death…
Whereas Christian understanding does not…

geo

 

[George720]

God is beyond existence and non-existence.

If God is absolute and pure existence,
the existence of everything else beside Him is derivative and relative.

Can’t have both…

geo

 

[Latin]

God is the author of Good, and is not the author of evil,

As follows, the Catholic Encyclopedia, Free Will: explains the reason God is not the author of evil/ sin:

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Free Will explains;
“God is the author of all causes and effects, but is not the author of sin, because an action ceases to be sin if God wills it to happen. Still God is the cause of sin.”
.
WITH OTHER WORDS, when God wills that we do a salutary act, God causes us to freely choose to do a good and as the effects, we freely choose to do the good WILLED and CAUSED BY GOD.

As God is the author of all causes and effects, with the same above principle, when God wills that we commit an act of evil/ sin, He causes us that we freely choose to do an act of sin and as the effects, we freely choose to commit an evil/ sin WILLED and CAUSED BY GOD.

.
FURTHER MORE, “But [God] is not the author of sin, because an action ceases to be sin if God wills it to happen.”
.
CCC 310 "With infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world in a state of journeying towards its ultimate perfection, CCC 314 through the dramas of evil and sin."

God DECREED, and He CAUSING US to provide/ produce the dramas of evil and sin, and God converts our sins into greater good.

.
Without God’s will and His cooperation we can do NOTHING, not even a smallest act of sin.
When God wills that we commit an act of sin, we freely choose to commit an act of sin, BUT because an action ceases to be sin if God wills it to happen, legally we DID NOT commit an act of sin, practically of course we committed an act of sin WILLED and CAUSED BY GOD.

.
CRUCIAL QUESTION: Why (CCC 310) God with infinite wisdom and goodness freely willed to create a world in a state of journeying towards its ultimate perfection, (CCC 314) through the dramas of evil and sin?
.
In THE PROBLEM OF EVIL Peter Kreeft’s answer of the above question.
“Who’s to say suffering is all bad? Life without it would produce spoiled brats, not joyful saints.”
.
In legal sense we can say, God is the author of good, and is not the author of evil/ sin, because an action ceases to be sin if God wills it to happen, in the practical sense, still God is the cause of sin for the benefit of the entire human race.
.
313 St. Catherine of Siena said to “those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them”: "Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind.

St. Thomas More, shortly before his martyrdom, consoled his daughter: "Nothing can come but that that God wills. And I make me very sure that whatsoever that be, seem it never so bad in sight, it shall indeed be the best."

Dame Julian of Norwich: "Here I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly keep me in the faith. . . and that at the same time I should take my stand on and earnestly believe in what our Lord shewed in this time - that 'all manner [of] thing shall be well."
.
God bless

 

[George720]

Without God’s will and His cooperation we can do NOTHING, not even a smallest act of sin.
When God wills that we commit an act of sin, we freely choose to commit an act of sin, BUT because an action ceases to be sin if God wills it to happen, legally we DID NOT commit an act of sin, practically of course we committed an act of sin WILLED and CAUSED BY GOD.

This teaching is not a part of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Faith of which I am aware…

Can you show this teaching from the pre-Schism Fathers? [eg St Basil or Athanasius etc?]

God does not command us to sin
and then call it not-sin
because He commanded it…

That is a very strange teaching…

geo

 

[Latin]

I’m sorry I’m not aware the pre-Schism Fathers teaching in this this subject, but it doesn’t really matter, as Daniel 12:4 states: … and the knowledge shall increase, in the Church we have progressive knowledge.
.
We cannot understand the legality of sins until we understand the reason God created in this world the dramas of evil and sin .

.
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Divine Providence explains the reason.

His wisdom He so orders all events within the universe that the end for which it was created may be realized.

He directs all, even evil and sin itself, to the final end for which the universe was created.

God preserves the universe in being; He acts in and with every creature in each and all its activities.

Evil He converts into good (Genesis 1:20; cf. Psalm 90:10); and suffering He uses as an instrument whereby to train men up as a father traineth up his children (Deuteronomy 8:1-6; Psalm 65:2-10;

.
In THE PROBLEM OF EVIL Peter Kreeft’s also explains the reason.
“Who’s to say suffering is all bad? Life without it would produce spoiled brats, not joyful saints.”

.
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Free Will
“God is the author of all causes and effects, but is not the author of sin, because an action ceases to be sin if God wills it to happen. Still God is the cause of sin.”
.
In the above excerpt we have three issue:

1. God is the author of all causes and effects.

This is simple everyone can understand it; His wisdom He so Designed, Decreed and Orders all/ every Event within the universe even evil and sin itself.
.
2. God is not the author of sin, because an action ceases to be sin if God wills it to happen.

This is also simple, deals with the legality of sin.
We all freely commit sins, because God causes us to sin, we are legally not responsible for it. – God justly cannot throw anyone to hell for the sins he is committed.
.
3. Still God is the cause of sin.

For our sins we commit, God does not punish (out of vengeance) us, God corrects (out of love) us, our sins and the sins of the world cause us great sufferings, sufferings and God’s graces makes us loving, noble, well informed, joyful saints.

.
Evil He converts into good (Genesis 1:20; cf. Psalm 90:10); and suffering He uses as an instrument whereby to train men up as a father trains up his children (Deuteronomy 8:1-6; Psalm 65:2-10;
.
Life without sufferings would produce spoiled brats, not joyful saints.” – As we see, free will is NOTHING TO DO that evil/ sin exist in this word!

Sin produce sufferings, sufferings produce joyful saints.
.
CCC 310 With infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world in a state of journeying towards its ultimate perfection, CCC 314 through the dramas of evil and sin.

If we understand Catholic Theology, we understand God’s infinite wisdom and goodness in His creation of the dramas of evil and sin.
.
God bless

 

[George720]

Thank you for the explanation, Latin…

The problem of evil is a Mystery…

Yet the teaching you elucidated is strange…

We understand sin as an ontological, not a legal, matter…
And fallen creation as Good for fallen man in Adam…
Yours then is the source of Salam’s idea…
eg That God decreed evil and sin…
The problem with this understanding, you see…
Is that it thereby justifies both evil and sin…

Back to the Garden, we find that the tree of knowledge of good and evil is in it’s center, along with the tree of Life… That Adam was not yet prepared to eat of the fruit of the tree of this knowledge… That God warned him what would happen on the very day that he might eat of it - eg That he would die…

And that Adam turned from God and ate of this tree of knowledge of Good and evil…
And that Adam died that very day, and was expelled from Eden out of the Garden and into the world… The world in which as dead he lived 900+ years… Because we find God in the Prophet saying: “Hear O Israel! I the Lord Thy God am a Jealous God…” And in this we find our profound need to turn only to God, and never to anything other than God - Not that God is jealous as fallen man is jealous of what another has that he does not… But that the Calling of Man is higher than the fallen purposes of fallen man, and that we need vigilance of soul to embrace it, for it is nothing less than the Marriage of the Lamb, no matter the cost… And that we can only attain it by our willful turning away from all earthly concerns and unto God alone…

And in this pursuit, we embrace the sufferings of this world, and scorn its pleasures, and take up the narrow and afflicted Way that leads to Life Eternal and Joy…

This world is under the rulership of death, and as fallen man we are dead in it even as we are living our fallen lives… We are Called to throw off death as our ruler as we are Baptized into Christ, even into His Death on the Cross, and live the Life that death cannot touch…

Death is not decreed by God - It is decreed by our turning away from God…

Death will be the last enemy that God will overcome…

geo

 

[George720]

For Lo…
Through the Cross…
Is Joy…
Come unto all mankind…

That Joy comes no other way…

All else is infidelity…

We take up our cross…

And we follow Christ…

Who suffered for us…

And with Him we count as naught…

Our sufferings of this world…

geo

 

[EndTimes]

God never decreed Death aka Satan’s desire…
Death was never Created…
Death is the result of Man following Satan
Jesus’ Atonement Sacrifice Redeemed Man back to God.
Pentecost Day (Peter/Etc) … God’s Holy Spirit - Returns to Man

 

[SalamKhan]

Can’t have both…

I didn’t say it was both, did I?

I said the Ismaili Shiahs share your view, did I say I was an Ismaili Shiah?