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Attributes of God (Omnipotence (All-powerful (usually understood by…
Attributes of God
Omnipotence
- All-powerful (usually understood by philosophers to mean he can do anything) or almighty
- Creatio ex Nihilo (Creation out of nothing)
Many Bible passages support God's omnipotence e.g. Matthew 19:23-26 "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible"
Omnipotence implies some logical contradictions i.e:
- Can he commit suicide?
-Can God Sin?
-Paradox of the stone, can God create a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it?
Rene Descartes said God is not limited by the laws of logic - he created them but can adopt of abolish them. We do not know what is or isn't possible for God. We have a limited understanding
PROBLEMS
Peter Vardy - with the amount of evil and suffering in the world, surely a God who can do the logically impossible must be evil? The Free Will defence claims that genuine love requires freedom and therefore the price of suffering is worth it however if God could do the logically impossible he can create a world where:
- Humans have free will
- These free beings could be controlled in a way so to insure they would only act in a Kind, generous way
Aquinas said God can do everything that is absolutely possible - 'God can X' is true for Aquinas providing 'X'' has no contradictions e.g. create a square circle or ask God to be 'evil
Aquinas defines God as "wholly simple and timeless", a God full of potential that does not change. Does this make God incapable of choice?
Omniscience
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God's omniscience has an impact on our understanding of
- Justice (God needs to know everything to give a 'just judgement'
- Human Freedom (If God knows everything we will do, are we really free?)
Peter Vardy
- Liberty of Spontaneity = Human beings are completely determined by our genetics and social condition and have no freedom at all
or
- Liberty of indifference = we are influenced by these factors but can act against them
Kant said if God's omniscience does determin our choices, it would be wrong for him to punish us
Arguments concerning the omniscience of God are altered depending on which model of God we are looking at
The Wholly simple God and omniscience
- God outside space and time knows all that has happened and all that will happen. Augustine gave this metaphor "...he who goes along the road does not see those who come after him; whereas he who sees the whole road from a great height sees at once all those travelling along it"
Responses to this:
Human actions cause God to know what happens - this guarantees human freedom as human free choices cause God to know - God still knows the past, present and future but God knows because he is timelessly seeing all that is happening
The everlasting God and omniscience
If God is in time, then time passes for God just as it does for humans
- God is aware of the past and the present but he also knows the factors that will determine the future but the future is still the future
PROBLEM - God can know each individual very well and predict the future but this is not the same as knowledge
Omnibenevolence
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Gods love:
- Agape - connotations of showing love through action, not just love as a feeling or emotion.
- God is the source of all love
- God's love is demonstrated through the incarnation
- God's love is not the 'Platonic' sense of 'Ideal' love but involves activity, shown in the sacrifice of Christ
How do Christians know God is good?
- God is the perfectly good thing
- He does everything out of Love
- He is the source of all happiness and love
Question - If God is perfectly good, is He unable to do wrong? If he cannot do wrong, he is still omnipotent?
Question - Is a good God responsible for the bad things in creation?
Morality
- God in the Bible wants humans to make good choices
- He gives them rules to follow (e.g. 10 commandments)
- People at given freewill but it is clear how God wants them to behave
- God's anger is not focused on their failure to perform religious rituals correctly but on their moral behaviour.
Question - Should a good God have made people with free will or should he have made them capable only of doing good?
Euthrypo Dilemma
- Is something good because God commands it or does God command it because it is good?
- If something is good because God commands it suggests the only reason some things are better than others is because of the arbitrary whim of God. This would make nonsense of calling God good because to say that would be meaningless
- If God commands things because they are good, this suggests an external measure of goodness - God does not control morality
Boethius
Aimed o question what we mean by 'divine foreknowledge', to explore the meaning of eternity
to discuss two types of necessity
"whatever lives in time lives only in the present, which passes from the past into the future, and no temporal thing has such a nature that it can simultaneously embrace its entire existence”
Boethius and freedom
- If God already knows with complete certainty, how can your future be up to you to determine?
- Boethius argues that what the omniscient God sees in the future must happen whether is happens because he sees it or he sees it because it happens is irrelevant
- God may not directly cause our actions but in seeing them, they become necessary
Boethius' answer to the problem:
- Gods foreknowledge is not the cause of events
- God surveys the whole of time in an eternal present
- Eternal means timeless not everlasting
- God is eternal
Impassibility
What does it mean for God to be impassable? - Literally it means God is unable to feel pain or suffering - 'God cannot be acted upon'
Plato: The form of the Good was incapable of being affected because it had no personality
Aristotle: the Prime Mover is the uncaused cause
Augustine: God is absolutely immutable and cannot be other than he is
However, if God can answer prayers, cause miracles and interact with people, how can he be outside of time?
- God cannot be loving if he is impassable
- Hartshorn: the world would suffer with an impassable God
Eternity
Atemporal
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God is:
- Unlimited
- Immutable
- Unique
Sempiternal
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To some extent, the future is unknown because it hasn't happened yet
A timeless, impassable God is incapable of love Huge weakness of Atemporal God because in order to have a genuine relationship with him he has to be able to intervene in our lives