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| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > General Chat > God's "Anger": Help Change Exousia's Mind! | Forum Quick Jump
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|  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 1/13/2007 4:53 PM (GMT -6) |   | Jeff: But how can a teleological and omniscient being not act for both simultaneously? Once we say that God is not motivated by sentient states at all, God's subjective experience of beauty is irrelevant, too. Then how can we even account for creation of those beings in the first place. They don't exist yet, so what, other than an anticipated pleasure, can account for their creation?
and...
If God doesn't act from motivation grounded in anticipated sentient satisfaction, how do we account for creation. To say God creates FOR... is to say, to my mind, that there is true sentient motivation there.
To maximize good IS to minimize evil, by definition. God does ACT for both simultaneously. I'm just saying that given the decision to express Godself in Creation, God COVENANTED with himself to BEAR the dissonance that would inevitably emerge in Creation. And he did this because he wants to work for the GOOD of Creation.
But why would God want to create Creation anyway? What's the motivation?
God created so that contingent expresssions could find aesthetic satisfaction in God.
God was COMPLETELY FINE without us. God has aseity. The Triune god could have NOT CREATED and existed in continuous pleasure and bliss
But God wanted to have a different VARIATION of pleasure by providing context and content for enhancing the pleasure of contingent expressions of Godself.
God wanted someone OTHER THAN Necessary Existence to enjoy God's beauty...just like God does!
The anticipated pleasure is INSEPARABLE from the anticipated pleasure of the contingent expressions.
So, God created not FOR HIMSELF directly...but for OTHERS. And in doing so, it was STILL for himself.
Divine brilliance.
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
Post Edited (Exousia) : 1/13/2007 3:59:55 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
 |  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 1/13/2007 4:55 PM (GMT -6) |   | Tom: "Anger" is probably a bad translation. The verb is an interesting one. "Provoked" is better. I think the point is to say that love doesn't "retaliate."
Jeff: I think it means that God's perspective is complete. Provocation occurs, subjectively, when we misinterpret reality, I think. Or when we are taken off guard because our perspective is too limited.
YES, my brothers. YES!!
That's why it's a function of OMNISCIENCE that God cannot get angered or provoked. God has a COMPLETE perspective!
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
Post Edited (Exousia) : 1/13/2007 4:00:25 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
 |  Similitude Registered Member
 Date Joined Apr 2004 Total Posts : 4968 | Posted 1/13/2007 5:58 PM (GMT -6) |   | | Exousia: But God wanted to have a different VARIATION of pleasure by providing context and content for enhancing the pleasure of contingent expressions of Godself.
Jeff: OK. There it is. "God wanted to have .... pleasure." That's all I'm after. God desires pleasure. That's not being selfish. Being selfish is when one attains their own pleasure at the expense of another's appropriate pleasure. So long as one attains pleasure by acting consistently with and conducively to the pleasure of others, love is perfect. This need not rule out the divine desire for pleasure at all, though. See what I'm saying? We don't have to see perfect love as inconsistent with sentient motivation.
And once we can allow for sentient motivation in God as the source of His self-disposition, He is understandable to us in an analogous way. Why else does the human race think of God as a person? Because they analogically apply all the attributes of their own personhood to the deity to the extent that this doesn't create intellectual dissonance of any kind. And perfect love works just fine with this analogical approach.
Granted, God doesn't have to sit and contemplate, "Will helping Jeff make me feel better?" He knows this perfectly. So I don't say that God has to weigh these things in time. I'm just trying to account for the ground of His self-disposing capacity. And I see this ground in God's natural feelings and their associated impulses--impulses which are intelligently and teleologically directed by Him to benevolent relational ends.
Since God is relational, He directs His natural impulses to ends that benevolently affect some other sentient being or beings. And even when He forebears by acting to restrain Himself from intervening in creation to prevent evil (to allow the moral order its requisite freedom), this, too, is for some other person or persons. At all times, God is serving His own sentient interests by serving the sentient interests of some other or others. This is why I say, God created for Christ by attaining a kingdom for him out of this world. And God creates for Himself by obtaining the sentient satisfaction that He receives from creating for Christ. See, even when He creates for Christ, He necessarily creates for Himself.
We're saying the same thing, I think, D., except this: You want to make divine sentient satisfaction secondary instead of primary in divine motivation. I don't see that this buys us anything. All it does is make God's self-disposing more mystical than it needs to be. Why not just make it analogous to ours, and hence explicable, by making God's sentient satisfaction primary or equal in importance in divine motivation? What distinguishes God's motivation from ours is not a difference in the role of sentience, but a difference in the role of intellect. God's perspective is PERFECT, hence He always knows without a doubt what is in His and other's sentient interest. And He knows they are conducive to each other.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 1/13/2007 5:09:55 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
 |  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 1/13/2007 6:07 PM (GMT -6) |   | Jeff: At all times, God is serving His own sentient interests by serving the sentient interests of some other or others.
Agreed. Completely.
And THIS is why love doesn't seek it's own over and against others. It doesn't feel the NEED to do so. By being "for others", it IS for itself.
All of this is a more consistent understanding of Christian hedonism, actually. Piper has the SAME PROBLEM as Edwards, unfortunately. "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
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 |  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 1/13/2007 6:11 PM (GMT -6) |   | Jeff: We're saying the same thing, I think, D., except this: You want to make divine sentient satisfaction secondary instead of primary in divine motivation. I don't see that this buys us anything. All it does is make God's self-disposing more mystical than it needs to be. Why not just make it analogous to ours, and hence explicable, by making God's sentient satisfaction primary or equal in importance in divine motivation?
YES, on the bolded part.
It does buy us something. It shows that love can be TRULY UNCONDITIONAL.
UNCONDITIONAL LOVE means loving even when their is NOTHING TO GAIN from giving that love.
God loves us and does good to us just because we exist...and for no other reason.
He doesn't do it for himself. He doesn't NEED to.
He does it for US.
He's ALWAYS been "God with us."
God is PERFECT LOVE...which is UNCONDITIONAL and "ON THE LOOKOUT" FOR RELATIONSHIP (just like YOU say, Tom!)
Perfect love is not self-seeking. It's unconditional and outward-focused.
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
Post Edited (Exousia) : 1/13/2007 5:14:17 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
   |  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 1/13/2007 6:19 PM (GMT -6) |   | Jeff: OK. I think we're on the same page. And it is this page that makes UR so plausible, right? We don't need verses for it. So long as scripture doesn't concern itself with matters outside of Christ's temporal reign (the primary goal of creation, to my mind) which he will deliver up to the Father, UR is not precluded. Hence, UR has, for its ground of plausibility, the essential, loving relationality of the godhead and the pleasure that God can derive from His creatures, given His complete competence to bring that SofA to pass. That's how I'm seeing it. Does that sound reasonable?
Absolutely.  | | Back to Top | | |
   |  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 1/13/2007 6:38 PM (GMT -6) |   | Jeff: I think I've got it. The atonement was not conditional in a libertarian sense. It was NECESSARY given the purpose of God. But it was conditional in a LOGICAL sense. Does that make sense? IOW, ends can only be attained by the appropriate means. So things are conditional in that sense. I'm saying, though, that once Christ's reign is complete (he must reign until...), there are NO MORE conditions in the form of means, because the end of creation will have been attained. Then God's love flows UNCONSTRAINED! LIKE A GLACIAL MELT!!!
Yes, Jeff. Yes.  "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
| | Back to Top | | |
 |  Starkman Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001 Total Posts : 1747 | Posted 1/13/2007 6:40 PM (GMT -6) |   | So God's anger is really nothing more (or less) than God lovingly -- His context of existence -- taking up a "tough love," stance so to speak. God perceives the opposition but He receives said opposition only in an emotional context of complete awareness of the depravity of the accuser. Therefore, because God can never not fully comprehend this information, and because of who God is, God neither receives nor reacts to opposition with an emotion apart from His self-existent context of love.
Never does God "loose it," and never does He come close to loosing it. Never does God have to restrain emotional anger as we know it. And never does He react to His opposer in any context except the context that defines who God is; God can never react to his opposer in an "againstness" to His opposer, the way we can. In reality, God's anger when interpreted from our context is an anthroporphism. God's anger in reality, however, is a perfect tough love initiative with restored relationship the motivator.
So when God responds to the opposer, God's motivation is not from any other context but one of love, even when demonstrated in "tough love," which we might perceive as emotional anger as we know it. Tough love is not a negative emotion, however, but rather a reaction based on complete awarenss of the depravity of the opposer and based on a context of love for the opposer. Though God's love may look disproportionate (or even emotionally charged), it is never the case that God's reaction is based on anything other than His desire to cause a positive response from the opposer.
This is something of what I'm hearing E. saying, yet with my own added understanding.
Starkman My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship with us? | | Back to Top | | |
 |  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 1/13/2007 6:46 PM (GMT -6) |   | Starkman: So God's anger is really nothing more (or less) than God lovingly -- His context of existence -- taking up a "tough love," stance so to speak. God perceives the opposition but He receives said opposition only in an emotional context of complete awareness of the depravity of the accuser. Therefore, because God can never not fully comprehend this information, and because of who God is, God neither receives nor reacts to opposition with an emotion apart from His self-existent context of love.
Never does God "loose it," and never does He come close to loosing it. Never does God have to restrain emotional anger as we know it. And never does He react to His opposer in any context except the context that defines who God is; God can never react to his opposer in an "againstness" to His opposer, the way we can. In reality, God's anger when interpreted from our context is an anthroporphism. God's anger in reality, however, is a perfect tough love initiative with restored relationship the motivator.
So when God responds to the opposer, God's motivation is not from any other context but one of love, even when demonstrated in "tough love," which we might perceive as emotional anger as we know it. Tough love is not a negative emotion, however, but rather a reaction based on complete awarenss of the depravity of the opposer and based on a context of love for the opposer. Though God's love may look disproportionate (or even emotionally charged), it is never the case that God's reaction is based on anything other than His desire to cause a positive response from the opposer.
Starkman.
If I could reach out and HUG YOU I would.
I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY would!!!
BRILLIANT, SIR!
 "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
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 |  Starkman Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001 Total Posts : 1747 | Posted 1/13/2007 6:52 PM (GMT -6) |   |
E., your response made my day. Thanks!!!
(Now watch that TGB character come along and mess everything all up! Him and that Jeff fellow. You gotta watch them. Watch then closely!)
Love ya, Tom & Jeff!
Starkman My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship with us? | | Back to Top | | |
 |  Similitude Registered Member
 Date Joined Apr 2004 Total Posts : 4968 | Posted 1/13/2007 7:12 PM (GMT -6) |   | | | |
  |  Similitude Registered Member
 Date Joined Apr 2004 Total Posts : 4968 | Posted 1/13/2007 9:01 PM (GMT -6) |   | |
We got off track. We got into whether sentient satisfaction is the ultimate ground for God's motivation. I think it is, cause I can't explain His self-disposition any other way. But we're agreed that God does receive sentient satisfaction from the well-being of others, in either case.
We didn't settle the anger question. My point was just to explain that whatever negative feelings God feels, His associated impulses are intelligently directed to benevolent ends, ALWAYS. This is why any experience of a distinct negative feeling of anger is not problematic to me. It's just conditioned by unique social relations. In short, we all believe in God's perfect love. And we see this kind of love as the most plausible ground for UR. We will live in tolerance of our differences and rejoice in the mind-bogglingly, awesome love of God.
I'm still in need of understanding how the atonement can work if forgiveness/remission of sin is not even an issue. I want to see the atonement as a proof of God's competence in accomplishing His purposes in spite of a departure by creatures from the originally intended way of inheriting with Christ. So God is perfectly loving insomuch as He accomplishes His benevolent purposes even at the cost of great suffering to Himself and Christ.
But I see all of this as worth it to God. God is competent enough that He never suffers more than is necessary to render the project worth it. Otherwise, I don't see why there has to be an eschaton of any kind. The project could continue indefinitely with all of its ugliness.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 1/13/2007 8:12:10 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
 |  PotOnWheel Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001 Total Posts : 9890 | Posted 1/14/2007 7:48 AM (GMT -6) |   | |
I want to use the following as a point of departure:
jefscott said... Exousia: What I mean, Jeff...is that God's motivation for right-relatendess is NOT the decrease of God's displeasure. It is the maximization of good FOR OTHERS. God just knows that a SECONDARY EFFECT of God's maximizing good is his OWN increase of pleasure.
Jeff: But how can a teleological and omniscient being not act for both simultaneously? Once we say that God is not motivated by sentient states at all, God's subjective experience of beauty is irrelevant, too. Then how can we even account for creation of those beings in the first place. They don't exist yet, so what, other than an anticipated pleasure, can account for their creation?
And next I want to use a phrase my son quoted, "for God's glory."
Finally, I wish to make a comment:
I asked my son what was meant by "for God's glory." And it was hard for him to take a jargony phrase and explain it. But by 'negativa' we narrowed down that it should not mean "fame," as I sometimes suspect people are meaning it to mean. That aside, we moved onto the 'positive.' I suggested that since Calvin talks sometimes of "glory" as 'good rep' and 'credit' but other times as "energies" that we think for a moment about the Sun! The son has energy that can also be called its "glory." The Sun sends out its rays that hit objects. Hitting them causes a change in them, and also a change in their appearance as the light both strikes them and bounces off inorder to arrive at last in our eyes. Loosely, I think it is meaningful to speak of an object -- especially a mirror -- "glorifying the Son" if it both keeps itself clean and 'bright" and if it tries to preserve its orientation to the light soas to reflect the glory of the Sun unto other intended objects.
I think this mix of analogies is good.
What do YOU think?
So... RATHER than talking about "maximization of good for others" this analogy keeps the EMPHASIS on God. The shining is God. The elumination is God. The reflection is God. The "refraction" by angles is "image bearing." ...GLORIFYING!
Something I haven't liked in the conversation is that things seem so fractured. Good for others cannot, I think, be considered "apart from" God. So... state them with God as their beginning and their end. And how can one state such that a negative in God is minimized when God is the creator of all and everything is created to be in God "all in all?" Too fractured for me.
.
I think the analogy is a good one.
What do YOU think?
(o)Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 1/14/2007 6:54:13 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
   |  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 1/14/2007 9:17 AM (GMT -6) |   | POW,
I like your analogy.
You can't talk about the maximization of good WITHOUT keeping the emphasis on God, because God is the FOUNT of all that is true, beautiful, and rightly-related. EVerything is truly a "reflection" of God in that everything is a contingent expression of God's reality. Piper was right: God is MOST glorified when we are most satisfied in God. Basically, the more we are satisfied in God, the more Holy-Spirit transformation we go through to simply SHINE the glory of God from ourselves.
We're not saying different things, fundamentally. Just having different emphases.
**************************
Jeff: I'm still in need of understanding how the atonement can work if forgiveness/remission of sin is not even an issue.
Tom: I think this is hugely important too. It's like the atonement is the proving grounds for everything.
What about the whole "transcendental-whole-correcting" thing? It was still the case that self-disposition towards the Dispositional Equilibrium NEEDED to occur, theosis would STILL be the goal, a human being was still needed so that could happen. You don't need forgiveness, but Jesus's repair of the "transcendental whole" can be looked at as a "remission of sin"...where Jesus really HAS taken away the transcendental whole of creaturely misrelation.
Just my thought. "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
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 |  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 1/14/2007 9:36 AM (GMT -6) |   | I really do want to reflect a bit on Starkman's post...because it really got to the HEART of what I've been trying to say this whole time.
I've never had a problem with God doing "operations of opposition" when working with some of his beloved. Never. That's the "tough love" that Stark talked about. We see everywhere that there are times where "tough love" really is the best thing that can be done for everyone. And tough love can be painful. Forcefully putting a teenage hurting year old girl into 5-point-restraints because she's suicidal and homicidal and acting out, can be painful for everyone involved. But it IS for seeking her (and everyone else's) good.
My main concern was with this:
God, despite how his actions may look to us, NEVER has an adversarial, opposition stance towards Creation at any time. God doesn't feel like he's "at war" with sin or sinners. God doesn't SEE GODSELF as an opponent AGAINST other opponents. God doesn't see Godself as FIGHTING against other opponents. God doesn't see Godself as "over-against" us in any way. God doesn't have an adversarial perspective where EMOTIONAL RESPONSES grounded in that adversarial perspective can emerge.
This is NOT to say that God doesn't do "operations" where God is working "at cross purposes" with misrelation. NO! This is just to say that God's "cross purpose" working NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER emerges from a perspective where God SUBJECTIVELY FEELS LIKE God is an "opponent" over and against something or someone else. And that's all adversarial really means in my mind: someone that has the PERSPECTIVE of being an opponent or enemy of anything.
And, I don't see Perfect Love seeing itself as an "opponent" or "enemy" to anything. God is a Physician. God is a Parent. God is a Therapeutic "Tough Love" presence. But I don't see God as being an Enemy to things that try to oppose him, even though God does "operations" that are in opposition to falsehood, ugliness, and misrelation all the time.
I don't see it.
This is why I can't see God being angry, in the way we usually mean anger. To be angry is INHERENTLY to have a stance of opposition towards something. (We can really see this in passive aggression and things) I cannot conceive of an instance of having an angry feeling about something and me NOT seeing that something as either "OPPOSING ME" or inclining me to want to "OPPOSE" that thing. Perhaps someone can show me an example of an ANGRY emotional state where there is NO "target" to which the angry person feels "opposed by" or "opposed to", in some way.
Oh, well. Just some more stuff...
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
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 |  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 1/14/2007 9:41 AM (GMT -6) |   | Maybe it's just me...
But I believe that FAR TOO MANY people believe that God is adversarial towards things, even including people. That's how religious people can jump on the bandwagon of what THEY think God is "against" so that THEY can work to ELIMINATE it. ("We must STAND AGAINST gay marriage and the "attack" on Christmas!" That kind of stuff) And I think we well see the results of THAT kind of thinking. "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Therefore (YOU) go and introduce all peoples into the Way, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and intstructing them in following everything I have commanded you. (Great Commandments!)
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age."
| | Back to Top | | |
 |  Similitude Registered Member
 Date Joined Apr 2004 Total Posts : 4968 | Posted 1/14/2007 10:46 AM (GMT -6) |   | |
Exousia: You don't need forgiveness, but Jesus's repair of the "transcendental whole" can be looked at as a "remission of sin"...where Jesus really HAS taken away the transcendental whole of creaturely misrelation.
Jeff: I think this gets at the real issue. Volition is a sui generis capacity. Repairing relations that entail volition and volitional beings are unique kinds of repair. They are unlike all other repair jobs. Consequently. we have a unique vocabulary to describe those unique qualities entailed in repair of volitional beings and relations.
Exousia: But I believe that FAR TOO MANY people believe that God is adversarial towards things, even including people. That's how religious people can jump on the bandwagon of what THEY think God is "against" so that THEY can work to ELIMINATE it. ("We must STAND AGAINST gay marriage and the "attack" on Christmas!" That kind of stuff) And I think we well see the results of THAT kind of thinking.
Jeff: Some of these issues entail governmental action (e.g., any homosexual can commit to a life of monogamous fidelity already as long as they don't want government benefits). And I don't see how we can completely divorce our view of government from what we think right-relating is. To me the real issue here is: what is right-relating? Does right-relating even entail cheerleading for political sides, or just paying taxes for the services they rend unto us, as Doc would argue? If it entails side-taking, then I don't see how we can avoid "operations of opposition." And once this happens, each side of any given specific issue will infer that the other side deems them as mis-relaters. E.g., once someone votes Democrat, aren't they demonstrating that they think Republicans misrelate worse than Democrats? Don't see how that can be avoided once one enters the political process in a policy-advocate/implementation capacity.
Exousia: God, despite how his actions may look to us, NEVER has an adversarial, opposition stance towards Creation at any time. God doesn't feel like he's "at war" with sin or sinners. God doesn't SEE GODSELF as an opponent AGAINST other opponents. God doesn't see Godself as FIGHTING against other opponents.
Jeff: I totally agree. I've always thought, too, that the warfare motif seems to imply another falsehood--that the eschaton has not occurred because God hasn't prevailed yet; as if God couldn't overpower creation anytime He wanted to. In fact, God forebears intentionally. He wants the project to continue for benevolent purposes. And He doesn't need to fight Satan. Satan seemingly has to ask God for permission for some things. He would do much worse if God let him. So I never saw God's actions as war-like.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 1/14/2007 9:55:50 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
 |  Sahid Megistered Rember

Date Joined Jun 2004 Total Posts : 2013 | Posted 1/14/2007 12:18 PM (GMT -6) |   | To what extent does God repect the decisions of human evildoers? I don't have any problem with the idea of God being angry, but I do have a problem with the idea that if you don't use your volition the way God wants you to, then God will take that volition away. John Howard Yoder makes the interesting observation that throughout the New Testament and especially in the gospels, God is merciful to all except the unmerciful. We see this most clearly in the parable of the unmerciful servant and in the statement that we will be measured by our own standards in Matt 7, Mark 4, and Luke 6.
Taking this particular quality of God into account, I think it is best to pose the question from another angle (or another set of assumptions). There is one group of people who we need not consider in this question: the merciful. They will me shown mercy. The unmerciful are those we must deal with. I gather from the New Testament that they will be measured by their own standard of measurement. So the only thing that comes close to non-benevolent, anger-motivated action by God is his elimination of double standards (one with which the unmerciful person judges himself and another with which he judges others).
I would go a step further and say that unmerciful attitudes of all varieties are intrinsically self destructive. If this is so, then God's measuring out their own standard against the unmerciful need not even be an active response of God. It might just be the consequence of God showing respect for the unmerciful person's choice (a lot like Jesus did when it was God's will that he subject himself to the wills of evil men, Acts 2:23). We can also see unity between God's responses in relation to the merciful as well as the unmerciful. In both cases God allows the person to make his or her own "rules" (for lack of a better term). But seen for what they are, there are truly only two choices available the merciful/loving and the unmerciful/hating. The unmerficul person cannot ultimately separate his or her hate for others from hate of self. We become our choices.
So, bringing it back... Instead of a choice between anger and benevolence, I'd like to argue for respectfulness against moral domination. By "moral domination" I mean the idea that a time will come (or comes from time to time) when God will intervene to stop the consequences of evil choices and render human volition vacuous. Watch me fly. Freedom like wings and I will use them. Freedom like wings and I will spread them wide. - Stavesacre | | Back to Top | | |
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