Post Edited (jefscott) : 9/4/2006 8:58:23 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (jefscott) : 9/4/2006 8:46:38 PM (GMT-5)

Meph: Human beings get angry naturally because we are ANIMALS. And out of our vulnerability and insecurity issues, we get angry. Just like a frightened or attacked animal. As we develop spiritually, I believe, we don't NEED to fall into anger.

Jeff: Right, to the extent that we are sinners ourselves, our anger should diminish. But I say that's for the reasons you mentioned. Not because anger is intrinsically dysfunctional or evil. It's just a natural emotion.

Meph: Act like I am a 15 year old teenager. And I ask you this questions:

1) Jeff, does God get mad at me when I do bad things?
2) If God does get mad at me, does he treat me a certain way BECAUSE he's angry at me?
3) Does God think I'm a bad person because I do bad things?

I'd like to see how you answer these...

1) Yes, to the best of my analogical understanding of God's nature--apart from which I know nothing about it.

2) Yes, if you don't repent in your heart.

3) He KNOWS you're a bad person if you do bad things. But bad/evil can be both intentional or unintentional. If you are not repentant for intentional evil, you will not be forgiven. And this seems completely intuitive, doesn't it, my 15 year old grasshopper. And you see, evil is very hard to overcome because of the Fallen conditions under which we live. But God, having created with a benevolent intent, is now accomplishing that benevolent intent via a propitiatory act of love. And this act occassions a way for those who adore His benevolence and embrace Him to be reconciled to Him despite our Fallenness. Isn't God AWESOME!!

And now, BRO, I simply MUST stop for the day. I've enjoyed the dialogue. Otherwise I wouldn't have gotten myself so far behind on important stuff to do it. GOOD NIGHT!!

Thanks for this Tom. You are so thoughtful :)

Now, allow me to tweak it a bit...

Q. Suppose God never gets angry when people knowingly and intentionally do wicked things... what perfection or goodness would God lack?

A. He would lack the ability to relate genuinely/authentically/rightly. God would have to respond to the intentional wicked things with a "nice" emotion rather than with the appropriate emotion. God would not be healthy.

take that mephi o latte,

selah

And Jeff...

you would tell a 15 year old that God does get angry at her when she does bad things...AND that God will treat her a certain way out of God's angry disposition (probably negatively)...UNLESS she repents in her heart.  That's what I'm hearing, right?

Wow.

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 9/4/2006 9:55:52 PM (GMT-5)

you would tell a 15 year old that God does get angry at her when she does bad things...AND that God will treat her a certain way out of God's angry disposition (probably negatively)...UNLESS she repents in her heart.  That's what I'm hearing, right?

Wow.

Jeff: OK!! One last post!!! The point is, even YOU, Meph, are positing that God experiences a DISpleasureable emotion from evil and will cause serious ramifications for it. So how would the 15-year old feel so much better if I say God is displeased because of your bad behavior and you will receive painful ramifications because of it? They seem virtually identical.

The only difference is, to claim the latter, while insisting divine anger is impossible, leads the person to distrust analogical thinking, unnecessarily, to my mind. And once we rule out analogical thinking, there goes all of our analogical thinking about God's pleasureable emotions. It's too high a price to pay, unless someone can explain what's at stake, here.

I'm convinced that people's real problem with reconciling God's displeasure with true forgiveness is the issues I discussed previously about how it has to be reconciled with other aspects of God's dispostion/purpose/etc. I think people just have the same kinds of issues with consistency that we do on this forum. GOOD NIGHT PEEPS!! And sweet dreams.

Post Edited (jefscott) : 9/4/2006 10:13:21 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 9/4/2006 10:29:26 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 9/4/2006 11:00:07 PM (GMT-5)

Getting closer mephi...

One difference between divine and human anger is that God's anger is always a "response"...ours is often a "reaction." An angry response with a person about their behavior (behavior that's against the good) is an appropriate/genuine RELATIONAL thing. God can be (and I would say should be) angry WITH a person about the person's behavior if the behavior is bad and the person chose that behavior intentionally. When God responds this way, the person has a sense of how to respond back to God...and God to the person...and the person to God.

A enraged "reaction" toward a person herself is not the same thing. If God's anger is an enraged reaction, it wouldn't be a healthy relational thing. It would drive a person away from God. Think about it.

Therefore...

in order for us not only to BE MORE LIKE GOD, but also to actualize MORE of our innate/original humanity...

We should strive to live in constant communion with the Holy Spirit and rely completely on his wisdom while we are trying to create a character such that we will one day be naturally inclined to only become angry and respond to a person (about the person's behavior) when they willfully and knowingly do sinful activities to others. Because we, unlike God, are limited in our knowledge of the person's intention to do this behavior, we should tread lightly and not make "appropriate anger" our highest goal...

If you are angry at me now...just say so.  ~selah

MephEternal said...
Let me put together what I'm learning from this entire discussion.

Anger is an aspect of DIVINE LOVE, with respect to emotional responses to people who willingly, knowingly do sinful activities to others. (Selah)

Anger is a FULLY HUMAN aspect of our nature, with respect to emotional responses to people who willingly, knowingly do sinful activities to others. (Jeff)

Therefore,

in order for me not only to BE MORE LIKE GOD, but also to actualize MORE of my innate humanity...

I should strive to create a character such that I will be naturally inclined to become angry at persons who willfully and knowingly do sinful activities to others.

Ok.

Why do I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone?

Post Edited (selah) : 9/5/2006 5:48:06 AM (GMT-5)

Oh well...

Maybe this doesn't count for much. But it means a lot to me.

So, when I find something that I believe is consistent theologically, psychologically, AND personally...heh...

To each their own.

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 9/5/2006 7:55:53 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 9/5/2006 8:26:11 AM (GMT-5)

Jeff: Christ's anger in the temple was not dysfunctional.

Tom: Why do you think Jesus was angry at people in this instance (Mat 21; Mk 11; Jn 2)? The text doesn’t SAY he was angry with anyone. Only John mentions Ps. 69 (“Zeal for your house has eaten me up”), but the Psalm suggests “bearing reproach” for God and “weeping” because of how others treat God.

To be fair. Mark 5.3 does say “Jesus looked around at them [religious leaders] in anger…” when they refused to answer his questions (because of the “hardness of their hearts”).

Mephi will either have to explain this in a way that (a) has Jesus not angry with “persons” but with “states of affairs” or “behavior,” or (b) attributes to Jesus sinful dysfunctionality, or (c) interprets the author as understanding Jesus’ “angry look” (just a look!) in phenomenological terms.

The phenomenological approach can work with all or most passages where God is described as angry. In other words, the authors are simply using language to describe divine action from their point of view. Something similar to describing a “sunset.” Well, we know that the sun doesn’t actually “set” (and the earth remain stationary). The earth revolves. So the sun isn’t actually doing anything, especially setting. We all concede phenomenological language like this. It doesn’t destroy the basis for analogy elsewhere with regard to God.

Why can’t “divine anger” be phenomelogical? Why can’t it just be an emotional sunset of sorts?  

Jeff: We are to strive to regulate anger in accordance with its legitimate action-impelling utility.

Tom: What divine actions do you have in mind that cannot be motivated (assuming God is motivated by emotions at all; let’s just assume he is for the moment) by emotions other than anger? What actions do you suppose anger motivates that couldn’t be motivated by a combination of other emotions?

-------------

Personally, I can be convinced that God gets angry at people if I can get with an explanation of such anger that’s not at some level dysfunctional. I'm becoming more convinced that there is no such anger, and I struggle with the apparent inconsistency between admiring people who don’t respond angrily when provoked and then insisting that God must get angry on occasion. What’s with that? I mean, when I love and pray for those who persecute me am I MORE or LESS like God? On the other hand (Mephi), neither would I seek—without any anger—to execute justice on those who persecute me. And God does that. So we DO leave some things to God as appropriate for him as God that we cannot seek ourselves.

Tom

Jeff: We are to strive to regulate anger in accordance with its legitimate action-impelling utility.

Tom: What divine actions do you have in mind that cannot be motivated (assuming God is motivated by emotions at all; let’s just assume he is for the moment) by emotions other than anger? What actions do you suppose anger motivates that couldn’t be motivated by a combination of other emotions?

Jeff: I've got five minutes to respond until the weekend. So it's like this, to me: I don't say I can prove God has anger. I say we can't prove that He doesn't. I also say it's irrelevant in one sense what He feels so long His ACTIONS are benevolent. So there are two things that follow from that fact the God has no anger:

1) Human analogical reasoning is untrustworthy (unless you can explain to me how it is that you KNOW God doesn't feel anger).

2) Scripture is not much help in doing theology, either.

If these two are true, I don't see on what grounds we would be dogmatic about anything. If nothing is grounded with a sufficient degree of epistemological confidence, why judge people for being angry. It seems to always end up that people seem the most dogmatic about the things that are the hardest to rationally argue for--like absolute pacifism. Same kind of thing. So what happens?--constant division and exclusivity in argument. Go for it, bro. I can't relate.

Jeff: there are two things that follow from that fact the God has no anger:

1) Human analogical reasoning is untrustworthy (unless you can explain to me how it is that you KNOW God doesn't feel anger).

2) Scripture is not much help in doing theology, either.

Tom: I don't think these follow from the fact that God has no anger. Those passages that describe God as angry just have to be understood in a way that leaves your (1) and (2) in tact. And I think they can be left in tact on a phenomenological reading of those passages. If we suppose that God does not become angry or indignant at PEOPLE but rather with sinful ACTIONS (and I think that distinction is a meaningful one, don't you?), then it's not difficult to interpret the "anger" that characterizes divine action as pertaining more specifically to those sinful ACTIONS as such. But since God's responses (judgements and discipline, for example) involve PEOPLE (because that's where the ACTIONS being addressed reside), a phenomenological description wouldn't make this finer distinction. Yet we're justified in reading this distinction into those passages if we have sufficient warrant. And it's at least arguable that the distinction is warrnated by Scripture's revelation of God in Christ (though not entirely absent in the OT) as universal, unmerited and unconditional love.

Nobody's looking for knock-down proofs this way or that. It's not about that. It's about being consistent within Scripture given one's whole view of God accross the board. Can somebody make sense of Scripture as truthful and authoritative and believe God gets angry at PEOPLE? I think so, IF they have an understanding of anger that excludes its being dysfunctional (which I'd like to see). But for those who don't think there's any manifestation of anger that is not at some level dysfunctional, I think they CAN continue to take Scripture as an authoritative and trustworthy source for theology.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 9/5/2006 2:59:33 PM (GMT-5)