Is God Truly All Powerful?

[Lovejoy]

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying Lovejoy, you are not answering specifically my questions.....

"we have in the world now is a good and pure thing that has been made perverse by our knowledge of perversion. Adam and Eve understood sex, and all the good things of it, without knowing about perversion."

Are you then saying Adam and Eve understood what is "good", without necessarily understand the "bad"?

We can understand what is good, be good, without an understanding of what is evil?

We can understand the goodness of God, without knowing hell?

Then what is the purpose of evil?

We are not approaching this on the same belief system. I do not think that evil must exist for good to exist. I think evil and sin are just concepts describing an absence of God and righteousness. Just as dark and cold are not a thing unto themselves, but rather a lack of light and heat. Only, in this case God is what is natural and right, and evil is alien. What you seem to want is to have an answer that satisfies your philsophy, your approach. I can't do that. I don't think things balance the way you do. All I can say is that in the new earth, in God's kingdom, we will not know evil or understand it (I don't think). Evil is here because all fall short of God. It is not as powerful as God, and it has no chance of winning. Hell is just a destination for those things that do not end up being Christ's. Evil is just an effort of willful disobediance to what is right. As it happens, God can use it for the purposes of growing those that are His, testing us.

Anyway, we have different world views, and that is a fact. Maybe in the morning I will make more sense.

 

[Humanoid]

Well, no, I'm not trying to satisfy my philosophy, just want to understand the thinking. Because I keep hearing:
"Why does God let people suffer? The Bible will tell you".
"Why does God allow evil? The Bible will tell you".

Obviously your answer is: God gave us free will.

At the cost of thousands of eternally tormented souls. Isn't there a better way? Why was this era necessary?

"All I can say is that in the new earth, in God's kingdom, we will not know evil or understand it (I don't think)."

But that would mean you will have no memories of your time now, on this earth, along with evil. If you will have no memories of it, what was the point? If the point was just a sort of test to see who would willingly choose God and who would not, because he loves our free will so much, then what was Gods plan with Adam and Eve, why didn't they have to willingly choose him? It seems for them they only needed to obey God, not willingly choose him.

 

[Lovejoy]

But they did have a choice. A choice between submission to God, or to listen to a serpent who offered to make them self sufficient.

As to our memories, all it says is that we will not remember pain, but there will also be no evil there. I have not idea how much of our unique identiies will remain. Much of the testing that we go through now has to do with our earthly ministries, and helps us to bring others to Christ. God does not love our free will, He loves us and wished for us to love Him freely in return.

I am sorry, but I do not have all the answers, not even to my own belief system. I promise I will get back to this tomorrow when I am a little clearer. It is 3:00 AM here.

 

[Humanoid]

Ok Lovejoy, have a good night and thank you for your replies and patience

My final thought for today (early morning here):

A repition really but I find it completely irrational of God to put so much blame on Adam and Eve's mistake, when clearly they couldn't have any idea of what their disobedience would mean.

We do, and even we disobey, severely. We are taught of hell, we are taught of death, of eternal punishment, all these deterents and still we disobey. What were Adam and Eve told?

-Don't eat this or you will surely die.
-I will what?
-Die, cease to be.
-Cease to be?

 

[Lighthouse]

I'm sure God allowed Adam and Eve to understand the concept of death. Either that or the original text says that they would be seperated from God, as Romans 6:23 implies, since none of us is saved from physical death.

 

[Caledvwlch]

No, God did not create time.

Come on!!!! Then who did? Really. Time is a part of the created universe. I think Einstein proved that a long time ago.

 

[Caledvwlch]

He is bound by the physical and spiritual. He is also bound by the temporal.

This is ridiculous. Do you even believe in God? How could God be bound by his own creation? I'm not saying God can't intervene. The stories of the Bible show a lot of divine intervention, but to insist that God is bound by the constraints of his own creation seems ludicrous to me.

 

[Clete]

Come on!!!! Then who did? Really. Time is a part of the created universe. I think Einstein proved that a long time ago.

Einstein did no such thing. He didn't even prove that time exists, never mind that it was created.

 

[Caledvwlch]

Speculation that has a simpler explanation: God is not timeless. The past is fixed, the present is reality, the future is not yet. Time is unidirectional. The timeline of everlasting duration is still moving into the blank future.

I would disagree. If you believe in an omnipotent creator, then the future is fixed as well. As far as God is concerned, it's already happening. Now and always. All things are before him at once.

 

[Caledvwlch]

Einstein did no such thing. He didn't even prove that time exists, never mind that it was created.

He proved that time has properties apart from merely a manmade perception of the passage of events. From a Chrisitian point of view, how can you NOT believ that God created time?

 

[Caledvwlch]

The problem is not with God. This is a mutually exclusive, logical contradiction, absurdity. The problem is with the illogical question, not with God. It is like saying: Can God make 2+2=4 and 2+2= 10 at the same time? This is not a limitation on omnipotence, but a stupid question.

I agree with you on that one. I think we are both saying the same thing with different words.

 

[Lighthouse]

Caledvwlch-
Time is not a thing that could be created. Duration and succession have always existed. And time is nothing more than duration and succession. Since God has always existed, then the succession of events has always existed. And that is what we call time. Time that has passed is no more, and time that has not come... wel, it has not come. Therefore it does not exist, and can not be known. God knows His plans, and How He is going to end things, but He does not know what I will have for supper tonight. He also does not know who I am going to marry. Or if I ever will get married. Time is not something God can look at, and see all of at once. Because it is a non-entity.

 

[Caledvwlch]

Caledvwlch-
Time is not a thing that could be created. Duration and succession have always existed. And time is nothing more than duration and succession. Since God has always existed, then the succession of events has always existed. And that is what we call time. Time that has passed is no more, and time that has not come... wel, it has not come. Therefore it does not exist, and can not be known. God knows His plans, and How He is going to end things, but He does not know what I will have for supper tonight. He also does not know who I am going to marry. Or if I ever will get married. Time is not something God can look at, and see all of at once. Because it is a non-entity.

You seem to be trapped by your own limitations, as we all are. But to assign your own limitations on God just seems wrong to me. Even when I was a Christian, my opinion on this point was the same.

For example:

In Sunday School once, we were discussing what happened to the Old Testement saints when they died. People were throwing out all kinds of silly ideas (they stayed in a temporary "Paradise" or quasi-heaven, or inverse pergatory). I put out the idea that spiritual beings are not bound by time, and therefore, when an OT saint died, he left the constraints of time and was immediately with God. Nobody has been able to provide me with a better explanation, using the Bible or anything else.

 

[godrulz]

Come on!!!! Then who did? Really. Time is a part of the created universe. I think Einstein proved that a long time ago.

Time is not a created thing. It is succession, duration, sequence. It should not be confused with space. Einstein is not a philosopher-theologian. He was a speculative, theoretical physicist. The measure of time is subjective, but the reality of it has always existed. The uncreated God experiences an endless duration of time with no beginning and no end. He is not timeless. Can you see time under a microscope? It is a concept, not a created thing. J.R. Lucas' "A Treatise on Time and Space" may be helpful to confirm this.

 

[godrulz]

I would disagree. If you believe in an omnipotent creator, then the future is fixed as well. As far as God is concerned, it's already happening. Now and always. All things are before him at once.

This is an indefensible, problematic assumption. The only way this could be true (not even then) is if God predestines and fatalistically determines every moral and mundane choice of every creature and atom in the universe. Quantum mechanics and chaos theory refute this. Every moral and mundane choice you make shows that we are self-determining, free moral agents. Contingencies are genuine. If something may or may not happen, it is not knowable as a certainty until it happens. The future is genuinely open for God and us. He is responsive and omnicompetent, not a brute force dictator. Omnipotence does not mean that He does everything possible all the time. He chose to not exercise His sheer power and gave us creative freedom and responsibility. This resulted in God not controlling everything (it is more glorious and difficult to bring your purposes to pass despite millions of contingent choices by other moral agents) and thus knowing some things as possible rather than actual or necessary before they come into being.

 

[godrulz]

You seem to be trapped by your own limitations, as we all are. But to assign your own limitations on God just seems wrong to me. Even when I was a Christian, my opinion on this point was the same.

For example:

In Sunday School once, we were discussing what happened to the Old Testement saints when they died. People were throwing out all kinds of silly ideas (they stayed in a temporary "Paradise" or quasi-heaven, or inverse pergatory). I put out the idea that spiritual beings are not bound by time, and therefore, when an OT saint died, he left the constraints of time and was immediately with God. Nobody has been able to provide me with a better explanation, using the Bible or anything else.

To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (or hell for unbelievers). In heaven, thinking/feeling/acting will require duration. We will not be limited, but this does not mean that we will not experience past, present, and future.

What are you now? What was your denominational background previously? What went wrong?

Ps. 90:2; Rev. 1:8 God is everlasting duration vs timelessness.

Rev. 6:10; 8:1; 22:1,2 There is time in eternity/heaven.

 

[Lighthouse]

You seem to be trapped by your own limitations, as we all are. But to assign your own limitations on God just seems wrong to me. Even when I was a Christian, my opinion on this point was the same.

For example:

In Sunday School once, we were discussing what happened to the Old Testement saints when they died. People were throwing out all kinds of silly ideas (they stayed in a temporary "Paradise" or quasi-heaven, or inverse pergatory). I put out the idea that spiritual beings are not bound by time, and therefore, when an OT saint died, he left the constraints of time and was immediately with God. Nobody has been able to provide me with a better explanation, using the Bible or anything else.

God limits Himself. And Jesus' parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus says that Lazarus went to Abraham's bosom, which is not "with God." Of course, now that Christ has died, they were released to be with God. Since Christ is the only way to the Father, then Christ had to die in order for any human to ever be with God.

And time is not an entity which someone can exist outside of. Time is not a thing that can bind, we, and God, are bound by existence. God can only exist within that which exists. The present is the only point in time that exists.

 

[servent101]

Lighthouse

And time is not an entity which someone can exist outside of. Time is not a thing that can bind, we, and God, are bound by existence. God can only exist within that which exists. The present is the only point in time that exists.

This is a statement, with no reason or logic - it is your word, that this is so, or at least this is presented as such, do you really want to let this statement stand - simply on the basis that you said it?

This may seem strange to you, but the concept that we exist in tiny wedges of space and time is one that is lost when we look at the more infinite attributes of God - that God is not confined to what we perceive space and time as - even the new physics, the String theory suggests otherwise.

Do you want to admit that you just do not know what you are talking about, that you have no source other than your own speculative ideas?

With Christ's Love

Servent101

 

[Lighthouse]

Serpent-
You're full of crap. God existing within that which exists is straight from the Bible. And present being the only point in time that exists is from the Bible as well. Get a clue.

 

[godrulz]

Serpent-
You're full of crap. God existing within that which exists is straight from the Bible. And present being the only point in time that exists is from the Bible as well. Get a clue.

How did you get so many rep points? Can you give them to yourself if you are a subscriber (haha)? I'm jealous. :sam: