What do us Christians do with the consequentualist question on God's morals? If God knew what was going to happen then this means God allows evil.
It God knew what would happen before they fall then why did he allow it if he is pure good? Why must be Gods moral law so far and alien to us?
After the fall, known empirical history really isnt beautiful. Its a bloodbath and a debauch scene of biological desires.
I never really got that much right sound answers from classical theism.
For the record im not a morally righteous person either. I didnt made this thread to feel better about myself. I just want to help from anons who spend more time than on getting the right answers.
Maybe us learning to discern between what is good and what is evil through experience is a greater good than ignorance and God knows that and wants what is best for us.
This sounds plausible, but is incorrect. God does not will evil, and would not have willed us to sin in order to learn good from evil. This desire to learn from experience was itself the first sin, and a break from God's will.
Rather God permits the potential for evil for Love's sake. In order for us to have a loving relationship with God, we just be free to either choose him or reject him, which is to say to choose good or evil.
It is this freedom which has allowed evil to manifest, for the greater good of loving union with, and service to God, for his glory, through us. We can't say that our evil is His fault, however, because it was created through our free choice.
must* be free
But God do know what we will choose. In physics everything already happened in a way.
God is outside of time so he does saw everything.
Still no re-assuring answer to the problem of omniscience.
Evil is necessary for free will to exist. No choice between good and evil, no free will.
God is outside time, but for God there is no past, present and future. I'll give you a few line from Milton's Paradise Lost regarding omniscience and really read this carefully;
For man will heark'n to his (the devil's)glozing lyes,
And easily transgress the sole Command,
Sole pledge of his obedience: So will fall, [ 95 ]
Hee and his faithless Progenie: whose fault?
Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of mee
All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
Not free, what proof could they have givn sincere
Of true allegiance, constant Faith or Love,
Where onely what they needs must do, appeard, [ 105 ]
Not what they would? what praise could they receive?
What pleasure I from such obedience paid,
When Will and Reason (Reason also is choice)
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoild,
Made passive both, had servd necessitie, [ 110 ]
Not mee.
They therefore as to right belongd,
So were created, nor can justly accuse
Their maker, or their making, or their Fate,
As if predestination over-rul'd
Their will, dispos'd by absolute Decree [ 115 ]
Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed
Thir own revolt, not I: if I foreknew,
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault,
They trespass, Authors to themselves in all
Both what they judge and what they choose; for so
I formd them free, and free they must remain
I dont think what tou said makes sense abou free will and i also didnt understand the poem you wrote.
To move on with the topic, why was the creation created at all? God just felt like it seems like a dumb answer.
God created the world out of his boundless love. Love wills the good of another. What greater good is there than the shared love of an infinite, all good, all knowing Creator? This is why God created us who, with freedom, by grace, in love are capable of partaking in His nature. It is better for us to exist, even with the perils of sin and death, because open to us is a boundless glory and joy in the Majesty of him and his creation. This possibility far outweighs any evil, for which, though he knew it would happen, he is not responsible because he made us free to choose or not to choose it. He knows the outcome because he exists there, but he did not will it, not us he to blame for it, because verily it could have been otherwise had our forbears chosen differently. This is not an oxymoron, but does seem a paradox, and is surely a mystery to it mortal minds, being bound in time as we are. Bring things bound on time, we are not able to see outside it.
If i follow classical theism and i take a peek at nature, i wouldnt come to the conclusion of a loving God. I could have the benefit of the doubt that this might turn into a good thing any centuries from now but it has always been this way for billions of years.
What doesn't make sense? If there's only good, there's no choice to choose anything else than good. Which means you're not free, you're a programmed robot who can't do anything else than good.
You really think anyone has an answer to that question? How is anyone supposed to answer that?
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We are still free to do something except good. It still doesnt answer why there has to be a creation and why things are the way they are.
God is not subject to anything but im just trying to make sense of this saying "God is good". If God is not good and his morals are so alien then why should we worship him? We all use reason anyway.
Is this moral? If i create a kid beat him up then take him to a park not necessesarily in that order, what would you call me?
God the Father is present in Genesis 1 to 11, the book of Job and thats about it. The rest ofnthe bible OT is the devil as God.
What you consider evil is very different from what God considers evil.
GNOSTICS BEGONE
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Laugh at it, mostly. There is no objective morality without objective moral agent to set the standard - there is no morality without God.
And? From Charity God created universe and charity requires that free will exists and if free will then real possibility of moral fail. "As God is supremely good, He would nowise allow evil to be done, unless He could draw some good from every evil."
Sufficiently answered already but it can be added, that glories consequent to incarnation far extend glories of original justice; that's why Church can sing "o felix culpa".
God's Law, or at least this part that deals with natural, i.e. moral law is written in all humans hearts. It's called natural law.
This isn't the right way to go about things. Think for a moment of theology being like math. A certain order of operations is followed to get the right answer, and this order of operations doesn't follow the chronological history presented in the Bible. It starts with the sacrifice on the cross.
The bare fact of the matter is that mankind is tainted by harmatia, or "missing the mark" which is translated as sin/peccatum, and also knowledge of death.
Christ came to show us that life will conquer in the end and that there is a true path out of sin, not a relativity of many paths through the world. Once this basic equation is put together then the rest of the story falls into place, including a time before sin.
You should read Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift and especially the 4th part which is the sojourn with the houyhyms. It is a classic discourse on how original sin makes us different from animals in some not-so-desirable ways, and how original sin became baked into the human experience through transformations which we don't fully understand.
I understand there are limits to our reasoning but we must at least find a reason why God must be good.
Yeah i agree its a shitty way of weighing morality but doesnt mean it couldnt be right at sometimes. God played a gamble on our lives and he has zero stakes in it, God never once stepped into the animal kingdom and he only spent a life time suffering as a human. If we follow that we are created from nothing separate from God.
Also im not a gnostic, just looking for a coherent answer.
The concept of good comes from the existence of God. Of all fullness and goodness, God is the source behind it, the reference point on which all things may be said to be better.
Let me ask you this, what would you call a person who allowed you to live even though he had the choice to kill you with no consequences, and you are an inconvenient miscreant who will surely mess up his plans at some future point or other?
What would you call a bring who allows you to experience holocaust, getting nuked and all the beauty of being alive in this existence?
Yeah i know who am i to question God but come on. You could say this is "if God exist why bad thing happen" which yes it kinda is.
Bad things have been happening for billion of years from now since the creation.
You're doing it again.
We say God is good because that's his nature, everything that he wills is good and everything he desires is good. There is no pettiness or mischief or evil in him since all those things lack in perfection and imply disharmony. God is good similar to how a circle is circular or a triangle has three sides, it's who he is.
And this is confirmed by how he revealed himself to us via creation and scripture.
for something to be bad it must contradict absolute, objective goodness, and only God qualifies as such a goodness. In a worldview devoid of a Good God there is no way to describe something as "bad" or "evil" things just are.
God is good because God is good and Good is God. Seems very coherent.
For the biblical reference, Job was toyed by God.
Circular reasoning again.
I dont believe you are really trying to contemplate the enormity of God at all; you ironically probably perceive Him as some dude telling people what to do (which He is) like some annoying neighbor (which He is), or imposing father (which He is), but youre applying a human authority on Him and so you ask "why should i respect his judgement?? Why is He the constant (Good) and not fallible like me??"
If you earnestly attempted to contemplate and along with your reason and attempted to look at what everyone is pointing you to - past the fingers themselves - and meditated on how truly enormous God really is, you might begin to understand why He exists as the Objective Highest Good, and as such the understanding that harmony is living in subject to Him.
Well if you're just asking "if God real, why bad thing happen?" then you might want to refer to the answer to that question, which even Jesus himself was able to answer to.
viz. when he healed the blind beggar, and was asked by the apostles if his blindness was due to the sin of his parents. I suggest you re-read that passage and see what implications it has for charitable works.