Do you think it is a higher status to have no compunction toward or against any action so that one is untouched by any issue of morality? I don’t. If so it must seem like the luckiest of coincidences to you that He isn’t a total monster. I don’t think such a status is at all desirable. What is more desirable is to know the moral weight of every choice and to single mindedly act in accordance with ones values. To be independent of values would be a defect.
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No.
But I don’t necessarily think God’s perspective and morality is quite the same as ours. Ours tends to focus on the present and our own comfort, while God’s is more about the future and our potential. I don’t go so far as making a complete disconnect where, behavior which looks criminal or more like the devil can be accepted. And like I said, I am wary when it looks too likely that the talk of constraints due to “God’s nature” may be more about entitlement for religious folk.
I hardly think that God’s choices are random. I rather think they are founded on a far more accurate assessment of what works best. “Morality” has too often become a suspicious word. You can see this in how I define sin as “self destructive habits.” I think there is something measurable (in principle, at least) about things which are “moral” from God’s perspective.
And I guess I am also suspicious of this word “nature” when applied to God. The word is used in different ways, and it often seems to me that the way used theology is not the same as when we talk about a nice person’s “sweet nature.”
“The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons but only one God. The number three has nothing to do with it. These are simply the three persons we know as God. But to equate our knowledge of God with the limits and totality of God is absurd.”
GOD is Three and One. The Three is important because it is Many, which indicates that GOD the Trinity is the solution to the ancient puzzle, the One and the Many. Possibly GOD could be Four and One, but GOD is not. GOD as you have said is Father. Son, and Holy Spirit Who are separately and together GOD, however since the Trinity always works together it is probably more accurate to say that they are together GOD.
GOD is also LOVE. LOVE is not an “attribute” of GOD, LOVE is the essence of GOD. The Father is Love, the Son is Love, the Spirit is love. In this way GOD is the GOD Who RELATES. GOD is Three and One, One and the Many.
St. Roymond, if one wants an apt analogy for the Trinity, I recommend the one used by Augustine in De Trinitate, the book which defined the Trinity for us in the West. The best analogy he provided was, one of Love, The Lover (male,) the Beloved (female,) and the Love that binds them together into one person.
This analogy is much better than water or the sun. The most telling criticism of it is the fact that the woman is labeled as “beloved” so it does not say that she loves the man. This appears to be based on the failure of the time of Augustine to recognize women as equal to men. Once this is fixed we have mutual love and our analogy is good.
Nor do I but I see it as being for the opposite reason, that God’s insight makes analysis and deduction unnecessary. I never read it but I’ve heard about a book on fast versus slow thinking. Things we are very expert in can be done without the slower, laborious thinking. Being morally expert makes the good a simple matter of recognition, no calculation required.
Now to be fair, I don’t know but I don’t assume that God does anything at all as a character in His own creation. He isn’t an object among objects but I also doubt He is a subject among subjects. Rather I think His existence is intertwined with that of every ‘regular’ subject or being. There is no way of knowing but I don’t assume there are any questions He has which would require the use of rationality as we know it.
I think of God as not only the ground of being but also the initiator of all becoming. I think this can only come about when the One withdraws from parts of creation so that true others may exist with whom He can relate. Free will is an artifact of that desire for relationship.
But there is also something immediately felt about things which are moral or the opposite wat least under favorable circumstances. It is human nature to weigh personal gain against that which is felt to be right or morally required. You could call that our fallen nature.
But that isn’t truly an aspect of moral thinking, it is more about the impediments to being and acting as a moral person. A utilitarian might see morality as noting but an exercise in calculating the pain and pleasure entailed by choices, but that is viewing a basic human capacity and experience from a martian perspective. It is like recognizing the divine, we don’t have to; our will is truly free in that regard. There are other things one can believe in instead, like the maximization of utility. But it is a capacity which can be cultivated and it is my belief that religion has evolved to strengthen that capacity.
To achieve more of our human potential than mere survival a lot depends on becoming aware of our values and subjugating our choices where opting for greater personal comfort conflicts with actualizing our better selves. Personally I think religion has elaborated heaven and hell in the service of helping people get over that impediment to being a moral person. God leaves much up to the individual and there won’t necessarily be obvious sticks and carrots involved. But if religion helps one over the hump, then it is quite possible that getting a taste of a better way of being will activate more motivation to maintain it.
In the sense that causing discomfort in the present for no good reason is bad… yes.
But…
Sacrificing present comfort for future potential is good.
Sacrificing the future potential for present comfort is bad.
Of course the choices we make about what is important to us cannot be ignored either. It can certainly be very wrong to demand that someone sacrifice the things which are important to them for the sake of some future potential in regards to what someone else has decided is most important. On the other hand, not all choices are equal in the potential for future happiness. People can and have frequently found they have sacrificed their potential in things they later learn were much more important. So we have a conviction that God knows the best choices in this regards (for our particular case – this is not a singular path the same for everyone), even though God will not force us to make the best choices.
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There’s a lot of threeness going on here. Seemed fitting to share this photo I snatched from Myron Penner’s FB post:
and this one
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Phoenix, AZ
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And even I think this is VERY appropriate. These three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirt are our window through which we can see God.
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Always good to know and own your frame. Everyone has one but we don’t all know what it is.
It is especially good if one can just own it as their’s without trying to force feed it to all comers regardless of interest.
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I have heard these words many times, but I have never seen how they clarify anything.
The only thing it suggests to me is that while God is the source of everything, God is not so by any intentional action since the only ground I know is not a being or intentional but just a place where resources can be found by plants for example. No I certainly do not believe God is just a resource, or a place where other things can come into being. On the contrary, I see God as a being who intentionally created the universe and it is the universe which he made into a resource and place where things can come into being. Thus this rhetoric sound very pantheistic to me, and that is a type of thinking to which I must be personally opposed. It provides no explanation for evil except as something natural and unavoidable no matter what.
I think evil is easily avoided. You just choose power and control rather than love and freedom, not creating things like life and free will, and then everything will go according to your plan with no evil. Very boring and not much good either to be sure, but no evil. Making evil something necessary and unavoidable is not something I can agree with. Evil is not that fundamental or important. For example, some think that free will is about the ability to choose between good and evil. I don’t think so. This is just a small unfortunate side consequence. I think the reality is that evil is a parasitic thing narrowing down into nothingness, while good is a infinitely branching tree. It is for the latter which free will is really about, choosing among the endless options available in what is good.
- What a neat word! Inspires me to call myself “a Threeness Pentecostal Christian”.
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Fortunately I don’t have a lot that needs clarifying. No doctrine of any kind. I think of it as God existing first and acting on matter to shape and guide it. It is doubtful that everything we see in the living world could have come about through random mutation alone even in the deep time we think the universe has had. But if everything we associate as coming from consciousness - including awareness and intention - has always existed that can be thought of as the mind of God. I liked this post from Fred_W on May 27 of this year while I was away from these forums:
Any valid comparison between what ‘God’s Word’ tells us and what ‘God’s Creation’ tells us must put both into the same form of interpretation. We do not interpret the Creation literally, we interpret it epistemically. Words are man-made and translation is interpretation by definition. Genesis must be given an epistemic translation. Such a translation would read, “In the beginning, God created space and matter. And the matter was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was vibrating over the fluid matter.” Seems to be amazingly accurate. Ancient Hebrew had no better words in its vocabulary to say that with the syntax found in Genesis.
In particular I like this way (my bolding) of understanding Genesis, not that I think my interpretation coincide’s with this member Fred’s idea. But I find it useful from my POV. One of the questions it addresses is the mind/body problem of how matter in any form gives rise to mind and how mind has any control over a material body. It isn’t a material explanation of anything but it does suggest how mind and matter could ever have gotten together. Science alone hasn’t been able to touch that one. Brains can be studied directly by science but not the consciousness which they support. If consciousness starts out as the mind of God then the paraphrase (translation?) contained in that quote makes a lot of sense. It isn’t a purely material explanation, but who expects that regarding anything to do with God?
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I agree with his reasoning and method. It is a problem with literal interpretations when the fact is that the meaning of the words have changed simply by there being so many more words for things the people back then didn’t know about. “Dust” for example could just as easily mean matter or stuff of the earth than what the word has come to mean to us today.
I personally think the theological understanding of Genesis 1 is much more likely what was intended than this fit to modern science – saying God is not light, sun, moon, land, water, plants and animals, but the creator of all of these things. But I use a similar methodology as this in other parts of the Bible.
It is not completely clear what you are claiming provides this explanation of how matter gives rise to mind. From what follows it sounds like you are agreeing that God as a mind is what you mean – that starting with a mind would explain why a created universe is meant to give rise to consciousness and mind.
Because I think it is the other way around: either matter and consciousness are co-basic or consciousness comes first. I suspect it is the latter and matter and consciousness may be different phases of one thing. That is what Iain thinks but I don’t have an informed opinion about that one way or another so I borrow his.
Oh I see…
That is too magical of an idea of consciousness for me.
I think consciousness is part of the process of life, and like life it is highly quantitative. Thus the human level of consciousness is a vast array of smaller portions of consciousness gathered in multiple hierarchical levels with innovations to add greater awareness and greater degrees of abstraction due to more representational capabilities. I think it is all perfectly rational and subject to scientific explanation.
Perhaps my refusal of most of these ideas of divine simplicity is related to this. I see God as a being of infinite complexity not simplicity. Perhaps starting with such a being as a creator of everything else seems farfetched to you, and that I can very much comprehend. I have no argument to support the idea. But I think this idea of a magical fundamental consciousness is far more farfetched.
Well any attempt to talk about actual beginnings has got to be speculative. It was a mistake for me to describe God in overly simplistic ways even just to describe in broad strokes. But yes starting with a cosmic watchmaker or human like being behind a curtain waiting around eternally fully formed already as a catalyst for jump starting everything does strike me as far fetched. Maybe the language of genesis is preferable for avoiding becoming too specific. Every attempt to say more must flounder.
Truth is an opinion in the mind of the believer that satisfies the soul. Everyone has their own opinion (POV).
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Some opinions can be wrong and the opinionated believing what is untrue. I.e., truth is not merely an opinion in the mind.
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Well yes, I don’t buy into all such ideas either: not a watchmaker (well not with regards to living things), and not human-like either. I do believe the universe was designed to support life and that is the reason for its existence – designed in fact for a relationship with the living things inhabiting it. This makes a great deal of sense of many things I see in science which frankly don’t make a whole lot of sense to many scientists. And I don’t understand the Biblical “created in God’s image” to mean God is similar to us in ways that we would say God is human-like compared to other sentient civilized beings in the universe (assuming they exist).
Thus I would reject humanism in favor of an ethic to support and defend life in general (the purpose of the universe), remembering that I consider life to be quantitative and hierarchical so I do not consider the life of all living organisms to be equal. And since AI, I do not think intelligence to be a significant measure of greater life but do think diversity, awareness, and cooperation are significant measures of greater life (language hitting heavily on those).
Also while I don’t agree with the word “simplicity” in the doctrine of simplicity, I do agree with the understanding of the doctrine which would judge the word “formed” as not applying to God – not composite in any way. Besides since in my case, we are talking of an infinite God, I don’t see how it is possible that such a being could be formed.
While I don’t have an objective argument why such a being must exist, it is reasonable to ask what reason I might have to believe in such a thing. Though I have explained this elsewhere, it seems appropriate to do so in part here also. And first reason which came to me was in answer to a human need (applicable to all living things really) for a faith that life is worth living. A very subjective reason to be sure, which I think all such reasons for such a belief must be. I also see a need to balance out the objective, uncaring, mechanical nature of so much of the universe. It would be dishonest to deny this rather pervasive aspect of the universe and so embracing this as a human being really needs something to balance it out. So I see this highly subjective belief in an infinite (and thus all important) caring being behind the curtain (as you say) to be very helpful to our well being.
But if you still think a being who thinks like a human would need to have figured out the laws of nature and constructed atoms in such a way as to eventually give rise to cells, there is as much magic in your thinking as mine. Not that I object or that it would be my place to do so. We all make our peace with all the demands of reality as we find them on the best terms we can.
I don’t.
- thinks? yes. like a human? no. An infinite being capable of everything would logically have some ability like thinking though very likely not at all similar to what human beings do. Let us remember the Bible was written to be understood by human beings and I think it ascribes motivations only because of how they understood things (some of which no longer even work with human beings in modern times).
- I think God only needed to figure out how to design the universe to support sufficient complexity for the nonlinearity of self-organizing processes. I don’t think it needed to be planned out even as much as you seem to suggest.
- It remains an open question whether He designed nature well enough for it to make it all the way on its own, and how much interference (as allowed by the laws of nature – no magic) was required to get thing beyond hurdles which made the development of life too unlikely. Getting some measure of how common life is in the universe might give us a better sense of this.
Perhaps you can adjust what you say to fit these corrections, but I suspect it will lose a great deal of its cogency when you do.
Of course once I bring the Bible into it you have far more grounds for seeing magical elements in what I am saying. But then I have answers ready for that as well because I simply don’t subscribe to a magical understanding of any of its content.
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