How many do you need to contradict the ones that say he does?
What did you just do?:
I suggest you not use that again as an argument.
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Given that pantheism views creation and the divine as conterminous, pantheism is definitely not what I described. Panentheism would be closer, but still not a very accurate description of the view that God is sustaining everything, as this view does not view creation as being a part of God the way that panentheism does.
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I donāt know how to disabuse you of that analogy which is earthbound and four-dimension-bound, so to speak. I know this is not enough:
ā¦and he upholds the universe by the word1 of his power.
Hebrews 1:3
How about a little thought experiment. If, as the suggestion that I like is true, that quantum mechanics is hinting, and letās say more than hinting, that the fundamental reality is information1 what happens if that information disappears? That does presume that the source of the information is the mind of God. But not unlike the fact the shadow of a cloud contains information about the cloud, if the cloud which created the shadow goes away, so does all the information in the shadow and the shadow itself. Creation is gossamer and ephemeral compared to God.
1 Words contain information.
Of course it isnāt, because weāre broken.
There you go again saying the scripture is wrong.
And again.
But God makes everything: āwithout Him was nothing made that was madeā.
Your soft deism is showing again.
Do you guys not see how when you make declarations that amount to saying that scripture is wrong then youāre making up your own religion?
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The problem is that you go to great lengths to ignore scripture when you donāt like what it says. Dale provided a set of verses that you have to thoroughly mangle in order to pretend they donāt say that God owns everything.
John and Paul both clearly say that God makes everything that is. They donāt say that He kick-started things and let them run, they say that if something exists it does so because God made it.
Yes ā and creation is always present tense.
You seem to want a God you can shove off into a corner once Heās gotten things going ā but that is not the God the Apostles tell us about.
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Also āapart from Him has nothing been made which has been madeā.
And āIn Him all things hold togetherā.
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Yes the information of a dream only exists in the mind of the dreamer. But a real creator can can put information in something outside of his mind in something more permanent and real. Yes the dream is gosamer and ephemeral compared to the dreamer. But I think God is more than a dreamer and a true creator who can make something permanent and real with an existence of its own.
In Hebrews the word is āallā not āuniverseā and its meaning is highly contextual, meaning different things in the other instances it is used in the Bible. This could easily just mean that God is upholding all he has promised in the scriptures. Indeed I think God is working to make sure things generally go according to His will in the world for the betterment of His children. No I do not think it means the universe is like a dream which will simply vanish if God stop holding it to a particular way.
The dream is part of the dreamer. So this is pantheism. If it were panentheism then the dream could leave the dreamer and have an existence of its own. I of course believe in neither of these. I believe in the true creator who has intentionally made something real according to a rational order by which something can exist apart from Himself ā all according to His reason for creating the universe. And this is the nature of the world we observe.
I look beyond mere semantics to the essential connections between things. Hebrews 1:3 can mean many things. And I donāt think it means pantheism so it doesnāt mean the universe has no existence of its own but only exists because God is holding together like carpenter who cannot make a table stand on its own legs. The crucial question as far as I am concern is whether God CAN create something which exists on its own. And the answer is OF COURSE He can. Then why not? Frankly, the only reason I can see is religionists seeking to exaggerate their own importance.
Is this the problem and what we have here, @St.Roymond?
At least I am correct in that respect. 
So much for metaphysics.
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This forum involves succinct responses which means, automatically, that they can be misinterpreted and I grow tired of being told that I ignore the bible.
I dispute the way you and others (mentioning no names for now) quote and claim specific meaning to Scripture. I do not have the time or the inclination to unpack or challenge every single line quote that does not mean what you claim it does. Scripture is not a set of one-liners
I dispute any version of Original Sin or claim that any person is automatically separated from God from birth and that society is spiritually deadā¦
Richard
I would say that his position is theology from below that is misguided by pagan philosophy, rin this case an incorrect understanding of omnipotence.
So you throw out a large part of what St. Paul wrote ā he explicitly said that death passed to all men, i.e. all humans. Death is the result of ā or perhaps better the definition of the state of ā separation from God.
There you go again, claiming what Paull said , without any sort of citation. Your view is also based on a certain understanding of the word death.
If you are going to claim me wrong you will have to be a little more precise.
Richard
Very depressing final paragraph, Vinnieā¦it can, I admit, sometimes seem that way. But we just have a very crazy impression of God, thatās all.
The term there, as in Colossians, is āĻį½° ĻĪ¬Ī½ĻĪ±ā, which in technical use ā i.e. philosophy or similar arguments ā in the first few centuries BC and AD is a term that refers to āall there isā, often rendered as āthe allā, unless context indicates otherwise. If it were just ĻĪ¬Ī½ĻĪ± without the definite article, or if it was in a narrative context, you would be correct. There are perhaps three instances in Paulās usage that by context are not meant in this technical sense; I donāt include Hebrews there since in my view it is too Alexandrian in style and grammar to be Paulās.
Nothing in the context suggests that; indeed in context Ļį½° ĻĪ¬Ī½ĻĪ± refers back to ĻĪæį½ŗĻ Ī±į¼°įæ¶Ī½Ī±Ļ, āthe agesā, which tends to be a term referring to everything in time and thus everything in existence.
That is only true if you insist on shoving things into the terms you are imposing on things here. Godās Creation is not part of God, but that does not mean it is not dependent on God. You are committing the fallacy of anthropomorphizing, defining the divine in human terms: where in humans a dream only exists as 'part of" the dreamer, in God a ādreamā takes on reality.
I have no clue why you insist on interpreting the scriptures by forcing them through your own psychological sieve, but itās tiresome. Your bias is not a valid approach to interpreting any ancient literature ā or even not-so-ancient; it fails as much in Coleridge as in Gilgamesh or Paul.
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