In the beginning... God and time

Faith & Science Conversation
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John 4:24 “God is spirit, and and His worshipers must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”

Orthodox Trinitarian Christians do not have this modalistic view you seem to have that the Holy Spirit is the spirit part of God. The Holy Spirit is a PERSON not just the spirit portion of God.

The teaching that God is spirit is one of the most fundamental teachings of orthodox Christianity. What is true is that the Bible speaks of the “spirit of God” and since God doesn’t have body and spirit parts, this is taken to mean the Holy Spirit.

Now if you are Mormon, then you would believe differently that God the Father has a body. But even in that case the Holy Spirit is a separate person which happens not to have a body and is not just the spirit portion of God.

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Modalism is One God in Three Forms or Modes. That is not what I said, but One God in Three Persons. God is Spirit as Jesus said, but God is not a infinite Spirit as you said.

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So you believe in a limited God, but I do not.
So this finite spirit you believe in is your god, but is not and never will be my God.

So speaking of the God I believe in, which you choose not to believe in…
unlimited = infinite = there is no end to what God has to give.
God is spirit – a life giving spirit.
God is spirit + God is infinite = God is an infinite spirit.
God is an infinite life giving spirit = A relationship with God gives eternal life.

A relationship with a limited God cannot give eternal life, therefore, I am not interested. Perhaps it gives you an eternal existence but without that which makes an eternal existence worthwhile, that is how I would describe hell.

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@mitchellmckain, your reasoning is clear. The problem is that we cannot go by logic alone, whether we are doing science, theology, or philosophy.

We need to compare our logic with the revelation we have been given by God.

For instance you say that God is infinite, and most Christians would agree, but the Bible does not say this. Infinity is a Greek concept and the Bible is a Hebrew, Jewish book.

Infinity is part of the philosopher’s god that you say you reject, but of we are a product of Western culture as is infinity. The Bible says that God is Sovereign, or unlimited in power, not infinite. Monarchs, personal, are Sovereign, the universe, impersonal, is infinite.

As you indicate the power of eternal life is not its infinite length, but its goodness. It is the fact that Eternal Life is Life with God as revealed by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and not by our logic.

The Trinity is revealed in the NT. We cannot lay it aide because we do not understand it or so not like it. It clearly says that God is Personal, which rejects the impersonality of the philosopher’s god, and the abstract nature of formal theology.

God is not infinite, because in-finite means “without boundaries.” God has boundaries which God has created God is not evil, but God is good all the time… God does not tell lies. The universe is not God.

The Sovereign God (YHWH) can do whatever God wants including giving Eternal Life. I suggest you read my essay God and Freedom on Academia.edu.

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Hi Roger, Until the fourth century, logic and reasons were part of Christianity. Revelation was, and should be, tested with the same logic provided in 1 John 4. God and the Bible are not exclusively Hebrew but encompasses all wisdom, even that which man excluded from the Bible.

Best Wishes, Shawn

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Be more specific.

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Dear Roger, 1 John 4 says we need to test the revelations given by the holy spirit, not accept them blindly. It has been the priests who have been guilty (Malachi 2:7-9, Jeremiah 8:8-9, and Ezekiel 2:1-7) of illogically interpreting the Word. God’s laws are logical and it is important that we use our god-given logic and reason to determine if the Revelations in the Bible or from a holy spirit are His Word, and have not been the victim of the hands of man.

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Is this a new kind of baptism - a “quickie” for the moment if you will? :smile:

Sorry - couldn’t resist capitalizing on your typo. For what it’s worth, I actually agree with much of your thought there, though I would insist the problem is much more in how we interpret and use what’s already in existing scriptures than in thinking those have a problem that we need to correct. In any case, it’s just me injecting a bit of levity into a deep subject. [I’ll cower at my desk here a bit now, just in case any lightening strikes are imminent.] :cloud_with_lightning:

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No problem Mervin. It was the actually the second one that autocorrect messed up. I have fixed it. Thanks

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Try a metaphysical definition of life. For me life is the ability to move matter or energy at will. it does met require the object that possesses this ability to change itself. If I enact the will of Jesus he is alive in / through me as after all his will is still moving matter or energy by his will. What does your God need to change about himself in order to be God?
Now many Christians believe in Big Santa and call him God as they believe to be the real God themselves. This is most manifest in the way they pray as to ask God to change reality according to their wishes instead of asking God to change them in order to fulfill his wishes. They understand a personal God to be a God that works in their personal favour asa way of personal interaction. The God of a philosopher can still be very much alive as in changing their reality by changing how they interact with reality instead of having to change how reality interacts with them. After all, reality is a bit like the sound that the tree makes when falling over, whether you are there to hear it or not.

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The definition doesn’t even work. Planets and stars can move matter with gravity so it seems to come down to will, which you haven’t defined. And is a person dead if they are paralyzed and thus cannot move anything by will at all? Most people would consider them alive if they breathe, their heart beats, and their brain is working but all of that is considered automatic and not a case of will moving anything.

And what is so special about matter and energy anyway? Why should being able to move those things make the difference between a spirit which is alive and a spirit which is dead? Obviously, when Jesus said, “Let the dead bury their own dead,” he wasn’t talking about the inability of people to move matter.

So all that leaves of your definition is equating life to will, and I don’t see that as explaining much of anything. Not only that but I don’t think that willfulness is even a good measure of life. And if your definition is not giving a measure of life then it is practically useless. So sorry, with both will and moving matter shot down, I don’t see any merit in your definition of life whatsoever.

What I see as essential to life are things like self maintenance, awareness, growth, and learning. Some of these things may indeed have been what Jesus saw as somewhat lacking in those he called dead in Luke 9:60.

The only way I would consider this even a little bit valid is if you are describing yourself at some time in the past.

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I do not think that you understand what the Philosophers’ God is. The P G is omniscient , which means He knows everything including the future, right.

People know that learning requires changes in the Mind, but the P G does not change. So this learning or knowledge must not current or new, but old going back to the Beginning.

Thus the P G knows everything that would happen from the Beginning and so the Philosophers’ God does not change nor change anything, because everything is preordained and arranged. This means that evolution as a scientific process is an illusion.

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Dear Roger,
Which philosopher has a god that is puppet master? Certainly not Socrates or Plato.
Best Wishes, Shawn

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How can the word, “divine”, be applied to a being that promptly falls from God’s favor? The orthodox Christian dogma I was exposed to relies on the hypothesis that Pride can be part of this sort of divinity and that both the angels and Adam & Eve became jealous of God’s power and thus Fell. As hard as I have tried, I just can’t get my head around this conundrum: Pride and Jealousy are compatible with potential divinity, but NOT with the real thing.

Shawn, evidently you and most of the responders to this forum do not share my difficulty with this distinction. In all probability it’s because we do not always make it clear which nature we are referring to: worldly or spiritual; biological or noospherical. We do have ‘a foot’ in each.
Al Leo

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Dear Albert,
Let me give you timeline that goes along with my comments, and this is from the theory of Apocatastasis. 1) God created the hosts of Heaven and they lived in divine bliss for an eternity. 2) Lucifer becomes jealous of the King and campaigns to become the second king. 3) Once all have chosen sides, God instructs Michael to purge Heaven of the 1/3 who followed Lucifer. 4) After an eternity in Hell, Adam and Eve (2 of the 24 Elders) are chosen as a proxy for the fallen to be tested in the highest reaches of Hell (Paradise). 5) After the fall of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:24), God creates the material universe to restore all of the fallen.

Every soul that is born was created divine, and then spent an eternity in Hell. Created in God’s image and then corrupted. And now we are in the middle of our restoration. It took me a long time to stretch my imagining to encompass these multiple eternities. Needless to say, 13.7 billion years is a small fraction of the timeline since God and His Son lived alone in Heaven (John 1:1).

Does that help you to understand why I see no conflict with divine and corrupt? That envy and pride sprouted from Free Will and only through Free Will can restoration be complete.
Best Wishes, Shawn

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Probably because most of us ‘run-of-the-mill’ believers in this forum don’t buy into such extra-biblical fantasies as what Shawn is pushing on you here. We are not gods - never were, and never will be. To think we have been or have the potential to be is to create these confusions where none existed before. God is not part of some council of equals or even near-equals (despite some O.T. language that occasionally uses such imagery to anthropomorphize how God might deliberate to reach decisions). But the classical Christian conception of God would be much more along the lines of … “My ways are not your ways … my thoughts are higher than your thoughts.” And even that is an anthropomorphic accommodation since it is a category mistake for us to think of God as some ‘bigger, better, more genius’ version of ourselves. Any view that has God as just another being in the universe (even if the most superior ‘super-being’) is a view that invites in all this unnecessary confusion.

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I agree that the concept of Sin can arise only when there is Free Will. However, IMHO, your worldview has God acting the way we see humans act; i.e., you are making God in our image, rather than the other way around. If it maximizes the potential to make your life worthwhile, go for it!
Al Leo

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I agree with you statement above, but I find it unfortunate that finding the right words to express this to others (especially to one’s kids, grandkids, etc.) without confusion, is so difficult. It’s almost as if Christ waits for the right time to make himself really present to you; Bible study can often help, but unless thoughtfully done, can actually add to the confusion. I am especially fond of Sallman’s painting of Christ knocking on one’s door that has no outside latch. He is ready to enter whenever you are.
Al Leo

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Not only does this remind me of the serpent’s temptation in the Garden of Eden, but it is hard for me to even see the attraction in this. The vision I have is so much more appealing to me – an eternal relationship with God where there is no end to what He has to give us, no end to growth, to learning, or to becoming more with new horizons always waiting for us. There is where it seems to me the meat of life is to be found, not in the being but in the becoming. It seems that many people stumble over this desire for the accolades of success without any desire for the process of success itself. Isn’t this in fact the lie in the serpent’s temptation of Eve, suggesting that they skip over the becoming process to take on the appearance without the substance, “when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil.” Of course, as His children we have desire to be like God, but this so we open ourselves to receive what He has to give and to learn good from evil as He teaches it. Too much harm and horror has been the result of people taking it upon themselves to dictate good and evil, right and wrong, without any real wisdom and substance behind such exercises of empty authority.

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Evolution is not a scientific process but a process. It is - as the word says - the slow unfolding of a plan.
It was Einsteins big mistake to think “Gott wuerfelt nicht” as he did not contemplate that for an omniscient being throwing the dice does not make a change to the outcome as the outcome is already known, no matter how often you would roll the dice.
Why would you make the ability to learn a prerequisite for being alive - or do you believe God has to “evolve” to be worthy of being worshipped? Sure some people do and think he evolves by granting them their wishes, but that is a very dangerous territory