The world, with its ugliness and evil, does not disappear when one goes to heaven — Thorongil
that caused poor uneducated people in that time to be terrorized by fear and horror over the idea that they would end up there — Beebert
To gain and keep Control over the masses, by causing them, the fearful, sensitive and uneducated ones, to submit to The Church. All about power. — Beebert
If God causes the event directly, then it would be beyond good and evil.And when God intervenes in nature and does something we judge, by the moral law he gave us, to be evil, then what? — Thorongil
Hmm okay, so then where does evil come from? Evil exists eternally like some kind of absence?A straw man. It's not lifted above, but made to be identical with God himself. God is not merely good, he is goodness itself. — Thorongil
No. God's transcendence would imply that doctrine.Do you reject the doctrine of divine simplicity? — Thorongil
The relevance is that you would then not use the Law to judge God's actions. Using the Law to judge God is an effect of sin, or so would be my claim.I still don't get the relevance. Are you saying that the repugnant things are suddenly no longer repugnant once sin goes away? Ugly and evil things just disappear? That would be an interesting claim to the extent that it suggests you are an annihilationist. — Thorongil
Is morality defined by God's Law? Is God the Creator of the Law? Presuming you've answered these two by yes, then it would follow that God - as Creator of the Law - cannot be judged using the Law. So how is this theologically absurd?It seems that God's "glory" is always appealed to when trying to smooth over theologically absurd or morally repellent claims. — Thorongil
God is in many ways like a Father, but He's also different from your earthly father.I made an analogy between a father and his child. Do you reject that God is a father and that we are his children? It seems you must do so in order to say that my analogy is "fallacious." — Thorongil
Because whatsoever God does, it wouldn't count as breaking the Law - precisely because God is above the Law, and thus not subject to it. By not being subject to the Law, there is no sense in which you could say that God would break it.Now you're saying that God can't break his law, after you've just beaten me over the head with the claim that God can do what he wants, because he's above and beyond the law? Tell me how you have not just contradicted yourself here. — Thorongil
In the sense of St. Augustine's statement, it might (although I'm not ready to go there).Alright, so then anti-natalism follows. Why create more humans corrupted by the fall? You're just perpetuating the fall and its corruption indefinitely. — Thorongil
Well, was there any alternative? Civilization basically collapsed when the Western Roman Empire collapsed, so don't underestimate the level of destitution and illiteracy this caused in Europe. — Thorongil
so then where does evil come from? Evil exists eternally like some kind of absence? — Agustino
whatsoever God does, it wouldn't count as breaking the Law - precisely because God is above the Law, and thus not subject to it. By not being subject to the Law, there is no sense in which you could say that God would break it. — Agustino
If God causes the event directly, then it would be beyond good and evil. — Agustino
Hmm okay, so then where does evil come from? Evil exists eternally like some kind of absence? — Agustino
No. God's transcendence would imply that doctrine. — Agustino
Using the Law to judge God is an effect of sin, or so would be my claim. — Agustino
Is morality defined by God's Law? Is God the Creator of the Law? Presuming you've answered these two by yes, then it would follow that God - as Creator of the Law - cannot be judged using the Law. So how is this theologically absurd? — Agustino
God is in many ways like a Father, but He's also different from your earthly father. — Agustino
Because whatsoever God does, it wouldn't count as breaking the Law - precisely because God is above the Law, and thus not subject to it. By not being subject to the Law, there is no sense in which you could say that God would break it. — Agustino
In the sense of St. Augustine's statement, it might (although I'm not ready to go there). — Agustino
Yes, God is above any form of predication - exactly! Have you been reading the theologians lately? You've opened up Lossky once again, or Dionysius? That is my exact point! He is above goodness, above Justice, etc.This is actually a very dangerous thing to believe, in my opinion - because if this is so, 'God' is also above any form of predication - we can't even say that God is 'good' or 'just', because, according to this, God's ideas of 'goodness' and 'justice' could be utterly capricious; He might decided that what we think is evil, is good, just because He can. — Wayfarer
Supernal Triad, Deity above all essence, knowledge and goodness; Guide of Christians to Divine Wisdom; direct our path to the ultimate summit of your mystical knowledge, most incomprehensible, most luminous and most exalted, where the pure, absolute and immutable mysteries of theology are veiled in the dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence, outshining all brilliance with the intensity of their Darkness, and surcharging our blinded intellects with the utterly impalpable and invisible fairness of glories surpassing all beauty. — Dionysius
That it that is the pre-eminent Cause of all things intelligibly perceived is not itself any of those things.
Again, ascending yet higher, we maintain that it is neither soul nor intellect; nor has it imagination, opinion reason or understanding; nor can it be expressed or conceived, since it is neither number nor order; nor greatness nor smallness; nor equality nor inequality; nor similarity nor dissimilarity; neither is it standing, nor moving, nor at rest; neither has it power nor is power, nor is light; neither does it live nor is it life; neither is it essence, nor eternity nor time; nor is it subject to intelligible contact; nor is it science nor truth, nor kingship nor wisdom; neither one nor oneness, nor godhead nor goodness; nor is it spirit according to our understanding, nor filiation, nor paternity; nor anything else known to us or to any other beings of the things that are or the things that are not; neither does anything that is know it as it is; nor does it know existing things according to existing knowledge; neither can the reason attain to it, nor name it, nor know it; neither is it darkness nor light, nor the false nor the true; nor can any affirmation or negation be applied to it, for although we may affirm or deny the things below it, we can neither affirm nor deny it, inasmuch as the all-perfect and unique Cause of all things transcends all affirmation, and the simple pre-eminence of Its absolute nature is outside of every negation- free from every limitation and beyond them all.
But your judgement of God is pathetic otherwise. You pretend that God is some sort of man, and if there is no Law to govern his behaviour, then He will "misbehave" :s You have still not given up on the idol of your own self which you project unto your imagination of God.God's ideas of 'goodness' and 'justice' could be utterly capricious; He might decided that what we think is evil, is good, just because He can. — Wayfarer
No, it's actually not. For someone to be evil, they have to break the moral Law. God cannot break the moral Law as He is not its subject. Therefore God cannot be evil.Poppycock. This is to say that evil is not evil. — Thorongil
This is precisely the reification that I've condemned. I know St. Augustine and the later Saints supported this view, but I think it's absolutely wrong. Does this privation of the good exist? You will now say yes. So apparently, something - the free will of man - can displace God, so that God ceases to exist where the privation of good exists right? So His omnipresence was a joke. That's absurd. And if you'll claim that evil is nothing, then you're even worse than you claim that I am by asserting that God is beyond the Law since you do not take evil seriously.This returns us to your original argument, which I only granted for the sake of argument. I suppose the response to your question would be that you are mistaken to speak of evil as existing. That is to say, if you grant that evil is the privation of the good, and it is the case that the good alone exists (God), then evil does not exist. God cannot by definition be present where nothing exists, so the contradiction you thought resulted doesn't actually do so. — Thorongil
Wrong doctrine. Or better said, doctrine at a superficial level. Divine simplicity entails first and foremost that God is beyond the things created and nameable.But as I said, the doctrine also entails that God is goodness, however analogical this claim may be. To enact a complete divorce between goodness and God is not something I've ever seen a traditional Christian theist do. — Thorongil
Right, so you've never read Dionysius? You've never read Isaiah? You've never read Christian mystics? :sI've ever seen a traditional Christian theist do. — Thorongil
For you? No. (although yes, there are instances when murder is not wrong - or better said excusable. If you attack me with a knife for example, and I end up killing you, that is morally excusable).I'm still uncomfortable with this, as it seems to imply a kind of moral relativism, which would suggest, for example, that there are instances when murder is right. — Thorongil
Okay, so what? God is servant to your moral sensibilities? :sBut for God to command murder at one time and condemn it at another offends our moral sensibilities. — Thorongil
For the most part yes.Murder is intrinsically wrong, no matter the circumstances, which means that its being wrong cannot change. — Thorongil
Please expand on this.Not univocally, no. — Thorongil
It is fallacious when you're overextending it, as you are.Right, so my analogy isn't fallacious. — Thorongil
God doesn't have a definable nature in His essence. Divine incomprehensibility IS His nature.I say that God cannot break the law, because the object of the law is the good, so to break it would be to violate his own nature as goodness itself. — Thorongil
I think procreation is not immoral. Whether it should be preferable to never procreating is a question for the individual. Some are called to be completely devoted to God. Others are not.I admittedly threw you a slightly off-topic bone here, but this is an interesting response. You don't have to respond in this thread, but what exactly is your view on procreation? I might have mistakenly believed you were an anti-natalist at one point. — Thorongil
What reality? If the essence of morality is God's Law, then that is reality. What you perceive as morality - at least in its untainted version - was written on your heart by God.So morality is just morality because God randomly defined what it is, but in reality, the opposite might as well be moral? — Beebert
It's immoral because you are subject to God's Law - and you were created in such a way as to be subject to it.If I kill someone randomly, is it immoral because I do something Christ would never do, in other words something God would never do, or is it immoral because God just says so? — Beebert
Yes, He is defining what God is not:I think you are confused as to what "above" actually means. He is defining what God is not, not what he is — Beebert
nor godhead nor goodness —
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