Does God follow rules?

[PBear42]

I’m not sure this is quite what the OP has in mind, but it reminds me of an issue which has long stumped me. (BTW, as I’ve mentioned in prior threads, I’m an atheist but was raised a Christian.) To whom or what was God sacrificing his Son? The need for grace as a concept doesn’t puzzle me. But, once God decided to extend grace to an otherwise admittedly unworthy world, why the need for a sacrifice? This implies God is subject to some sort of rule.

And, Walloon, I’ve reviewed the Wikipedia article you linked, but didn’t see an answer to this point there. If I missed it, feel free to point it out.

[Voyager]

@Chronos

There are actually two questions, here: First, does God follow rules? And second, must God follow rules?

The first question is easy. Although God could, presumably, perform miracles whenever He wanted, He certainly doesn’t seem to do so very often. At least almost all of the time, He is content to let the Universe run under a set of consistent rules, so to that extent, He follows rules Himself.

The second question veers into some deep philosophy. If, for instance, a being never does something in all of eternity, what does it mean to say that that being can do that thing?

But God’s rules certainly can’t be the laws of physics, since he supposedly has violated them many times. Now if you want to rule out miracles, fine, but it is a feeble god indeed bound by those rules.

Following rules seems to contradict the notion of god being all good, because, unless the sole rule is to be all good, there must be some case where following the rules does not lead to the maximum of goodness.

The contention that God must follow rules seems to come up to explain god doing something nasty or absurd, or to justify some human religious practice. The thread on the Mormon baptizing the dead included this concept to justify why the dead couldn’t baptize themselves. The requirement of salvation through Jesus, instead of God, is usually justified by some rule of god and sin.

And of course a tri-omni god is both logically inconsistent and at variance with reality as we see it.

[Odesio]

@Sunspace

In Christian mythology, does God follow rules? He lays down rules for humanity to follow, but can he himself be capricious or act randomly? Is this the same for other Abrahamic religions, such as Islam and Judaism?

Check out the story of Job from the bible. Basically God says the following to Job.
Job: I’ve been a righteous man all my life. Why the hell are you fucking with me?

God: Pipe down you son-of-a-bitch! Were you there when I created the universe? Were you there when I created man?

Job: Um, err, no.

God: That’s right, you weren’t. Listen to me you primitive screw-head, you simply don’t possess the mental faculties to discern the reasons behind my actions. So don’t you dare fucking question me!
The long and short of it is that God isn’t acting randomly we’re just incapable of understanding all that he does. God moves in mysterious ways and all that.

Marc