I didn’t say he didn’t have a body. I said he didn’t have a physical body. His body was quickened by the spirit and therefore immortal. A physical body suffers pain and physical death the spiritual body does not.
Who failed? Seems the plan worked quite well actually.
Who are you responding to? I didn’t use the word “fail”.
I said “physical body”. If Adam didn’t already have a physical body, how did he eat the fruit?
Ok, so Jesus isn’t necessary. Let’s just have everyone judged by the “what they knew, what they did” standpoint, and we can avoid the whole unpleasantness with the crucifixion.
And omniscience is still required for a “what they knew, what they did with what they knew” judgement.
n/m
Playing Evil Within, no time for this right now. Back later.
So she hung out with John Mayhew, John Silver and Chris Stewart?
Freedom of choice is a mortal desire not one of a perfect supreme being, I know I am far from perfect but I would not allow my child to harm another if I knew ahead of time my child would harm others I would not conceive one in the first place. Allowing a child to do evil things is not free will if they are punished for it, but one also has to take in to account the good of the others that were created.And God apparently didn’t care if one killed it’s brother or neighbor. When humans have faults inborn it is not the human’s fault.
According to the passage in the NT when a woman wanted help for her child, Jesus is quoted as saying, “’ I came only for the lost sheep of Israel” so his purpose was not in saving the whole world, and Why God would settle the difference between himself and his creations sending his son just to die doesn’t make sense to me. He had the power to destroy all of his created being another way just like he did in the Flood
Or just stop the evil so he must have wanted evil beings as well as the good.
And yet he did help the woman’s daughter when we was impressed by her faith in him. I think it’s more a case that he saw redeeming Israel as his top priority, not necessarily that he didn’t care about the gentiles. In another passage, he (remotely) heals a Roman commander’s servant. The Roman is so sure of Jesus that he doesn’t even bother to check that the servant has been healed. Jesus is said to have been “amazed” and remarked that “I have not found such faith in all of Israel”.
Again, it isn’t that God has a grievance against his creations; it’s that the universe and humanity are estranged from God. It’s more like he’s dealing with a hostage situation, or an enemy-occupied territory. In the computer analogy I made earlier, the purpose of Christ is to allow those who choose him to be “ported” to the new creation.
The Flood wasn’t total obliteration, and it was an extreme necessity to cope with an out of control situation. God is trying to rescue creation, not just pull the plug on it. If you will, think of Tolkien’s analogous myth in the Silmarillion: Eru Ilúvatar is determined to neither accept Melkor’s usurpation of creation, nor give him the satisfaction of forcing Eru to destroy it. Iluvatar says that in the end he will make even Melkor’s rebellion part of his plan.
If one accepts the Gnostic notion of Lucifer/Satan as the demiurge of our universe, than he can’t be eliminated without taking the universe with him. So God is essence said “fine, be that way”- but then set out to create a way for humanity to be removed from Satan’s authority. And why did evil ever exist in the first place? That’s a deep question many have struggled with; but I think the Christian answer is that God wanted children, not just creations, and the redemption in Christ was how he went about it.
I’m sorry, but it sounds like God has some deep psychological issues that need resolving before he should be taking on something as complicated as a “Creation”. I think the problem is that he never had any examples of child-rearing from others to serve as examples, so he didn’t know that you’ve got to put the poison fruit away when leaving the house because innocent children may not have the best judgment, sleazy Uncle Snake isn’t the best babysitter in the world, and you sure as hell don’t hand out the toughest punishment for a first offence that is mostly your fault any way. Definite blame transference going on here.
To extend the analogy, though, God also created the bank, the tellers, the customers, the robbers, and the shotguns. It seems very odd to me to say that God and the rest of us are estranged, as if that’s through our fault entirely, when we’re his creations.
I’d find it sad, but not strange, if a parent and child were estranged. But if you told me that the parent knew in advance that what they did would result in an estrangement, that they did it anyway, and then they went to great lengths in order to mend that estrangement, all of it part of their ongoing plan for their child - I’d consider them, at the very least, to not be very sympathetic.
It comes down to asking “if God is omnipotent, why aren’t things perfect?”. Cue 2000 (if not more) years of theological debate.
Well, that’s kind of what Theology behind original sin was supposed to prevent. Augustine of Hippo noticed what was happening to people who listened to Pelagius, who said, basically, we are responsible for what we do. If we sin, we need to answer for it. So therefore we need to try to live sinful lives. It was, as could be imagined, a drag. And, of course, there was tons of anxiety involved.
Original sin was Augustine’s way to mitigate that anxiety and the need to ‘be perfect’. We all have sinned and were even born with it. So there is no need to try to act perfect - we can’t be perfect. But we can ask forgiveness and gain repentance that way.
I know it doesn’t seem that way now, but 1700 years ago, original sin was a far more gentle, kind, and loving part of an explanation of the question of how does one act before God.
Then everyone is dead spiritually based on the above.
But we have been given enough time to ask the question of how God as acted before us.
There is that. Such an excessive and overly elaborate punishment for a first offense from a couple of innocents who did not have the ability beforehand to tell right from wrong, and who were being manipulated by a creature who did have that ability.
There’s that at the back of things, I agree. But as well as that, there’s all these little bits of not “why aren’t things perfect?” but also “why aren’t things better than this?”
Anyway, it’s not even my biggest problem with original sin! I take issue with the idea that because my great x whatever grandparents made a mistake I and everyone else are forever tainted by their actions.
The Augustine stuff is interesting. I’m not sure of the theological impressiveness of a position designed to, I guess, make real life easier to deal with. It seems antithetical to the purpose, and a little like an attempt to solve the problems caused by a philosophy while trying very hard to keep it as it is. I’ll have to do some reading, though.
The latter is what kicks me around. I was corresponding with a very nice Christian, who is studying for the ministry, who pointed out the usual notion that we need some level of pain in order to learn from our mistakes. We need to bump into the corners of tables, to learn how to walk carefully.
I might accept that. A world absolutely without any negative consequences is one from which very little can be learned.
But…millions of children starving to death? Millions of malaria deaths? Large-scale genocide?
We would have learned the same valuable lessons at a vastly lesser scale of horror. The deaths of mere thousands would have taught us exactly the same thing as the deaths of millions – billions? – have. The scale is grotesquely disproportionate to the justification offered by this specific argument.
This would show that God is not as good a father as a human one. To me it is like giving a small child a gun and say, use it like you want, so the child kills itself and the father knew he would do so.