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Source: (consider it) Thread: In what ways does God give us freedom?
Tortuf
Ship's fisherman
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quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
I imagine you would still rather God was involved, but may I ask whether you have ever considered that taking that credit would give you greater confidence in your abilities?

What I have found is that I have great confidence in my own strength and abilities when I pray and meditate.

I also have the significant probability of operating out of self centered fear, making an ass out of myself and fucking up things worse than they were if I let my ego take over and run things.

You might reply that taking the time to reflect and center myself is me operating and working out the best course of action without dependence on any supernatural being. Maybe you are right and I am wrong. It happens.

On the other hand, I am quite comfortable with where I am right now. Part of where I am right now is that I can share my experience and feelings, but that your path in life is your own and not any of my business. So, feel however you feel with my blessing, for what it is worth.

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SusanDoris

Incurable Optimist
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Tortuff

Thank you for your reply - much appreciated. It's an odd thing about memory - with old age come times when the brain recalls with sharp clarity various events, however brief they were, of acute embarrassment or stupidity! A consolation, however, is that you also find that others do not remember them - probably because they're too busy recalling their own! So now when my brain tries to do this, I give it a stern telling-off!

[ 10. October 2015, 05:35: Message edited by: SusanDoris ]

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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

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W Hyatt
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quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
It just doesn't work in Judeo-Christian understandings of God. It flies in the face of everything that is written about God in Scripture, and inevitably means dismissing huge chunks of the Bible. We all have parts of Scripture that we struggle with and have to either "explain away" or set aside as "mystery", but those who hold to impassibility have to rewrite pretty much everything and have to constantly say "when it says this about God it doesn't really mean precisely what it says".

It just doesn't work in a Christian paradigm, however much some try to make it.

It works great for me, and yes, I'm entirely comfortable with saying Scripture doesn't really mean precisely what it says because I believe Scripture presents God as God appears to us in all our different states of mind. However, saying that it does really mean precisely what it says introduces a whole new set of problems, including statements that contradict each other and statements about God claiming to be the author of evil.

Impassability doesn't mean that God is unfeeling and unresponsive. It means that on the one hand, as he is in himself, his love and his response don't play out and change over time because time only exists in creation. But on the other hand, they do play out and change over time as he is present in his time-bound creation.

I can see why Open Theists would object, but I don't see why it would fail to work with other Judeo-Christian understandings.

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A new church and a new earth, with Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.

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Barnabas62
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W Hyatt

The etymology suggests that if God is indeed impassible, He is not able to suffer or experience emotions. I've never been able to square that with scripture, nor with orthodox understandings of either the Trinity or the Person of Jesus. There is not a disunion between the human and Divine natures of Jesus; that's Nestorianism. And the church has always taught, contra the Gnostics, that Jesus really suffered, that he was indeed fully human and fully Divine.

But I recognise that both Catholicism and the early Reformers taught the doctrine. So the explanations that are traditionally given have always struck me as rationalisations! Which I suppose is not surprising given my nonconformist roots.

Why not be satisfied with the shared understanding that God is faithful? Surely that says all we can truly say?

[ 10. October 2015, 11:14: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]

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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

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Lamb Chopped
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Impassible = not subject to passions, not necessarily emotion per se (though I know some people use the term so). Passions are by nature emotional storms or waves that come and go, and tend to incapacitate the reason of the one who suffers them. Our emotions are disordered, messed up, not fully functional, and subject to variation in object (who do you love this week? hate?) and intensity (yesterday I was gung ho, but today I'm rather meh about it).

God's emotion is not of that sort, but is a) steady and eternal and b) at the service of the rest of his nature.

Which is to say that God is MORE emotional than us, not less. He's doing it right.

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Barnabas62
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It is the issue of suffering with which I disagree. The word "passion" is now an intense word, even a wild one e.g. "I'm passionate about ...". But its original root was always connected with suffering. When we talk (or used to talk) about the Passion of our Lord, we refer to his suffering.

Here's a link to the evolution of meaning.

BTW, although this is a tangent, it's not that far removed from the OP. Our freedoms include the freedoms to experience sorrow and joy.

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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

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W Hyatt
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quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
The etymology suggests that if God is indeed impassible, He is not able to suffer or experience emotions. I've never been able to square that with scripture, nor with orthodox understandings of either the Trinity or the Person of Jesus. There is not a disunion between the human and Divine natures of Jesus; that's Nestorianism. And the church has always taught, contra the Gnostics, that Jesus really suffered, that he was indeed fully human and fully Divine.

I understand about the etymology, but that sounds like describing God as impassive rather than impassible. I believe Jesus is God as much as anyone, and that he truly experienced emotions and suffered as described in the Gospel accounts. I just don't see how that's inconsistent with impassibility, at least according to what I understand to be the meaning of impassibility.

[ETA: use of the right word, finally]

[ 10. October 2015, 20:44: Message edited by: W Hyatt ]

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A new church and a new earth, with Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.

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Barnabas62
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How do you explain the cry of dereliction? Jesus the Son suffers an agony of physical pain and rejection. How is that not a sign of the Godhead knowing both the experience of suffering and the experience of deep emotional pain? Of course it is an experience in time but it must resonate in eternity. Indeed we are told that the wounds of the cross are 'still visible above'. They are a memorial to the suffering of the Godhead. I accept the huge mystery of kenosis but not the contradiction that the Godhead has both experienced suffering and is yet unable to suffer.

Happy for someone to explain where I am wrong.

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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

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Martin60
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God cannot not suffer everything everything suffers. He's sustaining all, thinking [it] all, every indeterminate quantum perturbation in the cosmos and everything in between. And more. Infinitely more. But how does He FEEL about it? About what He feels. What is His metapathy? Creation may well be infinite from eternity in Him, but He is transfinite. So He can't not feel infinitely but it doesn't fill Him. At all. Do His feelings change? As a whole? They ... can't. He is, in that sense, impassible. Nothing can occur in creation that can change His overall feelings, mood or the analogies of those in His transfinite, multi-person, eternal, multi-dimensional, omni-omni, superpositioned, indeterminate, transcendent immanent being.

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Love wins

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cliffdweller
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Ah, gotta disagree with our friend Martin there.

God is constant. His disposition towards us is always love. That is the sense in which he is "unchanging". But he is not impassive. Part of "being love" (as opposed to just "being loving" means that he is in relationship-- there is mutuality. God is moved. Think of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem or over Lazarus' tomb. He knows the end of the story-- he knows there will be resurrection-- and restoration. And yet, he weeps. He mourns. Precisely because he IS in time, he IS with us. He is not in some distant dimension, removed from the impact of the day-to-day realities that delight, horrify, bemuse, offend, and comfort us. He is moved.

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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner

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Alisdair
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Would it be helpful to some to compare God's 'will' with the difference between a classical music score, and a jam session.

The score takes everyone through in a very prescribed format where everyone's role is clearly mapped out as to which notes they must play when, etc.; while the jam session may set out with a particular theme to get them going, and a fixed amount of time in which to play (several of the group members have a bus to catch), and off they go, seeing where they go, making it up as they go along, riffing off that theme, until somebody takes them all home.

Both approaches achieve their aim, but in quite different ways.

Perhaps God is into jazz and jamming.

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cliffdweller
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I think Lamb or someone used that analogy already on this thread-- and yes, I think it's helpful. I'd draw the variables even wider than you do-- (the time frame may not be all that fixed-- someone might leave early thru their choice or another's)-- but yes, the overall metaphor works. God creates a framework in which we are free to improvise. There's some relief in that-- knowing that "doing right" doesn't mean having to perfectly decipher some illusive but super-specific "God's plan", but rather the freedom to explore within some fairly broad guidelines.

[ 11. October 2015, 14:16: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner

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no prophet's flag is set so...

Proceed to see sea
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God may be moved, but doesn't actually do anything except quietly respond with no hint to us. We have the freedom to draw comfort from God. But no right to expect anything more than internally felt comfort.

There is no intervention to be expected. The freedom is complete for us, except for the freedom to not suffer and to not die. The Christian story is about, in part, intervention at death. We shall all have to see about that. In the meantime, we can live according to the ways we have been shown. Our freedom is to serve and love others or not. This, I think, is our imperative. I feel better when trying to do so. Positive reinforcement. The alternative is too bleak.

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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/

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Alisdair
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@no prophet's flag is set so...

I don't buy that view at all.

That seems rather like the deus exmachina model---God winds up the universe then steps back and lets it run, i.e. effectively absenting God from any direct day-to-day involvement, which completely removes any possibility of a 'personal' God who we can 'know'. The 'Holy Spirit' drops out of view, and a large part of Jesus example becomes problematic too.

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no prophet's flag is set so...

Proceed to see sea
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The experiences of life are sometimes a brutal teacher. I should have to betray my child to accept your view. The Holy Spirit is your comforter, not you miracle doer. God is your companion not your saviour from the perils of earthly life.

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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/

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Martin60
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Alisdair

npfiss... isn't saying this at all:

"God winds up the universe then steps back and lets it run, i.e. effectively absenting God from any direct day-to-day involvement, which completely removes any possibility of a 'personal' God who we can 'know'. The 'Holy Spirit' drops out of view, and a large part of Jesus example becomes problematic too,"

He isn't denying God's immanence in that which he said previously to your illogical response above.

Cliffdweller, we don't disagree at all. Nothing you say, with which I totally agree, disagrees with anything I said. Or believe. I.e. know. How much of transfinite omnipathic Love is taken up with feeling about every feeliing of creation?

We wrestle here with God's complete non-intervention beyong the Incarnation. The FACT of it. A fact as good as quantum mechanics (and NOTHING is better than that as a model of reality). The WHY of it.

Nothing about Jesus is compromised by that fact. And NOTHING about the Holy Spirit. Apart from our extremely limited understanding of Her based on the musings of our pre-modern Jewish spiritual ancestors INCLUDING the man Jesus.

Last Monday in our home group my wife shared how she was being driven to true despair, on the edge of acute depression by the straw on her camel's back of a single four year old child disrupting her entire school. She knows that God does NOT EVER intervene. Ever. That there is no point praying for wisdom, or a good night's sleep let alone any other magical change. But she wanted to share with the group who are ALL nice evangelicals, who ALL use the pre-modern modes of speech and therefore thought and prayer about God, to a despairing degree, bless them. Of COURSE we prayed about it. Raw and real with the unreal. Together. And one ordained sister present has been texting and praying and it's all been vastly encouraging. Not least because, of course, a miracle HAS happened. The situation has been transformed in a way that was not envisaged. Because of God's provision. Not because She performed some micromanagement of people's feelings and thoughts. The situation had potential in it that was realised BECAUSE goodwill, openness, positive perseverance, networking, vulnerability were being exercised. NO magic wand was waved. Someone from left-field, invisible, who was watching, just stepped unasked up to the plate and that has made ALL the difference. God made that possible. 13.74 Ga and 2 Ka ago. In our staggeringly subtle minds. And yes Her deep comingles perichoretically with our deep. Life=spirit goes way beyond Bismark's politics in being the art of the possible. And no claims have to be made at all. And no faith lost. Evil proliferates the same way. But the story just gets bigger and more complex.

I've mentioned here a guy I didn't love. A guy I felt no affection toward. Believe me, if you knew him, what his history is ... I felt awkward, uncomfortable ... resentful. His awkward, broken helplessness. On Friday night I just hugged him. I meant it. Thank you Father for that space. For that impulse. For the provision of that, of unconditional affection in my 13.74 Ga and 61 a of experience. For that FREEDOM.

I have another guy to go ... and another I've just had to let go. No, I've not abandoned him. He's completely unhelpable. God CANNOT lift a finger for these guys. Or anyone else. CANNOT. Not will not. That is SUCH a relief. THAT is freedom too. Free of that torture.

[ 11. October 2015, 21:02: Message edited by: Martin60 ]

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Love wins

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cliffdweller
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((((Martin)))

See, Susan Doris: there must be a God. I just hugged Martin.

Martin: your post makes me both
[Smile] and [Votive]

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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner

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Martin60
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Steady on old girl. I'm British donchaknow.

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Love wins

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no prophet's flag is set so...

Proceed to see sea
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I am too stupid to understand "immanence". Is mere presence sufficient? I am only objecting to the idea of intervention in the wiles and wherefores of the world and daily goings on. Which both reduces freewill of humans and all natural phenomena. And is inconsistent with experience. May I just proceed with companionship and hope for the ability to manage and cope? Free to botch it, free to return from wrecking it to a demonstrated path? ( If so, I will join in a group hug. And I really don't do hugs, but this would be, for me, pretty much central and thus worthy. )

--------------------
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/

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Martin60
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(((((no prophet's flag is set so...))))) THAT'S immanence baby!

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Love wins

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Alisdair
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@no prophet's flag is set so... and Martin60

On reflection I take back my last comment, because---on reflection---I find myself today far more in sympathy with the words you have both written than when I responded, too quickly, in the first instance.

But, still, perceptions of presence, immanence, and the meaning of words too, are personal, but I am glad they can be shared, smoothed like stones in the river, and then perceived again, but differently.

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Boogie

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quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:

We wrestle here with God's complete non-intervention beyond the Incarnation.

That's the very reason for the OP. I think that maybe the older we get the more wrestle. People have given me lots of answers for God's total non-intervention (thank you). I also hear some say God does intervene where s/he can without removing free will - but I don't see any evidence of that. I'm not asking for much intervention either - just to remove (or not allow to be created in the first place, whether natural or human) the worst of the worst evils, not everyday 'suffering'.

But, like a child, whatever answer I get doesn't satisfy and my question/answer remains 'humph, but why??

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Garden. Room. Walk

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SusanDoris

Incurable Optimist
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quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
((((Martin)))

See, Susan Doris: there must be a God. I just hugged Martin.

[Smile] Good idea!

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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

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quetzalcoatl
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Martin - a right corker that post, well done. I think that people who are not religious also go through processes like that, I mean, being in an apparently hopeless situation and emerging with a solution, happens all the time. However, your guesswork is aesthetically preferable.

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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.

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cliffdweller
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
However, your guesswork is aesthetically preferable.

In the end, that's all any of us-- me, Martin, Susan Doris-- has. We observe the universe and attempt to make sense of it. Out of the marketplace of interpretations, we choose the one that seems "beautiful" in the fuller sense of the term.

And that's important. Because how we view the world, how we interpret that data, determines how we will interact with the world, how we will "live and move and have our being" in the world that we share.

I hope that I too, am choosing light over darkness, beauty over chaos.

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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner

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quetzalcoatl
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quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
However, your guesswork is aesthetically preferable.

In the end, that's all any of us-- me, Martin, Susan Doris-- has. We observe the universe and attempt to make sense of it. Out of the marketplace of interpretations, we choose the one that seems "beautiful" in the fuller sense of the term.

And that's important. Because how we view the world, how we interpret that data, determines how we will interact with the world, how we will "live and move and have our being" in the world that we share.

I hope that I too, am choosing light over darkness, beauty over chaos.

Yes. I'm not sure that we observe the universe really, or 'view the world'. Doesn't matter really.

Reminds me of Keats, truth is beauty, and beauty is truth. For me, that means that truth is not intellectual at all, but the right aesthetic moment, when life is fulfilled. I certainly don't choose that. It happens when I stop choosing.

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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.

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Martin60
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{{{{{{{Jack o' the Green, shamwari, Belle Ringer, Rolyn, LeRoc, balaam, Tortuf, Adeodatus, anteater, SusanDoris, W Hyatt, mousethief, Barnabas62, Komensky, Lamb Chopped, cliffdweller, Alisdair, mark_in_manchester, Raptor Eye, Jammy Dodger, Jengie jon, Pomona, Brenda Clough, Croesos, no prophet's flag is set so..., Susan Doris, quetzalcoatl}}}}}}} all in the same boat... Ship! with {{{{{{{Boogie}}}}}}}

Croesos has the answer the Boogie. But he ain't tellin'. A bit like God really.

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Love wins

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Eutychus
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hosting/

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Croesos has the answer the Boogie. But he ain't tellin'.

Martin, I hate to interrupt all this hugging, but pre-empting the views of shipmates not involved in the discussion at this point is not a good plan. Please have a little sit down and a cup of cocoa or something, and rein in your posts a bit.

/hosting

[ 13. October 2015, 21:10: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy

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no prophet's flag is set so...

Proceed to see sea
# 15560

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quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
However, your guesswork is aesthetically preferable.

... we choose the one that seems "beautiful" in the fuller sense of the term.
...
I hope that I too, am choosing light over darkness, beauty over chaos.

Aesthetics and beautiful. I have the neophyte's understanding of this. A strong draw. Light over darkness, beauty over chaos. Worth restating, it's where I try to live.

I hope it is like the waterfall on a canoe trip with my friend dying of cancer (dead these 6 years), where he obviously experienced something profound in the middle of no where; a 'thin place' he called it. It didn't change his cancer and didn't prolong his life, but it made him place his cancery troubled guts and soon death in the context of eternity, which the waterfall - running since the end of the last ice age - was a stand in. It gave a goodly measure of freedom from his worry and terror of dying and being dead.

I need lots of education about beauty and the truth it shows. Aesthetics. Is there a secret music of the spheres? Of the molecules in our cellular protein factories Can we know this stuff? Will knowledge truly set us free?

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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/

Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010  |  IP: Logged
Martin60
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Eutychus. Sir. I would like to engage with what Croesos said way back regardless of his not engaging further, which I also completely respect.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Originally posted by Martin60:
As they, we hung (our) children at Auschwitz He HAD to do nothing.

quote:
... The interesting thing is the degree to which this is special pleading that is only ever argued in connection for God and would be considered morally monstrous in any other context.

For example, Martin60 seems to be arguing that putting an end to Auschwitz was far worse than anything done at Auschwitz. In effect, that the wrong people were put on trial at Nuremberg and the Allies were guilty of violating the Nazi High Command's free will.

I went on to acknowledge that I was guilty of special pleading on God's behalf. But Croesos' rhetoric is also flawed. If God had put a stop to Auschwitz by supernatural intervention, it would have been the Second Coming. I wish He had, that the Kingdom had come. But we ended it. After creating the conditions that led to it. The right people were put on trial. A tiny fraction of them. And we killed a few. Showing that we were part of the problem in microcosm. The evolutionary problem. AKA sin.

We must put God on trial. Test Her. Here. She is great and She is good, as Jews of Auschwitz knew well. She NEVER intervenes. In 13.74 Ga of this universe alone. Even in its creation possibly. Probably in fact. With a probability approaching certainty in the simplest model of God: creation is infinite and eternal in a transfinite God.

Except for incarnating. Infinitely, eternally or once.

I sit here with rolling news at 21:35 BST and am very moved by Pauline Cafferkey's dying, Lord have mercy. I wish She would. She won't. Is that because She can't? How can that be so? Is the only way out of concluding that God can but CHOOSES not to, restrains from doing so for at least six hundred million years of exponentially increasing suffering, requiring special pleading for Her not to do so, to conclude that She CANNOT intervene without destroying creation.

Because it can't be about morality. There is NO moral reason why God never intervenes. There must be an existential reason, a logical reason. Existential in the sense that we could not exist.

Surely?

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Love wins

Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Alisdair
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Sorry, not following you. Shutting down death camps or vaccinating against disease are like inconsistent parenting because if someone really wants to murder Jews or "decides" to contract smallpox we should respect their freedom to make that choice? That seems abhorrent.

So, where would you draw the line? It seems that 'Love' inherently requires 'Freedom', which inevitably opens up the potential for 'Suffering' and 'Evil' and 'Death', but how else can the potential for 'Love' and 'Life' be realised.

It's no different to my wife and I deciding not to have children because we don't want them to be exposed to the dangers of life. Fine, perfectly legitimate choice, but the end result is those children never were, and never will be---who knows what they might have been, and 'Love' is lost, instead there is nothing but a 'might have been'.

'God' doesn't seem to go for 'might have beens', but is very much interested in giving everyone/thing a chance to flourish and see what it can become.

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Boogie

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quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:

Because it can't be about morality. There is NO moral reason why God never intervenes. There must be an existential reason, a logical reason. Existential in the sense that we could not exist.

I agree. It must be this.

Because an all knowing, all powerful God would know exactly where to draw the line to allow us enough freedom to choose good over evil, but at the same time preventing the worst evils - especially natural evils.

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Garden. Room. Walk

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quetzalcoatl
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Reminds me of the idea in Jewish mysticism that God withdraws in order to permit creation. This is not really a moral reason, nor I suppose a logical one, but an interesting one, even if it is another guess.

It suggests an incompatibility between my concrete existence and the direct presence of God, and I suppose many religions warn about this. Well, a friend of mine used to talk of a light brighter than a million suns, when he saw God in his friend, sounds scary. Other horror films are available.

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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.

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Martin60
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Hmmmm. Bin thinkin'. I talked the missus' hind legs off with this having trapped her in the car for a couple of hours yesterday and then walked AND talked them again on the way from Blakeney to Wells and back (sixteen bloody mile!) today.

I could see the weakness in my argument here as I reiterated it yesd'y and the walk drew it out. I abandoned special pleading for God being morally bound not to intervene for existential reasons BUT God DID intervene AS Jesus. In the face of every moral need as a man He responded.

So why can't He now?

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Love wins

Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Raptor Eye
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Hmmmm. Bin thinkin'. I talked the missus' hind legs off with this having trapped her in the car for a couple of hours yesterday and then walked AND talked them again on the way from Blakeney to Wells and back (sixteen bloody mile!) today.

I could see the weakness in my argument here as I reiterated it yesd'y and the walk drew it out. I abandoned special pleading for God being morally bound not to intervene for existential reasons BUT God DID intervene AS Jesus. In the face of every moral need as a man He responded.

So why can't He now?

God did and does intervene as Jesus, in the sense of guiding us, showing us the way - 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life'. Jesus points us toward God, and gives us the freedom to go our own way instead. Until the day when all tears will be wiped away, as the second coming of Christ means that God has intervened finally, once and for all.

Meanwhile, we're stuck with each other, and charged to love one another, even - especially - those who are the least loveable.

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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10

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Martin60
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You nicely avoid the question Raptor Eye. Very nicely.

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Love wins

Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Boogie

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quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
I abandoned special pleading for God being morally bound not to intervene for existential reasons BUT God DID intervene AS Jesus. In the face of every moral need as a man He responded.

Well, I don't think Jesus was God. I think he was full of God - more than anyone before or since. So he can show us the way. He responded with love, so should we.

But I don't think he intervened.

I still think the only reason God doesn't intervene is because s/he can't + allowing life to exist.

So s/he gives total, complete freedom. I am now working on being grateful for this.

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Garden. Room. Walk

Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008  |  IP: Logged
shamwari
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God works from within the process of living, not upon it.

He nudges, suggests, prompts and influences us. He does not force, compel or coerce.

Love is in no way coercive. And God is Love.

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Martin60
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How can a man be full of God more than any other? Without God intervening?

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Love wins

Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Boogie

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quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
How can a man be full of God more than any other? Without God intervening?

By 'allowing' God in?

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Garden. Room. Walk

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Komensky
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quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
God works from within the process of living, not upon it.

He nudges, suggests, prompts and influences us. He does not force, compel or coerce.

Love is in no way coercive. And God is Love.

If you believe in the truth claims of the Bible, God most certainly does force, compel and coerce. I can't imagine what you mean by: 'Love is in no way coercive'.

K.

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"The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity." - George Bernard Shaw

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Komensky
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quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
How can a man be full of God more than any other? Without God intervening?

By 'allowing' God in?
This assumes that you have free will. That you get to decide to let God 'in'. This is, at least, a better picture than the usual 'God has great plans for you' and that 'God has always known about you since before you were even conceived', which take God outside of time and deny your free will.

K.

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"The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity." - George Bernard Shaw

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cliffdweller
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quote:
Originally posted by Komensky:
quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
God works from within the process of living, not upon it.

He nudges, suggests, prompts and influences us. He does not force, compel or coerce.

Love is in no way coercive. And God is Love.

If you believe in the truth claims of the Bible, God most certainly does force, compel and coerce. I can't imagine what you mean by: 'Love is in no way coercive'.

K.

Other than the somewhat controversial and complicated passage discussed at length upthread (God hardening Pharoah's heart) I can't imagine what passages you are envisioning.

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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner

Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008  |  IP: Logged
Martin60
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Where is God in Christ coercive?

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Love wins

Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged



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