But the specific problem is that you prefix this by inferring that God *does* abide by an ethical framework, whereas the point is that "God neither conforms to nor invents the moral order."
The very next sentence of the quote is:
"Rather His very nature is the standard for value."
God acts according to the standard of value, which is God's nature.
If God does not conform to the moral order, but acts according to His own nature, that means that He is not a moral agent.
God does not conform to the moral order in the sense that God has to reshape (form) what God would have done anyway to fit (conform) into a moral order.
The view that you can't be a moral agent if you act according to your nature is I think quite wrong.
Virtue ethics makes a distinction between akratic behaviour (the agent knows they ought to resist temptation but in spite of themselves doesn't), enkratic behaviour (the agent resists temptation because they know what the right thing to do is), and virtuous behaviour (the agent does what they want to do because that is what they want to do). So an enkratic agent gives to charity because they know giving to charity is the right thing; a virtuous moral agent gives to charity because in addition to knowing what morality requires they feel sympathy for those to whom they give and desire their good. That is, their reasons for acting are not merely that morality requires them to do so but are the reasons why morality requires it.
A virtuous moral agent is therefore one who acts out of their whole nature not merely their reason and willpower.
God is not enkratic: obeying the moral law through discipline rather than through inclination. Rather, God is perfectly virtuous, and virtue in others is imitation of God.
I think virtue ethics is a probably a better "fit" for Christianity - in which instance it's typically conceived as becoming Christlike. However, as with morality, there is only one standard for virtue, which is God's nature.
Moral agents are held to account according to a standard, whether value or virtue (or some other). Being held to account according to one's own nature just leads to everyone doing "what is right in their own eyes". Furthermore, God cannot be held to account.
Putting it another way, we wouldn't say that God is Christlike.
But the specific problem is that you prefix this by inferring that God *does* abide by an ethical framework, whereas the point is that "God neither conforms to nor invents the moral order."
The very next sentence of the quote is:
"Rather His very nature is the standard for value."
God acts according to the standard of value, which is God's nature.
If God does not conform to the moral order, but acts according to His own nature, that means that He is not a moral agent.
God does not conform to the moral order in the sense that God has to reshape (form) what God would have done anyway to fit (conform) into a moral order.
The view that you can't be a moral agent if you act according to your nature is I think quite wrong.
Virtue ethics makes a distinction between akratic behaviour (the agent knows they ought to resist temptation but in spite of themselves doesn't), enkratic behaviour (the agent resists temptation because they know what the right thing to do is), and virtuous behaviour (the agent does what they want to do because that is what they want to do). So an enkratic agent gives to charity because they know giving to charity is the right thing; a virtuous moral agent gives to charity because in addition to knowing what morality requires they feel sympathy for those to whom they give and desire their good. That is, their reasons for acting are not merely that morality requires them to do so but are the reasons why morality requires it.
A virtuous moral agent is therefore one who acts out of their whole nature not merely their reason and willpower.
God is not enkratic: obeying the moral law through discipline rather than through inclination. Rather, God is perfectly virtuous, and virtue in others is imitation of God.
I think virtue ethics is a probably a better "fit" for Christianity - in which instance it's typically conceived as becoming Christlike. However, as with morality, there is only one standard for virtue, which is God's nature.
Moral agents are held to account according to a standard, whether value or virtue (or some other). Being held to account according to one's own nature just leads to everyone doing "what is right in their own eyes". Furthermore, God cannot be held to account.
Putting it another way, we wouldn't say that God is Christlike.
Yes, yes we would. It's exactly what Jesus says in John- "He who has see me has seen the father".
Unless of course every preacher who's ever said that one of Jesus' purposes was to show us what God is like is completely wrong of course.
...
Putting it another way, we wouldn't say that God is Christlike.
Yes, yes we would. It's exactly what Jesus says in John- "He who has see me has seen the father".
Unless of course every preacher who's ever said that one of Jesus' purposes was to show us what God is like is completely wrong of course.
I see. Serves me right for trying to put it "another way".
That seems like two rather contrasting attitudes to being or becoming Christlike. Would you say we aspire to (or attain) Christlikeness in the same way as God does?
...
Putting it another way, we wouldn't say that God is Christlike.
Yes, yes we would. It's exactly what Jesus says in John- "He who has see me has seen the father".
Unless of course every preacher who's ever said that one of Jesus' purposes was to show us what God is like is completely wrong of course.
I see. Serves me right for trying to put it "another way".
That seems like two rather contrasting attitudes to being or becoming Christlike. Would you say we aspire to (or attain) Christlikeness in the same way as God does?
God already has Christlikeness by definition. We aim to achieve it.
God already has Christlikeness by definition. We aim to achieve it.
Even when putting people to death?
Us or God?
God
He doesn't. Or at least I don't believe he does. I used to, but that's the God I left when I left evangelicalism. The one I'm absolutely terrified of actually being real because the prospect causes me to despair of all hope.
God already has Christlikeness by definition. We aim to achieve it.
Even when putting people to death?
Us or God?
God
He doesn't. Or at least I don't believe he does. I used to, but that's the God I left when I left evangelicalism. The one I'm absolutely terrified of actually being real because the prospect causes me to despair of all hope.
Do you have any evidence for Love as the ground of infinite being apart from that bastard?
If so, feed it back in to the Jesus story. Because He, being fully human, fully enculturated, couldn't not get Himself wrong either. He walked by transcendent faith with feet clagged with ANE clay.
God already has Christlikeness by definition. We aim to achieve it.
Even when putting people to death?
Us or God?
God
He doesn't. Or at least I don't believe he does. I used to, but that's the God I left when I left evangelicalism. The one I'm absolutely terrified of actually being real because the prospect causes me to despair of all hope.
Do you have any evidence for Love as the ground of infinite being apart from that bastard?
If so, feed it back in to the Jesus story. Because He, being fully human, fully enculturated, couldn't not get Himself wrong either. He walked by transcendent faith with feet clagged with ANE clay.
I suspect that you don't. The only evidence you have is the story. And that is toxic.
I'm in the same position as @KarlLB for what it's worth, but the toxicity of various stories has to be acknowledged. There is a lot of rhetoric aimed at particular contemporary readers which is quoted as coming out of Jesus's mouth, but I think this belongs on another thread.
It's worth a great deal @ThunderBunk. In a previous life, before becoming a born again atheist, I'd argue here just as I proposed @KarlLB do above. I'd find the universalism, the competent Love in the words of Jesus despite the harsh, hard damnationism.
It's worth a great deal @ThunderBunk. In a previous life, before becoming a born again atheist, I'd argue here just as I proposed @KarlLB do above. I'd find the universalism, the competent Love in the words of Jesus despite the harsh, hard damnationism.
It's a relief that I'm not having to rehearse my "just when I've got to a point where I can cope with God you go and make him a git again" speech.
I think, to be horribly conventional for a moment, that holding in tension the condemnatory bits in Jesus' words (and those said about him by NT authors) with the stuff about reconciling all nature, and God being all forgiving - he commands us to love and forgive our enemies, so cannot himself be working to any other standard - I'm left with the concept that the damnation is:
(a) metaphorical. Bad Things(TM) are spiritually harmful - they widen the estrangement between God and man. If they were left to fester they could ultimately destroy us, notwithstanding that ultimately God can and will win - Love wins, as you liked to say @Martin54
(b) code. "This way leads to Hell" == "This is a really really bad thing".
So the stuff about the wide gate and the narrow one is saying that the right thing is often the harder, requires some thought and finding, and therefore the way less travelled.
That's how it seems to me, anyway. Probably belongs on the Universalism thread though.
If only reality had Love's signature, I would bow the knee to all of that @KarlLB. But that all we have is natural radicalized ancient Jewish humanism that we have to work at to reconstruct as universal Love, is too big an ask for me. I'm glad it works for you and @ThunderBunk and nearly all here. As I drifted off last night, I was, of course, craving an epiphany.
I remember a thread a good many years back about Orthodox views on Hell. More along the lines of God's eternal presence being Heaven to some and Hell to others, as it were. Some people will say, 'Hey! This is great!' Others will say, 'Ouch! That smarts!'
That's a crude way of putting it, of course.
I wouldn't 'dogmatise' any one particular view but certainly incline towards @KarlLB's attempts to interpret these things in a different way to medieval RC and classic evangelical terms. FWIW I do incline to a 'wider hope' and have a great deal of sympathy with a universalist position.
Whether that makes me any less of a bastard is for others to decide. 'Will not the God of all the earth do right?'
It's all above my pay-grade but I'd rather concentrate on whether I'm choosing the 'narrow path' in terms of how I relate to other people and 'work out' my 'salvation with fear and trembling' than mither about whether other people are on that path or not.
People think we're weird praying for the dead but I find it helpful. Not because I believe I'm gaining people remission from Purgatory (which in RC theology was for the 'saved' let's not forget) but because I love them.
I'm reminded of a Western I saw once, possibly with Lee Van Cleef.
By which I mean Lee Van Cleef may have been in the Western, not that I watched it with him ...
Just thought I'd clear that up.
There was a scene where the baddie, caught out and thwarted, shouts, 'You bastard!'
To which the hero - or anti-hero - replies, 'With me, it was an accident of birth. With you, Mr Whatever-the-Baddie's-Name-Was - you are a self-made man.'
As an aside, I understand the rhetorical flourish, @Martin54 but may there not be some kind of paradox, creative or otherwise, in your continuing to call God names even though you don't believe in a deity anymore?
I'm reminded of a Western I saw once, possibly with Lee Van Cleef.
By which I mean Lee Van Cleef may have been in the Western, not that I watched it with him ...
Just thought I'd clear that up.
There was a scene where the baddie, caught out and thwarted, shouts, 'You bastard!'
To which the hero - or anti-hero - replies, 'With me, it was an accident of birth. With you, Mr Whatever-the-Baddie's-Name-Was - you are a self-made man.'
Nope. Lee Marvin. Ralph Bellamy. Jack Pallance! As Jesus Raza. Claudia Cardinale!!! Burt Lancaster. Woody Strode. The Professionals.
As an aside, I understand the rhetorical flourish, @Martin54 but may there not be some kind of paradox, creative or otherwise, in your continuing to call God names even though you don't believe in a deity anymore?
Just sayin' ...
I'm pointing out knowing the utter absurdity of Jesus' and most (as in the vast, overwhelming mass) of his followers' even reconstructed liberal God. And I don't belief full stop. Period. Except in subjective unconditional positive regard (as to you above), truth, beauty. I don't, won't, can't do unwarranted belief beyond those psychologically healthy ones. Wish I could.
If a grey star starts shining above the sun*, in each hemisphere, we will know that there is intentional transcendence. I doubt it would change what anyone believes about their G/god/s. What would the now God knowing scientific community believe about Him?
For me, any instance of the fingerpost meaning 'God', would also mean Love. Arthur C. Clarke's The Star notwithstanding. In which there certainly is a God and He certainly is a bastard.
Wish that believing was enough. I have to know. And so I do.
How the Fall works may be, in the specific theological sense, a mystery, and/or something we can only begin to comprehend symbolically or through sacred myth; I have no problem with either the notion that the human Fall worked backward through, or transcending time, or with the notion that the fall of a third of the angels happened before even the furthest of prehistory we know of (and/or worked backward through/transcending time, perhaps like Tolkien's Music of the Ainur).
Is an ethical framework required of God? Clearly God expects humanity to function under a specific, proscribed framework, but does it apply to him?
If it doesn't we then get hooked on the Euthyphro dilemma: does God command the ethical framework because it's good (but then what makes it good?) or is it only good because it's commanded by God (in which case God is an arbitrary dictator).
The traditional theistic answer (in those traditions that do philosophy) is that created goodness is a reflection of God's nature. In traditions influenced by Plato it's an actual participation in God's nature; in others it's an imitation. As Lamb Chopped has already said.
I note that the classical theistic perspective is that the Euthyphro dilemma is a false dilemma.
From a classical theistic perspective, therefore, the Euthyphro dilemma is false. As Rogers puts it, "Anselm, like Augustine before him and Aquinas later, rejects both horns of the Euthyphro dilemma. God neither conforms to nor invents the moral order. Rather His very nature is the standard for value."
I have no problem with it. If Love were the ground of being, They would have no option to create as if they didn't. If They are real, that's exactly what They've done. What They're doing. Always and forever. Transcendence will answer.
But why couldn't They have Jesus exercise divine intelligence? The pious fraudsters of the Pericope Adulterae obviously felt the same. There is nothing unnatural in the editing of the greatest story ever told.
How the Fall works may be, in the specific theological sense, a mystery, and/or something we can only begin to comprehend symbolically or through sacred myth; I have no problem with either the notion that the human Fall worked backward through, or transcending time, or with the notion that the fall of a third of the angels happened before even the furthest of prehistory we know of (and/or worked backward through/transcending time, perhaps like Tolkien's Music of the Ainur).
I don't think it works for the fall to be a historical event. If it happens in history and its effects go backwards through time then causality and free will are shafted and I think that's a bigger problem than seeing the fall as a metaphor for human nature - aka the "please do not press this button" problem.
Yes, we've been here before.
Why does God allow suffering?
Why doesn't he intervene?
I don't think I have ever heard an acceptable answer to these questions. Generally they depict God as either malelovent or impotent.
It has taken most of my life to learn, but I try not to speak for anyone anymore. I will not attempt to speak for God either.
Biblical writers seemed to see pain and suffering as part of the deal. Looking around it seems to be.
What I find worse is the common admonishment from pastors and teachers to figure out "what the Lord is teaching you through your suffering." Impossible. It is beyond me.
And when we look at the headlines in this way, how does it work? I see systems of injustice in which I am complicit and from which I benefit -- at great cost to the suffering so that I suffer less if at all. But I don't hear these same pastors and teachers talking about social justice. Maybe condeming the suffering by creating imaginary sins they have committed for which they are being judged.
I am just catching up on this very interesting discussion.
A small group I'm part of recently engaged with a talk by Thomas Jay Oord on The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amnipotence . It is a thirty-minute listen, and breaks off in mid-sentence if I recall correctly, but it's enough to get the idea of what it's about. Essentially, God is not omnipotent because he/she/they are limited by love. It is not to say they are not immensely powerful but because of their love they could not, for example, walk down the high street gunning people down.
I don't think it works for the fall to be a historical event. If it happens in history and its effects go backwards through time then causality and free will are shafted and I think that's a bigger problem than seeing the fall as a metaphor for human nature - aka the "please do not press this button" problem.
I suppose we'll have to disagree. It may also have to do with how time works on all kinds of levels. (I'm quite confident the universe is very, very old--I'm not arguing against that or against biological evolution at all.) And of course this reverse-causality idea is only one model among many--it could be any of the ones I listed, or something completely different. I suspect that, ultimately, no matter how developed our sciences go in the future, this may be something we can only grasp through the language of myth, that we will understand more clearly when we see God face to Face.
I suspect that, ultimately, no matter how developed our sciences go in the future, this may be something we can only grasp through the language of myth, that we will understand more clearly when we see God face to Face.
Chastmastr, I don't want to dismiss what you're saying - I believed this once but I'm not sure I still do.
Comments
Moral agents are held to account according to a standard, whether value or virtue (or some other). Being held to account according to one's own nature just leads to everyone doing "what is right in their own eyes". Furthermore, God cannot be held to account.
Putting it another way, we wouldn't say that God is Christlike.
Yes, yes we would. It's exactly what Jesus says in John- "He who has see me has seen the father".
Unless of course every preacher who's ever said that one of Jesus' purposes was to show us what God is like is completely wrong of course.
That seems like two rather contrasting attitudes to being or becoming Christlike. Would you say we aspire to (or attain) Christlikeness in the same way as God does?
God already has Christlikeness by definition. We aim to achieve it.
Even when putting people to death?
Christ returns to that form.
Us or God?
God
We've got nothing on Him.
He doesn't. Or at least I don't believe he does. I used to, but that's the God I left when I left evangelicalism. The one I'm absolutely terrified of actually being real because the prospect causes me to despair of all hope.
Do you have any evidence for Love as the ground of infinite being apart from that bastard?
If so, feed it back in to the Jesus story. Because He, being fully human, fully enculturated, couldn't not get Himself wrong either. He walked by transcendent faith with feet clagged with ANE clay.
I suspect that you don't. The only evidence you have is the story. And that is toxic.
It's a relief that I'm not having to rehearse my "just when I've got to a point where I can cope with God you go and make him a git again" speech.
I think, to be horribly conventional for a moment, that holding in tension the condemnatory bits in Jesus' words (and those said about him by NT authors) with the stuff about reconciling all nature, and God being all forgiving - he commands us to love and forgive our enemies, so cannot himself be working to any other standard - I'm left with the concept that the damnation is:
(a) metaphorical. Bad Things(TM) are spiritually harmful - they widen the estrangement between God and man. If they were left to fester they could ultimately destroy us, notwithstanding that ultimately God can and will win - Love wins, as you liked to say @Martin54
(b) code. "This way leads to Hell" == "This is a really really bad thing".
So the stuff about the wide gate and the narrow one is saying that the right thing is often the harder, requires some thought and finding, and therefore the way less travelled.
That's how it seems to me, anyway. Probably belongs on the Universalism thread though.
That's a crude way of putting it, of course.
I wouldn't 'dogmatise' any one particular view but certainly incline towards @KarlLB's attempts to interpret these things in a different way to medieval RC and classic evangelical terms. FWIW I do incline to a 'wider hope' and have a great deal of sympathy with a universalist position.
Whether that makes me any less of a bastard is for others to decide. 'Will not the God of all the earth do right?'
It's all above my pay-grade but I'd rather concentrate on whether I'm choosing the 'narrow path' in terms of how I relate to other people and 'work out' my 'salvation with fear and trembling' than mither about whether other people are on that path or not.
People think we're weird praying for the dead but I find it helpful. Not because I believe I'm gaining people remission from Purgatory (which in RC theology was for the 'saved' let's not forget) but because I love them.
By which I mean Lee Van Cleef may have been in the Western, not that I watched it with him ...
Just thought I'd clear that up.
There was a scene where the baddie, caught out and thwarted, shouts, 'You bastard!'
To which the hero - or anti-hero - replies, 'With me, it was an accident of birth. With you, Mr Whatever-the-Baddie's-Name-Was - you are a self-made man.'
Just sayin' ...
Nope. Lee Marvin. Ralph Bellamy. Jack Pallance! As Jesus Raza. Claudia Cardinale!!! Burt Lancaster. Woody Strode. The Professionals.
I'm pointing out knowing the utter absurdity of Jesus' and most (as in the vast, overwhelming mass) of his followers' even reconstructed liberal God. And I don't belief full stop. Period. Except in subjective unconditional positive regard (as to you above), truth, beauty. I don't, won't, can't do unwarranted belief beyond those psychologically healthy ones. Wish I could.
If a grey star starts shining above the sun*, in each hemisphere, we will know that there is intentional transcendence. I doubt it would change what anyone believes about their G/god/s. What would the now God knowing scientific community believe about Him?
For me, any instance of the fingerpost meaning 'God', would also mean Love. Arthur C. Clarke's The Star notwithstanding. In which there certainly is a God and He certainly is a bastard.
Wish that believing was enough. I have to know. And so I do.
*The Hydrogen Sonata, Ian M. Banks
Absolutely agreed.
(Very nice to see you back @ChastMastr).
I have no problem with it. If Love were the ground of being, They would have no option to create as if they didn't. If They are real, that's exactly what They've done. What They're doing. Always and forever. Transcendence will answer.
But why couldn't They have Jesus exercise divine intelligence? The pious fraudsters of the Pericope Adulterae obviously felt the same. There is nothing unnatural in the editing of the greatest story ever told.
I don't think it works for the fall to be a historical event. If it happens in history and its effects go backwards through time then causality and free will are shafted and I think that's a bigger problem than seeing the fall as a metaphor for human nature - aka the "please do not press this button" problem.
He walked by transcendent faith with feet clagged with ANE clay.
It's probably something obvious, but I can't work out what ANE stands for, and Google isn't helping.
Thank you!
Most generous @North East Quine. It is a tad obscure. Americans seem more familiar with it.
I don't think I have ever heard an acceptable answer to these questions. Generally they depict God as either malelovent or impotent.
It has taken most of my life to learn, but I try not to speak for anyone anymore. I will not attempt to speak for God either.
Biblical writers seemed to see pain and suffering as part of the deal. Looking around it seems to be.
What I find worse is the common admonishment from pastors and teachers to figure out "what the Lord is teaching you through your suffering." Impossible. It is beyond me.
And when we look at the headlines in this way, how does it work? I see systems of injustice in which I am complicit and from which I benefit -- at great cost to the suffering so that I suffer less if at all. But I don't hear these same pastors and teachers talking about social justice. Maybe condeming the suffering by creating imaginary sins they have committed for which they are being judged.
Generally, I find theodicy a fruitless effort,
A small group I'm part of recently engaged with a talk by Thomas Jay Oord on The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amnipotence . It is a thirty-minute listen, and breaks off in mid-sentence if I recall correctly, but it's enough to get the idea of what it's about. Essentially, God is not omnipotent because he/she/they are limited by love. It is not to say they are not immensely powerful but because of their love they could not, for example, walk down the high street gunning people down.
I suppose we'll have to disagree. It may also have to do with how time works on all kinds of levels. (I'm quite confident the universe is very, very old--I'm not arguing against that or against biological evolution at all.) And of course this reverse-causality idea is only one model among many--it could be any of the ones I listed, or something completely different. I suspect that, ultimately, no matter how developed our sciences go in the future, this may be something we can only grasp through the language of myth, that we will understand more clearly when we see God face to Face.
Chastmastr, I don't want to dismiss what you're saying - I believed this once but I'm not sure I still do.
However I hope you're right.