Is God Truly All Powerful?

[freelight]

Gods omnipotence conditioned

Gods omnipotence conditioned

. He voluntarily limited His power by giving us genuine freedom (i.e. He does not control every moral and mundane choice in the universe). God remains perfect and good and all-powerful even if we do not meet the conditions of appropriating HIs perfect provision (repentant faith in Christ and His finished work).

Summary: God is good; God is all-powerful, but is not the only free moral agent in the universe (He voluntarily limits His sheer power and does not always exercise His potential power); man is a free moral agent; if they reject Him, they suffer the consequences forever. This is not God's fault. He died for us, so we must now live for Him instead of Self. We are without excuse if we reject His love; He remains perfect whether we serve Him or not.

Indeed for absolute free will to exist in free moral agents.....an extension of power was issued from God to other conscious beings(creatures) thereby giving them a sovereignty of will. In this bestowal, God gave up the total supremacy of Himself being the Sole One Being with free-will Sovereignty. This does not disqualify God as being omnipotent within the ethical consitution of His government but simply shows that He will not coerce any of his creatures to do anything against their will. (assuming free will is absolutely sovereign with regards to the station, condition and destiny of the individual soul).The gift of free will-agency then can be a blessing or a tragedy......as the potential for sin enters into such freedom. However views vary about free wills place of influence in the the souls destiny as schools of theology/philosophy may have a cosmology where its conditional factors may place limitations on free will and/or assume divine Will as ultimately Soveriegn even concerning the destinies of Gods creations (universalism, arminianism, calvinism, etc.). Whether hell exists as an eternal lake of fire are also subject to inspection.....as well as the illogicity and cruelty of the doctrine of eternal conscious suffering/punishment of souls imposed by Deity.

So.....we would beg to explore free wills dimensions and powers within a respective context. God is All-powerful primally in the sense that All power resides and originates in His Eternal BEING. How much power he gives to free-will creatures that may oppose his power or divine Will is also open to inspection. If we maintain the absolute free-will sovereignty of a soul, then its power can only ultimately affect its own station, condition and final destiny. Of course the Will of God remains eternally constant. This however does cause one to question the risk taken by God if he knew that free-will creatures would oppose His will (or even have absolute power to do so!) therefore setting himself up for grief or disappointment...assuming some souls can reach a place of no return with no chances for rescue, recovery, restoration whatsoever. I still hold to a kind of Universalism where ultimately divine Will is triumphant in every-thing and being.....because God is Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent........ABSOLUTELY. If we are to maintain that God is OMNI-potent...then we must assume His Will is. We also must assume that no part of God will be lost or indeed can be lost! But this gets into more dimensions of course.



paul

 

[godrulz]

I agree. I usually enjoy Godrulz posts.

I always enjoy your spirit, attitude, and thoughts. Clete is also one of the sharper tools in the shed. Hey, is this fellowship week again?

 

[Lovejoy]

I always enjoy your spirit, attitude, and thoughts. Clete is also one of the sharper tools in the shed. Hey, is this fellowship week again?

:chuckle: One can only hope not!

 

[Humanoid]

Summary: God is good; God is all-powerful, but is not the only free moral agent in the universe (He voluntarily limits His sheer power and does not always exercise His potential power); man is a free moral agent; if they reject Him, they suffer the consequences forever.

Ok, so lets call this option C2 then. Recall option C was:

C. God is NOT omnipotent, doesn't really know who will end up in hell, but the ones that do will suffer there eternally.

So according to you, option C2 is:

God is omnipotent (this ofcourse implies omniscient), but chooses not to see the ultimate fate of everyone (although he could if he wanted to) to respect their free will. Some people will go to heaven, while a great deal will instead be forever tormented in hell.

Is this correct?

If so then then again this begs the question, why would he even risk ONE soul being forever tormented? How could you enjoy anything knowing that one of your children is forever suffering?

To me this isn't just a "point of discussion", it is extremely grave question!

Please excuse any errors, english is not my first language....but it's not my last either :dunce:

 

[godrulz]

Ok, so lets call this option C2 then. Recall option C was:

C. God is NOT omnipotent, doesn't really know who will end up in hell, but the ones that do will suffer there eternally.

So according to you, option C2 is:

God is omnipotent (this ofcourse implies omniscient), but chooses not to see the ultimate fate of everyone (although he could if he wanted to) to respect their free will. Some people will go to heaven, while a great deal will instead be forever tormented in hell.

Is this correct?

If so then then again this begs the question, why would he even risk ONE soul being forever tormented? How could you enjoy anything knowing that one of your children is forever suffering?

To me this isn't just a "point of discussion", it is extremely grave question!

Please excuse any errors, english is not my first language....but it's not my last either :dunce:

I do not believe God choses not to see the fate of everyone. He knows that many will reject Him, but this does not mean He knows which individuals will reject Him trillions of years before they even existed. Once alive and hardening their hearts, He would be able to see the potential outcome of their choices, yet His mercy and conviction can still reach them. It is not a foregone conclusion what their destiny will be until the end. So, it is not that He decides not to see their fate, it is that He cannot see their fate before they were born unless He predestined or caused it negating their choice and responsibility. Even in the original 'very good' creation, it was God's expectation that man would not rebel. He was genuinely grieved and had a change of disposition after the fact. He knew the possibility of hell, but not the certainty.

What is your first language?

God in His wisdom felt it was a higher good and glory to create rather than not create. He also felt the risk of free will was more important than creating robots. It breaks His heart when His creation perish apart from Him. However, His love for life, truth, holiness, etc. outweighed the alternative of no life or robots who could not love and live. If we understood God's love and holiness and wisdom we would know that hell and creation flow out of the love and holiness of God. He will have a people for Himself. This brings great joy to Him. Hell was for Satan. Jesus died to save us. Man does not need to go to hell. If he rejects God, God's truth will triumph still.

"Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Gen. 18:25

 

[Humanoid]

My first language is romanian, not a very expansive language lol.....

Your views on God surprise me, how many christians do you think share a view like yours? I think I can safely assume you are a minority.

This sounds very contradictory to me:
"Even in the original 'very good' creation, it was God's expectation that man would not rebel. "

and

"He also felt the risk of free will was more important than creating robots."

By rebelling you mean it from the fruit of the tree of knowledge? Why would a quest for knowledge, curiosity be considered rebelling? Don't you think that's a rather unfair and unrealistic rule for God to impose on his creations?

It doesn't make sense to me that he cherishes our free will so much, to the point that it overwhelms his pain about all those eternally damned, yet expected Adam and Eve to refrain from such an overwhelming temptation. After all, they were only humans You don't expect a 4 year old to NOT eat the plate of chocolate cookies you place in front of his nose do you? And then when he does, punish him in a manner like he had the comprehension to understand the consequences of his actions.

I just don't buy it that God has such poor judgement.........on people of all things

 

[Humanoid]

aah, I can't seem to edit my posts.....
I wrote: ...you mean it from the fruit....." ofcourse i meant "eat from the fuit".....

 

[Humanoid]

Also:
"And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

How would Adam have any idea what dying ment?

 

[Lovejoy]

I am not sure where Godrulz deviates from the norm on this, but of course it is ridiculously late and I may just be missing it. God did not set us up for failure. He does not want us to fail. But stopping us from being able to make a choice is a greater failure, I think.

 

[Lighthouse]

I have a question which has been going on in my head for a while and I would like to get some opinions, some thoughts on this matter, please.

My question is: Can God see the future? Does he know everything that will happen in someone's life, from start to finish?

If he can, than what is the point of creating "bad" people? I mean if he know that this soul will be foreever tormented in hell (or perhaps not forever, seems to me in 2000 years people should at least have agreed on that), but even if hell is just temporary punishment, why create this soul in the first place?

If God KNEW that this person would kill or hurt other people?

Furthermore, if we each have a destiny, than saying we have free will is kind of pointless isn't it? If I were to tell someone: Listen, in about 3 years from now something is going to happen to you and you will kill 10 people.
They'll say, no way, that can't be me. But ofcourse, it's your destiny. NOTHING you do, even knowing what I've just told you, will change that. It's your future, it's your only future because that's what God has seen. And God cannot be wrong.

So this is all very confusing........

To clear this all up, the answer to your first two questions is, "No."

 

[Lovejoy]

Also:
"And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

How would Adam have any idea what dying ment?

He obviously did not understand that well! In the end, even those of us that live with death don't really get it all that well, though. All God had to do with Adam is make it clear that he would come to an end, cease to be. After that, the word for "death" took on a clearer meaning.

 

[Lovejoy]

To clear this all up, the answer to your first two questions is, "No."

Yeah, God knows what is knowable. You can't know things that are just unknowable, or you are dealing with something completely irrational.

 

[Lighthouse]

To suggest that God does not exist outside of time is to suggest that he is bound by his own creation. He's not bound by the physical or spiritual aspects of his creation, why should he be bound by the temporal?

He is bound by the physical and spiritual. He is also bound by the temporal.

 

[Humanoid]

But stopping us from being able to make a choice is a greater failure, I think.

I agree, but why do you stop there? Isn't it reasonable that in order to give someone freedom of choice, you also have to give them the reasoning capabilites to make a choice? I just don't see how Adam could have had the capacity or precedent to understand the threat of punishment such as "you will die if you do this". He or Eve did not know or understand what death was.

Furthermore it makes no sense to me that God specifically forbade them to understand the difference between good and evil, yet the reason we have free will apparently is so that we choose to go to God willingly, because our free will has taught us the difference between good and evil, and that evil is bad, is death, torment etc....

You see what I mean? Why make a rule to forbid them knowing the difference between good and evil if that knowledge is the only sincere way of going to God and understanding his goodness?

Can Adam understand the goodness of God without understanding what evil is? If so, then why create evil, why not let us understand by some other means besides death, evil and torment?

 

[Humanoid]

All God had to do with Adam is make it clear that he would come to an end, cease to be. After that, the word for "death" took on a clearer meaning.

Actually no, he would not understand, how could he comprehend "come to an end, cease to be"? How would God possibly explain to him this concept???

 

[Lighthouse]

I have no trouble subscribing to the "ever-present now" theory. As temporal beings, it's difficult for us to comprehend, but if God created time (we can all agree on that, right?), I see no reason that he would constrain himself within his own creation.

No, God did not create time.

 

[Lighthouse]

It has occured to me that God's omnipotence effects what He can do, thus the fact that He can not lie is because He is powerful enough to not lie.

 

[Lovejoy]

I agree, but why do you stop there? Isn't it reasonable that in order to give someone freedom of choice, you also have to give them the reasoning capabilites to make a choice? I just don't see how Adam could have had the capacity or precedent to understand the threat of punishment such as "you will die if you do this". He or Eve did not know or understand what death was.

Furthermore it makes no sense to me that God specifically forbade them to understand the difference between good and evil, yet the reason we have free will apparently is so that we choose to go to God willingly, because our free will has taught us the difference between good and evil, and that evil is bad, is death, torment etc....

You see what I mean? Why make a rule to forbid them knowing the difference between good and evil if that knowledge is the only sincere way of going to God and understanding his goodness?

Can Adam understand the goodness of God without understanding what evil is? If so, then why create evil, why not let us understand by some other means besides death, evil and torment?

There is a misunderstanding here. Adam and eve knew right from wrong. That is apparent in how they approached the Serpent. And God expected obediance, and must have had a reason to do so. What they did not understand is the full scope of evil. Is sex okay? Or is it inherently evil? What we have in the world now is a good and pure thing that has been made perverse by our knowledge of perversion. Adam and Eve understood sex, and all the good things of it, without knowing about perversion. Just as a child may lie out of fear, so to did Eve. What she did not do was lie to God out of an effort to hurt Him, as the serpent did. Adam and Eve understood things in the light of a perfect garden, and as children (as Christ would refer to later). They did not understand was how things work in our world, as fallen adults. This is not a black white issue of logic (like assuming that they knew absolutely nothing), but an issue of degrees (they did not know what we know, but something entirely different).

 

[Humanoid]

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying Lovejoy, you are not answering specifically my questions.....

"we have in the world now is a good and pure thing that has been made perverse by our knowledge of perversion. Adam and Eve understood sex, and all the good things of it, without knowing about perversion."

Are you then saying Adam and Eve understood what is "good", without necessarily understand the "bad"?

We can understand what is good, be good, without an understanding of what is evil?

We can understand the goodness of God, without knowing hell?

Then what is the purpose of evil?

 

[Humanoid]

Why do you conclude Adam and Eve knew right from wrong? A child simply does (most of the time) as you tell him, but in doing so does not prove he understands WHY his obedience is good, and his disobedience is bad.

At first he learns it's bad, because he is punished, so he obeys not because he realizes why something is bad for him but because he wants to avoid the punishment. Then only later as he grows and learns and becomes wiser does he understand why his actions are bad, and doesn't need punishment to be "good".

So that is why I say, how can God expect Adam and Eve to obey this command when they have no understanding of good or bad, right from wrong. And why such a harsh punishment when God should have said: You know what, it's my fault, I expected too much from you, and it was unrealistic.

So far in this thread I've learned that:

God is not omnipotent
God doesn't know how you'll end up
God wouldn't know the first thing about raising children
Evil seems to have been invented by God as a trap for man to fall into, and then God blames man for falling into the trap and punishes him for it!