On what basis are these things known?
I disagree that Evil is privation of Good for a simple reason: When you suffer from pain, you have a certain experience, and this experience is different from the experience when you have pleasure.
We can for sure say that God is Benevolent and Malevolent from His creation. He is the creator of all diverse forms of existence in an endless universe from nothing, and for that, He needs to be very powerful and knowledgeable. He has to be Omni, since otherwise another entity is Omni!
Isnât God omnipotent then? Is there any text in the Bible saying God is omnipotent or not omnipotent?
Omnipotence means being able to act contrary to His own nature, if necessary. If not, then it is not omnipotence.
So would it be the case that your point here is, claiming that God was not omnipotent?
ââŚthe Lord God omnipotent reigneth.â (Revelation 19:6 KJV)
Acting contrary to His own nature would mean God ceases to be God. That is illogical and self-contradictory.
The Bible is explicit and leaves zero room for exceptions:
ââŚin which it is impossible for God to lieâŚâ (Hebrews 6:18 ESV)
Notice it does not say âit is impossible for God to lie unless it is necessary.â
Your position amounts to saying: âGod is God at all times⌠except when it becomes ânecessaryâ for Him not to be God.â That is not a coherent definition of omnipotence.
No, that is not what Iâm saying at all.
I never claimed that the discovery of what is good is âobvious.â
My point was strictly ontological: Godâs nature necessarily creates the category of its oppositeâexactly as an objective law âdo not murderâ necessarily creates the category of crime. That is not a claim about how immediately clear or obvious the standard must be.
I donât know the details of Marguerite Poreteâs case, but if she was executed simply for her writings, then yes, that was wrong. Burning someone alive for writing a book is murder. The Bible is explicit on this:
âYou shall not murderâ (Exodus 20:13)
And how do you know any of this?
This is discussed in the OP! You didnât comment in the OP, so I donât know whether you agree or disagree.
Omnipotence means can do anything, even the miracles.
If God cannot do what he wants to do because of his nature, He is not God, and is not omnipotent.
You seem to be saying God is not God, because he is not omnipotent. God cannot do things which is not His nature.
That is what I read from your points.
The âproblem of evilâ is a separate issue from your claim that God must be both Benevolent and Malevolent. I already showed why that claim is false with the legal analogy: establishing a positive standard (good) automatically creates the category of its opposite (evil) without the standard itself becoming evil.
Human nature is changeable; Godâs nature is not. We have been granted genuine free will, so moral responsibility lies with the individuals who commit the actsânot with God.
No, that is not what Iâm arguing at all.
God is the unchanging moral standard. He is good and cannot do or be evil. Therefore He is not responsible for the free choices of moral agents. Moral responsibility belongs to the individual who commits sin.
God creates evil indirectly, simply by existing as goodânot out of cruelty or malevolence. The opposite arises automatically as the shadow of the positive standard, just as the law âdo not murderâ automatically creates the category of crime. That does not make the law (or God) malevolent.
These questions assume God had a free choice to be something other than who He is. But as you yourself have acknowledged, God cannot contradict His own nature.
Scripture reveals that:
âGod is loveâ (1 John 4:8 ESV)
And love, by its very nature:
âdoes not insist on its own wayâ (1 Corinthians 13:4â5 NIV)
Genuine love requires genuine free choiceâit cannot be coerced. That is why God created a world in which real moral responsibility exists.
This fully explains the world we live in and answers your âwhyâ question. This is simply the only way reality can exist in accordance with Godâs very natureâeven though God has foreknowledge.
I didnât think you did. If the good was obvious, there would be no need for an incomplete and fallible conveyance of Godâs law, subject to confusion, misinterpretation, or the inability to follow it for other reasons.
Porete Margueriteâs book undermined the authority of the ecclesiastical church. If they thought she was leading souls to eternal damnation, then surely the murder of her physical body must have been justified for the greater good.
Miracles do not contradict Godâs nature.
That logic doesnât follow.
Letâs test it with a simple example: If a human cannot do what he wants to do because of his nature, he is not a human?
A human may want to fly like a bird without any technology, but he cannotâbecause it contradicts human nature. Does that mean he is not a human?
Of course not.
The same applies to God. Omnipotence does not mean the ability to do literally anything, including logical contradictions or things that would make Him cease to be God. That definition is incoherent.
No, that is not what Iâm saying at all. You are misreading my position. I have clearly said the opposite: God is omnipotent, but true omnipotence does not include the power to act contrary to His own nature or to perform logical contradictions.
It wasnât. The closest you get is to assert what God is considered to be. What is considered to be and what is known to be are two very different things.
That was your logic. And I was telling you it doesnât follow. And you are saying it doesnât follow either.
If Omnipotence cannot do something because of the nature of the Omnipotent being, then He is no longer omnipotent being.
Saying He is, when He cannot perform things which is not His nature is a contradiction.
That sounds like opposite. True omnipotence can do anything even perform miracles. If not, then it is no longer omnipotence. The limited omnipotence and compromised omnipotence is not true omnipotence.
If we accept that the existence of Evil is an unresolvable problem for a Benevolent God, and in the same manner, the existence of Good is an unresolvable problem for a Malevolent God, then it follows that God must be Benevolent and Malevolent.
You are not adding so much by saying that we have free will. Yes, we are free, but people are craving for killing, rapping, abusing, etc. We can resist the craving, but any person can resist to a certain limit, and there is a point at which a person commits a crime, because s/he can no longer resist. Anyhow, damage is made when a person is killed, raped, or abused, so who is responsible for all these if not Benevolent God!, who either created criminals with such a nature or put them under the influence of other higher Beings.
He is certainly responsible for the creation of the world in which Evil acts are not only possible but sometimes become unavoidable.
Not at all. It only questions a Benevolent God. All I am saying is that God knows in advance what the outcome of creation will be, so if there are two options for creation, one includes Evil people, and another does not, so why bother creating a world in which Evil people exist, can do Evil things, and eventually end up in the eternal Hell?
Could we agree that Good and Evil exist in the world?
Not without clarification. Iâll start with this - what is the significance of capitalizing these terms? Does it mean that you regard them as nouns?
Exactly. The Christian virtues of prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude could not exist without suffering and evil. The seven capital virtues (chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, kindness, patience and humility) exist as âvirtuesâ only as counterparts to the seven deadly sins.
1 Like
Yes, I mean nouns when I said Good and Evil. I capitalize them to signify their importance in reality, especially when it comes to discussing God and His nature. A little harm to an innocent child is an unacceptable thing to me when it comes to a Benevolent God, so it is Evil. In the same manner, a little love is not acceptable when it comes to a Malevolent God, so it is Good.
In that case I do not agree. They are adjectives not nouns. They are not entities.