God as omnipotent creator Flashcards
God as omnipotent creator
-for many to say that god is the only God means also that he must be omnipotent, the creator of everything that exists and controller of all things.
-since God is the only God, he can’t be challenges by any other power or authority so Christians have deduced that God must be omnipotents
-Matthew 19:26 “with god all things are possible”
Christians disagree about what is means to be omnipotent, because omnipotence can be defined in different ways.
- For some to say Gods omnipotent means he can do absolutely anything including logically impossible.
2.Others think this is just logical nonsense and that to say God is omnipotent means He can do anything that’s ‘logically possible’
for many christians…
-its important to accept (2) as right def because of POE.
-if (1) is true we are faced with problem of why God doesn’t control evil in world.
-scholars such as Hick + Plantinga maintain that (2) is true, and that its not logically possible for G to allow humans to be truly free and to get rid of evil at same time.
omnipotent —> creator
-if god is omnipotent he must be creator of everything that exists.
-most christians accept this, although again they disagree about method of Gods creation:
-1. some christians believe that the universe ex Deo, but most reject this idea as it would imply that God and his creation are the same thing, whereas most Christians believe that God is transcendent and ‘WHOLLY OTHER’ (completely diff from material world)
problem with genesis
-may be true that God created universe from nothing. the problem is that Genesis does not show this to be the case, because Revised Standard Versions transaction here wrong.
more likely Hebrew translation
“the earth being void without form”
-already existing dark eatery chaos.
-Gods creative acts are to bring order to this chaos, hence his first act is to create light to banish darkness.
Exodus
‘I AM THAT I AM”
God as controller of all things
-God must in some sense control everything.
-another way of saying this is to refer to God as “King” or “sovereign” since a king has control over his subjects.
-god sustains the universe, he holds it in existence and preserves in from destruction. God sustains the fabric of existence itself.
idea of god sustaining the universe expressed in may ways:
-god preserved universe from falling back into watery chaos.
-god ‘set the earth on its foundations, so that is never should be shaken’ psalm 104:5
-we said above that monotheism for christians is ethical, god sustains human morality by providing a code by which Christians are expected to live (teachings of J, 10 commandments)
Christians vary in their interpretation of God as controller of all things
- since God is only god and since he is all powerful must also be omniscient. Must therefore know past, present + future. Meaning future fixed + unavoidable. (theological determinism) in its strongest from means humans dont have free will and so God has absolute control over persons actions.
alternative view of god as controller
-follow Aquinas’ view that God doesn’t exist in time: rather he exists timelessly. for G there’s no today, tomorrow or yesterday.
-god sees all times, rather like an unrolled scroll, so he sees the entire history of the universe timelessly.
-some argue Gods omniscience means that god sees the result of our future free choices but doesn’t cause them
-god has the power to intervene and control, but doesn’t he permits human free choices.
question of whether we have free will
-since many believe that without free will our moral actions are worthless, since we would be nothing more that ‘moral robots’
god as transcendent
-means that god us above and beyond the space-time universe
-god is not made of anything and does not exist in anything ( can’t exist in space or time as this would limit him)
-god is eternal having no beginning or end. as god is omnipotent creator nothing is responsible for his existence.
-god wasn’t created by someone else and he didn’t create himself. god is his own existence and gods essence is to exist.
gods transcendence is expressed in many ways in the Bible
“no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” - corinthians
“for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and thoughts than your thoughts” Isaiah
Rudolph Otto
-an apprehension of the wholly other
-Otto focuses on Gods holiness in the sense oh his being numinous and transcendent.
-for example in narrative of Moses call where god tells Moses to take off his shoes because he’s standing on holy ground (texts such as these show Gods transcendence means gods true nature is unknowable)
