Prove that God is good
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alexandriaisburning
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Because it can't be proven. Moreover, it's actually a bad question in general. After all, if we grant the assumption that God exists, we must of necessity assume that God is good.
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alexandriaisburning
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Classically, God's goodness is understood not as a "measuring up" of God's actions to some standard external to God whereby God's actions would be classified as "good", but rather as fundamental to the very nature of God. That is, God is not "good", as if "goodness" can be understood in isolation from the divine nature; rather, goodness is that which God is.
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OK, so let me ask you this: what if "good" were actually defined as "evil" by the vast majority of humanity? Take, for example, the death of the two witnesses in Rev. 11.
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Quid est Veritas?
In Memoriam to CS Lewis
What is good to one person may be evil to another. The Nazi regime would consider it good to eradicate the Jews for instance.
For the concept to have any merit and not be merely a description of what someone wants, it needs a universal definition, a Platonic Form if you will. Something which is Good itself, upon which others' idea of what is 'good' or not can be measured.
The very idea of the Christian God is predicated on Him undertaking this function.
For the concept to have any merit and not be merely a description of what someone wants, it needs a universal definition, a Platonic Form if you will. Something which is Good itself, upon which others' idea of what is 'good' or not can be measured.
The very idea of the Christian God is predicated on Him undertaking this function.
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alexandriaisburning
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As I mentioned earlier, this would be irrelevant in terms of speaking about God's goodness. As God's goodness isn't adjudicated by the opinions or standards of that which is "other-than" God, the whole of creation could insist on the "non-goodness" of God, and yet it would have no meaningful bearing on the necessary conclusion that God--if God is assumed to exist--is God. To assume the existence of God is to assume the goodness of God as well.
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- Jun 12, 2009
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I would say you must look at things from the 'truly' ETERNAL perspective to 'determine' God's goodness. Otherwise slaughtering women and children was 'good' in the OT, but not acceptable as good, by anyone's standards TODAY.
And of course, when I say ETERNAL above I'm not including the use of that word in nominal translations of the bible...but that's another 'issue' of course.
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Thursday
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We can only prove that God is good if life is eternal.
Life on earth is inconsequential when compared to eternity, so justice could prevail.
If life is not eternal, and God created us, then it would be difficult to accept that God is good given the terrible situations many face here on earth.
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Albion
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OK. You're saying that before asking and answering the question asked in this thread, it really would be necessary to decide what "good" and "evil" mean.I would say you must look at things from the 'truly' ETERNAL perspective to 'determine' God's goodness. Otherwise slaughtering women and children was 'good' in the OT, but not acceptable as good, by anyone's standards TODAY.
And of course, when I say ETERNAL above I'm not including the use of that word in nominal translations of the bible...but that's another 'issue' of course.
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We might define “good” as being Loving and the ultimate Love as being “totally unselfish”, so all we have to show is as being totally unselfish.
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Seems logical to me. Example: If we were in a room arguing and I picked up a chair and threw it through the glass window behind me....is that good or evil? From your 'immediate temporal' perspective it would probably be considered not only 'bad', but maybe even a little scary as to what I might do next....right? But if you saw what I saw through the window behind you, which was gun toting terrorists heading for the only door to the room we were in....you might be thankful that I just opened an escape route to save 'both' of us...because I really wasn't 'that mad' at you, that I wanted you dead. And my, more 'futuristic temporal' motivation, would supersede your more 'immediate temporal' understanding and experience POV. I hope that analogy helps.
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alexandriaisburning
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The situations that obtain within the contingent creation have no bearing on the goodness of God. If God is good, then God is good. God is not good "if" x, y, and z obtain within creation, or "not good" if a, b, and c do obtain; God's goodness is not a measure of God's relationship to a standard of behavior or being. God is good simply because God exists; by virtue of this starting proposition, it follows that all that God does (or doesn't do, for that matter) is good...again, not because it "seems" so, or because it measures up to what goodness is in our minds. No, God is good because God is God; all of God's actions must therefore be good because it is a good God acting.
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alexandriaisburning
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It's a helpful analogy for describing how human beings adjudicate the "goodness" of a behavior (even if we are admitting that it is a relative scale based on the additional adjudication of the outcomes). However, it's not really useful when discussing the goodness of God. God's actions aren't good because they result in the most desirable outcome (although one might argue that this is, in fact, the case). No, God's actions are good because it is God acting. As God is necessarily good, it follows that God's actions must necessarily be good, regardless of how desirable we conclude the outcomes to be.
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Thursday
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That argument doesn't work with someone who is agnostic.
When we give our children vaccinations, all they know is fear and pain. They have no idea that it is good for them, but it is.
Our life on earth could hold many similar experiences if life is eternal. Otherwise, how could you call a God good who created millions of people who will be born to suffer daily then die in pain?
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