Did God determine his own nature?

Did God determine his own nature

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Marvin Knox

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Did God determine his own nature?
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt concerning my prior opinion that you are just playing games here.

I'm going to assume that you simply have trouble reasoning logically. I'll take you through it very simply.

We have already agreed that there is nothing, as you say, "outside of Himself". Therefore the option that something outside of Himself determined God's nature is a non starter.

"Decide" is a synonym for determine. I assume that you want to know if God is the One Who decided what He would be in His nature and then did what was required to make that nature actually be.

Obviously one of the eternal attributes of God's nature is His ability to decide (or determine) things. He created us with that same attribute.

Saying that God decided what His nature would be is tantamount to saying that God created Himself - since His nature already included the ability to decide.

Self creation is a logical absurdity.

God's deciding on His nature (to include the ability to decide) and then doing what was required to make that nature come into existence is impossible.

Now - if you were asking if God has acted to display the attribute of being able to decide things, that would be easy to answer. Of course He has and of course He is doing so even now and will do so in the future according to what He has told us in His Word.

The eternal nature of God is a mutual love or appreciation within Himself of the various attributes He has always possessed.

God's eternal Son has always reflected the nature of the Father. The Father has always loved what He sees displayed in His Son. The Son has always loved displaying all that the Father is and reflecting it back to bring the Father glory.

The Holy Spirit (who is said to be generated by, or proceed from, both the Father and the Son) is the person generated by the mutual love of the Father and the Son. He is the "vehicle", in a manner of speaking, who makes God the very epitome of love itself.

This creation we live in has been and always will be a way to (as God puts it) "magnify" that inherent glory of God by displaying His nature through the work of His Son (in whom all things exist). The Word of God is doing what He has always done in that respect.

"...since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." Romans 1:20
 
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Marvin Knox

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it would be difficult to create something like love if love was not intrinsic to you. i am not speaking of the human emotion here but of its highest ideal. i cannot imagine something that was loveless bringing forth love
I totally agree.

Love is the very nature of God. That's why love is the greatest virtue, or attribute, which can be displayed through those God created in His image.
 
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Michael Scaman

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The first sentence answers the second.

In Islam I believe God can choose his nature
In Christianity and Judaism God chooses what is best seeing the bringing from the end and He Himself is the ideal, even reflected in the commandments which flow from his nature
 
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it would be difficult to create something like love if love was not intrinsic to you. i am not speaking of the human emotion here but of its highest ideal. i cannot imagine something that was loveless bringing forth love
Is the highest ideal of love something created? Is that not an aspect of his nature, uncaused and uncreated?
 
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The problem with the question is that it assumes God is not immutable, that He was different at some point In eternity past.

God does not change. Who He is now is who He always has been.
I was starting with the assumption of immutability. I guess my question is more about whether God is uncaused or self causing. Self causing is obviously problematic, if not logically absurd. Uncaused would mean that God's existence and nature are without reason. This would go against the widely held theology of God's existence/nature being necessary.
 
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Everybodyknows

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Yes. We can give the source of the eternal regression a name, a word that refers to "that".
"God" works.
@Silmarien said that asking this kind of question inevitably leads to eternal regression. There is a point where we have to just stop asking further questions, but this is not a solution. God is the point we usually choose to end or questions, but it's too late I already asked the question. So if further questioning inevitably leads to more eternal regress then God still contains the very problem we have conscripted him to solve.
 
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Everybodyknows

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Nothing can create itself. That's a logical absurdity.

However a thing can be self existent and God is that one and only self existent thing.
I'm not seeing the difference between self creating and self existing. By self existing do you mean that God is the reason for his own existence?
 
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ToBeLoved

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Then there must be some factor external to God that determined his existence and nature. What is it?
or it could be that if God is love, that God cannot be perfect and holy and act outside of His nature.

Like thinking about the entire sin issue. Now God (if He could choose His nature and still be Holy) might have said, I don't need a sacrifice for sin if my Son has to go to earth and suffer, I'll just change that there must be a sacrifice for sin.

But God didn't do that, because by His Own Holiness, He must make us holy as well and remove the sin problem, so His Son had to come to earth and die.
 
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Everybodyknows

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God, by definition, is uncreated.
What do you mean then by God being entirely self determining if he didn't determine his existence?

Thank you for you comment by the way, you seem to be the first to suggest that God is self determining.
 
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Marvin Knox

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I'm not seeing the difference between self creating and self existing.
You really can't see that for something to be created requires that that something not exist before it's creation whereas self existence requires eternality?
By self existing do you mean that God is the reason for his own existence?
Sure.

Why not - if it helps you to make a point by saying it that way?

Is there a certain point you are trying to make with these word games?
..........God is self determining
No - God is self "aware".
 
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Vicomte13

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Most would agree that God's nature is eternal and unchanging. Did God choose his nature or is it determined by some factor outside himself?

Your question could unleash years of philosophical debate.

To be able to even discuss it without talking past each other requires defining the terms used.

Without defining these words, nothing can happen but wheels spinning in the linguistic mud:

"God".
"Nature".
"Eternity".

These cannot be defined without first defining the words that would have to be used to define those things:

"Is",
and
"Exist".

This will lead immediately into a tautology: existence can only be defined in terms of itself.
That which is, exists, that which exists, is.

It is unsurprising, then, that the forms of the verb "to be" are intricately bound up in the concept and name of God.

Of course, to avoid the tautology, one has to find some other reference point. Trouble is, with "existence" and "being", there isn't any other reference point, by definition, unless one wants to consider the notion of nonexistence and emptiness to be the opposite of existence.

Does nonexistence exist?
Is nothing a thing or just a word?
Is empty space a thing, or the utter lack of a thing.

If one defines existence as including nothing, and nonexistence as being part of existence if only as a concept, one is rounding the corner to begin the first discussion of the definitions of the necessary words to have the conversation you propose to have.

I propose the following definitions:

(1) Existence and being. To exist is to be, to be is to exist. That which exists, is. That which is, exists.

(1)(A) Thoughts exist, though they may not be material. (They may be, if thought is purely a chemical structure. But if there is a detachable spirit, such as Near-Death Experiences and all Jewish, Christian, Hebrew, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and pagan religion holds, then thoughts can and do exist without any material. In any case, whether material or not, the fact that we are experiencing thoughts right now reading and writing this demonstrates empirically that thoughts exist as SOMETHING, and as such are part of "existence". They "are".

(1)(B) Nothingness may not exist as a material thing. (The actual space between stars, "outer space" is not really a vacuum. It is a very rarefied plasma of transiting light particles (a photographic film exposed to outer space will wash out with light in time, so "outer space" is really a sea of particles).) To find true vacuum one could go within the crystal latticework in a rock deep in the bowels of the earth, where there is neither air nor water, nor ambient light particles nor anything else but the occasional odd neutrino passing through. This would be (or could be) "true" vacuum - dead space between atomic particles that is literally composed of nothing. That "nothing" is itself certainly a thing, because thoughts are a thing, but it is a thing without material existence. It's only property is that of dimension. (Then again, within each cubic Planck-length space within there COULD be a quantum foam in which existence and non-existence fizzes and pops - or that whole concept could itself be nothing but an imaginative mental contruct, which does not exist in tangible reality, but which does exist as a matter of thought, like Romulans and Vulcans.)

(2) Given those definitions of "Existence" "To Be" and "Nothingness", we can then proceed to define "Nature" precisely for our purpose. Nature is the behavior of that which exists materially (including empty space). That part of the definition is fixed. Nature may or may not include that which is purely thought and mental construct.

In this way, we can speak of a set of things as Nature, and then speak of the apparent laws that govern it, and we leave open the possibility of a larger set of things that are also nature, that include the world of thought.

This problem of thought will emerge throughout our discussion (if we ever go on to have it), for the dichotomy between the physical and the mental, the material and the spiritual, is THE issue that we are grappling with. We live in a universe with concrete points that we can see and touch, using a mind that obviously works, but whose existence is (perhaps) a non-material mystery. And given the self-evident existence of mind, the question of God is the question of whether or not there is an overmind, a spirit that does not live in the physical or require it. Is our thought and mind the intrusion into the reality we can perceive physically of an aspect of existence that we cannot see other than in this way (or through revelation by another mind somewhere)? Or is our mind nothing but the physical/chemical phenomenon generated by a deterministic meat machine?

Definitions at least help us grapple with what we're talking about, which is, at root, God.

(3) God is certainly that which is omnipotent, omnipresent and timeless (or eternal). That God could be an "It": Natural law - the law that governs that "Nature" we have defined (if there is a natural law). But if that God has a mind and is also omniscient, then things get much more interesting. And given that WE have minds, obviously, the universe - which is to say the manifestation of nature - at least perceives itself in a certain way, through us.

Is there a mind over ours? And if there is, is there a mind over that one? Is there ultimately a mind behind natural law that makes it be? If so, that is a theistic God, and is the God of the Jews, the Muslims and the Christians, and "It" becomes a person - a "He" (or possibly "She"). If not, then God is simply the unthinking laws of nature and pantheistic. In any case, given our definition of God, God exists in some form by definition, because Nature is, and behaves regularly, and has a law that makes it do so. So, the really interesting question is whether God has a mind or not - that determines whether God, which is that which is (or the cause of it being so), is pantheistic or theistic.

We can assume a theistic God by definition and move on, or we can pause and demonstrate, from the evidence we have available to us, that it is more likely than not that God is theistic.

(4) "Eternal" would be defined as "that which always was, is, and always will be", or it could be alternatively defined as timeless (which is more nebulous). To really define it, we would have to define the concept of "time".

Note: I'm really trying to wrestle with the essence of things here, so that a conversation can be had using a common, agreed upon lexicon.

If in the end it all looks like mental masturbation, then maybe this discussion isn't for you.

With those terms defined thus, I can answer the question you posed.

But it will take some space and isn't worth doing if you're not interested in seeing the answer.

So, it's up to you.

Do you accept these definitions of terms, or would you like to adjust some of them?
Shall we go on?
 
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You really can't see that for something to be created requires that that something not exist before it's creation whereas self existence requires eternality?
Actually I'm thinking of God atemporally. In the atemporal sense they are not that different, in that they are the same logical progression. It resulted in the same logical absurdity of the cause of something being within itself.

Sure.

Why not - if it helps you to make a point by saying it that way?

Is there a certain point you are trying to make with these word games?
It's not word games, I was trying to understand what exactly you mean by self existing. I took a guess, was I right or is there more to it than that?

No - God is self "aware".
I wasn't making a statement of personal belief, just responding to @chilehed. Perhaps you should direct your comment towards him as his view seems to be at odds with yours.
 
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chilehed

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What do you mean then by God being entirely self determining if he didn't determine his existence?
I'm pretty sure that I didn't say that he is entirely self-determinate and yet didn't determine his existence.

If by "determine his existence" you mean that he did something before he existed, then one reason that's not possible is because God not existing is by definition, a contradiction in terms.

God's existence is contingent on nothing other than himself. Expecting to fully grasp that is somewhat analogous to A. Square expecting to fully grasp the 3-dimensionality of A. Sphere in the book Flatland.

I suggest you study St. Thomas Acquinas.
 
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ToBeLoved

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God's existence is contingent on nothing other than himself. Expecting to fully grasp that is somewhat analogous to A. Square expecting to fully grasp the 3-dimensionality of A. Sphere in the book Flatland.
I don't think God is contingent on Himself. That makes no sense to me.
 
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I'm pretty sure that I didn't say that he is entirely self-determinate and yet didn't determine his existence.
You said
God is entirely self-determinate.
Does entirely self-determinate exclude determining his own existence?

If by "determine his existence" you mean that he did something before he existed, then one reason that's not possible is because God not existing is by definition, a contradiction in terms.
I'm using the atemporal conception of God so before and after don't make sense.

God's existence is contingent on nothing other than himself. Expecting to fully grasp that is somewhat analogous to A. Square expecting to fully grasp the 3-dimensionality of A. Sphere in the book Flatland.
In the atemporal sense, God's existence being contingent on himself is not that different to saying God is self causing. It's a circular argument. We seem to favour circular reasoning over infinite regress because our minds find it simpler to deal with. But one is not more logical than the other. But perhaps you are right that it is beyond our ability to grasp.

But some philosophers have tackled the question and that was where I was going this thread would go (We are in the philosophy forum right?). I've brought up Aquinas a couple of times but no one has addressed it. In fact Aquinas was the one who got me thinking about this question in the first place. He says "God wills his own goodness necessarily". What is this mysterious 'force' of necessity that dictates what God must will?
 
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