How can we know that God is omnibenevolent? If we can't, why have Faith?

TheLostCoin · Mar 21, 2020

It's a philosophical question, and it's hard to get across exactly what I mean by this, so I apologize if in my examples things become somewhat offensive, but it's something I sincerely struggle with.
The fundamental Christian belief is that God loved the world so much that he gave his Only-Begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

God created this world and, by extension, Willed the world to be fallen, corrupt, filled with death, and filled with injustice and suffering; some forms of the latter which people deal with from the time they are born or from childhood to their death, knowingly or unknowingly.

Even if it is by God's permissive Will, that is, God didn't actively make it such, but merely allowed it to happen, He still Willed it because He not only created a world which could potentially become fallen, corrupt, and filled with suffering; but He also easily could have stopped it via His omnipotence. There's no way around it.

Well, the Irenaean response is that God permits suffering because by permitting suffering, pain, death, and injustice, we can know to the fullest extent possible what goodness is; what the lack of suffering is; what the lack of pain is; what justice is; what life is; etc., and that by this temporary suffering, we can enjoy paradise to its fullest extent.

The problem with this response though is this - how can we know that God has created the world for us to know what goodness is? What if He lies? What if He wants us to suffer for His enjoyment? What if our lives our just entertainment for Him? What if the feelings which we perceive to be God's loving embrace are just falsehoods given by Him?

Some may answer Christ, because a God who was insincere wouldn't have lowered Himself to the level of a man and suffered what we suffer; but how do we know that God didn't just lie about Christ? How do we know He truly suffered? Maybe Orthodoxy is false, but God lied to us about it, and perhaps Docetism is true, or Arianism! How do we know that God will even grant us eternal life? Maybe God has set us up all to fail so nobody could enter into Heaven. Maybe God is really not omnibenevolent at all, and wants us to lose, He's actually malevolent. It's possible.

Say I'm a skeptical Buddhist who has been psychologically conditioned, born and raised to believe that a belief in God is a type of spiritual delusion. Why should I, as that skeptical Buddhist, believe that God is truly worth trusting in as omnibenevolent?

And this necessarily begs the following question: If we can't know whether or not God is sincere or not, why should we even bother having Faith? If we are, for example, set up to fail, why does it even matter to worship God? Sure, you run the risk of offending God, but offending God probably doesn't matter if God is malevolent which is just as much of a possibility.

Aussie Pete · Mar 21, 2020

TheLostCoin said:
It's a philosophical question, and it's hard to get across exactly what I mean by this, so I apologize if in my examples things become somewhat offensive, but it's something I sincerely struggle with.
The fundamental Christian belief is that God loved the world so much that he gave his Only-Begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

God created this world and, by extension, Willed the world to be fallen, corrupt, filled with death, and filled with injustice and suffering; some forms of the latter which people deal with from the time they are born or from childhood to their death, knowingly or unknowingly.

Even if it is by God's permissive Will, that is, God didn't actively make it such, but merely allowed it to happen, He still Willed it because He not only created a world which could potentially become fallen, corrupt, and filled with suffering; but He also easily could have stopped it via His omnipotence. There's no way around it.

Well, the Irenaean response is that God permits suffering because by permitting suffering, pain, death, and injustice, we can know to the fullest extent possible what goodness is; what the lack of suffering is; what the lack of pain is; what justice is; what life is; etc., and that by this temporary suffering, we can enjoy paradise to its fullest extent.

The problem with this response though is this - how can we know that God has created the world for us to know what goodness is? What if He lies? What if He wants us to suffer for His enjoyment? What if our lives our just entertainment for Him? What if the feelings which we perceive to be God's loving embrace are just falsehoods given by Him?

Some may answer Christ, because a God who was insincere wouldn't have lowered Himself to the level of a man and suffered what we suffer; but how do we know that God didn't just lie about Christ? How do we know He truly suffered? Maybe Orthodoxy is false, but God lied to us about it, and perhaps Docetism is true, or Arianism! How do we know that God will even grant us eternal life? Maybe God has set us up all to fail so nobody could enter into Heaven. Maybe God is really not omnibenevolent at all, and wants us to lose, He's actually malevolent. It's possible.

Say I'm a skeptical Buddhist who has been psychologically conditioned, born and raised to believe that a belief in God is a type of spiritual delusion. Why should I, as that skeptical Buddhist, believe that God is truly worth trusting in as omnibenevolent?

And this necessarily begs the following question: If we can't know whether or not God is sincere or not, why should we even bother having Faith? If we are, for example, set up to fail, why does it even matter to worship God? Sure, you run the risk of offending God, but offending God probably doesn't matter if God is malevolent which is just as much of a possibility.

Your premise is wrong. God did not will the human race to fall. It is a risk that you take if you do not create robots.

I bought a robot dog for my son, who lives in a flat. It does not pee on the carpet, it does not chew up shoes, does not bark all day and does not beg for food every few seconds. It can be programmed to simulate a real dog. It's quite clever. But it is not alive.

God made man in His image but with free will. God gave man a choice. God advised man of the consequences of making the wrong choice. How hard could it be? Just one prohibition. Adam chose exactly the wrong thing. Please note that it was Adam's disobedience that cut him off from God.

If it were up to me, I would have scratched Adam and Eve and started again. People only think of how badly off humanity is. How about considering God's point of view. He creates a being in His own image. He creates a delightful wife for Adam. Adam and Eve live in paradise. Then Adam and Eve revolt and hand control over their lives to God's arch enemy.

What does God do? Take care of them. Eventually God sends His only Son to die in Adam's place so that all may be reconciled to God. God offers reconciliation to any who will accept His way of restoration. Sadly, not all respond. People are entirely responsible for their own lives. One day, mercy and grace will conclude and judgement will begin. The signs suggest that it is not far off. God's love never ends. One day He will put and end to the world system for the sake of those who have accepted Christ. That is God's love.

Carl Emerson · Mar 21, 2020

TheLostCoin said:
Even if it is by God's permissive Will, that is, God didn't actively make it such, but merely allowed it to happen, He still Willed it because He not only created a world which could potentially become fallen, corrupt, and filled with suffering; but He also easily could have stopped it via His omnipotence. There's no way around it.

If God gave a measure of free will, He no longer created the choices that would be made.

HTacianas · Mar 21, 2020

TheLostCoin said:
It's a philosophical question, and it's hard to get across exactly what I mean by this, so I apologize if in my examples things become somewhat offensive, but it's something I sincerely struggle with.
The fundamental Christian belief is that God loved the world so much that he gave his Only-Begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

God created this world and, by extension, Willed the world to be fallen, corrupt, filled with death, and filled with injustice and suffering; some forms of the latter which people deal with from the time they are born or from childhood to their death, knowingly or unknowingly.

Even if it is by God's permissive Will, that is, God didn't actively make it such, but merely allowed it to happen, He still Willed it because He not only created a world which could potentially become fallen, corrupt, and filled with suffering; but He also easily could have stopped it via His omnipotence. There's no way around it.

Well, the Irenaean response is that God permits suffering because by permitting suffering, pain, death, and injustice, we can know to the fullest extent possible what goodness is; what the lack of suffering is; what the lack of pain is; what justice is; what life is; etc., and that by this temporary suffering, we can enjoy paradise to its fullest extent.

The problem with this response though is this - how can we know that God has created the world for us to know what goodness is? What if He lies? What if He wants us to suffer for His enjoyment? What if our lives our just entertainment for Him? What if the feelings which we perceive to be God's loving embrace are just falsehoods given by Him?

Some may answer Christ, because a God who was insincere wouldn't have lowered Himself to the level of a man and suffered what we suffer; but how do we know that God didn't just lie about Christ? How do we know He truly suffered? Maybe Orthodoxy is false, but God lied to us about it, and perhaps Docetism is true, or Arianism! How do we know that God will even grant us eternal life? Maybe God has set us up all to fail so nobody could enter into Heaven. Maybe God is really not omnibenevolent at all, and wants us to lose, He's actually malevolent. It's possible.

Say I'm a skeptical Buddhist who has been psychologically conditioned, born and raised to believe that a belief in God is a type of spiritual delusion. Why should I, as that skeptical Buddhist, believe that God is truly worth trusting in as omnibenevolent?

And this necessarily begs the following question: If we can't know whether or not God is sincere or not, why should we even bother having Faith? If we are, for example, set up to fail, why does it even matter to worship God? Sure, you run the risk of offending God, but offending God probably doesn't matter if God is malevolent which is just as much of a possibility.

The case of the skeptical Buddhist leads only to a glass half full/half empty stalemate. The Buddhist is forced to admit, based on his own core beliefs, that his own belief may be a spiritual delusion. In the end it is a draw.

I reached the same philosophical conclusion on suffering as Iraneaus, though independent of him. If there was no bad there could be no good. We would have nothing to compare it to. For that matter there may as well be no bad in the world at all. We may never have seen bad.

That God might cause bad things to happen for his own amusement or that He chooses to inflict suffering is something I simply do not accept. When I do something good for someone there's something of a feeling of positive euphoria that results from it. If I do something bad to someone I get the opposite feeling from my conscience. That good feeling I know as good, the bad feeling I know as bad. Any person who gets some good feeling from doing bad things is condemned by reason alone.

God Himself must represent that good. If He did not no one would be left alive.

renniks · Mar 21, 2020

TheLostCoin said:
And this necessarily begs the following question: If we can't know whether or not God is sincere or not, why should we even bother having Faith? If we are, for example, set up to fail, why does it even matter to worship God? Sure, you run the risk of offending God, but offending God probably doesn't matter if God is malevolent which is just as much of a possibility.

If you could know everything with absolute certainty, there's no room or need for faith. Believing is always a choice. Only by choosing to believe God is love, will you experience God's love.

zippy2006 · Mar 21, 2020

TheLostCoin said:
It's a philosophical question, and it's hard to get across exactly what I mean by this, so I apologize if in my examples things become somewhat offensive, but it's something I sincerely struggle with.
The fundamental Christian belief is that God loved the world so much that he gave his Only-Begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

God created this world and, by extension, Willed the world to be fallen, corrupt, filled with death, and filled with injustice and suffering; some forms of the latter which people deal with from the time they are born or from childhood to their death, knowingly or unknowingly.

Even if it is by God's permissive Will, that is, God didn't actively make it such, but merely allowed it to happen, He still Willed it because He not only created a world which could potentially become fallen, corrupt, and filled with suffering; but He also easily could have stopped it via His omnipotence. There's no way around it.

Well, the Irenaean response is that God permits suffering because by permitting suffering, pain, death, and injustice, we can know to the fullest extent possible what goodness is; what the lack of suffering is; what the lack of pain is; what justice is; what life is; etc., and that by this temporary suffering, we can enjoy paradise to its fullest extent.

The problem with this response though is this - how can we know that God has created the world for us to know what goodness is? What if He lies? What if He wants us to suffer for His enjoyment? What if our lives our just entertainment for Him? What if the feelings which we perceive to be God's loving embrace are just falsehoods given by Him?

Some may answer Christ, because a God who was insincere wouldn't have lowered Himself to the level of a man and suffered what we suffer; but how do we know that God didn't just lie about Christ? How do we know He truly suffered? Maybe Orthodoxy is false, but God lied to us about it, and perhaps Docetism is true, or Arianism! How do we know that God will even grant us eternal life? Maybe God has set us up all to fail so nobody could enter into Heaven. Maybe God is really not omnibenevolent at all, and wants us to lose, He's actually malevolent. It's possible.

Say I'm a skeptical Buddhist who has been psychologically conditioned, born and raised to believe that a belief in God is a type of spiritual delusion. Why should I, as that skeptical Buddhist, believe that God is truly worth trusting in as omnibenevolent?

And this necessarily begs the following question: If we can't know whether or not God is sincere or not, why should we even bother having Faith? If we are, for example, set up to fail, why does it even matter to worship God? Sure, you run the risk of offending God, but offending God probably doesn't matter if God is malevolent which is just as much of a possibility.

To preface my comment, I am Catholic, not Orthodox, but I am somewhat familiar with the Orthodox tradition.

The first thing I would say is that if we could know then we wouldn't need faith. Second, from a Palamite (and Pauline, and Thomistic) perspective we are given a sort of experiential foretaste of God's goodness which leads us to faith and is in some ways part of faith. This is given primarily through prayer and the sacraments. So concrete aids are given that we may come to faith and the truth. It isn't just a matter of logical possibility.

(I am actually just beginning a book called Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith, which is very much on topic but I'm not far enough into it to comment on Nyssa's view.

)

TheLostCoin · Mar 21, 2020

Aussie Pete said:
Your premise is wrong. God did not will the human race to fall. It is a risk that you take if you do not create robots.

I bought a robot dog for my son, who lives in a flat. It does not pee on the carpet, it does not chew up shoes, does not bark all day and does not beg for food every few seconds. It can be programmed to simulate a real dog. It's quite clever. But it is not alive.

God made man in His image but with free will. God gave man a choice. God advised man of the consequences of making the wrong choice. How hard could it be? Just one prohibition. Adam chose exactly the wrong thing. Please note that it was Adam's disobedience that cut him off from God.

If it were up to me, I would have scratched Adam and Eve and started again. People only think of how badly off humanity is. How about considering God's point of view. He creates a being in His own image. He creates a delightful wife for Adam. Adam and Eve live in paradise. Then Adam and Eve revolt and hand control over their lives to God's arch enemy.

What does God do? Take care of them. Eventually God sends His only Son to die in Adam's place so that all may be reconciled to God. God offers reconciliation to any who will accept His way of restoration. Sadly, not all respond. People are entirely responsible for their own lives. One day, mercy and grace will conclude and judgement will begin. The signs suggest that it is not far off. God's love never ends. One day He will put and end to the world system for the sake of those who have accepted Christ. That is God's love.

1. God is omniscient. In creating Adam and Eve, He knew that they would fall. So I am considering God's point of view.

2. Your robot scenario is not one to one, because God created a world where the consequences of Free Will would be the suffering we see in this world.

It would be as though I made a computer program where a random number between one and ten would be generated, and if it is 6 or greater, the program would trash my computer and delete everything, and if it is 5 or below, the program would end with a message that says "you win!". Regardless if the program got 6 or greater and I became upset that my computer was destroyed, at the end of the day, I still programmed the program such that my computer would become trashed if it ended up on 6 or above.

It's different with God, because God knew it would land on 7.

If I made such a program and in doing so knew that it would land on 7, how would that be any different from just writing a program that deletes my computer? The only difference would be actively destroying my computer or leaving up to an external factor to destroy my computer, but regardless, I still wrote a program that, regardless of the means, destroys my computer, and did so knowingly.

3. What if God does not offer reconciliation at all? What if, in our sinful condition, God cannot forgive us because of how imperfect we are?

Jeshu · Mar 21, 2020

If you can't trust the truth to tell you right who can you trust to tell you anything? If truth proves to be wrong then it was never The Truth in the first place.

The truth is we are and we have ancient writings that reveal the truth of ourselves to us. When Jesus convicted me of my sin, He wasn't telling lies, it was the truth that cut my heart and made me willing to die to my self will to receive His will instead. To live the truth in love is the best thing life has on offer why should i believe anything or any one else?

Sure to blame God for our evil stubbornness serving lies instead of His revealed truth is just a cop out on our part and an unwillingness to take responsibility for our own actions. God did, He took responsibility! He came down in the form of a man, suffered and died the truth of our sins, as clear as crystal for all to see. The best part is He overcame the death i put Him through and is alive and well beside the Father for all to see. That is where i put my hope in. Revealed truth that does as He promises.

The story of the bible is true. For each sin in the human heart puts our God given good life to death and enslaves us to lies and its misery. Been there, done that, while God's truth brought me life, just as He said it would, if i would die to my self will and surrender my life to His will. He has only ever been good to me. Gave me love and recognition and made straight all my crooked paths. i will always love Him for that.

This is what is missing out of your analysis my friend. God is the truth, God is love and God is Spirit. i only ever understand God within those Three Realities otherwise you get a monster of a god. Your god has no truth in him, no love to give and no spirit to impart and is therefore as dead as a door nail. This gives rise to lies which turn our Truthfully Loving Heavenly Father into a cruel careless selfish monster. The bible calls him the abomination that causes desolation. You better be well aware of that!

God allows all sin not because He wilfully created evil or delights in it but because He wants us to love Him and recognise Him as the only True Lover in this fallen world and leave a life of lies and sin behind.

Considering our wilful disobedience it does makes perfect sense to me. We have to return to the truth and leave our miserable lives full of lies and corruption and cling to Him in true love and adoration. For only such a life is blessed and worth living or dying for.

Peace.

Isaiah 30:15-18
This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:

“In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength,
but you would have none of it.
You said, ‘No, we will flee on horses.’
Therefore you will flee!
You said, ‘We will ride off on swift horses.’
Therefore your pursuers will be swift!
A thousand will flee
at the threat of one;
at the threat of five
you will all flee away,
till you are left
like a flagstaff on a mountaintop,
like a banner on a hill.”

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show you compassion.
For the Lord is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!

TheLostCoin · Mar 21, 2020

zippy2006 said:
To preface my comment, I am Catholic, not Orthodox, but I am somewhat familiar with the Orthodox tradition.

The first thing I would say is that if we could know then we wouldn't need faith. Second, from a Palamite (and Pauline, and Thomistic) perspective we are given a sort of experiential foretaste of God's goodness which leads us to faith and is in some ways part of faith. This is given primarily through prayer and the sacraments. So concrete aids are given that we may come to faith and the truth. It isn't just a matter of logical possibility.

(I am actually just beginning a book called Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith, which is very much on topic but I'm not far enough into it to comment on Nyssa's view. )

But how can you know that these "concrete aids" are really concrete? If you cannot know that you are experiencing God's goodness which is a result of Faith, why should one have Faith to begin with?

TheLostCoin · Mar 21, 2020

Jeshu said:
If you can't trust the truth to tell you right who can you trust to tell you anything? If truth proves to be wrong then it was never The Truth in the first place.

Maybe we can never know anything at all. But if we cannot know anything at all, there should be a reason as to why we have Faith in something.

I can believe that the universe is a product of a giant sneeze via the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But such a view is pointless.

God allows all sin not because He wilfully created evil or delights in it but because He wants us to love Him and recognise Him as the only True Lover in this fallen world and leave a life of lies and sin behind.

And this is the Irenaean argument, but the problem is that you don't know if He really wants us to love Him or not.

Jeshu · Mar 21, 2020

TheLostCoin said:
And this is the Irenaean argument, but the problem is that you don't know if He really wants us to love Him or not.

Nonsense my friend of course we know that God wants us to love Him it is our very first commandment!

Matthew 22:37-40
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

zippy2006 · Mar 21, 2020

TheLostCoin said:
But how can you know that these "concrete aids" are really concrete? If you cannot know that you are experiencing God's goodness which is a result of Faith, why should one have Faith to begin with?

Why can we not have inchoate knowledge that we are experiencing God's goodness? What does "knowledge" mean to you? Is it a kind of infallible assurance?

I don't really want to lean on Augustinian arguments against Manichaeism in the Orthodox forum, but the Christian argument for the goodness of the Creator isn't generally a priori. "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made" (Romans 1). So an evil Creator is a logical possibility, but upon investigation and reflection it is not actually true. If you are looking for objectively concrete things then I would point to the scriptures, the Church, the saints, and of course Christ himself.

To quote Metropolitan Hierotheos who is himself quoting Romanides, "Furthermore, 'the conflict between Palamas and Barlaam was not so much about the form of doctrine as about its methodological foundation. Barlaam based himself on metaphysics and metaphysical epistemology and logic, while Palamas took as his basis empirical verification and confirmation and their demonstrable results.'"

JIMINZ · Mar 21, 2020

TheLostCoin said:
God created this world and, by extension, Willed the world to be fallen, corrupt, filled with death, and filled with injustice and suffering; some forms of the latter which people deal with from the time they are born or from childhood to their death, knowingly or unknowingly.

You say.

"God created this world and, by extension, Willed the world to be fallen,"

That is an assumption based solely upon the fact Adam and Eve disobeyed the Law set before them, then blaming everything including their fall on God Himself, for Creating them in the first place.

Your assumption is based in a misconceived belief that God is basically unfair, just because things didn't work out in the world created by God the way you think they should have, you have no proof one way or the other which would bolster your premise as to why He created the earth in the first place.

JIMINZ · Mar 21, 2020

TheLostCoin said:
It's a philosophical question.
The fundamental Christian belief is that God loved the world so much that he gave his Only-Begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

I am assuming from the way you have written your statement, you personally do not hold with this Fundamental Christian Belief, therefore the skepticism expressed in the remainder of your post is understandable.

JIMINZ · Mar 21, 2020

TheLostCoin said:
Even if it is by God's permissive Will, that is, God didn't actively make it such, but merely allowed it to happen, He still Willed it because He not only created a world which could potentially become fallen, corrupt, and filled with suffering; but He also easily could have stopped it via His omnipotence. There's no way around it.

Again, you are assuming to know the thoughts of God without ever showing any proof of such knowledge.

You don't begin to solve a problem by first saying you know the reason there is a problem in the first place, that is the equivalent of rewriting the equation so you can come to the answer you already possess.

Your going to have to go all the way back and begin again, in order to come up with a better Philosophical question than you have here.

I fully understand why this is something you sincerely struggle with.

TheLostCoin · Mar 21, 2020

zippy2006 said:
Why can we not have inchoate knowledge that we are experiencing God's goodness? What does "knowledge" mean to you? Is it a kind of infallible assurance?

I don't really want to lean on Augustinian arguments against Manichaeism in the Orthodox forum, but the Christian argument for the goodness of the Creator isn't generally a priori. "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made" (Romans 1). So an evil Creator is a logical possibility, but upon investigation and reflection it is not actually true. If you are looking for objectively concrete things then I would point to the scriptures, the Church, the saints, and of course Christ himself.

To quote Metropolitan Hierotheos who is himself quoting Romanides, "Furthermore, 'the conflict between Palamas and Barlaam was not so much about the form of doctrine as about its methodological foundation. Barlaam based himself on metaphysics and metaphysical epistemology and logic, while Palamas took as his basis empirical verification and confirmation and their demonstrable results.'"

True. Perhaps the fact that the Scriptures have inherently perceived goodness, and the fact that we can see goodness itself in the Saints and in Christ from obeying God, perhaps that is a suggestion itself that God is omnibenevolent.

Interesting point.

TheLostCoin · Mar 21, 2020

JIMINZ said:
You say.

"God created this world and, by extension, Willed the world to be fallen,"

That is an assumption based solely upon the fact Adam and Eve disobeyed the Law set before them, then blaming everything including their fall on God Himself, for Creating them in the first place.

Your assumption is based in a misconceived belief that God is basically unfair, just because things didn't work out in the world created by God the way you think they should have, you have no proof one way or the other which would bolster your premise as to why He created the earth in the first place.

The Law set before them was a part of God's Creations, as was the Penalties for disobedience to said Law.

TheLostCoin · Mar 21, 2020

JIMINZ said:
Again, you are assuming to know the thoughts of God without ever showing any proof of such knowledge.

You don't begin to solve a problem by first saying you know the reason there is a problem in the first place, that is the equivalent of rewriting the equation so you can come to the answer you already possess.

Your going to have to go all the way back and begin again, in order to come up with a better Philosophical question than you have here.

I fully understand why this is something you sincerely struggle with.

Part of the very problem I pose itself is not knowing God's thoughts, and if we can't know God's thoughts, why should we have Faith that God's thoughts are good?

JIMINZ · Mar 21, 2020

TheLostCoin said:
Say I'm a skeptical Buddhist who has been psychologically conditioned, born and raised to believe that a belief in God is a type of spiritual delusion. Why should I, as that skeptical Buddhist, believe that God is truly worth trusting in as omnibenevolent?

And this necessarily begs the following question: If we can't know whether or not God is sincere or not, why should we even bother having Faith? If we are, for example, set up to fail, why does it even matter to worship God? Sure, you run the risk of offending God, but offending God probably doesn't matter if God is malevolent which is just as much of a possibility.

You shouldn't.

But then again Faith if acquired only by Grace.

Eph. 2:8
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

JIMINZ · Mar 22, 2020

TheLostCoin said:
Part of the very problem I pose itself is not knowing God's thoughts, and if we can't know God's thoughts, why should we have Faith that God's thoughts are good?

The point is you keep saying by your very own words, that you do know Gods' thought and the causes for His actions.

You have made all kinds of assumptions as to the reasons God did this or that,
that is saying you know His thoughts.

There is one key factor you have left out, which is the determining factor for the whole question of "WHO" is responsible for the way things have progressed from Adam to today and whether or not we should have Faith in Him.

God Created Adam:

Gen 1:26-31
26) And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28) And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29) And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30) And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31) And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Did you notice what God gave to Adam, (DOMINION) that gift from God placed the sole responsibility for his actions squarely on the shoulders of Adam (Mankind) for everything which has taken place, and yes even the eating of the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

At the moment God gave Adam Dominion over all of His Creation, God was giving Adam (Mankind) the power and Authority to Rule the World (Earth), God stepped back from it at that moment, that is what Dominion means.

How can we know that God is omnibenevolent? If we can't, why have Faith?

A Lonesome Coin

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Dragonsworn

A Lonesome Coin

Bought by His Blood

A Lonesome Coin

A Lonesome Coin

Bought by His Blood

Dragonsworn

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A Lonesome Coin

A Lonesome Coin

A Lonesome Coin

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