aiki
Regular Member
Seriously, you two? My avatar is supposed to be symbolic of my worldview and thinking generally? Really?
Colossians 1:16 does not say God is in everything or is everything. It says only that all things were created by and for Him. God is not what He has created any more than a painting is the painter who painted it or a marble statue is the sculptor who sculpted it. We may see hints of the nature of the painter or sculptor in the works of art they create, but it is a very confused person who thinks the painter or sculptor is literally what they have made.
The same thing goes for all of the other verses you cited, VanillaSunflowers. Not one of them indicates that "everything is God." The only way God could have created the material universe, was to be totally unlike it. God is transcendent to the physical realm. He is non-contingent, infinite and incorporeal. And He had to be this way in order to make the universe. To say, then, that "God is everything" is to misunderstand God's nature profoundly and to confuse what is made with the One who made it.
It would be an insult to a potter to look at one of his clay pots and say to him, "You are this pot. This pot is you." Clearly, the potter is far superior in a multitude of ways to his pot. In fact, it is his very superiority that enables him to fashion clay pots. To equate him with one of his pots, then, diminishes him severely. This is exactly what we do, with God, however, when we say things like "everything is God." God is not dirt; He is not a microbe; He is not a galaxy or supernova; He is not a tree, or mountain, or whale. All of these things are infinitely below Him and utterly contingent upon Him.
I hope you can see now - at least a little - why saying "Everything is God," is both irrational and denigrating to the Creator.
Selah.
Colossians 1:16 does not say God is in everything or is everything. It says only that all things were created by and for Him. God is not what He has created any more than a painting is the painter who painted it or a marble statue is the sculptor who sculpted it. We may see hints of the nature of the painter or sculptor in the works of art they create, but it is a very confused person who thinks the painter or sculptor is literally what they have made.
The same thing goes for all of the other verses you cited, VanillaSunflowers. Not one of them indicates that "everything is God." The only way God could have created the material universe, was to be totally unlike it. God is transcendent to the physical realm. He is non-contingent, infinite and incorporeal. And He had to be this way in order to make the universe. To say, then, that "God is everything" is to misunderstand God's nature profoundly and to confuse what is made with the One who made it.
It would be an insult to a potter to look at one of his clay pots and say to him, "You are this pot. This pot is you." Clearly, the potter is far superior in a multitude of ways to his pot. In fact, it is his very superiority that enables him to fashion clay pots. To equate him with one of his pots, then, diminishes him severely. This is exactly what we do, with God, however, when we say things like "everything is God." God is not dirt; He is not a microbe; He is not a galaxy or supernova; He is not a tree, or mountain, or whale. All of these things are infinitely below Him and utterly contingent upon Him.
I hope you can see now - at least a little - why saying "Everything is God," is both irrational and denigrating to the Creator.
Selah.
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) I think one could argue that the universe is an unfolding, self-creating entity, so it could be said that God has indeed created everything in the universe, but he is also everything in the universe.
