What do you think God does all day?

What do you think God doeas all day?

  • nothing

  • watches and is amused by the actions of His creation

  • intervenes in the lives of some select people

  • Is intimately envolved in the lives of all men and events


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Rick Otto

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Transcendant is the operative word, but you might notice a change in the relative proximity of God in terms similar to Adam & Eve's experience in the Garden, or His "nearness" to the Jews between the lives of Joseph & Moses.
To use the locational word in a transcendant, relational sense, makes "near & far" possible.
 
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michael servetus

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rnmomof7 said:
I believe the way we see God affects our soteriology .

Throughout History men have tried to understand the nature and actions of God as they relate to men.

Is God the God of Deists or has He chosen just not to see all or some things here?

Is God aloof or personal ?

Is He omniscient ?
I think God is in control of his creation, unlike the god of Islam who is jsut kinnda hangin' out...
 
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rnmomof7

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geebob said:
I agree with this, but what otto might be attempting to get at is that God is transcendent. There's no contradiction in affirming that God is both transcendent (far beyond us) and emminent (intensly involved with us) as he is extends into creation and beyond it. Of course it isn't accurate to articulate that as "with us one day and remote the next".

I believe God fills all space ..as a Spirit He does not "take Up space" Even if He fills it.

We speak not a word nor think a thought that is out of His hearing.
 
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augustine32

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geebob said:
There's a great quote from a theologian by the name of Markus Barth that is something to the effect of "A God who has fixed everything from the beginning may either retire or die".

A God who has fixed everything from the beginning has also fixed the means by which things will be accomplished and part of those means is His intimate involvement with His creation.
 
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geebob

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true enough. However, it is arguably a laid back thing to deal with a completely determined world. Wisdom and cunning is not as important for God to use as he only needs to consult the script. But if God had created an indeterminate world, how wise and powerful he would need to be to keep up with that which is unplanned for and still come out on top.

So to answer rnmom's question, what does God do all day? In the deterministic setting, he does the same thing everyone else does. He follows a pre-written script.
 
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Rick Otto

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is a projection of meaning from a 3 dimensional, temporal perspective, because in eternity, the past & future are eternally present. So, God, the determining, primary cause of all events, can & does exercise force, both compelling & restraining, within His creation. Our experience, & thus view, is temporal, & even when the eternal is revealed, it must be expressed in temporal language.
That's why it's in one sense sophmoric to ask "What does God do all day?"(the literal sense), and yet in another sense(figuratuvely), it is a profound question.

The confusion caused by our limited perception is compounded by our trust in our own understanding. We begin to use our understanding as a measuring device on reality, & soon we are measuring God Himself w/it.

This is freedom?
 
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geebob

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Our experience, & thus view, is temporal, & even when the eternal is revealed, it must be expressed in temporal language.

I am not a skeptic about the scriptural presentation of God. So I will stick with the temporal God presented in scriptures.

Besides, it is not beyond our means to express things about an atemporal God. Plato was beginning that project on the other side of the meditaranean during much of the scripture writting. and yet, that is not our scripture.

And even if many of the actions of God and scripture can be taken out of the scriptural context of temporality and placed in atemporality, there are still some scriptural actions ascribed to God that that are not coherent without involving God temporally. An atemporal God cannot redeem because before someone redeems you, they are holding something against you and after redemption, they cease to hold whatever it was against you, so redemption is an action that places the subject within a temporal sequence from before to after. With other actions, it might be coherent to say that God acted in eternity and the effects of those actions are within in time (for instance, God somehow acted in some way in eternity such that the manifestation of that action is a parting of the red sea in time). But redemption isn't just something that happens to us, but it is something that happens internally within God. He changes his attitude with regard to particular individuals in time. He forgives their sin which previously he held against them.

We begin to use our understanding as a measuring device on reality, & soon we are measuring God Himself w/it.

God is quite capable of creating creatures who can have a decent and basic understanding of him and furthermore he is capable of revealing to them about himself. Christianity requires that we believe exactly that.

Besides, the theory of the atemporality of God also utilizes human understanings and "measurements".

Some try to argue that a certain perspective of physics is decisive on this for example.




BTW This is my last post in this thread and in this forum for a long indefinite time. So I won't respond further.



 
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geebob

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AS I said, the last post above was my last post, but I can't resist.


I am actually not quite sure how the issue of foreknowledge came up, interesting how it does so often (but it is not central!).

First of all, truth from our perspective (and arguably, as I've argued, the right perspective from which God views things as God is temporal), is tensed.

Secondly, it is coherent to say that uncertainties express truth ie that something is uncertain is really the way it is. uncertainty often describes our mental states of ignorance, but I would argue that sometimes, uncertainty is the most accurate way to percieve something because it really is uncertain.

And this can be demonstrated from counterfactual logic combined with aristotelian logic.

Basically what I would demonstrate from that is the the statement x will/would happen can be false at the same time that x won't/wouldn't happen. This is because these statements when placed on aristotle's square of opposition (which I won't take the time to demonstrate) can be understood to be contrary instead of contradictory. Contrary statements unlike contradictory statements can both be false at the same time.

So if the future is open, which is an aspect of a creation that is well within the creator's ability to create as He is omnipotent, then his omniscience entails that he knows the truth values of all propositions about that future, and some times he knows that what will happen is true, and sometimes he knows that something won't happen is true. And then there are times that he knows that x will happen is false as well as x won't happen. But there is a true proposition to be known here, and in such a case it is called the conjoined might proposition (x might and might not happen).



Now, this is my last post in this thread (and forum-soteriology forum that is) and I won't post here in this thread again, (so have the last word), but if you want to know how I'd respond to something, you'll have to go to the theologyweb.com theology 101 section which is the non-debate Q&A section (which though it is an active forum, it does not have a lot of involved action as there are no back and forth debates that go on forever).
 
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rnmomof7

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Rick Otto said:
I don't know that "laid back" is an indictment, but how can an omniscient God not know what's goin' to happen next?
Any particular perspective on truth is decisive in many ways, some eternal.
"Temporal God"?
Do take a break!

I believe that geebob is a believer in open theology, that is that God does not know every thing because he self limits his omniscience .

I believe that is a clear violation of scripture myself.
 
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