What do you think God is like in his, hers, or its nature? Is God best thought of as male, female, what? What is the relationship, if any, of God to the world of time and change? How did Christianity historically describe God in his own nature? Where has modern theology gone?
The Nature of God
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TheyCallMeDave
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- Jun 19, 2012
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Id like to debate this and I take the stand of the :Biblical God and what HE has revealed about himself and his nature. Id be looking for someone who dissends from this viewpoint to debate with.
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Appreciate your request, TheyCallMeDave. Sorry it took so long for me to get back. Don't know my way around yet. In posing the question, I realize the issue is very complicated. So I thought I'd share some of this complexity with you. You speak about addressing opponents to the biblical model of God. Fine> However, I think you should carefully bear in mind that you are actually debating the classical Christian model of God, classical theism, the god of the creeds and confessions. Fact is, the model or picture of God comes largely from certain schools of Hellenic philosophy, not Scripture. That's a point many Christians miss and that I cannot stress enough. In brief, classical theism argued God is void of body, parts, passions, even compassion, wholly immutable, the supreme cause, never the effect, without even the shadow of movement, wholly unaffected by the world. This does conflict with the biblical model. Now, please bear in mind that the Bible is not a book of metaphysics, tells us very little about how God is build. However, it presents enough of a picture of God to stand in tension with classical theism. The biblical God does in fact change. Over 100 passages speak of God as changing his mine, etc., See, for example, Gen. 6:6, Hosea 8:11. The biblical God is viewed in highly anthropomorphic terms. Hence, just about every body part is attributed to him. In addition, the biblical God is not indifferent but filled with great emotion. There are implications that the biblical God is ontologically one with the universe. See, for example, Jer. 28:28, II Cor. 15:21. There is implication that God needs the universe. All the biblical predication is relative predication. It's hard to be a father without children, a creator without as creation, etc. However, these are only implications, as the Bible is not a book in metaphysics. In recent years, major theologians have challenged the classical model on the basis that it is not biblical and also on the basis that it does not make sense to begin with. I share that approach and am happy to discuss it with you.
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Super14LDS
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Your belief sounds to much like mine in that it directly contradicts the concept of the Trinity, which are three Gods without form or passion in one. The Trinity was not officially taught in the Christian church until 300 years after the Resurrection of The Savior. The idea of the 3 in 1 Trinity was the product of the Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. Under the direction of Constantine, a council of theologians, scholars, and clergy were called together to organize the official doctrines and beliefs of the church. Confusion about official doctrine was rampant at the time. The council debated the nature of the Godhead until a compromise was reached. That compromise was the Nicene Creed, which established the idea of Christ "being of one substance with the Father". In the 5th century the Athanasian Creed reaffirmed and expounded further on The Trinity by teaching "That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one." Just to make sure someone didn't miss that the Three are One God the creed repeats this several times.
The Godhead conceived in the Nicene Trinity was not taught in the New Testament Church, nor officially in the ancient Christian Church prior to the Council in 325 A.D. Edwin Hatch, an emeritus professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford taught
"And if the doctrine of God now espoused by the various sects is foreign to the thought of the primitive Church, what was the Godhead of the early Church like? Indeed, we find in the early Church the true doctrine of a Godhead consisting of three distinct persons who are completely separate in substance, but one in will - the Father presiding over the Son and the Son over the Spirit." [Hatch, E., The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957,) p. 124.]
The Godhead conceived in the Nicene Trinity was not taught in the New Testament Church, nor officially in the ancient Christian Church prior to the Council in 325 A.D. Edwin Hatch, an emeritus professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford taught
"And if the doctrine of God now espoused by the various sects is foreign to the thought of the primitive Church, what was the Godhead of the early Church like? Indeed, we find in the early Church the true doctrine of a Godhead consisting of three distinct persons who are completely separate in substance, but one in will - the Father presiding over the Son and the Son over the Spirit." [Hatch, E., The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957,) p. 124.]
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