Was the Omni-God concept a consequence of the development of human consciousness?

It is interesting to speculate how the incoherent and mass-apostasy-inducing Omni-God concept arose and came to dominate Christian (and some other) theologies and Priesthoods. 

One God who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and created everything from nothing - i.e. the officially mandatory nature of God according to mainstream Christianity; is an idea literally inconceivable to simple people and children. 

And inconceivable to people of the past, and up to the life of Jesus; because I see nothing explicit to suggest that the authors of Old Testament, the Gospels, or Epistles conceptualized God in this way. 

The Omni idea seems to have emerged - off the record - in the generations after the ascension of Jesus and deaths of the Apostles; until we see it behind the Christology schisms and disputes, concerning the divine and/or human nature of Christ; that tore-apart the nascent church in its early centuries. 

Such disputes were (and are) inevitable when Jesus was assumed to have been incarnated into the creation of an Omni-God, since the Omni definition of God excludes the possibility of Jesus being a second creator-deity; and indeed removes any possible reason or purpose for a further manifestation of deity. 

(If God is supposed to be able to do everything, know everything, be everywhere etc - then there is no necessity for Jesus Christ to be incarnated, live, die, be resurrected, ascend to Heaven etc. The Omni-God can - by definition - do everything that is doable, so Jesus is superfluous.) 

Yet if Jesus Christ is not a truly divine creator God; then Jesus is "just" a teacher, prophet etc - and we either assume Jesus was a false teacher and revert to Judaism; or assume Jesus was a valid teacher as with Islam. 

But if Jesus is not divine, he is not unique; and there is no reason to build a religion around following him. 

So how and why did such a strange and destructive idea emerge? 

My best guess of how, is that the Omni-God was synthesized from the ancient Hebrew idea of a single dominating personal God to whom all other Gods were inferior and subservient; and to whom all worship and obedience was due. 

This "monotheism" was combined with Greek philosophical ideas - and religious ideas - probably from  elite and initiatory mystery religions; such as Neo-Platonists and Gnostics); of a universal but impersonal abstract-deity that was everything (pantheism), was the ultimate cause of everything, was perfect hence time-less etc.

(Much like some Hindu and Buddhist philosophical concepts of deity.) 

 

But why did the Omni idea happen at all? 

My understanding is that this was part of the development of human consciousness; and the increasing inner sense of separation of the individual from the group. 

Before the Omni-God concept; human consciousness was naturally, spontaneously, and largely un-consciously very much immersed in the group consciousness - and this group consciousness included the realms of spirits and the divine. 

Because people experienced relationships with so many other Beings (such as animals, trees, landscape, the dead, angels, demons, and gods); there was no subjective "problem" of creation as being incoherent.

There was no need to "explain" how it was that the universe held-together and had purpose - because this coherence was simply a matter of experience. Men knew that things cohered. 

This was, and still is, how young children experience reality even nowadays; and perhaps some tribal peoples as well. 

In other words, in ancient times there was no felt-problem of incoherence that the Omni concept was needed to solve. 

There was no need or reason to explain why all the different aspects of reality held-together and had an overall purpose. 

And no reason to explain why there were real values - a real and universal morality... Since such things were obvious.  

It was when Man's consciousness began (and continued) to become ever more self-aware and separated from the group consciousness; and from awareness of the dead, spirits of many kinds, and the divine - that Men sought an explicit explanation of the "unity" of all things...

That intellectuals came-up with the Omni-God explanation. 

This does not explain why the early Christian church seized upon the Omni-God concept and made it mandatory, despite all the problems it has caused ever since. 

But I think that ultimately such reasons are social rather than philosophical: to do with the church as an institution, rather than Christianity as a theoretical construct.  

The Omni-God concept is popular in all the major monotheisms, I think because it is interpreted to make the specific religion both universal and mandatory; it is used to insert the religion and its church into the ultimate creation and operation of absolutely every-thing. 

Omni-God removes choice from religion; and religion becomes a matter of acknowledging one truth for everything...

Or else the act of rejecting that church and religion gets conceptualized as rejecting... absolutely everything, and all possibility of anything.

So, with Omni-God; not be be a member of the church and religion is therefore conceptualized as a wholly irrational and incoherent act - an embrace of absolute nothingness.  

If it is broadly correct that the Omni-God emerged after Jesus and in the early centuries AD; driven from-within by changes in Mens' consciousness; then we can also see that a genuine, living, motivating belief in Omni-God has become impossible in the modern era.

Shoals of people have left the Christian church, and/or had their faith reduced to the feebleness of a lifestyle-choice, by the insistence of Christian theology on the Omni-God combined with the gross incoherence of the concept - which incoherence has now become spontaneously obvious even to those of low intelligence. 

(The two obvious problems about a Christianity rooted in the Omni-God concept and a Good God; are an inability to explain genuine evil and extreme and undeserved suffering and death; and also an inability to explain human agency or "freedom".)  

In replying to a basic question of "who was Jesus?": mystery-word-spells about Jesus being simultaneously wholly-Man and wholly-God seem like meaningless or devious abstractions; when materialism is built-into the modern perspective. 

In replying to what did Jesus do?": kick-the-can pseudo-explanations about Jesus being necessary to save Mankind from the blame attached to an "original sin" leading to a "fall" that occurred in prehistory; make no sense (and seem grossly unjust)...

When Man's consciousness has become so spontaneously separated from the group/ spirit/ divine that the choices and events of putative ancient ancestors is experienced as utterly irrelevant to me-here-now.

If the Omni-God was not original to Christianity but instead the contingent artefact of a particular stage in Man's historical consciousness and the rhetorical requirements of the ancient church...

And since the O-G concept currently stands in the path of any possibility of explaining (clearly and simply) the nature of Jesus and what he did...

Then Christians really need to go back and re-examine and reject this Omni-God dogma... 

And then we need to replace the obsolete and harmful Omni-God with a conceptualization of God that makes explanatory-sense to us each, here, and now; and which clearly and simply explains the necessity of Jesus Christ for those who desire salvation.  

An Omni-God's-eye-view of agency/ free-will - a thought-experiment

Continuing the theme of yesterday's post - I will try to show why there can be no agency or 'free will' within the mainstream, classical Christian theology of one God; omnipotent, omniscient, omni-present; who created everything from nothing. The Omni-God concept. 

I will make the thought-experiment of imagining myself as being this Omni-God, having made creation - and desiring now to make Men who would have genuine individual agency.

Clearly, it would be useless to make many Men and control all of them directly - because that would simply be to make a puppet show. 

But a more common argument is that God made Men and placed within each Man a small portion of himself - a 'divine seed' - and it is this divine seed within each Man that enables him to be a genuine free agent; to think and choose independently from God. 

But this does not work either! If the direct-control God would just be a kind of puppet master - this 'remote-control' God would just be a kind of playwright, whose characters only superficially appear to be agents.

If God makes all the ingredients, then no matter how these ingredients are divided and mixed - every-thing is still God. All agency is still God's. 

Thus, a Man whose agency depends on a divine seed from the Omni-God is still the Omni-God - albeit just a part of that God - like a character in a play is always a part of the playwright. 

Thus, a dramatist can make a play with twenty different, and differently-motivated, characters... But ultimately all of these characters are just fragments of the playwright's own character. 

Their differences do not make the characters have free will - each is still 'inside' the play. Likewise the fragments of an Omni-God do not have agency - each is still inside the creation, All of which has been made by Omni-God.   

The Omni-God may then try to make his 'characters' develop agency - even if they did not have agency to begin with...

He might reason that - even though each character in his play begin as just a fragment of God; by interacting with his environment and by learning, each Man will potentially develop independence of will - and will learn agency.   

This would be analogous to the playwright setting-up his drama with characters - each a fragment of his own character - but then as the play proceeds, the characters will interact and experience events in unexpected ways that might surprise the playwright - and were not predicted by him. 

The characters 'become real' to the author, 'take on a life of their won' - as writers sometimes say...

But that is just another superficial illusion in the case of the Omni-God; because all possible interactions between all Men and all environments are still just a part of God. And even the capacity to learn from experience was a quality implanted by that same Omni-God. 

Furthermore, the Omni-God already knows the result of these innumerable interactions, because he is omniscient - so he will not even experience the surprise of a human playwright! 

So, it turns out that the Omni-God does not generate agency; whether as a puppet master or as a playwright. 

When no individual 'human agency' goes-into the mix of creation; and when all of creation comes from the Omni-God - then no amount of dividing and mixing and interacting can make human agency emerge from creation. 

My inference is therefore that if human agency is real - as Christianity requires it must be (and if this thought experiment is valid*); then the Christian God cannot be an Omni-God.

For human agency to come-out-of creation - human agency must have gone-into creation. 

 

Note: the intention of this thought experiment is to clarify my argument: to make it more comprehensible. Of course, it does not prove anything - because no thought-experiment can prove anything! But it may lead to an understanding of the argument explaining why there is no way to get personal-agency out-from the assumptions of an Omni-God; and why Christians for whom the issue of free-will/ agency is primary (and who are not happy that it should be regarded as wholly an incomprehensible mystery) therefore need to discard the Omni-God concept. 

Where does evil come from? A simple answer is needed

"Where does evil come from" is a simple question, and an obvious question! 

Christians ought to be able to answer the question, in the same simple and obvious terms it is stated - without recourse to vast, complex and soaring abstractions - and would-be-profound discourse on the nature of 'infinities'! 

And answered without recourse to statements that "Men cannot know", such things - or that they are divine-mysteries... 

Why? Because the question is obvious, reasonable, real, serious; and therefore will (deservedly!) block conversion unless answerable in the same terms it has been asked.  

The basis of the question is that there are obviously evils in this world; and Christians also know that God - the creator of this world - is Good: So where do these evils comes from?

The proper answer - the answer demanded and deserved - should be short, concrete and to the point; or else it is not a real answer 

...and will be recognized by most people as not a real answer. 

If God is supposed to have created everything except Himself (i.e. if God is an Omni-God) and is also supposed be wholly Good (i.e. if the real Christian God was also the Omni-God) - then where does evil come from? 

It's a valid question. And there is no coherent answer: If God is Omni then he cannot be wholly Good, and if wholly Good then he cannot be Omni. 

A Christian God and Omni-qualities are incompatible. 

And this incompatibility has always been obvious to most people in the world; including, I would guess, many Christians.

One attempt at arguing the compatibility of Omni-God and Christianity is to insist that evil and Good are actually, ultimately, the same and indistinguishable aspects of God's will - that both apparent-Good and apparent-evil come from God; and it is only our erring, limited human minds who cannot see this oneness. 

Indeed, taken one at a time - any proposed evil can be reframed as potentially an aspect of Good - in some larger sense.

However, even though individual instances of putative evil can be put-in-doubt, to insist on the oneness, inseparability of Good and evil-as-such is Not to be a Christian. If there is no evil, no 'sin' - if all is an equal expression of oneness - then there is no point to Christianity. 

So that kind of argument does not work. 

If evil is really-real, and God is really Omni - then evil must come from God, evil must be located-in God, ultimately. 

The usual Omni-God answer is that God gave some creatures - including Men - agency, or free will; so that Men can choose to oppose God and creation. 

Okay - but where does that motivation to oppose God and creation come from? 

If every Man was wholly-made by God (as the Omni-God concept insists); then - even if agency-within-omnipotence was granted - where does the motivation to evil come-from? It has to come from God, ultimately, because (with an Omni-God) there is nowhere else for motivation to come-from. 

In more general terms, all evil motivations, indeed the whole possibility-of-evil, would need to be baked-into the created world by the Omni-God - because the Omni-God ultimately created every-thing. 

Evil is best understand as opposition to God and to God's creation... So how can there be opposition to God and creation from some being who is created by God?  

One answer is to regard evil as a kind of insanity: something that doesn't make sense. 

For instance, Satan is described in terms of knowing that he was created-by God, but (for some crazy reason!) hating and resenting this fact; and therefore hating himself - along with the whole of creation.

Okay - but where did such insanity originate - if not the Omni-God Himself? 

How was it possible that one of God's creatures could develop this kind of pathology of insane self-hatred, resentment - pride? The only ultimate answer is that God-made-him-that-way - because, with Omni-God, that is eventually the answer to all questions...

For Omni-Godites; God made Satan that way - for reasons we cannot comprehend, but which God comprehends - therefore, the duty of all good Christians is submission, obedience to God's will... 

...But wait a minute! Uncomprehending submission to God's incomprehensible will... That sounds very much like another religion; but it is not Christianity - it is not the kind of thing that Christ would teach in the Gospels, and of course there is no essential role for agency. 

And this not Christianity; because this argument means that Christians are regarded as incapable of personally recognizing and rejecting evil...

The Omni-God answer to any version of the question: "Where does evil come from?" can only either be God - or else, the denial that evil really is evil.

And either or both of these lead either to a God beyond human discernment, a God to whom we must submit without understanding; or else the denial that evil really is different-from Good.  

Both of which are incompatible with Christianity. 

The incompatibility of the Omni-God with Christianity is indeed very easy to see and impossible to deny without redefining Christianity; or else moving to a level of uncomprehended-abstraction piled-upon uncomprehended-abstraction that makes coherent thinking impossible - and seems intended to stun all opposition into silence!

And this is why all honest defenses of a Christian Omni-God always end-up with putting 'incomprehensible mystery' at the very heart of the Christian religion - and the Christian is required simply to accept that. 

Which is hardly a satisfactory state of affairs. Especially not for someone considering conversion to Christianity, or to a Christian who wants a proper answer to an urgent question. 

So if the question is "where does evil come from?" - then what would I personally regard as an answer that is short, concrete and to the point - and true?

My answer is that:

God the creator is indeed wholly Good, however God creates using already-existing Beings - such as Men. It is these already-existing Beings that are the source of evil.

In other words, God's creation includes evil because it is made from beings that were already-evil; in different ways, and to different degrees. 

Or, God is wholly Good, but Men are - and always have been - partly evil. 

Therefore; evil really is evil; and God the creator really is Good - but the Christian God is Not an Omni-God. 

Now - of course! - such an answer raises further questions; and invites expansion. 

So much for this mortal earth; but can we not look-forward to inhabiting a wholly-Good world? What about Heaven the wholly-Good place, for example? 

How can Heaven be really-real and wholly Good - when the beings in God's creation contain evil?

It's another question; and it needs another answer. 

A short answer to this question is: that is where Jesus Christ comes in. 

This world contains evil because men brought evil into it; but for those who follow Jesus Christ, the next world can be wholly Good...

Because after death, and through resurrection, Men can choose to leave all evil behind and take-forward into Heaven only that which is Good.  

Note: Whether or not you regard my short, simple and to-the-point answers as sufficiently correct (given that all possible answers are bound to be incomplete and biased, and especially short answers!) - I hope they at least illustrate the kind-of-answer that is required to this question. And that the above suggested answers may demonstrate, by contrast, the kind-of-answer that is not suitable to the question. 

Further note: Those seriously interested in agency, which itself is the other side of the coin of evil - and in the Omni-God (aka Supergod) in relation to Christianity - should read William James Tychonievich's superb essay, published today. 

Just how important is Free Will (Agency)?

William James Tychonievich has written a blog post about a fictional book that (as part of its story) attempts (albeit from a Jewish rather than Christian perspective - it was written by a Rabbi) to provide an intellectual model that combines the attributed omniscience and omnipotence of God, with human Agency, or Free Will.  

But, as William argues (endorsed by comments from myself and Francis Berger) the model actually, by its assumptions and implications, sacrifices human agency in order to sustain the Omni-God assumption. 

In this respect, and in common with nearly-all Christian theology (including mainstream Roman and Eastern Catholic and Protestant theology); it is evident that the omni-nature of God is primary - and an understanding of human agency and freedom is something that is, in practice, sacrificed to the need to ascribe omni attributes to God. 

This is confirmed when the Rabbi author (Shaul Behr) responds to the post with a couple of comments; finishing with:

Like those who came before me, I am content, as you say, to leave it as an unresolved "mystery of God".

The Rabbi's response is therefore essentially identical with that of most Christian theologians over the past couple of millennia; and I translate it as follows:

We are sure and certain that God is omnipotent and omniscient. We also recognize that Men must be free agents in order that each Man's choices have meaning. But, although we can provide confusing, complex abstract pseudo-explanations of how this might be possible - none of these explanations really make sense. And we cannot provide a clear, simple, coherent account of how free agency is possible with an Omni-God. So we call the situation of Man's freedom in the context of Omni-God "a mystery".

The question I ask is: is this good enough? 

And I answer: No it is not good enough. 

It is, in practice, treating the matter of coherently understanding human agency as trivial - and not something that needs to be understood. 

It is commonly asserted that all Christians (and, apparently, all Jews) must believe in the Omni-God, or else they are not Christians (or Jews) - because Omni-God Just Is God - because supposedly nothing else makes any sense... 

Man's freedom, in stark contrast, becomes something that must be taken on faith, as a form of words; by the asserted necessity for each of us to trust in the validity of theological authority. 

Apparently; Omni-God is mandatory; while by contrast free agency is something that needs to be asserted but does not need to be understood - and, because of Omni-God, freedom cannot be understood. 

Unsurprisingly, in practice, traditional Christian theology has always tended to assert God's omni-nature as interpreted by "the church" (whichever church prevailed); while human agency was considered to be a problem.  

Indeed, human agency is blamed for the evils of this world. 

It seems that the only proper role of human freedom - in traditional theology - is to make the right choices from among those presented by God.

Unsurprisingly, since there is only one right answer among choices, and all possible answers are God-given; it has seemed to many Christians that it might be better if humans had simply been pre-programmed to make these right choices. 

It has thus seemed that the only significant role of human agency is negative: freedom is seen as the freedom to do wrong. 

Which fits with the pointlessness of human life when God is Omni... Since such a God is everything, then human beings can add nothing to creation; which implies that creation of humans was futile - because (from this perspective, at the bottom line) the best a human can do in life, is to follow a pre-determined path of correct choices. 

Apparently; freedom has no positive role. 

Thus, by such accounts; the problem of Omni-God and human freedom has been "solved" by reducing human freedom to an expression of negative resistance to God's reality.

Freedom becomes regarded like a disease; something wrong with Men... Hence the centrality of "original sin". 

However, if the logic is followed - we get the bizarre assertion that this supposedly Omni God, for some "mysterious" reason, created flawed human beings who can only mess-up.       

The things is: our freedom, our agency as human beings, is experiential; something we know innately and directly. 

Whereas the Omni-nature of God is something inferred as a consequence of non-intuitive abstract assumptions; and via logical procedures that many or most people cannot follow, or regard as flawed. 

And that is a problem! 

It is a problem that will not go away: Christians know we are free, and yet we are told that this knowledge of agency is subordinate to the assertion of Omni-God.

Officially - we are told that the ultimate answer is that common sense cannot comprehend this situation - tha tthe situation is necessary and unavoidable - therefore "it is a Mystery".  

And yet this mystery is made to be foundational to being-a-Christian (and also perhaps a Jew)!

Well, in the end, the only responsible way to address this situation is for each of us to plumb the depths of our primary assumptions concerning the ultimate nature of reality - to establish what we really suppose to be known, and sure, and foundational. 

Is it what we have been told, or what we experience?  

Upon this hinges a great deal. 

For most Christians, officially, Omni-God is mandatory - free will/ agency... not really

The problem for traditional, orthodox mainstream Christian Churches is that they make a very Big Thing about the creator deity being Omni-God - but when it comes to the free will of Men... Well, freedom is accorded much, much less significance. 

On the one hand; Omni-God is absolutely mandatory - the church member must swear to that concept. 

On the other hand; each Man's freedom... well, it is supposed to be present and effective. Christians are supposed to be able to choose our values, commitments, behaviours - either because we get divinely evaluated on them, or else simply because these decisions have consequences related to salvation. 

However; both in theory and in practice, freedom may be (more, or less) dispensed-with by this type of Christianity. At the very least least, Man's freedom gets so hedged-about with so many caveats, that when it comes to the crunch - e.g. when it comes to a conflict between Man's Freedom and God's Omni-status... well, agency means little or nothing. 

Omni-God Must Be - but Man's Freedom is something rather difficult, something we are allowed to doubt and debate... 

In the crunch, Omni-God prevails and freedom is imprisoned, and perhaps forgotten. 

Looking at a couple of Protestant documents: The Thirty-Nine Articles of 1571 are (in theory, if not in practice) the confession of the Church of England, and all the other churches in the Anglican communion - third largest in the world. This has as its first item of faith, the Omni-God:

There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible.

The Westminster Confession of Faith from 1646 is the basis for several nonconformist groups, including the Presbyterians. This is more explicit, and hard-line, in its Omni-Goddism than the 39 Articles; and requires affirmation of a conception of the God that would (of itself) probably satisfy the most ardent pure-monotheist: 

There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and withal most just and terrible in His judgments; hating all sin; and who will by no means clear the guilty. God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of Himself; and is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which He hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting His own glory in, by, unto, and upon them; He is the alone foundation of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom, are all things; and hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them, whatsoever Himself pleaseth. In His sight all things are open and manifest; His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature; so as nothing is to Him contingent or uncertain. He is most holy in all His counsels, in all His works, and in all His commands. To Him is due from angels and men, and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience He is pleased to require of them.

Having established the absolute requirement of belief in an Omni-God - what do these documents say of Man's freedom?  

39 Articles: The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith; and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.

Westminster: Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto. When God converts a sinner and translates Him into the state of grace, He freeth him from his natural bondage under sin, and, by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so as that, by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly, nor only, will that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil. The will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone, in the state of glory only.

We see that, in contrast to the much-emphasized and freedom of God elsewhere described in these documents; in this earthly mortal life, Man is characterized mainly by un-freedom. 

Man is describing here as lacking the freedom in the divine sense - that freedom which is necessary for creation, and indeed (I would say) for love. 

In these confessions; Man cannot will good, but can only will a kind of double negation of rejecting evil, or will acquiescing to the good that is done-for-us and given-us by God the Father and Jesus Christ. 

What I see; is how far from the situation described in the Gospels, especially the Fourth Gospel (John) Christianity had developed by the time of these confessions. How close Christianity had come to the pure monotheism of Judaism or Islam; by which Man's freedom is (so it seems to me) almost solely related to the choice of obedience and submission to God's will, law, and commandments. 

Even this minimal version of human agency as obedience is, by my understanding, impossible when God is truly Omni. 

When God is everything necessary, Man's existence and "choices" mean nothing of real value.

When God is absolute and infinite in knowledge, power, and presence; this eliminates any need, space, or place for Man's agency to exist - so it gets ignored.

For orthodox, mainstream, traditional Christian Churches; the Omni-God is absolute, compulsory, officially-required, built-in. 

Human free agency - by contrast - is treated like an optional extra, a mere embellishment or decoration on the rock of faith; nice but (when the chips are down) not-really-necessary.   

Therefore; if a Christian believes in the reality and vital importance of his own free agency to salvation and theosis - to living this earthly mortal life...

Then, in order to be honest and coherent both; such a Christian ought to set-aside the Omni-God concept, or at least relegate Omni-God to subordinate status. 

And instead seek an understanding of God that acknowledges - and clearly and coherently explains - the nature, origin, truth, and goodness of each Man's freedom. 

Note: I leave it to the members of the two largest Christian communions - Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox - to do the same exercise for the confessional documents of their own institutions. 

The Big Problem about the whole business of Omni-God

In a sense the Big Problem about the whole business of God's supposed omniscience and omnipotence is Christians defining God in terms that contradict the basic stance of Christianity.

The Omni-God arises from defining God in terms of divine attributes; and then this is compounded by these attributes being abstractions. 

But this is a strangely unnatural thing to do in the first place! For Christians, God is a person - primarily. 

To know God is to know that person - not to know his philosophical attributes!

Christians glibly pay lip-service to the Christian God being 'a personal god' - and indeed this corresponds to the sequence my own adult conversion (and that of CS Lewis); where I began as an atheist, then believed in a deity (philosophically understood - a deity of attributes), then finally a god who loved me and with whom I could have a personal relationship. 

But having arrived-at belief in a personal god, and arrived-at being-a-Christian, surely we ought then to realize that the 'person' aspect should come first? 

With the example of Jesus Christ (a Man, and divine) before us - and the way that Jesus speaks-with and refers-to his Father, repeatedly (especially in the Fourth Gospel); it seems plain and irrefutable common sense to recognize that the personal understanding of God ought-to-be primary!  

God is primarily a person, a particular individual* - God is a person who has-done and is-doing particular things; of which the most significant is creation. 

For Christians: God is the-creator; and the-creator is a person. 

Belief in God entails belief in that person. 

Only then may we move-on to discuss this God-person's attributes, powers and limitations etc - but these attributions are secondary and optional - and ought not to be made primary and defining. 

That God's attributes have-been and are, made primary and defining, is a deep and significant error; an error that leads to insoluble philosophical problems such as those relating to free agency and the origins of evil. 

...Then these insoluble problems serve to drive people away from Christianity; because belief in the attributes of God that lead to these problems is asserted to be mandatory for all Christians.

The fact that the divine attributes are doubled-down and insisted-upon despite all, implies that for such people God is not really being regarded as personal - but that, at best, philosophical abstractions are being dressed-up in a superficial personality. 

For such self-identified Christians, when the chips are down, God's personality is up for debate... but God's Omni-qualities are not negotiable but instead a dogmatic requirement. 

This is revealed by the insistence that Omni-God does not really have 'passions' or desires, that Omni-God does not hope, or suffer; that God does not change and is eternally, always 'the same'. So that Omni-God's love for his children (Men) is said to be of some qualitatively-different kind than the desiring and transforming love of persons for persons, beings for beings... 

Before long on this path, we may observe Omni-God's love is being regarded as so alien and incomprehensible a concept to our understanding, that the Christian is being pushed towards an attitude of 'oriental fatalism', obedience, and submission; and Omni-God is being attributed with a nature and motivations that - in a Man - would be regarded as evil - cold, un-loving, indifferent, heart-less... 

 

Continuing down this Omni-God path can easily take Christians away from being rooted in a relationship with the person of our loving-Father; and propel the Christian towards an attitude of unquestioning and uncomprehending obedience to an absolute judge and ruler...

And, potentially, then beyond that into oneness spiritualties of abstract universal deity, where 'love' has become so diffuse and depersonalized as to resemble an infinite force field or energetic vibrational frequency.

In conclusion; for Christians - taking the example of Jesus Christ - God the creator is a person; knowing God is to know that person - and loving God is to love that person. 

And the business of listing and defining the abstract attributes of that loved creator-God is no more necessary than it would be to list and define the attributes of Jesus Christ; or the attributes of our own parents, siblings or children...

Certainly, the loving does not wait-upon the listing! 

Adapted from a comment at WmJas Tychonievich's blog

*Note. In fact I personally believe God the creator is two persons, a dyad; but the above argument works the same whether the ultimate creator-God is one Heavenly Father or two Heavenly Parents. 

If this world is ruled by evil Men, affiliated with Satan - what does this tell us about God? (Concerning negative versus positive Christians)

It is important for people to realize, to acknowledge, that the global leadership class of 2023 - especially those of The West - are affiliated to evil; i.e. are allied with Satan and against God and divine creation. 

But making this acknowledgement is not sufficient to be Christian, because the Christian God is Good - and Good by (the best and highest) human standards  of Good - as exemplified and taught by Jesus Christ. 

In other words; to be Christian, we must also correctly understand how it is that God, the creator, who is wholly-Good - makes things, such that this world is ruled by evil Men who serve the agenda of Satan. 

In other words; we need to understand enough about the nature and motivations of God to make sense of the current fact of things-now being substantially under evil leadership. 

And there are (from a Christian perspective) right and wrong ways of understanding this.

As so often nowadays; this line of reflection almost immediately gets-down to fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality - especially the nature of God (in other words - to metaphysics). 

And as so often nowadays; such reflections operate as a stress test on some of the historical incoherences of Christianity - in this instance, the dogma that the Christian God is an Omni-God (omnipotent, omniscient, and creating everything from nothing).

When the Omni-God concept is made primary - then there is no real Good or evil; because everything is of-God. 

Our human ideas of Good and evil are then merely the delusions of Beings who have been made depraved and weak, and forced (for incomprehensible reasons) to dwell in the realm of an evil dictator - with the only goal the negative one of acknowledging our own depravity and that evil of our situation. 

Somehow; this acknowledgement of evil is supposed to be the only path to our personal salvation. And yet this (we must believe) was the only and best way that we (who are supposed to be completely made by God, in complete accordance with God's designs, and having experiences completely dictated by God or God's servants) can escape eternal torment.    

I have noticed that some of the Christians who pass the Litmus Tests of our time - and who therefore appear to be 'good Christians' - are doing so negatively rather than positively. In other words - such Christians recognize the evil of the Litmus Test issues - but only because they regard this whole world as essentially evil. 

Such negative Christians regard Men as essentially depraved creatures who inhabit a world that God has given to the rulership of Satan; and which Satan - who is a sadistic, lying tyrant - operates as a prison of torment.   

In other words; such negative Christians regard God as Good (in some ultimate and abstract sense) but one whose Goodness is morally-incomprehensible - because God (as an Omni-God, qualitatively utterly distinct from men) operates by values that are beyond human comprehension and empathy. 

Because if a Man were to treat his children in this way, he would be regarded as a moral monster! 

An analogy might be parents who deliberately choose to send their son to a boarding school whose headmaster is a sadistic tyrant, and who employs sadistic tyrants as teachers; and these teachers ensure that the most sadistic and tyrannical of the boys are praised and rewarded, and encouraged to torment the children at the school and expunge anything in them that is Good or joyful. 

Even more extremely; since these parents are 'omnipotent and omniscient' - we must assume that they might not have sent their son to boarding school at all, but chose to. And they might instead have picked a better Headmaster who had some Good motivations and employed a better staff and encouraged Goodness in the boys... 

But no! These parents chose to force their kid to inhabit torture-school...

And further - these parents must be regarded as having made their son such that he was by nature depraved, that he was corruptible by evil; he is set-up (by his creation-from-nothing) such that he cannot resist corruption.  

Such choices are de facto imputed to the Omni-God - and belief in Omni-God is then made mandatory for Christians... 

Negative Christians are driven to such extremes by their dogmatic adherence to the Omni-God. 

In the past, it was possible, indeed not unusual, for Christians who believed in an Omni-God to operate in a way that was inconsistent with their belief - and which instead focused on the nature, example and teachings of Jesus. 

But nowadays, because of the stresses of these times - the contradictions of mainstream, orthodox Christian theology have been brought to the surface, and confronted by a more evil world than ever before - a world in which the organized institutional 'Christian' churches have (almost-) all chosen to obey the totalitarian agenda of evil, and who actively-support many or most of the globalist-leftist Litmus Test issues. 

Yet to regard this world and Men as essentially evil is to reject that which is specifically Christian, and to adopt a Judaic/ Old Testament/ Islamic - or even quasi-Gnostic - view of God; as incomprehensible or even apparently evil by even the best human standards. 

(The Gnostics believed, in essence, that this world - and all 'matter' - was created and operated by 'the devil'; and was therefore wholly negative, operating only as a test to elicit a spiritual and other worldly desire. For the Gnostics, we Men could not learn anything positive from our experience in this world - we could only learn the negative lesson of its evil, and experience the desire to escape from matter into pure spirit. Meanwhile - for Gnostics - knowledge of God could only be negative ('negative theology') - we could say what God was not; but could state nothing positive and substantive about God. In other words; this is a double-negative theology - in which 'Good' is only the negation of evil. While there are no modern day Gnostics - it can be seen that this negative metaphysical attitude has been, and still is, a feature of many religions and spiritualities. This is also revealed by the commonly-expressed double-negative conception of salvation; which is so often described as as an escape from default-torment - e.g. "Jesus came to save Men from Hell".) 

It seems obvious to me that Christians - i.e. those who follow Jesus Christ - cannot (and should not) follow this path of regarding this world as created by God as a prison ruled by a tormenter; and of God's nature as utterly unlike even the best aspects of the best of of Men.

The test of these times involves both accepting that this world is indeed ruled by evil men who serve Satan; and also understanding that God is Good - and Good by the best standards of the best of Men in this actual world. 

This means that (in 2023) Christians are being compelled explicitly to reject the old error of the Omni-God in Christianity - failure to do so is pushing Christians towards a kind of double-negative pseudo-Christianity, in which God and the ultimates have more in common with the world-view of Judaism, Islam, or even the Gnostic...

In other words; we are called-upon explicitly to reject a type of 'Christianity' that demands (above all else) complete obedience to the incomprehensible and (to us ultimately depraved humans) apparently-immoral demands of all-powerful and abstractly inhuman deity.

Such a Christianity has no essential role for Jesus Christ as such - its theology and demands are wholly-derivable from God as-was before the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ: Jesus has been wholly-absorbed-into the Omni-God (as must all of creation be absorbed into an Omni-God). 

Such a pseudo-Christianity is an Old Testament religion (plus/ minus various Greek and Roman philosophical assumptions) - and such remains the case no matter what lip-service is paid to the importance of Jesus.  

In one version; Jesus has been absorbed into an already-existing Old Testament project, without any qualitative break or inflexion; in another version Jesus is just treated as-if he was simply God the Creator.  

To be a positive Christian in 2023 therefore entails more than just rejecting the temptations of the Litmus Tests on the basis that the world world is evil and God made it this way. 

We cannot negative our way out of trouble! 

Good comes from Good, not from a vast piling of evil upon evil. When Christians find themselves talking as if Good could come from evils, they ought to regard this as a reductio ad absurdum - and examine their assumptions that led to this non-sense! 

Christians need to be led by Jesus Christ, not by a pre-Christian conception of an Omni-God. 

A Christian in 2023 needs to detect and reject evil - yes!

But only as a means to the end of pursuing positive Good. 

**

Note added: The reader may notice that I emphasized 2023 throughout. Negative Christianity often worked well in practice in earlier eras - and this is also useful to understand. Firstly, Men had a different and more group-ish (immersive, passive, un-conscious) form of consciousness in the pre-modern era; and this resulted in society-wide forms of religion. The positive aspects of even the most negative theologies were therefore sometimes ameliorated by positive social practices - particularly those handed-down by tradition. One example would be that of Eastern Orthodox Christianity as found in the Byzantine Empire, or Holy Russia. As well as an ascetic and meditative monasticism rooted in negative theology; there were all kinds of ritual and symbolic practices that were part of everyday life and provided a counterbalancing of warmth, aesthetic satisfaction, colour, energy - often the veneration of Mary, the Mother of God was a particular route for this. Something analogous can be seen in some Medieval Roman Catholic societies of Western Europe. But things have changed - modern Men's consciousness is more autonomous and individualistic and consciously aware of things once taken-for-granted so that we must choose much that was previously spontaneous; automatically absorbed from society. Now (2023) there are no Christian societies that provide that kind of communal and primarily-motivating religious life. Each Christian is, in an existential sense, "on his own". Therefore the long-standing flaws of mainstream Christian theology have been unmasked. Thus life in 2023 is always and everywhere a testing-time for Christians; in ways that 1223, 1523, or even 1823 - were not (or not always).  

Absolute abstractions can make people crazy

*

There are some words, quite a lot of them, that name absolutes - and they can drive us crazy.

We can, it seems, quite easily get to the point where the abstraction takes over from immediate reality, such that the absolute requires nothing short of absolute submission to... to what?

To the absolute truth of the absolute.

*

An example:

Properly speaking, equal means the same - and 'the same' means no more than that things are in the same category - to say that humans are equal before God, or the Law, or whatever, means only that they are members of the same category.

Thus, there is a relationship with God which is characteristic of humans, and the category of humans includes (for Christians) men and women, children and adults.

The word equal is doing no necessary work here (or anywhere else), but instead - by its pseudo-mathematical and un-human precision, making our brains go into convulsions.

*

But in politics, equality has become an absolute abstraction.

As an absolute 'equality' comes first, as an abstraction it can never be known whether any specific reality matches up to the absolute value of being wholly 'equal'.

Because we cannot measure the concordance between reality and an absolute abstraction, yet hold the absolute abstraction as primary - equality becomes a concept which requires absolute submission.

Even to discuss the reality, achievability or degree of equality is an appalling thing - because equality is absolute.

*

Substitute for equality 'justice', we see the same.

There are many examples: freedom, democracy, human rights, poverty, oppression...

There can be, there is, often a gross dissociation between a person's adherence to what would seem to be the implications of equality, or justice and their actual lives (both outer and inner). But once the absolute abstraction holds-sway, then that doesn't matter - because of course there never can be any proportionality between an absolute and reality...

*

To refuse to submit to a concept like equality is to insult equality.

To refuse to say the right things about equality, to put equality first, to swear by the concept of equality... such things are seen as a gross act of aggression against society.

What matters is submission to the concept: public, and preferably private, submission to the validity of the idea in all its abstract purity.

 *

In philosophy the 'omni' words when applied to God are similar absolute abstractions.

In terms of human understanding, to have 'total' power, knowledge, extent doesn't mean a thing.

We could imagine power, knowledge and extent which had no definable bounds, but our minds implode at the matter of absolute power, knowledge, extent...

*

And in religion these unimaginable incomprehensible absolute abstractions operate in an analogous fashion to equality and justice in modern politics...

People are not required to understand the omni words, because they are un-understandable; they are not required to live-by the omni words, because their implications are abstract and disconnected from life.

People are required to submit to the omni words; because to do otherwise is seen as insulting God (to whom these absolute abstractions have been linked).

*

So these omni words, and the absolute abstractions which lie behind them, come to rule religions; despite that nobody knows what they mean, and nobody even knows what it would mean to live by them.

It should be possible to make a one-sided rejection of omni attributes; to say, that don't make sense... and leave it it that.

But anybody who challenges an omni attribution is assumed to be stating the opposite as an alternative in philosophical terms.

And the opposite to an absolute abstraction is a terrifying thing, not least because it is necessarily perceived as incomprehensible and as craziness-inducing as the abstraction to which it is put in opposition...

So to oppose an approved absolute abstraction is to be perceived as proposing something so vast and total as to be mind-numbing in its horribleness.

*

So we recurrently get the situation in which submission to the official absolute belief system, in all its abstract perfection, becomes the hallmark of orthodoxy, and indeed in practice the one and only absolutely (!) required mark of orthodoxy.

*

For some religions that is appropriate, but not for Christianity.

For Christians, the essence is the personal relationship with God: that is the essence, not the whole thing, but we must work outwards from that.

And we cannot work outwards from a personal relationship to meet an absolute abstraction - if we try to do this, if we insist on doing that - at some point we will leave behind the personal relationship.

For all matters of doctrine, the  Christian hopes and aims to achieve a conviction in his heart; to understand is to have that conviction - and that conviction is of the form of a personal relationship.

*

The Christian must strive above all to love God; but we cannot love an absolute abstraction, only a person.

*

How an Omni concept of God requires Original Sin

*
I think it likely that the concept of Original Sin derived from the philosophical insistence on the absolute/ infinite/ abstract 'Omni' definition of God - omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent -  which attempted to fuse Christianity with Greek-Roman Classical Philosophy. 

The Fall is described in Genesis in the Bible, but not the concept of Original Sin - this is a philosophical inference, a second-order interpretation.

Simply, Original Sin has it that since the Fall, all men are born in a state of sin - and it is this situation which Christ's Atonement was needed to remedy. 

*

I think that once God had been defined philosophically in terms of Omni properties, and also as having created everything (except Himself) from literally nothing (ex nihilo) then the most pressing question for these early intellectual Christians was to explain the function of Christ.

Because a God that could do anything would seem not to need to go through this elaborate, messy and contingent business of Himself being incarnated into mortal life, dying, being resurrected and ascending to Heaven.

I think that Original Sin was intended to explain the function of Christ in the context of a God that could do anything. The idea being that God made everything perfect, but Man exercised his God-given free will to sin in the Fall; and this wrecked creation permanently - requiring a further act of God in Christ's incarnation (with an 'equation' or contrasted equivalence made between Adam and Christ).

But, it has, over the centuries, proved difficult/ impossible to hold-the-line on Original Sin - because the idea of inborn sin implies we are tainted at source, all humans are fundamentally wicked (or else we would not have required a Saviour), and this negative evaluation tends to spread and contaminate everything that humans feel, think and do.

Indeed, belief-in (living-by) Original Sin tends to paralyse the will, because it puts us at odds with God, and it removes any level of self trust, or any confidence in our own evaluations - we cannot (it seems) even evaluate which is a real or valid church - we cannot even get started on our Christian life, because our essence is wrong.

The effect of Original Sin is almost like philosophical relativism - in the sense that in relativism the only core possible belief is that all truths are relative and all other truths are made uncertain; whereas with original sin the only core belief is that we are fundamentally sinners, and all other beliefs are made uncertain by that.

*

The Restored Gospel of Mormonism goes right back to first philosophical principles, and rejects the concept of God as primarily an abstract and philosophical 'omni' deity creating everything from nothing - and replaces it with the primary concept, from the Old Testament, of God as a primarily a person: primarily our Heavenly Father, and we as his children. This relational definition is made primary, and any philosophical definitions must fit within this primary 'metaphor'.

Because God is not Omni, and therefore works within the universe, then it is reasonable to assume that the work of Christ was necessary - it was the only (or best) way that God could achieve his purposes.

God could not just make everything as he wanted, by an instantaneous act of will; rather God must work within time and within the matter and laws of the universe, to help his children whom he loves.

*

So the Fall happened, and had a permanent effect on possibilities and arrangements - but there is no such thing as Original Sin and modern men and women are born as innocent as were Adam and Eve - but born into a different and corrupted world, and a world of birth and death.

On the other hand, the dawn of consciousness, the reality of birth and death and need to overcome the corruptions of the world offer vast possibilities for spiritual development which would have been impossible without the Fall.

Because our God is not an Omni-God who can do anything instantly, means that the universe sets constraints on action - things can only be done in some ways and not other ways. The Atonement of Christ can be seen as necessary, as the only way that God could achieve his hopes for Man.

The complex 'rigmarole' of having the maker and ruler of this world Christ born into this world as an incarnate Man, his life and teachings, his death by crucifixion, his resurrection and ascension - all these can be understood as a necessary mechanism for our spiritual progression towards godhood, as Sons and Daughters of God to become more like God, more like Jesus Christ.

*

My basic point is that the dark and often paralysing concept of Original Sin is only made necessary to explaining the work of Christ by the primacy of an abstract and philosophical Omni concept of God.

But when God is seen as our Father, then Original Sin is seen as firstly unnecessary, and secondly as tending to be pernicious - so it can be and is discarded.

The way is then open for a simple and non-paradoxical understanding of the human condition which has men and women as very mixed but fundamentally good (more-or-less prone to corruption - but not fundamentally and intrinsically sinful); and Christ's work as giving us salvation by (in some way) living the path to eternal resurrected life.

Therefore, without Original Sin, we have all already been-saved by Christ for eternal resurrected life in (some degree of) happiness; so long as we do not choose positively-to-reject that salvation.

For those who accept Christ's salvation; the emphasis of mortal Christian life moves onto exaltation, theosis, sanctification, the process of becoming more god-like - or divinization.

*

So, the contingent decision to assimilate the common sense, personal, and family based ancient Hebrew and Christian narrative into the pre-existing Greek/ Roman abstract philosophical understanding can be seen as having had a profound and lasting effect upon Christianity as originally demonstrated and taught by Christ and the Apostles.

The Mormon Restoration goes back to before this philosophical re-conceptualization and reveals what seems to be a simpler, clearer, more positive, optimistic and motivating understanding of the human condition and of Christ's work in transforming it: I believe it is a better way of understanding the difference that Christ made.

Having said that, it is of course perfectly possible to be a real and good and devout Christian with what I would regard as an inferior conceptual understanding of Christianity - indeed that is and always has been the usual situation; not least because most Christians most of the time pretty much ignore the metaphysics and philosophy of their Christianity - and in practice they fit their abstract understanding into their primary personal relationship with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.

Mormonism simply takes this 'plain man's' Christianity of loving relationships as its official theology - and there is no need for the doctrine of Original Sin, and little benefit from it (some benefits, but little), and considerable possibility of harm from it.

*

But it only makes sense to discard Original Sin if first you discard the Omni concept of God - otherwise you will end-up without any necessary function for Christ, and then Christ becomes an 'optional extra' as in Liberal Christianity - and then, with an optional Christ, the way is open to people, en masse, choosing actively to reject the salvation which comes only by Christ.

Which is the current situation. People who cannot accept Original Sin end up rejecting Christ - but usually unaware that there is a strong and coherent 'third way' that combines full recognition of Christ as our Saviour but without need for Original Sin: which is Mormonism.

*

The Supergod delusion - by WmJas Tychonievich

Some outstanding theological clarification on a vital topic from WmJas Tychonievich. What William calls the Supergod conceptualisation is what I have blogged about here under the name 'omni' God - that is, the idea that our God is abstractly defined as omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent etc.

By contrast, I believe in God as described in the New Testament (and the Old) who is The Creator and Our Father. Scripture does not use abstract terms from Greek and Roman philosophy to pre-define God; God is known by us as a person - not a set of attributes into-which the person of God must (for some reason) be hammered.


What William and I share is a foundation in Mormon theology - William due to upbringing, and me due to having discovered Mormon theology in middle age. But, for whatever reasons, you will seldom hear Mormons arguing against the Supergod concept in the kind of ultra-logical, no-holds-barred fashion that WmJas approaches the subject.

Yet, this is an extremely important matter; because many people are (permanently) deterred from becoming a Christian by the insistence of mainstream churches that the omni concept of God is absolutely necessary and non-negotiable. For most Catholics and Protestant priest, pastors and theologians alike: if you don't believe in Supergod then you are not a Christian.


I regard this claim as lazy, incoherent, deadly nonsense; and the fact that so many Christians for so many centuries have stuck with it makes no difference. It was, in my opinion, this intransigence over an incoherent assertion that led to the rise of the major monethistic rival to Christianity - which has now outstripped Christianity in size.

Christianity's most formidable rival asserts the much-more-coherent abstract omni-deity; that is not necessarily nor always Good - according to human evaluations; and is not our loving Father whom we may know personally. If the omni-God is insisted-upon and given priority by Christians, the rational result will be a Christianity that is a second-rate version of its rival.


If an individual Christian is happy with the omni God and it does not spoil their Christianity, then fine. We are not all called upon to attain coherence.

My objection is the exclusivist preaching of philosophy at the expense of religion; and the insistence that church members assent to non-sense.

In practice, most Christians fudge the question in real life; and also in practice many or most Christian laity do not believe, and never have believed, in Supergod - but instead implicitly the benevolent Father Creator, such as I (and William) regard as true. 

Anyway, WmJas has written an essay that I would have loved to write - so I endorse it without reservation.

Read the whole thing...

The fact of demons refutes that God can be both "Omni" and Good

What seems to me a very powerful argument against the mainstream orthodox Christian notion that God-the-creator is both Good and an Omni-God; is the theologically-assumed reality of demons - that is, of never-incarnated spirits who are irredeemably committed to evil, and who operate in this world.

In an ultimate sense, this is a just a subset of "the problem of evil" - and its existence At All; but most of the attempted explanations of the presence of evil in this world are focused upon human beings. Apparently; many mainstream Christians (although not me) are sufficiently satisfied by the traditional explanation that human evil is a consequence of 1. human free will (granted by God) and 2. The Fall; plus 3. that there is always a possibility that mortal humans may repent and accept salvation. 

It is this possibility that any human who is currently committed to evil may, nonetheless, repent and accept salvation that serves to explain why such humans are not annihilated or incarcerated somewhere where they can do no harm. 

So; most orthodox Christians believe that evil demons are real, and that they have a harmful effect on this world; but that they cannot ever repent. 

This creates a contradiction. 

It seems obvious (?) that any Good God who had the power to do so (as an Omni-god does, be definition); would decisively sequester such evil beings somewhere where they could not corrupt or damn human beings. 

That God does not do; and allows demons access to humans, implies either that God is not Good, or that God is not "Omni". 

[Note added: To clarify, here I am not trying to refute the orthodox explanation of the existence of demons in the first place. This, in traditional orthodoxy is usually a matter of angels being conceived as a separate creation from Men. Upon having been created, these angels then use their free will to choose evil - they become fallen-angels. This fall is then regarded a - according to the attributed nature of angelic beings - a permanent condition. What I am instead saying here is focused on the question of what God does about fallen-angels/ demons, after they have arisen.] 

Maybe this is why so many modern Christians who cleave to the definition of God as wholly Good and "Omni" tend to deny the reality of traditionally-understood demons. Instead they (seem to) regard demons ("if they really exist") as merely confused, misguided and "disturbed" spirits who might attain salvation; or in some other way as only-partly-evil, or reversibly-evil.   

Or else such Christians fall back on the "God's Goodness is total but un-understandable by Men" argument; which leaves the Christian "God-is-Good" deity indistinguishable from the Islamic concept of "Good is God".  

Such are the ways in which the stark contradiction of traditional Christian theology when it comes to demons is obscured; and concealed behind imprecision, and complexity of (only vaguely-understood) abstractions. 

NOTE: I intend to present an alternative metaphysics to explain permanently-evil demon-spirits and their continued operations in this world; in a soon-to-be-published post - which will be referenced back to the above argument.

Q: Do you believe in God? A: What do you mean by "God"?

If somebody asks: Do you believe in God? 

Then the true answer depends on what is meant by "God" - and there are very wide divergences indeed between understandings what is meant by "God" - even among Christians. 

The only valid answer would be some version of: First; what do you mean by God? 

So, you cannot, and indeed should not, answer the question without getting clarification of what the enquirer is assuming about (what he is calling) God.

Otherwise, by saying "yes", you are assenting to buy a Pig in a Poke. 

For example, my understanding of God, the God in whom I believe;  is one that many/most Christians, Jews, Muslims would not consider to be actual God at all - or, at best, only a selective sliver of what they believe God to be. 

To such people, because I regard the Omni-God as false (and indeed incoherent), I am a kind of pagan - whatever my attitudes to Jesus Christ, whatever my desire for salvation.  

While to me; the Omni-God believers (insofar as they are real Omni-God believers, rather than those who are merely parroting forms of words, in obedience to the authority and doctrines of their church); are all de facto monotheists...

Monotheists whatever their Trinitarian protestations; and as such they do not really regard Jesus Christ as essential to anything (not even salvation) - nor do they believe in evil or freedom.   

And I regard all Omni-God monotheists as metaphysically indistinguishable from proponents of Oneness spirituality - and therefore their many practical differences are varieties of incoherent with their metaphysics.

I mean that the Omni-God is reducible-to/ metaphysically-indistinguishable-from the "deity" of "Deists" - which is not a person, but Just Is. Such a God-Deity is The Way Things Are.  

Answering "yes" to "do you believe in God?" therefore means very little or nothing - and a "yes" is more like to mislead than enlighten. 

Of course, in the West hardly anybody believes in God of any kind - so a negative reply to "do you believe in God?" is usual, and informative.   

But before assenting to belief in God we ought to be clear what we really mean by this - what we regard as vital to our understanding of God. 

Once someone has honestly (and without veiling-abstractions that serve to disguise incoherence or incomprehension) explained what he means by "God" - he has gone a long way towards explaining how he regards ultimate reality. 

He has also, potentially, done himself a big favour - because it may be that, once he has explained what he means by God, in terms that he himself can clearly grasp - then he will discover that this God is not really what he does believe or desire: in his heart of hearts. 

If God is all-powerful, then why didn't He make everybody Already-Good? (Why Men were needed to co-create Heaven)

"Why didn't God make everybody Already-good?" is actually a deep and tough question that cuts to the heart of Christian theology.

Because if God was the Omni-God of traditional, orthodox and classical theology - then it is hard to understand why He so often creates indirectly, via a rigmarole of intermediate factors and choices - which so often go wrong. 

To be sure of good results; God surely ought to have 'cut to the chase' and made everything 'right' from the beginning?

So goes the question...

So, if God wanted to make Men Good on this earth - then why didn't he just make Good Men in the first place? 

Why make Men so weak, so prone to temptation; why place these weak Men is such bad situations? 

Why Make the path from sin to salvation, from earth to Heaven, such an obstacle course? 

And the real zinger: Why did an omnipotent God need Jesus Christ to be born, live, die, resurrect and ascend to Heaven in order that Men be offered salvation? Surely it would be much more efficient and certain for God to create Good Men directly into Heaven, without the 'rigmarole' of Christ's incarnation and Men's choices?

Such questions are obvious and (to the asker) valid knock-down arguments only when Christians emphasize that their God must be omnipotent. Valid; because the typical omni-Godite Christian responses to such questions nearly-always come across as irrelevant, weak or evasive. 

But I personally reject the Omni-God concept; therefore I believe we need explicitly to conceptualize God as needing Men (and Men's agency) in order to achieve the goals of divine creation. 

In other words; divine creation was conceived from the beginning as a work of cooperation between God and men: a work of co-creation. 

Or - the 'rigmarole' of contingencies and obstacles in life are not an unfortunate matter; but necessary to attaining the desired results. 

My argument it is rooted in the assumption that the essence of Christianity - the work of Christ - was that Men should be able to live the eternal resurrected life in Heaven. 

And the assumption that this goal of Heaven could not be achieved by God without the freely chosen help of Men. 

So I am emphasizing that God could not create Heaven directly; but only by many intermediate steps involving the free will of Men - especially only by including the work of Jesus Christ. 

In other words Jesus Christ is necessary to God's plans, and without Jesus Christ God's plans could not be achieved. 

(It is this insistence upon the creational necessity, and not merely the goodness, of Jesus Christ - that divides Christianity from Islam.) 

Thus, one aspect of God's non-omnipotence which Christians (I would say) need to acknowledge; is that Jesus Christ was necessary; that God could not do-without what Jesus did - and what Jesus the Man freely chose to do. 

The results made possible by Jesus Christ were not obtainable directly; and Jesus was a Man and needed to be a Man; a Man with agency - therefore, we have here a vital example of co-creation.

To put it another way: to get from God's creation to Heaven was not possible directly; but only via many intermediate steps where Men make free choices; and these intermediate steps include the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and the incarnations, deaths and resurrections of all Men who wish for eternal life in Heaven. 

Heaven is the main objective of divine creation; and Heaven is the co-creation of God, Jesus Christ and all Men who inhabit it. 

In his most important work, God therefore works-with men, and by-means-of the agency of Men. 

God is the prime creator, and all other beings dwell within God's creation - that is what makes God God. But at the same time; the purpose of prime creation is that Men should co-create with God: that Men should (in other language) raise to become Sons and Daughters of God, as close as possible to the creative level of God (although always secondary, creating within already-established divine creation): active participants in the continuing work of creation.  

God is not 'omni', God would not want to be omni! - Because the goal of creation is Heaven; and Heaven is made-by and made-for co-creation; and co-creation is an ever-more active, conscious and powerful participation of Men in divine creating. 

Note: This post continues a line of discussion initiated over the past few days. 

What makes Good good?

All Christians believe that God is Good and loves us. 

But what does this actually mean? 

What does it mean to be Good? 

In particular; is Good a matter of preference merely, as modern materialistic ideology would have it. Are Good and evil "relative" and interchangeable? 

What this "relativism" of values seems to mean in current Western/ Globalist culture, in an underlying and implicit way, is that what matters are peoples' feelings (or more exactly, some peoples' feelings) - especially their "hedonic status", i.e. whether they are happy or suffering. 

What counts as Good is what is believed to lead to happiness, while evil is whatever causes suffering (or is asserted to cause suffering) - and Good and evil can therefore change places according to the cause of gratification/misery in the current situation. 

It should be noted that this modern Western hedonic morality as the basis of values, is rooted in the assumption that we can objectively know, and indeed measure, the hedonic outcome of choices... 

The assumptions that we know and can quantify other-people's state of happiness; and that we understand the relationship between present action and future emotions - including in large numbers of people; and that that we can predict the major psychological consequences of material actions.

These assumptions seem to me nothing but wishful-thinking at best; and most often sheerly-obvious nonsense...

Nonetheless; these are among the assumptions upon-which modern mainstream morality and values are based.  

  

Or is there instead some objective basis to Good and evil? By "objective" I mean here to ask: is there something about the nature of reality that distinguishes Good from evil? And if there is something objective about Good - what is it? 

Traditional orthodox mainstream Christian theology has it that God is Good because God created everything from nothing, because God is "omni" in nature. 

This is the argument of monotheism, something that this type of Christian shares with Jews and Moslems, and which is rooted in an assertion that God is Good because there is nothing else. 

In other words, by this argument, God is Good because God is everything, so that it is irrational, meaningless, to believe otherwise. Because there is nothing else but God - to be evil is meaningless, futile, insane... evil (by this account) has nowhere to go, and nothing to believe-in. 

The obvious objection to the monotheistic omni-God argument; is that if God made everything, is everything, controls and knows everything - then this abolishes the difference between Good and evil. 

The trad-orthodox definition of evil is more a matter of "Good is God" than "God is Good"; because (by this account) there is ultimately nothing except God and that which is wholly made by God - and God has been defined as Good. 

Apparent differences between Good and evil can therefore only be illusory, or temporary... But, even then, it is unclear why God should make or allow such illusions. 

(Indeed, it is unclear why the omni-God should do anything at all - since everything that has happened, is happening, or could happen - is all God Himself and his own 100% God-made creation. Creation seems to change nothing essential, to have no purpose or direction; because everything always was/is/shall-be.) 

Therefore, if we regard Good as relativistic, we just get a kind of this-worldly hedonic therapy, in which anything and everything is "justified" by assertions that it will make "people" happier, or less miserable. 

Or else, by trying to make Goodness identical with an omni-God, by asserting that all-is-God and God-is-Good; we end up actually abolishing the distinction between Good and evil. 

Anyone evil is then insane by his opposition to the only actual reality... Yet even this statement does not stand, because God must have made that person the way he is - i.e. insane.

The omni-mono-God philosophy explains nothing because it explains everything!

And such a conception of God seems especially antagonistic to Christianity; which must surely have an essential place for the divine Man Jesus Christ, and his doings at some point in history; and for the necessity of (in some meaning) "following" Jesus.

For a Christian; Jesus must make a difference, and that difference must be deep, cosmic, temporally-located, crucial. 

My own views on this subject have been expounded scores of times on this blog; but I will focus on the major objection to it. 

My understanding of Good: If God is a Being (or indeed two Beings - Loving Heavenly Parents) who found-themselves among a multitude of other Beings; and if this God began creating at some point in time; and if this creation is founded upon Love...

So that creation is something like "the purposive and mutually loving relationships between Beings that were previously and otherwise mutually unloving, lacking in shared-purpose"...

Reality is therefore a growing creation in an environment of chaos...

By this "model", Good is defined as God's project of creation; and evil is some kind of opposition to this project (anything other than joining with the project of creation - is may be any kind of opposition, from trying to exploit creation for selfish reasons, or trying to destroy creation). 

In theory, there is also the alternative of opting-out from creation. 

By my understanding of Good; Beings such as ourselves find-ourselves in an ongoing divine creation; and we need to decide whether we are on the side of creation or not.  

Good is the decision to join with God's creation. 

Opting-out is the decision Not to join with creation. 

Evil is the decision to oppose creation. 

Main objections to my understanding: Some things that some people find wrong with this scheme, are that I regard God as "just" a Being (actually two Beings) among a multitude of other Beings; that God's creation had a beginning and has therefore not been eternal; that God is finite in knowledge and power...

And that Good is only one among other rational possibilities. 

By my understanding; to be evil is to oppose the project of divine creation; but that opposition need not be irrational. Evil may be short-termist, evil will be un-loving, and may be manipulative, sadistic, spiteful... 

But evil need not be irrational (evil is only irrational when it denies the reality of divine creation). 

By my understanding: There really is no compulsion to be Good, because Good is one side in the spiritual war arranged around the actually-existing reality of divine creation. 

There is indeed One God, in the sense that there happens-to-be one divine creation, and this was an is the creation of God. 

There is one creation which is that we know, and which includes all other Beings that we can know. One creation within-which we and other Beings find-themselves when they become self-aware, when we/they become "conscious" of reality and their places in it among other Beings, and having relationships with these other Beings.  

Such matters could have been otherwise, but were not otherwise: this is reality - this is the situation within-which we exist.   

To loop back to the original incoherent ideas that Good is relativist because choice is rational and real; or else that Good is objective and necessary because there is mono-omni-God creating everything; I would say instead that Good is objective because God is The Creator; but the choice of Good versus evil is also real, has consequences that may be permanent, and it is a coherent choice to choose evil - even when the reality of one divine creation is acknowledged. 

By my understanding: To choose Good is to choose to affiliate with God's objectively real project of creation, and this project is built from love, because creation is the product of love.

Any Being capable of love is capable for choosing to affiliate with creation.

But evil may be a coherent choice, because creation takes place amidst continuing chaos - and continuing chaos is termed "death" (by the Fourth Gospel" and is spiritually-analogous to the scientific-material concept of "entropy". 

Evil is not entropy, but coherent evil entails an ultimate commitment to entropy and chaos in preference to divine creation, because entropy/ chaos is all that would remain when evil has done its work...

After evil has worked through to its conclusion; there would be a world without creation, which is a world without love; and that would be the return to a pre-creation world of mutually un-conscious and unloving Beings; i.e. the end state of evil would be Beings uncomprehendingly existing in a situation that has no coherence and no direction.

Thus evil is a possible and coherent thing to desire.   

In other words, by my understanding, divine creation is incomplete and (in principle) vulnerable to evil, and to entropy; or, this would be the case without the Second Creation of Jesus Christ. 

Primary creation of God is of-itself therefore incomplete and contingent; and Jesus Christ is therefore essential to the triumph of Good. 

But the triumph of Good is not the imposition of Good across all that exists - it is a Second Creation that consists of Beings that are only and wholly Good. That situation called "Heaven". 

This is why Christianity is the only coherent religion; and why Jesus Christ is and was essential. Jesus was Not essential to the primary divine creation; but Jesus is essential to the indomitable and eternal triumph of creation - in Heaven. 

   

Note added: What makes Good good is loving-creation - but only if you agree that love is, indeed good. Otherwise not. That which is good is therefore objectively real; but what makes the real objective, is personal. 

No space for Jesus (in mainstream Christian theology)

It is clear that freedom does not matter much to many people (perhaps because spiritual freedom entails ultimate responsibility for our own fate). So the fact that mainstream/ orthodox/ traditional Christian theology has no place for freedom in its conceptualization of God; is not something that deeply bothers those who aspire to total obedience, or the annihilation of "the self". 

This exclusion of space for freedom is somewhat distinct from an explanation for freedom - although the two can go together. 

There is no space for freedom when God is assumed to be "omni" and to have created everything from nothing; because every-thing then is ultimately made, known and controlled by God. 

To explain what freedom is requires a rather different understanding. We need to get an intuitive grasp of what we are talking about when we reference freedom, free will or agency; and develop a picture of how it could happen (even if it seldom does actually happen). 

The difficulty is that most people have an unconscious assumption that understands every possible action (including every thought) to be caused by some prior stimulus. Such assumptions leave no space for freedom. 

So freedom must be uncaused. But many modern people vaguely-but-firmly believe in a thing they call "randomness"; so then they assume that stuff happens completely unpredictability... 

But randomness is not freedom, indeed it is not an explanation At All but the opposite of explanation - "randomness" (if it existed, rather than being just a mathematical tool) would be a denial of even the possibility of explanation. 

Freedom must therefore be the attribute of a particular person and his nature and motivations. In other words, freedom must be an uncaused cause, a first-cause - which is a partial definition of God. 

Hence; freedom is a first-cause, which is a divine attribute. 

It seems that the conclusion is that Men are gods, of the same kind as God; insofar as they are free.  

Insofar as Jesus Christ really matters to Christians, it is noteworthy that so many Christians have been so concerned to assert the absolute power and fundamental nature of God's unity, omni-qualities and total-creation, that they have left no space for Jesus the mortal Man.

And no possibility of explaining why Jesus was necessary - after all, if God is defined as having everything possible already covered, there is nothing substantive for Jesus to do.

If God does everything, either directly or via creation; then Jesus is merely optional.   

The exclusion of freedom by theological assumptions is therefore another side of the same coin that excludes the possibility of a coherent explanation of why Jesus is necessary for the accomplishment of what Jesus offered. 

If we agree that Jesus (a mortal man, living in a particular place and time) offered the possibility of for Men to choose resurrected eternal life in Heaven; then there must be some reason why Jesus was needed for this task - and if God is predefined in terms of omni-qualities, it seems clear that the Man Jesus was not necessary for anything.

Yet those who accept Jesus's claim to divinity and to be the necessary path to eternal resurrected life should - it seems to me - be making metaphysical assumptions and constructing their theology around that fact. 

In sum: If Jesus is a Man and is necessary - then God cannot be Omni. 

My view is that the reality and necessity of Jesus must be the primary focus and structuring factor in creating a Christian theology of God; not the other way around.

NOTE - It may be asked why, if there is indeed no space for Jesus, so many previous generations of Christians were satisfied by theological explanations. The first answer is that many weren't and these stayed Jews or embraced Islam. But the main answer is that Men's consciousness has changed through history - and world-pictures that strike us as abstract and dead used to be spontaneously infused with purpose and meaning - by the innate Original Participation which Men have only recently left-behind.