A GOD FOR ALL SEASONS
Here is another most interesting thing about the gods of the Christians—whether we mean father god or his son, Jesus, or the ghost that runs around with lots of power too. For the purpose of this discussion, we'll just mash together all three Christian gods into one god.
Bush says he's doing god's will when he removed Saddam from power. But didn't god put Saddam in power? Maybe god meant Saddam to be in power, maybe god was punishing the Iraqi's for some sin they committed against god and Bush overstepped his bounds in overturning god's plan. Maybe Bush isn't doing god's will at all. How can we know?
But then the Christians can fire back that if god didn't mean for Saddam to be removed from power then Saddam would still be in power. Okay—that's interesting, because that sort of says that whatever happens is god's will. Okay, if everything that happens is god's will, then god's real purposes in human activity can't be discerned in any of history because nothing god does can be picked out in history. His will is everywhere, therefore, it's invisible; it's just whatever is. That means that whatever happens is god's will and that whatever is is god. That makes god pantheistic. It also means that any act by any person is god's will so no person can be blamed for his actions since he's doing god's will which is everything that happens.
If your head is spinning in circles, never mind. So is the holy ghost's.
4 comments:
George, for someone as intelligent as you are, I expect a more intelligent critique than this, which essentially strips our English word "will" of its rich semantic range. Truly, and sadly, Christians abuse the concept of God's will terribly, but their abuse doesn't negate the proper use. If you were to do a study of the semantic range of the word "will" in the Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek texts of what we call the Bible, you'd see that what we translate into the one word "will" is actually several different words. Do you mean decretive will, preceptive will, or something else?
I'm not siding with our President, I assure you, but I am saying that not all of us understand these concepts similarly.
Jeremy, I have a very firm and non-philosophical definition of "will" in mind. It is that chemical point which triggers a thought to become conscious in the brain and it is that chemical buildup to a moment of triggering which allows for an action to take place. For will to be exercised, there must occur a necessary buildup of chemical activity to cause a yes/no act to happen. Will, for me, is a purely yes/no chemical triggering in the brain of animals and humans. Sometimes this act of will which causes a thought to appear or an act to happen occurs in a pre-conscious moment too. We are not always aware that a triggering has occurred before it happens. The best book about this is "The Origins of Mind by Peggy La Cerra and Roger Bingham. I think they nail it pretty good.
George, your understanding of the will is competely plausible to me within what I understand of your framework. That said, I think you're throwing be a bit of a red herring with your response. In your post, you're criticizing the way Christians mis-use the concept of the "will," which, in a Christian framework, carries a substantially different set of connotations. My point is not to argue about which understanding is correct, but to say that if you're going to criticize the way Christians abuse "God's-will" language, you need to be able to understand the way that the Christian's scriptures employ the word, which you clearly haven't done. That's my point of disagreement here.
Jeremy, can you recommend a concise discussion of a Christian's way of discussing these various types of "will" (i.e. decretive and preceptive) that will show me what you're talking about?
I just further realized that my definition of will precludes there being a spiritual god because the father-god-creator would have to have material substance to even be included in my definition and to even have "mouthed" (action and thought) the words, "Let there be light." Not only that, this god would have to have the motives, thoughts, ambitions and feelings of a human being to have any reason to create a world. The loneliness stuff which I've heard some Christian writers come up with just doesn't work for me.
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