Belinda wrote: ↑Thu May 01, 2025 3:17 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu May 01, 2025 2:54 pm
Belinda wrote: ↑Thu May 01, 2025 12:32 pm
You don't know what a desert whirlwind signifies and what the writer of the Book of Job intended by the whirlwind.
Actually, I think I do. But why don't you enlighten me?
A maiden aunt may be a good counseller.
Or senile.
Mary is a good imaginary counsellor
Biblically, she's not one at all. But the papacy says she is.
Catholicism made it up in the 4th Century AD: apparently a cat named Ephrem the Syrian was the first to come up with that idea, and it caught on fast, because paganaism, including Romanism, had long had an affection for goddesses rather than gods. They always are assumed to be more soft-hearted and pliable to human wishes, it seems.
But it's just a hold-over from paganism. It's not Christian theology.
As a theological determinist, I prefer God to be my judge.
Hmmm...I don't think you understand determinism, then. If things are determined, then God can't be your judge...nor can anybody else. For in that case, all your behaviours are causally predetermined, and you don't actually make any choices yourself, and there's no possibility of you being praised or blamed for anything that deterministic forces made you do. You had no input.
But I think you don't actually believe that, and your language of personal responsibility suggests you don't.
"Where were you when I laid the Earth's foundation"
Yes, that's precisely how God's answer to Job begins. Have you figured out why?
"Where were you when I laid the Earth's foundation" is theistic determinism .
It's the opposite, actually.
From a deterministic perspective, the answer would be simple: "I was in molecules, already in motion by nothing but material forces." In fact, the right answer is even, "There was/is no 'me,' since 'me' would be distinct from the causal-material nexus, and in truth, 'me' isn't real and doesn't cause anything: so why are You talking to 'me'?"
But God is speaking to a person, and a person with his own questions and volition. Job's question is obviously backstopped by the idea of free will; he knows that he's been a good person, and not predetermined to be that, and he can't understand why God is permitting him to suffer, therefore. And he would like an answer.
God's answer is perfectly fair: he tells Job that he's standing on the edge of a great question, like a man standing on the shore of the Pacific Ocean with a cup in his hand, asking for that ocean to be put into the cup. The answer is,
"Job, I am God, and you are not." The answer exists, but you have nothing but a mortal's "cup" of wisdom in your hand, and you're asking questions that have answers that go into the connections between everything in the universe. This isn't all about you, Job; it's about the larger patterns of history, for which you have no capacity. You're not ominiscient, nor have you an infinite capacity to absorb all the relevant explanations and reasons; so you must learn to trust My character instead, and take your place in the order I ordain, fulfilling your part in the total plan."
And that's true. Nobody can understand the "why" to suffering. There are too many parts to the answer. The best we can do is manage some provisional, concilliatory explanations; but the minute we try to force one of these to be THE explanation, you know what happens...we find that answer too small, too petty, too unlikely, and too inadequate to satisfy the question we asked, or the longing to know in our souls.
And Job gets it. He understands the answer he receives, and understands it in just the way I have said...namely, that the problem is in asking a question for which human beings have no comparable capacity to understand. And this is why Job responds,
"Therefore have I uttered what I understood not, things too wonderful for me, which I knew not." ("Wonderful" here is used in its antique sense, of "causing wonder," not in the more modern sense of "really pleasing.")
The upshot: if God told us the answer as to why all suffering happens, we could not fathom it. It would involve every detail of everything that's happened since before the dawn of time, and everything that is interconnected with it in the present. We have neither lifespan nor brains to contain such an answer. So what we can do, as limited, temporal creatures, is simply realize what we are, and trust God for as much of an answer as we can understand and for the goodness of his ultimate intentions to us. No more is even possible.
In the end, the message is, "Trust God."
unpleasant events are good for us
There's no such thing as "good" under determinism either. There's just whatever IS, and whatever IS was all there ever could be anyway. Morality's gone. So unpleasant things aren't "bad" or "good," and don't change anything about us anyway -- if determinism were true.
...the degree of evil in the world is unnecessarily high for teaching us to act responsibly.
That's not actually why there is evil in the world, I think. It's rather a symptom of our alienation from God; and God doesn't "teach" people things when they're not interested in relationship with Him. Rather, He may graciously use suffering, or other things like joy and beauty, to alert them to their moral condition, so that they'll realize their situation and cry out for help, perhaps; but there's no use teaching somebody something when they are determined not to learn it.
But let's play along: if it were a teaching tool, and if there were an unnecessarily high amount of it to get the job done, then would it not automatically follow that we'd all be moral and "acting responsibly" already? We'd have been forced to learn all the associated lessons, and would be reformed. But we're not. So whatever amount is teaching us anything, it's not enough to get the job done, obviously.
