If God made everything and He is all-powerful, and could make up all the rules, then why can't He do anything He wants? Christians say God hates this, and hates that, and could only send His only Son to save the world and can't do anything else. Why can't He?
< STRONG Because God has made eternal promises/laws that He Himself voluntarily followed in order to be voluntarily consistent.
If God weren't consistent/constant, then the universe would be contradictory, chaotic, and not in harmony.
The Bible says that "God is constant. He does not change: He does not grow; He does not evolve; He does not develop—He is immutable (Num. 23:19; I Sam. 15:29; Ps. 33:11; 90:2; 93:2; 102:24-27; Prov. 19:21; Isa. 14:24; 44:6; 46:9-10; 54:10; Mal. 3:6; Rom. 11:29; Heb. 1:10-12; 6:17; 13:8; Jam. 1:17; Jude 25; Rev. 1:8)."
- http://www.embracedbytruth.com/God/God's%20Essence/God%20is%20Constant.htm
Imagine an all-powerful being changing all the time. If He were all powerful and kept changing, then everything would keep changing due to His power. Nothing in the universe would remain consistent, not even time itself, and hence we couldn't have a universe like the one we have now. So it make sense that God would want to be consistent in order for everything else to have shape, meaning, and distinctions.
That said, God, being consistent, would make consistent and everlasting laws, and perhaps a few laws that He would follow Himself, namely, personal promises, and covenants that requires His obedience to.
So because of everlasting promises and covenants, God chooses not to do certain things as atheists would complain about.
For example, if God created a system called Justice that requires punishment for evil (such as death), and created humans that can perform evil, therefore, with the existence of humans doing evil, that would mean that He must send His perfect Son to be punished for the sins of others, in order to be logically consistent with His laws.
>> But this makes Him not all-powerful.
There you go.
< STRONG Not logically.
There's a difference between being powerful while not exercising that power and being powerless. For example, a man who follows the law doesn't make him powerless... it simply makes him a law-abiding citizen. Or another example is a person making a vow to not do drugs. Does that make him powerless to do drugs? No... he is very capable to do drugs, but chooses to not do it because of the vow. However, if he does drugs, THEN he becomes powerless to the drug's effects, for he can't control what drugs do to him even if he wanted to. However with God, he can control the effects of drugs, since he can control physics, which makes him powerful... but would He do it? It depends on His will.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
No flaming.
No trolling.
No lewd or offensive content.
No swearing or crude language.
Moderators have the right to delete comments to keep the commenting section clean. However, we will try to not use this right as much as possible, so please feel free to comment while following the rules.
All comments on arguments, counter arguments, and views and opinions of the page are welcome, so long not offensive. You can express disagreement without being offensive.