God is an embodiment of contradiction ?

[lexy]

During a discussion with a friend about God, a thought I found puzzling but provocative came to mind. I have discussed it with friends, and most seem to think it is contradictory. The thought was more of an argument, and it goes something like this: if it is true that God in some sense is the greatest being that can be conceived, it seems to follow that God is somehow the maximum of all things (e.g. if goodness exists, God is maximum goodness, likewise if evil exists God is the maximum of evilness ). If this is true then God possesses all qualities; and if God possesses all qualities, it also seems to follow that all beliefs about God, even if they are contradictory, are true (e.g. God is a supernatural being, God is a natural being). Put perhaps in simpler terms: if God is in some sense all things, then all beliefs about God, even those that contradict each other, are true. Is this even remotely anything that theologians/philosophers have ever discussed?

[neo-x]

Let me put it this way...can an omnipotent sqaure be a circle at the same time? And if it is the latter than is it still a square?...or is it an absurdity. God is what is he, he is not what he is not. If God is a supernatural being, then he is not a natural being. He can not be both at the same time, because he is not everything. Is God also a bottle of liquor?

Going Pantheistic, are we?

[Byblos]

During a discussion with a friend about God, a thought I found puzzling but provocative came to mind. I have discussed it with friends, and most seem to think it is contradictory. The thought was more of an argument, and it goes something like this: if it is true that God in some sense is the greatest being that can be conceived, it seems to follow that God is somehow the maximum of all things (e.g. if goodness exists, God is maximum goodness, likewise if evil exists God is the maximum of evilness ). If this is true then God possesses all qualities; and if God possesses all qualities, it also seems to follow that all beliefs about God, even if they are contradictory, are true (e.g. God is a supernatural being, God is a natural being). Put perhaps in simpler terms: if God is in some sense all things, then all beliefs about God, even those that contradict each other, are true. Is this even remotely anything that theologians/philosophers have ever discussed?

That's because you're confusing a thing with its privation (its lack). Darkness is not a thing, it is the privation (total absence of) light. Evil is not a thing, it is the total absence of love. As neo stated, It is no more logical to state God is evil than it is to state a triangle is 4-sided.

[Jac3510]

Byblos and neo are both correct. I do want to affirm something that you said, though. There is a sense in which it is true that " God is somehow the maximum of all things." The trick is in how you flesh this out. In technical language, what you really mean is that God possesses all perfections in Himself and identically with Himself. So "sight" is a perfection (namely, the perfection of the eye), so we can say that God has "perfect vision." But even that is not saying enough, because what is vision? It's not just the ability to catch lightwaves. It has more to do with our ability to perceive out surroundings, and so the perfection of sight is really closely related to knowledge or awareness. What this means in God is that God possesses perfect knowledge or perfect awareness of absolutely everything that was, is, or will be. Yet, to use the examples of blindness already mentioned, blindness is not a perfection but is rather a lack of something, so there is no sense that God contains blindness within Himself.

Or let's take your example of a natural vs. a supernatural being. We'd have to know what makes a being "supernatural," and I would take it that would mean a being that is not a physical entity--that is, it is unembodied. But embodied being is not a perfection. Being itself is a perfection, but embodiment is just the particular way something is (much light our eyes catch work out the way in which we happen to have the perfection of sight). In fact, it turns out that embodiment is, by nature, a limitation, because that which is embodied is by nature limited to be here rather than there. So the perfection we attribute to God is the perfection of Being, not the perfection of embodiment. Thus, we would not say that God is a natural being. He is, rather, perfect Being Itself.

So what you need to do with your argument is rather than attributing every idea to God, ask what is the real fundamental thing underlying every idea. You'll find when you do that, that there are no contradictions in Him (nor can there be as both Byblos and Neo both pointed out).

[Philip]

There can be things about God that SEEM contradictory but that are not. He is both spirit, and now, in Jesus, also in a physical body (which He will return in). He was and is both God and man (in a glorified body). He is one God but also a Trinity within His Godhead. But I think when we we start to use words like maximum with God, we are still (wrongly) putting some kind of ultimate limit upon Him, even though it would be a limit above all others. And yet God has UNLIMITED capacity in what He can DO- which is not to say that He or His Holy Character ever change. And His unlimited capacity doesn't include things He won't ever do - like sin or do evil.