"Bart Goddard" <goddardb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:3f4267bb$1_1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
> Matthew Johnson <Matthew_member@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
> news:3f4211fd$3_1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>>>> God is like a weather forecaster - he watches clouds and
>>>> wind, and knows what the weather the following day or
>>>> week will be. He just knows it, he doesn't predestinate it.
>>>
>>>This fails because we don't just attribute to God omniscience,
>>>but also omnipotence.
>>
>> We do, of course, but that does not cause it to 'fail'. Omnipotence
>> means He _can_ do anything (except, as Thomas Aquinas pointed out,
>> achieve contradiction), it does not say He _does_ do everything.
>
> "Omnipotent" really means "All" powerful, and we take this to
> mean that God does "all".
No, You take it to mean that God does all. But what do you do about His
statements that He doesn't do all? I think your problem is that you don't
have the categories perhaps to differentiate between these things. God is
the ULTIMATE or REMOTE cause of all things, true. But He is NOT the
efficient or immediate cause of all things.
As you state below, God sustains the universe, hence without His upholding
by His word, everything would cease to exist, including Satan, and every
particle.
But we must make these differentiations or else get contradictions to
Scripture. For example, we read, James 1:13 Let no one say when he is
tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor
does
He Himself tempt anyone.
It seems to me, that in this passage God differentiates between Himself
doing a thing from Him giving the power to a creature to do the very same
thing. God does not tempt at all, but certainly He maintains the existence
of creatures who do tempt.
> Without His continual attention, each
> particle in the universe would cease to exist.
Gary www.faithalone.org
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