RE: A few questions for Christians...
October 4, 2016 at 9:18 am
(This post was last modified: October 4, 2016 at 9:20 am by Neo-Scholastic.)
I don't know about number 1. That God created anything at all is a bit of a mystery to me. Since God is Love he could only express that love toward something apart from himself. That seems to undermine the notion of God's self-sufficiency. Otherwise it is a problem to which I haven't devoted much thought.
However you seem to be asking something else. Is this the only possible universe God could have created? I do not know for sure although that would seem to be the case. The forces and constants of the physical universe appear to be quite arbitrary, as if contingent. It is easy to imagine them being otherwise. And there could be more worlds than the the one in which we live. Whatever the case, God could not create a world contrary to His own rational nature. As such, some eternal truths, like those of mathematics, that follow from Divine Truth would circumscribe all possible worlds.
That addresses the literal meaning of your question. Now I shall address its sense. Based on the second question, i suspect that you are trying to setup some kind of apparent contradiction based on the idea that all things are foreordained to happen just as they do and no other way. That conclusion requires the support of several presuppositions like atomism and mechanistic causal closure. Based on those dubious presuppositions, which on AF are impossible to dispel, I predict it will not take too long for people to start arguing over the definition of free will to both support and defend their positions and I would rather not engage in semantic disputes this morning.
However you seem to be asking something else. Is this the only possible universe God could have created? I do not know for sure although that would seem to be the case. The forces and constants of the physical universe appear to be quite arbitrary, as if contingent. It is easy to imagine them being otherwise. And there could be more worlds than the the one in which we live. Whatever the case, God could not create a world contrary to His own rational nature. As such, some eternal truths, like those of mathematics, that follow from Divine Truth would circumscribe all possible worlds.
That addresses the literal meaning of your question. Now I shall address its sense. Based on the second question, i suspect that you are trying to setup some kind of apparent contradiction based on the idea that all things are foreordained to happen just as they do and no other way. That conclusion requires the support of several presuppositions like atomism and mechanistic causal closure. Based on those dubious presuppositions, which on AF are impossible to dispel, I predict it will not take too long for people to start arguing over the definition of free will to both support and defend their positions and I would rather not engage in semantic disputes this morning.
