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Replying to post 316 by Talishi]
In a way, I agree. The Bible, as I said, is not a book of metaphysics, tells us very little about how God is built, so to speak. We get but snap shots which often conflict. It's up to us to put them together into a meaningful, unified whole.
Consequently, the early church borrowed heavily on Hellenic metaphysics and standards of perfection. Many believers and also nonbelievers naively assume that the traditional Christian definition or picture of God comes right out of Scripture. It most certainly did not. It came most directly out of Hellenic metaphysics.
Now, the traditional model of God is called classical theism. Accordingly, God is void of body, parts, passions, compassion, wholly immutable, wholly independent of the world, all-determining. Since the 40's, however, many theologians have challenged this model on biblical and empirical grounds. Neo-classical theists, such as myself, argue the model is unbiblical, as God, in Scripture, is attributed deep feeling, change, and knows the future only as possibilities, not certainties, etc. We have proposed a dipolar model of God, whereby contingency and change can be attributed to God. After all, if God cannot change, if nothing can make any difference in God, then saint or sinner, it's all the same to god, who remains blissfully indifferent to the world. But I know I and many others can put no faith in such an indifferent Deity. We accept that God is all-knowing. However, we stipulate carefully that this means God knows the future for what it is: the realm of as yet unactualized potentials, not as a matter of definite fact. I can go into more detail if you wish. I'm just trying to point out here that Scripture is not the basis for the classical Christian picture of God as he or she is in his or her own nature. I say "her," to draw attention to the passive, empathic, receptive dimensions of God, a theme lost to the classical model, which, on the basis of purely Hellenic standards of perfection, enshrined the immune and the immutable.