Can God do anything?

[music4two]

Is there anything God cannot do? Yes! That’s right God can’t do all things. Not because He is limited in power at all. It is because His very nature prohibits him from acting in certain manners.
There are certain absolutes when it comes to God. An example might be that God cannot BE God and NOT BE God. Another example is that God cannot create another God that is equal to Himself. One absolute is that God is eternal and infinite. Any created being would be less and therefore subservient to the original, God.

So what can’t God do?

In the silliness of my youth I would engage in philosophical debates on questions like “Can God make a rock so big He cannot lift it?� As I gained more wisdom, I realized that those that asked such questions were usually not interested in God but wanted to spin the conversation down a rabbit hole of idle philosophy. So I am not going to deal with such questions here.

Let’s deal with some valuable questions. Here are some things God cannot do.

1. God cannot lie. His standard of right and wrong does not change. He cannot say something is true today and not true tomorrow.
Abraham knew this and even when confronted with slaying Isaac, Abraham knew that God would have to raise him from the dead because of the promises made by God about Isaac.
God can never again send a worldwide flood because He made a promise against it.

Heb.6
13For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself,
14saying, "I WILL SURELY BLESS YOU AND I WILL SURELY MULTIPLY YOU."
15And so, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise.
16For men swear by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute.
17In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath,
18so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.

2. Can God stop being God or stop existing? God is infinite. The morality of God does not change. His character does not change. Attributes of that character are holiness, truthfulness, love, mercy, and justice. The nature of God is infinite, meaning no end. God is the only being in the universe that is absolute in His character. He is the ultimate of perfection. God cannot cease to exist. He is self sustaining in His existence. God is eternal and cannot die.

3. God is not free to act contrary to His character. His commands and actions are grounded in what is ultimately and eventually good and righteous. Because we cannot know or see everything it may appear at times that God breaks this attribute but it always turns out to be for the good.

4. God cannot sin or be tempted to sin. Holiness is an absolute in God’s nature and cannot change.

5. God is not arbitrary. Everything that God does has purpose. God’s creation (including man) has a purpose. Men may fail to find their purpose, but that does not mean they were created without one. In the same way God’s plan’s have purpose and function as God designed them. The purpose or “Fruit� of God’s creation is the perfecting of His children into beings with which He can have fellowship. Children who have all of God’s character possible within a human being. All of God’s plans center around this single goal. If we are following a plan that does not produce this kind of fruit, it is not the fault of God’s plan it is that we are following a plan other then God’s.

[McCulloch]

1. God cannot lie.

2 Thessalonians 2:11
For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false ...

3. God is not free to act contrary to His character.

This is a bit of a tautology. Am I free to act contrary to my character? What do you know about any entity's character except from how it acts?

4. God cannot sin or be tempted to sin. Holiness is an absolute in God’s nature and cannot change.

You say that God is just, yet in so many ways what is written about this God portrays him as being unjust. The answer? Redefine the word just in relation to God. God cannot sin, because whatever acts you attribute to God become just and right by definition, regardless of how they might seem.

5. God is not arbitrary.

Romans 9
What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses, "I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION." So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH."
So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?"
On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it?
Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?
And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.

This looks pretty arbitrary to me.

[Heterodoxus]

music4two: rhetoric, rhetoric, all is rhetoric!

Please:

• * create a personal profile so we can have some idea of your background and qualifications to make these claims, and if a rebuttal might be appropriate; and,
  
  * cite your sources (note: parroting pro-Christian rhetoric supported by nothing more than a Bible proof text[s] does not a citation make).

[OnceConvinced]

God seems to have an awful lot of trouble getting people to have faith in him too.

[music4two]

1. God cannot lie.

2 Thessalonians 2:11
For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false ...

God did not lie in this case. He sent a spirit to delude.

3. God is not free to act contrary to His character.

This is a bit of a tautology. Am I free to act contrary to my character? What do you know about any entity's character except from how it acts?

And according to God actions we can conclude that He will always act according to His character.

4. God cannot sin or be tempted to sin. Holiness is an absolute in God’s nature and cannot change.

You say that God is just, yet in so many ways what is written about this God portrays him as being unjust. The answer? Redefine the word just in relation to God. God cannot sin, because whatever acts you attribute to God become just and right by definition, regardless of how they might seem.

And by what other source would you define just? If we do not understand His justice, that is our lack of understanding and not His.

5. God is not arbitrary.

Romans 9
What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses, "I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION." So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH."
So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?"
On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it?
Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?
And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.

This looks pretty arbitrary to me.

Perhaps your understanding of these verses causes you see see arbituary action. I do not see them that way.

[InTheFlesh]

God seems to have an awful lot of trouble getting people to have faith in him too.

Matt.22
[14] For many are called, but few are chosen.

1Pet.2
[9] But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:

[McCulloch]

God did not lie in this case. He sent a spirit to delude.

It amounts to the same thing. God did something with the intent to deceive someone.

And according to God actions we can conclude that He will always act according to His character.

So what? We can conclude that I will always act according to my character. We learn nothing about God from this tautological fact.

And by what other source would you define just? If we do not understand His justice, that is our lack of understanding and not His.

Therefore it is meaningless to say that God is just. Because whatever you believe that God has done, you believe that it must be just by virtue that God did it. If a judge allowed a man convicted of a capital crime to get off because an innocent one offered himself as a substitute, that judge would not be called just. Yet, you call the Christian God just. Why?

Perhaps your understanding of these verses causes you see see arbituary action. I do not see them that way.

Then please explain them to me. I read them and I see that God has mercy on whom he pleases. He has apparently made you for glory and me for eternal torment.

[InTheFlesh]

The Christian believes God is holy
the non believer feels God is evil.

Even though God brings evil,
he is righteous.
The flood was bloody murder
but it was a righteous judgment.

Pss.145
[17] The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works.
This is true because it says so in the bible!

[music4two]

Is there any forum on this board where one can discuss aspects of Christianity, without having to prove Christianity.

[InTheFlesh]

No such forum!