God is Perfect!

[Furrowed Brow]

Hey what am I doing in the theology and doctrine forum?

Anyhow. I read this Here

If you believe in God then you must believe He is Perfect.

I’m a bit ignorant of doctrine. But I am curious. Where in scripture does it say that god is perfect. And exactly what is said?

Also, if god is perfect…what does that mean?

[Furrowed Brow]

because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

I think we have finally found one of the omnis. This makes clear mention of eternal power.

Eternal power yes. But a perpetual motion machine would count as eternal power. So God would transcend the known laws of physics. But existing in some state that falls beyond the laws of physics does not entail any of the omnis or perfection.

However I have to say that your reply McC is exactly the kind of thing I was asking for. As QED points out, it seems that the theist is falling back on some platonic ideas of perfection, ideas that are not supported by scripture. This looks like a clear case of projecting ideals onto a text that does not support those ideals.

[QED]

Good research McCulluch.

because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

Another perfect example of conjuring-up God through arm-waving: God makes himself evident from the inside. This is because we can clearly see that a God has been busy -- hence the internal thought processes which were interpreted as God making himself evident in our minds! Paul is doing no better than inferring God through the analogy between men going about the business of creating things and God performing the same kind of act.

A lot of other inferences are then piled-up on top this flimsy foundation -- eternal power? Maybe it is realised that a beginning or end spells trouble for the God concept.

[Greatest I Am]

Perfection is one of the hardest attributes to give to God.

This would mean that He was Perfect in the beginning and all of the systems that He is master over would have been Perfect as well.

Since most Christians do not see Perfection about them now, this would have to mean that God back slid to a state of imperfection. This is not allowed.

How they reconcile this with waiting and praying for end times so that God can fix what ain't supposed to be broke in the first place is beyond my understanding.

Is He God or is He not.
Christians seem to have it both ways. He is God but man somehow has the power to make Him back slide.

Strange.

My view is that God's Perfection as well as all His systems have never lost their Perfection.
This would mean that things about us are Perfect.
Something that most would not agree with because they believe that evil is something that must be cleansed from human experience.

Something that God has allowed forever.

In fact they believe this even though God has made sin part of our inherent nature.
They seem to be disagreeing with God on this but are impossible to convince of this fact.

They do not believe that Perfection can evolve. They think that God is stagnant and does not evolve to a higher state of Perfection as we do.

This would of course mean that all that we are is lost at death because God has no need of it.

Things do get strange when we try to say that things are Perfect while ever changing and containing what we see as evil.

Even myself, as the main person here who tries to explain the Perfection of God and His systems, have a hard time sometimes in conveying the reality of this Perfection.

It is a fundamental principle. If God is not presently in a Perfect system then He is a failure.
If He is not a failure then why is there evil and pain in the world.
It must be because the world is made Perfect with evil here. Something most reject and see as a flaw in the world that God has created.

They tend to think that things were Perfect until man was born and that man has the power to ruin God's Perfection.

They point to Adam and Eve and say that sin was born with them.
They tend to ignore the fact that God created the sinning natures of all men.

If He did then it must be considered normal.

They do not like this.

To then the Perfect man is one without sin. A Jesus, in other words.

How can man with a sinning nature be Perfect?

If no man is born without it then it can be said that man is Perfect even with his sinning nature. It would be the one born without it that would be abnormal.

I hope I have not just muddied the waters even more with my comments. If I did please come back because without recognition of God's Perfection then you will never truly know God.

Regards
DL

[Cathar1950]

I have understood perfection to mean whole or mature as Mack was pointing out there are more then on use of the word.
The attrubutes of God are interesting as by nature they are limited to the imagination.
Usually they seem to be negatives about the limit nature of man and assumed even if there lacks any meat in the texts.
I have enjoyed Hartshorne's work on the subject and I am trying to read his "The Logic of Perfection". In some of his other works such as "Divine Relativity" he shows the limits of our language and not only do they sound like ancient boasts, they sometimes amount to nonsense.
I will try to sum up some of his critics as they relate to the subject.
Maybe I can test my via voice.

[QED]

OK, I want to put another slant on things, particularly with Greatest I Am in mind (I was wondering where you had gotten to -- seeing as how this is your cup of tea!). Paul Davies in his book the Goldilocks Enigma makes an interesting observation about the testability of the various fine-tuning arguments: He points out that when we examine the actual values of the dimensionless constants of nature we can compare them with the range in which they must fall before "our world falls apart".

In other words, while people talk about apparent fine tuning there is still a finite amount of wriggle-room for the numbers to still end up with a universe like ours. His suggestion then is that if the numbers were put in by divine hand we might expect them to fall in the middle of the range -- whereas, if multiverse theories are right, then we have selected an operational universe, but the odds are on that the values will not all lay close to the mid-range. It is far more probable to find them at random places in the acceptable range. So far, the numbers do appear to have this random distribution and hence favour the multiverse interpretation. A perfect mathematician would surely get things spot-on would he not? Most mathematicians I know would be passionate about this.

[Greatest I Am]

OK, I want to put another slant on things, particularly with Greatest I Am in mind (I was wondering where you had gotten to -- seeing as how this is your cup of tea!). Paul Davies in his book the Goldilocks Enigma makes an interesting observation about the testability of the various fine-tuning arguments: He points out that when we examine the actual values of the dimensionless constants of nature we can compare them with the range in which they must fall before "our world falls apart".

In other words, while people talk about apparent fine tuning there is still a finite amount of wriggle-room for the numbers to still end up with a universe like ours. His suggestion then is that if the numbers were put in by divine hand we might expect them to fall in the middle of the range -- whereas, if multiverse theories are right, then we have selected an operational universe, but the odds are on that the values will not all lay close to the mid-range. It is far more probable to find them at random places in the acceptable range. So far, the numbers do appear to have this random distribution and hence favour the multiverse interpretation. A perfect mathematician would surely get things spot-on would he not? Most mathematicians I know would be passionate about this.

You slanted me right of the page.

I think my only safe comment is that, thanks to the uncertainty principle the numbers will always be in flux. For all I know God may have added some other factor to delay our understanding of the complete picture in order that more generations will be produced and kept happy in dithering out all these things.

I may be able to answer better if they ever decide if we have a single universe, which is my guess, or a multiverse.

Time will tell.

Regards
DL

[Furrowed Brow]

My view is that God's Perfection as well as all His systems have never lost their Perfection.

But where in scripture does it say or entail that God is perfect? Are you imposing your own sense of God, a sense of God that is more platonic the God of scripture?

[QED]

I think my only safe comment is that, thanks to the uncertainty principle the numbers will always be in flux. For all I know God may have added some other factor to delay our understanding of the complete picture in order that more generations will be produced and kept happy in dithering out all these things.

OK, well, I can't see how the uncertainty principle would affect the numerical ratios -- but I get your drift. You're explaining why the world looks to be sans God by suggesting that God is deliberately hiding himself by using deceit (planting fossils and rigging isotopes to make a young Earth look a million times older). Could deceit be considered as an attribute of a perfect God?

[Furrowed Brow]

Could deceit be considered as an attribute of a perfect God?

If there is an example in scripture then yes - deceit would be an attribute of God. What about God testing Abraham's faith. Deceit? If God can be deceitful there, then a few fossils, and rigged isotopes would not put him into a moral panic. However can God rig isotopes and false fossils? Does scripture indicate he has this kind of power?

If we assume God is perfect then any passage in scripture that tests our critical faculties can be put down to God's perfection, which to us ants will seem inscrutable. But does scripture and only scripture say or entail God's perfection?

This is what I think some theists are doing. They have imbibed platonic presumptions about perfection, the 3 omnis, immutability, etc and then read these presumptions into scripture. Perhaps without realising they are do it. But Christianity must start with scripture and not Plato must it not?

So how does a theist and particularly a Christian rest the notions of perfection, the 3 omnis and so forth from scripture and only from scripture. And if they can't why do they worship a God not of the bible?

[Greatest I Am]

I think my only safe comment is that, thanks to the uncertainty principle the numbers will always be in flux. For all I know God may have added some other factor to delay our understanding of the complete picture in order that more generations will be produced and kept happy in dithering out all these things.

OK, well, I can't see how the uncertainty principle would affect the numerical ratios -- but I get your drift. You're explaining why the world looks to be sans God by suggesting that God is deliberately hiding himself by using deceit (planting fossils and rigging isotopes to make a young Earth look a million times older). Could deceit be considered as an attribute of a perfect God?

Yes.

If we are in the image of God then God must be in the image of man.

All attributes would be shared except of course God's levels would be the benchmark for us to strive for. His standards would be the max.

Regards
DL