The Nature of God

The Nature of God

Simplicity

1) God is God

• God cannot be broken down

2) God is unchanging

• Only something unchanging can be the creator of something changing

- Anselm

- God's existence is a predicate

- Augustine

- God is unchangeable and cannot lose or gain anything

- Aquinas

- God is 'Wholly Simple'

- God is being

- Criticisms

• How can a simple God love and interact

• God loves us in an inhuman way, love is what God wills for humans

• God cannot be transcendent and simple, how can he act and if he can't then how can he be benevolent/omnipotent

Eternity

- Nicholas Wolterstorff

• "the feeling, deep seated in much of human culture, that the flowing of events into the irrecoverable and unchangeable past is a matter of deep regret."

- We live in present

- God is eternal, God is outside of time & space.

- God is perfect and time passing implies imperfection

- God exists necessarily

- Boethius (Imprisoned and executed for opposing the emperor, while in prison wrote 'Consolations of philosophy')

- God is changeless and does not exist in time.

- All time is present to God simultaneously

- No past, present or future

- God does reward and punish us justly

- God is beyond human understanding, we can only speak of him in analogical terms

- Criticisms

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