Q&A: God’s Attributes and Abilities
God’s Attributes and Abilities
Question
Do the attributes that define God sometimes contradict each other? Or are they too human?
For example, He is described as getting angry, but since He knows what will happen, He shouldn’t get angry (anger in the sense of surprise, expecting something else and then getting angry and “not understanding” how they didn’t obey Him). Of course, if you define Him as not knowing the future, then that isn’t a contradiction. But then it seems like you strip away a lot of His “abilities.” Even if He isn’t defined as omnipotent in the absolute sense of the word, the definition becomes much more than just: he can do almost everything except for a few “minor” things—
He can’t see the future,
He can’t make Himself disappear (assuming He is something infinite and indestructible),
He can’t regret things He does (assuming that at least if He is all-knowing, then He should always make good choices).
Also in the moral context there are contradictory attributes—if He is defined as someone who can prevent injustices and does not do so, then He is not moral, and if He cannot, then that too belongs on the list of things He “cannot” do.
In the human context, throughout history it seems that many human traits have been stripped away from Him (in the past He is presented as something immense, exalted, omnipotent, angry, happy, and sad).
He has become a much more abstract and mysterious concept than ever before, so it’s very hard to “work” with Him; there’s no substance, simply put…
Answer
I didn’t understand the question. With so many trees, you can’t see the forest. Each question separately can be dealt with. But what is the general conclusion? It’s not much of a feat to present a collection of questions, each of which has an answer, and then draw conclusions from the mere fact that there are many questions.
Besides, I don’t understand why recognizing His attributes and the picture we have of Him are a condition for serving Him.
Discussion on Answer
You didn’t answer me. What is the question? And why are you building an objection out of a collection of questions that have answers? I don’t see the point of such a discussion.
All these questions have one common denominator, which I explained—the concept “God” is not clear enough in my opinion. Everything around that is there to explain the line of thought and to show why I think it isn’t clear, and here is why. You don’t have to address everything if you agree with me, and you can skip to the part where you explain why, in your opinion, for example, it is strong and clear enough that I should act on the basis of that recognition. Or maybe address something specific in what I said and show that it isn’t correct. But the main point, which I also wrote in the title, is abilities and attributes through which God can be defined, to the point that He would have much broader and greater meaning. In my opinion, the less defined and specific something is, the more it can be applied to many things, and then the concept we want to refer to, which is God, expands and becomes something less specific and less meaningful. That’s why the side effect that happens to many people is that they say, “I don’t know what God is.”
And in my opinion the solution is to sharpen the concept and make it more precise (as much as possible)
“As for your not understanding why recognizing His attributes and the picture we have of Him are a condition for serving Him”—
about that, I wanted to add that recognizing His attributes and the picture we have of Him is not a condition for serving Him, not at all,
but rather that recognition itself is the condition for serving Him. Meaning, the condition for serving Him is that a person first acknowledges this, and if that recognition is not well grounded—in our case, recognition of God’s basic attributes and of His essence in general, and of His meaning on a level where you understand what you believe in, beyond merely His being the creator of the world, because that’s too general, since you could say that the Big Bang is the creator of the world in a certain sense, for example…
And all the more so when we are talking about recognizing an entity that so deeply affects life—there is no symmetry between the level of recognition of it and the level of influence of that recognition.
And after I explained this whole line of thought—> the level of recognition of God’s attributes and abilities is > a condition for sufficient recognition > and that is a condition for serving Him.
Meaning, in my view the level of recognition is lacking because of—
contradictions in the attributes ascribed to that entity
a definition that is too general
lack of understanding of its basic abilities
And in summary, one can ask: why, in your opinion, is the level of recognition of God sufficient for me to act on its basis?
The general conclusion is that this is an unclear concept that can be interpreted by all kinds of people, and that leads to cascading mistakes. So if we already acknowledge something, the bare minimum is that it be well defined. The question is convoluted because the concept is convoluted, and you have to give several aspects of it (including aspects that you think are wrong, because a large part of society understands it that way—for example, seeing the future) in order to try to grasp it. As for it being a condition for serving Him, that really varies, because for the sake of argument one can acknowledge Him but say that it’s not all that relevant, because it isn’t meaningful or clear enough—like the recognition of life outside Earth, which is certainly plausible, but right now can’t really be grasped, so it isn’t relevant to practical life. The transition from something plausible and reasonable (and even that can be debated, but let’s assume for the discussion that it’s very reasonable) to something very active, powerful, meaningful, and relevant to practical life requires more, and the less defined it is—or if it is defined in very different ways (and every definition has supporting sources)—then basically you’re left without much… So what do you think about that? Where is the line between something plausible and reasonable and something that can be acknowledged on a level such that I would live according to that recognition? Assuming it really is the case that it isn’t well defined