Most people believe in a Supreme Being, although they may call him by different names. We know that God lives. We want to share with you our feelings about him. God is perfect, all-wise, and all-powerful. He is also merciful, kind, and just. We know that we can have faith in him. We can love him with all our hearts.
In those days, all Mormon boys were Boy Scouts and had memorized the Scout Law. So it was that, through the "full of sound financial structure" effect, a rookie missionary once came out with this:
God is perfect, all-wise, and all-powerful. He is also thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.
Fortunately, this happened during companionship study, not while actually teaching, and it made us laugh -- but why is it so funny? Isn't it curious that (a) God is understood to be morally perfect; (b) thrift, bravery, cleanliness, and reverence are virtues; and (c) it is ridiculous to ascribe any of those virtues to God? The fact that the missionary's flubbed line elicits laughter is proof that no one, not even God himself, can fully embody all that is good. As I wrote in "Ahuric vs. Devic, and eternal sexual identity,"
In fact, I believe that there are billions and billions of different and complementary ways of being good, and that each of us (potentially) contributes to the Good in a way that is unique and irreplaceable. If one being could fully embody every possible type of good, why would we -- why would anyone other than God himself -- even need to exist?
I think this is the main reason that God places such importance on preserving our free will. To make our full contribution to the Good, it is necessary that we act in harmony with God, but also that we act for ourselves -- as ourselves -- which means not becoming "clear glass through which God can shine" (Eckhart); not doing, saying, and thinking precisely what God or Jesus would do, say, and think (WWJD?); but realizing the Good each in our own unique way. Otherwise, why exist at all? Why not let God shine unfiltered even by clear glass?
As discussed in my post "Lives, the universes, and everything," this applies not only to individuals but to entire worlds and explains why God created so many worlds, including highly imperfect ones like that in which we live. There is no one "best of all possible worlds" (Leibniz) which would manifest all possible goods and nothing bad. In a world of perfect safety and peace, for example, courage could not exist.
I have said before that, although in theory Jesus Christ ought to be the epitome of every virtue, in fact he seems to be an essentially Ahuric rather than Devic character. I think the same must be true of God the Creator, since he created worlds such as our own, where evil is allowed so as to make certain manifestations of Good possible. In "Lucifer, Ahriman, and Ganymede virtue sets," the post which introduced the terms Ahuric and Devic, I characterized Ahuric virtue as "seeking good" and Devic virtue as "avoiding evil." The God who created this world must be fundamentally Ahuric, and Christianity is an Ahuric religion. The Devic religion par excellence, with the explicit goal of ending the suffering of all sentient beings, is Buddhism.
7 comments:
Good stuff.
Aside - your comment on being taught to memorize "God is perfect, all-wise, and all-powerful" is a clear example of how the Mormon church has never integrated its strands, and how Mormon theology is unfinished business. Because (as you now realize) that phrase is in stark contradiction to what is new and distinctive about Mormon theology. It shows how doctrine and practice tend to drift in the direction of church (group) coherence and growth - even when this contradicts the metaphysical foundations of that church.
Thrifty is the most ridiculous virtue there. Creation seems excessively extravagant, and purposely so.
Yes, there was a big emphasis on "building on common beliefs" when doing missionary work, but behind the standard Christian vocabulary lie deep metaphysical differences. Robert L. Millet's carefully worded explanation of the Mormon version of omniscience and omnipotence was, "There is no knowledge of which he is ignorant and no power he does not possess." That is, God has "all" knowledge and power in the sense that he knows everything that anyone knows and can do anything that anyone can do -- which is not inconsistent with the doctrine that "The knowledge and power of God are expanding," or with the possibility that some things remain unknowable or impossible even for God.
I've always maintained that the first sentence I've quoted has things precisely backwards. It would be more accurate to say, "Most people believe in something or someone they are willing to call 'God,' although they mean all sorts of different things by that word."
@Wm - In a sense the Big Problem about the whole business of omniscience and omnipotence is Christians defining God in terms of attributes; and then this is compounded by these attributes being abstractions. But it is a strangely unnatural thing to do in the first place.
For Christians, God is a person - primarily (indeed two persons, a dyad of Father and Mother, by my understanding; but I will continue to use the singular here).
People play lip-service to 'a personal god' - and this corresponds to my own conversion and experience and that of CS Lewis, where we first believed in a deity (philosophically understood), then a god with whom we have a personal relationship.
But having got to belief in a personal god and being a Christian, we ought then to realize that the 'person' aspect should come first. God is primarily a person, particularly individual - a person who has-done/ is-doing particular things; of which the most significant is creation.
Only then may we move on to discuss attributes, powers and limitations etc - but these are secondary and optional - and ought not to be made primary and defining.
Does God know all his knots?
What did you mean by the statement that:
“although in theory Jesus Christ ought to be the epitome of every virtue, in fact he seems to be an essentially Ahuric rather than Devic character”?
thanks.
Max, follow the links in the post for background on the Ahuric/Devic distinction.
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