Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Omni-benevolence Summarily Refuted

I enjoyed the short work Ray Comfort made in this article (link) of the idea of divine omni-benevolence.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I read the content you linked to.
Since there are already so many comments, I post my comment here:

If God is not all-benevolent, how do you know whether he is benevolent towards you?

Turretinfan said...

Anonymous asked: "If God is not all-benevolent, how do you know whether he is benevolent towards you?"

Because it is written, "Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is." (Jer. 17:7)

And again it is written, "We love him, because he first loved us." (I John 4:19)

-TurretinFan

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the answer.

So you say that God is not all-benevolent, an attribute orthodox christendom has affirmed ever since the rise of christianity?
You deny God's goodness? Scripture abundantly shows God's all-comprising goodness. God's all-benevolence has never been objected to, not even in reformed circles, has it? Did Luther deny all-benevolence? I don't think so. I wonder where you get the idea from that God is not all-benevolent? Don't you think this is a grave deviance from orthodoxy? Are you not forced to dismiss a lot of God's word in order to come to that creed?

Turretinfan said...

A wrote: "So you say that God is not all-benevolent, an attribute orthodox christendom has affirmed ever since the rise of christianity?"

Umm ... your history is in need of some improvement. Omni-benevolence is not "an attribute orthodox christendom has affirmed," much less since the beginning.

A wrote: "You deny God's goodness?"

That's certainly not what I do! God is good. Goodness and omni-benevolence are not interchangeable.

A wrote: "Scripture abundantly shows God's all-comprising goodness."

God's perfect goodness is Scripture's teaching.

A wrote: "God's all-benevolence has never been objected to, not even in reformed circles, has it?"

Of course it has.

A wrote: "Did Luther deny all-benevolence? I don't think so."

I don't know or care. Luther carries very little weight with me.

A wrote: "I wonder where you get the idea from that God is not all-benevolent?"

Scripture - the only place where we can get a clear idea of God.

A wrote: "Don't you think this is a grave deviance from orthodoxy?"

It would be a grave deviation to deny God's goodness. It would be a deviation to affirm omni-benevolence.

A wrote: "Are you not forced to dismiss a lot of God's word in order to come to that creed?"

On the contrary, as noted above, a denial of omni-benevolence is the only reasonable inference from Scripture.

-TurretinFan

Anonymous said...
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