Featured MMOTW, what makes the most perfect being of them all?

WITBOTL

Excellent response to the OP. Apparently the Apostle Paul was confronted with the some of the same problems that the Church is today. Simply shows that mankind is often tempted to think more highly of himself than he should.

Of course by quoting Scripture you understand that you will be considered an ANTI-INTELLECTUAL.:smilewinkgrin:

 

12strings

I must say that you, yeshua1, and WITBOTL have presented excellent rsponses to the OP and have so far avoided the chastening of Dr. Bob, HOSS, hs, or ht!

 

When I am confronted by those who consider defending the faith which was once delivered to the Saints by the use of Scripture as anti-intellectual, those who cherish the golden idol of intellect, I am reminded of the following Words of God given to that great prophet Isaiah:

18. To whom then will ye liken God? or what likness will ye compare unto Him?
19. The workman melteth a graven image, and the goldsmith speadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains.
20. He that is so impoverished that he hath no oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot; he seeketh unto him a cunning workman to prepare a graven image, that shall not be moved.
21. Have ye not known? have ye not heard? Hath it not been told you drom the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?
22. It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as GRASSHOPPERS; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.
23. That bringeth the princes to nothing; He maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.
24. Yea, they shall not be planted; yea; they shall not be sown; yea; their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble.
25. To whom then will ye liken Me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One.

Verse 18 above counters the purpose of the OP as the previous responses by yeshua1, WITBOTL, and 12stings have alreay done! I believe those who characterize the use of the Word of God as anti-inellectual, those who endorse open theism, those who are enamoured with their own intellect would do well to prayerfully consider the passage as a whole but especially Verse 22. Then they might ponder if the next grasshopper they see looks with disdain upon them!

 

Just read the OP and then the thread. Being one who thinks linguistically, I felt I should comment.

The problem with the OP is that there is a meaningless phrase: "most perefect." The concept "perfect" cannot be "more" and it cannot be "less." Either something or someone is perfect or they are not. As Yeshua has pointed out, God is the only perfect being. He cannot be "more perfect" or "most perfect." Those are nonsense phrases.

Consider the perfect game in baseball. It occurs when 27 batters are gotten out in a row. Not 26, not 28, but 27. It is not just a shut out when no runs occur, or just a no hitter, in which no one gets a hit but someone might get on base with a walk or through an error. (You can actually lose a no hitter.) There is no such thing as a "more perfect" game or a "most perfect game. There is just a perfect game: 27 batters out in a row, every single batter.

 

John

I had not noticed the misuse of the term "most Perfect". My young grandson pointed that out to me this evening!

 

Sorry, I don't have much use for philosophers (and yes I've taken a course and done some reading). Biblically speaking they get you in trouble (Col. 2:8). Someone once told me (on the BB maybe?) that verse didn't mean what we think of as philosophy. It is to laugh! As if an educated Jew writing in the 1st century didn't know about the Greek philosophers.

And I know that systematic theology often refers to philosophy. Sys. theo. IMO is only useful so far as it is studying the true God and noting mistakes made about Him by the philosophers.

I'm familiar with Plato and his talk of the perfect form. I still think he was nuts.

Try this. Talk about the perfect God instead of the perfect being. To me it then becomes obvious what you are talking about. As long as you talk about beings, it might be a human, angel, demon or alien from outer space. An angel or a human might be perfect in the sense that they are free from sin. But that is a limited perfection, like comparing a soccer game (in which true perfection doesn't exist but a perfect shot might) to the perfect game in baseball. It's apples and oranges.

Living in an idolatrous nation, I often think of the perfect God of the Bible as compared to the gods of Shinto or Buddhism. And I've been in a Muslim country and know that the Muslim Allah is far from perfect--he commands and enables what the Bible calls sin. So, if you talk about the perfect God as opposed to the perfect "being," you don't have to use the word "more."

Edited in: I really don't think philosophers use words right much of the time. Look at logical positivism--neither logical nor positive. Occasionally a philosopher will dabble in linguistics and make a mess of it, like Wittgenstein writing about language. Linguists are still trying to straighten that one out!

 

Basic definition!:thumbsup:

 

Frankly, I did not look much at the verbiage of ht's OP but wondered about the intent of his thread??????????????

In recent years I have noticed that frquently the talking heads on TV will provide a modifier to the word "unique"! Also the terms "win win" and "lose lose" are in common usage, particularly in some business groups.

 

We describe God the best way we can, but our human language is inadequate to define the “infinite” magnitude of His Greatness. If we are growing in the knowledge of God, which we should be, then the most we can know and understand about His Perfect Loving Nature is ever expanding into an even more perfect understanding of who He is. Likewise, if the infinity of God’s Love had been reached there would not even be a need for us to be here receiving it, there would be nothing to expand and there would be no glory for God to gain. So in a sense, in human terms, I would say God’s Love becomes more infinitively perfect everyday while understanding there is no end to an infinitive journey for either, us receiving God’s Love or Him giving it. Thus, Love becomes more perfect.

How bout dat?! :type:

 

god NEVER changes, so by definition, he has been and shall always be perfect, as He is ONLY God, and He never has to learn anything, get more powerful, get more wisdom etc, as He ALONE is self existant and Eternal, and He is complete and perfect, PERIOD!

 

Folks just remember that you must filter everything "ht" writes through his "open theism" beliefs!

 

but by taking this position you do not just limit his immutability, you also call into question his eternality and his omniscience, if not his infinity.

By saying God can experience change, you are saying he can acquire new knowledge which necessitates that his knowledge before was incomplete. Also by noting experiences and change, you must necessarily put those changes and experiences in time. If you believe God can change in the way that you state, then you make him subject to change in time and therefore subject to time. This calls into question his eternality.

Ultimately, changes in this sense ARE changes in nature character.

I believe God does reveal himself to us anthropopathically and anthropomorphically but that is for our benefit and not expressions of his eternal nature.

 

This is poor exegesis, not done according to the grammatical-historical method. You are reading your 21st century ideas back into the Scripture. What possible 1st century philosophy would honor Christ? Gnosticism? Stoicism? Epicurianism? All of the philosophers of the day would have laughed at Paul and at the Gospel of Christ.

Why do you want me to judge them? Christ is their judge. I will say this, though. The site shows an apologetics conference. If they are simply studying philosophy for use in apologetics, hoping to win the lost for Christ, then they are copying Paul. I read a lot of Francis Schaeffer when I was young and liked his approach, which at L'Abri was used to win young people to Christ.

I've got about 9 grad credits in sys. theo. under my belt, have read through several of them, and they are useful, just not the be-all-to-end-all.

I'm not sure what you want me to reply here. Could I explain better what Descartes, Plato and Liebnitz said about God? Certainly, to the precise extent that they did not follow Scripture. I've been a missionary to a Buddhist country since 1981. I doubt if your dead white males mentioned above ever did that. In my experience, the best way possible to get to know God and how to explain Him is evangelism, and I've been doing that cross-culturally as a professional for 31 years.

The issue is not grammar, but semantics, which is the study of meaning. If a child (I believe it was OldRegular's grandson) can say, "Perfect is perfect, you can't have more perfect," then the semantics of the matter are quite simple. Either God is perfect or He is not. There is no god in the world anywhere near Him. The Shintoists do not call their 4 million gods perfect, the Buddhists call no hotoke perfect, and so on. It is only the God of the Bible Who is perfect.

Again, the problem is not grammar but semantics. No matter how hard you try, you can't change the meaning of words as commonly used. You can say "more perfect" as many times as you want, and it will still not communicate what you want it to. People will still say, "Huh? How can something be more perfect?" You confuse people by using words in ways that don't convey real meaning, like the character in Alice and Wonderland who said he would use words like he wanted to and make them mean what he wanted to.

No. Proper exegesis of the Word of God does.

As I said, philosophy is fine when used for apologetics, and I've occasionally quoted Confucious here. But it is certainly not a guide for our life. I'm a Baptist, and believe in the Baptists distinctive of "The Bible as the sole rule of faith and practice." Don't you?

 

Well, we'll just see where he takes us, or tries to. :type:

 

OR, I appreciate the warning....HT is one scary dude!:sleeping_2::sleeping_2::sleeping_2::sleeping_2:

 

God exists OUTSIDE of His creation, and He can freely chose when/how/where etc to intervene and interact within it!

He is eternal, and He IS the beginning and the End, as He is SOVEREIGN, and that means He has BOTH predestination and Foreknowledge of ALL things that will ever happen...

And when jesus became God Incarnate, He did NOT change in His Nature of very God, its that He added also to His being very Human nature too!

Just curious, how do you view God as a trinity?