To imply otherwise means that God makes no choices, and we clearly know that He does.
There is nothing God "wants" from us that He can get.
The Bible tells us that God wants plenty from us, He wants us to love Him, He wants us to obey Him, He wants us to teach our children, and on and on and on. Because He is omnipotent He causes all of these good things to happen and He gets what He wants. We humans want things we can't have. That doesn't apply to God.
Rational? Rational as in "My thoughts are not your thoughts?" Whose reason are you referring to? Ours or His? And it if is His, is it something we can comprehend? Or are we stuffing Infinite God to our finite logical box?
God defines what rational is, so He is the standard. God gave us some ability to use reason when He created us, but of course we fall short of His use so our thoughts are different. If God was not rational, then He would be random and purposeless.
I do credit you for the courage to admit that in your theology God ultimately created Adam so that he would fail.
I wouldn't say that's why He created Adam, but I would say the Fall was part of God's plan, and did not happen by accident.
Did God not create Esau and predestined him to sell his birthright? Did God not create Him knowing that he would do just that? Did Esau have a choice? How can he hate Esau, FK when He made it to be what He made him?
The Bible specifically tells us that God predestined that Esau would sell his birthright, and so obviously God knew. Esau had the same choices that all lost sinners have, but among those is not the choice to do good in God's eyes. God can hate Esau because he was not one of God's children. God only loves His own. He had no duty to create Esau as one of His children. God made a sovereign choice for His own reasons.
According to your theology God created Esau in order to hate him!
No, that was not the reason for creating. The reason God made Esau was to use him in the furtherance of God's plan. It is the same reason God made Pharaoh, Judas, and all the rest. God hating them is a consequence of their purpose, not a purpose itself for creating them.
In your theology Judas is an obedient servant who does the dirty work and then gets cast into hell for his obedience!?!
Judas, and the rest did not do what they did out of obedience to God, so they do not get credit for being obedient. God used them by removing Himself from them to that degree necessary to guarantee that His plan would be accomplished exactly as designed.
In your theology God is not Love; He is only a god who loves some.
LOL! And in your theology God loves the vast majority of people so much that He stands aside and does nothing to protect them while they hurl themselves off a cliff to their doom. Some love. If I treated my own children the same way your God treats His, I would be put in prison. :)
After all that is why they were born.. to qualify as beneficial spirits.. or NOT..
What makes no sense, FK, is that God makes "choices." Think about it, choice is something we have because we don't know the outcome for certain. So, what posisble "choice" could God make not knowing the outcome? A choice suggests more than one possibility, FK. Does God have to choose between different possiblities or did He make the world exactly as desinged.
Choices are soemthing we make when we decide to lay bathroom tiles, and mount cabinet door knobs. God makes no choices, FK. He just does evetrything right the first time.
The Bible tells us that God wants plenty from us, He wants us to love Him, He wants us to obey Him, He wants us to teach our children, and on and on and on
Where does God say "I want you to love me?"
God defines what rational is, so He is the standard
God is a different essence. His thoughts are not our thouths. He does not define our standard. Our standard is what He gave us. It does in no way compare to His.
I wouldn't say that's why He created Adam
Then why did He?
The Bible specifically tells us that God predestined that Esau would sell his birthright, and so obviously God knew
This is one of those parts of the Bible that cannot possibly be true. There is no reason whatsoever why God would hate Esau unless Esau did something God did not foresee which is impossible.
God has no reason to hate Esau, as Esau did nothing God did not already know before it happened, and by His permission, or because Esau had no choice but to do what he did, and was simply doing God's will.
Don't you think it's a little strange that God would hate Esau for selling his birthright and not Adam for ruining the whole Creation? Or Judas for selling out Christ? Or Pontius Pilate for turning Him over to the Jews when he couldhave pardoned Him?
But, of course, in your theology all this happened because God "wanted" it. If He wanted it and He gets what He wants, than there is no reason whatsoever for Him to hate anyone, good or evil, for "doing His will," especially Esau!
And while you are at it, explain to me how can Love hate?
Kosta: According to your theology God created Esau in order to hate him!
FK: No, that was not the reason for creating
Oh? That's the only reason God would have for hating Esau.
The reason God made Esau was to use him in the furtherance of God's plan
Which was for Esau to sell his birthright! Did Esau have a choice of not doing that in your theology? Or course not! So, he was (pre)destined to do what God wanted in His plan, which involved Esau selling his birthright, not because hge wanted to but because God did, right? Was there any other reason Esau had on this earth? If not, then God created Esau with a specific purpose to sell his birthright for "futherance of [His] plan." Which is fine, but doesn't explain why He hated the man.
Judas, and the rest did not do what they did out of obedience to God, so they do not get credit for being obedient
But in your theology there can be no disobedience to God!? Remember, God is always in control whether we obey or disobey. Either way we can only do His will, right? Otherwise God couldn't get what He wants, right?
Can you imagine if Esau decided not to sell his birthright!? Or if Judas said to himself, "30 pieaces of silver, I don't need that..."? Or if Adam spanked Eve and chased away the Serpent instead of eating the fruit?!?
God used [Judas and the rest] by removing Himself from them to that degree necessary to guarantee that His plan would be accomplished exactly as designed.
Where they under grace? Are you suggesting they had indwelling Spirit? But be it as you make things up, by "removing" Himself from them, He did not just "allow" things to happen, but created conditions under which they will happen for certain, so the determining factors are not the peons running around on earth but God. Where is the guilt of the peons in all this?
And in your theology God loves the vast majority of people so much that He stands aside and does nothing to protect them while they hurl themselves off a cliff to their doom
God does nothing? You mean as in spoon-feeding them? Are you saying "it's not faaaaair?" :)
If I treated my own children the same way your God treats His, I would be put in prison. :)
But God's ways are not your ways in case you didn't notice. The Bible clearly tells you that God does not compel. he is not dealing with "children" but with rational human beings that he equipped with reason.
This issue (and not crunching Muslims) is what Benedict XVI's Regensburg address was about. There's some good stuff in Fides et Ratio which I ought to re-read.
This again is where I get my concern about the problem of theological language from. To say that God "wants", is, at least in the history of the word 'want', to say nothing other than that God lacks something. Can we say that? I would offer instead to say "God wills".
But then I read Hosea ...
Or Jeremiah who says that God does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men. Is there a suggestion, at least in the plain meaning of the words, that God does stuff unwillingly? We can explain this away but it seems to me to power of the line is precisely in the inner conflict it expresses, so explaining it away just guts the verse and what Jeremiah is saying.
Theologically it seems right to say that God is or at least lives in uncreated bliss. But in His ultimate and perfect self-revelation He appears (at least for a while) as a man being tortured to death. A trivial, but no less valid for that, response to this might be to say that sometimes to say the truth about God we have to say the opposite of the truth!
Now, at the risk of being sexist, I'd like to suggest that while this is hard to accept at first, any guy who has tried to understand a woman has found himself tied up in similar knots.
I hasten to add that this is a reflection about language and human reason, not about God (or women).
I think.