They are different faces of the same God. Trinitarian theology and so on. God did not appear to men in the OT as Jesus did in the New. Jehovah tended to lights and voices out of the sky and burning bushes and the threat of death to any man who saw Him directly. That is quite a different appearance than what Jesus gave us.
If they are different faces of the same God, then you should agree that the OT God was also personal, even if you do not recognize it. A being is either personal or impersonal. Slot machines are impersonal. Some people thing God is like that, acting randomly. But some of us think the opposite, that God is personal and acts with purpose.
FK: *** How many chances did He give the Jews? Seventy times seven, etc.? :) He disciplined them out of His profound and very personal love for them. The OT God is very personal. ***
He was a distant and angry taskmaster. That approach failed.
Even if that is your personal view, you still agree that it is the same God, right? IOW, I hope you're not saying that personality suddenly "attached" to God at some point. On a side note, do you have a view on how God overcame His failure in the OT? Did He just "wise up", or did someone help Him to understand His error in your view?
FK: ***There was a time before creation.***
What time would this be? God existed before the ages according to Paul. If God created time, as He created everything else, then He exists out of time.
That God exists out of time just means that He is not subject to the rules of time that we experience. Time is just a measure of existence. Some people consider it to be its own dimension, as it were, and I agree with that. My only point is that if we say that God created, then He existed before He created, in human terms. Whatever you want to call that existence before creation, that is the time I am talking about. There was love in the Trinity before there was creation, and love is an action that can be measured with time.
FK: ***If you are “one” then you are saying you can snatch yourself out of God’s hands. The scripture forbids this. ***
Scripture most definitely says that man can reject God. The whole OT is the Jewish nation variously rejecting God. When Jesus revealed that His followers must eat His body and drink His blood, many of them walked, saying that it was too hard.
With all due respect, so what? :) Of course men reject God. In fact, most do. Jesus said that He would not lose THOSE FEW that were given to Him by the Father. That is totally different. You are saying that Jesus DOES lose some who were given to Him by the Father. That simply goes against what scripture teaches.
And being a "follower" who is swept up into a movement (see Obama supporters) does not necessarily make one a true believer (ask an Obama supporter to name one of his accomplishments). We saw that with the rich young man. His "faith" was false and shallow. He did not have true faith. He was not given to Christ by the Father. IOW, those who walked away from Jesus were not actually true followers in the first place. They were posers.
Judas rejected Him; Peter rejected Him three times and yet Peter’s repentance brought him back to Jesus. Peter, the prodigal son, returned. Judas, in despair, didn’t. The Jews who walked away from Him, didn’t return either.
It sounds like you are confusing a temporary lapse with a full rejection of God by someone who claimed true faith, but never had it. If God allows true believers to renounce their faiths permanently, then God is a liar and we can trust Him for nothing.
FK: ***Your Catechism says that God conveyed what He wanted to convey in the Bible. How meaningless the Bible is since it doesn’t include the countless number of exceptions that your tradition adds.***
Are you saying that God didn’t convey what He wanted to in the Bible? Did those nasty Catholics keep some of God’s word back from Him?
No, your hierarchy hasn't accomplished anything in fact along these lines. I meant that logically the Catholic view would have to be that God intended to convey very little in scripture, since your tradition contradicts it so much. God DID convey what He wanted, and some are able to see it.
“On a side note, do you have a view on how God overcame His failure in the OT?”
Yup, its called the Incarnation. Remember about a year ago I suggested you read “On the Incarnation” by +Athanasius the Great? Its all there, FK. It will answer most of your other points in 4083 also.
And as it is.
It's not all that hard to do the meth work to underestand the relatiosip between time and space as depicted by Newton (and others ) and developed by Einstein. (Whose birthday was 3/14)
And it's good to do the work so as not to be swept away by people throwing around words like "Dimension" in impressive but vague ways.
PLEASE think about what it means to say "Time is a measure of existence" in comparison with my child's garden of Aristotle above. I think the concept of time is meaningless unless there is some change going on. And I mean "meaningless". If you do a thought experiment of a time without stuff changing, and look at words like "Before", "after", and "during", and ask yourself, "WHAT?": "Before what, After what, During what?" what do the words mean without something that was once like THIS and now is like THAT?
If you want to say, "Well, they must mean SOMETHING," hold your own feet to the fire.
It's not a useless exercise, I think.
What I call "pothead metaphysics" (revealing maybe a little more about my past than I'd care to) gets all excited about notions of time and dimension and Rod Serling and such. But a little cold hard thought goes a long way to take away the "Gee whiz!" and to clarify one's thinking.
It's been more than 25 years, But I think Max Born's "Einstein's Theory of Relativity" is as good a place to start as any. The first chapters are easily understood, believe me, or I wouldn't have understood them.
***If they are different faces of the same God, then you should agree that the OT God was also personal, even if you do not recognize it. A being is either personal or impersonal. Slot machines are impersonal. Some people thing God is like that, acting randomly. ***
We are human and ascribe personality to things that don’t possess it. The OT God did not get ‘familiar’ with us in the way that Jesus, in His human person did. He appeared as a force of nature in the OT, and as a human being in the New.
None us have ever said that God acts randomly.
***Even if that is your personal view, you still agree that it is the same God, right? IOW, I hope you’re not saying that personality suddenly “attached” to God at some point.***
The person of Jesus was created for us so that we could relate to God. God didn’t require a human form. We were able to relate to God much better through Jesus than through fire and lightning and burning bushes.
***My only point is that if we say that God created, then He existed before He created, in human terms. Whatever you want to call that existence before creation, that is the time I am talking about.***
God always was, is and will be. Temporal labelling of God is inaccurate.
***There was love in the Trinity before there was creation, and love is an action that can be measured with time.***
Love is not an action. It is a decision.
***Jesus said that He would not lose THOSE FEW that were given to Him by the Father. That is totally different. You are saying that Jesus DOES lose some who were given to Him by the Father. That simply goes against what scripture teaches.***
No, He says that no one can snatch them out of His hands. That is what Scripture teaches; it also teaches that man, by his own decisions can imperil his soul.
***IOW, those who walked away from Jesus were not actually true followers in the first place. They were posers.***
Every one sins; everyone walks away from God at least on occasion. Does that mean that all are posers? Or can the non posers can sin with impunity?
***It sounds like you are confusing a temporary lapse with a full rejection of God by someone who claimed true faith, but never had it. If God allows true believers to renounce their faiths permanently, then God is a liar and we can trust Him for nothing.***
Micromanaging again. He’s gotta be one busy guy, this Reformed God. Where does God say that believers cannot renounce their faith?
***No, your hierarchy hasn’t accomplished anything in fact along these lines. I meant that logically the Catholic view would have to be that God intended to convey very little in scripture, since your tradition contradicts it so much.***
Such as? A short list might be of help here.
***God DID convey what He wanted, and some are able to see it.***
Ah yes. Being Jesus was rather tiring, wasn’t it? So God therefore had a 1500 year snooze before inspiring Luther and his merry band of Scriptural Visigoths.