That is an anthropomorphic God by necessity, since God cannot be adequately comprehended or expressed in limited human capacity. What the Bible describes is not God as He is, but a God expressed in human words will fall short of what God is.
I do not reject the revelation, but I do reject the anthropomorphism of the Bible. We can not positively express what God is. WE can only do it by negation, i.e. of what He is not.
The OT is anthropomorphism based on revelations, interpreted and expressed in human terms and human capacities. The Gospels are eyewitness accounts. Apples and oranges. One is an approximation; the other is factual reporting.
God is simple and umcompound, because only that which is simple and single, a monad, cannot be divided or subdivided, and only that which is perfectly simple is in perfect harmony with itself; complexity leads to disharmony and diversity, and diversity leads to change; God doesn't change, and God cannot be subdivided, He is One.
I suppose I'll take that as a "yes". But doesn't that ruin the Orthodox view that God has nothing to do with death? You just told me that God willed death. The OT says the same thing
He willed it for Himself, so that others may live. But He is not the source of death, since death was already ushered into the world; He merely took our sins and paid with His life for them. That was His choice. He didn't will it on anyone else.
[Kosta: And what is He going to "do" after the End of Times?] Other than reign in Heaven and be our loving Father, the Bible doesn't tell us.
Clever. Of course not. It leaves it up to our fancy, FK.
So, are you saying it is impossible to be the author of something and when the expected results happen one has reason to grieve? I remember that a few years ago there was a lone rock climber who got his arm wedged between a boulder and a wall. Knowing he was going to die because he was in a remote location, he wound up sawing off his own arm to free himself. He was the author of an expected result. You are telling me here that he had no reason to grieve the loss of his arm
That is inconsistent with the Reformed view of God. God would never be caught in such a do-or-die situation. If the world turned wicked, it wasn't a "fate" that was imposed on God so that He had to do something radically to save it, but a result of His will. And if God made the world wicked, there is no reason for Him to grieve the wickedness of the world.
He [God] willed it for Himself, so that others may live. But He is not the source of death, since death was already ushered into the world; He merely took our sins and paid with His life for them. That was His choice. He didn't will it on anyone else.
I have learned through these discussions just how fervently you ignore the OT and it still amazes me. Yet Jesus referenced the OT as God's word to be obeyed hundreds of times. I'll go with Him.
It is the same God.
It often looks like the EO try extra hard to deny an omnipotent Hebrew God in favor of a pastey, passive, regressive Greek God. But that's not accurate. Christ came to save the "lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew 15:25) for a reason. All those who are His are all Jews inwardly (Romans 2:29). And the Jews have always known who is in control of both life and death. "See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand." -- Deuteronomy 32:39
God did not change from one testament to the next; He revealed more of Himself to us, giving us a "better testament," a fuller knowledge of the exact same omnipotent, omniscient God He has always been.
As for the OT not being "reporting," tell that to Moses and Job and David.
If God is not in control of both life and death, this would be a really frightening existence indeed. Thankfully, mercifully, all of it, one way or another, is by His hand, for His glory.
The LORD hath made all [things] for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil." -- Proverbs 16:1,4"The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, [is] from the LORD...
This is from the same God who tells us...
"As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him." -- John 17:2"And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father." -- John 6:65
The same God who gives light to all His words...
"According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that [pertain] unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue" -- 2 Peter 1:3"Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began" -- 2 Timothy 1:9
It is the same Scripture, the same God. Men are fallen; God is all holy. Men flee God's face; God grabs hold of whom He will and drags them to Him. Men plan; God ordains. Men stumble; God is all strength and ever victorious.
Consider Egypt. Is the God of Isaiah 19 a different God from Colossians 1?
And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom. And the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof; and I will destroy the counsel thereof: and they shall seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to them that have familiar spirits, and to the wizards. And the Egyptians will I give over into the hand of a cruel lord; and a fierce king shall rule over them, saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts... The LORD hath mingled a perverse spirit in the midst thereof: and they have caused Egypt to err in every work thereof, as a drunken man staggereth in his vomit." -- Isaiah 19: 1-4,12,14
"For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist." -- Colossians 1:16-17 "The burden of Egypt. Behold, the LORD rideth upon a swift cloud, and shall come into Egypt: and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it.
By your own standards you cannot possibly know this. You are merely assuming whatever you want to assume. Do you have anything to back this up? How do you know that Moses and Joshua and David and the rest of them were not reporting what they saw, but you believe that the Gospels were "factual" reporting? You can't prove that.