DR. E: You use the words of Scripture and your renewed mind to understand as best you can.
D-FENDR: And your result is... ? How would you describe it?
Sorry. I don't play that game. Some Roman Catholic apologists, once they've gotten the answer in several posts, keep asking the same question.
Next.
if God is without passions, what do you make of God “hating” or experiencing “wrath”?
Let's see what Calvin has to say about the immutability and consistency of God regarding Genesis 6:6...
The repentance which is here ascribed to God does not properly belong to him, but has reference to our understanding of him. For since we cannot comprehend him as he is, it is necessary that, for our sakes he should, in a certain sense, transform himself. That repentance cannot take place in God, easily appears from this single considerations that nothing happens which is by him unexpected or unforeseen. The same reasoning, and remark, applies to what follows, that God was affected with grief. Certainly God is not sorrowful or sad; but remains forever like himself in his celestial and happy repose: yet, because it could not otherwise be known how great is God’s hatred and detestation of sin, therefore the Spirit accommodates himself to our capacity. Wherefore, there is no need for us to involve ourselves in thorny and difficult questions, when it is obvious to what end these words of repentance and grief are applied; namely, to teach us, that from the time when man was so greatly corrupted, God would not reckon him among his creatures; as if he would say, ‘This is not my workmanship; this is not that man who was formed in my image, and whom I had adorned with such excellent gifts: I do not deign now to acknowledge this degenerate and defiled creature as mine.’ Similar to this is what he says, in the second place, concerning grief; that God was so offended by the atrocious wickedness of men, as if they had wounded his heart with mortal grief: There is here, therefore, an unexpressed antithesis between that upright nature which had been created by God, and that corruption which sprung from sin. Meanwhile, unless we wish to provoke God, and to put him to grief, let us learn to abhor and to flee from sin. Moreover, this paternal goodness and tenderness ought, in no slight degree, to subdue in us the love of sin; since God, in order more effectually to pierce our hearts, clothes himself with our affections. This figure, which represents God as transferring to himself what is peculiar to human nature, is called ἀνθρωποπάθεια
"And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." - Gen. 6:6
It is the Roman Catholic church which anthropomorphisizes God and makes Him into a Zeus-like character who changes with the whims of men. This must be what permits Rome to so easily give Mary and various saints God-like abilities. Rome doesn't know God, and therefore Rome gives away His holy and divine essence to mortal men.
Here's Arthur Pink's excellent work...
IMMUTABILITY is one of the Divine perfections which is not sufficiently pondered. It is one of the excellencies of the Creator which distinguishes Him from all His creatures. God is perpetually the same: subject to no change in His being, attributes, or determinations. Therefore God is compared to a rock (Deut 32:4, etc.) which remains immovable, when the entire ocean surrounding it is continually in a fluctuating state; even so, though all creatures are subject to change, God is immutable. Because God has no beginning and no ending, He can know no change. He is everlastingly "the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" (Jam 1:17)...
And here is a great essay...
Among Catholic theologians, while they may differ as to the exact manner and extent of God’s passibility, one nonetheless finds a strange mix of theological bedfellows. They include, among others, Raniero Cantalamessa, Jean Galot, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Roger Haight, Elizabeth Johnson, Hans Küng, Michael Sarot, and Jon Sobrino. Of course one must add the host of Process Theologians who, following the lead of Albert North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, hold, by the very character of their philosophical position, that God is by nature passible and so can suffer. This theological shift has been so overwhelming, so thorough, and has been achieved with such unquestioned assurance that Ronald Goetz has simply, and in a sense rightly, dubbed it the “new orthodoxy.” What has brought about such a radical reconception of God? How, in only one hundred years, has the Christian theological tradition of almost two thousand years, so readily and so assuredly, seemingly been overturned? There are basically three factors that have contributed to this change: the prevailing social and cultural milieu, modern interpretation of biblical revelation, and contemporary trends in philosophy... From the dawn of the Patristic period Christian theology has held as axiomatic that God is impassible—that is, He does not undergo emotional changes of state, and so cannot suffer. Toward the end of the nineteenth century a sea of change began to occur within Christian theology such that at present many, if not most, Christian theologians hold as axiomatic that God is passible, that He does undergo emotional changes of states, and so can suffer. Historically this change was inaugurated by such Anglican theologians as Andrew M. Fairbairn and Bertrand R. Brasnett. Within contemporary Protestant theology some of the better known theologians who espouse the passibility of God are Karl Barth, Richard Bauckham, John Cone, Paul Fiddes, Robert Jenson, Eberhard Jüngel, Kazoh Kitamori, Jung Young Lee, John Macquarrie, Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Richard Swinburne, Alan Torrance, Thomas F. Torrance, Keith Ward, and Nicholas Wolterstorff.
And because God works "all things for the good of those who love Christ, who are the called according to His purpose," I should thank you for motivating me to find and read these wonderful links and then send them on to my fellow saints in Christ.
Your continued "authoritative" pronouncements regarding what the Church teaches and what Catholics believe is unqualified and specious. Hearsay from failed Catholics and Google mining of dubious websites are no substitute for the years of rigorous study under educated Catholic theologians.
Presented as opinion for the sake of contrasting yourself from all things Catholic simply comes off as clumsy and juvenile. Authoritatively spoken they come across is something far more sinister. Thank God anyone with access to to Free Republic also has access to the truth freely available on the internet. No one has to depend on your posts for the truth.
This kind of recognition of truth is what true worship is about. These words have returned the Name of the Holy One back to where it belongs, high and lifted up. You have brushed aside the flimsy, tattered rags of Rome and shown that there is nothing there. To God only be the glory, and Him alone. Thank you, Dr. E.
Never got an answer. Your claims were about being your able to fully conceptualizing God, as you described "an entire concept, an idea with all its ramifications" etc.
I've asked you to demonstrate, to describe your concepts - your idea of God "with all its ramifications."
And.. Nada.
More Calvin:
This figure, which represents God as transferring to himself what is peculiar to human nature
Ah, so it is God which anthropomorphizes God.
Doesn't really explain the "without passions" description - it contradicts it.
I thought everything belongs to him. Is there anything not in his control? The truth is, God repents all over the Old Testament. Reading Calvin only reminds what hyperbolic, convoluted mental gymnastics are needed to make the Hebrew God into a Platonic Christian Deity