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To: stfassisi; boatbums; metmom
We know God can only be love because hate is an imperfection of love from an ACTION of a created being

And you know this how? God has perfect hatred.. He hates sin..that is perfect.. Or do the scriptures lie?

RN-””Who did God love before he created anything?””
Himself.

Agreed...

RN-””Why did God create man?””
Out of love for love with a free will to choose His love or reject it

That is not what the bible says..so you can believe Aquinas or the bible.. God was not lonely, He did not need friends ,He was fully satisfied in His love for Himself.. So one more time..why did God create man?

””So the scripture is wrong when it says GOD HATES anything? “”
You are wrong in not understanding this because it is figurative and metaphoric.

Really ?? And one knows that how? It seems to me Catholics pick and choose what is metaphoric and what is not to support their idea of god..

I actually believe in the perfect God of the bible, the Holy God that hates that which is an offense to His holiness and righteousness..

"The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity. " (Ps 5:5)

"But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate." (Rev 2:6,15)

Just as there are 2 kinds of love...sinful and righteous love there are 2 kinds of hatred.. Righteous and sinful

3,493 posted on 11/28/2010 4:19:30 PM PST by RnMomof7 (Gal 4:16 asks "Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?")
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To: RnMomof7; Kolokotronis

“”So one more time..why did God create man?””

Out of love for love and for us to serve and love God back

From the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church

67. For what purpose did God create man and woman?

God has created everything for them; but he has created them to know, serve and love God, to offer all of creation in this world in thanksgiving back to him and to be raised up to life with him in heaven. Only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of the human person come into true light. Man and woman are predestined to reproduce the image of the Son of God made Man, who is the perfect “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15).

We are all given a free will to love and serve Him and we are NOT in God’s likeness when we don’t love.

Good stuff from Pope Benedict XVI’s God is love

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.html

We have seen that God’s eros for man is also totally agape. This is not only because it is bestowed in a completely gratuitous manner, without any previous merit, but also because it is love which forgives. Hosea above all shows us that this agape dimension of God’s love for man goes far beyond the aspect of gratuity. Israel has committed “adultery” and has broken the covenant; God should judge and repudiate her. It is precisely at this point that God is revealed to be God and not man: “How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel! ... My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst” (Hos 11:8-9). God’s passionate love for his people—for humanity—is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice. Here Christians can see a dim prefigurement of the mystery of the Cross: so great is God’s love for man that by becoming man he follows him even into death, and so reconciles justice and love.

The philosophical dimension to be noted in this biblical vision, and its importance from the standpoint of the history of religions, lies in the fact that on the one hand we find ourselves before a strictly metaphysical image of God: God is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but this universal principle of creation—the Logos, primordial reason—is at the same time a lover with all the passion of a true love. Eros is thus supremely ennobled, yet at the same time it is so purified as to become one with agape. We can thus see how the reception of the Song of Songs in the canon of sacred Scripture was soon explained by the idea that these love songs ultimately describe God’s relation to man and man’s relation to God. Thus the Song of Songs became, both in Christian and Jewish literature, a source of mystical knowledge and experience, an expression of the essence of biblical faith: that man can indeed enter into union with God—his primordial aspiration. But this union is no mere fusion, a sinking in the nameless ocean of the Divine; it is a unity which creates love, a unity in which both God and man remain themselves and yet become fully one. As Saint Paul says: “He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor 6:17).

11. The first novelty of biblical faith consists, as we have seen, in its image of God. The second, essentially connected to this, is found in the image of man. The biblical account of creation speaks of the solitude of Adam, the first man, and God’s decision to give him a helper. Of all other creatures, not one is capable of being the helper that man needs, even though he has assigned a name to all the wild beasts and birds and thus made them fully a part of his life. So God forms woman from the rib of man. Now Adam finds the helper that he needed: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23). Here one might detect hints of ideas that are also found, for example, in the myth mentioned by Plato, according to which man was originally spherical, because he was complete in himself and self-sufficient. But as a punishment for pride, he was split in two by Zeus, so that now he longs for his other half, striving with all his being to possess it and thus regain his integrity.[8] While the biblical narrative does not speak of punishment, the idea is certainly present that man is somehow incomplete, driven by nature to seek in another the part that can make him whole, the idea that only in communion with the opposite sex can he become “complete”. The biblical account thus concludes with a prophecy about Adam: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24)


3,544 posted on 11/29/2010 6:48:04 AM PST by stfassisi ((The greatest gift God gives us is that of overcoming self"-St Francis Assisi)))
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