Wednesday, July 14, 2004

The Limitations of God?

After having read the last to post on Reuben's blog I was wondering what are God's limitations (I've thought about this before)?

Does God actually have limitations?
Does he have limitations in his abilities?
Are any “limitations” only really decisions that God has made and decided to abide by?

What do you think?

Thinking about it at various times I've come to think that God does have some “limitations” that result from his very Nature or at least appears to based on our perceptions of his Nature. Most of you probably wouldn't call these “limitations” most likely advantages and I guess many of them are what are things that would seem to be limitations in a human but in God are only advantages.

Any way these are the ones think he may have.

He is can only be truthful and follow his word exactly. He is unable to lie in any form or manner, i.e. he can not conceal “emotions”, shade the truth, tell only part of the truth (might be some exceptions) pretend to be what he is not . He may decide not to revel something but can not easily tell partial truths.

He can not change, his word or mind. Once he says something he will do it.

He is unable to completely force a human to do something he may set things up so that there is only a 1x10^100 or less chance that we will not do what he wants but in the end the final choice is ours, even if it only comes down to the random firing of one neuron or something.

Really most of these are not truly “limitations” for god but would be if applied to a human in the world as it is today.

Any way what do people think?

Does God actually have limitations, can he be limited?

Does he have limitations in his abilities?

Are any “limitations” only really decisions that God has made and decided to abide by?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

You'll note though that he usually used "if" in most of his statements. Which would allow one to change there mind or stated actions if the conditions are met.

Nathan said...

In Malachi, God says "I do not change, therefore you are not consumed" I've always understood God's immutability\changelessness as to be consistency of character, and hence reliability of promises.


Does God never decieve?
What about the people of Ai, where he commands Joshua to trick them in a battle?
What about in 1 kings 22 where God sends out a lying spirit?