What is God responsible for?

[Willum]

Many things were done in God's name:
But what is he responsible for?

When the Catholic Nazi Germany attempts a genocide, a man is blamed.
When Hebrews commit genocide on the Canaan, it is his will.

We have plagues, on Catholic countries, for example. The Dark Ages were committed in Yahweh's name. Were they?

Why would Yahweh plunge the civilization of Rome, with health, farming and sanitation, back into the primitive squalor of ancient Jerusalem, if so?

If not, why did he not stop such a terror? It seems to be in His purview.

How does one determine if an act is done in God's will, or men's will?
Does the Bible tell us?

Understanding that free will is a constraint - we can also understand that mob's and large numbers of people lose free will, does this fall into God's purview, then?

In short, how does one know what God is responsible for;
Any group decision?
A decision influenced by prayer?

The position is that presented by Romans 13:

Obey the rulers who have authority over you. Only God can give authority to anyone, and he puts these rulers in their places of power. 2 People who oppose the authorities are opposing what God has done, and they will be punished. 3 Rulers are a threat to evil people, not to good people. There is no need to be afraid of the authorities. Just do right, and they will praise you for it. 4 After all, they are God’s servants, and it is their duty to help you.

The position of the OP is: those atrocities committed by governments, God's will, and he is responsible for them.

[ttruscott]

BUT elsewhere you have argued that our creation in Adam did create us as imperfect and prone to sin .

I know I didn't argue that "that our creation in Adam did create us as imperfect" because I don't know what that means. What I know I would have said is that God Created us perfect. That Adam was created perfect but that by his deliberate rebellion Adam lost that perfection. And that Adam subsequently passed on the sinful condition he incurred to his children, rather like a father passes on a genetic condition.

You expanded on this here:

No, babies have broken no law so cannot be considered personaly guilty of anything.

That said, all babies are born "imperfect" meaning born in an imperfect condition and therefore suseptible to sickness, disease even (sadly) death. This imperfection means we all have a natural inclination not to behave perfectly. This imperfection (imperfection= sin) in inherited we believe, from of Adam (Romans 12:5) .

No baby is at fault for this sad eventuality.

Adam subsequently passed on the sinful condition he incurred to his children...is the same in meaning as "that our creation in Adam did create us as imperfect" as all deviation from GOD's perfection is imperfection. It also means that GOD put us into Adam after he fell knowing he would pass on his sinful condition to us WHEN HE DID NOT HAVE TO DO THAT!!! GOD could have made us independent from Adam and created us in innocence like HE did Adam and Eve. HIS creating them this way denies any necessity for us to be made in such a way as to have to accept Adam's sinful condition and therefore makes HIM responsible for our being created in a sinful condition...a blasphemy as you know.

No baby is at fault means both Adam is at fault for sinning and GOD is at fault for making us be in Adam's family! If the 'baby' was at fault by a free will decision to sin then all is fair, no one is being punished for his father's (Adam or GOD) sin and everyone has their own responsibility...no blasphemy at all.

What I know I would have said is that God Created us perfect.

How does the sinful condition he incurred to his children[/i] not interfere with the perfection of his children?? Perfection = a sinful condition?

Perfection means finished. A sinful condition is obviously not finished or completed as it can (must) be either redeemed or judged. I think you must have a contradiction here.

[ttruscott]

If by HE you are refering to ADAM I would say, no he (Adam) is not responsible for each sinful act we commit, we carry our own responsibility for those for we too have free will, but [HE] Adam is responsible for our being born in a sinful condition. He is responsible for our being born in a spiratually weak state inclined to do bad rather than good.

To be a sinner is to have a sinful condition or nature. Is this spiritual weakness or a propensity toward evil? They do not seem to me to be the same... Romans 6:14 For sin shall no longer be your master, ... with John 8:34 Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

Are Adam's children weak against temptation or enslaved to sin, that is, inclined to do sinful things.

Your mention to the term responsible as referring to a cause is interesting. I have in the past argued that HE was indeed the cause of sin because HE created us with a free will able to choose to sin but HE was NOT RESPONSIBLE for sin because HE did not want us to choose sin but we did against HIS will. Hmmmmm....

This is why personal names are useful. You seem to be refering to God (JEHOVAH) in this part of the post. If by "HE" you are refering to Jehovah, then I would disagree. Creating intelligent beings with free will isn't being the primary "cause" of sin. It means that sin is possible but it doesn't CAUSE the sin.

I agree but causing the possibility for many equates to cause of the sin. <shrug> I champion GOD's true holiness beyond mere lip service so our free will is paramount as it is the only thing that keeps GOD at arm's length from the creation of evil and proves our guilt so our punishments are just. Being created in an inherited state of spiritual weakness OR with an inclination to be evil destroys our free will so someone else responsible which cannot be, it never happened that way - it besmirches HIS holiness and loving righteousness.

I will not repeat my questions from

in "Should all people be blamed for Adam's sin?"

but will look for answers there.

And I am sorry to have tweaked your necessary name thing - no one else has ever had trouble differentiating the Capital HE and He s to designate GOD and a Person in the GODly Unity so I'm not careful about that.

[dio9]

[Replying to Blastcat]

Its all about spiritual life. According to Genesis Adam and Eve died when they ate. They died but continued to live and have children, what kind of death did they suffer? What kind of life was restored by Jesus?

[JehovahsWitness]

You expanded on this here:

No, babies have broken no law so cannot be considered personaly guilty of anything.

That said, all babies are born "imperfect" meaning born in an imperfect condition and therefore suseptible to sickness, disease even (sadly) death. This imperfection means we all have a natural inclination not to behave perfectly. This imperfection (imperfection= sin) in inherited we believe, from of Adam (Romans 12:5) .

No baby is at fault for this sad eventuality.

Adam subsequently passed on the sinful condition he incurred to his children...is the same in meaning as "that our creation in Adam did create us as imperfect" as all deviation from GOD's perfection is imperfection.

Okay, now I understand what you mean when you used that expression thanks.

It also means that GOD put us into Adam after he fell knowing he would pass on his sinful condition to us WHEN HE DID NOT HAVE TO DO THAT!!! GOD could have made us independent from Adam and created us in innocence like HE did Adam and Eve. HIS creating them this way denies any necessity for us to be made in such a way as to have to accept Adam's sinful condition and therefore makes HIM responsible for our being created in a sinful condition...a blasphemy as you know.

No I don't agree. Firstly because Adam having children wasn't an error, it was part of God's original plan and his express will. That their children would be less than perfect was a sad consequence of Adams error. Plus to change his purpose would mean Jehovah could be defeated by what is bad, that Almighty God can be a failure. When Jehovah expresses his purpose it must be fulfilled (see Isaiah 55:10,11) . Any alternative is effectively saying that someone is more powerful than God and that Jehovah cannot be relied on to do what he says. Now that would be blasphemy

No baby is at fault means both Adam is at fault for sinning and GOD is at fault for making us be in Adam's family!

No I don't agree. As I said, allowing the natural consequences of someone else error to roll out does not render the one that allows it responsible in any way.

To illustrate: If someone steals a car and goes to jail and because of the sentence the children of the theif suffer (because their father is in jail) can we say the Judge is responsible for the chidren's suffering because he (the judge) could have simply not sent the man to jail?

OBJECTION: Yes but Adam's children weren't born yet.

So would God have been morally justified in castrating Adam just in case? Killing Adam before he had children would effectively be denying life to those that, from the moment Jehovah said "Be fruitful, become many and fill the earth" had been promised it. Not in the sense that Adam's unborn children had prehuman existences but in the principle that in creating Adam he was giving him the potential and promise that he would father a race, the human race.

JW

To learn more please go to other posts related to...

SIN , PERFECTION , and ...THE RANSOM SACRIFICE OF JESUS CHRIST

[postroad]

[Replying to post 253 by dio9]
Maybe the penalty was actually physical death. Maybe God relented and the sentence was reduced to banishment? Or is God incapable of simple forgiveness?

[dio9]

[Replying to post 255 by postroad]

No I am clearly saying the death Adam suffered was spiritual death. For instance this is why Christians say , " I am born again" as Jesus said to Nicodemus you must be born again . This means spiritually , as Nicodemus said it is not possible to come out of our mothers womb again. The life Jesus brings to us is spiritual life. The fullness of life. Not physical alone as the pagans but physical and spiritual as sons and daughters of God.
Would you say Christians are son and daughter of God?

[postroad]

[Replying to post 256 by dio9].
You tell me.

1 John 3:1-10New International Version (NIV)

3 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears,[a] we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8 The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. 9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. 10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister

[dio9]

[Replying to post 257 by postroad]

sounds like Christians are something more than pagans because of Jesus. Spiritually alive again. The death Adam suffered is restored by Jesus. We were always meant to be spiritually alive . Speak but the words and my soul will be healed. the human soul was damaged . the soul is spirit and flesh together. The meaning of Adam leaving the garden is his spiritual part died, shut down , was cast out of God's garden. If we have eyes to see Jesus said, we can see it. Physical eyes? No we have them already , spiritual eyes. Jesus restores the lost spiritual life of Man AKA Adam. And this spiritual life is eternal life.

[postroad]

[Replying to post 258 by dio9]
I would imagine if that were true Christianity would be united in thought and action?

Jeremiah 32:39
I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me and that all will then go well for them and for their children after them.

[onewithhim]

The OP asks, "What is God responsible for?" I have answered that he is responsible for the beautiful planet we live on, and everything good that we have. He is NOT responsible for all of the sorrow and grief that saturates the world today.

Er, well, hmm. I think he is just a teensy bit responsible. True, silly people built their houses near the sea; others beside a volcano; still others lived in a desert or in parts plagued with drought. But some wise people who built in the right places have been surprised by the earth opening up and swallowing them. And some nice people, visiting friends, have been caught up in tsunamis. Then again awful winds have blown others off the planet. Who caused these things? I don't think it was Joseph Stalin.

Humans let Him know that He was not wanted, and to let them do what they wanted without His interference. He respected that. But He cares enough to watch out for the interests of the people who WANT Him to interfere with their lives.

Hmmmm, again. Some nice people, while praying to him, have been killed by their church falling down. I know - wrong church, wrong faith. Some kids in the Holocaust begged for his help, very happy to have him interfere. Were they the wrong sort too?

You say that "the end" is a statistical surety and not fulfilment of prophecy. Why? Many people believe that things will get better and there will be no end of this system of things. Men will figure it out and we'll just go on our merry ways. So the Bible would not be true for them, and neither would they experience statistical surety. The important point here is that the Bible says that times would get worse, much worse, and there would be no hope of men figuring it out. So far the Bible is right. Things are not getting better. Men admit that they have no clue how to improve this world, especially with the kind of selfish men we have who control what happens here on the earth to a great extent.

Your argument that God is responsible for tsunamis and earthquakes, etc., merely shows your contempt for Him. Why would He allow people to build dwellings on fault lines when they were all looking to Him for guidance? He wouldn't. But the people are not looking to Him for guidance. I already said that humans basically gave Him the finger thousands of years ago, and they continue to do so.
Why would He interfere where mankind has told Him to butt out?

There are even some of His own people who suffer great difficulties and even death, in this system. Everyone is given the opportunity to answer Satan's challenge that NO ONE would continue to love Jehovah if He let them suffer. If our child dies (which we do EVERYTHING to prohibit), though anguished, we know that it is a time that we can answer that challenge in Jehovah's favor, and beyond that, we know that He will bring them back in the Resurrection.



"Satan answered [Jehovah], 'Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face.'" (Job 1:9-11, NASB)

Jehovah did not "touch all that Job had" but allowed Satan to do it.