Chili

Yes, evil it is but notice the difference between form the light and create darkness.

Lord God forms but is not a creator to create anything at all that finds form in existence . . . and is thus why darkness cannot overcome the light.

So please understand that God is creator and Lord God is not creator but is wherein all of God's creations find existence of being. It is in this being that evil is created by conjecture only in the opposites between good and evil of which good is an extraction for the Ultimate Good (God) that has no opposite of its own (or soon 2+2 would no longer be 4; red herring but true).

Good and evil is right and that does not need an apology.

Jobar

Sorry, Amos. Clear as mud. Doesn't make a lick of sense, to me.

If you want to define God as the source of all good but none of the evil in the world, which the great majority of Christians do, then the plain words of 45:7 just blows it all away. And that fact is why there's so much quibbling over the translation of this verse.

Chili

God is not the same as Lord God.

God is the essence of all that is and all that is indeed is good. Having said this I will agree that not all that is is good for you (impersonal), but that does not give us the right to say that it should not be.

God is not the source of all that is good but just the essence of all that is and just because it is it is good . . . or it would not be or it would no longer be.

FatherMithras

Word salad.

Jobar

While I might agree that *you* don't think that God = Lord God, I have to point out that few Christians would agree with you.

I mentioned in that GRD thread that some believers try to assign different meanings to 'divine good' and 'humanity's good'. That's what you're doing here. You have to say that 'divine good' is both good and evil, in the human meanings of those words. While that squares well with Isaiah, I could find any number of verses which would deny that God is responsible for the things humans call evil; as I've said, 45:7 directly contradicts divine benevolence in any meaningful sense of the word benevolent.

added- By the way, did you start this thread, or did a mod split it off from mine? Rather confusing, in either case...

Chili

Perhaps true but I am not here to argue with Christians. I am just telling you how it is and why an impression (phantasia) is not the same as a perception (aisthesis) which can be an appearance (phainomenon) that can be false, while the being itself just 'is' immediate (aistheta) as in I AM [that which in essence (einai) I am]. There is no divine good, but just "being" itself is good.

There is no such thing as 'human good' since even our richess including wisdom are like filthy rags until such time as we are raised and there retrieve our human contributions and tie them to the Ultimate Form of the Good. Even our forms [of the good], ousia's, eidetic, kinetic or lyric visions are small extrapolations of the Ultimate Form and therefore good only for our purpose and it is in their absense that bad becomes known or happiness would be an end in itself.

In fact, our richess become liabilities because they will require a larger ark unless we counter balance them with indulgences (sic, lol) but that is another story. Anyway, that is why Jesus said that it is easier for camel to go thru an eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.

I really do not agree with your human meaning of the word if the bible is an inspired book. But, yes Jobar, I understand what you are saying but it is not fair to say that I must agree with your interpretation before I write anything at all.

Just go to Gen.2:10-12 where the first river winds throughout the entire land where power wealth and beauty is found while the second river winds thru the same land where its opposites are found. Plain and simple: pleasure cannot be conceived to exist without pain because we are alienated from the Good.It happened when I posted but I really do not know how it happened. Sorry if I did something wrong.

Chili

Did you want ketchup with that?

Chili

I am a bit reluctant to say that God is not the source of all good because in a sense is he the source of all good for the simple reason that the primary premise of all creation is intuit upon us as human co-creator.