Jack the Bodiless

Given the rather obvious mismatch between the "omnimax" God (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent etc) and the one portrayed in the Bible: where did the modern Christian concept of the omnimax God actually come from?

I'm having a hard time seeing how anyone could read about (for instance) the massacre of the firstborn of Egypt and saying to themselves "Yep, that's wonderfully good, so God is omnibenevolent. And the Jews had to mark their lintels so that God wouldn't kill their kids by mistake, so he's omniscient. And the Fall and the whole of humanity before the Flood was a complete waste of time and effort, so God must be in control".

So where DID Christians get the notion of the omnimax God? From pagan Greek philosophers? Is it just sheer ignorance that fundie Biblical inerrantists also claim to believe in an omnimax God, a pagan concept without any Biblical justification except vague phrases like "with God, all things are possible"?

Catholics don't place much reliance on the Bible, as they have their own traditions which qualify it. So maybe the Protestants kept these non-Biblical aspects of God to avoid their God looking inferior to the Catholic one?

Marduk

I've always wondered this to. Maybe as the Bible progressed and the Jews encountered other societies like Egypt and Babylon with their own supergods like Ra, Thoth, Ptah, Marduk etc. they had to beef theirs up to. But it still seems more like a Christian idea than a Jewish one. Maybe John and Paul, I don't really know, just guessing.

MortalWombat

I just assumed he originated in <a href="http://www.carnegiesciencecenter.org/family/omnimax.asp" target="_blank">San Diego in 1973.</a>

True Christian

The Lord has existed for all eternity. The Lord is the First Cause of all things. The Lord has not changed and will not change. The Lord does not change, as He stated in His Word, the Holy Bible. If you want to know who the Lord is and what He expects from human beings, you must read His Word in the Holy Bible. There is no other source of information about the Lord.

cloudyphiz

thanks for clearing that up then.

Mageth

There is no other source of information about the Lord.

And you, apparently.

Ojuice5001

I'd been wondering what happened to you, True Christian. You introduced yourself and then didn't post again until just now. I don't mean this as an insult, but was it all the people making fun of your handle that scared you away?

[ May 22, 2002: Message edited by: Ojuice5001 ]</p>

Toto

I think the omni-good god came from the Persians, after the Jews returned from their exile in Babylon. Before that, YHWH was identified with natural forces, including the good and the harsh (see Job). After the Jews were exposed to the advanced thinking of the Zoroastrians, they started to redefine God as all good, which required the invention of Satan to explain the existence of evil. Later Hellenistic Jews (including those who invented Christianity) reinforced this with the ideal of the omnipotent god from the Greek philosphers, especially Plato.

If you try to fit every part of the Bible into a coherent philosophy or theology, you strain your brain. Some Christians get around this by talking about "progressive revelation", meaning that god only reveals certain parts of himself to each generation, like a parent who keeps certain things secret from the kids until they are ready to handle them. An obvious rationalization that makes no more sense than any other part of theology.

ShottleBop

Traditional Judaism does not use Satan to explain the existence of evil. As committed by humans, evil is generally ascribed to the misapplication of motives that are also required to do good.

David Bowden

The interaction between late pre-Christian Judaism and various philosophies prevalent throughout the Eastern Mediterranean is responsible for most of the early church's ideas about God. (The development of God before that would be complex and probably very speculative - perhaps Karen Armstrong's History of God would be a helpful resource.) Religion in Late Antiquity is notable for being incredibly diverse, and there was much interaction and borrowing.

For Christianity to emerge in its final form, some fine-tuning had to be done (to shoehorn Jesus into the godhead and squeeze the Trinity into earlier monotheistic notions, for instance), but I think any attribute of the God of Christianity clearly has its forebear in first-century Judaism and/or paganism.

Pagan monotheism certainly predated Christianity; the essentially monotheistic teachings of Plato and the Stoics especially seem to have heavily influenced early Christian thought. The Alexandrian Jewish thinker Philo is known to have mixed Jewish and Greek philosophies about God.

Pro-Hellenistic Jews like Philo defined the Jewish culture of the time, so it is not unlikely that early Christian thinkers were exposed to and basically friendly towards these notions, which had given Jewish monotheism a degree of philosophical robustness (as well as consistency of character) that sure didn't come from OT stories like the ones Jack referred to above.

I won't bother to comment on the relationship between "fundie Biblical inerrantists" and "sheer ignorance."

-Wanderer

[ May 22, 2002: Message edited by: wide-eyed wanderer ]</p>