"I am also highly uncomfortable with the idea of an ‘omnibenevolent’ being inflicting an ‘intentionally’ imperfect (and persecution-attracting) religion on a group - not apparently for their own spiritual benefit – but simply to make it easier to impose a ‘better’ religion later.
I am equally uncomfortable with an omni-benevolent being creating an imperfect, i.e. morally depraved, creature such as ourselves and then laying the blame for this screw-up squarely on our doorstep the first time we step out of line. Makes the whole “omni” thing less than compelling…
Yes, I’ve often wondered whether that defective product should have still been under ‘manufacturer’s warranty’ (metaphorically speaking) at them time.
I’ve also wondered why, if the objective was a less imperfect race, God didn’t simply set Adam and Eve aside, childless in some isolated spot, to start again with a new couple (‘Madam and Steve’ perhaps).
The conclusion would seem to be that either (i) it is impossible to create a sinless couple, or (ii) that the Fall was intended. Neither would seem to be theologically palatable.
There is a third alternative–that Genesis didn’t actually happen, e.g., it is simply one among hundreds of creation stories. I have never understood why this alternative is so hard for people to accept. I think the reason is that the only way to keep God as a perfect being requires the source of evil to be shifted from God to man or nature or Lucifer or whatever boogeyman is convenient. The notion of a less than perfect creator apparently genuinely bothers people so much that there is no limit to the mental gymnastics they will engage in to absolve God as the author of our imperfections. Nietzsche captured this perspective brilliantly in BG&E: “One is most dishonest to one’s god: he is not allowed to sin.” (Epigram 65a, Kaufmann translation, emphasis in original)
You’re free to be a Gnostic if you like, but Christianity rejected that worldview nearly two thousand years ago. So it’s understandable why Christians today don’t want to accept that.
Gnosticism was a group of theologies in the first few centuries CE that believed the creator of the material world was imperfect and/or evil, and mainstream Christianity rejected that view in favor of the view that both spiritual and material reality were created by the perfectly good God, and evil/imperfection is the result of evil/imperfection within created rational beings (humans and angels).
But the gnostics kept God’s perfection by offloading evil onto the demiurge. The standard story can’t resolve the contradiction between divine perfection and a flawed creation. We’re back to the original conundrum for which Chuck D (the one posting here, not the author of the Origin or the Public Enemy guy) seeks a resolution. As he points out, just saying that created beings are imperfect just deflects attention from the one who created them. That would be the aforementioned mental gymnastics.
Two thoughts on Gnosticism. First, it is no more ludicrous than Christianity, e.g., I’ll trade you one demiurge for ten Seraphim. Second, it is too anhedonic for my taste with all that “the material world is evil” and such…
In all seriousness, I think that the imperfection of created beings, along with the claim of Jesus’ resurrection, form the Achilles heel of Christianity. One is a physical impossibility and the other an incorrigible contradiction. It makes, for example, the perennial “Problem of Evil” look like child’s play. That’s why it is so painstakingly avoided by Christian apologists. As you point out, deflected. That’s also why the gods of other religions are so much more interesting than the Christian God–they “are allowed to sin.”
Yes, what I said was very much in the context of an implicit “assuming for the sake of argument …” that the events described in Genesis actually happened. But given that we were explicitly discussing “an omni-benevolent being creating an imperfect, i.e. morally depraved, creature”, that doesn’t seem too unreasonable.
I don’t think even that works – as God created (“assuming for the sake of argument …” etc etc) man and nature and the angels (including Lucifer) … and anything else that could be brought foward as an alternative candidate. This means that the contradiction remains of a perfect creator creating the source of the imperfection – and thus being the ultimate cause of that imperfection. I think the same applies to the demiurge in Gnosticism. Each ‘explanation’ serves merely to obfuscate the contradiction, not to remove it.
This has been a fascinating thread, but its getting late. Maybe pick it up tomorrow. One side note–Augustine was a committed Manichaeist, primarily because it espoused body-soul dualism and a form of inherited original sin (one of Augustine’s pathological obsessions) before dabbling in Neo-Platonism and his ultimate conversion to Christianity…
Yeah, he seems to have held on to a few Manichaean-adjacent beliefs after his conversion to mainstream Christianity, especially in his later anti-Pelagian phase. IMO his staunch adherence to original sin and infernalism did a lot of damage to Western Christianity.
The problem here is with the idea that a standard of perfection should be unlimited. A perfect square is limited to being a square, but it’s still perfect. The other problem is that the source of all things doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be powerful. And the other other problem is that neither the Ahriman nor Ormadz has to be the source of all things, just the source of some things, as long as both of them add up to all.
Those aren’t the same thing either. The source of all things could be at once limited and exactly what it should be. So your conclusion doesn’t follow.
Again, that’s only an assertion, one I see no reason to accept.
Why can’t there be a standard by which to judge a creator’s actions? And if the creator then sins, why would that be a failure? It could be entirely in accord with its nature, if it were indeed a perfect Ahriman.
Don’t see why.
First, why? Second, you forget that neither of these two deities would be the source of all things, only the source of some things, perhaps half each, though the exact balance is unimportant. Nor does the absence of limits require possession of all perfections, as far as I can see.
Well, one is good and the other evil. Which one has the perfection the other lacks, and what is it? We of course prefer the good one, but does that make him more perfect than the evil one? There are a lot of unclear terms and unclear connections being bandied about here.
Curiously, chuch father Irenaeus in his Against Heresies wrote the following about Simon Magus, who is supposedly the inspiration for heresies like gnosticism -
Now this Simon of Samaria, from whom all sorts of heresies derive their origin, formed his sect out of the following materials: … men are saved through grace, and not on account of their own righteous works. For such deeds are not righteous in the nature of things, but by mere accident, just as those angels who made the world, have thought fit to constitute them, seeking, by means of such precepts, to bring men into bondage. On this account, he pledged himself that the world should be dissolved, and that those who are his should be freed from the rule of them who made the world.
As Paul D noted in his isthatinthebible blog,
What’s curious is that this is almost exactly the same gospel that Paul teaches in Galatians, particularly in chapters 2–4.
I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing. (2.21)
Why then the law? … it was ordained through angels by a mediator. (3.19)
But the scripture has imprisoned all things under the power of sin… before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. (3.22-23)
…while we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world. (4.3)
Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods. Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits? How can you want to be enslaved to them again? (4.8-9)
So both Simon Magus and Paul seem to be basing their gospel on the following:
Men are saved by grace, and not through righteousness (works under the law).
The law was given by angels to bring men into bondage.
The true God has finally made himself known unto men.
Now people can be freed from the bondage of the law and the “elemental spirits that were not gods” (Paul) or “them who made the world” (Simon), which works out to the same thing in Gnostic theology.
So what did this father of gnosticism Simon Magus really teach, and how much did Paul agree of disagree with him?
Something without limits cannot be limited, but that “cannot” isn’t somehow a limit on its unlimitedness. “Sin” in the sense of “missing the mark” is a limitation.