(urth) The Wizard

[Daniel Petersen]

Uh, I think you guys may be getting a little confused here.  The Christian
God is Good in a 'dark' and even 'scary' way because he is HOLY.  There is
no 'nastiness' or 'meanness' in the Christian conception of God.  He
doesn't delight in the death of the wicked as the prophet Ezekiel puts it.
 In that sense 'in him there is no darkness at all' as 1 John chapter 1
puts it.  Tread carefully here if you want to speak coherently about
orthodox theology.  Not for sensibilities but for accuracy.  Pure goodness
is nothing we've ever truly seen in fullness and the eternal Triune Love
(as Christian theology would have it) is a degree of communion and
self-giving glory we just cannot imagine ('he dwells in unapproachable
light' as Paul put it).  Thus this kind of transcendent goodness can be
downright terrifying to people enmeshed in spiritual darkness and sin
(again from the Christian story).  That is what it means for God not to be
'safe' or 'tame'.  God's wildness is a terror to evil, not a participant in
it.

-DOJP

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 10:20 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>wrote:

> Jerry Friedman wrote:
>
> > I believe one could make a case from the Christian point of view
> > that God is good in a dark way, since he kills lots of people and
> > condemns people to eternal torment.  I hope the Christians here will
> > correct me if I'm wrong, but I can see Wolfe believing that God, who
> > created space and the stars, is good in every way, including the dark
> way.
>
> No correction from me. C.S. Lewis put it very succinctly: "Aslan is
> not a _tame_ lion." God is good but he isn't _nice_.
>
>
> --
> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
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