A Just and Loving God?

If the God of the monotheistic faiths is not one worthy of worship, then - indeed, a detestable invention, made in humanity's image, if anything, and the vile source of all the evil, pain and suffering in the universe, if not - what kind of God would be worthy of our worship and adoration?

To begin with 'he' would not be a 'he' - or a 'she' or an 'it'. A whole new vocabulary would be required to refer to this deity accurately, but even that would not be adequate. I will not even begin to attempt it here.

Such a being would be infinite and eternal, immortal and indestructible, like the Jewish and Christian God. S/he would also be personal - though unipersonal, not tri-personal, like the Christian deity (a nonsensical idea!), and rational. There is no question but that s/he would be transcendent and immanent, and omnibenevolent.

We can assume that this being is the creator of the universe, and that s/he is omnipresent and omniscient, in the sense contained in my previous posting - namely, that s/he knows everything that has ever happened or is happening in the universe.

For such a God to be truly omnibenevolent, however, s/he can be neither omnipotent nor endowed with foreknowledge, in the sense employed in my previous posting, i.e., a conditional knowledge of all future events such that God knows that x will occur, unless s/he intervenes to prevent it occurring, and cause y to occur instead.

An omnipotent God, seeing evil and suffering anywhere in the universe, but failing to intervene to end it, would be the very Devil; similarly, a God who foresaw evil and suffering in the future, and could change it, but failed to do so, would be Satan himself.

A truly good God must therefore be potent, but not omnipotent, and cannot possess foreknowledge of the future. This picture of God is the only one that preserves free will, and refutes determinism and pre-determinism. It is also utterly incompatible with both the Lutheran and Calvinist doctrines of predestination, and the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination.

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