Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Traditional theism (e.g. Thomas Aquinas) distinguishes between God's will and God's permission, claiming that while God permits evil, he does not will it. [7] This distinction is echoed by some modern open theists, e.g. Gregory A. Boyd, who writes, "Divine goodness does not completely control or in any sense will evil."
Predestination, in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. [1] Explanations of predestination often seek to address the paradox of free will, whereby God's omniscience seems incompatible with human free will.
According to Thomas Aquinas, God is the "Highest Good". [1] The Summa Theologiae (question 6, article 3) affirms that "God alone is good essentially". [2]Because in Jesus there are two natures, the human and the divine one, Aquinas states that in him there are two distinct wills: the human will and the divine will.
A major theological dispute at the time of the sixteenth century would help to force a distinct division in ideas – with an argument between two eminent thinkers of the time, Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther, a leading Protestant Reformer. Erasmus in Discourses On the Freedom of the Will believed that God created human beings with free will.
Divine law is any body of law that is perceived as deriving from a transcendent source, such as the will of God or gods – in contrast to man-made law or to secular law. According to Angelos Chaniotis and Rudolph F. Peters , divine laws are typically perceived as superior to man-made laws, [ 1 ] [ 2 ] sometimes due to an assumption that their ...
God permits us sinners to author the crucifixion of Jesus by our sins, [78] and God permitted the sinful actions of Pontius Pilate, the Pharisees, and the other sinners involved in Jesus' crucifixion, [79] for the sake of what God wished to accomplish through Jesus' self-sacrifice in Jewish law: [80] the salvation of mankind, [81] including ...
Sovereignty can include also the way God exercises his ruling power. However this aspect is subject to divergences notably related to the concept of God's self-imposed limitations. The correlation between God's sovereignty and human free will is a crucial theme in discussions about the meaningful nature of human choice.
A defence attempts to demonstrate that the occurrence of evil does not contradict God's existence, but it does not propose that rational beings are able to understand why God permits evil. A theodicy shows that it is reasonable to believe in God despite evidence of evil in the world and offers a framework which can account for why evil exists ...