The answer is surprisingly yes!! Here is the statement:
” God is limited by His infinite attributes”
Let me give you an example! If I say that God can’t lie, it is a limitation. But does it degrade from Him, absolutely not. God can’t lie beacause His infinite attributes do not agree with this.
Let me take another biblical example: if you read the Gospel according to St. Mark chaper 6 from 1 to 6:
(Quoted in English then Arabic)
” 1And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him. 2And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands? 3Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. 4But Jesus, said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. 5And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. 6And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching. ”
1 وَغَادَرَ يَسُوعُ ذلِكَ الْمَكَانَ وَعَادَ إِلَى بَلْدَتِهِ، وَتَلاَمِيذُهُ يَتْبَعُونَهُ.
2 وَلَمَّا حَلَّ السَّبْتُ، أَخَذَ يُعَلِّمُ فِي الْمَجْمَعِ، فَدُهِشَ كَثِيرُونَ حِينَ سَمِعُوهُ، وَقَالُوا: «مِنْ أَيْنَ لَهُ هَذَا؟ وَمَا هَذِهِ الْحِكْمَةُ الْمَوْهُوبَةُ لَهُ، وَهَذِهِ الْمُعْجِزَاتُ الْجَارِيَةُ عَلَى يَدَيْهِ؟
3 أَلَيْسَ هَذَا هُوَ النَّجَّارَ ابْنَ مَرْيَمَ، وَأَخَا يَعْقُوبَ وَيُوسِي وَيَهُوذَا وَسِمْعَانَ؟ أَوَلَيْسَتْ أَخَوَاتُهُ عِنْدَنَا هُنَا؟» هكَذَا كَانُوا يَشُكُّونَ فِيهِ.
4 وَلكِنَّ يَسُوعَ قَالَ لَهُمْ: «لاَ يَكُونُ النَّبِيُّ بِلاَ كَرَامَةٍ إِلاَّ فِي بَلْدَتِهِ، وَبَيْنَ أَقْرِبَائِهِ، وَفِي بَيْتِهِ!»
5 وَلَمْ يَقْدِرْ أَنْ يَعْمَلَ هُنَاكَ أَيَّةَ مُعْجِزَةٍ، غَيْرَ أَنَّهُ لَمَسَ بِيَدَيْهِ عَدَداً قَلِيلاً مِنَ الْمَرْضَى فَشَفَاهُمْ.
6 وَتَعَجَّبَ مِنْ عَدَمِ إِيمَانِهِمْ. ثُمَّ أَخَذَ يَطُوفُ بِالْقُرَى الْمُجَاوِرَةِ وَهُوَ يُعَلِّمُ. >
I want you to focus on verses 5 and 6. Verse 5 said that He couldn’t do mighty works, it didn’t say He did not or He did not want to. It said literaly He couldn’t. How could not Jesus do a mircale??? Isn’t He God? Definitly He is. Then what is wrong?? The answer is, nothing is wrong. Verse 6 explains every thing right away: Jesus could not do a miracle because of their unbelieve… He is the one who set the rule… He can’t break it, not out of weakness, but, out of prefection… It is his infinite justice that limited Him…
God can’t do evil things not out of weakness but out of perfect righteousness.
I wanted to complete Tony’s idea about how we are limiting God by rules.. We will really limit God if you employ our own logic to make Him perfect.. BUT God revealed Himself to us in His Son. He showed us Himself in the bible. He told us about Himself… These things that He told us about are absolute facts.. They are not going to confine Him.. What will really confine HIM is our rejection to His clear statements that He repeated more than once…I d like to give another example here:
When He talked about Himself as the only way of salvation…. When He talked several times about the necessity of faith for our salvation….
But our self-righteousness does n’t accept it, our logic will start assuming postulates about different cases that doesn’t look fair if it were judged through Jesus words. Then what will do? We will act as Gods by twisting His words to others words that satisfy our sense of fairness.
يخرب بيوتكوا أنا مش ملاحق على الأخوين أرمانيوس.
Give my brain a break. It’ll explode
Thanks Miena for the great post
Comment by ikhnaton2 — January 25, 2006 @ January 25, 2006 6:42 am
Just for the sake of Honesty, the statement that I gave in the being is not mine. I quoted it from a coptic chatting room. However, the examples and the explanations are original
. For Copyrights ask ….. JUST KIDDIN
Comment by Miena — January 25, 2006 @ January 25, 2006 5:02 pm
Miena, I don’t know if I do agree with you or not, because I agree with the main idea but I feel we don’t reach the same conclusion. I’ll illustrate my idea based on the topic you opened conderning salvation. Sorry if I gonna start my example with assuming a postulate. Let us consider the case inwhich an unbaptized child dies just after his birth. You will find some gods saying that this child is going to be enjoying the eternal hevean with saints. Others are going to say he will not be in heaven nor in the hell, but he will be in good place but less than the grace of heaven. Others will say he is not baptised so he cannot see salvation. This is what I mean by creating our own gods out of our lake of belief, we are trying to limit god by our rules. I would rather say that I believe in god’s love, mercy and justice; and I’m sure whatever god does with such a postulate is more merciful, and more justiful than any of us would have done if he let his own god take the rule of salvation in his hand. I hope that this is making me clearer.
Comment by Antonius Armanious — January 25, 2006 @ January 25, 2006 9:03 pm
I don’t disagree with you. I will say the very same thing:
” I’m sure whatever Goddoes with such a postulate is more merciful, and more justiful than any of us would have done ”
but this shouldn’t give me the green card to twist God’s words because I have some assumptions.
Let me give you another example:
let’s say there is a class of Mathimatics. The instructor of the class handed out the logistics at the first class. in the logistics, it said:
Homeworks 20%
Final Exam 80%.
These are rules of the class. As a student, I am NOT allowed to say the following:
” The instructor will allow students to pass ,incase they have urgent situtation, evenif they don’t attend the final” It sounds unfair if he didn’t do that , but still I am not in a position to give that statement.
The instructor himself can do whatever he wants but he didn’t till me how he will respond to it. Accordingly, the logistics is the only thing that I have to stick with…
I hope that I made it more clear now.
Comment by miena — January 26, 2006 @ January 26, 2006 4:55 am