God wills it (right) because He is good -- essentialism.

God’s nature, which is, granted, supernatural, is supreme over His will… check it oot…

Quotes from “Intro. to Philo.” – Geisler, Feinberg…

Quotes from “Chosen But Free” – Geisler…

Extreme Calvinism is also discussed in my thread “Predestination and Free Will”

It’s unfair to judge a being good or bad according to the quality of it’s will.

Who is judging a being good or bad according to the quality of its will?

You’re saying that a good being wills it (right). I’m saying that a being is good or bad regardless of what it wills. However, one could make a judgment as to its health.

Ie, 'God wills it (right) because he is healthy.’

No, healthy does not equate to good, and unhealthy does not equate to bad… if you’re referring to physical health.

A being wills according to the goodness/badness inside itself. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders,” (Matthew 15:19). God only ever wills good because His nature is good, and we will good when He gives us a new nature in union with His.

Health and goodness go hand-in-hand.

Let me give the formula:

x wills it (impressively) because it is healthy.

This may apply to any living thing.

First… sorry to Impious for not really reading what you wrote before replying. You said, “It’s unfair to judge a being good or bad according to the quality of it’s will. …You’re saying that a good being wills it (right). I’m saying that a being is good or bad regardless of what it wills. However, one could make a judgment as to its health. / Ie, ‘God wills it (right) because he is healthy.’” Let me give the formula: / x wills it (impressively) because it is healthy. / This may apply to any living thing."

Why do you bring up making a judgment as to a being’s health (not moral health, you seem to be saying) (according to the quality of it’s will), whereas you think it unfair to judge a being good or bad according to the quality of it’s will, and that a being is good or bad regardless of what it wills – when I was judging neither God’s health nor His goodness/badness, and was saying that the reason He wills (right) is because He is good [but, I wouldn’t say He is good regardless what He wills, because if He were to will something bad, that would mean He is not good (not that it is possible for Him to will something bad, being that He is good)… but whether or not He is good wasn’t the point of the thread]. Untangle THAT. And while you’re at it, tell me how ‘healthy’ (not physical health) is different from ‘good’ (morally good). And only God can will impressively… that is, perfectly good and loving.

Tortoise,

No. If a being is willing bad things, that being is not God, and that being does not have authority to determine what is right human behavior.

You seem to be saying “We have ruled out figuring out how to tell if what the being is willing is right or wrong, if we automatically define everything that being does as good.”

You seem to want some justification for what counts as “good” beyond just “God willed it (right) because He is good”. That’s a different thread… one I’d be delighted to start, if you’re interested.

The whole concept of morality blows up though if all people can be brought back at any time and are made of god, i.e. what people experience as “disconnectedness” from “nature” is an illusion, they simply collapse back into the universal life-field. That is, god is existence, we are conscious because we are connected to god right now, that is how we are conscious to begin with we are ‘temporal bound gods’, in that we perceive like gods but only at lower resolutions.

The only valid argument I see for gods existence is that existence is god itself, but nature was created,therefore it is not god, and therefore science can never be ‘self sufficient’, unless it includes the existence nature derives itself from.

I’m posting this here instead of in my Predestination and Free Will discussion with Omar…

II- Since God’s is the only perspective that is entirely correct, evil is not a point of view.
O- I am not saying that God’s perspective is “correct”. It is simply the opinion of the strongest party. Could God be wrong? Whether we judge God’s perspective as “correct” or “wrong” we would be comparing Him to a human standard that He does not share. His ways are not our ways…
III- No – might does not make right. God (good/love) is the source and standard of “right” – not because He is omnipotent (all-powerful), but because He is good, love. Might makes right only if we recognize that love is more powerful than brute strength (it would be better read “love makes right”). Philippians 2:6 “…although He existed in the form of God, [He] did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped…” …something to struggle to hold on to. What was more important was to manifest His love by dying in our place. Jesus humbled Himself to show us what is more important (indeed more powerful) than raw power: love.

Ichthus: I would say that a pure will is God.

Yeah, I’m basically an essentialist the way you’ve described it, very good compilation there.

The criticism that essentialism amounts to defining God as good arbitrarily has kind of a equivocation in there.  The accusation relies on us being people that have no idea what "good" is through recognition- we're just taking whatever God is and calling that good by fiat. It then expects us to balk at this, by relying on us to react with moral outrage. That's a contradiction.  If it's true that good is nothing other than God's nature, then recognizing such isn't arbitrary at all. 
The truth is more nuanced, of course. The fact is, we recognize good in the world around us, and that recognition is what leads to these discussions, and the difficulties. So first we see good in the world, then we see good as best exemplified by God, then we learn that the good in the world ultimately comes from God. There's nothing arbitrary about it.