This shows God as the ultimate supreme power in the world. The genesis story clearly emphasises the omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence of God’s nature and character. Clearly God is all powerful and all knowing because he has the ability and the knowledge to “creation ex nihilo”. Isaiah expressed the utter sovereignty of God, who cannot be challenged by man or by false Gods, which man, in his ignorance, carves and worships, “I am the lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe, I am the lord, who does all these things.”
Thus the biblical writers saw that although God is a transcendent and sovereign creator, his creation of humanity and the universe was for a purpose. The creation sets the scene for the relationship between God and humanity, which has its culmination in an eschatological future.
“God is responsible for everything that happens in the universe.” Discuss.
Genesis describes to us God’s omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence in the world. From this Christians believe that God is the creator of the world and to him the universe is responsible. If God is truly all powerful then this statement is true, only he knows what will happen to us and how we will react to it.
However, this position is contradicted by a common argument known s the Problem of Evil. The Problem of Evil challenges those who uphold the notion of an all loving, all powerful God. The problem of Evil has several statements which make up the basis of the argument. Firstly if God is omnipotent, then he could do anything. This means he could create a world that is free form evil and suffering. Secondly if God is omniscient and knows everything in the universe, then he must know how to stop evil and suffering. And finally, if God is omnibenevolent then he would wish to end all evil and suffering. No all loving God would wish his creation to suffer for no reason. Therefore if God is all these things then he becomes responsible for the way in which the universe works and so he has brought evil and suffering into the world as his own invention. However, this can also be challenged by the fact that because evil and suffering do exist it is logical to conclude that God is not omnipotent- he doesn’t have the power to stop evil entering the world- or he is not omnibenevolent – he does not want to get rid of evil from the world. J L Mackie observed this and states that the three presuppositions of the argument constitute an inconsistent triad – that is, the conjunction of any two entails the negation of the third. Therefore if God is not all powerful, he cannot be held responsible for what happens because he hasn’t got the power to do anything about it and it is therefore humanity’s fault for bringing evil into the world.
However, there are further problems. If God created a perfect universe then it is a logical contradiction to argue that a perfectly created world has gone wrong. Either the world was not perfect in the first place, or God has made it go wrong. If so then it is God, and not humanity, who is to blame. Also, the existence of hell as a place of eternal punishment seems a contradiction for an omnibenevolent God. If hell was part of the design of the universe, then did God know that the world would go wrong anyway, yet still allowed it to happen, making him ultimately responsible for all that happens in the universe.
However, many people, particularly believers in the God of classical theism try to reconcile the Problem of Evil to God. This has taken the form of the free will defence. This world is the logically necessary environment for humans to develop in, as it provides freedom in the form of real choices that produce both good and evil. Without such choices we would be neither free, nor human. God cannot intervene because to do so would compromise human freedom and take away the need for humans to be responsible, thus preventing human development. Therefore it can be argued that as God gave up his ability to control humanities actions he is therefore acquitted from the responsibility of what happens to the universe.
