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Motivations of a God

To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.pagan
From: "Kevin Jones" 
Subject: Re: Motivations of a God
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 01:13:13 +0100

"Midwinter"  wrote in message
news:Xns94C1F2A03D577solstice688TAKEYOURS@217.32.252.50...
> Innocent8  wrote:
>
> > the former (motivation) is metaphysical in the case of most Gods.
> > our knowledge is a matter of epistemology. methods of knowing
> > what gods want include augury, divination, oracle, prophecy,
> > and conversation. Gods and gods have varying power attribute.
>
> However, Christianity specifically forbids these activities.

Hmm! Depends which version of Christianity you mean and which period.
Astrology was permitted by the early medieval Church, as long as it was
under the control of Church and performed by people it approved of - that's
divination. Various denominations have accepted that God can send signs - in
fact there are gangs of people in the States looking for signs that these
are the Last Days - so that covers augury. There are also plenty of examples
of Christian prophets, or people purporting to be prophets, in a variety of
denominations - of course the argument there is that prophecy is legitimate
since it goes back to the OT. There are even a number of Protestant
denominations who are particularly gone on one particular prophecy - the
Revelation of St John the Divine. St John was, in the course of this, having
conversations with angels, which isn't particularly unique. You could
reasonably argue that Christian mystics have conversations with God - some
of these have been canonised by the Catholic Church. Then again you have
more fundie denominations with various pastors telling their flock that God
has told them this or that, so that could qualify as a conversation. To
judge from some of these pastors' recorded words, they've got God's mobile
number and are regularly bending his ear - in fact those denominations might
regard it as blasphemy to suggest that their pastors don't have a direct
line to God.

In fact apart from oracles, Christianity has, at some time, permitted all of
these, and still permits most of them. The odd one out is astrology - but
then a denomination or two could easily make an argument that God can reveal
his will in the movements of the heavens for all to read. That was pretty
much the medieval position, which is why it wasn't regarded as a sin to
practice it. No doubt we'll see it happen again - these things tend to come
round.

Kevin

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