OMNIBENEVOLENT GOD

1. OMNIBENEVOLENT GOD I will know what it means to refer to God as good and if God ought to reward or punish Homework: Assessment on the Attributes of God is next Monday 27th Jan

2. STARTER – DEFINE GOOD • One word association, list them • Then write a sentence or two to define.

3. SOME ANSWERS … • To be desired or approved of (E.g. “Good film”) • Having the qualities required for a role (E.g. “Good footballer”) • Showing moral value (E.g. “Good person”) • Giving pleasure, enjoying, satisfying (E.g. “Good food”) • Thorough, efficient (E.g “Good job”)

4. GOOD AND GOD • Activate: Individual Mastery • Using the worksheet ‘God as Omni-benevolent.’ • Individually you are going to answer a series of questions. • You will then pair up and compare your answers. • What is Hesed? • In the Bible, what is God’s love compared to? • What task was given to the prophet Hosea, and what purpose did it serve? • What are the philosophical problems that come with this understanding of the love of God? • What is agape?

5. DEMONSTRATE: PAIRED COMPARISONS • Pair with someone you do not usually work with. • Read through each others’ answers. • What have they picked out? • What could they improve on? • Is their work of an unacceptable, acceptable, or good standard? • Why?

6. ACTIVATE: GROUP WORK • Here, each group must answer the question below. • What are the issues regarding God’s benevolence?

7. ISSUES REGARDING GOD’S BENEVOLENCE • What is the relationship between God and goodness? • Can God do evil? • Should a good God reward and punish? • If God is omnibenevolent, can hell exist?

8. MINI-CONSOLIDATE: • List 5 things you have learned from this lesson so far. Remember our Learning Objectives: • I will know what it means to refer to God as good • I will know if God ought to reward or punish

9. A HISTORICAL EXAMPLE … RICHARD SIBBES (1577-1635) Richard Sibbes was a rough contemporary of Shakespeare, was a Puritan preacher and theologian who spoke so winningly of the kindness and love of God that he came to be known as ‘the honey-mouthed’ preacher. Yet it was not simply that Sibbes was born with a sunny disposition; he himself was adamant that it is our view of God that shapes us most deeply. We become like what we worship. And Sibbes clearly saw the triune God as winning, kind and lovely: he spoke of the living God as a life-giving, warming sun who ‘delights to spread his beams and his influence in inferior things, to make all things fruitful. Such goodness is in God as is in a fountain, or in the breast that loves to ease itself of milk.’ That is, God is simply bursting with warm and life-imparting nourishment, far more willing to give than we are to receive. And that, he explained, is precisely why he created the world: ‘If God had not a communicative, spreading goodness, he would never have created the world. The Father, Son and Holy Ghost were happy in themselves, and enjoyed one another before the world was. Apart from the fact that God delights to communicate and spread his goodness, there had never been a creation or redemption.’ …

10. A HISTORICAL EXAMPLE … RICHARD SIBBES (1577-1635) … It is not, then, that God needed to create the world in order to satisfy himself or to be himself. The divine majesty of this God is not dependent on the world. The Father, Son and Spirit ‘were happy in themselves, and enjoyed one another before the world was.’ But the Father so enjoyed his fellowship with his Son that he wanted to have the goodness of it spread out and communicated or shared with others. The creation was a free choice borne out of nothing but love. It was the knowledge that God is so sunny, so radiant with goodness and love, that made Sibbes such an attractive model of God-likeness. For, he said, ‘those that are led with the Spirit of God, that are like him; they have a communicative, diffusive goodness that loves to spread itself.’ In other words, knowing God’s love, he became loving; and his understanding of who God is transformed him into a man, a preacher and a writer of magnetic geniality. That amiability shone through his preaching; it still glows from his writings; and looking at his life, it is clear that he had a quite extraordinary ability for cultivating warm and lasting friendships. He had become like his God.

11. FOR REVISION ... • Know about different views on what it means to say that God is eternal. • Understand the difficulties in defining God as omnipotent and some possible solutions to these difficulties • Understand the difficulties involved in discussing God’s omniscience • Understand what it means to describe God as Omni-benevolent. • Assess the coherence of these concepts and explore the philosophical problems of asserting all of these attributes. • Consider the views of Boethius an others on the issue of eternity and omniscience • The implications, coherence (or lack of), usefulness??