| DyranLK said: In the Wikipedia article's "Would a perfectly loving God prevent nonresistant nonbelief?" section, the main criticism is the preconceived notion that God would want to "prevent inculpable nonbelief" in the first place; and personally that pretty much sums it up for me as well. The reason we're given that choice, though, I believe, is because that in order to start and develop a relationship you must be capable of making the choice to willingly be a part of it. If you don't, then it's not a genuine relationship. It's just a forced partnership with a complete lack of heart, and a high chance of falling apart. And if there is no genuine relationship with God, then man can fall again -- because even if God is supposedly "perfect", we technically aren't. His demands are strict, but in no rendition of him in any branch of Chrisitanity does he not provide us the choice to abide to them. In the New Testament, Jesus emphasizes the act of serving; however, it's also clear that it's out of his own will, out of his own desire to serve others, that he chooses to be a servant. If God instantaneously made all men, women, and children wholly serve him with a snap of his non-corporeal fingers then it's him who would be making the choice, not us -- and that, in turn, is slavery, not servantship. Anyways, in the end, I think the argument made here is a good attempt but better ones do exist. The main nitpick would probably be with #3, which says "If there is a God who is always open to personal relationship with each human person, then no human person is ever non-resistantly unaware that God exists." because it suggests that God can not be perfectly loving while others don't openly love him as well, while I believe this is technically an untrue assumption. It can be considered exponentially tragic, then, for those who do believe in God and in the fact that those "non-resistantly unaware" of God's existence will be condemned to Hell, as that suggests that numerous amounts of people around the world have condemned fates and might not even know it, and probably would even embrace the idea if they were introduced to it -- however, that's where the New Testament's insistence on "spreading the gospel" comes in, being the reason behind evangelical missions and crusades and so on and so forth. It's because the responsibility was laid upon the people. |
You say choice is the reason there is nonresistant nonbelief. But nonresistant nonbelief does not describe people who choose not to believe in God. Nonresistant nonbelief describes people who do not believe in God, not by fault of their own. This describes people who have tried to believe in God, but could not do so. These people never even had a chance to have a loving relationship with God even when they tried.
An omnipotent God who genuinely wanted to have a relationship with everyone would have given everyone reasonable and fair means to find him. And by reasonable and fair, I don't mean things like blind faith, following your culture's religion, or merely guessing that he is there; since this means every individual's chance for finding God is a guessing game and/or is based on chance. A perfectly loving and all-powerful God would not base his discovery and guesses and chance.
