OMNIBENEVOLENT GOD I will know what it means to refer to God as good and if God ought to reward or punish Homework check Questions on Vardy about omniscience

Final word on God’s omniscience Omniscience – refers to God’s unlimited knowledge, including all history, past present and future. God is outside of time and has knowledge of the whole of time from beginning to end. Limited Omniscience – God’s knowledge is limited to what it is logically possible to know or God chooses to limit what he knows to allow human free will. According to this view God’s knowledge changes over time, since God acquires new knowledge as events occur. This view fits with the belief that God is everlasting. Middle knowledge consists of knowledge of what would happen if certain choices were made or if certain things happened differently.

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

What do we mean by Good? Some possible 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”)

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. 1. What is Hesed ? 2. In the Bible, what is God’s love compared to? 3. What task was given to the prophet Hosea, and what purpose did it serve? 4. What are the philosophical problems that come with this understanding of the love of God? 5. What is agape? GOOD AND GOD

DEMONSTRATE: PAIRED COMPARISONS Pair with someone you do not usually work with. Read through each others’ answers. 1. What have they picked out? 2. What could they improve on? 3. How would you judge the quality of their work. Why?

ACTIVATE: GROUP WORK Here, each group must answer the question below. 1. What are the 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? ISSUES REGARDING GOD’S BENEVOLENCE

CONSOLIDATE: Produce a mind-map/summary chart of the topic so far. Include what has been covered on the Attributes of God. Key terms Scholars Strengths and weaknesses Finish this for homework and bring it to Thursday’s lesson. You can use tomorrow’s slot to finish this off if you wish.

A HISTORICAL EXAMPLE … RICHARD SIBBES ( ) 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.’ …

A HISTORICAL EXAMPLE … RICHARD SIBBES ( ) … 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.