What makes God good? Have you thought about this? I’m sure you can talk about all the good things He did in your life. But I’m looking for what make God intrinsically good. What factors or attributes make Him good?
For me, I see God’s goodness in the love I have enjoyed so much among my family and friends and with complete strangers. Such love is the very essence of God, our Father who created us to be His family and friends. While there is pain and loss in this life, too, He uses even that to teach us and mold us and to allow us to fully appreciate the wonder and majesty of love… both for Him and for one another.
I also see God’s goodness in the awe-inspiring beauty and complexity of His creation… subjected in futility but also in a hope that is not in vain.
But most of all, I see God’s goodness in His Son, Jesus, who gave everything of Himself for each and every person and for all creation.
I’d say that’s all pretty good. How about you? 
Love to you,
Andy
Good is a relative term which based on consensus, based on the theory that we are made in His Image, has been attributed to our God the best intentions for humanity inherit to His being.
Thank you Andy, for you response. You say that you see God’s goodness in the love among family friends, and strangers. And that’s all wonderful, and I concur. And I agree that the glory of His goodness can be seen in the majesty of His creation. And in His sacrifice of giving His Son.
However, all those things are an expression of His goodness, but it doesn’t define how or why He is good. He’s good because He loves. But even in using the word “love” we have to define what that is (though I suppose I Corinthians 13 is a good reference).
I suppose what I’m trying to get at is “why” God is good. I mean we could have gotten a God that was maleviolent and meanhearted and treat us as slaves. I mean, He doesn’t really have to have mercy on us at all, if He were a capricious God.
What if, for instance, He just got tired of the whole thing and just wiped us all out of existence with a flick of a finger, and started all over.
But for whatever reason, He loves us and even at the beginning of creation, He proclaimed everything very good, including and perhaps especially humans, since we were created in His image. The only reason we feel His wrath is because of our disobedience to Him.
But what does that mean that we are “made in his image”. Is it not because we are able to think and reason, to love, and to act upon our own will? But then why are we not intrinsically *good * as He is? Is there something lacking that will give us the quality of goodness that He has?
AUniversalist,
I don’t think you can say that goodness is a relative term. Because you would have to compare good with something tangable for it to be relative. What are you comparing it to?
I guess I look at it this way. If a) God is love, as the apostle John says that He is, and if b) godly love is as Paul describes, and if c) God’s Son gave Himself for all, then it follows for me that God is anything but capricious. Why is He that way? I don’t know if anyone could say. Yet, it seems to me that it would make little sense for an omniscient, omnipotent being to act capriciously toward His creation.
Rather, the purposeful Creator we meet in the Bible makes infinitely more sense, at least to me. He created the universe and everything in it with a purpose in mind. And while we can’t be certain exactly why we play such a substantial role in His purpose, I think that a major clue is found in His description of Himself as our Father. We are His children, and… as the Proverb says… perhaps He is training us up in the way we should go so that we should not depart from it. From our current perspective, such training is not always pleasant and might appear, at times, to be arbitrary and capricious… even when it is anything but.
He did something along those lines in the generation of Noah. No?
The flood is a frightening thing to contemplate. It serves as a good reminder that God is not messing around and that His judgments are not trifling.
My best guess is that the things we lack in relation to God have a lot to do with immaturity, selfishness, fear and pride… the very things that keep us from truly living out 1Cor 13 toward God or our neighbors as godly people are commanded to do.
As for being made in His image, I think it, once again, might revolve around the concept of God as our Father. As in… we are God’s children, perhaps more so even than we are the children of our earthly parents.
Love to you,
Andy
I agree. The idea of a capricious God came to me from a Calvin and Hobbes strip, where Calvin is playing with his toys as if he is god and eventually decides to destroy them because they did not bow down to him. This kind of compulsion seems childish to say the least. Yet sometimes it seems God is depiected this way in scripture…
…Case in point:
Granted He saved Noah. And i get that the needs of the few righteous outweigh the needs of the many wicked. He basically started over.
What I’m hoping to understand is that if we are partakers of the Divine Nature (II Peter 1:4), implemented by the exceedingly great and precious promises we are given, how is that going to affect our nature and of freedom of choice as humans to decide right from wrong. As much as our bodies and minds will be changed in in a twinkling of an eye, I do not see how we can stay human and be denied the ability of that choice.
Yet I dearly wish to be as good and holy as God is.
I think the surface story of the flood is that He started over, but if you look at it a bit closer, it doesn’t seem to me like the flood really solved much if anything. The first chance he got, Noah made some wine, got passed-out loaded in his birthday suit and cursed his own son in the process. So I’m not at all sure the surface story is the real story, which seems pretty much the norm for the book of Genesis. At any rate, I guess I see no real reason to believe that God is finished with Ham or Canaan or the ante-diluvians anymore than He’s finished with us.
Me too. Maybe it’s a matter of us being unable to see or understand all the things God is doing to bring all of us to maturity. As in one day, our education will be complete, with God not accepting any failing grades… doing whatever it takes to help everyone get an A+. That’s what I’m hoping for anyway.
Thanks for sharing, Dondi,
Andy
Hi Dondi,
I presume by this you mean why is God good as opposed to Capricious or even evil. Why is God in essence good?
To me it seems that goodness is always the stronger. I believe that most people, even depraved individuals, have an understanding of goodness even if it’s in contrast to how they behave or are treated (I don’t say there aren’t exceptions to this) I believe too that most people respond positively to goodness; most people would inately respond positively to loving behaviour than non-loving behaviour.
Whilst there are many evidences of God’s goodness that we may see in our own lives or around us I think sometimes these are in the eye of the beholder and not always easy to argue to a non-believer.
What stands behind goodness is Love. Good creations in themselves are meaningless unless a consciousness is there to enjoy it. Though this would include something being good simply because God willed it even just for his own pleasure.
God is Love.
This does not mean that God behaves according to some standard that stands behind Him that corresponds to love but that He is Love, He is the Essence, the Source. In a manner of speaking Love does not exist apart from God (but then nor does anything else)
Our understanding of goodness is because “in Him we live and breath and have our being”.
Ultimately Love cannot be defined. To define it is to define God.
We can make all sorts of attempts at definitions but we know that for anyone who has loved another, be it a child or spouse etc , to define the experience of it is like trying to describe or define the colour red; expressing a colour in terms of the electromagnetic spectrums and wavelengths of light and nerve reaction in the eye or the feeling that it gives you when you see it still doesn’t explain it.
I think Jesus was the Essence of Love expressed in human terms.
If God is Love then I believe all his actions have to be an expression of that. I think that is why I’m ultimately a Universalist because I find it hard to believe that God could finally destroy something He created out of Love; He could only have created from the expression of Himself which is Love.
Cheers S
Many people say that God is not good. They say He allows murders, tortures, the rape and killing of little girls, etc., etc. How can a good God allow such atrocities? How do we answer these people?
I think Aquinas nailed it; God’s essence is pure Truth. the True is the highest order from which All goods proceed and in which all goods find their habitation. Also Jesus referred to Himself as ‘Truth’ (Jn 14:6).
Ideally, if they have time and interest, I answer with detailed discussion about metaphysics, to discuss why free will on one hand, and a neutrally reactive field of existence for multiple derivative persons on the other, are both important; and also what we could thus expect God to do about it historically sooner and later.
But since most people don’t have time and interest (especially if they’re suffering grief from such problems!), I point to the cross and say, “The one and only God Most High Himself, the One Who is ultimately responsible for allowing such things, voluntarily suffered and suffers with all victims. He pays the price for our sins: suffering with us always even after our suffering is over for us. Let us weep but also remember that, just the same way, He promises He will be victorious at last over injustice, vindicating those who have wrongly suffered.”
(And then, depending on their mood, I may add: “He also suffers there with and for the unjust victimizers, too; in order to finally vindicate them, too, so that we all may be at peace someday.” But sometimes people aren’t ready to hear that yet.)
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The question of ‘what makes God good’ was a major topic of my recent Cadre article (critiquing a fellow trinitarian theologian who wants to defend against moral critique of God by divorcing God from morality!) “The Most Real Reality and the Folly of the Cross”, by the way.
To the question of what makes God good?.. I really don’t know. Sadly, that’s the truth. 
Bret P.S. A huge welcome back Jason!!! Now, tone it down for those of us who can’t comprehend your extreme intelligence!!! PLEASE!!! Love ya brother!
God is Good, because God is the ground of all goodness, and the stuff of all good-realities. Evil is ultimately privation.
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First I never said goodness is a relative term, I said Good is subjective and it is absolutely subjective and relative since it needs to be defined to get a consensus understanding of what it actually is in human terms.
There is no comparing anything here but if you have to, go ask another culture other than yours, what is good and compare it to your definition of good and you will be surprised to hear that not everyone has your same opinion of what is good.
Eastern Cultures have a far different view on what is good than Western Cultures, and back in the day the Aztec’s understood good differently than the Jews, the Jews understood what is good differently than the Romans, etc. Human rights aren’t even a consensus among the nations and that is why there is democratic governments, theocratic governments, communist governments etc. and that is because good is a relative term.
Based on what fact?
If God exists, then God is the ground of being, and the reality upon which all being depends in order to exist. This includes Goodness, what ever it may be and in what ever form, as an existent item. As for Evil, name one Evil that is not in some form a privation of Good.
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It is based on no fact. It is based on faith.
I think God’s goodness is actually based on fact, such that Paul’s words were true when he penned Rom 1:20, "…since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse."
What I mean by this, is:
- God is not good, He is Truth. Truth is the cause, goods are effects. All real goods whatsover derive from the true. So to say God is good is begging the question: what determines the effect we call goodness?
- Truth is a quality God built into every bit of existence. Sin has falsified this existence. We can understand true and false as an ontological reality pertaining to all aspects of life by using the closest words we have in english for them: perfect and imperfect. To what degree is a thing or a behavior or a state of affairs perfect? To what degree imperfect? Using this foundation I believe leads to Paul’s conclusion that God’s attributes and nature are seen in the natural realm. They are thus becasue truth itself is the ‘glue’ or power present in thought and act which provides all propensity for and direction toward the final destination, Truth. Because we see only darkly in this life, faith is necessary till God accomplishes all in all where all will be true.