I never said good was relative in the intrinsic sense, but what you think and I think makes God good can only be relative because it is based on our own consensus of what good is.
According to your faith, and what you believe. It is not a ‘fact’ at all but what you consider a fact based on faith that what you believe is true concerning God in the first place.
Not sure I understand you…are you saying all truth is relative? Or are you saying because one’s grasp of truth is never complete, we can just never have certitude about why God is good?
What, in the statement above, is it you’re referring to when you say IT is not a fact at all…? What is IT? This is confusing as I didn’t make a claim that anything I wrote was “fact”.
You said, “I think God’s goodness is actually based on fact”.
There is no fact, only your faith in your belief that it is fact. I thought I was clear on this.
It is only by faith, that you could ever justify it as a fact and that is always subject to your belief and therefore relative.
Whether God is good or truth, will always be by faith and by your faith a fact to you and only you. Others must accept it as a ‘fact’ by their faith, even to agree with your belief (not fact).
Gotcha. I somehow translated your earlier response into supposing I was claiming factual knowledge in what I presented.
I’m still trying to figure out where you’re coming from. Do you believe we can we have facts of the material world, or in your view is all knowledge ultimately unknowable?
Do you propose it as fact that my beliefs “will always be by faith”? Why always? In your view can the faith knowledge one holds of God or His characteristics or ways not have any actual connection to truth? Can “fact” only apply to things that occupy temporal and spatial position?
I believe that God is good, love and truth. I believe truth is not bound to the spacial physical or metaphysical universe, and saying this, unless one has met God Himself, none today can claim any fact we can only trust in the testimony of Jesus Christ who claims to be from the Father God (and for Trinitiarians, is God and therefore the testimony of the disciples and those who witnessed such claims). Therefore faith is the only way we can affirm any fact which we unfortunately cannot demonstrate presently.
Okay, thanks for responding.
Do you feel that no one has “met” God? How about Saul on the road to Damascus or the OT prophets? There are many testimonies through the centuries of humans who have ‘met’ God in strong spiritual experiences; are these claims possible? And isn’t the formation of faith itself in the human soul from some real experience of God? Just trying to understand your position. Not sure why you feel pressed to quickly point out that beliefs are ‘only faith’.
I guess you are not getting this point. Whether or not Paul met resurrected Jesus on the road, makes no difference to those who have not, nor could Paul prove such fact (if such was fact in the first place). We have to accept their testimony by faith.
What if I claimed to met Jesus, not once but twice in my life and both times very influential and pertinent profound lessons were learned? There would be those who claim I am liar because what I learned might contradict the ‘truth’ they had perceived in their ‘visitation’ to Hell with their tour-guide 'Jesus 'and such. Heck, they didn’t even have to have an experience that contradicts mine, they just don’t believe Jesus would visit anyone today, nor would he have to when they have learned so much from the Scriptures and “why didn’t Jesus visit them at a pivotal point in their lives and save them from their current circumstance which caused them great stress.”
What makes God good was the question, and unfortunately the answer is not concrete and can only be taken by faith not fact.
If your view from the beginning is that there is no concrete answer to the question ‘what makes God good?’, not sure why you bother asking it? I am under the impression that religious or theological discussion is worthwile precisely because the faith of those thus engaged have an actual ground in some external, concrete fact–i.e., that God is in fact good. I don’t see that the potential for error of one’s views–which I agree relegates all humans to faith insofar as we don’t have all the pertinent facts about God–does not negate actually existing facts concerning God’s goodness.
Anyway, thanks for your patience with me, I tend to think slowly these days, not trying to be bothersome.
The point, there are no facts of God’s goodness, nor is there any fact God is good. All these things must be taken by faith, since everything you believe to be a fact is based on the testimony of another which you must believe by faith to be true in the first place. Until we come to a place where we acknowledge these things, there will be seldom any unity or harmony with one another.
I believe you that God is good based on your good testimony.
2 Corinthians 1:12-14
For our proud confidence is this: the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you. For we write nothing else to you than what you read and understand, and I hope you will understand until the end; just as you also partially did understand us, that we are your reason to be proud as you also are ours, in the day of our Lord Jesus.
3 John 1:11-13
Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does good is of God; the one who does evil has not seen God. Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone, and from the truth itself; and we add our testimony, and you know that our testimony is true.
How can one prove a fact based soley on a testimony? They cannot.
2 Corinthians 5:7
For we walk by faith, not by sight.
It is a precarious; but, essential. Why? Because it is not about theological debate, or religious dogma or doctrine. It is by our actions and our deeds which shall live, not by our words, theological standings, or debates.
**James 3:1 **
Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom.
Everyone says God is good, and what makes God good is irrelevant.
James 2:21-22
You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God.
Let me recap.
There is no fact in which we can claim God is good or what makes God good. We simply believe God is good and show it by our good behavior. Let everyone come to believe the testimony which we know to be true, God is good and loving and truth, by our testimony and our actions who follow Him.
You have not defined fact, so I’ll provide one: Fact is the word used to describe the strength of intensity of a relation between the intellect and some external state of affairs. When the intensity of the relation is low, one has belief. When the relation reaches some generally accepted strength of intensity, the relation we confer the designation “fact” to it.
It’s pretty easy to develop this relation with material and certain conceptual (mathematics) things as the material world necessarily claims the greatest part of our attention. The relation is much more difficult in the prescriptive (spiritual/moral) realm. Faith is not a purely subjective affair. Over all history, the great majority of humans have intuited and believed in ‘a being greater than which none other can be imagined’ and religions have developed from this objectively intuited Fact.
I think it safe to say that 95% or more of all believers do not hold faith as fact, though belief itself is relative to Fact. But God has always appointed certain humans to know Him as Fact. While the majority of us grope in relative darkness as spiritual prisoners (Psa 79:11, 102:19-20, 107:10-13, Isa 42:1-7) God appoints and cleanses (with fire) some to hear and see Him clearly enough to perform some service encourage those of faith. This level of knowing the Fact of God and some portion of some of His attributes necessary to perform the function they were appointed to serve is, unlike that of ‘lower level faith’, not of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”. Paul was blinded on the road to Damascus and suffered a number of afflictions to take the gospel to the gentiles, the OT prophets were regularly mistreated for representing the Fact of God to their audiences, the apostles suffered and most are reported to have died terrible deaths for their adherence to the Facts. It costs plenty to know any of the facts of “God as Fact” according to the testimony of Scripture.
On the other hand, the darkness of ungodly philosophies like relativism, materialism, some forms of subjectivism and empiricism, etc. work to (among other things) relegate faith to a trivial term by attempting to relegate the faith of the believer to a factless, private void.
C.S. Lewis, in describing his reason for abandoning his atheism, said, “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.” This is a good example of the use of reason to find the path from intuition to the Fact upon which the believer’s faith is founded. Paul, who was brought to know the Fact, pointed up the factual strength of his faith in God and His goodness wrote, “For 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.” (Rom 1:20)
Even the weak relation of faith can be shown to have its basis in fact, even if those who hate the relation try to bury it in the darkness.
You still have no fact God is good, only testimony. So faith is all you have LBY.
He is good because he creates us without hesitation… He is good because he poured blessings to us He is good because he is giving us PROBLEMS that will make us more perfect and for us to have lessons in life 
God is good all the time …