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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.pagan From: "Kevin Jones"Subject: Re: Motivations of a God Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 01:13:13 +0100 "Midwinter" wrote in message news:Xns94C1F2A03D577solstice688TAKEYOURS@217.32.252.50... > Innocent8 wrote: > > > the former (motivation) is metaphysical in the case of most Gods. > > our knowledge is a matter of epistemology. methods of knowing > > what gods want include augury, divination, oracle, prophecy, > > and conversation. Gods and gods have varying power attribute. > > However, Christianity specifically forbids these activities. Hmm! Depends which version of Christianity you mean and which period. Astrology was permitted by the early medieval Church, as long as it was under the control of Church and performed by people it approved of - that's divination. Various denominations have accepted that God can send signs - in fact there are gangs of people in the States looking for signs that these are the Last Days - so that covers augury. There are also plenty of examples of Christian prophets, or people purporting to be prophets, in a variety of denominations - of course the argument there is that prophecy is legitimate since it goes back to the OT. There are even a number of Protestant denominations who are particularly gone on one particular prophecy - the Revelation of St John the Divine. St John was, in the course of this, having conversations with angels, which isn't particularly unique. You could reasonably argue that Christian mystics have conversations with God - some of these have been canonised by the Catholic Church. Then again you have more fundie denominations with various pastors telling their flock that God has told them this or that, so that could qualify as a conversation. To judge from some of these pastors' recorded words, they've got God's mobile number and are regularly bending his ear - in fact those denominations might regard it as blasphemy to suggest that their pastors don't have a direct line to God. In fact apart from oracles, Christianity has, at some time, permitted all of these, and still permits most of them. The odd one out is astrology - but then a denomination or two could easily make an argument that God can reveal his will in the movements of the heavens for all to read. That was pretty much the medieval position, which is why it wasn't regarded as a sin to practice it. No doubt we'll see it happen again - these things tend to come round. Kevin
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