- If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him?
- If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future?
- If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers?
- If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him?
- If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses?
- If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them?
- If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him?
- If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable?
- If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees?
- If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him?
- If he has spoken, why is the universe not convinced?
- If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest?
*the Bysshe bit got changed to Bish somewhere between 1811 and now
Very ironic - families are funny things.
ReplyDeleteInteresting questions as well - they are all quite philosphical, and yet populist at the same time.
They are not easy though.
Either, Divine accomodation, Impossiblility of understanding an infinite God or Human Sinfulness, would be my very Calvin-influenced approach to most of the answers. I look forward to what you have to say.
You never know I may even attempt to answer the last question (or perhaps the third to last one) myself on my blog sometime this week if I get the time, as it may be benifical for me to think about the issues.
How did you find this out??
ReplyDeleteThe first one seems straightforward enough to me:
If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him?
- That we aren't infinitely good.
The others aren't easy, but seem to assume a rather deistic view of God; he is more than a machine. Some of these questions find explicit answer in Romans with not much more to say. I look forward to your answers!
PS did he have a website thebluefysshe?
his questions, from wikipedia, but the story I knew before from somewhere else.... that we're related because some distant cousin of my grandfather did the research... back about 700 years
ReplyDeleteIf you found some answers this would make a very interesting book. A chapter per question? Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, it's amazing you can trace your family back that far! started tracing my family history once, then got interuupted by GCSE's, A-Levels, Uni...must start again.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, interesting questions. It's good and interesting to htink through them properly for ourselves, especially because they're still asked so often today.
Yeah, i'd go with Nathan's book idea...!!
Really interesting list of questions. Christians should get a list that killer to hand out, a sort of dead opposite Necessity of Christ thing!
ReplyDeleteAbout the same time in history, one of my relatives was slowly going mad. It's the truth! of course, all of his genes have left the family ;-)
Probably driven to insanity trying to answer the questions on a Bysshe pamphlet....