John 5:43-48
Be Perfect Like God is Perfect
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Jesus teaches us to be Perfect as God is Perfect...God is the Perfect Being...The Perfect Being created the heavens and earth and saw that it was good...And after Creation was done, God saw all that He had made, and it was very good...So who better knows Perfection and Good in the Universe than God and His Son...God is LOVE and God is Compete...He has Complete Understanding...LOVE is Perfect, and LOVE is Complete...
As we read the gospel of John, we read that all things are created through Jesus...Jesus is the Perfect Man...So in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...He was with God in the beginning...Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made...In Him is life, and that life is the Light of all mankind...The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it...The true Light that gives Light to everyone was coming into the world...He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him...He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him. ..Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God...The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us...We have seen His Glory, the Glory of the One and Only Son, who came from the Father, full of Grace and Truth...The Perfect Man had arrived on earth...
Jesus taught many things about love and about God...He teaches us that we have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’...By say this we might believe that having an enemy makes the world a little tainted... But Jesus still believes we should love your enemies and pray for those who persecute us, so that we may be children of Our Father in heaven...God causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous...So there is righteous and unrighteous people in this world, according to Jesus...If we only love those who love us, what reward will you get?...How does that get us to a world or universe of harmony...Don't even the tax collectors and those who have done wrong love their families?...And if you greet only our own people, what are you doing that is more than others are doing?...Do not even pagans do that?...So let us be perfect, therefore, as our heavenly Father is Perfect...Jesus wants us to be complete as God is Complete...Perfect sometimes translates into the word complete, so Jesus says we are to be Perfect as God is Perfect, and as Complete as God is Complete...
Why does something exist?...Why does creation exist, instead of not existing?...Is this the best "something" and world possible since God created it through Jesus?...William Lane Craig wrote this about the mathematician G. W. Leibniz...Leibniz was one who questioned those things around him...Craig writes: “G. W. Leibniz, co-discoverer of calculus and a towering intellect of eighteenth-century Europe, wrote: “The first question which should rightly be asked is: Why is there something rather than nothing?”...In other words, why does anything at all exist?...This, for Leibniz, is the most basic question that anyone can ask...Like me, Leibniz came to the conclusion that the answer is to be found, not in the universe of created things, but in God.”...
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy writes: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was one of the great thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is known as the last “universal genius”...He made deep and important contributions to the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, logic, philosophy of religion, as well as mathematics, physics, geology, jurisprudence, and history...Even the eighteenth-century French atheist and materialist Denis Diderot, whose views were very often at odds with those of Leibniz, could not help being awed by his achievement, writing in his entry on Leibniz in the Encyclopedia, “Perhaps never has a man read as much, studied as much, meditated more, and written more than Leibniz...What he has composed on the world, God, nature, and the soul is of the most sublime eloquence...If his ideas had been expressed with the flair of Plato, the philosopher of Leipzig would cede nothing to the philosopher of Athens” (Oeuvres complètes, vol. 7, p. 709)...Indeed, Diderot was almost moved to despair in this piece: “When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner” (Oeuvres complètes, vol. 7, p. 678)...More than a century later, Gottlob Frege, who fortunately did not cast his books away in despair, expressed similar admiration, declaring that “in his writings, Leibniz threw out such a profusion of seeds of ideas that in this respect he is virtually in a class of his own” (“Boole's logical Calculus and the Concept-script” in Posthumous Writings, p. 9)...The aim of this entry is primarily to introduce Leibniz's life and summarize and explicate his views in the realms of metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophical theology...Leibniz presented a number of arguments for the existence of God, which represent great contributions to philosophical theology and which will be discussed below...But one of the most basic principles of his system is that God always acts for the best...While this is generally treated as an axiom, the opening of the Discourse on Metaphysics does present something of an argument for it: “God is an Absolutely Perfect Being”; “power and knowledge are perfections, and, insofar as they belong to God, they do not have limits”; “Whence it follows that God, possessing supreme and infinite wisdom, acts in the most perfect manner, not only metaphysically, but also morally speaking.” (AG 35)...This might not appear a surprising claim from a theist, but it is not obvious that God must always act for the best or even create the best world (See Adams 1972)...And Leibniz sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, appeals to this principle in his metaphysics, most notably when he is also employing the Principle of Sufficient Reason...Indeed, when it comes to the creation of the world, the “sufficient reason” for God's choice of this world is that this world is the “best” of all possible worlds; in other words, in this case the Principle of Sufficient Reason is essentially the Principle of the Best...
We are given a theory of the Big Bang that many people believe started the universe...Yet, where did the chemicals and space that go into the Big Bang come from?...So we must question things as Leibniz questions- why does anything exist...What was out there before the Big Bang?...How did the chemicals and space get there?...Where did all the hydrogen, helium, oxygen and other chemicals get into a space to cause this Big Bang?...Where did this space or pre-universe get there to help cause the Big Bang to take effect...
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy continues...Leibniz made an important contribution to the history of the ontological argument...His reflections on this form of argument go back to the 1670s, and we know that he shared his thoughts on this matter with Spinoza when Leibniz visited him on the way to Hanover...According to Leibniz, the argument that Descartes gives implicitly in the Fifth Meditation and explicitly in the First Set of Replies is faulty...Descartes had argued that God is a being having all perfections, existence is a perfection, therefore, God exists (AT VII 118–19/CSM II 84–85)...But, Leibniz thinks, one needs to show that it is possible for such a being to exist, that is, that it is possible for all perfections to co-exist in One Being...If this is so, then and only then an ens perfectissimum can be said to exist...In his short essay That a Most Perfect Being Exists (Quod ens perfectissimum existit) from 1676, Leibniz argues just this...He defines a “Perfection” as a “simple quality which is positive and absolute, or, which expresses without any limits whatever it does express” (A VI iii 578/SR 101)...And with this definition in hand, Leibniz is then able to claim that there can be no inconsistency among perfections, since a Perfection, in being simple and positive, is unanalyzable and incapable of being enclosed by limits. That is, if A and B are perfections, then the proposition “A and B are incompatible” cannot be demonstrated because A and B are simples, nor can the proposition be known per se...Therefore, it is possible that any and all perfections are in fact compatible...And, therefore, Leibniz reasons, a subject of all perfections, or an ens perfectissimum, is indeed possible...But this argument by itself is not sufficient to determine that God necessarily exists...Leibniz must also show that existence is itself a perfection, so that a being having all perfections, an ens perfectissimum, may be said to exist...More exactly, Leibniz needs to show that necessary existence belongs to the Essence of God...And this he does in another short piece from this period, writing “Again, a necessary being is the same as a being from whose essence existence follows...For a Necessary Being is One which necessarily exists, such that for it not to exist would imply a contradiction, and so would conflict with the concept or essence of this being” (A VI iii 583/SR 107)...In other words, if it is the case that a necessary being is the same thing as a being whose existence follows from its essence, then existence must in fact be one of its essential properties...Leibniz continues in this short reflection, “And so existence belongs to its concept or essence...From this we have a splendid theorem, which is the pinnacle of modal theory and by which one moves in a wonderful way from potentiality to act: If a Necessary Being is possible, it follows that it exists actually, or, that such a Being is actually found in the universe” (A VI iii 583/SR 107)...The “pinnacle of Modal Theory” that Leibniz mentions here is none other than one of the notorious axioms of the modal logic S5: ◊□p → □p...In short, Leibniz's argument is the following:
(1) God is a being having all Perfections...(Definition)
(2) A Perfection is a simple and absolute property...(Definition)
(3) Existence is a Perfection...
(4) If existence is part of the essence of a thing, then it is a Necessary Being...
(5) If it is possible for a Necessary Being to exist, then a Necessary Being does exist...
(6) It is possible for a Being to have all Perfections...
(7) Therefore, a Necessary Being (God) does exist...
It should be noted that Leibniz's argument bears a certain affinity with the ontological argument that Gödel gives, insofar as it also seeks to demonstrate the possibility of a being having all simple, positive properties. (For Gödel's argument, see the entry on ontological arguments.)...
The Stanford Encyclopedia continues: But what are the criteria by which one can say that this world is the best?...It should be clear that Leibniz nowhere says that this argument implies that everything has to be wonderful...Indeed, Leibniz is squarely in the tradition of all Christian apologists going back to Augustine, arguing that we cannot have knowledge of the whole of the world and that even if a piece of the mosaic that is discoverable to us is ugly the whole may indeed have great beauty...Still, Leibniz does offer at least two considerations relevant to the determination of the happiness and perfection of the world...He tells us in the Discourse on Metaphysics, first, that “…the happiness of minds is the principal aim of God.”...(A VI iv 1537/AG 38) and, second, that “God has chosen the most perfect world, that is, the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypotheses and the richest in phenomena” (A VI iv 1538/AG 39)...So, is this world of genocide and natural disaster better than a world containing only one multifoliate rose?...Yes, because the former is a world in which an infinity of minds perceive and reflect on the diversity of phenomena caused by a modest number of simple laws...To the more difficult question whether there is a better world with perhaps a little less genocide and natural disaster Leibniz can only respond that, if so, God would have brought it into actuality...And this, of course, is to say that there really is no better possible world...