Author Topic: God can do it but... (Read 1032 times)

spouse of Jesus · « **on:** August 25, 2009, 07:08:06 AM »

God can do every thing that is not a contradiction. Many things are not contradictions, but still He doesn't accept them.
He is able to do sth, but He is never pleased to do so.

I was talking with mother about whether God can heal a man who has just one hand. I said that if God creates everything from nothing, He can creat a hand for that man from nothing.
But the problem is that such a miracle hasn't happened as far as I know.

Imagine God makes such a miracle... no one can deny it, as it is the case with healings of pains and tumors.

Telesphorus · « **Reply #1 on:** August 25, 2009, 07:40:52 AM »

Quote from: spouse of Jesus

I was talking with mother about whether God can heal a man who has just one hand. I said that if God creates everything from nothing, He can creat a hand for that man from nothing.

I recall reading of a case of someone who had a missing limb miraculously restored. I will try to find it.

Lybus · « **Reply #2 on:** August 25, 2009, 11:40:24 AM »

I believe I have heard of a man (from my catechism when I was younger) who had contempt for Mary, the mother of God. This was during the biblical times, while she was being carried to her tomb on a stretcher of some sort. So the man attempted to use his hands to flip her over on the stretcher, but before his hands made it within a foot, they were sliced clean off for no reason. After he realized what he had done, he reptented, made a perfect contrition, and his hands were miraculously restored.

I don't remember his name, it was a long time ago.

spouse of Jesus · « **Reply #3 on:** August 25, 2009, 02:06:28 PM »

Glory to God.

Adesto · « **Reply #4 on:** August 25, 2009, 02:09:16 PM »

Quote from: Telesphorus

Quote from: spouse of Jesus
I was talking with mother about whether God can heal a man who has just one hand. I said that if God creates everything from nothing, He can creat a hand for that man from nothing.

I recall reading of a case of someone who had a missing limb miraculously restored. I will try to find it.

There's a miracle connected to Our Lady of Lourdes with a young girl whose leg was practically eaten away by some cancer-like disease, and which was restored to perfect health. I can't remember the source although I'm sure it is traceable somewhere, but I do remember that there was an atheist who was travelling to Lourdes to do an article rubbishing the "scam" as he would have put it, and who was talking on the train to a young woman who had been horribly disfigured by some disease. He scorned her for her "stupidity" and said that the only way he would be convinced of the miracles was if she was completely cured. A miracle indeed happened, she was cured, but he was too proud to admit it, and claimed it was "healing propensities of water" etc.

The same perverse refusal to accept truth comes from scientists who have witnessed the boiling of the blood of St. Janarius (sp?) in a reliquary on a certain feast every year. Their answer is that the heat from the huge crowd witnessing the events causes the ambient temperature to increase to such an extent that the dried blood liquifies! It does not seem to occur to them that if such intense temperatures could be projected from a crowd several meters away, then the temperature within the crowd would make them drop like flies!

Jamie · « **Reply #5 on:** December 18, 2009, 01:36:29 AM »

Quote from: Adesto

Quote from: Telesphorus
Quote from: spouse of Jesus
I was talking with mother about whether God can heal a man who has just one hand. I said that if God creates everything from nothing, He can creat a hand for that man from nothing.

I recall reading of a case of someone who had a missing limb miraculously restored. I will try to find it.

There's a miracle connected to Our Lady of Lourdes with a young girl whose leg was practically eaten away by some cancer-like disease, and which was restored to perfect health. I can't remember the source although I'm sure it is traceable somewhere, but I do remember that there was an atheist who was travelling to Lourdes to do an article rubbishing the "scam" as he would have put it, and who was talking on the train to a young woman who had been horribly disfigured by some disease. He scorned her for her "stupidity" and said that the only way he would be convinced of the miracles was if she was completely cured. A miracle indeed happened, she was cured, but he was too proud to admit it, and claimed it was "healing propensities of water" etc.

The same perverse refusal to accept truth comes from scientists who have witnessed the boiling of the blood of St. Janarius (sp?) in a reliquary on a certain feast every year. Their answer is that the heat from the huge crowd witnessing the events causes the ambient temperature to increase to such an extent that the dried blood liquifies! It does not seem to occur to them that if such intense temperatures could be projected from a crowd several meters away, then the temperature within the crowd would make them drop like flies!

You raise a very fascinating point here - I tend to think that before God would rely on supernatural methods to perform a miracle, that He would use natural means first if they were available. So, for example, God could summon natural forces to cause the Red Sea to part for Saint Moses. If my assumption is correct, modern "scientists" (I use quotation marks because modern science is not true science as it rejects the first and final cause) are not disproving a miracle by giving a natural explanation. They are merely describing the method used by God. Science can say that the Red Sea parted because of a freak weather pattern - but the very fact that it happened at the same time as Saint Moses was on the banks and commanding the Sea to part clearly makes it a miracle.

Having said that, I don't believe that body heat would be the cause of the miracle you describe. Some miracles absolutely require God to cause nature to do things it would not normally be capable of doing.

CM · « **Reply #6 on:** December 18, 2009, 02:47:07 AM »

Nature is of course capable of doing all the things God has planned from the beginning as miracles, I believe, since God created it all and foresaw all that would happen and all the prayers of men and planned from the beginning how He would answer each one. I believe He programmed in certain things with timers to coincide with the precise moment He wants those things to happen.

Jehanne · « **Reply #7 on:** December 18, 2009, 06:37:53 AM »

Quote from: spouse of Jesus

God can do every thing that is not a contradiction. Many things are not contradictions, but still He doesn't accept them.
He is able to do sth, but He is never pleased to do so.

I was talking with mother about whether God can heal a man who has just one hand. I said that if God creates everything from nothing, He can creat a hand for that man from nothing.
But the problem is that such a miracle hasn't happened as far as I know.

Imagine God makes such a miracle... no one can deny it, as it is the case with healings of pains and tumors.

Could the One and Triune God make a rock so big that He could not lift it? Answer: No.

CM · « **Reply #8 on:** December 18, 2009, 08:22:16 AM »

Can God make false things true insofar as they are false? Can God make true things false insomuch as they are true? Can God create a being that is greater than He? Can God create something that has always existed?

These answers to these questions pose difficulty no matter which position you take it seems.

Either way you have to say that God is incapable of something, or that a self contradictory exists (both of which are false).

St. Thomas Aquinas explored some of these and similarly difficult questions (which had been also touched on by St. Augustine) in his treatise "De Aeternitate Mundi".