Of course it is. Why at this point does this surprise me.
That God would ask this of someone. As a fucking test el-mao.
“Hey. Sacrifice your son.” “Ok stop! Just chill man it was a test. You passed. Yes, I gave you free will, but still want you to lick my boots. Just of your own free will.”
Serve me peasants.
Sounds like a god id love to meet! /S
Doesn’t much seem like a thing an omniscient and omnipotent being would need to do. They would already know, right?
This is not me saying you’re wrong because I don’t think you are, but as a fun thought experiment, I know the argument for this from the theologist perspective. There’s quite a lot of philosophy behind it.
Being both omniscient and omnipotent simultaneously would require a totally different perspective of time. God would need to be an observer to all that is, was and will be at once as if you were looking at a painting. But to make changes to that painting, if you will, God would need to enter time to interact with the people of his creation to make things so.
You have this sort of chicken and egg situation as a result. While God theoretically knows Abraham is faithful, he knows Abraham is faithful through the trials of Abraham which God would have had to perform to know what he knows. So in effect, God knows the result of these actions before hand, but the actions still must occur, otherwise God would not know.
I don’t have time or the memory to drive deeper into this discussion but I remember this was a very long discussion I had during my theology studies before I left the church.
Theology is a fun kind of philosophy to learn about, especially while learning about philosophy more generally. It’s like a philosopher with a loaded gun pointed at their head trying to do philosophy, or just philosophy that works backwards from a conclusion. It’s fascinating how creative the arguments get.
