Deity, God

Which of God’s attributes made your faith?

I’ve been reading “Articles of faith” by James E. Talmage. In chapter 2, where he talks about God, he makes this statement:

>A knowledge of the attributes and character of Deity is essential to an intelligent exercise of faith in Him.

I wonder if others agree with this. If so, I wonder which specific attributes or characteristics of God resulted in your faith.

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Kim Siever

Queer Mormon poet with radical political views. I have been married 27 years, and we have 6 children. Sunday school president. Served in the Utah Provo Mission.

6 thoughts on “Which of God’s attributes made your faith?”

  1. This sentiment was championed by lectures 3 and 4 of the Lectures on Faith. I don’t agree with the LonF version, but I do believe there is one attribute that is essential to faith, which is God’s all-benevolence. I can have faith even if he is not all-powerful or all-knowing, but I think the idea that God is all-good is fundamental to faith in him.

  2. Jacob – I agree with that completely. He needn’t be all-powerful; omnipotent can mean powerful enough to fulfill His promises. And He need not be all-knowing, as in simultaneously aware of every grain of sand on every seashore in the unvirse; omniscient can mean that He can see clearly everywhere He needs to, including into the human heart. But if He isn’t all good. If I can’t trust that His whole motivation is to do the most beneficial thing. If there might be some hedge in Him, some area of darkness, that’s the faith breaker. And the power really, I just realize, when people question a God that made a world that contains evil. I’ve ever really understood the potency of that question for some, since the question has never troubled me, precisely because I need not believe in a God that is the moving cause behind all things.

    ~

  4. I’m more curious about what “an intelligent exercise of faith in Him” means given some of the church’s leader’s stances on intellectuals.

  5. Sometimes, when the nature and character of diety does not seem congruent with my expectations, it has lead me to question my faith in the diety I have been taught about.

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