Hephaestus make love to Athena: at the moment of climax she pushes him aside, and his semen falls to the earth where it impregnates Gaia." Hephaestus was associated by Greek colonists in southern Italy with the volcano gods Adranus (of Mount Etna) and Vulcanus of the Lipari islands. The first-century sage Apollonius of Tyana is said to have observed, "there are many other mountains all over the earth that are on fire, and yet we should never be done with it if we assigned to them giants and gods like Hephaestus". In the Trojan war, Hephaestus sided with the Greeks, but
The Suffering of God understanding what kind of God He is. The second widely held position that Fretheim challenges is the doctrine of divine omniscience. (chapter 4) Fretheim uses solid biblical exegesis to argue compellingly against a view (at least in the Old Testament) which classifies omniscience as one of God's fundamental characteristics. Divine foreknowledge, he believes, is limited because of God's relationship with creation. There is no doubt, he says, that God always knows what He will do in the future, but He does not always know what free moral agents outside of Himself will do. For Fretheim, the widespread use of words