David Gould

Hi SeaKayaker,

Good to see you in this thread - I think the other one is spun out of control a few pages ago...



Okay.

I guess my contention is that infinite torture does not fit into the human definition of the word 'just'. Torture is rightly recongised as evil, even when it is deemed necessary to extract information. Using torture for punishment is recognised by humans as evil.

Even infinite incarceration is dubious, although an argument could be made that if a non believer is incapable of salvation and as their soul is immortal, God has no choice but to incarcerate them forever. However, I think this argument is flawed because criminals deemed not capable of rehabilitation are incarcerated for life for one main purpose - to protect others from their actions.

God could simply keep non believers out of Heaven for eternity. Earth seems a reasonable alternative. That could be considered 'incarceration', I guess but it is a far cry to incarceration in Hell...

If God uses torture as a punishment, he is not good or just under the human definition and therefore Christians have as much to fear from him as I do.

If God does not use torture as a punishment, I have nothing to fear from him.

I guess that is a more fully explained version of my two positions.

Thanks

David

CX

And do you? I freely admit that I have no interest in the Torah so I have not studied Hebrew or any semitic language. I am however fascinated by the New Testament and have studied, superficially, Koine Greek to gain a better understanding.

SeaKayaker

David Gould,

Thanks for the reply.

Speaking hypothetically, if a person were to do something deserving of infinite torture (I realize that this assumes that it is possible to do something so bad that it is deserving of infinite torture), would infinite torture then be just for that person?

SeaKayaker

Synaesthesia

SeaKayaker,

Also speaking hypothetically, if a person had enough power to inflict infinite torture, perhaps they also have a responsibility to ensure that it never becomes necessary to use it.

Of course, the ability to earn infinite punishment is well beyond the capacity of any human being....

Grizzly

Is God just and good by human definitions? Of course not. The bible is replete with instances of God not being just and good by human standards. Ordering the deaths of women and infants, asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, killing all the firstborns sons in Egypt…..we can go on and on.

But here is one example God’s warped sense of justice. God feels that we have wronged him. He is angry with us and seeks justice. He sends his himself down to earth in the form of man and we kill him. Now God is pleased - and all we have to do is believe this story, and we can have eternal happiness. Huh?

Say I steal a car. Can I send someone else in my place to go to jail for me (to be punished for my crime?). Would we hold this up as an example of justice?

SeaKayaker

Grizzly,

Your post may not have been addressed to me, but I hope that you do not mind if I reply, as you bring up some interesting points.

You give examples where God’s actions seem cruel and unjust. However, as finite human beings, we cannot know everything. In defending the internal consistency of the Christian worldview, I will maintain that, however unjust God’s actions may seem, He has a morally justifiable reason for them. In other words, when something evil happens, God has a purpose for it that will bring good out of what happened. I will not claim to always know this purpose. In fact, very rarely do we understand it. However, in the crucifixion of Christ we can see, even if only partially, how God works greater good out of evil. Out of this horribly evil deed, the murder of the only innocent man who only lived, God brought not only Christ’s resurrection and glorification, but also salvation for Jew and Gentile. Thus, God used this wicked deed to work great good. Therefore, although we may see things in the world and in the Bible that seem like purposeless evil, we can remember and find comfort in the fact that God has a morally justifiable reason for that evil.

Your next paragraph makes some interesting points, so I will break it up to comment on it in small pieces.
We have wronged God, He does not merely feel that way.

The very fact that any of us is here shows that God not only is just, but also merciful. For, if not for his mercy, none of us would be alive today.

After Christ, truly God and truly man, lived on the earth as a man, he was killed (I will not claim to be able to understand in its entirety the concept of the trinity, but there is a distinction between God the Father and God the Son).

God is not pleased with the people who killed His son for doing so; the crucifixion of Christ was an evil deed, but one that God used for tremendous good.

The only reason that believing this story means anything is because of what it accomplished. God’s holiness cannot admit sin and requires justice. In order to be just, God must punish sin. Because Christ was a man, his death could atone for the sins of men, and because He was perfect, His death did not atone for His own sin, but rather for the sin of others, and because He was God, His death could atone for all who have faith in Him. Therefore, it is because of what the death of Christ accomplished, redemption for those who have faith in Him, that believing the story has any meaning.

God was not going to Hell if Jesus did not die and you did not send Jesus to die for yourself. As your example would require one of these two scenarios, both false, it is invalid.

SeaKayaker

CodeMason

Your argument is self-contradictory. You say that "whatever God does it is for the greater good, even if we do not understand it". How do we know what God does is always for the greater good? "God is defined as all-good", may be your response. But if God does things that do not fit the definition of goodness, God cannot be defined as all-good, and cannot have the "perfect moral standards" that we merely do not understand.
You also seem to imply that God uses evil to create good. In order from the most good deed to the worst deed, it would go; good-to-good, evil-to-good, good-to-evil, evil-to-evil. Are you saying God cannot use the first, and most good option? Some omnipotence!
Why have we wronged God? "Because God says so (according to his perfect moral standards)." Is basically the condensed version of the argument I can see, and then you're right back at the start. Therefore, his original statement stands, even if you have an emotional objection to it of some kind.
It is neither merciful nor just to create creatures for the sole purpose of seeing if they will do you wrong. Creating creatures with the prospect of infinite torture is far worse than creating no creatures at all, IMHO.
Don't you find God and Man to be mutually exclusive? But then again, I see a lot of square circles floating around these days too.
See above. If God worked through good instead of evil to create more good, it would be a more good deed. If God does not want or is unable to, it raises questions about his goodness and/or his omnipotence.

I did not understand your next two points, so I'll leave them alone.

SeaKayaker

CodeMason,

Thanks for the post.

Even if we do not know what the particular greater good is, we can trust (according to the Bible) that it exists.

The actions of evil men do not interfere with God’s plan of salvation, for He is able to use even evil deeds to bring about good. God does use the first option, but as people are sinful and naturally at enmity with Him, their deeds are naturally evil.

According to the Bible, the inspired word of God, all have sinned. Therefore, I can consistently (within my worldview) say that all have sinned and wronged God.

Creating people with the prospect of eternal happiness is far better than creating no people at all. The goal of our existence is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, therefore we are not created for the purpose of going to Hell, but rather for going to Heaven. Those who rebel against God permanently on earth deserve Hell. Paul addresses a similar issue in the context of election, saying, “But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? ‘Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?”’ Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath-prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory-even us, whom he also called” (Romans 9:20-24).

I will not claim to be able to understand it fully, but I do trust that it was so. Because God is the ultimate authority and the ultimate judge of reality in my worldview, I do not have to fully understand everything. However, if I were to establish myself as the ultimate judge of reality, I would have to be able to fully explain everything in reality. Is this not what the atheist does?

SeaKayaker

Grizzly

Hello SeaKayaker,

Thanks for taking the time to thoughtfully respond to my post. I will attempt to respond to your comments. For the sake of brevity, I may paraphrase you, but if I am off the mark, please let me know. I think I will break it into two sections: Justice and the Salvation Story.

Justice

Your first response to my claim that God is unjust is to say that while it may appear unjust to us, God has a morally justifiable reason for doing acts that appear unjust – it is just not known to us. My response is then we can’t really use the word “just” to describe God. Words are only effective if we can all agree on what words mean. We can’t have two definitions – one for humanity and one for God. Otherwise, we are really talking about two different things.
For example, I think we can all agree that ordering the murder of infants is not just – no matter who does the ordering. There is no way to call this just, unless we change the definition of the word.

It seems to me that you are arguing that everything that God does is just – no matter what the action is. This causes a strange circularity. God is just. Why? Because everything he does is just. Why is everything he does just? Because God is just. I think you can see that this is less than satisfying.

Salvation Story

I have to admit right out that the salvation story makes no sense to me. How does Christ’s death atone for man’s sin? If I “sin” against you, I must either admit my wrong doing and make amends or not admit any guilt and move on.
Let me try an analogy.

A powerful King is angry at his people because they disobey him and do not honor him the way they should. So he sends his son to go live among the people. The son only tells a few people who he really is, but goes on and lives as a poor peasant (even though he isn’t really poor). Other peasants, for various reasons that we won’t go into, want to have the son killed. They succeed. The King is now pleased that his son lived as a peasant, and is now offering untold happiness to the peasants. All they have to do is believe this story. However, if they don’t believe this story, he will lock them up and torture them forever.

I don’t see how the life and death of the son make everything OK between the King and the peasants? How is the sons life the salvation of the peasants? It does not make sense.

ManM

You know, with all of the crap going on in the world, you tend to wonder. We should have nothing to fear from a good God... However, we have everything to fear from ourselves.