Magus55

Well said luvluv

Biff the unclean

Excuse me, but this is screwy. How can you say this…
It is more difficult to demonstrate that a morally perfect God would value the absence of suffering above all other considerations, because we do not know precisely what moral perfection entails….
and then follow up by saying…
Firstly, we are proceeding from the notion that God is necessarily morally perfect.…?

If you don't know what moral perfection is how can you make the claim that a God, whom you cannot observe, is necessarily morally perfect? Why are you claiming to have information that you readily admit you have no way of knowing? How is this not self delusion?

The debt that Jesus paid has not been incurred by the simple eating of one apple. Jesus is paying for every single incident of murder, child molestation, rape, torture, hate, war, and genocide in the history of the world.
Not until Martin Luther rewrote Christianity.
For the first millennium and a half Jesus died to forgive man of original sin…period. Thus allowing the possibility…not the assure-ity or, according to gospel, even the probability of going to heaven when you died. Any additional sins you accumulated along the way had to be forgiven on a case by case bases through the auspices of God's representatives on Earth the Roman Catholic Church.
We can't help it if you guys insist on changing the original story to fit whatever flavor of Christianity you like the taste of at the moment.

luvluv

Biff:

Well, necessary was the operative word in my latter statement. It is not necessary to know what moral perfection entails to know that, by definition, the Christian God is necessarily morally perfect. I only meant to suggest that this necessary moral perfection which is inherent in God's character and which is inalterable may be the source of the "price" of sin, not His arbitrary whim.

I can certainly believe that God is morally perfect and yet not know exactly what moral perfection entails, just like you can believe that there is a theory for the unification of physics and yet not know exactly what this theory is.

Well, it can be argued that the Catholic Church itself re-wrote Christianity, and that Luther simply reverted it to it's original form as embodied in the scripture (with apologies to Amos). The original intent and conception of the Gospel message, as seen in the writings of the New Testament and of the early church fathers, would seem to suggest that Christ died for all sin, and that even the future sins that are forgiven are also forgiven on the basis of Christ's sacrifice.

Biff the unclean

Well, necessary was the operative word in my latter statement.
Necessary? Why would this be necessary? That would imply that there were "proofs" that support this contention. All you have is a story with this as part of it's plot line, that has all the earmarks of a work of fiction.

It is not necessary to know what moral perfection entails to know that, by definition, the Christian God is necessarily morally perfect.
And what definition would that be? What checkable authority does it hold?

… just like you can believe that there is a theory for the unification of physics and yet not know exactly what this theory is.
Unlike Alice I try not to believe any impossible things before breakfast. I hold no beliefs IN THE RELIGIOUS SENSE OF THE WORD about physics at all. There is no need too, physics provides proof.

Well, it can be argued that the Catholic Church itself re-wrote Christianity, and that Luther simply reverted it to it's original form as embodied in the scripture
That would imply that Protestantism is a form of Gnosticism, which it is not. Or that there is any record of the early church holding Protestant-like ideas, which there is not.

The original intent and conception of the Gospel message, as seen in the writings of the New Testament and of the early church fathers, would seem to suggest that Christ died for all sin, and that even the future sins that are forgiven are also forgiven on the basis of Christ's sacrifice.
How odd that something like that should go unnoticed for one thousand and five hundred years. Only to be rediscovered at the very time that the Hapsburgs wanted to take economic power away from the Pope. That's some coincidence. I'm afraid that for most of it's history all Christians believed that Jesus was the second Adam, and that baptism absolved you from original sin. It doesn't really matter if you want to change it, it's not like it's an historic fact of something real. Just don't deny that it was the original fable of the religion.

Darth Dane

God is infinitely Good. Man can be evil.

If God lets these atrocities continue, it is because they are of our doing, what we do/create is our business.

God gave his commands and since we can't abide, we have to live with the trash from our actions.

God is Love, what are you?





DD - Love Spliff

luvluv

Biff the unclean:

By necessary I mean definitionally necessary. If we are talking about the Christian God and assesing the possibility of His existence, we must search for this possiblity using the given definition of his attributes. A morally imperfect God would not be the Christian God. No Christian would be compelled to defend the existence of such a God because no Christian believes He exists. The Christian God is the God we are supposedly discussing in this thread. wiploc's analogy had the implicit assumption that God is able to alter the "price" of sin at his whim, but this would not be true of the Christian God. The "price" of sin, and all other moral issues, would flow necessarily from His character. He could not any more choose the price of sin than He could choose that rape is virtuous. His character is morally perfect and cannot change.

That definition would the orthodox Christian defintion of both the Catholic and Protestant churches. The checkable authority would be the general consensus of Christian believers on this point. God is not primarily concerned with our happiness to the exclusion of all other considerations, and would probably rather we be unhappy than unjust. I think Kenny spelled it out beautifully, and this conception of God's moral character is perfectly clear from even a casual reading of the Bible.

I'm not trying to convince you at this point in time that any of this is true, only that if you are going to attempt to disprove the Christian God than your disproof should reflect the actual character that Christians believe God has. Christians have never believed, to my knowledge, that God was simply maximally kind, which is all the term omnibenevolence connotates. A disproof from evil of the Christian God should therefore find a more accurate term of forfeit all legitimacy.

If you believe that all the laws of physics can be unified into a single consistent theory, and yet you do not know what that theory is, then you are in precisely the same epistemic position as I am when I believe that God is morally perfect while not yet knowing exactly what moral perfection entails. You know that a unified theory must contain a theory of quantum gravity, I know that moral perfection must include a proper balancing of the moral attributes of kindness and a commitment to justice.

Maybe I am not understanding your question. What is the problem with believing that God is morally perfect while not yet knowing what moral perfection is?

What do you mean by Protestant ideas? Do you believe that the term "original sin" or the concept is in the New Testament? I'm pretty sure it isn't. The original believers of Christianity, and one could argue Christ himself, had no concept of original sin. His original followers believed that his sacrifice covered their sins. The concept of original sin took centuries to develop, IIRC.

It did not go unnoticed for a thousand years. It was not part of the original concept of Christianity. It is hardly surprising that the social institution of the Catholic Church, interested as it was for so many years in influence and power, should have made itself essential in the quest for salvation by declaring that routine confessions to ordained priests were necessary for salvation. That notion was pretty obviously not part of the original plan of Christianity because there were no ordained priests around at the time, and precious little hierarchy at all. It is not really a coincidence that people would not know this since most people could not read in Latin (if at all) and it was illegal to publish the Bible in the vernacular tongue.

Well, I don't know about that "most of history" jazz. I am not aware when or where the notion of original sin emerged precisely, but it is very likely that neither belief has been held for a majority of the time by a majority of the people. But it is pretty obvious that the original intent of Christianity had no concept of original sin vs contemporary sin. Jesus' death was meant to atone for the actual individual sins of the believer and (and this is the kicker, pay attention): all sins that are forgiven after salvation are still only forgiven because of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. So my original point still stands even if what you are saying is true. Christ sacrifice is what makes forgiveness possible for any and all of the sins we commit. So it was not just original sin that Christ's sacrifice covered.

If what you are saying is that the earliest Christians believed that Christ's sacrifice covered ONLY original sin, then I am wholeheartedly denying it.

Wiploc

I don't know, I don't think of myself as an unusually good person. But I'm certainly nicer than Jehovah. If I were the god of Oklahoma, and Jehovah was the god of everywhere else, everyone would come to Oklahoma.
crc

luvluv

"Nice" is not "love".

"Nice" is not "good".

the_cave

This is half right--it has indeed always been orthodox teaching (indeed, orthodox Catholic teaching) that the death of Jesus absolved mankind of original sin--_and therefore_ the possibility of absolution for individual sins exists. Following this, it has always been true that a) for individual sins, the individual needs to repent b) the Catholic church believes that auricular confession to a priest is (usually) necessary for forgiveness (for Christians. This is actually a much finer and more compicated point than you might think). However, I should add that the church has not to my knowledge ever withheld absolution when repentance was genuine, unless a priest were abusing his power (in which case the sins were forgiven anyway, as it is always God doing the forgiving.) I'm not sure who's changing their story, but it isn't the Catholics.
Of course, in the end, God can forgive whomever he wants (Origen, for example, appears to have been a universalist--everyone is saved. He was somewhat unpopular for holding this position.)

the_cave

Well, alright, this is sort of true, too. But--

This is also technically true. However, it's still the case that the individual believer has to be repentant, and has always had to be, even after baptism.