Q&A on God's justice and Christ's propitiation

I just thought this exchange between Damion and myself would be helpful for others.

what we consider good, such as the “infinite bliss and happiness”

We might indeed usually speak of it that way, but that's not what I'm after here. On atheism, does it make sense that ANYthing be called good? Whether it makes sense doesn't necessarily touch on whether people will believe it, as I'm sure you'd agree. Proof is not the same as persuasion.


on your theological premises, God would still be perfectly good if only one person (say, um, Enoch) enjoyed infinite bliss

You are right. Further, God would be perfectly good if NOONE enjoyed infinite bliss.
Compared with how it really is, one could say that He'd have shown less mercy and compassion that way, but one would not have a useful or reasonable way to judge that, or to judge God as wrong.


billions of souls suffering eternally counts for exactly nothing in the overall calculus of good and evil in the universe

No, I wouldn't say that. That's not a good thing, not at all. It's so distasteful and wrong, in fact, that it cost Jesus Christ His very life.


Does God acts in good ways because He embodies goodness, or does He embody goodness because he acts in good ways?

It's the former.


what precisely do you mean when you say that goodness is an ontological attribute?

I can't guarantee that my language is the most strictly correct and proper, philosophically speaking. What I'm trying to say is that God has revealed Himself as being good and there is every reason to trust Him. Further, there is no viable alternative for defining good in any useful way.


but on your terms no conceivable amount of harm (even the eternal harm of billions of souls) is unjustified so long as it is divinely ordained. Can you think of any harm which is unjustified, and in what sense is it so?

Former sentence is correct. For one thing, as I said before, we don't know the full plan of God and so have insuff information to judge. On atheism, I don't see any way to ground "justification", so that's another problem.
You asked for "any harm", in general, so I'd say that any and all evil committed by a created being, be it human or angel, would be unjustified harm. Sorry if that's not what you were asking for - elucidate the question and I'll be happy to respond to it.


it is only wrong to murder because God specifically forbade it?

I would say that, yes.
As I understand natural law theology (which is not all that well), I think a proponent thereof would disagree and say that it's also forbidden by natural law. I am not sufficiently versed in that to say either way.


you would say God just had to punish someone because He is perfectly just, so much so that ordinary outright forgiveness is logically impossible for Him

I guess you could say that, yes. The way that the law and justice are set up, wrongdoing must be punished.


justice (as we usually use the term) requires that the punishment for a given criminal fit his own crimes, God’s justice allows Him a loophole -- punish an innocent volunteer instead of the guilty party

Oh, I guess that wording, while a bit irreverent, fits, yes. The alternative is that, indeed, every criminal pay for his crimes, and his crimes are of infinite evil b/c they offend an infinitely holy God's holy law. God does not tolerate impurity in His presence, so we'd all be doomed forever to separation from Him. The only "candidate" for acting as substitute for mankind is God Himself.


Once again, it seems, you’ve run so far afoul or ordinary usage that you would actually be better off using antonyms.

And that would be a problem if I cared much about "ordinary usage". We do not judge God by man, but rather man by God.


Is God also being unjust in allowing sinners into heaven?

This is an excellent question, and speaks to the untruth of Islam. It's a major chink in the Islamic armor - Allah allows some sinful people into Paradise and the virgins and all that. And on what basis? Allah just --poof-- forgives the offenders.
The God of the Bible does no such thing. Take me as an example. All the times I've lied, been unjustifiably angry, looked with lust at a pretty girl, etc, these things have been fully punished. All the just punishment has been poured out on Christ on the Cross. My sin has been reckoned/imputed to Him and His perfect righteousness has been reckoned/imputed to me. Think of it as swapping bank accounts. At the Cross, I told Jesus I was sorry for all the 50% APR credit card debt I'd racked up and meant it. I asked Him for His Swiss bank acct containing €100 million. He agreed and did the switch.
Sounds crazy, right? To me too, but that's the reality. Christianity is too good to be true, only it really is true.
For those who reject the bank acct swap, they justly go to "debtor's prison". For those who accept the acct swap, they justly receive the money, since the guy who receives the bad debt has the resources to pay it. It's just that He's generous enough to share His incredible wealth with whomever might ask.


If they are non-believers, then by definition they *cannot* turn to God since they do not know God is really there.

God says that they DO know He exists - Romans 1:18-22. Further, that His law is written on their hearts, so that they have no excuse - Romans 2:10-15.
OTOH, it's true that they can't turn to God. For a person to turn to God, it requires a supernatural work on His part in their life.


I understand that you believe God is loving, but would not the hypothetical deity (affirmed by universalists) be far more loving than the one that you believe in?

How loving is it to refuse to punish all the evil done in the world? To arrive in Heaven and find an unrepentant Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot hanging out on the clouds with you? Especially since your last thought was "curse Hitler" as the SS guards threw the switch to flood your shower stall with sarin gas?
To arrive in Heaven and find the man who just finished raping and messily murdering you and your family there beside you?
I think this series of articles is very useful and illustrative of my meaning, for real.


I am *NOT* criticizing God but merely a man-made concept...

Fair enough, but you really do need to incorporate the idea of internal vs external critique into your argument. From my end, your viewpoint is man-made, and TGOTB really does exist.
So I ask myself - can atheism provide any grounding for making such moral critiques as I find here? So far I've not seen one, but I could be surprised someday.


But in this case you must give up on Anselm, because it becomes trivially easy to conceive of a greater being than the one you claim to worship.

Oh, that's a very interesting thought, actually!
I'll have to chew on that for a while, but I think you may very well have a great point WRT Anselm's ontological argument...

Peace,
Rhology

An independent thought about God

The previously-mentioned email correspondent asked me another question. This goes into a bit of my personal history of thought, but I shamelessly lay it out before you, my faithful trio of readers.

Question: Since you became a Christian, have you ever had a totally independent thought about God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, the Trinity, Satan, evil, good, Heaven, or Hell? If so, what do you consider the most salient one?

Answer:
First, a disclaimer - No one ever has any independent thoughts about anything, so strictly speaking, the answer is no. We are either controlled by evil (an oligarchy of the flesh, the devil, and the world) or by the Holy Spirit.

That's probably not what you meant, though, so I'll address this on a more colloquial level.
2 things come immediately to mind, and maybe more will occur before I finish writing this.

1) Earlier in my walk with God, I believed that God *would* without fail make sure that I understood theological truths about Him and about the Scripture (specifically, on whether it is justifiable to claim the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues, or glossolalia) based simply on the fact that I had prayed (and very earnestly, no lie) that He would lead me into these truths b/c, as I would tell people, "Why would God lie to me?"
What I forgot was, of course, that God has no obligation and has made no promise to telepathically reveal all theological truth on any given question based on even an earnest prayer. I can think of several reasons why, but at the time that didn't occur to me.
God used His Scripture (as He usually does) to shepherd me to a better understanding of this issue so that, after about 10 months of struggling with this issue, I realised that I had never observed nor performed speaking in tongues in a biblically-supportable way.

2) A little later, I think I came to a much fuller-than-it-previously-had-been realisation of the horror of Hell. It occurred to me that Jesus Christ, while He lived ~30 years as a human and suffered all our weaknesses, died for us, rose again as the 1st glorified human, etc, He had never gone to hell. How, then, I thought, could we say that God's been everywhere we've gone? Hell is SO horrible and SO eternal! How could it be eternal?
Many answers presented themselves to me. I find them fully intellectually satisfying and for the most part satisfying to my heart, but the horror of hell remains. It's a similar horror to the one I sometimes encounter when I talk to atheists. Specifically, sometimes the subject of morality is broached, in similar manner to the one in which you have broached it with me. I respond in the same way in which I respond to you. The wrangling then proceeds to the point that I sometimes ask them if they can unequivocally, rationally say "Hitler was in the moral wrong to murder 6 million Jews". A few times, these atheists have revealed that they are far more consistent than others with their own position: "No, what he did was right for him but wrong for me."
Therein lies the complete abdication of any possibility of any moral judgment at all. And this event is only 60 years removed from now!
The upshot is that this question is already academic for them - they have NEVER seen horror. The stacks of bodies they've seen in grainy photos are simply statistics, not humans with families, friends, and dreams. They pale in color and passion to the heroes and villains they see blown away on a daily basis on TV and video games. But I struggle and strive to remain cognizant of the horror of evil, and I express that in part by eschewing and even shooting down the occasional "Jew in the oven" joke or "heil Hitler" joke I hear.
THAT is the horror I mean.
Ironically, this is precisely one of the answers to the question. How evil is evil? Well, it's terribly, horribly evil. Justice demands punition of evil, and that's Hell. Evil is so evil it must be destroyed without question.
Other aspects to it:
-Sartre's comment that the door to hell is locked from the inside and related thoughts.
-The Bible doesn't say who torments the damned; it just says they are tormented. I think it's quite reasonable to believe that the damned, deprived even of God's common grace, will torment and tear each other to pieces for eternity, thus incurring eternally continuing sin and justifying their eternal punishment.
-The damned knew, in life, that God exists and that they are lawbreakers and yet rejected Him anyway. Why would God bring them to heaven against their will? CS Lewis said: "There are 2 kinds of people: Those who say to God 'Thy will be done' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'THY will be done.'"

Why did God delay?

An email correspondent asked this:
Would I be correct in assuming your answer is in essence that you haven't a clue, guess, thought, speculation, or hypothesis concerning why God postponed telling man anything significant about the Trinity, Heaven and Hell until two-thirds of the generations of man were dead?

I had earlier answered a less-developed question, but he has pressed, desiring a fuller explanation. I thought my answer would be worth sharing here (but I could have been wrong to think that):

No, it's not that I don't have a clue, it's just that God almost certainly hasn't revealed all His reasons.
So I'll take another stab at it.
1st, He may have waited until 2/3 of generations of man were dead, but certainly not until 2/3 of all humans that will ever live have died. Also, we have no idea how many generations of man WILL pass by before the end comes. This earth could well go on so long that God's delay in fuller self-revelation would leave an inconsequential segment of humanity unrevealed-to in the past, if you will, compared to how many will have lived since.
2nd, getting to what He has explicitly said, like I said, He waited until the time was full. The only "why" I can give is that God ordains all that comes to pass, so He planned that Christ would come when He did. It's all according to His plan.
3rd, God desired to glorify Himself and provide evidence to humanity of His existence, goodness, and provision by giving prophecies thru His prophets and Scripture beforehand and then carry out and fulfill said prophecies.
4th, related to #3, God apparently enjoys foreshadowing the future and preparing types of the still-to-come antitypes/fulfillments. An example is Adam (type/foreshadowing) and Jesus Christ (2nd Adam, as fulfillment, antitype) (see Romans 4-5).
5th, God is glorified thru His people exercising faith in His goodness and provision based on what He has done before and His promises. The books of Hebrews (chapter 11) and 1 Peter discuss how the holy men and women who came before us were recipients of promises, but in most cases, they did not receive the promised-for things b/c they were for the benefit of future generations. They were mostly to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

And I reiterate that the OT has a doctrine of afterlife, Hell and Heaven both are foreshadowed in significant ways.
The Triune nature of God is foreshadowed in, among other ways, multiple OT references to the Holy Spirit and angelophanies of the "angel of the LORD", who is clearly divine and whose identity is, in fact, very probably the preincarnate Christ, and the oft-stated axiom that "to see God is to die". Yet people saw God. How, if not by a Triune God?

Timing is everything!

Adam has commented, and I thank him for his responses. He's lost a little fleetness of foot since the last time we talked, but hopefully he can get it back.

-Funny that Paul rebuked Hymenaeus for his timing, not for what he taught.

I doubt he called his TIMING "gangrene".

-It is interesting that Paul never corrected Hymenaeus on his teaching of HOW the New Kingdom would come.

3-4 sentences in the NT deal w/ him. Let's look elsewhere. You can start w/ all the psgs I've already cited.

-Any Christian then could look around and see that nothing really changed, but they didn't call him out on THAT -- just the timing. Paul also knew that the New Kingdom would come spiritually, not physically.

That's an interesting thing to say. Let me ask you sthg.

1 Cor 15:50-52 says we will all be changed. In 70 AD, what happened to the Corinthian church? How were they changed?

-Christ Himself said it would not be visible.

Where?

-As to 2 Peter 3, I think we can agree that the 1000 years/1 day comes from Psalm 90, correct?

Oh, perhaps.
You know, if you're going to get snarky about the interp of what 1000 yrs means, how do you justify transmogrifying it into less than 40 years?

-They're not saying that "at hand" or "quickly" means thousands of years, at all.

An assertion that fails to take the context into acct. The context is people like you, the scoffers, who say "Where is the promise of His coming?"
You know, in 2000 yrs they haven't stopped saying that.

-They're just showing God's patience

You don't believe in God's patience b/c you find it unconscionable that God could wait more than a few decades to accomplish His grand plan.

-quickly means quickly.

You mean like in Ezek 12:21-28?
I see "the days are near" in there, as well as "but in your days, O rebellious house...I will perform it" and particularly 27-28:

26And the word of the LORD came to me: 27"Son of man, behold, they of the house of Israel say, 'The vision that he sees is for many days from now, and he prophesies of times far off.' 28Therefore say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: None of my words will be delayed any longer, but the word that I speak will be performed, declares the Lord GOD."

And yet the New Covenant, to which this refers, came about 400 years later!
Your insistence on timing being more important than WHAT THE THING IS is bunk. God is way bigger than you think He is.

-just as the unbelieving Jews of the 1st Century were,

I believe that God's judgment fell on them in 70 AD. But that's not The Judgment, it's not The Resurrection, it's not The Parousia. How do I know? Tons of things the Bible tells us will happen then didn't.

-Romans 5:18 says that Christ's Return was for everyone, by the way. It doesn't save for believers alone.

True, but His return will be judgment, fearful wrath for unbelievers.

-Romans 5, and I see no place where the curse of Adam would be lifted.

I was referring to the dichotomy between Adam = Death/Condemnation and Christ = life/justification.
The Curse of Genesis 3 does have, after all, "and to dust you shall return." That's where death came in.

-I'm not sure where you read that mortal things won't decay

Exactly - it's your ludicrous position that made me bring it up. Things decay NOW. In the eternal Kingdom, they won't. Ergo, this is not the eternal Kingdom.

-It is obvious from the mess that the temples of organized religion are in that very few indeed do understand that the Kingdom is now, and the Ecclesia of God is within all to grasp. So many mortal lives wasted in judgment of others instead of loving others and serving others.

Your theology is an absolute catastrophe.

-the nations would still exist. And they do.

Why is that a problem for my position?

-Revelation was NOT about destroying this mortal earth

Is 65:17
Rev 21:1 (Turi already brought this up - I am losing confidence in your reading comprehension and retention abilities)
2 Pet 3:10
It's hard to have a new earth w/o blowing up the 1st.

-We are given new spiritual and holy bodies, but our mortal bodies don't change.

This assertion did not deal w/ the psgs I cited to the contrary. You need to interact w/ those.

-but the imperishable spiritual ones can, and do!

But *CHRIST'S* body was not merely spiritual - check 1 John for that one.
Wow - a Hymenaean, a Gnostic, AND a Docetist. You're racking up the points, my friend.

-lying has nothing to do with Revelation.

P1: It says liars will not enter in.
P2: I say Christ is raised PHYSICALLY as will we all, in the eternal Kingdom.
P3: You say we're already in the eternal Kingdom.

S: Therefore, I'm a liar and did not enter in.

Crude syllogism, but it demonstrates the incoherence of your position.

-Repent from what?

Your sin.

-I don't lie. I don't trick others in believing me. I use the very Book to show people God's Love for everyone, even the non-believer (but especially the believer). I give away all of my extra earnings to those who believe.

And your prideful arrogance.

-I don't believe in 'churches' as even in the Book we don't see denominations or churches

You are blind - >80% of references to 'ecclesia' in the NT are to local bodies of believers.

-For those who ignore it, they are not condemned.

See my previous post on Hell.

-If you believe people are condemned, where do they go after mortal death?

Hell.

-If you believe salvation is for today, who is saved?

Those who are justified by God's grace through faith alone.

-Jesus said only the few would see the Kingdom in His timeframe, so how is it that 2.1 billion Christians would be "a few" (?)

You forgot the context - He's contrasting "the many" w/ "the few". Few will find life in comparison w/ the many who go to destruction.

-Stop going to your congregations

Heb 10:23-25
There's another thing to repent of - exhorting others to disobey God.

-He prepared such a glorious and perfect Kingdom for us, here and now

The sad thing is that you're settling for this earth, and you will settle - this is as close to Heaven as you're ever going to get, unless you repent.

Peace.

Hell is not in the Bible

Adam said:

And what exactly is your Biblical basis for "destruction" (?)...there is no Hell in the Bible

You know, you're not the only one in the world who has a problem w/ the doctrine of Hell. Mormons do, JWs do, atheists definitely do, liberals do.
But it's just not a possible position to hold if you care about the Bible.

Matt 7:13 - For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction,
Matt 7:23 - And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'
Matt 10:28 - Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Matt 11:24 - But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you."
Matt 12:37-41 - for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned...The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.
Matt 23:33 - You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?
Matt 25:41 & 46 - Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels...And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
John 5:24 - He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
John 5:28-29 - Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

You who claim to care so much about not making Jesus out to be a liar, you have no excuse not to believe in the eternal punishment of the reprobate.

Hear what the rest of the Scripture has to say:

Is 66:24 - "And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh."
Dan 12:2 - And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Rom 2:5 - But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.
Rom 2:8 - but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.
Rom 2:12 - For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.
Rom 5:18 - Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men,
Rom 6:23 - For the wages of sin is death
Rom 8:3 - By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh
2 Thess 1:9 - They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might
Jude 7 - just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
Jude 12-13 - 12These are blemishes on your love feasts...casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
Rev 14:11 - And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name."
Rev 20:15 - And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

There's more where that came from, but that's a good start.