Well, hold on there. If God doesn’t work it out to my satisfaction, he can’t be the real God. Right?
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That’s bad. Not as bad as relocating the offender and pressuring the victims to stay silent, but still bad.
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Yes, and the point is that some people have given themselves over entirely to evil. Demons have certainly done so, so why should human beings be any different? I would even go so far as to say that some humans are more depraved than demons themselves.
Well yes, there is that too. Which is why the Psalm 69:22-29 even exists.
Especially Psalm 69:27-28: “Charge them with crime upon crime;do not let them share in your salvation. May they be blotted out of the book of life and not be listed with the righteous.”
But I suspect Hell will be like that: a state of extreme self-loathing that devours the soul for eternity. I am not certain whether there will be literal hellfire. From John 5:28-29, we know that even the damned will receive a resurrected body, though certainly not a glorified one. I therefore assume that, after the final resurrection, there will also be some form of physical suffering in Hell. Even so, I agree with you that the true agony will be the self-loathing that overwhelms them. Self-loathing, anguish, despair. Is that not what Jesus suggested in the case of Judas, when he said that it would have been better for him never to have been born?
And I don’t believe this leaves any room for restoration. The doctrine of final restoration was dogmatically condemned by an ecumenical council, Constantinople II; and because I believe that God the Holy Spirit preserves the Church from dogmatically teaching falsehood, that doctrine can never be persuasive to me. Furthermore, Jesus spoke of a “worm that never dies”, which seems clear enough to me. Most exegetes have understood this to mean the worm of conscience, but such a worm would surely die if universal restoration were possible. Also, how could Jesus’ statement about Judas make any sense if Judas were ultimately to be saved and restored at the end of time? His eventual salvation would surely mean that it could not be said of him that it would have been better for him never to have been born. And yet Jesus said precisely that: “The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”
And even if that were somehow not clear enough, the Second Council of Constantinople, the Fourth Lateran Council, and the witness of the overwhelming majority of the Church Fathers would be sufficient for me.
I respect the fact that some Christians believe in final restoration, but I cannot embrace that view, because I take dogmatic pronouncements with the utmost seriousness. I do not believe that Jesus founded the Church only to allow it (and the successors of the apostles) to teach falsehood as though it were doctrine to be believed with certainty. Like the Church Fathers and the earliest Christians, I believe that the authentic interpretation of Scripture belongs to the Church, not to the individual, which is why I can’t embrace that view. And even if I were a Scripture alone Christian, I would still hold that the Gospels themselves, in their plain sense, point to eternal damnation as something real, not as something that will ultimately be undone by restoration.
That comment hits one of the crucial points. Humans seem to put much weight on justice, that all are treated with the same rules and all get their fair payback. Many are even willing to suffer worse living conditions if they think that all are treated equally. I have read research papers on the topic but so long ago that I do not remember now what those papers were.
God is not fully fair. The ‘problem’ with God is that He is ‘too’ merciful. When our sense of justice demands fair payback, He may forgive or give too abundantly.
Jesus told a parable about workers who all get the same payment, even when some work the whole day and some only an hour. Those working the whole working day complain because they think that they should get more salary than those that only worked an hour. The answer pointed to the freedom of the owner to do good with his money - those working the whole day get their fair salary but the others are given more than they earned because the owner is good.
In the case of a woman caught in the act of adultery, Jesus told that he who is sinless should throw the first stone. Jesus did not accept the adultery but he was willing to give another possibility to the woman: go and sin no more. That was also a case where the ‘criminal’ (the woman) did not get a fair payback that she deserved according to the law.
I have struggled with these questions for decades, since I had to make a choice between lethal/violent responses (taking a weapon in military) vs. non-violent actions (conscientious objector). My instinctive responses lean towards the former but I chose the latter because of my understanding of what the will of God was for me. When there was a hearing about the reasons why I refused to take a weapon, there were many imaginary scenarios and the question of how would I react in such situations?
I have been thinking about the correct reactions to such imaginary scenarios even afterwards, especially after I got children. How would I respond if someone hurts my children? The basic ‘gut instict’ reaction would be quite violent but I think that it is the reaction of the ‘flesh’, not of the Spirit.
It has demanded quite much mental processing to overcome the basic instinct reactions to wrongdoings.
We may think that my wrongdoings are not as bad as those of Hitler, Stalin, the pedophiles who have seriously hurt and killed children, or comparable evildoers. Yet, in front of God my wrongdoings deserve as serious punishment. We should hate the crimes but treat the criminals as we would like to be treated ourselves. Even better: if I was forgiven, I should show the same forgiving attitude towards those who have done wrong against me and my dear ones.
That does not mean that we should close our eyes from crimes and release all criminals from prisons. Crimes are punished according to law and as long as the law is just, the criminals need to accept that there are consequences of their acts. The judicial system takes care of the legal consequences. For ourselves, what it is more important is our attitude towards those who do wrong against us and the people around us. If I demand full payback, it is like demanding the same judgement to the person that looks at me from the mirror.
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Why does the existence of some who exhibit much evil cause you to reject the teachings of the first two chapters of Genesis? Why not just as easily say that the birth of an innocent child refutes the notion that “all are inherently evil”? You start your theology with Genesis 3 (and won’t even get that right because skipping over Genesis 1 and 2 causes your theology to go askew from the very beginning.) God’s creation is good - including humanity! And that observation was and has never been revoked. Genesis 3 shows how we have marred the image of God - distorted it - run away from it or ignored it to be sure - but at no point in scriptures is it ever retracted as no longer true. Even the theology of “the curse” as it now gets used runs afoul of scriptures, even in Genesis already as we read of God revoking the curse in Genesis 9. But I won’t attempt to build yet more doctrinal castles in the sky on an already over-used emphasis that tries to make “the fall” more theologically foundational than Creation itself. (And even ‘Creation’ is not any foundational cornerstone for the Christian, as that position belongs to Christ and Christ alone - but that’s a whole separate Creationist issue.)
That is quite a statement there! Re-read that to see if you really mean it! So the church can never get anything wrong, eh? I guess “the church” doesn’t really exist at all then! Even Christ’s own disciples in their later apostolic roles still got things wrong. Are you going to claim they weren’t really an early form of ‘the church’?
Jesus does have harsh words, as you say - indeed towards any who lead children astray. And indeed we see Judas apparently agree with Jesus as he “applies his own millstone” and takes his own life in remorse. But jumping from that toward trying to build a later doctrine of eternal conscious torment such as became developed under Anselm many centuries later is a stretch that scriptures themselves just don’t support beyond - again - trying to build entire doctrinal castles on modern re-understandings of a few scattered proof-texts. I understand how verses from the Bible get applied this way - I grew up with it too. But after reading the scripturally sourced takedowns of that view, it is impossible for me to ‘unsee’ that now. The “Good news” of the gospel is no longer good news at all under the damnationist misappropriations of scriptures. It’s the gospel I want to live into and up to - not its antithesis.
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…Fair for everybody else that is! We generally tend more to covet grace when it comes to ourselves. Yeah, ‘justice’ (for others) is something we have a bit of a white-knuckled death grip on! Haidt describes it well too in “The Righteous Mind”: the notion of “fairness / cheating” plays big in our minds, even if we never consistently apply it when it comes to ourselves and our own loved ones. We will willingly suffer much rather than let somebody else “game the system”. As you mention, Jesus’ parables hit on this theme repeatedly, as exemplified by “the older brother”, and other parables you mention.
That is an interesting case! And you may be right, but I’d still speculatively push back on this by at least applying some doubt. Could we really characterize “the law” as being more fair than Jesus? I no longer just easily buy into the notion that justice and mercy are opposed to each other. I think they both find their unified perfection together in Christ. I.e. - If Christ is merciful, then it must have been perfectly just for him to be so; and if Christ is just, then it must have been the infinitely merciful thing as well. These two things cannot be opposed to each other, though, again, I understand how certain passages could be leveraged to make it seem so. I think such passages are accommodations to our foreseen problems with it … “these Kingdom values are not going to seem fair at all to the early vineyard workers or the indignant older brothers looking on.” Our glib response to our own kids that “life just isn’t fair” probably isn’t serious commentary on the real and final state of all life as it is our merely entering into and acknowledging our children’s perception of it. In the end, and with Christ’s eternal perspective I suggest that our charges of “unfairness” just melt away as nothing under the higher lights of love that we will then be able to see with. And at that point, I have faith that we will acknowledge that Christ was not being unfair when he refuses the religious leaders from having their way (or ostensibly - Moses’ way according to them) with the adulterous woman.
There are many commendable reasons to make exactly these kinds of efforts to break the evil cycle of violence. Satan rejoices in our violence - which is obedience to him. Christ does not. Living in an evil world as we do, we are surrounded with it, and it always leads to and sews the seeds for more to come. It’s Satan’s kind of playground, and we make ourselves his allies in our insistence on keeping it that way. Christ will triumph over all that in the end. That is the gospel I want to live and die for. Lord help me. You’re right that it seems impossible to live in a violent world without indulging in at least “some accepted violence” ourselves. And I think scriptures acknowledge this, even though they stop short of calling it good or as having any final part in God’s kingdom. When one strays deep into the weeds, it seems there will always be more wading through weeds to find a path back out. Violence always leads to more violence.
They generally aren’t. Have you deliberately murdered millions of people? The doctrine that an innocent little child deserves the same torturous and eternal fate as Stalin just because God is infinitely affronted by even the slightest little “sin” such as even we fallen ones can easily forgive and even overlook, -that “drunk uncle” version of an angry God is a loathsome relic of a wayward Calvinism that has built its damnationist theologies on Genesis 3 at the expense of the Gospels and nearly all the rest of scriptures. This isn’t to trivialize any sin - indeed quite the opposite. It is to recognize the relative gravities of all our sin as Jesus did when he charges the religious leaders to attend to the greater matters of justice and mercy without neglecting the former (lesser matters). Jesus has no problem recognizing that some sins are of greater consequence than others, and this without saying that minor sins can or should be ignored. (Though I would go on to say He gives us a more accurate view of what all we should be taking offense at - as he and his disciples were certainly accused of making loose with the law about such things as harvesting on the sabbath.)
No - if any are worried that the Stalins or Hitlers or pedophiles of the world are just going to get a forgiving “pat on the head” - then that only shows a complete misunderstanding of Christ and all his apostles after him. And no amount of retributive torture (even to eternity) goes an inch towards actual and real justice for all their victims. Obedience to Christ is a thing. A very real and concrete thing that is inseparable from the Gospel message. We all are in need of God’s grace to get there - I’ll agree with that part of reformed theologies. But in these regards, it seems to me that the gospels are a source of both comfort (good news) as well as afflictions (especially towards all of us who are part of ‘religious establishment’) - warnings for us. But the bad news is not as bad as the good news is good. There is no eternal yin-yang symmetry there. One of these things is not like the other - thanks be to God!
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Yes, all sins are not equal and the differences matter. How, that is a decisions I leave to God because I do not know.
Also yes to your criticism that “an innocent little child” would be condemned like the adult Stalin.
I support the teaching in Ezekiel 18 - we are judged based on our own sins, not because of what our parents or ancient relatives did. If ‘an innocent little child’ would be condemned, that would be because of an inherited doom and I do not support that interpretation. Augustine of Hippo was a child of his time and he misunderstood that point. It is sad that the speculation of Augustine was accepted by a council and got such an important role in the western tradition of Christianity.
And by the way, I am not a Calvinist and have not grown in a society where Calvinist teachings would have played an influential role. Calvinism cannot be accused if some of my interpretations sound unorthodox.
What I was thinking when writing my comment was that our sins are probably not as ‘light’ as some seem to think when they compare themselves to the worst cases. I assume that none of us could ‘throw the first stone’ because we have also done things that are wrong in the eyes of God. Matthew 5-7 can act as a truthful mirror for us and those teachings set the bar high.
If we are guilty and need forgiveness, then we should not condemn the other sinners like we would be much better than them.
Just for clarification: I do support the principle that the judicial system condemns those who have done crimes. Forgiveness does not mean that we can just sweep the crimes under the rug.
Even in churches, demanding forgiveness and forgetting from the victims of sexual abuse is often abuse of power. I have heard the victims tell how it feels sitting in the church and watching how their abuser is treated as a respected pillar of the congregation by people who do not know of the crimes that the person has done. Also, it is common that slipping unpunished from such a crime encourages further abuse.
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I was using your post as an excellent springboard towards a more general reaction, so sorry that it felt all directed at you.
And while I’m obviously not harkening from a Calvinist tradition either, I should always be adding that there is much of value in reformed traditions too and I’m not always just trying to throw the whole tradition under the bus, though one could be forgiven for thinking so when I get off on a ramble.
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You are arguing against a position I am not actually taking.
I am not denying Genesis 1–2, nor am I saying that creation is evil, that humanity ceased to bear the image of God, or that the fall is more ultimate than creation. My point is simpler: Genesis 3 matters because it explains the present moral condition of humanity. Affirming the goodness of creation is not the same thing as denying the reality or depth of human sin.
So yes, God’s creation is good, and humanity as created by God is good. But that does not remove the need to account for the universality of sin, rebellion, and corruption in actual human life. Saying that humanity is fallen is not the same as saying that creation itself was bad, or that the image of God was erased. It means that what was created good is now profoundly disordered.This is what the Church has always taught.
I have never claimed that the Church is incapable of making any mistake. What I am saying is that it cannot dogmatically teach falsehood to Christians and lead them astray for centuries, because that would place it in direct contradiction to Christ’s own words regarding the Holy Spirit that will lead us to all the truth and the gates of Hell that will not prevail against His Church.
For the same reason, I don’t regard the free examination of Scripture as a principle belonging to the early Church; it is, rather, a much later development that contradicts the life of the early Church and the early Christians. I respect Christians who adopt that criterion, but it is not and never will be mine.
If Judas were ultimately saved and happy for all eternity, it would make no sense for Jesus to say that it would have been better for Judas never to have been born. That is the point. In the same way, it would make no sense to speak of a worm that never dies if the worm does, in fact, die in the end and Judas is eventually saved.
As I said, I am not sure whether there will be literal hellfire, but the texts strongly point to eternal damnation and argue against restoration. The rule of faith of the early Church (which served as the criterion for the early Christians, who believed that the final interpretation belonged to the Church, contrary to the Reformers ) has also understood them in that way.
If you don’t agree, I respect that, but I am certainly not going to claim that the early Church, the Doctors of the Church, many saints, and many ecumenical councils led the faithful astray for millennia, and that we modern Christians (conditioned by the enlightenment principles) know better than they did.
Again, I know that many Christians in perfect good faith think this way. I respect that, but I will never agree with that point of view. After the reformation we have 47.000 different christian denominations which continue to split up even now (a user a couple of weeks ago opened a topic in distress because his own Church has just split-up), I certainly don’t think that it’s God’s positive will or that this is what He intended when he told us that the Holy Spirit would have guided us into all the truth.
To say that this doctrine was created by Anselm is historically untenable. If by “this doctrine” one means eternal punishment, then the idea is clearly attested long before Anselm. Justin Martyr speaks of “eternal fire” and ‘everlasting punishment’; Irenaeus speaks of “everlasting fire” and of the “eternal punishment of unbelievers”; and Augustine devotes Book XXI of The City of God to the ‘eternal punishment of the damned,’ explicitly arguing that it is presumptuous to deny the eternity of that punishment when Christ himself says that the wicked go away into “eternal punishment
If on the other hand, one means the satisfaction account of the atonement, Anselm still did not invent it out of nothing. What historians say is that Cur Deus Homo is the classic or first systematic presentation of the satisfaction theory, not the creation of Christian doctrine ex nihilo. The standard scholarly description is that Anselm’s work is the locus classicus of the satisfaction model, while Catholic reference works describe it as the first systematic presentation of the doctrine of redemption.
He argues that sin cannot fittingly be left “without compensation or punishment”, that the sinner owes God satisfaction for the honor withheld, and that only one who is truly man can repay humanity’s debt while only one who is truly God can do so sufficiently. So even where Anselm is original, he is systematizing and rationally articulating an existing doctrinal inheritance, not inventing the doctrine of eternal hell.
And to receive the salvation that Christ offers one must be willing and open to accept it, which can hardly be done if one’s own entire disposition and being is devoted to evil. I don’t think that there are so much people like this, I do believe that most people will end up saved after being purified, but i also think that there actually are some people who are corrupted to a point that they will not accept redemption and will lose themselves.
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Well, I think you should ask yourself why Jesus behaves so mercifully toward the adulterous woman, yet calls others ‘sons of the Devil’ and says that it would have been better for Judas (whom He also calls the “son of perdition”) never to have been born.
I will say it again: would it make any sense to say that it would have been better for Judas never to have been born if his final destiny were everlasting joy, delight, and happiness in Heaven, even after a very long and severe period of suffering? Clearly not. If someone is ultimately saved and eternally happy, then it is obviously far better for that person to have been born than not. And yet Jesus says precisely the opposite: that Judas would have been better off had he never been born. How this can be reconciled with final restoration (a doctrine which, as I said, has been dogmatically condemned as heretical, though let us set that aside for the moment) is quite beyond me.
You’ve said yourself: it’s Calvinism. Something that Calvin made up with his own private judgment, certainly not something that was taught by the Church, much less dogmatically.
Calvin believed in unconditional election (something which he made up because he clearly thought he knew better than the Church) and argued that if a baby was not among the elect, their age did not save them from being condemned.
But the Church never defined dogmatically what happens to unbaptized babies.
Actually the Church entrusts them to the mercy of God and says that we may hope that there is a way of salvation for them. Even the limbo has never entered into the dogmatic definitions of the Magisterium, and the Church teaches there are serious theological and liturgical grounds for hoping that these children may be saved.
And among the fathers of the Church already Saint Ambrose left open the possibility of their salvation. Actually she (the Church) teaches that we can confidently hope in their salvation, even if we don’t have absolute certainty.
Jesus also talk about those who are invited to the wedding and present themselves without the wedding clothes.
Matthew 22:11-13: “ “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless. Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
What do we make of that?
This is not true at all. While it’s true that all of us have committed some sins deserving damnation and that all of us would be lost if not for God’s grace and our assent to it, it’s also true that different sins deserve different punishments, so to say that your sins are as bad in God’s eyes as the sins of someone who kills millions of people or rejoices in the suffering of the innocents is completely wrong. Which, again, doesn’t mean that you can claim a right to salvation or that all sins aren’t hated by God, because they clearly are. But there is also a clear difference between them.
And yes, I am absolutely better, one million times better, than a vile animal who thrives on the suffering of children. There is no doubt about it. To be honest I’m even disgusted by the fact that we belong to the same species and I would argue that probably even most demons aren’t as depraved as the people I have exposed in my first post in this topic.
Does this mean that I wouldn’t be 100% damned and lost if not for God’s Grace? Not at all. I have unfortunately committed many sins deserving God‘s punishment and eternal condemnation, if not for His grace, there is no doubt about it. But even in Hell there are degrees of punishments.
One should also recognize one’s own limitations. I would not forgive someone who harmed my children; I am not capable of that. Nor can I say that I would wish for such a person to repent and receive God’s salvation. I would accept it if they were ultimately saved (“thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”), but I certainly cannot say that this is what I desire. I’m human and I have my own limitations, not being able to forgive literally everything is one of those (and I suspect that if someone really puts himself in the shoes of the victims and the relatives of the victims it would become much harder for them as well).
Some sins simply cross a line. No normal human being can commit them without first destroying his own conscience (this doesn’t mean that they can’t possibly be saved, but it’s far more difficult because when you commit certain sins your conscience is certainly not the same anymore). If a person is mentally ill and his free will is seriously impaired, that is, of course, an entirely different matter.
I also believe that many people are so eager to forgive (even more so, in some cases, than Jesus Himself) because they fundamentally reject, whether consciously or not, the doctrine of original sin. Instead, they have embraced the anti-Christian notion inherited from the Enlightenment: that human beings are born fundamentally good, and that if they commit evil, it is only because some external factor—their upbringing, education, trauma, and so on—has driven them to it.
I don’t accept that view. It also contradicts observable reality, since many people are raised in horrific conditions and yet still turn out to be more than decent human beings. But once one rejects the doctrine of original sin, and also the idea that we are, in most cases, sufficiently free to choose between right and wrong, then it becomes easier to see why someone might cling to the doctrine of universal restoration, despite its having been condemned multiple times.
Exactly. The next step is to ask why He was merciful toward her, yet utterly severe with those who harmed children. Where do you find a word of mercy for them, or for Judas, or for those He called “sons of the devil”? Jesus is clearly not equally merciful to all people. Perhaps it is because some people remain redeemable, while others have closed themselves off to the action of divine grace. Perhaps it is because some sins are graver than others, not because they are intrinsically unforgivable, but because they so darken the conscience that they lead a person to final impenitence and to the sin against the Holy Spirit, which is indeed unforgivable.
2 Peter 2:4-10: “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment( if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the flesh and despise authority.”
And I have another question: if final restoration is true, why have Christians never prayed for the repentance of the devil and the other fallen angels, for example? Why is that? Perhaps because final restoration is not true, which is also why the vast majority of Church fathers didn’t believe in it and the Church dogmatically condemned it?
I‘m sorry but it’s false and gravely misleading to say that the Western doctrine of original sin and infant baptism was simply “Augustine’s speculation” later accepted by a council. The practice of infant baptism and the conviction that infants need regeneration far predate Augustine and belong to a much older tradition, attested in both East and West. Origen, Cyprian, Siricius, and Innocent I already stand within this line, and Carthage in 418 did nothing more than condemn those who denied that newborn children contract from Adam something that must be cleansed in baptism.
The Church was already baptizing infants “for the remission of sins” before him, and when the first direct testimonies appear in the second century, infant baptism is never presented as an innovation. The ancient custom of baptizing infants was used against Pelagius even before Augustine, by figures such as Origen and Cyprian, precisely as confirmation of the Church’s faith in original sin.
The second error concerns Ezekiel 18. The Church doesn’t teach that a child bears the personal guilt of Adam or of his parents, she rather teaches that original sin is a sin “contracted and not committed” and that it “does not have the character of a personal fault” in the descendants of Adam. So the objection, “Ezekiel 18 says that we are not judged for the sins of our fathers,” is really directed at a caricature of the doctrine, at a strawman of the doctrine; not at the doctrine itself. The doctrine has never been: “the child is guilty of someone else’s sin.” Rather, it is: the child is born in a nature deprived of original holiness, and for that reason needs the grace of Christ.
Also the Council of Carthage in the canon 418 didn’t simply adopt Augustine wholesale. The most serious historical reconstruction shows that Augustine, in opposition to Pelagius, came to maintain that infants who die without baptism are assigned to hell, albeit in the form of the “mildest condemnation.” Yet the same historical picture also makes clear that the Council of Carthage, while condemning Pelagius and teaching that infants contract original sin and must be baptized, didn’t explicitly endorse every aspect of Augustine’s severe position on the fate of infants who die without baptism (and the fathers never claimed to be the final interpreters of the Scriptures and Tradition, the Church was considered to be the final interpreter of doctrine). And even today she teaches that she entrustes them to God’s mercy and that we can have a solid hope that they will be saved, as I have already shown to Mervin. So the council received the anti-Pelagian core concerning original sin and the necessity of baptism (which, again, far predates Augustine), but it didb’t canonize in one stroke the harshest form of Augustine’s position on the final destiny of unbaptized infants.
Knor, please, let’s get our facts straights. Even a week or two ago you said that the fourth Lateran council was influenced by Dante, while Dante was born 50 years after the Council.
Not just babies. I’m talking small children here that would and will already exhibit willful “attitude” as far as most disciplining adults present are concerned. To be equating these relative innocents with the sins of older and egregiously evil killers or pedophiles and such is still just as heinous.
To equate all sin as being “equally horrible” before God may have some grain of truth in it, in that none of it will be tolerated, but such a doctrine has an unfortunate effect on us of making it seem like we are all just equally and horribly (hopelessly) deplorable before God, and therefore there is no cause to even try. It’s like deciding that jaywalkers should be treated the same as serial killers in your society. The only result such a horrible society as that would produce is to turn everybody equally into “hardened criminals” all worthy of the same punishment. Justice is turned on its head and rendered meaningless and non-existent.
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Yes, I absolutely agree. But I don’t think that any person with a sane mind would equate them, to be honest.
Even here I agree 1000%
P.s
It should also be noted that some pedophiles are attracted to children but never act on those desires, because they recognize that such urges are deeply evil. These people illustrate what I was referring to: human beings, in their fallen nature, may sometimes develop terrible inclinations, yet those inclinations can be controlled, and a person can still distinguish right from wrong and decide to act in the right way, with the help of God’s grace.
One concrete example is this man right here 'I'm a paedophile, not a monster,' claims Tennessee man | The Independent | The Independent
Or this one Meet pedophiles who mean well - Salon.com
Having very evil inclinations is an unfortunate consequence of the fall, but you can still be a very good person if you recognize them for what they are and make the right choice.
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They are human beings. Stop calling them creatures. And while I’m at it, I flagged your post for the moderators. We don’t need videos of killing on the forum. This isn’t freaking Reddit.
Bringing up the Enlightenment in this context is just weird. The existence of mental illness – whether psychopathy, schizophrenia, or depression – isn’t the result of the “fall.” It’s the result of our large brains. Animals don’t suffer mental illness at nearly the rate of humans, and their problems are mostly limited to what we would call being neurotic, which is overly fearful and aggressive toward strangers.
The monsters are human beings who do monstrous things. If we do monstrous things to them in return, we all become monsters.
I agree with everything you said except this. Adultery or envy are not nearly as serious as killing millions of people.
I take it back. I also disagree with this. Setting aside the fact this passage is a late addition to John, the law on stoning adulterers hadn’t been enforced in decades, if not hundreds of years.
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It was a video of a tv show. It wasn’t a real killing.
The claim that psychopathy and evil tendencies would have existed even without the Fall (which you probably don’t even believe existed at all) is your opinion, not mine. I stay with what Christianity has always taught on the subject.
Define “monstrous things”. Jailing someone for life and making sure that they can think about what they have done without endless distractions and divertissements is not being monstrous at all. Which is what I want for that kind of people. I’m not saying we should torture them. I would say that (I’m not denying this) if I weren’t a Christian though, 1000%.
Ontologically they are human beings but they don’t behave as such (you can’t tell me that the actual rejoicing in the suffering and death of children isn’t something extraordinarily depraved even for criminals). And it’s a choice. As I have shown there are people who have evil tendencies and decide not to act on them because they recognize how evil those tendencies are and they decide to act in the right way.
Duh. Also gratuitous violence that borders on revenge fantasies. Take it somewhere else. Use your words.
I refer you again to the Forum rules on Gracious Dialogue:
- Focus on discussing other people’s ideas, not on evaluating their character, faith, communication style, or perceived “tone.” Please avoid attributing beliefs, motivations, or attitudes to others.
As a matter of fact, I wrote a 10,000-word peer-reviewed article on the historicity of the “fall.” I’ll spare you the link.
The claim that mental illnesses didn’t suddenly appear with the “fall” isn’t my opinion. It’s a scientific fact. You can choose to believe anything you want about the consequences of the “fall,” but believing it doesn’t make it true.
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It’s not a scientific fact unless you can determine when the fall actually happened. If the historical A&E were the first metaphysical humans (which is entirely possible as far as we know) , one may coherently hold that Adam and Eve were the first true human beings in the sense that they weren’t merely biologically human, but endowed by God with rational souls. In that original state, human nature existed under original justice and the preternatural gift of integrity, so that the lower appetites were rightly subject to reason and reason itself to God. For that reason, disordered inclinations, concupiscence, and the inner fragmentation proper to fallen nature did not belong to man as created, but to man as deprived of original justice through sin. Accordingly, while one may grant that biological vulnerabilities could exist at the level of animal nature considered materially, it is entirely consistent to say that such disorders were not proper to human nature as elevated, ordered, and preserved by God prior to the Fall.
For example both Craig and Kennet’s views about original sin are scientifically possible Adam & Eve: A Survey of Models for Catholics .
So this sentence
Needs a correction, because it’s not a “scientific” fact that metaphysical humans were plagued by mental illnesses and evil tendencies before the “fall” (you used quotation marks for it and I don’t know why at this point). It would actually be an oxymoron, if you think about it. But it’s not even clear if this is what you actually meant, so i will wait for a clarification.
Ok you are right but at this point I don’t exactly know your view on the subject, it’s not clear what you think about it.
“Metaphysical humans” is the misnomer. I can provide you with scientific evidence of dogs and other animals suffering from mental illness. It didn’t suddenly appear with the “fall.” But animals don’t become schizophrenic or suffer from hallucinations and delusions. That takes a bigger brain. I can also provide you with evidence of Neanderthals and other previous hominins with their skulls smashed in by violence. Sin didn’t suddenly appear at the “fall.” Humanity just reached the point where they recognized evil for what it was.
I put “fall” in quotes because it’s also a misnomer. There never was a condition of perfection from which humanity fell from grace. Since you’ve goaded me into it, here’s the shorter version of my view:
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You are talking about dogs, animals and humans not capable of forming a covenant with God and without a rational soul. I was talking about humans as we commonly define them, namely rational animals endowed with a rational soul.
The fact that violence was still present among animals doesn’t mean that it was present among the first metaphysical humans. Unless you deny the soul and the qualitative (nor merely quantitative) difference between humans and animals.