Which, I submit, is not so very different from your classic protection racket. There's a threat (shame if something happened to that nice soul of yours such as, say, eternal damnation). It's a very big threat. There's nothing remotely resembling a decent justification for it (please feel free to demonstrate that I'm wrong, but I'll take quite some convincing). There's a way out, which curiously has rather little to do with the actual threat (e.g., it doesn't involve, you know, actually not sinning any more). The fact that this way out is available suffices to show that God does, in fact, have a choice in the matter, so you don't get to claim that eternal damnation is just some kind of inevitable "consequence" of sin that God couldn't prevent.
I don't think it's as arbitrary and protection-rackety as you suggest:
* There are psychological laws which you can infer from observing yourself and others, such as "if I think mean thoughts about people all the time, I'll become a mean person" or "if I indulge my every desire, I'll end up with no self-control".
* It is at least possible (although I don't know) that these laws aren't contingent, but are necessary properties of any conceivable rational/sentient creature, and that God can't change them, in the same sense that (to use your example) God can't make a four-sided triangle.
* This is similar to what CS Lewis says about each of us gradually becoming either a heavenly creature or a hellish creature, by means of these kinds of little choices.
* Heavenly creatures end up in heaven and hellish creatures end up in hell - this almost certainly is a necessary truth that God can't change. If heaven were full of hellish creatures it would cease to be heaven.
* (Alternatively, some people think that heaven and hell aren't distinct, but that we all encounter God when we die, and those who have learned to love him experience this as bliss whereas those who reject him experience it as torment. I find this plausible.)
* The "way out" is not God arbitrarily choosing to pardon a subset of people when he could just as easily have pardoned everyone. I think evangelicals sometimes overemphasise imputed righteousness at the expense of imparted righteousness. Salvation means God can actually make me fit for heaven, if I let him; it doesn't mean merely that he states that I am. (I'll be the first to admit there are non-Christians who are way better people than me, but I believe over time - probably extending beyond this life - my derivative is positive and theirs is negative.)
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-05-29 01:57 pm (UTC)I don't think it's as arbitrary and protection-rackety as you suggest:
* There are psychological laws which you can infer from observing yourself and others, such as "if I think mean thoughts about people all the time, I'll become a mean person" or "if I indulge my every desire, I'll end up with no self-control".
* It is at least possible (although I don't know) that these laws aren't contingent, but are necessary properties of any conceivable rational/sentient creature, and that God can't change them, in the same sense that (to use your example) God can't make a four-sided triangle.
* This is similar to what CS Lewis says about each of us gradually becoming either a heavenly creature or a hellish creature, by means of these kinds of little choices.
* Heavenly creatures end up in heaven and hellish creatures end up in hell - this almost certainly is a necessary truth that God can't change. If heaven were full of hellish creatures it would cease to be heaven.
* (Alternatively, some people think that heaven and hell aren't distinct, but that we all encounter God when we die, and those who have learned to love him experience this as bliss whereas those who reject him experience it as torment. I find this plausible.)
* The "way out" is not God arbitrarily choosing to pardon a subset of people when he could just as easily have pardoned everyone. I think evangelicals sometimes overemphasise imputed righteousness at the expense of imparted righteousness. Salvation means God can actually make me fit for heaven, if I let him; it doesn't mean merely that he states that I am. (I'll be the first to admit there are non-Christians who are way better people than me, but I believe over time - probably extending beyond this life - my derivative is positive and theirs is negative.)