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Post by perplexedseeker on Oct 22, 2010 10:47:28 GMT
Long post coming up! Ironic, isn't it, that since I said I would be posting less, my activity here has been reinvigorated? ;D
As many of you probably know, I have a vaguely cultural-Christian agnostic background, so there are numerous aspects of Christian doctrine which interest me but which I would like to understand better. Specifically, there are four issues that I think simply don't make logical sense, even one of which would preclude me from seriously considering orthodox Christianity as a worldview. I understand that such things could perhaps be accepted on faith or scriptural authority alone, but as a deist, these options were never on the table for me. I'm happy to concede, however, that I may be simply misinformed about the content of these doctrines. So if someone could please explain to me:
1. The Trinity I understand this doctrine to mean that on Christian orthodoxy, God has a single substance but consists of three persons. I'm truly baffled by what this would even mean. Clearly they are not trying to say that there are three Gods, who are different to each other but also (somehow) identical, which would be quite simply incoherent. Even if one accepted it as a "mystery" that our minds cannot fathom, it would still seem as though one cannot uphold the Trinity and Divine Simplicity (which is central to many classical arguments for God's existence) at the same time without contradiction. For how can God be absolutely non-composite yet have three parts?
But perhaps I'm thinking about this the wrong way. Is the Trinity, like Frege's Morning Star, just three ways of referring to the same thing that differ in sense but not in reference? Is it a functional term - do the three "persons" of the Trinity simply refer to different things God does, or different ways we percieve God due to our own limitations (which is the way the Hindu Trinity works)?
2. The Incarnation I am totally mystified by the idea that a particular, spacially and temporally restricted human being could be identical to God. It just seems like a square circle or a positive negative to me. If, as orthodoxy holds, evil in the world was the result of Adam and Eve's free choice, then the Incarnation was a contingent event. But then wouldn't this mean that if God is identical to Jesus, he would be contingent as well? And wouldn't this severely undermine a whole host of theological arguments that depend on God being non-contingent? In confess I just don't get this doctrine, and think that it weakens rather than strengthens Christianity. Perhaps someone could set me straight?
3. Predestination/Election/Providence etc. I understand these interrelated doctrines to mean that God has ordered everything in the universe so that it will turn out exactly the way he has foreseen, in order to ensure his omniscience. Specifically for Election, he has already picked who will be saved and who will not. The trouble I have with this is that it instantly vitiates the Free Will Defence. Perhaps Calvinists could live with this, as they seem to be hard determinists, but it seems rather important to many other churches. I have heard of a doctrine called Molinism that proposes God knows all the possible true counterfactuals about future events, and can therefore elect potential alternate versions of people whilst preserving their free will, but I can see serious problems with this, not least how God could know truths about things that don't actually happen.
Providence also seems to beg the question against people who hold that God is eternal, in which case time (strictly speaking) doesn't exist from God's perspective, or is just another dimension, and it would be totally unnecessary for God to pre-program the universe to know the future, because for him, it's all happening now.
4. The problem of Hell This is the big one, and it's by far my largest objection to orthodoxy. It's the Problem of Evil on steroids. I happily concede that the various theodicies provide (at the least) good grounds to be skeptical of the claim that the finite amount of suffering we observe in the current universe is incompatible with God's goodness. I'm even willing to concede, for the sake of argument, Aquinas' claim that there is no "worst of all possible worlds" that contains so much suffering that God would not be justified in creating it for the sake of the greater good that would result from it (eternal life for survivors of that universe, and so on). One might be tempted to say that the problem of evil is significantly weakened if all evil is eventually punished and all good rewarded (which always seemed a rather cynical reason for doing good to me, but that's a separate argument).
But then we bring eternal damnation into it, which appears to involve the claim that a finite amount of sin can result in an infinite punishment. Leaving aside questions about whether a retributive concept of justice is even correct, or if any alternative formulation such as reformatory justice is correct instead, I cannot imagine for a moment how anyone could think this was logically compatible with God's justice. One might try to claim that this is an emotional problem rather than a logical one, and that since the damned have being, their existence is still more good than evil, and so God is justified in condemning them to eternal torment.
But I believe this just will not do. The standard problem of evil is based on an empirical claim about the (finite) evil we see around us, and whether God could be justified in permitting it for the sake of other goods, like free will, love etc. The problem of damnation takes God's existence and attributes for granted, and argues that the doctrine of Hell is inconsistent with them. This is not a finite evil that God permits because more good will come of it. It is an infinite evil God actively inflicts on those who have failed to make themselves worthy of him. I totally fail to see how any good could come of this. Even annihilation would seem to be more merciful.
The most common response I've seen to this is that since God's dignity and love are infinite, any transgression against God deserves infinite punishment. But then don't all finite creatures fall infinitely short of God's standards? One might claim that it is not God's standards we are judged against (say, on a Thomistic account) but against our own proper functioning, that is, fulfilling all our natural ends. But since even a perfect creature would still be finite, how could failing to live up to such a standard merit an infinite punishment?
There also seems to be a specific problem for defenders of the Kalaam Cosmological argument here. Even if it is accepted that any sin is a limitless transgression against God, and that justice demands an infinite punishment, then if hell is temporal, the punishment could only ever be a potential infinite, not an actual infinite (which the Kalaam relies upon denying is possible anyway), so even in condemning someone, God would still not be just. Another attempt to get out of this is the idea that Hell is not of an infinite duration, but an eternal timeless present. But if the damned are timeless, they are immutable, so how could they suffer in any meaningful sense of the term?
There's also the question of what role divine mercy plays in this. I have heard many Christians argue that everyone deserves hell (which takes care of the justice part), but that through God's gratuitous gift, the Passion somehow tops up your virtues to neutralise this if you assert and really believe that it took place (which takes care of the mercy part). Do they really mean that any amount of virtue practised in this life counts for nothing, whereas a simple set of binary propositions can do all that work? Or have I radically misunderstood this claim?
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Post by unkleE on Oct 22, 2010 13:02:32 GMT
G'day PS. Here's my response, doubtless different to others'. (As short as possible post coming up.)
Trinity.
I don't know why anyone would expect to understand God's nature. We can't even understand matter and space-time easily: How does action at a distance work in particle physics? How can there be maybe 12 dimensions of space-time, but we just live in 4 of them?
Remember the trinity is a human doctrine attempting to explain God's nature from a few hints given in the Bible. It isn't taught directly in the Bible and Jesus didn't elucidate it, so it can't be essential for christians.
Most things we say about God must be limited, and be analogies. My preferred analogy for the Trinity is a cube - 1 3-D solid figure but at the same time 6 2-D plain figures. I see no reason to baulk at a God who is one being and three persons.
The Incarnation.
I don't see why anyone would think that Jesus was "identical" with God. How could he be when he was limited to being one human being in time and space? The Bible says he was the image of God, a person in whom the fulness of the godhead dwelt, but not identical. And he was also a human being who got tired and dirty, and admitted there were some things he didn't know. If God can organise the whole universe, including the process of human reproduction where two sets of DNA get combined into a new person, marrying his consciousness with that of a human doesn't seem too difficult to me.
Predestination, etc
Not all christians accept this doctrine. In scripture it is balanced with human freedom, so that a fair reading of scripture is that both God chooses and we choose - a paradox, but no more difficult (IMO) than being a compatibilist about human free will.
Further, if you read the NT predestination passages carefully, I think it becomes clearer that the emphasis is often not on God imposing his choice on us, but on God choosing in advance what good things he would give to his adopted children. Human freewill is a mystery, and how it intersects with God's sovereignty is also a mystery, and Calvinism is (IMO) an easy logical way out of the impasse that loses more than it gains.
Hell
This seems to be your biggest one, yet it is the easiest (IMO). Hell isn't taught to any degree in the OT, and our source is Jesus. But I believe Jesus has been misrepresented:
1. "Eternal" does not mean "everlasting", but "of the age to come". Jesus warned of punishment in the age to come, not unending torment (I learned this from a Professor of NT Exegesis in an impeccable evangelical Bible Commentary, and I can give you the quote if you like).
2. He warned we should fear him who could destroy body and soul in hell. The Greek word destroy means what it says - the end of the person concerned.
3. The doctrine of an immortal soul is Greek philosophy, not Biblical teaching. We are dust and will only live on if we are resurrected.
4. The image of the the fires and the "worm not dying" are images based on the Jerusalem rubbish tip (Gehenna comes from Hinnom where the dump was located). The purpose of the dump was to burn up the rubbish, including sometimes the bodies of criminals.
So I believe Jesus taught the end of life for those who don't believe, but resurrection to new life for those who do.
Hope that offers a few new ideas to think about. Thanks for your questions.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Oct 22, 2010 17:14:57 GMT
Calvinism is certainly not hard determinism and it is certainly not determinism. Calvin was quite explicit in stressing the existence of free will (at least in what I read) and also accepted the intersection of free will with God's predestination as mysterious. Determinism would also be tough to combine with human responsibility, so Calvinism is generally compatibilist.
I think providence is seen from a human perspective, thus from a world with a timelike dimension. I think from God's perspective this would be eternal, instantaneous and simultaneous, coexisting with the universe at any time within the universe, necessarily knowing the future of the universe. I am afraid I cannot make it sound more comprehensible, so I have to stick with this mumbo-jumbo.
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Post by Al Moritz on Oct 23, 2010 1:52:00 GMT
1. The TrinityI understand this doctrine to mean that on Christian orthodoxy, God has a single substance but consists of three persons. I'm truly baffled by what this would even mean. Clearly they are not trying to say that there are three Gods, who are different to each other but also (somehow) identical, which would be quite simply incoherent. Even if one accepted it as a "mystery" that our minds cannot fathom, it would still seem as though one cannot uphold the Trinity and Divine Simplicity (which is central to many classical arguments for God's existence) at the same time without contradiction. For how can God be absolutely non-composite yet have three parts? But perhaps I'm thinking about this the wrong way. Is the Trinity, like Frege's Morning Star, just three ways of referring to the same thing that differ in sense but not in reference? Is it a functional term - do the three "persons" of the Trinity simply refer to different things God does, or different ways we percieve God due to our own limitations (which is the way the Hindu Trinity works)? Hi Perplexed, my answer is obviously informed by my Catholic faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church: The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: "The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e. by nature one God."and: They [the persons] are distinct from one another in their relations of origin: "It is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds." The divine Unity is Triune.See: www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p1s2c1p2.htm#IIISomeone once suggested the following as an explanation: The Son is the Word of God, i.e., God's knowledge of Himself. God knows Himself, but since that knowledge is infinite, it is God. God the Father and God the Son love each other, but since that love is infinite as well, it is also God -- the Holy Spirit. The key here is thus God's infinity. As my father likes to point out, even his computer program Mathematica gives 'infinite' as a result when you type in 3 x 'infinite'. It cannot be three Gods, since God's infinity precludes that -- even a mathematics program can "prove" this! I would say that in His human nature, Jesus is contingent indeed. His human nature is not identical to God, but just that, a human nature. Jesus Christ is one person, but with two natures united, His divine and His human nature. As the Catechism of the Catholic church states: Jesus Christ possesses two natures, one divine and the other human, not confused, but united in the one person of God's son.
[...]
The Incarnation is therefore the mystery of the wonderful union of the divine and human natures in the one person of the Word.See: www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p122a3p1.htm*** I don't believe in predestination, but in free will. As for Hell, I don't know how much it deserves to be called 'evil'. The catechism explains: (1033) To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called "hell."
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Post by himself on Oct 23, 2010 22:26:55 GMT
Regarding the Trinity:
My children see me as Mike the Father; my dad sees me as Mike the Son. My wife sees me as Mike the Lover. Yet I am the same being in all three cases. However, not being a being of pure act, these three ways I am experienced are not wholly subsistent in themselves.
In the same manner we experience God in the universe, in history, and in ourselves. In the universe, we see God as the Creator; in history, we see God as the man Jesus; in ourselves, we experience God directly as love. Because God is purely actual, each of these is wholly God. If the Son were distinct from the Father, for example, then there would be something in the Father that was not in the Son, so that the Son would be in potency toward that something; and vice versa.
The term "persona" originally referred to the masque that actors wore on the Greco-Roman stage. A different masque [person] did not mean a different actor [being]. + + + The term "substance" means a unity of matter and form. A basketball is a substance, since it is a unity of rubber matter and spherical form. A novel is a substance since it is a unity of a particular subject matter with a particular narrative form. (Matter need not mean physical matter.)
Al Moritz has it right, and more succinct than I could put it.
As the source of our own rationality, God must himself in some sense possess intellect and volition.
God knows himself and, as the subject of the predicate is called the Father. To know something is to conceive it and we conceive things in words. God as the object of knowing is called the "only-conceived" or "only-begotten" Son, and also called by analogy the Word.
The will is an appetite for the products of the intellect, and so God desires himself. The subject is still called the Father, but as the object he is called the Spirit. Since love proceeds from the lover to the beloved and returns, we say the Spirit proceeds from the Father rather than that it is conceived by the Father. (And since Father and Son are one, the Western rite adds a clarifying phrase: "proceeds from the Father and the Son.")
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Post by ignorantianescia on Oct 23, 2010 22:42:05 GMT
Actually, I am curious about the Catholic doctrine regarding free will and omniscience, too. Is it generally considered compatibilist or libertarian?
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Post by himself on Oct 23, 2010 23:41:32 GMT
Actually, I am curious about the Catholic doctrine regarding free will and omniscience, too. Is it generally considered compatibilist or libertarian? The will is free because it is undetermined. First, the Latin term translated as "free will" is liberum arbitrium, which translates better as "free judgment." The will is sometimes called the "intellective appetite" since, as the sensory appetites are desires for the perceptions of the senses, the will is the desire for the conceptions of the intellect. Now, you can desire something only insofar as you know it. You may desire peace in time of war. But you cannot specify what that peace would look like, how it would be practically attained, and so forth. Our knowledge being vague and indeterminate, our goals could be fulfilled in any number of ways. So insofar as the object is incompletely known, the will is incompletely determined toward it. This can be seen in the command experimenters give their psych subjects: "Choose one" item in a list. The free will is not inherent in the term "choose" but in the term "one." It is indeterminate and does not refer to any of the acts or symbols to be chosen. Which of the symbols is "one"? Notice, that this freedom of the will is independent of whether anyone, including God, knows how your will tends. Heck, my wife can predict my acts at least half the time. That only shows she knows me, not that she has chosen for me and bent my will. It is also independent of any impairments to the will, as by habits, which for Thomas included personal habits, cultural habits, and what we would today call "genetic dispositions." Making your knee jerk by hitting it with a hammer does not disprove the indeterminacy of the will. Nor does the careful weighing of pros and cons beforehand. Neither does an habitual preference for chocolate or a disinclination to quit smoking. The will is a part of the soul [ anima = alive] and the soul is the form of a living body; and so the body influences the soul as well as vice versa. Moderns always want to define "will" more complicatedly than the theologians did. In particular, a freely willed judgment need not be: - random
- unpredictable
- unreasoned
- successful
- unmotivated
- purposeless
- or even conscious (the subconscious is part of the mind, no?)
This has links to helpful essays by James Chastek: tofspot.blogspot.com/2010/10/mindless-machine-tries-to-convince-us.htmlHope this helps.
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rtaylor
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 97
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Post by rtaylor on Oct 24, 2010 12:23:12 GMT
UncleE says. Most things we say about God must be limited, and be analogies. Analogy. One mans analogy is another mans superstition. Is the story of the garden of Eden meant to be an analogy, or is it literaly true? What else ie meant to be analogy?
The Holy trinity. A pagan concept adopted by Christianity. Not mentioned in the OT. a later addition. There where many additions after Moses and Mt Sinia. The question should surely be , Why should anyone believe in the God of the ancient Jews at all?
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Post by trav10 on Oct 25, 2010 12:09:38 GMT
I'm genuinely annoyed. I just spent the best part of 40 minutes writing a post in this thread about the four topics brought up by Perplexed Seeker. I pressed preview, and then after reading it, exited out of my post, before realising I had pressed preview instead of post reply.
As anyone who's found themselves in that situation before can attest, that is seriously frustrating.
James/moderators, I doubt there is any way to retrieve my lost post, but if there is please post it! Cheers.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2010 16:03:13 GMT
As anyone who's found themselves in that situation before can attest, that is seriously frustrating. I empathize with you. That is why I write lengthier posts in my word processor.
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Post by Gigalith on Oct 26, 2010 22:19:56 GMT
Since childhood, I have sought elegant things. Though I was raised in it, Christianity did not appeal to me for this very reason. Why did God create angels to do His work if God was omnipotent? Or why take seven days to create the world, when He could do it with a Word? Why did this one specific dude get to be God, and no one else?
When I grew older, for this and other reasons, I left Christianity for Taoism. My new religion was not inelegant because it was not anything. I "believed" in only the Tao, and that everything else was illusion. I use quotes because I believed that any word or thought was inaccurate in some way, and that the only knowledge not-knowledge; the only awareness unawareness.
There are no words to describe what felt or thought then, as there are no words to describe the end of words. I was in deep sorrow, and thought it true happiness.
For this and other reasons, such as the whole neuroscience/materialism/free will rigmarole, I ended up right back to the orthodox, normal Christianity.
Take the story of Jesus in the not-thinking of mine. We have God, an active, aware, real God coming down into the real world, down in all the mud and the dirt and the blood, and doing things, and slogging it out with the rest of us. As lives go, God's was by no means pleasant: his name was essentially the same as our "Josh", he was raised by peasants and thought to be a bastard, his own town rejected him, his own people tried to stone him, everywhere he went people tried to king or kill him, the authorities hated him, his own disciples let him down and betrayed him, and died in a three-hour public execution. And later came back to life. And this is all God.
Sheesh. Someone else can have Zen, I'm hooked.
That God did this is beyond elegant, because it is God's ultimate love that He would condescend to suffer with us. God, being the Creator of Time, has done, does, and will always do this. You can think of the Trinity as three Eternal Actions that are part of the same Eternal Being, just as you might have three tabs open in the same browser.
That God could do this is no issue to me because of a thing I used to do, and still do at times: play boardgames with myself. Specifically, I would take one side, make the best apparent move that I could from that perspective, then take the other and make the best move from their perspective, and so on. I sometimes even give certain sides a personalty. You could say of any player that I was them, and yet I was the only Player.
Thus, I have no problem imagining God also doing the same thing on a higher scale. God the Father is running the universe. God the Son entered to love us, and God the Holy Spirit is in people to inspire them to do things.
As for predestination, while it's not a huge part of my faith, it helped me return. Specifically, Lutheran theology holds that while everyone is being led to God by God, people can still back out. It's not so much "free will" as "free won't".
As for Hell, I find it necessary. One of the appeals of Taoism to me was its emphasis on non-action. It didn't matter whether you did or didn't do anything, you'd be sucked into the Tao at your death. The only thing that (didn't) matter was whether or not you let go of desire, and therefore suffered less, along the way.
Nevertheless, it is clearly the case that it is possible to increase the suffering of others, such as by kicking them in the knee. If the Tao was good, how did it let this happen? I resolved this by saying that since everyone was merely a "mask" of the Tao, it was only the Tao hurting the Tao, and the evil-doer was doing evil to himself. Alternately, in some weird cosmic auto-BDSM, the Tao wanted to hurt itself, and so evil-doing wasn't actually evil, or didn't count, and anyway everyone was going back into the Cosmic Blender eventually.
But this only dug a deeper hole. If the Tao was letting in suffering because that's what the Tao, or a part of it, wanted, then would the Tao do anything? Would it create an illusory world-trap where immortal, invincible demons tortured each other for eternity? If it did, the Tao was a terrible thing, if it did not, the Tao had to have some kind of standard. If the Tao had a standard of what it would not permit to exist, then why doesn't the standard include everyday, ordinary, suffering? And was not the standard, if it existed, eternally unfair to those beings or parts of the Tao which desired to be eternal monsters?
So back to Christianity. God, the Eternal Justice and Mercy, is Just both in that He will not let anything slide by, and also that He will not force anyone to take His Mercy. If someone wants to be a monster, God will let them. If someone begs for mercy, God will give it to them.
I suggest you read the Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis. It's on this theme.
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rtaylor
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 97
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Post by rtaylor on Oct 27, 2010 16:18:21 GMT
The difference between Taoism and Christianity is Revelation. Taoists think and come to conclusions based on their own thinking. No faith required. Christianity demands belief in impossible things that have been revealed to 'special people', or prophets. Usually in dreams.This is known as Divine Revelation. Faith is required. And there are so many to choose from. They all promise reward for believing in impossible things and punishment for not.
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Post by perplexedseeker on Nov 9, 2010 12:24:10 GMT
Just wanted to thank you all for your replies. You've all, in your own ways, given me food for thought on these topics.
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Post by peterdamian on Nov 9, 2010 15:01:35 GMT
On the Trinity, here ocham.blogspot.com/2010/09/boethius-treatise-on-trinity-is-one-of.html is my explanation of Boethius' treatise on the Trinity. Boethius (with Augustine) is one of the most influential Christian philosophers of the early middle ages. Here www.logicmuseum.com/authors/boethius/boethiusdetrinitate.htm is a parallel Latin-English version of Boethius' treatise. And here www.logicmuseum.com/individuation/individuation.htm is a page of links to other medieval discussions of related issues - such as whether the body that rises again in the life to come is the same in number with the body of this life. In answer to your question about whether it is related to Frege's question - probably not. Boethius mentions a similar idea in 172.140, giving the example of different names for a sword. But then he says that "it does not follow that "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" is said as though of some synonymous thing; for blade and bland are identical and the same, but Father, Son and Holy Ghost are indeed the same, but not identical". His solution rests on a presumed distinction between predication which ascribes real properties that belong to a subject 'of itself', and predication which is merely circumstantial, and which "is not grounded in that which it is for a thing to be" If you can understand that (I don't, really). A link I haven't given on that page (but should have) is Richard Cartwright's essay on the Trinity. This is essential reading eyring.hplx.net/Eyring/Notes/trinity.html . On your question about the incarnation, this should be answered by Boethius' answer (if you can understand it). The philosopher Peter Geach had a somewhat different approach, explained here plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-relative/ (warning, difficult). This is the idea of 'relative identity'. The problem is to get over the difficulties of Leibniz' principle. Leibniz' principle (the indiscernability of identicals) says that Fa and a=b imples Fb If correct (and it seems impeccable) then God is the father of Christ, and Christ = God, therefore God is the father of God which is impossible if fatherhood is a non-reflexive relation. On predestination, that is too large a question to deal with right now. Every medieval philosopher-theologian tackled this question, as well as philosophers and theologians afterwards. St Thomas' is the most elaborate treatment, for which see Q82 of Summa Theologiae here www.logicmuseum.com/authors/aquinas/summa/Summa-I-80-83.htm#q82a1arg1 . On the inferno, I have a page here www.logicmuseum.com/afterlife/afterlife.htm - you may be amused by James Joyce's account of it www.logicmuseum.com/cantor/PortraitoftheArtist-Hell.htm . Hope that helps - should keep you going until the weekend at least
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Post by perplexedseeker on Nov 9, 2010 18:28:24 GMT
Thanks very much, peterdamien. There's some real philosophical meat to get into there!
And as for the quotes about Inferno... I was not so much amused as revolted and appalled to the extent it made me seriously question whether any decent person could even for a moment entertain such an idea... In particular I found the bit where Aquinas says the blessed will specially be allowed to see the damned in agony so that they can enjoy their own situation even more by comparison both deeply disturbing and inherently evil. I find it hard to believe a rational theist like Aquinas could have held such opinions.
I really don't mean to offend anyone or sound like Sam Harris, but I truly don't understand this. I would like to know how anyone could believe such a thing as eternal damnation is just and good, but I cannot. I know from our previous conversations that all of you who responded to me are decent, considerate and rational people, but there seems to be a disconnect here. Maybe it's because I'm a Deist and just can't see it. But (with the exception of UnkleE) nobody directly addressed my question about how damnation could be compatible with God's justice. I can fully understand that it's incompatible with God's justice that those who do evil in this life do not have to answer for it in the next. I don't even have a problem with Hell per se but rather its eternal and irrevocable nature. I have no quarrel with purgatory, for example, as it allows God to be both perfectly just (administering appropriate punishment) and perfectly merciful (by holding open the possibility, even if sinners never, in fact, take it, of eventual reconciliation and repentence).
But putting such questions aside for a moment, it's hard for me to see why the retributive concept of justice (justice as vengeance) on which hell absolutely depends is even correct. What grounds do we have for believing that God does not will the eventual rehabilitation and reconciliation of all sinners to him?
Another wrinkle which stands out for me is the arbitrariness of death as the point at which you're either saved or damned. Suppose a man is killed by a falling meteor in the act of escaping from the scene of a murder he committed. It's entirely possible that had he lived just a little longer, he would have bitterly regretted his immoral action and repented (and, if you're a Molinist, presumably God knows the answer to this question). But because of a random and meaningless event, he ended up dead before repenting, and hence damned. This hardly seems just, or merciful.
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