The Evangelical Universalist Forum

The Commands Of The Monster God Of The Old Testament

Theology Biblical Theology
#48

There a two theories of justice. Consequentialist theories and retributive theories. It would only be unjust to punish the innocent in certain circumstances if one holds to a retributive theory of justice. Consequentialist theories say that the punishment of the innocent can be justified in certain circumstances because of the benefits that can be accrued like deterring crimes or reforming people. But even the staunchest of contemporary retributivists, Michael Moore, recognizes that the demands of retributive justice are prima facie demands that can be and are overridden in specific cases. This is why Moore is not committed to moral legalism Moore says that we must not confuse the intrinsic goodness of retribution with the categorical duty to carry out retributive justice on every possible occasion. He calls himself a threshold deontologist, that is to say, he abides by the categorical norm of morality until doing so produces sufficiently bad consequences to pass some threshold. So in the extreme case where one must punish an innocent person or else the whole world would be tortured forever one should punish the innocent person. By waiving the prima facie demands of retributive justice and punishing the innocent person he has mercifully saved the whole world from being tortured forever and was therefore acting compatibly with moral goodness. Nonetheless, I’m convinced that the justice at the cross was consequentialist as well as retributive. The Bible says Christ learned obedience through what He suffered. Thomas Aquinas held that at the cross Jesus suffered and bore the punishment for our sins. But this punishment was medicinal punishment. We know it was disciplinary because of Isaiah 53:5 -

The chastening for our well being fell upon Him.

The Hebrew word here is musar

musar:

discipline, chastening, correction

The punishment is one of medicine and well being. Therefore, God’s justice is consequentialist as well as retributive in nature at the cross. Punishing Christ for our sins is justified because it gives eternal life to the world. Punishing Christ prevents the lost from suffering forever and Christ learned obedience through what He suffered. Therefore the punishment was just on God’s part. Evil on mans part because of the evil intentions of man. But God’s intentions were holy and good. What Satan meant for evil God meant for good. Here’s 50 morally sufficient and justifiable reasons God had for the death of Christ. Seeing that logical explanations are infinite in number and God is infinite in wisdom and knowledge there are and infinite number. Nonetheless, here’s 50:

1 To remove the wrath of God
2 To free us from the slavery of sin
3 That we may die to sin and live for righteousness
4 To please His heavenly Father
5 To achieve His own resurrection from the dead
6 To show God’s love and grace to sinners
7 To cancel the legal demands of the law against us
8 To become a ransom for many
9 For the forgiveness of our sins
10 To provide the basis for our justification
11 To complete the obedience that becomes our righteousness
12 To take away our condemnation
13 To abolish circumcision and all rituals as the basis for salvation
14 To bring us to faith and keep us faithful
15 To give us a clear conscious
16 To make us holy
17 To obtain for us all things that are good for us
18 To heal us from moral sickness
19 To give eternal life to the world
21 To deliver us from the past evil age
22 To reconcile us to God
23 To bring us to God
24 So that we might belong to Him
25 To give us confident access to the holy place
26 To become for us the place where we meet God
27 To bring the Old Testament priesthood to an end
28 Become our High Priest
29 Free us from the futility of our ancestry
30 So that we would die to the law and bear fruit for God
31 To enable us to live for Christ and not ourselves
32 To make His cross the ground of all our boasting
33 To enable us to live by faith in Him
34 To give marriage it’s deepest meaning
35 To create people passionate for good works
36 To call us to follow His example of lowliness and love
37 To create crucified followers
38 To free us from the fear of death
39 So that we will be with Him after death
40 To secure our resurrection from the dead
41 To disarm the rulers and authorities
42 To unleash the power of God in the Gospel
43 To destroy hostility between the races
44 Ransom people from every tribe and nation
45 Gather His sheep from around the world
46 Rescue us from eternal torment
47 Gain His joy and ours
48 So that He would be crowned with glory
49 To show the worst evil in human history was meant by God for good.
50 To learn obedience and be perfected

#49

I think we need a diversion here, due to the Christmas holidays! :wink:

#50

“The one who sins is the one who will die. The children will not bear the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child.” (Ezekiel 18:20)
“Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent–the Lord detests them both… each will die for their own sin.” (Prov. 17:15; Deut. 24:16)

My own conscience is more sympathetic with this Biblical outlook that appears to see ‘consequentialist ethics’ as immorally contrary to genuine justice.

(A Critique of Penal Substitution)

#51

“Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent –the Lord detests them both… each will die for their own sin.” (Prov. 17:15; Deut. 24:16)

I agree that’s the norm in human courts of retribution but Christ was a divine person and in utterly unique (Holy) circumstances. I also showed from scripture that God’s justice is consequentialist at times and that the demands of retributive justice can be relaxed in utterly unique circumstances. It happens every day.

#52

Yes, I realize that as with the genocides of infants, you see beating up Jesus as somehow unique and ‘just.’ But I find this orthodox fundamental nature of justice holds true in all settings, and that Jesus epitomized graciously bearing an undeserved punishment that wasn’t fair and not just at all.

Indeed, I see Jesus’ love bearing the in justice that sinful man inflicts is what brings us such healing and reconciliation. I do not see where in Scripture it is declared that actually “God’s justice is consequentialist…”

#53

Well said, Bob.

#54

What I said was that it was evil on Satan’s part but good on God’s part. I gave the philosophical argument and you responded with an OT scripture that I put in context. God is holy and therefore in a privileged and unique position. It is the key to our salvation. God planned the crucifixion. (acts 4:27-28). To paraphrase the OT mirror: They meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. (Genesis 50:20). The most profound thing we can say about suffering and evil is that Christ entered into it and turned it for good. Besides the scores of OT passages on God taking life (He’s the unique giver and taker of life) and the philosophical evidence from the philosophy of law on retributive justice and how it works to preserve moral goodness in unique circumstances by a relaxing of it’s demands, there is no external law hanging over God to which He must conform. As I stated in the OP He’s holy (unique). Holiness when applied to God not only refers to moral purity but to everything that separates God from His creation and His creatures. There are ways we are like God and ways we are not. He’s distinct. For example: God in infinite in wisdom and knowledge and sees all circumstances past, present, and future. He’s in a privileged position. He’s all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent, self-sufficient, In control of the universe. We are none of these things. He does not issue commands to Himself. Since God does not issue commands to Himself, He literally has no moral duties to fulfill. He can act any way consistent with the Holy. He does not have the moral duties we have and will have unique prerogatives because He’s Holy. He may usually act in accordance with duty, but since He does not act from duty, He’s free to make exceptions. Even if God has established a system of justice among human beings that forbids the punishment of the innocent, He Himself is not so forbidden. What they meant for evil God meant for good. We see this all through the OT when God judges His people. He will use evil to judge His people and then turn around and judge those who brought evil against His people. (Judges 2:11-19; Isaiah 10:5-6) One act two intentions. Mans intentions are evil God’s intentions are holy and good. God didn’t take delight in the evil and suffering in and of itself at the cross. But in what was accomplished at the cross.

hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the LORD. ~~ 1 Cor. 5:5

I gave 50 justifiable reasons for the death of Christ. There are infinitely many more since logical explanations are infinite in number and God is infinite in wisdom and knowledge.

#55

Well done.

#56

You distort our rebuttals. No one says God submits to an external law, but that God is faithful to His character which we are convinced is innately always that “God is love” and light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

Thus when you post that His uniqueness is that God endorses the slaughter of innocent little ones and violates every thing we know of what love and goodness is, you make language meaningless, and ask us to affirm that God acts contrary to the conscience of everything those made in the image of God deeply know.

But I do love your theme that God enters into our evil, and turns it to good. Well said!

2 Likes
#58

2 Thessalonians 2:10-11 - And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie

Revelation 16:10-11: “The fifth angel, who poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.”.

You’ve committed blasphemy against the Holy

Do we consider the wrath of God a primitive and obscene concept? Is the very notion of hell an insult to us? If so, it is clear the God we worship is not a holy God. Indeed He is not God at all. If we despise the justice of God we are not Christians. If we hate the wrath of God it is because we hate God Himself ~~ R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

In the words of Thomas Talbott:

“I will not worship such a God, and if such a God can send me to hell for not so worshipping him, then to hell I will go”

#59

Hollytree,

You seem to have left extolling the slaughter of innocent infants, to exalt those who celebrate predestination to damnation. On a site dedicated to Thomas Talbott’s view of God’s sovereign power to reconcile his creation, you mock him and defend calling ‘love’ what everyone here recognizes as hateful darkness by appealing to my old classmate, John Piper! He defines divine ‘love’ as a deity choosing to predestine most of his offspring made in his image to be perverts unable to ever respond to God, and then punish them for this with eternal torture :frowning:

Your plea to follow Sproul and Piper’s view confirms qaz’s reading that you insist ‘goodness’ be defined as perversely opposite of any meaningful understanding of moral language. You’re welcome to celebrate such a definition of justice and love if you like. But such an appeal surrenders any chance to challenge the conscience of those here who recognize and love a God of victorious love.

2 Likes
#61

The name of the book, “The Idea of the Holy: an inquiry into the non-rational factor in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational” is just that: the book is what the name is. As for its content, the holy is what Rudolf Otto calls “the numinous” (from omen and ominous, thus numen and numinous). The numinous is above and beyond the meaning of goodness, a mental state perfectly sui generis and irreducible to any other and can be defined but cannot be discussed but it can be awakened in the spirit.

#62

Hollytree,

You haven’t understood Rudolf Otto. His observation that people’s religious experiences are supra-rational was never a contention that we should believe that what we recognize as evil is actually good. That is an argument that any cultist can use to insist that we must accept the most perverse claims about God that anyone can conceive. I.e. it can be used to support any blasphemy against our Lord, in whom there is no darkness.

#63

Whatever Bob. I gave the philosophical argument and you went to the OT. I also explained the passage. You call a holy God unjust and evil. This is blasphemy.

#64

The problem Bob is that many thinkers and theologians (if there is such a thing anymore) are realizing that much of the old school ‘religious thinking is out the window’ :roll_eyes:

So our choice is to hold on to old ways… Or to look at new possibilities.

1 Like
#65

Having said what I said,

Bob said:
That is an argument that any cultist can use to insist that we must accept the most perverse claims about God

And that is a premise I abhor. But if we start to think and show beyond that very narrow view we can indeed start to see God for what he is and what He is trying to accomplish.

#66

It appears that you don’t only turn Talbott and Otto upside down. WHERE did I call God “unjust and evil”?? That’s quite opposite of what I affirmed. Do you translate repeatedly declaring that “God IS love,” and “in Him is no darkness at all” as calling God evil?

Your own post argued that God endorses slaughtering innocent infants and other folk, actions that appear to most of humanity as the essence of an unjust evil (and cited some philosophers you claimed also argued God’s uniqueness means that He is the opposite of what our conscience recognizes as love and goodness).

I just affirmed that I whole-heartedly believe that God is good and loves in a way that humans can recognize, and in the understandable senses in which the Bible defines love.

#67

Just a word about “The Monster God of the Old Testament.” If by this phrase, it is meant “the God of ancient Israel” then I hereby affirm that He is NOT a “Monster God”! He is the one and only God. He is the same God whom the apostle John stated to BE “love,” not that love is merely one of His characteristics, but is His very essence.

What has happened is that He is incorrectly depicted in the Mosaic writings and in some of the writings of the prophets.

Moses was in charge of the great nation of Israel. Sometimes he worked out solutions to the many problems that arose, and in my opinion, he mistakenly ascribed some of these solutions (which were very violent), to God. He supposed that God had revealed these solutions to him. And that’s why we read in the Mosaic writings that God told Moses to carry out some of these atrocities, as well as other statements by Moses such as “He reached out his hand to steady the ark, and God killed him.”

#68

Paidion,

Not all the scriptures in the OT come from Moses. If God is love then He must hate evil.

Psalm 5:5 - “The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.”

Psalm 5:6 - “Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing: the LORD will abhor the bloody and deceitful man.”

Psalm 10:3 - “For the wicked boasteth of his heart’s desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the LORD abhorreth.”

Psalm 11:5 - “The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.”

Psalm 53:5 - “There were they in great fear, where no fear was: for God hath scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee: thou hast put them to shame, because God hath despised them.”

Psalm 73:20 - “As a dream when one awaketh; so, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image.”

Psalm 78:59 - “When God heard this, he was wroth, and greatly abhorred Israel:”

Psalm 106:40 - “Therefore was the wrath of the LORD kindled against his people, insomuch that he abhorred his own inheritance.”

Proverbs 6:16-19 - “These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.”

Proverbs 22:14 - “The mouth of strange women is a deep pit: he that is abhorred of the LORD shall fall therein.”

Lamentations 2:6 - “And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden: he hath destroyed his places of the assembly: the LORD hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest.”

Hosea 9:15 - “All their wickedness is in Gilgal: for there I hated them: for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of mine house, I will love them no more: all their princes are revolters.”

Zechariah 11:8 - “Three shepherds also I cut off in one month; and my soul loathed them, and their soul also abhorred me.”

Malachi 1:3 - “And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.”

#69

hollytree, None of these are Scriptures that urge slaughtering children and the innocent, or the contentions of yours that we have questioned such as philosophers you cited who have God predestining his offspring to damnation. No one has argued that God does not abhor evil! Only that he chastens sinners in a righteous way consistent with his love for sinners that pursues their welfare and salvation.