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Punitive justice is a human construct born of our impotence to prevent or restore the damage wrought by evil. It is to soothe our wrath, vengeance, and insecurity in an attempt to prevent future occurrences as a deterrent. God's Divine justice is NOT impotent and is not based on wrath, vengeance, or insecurity.
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Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
What Bible verse says that?
I literally just said God does not judge based on insecurity. So when you ignore my statements and say this, it tells me that you don't actually read what's posted. So why should anyone pay attention to your nonsense?
I was pointing out that the use of punitive justice automatically presumes impotence, wrath, vengeance, and insecurity so it can NOT be true of God's Divine justice. I was in a sense agreeing with you about God's lack of insecurity while disagreeing with you about the existence of eternal punishment.
The issue is that you have too low a view of God and too high a view of humanity. You can't fathom an all-powerful, all holy God that demands justice.
BF, you really need to work on scaling back your use of the straw man. No one has raised any doubt that God demands justice, so you shouldn't suggest that they've done that. What some of us doubt is whether a proper understanding of justice includes retribution - punishment inflicted with no happy result in mind except the suffering of the subject.
Taking pleasure from the pain of others is called schadenfreude, or in extreme cases, sadism. Do I have too low an opinion of God if I say he lacks these attributes?
BF, you really need to work on scaling back your use of the straw man. No one has raised any doubt that God demands justice, so you shouldn't suggest that they've done that. What some of us doubt is whether a proper understanding of justice includes retribution - punishment inflicted with no happy result in mind except the suffering of the subject.
Taking pleasure from the pain of others is called schadenfreude, or in extreme cases, sadism. Do I have too low an opinion of God if I say he lacks these attributes?
It is black and white . It’s either/or. Either God achieves Its goal or it doesn’t . Again, all the commentaries you can provide are just excuse making , nothing more . They don’t change the reality that God doesn’t accomplish what It set out to do .
God's "goal" as you put it, is simply to be glorified in and by His creation.
You can call perfectly reasonable explanations "excuses" if you want to, but to me that only shows a lack of willingness to do any serious deep thought on your part, which is disappointing.
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Originally Posted by NatesDude
You are merely throwing stuff against the wall now and hoping something sticks . There is no basis at all for this speculation.
Well, it is just speculation. I believe I have a basis in making it, but it really doesn't matter.
God's "goal" as you put it, is simply to be glorified in and by His creation.
You can call perfectly reasonable explanations "excuses" if you want to, but to me that only shows a lack of willingness to do any serious deep thought on your part, which is disappointing.
It is ironic that the guy that admits he is not allowed to disagree with his church claims to be disappointed when I don’t accept what his church writes
Gods goal is stated plainly . That It wants all men to be saved. It’s not guesswork or speculation, it’s written plainly in the Bible . So either that happens , or it doesn’t .
The passages you quote are merely Christians trying to justify hell, without thinking too much on the problem of hell. That is what is disappointing. That people simply accept what they are told , and then from there work to justify what they are told they must believe . The church is faced with a conundrum. A loving God who says It wants to save everyone versus a teaching of the church that not everyone gets saved . So this must somehow get worked out in their minds . They do so by offering all sorts of reasons why God didn’t really mean It wanted to save everyone, or excuses why God just can’t save everyone . But in the end they are just excuses for why church teachings don’t mesh with Gods biblical claim It wants to save everyone . There is nothing impressive in this, it involves no real independent thinking . It only involves people accepting without question that what they are told they must believe is true, then working to justify that in their minds by all these various excuses for God .
The deep thought would be to question why God fails at accomplishing what It says It wants to happen, and what that says about your version of God and your theology . But you aren’t allowed to do that .
God's "goal" as you put it, is simply to be glorified in and by His creation.
You can call perfectly reasonable explanations "excuses" if you want to, but to me that only shows a lack of willingness to do any serious deep thought on your part, which is disappointing.
Well, it is just speculation. I believe I have a basis in making it, but it really doesn't matter.
An awfully lot of posts for something that "really doesn't matter".
It is ironic that the guy that admits he is not allowed to disagree with his church claims to be disappointed when I don’t accept what his church writes
I'm not saying you should accept it as in believe that it's true, but the explanations (excuses as you call them) are perfectly reasonable and work just fine within the framework of the dogmas.
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Originally Posted by NatesDude
Gods goal is stated plainly . That It wants all men to be saved. It’s not guesswork or speculation, it’s written plainly in the Bible . So either that happens , or it doesn’t .
Interesting that you describe that verse as a "goal" of God's. I would not phrase it that way, and I don't see God as having "goals". Having a "goal" implies that the goal can either be met or not. God does not have a "goal". God has a will and a purpose.
Yes, there seems to be a problem here because we know two seemingly contradictory things:
1) God wants all men to be saved
2) Not all men are saved
There's nothing wrong with doing our best to try to intellectually reconcile this apparent problem. I happen to think Fr. Callan in the commentary I quoted several posts ago does a nice job of doing that. I'm sorry that you see it as "excuse-making".
If you feel that this apparent contradiction is enough justification to abandon Christianity, then that's your prerogative and I find it unfortunate. It's not so with me.
An awfully lot of posts for something that "really doesn't matter".
I was referring specifically to my personal speculations regarding the feasibility or logic of annihilationism.
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