Yes, I was providing a common Christian view to why Jesus had to die: I wasn't commenting on if I am a Christian or not. I clarified that to @frank and they ignored that too! :roll:

No we don't need to talk about it: all you need to concede is that there are some legitimate sins; then God would have to incarnate himself through hypostatic union to absolve those sins. We don't need to agree on specifically what is sinful.

BANNO. @frank ignored the Thomistic response I gave: even if you don't think that kind of response will be received as plausible by frank, they didn't even try to respond to one of the top answers historically to the very issue they wanted to address in the OP; and they continued to desecrate on the idea of God's sacrifice.

How can you not agree that that is intellectual vicious? It doesn't matter if at the end of the day you find it implausible: it's one of the most prominent responses to this issue.

Cc: @Banno @frank

:up:

I can tell now that neither of them want to have a productive conversation: they just want to straw man and desecrate on their "enemy". It's intellectually vicious and stupendous.

Then you need to refurbish your position. You said that God does not murder because when he kills us we don't truly die. This applies to all killings within your view.

You need to clearly define what murder is and then apply that standard to God's killings. So far you just keep ad hoc patching your view. You say God can't murder because you don't really die, but we both agree that's false; so now you are appealing to God just being special.

I'll ask you again: how do you define murder?

You just continue to be disingenuous. I'm done talking to you.

I wouldn't answer because it is irrelevant; but ok, I'll answer to further the discussion. I don't believe Jesus is the Son of God.

This is irrelevant because:

1. I was providing a view that is internal coherent and plausible within Christianity to address why God sent His Son to die on the cross; and

2. One could hold the view I gave and not be a Christian. Nothing about what I said actually entailed that Jesus was the Son of God. It entailed that the Son of God would have to incarnated at some point to be sacrificed for our sins in some way.

Asking me if I believe that Jesus was God is like:

1. Me asking "what are reasons someone would believe that we have a soul?".
2. You give me an exposition of one avenue someone could take to believe in us having a soul.
3. I ignore your exposition and ask you "do you believe that we have a soul?"

Well, that's irrelevant if you think about it: you could hold that we have no souls and that your exposition suffices to give a plausible account of us having a soul relative to some metaphysical theory.

 Do you really think that there was a chance of @frank accepting Thomism as an answer to his questions? Wouldn't he simple see it as a more verbose expression of the very same confusions? And indeed, with good reason.

@frank wrote in the OP:

The Catholic Church teaches that God Almighty came down from heaven to save us... from His own wrath... by allowing Himself to be tortured to death. And apparently this strategy worked in spite of the fact that he didn't actually die (people saw him walking around three days later), and most people didn't get saved.

Don't you agree this is a straw man? The Catholic Church does not teach this nor is it an iron-manned position on the topic. I think we all can agree that it is intellectually vicious to straw man positions when creating an OP; especially when it is written in a condescending way.

I would not think to purposefully desecrate and straw-man anyone's position in an OP on a philosophy forum: that's just disingenuine, closed minded, and dishonest. Can we agree on that? Can we not agree on being intellectually virtuous when discussing ideas on a philosophy forum?

I've suggested silentism as the most reasonable response to such issues - admitting that we don't know the answer.

I don't know what that means. Can you elaborate please?

You didn't just read it, frank, you ignored it and responded to low hanging fruits. I've given you many opportunities to engage and you refuse, which is your perogative; however, it saddens me that you go along with people in this forum in straw manning and condescending claims about views when people have and are willing to provide you with the real positions that you should be responding to.

I understand for @Banno Christianity probably holds no water and has every right to desecrate on it in here (although that also is disappointing); but you made the OP: there's no excuse. I responded to your OP with the Thomistic response and you ignored it and continued to act like no one can give any responses to what you are asking. Banno isn't obligated to read all the other posts in someone else's OP and respond accordingly.

All I am saying is why do you create an OP asking about a topic in a condescending and straw-manning way just to ignore anyone that gives you a response that is actually challenging for you?

What variables? You mean truth and the actual reality of the situation at hand? That's a bit of an abrasively dismissive way of describing such, wouldn't you say? But alright then.

When we discuss hypotheticals, they are in a vacuum: they are ceteris paribus. We add in variables to test our reasoning and decipher what we believe. You keep shifting the goal posts because you are not quite envisioning or appreciating this aspect of hypotheticals.

If I say “is it permissible to run a red light all else being equal?”, then it is not a valid response to say “it is permissible if its 1 AM with no traffic and your wife is bleeding out in the car while you rush her to the hospital”. Do you see what I mean?

And the officer responds, "oh you're just importing variables into the hypothetical". It is not a hypothetical. It literally happened. At least, allegedly, per the text we're discussing.

That’s not at all what’s happening. That’s adding context to a real scenario: these are hypothetical scenarios. Do you understand the difference between a hypothetical scenario and a real-life scenario?

Okay, so like I said. Maybe your premise is invalid. Simply, perhaps you're just wrong about one or more things. This is why religion is not generally a "hot topic" in the halls of philosophy. Because faith is belief, and belief is anything you deem fit. It's your right, after all.

Nothing about my definition of murder is faith-based or religious: I don’t know why you went there.

To be clear, if you reject that murder definitionally has to do with killing an innocent person then you are using a definition that is completely and utterly foreign to the modern justice system. A definition that includes killing guilty people would imply that there may be scenarios where what normally is considered legitimate self-defense is murder and scenarios where normal murder is not self-defense and yet not murder or manslaughter.

I don't see the relevance: can you elaborate on how this relevant to the OP?

Let me grant you that Jesus relates himself to the messiah from the OT which, in turn, is related to the God of the OT (the father). My argument demonstrates that the OT gets some stuff wrong about God because God can't do some of the things the OT claims God did; so those portions are false. However, it could be true that some of the other portions are accurate or none of it is. This argument certainly would jeopardize the standard Christian view that the Bible is inerrant.

Ok, thank you for the clarification. If you are using my definition and leveraging that God is not murdering people because they can't truly die, then no one ever commits murder. Are you accepting that? I want to make sure we are on the same page about the consistent conclusion of your position here.

If I kill an innocent infant, then the same logic would apply: I have not murdered them because they haven't truly died.

That's why I added in the "and a killing is to end the natural life of a being" since rational souls have a supernatural component that the stereotypical idea of killing does not apply.

My invocation of Thomism here was to give @Frank a reasonable Christian answer to their OP's blatant straw manning of Christianity; which doesn't necessitate that I accept the metaphysics.

On a separate note, I actually do find a lot of Thomism plausible. However, I know you have a lot of knowledge of philosophy and if there's alternatives that you would like to discuss with me then I am all ears.

I was talking about legitimate debt. Are you suggesting that the idea of sin is illegitimate?

You are making my point for me! In my example I am right that they are innocent because they are morally blameless as it relates to the incident; whereas you are right in your example that we could import variables into the hypothetical where they are not morally blameless in ways where it may be justified to kill them.

My point was that murder is considered normally killing someone that is innocent, although I would refine it a bit, and you were asking about what constitutes innocence. In both our examples, it is evident that innocence is about whether or not a person is morally blameworthy in a relevant way for the other person(s) to be justified in what they did to them.

I said you were shifting the goal-post because obviously innocence is a key component of murder: no one disputes that and my original comment was a definition of murder.

I didn't give a reference for that because I do not see the relevance. The OP is arguing that the OT depicts God in a light that is contradictory to God's nature. Even if the NT depicts God accurately or inaccurately, that is a separate issue.

You are just shifting the goal post to a discussion about what constitutes innocence. There is a wide consensus that unjust acts involve a victim and a victim, as the name implies, was innocent.

Innocence, I would say, has to do with being morally blameless as it relates to the incident at hand. Hence, an ex-convict would be an innocent victim if they were shot point blank on a sidewalk because someone didn't like the fact they had been previously convicted of a crime.

I don't think that is true. God may indirectly intentionally kill people or let them die; but He does not directly intentionally kill people (notwithstanding just punishment).

What definition of murder are you using?

It was an account through natural theology of why God would necessarily freely choose to sacrifice the Son (which doesn't necessarily have to be Jesus) and how it is out of love and not wrath. This is philosophical: it is not dependent on revealed theology.

Even if it were (as maybe I am providing why Jesus specifically had to be sacrificed), the part of the argument I gave is not a historical argument from revealed theology even if it presupposes some truths only derived from revealed theology.

E.g., I can make an philosophical argument for the metaphysics of a mind that presupposes some scientific claims which are not themselves philosophical; like so I can give an philosophical account of why Jesus would be sacrificed which presupposes Jesus was God through revealed theology which is not itself philosophical.

@frank is incapable of responding to my argument for some reason and insists that God meaninglessly sacrificed himself to himself out of wrath. It's just a shame they are unwilling to have a productive conversation.

Yep, that's why it has been historical seen as immoral and has been illegal. Same with assisted suicide.

If you don't agree with the definition, then please provide the one you are using and we can discuss with that one.

Because the OT claims God has done things that are evil; and God cannot do evil.

As I tried to explain to @frank (but they rudely ignored it), it is because God is all-just. To forgo the repayment required for an offense is to forgo justice. Oftentimes, mercy (viz., alleviating someone’s deserved misery) is contradictory to justice (viz., upholding what is owed).

God is all-just and all-merciful, so there is a necessary synthesis of both in God. The perfect synthesis of the two for God is to forgive our sins if we are repentant (viz., so as to be merciful) as long as a proportionate price has been paid for them by a representative of the group (viz., so as to be just). In this way, the price has been paid and an alleviation of misery can be done.

Imagine that you knew someone was in debt to you so much money that they never could pay it back. You could absolve them of the debt with the snap of your fingers, but you would be being unjust: they deserve to pay that back and you deserve that money, but you are forgoing it to allow someone to be in a condition that they do not deserve out of some motive (perhaps love or kindness). In this case, you would be having mercy on them, but at the expense of being just.

If you want to be just, though, you cannot do this; but if you make them continue to be in debt (to be just) with no way out, then you are not being merciful.

So, can you be both merciful and just? Is there a way to synthesize them? Yes. For example, in this case, you could take the money from a volunteer who is wealthy enough to pay the debt for this person and thereby absolve them of their debt when they don't deserve it (i.e., be merciful) and preserve the proper respect of desert (i.e., be just).

It's not a perfect analogy, but this is what God did.

GregW, murder is the direct intentional killing of an innocent person and a killing is to end the natural life of a being. By your logic, then, if I go and kill someone it isn't murder because they haven't truly died since their soul is immutable and ends up in heaven.

1. It is impermissible to indirectly kill an infant
2. Killing an infant's parents will indirectly kill the infant (if left to itself)
3. Therefore, it is impermissible to kill an infant's parents (for any reason, so long as you cannot support the infant)

Would you agree with that argument?

No, I wouldn’t. But let’s say I did: is your argument that if it is immoral to kill or leave the infant, then the lesser of the two evils (that should be picked) is to kill it? I do accept the principle that if one has to do evil that they should do the lesser of the evils; but wouldn’t this argument require that God had to do evil?

The reason I wouldn’t accept the argument, on another note, is for two reasons:

1. It is sometimes permissible to indirectly intentionally kill an infant. Going back to our discussion about the principle of Double Effect, the tactical bomber, e.g., is justified in bombing the military base even if he knows with 100% certainty one innocent bystander will be killed.

2. Omissions and commissions are evaluated morally differently, such that if one can only do immoral acts then letting something bad happen is always the permissible and obligatory option. If I can only murder someone else to stop the train to save the five or let the five die, then letting the five die is morally permissible and obligatory; however, all else being letting the five die would be immoral. If you either have to let the children starve or murder them, then letting them starve is bad but morally obligatory and permissible.

I think you would have to, at the very least, deny the principle in 2 that <if one can only do immoral acts to prevent something bad, then it is obligatory that they do nothing>.

that one is permitted to indirectly kill an infant in certain circumstances. In that case a command to kill infants could be reasonably interpreted as a command to indirectly kill infants by killing their evil parents.

Well, this cannot be true. 1 Samual 15 makes it clear God is commanding Saul to directly intentionally kill them all. It even goes so far to explicate that Saul did it but kept some of the animals and God was annoyed with Saul for keeping the animals BUT NOT for directly intentionally killing the people:

“He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. 9 But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.”

 God is allowed to "kill," given that every time anything dies God has "killed" it. Life and death are in God's hands. Can God delegate such a prerogative to the Israelites in special cases, such as that of the Amalekites? If so, then this "mercy killing" of an infant is not per se unjust, and it actually provides the infant with the best option, given the alternatives.

Yes, this seems to be Aquinas’ answer; but then you are saying that murder is not the direct intentional killing of an innocent person OR that murder is not always unjust. Would you endorse one of those?

Note though that collateral damage is part of war, and that it bears on the question of directly intended killing versus indirectly intended killing. 

But this seems disanalogous. The tactical bomber is not indirectly intending to kill an innocent bystander if he successfully bombs the military base, notices he has another bomb leftover, and uses it on an innocent person riding their bike. Going in and winning a war against the Amalekites and then killing en masse the women and children is not indirectly intentional. Technically, one could argue that the women and children were all killed in the heat of battle; but how honestly plausible is that? When has that ever happened in war?

I have not. I haven't had the time to sift through all the posts in here.

There was nothing invalid about the form of my argument. Murder is the direct intentional killing of an innocent person. God did that in the OT, or rather it is purported that God did that. Either God did it and committed murder or He didn't. If He did and murder is unjust, then God is unjust. However, God is all-just, so God cannot commit murder; so the OT cannot be correct. You may not find it plausible, but the argument is logically sound.

Yes, but you are thinking of liberty of indifference and not liberty for excellence; and this is why you will find it incoherent and probably downright contradictory to say that people in heaven cannot sin and yet are free. No different than how if you think freedom fundamentally consists in this indifferent ability to choose from contraries you will find it impossible that God is free, let alone perfectly and absolutely free, and yet cannot do evil.

It's why the replies from believers consist mostly of repeating doctrine rather than responding to the inconsistency. To reaffirm the creed is to participate in the truth.

I literally responded with a philosophical account of why God had to sacrifice Himself, devoid of faith, and @Frank ignored it. I understand many laymen do not take this approach and your critique here can be generally valid of those who do not have a robust understanding of their Christian beliefs; but I gave the consistent and rational position that Aquinas would endorse: so this isn't even a niche or unlikely position for the Catholic Church to endorse.

How is that relevant to our discussion? Do you see how your depiction of Christianity was a straw man? That's all I was attempting to argue here.

What would you say the sacrifice of Jesus was meant to accomplish?

I explained this in my responses to you:

Imagine that you knew someone was in debt to you so much money that they never could pay it back. You could absolve them of the debt with the snap of your fingers, but you be being unjust: they deserve to pay that back and you deserve that money, but you are forgoing it to allow someone to be in a condition that they do not deserve out of some motive (perhaps love or kindness). In this case, you would be having mercy on them, but at the expense of being just.

If you want to be just, though, you cannot do this; but if you make them continue to be in debt (to be just) with no way out, then you are not being merciful.

So, can you be both merciful and just? Is there a way to synthesize them? Yes. For example, in this case, you could take the money from a volunteer who is wealthy enough to pay the debt for this person and thereby absolve them of their debt when they don't deserve it (i.e., be merciful) and preserve the proper respect of desert (i.e., be just).

It's not a perfect analogy, but this is what God did.

And:

The death itself is not what fundamentally saves you and I: it is that something of infinite dignity was offered to repay our sins. This could be, in principle, done in various ways.
…
Frank, it isn’t the Christian narrative. According to Christianity, when you sin you offend God and you cannot repay that sin; so God, out of love, offered Himself to repay that debt so that you can repent.

But you didn’t address them. Your view is a straw man of Christianity.

God is all-just and all-merciful; so He has to synthesize the two analogous to the debt example I gave. You seem to think God can just forgo punishment for sins and that is best; but that is mercy at the expense of justice. If the judge absolves a person of a rightful conviction sentence out of mercy, then they have sacrificed justice.

@Frank

Imagine that you knew someone was in debt to you so much money that they never could pay it back. You could absolve them of the debt with the snap of your fingers, but you be being unjust: they deserve to pay that back and you deserve that money, but you are forgoing it to allow someone to be in a condition that they do not deserve out of some motive (perhaps love or kindness). In this case, you would be having mercy on them, but at the expense of being just.

If you want to be just, though, you cannot do this; but if you make them continue to be in debt (to be just) with no way out, then you are not being merciful.

So, can you be both merciful and just? Is there a way to synthesize them? Yes. For example, in this case, you could take the money from a volunteer who is wealthy enough to pay the debt for this person and thereby absolve them of their debt when they don't deserve it (i.e., be merciful) and preserve the proper respect of desert (i.e., be just).

It's not a perfect analogy, but this is what God did.

from His own wrath

God sent His Son out of love so that He can be both just and merciful. God is not wrathful: I don’t know why the OT describes Him that way, but the NT makes it clear He is not.

And apparently this strategy worked in spite of the fact that he didn't actually die 

The death itself is not what fundamentally saves you and I: it is that something of infinite dignity was offered to repay our sins. This could be, in principle, done in various ways.

most people didn't get saved

What do you mean?

How does a person who hasn't had a lobotomy make sense of this?

Why do you have such hostility for Christianity? This seems disingenuine, an ad hominem, and mean.

 Could it be that most Christians throughout history didn't know this is the Christian narrative?

Frank, it isn’t the Christian narrative. According to Christianity, when you sin you offend God and you cannot repay that sin; so God, out of love, offered Himself to repay that debt so that you can repent.

Okay, that's fair. I just wanted to try to impress the idea that the Amalekite culture and the Amalekite religion/cult go hand in hand, and if we want to get into the exegesis we could show that it is specifically the abominations associated with the Amalekites that God is concerned with. The question, "Why the Amalekites?," is something we ought to keep in mind. It would be a significant mistake to assume that this is how God/Israel deals with every people-group

That’s fine by me.

I think it is reasonable to assume that there were Amalekite children and that they were part of the ban.

:up:

In the first place I would want to note that in our Western society which strongly values individualism, the individual is the central agent and the child is often seen to be his own person, so to speak
…
A second consideration is the question of support mechanism.

I am having a hard time parsing your argument. Let me offer some arguments I think might be extractable from your elaboration. I’m going to use loose arguments and I am not intending to put words in your mouth.

Argument from Group Agency

1. A person’s innocence or guilt is determined relative to the group’s innocence or guilt.
2. A person that has done nothing wrong themselves but is a part of a group that is guilty is thereby guilty (just the same).
3. Murder is the direct intentional killing of an innocent person.
4. The Amalekite group was guilty (of relevant crimes to potentially killing them).
5. The Amalekite children had done nothing wrong.
6. The Amalekite children were guilty by association with the Amalekite group (2).
7. Therefore, killing the Amalekite children was not murder.

Is this an argument you would endorse?

Briefly, I would say that I would deny 2. Ethics is person-centric, not group-centric; but then, again, maybe you would rejoin that this is ‘libertarian modernism’.

Argument from Mercy Killing

1. A person that could be mercy killed or left to endure a serious and fatal life (such as leaving them to starve to death because no one can feed them) should be mercy killed.
2. The children of the Amalekites would have been left to starve, because the Israelites lacked the resources to integrate them into their society properly, and inevitably die in insufferable ways.
3. Therefore, the children should have been mercy killed.

Is this an argument you would endorse?

Briefly, I would say this is consequentialistic; and I would deny it on those grounds. Murder is not allowable if letting a person live would result in grave consequences for that person—including insufferable death.

Argument from Evil Cleansing

1. An extremely evil idea deeply rooted in a society, culturally, should be eradicated.
2. Eradicating such an extremely evil idea is infeasible without killing off most of the population.
3. Therefore, one should kill most of the population of a society that has a deeply rooted extremely evil idea.

Is this an argument you would endorse?

Briefly, I would say that this also is consequentialistic at heart. I don’t think it is permissible to do evil in order to eradicate evil.

P.S. The reason you aren't getting a lot of direct answers to your argument in this thread is simply because it is a very difficult argument to address. For that reason I'm not sure whether I will succeed in giving you a satisfactory answer either, but I think these considerations complicate the initial picture quite a bit.

That’s fair, but aren’t you a Christian? I’m curious what you make of these difficult passages: does it affect your faith?

Considering other common forms of death in antiquity, death by flood isn't exactly a bad way to go. Would you also think, e.g., death by tuberculosis or dysentery to be God "murdering?"

Are you confusing an action with an allowance. God is doing the flooding (by willing it); whereas a person with cancer right now was through privations of what God wills—God is not willing it.

It’s the difference between me killing someone and letting them die.

Secondly, if a set of pre-existent rules binds God, then he is not God. Creation (which includes rules) proceeds from God.

God is not bound by rules; but that doesn’t mean He isn’t bound by His nature. His nature is perfectly good which binds Him: the modality of ‘rules’ is irrelevant to that point.

Again, you are taking a divine command theorist approach and this is very flawed. Things are not good merely because God wills them: God has to will them in a way that is good because He is goodness itself—His nature is perfectly good.

Yeah, but don't those seem like highly ad hoc explanations? The Rabbi, granting Chatgpt even got it right, is inventing a new kind of light to explain it when the simpler answer is that the author had no clue how light works OR the author was trying to convey something spiritual.

Does it? It says Noah has his sons when he is 500 years old. His sons are all a century old when the Flood comes, when Noah is aged 600. Noah's sons are the last births mentioned in the text. If one reads this literally, I'm not sure how fair it is to make assumptions about human life cycles at these scales, particularly if one considers the radically different biology that is being suggested elsewhere.

I see your point: upon thinking about it more, I think this is a fair and reasonable rejoinder. I don’t think the great flood mentions or implies there are children and there are plenty of mentioning of abnormal biology.

EDIT: It is worth noting, though, that the lineage part does suggest that they are procreating (instead of God manually creating them), so it's still kind of suspect that there are no children at all. Especially if people are said to be doing immoral things: that usually involves sex.

What are your thoughts on the other two examples I gave in the OP?

There is no "principle or parsimony" for reading historical texts that says: "stick to just one text." Really quite the opposite. We try to confirm things through as many traditions and texts as possible. I am not sure where Rashi got that idea though, if it might have been in an earlier tradition.

What I was referring to is the principle that the simpler explanation that explains the data is the one we should use. I believe this would be used by historians.

The religious view is that God has the right to take and give life as He sees fit.

But, then, murder is not the direct intentional killing of an innocent person. It would have to be defined some other way, and different than it being merely an illegal killing.

I sympathize with your position, since it does seem to me that the OT counts, all else being equal, against God being all-just OR that the OT is not describing God (or potentially divinely inspired).

The point of this OP is to see what people would say who would hold that the OT is divinely inspired

.

Exactly, and most Christians have the Church itself as an interpreter, and its most respected saints as anchors. You have the Church Fathers as an anchor point, and within them the "Universal Fathers" who are doctors of the Roman Catholic Church and also among the most respected saints in the East, e.g. the Capaddocian Fathers, Saint Maximus the Confessor, etc., as well as the Apostolic Fathers who wrote within living memory of the Apostles or those they directly taught.

Islam has a similar set of texts and interpretive system. Evangelical Christianity, as dominant as it is in the Anglophone world due to its influence in the US, is quite unique in the Abrahamic tradition in how it deals with scripture and tradition.

But how are they interpreting it? How do they respond to the things @Hanover said? If you would like to respond to a specific example, then here's one: why does Genesis describe God making light for the earth before the sun?

By your definition, a person would kills an innocent child in society that has not made killing humans, in any way or means, illegal has not committed murder and, most crucially, apparently, has done nothing wrong.

Murder is the unjustified killing of a person: the direct intentional killing of an innocent person.

Moreover, "God being the law" is partially true and partially false. God IS perfect goodness and perfect justice: His commands are not themselves what grounds what is good or just---it is His nature.

So you are right that there is no other being above Him: He is constrained by His own nature to be perfectly good. So my argument is perfectly valid: if God is all-just (because it is in His nature to be all-just and not merely because you are defining arbitrarily God's commands as what defines justice) and murder is unjust, then God cannot commit murder; but God does commit murder in the OT, so that is not God or they got the facts wrong.

Aquinas doesn't think the word "best" makes sense in that context, given the infinite possibilities

I'll have to think about this: maybe if there are an infinite range of possibility then God would have an infinite amount of 'best' worlds He could create. I am not sure.