God in the place that is defined by God's absence
Again, this is the main point. There is no such thing as God's absence even in Satan. There is only refusal of God or accepting God, but the ontology is always as privatio, an act of will, there is no ontological substance to rebellion. There is no ontological reality to refusal of God, some "God's absence" realm. Refusal is act of will, not an ontological reality. God created everything and named it as Good. There is no corner of created or uncreated world where the God is absent. This is important as it impacts Christology. Christ did not descend to Not-God place. He has command over all creation and preached gospel to the dead. I just want to point out that Bishop Barron draws heavily from Hans Urs von Balthasar, and these are considered as heterodox theology that runs close to denying several established dogmas with Church Fathers and dogmas established by various councils. It is one thing to claim metaphorical language of "Not-God" as internal experience of somebody severed from Grace. It is another to posit ontological power of such severance to create a "space" or "realm" where damned reside collectively and which is cut off from the God completely. In classical view, Jesus waltzed into Hades and preached gospel to individual trapped souls. He did not walk to unassailable "evil" Manichean prison outside of God's creation to free the souls. That is dangerously close to Manicheanism and assigning evil the ontological status, thus even promoting Satan to some sort of ontological Evil God who creates his own "realm" of Not-God in Hades.
Because there is already an eternal "space" of self-giving love between Father and Son, that space can stretch to encompass the finite distance created by human sin. The abandonment on the Cross is not a sudden rupture of divine love, but the manifestation in historical reality of the divine, self-emptying love that exists eternally within God.
In the theology there is a difference between God uncreated attributes, powers and operations and human ones. You can love your neighbor and it is analogous to Father loving his Son. But it is not the same. And it does not matter if you look at it through Thomist Absolute Divine Simplicity or Palamas Essence-Energy distinction, "energies" or operations of God such as Divine Glory, Mercy etc. are either divine essence or uncreated energies and thus outside of purview of not only humans but also angels and any other creatures. In that sense there is no "space" of self-giving love between Father and Son. Divine love is either consubstantial part of Divine Essence eternally present between Son and Father or it is Palamian uncreated energy that is the operation of divine nature of both of them. This is important trinitarian dogma. As in John 16:15
All things that the Father has are mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
This includes Divine love, which is operation of divine nature. There is no "space" between The Father and The Son. There are distinctions between persons such as Jesus being begotten and Father being the source and archaea. But these are relation of opposition inside the ousia of the Trinity, there is no space inside the trinity as an extra attribute dictating this relationship inside Thomism, that would be against Absolute Divine Simplicity. Palamism says that Father and Son share uncreated divine energies, however these are operations of divine nature of persons within Trinity. In the same way as it is appropriate to human nature to let's say talk or breath (an operation of human nature), it is natural for Father and Son and Holy Spirit to express Divine Love.
There is no space there as some independent variable, there is no "Divine Space" between persons of Trinity outside of it, dictating operations of God. Wherever Son is, Father and Holy Spirit are also fully in their consubstantial form, they are there 100%, no "spatial distance" can diminish it to 99.9999% as space is not an attribute dictating operations of God as said above. That is the main point of retarded view of PSA - if Father punishes the Son, he punishes himself and the Holy Spirit, he cannot separate himself from the other and do "Divine Punishment" operation on them as that would break Trinity. That is why PSA is Nestorian heresy trying to divide Jesus in his human/divine hypostasis as if it was separate created "human Jesus" who descend to Hades while "divine Jesus" rested at the right hand of his Father somehow watching his alter ego doing stuff in Hades or maybe laying and chilling in the tomb or whatever.
Church Fathers had it correct, you start with Christology which is deeply tied to overall Christian theology. And then the rest flows out naturally. You cannot change soteriology (as it depends on Christ and his resurrection) even ecclesiology (it posits Christ as the head of the Church) as it has butterfly effects on Christology and Theology, eventually distorting the overall view.
Again, when Jesus conquered death in his dual human/divine (in his hypostatic union) nature healing the rift brought upon human nature by Adam, he came as a victor to Hades - a created realm by God (Niceno-Constantinoplitan creed names God as creator of of all things visible and invisible) to preach gospel to individual souls who now had healed human nature. They had the same opportunity as we healed humans have now through baptism and deification. They could participate in Gods's grace individually - maybe some did and some didn't. It is not as if Jesus took away redeemed souls of prophets and other righteous from "Not-God" realm of Satan toward the "Yes-God" realm of creation or something like that. It was individual choice of each soul in the same way we now have on this Earth now. We are not living in Not-God realm if there is overwhelming sin around us as in Sodom, where the sin creates some splinter-reality of "Not-God" and where the space or air is imbued by this ungodly property, it is incredibly heterodox thought.
georgioz
1d ago
Pretty nitpicky for flowery language, when the sentence before I said what I mean by not-God - the depths of evil and suffering
This is definitely not nitpicky or flowery language it is the point, your claim is borderline Nestorian, which is by the way the error of PSA. Jesus descent to Hades was not descent to suffering in form of any range of Not-God. That is the point, Jesus is God and he was in no way damned or suffered in form of being severed or diminished from consubstantiation with the trinity. His sacrifice ontologically changed the nature of all humans, it was not some exploration of suffering. That is a very important Christological distinction. Jesus descending to Hades as a victor over death to preach Gospel to dead with now healed nature, he was not exploring some realm of Not-God or suffering, paying some debt to justice or anything like that.
You cannot meditate on a mystery of the faith without it being an act of prayer. God initiates all prayer. Do I need to add this disclaimer to everything I write on spiritual topics?
Again, this is not about prayer or meditation. It is about ontological change and deification. Also God goes not "initiate a prayer", he makes you able to pray, he is the source of grace - but we have free will and we are coworkers in our salvation through willing participation on Grace. Synergism vs monoergism. If you agree with synergism, then we are in some substantial disagreement.
All this is important especially in context of Calvinist PSA the OP discussed.
georgioz
1d ago
I also like Vicarious in some formulations, not yours. It's not about God "understanding us" in a way He couldn't before. It's that God set out to the depths of evil and suffering, went to the furthest reaches of Not-God, to find us and love us from the full range of God and Not-God. He descended into Hell. We recite that in the Apostles Creed but do we appreciate what that means? There is no where we can run that He has not traversed.
I would just say that this Not-God language does not align with traditional Catholic and neither Orthodox understanding. Evil or Not-God is thought of in terms of privatio, there is no "Not-God" realm that would turn God into a dialectic, in fact this thinking led to many heresies. Not-God has no ontology, such a reality it would cease to exist there is "no" there to find find anything. Even Satan is not true "Not-God", he does not sustain himself, he derives his existence from rebellion against God, which is not the same as "Not-God", again there is no true dialectic as with let's say Manicheans or Gnostics or Bogomils and other religions or heresies.
Ultimately, it is a mystery. I don't mean mystery in the secular sense, where there is one answer and if you find it you can stop looking. I mean in the Christian sense, mystery is something like Jesus' parables. Something that you need to keep coming back to, something that always has more to understand, something you can meditate on for all eternity and still find more to appreciate. Trying to pin it to a wall like a butterfly will kill it.
Partially true. We see this by holistic reading of The Scripture. For instance consider John 6:32–35
"Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” 35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
There are many foreshadowing and multiple meanings in The Bible, the famous quadriga of the exegesis, where the text has literal and historical meaning, allegorical and moral meaning, it can be foreshadowing of future things or all of the above at once. Another famous example is the Destruction of the Temple at 70AD described in many passages from Old Testament, New Testament such as Mathew 24 but also in Revelations. It is at the same time a prophecy of actual historical event, it is also an explanation for the Church to be new Israel and it is also at the same time prophecy about eschaton. It is all of the above 100%. It is not 20%/60%/20% or anything like that.
But there is also more to mystery. For instance Church fathers talked about sacraments as a Mystery. Talking about mystery in purely intellectual term is in this sense a category error, mystery can be known by divine Grace, that is how you "pinpoint" the mystery. That is the very nature of the process of deification. You do not pin the mystery on piece of paper to examine it like a butterfly by your intellect, you pin yourself onto the butterfly so to speak.
The fruits mentioned in the epistles, an obsessive regard for the common good, being happy with little and sharing any abundance with the community, abstaining from consumerism and worthless status competitions, directing one’s energy as far as one is able to promoting a good life to those around them, submitting as if a slave to wisdom, having a high trust community, loving good work, loving everything good, things like that.
Again, the same psychobabble. The fruits means caring for common good, also happiness and also promoting good life, good work with bunch of random shit attached. This is stoner level argument of Wow, good is good bro. Where is the grounding for what is good, where is the argument? This is just bunch of childish assertions with the crown jewel supposedly being: A rule [for good] would be “does it promote common wellbeing on the whole, longterm”. Oh, the good is a thing that does not prevent good in the future. Are you even listening to yourself and how moronically tautological this argument is?
That’s what the scapegoat ritual was doing from a psychological perspective. I suppose without this explanation, you believe that for hundreds of years God literally placed the sins of Israel on a goat and sent it off to the wilderness. In any case, the ancient Israelite believed that this occurred, and the belief would have actually reduced their sinful inclinations through this belief (placebo).
Again, bunch of assertions. How do you know it? Maybe they sacrificed goats because they were pissed off with their bloating and wanted to murder them, plus did you see goat eyes? Or alternatively, it was something that God commanded them and they agreed to do that. Again, you are just spinning stupid stories, thinking that your schizoid conspiracies about societies thousands of years ago have any meaning. How do you know that aside of bunch of assertions that actively goes against what they wrote about themselves?
Then you and the theobros will be like the Greek Orthodox monks who quibbled over footnotes in Constantinople as the Muslims took over your entire city ...
Okay, you lost me there. Just another inane story.
In real life, God punishes those who miss the big picture and God rewards the groups who are more organized.
This is completely false, by this logic, God "punished" Jesus (and himself) by crucifixion for being disorganized. This completely misses the meaning of punishment, free will and overall Christian soteriology and anthropology just to fit your narcissistic psychobabble story you want to fit as your inane grand narrative.
If you believe this revelation, you are judging him as good.
Aboslute non sequitor. If you believe in math, then you judge that 2+2=4. It is not my "judgement" or belief that makes it so. That is the point I am making.
I had thought that "might doesn't make right" was such a well understood and uncontroversial principle that nobody would dispute it, not even you, so exactly how we got there doesn't really matter.
Why have you though that? Give me an argument why "might makes right" rule of let's say millions of Social Darwinists is wrong. Just appealing to majority does not cut it. That is exactly what I am asking you - from your worldview, what makes that morality incorrect? What is the moral standard in your worldview, even in abstraction? Does your worldview even account for any moral standard at all? Again I am not denying that I am also finite being using reason and senses to arrive at conclusions. But we are going one meta-level higher, what these conclusions allow for? Just because two finite beings arrive at different conclusions - let's say one says 2+2=7 and another says 2+2=4, it does not follow that they are both incorrect as they are both finite. One has a coherent model of math and logic, the other has a model that is incoherent.
The infuriating thing is that you at the same time say that we are finite and there is no grounding, but at the same time confidently say shit like might doesn't make right" was such a well understood and uncontroversial principle that nobody would dispute it. Really? It is impossible or universally incorrect to challenge such a claim? That is an objective and universal claim for which you have no grounding.
Plus it does not matter what I believe, that is pure ad hominem. We can both agree on facts but for wrong reasons which makes one or both of us incorrect.
But the argument is that since you can't create the things that God creates, he is morally unquestionable. The only characteristic of God that this argument depends on is God's power, so this argument applies to a rich dude. If you didn't intend for it to apply to a rich dude, you need to fix up the argument.
Yes, that is the thing that I appealed to. Again, God is a necessary condition for objective morality to exist. I even gave you example of Godel's god providing for modal collapse. Are you incapable of understanding this basic logical argument? Let me spell it for you:
- For X to exist, it is necessary that Y exists
- X exists
- Therefore Y exists
It is basic modus poens argument. Do you get at least the formal logic of that one? And no, "rich dude" is not the necessary condition there. Existence of somebody more powerful than you - let's say Bill Gates - does not ground logic, metaphysics, ethics and all the rest.
Agreed, these kind of obvious loopholes should be closed immediately. I remember that back in the day there was some regulation that forbade bars to sell loose cigarettes. Enterprising bar owners created a bundle of matches+cigarette and the idea was that the customer bought overpriced matches and got the loose cigarettes for free as a gift, so technically cigarettes were not sold. This was stamped out quite quickly.
georgioz
3d ago
It certainly sounds like you're saying you shouldn't judge God as good.
Only in the eye of solipsist. I do not "judge" God as good, he told me about his nature in his divine revelation. He is who defined this property, not me. That is the main point, he does not have to pass georgioz's stupid yardstick of what he judges as good or evil, he is the yardstick. Even if I declared him evil, it would be pointless in the same way as if I declared that 2+2=5. Again, that is the point of the discussion. I really find it amazing how some people are unable to escape their own solipsism, like with the other debater he just lives in his head in complete rebellion against everything including reason, worshipping his subjective judgement to an extent that he even cannot imagine anybody having a different worldview.
Exactly what here is fallacy of popularity? Are you claiming that because someone is more capable than you does mean they're right, and so when I say it doesn't mean that, that's fallacy of popularity? This seems strange.
You evoked "arguments" such as we've learned or we'd never accept etc. In middle-age mezoamerica we've learned that carving out hearts of slaves on an altar is amazing thing. Popularity of something does not make it good or true. That is the fallacy.
You can talk about what doesn't give moral strength or weakness without grounding morals. It is absurd to claim that God's power gives him moral strength. I may not be sure what does, but this doesn't.
That is because of your misconception of thinking of God as some "rich dude" inside the universe, your presupposition is exactly that you are equal to him. My paradigm is completely different, God is a unique entity that has ability to ground all these things: metaphysics, morality, epistemology etc. He gives the universe telos, he is responsible for stability of laws of nature. He is of course much more, but in this discussion he serves as an anchor. I even used the analogy with Gödel's god and what kind of grounding The God provides, if you are even willing to entertain such a thing:
To provide an example, imagine how god in Gödel's ontological proof serves as modal collapse that smooths away existence of unprovable truths. That is the point of my presupposition. In this analogy you are denying existence of Gödel's god, but you are also at the same denying existence of unprovable truths and claiming that you have access to modal collapse without any grounding.
georgioz
3d ago
I will, while you invoke them not knowing that tomorrow they can completely invert.
This is amazing, you still do not get the argument. You evidently do not understand the actual position, that goes about the situation paradigmatically. My paradigm allows for existence of stable laws of nature as created by god. Your paradigm is dependent on senses that have no epistemical grounding. You are projecting your worldview, you are absolutely incapable to think on meta level about the paradigms and logical rational conclusions of you positions. Again, it is completely the opposite.
When that debate fails, people go secular and shoot Conan dead.
And? Is it good or is it bad or is it just whatever? Or is it just deterministic universe doing its thing?
This is exactly what you're saying when you say "God". "My philosophical concepts are justified because I say so".
Haha, no you silly. My worldview provides actual justification, I even gave you example with Gödel's god in what I mean.
I do not suffer either, because just like you, I'm perfectly capable of telling myself "actually my beliefs do have grounding"
Haha, this is incredible. You just assert incoherent gibberish on the level of 2+2=154 and at the same time you claim the mastery of mathematics, because you feel like it. This is basic rebelion against reason. Of course the paper does not burst when you write nonsensical stuff like this sentence is false. You seem to be unable to proceed to the level of analysis beyond that. Again, amazing stuff.
Anyway, have a good day sir and good luck with your nihilism and total relativism.
georgioz
3d ago
What a bunch of psychobabble garbage. Just this one sentence:
If I had to choose between the exact original soteriological schema (hypothetically) and a later innovation that is more fruitful, I would gladly pick the more fruitful one, simply because I only care about the effects.
What is fruitful, what effects do you care for? How did you came to posses such mystical knowledge of what is fruitful and what is rotten? This is classical "pragmatic" analysis of people who pretend that they are above the fray, the classical "neutral" position masking their own worldview.
In regards to the atonement as the fulfillment of the temple sacrifices, we can ask: what was the psychological effect on the part of the offerer? I’ve already written too much so I won’t go in depth, but: the scapegoat is believed to carry away the sins simply as placebo, almost as guided visualization, you feel that your sin has departed because the goat or the bird departs far away.
So what now, are you some kind of Nestorian or materialist and these are the "fruitful effects" that you seek? I don't even know what you are trying to say here, is this some sort of stream of though or what? I can as well read St. Ireneus Against Heresies from 180AD who offers a more meticulous critique of various cults, especially myriad of gnostic cults that engaged in various things that you describe here such as Valentinians or Marcionist. I can see where these cults come from, how they even relate to various movements right now. And I find it much more "fruitful" and having better "effect" compared to this reddit level of psychobabble, all it lacks is Jungian analysis of male and female archetype or some such nonsense as from Peterson.
Why the need to psychoanalyze this stuff and not take it at face level? We have rich writing of Church fathers, various debates between theologians as well as laymen over millennia. I find that much more interesting that this anachronistic bullshit.
At the end of the day no amount of constructing philosophical concepts like God and declaring that it is that concept alone that provides meaning will actually change anything. I will continue to act as if my actions hold meaning despite no materialistic evidence to it (I never said I am a materialist).
So in short you are going to invent you own ad-hoc fairy tales divorced from senses and reason to pretend to walk through life. You are going to evoke concepts such as "good" or "truth" knowing it has no stable grounding and that tomorrow it can completely invert. Not only that, but that you were good and truthful all along, that there is no ultimate yardstick as everything is subjective and there is not standard. Exactly, this is the endpoint of this meaningless ungrounded philosophy.
You seem to believe that I need some objective philosophical justification. Untrue: I only need a subjective philosophical justification. That's all I have, and furthermore that's all you have, because your perception of so-called objective philosophical concepts is itself subjective. Who knows, maybe you're the one who lives in the Matrix and what you believe and remember about the Christian God's goodness changes on the daily.
Again, this is pure projection. It is all you have as you used your "reason" to construct this incoherent paradigm of subjectivism where you cannot ground metaphysics, epistemology or morals and where nothing has meaning outside of solipsistic subjectivity. I was making an internal critique of your worldview and you just assent: everything is subjective, you need no grounding and that is all you have. What you do not realize is that these are propositions.
I only need a subjective philosophical justification, perception of so-called objective philosophical concepts is itself subjective
You do not even realize that this is a universal statement that directly contradicts subjectivity, you are expressing a universal statement while at the same time denying existence of universal statements. You do this all the time, the term "subjective justification" cannot be subjective, it is like saying "married bachelor". Justification is not subjective, it is normative otherwise I can just say that Conan's response to question of what is good in life in form of "Crush your enemies, drive them before you and listen to lamentation of their women" is "justified" by his subjective perception of "philosophical concepts". So it then at least two of the criteria of Justified True Belief are met, and since truth is also subjective, Conan's moral prerogative counts as Justified True Belief as well in this insane system. It is "his Truth" in postmodern sense. Your subjective relativistic worldview completely vacates any possibility of truth, goodness and even possibility of any debate . It's Conan's truth bro, he justifies it by his subjective experience of philosophical and moral concepts just like you, leave him be. Just to reiterate, this is internal critique of your position that has nothing to do with my position.
Or I can say that my philosophical concepts are "justified" because of "sbd sfnwefg esfdge". Justification must be normative, objective and invariant - none of which you have access to in your own paradigm. Which is exactly the point I am making and that you cannot understand. This sentence is an incoherent garbage. You claim access to metaphysical language without doing the legwork and you just try to avoid internal contradictions in your worldview.
Also your worldview and my worldview are nothing alike. I do not suffer from your problem, I can proudly declare "There is an objective philosophical justification for so-called objective philosophical concepts as they exist in a mind of The God, who is a special entity that can logically anchor all that". In the same way my analogy of Gödel's god anchors modal collapse. It is a coherent presupposition that fully accounts for my worldview and makes it distinct from your incoherent gibberish.
I have the same grounding as yours: my senses and reason. These are not perfect. You talk about a human not having the capacity to judge God, but your positive claims about God are no less hubristic than Job's attempt to judge God. Your claims of objective morality are unfounded.
No you don't. I also use senses and reason, but my grounding is God, which is a special type of entity that provides grounding. To provide an example, imagine how god in Gödel's ontological proof serves as modal collapse that smooths away existence of unprovable truths. That is the point of my presupposition. In this analogy you are denying existence of Gödel's god, but you are also at the same denying existence of unprovable truths and claiming that you have access to modal collapse without any grounding.
Do not pretend that "knowing true things is good, believing in false things is bad" is something that wouldn't be obvious to you even without any religious indoctrination. You don't need God to not walk into traffic, assured that the traffic isn't there.
I do actually know that exactly because my paradigm allows for the God, which in turns gives me access to objective morality, epistemology, coherent metaphysics, stability of laws of nature and everything else. It is you who is pretending, playing all and mighty, mocking God and existence of objective morality, sneering and seething while at the same time pretending you have access to what I have. I have more respect to Camus who understood the actual endpoint of your nihilistic morality; "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide." Walking into a traffic is the true existential question for your nihilistic position, and you even cannot explain why it is good or bad. You are just pretending not to see it.
You would not be replying if what I was saying was random noise. You act as if informational value below 1 is the same as zero.
That is because I believe in God. I believe that the world as well as you were created with a purpose and it is not a cold materialistic monad that ends up in heat death with no meaning. The true question as posited above is why you pretend it has any meaning to write anything. According to materialism are we not just moving atoms with no meaning and purpose not dissimilar to cosmic dust circling around the black hole in specific pattern? Again, you are just projecting. I do not operate according to what you profess to believe. And you do not either, which is at least a hint that I am right.
The kind of morality I am employing predates Christianity and operates closer to reality. Rich of you to forbid me to use maths because your version of maths allows division by zero.
Oh really? Were you there 2000 year ago as some elf from Tolkien story? Who knows, maybe you are just some Boltzman brain, or you live in a Matrix, or you are just dreaming inside Big Yuds Basilisk or whatever. You have no epistemic basis to claim access to these things as you said you are relying on your own senses and you refuse to use reason to ground them in anything. Again, you give yourself access to wild metaphysical concepts without actually providing any philosophical justification to any of that.
Knowing what you know and what you don't know correctly generally turns out better for you (in a very self-obvious way that you'd have to be deliberately obtuse to not understand)
You do not have any grounding for epistemology either. You do not know what is true or false no more than you know what is good or bad.
In a very self-obvious way that you'd have to be deliberately obtuse to not understand
Declaring something "self-obvious" is not grounding or justification. What do you even mean by self-obvious. I have discussed with morons who thought that self-evident means "evident to myself", as opposed to a logical tautology such as "a triangle has three angles" - although I would argue that even that proposition is not self-evident in terms that you have to presuppose Euclidean geometry, existence of angles and numbers; all outside of the proposition which makes it not self evident but reliant on number of presuppositions. However you seem to be one of the former bunch. Guess what, what is obvious to you is completely alien to somebody else such as saying that of course my sense of morality is based partly on meat desires.
Of course my sense of morality is based partly on meat desires and partly on post-Christian values instilled in childhood, I am not going to pretend that these are any less arbitrary than they are.
Yes, you are pretending. You literally talk about better and worse as if it has any meaning. You are a nihilist, your declaration of something being good has the same meaning as writing "safbdsnbdsv a,fmbdsf sdfd" - an equally arbitrary and meaningless statement. So stop appropriating moral language of Christianity that actually at least allows for objective morality to exist in its paradigm and presupposition. You do not have access to that by your own admission.
The better answer is to admit you don't have objective morality rather than writing a book that says "this is the objective truth
Why is that "a better answer"? What is your yardstick of better and why is that? Did you not get your morality from some shitty book or podcast or maybe from some stories of your family or maybe some sort of epiphany either drug induced or otherwise? Why is that better than anything else?
Then you shouldn't be saying that God is good. I'm pretty sure that most people who say we "shouldn't judge" God say that God is good.
I can, because I do have completely different presuppositions. In fact it is inherent in the book of Job - by the structure of the argument Job accepts God as a benevolent omniscient allpowerful omnipresent being. The Bible talks about internal critique - how can you judge such a being from internal critique of this worldview. God is the yardstick of measurement, that is what was meant by the passage in Job. Without God there is no morality, everything is just subjective vibes exactly as you mentioned and anybody can judge anything as good or evil based on how they wake up that morning. God is not "just a rich guy", his existence presupposes a completely different paradigm.
Because it's a pretty shitty answer
According to who, you? Do you have a better answer to it? Where do you even derive good and evil from?
In modern times we've learned that just because someone is more capable than you doesn't automatically mean they're right. We'd never accept some rich guy lecturing us by saying "where were you when I built a city?" I wasn't anywhere when God built the Earth's foundation because I don't live long and don't have the ability to make natural structures. Neither of these things is a source of moral weakness.
This is pure fallacy of popularity.
I wasn't anywhere when God built the Earth's foundation because I don't live long and don't have the ability to make natural structures.
Exactly, that is why you don't know shit. For all you know you are living in one of multitudes of simulation theorem universes or whatnot. You were not everywhere and everytime, you are just guessing and stumbling around. You have no grounding to declare any universal claims.
Neither of these things is a source of moral weakness.
You cannot talk about moral strength or weakness, because you did not ground morals at all. To be more precise, tell me why we should follow a Golden Rule as opposed to Eye for an Eye as opposed to Law of The Jungle or anything else. And I am not interested in some shitty sob story about babyeating aliens and another fallacy of popularity or whatnot, I mean it in form of some grounding of moral law that is more than "just because I prefer first to the third".
georgioz
4d ago
Readers will wonder a little less about "How will Harry Potter defeat the bad guy without any help from his mentor"
Reader's will not wonder about that, as in the OG books Potter defeated the bad guy be sheer cosmic luck during all occasions. But I had similar discussion about how Hermione and not Potter is the true hero of the story.
georgioz
4d ago
My theory is that it's because of a distaste towards the Levitical system in general. As modern Christians, we don't need to make offerings for our sins, so the whole concept seems alien to us. Never mind that it's the system God chose to give to Israel - it just feels wrong! Why couldn't God choose to forgive sins without all this slaughtering of innocent animals? Why does blood have to have this significance? It seems barbaric to modern sensibilities. So if some people have this distaste towards the idea of blood sacrifice, it seems reasonable to me that such distaste would apply also to theories of Jesus as a blood sacrifice, even if the text of Scripture seems to treat his death as such. I wouldn't call this a theory of mind necessarily, but perhaps a vibe check?
Exactly, this is the sin of pride where I am the judge of God and if he did good or evil. It is the same distaste that many people have with Job and his testing and they do not take Gods answer in Job 38 where God says stuff like Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?, basically saying Job to trust his divine plan. No, people think that they can judge God.
By the way on related not I recently watch one discussion where somebody told that he cannot believe God who accepted slavery. Of course slavery is bad so God is bad. The opponent had a really good answer:
Imagine that you are old testament tribal chief and you just won a skirmish with rival clan where you killed 20 enemies and captured 80. What will you do with them?
- Send them back to their tribe so they come again next year
- Kill them on the spot, thus also condemning their wives and children over there to die of starvation
- Imprison them and their wives in perpetuity, for which you do not have any resources
- Imprison them and their families and make them work so they are no longer threats, but so they can also earn their living
Back then the slavery was in fact a humane way to deal with your enemies. It was not unheard of for victorious tribes to genocide and wear skulls of all men and just kill boys and ugly women and infirm and old, and take young and beautiful girls as second or third wives. That was the norm, not slavery. There is always context in these things and the Bible was the text that was talking about how to behave toward slaves. It was Geneva Convention of its time.
PSA has several deep problems, the main one being Christological and trinitarian. The "Penal" in PSA means that God the Father punished the Son in some way - the original reformers even went as far as to describe it as "Damnation", meaning that Jesus was cut off from Fathers grace and thus momentarily the trinity was broken and the dogma of eternal consubstantiation does not apply.
As far as I understand the early Church councils dealt with these problems implicitly by focusing on Christology, thus they are shared among Catholics and Orthodox Christians. Jesus did not die to substitute his life for "Justice", he was not crucified as "punishment" for our sins, he "satisfied" the Justice by his voluntary sacrifice by annihilating the reason for punishment. Jesus is not some sort of quasi-Job or a new prophet who was tested by the Father or who died as a result of his sin or sins of others or even world sin, pecatorum mundi . As explained before, this is impossible through trinitarian doctrine, it would mean that one person of godhead is angry at another person of godhead, or in catholic theology it would be privation of eternal love between three persons of godhead, an impossibility. Instead the crucifixion represents the voluntary act of love of God in form of the second person of the Godhead voluntarily healing the rift. By this action there is true ontological change in humanity.
Jesus role was to heal the rift introduced by Adam, the New Israel in form of The Church then partakes in this miracle by Christians being able to partake in true deification in this life. That is why we see saints in Revelations being part of heavenly divine liturgy - deification and glorification is a thing that can happen in this life, it is not postponed until after eschaton.
That is also why in Nicaean-Constantinople creed Christians talk about descend to hades. That is where the Son descended and preached gospel to all everybody in his defeat of death. This resolves the situation where Old Testament did not truly recognize atonement of sins, as the nature of the man was not healed yet. This is the function Jesus performed after death and before resurrection.
No salvific mechanism at all in the cross and resurrection. Rillera does say that God can forgive out of his own desire, which would mean there is no necessity for the cross other than as a ritual and as a proof of Jesus’ agency as the "forgiving one". This would seem to open the door to universal salvation, which Rillera hints at in his discussion of 1 John (214), though he more explicitly goes after the "Limited Atonement" of TULIP.
There is a sense in which the crucifixion is universal, it heals the rift introduced by Adam. But this is healing of broken nature of humanity instead of universal promise of salvation. Now it is on free will of every Christian to cooperate with God in the process of deification to willingly accept Jesus Christ and accept salvation. Catholics do not have the concept of Faith Alone, we view the salvation as a process, willing cooperation or synergeia with divine power to participate on God's grace. There is always a possibility to turn away from that grace, that is why it is necessary for Christians to participate on sacraments including eucharist.
I can buy most of these points (though Hebrews 5 implies that sin sacrifices had paramount importance in a priest's duties). However, Rillera makes a leap of logic when he then concludes that PSA isn’t supported in the Bible. Romans 3 states that God displayed Christ publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. Romans 5 says that Christ died for us (though it stops short of claiming he died in our place), and it is clear that we are justified through Christ’s blood which saves us from God’s wrath. Isaiah 53 says that the suffering Servant "was wounded for our transgressions, the chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed...the LORD [YHWH] has laid on him the iniquity of us all"; with clear substitutionary implications (3). Colossians 2 states that Christ "canceled out the certificate of debt....having nailed it to the cross".
The way I understand this legal language is in form of jubilee as in Leviticus 25, again a type from old testament foreshadowing the New Testament reality. It is not that Jesus paid our debt, his sacrifice was a cosmic event, he defeated death, changed ontological nature of all humans as second Adam and thus in celebration God enacted universal debt amnesty for all humans. Christ did not pay the debt in his blood, his blood and descend to Hades annihilated all debt contracts.
As for the old testament "sacraments", Catholics view it as a type. Circumcision is a type of how one is introduced into the Israel, this is fulfilled in new testament as a baptism together with regenerative properties and induces the person into a New Israel - unam sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam, the one holy universal apostolical Church. This is the true continuation of the prophecies in the same way Jesus is messiah and fulfilled the prophecies of his first coming, the Catholic Church fulfilled the type in New Israel as the continuation of the tradition. This is the same thing with sacrifices - what Jews in old testament tradition did was a type, it was not true sacrament but the type of the sacrament we now do in a church during the liturgy. We continue the tradition of Melchizedek priesthood, where the Jesus is the head of the church and catholic priests participate in this eternal priesthood via apostolic tradition. Catholics have dogma where priest act as in persona Christi during the eucharist and participate in this age old sacrament of Pascha. That is the fullfilment of the sacramental type after the first coming of Son of God.
In a sense protestants in their view of sacraments, priesthood and other things as "symbols" deny the reality of the Christ as fulfillment of old testament. They adhere to symbolic language of quasi-sacraments of old testament without crucial update of fulfillment of messianic prophecies in Jesus who established the sacramental reality and ability of Christians to participate in divine Grace in this life.
I don't think it has to be necessarily "central". Even now we have a book from the standpoint of Potter , and then there is some knowledge dump either at the end of the book or as part of story progression for "grand reveal". It is very similar to Sherlock Holmes stories, only with less breadcrumbs.
In the alternate universe we can have a relationship between Malfoid and Potter limited to couple of pages of interaction and some new stories of her exploits. It does not have to take much of the books, she is still a double agent and they may have very few times where they can have genuine conversations. A moment stolen under cloak of invisibility or after Potter rescues her from Fiendfyre after psycho Crabble underling declined her authority and indulged his violent tendencies inside Roome of Requirements. Imagine the pivotal point of the war where Harry uses Elder Wand licensing properties to defeat the Dark Lord. In the books it was explained by ghost of Dumbledore to Harry after the fact. In this new narrative this could easily be done a few pages of inside story of Malfoid using her guile to talk to Ollivander who would explain it to her and she could pass it over to Potter.
You could easily play it out as ongoing courtship and gradual gaining of respect - which the book does anyways. It is not a full romance novel where Potter takes Malfoid on a ball or whatnot. It is gradual warming of their relationship, with a payoff at the end after defeat of Voldemort where Potter and Malfoid embrace each other in front of the whole school, thus revealing what really happened. Only with a couple of passages leaving breadcrumbs so the infodump would not be so grating. E.g. imagine that Malfoy's mother Narcissa learns that her daughter conspired with Potter against Voldemort. It would make her turning against Voldemort and protecting her daughter more believable, it is not just some emotional fart, it is a rational decision to change her mind as even if Voldemort wins, her daughter and probably her whole family would be executed for high treason.
This would also show how reign of terror of Voldemort is inefficient and self-defeating ideology, as it can turn the most stalwart supporters into opposition due small things, like during Wu Guang uprising where a general decided to start rebellion because even smaller infraction of failing his orders due to rain meant forfeiture of his life. Similarly for Narcissa she would immediately know her daughters and whole family life was forfeit the moment she learned her daughter conspired wiht Potter. Her decision to save him would turn from some random action of mercy into an action of calculated preservation, her move against her husband would be more believable as she would not dare to tell him in fear of Voldemort learning the secret via Legitimens, this turning her rebellion against her husband into genuine act of protection of her daughter and her husband. There are other parts, for instance Malfoid could be a prodigy at occlumency exactly as male Malfoy, who was able to resist Snapes Legitimens powers. In this very same book Potter even tracks Malfoy through map and tries to revel secret plot of her trying to pull off the plan to bring Death Eathers into Hogwarts. Malfoid could explain to Potter the Reign of Terror that grips many families into obedience and they could move forward, in a sense she could even be his Occlumency mentor or whatnot.
There are many such possibilities by having Malfoy as romantic interest and turned into Potter's side of the story.
Yes, however it is a decision of will, not a place of privation. More specifically it is privation of due good, bonum debitum. Good and Evil is natural inclination of creatures with free will, it is not natural expression of other creation such as rocks, trees or even invisible ones such as Hades. All these created things are automatically "good" as they were declared such by God in Genesis, they lack nature and ability of privatio.
No, Hell/Hades is an invisible place created by God and thus cannot be absent of God. Even under Thomism God's grace is part of his essence, so uncreated grace or other operation of God is in effect even in Hell. Hell is absent of sanctifying grace, but that is Thomistic created effect meant for humans. Not all places or creatures that lack sanctifying grace are hell.
But beware. If you are using Thomistic framework, the relations of persons within ousia of godhead are unlike any created effects. Divine glory or love or grace flowing between persons in the godhead are uncreated, and unlike anything outside. God can withdraw sanctifying grace, but he cannot withdraw the divine uncreated grace flowing between person of the Godhead. Christ cannot be spacially diferentiated from Father or Holy Spirit. Again, there is no "Divine Separation" as an attribute of the Holy Trinity.
Additionally while God can withdraw some created attributes such as sanctifying grace from creation, he cannot withdraw everything as it would functionally mean annihilation. Not-God place is nothingness and impossibility.
Yes AND. As with other things, hell is also a place created by God. One word can have multiple referential points.
Yes and No depending on what you want to say.
Also these stupid Yes/No questions are exactly the source of false dialectic that poison the mind of many modern thinkers and especially protestants. Let me give you an example of similarly stupid question:
"Killing is against God's law, Yes or No"
Incorrect. Beatific vision is something that is going to happen after eschaton with certain exception such as angels or saints etc. It does not mean that everything that does not have beatific vision is Hell. This is exactly what I wanted to say, this stupid theology dangerously skirts Gnosticism and Nestorianism due to incorrect Christology.
No, you give it substance by tying it to a place. Place does not have will to deny God.
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