Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Burning strawmen in hell

RICK LANNOYE SAID:

“Sorry, but you're arguing with a strawman, against a point that no one is making! Either you're unaware of what we who reject Hell are actually saying or, perhaps, purposedly distorting it. I hope it's the former.”

In the context of fire and brimstone, burning a straw man is an apt analogy.

“In any case, here's the REAL argument:”

Do tell. I’m on the edge of my seat, waiting for your priceless enlightenment on the issue.

“What is usually taken to mean ‘justice,' as the justification for God causing people to suffer pain in Hell, is the idea that they deserve to suffer for the pain they caused others. However, ‘justice’ and ‘revenge’ are normally distinguished by the notion that the pain inflicted is equal to and not exceeding the pain the guilty caused others.”

i) My little post said nothing about “pain.” Therefore, you’re the one who’s guilty of a straw man argument, not me.

ii) It’s quite possible to wrong someone without causing him pain. Likewise, it’s quite possible to punish someone without causing him pain. So your framework is arbitrary.

Mind you, I have no fundamental objection to the idea that God might inflict pain on some or all of the damned. But that’s inessential to my argument. Try again.

iii) Even more to the point, you seem to assume the only reason God would punish a human being is for what he did to another human being.

Evidently, the idea of wronging God is an alien concept to you.

It is, however, quite possible for sinners to wrong God. Indeed, we’re all guilty of this.

But while we can wrong God, we cannot harm him or cause him pain. These are distinct and separable notions.

“Now, since there is no such thing as a human who could have ever caused an INFINITE amount of suffering, then to inflict an infinite amount of suffering in return upon any human would be impossible IF God were going to be truly ‘just,’ at least, according to the common understanding of ‘justice’.”

i) Guilt is not an “amount.” Guilt is a quality, not a quantity.

ii) The damned don’t experience “infinite” punishment. Their consciousness is finite. They experience punishment finitely, from one moment to the next–not all at once.

“No matter how much hurt a human caused (and to be sure, there are some who did a LOT), if he were to suffer the exact amount of suffering in return, there would come a point when he would have suffered an equal amount, given enough time. If Hell were a place, therefore, where justice is meted out, then it could NOT be ETERNAL.”

Once again, it isn’t necessary to hurt someone or inflict pain in order to wrong someone. You have a dreadfully superficial grasp of morality.

For example, it’s possible to wrong the dead. You can do this by besmirching their reputation.

Take a man who’s a preacher’s kid. Suppose his parents were loving, devoted parents. But when he grows up, he turns his back on the faith. And, in order to justify his apostasy, he trashes his parents. He waits until they are dead. When they are no longer in any position to defend themselves or set the record straight. Then he defames his late parents. He dishonors their memory, even though they were honorable parents.

Now, he’s not hurting them, in the sense of inflicting pain or anguish. Yet he’s wronging them. You wrong the dead when you slander the dead.

And, indeed, he’s wronging them in a way that’s worse that mere pain. After all, there’s nothing inherently wrong with feeling pain.

“This has NOTHING to do with a statute of limitations! You're confusing a legal limit which our laws have because it's so difficult to preserve the evidence needed to justly convict someone after long periods of time.”

No. All I’ve done is to play along with Grayling’s argument.

“Quite different from how long a punishment for the justly convicted ought to be!”

I myself drew that distinction in a separate post. You’re behind the curve.

“Presumably, if God were inclined to hurt people in return for every hurt they committed, in equal measure, He would have no such problem as his memory failing, and forgetting or distorting what happened.”

I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean. Were you sober when you wrote that? Or was that the drink talking?

“But the point you're really missing is that Jesus, not only rejected the idea of exceeding the Old Testament ‘eye for an eye,' put taught that God did not want to hurt anyone, but to FORGIVE!”

What Jesus do you have in mind? Is it this Jesus?

31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left… 41"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels…46And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

Or this Jesus?

God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, 7and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels 8 in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.

Or this Jesus?

12When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, 13and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. 14 The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. 15Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, 16 calling to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, 17for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?"

Continuing with Rick:

“If you'll re-read the words of Jesus in the gospels, and look for where HE said his purpose for coming was to die as a blood sacrifice to PAY for our sins, guess what? YOU WON'T FIND IT. In fact, the one place where he does talk about sacrifice is where he says God doesn't want it! He quotes Hosea, saying that God desire MERCY instead. Look in the book of Acts, at all those first Christian sermons. One would think that would be a real good time to explain what was Jesus' main reason for coming, right? But in none of those sermons, do any of the apostles say Jesus was a blood sacrifice to pay for our sins! No, all these stuff about blood sacrifice was superimposed later on.”

i) First of all, it’s nice to see you lay your cards on the table. You reject hell because you reject penal substitution. It’s useful to see how much else we must jettison to jettison the doctrine of hell.

ii) For a good treatment on the subject, see Steve Jeffery et al. Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution (Crossway 2007).

“Jesus actually said that God just forgives when we own up to our sins and repent. That's it!”

I see. So Jesus really didn’t need to come here at all. He didn’t need to die on the cross.

If, on his deathbed, Joseph Stalin says, “You know, God, now that I’m about to die, I’m sorry for murdering 20 million men, women, and children. Just forgive me!”

“If not, then Jesus/God asks us to do something he, himself, cannot do, to forgive others without demanding any sort of payment or to suffer some painful punishment.”

i) Even if that were true, so what? Why assume that God has all the same rights and responsibilities as we do?

Even at a human level, a soldier, policeman, or judge has different rights and responsibilities than a father, husband, or brother.

ii) You’re also assuming, without benefit of argument, that the possibility of human forgiveness isn’t underwritten by the atonement.

11 comments:

  1. If I point out that Jesus' death paying for our sins is commented on pretty heavily throughout Hebrews and Romans (and other places, of course), will the counter argument be that those weren't Jesus' words?

    If that is the counter-argument, does this mean that Mr Lannoye is suggesting: 1) Jesus is not God; 2) God did not inspire the Bible and does not mean what it says, or; 3) some combination of the above?

    And if that means what I think it means, why bother arguing about Hell's existence from the perspective of a person you don't really believe existed and who, if he did exist, certainly didn't know what he was talking about?

    Am I off-base with this?

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  2. Take a man who’s a preacher’s kid. Suppose his parents were loving, devoted parents. But when he grows up, he turns his back on the faith. And, in order to justify his apostasy, he trashes his parents. He waits until they are dead. When they are no longer in any position to defend themselves or set the record straight. Then he defames his late parents. He dishonors their memory, even though they were honorable parents.

    Franky Schaeffer...

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  3. I'd like to respond first to Chrish's questions.

    Let me briefly clarify what point I am arguing from to say that there is no Hell. In my book, (for those just now tuning in: "Hell? No! Why You Can Be Certain There's No Such Place As Hell," (available as a free ecopy at my website: www.ricklannoye.com) I argue against Hell from a number of perspectives, but in the post you saw, I was arguing from the perspective of Jesus himself.

    Whether Jesus was God or not, whether I believe in God or not, Jesus did not believe in Hell. His core message makes it impossible that he could have in that HIS view of God was radically different than the vindictive, angry, and basically, sociopathic view that was common then and now.

    As to the idea that the modern Bible is the infallible Word of God, it plainly cannot be! As Steven (Triablogue) himself (perhaps, unwittingly) pointed out, there are a number of different versions of Jesus in the Gospels! Evangelicals/Fundamentalists and the like are compelled by their doctrinal position to blend them altogether into one picture, even though each of of these Jesuses contradict each other.

    But not even they would ever make such a mish mash of any other ancient text. Normally, any scholar worth the paper his degree is printed on WEIGHS what is found in every text to discern which passages are most likely adulterations and mistakes and complete fabrications, from those which are most likely true to the original. Much can be detected in the context itself!

    Steve quotes from the story of the Sheep and Goats in Matthew 25, which is actually a very good example of 3 different layers, or 3 different versions of Jesus. I contend that the original layer is the part where Jesus teaches his followers to be as empathetic to the suffering as they would be toward him. This teaching, as it was being relayed (by word of mouth initially, and then written down and recopied over and over), was eventually woven into one of the many typical Jewish Messianic Warning Parables. Note that in Mt 24 and 25, there are 3 other such parables that precede this one, but NONE of them talk about God punishing anyone eternally, but only the Jewish Messiah excluding some Jews from being a part of his temporal, earthly, royal administration, a chastening to be sure, a shame perhaps, but nothing like eternal torture!

    Then, on the top layer, are 2 insertions (probably added by some Greek Christian scribe LONG after Jesus' death) adding the words "and these shall go into everlasting punishment." But, whoever slipped these words in clearly missed the point! There is no way that Jesus could have, all in the same breath, said, "Hey, I really want you to do all you can to help the suffering, even those who did something bad landing them in prison, even the LEAST," only to follow that up with, "but not to worry, I'm going to eventually REALLY cause people suffering that won't even compare!"

    But of course, the original ideas Jesus had about a kind, loving and forgiving God, don't serve the agenda of the rich and powerful who need a hateful, vengenge God to help get people to side with them.

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  4. So tell me again why a non-believer's view on hell is relelvant to...anything?

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  5. An errant Bible is not an authority. Thanks Rick. I simply assert (w/o justification, just like Rick) that in fact all the parts that he leans on for support are later scribal interpolations and the stuff *I* want in there is really what Jesus really really did for real. Easy as pie.

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  6. ...vindictive, angry, and basically, sociopathic view...

    Roflcopter. So the people who still believe in justice are spiteful sociopaths with rage problems. Yay for bleeding-heart liberalism and its inability to make an argument that doesn't boil down to "you're a big meanie!"

    Then, on the top layer, are 2 insertions (probably added by some Greek Christian scribe LONG after Jesus' death) adding the words "and these shall go into everlasting punishment." But, whoever slipped these words in clearly missed the point!

    Step 1: assume that Jesus didn't believe in hell.
    Step 2: reinterpret all of Jesus' teachings on hell as "later insertions" without any argumentation or evidence.
    Step 3: ???
    Step 4: PROFIT!

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  7. Ho hum Lannoye...another disciple of John Dominic Crossan.

    Your view of Scripture renders your position on Hell as moot. And because your view of Scripture has been refuted over and over and over again, it's kinda pointless of you to argue anything with believing Christians.

    Nobody takes the "Jesus Seminar" method seriously anymore. Except, of course, people like you with an axe to grind against the Church.

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  8. "Likewise, it’s quite possible to punish someone without causing him pain."

    Would you care to elaborate? Physical pain may not be necessary, but there must be some form of distress. I can't imagine that you picture the damned to be residing in some form of luxury resort with every conceivable pleasantry.

    "It is, however, quite possible for sinners to wrong God"
    If it's possible, the "how" is not easily understood. He cannot be harmed, His attributes cannot be lessened or demeaned as the result of any human action, He cannot suffer loss, He cannot be pained, and the only real injury done by slandering Him is done to other humans who may reject Him because of the things said about Him.

    By the way, who do you think utters falsehoods about Him or defames Him more frequently: atheists and agnostics who deny or question His existence or theologians who claim to know Him intimately and write numerous books insisting He is this way or that? My odds are on the latter.


    "If, on his deathbed, Joseph Stalin says, 'You know, God, now that I’m about to die, I’m sorry for murdering 20 million men, women, and children. Just forgive me!'"

    One of the many critiques of Christianity is that it allows just such a possibility: if Stalin were truly penitent, he would be ushered by Jesus straight into Heaven. No "purgation", no need for repayment of any sort due to the atoning sacrifice of Christ.

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  9. John,

    You need to read Steve's post. He did elaborate.

    As for your statement about us being unable to "pain" God, that's true in a physical sense, but I would say false in a metaphysical sense. In Christian theology, all sin is an affront to God, because it places the creature in an adversarial relationship to the creator.

    The original sin was "I will be like God", or perhaps "I will be my own God". Every other sin devolves from this. Any breaking of God's laws for His creation, and the creature is asserting its own autonomy above the Creator. That is the way sinners wrong God. And we all have done it.

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  10. JOHN SAID:

    “I can't imagine that you picture the damned to be residing in some form of luxury resort with every conceivable pleasantry.”

    You can make people miserable by giving them everything they want. Lots of pampered people are miserable. They have the best of everything, yet they’re miserable.

    Rock stars. Movie stars. The idle rich.

    I won’t say whether or not hell is like that. Just that such a thing is quite conceivable.

    “If it's possible, the ‘how’ is not easily understood.”

    Go back to my example of thankless, spiteful children who defame their dead parents.

    “By the way, who do you think utters falsehoods about Him or defames Him more frequently: atheists and agnostics who deny or question His existence or theologians who claim to know Him intimately and write numerous books insisting He is this way or that? My odds are on the latter.”

    Heretics defame God just as much as atheists.

    “One of the many critiques of Christianity is that it allows just such a possibility: if Stalin were truly penitent, he would be ushered by Jesus straight into Heaven. No ‘purgation’, no need for repayment of any sort due to the atoning sacrifice of Christ.”

    I see that you’re not paying attention. What was the context of my statement? What was I responding to?

    Hint: the notion that God “just forgives” the penitent without any need for penal substitution.

    In fact, your whole little screed is, at best, a sloppy, indifferent reading of what I actually said. You’re in such a hurry to rattle off your talking points that you ignore or disregard what I wrote.

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  11. Here's another comment by Rick at this post:

    "OK, let’s say you’re correct, that there is a God who intends to torture billions of people for all eternity, with a few exceptions.

    There’s a BIG problem here. Whatever it is that you feel you’ve done (or that God did if you’re a Calvinist), the existence of Hell makes Heaven impossible!

    I’ve actually written an entire book on this topic–”Hell? No! Why You Can Be Certain There’s No Such Place As Hell,” (for anyone interested, you can get a free Ecopy of my book at my website: http://www.ricklannoye.com), but if I may, I’d like to share with you two of the many points I make in it to explain why.

    Let’s say you end up in Heaven trying to sing endless praises to a God who is, simultaneously, torturing billions of others. Unless you are given a de facto lobotomy (in which case, YOU would no longer be YOU, so you might as well have not had a soul to begin with), you would have to begin wondering, “When am I next?” and the joy of Heaven would be lost, replaced by gloom and foreboding, meaning, it’s Heaven no more! Why? Because you could never rely on a God who is so mean to be honest about making any exceptions.

    After all, which is more difficult? For God to actively cause so much immense pain, for so many, for so long, or to go back on whatever promises he made to a few others that he would not put them in Hell too at some point?

    It would be like accepting an invitation to live as a guest with one of these maniacal men we’ve been hearing about lately who kidnap, imprison, rape and torture young girls in secret basements. Can you imagine such a guy, simultaneously, having some other young lady as his dinner date, and treating her with respect and care? And even if he did for a while, wouldn’t his true nature unleash itself upon her at some point in time, as it has on so many others? Of course!

    But the good news is that God, as Jesus described him, has no intention of ever hurting anyone. If one is willing to look, there’s substantial evidence contained in the gospels to show that Jesus opposed the idea of Hell. For example, in Luke 9:51-56, is a story about his great disappointment with his disciples when they actually suggested imploring God to rain FIRE on a village just because they had rejected him. His response: “You don’t know what spirit is inspiring this kind of talk!” Presumably, it was NOT the Holy Spirit. He went on, trying to explain how he had come to save, heal and relieve suffering, not be the CAUSE of it.

    So it only stands to reason that this same Jesus, who was appalled at the very idea of burning a few people, for a few horrific minutes until they were dead, could never, ever burn BILLIONS of people for an ETERNITY!

    True, there are a few statements that made their way into the gospels which place Hell on Jesus lips, but these adulterations came along many decades after his death, most likely due to the Church filling up with Greeks who imported their belief in Hades with them when they converted."

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