The Nature of Sin

Introduction

Unfortunately, the nature of sin isn’t a well understood topic by many theists or atheists alike; the issue, as I see it, is in four parts, the first being what is sin, the second being the consequences of sin, the third what is the provision for sin and finally, if God is all powerful and loving why does he make it so difficult?

I will attempt to explain from a biblical standpoint what sin is and why we all stand condemned, guilty of committing evils and continue to do them despite knowing better.

Admittedly, I concede these are radical and concerning claims, how can I possibly think such an extreme view?

To support my claim, I will need to look at scriptures and expound on what is being said; I do not believe what I am saying is radical or new, the view I hold I think is the traditional understanding. Rather, the unacceptance or the misunderstanding is due to bad hermeneutics, that is the study and understanding of the bible.

I did not plan on making this study particularly long or comprehensive, but the nature of the topic and the tangents it leads one down has made it longer and more in depth than I originally planned. However, I feel the additional time and effort taken has made it a better study.

Although this study is primarily designed for the believer, I think the sceptic and atheists might find the study enlightening especially on my response to Divine Hiddenness, where I also discuss the Problem Of Evil.

Sin is described as:

• An immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law. ¹

• It is violence and lovelessness toward other people, and ultimately, rebellion against God. ²

But this is often mistaken as:

• Any wrongdoing or evil act.

For the purposes of this study I will be using the second definition I gave: “It is violence and lovelessness toward other people, and ultimately, rebellion against God.”

The second part of the issue is best explained by New Testament scholar N.T Wright, “Part of the difficulty of the topic, as with the others we have been studying, is that the word hell conjures up an image gained more from medieval imagery than from the earliest Christian writings. Just as many who were brought up to think of God as a bearded old gentleman sitting on a cloud decided that when they stopped believing in such a being they had therefore stopped believing in God, so many who were taught to think of hell as a literal underground location full of worms and fire, or for that matter as a kind of torture chamber at the center of God’s castle of heavenly delights, decided that when they stopped believing in that, so they stopped believing in hell. The first group decided that because they couldn’t believe in childish images of God, they must be atheists. The second decided that because they couldn’t believe in childish images of hell, they must be universalists.

There are of course better reasons for becoming an atheist and better reasons for becoming a universalist. Many who occupy one of those positions have gone by a much more sophisticated route than the ones I just described. But, at least at a popular level, it is not the serious early Christian doctrine of final judgment that has been rejected but rather one or other gross caricature.” ³ The point being here is that the subject of hell has been mired in years of traditions, mainly from Catholicism; historically the catholic pope and his priests have interpreted the scriptures, not allowing the laity to read the bible to ascertain the truth of many matters for themselves. The issue being, up and until the reformation the teachings of Catholicism was considered authoritative and many of these teachings have had impact on people today, without justification. ⁴,⁵ The point being, not to cast blame on any one individual or group of people, but to try and ascertain the truth as best as we are able.

Question One: What is sin?

The Secular View

The issue here as I understand it, can be subdivided into three groups:

1. The average, non-academic layperson: who’s understanding on the topic is like the quote described by N.T. Wright; someone who hasn’t taken the time to engage with any study at any level, so isn’t in any position to know any better.

2. The intermediate level educated person: who has at least spent some time researching the topic and has some evidence for their favoured view, and possibly some reasoned arguments why they believe, what they believe.

3. The advanced level educated person: who has taken the time to read experts on the subject, both for and against, and has reasoned arguments why they believe what they believe.

Now, obviously there can be overlap between the three groups, someone might be in-between two groups for example.

However, I do not believe we need to describe what someone from group one understands, as someone who is so disposed, probably will not have studied the subject, if at all, since they left school and or the last time they went to Sunday school. What we are taught in our formative years, may well have been good for the level of a 12-year-old, but isn’t sufficient for an adult, who’s thinking has developed since that 12-year-old. For example, what I was taught in Religious Education back in the early 1990’s on morality and sin was nothing more than a broad overview of the subject, compressed in no longer than an hour long lesson, never to be revisited (to my knowledge).

The view that: Any wrongdoing or evil is sin, seems like a plausible and intuitive claim, but is it?

Wrongdoing is synonymous with any crime, lawlessness, misconduct, malpractice, immorality, wickedness, badness or evil. In other words, wrongdoing is some definition of crime, lawlessness, misconduct, malpractice, immorality, wickedness, badness or evil, which they themselves are some definition of wrongdoing or evil, in essence boldly circular, in other words, wrongdoing is some kind of wrongdoing. This isn’t to say these words are incorrect or we are mistaken about the nature of what sin is or what is evil.

It is clear some things are really wrong, very few people really believe that it isn’t the case, as Michael Ruse put it “The man who says that it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man who says, 2+2=5.”⁶

Rather, the issue lays in our attitude towards what wrongdoing is and more explicitly, what is the ultimate grounding of our morals?

For people like Rebecca Goldstein, she accepts objective morals, yet ‘grounds’ them in a ‘transcendental’ moral framework, that is to say, there are assumed and pulled up by there boot straps rather than any actual grounding per se! Rather she takes a kind of introspective approach, that takes our common shared experiences and tries to evaluate what is better. E.g. we know the pain of losing a loved one, or at least seen the effects, and this pain matters, we also know that support from friends and family help and comfort them in that pain is good for that grieving person(‘s). More specifically in terms of evils or wrongdoings, we know the stress, pain, worry etc. when we are robbed or at least know the effects of that crime on a family member or friend. This pain matters and for advocates of this kind of view is objective proof that these wrongdoings should be condemned. In other words, these ‘matterings’ matter and give evidence and support to why these negative emotions should be avoided and laws etc. are put in place to protect the general public. ⁷,⁸,⁹,¹⁰

This kind of view seems very plausible at first glance, but is it? Ultimately, No. Just like in most things in life, you need to read the fine print in any deal to see what is really going on. Goldstein and others want to say how we’ve progressed overtime, whether it be on slavery, equality for women, health care, age of death or living standards. The issue here is they are smuggling in a standard on which to judge on and compare it too, on what grounds can they assume progress? If as Goldstein and many like her are self-claimed atheist’s, all space time reality, matter energy must be explained by naturalistic means. This means the explanation of ultimately human origins is evolution. If evolution was true (I think I have good reasons to doubt this.), then things like rape, murder, incest, child abuse happens all the time in the animal kingdom. Why are we different? This amounts to nothing more than speciesism, that is, our species alone is to be preferred.

They want to say how we’ve improved from the romans 2,000 years ago (or whatever civilization of choice), as we rightly condemn slavery, yet we’ve got estimated more modern slaves to date than the estimated global population back then! And arguably the bible in particular the Old Testament regulated the current slavery from surrounding neighbours/area and forbid the capturing of foreigners and Hebrews to make ‘new’ slaves, to stop the abuse which makes slavery so abhorrent. The point being arguably and objectively we are not morally superior to the past, at least in terms of the Hebrew culture.

The equality for women is surely a clear case of change for good over time isn’t it? Of course women should be regarded as equal. In fact, it was the intended outcome throughout the Old Testament and certainly in the New Testament. That women are equal, each assigned to roles that was to symbolise a part of the very nature/image of God. Genesis 1:27,Galatians 3:28, 1 Corinthians 11:11.

For reasons to complicated and not relevant to the topic, weak men who should have known better (like on the subject of slavery), who were in places of authority and leadership disregarded the clear mandate, set by God, these people like all us all will ultimately be judged for our actions.

It might be objected, ‘it is alright for you to say this about Judaism and Christianity, but what about the rest of humanity? Why didn’t they get the memo?’

If the Old Testament is true, sometime before Caine and Abel, laws/rules were given to humanity. We are not given much detail as to why Caine’s offering wasn’t accepted but Abel’s was, other than Caine offered up what was produced from the ground, that was earlier cursed, And Abel gave the fat portions of some of the first born of his flock Genesis 4:3-5. But it may be due to an attitude problem, that is relying on works, not by faith, which I plan to address in more detail later. So, it would be the case all humanity know the requirements of God at the very beginning. But we do not need to look too far to see that humanity rebelled against God.

The most vivid case of rebellion against God is that of Israel, right after the crossing of the Red Sea and Moses goes up to the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments and because Moses was gone for such a long time, they craft a golden calf to worship. What clearer miracle could God have done? Yet they still decided to worship another god! It is easy for us to sit in judgement, thinking how silly they were for not trusting in God. Those of us who are saved have the collective works of almost 3,500 years of testimony of God’s power written down by about 30 different authors, we have the Holy Spirit and the numerous happenstances/miracles that happen out of the blue, when we needed them the most, yet we never truly trust God. The point being humanity just is hardwired in such a way that we will try and do things our own way, ‘…did God really say…’Genesis 3:1.

Now as for other civilizations, it seems C.S. Lewis was correct, that as a theist, one doesn’t need to consider every religion as completely wrong, Atheist’s must maintain that all religions are simply wrong. We can evaluate a belief and determine similarities and say on this point (at the very least) weren’t completely wrong.¹¹ Their given prophet or teacher claimed to receive some revelation and we can assess if this revelation is correct or not.

It is a simple fact of nature, that the circle of life seems to revolve around the stronger takes advantage of the weaker, the strongest Alpha Male Lion (or whatever species you prefer) gets the first rights on any food and all the reproductive rights of the most desirable females. As this pertains to humanity, women and children seem to be ripe pickings by, for what can only be called evil and despicable individuals (overwhelmingly likely to be men) who for their own gain otherwise abuse their power to take advantage of vulnerable individuals, by way of physical, mental or sexual abuse, usually in some combination of all three.

But if atheism is true and primarily if evolution is true, why is this wrong? These kinds of acts happen all the time in the animal kingdom ¹²,¹³,¹⁴,¹⁵,¹⁶,¹⁷. If we are simply a more evolved ape, why are our acts not simply classed in the same category? As indifferent, that is, not moral or in other words, no moral accountability. The only answers I seem to find on this question is, or amounts to, is that we are simply evolved differently, that is, we evolved to be moral creatures¹⁸. But theses ‘Just So’ stories aren’t really sufficient and amounts to the Taxi Cab fallacy, where you simply arrive at a desired conclusion, without justification. There simply is no proven demonstrated evolution to morals in any academic literature¹⁹. The fact is, as British historian Tom Holland summarises in his book ‘Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind’ “My ambition…how we in the West came to be what we are, and to think the way we do. The moral and imaginative upheaval that saw Jesus enshrined as a god by the same imperial order that had tortured him to death did not bring to an end of the capacity of Christianity for inspiring profound transformations in societies. Quite the opposite. Already, by the time that Anselm died in 1109, Latin Christendom had been set upon a course so distinctive that what we term ‘the West’ is less its heir than its continuation…To live in a Western country is to live in a society still saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions…Whether it be the conviction that workings of conscience are the surest determinants of good law, or that Church and state exist as distinct entities, or that polygamy is unacceptable, its trance elements are to be found everywhere in the West. Even to write about it in a Western language is to use words short through with connotations. ‘Religion’, ‘secular’, ‘atheist’: none of these are neutral. All, though they derive from the classical past, come freighted with the legacy of Christendom. Fail to appreciate this, and the risk is always of anachronism. The West, increasingly empty through the pews may be, remains firmly moored to its Christian past.”²⁰

Furthermore, it may well be intuitive at some basic level at first glance that atheism/naturalism predicts the ubiquitous suffering we find in the world, as Dawkins famously writes “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference... DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.”. ²¹ But, if that was the case we shouldn’t care about morality, that is, it isn’t necessarily the case it is a biologically advantageous adaptation. Rather, it seems far more intuitive on their view, that just like in a Lion’s pride or in a troop of Apes or whatever group of individuals we look at, an Alpha male dominates that ‘tribe’ and continues to take the best and first pick of the food and the females, and the females will seek and want to be impregnated by the strongest males (preferably the alpha male), up and till a younger or stronger male becomes sufficiently strong to defeat the reigning Alpha male, to become the new Alpha male.

A troop of chimpanzees will attack and kill another group of chimps, if they are sufficiently powerful enough, even if some of that group was once part of the attacking troop. In the wild, if food is found, which is being eaten by a weaker ‘group’, the stronger ‘group’, will attack and take possession of the food!

Likewise, where human tribes will eventually meet, and in the struggle to survive and in the competing of resources they fight, where the loosing tribe the females are taken for stronger tribe and slowly become stronger and stronger, absorbing desirable females to copulate with, creating a super tribe.

Additionally, and more importantly, even granting evolution by purely naturalistic means is possible, you must account for the fact, we (homo) evolved from ‘primitive’ forms, that is ape-like creatures, which do not co-operate in the fashion needed to make it the case we would co-operate or even ‘evolve’ to co-operate! Whatever that means?

Even if I grant millions of years ago, an advantageous adaptation made it so, that an ape-like creature walked upright and had improved mental capabilities, and this adaptation gets passed into a group, making a new species. Even granting this, none of this follows at all that they would co-operate in any other fashion in any other way apes do so at the moment. There would still be some Alpha male dominant, if any subgroup moved to get other resources, they too would be subject to some Alpha male and may get attacked, if they are found by the main group and possibly killed.

Furthermore, it doesn’t follow subsequent adaptations further improve mental capabilities, as even granting this first adaptation. The tendency of living organisms is to revert to the mean at the species level²² and mutations break functionality at the molecular level of individuals. So, the novel adaptation would simply become fixed and tend to stay with variation at the edges at the species level and tend to revert back to the mean over many generations, meaning a new adaptation couldn’t get fixed²³,²⁴,²⁵. Michael Behe in his book “Darwin Devolves: The Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution” writes “Lenski and coworkers used new technology to simultaneously probe all the genes of the mutant bacteria to measure which had higher or lower activity than the ancestor. Remarkably, they discovered fifty-nine genes that had changed their activity levels, either increased or (mostly) decreased them, all in the same direction in eight of the twelve mutant strains.”²⁶,²⁷.

So, I think the naturalist is on shaky ground when claiming co-operation is an advantageous adaptation. Moreover, it has no proven pathway in secular literature, additionally it doesn’t necessarily mean any adaptation is going to be fixed, nor can it be claimed morals have evolved or progressed overtime, without presupposing some kind of ideal standard from the beginning to compare it to.

Having said all this, from the beginning God made man and women in God’s image and throughout the bible women and children were provided for, through the Old Testament law and in the New Testament (this doesn’t necessarily mean, this always happened). Nevertheless, the standard was that widows and children were to be provided for.

As for health care, age of death and living standards, these are obviously true, we are able to cure many illnesses that once would blight humanity, allowing us to live longer, healthier lives, however, now we are dying of different things, like cancer, which isn’t necessarily better.

References:

Where Hebrew or Greek words are translated, I have used Laridian PocketBible© version of NAS Exhaustive Concordance Hebrew-Aramaic Dictionary and NAS Exhaustive Concordance Greek Dictionary unless otherwise referenced below.

(1) Sin definitions

(2) What is Sin? Biblical Meaning and Definition (biblestudytools.com)

(3) N.T. Wright, Surprised By Hope, 2008, HarperColins Publishers, P175.

(4) What is hell? | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)

(5) The Origin of Hell-Fire in Christian Teaching (truthaccordingtoscripture.com)

(6) Michael Ruse, Darwinism Defended, London: Addison-Wesley, 1982), 275.

(7) https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/moral-psychology-plato-philosophy-by-rebecca-newberger-goldstein-2015-01

(8) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/19/rebecca-newberger-goldstein-interview-science-philosophy-plato-googleplex

(9) https://iai.tv/articles/rebecca-goldstein-on-what-really-matters-auid-1141

(10) https://fs.blog/rebecca-goldstein-matter/

(11)C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952, HarperColins Publishers “I am going to begin by telling you one thing that Christians do not need to believe. If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all those religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth”.

(12) Goodall, J. 1990, Through a window: My thirty years with the chimpanzees of Gombe. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

(13) Finch, G. 1943, “The bodily strength of chimpanzees.” Journal of Mammalogy, 24, 224-228.

(14) Goodall, J. 1972, In the shadow of man. New York: Dell.

(15) Wilson, M.L. et al. 2014, “Lethal aggression in Pan is better explained by adaptive strategies than human impacts.” Nature, 513, 414-417.

(16) Goodall, J. 1990, Through a window: My thirty years with the chimpanzees of Gombe. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, pp. 128–129.

(17) Deadly violence a natural tendency in chimps, study finds – Harvard Gazette

(18) The Origins of Human Morality - Scientific American

(19) The Ultimate Challenge According to C. S. Lewis | Evolution News

(20) Tom Holland, 2019, “Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind”, Little, Brown (ebook)

(21) Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden, Science Masters, 1995. P133

(22) Natural Limits to Variation, or Reversion to the Mean: Is Evolution Just Extrapolation by Another Name? | Evolution News

(23) #7 Story of 2022: Mammoth Support for Devolution | Evolution News

(24) Devolution Watch: Malaria Gnaws Off a Leg | Evolution News

(25) C. Raeside et al., “Large Chromosomal Rearrangements During a Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli,” MBio 5 [2014]: e01377–14. “Ten of 12 populations suffered deletions ranging from 0.9 percent to 3.5 percent of the ancestral genome size. The others duplicated some segments as well as deleting others. The authors write: “The overall tendency toward reduced genome size reflected the fact that large deletions were much more common than large duplications”

(26) Michael Behe, “Darwin Devolves: The New Science That Challenges Evolution”, Harper One, pp. 142

(27) D. Schneider et al., “Long-Term Experimental Evolution in Escherichia coli. IX. Characterization of Insertion Sequence-Mediated Mutations and Rearrangements,” Genetics 156 (2000): 477–88.

What does the Old Testament say?

A typical view of the Old Testament is that the laws are somehow a permanent and absolute law for all time and all peoples, as this extended quote from Paul Copan says:

“Someone posted an “Open Letter to Dr. Laura” on the internet. Dr. Laura Schlessinger, of course, is the Jewish author and (until recently) radio talk show host who offers practical advice about relationships, parenting, and ethical dilemmas based on Old Testament principles. Here’s part of that letter, which is saturated with sarcasm:

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.

 I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to follow them:

• I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

• I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

• A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?

• Leviticus 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

• Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Leviticus 19:27. How should they die?

• I know from Leviticus 11:6–8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

• My uncle has a farm. He violates Leviticus 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). . . .

I know you have studied these things extensively; so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.

AYour devoted disciple and adoring fan.”¹ (citations omitted)

This is a great example of the typical understanding of the general layperson’s understanding of the bible and what they would take to be sound on the subject of an objective morality.

First what is it that the bible actually says on the subject:

As per my response to the issue of slavery ² I list numerous verses which shows that the intent of the entirety of the Old testament and that of the New is that each individual love each other as they love themselves e.g. Lev 19:33-34, Ex 22:21-24, Lev 19:18, Deut 6:4-5, Deut 10:19, Micah 6:8, Matt 22:37-39.

In my defence I will list 6 main scriptures:

Exodus 20:1-17 also see Deuteronomy 5:6-21 for a parallel summary.

And God spoke all these words:

2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

3 “You shall have no other gods before me.

4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand [generations] of those who love me and keep my commandments.

7 “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labour and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

12 “Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

13 “You shall not murder.

14 “You shall not commit adultery.

15 “You shall not steal.

16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour.

17 “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.”

This passage and the one in Deuteronomy are known as the Ten Commandments, which God gave to Moses; The intent of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21 is to outline some basic rules to govern daily life; A main point that is not necessarily appreciated by most people is that the Old Testament laws (Exodus 21-23:33, most of Leviticus and parts of Deuteronomy) wasn’t a permanent law for all of time for all peoples as Paul Copan writes “…these laws weren’t the permanent, divine ideal for all persons everywhere. God informed his people that a new, enduring covenant would be necessary (Jer.31; Ezek.36). By the Old Testament’s own admission, the Mosaic law was inferior and future looking. Does that mean that God’s ideals turn up only in the New Testament? No, the ideals are established at the very beginning (Gen. 1-2)…”³, v2-7 shows that we all ought to remember God’s high and lofty position, God was not created or caused by something else, God is by definition uncaused, pre-existent, the first cause of all space and time. v8-11 is a call to remember for all to have a day off, to keep the day holy. v12 to honour your father and your mother; to honour is to give high respect, give high esteem, cherish, admire, and look up to someone. With the promise that, whoever does do this “so that they may live long in the land”. v13 do not murder (ratsach, רָצַח, meaning manslayer or murder), see Matthew 5:21-26, murder is seen as premeditated with malice and forethought see Exodus 21:12, Genesis 9:6, Leviticus 24:17-21,Numbers 35:16-21,31, Deuteronomy 19:11-13, there is a clear distinction between accidental killing see Deuteronomy 19:4-7, Numbers 35:22-25, Exodus 21:13, Deuteronomy 4:41-44, Joshua 20:1-3. v14 do not commit adultery, see Matthew 5:27-32 this is specific prohibition on having sexual relations with another person, other than your spouse, that is in matrimony. v15 do not steal, like v17 it shows that what belongs to someone else, should remain that way and not to be envied to the point that you commit v14 or v17. v16 do not lie, tell the truth see Leviticus 19:11, Deuteronomy 19:16-21 and 25:1-16, also see Zechariah 8:17. V17 do not covet your neighbour’s house, spouse, or possessions, by covet the Hebrew is חָמַד chamad, which means to desire or to be attracted to or covet, in other words in context to the text, to want (to be jealous or envy) something someone else has.

So, we have several commands in the Old Testament that mediate between our direct actions and our thoughts and desires; It is safe to conclude as well that God wanted us to love one another as we love ourselves from elsewhere within the Old Testament; this fact may not be readily seen to anyone who has done a cursory study on the Old Testament or the laws, but the actual fact of the matter is that the Old Testament did intend every Hebrew to love one another.

It seems obvious to me that if we all actually loved one another as we love ourselves, a vast number of the issues, crimes and atrocities that have been perpetuated throughout history would have been largely avoided. Unfortunately, we are incapable of loving truly at this level, but we all have glimpses of what love is like, love of a parent, to a child, love of partners, love of a child to a parent, love of siblings and love of a friend. When we do love in this way, we want to please the one we love, we tend not to want to hurt the ones we love, as this wouldn’t please them. In fact, we are pleased when our loved ones are doing well for themselves, have nice things, or found a very desirable partner, we are not jealous in the way that we envy to the point of trying to steal it from them.

What about the New Testament?

Matthew 5:17-48

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. 18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

21 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' 22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca, ' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.

23 “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.

25 “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. 26 I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.' 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

31 “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.' 32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.

33 “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' 34 But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37 Simply let your ‘Yes' be ‘Yes,' and your ‘No,' ‘No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.'39 But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect

v17-18

The words of Jesus, v17 he didn’t come to abolish the law, but fulfil it. V18-19 the law will not disappear till it is accomplished, see Luke 10:25-28, pp Matthew 22:37-39 & Mark 12:12-29-34, the point being here is, the summary of the whole law is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and all of your mind, and, love your neighbour as yourself, all the other laws are subservient to this clauses. As I have tried to demonstrate, if we actually loved each other and even ourselves for that matter, most if not all of the crimes and atrocities would never have taken place, see Romans 7:7-13 it is only by the law, that we know what is wrong, as C.S. Lewis quipped “A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.” ⁴, that is, we only know that is wrong to steal, cheat, lie etc, because we already know that:

1. It is good and feels good, when we work hard and have bought something nice, and or done something honestly and did so by telling the truth.

2. It feels bad when someone has stolen, lied or cheated you.

3. Secular laws prohibit them, it is against the law to lie under oath or to commit perjury, to steal or defraud/cheat.

So, the law is there to first to point the standard we all almost accept is correct, and those who claim not to know, soon do, when something of theirs is stolen, broken or they are wronged in so many different ways! We know these standards are correct through introspection, as well as through experience, first hand and through the grapevine of the consequences of the privation of the good we know we ought to do and through trying our best to do what we know is right however inconsistently or successfully.

Second, those of us who are being honest, should quickly realise that even with the best intentions in the world, we never live up to those intentions. We all have moments where we know we haven’t crowned ourselves in glory, done or said something hurtful, neglected to tell someone something of importance that led to a big mistake, lied to cover your or your friends back, done something you know you ought not to do, or watched someone do something you know is wrong and didn’t confront them or report them to a supervisor or relevant authority! That is life! We are defined in some ways by these mistakes or wrong-doings, once we have done a mistake once, it is easier to do it a second time till it becomes habitual, and we are doing these wrong-doings without thinking! I said before we are defined in some ways by these wrong-doings, and it’s partly true, but it is also true we can through force of will, contravene and stop doing what is wrong at any point if we wanted to. There is more I will say later on this but, just to say, we can only know what a crooked line is, because we already understand what a straight line is, we know what is wrong, because we already have a pretty good understanding of what is good or moral.

v19

Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven see antonyms 1 Timothy 1:3-11, 1 Peter 1:13-16, Romans 7:7-11, 13:8-10, James 2:8-11,James 2:11 sums up this the best, “For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.” The point being not many should seek to be teachers or preachers, it is a noble thing, see James 3:1, 1 Timothy 3:1-7 but unless you are able to be above reproach and have a good command and understanding of scriptures, you are storing up judgement and risk being called least in the kingdom of heaven.

v21-26

v21-22 mirrors v13 in Exodus 20, even an angry ((ὀργίζω orgízō), meaning to ‘make angry’, angry, enraged or moved with anger; from the root word ὀργή orgé, meaning, impulse, wrath or anger) thought towards another person is equivalent to murdering someone, see Matthew 15:16-20, Mark 10:19, Luke 18:20, Romans 13:9, 1 John3:11-15, Revelation 21:8 The point being, there doesn’t appear to be any distinction between the thought act and the actualisation of murder, but lets look more deeply into this. There should be a distinction between righteous and unrighteous anger, as there seems to be clear cases of ‘justified’ anger; see Matthew 21:12-13, numerous passages in the Old Testament where God is provoked to anger due to Israel’s disobedience, see Joshua 25 as a background of the start of the troubles for Israel, they promised to serve God and only God v 16-18, 21 and 22 in particular, read what Joshua says in v19; Israel despite warnings of the rod that they were putting for their backs promised on oath, to serve God alone. Now see Numbers 25:1-3, Judges 2:19-20, 10:6-7, read 1 & 2 Kings, time after time you read bad report of bad report e.g. 1 Kings 11:6, 9, 14:22, 15:26, 34, 16:7, 19, 25, 30, 21:20, 25, 22:43, 52, 2 Kings 3:2, 13:2, 11, 14:24, 15:9, 24, 28, 16:2, 17:2, 17, 21:2, 6, 16, 20, 23:32, 37, 24:9, 19, 2 Chronicles 21:6, 22:4, 24:2, 29:6, 33:6, 34:2, 36:5, 36:9, 12, Jeremiah 52:2.

So, the main question that might be on the sceptics’ mind, why is a thought so bad? Clearly, we can all agree the act of murdering someone is wrong and shouldn’t be done; by murder I mean killing someone with malice and forethought, that is, premeditated, so that the killing is done by design and malevolence. Notice this does not including accidental killing or in cases of war at an individual level.⁵

Why then is an angry thought considered evil? Almost universally, when we get angry or annoyed with or about something, or someone, it is due to selfish reasons, our pride is damaged, or we have been put out in some way, causing the feelings to despise or hate a person(‘s) who have wronged you. In relation to v22 the word raca comes from the Aramaic, meaning worthless or empty “(רֵיקָא or רֵיקָה, or ῥακά in Greek) meaning “numskull” or “fool” (BDAG). Sometimes pastors will state the word is particularly foul; I have occasionally said raca is a four-letter F–word in order to tease out the shock value. But even with this there is some flexibility, some people would have to be extremely angry to drop an f-bomb on someone, others use the word so frequently it is no longer a shock.

However, at the time of Jesus the word may not have had quite that level of insult. It was “a colloquial term of rather gentle cheek and generally used in familiar surroundings” (BDAG). The ESV therefore translates the word as “insults” his brother to avoid the confusion of the use of an Aramaic word.”⁶

So, the ‘insult’ is a derision or ridicule at someone, for something someone has done to you! It shouldn’t need to be said, but obviously the tone and intent of the insult is key, just making fun of someone, you know as a joke or gentle light-hearted joshing, isn’t what we are talking about here. The clear intent here is that you are so indifferent to someone that you ignore their humanity, worth and meaning, not giving them benefit of the doubt, thinking they are so bad and reprobate, to not be worthy of any respect. ⁷

The point is, raca and fool are dehumanising terms which removes worth to those the term is being used against. The point being, if you think someone, or a group of people are worthless, if you continue to believe this, it will lead to thinking that person or group of people are worthless, not worthy of your time, respect, or love and at the extreme can lead to the actualisation of murder.

I do not think it is controversial or radical to claim that what we choose to dwell on, or give attention to, ultimately effects our desire’s, thoughts, and actions, for example, if one thinks negative thoughts about oneself, that individual, if they continue to think they are worthless or insignificant they will act that way. ⁸,⁹

Although, the research seems to show that people who are serial killers predominantly have lower brain activity in the frontal lobe, Dr. James Fallon, the person who conducted the research had the same brain pattern as the serial killers, meaning that there are other factors at play. ¹⁰ The idea being that nature is the predominate cause of violent behaviour and nurture has a significant but lesser role in this tendency. Otherwise, it would be inexplicable why Dr. Fallon hasn’t committed murder himself, so psychologists think that how one is brought up plays the contributing factors on how one will act.

Other factors like Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) have been considered when talking about tendency to murder. This however, is fraught with issues, as it is far too complicated and cannot be fixed to a particular place in the brain or how one is brought up as some key indicator or proof! It does however give some traits that might be more likely given known behaviours and personality characteristics. It remains a fact that we all have narcissistic tendencies at some points, as well as other traits, like being introverted, honesty, conscientiousness; a “normal” person will display all these traits in a continuum. ¹¹ A person with narcissistic tendencies will obviously be maladaptive towards the highly narcissistic and display less of the other tendencies. Its pathological extreme can lead to various forms of violence, such as stalking, battering, or murder. Some research has shown a link between individuals with a pathological degree of narcissism have a psychological disconnect between an unconscious sense of inadequacy and a conscious feeling of superiority.¹² Narcissists think they are better than everyone else, but this belief is fragile. These individuals are more vulnerable to any events (interpersonal rejection, negative feedback, criticism) that might threaten their exaggerated view of themselves and, as a result, are more likely to react with anger and hostility to any perceived or real challenge to their ego. ¹¹ They were clear that this doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a link, but it is more likely given these tendencies.

So, what does any of this show? It shows the topic is complicated, and that multiple factors are at play, the most important seeming to be personality type and how one freely chooses to act. Obviously, any naturalist, determinist or Calvinist will want to deny that libertarian freewill exists, which I will attempt to defend later, but for now assume for arguments sake libertarian freewill does exist. If we do freely choose our acts, then we at certain times choose to hate or at least act indifferently towards other people, this I maintain isn’t loving our neighbour as ourselves, as this would require us to always seek the best for others, that is, to act as if they were ourselves and to give preferentially of ones time, energy and love.

This is obviously a high demand on any individual and one that may not be possible to achieve at any given time, but this is precisely the point! The spirit of the law in Exodus 20 was to show the imperfection and how we all miss the mark on many occasions.

If we agree that anger and hatred isn’t the best motion, emotional state of affairs, thought(‘s) and or action(‘s)? Then we ought not to seek or attain such states of affairs to the best of our ability.

v27-30

V27-28 mirrors v14 in Exodus 20, do not commit adultery, the Greek is (μοιχεύω moicheuō), meaning to commit, or the act of adultery, which typically means to have sexual intercourse with a married person or someone outside of wedlock. Notice the same logic being used for murder here, even a lustful thought is to be considered adultery.

It seems that claim to commit adultery is wrong, isn’t controversial or something that should need much elaboration to show, it is self-evidently true that seducing someone else’s spouse is wrong. How the nature of the pairing is instantiated between two people isn’t clear, but the free act to loving one another is key, love cannot be forced in any way shape or form and to do so, would harm the relationship in meaningful ways.

Other issues arise of course, what if the two people in adultery are in love? The issue here is, sex from the beginning was instituted between a man and a woman and that they should be married, committing to one another in a lifelong bond. So, back to the question, the problem is, at least one of them made a promise before God and a congregation of people, that they would be faithful to one another, forsaking all others and to commit to that one person. Notice the promise to forsake all others, it is implicit from that it is possible to love others, but the oath was to forsake that, to honour your commitment and be faithful, not only to your spouse, but to God.

Another issue arises of those who are not married and are having sexual intercourse? All parties in this case are in the wrong according to this, this includes those who lust and or masturbate in sexual desire of another person (other than your spouse). It is clear then that in this one command most if not all are guilty of this at least once in their lives, but more likely a regular daily occurrence.

So, the implications here is, only your spouse is your object of sexual desire. Everyone should be loved, but just as it would be inappropriate to love your parents, siblings or other relations as you love your spouse, that is, in a sexual manner, so too, it is inappropriate to love a neighbour, that is, anyone else, as you love your spouse.

v33-37

As for v33-37, in regard to making oaths:

In similar fashion, Jesus is breaking down what was traditionally taught, about keeping your oath, which in and of itself is a good thing, we should be people of our word. Oaths in the bible are considered to be binding: Numbers 30:2, Deuteronomy 23:21 and Matthew 23:16-22; Oaths are to be only taken in God’s name, that is, from the implication of the texts, we are only to vow to serve, trust and love God solely: Deuteronomy 6:13, Psalms 24:3-4 and Jeremiah 12:16.

However, Jesus makes a distinction here, we shouldn’t swear by anything at all, because it isn’t within our control in any event, simply let our yes, mean yes and no, mean no. In James 4: 13-16 gives a good illustration of our humility and position in regards to our plans, oaths and our promises, simply put, we should say “if it is the Lord’s will...”, that is, we are deferring our mistaken ability to change, or manipulate the world in such a way, as to control the events in our favour to God’s almighty hand.

v38-42

As for v38-42, in regard to revenge:

The understanding and wider context of these verses in the Old Testament comes from Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:20 and Deuteronomy 19:21; again, notice that Jesus takes the letter of the law and ramps it up to a more demanding level, requiring not only our outward appearance, but our inner state be beyond reproach.

The Old Testament law gave provisions in many varied circumstances, for example, if someone borrowed something like cattle from another person, and it gets lost, or dies the borrower would have to pay back the lender Exodus 22:14. Similarly, in regard to someone getting injured, the wider context of the three scriptures listed are:

• Exodus 21:24 – The previous verses reveal the context, is that of two fighting men, who injure a pregnant woman, the husband can make demands on the two offenders in court, and they would be required to pay if the judge allows v21-23. However, if after the baby is born and it is discovered that the baby has serious injury, there should be “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot…”v23-25

• Leviticus 24:20 – Again the previous and surrounding verses gives context; The context being that of malicious intent, anyone who takes the life of a human being, he must be put to death v17. Anyone who takes the life of someone’s animal must make restitution – life for life v18. If anyone injures his neighbour, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured v19-20.

• Deuteronomy 19:21 – Again the previous verses give context; this time it is due to a “malicious witness who takes the stand to accuse a man of a crime” v16. The next verses are in regard to the judge making a thorough investigation, however, if the judge finds that the witness proves to be a liar, giving false testimony against his brother v18b. “Then do to him as he intended to do to his brother…” v19. This then leads to v21 “Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”

It seems clear then, the context was that of malicious intent or carelessness where someone gets harmed due to negligence or by design and the payback allowed as restitution to the injured party; in contrast however, Jesus is saying “turn to him the other also…” Luke 6:29, Romans 12:17,19, 1 Corinthians 6:7,1 Thessalonians 5:15 and 1 Peter 3:9; We have a number of New Testament scripture that intends the reader to consider and embrace the idea that we should not seek revenge or payback as 1 Corinthians 6:7 says “Why not rather be wronged?...” or 1 Thessalonians 5:15 “Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else.”

1 Corinthians 6: 9-11

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

This passage has often been used (mistakenly I think) to vilify certain groups of people, namely the homosexuals, without really looking at what it is actually saying! The passage makes it clear (if one is being honest with oneself) that we are all disqualified from entering into the kingdom of heaven on our own merits! Go back to Matthew 5:17-48, we all fall short, we all are guilty of being sexually immoral, as we have all looked at lust with someone certainly before we were married and probably afterwards too!

To be completely clear, if individuals want to say homosexuality is a sin and therefore, they are going to hell, or that they are incapable of salvation because of who they are, this is completely wrong! If a homosexual is damned because of who they are, then you are I, who look lustfully or any other sin, are just as guilty and condemned to hell too!

We all have made a god in our own image (Idolatry) at one time or another, that is, we form a god that is okay with a particular thing “god is okay with me doing such and such” when deep down we know it isn’t right.

We all have stolen something, either from:

• God; not giving the best part of our efforts, time and energy to serving him.

• Work; taking an extra-long break at work, or starting or stopping work before/after we are contracted to, and or slacking, or straight up stealing from work e.g. stationary or cups etc.

• Individuals or businesses; taking on purpose or accidently items that you didn’t purchase.

Now, not everyone has done all of these, but we have all stolen from God and the majority haven’t devoted all their allotted time at work productively, and almost certainly not always been on time with finishing breaks or beyond question when using works stationary, that is, using work stationary at home.

We all have greedy (the NIV translation) tendencies to one extent or another, from the Greek (πλεονέκτης pleonektēs meaning covetous, from two root words πολύς polys meaning many, much, great and ἔχω echo meaning to have, hold, be the context of this is to hold in the hand or to own.) so the intent of the word is to convey a great need to have something.

Greed is defined as “An excessive appetite for further goods or food, often linked with selfishness and gluttony.” ¹³

Most people in their lives, will act in a way akin to being selfish at some point and may even be greedy in wanting more than our fair share at times, but in my experience few if any persons I know have exemplified greed to that state, at least from an outward appearance. But what does the bible say Romans 1:29, 1 Corinthians 5:10, Mark 7:21-22, pp Matthew 15:19-20, Ezekiel 33:31 and Ephesians 5:5. For times sake I will only delve into one of these Mark 7:21-22 “For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come – sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.” These of course are the words of Jesus; It is from within where the troubles lay. We have seen in Matthew that it isn’t outward appearances that makes a person ‘sinful’ (although there are clear sinful actions, like rape or murder.) rather, it is inward, that is, what we are thinking about is ultimately where sin lays. If someone continually thinks about the latest gadgets, possessions, food or holidays and how to acquire them, this person would be greedy and isn’t thinking on more worthwhile goals, like helping others.

Drunkenness; The scripture lays no general prohibition of the consumption of alcohol (Deuteronomy 14:26, John 2:1-10, 1 Timothy 5:23, other scriptures show that wine is a sign of blessing and flourishment in the land of Israel see Deuteronomy 7:13, Genesis 27:28, Proverbs 3:9-10 among others.), but does warn against its abuse for obvious reasons, many mistakes are made when under the influence of alcohol. Some mistakes are minor, like saying something inappropriate to a friend or loved one. Other mistakes end up breaking the law, like vandalising someone else’s property. Still other mistakes can be life changing, like getting an ill-considered tattoo or injury from falling or fighting. And some other mistakes end up being disastrous, like foolishly driving under the influence of alcohol and killing someone or permanently injuring yourself.

There are a number of scriptures that warn against the abuse of alcohol; Isaiah 5:11, 22, Proverbs 20:1, Habakkuk 2:15, Luke 21:34, Romans 13:13, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 11:20-21, Galatians 5:19-21, Ephesians 5:18, 1 Thessalonians 5:7-8 and Titus 2:3.

Additionally, if it wasn’t already clear, that leaders of a church are not to engage in drunkenness; 1 Timothy 3:2-3, 8 and Titus 1:7.

Slanderers, Slander is defined as “False and malicious talk about others. It not only harms those against whom it is directed, but also brings ruin to those who propagate it”. ¹³

The Greek for slander is λοίδορος loidoros, which is translated as ‘revilers’ but has the connotation of being abusive, from the word λοιδορέω loidoreó, meaning to revile or to be abusive “I revile a person to his face, abuse insultingly.” ¹⁴ Additionally, it has a third Greek word associated with it λοιδορία loidoria, meaning to revile or be abusive; so the general meaning of the word is to abuse, revile and insult a person to their face.

It seems self-evident that slander (tantamount to lying or perjury) is wrong and shouldn’t need much explaining. But bearing false witness against another person is wrong, it could have grave consequences, either to the:

• One being lied about e.g., they could be in court being charged with murder or some other serious crime and faces life in prison or the death penalty.

• Or the one lying, if the court finds out that their testimony was false, they could face criminal proceedings themselves.

Any kind of situation where one is called to give a testimony or character assassination of another, the testimony one gives should be as accurate as possible, if feasible err on the side of caution and give benefit of the doubt to the one being assessed, to allow one not to say anything that might not be accurate and just hearsay or rumours.

Swindlers, fraud (synonyms with swindle) is defined as “The obtaining of goods or money by deception. Scripture condemns this practice…” ¹³

The Greek for swindle is ἅρπαξ harpax meaning rapacious, ravenous; a robber, an extortioner and ἁρπάζω harpazó meaning to seize, catch up, snatch away, or seize by force.

Similarly, this seems equally clear why this kind of behaviour is wrong, the kind of person being depicted here isn’t a poor person stealing to live, but something far more sinister and malevolent, something more akin to a street hustler, con artist or a professional criminal, taking by force or deception what isn’t theirs.

1 Timothy 1: 8-11

We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 9 We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10 for the sexually immoral, for those practising homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers – and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine 11 that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.

Again, like the previous verses we have a number of prohibited behaviours/actions, notice they all take a more or less the same acts; murder, sexual immorality (adultery), homosexuality and liars, but notice here Paul is explicitly saying slavery is wrong v10.

v8 At the start of this paragraph where previously Paul greets Timothy and warns against false teaching, we get v8 “We know that the law is good if one uses it properly”, we have a glimpse at the Jewish mindset, that the law is good and was there to show how sinful we all are see Romans 7:7-25 “Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! Nevertheless, in order that sin might be recognised as sin, it used what is good to bring about my death, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.” Romans 7:13.

I won’t go over the same material again, but notice the law v8 ‘the good law’, that is the Old Testament law forbid slavery and the act of slave trading, it was a capital crime Exodus 21:16.

And whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel…; The word we use for doctrine (διδασκαλία didaskalia; doctrine or teaching or instruction – from the root word διδάσκαλος didaskalos; an instructor or teacher – from the root διδάσκω didaskō; to teach.) This description of sound doctrine appears here and in 2 Tim 4:3 and Titus 1:9, 2:1; “sound words” in 1 Tim 6:3, 2 Tim 1:13, “sound in faith” in Titus 1:13, 2:2. ¹⁵

Sound doctrine in this context is whatever conforms to the gospel, which can be understood in line with 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 “Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures”. Additionally we can take other verses looked at here, like Matthew 5, 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1, James 2, and Galatians 5 to gain insight on what is required to live a perfect life, which by now should be realised is impossible.

James 2:8-13

If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbour as yourself,” you are doing right. 9 But if you show favouritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. 11 For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

12 Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, 13 because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment!

The royal law, to ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ c.c. Matthew 22:39; with the greatest commandment being; ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’, Jesus saying the whole law and the prophets hang on these two commandments Matthew 22:34-40. I have made this point numerous times that the law demands and requires everyone to love each other and our main goal is to love God, if this was actually done, most if not all the atrocities and evils committed would never happen.

v9 But if you show favouritism; If we claim to love our neighbours, yet we show favouritism then we aren’t truly loving our neighbours. Similarly, v11; the commandments that state not to commit adultery, also said do not murder. Even if one doesn’t commit murder, either in the physical act or in thought (see Matthew 5:21-26), yet does commit adultery, either in the physical act or in thought (see Matthew 5:27-30) one has broken the law, or vice versa.

v10 for whoever keeps the law yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all the law, that is, we haven’t loved our neighbour as ourself and more specifically we haven’t loved the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind.

Galatians 5:16-26

I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17 For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under law.

19 The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

v16-18 – Living by the spirit, that is keeping the royal law e.g. James 2:8 & Matthew 22:39; those who are truly ‘lead by the spirit’ are not under the law, but are living by faith and is credited to them as righteousness Romans 4:13-25.

Now, having said this, is it possible to live continuously in the spirit, or is it simply easier to wilfully do what we know is contrary to the good some of the time?

v19-21 – Gives a list of ‘improper’ or ‘sinful’ acts, which for the most part are mentioned or implied by the previous verses mentioned above; The word we are using for witchcraft is (φαρμακεία pharmakeia, which means to administer drugs or the use of medicine, drugs or spells.) So, the implication here, is someone who is taking drugs, not the stereotypical typecast of witchcraft of Harry Potter or Bewitched.

v22-23 – Here we discover what the acts of the fruits of the spirit are, that is, what behaviours or traits. With the claim, ‘against such things there is no law’ meaning, those who are demonstrating love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, will be doing what the law required, that is, they will be fulfilling the spirit in which it was intended.

Now this raises difficult questions, as why if it was possible to fulfil the law, why did Jesus need to die and why are people going to hell? I answer the first question more fully in question three and the latter in question two.

v24-26 – In the Greek there is a ‘Now’ preceding ‘those’ (δέ dé; a conjunctive meaning now, therefore, moreover, however), it is a subtle difference, but adds something to the meaning, that is, it links what was previously said with the next more firmly.

So those who believe have put to death the desires of the flesh in a figurative sense of the word. The call is in v25 to not only live by the spirit but to also walk or act by the spirit too, that is, live and do the things required day by day in a way that is inline with the gospels and spirit Old Testament laws. Notice in v26 it is warning us not become conceited from the Greek (κενόδοξος kenodoxos; which is from two other Greek words κενός kenos, which means empty and δόξα doxa, which means glory – the literal meaning is empty glory, that is, being self-deluded or conceited.), provoking and envying each other, in other words, even after becoming saved, it is possible to become self-conceited, envious and provoke each other, the very things we freed from.

Additional Considerations

Having said all of this, it is important to bring to the fore, other contemporary views which have some plausibility. Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson among others have a view that morality is subjective to the individual, so to speak, and that if an individual thinks doing x is wrong, then it is objectively wrong for them to do x. So, for them to do x is in some sense is damaging them by doing it, they are making their life harder. “Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong. Start stopping today. Don’t waste time questioning how you know that what you’re doing is wrong, if you are certain that it is. Inopportune questioning can confuse, without enlightening, as well as deflecting you from action. You can know that something is wrong or right without knowing why”.¹⁶

I have some sympathy with this view and on some level it is correct, if you believe something is wrong, then you shouldn’t do it, even if it isn’t directly prohibited by law of the land or if it actually isn’t against the objective standard God has given, for that person it is wrong and becomes an additional burden to fulfil.

Now, to be clear what I am not saying is if someone thought it was wrong to wear sandals with socks, that person is then somehow evil or wrong in an objective sense to do that. Rather, what I am saying is that non-trivial matters, like one’s stance on eating meat or how one raises one’s children e.g., on disciplinarian matters. Are in fact somehow true and are an additional source of morality to them and to do something substantive against that morals, is in fact damaging psychologically to that person in a meaningful way.

References:

Where Hebrew or Greek words are translated, I have used Laridian PocketBible© version of NAS Exhaustive Concordance Hebrew-Aramaic Dictionary and NAS Exhaustive Concordance Greek Dictionary unless otherwise referenced below.

(1) Paul Copan, Is God A Moral Monster, 2011, Baker Publishing, P57

(2) Slavery | Micah Ministries (micahmins.com)

(3) Paul Copan, Is God A Moral Monster, 2011, Baker Publishing, P59

(4) C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952, HarperColins Publishers (ebook)

(5) The Ancient Hebrew Law of Homicide: II The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Jan., 1915), pp. 289-344, https://doi.org/10.2307/1451274

(6) Anger and Murder - Matthew 5:21-26 - Reading Acts

(7) Raca Definition and Meaning - Bible Dictionary (biblestudytools.com)

(8) You Are What You Think | Psychology Today

(9) You Are What You Think: How Your Thoughts Create Your Reality — OMAR ITANI

(10) Guy, F. (2016, May 16) Nature and Nurture: The Origins of Violence. Crime Traveller. Retrieved from https://www.crimetraveller.org/2016/05/nature-nurture-origins-violence/

(11) Narcissism, Rage, and Murder | Psychology Today

(12) Vol. 6:421-446 (Volume publication date 27 April 2010)

First published online as a Review in Advance on December 14, 2009

https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.121208.131215

(13) Laridian version of Dictionary Of Bible Themes, Martin H. Manser, 2009

(14) Strong's Greek: 3058. λοιδορέω (loidoreó) -- to abuse, revile (biblehub.com)

(15) What is Sound Doctrine? 1 Timothy 1:8-11 - Reading Acts

(16) Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life – An Antidote to Chaos, 2018, Penguin Random House, P177

Thought Experiments

Some people like to bring up so called ethical paradoxes to somehow show that morals are subjective to individuals. For example: The trolley paradox, which goes something like this:

There is a runaway trolley barrelling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two (and only two) options:

1. Do nothing, in which case the trolley will kill the five people on the main track.

2. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.

Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?¹

Or a more chilling problem is the thought experiment where we ‘save the world’ where we are asked to imagine, you have the power to stop the world from being blown up, but you have to kill a little girl to save the 8 billion or so people on the planet. Do you:

1. Kill the girl and save 8 billion people.

2. Do nothing and kill everyone.

Whatever choice we choose, we have to either kill one or many people, either option is undesirable and is meant to show that our intuitions show morals are subjective; If in the saving the world scenario we kill the girl (option 1) we save the 8 billion, we can then ask, what if we say we have to kill two girls to save the world, or three, or five or ten or a million, what do we decide then?

Scenarios like these do not prove anything, other than in such scenarios we are unsure, not that it is subjective, rather, either option could be the right action, given the circumstances. Additionally, in most of these so-called paradoxes are so implausible that they are absurd and not going to be a situation anyone is likely to be in.

Moreover, given our sphere of influence, in the case of the trolley paradox, choosing either option isn’t a deliberate choice to kill anyone, rather, the chooser is forced between two undesirable options, where the chooser is without any causal relation in causing the trolley going out of control, they are just potentially limiting the damage inflicted. Therefore, it seems likely in the case of the trolley scenario we are only required to make a choice either way, as doing nothing, that is, seeing a problem but ignoring it or turning away to pretend it isn’t there would be the wrong choice.

Additionally, if it isn’t already clear, these scenarios are highly implausible and ridiculous, consider saving the world scenario, how is it possible that any one finite individual can save a planet by the means stated in this dilemma? Or in the trolley scenario, why is it that the individuals involved (the one or five) stationary on a track and unable to look to see the trolley? presumably they were close enough that it wasn’t possible to move away, but clearly unless they were somehow tied to the tracks (which is another version of the trolley paradox) , it is highly unlikely that they would stay on a set of tracks long enough for this to happen and if they were tied? The only unethical person is the one who had tied them up.

Therefore, consider our own lives, we are forced to make decisions all the time, what to wear, eat, education, career choice, love interests etc. which, in the vast majority of cases what we do in these circumstances are morally neutral, they obviously have consequences e.g. choosing to wear shorts in the middle of winter for example may not be the best choice, but it wouldn’t be immoral, or choosing to be a firefighter instead of a doctor, it may be considered more prestigious to be a doctor and if you have the educational acumen to do so, it may be desirable to become a doctor, but if the individual has no interest in becoming a doctor despite having the grades to do so, that person isn’t obligated to become a doctor, that individual could choose to become any number of different professions and be happy and fulfilled. So, we are required to choose and in choosing we are not necessarily doing anything wrong, even if we are only forced with only bad options. Rather, it is the intention and desires of the individual which determines its moral standing e.g., if the only reason you became a doctor was to spite your parents as for some reason hated doctors, because you wanted to hurt their feelings for some real or imagined wrong, they committed, that wouldn’t be a good reason to become a doctor. Or more to the point, if a person choose to leave the pulley to divert the trolley because you deep down wanted to kill them, that would be obviously wrong.

In the case of saving the world, one is choosing to kill someone in order to save billions, this seems to be a different kind of issue, one is definitely doing something that in any other circumstance, would be wrong, that is, it would be considered murder and, in some way, if one were in this situation, one would have some kind of moral accountability even if they thought what they were doing was the correct thing.

Euthyphro Dilemma

The Euthyphro Dilemma was in Plato’s dialogue with Euthyphro, in which Socrates asks Euthyphro "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?", a more modern version was posed by Gottfried Leibniz where the more common formulation "is good and just because God wills it or whether God wills it because it is good and just."

I have stated before that morals are objectively true, this can be confused with thinking God choose the moral standards, that is, Are these things right because God commands them or does God command them because they are right? If the first, then it is arbitrary, that is, if God commanded that hating, rape or murder was good, then we would be morally obligated to do these things. If the later then the standard isn’t because of God, but he is somehow subservient, he is only stating a more fundamental law outside of himself. As C.S. Lewis writes “if good is to be defined as what God commands, then the goodness of God Himself is emptied of meaning and the commands of an omnipotent fiend would have the same claim…If the second, then we seem to be admitting a cosmic dyarchy, or even making God Himself the mere executor of a law somehow external and antecedent to His own being. Both views are intolerable.” C.S. Lewis then goes on to say that “just as a cube, in which six squares are consistent with unity of the body, is different from a square. (Flatlanders, attempting to imagine a cube, would either imagine the six squares coinciding, and thus destroy their distinctness, or else imagine them set out side by side, and thus destroy the unity…) It is therefore possible that the duality which seems to force itself upon us when we think, first, of our Father in Heaven, and, secondly, of the self-evident imperatives of the moral law, is not a mere error but a real (though inadequate and creaturely) perception of things that would necessarily be two in any mode of being which enters our experience, but which are not so divided in the absolute being of the superpersonal God. When we attempt to think of a person and a law, we are compelled to think of this person either as obeying the law or as making it. And when we think of Him as making it we are compelled to think of Him either as making it in conformity to some yet more ultimate pattern of goodness (in which case that pattern, and not He, would be supreme) or else as making it arbitrarily…(in which case He would be neither good nor wise). But it is probably just here that our categories betray us. It would be idle, with our merely mortal resources, to attempt a positive correction… But it might be permissible to lay down two negations: that God neither obeys nor creates the moral law. The good is uncreated; it never could have been otherwise; it has in it no shadow of contingency; it lies, as Plato said, on the other side of existence. It is the Rita of the Hindus by which the gods themselves are divine, the Tao of the Chinese from which all realities proceed. But we, favoured beyond the wisest pagans, know what lies beyond existence, what admits no contingency, what lends divinity to all else, what is the ground of all existence, is not simply a law but also a begetting love, a love begotten, and the love which, being these two, is also imminent in all those who are caught up to share the unity of their self caused life. God is not merely good, but goodness; goodness is not merely divine, but God.” 2

In other words, we pose a third option to break the dilemma, in essence it becomes a false dilemma, the so called dilemma was false and there was a third or more possibilities the objector didn’t consider as an option, namely, God simply is the good.

If we take what secular philosophers say, that objective morals are a fundamental truth, like laws of logic, or laws of physics. Then it seems like there is a kind of category mistake going on, take God’s omnipotence for example, are we to take it that similarly that His omnipotence is grounded in a more fundamental fact? Clearly not, or we simply suggesting an absurdity like a square circle. God’s omnipotence can not be dependent on or by anything more fundamental, or that more fundamental power would be God. Similarly, God’s moral perfection, isn’t grounded in some more fundamental fact, God simply is that fundamental fact, in virtue of his omniscience, holiness and goodness. God neither states moral duties and obligations out of whim or stating a further fundamental law rather it’s essential to God’s nature to be good, like God’s omnipotence is essential to God and not stating a more fundamental truth.

This then leads to Euthyphro 2.0:

Euthyphro 2.0 states that our supposed third option really on closer analysis is their first, namely, God is arbitrarily naming things good because He wills it. So, the dilemma is reinstated, if God willed rape and murder to be good would we be obligated to do such act, or are we dependent on a more fundamental truth?

I would insist at this point what they are proposing is an absurdity, moral perfection can not propose what is evil as good, just as omniscience can make false propositions true, they simply are thus. Necessarily true propositions must be facts and an omniscient being would know any such facts. Similarly, moral perfection wouldn’t be moral perfection if it could propose something other than what it already knows to be the case, not because it is a moral fundamental truth, rather God knows it, not only in virtue of His omniscience because that is an essential to His nature.

The Properties of God

Another issue arises when, what do we mean when we say ‘God is good’? Or ‘God is omnipotent’? Or whatever property you wish to assign to God. If we say it is a property like we assign redness to an apple or a car, or we say Jane has blue eye and brown hair, or whatever. In other words, contingent facts, things that could have been otherwise or put another way, it is a property outside of the thing in question. The issue is, that when we say an apple is red, we don’t typically mean there is instantiated an abstract thought called ‘redness’ somewhere in some metaphysical location which the apple possesses. Rather, we typically mean it in an intuitive sense of it just being red and an apple. For example, if we think of a cat, the term is mutually exclusive, in that when we say cat, we automatically rule out other categories, like dog or mouse. But within, the category of ‘Cat’ there are a number of different properties that a cat could have (see figure 1.1), for example the breed, gender, eye colour, fur colour etc. But when we say a cat is this breed, we do it to differentiate it from other distinct breeds of the same species in some objective sense. In that, when we talk about cat’s, we intuitively know, a cat, typically has two eyes, ears, four legs and paws, a nose etc. On the other hand, when we say the cat in question is a certain breed and has grey fur and brown eyes, the ‘grey’ fur and ‘brown’ eyes are contingent, in that even within the same variant of species, they eye and fur colour could be different. Additionally, we are not saying there is instantiated in reality some property of ‘grey’ or ‘brown’ somewhere, rather, it is just a colloquial abstract term to differentiate between other colours or discrete objects.

As this pertains to God, and his Aseity (His self-existent properties), in conjunction with a typical view called realism (there are abstract objects that are necessarily existent, or concrete objects)(see figure 1.2), if we are saying God is omniscient, we shouldn’t say there is something called omniscience and God possesses that individual property and God is somehow subordinate to this necessary property.

A typical response is to say these properties only exist in the mind of God, so as to ground all abstract thoughts and propositions like His omnipotence or redness in Him. But this is an unwanted burden of almost infinite weight, as this requires God to think about every possible thought or proposition, including ones inappropriate for a Holy God. ³ Additionally, if thoughts like God’s omnipotence is in God’s mind, God would have to already have to be omnipotent before He could have omnipotent and becomes circular reasoning.

Rather, we should take some sort of anti-realist view, that says abstract objects do exist, but that they do not commit oneself to thinking they actually exists in some real way. God therefore has properties, but they are more like in the case of a cat, a cat has certain characteristics that essentially makes it a cat and some necessary features like eyes, ears, nose etc. God is essentially and necessarily Omnipotent, Omniscient and Morally Perfect (see figure 1.3).

This issue is it links into other known problems like in the doctrine of divine simplicity and God’s relationship with abstract objects, like numbers and sets and other abstracts like redness etc. Which I have touched on briefly above, the view I would defend is a version of anti-realism, where we can acknowledge abstract thoughts like properties like something having redness without being ontologically committed to it (redness) being a real thing.

Why Is Homosexuality a Sin?

An obvious question that sceptics will want to raise is, why is homosexuality immoral? Like I have said before, being homosexual isn’t anymore of a sin than any other sin like, premarital sex or looking at lust, as I have demonstrated. I also do not think it is helpful to look at homosexuality as being beyond redemption, that is, it is evil. No one is going to hell just because they have sinned, it is because they have rejected God’s provision, we will however have to answer for those sins later on, but we stand condemned or acquitted on where we stand on Jesus.

So, despite what some might want to make out, Christians are not out to vilify any one group of people, but I do think it is important to not compromise on what the bible clearly states either.

So, why is it a sin to love someone of the same sex?

From a biblical standpoint, God ordained from the beginning that man and women would be fruitful and increase in number Genesis 1:28, that is, the goal is to have progeny. That one man and one women should become one flesh Genesis 2:24, that is married. Marriage is always seen as between a man and a woman, and that the desired outcome is to have children, this rules out same sex couples.

So, in some sense, it is a definitional claim, because marriage is defined as between a man and a woman, so same sex couples cannot get married.

The sceptic may concede that point, but pushback on that modern day lifestyles and the need to increase the population isn’t such a pressing issue for many; so why is it a big deal that two consensual people of the same sex wanting to have a lifelong bond of love is wrong?

Two issues arise when making such a question:

1. They’re assuming a modern 21st century viewpoint, that same sex relationships are acceptable.

2. Because it feels good, that must make it right.

There are no good analogies that I can give that doesn’t either trivialise or risk insulting specific readers that might find this topic controversial. So, I want to convey my upmost desire to tackle this most thorny of issues as respectfully and thoughtfully as possible. In fact, I have rewritten this section multiple times to try to get it as courteous as possible.

We all have inclinations we know we shouldn’t proceed with and just because it does or would feel good, doesn’t make it automatically so. It may seem harsh or even uncaring to say and even unfair. Like I said before, Christianity is exclusive, before we are married 0% of the population are available to us and only 1 in 8 billion afterwards, it may well be inconvenient, if an attractive person pays attention to you and you would like to see where things would lead either romantically or sexually, but that doesn’t mean you can forsake your wedding vows, or if you happen to be single, because that person is attractive and is interested, doesn’t mean you should have sex out of wedlock, it might be nice or desirable, but that doesn’t make it morally justifiable.

Similarly, those who are attracted to the same sex are equally obligated to stay celibate and not pursue that urge, it may be unfair, but that is life, countless people have had unrequited love or having got married, fell out of love for many different reasons, or still been in love with someone who never returned their affection.

Homosexuals who wish to get married can do so legally in civil partnerships, which afford the same rights in law as traditional weddings in a church.

It seems odd to me that atheists or sceptics want to get married in a church as they are making proclamations and oaths to a God they do not believe and typically do not want to worship. Similarly, it is odd that homosexuals want a traditional wedding given the confines of what Christianity teaches; marriage is, again, between one man and one women joined as one, symbolising God and man’s (humankind) relationship, man is subservient to God, likewise the woman in this figurative sense is subservient to the man Ephesians 5:23-32⁴. So, for two men or two women, the symbolism ceases to work, God and God in this marriage bond cannot symbolise God and humanities relationship, similarly man and man cannot symbolise God and humanities relationship.

The point being every Christian should realise, if it isn’t already clear, we are not here to judge the non-believer as such, how they choose to live their lives should be of little concern in most cases as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5:12-13 “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside. ‘Expel the wicked person from among you.’” In other words, our primary concern is those inside of the faith, if a homosexual or any other kind of sinner wants to claim to be Christian, then that has implications, sin bars us from participated in active ministry and in extreme cases, may require excommunication if they can not control their temptation. Non-believers on the other hand aren’t for us to judge, that is for God to decide. So, if a homosexual who doesn’t believe in God chooses to love another person of the same sex, that is their concern, we as tolerant individuals should accept their way of life (assuming it isn’t breaking any laws and it is consensual), and it will be God who will judge, not us! We shouldn’t cast judgement on any non-believer as they do not accept our way of life.

Possible Objection

It might be argued that I haven’t really given a robust enough moral framework, that explicitly shows what is moral or what we ought or ought not to do. I disagree, I have laid out a principle of loving one another, which I’d argue is clear. If we all made a concerted effort to ultimately love God and by extension each other what crimes would we actually commit? If we all wanted the best for each other, what violence would we commit?

If someone is wanting a complete ethical framework, where I lay out if ‘X’ do ‘Y’ or ‘Z’ then I think you are missing the point of the ethics, and your only seeming motivation is to have a get -out-of-jail-free-card! “I did all the that you commanded God”, “Now, I deserve to go heaven!”, well no! that goes against the very spirit of the proposal being put forward, if one is looking to love everyone as themselves and love God, one isn’t looking to find loopholes, rather, they are seeking the best for everyone else and trying ones best! Then one is fulfilling the royal law (see Galatians).

Closing Remarks

We have gone through a fairly in-depth study of what Sin is, both at a secular and Christian understanding. The good therefore, as philosophers sometime refer to our moral obligations are firstly grounded in God’s perfect nature and our obligations are twofold:

1. To love God with all your heart, soul and mind; Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37-38.

2. Love your neighbour as yourself; Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:39-40.

Additionally, we can say that whatever an individual classes as wrong, for them, it is at some level.

We then looked at in some detail at our total inadequacy to fulfil these obligations, see the sections in Matthew 5, not only are our actions in many cases well below par, but our thoughts are too. In addition, we looked at various of other places in scripture to show in detail other ways in which we full short of the mark, see sections in 1 Cor, 1 Tim, James and Galatians.

We can now look at the consequences of what that sin does and the destination one might go.

References:

Where Hebrew or Greek words are translated, I have used Laridian PocketBible© version of NAS Exhaustive Concordance Hebrew-Aramaic Dictionary and NAS Exhaustive Concordance Greek Dictionary unless otherwise referenced below.

(1) Trolley problem - Wikipedia

(2) C.S. Lewis, The Poison of Subjectivism The Poison of Subjectivism (weebly.com)

(3) (2) Cadbury Lectures 2015. 3: 'Anti-Platonic Realism' by Professor William Lane Craig - YouTube

(4) The point being, the men should love their wives, just as Christ loved the church (symbolising all people) and gave his life, so too should the man be willing to do the same for their wives. Furthermore, in 1 Corinthians 7:1-7 states in marriage each are owned by the other and should not withholding themselves from each other.

Question Two: The Consequences of Sin.

Now we have some understanding of what sin is, what happens if we do sin? Ultimately, sin will be judged by God at the ‘judgement day’ or ‘God’s last judgement’, where all our acts and deeds are going to be judged by God’s objective standard, which will as question one has outlined condemn us all to hell;

The basis of God’s last judgment will be:

According to works – See Revelation 20:11-15, Matthew 12:36-37, 16:27, Romans 2:6-10, Revelation 22:12 – It is according to the revelation each person has, see Romans 1:18-21, 2:12, 2:14-15, 3:23, Matthew 11:20-24 pp. Luke 10:13-15, Matthew 12:41-42 pp. Luke 11:31-32. Galatians 3:1 – It is according to attitude towards Jesus Christ, John 3:18, Matthew 10:14-15 pp. Luke 10:11-12, Matthew 10:32-33 pp. Luke 12:8-9, Matthew 25:35-40, Mark 8:38, Luke 10:16, Acts 4:12, 16:30-31 – The fairness of God’s last judgment, Psalms 51:4 (Romans 3:4-6), 98:9, Isaiah 16:5, Romans 3:19 – Believers need not fear judgment, John 5:24, Romans 5:9, 1 Corinthians 11:32, 1 John 4:17, 1 Corinthians 3:12-15, 2 Timothy 4:1, Hebrews 10:25.

So, at bottom, the judgment of sin is a final day of reckoning, where our actions and thoughts will be assessed, judged and sentence put forward to our final destination, that is, if you have been found not to have lived to the royal commands e.g. Matthew 22:37-39 then you will either go to heaven or hell.

It is important to note however, and highlight again that no one is going to hell just because they did x or y bad deed, rather because they didn’t accept God’s provision, so although it is correct in one sense to say ‘no murder is going to enter into heaven’ but it is equally true, if we have a angry thought about another person, we have committed murder in our hearts, therefore we who have done such things can never enter heaven either, essentially meaning everyone is barred from entering heaven (luckily this isn’t the predicament we are in, see section three).

Original Sin:

Is primarily a Roman Catholic idea, that from birth we are born with degenerative nature, which leads us with the hard question, are we somehow accountable for the sins of Adam and Eve? There are a number of scriptural text, that are given to give plausibility to the notion namely the Genesis 3 narrative of Adam and Eve’s fall and expulsion from the garden, Psalm 51:5 and Romans 5:12-21.

It seems to me that, although we are in one sense are all fallen, that is, we are all sinful, it isn’t the sin that is sending us to hell, rather our not accepting God’s provision that sends those to hell.

Additionally, it seems that we are all accountable for our own sins, not that of Adam or Eve, although they were the first to sin, we do not and cannot be held accountable for their actions in the past, we all have committed enough sins of our own free will to make us guilty and worthy of hell.

Free will:

Free will is ultimately the ability to do otherwise the things we do, so although we did action X it was possible to do ~X where ‘~’ denotes the negation of something.

This topic is by itself is a subject worthy of a whole study but will try and strip the argument down to its essentials and explain it the best I can.

If as materialists or naturalist want to insist, that the mind is an emergent property of the brain, that is, everything we think and feel is a result of the chemistry and electronic stimulations of the brain, that is, it is determined by laws of physics. Determinism in this broad sense is false, as demonstrated by Bell’s Inequality and the experiments that follow on it¹.

In 1935, A. Einstein and co-workers B. Podolsky and N. Rosen published a seminal paper², which acquired the name ‘the EPR paper’³,⁴, in which he proposed that quantum mechanics is incomplete in the sense that there must be hidden laws “hidden variables” that completely determine the apparent statistical out of quantum processes. Pure chance, in physics is an illusion Einstein argued, to reject determinism leads to “Spooky action at a distance” and a host of counterintuitive phenomena. In this view, the probabilistic nature of the subatomic world is merely apparent and quantum mechanics is an incomplete description of nature.

Remarkably, about 29 years later the physicist John Bell published a relatively simple experimental design in which these hidden variables could be tested³. The theoretical and experimental details go beyond the scope of this discussion, but experiments based on Bell’s theorem have been conducted over the past half-century or so, confirming the nondeterminism of nature. In other words, Einstein was wrong, there are no hidden local variables, which means that quantum processes are not determined by their local states prior to collapse of the quantum waveform. In this sense determinism is not true, there remains subtleties to the debate, but the evidence in physics strongly implies nature is not deterministic as Laplace and Einstein believed it was, that is, Laplace believed that, if he knew the precise location and momentum of every particle in the universe , he could know all past and future events with certainty.

Wilder Penfield

Penfield was a pioneer in brain surgery for epilepsy sufferers, put simply he was able to essentially cut the brain in half, which would stop the seizure from spreading to the others side of the brain, making the seizure worse.

Penfield performed many operations on awake patients, obviously they were given local aesthesia, so they felt no pain and Penfield mapped their brains by stimulating the context with an electrical probe. In his research he mapped hundreds of patients over many decades, he was able to stimulate many different mind states: movement of limbs, sensations, perceptions, emotions, even memories. But he was never able to stimulate the will. For example, he would ask conscious patients to randomly at will, and during that interval, he (Penfield) could, without telling the patient, stimulate the area of the brain that caused the arm to rise. He would ask the patient “Why did your arm rise? Did you do it, or did I?” The patient always knew if they willed their arm to move, or if Penfield moved it. Even in the case of memories, the patient would always knew they didn’t will it ⁵,⁶,⁷,⁸,⁹.

Additionally, Penfield noted that there are no intellectual seizures. That is, there has never been a seizure in medical history that has had specific intellectual content or abstract thought. If the brain is the source of all thoughts, will, desires and ultimately consciousness, why has there never been a single case in medical history of any abstract thought? This fascinated Penfield and he reasonably inferred that the reason for this, is because abstract thoughts do not originate in the brain. Penfield it should be noted was a materialist at the start of his career, but became a dualist by the end  ⁵,⁶,⁷,⁸,⁹.

Benjamin Libet

Benjamin Libet was a neurophysiologist, he was fascinated with what he called mind time. He studied the correlation between the electrical activity of the brain ad the simultaneous content of thought. Libet performed seminal experiments on the correlation between thought and brain activity, and his most famous experiments involved the study of free will. Libet placed electrodes taped on volunteers’ scalps and recorded their brain waves. The volunteers were asked to sit in front of a screen that displayed a clock and were asked to push a button whenever they freely decided to do so. The clock recorded the exact time they made the decision to push the button, to a resolution of milliseconds, this allowed Libet to precisely time the moment that they freely decided to push the button. The time of the volunteer’s decision to push the button could be correlated precisely in time with their brain waves.

Libet’s initial experiments showed a very consistent relationship between the brain waves and the voluntary decision and execution of the decision to push the button. Libet found that there was approximately 400 milliseconds before the volunteers were aware of a conscious decision to push the button, there was a spike in brain activity that seemed to correspond with the thought that the button would be pushed. This seemed to be very strong evidence that freewill doesn’t exist. However, that wasn’t the end of the experiment, Libet was careful and asked the volunteers to repeat the experiments in which they decided to push the button and toted the time of their decision, but he then asked the volunteers to veto the decision to push the button and thereby not push it. Remarkably, Libet found that while the decision to push the button was invariably preceded by an unconscious spike in brain activity, the veto was electrically silent in the brain. Libet interpreted this as meaning that the brain causes a steady stream of unconscious motivations – he compared them to temptations – of which we are freely (i.e. spiritually and immaterially) capable of refusal or compliance.

Libet noted the remarkable similarity between his experimental findings and the traditional Christian understanding of temptation and sin. He concluded that we are beset with unconscious temptation over which we have no control, but to which we can give assent or refusal to act freely. Our free will is real, Libet concluded, if we understand it as free won’t – as our freedom to accept or reject temptation¹⁰.

What is hell?

People who end up in hell, are there from the consequences of sin, not because they’re sinners, rather it is because they didn’t accept the provision made by God, and they didn’t fulfil their duty to loving God, that is seeking a relationship with God and loving everyone else as themselves.

As I have said elsewhere, to love someone is a free act, it cannot be forced or demanded upon by another individual. So, God respecting our free choice, and doesn’t force us into His presence in the next if we do not want it.

The issue then becomes, who in their right mind would reject eternal happiness? The problem is, the kind of people that are raising such questions are blissfully unaware of the situation at hand. Because a person doesn’t want a certain negative consequence for their action they chose, doesn’t allow them to avoid such a consequence if that is what the conclusion of an action taken! For example, if I am an alcoholic and drink 3 litres of whisky a day, the fact I don’t want liver failure, doesn’t mean that isn’t what is going to happen and my refusal to accept the consequences doesn’t suddenly remove the danger.

A common objection is a simple refusal to understand that our sins are sufficient to warrant the consequences suggested, the issue being that the typical sceptic/atheist holds something like the idea of hell N.T. Wright portrays in the introduction. However, the issue is far more subtle than that, the sceptic is more like a fish in a fish tank who is unaware that it requires water to breath, move and have it’s being, and thinks in its heart, I don’t need this tank so survive, I think it’s better out there! And as a result jumps out of the tank and dies. This is much like the situation here today, if theism is true, then every good that is possible is as a result of God, we can experience love, joy, peace, happiness, contentment and any other good emotion only because of God, the evil is the absence of good, or the privation of the good, not any comparable property like the good has; as 1 Timothy says ‘8 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 9 We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious…’ in other words, the law (the good) is a signpost for knowing what is wrong as C.S. Lewis writes “You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong–only because cruelty was pleasant or useful to him. In other words badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness.”¹¹. In essence, the bad acts we do are as a result of freewill and in the absence of the good we all know deep down.

Therefore, on my view, those who are going to hell, will enter an eternity without the presence of God, that is, a place without any good emotions.

On what grounds can I make such assertions?

There are several different traditional views on the doctrine of hell:

• Universalism – The view everyone is eventually saved and go to heaven regardless of what they believed or did.

• Annihilationism – Those who do go to hell are annihilated at some point after a finite

time.

• Purgatory – People go to purgatory for a finite time to serve out a sentence before finally entering heaven.

• Eternal conscious torment – Those who go to hell, suffer an eternity of torment.

Universalism:

There are no good reasons to my mind to accept Universalism, as it blatantly contradicts what the bible says and more importantly what Jesus said about salvation ¹²,¹³,¹⁴,¹⁵. Moreover, it seems to negate freewill, if someone truly doesn’t want to go to heaven, why are they forced into a place they have no desire to go to? Surely that would be an evil thing to do?

Imagine being invited to a party that you turn down, but then on the day of the party, you are forced into a van by a bunch of heavies and then forced into a party and made to participate in the games and festivities against your will, would you be happy about such a situation? I would suggest no one would. Similarly, if God is ultimately forcing people into heaven against their will, it would be equally wrong.

Even if as some seem to suggest, these people are in a kind of hell or place of literal torture until they change their minds, it is still wrong! It is regarded as immoral to take the testimony of torture victims, because they will say anything to stop the pain and agony, including admitting to things they do not believe or know to be the case! So, if a non-believer is forced into confessing to loving God to placate the tormentor and cease the interrogation, this person neither freely chooses to love God, nor are they going to love them afterwards.

Annihilationism:

An Annihilation view of hell is more plausible than Universalism, but does that bible teach such a view? ¹⁶,¹⁷,¹⁸,¹⁹ The scriptural view seems to reject the idea of annihilation, see for example 2 Thessalonians 1:9 “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” Other passages seem to suggest that hell is eternal, which for want of a better term, called ‘Eternal Conscious Torment’ (ECT) Matthew 25:46 or Revelation 14:9-11, verse 11 in Revelation 14 specifically makes it clear that those who are going to hell will be there for ever.

Purgatory:

Purgatory is typically a view believed by Catholics, which if correct, is a temporary state for affairs for certain individuals to ‘work off’ or purify the sins they committed before going to heaven.

The doctrine of purgatory states that “I]f they die truly repentant in charity before they have made satisfaction by worthy fruits of penance for (sins) committed and omitted, their souls are cleansed after death by purgatorical or purifying punishments, as Brother John has explained to us. And to relieve punishments of this kind, the offerings of the living faithful are of advantage to these, namely, the sacrifices of Masses, prayers, alms, and other duties of piety, which have customarily been performed by the faithful for the other faithful according to the regulations of the Church.”²⁰

The issue is, the problem of penance, ²¹ is “Rome bases its penance teaching on incorrectly translating "repentance" ("to change one's mind," as in Ezekiel 18:30, Luke 13:5, Acts 2:28, etc.) as "penance." Catholicism believes that a priest has the power to forgive or retain sins and to impose penance as a means of testing the genuineness of one's confession—and of "satisfying" God concerning one's sin.

But sinners can only be forgiven, accepted, and justified on the ground of Christ's sacrifice. It is this alone that satisfies the justice and wrath of God against us. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved" (Acts 16:31). We must confess our sins to God: "If we confess our own sins, He is faithful and righteous, to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (I John 1:9).” ²²

The issue being, the doctrine teaches that sins can be paid for and absolved by giving money, saying prayers to saints, and more widely; Priests and the Pope can absolve sins, making the individuals time in purgatory for a briefer time.

Eternal Conscious Torment:

Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) is the historical view of hell held throughout Christendom in the past, but still has a large proponent that believes this to be the most accurate; Mark 9:42-48 where it describes it ‘better’ (καλός/kalos meaning beautiful or good or less common better. Combined with μᾶλλον/mallon meaning all the more, and μάλιστα/malista meaning most especially) to be crippled to enter life (ζωή/zóé meaning life, both of physical (present) and of spiritual (particularly future) existence) then being fully able in hell (γέεννα/geenna, Gehenna, the valley West and South of Jerusalem, also the symbolic place of hell) where the fire never goes out (ἄσβεστος/asbestos meaning unquenchable and πῦρ/pur meaning fire), the implication of this is it was an illustration, not a literal similarity. Gehenna was a literal place in Jerusalem which was used as a garbage dump, but more historically it was the place the Jewish people sacrificed children to Molech, the people that worshipped Molech were put to death; see Jeramiah 7:30-34, the implication seems to suggest a place of hopelessness and dread for the evils that were committed in worshiping something other than God. There is some ambiguity on verse 44 where “their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched” should be included as some manuscripts do not include this part of chapter, but it is in fact a reference to Isaiah 66:24, which states the same, the bodies that were killed were set a light to burn, the reference to the fire will never be quenched is obviously hyperbole and shouldn’t be taken literally (the concept of burning is that it incinerates whatever is being burned), especially in reference to what hell is like. Worms are of course considered unclean to the Jewish people, along with carrion, which further adds to the detestable nature of the place. Additionally, Revelation 20:14 also describes hell as a place of burning.

Hell is also called a place of ‘darkness’ Matthew 8:12, 22:13 & 25:30; if this is not immediately clear, fire and darkness are not compatible concepts, fires produce light and darkness is the absence of light. The concepts of darkness and fire are best to be interpreted as figurative as there are not compatible any other way.

It is my contention, therefore that the evidence before us is that the analogies are to be taken as ‘likenesses’ of what hell is like, not literal descriptions. There are several ways to understand the word used for ‘fire’ πῦρ/pur, could be described as heat.²³ Given the passages that talk about hell being a place of ‘darkness’, it seems to me that the description of heat, rather than fire is the best understanding of the doctrine of hell.

Satan:

The idea of Satan isn’t going to be something sceptics or materialists will accept easily, but if Christianity is true, the doctrine of Satan is a belief that must be understood and squared, within the faith and something sceptics will have to take into account when discussing Hell and Satan’s relationship in relationship within Christianity.

Satan: Satan from the Hebrew שָׂטָן satan meaning adversary, superhuman or adversary of God & the Greek Σατανᾶς Satanas meaning the adversary, Satan i.e. the devil.(1 Chronicles 21:1, Job 1:6-9, 12, 2:1-4, 6-7, Zechariah 3:1-2, Matthew 4:10, 12:26, 16:23, Mark 1:13, 3:23, 26, 4:15, 8:33, Luke 10:18, 11:18, 13:16, 22:3, 31, John 13:27, Act 5:3, 26:18, Romans 16:20, 1 Corinthians 5:5, 7:5, 2 Corinthians 2:11, 12:7, 1 Thessalonians 2:18, 2 Thessalonians 2:9, 1 Timothy 1:20, 5:15, Revelations 2:9, 13, 3:9, 12:9, 20:2, 7) who was mistakenly named ‘Lucifer’ in the King James Version (KJV) but better translated ‘morning star’(הילל) (Isaiah 14:12, 2 Peter 1:19, Revelation 2:28, 22:16), in Isaiah 14 there seems to be a shift from v1-11 from the King of Babylon from that of v12-14 this mysterious ‘morning star’, It becomes clear, once we fit this together with II Peter 2:4; Jude 6; Revelation 12:3-4,9; and Ezekiel 28:12-14, that God assigned the angels to the earth under their commander, Lucifer (Helel in Hebrew), who was the sum total of all that God could create by fiat in a created being, perfect in his ways until iniquity was found in him. We see a picture of a being of awesome beauty and power, of tremendous intelligence, and like us, a creature of free moral agency.

Something happened to that great being, and he began a campaign of deceit. He began to separate from God a number of the angels, undoubtedly using the reasoning that they should have more, that God should treat them better, that God was being unfair, that they did not have the liberty or the power that was due them. At some point he began to express, "I will be like the Most High."

Some commentators say that the Hebrew says in reality, "I will be God," not just like God. We can see what he wanted: complete power, authority, and control. He did not want to be under another; he did not want to be submissive. He did not want another being pulling his strings or controlling him.

He wanted to sit, as it says, on the mount of the congregation. So he decided, "I will make war. I will ascend into heaven." So the demons left their first estate, the realm of their authority, and they mounted up in war and attacked God. They were soundly defeated and cast down. Their first domain became a place of restraint, literally "a silo," a pit, where they were chained. This suggests that, as a result of their rebellion, they no longer have the liberty that they once had, but are now held in restraint. A great deal of their free moral agency was taken from them”²⁴, this seems to suggest that the ‘morning star’ Isaiah 14:3-11 is separate from the king of Babylon, a higher power or the true power of the ruler of Babylon.²⁵,²⁶,²⁷ This view isn’t universally accepted, some will want to insist the morning star refers to the planet Venus, or even Jesus himself as one of his titles is the morning star ²⁸, the latter isn’t taken with any seriousness “How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! (Isaiah 14:12). “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star” (Revelation 22:16). So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts (2 Peter 1:19). Two stars, one still shining, one fallen: This is the picture of Jesus versus Satan. Satan was a star, but his light has been extinguished. Jesus is the star. Although he was killed, he rose again and resumed his place in the heavens. His light was extinguished for a short season, but ultimately could not be put out.”²⁹ the former, is less easy to dismiss “Despite the clarity of this text, some readers remain so committed to their earlier understanding of the text that they are determined to get around the context. “Well, maybe it does refer to the king of Babylon, but it must refer to the devil, too,” they protest. But why must it refer to the devil? Is there anything here that cannot refer to an earthly ruler exalting himself? Do any of the oracles against other nations (chs. 13-23) contain hidden prophecies against the devil? Was the devil a mere earthly conqueror, brought to the realm of the dead after he was thrust from heaven (14:12, 15)?”³⁰ Dr. Keener has a point here, nothing what is said in the passage explicitly states it is referring to the Satan.

Additionally, as Daniel W. Wallace states the word of ‘morning star’ isn’t a proper name, thus the translation to Lucifer is incorrect “The reality is that in Isa 14:12 the primary or initial reference of ‘morning star’ is not to the devil but to the Babylonian king…In other words, ‘morning star’ or lucifer in the Latin Vulgate literally referred to Venus, but metaphorically would refer to earthly kings, emperors, and pagan deities. Peter thus may have chosen this word to show that the real morning star was Jesus, not Caesar. Isaiah 14:12 thus spoke of the Babylonian king as the morning star and thus predicted his fall. Jesus and John used this text to indicate that Satan would fall. It is only by turning lucifer into a proper name, as has been done by KJV advocates, that misunderstanding of the meaning of these texts could occur. The logic of the KJV position is as follows:

• Lucifer is a proper name and refers exclusively to one who is inherently evil, the devil.

• Thus, even if translated as ‘morning star’ in Isa 14.12, this still refers exclusively to the devil.

• Consequently, for Jesus to be called ‘morning star’ in 2 Peter 1.19 is to call him the devil.

The logic breaks down on the first premise—viz., that the term in Isa 14:12 refers exclusively to one who is evil. Since this is false, the conclusion is also false. To call Jesus ‘morning star’ in 2 Peter 1:19 makes him no more evil than calling Satan ‘god’ (2 Cor 4:4) makes him good. And to argue that since God is not the God of confusion and therefore different words must be used in each verse is to continue to compound the false view of lucifer as a name for the devil.” ³¹ It therefore seems that lucifer isn’t a name for Satan and the view of his fall, is unwarranted.

Satan is a created angel, that is, not equal to God; some believe him to have been an Archangel, that fall due to his pride. Although there are many scriptures that are used to give plausibly to the doctrine of Satan specifically in the New Testament, there are few direct references to him in the Old, the main reference is in Job, where it speaks of the angels, which Satan being one of them, which the angels are asked to give an account of themselves and there is a dialogue between God and Satan where Job is commended by God as “blameless and upright” (Job 1:6-8, 2:1-4) and Satan says he is only blameless and upright because he is essentially protected by God, Satan places a challenge to God to withdraw His hand of protection (Job 1:9-12. 2:6-7), subsequent verses tell of what God allowed Satan to do to test Job’s resolve, which Job eventually passes. What can we learn from this? Satan is subservient to God, meaning he is limited in power, knowledge and cannot be in multiple locations at once, Satan needs permission to do anything, and cannot go outside of that brief.

Satan has been called different names which are:

Devil: The word Devil comes from the Greek διάβολος diabolos, which is defined as slanderous or accusing falsely; its main translation is Devil or malicious gossip; διάβολος is from the root διαβάλλω diaballó, which means to bring charges, usually with hostile intent. Remember Satan means accuser “Throughout the Bible we learn Satan has many names. He is called the adversary, the dragon, that old serpent, and the god of this world, among others. In the New Testament, Satan is used interchangeably with Diabolos, or “the devil” at least thirty times or more, depending upon which version is used. You will also find that he is Beelzebub the prince of demons, as well as many more reference comparisons (e.g. power of death, roaring lion)”³²,³³ (Matthew 4:1, 5, 8, 11, 13:39, 25:41, Luke 4:2, 3, 5, 9, 13, 8:12, John 6:70, John 8:44, 13:2, Acts 10:38, 13:10, Ephesians 4:27, 1 Timothy 3:6, 2 Timothy 2:26, Hebrews 2:14, James 3:15, 4:7, 1 Peter 5:8, 1 John 3:8, 10, Jude 9, Revelation 2:10, 12:9, 12, 20:2, 10.)

Beelzebub: From the Greek Βεελζεβούλ Beelzeboul meaning lord of the flies or fly god, it is a name given to Satan (Matthew 10:25, 12:24, 27, Mark 3:22, Luke 11:15, 18-19.)

Satan is the accuser:

Satan is defined as an accuser, we can see from the book of Job direct evidence that Satan is directly condemning Job of only being upright because God is effectively spoon feeding or protecting Job, the implication being, if He (God) stopped his providential hand on Job’s life, Job would reject and curse God in a moment.

However, God knew better and rightly commended Job to Satan as an upright man and Satan was found wanting. We also see when Jesus goes into the wilderness for 40 days and nights he is tempted(Matthew 4: 1-11, Mark 1: 12-13 & Luke 4: 1-13) Jesus is tempted/tested or accused by Satan, Jesus was asked at the end of the 40 days , to call out to God to turn the rocks into bread, Jesus was offered all the wealth of the known world if He just worshiped Satan and Jesus was asked to prove his divinity by chucking himself off a high point so the angles would save him from falling and dying.

We can see more widely how Satan “the accuser” condemns each and everyone of us before God day and night; see Revelation 12:10. In John 8:44 Satan is described as the father of lies, a murder, and never holding to the truth. Satan lies and accuses us before God about all our mistakes.

Satan & Hell:

How does Satan pertain to hell? Hell seems to be originally created for Satan and those, who rebelled at the fall Revelation 20:1-3, it should be noted that in this passage it refers to the abyss, which at a cursory reading seem to be different places, but I would argue could be the same; see 2 Peter 2:4, note that I suggest that the concept of fire/πῦρ is a metaphor and not to be taken literally. The abyss or ἄβυσσος or abussos is defined as ‘boundless’, ‘bottomless’ or ‘abyss’, so if Revelation and 2 Peter are describing the same event, then it is the case that this is another characteristic of what hell is like.

Hell and the abyss, therefore are one and the same and was originally created for Satan and his demons, as the consequence of rebelling against God e.g. Jude 6

Closing Remarks

It appears then from the study so far that, Hell was created for Satan and his cohort that rebelled against God sometime in the distant past, but for reasons unknown directly, Satan was allowed to abide on earth for a time, before ultimate judgement.

References:

Where Hebrew or Greek words are translated, I have used Laridian PocketBible© version of NAS Exhaustive Concordance Hebrew-Aramaic Dictionary and NAS Exhaustive Concordance Greek Dictionary unless otherwise referenced below.

(1) https://evolutionnews.org/2018/07/is-free-will-an-illusion/

(2) https://cds.cern.ch/record/405662/files/PhysRev.47.777.pdf

(3) https://cds.cern.ch/record/111654/files/vol1p195-200_001.pdf

(4) For a discussion see Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality (New York: Random House. 2004)

(5) https://evolutionnews.org/2018/07/neurosurgeon-wilder-penfield-on-free-will/

(6) https://evolutionnews.org/2016/04/wilder_penfield/

(7) https://evolutionnews.org/2021/11/dualism-and-materialism-in-modern-neuroscience/

(8) https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/reconciliation/science-and-the-soul

(9) W. Dembski, C. Luskin & J.M. Holden, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith – Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos, Harvest House Publishers, pp.197-222.

(10) Readiness Potential and Neuronal Determinism: New Insights on Libet Experiment | Journal of Neuroscience (jneurosci.org)

(11) C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952, HarperColins Publishers (ebook)

(12) Talbott’s Universalism | Scholarly Writings | Reasonable Faith

(13) The False Doctrine of Universalism (bible-knowledge.com)

(14) Why Universalism is Wrong - Laura J. Davis (laurajdavis.com)

(15) The Reasons Why Universalism is False (tentmaker.org)

(16) Annihilationism | Reasonable Faith

(17) What is annihilationism and is it biblical? No, it is not. | carm.org

(18) J. I. Packer on Why Annihilationism Is Wrong (thegospelcoalition.org)

(19) Is Hell Eternal Conscious Torment? (crossroadschurchutah.org)

(20) Denzinger EN 824 (clerus.org) (856)

(21) Penance | Catholic Answers

(22) Roman Catholicism vs. Biblical Christianity (cbcg.org)

(23) πῦρ - Ancient Greek (LSJ)

(24) Isaiah 14:12 (KJV) - Forerunner Commentary (bibletools.org)

(25) #7 Book of Isaiah 14:12-14:17 by Chuck Missler - YouTube

(26) Isaiah - [1990s] by Chuck Missler (blueletterbible.org)

(27) Isaiah.p65 (wpo-gregor.org) – see pages 27-30.

(28) "Lucifer" in Isaiah 14 -- Have We Been Deceived All These Years? (hope-of-israel.org)

(29) Why Are Both Jesus and Satan Referred to as the Morning Star? (christianity.com)

(30) Does Isaiah 14:12-14 refer to Lucifer’s fall from Heaven? – Bible Background (craigkeener.com)

(31) Is "Lucifer" the Devil in Isaiah 14:12? - The KJV Argument against Modern Translations | Bible.org

(32) Satan, the Devil, and Lucifer: are they one and the same? - The Outlaw Bible Student

(33) Easton, M. G., Easton’s Bible Dictionary, (New York: Thomas Nelson, 1893).

Question Three: The Provision of Sin.

Now we have looked at what sin is and what are the consequences of sin, now it is time to investigate the provision God has provided for the predicament of all humanity.

One key passage that is importance in this is 1 John 1:8-10 says “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.” We are called to confess our sins to God and He will forgive us of our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness, if we are humble and recognise we are all sinners and not somehow worthy of forgiveness. He continues in the next verses 1 John 2:1–2 saying “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” The Greek for ‘advocate’ is παράκλητος/paraklétos, which means: (a) an advocate, intercessor, (b) a consoler, comforter, helper, (c) Paraclete. Additionally paráklētos (from 3844 /pará, "from close-beside" and 2564 /kaléō, "make a call") – properly, a legal advocate who makes the right judgment-call because close enough to the situation. 3875 /paráklētos ("advocate, advisor-helper") is the regular term in NT times of an attorney (lawyer) – i.e. someone giving evidence that stands up in court. The Greek for the word for ‘atoning sacrifice’ is ἱλασμός/hilasmos which means: a propitiation (of an angry god), atoning sacrifice. along with ἱλάσκομαι/hilaskomai which means: (a) I have mercy on, show favor to, (b) trans. with object of sins: I forgive, pardon.

It is important to note that the author of 1 John 2:1 when he wrote “…so that you will not sin” he did not write “so you will never sin”. Sin is always possible as long as believers possess the old sin nature.

John acknowledged Christians will succumb to sin sometime in their lives: “And if anyone sins” (v. 1). The word ‘if’ in the Greek is ἐάν/ean and denotes conditional particle or conjunction and assumes believers will sin sometimes.

Christians who walk in the light of God’s Word will still face temptations, but the Lord promises to not allow the temptation beyond what we can bare. The apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10:13 “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” The question then arises, what does this mean? If you have be alive long enough, you should know by now that events will come to pass that will be difficult, which may or may not involve being tempted, to test our resolve. The question then is, could we have done anything thing differently than you did? That is, could you have avoided the temptation, the answer seems to be yes, whether we do that in practice is another matter all together.

Hebrews 11 gives us the hall of fame of faith, showing how it is by faith we are saved, not by works or following a set of rules. "By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.” and “By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18 even though God had said to him, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’ 19 Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.” There were mentioned 14 distinct people and a group called the prophets: Abel, Noah, Abraham & Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, David and Samuel and the prophets “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, 40 since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”

So, what was this better way?

Jesus Christ was the promise that the Old Testament believers were waiting for and is the better way to salvation. So, even thought people who never heard of Jesus, could still receive salvation if they demonstrated faith like those of Abraham or the prophets mentioned above.

Why is Jesus the planned promise they were waiting for?

Jews for Jesus write “Early rabbis and sages recognized all of these passages as referring to the Messiah.

• Messiah would be from the tribe of Judah: Genesis 49:10

• Messiah would be a descendant of King David: 2 Samuel 7:12-16

• Messiah was to be born at Bethlehem: Micah 5:2

• Messiah would arrive before the destruction of the Second Temple: Daniel 9:24-27

• Messiah would present himself by riding on a donkey: Zechariah 9:9

• Messiah would be tortured to death: Psalm 22:1-31

• Messiah’s life would match a particular description, including suffering, silence at his arrest and trial, death and burial in a rich man’s tomb, and resurrection: Isaiah 52:13-53:12 In regard to lineage, birthplace, time, and lifestyle, Jesus matched the Messianic expectations of the Hebrew Scriptures.”¹

Firstly, Jesus claimed to be the Messiah John 4:25-26; even if you deny that the gospels are eyewitness accounts (I think we have good evidence to suggest they are: Matthew², Mark³, Luke⁴ and John⁵), we know from the early creeds e.g. 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 show a high Christology from within a few years of the resurrection and that the earliest believers taught Deity, Death and Resurrection⁶,⁷,⁸,⁹,¹⁰.

These claims wouldn’t have been readily believed by first century Jewish people, especially as the event took place in the busy town of Jerusalem, if there was no empty tomb or that they didn’t have experiences they believed to be appearances from Jesus, individually and in groups over many days, the belief would never have taken off in any plausible way; historically there had been many failed attempted messiahs in history, which had few followers and quickly disappeared, as quickly as they started. No one would believe a person who was crucified would be the Messiah¹¹,¹².

Inference to the best explanation

The best explanation, therefore, is that the disciples saw something, the question is, what did they see?

Sceptics will want to insist the best explanation is anything but what the disciples claimed, they will often talk about hallucinations being the most likely explanation¹³, in particular group hallucinations¹⁴,¹⁵, to Dr. Ehrman credit, he doesn’t rule out the miraculous out of hand. What he does say is as a historian he cannot say by historical methods what happened, he believes that “…the historian, as a historian, cannot make any statements about what God has done – since those are statements that require faith, but history does not require faith. ”¹³ Dr. Ehrman makes the case that the disciples definitely saw something, Tom Holland goes as far as to say the Christian faith doesn’t make any sense if they didn’t think Jesus appear to them¹⁶.

Do hallucinations explain away the miraculous element of the gospel message? The short answer is no. Hallucinations are by definition in the mind of an individual: see the NHS description “Hallucinations are where you hear, see, smell, taste or feel things that appear to be real but only exist in your mind.”¹⁷. So, it is physically impossible to share an identical experiences that are hallucinations or a “vision”, moreover, everyday experience tells us that when one has a dream, one can’t take ones best friend or ones spouse into ones dream, as Mike Licona writes “Since hallucinations are mental events with no external referent, one cannot share in the hallucination of another. In this sense, hallucinations are similar to dreams. Accordingly I could not awaken my Wife in the middle of the night and tell her I am having a dream that I am in Hawaii and then have her return to sleep and join in my dream where we would enjoy a free vacation. We may both return to sleep and experience dreams of being in Hawaii in which the tow of us are present. But it is highly unlikely that we will dream the same dream and have the same conversations in both dreams.” ¹⁸ In defence of hallucinations being a poor candidate, Licona writes “In other words, one experiences a hallucination when they have a perception of something that is not actually present. Hallucinations can be experienced in a number of modes: auditory, visual, olfactory, kinesthetic…, gustatory and tactile... Hallucinations generally occur in a single mode. However, percipients may experience multimode hallucinations such as one involving both visual and auditory components. However, these multimode hallucinations are rare by comparison.

Approximately 15 percent of the general population will experience one or more hallucinations during their lifetime. Females are more likely to experience a hallucination than males. Some personalities are more hallucination-prone than others. And the older one grows, the more likely he or she is to experience a hallucination. Thus it should be of no surprise to learn that senior adults who are grieving the loss of a loved one are among those most likely to experience a hallucination: roughly 50 percent. Yet only 14 percent of these (or seven percent of all bereaved senior adults surveyed) are visual in nature.”¹⁹(citation omitted)

The point being hallucinations do not explain the multiple appearances as described in the NT are the best explanation, Bart Ehrman lists a number of visions of Mary, the mother of Jesus¹⁵ the issue with such visions is that they are in only one mode, normally visionary, but never in multimode as the gospels and creeds claim.

Additionally, and more importantly the evidence of known data on hallucinations shows that roughly 15 percent of people experience hallucinations, however, some estimates are even lower suggesting that only 1 in 20 or 5 percent of the population has a hallucination²⁰. If this is correct some estimates of around 200,000 to 700,000 ²¹ people lived in Galilee in the first century Israel, meaning around 10,000 to 35,000 or maximum 30,000 to 105,000 people would experience a hallucination, of which roughly 50 percent of these are of senior citizens, meaning 5,000 to 17,500 or maximum 15,000 to 52,500 people could plausibly be said to experience such unimodal hallucinations, and any multimode hallucinations from the research I’ve conducted seems to be primarily in mentally unwell people e.g. Schizophrenia or dementia²²,²³ or in cases of drug use like LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) or other hallucinogens. Additionally, it needs to be said that includes men and women, and as Licona stated, “Females are more likely to experience a hallucination...” In other words, the profiles of the eyewitnesses do not fit well with the kinds of individuals that would plausibly have multimodal hallucinations. But even if one granted by some happenstance one or two of the disciples saw something, by the way of hallucinations, it is infeasible that they all saw the same things to create a coherent enough story that it was believed by tens of thousands of Jewish people and that subsequent people from around the known world would believe such a message too. Additionally, it is far beyond coincidence that these hallucinations only happened for about 40 days and the empty tomb story all happened to coincide perfectly with each other, for a minimum of 11 individuals in Jerusalem.

Moreover, hallucinations do not explain the evidence of the empty tomb, nor even granting hallucinations was a plausible explanation, would they believe God raised Jesus bodily as William Lane Craig writes “the Hallucination Hypothesis has weak explanatory power with respect to the origin of the disciples' belief in Jesus's resurrection. Subjective visions, or hallucinations, have no extramental correlate but are projections of the percipient's own brain. So if, as an eruption of a guilty conscience, Paul or Peter were to have projected visions of Jesus alive, they would have envisioned him in Paradise, where the righteous dead awaited the eschatological resurrection. But such exalted visions of Christ leave unexplained their belief in his resurrection. The inference "He is risen from the dead," so natural to our ears, would have been wholly unnatural to a first century Jew. In Jewish thinking there was already a category perfectly suited to describe Peter's postulated experience: Jesus had been assumed into heaven. An assumption is a wholly different category from a resurrection. To infer from heavenly visions of Jesus that he had been resurrected ran counter to Jewish thinking in two fundamental respects, as we have seen, whereas Jesus's assumption into heaven would have been the natural conclusion.”²⁴,²⁵

To try and hammer this out more completely, the Jewish belief was that the resurrection would come at the end, when the Messiah would come.²⁶ “The resurrection doctrine is fleshed out in a variety of rabbinic sources. Among the ideas associated with it is the belief that during the messianic age the dead will be brought back to life in Israel.”²⁷ In other words, if the disciples were to hallucinate seeing Jesus, after his death and burial, it would be in the context of their culture, that is, in Abraham’s bosom or sometimes referred to the bosom of Abraham, or by Abraham’s side, the place the righteous go when they die, ²⁸ see Luke 16:19-31.

So, it seems to me that the preponderance of evidence leans highly on the side that the best explanation for the evidence we have for the resurrection is the accounts we have primarily in the New Testament.

Provision of Sin continued

Through Jesus is this better way, as promised and mentioned in Hebrews 11:39 see Psalms 39:12, 119:19, 1 Chronicles 29:14-15, Hebrews 11:13-14 and is the ultimate provision of Sin.

Romans 3:21-5:21 states that we are justified by faith through grace and it is credited to us as righteousness for all who accept, love and worship God. As Paul writes “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus”. As I have mentioned before that it is by faith Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness, the same righteousness available to all who freely choose to believe. Paul continues by saying “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood – to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished – he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” The Greek word for ‘atonement’ used here is ἱλαστήριον/hilastérion which means propitiatory or propitiation: (a) a sin offering, by which the wrath of the deity shall be appeased; a means of propitiation, (b) the covering of the ark, which was sprinkled with the atoning blood on the Day of Atonement. Many regard Romans 3:24-26 as pre-Pauline ²⁸,²⁹,³⁰, with others giving reasons for suggesting only verses 25-26 bearing the hallmarks of not originating from Paul ³¹,³², the point being this isn’t likely something Paul made it up or is a later embellishment and could have been some of the reasons why Saul (Paul) started persecuting the church.

Why the shedding of blood

There are several issues that arise in my mind whenever we want to address the issue of judgment, the propitiation of sins and forgiveness:

1. How can a good God allow sins to go unpunished?

2. Can God be good if God turns a blind eye to evils?

3. God’s love towards humanity and…

4. God wanting a relationship with us.

5. If God does judge us, what will be the nature of this judgement?

6. Can finite crimes deserve an infinite punishment?

7. Why is the New and particularly the Old Testament seemingly so interested in blood sacrifice?

Given what has already been covered, God cannot make evils, good, or goods, evil. So, can a morally perfect being allow evils go unpunished? The obvious answer is no. It would be morally wrong for a morally perfect being to turn a blind eye to wrongs being committed either intentionally of inadvertently. A good and loving parent will not allow their children in witnessing them doing something bad and not punish them or call them up on it and reprimand them. Similarly, a judge who has a person convicted of crimes can not allow the crimes to go unpunished and some sentence passed on their punishment.

In fact, a parent that always turned a blind eye to their children’s misdemeanours wouldn’t be loving and their children would be maladapted members of society if their behaviours were never questioned, and they wouldn’t be good parents. Similarly, a judge who always acquitted evil acts people committed no matter how much evidence was brought against them, that judge wouldn’t be performing or conducting their duties or time wisely if no matter what, they turned a blind eye to crimes and would be a case of serious malpractice if a such an individual didn’t judge fairly or impartially.

Likewise, God cannot turn a blind eye, God’s justice, holiness and perfection must act on evils committed, in fact, God by rights should act straightway and stop any wrongs there and then. But obviously in such a counterfactual world, given the scope of what I’ve laid out for what sin is, no one would stand innocent and would result in a world that is absolutely terrifying, where people what did wrongs would either be cut down on the spot or in the ridiculous, where God could slap someone round the back of the head or physically stop them every time someone did something wrong. In either case, this would either eliminate freewill or result in a world at best with no free creatures and at worst complete alienation to God.

I do not think anyone really wants a world like the worst-cast scenario of complete alienation or think that would be a possible world God would want. Some, however, may think a world without freewill is a price worth paying if stops the rape of children by priests, teachers/guides and politicians or the other abuses that have happened throughout history. At first glance it may seem like a good, but is it ultimately?

If we had no freewill, that is, we are ultimately determined and couldn’t do otherwise, they could be no morally praiseworthy actions, similarly we couldn’t develop or progress or change for the better. More poignantly, if the World Wars didn’t happen, I couldn’t existed. My Grandfather and Grandmother would never had met if it wasn’t for the Second World War, my mother would never had been born and never met my dad, and I wouldn’t have been born to meet my wife and have my daughter. No doubt you have similar stores. Additionally, acts like courage, self-sacrifice, generosity, love, joy, peace, mercy and forgiveness could never be realised in such a world.

Most people (including atheist’s) will concede this point, but atheists will push back on the idea that God could have free creatures that always freely choose to do the good. Their claim being that there is no logical contradiction in someone freely choosing to do the good all the time. The explanation being that given the many possible worlds that are available, God can choose those who freely choose to do the good in their respective possible world to be placed in the actual world. The problem being that such an individual is put in the actual world, causation is changed, what person (P) P does in possible world (W) Wn, doesn’t follow that is what they’ll do it in the actual world (Wa) Wa, as circumstances have changed, they will be dealing with different individuals and different situations, nor does it follow that because P freely does that good (X) X in Wn, that they necessarily freely do X in the Wa, they could freely do ~X.

Again, because it is possible, that is, because it doesn’t entail a contradiction, doesn’t mean it nevertheless can be instantiated in the real world. Any given person may freely choose to do the good sometimes, but it doesn’t follow that they can always do the good, as each instance has innumerable different factors and happenstances that make each instance unique. So, although in instance (I) I1 P freely choose vanilla ice cream, in I2 or In (even though superficially all parameters are similar to I1) it doesn’t follow P freely choose vanilla every time. Similarly, because P freely does X in Wa once in I1, it doesn’t follow P necessarily freely does X in Wa in In.

Additionally, if it is possible that a finite person can err, that is, make mistakes even if they are inadvertent mistake either due to ignorance or fatigue, there is a real possibility of these mistakes being the cause of unintentional evils.

For example, if P1 (an individual who is late coming from work, due to a tight deadline, meaning they must rush to get back home intime for their dinner date) inadvertently make a mistake Xm where they pass their turning and swerve to get into the lane, causing P2 (an individual who had a bad day at work due to losing a lot of money on the stock exchange and subsequently being made to stay behind after hours for a meeting with their boss to get a final written warning for poor performance) to have a slam on their breaks, due to the bad day P2 is having, this infuriates them and they beep their horn and flash their lights, P1 tries to apologies, but P2 mistakes this as a rude hand gesture and P2 has angry/hateful thoughts about P1. As I have shown previously in Matthew an angry thought is equivalent to murder in the heart, which is by my definition “It is violence and lovelessness toward other people, and ultimately, rebellion against God.” Is a sin or evil.

So, I believe I have gone some way in showing that evils cannot necessarily be avoided while creatures are both finite in knowledge and power and have freewill.

The question then arises, why couldn’t God create beings that weren’t finite? If God created beings with omniscience and omnipotence, then that leads to contradictions, you essentially have potentially billons of Gods. Sceptics will say, these individuals wouldn’t have necessary existence, so God would still be unique, but that seems to miss the point completely. Something with omnipotence cannot be contingent, if you are contingent on something higher, then by definition they can not be omnipotent, omnipotence by definition cannot dependant on anything. Similarly, omniscience cannot be dependant on a higher being, because they will lack that knowledge of being necessary. For example, if I were omniscient, yet wasn’t omnipotent, I couldn’t instantiate sates of affairs I knew to be good, similarly, being omnipotent yet not omniscient, I would have the power to bring about any coherent states of affairs, yet be ignorant on what would be the best course of action. So, it seems to me, being omnipotent and omniscient are qualities only God can have.

Some sceptics might concede this, and simply suggest “why not heaven straight off, why do we need to go to earth? Agreed, finite creatures will make mistakes etc. But in our heavenly bodies, we don’t have these limitations.”

There are several issues I have with such a suggestion:

1. It assumes people that hypothetical person chooses to love god in a possible world does so necessarily in the actual world, we have seen that doesn’t follow given the multitude of individuals and instances that could have been otherwise, what someone would do in the real world could be different, given different circumstances.

2. It assumes there is no greater good in having people tested to see how they will react with the relatively limited skills and abilities they here on earth as an assessment of how they will be when they are given their glorious bodies.

Back to point 1. Even with God’s middle knowledge contemporary philosophers concede His middle knowledge isn’t essential like God’s natural knowledge. God’s middle knowledge is like God’s free knowledge, that is, it’s contingent. God’s free knowledge is contingent on facts that would obtain in the actual world, so, had I not exist in the actual world, God’s free knowledge would have been different to what it actually is, and god’s free knowledge is changing as new facts are coming into existence. Therefore, God’s middle knowledge would know what I freely would have done, had I been one of Jesus’s 12 disciples, it doesn’t follow I necessarily would do that, as I could have freely done otherwise.

Point 2. I will concede there isn’t any contradiction in God placing us straight into heaven/new earth, it seems to me however, that isn’t necessarily the best situation, we can imagine scenarios where being tested for a time to see what we would do given relatively little information and power as a test of character and personality to ensure the right people are in the right positions. For example, job interviews often have tests to assess various abilities and how one thinks to test suitability in a company role. Again, in a workplace setting, one can be asked to do a trail day to ensure suitability and to ensure on has the abilities stated in ones CV.

Additionally, having already lived a life with limited capabilities and the trails and temptations that inevitably occur in this life, and we discover (often the hard way) how empty and meaningless what this world has to offer. When we get to the new earth we will already have a fully lived life of experiences of the consequences of doing things largely poorly and thus experiences of how not to do things and the knowledge and experience of how to things correctly.

Some speculation on my part here, but, in the narrative of the fall of Satan and the one third of the angels with him, could it be that God just put the angels straight into heaven and some just freely rebelled? Is it just the case that the best way for individual’s to freely love God and love our neighbours as ourselves is to allow individuals to be tested for a relatively short time and allow them to freely determine their fate and this will allow the maximum amount of free creatures to enter into heaven and an eternal relationship with God?

Can finite crimes deserve infinite punishment?

The point sceptics will insist is that, any crime a person commits on earth always has a finite punishment e.g. if one stole something, you might get 3 or 4 years in prison, or if one murders someone, you might get life in prison, but it will always be a finite time.

The first point to raise is this assumes hell is a place of punishment, if as I have pointed out that hell is just the separation for God, as a consequence of rejecting God, analogous to choosing not to go to a party, then thy are not punished for rejecting God, rather, they are just not permitted to enjoy the party, they are outside of the party.

Second, even if I grant that it is punishment (I don’t); if hypothetically, we lived for thousands of years before we died and suppose someone like Hitler, killed millions of people, and further suppose, we capture this individual and we place him in court for crimes against humanity, what would be an adequate punishment? The death penalty, life in prison without parole? I’d suggest life in prison without parole. What then if we didn’t live for thousands of years, but millions of years, what should the punishment be if such an individual was on trial? Again, I’d suggest life in prison. What then if we live eternally, what should the punishment be for such a crime? It seems then, such an individual would deserve life in punishment if someone committed mass murder like Hitler. 

We all collectively murder, commit adultery, lie, cheat and steal so it would follow, given the ethical framework in Matthew 5, we would deserve infinite punishment for crimes. This kind of assumption also assumes that individuals that are in hell do not continue to hate, steal, lie and cheat there infinitely, further compounding wrongs.

Additionally, having already lived a life with limited capabilities and the trails and temptations that inevitably occur in this life, and we discover (often the hard way) how empty and meaningless what this world has to offer. When we get to the new earth we will already have a fully lived life of experiences of the consequences of doing things largely poorly and thus experiences of how not to do things and the knowledge and experience of how to do things correctly.

Some speculation on my part here, but, in the narrative of the fall of Satan and the third of the angels with him, could it be that God just put the angels straight into heaven and some Just freely rebelled? Is it just the case that the best way for individual’s to freely love God And love our neighbours as ourselves is to allow individuals to be tested for a relatively short time and allow them to freely determine their fate and this will allow the maximum amount of free creatures to enter into heaven and an eternal relationship with God?

A sceptic/atheist will have to conclude and insist that the ethical framework I’m suggesting is wrong, persons are not judged on what one thinks, only on what one does. Any rejection of this ethical framework l’m presenting requires less obvious assumptions than what I’m presenting, and my ethical framework is plausibly more correct. Moreover, as I’ve tried to demonstrate, any framework they, the sceptics can provide ultimately presupposes the very thing they’re trying to explain. Additionally, this is clearly and obviously false, we can imagine someone who from all outwards appearances seems a moral person, yet inwardly is full of anger, rage and hatred for everyone and everything. Such an individual isn’t truly a moral person, and as I have shown, what one chooses to think about ultimately influences how one acts.

Additionally, this is clearly and obviously false, we can imagine someone who from all outwards appearances seems a moral person, yet inwardly is full of anger, rage and hatred for everyone and everything. Such an individual isn’t truly a moral person, and as I have shown, what one chooses to think about ultimately influences how one acts.

Why does God want a relationship with us?

I am aware of no, ultimately non-question begging answers for either position to this fore or against. However, I believe there are some good explanations that provide inference to the best explanation. God's existence is the best explanation as the first, uncaused, cause and ultimately the necessary cause of the universe. Furthermore, we can deduce from the necessary nature of God being morally perfect, that God must be loving to be a Maximally Great Being.

Additionally, given these facts, as we are made in the image of God, as image-bearers we have intrinsic moral worth and a non-material eternal nature, that is to say, our immaterial selves go on existing indefinitely, not that we are necessary or possess the great making properties essential to God. So, given that we are at least in part immaterial, God will want to have a relationship with us, appropriate to God's high and lofty necessary existence

Why the need for blood to pardon sins?

The general understanding, at least in many so called 'traditional' Christian circles is that the covering God gave to Adam and Eve to replace their efforts to cover their nakedness was the first blood sacrifice, that is, the first pardon/atonement for sins. This blood sacrifice is there to show that through the death or sheading of innocent blood, humanity is to be atoned and reconciled to God, "Without shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins" Hebrews 9:22, Leviticus 17:11.

However, in Isaiah 1:11 God declares "..I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats" . Hebrews 10 summarises the predicament as well as can be, the law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming (v1), the blood sacrifices can never take away our guilt or redeem us, otherwise the worshippers would have been cleansed once and for all, that is, the one sacrifice would have been sufficient (v2). But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins (v3), that is, we are reminded of our short comings by the law and the cost of these sins require the blood or life of an innocent third party. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins (v4-6), that is, it was always a foreshadowing of what was to come (e.g., Abraham and lsaac, Genesis 22), and it was by faith those who did the daily/yearly sacrifices for sins, would be acceptable. (v7) Jesus' speaking "Here I am - it is written about me in the scroll - I have come to do your will, my God" Psalms 40:6-8. First he said "sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you please with" - thought they were offered in accordance with the law. Then he said, "Here I am, I have come to do your will." He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (V8-10). (v12-14) Jesus is our king and priest of the order of Melchizedek (Gen 14:-18-20, Psalm 110:4, Hebrews 7:1-25), and offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, and he has sat down at the right hand of God. For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever at those who are being made holy. (v15-17) By the Holy Spirit "This is the covenant I will make with them after that time says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them in their minds." (Jeremiah 31:33) and adds “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more." (Jeremiah 31:34). So, the need of death and blood sacrifices was there to show in graphic way, the consequences of sin and the cost outcome of what sin does and what is required to satisfy that debt. The cost then is the life of the individual who has sinned or the life of an innocent third party to pay for the wrong doings committed.

The sceptic will have to deny and insist that isn't the case, but any cost of wrongdoing they can articulate (even if theists grant that the sceptics even has a coherent enough explanation of metaethical judgements) aren't going to be accepted as authoritative by Christians/theists and not necessarily going to adopted by every sceptic either as definitively correct. Sceptics will insist that we have years of legal precedents and legal frameworks to judge crimes, granted, but as historian Tom Holland has demonstrated this is largely due to the influence of Christianity.

Additionally, as I’ve pointed out, many of these crimes are committed all the time in the animal kingdom, so if we are simply highly evolved apes, we have no reason to suspect or insist our actions are any less consequential than that of the lower animals and to suggest otherwise amounts to speciesism and question begging, the sceptic cannot presuppose the very thing they're trying to explain.

Therefore, it seems to me, that the theist has an explanatorily better answer to this, even if we cannot answer every problem, we at the very least can explain why we have morals and why we all have an almost universal shared sense of morality, that is, there is a standard of the good and has written it on our hearts and minds. Theists maintain this ‘good’ is through revelation given by God.

some explanation and definition of the cost of sins.

Due to time and space constraints, I haven't delt with other Old Testament laws regarding redemption of sins like the scapegoat, or other ideas like the Passover or kinsman redeemers. Nevertheless, Jesus Christ is mankind's scapegoat for sins, also Jesus' blood figuratively is our covering that passes over us and appeases God's judgement of sins and last but not least, Jesus is mankind's kinsman redeemer who is both willing and able to pay our debt for sins.

William Lane Craig has written an extensive treatise on the topic of divine substitutionary atonement, where he gives numerous cases in Anglo-American legal history were innocent people are otherwise held accountable for crimes committed by others in their charge, these are largely found in employment and maritime law, where the acts of an employee are attributed to a Managing Director or Chief Executive Officer of a company, were the one in charge may well be completely innocent of any wrongdoing, yet still be accountable in law due to their position and authority in the company. The point being, not that this is

directly analogous to how God atones for our sins, rather to showcase that the idea of substitutionary atonement isn't foreign to common experience, as much as sceptics will want to insist. For instance, William Lane Craig elucidates in his work on the atonement, he writes “Penal substitution theorists will sometimes object to the employment of legal fictions…But such an objection is based on a misunderstanding of the role of legal fictions in the achievement of justice. A legal fiction is a device that is adopted…in order to bring about real and objective differences...” The point being, is the objection is meant to point out, God’s justifying us is fully affectatious in supplying us forgiveness, for those being saved. But legal fictions in the real world, give tangible results for those affected by such laws, meaning it does have analogous results. He continues by saying “…the legal fiction that a ship is a , person. The adoption of this fiction by U.S federal courts in the early nineteenth century came about because of the efforts of ship owners to evade responsibility for violating embargo laws and carrying unlawful cargo including slaves” Craig goes on to saying when the ships are eventually seized the captain and crew would pass on legal responsibility to the owns, who in turn would produce manifests that should innocence, and not knowing what the staff are doing. Craig continues by saying “The courts responded by making the ship itself (herself?... By the end of the century, this fiction became the settled view of ships in maritime law, so that the “offending ship is considered as herself the wrongdoer, and as herself bound to make compensation for the wrong done”.³³

References:

Where Hebrew or Greek words are translated, I have used Laridian PocketBible© version of NAS Exhaustive Concordance Hebrew-Aramaic Dictionary and NAS Exhaustive Concordance Greek Dictionary unless otherwise referenced below.

(1) What Proof Do You Have That Jesus is the Messiah? - Jews for Jesus

(2) www.mainstreamapologetics.org/evidences/HIS-EV25.html

(3) www.mainstreamapologetics.org/evidences/HIS-EV26.html

(4) www.mainstreamapologetics.org/evidences/HIS-EV27.html

(5) www.mainstreamapologetics.org/evidences/BIB-EV75.html

(6) The Evidence for Jesus Christ | Micah Ministries (micahmins.com)

(7) Gary R. Habermas, The risen Jesus & future hope, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc. 2003. P17-18.

(8) Gary R. Habermas, Evidence for the Historical Jesus: Is the Jesus of History the Christ of Faith?, 2015. www.garyhabermas.com/evidence

(9) Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, InterVarsity Press. 2010. P223-235

(10) Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus – Ancient Evidence for The Life of Jesus, College Press Publishing Company. 1996. P152-162

(11) Roots of the Rebellion: False Messiahs - Reading Acts

(12) PSEUDO-MESSIAHS - JewishEncyclopedia.com

(13) Why I (Actually) Discuss Hallucinations - The Bart Ehrman Blog

(14) Were Group Hallucinations Been Behind Visions of Mary (ehrmanblog.org)

(15) Group Hallucinations How Can They Possibly Happen (ehrmanblog.org)

(16) Unbelievable? NT Wright and Tom Holland: How St Paul changed the world | Shows | Unbelievable (premierunbelievable.com)

(17) Hallucinations and hearing voices - NHS (www.nhs.uk)

(18) Michael R. Licona, “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach”, pp. 484

(19) Michael R. Licona, “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach”, pp. 483-484

(20) 1 in 20 People Have Hallucinated | Live Science

(21) How many people were in Galilee in Jesus time? – TeachersCollegesj

(22) https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbaa101 Why Do Hallucinations Occur in Dementia? | Psychology Today

(23) https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/historical-jesus/visions-of-jesus-a-critical-assessment-of-gerd-ludemanns-hallucination-hypo

(24) https://youtu.be/WsUwyC2cwNg - Alex O’Connor & William Lane Craig discuss the resurrection and rival hypotheses.

(25) https://ntwrightpage.com/2016/04/05/the-resurrection-of-resurrection/

(26) https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-resurrection-of-the-dead/

(27) https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionaries/bakers-evangelical-dictionary/abrahams-bosom.html

(28) Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, I, p. 46.

(29) Ernst Kasemann, “Zum Verstandnis von Rm. 3:24-26,” ZNW, 43 (1950-51), pp. 150-54.

(30) A. M. Hunter, Paul and His Predecessors, pp. 120-22.

(31) Talbert, Charles H. “A Non-Pauline Fragment at Romans 3:24-26?” Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 85, no. 3, 1966, pp. 287–96. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3264242. Accessed 21 May 2023.

(32) J.D.G Dunn, “Word Biblical Commentary – Vol 38a, Romans 1-8” 1988, Thomas Nelson, pp 164.

(33) William Lane Craig, “The Atonement” Cambridge University Press, 2018, p48

Problem Four: Divine Hiddenness – Why so silent?

The argument from Divine Hiddenness (DH) is a well-used argument against God for various reasons:

1. It has immediate first-person subjective appearance, sceptics and Christians alike haven’t felt God’s presence – the bible is replete with calls of instances where God appears far away.

2. We earnestly pray or seek God, yet He may seem distant.

3. Believers may forget the times He has revealed Himself to us, yet we still wonder if He is real.

The argument or the concept of hiddenness has been in circulation for thousands of years and as I’ve mentioned briefly is a theme in the bible itself. However, in recent years the argument has been made popular and given substantial philosophical rigor by John L. Schellenberg.

His argument goes something like this:

1. If a perfectly loving God exists, then there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person.

2. If there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person, then no finite person is ever nonresistantly in a state of non-belief in relation to the proposition that God exists.

3. If a perfectly loving God exists, then no finite person is ever nonresistantly in a state of non-belief in a relation to the proposition that God exists (from 1 and 2).

4. Some finite persons are or have been nonresistantly in a state of non-belief in relation to the proposition that God exists.

5. No perfectly loving God exists (from 3 and 4).

6. If no perfectly loving God exists, then God does not exist.

7. God does not exist (from 5 and 6).

An Analogy:

If for arguments sake we imagine a being who had unlimited wealth (omni-wealth) and was omnibenevolent, such a being, all things being equal might be morally obligated to give everyone the equivalent of trillions of pounds sterling.

On an individualistic case, it would be a wonderful thing that some unknown rich benevolent individual gives out an unimaginably large amount of money to someone. But is it really the best thing to do, to give billions of people large amounts of money?

The short answer is obviously no. It is patently clear that if everyone has the equivalent of trillions of pounds in their accounts, the market is suddenly flooded with large amounts of money, and eventually the money loses value, and prices go up. Not to mention, large amounts of people will suddenly quit their jobs, and businesses can no longer supply needed goods and food, further increasing prices. It would be a disastrous economic episode, and no one would really benefit from such an action, however well intended.

Additionally, in such a scenario, certain individuals wouldn’t be well suited to having such wealth, they may decide to recklessly drink and take drugs to destruction or partake in other vices they might have fancy to, like gambling.

In such a scenario, obviously the omni-wealthy person wouldn’t be doing a good thing. If such an omni-wealthy being did exist, they would need to have other properties, like omniscience, so that they knew, who was the best people to give money to, that is, people who genuinely need money and how much, so as not to overwhelm them. Moreover, they would need omnipotence, so as to be able to instantiate what they intend to do, an omni-wealthy, omnibenevolent and omniscient being with power, to enact their desires or decide against better judgment to give the wrong person too much money.

On top of this, such a being couldn’t reveal themselves, as to complete their goal sufficiently, they would need to be anonymous and not reveal who the giver is to the recipient of the gifts they received. This would ensure such a being wouldn’t be inundated with requests for money or support from well-intended individuals and restrict his ability to carry out his goal of helping the maximal amount of people he can. This being could then give freely and hidden, being able to give sufficient wealth to those who needed and could handle such gifts wisely.

This is analogues to God and the hiddenness argument; isolating properties arbitrarily like omni-wealth and omnibenevolence doesn’t necessarily portray or give the best account of what such a being would be expected to do. Similarly, picking perfect and loving in isolation to other great making properties might give the wrong account of what such a being might do.

Similarly, like in the analogy, God would need to use other properties in order to correctly pick who is right and in the precise time and manner to reveal Himself and give evidence of His existence. Like in my omni-wealth analogy, just picking anyone might not be correct for the individual, God I will argue cannot reveal Himself to anyone, as this might violate their freewill. For instance, in the most extreme case if God were to pop in, unannounced in your living room to every person that He exists randomly, this might just annoy and infuriate people, and not facilitate in fostering a loving relationship with Him.

Or consider a less extreme case, where God writes on every atom “Made by God” or have the stars in the night sky write “God exists” for everyone to see. This might convince some people but as well renowned sceptics like Richard Dawkins has said in an interview with Peter Boghossian on 24/10/13 where he basically ruled out any evidence could be used for God’s existence and would be indistinguishable to sufficiently powerful aliens and would in principle be more likely than God. Additionally, God isn’t interested in just having people adding one extra item of ‘truth claims’ in their ontology, He wants a loving relationship with everyone freely, which doesn’t necessitate physical proofs.

Sceptics might concede that some individuals are resistant non-believers but that wouldn’t do anything to show why God doesn’t reveal Himself to non-resistant non-believers. In my analogy, the omni-wealthy being hides himself to stop him from getting inundated and not fulfilling his goals in giving people the right kind of financial support. Obviously, this isn’t completely the same for God, but it gives a glimpse into why God might not reveal Himself (with the wealth giving being analogous to God’s revelation) if this could overwhelm or coerce people against their wishes.

For example, in my analogy, we could imagine a person at time T¹ isn’t in a sufficiently wise state to handle the wealth the omni-wealth wanted to give, but knows at T² this individual is ready. So although this hypothetical person is in need (is non-resistant) and would like some wealth (revelation from God) yet for whatever reason, only known to the omni-wealthy being (God) they are not ready, due to some character development or moral growth that is only sufficient at T² , if this is even possible, it undermines the philosophical weight of the DH argument.

Argumentation against the Divine Hiddenness Argument

I have shown at least in part that isolating properties may give counterintuitive outcomes and may not be an accurate representation of what we seek to describe or refute. Just like in my analogy, just being omni-wealthy and omnibenevolent may lead to absurd or undesirable outcomes. Similarly, just isolating perfectly loving, doesn’t give a full picture of what a typical theist believes God is like. Yes, we agree God is loving, but that isn’t His only attribute. So, I question the validity of some of the argument from the outset.

1. Is God only perfectly loving?

Let's look at the premise more closely:

• If a perfectly loving God exists, then there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person.

Is God only perfectly loving? No theist would accept that God is only loving. Yes, God is loving, but it would be a mistake to take that as the defining characteristic of God, just as much as defining a car as a “wheel”, it is inadequate to capture the complexity of a car. Similarly, God cannot be defined as merely loving, even if we add "perfectly", it fails to describe God fully.

God, I will maintain and insist is at minimum: omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, which includes being loving. Additionally, I would add God would want individuals to have freewill to choose and develop virtues and characters, willing to seek and grow to discover God, the ultimate truth and goal for any human to discover.

Why is this important?

As I've briefly mentioned, isolating one property can lead to misaligned assumptions to what such a being would do. Like in my analogy of the omni-wealthy being. It could be the case just focusing on this hypothetical persons goals on just omni-wealth and omnibenevolence, such a being would be obligated to give everyone trillions of pounds each.

Additionally, I showed this would lead to undesirable outcomes, so if such a being did exist, it would need to be more than just omni-wealthy, omnibenevolent, such a being would need to be omniscience and omnipotent to ensure they didn't ruin the economy and potentially harm individuals unintentionally.

In other words, in order to not artificially preload the outcome to give absurd results, we must give the being in question reasonable properties, so as to give it a fair shot at succeeding.

Why is my conception of God preferable?

God, if such a being does exist, would by definition need to be maximally great, which entails omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence. While love is essential to any concept of God, it typically requires multiple properties to ensure their maximal greatness. Including all these properties gives a more nuanced view of God.

What would an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and loving God do?

Such a being would ensure that sufficient evidence of the natural laws and order points to a transcendent cause and first cause. Life and biodiversity of nature would point to a designer and moral laws which are universal throughout humanity, which points to a moral law giver. This in short is commonly understood as natural theology and is the general revelation given to all Mankind, so that we are without excuse (Romans 1:20).

I believe, in addition to this general revelation, God has given special revelation in Jesus Christ, to which we all have a duty to have a response to.

Now, to be fair to Schellenberg, he does imply some of God's traditional properties I insisted on in 'Divine Hiddenness and Human Philosophy' where he writes

"certain reasoned defences of the claim that the ultimate divine reality is a God, a being unsurpassably great who is a person or very much like a person, possessing all power, all knowledge, all goodness and having created every other concrete thing."

He adds later

"To facilitate my own discussion of such matters (I hope it will also be helpful for others), I have introduced the non-theistic label 'ultimism' to stand for the more general religious idea of a reality that is triply ultimate: metaphysically, axiologically, and soteriologically. Theism entails ultimism, but the converse does not hold."¹

What does Schellenberg's ultimism entail?

• Metaphysical - Abstract reasoning and of mind & things outside the physical.

• Axiological - Ethical and aesthetical truths.

• Soteriological - Relating to salvation.

How might we best understand this view?

I think, (if I understand his position correctly) he means something transcendent, ethical and moral and wanting to save humanity. Schellenberg elaborates by saying

"First, let's notice what theism's (or personal ultimism's) axiological component entails. The Ultimate, if a person, would have to be an unsurpassably great person. The value of power and knowledge as well as benevolence in persons is commonly highlighted by philosophers who spell out the content of theism. But, although neglected, the value of love in persons is certainly no less obvious. So we have to say that an unsurpassably great person could not be other than unsurpassably loving toward other persons."¹

This is how he transitions to his claim that God must be perfectly loving, which isn't the same as ultimism or my preferred understanding of God, let me explain why?

The claim of ultimism rests on the three axioms: metaphysical, axiological, and soteriological which, whether taken in isolation or together, do not entail or imply perfect love. For example:

• Axiological (ethical): Being ethical is not equivalent to being loving. An A.I. bot, for instance, could approximate ethical behavior without exhibiting love, let alone perfect love.

• Soteriological (salvation): Even the axiom of salvation does not necessitate perfect love. It is conceivable that, in virtue of this ethical axiom (which does not require love), the "Ultimate" could decide that saving humanity is the “right” thing to do without ever being loving, let alone perfectly loving.

In short, while Schellenberg connects ultimism to unsurpassably great and perfect love, the connection is not justified by the axioms themselves. This distinction highlights a critical flaw in his reasoning and emphasises that ultimism, as he defines it, is not synonymous with love nor more importantly, my preferred understanding of God.

In other words, Schellenberg’s claim that “an unsurpassably great person could not be other than unsurpassably loving toward other persons” assumes a particular interpretation of love, one that prioritises eliminating non-belief through direct intervention. However, this interpretation may overlook other aspects of love, such as respecting human freedom, fostering personal growth, or allowing individuals to seek and find God in a way that leads to a deeper, voluntary relationship.

Additionally, it isn't clear that this ultimism Schellenberg articulates necessarily entails a perfectly loving being always does eliminate non-resistant non-belief. The analysis I gave seems more plausible.

In short, I believe this is compelling reasons to deny at the offset Schellenberg's argument as he assumes a too narrow definition of what God would do. It's important to understand by challenging premise 1, we undermine the entire argument. But let's move to the next premise.

2. Non-resistant Non-belief

• If there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person, then no finite person is ever nonresistantly in a state of non-belief in relation to the proposition that God exists.

As I have shown, we have reasons to reject Schellenberg's leap to ultimism to perfectly loving, which I've shown isn't equivalent.

Additionally, I've shown taking properties in isolation can lead to undesirable consequences, even if unintentional. But such unintentional mistakes would be incompatible with a maximally great being like God.

Non-resistant Non-belief?

What does Schellenberg mean by non-resistant non-belief?

"nonresistant nonbelief, it refers to nonresistantly being in a cognitive condition, in relation to the proposition that God exists, that is incompatible with then being able to participate in a personal relationship with God just by trying should one seek to do so, with this cognitive condition conjunctively construed, cashed out in terms of being nonbelieving and without nonbelieving faith and without nonbelieving hope."1

Essentially, a non-resistant non-believer is someone who would openly come into a loving relationship with God, had she had sufficient evidence, but is resistant due to some lack of evidence or experience from God.

Schellenberg writes in his part one of Divine Hiddenness paper,

"Notice here the interesting fact that it is not only the apparently honest doubt of reflective nonbelievers to which we can appeal; the absence of belief in a loving personal God, over aeons of evolution, of those occupied with other ideas and never even able to resist personal relationship with God will do perfectly well as a relevant indication of nonresistant nonbelief."²

The point being, over eons of evolutionary change, life, let alone human life, has been ignorant of theism, let alone Christian theism, which has only been available to humanity for almost two thousand years.

Granting that humans have been ignorant of Christianity for a long time and even when it was believed, it took a while to get spread throughout the world.

Does this concession, prove non-resistant non-believers?

Yes, in the technical sense, those who never heard of Jesus, never heard of Jesus! Which is trivially true. But does this mean countless millions of people for hundreds of thousands of years are doomed because of something they weren't in the position to know?

No, if God is who we claim He is, He isn't going to damn people to hell for things they couldn't know. Rather, He will judge them on what they do know e.g. the general revelation given to all Mankind. Or, they could be given evidence before the appointed judgement to give all individuals a fair chance to make informed decisions.

"...Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Gen 18:25

I believe it is trivially true, that humanity throughout our history has been deeply religious in some sense and there is no evidence to suggest religiosity is a new invention. It seems clear, from the inception of humanity, we have worshipped some form of deity and so the general revelation of creation to God is a clear path to God's existence and it has been plainly known throughout history. E.g. a study from Oxford University in 2011, found that Humans 'predisposed' to believe in gods and the afterlife led by Dr. Justin Barrett;

"This project suggests that religion is not just something for a peculiar few to do on Sundays instead of playing golf. We have gathered a body of evidence that suggests that religion is a common fact of human nature across different societies."³

So, it seems humanity is hardwired to believe in God or god's at least in the transcendent supernatural. Additionally, it would appear natural theology is a good indicator for God’s existence.

But what about this claim, people who never heard about Jesus or the true God, are non-resistant?

To highlight this further, consider the exchange between Aslan and the boy in C.S Lewis's books in the Chronicles of Narnia - The Last Battle

"of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless. it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, though knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days."⁴

The point being, people who never knew God (at least, not in the truest sense of the word) can still otherwise have a meaningful relationship with the true God, by God crediting it to them as righteousness. The idea of that people are judged on the revelation they received, not what they couldn't know, or didn't know, is clear throughout scripture;

"The Lord answered, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,' and he then begins to beat the menservants and maidservants and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers. “That servant who knows his master's will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." - Luke 12:42-48

Does widespread ignorance or cognitive non-belief necessarily entail non-resistant non-belief?

No, as I've shown general revelation is given as a Subset of reasons we can know apart from having specific revelation from a given culture; So, a hypothetical person prior 2000 years ago, could get concussion when shipwrecked and is the sole survivor on a deserted island and could still otherwise reason to God as the creator of the universe and maker of life and furthermore reason they are the ultimate judge and worship this Deity.

What about people today?

Schellenberg or sceptics might argue, that certain non-believers aren't in a state of non-resistance.

It would be disingenuous of me to try and psychoanalyse any one individual. It remains however, the case we all have general revelation and regardless of how one sees the evidence for this general revelation. Us moderns,still have to contend with the special revelation in Jesus, which is the basis of where we spend eternity, narrowly taking a naturalistic framework to reject supernatural claims doesn’t seem to be the most open minded approach.

But even if you come to a firm position on general and special revelation and you reject it. If it is remotely possible, like in my analogy of T¹ and T², then God is morally justified in remaining hidden for a time for responsible growth and the argument fails.

It appears then, we have sufficient evidence that:

• Belief in God is widespread throughout cultures, which makes it reasonable, it is a human trait in all humans throughout history, including deep time.

• General revelation gives everyone sufficient evidence.

• God will judge on what we do know, not what we don't, or couldn't.

• God can judge acts based on motivation to worship god, even if it is the wrong God.

Coupled with the faulty assumptions of Schellenberg's leap from ultimism to perfect love and the defective definition that leaves key aspects of God, premise 2 is dubious at best.

3. If God exists, there will be no Non-resistant Non-belief. (From 1-2)

I have given reasons to doubt this, undermining the premise.

4. Some finite persons are or have been non-resistant

Even if we grant this. If it is possible that God, like in my T¹, T² analogy can have reasons to hide His presence temporarily, the premise fails. For instance, in my analogy: "we could imagine a person at time T¹ isn’t in a sufficiently wise state to handle the wealth the omni-wealth wanted to give, but knows at T² this individual is ready. So although this hypothetical person is in need (is non-resistant) and would like some wealth (revelation from God) yet for whatever reason, only known to the omni-wealthy being (God) they are not ready, due to some character development or moral growth that is only sufficient at T² , if this is even possible, it undermines the philosophical weight of the DH argument."

Such a person is open to a relationship, yet for whatever reason is still a non-believer. If God is who we claim, God will have reasons to hide, if their state isn't conducive to a meaningful relationship and iff (if and only if) they change sufficiently God will no longer hide Himself, and their non-resistant non-belief will disappear.

For instance, we can take the prodigal son analogy Luke 15:11-32 offers a biblical parallel to my analogy. The father does not chase the son while he is in rebellion, but he is ready to embrace him when he returns, in fact it is implict the father is actively waiting for the son. Similarly, God might wait for the “prodigal” to reach a state of readiness before revealing Himself fully.

Unrequited Love Analogy

Imagine Kip, who loves Jane deeply. To express his feelings, Kip leaves thoughtful notes and gifts. However, Jane, captivated by Kim, assumes these gestures come from Kim, never realising Kip’s intentions. While Kip desires Jane’s affection, he respects her autonomy, ensuring his actions are evident but never coercive.

In this analogy, Kip represents God, the notes signify general and special revelation (including prompting by the Holy Spirit), Jane represents non-resistant non-believers, and Kim symbolises naturalism. Jane’s infatuation with Kim blinds her to the true source of Kip’s notes, leading her to misattribute them. This mirrors how non-believers may interpret evidence for God within a naturalistic framework, misattributing divine revelation to natural causes.

For example, evidence such as the beginning of the universe (Kalam Cosmological Argument) may be reinterpreted within naturalism, such as through the multiverse hypothesis, rather than pointing to a transcendent cause.

Additionally consider the following situation:

Imagine that Jane briefly experiences something extraordinary an encounter that momentarily shakes her certainty about Kim. She admits it makes her reconsider, but her infatuation and prior beliefs lead her to rationalise it as a coincidence or misunderstanding rather than evidence of Kip's love.

This parallels Ayer’s near-death experience, where his atheistic presuppositions led him to dismiss the event as a hallucination despite its impact, illustrating how worldview shapes interpretation of evidence.

The key challenge:

As long as Jane attributes everything to Kim, no evidence could convince her of Kip’s love. Similarly, if a cognitive framework prevents a non-believer from recognising divine evidence, this creates a plausible explanation for non-resistant non-belief that is not rooted in resistance to God.

If even one plausible explanation like this exists, it undermines Schellenberg’s claim that a perfectly loving God must eliminate all non-resistant non-belief.

A more epistemic issue?

If someone presupposes naturalism, is non-resistant non-belief really compatible within a naturalistic worldview? If person P at T¹ holds an incompatible belief e.g. naturalism. God can be reasonably justified at waiting to T² to reveal Himself when P holds a more compatible worldview.

In other words, temporary hiddenness isn't equal to actual hiddenness. Just like in the prodigal son analogy, the father is waiting, even if the son isn't aware or conscious of the fact. Or to put it differently, at T¹ the prodigal son wants to come back, but due to pride and stubbornness, isn’t in a place of humility to reach out to God, even if the father is waiting for such a relationship. At T² the son is ready for a meaningful relationship and sucks up their pride and humbles themselves to be in a meaningful relationship, the father sees the son and welcomes him in without reservations.

Or consider another hypothetical, person P at T¹ is traumatised by the scenes they've endured in war or possible abuse from an abusive partner, making them embittered and angry towards life. God is waiting for P to be willing to open at T² where P is ready to open up for meaningful relationship.

Again, if Schellenberg needs only one instance of non-resistant non-belief to bring his argument forward. But this means if it's the case we have plausible cases to explain such non-resistant non-belief into question, we only need one instance for the argument to equally fail. It might not prove God exists, but it's not designed as an argument for God’s existence.

The analogies I provided ensure it is on the non-believer to initiate or change to bring about the meaningful relationship, and in all cases God is waiting on their change, as there is some deficient psychological issue or development change needed for a loving relationship.

The only possible push back I can envision from sceptics, is that if God would reveal Himself sooner, they would freely believe. But that misses the point, a T¹ the prodigal son isn't humble enough to move to meet his father, who is open armed, waiting. At T¹ the naturalist has an incompatible worldview and couldn't in principle rationalise such a belief correctly. And finally at T¹ the traumatised person is angry and wasn't interested in any relationship. Just reasserting dubious claims isn't evidence.

Paul's Conversion and Divine Hiddenness

An often-cited example against Divine Hiddenness is the case of St. Paul and his dramatic road-to-Damascus conversion (Acts 9:1–19, retold in Acts 22:6–21 and Acts 26:12–18). The argument suggests that if God could provide decisive evidence of His existence to Paul, He should be able to do so for all non-resistant non-believers.

However, this example fails on multiple fronts:

1. Paul Was Not a Non-Resistant Non-Believer.

Paul was a devout follower of the Judaic faith, with an unshakable belief in God. His opposition to Christianity stemmed not from resistance to God, but from a misinformed zeal that led him to persecute Christians. This context undermines the idea that Paul was “non-resistant” in any meaningful sense. Instead, he was deeply committed to a flawed understanding of God's will.

Additionally, the sceptical claim he (Paul) was a non-resistant non-believer is a unfounded as claiming Abraham, Isaac or Jacob were non-resistant non-believers, they were patriarchs of the faith, the faith that Jesus, and the disciples believed.

2. Paul’s Beliefs at T¹ Were Incompatible with God’s Wider Revelation.

Paul’s initial beliefs T¹ created a psychological and theological barrier to accepting the fuller revelation of God in Christ. In this state, any attempt by God to reveal Himself might have been misunderstood or outright rejected, as Paul’s framework was not yet conducive to such a relationship.

My T¹, T² analogy clarifies this: at T¹, Paul’s rigid, incomplete understanding of God made him incapable of receiving or processing the full revelation. At T², after encountering the risen Christ, Paul was prepared to reinterpret his prior beliefs and embrace a fuller understanding of God. This transition reflects not God’s absence but His intentional timing, revealing Himself when Paul was ready to respond meaningfully.

3. Decisive Evidence Alone Does Not Guarantee a Loving Relationship.

Even if God provides overwhelming evidence of His existence, the ultimate goal is not mere belief but a meaningful, loving relationship. God’s revelation to Paul was not a coercive act of force but an act of grace, meeting Paul in a moment when his heart and mind could be transformed. This principle applies universally: God’s timing respects the individual’s capacity for genuine relational engagement, which may vary for each person.

Moreover, it is essential to remember that Paul’s belief prior to his conversion was rooted in his commitment to the Judaic faith, not atheism or agnosticism. As he later wrote:

"I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile" Romans 1:16

Or Romans 11: 1-31

"...[H]as God rejected his people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. ² God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? ³ “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” ⁴ But what is God's reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” ⁵ So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. ⁶ But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace...So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather, through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. ¹² Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!"

This underscores that Paul’s faith journey was deeply tied to the theistic tradition he already embraced, rather than the supposed stance of a non-resistant non-believer.

4. Paul’s Conversion Was Exceptional, Not Normative.

Finally, Paul’s experience was part of God’s redemptive plan for the early church, uniquely suited to his role as the Apostle to the Gentiles. It does not follow that God must replicate this dramatic encounter for every individual, especially when such interventions might bypass the free and sincere seeking of a relationship with Him.

Anticipating Objections

Objection:

"If God could transform Paul despite his resistance, why not reveal Himself to others in the same way?"

Response:

Paul’s resistance was not rooted in disbelief in God but in misunderstanding His will. God revealed Himself when Paul’s state allowed for a genuine transformation. For others, who may lack such readiness, a similar revelation might fail to achieve the desired relational outcome.

Objection:

"Why should timing matter if God’s goal is a relationship with all people?"

Response:

Timing is crucial because a meaningful relationship requires both parties to be prepared. A premature revelation could lead to misunderstanding, rejection, or a superficial relationship, none of which align with God’s loving nature.

Conclusion.

I believe I have shown premises 1-4 are flawed at best. The notion of ultimism isn't equivalent to perfectly loving and that isolating one property is problematic. I have given substantial philosophical reasoning why the traditional theistic framework of God is a better explanation and provides a more coherent understanding of what such a being would do.

Additionally, I have shown that general and special revelation has been given to all Mankind as a beacon to God's existence.

Finally, I showed that God can have reasons to temporarily hide from non-resistant non-believers and it is compatible within the framework I layed out.

The Problem of Evil – Why so much pain?

In my previous defence of the Problem of Evil (PoE), I outlined several goals, desires, or attributes God may have concerning His relationship with humanity and the biosphere we inhabit. For readers unfamiliar with my prior defence, I recommend reviewing it, particularly section 5. My Response. While I believe my earlier response provides a reasonable basis for sceptics and atheists to question the assumption that God has no sufficient reasons for allowing any given suffering, I aim to present a more robust defence here.

This defence focuses on a specific attribute I previously termed an "Ordered Universe." For this discussion, I will refer to it as the Principle of Indifference (PI). Importantly, PI does not imply apathy or disregard but rather describes the necessity of certain trade-offs to achieve a greater good. To clarify, it is better understood as a Principle of Necessary Trade- offs.

For example, when politicians introduce a new law, they aim to promote the greater good for their citizens, yet they may recognise potential disruptions, inconveniences, or disadvantages for some individuals. Similarly, a parent may allow their child to undergo temporary suffering from a vaccination for the greater good of long-term health. In a comparable way, God creates laws that, on balance, promote the flourishing of life, even though these laws have necessary drawbacks that can cause harm under extreme circumstances.

Consider fire: the natural laws governing combustion allow fire to warm us, cook our food, and power generators, but they also make it possible for fire to burn and kill if mismanaged. Extending this idea further, natural

laws govern the Earth's magnetic field and plate tectonics, which enable crust recycling and the renewal of essential nutrients in the ecosystem. Processes like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, while destructive, are byproducts of these necessary systems. Likewise, water's universal solvent properties allow it to extract nutrients from rocks and distribute them through water systems and soil, enabling the sustenance of plants and, by extension, entire ecosystems.⁵,⁶,⁷

The Principle of Necessary Trade-offs in Design and Engineering

This principle mirrors the concept of restrained optimisation in design and engineering, where mutually exclusive goals necessitate compromise. For example, building a durable yet lightweight water bottle requires a balance between materials like plastic (light but less durable) and steel (strong but heavy and costly). No design achieves perfection in all metrics; instead, trade-offs are made to achieve optimal functionality within constraints.

In the same way, the laws of nature reflect a restrained optimisation: they are designed to support flourishing life while unavoidably entailing certain harms. These trade-offs are not arbitrary but reflect the greater good enabled by a stable, law-governed universe.

Fine-Tuning and Nomological Laws

The fine-tuning of the universe's constants, quantities, and initial conditions is widely acknowledged in academia as a significant topic, even among secular thinkers. While various theories, such as String Theory or M-Theory, attempt to explain fine-tuning, they often fall short of providing definitive answers. As the late Stephen Hawking noted:

"Even when we understand the ultimate theory, it won't tell us much about how the universe began. It cannot predict the dimensions of spacetime, the gauge group, or other parameters of the energy-effective theory... It allows a vast landscape of possible universes, in which we occupy an anthropically permitted location." ⁸

Granting that we do indeed exist (solipsism, Matrix-like scenarios, or Boltzmann brains notwithstanding), we must ask: how best can we explain our existence?

Modern cosmology tells us that the universe began approximately 13.77 billion years ago with the Big Bang. Over time, light elements formed, leading to the creation of stars and galaxies. These early stars exploded, producing heavier elements necessary for planets like Earth. By processes still unknown, life emerged on Earth and advanced life forms developed.

The universe's laws, constants, and conditions now dictate the

nomological framework-the repeatable and uniform consequences of cause and effect-that governs our day-to-day existence. This framework ensures the reliability and predictability necessary for intelligent agents to navigate the world.

For instance, fire, governed by these laws, can warm us, provide light, and sustain life but can also harm and destroy. Similarly, pain receptors in organisms are critical for survival, enabling beings to recognize injury and seek care. Without them, an organism would be unable to perceive harm and survive in the long term. The same mechanisms that protect and enable flourishing in ordinary circumstances may, in extreme situations, result in suffering.

Applying Pl to Specific Scenarios

Bambi

Consider the hypothetical case of Bambi, where a tree falls and burns her alive. The laws governing combustion, which provide immense benefits like warmth and energy, are also responsible for such tragedies. The pain receptors that evolved to protect Bambi under normal conditions overload in this extreme scenario, causing her suffering. Moreover,

Bambi's eventual death likely contributes to the ecosystem, as her remains nourish scavengers and enrich the soil. While such events are tragic, they are part of the broader cycle of life, which depends on the same natural laws that enable flourishing.

Sue

The case of Sue a hypothetical girl tortured, raped, and murdered presents a far greater emotional and philosophical challenge. Pl alone cannot fully address such instances of moral evil. However, other theodicies, such as the Free Will Defence, Sceptical Theism, and Soul- Building Theodicy, come into play here.

Free will is integral to humanity's ability to form genuine relationships with God and each other. True love requires the freedom to choose and reject, and moral accountability necessitates the ability to act otherwise. The perpetrator of Sue's suffering misused their free will, choosing evil over good. For free agents to grow and develop, actions must have real- world consequences both good and bad. If God were to intervene in every moral failure, humans would be deprived of genuine agency, accountability, and the ability to develop virtues like compassion, forgiveness, and justice. Pl indirectly allows for circumstances to have laws of nature that allow for creatures like us to exist, thrive and create systems that can govern our lives in a way that encourages human flourishing.

While this explanation may not fully satisfy the emotional weight of Sue's case, it demonstrates that suffering can serve broader purposes within a law-governed world where free will exists.

Given this lack, I hope to mitigate some of these shortcomings in this next part.

Moral Evil: The Distinction Between Natural Processes and Human Agency

While natural evil can be understood as a byproduct of necessary trade-offs, moral evil introduces a fundamentally different dimension of suffering. Humans, unlike animals, possess moral agency and the ability to choose between good and evil. This distinction is critical when evaluating cases like Sue’s suffering versus the zebra’s or Bambi’s.

For instance, when a man mercilessly beats a dog, the distress caused to the dog is amplified by the human’s deliberate intent to harm. This suffering stems not from natural processes but from the misuse of free will. PI indirectly allows for human agency, as the same consistent laws that govern nature also enable moral freedom. Without such freedom, genuine love, accountability, and moral growth would be impossible.

The Free Will Defense complements PI here, demonstrating why God permits the existence of moral evil. A world where humans can freely choose to love, create, and grow must also be a world where they can choose to harm. This interplay is necessary for humans to have moral weight to consequences to actions, allowing for moral growth. 

Sceptical Theism can give some reason to question our ability to understand any such reasons God might have for allowing Sue's suffering, or actual real-world examples, as Alvin Plantinga writes "...our knowledge of God's options in creating the world is a bit limited. Suppose God does have a good reason for permitting sin and evil, pain and suffering: why think we would be the first to know what it is? The real question here is whether this aspect of our world provides believers in God with a defeater for such belief." ⁹

In other words, our understanding on such matters in necessarily limited, why should we think we could even understand what an omniscient being would do? Just as a chess grandmaster can see many moves ahead of an average ability player, and the average onlooker trying to understand why the grandmaster is seemingly sacrificing their queen, in a bizarre move. But to the grandmaster they see that in 3 moves they get checkmate. We shouldn't deem to think we could possibly understand God's decisions, when the disparity is even greater than a grandmaster is to an average player.

In short, God can have reasons beyond our ken to understand. But this scepticism isn't deployed to stifle debate or valid questions, rather it’s an acknowledgement of our epistemic limitations. Furthermore, if God is who we claim, then the Christian has every confidence that God has reasons for allowing any given suffering.

The sceptic however, if they want to demand any suffering is in fact gratuitous, they must demonstrate their claim and provide their burden of proof by showing there can be no morally justified reason for permitting such a scenario? If they cannot, they ought to have the good grace and adopt the same level of humility, theists adopt on such matters.

Why does the sceptic have burden of proof?

If the theist has given a plausible defence or explanation for any given situation of "so called" evil. It falls on the Sceptic to demonstrate why in fact this explanation is insufficient and if they demand it is gratuitous, how God couldn't have any morally justified reason for permitting such evil?

Can there be any cases of gratuitous suffering?

It would be up to the sceptic to find a case, that the theist can not find a plausible explanation that could justify the suffering. This is why the logical Problem of Evil is rarely expounded by sceptics these days, as it is virtually impossible to shoulder the burden of proof for such a claim. The sceptic has all burden to necessarily show God couldn’t have any justification, while the theist only needs to find any plausible explanation why God could have morally justifiable reasons.

Soul-building doesn't really address cases like Sue or Bambi but can be valid in certain cases where cases are less finial in nature, addressing humanity's capacity to grow, adapt and improve in times of adversity. Allowing humans to reflect and potentially draw closer to God or develop virtues that make them enriched, tempered and tested in character. For instance, a real world case: when my mother died of cancer on 3rd July 2021, the subsequent weeks and days leading up to that event, my mother's faith was not only a comfort to her, but it grew in strength and despite her growing weakening frame as the cancer slowly destroyed her body, she longed to be in her true home with Her’s and (eventually) my heavenly Father. Additionally, despite her death profoundly affecting me, it allowed me to draw closer to God after a period of reflection and doubts, which indirectly lead me to starting my first defence of The Problem of Evil and subsequently this essay on the nature of sin.

The ultimate injustice

If Christianity is true, the ultimate injustice and success is that of Jesus Christ; God who created the universe, life and everything else, was willing to undergo enormous suffering to ransom creation and ultimately save humanity from our rightful predicament. As Plantinga writes "He created human beings; they rebelled against him and constantly go contrary to his will. Instead of treating them as some Oriental monarch would, he sent his Son, the Word, the second person of the Trinity into the world...The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He was subjected to ridicule, rejection, and finally the cruel and humiliating death of the cross. Horrifying as that is, Jesus...suffered something vastly more horrifying: abandonment by God, exclusion from his love and affection... All this to enable human beings to be reconciled to God, and to achieve eternal life." He goes on to say "This overwhelming display of love and mercy is not merely the greatest story ever told; it is the greatest story that could be told. No other great-making property of a world can match this one. If so, however, perhaps all the best possible worlds contain incarnation and atonement, or at any rate atonement. But any world that contains atonement will contain sin and evil and consequent suffering and pain. Furthermore, if the remedy is to be proportionate to the

sickness, such a world will contain a great deal of sin and a great deal of suffering and pain. Still further, it may very well contain sin and suffering, not just on the part of human beings but perhaps also on the part of other creatures as well." ⁹

In other words, God's love for all of creation, but in particular to us, as image bearers, may represent the best of all possible worlds according to Plantinga, as this self-sacrificial love represents the best of all possible worlds.

But to focus on in particular to Jesus's wrongful and illegal trails, beating, torture, possible rape¹⁰ and eventual murder. God himself took on every injustice we could possibly take, whilst being completely blameless and became the object of complete injustice. Paying the debts of the times when we sinned and were unjust to others and when we were wronged in so many different ways.

Conclusion

The Principle of Indifference (or Necessary Trade-offs) provides a plausible framework for understanding why God allows suffering in a law- governed universe. By permitting consistent natural laws, God ensures a stable environment where intelligent agents can navigate, thrive, and grow. While Pl alone cannot address all instances of suffering, it complements other theodicies, such as free will and soul-building, in providing a coherent response to the Problem of Evil. This perspective invites sceptics and believers alike to consider that suffering, while difficult and tragic, may serve greater purposes in a world designed for the flourishing of life.

Final remarks 

I have tried to tackle the issue of sin; what it is, why we are guilty,  the consequences of it and the sufficient provision for sin, in a systematic approach, which you, the reader found helpful. 

The intent of my study was to give an indepth look at this issue, while allowing the reader to connect the dots and think for themselves a bit.

Obviously, I couldn’t give total justice to the vast nature of the subject,  but I think it gives a respectful explanation and answer to it.

We first looked at what sin was, I used the definition of sin as "It is violence and lovelessness toward other people, and ultimately, rebellion against God." We then looked at a secular look at the answer and I attempted to show its answer failed to address the issues sufficiently.  We then looked at the biblical perspective, looking deep in scripture that addresses this issue. 

We discovered that God's intentions from the beginning that our Obligation were to love God and to love our neighbours as ourselves. We looked at different aspects to challenge my proposal, like thought experiments and looking at the Euthyphro Dilemma and the nature of God to see if it coheres with the internal logic.

We then looked at the consequences of sin, we briefly looked at the subject of original Sin and why we are not accountable for our ancestors sins. We addressed freewill and why it is the best explanation for reality, justice and our intuitions. We then looked at what hell is, and the different understandings of what hell is. I defended a version of Eternal Conscious Torment, but argued that it was metaphorical and the best way to understand it was separation from God. 

We then looked at the provision for sin. Addressing why Jesus uniquely answers this predicament we are in, why blood sacrifice is so necessary for this predicament and why Jesus’s life, death, resurrection is the inference to the best explanation. 

We then looked at why God can have justifying reasons to temporarily hide from individuals who might be otherwise be open to a relationship to God, by tackling Schellenberg's hiddenness argument. 

We also addresses why natural laws,  freewill and other theodicies answer why we have suffering in the world, giving God morally sufficient reasons for seemingly gratuitous suffering. 

I hope this study has been as enlightening and thought-provoking for you, the reader, as it has been for me in its preparation. I struggled with certain areas and spent far longer than originally planned, but the journey has been deeply rewarding.

May this work inspire deeper reflection and understanding of God’s justice, mercy, and love as revealed through His provision for sin.

God bless.

References:

Where Hebrew or Greek words are translated, I have used Laridian PocketBible© version of NAS Exhaustive Concordance Hebrew-Aramaic Dictionary and NAS Exhaustive Concordance Greek Dictionary unless otherwise referenced below.

1.http://www.jlschellenberg.com/uploads/8/5/6/1/8561683/divine_hiddenness_and_human_philosophy.pdf

2.http://www.jlschellenberg.com/uploads/8/5/6/1/8561683/divine_hiddenness--part_1.pdf

3. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110714103828.htm

4. C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles Of Narnia – The Last Battle, HarperCollins Publishers, e-book edition

5. https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/water-universal-solvent

6. https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/20540000/k12/water.htm?

7. https://youtu.be/e2i0g1sL-X4?si=aZtG01TNk-PJxKRh

8. S. W. Hawking, “Cosmology from the Top Down,” paper presented at the Davis Cosmic Inflation Meeting, U. C. Davis, May 29, 2003.

9. Where the conflict really lies: science, religion, and naturalism /Alvin Plantinga. 2011 Oxford University Press - IV KITCHER'S "ENLIGHTENMENT CASE" e-book

10. https://medium.com/belover/the-case-that-jesus-was-raped-1eb16deb91eb