Ship of Fools: Purpose, Outcome and Responsibility

Thread: Purpose, Outcome and Responsibility Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

On another thread (Early Church and PSA) Shamwari expressed the following view:

“The Biblical writers did not distinguish between purpose and consequence. Since they thought that God wills all things they identified consequence with purpose.”

Cliffdweller disagreed:

“As a broad generalization, this simply is not true. There are abundant places in Scripture where God is shown to be unhappy with the outcomes, with human decisions that were made, etc..”

Although Cliffdweller has a point, ISTM that he/she is underlining the imprecision and confusion which Shamwari has identified. The bible does seem unclear as to the distinction between God’s sovereign will, human free will, and the importance of that distinction for a clear understanding of moral responsibility, culpability for sin, and judgement. A particularly example is Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, where in Acts 2: 23 he argues that Jesus was “handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge”, whilst the climax of his argument is that his hearers are to repent because they had fallen under God’s judgement for crucifying his Messiah (Acts 2:36-38).

More generally, what do Shipmates make of Shamwari’s observation? And more specifically, could Peter have made a better job with his sermon?

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

Ah, you are baiting the beast here. If its precision you want, it's precision you'll get as I lay out a distinctly Open view on those questions. I was just showing a wee bit of (uncharacteristic) restraint before as I'm sure my many discourses on the subject have wearied many a shippie.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
On another thread (Early Church and PSA) Shamwari expressed the following view:

“The Biblical writers did not distinguish between purpose and consequence. Since they thought that God wills all things they identified consequence with purpose.”

If that were true there would have been no Cities of Refuge, and all manslaughter would have been treated as murder.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

The Bible isn't a single book, but a collection of books written at some wildly divergent times and places.

I think it's odd to expect the Bible to speak with one voice on anything.

That said, is there a clear case where, a Biblical narrative blatantly ignores intent and judges only the consequences of an action? How do we test that?

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

You're going to run into at least two issues:
1. The Bible (esp. in narrative) often does us the courtesy of assuming we can judge the immorality of an action without needing to have it spelled out for us (e.g. "And the moral of this story, children, is that...") Plenty of people assume that no explicit moral = no judgment at all.
2. There are plenty of places and plenty of subjects on which God feels no need to explain or justify himself to us. The book of Job is going to be an overriding example here.

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