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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
So, we have a God who is good. We have justice as a good thing. We have a God who is just, as a direct consequence. And yet we are supposed to think that He forgoes this justice, this goodness, at the most vital point, to us anyway, when He is disposing of our souls. No wonder people have a problem believing in Him, when He is portrayed in such a cavalier fashion.

It may be nice for a Christian to think he has a get-in-for-free ticket to heaven. I just question whether things that are nice to think are things that are necessarily true.

Cheers, PV.

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Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping?

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Originally posted by Ikkyu:

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:


[snip]

Nobody, but nobody, is going to hell who truly wanted to be with God instead.

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The problem with this is that the definition of "truly wanting to be with God" varies widely depending on what seems to me to be mostly personal opinion. Christians can't even agree on a definition of God! Maybe if you make it vague enough they might agree but if you try to add in what "God" wants you will get very different answers. So what God should I want to be with?
Westboro Baptist "God"? , Amish "God?, Allah? Hashem? What If I hope to be reborn in the Pure Land? Namu Amida Butsu!!

Does that make a difference?

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Originally posted by Philip Charles:
God should be trusted, loved, honoured etc for God's sake and not for any reward. What happens after our death is in God's hands and God can be trusted.

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The idea is that good people get to go to heaven, and bad people don't.

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Irrespective of their beliefs.

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What else could be morally just? What else could be consistent with the notion of a just and impartial arbiter of the moral, and disposer of souls, this allegedly good God, who loves all mankind, not just a conveniently agreeable segment of them?

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Originally posted by Philip Charles:

God should be trusted, loved, honoured etc for God's sake and not for any reward. What happens after our death is in God's hands and God can be trusted. This is the truth that lies behind judgment, heaven, hell and anything else one might want to throw in this direction.

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If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” Dan. 3:17-18

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So, it's not the most original of thoughts, but it is a deep-seated conviction of mine.

The idea is that good people get to go to heaven, and bad people don't. Irrespective of their beliefs. What else could be morally just? What else could be consistent with the notion of a just and impartial arbiter of the moral, and disposer of souls, this allegedly good God, who loves all mankind, not just a conveniently agreeable segment of them?

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Originally posted by Kwesi:
ISTM that on the first question New Testament teaching is pretty clear that whether we like it or not the attainment of a sufficient level of moral uprightness to enter heaven is not possible for anyone. That seems evident in both the teachings of Jesus and the epistles.

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Originally posted by anteater:
PV:
I'm late to this thread, so feel free to ignore me.

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The idea is that good people get to go to heaven, and bad people don't.

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You may have heard of the concept of splitting, whereby some people see no nuances but (in your case) good and bad people. Most people would recoil from this simplistic division of humanity...

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Originally posted by Kwesi:
ISTM that on the first question New Testament teaching is pretty clear that whether we like it or not the attainment of a sufficient level of moral uprightness to enter heaven is not possible for anyone. That seems evident in both the teachings of Jesus and the epistles.

Jammy Dodger: Is it really that straightforward? In the story of the
sheep and the goats (which I quoted upthread) simply helping those in need appears to be a sufficient level of moral uprightness to be welcomed into the kingdom.

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Originally posted by Kwesi:
Personally, I agree with Origen that judgement is necessary and should not be avoided, but is essentially a matter of diagnosis preceding healing and restoration. I confess to universalist tendencies but entertain the right of an individual to remain outside the father’s house by choice.

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Originally posted by Kwesi:
It is, however, difficult to see how the life, death, resurrection and merits of Christ, which Christians consider central to their understanding of salvation and sanctification, have anything to do with this passage.

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Originally posted by Kwesi:
Furthermore, is it questionable whether this passage is meant to have a general application in which “the least of these my brethren” is a reference to any person in need either then or subsequently. The story was part of a discourse addressed specifically to the disciples during the crisis of Easter Week, the context of which is set-out in the opening verses of Matthew 24, and not to a wide disparate congregation. One is given to understand, therefore, that NT scholars are mostly of the opinion that “the least of these my brethren” is a specific reference to the disciples, who will be subject to fates similar to their master (Matthew 24: 9-12). It is probable that Matthew (alone) included these words in his gospel because the persecution of the apostles had become a reality.

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Originally posted by Kwesi:
in event it is difficult to conclude that it sets out the modalities of a final judgement, and is a shaky foundation on which to build a soteriology of justification by (just) works.

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Originally posted by Kwesi:
To my mind, and one doesn’t think it at all original, the paradigm of the NT is not that of a court of law in which God is the Judge and justice is impartially administered with a plea of mitigation from Jesus, the defending counsel, but of a family in which God is the Father and Jesus is the Elder Brother who represents the father and has a mission to reintegrate a dysfunctional family called humankind (John 3:17). The family paradigm with its emphasis on forgiveness and reconciliation does not preclude questions of justice but is one in which justice is subordinate to the overall objective. Personally, I agree with Origen that judgement is necessary and should not be avoided, but is essentially a matter of diagnosis preceding healing and restoration. I confess to universalist tendencies but entertain the right of an individual to remain outside the father’s house by choice.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Which culture? Iron Age?

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Originally posted by Kwesi:
in event it is difficult to conclude that it sets out the modalities of a final judgement, and is a shaky foundation on which to build a soteriology of justification by (just) works.

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PilgrimVagrant: Good things, good works, may arise out of being a good person, may indeed, prove a good person to be good, but these works are secondary to the goodness of character that precede them, inspire them, and generate them.

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I am not talking justification by works. I am talking justification by way of being. I am not talking ethical actions, I am talking ontological state. I am not talking doing good things, I am talking simply being good, as the deciding factor of our eventual fates.

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:

I am not talking justification by works. I am talking justification by way of being. I am not talking ethical actions, I am talking ontological state. I am not talking doing good things, I am talking simply being good, as the deciding factor of our eventual fates.

Good things, good works, may arise out of being a good person, may indeed, prove a good person to be good, but these works are secondary to the goodness of character that precede them, inspire them, and generate them.

The alternative, conventionally Christian view on salvation seems to be a thing about what one believes, and knows, and comes through belief to know. It is essentially a cognitive, epistemological view, and it is one I can't see as being consistent with the idea of a just disposition of our wayward selves, and therefore a just God, however convenient for Christians to believe in it.

So there we have it; which is the best alternative for humanity to be judged on? What we do, what we know, or what we are?

Cheers, PV

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
There is the concept of the 'good sinner' which I take us all mostly to be, the idea of being partially good, but still inclined, in some minor details, to sin. Then there is the idea of goodness and badness being a multidimensional gray-scale, which we all inhabit, in various positions in degrees of black and white on various dimensions, most of us being more pale than shaded.

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However, if conventional Christianity has a better idea, I am more than willing to entertain it.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:

I am not talking justification by works. I am talking justification by way of being. I am not talking ethical actions, I am talking ontological state. I am not talking doing good things, I am talking simply being good, as the deciding factor of our eventual fates.

Good things, good works, may arise out of being a good person, may indeed, prove a good person to be good, but these works are secondary to the goodness of character that precede them, inspire them, and generate them.

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Okay, more confusion.

PV, we understand you mean being good, or growing into goodness, or becoming a good person, or however you want to ontologically phrase it. The point is, this is not possible. Not to any sin-infected human being, not to any reasonable standard of goodness. It's like polishing a deeply flawed diamond, one where the flaw goes so deep the stone is almost in two pieces. You can polish all you like, but there's no fixing that.

[code]

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
There is the concept of the 'good sinner' which I take us all mostly to be, the idea of being partially good, but still inclined, in some minor details, to sin. Then there is the idea of goodness and badness being a multidimensional gray-scale, which we all inhabit, in various positions in degrees of black and white on various dimensions, most of us being more pale than shaded.

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I think these two ideas are inconsistent with each other and contradictory.
If goodness and badness are multidimensional then it must be possible for someone to be simultaneously very good and very bad, or some other complication that means that judgements about whether someone is mostly good will be largely meaningless. You can say that someone is honest and dutiful, but callous and self-righteous. But to sum that up to good overall but inclined in minor details to sin - that's not doable.
What makes something a minor detail anyway? If people like you and me who are basically good commit a sin, it must be a minor detail?

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
My 2 cents echoes some of what's already been said:

Salvation and even justice, in the biblical sense, are not about rewarding good or punishing evil. They are both about restoration-- about setting things right. The one spiritual truth we can all empirically observe is that things are Not Right. If we didn't know that already, we learned that last night with the horrific news of yet another school shooting here in the US.

Things are not right. And that misalignment is found in each of us. Sometimes the misalignment may seem insignificant to us-- perhaps we have a tendency (quickly squelched) to rejoice at the suffering of rival, or a tendency to envy those who are advanced when we are not. Small things. Other times the misalignment is so significant that we can only call it evil-- 200 African girls kidnapped and sold into slavery. Each of us is in a different place along that trajectory from near-saint to near-demon, for a host of reasons from environment or family or past to free choice or pride or stubbornness.

Wherever we are on that trajectory, there are things we can do on our own that will move us away from evil and toward the good. But we-- and the world we live in-- can never be fully restored, fully "set right" without a Savior.

That is God's desire for each of us, and for the world we live in. He desires us to be fully restored and set right, to live the life we were intended to live. Again, we may do things on our own to move in that direction. Or we may do things in the power of the Spirit by recognizing our need for a Savior. The people who are trying to get there on their own might very well be further along the trajectory than the person who is attempting to get there thru the power of the Spirit. But ultimately, full restoration comes only thru Christ (IMHO).

I don't think that necessarily or even probably means the only who are fully set right in the restoration-- the New Heaven and New Earth-- are those who verbally confess allegiance to Christ in this life. But I believe the only way anyone gets there is thru the grace of Jesus Christ. That grace is a big grace, which just might be big enough to include everyone, regardless of where they are on the trajectory or whether or not they recognize him or call him by name.

But I think that's what justice and salvation mean in the Bible-- not getting what you deserve, not reward or punishment, but setting right.

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
There is the concept of the 'good sinner' which I take us all mostly to be, the idea of being partially good, but still inclined, in some minor details, to sin. Then there is the idea of goodness and badness being a multidimensional gray-scale, which we all inhabit, in various positions in degrees of black and white on various dimensions, most of us being more pale than shaded.

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I think these two ideas are inconsistent with each other and contradictory.

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On the contrary, they are mutually consistent.

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
And this is another substantial point of disagreement between us. I can think of several famous non-christians, who are good. Indeed, better than several famous Christians. The idea that goodness is dependent on a Christian world-view is just a non-starter for me. I have cited Gandhi and the Dalai Lama previously, but any of the Hindu gurus or Zen masters or Sikh teachers would do equally well.

The problem Christians have with the idea of goodness being central to salvation is generally, I find, twofold. Firstly, they don't like the idea that they need to be good, and secondly they don't like the idea that Christianity has no monopoly on goodness.

So, in direct contradiction to the thrust of your argument, I say it is not necessary to be Christian to be good, any more than it is necessary to be good to be Christian. These are, as statisticians might have it, independent variables. And if they are independent, then (to ram the point home) surely a just God will seek His company in Heaven from the best the world has to offer, rather than a somewhat smug subset of it.

Again, a rational argument, evidence based, would serve your cause better than a flawed analogy about flawed diamonds.

Cheers, PV.

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
]To be just, a just disposal needs to be seen to be just. There is no point in saying God is Just! but His justice is not like our justice. That is like saying God is Red! but His red is not like our red.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
And this is another substantial point of disagreement between us. I can think of several famous non-christians, who are good. Indeed, better than several famous Christians. The idea that goodness is dependent on a Christian world-view is just a non-starter for me. I have cited Gandhi and the Dalai Lama previously, but any of the Hindu gurus or Zen masters or Sikh teachers would do equally well.

The problem Christians have with the idea of goodness being central to salvation is generally, I find, twofold. Firstly, they don't like the idea that they need to be good, and secondly they don't like the idea that Christianity has no monopoly on goodness.

So, in direct contradiction to the thrust of your argument, I say it is not necessary to be Christian to be good, any more than it is necessary to be good to be Christian. These are, as statisticians might have it, independent variables. And if they are independent, then (to ram the point home) surely a just God will seek His company in Heaven from the best the world has to offer, rather than a somewhat smug subset of it.

Again, a rational argument, evidence based, would serve your cause better than a flawed analogy about flawed diamonds.

Cheers, PV.

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You're still not getting it. There IS no one good, no, not one. And I dare you to ask any of the people you've mentioned if they consider themselves to be good. They are, after all, the only ones with direct access to their own interior lives.

The question is not what a person looks like from the outside. The question is what he or she IS.

I've never met a person I considered saintly (and there are a lot of these, Christian and non-Christian!) who did not have a strong sense of his/her own wrongdoing. And I will do them the compliment of taking their own self-assessments for truth. They are not being falsely modest. When the saints accuse themselves, they are speaking the truth--the same truth that the whole human race faces about ourselves.

When will you see that I am NOT claiming goodness for Christians only? Christians, just like non-Christians, are deeply flawed and in need of a Savior. The only case in which your examples of Gandhi, eastern teachers, etc. makes a difference is in the purely external human estimation of goodness as it appears to other humans. That's fine if you're running a popularity contest, but it's not going to cut it for any of us--Christian or not--in the divine court.

You seem to greatly dislike analogies. I am not sure why. I regret if they cause you some form of mental pain, but I find they are generally a useful aid in communication--if not to you, then to others who are reading the thread.

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Originally posted by Fr Weber:

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
]To be just, a just disposal needs to be seen to be just. There is no point in saying God is Just! but His justice is not like our justice. That is like saying God is Red! but His red is not like our red.

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Then perhaps it is your notion of justice which needs adjustment. Human justice is anything but infallible, individual human beings hold different ideas of what it means, and it is demonstrable that societal notions of "just" and "unjust" have changed within recent memory.

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Originally posted by Kwesi:
PilgrimVagrant, I’m intrigued by your framework, but would like to see it developed and clarified.

As I understand it you posit people as either good or bad in an ontological sense, and it is this state which determines their classification as sheep or goats and ultimate destination: heaven or hell. In practise, however, you argue that individuals perform good and bad acts of varying degrees of goodness and badness, and the proportions of predominantly good acts and perdominantly bad acts varies from one individual to another.

What I would like to know is:-

1.How an individual is or becomes ontologically good or bad: is it innate or acquired?
2.Is there a relationship between good and bad acts and an individual’s ontological state?
3.Do good and bad acts have anything to do with God’s judgement on an individual?

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
There is the concept of the 'good sinner' which I take us all mostly to be, the idea of being partially good, but still inclined, in some minor details, to sin. Then there is the idea of goodness and badness being a multidimensional gray-scale, which we all inhabit, in various positions in degrees of black and white on various dimensions, most of us being more pale than shaded.

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I think these two ideas are inconsistent with each other and contradictory.
If goodness and badness are multidimensional then it must be possible for someone to be simultaneously very good and very bad, or some other complication that means that judgements about whether someone is mostly good will be largely meaningless. You can say that someone is honest and dutiful, but callous and self-righteous. But to sum that up to good overall but inclined in minor details to sin - that's not doable.
What makes something a minor detail anyway? If people like you and me who are basically good commit a sin, it must be a minor detail?

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On the contrary, they are mutually consistent. One can be a highly effective parish priest, bringing succour to his flock and educating them in critical ways with each Sunday sermon, and still a paedophile. The fact that one tends to blackness in one, sexual dimension, does not necessarily entail that one tends to black in all dimensions.

Cheers, PV.

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Where does grace fit into that scenario? Or does it?

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Where does grace fit into that scenario? Or does it?

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It's very important, but indirectly so.

The idea is that the invasion of the Holy Spirit transforms us, but does not, in and of itself, save us. What it does is convert us to the right attitude, a healthy love of virtue, and visceral dislike of sin. But from there on, it is up to us to make what we can and will of the grace of God in our own lives.

Being a 'saved' or 'born again' Christian is therefore, not a guarantee of eternal bliss, just an advantage of mindset towards this end.

Cheers, PV

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
Yes, you can be very bad in some dimensions, and very good in others. Where that leaves one on a more simple, one dimensional scale of good and bad, is not for me to say. That's God's call. And I suspect He has more sophisticated ways of dealing justice than we can know. Perhaps each dimension is dealt with separately.

So what? How does this affect the model?

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As for love overriding justice; well, no. Justice, a good thing, is the proof of love. Without the love, there would be no justice. If God didn't love us, it wouldn't matter to Him how He dealt with us; perhaps He would have handsome favourites, or prefer folk-dancers to anyone else, or insist on real-estate agents for company.

But justice distributed on ethical grounds, well, that makes His love immanent and relevant, in a way no arbitrary preferences could.

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
Well, from my point of view, of course, you are the one who seems willfully determined 'not to get it!' I have repeatably argued that goodness and badness exist on gray-scales.

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
It may well be that God is the only being that exists in pure white on all dimensions. Nevertheless, that does not disbar the rest of us from being mainly good, or somewhat good, or passably good, in any or all of these dimensions.

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
We cannot expect to be wholly good; and nor should we. We evolved out of slime. It will take us time to shed our innate tendencies to selfishness; and I am talking geological time, epochs and eons, not days or weeks. The fact that we are good at all, in any respect whatsoever, is already a miracle. And a miracle, moreover, not confined to this religion or that; it seems to be a human trait, this goodness, though we may ethnocentrically ascribe it to other animals, also. Whatever, it would be unjust for God to ignore it, come judgement time.

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Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
As for anologies; I do not wholly dislike them; I am simply careful with them. They have a place, as an illustration of an argument. But they are not a replacement for an argument, and should not submitted as such. An analogy, a parallel, is not a train of thought, just the recognition of a pattern that may, or may not, bear close similarity to some more difficult topic. The danger is to understand the analogy, and then think you have automatically understood the difficult topic. You have to show, with an analogy, what the difficult argument is, what the analogy is, and why the analogy is relevant to the difficult argument. It is not good enough just to say; my position is proposition X, and analogy Y is self evident, and therefore X must be true. You have to rigorously determine that analogy Y is like proposition X, before Y has any purchase on X, whatsoever. This is so much extra work, it is probably more effective simply to prove X from first principles, anyway, and see Y as nothing more than an interesting diversion.

Cheers, PV.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

There's another issue with the idea that God should reward goodness and punish badness wherever it exists, Christ's work being unnecessary. The border between good and evil runs through every human heart (except Christ's).

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From An Online Orthodox Catechism.
One should note that the notion of Hell has been distorted by the coarse and material images in which it was clothed in Western medieval literature. One recalls Dante with his detailed description of the torments and punishment which sinners undergo. Christian eschatology should be liberated from this imagery: the latter reflects a Catholic medieval approach to the Novissima with its ‘pedagogy of fear’ and its emphasis on the necessity of satisfaction and punishment. Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel depicts Christ hurling into the abyss all those who dared to oppose Him. ‘This, to be sure, is not how I see Christ’, says Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov).

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Originally posted by Golden Key:
...or God works as long as it takes for everyone and everything to be safe, and well, and Home...

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As regards becoming good or bad; in the world according to PV, the character, or soul, stands in relationship to it's thoughts, words and deeds. It has, in it's original state, a tendency to selfishness for itself, and a desire for selflessness, for others. It wants to have it's cake, and eat it, too. It wants to be allowed to be greedy, but for others to service that greed. Sooner or later, we realise the world can't work that way; if everyone was selfish, no-one's greed would be serviced. So we invent virtue, and the genius idea of each servicing each others need, to the extent that is good for them, and no further.

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My current thinking is that God does not, and does not need to directly to judge our acts. Our acts have consequences, for ourselves and others. A virtuous act leaves the world better, and sinful act, worse. A virtuous act leaves our spirit stronger, a sinful act, weaker. All God needs to do, therefore, is assess our spirits, and what better way to do that, than allow us to approach Him to the extent that we can bear?

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