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tonyrey
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It makes a vital difference because all material phenomena have physical causes.
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Bobber90
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Quite right about Mary, that was pointed out to me earlier. It is another issue whether God can be considered good for not obliterating His creation (well, not totally obliterating), and I am clearly letting my opinion of that idea seep through now!
The narrative is that Adam and Eve were flawless(?) until they decided to sin, and since then we are somewhat corrupt beings or beings flawed by a corrupted environment, though we can still repent and love. However, isn’t there an argument that God could have prevented sin and, better still, hell, by setting us up so that we understand good and bad more fully and are compelled by these feelings? Adam and Eve did not feel compelled by good over bad.
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Bobber90
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Supposing that immaterial phenomena have no causes provides no escape from the argument!
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Bobber90
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The difference is that parents are not creators in the way God is supposed to be. If they were, I suspect good Christian parents would ‘create’ children who understood God immediately and deeply, with the result that their children would always voluntarily choose the good. God could have done that!
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Bobber90
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This is a good point about free will. You argue that the free will we have is of the form whereby each person is the sufficient cause of their behaviour, in some way. This seems like a tautology, like a good way of saying that whatever happens, it was the person themselves who caused their behaviour but without saying how, and I’m not sure that an uncaused immaterial soul is compatible with this or with the evidence of how decisions are made in reality.
If the soul is ‘up above’ or looking down on our situations/hypothesising/thought processes/emotions or whatever, by what means or process (that is meant to be separate from these things) does it come to a decision and impart force? Is it moved by reason/understanding of good, for example?
Never mind how, let’s assume the prime-mover soul does grant free will such that the person is the sufficient cause of their actions. The point is still that Adam and Eve’s souls must not have been perfect or perfectly ordered, because on the first instant they directed the person to choose sin. Why not fix up people’s souls so that they are compelled by good, rather than deceived by bad?
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fhansen
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Not if there’s a purpose or reason-if there’s merit-in having humans learn for themselves the hard way what the right choice is.
God’s purpose is to educate, mold, form beings here on earth. He wants our wills aligned with His own, aligned with truth and righteousness. Our wills are limited in their freedom, relative to His, as all aspects of creation are limited relative to God, and yet our wills are still radically free, free enough to oppose His will, free enough to accomplish the cruelest and most horrific acts we can imagine and are physically capable of committing, only because He allows just such freedom. Inherent in all creation is one unavoidable “flaw” or imperfection; creation is not God. And this one fact allows for the possibility of imperfect wills, based on imperfect wisdom, if and when free will is included in the mix of created beings.
So the “project” here is for creation-in the form of us-is to experience-to* know*- good and evil-in order to learn to appreciate-to hunger and thirst for- only the good, to hunger and thirst for the source of that good, the only One who can sustain that good in creation so long as that creation is not willfully unaligned with His will, i.e. so long as we recognize our need to submit and be led by His perfect will, led by Him.
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Bobber90
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Again, I can see your point and do quite like it, apart from the existence of hell. If people are to learn, why not teach those who fail in life with a special course of purgatory? The extent and duration of pain can match the seriousness of the rejection of God in life, and last until true appreciation of the good is reached. Eternal hell is pointless with regards to the goal of true appreciation of God.
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davidv
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fhansen
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There are only two arguments I can come up with. One is that, if existence, in and of itself, is an undeniable objective good, regardless of our opinion at any given moment (i.e. regardless of whether or not we do, indeed, deny the good of existence), then hell would be a choice to reject goodness, love, etc, in favor of cold pride and selfishness. It would be the adamant rejection of God, still having a preference to continue to exist, perhaps, but to exist without Him at all costs.
The other point I’d make is that we don’t know all the ins and outs of the after life-we don’t know much about it at all, in fact. But we do believe it’s been revealed that God is infinitely just and fair and merciful-and that justice will be done in such a way that all will be satisfied. A 13th century British visionary named Julian of Norwich, a nun, I believe, whose revelations the Church accepts as valid and who was living during the Plague, carrying a great burden for the eternal fate of so many who were dying, was given this simple, powerful, assurance by God: **“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” **And while my own knowledge and understanding are quite limited, I have absolute faith that statement will prove itself to be true.
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Bobber90
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Hell is objectively bad (I’m told), meaning that it is objectively not in a person’s interest to go there. A benevolent God would not pretend to accept the ‘decision’ of a mistaken, sinful creature as a judgement in full knowledge that going to hell is a good idea. Even if someone really had deluded themselves into thinking hell is good, God would know otherwise, and a good god would not cause eternal suffering.
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Bobber90
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The first idea of hell seems quite plausible, where hell is not totally bad. But if hell was simply a case of respecting people’s choices in life, it would seem appropriate that an infinitely wise and benevolent God would either teach a better way or provide a tolerable existence, making hell merely boring. This scenario obviously doesn’t tie in with the fact that rejecting God is supposed to be the performance of evil and not a morally neutral choice.
If it was considered unfair to punish eternally sinners instead of purging/teaching them, then I would say that for all to be well, hell must not exist. Speculation, obviously, but thanks for the interesting suggestions.
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tdgesq
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There are two questions here: (1) whether the original holiness of Adam and Eve necessitated that God predetermine that they always act rightly and (2) whether there is a moral principle supporting God’s decision to to create humankind with free will.
If the original holiness of Adam & Eve means that God predetermined them to always act rightly then we would have a problem, since they obviously didn’t act rightly. Original holiness must mean something other than that, ie. they were created without concupiscence, original sin, and the pains of death. Notice, none of these attributes necessitate predetermination rather than free will.
God could certainly “fix” people’s souls to compel them to always act morally. This is equivalent to affirming that God could predetermine every human being to act rightly. However, such a predetermination is inconsistent with free will, at least as I have defined it in my previous post: the actor is the sufficient cause of his actions. You might object that it would be better if God predetermined every person to act rightly rather than endow humanity with free will.
That is moral question. All that is required to answer it is a demonstration that God had a morally sufficient reason to create humanity with free will. Allowing people to choose the good without compulsion is a morally sufficient reason. The attendant consequence is that people are also free to choose evil. The only other alternative is to deprive human beings of freedom. One can criticize God for endowing us with freedom and the resulting capability to sin, but only at the cost of freedom itself.
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Texas_Roofer
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Again you blame god
And there it is god did the wrong thing but as a superior being you are correcting it through **your **control- wow. Why not just say “yes to knowledge” when asked which master you will serve? Adam too selected the fruit of knowledge, and you reaffirm his action.
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shoe
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But do you think that parents who “create” children with free will on the one hand and deny them the right to use that free will (to make choices) on the other hand are showing their children love?
Although God has instilled within each individual the ability to choose doing evil, that is not to say that the individual must choose to do evil, since each individual also has the freedom to choose doing good.
If God had created human beings with the power not only to choose between doing either good or evil, but also to “always voluntarily choose the good,” then God’s created beings would not be humans at all: they would be gods instead. But since by definition God is the only being in existence that is uncaused, God’s causing other gods into existence is illogical.
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perro_sarnoso
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Mary is the Theotokos; Aeiparthenos; Kacharitomene. Hers is a necessary pre-redemption.
Lets put Mary’s mission aside and lets get to your mission.
You and I have been given the necessary tools and defenses to carry out our mission. God has not spared any graces or special favors to ensure your salvation.
You and I however have chosen to do “our thing”; live our life and pretty much decide that we don’t need God under certain circumstances.
We are looking for an easy salvation without giving up our wants and needs and comforts and privilidges and entitlements and rights to a life [worth living].
We want God to save us despite our licentiousness. And He is so merciful that sometimes…He does.
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davidv
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Hell is:
God does not pretend. Nor do our best interests keep us from choosing evil over good.
Sin is not a mistake. Sin is a deliberate choice to do evil instead of good.
God does not cause eternal suffering. The individual who chooses to go their own way, without God, is the cause of eternal suffering.
It seems to me that you are trying to blame God for sin. You are not very convincing.
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Bobber90
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It is exactly my point that heaven is objectively good, hell objectively bad. A benevolent god would not allow its creation to suffer objective bad for eternity if the god loved them.
Our own offspring sometimes choose to do evil, but we still love them and want what is objectively best for them. God doesn’t agree with this, He says “No, you shall burn for turning away from me.” even if burning is a metaphor for objective bad.
He allows eternal objective badness to happen to people, when there is an alternative, which is to teach them their objective interests and happiness lie elsewhere (e.g. through purgatory), or to set it up so that humans understood this properly the first time around.
Then you have not realised the full scope of the arguments! It is not just that God is ultimately responsible for the actions of His creation, but that He set us up to commit sins and go to hell, when He could have set us up to freely avoid sinning altogether. There is a better option here, and by not taking it, God is not all three of omnipotent/omniscient/totally benevolent. If you find that unconvincing, please address the problem area.
Objections might be that God is truly loving us by allowing some people to live out the consequences of their choice in hell. Ie, God does not force us to love Him, but gives total freedom, such that we are able to make it entirely a choice to be with Him, and entirely a choice not to. However, this misses the point, because isn’t it still entirely free and voluntary to give someone free will, and then convince them to direct it towards objective good? How is it theoretically impossible to implant good understanding in humanity, so that every person recognises God for what He is, and at the same time recognises what objective good is. If you say that this is coercive upon free will, you forget that objective moral values are supposed to be real and binding; you minimise the glory of God by pretending that true recognition permits voluntary digression in a perfect human being. The only way to get a being to voluntarily turn away from perfection is to blight the being with imperfect perception or a corrupt character, or to trick it. Given that Adam and Eve turned away from God, they had one or more of these defects. So did Satan, so did the angels. These defects are what cause people to sin, and God caused these defects, therefore God causes people to suffer on earth and beyond.
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Bobber90
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I disagree that there are two relevant questions here, but I understand the value of the objection. I disagree because the OP argument doesn’t hinge on whether the present state of affairs is defensible on the grounds of free will, but whether it is the best way to satisfy the requirements for free will/voluntary love/etc, or whether there is a better way. If I understand you, it is true that Adam and Eve could have been fully holy and yet still make a free will sin, because of the nature of the free will they had. The second point justifies the present state of affairs with the importance of free will. However, the way to meet this objection is clearly to say that yes free will is centrally important, but no it doesn’t entail sin.
Firstly, I think there is an area of Christian belief which already accepts this point. You argue implicitly that it is too much of a cost to lose free will, and seem to believe that free will is an objective moral good. If that is so, does freedom exist in heaven, are people in heaven free to sin? How could heaven not include this vital organising moral good, if it is the objective best state of affairs.
I reckon heaven would include the combination of perfect free will and perfect understanding of God. The two would not be mutually exclusive, nor coercive, and everyone would freely live in love. Given that this is so tautologically and self-evidently the best state of affairs, why didn’t God institute it for everyone, for all time?
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Bobber90
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ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/FRWILL.HTM
The president of Notre Dame Institute and pastor of Queen of Apostles Parish, Fr. William Saunders, answers Is There Free Will in Heaven?
He says yes there is, and argues ‘while we retain our free will in heaven, we naturally choose to love the Lord. Now it would be contrary to who we are to choose to sin and thereby to reject this perfect life, truth and love that is God. For example, an eighth grade student asked me once, “Can God murder someone?” “God could because He can do all things,” I replied. “But God would not because to murder is evil and to do evil would be against His all-good nature.” Likewise, in the original question, “Is it possible, but not probable at all because of the beatitude we share in heaven with God.”’
He also talks about the rebellious angels:
*However, if these angels were in heaven, why would they rebel against God? Both Ignatius of Antioch (d. 110) and Clement of Alexandria (d. 211) speculated that at the beginning, the angels did not possess the full beatitude of heaven. Instead, they underwent a period of trial and those that made the choice to serve and to love the Lord and to remain faithful to Him attained the full happiness of heaven, whereas those that rebelled were cast into hell.
St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) expanded this notion of the angels undergoing “a period of trial.” Right after their creation, the angels had “to choose” God to remain in heaven, just as each of us must choose God during our lives on earth to attain heaven. *
This begs the question of why God felt the need to test His created beings under conditions where they could get it wrong, where they could [mis]think their interests lay outside of obedience to God, and where the consequences are objectively bad suffering. Yes, one might say that this makes obedience extra special to God, but God determines the numbers who obey, sets it that obedience is obedience in partial ignorance, sets the threshold of the degree of goodness of character necessary to obey behind this veil of ignorance, and is still ultimately responsible for the actions of the creatures. That is not the image of benevolence, in comparison with a god who teaches his creatures under his wing of infinite knowledge and wisdom.
The president of Notre Dame Institute and pastor of Queen of Apostles Parish, Fr. William Saunders, answers Is There Free Will in Heaven?
He says yes there is, and argues ‘while we retain our free will in heaven, we naturally choose to love the Lord. Now it would be contrary to who we are to choose to sin and thereby to reject this perfect life, truth and love that is God. For example, an eighth grade student asked me once, “Can God murder someone?” “God could because He can do all things,” I replied. “But God would not because to murder is evil and to do evil would be against His all-good nature.” Likewise, in the original question, “Is it possible, but not probable at all because of the beatitude we share in heaven with God.”’
He also talks about the rebellious angels:
*However, if these angels were in heaven, why would they rebel against God? Both Ignatius of Antioch (d. 110) and Clement of Alexandria (d. 211) speculated that at the beginning, the angels did not possess the full beatitude of heaven. Instead, they underwent a period of trial and those that made the choice to serve and to love the Lord and to remain faithful to Him attained the full happiness of heaven, whereas those that rebelled were cast into hell.
St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) expanded this notion of the angels undergoing “a period of trial.” Right after their creation, the angels had “to choose” God to remain in heaven, just as each of us must choose God during our lives on earth to attain heaven. *
This begs the question of why God felt the need to test His created beings under conditions where they could get it wrong, where they could [mis]think their interests lay outside of obedience to God, and where the consequences are objectively bad suffering. Yes, one might say that this makes obedience extra special to God, but God determines the numbers who obey, sets it that obedience is obedience in partial ignorance, sets the threshold of the degree of goodness of character necessary to obey behind this veil of ignorance, and is still ultimately responsible for the actions of the creatures. That is not the image of benevolence, in comparison with a god who teaches his creatures under his wing of infinite knowledge and wisdom.
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Bobber90
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Even the legendary WLC offers nothing particularly different, reinforcing the idea of obedience in partial ignorance with his term epistemic distance. Incidentally, the relevance of epistemic distance is that knowledge is a factor in sin/good behaviour, and it is not true that the capacity to chose is itself the only factor in sin:
reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6101
As such, being good on earth is a case of submitting to a belief system which deliberately offers no/little justification for doing so outside of itself. This must be the case if earth is the precursor to and trial for heaven. The only justification on offer appears to be the intuition of objective moral values, which can happen outside of Christian belief.
reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6101
As such, being good on earth is a case of submitting to a belief system which deliberately offers no/little justification for doing so outside of itself. This must be the case if earth is the precursor to and trial for heaven. The only justification on offer appears to be the intuition of objective moral values, which can happen outside of Christian belief.
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