Is God above justice?

[ANV]

Does the act of murder become ok if God says it is.

 

[STT]

Does the act of murder become ok if God says it is.

God is justice therefore He cannot.

 

[meltzerboy]

Does the act of murder become ok if God says it is.

It seems you are getting at the so-called Euthyphro dilemma, derived from Plato, in which the argument is posed whether justice is based and defined on whatever G-d says and does or whether G-d Himself is bound to the laws of justice. The Greek dialogue has inspired the discussion, and sides, it appears, with the latter. Judaism stands outside of the philosophical discussion since, as a religion, it is typically based more on practical behavior than on prior doctrine. On this particular point, however, one of the Ten Commandments clearly states “Thou shalt not murder,” so G-d would not renege on His statement, except that the meaning of murder would have to be fully specified.

 

[Faithdancer]

God is justice therefore He cannot.

Exactly. End of discussion.

 

[friardchips]

Does the act of murder become ok if God says it is.

While the end does not justify the means, there is killing that is just: just defense.

But then, killing in just defense, is not murder. So no, God never Wills murder.

‘Killing’, however, is a wider subject. Lawful killing would come under what (I think) is known as an ‘Act of God’:

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a5.htm

*'Legitimate defense

2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. "The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not."65*

*2264 Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow:

If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. . . . Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s.66
2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.

2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people’s rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people’s safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.67

2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."68’
*

 

[Bradski]

Does the act of murder become ok if God says it is.

Murder is an unlawful killing. Is God bound by the laws of man?

 

[o_mlly]

Murder is an unlawful killing. Is God bound by the laws of man?

Is man bound by the laws of animals?

 

[rossum]

God is justice therefore He cannot.

So what do we call the deaths of the unborn children whose pregnant mothers were drowned in the flood? “Collateral damage”?

As a Buddhist, all gods are subject to moral law (karma), including the most powerful gods.

rossum

 

[seagal]

Murder is an unlawful killing. Is God bound by the laws of man?

This law came directly from God: Exodus 20:13 “You shall not murder.”

 

[STT]

So what do we call the deaths of the unborn children whose pregnant mothers were drowned in the flood? “Collateral damage”?

It is called natural evil. Christian believe that this is the result of fall of man. I believe that suffering is good for mental and spiritual growth.

As a Buddhist, all gods are subject to moral law (karma), including the most powerful gods.

rossum

How you can justify this when there is no self in Buddhism and baby cannot have any karma?

 

[rossum]

It is called natural evil.

Then the Flood was a natural event and was not caused by God at all? Or is it that God is indirectly responsible for creating a world which included deadly floods and evil? Floods are not generally ascribed to the free will of man, are they?

How you can justify this when there is no self in Buddhism and baby cannot have any karma?

Study the Five Skandhas, in particular the Formations (saṃskāra) skandha. That is what carries accumulated karma from one life to the next.

rossum

 

[STT]

Then the Flood was a natural event and was not caused by God at all? Or is it that God is indirectly responsible for creating a world which included deadly floods and evil? Floods are not generally ascribed to the free will of man, are they?

God doesn’t cause evil. As I mentioned natural evil is the result of fall of man according to Christian teaching.

Study the Five Skandhas, in particular the Formations (saṃskāra) skandha. That is what carries accumulated karma from one life to the next.

rossum

That I am aware of. My question is how the concept of karma is applicable to a baby when he has no self. Do you believe in self?

 

[rossum]

God doesn’t cause evil.

Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord that do all these things.” (emphasis added)

You might wish to reconsider. Evil exists. If God made everything that exists (except Himself) then He made evil, as the Bible says. If God did not make evil, then He is not the creator but is a co-creator alongside the creator of evil, Zoroastrian-style.

My question is how the concept of karma is applicable to a baby when he has no self. Do you believe in self?

The five skandhas perform many of the functions assigned to “self”. The baby’s karma is part of the formations skandha, which is one of the five skandhas which all human beings have at birth.

However, the skandhas are impermanent and changing so they are not a self/soul in the Christian sense.

rossum

 

[meltzerboy]

Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord that do all these things.” (emphasis added)

You might wish to reconsider. Evil exists. If God made everything that exists (except Himself) then He made evil, as the Bible says. If God did not make evil, then He is not the creator but is a co-creator alongside the creator of evil, Zoroastrian-style.

The five skandhas perform many of the functions assigned to “self”. The baby’s karma is part of the formations skandha, which is one of the five skandhas which all human beings have at birth.

However, the skandhas are impermanent and changing so they are not a self/soul in the Christian sense.

rossum

Judaism takes the Isaiah passage literally; G-d is the Creator of EVERYTHING, including evil. However, it is how we deal with the evil in our lives, both internally and externally, that is the key to our relationship with G-d and humanity.

 

[Wesrock]

Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord that do all these things.” (emphasis added)

You might wish to reconsider. Evil exists. If God made everything that exists (except Himself) then He made evil, as the Bible says. If God did not make evil, then He is not the creator but is a co-creator alongside the creator of evil, Zoroastrian-style.

You would do well to read Saint Augustine who struggled with the same problem around the existence of evil. He followed the teachings of Mani becore his conversion to Christianity, and Mani taught that evil was not created by God but by a separate evil deity, much as you described.

Saint Augustine eventually realized that evil is not something positive that exists. It is a privation of good. Light is a creation, and shadow and darkness are the result of a privation of light.

God may still be held responsible for evil in some respects, mind. To say it is outside of His dominion is to propose something like what you say. If God creates only so much light such that the light does not fill every nook and cranny, but that shadow and darkness fall in certain areas, it is according to His overall will that such is so.

But evil, like darkness, is not a created substance. Granted, in common parlance we might say I’m responsible for “creating” an absence, but in truth it’s the result of me not “creating” or doing something to fill the absence that leads to the absence. It does not have being in itself. It’s the absence of being in some way, but permitted according to God’s will.

 

[Wesrock]

As a Buddhist, all gods are subject to moral law (karma), including the most powerful gods.

The gods you speak of are not the same type of being or even level of being as the God Christians propose…

But even so, Christians classically understand morality to be rooted in the natire of a being. It’s not that there are an arbitrary set of laws above all else, but that if it’s in the nature of squirrel-hood in general to do X, Y, and Z, then to be a good squirrel is to do X, Y, and Z. Christians don’t consider a squirrel to be a rational creature, so being a good squirrel or a bad squirrel doesn’t have a moral component, but there is still a measure of goodness and badness. With rational beings such as humans, there are certain ends that are suited to the animal part of humanhood and to the rational part of humanhood, and whether we behave morally is based on the choices we make as rational creatures and whether they are contrary to human-hood. And since all humans share human-hood, we all have the same moral law rooted in our nature. It’s the same type of analysis as that with a squirrel, but with different results, because squirrel-hood is a different nature than human-hood.

So I don’t propose that God is above this type of analysis entirely, but the difference between a squirrel’s nature and a human nature, or even a bacterium’s nature and a human nature, is infinitesimally small compared to the difference between God and anything else. God is beyond the type of being that all other things, from a helium atom to a human to an angel, share.

So, God is according to what He is. Expecting Him to behave like a human is infinitely more ridiculous than expecting a human to behave like a type of bacteria or hydrogen atom or quark.

God gives being and takes being away. This is as true for those who die of natural causes at 101 as it is for those who die sooner. Our being is not ours essentially. Anything that exists is but a steward of that existence. When a disaster occurs, God is not intervening in something separate from His action; He is not a clockmaker who, after setting the clock to run a year ago to run on its own, has come back and started fiddling with it again. If the world is a computer program, He is not only the programmer, but the computer itself. If the world is music, He is the musician. The notes that sound, long or short, are only heard because He still plays.

 

[friardchips]

For the sake of wandering pilgrims:

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2c1p6.htm

*'Paragraph 6. Man

355 "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them."218 Man occupies a unique place in creation: (I) he is “in the image of God”; (II) in his own nature he unites the spiritual and material worlds; (III) he is created “male and female”; (IV) God established him in his friendship.

I. “IN THE IMAGE OF GOD”

356 Of all visible creatures only man is “able to know and love his creator”.219 He is “the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake”,220 and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity:

What made you establish man in so great a dignity? Certainly the incalculable love by which you have looked on your creature in yourself! You are taken with love for her; for by love indeed you created her, by love you have given her a being capable of tasting your eternal Good.221’*

 

[STT]

Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord that do all these things.” (emphasis added)

You might wish to reconsider. Evil exists. If God made everything that exists (except Himself) then He made evil, as the Bible says. If God did not make evil, then He is not the creator but is a co-creator alongside the creator of evil, Zoroastrian-style.

That is to me a contradiction in Christianity when consider the verse “God is love”.

I believe that God is neutral.

 

[rossum]

For the sake of wandering pilgrims:

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2c1p6.htm

*'Paragraph 6. Man

355 "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them."218 Man occupies a unique place in creation: (I) he is “in the image of God”; (II) in his own nature he unites the spiritual and material worlds; (III) he is created “male and female”; (IV) God established him in his friendship.*

(III) puzzles me. Being male and female is not universal, but it does cover a great many more species that just Homo sapiens. Why claim such an obviously non-unique property as part of the uniqueness of man?

rossum

 

[Wesrock]

(III) puzzles me. Being male and female is not universal, but it does cover a great many more species that just Homo sapiens. Why claim such an obviously non-unique property as part of the uniqueness of man?

rossum

The Catechism is stressing that BOTH male and female are in God’s image. This to refute claims that only males are in God’s image.