Brother Vaqas has joined brother Stew in the one-post wrecking crew that refutes Christianity. Vaqas made the following comment on BloggingTheology (emphasis mine):
“@Ken Temple
Hi Ken since we’re discussing whether the messiah can die for the sins of the world i have some questions for you if thats all right.
first question: are these statements,
“Mankind has sinned against an infinite God, and therefore the sin is infinitely great. It takes an infinite being to atone for infinite sin, and the only infinite being is God. Therefore, since Christ atoned for sin, Christ must be God.”
a correct understanding regarding you’re belief on the matter?”
What followed was a brief exchange between Vaqas and the professional Christian liar Ken Temple, which I assume is still on-going, which exposes a fatal contradiction in the Christian doctrines of Jesus’ divinity and atonement for humanity’s sins. Here is the exchange:
Not exactly. He also had to be human at the same time. He was both God and human. One person with 2 natures. The virgin birth (which Islam agrees with) demonstrates this.
@Ken Temple
I think the humanity is implied. regardless do you agree with the notion of an infinite being required to atone for infinite sin?
Yes, but death cannot affect the Divine nature – it gives power for the atonement and resurrection – the resurrection proves the Deity.
@Ken Temple
But if death cannot touch the divine nature and the human nature is not infinite then what part of the “godman” is scarified for atonement?
Beyond the theology of what I have already communicated, it is a mystery. The power of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead proves that His sacrifice / atonement was powerful.
@Ken Temple
…Wait what? its a mystery? But that seems like an important thing to know. since again if an infinite sacrifice is needed for infinite sin, and of the two natures of the “godman”:
the divine can’t die
and the human isn’t sufficient(not to mention God hates human sacrifice)
what exactly was sacrificed for you’re salvation? wheres the merit or meaning of the sacrifice?
As Temple would say: BOOM!
https://bloggingtheology.com/2020/01/04/sorry-christianity/comment-page-1/#comment-30887
https://quranandbibleblog.wordpress.com/2019/03/10/brother-stew-refutes-christianity-in-one-post/
The Quran and Bible Blog 
Reblogged this on Blogging Theology and commented:
As Ken Temple would say: BOOM!
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Awesome!
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Let’s hope that sincere Christians see the futility of their religion and consider Islam, inshaAllah. There’s probably no hope for Temple the liar, but perhaps God will guide him.
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The unfortunate and sad thing brother Faizal is that if he is deceptive, evil and liar on line, think about the muslims who meet this missionary in person and are deceived by him? he gets money to sell lies about islam and there are many like him
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These missionaries target gullible and easily impressionable people. But when they are confronted by knowledgeable people, they run in fright.
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let me tell you guys that brother Vaqas’ objection goes back to the 16th century. you know who brought this objection? an italian christian by the name of fotus sochino
i still have my microsoft word document in which i collected fautus’ objection, over 10 years ago.
i will post fautus’ objections
please let me know what you think
:::::::::
1. If God’s justice cannot be upheld unless sin be punished, and if Christ did not suffer the precise punishment which man’s sin deserves, then God’s justice is still not satisfied.
He writes:
Some hold that Christ suffered in degree, but not in kind what all for whom he died would have suffered in time and eternity. This is not substitution in any proper sense. If I am required by law to do a particular thing, and engage another man to do it in my place, and he, instead of doing it, does an equal amount of other work, he does not act the part of a substitute; nor will the law release me. If, however, the governor choose to accept what is actually done, in lieu of what I am required to do, then this is a matter of sovereign prerogative, and not of law or justice.
But substitutionists reverse this natural order of the relation between crime and punishment, making the removal of the “reatus poena” antecedent to the removal of the “reatus culpae”—that is, exemption from punishment is the antecedent of deliverance from criminality.
Hence, the sinner is pardoned, released from all liability to penal suffering, when Christ became his substitute, but is left in his criminal and polluted state; morally corrupt, but not liable to-the divinely ordained consequence of his corruption! At enmity against God, yet not liable to the consequences of that state of enmity. Such a state of things, it is self-evident, is impossible in the sphere of either physical or moral law. It would be possible only in the sphere of human law, and possible here only because of the inherent weakness of human law. Thus, a man commits a malicious murder, is indicted and tried by the proper court; but, by the bribery or death of witnesses, or by corrupting the court, he procures a verdict of acquittal, and is set free. This verdict operates as a barrier against subsequent prosecution and punishment. This is exactly the state in which substitutionary satisfaction puts all for whom Christ died. His death absolutely delivers from “reatus poena,” but leaves them in the meshes of “reatus culpae,” from which, however, they are at some indefinite time to be wholly or in part relieved (pp. 113-14).
DID this god in human form make the 6 hours of suffering eternally a part of his essence?
he who takes my place in suffering does not, and cannot, take my sufferings. These cannot be the same for him as they would be for me, simply because he is not I.
In his place I should not feel precisely as he did; I might feel more, I might feel less; I should certainly feel differently; my penalty, therefore, cannot be transferred to him..
Did your god die for those who blaspheme against the spirit? There are hundreds and thousands who blaspheme and disbelieve.
That is poetic nonsense. God who created life does not have death as his antithesis. He does not need to defeat death. Death is already under his control. God does not need to die to defeat death. He is living, the giver of life and the taker of life. Death is always subservient to God. Yet you make God succumb to it and then play with words to make it defeating death. Interesting
WRONG!
It is both your faith and works that save.
If Noah believed and did not build the ark, he would still not be saved.
As I stated, the minute you remove ‘works’ from the equation, you start drowning, as Noah would have.
12. Even if Jesus had a divine nature [which Socinus denies], his sufferings, which were only in his human nature, would be of no more value than any other human being.
Many biblical expositors say that Christ was composed of a divine and human nature, just as a human being is composed of body and soul. And just as in the case of a human being we acknowledge that some operations are of the body and others of the soul, even so these commentators acknowledge some operations in Christ to be of the human nature and others of the divine nature. Although the same individual, consisting of body and soul, is the one who performs an action, nevertheless the power behind the actions of the body is one thing, and the power of the soul’s actions is another. Many actions or operations of the body, because they are completely peculiar to the body, cannot be influenced at all by the soul or mind. Nor can such operations of the body be regarded as furnished with any greater power than if that same action could take place apart from a thinking soul and mind [e.g., in an animal] . . . .
In the case of Christ’s passion the conclusion is all the more forceful, since while both the body and the soul can suffer, the divine nature cannot suffer at all; only the human nature can suffer. If a blow, inflicted on the body of a human being, has no greater power per se than if that same blow had been inflicted on some beast, it is much more true that whatever Christ suffered could have in itself no greater power than if some mere man had experienced the identical suffering . . . .
The divine nature cannot be injured, troubled ordisturbed by the afflictions of the human nature, nor can it be genuinely involved in such disturbances in any way.
You yourself admit that Christ’s divine nature suffered only through the “communication of attributes.” Apparently your doctrine of satis-faction has not blinded you to such an extent that you cannot clearly see that the divine nature cannot literally suffer. Therefore, that infinite power which you claim is supplied by the divine nature does not literally belong to Christ’s sufferings through the communication of attributes, either (pp. 72-73).
13. Even if the divine nature could suffer, it would not mean that the sufferings are of infinite value.
The question here is whether Christ’s sufferings are of infinite worth. If we consider all of God’s works one by one, we will find that none of them are of infinite worth, however valuable they may be. Even the angels are not of infinite worth, since they have certain ordained ends and limits, from which they derive their value, as it were. It is only in God himself, and in whatever naturally and continually inheres in him (if one can speak in this way about God) that you will find infinite value. Therefore, even if we wish to understand the term “passion” in this context to refer to the very feeling of suffering, we still could not conclude that the divine passions are of infinite value. That is because such sufferings do not inhere in God either continually or naturally (pp. 75-76).
14. Even if the sufferings of Jesus, because of his divinity, were deemed to be of infinite value, they would only pay the penalty owed by one man not all of humanity.
Perhaps we might say that the infinity of time which could not rightly be demanded of us (since our transgressions were only temporary) takes the place of the infinite price which each of us owed but were unable to pay. Assuming that we may be freed from our guilt through payment made by someone else on our behalf, why was not each one of us bound to pay an infinity of price in place of an infinity of time through someone else, to the degree that we could not do so on our own?
In that case, then, the infinite value which is allegedly found in Christ’s sufferings, because the divine nature suffered, could have paid for one person at most. And so, only one of us could have been freed from our liability to eternal death by his power. This conclusion is true if, as it was said, any of us were liable, on our own, to pay an infinite price. Consequently, it would be necessary for there to be just as many prices of infinite value paid as there are people for whom a payment is to be made. Just one infinite price would not be enough if all of us are to be freed from our liability through a transaction based on a payment made through another for what we ourselves were owing.
Now, you might assume, quite contrary to reason, that we should regard the infinite value which accrues to the sufferings of Christ through the divine nature as sufficient to cover all of the infinities of punishment which each of us ought to have paid. But then you must also assume that any suffering of Christ could bring about this same effect. Some of the so-called Scholastic doctors have contrived just such a doctrine. They say that one drop of Christ’s blood would be sufficient—and more than sufficient—to redeem the human race. But if that is true, I fail to see, as I remarked recently, how God could escape the charge of either ignorance or savageness. After all: when he could have given salvation by subjecting Christ to only minimal suffering, he chose instead to inflict a horrible and accursed death on him, which came after serious and innumerable evils (pp. 76-77).
15. Even if the divine nature could suffer (which it can’t), it would not avail to satisfy the penalty for sin because that penalty is owed by humanity (not divinity) and must be paid by the human nature.
Even if the divine nature in Christ could suffer somehow, it could not contribute toward satisfaction. Satisfaction to divine justice had to be made by the human nature alone, not by the divine nature in any way.
This fact would seem to rule out the power which you allege that the divine nature (which itself experienced no suffering) bestowed on the sufferings of the human nature. For if that infinite power does not arise from the human nature but is bestowed on the sufferings by his divine nature, I fail to see how satisfaction could have been made to divine justice. Divine justice not only requires that human nature itself should make satisfaction, but divine justice also utterly demands that the power of satisfaction should come from human nature.
An analogy will clarify this. Suppose the law requires someone to carry a burden on his own shoulders as punishment for some infraction of the law. If the person indeed has the burden placed on his shoulders but at the same time receives help from another person who comes along and lends assistance, either by bearing some of the weight or by offering support in any way, then satisfaction is not made to the law. Likewise, if the human nature indeed suffered but was at the same time continually sustained by the divine nature so that it could bear the punishment, then satisfaction was not made to the divine law, which determined the penalties to be endured by the human nature. Nor will satisfaction have genuinely been made to the law if the one who should bear the burden is helped extraordinarily by consuming some food or drink that produces superhuman strength, or by any other source introduced from without.
The law that decreed the punishment careful-ly takes into account the typical strength of a human being, and metes out punishment to harm the offender as the seriousness of the crime warrants. If the offender’s strength ismiraculously increased, then the offender does not yet feel the affliction that the law intends. Consequently, a fair judge would never allow a guilty person to be strength-ened and supported in this way. But suppose that the transgressor is furnished with ex-traordinary strength that far and away ex-ceeds the strength people typically possess, so that the burden which is heavy for everyone else is not particularly heavy for this individual. Since the force of the burden cannot—or rather, should not—be diminished, the fair judge, complying with the spirit of the law rather than its letter, will increase the burden. The judge will do this because the intent of the law is that the transgressor should experience the weight of the burden that the transgression demands.
…If this human nature is strengthened from a source outside itself, so that it experienced the punishment much less—or even somewhat less—than the law required, the human nature will not have made satisfaction to the law in any way (pp. 79-81).
16. Since the PST holds that Jesus suffered the penalty due to man for his sin, and since the human nature of Jesus did not experience eternal death, then the penalty for man’s sin was not paid.
But your view demands that Christ experienced less punishment than our sins required. The penalty decreed against the transgressions of human nature was eternal death. Even though this human nature ought to have been afflicted with this extremely serious penalty, Christ nevertheless did not experience this in any way—notwithstanding your assertion that he endured all the penalties for our transgressions.
On account of the help of the divine nature,coming from without, the human nature not only failed to experience eternal death but was even raised after paying a penalty for three days. It was raised to eternal life and granted the highest and unspeakable glory and power (pp. 81-82).
17. Even if somehow the death of Jesus did satisfy the penalty owed to the Father, who paid the penalty owed to the Son, since he is also god in this theory and would need to be propitiated as much as the Father would?
Now, if the son made satisfaction to the Father—that is, if he paid what was owed to him—then who will give the son what was owed to him?
I suspect that you will reply as follows: satisfaction made to the Father is also made to the son, since they both have the same will. But such a response is obviously futile. In the case of literal and complete satisfaction, such as we are contemplating here, no consideration is given to the will, but to the matter itself. The punishment is determined and considered according to the rigor of the law, not according to the intent of the one who is to receive satisfaction.
Besides, when the matter itself is considered and the rigor of the law taken seriously, it does not necessarily follow that the son receives satisfaction along with the Father. The son could have paid nothing at all to the Father if whatever is or becomes the possession of one necessarily is in fact the possession of the other. The son always truly possessed whatever the Father receives. And whatever the son has is always in turn the continual property of the Father. Indeed, if what I am sure you yourselves regard as completely false were in fact true, then the son could not have genuinely paid anything to the Father. No payment can truly exist when the one who makes the payment gives the very payment which one necessarily receives immediately by actual right and from the nature of the case (p. 83).
18. If the Son is god, equal to the Father, then the Son cannot pay anything to the Father, since the Father already has what the Son has.
No one could dispute, then, that the son could not give anything to the Father, since whatever the son has also truly belongs to the Father. Christ himself said that all things that were his are the Father’s (Jn. 17:10). If you would have it that one person in the Godhead has something, besides the personal property that the other does not have, then you are dividing rather than distinguishing God’s essence, contrary to your own teaching. Besides, no one would ever think that the person of the son handed over in payment his own personal property to the person of the Father in satisfaction for our sins (pp. 83-84).
19. If the Son shares the divine essence with the Father, and the Son made satisfaction for the sins of mankind to God, then he made satisfaction to himself which is non-sensical.
It assumes that he, to whom satisfaction ought to have been made, will have made satisfaction to himself. Or, it assumes that he gave himself the power to make satisfaction. Or, it assumes that the person making satis-faction was so joined to the person who ought to receive satisfaction that he was possessing absolutely all things in common with him, from which the power of making satisfaction to him could arise.
It is necessary for the person making satisfaction, or the person who helps accomplish satisfaction, to be absolutely distinct from the one who is to receive satisfaction. At the very least, the one making satisfaction should be separate enough to have some possession of his own from which satisfaction can receive or effect power. Common sense itself clearly teaches this, so that if you insist on saying that Christ paid all the penalties for our sins to God on our behalf, you are forced to choose between one of the following conclusions: (1) you must deny that christ himself is eternal god and Jehovah, or (2) you must affirm that the extent to which he was eternal god and jehovah could not coincide with making that payment (p. 85).
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This guy was on to something.
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the heretics of crosstianity provide us good amo. lol lol
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who needs to do thinking when thinking comes ready made lol
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oops , some old words included in the document which should have been excluded.
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https://www.blogger.com/profile/12161943466797514854
it was this guy who actually bassam zawadi used in his debates. most of the quotes about come from pulliams blog. he died 2010
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Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), an Italian theologian, is one of the most important figures of the 16th century Reformation. He took the rejection of Roman Catholic doctrines much further than Martin Luther, John Calvin or any of the other Reformers. He rejected the deity of Christ, the Trinity, and the Satisfaction theories of the atonement. While he is sometimes called a “rationalist” by his opponents, he did not reject the divine origin of the Bible but merely believed that its teachings could not contradict sound reason (See Alan W. Gomes, “Some Observations On The Theological Method Of Faustus Socinus,” Westminster Theological Journal, 70 [2008]: 49-71).
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most likely this guy was influenced by islam.
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brother vaqas, what are you thoughts ?
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@mr.heathcliff
Excellent find brother! i think the next question we should ask ken is if the divine nature experienced the suffering and force him to logically work out the ramifications presented here out in the discussion with him.
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the whole bs that a god needs to “sacrifice ” himself temporarily means that god in christianity keeps hell open for no reason. justice in christian belief does not require a continuous hell if your pagan gods “justice” means a PUNISHMENT for All sins in all years for a few days. its a mockery of justice. hell is kept open for no real reason.
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i find this point very interesting :
An analogy will clarify this. Suppose the law requires someone to carry a burden on his own shoulders as punishment for some infraction of the law. If the person indeed has the burden placed on his shoulders but at the same time receives help from another person who comes along and lends assistance, either by bearing some of the weight or by offering support in any way, then satisfaction is not made to the law. Likewise, if the human nature indeed suffered but was at the same time continually sustained by the divine nature so that it could bear the punishment, then satisfaction was not made to the divine law, which determined the penalties to be endured by the human nature. Nor will satisfaction have genuinely been made to the law if the one who should bear the burden is helped extraordinarily by consuming some food or drink that produces superhuman strength, or by any other source introduced from without.
The law that decreed the punishment careful-ly takes into account the typical strength of a human being, and metes out punishment to harm the offender as the seriousness of the crime warrants. If the offender’s strength ismiraculously increased, then the offender does not yet feel the affliction that the law intends. Consequently, a fair judge would never allow a guilty person to be strength-ened and supported in this way. But suppose that the transgressor is furnished with ex-traordinary strength that far and away ex-ceeds the strength people typically possess, so that the burden which is heavy for everyone else is not particularly heavy for this individual. Since the force of the burden cannot—or rather, should not—be diminished, the fair judge, complying with the spirit of the law rather than its letter, will increase the burden. The judge will do this because the intent of the law is that the transgressor should experience the weight of the burden that the transgression demands.
////
some how it has to make jesus FULLY human in the sense that judas as FULLY human would taste wrath in hell without any divine support or another nature helping judas “bear” the fires of hell.
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Here again is a very old post
i will say again that christian “justice” system is a corruption and a joke, there is absolutely no reason for punishing criminals in hell.
i quote :
why did god kill himself?????
The first problem is that it portrays God as a judge who is in the unpleasant position of having to uphold a law that calls for mandatory sentencing. Sin calls for death, so God’s hands are tied. The obvious flaw here is that the reason sin calls for death is because God chose for that to be the penalty. Or perhaps rather than the penalty being the result of God’s choice, it’s due to God’s nature, God’s will, or God’s character. I don’t care in the slightest which aspect of God is
to blame for this.
The second problem is that the punishment is set up as something
that’s transferable. Punishments aren’t like that. I can’t go to
prison in someone else’s place. I can’t have points put on my driving
record in place of someone else. I can’t die in the place of someone
on death row, even if I and the criminal agree. If any of these
happened, it would be called “corruption.”
A monetary debt analogy is often used to explain how someone could
“pay” a penalty for someone else. However, the analogy is flawed at
precisely the point that the analogy is designed to make. With a
monetary debt, it’s not that the debtor has to pay, the point of the
agreement is that the creditor needs their money back. Someone else
can pay the debt, just as someone else can give money to the debtor
who can then give it to the creditor. This isn’t some special
exception; it simply follows naturally from the fact that wealth is
transferable. Non-monetary penalties aren’t like that. The point is
not that the victim of a crime needs someone, anyone, to serve 20
years for them. The point is that the criminal needs to serve 20
years. Either the criminal “pays” the “price” himself or it goes
unpaid.
The third problem is that Jesus didn’t pay the penalty for sin.
Precisely what are the wages of sin? Death is a fairly clear answer
in ordinary language, but theology has a way of mincing even the
clearest of words. Death could mean the destruction of the body, death could
mean eternal separation from God, death could mean an eternity in
hell, or it could be some combination of these.
Here’s the key question: do the wages of sin include an eternity in
hell? Certainly, the answer must be yes or no, although multiple
positions are encompassed by either answer. If no, then what’s the
point of hell? God just keeps a torture chamber around not because
it’s demanded by justice, but simply because he’s the sort of being
who wants hell to exist. Furthermore, if the wages of sin do not
include hell, the fact that Christians still physically die means
that Jesus’ death didn’t take away the penalty. If yes, then Jesus didn’t
pay the penalty for sin. The penalty for sin includes hell, and Jesus
certainly didn’t go to hell for eternity.
Furthermore, Jesus’ only paid the penalty of physical death in a
legalistic sense. Suppose a judge sentences a convict to be executed,
legally declared dead, and then revived afterward. Assuming
everything goes as planned, this is not capital punishment.
There is no real difference between sentencing someone to death followed by
resurrection and sentencing someone to a painful experience. So it’s
not even clear that Jesus paid the penalty of “death” in any sense of
the word.
My second objection does not claim that God couldn’t have made the
rules differently.
I’m saying that if the rules add up to a punishment, then this
punishment had better be a punishment. If it’s not a punishment, then
don’t call it one, and don’t act like it’s a punishment when thinking
through, say, the justification of hell.
A few nano seconds
Also, you need to argue far more than just that Jesus’ temporary
death is “more significant.” You need to go so far as to say that a few
microseconds on the cross for Jesus equals one person going to hell
for eternity.
And even if a few microseconds/person covers it, why not make the
method of execution swifter, so that it lasts only several seconds?
Is a few nanoseconds of Messianic suffering simply too far below the
going rate on souls? The whole story sounds like a poorly thought out
after-the-fact justification, and not like a cosmically designed
ultimate expression of love.
Jesus suffered horribly and died for the sins of the entire world?
Big deal. My mother suffered for years from cancer and died for
NOTHING. Beat that Jeebus.
I get your analogy, but your missing one aspect. If the hypothetical
judge (who was the father) decided that my punishment was to be
imprisoned for the rest of my life, and to be tortured in horrible
unimaginable ways….and the judges other son stood up and said “I’ll
take his punishment for him”, the judge agrees to this….yet instead
of imprisoning and torturing his son, he just gives him the death
penalty which is over rather quickly????
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here is another very old post exposing william lane craigs
I have no idea why he (and other Christian apologists) equates sins being punished with justice. In many cases, forgiveness for sins is what constitutes true justice. The Christian theological demand for every sin being meted out with punishment strikes me as altogether insensible. That would imply that it would be warranted for all humans to go to hell!
Settling that question isn’t necessary for the conflict at hand. The burden of proof on us is to demonstrate that justice- however it may be defined- doesn’t necessarily entail that every sin needs to be punished. As long as we can demonstrate that there’s reason enough to doubt that conception of justice, WLC’s argument is useless.
Another example of meaningless sophistry: a) God is love. b) God is eternal. c) love requires an object. d) humanity is the object of God’s love. e) but humanity is not eternal. Therefore God must be triune!
I agree with all that u said, but I must take exception to B. I don’t know of any doctrine that necessitates that God love Himself. If it exists in our aqueedah then fine, otherwise to analogize loving our own lives/existence to God, I suspect regenerates the original impasse – that Divine Love requires an object. Self is also an object. My understanding is that God being all loving/merciful as an attribute is an analytic necessity, and exists eternally as ipso facto His being – not a divisible part of it, but it itself. That love, like God himself, is necessary, while the love we feel is but a contingent phantom derivative of His pristine love which He instantiates in us. Qualitatively, they cannot be equated, which is exactly where WLC errs.
Analytic necessity is a necessity of identity, which does not require external factors to explain it, nor any negative comparisons for comprehension and contextualization. Hence, when we mention God, we cannot even begin to conceive of the genus of divinity (not what it entails, which brings to mind synthetic a priori necessities), without instantly conceiving of His attributes, central to which is Love. A Muslim does not say “God is merciful/loving because…”. A Muslim assumes God’s a priori mercy, then proceeds to explicate any given quandary. For this reason, the statement “God is Love” is redundant. With that departure point, WLC’s observations betray the Christian deficiency in encapsulating God’s goodness from a purely rationalist, rather than strictly logical perspective, notwithstanding his logically astute deployment of the moral argument against the theodicy.
Look at the problems WLC opens for himself here. He impugns the Islamic conception of God as being an Isolated Being not in a loving relationship with His creation, whose love is partial, conditional, and hence deficient, unlike the loving Trinity. The Trinity is loving because each ‘personality’ in the Trinity loves the other, therefore this Love is eternal, supposedly bounced back between the three infinitely, since in each other, there is an ‘object’ to love before the creation of humanity. Yet, if asked whether God is imperfect because he cannot feel pain, or despair, or any other emotion etc, they will respond that God’s knowledge of all those emotions is transcendent since he created them all, and since he causes both the cause and the effect of said emotion. The passive human receptacle/recipient only has a limited access to his/her own emotion, they would concede, even though it might appear that he/she ‘owns’ it by virtue of having experienced it so deeply, and that is if we were to ignore other gaping incoherences in classical Lutheran and Aquinan/scholastic ‘ontology’. Yet, somehow, Divine attributes like love seem to escape this classification! Why the partiality there? Thus, to insist that Divine Love requires an object, WLC will have to concede two equally unattractive attributions on the one hand, or another on the other, in a catch 22. A – 1) God needs an object to love, thus His love is predicated on the existence of another, ergo His love is an ‘effect’ that is exercised upon Him. If so, God is not the Cause of all things, or at least must feel Love the same way creation does, in which case Love, as some platonic entity, may be possessed of some autonomous existence beyond God’s power. 2) That object of love must be separate from the lover, and if the Triune conception is to provide relief, then each ‘personality’ in the Godhead must indeed be separate, and hence we’re dealing with a needy God who needs to love another needy God and on to the third and vice versa in order for all three to know what Love is!! If we accept A 2, then we can dispense with WLC’s honestly embarrassing sleight of logic whereby he tries to prevaricate the ‘is’ in “Jesus is God” as being an “is” of predication rather than identity (with the example: “the couch is red” – which is the same as attribution – although I am not sure if it qualifies as ‘ens’ since it certainly doesn’t qualify as ‘esse’). Furthermore he will have to accept that these beings are in fact separate in stasis, and not just personality, hence polytheism. OR, WLC would have to concede that B – If God is not subject to A1&2, then the Christian conception is just as faulty as the caricature of the Muslim conception WLC himself erected – that God is an isolated and self-absorbed Being that is internally focused, since any internal Love would have to be ‘self-love’, or divine narcissism. In effect, he digs a hole that leads him right back to his starting point, and as Shabir Ally astutely pointed out, this is not a “yo mama” tu quoque fallacy, but rather a simple affirmation that if WLC’s charges are a problem, which Muslims do not concede, then the Gospels and Christian scripture in general, from the very words of the all-loving Father and Son, contain the same fatal blemish
a parent who continues to love a defiant son means that the parent has weakness. it seems that craig’s god cant give up loving which seems to me that craigs god is weak too.
Oh and another thing – WLC assigns the similitude of the Son being the father to an ‘is’ of predication, not identity – i.e., ‘the couch is red’. He says that red is not a separate object, but an attribute of the couch. Well then who is an attribute of whom in this honestly enervating rational glut? Is the son an “attribute” of the father? Or vice versa? What about the lonesome Pneuma? How can distinct ‘personalities’ be attributes in the first place, unless he proposes Divine schizophrenia?
By “died for his own death sentence”, are you invoking a) the death sentence that God imposed on Himself, b) the purpose for which death sentence is carried out, I.e., the mark of Cain / Original Sin, or c) both? It seems to me that Christian ontology assigns more “free will” to creation than Islam, since it affirms the autonomous nature of Satan’s and humanity’s sin-blight, through which sin originally occurred, and eventually congealed into the cosmic entity that could only be undone through God’s death. If so, then Christians must choose between two options: a) God is all powerful to forgive sin without so drastic a recourse as cruciFICTION, or b) God has no choice but to kill Himself or His son or both (sigh), because the wages of sin are too high to abide anything less, which means God is not all powerful. Forgiving sins is what in the study of mythos, “Gods” do, so no Christian can hide behind the “God cannot do ungodly things” defense to shield the necessity of Divine martyrdom. In fact, a dying god is far less intuitive and non-analytic.
hahaha… “it is the cross that allows God to be all just, all holy and yet all loving and all forgiving at the same time” (2min30s) .. is the cross part of trinity now? a godhead? What about all powerful? still, those who don’t accept cross, cross don’t allow God to forgive them, so not only God is not all forgiving (towards non-christians) but even His mercy and justice is contingent upon cross..
implied in his argument is, when Allah Swt forgive the sin He is not being just, so he is taking sin in the level of cross, an entity that ”allows/restrict” God from doing something or not doing something… wherreas, God doesn’t depend on sin or cross but sin and cross depend on God’s will to exist (it open the other debate but thats separte case)
I as Muslim, understand it as, Allah Swt says His mercy has presednece over His justice. and the translation thing is also a issue, the most forgiving or all-forgiving… certainly not all-forgiving as even in christianity non-christians aren’t forgiven, similar in Islam and all other religion.
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here is evidence that the christian god , even if all humans WENT to hell, would still NEED to punish himself to APPEASE his “justice”
QUOTE:
6. In saying that the suffering of an innocent makes satisfaction to God’s justice, one is saying that God’s justice requires that someone suffer. It then becomes the suffering itself that somehow satisfies God.
But what shall we say adequate to confront the base representation that it is not punishment, not the suffering of the sinner that is required, but suffering! nay, as if this were not depth enough of baseness to crown all heathenish representation of the ways of God, that the suffering of the innocent is unspeakably preferable in his eyes to that of the wicked, as a make-up for wrong done! nay, again, ‘in the lowest deep a lower deep,’ that the suffering of the holy, the suffering of the loving, the suffering of the eternally and perfectly good, is supremely satisfactory to the pure justice of the Father of spirits! Not all the suffering that could be heaped upon the wicked could buy them a moment’s respite, so little is their suffering a counterpoise to their wrong; in the working of this law of equivalents, this lex talionis, the suffering of millions of years could not equal the sin of a moment, could not pay off one farthing of the deep debt. But so much more valuable, precious, and dear, is the suffering of the innocent, so much more of a satisfaction—observe—to the justice of God, that in return for that suffering another wrong is done: the sinners who deserve and ought to be punished are set free.
I know the root of all that can be said on the subject; the notion is imbedded in the gray matter of my Scotch brains; and if I reject it, I know what I reject. For the love of God my heart rose early against the low invention. Strange that in a Christian land it should need to be said, that to punish the innocent and let the guilty go free is unjust! It wrongs the innocent, the guilty, and God himself. It would be the worst of all wrongs to the guilty to treat them as innocent. The whole device is a piece of spiritual charlatanry—fit only for a fraudulent jail—delivery. If the wicked ought to be punished, it were the worst possible perversion of justice to take a righteous being however strong, and punish him instead of the sinner however weak. To the poorest idea of justice in punishment, it is essential that the sinner, and no other than the sinner, should receive the punishment. The strong being that was willing to bear such punishment might well be regarded as worshipful, but what of the God whose so-called justice he thus defeats? If you say it is justice, not God that demands the suffering, I say justice cannot demand that which is unjust, and the whole thing is unjust. God is absolutely just, and there is no deliverance from his justice, which is one with his mercy. The device is an absurdity—a grotesquely deformed absurdity.
here is evidence that the christian god , even if all humans WENT to hell, would still NEED to punish himself to APPEASE his “justice”
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brother Vaqas, thoughts?
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@mr.heathcliff
Another excellent find brother! It just goes to show how flawed christian theology really is.
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quote:
Not all the suffering that could be heaped upon the wicked could buy them a moment’s respite, so little is their suffering a counterpoise to their wrong; in the working of this law of equivalents, this lex talionis, the suffering of millions of years could not equal the sin of a moment, could not pay off one farthing of the deep debt. But so much more valuable, precious, and dear, is the suffering of the innocent, so much more of a satisfaction—observe—to the justice of God, that in return for that suffering another wrong is done: the sinners who deserve and ought to be punished are set free.
HOW CAN CROSSTIANS DENY WHAT I QUOTE BELOW:
God the Father is re-directing his wrath awayfrom us and turning it instead against god the son.
This is ‘absorption’ only in the sense in whicha self-abuser ‘absorbs’ the knife blade with which he is slicing his own flesh!
So what do we conclude?
Well, it looks like jesus did not die on thecross so that God could forgive us.
Forgiveness had nothing to do with it.
Instead, he died so that god could let off somesteam.
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gore to make crosstians continue in their corrupted and sinful nature.
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