Cold Case Christianity: reply to Wallace's "reasons" to convert to Christianity

Here's my reply to what J. Warner Wallace says in his youtube interview by Lee Strobel:


Wallace at 1:20 asserts that he was skeptical of other Christians during his atheism-days because they couldn't give a reason for their faith.  Unfortunately, the Holy Spirit is not limited to persuading based on empirical facts believed equally by preacher and gainsayers alike.  Peter allegedly got thousands of Christ-hating Jews to repent with a single presumptuous sermon that appealed to no other facts known to such Jews, except that they had murdered Jesus. Acts 2.

Wallace at 1:50 ff says he stayed away from Christianity because in his experience, Christians were either those who couldn't give a reason for their faith, or were criminals whom he was in the process of arresting.  But this is rather stupid...he cannot have been too great of a detective, since Christian books on apologetics have been available for at least the last 100 years. 

Wallace at 3:30 says if you cannot get somebody to say say they saw the criminal do the crime, you don't have a direct-evidence case, you have an indirect evidence case.  While that is true, it is devastating to Wallace who thinks apostle Paul was an "eye"witness of the risen Jesus, yet nowhere in the most explicit accounts of Paul encountering Christ in the NT (Acts 9, 22, 26) is it either expressed or implied that Paul physically saw Jesus.  Paul, Matthew and John are the only sources in the NT with any possibility of coming down to us today in first-hand form.  If we exclude Paul, now we only have TWO possible eyewitness testimonies to the resurrection of Jesus.  We don't know jack shit about Matthew beyond the fact that he was a tax-collector.  If the traditions of the later fathers are correct, Matthew wrote a gospel to leave behind for Jews, which tells us Matthew was a gullible idiot.  How could he possibly figure his simple-minded story of Jesus' virgin birth would suffice to wow the Jews and get them to seriously consider that Jesus really was the messiah?  How hard would it be for such Jews to simply say Mary was lying to cover up adultery or rape, or that the feats Jesus did were not genuinely supernatural?  John's gospel is even worse, coming from somebody whom the Murtatorian Fragment says first wanted the gospel content to simply be the visions the apostles would have after starving for three days.  Methinks you don't have any more accounts of Jesus' resurrection that come down to us today in first-hand form, which means you are forced to make the entire case on hearsay, and I'm sorry, but no right-thinking person will uproot their lifestyle, mode of thinking, and give up friends to make new friends, all because of what 2,000 year old hearsay has to offer.

Wallace at 5:15, uses as an example one of his prior cases where a man was prosecuted in a purely circumstantial case of murder, the jury found him guilty after 4 hours of deliberation, and he later confessed after going to prison.  Unfortunately, Wallace doesn't mention the obvious fact that the more circumstantial the case is, the more likely the the State will fail their burden of demonstrating guilt beyond a reasonable doubt).  But if the NT's only three possible eyewitness accounts of Jesus rising from the dead, don't come down to us in first hand form, or have other equally serious problems, then the WHOLE case for his rising from the dead is circumstantial, and interpreting such weak evidence after 2,000 years of Christians disagreeing on every aspect of it, is an absurdity that has no analogy to modern-day courts, where cold-cases that are eventually tried in courts usually aren't older than about 30 years.

Wallace at 5:50 says the real question is whether your unanswered questions are deal-killers or not.  My answer is "yes", but more specifically, I've gotten enough answers to my questions from the NT data that my skepticism would be justified even if my unanswered questions were answered.


Wallace at 6:35 admits that as an atheist he thought, on the basis of criminal law, that the standard for historical truth was "beyond a possible doubt". 

Wallace was a rather ill-informed atheist. This might help explain why he found the opposite of atheism to be more reasonable.

Cold Case Christianity: Wouldn’t a Loving God Make Sure Everyone Gets to Heaven? Ask a Calvinist

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Wouldn’t a Loving God Make Sure Everyone Gets to Heaven?

Posted: 15 Sep 2017 01:25 AM PDT

289The concept of Hell is daunting for many Christians.

And since Christians are spiritually alive, you cannot blame their hatred of hell on their being spiritually dead, so their view just might reflect a truth of the Holy Spirit that is being mangled by improper bible interpretation or by NT authors who were not inspired by God.   

It’s not pleasant to think our unbelieving loved ones might spend eternity separated from God, regretting their decision forever.

It's even more unpleasant when you remember that the age of accountability is around 7.  That is, under conservative Christian theology, if a 7 year old unbelieving girl goes to church by invitation, learns the true gospel, but doesn't "accept Jesus", and then dies in a car accident on the way home, God roasts this little girl in hell forever.  One Christian singer has responded to the literal hell-fire issue.

Wallace continues:

Several religious traditions seek to avoid the problem by offering a second chance to those who reject God’s gift of forgiveness. They envision a place where rebellious souls can, in the next life, reconsider their choice or earn their way toward heaven; the Catholic tradition offers “Purgatory” and Mormonism describes a “Spirit Prison”. Both seek to offer solutions to commonly asked questions: Wouldn’t a Loving God love all of His creation? Wouldn’t He make sure everyone goes to Heaven (regardless of what they might believe in this life)? A loving God would never limit Heaven to a select few and allow billions of people to suffer in Hell, would He?

Those questions arise from the obvious fact that is taught in the bible: God does not require perfection in a sinner's good works before these can be acceptable to God (Matthew 25:40, in a context where some of the sinners didn't know their good deeds helped Jesus, so many of them likely weren't even Christians either), nor does he require perfection to fully expiate sin (Leviticus 16:30, the cleansing from sin promised here on the basis of animal blood atonement is a full expiation, yet the sacrifice was a mere animal, hence an imperfect attempt to appease the deity works, in the bible, hence, "perfection" is not required of human beings)

Let’s consider, however, the nature of Heaven and the truth about humans. Heaven is the realm of God, and those who ultimately enter into Heaven will be united with God forever.

So apparently, Satan is united with God forever, because he appears in Heaven (Job 1) and his demons sit around God's throne, waiting for God to authorize them to go to earth and force people to sin:

 19 Micaiah said, "Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left.
 20 "The LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?' And one said this while another said that.
 21 "Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.'
 22 "The LORD said to him, 'How?' And he said, 'I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then He said, 'You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.'
 23 "Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you."
 (1 Ki. 22:19-23 NAU)

And apparently they are in heaven "forever" because if they are there now, and if heaven is an eternal "now", then they can no more leave heaven than god can.

Wallace continues:

While that sounds fantastic for some of us, it sounds ridiculous, boring or offensive to many who reject the existence of God (and resist God’s guidelines and obligations).

It also sounds boring to conservative Evangelicals like J. Warner Wallace, who, like most of his kind, would get sick of "going to church" if he did the whole Sunday-service thing every single day.  Staying away from church is what helps give the once-per-week church-going experience a greater feeling of significance.  Nothing different than the drunk who refuses to touch alcohol except for Friday and Saturday nights.  The longer the wait, the sweeter the reward.  The whole idea that you'll just be standing at God's throne, looking at him and ceaselessly praising God for his goodness after you get to heaven, is the result of a warped mentality.

If everyone will eventually end up in Heaven, it is inevitable and compulsory. This type of eternal destination seems contrary to the nature of God and the nature of human “free will”:

And so what you do now is fail to mention that your views about God's sovereignty and human freewill contradict those Christians you call 5-Point Calvinists, who believe people end up in hell because God intended from all eternity that they never have a genuine chance to go to heaven.

A Compulsory Heaven Would Eradicate “Free Will”

People who deny the existence of God relish the fact they have the freedom and ability to do so. Some of these same people, however, argue a loving God would make certain everyone goes to Heaven after they die.

That's because any other definition of "loving" requires us to believe "love" is compatible with a God who "delights" to cause rape and parental cannibalism (Deuteronomy 28:30, 53, 63).  Some things are beyond discussion, whether you make money discussing them or not.

But this kind of “universalism” actually denies human “free will” altogether. If Heaven is the only destination awaiting us (based on the assumption all who die eventually end up there), it is truly compulsory.

So?  God has no problems forcing people to sin in Ezekiel 38:4 - 39:29.  See 38:4, yes, "hook in your jaws" is mere metaphor, but the metaphor clearly cannot be reconciled with your belief that God doesn't force people to sin.  Why is god characterizing his power over human freewill here as "hook in your jaws", if that kind of mental picture implies more use of force than what is actually the case?  If the Gog and Magog armies were of their own freewill set to attack Israel, then it is completely inaccurate to say God used a "hook in their jaws" to cause them to so attack.

In this view of the afterlife, we have no choice about where we end up; everyone is united with God, like it or not.

So?  We send criminals to jail whether they like it or not, despite it being against their freewill.  Apparently, violating a person's freewill can be a good thing.

A compulsory Heaven rejects the importance of human liberty, the very thing those who deny God cherish the most.

Correct, your spiritually alive 5-Point Calvinist brothers and sisters in Christ also reject any importance of human liberty.

By offering (but not forcing) Heaven to those who freely choose to love the One who reigns there, God is actually honoring and respecting our “free will” universally.

True, but there are plenty of bible verses which contradict any idea that god respects human freewill.  Ezekiel 38:4.  Daniel 4:33, God causes a king to become animal-like and eat grass like an ox.  If he can mess up a human mind by force, he can also make it spiritually alive by force.

He is, in fact, treating us with the utmost respect and dignity; something we would expect if He is all-loving in the first place.

Which is nothing but worthless talk given that you have to qualify what you just said to make room for the fact that God allows little kids to be raped all the time.  What fool would say God is treating those kids with the "utmost respect and dignity" by stepping out of the way and allowing them to be raped when he has the most power in creation to protect them from all such?  Inerrantist Christians, that's who.

A Compulsory Heaven Would Embrace the “Unsuited”

In addition to this, a Heaven including anyone and everyone is counter intuitive and un-reasonable. Just think about it for a minute. Most of us would agree: A Holy place of eternal reward is simply not suited for people with a certain kind of character or certain kinds of desires. All of us can think of someone from history who (by our estimate) is unqualified for eternal reward. We may not all agree on who should or shouldn’t be included in such a place, but most of us would hesitate when considering people like Hitler (or perhaps lifelong unrepentant pedophiles with murderous desires) for eternal reward in Heaven. If there is a Heaven, it is surely unsuited for certain kinds of people, and even the most skeptical among us can find someone he or she would place in this category. A compulsory Heaven, including the most vile and dangerous people from history, is not likely what skeptics have in mind when they argue for an all-inclusive final destination.

Then read Daniel 4:33, God is able to change the mental constitution of even sinners who are actively against him.  Nothing prevents God from re-constituting the mentality of atheists after he brings them to heaven so they will find eternal joy in standing around god's throne, ceaselessly signing his praises.

A loving God would make Heaven possible for all of us while respecting the free will desires of some of us.

A loving parent would not respect the freewill choice of a child to ignore the warnings and just sit in the middle of a street while a driven by a drunk barrels toward them.   A loving parent would realistically and rationally conclude that sometimes forcing the loved one against their will is the most loving thing one can do.  Or if you wish to trifle, the parent who has ability and opportunity to take a gun away from a teen daughter intent on killing herself, could only be loving to forcefully wrench the gun out of her grip...not simply stand there and, like God, remind the girl that she is responsible for own choices.

A loving God would reward those of us who have decided to choose Him while dealing justly with those of us who have decided to choose against Him.

And your 5-Point Calvinist brothers and sisters in Christ, who are no less spiritually alive than you, explain that those who reject the gospel are obeying God's secret will that they so reject...which throws your "dealing justly" crap into a tail-spin:  What's just about condemning a sinner for doing what God wanted her to do?  If God secretly willed that a man rob a store, why does God thereafter condemn the man?  Do we find this rationalization completely disagreeable because we are sinners who don't know the whole truth, or because God's real truths are in our hearts causing us to naturally recoil from such rationalizations?

If the latter, what does that say about those genuinely born again spiritually alive Christian brothers and sisters in Christ?  How could they possibly have degraded their Christian thinking so low that it races past even the thinking of your average unbeliever?  Can they be part of the body of Christ while doing more harm with their theology than the average unbeliever does?

For this reason, Heaven simply cannot be the destination of every human who has ever lived. Heaven is not compulsory, but is instead the destiny of those who love the God who reigns there and have accepted His invitation.

If even murderers of Christians such as Saul (Acts 9) can convert on the basis of an experience on the road to Damascus that YOU say left Saul's/Paul's freewill intact, then God could be giving similarly dramatic experiences to unbelievers who are less angry at the gospel than Saul was, with even better odds that they would convert.

Unfortunately, your God has a lot of ways to convince the sinner to convert, ways that would not violate their freewill, and yet he doesn't do shit.  God has no business complaining about how the world rejects his "offers" (Matthew 23:37) if he knows of ways to more pesuasively convince them consistent with their freewill, but refuses to employ these measures.

Now just tell yourself "God's ways are mysterious" and "this excuse will suffice to get me out of any theological jam, even though I don't accept it when employed by heretics to get them out of a theological jam."  

You know, the same type of mental logjam that helps terrorists feel better about flying planes into buildings.

Cold Case Christianity: Why Would God Send Good People to Hell? He doesn't.

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled 

Why Would God Send Good People to Hell?

Posted: 13 Sep 2017 01:22 AM PDT

256I’ve been blogging recenty on the existence and nature of Hell and, unsurprisingly, I’ve received tremendous response from Christians and non-Christians alike (much of it hostile). The topic polarizes believers and unbelievers. Many Christians struggle to correlate God’s mercy with a place of permanent justice, while others prefer to believe God would annihilate rebellious souls rather than assign them to Hell eternally. Non-believers often point to the apparent unfairness of God related to those who either reject Jesus or haven’t heard of Him. After all, there are millions of good people in the world who are not Christians. Is it fair for God to penalize people who are otherwise good? A good God would not send good people to Hell, would He?

That depends on your definition of "good".  If you can tell yourself with any seriousness that the God of Deuteronomy 28:63 who "delights" to cause rape (v. 30) and parental cannibalism (v. 53) is "good", then your morality is so far out of whack that it is more than likely that you are either psychologically beyond any rational discussion, or, you make too much money peddling your wares to give a fuck about the minds you are messing up with each sale.

Here’s the good news: God will not send good people to Hell; of this we can be sure.

But God's "delighting" to cause rape and parental cannibalism for those who disobey him, seems to invoke more the barbaric mindset of the ancient people that wrote this garbage, and not the actual views of an infinite creator whom you think hates rape and cannibalism just as much as you do.

But, here’s the bad news: “good” people are far rarer than most skeptics (and many Christians) are willing to admit. The Christian worldview describes the true nature of humans and the incredible sovereignty of God, and once these truths are understood, no one will expect their own “goodness” to merit Heaven:

Yeah, you aren't a real Christian until you confess that the baby born to David and Bathsheba "deserved" to be tormented with a terrible fatal illness for 7 days before finally dying:

 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.  (2 Sam. 12:15-18 NAU)

Wallace continues:

People (By Their Very Nature) Are Not “Good”

We don’t have to teach our infants to be selfish, impatient, rude and self-serving; infants must be taught just the opposite.

Which implies they aren't made in the image of God, since they only reason they are moral when they grow up is because they are taught to suppress these primal urges, not because any law of God is in their heart.  Well gee, animals can be taught to suppress their primal urges too, yet you cannot allow animals to be made in the image of God.  Your problem.

We don’t come into the world equipped automatically with sacrificial “goodness”. We must be taught how to love, how to think beyond our own needs and desires, how to share and how to appreciate others. The daily news headlines are filled with examples of young men and women who were not taught how to love and respect the law. When young people are not nurtured and trained in this way, they default back to their innate nature.

And so this innate nature wasn't created in the image of God, unless you say God wants criminals to do what they do, as your brothers and sister in Christ called "Calvinists" say.

And if we are honest with ourselves, each of us must admit we often have difficulty controlling our anger, our lust, or our pride.

Yes, the way Samuel did when he used a sword to hack King Agag to pieces:

  33 But Samuel said, "As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women." And Samuel hewed Agag to pieces before the LORD at Gilgal. (1 Sam. 15:33 NAU)

Wallace continues:

We are inherently fallen creatures, trying our best to constrain our fallen nature. The Bible simply recognizes the innately fallen nature of humans (as described in Romans 3:10-18).

It also recognizes that these humans can obey the law to the point of pleasing God:

 5 In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah; and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.
 6 They were both righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord. (Lk. 1:5-6 NAU)

Feel free to twist yourself into a theological pretzel trying to explain how imperfect sinners can be righteous in the sight of God due to their obedience to his commands (Luke 1:6), while also insisting that we cannot be righteous in god's sight by obeying his commands (Romans 3:20).

Wallace continues:

Heaven (By Its Very Nature) Is “Perfect”

Can't be too perfect:  it is a place where God enables demons, who are otherwise sitting around God's throne (!?) to go down to earth and cause people to tell lies:

19 Micaiah said, "Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left.
 20 "The LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?' And one said this while another said that.
 21 "Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.'
 22 "The LORD said to him, 'How?' And he said, 'I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then He said, 'You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.'
 23 "Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you."    (1 Ki. 22:19-23 NAU)

Wallac continues:

If there is a God, He is responsible for creating everything in the Universe.

No, that's your out-of-control monotheism.  Many scholars see in Deut. 32 a distinction between a being called Elohim and a being called Jehovah.

  8 "When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, When He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples According to the number of the sons of Israel.
 9 "For the LORD'S portion is His people; Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance. (Deut. 32:8-9 NAU)

 See The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God. Some Christian commentaries admit the text was corrupted intentionally because it gave the appeareance of supporting henotheism, at least:

...I emend the text here following the reading בני אלהים, “sons of God,” found in 4QDeut^j and LXX ἀγγέλων [or ὑιῶν] θεοῦ, “angels [or sons] of God,” to read “according to the number of the sons of God.” The Tg. adds “seventy” after “the number,” connecting the text with the seventy nations of the Table of Nations in Gen 10 and the song of Jacob in Gen 46:27 (cf. 10:22). It is easy to understand the change that was made in MT to remove a text that seems to suggest the existence of other gods.

Christensen, D. L. (2002). Vol. 6B: Word Biblical Commentary : Deuteronomy 21:10-34:12. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 796). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

 Wallace continues:

This means that God created matter from non-matter

Creation from nothing or creation ex nihilo involves logical contradiction, and is on the level of talking about animals just appearing in your living room out of thin air.  From nothing, nothing derives.  The only logical way God could get something from nothing is if God added something to the nothingness first. God can no more cause zero to produce 4 acorns, than he can cause 5+5 to equal 83.

and life from non-life. If this is true, God has incredible, infinite, and unspeakable power.

So apparently you are more interested in your generalizing dogmas than you are in actual scripture, since many bible texts are logically incompatible with God having infinite power:

 19 Now the LORD was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country; but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had iron chariots. (Jdg. 1:19 NAU)

 Inerrantist Christian scholars cannot explain why a chariot being made or iron could possibly thwart God's purposes for Judah, and they resort to speculation, a thing inerrantists forbid skeptics from doing:

In our text (v. 18a) the narrator explicitly attributes Judah’s successes in the hill country not to equivalent military power but to the presence of Yahweh. Then why could they not take the lowland? Why is Yahweh’s presence canceled by superior military technology? The narrator does not say, but presumably the Judahites experienced a failure of nerve at this point, or they were satisfied with their past achievements.

Block, D. I. (2001, c1999). Vol. 6: Judges, Ruth (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 100). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 Wallace continues:

With muscle like that, God surely has the power to eliminate imperfection.

except in the case of Judges 1:19.  He also grieves his own choice to create mankind in Genesis 6:6-7.  Slow down and don't be so damn quick to view God as magic genie in the sky who is just omni-this and omni-that.

This is why, as Christians, we believe that God is perfect; He has the ability to eliminate imperfection.

Perfection logically cannot create imperfection. God cannot create that which he doesn't already possess.  So if he created mankind, it was not logically possible for man to have "freedom" to disobey god...except in the Calvinist sense of our sins disobeying the revealed will of God but yet still conforming to and obeying God's secret will, in which case the disobedience toward God is only in appearance, not reality.

The Christian God is not a “good God” after all. He is a “perfect God”. His standard is not “goodness”, it is “perfection”.

It doesn't matter how many bible verses you can cite to justify that, the standard for salvation Jesus taught in Matthew 25 is decidedly lower:

31 "But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.
 32 "All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;
 33 and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left.
 34 "Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
 35 'For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in;
 36 naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.'
 37 "Then the righteous will answer Him, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink?
 38 'And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You?
 39 'When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?'
 40 "The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.'
 41 "Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;
 42 for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink;
 43 I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.'
 44 "Then they themselves also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?'
 45 "Then He will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.'
 46 "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
 (Matt. 25:31-46 NAU)

 Not only is there no mention of "faith" here, but many of those whom Jesus says go to heaven because of their charitable works, likely weren't even Christians at all, since Jesus describes them as not realizing during their earthly life that they were helping Jesus when they helped the homeless and fed the hungry (v. 37).  Jesus would hardly base salvation on a sinner's doing of good works, as he does here, if "perfection" were the true standard.

And in context, Matthew 25:14 gives the parable of the talents as an example of what God's judgment is like; and while in that parable the person who did nothing with the master's talents is disciplined, the sinner who tried to do something good with their talents were rewarded despite the philosophical trifle that their being sinners means they probably did the good only via selfish motive.

The real question that each of us has to ask ourselves is not “Are we good?”, but “Are we perfect?”

A question that can be disregarded now that we've replaced your fabulous ultimately Utopian god with a god that is slightly more scriptural.

Can any of us answer in the affirmative here?

We don't need to answer your question, a question posed in scripture is far more conducive:

 8 He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God? (Mic. 6:8 NAU)

 God rewards Solomon with great riches solely because Solomon prudently answered one of God's questions:

 7 In that night God appeared to Solomon and said to him, "Ask what I shall give you."
 8 Solomon said to God, "You have dealt with my father David with great lovingkindness, and have made me king in his place.
 9 "Now, O LORD God, Your promise to my father David is fulfilled, for You have made me king over a people as numerous as the dust of the earth.
 10 "Give me now wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people, for who can rule this great people of Yours?"
 11 God said to Solomon, "Because you had this in mind, and did not ask for riches, wealth or honor, or the life of those who hate you, nor have you even asked for long life, but you have asked for yourself wisdom and knowledge that you may rule My people over whom I have made you king,
 12 wisdom and knowledge have been granted to you. And I will give you riches and wealth and honor, such as none of the kings who were before you has possessed nor those who will come after you." (2 Chr. 1:7-12 NAU)

 Some would argue that God was stupid for giving such wealth to a sinner whom God knew or should have known would foolishly squander it with idolatry-promoting events and works, as Solomon did.

Others would argue that if God is rewarding Solomon's imperfect answer, then God's standard for sinners probably isn't perfection.

Even if we reject the teaching of the Bible, but accept the possibility that there may be an all-powerful God, we must acknowledge that His standard will be perfection and that we will ultimately fall short of this standard.

You are high on crack, there is nothing about god outside the bible, that would argue this God's standard for human beings is some type perfection unattainable by purely naturalistic efforts.   On the contrary, the argument from natural theology would counsel that the God who made us, knows perfectly well our limits, and whatever standard he might have imposed, is likely a standard most responsible mature adults are capable of meeting.  You think Moses was inspired by God to write the Pentaeuch, and if so, then when he says obeying all of God's commands isn't too difficult, he is contradicting your evangelical presupposition that nobody can obey all of God's laws without being perfect:

 10 if you obey the LORD your God to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this book of the law, if you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and soul.
 11 "For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. (Deut. 30:10-11 NAU)

 You get the same idea in the NT, namely, that sinners not only can, but often DO become righteous in the sight of God because of how much they obey his commands:

 5 In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah; and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.
 6 They were both righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord. (Lk. 1:5-6 NAU)

Wallace continues:

God doesn’t send good people to Hell.

But he does take "delight" in causing rape and parental cannibalism, Deuteronomy 28:30, 53, 63.

In order to consider ourselves “good”, we typically have to overlook much of what we think about and a lot of what we have done.

The way God does in Matthew 25:40, no discussion about whether they did their acts of charity with "perfect" motives or not, they are just allowed into heaven because they performed acts of charity:

Conversely, God doesn’t send good people to Heaven either.

The people who do good, including those who don't know Christian theology, go to heaven according to Matthew 25, supra.

“Good” is simply not “good enough” in light of Heaven’s perfection.

Under the doctrine of original sin, Abraham's trust in God cannot have been "perfect" trust or belief, as original sin would taint each and every motive we have to do anything or believe anything, yet Paul still taught that it was this act of belief by Abe upon which God justified Abe:

 9 Is this blessing then on the circumcised, or on the uncircumcised also? For we say, "FAITH WAS CREDITED TO ABRAHAM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS." (Rom. 4:9 NAU)

Jesus responds positively to an imperfect form of faith:

 23 And Jesus said to him, "'If You can?' All things are possible to him who believes."
 24 Immediately the boy's father cried out and said, "I do believe; help my unbelief."
 25 When Jesus saw that a crowd was rapidly gathering, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, "You deaf and mute spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again."
 26 After crying out and throwing him into terrible convulsions, it came out; and the boy became so much like a corpse that most of them said, "He is dead!"
 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and raised him; and he got up. (Mk. 9:23-27 NAU)

Peter's motive for asking Jesus to save him, cannot have been a motive completely free from the taint of sin and selfishness, yet Jesus still finds the request sufficient to justify granting:

 30 But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!"
 31 Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" (Matt. 14:30-31 NAU)

If Jesus was a modern day Conservative Evangelical Inerrantist, he would have said to the father of the demon-possessed boy "you were born in sin, all of your motives to action are based in sin, you do not want me to heal this boy because of pure motive, but because you desire an easier life.  Didn't you know that my strength is made perfect in weakness (2nd Cor, 12:9)?  This messenger of Satan shall continue to afflict you, to teach you to be humble (Id)!  Go forth and praise God that you were counted worthy to suffer shame for my name! (Acts 5:41). Fuck you.

A loving God rescues creatures who are “practically” imperfect by offering us the free gift of forgiveness (Romans 6:23).

Sure is funny that you run immediately to Paul and not what Jesus had to say about salvation.  According to one gospel author, the "gospel" consists of the words and deeds of the historical Jesus (Matthew 28:20) and therefore, not the theological ravings of a rich duplicitous philosopher who wants to make his own ramblings more the center of attention than the words and deeds of Jesus.

When we accept this offer, we become “positionally” perfect (Hebrews 10:14) by clothing ourselves in the perfection of Jesus.

Something Jesus explicitly contradicted when he made a sinner's own acts the basis  upon which they enter the kingdom of heaven, in a context nowhere expressing or implying a righteousness imputed to them from Christ:

 17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
 18 "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
 19 "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
 20 "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5:17-20 NAU)

Because Jesus goes on to preach the Sermon on the Mount and show how obeying the spirit of the Law is equally as important as obeying the letter, the gospel Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount cannot be reconciled with a gospel that says salvation is a free gift.  Sorry, but you don't enter the Kingdom of Heaven if your own moral righteousness doesn't meet the standard Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount.

Wallace's belief that God's standard is too high for sinful humans to meet, overlooks God's equally magical genie-ability to just get "rid" of sin by unspecified means, such as his getting rid of David's adultery with Bathsheba, and the death penalty that normally attached:

 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD."
And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die."
(2 Sam. 12:13 NAU)

Gee, can the God of evangelical Christians really just get rid of a sin and the consequence demanded for it in the law, so easily?  If so, Wallace needs to worry more about what the bible actually teaches, and less about making his idealism sound good to Christians who already hold most of his presuppositions.

Cold Case Christianity: Why Is the Penalty of Hell the Same, Even Though People Are So Different?

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Why Is the Penalty of Hell the Same, Even Though People Are So Different?

Posted: 08 Sep 2017 01:20 AM PDT

257The notion of Hell is incredibly controversial, even among Christians.

Which means you need to be god-damn sure you aren't spouting heresy before you tell the world that Hell is a literal place of literal endless torment.  You aren't going to gain that level of certainty in light of the fact that most Christian scholars provide convincing biblical arguments that the NT concept of Hell is mere metaphor.

Many believers struggle to reconcile the mercy and grace of God with the existence of Hell and have tried to redefine Hell in an effort to remove what they perceive as offensive. For some, Hell seems too inequitable to be possible. Would a Loving God punish everyone in the same way?

God himself prescribes different level of punishment for different offenses in the bible, for example death for adultery (Lev. 20:10), but when the adultery is between a slave owner and his slave-girl who was previously pledged or betrothed to another man, then the death penalty doesn't apply "because she isn't free".  Lev. 19:20-22.

  10 'If there is a man who commits adultery with another man's wife, one who commits adultery with his friend's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. (Lev. 20:10 NAU)

  20 'Now if a man lies carnally with a woman who is a slave acquired for another man, but who has in no way been redeemed nor given her freedom, there shall be punishment; they shall not, however, be put to death, because she was not free.
 21 'He shall bring his guilt offering to the LORD to the doorway of the tent of meeting, a ram for a guilt offering.
 22 'The priest shall also make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering before the LORD for his sin which he has committed, and the sin which he has committed will be forgiven him.     (Lev. 19:20-22 NAU)

If God never changes, Mal. 3:6, then his sense of justice also doesn't change, so that if NT Hell lumps every lost sinner together in a mindlessly screaming fiery mass, it is inconsistent with other biblical teaching.  God's rescinding the death penalty for adultery in the specific case of the slave girl, supra, makes it clear that James 2:10 is wrong for saying those who offend in one point of the law are guilty of all.  If God seriously thought the slave owner who committed adultery with the slave girl was therefore also guilty of death-deserving blasphemy, God would not have rescinded the death penalty in the case of the slave-girl.

Sorry, Wallace, but you need to learn how stupid it is to say that the guy who is convincted of jay-walking is viewed by God as guilty of rape, child molestation, murder, arson and spousal battery.  Such stupidity provokes interesting philosophical conversation, but doesn't amount to jack shit for practical reality.  How long would you live in a convervative Christian county where the law said that if you are convicted of theft, you will be viewed by the judged as guilty also of kidnapping?  If James 2:10 is so stupid that it doesn't even work in real life, what makes you think it remains a valid theological truth?

Wallace continues:

Isn’t it unfair to send someone like Gandhi to Hell (simply because he was not a Christian) alongside someone like Hitler (who committed unspeakable atrocities)?

Yes, and biblical arguments could be made that your ultra-fundie view that gospel rejectors go to hell, is false.  though I doubt you have the courage or conviction to contact me to find out how you've been missing the forest for the trees your whole Christian life.  Contacting me would not promote sales of your book, so why would you bother?

A reasonable and just God would not be the source of such inequitable punishment, would He?

Makes sense enough on a practical level, but any Christian who has trouble with God's love appearing so unloving, is probably talking from biblical ignorance.  Your God not only causes rape to befall women who disobey him (Deut. 28:30), he takes the same "delight" in causing such rape that he would take in causing prosperity to those who obey him (v. 63).  Let's first resolve the question of why you so blindly believe the bible's statements that God is loving in the first place, when it is a perfect absurdity to say the person who can "delight" to cause rape, is "loving".

In one sense, it is true: All sin has the same consequence when measured against God’s perfection.

Not if the OT has anything to say about it.  God thinks adultery with a free woman deserves death, but not adultery with a slave-girl.  God would hardly demand less punishment in the latter case if he seriously believed both acts "deserved" the same degree of punishment.

Lying is just as significant as murder when it comes to assessing our imperfection relative to the perfection of God.

And only a jailhouse lawyer for God would insist that the man who exaggerates his bowling abilities to his friends (lying) has committed a wrong equally as significant as the man who rapes a child to death.  Fuck you.

Even the slightest sin demonstrates our inadequacy and need for a Savior.

Your spiritually alive and authentically born again 5-Point Calvinist brothers and sisters in the Christian faith would explain that the ultimate reason we sin is because God wanted us to. 

But make no mistake about it; some sins are clearly more heinous than others in the eyes of God (John 19:11-12).

You just contradicted yourself, since you just said "Lying is just as significant as murder when it comes to assessing our imperfection relative to the perfection of God."  How can murder be more heinous in God's eyes than lying, if in God's eyes they are of equally significant sin?

As a result, the God of the Bible equitably prescribes punishments for wrongdoing on earth and in the next life:

Some would argue that the degree of heat one is tormented by in hell hardly matters, since it at minimum must be a place where everybody weeps and gnashes their teeth.  I've often asked fundies to explain how hell can be so mindlessly awful as certain biblical descriptions say, if at the same time it is sufficiently tolerable to allow the rich man to have an intelligent conversation with Abraham as he does in Luke 16.  You cannot hold intelligent conversations with another person when you are on fire.

There Are Degrees of Punishment on Earth

When God gave the Law to Moses, He made one thing very clear: Some sins are more punishable than others. God assigned different penalties to different crimes, based on the offensive or heinous nature of the sin itself.

For example, it is because the slave girl is not free, that the man who commits adultery with her escapes the death penalty otherwise required for adultery, thus indicating God views the worth of slave-girls exactly the way most other slave-owners did in those days:  her lesser social status proved her lesser ultimate worth.

The Mosaic Law is filled with measured responses to sin. God prescribed punishments appropriate to the crimes in question (Exodus 21:23-25). In fact, the Mosaic Law carefully assured that each offender would be punished “according to his guilt” and no more (Deuteronomy 25:2-3).

Which contradicts James 2:10 and its statement that offending any part of the law makes one guilty of offending everything else in the law.

The Mosaic Law is evidence of two things. First, while any sin may separate us from the perfection of God, some sins are unmistakably more offensive than others. Second, God prescribes different punishments for different crimes based on the severity of each crime.

And it is for this reason that the the harshest possible penalty of being burned alive is required of the girl who has pre-marital sex (Lev. 21:9).  Some would argue that murder, rape of a child, and other crimes are far worse than pre-marital sex. 

There Are Degrees of Punishment in Hell

In a similar way, God applies this principle to the next life, prescribing a variety of punishments in eternity corresponding to the crimes committed in this life (Revelation 20:12-13). This is most apparent in Jesus’ teaching on the “Wicked Servant” (Luke 12:42-48). In a straight forward interpretation of this parable, those who reject the teaching and calling of God will be harshly punished, but those who have less clarity on what can be known about God (“the one who did not know it”) will be punished with less severity. There are degrees of punishment in Hell; God is equitable and fair when it comes to the destiny of those who have rejected Him.

So God punishes also the one who "did not know it"?   How cruel and unloving is it to punish those who didn't know what they were doing was wrong?  Do you as a Christian wish to rescind the laws that protect mentally ill people from trial, on the ground that because God subjects the innocently ignorant to punishment, we should too?

By the way, Jesus concludes that parable by saying his purpose was to cast fire on the earth:

42 And the Lord said, "Who then is the faithful and sensible steward, whom his master will put in charge of his servants, to give them their rations at the proper time?
 43 "Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes.
 44 "Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions.
 45 "But if that slave says in his heart, 'My master will be a long time in coming,' and begins to beat the slaves, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk;
 46 the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and assign him a place with the unbelievers.
 47 "And that slave who knew his master's will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes,
 48 but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will receive but few. From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.
 49 "I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled!
 50 "But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is accomplished!
 51 "Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; (Lk. 12:42-51 NAU)

The only way you can say this parable speaks of hell, is if you agree that hell will take place on earth.  But you don't believe that.  You agree with most other fundies that the currently existing hell that sinners are now in, is not "upon the earth".  So there is objective and legitimate room to object that you are taking what Jesus said out of context when you use it to promote your idea of hell as this other-dimensional place of suffering.  Jesus clearly thought the fire he would use in punishment would be sent "upon the earth".

Those who know more about God are held to a higher degree of accountability and responsibility. This is clear from the words of Jesus Himself (John 9:41, John 15:22-24)

Clement of Alexandria asserted that John didn't wish to repeat the "external facts" which he knew were covered in the previous Synoptic gospels, and therefore wrote a "spiritual" gospel, and the contrast requires this spirituality to constitute something different than "external facts".  So since directly quoting what the historical Jesus really said would qualify under "external facts", John's intent to write a "spiritual" gospels more than likely means his quotes of Jesus aren't always what the historical Jesus actually said, but John's own theological reflections being represented AS IF Jesus had actually said them.

and the authors of the New Testament (Hebrews 10:28-19).

Christian scholars are sufficiently divided on who authored Hebrews that skeptics are rational to toss it aside until author-identification makes a credibility assessment possible.

But God has also given us enough information in the natural world (Romans 1:18-20) and in our own moral intuitions (Romans 2:14-15) to conclude He exists.

Did the natural moral intuitions of the legislators for 19th century Delaware tell them anything about God as they concluded that the age of sexual consent should be seven years old?

For this reason, no one holds a legitimate excuse excluding them from the justice of God.

I don't serve sadistic lunatics who not only cause rape (Deut. 28:30) but who take delight to cause rape (v. 63).  I'll wear my eternal misery in hell as a badge of honor.

The Bible is clear: While all who reject God will be separated from Him for eternity,

thus contradicting the bible's other teaching that God is omnipresent or present everywhere.

not all will suffer the same form of punishment.

thus contradicting the teaching in James 2:10 that God thinks being guilty of murder proves one guilty of adultery too.

The God of the Bible is equitable and fair, loving and just.

As demonstrated by his choice to cause an infant to suffer the torment of some unspecified terrible sickness for 7 days, as opposed to just killing him quickly:

 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.  (2 Sam. 12:15-18 NAU)

Your god cannot just mercifully kill an innocent infant quickly (and too many Christian theologians, perfectly well aware of Romans 5, nevertheless deny the doctrine of original sin that you will predictably hide behind to justify your predictable  response that all infants "deserve" to be killed, you fucking scumbag), your god has to torture this baby for seven days with a terrible sickness first, as if the creator of the universe could not possibly imagine any better way to get his point across to David and Bathsheba and the rest of the onlookers except to torture this baby for 7 days.

And nevermind that if God's "taking away" David's sin was sufficient to exempt David personally from the death penalty required for adultery, then there was no sin left to punish anybody for, such as the torment of a 7-day fatal illness God "struck" the baby with.

Nevermind that David was King, and therefore Nathan's very quick assurance that God made an exception to the death-penalty rule for adultery in the case of David, appears to be politically motivated

Nevermind that if in fact God really did successfully exempt David from the death penalty otherwise normally required for adultery, then apparently there is nothing about God's nature that "requires" him to punish sin, and therefore, God is not sending people to hell because "his righteous nature demands it", he is doing so in spite of the fact that it would be just as consistent with justice for him to exempt them from hell the way he exempted David from death.  Stop telling the world God's righteous nature "requires" God to punish sin.  God apparently can also just as easily spare a sinner from punishmen by a simple wave of his magic wand.  He punishes by voluntary choice, not any necessity.


And yet you think skeptics irrational when they laugh at the idea of your god's sense of justice?  If so, you must think winning a debate with me would be very easy.  So respond already and let's get started.  Or continue confining your frightened ass to just the narrow market of fundie Christians who already agree with you on 99% of what you say, thus showing by your actions that you care more about selling books than you care about being correct in what you believe.  You risk losing book sales if you spar with me, so you probably just "don't have the time" to engage with skeptic who use frigthtening words like "fucking scumbag", eh?  Yeah, that's believable.

He provides a pardon to everyone (through Jesus’ work on the cross) and fairly deals with those who have rejected the pardon.

 Except that Luke 12:48 indicates God will also send to hell, at least under your interpretation, even people who did not know the Master's will, which sort of makes it laughable to say your God is in the least bit "fair".  The big mystery is why you take the doctrine of God sending innocently ignorant people to hell, and do what comes naturally:  become a 5-Point Calvinist.

Might your God believe a particular girl will reach the age of accountability at 7 years old? 

If so, where would God send her if she died one day after going to church and rejecting the gospel invitation?

Does your god send 7 year old girls to hell?  or is this the part where you save face by appeal to God's mysterious ways, you know, that excuse you never find the least bit convincing yourself when you hear cultists and heretics employing to the same end?