Demolishing Triablogue: Steve Hays tries to justify biblical morality

This is my reply to an article by aoologist Steve Hays entitled

Moral skepticism and Scripture

From an exchange I had with an unbeliever on Facebook:

The answers you give curiously avoid quoting those parts of the bible where God takes personal responsibility for death and evil, therefore, your attempts to explain alleged evil as the result of natural earthly forces, constitutes dishonesty on your part.  You are a Calvinist.  If you believe God secretly willed for Hitler to massacre the Jews, and secretly willed for pedophiles to rape small children, you need to just come out and admit that yes, that is the way your god is.  Otherwise, the atheist to whom you give your naturalistic answers might get a false impression about how unspeakably nasty your theology actually is.

I have no theory as to why God predestines a particular hurricane to strike a particular area. In general, hurricanes are natural forces which restore the balance of nature.

If God is all-powerful, he doesn't need to use hurricanes, he can simply cause humans to desire whatever he wants them to desire with his magic wand called irresistible grace, a presupposition you Calvinists are bound to accept. 

It's not as if hurricanes are targeted to hit population centers. That's an incidental consequence of humans living in hurricane zones.

Then you aren't a very good Calvinist, since under Calvinism, the only reason anybody ever found themselves at the mercy of a hurricane, or desired to move to or stay in a location that was eventually hit by a hurricane (such as Houston Texas most recently), is because God predestined or foreordainted them to do so.  And further under Calvinism, they had no chance of successfully resisting making the movement and choices they were predestined to make.  You aren't a Molinist, are you?

In general, humans die in natural disasters as a side-effect of living where natural disasters happen to strike.

But the reason they die in natural disasters is because that was the method God used to kill them, as required by bible passages in which God claims personal responsibility for all death and murder:

 39 'See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand. (Deut. 32:39 NAU)

Hays continues:

God created a world with natural mechanisms.
And everything happens according to his master plan for the world. In that respect, even bad things happen for a good reason. And this life is not the ultimate frame of reference.

Your skeptical opponent believes none of those propositions, so why are you using them?  Whoops, I forgot...it is because God predestined you to use them.

    When men fight with one another and the wife of the one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts, 12 then you shall cut off her hand. Your eye shall have no pity (Deut 25:11-12).
i) To begin with, who started the fight? Who threw the first punch? Who's at fault?

 You shall not add to the word of the Lord.  See Deut. 4:2 and 12:32.  If the law doesn't speak about who started the fight, neither should you.  So you only do so because you wish to make the Calvinist god look more politically correct in the eyes of modern people whose individualist sense of justice naturally prompts them to ask such clarifying questions. 

ii) You also disregard the nature of the offense. Grabbing the genitals risks rendering the man impotent. A harsh penalty for a harsh crime. The penalty is completely avoidable by avoiding the crime.

But in Calvinism, if a woman does grab a man's testicles to help her husband win a fight, God predestined her to do this.  So if God wants a woman's hand cut off for grabbing another man's testicles, God desires to horribly harm and maim a woman for successfully carrying out the divine will.  Your distinguishing between God's revealed will and his secret will, doesn't get rid of the moral atrocity just described.  Even assuming Calvinism to be the most biblically justified form of modern Christianity, God is still horribly and shockingly cruel for inflicting pain and misery upon people simply because they successfully carried out his true will.


What would be wrong with making this a federal law for America today, especially since you believe it was a harsh crime?  If God wanted women who grab a man's testicles during a fight to have their hand cut off back in the days of Moses, and if God doesn't chance, what makes you think God today thinks a less harsh penalty is somehow "better" today?  Or did God predestine you to avoid answering this?

    18 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, 19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, 20 and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21 Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear (Deut 21:18-21).

 

i) I didn't say if that was the thing to do now. Not everything that God commanded ancient Israel to do is a direct command to or for Christians.

But adultery in its original OT context was to be answered with the death penalty, Leviticus 20:10.  If your NT somehow imposes the prohibition against adultery on Christians, but not the death penalty that originally attached to it, I'd say that means the NT authors are guilty of picking and choosing in arbitrary fashion what they please from the OT.   You appeal to the authority of Jesus and the NT writers to overcome the picking-and-choosing criticism?  I have good reasons to view Jesus as a non-divine human revolutionary, and Paul as an intentional perverter of what Jesus said.  You don't do Calvinist apologetics to convince anybody at all except other Calvinists, that's for sure.

ii) You fail to grasp the nature of the Mosaic penalty structure. As various scholars contend, the death penalty was generally a maximum penalty, not a mandatory penalty (first degree murder might be a notable exception).

You shall not add to the word of the Lord, Deut. 4:2, 12:32, which is exactly what you are doing when you try to get away from the plain meaning of the text via "scholars".   If the bible doesn't express or imply that the given law/penalty has exceptions, then you shall not add to the word of the Lord, it's real simple.

ii) The fact that the legislator invokes the purgation formula in the case of the incorrigible son indicates to me that in this case (and other cases in kind), the penalty is indexed to the cultic holiness of Israel. If so, that doesn't carry over into the new covenant era.

The Jews of the first century apparently reached for rocks to stone Jesus to death for blasphemy, apparently because, despite living in the first century, they nevertheless thought that the judicial penalty demanded in the Pentateuch (death, Lev. 24:16) applied in their own day too.  So if NT authors and Jesus clearly taught such judicial penalties no longer applied, there is excellent biblical and historical reasons for saying they got it wrong.  But to discuss that in depth would be to assume the bible gives the "correct" answer, when in fact as a skeptic I believe the biblical teaching on "new covenant" is hopelessly confused if not contradictory to the theocratic regime of the Mosaic legislation.  I would be pointing out that "we know" bears cannot talk in English, and you'd be responding that Goldilocks was a fine little girl whose testimony cannot be impeached.  But I'll toy with you further for the benefit of the reader who might think you could possibly win such debate if you carped long enough about it.

By contrast, the penalty for murder antedates the Mosaic covenant. The penalty for murder is indexed to the image of God rather than holy land.

Which sounds like excellent reason to believe that because sinners in the New Covenant are no less made in the image of God than Moses was, the death penalty required for marring God's image under the Old Covenant still applies under the New. 

Deuteronomy has a refrain about "purging evil" (Cf. Deut 13:5/6; 17:7,12; 19:13,19; 21:9,21; 22:21-22,24; 24:7). A dramatic illustration is the ceremony to cleanse the land of blood guilt (21:1-9). These penalties operate within a framework of ritual holiness, where the land is culturally holy, and transgressions defile the land, necessitating punitive actions that reconsecrate the land. But that principle doesn't carry over into the new covenant, because the holy land category is defunct.

On the contrary, there is nothing about the changes in the political climate of Judea and Palestine between Moses and Pilate to suggest that it ever stopped being "holy land".   You think God inspired the captivity Psalms, some of which show desire for bloody Mosaic-style reform (Psalm 137:9), despite the fact that these were written after the Hebrews were taken captive and prevented from going back to Jerusalem.  Sorry Steve, but you don't justify a new plan by proving that God's original plan didn't work.

Furthermore, Jesus prefaced his Sermon on the Mount requirement of cutting off a hand (Matthew 5:30) with a general admonition that it was folly to attempt to avoid obeying even the least of the Mosaic law (5:17-20), so that's a pretty stiff argument that, contrary to the much-easier-to-accept modern view, Jesus really meant the hand-amputation part in v. 30 no less literally than he meant the mental adultery (v. 28) and the basis for divorce (v. 32) literally.  Or doesn't Calvinist exegesis require you to give due regard to the immediate context?  If you as a Calvinist can believe God sends to hell forever the 5 year old girl born to unbelieving parents all because she rejected the gospel at church the Sunday before dying in a car accident (children of unbelievers are not holy until at least one parent becomes a Christian (1 Cor. 7:14, and where do you think people go if they die in a state of being unholy? Purgatory?)), then you should have no trouble believing equally horrifying atrocities, such as your Jesus being far more fanatical against sin than anybody on earth ever was, seriously believed that literally amputating the offending limb (the psychological effect of which would profoundly dissuade from future like-sins) was the better way.  Think real hard before you say literal amputation of a limb doesn't change the heart.  If you were caught stealing in fundamentalist Arabia and endured the involuntary amputation of your hand as a result, you'd be fanatically hesitant before you stole something again, as literal amputation is naturally presumed traumatizing physically and psychologically for all except the truly incorrigible.

iii) Your position suffers from self-referential incoherence. On the one hand, you appeal to stock arguments for moral skepticism. If I was born at a different place and time, I'd have different views.

On the other hand, you attack OT ethics. But your moral skepticism neutralizes your ability to attack OT ethics.

No, we can attack OT ethics by showing that YOU Christians disagree with what your own God approves of, forcing you to admit you lost the debate, or forcing you to foolishly argue that atrocities most common sense people are shocked by, could somehow yet be "good". 

You can't say that's wrong.

 We don't have to day it's wrong, all we have to ask is whether you think Jesus approved of rape.  If you answer "no", then we just found a contradiction in God's attributes, since the God of the OT approves of rape (search for the phrase "The American Bible Society produced the "Good News" bible" in my article containing my exegesis of Deut. 21:14), you would be required to condemn this god because your own morals do not make any room for the possibility of morally justifying rape.

Do you believe it is always absolutely wrong to derive pleasure from causing rape and parental cannibalism?  If so, you must join us in criticizing the morals of your god, because he causes, rape and parental cannibalism (Deut. 28:30, 53), and says he will take just as much "delight" to cause these atrocities as he takes in granting prosperity to those who obey him (v. 63).  If you sinply hide under the "God's ways are mysterious" then because you don't find it persuasive when "heretics" appeal to God's mysterious ways just to get their asses out of theological jam in a way that saves face, neither do we skepics find it persuasive when you employ the exact same excuse for the exact same reason...at which point you drop the debate because you are intellectually incapable of going any deeper, at which point the readers recognize you are not doing apologetics to convince anybody except those who already agree with you that Jesus is the Son of God and the bible is the inerrant word of God. 

Ironically, I agree with moral skeptics that moral intuition is unreliable, given the fact that different cultures have different taboos. What's admirable in one culture is abominable in another, and vice versa. So we need something over and above moral intuition to correct or corroborate our moral intuitions.

And since you don't think getting delight out of causing women to be raped can be morally justified, we can safely dispense with any foolishness that says the God of Deut. 28:30, 63) is the proper moral authority.  Otherwise, it would be "godly" to derive pleasure from causing women to be raped, raising the question of why it would be wrong for Christians today to rejoice in rape similarly to the way OT Hebrews rejoiced at the thought of slaughtering the children of their captors (Psalm 137:9).

You attack OT ethics, but obviously the Pentateuchal legislator didn't share your outlook.

And we skeptics are frightened by the prospect that an ancient crazy man disagreed with common sense civility.

You have your convictions and he had his. So what brokers the disagreement? Who's the referee? What makes your moral opinion superior to the viewpoint of the Pentateuchal narrator?

First, under atheism, the fact that we cannot prove the U.S Constitution morally "superior" to the barbaric practices of the Congolese army, does not mean there's no rational answer.  We are still people with genetic predispositions living in a country that has evolved to give us the right to condemn in free speech the contrary morals held by other nations.  Rape is a naturalistic evil because the unwillingness of the female usually implies she is not ready to provide for offspring, and that is counterproductive to the naturalistic goal of survival, which is not to have kids merely to let them die of exposure,  and indeed, though rape be found in the lower order animals, it isn't very common and can safely be chalked up to a flaw in evolution, since clearly the willingness of the female to be made pregnant strongly implies an ability to provide for such offspring thus achieving the naturalistic goal of survival.  We evolved from animals and they do not just do nothing all day because there is no way to prove which of their conflicting moral predispositions is "better" than the others.  Two bucks continue to butt heads to gain the affections of the female in the group, despite the fact that by being without God, there is no way to prove which one of the bucks morally "deserves" to get the female.  So it does not follow logically that without an ultimate moral law-giver, we "should" do anything, such as just sit around and let anybody do whatever they want.

And in case you didn't know, moral relativity under atheism does not automatically favor the man trying to stab me to death....it also justifies me, the other atheist in the fight, to do whatever I want to do in that situation, such as inflict fatal injuries on my attacker.  So stop telling atheists their belief logically compels them to just sit back and let an attacker harm them.  Relativity doesn't merely tell attackers they are free to do whatever, it says the victims enjoy equal freedom to do whatever too.

So if atheism is true, I am not doing anything inconsistent with the moral relativity of the universe, when I physically resist somebody trying to stab me to death.  And the world doesn't show us much more than that winners in a conflict are those who have the most power, legally, physically or otherwise. Moral disagreements are nearly NEVER decided by on party convincing the other that the latter's moral view has fatal rational or logical deficiencies.

Therefore we should only expect that despite the relative equality of morality in life, human beings are going to continue clashing with each other about it regardless.  Nobody can prove that one form of government is "better" than another either, but that hardly convinces most people to just shut up about politics.  The need for self-preservation and preservation of one's preferred group logically implies one will naturally speak out against and react against any known contrary morality.  If you wish to avoid dying, you are naturally going to oppose the views and acts of those who wish for you to die. 

Second, the question could similarly be put to you as to why you, an alleged follower of God, think rape is absolutely wrong, when your Calvinist viewpoint requires you to ground rape in the secret will of God even if not the revealed will, prompting questions that make you look stupid as soon as you try to answer them, such as "if God wills rape, how can it be ungodly to praise God for causing rape?"  What now, Steve?  Will you go out on a limb and publicly state that rape must be good because God's good nature is necessarily implicated in his secret will no less than in his revealed will?

In light of biblical evidence against God's intellect and rationality, any biblical statements assuring you that God is good no matter what, are legitimately open to falsification and more than likely better interpreted the way Copan and Flannagan interpret the wholesale slaughter statements of the Pentateuch: mere Semitic exaggeration.  Only god's jailhouse lawyer would insist that Christians who adopt open-theism are spiritually dead.  They don't just say God is limited because that's how they feel, Christian scholars like Pinnock, Sanders and Boyd have stepped into the intellectual arena and have provided biblical explanations supported by appeal to standard hermeneutics for why it is that when the bible says God repented of his own choice to create man (Genesis 6:6-7) this is not language of appearance or mere anthropomorphism, but was understood by its originally intended audience as a reality about god (your belief in biblical inerrancy is sufficiently minority among Christian scholars that it hardly requires anybody to attempt to "reoncile" the open-theistic interpretation of Gen. 6:6 with other biblical statements about God's perfection.   Sorry Steve, but the falsity of open-theism is not quite as obvious as you would wish.  Your controlling presuppositions buckle rather quickly under attack.

You're using the same argument John Loftus employs, but it disqualifies you from assuming the posture of a moralist.

 Maybe that was the case with the skeptic you were talking to, but now you are talking to an atheist/former Calvinist, me, who is more than adequately prepared to kick your moral teeth out the back of your skull (probably more because your Calvinism is an absurd travesty of morality, given that in your world, the good God's willing of anything infuses good into it, even if what was willed was rape).  Let me know when you have the guts to put your money where your triablogue mouth is. I've already reviewed Turek's insane "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist", so when you reply, I hope you have something a bit more serious than asking atheists how they know that Hitler was wrong, or blindly presuming the nations surrounding the ancient Hebrews threw live babies into burning ovens.

Cold Case Christianity: Why Would God Punish Finite, Temporal Crimes in an Eternal Hell?

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

Why Would God Punish Finite, Temporal Crimes in an Eternal Hell?

Posted: 06 Sep 2017 01:01 AM PDT

240I was interviewed recently on a large Los Angeles radio station about the existence of Hell.

Did you tell them about the liberal Christian scholars who say hell-fire in the NT is mere metaphor? 

One caller objected to the duration of punishment in Hell. From his perspective, the idea our temporal, finite sin on earth warrants an eternal punishment of infinite torment in Hell was troubling, at the very least. The punishment does not seem to fit the crime; in fact, the disproportionate penalty makes God seem petty and vindictive, doesn’t it? Why would God torture infinitely those who have only sinned finitely?

Did you have any callers who objected that the bible god sometimes gets rid of sin by simply waving his magic wand, no atonement needed?  Or were the callers just a bunch of ignorant skeptics who didn't know the bible as well as I do?

Better, the OT God makes it clear that human sin is completely forgiven by means of animal sacrifice, even if the sin was one normally calling for execution, such as adultery:

  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)

 The bible also says Yom Kippur completely cleansed Israel of sin:

 30 for it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; you will be clean from all your sins before the LORD. (Lev. 16:30 NAU)

But no, J. Warner Wallace believes Hell is literal and eternal, and thinks the bible doesn't have any mistakes, and so insists that regardless of how this passage reads, it cannot mean that you are "really" cleansed of sin before the Lord, because we have to account for why requires an eternal hell of torment in the NT.  Well excuse me, but biblical inerrancy is total bullshit, so you cannot get rid of Leviticus 19 by pointing out that Jesus taught a literal hell in Luke 16.

If this sexual sin was rape, the easy way to obtain divine forgiveness makes God a mysoginist prick.

If this sexual sin wasn't rape, it was likely intentional, for what sexual sin between consenting adults wouldn't be?  But then the forgiveness here for this intentional sin contradicts the explicit teaching of the bible that intentional sins cannot be forgiven:

 30 'But the person who does anything defiantly, whether he is native or an alien, that one is blaspheming the LORD; and that person shall be cut off from among his people.
 31 'Because he has despised the word of the LORD and has broken His commandment, that person shall be completely cut off; his guilt will be on him.'" (Num. 15:30-31 NAU)

 26 For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
 27 but a terrifying expectation of judgment and THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES.
 28 Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. (Heb. 10:26-28 NAU)

Wallace continues:

I think it’s important to define the nature of Hell and sin before our discussion of the eternal nature of punishment can have any meaning or significance.

And good luck in your attempt to show that any Christian scholars who define hell a pure metaphor, are just spiritually dead. 

Objections related to the eternal nature of Hell result from a misunderstanding of four principles and terms:

Those objections also arise from a belief that the bible has mistakes, another presupposition you won't be refuting anytime soon, indicating that while you pretend to be writing to equip Christians to answer skeptics, the truth is, you are only writing to convince people who carry around the same basic Christian convictions that you hold.

We Fail to Understand the Meaning of Spiritual “Torment”

The Bible says those who are delivered into Hell will be tormented, and the degree to which they will suffer is described in dramatic, illustrative language. But, the scripture never describes Hell as a place where God or His angels are actively “torturing” the souls of the rebellious.

Yes it does:

 10 he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. (Rev. 14:10 NAU)

 8 "But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." (Rev. 21:8 NAU)

The Revelation author was pro-Jewish and lived in the first century, where prisoners were routinely tormented or punished in the presence of, and by the authority of, the local king or other ruler.

 Jesus likened God to a king who beat his subjects:

 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.  (Lk. 12:45-48 NAU)

Why should the rational person distinguish Wallace's god who doesn't "actively" torture anybody, from the biblical god Jesus taught, who apparently throws unbelievers into a furnace of fire?  What's the difference between selectively burning a person on their body with a blow torch, and throwing them into a furnace intended to burn them without killing them?

 40 "So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age.
 41 "The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness,
 42 and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matt. 13:40-42 NAU)

 Jude describes the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire as "punishment"

 7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 1:7 NAU)

To make sure you cannot quibble, the bible specifies that God was hurling fireballs "from heaven" down onto these two cities:

 24 Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven, (Gen. 19:24 NAU)

Now are you still sufficiently fundamentalist so as to admit that God does the punishing?


And the idea of God causing endless unbearable suffering is perfectly consistent with God threatening to cause parental cannibalism, kidnapping, rape and other horrific atrocities in Deuteronomy 28:15-63.  Read it, then you talk to me again about about how wrong it is to call your god a sadistic lunatic.  Is it really true that the all-powerful creator of the universe could not, during the days of Moses, think of any more humane way to successfully dissuade his people from sin, except to threaten them with horrific plights?

“Torture” is the sadistic activity that is often perpetrated for the mere joy of it.

No, "torture" is intentional infliction of pain, but whether it is inflicted sadistically goes beyond the dictionary definition:

“Torment” results from a choice on the part of the person who finds himself (or herself) suffering the consequences.

No, "torment" is the experience of anguish and pain as the result of harsh circumstances, the dictionary definition does not link the experience to the suffering person's "choices"

However, it is obvious that you've inserted "choices" into the definition of "torment" because of your arbitrary desire to blame hell's torments on those who suffer it, as required by your religion.  You have done an unconvincing job of trying to disconnect Jesus from the cause of those hellish torments.

One can be in constant torment over a decision made in the past, without being actively tortured by anyone.

Immaterial, the bible god actively tortures people on earth AND in hell, see above.

We Fail to Understand the Insignificance of Sin’s “Duration”

If someone embezzles $5.00 a week from their employer’s cash register they will have stolen $260.00 over the course of a year. If they’re caught at the end of this time, they would still only be guilty of a misdemeanor in the State of California (based on the total amount of loss). Although the crime took a year to commit, the perpetrator wouldn’t spend much (if any) time in jail. On the other hand, a murder can take place in the blink of an eye and the resulting punishment will be life in prison (or perhaps the death penalty). The duration of the crime clearly has little or nothing to do with the duration of the penalty.

And according to Leviticus 16 and 19, supra, sins in general and the sin of adultery in particular cease their duration upon sacrifice of an animal.  If the Book of Hebrews in the NT teaches that sin is not "fully" dealt with by animal sacrifices, then the author got it wrong, since full expiation and cleansing before the Lord is exactly how Leviticus' originally intended recipients would have taken those words, and it is what they signify in their immediate contexts anyway.  The whole business of Jesus fulfilling the animal sacrificial system with his own death is total bullshit...how could Jesus "forgive" sins during his earthly ministry as he is alleged to have done (Mark 2:10), if after such forgiveness, the sin still required some type of sacrifice?  But the theological problem of Jesus needing to die for previously forgiven or previously atoned-for sins, is yours and yours alone.

We Fail to Understand the Magnitude of God’s “Authority”

If your sister catches you lying about your income last year, you might lose her respect. If the IRS catches you lying about your income last year, the resulting punishment will be far more painful. What’s the difference here? It certainly isn’t the crime. Instead, we recognize the more authoritative the source of the code, rule or law, the greater the punishment for those who are in violation. If God is the Highest Authority, we should expect that violations of His “laws” would result in significant punishment(s).

No, see Leviticus 19:20-22, supra.  If a slave-owner has sex with his female slave after she had been betrothed to another man, the slave-owner who committed this adultery is spared from the mandatory death penalty because the slave-girl wasn't "free" (she wasn't important enough by god's standards to infuse the sexual act with that much importance or significance), and he will obtain divine forgiveness by nothing more than his giving a sacrificial animal to the priests for slaughter.

Oh, and don't miss the fact that no matter how many times you read that passage, the slave-girl in question is never penalized or punished in any way, despite the fact that, if you deny this act was rape, she consented to the sexual liaison and therefore was no less guilty than the man and thus just as needful of expiation as the man.  So either a) she isn't penalized because the sex act described here was rape (in which case the man obtained divine forgiveness for rape by simply allowing one of his animals to be slaughtered, showing that the god of the OT thinks rape does not require the man to suffer any punishment beyond giving up an animal, when in fact the man being a slave-owner implies he was rich and could afford to give up several animals without feeling any financial sting), or b) she consented and was guilty of adultery as much as the owner, but God for whatever reason finds it unnecessary to address her part in the sin.

We Fail to Understand the Depth of Our “Sin”

Finally, it’s important to remember the nature of the crime that eventually leads one to Hell. It’s not the fact you kicked your dog in 1992. It’s not the fact you had evil thoughts about your teacher in 1983. The crime that earns us a place in Hell is our rejection of the true, living, eternal God.

On the contrary, the bible says people are judged for all of their acts and words, not just the act of rejecting the gospel:

 32 "Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.
 33 "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit.
 34 "You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.
 35 "The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil.
 36 "But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.
 37 "For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." (Matt. 12:32-37 NAU)

  27 "For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and WILL THEN REPAY EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS. (Matt. 16:27 NAU)

  12 And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.
 13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. (Rev. 20:12-13 NAU)

 No, "according to their deeds" cannot be whittled down to "only because they rejected the gospel".

The rejection of God’s forgiveness is not finite. People who reject Jesus have rejected Him completely.

First, that's just plain stupid.  If I reject my neighbor because I don't like his morals, that doesn't mean I'd just stand there and do nothing while watching him drown, or refuse his offer of money if I needed it to avoid being evicted.  What are you going to say next?  That we only reject the light lest our evil deeds be exposed?

Second, those authentically born-again spiritually brothers in the faith you call 5-Point Calvinists believe that God has predestined people to do all that they end up doing, including their sins, which makes God's sending unbelievers to hell even more atrocious, since the only reason they desired to sin was because God forced them to desire this.

Then there's Ezekiel 38:4, where God describes his sovereign forcing of a foreign people to attack Israel, by saying he will put a hook in their jaws and draw them against Israel, and ch. 38 and 39 go on to say God will then punish by great slaughter these foreign nations for doing what he forced them to do.

Wallace, who are you trying to impress here?  The people who already believe everything you say (gee, real toughie there)?  or the skeptics and atheists who agree with most Christian scholars that bible inerrancy is total bullshit?   Given how obscenely weak your theology is, I'd say you've chosen the low-road, and you intend more to make Christians feel confident that their beliefs are true, and less to convince skeptics of the alleged error of their ways.

They have rejected Him as an ultimate, final mortal decision. God has the right (and obligation) to judge them with an appropriate punishment.

Don't call God a punisher unless you credit him with the torments the sinners experience in hell.  Sorry, Wallace, but you are not going to reconcile the biblical picture of God as tormentor, with the modern Christian belief that God doesn't himself torment anybody.  Again, read the most depressing news in the world in Deuteronomy 28:15-63, then come back here and tell me God doesn't inflict torment and torture.

To argue that God’s punishment does not fit our crime is to underestimate our crime.

And although God could have caused Bathsheba to miscarry early after her adultery with David so that the child conceived would never experience any torment, God did not.  And although God could have simply caused the born baby to die immediately, he did not, but struck the child, so that it suffered a tormenting  sickness before finally expiring after 7 days:

 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)

To argue that a teenager stealing a pack of bubblegum deserves to be roasted alive in hell in screaming mindless agony forever, indicates you deny those parts of the bible that delimit God's power and holiness.  It also tells me you think God's plan to deal with sin is perfect, when in fact you should know from Genesis 6:6-7 and Exodus 32:9-14 that God sometimes discovers later that his original plan was less than perfect.

Your belief that people "deserve" hellish torments forever for temporal sins also indicates you reject those parts of the bible that teach that God was capable of getting rid of somebody's sin by simply waving his magic wand, as he apparently did in the case of David's adultery with Bathsheba:

 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 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.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die." (2 Sam. 12:11-14 NAU)

If God is capable of just "removing" even sins otherwise requiring death, such as adultery, then you need to stop pretending that God's holiness "demands" that he punish sin.  He "needs" to punish sin about as much as a morbidly obese woman "needs" to eat ice cream. 

How do you expect this senseless rambling of yours to strike the fear of God into the hearts of unbelievers, when it is clear you simply reject any biblical teaching on God that doesn't fit the traditional conservative Evangelical understanding of sin and punishment?

The Bible describes Hell as a place where those who have rejected God will suffer the torment of their decision.

It also says they will suffer burning from fire and brimstone, see Revelation, quoted supra, and the last I checked, there is no logically necessary connection between stealing a candy bar and being burned by fire and brimstone, which means somebody else is responsible for forcing the sin and the punishment to be connected to each other, and since God is the one who punishes sin, it is God who is causing the fire and brimstone to burn the sinner.

It is only jailhouse lawyers like Wallace who would try to explain away the video showing his client murdering another person with a gun, by arguing that it was the bullet, not the client, who "caused" this death.

It’s an appropriate punishment given the magnitude of God’s ultimate authority and the mortal opportunities for each of us to choose otherwise in this life.

Then arbitrarily exempting adulterers from the death-penalty is also consistent with God's nature, 2nd Samuel 12, supra, in which case there is room in God's "nature" to simply eternally avoid punishing a sin.  Your portrait of a God whose nature mandates that he punish sin, reflects less from the bible and more from your choice to be a modern-day fundamentalist intent on selling books to the people who already believe everything you believe.

I'm not exactly quaking in my boots over J. Warner Wallace's pitiful attempts to justify the doctrine of literal torment in a literal Hell.  To quote one of my favorite songs from Deicide, fuck your god.

My challenge to Al Serrato of pleaseconvinceme.com

Here is the debate challenge email I sent to Al Serrato, a Christian and criminal prosecutor who advocates over at pleaseconvinceme.com the same type of "forensic faith" stuff promoted by J. Warner Wallace:

Mr. Serrato,

I am a skeptic with several challenges to the resurrection of Jesus that I believe were not disturbed by anything in current apologetics books and blogs on the topic.

 

I would like to discuss with you this or any other apologetics topic of your choice, at any time, date and internet location most convenient to you, but I assume you'd approve of us doing this at your blog pleaseconvinceme.com?

  

Here's a short list of the issues I'm prepared to discuss, or propositions I'm willing to defend:

 

1 - There are only 3 eyewitness accounts of Jesus' resurrection in the NT, at best, all the rest are hearsay.  And that's generously granting assumptions of apostolic gospel authorship that I am otherwise prepared to attack on the merits.

2 - Apostle Paul's gospel contradicts the one Jesus preached.

3 - The actions of the 11 apostles after allegedly experiencing the risen Christ indicate what they actually experienced, if anything, was something less than the "amazing transformation" lauded so loudly by apologists.

4 - Because Matthew is in all likelihood not responsible for the content in canonical Greek Matthew, he and his gospel are disqualified as  witnesses.

5 - Because John was willing to falsely characterize divine words he got by vision, as if they were things the historical Jesus really said and did, John and his gospel are disqualified as witnesses.

6 – John’s intent to write a "spiritual" gospel as opposed to imitating the Synoptics which he knew had already disclosed the “external facts”, argues that “spiritual” here implies something different than mere writing down of eyewitness testimony.  The historical evidence that is accepted by even fundamentalists makes clear that John’s source for gospel material included visions and not just memory.

7 - The NT admission that most of Paul's converts apostatized from him for the Judaizer gospel, warrants skeptics to be a bit more hesitant than Christians before classifying Paul as a truth-robot.  The NT evidence against Paul's integrity is many, varied and strong.

8 - Papias asserted Mark "omitted nothing" of what he heard Peter preach.  Because Bauckham is wrong when saying Papias here was using mere literary convention, Papias meant that phrase literally...in which case Mark's silence on the virgin birth is not due to his "omission" of it, the virgin birth doesn't appear in his gospel because there was never a virgin birth story available for him to omit in the first place...a strong attack on Matthew's and Luke's credibility.

9 - Paul's belief that Mark's abandonment of ministry justifies excluding him from further ministry work (Acts 15) will always remain a justifiable reason (assuming Acts’ historicity here) to say Mark wasn't too impressed with gospel claims, even assuming he later fixed his disagreements with Paul and wrote the gospel now bearing his name.

10 - Mark's strong apathy toward writing down Peter's preaching supports the above premise that he was less than impressed with the gospel, and likely only joined himself to the group for superficial reasons.  Not a good day for fundamentalists who think Mark was inspired by God to write his gospel.

11 - Peter's explicit refusal to endorse Mark's gospel writing, militates, for obvious reasons, against the idea that Peter approved of it.

12 - stories of women becoming pregnant by a god in a way not disturbing her virginity, are securely dated hundreds of years before the 1st century.  The copycat Savior hypothesis is virtually unassailable, once the admittedly false skeptical exaggerations of the evidence are excluded, and rationally warrants skepticism toward Matthew's and Luke's honesty.

13 - The failure of Jesus' own immediate family to believe his ministry-miracles were genuinely supernatural (the logical inference from John 7:5 and Mark 3:21-31) provides reasonable and rational warrant for skeptics to say the miracles Jesus allegedly did, were no more real than those done by Benny Hinn and other wildly popular con artists.

14 - The evidence for the specific contention that most of the apostles or earliest Christians died as martyrs (i.e., were forced to choose between death or committing blasphemy, and chose death) is furiously scanty and debatable, justifying skepticism toward this popular apologetic argument.

15 - the mass-hallucination hypothesis does not require the exact same mental images to have been shared by the original apostles.  Mass-hallucination need not require such impossibility any more than Pentecostals being slain in the spirit requires them to all move and talk in the exact same way before they can validly claim to have shared the same experience.

16 - There are contradictions in the resurrection accounts that are not capable of reasonable harmonization.

 

I am also willing to discuss whatever apologetics argument you think is the most clear and compelling.  Intelligent Design?  You'd be surprised at how easy that is to refute.  Messianic prophecy?  I'll discuss whichever one you believe is the most compelling.  Atheism?  I argue that the concept of God as believed in the Judaeo-Christian heritage is an incoherent concept, which provides all the rational warrant necessary to dismiss it just as quickly one dismisses pyramid power or telepathy. I will discuss any other topic you wish.  Epistemology?  I advocate empiricism, namely, you cannot give a convincing argument that anybody has ever learned a fact completely apart from their 5 physical senses.

I am posting this email to you at my blog https://turchisrong.blogspot.com.

 

Sincerely,

Barry Jones.

barryjoneswhat@gmail.com

https://turchisrong.blogspot.com

my challenge to Pleaseconvinceme.com

Here is my latest post over at

http://pleaseconvinceme.com/2017/why-apologetics-wont-work/#comment-175708

Cold Case Christianity: Why Doesn’t God Reform People Rather Than Punish Them in Hell?

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

Why Doesn’t God Reform People Rather Than Punish Them in Hell?

Posted: 01 Sep 2017 01:00 AM PDT

 258Some struggle to understand how a loving God could create a place like Hell.

Your spiritually alive brothers and sisters called 5-Point Calvinists don't.  They believe God secretly wills the teenager to steal a candy bar while telling her through the bible "thou shalt not steal".  That is, they believe God causes people to sin.  Apparently, your bible is not quite as clear on the "Christian" answer to the problem of hell, as you pretend it is.  So unless you claim all 5-Point Calvinist Christians aren't truly born again, spiritual deadness cannot be the reason somebody thinks your brand of Christianity is total bullshit.

And the fundamentalists who struggle with how a loving god could create a place like hell probably struggle because they haven't seriously considered the arguments of the liberal Christian scholars who do a fine job showing that hell "fire" in the NT is mere metaphor.  Also they probably struggle with the question since if Deuteronomy 28:30, 63 be true, their "loving" God takes just as much delight in causing women to be raped as he takes in causing prosperity to others.  I recommend that fundie Christians first make sure the biblical portrayal of God is consistent, before they start asking the larger questions. 

Either way, viewing the bible as the inerrant word of God does not appear to generate any more positive change in life than when one starts believing the Book of Mormon is the word of God. 

 Others, while understanding and accepting the relationship between mercy and justice, freedom and consequence, victory and punishment, still imagine a better way. If God is all-loving, why doesn’t He simply “reform” people rather than allow them to continue in their sin and eventually punish them in Hell? Even human prison systems understand the value of reform; isn’t a God who punishes his children in Hell a sadistic and vengeful God?

Isn't your God vengeful and sadistic for not only causing women to be raped (Deut. 28:30) but in taking "delight" to see this happen (v. 63)?

We expect that a loving God would care enough about us to offer a chance to change rather than simply punish us vindictively for something we’ve done in the past.

Then you apparently never read Romans 9, where Paul pushes the analogy of God/potter sinner/clay to such an extreme that concerns about freewill are preempted:

 18 So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.
 19 You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?"
 20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it?
 21 Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? (Rom. 9:18-21 NAU)

Which marketing strategy makes more money?  Providing the proper interpretation of Romans 9 to a modern audience who think human freewill is a foregone conclusion?  Or providing arguments about God's respect for human freewill, to a modern audience who think human freewill is a foregone conclusion?

As it turns out, God (as he is described in the Bible) understands the difference between discipline and punishment,

Yes, for example, his causing sickness and suffering to a baby born to David and Bathsheba, so that the child suffered several days before finally dying.  God causing babies to suffer when he can just instantly take their souls with no suffering, is the god you serve: 

2nd Samuel 12:11-18
10 'Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.'
 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 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.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 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. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, "Behold, while the child was still alive, we spoke to him and he did not listen to our voice. How then can we tell him that the child is dead, since he might do himself harm!"
 

Oh, did I forget?  God did this to the baby despite telling David that David's sin had been put away, see last clause of v. 13.   The lesson we learn here is that even if God himself tells you that your sin of adultery has been "put away", that does not prevent God from punishing you and your children for it anyway.

Oh yeah, the bible god sure does know the different between suffering and punishment.

and He is incredibly patient with us,

Which is rather stupid given that if God is smarter than a con artist, he can quickly convince us, without violating our freewill, that Christianity is true, and any need for patience will be foreclosed.  Even if you read divine respect for human freewill into Ezekiel 38:4, still, the whole idea that god is like a best friend who is trying to convince you of the error of your ways, is childish and unrealistic.  If God really wanted you to do something, he could infallibly cause it to come to pass, whether to make you sin or do good.  Notice what God says about two future armies, gog and magog, through Ezekiel.  You'd think they were nothing but puppets on strings in God's hands:

 3 and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal.
 4 "I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out, and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them splendidly attired, a great company with buckler and shield, all of them wielding swords; (Ezek. 38:3-4 NAU)

It doesn't matter if this is mere metaphor, which it is:  the metaphor still puts images in your mind of God forcing other people to sin or do whatever he wants them to do, images that are wholly inconsistent with your childish pandering to modern society's individualist cult mentality that says God respects our freewill.

But it was never any secret that you are doing Christianity mostly because of the money you can make convincing people that God wasn't able in the past to do as much as he wished until you came along with your "forensic faith" marketing gimmick.

And if God is eternal, than his attributes will be eternal as must logically be the case in any other situation, which means his attribute of patience is no less eternal than his attribute of love.  Feel free to trifle that an infinite being his a finite trait all because the bible presents him that way, but remember that you only sound convincing to your religious fanatic friends, nobody else.   But that assumes you care about being wrong, when in fact it is clear you are more concerned with making money off of Christianity than you are in being correct

allowing us an entire lifetime to change our minds and reform our lives.

Not true, plenty of children die less than year after they reached the age of accountability, whatever you think that age is.  Only a fool makes the generalized statement that God allows people a lifetime to change.

This is easier to understand when we think carefully about the definitions of “discipline” and “punishment”:

Discipline Looks Forward

All of us understand the occasional necessity of disciplining our children. When we discipline, we are motivated by love rather than vengeance.

That might be the politically correct party line, but the truth is some parents discipline their devil-children out of sheer exasperation, and desire to see the child suffer punishment and discipline at the same time.

We hope to change the future behavior of our kids by nudging them in a new direction with a little discomfort.

Most modern Christians think the the biblical model of beating kids with rods constitutes something more than a "nudge":

NAU Prov. 22:15  Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of discipline will remove it far from him.
 13 Do not hold back discipline from the child, Although you strike him with the rod, he will not die.
NAU Prov. 29:15  The rod and reproof give wisdom, But a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother.

Wallace continues:

God also loves His children in this way and allows them the opportunity to reform under his discipline.

Which makes no sense once you remember that kids die at all ages all the time, and therefore, their dying shortly after the age of accountability occurs statistically just as often as kids dying in any other age-group.  Your generalization is too hasty, you wouldn't be talking that way to a Christian family who just lost their rebellious 9 year old daughter in a bus accident.  You'd have to tell them you believe that since he lived past the age of accountability and still wasn't a Christian, she is in hell right now...and that means you won't be achieving record sales of your books in her town any time soon.

This takes place during our mortal lifetime; God disciplines those He loves in this life because He is concerned with eternity.

Then he is stupid, because he has an infallible way of making sure they avoid hell:  killing them within a month after they are born.  If aborted babies go to heaven by default, then you need to remember infant death brings eternal good, as you sob about how abortion "kills".  And abortions doctors cannot do any wrong:  when they abort a baby, God takes the credit, because God takes personal responsibility for all murder:

 39 'See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand. (Deut. 32:39 NAU)

Discipline, by its very definition, is “forward-looking” and must therefore occur in this world with an eye toward our eternal destiny:

Hebrews 12:9-11

Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Punishment Looks Backward

There are times as a parent, however, when our loving efforts to discipline and reform are unsuccessful; our kids are sometimes rebellious to the point of exhaustion. In these times, our love requires us to deliver on our repeated warnings. Our loving sense of justice requires us to be firm, even when it hurts us to do so.

yeah, but you would never cause your rebellious teen daughter to be raped just because she is rebellious...but God causes women to be raped, and takes "delight" in this, in Deut. 28:30, 63.  So your attempted analogy to human instances fails miserably, your God's ways are too extreme to permit analogy to any human instance, except perhaps deranged lunatics.

Our other children are watching us as well, and our future acts of mercy will be meaningless if we fail to act justly on wrongdoing. In times like these, we have no alternative but to punish acts that have occurred in the past. Punishment need not be vindictive or vengeful. It is simply the sad but deserving consequence awaiting those who are unwilling to be reformed in this life.

Hebrews 10:28-29

Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?

God is patient.

If so, it's only because sinful Moses talking some sense into the divine head:

 9 The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people.
 10 "Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation."
 11 Then Moses entreated the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
 12 "Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, 'With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth '? Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people.
 13 "Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'"
 14 So the LORD changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people. (Exod. 32:9-14 NAU)

He’s given each of us a lifetime to respond to His discipline and change our mind. It cannot be said that God failed to give us the opportunity to repent.

But it can certainly be said that God did not do everything he could possibly have done, to convince freewilled humans to do what he says.  If he was willing to part the Red Sea in face of faithless Israelites and skeptical Egyptians, then God doesn't think doing monster-miracles violates anybody's freewill.  Or he doesn't respect freewill the way you think he does.

And it is rather difficult to believe that after this particular miracle, the Israelites continued to complain against god (Exodus 16:3).  If this part of the story is historically true, then God is stupid for "expecting" such human beings to materialize a strong faith on the basis of the 10 plagues and parting of the Red Sea, especially when he infallibly foreknow these miracles would not produce such a faith.  Don't you worry though, these stories are just religiously embellished kernels of historical truth, for not more more purpose than religious edification of the tribes.

When we are rebellious to the point of exhaustion, however, God has no choice but to deliver on His warnings.

Not true, according to you and the bible, the Canaanites were sinful to the point of exhaustion for 400 years before god punished them:

13 God said to Abram, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years.
 14 "But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions.
 15 "As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age.
 16 "Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete." (Gen. 15:13-16 NAU)

 In other words, God recognizes the Amorites as sinful to the point of exhaustion, both in reality and in his allegedly infallible foreknowledge, and yet doesn't act there and then, but waits 400 years, not for the Amorites to change their ways, but so their sinful iniquity will become "complete".

Sort of like you knowing you have a devil child who hurts others, but you still put him in the same room with other kids and then don't immediately punish him when he hurts other kids, because you don't think he iniquity is yet complete.

Let's just say that J.Warner Wallace's apologetics argument don't exactly cause me to break out in nervous sweats.  And I say that after multiple demonstrations that his arguments are wrong and inconclusive on the merits.

Tough Questions Answered: How Did Paul Find Common Ground with Greek Intellectuals in Acts 17?

This is my reply to a Tough Questions Answered article entitled

           

How Did Paul Find Common Ground with Greek Intellectuals in Acts 17?

Posted: 25 Aug 2017 06:00 AM PDT

Darrell Bock, in Acts, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, provides an excellent analysis of Paul’s speech to the Athenian Areopagus in Acts 17. Bock demonstrates how the beginning of Paul’s oration found common ground with his Greek audience. By studying Paul’s technique, we can learn how to find common ground with members of our culture who are biblically illiterate.

And the desire to find common ground makes it seem you don't believe the Holy Spirit will be quite as successful with your audience without this secular persuasion technique.  This tells me that at least unconsciously you believe there's nothing more to your selling of God to others, than there is when Arnie sells a used car.  If the Holy Spirit can convict of sin without the human speaker establishing common ground with the unbeliever, why did Paul wish to seek common ground?  Could it be that this is the expected fruit of a man who thinks God can be assisted by employment of secular psychological tactics?

snip

    In addition, ‘we are his offspring’ (γένος ἐσμέν, genos esmen). The expression that we are God’s offspring comes from another pagan poet, Aratus (ca. 315–240 BC), Phaenomena 5 (some scholars also note Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus; Marshall 1980: 289; but Fitzmyer 1998: 611 rejects a connection to Cleanthes). Paul explicitly notes this connection in introducing the citation as coming from ‘some of your poets.’ Paul is working with ideas in the Greek world that are familiar to the Athenians and only alludes to Scripture in his speech instead of quoting it directly. The text from Aratus, as Paul uses it, recognizes the shared relationship all people have to God.

Paul was also taking it out of context, since the immediate context Aratus gave, clearly indicates the god is Zeus and "offspring" meant humans are little gods:

 PHAENOMENA, TRANSLATED BY G. R. MAIR 
[1] From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the havens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring; and he in his kindness unto men giveth favourable signs and wakeneth the people to work, reminding them of livelihood. He tells what time the soil is best for the labour of the ox and for the mattock, and what time the seasons are favourable both for the planting of trees and for casting all manner of seeds. For himself it was who set the signs in heaven, and marked out the constellations, and for the year devised what stars chiefly should give to men right signs of the seasons, to the end that all things might grow unfailingly. Wherefore him do men ever worship first and last. Hail, O Father, mighty marvel, mighty blessing unto men. Hail to thee and to the Elder Race! Hail, ye Muses, right kindly, every one! But for me, too, in answer to my prayer direct all my lay, even as is meet, to tell the stars.

What would you do if you found out that in the immediate context of the pagan poem Paul quoted, Aratus was talking about people being the children of Zeus?

Would you continue asserting what you've confidently asserted your whole life, namely, that the person who takes a text out of context has engaged in obvious wrong-doing?

Or did you suddenly discover, just now, that taking things out of context can sometimes be a good thing? When is the last time you ever entertained such a stupid notion that taking things out of context could ever be acceptable? 

 

There's no denying Paul took Aratus out of context, so instead of doing the obvious and concluding Paul was wrong to take something out of context, just like you always insist this is wrong for everybody else to do, you instead insist that this act which everybody has always agreed is always wrong, an act that you've used to definitively prove the dishonesty of skeptics and cultists, and now you get a flash of knowledge that perhaps taking something out of context isn't necessarily always indicative of stupidity or dishonesty.

If Paul believed Hebrews 4:12 or the same as that verse, that the word of God is alive and powerful, would he have attempted to find common ground with the pagans by quoting their own devilish polytheistic and fictional literature?

Isn't it more likely that, if Paul believed the same as Hebrews 4:12, he would have concluded that finding common ground is the less forceful way to convince pagans, and the clear settled word of God is the most powerful took in his arsenal to fight through their ingrained paganism?

When you evangelize a Hindu, do you try to find common ground by quoting something from the Vedas? Stupid, right?

If any of this Acts 17 scene is historically true, then Paul clearly had less faith in the revealed word of God to convict pagans of their error, than he had in the purely naturalistic approach of establishing common ground with them. But there is no common ground possible anyway:

15 Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?
16 Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? (2Co 6:15-16 NAU)

 

Conservative Inerrantist commentators agree Paul was quoting a text that was originally about Zeus, see "Ashamed of the Gospel (3rd Edition): When the Church Becomes Like the World", By John MacArthur, Crossway Pub. 2010, p. 159), so you don't have the option of saying this part of Aratus' poem was inspired by God.

A Christian professor of classics admits that Paul did not use this quotation according to its originally intended Stoic sense:

It is noteworthy that Aratus commences his poem with the words, "let us begin with Zeus," for the gods who were conventionally invoked by Greek poets were the Muses, the goddesses of poetic inspiration. Aratus' contemporaries would have been struck by this change, by which the poet lends a religious Stoic tenor into the Phaenomena. To ancient Greeks Zeus was the sky-god whose control over the sun and clouds directly concerned human beings; mention of him at the outset of a work on constellations and weather is therefore appropriate. For Hellenistic Stoics, however, Zeus was another name for that force which controlled the universe and resided in man and beast. It is a kind of pantheism which Aratus advances in these opening lines:the divine Reason permeates every facet of human endeavour. The city-streets and market-places, the seas and harbours are filled with the presence of this deity (lines 2-3). Zeus must be praised at the start of his poem because this "world-soul" controls the cosmos. Mankind is, according to such belief, part of that environment and so "is indebted to Zeus." The omnipotence of Zeus is expressed with the words "for we are indeed his offspring." Literally the poet states that we are of the race (genos) of Zeus. Thus the ancient weather-god, once depicted in anthropomorphic terms, is replaced by the Stoics with an abstract force which pervades the entire world.

Having noted the context of the half-verse "for we are indeed his offspring," the reader will conclude that the apostle Paul does not quote this passage in complete agreement with its meaning and intent, but in order to show that even to some Greek thinkers and writers the idea of an anthropomorphic Zeus is false.

Verses 24-31 of chapter 17 clarify Paul's use of the quotation in declaring the gospel of repentance to the Athenians. When he cites the saying that man is God's offspring, Paul employs the words in light of God's self-revelation in the Old Testament. Mankind was created in the image and likeness of God, as revealed in Genesis 1 :26-27. Paul does not give the phrase "for we are indeed His offspring" the meaning which Stoics do; rather, he uses it to preach that God abhors idolatrous worship. Paul had stated earlier in his speech that God does not "live in shrines made by man" (24). After quoting Aratus the apostle says that the Deity is not "like gold, or silver, or stone" (25). Surely Paul has in mind the second commandment here, as stated, for example, in Leviticus 26:1 "you shall make for yourselves no idols and erect no graven image or pillar, and you shall not set up a figured stone in your land." The Stoics had rightly reasoned that if mankind is the offspring of God, then the living God cannot be represented by an inanimate object. Paul himself writes elsewhere that God's eternal power and deity are visible in creation (Romans 1 :20). And in yet another context the apostle restates in general terms what he says specifically to the Athenian populace in Acts 17: "What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, 'I will live in them and move among them' (2 Corinthians 6:16)." Thus on the Areopagus Paul points out that the Athenians had exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man.

Verses 24-31 also makes clear that Paul does not adopt the Stoic theology of a guiding principle as expressed by Aratus; the apostle depicts God as the Creator, whose person is real. In verse 25 the missionary reminds his listeners that God is the creator of the universe, who has no need of human idolatrous adoration. Here Paul may have in mind Psalm 50:7-15, where the Lord states that He does not require sacrifices from mortals, for all the world and everything in it is His by virtue of His work of creation. And to underscore the personal quality of the true God Paul states that God has "overlooked" the times of ignorance (30), "commands" all men to repent (31), since He has fixed a day when He "will judge" (31) the world by Christ whom He "has appointed" (31). Thus the apostle in no way identifies with Stoic or Epicurean theology, but declares the God who is Creator and Judge.

Do you agree with this professor that "the apostle Paul does not quote this passage in complete agreement with its meaning and intent"?

If so, what else are you doing when you quote a passage not in complete agreement with its meaning and intent, except quoting it out of context?

The desire to vindicate Paul regardless of how good the evidence against him is, is rather difficult to resist, amen?

 

Clement of Alexandria believed Paul was quoting from Aratus.  From Stomata, Book 1, ch. XIX:

Since, then, the Greeks are testified to have laid down some true opinions, we may from this point take a glance at the testimonies. Paul, in the Acts of the Apostles, is recorded to have said to the Areopagites, “I perceive that ye are more than ordinarily religious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with the inscription, To The Unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you. God, that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him; though He be not far from every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we also are His offspring.”
Whence it is evident that the apostle, by availing himself of poetical examples from the Phenomena of Aratus, approves of what had been well spoken by the Greeks; and intimates that, by the unknown God, God the Creator was in a roundabout way worshipped by the Greeks; but that it was necessary by positive knowledge to apprehend and learn Him by the Son. 

Does a pagan take Genesis 1:1 out of context by using it to show that Zeus created the world?  If so, then necessarily, by the same logic, you believe that when Paul quoted a pagan text about Zeus for the proposition that the biblical god is the father of all people, he was taking that pagan text out of context. 

 

Either way, the revealed word of God provides plenty of ammo to fight against ingrained paganism, so Paul's attempt to evangelize using more methods than simply the sure-fire word of God, indicates his lack of faith that God's word is powerful. You don't see Peter coddling the scruples of any Jews in Acts 2, do you? Apparently, successful evangelism of those most against the gospel does not require establishing any common ground whatsoever.

Augustine didn't hold back from admitting Paul quoted Aratus out of context.  From Schaff's edition, Augustine, Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily 38  Acts 17:16, 17:

 And he does not say, “Through Him,” but, what was nearer than this, “In him.” - That poet said nothing equal to this, “For we are His offspring.” He, however, spake it of Jupiter, but Paul takes it of the Creator, not meaning the same being as he, God forbid! but meaning what is properly predicated of God: just as he spoke of the altar with reference to Him, not to the being whom they worshiped. As much as to say, “For certain things are said and done with reference to this (true God), but ye know not that they are with reference to Him.” For say, of whom would it be properly said, “To an Unknown God?” Of the Creator, or of the demon? Manifestly of the Creator: because Him they knew not, but the other they knew. Again, that all things are filled (with the presence) - of God? or of Jupiter - a wretch of a man, a detestable impostor! But Paul said it not in the same sense as he, God forbid! but with quite a different meaning. For he says we are God’s offspring, i.e. God’s own, His nearest neighbors as it were. 

DeSilva cites E. Ferguson's noting the pantheistic nature of the Aratus quote: 

E. Ferguson notes another conceptual similarity to be the idea of kinship with the divine. 29 The citation from Aratus in Acts 17:28 (“for we are of his offspring”) documents the Stoic concept 30 as does, for example, Epictetus, who speaks of Zeus as the father of humankind (whom Odysseus even regarded as a personal father-like guardian). 31 Paul’s similar statement in Gal 3:26 (“for you are all children of God”) distinguishes itself from the Stoic counterpart by the addition of “in Christ Jesus” and “through faith” as the qualifiers. For the Stoic, there were no qualifiers on kinship with the divine, a relationship all held to the deity by virtue of being the deity’s workmanship together with the rest of nature. Similarly the Stoics held that all parts of the universe formed a whole, and to describe this they employed the metaphor of a body and its component members. 32

29 29. Ferguson, Backgrounds 293.

30 30. Aratus Phaenomena 5.

31 31. Epictetus Dissertations 3.24.

32 32. Cf. ibid. 2.10.4-5; Seneca Ep. 95.52: “All that you behold, that which comprises both god and man, is one—we are the parts of one great body,” cited by Fee, First Corinthians 602.

 JETS 38/4 (December 1995 ) 554,

"Paul And The Stoa: A Comparison", David A. Desilva*

The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society.

1998 (electronic edition.). Garland, TX: Galaxie Software. 

In 1995 David deSilva was assistant professor of NT

and Greek at Ashland Theological Seminary 

J.D. Charles admits Paul's source is Aratus, and that similar language is found in other Stoics, but the point is that the fundie Christian cannot escape Paul taking Aratus out of context merely by whining that Paul's dependence on specifically Aratus for the quote isn't concretely established:  The Stoic view was pantheistic, so it doesn't matter if Paul was quoting any of them directly or indirectly, he still took the pantheistic statement out of context, given the pantheistic intentions of the Stoic authors writing such stuff.  When you quote a Stoic view of God to get Stoic interested in hearing your perspective, you are leaving them with the false impression that you approve of the theology in the quote, and indeed, Paul nowhere expresses or implies that the pantheistic Stoic view is incorrect:

The second citation, “We are his offspring,” stems from the third-century BC Stoic philosopher Aratus, who, significantly, hailed from Paul’s native Cilicia. Aratus penned these words in a poem in honor of Zeus. Titled Phaenomena, the poem is an interpretation of constellations and weather signs. It reads that “in all things each of us needs Zeus, for we are also his offspring.” Without question, “his offspring” is sure to resonate with any Stoic present in the audience.67

----67 “Phaen 5. It is difficult to confine with precision these words to Aratus of Soli alone, given the fact that this language appears in numerous ancient sources. For example, the words of Cleanthes, another third-century BC. Stoic, are comparable: “You, O Zeus, are praised above all gods… Unto you may all flesh speak, for we are your offspring” (the text is reproduced in M. Pohlenz, “Kleanthes Zeushymnus,” Hermes 75 [1940] 117–23). Similarly, the third-century BC poet Callimachus, in a hymn “To Zeus,” speaks of humankind as “offspring of the earth” (Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments [Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University, 1988] 3).

"Engaging the (Neo)Pagan Mind:   Paul’s Encounter with Athenian Culture as a Model for Cultural Apologetics"  (Acts 17:16–34, J. Daryl Charles, TrinJ 16:1 (Spring 1995) 58,
Trinity Journal. 1998 (electronic edition.). Deerfield, IL: Trinity Seminary.

If Paul has no problem quoting pagan literature out of context, what exactly is wrong with concluding that he likely didn't have a problem quoting the OT out of context either? If Paul didn't think he did something wrong in taking Aratus out of context, he likely wouldn't believe that taking the OT texts out of context was something wrong either.

 

 Paul even misquoted the sign "to the unknown god", as Jerome says that sign had read "to the unknown gods" plural, and he says Paul changed it to a singular god to make the intended comparison easier to maintain than it really was. 

 

 In Jerome's Commentary on Titus 1:12, Jerome says the signs in question would have been in the plural, such as "To the Gods of Asia and Europe and Africa, to unknown and strange gods":

It has often been discussed whether Paul took a certain degree of “homiletical license” in his reference to the inscription “to an unknown god.” Jerome thought so, arguing in his Commentary on Titus (1:12) that there were altars in Athens dedicated to “unknown gods” and that Paul had adapted the plural “gods” to the singular “god” in light of his monotheistic sermon.78 Pagan writers also attested to the presence of altars “to unknown gods” but always in the plural. For instance, the Traveler Pausanias, writing in the middle of the second century A.D., described the presence of altars to gods of unknown names on the road from Phalerum to Athens and an altar “to unknown gods” at Olympia.79 Written in the third century, Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana also refers to these Athenian altars “to unknown gods.”80 There is thus ample literary evidence that Paul did not fabricate his allusion, that there were in fact such altars in Athens. Whether they were invariably inscribed in the plural or whether there was one dedicated to a single “unknown god” remains an open question.

Polhill, J. B. (2001, c1992). Vol. 26: Acts (electronic ed.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 371). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

  snip

In like manner, when we engage anyone with the truths of Christianity, we must find common ground first.

That doesn't cohere with biblical statements that God's word is powerful on its own (Isaiah 55:10-11, Hebrews 4:12) and conflicts with Peter's alleged ability to successfully evangelize Jews without needing to coddle their scruples in Acts 2.   Really now, if you think you need to quote something from the Vedas to establish common ground with the Hindu you are attempting to evangelize, you are saying you think the Holy Spirit can be helped with secular persuasion techniques.  But if the Holy Spirit truly is moving through your preaching, it is highly unlikely that he needs you to employ naturalistic bridging-tactics to successfully convict them of their sin.