If I were a Christian (part 2)

The last post kind of ended early, I figure there's more to say about the type of Christian God I would believe in.

I wouldn't believe that God is the only source of morality. I would believe, however, that he is a source of morality. For example, if God were to say, "Okay all who follow me, I want to see you rape some young girls simply because I like rape," he would be a bad being. Him making this command wouldn't cause the act to be right. He would be evil for making the command. Hence, there are some things that even God cannot change the moral status of (like rape, adultery, etc.).

Saying all that, I would also say that there are some things God could change the moral status of. Since God created us and (presumably) caused there to be no needless suffering, died for our sins, and so on, he is a benefactor. He is actually our ultimate benefactor since our existence is due to him. If someone does you a favor, say takes out the trash every day, then you owe them something. You owe them thanks or perhaps some money if they ask for it. However, there is a limit to how much they can ask of you after they do a favor. The same goes if you wrong someone. If I wrong someone, I need to atone for what I did. This can be done by doing the person a favor, by obeying their request. Of course, like the last example, there is a limit to how much of a request they can make and still demand you to follow it. One cannot demand a million dollars, for example, simply because you stole a candy bar from their shop. So, if we were to wrong God, we would have a debt to him. This debt can be repayed by obeying him. Of course, with any person who is wronged, there is only so much they can ask and still reasonably demand it of us.

So, since God is our benefactor, and since he has been wronged by us, we are in debt to him. So, his requests have some (but not total) moral weight. These requests may be requests of worship, petitionary prayer, and attendance at church. This causes God to be a source but not the only source of morality.

In Swinburne's book, Responsibility and Atonement, he explains these concepts. He also explains how if a person's life is supposed to be a gift from God, then God cannot give very tight moral restrictions for how it is to be used (p. 129). Here's a quote where he explains this:

"No giver can give a present with full instructions on its use; I cannot 'give' you five dollars and tell you what I want you to buy for me with it. It would not then be a gift. Something is only a gift if, maybe within limits, the recipient can choose what to do with it. And a gift is not a generous one if any instructions for its use, though not totally precise, are too detailed."

So, a good God who gave us the gift of life would not subject it too very tight moral restrictions. We would have a certain amount of moral freedom where we can make our own choices.

As for the concept of original sin, I would agree with most Christians I'm sure, that we aren't to be blamed for sin coming into the world. We can't be blamed for what Adam and Eve did. I would agree that humans have a tendancy to sin and hence need atonement for their sins.

I would not agree that Jesus' death in any way "paid the price" for our sins. One person cannot be punished for the sins of another. I do believe, however, that Jesus' suffering and eventual death can be taken another way. That being that Jesus sacrificed himself so that we could see how serious our sins are. A person who is wronged (God) can sacrifice something (his Son) to show us that our sins are very serious. From Swinburne again (p. 153):

"God makes available the sacrifice (of himself), but it is we who have to offer it. Christ's laid-down life is there made available for sacrifice, like a ram caught in a thicket. Any man who is humble and serious enough about his sin to recognize what is the proper reparation and penance for it may use the costly gift which another has made available to him to offer as his sacrifice...the sinner has to use Christ's death to obtain forgiveness."

He says we must identify that Jesus' life was perfect and one that we ought to have lived. We can offer Jesus' life to God as the life we should have lived. I think Swinburne's interpretation of Jesus' life and death is better than other interpretations.

If I were a Christian (part 1)

On the bus ride home yesterday, I was reading Richard Swinburne's Providence and the Problem of Evil. This got me thinking, if I became a Christian, what type of Christian would I be?

First, I would generally agree with Swinburne's view of the Christian God. He believes that God is all-knowing but doesn't know the future with absolute certainty. The reason why he holds this view is that he believes no being can have an incorrigible belief about what a free being will do in the future. This is because for a being to truly have free will, he must have the power to make any person's belief about his future actions false. Say for example that God believes I will go to school tomorrow. Sure, there is a high probability that this will happen since I have class tomorrow. However, since I have free will, I must have the power of not going to school tomorrow. I must be able to make false God's belief that I will go to school tomorrow. So whatever belief God may have about my future actions, I must have the power to make them false. Therefore, as long as it's possible that God's beliefs about my future actions are false, he cannot know them with absolute certainty.

There is a couple ways around this but none of them seem plausible. One can say that my future act caused God to have a past belief about my future act. So, my future act of going to school tomorrow caused God today (and forever stretching back into eternity) to have the belief that I will go to school tomorrow. The problem that Swinburne shows with this in his book The Christian God is that causes must always precede their effects. You can never have an event at a certain time t cause something to happen at a time before t. Another way to get around the free will problem is to say that God is outside of time so he sees all the events that have and will happen at once. However, as Swinburne points out in The Christian God, it is hard to make sense of the idea that a being can be outside of time.

In general, I would agree with Charles Seymour's idea of hell that he gives in A Theodicy of Hell. Generally, Seymour believes that God sends some people to hell to punish us for our past sins. Since we only committed a finite number of sins and each sin is only finitely wrong, we can only receive a finite amount of punishment. However, once the damned get to hell, they still have the free will to sin and God will punish them for those sins too. It is possible for those in hell to get out of hell and into heaven if they become good enough such that at some point in the future, they would have experienced all the punishment they deserve. I agree with Seymour that this view is compatible with a loving God. Here, I wrote a review of the book and here is a link where Charles Seymour summarizes it.

I think one can believe in the Christian God and still believe in evolution, as Swinburne does. I don't think there is much problem with interpreting some of the bible as fiction or interpreting some of it in a non-literal way. For example, one could believe the Garden of Eden never existed but still believe that there was a first man (call him Adam) who committed the first sin. This latter belief is compatible with evolution.

I'd say that's about it, that's the most plausible view of the Christian God I can see. (There's more to Swinburne's beliefs like those concerning the Trinity and the Incarnation that I didn't talk about here. I think those beliefs are plausible as well)