Post Edited (jefscott) : 1/27/2007 1:47:31 PM (GMT-6)

To my mind, glory requires that an intelligent being be able to apprehend a quality in another and APPRECIATE it at some level. If I'm boxing someone, and I know that if I don't box well my opponent is going to belt me, I can still appreciate my opponent when he belts me. Simply because he is doing his thing WELL. So long, then, as humans can apprehend that certain actions deserve to be responded to in some way, they can appreciate Him who applies judgment because of His fidelity to the rules of the game. Appreciation need not entail liking. Neither does glory, to my mind.

So the only way accountability can be inconsistent with glory, to my mind, is if there really is no such THING as accountability in the first place. This is what you're saying, is it not, D? This means that people's sense of accountability is an illusion. I, on the other hand, don't think the majority of humans could shake their intuition of accountability any more than they can shake their intuition of free-will. Some people can. But most people can't.

The reason why I think people can't shake it is because if there is no accountability, most people think, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. We can be saved post-mortem. So if any person can be motivated by negative consequences, they have a positive role. I think MOST people are motivated by negative consequences. I know LOTS of people who wouldn't work except that the alternative is jail or starvation. I know LOTS of people who don't speed ONLY because they don't want to pay a fine. And on and on... I'm just not seeing the down side to negative consequences for negative behavior.

Post Edited (jefscott) : 1/27/2007 2:07:48 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Starkman) : 1/27/2007 3:41:53 PM (GMT-6)

Exousia: You really don't see any reason why a person would be placed into a place of possible pain-filled rehabilitation EXCEPT as a MORAL ACCOUNTING for past actions?

How about this:

God wants us to LEARN from life...because he wants us to be FREE, RESPONSIBLE beings. And the lessons that we don't learn in THIS life need to be learned in the next. God wants to FREE US from our LIES and BONDAGE...so that we may be EMPOWERED to use our GOD-LIKE powers of spirit freely and wisely. Like the Sons and Daughters of God that we are.

Jeff: You say a perfectly loving person would only be concerned about another's satisfaction--not their own satisfaction. So I'm going to ask my question ONE MORE TIME.

1) If God is perfectly blissed out in satisfaction with INTRA-godhead relationality,

AND

2) If INTRA-godhead relationality is non-volitional,

... then why wouldn't a perfectly loving creator, who is sentiently motivated to do what is most sentiently satisfying to others, just make us like Himself? Then we could all experience that bliss. THIS, D, is my issue. All your personal history is irrelevant to it. We're trying to understand the nature and workings of perfect love in a philosophically coherent way. The way you are personally best motivated doesn't give me any insight into what we're discussing here, because I AM motivated by negative consequences just like you said a rational person would be if they knew what was coming:

That's why spiritual development is important RIGHT NOW.

The more crap you get out of your life HERE...the LESS crap you have to be concerned with LATER.

You want "wailing and gnashing of teeth"?

You are, here, conceding that negative consequences WILL motivate a rational person. I see literally no practical difference in what you're saying, there, and moral accountability. So I'm not going to JUDGE someone for believing in ill-desert. Much less scrap the historical Christ over it--UNTIL, i.e., you can answer my main question in a way that renders your view more intelligible to me.
 

Post Edited (jefscott) : 1/27/2007 8:41:56 PM (GMT-6)

Gosh this is long. Sorry.

Exousia: Accountability? Dang.

Tom: I don’t see the problem with accountability. We’re either accountable or we sin with impunity. Either there are consequences to free choice or there are not.

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Tom: And holding them accountable means something like “seeing to it that they experience the just consequences of their sin.” To not forgive is to “hold accountable.” To forgive is to “not hold accountable.”

Jeff: Exactly. We simply are accoutable. This simply means there are fitting consequences to our actions unless Christ absorbs them.

Tom: Right.

Jeff: So long as we tie these consequences to the temporal aspect of Christ's reign, they have no problematic impact on the coherence of UR. In other words, after the temporal end (and the associated side-effects) of creation is over, all those consequences which were correlatively entailed in the project will have run their course.

Tom: I’m not sure I’m following this. It looks like you want to ground accountability in the temporal reign of Christ. I ground it in metaphysics. We could not be created as contingent beings for loving God and not be accountable. That’s all I need.

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Jeff: God only needs atonement for remission because of He originally intended for us to fellowship in Christ's temporal glory by being sinless.

Tom: I’m not getting it. I just say God needs atonement for remission because the loving relationship for which we are intended precludes our sinning with impunity, that is, it requires that creation (us) be held accountable. It’s just metaphysics, not eschatology.

Jeff: The post-fall, redemptive plan is not the original, or primary, intention.

Tom: I can agree to that.

Jeff: There is, then, nothing about God's nature that requires propitiation for sin.

Tom: We’ll probably disagree here. I think God is the grounds for what is metaphysically the case at any point in time. In my view love requires freedom (for us), and freedom entails risk, and risk implies consequence and accountability. Without accountability, there is no risk. But all these flow from metaphysics which in turn is grounded in God. So I’d say God’s nature is pretty much the ONLY reason why there’s accountability in creation.

Jeff: It [sinlessness] is a mean that is correlatively entailed in the SUCCESS of the temporal project. This, alone, may be what necessitates the atonement.

Tom: It sounds like we’re saying the same thing, but I don’t see why this has to be so compliated. I would never think to describe as “a sin-free creation is entailed in the success of the project.” It sounds to me, Jeff, like you’re suggesting that God made creation’s being sin-free necessary to the success of the project but could have made it otherwise. I don’t see that God could have achieved success apart from sinlessness since the project is to have pure, loving, and free sentient creatures reflecting the divine life and love. If God intends us to be THAT, then (a) we have to be libertarianly free to begin with, and (a) such freedom entails the risk of and accountability for sin which in turn entails atonement to achieve success should we fall into sin.

Is this what you’re saying? I’m just saying that what grounds the necessity of atonement in the event creation falls into sin is the metaphysics of creaturely, loving relationships. Perfect love would not permit our sinning with impunity.

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Jeff: Accountability is a means to the maximizing of Christ's glory. So yes, forgiveness is required to bring one into the fellowship of Christ's temporal glory. But it is not required to bring one into peace with God, independent of the temporal project. This latter statement conveys the sense in which I think Exousia is rightly articulating perfect love.

Tom: Ahhhhh. OK, then I guess I’m alone on this one ‘cause I don’t see sinful creatures coming into the enjoyment of peace with God apart from accountability. And I don’t separate the “temporal project” from “creaturely enjoyment of peace with God.” Why do that?

As I see it, our enjoying peace with God (and all the attendant consequences—glory for God, reflected beauty, etc.) IS THE PROJECT. Yes, this may originate in the fact that God always acts out of a regard for—or better yet, out of an apprehension of—his own worth and beauty, but God acts FROM this perspective, from the security of it, not necessarily and exclusively FOR THE SAKE OF IT. It’s not as if creation could have anything to do with that worth and beauty apart from being at peace with God. The latter (our being at peace with God) is what constitutes the glory of God’s worth and value in contingent reality. So when creation is at peace with God, then that’s ALL creation has to do with recognizing, celebrating, and reflecting the worth and beauty of God.

I gotta be missing something here.

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Jeff: To my mind, glory is not an aesthetic thing. It's different. It requires different conditions than aesthetic ones for its occurrence. I think this is the real source of our disagreement. There's no getting around the difference in implications, here. Even if one wants to say that glory is aesthetic, it still must be understood in terms of UNIQUE conditions. For example, can glory occur without LFW? I think not. But aesthetic pleasure can be derived from non-volitional beings/conditions. So what ARE the conditions of glory?

Tom: Great thoughts. Should this be a separate thread? It’s hugely important.

I think glory just IS beauty. These are synonymous to me. But beauty is always determined by the nature and capacities of a thing. So a flower’s beauty is different than an oil painting’s, different than a symphony’s, different than elegant mathematical equations. I wonder what commonalities in all these reflect what’s essential to beauty. Interesting. I think it boils down to interdependent sociality, but that’s another thread!

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Jeff: So the only way accountability can be inconsistent with glory, to my mind, is if there really is no such THING as accountability in the first place.

Tom: I also think accountability is an objective and necessary feature of creaturely becoming, and I can’t imagine such becoming apart from accountability. Objective accountability is what constitutes the RISK we always talk about. No accountability, no risk. That’s why if creaturely becoming fails and falls into sin, atonement is metaphysically necessary to its proper becoming in love once again.

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Jeff: This is what you're saying, is it not, D? This means that people's sense of accountability is an illusion. I, on the other hand, don't think the majority of humans could shake their intuition of accountability any more than they can shake their intuition of free-will.

Tom: However else we might disagree, Jeff (and I’m not sure what that is), we agree here.

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Jeff: In the meanwhile, I've not been convinced, Tom, that God needs LFW for HIS satisfaction. Especially is this the case if God is blissed in His INTRA experience with persons who don't love volitionally. Help me with this one.

Tom: Greg and I may be the only ones left in the world who belief this, but it still makes sense to me—a being’s ‘love’ cannot be GIVEN TO IT by another. Impossible. That’s the nature of love. God’s loving necessarily is not an exception to this. God’s loving necessarily (by nature) is not a feature determined for him by some power other than God. It’s self-determined, just necessarily so. But if God were to (supposedly) create us to love unfailingly as a matter of nature, then our loving would be a feature determined for us entirely by a power external to ourselves, and that would make us automatons with respect to the most important thing about the universe—love. I deny that love can be determined for a person by forces/wills outside the person, period.

So once God freely decides to create and purpose us for loving relations, he has to grant us the freedom necessary to our responsibly becoming in love, and THAT entails being accountable, and accountability is what constitutes the need for atonement should we fall.

So I agree, Jeff, that GOD doesn’t require us to have LFW. I think WE require it.

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Jeff: One more thing, Tom. I think one thing we need to address is the role of covenant in perfect love theology. Covenants entail conditionality. So we have to be clear on what it means for love to be unconditional when acting covenantally (i.e., conditionally). We have to define the senses in which things are conditional. So far, we're all agreeing that there are at least some senses in which things are conditional.

Tom: Totally agree.

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Jeff: Where I diverge from you and D, I think, is that I see Christ as an intended beneficiary of the means of the project's order.

Tom: I think I get this, Jeff. I just don’t see the need to go this route.

Jeff: And, BTW, I agree that where there is no knowledge of ill-desert, there is no ill-desert. Ill-desert must be apprehended as the grounds of the most rational account of the moral order to be obligatory.

Tom: Yes. Accountability is an OBJECTIVE feature of creation purposed for love. It couldn’t be otherwise. God could not have PURPOSED creation for loving reality apart from HOLDING CREATION ACCOUNTABLE should it fall. And should it fall, God could not FULFILL HIS PURPOSE for creation (viz., bring fallen creation into loving relationality) apart from ATONEMENT. Atonement is just God holding creation accountable for its choices. That’s what God does in Christ on the Cross. In Christ, God holds the world accountable.

Jeff: But once it is apprehended that way, it is binding. To my mind, it is still the most rational way of understanding how discursive creatures, who are not and can not be born with perfect love, must come to understand and live morally.

Tom: I think we’re pretty much on the same page then.

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Starkman: I don't recall D. ever saying that people are not accountable for their sin.

Tom: I don’t recall him ever saying that either, which is why his comment “Accountability? Dang” confuses me. Why would he balk at accountability (unless I’m misunderstanding the “dang”)?

Starkman: I don't see it being an anti-loving thing for God to require people, namely non-Christians, to be accountable for their sins…

Tom: Not only is it not anti-loving for God to hold creation accountable, but it’s positively entailed in God’s having loving designs for us.

Starkman: Question: Exactly what is God going to give or withold from us as far as "rewards" go? What in the world would I care about much of anything about rewards if I'm just able to find myself before Jesus' feet and thank Him alone for having mercy alone on my butt? For the life of me, I can't think of any "things" that God could give or withold that are going to make much of a difference to me once I'm there. As a matter of fact, He can keep all the reward stuff for just having loved me enought to die for me. Hek, to tell you the truth, I gave up long ago even caring about "rewards." I'm screwed up so badly that I'm just thankful for my salvation.

Tom: I hear ya. But what if “rewards” are capacities to reflect and generate God’s loving beauty? What if the rewards are what we ARE, not trophies or gifts external to us? Given all God’s done for you, wouldn’t you want to become as capable a reflection of him as possible? And what if how much of God gets reflected in and through us depends upon what we become in this life? So the “rewards” are about us, but they’re FOR God.

Starkman: The rewards, therefore, are positional placement, in terms of who and what you are in heaven, as it pertains to your existence in heaven. The reward or loss is the natural result of what spiritual integrity can be found in a work.

Tom: Then why wouldn’t you be concerned about rewards? I thought you said you wouldn’t interested in rewards. Am I missing something?

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Starkman: What I think D. is after is to state that no matter what God does, he can never go against His loving nature, which is to forgive and restore. If someone is going to be stuck in a box (post-mortem) for a while, I don't remember D. ever having had a problem with that.

Am I on track here, Exousia?

Exousia: Starkman. You just rock, man. The NATURAL CONSEQUENCES OF LIFE (and DEATH) are enough for responsible beings to learn from. We don't need to be UNFORGIVEN to learn. The PAIN and EFFECTS of MISRELATION will teach us just fine.

Tom: You’re not getting my (and Jeff’s if he agrees with me) point. God leaving us to bear the natural consequences of our choices IS God’s “not forgiving us.” They’re the same thing. God’s “forgiving us” on the other hand is simply God’s rescuing us from experiencing the consequences of our choices. That’s all I’m saying. When we are saved from having to experience the just consequences of our choices, it’s not because forgiveness means God just ignores those consequences. On the contrary, God can’t ignore them any more than God can remove accountability from metaphysics. Those consequences ARE experienced. They’re just experienced on our behalf by someone qualified to do so—a new head, Christ. So we are forgiven not in the sense that God erases the consequences of our sin, but in the sense that God as human, God IN humanity, bears the consequences of our sin for us so we don’t have to.

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Jeff: Nor, Tom, have I received an answer to why God needs or desires the kind of LFW we experience now since His greatest supposed bliss is derived from INTRA-godhead relationality--which you claim is non-LFW relationality.

Tom: It’s not that God needs or desires LFW. GOD doesn’t. WE do. More specifically, our becoming what God created us to become requires that we be libertarianly free to become it. That’s HOW we do our becoming. It’s just that simple. There’s nothing more to it. Whether we’re created at all, or how we’re created when we’re created, or whether we make it in the end by reconciling to God on earth or taking the post-mortem ride through Hell, none of this has any affect upon God’s experience of Godself as unsurpassable joyous loving relationality. There nothing in that which is God that “needs” us to exist at all, so there can hardly be anything in that which is God that “needs” us to be libertarianly free. What requires that we be free is that which is US, namely, contingent creaturely existence. To make that which we are unfailingly loving, that which we are must BECOME unfailingly loving. It can’t be created by God, *poof, on the spot, unfailingly loving, already “arrived.” If God wants to create beings, personal beings, that love and worship him, there’s ONE way to get it—via LFW, risk and accountability. This is where I ground these things, not in the benefits Christ gets from the temporal project (though I’m not arguing creation isn’t “for” Christ in some sense).

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Exousia: It's NOT essentially the same thing, Jeff. You really don't see any reason why a person would be placed into a place of possible pain-filled rehabilitation EXCEPT as a MORAL ACCOUNTING for past actions?

Tom: You’re missing Jeff’s point. Why are you assuming it’s either rehabilitation for no other reason EXCEPT as a moral accounting of choices or as something else? That misses the point. It’s not about accountability, just like it’s not about freedom. These things are rather about the achievement of loving, creaturely personhood.

Exousia: How about this: God wants us to LEARN from life...because he wants us to be FREE, RESPONSIBLE beings. And the lessons that we don't learn in THIS life need to be learned in the next. God wants to FREE US from our LIES and BONDAGE...so that we may be EMPOWERED to use our GOD-LIKE powers of spirit freely and wisely. Like the Sons and Daughters of God that we are. That's what psychiatric facilities are FOR. We are caught up if we think that hell is like some worldly PENITENTiary...and our screwed up sense of "justice."

Tom: We may end up just asserting contrary intuitions. I hope we can get past this. If our sense of justice is as screwed up as you say, why wouldn’t our sense of psychiatry be as screwed up? I mean, come on. Either we take our intuitions seriously and evenly or we don’t. But you can’t condemn our sense of justice while exalting our sense of psychology.

There’s no reason why all these intuitions can’t reflect different aspects of a full perspective on things. Hell is the “just” consequence of our choices. You don’t wanna say this, you wanna say hell is just the “natural consequence” of our choices. I really don’t see any great difference here. So hell is the just and natural consequence of our choices. What’s the problem? Hell is either a natural or unnatural consequence of our choice. And hell is either just or unjust. What can’t it be just and natural? If hell is best likened to psychiatric facilities, it’s either a just or not. I say it’s just. You seem to have this idea that if hell is just, it’s because a mean and angry God is in heaven stoking the fires, and if hell is just then it has to be a penitentiary and not a psychiatric facility. I don’t see that. Remember, these are all just analogies bro. And NO ONE ANALGOY WILL CAPTURE ALL THE TRUTH OF A REALITY. I think you expect this to be the case.

I love justice. I know you do too. I think everything God does is just and right. I guess I’m not seeing what’s so screwed up about our sense of justice then or why we can view hell as JUST.

I will say this. While I think hell is just, I don’t think hell is a place where humans can exhaust the experiential consequences of their sin and so “pay their way” out. Christ could, and did, experience the full consequences of human sin. In other words, the natural consequence of our refusing to take responsibility for our sin is our being held accountable by God for our sin and that in turn is what hell is. God cannot create a world in which hell does not receive those who refuse to take responsibility for their choices. But neither could he be perfectly loving in a world inhabited by sentient fallen creatures like us and not absorb the consequences of our sin himself, atoning for us, so that those who simply take responsibility for themselves before God would not have to experience hell.

That’s the metaphysics of it—love, freedom, risk, accountability, and so consequences. What’s the problem?

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Exousia: You want "wailing and gnashing of teeth"? Discover that you've been living by a LIE your entire life in a certain area...AND that you've HURT the ones you love in living in that lie. It HURTS. Badly.

Tom: Bro, do you honestly think the pain of self-discovery in THIS life is equal to the pain of self-discovering in hell? You have no experience of the latter, so you couldn’t possible speak from experience. But biblically or philosophically, do you really think these are equivalent?

Exousia: When I discovered that much of the "good" things that I've done really came from an ANXIOUS, EGOIC, NARCISSISTIC center...and that they weren't truly acts of LOVE... When I discovered how MUCH I hurt the people I loved by this...including my wife...I felt like I wanted to DIE...but I couldn't. I cried...and cried...and cried... It WAS hell.

Tom: Having never been to hell, how could you possible KNOW this, D? Come on. Show me some J.

Yes, self-discovery can be unspeakably painful. I just think that what we experience here and what we’ll experience there are qualitatively different. It’s all pain and suffering, so I’m not saying they’re not related. I just think post-mortem hell is beyond your our anybody’s ability to imagine. Let’s just leave it at that.

Exousia: ….and honestly, I can't IMAGINE how it would be if I had to deal with the TRUTH of my heart ALL AT ONCE.

Tom: And to deal with it in the absolute absence of any creaturely comforts, sociality, etc. This is the eschatological pit of despair. God is present, but we are forsaken by all else. And even the divine presence is not cushioning the journey. God too leaves us to ourselves, to drink full the bitter dregs of our rotten selves. This is nothing like any human being has or even COULD experience on earth.

Exousia: God is doing this for HEALING and RESTORATION...not just settling some moral score.

Tom: I’m glad you said it wasn’t “JUST” settling some moral score. That at least means you believe settling the score is PART of what it’s about. But hey, I’d even protest THAT! It’s not what I’ve been describing at all. “Holding people accountable” is NOT equivalent to “settling scores.” I really think that a lot of the mean-spirited, ugly, judgmental Christianity that we’ve all been wounded by is making it difficult for you to clearly see the goodness and beauty of justice and accountability. It’s not that God is “getting even” or “settling scores.” He’s just “holding us accountable,” and not for the sake of satisfying some objective standard or moral code, but rather for the sake of bringing us into the experience of his love.

Freedom, risk, and accountability are objective features of creation, metaphysical constrains that not even God can avoid. They’re grounded the essence and nature of God as expressed in contingent reality. So when those principles are played out in our experience (say, of hell) it’s not more for the sake of “maintaining the principles” than is our experience of God’s love for the sake of maintaining those principles. Nothing that ever occurs happens for the sake of maintaining principles. That is a denial of what you and I have been privately agreeing regarding necessary existence, that it is perspectival sociality. It’s all relational. Everything that occurs is most fundamentally a movement toward or away from harmonious interdependence and FOR THE SAKE OF that interdependence. Nothing occurs FOR THE SAKE OF maintaining principles or settling scores. That’s privation. But accountability and justice can be maintained FOR THE SAKE OF achieving harmonious interdependence. That’s all I’m saying. Don’t throw out justice when you talk of hell just because you’re viewing hell as purgative. Purgation describes God’s perspective on the suffering of those in hell. But that people are there at all is determined by the justly accountable nature of reality.

Tom

Jeff: I'm going to ask my question ONE MORE TIME.

1) If God is perfectly blissed out in satisfaction with INTRA-godhead relationality,

AND

2) If INTRA-godhead relationality is non-volitional,

... then why wouldn't a perfectly loving creator, who is sentiently motivated to do what is most sentiently satisfying to others, just make us like Himself?

Tom: It’s “blessed out” isn’t it? And it’s AD INTRA, isn’t it? I mean really, Jeff, if you want a sound answer you gotta get the vocab right!  

I hope you’ll see my answer to your question in the longer post I just put up. Roughly the answer goes like this:

(1) What’s most sentiently satisfying is loving relationality

(2) God is necessarily sentiently satisfied in loving relationality. That is, God determines himself with respect to loving relationality. He’s self-existent love. No will or power outside of God determines God’s loving nature.

(3) We are not necessary beings; we’re contingent creatures.

(4) The only way contingent sentient creatures like us can get into the most satisfying state of loving relationality possible for us is if we BECOME our way into that state, and the only way that happens is by our choosing to become loving.

(5) God can’t do what you suppose because what you suppose—determining that another being loves at all—is self-contradictory.

If you disagree with this, then I understand why you have to find some OTHER grounds that might explain why God went this route. I and my eternal twin Greg bathe and shower in this truth, so we don’t need to go elsewhere. It’s a steam room actually and there’s enough room in here for you, but you have to come in naked like the Scandinavians.

Tom

Jeff: No one is arguing for that, Keith. We're ALL arguing for UR. We're just understanding it differently.

Tom: Right. The thread started out to be a discussion of what the so-called unpardonable sin is and whether it was irrevocably unpardonable. Then it turned into a discussion of forgiveness.

Jeff: The way you [Starkman] and D see post-mortem consequences seems less than benevolent to me, so far.

Tom: It seems less than benevolent to you because you believe they agree that God could have created us already compatibilistically free with respect to love, right? And if God could have so created us, then it’s unloving to risk sin and hell if only to get us to love unfailingly, or compatibilistically. I agree with you Jeff. If God could have created us from the get-go in our final, finished, compatibilistically loving state, then to risk sin and hell is unlike any understanding of love I can intuit.

But I disagree that God is capable of creating us in such a compatibilistic state. I find the very notion incoherent. We’ve been all over this through the years and I’m not inviting a new debate. I’m just clarifying the stands.

If the metaphysical constrains of creaturely love limit us to having to BECOME loving through the exercise of our wills, then in my view we have a context in which to explain creation as risky and hell as God holding us accountable for the exercise of our will even though in love God has held humanity accountable for all its sin in Christ. We don’t HAVE to be in hell experiencing those consequences. Those consequences have been experienced. But because we are called to loving relationality, and because such relationality entails honesty, transparency, truth, purity of intention (all the other good stuff that goes into a loving relationship), and also, for us, choice—we have to acknowledge the truth about God and ourselves and choose. Not even atonement can remove THAT constraint (nor could God have removed it by creating us loving from the start). So it is that even though Christ can bear the consequences of our sin, we cannot benefit from this act without willingly identifying with it. Again, that’s just the metaphysical constraints of personal loving relationships (accountability, truth, choice, etc.) to my mind.

Tom