Christian Apologetics

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The aim of Christian apologetics is to provide a rational defense of the main tenets of Christianity. Here orthodox Christians and those who disagree with them are invited to help summarize and elaborate all the major arguments of Christian apologetics.

These tenets include:

Contents

[edit] Eternal Damnation

An objection to eternal damnation is that all punishment must be proportional to the offense and to the reasonable capacities of the offender.

[edit] Objection: Eternal damnation not proportional to offenses

Why is damnation eternal? How can eternal punishment be a proportionate response to a finite number of sins?

[edit] Pro-orthodox argument: Why eternal damnation is the just dessert of even the slightest disobedience of God

Justice requires that punishments be fitted to crimes in proportion. Eternal damnation is a punishment of infinite magnitude, due to its length. Nothing precisely quantitative is stated about the intensity of eternal damnation (weeping, gnashing of teeth, the smoke of their torment rises forever). But a punishment of any intensity for infinite duration is an infinite punishment.

The belief that God is just implies that eternal damnation must somehow be proportional. That is, sins committed during a finite lifetime must somehow be infinitely heinous. It is reasonable to suppose that the sins committed by any mortal are neither infinite in number, nor infinite in duration. This suggests that sins against God are infinite in magnitude.

I think we've established at this point that eternal punishment is not really about punishing sin according to their deserts, but punishing disobedience. One act of disobedience, no matter how trivial, deserves infinite punishment. That is your logic.
This point of view is that any offense against the worth of God, whether it be short in duration or small in its visible effects, still has one infinite dimension. It is a violation of infinite obligation. So this is a description about eternal damnation being a punishment for sins according to its deserts.
OK so let's say the argument here is "that the even slightest disobedience of God deserves eternal punishment."
And this is because even the slightest rebellion against God has infinite weight.
This is where I disagree. Disobedience doesn't have any objective weight. The seriousness of disobedience is determined at the discretion of the person who is disobeyed. If I disobey my parents, they can hit me with a rod, or they may disapprove but let me do what I want without retribution. When God ordered Adam not to eat a certain fruit, it was not logically inevitable that disobedience would bring one degree of punishment or another. It was God's choice -- according to the Genesis story -- to impose death and toil etc. Thus, aside from the severity of a particular injustice, disobedience by itself cannot give rise to a objective degree of penalty. That penalty is the discretion of the disobeyed person.
Consider also the penalty the snake suffered for tempting Eve. The snake lost its legs! And now all snakes don't have legs, where presumably they once had legs before the Fall. Obviously, God wanted to make the snake suffer, even though the snake is not a human being, but a mere animal. And if the snake was actually Satan impersonating a snake, then God did an injustice to all the snakes of the world, since they have no legs as a result of Satan's impersonation of a snake, for which they are not to blame.
I believe the heart of this disagreement involves the nature of God and the nature of righteousness. It is the nature of God to be righteous. Within this point of view, that is the same as saying it is the nature of God to uphold the highest value (himself) accordingly. There are two ways to signify the infinite magnitude of offenses against him: eternal punishment in hell and the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. The penalty of hell is imposed from the nature of God. He could choose not to impose it and it would be a choice to be unrighteous. I believe our disagreement stems from the different ways that we view the nature of God and the nature of righteousness.
I still don't see your logic. It may be wrong not to obey God, but disobedience is obviously not infinitely wrong, or else God would have annihilated Adam and Eve immediately or sent them straightaway to hell. Instead, God imposed a lesser penalty, by letting them live out their earthly lives and to have children. That is far short of an infinitely heinous punishment. This contradicts your logic.
But in addition. let me also raise this point: you're basically saying that as soon as God created us, we were bound to be condemned, since it was impossible for us, being imperfect beings, to be perfectly obedient. And God knew this. So God condemned us to sin, just so he could show his mercy. This sounds rather self-aggrandizing.
Moreover, God could have let us eat of the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. Or he could have just not put those trees there. Then Adam and Eve would have had a much better chance of being obedient. So in a way, the Fall is God's fault, because I see no good reason for putting those trees there and then prohibiting the consumption of their fruit, except to make sure that Adam and Eve disobeyed. Surely, God would be convicted of contributory negligence or reckless endangerment if this were a tort lawsuit!
Here's another reason God is partly to blame for man's sin. Most if not all sin is a byproduct of scarcity and competition. But in Eden, there was no scarcity and thus no competition and thus hardly any reason to sin. Scarcity could not come about until Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden by God. Thus God exacerbated the likelihood that mankind would be subject to sin, through the earthly punishment he imposed on Adam and Eve.
Yes! In all righteousness, God could have sent Adam and Eve to hell immediately. But for a time, in his forbearance, he overlooked sins. This is the teaching of Romans 3:25 (and context). For a time, he appeared unrighteous. But to demonstrate his righteousness, he put forward Christ as a propitiation. God never imposes a lesser penalty. That would be unrighteous -- it would not reflect his infinite worth. All penalties are infinite.
Here is an illustration to help describe the righteousness of God. Pretend temporarily that there is no hell. Pretend that the only possibilities for a human are annihilation and heaven. If God allowed Hitler into heaven instead of annihilating him, something within us (a sense of righteousness) would object vigorously. If one adds the orthodox Christian concept of the glory of God, one should object 10,000 times more vigorously if God allowed me (an average person compared to Hitler) into heaven -- precisely because my offenses against such a worthy and glorious God should make my entrance into heaven unthinkable without a demonstration of God's righteousness. A Jew reading about God's forgiveness of King David after having seen him basically murder the husband of Bathsheba would understandably have in his mind a massive cognitive dissonance. We would object vigorously if a human judge were to let a guilty person off the hook. A king or a government will not allow treason to pass without remarking on its significance; the majesty of the king or the rightful place of the government must be recognized. We have this sense of right in our hearts. God is righteous and will be recognized as worthy.
In fact, even if God annihilated Hitler, your sense of justice or righteousness should be offended -- Hitler would be getting off the hook too easily. We all agree his offenses are great and that their significance must be recognized. Now enlarge your concept of the majesty and glory of God until Hitler's offenses and all of ours become so great as to merit an infinite punishment and now you have arrived at the orthodox Christian view of the magnitude of the glory of God.
The other points seem to belong under the objection from reasonable capacity. If you move them, feel free to delete this paragraph.

From Jonathan Edwards' The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners:

A crime is more or less heinous, according as we are under greater or less obligations to the contrary ... Our obligation to love, honour, and obey any being, is in proportion to his loveliness, honourableness, and authority ... But God is a being infinitely lovely, because he hath infinite excellency and beauty ... So that sin against God, being a violation of infinite obligations, must be a crime infinitely heinous, and so deserving of infinite punishment.

[Note: this is the conservative, Calvinist position, consistent with Jonathan Edwards and John Piper (and hopefully above all, consistent with the Bible)]

[edit] Anti-orthodox challenge: The Idea of an "Infinite" Obligation is incoherent

There are no degrees of obligations. You either have an obligation or not. At most, one might say that obligations can be prioritized, as in having a "higher obligation" or an "overriding obligation" that trumps other obligations. But no one thinks of "obligation" as capable of being quantified in the sense that infinity is a quantity. In short, the idea of obligation is boolean and possibly ordinal, but not cardinal in nature.

It makes much more sense, therefore, to drop the idea of an "infinite obligation" and to focus on the real issue: the idea of a infinitely heinous offense. It is certainly true that punishment should be proportional to the heinousness of an offense. The question is whether committing even one sin is sufficiently heinous to merit infinite punishment.

From another contributor: Perhaps I can agree that I am under some obligation to honor and thank God. But it is difficult to understand why the obligation should be infinite.

We might leave it up to the reader to decide whether an obligation can be quantified as infinite. For example, can one obligation be described as twice as important as another -- or merely more important? From his sermon, you can see that Jonathan Edwards thinks an obligation can be quantified as infinite.
The goal of this rejoinder is to make the idea of an infinite obligation understandable, not to argue for agreement that it actually is the case. If someone were to stand before an infinitely majestic and holy God and radio back that they feel a sense of infinite obligation or guilt, would that be understandable?
Can the idea of infinite obligation be illustrated? Suppose I offend a series of individuals in the same way. The first in the series is a complete stranger. The second in the series is a friend. The same offense committed against these two individuals are different in significance in proportion to the significance of my relationship to each of these individuals. Continue the series with my parents and end the series with God himself. As you move further along the series, the relationship becomes more significant, the debt I owe becomes more significant.
But this illustration is misleading. The closer someone is, the less the whole notion of "obligation" applies, and the more one does things out of love and spontaneous generosity. A mother does not care for her children out of obligation. She cares for them out of love. Love and obligation are inversely proportional.
Compare insulting an acquaintance, insulting parents, and insulting infinitely sovereign majesty.
Yes, it is worse to insult a friend than to insult a stranger. But the friend is also more willing to forgive. A fortiori for parents. If God was really like a father, he would allow everyone, regardless of whether they accepted Christ or not, to say sorry when they die and meet him in heaven. Then God would forgive them there and then, and not damn them for all eternity like a cruel and petulant Middle Eastern despot.
For the purposes of this illustration, the question is whether these insults can be compared with language such as "twice as bad" or merely ranked in order. Romans 3:25 indicates that God cannot merely forgive offenses. If he were to forgive without demonstrating the significance of these offenses, he would be unrighteous. That is, he would be allowing that which is of highest value to be trampled and treated without proper recognition. God demonstrates all of his excellencies, righteousness as well as love, in the cross. A truly unloving God would send everyone to hell immediately after their first offense. A truly unrighteous God would forgive everyone without requiring the recognition of his worth. This rejoinder is asking whether this is understandable, not necessarily agreeable.
Actually, the question is not whether God can merely forgive offenses. The question is whether any offenses can add up to eternal punishment. And on that point, the answer is no, they cannot. To be righteous, you must punish in proportion to the offense. Lying merits maybe a day of punishment. Stealing, a year. etc etc. The end result is, sins can't add up to infinity. What you are arguing is that the commission of even the least sin -- such as saying a bad word -- is deserving of eternal punishment. That is not righteousness. That is going way overboard and being disproportional.
I think what you are really saying is not that sins deserve appropriate punishment, but that simple disobedience deserves eternal punishment. So if God ordered me to tie my shoes by noontime, and I forget, I would deserve eternal punishment, according to Edwards' and your logic. Right?
When sins are defined as disobedience against a list of do's and don'ts, they cannot add up to an infinite offense. However, that is not the primary thing about sin according to the Bible. When King David committed adultery with Bathsheba later arranged for the death of her husband, he later said in his confession to God, "Against you alone have I sinned." Yes, he did sin against her and her husband, but the primary component, the main concern was his treatment of the worth of God. In David's mind, where was God when David was walking about at night and saw her bathing? Where was God when David arranged for the death of her husband? Surely the murder of a human is a great matter. However the Bible treats David's offense against the worth of God as the primary component of his sins. In order to find eternal damnation understandable, the concept of the worth of God must be enlarged continually until it is conceivable that murder is an offense first against God and second against the human victim.
OK, but you are saying that if God orders me to tie my shoes, and I don't, I deserve eternal punishment, correct? This is similar to the command to Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge. BTW, is Adam in hell or just dead? If dead, will he be raised on the day of judgment and sent to hell?
To my knowledge, the Bible does not describe the entire development of Adam's relationship with God. The moment he ate from the tree, he repudiated the rightful place of God, the one who created him and the garden and galaxies out of nothing. From the orthodox Christian point of view, this (the glory and worthiness of God as it relates to us) is the weightiest matter any human will ever have to deal with. If any readers sincerely seek assistance in understanding and appreciating the relationship between the glory of God and eternal punishment, they can read the entire text of Jonathan Edwards' The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners. It is not commended as the best thing to read -- merely a helpful one.
I owe my continuing existence and everything good to God. If he ceases to uphold my existence by the word of his power, I would evaporate into nothingness. God also has given his Son to forgive me -- and this has infinite significance. God's majesty as Sovereign also demands honor.
Perhaps it is up to the reader to decide whether one can only speak of an obligation as being greater than another or if one can begin to conceptualize how much greater it is. If one can, then it is possible to conceive of an infinite obligation -- and a single sin against God would be an infinitely heinous offense that merits infinite punishment.
Perhaps you can reason backwards within the Jonathan Edwards paradigm: eternal punishment and justice imply that sins can merit eternal punishment. How do they merit an infinite punishment? By being infinitely significant violations of obligations. But they can only be such large violations if those obligations are equally as large. If the paradigm is understandable, even if not agreeable, then the goal of the rejoinder is met.
(Some incomplete material has been moved to the discussion page temporarily.)
[edit] Anti-orthodox challenge: Even if there is an infinite obligation to obey God, violations cannot call for eternal hellfire

What is the apropriate retribution for a wrongdoing? It is not necessarily an eye for an eye, or simply in accordance with the principle of proportionality. Here is a paragraph explaining Kant's view on punishment from here.

Notice where this leaves us: on the one hand, punishing a person may be a way of respecting his or her humanity. On the other hand, some forms of punishment violate the humanity of the person being punished, and in the process debase us. But now an interesting question arises. Most is us agree: punishing a torturer by torture is not acceptable. A person in the throes of torture is a person who has, at least for the time being, had their humanity expunged. But the opponent of capital punishment will ask: isn't murder like torture in this respect? After all, a murderer robs his victim entirely of her humanity. But now we must ask: if we execute murderers, might this not be one of those very cases, like torture, in which the jus talionis goes too far? Take a different case. Suppose a particularly savage criminal left his victims alive, but performed some sort of surgery on them that destroyed their mental capacities -- that left them virtually sub-human. Kant would (or should, in all consistency) insist that it would not be appropriate to punish the wrongdoer by subjecting him to the same procedure. The fact that the criminal did not respect the humanity of his victims does not entitle us to rob him of his humanity. But if this is so, one can wonder: how could capital punishment be justified? In killing a murderer, the state takes it upon itself to extract his humanity from him in the most final way. So it is fair to ask: can a system of punishment that really takes the categorical imperative seriously really permit the death penalty? If torture and psychosurgery are not acceptable forms of punishment, why is it that execution still is?

Hellfire seems to be tantamount, if not identical, to eternal torture. Even human beings, under the Geneva Convention, agree that this violates human rights.

And if hell is not like roasting in fire for eternity, it must at least meet the Geneva conventions and commonly accepted notions of human rights, in order to be just and humane punishment.

NOTE: Nice to link here to a discussion of what hell must be like.

There is a response under construction in the discussion page. That which meets the goal of this rejoinder will be published here.
[edit] Anti-orthodox challenge: A perfect God does not necessarily obligate us to obey.

I think it's unclear here what follows from God's majesty. Consider the idea of God that Plato and Aristotle had. Both of them believed God to be utterly perfect. So they accept your premise that God is perfect in an infinite way. But at the same time, they did not derive any rule that one had an infinite obligation to obey this God or that one deserved eternal punishment if one failed to do so. Why would that be? Both Plato and Aristotle were supremely logical thinkers. I dare say more logically rigorous than Jonathan Edwards. Let's explore why they arrive at different conclusions.

Why should there be an obligation at all? Why are we under obligation to God? One can imagine a universe where God does not require our obedience or worship.

[edit] How Edwards sees God's majesty resulting in obligation

One thing that might have caused Edwards to arrive at a different conclusion is that he reasoned from biblical teachings. To him, the Bible states that the essence of righteousness is to uphold the highest value accordingly and that this righteousness is part of God's nature. What follows is a description of his reasoning and where this definition of righteousness comes from.

The central fact (or family of facts) in the universe is that God is infinitely glorious and excellent. He is infinitely more glorious and more excellent than any other thing or being that has ever existed, that currently exists, and that will ever exist.

The central rule in the universe (as described by Jonathan Edwards) is that the most worthy being or thing should be valued accordingly. This is the essence of what is right. God should be worshipped because he is the most worthy being by an infinite margin. This rule is not imposed upon God externally. Rather, it is part of his nature.

God requires our obedience and worship because he is righteous. If he did not require it, you could justly declare him unrighteous.

Where does this definition of righteousness come from? Romans 3:25 says "[Christ Jesus,] whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins."

God put Jesus to death in order to show his righteousness. He had for a time passed over sins (of infinite magnitude committed by people before the death of Jesus) and thus had appeared unrighteous. He appeared to be somewhat and mysteriously OK about being spurned and devalued by humans. He had a covenant relationship with sinful people, he forgave King David, etc.

If you are God (infinitely worthy) and for a time show some degree of acceptance when you are spurned, you would appear to be unrighteous -- you would be failing to uphold the highest value (yourself).

When God put Jesus to death, he showed his righteousness by saying in effect: "The spurning of my worthiness is indeed infinite. The forgiveness I have given has also been infinite and by having infinitely worthy deity (Jesus) put to death on the cross, I hereby show you how I value my worthiness and how significant your sins are. I hereby uphold my worthiness and thereby demonstrate my righteousness."

[edit] Objection: Eternal damnation is incompatible with love

Could you imagine your mother or father condemning you to eternal damnation? Could you see yourself in any circumstance condemning your children or your spouse or anyone else you love to eternal damnation? This is inconceivable. Since God's love is all the greater, it follows that it is even more inconceivable that he could consign any of his creatures to eternal damnation.

Response

God is a God of justice and holiness as well as love. To tolerate evil in His creation is not loving, as evil harms and destroys.

[edit] The Objection from Reasonable Capacity

A criticism hinges on the idea of reasonable capacity: Just as we have no criminal laws that a normal person can't reasonably be expected to follow, there should be no law (i.e. a law demanding sinlessness for salvation) that no normal human being can obey. It would follow from this that eternal damnation is unjust, since the law that triggers this penalty is unreasonable.

Jewish theology allows for imperfect human beings to earn salvation through good works. (Need to cite sources.)

[edit] Limited Salvation

Orthodox Christianity holds that salvation is limited to those who are saved through faith in Jesus Christ. There is some disagreement among orthodox Christians as to the extent to which non-Christians can be saved. But it firmly holds that salvation is limited and that it is just if many non-Christians suffer eternal damnation after their earthly death.

Christian Apologetics defends the justice and rationality of limited salvation. Opponents of the doctrine have argued that limited salvation is unreasonable and unjust.

Why is Jesus the only way to be saved? Why can't there be other ways to be saved? If God is loving, wouldn't he accept devout and good people of other faiths?


[edit] The Doctrine of Atonement

The Doctrine of Atonement holds that Jesus Christ died to atone for the sins of fallen human beings.

How can one person die for another person's sins? How can one person die for the sins of many other people? Why is the death of Jesus considered an acceptable replacement for the eternal suffering of sinners?

Liberal Christian views of atonement - link to religioustolerance.org

[edit] Objection: Two Wrongs Cannot Make a Right

It's wrong to sin, but it's also wrong to kill an innocent person. How can two wrongs make a right? In other words, our modern notion of justice does not allow one person to be punished in the place of another. If a criminal commits a crime, and his brother steps in to receive the punishment, justice is still not done, and in fact injustice is doubled.

However, the substitutionary punishment theory did make sense in more barbaric ancient societies where angry gods were rather indiscriminate about exacting justice -- destroying whole cities for the sins of a few of its citizens, demanding sacrifice of innocent animals for the sins of guilty humans, etc.

More than likely substitutionary punishment also made a lot of sense to those who had the power to force someone else to take their place.

I would have thought that this principle in the case of Jesus Christ, as the Son of God, would stand on its own. Rather than just a normal subsititution this is one of extraordinary power due to the incredible 'value' of this Son in relation to the Father. However, is this diminished in light of the fact that, as the omnipotent God the Father, 'he' would have known it was pre-ordained?

[edit] Original Sin

Do Christians believe that the fall of Adam affects all humans? If so, what is the effect and why should the fall of Adam affect all humans? Are we judged for our own sins or for his as well? Does Adam have any effect on whether I am sinful?

[edit] The Implications of Darwinian Evolution

Is it possible to retain the doctrine of Original Sin if one accepts that human beings came into being through the process of natural selection? The evolution of human beings implies that there was no "Fall," since the behaviors that constitute sin - e.g. aggression, jealousy, lust, greed, deception, etc. - stem from natural instincts. These behaviors were natural since they contributed to the survival and development of the human species.

This does not mean that such behaviors are good today, in a much more civilized form of society. They must be checked and controlled to promote the greater good.

[edit] Biblical Inerrancy

Orthodox Christians hold that the Bible is inerrant. Their critics hold that the Bible was composed and collated by human authors who were fallible.

Some quotes from Oxford University Biblical scholar and former Catholic priest Geza Vermes:

The gospels tell us two contradictory things - that Jesus was interested only in Jews and that the world was his target. Which one is right? My belief is that the first is something Jesus did say, which has survived in the text, while the other was something that was later attributed to him by gospel writers to suit the needs of an expanding Christian church. source

[edit] Notable Christian Apologists and Opponents

[edit] Pro

[edit] C.S. Lewis

[edit] Josh McDowell

[edit] Lee Strobel

[edit] Con

[edit] Richard Dawkins

[edit] Hard to Classify

[edit] Bishop John Shelby Spong

[edit] Links

 
See also the Wikipedia article on Apologetics.
See also the Wikipedia article on C. S. Lewis.
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