This is just a more technical-sounding, confusing, fancy way of making the “one person paying another person’s monetary debt” analogy (indeed, you go on and on with it in parts I don’t quote) which I very soundly refuted in the article itself:
greetings yahya. if you feel that you have refuted this then we certainly do have ourselves a problem but before speaking more on the matter, let us actually look at what you have said:
Henry Ward Beecher or someone once said, “... ( a ) Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note—torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.” ( b ) Yet instead of perceiving forgiveness in this very accurate and rational way, Christian dogma—to use the cliché that Christians themselves are always using—instead misrepresents forgiveness as a note of debt transferred from one person who cannot pay it to a loving volunteer who can. ( c ) As I heard a brother in the faith put it once, “The Christian concept of entering Heaven is similar to going to the movie theater. To get in you need to pay the ticket price. If you can not [sic] afford the price you get rich uncle Charlie to cough up the money for you. I do not see this as forgiveness. forgiveness [sic] erases all debt and their [sic] is no longer a price to be paid. To be forgiven we need only to repent fully and strive to become loyal servants of Allaah(swt). When our repentance is accepted, there is no longer any bill to pay...There is no charge for Allaah(swt)'s mercy.” Precisely. Forgiveness is the erasure of moral debt altogether, not a transfer of it from one party to another. Christianity is supposedly a religion centered entirely on grace yet the Christian definition of grace tries to have it both ways, and in doing so attributes both utmost injustice and gross, puzzling impracticality and unreasonability to the Almighty....
( a ) what exactly in the above is diametrically opposed to the christian understanding? does the christian not claim that the blood of christ cancels their debt to god? do they not believe that they have passed from judgement into life? i have noticed that parcelled throughout your post there are these peculiar lines which make no sense outside of simply misrepresenting what christianity claims and the above is just another example.
( b ) wait, a minute. you claim that we find in christianity something totally contradictory to what is underlined in section ( a ) yet never do you actually explain how this is so. you simply state this without backing it up. if one's debt is paid then does this not mean that the matter is ended, cancelled, burned up (or whatever other ways of putting it you have so kindly enumerated within your post)? the odd thing here is that you make your claim without basing this on fact and as such we find ourselves with yet another point that makes little sense outside of disparaging christianity simply for the sake of it. how does the christian understanding not lead to our sin(s) "never [being shown] shown against [us]" anymore? so far your argumentation has been so full of holes that it surprises even myself.
( c ) the analogy of yours actually proves nothing. in what way does it show that the christian conception of forgiveness does not lead to a "cancelled note"? for one thing, your analogy is faulty because in no sense does the concept of forgiveness play any role at all in watching a movie. certainly i can stretch your point to gain an understanding of what you're attempting to say but the analogy is a bad one. the individual in the example is not in any sort of debt towards the theatre company and this is unlike the discussion we are engaging in.
"If you can not [sic] afford the price you get rich uncle Charlie to cough up the money for you. I do not see this as forgiveness. forgiveness [sic] erases all debt and their [sic] is no longer a price to be paid." and this is precisely where things get good. the christian understanding is that the atonement was an expression of justice (hence why i could say:
"the true suffering did not consist of being nailed to the cross, or flogged, beaten etc. but rather in the wrath of god which flows from the justice of god being meted out on the person of christ") and forgiveness is subsequently given through this. you first error is that you lack a proper understanding of what is an expression of forgiveness and what is one of justice. but more importantly, here we go again with unsupported claims (i.e. "forgiveness [sic] erases all debt and their [sic] is no longer a price to be paid"). in what way do christians say that after god has forgiven them through the blood of christ they must still pay for their sins to god (as if christ's sacrifice wasn't enough)? yes, forgiveness does indeed erase all debt and as such the christian has passed from death into life.
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace --- Ephesians 1:7 NIV
"Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood --- Acts 20:28 NASB
so at this point i must again ask you, where exactly is the argument? you claim that forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note and who exactly is disagreeing with this? do christians not say that christ paid for their sins once and for all and as such they stand justified before god? your objection is either said in complete ignorance of christian teaching or a clear act of deceit. individuals on this board ought to stop thinking that merely denying a matter constitutes debunking it. the paragraph in which you claimed that your refutation was to be found was little more than a string of denials of the christian doctrine followed by no actual argument against it. my review of your post certainly is not starting off well.
"To be forgiven we need only to repent fully and strive to become loyal servants of Allaah(swt).[/U] When our repentance is accepted, there is no longer any bill to pay" <--- and this is where we get into the point of justice. i have noted that you have completely ignored this subject which i find quite odd (can a discussion on forgiveness at all be had without invoking the notion of justice? is it alright for the courts to simply forgive the person who murdered an innocent man? technically, they could pronounce a "not guilty" verdict yet such would not be an expression of justice and hence they are completely unable to do so). before we even get to the matter of being forgiven, we must first answer the question of whether it is just to be forgiven. god is the ultimate standard in the universe and as such he has a duty to necessarily uphold the good. god cannot act contrary to justice. sure, he can withhold mercy (forgiveness) but he
cannot withhold justice and as such the little discussion that you have hitherto entertained without at all appealing to the concept of justice is rendered moot. once again, as long as we ignore the concept of justice altogether, your diatribe on the christian faith could in fact be sustained yet when we actually look at things in the greater context and begin to appreciate all of god's attributes, your points all fall flat.
( d ) Thank you for unknowingly and inadvertently proving my point about these Christian doctrines limiting a limitless God—who in actual fact never needs anything to enable Him to do anything, and can solve any problem without having to resort to torturing Himself to death for no good reason to do so.
the only thing that i have inadvertently proven is your complete ignorance of what limitless actually means. it does not mean that he possesses no limits but rather that his limits do not somehow render him anything less than the one, perfect divine being. for the fact of the matter is that god is in fact limited--by a lot of things actually. he cannot lie, cannot steal, cannot sin etc., his aseity and omnipotence limit him to such a respect that he cannot cease to exist etc., god is limited by the rules of logic and so forth. so no, your appeal to limiting an infinite god simply won't work here for it only shows how you do not understand what is meant when christians and even muslims say that god is infinite.
note: as we shall soon see it is rather you who limits god and in fact imply that he is not perfect by claiming that some of his attributes aren't infinite. as such, he does not possess them in their entirety, and therefore cannot possess goodness in its entirety and this results in him not possessing perfection for he lacks the full measure of what is needed to be perfect. yet i digress.
( e ) who in actual fact never needs anything to enable Him to do anything, and can solve any problem without having to resort to torturing Himself to death for no good reason to do so.
once again, you are in fact wrong. god needs justice for he cannot simply act in any manner whatsoever. if he could act in any manner possible then he would not need justice but he certainly needs his actions to conform to certain standards such as justice (and before i hear the words euthrypho, plato and dilemma shouted at me we should also mention that these standards are found in his own being and as such we have nicely averted such a problem). the cross was an expression of justice and i would hope that you would at least keep from making such blithe, superficial comments on christian doctrine for we can all engage in the same particularly as it comes to your prophet engaging in sexual relations with a 9 year old girl and yet out of common decency, i avert putting the matter in manners that are repulsive to both you and myself (though i certainly condemn such an action). the problem here is that you still have not touched on the concept of justice and you have not shown us how your god is just when he forgives seeing as forgiveness by its very definition (i.e. mercy) is the opposite of justice. the muslim deity is simply incapable of being just and merciful at the same time concerning the same matter. given that he is not just consistently, then he is not the very emodiment of justice nor of goodness for to fail to embody justice is to fail to embody goodness. to fail to embody goodness is to fail to embody perfection, oh dear, we seem to have come to a parade of horribles.
note: if the muslim deity is not infinite justice or mercy, then he is not the full and in fact very embodiment of goodness etc. your failing argument has now driven you to commit blasphemy, congratulations.
And once again: punishment is the opposite of forgiveness. Changing the identity of the one being punished does not negate this fact.
first of all, your first sentence adds nothing to the discussion. punishment is an expression of justice and as such i have already included this particular understanding when i had contrasted justice to forgiveness repeatedly throughout my post. let's not waste any more words then are needed.
i'm not too sure what you're getting at with your second sentence and as such i would kindly request you to elaborate on this point. edit: now i think i do. you are saying that the cross is an expression of punishment and not of forgiveness and i must say that you are right. forgiveness flows from what happened on the cross. the cross itself highlights the justice of god. notice that it is called the atonement, to make "at-one-ment". it is a term that has to do with justice and the setting right of wrongs. the fact that you once again did not understand this further highlights your need for further study before you at all begin to start writing articles on the matter. perhaps then we would not run into such misunderstandings of elementary issues.
Sin results in a debt of sorts to God, but not a literal “sum must be paid by someone, it doesn’t matter who” sense like with actual money.
alright, so we agree that sin results in debt. i should mention that i did not argue that sin resulted in a monetary sum being pained but that it functioned along the lines of debt (to which i then subsequently gave examples involving a monetary unit). yet what is more troubling is that you simply assert the above without any proof (i.e. that a third party cannot pay one's debt). can you actually attack my definition of debt (it was actually a fairly all-encompassing definition and it is simply you who misunderstood it as relating only to money) before making claims that s yet have to be proved? if debt is contingent to the person then it need not only be that particular individual who has to pay this debt. in a sense, this discussion is indeed moot because we have examples in which debt operates in such a fashion. the bible clearly claims that divine law functions in such a way and given that we have proof both from logic and experience that this is perfectly in keeping with the idea of debt, then the christian understanding cannot be attacked. simply by admitting that sin "results in a debt of sorts to God" you have lost all logical grounds for criticism. we certainly know how debt operates and what has been claimed by christians is not at all illogical within such parameters. yet, this discussion is nothing if not entertaining and as such even though realistically speaking, your point has been refuted (even by yourself, thank you very much), we can certainly carry on as we have. i'd like to see what other manner of supposed proof you can bring to salvage your argument.
No one should ever have to pay for another person’s wrongdoing.
incorrect---incorrect in whatever sense we read the above. first of, christ did not have to pay (in the sense that he was forced to) but rather chose to pay. secondly, people are able to and in fact do pay for the wrongdoings of others all the time (surprisingly even in islam; you might want to look into the matter of noah's flood as it is related in the qur'an)---remember the example of monetary debt? the fact is that the above doesn't make any sense at all and is as ridiculous as it is incredibly wrong. how did you even come up with the above?
( f ) There is nothing unjust about a person who has the right to decide what, if any, punishment someone receives deciding on no punishment because he knows that none is necessary due to genuine repentance. ( e )If someone were sentenced to seven years of grueling slavery under a person he had wronged (there were many instances of this is ancient legal codes), and the wronged party exercised his right as the man’s new master to free him because after talking to him he had correctly ascertained that he had learned his lesson, no one would accuse him of injustice because of his mercy. Indeed, you could plug in any situation and you’ll find it’s the same.
( f ) here we somewhat play off the words "no punishment" and "necessary". there are two ways in which the words can be understood within the above context. the first being that no punishment is necessary because the individual was never guilty in the first place, and the second is that no punishment is necessary because the person though being guilty, is given a break from his judge. the second of these i do not agree with as it concerns the being of god. just as god is infinitely loving, all-knowing etc. he is also infinitely just. he is the only righteous judge in the true sense of the word and as such he upholds justice consistently. you seem to not understand what justice is. if you commit a wrong then justice demands that punishment be meted out. just as in the case of the murderer, he may have truly learnt his lesson but punishment is not only to make the individual acknowledge his error, but also to punish the very act of sin. if punishment was only guided by whether the individual acknowledge their error or not, then why would the polytheists remain in hell forever? are you seriously going to tell me that they will not have understood that they worshiped only idols and things which were not the one god? would hell even be needed because as one stands before the throne of god and is being judged, will you seriously tell me that they will not realize that they have been in error? clearly, not only is your point not logically viable but even violates the teachings of islam.
( e ) once again the difference between the two is that the new master does not function in the capacity of ultimate justice. justice is not only there to punish you until you have realized that you are wrong (for in such a case, hell would not be needed) but rather to punish your sin as well. furthermore, god is justice itself. just as love cannot help but love, so can neither justice help but be just. justice is not mercy (forgiveness) and you simply ignore this. of course, your rejoinder would consist of "well god is also mercy" (well actually you might not seeing as you go on to say that god is not mercy but rather merciful, as such he possesses attributes in his own divine nature that aren't infinite. of course this means that he isn't infinite in the first place but i suppose that such is the sacrifice you're willing to make in order to defend your failing point) but this would still lead us with a contradiction in the divine nature where he has to pit two infinite attributes against the other and can never be in harmony as it concerns his own being.
I don’t know what it is about the imaginary paradoxes of Christian doctrine that allow Christians to use them time and again as a cop-out counter-argument for things. If anything whatsoever doesn’t make sense about Jesus’s (P) being incarnate, you just shrug it off as it being due to His being “both perfect God and perfect man”. If anything about the Trinity is demonstrated as not making sense then it’s only because of the Triune quality itself, which is beyond our mortal comprehension—when it is not more convenient to argue that we’re “just not understanding it” instead; Christians will shift back and forth between these two contrary positions willy nilly as it suits them. And if anything God does in your doctrine or stories is shown to be unjust, why it’s only because He has both perfect justice and perfect mercy. I guess the attraction of these cop-outs is how nice it is to have something already difficult to understand to fall back on. If the rebuttal doesn’t confuse us then you can still insist that we’re “just not getting it”, or at worst hypocritically claim the issue as being beyond mortal comprehension anyway. Whatever the reason is, I’m getting awfully tired of the trend.
oh please, instead of carrying on with such a meaningless diatribe, can you actually get to the point? if you mean that i have highlighted clear contradictions within the being of your god while i ignore supposed contradictions with the incarnation of christ then quote for us the relevant parts of my post. you'll note that i chose my words very carefully and yes, the christian actually has a defense that the muslim does not. given the dual nature of christ, no contradiction happens within any of the nature but rather between them (in a superficial sense i suppose). the divine nature remains as is and is in full harmony as it concerns itself and the human nature likewise. given that the muslim deity's single nature means that the contradictions happen within the divine nature then you certainly do have a monumental problem.
There are some dissenters among us Muslims to the idea that anyone will be in hell forever, and most of us agree (with much scriptural back-up) that at the very least a great many of the d-a-m-n-e-d will not.
as it concerns the above, i certainly am not interested in the specifics of the intra-islamic debate on the matter yet even so, if there is even one individual who remains in hell forever then my point is made. you have not brought anything relevant to the discussion.
By the way, which is worse: earthly death by torture or eternal hell? Can the greater of the two somehow paid in full by lesser? Even if it could, one person’s eternity in hell would be the maximum that could be paid for, not all people’s. Even with the desperate theory you propose below you still have the mathematical problem of adding infinities to each other.
once again you display to us how little you understand christianity in the first place. the wrath of god refers to the very eternal punishment that hell consists of. so it is not a question of whether or not christ's death on earth is worse than the punishment in hell because he in fact experienced that very punishment. in fact, he experienced it to a higher degree than any other individual will ever experience it within any one time for their punishment will be meted out throughout eternity for no finite being can experience an infinity in one moment yet christ experienced the full sum in a finite moment and as such in terns of intensity, christ's suffering was worse. the problem is actually in your lack of understanding for at any one moment, the inhabitants of hell would experience a finite amount of suffering, it is infinite only in that it would last forever and as such, there are no two infinities that are added together in the punishment of christ but rather only the single full sum consisting of finite moments. the fact that you granted that christ could even pay for one person's infinite punishment proved to be your undoing in this case.
There is no “muslim deity”.
i agree. but in all seriousness, what exactly are you trying to do with your post? when i say the muslim deity i do not mean to speak as if such a being actually existed, i certainly don't believe that the god espoused in the qur'an actually exists but rather i mean to speak of the conception of god that we find within the qur'an. it should be acknowledged that you, in a superficial sense, (as with all those who pray to a "higher power") direct your worship to Yahweh for there is no god besides him yet this does not mean that you worship him properly as he has intended and as such muslim deity refers to that conception of god that one finds within the qur'an. please let's not nitpick here---especially when the discussion has nothing to with whether muslims and christians worship the same god.
The Koran refers to Him instead merely as “the most merciful of those who have mercy”. If either your notion of God or ours involved infinite mercy then neither of us would believe in hell. Well, you would, I’m sure, but only because of the “fall back on the paradox” cop-out discussed above. Nothing is too contradictory for a Christian to believe based on the acknowledged fact that it is paradoxical alone. How odd.
it must first be said that the crucial point was whether the muslim deity was infinite justice or not. if we follow the same lines then the muslim deity is not infinitely just but only the most just. so that means that at times he's unjust for if he were just consistently and at all times, then he would be infinitely just and justice itself (for only the being of justice is just at all times). this brings up further problems such as him not being infinite goodness for he lacks infinite justice or mercy etc. do you see the trappings you get yourself in when you try to defend such a failing position as yours? now to answer your question as to how mercy can exist alongside the place we term hell, the christian response is that even hell is an expression of love and mercy. if god is the source of all goodness and life, then the choice to disconnect oneself to that life (as in refusing to follow his decrees, disbelieving in what he has revealed) is to choose hell. god in his infinite mercy allows us to make our choices for ourselves for even though the stakes are high, if our choices had no eternal consequences then not only would your life cease to have any real meaning (seriously start reading up on the loss of immortality by existentialists and particularly absurdist: sartre, camus etc) but you would in fact lose all worth. in his love and mercy, he has allowed you to be responsible for yourself and that weight of responsibility is perhaps most poignantly felt by the reality of hell. i'm glad that you've at least admitted that your deity possesses both logical, and ontological paradoxes in his own divine nature.
In any event I have never heard anyone make your defense before so I’m pretty sure it’s only individual apologetics as opposed to scripturally established dogma.
the above is precisely why i called you ignorant. you simply do not understand what christians at all mean by the statement, "christ saved us from hell" or variations thereof. time and again you prove that you are simply not fit to be pontificating on such a matter.
I am getting tired of this peculiar idea of yours that just because an entity is infinite that means that wronging it is committing infinite wrong. It is the size of the action itself, and not the size of the victim, that makes the difference. Your logic is equivalent to that of someone saying that murdering a murderer makes one responsible for all the murders that he ever committed: something is being done to X and X has quality A, so the thing being done must itself have quality A.
so far, you have not ceased to amaze me. you once again misunderstand the claim as if size had anything to do with it but rather it is the act! if god is a being of infinite worth, then a crime against him is necessarily infinite. a person is of more worth than an animal and the animal is of more worth than the insect etc. in just the same way that given the kind of being that the ant is, 'crimes' to this entity are measured in respect to its worth in the same way that crimes against a person are measured in respect to their worth as a human being (that is, simply by being a human being they are of worth more than any other creature). we take far more serious the willful killing of a human than the willful killing of an ant--even a colony of ants. in fact, while there exists such a thing as murdering a person, there is no such thing as murdering an ant and this once more goes to show how worth plays an intricate part in the severity of a crime. you seem to possess a very low view of god in that you can claim that a crime against god is not an error of infinite proportions. a crime against god is an infinite wrong, he is the sole being to which no wrong should ever be directed towards. therefore, it is actually your peculiar idea that has been refuted.
once again, the payment for crimes against a finite being and as such one of finite worth is necessarily finite. yet crimes against an infinite being (and as such one who is of infinite worth) is infinite wrong and as such the payment thereof is of infinite value. your inability to make sense of such a simple concept is quite disheartening.
You cannot escape the logic of my post by making up some distinction between “immediate” and “eternal” consequences which, even if it’s true, is still irrelevant.
the distinction is not arbitrary. please begin to show how it is instead of merely claiming this. you have a bad habit of claiming things that you do not back up and this really needs to stop if we are at all going to continue.
whether it is right to charge someone a debt they can’t possibly ever pay and then claim to be doing them a favor when you, the charger, pay (yourself??) up instead, when there was never any need for the debt in the first place as the chargers needs no money and knows that the debtor can’t pay and will do his best not to run up any more debts in the future.
oh dear, the problem with making and then attacking incorrect analogies is that you are simply attacking a strawman. the issue isn't that the debt was such that we could never pay it--no, we were at one point able to for there was indeed a time where we lived in perfect communion with god (i.e. we gave god his 'due'. we gave to god what was 'owed' to him). that was pre-fall eden and it is only after sinning that we were thus unable to pay the debt (as superficial as that may sound). so please start attacking my actual analogy (seeing as it is in keeping with what i have just presented) instead of making your own substandard comparison and thinking yourself to have done a good job by attacking it and not the one i have presented.
now, given all your errors in the above, i hope your next post will do a better job in defending your position.
