Thoughts on the Nature of God

The existence of God can be neither proven nor disproven. In a series of essays, I tried to show that whether the universe is deterministic or not also cannot be proven or disproven. Additionally, I showed that one could put constraints on the problem and reduce it to a question of whether the universe is infinitely continuous at any microscopic level, or not, if it were then it was deterministic. Analogously I can argue that though we cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, we can put constraints on what His nature must be if he does exist, given the knowledge we have of the world today and our existing concepts of God.

Generally God is considered an immaterial being that lives somewhere called Heaven. As commonly conceived, He is the ultimate dualism problem, in that being immaterial, He can still affect the material world. One of the implications of my saying God only works through people, is that we can find a way around this dualistic problem. More on that below.

The first constraint that I would argue for is that God does not break the rules of nature. In another essay where I first stated this I discussed its implications on the possibility of miracles. That is outside this discussion but will be covered at another time. What is important, however, is the question of a friend of mine who is a Lutheran lay pastor. He and I had some interesting discussions, and when I said that God does not break the rules of nature, his response was, “Is it because He will not break them, or because He cannot break them?” Further on in this essay, we will see that this has a major impact on the theodicic question. For now let’s look at how traditional Christian belief approaches this.

According to the Biblical tradition, God created everything, the Heavens and the Earth. Today we would generalize this to the Universe. Accordingly then, He also had to have created the laws by which it operates. Since He created the Laws of Nature, then He should be able to use or not use them as he sees fit. Many Christians today, think that God is directly involved in all events on earth, both natural and human-caused. They truly believe that He controls the weather, or can if he wishes, and other natural disasters as well as human-caused evil. They ascribe to a God that is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.

This belief leads them into some very serious difficulties when faced with the apparent success of evil or a natural disaster. The immediate question is, “How can God let this happen?” This is often met with the response, “It is not for us to know God’s ways,” or some equivalent. According to an excellent book on the history of evil in philosophic thought, this question was first asked in a meaningful way after the great earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755. The answers all amount to, “I don’t know.”

No matter how we unpack the trio of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence, it is internally self-contradictory. It’s like the old sales saying, “Faster, cheaper, better, pick two.” In this particular essay, we will approach the problem as if omniscience and omnibenevolence are valid.

To justify this choice we can point out that, if God exists, he should be in a position of being able to know so much more than us, that whether or not His knowledge is truly infinite (the ultimate meaning of omniscient), it is so far ahead of ours that we can take it as a working example of omniscience. How could His knowledge be greater than ours? This is another implied ability of God, to know all that we know and more. If we constrain His knowledge just to that which we as humans collectively know, it is much vaster than what any one person knows. This is not just academic knowledge but all knowledge of life under all circumstances of human living. It is fairly simple to assume that He is able to sort and analyze this knowledge, removing contradictions, recognizing similarities and patterns, and defining gaps, given that He is able to acquire it. Generally, God is given greater knowledge than this, so we can take as an operational definition that God is omniscient.

Also we can point out that if God is not omnibenevolent, then why should we worship Him or respect Him? If his motivation is not our best interests, then there is no reason to have Him as God, other than to bribe him to be nice to us, to bend His ends to ours, or at least let us survive and hopefully prosper. There are some other implications of this question when we consider omnipotence.

Let us first examine the consequences of true omnipotence. First of all, if God is truly omnipotent, then He must have omniscience. Otherwise, He has power that he cannot correctly apply or perhaps even use for a failure in the knowledge required to do so. Anything less than omniscience immediately implies less than omnipotence. But if he is omnipotent, then he has the ability to alter anything, change the forces of nature, even, in principle change time. If he can do this, then why do bad things happen to good people, to quote a book title? The problem is that by our moral standards, he is letting evil happen[1] when he could prevent it, and is therefore culpable of being a part of it. One might make a utilitarian argument that says more harm would occur if He did not let it happen, but considering we posit God as a deontological being not a utilitarian being, this is a contradiction of Christian belief. It also contradicts the omnibenevolence attribution, or rather reduces it to a utilitarian calculation as well.

Does He follow the laws of nature out of the respect for our intellectual strivings to understand them? After all, if He changes and alters them willy-nilly, we would never understand them. But then again, why should it be in His interests for us to do so? Why should He want humans to be the cantankerous, ego-driven, independent creatures, that we are? For that matter why should he want us to have free will? These last two questions are obviously rhetorical, but they touch on much of the mystery that comes with the omni-triad.

From my perspective, the idea that God is not omnipotent is the easiest way to deal with the contradiction. God follows the laws of nature, because He cannot do other. At the same time this absolves Him of the problems of theodicy. He allows evil to happen only because He cannot prevent it. But what does that leave us then? He can still be omniscient and omnibenevolent and be unable to do all that He wants to help us.

But if He cannot disobey the laws of nature, just as we cannot, what is His value? What can he do? After all we define him as not material in our world. For that matter, if He is not all powerful, how do we know He is there to start with? Why should we have any belief in Him or His efficacy? If we expect physical demonstration of Him, there is no reason. The example of the professor that says, “If there is a God, let Him strike me dead in the next 20 seconds,” and twenty seconds later says, “I’m still alive, there is no God,” is cheap theatrics not valid philosophy or theology. It also happens to be massive arrogance to consider oneself so important among all the people of the world that God would take the time to strike one person dead just to show His existence. For that matter, it also runs against the omnibenevolence idea, because God is not benevolent to just believers, but to all.

There is a means by which God can be effective on earth, people. God communicates with people.[2] In the Old Testament it was often in dreams or visions. There are stories of direct conversation, e.g. Abram and God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. My own thoughts are that it can be dreams or visions but also something known in a moment of quiet openness. It is not necessarily a voice or vision, but knowledge, and it is conveyed as a choice. In one sense this seems more impotent than potent, but humans are the biggest show on the planet for better or for worse. And regardless of the historical theories that times make the man, history is full of people that single-handedly made a difference either by their own efforts or by recruiting people to help.

We as humans effect the world around us by creating physical objects to change it. We become more effective by recruiting other people to help us do this. From this activity come our societies and cultures. It is not a far stretch to consider that God would do the same thing by asking people to do things that they might not think of themselves, but once having considered it, subscribe to the effort with all their will. And yes, one can look at it like a numbers game just as sales people do, out of so many candidates will come prospects, and out of so many prospects will come closures. The only thing I would think is that with God’s greater knowledge, He has a higher success ratio.

Again however we still must consider that using people is not perfectly efficient. Some evil is so great that only large groups of powerfully motivated people can overcome it. Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Stalin’s USSR, and Mao’s Red China come to mind. The first fell by the force of the Allied Armies. The other two fell from the combined Cold War efforts and their own internal contradictions. Also not all good seems to be rewarded, but that is another topic.

After first admitting our ignorance of whether God exists or not for certain, if we accept His existence as a belief, then what value is that belief? First it is the North of our moral compass. All morality to theists, at least those that believe that God is more than the First Watchmaker of the Universe, starts with what they think God wants as moral standards. (It is not the place to discuss here that most of those standards can be arrived at from non-theistic belief systems.) Most Christians take it much further, ascribing to Him all the power we discussed above, and then asking for various blessings, assistance, and forgiveness. That discussion is for another time. Second, it may be a source of comfort in times of trouble—God is watching out and will help as He is able. Third, He may indeed “talk” to people when they are open to it and He needs their assistance. It is not a forceful “Du wilst,” but “I would like you to….,” or “Have you considered….”

[1]It is evil as opposed to bad because having the power to control it makes Him responsible for it, therefore it can be considered intentional.
[2]It becomes highly speculative physics, but gets around the problem, if we hypothesize that God exists as some sort of field complex in the dimensions other than our own three. Since speculative physics now hypothesizes that the universe is composed of many dimensions, then all things may inhabit more than just the three dimensions we are used to. God would interact with humans through their nervous system’s electrical fields, via the non-spacial dimensions.

Thoughts on Christmas

Christmas in the US is an amalgam of three different holidays, Winter Solstice, St Nicholas’ Day, and the birth of Jesus. Of the three the commercialization of St Nicholas’ Day has become the most obvious, with the carols inspired by both the Solstice and the birth of Jesus, second. The ideas in this essay are quite preliminary and are subject to further expansion and revision over time. These are first thoughts on the topic.

The focus of this essay is the incorporation of the birth of Jesus into a holiday. Looking at the source materials in context for the birth story, they come from two of the four Gospels, Luke and Matthew, and neither tells the same story. The Christmas story as is done in church and, at one time, school pageants, is a forcing together of the Matthew and Luke birth stories.

Both Matthew and Luke state that Mary was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, and Luke gives a lot of additional detail such as John the Baptist being the cousin of Jesus. Matthew has the Magi, and Luke has the manger, shepherds, and angels. Matthew has the flight to Egypt, but Luke simply has them going home to Galilee.

Of greater interest to me is that Mark makes no mention of Jesus birth. Mark is the oldest of the Gospels, with Matthew and Luke coming 25 to 30 years later. In that time Paul had done a large amount of his evangelizing and creation of a Christology—Jesus as savior and Messiah, not just as a rabbi and teacher. It crosses my mind that, by the time Luke and Matthew started creating their versions of the story of Jesus, additions to the oral tradition had been created. The motivation would be similar to: a person as important as Jesus would have to have a day of birth in keeping with the significance.

In addition to the virgin birth, Matthew apparently obtained a story concerning astrological events. No one in over a hundred years of astronomical attempts has been able to explain the “star” of Bethlehem. Furthermore, one cannot literally take it that the star, if it were a heavenly body, would lead them to the manger or to Judea. In fact, from a parsing of the text, the Magi did not arrive until Jesus was about two years old, hence the Herodian decree that all male children under the age of two were to be put to death. Actually, I think the historicity of this is also in question. So the standard vision of three wise men giving gifts to Jesus in the manger is a modern myth.

Luke, on the other hand, uses an entire chapter to describe the pregnancies of both Esther and Mary and establishing that John the Baptist was a cousin of Jesus. He also states that there was a tax on the Roman world, causing Mary and Joseph to go to Bethlehem. Luke also gives us the angels announcing the birth to shepherds, who leave their flocks to go see the baby. Luke has them go live in Galilee. As with the Matthewan story, the historicity is lacking, as is a certain lack of knowledge about sheep herding. Luke in his desire to illustrate the humble beginnings and the humble audience for early Christianity makes a serious error in stating the shepherds left their flocks.

One of the characteristics of Christianity is that it co-opts the prophecies of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, as being the prophecies of the coming of Jesus. The evangelists that wrote the gospels set the pattern for this as did Paul, relating Jesus and the events of his life to fulfillment of prophecy. It begins with the birth story’s fulfilling the prophecy of Micah 5:2-5a. However, it is notable that 5b puts the lie to the passive peaceful image usually portrayed for Jesus. The Jews were looking for another David, not a spiritual messiah.

Part of the appeal and the tremendous staying power of the Christmas story as it has come down to us, is the desire for it to be so. It feels so good. It is an affirmation of absolute goodness in the world. The story is so powerful that it can cause us to suspend our judgment on it and the larger contexts of it. Ex-bishop Shelby Spong did make a valid observation that we tell this wonderful story of the birth of a baby that in thirty-some years will be murdered in the most horribly violent way that the society of the day could devise. The cognitive dissonance is more than we can handle, so we focus on how wonderful this baby is to us, and ignore how he will become important.

It also shows what happens when we do not understand the way in which the Gospels were written. Many if not most Christians, and at one time myself, take them as historical documents, which in fact they are not. They are selective telling of the events the evangelist considered important in telling his version of what the life of Jesus meant to him and should mean to others. The “rules” by which they wrote allowed the attribution of their own ideas to other people’s dialog, and a conflation of both fact and fiction in the telling of the story. We then read this literally and create what is a fantasy.

Despite all the fantastic and a-historical nature of the story, rather than its being derided, it needs to be seen for what it does, stimulates the benign feelings of good-will among people. Even if the effect lasts only for the season, it provides something that does not seem to occur any other way. As such regardless of our intellectual assessments and judgments, emotionally it is valid and should be accepted as such.

The ELCA and homosexuality

The ELCA's decision to allow rostered pastors in committed homosexual relationships has made news and also has lead to considerable discussion within the church. Despite a six-year campaign on this issue by the leadership, the final decision was made by one vote out of one thousand. Since that vote, the discussions have become very intense both within congregations and across the ELCA synods. At this point, it would appear that schism, such a occurred in the Episcopal Church is imminent.

As I see it, the problem is a conflict of congregational understanding of religious doctrine, intellectualization of scripture and reinterpretation by the clergy, and cultural politics, essentially a perfect storm, if one considers three-way conflicts such a thing. As a result, many parishoners are feeling betrayed and desirous of leaving their church, synod, or denomination.

Most members of a church take the Bible fairly literally. At the very least they consider God to be in charge of everything, and the Bible to be a true and accurate acccount of what God wishes for the world. As such, it is very clearly stated in a number of places that male homosexuality is a sin. (Within my own knowledge, the Bible is silent on female homosexuality. Also within my knowledge, nowhere is homosexuality discussed in the Gospels.) Coupled with this is a common aversion to homosexuality among heterosexuals. By every standard, the parishoners generally consider homosexuality to be a sin. Whether or not this is a desirable attitude or culturally politically correct, this is the reality.

However, parishoners also are fully aware of their own sinful nature, and unless they have true homophobia, will welcome homosexuals as members of the congregation. The problem is when homosexuals are presented as leaders. First, they are seen as perpetual sinners. Rightly or wrongly, congregations want their pastors to be moral leaders in their behavior as well as their preaching. For a known, and in this case unrepentent, sinner to be made the leader of the parish is very troubling. Second, they are seen not as "one of us" but as other. They are not to be trusted in their discussions of scripture and most especially any discussion of male-female relations because they are seen as not knowing about them or as approaching them from the outside.

At the same time there is tremendous cultural pressure not just to tolerate homosexuals, which has been going on for many years, but to fully accept or even celebrate homosexuality as a perfectly normal phenomenon, witness the "Sally Has Two Mommies" type of teaching in the schools and the prominence given to homosexual celebrities. Coupled with this are the campaigns to legalize homosexual "marriage" which is a deliberate slap in the face to most religious heterosexual couples. I have written an essay on this issue discussing it in depth, but the problem is the attempt to appropriate the term marriage not the legalization of commitments between adults.

An additional cultural pressure is the slow, and sometimes not so slow, decrease in membership of mainline Protestant churches. Because all churches are a form of political institution, the leadership is constantly considering ways to maintain and advance their position and that of their church. Rather than understanding we are in a holy war of Christianity vs. secularism, they attempt to compromise--thinking that it is the issue du jour rather than the fundamental problem of absolute standards of religious morality vs. relativistic ethics of secularism. It is quite analogous to dhimmitude vis-a-vis Islam. Their parishoners understand it much better.

The problem, from a leadership point of view is that the churches that are growing, feel-good, independent Protestant and Roman Catholic, use totally different models. The first is simply totally accepting of everybody as members and gives a message that is designed to make everyone feel good about themselves--their sins are forgiven, God loves them, and life will be OK. The Roman Catholics, simply have a fully integrated life program, coupled with the encouragement to be fruitful and multiply. Whether practiced or not, birth control is forbidden by Roman Catholic doctrine, with one relatively unreliable exception. Roman Catholics are encouraged to have large families, and the church makes sure that the children are brought up in the church and kept there throughout their lives. Not by brainwashing, but by showing them how to live their doctrine in the world.

In the meantime, the ELCA is tied to the basics of Lutheran doctrine that it is both law and teaching not just teaching that is the basis of the faith. Most of them have found that to grow they have to have at least one service as a celebration, feel-good service. But what to do about the more traditional members, the ones with the money that provides most of the support of the church? This brings in the third element of the situation--scriptural reiterpretation.

For the last several years, there have been on-going "classes" in homosexuality in the scriptures at ELCA churches. There have also been discussions at synod conferences. The overall thrust was an attempt to remove the stigma of sinfullness from homosexuality. Primarily by re-interpreting the contexts of some scripture and simply saying other scripture was a cultural not holy pronouncement, the Biblical proscriptions of homosexuality were presented as other than they literally appeared to be. Apparently this was not a successful as the leadership had hoped. The vote was so close, that one is suspicious of some hidden arm-twisting at the conference, and the Lutheran magazine immediately had all sorts of op-ed pieces on how we needed to stick together. As it turns out, there are congregations already discussing the formation of an independent synod.

Like the Episcopal Church, the ELCA is intellectually and scripturally liberal and tolerant. The Missouri and Wisconsin synods are much more literal in their interpretation of scripture and flat say that homosexuality is a sin. But in this case, just as in the case of the Episcopal church, it is their undoing. The leadership, seeing themselves as part of the liberal, intellectual elite, took the typical positions of that block and the congregations did not follow. I have commented on this before, e.g., Bishop Hansen's politicking, and articles in "The Lutheran."

The responses to this have varied forms and multiple causes. The ELCA leadership tries to point out that no congregation is required to accept a homosexual pastor. This is simply words to try to make the unacceptable accepted. But to those congregations that truly believe in the literality of scripture or in a more literal sense than is being promulgated on this issue, that means nothing. They expect scriptural consistency throughout their organization. They don't want the risk of a bishop who is a homosexual, which will eventually come from this change. I would take my friend and fellow blogger Kevin Kim further. Kevin said that in the great Protestant tradition, there may be schism. I say there WILL be schism. My first thought was that the splitting parishes would join either the Missouri or Wisconsin synods. Apparently they are taking the great Protestant tradition to its fullest and creating a new synod.

There are those congregations that will live with it, though not comfortably. Some members may leave the church, but most will stay, as it will not directly effect them in their daily and weekly church lives. There are others that will think this is wonderful. My suspicion is that they have a very high percentage of professorial or politically liberal members who are more interested in the cultural component of this than the scriptural one.

From my own viewpoint, the clergy are through discussing it or dismiss possible counter arguments rather quickly. They have the decision, like it or not, and now need to implement it and bring their parishes behind it. Like good soldiers they followed orders and did their best to convince us that it was OK. I am not sure how comfortable some of them are with it. Those that aren't will be the leaders of the schismatic parishes. Those that can tolerate the discomfort will continue to toe the party line, though not enthusiastically, and those that think it is truly right, will continue to support it in various subtle approaches in sermons.

From my viewpoint, the ELCA in this decision, created a new church doctrinally. My own parsing of the scriptures says they are pretty clear on the issue, and one cannot go through such rationalizations without changing their meaning completely. From a purely scriptural viewpoint, they were wrong. From a cultural viewpoint, this is the current big cause, so they appear to have done "the right thing." However, it has sown the seeds of a major division of the ELCA and therefore its ultimate demise. I don't think the number of members it may gain from this will come anywhere near off-setting the number that will be lost.

For myself, I don't have a problem with homosexual preachers, as long as they aren't preaching on relationships. I am not doctrinally bound, since I long ago parted with traditional Christianity and, though I am now a believer, still create my own interpretations and understanding of scripture. I go to church for much more than the scriptural lessons, and I think those of us who stay in the church after this decision are much the same way. Church to us is more than who is preaching at the moment though that is important as well.

Whether the ELCA did the right thing or not in this decision will depend on who you are. From a biblical literalist standpoint, it was wrong. From a cultural standpoint, it was wonderful. From a leadership standpoint, you got what you asked for (Subtext, you should be careful what you ask for, you might get it.). From a overall church survival--not a good thing.

Salvation...Or Have You Been Saved?

When I was younger in college, one of the questions that I often heard from the campus fundamentalists was, "Have you been saved?" The only effective way to deal with it was to either ignore it or tell them you either didn't care, or were something scary like a Satanist. To them salvation was a Get-out-of-Hell-Free card that only required a particular set of beliefs-orthodoxy vs. orthopraxy. The latter ends up going with the former, but the bait was the easy way to Heaven. From where I stand, Salvation is not that simple nor is that what it really is. To deal with it requires considerable unpacking of the concept as currently promulgated.

Salvation doctrine comes from St. Paul, not the Gospels. Part of the reason it is so successful, is that it incorporates the underlying mythologies of appeasment of the Gods and magic from our distant religious past, and a borrowing of concepts from the Middle Eastern areas where Paul traveled and preached.

There are several underlying beliefs go with this idea. First, that Jesus was literally the Son of God, that he was the result of the impregnation of Mary by God, through some supernatural means--after all He is God. Second, that Jesus was a perfect human, because of his spiritual father. Third, Jesus' crucifixion was the complete payment for our sins. Fourth, if we accept Jesus as our lord, be baptised, regret our past bad acts, and do what Jesus says we will be guaranteed a place in Heaven, because, fifth, God is all-loving, and all forgiving. There is a sub-text, if you believe the right way.

First, let's start unpacking this with the underlying historical, religious traditions. One of the practices that Judaism had was to take a perfect goat, symbolically lay all the troubles and evil of the past year upon it and drive it out into the wilderness. This was the scapegoat,and is the source of the term and concept in our language. Second, before Abraham was stopped from slaying Isaac as the sacrifice to God, the tradition was to sacrifice a first-born son to God or the gods as an offering to have good fortune. (I take the story of Abraham and Isaac to be the mythological way of condemning the sacrifice of the first-born.) Virgin-birth has been around in religious mythology from before recorded history; it is not unique with Christianity. What is unique with Christianity is the concept of forgiveness--at least to the extent that true repentence will obtain forgiveness, no matter how wrong the sin. Paul made brillian synthesis of these concepts to create Salvation Doctrine. It is very effective because it is the solution to internal dissatisfaction and guilt that is part of the normal human condition.

Generally speaking, even presenting the idea of salvation requires an acceptance of both Heaven and Hell. These two concepts have been around in some form probably as long as people have had a sense of the religious. Once one has the idea that there is an afterlife, then there is the question of, where is it and what is its nature? It is not at all hard to tack onto that, the concepts of good, evil, reward, and punishment.

Almost all people have some form of conscience, and are self-aware of when they have done good or bad, to themselves or to others. Their ethical boundaries may be limited to only their immediate families or may expand wider. Most people raised in a Judeo-Christian background or culture, regardless of belief, have fairly wide ethical boundaries. Other people have more limited boundaries, e.g. the tribe, or in extreme cases just themselves. For those who have wide ethical boundaries, Salvation Doctrine offers relief from all the guilt and struggle to do right and failing. Just be sorry you failed, believe the right way, and Heaven is guaranteed. Sure you are supposed to try to not do evil again, but the rules generally are so stringent, that is all but impossible. Jesus is supposed to be the only perfect human.

It should be obvious, at this point, that I have little sympathy for the standard concept of salvation. I do however think that there is valid concept of salvation, in the sense that there is an afterlife, and that the good and the bad do get separated, at least for a while. So in the sense of getting to Heaven, there needs to be some sort of salvation. Judeo-Christian tradition generally has the more general form for this, and the example of Jesus, as a teacher, living what he preached, is the key as I see it.

There are two components that seem critical, one is our own desire to do good and the concommitant remorse when we don't, and the second is the Grace of God. Though I have not read the writings of the Jesus Seminar, I would doubt that Jesus actually said that no one gets to Heaven except through him. I could believe that his example of living is a way to Heaven. With or without a belief in God, Jesus' teachings are very good ways to live, taken with some common sense and not always exactly literally. One also has to filter out what Jesus taught from what others said he taught or meant, including the Gospel writers, and your current author. In other words, his teachings have to be taken and applied as a life-long student exercise, not as a cook book or rule book. One may look to others for different interpretations or for guidance, but ultimately the responsibility is our own. An important caveat is that good done to get to Heaven is worthless. It is good done for its own sake that counts. Spritituality is not transactional.

With respect to the Grace of God, I have long held that it is freely given, not because of belief, but because of goodness. As my Episcopal priest said when I was in high school, "There is more love in the most debauched sinner than in a cold-hearted paragon of virtue." God sees that and does act on it. The debauched sinner is goodness mis-directed, warped, and distorted. An example is that many of the alcoholics I have known were very warm, loving people that used the alcohol as an anesthetic for the pain they felt for others. I did the same, when I was in medical school. At the same time, not all people who are cold on the surface, really are. This is not ours to judge, but to be aware of the distinction.

So there is salvation, but not in the form preached in most churches. It is a matter of being a good person and doing good things for their own sake. It does not mean avoiding certain behaviors just because someone has decided they are bad. The most obvious example is alcohol. In moderation it's a pleasure, and denying any use of it, out of a mis-placed attempt at moral rectitude, may actually be sinful. Like anything else, an excess is harmful. It also is not a matter of doctrine. I have a very hard time with some very nice people, because they think anyone that does not accept Christianity and believe in the standard Salvation Doctrine is doomed to Hell. That is ultimately a very pernicious form of exclusion. "I get to Heaven, but he/she doesn't." The subtext becomes, "I am better."

So striving to be the best person we can be, and do as much good--by our own standards--in the world that we can is the way to salvation. It is actually much harder than the standard formula. We have to constantly judge ourselves and most people are theire own harshest critic, and the standard is not fixed. Generally it keeps getting tougher. But the result is a true self-satisfaction, not a self-righteous smugness.

Benevolent, Good, Bad, and Evil

These four words have no meaning outside of a human context. Their meaning requires sentience both to provide the value judgment and to provide the actions to which they are applied. In my thinking, these four words are a matrix, not a linear relationship. The two axes are active-passive, and beneficial-harmful. Benevolent and Evil are active, good and bad are passive. Benevolent and Good are beneficial; Bad and Evil are harmful. In all four cases it is human judgment that creates the classification. Good and Bad refer primarily to facts, whereas Benevolent and Evil include intent.

To illustrate, let’s start with a rock, about a foot square in size. As long as it is sitting on the ground where it was last located by natural forces, it is simply a fact, a rock with various attributes. Of its own, it does nothing except occupy a given space for a length of time. It is neither good nor bad in itself. If a human takes the rock and builds with it, it can be considered good as it sits in the wall of the building. If it were to block a road, it would be considered bad. In this case, it may arrive in its road-blocking role without human intervention. The important thing to notice is that whether good or bad, it is in reference to human activity and need. In the first case, human action might have created its new role, but it could have happened simply by the building being built upon its original location, with the rock incorporated into the foundation in situ.

Can the terms benevolent and evil be applied to the rock itself? I think not. Building the building may have been done by a person or persons with benevolent intent, but the rock itself is not benevolent. Similarly the road-blocking role may have been done with malice or evil intent, but the rock itself is not evil. Its goodness or badness derives from the role it was given by human action or with respect to human action, not from any properties inherent in itself. I challenge anyone to find a value of good, bad, benevolent, or evil without bringing human thought and/or action into the discussion, directly or indirectly.

A rock is a neutral object. People don’t hate rocks for their existence. So let’s look at a more emotional issue. Imagine a loaded Glock automatic pistol on a table. Is it good or bad? If it is one or the other, how is it different from a rock, which is neither good nor bad? Is the existence of the pistol bad, because it can be used to kill someone? Immediately the argument is lost, because the killing of one person with the pistol requires the active use by another person. Do you argue that if the pistol did not exist, it could not be used to kill another person? But if it does not exist, the argument is moot, there is no pistol to discuss. One cannot apply a value to something that does not exist.

It is the use of the pistol, not its existence that creates the value, positive or negative. But only humans use pistols with intent. It is theoretically possible to train an ape to use a pistol, but again this is human intervention, and the ape does not have the intention of use a human does.

So let us approach the pistol from another viewpoint. It is manufactured by humans with the intent to make a tool that kills either other animals or other humans. The intent is with those that make or purchase the pistol, not with the pistol. Regardless of why it was created and manufactured, the pistol has no intent of itself lying on the table. Without the intent, there is no good or bad in it. The point is, firearms just like rocks exist and have no value, good or bad, outside of human use. By this point, it should be obvious that the same argument applies to nuclear weapons.

At this point, it is interesting to apply the concepts directly to humans. Similar to the above discussion, is a human standing in the middle of the room good or bad? Unless we know what the person is doing other than standing or what he/she is thinking, the question is unanswerable. Other than to anti-humanists, the existence of humans is value-neutral. However, it is not the existence of humans an anti-humanist is condemning, but rather their actions. Without acting, a human is no more than a rock with respect to our values being discussed. Once again we are back to the point—values are the result of human assessment of human action.

Good and bad may be applied to active behaviors as well as passive existence. A good behavior would be one that is done without error, or achieves its result. A bad behavior would be the opposite. However, what do we do with a behavior that is perfectly executed to accomplish a bad, in the sense of harmful, result? It would seem necessary to separate the execution from the result. The execution must be assessed relative to its correctness, where as the result is evaluated with respect to its impact on people.

As an aside, it is the impact on people that determines good and bad. The impact of human action on the environment is often described as bad. As far as the environment itself is concerned, there is neither good nor bad. The environment is constantly changing and adapting, and human activity is often erased in less than 100 years, which is nothing in comparison to even the current inter-ice-age period, which has lasted for about 10,000 years so far. It is some humans assignment of bad to that impact that makes it bad. So the so-called evil or bad of human impacts on the environment is actually the impact of how those changes are perceived on other humans.

Having established that good and bad are human-assigned values, now let us look at benevolent and evil. As has been stated at the beginning of this post, benevolent is not the same as good, and evil is not the same as bad. They are definitely respectively related, but not equivalent. Good and bad may be applied to inanimate objects as well as animate behavior, but benevolent and evil apply only to behavior.

The main difference between good and bad and benevolent and evil, is that good and bad are the respective ends of benevolent and evil action. Additionally, benevolent action is characterized by its intent, to do good. Conversely, evil action has the intent to do harm. There is, however, a subtlety here. Benevolent behavior is not doing good as a return for earned value, but as more than earned or even unearned. The concept of benevolence, the noun form, includes generosity or an excess of goodness—goodness that more than accomplishes its goal. So too, evil action is that which intends to cause extreme harm.

The difficulty with benevolent and evil is the matter of degree. At some point one can say bad behavior becomes evil behavior. Or good behavior becomes benevolent. In the cases where the intent is unquestionable, the intent defines the action. The desire to do good for the sake of doing good defines benevolent as the doing of bad for the sake of doing bad defines evil. But, even with it defined that clearly, the amount of good or the amount of evil seems to enter in. Helping someone fix their car just out of caring or friendship is good, but doesn’t qualify as benevolent, unless, for instance one springs for an engine rebuild or provides the labor for it. Equivalently, simply purposefully doing annoying things or mildly injurious things doesn’t qualify as evil, unless they escalate into serious harm to the victim.

We also refer to people as benevolent or evil. Again, this is a characterization that is based on our observation of their behavior over time. If a person’s actions continually lead to harm to others, and especially if they seem to be pleased by it or enjoy it, we will start calling them evil. There can also be covertly evil people, who have a façade of well-meant behavior hiding their real intent which is harm. We can also construct the opposite situations for benevolent people.

It now crosses my mind to ask, “How to classify the Count of Monte Cristo?” The end result of his actions is the ruin of his victims. But we know that these victims had already harmed him excessively. It is obvious from the story that he relished the destruction of his enemies. However, he also revised his goals with the revelation of new information, and was remorseful over the death of the child of one of his enemies. It would appear that vengeance and/or justice can carve out limited exceptions to our concept of evil.

To reprise, good per se is not benevolence, bad per se is not evil. Good is not the opposite of evil, but of bad. By the same token bad is not the opposite of benevolent, evil is. Most importantly, all four terms require the presence of sentience to have meaning. With these concepts in place, we now have a frame in which to discuss theodicy—why does God allow evil in the world?

Presumption

When I was in high school, I would go to church camp for a week every summer. It was a wonderful time. Part of the program was classes that met every day to explain more deeply major concepts in the church's belief structure. I particularly remember the series on sin, in particular the so-called Seven Deadly Sins--Pride, Envy, Anger, Covetousness, Gluttony, Lust, and Sloth. One statement stuck out more than others--presumptuous sin was unforgivable. This is sin that is committed knowing at the time it is sinful, under the presumption that one will be forgiven afterwards.

Presumptuous sin ignores the admonition to always strive to do what is right. Forgiveness requires contrition, and a desire to not repeat the sinful acts. Presumptuous sin cannot be contrite, because one knows ahead of time that what is to be done is wrong, therefore one is not sorry for doing it. It also violates the desire not to repeat the act, because one is planning to do it. One could rename it pre-meditated sin.

Most preachers could wax rhapsodic on this theme, but I want to talk about a parallel concept that is never mentioned--presumptuous salvation. Presumptuous salvation is the assumption that by doing certain things one will be saved and go to Heaven. In effect, it is saying, "I can buy my way to Heaven," not necessarily with material goods, but with outwardly virtuous actions. It is a Christian version of Muslims' thinking that death by martyrdom is an automatic Go To Heaven card. During the Crusades, Christians thought in a similar way--go on the Crusade, kill the unbelievers, rescue Jerusalem from the non-Christians and thereby go to Heaven.

It is akin to the behavior attributed to the Pharisees, a formulaic way of living that required highly regulated behavior, to guarantee being ritually pure. Today we can see it in many Christian denominations with strong proscriptions on certain behavior--smoking, drinking, gambling--on the grounds that they are inherently sinful, and requirements for certain other behavior such as full-emersion baptism. These become a rigid code that is taken as a guarantee of reaching Heaven.

This type of thinking removes the need to actually have to be aware and judge one's thoughts and behavior. Virtue is doing right for the sake of doing right. This is doing right (as defined by the church leadership) for the goal of getting into Heaven.

It goes to motive, as the lawyers would say. There is no virtue in turning the other cheek, if the whole time one is resenting the first slap and wishing one could retaliate. Virtue is in genuinely not wanting to retaliate but feeling sad for all involved, understanding that retaliation simply leads to a worse situation. (BTW, this does not mean there should never be retaliation, but that is a whole other post.)

The most public form this takes is the person that takes the approach that as long as one is baptized, and professes to believe in salvation through Jesus crucifixion, then one is automatically saved. There is a bumper sticker that reflects this--"Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven." But the subtext here is actually presumptive sin--I am forgiven so I can sin again.

Along with this attitude of presumptive salvation, is the idea that anybody else who does not fit the formula is not saved. This is a great error by my judgement. It strikes me as totally inconsistent to state that God is loving, benevolent, and forgiving, generous with His grace.....but, only if you believe exactly as I do and act exactly as I do. From my viewpoint, a lot of Christians will have a big surprise coming when they die. Who makes it to Heaven will depend not on the minutia of behavior, but on one's attitudes. There will be non-Christians, and even atheists in Heaven, because they were genuinely virtuous people, and there will be many Christians missing, because they substituted presumptuous salvation for actual virtue.

Q--an update

I have been reading "The Gospel of Thomas." This is a non-canonical book of Jesus's sayings that forms part of the Gnostic literature. Why it is of interest, is that many of the sayings correspond to the so-called Q material. However, and I don't think it is just the translation I am reading, there are considerable variances in the wording, though the sayings are easily recognizable.

While I was doing my reading on Q, I found that all Pro-Q writers mentioned the Gospel of Thomas and how it was probably either late first century, or early second century and that it had many parallels to the Q sayings. They used this as part of their authentication of Q as existing as a document at one time. However, I never saw any table comparing Thomas to Matthew and Luke in the detail that Matthew and Luke are compared. The anti-Q commentors ignored Thomas, probably because it tended to undermine their case, and because it was not a canonical book. (Anti-Q people tend to be more literalistic and have rigid ideas of what is valid scripture).

So far, my reading indicates that the Thomas material is similar enough to support some sort of common source, but I think it undermines the idea of a single written document. The changes in the Thomas material are what might be expected from the capture of an oral tradition for the first time. There is also the possible editing to fit the needs of Gnosticism (which I see as and East-meets-West thing. Much of the writing reminds me of Zen Buddhism with a Christian outlook.).

If Thomas captured an oral tradition directly, then how do we explain the close parallels of Matthew and Luke? Several arguments are in the material I read:
Luke read Matthew
They used a common document
Their arrangements of the material are greatly different
Their wordings are so similar, or according to Eta Linnemann, not that similar

Nobody seems to take seriously the idea of independent capture of oral tradition, save possibly Eta Linneman, though she supports Luke reading Matthew.

The truth is, the amount of Q material is not that great that a person could not memorize all of it. It is far shorter than a one-act play. So it would be a reasonable concept that both Matthew and Luke heard and captured the recitations of one or more early preachers that had essentially the same versions memorized.

I subscribe to the independence of Matthew and Luke for a number of reasons, but the primary is that each has material the other doesn't, and both use Mark, but edit him quite differently.

The extreme pro-Q people would consider independent capture of an oral tradition as undermining their fundamental assumption--that Q was a written document. They need this to provide sufficient authority for them to claim that Q was the "true" teachings of Jesus and should be the only source of Jesus words, thus invalidating all of 2000 years of Christianity as it has been developed. Independent capture of an oral tradition would not harm the writings of most moderate scholars. It provides a source for the Two Source hypothesis, so they can still talk about "Q material." It would be indifferent to the single-source scholars and anti-Q people.

At this point, I favor the independent capture of an oral tradition. It helps explain more in my mind than a written document does, especially since none has turned up yet--even a Third or Fourth Century copy. It also accomodates the statistical analysis of Eta Linnemann.

Considering the highly conjectural nature of this topic, about all one can do is make a provisional choice and wait for further evidence (not further conjecture).