To #28, in my mind it makes sense why a payment must be made for sin, but as to why that has to involve blood, I can’t answer that. The standard response to the other would be that perfect goodness and holiness cannot dwell eternally with sin. The sin would cause heaven to be less than heaven. Whether you buy that answer is a different story.

BigHouse

To respond to #32, that statement I made would only be true if a perfect creator existed. If this type of God existed, I believe it would stand to reason that he would deserve the honor and worship of his creatures. I might not have worded that statement right, but that’s what I meant.

I’m not sure if I’m on the right track with this whole God ordaining the fall stuff or not. What I am trying to do is to be honest with the answers. I get just as fed up wit the cheap, cliche answers as anyone.

Lewis is a propagandist. Like many another convert he must convince others of his new found “truths” in direct proportion to his insecurity about their being true.

Much to Tolkein’s disappointment he did not convert to Catholicism — such an Oxford thing to do, even in Lewis’ time. He became an Anglican, having been an agnostic.

Lewis was not a theologian. He ended his life as a professor of medieval literature at Cambridge. Stick with C. S. Lewis on medieval lit. Especially illuminating, “The discarded image” Cambridge U. Pr. (Canto reprint pbk).

His “Mere Xianity” means just that. It presents a mere, core set, of alleged truths which supposedly define the essence of xianity in an Aristotelian sense. Lewis longed for a religious medievalism unintelligible to his fundie idolators.

Alas, dear Lewis, The Divine Comedy is not a travelogue.

This wouldn’t deny the passages concerning love and God’s love for his people, but it puts it in proper perspective, that it isn’t his highest aim.

Put in the perspective you’re using, love is not even an aim. A god that is willing to torment unbelievers for eternity to satisfy his need to be preeminent, even if he “deserves” it, clearly does not love these people. At least not according to any definition of love any rational person has ever used.

I’m still not seeing anything that solves the apologetic pretzel but I give you kudos for trying, Jenkins.

If God is real, all-powerful, and perfect, he would deserve the honor and glory of his creation.

So what would be the basis on which he deserved to be worshipped?

It seems contradictory to me to talk about a “perfect” being who is not perfectly good. And a perfectly good being would care about his creation, at least **enough** not to see them tortured, even if that wasnt his *highest* goal.

…They are such perfectionists that they beat themselves up sufficiently for their own mistakes, and they don’t need anybody else adding any guilt.

Yes, dont they? ANd that gives lie to the entire fundamentalist set of presumptions about human nature — that we are depraved to the core and “you dont have to teach kids how to be bad.” I heard that a lot a church. Well, you dont have to teach them how to feel guilty, either, and you dont have to teach them to care about what others think. Human morality develops entirely naturalistically from their relationships with their parents. We’re wired to care about others.

I am convinced that confidence develops out basic self-esteem. I will have some articles on this topic coming up.

Glad you dodged the bullet!

Would it not stand to reason that there can be some differences in what is right/wrong for God and man. If God is real, all-powerful, and perfect, he would deserve the honor and glory of his creation. It would be wrong, though, for man to seek glory for himself because he doesn’t deserve it. So, God seeking his own glory can’t be wrong because he’s seeking the worship of the highest good, which happens to be himself. Honor and glory have to be addressed somewhere and if this God is real, the only right place for it to be directed is him. So for God to seek honor and glory for something other than himself would be to detract from the highest good.

Scripture attests to this. I can’t remember the exact reference off the top of my head, but in Isaiah it says that he blots out transgressions for his namesake. Psalm 23 says he leads people in paths of righteousness for his namesake. The Colossians passage I referenced earlier says that all things were made in and for Christ, so that he might be preeminent. I don’t think this line of reasoning is without basis. This wouldn’t deny the passages concerning love and God’s love for his people, but it puts it in proper perspective, that it isn’t his highest aim. I think, and I could be way off, but one problem with Christian apologetics is that it tries to answer questions from the wrong starting point. It tries to cram all the answers to what’s going on around us into the framework of God’s main goal above all else being love for people. I very well could be way off, but I think it has more biblical grounding than some think.