Let's think about this. If the Christian belief includes the statement that God cannot sin, does it make sense to interpret the text in a way that causes God to sin? The "obvious spirit of the text" is that it's intending to spur people to do good acts, not undermine the theology of God.

Also, as to the precise word usage, I'll again point out that you're leaning very heavily on non-contemporary language to make your point, which is highly problematic when it comes to translational questions.

Lastly, talking about a "theme" and turning it into a direct command that is to be applied to all people in all times and in every circumstance is just a really bad way of handling scripture.

This is an example of why non-Christians in particular (though this also applies to Christians) need to be very careful when trying to use proof-texting to make their points. It's true that it's possible to interpret passages in a way that leads to immediate logical contradictions. But to do that requires you to hold a number of assumptions which Christians are likely to reject. So you might be "correct" in your point (in that if you interpret a passage a certain way, you end up with a certain undesirable conclusion), but you won't be "correct" in your point (in the sense that your objection carries any weight with regards to how the Christian understands things).

Are you saying that we should interpret the Bible in terms of other Christian beliefs? Because that doesn't seem consistent with your plain meaning approach to interpretation.

If you have another interpretation you feel more comfortable about, then by all means accept it, but regarding salvation, things are written pretty clearly and extensively. I do not believe Ive said anything here that is not the popular Christian opinion.

From what I recall, the verses about Lucifer in heaven are pretty vague, and I do not believe he is actually called an angel at any point, or that he was a worship leader.

Without looking up the verses, I think it says he fell from heaven, and that he tried to set himself up higher than God, but again, it is pretty vague.

I take it literally, I just don't know if people have extracted a little too much from those short verses.

If it happened that the "plain meaning" of a verse seems to run contrary to some fundamental theological point, the odds are good that you're misfiring on what the "plain meaning" of the text is.

In this specific case, starvingwriter is interpreting the passage as if it's saying that God can sin. I don't think that's the plain meaning, and I don't think it's particularly close. But the reason it's not particularly close has more to do with understanding the intended audience (which is part of the "plain meaning") than it does any sort of special nuance about the language usage.

The plain meaning is precisely what I've said it is, which is that this is an exhortation to encourage people to do good. The plain meaning is does not include the idea that such an exhortation should be applied to God, and certainly does not include the accusation that God can commit sins.

Feeding the starving is obviously good as Jesus did it with that bread and fish.

The whole concept of applying humanistic traits to god is absurd anyway. I guess you can avoid seeing Christianity that way and doing so makes the religion more logical and legitamte, but the Christians generally make it hard.

Not really. If you take the bible as merely a literary work, one can understand its characters (in particular that of God and Jesus in the OT and NT) based on their characteristics. One can say, for instance, that the OT God is a jealous god. Now of course one can ask what that might mean in the context of an omniscient benevolent deity and it probably isn't how we think of it precisely as applying to humans, but at the same time if we don't allow a discussion of god to make use of a single word which is otherwise applied to humans, we won't be able to say much at all.

That's weird, because I'd assume that a plain reading of "So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin." (English Standard Version) is pretty damn clear, and you're reading a whole lot into it.

If someone knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him, it is a sin. It's pretty absurd to claim a "plain reading" of the verse is best, when you're interpreting it as a general exhortation to do good when you can, and not as what the words actually say.

So the question is pretty simple at that point: Does God know the right thing to do in all cases? Yes.

Does he ever fail to do the right ting? If you think following the Biblical instructions to feed the hungry is the right thing to do, then yes he does. Does it explicitly say that in James 4? Of course not. Lucky for us, the Bible is more than one verse long.

Of course, you can start off by saying "Well, God can't fail to do the right thing." Well, okay. That would then mean that helping the poor and hungry is not a good thing, OR that God has the biggest case of "Do as I say and not as I do" of all time - that what constitutes a good or bad deed from God is utterly different and separate from what constitutes a good or bad deed done by a human.

What you’re saying is what I’d interpret as a paradigm, in this case, that God is a wholly benevolent being incapable of sin. Using that paradigm, the question ‘Can God sin’ is an irrelevant question. It’s asking, is there a characteristic of this being that exists that we’ve already established can’t exist. It’s like asking whether or not a jelly can be rock hard. No, it can’t, because part of what makes it Jelly is that it wobbles, it’s an inherent characteristic that defines what it is.

What’s throwing me though, is that it also seems that ’God can’t sin’ is a premise. I was looking at this as part of answering the question about whether or not God sinned when he drowned the entire population of the planet during the Flood (just as one example). An argument that tried to show that he didn’t would necessarily rely on the ‘God is wholly benevolent and can’t sin’ premise to conclude that God can’t sin. Right? And wouldn’t that be begging the question since God’s wholly benevolent character is an assumption made in the premise and the conclusion is just restating the premise? I’m being asked to concede that God can’t sin, so that the point that we're arguing, whether or not an act committed by God is a sin, can be proven.

So, yes I agree that it's the assumption that God can't sin that I should challenge, I was just looking for the logic/argument behind it before I got to that though.

I think it would be helpful if you rephrased your objection to what it really is, the problem of evil.

A God who is omniscient and omnipotent can see all the evil in the world and presumably has the ability to remedy it. Your objection is that when he does not, he is sinning (given his omniscience and omnipotence). It follows that if there is any evil, since God is able to remove it, he is sinning. I think it is curious that you limit your focus on people who go hungry, it seems rather arbitrary given all the suffering in the world.

The obvious rebuttal to your objection is that of free will, where God would need to circumvent our actions in order to avoid any evil. If I decided to cause you pain, God would need to intervene, and earth would now be no different than heaven, where there is no pain and suffering.

There are objections to the free will argument as well, but I think admitting that the problem is that of evil in general, and why God allows it in the first place, is a better start to this conversation.

I'll just requote myself because what you're doing is absolutely clear.

1) Is it a command for all people to feed all poor people in all times and in all places? (Edit: In other words, is it *THE* right thing to do for all people to be feeding all poor people in all times and in all places? Again, I'll go back to my example. If I have $100 in my bank account, is that sinful because there exist people in the world somewhere that can use $100?)
2) Is an exhortation that has been given to people meant to be applied to God? (Edit: This is the big assumption that you're making that most Christians -- if not all Christians -- would reject. Even if God gives us a direct command, there's no implication that such a command should be applied back towards God and be interpreted as a command to God.)

[Edit again: Recall that your claim is that the ability to do something good and not doing it is a sin. That is, you're substituting *A* right thing for *THE* right thing. Do you not accept the distinction between those two concepts?]

As a side note, you should probably read the verse in context. Here is the ESV:

If you don't accept the traditional division points of the passage (the sub-headers are not part of the original text) and believe that the last sentence is really the first sentence of a new topic:

It's extremely hard to use 4:17 as an accusation that God should be feeding the poor, and that by not feeding the poor that God must be sinning.

Through all the discussion things have drifted a bit from the point I was trying to make itt. The OP posted the following as a complete list of possibilities given the existence of starving people.

I simply pointed out that this list is not exhaustive and that our point of view could create a situation where we should feel compelled to help the starving while God is not under the same obligation. If this is a possibility, then conclusions drawn based on the 3 options above as complete, are erroneous.

So you're saying God cannot have a relationship with sinners, correct? It isn't about temporary presence, but an on-going relationship that God's sense of Justice will not allow? And without that relationship, we cannot live in heaven? If so, I think we're on the same page, and it's what I was getting at when I talked about God "uniting" with sin.

Assuming I'm reasonably close, I think the apparent relationship between God and Satan, which lasted for centuries at a minimum, is still problematic.

I was not saying people believe in God, but reject him because they disagree with a particular doctrine. I was talking about people who cannot accept Jesus’ sacrifice because they don’t believe it ever took place. I cannot choose to believe in something I don’t.


This seems wildly inconsistent with a God who wishes all to be saved. God hides from us. He only gives us the full picture after it’s too late (according to his rules). This is what my objections about spending a few seconds in heaven were getting at. That is presumably when we could finally make an informed decision, but our fate will have already been decided.

Satan was kicked out of heaven for sinning against God, the amount of time the transition of him leaving was, seems like a strange objection, especially since that amount of time, and whether or not it is relevant, is unknown. The bible does not provide a lot of information on what took place, only that he was in heaven, and now he is not.

I am inclined to agree with you, at least in part. I do not feel like I believed by choice, but that God revealed himself to me. What I cannot know is whether he will reveal himself to all people at some time or another, or whether or not the the attitude and willingness of people are a factor.

What you can do, is read the bible, go to church, pray, be willing to believe. If you have an open heart and a willingness to accept God, God will speak to you.

What it sounds like you want to do is eliminate the punishment, entirely. It is not about simply wanting to be forgiven, but being forgiven. It sounds like you would be happy with God going down to hell and taking a tally of anyone who wants to go to heaven.

If you do not accept Christ, your sins are not paid for. To wait until the time you have to pay them yourself and then ask for Christ to pay them is not really how God is appeased. That is not how justice is described in the bible.

It is a bit of a paradox to think of God as completely just and merciful, but we should not forget one while examining the other. Sins must be paid for because God cannot be with sin, since he is perfectly holy. Simply wanting to be forgiven when you risk being punished is not enough.

You should have stuck with your fifth attempt before editing it and going for this sixth one

I have tried to impress on you that it is NOT an "argument" and one is NOT deducing a "conclusion", and, in particular, is thus not "begging the question" which mean one is assuming the conclusion of an argument. It is JUST an assumption, or a premise. Btw I don't know what you mean by it being a "paradigm" but whatever you mean by that, i think premise or assumption are better terms.

Here is the analogy. I claim planes exist. Built into the notion of what a plane is, they have the property of having wings. Now you tell me this story about a wingless plane. I can respond with "nonsense! that does not fit my basic understanding of what a plane is". See how this isn't an attempt to make a logical deduction? It is just asserting my initial assumption.

What is happening here is that the fact that god can't sin is built into the definition of the god we are assuming exists. If asked whether god has sinned, I am not making a subsequent deduction. I am simply repeating the initial assertion to say "of course not, my understanding of god is one that does not sin".

As I suggested, the difference is between someone repeating Statement A several times in several contexts and someone making the vacuous logical deduction "Statement A implies Statement A". If they tried that, then you could accuse them of what you have accused RLK of doing. But he didn't.

I think the point is that God seems to have a much higher tolerance for sinners than modern apologists would have us believe. It seems to me (and judging by posts on Christian forums, some Christians agree) that this 'God can not be with sin' is a relatively recent invention in response to claims that Christians worship a monstrous god who punishes finite sins with eternal torment. God no longer sends people to hell; now he's simply handcuffed by their fervent desire to go there.

On that note, a question for clarity: You said you take the Bible literally, does that include hell being a place of conscious torment?


I think the identical claims of divine experience coming from mutually exclusive religions point away from them being real experiences of God. Of course one could say the experiences of Christians are real and the ones from people saying, "God told me Christianity is false" are themselves false, but then the Muslims say the same thing and we get nowhere. (This is also a problem within religions. I was listening to a religious talk radio show a while ago and the host, who knew his theology and philosophy pretty well, was arguing with a fellow believer about some relatively minor issue. I felt like he was rebutting all of her arguments pretty effectively, when she said, "But Frank, God put it in my heart that..." and he couldn't say anything but, "OK, thanks for your call.")


I'm not sure how I gave this impression. I said it seems unfair to punish people who make a decision (whether to accept Jesus' sacrifice) based on impartial, contradictory, and usually misleading information.

Uh, yeah! I'm more loving than the Christian God.

If God feels like he just needs to get his pound of flesh, he can leave them there for a period of time--maybe a year for every sin they committed, or a thousand years for every year they lived as sinners--whatever. But at some point long before you reach the billion year mark, they've learned their lesson and you're just keeping them there for your own pleasure. Remember, this is a God who supposedly wants all to be in heaven with Him. You're telling me that after one billion years of hell, God couldn't find myriads of people who genuinely wanted to worship Him and would do whatever he asked?

Again, if that's the rule God created, it seems supremely unjust to hide himself and Jesus' sacrifice from us.

What is the difference between accepting Jesus' sacrifice one second before you die, and one second after? One is when you're expected to make the decision, and the other is when you actually have enough information to make it. I don't call that Justice.

When I was a believer I thought that was the whole point. You had to show faith when it was not obvious, or your acceptance of Jesus' sacrifice was meaningless. Of course, that was when I belonged to the One True Faith, and all you other Christians and the non-Christians were doomed. It's easy to think the rules are fair when you're not getting screwed by them.

I think it's more than a bit of a paradox; it's closer to a logical contradiction that disproves a creature claiming both qualities. That aside, I really have a question about your next sentence. Why does one follow from the other? What is it about 'perfectly holy' that it cannot be with sin? It doesn't seem to be an attribute of holiness that it cannot be with sin. It would appear to be a personal preference.

My keyboard is acting a bit funny, my shift key does not work, so if I type a bit formal, it is only to avoid using apostrophes and the like, they come out like this - È.

My original point was that there is a difference between being with God and speaking with God, than being one with him for eternity. It is the latter that requires us to be sinless. His tolerance for sin is evident in that we are still alive.

As opposed to non-existence? It is a place of torment, I would think that entails some sort of awareness, yeah.

I spoke about this in the faith thread, if someone else feels that they hear from a different God, there is nothing I can say to refute that. There are many possibilities as to why this is, including that I am wrong about Christ, but there are also many other scenarios where I am right as well.

It is perfectly valid for you to believe it is unfair, I cannot debate that.

While everyone may not agree with this and it sounds a bit heretical, I do not think God has a choice in the matter. If he were to forgive people who have not accepted Christ, he would not be just, and he would not be completely holy. I disagree that God created this rule, as you put it, but that it arises out of the character of God. The bible says that it is not the desire of God that anyone perish, but we know that people do. God cannot sin, and he cannot unite himself with sin, that is why there is a hell.

I agree that it seems harsh, but the alternative is that no one is ever punished, because people will do anything to avoid the punishment when it is decreed, as it were. I believe faith has a great deal to do with this, as it is impossible to please God without faith. I again believe this has to do with his character.

You stated earlier that one cannot choose to believe, but you used to be a Christian, did you choose to stop believing?

Not sure to be honest, but I believe that it is part of the character of God, which he cannot change. Or maybe he can, but simply will not, to remain perfect. Sin is the opposite of love and good, it is selfish, I think by definition alone it makes sense that these two cannot unite.

I know the bible pretty well, not as well as many people I know, but pretty well. I do not want to come across like I have all of the answers, the majority of my statements are out of the bible, I am just paraphrasing. Some of your objections are going to be valid, we cannot fully understand God, or make perfect sense of these things. If we were able to prove God rationally, we would not need faith. Ideas of fairness and morality are subjective, in the sense that we may not see eye to eye, there is not always a right answer.

Again, thanks for answering my questions. I think we understand each other, for the most part. I'm not going to go point-by-point, but I'll answer the direct question you asked.
I wouldn't say I chose to stop believing, I just stopped believing because the evidence didn't seem compelling after a second look (I was baptized as a teen and decided to reexamine my beliefs in my 20s).

I don't think we can really choose what we believe or don't believe. No matter how hard I try, I can't choose to believe that I have three arms. I think convinced is probably a better word. When I was younger I was convinced that God existed. When I looked at the evidence later I became convinced that God doesn't exist. If I encounter compelling evidence that I've missed up til now, I'll again be convinced that God exists.

You say context is always essential, but it seems to me that there are just a lot of inconsistencies (as you would expect if the Bible is a collection of writings of no divine nature). At one point, God simply erases everyone but one [possibly arbitrary] family, there doesn't seem to be much context taken into account there.

But Christ's sacrifice isn't the justice he requires, if there is an extra component to it. Either the price for sin has been paid, or it hasn't. So if you also need to believe, your sin-debt has not actually been paid - but isn't scripture fairly clear that Christ's death pays the price of sin?
Ultimately, I am just questioning these attributes of God being just and merciful. To me they are clearly contradictory attributes, as is how forgiveness is described in the scriptures. Perhaps all that comes down to is that these descriptions are inaccurate: God works in mysterious ways, right?!

Does this apply if it God himself that has carried out the act, such as the drownings in the Flood, or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah? Then doesn't the 'we can't know that God didn't have a perfectly good reasons for doing it' apply?

I regularly see comments about God being a psychotic, or a moral monster, but the 'mysterious ways' defence seems hard to beat, is there an effective counter?

Thanks for being polite, debating religion usually brings the worst out of people, and you showed that it need not be the case. I honestly appreciate that.

As for choosing to believe or not to believe, like I said earlier, I agree with you to an extent. It is however, completely up to you to keep searching. This is what I meant when I earlier said that you can still read the scriptures and go to church, those things are under your control, which may lead for you to believe.

Your analogy of looking for a third arm is a bit too simple, I think something like bigfoot would have been slightly better, even if still too simple. If there was a chance that bigfoot was real, and that getting to know him was extremely crucial for me, then I would make a few trips to the Pacific north west, and camp out with those lovable enthusiasts.

I am not suggesting you have not done that, I do not know your history, maybe you have already metaphorically camped-out, but you still have the choice to keep an open mind about things.

Considering the number of authors, and the date ranges between them, I think you would expect the whole book to be inconsistent, and I think you will find that it is remarkably consistent with that in mind.

The bible literally describes judgement like a courtroom, with God as the judge, Satan as the prosecutor, and Christ as the defender. If you have not accepted Christ and his atonement, he does not defend you. Satan accuses you of all your sins, and God declares you guilty, with no one to plead your case. That is why Jesus will say to some - I never knew you, despite their apparent efforts.

I am not trying to convince you of these things, I am only explaining how they are described. You seem to be trying to disprove these things by saying that they contradict and do not make sense, but I do not think that is the case.

But is that warranted?

It seems to me that the Bible writers tried to give reasons why we should think is loving. Romans 5:8 and John 3:16 come to mind, and something about taste and see that God is good.

With every inconvenient question about God, His definition grows to negate the question by fiat.

You seem pretty satisfied with your version and where you are at so there is no reason to push this too far, but consider that Jesus was talking about things beyond the physical. The physical world is for human beings, not for the spiritual. This is why Jesus preached prayer (or meditation) and fasting (withdrawing or detaching from the physical world).

You can't understand the non physical through images because then you are making it physical. This literal interpretation is a good starting point but after a certain time, Jesus meant for you to go deeper - to when you can read the bible and not interpret it through visualizations of people, places, and behavior. When you do this, your understanding changes.