But im not free with the biblical God. Its pointed out a lot that he can do with me as he pleases anytime he wants because he is my creator. So im not the owner of my gift, God is.

What do you feel He does with you?

Yes, but we don't do it intentionally. As you say, we inherit the liability.

Adam's nature is just Adam himself--there is no separation here. This is what "nature" means--the essential part that makes something what it is. So if God gave Adam his liberty (or, gave up ownership over Adam), then God gave up ownership over Adam's nature. And if God doesn't own Adam's nature, then damage to Adam's nature is not damage of God's property. Thus, the person who damaged Adam's nature would not owe restitution to God for this damage.

Yes, we were held in bondage and things like hate, sickness, and cruelty were a byproduct of this bondage. Jesus' main purpose (amongst other things) was to serve a fatal blow to the opposing side. So it is not to say that the war is over yet.

I would not say "God can now offer...", but I would say now that we are free we are able to work towards being properly aligned with God.

It was all part of the war, yes.

How exactly Jesus battled with Satan and "the powers", I don't know. I think that the battle was spiritual, not necessarily physical, but I don't really know that we are given enough to be able to come to a conclusion on how any of that works.

I'm not really sure how you want me to respond. The paragraph you initially responded to was a reply to a specific point brought up by Concerto. Since I doubt that you have the same views on this topic as Concerto, it probably doesn't have the same relevance to you. After all, I don't actually believe that life is a gift from God, since I don't believe there is a God. What I'm doing is seeing if the claim that our life is a gift from God is consistent with the claim that we owe damages to God from damaging that life.

I was just pointing out that if the biblical God is real i dont think his gift was a gift in the first place. Thats all.

Adam's perfect nature, over which God retained certain claims, consisted in both his intrinsic qualities and his ongoing connection with his Creator. In severing this relationship, he ruined the perfection which God had charged him to preserve, resulting in a liability mankind could not repay on its own.

That does not follow. God gave Adam liberty to make use of himself, but not license to undo God's work in creating him. Meaning, with respect to self-possession by Adam, God gave up some rights while reserving others.

I found it impossible to pick one because the amount of work to put in to study all the explanations of atonement is too grueling. I wouldn't attempt it without a long term study of them and I'm not even sure the list you want us to pick from is sufficient.

How can someone be perfect and yet capable of creating evil? This may be a semantical argument but I feel that you really have to stretch the definitions to make it work.

The first issue involves your statement that we are committed to human reason. But as Christians, we have a higher commitment - to God's Word. That doesn't mean we accept that which is obviously contradictory - for instance, if the Bible said A=nonA I would have serious problems. We also believe that God is Reason itself and those issues we can't reconcile with our intellectual difficulties nevertheless have a resolution in God - and given that God is the Absolute Person, that is itself a reasonable position.

But I don't think you can show that the atonement is of the A=nonA class. All you can show is that you don't understand it. But in truth, no one does fully understand it. I don't, and I recently listened to Craig's short series on this subject in his Defender's podcast series, and he said he's never read a Christian philosopher or theologian who has explained it completely.

I believe the doctrine has to be understood from the penal viewpoint, but must include the concept of imputation. In the NT, Christ is linked to Adam, even called the last Adam. And Adam is designated as the federal head of the human race - he stood for all men in his test, and his failure becomes our failure. In the same way, Christ's atonement becomes ours.

So why is this just? My way of looking at it is to consider the alternative. If some form of eternal punishment is the consequence of sin, then anyone who committed the slightest sin would be irredeemable. If fact, this IS the case with fallen angels, as far as we know - they have no hope of redemption, no forgiveness of sin. For whatever reasons, and as Christians we believe God had good ones, He decided to provide a "second chance", a way to supply salvation to us through grace.

This is a very difficult concept - I don't pretend to understand it fully. As Craig said, theologians have struggled with it since Christ and no one has articulated it in a completely satisfactory way. I find that to be true of many Bible doctrines - all of them have some mystery for us at the edges. I don't think you can make a formal case for its logical invalidity but you can certainly ask questions I can't answer. Christianity does involve a faith commitment.

The point that doesn't make sense to me is the source of God's right to make these claims. So, one potentially acceptable source is ownership. If God owns humans, then it is a common principle that property damage requires repayment. But you don't want to say that God owns humans simpliciter. Rather you say that he has some rights of ownership, but not others.

This doesn't make sense to me. If I had a slave. I can't say, alright, I will make you free, but you still have to do what I say. The act of making her free just is the giving up of your rights to license which actions she will or will not do. So it seems to me that you need to either admit that God did not make humans free, or come up with a different explanation of the atonement.

Now, of course, even free people are bound by laws and morality. But that is a different kind of obligation, not that of slave to master. Nor is the damage done reducible to property damage.

Is the other side Satan and his minions? How is there any conflict? Okay, here are a few comments:

1) God could completely crush Satan (at least according to orthodox Christian theology) in any kind of real conflict. A true conflict seems to shade into Manicheanism. It seems to imply that God has to struggle. But God is, after all, God. Isn't he the kind of being for whom struggle is unnecessary?

2) You talk of this war as ongoing, and seem to minimize the actual significance of Jesus' actions during his life. But then, what is the significance of these actions? Why did Jesus have to become a human to beat Satan? Why did Jesus have to die to beat Satan? How did Jesus' death change things for us? After all, usually dying is a sign of defeat. So was Jesus initially defeated?

3) How is it that God ever allowed us to be enslaved by Satan in the first place? Seems like an earlier humanitarian intervention would have been in order.

4) Satan's enslavement of humans might have been a fact, but it was not justified. So there is no moral or legal need to justify freeing us. So why doesn't God just use his greater power to free us? I.e. some people today are still enslaved to Satan, and some people are not. This is much the same as BC. So what's changed?

Fair enough. However, the less we know here, the less impressive this is as theology. The point, after all, is to have a theory that explains these matters. I know what a physical battle is like. But I'm not sure what a spiritual battle is like. Does God's angels line up and fight with Satan's angels? Does it matter which of them use better military tactics? I have all these questions about your picture, but I suspect you'll end up saying you just don't know. But then your theory seems to explain very little, if anything, of why Jesus needed to die on the cross.

I'm not trying to offer a logical proof that absolutely disproves the theory of atonement. I don't think that is possible, as per the Quine-Duhem thesis. Rather, it seems to me that almost all theories of the atonement (except perhaps for Abelard's moral influence view) require assumptions that are generally inconsistent with contemporary legal, political, and moral ideas. For example, Concerto is arguing for a conception of the atonement that implies that humans should be viewed as God's slaves. Yet, slavery is universally condemned by modern moralists.

I don't view this as enough, on its own, to throw over a belief in Christianity. However, it is still worth pointing out how odd it is that such a central doctrine of Christianity is not well-supported theologically. It might have lots of support in the Bible, but this doctrine has not been adequately explained by theologians (as you seem to acknowledge).

As for the significance of reason to this issue, I don't think you would be wise to pursue this. Christianity has usually claimed to be a religion fully compatible with, or even confirmed by reason. I think this is a heritage Christians should be proud of, not minimize by challenging the regulatory role that reason has on our beliefs.

Finally, regarding the penal substitution view of atonement.

1) First, regarding your story of the fall. I'll just say, Adam is not my federal head. I am a republican (not in the political party, but in the political theory sense). I believe in individual responsibility. Adam can be a symbol for humanity, but then the Fall is only symbolic itself. Adam cannot however, act for all of humanity.

This is another example of what I mean by outmoded political views. This view of humanity, as collective rather than individualistic, is characteristic of an older time when people were not viewed as individually responsible for their actions.

2) Logically, if everyone, willy-nilly, was guilty by Adam's sin, then everyone is innocent by Jesus' perfection. So everyone, regardless of their actions now, is saved.

3) The theory of punishment here is very strange. Let's say that Billy-Bob embezzles millions from his company. After being found out, he is sentenced to 10 years in prison. However, Billy-Bob has a loving mother, and she offers to serve in his stead.

Now, if anything, it would seem even more unjust to have another person serve Billy-Bob's sentence than to commute it. After all, the idea is that Billy-Bob needs to be punished, not just that someone should be punished. But that seems to be what you propose here. Except even worse--punishing someone completely innocent. That seems incredibly unjust on the part of God.

4) It is difficult connecting the math here. A single sin equals eternal punishment, yet Jesus "dying" is equivalent to the eternal punishment of all humans?

5) God is merciful--he sends Jesus to take our punishment for us. Why couldn't God be even more merciful and simply commute the sentence? Why was the torture of Jesus necessary? What theory of punishment justifies this?

Sort of an aside, but is this a counter argument at all? At least some of these ideas are not even universal, but are confined to subsets of the human population. Do you refer to contemporary western secular concepts of morality etc.? If you do, then many of those may not even be held by the majority of people. It is also at least debatable how long they will endure.

I'm not arguing that the atonement is false because it conflicts with moral ideas accepted by the majority of people. I am claiming that it is false because it conflicts with moral ideas that the person I'm talking to holds. If you don't think that slavery is immoral, or if you don't think that torture is immoral, then my arguments will not be convincing. In that case, I would have to argue for these moral claims directly.

Even if atonement conflicts with an individual's moral ideas, that does not make it false. It might make it unpleasant or uncomfortable or even unpalatable, but you are not addressing the fundamental truth or falsity of the idea at all, or so it appears to me. Do you disagree?

The bolded part is the more correct option.

God made mankind free only conditionally and within bounds. God alone has the quality of absolute freedom. Each of us faces the same choice Adam and Eve had: either being subject to God, the source of life, or mistaking ourselves for gods in which case our Creator leaves us to our own devices and nature takes its course resulting in death.

Then God's lesson is for us to find happiness in slavery or suffer eternal torment in its place. What a miserable decision for Christians to be forced to make.

I am assuming that God doesn't act immorally. So, for instance, if your favored theory of atonement suggests that God is a slaveowner, but we believe that slavery is immoral, then I would say that your theory of atonement is inconsistent with your moral beliefs.

Also, the relevance of political, legal, and moral ideas to this discussion is due to the fact that some theories (such as the ransom theory) rely on ideas and attitudes towards these issues which were assumed at the time the theories were first developed, but which do not reflect our understanding today. A couple examples: we know longer view sacrifice as placating God, we no longer believe that Satan could rightfully rule the earth as king, etc.

A lesson? Eternal torment? I can't make sense of your post.

Not being a god, you are subject to either the Creator of nature or nature itself. The choice is yours to make, as it was for Adam and Eve.

If anyone is interested in reading Aquinas on Christ's passion and attonement, here's the link.

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4048.htm#article1

There's no reason why the atonement would have to conform to humanity's views of anything. I do believe that the Reformers, in their attempt to answer critics of the substitutionary view, tried much too hard to explain it in terms of the natural law of the day. This led to complications that still give difficulty today.

I unhesitatingly repeat that God's Word trumps human reason. That doesn't diminish the idea that Christian theism is rationally defensible from an apologetic standpoint. Theologians who maintain that also insist that fallen human reason is inadequate to fully explain everything in the Bible. That there is mystery for us is actually perfectly logical and in accord with the existence of an omnipotent, personal God - not inconsistent at all.

Well, I said you can come up with difficult questions - theologians have been debating these and others like them for centuries. Here is an excellent recent article on the logic of the atonement by Packer(1973 is recent relative to a doctrine this old):

http://www.the-highway.com/cross_Packer.html

God can be defended rationally except for the times that it can't because rationality is inadequate.

Is this something more than simply stating that our human description of God is always modified by the lens of our cultural context? I would have conceded that point without debate. If that is true, so what? Do you have a broader point that you are trying to make?

Your choice is to accept God's ownership of you and submit to slavery, or to receive some punishment in its place. The specifics of whether you believe that punishment to be eternal torment or merely death are not particularly interesting to me.