Engaging an atheist this morning

[DialecticSkeptic]

Had an interesting exchange this morning on Twitter with an atheist named Kat:

Is a sacrifice by a diety to abolish our sins really justice?

Yes—if the deity is also the judge, the lawgiver, and the one wronged (and he is).

He created the wrongdoers! Knowing they would do wrongs [that were] against his perfect ideal.

Well, not exactly. Adam and Eve were not wrongdoers when God created them. Did he know they would fall? Yes. Does that contradict justice? No.

Knowledge of a future fall doesn't make his act of creation unjust. Justice is about dealing rightly with existing guilt. God created morally responsible beings, not robots—and his justice is revealed in both punishing sin and redeeming sinners through Christ.

He didn't create morally responsible adults (if the creation story is literal), he created irresponsible adults who acted on a whim. Perfection would not have chosen that.

Fallacious equivocation. Morally responsible refers to the capacity to be held accountable for one's actions—having the faculties of will, intellect, and moral awareness. It does not imply that the person always acts responsibly.

They didn't have moral awareness. That didn't come until they ate of the tree.

That does not correspond with the scriptures. They knew of sin (intellectually) and they knew disobedience was morally wrong, but they didn't know sin (existentially) until they ate. Arguably, man has had moral awareness for millions of years.

This distinction can be seen by way of contrast, wherein it is said that the one who "did not know sin" God made to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21; emphasis mine). Christ draws out the difference. He knew of sin (intellectually) but he didn't know sin (existentially), for he never sinned (Heb 4:15).

Your interpretation of "scripture."

Obviously. And that's not a meaningful objection.

There are other believers who strongly disagree with you. And others, like me, who interpret the whole thing as embellished history and myth.

—none of which has any impact on this position I have articulated. If you have no objections that land, then all the better for this position. I doubt those other positions would fare as well.

Your position establishes your belief. Of that, I have no doubt.

My position also withstands the objections you have raised, which is important here.

(And it withstands them because they missed.)

 

[DialecticSkeptic]

Another interesting exchange this morning on Twitter with the same person, sort of at the same time.

Someone had said, "Christians are flawed. Jesus is flawless."

Kat replied, saying, "If humans are flawed and God created humans, the blame falls squarely on God."

Another person chimed in to say that Jesus being flawless "runs counter to the very spirit of their belief—that Christ was human, which is essential to the idea he was sent to atone for our sins."

We pick up the conversation from that point:

If Jesus was truly human, he would have been flawed, too. And unless he had sinned, he really had no connection to humanity in a meaningful way.

Those in Adam (covenantal union) are flawed. Christ was not in Adam, but was rather the last Adam or second man—and thus not flawed.

And not human—not to the point of having a clue what it's like to be human.

The Christian position is that Jesus had a fully human nature. If this is not the position you're arguing against, then it's a strawman and thus invalid.

Human nature, however, is not defined by covenantal union with Adam—which is why Christ was fully human but not flawed.

Since all humans are flawed, that is impossible. And since the human experience is fallen (according to Christian belief), if he was sinless then he had no idea what it was like to be human and can't relate to us in any meaningful way.

All humans are flawed because all humans are in Adam. All except Jesus who, as a federal head himself, did not have one (Adam). Therefore, he was fully human but not flawed. He was fully human—a real body, mind, emotions, will, and experiences (hunger, fatigue, grief, temptation, suffering). Like us, he endured pain, injustice, betrayal, and death. In fact, because he was sinless, he felt the full brunt of temptation and suffering, without the desensitization or compromise of sin.

Human nature is covenantally fallen, not ontologically fallen. Sin distorts our humanity; it does not define it.

 

[Josheb]