On Hell and Forgiveness

[Neo-Scholastic]

Personally, I find this line of reasoning a strange kind of utilitarianism, as if the Deluge was simply a way to prevent more people unnecessarily from suffering Hell by preventing them from even being born. If that was the intent, then why not just smite Cain, who clearly deserved it, and allow the line of Seth to expand in peace.

Who knows. Maybe would not have gotten Noah and his extended family. Maybe there were good people a generation or two back. The list was meant to counter a claim that God wiped people out for emotional reasons. Something like 'regret' is informed by underlying principles/expectations that were not met and itself not entirely an emotional response.

And that is the key, not entirely and emotional response. When we as Christians respond to the problem of evil with the notion that this is the best of all possible worlds, then it seems like the act of creation entails pain and suffering. If the Lord was merely the impersonal God of the Philosophers, then It would be an distant and unloving thing. I guess my opinion is that one of the deeper meanings of the Deluge story is that God suffers with us, grieving over His creation and yet redeeming the tragedy of existence by participating in it and giving it purpose through the Cross.