RE: How far reaching are God's powers?
November 15, 2020 at 9:47 am
(This post was last modified: November 15, 2020 at 9:47 am by MilesAbbott81.)
(November 14, 2020 at 8:32 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Anything, absolutely anything. Can you be held morally responsible for things that you are ignorant of?
Can you be held morally responsible for things you are incapable of.
Can you be held morally responsible for what you have no choice in doing?
If so......how? Lay out a description of moral desert if you believe that it can be maintained in any of these circumstances.
I'd say that depends on the circumstance. Sometimes ignorance itself is a punishment or necessary affliction.
You're just asking me the same question in a different way, so let's just rephrase your question: "Can you be held morally responsible for sin if you can't control it?"
This really is the last time I'm going to answer this, and I do so not because I think you'll understand but because there may be some shortcoming on my part in explaining this that might benefit others.
Let's take Hitler as an example, and let's not include God in the equation for the sake of making the point. Does Hitler have a choice in being Hitler? After all, his life experiences were still the same. Did he have a choice in being raised by a maniacal father, or being blinded in the first World War? How about his miraculous survival in one particular battle that filled his head with delusions of grandeur? Had these things not happened to him, he almost certainly wouldn't have become a maniac himself.
Do you still hold him accountable, though he had no choice in whom he became? Of course you do, because the man was evil. He committed evil acts and posed an existential threat to humanity. He deserved every bit of his suffering in the end.
It's really no different for the sinner. We may not have a choice in becoming sinners, but we are still evil and guilty of evil acts, and as such we must be disciplined and dealt with, otherwise justice is never exacted and we turn into monsters like the people in Antifa, who are all existential threats to humanity (at least to some degree). Like Hitler, Antifa has been allowed to fester and metastasize not only to become a sword in the Lord's hand, but to illustrate what happens when there is no punishment for sin.
I would also add that our natures aren't permanent. They are a part of us temporarily, in order for the work to be done, and as we are disciplined, the Lord gives us the ability to choose good because we become aligned with His will, and not our own. I suppose it's still, in a way, the illusion of choice, but it's nothing you will be upset about when it finally happens. It's actually a superior form of our idea of freedom because it's based in His righteousness and not our sinful natures. Nevertheless, the flesh despises the idea of it, because it wants to be God and hates not being in control.
I think this satisfies the rest of your questions, which are really just different attempts at asking the same thing. Every negative you describe (blindness, pride, etc.) is either punishment for sin or necessary to the fulfillment of God's plan, and is therefore justified, because God's intentions are good and yours evil.
End of discussion, like it or not.