I agree with Craig that infernal suffering is finite in the sense that the damned experience it in finite increments. However, I don't agree that the suffering of the damned was compressed, and that's why Christ experienced. Guilt is qualitative, not quantitative, hence the atonement is qualitative, not quantitative.
I think he is (rightly?) getting at the idea that Jesus' suffering must somehow have been as valuable a sacrifice/payment that was commensurate with the payment/punishment that millions of redeemed sinners owed. We would have in mind the Scales of Justice being evened.
ReplyDeleteNow Jesus is a special case because, as the Son of God, His suffering and death is more valuable than a normal man's. So it may not be necessary to postulate that the intensity of His suffering had to have been equal to the damnation sufferings owed by all redeemed sinners, compressed and condensed into a single brief event.
Also, most of the atheist critics seem to get hung up on the 3 days/weekend thing. But orthodox, biblical teaching is that Jesus' atoning sacrifice was complete at the moment of his death, it did not require 3 additional days of suffering while He was dead.
To put it another way, perhaps the status of guilt is qualitative, but the path to having guilt remitted is through just recompense, which perhaps can be quantified in some way (although this probably eludes any sort of numerical metric). Just like a debtor can become a non-debtor by paying off his debt.
ReplyDeleteRecently listened to the Closer to Truth podcast called “Atonement – A Philosophical Inquiry”. At the end, the moderator (Robert Lawrence Kuhn) says, “Here's the larger question, for those who believe in a Christian God: Was God constrained by a salvation system of sin, death, and atonement? If no, why did God choose it. If yes, is God not omnipotent?” How would you respond to that question?
ReplyDelete