{"id":3894,"date":"2014-05-31T21:10:56","date_gmt":"2014-06-01T04:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/godslovewins.com\/blog\/?page_id=3894"},"modified":"2014-05-31T21:10:56","modified_gmt":"2014-06-01T04:10:56","slug":"essay-freedom-damnation-and-the-power-to-sin-with-impunity","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/godslovewins.com\/blog\/thomas-talbott\/essay-freedom-damnation-and-the-power-to-sin-with-impunity\/","title":{"rendered":"Essay: Freedom, Damnation, and the Power to Sin With Impunity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Freedom, Damnation, and the Power to Sin With Impunity\u00a0<\/strong>by Thomas Talbott<\/p>\n<p>Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. 97301 USA<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Abstract:<\/strong> I argue that the very idea of a freely embraced eternal destiny in hell is deeply\u00a0incoherent and, quite apart from its incoherence, implies that we are free to sin with\u00a0impunity forever and to defeat God\u2019s justice forever as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>According to traditional Christian theism, we are free to sin, perhaps even to sin with a\u00a0degree of impunity for a while, but we are not free to sin with impunity forever. That, indeed, is\u00a0part of the rationale behind the traditional understanding of hell as a place of punishment. If we\u00a0manage to sin with impunity during our earthly life and fail to repent of our sin, then in the next\u00a0life we shall discover that we have not escaped our punishment altogether. So it is not\u00a0surprising, perhaps, that the brief allusions to hell in the New Testament, particularly as they\u00a0occur in the words of Jesus, always picture hell as a forcibly imposed punishment rather than as a\u00a0freely embraced condition.<\/p>\n<p>In the parable of the sheep and the goats, those subjected to\u00a0punishment not only do not choose their\u00a0punishment; they are surprised to receive it. And in the\u00a0parable of the rich man and Lazarus,\u00a0the rich man\u2019s torment (from which he begs relief) is hardly\u00a0something that he has freely chosen to endure. He may have freely\u00a0chosen something\u2014 to live\u00a0selfishly or disobediently during his earthly life, for example\u2014 but he has not freely chosen the\u00a0punishment or the torment to which he is being subjected as a result of his sin.<\/p>\n<p>Now when the traditional understanding of hell as unbearable suffering, forcibly imposed\u00a0as punishment for sin, is conjoined with the idea of unending duration, we get the diabolical\u00a0picture of an eternal torture chamber of some kind. And few religious thinkers today, even\u00a0among the most conservative, are\u00a0prepared to swallow an idea as unpalatable as that. Most\u00a0would concede that an eternal torture chamber is utterly inconsistent with a supremely loving and\u00a0supremely powerful being. But if that is true, then any theist who seeks to retain a doctrine of\u00a0hell must revise the traditional doctrine in one of two ways: either by rejecting the idea of\u00a0unbearable suffering or by rejecting the idea that the suffering literally endures forever.<\/p>\n<p>Over\u00a0the past decade, a number of Christian philosophers have set forth a free will defense, or perhaps\u00a0even a free will theodicy, of hell1 and have therefore chosen the first alternative; they have in\u00a0effect replaced the idea of unbearable suffering, which no one could freely embrace forever, with\u00a0that of a freely chosen life apart from God&#8230;read remainder of article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.willamette.edu\/~ttalbott\/Impunity.pdf\">HERE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Freedom, Damnation, and the Power to Sin With Impunity\u00a0by Thomas Talbott Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. 97301 USA &nbsp; Abstract: I argue that the very idea of a freely embraced eternal&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/godslovewins.com\/blog\/thomas-talbott\/essay-freedom-damnation-and-the-power-to-sin-with-impunity\/\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Essay: Freedom, Damnation, and the Power to Sin With Impunity<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":240,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3894","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","excerpt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/godslovewins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/godslovewins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/godslovewins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godslovewins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godslovewins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3894"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/godslovewins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3908,"href":"https:\/\/godslovewins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3894\/revisions\/3908"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godslovewins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/godslovewins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}