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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    321,452
    Perspectives
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    Topics
    42
    A responsible choice in God's favor requires that we sin. — Carmelics
    Home/Divine Attributes
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    A responsible choice in God's favor requires that we sin.

    Divine Attributes
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.True friendship is always voluntary.
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    • 2.If God only exacts devotion from us, we are reduced to being his subjects; to be friends with him requires a meaningful and responsible decision on our part.
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    • 3.A responsible choice in God's favor requires that we understand the alternative, which is to be at enmity with him.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Morally significant knowledge of evil can be acquired through imagination, testimony, and empathy without requiring the agent to commit evil acts.
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    • 2.If experiential sinning were necessary for genuine moral understanding, then saints and morally exemplary persons would be epistemically deficient relative to habitual sinners, which is absurd.
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    • 3.Aquinas and the virtue ethics tradition hold that moral knowledge is cultivated through virtuous habituation, not through transgression followed by remorse.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The argument entails that God, being sinless, lacks the experiential basis for genuine understanding of rebellion against himself, yet omniscience precludes such ignorance.
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    • 2.If God can possess complete knowledge of sin's desolation without having sinned, then the inference that humans must sin to understand it commits a special pleading fallacy.
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    Divine Attributes

    Related

    A responsible choice in God's favor requires that we understand the alternative,...Aquinas and the virtue ethics tradition hold that moral knowledge is cultivated ...Guilt, remorse, a sense of defilement, and the hopeless desolation of being cut ...If God can possess complete knowledge of sin's desolation without having sinned,...
    +6 moreShow less
    If God only exacts devotion from us, we are reduced to being his subjects; to be...If experiential sinning were necessary for genuine moral understanding, then sai...Morally significant knowledge of evil can be acquired through imagination, testi...Only through experience can we understand what it means to be in rebellion again...The argument entails that God, being sinless, lacks the experiential basis for g...True friendship is always voluntary.

    Similar

    A responsible choice in God's favor requires that we understand the al...82%At the point of divine choice, the only real possibility is that God d...76%As creator, God is fully involved in those acts in which we sin, for t...75%If the essence of sin is rebellion against the will of God, then even ...73%

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: providence-divine
    McCann 2005 / free will defense passage
    View source passageHide passage
    Another free will defense may yet be available (McCann 2005). (For other attempts to modify a variety of free will defenses so as to make them compatible with theological determinism, see Byerly 2017 and Almeida 2017.) It must be remembered that even though the actions of free creatures do not escape providence, such creatures are still an enhancement to creation, in that their nature reflects more closely what we suppose to be God’s own nature. As such, free creatures are more suited to the kind of fellowship with God that believers understand to be their ultimate destiny. It may be, however,...
    Extraction notes

    The premises form a valid chain of reasoning present in the source passage: friendship with God requires a responsible voluntary choice (premises 1-2), which requires understanding the alternative of enmity with God (premise 3), which cannot be understood abstractly (premise 4), but only through the experience of sinning (premise 5), thus supporting the conclusion that a responsible choice in God's favor requires that we sin.

    Validity:

    Confidence: Explicit chain of reasoning in the text.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit