This post will largely be a response to another blog post written by Father Stephen Freeman at his blog “Glory To God For All Things”. Father Freeman attempts to address the question of God’s wrath from an Orthodox perspective, arguing that God is not actually “wrathful” toward anyone in the way Protestants (and Catholics) have tradtionally thought. In this post I will respond to Father Freeman’s arguments and attempt to defend the traditional Protestant view of the Wrath of God.
Continue reading at Reason From Scripture.
David–
(Right now, my computer won’t post this on “Reason from Scripture” so I thought I’d post it here instead. If I don’t remember to use a different computer and post it on RfS, could you insert it using quotations into a comment please?)
Why think that Romans 12:19 is assuming a retributive theory of justice? Why think that vengeance and wrath here could not be pedagogical, restorative, demonstrative, deterring, or preventative? There seem to be several possible ways of reading the text that take into account both the command to not take vengeance and the fact that Paul locates vengeance in God; yet not all of them attribute retributive motivations to God’s vengeance. So long as the theory of justice assumed by Paul here doesn’t have to be retributive, it doesn’t seem like this is a counterexample to the claim that the wrath/vengeance/judgment of God is non-retributive. I can substantiate that claim if need be.
David Cox–
I don’t think there is a misunderstanding here. Admittedly words like “vengeance”, “retribution”, and “punishment” are ambiguous terms, and they need to be given some kind of specific content. Different theories of justice would ascribe different motivations to a person exercising punishment. Most Protestants would say they are committed to the idea that God sometimes (perhaps often, or even always) has retribution as one of his motives for permitting or inflicting harm. Retributive punishment (as I understand it) is any infliction of harm (whether by permission or commission) in response to wrongdoing, that is proportional to wrongdoing, and which is motivated by the intrinsic goodness of inflicting suffering on those who do evil. The Orthodox have generally held (though rarely, if ever, formally articulated) pedagogical, restorative, deterring, and preventative understandings of justice, and denied a retributive theory. Pedagogical justice views punishment as a means to the reforming of a person’s character. Restorative justice views punishment as a means to restoring the damage for wrongs done. Deterring justice views punishment as a means to making potential criminals wary of the harm that will ensue if they do wrong, and consequently preventing them from doing evil. Preventative justice views punishment as a means to protecting goodness (innocence, purity, safety, etc.). Obviously these non-penal theories of justice are compatible with saying that there can be multiple motives for punishment–one or more that view it as a means to an end, and also a penal motivation that views punishment as an end in itself. But the Orthodox-patristic tendency has been to deny a retributive motivation for justice wholesale, identifying punishment entirely according to one or more of the other theories.
Though we believe there is judgment and divine wrath as a response to sin, it is a different kind of response than the West would generally say. And the nature of hell (the reason for why people go there, the reason why it has eternal duration, etc.) is also very different from the Western view. Father Stephen’s post, as well as The River of Fire, and some posts (written by amateurs/laity, though) in the “Natural Consequences” series on our blog The Well of Questions provide information about this.
Just leave another comment here sometime today or tomorrow if you can’t comment on RFS and I’ll go ahead and copy/paste it for you.
David–
Its still not posting the comment.
Ok, I copied your comment to RFS and I responded. Let me know if you still have trouble commenting.
David–
Thanks dude… it seems to be working just fine now… any idea what was up?
I’m not sure. 3 other people were able to comment just fine, so I don’t think it was the blog. *shrugs*
Just dropping by.Btw, you website have great content!
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Your passion for apologetics bursts through your writing. I found it interesting and engaging. Thanks.
Very Respectfully In Christ,
T. Michael Cart
Hi!For many people is so easy to take the course of the action in their hands and to revenge them selves.But after doing this a bitter taste take place inside of them.
So the wisest thing would be, to leave the anger of God to revenge!
God bless you!
by Arcadia
I noticed that this is not the first time you mention the topic. Why have you decided to touch it again?