Great conversation, Garb. Sorry about my kids interrupting the video and flow. Hopefully I can get your book and read it. Appreciate the dialogue and book advice! Shalom!
I'm at the 1:31 minuute mark where Courtney says, and I paraphrase, the only way for God to make things right is by some sort of penalty/punishment. That's where the line is drawn. If one doesn't take punishment (in any sense) as necessary to making things right, then PSA would be unnecessary. It is a very counter intuitive scenario in human terms. Say you accidentally killed my child, and I acknowledge it as a disorder and a burden against you. I can freely lift that burden without punishing you. I can make things right by resurrecting my child (if I had the power), restoring the life, and perhaps I have to compensate for emotional harm to the child or something. But I think I can do all that without saying I must punish someone for the disorder that occurred. Someone is on the hook for the restoration, but it does not necessary have to land on the person who committed the offense. PSA advocate would say, I think, that there can be no forgiveness without some sort of evening the playing field (punishment fitting for the offense). I think it is a very human intuition. That's why I think when we read scripture, we take it that God must think the same way. It is not clear however, that the text necessary demands that way of dealing with disorder. Therefore, I am skeptical that PSA is necessary. I'm not saying it can't be the way God can choose to deal with sin and disorder, I'm just thinking it is not necessarily so. And if someone can offer a plausible alternative, I think it's fair game. I"m not 100% convinced by the divine court case model--I'm not entirely convinced to the suggestion that God made a deal with the elohims. But I think it is better than the PSA model in the sense that it provides philosophically satisfying model that makes sense of a lot of scriptural data. Axiologically, a perfect God is less likely to be a PSA God, in my opinion.
Great conversation, Garb. Sorry about my kids interrupting the video and flow. Hopefully I can get your book and read it. Appreciate the dialogue and book advice! Shalom!
I'm at the 1:31 minuute mark where Courtney says, and I paraphrase, the only way for God to make things right is by some sort of penalty/punishment. That's where the line is drawn. If one doesn't take punishment (in any sense) as necessary to making things right, then PSA would be unnecessary. It is a very counter intuitive scenario in human terms. Say you accidentally killed my child, and I acknowledge it as a disorder and a burden against you. I can freely lift that burden without punishing you. I can make things right by resurrecting my child (if I had the power), restoring the life, and perhaps I have to compensate for emotional harm to the child or something. But I think I can do all that without saying I must punish someone for the disorder that occurred. Someone is on the hook for the restoration, but it does not necessary have to land on the person who committed the offense. PSA advocate would say, I think, that there can be no forgiveness without some sort of evening the playing field (punishment fitting for the offense). I think it is a very human intuition. That's why I think when we read scripture, we take it that God must think the same way. It is not clear however, that the text necessary demands that way of dealing with disorder. Therefore, I am skeptical that PSA is necessary. I'm not saying it can't be the way God can choose to deal with sin and disorder, I'm just thinking it is not necessarily so. And if someone can offer a plausible alternative, I think it's fair game. I"m not 100% convinced by the divine court case model--I'm not entirely convinced to the suggestion that God made a deal with the elohims. But I think it is better than the PSA model in the sense that it provides philosophically satisfying model that makes sense of a lot of scriptural data. Axiologically, a perfect God is less likely to be a PSA God, in my opinion.