Questions for Christians

Great Debates
21

The usual answer is that she must’ve been his sister. Some also just assume Adam and Eve weren’t the first or the only humans. The scholarly answer is that the Cain story is a different layer and the original story didn’t know about the Creation story. He just goes somewhere and finds a wife.

(I’m not going to bother saying that things may be myth and not history, as that’s a given.)

  1. Hypothetically, if Hitler was on his deathbed and confessed to a priest, would he go to Heaven? I’ve heard that many Christians believe confession is only valid if you truly feel sorry, so let’s assume he did. Let’s also assume he was baptized.

The Bible itself is just not clear on this. And not all books of the Bible agree with each other. There are some faith traditions that would say yes, he would be forgiven if he genuinely wanted to change. The Catholic tradition would put him in purgatory, where he’s have to be purged of all his sins before he could make it to heaven, possibly for millennia.

  1. I think this one is just Catholic, but correct me if I’m wrong. I was told by a Catholic that Mary was perfect and without sin because she had to bear Jesus, who had to be perfect. So, if in order to bear a perfect child, the mother has to be perfect, then shouldn’t Mary’s parents have been perfect? And their parents, etc? That should go back to Adam and Eve, meaning Eve would have to be perfect. If Eve was perfect, wouldn’t she have followed God and not eaten the apple?

This is a common question. For those who believe this, the answer is a miracle: Mary had an Immaculate Conception, where God blocked original sin from imprinting on her, though she was still subject to regular sin. But she was pious and good enough for God to pick her.

The Protestant answer is that she was just a righteous woman. They say there is no reason for the Immaculate Conception as, if God could prevent Mary from inheriting Original Sin, he could do it for Jesus. So there was no issue to be resolved.

  1. It is my understanding that Christians believe god created humans and only humans with free will. If Satan is a fallen angel, then he must have had free will. However, he isn’t human, right?

Free will is a post-biblical idea, but, as I understand it, those who believe in human-only free will tend to believe it means Satan can no longer choose. He had a choice very early on, but then was locked in, no longer free.

But, of course, all that requires assuming Lucifer is Satan, and lots of other ideas that aren’t really in the Bible. They’re post-Biblical innovations.

People act like it’s only the Catholic Church or similar who have some Tradition they consider just as important as the Bible, but the reality is that all Christians do it to some extent.

You have to negotiate with the text. It isn’t univocal. It isn’t inerrant. You have to choose.

  1. This is also probably over asked, but if God loves everyone, why is there suffering and pain?

There are many answers. The one I am familiar with is that it’s a consequence of free will, which required the existence of sin. It’s not a very satisfying explanation, IMO.

If you want to look through the Bible as it was written, you’ll note that God is not always all powerful.

  1. I often hear the argument that there is sin because we have free will and can choose to sin. I’m curious: We have free will and can’t run 200 miles an hour. Why can’t we have free will and be unable to sin?

Free will, in the Christian sense, is the ability to disobey God. And disobedience to God is Sin. So they’re just inextricably linked. If one couldn’t disobey God, they would just be a perfect little automaton.

No such issue shows up with not being able to run a certain speed. You can not be able to run at all and still be able to disobey.

I am about as far from a fundamentalist as you can get. I’m very open to a lot of ambiguity and not knowing. So I tried to represent multiple answers, including the ones I get from following actual Bible scholars–some Christian, some atheists–and how I think about all of this as a Christian myself.

22

I suspect the scholarly answer is that people need female gods, too, and the Christian God is only male. (The Jewish God, despite being based on the same texts, has both male and female aspects.) So Mary has been elevated to a demigod in many Christian traditions. And that led to the doctrine of immaculate conception.

23

In response to the OP:

I’m probably more agnostic than Christian now, but…

  1. Answers vary. Some say God simply created another woman for him out of nothing.

  2. Yes, if Hitler converted on his deathbed, he’d go to Heaven. But confession to a priest might not do it, many evangelicals hold he must trust in Jesus as savior, etc.

  3. Many Christians, including basically all Protestants, do not believe Mary was perfect or sinless at all.

  4. Many Christians think God just lets the world run kind of on its own “because it’s a fallen and sinful world.” Therefore, things like rape, murder, terrorism, child abuse, disease, war, etc. are to be expected. And God just lets most of it happen because He decides to do so as ruler. He may hold everyone accountable to judgement some day after death, but in this life? The game runs on the field with no referee.

24

Yeah, I’m not yet familiar with that so much. What I am familiar with is that the Virgin Mary replaced several Roman and Greek virgin cults. I’ve not looked into it deeply, but I believe they would often replace their virgin goddess with Mary.

I also believe similar things happened with the Saints. Definitely there are some things that seem to be treated like little fetishes, like a St. Christopher medal.

I’m just not super confident in what I know on this. The scholars whose work I’ve been following haven’t brough this up.

I am familiar a bit with Asherah, YHWH/El Elyon’s wife, and with the female interpretations of the Holy Spirit, as the Hebrew Bible when it personifies her is more likely to use female pronouns.

25

Missionaries thought that this was why it was important to evangelise the heathen, otherwise they were going to Hell because they had never had an opportunity to hear the Gospel.

26

I don’t know how many Christians would say this, but it is very far from all of them.

27

My take:
1- the account in Genesis and the rest of the Bible was from a patriarchal society and the religion told through a patriarchal lens. Much less focus was done on girls and women because their society did not value them as much as boys and men. So we are simply not told due to cultural bias.

2 Baptism is not required, and yes God does accept deathbed repentance. However in the case of Hitler and biblically pharaoh to get to that point, the heart is so hardened that such repentance becomes almost impossible. Values are inverted and the person clings to worldly things such as power or death as the only options. Dying without facing consequences (such as being tried and convicted) is seen as winning, as you ultimataly deny anyone justice.

3: As I understand it, and this is covered in apocrypha, Mary was protected from sin by the Holy Spirit. She grew up in a temple away from everyday society and people that would lead to sin thus sin simply did not come near her. Going a little further than the apocrypha does and IMHO this was not necessary for Jesus to have an immaculate womb development but it is something the Father desired for his Son. And although Catholics also hold to the concept of original sin, the Bible does hint that there is an age of innocence, even for God’s own Son:

Is 7:16 “For before the boy knows enough to reject evil and choose good, the land …”

4:Disagree: Some Christians do hold to that. However some free will can be lost via misalignment with God, eventually almost all gets lost i.e. Satan, and the above Hitler, Pharaoh. IMHO Free will is best though of as Maslow’s hierarchy, As one moves to sin, you can no longer operate at higher levels, feee will is lost. Hitler can not operate at the top, as he is consumed by lust for power and fear of failure.

5: Answer requires deep soul searching, even for men like Buddha who was devoted to answer that. Here’s my stab. We are created in the likeness God. God is willing to suffer and die not because God needs us, but because we need God. God Loves us unconditionally, and has adopted us as co-heirs with Jesus, to rule with Jesus. And is also conforming us to be more like God’s child. Thus we will be willing to suffer and die for others, as Jesus did. So we do it, we enter the world to help each other, as God did.

So why didn’t God just use magic to stop it. It would fundamentally change the relationship between God and man. Making man dependent on God’s power instead of God’s provision. That provision is best described as agape (1John 4:8 ‘Theos agape estin’/God is Love). The Greek word from the Bible that means self giving love never stop loving even on to death and expecting nothing in return. We are ultimately part of that inheritance to love as Jesus loves. As I understand it this relationship between God and man is almost unique to Christianity barring certain hybrid faiths that fold every religion into this God of Agape.

6: as I alluded to up thread free will is best thought of as Maslow’s hierarchy. It begins as emotional choices or awareness that in turn gives rise as a range of actions we could take or not take or consider. Consider somebody operating at the bottom level of the pyramid such as a slave or prisoner. Fear is their singular emotional motivator, and that gives rise to a single range of actions. Notice also how people who have depression feel like they’re just going through the motions. That’s an indication of loss of free will.

But Free will has the ability to give up free will, such as sin provides, though that just causes a misalignment, and is not evil it itself. Evil is way down that path when one turns to worldly power, instead of agape for one’s survival.

28

The answer to this one, assuming he was really and truly contrite and did everything with a pure heart, accepted Christ as his savior, etc.. is unequivocally yes, he would be forgiven and go to Heaven.

That’s kind of the point of his crucifixion and resurrection; anyone can be forgiven for anything if they accept Him and his grace.

Now whether or not it would have been possible for Hitler to personally reach that state of contrition and acceptance as @kanicbird points out is extremely unlikely. But not impossible. That possibility was always there for him.

#6 is kind of self-evident. If someone has true free will, that is the ability to choose between all of the available options, including sinning. If the ability to sin is artficially removed, then there’s no longer free will because your ability to choose is curtailed.

Look at it this way- the old sci-fi trope of mind control usually has the mind-controlled person being considered not culpable for what they did while mind-controlled. Why would it be any different if the person is being mind-controlled to only do good things? They’d be no less mind-controlled than if the usual trope was in effect and they were being forced to murder, cheat, etc… Removing options to sin is no different in a philosophical sense.

29

I assume you meant patriarchal.

30

Not so. I know for a fact that Cain was a product of the Walker/Crutch marriage.

31

I sit corrected.

32

Yes, thank you, and if possible could you correct that if it’s not too much trouble.

33

Right. We know that Hitler (and Stalin and a few others) would not truly repent so this is a meaningless question.

  1. The children of Adam & Eve could have married the Nephilim.

"When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.’ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown." – Genesis 6:1-4

34

Done. I also changed “except” to “accept” in the second paragraph. They have basically opposite meanings in this context, and from the rest of the paragraph, you meant “accept”.

35

when I googled “cain’s sister”, it mentioned Awan. Source was listed as Book of Jubilees: This text refers to Awan as the daughter born after Cain and Abel, who later became Cain’s wife.
Azan appears as Muslim call to worship

36

I can’t find the book of jubilees anywhere in my “new Oxford annotated Bible, with apocrypha”.

37

I fell down a wiki hole on this one. It’s a non-canonical Jewish scripture that is considered canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (and among Ethiopian Haymanot Jews)…

So as with all these questions your answer will depend on exactly which Christian or Jewish person you ask.

38

Edit: deleted, ninja’d because I was too slow.

39

At least in part, because those are two different questions with two different answers. Not to speak for the OP, but if I were asking “What do Christians think about this OT passage,” I’m asking because I’m trying to understand something about Christians, not because I’m trying to understand something about the Old Testament.

40

To answer the OP: Just make something up that sounds good. The Bible writers did, so you’re following in good footsteps.