seeming injustice of God
This raises an interesting point, the purpose and nature of punishment.
There is a sort of Karma view of punishment with a view to balance such that if you caused x amount of pain, you should receive x amount as punishment. This is more common with civil litigation and the assessment of payment.
There is a sort of banishment where a person injurious of others needs to be incarcerated to restrict the harm he can do others.
There is a sort of educational reformation view that the malefactor will mend his ways. This is often used by parents with their children.
The death penalty is representative of extermination or annihilation.
If one views punishment as a system of payment, then at the end of the "payment" is the person free from any further penalty? Since Jesus paid for all the sins of the world, why would someone else have to make payment and how could they?
It is natural to want to see the person who hurt you get hurt himself. This desire often influences our view of justice. At a personal level the desire for revenge often ties a person to a situation or people that are better off left behind.
Would annihilation be unjust?
Without giving first, my view of the structure (in type) you have given, of an essential humanist view of life, I am bound to go back to the greek. There are many lines of reason to do that with, as well, the type of approach, as it were; but if I begin with this lexical approach, first.
Spirit, Soul and Body - Lexical
Pneuma (πνοὴν)
the spirit, refers to breath. This word from 1 Thessalonians 5:23 derives from the root word
pnoe (πνοή), and signifies the breath of life. This same word is used in the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament) and is the word
πνοὴν in Genesis 2:7.
Psuche (ψυχή),
the soul, or life, is translated heart in Ephesians (6:6). It is the same Greek word used in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 for the soul. It denotes the seat of the personality as well as the power of volition (choosing). It is the individual.
Soma (σωμα) is the physical body. The Greek word for body in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 is different to the word dust in Genesis 2:7. This is because Genesis is dealing with the original material from which the body was formed.
Whereas, Thessalonians is a conception of the body as a living biological entity after God breathed into the form of man, the breath of life. Genesis 2:7 is a narrative of how the body came into existence as a biological entity, as well as an explanation of the original material used.
Whereas, Thessalonians 5:23 is a concern for the living body - in this instant - it is a concern for believers alive in their own bodies.
Given that when we speak of salvation (to be saved) then clearly we must have a rational mind, if for no other reason than because God commands all men everywhere unto repentance, and as you say Christ has paid the full penanlty of sin in His own body and blood (my emphasis) so why or why should there be any other payement for sin? Hence the annihilation precept.
To the Greek - The canonical question (extant manuscript giving rise to Scripture) - common Greek, as well, LXX Septuagint Old Testament in classical Greek.
And further, seeing that both sources derive their meaning from language, then it is the spoken word, recorded and then transliterated into an object language cohort, (Kings James to the English meaning for example) we still have to have regard for the language and the greek parse, else the Hebrew meaning.
So to your typology of meanings, the
sort of Karma view, is taken from a source text in Sanskrit and derivates to Buddhist and chiefly Hindi belief systems, yet dials to a meaning of reincarnation. I assume that the
sort of meaning in your text is a more simplified sense and doesn't essentially speak of reincarnation generally speaking, but as you say, in Civil Litigation proceedings and Compensation proceeding (my emphasis) it is a measured outcome, essential to
Just outcomes, and is measured in value (quantum). That is both a litigant fact of proceedings in the High Court and it is also a sociological and psychological sense of shared values, and loss of wellbeing of the victim.
Banishment is a simple expression and needs no real clarification, it is self contained.
Educational reformation view (never heard the expression before), but I assume is a pedagogic precept in a behavioural model (Behavioural in Psychological modality) in the psychological sense of teaching children to be well behaved in civil society and in life, whether in the classroom or at home.
The death penalty certainly removes the so sentenced from life, and therfore from further harmful influence..
I have to say, however, that a biblical account of salvation is significantly more detailed than a single sense of regeneration and hence eternal security in Christ. It also includes reparation, AND physical salvation.
So whilst I speak of a
seeming injustice concerning the account of Adam, as a type of Christ, and Christ in the likeness of sinful flesh, salvation must speak entirely of Christ Himself, and if Christ, then all that which proceeds from Him, speaks to Him, and is for His sake. My claimed
injustice, therfore, must account for how Adam becomes a source of injury through His disobedience in the Eden account, AND how Christ is the prohesied Saviour who is given to settle that account, yet that itself is conditional to repentance.
Rationally, annihilation may seem favourable, but the Scripture tells us that Adam and Eve were ejected from the garden in the East of Eden, precisely so that they would not eat of the tree of Life, having eated of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, lest they should live forever, and the tense in Hebrew and Greek implies in a state of separation from God and a life of self dependance. To have spiritual life independant of God without end. Yet the biblical account of Salavtion speaks of the soul itself as the eternal agent, whether in death, sepration from God, or in life, in Christ by faith, a gift of grace. Where then comes annihilation?
Shalom
