Consider the following possible world which is, as I’ve already said, roughly what some Christians consider the actual world to be like:
I don’t think many Christians consider the world to be like that. It would produce bizarre results such as the equivalent of Huckleberry Finn going to Hell because he helped a runaway slave but his conscience told him that helping a runaway slave is wrong. For a modern equivalent, a gay person whose conscience tells him that homosexuality is wrong would go to Hell for it.
I don’t think many Christians consider the world to be like that.
Do you have any evidence for that, other than the fact that it has consequences you find bizarre? (Most versions of Christianity have quite a lot of consequences—or in some cases explicitly stated doctrines—that I find bizarre and expect you find at least as bizarre as I do.)
I have at least one piece of evidence on my side, which is that I spent decades as a Christian and what I describe is not far from my view as I remember it. (I mostly believed that damnation meant destruction rather than eternal torture; I don’t think that makes much difference to the sub-point currently at issue.) I think if actually asked “so, does that mean that someone might be damned rather than saved on account of doing something he thought wrong that was actually right?” my answer would have been (1) somewhat evasive (“I don’t claim to know the details of God’s policy; he hasn’t told us and it’s not obvious what it should be… ”) but (2) broadly in line with what I’ve been describing here (”… but if I have to guess, then yes: I think that doing something believing it to be wrong is itself a decision to act wrongly, and as fit to make the difference between salvation and damnation as any other decision to act wrongly.”)
I don’t recall ever giving much consideration to the question of people who do good things believing them to be evil, which I take as evidence for my suggestion earlier that most Christians holding that non-Christians may be judged “on their merits” likewise don’t think about it much if at all, which in case it’s not obvious I think is relevant because it means that even if you’re correct that thinking hard enough about it would show an incoherence in the position I described, that won’t actually stop many Christians holding such a position: because scarcely any will think hard enough about it.
I don’t think many Christians consider the world to be like that. It would produce bizarre results such as the equivalent of Huckleberry Finn going to Hell because he helped a runaway slave but his conscience told him that helping a runaway slave is wrong. For a modern equivalent, a gay person whose conscience tells him that homosexuality is wrong would go to Hell for it.
Do you have any evidence for that, other than the fact that it has consequences you find bizarre? (Most versions of Christianity have quite a lot of consequences—or in some cases explicitly stated doctrines—that I find bizarre and expect you find at least as bizarre as I do.)
I have at least one piece of evidence on my side, which is that I spent decades as a Christian and what I describe is not far from my view as I remember it. (I mostly believed that damnation meant destruction rather than eternal torture; I don’t think that makes much difference to the sub-point currently at issue.) I think if actually asked “so, does that mean that someone might be damned rather than saved on account of doing something he thought wrong that was actually right?” my answer would have been (1) somewhat evasive (“I don’t claim to know the details of God’s policy; he hasn’t told us and it’s not obvious what it should be… ”) but (2) broadly in line with what I’ve been describing here (”… but if I have to guess, then yes: I think that doing something believing it to be wrong is itself a decision to act wrongly, and as fit to make the difference between salvation and damnation as any other decision to act wrongly.”)
I don’t recall ever giving much consideration to the question of people who do good things believing them to be evil, which I take as evidence for my suggestion earlier that most Christians holding that non-Christians may be judged “on their merits” likewise don’t think about it much if at all, which in case it’s not obvious I think is relevant because it means that even if you’re correct that thinking hard enough about it would show an incoherence in the position I described, that won’t actually stop many Christians holding such a position: because scarcely any will think hard enough about it.