Hi Dr. Craig, thank you for your presentation. Actually my question is related to the
question that was just asked. With respect to premise 2, if God is perfectly
good, an innocent person, he cannot punish, sorry if God is perfectly just he
cannot punish an innocent person. You've mentioned as a possible response
that there are no moral laws that God must fulfill, so he does not have any
moral duties. He can act in any way consistent with his nature [yes].
Elsewhere you said that moral duties are grounded in his will or commands; his
will is not independent of his nature but must express his nature. If true,
penal substitution implies that it is consistent with the nature of God to
punish an innocent person. It seems to me a little bit contradictory to say that
the divine command given to humans, do not punish an innocent person, expresses
a nature of God, and at the same time, it is consistent to say that it is
consistent with the nature of God to punish an innocent person. Alright now
Raul because of your accent it's a little difficult for me to understand,
your claim is that even if God has no moral duties, because he doesn't issue
commands to himself, nevertheless, on divine command theory, he cannot act
inconsistent with his own nature [correct]. And I think you're asking or claiming
that it would be in some way inconsistent with his nature to punish
an innocent person, is that right? Yeah. Why is that? As I understand what
you've said, mainly in response to the Euthyphro dilemma, you said that God's
command to us must be consistent with his nature, so command things consistent
with his nature [exactly]. And so the question is, could he command that Christ
be punished in our place or could he punish Christ in our place? Would
that be inconsistent with his nature? How would that be inconsistent with his nature?
Because he has given us the command not to punish the
innocent. Oh, now see we don't have the same, God doesn't have the same
moral duties that we have. That's the lesson of the command to Abraham to
sacrifice his son Isaac. If Abraham had done this on his own initiative, this
would have been murder, killing his son. But given a divine command it became his
moral duty. So the whole point of the divine command theory is that God may
have prerogatives that we as human beings don't have. And so as I said, even
if God has instituted a system of justice among human beings whereby it is
immoral and unjust for humans to punish other innocent humans for a wrong, and
even if God is too good by his own nature to punish an innocent human
person for another person's wrongs, why can't he reserved for himself the
prerogative of punishing an innocent divine person for the wrongs committed
by humans? I can't see any reason to think that that's incompatible with the
divine nature, unless you say, well, the demands of negative retributive justice
are essential to God's nature, and that's a very ironic twist because the critics
of penal substitution are usually vehemently anti-retributivist, but it
turns out that their objection really depends upon ascribing to God's essence
the demands of retributive justice, and therefore claiming he can't violate them.
But then as I gave a response to that, even if it is essential to his nature, he can meet the
demands of negative retributive justice while punishing Christ because Christ
wasn't innocent.