Questions Without Answers
- As we are required to love our enemies, may we not safely infer that God loves His enemies? (Matt. 5:44)
Not absent all context. God does not love all people in all ways all the time.
If God loves His enemies, will He punish them more than will be for their good?
Yes. God does not promise good for those who deny His existence or those who are otherwise hostile toward Him.
Would endless punishment be for the good of any being?
No, and at no time does the Bible suggest such a premise. The Bible asserts a simple, uniform dichotomy: either eternal life or eternal destruction.
As God loves His friends, if He loves His enemies also, are not all mankind the objects of His love?
Yes, however, an effort should made so as to not assert a false equivalence (apples and oranges fallacy). Friends of God and enemies of God are not identical groups. God loves both but God does not love both identically.
If God loves those only who love Him, what better is He than the sinner? (Luke 6:32-33)
He is the standard by which friends and enemies are measured. He is the standard by which love is measured. He is the Judge who sets both the rules and the terms of relevance. Luke 6:32-33 was spoken to a covenant people about a covenant people. It was not spoken to God-deniers about God deniers and the way they treat covenant people. Treating the text as relevant or applicable to all is an exegetical error that leads to bad doctrine and bad practice. The same is true of proof-texting or extricating
any verse or passage from its inherent context(s).
As "love thinketh no evil," can God design the ultimate evil of a single soul? (1 Cor. 13:5)
????
Can He? Sure. Has He? No. Every single individual who has ever lived has brought upon him/herself his/her own evil. Again: 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 was written by a
believer to
believers about
believers. There is no expectations that God-haters love in any way resembling God's love, nor that God would love those who hate or deny Him in the same manner/degree He loves others.
As "love worketh no ill," can God inflict, or cause, or allow to be inflicted, an endless ill? (Rom. 13:10)
Quote mining is also bad practice. Love does no harm
to its neighbor. Those who hate God or deny Him are not His
neighbor.
As we are forbidden to be overcome by evil, can we safely suppose that God will be overcome by evil? (Rom. 12:21)
No; you may not safely do suppose any such thing.
Would not the infliction of endless punishment prove that God HAD been overcome by evil?
No; the eradication of evil is not evil.
If man does wrong in returning evil for evil, would not God do wrong if He was to do the same?
No. Again: eradicating evil is not evil.
Would not endless punishment be the return of evil for evil?
No; it is the eradication of evil.
As we are commanded "to overcome evil with good," may we not safely infer that God will do the same? (Rom. 12:21)
The larger text answers that very question: "
Vengeance is God's,"
not ours.
Would the infliction of endless punishment be overcoming evil with good?
Yes. It is good to have an absence of evil.
If God hates the sinner, does the sinner do wrong in hating Him?
Cart before the horse. The reason God hates the sinner is because s/he has hated and dishonored God selfishly and unrepentantly with hostility.
Is God a changeable being? (James 1:17)
No.
These are not questions without answers.
Note: the practice of false claims, red herrings, proof-texting, quote mining, attributional error, false cause, and the other fallacies inherent in these inquiries does not bode well for cogent discourse.