r/ChristianOrthodoxy • u/WestIndependence3659 • 13h ago
Question Need help to counter this argument against Orthodoxy
Hi! Am inquiring into Eastern Orthodoxy, but got this objection to it while i was reading stuff on how to recouncile Old testament with a loving God, would love to hear responses and additionally please do recommend material on how to recouncile these things through a Orthodox perspective.
My objection concerns the command of God in 1 Samuel 15:3 to destroy the Amalekites, explicitly including their children and infants. The central question is whether this command can be reconciled with the Eastern Orthodox belief that God is perfectly good, cannot sin, and cannot act contrary to His own nature.
My objection is not simply that God takes human life. I am willing to agree that God, as Creator, possesses an authority over life and death that human beings do not possess. The problem is that, in this passage, it is not merely God who takes life: God allegedly commands human beings to kill children and infants, and their obedience is presented as a moral obligation.
This distinction is fundamental. If God were simply taking a life Himself, we would be discussing God's authority over His creation. However, in this passage, human beings are instructed to perform an action that would ordinarily be morally evil, and their failure to obey that instruction is itself treated as wrongdoing. The moral status of the human agents' actions therefore becomes unavoidable.
1. The Fundamental Dilemma: Either Divine Command Theory Is True, or God Commands Evil
The first problem is that the Bible ordinarily condemns murder as a grave moral evil. Within Eastern Orthodox Christianity, sin is understood as contrary to God's goodness and as a departure from the good. Yet, in the account of Amalek, God allegedly commands an act that would otherwise be regarded as a grave sin.
Consider the implications of this command.
If killing the infants was morally good, and the only relevant difference between this instance and other instances of killing innocent children is that God commanded it, then the moral status of the action appears to depend on the divine command itself. The act is no longer morally evil but morally good because God commanded it. Conversely, obeying the command is an act of righteousness, while disobeying it, as Saul did by failing to carry it out completely, becomes moral wrongdoing.
This appears to support Divine Command Theory(DCT) - an action that would ordinarily be morally evil becomes morally good because God commands it, while refusing to perform that action becomes sinful because God has commanded it. (I have read somewhere that Divine Command Theory is not supported in Orthodoxy and so if DCT is true then Orthodoxy is false)
Alternatively, suppose that killing the infants remained morally evil despite God's command. In that case, God would have commanded human beings to commit a grave moral evil. If God is perfectly good, this would contradict His nature and make Him not a perfectly moral being.
Thus, the dilemma is as follows:
- If killing the infants became morally good solely because God commanded it, then the moral status of the action is determined by the divine command, supporting Divine Command Theory and debunking Orthodoxy.
- If killing the infants remained morally evil despite the command, then God allegedly commanded an action contrary to His own goodness, contradicting the belief that He is perfectly moral.
A Christian cannot simply declare the action good because God commanded it without addressing the first problem. Nor can the Christian acknowledge that the action is intrinsically evil and maintain that God commanded it without addressing the second.
2. Murder Is a Grave Sin in Eastern Orthodoxy, and Moral Standards Cannot Change Merely Because of Time or Place
The problem becomes even more serious when considered within Eastern Orthodox theology.
Murder is a grave sin. Whether it occurs today or thousands of years ago among the Amalekites does not, by itself, change its moral status. If morality is universal, an intrinsically evil action does not become morally good merely because it occurred in a different historical period or involved a different people.
The passage concerns the Amalekites, but the historical distance does not resolve the philosophical problem. The question is not whether ancient Israel had different customs or whether ancient warfare was particularly brutal. The question is whether a morally perfect God could command an action that is intrinsically contrary to goodness.
If the deliberate killing of innocent infants is a grave moral evil, then its occurrence thousands of years ago does not automatically make it morally permissible. The fact that an action took place within a particular historical context may help explain why it happened, but explaining an action is not the same as morally justifying it.
Therefore, the claim that this was an exceptional event in ancient history does not, by itself, resolve the contradiction. If the act was intrinsically contrary to goodness, the passage's antiquity cannot transform it into goodness.
3. If God Cannot Lie Because Lying Contradicts His Nature, Why Would Killing Innocent Infants Not Contradict His Nature?
The Bible teaches that God cannot lie. Titus 1:2 describes God as one who cannot lie, while Numbers 23:19 contrasts God with human beings who lie. The traditional Christian understanding is that God cannot lie because lying is contrary to His nature as the God of truth.
This raises an important question: If God cannot lie because lying contradicts His nature, why would the deliberate killing of innocent infants not also contradict His nature if that action is intrinsically contrary to goodness?
The underlying principle is the same. God cannot perform an act contrary to His perfect nature. His inability to lie is not merely the result of an arbitrary prohibition that He has chosen to obey. It is connected to who He is.
But if His nature necessarily excludes lying, and if the deliberate killing of innocent infants is intrinsically evil, then His nature should also exclude commanding such an act as a morally good action.
The issue is not whether God possesses sufficient power to issue the command. It is whether the command is consistent with His perfect goodness.
If God cannot lie because lying contradicts His nature, He cannot simply make a genuinely evil action good by commanding it. Otherwise, goodness would no longer be grounded in His unchanging nature but would instead depend on whatever He happens to command.
That would make the meaning of God's goodness difficult to distinguish from the claim that His will determines what is good, regardless of the moral character of the action itself.
4. God's Superior Knowledge and Authority Do Not Automatically Resolve the Problem
One response is that God possesses knowledge and authority that human beings do not possess. I agree that God, if He exists as understood in Christianity, possesses knowledge and authority beyond ours.
However, that agreement does not resolve the contradiction.
God has also given human beings moral knowledge through His commandments and revelation. The Bible teaches that murder is wrong, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity understands sin as contrary to the good and to God's nature. Yet the same biblical narrative appears to command human beings to kill infants without explaining why the action is not sinful in this particular instance.
If we are expected to understand that murder is a grave sin, but are then presented with a passage in which God allegedly commands an act that appears to fall under that prohibition, we need an explanation of the moral distinction between the two cases.
It is insufficient to reply that God knows more than we do. Greater knowledge might reveal relevant circumstances, but it does not, by itself, demonstrate that the action was morally justified. An explanation is still required of why the killing was not contrary to goodness.
The question is especially important because the command is directed towards human beings. Saul and his soldiers are not omniscient. They are being instructed to perform an act that would otherwise be regarded as gravely wrong. They are expected to understand that obedience is righteous, even though the text does not provide an explanation of why the act is not sinful.
If the moral distinction depends upon knowledge available only to God, then the question remains: how could the human agents understand the moral status of their actions, and why should obedience to the command be sufficient to establish that killing the infants was good?
Invoking God's superior knowledge identifies a possible response, but it does not supply the missing justification.
5. The Fact That This Command Does Not Justify Killing Innocent People Today Is Irrelevant to the Central Objection
I agree that this passage must not be used to justify the killing of innocent people today. A modern individual cannot simply claim that God has commanded a killing and thereby establish that the action is morally permissible.
However, this does not answer the objection.
The issue is not whether the passage provides a valid justification for killing people today. The issue is whether the action described in the passage was morally good when it allegedly occurred.
If killing innocent infants is intrinsically wrong today, and if morality is universal, then killing innocent infants thousands of years ago is not made morally good merely by the passage of time. If God truly commanded an intrinsically evil act in the past, then the fact that the same act cannot be justified in the present does nothing to resolve the alleged contradiction in God's nature.
The question is not whether Christians are permitted to imitate the action. It is whether God, being perfectly good and incapable of sin, could have commanded it in the first place.
Consequently, agreeing that the passage must not justify contemporary violence does not resolve the moral problem posed by its historical claim.
6. How Can There Be Any Justification for a Sin?
A further problem arises from the very concept of sin.
If sin is contrary to God's nature, how can there be any justification for sin? If an action is genuinely sinful because it contradicts God's perfect goodness, then what could justify performing that action without contradicting that goodness?
In the biblical framework, sin is not simply a prohibited action for which a sufficiently persuasive excuse can be found. It is wrongdoing. Although human beings may have mitigating circumstances affecting their culpability, such circumstances do not turn sin itself into moral goodness.
Furthermore, the Bible does not establish a general principle that a person may commit an intrinsically sinful act and escape the moral problem simply because there was a good justification for doing it. A justification may establish that an act was not actually sinful in the circumstances, or that the person's responsibility was diminished, but that is different from establishing that a genuinely sinful act was permissible while remaining sinful.
This distinction returns us to the Amalekite command.
If killing the infants was genuinely sinful, then it cannot be justified as a sin without undermining the very meaning of sin as a departure from goodness. If it was not sinful in this particular instance, then the Christian must explain why it was not sinful and what morally relevant distinction separates it from otherwise comparable killings.
Simply asserting that God commanded it is not an adequate explanation, because that assertion risks making the divine command itself the sole criterion by which the act's moral status is determined.
God cannot sin by His very nature if sin is contrary to His nature. Therefore, if the command requires human beings to commit an act that is genuinely sinful, the command would appear incompatible with God's perfect goodness.
7. The Conclusion: God's Perfect Goodness Cannot Be Reconciled With an Intrinsically Evil Command Merely by Appealing to His Authority
My objection can ultimately be stated in the following way:
- Eastern Orthodox Christianity teaches that God is perfectly good and cannot sin because sin is contrary to His nature.
- God cannot lie because lying contradicts His nature as the God of truth.
- Murder is a grave sin, and the deliberate killing of innocent infants appears to be an instance of grave moral wrongdoing.
- Whether such an act occurs today or thousands of years ago does not, merely by virtue of the historical period, change its intrinsic moral status.
- In 1 Samuel 15, God allegedly commands human beings to kill the Amalekites, explicitly including infants, and Saul is condemned for failing to carry out the command completely.
- Therefore, the passage appears to present an act that is ordinarily regarded as gravely evil as an act of obedience to God, with disobedience itself becoming sinful.
- If the killing became morally good solely because God commanded it, then the moral status of the action appears to depend upon the divine command, supporting Divine Command Theory.
- If the killing remained intrinsically evil despite the command, then God allegedly commanded human beings to perform an act contrary to His perfect goodness.
- An appeal to God's authority, superior knowledge, or the historical circumstances does not, by itself, establish that the act was consistent with His nature.
- Nor does the fact that the passage must not justify killing innocent people today resolve whether the killing was morally justified in the original account.
The resulting dilemma is that either the command makes an otherwise evil action good, raising the problem of Divine Command Theory, or the action remains evil, in which case the command appears to contradict God's perfect goodness.
Thank you.
