Overall the Puritans were a religious group with a core of specific beliefs that are at the essence of the Puritan Faith. Those two beliefs are the belief that man is predestined or divided into two groups, the damned and the elect. The second core belief is that of free grace versus a doctrine of works. This means that man cannot save himself by changing his ways and doing good deeds. Instead it means than humanity is only saved by the free grace and mere good will of God and that whosoever believes in Christ and has faith may escape Hell.
Only he can redeem, justify, and sanctify us, and we need all three for our salvation. So we understand that our nature is sinful, but through Jesus we can win the battle against our flesh. Paul wrote that through the law we come unto the knowledge that we are sinful. We understand that through the work of the law, that we cannot be justified in the sight of God. We must know that we are justified by grace apart from any works in the
Thus, he believes there is no reason why should you live a moral life rather than for one's self. Fidley asks Seltzer one last question, “what motivation for adopting the moral point of view can you possibly offer without a belief in God and immorality?” which leads us to this quote, “When religion tells us that there is nothing more we can say about morality than that we can’t see the reasons for it, but do it if you know what’s good for you, then I do condemn it. We can do better than that. We can become moral grown-ups. And if there were a God, surely he would approve”.
Augustine defends the god of theism by rejecting the existence of evil as a force or power opposed to god as it would reject the premise that god is omnipotent. Below are the ways in which he justifies moral and natural evil, which respectively mean evil caused by human acts, and evil events caused by the processes of nature. To justify evil, he solves the problem by defining evil as a ‘privation’ – which means when something is ‘evil’, it is not defined to contain bad qualities but is seen to be falling short of perfection, or what it is expected to be. Take a rapist as an example. Adopting Augustine’s idea of ‘evil’, we are to say that he is not living up to standards expected of human beings.
Christianity teaches that people should not work on the day of Sabbath as God himself didn’t and that it should be the day of rest. However, Jesus didn’t follow these rules and decided to do the most loving thing and heal a sick person on this day even though he wasn’t supposed to. Some could argue that situation ethics and its ideas about love fit into Christian theology perfectly because even Jesus broke rules to do the most loving thing possible. Johns part of the gospels state that “God is love” and from this we can interpret that Christians must live their lives by trying to be Omnibenevolent and doing the most loving thing in all situations no matter how extreme. Fletcher incorporated the quote from the gospels into his ethical theory and devised six propositions and four principles.
In the quote below Rand explains why she rejects religion outright, and she believes man himself deserves the attention: Just as religion has preempted the field of ethics, turning morality against man, so it has usurped the highest moral concepts of our language, placing them outside this earth and beyond man’s reach. “Exaltation” is usually taken to mean an emotional state evoked by contemplating the supernatural. “Worship” means the emotional experience of loyalty and dedication to something higher than man… But such concepts do name actual emotions, even though no supernatural dimension exists; and these emotions are experienced as uplifting or ennobling, without the self-abasement required by religious definitions.
Colonialists place "...the book of God's Word over the book of God's Works, and theology over psychology." (Entwistle, 2010, p. 145). Neutral parties keep psychology and theology separate for fear that one will contaminate the other. And then there are Allies, those who believe that both psychology and theology belong to God and that "all truth is God's truth". They believe in total integration and know and respect the two books of God.
The strongest criticism to the free will defense is that God, being an all-powerful being, should be able to create free agents who make only good choices, freely. There is the option of having no free will, and no evil, and have free will and having evil, but the third option, which is less known, is the option that God can create a world where free will is possible, and evil does not exist. This would be possible
The Christian worldview understands that everything is the Lords and we are to treat it as such. Sometimes it is the lack of understanding regarding the ways of God and the principles of His word that can keep leaders from treating their employees with respect and with moral love. Nash (1992) stated, “Christianity simply will not make sense to people who fail to understand and appreciate the Christian doctrine of sin” (p. 48). It is easy to look at our ways as right when if they were put against the word of God we would see how wrong they really
John Locked firmly believed in the division of civil government and religion because they have separate functions, and should therefore act as independent institutions. Another argument made in A Letter Concerning Toleration is that it is ineffective to gain converts through violence because although it can coerce temporary obedience, it does not truly change one's beliefs. Voltaire explains an idea similar to Locke's in his essay, Of Universal Tolerance. He maintains that no religion is more divine than the rest, and thus no religion has the right to determine what is right and wrong for others. David Brooks's article, Kicking the Secularist Habit, outlines six steps for the modern secularist to realize that religious fervor never declined