Yes, @Tillman, but I live in West Michigan, and they live in Pennsylvania. Also, at the age of 82, I can’t drive that far. It’s only when they come here, maybe once a year, that I see them.
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To follow up, yes the doctrine of Original sin is evil.
So now the main question why did God ordered infants to be killed? They cannot even repent if they wanted. They have natural law which God wrote in their hearts and it hasn’t become tainted yet why?
The inhabitant of AI were killed, yet if one repented he could be saved?
So why in this case, the infants who cannot run are killed? That’s the main question
It’s good to challenge oneself with questions like these, for they make our faith even stronger.
@Johann, what do you think? I would love to hear your thoughts, since in many debates I have come across this question. How would you reply those who raise this question?
Paul repeatedly emphasizes that God’s ways are unsearchable and His judgments beyond human comprehension (Romans 11:33–34), that salvation is offered to those capable of moral choice and repentance (Acts 17:30), and that all creation eagerly waits for redemption in Christ (Romans 8:19–23).
If accountability requires knowledge and the ability to respond, then why, in this framework, are infants, those incapable of exercising moral choice or “running” toward God, subject to death?
How does God’s perfect righteousness, mercy, and redemptive plan operate in their case? Are we to understand their fate in light of His unsearchable wisdom, or does Scripture give any indication of how God treats those who die before moral responsibility?
J.
First, @Samuel_23, those infants in Israel would grow up to be an evil influence to the Israelites to lure them away from the true God. In fact, that is what happened since Israel never completely wiped out the Canaanites.
Second, the Canaanites were all involved in immoral, evil idolatry; it was an entrenched part of their culture, which needed to be wiped out completely to cleanse the land for Israel to start anew in their worship of the only, true God.
Third, God’s ways are mysterious and perfect. Our puny reasoning can’t fully understand God’s ways. If he had other reasons for commanding that whole families to be killed, he hasn’t revealed them, but they must be righteous.
Thanks @Johann and @Bruce_Leiter
What I said to them was:
The main key to understanding this question is chronology.
To understand God’s command, we must first grasp who the Amalekites were and why they incurred such severe judgement. The Amalekites were not innocent victims but a nomadic tribe descended from Esau known for their unprovoked aggression against Israel during the Exodus. In Exodus 17:8-16, they attacked the Israelites at Rephidim, targeting the weak, weary and stragglers, those least able to defend themselves. This was not mere warfare but a cowardly assault on God’s chosen people who were en route to the Promised Land as part of His covenant promise to Abraham. God declared perpetual enmity:
“I will completely blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven” (Exodus 17:14), and Moses prophesied that “the Lord will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation” (v. 16)
This hostility persisted. The Amalekites allied with other enemies of Israel, as in Judges 3:13, 6:3-5, and embodied opposition to God’s redemptive purposes. By the time of 1 Samuel 15, around 400 years after the initial attack, God had given them ample time for repentance, centuries of long-suffering patience, as seen in His dealings with other nations like the Canaanites. The Amalekites’ culture was steeped in idolatry, violence and moral corruption, including practices like Child Sacrifice, common among the Canaanite-related groups (Leviticus 18:21). Their destruction was not arbitrary but a culmination of divine judgment on a people who had hardened their hearts against God and His people
1st Part
The Concept of Herem: Divine Warfare as Theodicy and Holy Consecration
Herem transcends modern notions of genocide; it is a theophanic act where God, as Divine Warrior, consecrates enemies to Himself in judgment as in Deut 7:2 and Joshua 6:17-21. This motif permeates Scripture: YHWH fights for Israel, not for territorial gain but to eradicate idolatry and sin’s contagion. Theodicy- the justification of God’s goodness amid evil- frames this:
Sin’s cosmic scope demands decisive action. God, omniscient and immutable, sees sin’s intergenerational ripple (Exodus 34:7), yet His forbearance (Romans 2:4) precedes wrath.
Now patristic voices Like St. Augustine, viewed such wars as allegorical for spiritual battles against vice (eg, City of God 15.4), while Aquinas defended them via natural law: *
God’s sovereignty over life renders His commands inherently just (Summa Theologica I-II, Q.94 reference).*
Modern theologians echo this, portraying herem as “a focused attack upon sinful and idolatrous religion” rather than ethnic hatred.
This challenges our perceptions: Our finite justice pales against God’s, who alone weighs hearts.
God’s Justice and Mercy: A Dialectic Culminating in Christ
Reconciling wrath with love demands seeing God’s attributes as harmonious. “Mercy triumphs over judgment” (Jam 2:13), yet holiness demands sin’s penalty. OT judgements like Flood or Sodom mirror Amalek that is corporate reckonings where mercy spares remnants. For Amalek, justice punishes centuries of savagery, while mercy shields Israel, the conduit for global salvation.
Typologically, Amalek represents the “flesh” that must be crucified, as Orgien and later interpreters allegorised. This points to Christ, the ultimate Divine Warrior who conquers evil non-violently through the cross, absorbing wrath to extend mercy. Thus, 1 Samuel 15 unveils love’s cost:
God hates sin precisely because it harms His image-bearers
Why Order the Death of Infants Incapable of Repentance?**
Lemme be clear, Infants are imprinted with natural law, created in God’s image, possess latent rationality and free will which are potentials for moral agency, not yet actualised. Why then their inclusion? This is the main question.**
- I don’t agree withthe Original sin doctrine, so those who say its inherited from Adam etc etc, what the Scripture says matters. We don’t “inherit” the sin but rather suffer its consequences.
- Merciful Prevention and Eternal Destiny:
Growing in Amalekite culture would likely corrupt them, perpetuating evil. God, foreknowing outcomes, intervenes mercifully, transitioning them to glory before moral accountability.
Evangelical consensus holds that infants dying young are elect, saved by Christ’s atonement. Theologian Albert Mohler argues Scripture implies all such infants are among the redeemed, grounded in God’s electing grace. This echoes Spurgeon:
”Infants are saved by the merits of Jesus, without works or faith”
3. Sovereignty and Imago Dei:
God owns life, and infants’ imago Dei dignifies them.
Free will’s potential remains untainted by volitional sin, yet death’s sting affects all. Unlike fleeing adults, infants’ helplessness highlights mercy:
Their souls, unhardened, RECIEVE GRACE - Theodical Resolution:
In DCT, God’s command is just; theodicy adds that suffering serves redemptive ends. Infants’ death breaks evil’s cycle, ensuring salvation rather than potential damnation.
Peace
Sam
@Bruce_Leiter and @Johann
2nd Part
lets talk abt DCT specifically as it plays an important role here.
Ontological Foundations of DCT: Morality as Anchored in God’s Essence and Will
DCT begins with the premise that moral facts are not independent platonic forms or human constructs but are constituted by God’s commands, which flow from His necessary, perfect nature.
In the Euthyphro dilemma posed by Plato
Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods.
DCT resolves the impasse by asserting that goodness is neither arbitrary not external to God; rather, God’s will is the standard goodness because he is the ground of being, ipsum esse subsistens. For 1 Samuel 15:3, this means the command to enact herem (Total devotion to destruction) is morally obligatory not because it conforms to an abstract justice but because it emanates from YHWH, the covenant God, whose essence is moral perfection.
Voluntarist strands of DCT, championed by Willian of Ockham and Duns Scotus emphasize God’s absolute sovereignty:
Moral norms are what they are solely because God wills them, unbound by prior constraints.
In this view, even the destruction of Amalekite infants, incapable of repentance or fight, is right simply because God commands it through Samuel to Saul.
Ockham’s nominalism reinforces this:
Universals like “justice” have no independent existence; they are names for God’s decrees.
Thus, the command’s inclusion of infants doesnt pose a moral problem, it exemplifies God’s unfettered absolute power, where He could, in principle, command otherwise, but His actual command defines the Good.
This voluntarism guards against anthropomorphism:
Human intuitions about infant innocence, rooted in Imago Dei, are subordinate to divine prerogative, preventing us from judging God by creaturely standards.
Conversely, intellectualist variants as in St. Thomas Aquinas and C.S. Lewis, integrate God’s will with His intellect:
Commands are not arbitrary but reflective of His rational, eternal nature.
Aquinas argues in Summa Contra Gentiles that God’s will is ordered to His goodness, so commands align with the divine essence.
Applied to 1 Samuel 15:3, the command is just because it coheres with God’s holiness, punishing Amalek’s generational enmity to preserve redemptive order. Infants’ death while tragic from a human vantage, are morally licit as part of corporate judgement, where God’s omniscience foresees the greater good (preventing perpetuated evil) without violating His loving essence. This intellectualism tempers voluntarism’s potential for arbitrariness, portraying God as a necessary being whose commands are necessarily good, akin to Leibniz’s “best of all possible worlds” where moral truths are analytic propositions grounded in divinity.
Addressing Criticisms: The Arbitrariness Objection and the Infant Paradox in DCT
A perennial critique of DCT is the arbitrariness objection:
If morality depends on God’s commands, could He command atrocities and render them good? (Important Question)
In the Amalekite context, this surfaces acutely, why infants? Whose natural law remains untarnished and whose rationality/ free will is latent?
Voluntarists like Kierkegaard, in Fear and Trembling, embrace the “teleological suspension of the ethical”
Abraham’s binding of Issac parallels Saul’s task, where faith transcends universal ethics. For 1 Samuel 15:3, the command suspends ordinary moral norms for a higher divine telos - eradicating opposition to God’s kingdom.
Infants’ inability to repent underscores this:
Morality isnt contingent on human capacity but on divine fiat, echoing Kierkegaard’s knowing of faith who obeys beyond reason.
Intellectualists counter arbitrariness by invoking God’s immutable character:
He cannot command evil because His nature precludes it
Philosopher Robert Adams refines DCT in Finite and Infinite Goods with a “modified” version:
Goodness is a resemblance to God’s loving nature, so commands are constrained by His benevolence.
Thus, the infant killings are not arbitrary but merciful in eternal scope, transitioning souls to paradise before corruption (per evangelical views on infant salvation, grounded in Christ’s atonement, Romans 5:18).
God’s foreknowledge integrates here:
As an atemporal being (Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, Book 5), He sees infants’ potential trajectories in a wicked culture, making destruction a preventive grace, not caprice.
Another objection is the “epistemic problem” questions how we discern the genuine commands.
DCT responds via revelation:
Scripture, as God’s self-attestation, authenticates 1 Samuel 15:3, with internal coherence (eg consistency with Exodus 17) and fulfillment in Christ. For infants’ free will/ rationality, DCT posits these as divine endowments, but their exercise is irrelevant; morality flows from command, not creaturely autonomy.
Philosopher Eleonore Stump said, that biblical stories like Amalek reveal God’s relational pedagogy, where DCT invites trust amid mystery.
DCT’s implication for Theodicy in 1 Samuel 15:3: Justice, Mercy and Eternal Harmony.
In theodical terms, DCT reframes the Amalekite destruction as indicating God’s goodness without external metrics.
Alvin Plantinga’s free will defense extends to divine commands:
Moral evil’s possibility arises from creaturely freedom (Amalek’s rebellion), but God’s command rectify it sovereignly.
Contemporary analytic DCT, as in William Lane Craig’s work, incorporates modal logic:
In all possible worlds where God exists, His commands define the good necessarily. Thus 1 Samuel 15:3’s command is modally necessary for this world’s redemptive arc, culminating in Christ’s cross, where God commands His own “destruction” (Philippians 2:8) to atone universally.
Peace
Sam
@Samuel_23
Does DCT refer to Divine Command Theory?
I’m reading this a second time. I think there is some nutrition in here for me.
Thanx
KP
Yes brother @KPuff DCT is the short form for Divine Command Theory.
I have talked only about DCT in :
And this started with Plato, correct @Samuel_23 ?
J.
No this is 2nd part @Johann sir in which I specifically talked about DCT. I added plato’s question to show how DCT answers it.
Here is the first part:
How the DCT answer it?
The Divine Command Theory (DCT) essentially teaches that a thing (i.e., action, behavior, choice, etc.) is good because God commands it to be done or evil because God forbids it from being done. Thus, to say that it is good to love our neighbors is semantically equivalent to saying God commands us to love our neighbors. Similarly, it is evil to commit murder because God forbids murder.
Now, right away someone can object to Divine Command Theory on the grounds that good and evil become arbitrary to the whim of God. If good and evil are solely based on the whim of God, then morality is merely a will to power or “might makes right.” Since God is mightier than any of us, morality boils down to “His way or the highway.”
The alternative to Divine Command Theory is the assertion that the basis for morality lies outside of God, rather than at the mercy of His whim. This is the approach that Plato takes in his dialogue Euthyphro. The so-called Euthyphro Dilemma can be stated thus: “Is an action morally good because God commands it [DCT], or does God command it because it is morally good?” One might be tempted to abandon Divine Command Theory and instead ground morality in something external to God.
However, saying that God commands something because it is morally good threatens the sovereignty and independence of God. If an external principle, in this case the objective ground of morality, is outside of God, then God is obligated to adhere to this standard, and thus He is not sovereign. Furthermore, God’s morality depends on His adherence to this external standard; hence, His independence is threatened.
Thus, we are caught on the horns of a dilemma. Neither alternative is palatable to the Christian worldview. God is certainly not arbitrary in His moral actions, nor is God subject to some external standard of morality that governs His decisions. In the former case, we can say that God is not good, and in the latter we can say that God is not God. It’s quite understandable, at this point, why some reject Christianity and adopt moral relativism as their “standard,” except for the fact that the Bible presents us with a different picture of morality and demonstrates the Euthyphro Dilemma is a false dilemma.
The classic Christian response to the Euthyphro Dilemma is to ground goodness in God’s nature. This solves the first horn of the dilemma because God isn’t arbitrarily deciding what is good and what is evil on a whim. Rather, it is God’s nature to do good, and God never acts contrary to His nature. This also solves the second horn of the dilemma because the ground of morality is God’s nature and not some external standard to which God must adhere. God’s sovereignty is preserved as well as an objective standard for morality, i.e., God’s nature.
The Scriptures, God’s self-revelation to humanity, illustrates this quite nicely. A sampling of passages that demonstrate that goodness is grounded in God’s nature:
• Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way (Psalm 25:8).
• Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him (Psalm 34:8).
• For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you (Psalm 86:5).
• For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations (Psalm 100:5).
• Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever! (Psalm 107:1).
Even with this definition of the Divine Command Theory, there are two objections that can be anticipated. First, what if God’s nature changes such that what is good by God’s nature becomes evil and vice versa? God’s nature is the totality of His all attributes. Therefore, because God is immutable (Malachi 3:6), His goodness is an immutable goodness (James 1:17). Here’s another way to say it: God’s nature never changes—cannot change; therefore, goodness will never change since it is grounded in God’s nature.
Second, what about the times when God commands the Israelites to slaughter their enemies down to the very last man, woman and child? Isn’t this is a violation of God’s very own commandment prohibiting murder? The answer is similar to that of the first objection; namely, God’s nature is the totality of all His attributes. God is good—immutably good—but He is also holy, righteous, and just. God is a God who must punish sin and wickedness. The Canaanites were wicked and rebellious and under the just condemnation of God for their sin. We know that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23); and God, in His sovereignty, decreed the timing and manner of the Canaanites’ death, which was a demonstration of God’s judgment on sin. This, too, is an example of God’s goodness—it is good for God to execute holy judgment on sin.
Therefore, God commands certain actions as good and therefore to be done and forbids certain other actions as evil and therefore not to be done. What is good is not good simply because God commands it. It is good because it is reflective of His divine nature.
For Further Study
Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview by William Lane Craig & J.P. Moreland
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I stand on what the Scriptures say brother @Samuel_23
This here for further perusal.
J.
Yessss that’s what I’m talking about..classic
Voluntarist vs intellectualist
Classic, isn’t it @Samuel_23
Plato’s old challenge in Euthyphro is still the knife at the throat of every moral theory. The question is simple but lethal: Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good? That is where the split between voluntarists and intellectualists was born.
The voluntarist fires first. Good is good because God commands it. His will defines right and wrong. Ockham and later Reformers pressed this hard. If God tells Abraham to offer Isaac, obedience is good simply because God commanded it. This view exalts divine sovereignty, but critics say it risks making morality arbitrary, as if God could call cruelty “virtue” just by commanding it.
The intellectualist fires back. God commands it because it is good. Goodness has rational order rooted in God’s eternal reason. Aquinas is the chief defender here. God commands truthfulness because it reflects His nature as the God who cannot lie. This avoids arbitrariness, but critics warn it sounds like God is bowing to a moral law above Himself.
The Christian answer cuts through both horns. Goodness is not outside God, nor is it arbitrary whim. It is grounded in God’s own nature. He is holy, He is truth, He is love, and His commands flow from who He eternally is. He cannot deny Himself (2 Timothy 2:13), He cannot lie (Titus 1:2), and He cannot tempt to evil (James 1:13). When He commands, He is not inventing morality, He is revealing Himself.
So the dilemma collapses at Calvary. The cross shows us that God’s will and God’s nature are not at war. His command to love is not arbitrary, it is the blazing display of His own eternal character in Christ Jesus crucified. Morality is not some law above Him, and it is not whim beneath Him, it is His very heart revealed to His creatures.
J.
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Amen brother @Johann
Thanks for your insight on this matter.
Praise be to God
An excellent quote that explains the whole situation:
Peace
Sam
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We are comma dedicated not to unlawfully take another person’s life.
Abortion is the taking of life simple because it inconveniences one.
Therefore there is no justifiable reason for abortion.
@Samuel_23, your commentary takes me back to my seminary days in the late 1970s, but some of your words are still unfamiliar to me. In plain English, which I prefer, especially on a public forum, I guess the gist of your post is that God’s command to wipe out all the Amalekites is a mystery but still is perfect because he, as the all-powerful God of perfect justice, said it. Is that right?
@Bruce_Leiter sir we gotta be careful, the answer is much complicated than it seems concerning dct. To come to that conclusion, we had a discussion about DCT and primarily about voluntarist views and intellectualist etc.
Anyways, how are you @Bruce_Leiter, long time no see….
These verses which Johann gave sums it up:
This is the perfect answer regarding this question.
Peace
Sam
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Hi, @Samuel_23, yes, Johann does well in answering people.
I’m doing fine. I’ve been floating around on three forums and two social media platforms along with my writing and publishing of books.
If you’re interested in finding out about my books, write my name, Bruce Leiter, in the search space on the Amazon home page; and most of my books will pop up as you scroll down the page.
May God’s richest blessings be yours, Sam.
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@Bruce_Leiter sir, that’s awesome to hear! You’ve really been keeping busy with the forums, social media, and your writing—love the dedication. I’ll definitely search your name on Amazon and check out your books, that’s inspiring.
May God’s blessings be upon you too.
Thank you, @Samuel_23, I am busy, but it keeps me feeling young, though I am 82! I enjoy talking with you! May God receive all the credit for making us a blessing!
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