Is it Just to punish an innocent man?

There is some excellent, and very civil conversation and dialog occurring on this question, of which I have just begun to take part and will post here. Yes, the initial question is one that leads directly into whether it was Just for Christ to die for our sins. Many people initially thought it was a "trap" for that reason, interestingly.

My initial responses:

"Is it just to punish an innocent man?"

If you refer to punishing him for a specific crime so that he will not do it again or punishment in the sense of penance, wherein the punishment serves to rectify damages caused by the wrongful acts committed, then no, as an innocent person has no wrongful acts to rectify nor discipline for.

"Was it Just when Jesus died for our sins?"

Yes and no.

No, the Jews who set Him up were not acting in a Just fashion.

No, the Romans who washed their hands of it when they knew He was innocent were not acting in a Just fashion.

Yes, Christ's death, in terms of its nature as a sacrifice on our behalf was just. God was not punishing Jesus for sins He did not commit, unlike the human parties involved. Christ voluntarily took upon Himself the sins of humanity, negating their consequences of rejection of God by bringing them back to God for remedying, something only Christ, as Second Person of the Trinity, could do.

Because the nature of evil is a rejection or nullification of some good, only God could take the eternal consequences of these rejections without being damned. He can do this because God is an infinite source of good, which remedies the negation/rejection that evil entails. It's like filling up an infinite chasm, only an infinite Being can do it.

In case you're wondering, btw, how that works with justice in terms of God judging us, that would be the merciful aspect. Justice, however, still comes into play in the fact that even justified humans are still expected to perform voluntarily penance for their crimes, and that they will go through disciplinary measures, whether on Earth, or in Purgatory, before they enter Heaven. The difference, however, is that these consequences are temporal, not eternal, and thus are within our ability to discharge without recourse to damnation.

Those who do not die in a state of justification, of course, would presumably wind up in Hell.

The original poster has already replied to these with further questions to which I have also replied:

"I also don't get why the consequences of evil are eternal."

I thought I had made it clear that not all of them are, that there are temporal consequences and eternal consequences.

As to why there are eternal consequences in the first place, it's rather simply explained. In this life, here on Earth, we live in a material universe that operates according to certain principles and dimensions, one of which is temporal. We're temporal creatures because we live within a temporal system, and every movement of our will can be gone back upon so long as we live within that temporal progression. In other words, while an act, once completed, can never be changed, the will, once decided, can be altered. We can change our minds because our wills still have the potential to move, being in time.

After death, this changes. Once we're no longer living in this temporal existence, our wills, and thus our souls, are locked atemporally, ie eternally, into whatever relationship with God we existed in prior to our deaths. We cannot change them after that point because we're no longer agents in a temporal universe who have that luxury. Think of it this way: Life is like running along a vast plain, though it's more vast for some than others. Death, is like the cliffs at which the plain ends, and suddenly plummets. Once you reach the cliffs and leap, and we all must do so at some point, you cannot change your direction, speed, or anything else. These were all determined the moment you leapt, regardless of whether you now realize there's a big cushion waiting for you at the bottom, or a bunch of razor sharp spikes. At any time on our journey across the plain, we can change direction, and make for another point on that cliff wall. Once you're falling through the air, however, there's no going back.

"But it seems to me that it would also be merciful to just forgive us. Why couldn't God just do that?"

First and foremost, it is not merciful to completely isolate people from the consequences of their actions. God's mercy exists to preserve us from the eternal separation from Him that so many of our actions entail, He does this because He loves us, and thus wills for our good. God being goodness itself, willing for our good means He does what He does to try and bring us to Him, in so much as we allow ourselves to be brought.

But for God to just snap His fingers and say all is forgiven, you can do whatever you want without consequences would be disastrous! Evil actions are still evil, they still cause immense pain and suffering, they still destroy and negate goods in this world. As God wills for good, this is essentially intolerable to Him. Penance exists for reasons. First and foremost, it teaches a lesson, often through pain, of the negative consequences for a person for a certain action. Even more importantly, it should be designed and constructed such that it serves to remedy the effects of these evil actions upon the one committing them, and upon those who were harmed by it. Penance exists to foster harmony and repair problems caused by evil within communities and relationships, whether that be between the individual, family, friends, city, country, world, God, or all of the above. It does this also by serving as a way to combat habitual wrong doing, like addictions. It fosters self-discipline and fights the habit of sin that we all get into at times. And penance serves one final role in cleansing a person of the effects of sin, like a stain on the clothing being washed. If doing evil can be likened to getting dirty, repentance would be stopping getting dirty and determining to be clean. Penance is the actual cleaning of the clothes.

Remove the responsibility for individual and communal temporal penance from humanity, and you've removed humanity's own means for everything from community service to the penal system. More importantly, you've removed their metaphysical ability to wash off, as it were, and one of the most effective means of teaching lessons available to us, one honed by millions of years of evolution no less, that of suffering. Imagine a world wherein parents could not punish children or make them do anything to take responsibility for their actions. Imagine a world wherein communities, governments, etc. could in no way force members to behave, incarcerate them for the protection of the rest of society, nor even rehabilitate them. That is a world without temporal consequences for evil. I, for one, would rather we not have it.

Moreover, in terms of salvation, as nothing impure can be allowed in God's presence, the process of going through a cleansing and reordering of the soul in order to remove those habits of sin, the stains and blemishes left by it, etc. must still occur. It's logically necessary if what I have stated about God is true, that He is Good, and wills for us to have goodness, and tries to bring us to Him. As nothing evil can be in the presence of God, not merely because God doesn't like it but because God's nature automatically remedies it, temporal penance will occur on the path to Heaven, if not in this life, then afterwards. That's what Purgatory is. There is simply no escaping the fundamental fact of temporal penance's necessity and just nature for Christians.

Now, all of this answers why God wouldn't just do that. I felt it necessary to go in depth to answer for you, since the answer to why He couldn't is rather shorter and lacks exposition.

The reason why God couldn't just do that is because God's nature is both Merciful and Just, and it is not Just to remove all consequences for an action. As God cannot act opposite to His nature, a logical impossibility, He cannot be unJust. This is one of Christianity's inherent paradoxes. And it's probably my favorite. :-)

Stay tuned for more!