One for the Many

Exam­i­na­tion is again the source of a change of views, in this case, how I imag­ine God oper­ates. In think­ing about the sort of moral dilemma that pits a loved one against many strangers (e.g. such as sac­ri­fic­ing a son, for a train­load of strangers), I’ve always imag­ined that God would be of the opin­ion of sac­ri­fic­ing the least amount of peo­ple for the greater good of the most amount of peo­ple, i.e. God ‘sac­ri­ficed’ Jesus, the one for the many. But that isn’t right — God sac­ri­ficed Him­self, or at least the third per­son of the Trin­ity who became incar­nate sac­ri­ficed Him­self (but that is the same thing, is it not? Such con­fu­sion with this divine mys­tery of the Trin­ity). I sup­pose there is also all that talk of the shep­herd going back for the lost sheep, etc. Though sep­a­rate from this, it still seems best to me that the least amount of loss for the ‘great­est good’ is still the prefer­able choice, no mat­ter its difficulty.

Related posts:

1. Moral Foun­da­tions #2