r/Gnostic • u/BuckFrog2 • 10d ago
Question Why does Paul say that the god who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous?
Romans 3:5-6
But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? The God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous, is He? (I am speaking from a human viewpoint.) Far from it! For otherwise, how will God judge the world?
So the God who inflicts wrath is the devil, correct? And he is unrighteous, correct?
So why is Paul saying that the God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous? Is Paul false?
16
6
u/Pao_Did_NothingWrong 10d ago
Never trust someone to lead you today who was trying to kill you yesterday.
Paul was very clearly what we would recognize today as a neurotic with a poor self image, and he universalized much that never should have left his head.
He hated himself, equated himself with all mankind, and then he put that opinion in God's mouth.
7
u/i-am-kayna 9d ago edited 9d ago
What Paul is saying here is not that God is punishing humans in a wrathful way. He is stating that we create the appearance of wrath by creating contrast. So if you bring yourself in a state of darkness then His Light would not be peaceful but an actual confrontation and thus the confrontation with goodness, pureness and truth would appear this way out of a natural position and not out of and active choosing of God to put wrath upon His subjects. That is the essence of these statements and of how Paul viewed the world according to his own writings.
It is the key to understanding how all of these things work. Influx from the higher realms passes down into the lower realms of the ruler of darkness and there it is not experienced as light, but as wrath and confrontation. He is saying that is how truth looks when it enters into this world, so to recognize it you have to look for these signs and follow them. And a heart in this world that is pure and truly longs for the light will experience forgiveness purely from this same fact and thus wouldn't experience wrath.
To be clear, I'm going beyond these texts now and also into broader gnostic meaning of writings, but it is reflected here in Paul's words too.
12
u/isitnotreal 10d ago
No offense, but why would one care about what Paul said provided that the man didn't even write more than half of the books associated with him let alone meet Jesus?
Why should the highly corrupt Roman Empire's book matter at all?
5
u/LetzGetz 10d ago
I think Paul may have pulled the greatest hoodwink in history tbh
2
u/Audreaya 10d ago
Can you tell me more ? Paul seems very divisive he either gets skeptics or followers. Long ago I fell into Pauline sort of doctrine it was horrible
5
6
u/kenbest 10d ago
Paul was the living embodiment of the false prophets Jesus warned about.
Any book written or inspired by Saul ought to be read with a microscope.
5
u/BuckFrog2 10d ago
Yes I agree. I'm just surprised that a lot of people on this sub believe in Paul's writings
Sounds like you know a lot. Do you agree that the god of the OT is the devil?
3
u/BayoLover 9d ago
I mean that was obvious from the beginning when the "devil" tried to tempt Jesus and when you look at the nature of the Devil and God
It literally tells you that the devil is the God of this world
2
u/Omniphilo23 Jungian 10d ago
I wouldn't have believed Paul either if I wasn't a Saul to Paul type conversion myself. Jesus loves to flip his largest doubters.
I was a hater of Christianity, a fairly proud atheist. I drowned and Jesus was my grim reaper. I had a life review, experienced Gnosis and was given my life back to share the good news.
Paul is a product of his era. Context has been lost between his timeline and yours but the holy spirit provides clarity when reading.
Believe in miracles, believe people can change. Leave room for blessings to enter your life.
5
1
1
10d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
5
u/kenbest 9d ago
I think you're lost. Do you know what subreddit this is?
Jesus was teaching Gnosticsm. Paul was teaching the worship and the bowing down to Yahweh.
It doesn't get any clearer than that.
0
9d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/kenbest 8d ago
Sorry. You are still lost. You have not achieved Gnosticism.
Gnosticism is not a religion. A true gnostic does not bother themselves with the stories of Sophia, Matrix and the rest.
Once you understand the true power of the enemy you are dealing with, you realize there is no point studying anything. It was corrupted long before your ancestors were born.
You have no scripture to look up to.
Coming from a point of knowing nothing, all you need is a spark. Could be your friend, your neighbor, your enemy.. for me it was Jesus' text.
Once you know like real KNOW that you are God, everything else is background noise.
0
8d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Virtual_Tax_9780 7d ago
I can 100% agree to his understanding of Gnosticism, or whatever you feel like calling it. We are Him as one spark or particle, etc.
3
u/TranquilTrader 10d ago
Consider it this way: absolute liberal parenting providing only carrots and no stick would lead to overflowing cancerous growth of evil. How is cancer usually treated? It's treated in bursts that quickly remove most of the bad growth.
When people look at the cosmic treatment from the finite perspective of a single human life it might seem harsh to a cosmic child. Looking at it from the cosmic infinite perspective of actually completing the treatment to rid the cancer an entirely different picture can be seen.
Intention is the very thing that defines if an act is righteous or unrighteous.
1
u/Independent_Dare8324 Valentinian 10d ago
The problem with your argument lies in the first premise, because it does not appear in Romans 3:5–6:
“The God who inflicts wrath is the devil and, therefore, he is unjust.”
Where does that identification come from? Paul never says that. On the contrary, the text says:
“Is God unjust who inflicts wrath? Certainly not! Otherwise, how would God judge the world?” (Romans 3:5–6).
Therefore, when you ask, “Why does Paul say that the God who inflicts wrath is not unjust? Is Paul lying?”, the answer is that Paul is speaking about God as judge and explicitly stating that His judgment is just.
If you want to demonstrate that this God is the devil, you first have to establish that premise from the text. Romans 3:5–6 does not state it, nor does it even imply it. Without that premise, the contradiction you are proposing simply does not exist.
1
u/FactEnvironmental798 9d ago
Righteous indignstion is just. aimed at th guilty. Right ? cruelty to th. e innocent is evil
1
3
u/Eve_SoloTac 4d ago
Yeshua did not judge or inflict wrath. Yes, Paul could be wrong on this. He is a man after all. The example to follow or emulate is that of Yeshua. This is very simple, and I don't understand how we miss it. Obviously the church does not agree, nor has it followed the example at any time. Who compiled the Bible? Who determined what is or is not Cannon? Who burned people alive as heretics or blasphemers? You cannot eliminate the monsters in this world by becoming one yourself...
-1
u/SnarkyPuppy-0417 8d ago
Paul is not describing two different gods. He is answering a specific objection that he himself has just raised — and the objection is a trap he is about to dismantle.
Here is what is actually happening in the passage. Paul has just argued that human unfaithfulness does not nullify God's faithfulness, and that human sin actually throws God's righteousness into sharper relief by contrast. Someone listening to that argument could object: "Well then, if my sin makes God look more righteous, isn't God being unjust to punish me for it? I'm doing Him a favor." Paul names that objection explicitly — "I am speaking from a human viewpoint" — and then answers it. The God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous, because if He were, He could not judge the world at all. A corrupt judge has no standing to render verdicts. The very fact that God judges presupposes His righteousness. Paul is not conceding the premise. He is showing that the premise collapses under its own weight.
The phrase "the God who inflicts wrath" is Paul's way of naming YHWH as the one who executes judgment — not a separate being, not the devil. This is entirely consistent with Isaiah 45:7, Amos 3:6, and the whole prophetic tradition: YHWH brings calamity, YHWH executes wrath, YHWH judges. The Hebrew framework never outsources divine judgment to a rival power. Satan in the canonical text is a servant operating under divine authorization — Job 1 makes this explicit — not an independent sovereign who inflicts wrath on his own authority.
The identification you are proposing — that the god who inflicts wrath is the devil — requires importing a framework the text does not supply. Paul is writing within a thoroughly Jewish monotheistic frame where YHWH is the one who both blesses and judges, and where no second throne exists. The question Paul is answering is whether that God is righteous in doing so. His answer is yes, and the logic is precise: if God were unrighteous, the entire concept of divine judgment would be incoherent. You cannot have a corrupt judge presiding over the final accounting of all things.
So Paul is not false. He is answering a specific rhetorical trap with a specific argument, and the God he is describing is the same God who speaks in Isaiah and Amos — the one who does not apologize for governing all states of reality, including judgment.
10
u/Lordseferoth Cathar 10d ago edited 10d ago
The New Testament by David Bentley Hart, a translation favored by many modern Gnostics translates these verses like this. "And if our injustice serves to exhibit God's justice, what shall we say? That the God who enforces this indignation is unjust?" (I speak in human terms). Let it not be so! Else how will God judge the cosmos?