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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: This is the thread where we talk about Old Testament genocide.
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Wood
The Milkman of Human Kindness
# 7
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Just to clarify, I've made it clear that I don't think people under the new covenant are asked to behave in this way. Is your problem with these passages, merely that you think they can be used to justify me (or anyone else) asking you to commit genocide? Because I don't think they can based on these passages. I've said that.
The problem is that the New Covenant doesn't signify one single change in the moral character of God - rather it signifies a change in man's relationship with God.
Hence, while God clearly doesn't countenance genocide, by your reckoning, He could still order it. In terms of a reckoning of the character of God, it makes no difference what Covenant we're under, since God's moral character remains eternal.
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Narcissism.
Posts: 7842 | From: Wood Towers | Registered: Apr 2001
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Weed
Shipmate
# 4402
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Seeker963:
I do not think that God is accurately revealed as a loving killer in the bible. I think that God was inaccurately interpreted to be a "loving killer" (sic) and that inaccurate perception was recorded in scripture.
God is love and therefore does not condone, recommend or engage in murder or genocide. "How long, oh Lord?" indeed. The more I've read this thread, the more I've come to understand that inerrantism is more dangerous than I ever thought it was. That's not a swipe; it's a serious comment.
Seeker963, I endorse every word of your post.
Martin, I will reply when I have time to consider your post properly.
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Weed
Posts: 519 | From: UK | Registered: Apr 2003
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Ender's Shadow
Shipmate
# 2272
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Wood:
But that's part of God's covenant, part of God's deal. God isn't doing anything outside of what He has already said. This is demonstrably different from saying "don't kill and treat foreigners well - no, wait. Except for the Canaanites. It's OK when you destroy the Canaanites." If you take it as read, without context, it's almost as if he's altering the rules for the Canaanites.
It's made worse when you take into account the rules for the protection of foreigners... the role of a Moabite in OT Israel history... the fact that it's a Canaanite who gets the Israelites into Jericho... you get the picture.
Ok - that clarifies what you are arguing - but IMO you've missed the significance of the word 'sojourner' - which is the term used in the KJV for these people, in distinction to the people of the land. The 'Sojourner' is the member of the ethnic minority, who is at a disadvantage because they are in a potentially hostile host community, and they need to be treated kindly. But this category does not extend to 'the people of the land' who are subject to the judgement of God.
It's the same mistake as seeing 'Thou shalt not kill' as a condemnation of the death penalty - which is made mandatory for certain offences a few verses later......
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Test everything. Hold on to the good.
Please don't refer to me as 'Ender' - the whole point of Ender's Shadow is that he isn't Ender.
Posts: 5018 | From: Manchester, England | Registered: Feb 2002
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Wood:
Hence, while God clearly doesn't countenance genocide, by your reckoning, He could still order it. In terms of a reckoning of the character of God, it makes no difference what Covenant we're under, since God's moral character remains eternal.
Well, I don't think he "could", because I think he has committed himself to not so doing, which was not the case in Joshua.
But it depends whether your issue with the passage is that "Its just wrong for God to do this" - in which case I have said why I don't think it is several posts ago.
I was answering Cheesy saying (I think, although I'm still not clear) "I'd" not do it if God asked me to. What I'm saying is that post-Christ he won't.
That's why I think, even if it wasn't a swipe Seeker's "inerrantism is dangerous" is provocative rubbish. Not one inerrantist here has said that the Joshua passage justifies genocide per se. I do believe in progressive revelation, just not that what comes later contradicts what was earlier.
Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004
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Wood
The Milkman of Human Kindness
# 7
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
quote:
Originally posted by Wood:
But that's part of God's covenant, part of God's deal. God isn't doing anything outside of what He has already said. This is demonstrably different from saying "don't kill and treat foreigners well - no, wait. Except for the Canaanites. It's OK when you destroy the Canaanites." If you take it as read, without context, it's almost as if he's altering the rules for the Canaanites.
It's made worse when you take into account the rules for the protection of foreigners... the role of a Moabite in OT Israel history... the fact that it's a Canaanite who gets the Israelites into Jericho... you get the picture.
Ok - that clarifies what you are arguing - but IMO you've missed the significance of the word 'sojourner' - which is the term used in the KJV for these people, in distinction to the people of the land. The 'Sojourner' is the member of the ethnic minority, who is at a disadvantage because they are in a potentially hostile host community, and they need to be treated kindly. But this category does not extend to 'the people of the land' who are subject to the judgement of God.
Actually, that's a nicety if ever I've heard one. Even if you're right, I don't think it reduces the force of my argument.
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Narcissism.
Posts: 7842 | From: Wood Towers | Registered: Apr 2001
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Wood
The Milkman of Human Kindness
# 7
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
But it depends whether your issue with the passage is that "Its just wrong for God to do this" - in which case I have said why I don't think it is several posts ago.
Not really my issue (although it's my entry point) - as I said in the OP.
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Narcissism.
Posts: 7842 | From: Wood Towers | Registered: Apr 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Cheesy - God kills us ALL. God has condemned us all to death since Eden. Or the Big Bang. Literal or rational the result is identical. We are all mortal. The flaw with liberal rationalism is that it has to go to indordinate, entity proliferating lengths to accommodate God = Love.
If the Bronze Age God is our entirely our anthropomorphism of the time, then He is in just as much need of confrontation for His capricious, careless insouciance as the Calvinist one.
Why do we need to suffer SO much? We do we need to be so separated from Him? So alienated? Or is that word dangerous as it could imply sin?
Is He incapable of creating WITHOUT evolution? What a tangent! If so, angels canot possibly exist. A fine liberal sentiment. Gotta go.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Paul Mason
Shipmate
# 7562
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Posted
Just read the whole thread - phew!
This touches something I'd really like to get sorted in my own life - how do we interpret the bible and how much weight can we place on what it says?
So basically there seem to be two strands of thought in this thread -
a) Joshua really was told by God to commit genocide and therefore it's was a moral thing to do in those specific circumstances if in no others.
b) Genocide is always wrong, therefore God could not have ordered Joshua to do it as that's not the nature of God we know from Jesus. The OT passages that say he did are a case of history being writen by the winners and should be read both in subservience to the NT revelation (esp Jesus) and through the lens of the times and culture in which they were written.
(I hope that's a fair summary)
I find a) unsatisfactory because it leaves us with a God who can call something most of us instinctively feel is evil good. Not only call it so but carry it out. Such a God is not only hard to reconcile with the NT but is repellant.
b) is better because it means we have a God who is not a monster - but my problem now is this God is so feckless a communicator that he allows such a gross distortion of his real character to stand as the authoritative revelation of who he is for hundreds of years. Even when a better, clearer revelation appears in the form of Jesus, this God apparently refuses to negate or at least modify the earlier text. Although what Jesus says appears inconsistent with Joshua, he claims to fully support it as Scripture.
Also, as far as time and culture goes - are we really saying that genocide was once considered good, even holy? Has human nature changed so much in 3000 years that killing babies was once regarded a moral thing provided they were some other tribe's babies? I sincerely doubt that. Indeed why is there a specific instruction to kill the various non-combatants if it didn't go against the normal patterns of warfare of that time, as well as the normal impulses.
I really find this very difficult. I have two inconsistent views of God. I'm told that the OT must be viewed in the light of the culture of the day - but that doesn't work for me, as I've explained because I don't believe that God could allow himself to be so misrepresented for so long and I don't believe that people of Joshua's time viewed genocide as an acceptable norm. I'm also told that we should interpret the OT in terms of the NT - but that seems arbitrary to me. Why should the NT God be the real one and the OT one be the distortion and not vice-versa? Because he's nicer? because he's more recent?
I'd be a lot happier if I could just throw out parts of the OT altogether - but apparently the Church has not seen fit to do so in 2000 years so why should I?
So it leaves me with a book I don't know how to read or how much to trust.
![[Confused]](confused.gif) ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
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Now posting as LatePaul
Posts: 452 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2004
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
LatePaul , I'm with you on every word of your post. Could've written it myself, but won't bother now.
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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hermit
Shipmate
# 1803
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by ONUnicorn:
Why should it be wrong for our Creator to eliminate what no longer pleases Him?
Because He created us in His image and loves us as his own children?
I suppose He cared enough for future generations to show us examples of bad things happening to those who disobeyed Him, or who killed members of the tribe symbolic of His presence on Earth. And to show concrete examples of His power.
All possessives should end in 's or 'es if English were rational: The penny of him .... him's penny. The penny of you ... you's penny. The penny of them .... them's penny. It would seem annoying to us at first, but think of how much easier it would be for children and adults learning English. Won't someone PLEASE think of the children?
quote:
But on this thread we have good people who are arguing either that because God ordered it it must be a moral thing to do or that God can and does act in a way the whole of the rest of the world, and that includes the vast majority of Christians, consider so abominably immoral that they have even reached international agreement to say so.
Little Weed, were on earth did you ever get the idea that murdering people in or out of a massacre is a bad thing? In fact if you ask many people around the world .... Rwandans, Serbians, American rightwing taxicab drivers .... you'd get a very different opinion of killing, many people believe that what their country needs right now is a good old-fashioned bloodbath. How can you possibly say that your moral judgments are better than theirs (them's)? Well, the only way other than claiming some human thinker said so (and then they claim some other great thinker like Saddam Hussein said otherwise) .... is by pointing out that God said so, who is infinitely wiser than we are. And unfortunately the only place we have indications of God's will is the Bible, which says that He both commanded genocides, and executions for breaking His law in various ways (one of which is for MURDER, not KILLING - obviously someone had to execute murderers without themselves becoming guilty of the sin).
Basically if you say the OT record is warped on the matter of killings and genocides and commandments, it's so unreliable that it should be tossed entirely. And since Revelation is more of the same we need to get rid of that also. And since Paul talked about the authority of the state to kill we need to carve his writings out of the Bible also, and besides he was homophobic.
Well, that leaves us with the gospels and a few other books. But Jesus affirmed the authority of the Law (the Torah, first five books of the OT, which contained the massacre of the Amalekites):
Matthew 5:18
I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
And he also said, "
Matthew 23:23
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices–mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law–justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former." Note that justice and faithfulness are as important as mercy.
Worse, he went around whipping bankers and merchants while probably not expecting us to do it, cursed a fig tree to death, and told his followers to sell whatever they needed to sell in order to buy swords!
So if Jesus affirmed the jots and tittles of the Law which contains the Amalekite genocide .... according to some here we must discard much of the Biblical record of what Jesus said in addition to the OT and Paul. And that doesn't really leave us with much, does it? A sort of legendary folk hero, whose words we can pick and choose, something like Robin Hood or that Irish fellow - Cuculain, was it?
I think it's safer to treat the Bible as inerrant or close to it, than to go down that slippery slope, as so many Christians are doing nowadays. Sure, we may get to Heaven and be greeted by Jesus rolling his eyes and saying, "you didn't actually believe God commanded those killings, did you? Couldn't you figure out that it was an allegory with a meaning pretty much opposite to what it seemed to mean?" But I choose to accept as much of the Bible at face value as I can, through the interpretation of the Church, otherwise there's not much sense in claiming to be a Christian or Catholic.
quote:
I don't think God changed his morals in the space of 3000 years.
No, but has changed ours .... that's what "New Covenant" means.
quote:
But the problem is, if God gives us rules and breaks them, He becomes a sub-Divine hypocrite by His own standards.
Wood, here we come back to whether an adult mother is hypocritical to scold her 3 year old child for lighting matches when she does the same thing.
quote:
But in Luke 6:35-36 we have Jesus talking about being kind to our enemies because "...you will be the sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."
This was Jesus' attitude on the cross. He asks us to emulate it. He says it's* the Father's attitude.
Where does genocide fit into that?
But not endlessly kind and merciful, Kiwigoldfish, He gave the Amalekites plenty of chances over a span of hundreds of years. Nor would we be expected to be so kind and merciful we wouldn't kill someone trying to kill us or one of our children, if it came down to that.
quote:
But He was not God Himself - the God that emerges from the teachings of the Old Testament as a whole.
Well, that's gnostic and I suppose Swedenborg must have agreed with the gnostic position. I don't get any impression at all from the words of Jesus that the OT God was a lesser god, and that Jesus came obeying some newer and greater God whose teachings completely overturned the old.
quote:
God is love and therefore does not condone, recommend or engage in murder or genocide.
"God is love" is the only thing the Bible has to say about God that's accurate? How were you able to weed that out of the whole mess, do you have some special powers?
quote:
If God is wanting to express his justice about wrongs in the world by killing a large number of people, he is just going to have to find some other instrument to use because this idiot isn't going to let it happen.
All of us have the ability to choose whether or not to obey God, and I'm sure you won't be commanded to kill ..... but perhaps we all ought to obey what IS within our ability.
quote:
But that's part of God's covenant, part of God's deal. God isn't doing anything outside of what He has already said. This is demonstrably different from saying "don't kill and treat foreigners well - no, wait. Except for the Canaanites. It's OK when you destroy the Canaanites."
There's no record of God saying in the original Hebrew not to kill .... that would be ludicrous in view of His many commands to kill. The word is best translated as "murder" - killing humans aside from His commandments.
[ 11. July 2004, 18:44: Message edited by: hermit ]
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"You called out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness... You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain that peace which was yours." Confessions, St Augustine
Posts: 812 | From: Seattle | Registered: Nov 2001
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J. J. Ramsey
Shipmate
# 1174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LatePaul:
Has human nature changed so much in 3000 years that killing babies was once regarded a moral thing provided they were some other tribe's babies?
From Psalm 137:8-9:
quote:
O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!
I don't know if human nature has changed, but killing other tribes' babies was certainly thinkable back then.
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I am a rationalist. Unfortunately, this doesn't actually make me rational.
Posts: 1490 | From: Tallmadge, OH | Registered: Aug 2001
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Peppone
Marine
# 3855
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Cheesy - God kills us ALL.
No. This is to confuse God with our enemy.
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I looked at the wa's o' Glasgow Cathedral, where vandals and angels painted their names,
I was clutching at straws and wrote your initials, while parish officials were safe in their hames.
Posts: 3020 | From: Hong Kong | Registered: Dec 2002
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Peppone
Marine
# 3855
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by J. J. Ramsey:
quote:
O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!
I don't know if human nature has changed, but killing other tribes' babies was certainly thinkable back then.
This always seems to be interpreted as meaning that the psalmist also looked forward to that hideous event. But in fact, he's saying, "What you have done to us will be done to you in the end, because that is the world you have created by your actions."
It is a cry of grief, not triumph.
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I looked at the wa's o' Glasgow Cathedral, where vandals and angels painted their names,
I was clutching at straws and wrote your initials, while parish officials were safe in their hames.
Posts: 3020 | From: Hong Kong | Registered: Dec 2002
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Peppone:
This always seems to be interpreted as meaning that the psalmist also looked forward to that hideous event.
Yes, I think it's the "Happy are they" part that makes it seem so. That particular phrase (same word as the first word of Psalm 1 -- "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked") is in fact a phrase of approbation.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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J. J. Ramsey
Shipmate
# 1174
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Posted
I suppose I have a high-tolerance for counter-intuitiveness, but I can see God looking at all the various possible courses of history and deciding that as horrific as it was, genocide was the least worst solution to make the course of history go the right way, given the hardness of hearts at the time. That doesn't make genocide good, only the other possibilities even more evil.
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I am a rationalist. Unfortunately, this doesn't actually make me rational.
Posts: 1490 | From: Tallmadge, OH | Registered: Aug 2001
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J. J. Ramsey
Shipmate
# 1174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Peppone:
quote:
Originally posted by J. J. Ramsey:
quote:
O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!
I don't know if human nature has changed, but killing other tribes' babies was certainly thinkable back then.
This always seems to be interpreted as meaning that the psalmist also looked forward to that hideous event. But in fact, he's saying, "What you have done to us will be done to you in the end, because that is the world you have created by your actions."
It is a cry of grief, not triumph.
I agree that it is a cry of grief, but it is a cry of grief that seems to rejoice in the brutal death of children. That's the kind of hardness of heart that has been around in those centuries (and has reared its head in this one all too often). That is also the kind of hardness of heart that God has had to deal with.
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I am a rationalist. Unfortunately, this doesn't actually make me rational.
Posts: 1490 | From: Tallmadge, OH | Registered: Aug 2001
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Peppone
Marine
# 3855
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:
That particular phrase (same word as the first word of Psalm 1 -- "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked") is in fact a phrase of approbation.
So it could/ should be read
quote:
Blessed shall be they who dash your babies against the rock
Then my "cry of grief" interpretation doesn't fit. Back to square one.
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I looked at the wa's o' Glasgow Cathedral, where vandals and angels painted their names,
I was clutching at straws and wrote your initials, while parish officials were safe in their hames.
Posts: 3020 | From: Hong Kong | Registered: Dec 2002
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
Ok, I've been thinking about this through evening church.
Yes, I agree with Martin, we are all dying. As we (ok I) believe God holds the keys to our life and death, in a sense he sanctions the circumstances.
So, in a way, death is actually morally neutral. It happens to everyone.
Given that, if you happen to be God and you happen to have decided that you are going to make x group of people exit their mortal coils at this particular point in time, then that is your lookout.
So... if God really had decided to exert justice via Joshua then maybe there is no argument. He's God and he does what he choses. One time he chose a flood, another the sword.
So maybe there is another way of looking at it. Maybe the story of Abraham and Issac was God saying 'I can demand that you sacrifice your children, but I'm not going to do that from this point onwards'.
And maybe likewise in the OT there were occasions when God was saying 'I'm God and I can behave like this if I chose. You horrible little man, take that!'
And maybe in the NT, Jesus, the image of God, was drawing a line in the sand and saying 'God can do all those things you know about, but he isn't going to any more. In the past, people got illnesses and whatnot because of sin, but now I tell you that you should not look down on the leper. In the past, the men of God struck down the enemies, now I tell you to lay down your life for them.'
Maybe God looked down at all he had created and in the final analysis decided it wasn't so good after all so he had to come down and show us a better way.
[/sanctimonious drivel]
C
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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J. J. Ramsey
Shipmate
# 1174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Peppone:
quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:
That particular phrase (same word as the first word of Psalm 1 -- "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked") is in fact a phrase of approbation.
So it could/ should be read
quote:
Blessed shall be they who dash your babies against the rock
Then my "cry of grief" interpretation doesn't fit. Back to square one.
More like square two.
Your particular interpretation of how is it a "cry of grief" is wrong, but you are right that it is a cry of grief. It's that it is a cry of grief expressed as anger toward one's enemy, rather than sorrow for one's enemy.
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I am a rationalist. Unfortunately, this doesn't actually make me rational.
Posts: 1490 | From: Tallmadge, OH | Registered: Aug 2001
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Luigi
Shipmate
# 4031
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Posted
Late Paul, Trudy Trudy and Wood - I really wish I had more time but I think that you would all be really interested in reading the book 'Violence Unveiled' by Gil Bailie. It is a book based on Girard's thinking and it really does reveal the central leitmotif of the Old Testament, and the relationship of violence and ancient religion.
If I have time tomorrow I may post something - this thread moves so fast that it is difficult to keep up - especially when time on the internet is limited.
Got to go
Luigi
Posts: 752 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Seeker963
Shipmate
# 2066
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Seeker963. Why am I, therefore, dangerous? I do not condone, AT ALL, killing in God's name, homophobia, racism, agism (takes bottle that - no mute E), sexism etc, etc. I see liberal rationalism as equally dangerous in the long run as Calvinist inerrantism. Inerrantism is a broad church. Mine is informed by science and grace.
I have no idea whether you, personally, are dangerous or not. But, ISTM that inerrantism does leave someone, somewhere the possibility of saying "Murder is good when it is God's will".
I hope I can explain this in words. I'm starting from the premise that ethical principles like "Murder is wrong" and "Genocide is wrong" are inalterable principles. But some people are happy to modify those statements into "Genocide is right when God does it" in order to leave unchallenged the first principle of "the biblical narrative is always literal and factual in the modernist sense of literal and factual". To me, it seems far safer not to have to twist and turn ethics and morality in order to retain that level of inerrantism.
Every single ideology has its strengths and its weaknesses. I don't mean the following disrespectfully, feel free to disagree with me ut this comes from my own upbringing in inerrancy. I think the difference between a positioned non-inerrantist approach and a positioned inerrantist one is that the positioned non-inerrantist will admit to interpreting and reading scripture in the light of his or her own culture and perception. The positioned inerrantist, in my personal experience, not only does not admit to personally interpreting but often gets angry when "interpretation" is even hinted at whereas I feel that I can see very clearly all the cultural presuppositions that inerrantists use.
(Pease note that I'm using the terms "positioned inerrantism" and "positioned non-inerrantism" deliberately. I really can't work with your "liberal rationalist" argument because I've met almost no-one in churches inerrantists call "liberal" who are actually liberal rationalists; although I'm sure there are some somwhere.)
What I'm saying is that I previously thought inerrantism was "different but not harmful". Now I see that it offers the possibility of saying "Murder can be good if done in God's name". So it does seem to offer the potential of being truly dangerous.
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"People waste so much of their lives on hate and fear." My friend JW-N: Chaplain and three-time cancer survivor. (Went to be with her Lord March 21, 2010. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.)
Posts: 4152 | From: Northeast Ohio | Registered: Dec 2001
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Manx Taffy
Shipmate
# 301
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cheesy*:
And maybe likewise in the OT there were occasions when God was saying 'I'm God and I can behave like this if I chose. You horrible little man, take that!'
And maybe in the NT, Jesus, the image of God, was drawing a line in the sand and saying 'God can do all those things you know about, but he isn't going to any more. In the past, people got illnesses and whatnot because of sin, but now I tell you that you should not look down on the leper. In the past, the men of God struck down the enemies, now I tell you to lay down your life for them.'
Maybe God looked down at all he had created and in the final analysis decided it wasn't so good after all so he had to come down and show us a better way.
[/sanctimonious drivel]
C
So the omnipotent god proves his power by wiping out a whole nation - its nor big and its not clever. On the basis that he created the universe I think we can assume he could do that if he really wanted to without the need for any such special effects.
Rather than say people used to get ill through sin or it used to be right to sacrifice your children or good people could strike down their enemies with God's help, I think he was saying that such things were never God's way despite men wrongly thinking that's how a powerful god should behave.
Posts: 397 | From: Isle of Man | Registered: May 2001
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Tuggboat
Shipmate
# 7001
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Posted
Here's a very thorough treatment of the subject. Its nearly as long as this thread. Extermination of the Amalekites
Its (sic) long so if you go to the bottom of the page and see his summary points you can determine if its of interest enough to plow all the way through.
[Don't put in http:// twice.]
[ 12. July 2004, 03:16: Message edited by: Tortuf ]
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The wind blows, and restless are the sails;
Even the rudder begs direction;
Posts: 78 | From: Providence Forge, VA | Registered: May 2004
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hermit
Shipmate
# 1803
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Seeker963:
1. But, ISTM that inerrantism does leave someone, somewhere the possibility of saying "Murder is good when it is God's will".
2.Every single ideology has its strengths and its weaknesses. I don't mean the following disrespectfully, feel free to disagree with me ut this comes from my own upbringing in inerrancy. I think the difference between a positioned non-inerrantist approach and a positioned inerrantist one is that the positioned non-inerrantist will admit to interpreting and reading scripture in the light of his or her own culture and perception. The positioned inerrantist, in my personal experience, not only does not admit to personally interpreting but often gets angry when "interpretation" is even hinted at whereas I feel that I can see very clearly all the cultural presuppositions that inerrantists use.
1. No, by my definition there can NEVER be a murder by God's will, since the ancient Hebrew word for "murder" is defined as killing a human aside from God's will. But a killing or genocide could certainly be the best way of bringing about the results desired.
2. Just to be clear about the official Catholic stance, it's that Holy Scripture is entirely inspired by God (although some Catholic scholars dissent on that), but that it must be interpreted properly in terms of the culture and language of those times, and that it's all too easy for those who take a "private interpretation" of Scripture to impose their own values in their interpretation .... which is what I was getting at when I've insisted to Psyduck among others, that Jesus wasn't a modern liberal college professor.
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"You called out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness... You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain that peace which was yours." Confessions, St Augustine
Posts: 812 | From: Seattle | Registered: Nov 2001
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leonato
Shipmate
# 5124
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Posted
quote:
Originally poted by Manx Taffy
So the omnipotent god proves his power by wiping out a whole nation
But not in the cases we're discussing - he orders the Jews to do the killing, he doesn't do it himself.
Some time ago ONUnicorn posted from 1 Sam 15:
quote:
2 "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I will punish Amalek {for} what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt. 3 'Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has,
So God passes the buck, presumably he could have destroyed himself, but doesn't.
I find this disturbing, we have God destroying people (the flood, Sodom, Egypt) himself earlier, but now passes on the responsibility: and this AFTER he has given the Law, including "Thou shalt not murder". This command to kill is also clearly opposed to the NT "turn the other cheek" etc.
So did God change his mind somewhere along the way? Killing, then ordering not to, then ordering to kill, and back again, and again... If so, how can we trust in such a capricious God?
Or is God constant, and only human interpretaton variable?
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leonato... Much Ado
Posts: 892 | From: Stage left | Registered: Oct 2003
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
quote:
Freddy: But He was not God Himself - the God that emerges from the teachings of the Old Testament as a whole.
Well, that's gnostic and I suppose Swedenborg must have agreed with the gnostic position. I don't get any impression at all from the words of Jesus that the OT God was a lesser god, and that Jesus came obeying some newer and greater God whose teachings completely overturned the old.
It's not gnostic. It's not that Jesus said that the God of the OT was a lesser God, but that the impression of God needed correction.
Jesus did not completely overturn the definition of God. He did, however, change the things that God had said to Israel:
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Matthew 19:8 He said to them, "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so."
The commandment that Jesus refers to was not a commandment from Moses but supposedly from God Himself:
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Deuteronomy 24:1 "When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts [it] in her hand, and sends her out of his house.
Isn't Jesus saying that the commandment was not actually from God Himself, but was an accommodation to the hardness of their hearts?
Similarly with the laws about swearing oaths:
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Matthew 5:33 you have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord.' 34 "But I say to you, do not swear at all:
And yet it was God Himself that had told them to swear oaths:
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Deuteronomy 10:20 "You shall fear the LORD your God; you shall serve Him, and to Him you shall hold fast, and take oaths in His name.
So what is going on here? Doesn't it make sense that the God revealed to Moses wasn't as clear a picture of God as the one that Jesus revealed? It was still the same God - but the rules changed because God reveals Himself progressively as people are prepared to receive Him.
This was clearly true in the case of Abraham. Jehovah said to Moses:
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Exodus 6:3 I (Jehovah) appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as God Shaddai; and by My name Jehovah was I not known to them.
Why was He Shaddai? Because Shaddai was the name of God - an idol - that Abraham was familiar with. God accommodated Himself to Abraham's state, saying and doing things that would make sense to him.
This is in no sense a Gnostic position! This is what Jesus taught. It wasn't a different God, just an incomplete and imperfect version of Him.
To me this completely explains why Joshua could legitimately have believed God wished him to wipe out the Canaanites. The "angel of Jehovah" did tell him this, and God did not prevent it, for the sake of the long run benefit of humanity.
One thing that no one has mentioned is that in the Joshua account, Joshua only actually attacked Jericho and Ai. All the other battles were initiated by the enemy. This is true in Judges as well. It's not an important point, but it is curious that in the vast majority of the cases Israel was only defending itself. Not that this really helps.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Tuggboat
Shipmate
# 7001
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Wood:
quote:
Originally posted by Tuggboat:
Groups around the worldare using the original posts argument in interesting and novel ways...<snip>
This is all over generalized and my own take on it but we should equip ourselves with some basic defensive logic. Who knows maybe Hitler himself started this to destroy Christianity.
Excuse me?
How on earth did you get that from the OP? I should know what I was talking about, after all. I did write the thing.
I think my actual difficulty with the genocidal passages - and frankly, I think the systematic destruction of a people group and their associated culture from the face of the earth falls into a pretty complete defintion of genocide, actually - is how this squares with the dire threats directed against those who mistreat foreigners in the Torah and God's own rules for us.
It wasn't a real hard association. I typed genocide Amalekites and some other key words into google and came up with a bunch of special interests using the idea that the Judeo Christian God committed genocide. From there they usually take it to "And Hitler committed genocide" then come to a conclusion that God and Hitler are alike. From there they take the idea that we have a bad God like Hitler to anywhere they want.
Logic
God committed genocide
genocide was committed by Hitler (or name your favorite despot)
Therefore, Favorite despot is like God.
That's the basic reasoning. Truth seems to have created a lie. Something is wrong with that logic wouldn't you agree? If we can destroy the primary premise the secondary premises and false conclusions can't get a foothold in our thinking. See the link I posted above for an amplification of this.
As for the idea that the Amalekites were foreigners They were decendents of Essau whom God hated Mal 1:3
They harrassed, butchered and terrorised the Jews, their wives and children and destroyed even their meager years crops just for fun for several hundred years. Several times they tried to extend the Amalekites mercy but it always came back to get them. This was not an unprovoked attack on innocents. After many options were tried completely wiping them out was the only one left that had any hope of stopping them.
quote:
His own standards. He becomes less than God; flawed; imperfect; and all by His own standard of integrity. God's moral character does not change, right? But surely, by creating an hypocrisy in the character of God, we - paradoxically, since the argument weighs heavily on the character of God's divinity - strip Him of His divinity.
You may be surprised to know that this makes me uneasy.
By him doing this he was able to show the Jews Justice and keep his promise. That is a divine thing. It is Justice and Mercy not Justice or Mercy
Wives and children will continue to avenge the death of their father. The Amalekites had proven this before when they took in the survivors. After killing the whole warrior class this time, the women and children would have been left in the desert to starve. This time they had to all go. By ending their lives quickly he showed mercy toward them and justice for the Jews at the same time.
He his divine, he is not a hypocrit, He is Just, He is merciful, who knows what they really deserved. I would guess more than they got for messing with God's chosen ones.
A lot of this is in the this Link which is the same as I posted above
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The wind blows, and restless are the sails;
Even the rudder begs direction;
Posts: 78 | From: Providence Forge, VA | Registered: May 2004
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Tuggboat
Shipmate
# 7001
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jon Doe:
Umm, tuggboat, should that link have been
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/rbutcher1.html
(it didn't work originally for me as your link had two http's)
thanks for the link, will have a read once I have more time
jon
Thats the first time I tried this. Thanks
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The wind blows, and restless are the sails;
Even the rudder begs direction;
Posts: 78 | From: Providence Forge, VA | Registered: May 2004
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Luigi
Shipmate
# 4031
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Posted
Just a quick comment on the Amalekites link. I read this link some time ago when it was posted on another discussion forum. In fact I read it three times as I couldn't believe just how brazen the author was being the first time and I wanted to be sure that I wasn't missing some hidden depths!
All I can say is it just goes to show the preposterous lengths people will go to to justify a view in a pernicious, brutal, inconsistent God just because they think that the Bible demands that they do so. Talk about squaring circles. If this is a indicative of the tortuous logic and denial of any empathy with people in the past, that being a Christian requires of us, then I am off to look for another religion.
Luigi
Posts: 752 | Registered: Feb 2003
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hermit
Shipmate
# 1803
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Posted
Thanks for the excellent and thorough link, Tuggboat.
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
quote:
Freddy: But He was not God Himself - the God that emerges from the teachings of the Old Testament as a whole.
Well, that's gnostic and I suppose Swedenborg must have agreed with the gnostic position. I don't get any impression at all from the words of Jesus that the OT God was a lesser god, and that Jesus came obeying some newer and greater God whose teachings completely overturned the old.
It's not gnostic. It's not that Jesus said that the God of the OT was a lesser God, but that the impression of God needed correction.
Jesus did not completely overturn the definition of God. He did, however, change the things that God had said to Israel ....
This is in no sense a Gnostic position! This is what Jesus taught. It wasn't a different God, just an incomplete and imperfect version of Him.
To me this completely explains why Joshua could legitimately have believed God wished him to wipe out the Canaanites. The "angel of Jehovah" did tell him this, and God did not prevent it, for the sake of the long run benefit of humanity.
One thing that no one has mentioned is that in the Joshua account, Joshua only actually attacked Jericho and Ai. All the other battles were initiated by the enemy. This is true in Judges as well. It's not an important point, but it is curious that in the vast majority of the cases Israel was only defending itself. Not that this really helps.
These are good points, and I don't have a problem with the idea of progressive revelation or changing rules or even that Joshua might have THOUGHT God wanted him to kill when it was actually his own desire and the tribe's (I don't buy the idea that an angel would do anything God didn't command, although I realize there was some confusion about which was God and which was angel because the names could be identical). My point is simply that it's not IMPOSSIBLE that God could have directly ordered killings, and in view of the fact that such a large portion of the OT is in the plainest sense about killings ordered in one way or another by God, often for breaking commandments, it's safest to accept the traditional interpretations - the ones that accept it pretty much at face value. Believe it or not, I'll be very relieved if I make to heaven and am corrected on the matter!
One thing I worry about is that some people might be wishing to undercut the authority of the OT (and the NT verses which support them) because they find some commandments to be unacceptable or inconvenient. I suppose the really hotbutton issue that is known by everyone is that homosexuality is forbidden in the OT (and that's affirmed in Paul's writings as well as Revelation). And yet modern popular culture insists not only that it's not a sin, but that it's a positive virtue to obey your body's every fleshly desire - thus we have the spectacle of an openly gay man who preaches the virtue of his relationship, becoming elected to the office of bishop. And so there's a clash between OT commandments and new popular morality concerning this and other moral standards .... I think that may have a lot to do with the general stance of this website especially at the home site, which seems to be to undercut the authority of the OT in deciding any moral issues, and even to mock it in some ways such as the Biblical curse generator (I'm assuming that's still there, haven't visited the main site in a while).
It may be that God just doesn't care about whom we have sex with or whether we covet the neighbor's ass anymore, but I choose to stay faithful to what we've been given rather than blithely assuming it doesn't matter anymore or was probably never even commanded by God. I realize what I've just said isn't behind EVERYONE's distrust of the authorship of OT books, some have become discouraged by lists of apparent contradictions and mistakes, but I think that wanting to legitimize forbidden things is behind a lot of efforts to discredit the OT, Paul, etc.
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"You called out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness... You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain that peace which was yours." Confessions, St Augustine
Posts: 812 | From: Seattle | Registered: Nov 2001
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Weed
Shipmate
# 4402
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Why do you think I think you are not confronting the God of the OT? How could you possibly think, infer, deduce that I regard violence and killing as stronger than love? Nothing is stronger than love. God is love. Love who kills to attain its end.
Then you are using a completely different definition / understanding of the word love from me. Violence and killing are what human beings do. Look at the cross: Jesus is killed by man and asks his father to forgive those who are doing it.
quote:
Do I conclude that you are a liberal rationalist and God is NOT as He reveals Himself in the Bronze Age? Therefore your confrontation is with fundamentalist inerrantists like myself?
I don’t know what you mean by a liberal rationalist but my dictionary suggests secular humanism. Hm. I’m trying to be a Christian but I am aware that my views put me beyond the pale according to the standards of others.
quote:
Do you accept that God is accurately revealed as a killer and take exception to Him, therefore you confront Him? As Abraham and Moses did and we all should? How long, oh Lord?
I confront what is said in the bible, the whole of it. I believe that God is the same yesterday, today and for ever but humans, whether it’s Joshua or us today, all see through a glass darkly. I have great admiration for the ancient writers but I don’t think any of them ever intended their writings to be treated as accurate journalistic accounts. They are far too complex and multi-layered for that. Nor do I believe that God in some miraculous way ensured that everyone mentioned in the bible understood his thoughts and actions perfectly. I have a strong suspicion that if we could interview Joshua today he wouldn’t be as literal either as inerrant fundamentalists.
Trusting in God, Joshua believed this was what God wanted but he had a limited understanding. He didn’t know any way other than violence. He believe his God was greater than all the other gods therefore his God must be mightier in battle, must want his people to have the best land and therefore must want them to kill to get it even though he had ordered them in the Mosaic law not to kill. I read the rest of the OT and see that the killing didn’t actually work. I look at the Middle East today and I see that the continuing killing still doesn’t work. I look at the suffering God on the cross and I see that it is only love that conquers all and there is no place within the word love for killing. Killing is what humans do, not God.
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Weed
Posts: 519 | From: UK | Registered: Apr 2003
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Peppone
Marine
# 3855
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
I think that may have a lot to do with the general stance of this website especially at the home site, which seems to be to undercut the authority of the OT in deciding any moral issues, and even to mock it in some ways such as the Biblical curse generator.
I think this thing about the curse generator is a bit of a reach. How does that tell you anything about the attitude of the SoF home page creators and editors?
As for using the OT as a guide to moral issues- to me, the OT story as a whole is steeped in grace and compassion and mercy and love, with all its admonitions to treat the alien with mercy and welcome the stranger and cancel debts...(it's your NT that raises the stakes and gets scary)...which is why the Joshua story seems to contradict the rest of it.
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I looked at the wa's o' Glasgow Cathedral, where vandals and angels painted their names,
I was clutching at straws and wrote your initials, while parish officials were safe in their hames.
Posts: 3020 | From: Hong Kong | Registered: Dec 2002
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Zeke
Ship's Inquirer
# 3271
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Posted
Hermit, are you indeed saying that you adhere to every single OT commandment? If not, how do you decide which ones you think are important and which ones are not?
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No longer the Bishop of Durham
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If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it? --Benjamin Franklin
Posts: 5259 | From: Deep in the American desert | Registered: Sep 2002
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sanc
Shipmate
# 6355
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Posted
a lot of people today would like to disect the bible, highlighting that this account is just a myth, that one never happened, this writer's account is not a journalistic account. if the bible can be thus dissected, it renders the bible as a mixture of truth and untruth, and it makes it a doubtful book of GOD's revelation. if the dissecting goes on, we may someday put the bible side by side the work of homer. i think the bible is an inspired writing. when writers are inspired by GOD to write something, it should be taken seriously and branded as truth.
GOD uses many ways to judge the wicked, by fire like sodom, by flood during noah's time, by foriegn army like babylon to its neighboring countries, and the controversial one: through HIS chosen people israel. GOD said we should not judge, this also means that when HE judge, we should take HIS judgement as just and one abounding in love. the wickedness of people defiles the dignity of humanity to the effect that they are comparable to the beast of the jungle. there every action and intentions of their hearts fuels their sinful way of life. and theres not even a 5 among them who are righteous enough to avert the judgement.
so GOD's judgement: complete extermination of their existence. coming from a just GOD, i have no qualms with that.
Posts: 358 | From: Philippines | Registered: May 2004
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Seeker963
Shipmate
# 2066
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
No, by my definition there can NEVER be a murder by God's will, since the ancient Hebrew word for "murder" is defined as killing a human aside from God's will. But a killing or genocide could certainly be the best way of bringing about the results desired.
Semantic point taken and I have a real problem with that. Ideas like "ethnic cleansing" come to mind.
quote:
2. Just to be clear about the official Catholic stance, it's that Holy Scripture is entirely inspired by God (although some Catholic scholars dissent on that), but that it must be interpreted properly in terms of the culture and language of those times,
I would choose those words exactly to describe my own biblical hermenutic. (Although I don't know exactly what practicing Catholics these days consider that to mean if we unpack that sentence. I have a good idea what a lot of RC academic theologians meant by it it the mid-1970s when I studied theology at a Roman Catholic university.)
I don't think that is a "liberal" heremenutic nor do I think it's an inerrantist one.
quote:
and that it's all too easy for those who take a "private interpretation" of Scripture to impose their own values in their interpretation .... which is what I was getting at when I've insisted to Psyduck among others, that Jesus wasn't a modern liberal college professor.
Well, in terms of "private interpretations", I'm not a Roman Catholic. My own tradition - British Methodism - has a 200+ year tradition of people interpreting scripture to mean that God is against genocide, murder and war. So I stand squarely inside my own tradition. I will respectfully dissent from any British Methodists who believes that God may order a civilisation to be annhiliated in order to achieve his purposes.
I still resist the use of the word "liberal" until that word is unpacked. The little ditty about anyone who is more liberal than me is a liberal is basically correct. In my sojourns in Protestant inerrantist churches, attending some theology courses, people were always setting themselves in opposition to 19th century liberalism. And honestly, in mainstream Protestant churches, there aren't a lot of 19th century liberals around. Most of us are walking a middle path with a living faith in a Living God whether our conservative brothers and sisters want to recognise that our not. If conservatives are on a mission to change our minds - and all the conservative churches I attended claimed that they wanted to "convert" mainstream Christians to "real Christianity" - then conservatives had better learn what we actually believe. Arguing against 19th century liberalism doesn't convince us because most of us don't believe in 19th century liberalism either (although I'm sure there are some people who do).
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"People waste so much of their lives on hate and fear." My friend JW-N: Chaplain and three-time cancer survivor. (Went to be with her Lord March 21, 2010. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.)
Posts: 4152 | From: Northeast Ohio | Registered: Dec 2001
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jon Doe:
Umm, tuggboat, should that link have been
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/rbutcher1.html
(it didn't work originally for me as your link had two http's)
thanks for the link, will have a read once I have more time
jon
Oh goodie. The lifeboat ethics problem means
quote:
that the swift death of the innocents, in the context of a certain and much-more-suffering death in the desert, was the most merciful and least tragic course of action.
I'm sorry, ethics determined by the lifeboat thesis are not worth the paper they are written on. If I was in a classroom where this was discussed, I would refuse to participate.
More to the point, the great danger of this philosophy is that you begin to apply it to the sick, the mentally ill and/or the disabled, deciding that they are 'weighing down' the rest of society.
![[Mad]](angryfire.gif)
C
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Zeke
Ship's Inquirer
# 3271
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Posted
There is more than one way for something to be true.
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No longer the Bishop of Durham
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If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it? --Benjamin Franklin
Posts: 5259 | From: Deep in the American desert | Registered: Sep 2002
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Seeker963
Shipmate
# 2066
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
All I can say is it just goes to show the preposterous lengths people will go to to justify a view in a pernicious, brutal, inconsistent God just because they think that the Bible demands that they do so. Talk about squaring circles. If this is a indicative of the tortuous logic and denial of any empathy with people in the past, that being a Christian requires of us, then I am off to look for another religion.
I agree wholeheartedly.
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"People waste so much of their lives on hate and fear." My friend JW-N: Chaplain and three-time cancer survivor. (Went to be with her Lord March 21, 2010. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.)
Posts: 4152 | From: Northeast Ohio | Registered: Dec 2001
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Jolly Jape
Shipmate
# 3296
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Posted
Sanc, you wrote: quote:
a lot of people today would like to disect the bible, highlighting that this account is just a myth, that one never happened, this writer's account is not a journalistic account. if the bible can be thus dissected, it renders the bible as a mixture of truth and untruth, and it makes it a doubtful book of GOD's revelation. if the dissecting goes on, we may someday put the bible side by side the work of homer. i think the bible is an inspired writing. when writers are inspired by GOD to write something, it should be taken seriously and branded as truth.
Well, I suppose that's the "thin end of the wedge" argument, and I can see why it makes some people uneasy. But, underlying these arguments are assumptions about what the Bible is for . Is it an unambiguous rule-book, declaring definitive truth forever, or is it a book where we encounter the Living God. Now I'll grant you that it could be both, and a great many sincere and holy people believe this to be the case. But, in the words of the song "It ain't necessarily so." I would contend that it can be the second, and not the first, and still maintain all its' power and authority. Why is it better than, say, Homer? Because (in the context of "historical" accounts) it is a real record of a real encounter between real people and a real God. It ca n be all that without being inerrant.
This brings to mind something that was troubling LatePaul quote:
my problem now is this God is so feckless a communicator that he allows such a gross distortion of his real character to stand as the authoritative revelation of who he is for hundreds of years. Even when a better, clearer revelation appears in the form of Jesus, this God apparently refuses to negate or at least modify the earlier text. Although what Jesus says appears inconsistent with Joshua, he claims to fully support it as Scripture.
There is, indeed, a problem if we regard Scripture as inerrant, forensic truth. But I am not convinced this is what God's intention ever was, nor am I persuaded that Jesus, whose interpretive technique would cause much blushing amongst inerrantist Bible school professors, regarded it as such.
BTW, what is it about us westerners, that we want to oppose myth and truth, as if the former was inferior to, rather than an expression of, the latter. I've always believed that facts tell you what, and myth tells you, or at least leads you to, why.
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To those who have never seen the flow and ebb of God's grace in their lives, it means nothing. To those who have seen it, even fleetingly, even only once - it is life itself. (Adeodatus)
Posts: 3011 | From: A village of gardens | Registered: Sep 2002
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
2 things
1) What Cheesy said. In that post a few posts ago that he thought about in church. [just pauses for a few minutes while thinking about what has just happened. Breathes deeply]
2) I am getting dlightly annoyed at the way people are using this thread to make slightly snide and intellectually superior comments about "inerrantists" and "inerrantism" as a whole, in the full knowledge that no one who holds that view (whatever it is taken to mean by those who are so kindly writing it off) can actually respond without getting bounced all the way to the glue factory. So could you stop it please? Thanks.
Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004
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Wood
The Milkman of Human Kindness
# 7
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
2 things
1) What Cheesy said. In that post a few posts ago that he thought about in church. [just pauses for a few minutes while thinking about what has just happened. Breathes deeply]
What, even the last couple lines of his post? Are you sure?
Tuggboat:
As far as I can see, the only person here who's brought up the "God=Hitler" argument is you.
In the Old Testament, God orders the Israelites to commit more than one act of genocide. These are acts of genocide by pretty exact definitions, and all. That's undeniable. To point out that fact - fact, mind- is not - repeat not - tantamount to equating God with Hitler or Stalin, no matter how much you might want it to be.
Let's call a spade a spade here. To refer to the complete and systematic destruction of a culture and ethnic group as anything other than genocide is sophistry. I'm sorry, but there it is.
Besides, people seem to be getting confused about who actually does it - it's the Israelites that do it. No one here seems to be upbraiding the Almighty for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which He did Himself (and we have to assume that innocent babies died there, too - and before you go "ah, no, God didn't find anyone innocent," allow me to point out that Abraham asked if God could find a number of innocent men - not women, not children).
And we're all aware that "God told me to do it" is no more of an admissable excuse than "the Devil made me do it" or "I was just following orders". The sin - if sin it was - was committed by the Israelites, albeit (and here's the sticking point) under God's command. Did they feel bad about doing it? Scripture doesn't say, but given the course of Middle Eastern history in the Bronze Age, I very much doubt that they did.
I repeat: the problem is less the genocide per se and more that God not only allowed the Israelites to do it, but in fact ordered it, thus commanding the Israelites to sin.
Incidentally, hermit's analogy with the mother telling her kid not to play with matches doesn't wash - if the analogy were accurate, it would be tantamount to the mother saying "don't play with matches - except for the ones in this box here. You can burn your fingers all you like on those".
Now it may well be - and let's for the sake of argument assume that the story is true - that it was indeed the only way peace could result, and that it was a reasonable way to wage war.
Likewise, the rationalisation I got from Saint Augustine sugests that while God's moral character does not change, culture does, and that therefore what the Israelites did was - again - a culturally acceptable way of waging war in the Bronze Age Middle East. Well, maybe.
But none of this adequately covers the discomfort most of us feel at reading the passage. I don't think it's one I'm ever going to resolve, frankly.
[ 12. July 2004, 09:06: Message edited by: Wood ]
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Narcissism.
Posts: 7842 | From: Wood Towers | Registered: Apr 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Me neither. I echo Luigi's post from earlier; I also refer back to my 1984 illustration before; what Hermit and Sanc and Lep want me to do is to see five fingers because God commands it; yet there are quite clearly and distinctly four.
Two and two make four, and even if God Himself insists they make five, they still make four.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Wood:
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
2 things
1) What Cheesy said. In that post a few posts ago that he thought about in church. [just pauses for a few minutes while thinking about what has just happened. Breathes deeply]
What, even the last couple lines of his post? Are you sure?
Well, I think so. But I maybe don't understand what he means. God showing us a better way for us to be dealt with by him - yes I think so. But maybe that's not what he means.
Wood, I've re-read your OP and your last post, and its only now that I actually understand what your problem with the passages is. So sorry if I have been blathering irrelevant rubbish to your OP. I'll now go and think about the actual question you are asking. ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
I kinda liked the idea of God realising he had made a mistake - that an eye for an eye just makes the whole world blind - and coming and sorting it out.
It doesn't fit with any of my other ideas about God, but it is a comforting idea.
C
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arse
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cheesy*:
I kinda liked the idea of God realising he had made a mistake - that an eye for an eye just makes the whole world blind - and coming and sorting it out.
It doesn't fit with any of my other ideas about God, but it is a comforting idea.
C
Right then. I had misunderstood. But I liked the rest.
At least I am now back in normal universe, where I disagree with Cheesy per se. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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He hath loved us, He hath loved us, because he would love
Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004
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GreyFace
Shipmate
# 4682
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Wood:
I repeat: the problem is less the genocide per se and more that God not only allowed the Israelites to do it, but in fact ordered it, thus commanding the Israelites to sin.
This is the problem I have with it, too. The objections that God and killing are incompatible don't sit, for me, with the observed fact that every human we've ever known has either died or will die. You can either throw out God's omnipotence from your personal scheme of theology (I don't throw it out) or draw some conclusions.
No, the problem is in the apparent commandment to do it. When Jesus overrules the divorce bit of the Law, he says it was only permitted because of the hardness of hearts - permitted mind, not ordered. I think the genocides if they happened as recorded, were permitted in a similar way, not commanded.
quote:
But none of this adequately covers the discomfort most of us feel at reading the passage. I don't think it's one I'm ever going to resolve, frankly.
Maybe that's its purpose.
Posts: 5748 | From: North East England | Registered: Jul 2003
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GreyFace
Shipmate
# 4682
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cheesy*:
I kinda liked the idea of God realising he had made a mistake - that an eye for an eye just makes the whole world blind - and coming and sorting it out.
It doesn't fit with any of my other ideas about God, but it is a comforting idea.
Comforting in what way?
I'm more comforted by the thought that the Incarnation was God's plan from the start, that an eye for an eye was a progressive moral development from exterminating a family for stealing a loaf of bread, and that God doesn't make mistakes.
Posts: 5748 | From: North East England | Registered: Jul 2003
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
Because otherwise I am left with alternatives I don't like.
Either God is a monster (and he doesn't change), the OT is seriously flawed (in which case largely useless) or God changes his mind. Personally, I'd rather go with God changing his mind.
C
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arse
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Wood
The Milkman of Human Kindness
# 7
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:
quote:
But none of this adequately covers the discomfort most of us feel at reading the passage. I don't think it's one I'm ever going to resolve, frankly.
Maybe that's its purpose.
If that were its purpose, surely there would have been a significant body of writing on this subject before the modern age?
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Narcissism.
Posts: 7842 | From: Wood Towers | Registered: Apr 2001
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