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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Kerygmania: Jack Bauer and the OT God
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Luigi
Shipmate
# 4031
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Posted
Psyduck you said quote:
However, the OT was my principal specialism in my first degree, and I do find myself dissatisfied with a position that seems to involve reading it on a criterion that's (just) outside its compass. It seems to me that there are particularly Jewish ways of organizing the polyphony of the OT, and that they seem to draw on an organizing principle that arises from within the OT which is profoundly reflected in the religious integrity of Judaism.
I am not sure what you mean by 'outside its compass'. I am trying to make the Jews part of human history and prone to human failings rather than some different species to homo sapiens. Some seem to think that Homo Israelius aren't really humans at all - one of the reasons I find Wright so unconvincing. Also I am not clear as to whether you think I am looking at the Jews in ways that don't arise from within the OT? I really would like you to explain this more.
quote:
Old Testament theology has always seemed to me to be a subdiscipline that's never managed to become completely convincing. There's somehow often a forced feel to it. Some more than others. I find Bruggeman a lot more artificial, for instance, than von Rad. The most convincing articulations of what the OT is and how it works I seem to find in critical studies rather than theologies. I suppose that's reflected in my long post above.
Brueggemann was the beginning of my journey, and I certainly don't find all his reasoning convincing now. Von Rad I am impressed by - I'd be a fool not to be - but to be honest I don't feel I have read enough of him.
Whilst it is probably clear that I have dropped the more common understanding of the OT being a book in which God reveals himself, I do believe the OT is - quite possibly - uniquely revelatory. I haven't read enough ancient anthropology to make a more confident claim.
Finally, I still don't really get your position on the OT that is being articulated in your reply to Ruth - is the OT there so that we can while away the time in some sort of masturbatory intellectual exercise or are we meant to glean something from it? My guess is that you believe that we can glean something from it that is more than "isn't it wonderful to read a polyvocal text and we can then take whatever we like from it" - but I still can't tell what. Hopefully this doesn't come across to provocatively because I genuinely would like to know more.
Ingo - anyone who has more of a problem with lists than with genocide is someone who a) I hope never comes close to anyone I care for and b) our understanding of life, love and language exist on different planets and probably make dialogue impossible. You probably tick virtually all Cohen's boxes on why humans find it so easy to indulge in genocide AND / OR justify it. Good old Hitler, just making the day that the Jews meet their maker that bit closer! Eh?
Ruth - still interested in your thoughts
Luigi
[ 08. March 2006, 21:42: Message edited by: Luigi ]
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
Ingo - anyone who has more of a problem with lists than with genocide is someone who a) I hope never comes close to anyone I care for and b) our understanding of life, love and language exist on different planets and probably make dialogue impossible. You probably tick virtually all Cohen's boxes on why humans find it so easy to indulge in genocide AND / OR justify it. Good old Hitler, just making the day that the Jews meet their maker that bit closer! Eh?
That's an entirely unfair and superficial summary of just one aspect of what I wrote taken out of its context. The suggestion of your last sentence was indeed explicitly argued against, rather than supported, by me. I would agree though that your attitude doesn't bode well for a future dialogue between us. ![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
quote:
I am not sure what you mean by 'outside its compass'.
OK - I meant in the first place chronological compass. The New Testament revelation doesn't overlap with the Old, and therefore in some sense it will always be necessary for Christian readings of the OT to posit it's "pointing forward to" Jesus Christ. The only exceptions are those - essentially untheological - literalisms that see the "Bible" as a monad, and subordinate the revelation of God in Christ to "Scripture" read as a monovocal, undifferentiated, Qur'an-like authority.
However, to read the OT this way is always to risk subordinating it to the Christian revelation in such a way that it becoems merely preparatory to Christ, and only to hear its distinctive voices through Christian filters - or even as Christian transcripts. That's what I mean by subordinating it to something "outside its compass". Eichrodt says that it's all very well to read Jesus Christ as the fulfilment of the OT, but only if we bear in mind that he is a very surprising and non-obvious fulfilment. "Reading against the text" is a very important strategy, but it surely means that we read against one text, on the basis of another - or probably many others. If, however, we pre-privilege one text - say the Gospel of Christ - then we're risking modifying, if not silencing, other voices at the outset.
For me, that means that we have to read the OT scriptures phenomenologically - asking what confronts us when we read this text - and critically - which is where we ask how this text fits into, but also challenges, our understanding of other texts, before we integrate them into a Christian, scriptural understanding. Maybe this is clearer if, when you say
quote:
I do believe the OT is - quite possibly - uniquely revelatory.
I think the OT is a collection of texts which are consistently revelatory. And I think that sacral violence, but also henotheism-into-monotheism and the Law, are among the binding themes.
The unity of the OT arises, I think, from the fact that it implies a community. That might seem an odd way of putting it, rather, say, than "arises from" a community. But it's more true to the story of OT scholarship which reconstructs the community out of its scriptures, and not vice versa. The fact that the OT is a corpus is important here.
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My guess is that you believe that we can glean something from it that is more than "isn't it wonderful to read a polyvocal text and we can then take whatever we like from it" - but I still can't tell what. Hopefully this doesn't come across to provocatively because I genuinely would like to know more.
Not provocative at all. Very pertinent. For me, the community dimension is crucial. The OT speaks the voices of an ancient comunity of faith. I certainly don't believe that we can "take what we like" from the OT - rather that because our Christian community - ecclesia, church - understands itself as confronted by its Scripture - and in this sense the OT certainly is our Scripture, as well as Jewish Scripture - it understands itself as hailed by voices which speak to it in many different ways about God - and do so now, for us, in the enlarged context of Jesus Christ as emerging from the history of this community and its interaction with God.
That's the level on which we should expect to "get something out of" the OT. From its context in our community.
If we expect to "get something out of" the OT "as a book" - well, it seems to me that we can get all sorts of stuff, historical, ethnological, etc. etc. But that's not where the reeligious meaning of the OT confronts us.
Am I splitting apart the religious and the literary/scholarly meanings of the OT? I suppose I am. But then, I belong to a tradition - mainstrem Protestant - that expilicitly brings the two back together by the application of scholarship to enable the community to attend more faithfully to what the different voices of Scripture (inc. the OT) are saying, in their particularity and in the many contexts that apply to them - so that these voices confront us. (That's how it's not a matter of "reading what we like into them".)
This is what my community does to retrieve the religuious meaning of Scripture, and it's quite different to what other traditions do.
But essentially, for me, like the NT, the OT articulates its religious meaning for me in the context of the community - even when I'm reading it on my own.
Brief exapmle. The C of S badge is the Burning Bush. That operationalizes the experience of the Exodus community as "our" experience - initially in the seventeenth century "killing times", but also now, in postmodernity. It wasn't the Church of Scotland that God, through Moses, led through the Red Sea. Yet in a sense, it was, too. And that has implications for the present. Not least because the meaning of "Exodus" is also transformed for us by texts like Luke 9.
The religious meaning of the OT. for me, is found in its use, in a community context. And yes, that is separate, but related to and dependent on (in our tradition) its "scholarly" meaning.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Zealot en vacance
Shipmate
# 9795
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Posted
Funny, I did not look at this thread because of the 'Jack Bauer' reference. Great post by Ingo. Now to develop it a little further based on an element of Luigi's later post.
quote:
Originally posted by Luigi:
I am trying to make the Jews part of human history and prone to human failings rather than some different species to homo sapiens. Some seem to think that Homo Israelius aren't really humans at all ..
Is there ever any suggestion in the OT that on being born into this world any particular human is not part of humanity, and thus not part of human history? Didn't think so. And what was foreshadowed in the OT, is fulfilled in Christ, so that all may enter into the community of 'Homo Israelius' by dying to this world, and being born into a new order. Why else do christians say week by week 'We are the body of Christ'? Still in the world, but not of the world any longer, still sinning (just as OT Israel did), but enabled to be right with God (just as OT Israel was).
Here's the marvellous thing. A world of beings that have rejected God, but whom He still loves. His chosen method to begin the reclamation of that world for love is to find a friend, Abraham. Not the coup de main possible for the one true God, but by friendship.
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He said, "Love one another".
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
IngoB: quote:
Wow. I just spend 20 minutes of my life acquiring sophisticated excuses why I can just pick the nice bits from the OT and ignore the nasty stuff. To that I say: bunk.
Fatuous, distorting rhetoric.
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First, revelation
Enormous begged question. What is revelation?
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does ramp up in complexity and sophistication with the cultural progress of the people. But that's with regards to what? It's with regards to human culture. Abraham has not been bested in his faith in God, just because people got a lot less primitive.
So what's the correlation between "revelation" and Abraham's faith?
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At basically the earliest time when people had a chance of understanding, Jesus steps in and tells us how the human side of life should be handled.
So - let's get this straight. People before the first century AD had no idea how to be human?
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But that's His second commandment, "love thy neighbour". The first commandment of Jesus - "love God" - was understood from the beginning.
Eh? Beginning of what?
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And so Israel walked righteously - and stumbled one hell of a lot
One is inclined to invite you to make your mind up.
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- according to the first commandment "Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One...",
That's actually the Shema. There's probably been a Kerygmania thread on which is the first commandment. Of course you may be thinking of the Gospels, where the question is raised as to which is the greatest commandment. You're actually dealing here with a reductionist summary of the obligations imposed by the Law, not the Law itself. To reduce the whole body of Israelite Law to these two propositions, and then do amateur anthropology on them, is an imbecilic procedure. And, by the way, it reduces a profound religious insight to a soundbite.
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whereas the second commandment was in the works because human culture has to reach a certain point to achieve that one.
I have no idea what that means.
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So the OT is a beautiful corrective to the good-works-righteousness that for strange reasons is particularly popular among Protestants:
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
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No, it's the Shema first, and then there's a second commandment like it that concerns humans (since humans are like God).
Ah, the old imago Dei.
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And the OT is also a revealing record of the cultural progress that allowed Jesus to finally say what had to be said about human relations.
SO what do we have here? Jesus the great teacher? Didn't have you pegged as a hyperliberal Prot, IngoB.
Although what follows sounds rather hyperCalvinist. Or -since I don't want to be gratuitously offensive, hyperAugustinian.
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Second, God does not have an equity comission watching His every move. As far as we can tell, His usual modus operandi is to pick and choose. And worse, His choices are manifestly "unfair" according to human standards.
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Oh, hang on...
The "chosen people" were hardly the guys I would have put my money on. If God had asked me, I probably would have opted for some Chinese tribe. And then, picking Jesus of Nazareth, what ever was He thinking? He could have just become the Roman Emperor or at least some well-educated Greek philosopher.
It's the Pocket St. Paul that's the hermeneutic key here...
And now - it's Bismarck:
. quote:
And let's face it, picking that Jesus character didn't exactly lead to less slaughter till Christendom was finally established, did it now? It just reversed sides (for a while), with the quintessential Christian being a martyr. As far as I can tell God picks whoever He pleases and if a few of His children are meeting Him rather more quickly than expected as a consequence He seems not overly worried
And maybe C S Lewis...
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So second-guessing God isn't magically possible by looking back in history. We may understand a bit more of God's plan simply because we see a bit more. But that's not to say that we "get" God just because we "get" history. We "get" that the Israelites are bronze age barbarians, but we don't "get" why God would want to have anything to do with them. So what?
And now a veritable smorgasbord of pat interpretations. Picking the influences here could be a parlour game. If a bit ![[Snore]](graemlins/snore.gif)
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Third, if the Israelites had all been pacifist do-gooders, then they would have been exterminated long before NT times. It was kill or be killed, and God did want these people to survive and bring forth Jesus, so practically speaking, they had to kill. They were God's tribe. However, that cannot be used as excuse now for gunning down your neighbour or nuking Iran. Why? Because God has now made His covenant with all humanity in Jesus and through Jesus has told us how we are to deal with each other. Actually the latter follows from the former, we are now all "God's tribe" and already Israel knew that you had to treat your own well.
And finally - Ta -DAAAA!!!!
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So history is revealed as an ever expanding covenant of God which finally brings all of humanity into "God's tribe".
Yes indeed. Except not, sadly, by the OT. Rather by whatever denominational mangle you choose to run it through, or whatever pik'n mix compendium of interpretation bits you care to assemble into a hermeneutic.
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Does that mean that before all those not in "God's tribe" where second-rate humans? Not in the sense that they won't make it to heaven or God doesn't love them as much or whatever.
I have no comment to make on this. I just wanted to include it in my citation because there seems something specially cruel in the fate of all those who were eradicated in the genocides of Joshua also get to be patronized, in heaven, by a post like this.
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But they were not the ones who were chosen to bring about the ultimate "Jesus tribe". That's fact. And if they happened to stand in Israel's way (at least while Israel was being faithful for once) then they may well have met their maker quickly.
So with God, the ends justify the means. Ah no! Silly me. With God, there is no need or possibility of justifying him. Except that this argument is clearly a theodicy, an attempt to justify God in terms of the total outcome of creation. Except that we said above... ![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif)
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Fourth, people are amazingly good at hearing what they want to hear. I assume God has encountered that phenomenon rather often, and I doubt that the ancient Israelites were an exception. So how much of the recorded will of God is accurately what God actually said is not clear to me.
"Recorded" how? Did Reuters write the OT? I was going to list some of the other begged questions in this paragraph, but life's too short.
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Is it however impossible that God said anything like "Kill everybody in that city."? I don't think so. Given ancient customs of revenging blood, killing every human being of an enemy tribe may on occasion be the only way of guaranteeing survival.
So that's all right then. The urge to theodicy is never terribly far away, eh no, IngoB? quote:
In the end it remains guesswork how much of the OT God's commands is human extrapolation. But God isn't a sweet old man who couldn't hurt a fly. Look at the world, it's full of suffering, pain and death. Where's God now? Why doesn't all this crap just stop and we live happily ever after?
No - no theodicy after all. And cheek of us for asking for one!
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So the OT brings the true awfulness of theodicy into a clear focus for us because it's always easier to project moral outrage at a distance. That, too, is God.
Alas no, IngoB. It's this post that clarifies the awfulness of this paricular theodicy. Which, whenever it faces hard questions says "God is God and needs no justifying" only to slide straight back into justifying God when it thinks we've stopped noticing.
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A God who at least allows genocide to happen, perhaps even commands it, if that suits Him. And that God is the Good and the Just and the Merciful. Can you grap that?
One of the joys of being a native Welsh speaker is that sometimes you spot little things like the word "grap" - which is a mutated form of the word "crap". But it's worse than that. This is evil redefined as good, this is an historical positivism reading off from the beaten-up world to the thug in the sky who did it.
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Or is it perhaps getting a bit too ineffable?
I forbear to comment in effs. quote:
Feeling slightly stretched? But note how the killing and surpressing slowly changes to being killed and surpressed, until it hits a tipping point in Jesus. What is the NT martyr if not an inverted OT warrior?
Are you really asking this question? No. It's rhetorical, of course. It's also obscene.
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So perhaps the lesson of the OT genocides is to set us a question: are we ready to suffer and die for God, and perhaps one day not as individuals, but as a nation or even as the world? We are still the chosen people, but perhaps we would actually rather be chosen back in the bronze age when that meant others would bite the dust?
There is something profoundly wrong with the moral balance of this whole paragraph - and I'd say with this whole point of view.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Pyx_e
Quixotic Tilter
# 57
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Posted
Hosting
IngoB, Luigi & Psyduck
OK enough. The tone of this thread is taking a severe down turn. It will stop now or I will close the thread.
I have to read all this stuff and it is getting incompressible, personal and so up itself as to be risible.
This may be the end of this thread anyway, maybe it can get back on track maybe it can’t but from now on, make one point at a time and deal with all the discussion that arises. Do not attempt anymore shotgun scatter opinions. Do not attempt anymore phrases only you know the meaning off. Be careful that your personal feelings do not leak into you posting. Robust debate, yes. Rudeness, take it to Hell.
Pyx_e, Kerygmania Host.
Hosting
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It is better to be Kind than right.
Posts: 9778 | From: The Dark Tower | Registered: May 2001
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Niënna
Ship's Lotus Blossom
# 4652
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Posted
RuthW, ![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif) . What a great topic! I just read your OP and read through all the great posts this thread. What a fascinating question and perspectives you have proposed! I haven't read Deuteronomical histories (or Judges for that matter) for a couple of years now because it is my least favorite part of the whole bible. I mean its really hard not to come away with the idea that the God of the crazy rules (especially the ones about women) and genocide is not a bastard.
The best way I have dealt with the tension of God's character and goodness ... and how to spiritually grow from the OT accounts... is similar to what you and others have proposed -- namely, to see it terms of spiritual growth.
It is way, way helpful to look at the OT through the eyes of "Jack-Bauer-is-a-hero." For example, I think perhaps we all to come to God with a past and with baggage. I see the story of the Israelites - as story of people who were enslaved and so they had the mentality of slaves. I think we as Christians are like that, too. I mean I don't think anyone is a born a Christian. It's kind of like God freed them from Egypt but the Hebrews still carried old ways of thinking that prevented them from really being free. At first, they didn't even want to go into the promise land that God had brought them too (again, this from the perspective that Jack Bauer is the "hero") because they had no confidence in themselves or in God, either...
So, I guess perhaps now I can go through the Deuteronical histories and Judges, perhaps, looking at as God wanted them to get rid of old ideas, he wanted to completely cleanse them of bad influences, and have them learn a whole new way...and that's very helpful...thanks, Ruth.
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[Nino points a gun at Chiki]
Nino: Now... tell me. Who started the war?
Chiki: [long pause] We did.
~No Man's Land
Posts: 2298 | From: Purgatory | Registered: Jun 2003
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universalist
Shipmate
# 10318
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Posted
The title “God” in the Bible is just that—a title. It can refer to the “God” as Christians know Him/Her, as expressed fully in Jesus. Additionally, “God, or “The Lord” can refer to the devil, as St. Paul used the term occasionally. Referring to the devil, Paul once called him, “the god of this present, evil world.”
Now our job is manageable, knowing that there are two beings referred to as “God” in the Bible. Now, when I read about “God” commanding Israel to engage in ethnic cleansing against its neighbors, I no longer need to force-fit this distorted image of “God” into the referent “Jesus” and all I know about Him. When I view “God” as Jesus, I see quite another God than the abusive one often mentioned in the OT. Jesus forgives his enemies, and suggests that we be kind to those who hurt and persecute us. No longer does my head have to explode with such cognitive dissonance!
Insisting that the voice for “God” in the OT is always the true “God” we see in Jesus, has done much to give legitimacy to the KKK and other conservative groups. They can point with glee to the “God” who whacked Uzza for touching the ark and Ananias and Sapphira for lying to the Spirit (I’d like a dime for every time I lied to the Spirit).
Two starkly different visions of “God” are presented in the Bible. No way in heaven or earth can you have "God" both ways….
Posts: 66 | From: portland oregon | Registered: Sep 2005
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
Pyx_e, noted and sorry. See Psyduck's thread in Styx for more.
[ 09. March 2006, 22:36: Message edited by: IngoB ]
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Luigi
Shipmate
# 4031
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pyx_e:
Hosting
IngoB, Luigi & Psyduck
OK enough. The tone of this thread is taking a severe down turn. It will stop now or I will close the thread.
I have to read all this stuff and it is getting incompressible, personal and so up itself as to be risible.
This may be the end of this thread anyway, maybe it can get back on track maybe it can’t but from now on, make one point at a time and deal with all the discussion that arises. Do not attempt anymore shotgun scatter opinions. Do not attempt anymore phrases only you know the meaning off. Be careful that your personal feelings do not leak into you posting. Robust debate, yes. Rudeness, take it to Hell.
Pyx_e, Kerygmania Host.
Hosting
Apologies for my part in this. Will seek to avoid doing this again. I hope the thread isn't killed because I think there are still some really important issues that haven't really been explored yet.
Anyway Ofsted in 4 days time ![[Frown]](frown.gif) so it might be Wednesday before I post again.
Luigi
Posts: 752 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Luigi quote:
I think there are still some really important issues that haven't really been explored yet.
Anyway Ofsted in 4 days time so it might be Wednesday before I post again.
Wot wld U like 2 flag up? I think part of the problem - though a generative and fruitful part - is that I still feel that you and I (and maybe RuthW) are to some extent talking past each other. For my part, I'm not quite clear what RuthW is looking for, for example - though the "persuade me why I shouldn't be a Marcionite" point is a good one. But I'm not sure how far my point about community answered it.
Anyone?
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Autenrieth Road
Shipmate
# 10509
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Posted
I think the reason for now at least (what with RuthW being in EFM) to read the Deuteronomistic history, is precisely to understand what was believed then about God. You need to read that to appreciate the changes (or not) that happen in people's understandings of God as you get to the prophets, and then again to understand the background of the NT and the Messianic expectations at Jesus' time.
I read the Bible not so much to find out about God, but to find out what people have thought about God.
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Truth
Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Autenrieth Road: quote:
I think the reason for now at least... to read the Deuteronomistic history, is precisely to understand what was believed then about God.
Yes, absolutely, and that's very important. But I think what RuthW is asking about is why we should in any way feel bound by anything it says about God. The Qur'an says some beautiful things about God - that he is closer to you than the vein of your neck, for instance - and I can choose to accept that as illuminating and true - or not - because I'm not a muslim.
But why should these OT scriptures have a binding religious authority over me because I'm a Christian? And what would be the nature of that authority? Why can't I just dismiss them? My suppositions about community belong in here somewhere - and interestingly, you seem to presume an aspect of community in this: quote:
You need to read that to appreciate the changes (or not) that happen in people's understandings of God
Presumably, these changes are those that occur within a continuous community of religious belief. Zoroastrian records of belief, or Native American ones, wouldn't reflect changes in belief between them and us. They might reflect interesting internal developments, but they wouldn't really chart a development leading from when they were recorded to where we are now. Not unless we, in some sense, "converted", and switched faith-community or faith-tradition. Of course, we could - and many people do - assemble our own faith, or spirituality, out of bits that appeal to us in one or more of these traditions. But we wouldn't be bound by them. We would be selecting and dropping on the basis of what seemed good to us. (I'm not dissing this at all by the way.)
However, to belong to a tradition is to be bound in certain ways by its texts. (I'm understanding text here in the broadest sense.) But that can't - morally - mean assenting to everything in the tradition. Luigi is touching on something really important here when he talks about strategies of reading against the text. For him and me, a really important resource here would be Girard's understanding of the crucifixion as unmasking the sacral violence, endemic to humanity, which is specific to the OT. But it's not the only one.
Luther's, of a canon within the canon, or the traditional senses of scripture, or Freddy's Swedenborgian approach, would be others. It's a way of being bound, yet also free, in respect of the scriptures of a tradition. From a Christian perspective, the source of all such readings against the text has to be Jesus Christ himself,as the Revelation of God.
But Jesus Christ is also in this sense an interpretive principle "outside" the OT - which is what Luigi was pressing me on earlier. I think to be a Christian is to adopt Christ in this way - but the truth is that that is to run the risk of not hearing the distinctive witness either of the OT as a whole (and there is an organic unity to it, that of the community of Israel and its faith) or of the individual books. Try to reconcile Ecclesiastes with - well anything, really! It looks like a Jewish epicureanism. But it's in there, and is a jagged edge.
One of the things I treasure about my own tradition of mainstream Protestantism, is that it gave the world Biblical criticism, which does enable the silencing of dogmatic voices in order to hear what the texts might be saying. The complex playing-off of this against what the tradition says is what has formed my understanding of the authority of the OT. I see this authority as lying in those encounters I have with it that tell me truth about God. But that truth is a product of the encounter, and not of some frozen truth which lies in the text.
This is what works for me, but won't for others.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
For my part, I'm not quite clear what RuthW is looking for, for example - though the "persuade me why I shouldn't be a Marcionite" point is a good one. But I'm not sure how far my point about community answered it.
Honestly, for me it didn't answer the question because I didn't follow this bit at all:
quote:
I certainly don't believe that we can "take what we like" from the OT - rather that because our Christian community - ecclesia, church - understands itself as confronted by its Scripture - and in this sense the OT certainly is our Scripture, as well as Jewish Scripture - it understands itself as hailed by voices which speak to it in many different ways about God - and do so now, for us, in the enlarged context of Jesus Christ as emerging from the history of this community and its interaction with God.
I don't get what "the church understands itself as confronted/hailed" is meant to convey.
quote:
Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
I think the reason for now at least (what with RuthW being in EFM) to read the Deuteronomistic history, is precisely to understand what was believed then about God. You need to read that to appreciate the changes (or not) that happen in people's understandings of God as you get to the prophets, and then again to understand the background of the NT and the Messianic expectations at Jesus' time.
The OT was Jesus' Bible, so as his followers we should read it for background info -- sure, I've got no problem with that. But as I've thought about it a bit more, I think (right now) my question comes down to one of application. Perhaps this is not warranted, but I have been working under the assumption that I'm supposed to be able to apply what I read in the Bible to my life, one way or another. Every model of Bible study I've used has emphasized the importance of there being a take-away lesson, a real-life application. If reading the Bible doesn't sooner or later make me change my life at least a little bit, I tend to think I'm doing it wrong.
This is not to say that every time I crack the Bible open I expect to have a life-changing revelation. But I do expect that extended, concentrated study of the Bible will eventually yield something of value to my life.
It's this assumption that has led me to argue against my original Israel-as-Jack-Bauer idea from the very start. I still like that idea insofar as it's helpful for understanding the point of view. But that, like the proposition that we read the OT for background, makes Bible study all about understanding -- and I think it should be more than that. So when I look at the Deuteronomist history and ask myself what I might apply to my life from a theology that says "if we are faithful to our God he will help us kick your sorry ass," I worry.
If the Deuteronomist history is all just background material, then fine -- but that's pretty much Marcionism.
quote:
Originally posted by Autenreith Road:
I read the Bible not so much to find out about God, but to find out what people have thought about God.
All of the Bible? NT included?
I have to say, I find this really, really hard to understand. Yes, the Bible tells us what those people thought about God -- but if it doesn't also tell us something about God is it because they were all wrong? And why should we care what those people thought about God? Why read what they wrote and not also read what the Greeks thought about God? The Jewish background is certainly vital, but the Greeks are also our religious forebears.
Although it occurs to me that if one reads the entire Bible as things people have thought about God, that's grounds for opening up the Biblical canon to include a whole lot of other things, which I must say I think would be very cool. Not sure how I feel about the other possible effects of no longer privileging holy scripture, though.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
RuthW: quote:
I don't get what "the church understands itself as confronted/hailed" is meant to convey.
I mean that in a sense the OT speaks to the church as an authority over against the church. We can't change it or omit bits. It's all just there. And that's how we meet it - as a voice - or a collection of voices - from outside. This is a very Protestant way of looking at it, I know. Catholic and Orthodox people will want to say that the Church validates Scripture by recognizing it as such. In a way the difference isn't that great, because the Protestant take is that the church recognizes Scripture by validating it. (Nobody in the early Church, when the concept of Christian scripture was beginning to gel, thought of writing stuff to supplement it and getting that, too, validated as part of the Canon. It was a process of recognizing already extant and authoritative scriptures as Holy Scripture for the Church.)
So my point is that to be a (mainstream) Christian is to belong to a church community, and that means being stuck with the Scriptures that the Church has recognized that she herself is stuck with.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Sorry to double post.
No, really, I am. ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
I was re-reading the OP, and this jumped out at me whereit hadn't before. quote:
But in the context of the narrative, I accept that he is the hero of the piece, that he has the country's best interests at heart, and that he is doing the Right Thing, because the show just doesn't work for me if I don't buy into that.
It suddenly dawned on me that I don't seem to watch shows in this way. I think I could watch the programme and enjoy it just as much without buying into the moral assumptions that the hero makes. It confronts me with a situation that makes me think. But the "buying in" thing I don't feel I have to do - and although I've never seen "24" - sorry - and although I can't think of any other examples at the moment, I don't think I invariably make moral identifications like this, or feel any particular need to. Oh, granted, there will be times when I do. But these sorts of stories seem to work for me even when I deplore some of the choices that the heroes make - and even when I can admire and identify with, the heroes to a great extent.
I think that that amounts to a stance of "reading against the text".
Interestingly, in the instance you quote from 24, Ruth, it makes me very uneasy because it sets up a conflict between what I very strongly believe I should do, were I Jack Bauer, and what I fear I might do, put in his situation.
Whereas if I were Joshua, in Joshua chapter 10, I'd probably put my stick down and give the Amalekites a break when I thought they'd had enough. But that's the point. Joshua didn't do that. And (whatever happened to the sun!) we have a tradition which reports and endorses as God's will a battle of annihilation. One of the things that I encounter when I read that text, and realize that I'm "stuck with it as a Christian because it's in the Bible", is a sense of implication and guilt. It's not a nice story and it's not What Jesus Would Do. But it's there. And I have to come to terms with it. I've never done no genocide, and I've not wasted nobody. But I lost my temper today (let the reader understand) and I'm stuck with that too. In this sense, the OT is a mirror held up to me. A bit like 24. If it were my country, my community, my family, I have no doubt I could gouge somebody's eyes out. I do have grave doubts that I might be able not to.
I'm not called upon to swallow it wholesale - but I can't evade it either. It isn't just a primitive deposit. The fact that I can't square it with the centre of my faith, in Christ, but can't get rid of it, is a religiously healthy thing if I can keep the tension. If I lose the tension, and collapse it all into "what the Bible teaches", then I am stuck with Very Bad Religion.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
I mean that in a sense the OT speaks to the church as an authority over against the church.
"Over against" is another expression I've never understood. How is it different from "over"?
quote:
So my point is that to be a (mainstream) Christian is to belong to a church community, and that means being stuck with the Scriptures that the Church has recognized that she herself is stuck with.
This really does sound like an argument from tradition to me. Which is okay. But as an Anglican, I get to apply reason as well, which might change things a bit.
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
And (whatever happened to the sun!) we have a tradition which reports and endorses as God's will a battle of annihilation. One of the things that I encounter when I read that text, and realize that I'm "stuck with it as a Christian because it's in the Bible", is a sense of implication and guilt. It's not a nice story and it's not What Jesus Would Do. But it's there. And I have to come to terms with it. I've never done no genocide, and I've not wasted nobody. But I lost my temper today (let the reader understand) and I'm stuck with that too. In this sense, the OT is a mirror held up to me. A bit like 24. If it were my country, my community, my family, I have no doubt I could gouge somebody's eyes out. I do have grave doubts that I might be able not to.
The Bible hands us a tradition which endorses annihilation as God's will, but you don't endorse as God's will having lost your temper today. On what grounds do you reject that tradition when you judge your own actions?
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
RuthW quote:
"Over against" is another expression I've never understood. How is it different from "over"?
Well, over is what a roof is with respect to me. "Over against" is something that's there, and inescapable, opposite me and confronting and challenging me. Like a fact I'd rather deny. Or like my son, who is sitting here waiting to use the PC... quote:
The Bible hands us a tradition which endorses annihilation as God's will, but you don't endorse as God's will having lost your temper today. On what grounds do you reject that tradition when you judge your own actions?
I'd actually say that the Bible consists of many voices, some of which endorse annihilation and present it as God's will, and others which enable me to "read against the text" and deny that that is ever God's will. People get angry, sometimes murderously so, and this truth confronts me in the tradition as something dark, ambiguous and undeniable about human beings. But for me the Bible is not the final authority. It is only binding on me insofar as it speaks Christ.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW
Every model of Bible study I've used has emphasized the importance of there being a take-away lesson, a real-life application. If reading the Bible doesn't sooner or later make me change my life at least a little bit, I tend to think I'm doing it wrong.
Something C. S. Lewis said is relevant here. He was talking about the psalm verse that speaks of smashing the heads of Babylonian babies against a rock. Obviously this is not at all in keeping with the Christian message. He said that Christians should use this to meditate on the kind of fury people feel when they are unjustly treated. It provides a very good reason why we should be just.
I have not tried to apply this to Joshua, so I don't know whether it can be done. If it can, it should be.
There is another thead discussing passages of this type.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Autenrieth Road
Shipmate
# 10509
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Posted
(Psyduck, RuthW, if I've dropped a point you were probing me on, feel free to ask again. I tried a point-by-point but couldn't do it; so here's trying to think about what you say.)
Why did Marcionism not become orthodoxy? (I don't know, but I'm wondering if those reasons could provide a persuasive answer to the question of "why read the Deuteronomistic History".)
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Every model of Bible study I've used has emphasized the importance of there being a take-away lesson, a real-life application. If reading the Bible doesn't sooner or later make me change my life at least a little bit, I tend to think I'm doing it wrong.
I'm all of a sudden thinking one really could apply this style of reading/study to just about everything.
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
quote:
Originally posted by Autenreith Road:
I read the Bible not so much to find out about God, but to find out what people have thought about God.
All of the Bible? NT included?
Honestly, me, right now? Yes.
quote:
I have to say, I find this really, really hard to understand. Yes, the Bible tells us what those people thought about God -- but if it doesn't also tell us something about God is it because they were all wrong? And why should we care what those people thought about God? Why read what they wrote and not also read what the Greeks thought about God? The Jewish background is certainly vital, but the Greeks are also our religious forebears.
Sounds like a good idea to me.
I'm not so sure we really do learn about God from the Bible. There are bits and pieces that we take as fundamental, and then lots of study and learning in order to explain the confusing bits, and interpretation to square the contradictory bits.
quote:
Although it occurs to me that if one reads the entire Bible as things people have thought about God, that's grounds for opening up the Biblical canon to include a whole lot of other things, which I must say I think would be very cool. Not sure how I feel about the other possible effects of no longer privileging holy scripture, though.
Sounds good to me.
In some ways I'm conservative, and as an institution I'd prefer my church to carry on as it has been. Who am I to say to change it? Especially when my faith is so very unorthodox, and I'm certainly no theologian to be figuring out what's what for the organization.
I guess this is part of the community aspect Psyduck brings up. For 1700 years Christianity has read the whole Bible, so I'll try to read it too.
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Truth
Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
Why did Marcionism not become orthodoxy?
For one, this speaks strongly against it in the New Testament:
quote:
2 Timothy 3:14-17 (RSV):
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
It says all scripture is worthy to instruct us for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. And at the time of writing that was clearly referring to the OT. Of course, Marcion did not include 2 Timothy in his canon of epistles...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Moo: quote:
Something C. S. Lewis said is relevant here. He was talking about the psalm verse that speaks of smashing the heads of Babylonian babies against a rock. Obviously this is not at all in keeping with the Christian message. He said that Christians should use this to meditate on the kind of fury people feel when they are unjustly treated. It provides a very good reason why we should be just.
This is pretty close to what I think Luigi means by reading against the text - certainly what I mean by it. But what Lewis doesn't seem to provide is a basis for doing so. As an early twentieth century Anglican, he can just assume that smashing babies' heads against rocks is Just Not Done. The whole culture of Church and Empire is against it, and this is a culture deeply imbued with Judaeo-Christian values, and maybe above all the doctrine of Porgress (of which, I know, Lewis is very critical, but we are all circumscribed by the times we live in, and many of the cultural effects of the doctrine of Progress were just part of the background up to the ned of the fifties) so it doesn't seriously need to be asked why we don't bash our enemies' babies to death and feel that it's legitimate.
Nowadays, faced with a literalism that has not just no doctrine of Progress (not necessarily a bad thing) but also no sense of history and no conception of expertise, there is for many people nothing to stop the pushing of "if it's in the Bible, it must be good/true/OK". Which means that when any of us now pick up the Bible, we have to ask "Why is it that I don't have to take with literal seriousness everything that's in here?"
And this is a question that torments highly-educated, highly-intelligent people (as witness the OP) - not in the form of "It's in the Bible, so it must be true..." but "It's in the Bible - how can I not see it as vitiating the whole Bible?" or just "It's a bit of the Bible, it morally repels me - how can I possibly read round it with any integrity?"
And that's what I don't get from Lewis. I don't think he needed it. I still can't quite believe that we do. But we do. It's another aspect of the postmodern moment. One of the shattering things about the OT is that it's in places like a loudspeaker plugged into the religious id - the unconscous, which knows no morality, and is there in all of us, under all the structures we have in place to keep it down.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
Psyduck, are you sure that the idea that bashing babies' heads is wrong is a result of the idea of Progress?
Jesus didn't talk about Progress, but I'm very sure he didn't approve of bashing babies' heads.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Moo quote:
Psyduck, are you sure that the idea that bashing babies' heads is wrong is a result of the idea of Progress?
Jesus didn't talk about Progress, but I'm very sure he didn't approve of bashing babies' heads.
No, what I meant was that the "The Idea of Progress" (the title of J B Bury's classic) is connected very much with Western modernity, and the "Whig view of history". This would seem to imply that we outgrow - inevitably - the idea that it's acceptable to bash in babies' heads as we cease to be "barbaric". It's what undergirded much of the old-fashioned liberal theology, which collapsed in 1919 after the WWI and Barth's commentary on Romans. There were plenty of people in antiquity who didn't approve of bashing babies' heads. But it wasn't on the basis of a doctrine of progress. It would be on the basis of sheer compassion (which as Schopenhauer teaches us is irrational - it's part of the prejudice associated with the doctrine of Progress that all irrational stuff is bad, and only rational stuff is good) or the developed teachings of the various philosophical schools. Or - yes - on a religious basis. The point about Ps 139 isn't that it's in the Bible, but that something so shocking and obscene should be in the Bible.
I think another aspect of the OP is that we as a society find it difficult to deal confidently with the shocking and the obscene. We either excise reference to it (it doesn't feature in Boney M's version of "By the waters of Babylon" if I remember!) or we uncritically endorse it. There is no agreed framework within which we can discuss it. Which is in a sense the obverse of C S Lewis's situation, only half a century ago, in which the agreed framework was so strong - the idea of bashing babies' heads was so repugnant - that he didn't feel he had to justify his reading of the Psalm which understood it as an obscenity, and the psalm as teaching us a valuable lesson about what human beings do when the "civilized" controls slip. Lewis had an agreed framework - the "Judaeo-Christian ethic" - to refer to. We don't. I submit, subject to criticism, that that's why RuthW may feel the obscenity of some Biblical passages so acutely - not, of course, because she has no "ethic", but because the ethic she cultivates is not one that can be taken for granted as shared by "progressive" Western society any more. And the absence of that taken-for-granted shared ethic - let me use the word, that "metanarrative" - is also why the barmy literalist readings that find endorsement for the "right" genocides in the Bible, which horrify the rest of us, and begin to discredit the Bible in our eyes, also abound. RuthW: quote:
Every model of Bible study I've used has emphasized the importance of there being a take-away lesson, a real-life application. If reading the Bible doesn't sooner or later make me change my life at least a little bit, I tend to think I'm doing it wrong.
Surely there must be an alternative to this?
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
I wonder if the felt obscenity is even more acute than that. Not just that there is no longer a given, Western ethical standard (which I think was an important assumption of most of Lewis' writing) - but because of a feeling that the bible contains a great deal which is beneath current standards.
I certainly feel the obscenity of such passages more keenly because I know how vulnerable it makes my faith to the glare of intellectual honesty.
There comes a stage where one has to read round, apologise for, re-interpret and tiptoe around so much that one wonders whether the whole stinking morass should be abandoned as a bad job.
Perhaps it is a stinking morass because that is what the time was like, and that was how people were then. Life was as nasty, brutish and short. And individuals who were nastier and brutisher tending to find life less short.
I think that is reflected in the history we read. And we seem to read that God was involved despite the nastiness, brutishness.... the genocidal-war-ciminalness of the people who seemed to be chosen ones of the moment.
With David we get lots of insight into the relationship between man and God that we don't get with many other characters - a man who had great depth of feeling for God - and didn't just write violent psalms, was involved in - and perpetrated awful acts of violence. Apparently under God's blessing, and through which God appeared to promote his welfare. All perfectly in line with the ethics of the time.
But then God denied him the right to build the temple - and I think that would clearly have made little sense according to the ethics of the time.
I'm just wondering about an idea which has God involved in the appalling brutality of human life - perhaps not approving of it all, but nevertheless being involved in human history - and just occasional glimpses of his disapproval of it. Although I can squeeze that out of David's story, it's seldom obtainable elsewhere - but perhaps that is just how it was. The divine and the genocidal and nasty human record.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
mdijon: quote:
Perhaps it is a stinking morass because that is what the time was like, and that was how people were then. Life was as nasty, brutish and short. And individuals who were nastier and brutisher tending to find life less short.
Like the twist on Hobbes!
But my main beef with a developmental approach to the horrors of the OT is that it presumes that we've somehow got these things out of our societal and psychological systems. I don't think we have. I think that the nature of the restraints has changed - but I also believe that it's in the process of changing again, and that aggressive fundamentalisms, and horrible ethnic-based phenomena, are the "return of the repressed", which we are facing blindly because of our refusal to acknowledge them.
These people will always have the genocides in their Holy Books. And they will always read that as legitimation. I really do believe that if we excise those bits from our Bibles, we're refusing to face them in ourselves. Which makes us so much the more defenceless and compromised in the face of them. I've been thinking about this a lot since this thread started. I think maybe, in the end, "reading against the text" means standing up to God. Abraham did it, in Genesis 18. `Job did it, in the sense that he continued to maintain his own righteousness, and innocence. And when they did so, things happened.
Doesn't that make it at least plausible that we have a right, reading the story of Saul - to my mind co- most-distressing story in the Deuteronomistic History - to hold that it was Samuel that Saul really fell out with, not God? Do we really have to buy the spin, to receive the Scripture?
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
I really do believe that if we excise those bits from our Bibles, we're refusing to face them in ourselves. Which makes us so much the more defenceless and compromised in the face of them.
More than that, face to face with a God who is with those people, and prepared to work through people with that kind of blood on their hands. A God who then, we hope, continues to want to be involved with us - representatives as we are of the nastiest species ever to walk the earth.
I'm not quite claiming a developmental approach - except so far as we frown on genocide, and the writers of Judges clearly didn't - more an approach were God is with humanity at its nastiest. Although the international ethical situation has evolved slightly with regard to genocide, I would still portion horrific crimes against humanity to the West. Sanitized in a way, but I agree - I'm not sure humanity has changed.
Funny, I don't feel quite so bad about Saul's rejection. (Although I do feel much worse about the kind of things David got up to).
Perhaps my morality isn't as evolved as I like to think.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
mdijon: quote:
Perhaps my morality isn't as evolved as I like to think.
Whose is?
For me, the Saul story is particularly abhorrent because (a) he is in soapy bubble with God for forswearing a "genocide" (italicized to try to prevent leeching-in of twenty-first century mindset - impossible, I know,a nd part of the point) (b) the whole incident shows Samuel as a boundaryless fanatic (it takes real effort not to assimilate him not certain contemporary paradigms) and (c) the "evil spirit" that falls on Saul is clearly soemthing we'd recognize as a mental illness. Indeed, there are signs in the text (David's twanging cheering him up) that aspects of illness (without the concept we have) were recognized alongside the aspects of curse and doom.
I haven't preached on Saul for years. I can't remember what I said then, and I don't know hat I'll say when it comes up in the lectionary. (From where certain absences are striking, doncha' think?)
I wonder if perhaps one way to advance this thread might be for people to post problematic stories from the Deuteronomistic History, maybe with indications of difficulties and/or sketched resolutions. But I wouldn't want to derail th ethread. What do others think?
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
Well perhaps we'll start with this one then.
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
(a) he is in soapy bubble with God for forswearing a "genocide"
The details perhaps evade me at the moment - but I thought it was to do with being an arrogant twasock that he got into the soapy bubble...
I'm also not convinced about the mental illness theory - apart from perhaps depression?
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
I Sam 15: He spares Agag the king, and also fails to destroy the good cattle etc. and lets the Kenites who were allied to the Amalekites. It's fairly obvious that the rationale here is that of the herem or solemn ban - the reason that Achan was outed and killed after the debacle at Ai - he'd kept some good stuff from Jericho for himself whereas it was all to be destroyed as dedicated to God.
So it wasn't that Saul was being humane. But it certainly points up the awfulness of the institution of the herem.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
I thought the impatient sacrifice offering and tearing of Samuel's robe was the defining moment?
(Not denying what you've just written)
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Well, in a work (the DH) which gives four different procedures for selecting Saul as king, and three different ones for David, the occasion for Saul's firing is probably "heavily overdetermined..." ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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noelper
Shipmate
# 9961
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Posted
Is it a red herring to mention the extremes of desperate measures arising from unrequited and rejected Love?
When the rejected counters abuse and torment, with the only language the abuser can comprehend.
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Nil, nada, rien
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
....the occasion for Saul's firing is probably "heavily overdetermined..."
I do get the feeling he had it coming, though.
And I do get the impression that anyone with judgement would have seen that David was a basically decent bloke (aside from the odd war crime here and there) and Saul was an arrogant tosser.
And it's a great story: Maybe I've been taken in too much by the story line. We seem to be coming full circle to Jack Bauer again.
Noelper, are you suggesting God was responding to unrequited love? I'm going to struggle with that view, I think....
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Skinhead
Shipmate
# 10658
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Posted
RuthW, am I right in summing up your problem as a conflict between:
a) Our contemporary assessment of the Deuteronomist's history is that God orders bad things like genocide
and
b) You still want to hang onto the traditional Church idea that the Book of Joshua is part of the Bible, which is Holy Scripture, which is inspired and profitable for training in righteousness etc.
Now, I used to be a literalist, and one of the things that forced me to take a more fuzzy view of life and Scripture, was a consideration of issues such as this.
If you accept that maybe the Bible is comparable to Newtonian physics (i.e. is sometimes flawed, e.g. with regard to relativity), and that this includes Paul's statement about the OT, then it gets a whole lot easier to read Joshua (if you want to) and retain your integrity.
So now,
(a) becomes: "Joshua was a skilful politician and told the Israelites what they wanted to hear - that God's plans just happened to coincide with his plans for domination of Palestine, and God would help them to kick ass."
(b) becomes: "The Bible is a great book but hey, who wants to get too tied down with details when even the fundamentalists have a selective blindness about things like women wearing hats or speaking in church - and that's just the New Testament!"
And - Bingo! no contradiction. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) Whether or not you can stay on the course is another matter, but reconciling your views with those of the local church hierarchy is on a different plane.
So, what can you get out of reading Joshua? Well, that politicians haven't changed, for starters!
I should like to apologize in advance to people who take the Bible more literally. Been there, done that (for 25 years), got the scars. I appreciate where you're coming from, but I've tried long enough to be able to say, with a reasonable degree of certainty, that it didn't work for me. Not that I didn't suspend my critical faculties (i.e. have faith), pray, get baptised, get filled with the Spirit, speak in tongues, try almost all Protestant denominations, etc etc. ![[brick wall]](graemlins/brick_wall.gif) I don't have a problem with God, just with the way that God's disciples represent God.
I should also like to stress that this post is deliberately in a more lighthearted, broad-brush style, and should in no way be interpreted as belittling the preceeding lengthy and profound (I mean that) posts.
By the way, in the context of kicking ass, the concept of sacral violence takes on a whole new meaning .
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noelper
Shipmate
# 9961
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Posted
quote:
Noelper, are you suggesting God was responding to unrequited love?
I am mdijon; since I cannot conceive a more desperate act than the crucifixion. It also ties in with your earlier point that God is with us in our brutality.
quote:
I'm just wondering about an idea which has God involved in the appalling brutality of human life - perhaps not approving of it all, but nevertheless being involved in human history - and just occasional glimpses of his disapproval of it.
On this reading, the God Who destroyed all the lickle baby animals in the Flood had been very grievously wounded indeed.
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Nil, nada, rien
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
I see unrequited love as a good explanation for the crucifixtion... it's just with regard to genocide that I'm struggling....
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Skinhead: Welcome aboard. quote:
don't have a problem with God, just with the way that God's disciples represent God.
Welcome to my world!
quote:
By the way, in the context of kicking ass, the concept of sacral violence takes on a whole new meaning
Are we talking Balaam's ass here?
quote:
one of the things that forced me to take a more fuzzy view of life and Scripture
Actually, I think this thread - and your post, as I read it - is about the difficulties but necessity of taking non-fuzzy views of life and Scripture, holding them together, and noting the huge difficulties these throw up. As you suggest, politicians have a real knack for fuzzification. Especially ecclesiastical politicians who want us all to have nice agreed reading-strategies.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Skinhead
Shipmate
# 10658
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Posted
Thanks, Psyduck.
quote:
Actually, I think this thread - and your post, as I read it - is about the difficulties but necessity of taking non-fuzzy views of life and Scripture, holding them together, and noting the huge difficulties these throw up.
I like that angle.
quote:
As you suggest, politicians have a real knack for fuzzification. Especially ecclesiastical politicians who want us all to have nice agreed reading-strategies.
Do they also want you to sign up to the agreed reading-strategies so that they can progress the issue and achieve roll-out before they breach the deadline?
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noelper
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# 9961
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Posted
quote:
it's just with regard to genocide that I'm struggling....
Well, it's the language of common currency which humans speak consistently, and umm... understand. So much so that we repeat ourselves throughout the history of the world.
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Nil, nada, rien
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Niënna
Ship's Lotus Blossom
# 4652
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
The Bible hands us a tradition which endorses annihilation as God's will, but you don't endorse as God's will having lost your temper today. On what grounds do you reject that tradition when you judge your own actions?
I dunno if God's will is annihilation. I've always found comfort in this transaction:
quote:
Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, "Are you for us or for our enemies?"
"Neither," he replied, "but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come." Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, "What message does my Lord have for his servant?"
The commander of the LORD's army replied, "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy." And Joshua did so
(Joshua 5:13-15, NIV)
This is very interesting.
Also, I find King David not being able to build the Temple of God based on the issue that his hands spilt so much blood - also indicative that God is not okay with killing.
All I'm trying to say is that I think it is still possible to sift through and see God's desire for peace and grace and his "neutrality" towards different peoples (i.e. that he is really not on one side or the other).
Weren't the pharisees and scribes accused of not understanding God's perfect and pleasing will? Didn't Nicodemus similarly possess confusion about it?
I'm currently sifting through "A Popular Survey of the Old Testment" right now (inspired by this thread) and the author (Norman Geisler) claims that just as the eunuch didn't fully understand the Hebrew scriptures, so too it might be helpful or revealatory to look at it with eyes that are "christocentric" ... I'm not quite sure how to do that myself though...
[ 13. March 2006, 01:02: Message edited by: Joyfulsoul ]
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[Nino points a gun at Chiki]
Nino: Now... tell me. Who started the war?
Chiki: [long pause] We did.
~No Man's Land
Posts: 2298 | From: Purgatory | Registered: Jun 2003
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by noelper:
quote:
it's just with regard to genocide that I'm struggling....
Well, it's the language of common currency which humans speak consistently, and umm... understand. So much so that we repeat ourselves throughout the history of the world.
You might have to unpack this for me... Are you saying that God inspired genocide among us so as to wake us up to his unrequired love? Or to deliver a message?
Joyfulsoul, I cling on to that detail as well. Perhaps because it stands out, perhaps as a mark of how desperate we are to make sense of it all.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Joyfulsoul: quote:
I'm currently sifting through "A Popular Survey of the Old Testment" right now (inspired by this thread) and the author (Norman Geisler) claims that just as the eunuch didn't fully understand the Hebrew scriptures, so too it might be helpful or revealatory to look at it with eyes that are "christocentric" ...
With you there. But in a sense, that's the least problematic part of it for me. That God should reveal himself in Christ as the God who is Love, drawing together and completely transforming all that is in any degree revelatory of him in the OT is something I have no problems with. My problem is that if you do that, you are reading the OT in the light of an authority beyond and outside itself.
Yes, it's easy to see the OT as "Pointing towards Christ" - but it was also both saying something to, and reflecting something about, the sense of God in the community out of which it emerged. (Unless, of course, we're happy with the idea that is current in some circles that the prophets wandered around speaking stuff that was gibberish to their contemporaries, and couldn't but be gibberish, because it wasn't going to mean anything for another 600 years...)
SO we're stuck with an OT which contains some profoundly ethical/theological stuff (said prophets) together with some really nasty and exclusivist thinking, understandable in itself, and probably forgiveable, up to a point, in anyone much before the seventeenth century. And we're also stuck with little nuggets of sheer horror. And also an overarching understanding of God as One and Male which has sparked some sublime thinking, but has also empowered all sorts of domination, intolerance and oppression, by far not the least of which is the institution of Patriarchy. And has certainly foreclosed on other aspects of religious experience, which are potentially there in orthodox Christianity. (I'm leaving Judaism out of this, because it seems to me that the Jews have evolved their own, often deeply impressive, ways round these things - but a Jewish peerson would have to speak to that.)
And some of these bits sanction cruelty and unrestricted vengeance in an essentially obscene way.
A Christocentric reading of any integrity is going to be a way of repudiating and shutting up these voices. But they are deeply human voices, and potentially speak from any of us.
I think the basic question here is "What is revelation?" If we believe that the actual words of the book, or even the stories, that could be told in other words, are the revelation, I think we're stuck with things like (1) developmental views (that was OK then, but we've moved on - and see how much we've moved on...) or plenary-ish doctrines of inspiration (It's in the Bible so in certain circumstances it must be understandable/OK/God-commanded (2) or -spiritualizing (there's a lesson in this, and the lesson goes with the grain of the story but doesn't sanction its content as a way of behaving - so Jericho falls, as do any obstacles we face in life which we confront in God's strength, etc.) I'd count some Christocentric approaches in this category.
Is there an alternative?
Well, if you actually take revelation as an event in which God is perceived, and which "makes an impression", then yes, I think there is.
Emil Brunner compares revelation to a bomb going off, and the impression it makes to the crater the explosion leaves. I think we can extend that metaphor, and say that the "impression" is made in the human, social "material" over which the "explosion" takes place. Just as an explosion will leave a different mark on different material, just as the blast-effects will vary, so the impression made on a particular human community will derive from the structure and the culture of that community. And it will affect it, and change it.
That's a very partial metaphor. It doesn't begin to explaint the lasting and cumulative (not the same as developmental) effects of revelation on a particular community and its culture.
But it does make it possible to (a) take seriously as a revelation, without endorsing any of the moral consequences, something that happened, and was recorded "on" (as much as "by") a community very different to our own, and (b) "think the discontinuities" - because the discontinuities are as important as the continuities in Biblical religion: Bang! Abraham understands that God doesn't want child-sacrifice: Bang! The political-ethical emphases of the classical prophets appear in the second half of the C8; Bang! Deutero-Isaiah appears with what looks very like absolute monotheism in the mid 6th century. These are the explosions, but the material they crater is very different at each point.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Should have acknowledged that that was a partial response ( more is required) to this from Luigi: quote:
I am not sure what you mean by 'outside its compass'. I am trying to make the Jews part of human history and prone to human failings rather than some different species to homo sapiens. Some seem to think that Homo Israelius aren't really humans at all - one of the reasons I find Wright so unconvincing.
I do fear that if we start characterizing "the Old Testament™" as only preliminary, preparatory, whatever, we tend to view the community which produced it (over 1200 years, from the Song of Deborah to Daniel etc.) as one, inferior religious community. To make "our" Christ stand over against the OT seems to me to threaten to do this. Whereas to stand "revelation" as a category over against all that is human in the whole of Scripture - and all that is human in us, too - might let us avoid this. quote:
Also I am not clear as to whether you think I am looking at the Jews in ways that don't arise from within the OT? I really would like you to explain this more
No, not at all. Not least because your Girardian presuppositions are something I think I can also use to think round this. But again, if we find the unmasking of sacral violence in the crucifixion as the key to understanding sacrifice as "the" religious catgory par excellence, and its inhibiting (!!!) and channelling effects on human violence, it's awfully easy to conscript that to a view of Jesus religion as "superior". You don't do this. But a warning, surely, from Girard is the ease with which we resacralize violence within Christianity qua religion. Not least by violently asserting the superiority of the religion, rather than exploring the shaming profundity of the revelation.
A good postmodern way of putting it would be that we are no better than the Israelites who wiped out the Amalekites. Indeed because we still cling to our sense of superiority, we may be far worse. That's why I introduced the reference to "progress", above.
There's a story of a missionary somewhere in the south seas who had converted a tribe of headhunting Cannibals to Christianity, recently enough for them to be able to hold recollections of former ways and the new faith together. The missionary and the tribal chief were old friends.
It was 1916, and the news of the terrible slaughter in the trenches began to be something the missionary agonized with to his old friend. The chief asked him "What I can't understand is how your people can eat so many of their enemy."
We don't eat them. We just kill them."
You just kill them? That's barbaric!" Possession of some sort of framework is possession of a sense of limit. Maybe we have trouble with the OT not because the Israelites had such "barbaric" limits, but because our culture has none.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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noelper
Shipmate
# 9961
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Posted
quote:
Are you saying that God inspired genocide among us so as to wake us up to his unrequired love? Or to deliver a message?
No, I am saying that God used the natural human inclination towards genocide, in a way that confounds the predisposition. That is, to teach and work out His own Righteousness.
By interweaving His Ways with prevailing cultural customs and practises , and developing personal revelatory relationships with those individuals who were prepared to respect and serve Him, the OT God consistently shows how low He is prepared to stoop, in order to win over the human race from mindless cruelty.
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Nil, nada, rien
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
noelper, I think I see where you want to go, but I'm not sure I understand you. If I do understand you correctly, I'm don't think I can take the route with you to where you want to get to. Could you unpack. please?
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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noelper
Shipmate
# 9961
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Posted
quote:
I don't think I can take the route with you to where you want to get to. Could you unpack. please?
It's a route where the stepping stones are are not visible, Psyduck. (Think Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)
The OT God looks down from the eagle's viewpoint onto the carefully laid plans of us mice and men -and loves us ! Enough to enjoin His Righteousness with our brutality to make us His own - the apple of His eye; a new creation; the Redeemed from a lost world of hopelessnees.
![[Yipee]](graemlins/spin.gif)
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Nil, nada, rien
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by noelper:
quote:
Are you saying that God inspired genocide among us so as to wake us up to his unrequired love? Or to deliver a message?
No, I am saying that God used the natural human inclination towards genocide, in a way that confounds the predisposition. That is, to teach and work out His own Righteousness.
This makes sense to me. ![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
If you make wiping out the inhabitants of the land synonymous with wiping out evil you can put a good spin on horrendous acts of genocide.
This is no help to the wickedly genocidal generation, but by casting this shameful history as somehow noble and righteous you can see God as on your side.
Ironically, since God is on your side you are then bound to obey that God. Then it turns out that His rules just happen to be that you are not to wipe out your enemies, but in fact are to love them.
Naturally you feel ripped off about this, but Christians seem to have bought this idea hook, line and sinker.
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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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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Thomas Mann, in a series of famous broadcasts from the US to Germany during WWII, played on the theme that Nazi Germany was actually fuelled to do what it was doing, and to do it more and more, by the belief that "Otherwise, they'll do it to us..." And Mann was basically telling them that retribution was coming, and that what they were beginning to suffer was the mirror reflection of what they were inflicting and had already conceived to inflict. There was a clear invoking of a sow-the-wind-reap-the-whirlwind paradigm. And of course with the classical Prophets, there is the theme that the Assyrian is God's punishing rod. It does sometimes look as though it's being argued that there's an immanent mechanism in the outworking of history that visits consequences on people. And these consequences are understood within (highly) moral paradigms, rather than from a strandpoint of giving-over to barbarity.
But it's still a frightful dynamic. And it works on the basis of guilt reverberating round and round in the system.
And sometimes people conceive of themselves as the executives of this dynamic. General Patton, who was known to be physically ill every time he visited a liberated death camp, made a practice, AFAIK, of getting hold of the local community leaders, and bringing them to see what had been going on. There seem to have been a number of suicides.
I can see all of this as being of a piece with the developed - and I mean developed, as in the prophets - morality of the OT.
But I have to say that for me the central dynamic of the NT is of the Christ who breaks the circle of violence by suffering the violence, not by visiting it.
All sorts of things can emerge out of genocide - as any other human awfulness. And yes, I think that God can and does bring about a fundamental reworking of these things. But I can only see it as happening when God is also somehow among the victims. When God allows himself to be totally destroyed.
The lessons of genocide have mostly to come from the side of the victims. I suspect that the only thing the perpetrators might have to teach us is their horror at what they have done. If they ever reach that point. But maybe, if they do, that's a very important lesson indeed. And I don't really get it from the DH.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
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