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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: God the pathological killer?
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sharkshooter
Not your average shark
# 1589
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jerry Boam:
Do you like that one?
It is irrelevant whether or not I like it. That would be the pinnacle of arrogance.
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Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer. [Psalm 19:14]
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sharkshooter
Not your average shark
# 1589
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
God is love itself. It is impossible for Him to be angry.
I don't see it that way. The Bible is full of descriptions of God showing many aspects other than love. I choose not to ignore or rationalize them.
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Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer. [Psalm 19:14]
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by sharkshoooter:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
God is love itself. It is impossible for Him to be angry.
I don't see it that way. The Bible is full of descriptions of God showing many aspects other than love. I choose not to ignore or rationalize them.
I would think we have to rationalize (as in find a rational reason) this dichotomy if we are going to describe/follow/interact with God, wouldn't we? Don't we have an obligation to try to understand how God could be Angry and Loving?
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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"
Posts: 11730 | From: People's Republic of SoCal | Registered: Jun 2002
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sharkshooter
Not your average shark
# 1589
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mad Sex Geo:
I would think we have to rationalize (as in find a rational reason) this dichotomy if we are going to describe/follow/interact with God, wouldn't we? Don't we have an obligation to try to understand how God could be Angry and Loving?
This assumes:
1. God acts in a way which we would describe as rational.
2. We can understand God well enough to explain the apparent dichotomy.
I don't make those assumptions.
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Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer. [Psalm 19:14]
Posts: 7772 | From: Canada; Washington DC; Phoenix; it's complicated | Registered: Oct 2001
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Bonzo
Shipmate
# 2481
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Posted
quote:
I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Hmmm, compare to:
Deuteronomy 24:16
Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.
Jeremiah 31:29-30
"In those days people will no longer say,
'The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
and the children's teeth are set on edge.'
30 Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes-his own teeth will be set on edge.
Ezekiel 18:20
The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him.
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Love wastefully
Posts: 1150 | From: Stockport | Registered: Mar 2002
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by sharkshoooter:
quote:
Originally posted by Mad Sex Geo:
I would think we have to rationalize (as in find a rational reason) this dichotomy if we are going to describe/follow/interact with God, wouldn't we? Don't we have an obligation to try to understand how God could be Angry and Loving?
This assumes:
1. God acts in a way which we would describe as rational.
2. We can understand God well enough to explain the apparent dichotomy.
I don't make those assumptions.
Well I find myself in the interesting position that I kinda agree with you, but I also kinda think we have an obligation to explain ourselves and our perspectives to others which really means a certain amount of rational thought regarding these things, I would think.
Of course, YMMV.
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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"
Posts: 11730 | From: People's Republic of SoCal | Registered: Jun 2002
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
Originally posted by Hermit:
quote:
Now Karl has said that Biblical stories are just that, allowed into the Bible to teach moral points rather than being historical, I suppose analogous to Jesus telling parables. That's possible, but nonetheless the morality taught isn't what all of us would want - it teaches that the most important thing is to obey the Lord, even if that contradicts one's personal beliefs ... or personal beliefs about what God formerly commanded! The moral teachings of the OT are partly that if God commands us to kill, and we know truly and absolutely that is a command from God and not a delusion or hallucination, we must obey - and thus it isn't murder, any more than killing someone in pure self-defense is murder. "Absolute morals" means simply anything that God commands. There's no other reasonable way to define "absolute".
(my italics).
This only holds if the story is literally true. If it is a parable then it could be a metaphor. Jesus taught us about the unjust judge as a way of explaining what God is like, but he didn't mean us to go away and believe that God was an unjust judge. If the story isn't literal historical fact, but is an ancestor narrative then it doesn't have to be interpreted literally.
Now there are good reasons to believe that the story is an ancestor narrative. There is no archeological evidence for an Israelite invasion of Canaan as described in the book of Joshua and the nature of the miracles performed, such as the incident where the sun stops in the sky to allow Joshua to complete one of his campaigns of ethnic cleansing, strikes many scholars as being mythical.
Now one may dispute this - when I studied OT I was informed that the scholarly consensus is that History enters the OT with the reign of King David but scholarly consensuses (consensi) have fallen before. But it is impossible, given the current state of historical knowledge, to say with certainty that God commanded Joshua to commit genocide, or indeed that such genocide occurred. Therefore we cannot say with certainty that God has ever commanded someone to commit genocide. The element of doubt which I have italicised is present, in fact is inherent, in these texts.
OTOH we can place a much higher degree of reliability on the narratives of Christ's teaching in the New Testament, which are clearly pacific in their nature. This teaching is complemented by that of the Apostles, the Fathers and by later Church Tradition and by reason. Ergo we have a clear reason to believe that Christ told us that violence was against God's will, and this teaching is clearly more satisfactory, intellectually and morally, than any morality one can derive from the book of Joshua.
Even if morality is contingent on nothing less than the command of God the evidence that He has commanded us not to kill is vastly stronger than the evidence he commanded Joshua to commit genocide.
Given the enormity of countenancing genocide - even at this distance it is not an act we would countenance lightly - the element of reasonable doubt should lead us to conclude that genocide is always wrong and not countenanced by God unless, presumably we have ideological reasons to believe that the book of Joshua is equivalent to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, or unless we think that genocide is quite licit and wish to legitimise our convictions by window dressing them with Christianity. Where do you stand Hermit?
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
I want to keep this very simple for clarity's sake ... if being a Christian means worshipping a god who commands the slaughter of humans including women and children then I am an atheist.
Happily I am not an atheist. Happily I believe in God who is Love and who cannot countenance evil. Happily I can usually recognise the whiff of sulphur when I smell it.
The truly frightening thing in this thread (as Karl and others have pointd out) is that such abuse of the Bible can be matched in every religion that is prepared to resort to violence to uphold an alleged divine perogative.
How do I handle the nasty bits? ... I go to the Church; I do not rely on my own insights or the insights of any confessional group ... I listen to what holier people than I have said about sweetness of my Saviour. I recognise that sinners such as myself were biblical scribes. They were fiercely passionate in their love for God ... sometimes too fierce. The discernment comes not from academia or an alternative ethic but from the Spirit in the body of the faithful ... not personal illuminism.
I am going to bed now really quite depressed. Lord have mercy!
[ 24. March 2004, 22:56: Message edited by: Father Gregory ]
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
I want to keep this very simple for clarity's sake ... if being a Christian means worshipping a god who commands the slaughter of humans including women and children then I am an atheist.
Happily I am not an atheist. Happily I believe in God who is Love and who cannot countenance evil. Happily I can usually recognise the whiff of sulphur when I smell it.
The truly frightening thing in this thread (as Karl and others have pointd out) is that such abuse of the Bible can be matched in every religion that is prepared to resort to violence to uphold an alleged divine perogative.
How do I handle the nasty bits? ... I go to the Church; I do not rely on my own insights or the insights of any confessional group ... I listen to what holier people than I have said about sweetness of my Saviour. I recognise that sinners such as myself were biblical scribes. They were fiercely passionate in their love for God ... sometimes too fierce. The discernment comes not from academia or an alternative ethic but from the Spirit in the body of the faithful ... not personal illuminism.
I am going to bed now really quite depressed. Lord have mercy! [/QB]
Ah the simple and the clear. Rarely, on bad days, I wish I could go back to the days when I could defer to an outside authority. But how does one defer to an outside authority (i.e. the Church) when the outside authority is deferring to the bible? And the bible was written by man?
And the acedemia you dismissed shows that all of the above is built on stories written by man. A house of cards built on stories.
Ironically personal illuminism (by which I assume you mean some form of mysticism) is all many of us have left.
If mysticism doesn't cut it, than I am an atheist.
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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"
Posts: 11730 | From: People's Republic of SoCal | Registered: Jun 2002
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hermit
Shipmate
# 1803
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by sharkshoooter:
quote:
Originally posted by Mad Sex Geo:
I would think we have to rationalize (as in find a rational reason) this dichotomy if we are going to describe/follow/interact with God, wouldn't we? Don't we have an obligation to try to understand how God could be Angry and Loving?
This assumes:
1. God acts in a way which we would describe as rational.
2. We can understand God well enough to explain the apparent dichotomy.
I don't make those assumptions.
This is what I was trying to state, but of course I was a bit clumsier about it!
quote:
Now there are good reasons to believe that the story is an ancestor narrative. There is no archeological evidence for an Israelite invasion of Canaan as described in the book of Joshua and the nature of the miracles performed, such as the incident where the sun stops in the sky to allow Joshua to complete one of his campaigns of ethnic cleansing, strikes many scholars as being mythical.
Callan, one thing I recently noticed is that the genocide stories mainly seem to come from outside the Torah and Prophets, which were specifically what Jesus affirmed of our OT. So I'm not obligated to believe in them according to my own personal system of getting at the OT through the gospels. But nonetheless there's some continuity of thought about Canaanites and Amelekites from Genesis to the historical books, so there's always the possibility.
quote:
OTOH we can place a much higher degree of reliability on the narratives of Christ's teaching in the New Testament, which are clearly pacific in their nature. This teaching is complemented by that of the Apostles, the Fathers and by later Church Tradition and by reason. Ergo we have a clear reason to believe that Christ told us that violence was against God's will, and this teaching is clearly more satisfactory, intellectually and morally, than any morality one can derive from the book of Joshua.
I agree that the gospels and Paul are more reliable. I don't believe they teach pure pacifism. The first commandment was to love God with all heart mind and soul, the commandment to love neighbor as self came second. Whatever the command to carry sword might have meant symbolically, it's certain that the apostles carried swords, that Jesus knew that, and that swords were mainly meant for violent self-defense.
There were elements of early Christianity who interpreted the gospels as purely pacifist, and others who didn't.
quote:
Even if morality is contingent on nothing less than the command of God the evidence that He has commanded us not to kill is vastly stronger than the evidence he commanded Joshua to commit genocide.
He didn't command us not to kill in the English sense of the word. He commanded us not to murder, in the legal system He set up back then.
quote:
Given the enormity of countenancing genocide - even at this distance it is not an act we would countenance lightly - the element of reasonable doubt should lead us to conclude that genocide is always wrong and not countenanced by God unless, presumably we have ideological reasons to believe that the book of Joshua is equivalent to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, or unless we think that genocide is quite licit and wish to legitimise our convictions by window dressing them with Christianity. Where do you stand Hermit?
No one here is saying ordinary genocide is right. Let's put aside the particular one that supposedly occurred back then and focus on the more general question: If God commands us to kill some person or person, and we can know absolutely, completely certainly that He commanded it, should we obey? (Let's assume that an omnipotent God could somehow make us completely certain He commanded it). By the greatest commandment of Jesus, I say it would be right and obligatory for us to do it, and it would not be murder in His eyes, but simply killing in obediance.
quote:
4Peter began and explained everything to them precisely as it had happened: 5"I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. 6I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles, and birds of the air. 7Then I heard a voice telling me, 'Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.'
8"I replied, 'Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.'
9"The voice spoke from heaven a second time, 'Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.'
quote:
The point is that a God who indeed ordered the mass slaughter of thousands or millions of people because their ancestors weren't nice to his people is totally irreconcilable with the God of love revealed in Jesus Christ, and the moral way of life which God himself demands - not to murder.
The issue is NOT whether God has the right to judge and avenge - clearly he does. But that is not the motive for his command given in this passage nor is it consistent with the picture of the God of mercy and forgiveness revealed in Jesus.
This isn't, therefore, just going along with what modern professors of ethics think. This slur is tiresome and manifestly untrue. It is simply observing that certain ways of reading the Bible end up painting God as a capricious and immoral terrorist.
See Sharkshooter's admirable post I quoted above, Sean.
quote:
But how does one defer to an outside authority (i.e. the Church) when the outside authority is deferring to the bible? And the bible was written by man?
And the acedemia you dismissed shows that all of the above is built on stories written by man. A house of cards built on stories.
Which academia was that, MSG? Surely you know that most bible scholars around the world don't subscribe to that view? Or rather that it WAS written by men, who were inspired by God.
[ 25. March 2004, 03:14: Message edited by: hermit ]
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"You called out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness... You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain that peace which was yours." Confessions, St Augustine
Posts: 812 | From: Seattle | Registered: Nov 2001
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Cusanus
Ship's Schoolmaster
# 692
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
If God commands us to kill some person or person, and we can know absolutely, completely certainly that He commanded it, should we obey? (Let's assume that an omnipotent God could somehow make us completely certain He commanded it). By the greatest commandment of Jesus, I say it would be right and obligatory for us to do it, and it would not be murder in His eyes, but simply killing in obediance.
And how does this make us different from Al-Qaida? If I was convinced God told me to do this, I hope I would have the courage to go to hell along with Huck Finn.
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"You are qualified," sa fotherington-tomas, "becos you can frankly never pass an exam and have 0 branes. Obviously you will be a skoolmaster - there is no other choice."
Posts: 3120 | From: The Peninsula | Registered: Jul 2001
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
If God commands us to kill some person or person, and we can know absolutely, completely certainly that He commanded it, should we obey? (Let's assume that an omnipotent God could somehow make us completely certain He commanded it).
Interesting assumption. Why should we obey this commandment simply because God is omnipotent? Why should we disobey our conscience simply because an omnipotent God tells us to do something Satanic? Isn't the Law written even on the hearts of unbelievers, as Paul says?
Which brings us to the real point: the very way we discern whether we are receiving commandments from God or evil prompting from Satan is the nature of the prompting. Thunderous words do not come down from Heaven or up from the pit of Hell, but from the imaginings of our minds.
Hermit's and sharkshooter's God whose righteousness is beyond our comprehension might ask us to strangle an infant slowly for a righteous reason we cannot comprehend. But I say that the nature of the request itself tells us instantly that it is some bizarre evil. Satan can feign that he is God, but God does not feign that he is Satan. We are commanded by Satan, not God, to be the agent of merited torture or destruction. Since the time of Christ, God has given us unmerited favor and expects us to pass it along.
With respect to killing, I can only see the use of lethal force in the case where immanent and immediate loss of innocent life seems certain and no other option is available.
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Dear JimT
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
What worries me is the suspension of an innate (God-given) moral sense that some believers experience when they fixate on something written by a fallible human being. Some have often felt like "dashing babies against the rocks" (Psalm 137:8-9) but don't do that because they recognise their inner psychological turmoil and have enough presence of mind by grace to stay their hands. To authorise that or even to sanctify that in the name of God is, literally, demonic. They can be absolutely no compromise between God and Satan. Satan is neither God's avenging angel nor the instrument of his alleged wrath. He (Satan) is both the enemy of humankind and of God.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Sean D
Cheery barman
# 2271
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
quote:
Originally posted by sharkshoooter:
This assumes:
1. God acts in a way which we would describe as rational.
2. We can understand God well enough to explain the apparent dichotomy.
I don't make those assumptions.
<snips>
See Sharkshooter's admirable post I quoted above, Sean.
It's not a question of whether God acts in a way which we would see as rational and moral but whether he acts in a way which is consistent with his own self-revealed character. He reveals himself as rational. He reveals himself as loving and opposed to the wanton destruction of human life. It is not therefore a question of whether our puny little minds can understand God sufficiently, because our puny little minds don't need to try and work God out - that's the point of revelation. He tells us what he is like.
Plainly and simply: God is either irrational and capricious or he is loving and just. He can't be both - but not because my brain can't comprehend how he could be both, but because he has revealed in Jesus Christ that he is not both. I have made my decision which I think he is not on the basis of my own fuzzy feelings but because of the God revealed on the cross.
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postpostevangelical
http://www.stmellitus.org/
Posts: 2126 | From: North and South Kensington | Registered: Feb 2002
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Sean D
Cheery barman
# 2271
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Dear Sean
Amen. Amen. Amen.
I believe Amen is usually only appropriate when addressing God ![[Biased]](wink.gif) Now I have to remind myself that "Me" is not short for "Messiah"...
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postpostevangelical
http://www.stmellitus.org/
Posts: 2126 | From: North and South Kensington | Registered: Feb 2002
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Anselmina
Ship's barmaid
# 3032
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Posted
Sorry, I'm about to be pedantic (so what's new?).
First there's this.
quote:
Originally posted by sharkshooter: addressing Karl Liberal Backslider
:
I guess you really don't like the highlighted part of this one, then:
quote:
Exodus 20
The Ten Commandments
1 And God spoke all these words:
...
5 ... I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.
And then there's this.
quote:
Originally posted by sharkshoooter:
Originally posted by Jerry Boam:
Do you like that one?
It is irrelevant whether or not I like it. That would be the pinnacle of arrogance.
So when Sharkshooter asks KLB is he 'likes' a commandment he's what? Issuing a challenge TO KLB, throwing down the gauntlet, being robustly interrogative?
But when Sharkshooter is asked if he, too, 'likes' the very same scripture he's being tempted into arrogance, which of course he's much too virtuous to give in to!
If it's irrelevant for Sharkshooter to like it, why is he asking KLB if he likes it? I'm soooo confused ![[Confused]](confused.gif) !
There is also the implication that if KLB were to say he didn't like that scripture he would be wrong not to; whereas whether or not SS likes it is just 'irrelevant'. Is that called 'having your cake and eating it? '
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Irish dogs needing homes! http://www.dogactionwelfaregroup.ie/ Greyhounds and Lurchers are shipped over to England for rehoming too!
Posts: 10002 | From: Scotland the Brave | Registered: Jul 2002
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
quote:
But how does one defer to an outside authority (i.e. the Church) when the outside authority is deferring to the bible? And the bible was written by man?
And the acedemia you dismissed shows that all of the above is built on stories written by man. A house of cards built on stories.
Which academia was that, MSG? Surely you know that most bible scholars around the world don't subscribe to that view? Or rather that it WAS written by men, who were inspired by God.
Well I don't know about "most" academia or "least" academia. I know what academia I've read, and talked to, and they are rather persuasive. If you need names ![[Smile]](smile.gif) , start with E.P. Sanders and end with Spong with a wide range in the middle. I happen to have a friend who's a NT biblical literature professor as well.
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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"
Posts: 11730 | From: People's Republic of SoCal | Registered: Jun 2002
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Dear JimT
What worries me is the suspension of an innate (God-given) moral sense that some believers experience when they fixate on something written by a fallible human being. Some have often felt like "dashing babies against the rocks" (Psalm 137:8-9) but don't do that because they recognise their inner psychological turmoil and have enough presence of mind by grace to stay their hands. To authorise that or even to sanctify that in the name of God is, literally, demonic. They can be absolutely no compromise between God and Satan. Satan is neither God's avenging angel nor the instrument of his alleged wrath. He (Satan) is both the enemy of humankind and of God.
Why do you assume that people that "fixate on something written by a fallible human being" are more inclined to dash babies on rocks, or even suspend their innate moral sense, than say a "believer".
I know a few people that are challenged (in extreme) by the inerrent/god written view of the bible. The ones I know, in some cases are as moral or even more moral than some Christians I know. I would venture to say that one nontheist I know is also the most moral person I know.
I have observed the suspension of the innate "God-given" moral sense in believers, nontheists, and atheists alike. This, of course, is no comment on any of them, it's just an observation.
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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"
Posts: 11730 | From: People's Republic of SoCal | Registered: Jun 2002
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Dear MSG
I am not making such facile generalisations. Mileage varies across the board. I am, however, claiming that the mind set that justifies everything that the Bible says about God may be more inclined to fixate on something as not only a divine action but also a divine decree ... if they have suspended their moral sense or if it has been corrupted. Eschewing fundamentalism is the best way to despoil such selective justifications.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Duncs
Apprentice
# 5677
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Posted
Oh dear, this was posted by someone, but i think it's turned into chinese whispers and i havent a clue who originally said it!
But how does one defer to an outside authority (i.e. the Church) when the outside authority is deferring to the bible? And the bible was written by man?
And the acedemia you dismissed shows that all of the above is built on stories written by man. A house of cards built on stories.
- Ahh. But is this not where faith comes in? the CHristian faith in believing it to be true. If we become really pedantic, everything we "know" is based on belief. (Work with me, it is true!)
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Either he's dead or my watch has stopped!
Posts: 4 | From: Kent. | Registered: Mar 2004
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Dear Duncs
But is not the Church not made up of men and women and did not the early Christian communities and their apostles pen the Scriptures? Deferring to the Bible is simply the Church being true to herself and what God has committed to her. The two are not alternatives.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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hermit
Shipmate
# 1803
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Posted
quote:
And how does this make us different from Al-Qaida? If I was convinced God told me to do this, I hope I would have the courage to go to hell along with Huck Finn.
It's a purely hypothetical question that assumes God, the Creator of the universe, is indeed commanding you to kill someone.
As for al Qaeda, I believe that Satan and not God is inspiring them. You can believe what you want about them, it's irrelevant to the question. quote:
Interesting assumption. Why should we obey this commandment simply because God is omnipotent?
You're mistaken about what I was saying, which is simply that God has perfectly inspired us to know that He truly commanded us to kill in this hypothetical situation. Whether you obey God or disobey Him is entirely up to you, you have free will in the matter.
quote:
What worries me is the suspension of an innate (God-given) moral sense that some believers experience when they fixate on something written by a fallible human being. Some have often felt like "dashing babies against the rocks" (Psalm 137:8-9) but don't do that because they recognise their inner psychological turmoil and have enough presence of mind by grace to stay their hands. To authorise that or even to sanctify that in the name of God is, literally, demonic. They can be absolutely no compromise between God and Satan. Satan is neither God's avenging angel nor the instrument of his alleged wrath. He (Satan) is both the enemy of humankind and of God.
So you're saying, Fr Gregory, that anything which disturbs your innate sense of right and wrong in the Bible came from Satan? And that we all have that same God-given sense, that if I read the Bible over again my innate sense of right and wrong would force me to reject the same passages, as Satanic verses?
quote:
It's not a question of whether God acts in a way which we would see as rational and moral but whether he acts in a way which is consistent with his own self-revealed character.
Well, at first it seemed he revealed Himself as One God only, nothing about a Trinity. I certainly don't see the Bible revelations of God as completely and obviously unitary at all times even in Jesus alone. I've never come across any theological system that manages to incorporate every thing he said and did in a perfectly consistent manner.
quote:
Plainly and simply: God is either irrational and capricious or he is loving and just.
My parents seemed to be both from my viewpoint as a young child, but when I grew up I finally began to understand them.
quote:
Well I don't know about "most" academia or "least" academia. I know what academia I've read, and talked to, and they are rather persuasive. If you need names , start with E.P. Sanders and end with Spong with a wide range in the middle. I happen to have a friend who's a NT biblical literature professor as well.
I've been through John Crossan, the Jesus Seminar, and I think I flipped through one of Spong's books once. I didn't find them to be convincing ... but at least you're aware there is a conservative point of view. I'm sure you've read Luke Timothy Johnson and the more middle of the road John P. Meier (A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus). A good overview of conservative Protestant thinking can be found in Lee Strobel's Case For Christ, you can pick up the names of several reputable scholars in it.
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"You called out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness... You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain that peace which was yours." Confessions, St Augustine
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Dear Hermit
quote:
So you're saying, Fr Gregory, that anything which disturbs your innate sense of right and wrong in the Bible came from Satan? And that we all have that same God-given sense, that if I read the Bible over again my innate sense of right and wrong would force me to reject the same passages, as Satanic verses?
Nothing of the sort!
Everyone (except psychotics and sociopaths) has an innate sense of right and wrong ... the conscience ... a distinction between good and evil which is God given in the image as it were.
Most of us have no problems using this moral compass. Most of us do not go out and slaughter innocent people because they are godless. Most of us don't expect child sacrifice as a test of personal loyalty ....
.... and most of us, having this reflection of God's righteousness in us don't believe that God himself acts to the contrary.
Such consensual conscience is backed up by the theological consensus of the Church ... which in Orthodox terms is based squarely in the conviction that there is no evil in God. Any such evil would still be evil even if it could be proved to have a divine provenance.
[ 25. March 2004, 22:02: Message edited by: Father Gregory ]
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Jesus WAS the creator, killer God of the OT. The very same person. Jesus, God's Son, God the Son, Melchizedek, stated it categorically. Before Abraham was I AM. Yahweh. YHVH. Yod Haw Veh Haw. I AM that I AM. The Lord. The Eternal. He who revealed the Father, not the other way around.
This perfect being has no pathology. And kills us ALL with the law and gives us ALL life in Himself.
He who annihilated at least two the Cities of the Plain for their cruelty to the poor will resurrect them to have an easier time in judgment than Bethsaida and Chorazin.
I can come up with any rationalization you like as to why God killed on a pretty large scale, usually regional, even although the incidents are pretty rare (probably well eclipsed by Attila the Hun, Tamburlaine, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, Mao) what they lack in frequency and other quantitative values they make up for in theological impact.
To rationalize away God the Son stepping in to history directly and in command in strange, terrifying, brutal, merciless, lethal ways is to make Him in our own deceived, naive, false self image. We're better than God eh? More liberal? Kinder? More merciful? More gracious?
He KILLS. He sent bears to butcher children who abused His prophet. He executed a man who touched the Ark of the Covenant when it wobbled in transit.
And He died that they may live forever. I risk blasphemy here by saying that I can see, in His death at our hands, His apology that it had to be so. That we're even.
The killings are all part of the unfolding of almost if not actual universal salvation - the heil(e)sgeschicht - a success rate hopefully at least better than that with the angels of 2/3rds, including of the killed. Christianity is about how WE should behave, not God, who is utterly perfect and above reproach BECAUSE He is the best possible God and the after-life is the best possible outcome.
He came as one of us to die to show us how to live - including in the use of lethal force - so that one day He will not have to kill us again. But, His killing days aren't over yet. Any more than they were after His resurrection and return to full divine power and lethal intervention. Even His FACE is lethal.
His kingdom come.
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Love wins
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hermit
Shipmate
# 1803
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Posted
Amen, Martin.
The following verses don't seem to support Jesus as pacifist alone:
Matthew 10:28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Matt 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.
(it's the will of God that one falls to the ground).
Matt 21:18 Early in the morning, as he was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. 19 Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, "May you never bear fruit again!" Immediately the tree withered.
This next verse doesn't support the idea that God is aligned with any particular human culture, such as modern pacifist academic (or any other for that matter). In other words, let's not make God into our image:
Isaiah 55:8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.
9
"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
The following verses don't seem to support Jesus as pacifist alone:
Matthew 10:28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
This verse has nothing to do with God killing anyone, or Jesus being a "pacifist." It says that Satan can destroy body and soul.
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
Matt 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.
(it's the will of God that one falls to the ground).
God lets birds fall from their nest, says Jesus. Again, God is not killing people. We don't even know if the bird gets hurt.
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
Matt 21:18 Early in the morning, as he was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. 19 Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, "May you never bear fruit again!" Immediately the tree withered.
Jesus killed a tree, not a person, to make a point.
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
This next verse doesn't support the idea that God is aligned with any particular human culture, such as modern pacifist academic (or any other for that matter). In other words, let's not make God into our image:
Isaiah 55:8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.
9
"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
Notice that the verse doesn't include anything along the lines of, "And sometimes I'll do the same things that Satan does and you won't know why."
Hermit, you need to disabuse yourself of the term "pacifist" here. Fr. Gregory's point, my point, and others' is that people have an innate, God-given moral sense, a knowledge of Good and Evil, that allows them to discern between God and Satan. Man's life as a moral creature began with the KNOWLEDGE (I'm forshadowing a response to Martin's Old Testament raving) of Good and Evil. It's the only thing I believe we should take literally from Genesis. We didn't get it from an apple via a woman tempted by a snake, but we did get knowledge of good and evil: as a race, and as individuals as we mature. As infants we have no such knowledge and are like animals in that regard. But we inherit a knowledge of good and evil, with a stubborn and persistent temptation to do evil and pretend it is good, or simply ignore what we know to be good. We can be deceived, especially temporarily, yes, and sometimes we are confused. But not totally and not permanently. When a voice whispers, "kill the innocent," it is not God." You retort that "it could be--you never know--God is an absolute sovereign with ways beyond our ken." But I say not beyond our knowledge of good and evil, the very foundation of the founding book of the OLD TESTAMENT MARTIN I HAVE READ IT.
I do not take a pacifist position. I would not fault anyone for killing someone holding a hostage with a loaded gun who says I'm gonna shoot on the count of three. When they get to two, by all means put a laser bead on their forhead and make it quick and painless.
Martin, I'll let others handle how all the killing and lethal images of God's face are in the OT if they want to go over it again. It also says that God haggled and bargained like a street vendor. Shall we say God DRIVES A HARD BARGAIN and no doubt BUYS ON SALE? That's ESS AY ELL EEE. I simply say the Old Testament shows an emergent view of God that is greatly modified by the time one gets to the Gospel of John. The revelation continues, according to the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil that we got in Genesis. That's my best Martin-speak.
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by JimT:
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
The following verses don't seem to support Jesus as pacifist alone:
Matthew 10:28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
This verse has nothing to do with God killing anyone, or Jesus being a "pacifist." It says that Satan can destroy body and soul.
I've never heard it said that the one who can destroy body and soul is Satan before. Satan isn't anywhere portrayed as the one who destroys body and soul in hell, rather he's the one destroyed in hell. The usual view is that Jesus is refering to God - the God who casts the goats into hell etc.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
What JimT said, ... except for (see below)
Dear Alan
You are correct that this is a reference to God but the sense is that of being able ... not desirous or something that he actually does. Much of Jesus' pedagogy and exhortation has this hyperbolic aspect. I don't see many tempted Christians going round plucking out their eyes .... mercifully.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
Oh I agree Fr Gregory. The comment by Jesus is addressed to people who feared what following him may entail, especially the possibility of persecution and death at the hands of the Jewish leaders. The perspective is they can only kill the body, God can destroy body and soul ... and, I'd add, conversely God can save body and soul. It's a relative power thing Jesus is outlining.
And, just because God can destroy body and soul in hell, it doesn't necessarily follow that he will do so.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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Sean D
Cheery barman
# 2271
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
It's a purely hypothetical question that assumes God, the Creator of the universe, is indeed commanding you to kill someone.
Good grief Hermit - this is precisely what we're arguing about! It wasn't purely hypothetical for Joshua, in your view and by your own admission. So if in your view God really does that kind of thing, it precisely isn't hypothetical. And if he did it once how on earth are we supposed to know he doesn't do that kind of thing any more?! Why should you suppose Josh and his pals had such existential certainty about it? They didn't know they were going to be in the Bible!
quote:
As for al Qaeda, I believe that Satan and not God is inspiring them. You can believe what you want about them, it's irrelevant to the question.
You cannot have your cake and eat it. If it is evil and wrong for one group to committ mass murder and genocide, it is also wrong for another. If Satan is inspiring al-Qaeda, how can we say it was Jesus who inspired the slaughter of the Amalekites?
quote:
Well, at first it seemed he revealed Himself as One God only, nothing about a Trinity. I certainly don't see the Bible revelations of God as completely and obviously unitary at all times even in Jesus alone. I've never come across any theological system that manages to incorporate every thing he said and did in a perfectly consistent manner.
Congratulations. You have now managed to give all the reasons for not believing in inerrancy. Problem: it doesn't seem perfectly consistent. Solution: well, that's because it isn't perfectly consistent.
quote:
My parents seemed to be both from my viewpoint as a young child, but when I grew up I finally began to understand them.
Did your parents tell you to kill people, and then tell you it was wrong to kill?
You just aren't listening - please take note of my actual argument. I am NOT arguing that God's actions are inconsistent with my own puny perception of his character. I am saying they point-blank can't possibly be committed by God as God himself reveals God to be. I have no choice in the matter if I really want to believe God reveals himself in Jesus.
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postpostevangelical
http://www.stmellitus.org/
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
JimT - I HAVE READ IT ALL TOO, MANY TIMES And of course it is only God who can annihilate body and soul in Hell. And will, there being no eternal punishing. Emergence is a nice word isn't it? I have no problem with love triumphant emerging in sacred history as God the Son revealed a human face over His lethal one.
But to rationalize away his lethal one without ever positing it is intellectually and faithfully inadequate. Just as it would be for me not to consider God saying 'I was misquoted, misattributed'. Which He hasn't yet.
The inadequacy of OT cultures to understand why God was killing them and leading them in killing, does not deny that He killed. As Alan said, Jonah did God's will in saving Nineveh and the Assyrians and was barely, eventually reconciled to that.
YES He haggled and we didn't haggle enough. Abraham did a fantastic job over Sodom and Gomorrah - which - of course - were NOT destroyed for being gay, which they weren't any meaningful way - as did Moses over Israel: God told him to stand back while he killed the lot of them to start again through Moses who declined the offer.
May be we can avert some of the horrors of the apocalypse by negotiating a bit harder. Prophecy is contingent after all.
What is astounding about God's lethal intervention is its minimalism and restraint:
From the Flood to Sodom & Gomorrah is at least 400 years from the latter to the assassination of Onan is about the same.
In the NT He assassinated Herod Agrippa and executed Annanias & Saphira. No inconsistency in His nature there. He used Vespasian to destroy Jerusalem. He has been in full control of European history and therefore world history since. And is yet to take over completely and not by being elected or in the person of the schizophrenic old bag lady, our Holy Mother Church. But in His great wrath.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Since this post was addressed to JimT I'll let him reply Martin.
I think I can ask one more general question. Is it your approach to the Bible to read straight from the page in a matter of fact kind of way without factoring in the context and the human situation?
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Yes and no.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Jerry Boam
Shipmate
# 4551
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
...as did Moses over Israel: God told him to stand back while he killed the lot of them to start again through Moses who declined the offer.
From the Flood to Sodom & Gomorrah is at least 400 years from the latter to the assassination of Onan is about the same.
But since we have God given brains and senses and have used these to develop an understanding of genetics, and in that science proof beyond reasonable doubt that the flood was a myth, might we not want to consider the possibility that these stories are not to be taken literally, have a lot to do with the times in which they were written and the purposes of their authors, and are not a sound basis for concluding that God is a ruthless and indescriminate killer?
And are we really supposed to imagine that God desired the deaths of every person who is killed in a hurricane, tornado, tsunami, volcano or earthquake?
Really?
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If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving is not for you.
Posts: 2165 | From: Miskatonic University | Registered: May 2003
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
What Jerry said.
On the One Who Can Destroy Body and Soul: OK, I'm a little rusty on that passage, so "what Alan said."
Which brings me back to Martin and "God kills," as it says in his Holy Word. Going with what Jerry said, we are all forced to grant that God does not prevent killing or no one would be killed. Killing is a fact. That God kills is an opinion. Yes, it is one expressed by ancient Jewish writers, now frozen in black ink on exceptionally thin white paper, but those things that you're li'ble to read in the Bible they might nowt be exactly and literally, as written, the Eternal Strewth (God's Truth or 'sTruth or Strewth if I remember my Shakespeare).
I like you Martin.
You're a nut and proud of it. I like that in a nut.
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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Sean D
Cheery barman
# 2271
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by JimT:
I like you Martin.
You're a nut and proud of it. I like that in a nut.
Also, he's aware of it. There's nothing worse than not acknowledging it. Martin may be a hardcore fundy but he knows it and is very humble. At least he's consistent, he takes the commands in the Bible to be humble and loving as seriously as all the genocide stuff. All too rare. ![[Axe murder]](graemlins/lovedrops.gif)
Don't listen to this, Martin, I don't want your head to get big.
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postpostevangelical
http://www.stmellitus.org/
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hermit
Shipmate
# 1803
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jerry Boam:
And are we really supposed to imagine that God desired the deaths of every person who is killed in a hurricane, tornado, tsunami, volcano or earthquake?
Really?
I couldn't resist starting with this one. Of course He desired it, indirectly. Why else would this world be designed by God with death in it? It would get a bit crowded if no one died, wouldn't it?
quote:
This verse has nothing to do with God killing anyone, or Jesus being a "pacifist." It says that Satan can destroy body and soul.
It helps to see the parallel passage in Luk 12:4 And I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.
Luk 12:5 But I will warn you of whom you shall fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yea, I say to you, fear Him.
quote:
God lets birds fall from their nest, says Jesus. Again, God is not killing people. We don't even know if the bird gets hurt.
Sigh.
quote:
Jesus killed a tree, not a person, to make a point.
Jesus is capable of killing, and of course the fig tree is probably symbolic of a group of people, not that he was actually pissed off at a tree for not bearing fruit out of season.
quote:
Notice that the verse doesn't include anything along the lines of, "And sometimes I'll do the same things that Satan does and you won't know why."
Hermit, you need to disabuse yourself of the term "pacifist" here. Fr. Gregory's point, my point, and others' is that people have an innate, God-given moral sense, a knowledge of Good and Evil, that allows them to discern between God and Satan.
You're concentrating on "pacifist" more than I wanted, what I was getting at is your notions, your interpretations are heavily colored by the CULTURE you are in. I've never known an African or Asian to be concerned about a biblical genocide - the objections they have to Christianity are largely based on why God would have thrown their ancestors into hell (an idea some fundamentalist preachers but not all, still have).
Our conscience simply isn't that specific, a biological revulsion to death. Lots of cultures admire lethal violence.
quote:
It also says that God haggled and bargained like a street vendor.
God presumably created us to have a relationship. quote:
When a voice whispers, "kill the innocent," it is not God." You retort that "it could be--you never know--God is an absolute sovereign with ways beyond our ken."
It would have to be much, much more than a voice in one's head. quote:
The usual view is that Jesus is refering to God - the God who casts the goats into hell etc.
Lol ... I've never heard of God casting goats into hell, but there are some three words translated as hell that shouldn't always be. Sheol, gehenna, hades iirc. I think Sheol can refer simply to underground. quote:
Much of Jesus' pedagogy and exhortation has this hyperbolic aspect. I don't see many tempted Christians going round plucking out their eyes .... mercifully.
good point, that's why we have the careful interpretation of Church Fathers down through the millenia .... as far as I know the traditional branches of the Church all agree with me that God can and does kill people. Even if the Amalekite slaughter was a story akin to the parables of Jesus, the main point is that it doesn't contradict what we know about God - the rules against killing people are for us, not for God who kills everyone who's not murdered.
quote:
Good grief Hermit - this is precisely what we're arguing about! It wasn't purely hypothetical for Joshua, in your view and by your own admission. So if in your view God really does that kind of thing, it precisely isn't hypothetical. And if he did it once how on earth are we supposed to know he doesn't do that kind of thing any more?!
As I keep saying, God kills all the time ... even if He doesn't directly do it, he created this world where everything dies. I personally hope God will decide when my time is up.
quote:
Why should you suppose Josh and his pals had such existential certainty about it? They didn't know they were going to be in the Bible!
I don't know how God made them know, I don't even know for certain that it literally happened. I just know it could have happened without contradicting anything revealed by Jesus. Obedience to God comes first ... if God's not commanding you to do something then you can apply the Church's teachings to your situation.
quote:
You cannot have your cake and eat it. If it is evil and wrong for one group to committ mass murder and genocide, it is also wrong for another. If Satan is inspiring al-Qaeda, how can we say it was Jesus who inspired the slaughter of the Amalekites?
It's not murder if God commands it. We can say it was God who inspired the Amalekite genocide because we believe God inspired the Bible which contains the account, and because that's consistent with Church teachings (I don't actually know whether there is consensus in the Catholic Church about whether it literally happened). quote:
Congratulations. You have now managed to give all the reasons for not believing in inerrancy.
I'm a Catholic, not a fundamentalist. While the Church teaches that all Scripture is inspired by God, it doesn't teach that everything is necessarily historical or to be literally understood. quote:
Did your parents tell you to kill people, and then tell you it was wrong to kill?
No, and neither has God. But if He did, and I had complete confidence it was God, I would. However that would take extraordinary proof, beyond my present comprehension - even if there were a series of miracles witnessed by many others, I would tend to believe it was a trick of Satan.
quote:
I like you Martin. You're a nut and proud of it. I like that in a nut.
I realize this was said in jest, but I'd be happier if we don't call each other names even affectionately because this is one of those hot issues that can deteriorate quickly.
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"You called out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness... You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain that peace which was yours." Confessions, St Augustine
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hermit
Shipmate
# 1803
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Posted
D'oh, I just realized what Alan was talking about with the goats. Sometimes I'm a bit too literal! ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
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"You called out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness... You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain that peace which was yours." Confessions, St Augustine
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Hah! Look, how'm I s'posed to get over myself now? Eh? Call yourself Christians? Bastards. And Jerry - you are of course absolutely right: there is scant evidence if any for the Flood. The controversially attributed counter-current in the Bosphorous (Oxford!) in to the Black Sea. Marine foraminifera in North American soils. Eight feet of clay by a single act of sedimentation in static water in Ur. The Old Baylonian Epic of Gilagamesh, the Chinese Bamboo Annals in which Nu-weh is a survivor, of 8, of a world flood. Tantalizing stuff. The Flood does exercise me scientifically to say the least.
If it was global and covered Everest, God has covered His tracks to an inordinate degree. To me biodiversity is the greates challenge to that. If it covered Ararat that's nearly as bad. Half way up and one is rationalizing away.
Jonah, however, is far easier to swallow as he was the prophesied Assyrian redeemer. As is the Exodus, which fits with radical but valid Egyptology. As per the archaeologist David somebody or other Rorvak or summat.
Genesis is a phenomenal mixture of genres with many editors and contributors and indeed open to interpretation, but apart from the hard core Evangelical-Fundy submission reflex I have, there is also the legal authority of the geneologies, if one chooses to view them that way. Which I find impossible not to.
Your genuine praise makes me feel a little like that mad arsonist psycho in Steven King's magnificent The Stand. I'm not sure why ...
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
Hermit, I really do respect your point of view and understand that your underlying motivation is a perfectly normal, healthy, and admirable dedication to righteousness. The crack at Martin was purely playful and not a swipe at him or you or anyone else: he simply seems to like comments like that. I've heard him accept them from others and I'd never offerred him one before. To tell you the truth I was hoping to make Pyx_e chuckle because he once postulated a puppet fight between me and Martin PC in Heaven. Pretty funny.
To return to a serious and respectful vein, you seem to have conceded that if we cannot prove that God actually kills, we must however say that if he is a person-like, choice-making consciousness with unlimited power then at the very least we must grant that he sanctions killing because killing in fact does happen. I grant this. Now I must deal with the philosophical consequences. What to do? If I take your approach, I say that killing exists for a greater good than I can comprehend. Where does this lead? It leads exactly where you say. It leads to the possibility that I might be asked to kill without knowing why. Now I feel that I must go on. The premise has led me to somthing of an absurdity, which you more or less conceded: there is no way to imagine how to evaulate whether or not this was happening. More frightening, the premise opens up that I might never be able to tell Good from Evil: I cannot know it in my heart, and I cannot ask others because they are fallible and finite as I am. I cannot trust Man; I cannot trust myself; I can trust God, but he has asked me to commit atrocity. Or has he? Is it Satan posing as God? I will never know. I want absolutes, as you do hermit. I don't want this loose end.
So I go with God as something non-personal. In my world there is not a God "presiding" over creation, "sanctioning" killing. I don't know how others get around it exactly. It leaves me without an absolute in the sense that I can't look up the answer somewhere, but really you are without an absolute as well: you have imagined a possibility without a guaranteed way to evaluate it. As you said you would have no choice but to look to the ambiguous and fallible opinions of saints, Church fathers, and the Body of Christ surrounding you if you were to receive your hypothetical command. Eventually, faith in the Knowledge of Good and Evil says that you should come to an absolute, unshakable, and correct opinion. I say it will come from the God in and around you, not from the Old Testament figure with fiery eyes and hair like smoke.
In myself sanctioning the killing of a hostage-taker, I am in a sense with you: I would shoot to kill under the circumstance I said and would feel that I was "doing the will of God" but would never describe it in those terms. I would say instead that my moral choice was clear, that I had to kill, even though with all my heart I wished that I could have saved the hostage-taker and healed whatever it was that was wrong with them.
Peace my friend.
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Dear Hermit
We have a real impasse here. Orthodoxy teaches that God is NEVER the author of death. Death is not natural however crowded you think the world could get. Satan is not God's instrument toward the fulfilment of his purpose in anything. In short there is no moral darkness in God. "Behold I am become death the destroyer of worlds" is an accolade that falls to the fallen one, never the Risen One ... who has destroyed the long corrupting reign of death by his holy resurrection. Mindful of Pascha coming I can do nothing other than cleave to God who can only raise the dead ... not both kill and bury.
Truly it is when I contribute to threads like these that I realise just how irreconcileable Orthodoxy and mainline western Christianity really is ... both Roman Catholic and Protestant. I just give thanks for those western Christians who smell something dank and festering under the floorboards and who are inclined to something better.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Not pre-empting the good (and much maligned, by me, for which I'm still cut to the quick) Hermit's reply, but damn JimT, that's beautiful. And no offence taken, no way.
Iron to iron here. As in as a man's countenance is to his friend, as it sez somewhere in't'good book.
There's absolutely no way God would oe COULD command me to kill. He will do His own killing. That would be completely alien to NT normalcy and Christianity. If, God forbid, I should kill it would be on my own head, in extreme self or other defence. Any other circumstance would be murder.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Jerry Boam
Shipmate
# 4551
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
quote:
Originally posted by Jerry Boam:
And are we really supposed to imagine that God desired the deaths of every person who is killed in a hurricane, tornado, tsunami, volcano or earthquake?
Really?
I couldn't resist starting with this one. Of course He desired it, indirectly. Why else would this world be designed by God with death in it? It would get a bit crowded if no one died, wouldn't it?
Oh, right. And there I was thinking that death wasn't part of the original design, but only came in with sin in the garden. I read that somewhere, but perhaps I was not interpreting that bit the right way?
But say you were right and death was a feature, not a bug--why not specify that everyone lives in rude good health untill a certain age, then has an angelic encounter with the message "Your time to come home is in three weeks at sunset, mortal." The soon-to-depart get to say goodbye to the people and places that have become dear to them and then after a little ceremony with their loved ones and church, or whatever, peacefully expire with a look of peace and contentment on their faces...
Why Bam? Why Krakatoa? Keeping down the surplus population is really not a very plausible answer.
[ 26. March 2004, 19:03: Message edited by: Jerry Boam ]
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If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving is not for you.
Posts: 2165 | From: Miskatonic University | Registered: May 2003
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Ley Druid
Ship's chemist
# 3246
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Dear Hermit
We have a real impasse here. Orthodoxy teaches that God is NEVER the author of death.
...
Truly it is when I contribute to threads like these that I realise just how irreconcileable Orthodoxy and mainline western Christianity really is ... both Roman Catholic and Protestant. I just give thanks for those western Christians who smell something dank and festering under the floorboards and who are inclined to something better. emphasis mine.
If reconciliation depends on you, you might have a point, but in God all things are possible...
I sincerely hope you haven't lost faith.
quote:
Originally posted by hermit:
As I keep saying, God kills all the time ... even if He doesn't directly do it, he created this world where everything dies.
I think both Catholic and Orthodox theology would admit to the obvious fact that GOD permits evil. We see all around us and read in the Bible about sin, suffering and death.
I know both Catholic and Orthodox theology affirm that GOD is NOT "killing all the time" because he made death a part of the world.
quote:
"God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. . . It was through the devil's envy that death entered the world" (Wis 1:13; 2:24). CCC 413
Look that's exactly the same verse that the Orthodox use to say exactly the same thing (note this verse may not be found in some protestant bibles) Wisdom 1:13
Saint Thomas, the Angelic Doctor, wrote "God permits evil in order to draw forth some greater good". Every killing can now be viewed through the lens of Good Friday -- the evil remains evil, but the suffering and death have been redeemed.
[ 26. March 2004, 22:32: Message edited by: Ley Druid ]
Posts: 1188 | Registered: Aug 2002
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hermit
Shipmate
# 1803
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Posted
Thank you for correcting me, Ley Druid. I often mix my own beliefs into discussions, giving the false impression that these personal opinions are the teaching of the Church. In fact I've made no systematic study of Church teachings on this matter.
quote:
Truly it is when I contribute to threads like these that I realise just how irreconcileable Orthodoxy and mainline western Christianity really is ... both Roman Catholic and Protestant. I just give thanks for those western Christians who smell something dank and festering under the floorboards and who are inclined to something better.
For shame, Father. There's plenty dank and festering in the Eastern Church as well, I need only mention sometimes lethal wars over which calendar to use, and the treatment of Jews. Not to mention refusal to forgive.
As for the theologies, they're practically identical.
quote:
It leads exactly where you say. It leads to the possibility that I might be asked to kill without knowing why. Now I feel that I must go on. The premise has led me to somthing of an absurdity, which you more or less conceded: there is no way to imagine how to evaulate whether or not this was happening. More frightening, the premise opens up that I might never be able to tell Good from Evil: I cannot know it in my heart, and I cannot ask others because they are fallible and finite as I am. I cannot trust Man; I cannot trust myself; I can trust God, but he has asked me to commit atrocity. Or has he? Is it Satan posing as God? I will never know. I want absolutes, as you do hermit. I don't want this loose end.
Under ordinary circumstances I would judge this by Church teachings, in other words I would ALWAYS assume it was Satan asking me to kill. Unless .... there were some way I can't even currently imagine, that God would make me certain it was Him ordering it.
Now I was tossing this around in my mind and making the example more extreme ... what would I do if God commanded me to rape, torture and slowly kill a child? And here I'd have to admit, God would never do such a thing, it would be impossible. So I can understand that other people here draw the line earlier, with simple killing. Nonetheless I don't think it impossible for God to have literally, historically commanded the genocide of the Amalekites (not that He necessarily did, as I'm not a fundamentalist I don't have to believe He did). I don't think that would be irreconcilable with Him as powerful, just Judge .... and not even with what he said and did as the first humble coming of the Messiah.
Obviously the Amalekites in general were ripe for judgment, with human sacrifice and numerous aggressions toward the Israelites ... it's the innocents among them that we wonder about, why insist they be killed rather than adopted. I'll have to think more about that.
quote:
So I go with God as something non-personal. In my world there is not a God "presiding" over creation,
But I don't have that option, as easy as it would make everything. I've had specific prayers answered in non-coincidental ways.
quote:
But say you were right and death was a feature, not a bug--why not specify that everyone lives in rude good health untill a certain age, then has an angelic encounter with the message "Your time to come home is in three weeks at sunset, mortal." The soon-to-depart get to say goodbye to the people and places that have become dear to them and then after a little ceremony with their loved ones and church, or whatever, peacefully expire with a look of peace and contentment on their faces...
Sounds good to me, and I would have had easy anwers ready for you, back when I believed in reincarnation and karma. But now I'm supposed to believe in one life only to accomplish everything. All I can say now is that neither of us are the Creator, you'd expect someone infinitely more intelligent than we are to do things differently than we would.
quote:
Why Bam? Why Krakatoa? Keeping down the surplus population is really not a very plausible answer.
I'm personally not concerned with the issue of whether a death is by massive disaster or by ordinary means ... it's the amount of suffering connected with particular kinds of death that concern me. So I'm more challenged by one good individual dying slowly and painfully by cancer, than I am by a few thousand dying quickly by disaster.
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"You called out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness... You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain that peace which was yours." Confessions, St Augustine
Posts: 812 | From: Seattle | Registered: Nov 2001
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
I wish you well in your musings, hermit. The "problem of evil" and the implementation of "freedom in Christ" were written about very eloquently by Dostoevsky, whose works are legally offered by many Universities, for example The Brothers Karamazov, here. This thread prompted me to reread the Chapters entitled "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor." I've clipped what I think are relevant excerpts below:
quote:
Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature -- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance -- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth.
"No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha (the priest) softly…”But there is a Being and He can forgive everything, all and for all, because He gave His innocent blood for all and everything. You have forgotten Him…”
No, I have not forgotten Him; on the contrary I've been wondering all the time how it was you did not bring Him in before, for usually all arguments on your side put Him in the foreground. Do you know, Alyosha -- don't laugh I made a poem about a year ago…
Instead of taking men's freedom from them, Thou didst make it greater than ever! Didst Thou forget that man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil? Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.
In place of the rigid ancient law, man must hereafter with free heart decide for himself what is good and what is evil, having only Thy image before him as his guide. But didst Thou not know that he would at last reject even Thy image and Thy truth, if he is weighed down with the fearful burden of free choice? They will cry aloud at last that the truth is not in Thee, for they could not have been left in greater confusion and suffering than Thou hast caused, laying upon them so many cares and unanswerable problems.
The whole book should be canonized.
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Dear Ley Druid
I am much encouraged by your quotation from the Catechism.
Dear JimT
I agree. The Brothers Karamazov is a wonderful book; one of the best guides to Christian theodicy that there is.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
So God didn't do this?
GEN 38:7 ... Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the LORD's sight; so the LORD put him to death.
GEN 38:10 [Onan] What he did was wicked in the LORD's sight; so he put him to death also.
Orthodoxy is amazingly unorthodox.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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