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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Does God practice what (s)he preaches?
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
Various threads on the Ship at the moment are wrestling with the idea of God appearing to behave in what, to us, are immoral ways (genocide being the big issue). ISTM that this is part of a larger question, the theme of which has arisen before over the years. Namely, is God called to the same standards as us, or does God's otherness over-ride that? We've previously had discussions about what it means to call God 'good'. Can we use our own human understanding of what 'good' is to understand God, or is God so incomprehensible that this is simply impossible, and we should trust despite this.
I'll nail my colours to the mast. I think that every moral, ethical, character-based thing that God asks of us is there because of finding its origin in God. In other words, God does practice what God preaches. God asks us to forgive unconditionally because God forgives unconditionally. God calls us to humility because God is humble. God calls us to be peacemakers because God is a peacemaker. God calls us to love because God is Love. And that's what sanctification/deification is - becoming like God.
So, for me, when I encounter doctrines or teachings that appear to contradict the simple standards that we ourselves are called to, I reject them, because I believe that at the very least God has those standards (though, in a higher way). God's otherness is an escalation of our understanding, rather than something entirely different. For example, like many on the other threads, I cannot accept the idea that God ordered genocide, because that moral standard is at odds with the very nature of God that I believe God has revealed to us through Jesus. Or, if someone claims that God will not forgive some people, then, even if there wasn't all the stuff that scripture or tradition says about forgiveness, I know that can't be true, because I know that God has called me to forgive unconditionally, and God would not call me to do something that (s)he would not do; have already done; before me.
So what do the rest of you think, and why? Is God subject to the same (but higher) moral standards as us, or is morality something completely other for God, because, being God, the rules are totally different?
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"Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
Posts: 2098 | From: Midlands | Registered: Mar 2008
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
So the genocides were carried out by people, and those people had not heard the word of God in making their decision, but just wrote into their history that God had ordered them to do it?
IOW, parts of the Bible are not inspired by God, but rather are inspired by what some fallible human claimed God to have said.
Which means that large parts of the OT and smaller parts of the NT are unreliable
Go for it.
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Which means that large parts of the OT and smaller parts of the NT are unreliable
I'm not sure it's helpful to divide into reliable and unreliable, more that it's a matter of degree. As St Paul noted, we see through a glass darkly. Those that wrote scripture did, and we do. In terms of progressive understanding / revelation of God though, I'd hope that there are things we now see more clearly, just as those who come after us will see things more clearly than we do now.
(edit to add - we might have a different understanding of inspiration there. I do think it is all inspired, and don't follow your chain of consequences. Inspiration is not a full and total picture, rather a fuller understanding than what was known before.)
[ 28. February 2014, 10:47: Message edited by: goperryrevs ]
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"Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
Posts: 2098 | From: Midlands | Registered: Mar 2008
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
This is an issue I have great difficulty with. One thing, however, I am sure of: whatever we say about it, we must avoid portraying God as a version of President Nixon, insisting "when the Pesident does it, that means that it is not illegal."
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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pydseybare
Shipmate
# 16184
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
This is an issue I have great difficulty with. One thing, however, I am sure of: whatever we say about it, we must avoid portraying God as a version of President Nixon, insisting "when the Pesident does it, that means that it is not illegal."
Ah yes, the old 'if God is the source of all definitions of justice and righteousness and goodness, what does it mean to say that God is Good?' conundrum.
I like the idea of God being Good outwith of him also being the source of the term. If there was a measure of goodness which did not go all the way back to God, he'd still be good.
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"If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future."
Posts: 812 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
This is an issue I have great difficulty with. One thing, however, I am sure of: whatever we say about it, we must avoid portraying God as a version of President Nixon, insisting "when the Pesident does it, that means that it is not illegal."
Ah yes, the old 'if God is the source of all definitions of justice and righteousness and goodness, what does it mean to say that God is Good?' conundrum.
I like the idea of God being Good outwith of him also being the source of the term. If there was a measure of goodness which did not go all the way back to God, he'd still be good.
... but on the other hand we also can't make God subject to a concept of Good. God is Good; Good isn't God.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by goperryrevs:
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Which means that large parts of the OT and smaller parts of the NT are unreliable
I'm not sure it's helpful to divide into reliable and unreliable, more that it's a matter of degree. As St Paul noted, we see through a glass darkly. Those that wrote scripture did, and we do. In terms of progressive understanding / revelation of God though, I'd hope that there are things we now see more clearly, just as those who come after us will see things more clearly than we do now.
(edit to add - we might have a different understanding of inspiration there. I do think it is all inspired, and don't follow your chain of consequences. Inspiration is not a full and total picture, rather a fuller understanding than what was known before.)
Or it means we aren't getting the point of, for example, the conquest passages. That they aren't an example to follow or an indication of God's design, but of something else entirely. (Just don't ask me what)
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
... but on the other hand we also can't make God subject to a concept of Good. God is Good; Good isn't God.
How do you know?
The Holy Spirit told him.
That settles that.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
This is an issue I have great difficulty with. One thing, however, I am sure of: whatever we say about it, we must avoid portraying God as a version of President Nixon, insisting "when the Pesident does it, that means that it is not illegal."
What source of morality binds God? What happens if God violates it? The answers are none and nothing. How else would God be God? On the other hand, there is the concept in the OT of wrestling with God.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
That they aren't an example to follow or an indication of God's design, but of something else entirely. (Just don't ask me what)
Sure, and the "don't ask me what" is a big part of wrestling with scripture. Contradictions and difficult passages used to really bother me. Now, I appreciate them more and more, because they're the product of saints who were themselves wrestling with faith and scripture centuries before I was. I used to approach scripture wanting to form a coherent message, a systematic theology of beliefs, but I've come to terms with the fact that that's a wild goose chase. I now see scripture as much more dynamic, with internal tensions and conversations, provoking me to be active in picking sides, make choices, rather than passively receive a set of doctrines.
So we all have a picture of God, formed by scripture, tradition, reason, experience etc. and all of us find that picture of God challenged when we read scripture, because the pictures of God given in scripture are diverse and at times contradictory. What we do with that is what I find interesting - we have to pick and choose, we have to live with tension and paradox. That's why I asked the question, to see how other people deal with that. Sometimes it seems like there's a lot of sticking one's fingers in one's ears and going "la la la"; the challenge is being honest with ourselves.
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"Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
Posts: 2098 | From: Midlands | Registered: Mar 2008
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
What source of morality binds God? What happens if God violates it? The answers are none and nothing. How else would God be God?
This seems to be the more philosophical side of faith - the unmoveable object met by an unstoppable force, or whether can God create an object that God cannot lift. I suppose for me these exercises are interesting but ultimately fruitless in terms of actually getting anywhere. Which is where Christ comes in. As Christians, Jesus is the lens through which we should be seeing everything else.
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
On the other hand, there is the concept in the OT of wrestling with God.
The task is difficult, hence why I'd bring Jesus into the focus. A Jew wrestling with scripture is very different to a Christian wrestling with scripture. There is much overlap (and plenty in contemporary Jewish theology that we could learn from as Christians). But our starting point, our lenses, as I said, are totally different. We're wrestling with the same passages, but read them in very different ways.
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"Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
The original post asked if GOD practised what he/she preaches.
God doesn't preach - people do, although they claim to be inspired by him/her.
All the arguments therefore are about people and their claims, not God.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by goperryrevs:
So, for me, when I encounter doctrines or teachings that appear to contradict the simple standards that we ourselves are called to, I reject them, because I believe that at the very least God has those standards (though, in a higher way). God's otherness is an escalation of our understanding, rather than something entirely different.
We're missing an angle here, and that's maybe best seen through an analogy.
I value life and health very highly (don't we all?), and so, in the recent pandemic flu, I forced my son to take a flu shot. And I do mean that literally: I held him down and basically sat on him while he was freaking out screaming so he could get injected. (He's not usually resistant, but in this case he had been standing in a hallway full of hysterical crying scared kids for over two hours, all held there by parents determined to get very limited precious as gold vaccines available nowhere else in the state--and hysteria is catching.)
Now my son has an excellent case (from his point of view at the time) to claim that I am mean, cruel, and breaking the moral law by inflicting gratuitous pain upon him by force. What's more, it's totally out of character for what he knows of me. We don't do physical punishment, we don't use force of any sort (except in emergencies, which he can't ever recall happening). Surely he has a claim to reject what happened as me breaking my own moral law.
And yet there's an aspect he did not understand, could not understand, given his age at the time. His life was in danger. This was the flu that we lost Erin to. This is the flu that was even then forcing local hospitals to put up tents in the parking lots, since their capacity was maxed out. This was the flu that preferentially attacked the young and healthy, turning their own strong immune systems on them, and leading to a much higher death rate than expected in persons exactly like my son. And with a father working in health care, he was at even greater risk of exposure than a normal child. And so, from my point of view, what I was doing was the most loving and morally proper thing I could have done--I was attempting to save his life.
(and yes, we did all catch it anway, and yes, the shot was doubtless instrumental in making sure we were all freakin' miserable but still didn't wind up hospitalized. I'm fairly sure we would have otherwise, given the severity)
Now about God. It's easy to say "A God of love would never X, and therefore I reject X as a possible event." Well, unless we know and fully understand the whole story (and when do we ever?) it becomes pretty much impossible to say "God would never..." At the very least we need to speak with major caution.
Forcibly sticking a needle into somebody while holding them down as they kick and cry is not usually an act of love. But in this case, it was.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
I'm willing to accept that common analogy in principle. But when it comes to explaining genocide, or any individual's suffering, I find it usually ends up causing more harm than comfort. The "trust me this is for your own good" again, in theory, yes, in practice it sounds more like a sociopath. I'm just very very wary of using that to apply to any given situation-- or any given biblical text-- without some clear prophetic indication that "this is why I had to do it."
I'm more comfortable with open theism and the notion that not everything that happens in the world-- or in the Bible, for that matter-- is God's will. That there is brokenness in this world, at least for now, that is at play in ways we cannot fully grasp or understand. Things are hidden-- things both good (the unseen "good reason" for our cosmic "flu shot") and very, very evil (the work of the enemy).
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
What source of morality binds God?
God's own nature. Which is also the source of the moral laws (S)He gives us. They cannot contradict.
quote:
What happens if God violates it?
(S)He cannot. So any interpretation of scripture that says (S)He did, is wrong.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Fr Weber
Shipmate
# 13472
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
This is an issue I have great difficulty with. One thing, however, I am sure of: whatever we say about it, we must avoid portraying God as a version of President Nixon, insisting "when the Pesident does it, that means that it is not illegal."
On the other hand, God is not a human being, and projecting our judgment of other human beings onto God's actions is hardly tenable. He's not an essentially human being who just happens to have unimaginable power.
For one thing, God knows every consequence of his choices. We don't. When the family dog is taken to the vet to be vaccinated against parvo, he probably thinks he is being punished for some misdeed. In fact, he is being shielded from a deadly disease that will kill him.
I can believe that God commanded the massacres we read of in the stories of the conquest of Canaan. I struggle to understand why, but trust that it will be made clear to me eventually.
[ETA : cross-posted with Lamb Chopped, who said it much better than I did]
[ 28. February 2014, 16:20: Message edited by: Fr Weber ]
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"The Eucharist is not a play, and you're not Jesus."
--Sr Theresa Koernke, IHM
Posts: 2512 | From: Oakland, CA | Registered: Feb 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
This problem arises out of a simple misunderstanding of what "morals" are. Well, actually I don't know whether the misunderstanding is all that simple, but what "morals" are is simple. And once we understand that, so is God's status concerning "morals".
Every entity has behaviour that is "natural" to itself, which corresponds to its essence, to what they are. For inanimate objects this is "mechanistic" behaviour. Water, for example, will run downhill, because it is "natural" for a liquid to correspond to gravity like that. Once we come to animals, there is more than mere mechanism, there is what one could call "instinctive" behaviour. For example, a sheep grazes in herds, whereas a tiger hunts alone. Animals have a wide variety of such instinctive behaviours. We call them "natural" precisely if they accord with the essence of the animal. But such behaviour, since it is not mechanistic any longer but controlled, can be disturbed. For example, the tiger might decide to join the herd of sheep and try to live off eating grass. Then we say that the tiger is sick or crazy or the like. Now, this is obviously not going to happen much, but other disturbances are more common. It is not "natural" for a dog to eat chocolate, indeed, it will slowly kill the dog. Yet due to a stupid owner feeding the dog that chocolate as a treat, the dog may well build up a habit of eating chocolate. This is then a learned but "unnatural" behaviour of the dog, it is not appropriate to its essence.
The next step up from the animals are humans. Humans can go even beyond instinctive behaviour, they have "free will". That is to say, to some degree at least they can determine apart from external constraints just how they will behave. If they behave according to the human essence, if they do by free will what is "natural" for humans to do, then we say that their behaviour is "moral". If they do something contrary to the human essence by their free will, then we say that this is "immoral" due to being "unnatural". Of course, what precisely is appropriate to the human essence may not be easy to discern. If somebody knew nothing about dogs and saw a dog gobbling down chocolate, they may well conclude that eating chocolate in natural for dogs. One has to understand quite a bit about dogs before one can come to the conclusion that this is unnatural behaviour. Likewise, what is moral - and thus natural - to human beings is hotly debated in many instances. I do not intend to enter into those discussions now. Suffice to say that the term "natural" here implies a process of analysis and understanding. It does not simply mean "some entities of this type are found to do this in nature". It does not even mean "most entities of this type are found to do this in nature". (It is not impossible to conceive of a world in which most dogs eat chocolate, and yet it would still be unnatural for them to do so...)
OK, can we - as humans - say something about the natural behaviour of other beings? Yes, we sure can. In fact, I have just done so concerning dogs (and sheep, tigers, water). Why was I able to do so? Precisely because I know and understand the essence of what it is to be a dog sufficiently to make some statements about the behaviour that must follow from this. Whereas if I asked you what the natural behaviour of a yeti crab is, then you would shrug your shoulders and say "A what?" If you can say something about that, then precisely because you know and understand a little. For example, you might guess that it is appropriate for a yeti crab to live underwater at least some of the time, simply because that is what crabs usually do. Finally, does it make sense for us to expect other entities to behave naturally as we do? In general, certainly not. For example, we do not expect yeti crabs to live outside of water most of the time, like humans do. That would likely kill them. We do not expect dogs to eat chocolate like humans do, or we are stupid dog owners. We do not think that tigers should be charitable. Tigers are not group animal supporting each other, much less in some kind of spiritually significant way. However, of course there are commonalities. Both a sheep and a human should have regular bowel movements, and if the sheep did not have them then we would call it "sick", and the same for a human, unless the human somehow prevented bowel movements by an exercise of their free will, at which point we would call that (weirdly...) immoral unless there was some good reason.
Now it should be clear how far we can predict "natural behaviour" and hence the "morality" of God; namely to the extent that we know and understand God. Most people agree that we know and understand God only very little, mostly in the negative, and otherwise in analogy. So it should be clear from the start that we cannot say very much about what God should and shouldn't do. Can we expect Him then to act a lot like human beings, in acting naturally? Only to the extent that God is like a human being, and again most people would agree that God is not very much like a human being at all. There must be some similarities, if we believe that we are created in His image and likeness, but they are certainly nowhere near as obvious as our similarities to say a chimpanzee. Indeed, it requires quite some theological and philosophical thinking to come up with a way in which the embodied time-bound creature "human being" can be said to be like the incorporeal eternal Creator. So we immediately conclude that whatever we may predict as similarities between our moral behaviour and God's moral behaviour will be very limited, since the little we know about God tells us that He is a very different sort of being. Finally, if we now try to use now the best shot that humanity has ever had at characterising the essence of God, what will we conclude? Well, the best thing we can say about God by philosophical theology is that His essence is identical with His existence, or as revelation says, God's name is "He Who Is". What follows from this? Well, then it is natural and consequently moral for God to exist.
And that, basically, is all we really can say. God ought to exist, and since God cannot but exist, God is necessarily "moral" by virtue of existing. We can speculatively say a little bit more. For example, if we take the line that it is the human intellect which is what allows us to claim to be in the image and likeness of God somehow, then we can try to say that some things that are moral for the human intellect should be similarly found in God somehow.
Of course, some people will want to make much of God being "good" and "love" and so on. The problem there is that they basically argue by gibberish. They have no clear idea what it actually means to say that "God is the Good" or "God is Love", but then they immediately cash that out in terms of requiring of God this or that human good or this or that expression of human love. But things are not that simple, neither in philosophical theology nor - and I would like to stress that - in revelation. It is important to realise that in the Incarnation God became fully human, and hence that the actions and words of Jesus Christ are not primarily indicators of what God as God must naturally be like, but rather of what God wants humans (or perhaps Christians) to be like.
In conclusion, it is largely false to claim that we can derive what God ought to do from what we humans ought to do. The claim that a difference there would lead to some kind of contradiction in God's nature is nonsensical. That is like saying that I cannot possible construct a Lego stone, because a Lego stone is nothing like human anatomy and does not have human physiology / behaviour, and therefore would contradict my human nature. Rubbish. I cannot both create a Lego stone and wish to avoid making something that can be used as building unit to construct larger structures. Then I am in contradiction with myself. But a Lego stone can be utterly different from me as a human being, and still be exactly what I want to construct for my human purposes.
Of course, there are plenty of lessons in the bible concerning what we should do, as human beings. But as far as God as God (not God as human) is concerned, it really is of utmost importance to realise that the motto is "Do as I say, don't do as I do." Because God has the final word on what we should do, but we are not very much like God at all and hence should not expect to act like him. Of course, this is tough to follow for humans, who really like to ape, and hence in the Incarnation we finally meet God as saying "do as I do."
[ 28. February 2014, 18:21: 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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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Surely, our being created in the image and likeness of God must involve morals; we don't share morals with chimpanzees, but we are told to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.
We are told specifically that there are differences. Judgment belongs to God, not us. His ways are above our ways.
But if his morals are so completely different from ours as to be inscrutable, then we are worshiping a cipher, and the moral rules become "because I said so" and "do as I say, not as I do."
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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moonlitdoor
Shipmate
# 11707
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Posted
quote:
posted by IngoB
the actions and words of Jesus Christ are not primarily indicators of what God as God must naturally be like, but rather of what God wants humans (or perhaps Christians) to be like.
Doesn't the idea of theosis or human beings participating in the divine nature mean that there is some connection between what God is like and what God wants us to be like ?
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We've evolved to being strange monkeys, but in the next life he'll help us be something more worthwhile - Gwai
Posts: 2210 | From: london | Registered: Aug 2006
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Surely, our being created in the image and likeness of God must involve morals; we don't share morals with chimpanzees, but we are told to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.
We are told specifically that there are differences. Judgment belongs to God, not us. His ways are above our ways.
But if his morals are so completely different from ours as to be inscrutable, then we are worshiping a cipher, and the moral rules become "because I said so" and "do as I say, not as I do."
Exactly. If morality is a function of keening closely to the character and heart of God, then we must somehow have a capacity to know-- at least to some degree-- the character and heart of God. That seems to have been the whole purpose of the incarnation, at least according to John-- so that we would know "what the Father looks like". I can see the benefit in
struggling with the paradox of something that seems evil yet is apparently God's will (although I would question whether it's always as "apparent" as we think it is). But it seems to me throwing up our hands and dismissing the effort-- just accepting it as "divine mystery" would lead to immorality because we're not engaging in the sort of learning about the character of God that is precisely what is needed for us to imitate the character and heart of God.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Surely, our being created in the image and likeness of God must involve morals; we don't share morals with chimpanzees, but we are told to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.
What does it mean to be "perfect"? It means to be totally in accord with how you ought to be. The Father is indeed totally in accord with how He ought to be - as I have argued, to the extent we can talk about that at all He really cannot be otherwise. If you are totally in accord with how you ought to be, then you are perfectly moral (and other things, but we are discussing the moral bit now). Nothing else follows. In particular, it does not follow in the slightest that any of your behaviour pattern must be similar to any of God's behaviour patterns. (I agree by the way that we can say a little more than that. Just not on those grounds.)
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
But if his morals are so completely different from ours as to be inscrutable, then we are worshiping a cipher, and the moral rules become "because I said so" and "do as I say, not as I do."
That moral rule is correct and holy. We live according to God's word, as His creatures, we do not live like God, the Creator. And since that is so terribly hard for ape-like creatures who just must copy each other, and in particular their leader, God send his Word incarnate as a human being, so that we can live like "God as human being". And so finally we can become God-like, or more precisely, God-as-human-being-like. But we can never even remotely become God-as-God-like. (Well, we can argue just what precisely happens in heaven in the beatific vision. This may be something like the Incarnation, in which we as person somehow have part in Divine nature, without mixing our human nature with the Divine. But that really is a different discussion to one about morals in this world.)
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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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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
But as far as God as God (not God as human) is concerned, it really is of utmost importance to realise that the motto is "Do as I say, don't do as I do." Because God has the final word on what we should do, but we are not very much like God at all and hence should not expect to act like him. Of course, this is tough to follow for humans, who really like to ape,
Especially when we're TOLD to ape him. Your distinction basically says God as God and God as Man have different moralities. Which is weird, to say the least.
quote:
and hence in the Incarnation we finally meet God as saying "do as I do."
But who is not allowed to do what God as God does, despite saying that's all he ever does.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
If morality is a function of keening closely to the character and heart of God, then we must somehow have a capacity to know-- at least to some degree-- the character and heart of God. That seems to have been the whole purpose of the incarnation, at least according to John-- so that we would know "what the Father looks like".
But you are simply confusing communication, including embodied communication in and through the Incarnation, with being. You can know the character and heart of God in His word to you, or indeed in His Word to you, but you cannot extrapolate from word to being as you do with humans. If I speak to you honestly, then you can guess my inner state. As a human being you have access to the connection between my words and my inner state, because it is a lot like your connection. That is not true for God. God communicates in our terms, but we cannot guess His terms through that. In a sense God talks to humans always about human things, even if He talks about Himself. (At least so in this world, heaven may be different.)
Imagine as an analogy that I learn the pheromone language of ants, and synthesise those compounds so that I can use them. I then can for example put down a trail of pheromones to a food source for my ants. Or spray some other pheromone to warn them of incoming enemies. Etc. But can the ants from this guess my purposes? Not really. They cannot guess that I am say a research scientist working on a paper about ants. That's totally opaque to them. What they can guess to some extent is my purpose for them. If I lead them to lots of food, and warn them against many enemies, then they can guess that it is my purpose to keep them alive and strong. But really all this means is that by adopting ant pheromone language, I make ant sense and am in ant matters comprehensible to ants. I say "food over here" with pheromones, and it means something to them because it is what I wanted them to understand. But it does not really project back to me, because they are ants, not humans. Another human researcher might be able to guess where I am going with those ants, but the ants cannot. They are at the wrong level of being for doing that.
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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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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Your distinction basically says God as God and God as Man have different moralities. Which is weird, to say the least.
I don't think that God as God really has any kind of morality. That is just not a particularly helpful concept in talking about the Godhead. If at all, it just becomes another universal: "God is Moral." What have we learned there? Not much.
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
But who is not allowed to do what God as God does, despite saying that's all he ever does.
Jesus does not say that. He says that He does His Father's will. As should any human being. Namely, doing the Father's will for humans in general and for one's personal life specifically. Nothing in what I have said speaks against that.
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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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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
If morality is a function of keening closely to the character and heart of God, then we must somehow have a capacity to know-- at least to some degree-- the character and heart of God. That seems to have been the whole purpose of the incarnation, at least according to John-- so that we would know "what the Father looks like".
But you are simply confusing communication, including embodied communication in and through the Incarnation, with being. You can know the character and heart of God in His word to you, or indeed in His Word to you, but you cannot extrapolate from word to being as you do with humans. If I speak to you honestly, then you can guess my inner state. As a human being you have access to the connection between my words and my inner state, because it is a lot like your connection. That is not true for God. God communicates in our terms, but we cannot guess His terms through that. In a sense God talks to humans always about human things, even if He talks about Himself. (At least so in this world, heaven may be different.)
Imagine as an analogy that I learn the pheromone language of ants, and synthesise those compounds so that I can use them. I then can for example put down a trail of pheromones to a food source for my ants. Or spray some other pheromone to warn them of incoming enemies. Etc. But can the ants from this guess my purposes? Not really. They cannot guess that I am say a research scientist working on a paper about ants. That's totally opaque to them. What they can guess to some extent is my purpose for them. If I lead them to lots of food, and warn them against many enemies, then they can guess that it is my purpose to keep them alive and strong. But really all this means is that by adopting ant pheromone language, I make ant sense and am in ant matters comprehensible to ants. I say "food over here" with pheromones, and it means something to them because it is what I wanted them to understand. But it does not really project back to me, because they are ants, not humans. Another human researcher might be able to guess where I am going with those ants, but the ants cannot. They are at the wrong level of being for doing that.
But that's not what John tells us happens in the incarnation. God didn't just "learn to speak ant language." He "became an ant" to use your analogy. And he did so specifically because just "telling us stuff in our own language" (the entire OT) wasn't doing the job-- because we needed to see God in order to become like God.
I'm of course not suggesting that we will ever be able to fully or even dimly grasp the mind of God. But there should be a continuity so that by observing God, especially through Jesus, we understand what we are to be and do.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
Again, I think this "God's hidden & mysterious will" thing sounds good in theory, but looks really really ugly when we start coming down to cases. When you start telling a grieving parent that their child was raped because of "God's mysterious will" or that a horrific genocide was "God's mysterious will" it just starts to not fly. There is a limit to how far I for one am willing to push the flu shot analogy.
Which, again, takes us back to the conquest passages and other "hard texts". I'm personally a lot more comfortable saying, "I don't get this passage and what we're supposed to learn from it" then I am saying "God willed the conquest/ genocide for purposes we don't know".
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Of course you'd never say such a thing to a grieving parent/citizen/whatever. Even if it were true. And I don't think it is. By giving us free will (and the angels too, including the evil ones), God has ceded control of his creation, at least in part. So now things happen that are in fact against his will. Those can't be blamed on God. A rape, a murder, a genocide--just no.
The OT genocides are a different matter because there you have a scriptural command to cope with, and a unique situation, most of the details of which are unavailable to us. And that's a whole ugly can of worms and I suspect I'd do better to stay out of it here.
But as for anything not clearly commanded in Scripture, the proper response would be ![[Projectile]](graemlins/puke2.gif) and a vehement denial that God could have told anyone to do it. Because Jesus.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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pydseybare
Shipmate
# 16184
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
The OT genocides are a different matter because there you have a scriptural command to cope with, and a unique situation, most of the details of which are unavailable to us. And that's a whole ugly can of worms and I suspect I'd do better to stay out of it here.
But why and how is it a unique situation and why would you be better to stay out of it here?
quote:
But as for anything not clearly commanded in Scripture, the proper response would be and a vehement denial that God could have told anyone to do it. Because Jesus.
I don't understand. Why is something totally unacceptable in any other circumstance sudden fine when it is in the bible? Are you saying that nothing in the bible is to be taken as applying in real life?
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"If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future."
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Nope, I am saying that any "God told me so" that someone claims must be measured against Scripture, which includes Jesus. And so any extra-scriptural "God told me to kill x" claims automatically fail.
The problem comes in trying to square the Joshua stuff with what Jesus says and does. There are, I think, ways of doing it, but this is not the thread to attempt it. At least for me. Besides, all my speculations would do is generate heat, not light, and what's the point of that?
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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pydseybare
Shipmate
# 16184
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Nope, I am saying that any "God told me so" that someone claims must be measured against Scripture, which includes Jesus. And so any extra-scriptural "God told me to kill x" claims automatically fail.
OK try this: God has told me in a vision that he has changed his mind - genocide is back on the agenda to destroy all the enemies of the gospel of Christ. I know this is true because Jesus Christ has specifically visited me and I can back it up from the bible by a) looking at the OT and b) seeing times where God changes his mind.
Refute me.
quote:
The problem comes in trying to square the Joshua stuff with what Jesus says and does. There are, I think, ways of doing it, but this is not the thread to attempt it. At least for me. Besides, all my speculations would do is generate heat, not light, and what's the point of that?
Well because it sounds like you're trying to cop out.
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"If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future."
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
The problem as I see it, is that a concept of a personal god, a god who is integrally involved in anything worldly is that we don't know where the God part starts and stops, and where the people part starts and stops.
Killing one's child is clearly immoral. Did God kill his son Jesus, or did the people do it? I hold that the people did it and that God did something with it because transforming things is what God does, and had the people not done it then or ever, then God would have done something with that. If no crucified Jesus (done by people), then a stoned Jesus (done by people), and if no Jesus killed at all and lived out an entire life, then God would have done something with that as well. It's all speculative, but I suspect freedom of choice is an organizing principal such that God did not order or otherwise plan Jesus' death, rather than people did it.
And if no crucifixion, the people would have misintepreted and argued for centuries about what God was up to with what ever happened, and they would have written it down and debated and it, and even had wars about it. Because the God part stopped and the people part continued.
-- Personally, I am not confident about the confidence some people have in the level of God involvement in most of what happened back then and happens today. I think much more of it is about people doing, not God. -- Which makes this talk of morality of God rather moot.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
But who is not allowed to do what God as God does, despite saying that's all he ever does.
Jesus does not say that.
You err because you do not know the Scriptures. Jesus says: "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise."
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
The OT genocides are a different matter because there you have a scriptural command to cope with, and a unique situation, most of the details of which are unavailable to us. And that's a whole ugly can of worms and I suspect I'd do better to stay out of it here.
But why and how is it a unique situation and why would you be better to stay out of it here?
quote:
But as for anything not clearly commanded in Scripture, the proper response would be and a vehement denial that God could have told anyone to do it. Because Jesus.
I don't understand. Why is something totally unacceptable in any other circumstance sudden fine when it is in the bible? Are you saying that nothing in the bible is to be taken as applying in real life?
That's where I'm coming from too. I'd rather just say of Joshua "I don't know why it's in there, or why it seems to place God in the position of commanding it" than to try and bend my theology to make it work. In general, when one specific passage doesn't fit with the whole witness of Scripture-- and I really don't think the conquest passages do, at least not when placed in God's mouth-- I follow Luther's "let clear passages illumine unclear"-- take the whole witness of Scripture over the one outlier.
It's inconvenient for me because there's individual verses in Joshua I really like-- especially the stuff about fear, which I really struggle with. But the overall text is so problematic, I can only hope that we're just missing the point altogether. The last time I preached from Joshua I pretty much did that-- owned up that I have a love/hate thing going on with this book & why, quickly referenced the part I won't be unpacking in the sermon because I don't get it, and moved swiftly to what seemed to be edifying.
[ 28. February 2014, 21:53: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
But that's not what John tells us happens in the incarnation. God didn't just "learn to speak ant language." He "became an ant" to use your analogy. And he did so specifically because just "telling us stuff in our own language" (the entire OT) wasn't doing the job-- because we needed to see God in order to become like God.
I'm sorry, did you somehow miss that I am constantly talking about the Incarnation in all this? And yes, we need to see God-as-human-being in order to become like God-as-human-being, as I've noted several times. In part that actually has to do with the difference between ants and humans, instinctive and free will behaviour. I'm a bit cheeky in blaming this on our likeness to apes... At any rate, if at all, this affirms what I've been saying.
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
I'm of course not suggesting that we will ever be able to fully or even dimly grasp the mind of God. But there should be a continuity so that by observing God, especially through Jesus, we understand what we are to be and do.
Nothing in what I've said speaks against that.
The issue here is a completely different one. What you are trying to do is to make Christ a non-historical figure. But He is not. His revelation, His teachings are for the time from Christ's First Coming till Christ's Second Coming. They are not retroactively determining the past. We know what God wanted in the past, the bible actually tells us that. God was not simply silent. God set humanity on a path that let up to Christ, and it wasn't an easy path. It was a bloody and harsh path, and if your assumptions about God cannot deal with this being from God, then you are simply mistaken.
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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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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
You err because you do not know the Scriptures. Jesus says: "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise."
John 5:19 is not a general discussion about human morality, but about Jesus working healing miracles on the Sabbath. It is an allegory (*), given that the Son does all sorts of things that the Father never does, like getting baptised, or getting crucified, or taking a leak. This realisation is helped along rather nicely by Christ immediately contradicting a literal interpretation of this verse, in John 5:22, where the Son explicitly does what the Father does not do (because the Father delegates that activity to the Son). The imagery here was almost certainly that of a human son learning his trade from a human father, a situation that everybody in the audience would have been very familiar with. The point of all this is a claim of Divine authority for what the Jews would consider as innovation. And the entire practical discussion was about miracle working (John 5:20-21).
(*) I'm not so sure at what this really is, to be honest, other than not literal. My education in English never extended to classifying rhetorical / literary devices with accuracy...
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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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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Your invincible 'misunderstanding' IngoB is that God is the express image of the man Jesus.
ANY description of Him otherwise is YOUR fecklessly innocent faithful projection. Just as it was the prophet Samuel's.
As it was mine for longer than you've been alive son.
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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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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Nope, I am saying that any "God told me so" that someone claims must be measured against Scripture, which includes Jesus. And so any extra-scriptural "God told me to kill x" claims automatically fail.
OK try this: God has told me in a vision that he has changed his mind - genocide is back on the agenda to destroy all the enemies of the gospel of Christ. I know this is true because Jesus Christ has specifically visited me and I can back it up from the bible by a) looking at the OT and b) seeing times where God changes his mind.
Refute me.
Why should I? The burden of proof is on YOU, as you are the one making extraordinary claims. "I saw Jesus" does not constitute proof (you haven't got any other witnesses, have you?) as we are well past the post-resurrection appearances, and you are not an apostle, and the Second Coming has not happened yet. So you've got a bare assertion based on a private "appearance" which can and is easily duplicated by mental illness or drugs. And on the basis of this you wish to change doctrine? Pfffffbt. Doesn't work that way, sorry.
As for Scriptural support, what you would need to have behind you would be either a) an ongoing command to genocide (rather than one very specifically limited to a particular instance), and / or b) something that would validate the appearance you claim ("Lo, I appear unto Pydseybare in the year 2014! Hearken unto him, for he shall reveal unto you all manner of wonders, including where the remote control went to!") Sorry, but I see no such texts.
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Well because it sounds like you're trying to cop out.
I don't give a flying fuck at a doughnut what you think my motivations are.
[ 01. March 2014, 00:25: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
I'm of course not suggesting that we will ever be able to fully or even dimly grasp the mind of God. But there should be a continuity so that by observing God, especially through Jesus, we understand what we are to be and do.
Nothing in what I've said speaks against that.
The issue here is a completely different one. What you are trying to do is to make Christ a non-historical figure. But He is not.
Wha????? How in the world do you get from what I said to the inference that I don't think of Jesus as a historical being????
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The issue here is a completely different one. What you are trying to do is to make Christ a non-historical figure. But He is not. His revelation, His teachings are for the time from Christ's First Coming till Christ's Second Coming. They are not retroactively determining the past. We know what God wanted in the past, the bible actually tells us that. God was not simply silent. God set humanity on a path that let up to Christ, and it wasn't an easy path. It was a bloody and harsh path, and if your assumptions about God cannot deal with this being from God, then you are simply mistaken.
Actually, I think Jesus helps us a lot in reading the OT. There are a lot of places where he specifically and explicitly corrects the prevailing assumptions about the meaning/purpose of various things in the OT. While he doesn't address the conquest passages directly, I don't think it's a stretch to say that we should reread them in light of what has been revealed about God in the incarnation.
It's nice-- I guess ![[Confused]](confused.gif) -- that you are so certain you've got a God-given unambiguous blueprint for interpreting the hard texts. Given the discussion here, I think it's fair to suggest that quite a few of us don't think it's quite so simple or obvious.
If God wanted to reveal himself and the Christian life unambiguously he could/should have inspired a clearer book-- a list of clear, unambiguous propositional truths that spells it all out in detail in some well-organized systematic theology. But, for whatever reason, he didn't. For some reason, God chose to reveal himself in much of the Bible (including the conquest and many of the hard texts) in the form of narrative-- with all the ambiguity inherent to the genre. Hence the confusion. I don't know why God chose to do it that way, but I would conclude that either:
1. we are wrong about the divine nature of Scripture
2. God's purpose in inspiring such an ambiguous document was something other than "getting everything exactly right"
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
You err because you do not know the Scriptures. Jesus says: "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise."
John 5:19 is not a general discussion about human morality, but about Jesus working healing miracles on the Sabbath.
So you're saying the Father worked miracles on the Sabbath, but it's an allegory but... huh?
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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pydseybare
Shipmate
# 16184
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Why should I? The burden of proof is on YOU, as you are the one making extraordinary claims. "I saw Jesus" does not constitute proof (you haven't got any other witnesses, have you?) as we are well past the post-resurrection appearances, and you are not an apostle, and the Second Coming has not happened yet. So you've got a bare assertion based on a private "appearance" which can and is easily duplicated by mental illness or drugs. And on the basis of this you wish to change doctrine? Pfffffbt. Doesn't work that way, sorry.
OK, so you are refuting based on the facts, as you see it, that post-resurrection appearances are over, that there are no other witnesses, that I could be mentally ill or on drugs.
Which is fair. It wasn't a trick question, I was interested to know how you could argue with someone making this argument.
quote:
As for Scriptural support, what you would need to have behind you would be either a) an ongoing command to genocide (rather than one very specifically limited to a particular instance), and / or b) something that would validate the appearance you claim ("Lo, I appear unto Pydseybare in the year 2014! Hearken unto him, for he shall reveal unto you all manner of wonders, including where the remote control went to!") Sorry, but I see no such texts.
Fair enough.
quote:
quote:
Originally posted by pydseybare:
Well because it sounds like you're trying to cop out.
I don't give a flying fuck at a doughnut what you think my motivations are.
Actually it has nothing to do with your motivations and everything to do with understanding the comments that you've made. Given that you made a comment on the issue, and asked rhetorical questions when I came back on something you said, I assumed you were happy to talk about it.
Clearly you are not. Fair enough.
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"If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future."
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Taliesin
Shipmate
# 14017
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Posted
Cliffdweller and lamb chopped, I love you both. Thank you for the illuminations.
The OT is always a struggle...
Posts: 2138 | From: South, UK | Registered: Aug 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Your invincible 'misunderstanding' IngoB is that God is the express image of the man Jesus. ANY description of Him otherwise is YOUR fecklessly innocent faithful projection. Just as it was the prophet Samuel's.
I'm guessing you mean that I misunderstand by thinking God is not the express image of the man Jesus. Otherwise your second sentence makes no sense. Well, the claim that "God is the express image of the man Jesus" is wrong in pretty much any sense I can think of. Depending on what sense we are talking about, that's absurd or blasphemous or atheist or heretic or what have you. Perhaps you wanted to say that "Jesus is the express image of God"? If one carefully avoids some obvious heresies, that could become meaningful, even profound. Icons, sacraments, and all that. But what you said there is ... plain horrible.
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
As it was mine for longer than you've been alive son.
I do not consider you a father, wayward brother.
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Wha????? How in the world do you get from what I said to the inference that I don't think of Jesus as a historical being????
I explained myself in the paragraph that you have chopped off. I did not mean that you don't believe that Jesus walked 1stC Palestine. I assume that you do believe in a historical person Jesus. I was talking about the significance you attribute to Jesus. You assume that His significance is non-historical, i.e., that you can determine what the ancient Jews actually should have done, by projecting Jesus' teaching back in time and critiquing their actions retroactively. And as part of that the OT becomes a record of failure not only where it explicitly says that people fail, but also where it says that they succeed, making the very historical words of scripture untrustworthy unless first verified in Christ. In consequence, our history with God really only starts with Christ, and all the mucking about before then becomes conditional on what Christ said. This is elevating Christ out of His historical context to a position of non-historical principle. That's what I meant.
And I think it is deeply mistaken: God did speak to the ancient Jews, they did do His will (or not, but we are told which is which), scripture provides a trustworthy account, and Christ does not disrupt but fulfil this long tradition. Christ is the pivot point of history, but he is not above history. And yes, this also carries forward into the future. God's interaction with humanity did not stop with Christ, it merely changed in Christ. We have to take into account the ongoing interaction of God with us through the Holy Spirit and the Church. And that again is a process of history, not of principle. So that what we find later is determined by what went before, but one cannot take the now and simply project it onto the past as principle. That is anachronistic, and that is not how the Judaeo-Christian faith works.
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Actually, I think Jesus helps us a lot in reading the OT.
Certainly. He is the eye-opener. But he is not an editor who redacts scripture.
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
If God wanted to reveal himself and the Christian life unambiguously he could/should have inspired a clearer book-- a list of clear, unambiguous propositional truths that spells it all out in detail in some well-organized systematic theology. But, for whatever reason, he didn't.
Actually, this is just a diversion. You are not really struggling with some ambiguous text here. You are struggling with the plain meaning of scripture. You are not saying "this scripture can be misunderstood". You are saying "this scripture must be wrong in what it says, presumably because the people writing it were wrong about God". God either commanded genocide, or He didn't. The bible says He did, and people obeyed. Where is your ambiguity? Your problem is rather that you cannot make this fit with what you believe about Jesus Christ, and with the statement that He is the Son of the Father who supposedly ordered that genocide. You think you have to adjust scripture to make it fit with your understanding of God. I say you have to adjust your understanding of God to fit scripture - all of it, not just the NT.
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
God's purpose in inspiring such an ambiguous document was something other than "getting everything exactly right"
We can have a fair guess at God's purpose there... Isaiah 6:9-10, Matt 13:10-17, John 12:37-41, Acts 28:23-31. But I will hazard a guess and say that for you these statements are more difficulties to be explained away. God could not possibly hide His pearls from the swine, eh?
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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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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
No, no son of mine, IngoB, I obviously didn't. I meant the commutativity I used. Obviously. How could you think otherwise? Which you don't. You know exactly the blasphemous, heretical and perfectly orthodox implication you see staring you in the face.
It's you who idolatrously insist on projecting your inner killer on God, who does not fear to be judged with that same judgement.
Invincibility is two edged my son.
Thank God my Pope embraces me around you.
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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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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Actually, I think Jesus helps us a lot in reading the OT.
Certainly. He is the eye-opener. But he is not an editor who redacts scripture.
Actually, I think quite often he's exactly that. How else do you interpret the "You have heard it said ... but I say" passages? Often what the people "have heard said" is a direct quote from the Scriptures, but Jesus doesn't privilege it in any way or try to explain how he has the nerve to redact Scripture. And while in some cases (as with divorce) he's actually strengthening the original message, in other cases (as with "an eye for an eye") he's directly contradicting it -- and that's the example probably most relevant to this discussion (Matt. 5).
What interests me most about this troubling topic though, is how far back the question in the OP goes. Isn't that essentially what Abraham is asking in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah? God says "I'm going to destroy these wicked cities," and Abraham says "But wait, there are innocent people there. Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" So the idea of holding God to God's own ethical standards is built into Scripture from the very beginning (Genesis 18).
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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Steve Langton
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# 17601
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Posted
In terms of “what God preaches” in the first place – we humans tend to want simple ‘cut-and-dried’ morality in a world which is anything but. It seems to me that some answers are to be found by looking at the ways Jesus dealt with the OT morality as the scribes had developed it. In effect he said “Oh yes, you’re very literally doing what God said; but in a narrow way that misses the point, misses what God really intended by that rule. For example, the Sabbath was made for man’s benefit, to meet his need for rest; man wasn’t made for the Sabbath. If you so interpret the Sabbath that it becomes a burden instead of a rest, or so absolutely that ‘keeping the Sabbath’ gets in the way of healing the sick, then you’re just not thinking right. You are meant to use your brains about this”. Remember that in situations like that about the Sabbath the Pharisees were very literally complaining that God wasn’t practising what he had preached!!!
Posts: 2245 | From: Stockport UK | Registered: Mar 2013
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IconiumBound
Shipmate
# 754
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Posted
Originally posted by IngoB
quote:
This problem arises out of a simple misunderstanding of what "morals" are. Well, actually I don't know whether the misunderstanding is all that simple, but what "morals" are is simple.
Ignoring the fact that it took 500+ words to describe a "simple" answer, I propose that God and all other religions are, in fact, codes of desired human morality; from the Greeks to the Hebrews. These are put into place with myths or fables that give them a sense of authority.
The problems arise when contradictions arise between what the myth says and humans experience which is called theodicy. It stems from perceiving the myth to be exactly the same as reality.
Can we let the myth be myth and not strain our minds and start argument over details?
Posts: 1318 | From: Philadelphia, PA, USA | Registered: Jul 2001
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Wha????? How in the world do you get from what I said to the inference that I don't think of Jesus as a historical being????
I explained myself in the paragraph that you have chopped off. I did not mean that you don't believe that Jesus walked 1stC Palestine. I assume that you do believe in a historical person Jesus. I was talking about the significance you attribute to Jesus. You assume that His significance is non-historical, i.e., that you can determine what the ancient Jews actually should have done, by projecting Jesus' teaching back in time and critiquing their actions retroactively. And as part of that the OT becomes a record of failure not only where it explicitly says that people fail, but also where it says that they succeed, making the very historical words of scripture untrustworthy unless first verified in Christ. In consequence, our history with God really only starts with Christ, and all the mucking about before then becomes conditional on what Christ said. This is elevating Christ out of His historical context to a position of non-historical principle. That's what I meant.
I was addressing one point at a time. The excised portion of your quote appeared in the next snippet where I addressed that point-- as I will do now when I discuss your response.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I was talking about the significance you attribute to Jesus. You assume that His significance is non-historical, i.e., that you can determine what the ancient Jews actually should have done, by projecting Jesus' teaching back in time and critiquing their actions retroactively. And as part of that the OT becomes a record of failure not only where it explicitly says that people fail, but also where it says that they succeed, making the very historical words of scripture untrustworthy unless first verified in Christ. In consequence, our history with God really only starts with Christ, and all the mucking about before then becomes conditional on what Christ said. This is elevating Christ out of His historical context to a position of non-historical principle. That's what I meant.
Turn about it fair play-- I had explained exactly my response to this in my post, but you failed to include that here.
I understand there are OT scholars who steadfastly insist we must accept and read the OT on the OT's terms. And certainly we want to be informed and shaped by that. But the reality is, that's not what the NT does. The entire NT is FULL o a complete rereading of the OT in light of the NT. Passages are plucked out of their original context and reread in a new light. Jesus takes the prevailing and often obvious understandings of the Law and other OT texts and gives them a fresh new interpretation-- particularly in the Sermon on the Mount.
Christians have always read the OT through the NT. Sometimes (OK often) we go too far, of course, we read it w/o looking at the historical or literary context. We read it w/o listening to what it meant to Jews or Israelites historically or contemporaneously. That was an error. But to suggest that we aren't reading it in light of the revelation of Christ is to rewrite 2000 years of Christian tradition and the meaning and purpose of the NT.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
This is elevating Christ out of His historical context to a position of non-historical principle. That's what I meant.
And I think it is deeply mistaken: God did speak to the ancient Jews, they did do His will (or not, but we are told which is which), scripture provides a trustworthy account, and Christ does not disrupt but fulfil this long tradition. Christ is the pivot point of history, but he is not above history. And yes, this also carries forward into the future. God's interaction with humanity did not stop with Christ, it merely changed in Christ. We have to take into account the ongoing interaction of God with us through the Holy Spirit and the Church. And that again is a process of history, not of principle. So that what we find later is determined by what went before, but one cannot take the now and simply project it onto the past as principle. That is anachronistic, and that is not how the Judaeo-Christian faith works.
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Actually, I think Jesus helps us a lot in reading the OT.
Certainly. He is the eye-opener. But he is not an editor who redacts scripture.
I'm not suggesting he is. He is an interpreter, who shows us the meaning and purpose of Scripture. I absolutely agree that God was moving and speaking in the OT in and thru the people of Israel. Jesus helps us understand how and why.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
If God wanted to reveal himself and the Christian life unambiguously he could/should have inspired a clearer book-- a list of clear, unambiguous propositional truths that spells it all out in detail in some well-organized systematic theology. But, for whatever reason, he didn't.
Actually, this is just a diversion. You are not really struggling with some ambiguous text here. You are struggling with the plain meaning of scripture. You are not saying "this scripture can be misunderstood". You are saying "this scripture must be wrong in what it says, presumably because the people writing it were wrong about God". God either commanded genocide, or He didn't. The bible says He did, and people obeyed. Where is your ambiguity? Your problem is rather that you cannot make this fit with what you believe about Jesus Christ, and with the statement that He is the Son of the Father who supposedly ordered that genocide. You think you have to adjust scripture to make it fit with your understanding of God. I say you have to adjust your understanding of God to fit scripture - all of it, not just the NT.
That is circular reasoning. Our understanding of God comes from Scripture. So to say " you have to adjust your understanding of God to fit scripture" is just saying " you have to adjust your understanding of scripture to fit your understanding of scripture."
The conquest passages-- when read woodenly as you are doing (suggesting there is a "plain meaning") are completely contrary to the picture of God we find not only in the NT but also in the OT. We can't just look away and pretend that isn't the case. So we do as Luther advised, we "allow clear passages to illumine unclear". We don't build our theology on one text, but on the whole witness of Scripture. The whole witness of Scripture tells us that what you call the "plain meaning" of the conquest passages is, quite simply, wrong.
I don't think that means we throw out the conquest passages as uninspired or that we pretend the text doesn't say God commanded it. I'm saying we do exactly what we have done here-- point to it and say "that's ugly, and odd, and doesn't make sense in light of the whole revelation of Scripture-- both OT and NT. I don't know why."
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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