Ship of Fools: Kerygmania: Divine Purpose in the Old Testament

Thread: Kerygmania: Divine Purpose in the Old Testament Board: Limbo / Ship of Fools.

To visit this thread, use this URL:
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=11;t=000964

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

A couple of weeks ago, Nigel posted this in the "A Sovereign God" thread:

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
...on a slightly more board-appropriate note: how much consistency are we right to demand from the bible? Is it a block given to us by God and effectively 'written' by him, or is it more like a library of different books recording man's encounter with the diving, in which the Spirit may be seen moving; like a family album rather than a constitution, complete with the occasional mad uncle?
Wow! What a massive topic!!!! I'll go for a good British compromise – it is in between the two options. God's Word in human words – which is more about the language capability of humans to describe God in the way God authorised them to do so – even if they were not completely aware of that authorisation.

I find helpful the linguistic approach that builds on speech act theory here: meaning lies in paying attention to the words used by the authors in the way they used them. That can apply to both the human writers and the divine.

Another way to look at it – from a theological base rather than a linguistic one – is incarnational. God 'births' the message through the lives of the theologians who studied him so well.

An yet another model: Scriptural angle this time. God has a purpose to his message which, to use the metaphor in Isaiah 55:10f - “...as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will my word be which goes forth from my mouth; it will not return to me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”

It's possible to marry those three models together – all pay attention to purpose in communication. So – what was the purpose of 1 Samuel 15 from a divine as well as human authorial point of view?

Nigel

I like the last sentence as a way of framing the question, especially against the background theme of covenant. So my question to anyone who regards the Old Testament as being divine revelation (or divinely inspired to a degree that puts it in a special class) is: How do you see the relationship between the divine purpose or message in the OT and the apparent purpose or message of the human author, especially in the example of 1 Samuel 15 in particular?

[ 19. November 2013, 01:58: Message edited by: Mamacita ]

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

I've been grappling with this issue (more generally in respect of the whole bible) for some time, but have never really had the opportunity to pull together ideas and see where they go, so this is a good chance to pull in the fishing lines.

I suppose the first issue is knowing where to start. My starting point has been to ask the question, “Why is that there?” when faced with a text. This can be broken into two areas of study:

quote:
[1] The text (as we have it) authored by human beings; and
[2] The same text (as we have it) authored by God.

I'll bypass here the issues of the literary development and also of the textual transmission of the text if I may; mainly because from a practical point of view we have to use the text as we have it, or we would be here forever!

Number [1] above has been analysed from a host of standpoints, looking for example at the authors' particular historical, cultural, social, and psychological settings, using their personal idiolects (the speech patterns unique to each individual) within the wider language horizons of their settings, the reason and purpose for writing, the choice of genre, the presuppositions that affected their writing... and so on.

Number [2] above has a much more restricted orbit of study. Approaches have tended to be along one of the following lines:

quote:
[2a] Ignore the human element and start from the assumption that this is God's message carried directly to the hearer. The mechanism for understanding the message is usually associated with the work of the Holy Spirit;
[2b] Discuss the divine intention by way of inference. We infer what God wanted to say from second-hand sources, the human authors. As assumption can be made here that what God wanted to say the authors in fact did say, or that God carried the basics of a message through by working with the limitations of human speech. Further along the spectrum would be that the human authors did the best they could according to their lights, and it falls to the interpreter to distil out golden nuggets from the dross. It's possible here also to ascribe to the Holy Spirit the wisdom needed to take the necessary decisions.

Whatever approach is taken, there needs to be a justification for it – an ability to set out the grounds for the approach – so that it is available for public testing. Without that we run the risk of misunderstanding, a phenomenon that might lead to ways of living that do not accord with God's intention.

I've already started to use that word, 'intention.' For me, this is probably the most important element in interpretation. It has been the subject of much debate over the past 100 years, some cynicism, some rejection, and even battle cries. I've tossed the various critiques about, but have as yet not found a model to use that trumps 'Intention' as the key starting point to understanding a message. The premise is that there was always an intention in composing a work. The author always had a purpose, an aim, in mind. He or she may have been aiming at a specific audience, or might have had an implied audience in mind.

This intention, this purpose, this aim, drives the style of writing. In other words, genre is intention-dependent. I'm not convinced that a study of genre on its own will get to the nub of a piece. Having read the output of form critics from the middle of the last century, I have been left with the question, “OK, so the author wrote this Psalm as an individual lament. Yes, but Why??!!”

So, the “Why is that there?” question can help in drilling down beyond surface layers to the more in-depth issue of purpose in writing (or speaking - “Why did she say that” would then be the relevant question).

The intention that I have been referring to has been authorial intention. Not everyone is enamoured of that. Literary criticism (of texts generally, not just the bible) in the last century went through a series of analytical stages: searching for the author's meaning; searching for the meaning of the text; and later meaning as it lies with the reader. Each stage critiqued what went before and found it inadequate. In more recent decades the focus has been less on the individual components listed above and more on the interactions between them: author-text, reader-text. Does the fact that authorial meaning lies at the start of the list – critiqued by all that follows – 'mean' that it is outmoded? I think the answer is Yes – and No. The search for the meaning an author had did have its problems, but that had more to with issues over the definition of 'meaning' than anything else. My take is that the textual and reader-response options also fail at the point of 'meaning.' They have been barking up the wrong tree, because the real cat is not about 'meaning' as it stands on its own, but about 'intention.' This removes the focus of study from a static philosophical area (fascinating though that is!) to a more dynamic area.

Consequently I can break down further the study of “Why is that there?” as follows:-
[1] What the human author did by using the words he used in the way that he used them;
[2] What God did by using the human author in terms of [1].

There is a difference in scale here. Each individual human author can be analysed in terms of his or her own contribution. Each contribution stands on its own, with its own purpose. Something different happens, though, when we turn to God. Here we have a single author working in some way with (through?) a set of other authors. God's purpose would therefore best be seen at play across the entire range of books. Here we enter the world of the 'more than the sum of the parts.' The questions that lie here have to do with issues that affect many a thread on the Ship. Did God actually intend each and every word penned by the human, or did he decide to work with the text, warts and all? In what way did God interact with the human writers?

This bring us close the usual field of debate: inspiration, inerrancy and so on. To my mind this field is probably the wrong field to be jumping up and down on. My take – to return to the principle of intention – is to ask what the authors themselves did and how they viewed this activity that was coming together into what we now call the Bible. Secondly, how did they view God's role in this? The answer that I find best aligns with intention itself is summarised well in the Isaiah 55 quote (in the OP); God's message is infallible, i.e., it doesn't fail to achieve the purpose for which it was composed. If that's a good summary of how the biblical authors saw things, then I would say that it is good enough to answer the divine intention question.

With 1 Samuel 15, what is God's message that has been composed for a purpose here? Does it ride roughshod over the human intention or is it compatible? Can we, in fact, find a contribution to God's 'more than the sum of the parts' message contained in the human message?

I would argue that, yes, we can indeed find a component of the wider divine message in 1 Samuel 15. The basis for this argument (harking back to the importance of justifying one's approach) lies partly in the fact that this text was preserved down numerous generations alongside other texts that deal with other aspects of God's character. However, to back this up I would need to show how the 'more than the sum of the parts' fits here. I would need to show that the component fits, in terms of comprehensiveness, coherency, and consistency across the range of components. To those three criteria some may wish to add 'common sense.' I.e., does what we find there (comprehensively, coherently, and consistently) also fit with what we know about the community of human kind?

Monster post indeed. And really all just by way of background. I fear that without it, though, we would not be able to focus on the task at hand; we would constantly have to tackle presuppositions and misunderstandings along the path. Open for thoughts and challenges to all this, though. I'll come back to 1 Samuel 15 as the test case in more detail later.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

I am intrigued by the distinction between authorial and Divine intent relating to any scripture.

I wonder just how much water it holds. Insofar as the text could then be interpreted, not only at two levels, but at contradictory levels.

When it comes to the Divine intent then I have got to say (for myself) that that intent, which was always present, was articulated in the Word made flesh. I understand this to be what God was intending to communicate all the way along the line. What got in the way were the ignorances, prejudices and sin of the humans who were the vehicles of communication.

So we are dealing with a progressive revelation. Progressive in the sense that comprehension of the Divine grew and developed through the OT years. Not that God was witholding or revealing piecemeal. Nor does this mean that the 'progression' was ever upward and onward. Far from it. There is eveidence of 'regression' even at a late stage.

But I would be interested in the point of view expressed by Nigel as expanded, particularly with ref to 1 Sam 15.

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
...that intent, which was always present, was articulated in the Word made flesh. I understand this to be what God was intending to communicate all the way along the line. What got in the way were the ignorances, prejudices and sin of the humans who were the vehicles of communication.

I agree with the idea of Jesus being the primary communication of God, shamwari. The question that niggles at me when seeking to apply that, though, is, What do we do about the fact the communication of this divine intent comes to us via human authors? Can we be reasonably sure that “ignorances, prejudices and sin of the humans who were the vehicles of communication” do not also apply to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

We get, as it were, a second-hand account of Jesus (that's the 'image of the image' idea). Jesus is in the third person, in much the same way that God is in the third person in the OT. Right from the beginning, in fact: “In the beginning God...” rather than “In the beginning I...” Is perhaps the fact that we have this second-hand witness of Jesus deliberately consistent with the way we have witness to God in the OT?

Or is there a special process as work in the Gospel writings that is not to be found elsewhere?

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Shamwari, I must confess that I have a problem with the concept of 'progressive revelation', largely because of the caveats you, yourself, find necessary to make. Why can't we simply talk about developments in the Jewish understanding of the nature of God? We can then reserve 'revelation' for Jesus, whose appearance is the standard against which all previous imperfect understandings are judged, 1 Samuel 15 included.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

Point taken Kwesi.

Agree.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Nigel M, you ask the question is there a special process at work in the Gospel writings that is not to be found elsewhere? You, however, have already provided the answer when you agree with the idea of Jesus being the primary communication of God

What is special about the gospels is that they recount, however imperfectly, the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus, who, Christians believe, is God incarnate. Because of that we are inclined to think that the Gospel writers present a more accurate picture of the nature of God than the author of Samuel and the rest. It's not a question of special process or special inspiration. What makes the Gospels special is their subject matter.

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
What is special about the gospels is that they recount, however imperfectly, the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus, who, Christians believe, is God incarnate. Because of that we are inclined to think that the Gospel writers present a more accurate picture of the nature of God than the author of Samuel and the rest. It's not a question of special process or special inspiration. What makes the Gospels special is their subject matter.

It's a bit of a logical jump, though, to go from the human rendering of Jesus, to the concept of that rendering being more accurate than another. It doesn't explain how this 'accuracy'
might be contrary to another (rather than just a bit better) - which is the point you want to make about 1 Samuel 15.

We are still stuck with the issue that the subject matter is presented by human authors. This is fine for my approach, which is that we need to treat the communication of Jesus in the same way we treat that of the OT when it comes to interpretation. The Old and New Testaments are on a level playing field when it comes to this. We need to get round the idiolects, if you like, so that the full nature of God is revealed over and beyond the limitations of individual expressions. If we find comprehensiveness, consistency, and coherence across the entire network of human communication in the biblical collection of books, then that would be the 'more than the sum of the parts' that go to make up God's purpose. We could limit this to the Gospels, but it would be my conclusion based on the material itself that even there we have a mediated view of Jesus (and hence of God) that is comprehensively, consistently, and coherently in line with that of the OT. That enquiry belongs on the other thread, though, I think.

What I am trying to point out is that we are dealing with human communication. This factor has to be taken seriously even when it comes to discerning Jesus as God's communication. Even if Jesus is 'The Word of God,' for whatever reason he is still communicated by 'the words of humans.'

My answer for dealing with this phenomenon is not to retreat into philosophical concepts of special communication (inerrancy, inspiration, and so on), which I think you suspect me of doing! Those concepts might have their place, but - as an example - inerrancy actually works against my approach because it assumes a way of communicating that is alien (on my reading) to the way the biblical authors saw divine communication themselves.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

I would simply dispute the suggestion that "the old and the new are on the same level".

The Gospel writers were writing in the light of that definitive revelation given in Jesus. The OT writers didnt have that bonus.

I am not claiming that the Gospel writers got it 100% since they were recording memories which had been transmitted through a community for 30 years and had been influenced accordingly. (Jeremias has shown how this applies to the parables).

But writings post-Jesus are, IMO, a whole lot nearer the truth of God's nature, than those written 1000 years pre-Jesus.,

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
I would simply dispute the suggestion that "the old and the new are on the same level".

The Gospel writers were writing in the light of that definitive revelation given in Jesus. The OT writers didnt have that bonus.

But the Gospel writers were not using any special communication to inform their readers of this Jesus; they used language in the same way their forebears did. That's what I mean by the same level. It would follow that an interpretive approach to one would be equally valid to the other. I just wanted to get out of the way first any thought that interpreters were being expected to apply different interpretive criteria to the Gospels than to Samuel. If that's OK....?

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

I am not sure that I am understanding you Nigel so if I have got you wrong apologies.

But I am maintaining that all the writers "interpreted" in terms of their understanding of God.

AFAICS the Gospel writers, in the light of Jesus, had a different understanding of God's nature, will and purpose.

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

I was coming at it from the angle of the interpreter today - which is probably where the confusion lies. I would agree that the authors wrote what they wrote (which is what I think you mean by 'interpreted' in your post?) in light of what they understood about God.

From the angle of the reader today, if we want to identify the intention of those authors we have to interpret their writings according to some model or other; I just wanted to check there was no issue with the idea that whatever model is used, it could be used equally well with any of the writings.

The model I am suggesting offers the best approach to identifying the human intention in the writings is that which focuses on what the human author did by using the words he used in the way that he used them.

A bit of a tangent...

Someone once said (it might have been Umberto Eco - I'm not sure at the moment) that the author is betrayed by his words. I hesitate to use that as a blanket description of the approach I am stumbling towards, but I can see the force of it in one respect: each author (whether of 1 Samuel or Matthew) has a unique idiolect - a distinctive way of expressing things - but the choices he makes in his words can reveal his intent. I suspect Eco (if it was him) would also say that the intention of an author is also betrayed in that he cannot never communicate what he wants to communicate because the words 'fail' him; they are too imprecise. However, if we trundle down that route bar none then we could never trust what we read in the Gospels to be a decent enough 'image' of Jesus (and hence of God).

It might help if I offered a sample of what I am getting at with respect to the human communication side of things. I'll post on 1 Samuel 15 next taking into account the human author's purpose. At some point before the Rapture we might even get to the divine part!

[ 10. July 2010, 19:16: Message edited by: Nigel M ]

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

How about the fact that Paul felt no inhibition about allegorising the Isaac and Ishmael story, just to get the point across that having the important things in common are what legitimises a claim of heritage. Just because a food processor is assembled in a car factory doesn't make it a car. it has to share the same major components to qualify. Isaac has more in common with the promise than Ishmael, so he is the legitimate claimant. Paul believes the arrangement of the story was intentional on God's part, foreseeing just such a controversy between the Judaisers and the Church.

In 1 Samuel 15, God needs the judgment on the Amalekites to be seen as divine mission with a singular divine purpose, with no room for mistaking its origins.

This is a motif seen on the judgment on Babylon for attacking God's Chosen. A nation that is disinterested in spoils of war, the Medes, is raised to punish Babylon. This is God acting.

Saul's gathering of wealth and prisoners displaces the original intent of the mission. The lesson is lost, to Saul... and to posterity.

God asks us to rid ourselves of the things that hindered us in our journey to return to His side. Every trace needs to go. Instead, oftentimes, in carrying out the task, we turn it into a salvage operation. We syncretise the elements for service in our new lives. Without Samuel to finish the job for us, these neglected elements become stumbling blocks, turning us back to old ways, like the tribes that were neglected and allowed to exist in parts of the Promised Land and that turned the Israelites to idol worship, and punishment, and exile, and slavery.

God's intent as Master Author subsumes the human authorial intent.

Just hoping to start off the discussion. Feel free to critique but go easy. I deserve some slack for going out on a limb!

Bottomline, the OT is consistent with the NT: there is no taxonomy in clarity, the one is not superior to the other.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

quote:
Footwasher: Bottomline, the OT is consistent with the NT: there is no taxonomy in clarity, the one is not superior to the other.

It makes one wonder why one needed a New Testament at all!

.........you have heard it aforetime...but I say unto you........

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

HaHa! To flesh out the framework?

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

To focus on the human communication in 1 Sam 15 first...

Although the destruction of Amalek is a feature that acquires prominence these days, I would argue that the text itself indicates this feature is not the focus of the passage. The prominent textual features are: Samuel's status versus that of Saul; Saul's status as king over that of God; obedience and the results of disobedience. The destruction of Amalek is the test against which Saul is measured (echoes of Abraham and the sacrifice of his son?), but the test as a test is the prominent feature here.

Key features include:

Listen / Hear / Obey (shama = שָׁמַע). Saul stands or falls by this verb. The importance of obeying an instruction from God is laid down thickly in this passage. We have the interesting principle in vv 22-23 of obedience (loyalty) being more important than the sacrificial system because disobedience (disloyalty) is evidence of allegiance to other masters. Saul fell, according to this passage, because he was disloyal to the command of his master. The Amaleks were also judged and fell because they were disloyal to the master of creation.

Haram (= חָרַם the nominal form is herem). There isn't one English word or phrase that does justice in translation of this Hebrew word. The English versions go with something along the lines of “totally destroy,” “utterly destroy,” “devote,” “ban,” “exterminate,” “consecrated.” None of these are really adequate in imagining the context of the term. It is linked elsewhere in the bible and in related near eastern texts with a solemn judicial-religious process of setting something aside for the ownership of a particular person or deity. For example, a person who wished to become a priest could do just that, but if he wished to make this a life-long commitment he would go through the vows associated with herem so that everyone would know (including himself!) that he could no longer engage in any other activity. He could not take up another occupation. Similarly, a field donated to the temple under herem rules could never again be sold or bought. It belonged forever to the temple. This process was by no means limited to Israel; it was part and parcel of near eastern processes – albeit not a common occurrence. The Moabite Stone makes reference to an attack on Israel under these rules, 'devoting' Israel to Moab's deity. In medieval Judaism the term was applied to the process for putting someone out of the community and then shunning them (hence the translation sometimes used, “Ban”- although this is somewhat anachronistic). A forerunner to this 'Ban' process makes a biblical appearance (same verb used) after the Babylonian war (Ezra 10:8) and the concept may lie behind Paul's enigmatic “hand this man over to satan” statement (1 Corinthians 5:5), where Paul enacts a judicial process – announces judgement, convicts, and sentences a person who was disrupting the community by his lifestyle. Sentence was to be carried out in a formal setting; very heremish. Even in modern times we had the example of the Harem, the Turkish sacrosanct area for women who formally belonged to a ruler and who could not, therefore, be given to any other man. The use of the herem in war was a minority event, but was surrounded with formality, declarations, warnings, etc. It was not a surprise to the enemy; they were made very aware of the consequences of their rebellion and outcome if they did not cease. In 1 Samuel, Amalek is placed under this herem and is then heremed (for want of a better word) by the sword. 'Judicial execution' is the appropriate phrase here.

Compassion (hamal = חָםַל). The verb is used in verses 3, 15, and 19 and is linked in opposition to herem. Saul is ordered not to show compassion, but he and the army he is responsible for do indeed show compassion (on Agag and the best of the booty).

Hesed (= חֶסֶד). Another Hebrew word that has no immediate equivalent in English. The versions adopt the likes of “mercy,” “kindness,” “loving-kindness,” “steadfast-love,” “friendship.” The best phrase to use, I think, would be “covenant loyalty,” because it a term that is linked closely to that relationship. The mention of Saul's interaction with the Kenite people (v. 6) would seem out of place and unnecessary in this story (Why is that there?) were it not for mention of the fact that the Kenites showed this covenant loyalty to the Israelites when they were vulnerable in the Sinai wilderness. The implication is that the Amaleks did not show this, which was the evidence in support of God's judgement against them. Ironically (deliberately on the author's part?) the Hesed loyalty Saul shows to the Kenites is not shown by Saul to his master, God.

I think we can build a decent enough picture of the world within which the human author was writing. The archaeological record assists, as do insights from sociology, but even in the absence of those we don't have to go far to feel the world. Urban teenage gangs display the same characteristics of loyalty, rewards and punishment. Documentaries from the region in and around Afghanistan show a world similar to that of 1 Samuel. Even (heaven help us!) the way cliques behave in some churches give the feel of the thing! Humans are inherently tribal, it would seem. The concept of covenant holds the entire passage together. Without it, pieces (like the Kenite verse) fall apart.

This world of the author, however, is merely the backdrop to the message. It sets the scene and we need the scene to get a feel for the play, but the play is not the same thing as the scene. The plot in 1 Samuel, it seems to me, is revealed by the way the author uses the language. It could be presented hierarchically thus:-

* Obedience to God is paramount.
** It trumps even loyalty to the religious expression of obedience.
* Disobedience brings judgement.
** Saul was disobedient to God.
*** Either he could not control his people, or he was a liar. In any event, he was not fit for purpose.
**** Therefore Saul was judged and sentenced.

The supporting plot is performed by Amalek. The author uses Amalek as an echo to the main plot with the links in judgement, punishment, loyalty. I think it would be legitimate to wonder if the writer did not also believe that Amalek was in a state of rebellion against God and was under sentence, awaiting judicial execution. The language used, the link to the Keni people, and the association with the beginning of Saul's downward spiral all suggest this.

So that's my offering in part of an approach to the 1 Sam. 15 text, trying to see what the human author intended to communicate.

[Just noticed footwasher's post - will reply later... Cheers!]

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

Just a note about haram

While travelling in the Middle East during Ramzan (or Ramadaan) it is forbidden to drink even water in public. I once stopped at a stall that sold canned fruit juice behind a curtain (this was a very moderate Islamic country!). As my Arabic explorations had just begun, I did not understand the vendor's instructions too well. I snapped open the can and raised it to drink, and had it knocked out of my hand. "Haram!", the old codger roared!

Is its meaning "devoted" or "banned"? Devoted as you know has different connotations.

Is it "sin" or "exclusively meant for Mr X ".

In the passage, I think it means "set aside for God".

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
This bring us close the usual field of debate: inspiration, inerrancy and so on. To my mind this field is probably the wrong field to be jumping up and down on. My take – to return to the principle of intention – is to ask what the authors themselves did and how they viewed this activity that was coming together into what we now call the Bible. Secondly, how did they view God's role in this? The answer that I find best aligns with intention itself is summarised well in the Isaiah 55 quote (in the OP); God's message is infallible, i.e., it doesn't fail to achieve the purpose for which it was composed. If that's a good summary of how the biblical authors saw things, then I would say that it is good enough to answer the divine intention question.

Personally, I love the imagery in that quote from Isaiah 55. I think that in the same way that we are only superficially aware of the cycles of nature and of processes of our own physical nourishment and health, we are also only superficially aware of the spiritual cycles and processes through which God nourishes us and makes us spiritually healthy. As you suggest, Nigel, I take the quote to mean that God's message is infallible (which is not to say that the message of the literal text is infallible), and that the Bible does not fail to achieve God's purpose for which he had it composed. Not surprisingly, I think that that divine purpose is achieved just fine without us being able to see a clear, unambiguous message that we all can agree on.

So while I can agree with shamwari:

quote:
But writings post-Jesus are, IMO, a whole lot nearer the truth of God's nature, than those written 1000 years pre-Jesus.

I am not ready to replace the Old Testament with the New Testament because as Nigel alluded to in the other thread (IIRC), a) Christ claimed that he came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets and b) he seemed to take their authority as assumed. I think Christ reveals God perfectly, but I also think that he reveals the same God as is revealed in the Old Testament. As a result, I feel justified in looking for the New Testament God in the Old Testament texts, as difficult as that can be.

When 1 Samuel 15 presents a view of God that seems to be incompatible with the NT view, I still look for a view of the NT God that is derived from the text even if it's not directly in the text in a readily apparent way. The question comes down to the nature of that derivation and the relationship between the divine message and the literal message.

For me, it is enough to approach the text as though God in effect said to Samuel, "Fine, you want it to be about good people and evil people, with your people as the good people and with your enemies as the evil people - we'll go ahead and write it that way. However, in the end it will still portray the universal relationship between good and evil that I want it to portray. I will allow your message to be about people and individuals, but it will contain within it my message about principles regarding good and evil abstracted from individuals."

I want to understand all I can about the relationships that Samuel portrays among God, the Israelites, and the Amalekites, with all the nuances and depth that Nigel addresses because when I "subtract out" the people in the story, I think the resulting abstract relationship is an important, universal, and divine principle for all people and for all time.

However, I have appreciated reading the posts on this thread because I am very much interested in approaches that other people adopt regarding these issues. I believe that there are multiple, parallel approaches that can all yield valid results and that can be compatible with God's ineffable purposes.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

W Hyatt, I think you are trying to square the circle with your concept of "subtracting out" . You are clearly uneasy about the treatment of the Amalekites in 1Samuel 15, so you remove that bit i.e. the substance of the incident, in order to preserve an "abstract relationship". It would be instructive to know how often you would have to do this in relation to the OT as compared to the NT, and which books of the OT would require the greater or lesser parts of your editing.

What disturbs me is that the Amalekites are treated as unfortunate collateral damage to demonstrate a greater spiritual good. It is this kind of abstract reasoning that leads Christians to contemplate and/or accept the most appalling examples of man's inhumanity to man. The sort of reasoning that can theologically accuse the Jews of deicide, thereby regarding Hitler's extermination programme as an unfortunate consequence.

I suspect that in practical terms your position is much closer to Shamwari's and my own than you think, because you do recognise that there are parts of the OT which are difficult for Christians to accept. The danger of your formulation is that it prevents you facing up to that fairly and squarely, and leads you into the kind of dangers outlined in the paragraph above.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

From where I sit it seems that W. Hyatt and Nigel are making praiseworthy attempts to defend the indefensible.

In the sense that both want to preserve the revelation of God in Chrst and, at the same time, the revelation of God contained in passages like 1 Sam 15. as being consistent. So we have various processes to achieve this; subtracting out or distinguishing between authorial and Diivine intent.

I just happen to think that we ought to accept that Samuel really did believe that God required the extermination of Israel's enemies. Its a point of view that dominates the Book of Joshua too.

Which is not to blame Samuel from a Christian point of view in that he acted "according to his lights". He did not have "the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" ( 2 Cor ) available to him.

So God does not change. But man's understanding of God does change. And parts of the OT evidence a very 'low level' understanding if I may put it that way. (So do some parts of the NT!!)

As Kwesi pointed out we have a developing understanding and comprehension of God. To accept this is be freed from the pressure of having to assert that all parts of Scripture and equally inspired and thereby having to produce categories of interpretation which are both complicated and fairly ingenious.

Maybe I am a bit simplistic and naive. But it stems from the fact that I feel no pressure to claim the the OT is throughout "Christian", even at a kind of subterranian sense.

I think it was Luther who said that "the words of scripture are the cradle of the Word made Flesh". For me that Word, spoken in Jesus is climactic and definitive; the 'norm' by which all other words are to be evaluated and judged.

[ 11. July 2010, 13:23: Message edited by: shamwari ]

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

The next stage of this exploration is to remain with human authorial intention and explore the Gospels, given the focus this has on the character of Jesus. That's a vast amount of material, so I will go with Matthew's section known as the Sermon on the Mount, as that was dipped into in the other thread. We could always go from there to other places – like Luke's placing of Jesus firmly within the the whole OT tradition of universal justice and judgement on those who fail to return to God, which would make the case on its own for Jesus reflecting God's character of judge, sentencer and executioner of those who refuse to return from a state of rebellion.

Anyway – Matthew.

I made the point on the other thread that in Matthew presents Jesus as confronting illicit interpretations of the Jewish Scriptures. He does something similar in chapter 4 when Jesus opposes Satan's interpretation of some texts. In chapter 5, where Jesus takes on the question of interpretation, Matthew prefaces this with (5:17-20, NET version]:

quote:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish these things but to fulfil them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth pass away not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter will pass from the law until everything takes place. So anyone who breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever obeys them and teaches others to do so will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness goes beyond that of the experts in the law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Only after this does Matthew engage in the “You have heard is said...but I say to you” sections. The implication is that Matthew wants his readers to reject any additions or qualifications to what was the original intention of the Law and not to take the Jewish Scriptural texts out of context. 'Fulfil' in this sense means to do correctly as had originally been intended. This is supported by Matthew's use of the 'righteousness' word (dikaiosune = δικαισυνη) in connection with God's Kingdom (5:20). Again, the worldview of covenant looms large here ('righteousness' as how to behave loyally as a citizen of a Kingdom) and a definition of who was really in and who was out. Continued presence in God's Kingdom was always conditional on this loyalty; Matthew's presentation of Jesus here is as one who was clarifying just who was going to be in – and importantly who was going to be out – and that the time for decision was now (“Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is near” - 4:17).

Given the importance of the Jewish Scriptures for Matthew (and the other NT writers), I would argue that the background to the technical (Greek) words used by Matthew in his work lie in the Greek renderings of Hebrew terms in the Septuagint (LXX) (see below for more detail *). The meaning of words in the Greek NT (their intention) should be sought there. This puts dikaiosune firmly within the orbit of the Hebrew Tsedakah (= צְדָקָה), with its focus on behaviour that is appropriate to being in a covenant relationship, whether by the human junior partner or the senior divine partner. An example comes from 1 Sam. 12:7, where Samuel starts to set out the evidence for God's 'righteous' acts – the way he protected and vindicated his people. I think, therefore, there is justification for reading Matthew's text as saying that Jesus' message was to define membership of God's Kingdom (as opposed to anyone else's) along the lines of obedience to the covenant expectations of that Kingdom.

Taking this a step further. The implication Matthew is drawing out is that there is a flip side to being in this Kingdom. The one who does not repent and return is not going to be in the Kingdom. They will be handed over to the Judge to be sentenced, and from there to the one carrying out the sentence (5:25-26). This is a strand of Matthew's message that pops up repeatedly in this book.

Another example of an important term and the way Matthew uses it: eleos (= ελεος) This is the one usually translated in the English versions, “mercy.” Again, I would argue that Matthew's intention in using this word is to be found in the LXX, not elsewhere in Greek literature.* There is does not have the meaning normally understood by the English word (drawing as it does on the Greek background) for 'mercy,' The Hebrew word rendered in the LXX by eleos is Hesed (see my last post on the use of this). So when Matthew records Jesus as saying “Go and learn what this saying means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (9:13) he is not merely quoting a gentle saying from Hosea 6:6, he is also reflecting what we found earlier in 1 Samuel 15:22-23. A better translation of Matthew's intention here would then be:

quote:
[Jesus speaking] “Learn what God really intended by: 'My desire is for you to obey my covenant conditions rather than trot out external practices.' This is my mission: to warn those who are not behaving loyally. Why would I come to warn those who already are?”

I think that will do for now on the human authorial intention side of things. Not everything has been said, I know, but I have tried to keep this within the orbit of focus on 1 Samuel. I will come back anon on the divine intention aspect. Thus far, though, I hope I have opened up the continuity and coherence aspect between the intentions of the author of 1 Samuel and the author(s) of the Gospels.

* A word on this LXX phenomenon. When the assorted translators put ink to parchment, there were a number of everyday words that could be used as individual equivalents for Hebrew terms. Some were easy – 'father,' 'mother,' 'name,' 'heavens' – and it is no surprise that there is a consistent use throughout the LXX by all the translators for terms like these. Of note, though, are other words that have a more theological bent and that are also used consistently. Examples include kurios for Yahweh, theos for elohim, nomos for law. These are words that would not normally be expected to appear uniformly in a heterogeneous collection of translation units unless they had already acquired an approved common vocabulary throughout the diaspora. In other words, they were of such importance that they required a rendering into Greek at an early stage, and stuck around in common usage so that the LXX translators did not have to think about which term to use. This is in contrast to the vast majority of terms that are not consistent in use. Among the list of consistent terms are dikaiosune for Tsedakah and eleos for
Hesed.

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
W Hyatt, I think you are trying to square the circle with your concept of "subtracting out" . You are clearly uneasy about the treatment of the Amalekites in 1Samuel 15, so you remove that bit i.e. the substance of the incident, in order to preserve an "abstract relationship". It would be instructive to know how often you would have to do this in relation to the OT as compared to the NT, and which books of the OT would require the greater or lesser parts of your editing.

What disturbs me is that the Amalekites are treated as unfortunate collateral damage to demonstrate a greater spiritual good. It is this kind of abstract reasoning that leads Christians to contemplate and/or accept the most appalling examples of man's inhumanity to man. The sort of reasoning that can theologically accuse the Jews of deicide, thereby regarding Hitler's extermination programme as an unfortunate consequence.

I suspect that in practical terms your position is much closer to Shamwari's and my own than you think, because you do recognise that there are parts of the OT which are difficult for Christians to accept. The danger of your formulation is that it prevents you facing up to that fairly and squarely, and leads you into the kind of dangers outlined in the paragraph above.

Aaah - that helps me understand how you are reading my posts. It is a humbling experience to realize that by omitting an important assumption that I am making, I have led you to take my words to mean something very different than what I had in mind. Humbling, but also entertaining as I consider how completely I have failed to express myself.

I can see why you would imagine me reading the Old Testament stories and encountering parts that conflict with my New Testament view of God, and then trying to stretch or abstract out those parts until I am comfortable with how I see them fitting in with the New Testament. But once again, I have failed to anticipate your very straight-forward reading of my post because what I write seems to me to say what I want to say so precisely that I don't even stop to think about it how it might be taken to mean something very different.

You see, I have a very different starting point in reading both the Old and New Testaments from what you might imagine. One can reasonably read both texts and respond to them on a case-by-case basis and draw conclusions from what one finds in the text. Clearly, a Christian will prefer the New Testament over the Old Testament where they seem to conflict with each other in such an approach.

One can also reasonably decide that given Christ's words about the Old Testament, there must be an inherent consistency and then set about trying to find and understand that consistency, as Nigel seems to me to be doing. (Please correct me if I'm wrong, Nigel.)

But neither of those approaches comes close to describing how I read the Old and New Testaments. Rather than starting with the text itself, I start with an idea of God as pure and infinite love, desiring to draw every person as close as possible, and giving us divine truth as way to communicate with us and lead us to him. I see that truth as taking the form of a many-layered parable, with the final, outermost layer being the literal text found in the Bible (both OT and NT). The actual words of the literal text are very much targeted to a particular audience at a particular time in a particular culture, but the layers of meaning held within are for all people and for all time.

So in answer to your question, I apply the approach to 1 Samuel 15 that I described earlier to every chapter, every verse, and every phrase, including the so-called "difficult" passages and "easy" ones alike. I do not attempt to reconcile different passages with each other because I do not see any conflicts that need to be reconciled. I do not treat the Amalekites as unfortunate collateral damage, just as I don't see the Israelites as being preferred by God, because I do not see any part of the Old Testament as being about any historical people.

Instead, I believe I see something of those internal messages of divine truth that are about God's love for every single one of us, about his desire for us to freely return that love, and about the importance of us cooperating with him to allow him to remove anything inside of us that interferes with our ability to fully receive his love and his blessings. I may be hallucinating, but I am consistent in seeing those messages in every passage.

I have no objection to the approach you or anyone else has chosen with regard to the Old Testament, but I do object to the idea that I should change my own approach, or that it is somehow dangerous. The dangers you allude to as resulting from what you think is my kind of abstract reasoning would only result from me not only retaining the idea of particular, historical people, but from also a) identifying with the "good" people in the stories, b) taking it upon myself to decide who is currently in the same category as the "evil" people, and c) making the further presumption to think it's up to me to treat those "evil" people the way I think God has told me to treat them in those stories. But since I am not doing any one of those, my approach cannot in any way lead to any of the dangers you identify.

To the contrary, I see every individual person I come across as a potential angel whom God wants to lead to heaven to eternal happiness, with the only thing that prevents him from actually doing so being that person's individual freedom of choice. And even then, I think God has all sorts of tricks he uses to get us into heaven even when we aren't really trying because it takes a lifetime of determined, unrelenting resistance and rebellion on our part to keep us from choosing heaven in the end. So I actually suspect that in practical terms my position is much closer to Shamwari's and your own than you think, or maybe even beyond it on the "liberal" side.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

W. Hyatt, thanks for your most interesting post. In trying to get to grips with your argument it would help me a great deal if you could indicate how you read 1 Samuel 15: 1-3.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

W. Hyatt posted (inter alia

"I do not see any part of the Old Testament as being about any historical people."

I find that incredible. Can you explain?

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

It seems the Jewish Sages were quite complacent about the "collateral damage"

Quote
We must understand the four basic modes of Scripture interpretation used by the rabbis. These are:

(1) p’shat (“simple”)—the plain, literal sense of the text, more or less what modern scholars mean by “grammatical-historical exegesis,” which looks to the grammar of the language and the historical setting as background for deciding what a passage means. Modern scholars often consider grammatical-historical exegesis the only valid way to deal with a text; pastors who use other approaches in their sermons usually feel defensive about it before academics. But the rabbis had three other modes of interpreting Scripture, and their validity should not be excluded in advance but related to the validity of their implied presuppositions.

(2) Remez (“hint”)—wherein a word, phrase or other element in the text hints at a truth not conveyed by the p’shat. The implied presupposition is that God can hint at things of which the Bible writers themselves were unaware.

(3) Drash or Midrash (“search”)—an allegorical or homiletical application of a text. This is a species of eisegesis—reading one’s own thoughts into the text—as opposed to exegesis, which is extracting from the text what it actually says. The implied presupposition is that the words of Scripture can legitimately become grist for the mill of human intellect, which God can guide to truths not directly related to the text at all.

(4) Sod (“secret”)—a mystical or hidden meaning arrived at by operating on the numerical values of the Hebrew letters, noting unusual spellings, transposing letters, and the like. For example, two words, the numerical equivalents of whose letters add up to the same amount, are good candidates for revealing a secret through what Arthur Koestler in his book on the inventive mind called “bisociation of ideas.” The implied presupposition is that God invests meaning in the minutest details of Scripture, even the individual letters.

The presuppositions underlying remez, drash and sod obviously express God’s omnipotence, but they also express his love for humanity, in the sense that he chooses out of love to use extraordinary means for reaching people’s hearts and minds. At the same time, it is easy to see how remez, drash and sod can be abused, since they all allow, indeed require, subjective interpretation; and this explains why scholars, who deal with the objective world, hesitate to use them. These four methods of working a text are remembered by the Hebrew word “PaRDeS,” an acronym formed from the initials; it means “orchard” or “garden.”6

Donald E. Curtis

We have to remember that the apparent use of people as "demo kit" wasn't restricted to OT :

3Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him. John 9

I wonder what the poor sods who were so used would say when they reached Abraham's bosom: "Hope you've got a good compensation plan or a good lawyer!"?

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

I guess the Amalekites were "poor sods"!

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

I am a p'shat man myself

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

quote:
At the same time, it is easy to see how remez, drash and sod can be abused

.........but not half as much as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednigo..

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
W. Hyatt posted (inter alia

"I do not see any part of the Old Testament as being about any historical people."

I find that incredible. Can you explain?

Since I view the Old Testament somewhat as one long parable, my saying that it's not about any historical people is pretty much equivalent to saying that the parable of the sower is not about seeds.

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
W. Hyatt, thanks for your most interesting post. In trying to get to grips with your argument it would help me a great deal if you could indicate how you read 1 Samuel 15: 1-3.

I will try, but the messages I look for within the text aren't the kind that would lead me to say "Aha - now I understand!" and that would enable me to explain them as theological points of doctrine. They are more like the possible meanings of a parable, where you can try to work out a way to describe one possible way of interpreting it, but the real power of the parable comes from being able to apply it to a real-life situation.

When I read 1 Samuel 15, I take Samuel to represent the part of each of us that wants to hear and obey what God is telling us (e.g. our conscience), Saul to represent our first efforts to rationally figure out what that means in our practical life, and the Amalekites to represent some tendency I might have to be downright cruel and hurtful.

For example, I might take the Amalekites to represent a tendency or habit I have to participate in and enjoy malicious gossip. In my better times, I can recognize that there is no room for such a habit in a Christian life, and that I should aspire to cooperating fully with God to eliminate my bad habit and my enjoyment of it completely from my life (the command to kill all the men, women, children, and livestock). But as I proceed working out just what that means in practical ways, I can easily convince myself that it really just means that I should avoid actively passing on the gossip I hear to people I'm not close to (Saul killing all the people). I might also decide that I can continue to enjoy hearing the gossip and sharing it with my spouse (Saul not being willing to exterminate the best of the livestock). I will also resist the idea that I should have nothing to do with negative gossip at all and that I should actually detest it (Saul having pity on the Amalek king).

Ideally, my conscience will eventually lead me to realize that I have to completely reject my habit and my enjoyment of it (Samuel cutting the Amalek king in pieces), but the kind of reasoning that I use to excuse holding onto the seemingly harmless bits cannot be allowed to continue to rule in my daily life (God repenting of making Saul king).

So this is the kind of thinking running through my head as I read the chapter, with the intention of looking for some area in my life where it might apply so that I can then use the story as an inspiration when I am actually in such situations. My only thought of the people in the story is as though they are characters in an allegorical play. To me it says nothing about what other people should or shouldn't be doing, only what I should be doing to obey God in looking for and resisting evil tendencies in myself.

I hope this helps you see that my approach to reading the Old Testament is not a matter of trying reconcile the "difficult" parts with the New Testament, and that it is a completely innocuous approach with regard to the implications for my interactions with other people. As I said, I may be hallucinating, but I apply this approach consistently to all the Old Testament texts.

[ETA: closest to the "Drash or Midrash" approach]

[ 13. July 2010, 03:10: Message edited by: W Hyatt ]

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

I understand your approach H Wyatt (I was brought up in the New Church [Big Grin]

)

I see it as a way of applying Bible reading to our own spiritual lives - without taking the stories literally. And I also think that, done prayerfully/expectantly, God illuminates it for us.

What doesn't emerge is a 'definitive' answer - as the reading is more personal than that.

I have always found the New Church tradition a gentle and inclusive one. I think many of my perspectives remain from having a Dad who was a New Church minister - even though I have been a Methodist for 30 years.

So, in my view, there is no way God ordered the genocide - but we can gain personally from reading the passage now. Just as we might from any parable.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

W Hyatt, Footwasher, and Boogie, thanks for your recent contributions. In my ignorance I looked up the New Church home page on the internet, and found the account of its approach to scripture illuminating. Clearly, the seemingly blanket allegorical approach does not fit in with conventional biblical scholarship, though it is more convincing than fundamentalism in dealing with OT myths such as the creation stories and the flood. Its highly subjective approach, of course, might fit in with post-Modernism.

The problem lies in deciding what the allegorical meanings are, and who has control over the exposition, or whether it's a matter for the subjective understanding of each individual. In the case of 1 Samuel 15, for example, while I would not particularly wish to challenge W Hyatt's understanding, which seems more like the application part of a sermon than biblical exegesis, I do have a problem with those who have taken the allegorical approach to that historical period to justify the construction of racially-based societies in the European colonial period, or to argue that the Palestinians should be progressively dispossessed.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

I am glad for W. Hyatt's explanation. And there is certainly nothing wrong in reading the Bible devotionally in the way he outlined.

But I think Kwesi put his finger on the 'danger' inherent in it. When we read devotionally we do so in the light of our Christian Faith which informs and controls the meaning we get out of any passage. Our Faith, based on Jesus, would not allow us to interpret a passage like 1 Sam to mean that we should go out and exterminate those whom we think are wrong or evil.

But those with a different set of "Faith-based" principles might take such a passage as legitimising actions which Christians would regard as abhorrent. The point which Kwesi made.

So I think that, in additional to a devotional reading of scripture (which is necessarily subjective) we need to read and understand scripture from other angles. And the p'shat angle which D. Curtis outlined is therefore important to me.

I see now that when I said earlier that W. Hyatt was trying to defend the indefensible I was doing him an injustice. He is in no way trying to defend a concept of God which a literal and straightforward reading of the Sam passage implies.

All this could easily transfer to another extant thread about how we should read the Bible. There is an overlap here.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

p'shat ?

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

As posted by D Curtis

(1) p’shat (“simple”)—the plain, literal sense of the text, more or less what modern scholars mean by “grammatical-historical exegesis,” which looks to the grammar of the language and the historical setting as background for deciding what a passage means. Modern scholars often consider grammatical-historical exegesis the only valid way to deal with a text; pastors who use other approaches in their sermons usually feel defensive about it before academics. But the rabbis had three other modes of interpreting Scripture, and their validity should not be excluded in advance but related to the validity of their implied presuppositions.

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
I do have a problem with those who have taken the allegorical approach to that historical period to justify the construction of racially-based societies in the European colonial period, or to argue that the Palestinians should be progressively dispossessed.

So do I, but do you think that problem arises from the allegorical approach itself?

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

W Hyatt: "...so do I, but do you think that problem arises from the allegorical approach itself?"

Since you ask, W Hyatt, I guess the answer is 'Yes', because there is the problem of deciding what each of the elements in the story stand for. That depends to a large extent on the theological disposition of the reader, as we have seen re 1 Samuel 15.

It is also necessary to distinguish between a parable and an allegory, though the two cannot always be easily separated. A classic parable is the book of Jonah, which is designed to pose the question found in the last verse. Most of the details in the story are not suited to an allegorical interpretation, though Jonah stands for a certain theological disposition the author wishes to challenge. (In fact, the one presented in 1 Samuel 15 and found in Ezra etc. etc.). On the other hand, there is an important allegorical component in the Parable of the Father and the Two Sons with respect to the main characters.

A classic example of what might be considered over-allegorisation is Augustine's version of the Good Samaritan, in which the question asked by Jesus (the parable's purpose) gets rather obscured:

quote:
A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho: Adam himself is meant; Jerusalem is the heavenly city of peace, from whose blessedness Adam fell; Jericho means "the moon," and signifies our mortality, because it is born, waxes, wanes, and dies. Thieves are the devil and his angels. Who stripped him, namely, of his immortality; and beat him, by persuading him to sin; and left him half dead, because in so far as man can understand and know God, he lives, but in so far as he is wasted and oppressed by sin, he is dead-he is therefore called half dead. The Priest and Levite who saw him and passed by signify the priesthood and ministry of the Old Testament, which could profit nothing for salvation, Samaritan means "guardian," and therefore the Lord Himself is signified by this name. The binding of the wounds is the restraint of sin. Oil is the comfort of good hope; wine the exhortation to work with fervent spirit. The beast is the flesh in which he deigned to come to us. The being set upon the beast is belief in the incarnation of Christ. The inn is the Church, where travellers are refreshed on their return from pilgrimage to their heavenly country. The morrow is after the resurrection of the Lord. The two pence are either the two precepts of love, or the promise of this life and of that which is to come. The innkeeper is the Apostle. The supererogatory payment is either his counsel of celibacy, or the fact that he worked with his own hands lest he should be a burden to any of the weaker brethren when the Gospel was new, though it was lawful for him "to live by the Gospel."

While Augustine's approach might have a particular appeal to those approaching scripture like yourself, and have lots of interesting ideas for others like myself, it is a highly subjective interpretation and cannot be asserted with any authority. It is not obvious, for example, that the Samaritan stands for Jesus- Indeed, I would argue that he was, as Jesus said, a Samaritan!

I think the general point I would make to you is that scripture, especially the OT, contains many different sorts of documents, whose truth's require different methods of understanding depending on their genre. They cannot all be treated the same. They are certainly not, as we have been discussing, equally profound!

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

.......last para: truths not truth's, sorry!

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
While Augustine's approach might have a particular appeal to those approaching scripture like yourself, and have lots of interesting ideas for others like myself, it is a highly subjective interpretation and cannot be asserted with any authority.

I think I see and understand the point you are making, and except for your last paragraph about the OT, I agree with you. I particularly agree that Augustine's version of the Good Samaritan is an example of over-allegorisation. However, this leaves me with something of a dilemma.

Augustine's interpretation is an excellent example that illustrates how highly subjective and arbitrary such an approach can be. I can see that if I were to set out to justify some particular idea I have, I can twist the symbolism around enough like a Rubric's cube to make the symbolism seem to fit and at the same time seem to justify the idea I had from the beginning. If that idea is misdirected or self-serving to begin with, the result will be even more objectionable for my having twisted Scripture to suit my purposes - something I would think of as profanation.

Yet however much Augustine's interpretation may look like it's similar to Swedenborg's approach, it does not have much more than a superficial similarity. My dilemma is that it is way beyond this thread (and my time) to adequately explain or demonstrate how, yet I also feel compelled to offer at least something to counter the reasonable conclusion you have drawn as to the similarity of the two.

I think most of us Swedenborgians are quick to accept the terms "allegory," "metaphor," and "symbolism" as describing our approach and we often use them ourselves because everyone already understands them. However, by doing so we can give a somewhat misleading impression because our approach is actually not really like any of these (we refer to it ourselves as correspondence). We have some general principles we apply and limitations we accept up front. We apply a concept that is based on consistent use of imagery and do not claim our results to be authoritative or exclusive.

Swedenborg published a book about the approach and about the theology and philosophy behind it, in which he states up front that the internal sense (as he refers to it) cannot be understood except from doctrine, and that one can derive heresies by applying false doctrine. He also states:

quote:
Doctrine must be taken from the sense of the letter of the Word, and be confirmed [by it].... Enlightenment comes from the Lord alone and is granted to those who love truths because they are truths, and who apply them to the uses of life ... because they are in the Lord, and the Lord in them.

(Doctrine of the Sacred Scripture, number 53 and number 57)

In practice, all of his exegesis/eisegesis is based on and annotated with lots of references to passages taken from many parts of the Old and New Testaments to demonstrate a consistent use of various terms and imagery and the textual association of those terms with the abstract concepts he says they correspond to.

I say this not to convince you how wonderful the approach is or persuade you to adopt it, but merely to argue that it is not arbitrary and that it is not suitable for applying to political situations.

But most of all, I want to point out that where an interpretation such as the example you provide from Augustine seems to me to be designed to produce a specific interpretation, Swedenborg's idea about the purpose of the internal sense is very different. He presents it not so much as something that's important for us to discover and elucidate, but as something mostly for us simply to be aware of so that we can know how and why the Word is holy in every detail. The primary purpose of the internal sense is not to educate us about points of doctrine, but to inspire us and to connect us to God and to heaven in a way that we are not consciously aware of.

We Swedenborgians love to study and speculate on what things in the Bible mean, but we don't consider the results to be definitive, binding, or even persuasive. And as one of our ministers once said, Swedenborg wrote thousands of pages of doctrinal exposition, most of which emphasises that doctrine is not what's important, charity is.

(Once again, I lack the time and energy to produce a short post. [Hot and Hormonal]

)

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

Thank you W Hyatt - I was trying to explain the New Church approach yesterday and said very similar things, but not nearly so well.

[Smile]

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Thanks, W Hyatt, I found your post most instructive and illuminating. [Angel]

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

Nice work W! This is a great topic.

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

Divine intention – an outline.

I have to make some assumptions here for this part:
[1] There is a God; and
[2] That God communicates.

Or, if some prefer:
[1] If there is a God; and
[2] If that God communicates,
then...

If we leave aside the direct communication route (God speaking directly to humans), we have to hand this phenomenon called the Bible, which records God communicating, but in the third person (i.e., He said...did...). It's this phenomenon that is so intriguing.

I've been thinking on and off for quite a few years over how God communicates with his creation and how – given the mediated version of the communication in the bible – it is possible to know we have not completely misunderstood the message. That, of course, raises the question of why God would opt to communicate with us through mediators, rather than always directly. After all, if I were a god and I wanted something to happen, wouldn't it make sense for me just to speak directly? Why risk Chinese whispers?

A route to understanding this could lie along the 'purpose' factor in communication. I've tried drawing on a range of findings in linguistics and the philosophy of communication to answer the question, What was God's purpose in mediating a purposeful communication via a human author, who himself purposed a communication by using the words he used in the way that he used them?.

There must be a better way of phrasing that.

Still, there is a route backwards in that question. From the human author and his/her purpose in communicating we have words that can be analysed (public domain methodology). As the different purposes of each author are identified in their word choices, we start to build up a framework of assorted communications that have a main focus: God. Therefore, the words of the human leads to the word of God – in that the purpose of the human leads to the purpose of God. This makes sense if one thinks of the authors as theologians, not secretaries who had a rather unexpected voice from heaven land on their lap, but people who had spent years considering God and his ways, so much so that they had a God-ethos ready to hand when they wrote.

What about the worldview framework of covenant? It could be argued that while the 'covenant' concept as worldview might be pretty good at defining the scope of intention among the human authors, nevertheless at the end of the day it is a human concept. It might at best be described as a metaphor for understanding God's relationship with his creation, but not as firm as a model, or even as accurate as truth. Still, applying the backward route in communication, perhaps the covenant metaphor also directs the focus on God, and therefore is a good model to use for defining God's purpose in establishing relationships with his creation.

If this is the case, then actions under the covenant model actually do reflect God's purpose in communication. And one of those actions – operating under covenant expectations – is herem.

I appreciate this outline leaves so many hostages to fortune, but I would be happy to try and flesh aspects of it out.

Essentially I have tried to take seriously the fact that we have mediated communication. We have communication through the words used by many varied authors. These words – and not potentially countless other words written from the same times – have survived the test of time and scrutiny of many generations of people who recognised something of worth in them.

As to why God would take such a risk with mediated communication, that may in fact be the purpose of the communication. God opted to communicate directly to a small number of people, but then expected the message to be communicated onwards. Humans have a responsibility to communicate that message – they have that resource. To communicate outwards is one of the responsibilities of being the junior partner in the covenant; it is part of being the image of God, the representative of the Emperor in our own smaller kingdom of responsibility. By communicating God's purpose we are therefore fulfilling both a creation role (Gen 1-2) and an incarnational role.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

Posted by Nigel

What was God's purpose in mediating a purposeful communication via a human author, who himself purposed a communication by using the words he used in the way that he used them?.

There must be a better way of phrasing that.

My comment.

You bet there must be.

For the rest I am befuddled.

But then I am a bear with a very small brain

[ 14. July 2010, 21:04: Message edited by: shamwari ]

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by footwasher:
God's intent as Master Author subsumes the human authorial intent. ...

Bottomline, the OT is consistent with the NT: there is no taxonomy in clarity, the one is not superior to the other.

I promised to respond a few days ago - sorry for delay.

I'm not sure if what I posted in my last post on divine authorship matches what you think about 'subsuming.' Some would say that God's intention makes its way through the words, despite the human author's communication technique (or even theology). Others that God's intention rides over the human words, perhaps as a spiritual application. I think my take on it is that the human words are consistent with God's words, even given that fact that they are only human. Even better than that, though, I would say that the human purpose in communication is consistent with God's purpose - which is more dynamic than simply focusing on words.

Certainly I agree that the OT and the NT both represent God's purpose; there is no need to see any prominence in purpose.

Posted by Pooks (# 11425) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
I guess the Amalekites were "poor sods"!

What disturbs me is that you seem repeatedly to imply on this thread and elsewhere that the Amalekites were innocents even when you have acknowledged that they were not. It was almost done in a breezy way. According to the texts, they were raiders and murderers. They waylaid a group of already oppressed and exhausted runaway slaves and killed those who couldn’t run fast enough. Later, they and the Midianites repeatedly raided Israelites and operated a scorched earth policy so the Israelites had neither crop nor livestock left to eat. They also helped others to oppress the Israelites for tens of years (see texts below). I may be wrong, but I also got the impression that when the Amalekites moved, the whole tribe moved. Young or old, they were all part of the raiding party. It was the Amalekites who brought their women and children into the context of battle and thereby involved them in the first place. Whether you think they were innocent or not, they all benefited from the ill gotten spoils when the Amalekites were the victors.

The point of 1 Sam 15 though, is that God judged the Amalekites for the evil they had done as well as judged Saul for his disobedience -which was also an evil in God‘s eye. You have consistently down played the evil that the Amalekites had done to others as if it’s nothing worth mentioning. It seems to me that the real issue is whether you are prepared to accept that God has the right to judge evil or not. You have used the word ‘genocide’ earlier, the word is emotive, but hardly fitting in this case. The reason God wanted to destroy the Amalekites was because of their evil deeds, not because of their race. So please, let’s get a little perspective here. If your argument is that the God of the New Testament will not judge the world, then I think the onus is on you to show how you would do away with the many teachings that Jesus was recorded saying that clearly implied that God will judge evil and disobedience, and also give us the reason why you think that the Amalekites’ evil deeds shouldn’t be punished by God.

quote:
Judges 3:12-14 Once again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, and because they did this evil the LORD gave Eglon king of Moab power over Israel. Getting the Ammonites and Amalekites to join him, Eglon came and attacked Israel, and they took possession of the City of Palms. The Israelites were subject to Eglon king of Moab for eighteen years.

Judges 6: 2-6 Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count the men and their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it.

Numbers 14:45 Then the Amalekites and Canaanites who lived in that hill country came down and attacked them and beat them down all the way to Hormah.

Deut 25:17, 18 Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and cut off all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

quote:
Pooks: What disturbs me is that you seem repeatedly to imply on this thread and elsewhere that the Amalekites were innocents even when you have acknowledged that they were not.

You have used the word ‘genocide’ earlier, the word is emotive, but hardly fitting in this case. The reason God wanted to destroy the Amalekites was because of their evil deeds, not because of their race. So please, let’s get a little perspective here

The reason God wanted to destroy the Amalekites was because of their evil deeds, not because of their race. So please, let’s get a little perspective here. If your argument is that the God of the New Testament will not judge the world, then I think the onus is on you to show how you would do away with the many teachings that Jesus was recorded saying that clearly implied that God will judge evil and disobedience, and also give us the reason why you think that the Amalekites’ evil deeds shouldn’t be punished by God.

Pooks, "Listen to what the Lord Almighty says. He is going to attack the people of Amalek because their ancestors opposed the Israelites when they were coming out of Egypt....kill all the men, women, children, and babies...' (1 Samuel 15 2-3).

1. We note that the Amalekites are not being punished for any trouble they were causing at the time. They were being punished for the sins of their ancestors: crimes of which they were innocent. They are not to be destroyed for their own evil deeds- of which I'm sure there were many, as with the Israelites and the rest of us.

2. The specific inclusion of babies, whose innocence is surely undisputed, underscores the point.

3. Most people would understand the elimination of an entire ethnic group from the face of the earth as genocide.

4. I do not seek to deny that Jesus is our judge; but even if one accepts at face value the more apocalyptic words of Jesus in the Gospels and Revelations, the objects of his anathemas are punished for their individual/personal sins/crimes, and not for those of their ancestors.

5. At the end of the day, the behaviour of the Amalekites was no different from that of the Israelites and other tribes. Their sin was that their interests clashed with those of the Israelites, so they had to be got rid of as a matter of political policy. Had the shoe been on the other foot the Amalekites would have sorted out the Israelites, ordered, no doubt, by their God(s).

The question, Pooks, is whether this ethno-centric God is the one revealed in Jesus Christ. Most of us don't think so, but clearly there are others, like you, who do.

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

Wow, Hyatt, that was one humdinger of a post! It's the first time I'm hearing the methodolgy of New Church described in a lucid and cogent post, and although I share the initial premises, my conclusions diverge a bit. Maybe if I read some more about New Church, I may find its views better formed than my own!

Nigel M wrote:

quote:
I'm not sure if what I posted in my last post on divine authorship matches what you think about 'subsuming.'

I was trying for "co-opt", or "commandeer", I guess! For example:

21Now he did not say this on his own initiative, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, John 11

Here God has His official mouthpiece doing his job properly and telling the truth (maybe for the first time!), voicing his relief at being saved, ironically, without knowing that he no longer is included in the nation, because of his disbelief in Jesus! Here the information the human speaker intends to convey is different from that conveyed after God takes it over and gives it its final meaning.

See also:

Quote
(Isaiah 7:14-18)

Isaiah’s prophecy really outlines a timetable for the destruction of two troublesome foreign kings named Rezin and Pekah. Isaiah says to Judah’s king Ahaz, in effect, that by the time a particular maiden1 marries, has a son, and sees him through his “Bar Mitzvah”, these two kings will be gone. Some commentators try to say that Isaiah is not speaking to Ahaz, but to the whole “House of David.” They take this mental handle and try to stretch the meaning to make it fit the true virgin birth to come. But verse 16 ties the prophecy to the two kings and verse 18 calls upon Egypt and Assyria to be the instruments of their destruction. What have Egypt and Assyria to do with the conception and birth of Jesus?

Donald E. Curtis

Note the original sense and the final sense.

quote:
Certainly I agree that the OT and the NT both represent God's purpose; there is no need to see any prominence in purpose.

Sure, Jesus describes both as "treasure":

52 And Jesus said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings out of his treasure things new and old."Matthew 13

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
The question, Pooks, is whether this ethno-centric God is the one revealed in Jesus Christ. Most of us don't think so, but clearly there are others, like you, who do.

Yet the record shows that God has a universal and "ethno-centric" focus in his workings in both Old and New Testaments, Kwesi. He is presented as being considerate of all creation and yet also of his people. How do you respond to that consistency across the Testaments?

Nigel

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

quote:
Yet the record shows that God has a universal and "ethno-centric" focus in his workings in both Old and New Testaments, Kwesi. He is presented as being considerate of all creation and yet also of his people. How do you respond to that consistency across the Testaments?

Nigel M, you make the point for me when you distinguish between 'considerate of all creation and yet also his own people'. Who are 'his own people'? The answer is different in different parts of scripture. In Judges and Samuel it is clearly the children of Israel, in Jonah they would seem to include the people of Nineveh, at Pentecost and in Paul's letters they include both Jews and Gentiles, and in Revelation they are an 'enormous crowd....from every race, tribe, nation, and language'.

As I've tried to point out in other posts there are important paradigm shifts in the Jewish understanding of God and his relationship to themselves and other ethnic groups. In the time of Judges and Samuel 'his people' were the tribes of Israel, and others were treated as subordinate to their tribal interests. If their land had been promised to the Israelites they were expected to give up without a fight or suffer extreme consequences. God did not deal evenly with the various ethnic groups of his creation. Anyway, they had their own Gods to defend them.

The writer of Jonah, however, clearly understood the radical implications of Israel's increasing understanding that there was only one God, and his book is a polemic against those holding the traditional view of Jewish exceptionalism. God's concern cannot distinguish between different ethnic groups because he is their God as well as Israel's. Jewish exceptionalism ceases to be a blanket phenomenon, and their 'chosen' status is restricted to their mission to carry the knowledge of God to the nations. That would have included the Amalekites had they still been around.

In the New Testament God transcends ethnicity entirely. The mission of Israel is taken over by a multi-ethnic church, and its commission from the resurrected Christ is to 'go to all people everywhere and make them my disciples'. This is an imagination light years away from that of Samuel.

In order to reconcile universalism and ethno-centrism you have to pose a dominant and favoured ethnic group on the one hand and subordinate ethnic groups on the other. That how the Southern United States were organised until at least the 1960s, and South Africa under apartheid. White Christians in these societies unsurprisingly found great support for their social theories in the Old Testament.

Once we agree that God treats all men (and women) equally, as the NT insists, then ethno-centrism and universalism become incompatible. To believe in ethno-centrism is to believe in discrimination which is not compatible with the equality inherent in universalist concepts.

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Who are 'his own people'? The answer is different in different parts of scripture.

Not really, Kwesi. God's People can be universal in the sense that all creation belongs to the Lord (an OT and NT theme), but also in a more limited fashion only those who are loyal to God, who accept him. This is what is meant more commonly in the Bible by the phrase 'God's People' ('His People', 'My People').

As I pointed out on the other thread, the offer of salvation is universal, but salvation is dependent on acceptance and return. It is not universally imposed.

The OT presents the character of God as one who is willing to take anyone under his wing; Israel is only a model. God is represented as the El of all in addition to being the YHWH who works with Israel. This theme carries over into the NT, where the Greek terms theos and kurios represent that same balance. There is no paradigm shift in respect of way God's character is viewed.

There is still a need to deal with the texts in the NT that focus on the conditional offer of salvation. I think a problem may be that you are interpreting the likes of "In Christ there is no male and female" to mean that God no longer distinguishes between human groupings when it comes to acceptance. This is different, though, to the context where the principle is applied; there acceptance is offered universally to those who believe and return to loyalty via Jesus. This accords with the OT view of creation and covenantal relationships. There has always been that distinction. The question is how we respond to it.

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

Heh!Heh! Kwesi, I thought the apartheid issue would eventually arise.

The problem seems to be that people take themes from the OT and apply it (badly) to modern times.

It might be worth spending the time to see how the "peculiar people" of God were peculiar precisely because they possessed characteristics that would make possible the recognition of the Messiah when He finally came. Every Jewish male was potentially "meschiach".

After that, Jewishness (ethnicity), circumcision (gender) were no longer required...

[ 15. July 2010, 14:39: Message edited by: footwasher ]

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

quote:
Nigel M: The OT presents the character of God as one who is willing to take anyone under his wing; Israel is only a model.

A pity that wasn't pointed out to the tribes dispossessed to make way for the Israelite occupation of the 'promised land', and those destined to become 'hewers of wood and drawers of water'.

I don't accept that Israel is 'only a model'. (A model of what, we may ask?). They were people offered an exclusive covenant so they could become a 'chosen' people. I wouldn't mind betting that was how Joshua, Samuel, Ezra and the rest saw it.

I guess we just have to differ. You believe that the God who told Samuel to commit genocide is the one who says love your enemies. I don't.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

quote:
Footwasher: The problem seems to be that people take themes from the OT and apply it (badly) to modern times.

.....but what are the themes from the Old Testament that are badly applied to modern times?

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:

quote:
Nigel M: The OT presents the character of God as one who is willing to take anyone under his wing; Israel is only a model.
A pity that wasn't pointed out to the tribes dispossessed to make way for the Israelite occupation of the 'promised land', and those destined to become 'hewers of wood and drawers of water'.

Who's to say it wasn't? The essence of herem is that it is judicial execution of a decision. It follows a clear procedure of warning to the one who opposes. It doesn't come out of a dark alley unexpected. I think we need to be alive to fact that if something was presupposed, it did not always have to be spelled out. The author did not need to say "Commit herem, and by herem I mean follow this procedure..." because the procedure was already known.

One of the passages dealing with the destruction of tribes is Exodus 23:20-33 -

quote:
(NET Version)
“I am going to send an angel before you to protect you as you journey and to bring you into the place that I have prepared. Take heed because of him, and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him. But if you diligently obey him and do all that I command, then I will be an enemy to your enemies, and I will be an adversary to your adversaries. For my angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I will destroy them completely. You must not bow down to their gods; you must not serve them or do according to their practices. ...

I will send my terror before you, and I will destroy all the people whom you encounter; I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. I will send hornets before you that will drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite before you. I will not drive them out before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild animals multiply against you. ... You must make no covenant with them or with their gods.

In all that wordage - which incidentally is par for the course in covenant stipulations - is the same obligation to obey that lay on Israel as much as anyone else. The other tribes are presented as enemies - those who oppose. The implication is that they made their choice. Given the nature of warfare and of herem especially, it is not really possible to imagine that they were unaware of the consequences of their acts.

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
I don't accept that Israel is 'only a model'. (A model of what, we may ask?). They were people offered an exclusive covenant so they could become a 'chosen' people.

A model, according to the record, of a people in a loyal relationship to the God of all creation, not just a local God. The covenant with Abraham demonstrates that point. They were just as much a model of what happens when they failed to obey as when they did obey.

I appreciate that you don't like what the record says in parts, but you still need to deal with the point that the text makes throughout: that the character of God is consistent with one who expects loyalty from creation, and who judges and sentences those who disobey.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

quote:
“I am going to send an angel before you to protect you as you journey and to bring you into the place that I have prepared. Take heed because of him, and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him. But if you diligently obey him and do all that I command, then I will be an enemy to your enemies, and I will be an adversary to your adversaries. For my angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I will destroy them completely. You must not bow down to their gods; you must not serve them or do according to their practices. ...

I will send my terror before you, and I will destroy all the people whom you encounter; I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. I will send hornets before you that will drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite before you. I will not drive them out before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild animals multiply against you. ... You must make no covenant with them or with their gods.

Nigel, you can worship that God if you like, but IMO he is not the God revealed in Christ Jesus.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

That makes two of us Kwesi

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Nigel, you can worship that God if you like, but IMO he is not the God revealed in Christ Jesus.

Amen

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

I think you are still imposing an alien concept of individualism on the text of the bible to the exclusion of the corporate. If Paul could draw on Israel as a model (1 Cor. 10) relevant to his readers, if Jesus' worldview was consistent with a corporate identity (e.g., Matt 10:15; 11:22-24; 18:23-25), if he could draw on the example of God sneering rain and sun on all peoples (Matt 5:45); if he could relate to the practical reality of disaster falling without distinction and apply that to repentance (Luke 13:1-5), then you have the character of God via Jesus applying to whole groups. The individual responsibilities of those under the covenant did not entirely erase the corporate. The thread runs through the whole bible.

You have to be able to respond to the purpose of the authors (and divine author?) in the whole, not just the parts. Otherwise you have a distorted view of the (corporate!) purpose of the bible.

We may have a different paradigm for our worldview today, more individual and less corporate. That, though, probably owes more the the development of philosophical thought in western Europe over the past few hundred years than it does to any paradigm shift in the bible. Are you sure you are not simply imposing that more recent worldview onto the bible?

If not, where is the evidence that the NT authors had a message dealing solely with individuals to the exclusion of the corporate? You have to deal with the evidence in the record as a whole.

The only other option, it seems to me, is to set the bible aside as a source of reference for God and the way he wants us to live.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

If nothing else, the OT is so deeply embedded in the very language of the NT that you can't understand Jesus without understanding his roots in the Torah, which run really deep. Same with Paul. John had some issues with "the Jews," but even there he's working off of Jesus, who was Jewish and steeped in the Torah. Revelation is based entirely on a Jewish form of apocalyptic literature.

Jettison the OT and ultimately you jettison Jesus' real human experience.

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:

quote:
Footwasher: The problem seems to be that people take themes from the OT and apply it (badly) to modern times.
.....but what are the themes from the Old Testament that are badly applied to modern times?

Some of the arguments that pro-apartheid adherents used were also used by the segregationist movement in the southern US.

Fanciful, interpretations with little bearing on biblical principles were blatantly used to justify the separation of the races. I remember mention of these views whilst discussing such issues on US boards. An injunction against mixing was even extracted from:

19Observe my regulations. Don’t let your livestock mate with those of another kind, don’t sow your field with two different kinds of grain, and don’t wear a garment of cloth made with two different kinds of thread. Leviticus 19

The principle, of course, was the Jews had cultural markers that separated them from the pagan nations that surrounded them. Not eating shellfish, animals which chewed the cud but had cloven hooves, etc. These were those markers. There was nothing intrinsically right with the practices, they were just customs. They were followed strictly in order to differentiate the Jews from the nations around them, even as God prepared the way for His Messiah and set out clues to his identification.

I see the Amalekites as types, spiritual analogies of the things that obstruct the return to God.

The question then is: are the accounts parables or are they historical events?

If they are historical events, then the Amalekite children are definitely innocent victims, and the women too as noncombatants, and the descendants of the original raiders. In fact, all!

The key to the problem are the words of Jesus:

28And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell. Matthew 10

Lesson: One can suffer or lose their lives in this world, but the important consequences are in the afterlife.

22“Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried. Luke 16

1“Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. Matt 6

This may sound cold and dispassionate in view of the very real sufferings the victims went through, but Jesus taught that treasure laid in heaven LASTED. Eternal rewards. And punishments as well...

The other objection would be why God needed to put people, innocent people even, through suffering and pain.:

11Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. 1 Corinthians 10

4For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Romans 15

There is a sense that how we NOW act is more important than the past actions and consequences of the charcters of Scripture.

3how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard, Hebrews 2

You could say the fate of the OT saints is tightly linked to that of the future saints:

39 Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, 40since God had provided something better so that they would not, without us, be made perfect. Hebrews 11

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:

For the rest I am befuddled.

Understandable, shamwari; I shouldn't have posted so late at night!

I'll try again, this time blow by blow, with the top-level points:

Background:-
We have a set of books (the Bible) that were authored by humans.
These humans deal with God in the third person; i.e., this is not a record that presents itself as God's direct communication to humankind.

Issue
How do humans find God's message for them in this human document?

Proposal
God deliberately chose to communicate to his creation via this mediated process.
The fact of mediation is consistent with the purpose of God as represented in the record, e.g., in handing responsibility to humans as the image of God, in calling the nations, etc.

If this is the case, then the purpose of the human writers, ascertained by analysis of the text, corresponds sufficiently to the purpose of God in communicating. God's message comes through because he purposed it that way and the human writers let the message come through because their purpose accords with God's.

I've concentrated on 'purpose' (intention) in all this, because that seems to me to be the way the writers saw both what they were doing and what God was doing in communicating. It is more biblical, in that sense, than concentrating on propositional language, or the meaning of words in isolation from intent (ergo, from context). The latter is too static to be biblical.

That's pretty much what I think about it – in a nutshell. The implication would be that in doing what we can to find the human authors' intentions, we are also finding God's intention. We work back to the latter by paying attention to the former. I appreciate there is a danger of circularity in this: Human says God communicates through humans, therefore God communicates through humans. I don't think this is insurmountable, because we a consistency in the heterogeneous record on the matter. Many writers from different periods go down the same route and are accepted into a canon of transmitted texts.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Footwasher, I must confess that I find the argument in your latest post difficult to follow. I do, however, note with considerable satisfaction that you agree with me that if 1 Samuel 15 is history (which it is) then "the Amalekite children are definitely innocent victims, and the women too as noncombatants, and the descendants of the original raiders. In fact, all!" Be careful, you might end up agreeing with my approach.

You would be mistaken, however, to regard the Samuel passage as a parable, because it clearly isn't. Nor are you justified in claiming certain NT verses as an explanation of the passage. There is, for example, no reason to believe that the elimination of the Amalekites was a means of saving their eternal souls. (Incidentally, such warped reasoning was used to justified the burning of heretics and the inquisition). You are also doing violence to the text in regarding the Amalekites as 'spiritual types'. That was not the author's intention.

Nigel M, I share Shawari's befuddlement, despite your latest post. What exactly, precisely and simply is your basic point? Where do you want to get to?

Bullfrog, I think you make an important point in that it's impossible to understand Jesus without an appreciation of the OT. There is, however, a wider context. While Jesus is seen by Jewish Christians (though not the vast majority of Jews) as fulfilling the promises of God in their own culture, there is also a strong counter-cultural element in the life of Jesus both in his teaching (you have heard it aforetime..but I say..) and in the manner of his death, and Jesus also transcends culture, not only that of the Jewish religion, but of all other understandings of God. There is not, it seems to me, a seemless transition from the OT to the resurrected Christ. We can see that, for example, in the Christian understanding of Messiahship, which is far more profound than that envisage by the one who comes to restore the throne of his father David.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

But every Christian understanding is just the outworking of a Jewish one. Even the idea of a God that transcends national and tribal gods goes back to the Tanakh. All of Jesus' core teachings were out of the Tanakh. Everything he "fulfilled" had been there as a potentiality from the beginning. Jesus even shares a name with the famous conqueror of the Promised Land.

The seam isn't so clean, I think, as you imagine.

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Nigel M, I share Shawari's befuddlement, despite your latest post. What exactly, precisely and simply is your basic point? Where do you want to get to?

To provide a reasonable (i.e., capable of being reasoned through) justification for locating divine intention in the bible.

It's an issue that was a spin off from the 'Sovereign God' thread and stands alone, really, hence the new thread. The context is the wider debate that has been knocking about in Christianity in various guises for over a century, concerning the nature of language in the bible and communication, both generally and specifically in the bible.

My take has been to take that biblical communication as we have it, but to focus on the purpose of the authors, seeing how they understood what they and their predecessors were doing. This is a different approach to, for example, imposing static and reductionist propositional categories onto the bible, or to imposing assorted linguistic techniques that focussed on what words are, rather than what they do (or did).

The lower-level support for the top-level argument is to be found, I think, in the marrying of a number of insights from structuralism (with a small 's'), speech-act theory, the philosophy of language (e.g., from the interactions between Gadamer, Hirsch, Ricoeur and Derrida), discourse analysis, and the theory of metaphor.

The relevance to the 1 Samuel 15 debate would be, in my opinion, that there is a purposeful communication from God in that text. Hasty caveat: not to be taken out of context!

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:

The relevance to the 1 Samuel 15 debate would be, in my opinion, that there is a purposeful communication from God in that text. Hasty caveat: not to be taken out of context!

Purposeful as in 'God had on purpose in giving us this text' or 'We can find purpose from God in this text if we understand it well enough'?

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

quote:
Bullfrog: The seam isn't so clean, I think, as you imagine.

Thanks, Bullfrog, though I'm not quite sure what seam it is to which you refer! Perhaps I'm not sure what I'm imagining! What do you think it is? [Confused]

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:

quote:
Bullfrog: The seam isn't so clean, I think, as you imagine.
Thanks, Bullfrog, though I'm not quite sure what seam it is to which you refer! Perhaps I'm not sure what I'm imagining! What do you think it is?

The point where the NT breaks away from the OT. I don't think it's so clear where one ends and the other begins...it may not be completely seamless, but trying to pick out where the seam actually happens isn't so easy, and in some places there does seem to be a seamless transition.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Thanks, Bulldog, I completely agree with you, and readily admit that I have over-simplified a more complex reality. My main concern was to argue that there are shifts throughout scripture in the understanding of God which are quite profound.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Nigel M

quote:
The relevance to the 1 Samuel 15 debate would be, in my opinion, that there is a purposeful communication from God in that text. Hasty caveat: not to be taken out of context!

Quite so. And the communication from God, in context, is that the Amalekites are to be wiped off the face of the earth.

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

Nigel, are you perhaps making a distinction between "a purposeful communication from God in that text" and "a purpose attributed to God in that text?"

[ 16. July 2010, 04:35: Message edited by: W Hyatt ]

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

Kwesi wrote:

quote:
Footwasher, I must confess that I find the argument in your latest post difficult to follow. I do, however, note with considerable satisfaction that you agree with me that if 1 Samuel 15 is history (which it is) then "the Amalekite children are definitely innocent victims, and the women too as noncombatants, and the descendants of the original raiders. In fact, all!" Be careful, you might end up agreeing with my approach.

You would be mistaken, however, to regard the Samuel passage as a parable, because it clearly isn't.

I agree it isn't. BTW, don't you feel that the real life incident of the man born blind just to serve the purpose of being an exhibit for demonstrating God's glory would also be unjustified, if the compensation in the after life had not covered the damages?

quote:
Nor are you justified in claiming certain NT verses as an explanation of the passage. There is, for example, no reason to believe that the elimination of the Amalekites was a means of saving their eternal souls.

I had tried to suggest there that they happened to be coveniently placed for God to teach a symbolic lesson to Saul, the surrounding nations, and to us.

As to the second point, there is some evidence that Scripture teaches that God reaches out to individuals and saves their eternal souls on their recognition of their error, and on repentance. One might even argue that many of the texts with reference to salvation are really discussing the loss of the opportunity to be God's Chosen People, destined to be those through whom the nations of the world would be blessed. Jews would be extremely puzzled to hear that forgiveness was contingent on sacrifice. Jonah's account points to the contrary.

quote:
(Incidentally, such warped reasoning was used to justified the burning of heretics and the inquisition).

You made my point for me: they were warped reasonings.

quote:
You are also doing violence to the text in regarding the Amalekites as 'spiritual types'. That was not the author's intention.

The important intent is the Divine one. The question is: Did God co-opt the incident to teach a spiritual lesson?

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
Nigel, are you perhaps making a distinction between "a purposeful communication from God in that text" and "a purpose attributed to God in that text?"

I asked the same [Smile]

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

Then I apologize - I took your question to be about a more subtle distinction. (Which underscores how easily we can read things into posts (and texts) that the author did not intend!) I would not presume to try to simply rephrase your question.

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Purposeful as in 'God had on purpose in giving us this text' or 'We can find purpose from God in this text if we understand it well enough'?

quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
...are you perhaps making a distinction between "a purposeful communication from God in that text" and "a purpose attributed to God in that text?"

I think W Hyatt's questions are slightly different to Boogie's. And the answers, I fear, are Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes! If I take them in order:

[1] God had a purpose in giving us this text. This group of texts and not another, in this heterogeneous make-up, written by humans who refer to God in the third person, is provided by God with the purpose of assisting humans to fulfil their God-given role in being God's image. When humans communicate the message in the whole text, they are fulfilling God's purpose. This, at least, seems to be the thrust of how the authors understood it, e.g., the 2 Tim. 3:14-17 passage (note that however one might get hung up on the word 'inspiration', the focus of the passage is not really that, but rather purpose:

quote:
You, however, must continue in the things you have learned and are confident about. You know who taught you and how from infancy you have known the holy writings, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the person dedicated to God may be capable and equipped for every good work.

I appreciate that I have not touched on exactly which text we are talking about – which set of books in a canon. That debate has been had I'm sure, in various states of apoplexy, across the other side of the Jerusalem to Jericho road in Purgatory. Here I have just been interested in finding the principle to start from.

[2] We can find purpose from God in this text if we understand it well enough. Part of the role of being responsible, image-of-God working, human beings is to put brain into gear and use God-given talents to the best of our ability (I think that actually fulfils a parable or two). Shamwari mentioned in an earlier post (two-thirds of the way down page 1) an approach oft times named “grammatical-historical exegesis.” This would be a key component of an approach to locate the human authorial intention in a passage – which is what I would take “understand it well enough” to mean. In doing so, we find that the writers have had as their top focus the character of God and how that God wants his creation to behave. This forms a uniting principle behind all the texts. Thusly it also provides a route to finding purpose from God in the text itself. My caveat is that if we take [1] above seriously, then strictly speaking we need to locate God's purpose more fully in the “more than the sum of the parts” that go to make up the canon. Focussing too much on a limited range of texts would be reductionist; it would miss the whole – seeing trees but missing the wood. This means that although there is a need to get to detailed grips with each individual author, section by section, we then also need to go a step further to see how the individual parts fit together. This, in turn, feeds back into our further understanding of individual texts. We have to thank Schleiermacher for that particular hermeneutical circle, though taking into account the way it developed via Heidegger to Gadamer, to include the way this process also changes the one doing the interpretation. A 'new man' is being created as a result of the very process of interpretation; this also acts to fulfil one of God's purposes in providing such a text.

[3] There is a purposeful communication from God in that text. The text as we have it is not static, it is dynamic. I think this is an insight from the authors themselves; e.g., the Isaiah 55 passage makes that point. It means we don't have to see the bible as something akin to a Christmas present that lands on our lap and that could end up in a cupboard until we can think of what to do with it (“How nice – another set of hankies this year – perhaps I can find someone to give it to as a birthday present in a few months!”). If we do not accept a deistic view of God (the one who winds up creation and lets it run without further interference) in respect of his interaction with the world, then perhaps neither should we assume that the bible is something God gave but which he no longer really is involved with. A more biblical view of 'gift' (how the human authors understood it) is one where God passes the responsibility for something to another, but where God remains in overall ownership and can revoke the license for, so to speak. Land was a gift to Israel, but was always dependent on the human owners using it in accordance with God's instructions. Failure to comply meant the Emperor stomping in to remove the humans from power. And that fulfils another parable or two. So God's communication – his intentional message – works through the text somewhat like the water cycle.

[4] There is a purpose attributed to God in the text. Certainly the human authors identified purpose in the collection of texts as they were being built up, collated, and transmitted. The Timothy and Isaiah passages are examples. More generally we have Jesus' emphasis on interpreting the Jewish Scriptures and then showing his followers the importance of doing this so that they, in turn, focussed so much on OT texts in setting out their purpose. Additionally the human authors, by virtue of their focus on God and his ways of working, demonstrate a capacity for taking life as it really was and asking the question about how God fitted into the equation. The logic appears to be that if God is really the author of all, then everything that happens has to be explained in terms of a divine purpose. This could be expressed as God making things happen, or regulating things as they happened, or countering something that came from another entity in a divine council. However it was explained, the writers don't give the impression that there was room for a purposeless event. This, I think, is where the book of Ecclesiastes scores. Rather than being a depressing take on life, as some have interpreted it to be, when seen in the context of the worldview of the time and the larger scope for attributing purpose to God, it actually makes the opposite point; there is an overall, overarching, purpose with God.

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Quite so. And the communication from God, in context, is that the Amalekites are to be wiped off the face of the earth.

Quite so indeed! So how do you read the passages in the Gospels which validate corporate judicial execution?

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

It seems to me that the following posted by Nigel and located (buried?) at the heart of a long passage is a clue

"The logic appears to be that if God is really the author of all, then everything that happens has to be explained in terms of a divine purpose."

There is an underlying assumption (presumption) which seems to control everything else; namely, that God is the author of all.

I dont think he is.

There are some passages which are plainly an historical account - what happened no less.

This history was introduced or set in the context of a theological comment. For instance "The Lord said". But what proof is there that the Lord said anything at all apart from the writer's "faith stance"?

When it comes to "prophetic" passages the argument is somewhat different. I understand prophecy to be Insight rather than Foresight. And it is clear that such insights very often derive from a Divine inspiration. In which case we could say that God is the author of all such insights.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Nigel M

quote:
So how do you read the passages in the Gospels which validate corporate judicial execution?

Which one's do you have in mind, Nigel?

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Footwasher

quote:
BTW, don't you feel that the real life incident of the man born blind just to serve the purpose of being an exhibit for demonstrating God's glory would also be unjustified, if the compensation in the after life had not covered the damages?

I guess, Footwasher, I don't share your interpretation of this miracle. Surely, it's grotesque to suggest that God creates human beings with deformities for any reason whatsoever?

What I get out of Jesus' remark is that all of us are imperfect beings in many ways and need the healing of Christ's grace. Jesus' main point, however, is that the man's blindness was not an affliction brought on him by God either for his own sins or those of his parents.

Footwasher

quote:
I had tried to suggest there that they [the Amalekites?] happened to be coveniently placed for God to teach a symbolic lesson to Saul, the surrounding nations, and to us.

I can't believe you are suggesting that God created the Amalekites in order to wipe them out in order to teach us all a 'symbolic lesson'. BTW what is a 'symbolic lesson'?

Footwasher

quote:
Jews would be extremely puzzled to hear that forgiveness was contingent on sacrifice.

I'm afraid you've lost me!

Footwasher

quote:
The important intent is the Divine one. The question is: Did God co-opt the incident to teach a spiritual lesson?

Exactly how does God co-opt an incident?

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

Re the man born blind.

A translation (entirely legitimate) is

It was not this man who sinned or his parents.

BUT that the works of God might be made manifest......

In other words Jesus is not commenting on any possible reasons for his blindness. That was a fact which nothing could change.

His blindness, however, offered an opportunity for God's healing power to be made manifest.

It hinges on the Greek word "ina". Normally it implies purpose. i.e. so that.

But it can imply consequence as I have translated / interpreted.

It is sheer blasphemy to suggest God caused his blindness simply to afford an opportunity 30 years later to cure it.

What sort of a monster God is that?

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

Does the presence of God in a narrative imply God's endorsement thereof? I can certainly think of passages where things happen and God's response, even in the text, is resignation at best.

This probably is another gradual shift in the OT. Could the God that wiped out half the camp in a pique of outrage (Numbers, I think?) be the same God who, when the Israelites request a king, very begrudgingly gives them what they ask for, knowing full well that it won't be good for anyone involved?

And then there's that eerie silence in the later prophets...

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
It seems to me that the following posted by Nigel and located (buried?) at the heart of a long passage is a clue

"The logic appears to be that if God is really the author of all, then everything that happens has to be explained in terms of a divine purpose."

There is an underlying assumption (presumption) which seems to control everything else; namely, that God is the author of all.

I wouldn't say that the writers presented God as author of all – as I said on my post, sometimes he is presented as the one who confronts something that does not come from him. Do you agree though that the authors did seek, in fact, to explain everything from the starting point that God has an involvement one way or another in the workings of his creation?

This is one of the points that I was trying to get across on the other thread – that the record shows a God who is actively involved. That goes to his character.

The term “Insight” is one I would be happy to apply to each and every author of a biblical text, not just the prophets. I take as my backing for this the witness of the NT writers who relied on a wide range of OT texts to provide insight into the character of Jesus.

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Nigel M
quote:
So how do you read the passages in the Gospels which validate corporate judicial execution?
Which one's do you have in mind, Nigel?

There are a few examples listed in this post.

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

quote:
I guess, Footwasher, I don't share your interpretation of this miracle. Surely, it's grotesque to suggest that God creates human beings with deformities for any reason whatsoever?

As grotesque as agreeing with Satan to test Job, by killing his children, among other atrocities? You can't get away from the fact that, later, God (and Job) feels the acceptability and appropriateness and sufficiency of compensating him with many children (and cattle, and wealth). You have to wonder whether it's YOUR 21st century morality and PC are the ones that are out of sync.

quote:
What I get out of Jesus' remark is that all of us are imperfect beings in many ways and need the healing of Christ's grace. Jesus' main point, however, is that the man's blindness was not an affliction brought on him by God either for his own sins or those of his parents.

You'd have to avoid facing the fact that Jesus was answering a direct question: "Why was this man born blind?"

quote:
I can't believe you are suggesting that God created the Amalekites in order to wipe them out in order to teach us all a 'symbolic lesson'. BTW what is a 'symbolic lesson'?.

No need to "protest too much". I did suggest that more is at stake than eyes and teeth, hands and feet. A sentiment echoed here:

7“Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come! 8If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. Matt 18

And here's an example of how some use the accounts symbolically.

Quote
Joshua is a fabulous metaphor for clearing sin from your life. Every story is priceless, and a worthy topic for sermons and lessons of all kinds. As a literal piece of history, however, it is a series of atrocities.

Freddy

quote:
I'm afraid you've lost me!

You mentioned salvation. Jews believe salvation (forgiveness of sin) does not require animal sacrifice, repentance suffices.

quote:
Exactly how does God co-opt an incident?

If someone is sinning and heading for judgement, you might as well make an example out of him. The Scots would love the practicality of the solution: killing two birds with one stone, as it were, if you will excuse the apparent insensitivity.

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
It is sheer blasphemy to suggest God caused his blindness simply to afford an opportunity 30 years later to cure it.

What sort of a monster God is that?

Careful, shamwari! You are doing one of those monster leaps of logic again!

You may well be right about the grammatical construction in John 9, but what is the evidence for asserting that God would not cause blindness in order to cure it later? I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but want to stress the importance of justifying the steps we take. Otherwise we simply end up with a conclusion that you think God would be a monster if he caused blindness, therefore he could not possibly have caused blindness, therefore the text could not possibly say that.

That would be to fall prey to the presuppositions we have been brought up with.

[ 16. July 2010, 16:21: Message edited by: Nigel M ]

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

God creates a problem so that God can solve it...sounds like fortunate fall theology.

Though I think that is basically what Jesus says.

Weird...

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Footwasher

quote:
As grotesque as agreeing with Satan to test Job, by killing his children, among other atrocities? You can't get away from the fact that, later, God (and Job) feels the acceptability and appropriateness and sufficiency of compensating him with many children (and cattle, and wealth). You have to wonder whether it's YOUR 21st century morality and PC are the ones that are out of sync.

Job's God is more a problem for you than me, Footwasher, because I've argued that the God revealed in Jesus is different from many understandings of God in the OT. In Job 2:10 Job says: "Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil." So, am I to take it that you are asking me to believe in a God that does evil as well as good?

For what it's worth, my own approach to Job is probably much less literal than yours, but it's hardly necessary for me to develop the point.

As for my 21st century morality and PC, perhaps as my accuser you could point at which aspects of 21st century morality and PC cloud my judgement, so I can make the appropriate plea.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

Nigel: I do not see it as a monster leap of logic to assert that a God who causes a man to be blind in order that 30 years later he may effect a dramatic cure can only be regarded as a monster.

Maybe you can defend that action.

I would regard it as morally reprehensible and, if asked to worship such a God, would refuse.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Footwasher

quote:
And here's an example of how some use the accounts symbolically.
Quote
Joshua is a fabulous metaphor for clearing sin from your life. Every story is priceless, and a worthy topic for sermons and lessons of all kinds. As a literal piece of history, however, it is a series of atrocities.

........aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
I would regard it as morally reprehensible...

On what basis, though, Shamwari?

This is the nub of my point here; I think in reality you would feel more comfortable with putting the bible into the category of solely a human product, limited by space and time. It could, in reality, be put to one side. If there are any texts worth relying on today, they would be ones that accord with some other criterion.

What is that criterion, though? How would it be justified? At the moment it appears to be just gut-feeling.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Footwasher
quote:
And here's an example of how some use the accounts symbolically.
Quote
Joshua is a fabulous metaphor for clearing sin from your life. Every story is priceless, and a worthy topic for sermons and lessons of all kinds. As a literal piece of history, however, it is a series of atrocities.

........aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!

Why is that painful? Christians have been doing that to the Bible for centuries, at least since Origen. A lot of the gospel stories are so obviously loaded with symbolism that it's kind of dumb to read them without acknowledging the intended metaphors into the story, probably including the blind dude.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

Nigel: the criterion?

The God who revealed Himself in Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus didnt play games with people's lives. Nor did he regard God in the same way as Tess of the Durbavilles. The Immortal(s) was not making sport of human existence.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

Bullfrog: what, may I ask, is the metaphor in the story of the blind dude?

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Hold on, Bullfrog, my frustration was a response to Joshua is a fabulous metaphor for clearing sin from your life. Every story is priceless, and a worthy topic for sermons and lessons of all kinds.

I find the whole idea risible, and a violence to the integrity of the text. The notion of a linkage between Joshua's invasion of the 'promised land' and the eradication of private sin in the 21st century is rubbish. Every sermon based on that proposition must, indeed, be 'priceless'. What the lessons 'of all kinds to be learned' from that book, apart from the annexation of territory, one fears to imagine. I thank the Almighty I've never been exposed to such asinine expositions. If I want to learn about the problem of sin in my life, then I'm more concerned to hear what Jesus has to say about it than the writer of Joshua.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
Bullfrog: what, may I ask, is the metaphor in the story of the blind dude?

Going back to what Nigel M pointed out, and midrashing off of Jesus' comment that the blindness was brought about "so that he could be healed to show God's glory," then it's an analogy or allegory of the fortunate fall.

God allows sin (blindness) to happen, even in a good world, so that the greater glory of Jesus Christ (regained sight) could be revealed to humanity (the blind dude.)

This is not to say I'm endorsing the above reading, but I think it's consistent.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Sorry, shipmates, I left out the verb in the following sentence: What the lessons 'of all kinds to be learned' from that book, apart from the annexation of territory, one fears to imagine. It should have read: What the lessons 'of all kinds to be learned' from that book are , apart from the annexation of territory, one fears to imagine'.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Hold on, Bullfrog, my frustration was a response to Joshua is a fabulous metaphor for clearing sin from your life. Every story is priceless, and a worthy topic for sermons and lessons of all kinds.

I find the whole idea risible, and a violence to the integrity of the text. The notion of a linkage between Joshua's invasion of the 'promised land' and the eradication of private sin in the 21st century is rubbish. Every sermon based on that proposition must, indeed, be 'priceless'. What the lessons 'of all kinds to be learned' from that book, apart from the annexation of territory, one fears to imagine. I thank the Almighty I've never been exposed to such asinine expositions. If I want to learn about the problem of sin in my life, then I'm more concerned to hear what Jesus has to say about it than the writer of Joshua.

Joshua fit da battle of Jericho...

(if you catch the reference)

Ironically, Jesus' name IS Joshua. More accurately, they're both Yeshua.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

So what, Bullfrog?

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
So what, Bullfrog?

Just pointing out that perfectly decent marginalized people have made Joshua into exactly the allegory presented.

Granted, in that case it was more "social sin" being taken out rather than individual, but it seems a fine song (and story) to me put in its proper context.

And again, I think you're underestimating the link between Jesus and all that OT stuff. The cross-references are just too big and too numerous to ignore. And maybe Jesus "spiritualizes" the destruction of great swaths of people, but he still uses some pretty violent imagery sometimes. Maybe that's the reason he's more palatable - he merely damned everyone who rejected him to hell where Joshua only wiped them out physically.

I'm uneasy with genocide and damnation myself, but I think if I'm going to be a Christian and take the bible seriously, there has to be a way to understand this stuff besides cherry picking it away based on my own subjective preferences for what would make this "God" into something I could stand to be around.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

As Paul (very nearly) said

Almost thou persuadest me to become an atheist.

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
Nigel: the criterion?

The God who revealed Himself in Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus didnt play games with people's lives. Nor did he regard God in the same way as Tess of the Durbavilles. The Immortal(s) was not making sport of human existence.

I think we need to take this back to the other thread as we are derailing the original intent here. I'll scoot it over...

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Bullfrog, I think you'd be on stronger ground with "Go Down Moses."

Bullfrog

quote:
I'm uneasy with genocide and damnation myself, but I think if I'm going to be a Christian and take the bible seriously, there has to be a way to understand this stuff besides cherry picking it away based on my own subjective preferences for what would make this "God" into something I could stand to be around.

Be my guest!

Jesus and Joshua have the same root. (So, I understand does Judas). So what? It doesn't change our consideration of the Book of Joshua, does it?

My deeper concern is that after well over a hundred years of modern biblical scholarship and a scientific revolution, the faithful are being filled with pap of the kind quoted re Joshua. The difficult and disturbing central questions raised by this book of doubtful history are ignored and replaced by pietistic homilies on sin. God save us! What kind of Christian apologetic is it that seeks to defend genocide after the experience of the last and present century? What sort of message of salvation is that to a world ravaged with ethnic conflict? In an attempt to preserve the indefensible notion that the bible is the inerrant word of God, which anyone with two brain cells knows it isn't, we get the kind of contortions in so many of the posts on this thread. It may satisfy Christians in the closet, but it does nothing to engage the faithful with God's world and the people in it.

I agree with you, Bullfrog, that the bible has to be taken seriously: indeed, very seriously, but it also has to be studied critically. You are right about the dangers of 'cherry-picking', but its contents have to be measured against what we understand about the Word and the Godhead: to be Christologically coherent and in accordance with trinitarianism. I'm not 'uneasy' with genocide, I'm against it, and not because I'm PC or corrupted by liberalism, but because it's not Christian.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

I'm not an inerrantist in most senses of the word either, and probably qualify as a "liberal" by most of the usual litmus tests, but still...

How do you deal with the genocides of the OT besides by cherry picking them out? You quote Moses as a better civil rights example, but he wiped out thousands of children just before the Exodus, so you've still got a bloody mess to exegete there.

If you understand that I don't like to excise bits of Scripture, what do you do? Joshua is likely a glorified semi-historical (if historical at all) story. OK, so...What do you do with it? Do you think we should have a book of psalms that skips over 137 because we don't like to look at that side of our humanity?

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
What kind of Christian apologetic is it that seeks to defend genocide after the experience of the last and present century? What sort of message of salvation is that to a world ravaged with ethnic conflict? In an attempt to preserve the indefensible notion that the bible is the inerrant word of God, which anyone with two brain cells knows it isn't, we get the kind of contortions in so many of the posts on this thread. It may satisfy Christians in the closet, but it does nothing to engage the faithful with God's world and the people in it. ...

You are right about the dangers of 'cherry-picking', but its contents have to be measured against what we understand about the Word and the Godhead: to be Christologically coherent and in accordance with trinitarianism.

I'll pop this over to the other thread for a response...

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Bulldog, thanks for your latest post. I don't think we are that far apart, though I thought your 'unsease' about genocide could have been more definitely expressed.

My reason for mentioning 'Go Down Moses' was simply to suggest it is better grist to your mill from that genre than the one you suggested.

I agree that from a Christian perspective there are problems with the Exodus story, because from a monotheistic perspective the Egyptians are as equal in God's sight as the Israelites. (I think the author of Jonah would probably agree). This is not an argument to excise from the text but to critically engage with it. A Christian might want to think there are better ways of dealing with similar problems in the contemporary world through, say, reconciliation rather than revenge and despoilation. (One might contrast Mandela with Mugabe). Judges and Samuel raise the issues even more acutely.

Regarding Psalm 137, I would start by recognising the integrity of the author and the intensity of his feelings. Then I would go through each verse exploring the meaning. Having done that, I might want to engage with the poem from a Christian perspective. It would be instructive to discuss it with Christians who find themselves living outside their native land etc.

You ask: 'Do you think we should have a book of psalms that skips over 137 because we don't like to look at that side of our humanity?' No, precisely because it makes us confront responses to aspects of our humanity that are distinctly sub-Christian. The same is the case with Judges and Samuel, which are more representative of the modern world than we care to think, and raise questions as to the danger of Christianity being sucked into partial national and ethnic interests. God on our side is a primitive sentiment alive and strong.

Why do Christians read the OT? They do so because they are trying to deepen their understanding of who Jesus was. From the perspective of faith, that exercise is undertaken with the risen Christ as the measure. He is the key to understanding and interpretation. It was a process begun on the road to Emmaus and continues through the Spirit.

It's not a question of cherry-picking, but it seems to me obvious that the OT is, by definition and necessity, sub-Christian, despite its many sublime insights, and some parts are more sub-Christian than others. In exploring those issue we begin the understand what the New Testament is, and why we are Christians and not Jews.

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

Kwesi wrote:

quote:
As for my 21st century morality and PC, perhaps as my accuser you could point at which aspects of 21st century morality and PC cloud my judgement, so I can make the appropriate plea.

Actually, OUR 21st century morality, as we all share the same feelings of resistance to the idea of using human lives to make a point, albeit with varying degrees, and react accordingly. To summarise:

[1] Midrash viewers believe the unpleasant parts are not history but ALL parable
[2] P'shat viewers believe the unpleasant parts can be chucked out
[3] I believe that the unpleasant parts are history but set up such that the innocent are compensated in Abraham's bosom (its like Purgatory, but described as Gehanna).

Bullfrog wrote:

quote:
God allows sin (blindness) to happen, even in a good world, so that the greater glory of Jesus Christ (regained sight) could be revealed to humanity (the blind dude.)

Argh! I think I just had an epiphany!

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

quote:
Originally posted by footwasher:
Bullfrog wrote:

quote:
God allows sin (blindness) to happen, even in a good world, so that the greater glory of Jesus Christ (regained sight) could be revealed to humanity (the blind dude.)
Argh! I think I just had an epiphany!

You're welcome? Sorry? Should I hand you a towel? [Paranoid]

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:

quote:
Originally posted by footwasher:
Bullfrog wrote:

quote:
God allows sin (blindness) to happen, even in a good world, so that the greater glory of Jesus Christ (regained sight) could be revealed to humanity (the blind dude.)
Argh! I think I just had an epiphany!
You're welcome? Sorry? Should I hand you a towel?

"You're welcome" should do. I mean, as your response. And "Thank you". As my response. To your post. You know what I mean. Where's Hugh Grant when you need him?

Posted by Nigel M (# 11256) on :

quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
Rather than starting with the text itself, I start with an idea of God as pure and infinite love, desiring to draw every person as close as possible, and giving us divine truth as way to communicate with us and lead us to him. I see that truth as taking the form of a many-layered parable, with the final, outermost layer being the literal text found in the Bible (both OT and NT). The actual words of the literal text are very much targeted to a particular audience at a particular time in a particular culture, but the layers of meaning held within are for all people and for all time.

Communication in the bible as an onion - many layers. Nice idea!

Thinking about this, I suspect my approach to the onion figure would be to see the individual literal texts as the innermost layer. It would also be a correspondence, one where one is “speaking spiritually while speaking naturally” though perhaps inverted to say that the authors of the bible spoke naturally when they spoke spiritually.

I work my way towards this by considering one of the suggestions used for defining how divine authorship might work: that of a 'fuller sense' (a sensus plenior) in the Bible. This usually means something along the lines of the 'more than the sum of the parts' phenomenon that I mentioned earlier, where there is a meaning that an be apprehended only when the whole is in view. Sensus plenior, though, implies that the individual human authors may not – indeed most probably were not – aware of this additional meaning when they wrote their individual texts. The Catholic theologian Raymond Brown examined this idea and its history in some detail during the 1950s and he sparked off some debate about the topic across Christianity.

I have some reservations about the concept, especially if it is being used to apply to the Bible and divine intention with the same sense that it can be used to describe a human being as somehow more than the mere aggregation of all the particles that go to make him or her up. Is that a 'fuller sense?' Can particles be said to be intentional in their own right or is it a case of particles just getting on with their own thing, not really aware of the impact they have on a wider community?

The implication is that God has a communication for his people that can be understood only when the whole of the canon is considered. Although I do certainly agree that something indeed goes on when one considers the forest rather than just the trees, I wonder what the 'something' actually is and what its impact is on the way we view the trees.

What, for instance, happens to the trees when one considers the forest? Do the individual trees suddenly lose their individual integrity and become nothing more than an amorphous porridge? I sense here one of the failings of political extremism, when the individual has to lose his or her individual integrity / personality for the sake of the common good. If the common good becomes the touchstone for living, then the individual can be brushed aside or sacrificed. Indeed, for example, if a nation's police force acts in accordance with a “to protect the public” mantra, then each individual member of the public can be pushed off the pavement in the mistaken belief that the individual matters less than “the public” as a whole. This is the risk that applies to the Bible when considering divine communication solely at a 'fuller sense' level. Individual passages (and therefore authors) can be sacrificed for the better systematic whole. The personality in each individual text loses out to the impersonality of the canon.

There also arises the question of just how God's People got on before the canon. As the individual trees were growing at different times, was there even a forest to consider?

Another risk arises when a 'statistically valid' approach is taken to the Bible. In other words, when the interpreter takes what he or she considers to be a sufficient collection of texts to analyse in the belief that this set can be taken to apply to the whole. This set then is allowed to speak for the rest as being God's message. The risk of this approach is that it can given rise to a fair number of sects that end up with bizarre outcomes.

I get the impression that sensus plenior works to excuse biblical texts, rather than work with them. It fails to do justice to each individual author. This is seen most in the way some use the concept to find the NT in the OT.

So is there a way to see a divine communication in each and every specific instance of a text in the Bible? For me I take seriously the understandings of the authors themselves and how they saw things. Some themes:
* They saw communication as dynamic – out to achieve a purpose – rather than static.
* They held in tension the individual and the corporate.
* They sought to explain all of creation (the sum total of everything) in relation to God.

To me this speaks of the need to find a model that allows for the human authors' awareness of the fact they were contributing to the community's understanding of God and were therefore aware that their contribution was a tree in a forest. They were already aware of the forest. They were also aware that there would be no forest were it not for the individual trees.

Perhaps this could be seen in terms of seeds and trees. God sowed the seed that would take hold in the human heart of specific authors, who then brought about a maturity of understanding in their work. This led in turn to and reinforced a community of understanding, something that had been in a way predetermined by the very seeds that were sown. The framework for the forest lay in the seeds of faith. The parable of the sower comes to mind – as does that of the mustard seed.

UBB.classic^TM 6.5.0