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oriel36
Guest
Hermione said:
The real value of Christ and Christianity is to pass through the cunning philosophiocal argumentation and recognise why it is appropriate to love Jesus and God in one manner in a community of Christians as a means to form a link in the apostolic chain stretching back to Christ while seeing the majesty of our connection between the Infinite and the definite where the Eternal encompasses our temporal existence as a gift from God rather than something we are free to choose.
We cannot choose Love ,remorse and pity as experiences for they manifest themselves regardless of our choices and the greater the poignancy and joy, the more God and Christ.
Even at its most philsophical the Christian cannot but feel the dynamics which courses through Christian belief as it dwells not in the philosophical but passes through it.
esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeII/MysticalTheology.html
What you see as atheistic tendencies is really an unfortunate flowering of empirical doctrines in an attempt to reign in the ability of humans to reason from faith as the highest faculty and dilute it to sensory perceptions.The argument that religion answers one thing while science answers something else is perhaps the most explicit statement of this awful situation.
Most of what has passed down to us as either science or religion originates from the early 20th century and even I have to acknowledge that for good or bad this Freudian/Einstein era influences contemporary thinking to a huge degree,unfortunately so.
Perhaps a softer introduction to how Christians often have to pass through high intellectual objections in forming a closer love of Christ and God is appropriate.
ccel.org/ccel/underhill/mysticism.iii.i.html
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Asimis
Guest
In order to help him, we need to be able to answer his objection:
**He said:***We were going over the bible story of how when God was leading out of Egypt, he stopped the Egyptian army that was in pursuit, and caused them to retreat. After they had already retreated of course, God returned the waters to their original point and drowned the Egyptians, so that Egypt would know that he was God. The Choir then sang a song about how wonderful and glorious it was having God slaughter the Egyptian armies who were already retreating. *
To which I’ll had (since i am currently having issues with the same things as a Catholic):
God commands atrocities:
Deuteronomy 20:10-17
“When you draw near a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labour for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its male to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemy, which the Lord God has given to you. Thus you shall do to all the cities which are far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. In the cities of these people that the Lord your God gives you an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amoriotes, the Canaanites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded.”
Deuteronomy 7:2
“and when the Lord your God gives then [the enemies] over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them…”
Numbers 31:17
[Moses said to them] “… Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him…”
There are many other examples like this, if God is indeed love and just then why do we see these things in his Word?
**He said:***We were going over the bible story of how when God was leading out of Egypt, he stopped the Egyptian army that was in pursuit, and caused them to retreat. After they had already retreated of course, God returned the waters to their original point and drowned the Egyptians, so that Egypt would know that he was God. The Choir then sang a song about how wonderful and glorious it was having God slaughter the Egyptian armies who were already retreating. *
To which I’ll had (since i am currently having issues with the same things as a Catholic):
God commands atrocities:
Deuteronomy 20:10-17
“When you draw near a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labour for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its male to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemy, which the Lord God has given to you. Thus you shall do to all the cities which are far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. In the cities of these people that the Lord your God gives you an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amoriotes, the Canaanites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded.”
Deuteronomy 7:2
“and when the Lord your God gives then [the enemies] over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them…”
Numbers 31:17
[Moses said to them] “… Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him…”
There are many other examples like this, if God is indeed love and just then why do we see these things in his Word?
W
wcknight
Guest
When reviewing events in the OT, I think you have to be wary of what the writers’ purpose was for writing such things. First off the Bible was a history of the Hebrew people, and second it was written with the intention of showing that God favored Isreal above other nations.
In telling about some military atrocities, the writers may have felt the need to cover up these misdeeds as having been ordered by the Almighty. History as told by the victorious often has a far diferent perspective than that as told by the vanquished.
I put a whole lot more credibility to the NT than I do to the OT. In the OT, God is portrayed as a demanding, fearful presence, sometimes terribly vengeful and maybe even cruel, particularly to enemies of Isreal.
In the NT Jesus tells us about what God really is all about. Jesus knows His Father much better than any of the OT writers. He has no need to cover up any misdeeds in history. His mission is about salvation and revealing to us what God really wants of us. He is not out to prove that God only favors one country and one people.
Take the OT with a grain of salt and study the NT as if your soul depends on it.
Christ’s Peace.
In telling about some military atrocities, the writers may have felt the need to cover up these misdeeds as having been ordered by the Almighty. History as told by the victorious often has a far diferent perspective than that as told by the vanquished.
I put a whole lot more credibility to the NT than I do to the OT. In the OT, God is portrayed as a demanding, fearful presence, sometimes terribly vengeful and maybe even cruel, particularly to enemies of Isreal.
In the NT Jesus tells us about what God really is all about. Jesus knows His Father much better than any of the OT writers. He has no need to cover up any misdeeds in history. His mission is about salvation and revealing to us what God really wants of us. He is not out to prove that God only favors one country and one people.
Take the OT with a grain of salt and study the NT as if your soul depends on it.
Christ’s Peace.
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Asimis
Guest
How can the OT be taken with a grain of salt if the NT depends entirely on it?
Also, are you saying that the OT writers put words in God’s mouth? Then what does this says about the realibility of the content of the OT in which the NT hangs?
This puts the entire Bible in jeopardy, we even have Moses commanding these things, so when Moses spoke it was not God?
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patg
Guest
Maybe not “with a grain of salt” but you should certainly take it with an understanding of the worldview of the authors. The ancients attributed everything to God:
- All disease was caused by sin - either of the person or their parents
- Earthquakes, volcanic activity, and the weather are all the direct result of God’s favor or displeasure
- The victory or defeat of an army was due to God’s intervention
We can look at it differently since we know that disease is caused by germs, that weather is caused by temperature and high/low pressure systems, and that the results of a conflict are usually determined by who has the best trained and equipped army.
It was written in terms of the authors understanding of the world.
The bible is the story of the journey to knowing God and as in any journey, the process is an evolving understanding, not with complete understanding at every point.
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Huiou_Theou
Guest
Hermione,
Why did you visit an Atheists website to have your question answered first? That seems a bit extreme!
I have gone through the battle of practical atheism (agnosticism) myself, and I will tell you there are no real answers there.
To the true atheist, there is no reason for morality, no reason for love. These are just chemical things … they don’t like to admit it because they know it makes them look bad.
Rather than combat the entire thread of Atheists, I’d like to comment on the root cause of your disgust. God appears to do and sanction horrible things against human beings.
I would humbly ask you to consider a larger picture.
God sees everyone before and after death. He holds a person in existance even after they die. What difference does it really make to God if the Egyptian is on the physical side of existence, or the eternal?
If there were any justice in it, God could raise the Egyptians from their watery grave this very day. He hasn’t done so.
But even that overlooks something simpler:
You appear to believe the Egyptians repented because they turned back. Only God knows what was really in their hearts.
Perhaps if God had let them live they would have sinned worse than ever, being able to boast that the God of Israel was unable to defeat them. Who knows!
A person suffers for all eternity for unrepented sin, the worse the sin, the worse the eternal suffering. Perhaps God did them a favor by cutting them off – reducing their suffering through all eternity.
I need to add a little more perspective and another possibility here,
It is obvious that the power of God is such that he could have wiped them out painlessly. Or forgot about them so that they just ceased to exist. But he chose not to.
This is not so much about God torturing these poor Egyptians as it is about hope. These Egyptians were given time to die, and therefore time to repent. I don’t have time to look up all the things that come to mind when I say that, so just be satisfied with one passage of scripture (which could be from the OT, but I’ll take it from the NT):
1 Peter 3:18-20
Here peter talks about descending to Sheol, where he preaches to those who disobeyed in former times. The Egyptians could be in that class, they were considered no better than the people of Noah’s day. But the thing to grasp is that Jesus preached to them – a sign of his coming to free them from their imprisonment.
No one knows what God has in mind when he gives or takes a life. I am not God, that is why I cannot kill. But the same rule does not apply to God. As for the commands of God concerning genocide in the OT? It was God’s command, and from this command came the necessary learning by Israel which would/will one day allow them to understand Jesus.
I’m not omniscient, I don’t know what would have happened if God did it some other way.
Why did you visit an Atheists website to have your question answered first? That seems a bit extreme!
I have gone through the battle of practical atheism (agnosticism) myself, and I will tell you there are no real answers there.
To the true atheist, there is no reason for morality, no reason for love. These are just chemical things … they don’t like to admit it because they know it makes them look bad.
Rather than combat the entire thread of Atheists, I’d like to comment on the root cause of your disgust. God appears to do and sanction horrible things against human beings.
I would humbly ask you to consider a larger picture.
God sees everyone before and after death. He holds a person in existance even after they die. What difference does it really make to God if the Egyptian is on the physical side of existence, or the eternal?
If there were any justice in it, God could raise the Egyptians from their watery grave this very day. He hasn’t done so.
But even that overlooks something simpler:
You appear to believe the Egyptians repented because they turned back. Only God knows what was really in their hearts.
Perhaps if God had let them live they would have sinned worse than ever, being able to boast that the God of Israel was unable to defeat them. Who knows!
A person suffers for all eternity for unrepented sin, the worse the sin, the worse the eternal suffering. Perhaps God did them a favor by cutting them off – reducing their suffering through all eternity.
I need to add a little more perspective and another possibility here,
It is obvious that the power of God is such that he could have wiped them out painlessly. Or forgot about them so that they just ceased to exist. But he chose not to.
This is not so much about God torturing these poor Egyptians as it is about hope. These Egyptians were given time to die, and therefore time to repent. I don’t have time to look up all the things that come to mind when I say that, so just be satisfied with one passage of scripture (which could be from the OT, but I’ll take it from the NT):
1 Peter 3:18-20
Here peter talks about descending to Sheol, where he preaches to those who disobeyed in former times. The Egyptians could be in that class, they were considered no better than the people of Noah’s day. But the thing to grasp is that Jesus preached to them – a sign of his coming to free them from their imprisonment.
No one knows what God has in mind when he gives or takes a life. I am not God, that is why I cannot kill. But the same rule does not apply to God. As for the commands of God concerning genocide in the OT? It was God’s command, and from this command came the necessary learning by Israel which would/will one day allow them to understand Jesus.
I’m not omniscient, I don’t know what would have happened if God did it some other way.
A
Alterum
Guest
Huiou Theou:
It’s not Hermione; it’s someone else!
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Asimis
Guest
Excellent post! This thinking is in the right direction! 
Huiou Theou:
Huiou Theou:
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philipbenedict
Guest
In the Old Testament God (Yahweh) is glorious, great, awful and exalted. The God of Israel was clearly distinguishable from the “other” gods of the times. Yahweh governed their history and humankind. Yahweh judged and saved. Yahweh gave life. The Old Testament reality of God was very different than the God revealed to humankind by the coming of Jesus.
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Huiou_Theou
Guest
“I am the truth, the way, and the life.”
And you will see the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven.
I don’t see that God is different, only that the way we view him has developed. In the conversation God has had with us over the millenia, we have come to know him just a little bit better.
P
philipbenedict
Guest
Huiou Theou said:
Sorry! That is what I meant to say, the Old Testament people knew God differently. God did not change.
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NilNisiTeDomine
Guest
Hey all!
As an aside, please pray (or whatever) for myself and a friend of mine. We have also left the Catholic faith because it is untrue, though we wish to give God every opportunity to “save us” if it is true beyond our knowledge.
Pro Verum Semper,
Nil Nisi
As an aside, please pray (or whatever) for myself and a friend of mine. We have also left the Catholic faith because it is untrue, though we wish to give God every opportunity to “save us” if it is true beyond our knowledge.
Pro Verum Semper,
Nil Nisi
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