Children of incest entering assembly of God

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bquinnan

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Deuteronomy 23:2 reads, according to the New American Bible for Catholics, “No child of an incestuous union may be admitted into the community of the Lord, nor any descendant of his even to the tenth generation.”

I am fairly confident that this passage does not reflect the teachings of the Church today. How can this be reconciled with scriptural inerrancy?

Thank you and God bless.
 
Hey Bill,
Why don’tcha take this question to the Ask An Apologist forum, since it appears that no one out here can tackle it.

On that point, I suspect that that OT law was superceded by the compassion of Christ, who didn’t seem to care about such things.

One thing I read somewhere was that there is no guarentee that the Jews didn’t exceed the actual commands of God in places like this & when they decided to wipe out every living soul in a place. I don’t know. It certaiinly is hard to reconcile this with the loving God we serve.
 
It’s inerrant, but it reflects the Old Law (the Law of Moses). When Christ ushered in the New Law, the Old Law, which only bound the Jews until then, was no longer binding. This article might make the distinction clear.
 
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bquinnan:
Deuteronomy 23:2 reads, according to the New American Bible for Catholics, “No child of an incestuous union may be admitted into the community of the Lord, nor any descendant of his even to the tenth generation.”

I am fairly confident that this passage does not reflect the teachings of the Church today. How can this be reconciled with scriptural inerrancy?

Thank you and God bless.
Click to expand...
Perhaps we have to begin by admitting that, word by word and line by line, Scripture is not absolutely inerrant.

Consider the following,

After God personally gave the Ten Commandments (and nothing more as it says at the end in Deuteronomy Chapter 5) the people decided they could no longer hear God’s Word directly. So they told Moses to listen to God and pass the Word onto them. Is it reasonable to think that Moses, being a sinner might not have heard everything correctly.

Later in Deuteronomy Moses talks about how God will raise a Prophet up for the people “who will tell all.” Can we infer from that that Moses somehow wasn’t able to tell it all.

Moses, the othe Prophets, and many other voices in scripture point to the Messiah as the final judge of truth. That implies that none of those who point the way are the Messiah themself.

Jesus has the last word. In the Sermon on the Mount, he clarifies, explains, and in some instances repudiates some earlier teachings from Scripture. And the kingdom that he describes is open to any and all who wish to follow him.

Taking scripture as a whole we have a guide we can trust completely. Jesus is the way. All voices point to that way. Is it unthinkable that some of those voices also pointed ways that were less than perfect? I can live with that thought. The Spirit of Truth seems to bear witness to that possibility.

Hope it helps

-Jim
 
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bquinnan:
Deuteronomy 23:2 reads, according to the New American Bible for Catholics, “No child of an incestuous union may be admitted into the community of the Lord, nor any descendant of his even to the tenth generation.”

I am fairly confident that this passage does not reflect the teachings of the Church today. How can this be reconciled with scriptural inerrancy?

Thank you and God bless.
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Gods peace be with you bquinnan,

First the verse you quote is not verse 2 as you stated in my NAB.

See: usccb.org/nab/bible/deuteronomy/deuteronomy23.htm

Second, we follow the teachings of Jesus and the new covenet He gave us not the old. Of course He did not come to abolish the law but to fullfill it too.

Third, this is verse 2 in the NIV (& the KJV too):

biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?passage=DEUT+23&language=english&version=NIV-UK

Fourth, the OT was nailed to the cross according to my old Baptist preacher and is no longer binding. (Protestant opinion here added by me;) )

Fifth, Jesus came to save us ALL, not just the Jews. As a Catholic, Jesus Christ is my perssonal Lord and saviour! (non-Catholics too)

Sixth, I am tired of this subject already and will stop here.:clapping:

Keep the Faith, endure in Love to the end, die with a Hope for salvation,
 
Church Militant:
Hey Bill,
Why don’tcha take this question to the Ask An Apologist forum, since it appears that no one out here can tackle it.
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The question was only posted here for fifteen minutes when you made this reply–give people a chance!! 🙂
 
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bquinnan:
Deuteronomy 23:2 reads, according to the New American Bible for Catholics, “No child of an incestuous union may be admitted into the community of the Lord, nor any descendant of his even to the tenth generation.”

I am fairly confident that this passage does not reflect the teachings of the Church today. How can this be reconciled with scriptural inerrancy?

Thank you and God bless.
Click to expand...
Does “even to the tenth generation” mean the rule is limited to ten generations, or does it go on forever, and ten generations is simply an example to point out that the rule has staying power?

Let’s look at the case where it is unlimited.

If Adam’s kids mated with each other, and if no human has anyone in his ancestry prior to Adam and Eve, then all of humanity is the product of incest. That would make for a community of zero.
 
Church Militant:
Hey Bill,
Why don’tcha take this question to the Ask An Apologist forum, since it appears that no one out here can tackle it.
Click to expand...
Actually, that was what I had thought I was doing, but I got my forums mixed up. Thanks for your response.
 
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bquinnan:
Deuteronomy 23:2 reads, according to the New American Bible for Catholics, “No child of an incestuous union may be admitted into the community of the Lord, nor any descendant of his even to the tenth generation.”

I am fairly confident that this passage does not reflect the teachings of the Church today. How can this be reconciled with scriptural inerrancy?

Thank you and God bless.
Click to expand...

Neither could eunuchs, or descendants of certain tribes - but this has been reversed by the coming of Christ.​

The original point of the prohibitions was to ensure that Israel would a people consecrated to God and so, free from all taint of the cults of Canaan and elsewhere. So there was no place in Israel for consecrated eunuchs, or consecrated homosexuality, or consecrated prostitution, or self-mutilation, cultic cross-dressing, or any other such thing. (The eunuch Ebed-melech who rescued Jeremiah, was not a Jew, but a Gentile.)

Isaiah 56 foresees the reversal of the prohibition on the entrance of eunuchs into the Kingdom of God - Acts 8 shows this reversal happening: the Kingdom is not for Jews only, but for Gentiles, Samaritans, eunuchs, & all comers. It is no longer bodily circumcision that counts, but circumcision of the heart. So one’s descent or bodily state becomes irrelevant, for Jesus, the Apostles, for Paul, and for much of the Church (it appears that the Jerusalem Church found St. Paul’s vision of Christianity very hard to accept) ##
 
trogiah:
Perhaps we have to begin by admitting that, word by word and line by line, Scripture is not absolutely inerrant.

Be careful. This is heresy.

If you say that Scripture is not absolutely inerrant, then you must agree that Holy Mother Church is fallible. Then you have neither Scripture nor Holy Mother Church as your final authority, and have thus created your own religion. I’m sorry if this seems a little harsh, but ultimately it is true, even if you do not realize the implications.

Recall the words of the holy successor of Peter, Pope Leo XIII:
*It will never be lawful to restrict inspiration merely to certain parts of the Holy Scriptures, or to grant that the sacred writer could have made a mistake. Nor may the opinion of those be tolerated, who, in order to get out of these difficulties, do not hesitate to suppose that Divine inspiration extends only to what touches faith and morals, on the false plea that the true meaning is sought for less in what God has said than in the motive for which He has said it. (Denz., 1950) * -From Providentissimus Deus, as quoted at newadvent.org/cathen/08045a.htm.

That does not mean that every passage is meant to be taken literally…but whatever the author intended to convey is true. If the author did intend to convey history, then it is true history. (But it is not always the case that the author wishes to convey history…such as in parables).

Since we know that Scripture is without error, we must then assume that all the supposed ‘errors’ in Scripture are simply a result of the misinterpretation of fallible men. Every accusation that has been made against Sacred Scripture has been answered at one point or another.

God had to keep His people pure. They did not yet have Christ, and it was so easy for them to fall astray (though it often is for us as well 😦 ). There were so many temptations around them, among the pagans, with their evil practices—so God had to set down the Law to protect His people from corruption. These sorts of laws did just that—kept Israel pure, consecrated for God. God is Love, and the Old Testament shows a God who loves His people dearly as well. (Song of Solomon, for example, is seen as an allagory of God’s love for Israel…Psalms certainly makes God’s love very clear as well…but it is throughout the OT). But we must also remember that God is holy. His holiness is perfect and absolute, and He can not tolerate sin. It is only out of mercy that every single one of us is not damned. People who claim that the God of the OT was wrathful the the God of the NT is love seem to forget the statements of judgement that Christ made as well…or the fact that the Church is instructed, in several places in the NT, to exclude (excommunicate) serious unrepentant sinners from the Church.
 
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bquinnan:
Deuteronomy 23:2 reads, according to the New American Bible for Catholics, “No child of an incestuous union may be admitted into the community of the Lord, nor any descendant of his even to the tenth generation.”

I am fairly confident that this passage does not reflect the teachings of the Church today. How can this be reconciled with scriptural inerrancy?

Thank you and God bless.
Click to expand...
The very next verse states that no Moabite or his descendant to the 10 generation may be admitted into the community of the Lord. However, if you look at Ruth 4:17-22 you will see that David is only 3 generations removed from his full-blooded Moabite great-grandmother Ruth (or, if you prefer to take it back to the male line, 4 generations removed from Ruth’s Moabite father, David’s great-great-grandfather. Yet he was not only admitted to the community of the Lord; the Lord chose him as that community’s king.

Even in the Old Testament, mercy always triumphed over judgment.

DaveBj
 
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twf:
trogiah:
“Perhaps we have to begin by admitting that, word by word and line by line, Scripture is not absolutely inerrant.”

Be careful. This is heresy.

If you say that Scripture is not absolutely inerrant, then you must agree that Holy Mother Church is fallible. Then you have neither Scripture nor Holy Mother Church as your final authority, and have thus created your own religion. I’m sorry if this seems a little harsh, but ultimately it is true, even if you do not realize the implications.
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That’s exactly why I asked the question – I couldn’t figure out how this made sense, although I know scripture has been defined as inerrant. Your response, as well as Gottle’s, help put it in context quite a bit.

Thank you, and God bless.
 
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bquinnan:
Deuteronomy 23:2 reads, according to the New American Bible for Catholics, “No child of an incestuous union may be admitted into the community of the Lord, nor any descendant of his even to the tenth generation.”

I am fairly confident that this passage does not reflect the teachings of the Church today. How can this be reconciled with scriptural inerrancy?

Thank you and God bless.
Click to expand...
Wouldn’t there have been childen of incestuos unions in the days of Adam and Eve? I believe there most certainly would have and God was able to use the situation to populate the pre flood world. It was also never in itended for man to have more than one wife but God used polygamy to form the 12 Tribes of Israel.
 
The laws which are supplemented in the book of Deuteronomy are laws of Moses which DO NOT originally belong to the 10 Commandments. These are the laws that were particularly “allowed” by God because of the “hardness of hearts” of the Israelites. I believe this was done so to curb the evil of (incest) being done by the Israelites that time. Remember that time they don’t have sufficient grace to avoid evil things so everything was done “under the law” but now we are “under grace” as Paul puts it. Another example, you will also notice that divorce was “allowed” by Moses, and in fact this was the law of Moses, and that later on Christ nullified in the New Covenant. Most of the laws of Moses (if not all) are not binding in the New Covenant except the 10 Commandments.

Pio
 
‘The question was only posted here for fifteen minutes when you made this reply–give people a chance!! :)’

seriously! 🙂
 
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