Consistency between OT and NT--a question

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KevinK said:
I wonder why God didn’t do the “destroying” Himself when he did it directly in many other cases. Why implicate and traumatize others to do this deed
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Actually, God never does anything in creation by himself.
In old war movies 2 people had to turn individual keys to launch a missile.

They both know the same thing at the same time and turn the keys together.
God knows every temporal event always in eternity, not just when we see that it happens in an individual and sequential moment in time.

But he knows himself as one of the key turners, always knows this, and he knows a person on Earth as the other key turner, such as Moses talking to pharaoh and suddenly the people are delivered out of Egypt - God knows eternally that when Moses talks to Pharaoh, Pharaoh releases the people, and when Moses 4000 years ago temporally knew what God knows and did finally speak to Pharaoh in time, this temporal moment was when the people were released from Egypt. They were not always released from Egypt, which is how God knew it, but were released when both God and Moses knew it, which is a single event in time because Moses knowing is a single event in time.

We are turning one key when we pray in obedience to God’s command to pray to him just as Moses obeyed God and went to pharaoh.
God always works with ‘two key’ causation never alone because he is outside of time and he works with us to work in time so that we know temporarily what he knows eternally and then it is done. The word “cooperation” (Co-Operation) is not a coincidence in Catholic Theology and Doctrine. Everything done in contingent temporal creation is done by a dual causation, a dual agency; nothing temporal is done by God alone in creation, but all is done with the Co-Operation of a created being, be it man or Angel of the LORD.

God’s plan is the Eternal Vision of everything in it’s perfection and everything operating in its being, but not in an isolated knowing. In everything he knows, he knows a temporal creature knowing it with him, temporarily. He knows it eternally and when they know it together, then it is dually caused. (Understand this, that a creature does some sort of mechanical labor in causation rather than simple knowing, and is a kind of proximate cause where is God is the principal agent).

John Martin
 
In order to answer the question: why does a good God allow the mystery of evil, one must have a better understanding of of a Trinitarian God that is in an eternal dialogue. Here is an article that might help. Evil Exists, Therefore God Does Not=Bad Logic

As to why God allowed some seemingly bad things to happen in the Old Testament: God revealed to St. Hildegard of Bingen that after the fall, virtually all the sons and daughters of Adam succumbed to the lies of Satan up to the time of Noah. So God established a covenant with man and set up the Law. Since man had lost the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the Law was used by God to purify man from the outside-in, so to speak.

The purpose of this was to keep the Chosen People from being destroyed by Satan, and to keep Abraham’s seed as pure as possible (thus circumcision is the sign of the covenant), and from being destroyed by the father of lies. Sometimes this involved seemingly bad things happening. Only God can cause that evil is not the final result of evil people’s actions. The final goal was to send a Messiah from the seed of Abraham who would be born of a pure virgin. This Messiah would destroy death and gain for us the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
 
And, the Lord guarded the Israelites, corrected them and punished them…because the
INCARNATION of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was to take place in them, the people who were set apart!

Have a Blessed Christmas all of you!
 
I don’t see how that in any way answers the simple question why God didn’t do the destroying himself, for example like when He sent the Flood. He didn’t use proxies to kill everyone.
 
KevinK said:
I don’t see how that in any way answers the simple question why God didn’t do the destroying himself, for example like when He sent the Flood. He didn’t use proxies to kill everyone
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Elementary. What God does himself is done from all eternity in every moment that we might know his temporal reality meaning these people would have been eternally dead and not killed at the time that you think they would have been killed.

Eternally the Son is begotten from the Father; eternally the Holy Spirit is proceeding from the Father and the Holy Spirit is eternally proceeding from the Son.

In co-operation, when Mary and the angel and God knew, at the same time, the conception of Jesus, only then was Jesus conceived in the flesh, temporarily not eternally, even though God knows the conception of Jesus eternally as now.

If God did the flood himself there would be an eternal flood and we would be underwater at this moment, because God eternally knows himself creating the flood. Actually we would not be at all.

God does not do one thing at one moment and another thing at another moment; he does not change; he only knows all things always, eternally. But because he works with a CO-operator things do not happen eternally but happened when the co-operator suddenly in time works together with the knowing of God.
 
Salmonslayer said:
God isn’t bound by his own laws.
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I know He Himself is not bound by His laws, but we are bound to obey His laws. God commands us, “Thou shalt not kill” and then He tell us to go over that hill and kill everyone you find over there! He commands us “Thou shall not bear false witness” and then He makes the prophets tell a lie to the king by placing a “deceiving spirit” in them. It’s these inconsistencies that cause people to reject the OT accounts of God. This is not an orderly God, it’s an incomprehensible God, and I can understand why people reject the OT God.
 
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The slaughter of the Canaanites ain’t nothin’ compared to the slaughter to come in the final reaping. Cf. Revelation.
 
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I would not consider it “self defense” to kill tens of thousands of people in order to take their land. The Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years before they came into the promised land. God had 40 years to clear the land of the Canaanites first.

He could have sent wind to drive them out. He could have sent drought to drive them out. He could have even sent angels to scare the heck out of them and tell them to leave, but instead He ordered the Israelites to kill them all. There is no self defense going on here. This is why the Middle East is such a basket case, and it is why Christians should disregard the orgy of violence that is the OT. My two cents.
 
Guest1 said:
11 I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse,
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It is interesting that there are white horses in heaven. I thought that there would be only humans in heaven? Were these horses baptised somehow?
 
There does seem to be an inconsistency regarding clean and unclean foods. Did God change His mind about whether or not some foods are unclean?
1 Tim.4: 1-4.
Lev.11
But Jesus says that the Law is permanent?
Mt.5:17-19; Lk.16:17.
 
Here’s my two cents - yes - a book - lol
An old guy at church told me about it - I never heard of it before

H E L I O T R O P I U M
first published in 1627
the author Jeremias Drexelius

Sorry about your husband’s current state of affairs.
The book is about God’s will - and conforming our will - to His.
I would go to Jerusalem - if I were the both of you - lol
It’s grace - that makes us smart - it’s God’s gift - to us -
esp. on Christmas !
 
It doesn’t seem compatible with attributes assigned to God (omnipotent, omniscient etc.) that changing his mind is possible.
 
Well God chose the Jewish People in an ancient world which was quite violent and in many ways less civilized by modern standards. He intervened in their history through certain individuals and in that context.
The big difference with the New Testament, is now God himself is entering human history. So this in itself is a major shift. But also now it becomes a universal message to all the nations and not just the Jewish people. In the end, we may not fully understand, but we trust and know that God is a loving God.
 
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