Is it a true God or our own construct of "god" in the Bible?

[ericc]

Oral tradition is actually one form of folklore

Could be.

Thanks for helping this to find out.

No thanks. That’s your folklore, not mine. You alleged it, you support it. No support? Then your folklore accusation rest on zero foundation. You could have started the folklore yesterday. Or some psychologist/atheist pulled that off the air and you rode on that.

 

[goout]

TheOldColonel:

the image of God varies from story to story

But I have great difficulty when this image emanates laws that kill people. When someone dies, it is irreversible in our world. You cannot say later, oops, my bad…! That person died and cannot be brought back until the end times. So you really have to get a hard look on a bad law that kills. What is behind it? An inadequate image of God? Of just the blood thirsty nature of humankind?

You have to admit that scripture details history, and tells of events and practices and beliefs that are culturally conditioned. That’s just a reality. You have to know the writer to know the meaning.
And the writer is human, so by definition, scripture relays a less-than-full image of God.
The only fully adequate image of God is the person Jesus Christ.

Do you believe that God can breathe inspiration through flawed human beings using human language and inadequate knowledge of God?
I do. I think that is precisely the point of the Catholic Church: we are asked to trust God -and- one another, despite sin, contradiction, weakness, etc…

Fundamentalism makes the Christian life too easy, it robs it of life itself. Christianity us not supposed to be easy or cut and dried.
God could have just given us the book in a very simple and easy way, but he entered the mess as Jesus of Nazareth,

 

[curious_cath]

some psychologist/ atheist pulled that off the air and you rode on that.

You are jumping on me, dear ericc, not discussing the merits of what I said.

Please, tell me, how do you think oral tradition works, keeping hundred and hundreds of pages word-by-word for centuries. Describe some kind of mechanism, an engine for oral tradition, that is capable to do this.

 

[curious_cath]

The only fully adequate image of God is the person Jesus Christ.

Exactly my point I am trying to make. Thank you!

What you wrote here is a music for my ear.

Even if cacophonia for the literalists.

 

[TheOldColonel]

How many do you have to choose from?

 

[curious_cath]

Do you believe that God can breathe inspiration through flawed human beings using human language and inadequate knowledge of God?

That is exactly what I am looking for. An inspired kernel of the Scripture that is applicable on God. Perhaps there is a silhouette of God under the precious stones of the “statue” with golden head and clay legs. That silhouette is not supposed to fall but shine up in the light shed on him by Jesus.

“There before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. 32 The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay.” (Daniel 2)

 

[curious_cath]

How many do you have to choose from?

Exactly! The messy one of the ancient is not the one which is the Only One.

 

[TheOldColonel]

How do you know that?

 

[curious_cath]

Jesus tells me so… ?

 

[TheOldColonel]

By your reasoning, how do you know the Jesus in scripture is the One True Jesus? If the Old Testament can be as flawed as you claim, then why not the New?

My best guess is that you hold presuppositions that are making it very difficult to approach scripture without bias and without experiencing anger and doubt as to its authenticity and usefulness as a posit of divine revelation. You might considered examining your own constructs about God before those you believe underlie scripture. Therein lies the true conflict.

 

[curious_cath]

You are right. But I am a Christian. I am living in the presence of the Lord.

 

[TheOldColonel]

What more could you ask for?

 

[curious_cath]

You might considered examining your own constructs about God

I don’t have one. That is why I would like to know Him. Not him, but Him.

 

[TheOldColonel]

You may have to know him before you can know Him. He is a Man (man) many did not recognized when He (he) walked among men.

 

[IsaiahSpirit]

I would recommend Trent Horn’s Hard Sayings which addresses the difficult passages in The Holy Bible. Even though the Bible is ‘inerrant,’ it takes The Holy Spirit through The Teaching Authority of The Church to understand certain things. Peter the Apostle addressed this very thing in on of his Letters in The Bible.
I’ve been taught there are 7 Literary Forms in The Bible, where one is literal. But even the literal ones need an Authoritative Interpreter to clarify God’s Revelation. Especially since much is written from the standpoint of humankind’s relationship with God from a human person’s point of view.

 

[goout]

TheOldColonel:

How many do you have to choose from?

Exactly! The messy one of the ancient is not the one which is the Only One.

We differ here. What you say is Marcionism.
There is only one unchanging God.

All at the same time:

1. Scripture is Inspired and innerrant in the Catholic sense not the fundamentalist sense
   and
2. Human writers are, human, with all that entails.
   and
3. God is unchanging eternally (or outside time).

These things are all true. All in unity.

 

[TheOldColonel]

Looks like you tried to change horses midstream and fell in, soldier. What you state was the point of my rhetorical question. The is only one God.

 

[curious_cath]

We differ here. What you say is Marcionism.

There is only one unchanging God.

That is why I tried to call the ancient image of God an image and not the true God. We may also talk about preliminary human approximation of grasping God’s true nature that was necessary for the subsequent incarnation and revelation by Jesus. Even if this was necessary, we should be able to make distinction between human image and true God.

 

[ericc]

You are jumping on me, dear ericc, not discussing the merits of what I said.

Please, tell me, how do you think oral tradition works, keeping hundred and hundreds of pages word-by-word for centuries. Describe some kind of mechanism, an engine for oral tradition, that is capable to do this.

I am trying to trigger your memory where you pull out the folklore accusation. Because , you still haven’t provide the evidence. I remembered the folklore angle being a recent tactic by atheists, or perhaps by Freud. It is hazy and I don’t think I bookmarked those unsupported excuses. What you said would be be merited if you can substantiate them. Problem is , you didn’t or won’t. Can you please just tell us the folklore that you know of that discredit that Biblical verse? Do you know it? Yes or no? If no, how did you come to that conclusion it was folklore?

The OT was faithfully written/copied by temple scribes/priests. Folklore is not that well regarded to have that honor. You should research how seriously those scribes regard their work.

Anyway you run the risk of going against Jesus since he quoted Moses, Psalms and the Prophets in the NT. Either you accept Jesus knows what he is quoting or you are accusing Jesus of quoting folklore. You can’t avoid the fact that Jesus is quoting his own words, him being God. For example, Mark 7:10. Is that folklore? Yes or no? Cherry picking the Bible get you nowhere.

 

[curious_cath]

The OT was faithfully written/copied by temple scribes/priests.

Our Good Lord willed that his sayings would not be written down during his life time. Oral tradition kept them that became part of the folklore. Folklore only indicates widespread knowledge that was written down at some point by someone. We may not know the author or composer who coined the final version but we might know who wrote it down.

Being part of the folklore is not a bad thing. Certainly not an accusation. Folklore can be inspired, carrying over teachings considered of divine origin over a long period of time. Luke and Matthew did not know each other. Their gospels bear similarities based on Mark and another source called Q or Quelle. Q was a collection of Jesus sayings that was lost.

There could have been other collections before the gospels were written down. The apocrypha Gospel of Thomas is an example of an extensive collection of Jesus sayings that circulated among the believers for centuries.

The subtle differences and variations among the gospels, even in describing crucial points or periods in the life of Jesus, are evidences of multiple authors and composers. Jesus himself is the source of His sayings, but many of the words went through oral tradition adding/ deleting/ updating content. Despite what fundamentalists claim, this is the process how Sacred Scripture came into being. It was, at a different level, similar in the case of the Old Testament, as well.