NEW explanation for why God killed babies in the OT (Heresy?)

[ChunkMonk]

The people in the Old Treatment have the same ‘access’ to Heaven as the people of the New Testament. It is an article of Faith that Jesus deacended into Hell and brought the righteous out of ‘Hades’ and into Heaven. No one in the OT was ‘dead on arrival’ anymore than people are now.

The reason it’s justifiable for God to tell the Israelites to slaughter babies is because God owns those babies and He can do whatever He wants with them. He wanted those babies to be killed by Israel, so Israel needs to kill those babies. He doesn’t want other babies to be killed so they darn well better not be killed or someone is going to pay.

He wanted to destroy Sodom so Sodom got destroyed. He wanted to save Ninevah so Ninevah got saved. He owns it. He created it, gave it life, and whatever He decides to do with it is not only entirely justifiable, but in the best interests of every single party involved, including those he had killed or destroyed.

 

[Harry123]

I noticed remarks here something like “no afterlife during Old Testament times because Christ Jesus had not come yet.” I feel well-reminded of the account of the Transfiguration–when Jesus during his earthly life spoke on the mountain with Moses and Elijah (and Peter, James, and John were also there with him). Remember, Moses did have afterlife. And so did Elijah.

Yes, i mentioned those in my opening post. Prophets in the OT were predestined by God and were given salvation. But only a select few in the OT had access to salvation, not everyone as is the case today after the NT.

 

[mkoopman]

Aquinas does a thorough job on identifying how both Angels and Humans have intellectual souls. He is The Angelic Doctor and leaves little room for the error that you appear to believe I present on confusing the two souls as one type and equal. They have equivalence in faculties but Angel Intellectual Souls are… Angels.
And, yes, the spiritual beings are composite. Angels never possess, have possessed, nor will possess material bodies, but they and all the Host of Heaven (not God, Himself) have a composite nature.
Humans have a composite nature that includes both material and spiritual elements, body and soul. But a vegetative soul is also contained within material things like growing plants. Composite is not restricted to the body and soul of human persons. The immutability of a human person as body and soul is not simply because we are composite, it is the nature of human persons.
My reference is the complete Summa. Get back to me after you consume it and present a specific item that denies what I just presented.

 

[BlackFriar]

I think there are far simpler and more theologically accurate avenues to resolve your issues.

First up God did not kill babies.
Second, nor can we be sure He directly ordered anybody to do so.

Yes we are sure the writer of that OT book used a literary device such that Abraham is portrayed as personally believing
that is what God wanted him to do.

Just as the genocide of the Canaanites was allegedly justified on the same basis.

God made me do it doesn’t really work for murderers in court today. Not sure why the same syndrome cannot be recognised as happening in times past.

We have to remember the Bible was not intended as history in the same 100% objective way we expect it today. The Isaac story may well have embellished a quite different historical incident re Abraham to make the theological point that at some stage the Hebrews definitively broke away from anything to do with child sacrifce that was widespread around them. It was possibly an ancient practice of some Hebrew tribes just as the Hebrews look to have once practised polytheism and the worship of idols and no belief in the afterlife.

Significant numbers of Jews believed in the afterlife well before Jesus. No religion is without diversity of belief and practise which is something you seem unaware of. Jesus’s teachings did not all drop from a clear blue sky totally fresh and new. He stood on the shoulders of those before him much like any other great person.

 

[Harry123]

Jesus’s teachings did not all drop from a clear blue sky totally fresh and new. He stood on the shoulders of those before him much like any other great person.

In a way His teachings did. He came to say the kingdom of heaven had arrived …suggesting people previously didn’t have access to it in my opinion.

 

[mkoopman]

Your opinion does not count, the truth does. What you state can be accepted as true at face value but your conjecture from it is false and highly offensive. There were jews who believed gentiles would not be accepted in heaven. Take a guess why you do not read of this, despite often brutal depictions of other peoples, in Scripture? Because it is not true, plainly enough.
The just awaited Jesus for the gates of heaven to open, as you admit. On this in itself the idea that they did not have worth is shown to be false. Staying with simply these admissions you present the worthiness that you deny implies either not any person has worth, or your premise is false. Are you stating that no person has worth and that transcendental belief is nothing but a false economy?
Seems the only possible consistent resolution to your proposition and renders the idea valueless in itself except as a snarky comment. I do not believe this is your intended consequence. So how could OT saints enter heaven but not have the same “value” beforehand?
God let’s us know well that we are priceless in His sight. Scripture tells us this before the Incarnate Christ Jesus was born. How do you reject these writings?

 

[Harry123]

God let’s us know well that we are priceless in His sight. Scripture tells us this before the Incarnate Christ Jesus was born. How do you reject these writings?

Which OT scripture quotes are you referring to with this statement?

 

[BlackFriar]

It’s not that Abraham personally believed that God wanted him to do that. God really wanted him to do that. It’s clear to see

This was written by a man not by God nor by Abraham 100s of years after the death of Abraham.

You are entitled to believe the author somehow knew the manner in which God allegedly commanded Abraham…just as others may acceptably take that with a grain of salt and not impose on ancient writers and ancient readers standards of literary and historical appreciation that are foreign to them and merely our own.

Additionally you have the problem of explaining how God so strangely changes his mind on matters of basic morality. The specious rationalisation above is far from coercive. Medievals were committed to a too rigid approach to Scripture that also necessitated (falsely) Geocentrism and the condemnation kf Galileo. The Church has recently reversed that view and admitted the approach to Scripture which necessitated the geocentric view was exactly as I say…too rigidly literal.

There is no single solution to this difficulty that all Catholics must assent to which you seem to assert.

 

[mkoopman]

You mean to say the church, the same that presents us with the bible, is not the teaching authority and especially regarding the deposit of faith that predates the written new testament?
What amazing evidence do you have for this greater authority on Scripture and when did The Holy Spirit depart from the church Jesus founded?

 

[BlackFriar]

Are you saying that denial of geocentrism means the Bible is in error?

 

[BlackFriar]

I think the Church’s recent reinstatement of Galileo and the comments made re the unfortunate medieval approach to the Bible on that matter is clear.

 

[BlackFriar]

I dont need to read anthing.
The view I have espoused is acceptable to Catholics and indeed was taught (amongst others) by my Professor of Biblical Studies at the national Catholic Uni campus for seminarians way back in the 1980s.

 

[mkoopman]

More importantly is that both church documents referenced were written before the 1980s when this seminary teacher was lecturing. This would mean the seminary professor should have known these documents well.
Why there would be no need to read them is confusing to me. The church has many beautiful documents that are more than worthwhile reading. Perhaps the revised edition of Fifty-Two Shades of Hades is out in paperback and church documents don’t measure up?

 

[Gorgias]

And, yes, the spiritual beings are composite. Angels never possess, have possessed, nor will possess material bodies, but they and all the Host of Heaven (not God, Himself) have a composite nature.

This is the claim that I’m asking you to substantiate.

The immutability of a human person as body and soul is not simply because we are composite, it is the nature of human persons.

Oh, my, goodness. The human person is “immutable”? Seriously?

My grey hair witnesses to the weakness of your claim. (Heck… once I’m dead and buried, and all that remains is my soul… well, that will witness to the falsity of your claim. )

My reference is the complete Summa. Get back to me after you consume it and present a specific item that denies what I just presented.

Hahahahahaha! Yeah – next time someone asks me for a reference, I’ll tell them “Encyclopedia Brittanica – read it and get back to me”!

(p.s., telling me “please deny my claim” is not a defense of a claim – it’s the refusal to prove a claim. Unless you provide substantiation, I’ll take that as an admission that you cannot support your claim. )

 

[BlackFriar]

I dont care, youve gone off point. JPII has apologised for the erroneous Biblical approach of the Church authorities that opposed him. Your approach to the Bible is similarly erroneous. That is the point.

I get it you disagree and believe your personal view on Abraham is the only acceptable one and neither reason nor facts will ever change your unusual black and white appreciation of the valid range of Catholic views here.

There is nothing more to say therefore.

 

[James817]

I dont care, youve gone off point. JPII has apologised for the erroneous Biblical approach of the Church authorities that opposed him. Your approach to the Bible is similarly erroneous. That is the point.

I get it you disagree and believe your personal view on Abraham is the only acceptable one and neither reason nor facts will ever change your unusual black and white appreciation of the valid range of Catholic views here.

There is nothing more to say therefore.

You got to admit the interpretation mentioned has a precedent in the history of the early Church.

 

[mkoopman]

No please identify what you find in error from the Summa is not posting large parts of the Summa because you refuse to read it. The use of immutable in this context is not what you appear to think it is. In this context it was intended to make clear that death does not change the human person, as the whole person. And it does not, it fixes our ability to change our free will and leaves the soul separated from the body. Death, however, although leaving only our spiritual components locomotive does not convert us into Angel souls.
Really, please read the Summa rather than just flying off at the handle.

 

[BlackFriar]

Angels do not have souls. Souls by definition are orientated to matter and are imperfect without matter as its part of their nature. Angels do not have a nature intrinsically orientated to matter. They are not imperfect without matter. They are pure spirits, they are more perfect than us in their total and intrinsic immateriality.

 

[johnjacob2004]

The Old Testament God killed everyone one earth infants, women, men all with the flood while Noah and his family was in the ark. Was this an unjust God? St. Paul says this prefigured baptism…

 

[RedFan]

So no one can find anything inherently wrong with my proposed explanation for how God (given his goodness) was able to order the killing of babies in the OT?

The people of the OT were a dead people, with no way to access heaven and thus were essentially worthless.

If the people of the OT were a dead people and their lives worthless, why single out the killing of babies? Why not just say that the Commandment “thou shalt not kill” is a bunch of hooey, and killing any OT human was perfectly fine not only for God but for man to do?