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

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No. The jssue here is not child sacrifice but God commanding a deception. Your view vkes through unlikely somersaults to allegedly prove God did not command Abraham to kill his son.

He clearly did. No Christian can accept that as literally true. The rabbis, as you note, themselves accept this was the case and make their own somersaults to justify it.
 
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But there was no deception.
“Do this”
“No.”

or
“Do this.”
“Ok.”
“Alright, you have shown your faith and willingness, no need to do more. You are right, I will provide the sacrifice for you.”

And then if you add in TRADITION of the Jews, there was still also a sacrifice of Abraham never seeing his son again.

But note that Abraham still sacrificed LITERALLY on the mountain that was chosen by God.
I am not an expert in Hebrew but I have a feeling that strictly speaking, Abraham fulfilled the actual command in the strictest sense.
 
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As I say if you believe in a religion where its followers will do whatever its “god” allegedly says (which allegedly Abraham would) and there is no objective right or wrong, no Eternal Law that even God will not contradict, or command his followers to contradict, … then I and others want nothing to do with it.
Its all yours.
 
The objective right and wrong is based upon God, who is the source of all Good and who gives us the Law on our Hearts.
I believe God is holiness itself.
He is unchanging and His Will is Love and Mercy itself.
But you’re missing the point of the story. Like, almost completely.
 
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And you believe in an alien God who happily deceives his followers by commanding them to sacrifice children even when he doesnt mean it.

Thats a holiness myself and others want nothing to do with thanks.
 
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The understanding of God is not human understanding. God’s way is not our way.
 
Great reply to justify any fairy story you want about God that is immune to reason and inconsistency observations.
 
I find it a much greater deception to be led to believe something is not only true but infallibly so, only to actually have it be merely “tall tales”, as you say.
You keep saying it’s deception. It is NOT deception. You have the burden of proof here. Christians for a very long time have believed in it while not believing that God deceives us, you are under the burden of proof to demonstrate that this is somehow a deception. It was a test of faith, a command that essentially GETS FULFILLED ANYWAY as Abraham still offers up as a sacrifice the ram, after he said to his son that God would provide the sacrifice, and (according to tradition) you actually sacrifice your son in a way you were not expecting.

God fulfills things in ways we don’t expect a lot in the Bible.
 
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Abraham did sacrifice his son. God stopped him by an agent, an intercessor, an angel. Abraham thrust the knife to sacrifice, God knows our hearts. Jesus identifies lust in our hearts as adultery. Why is the committal of Abraham to the act of child sacrifice not sacrifice. It is. No somersault necessary.
God intercedes and when Jesus arrives the lamb is found. So the difference in God between the OT and the NT is the difference between a ram and The Lamb.
The Lamb did not just form itself out of the fire. He, The Word, was, is and ever shall be.
 
Just read the text.
The pretend God clearly commanded Abraham to kill his Son.

I want nothing to do with such a god even if he was joking, serious, having a bad hair day, deceiving, tricking, having a mental reservation or testing.
I am hardly alone in this.

You obviously differ.
That makes you a scary fellow Catholic if your own values find this ok.
 
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mkoopman said:
Your assertion identifies Angels as either non existent or not rational. Which wrong answer is it?
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Neither. But it’s a good attempt on your part to begin to understand Aquinas. :roll_eyes:

You claim that angels have souls. I disagree. And we both point to Aquinas in our assertions.

How would you understand this statement, then?
ST I.54.3 ad 1:
An angel is called “intellect” and “mind,” because all his knowledge is intellectual: whereas the knowledge of a soul is partly intellectual and partly sensitive.
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If Aquinas is correct, then angels do not have knowledge in the way that souls have knowledge.

Moreover, in his discussion of angels’ intellectual knowledge in I.54.5, Aquinas makes other observations that lead us to understand that angels are not said to have souls:

“it is in keeping with the order of the universe for the highest intellectual creature to be entirely intelligent; and not in part, as is our soul.” – In other words, Aquinas is drawing a distinction between a rational soul and an angel’s intellect.

"But memory can be allowed in the angels, according as Augustine (De Trin. x) puts it in the mind; although it cannot belong to them in so far as it is a part of the sensitive soul. " – So, Aquinas is saying that angels do not possess sensitive souls. (On its own, this doesn’t prove my point, but it leads us in the right direction.)

Moreover, in his discussion of how angels understand things, Aquinas says this:
ST I.55.2 co:
the lower intellectual substances —that is to say, human souls—have a power of understanding which is not naturally complete, but is successively completed in them by their drawing intelligible species from things. But in the higher spiritual substances—that is, the angels—the power of understanding is naturally complete by intelligible species, in so far as they have such species connatural to them, so as to understand all things which they can know naturally. …

The lower spiritual substances—that is, souls—have a nature akin to a body, in so far as they are the forms of bodies: and consequently from their very mode of existence it behooves them to seek their intelligible perfection from bodies, and through bodies; otherwise they would be united with bodies to no purpose. On the other hand, the higher substances—that is, the angels—are utterly free from bodies, and subsist immaterially and in their own intelligible nature; consequently they attain their intelligible perfection through an intelligible outpouring.
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So, whereas knowledge in us is a power of our soul, knowledge in angels proceeds from their nature.

Finally, I’m sure you would agree that Aquinas describes the soul of a human as its subsistent form, no? Yet, in I.56.1, he states, “since an angel is immaterial, he is a subsisting form.” In other words, there is no soul as subsistent form for an angel.

I would also disagree that we’d call angels “rational”, inasmuch as that implies that they ratiocinate. They don’t – their knowledge is immediate and infused. See ST I.58.3 and I.58.4.
 
Pretend God?

You’re definitely being too modern. You look at the details in the English language, miss the point of the thing, get offended, and deny that God is God because you don’t see past the modern western viewpoint.

If you read the whole chapter it clearly states this was a testing of Abraham.
You are missing out on the historical context that goes with it, and miss the entire point of the passage.

The God of the Bible is the true God, like it or not. He’s no pretend.

I am in good company in believing this.
 
From a Christian perspective, I find this an excellent interpretation. From a Jewish perspective, I would add that eternal salvation is not and never has been the ultimate goal of our earthly or spiritual life. Obedience to G-d’s will as reflected in His commandments (the Law) is the highest form of moral behavior. This is not exactly practicing righteousness (holiness) for its OWN sake, but rather righteousness for G-D’s sake. As important as the individual self is in Judaism, doing G-d’s will, whatever the consequences, is even more so.
 
Even a bad hair day? LOL Seriously though, what if G-d wanted Abraham to disobey Him? What if G-d’s will was that we should not relinquish the moral authority that He placed within our souls toward ANYONE, even G-d Himself? And what if Abraham in fact failed G-d’s will by listening to Him without responding (and by not even informing Sarah of his decision to kill HER son as well)?
 
This interpretation is lacking. Why?

11But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12He said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.
 
meltzerboy2 said:
As important as the individual self is in Judaism, doing G-d’s will, whatever the consequences, is even more so.
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And this is the problematic bit for natural law based Catholicism. Does God really command special individuals to breach natural law? And if he did would this be an indication I was having a psychotic episode and it was not reallyGod but something else “speaking”?

In which case these stories in ths OT are best judged as more parable or poetic licence to make a theological truth than absolute history in every detail.
 
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I dont understand what it is you are trying to say. The issue is not how to respond to God. The issue is whether God truly spoke to me in the first place. And whether we can make that decision on the basis of gravely evil incongruities in what we are allegedly told to do.

Some here force themselves to accept that God truly did speak to Abraham regardless of how disturbing the content was because they are constrained by their too rigid approach to interpretting the OT.

Yet Catholic Biblical scholarship is now no longer so rigid as to demand we have to do so. We no longer need to do triple backward somersaults to explain away the natural law incongruities of genocide, sacrice of captured enemies or sacrifice requests of children and so on.

We have options in understanding the Isaac episode. Some contributors here appear unable to accept this freedom.
 
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You accept a God who would leave you thinking for three days that you must literally sacrifice your child to him or suffer in hell for eternity? And then he suddenly changes his mind, and essentially says gotcha, just testing?

That is indicative to me of a needy person so adulating of authority they are bereft of any independent thinking or moral compass and are ripe for totalitarianism.
 
BlackFriar said:
You accept a God who would leave you thinking for three days that you must literally sacrifice your child to him or suffer in hell for eternity? And then he suddenly changes his mind, and essentially says gotcha, just testing?

That is indicative to me of a needy person so adulating of authority they are bereft of any independent thinking or moral compass and are ripe for totalitarianism.
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As others have said God never intended for Isaac to be sacrificed. He wanted to test Abraham’s faith and give the world a foreshadowing of the sacrifice of His Only Son.

Maybe I am a person who can’t think for myself. Who knows? Better to think like God than to think like men. As for you, your reply indicates that you’re a person who wants to morph God into something more comfortable.
 
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The point is that is exactly what he actually commanded Abraham and that is what Abraham understood YHW to intend. God knowingly left him in that deceived state for three days.

I am not interested in a God who would do such a thing.
You are happy with people who do that to you?

Are you saying silly Abraham for taking the Word of God in such a literalist manner?
Better to think like God than to think like men.
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No, this is still the same attitude that leads to cult worship and demonstrates the continued inability to stand on your own feet. Who said it is thinking like God? That unverified authoritarian voice again that must be obeyed without thinking of the morality of what is being commanded?

The above is not how a true God thinks. My God does not want us to blindly obey voices of power, He is in the gentle breeze not the mighty storm of authority.

Your god is foreign to me.
you’re a person who wants to morph God into something more comfortable.
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The Commandments are not comfortable, but their goodness is self evident and the Speaker of them worthy of my worship.
To live the Commandments is thinking like God.
 
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