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

[BlackFriar]

Yes Satisfaction theology anthropromorphism worked for the medieval mind and those familiar with slavery and redemption practices.
Once you condemn all slavery, not so much.

 

[HarryStotle]

1. For the reasons stated. Humans dont have full knowledge and the purity of heart to carry out by proxy functions that truly belong to God alone…without causing more disorder than the proxy functions are meant to fix in the first place. eg “just” war, eg capital punishment.

So wars can never be justified, punishments for any act never be meted out, and self-defense never considered, because God does not permit “proxy” functions. To him alone?

But it is you who claim that about God’s prescribed actions and not God. How do we know you are not merely undertaking a proxy function as far as God is concerned by such claiming things about God? Indeed you are. Where is your authority to take on that mantle? Parted any seas recently, been followed by pillars of fire, or called down plagues on despotic tyrants? I suppose, merely because your sensitivities have been triggered, that is sufficient reason for you to make yourself a proxy for God and speak in his stead?

What if God actually did command what he ostensibly did in the Old Testament and did it in such a way that the actors then knew it was God commanding it? Are we to trust your ability to read into the text what God did or did not command based upon what you alone know to be God’s method and what “truly” belongs to him.

For one, these were events and texts that were preserved despite the vicissitudes of time and confirmed by Christ and the Church as God-breathed. And yet here you are making a unilateral decision that what is in them was merely humans usurping God’s function?

There is good reason we have these writings and it isn’t merely because they happened to have survived. You have to throw out a whole myriad of basic theological principles regarding God and what has been revealed in those writings about him in order to stick with your “sensible” view on things. Not buying it.

 

[BlackFriar]

So wars can never be justified, punishments for any act never be meted out, and self-defense never considered, because God does not permit “proxy” functions. To him alone?

Correct, the direct taking of life is not a command a true God would ever personally give to any individual in my book.

What people sincerely conclude God wants of them in any given situation is a completely different matter. And though not sinning they may be objectively erroneous.

What if God actually did command what he ostensibly did in the Old Testament and did it in such a way that the actors then knew it was God commanding it?

When your thought experiment can actually enter the world of convincingly communicable reality lets look at it together.

Apart from receiving such a personal revelation yourself and convincing me with a vulcan mind meld I am not sure how you could do that though.

So excuse some of us when the short story of Isaac fails to far greater a degree. Its a theological story, God doesnt really have to have truly commanded Abraham, there are more convincing explanations possible now.

 

[HarryStotle]

So excuse some of us when the short story of Isaac fails to far greater a degree. Its a theological story, God doesnt really have to have truly commanded Abraham, there are more convincing explanations possible now.

The story of Isaac prefigures the story of Christ. The story of Christ happened in history. God was taking Abraham through the steps which he, himself, would walk, some three thousand years before he took the steps of Isaac as a human being. There are no other “more convincing explanations.” Abraham is our father in faith because he knew God, listened to God and responded to God.

That is very likely where you and Abraham part company, since your knowledge of God is, for your part, mediated and not direct. You have yourself and your “standards” for keeping God under your strict control and anthropogenic rather than Who He IS in Himself.

 

[HarryStotle]

Correct, the direct taking of life is not a command a true God would ever personally give to any individual in my book.

Why not own this notion? The direct taking of life is not a command that you, as God, would ever personally give to any individual. You stating categorically what God would or would not do, is assuming your ways are necessarily God’s ways and no other possibility can exist. Very human for sure, but that is about as far as you can push it by proxy – i.e., making your view out to be God’s as if God couldn’t think or act without your approval and consent. (Humans usurping God’s function is plastered all over your own position.)

 

[HarryStotle]

Yes Satisfaction theology anthropromorphism worked for the medieval mind and those familiar with slavery and redemption practices.
Once you condemn all slavery, not so much.

Condemning slavery is one thing, being redeemed from slavery to sin, for example, is another thing entirely.

Merely condemning slavery does not make it disappear as if by magic. Most who are enslaved would likely condemn slavery, but merely condemning it doesn’t mean they are redeemed or free from it. That all depends on who or what one is enslaved to.

Tyrannical masters likely wouldn’t be very amenable to releasing their enslaved subjects, even if one of those subjects happens to be their very self.

 

[BlackFriar]

…since your knowledge of God is, for your part, mediated and not direct.

By all means explain how your knowledge of YHW is not also mediated through men?

 

[BlackFriar]

You have gone off topic, you really love arguing about anything - me not so much.

 

[HarryStotle]

You have gone off topic, you really love arguing about anything - me not so much.

LOL. You first brought in the topic of slavery.

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

Yes Satisfaction theology anthropromorphism worked for the medieval mind and those familiar with slavery and redemption practices. Once you condemn all slavery, not so much.

 

[BlackFriar]

How is it you cannot see I dont believe the Father demanded that His son must be sacrificed to himself before he would save humanity. Nor does the Church.
But you have gone off topic.

 

[BlackFriar]

Why not own this notion?

I did. Did you not see I keep speaking of “my God”.
My protagonist is the one who doesnt own his own subectivity by assuming every word in a man written book is true and so ties himself up in inconsistencies.

And you love arguing trivialities for what reason? To show us how Aristotle like you believe you are?

 

[goout]

It’s interesting that popular opinions are vigorously batted back n forth authoritatively with no references to solid Church thought on this issue (maybe I missed something).

How about P Benedict in Verbum Domini sec 42?

The “dark” passages of the Bible

1. In discussing the relationship between the Old and the New Testaments, the Synod also considered those passages in the Bible which, due to the violence and immorality they occasionally contain, prove obscure and difficult. Here it must be remembered first and foremost that biblical revelation is deeply rooted in history. God’s plan is manifested progressively and it is accomplished slowly, in successive stages and despite human resistance. God chose a people and patiently worked to guide and educate them. Revelation is suited to the cultural and moral level of distant times and thus describes facts and customs, such as cheating and trickery, and acts of violence and massacre, without explicitly denouncing the immorality of such things. This can be explained by the historical context, yet it can cause the modern reader to be taken aback, especially if he or she fails to take account of the many “dark” deeds carried out down the centuries, and also in our own day. In the Old Testament, the preaching of the prophets vigorously challenged every kind of injustice and violence, whether collective or individual, and thus became God’s way of training his people in preparation for the Gospel. So it would be a mistake to neglect those passages of Scripture that strike us as problematic. Rather, we should be aware that the correct interpretation of these passages requires a degree of expertise, acquired through a training that interprets the texts in their historical-literary context and within the Christian perspective which has as its ultimate hermeneutical key “the Gospel and the new commandment of Jesus Christ brought about in the paschal mystery”.[140] I encourage scholars and pastors to help all the faithful to approach these passages through an interpretation which enables their meaning to emerge in the light of the mystery of Christ.

I respect P Benedict.
Any comments?

 

[Kei]

Precisely what I try to do, interpret in its relevant social constructs.

 

[goout]

It is true that God is unchanging.
Any exposition of scripture that proposes a changing value of human dignity in God’s eyes does not fly.

So you must look elsewhere. You must admit of the human element in Scripture. Human beings are limited in understanding. Human beings are not God, human beings are working with God’s inspiration to do God’s will.

Immature understandings of God’s will and action in the events of human history is a fact of life.
Dark and obscure passages make people uncomfortable. They can be confusing and seem contradictory.
If it makes one uncomfortable, that should give pause for reflection.
Fundamentalism does not pause to reflect, it constrains scripture to one’s own comfortable understanding and sucks the inspiration out of it.

 

[James817]

Not demanded but commanded.

“This command I have received from My Father.”

 

[Fidveritas]

You’ll understand what I’m asking when you see that a confused disobedience is the source of the heresy. Find the inner source of your confusion. Read yourself.

Pax Christi

 

[mkoopman]

Apparently American exceptionalism allows an out for this in the case if Osama Bin laden. Those exceptionalism-isms that prove the rule; in “your book.”
Would that be Scriptures you personally authored? Or, perhaps Dr. Suess? Inquiring minds need to know.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Why not own this notion?

I did. Did you not see I keep speaking of “my God”.
My protagonist is the one who doesnt own his own subectivity by assuming every word in a man written book is true and so ties himself up in inconsistencies.

Subjectivity would be when YOU assume that your “protagonist” merely assumes every word in a man written book is true without having very good reasons for doing so. Merely because you subjectively think something about a book does not imply everyone must agree with you or their reasons must be, like yours, purely subjective.

Secondly, since God is omniscient and omnibenevolent, then his judgements regarding what ought to happen in any situation are, by definition, far more just, good and wise than any human judgements precisely because human judgements are not omniscient nor omnibenevolent. Merely because you or I, limited as we are, do not understand why God would command or permit some action, does not mean he does not have supremely good reasons for doing so, infinitely better than ours – unless, of course, you believe your subjective determinations, even based as they are on a paucity of evidence, necessarily trump those of the omniscient and omnibenevolent God.

Thirdly, God’s omniscience means that he has access to all morally relevant information from the past, present and down to the future to the end of time. That means he knows the repercussion waves of every act as its impact spreads out from the moment it occurs. That means he knows the impact of every human life on the future and when best to remove that life before it can do the most damage to itself and to others. So God’s reasons for commanding the deaths of certain groups are based upon infinitely more warrant than you could ever access, situated as you are thousands of years removed from the act with only a short paragraph in scripture describing it for you.

My thought is that anyone who would place himself in judgement over God based upon such a dearth of knowledge is, himself, far too enamoured by his own subjective capacity to make judgements and those judgements ought themselves be put to greater scrutiny. Not that they will, of course, being based as they are upon the subjective attachment one has for his own ability to make far ranging and universal declarations, when perhaps he ought to be far more circumspect.

 

[HarryStotle]

It’s interesting that popular opinions are vigorously batted back n forth authoritatively with no references to solid Church thought on this issue (maybe I missed something).

How about P Benedict in Verbum Domini sec 42?

The “dark” passages of the Bible

1. In discussing the relationship between the Old and the New Testaments, the Synod also considered those passages in the Bible which, due to the violence and immorality they occasionally contain, prove obscure and difficult. Here it must be remembered first and foremost that biblical revelation is deeply rooted in history. God’s plan is manifested progressively and it is accomplished slowly, in successive stages and despite human resistance. God chose a people and patiently worked to guide and educate them. Revelation is suited to the cultural and moral level of distant times and thus describes facts and customs, such as cheating and trickery, and acts of violence and massacre, without explicitly denouncing the immorality of such things. This can be explained by the historical context, yet it can cause the modern reader to be taken aback, especially if he or she fails to take account of the many “dark” deeds carried out down the centuries, and also in our own day. In the Old Testament, the preaching of the prophets vigorously challenged every kind of injustice and violence, whether collective or individual, and thus became God’s way of training his people in preparation for the Gospel. …
   I respect P Benedict.
   Any comments?

Those are good general principles, but the passages in question are problematic precisely BECAUSE the actions are commanded BY God. Therefore, these passages do not merely “describe… facts and customs, such as cheating and trickery, and acts of violence and massacre, without explicitly denouncing the immorality of such things.” God is implicated in those acts because he explicitly commanded them to be carried out.

 

[Gorgias]

My protagonist is the one who doesnt own his own subectivity by assuming every word in a man written book is true and so ties himself up in inconsistencies.

That depends on what you mean by ‘true’.

Do you mean “every word is historically accurate”? Or maybe that “every word is scientifically accurate”? (No? Good – that isn’t what the Church means, either.)

Do you mean “since God is the author of Scripture, then it teaches – truly and inerrently – what He intends it to teach, as the expression of His self-revelation”? After all, that’s what the Church teaches.

(Does ‘your god’ teach that, too? I sure hope so… )