This is certainly the current position, but was not the position adopted by Joshua during the Jericho genocide. I have heard nothing to explain the concurrent condemnation of such actions and the upholding of this act, except that 'it’s ok, ‘cause God said it was’. This, of course, fails to convince.
I was looking at the question from the wrong direction.
I was addressing the issue of child slaying from the point of view of it as a cultic religious practice.
Duh. You’re talking about in the sense of the conquest of Canaan, and the directive of God to put all the inhabitants to death. OK, now I know what you are referring to.
The Old Testament reveals God as a God of mercy and justice. And, what we’re talking about in Joshua is the sovereignty of God and His election to have the inhabitants put to death by the sword.
We all die and we don’t know the day or the hour. 250,000 people die in the world every day, from all sorts of causes. God chose to combine the conquering of Canaan with this judgment against the idolatrous people who occupied the land. This was a special issue and judgment of God.
God had also decreed a death penalty in the Torah for various other things. It turns out, for their lack of faith and apostasy, the entire generation of Israelites that left Egypt (except for a couple) did not make it to the Promised Land.
God is the judge, not us. In particular, we don’t judge God, his decisions, or his commands.
For this to “fail to convince” is a whole separate subject. To fail to be convinced is to put a whole different spin or interpretation of who God is. This is an OLD way of looking at things. Nothing new about this.
In the book “Crossing the Threshold of Hope” his holiness the late Blessed John Paul II answered a series of questions, and to the question about people failing to come to faith in Christianity he remarked, that people – for one reason or another – do not like the way that God chose to reveal himself to mankind. I could be mistaken, but that could be the reason for people’s failure or inability to have a conviction about this. OLD NEWS. very old.
I’m reading a line-by-line commentary on the book of Romans called the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (a series of books on the Bible by Intervarsity Press) and this general subject is discussed in the commentary on Romans Chapter 2. that’s where my reading is so far, is up to the middle of Chapter Two.
St Paul is distinguishing Christians, Jews, and Greeks. Everyone should be able to understand and know God from nature and the law of nature. The law of nature is not the law of the jungle, dog eat dog. the law of nature is the highest understanding of human relations from a philosphical point of view. We shouldn’t murder other people. We shouldn’t steal from them. We shouldn’t practice adultery. These are laws that should be obvious to us when we consider what is or should be right and wrong.
The law of Moses is a much more explicit statement of the law of nature, they are not in disagreement in any aspect or subject; it is just more explicit. Finally, the law of Christ is the most explicit and all these laws are in agreement.
For this reason, NO ONE has an “excuse” for not believing or accepting the revelation in scripture and in Jesus Christ. In other words, perhaps someone has not YET reached a place of “conviction” but they can and should get there,especially with Jesus Christ and His Church.
this was in Paul’s writing to the Romans, and expanded in the writings of the early Christian writers. A Baptist friend of mine gave me some sage advice, that we should always find ourselves agreeing with the Bible. that a Baptist way of saying what I said above.
