Question about violence in the OT

[Magnanimity]

The way I determine what is good is by judging if an action (or inaction) does the most benefit and the least unnecessary harm as compared to other actions.

This sounds like the consequentialist approach to ethics, which has its strengths and weaknesses, as does Kant’s theory. I’m uncertain how consequentialism gives you moral norms that always and everywhere obtain.

Thomas Aquinas’s conscience should have been a bit closer to mine

For sure.

but he advocated the death penalty for heretics – an act that is never warranted

How do you figure that? If Aquinas believes in the likelihood of eternal conscious torment (Hell) for some people. (Bearing in mind the fact that you yourself don’t believe in such a place is an immaterial consideration here.) And a heretic helps to send more folks to this Hell, wouldn’t it follow that being a heretic is a much worse offense than being, say, a defrauder? What could be worse than the heretic—the person who helps to send folks to a place of neverending, inescapable torment and suffering? If one believes as Aquinas does, then the death penalty for such folks seems imminently reasonable.

I am by no means a superior person let alone a perfect person

I only inquired into your sense of superiority, not perfection.

 

[Magnanimity]

But that doesn’t mean that I or everybody else who is not perfect can’t point at something that is supposed to be the very epitome of goodness and state that something smells wrong

Right, and just so we don’t miss the point here, if you are not superior to others in your conscience, then it stands to reason that the same knee-jerk reactions to the face-value gross violence one finds in the OT would be shared by…well, everyone. Your reactions would be my reactions, which would be Aquinas’ reactions… Why? Because we all have properly-functioning consciences. We aren’t special vis-a-vis each other in this regard. Our reactions are common because our consciences are common.

For myself, the first time I read thru the OT in the late 90’s I was absolutely shocked. The sheer number of violent passages is striking. Back then, I was a young, Evangelical Christian. So I certainly had no resources whatsoever to deal with what I was reading. I had no Jewish Rabbinical interpretive framework to go to. I knew nothing about the church’s incredibly long allegorical tradition of interpreting the OT. So, I went the route of the apologists bc it was the best thing going. It was for me, the only game in town.

But that was a long time ago. And in the ensuing years, my understanding has broadened and I appreciate the reasonable staring points of Origen, Philo of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Athanasius, etc, etc, etc. They start with the firm belief that the only possible God that could exist is one who is all-good, is love and whose mercy endures forever. So, oracular literalist approaches to the OT were never adopted by the early church fathers (or the medievals). In fact, many fathers argued that any Christian that approached the OT in this way was a simpleton and a fool (see Origen). All of those stories had for them spiritual truths to convey to the reader who was reading the OT within the tradition of the church, illumines by the Holy Spirit and looking for Christ in the text.

One thing I do ask is that this not be swept passages under the rug, nor should the morality of someone who finds those passages unpleasant be attacked.

And it is reasonable of this community to ask of you that you abandon this Modernist literalism that has no anchor in church history. It’s a product of the Reformation (and Catholic counter-Reformation, to be fair). Oracular literalism is not worth anyone’s time or effort. It leads to contradictions, a belief in a gross god and all manner of ridiculousness. There is a better way, Mike. Give that DB Hart video I referenced a viewing. I expect much of what he communicates will surprise you—for the better. You owe it to yourself to stop fighting the low-hanging fruit of Catholic literalist apologetical defenses of the OT.

 

[EndTimes]

“My father was baptized Catholic but not raised in the faith. For years my mom has prayed for him to take RCIA. This summer he signed up for his first ever Bible Study at their parish. He is SO disturbed by all the violence God seems to enact (the flood in Noah’s time, the plagues in Egypt, battles God told His people to initiate, etc.) He came to me last week genuinely confused. HOW could God not just permit but encourage and initiate these things??! I did not know what to say. Do ya’ll??”

Sure … A few things to keep that in context.

Violence and Grave Sin - That is DISOBEDIENCES to LOVE / GOD - were the Causations Forcing God’s Hand - for the ultimate and actually Loving purpose of God attempting to Point Man’s will to the Direction of the proper narrow path - which in Turn leads to Eternal Life - Heaven.

Spare the rod? Spoil the Child!

The Worst “thing” that can befall us is not punishment or even Death.

Better to receive a spanking - or even dying in the body

• than for a soul to Obstinately remain so Wrong
  so as to firmly turn their back upon God and Eternal Life.

 

[goout]

whatistrue:

I think a lot depends on your starting point. If you are already convinced that the Bible is so much bunk then of course it won’t help.

The book was intended to help those who were troubled by these types of passages, including non-believers. I’m not saying that there is only one possible reaction to reading the book, but I think it’s unfair to paint all those who find Horn’s book troubling as well as stubborn and unwilling to take in what he says.

You’re not the first to recommend his book, and likely you won’t be the last. Here’s a thread from a few months ago where “Hard Sayings” was brought p. So as not to derail this thread, you may want to check that out for a specific example from that book that I felt was appalling.

And I must say that not every specific passage that some have issues with was directly addressed, nor was it a “here it is, the matter is settled” sort of thing but rather a demonstration to me that my mindset was stuck in 20th Century America while I was reading about BCE Middle Eastern culture. As I said, it helped.

And this is moral relativism, which I’ve noted is something believers decry while at the same time are the first to use in an a discussion. God is said to be all-knowing, able to see past, present, and future. Yet, what is written doesn’t appear to be from an all-knowing or all-loving being. At no point in history is right to kill someone for picking up sticks on the wrong day. At no point in history is right to call a man righteous who offered his daughters up to be raped by numerous men. At no point in history is it right to say a man can be beaten to death by a rod if he dies a day later because he is merely property. I’m glad you found solace in Trent Horn’s book, but I simply couldn’t accept what was being served.

Catholics believe that Christ reveals God fully and finally.

So if a scripture passage seems to portray an arbitrary God, or an indifferent God, or a violent and vengeful God who commands immoral acts, how can we resolve that dissonance?

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

This sounds like the consequentialist approach to ethics, which has its strengths and weaknesses, as does Kant’s theory. I’m uncertain how consequentialism gives you moral norms that always and everywhere obtain.

It’s not perfect, as certainly no approach is It does have one advantage over religious ethics: In cases where the religion and the group guiding it advocate for something morally objectionable, there is no ingrained need to accept it Take the Bible and the Church’s position on the violence of slavery over its first 18+ centuries.

How do you figure that? If Aquinas believes in the likelihood of eternal conscious torment (Hell) for some people. (Bearing in mind the fact that you yourself don’t believe in such a place is an immaterial consideration here.) And a heretic helps to send more folks to this Hell, wouldn’t it follow that being a heretic is a much worse offense than being, say, a defrauder? What could be worse than the heretic—the person who helps to send folks to a place of neverending, inescapable torment and suffering? If one believes as Aquinas does, then the death penalty for such folks seems imminently reasonable.

It’s enlightening when I read comments like these knowing theme’s not a lot keeping people like me from being murdered lest I might convince someone to question their faith. Does God not take into consideration the influence others had in causing them to commit heresy? Does God not consider that reasonable people can assess the validity of the Catholic Church’s teachings and could come to different conclusions? If what is true then is true now, what is to keep heretics from being killed today? If we didn’t live in a society that allowed for many faiths, would it be moral to murder a heretic? What is provably different from killing a heretic to those countries that kill Islamic heretics now?

Right, and just so we don’t miss the point here, if you are not superior

Stop. I never used the word superior. I said that all sides are not perfect. Viewpoints A and B can all not perfect, but A can be better than B. I AM superior in morality to people like Aquinas, Thomas More, and anybody else who thinks killing heretics is acceptable.

to others in your conscience, then it stands to reason that the same knee-jerk reactions to the face-value gross violence one finds in the OT would be shared by…well, everyone.

Incorrect. It is possible for two rational people to look at the same situation and not be in lockstep.

Your reactions would be my reactions, which would be Aquinas’ reactions… Why? Because we all have properly-functioning consciences.

There’s a bit of confusion here. You’re stating that because some people the OT as troublesome some don’t that the only logical conclusion is that those that do are in error (and not the other). There are many times where people see harm, violence, and subjugation and it doesn’t ping as problematic in their consciences. The only thing we can do is go through each example and determine if each is truly a matter of concern or not.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

So, I went the route of the apologists bc it was the best thing going. It was for me, the only game in town.

That’s a dangerous route to take. Finding truth involves seeking answers not desired answers. By going in with a predetermined result one is likely to ignore/downplay disconfirming evidence and overplaying the slightest nibble that supports one’s end goal.

But that was a long time ago. And in the ensuing years, /snip for space/ They start with the firm belief that the only possible God that could exist is one who is all-good, is love and whose mercy endures forever.

And that presupposition allow one to call good that which is evil, to claim that injustice is really justice. his idea of ignoring everything that believers know they should be embarrassed by and taking as true everything they aren’t wouldn’t fly if any other faith tried it.

So, oracular literalist approaches to the OT were never adopted by the early church fathers (or the medievals). /snip for space/

One thing you and D.B. Hart have done is try to say that because the entirety of the OT can’t be literal than none of it is literal. It would be like saying that because a body can’t be all bones then a body has no bones. Different groups of Christians have had different ideas as to what was and what was not literal. Some say that Genesis 1 has to be literal otherwise whence came original sin. Some say the story of the Binding of Isaac was true. Christians are quick to point out if an archeological find suggests evidence of some battle mentioned in the OT.

Here is what I think is a reasonable method to address troubling passages:

1. Is a passage fully/partially literal, or figurative? If partially literal, what parts? Just because the passage is troublesome does not mean one can just toss it aside. Presupposing it must be figurative dodges the questions but keeps us from finding answers. If you bury your head long enough everything starts to taste like sand.
2. If it’s partiall or fully figurative then it what way? There is no one way to say it’s figurative. Take the story of Jephthah. Some take it literally that his daughter was burned as part of a bargain God fulfilled. Others say the parts about the bargain were true, but that the “burnt offering” was figurative in that she only maintained her virginity. Still others say the whole story was figurative. We can take Genesis 2 where D.B. Hart lists different interpretations. Just saing a passage is figurative is insufficient.
3. Does the passage paint God in a bad light? Even a figurative passage can still peg God as a monster. The violence to Job, or Lot’s wife, or to the thousands that supposedly died due to an error in David’s census doesn’t show God as good even if figurative. Each has to be dissected and analyzed. Lumping everything together, saying it’s not literal, then giving a thumbs up doesn’t address how it speaks to God’s love and mercy (or apparent lack thereof).

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

And it is reasonable of this community to ask of you that you abandon this Modernist literalism that has no anchor in church history.

Again even if we say the OT isn’t wholly literal doesn’t mean that there can’t be parts that are, nor does a passage not being literal clear God of the violence in it.

Ignore that I’m an atheist. There are great many believers who struggle with these violent passages. To tell them to dive headling into OhThatDoesn’tCounism is an affront to their basic sensibilities and to their integrity.

It’s a product of the Reformation (and Catholic counter-Reformation, to be fair). Oracular literalism is not worth anyone’s time or effort. It leads to contradictions, a belief in a gross god and all manner of ridiculousness. There is a better way, Mike.

A better way is to let facts take you where they may. If you look through various Catholic apologetics you will see that the Church allows for one to believe in a literal interpretation of some or all of the OT. This includes the more embarrassing ones.

I did watch that vidoe. It was ok for the most part although I was reminded of this comic strip. I’ve mentioned some of the problems I had with his talk already. It’s clear he doesn’t like people using the historical-critical method exclusively in their exegesis.

It’s interesting when he talked about Greogry of Nyssa and his writing on Moses that D.B. himself says that his reading and others while all true aren’t necessarily the complete and exhaustive readings on the matter. In other words, one can read a passage as violent and it could be true; except he inserted 3 premises (presuppositions) for reading passages in general. The first presupposition is that it speaks to the truth of Christ. The second presupposition is it must arrive within and be confirmed over time by the community of faith that lives within by its fidelity. The third is to use the Holy Spirit. Two things to note from the last one: Multiple Christian arriving at very different readings can claim to rely on the Holy Spirit for those readings. He also claims that one can not be a theologian without believing in the Holy Spirit (which makes no sense as a theologian studies multiple faiths, not just Christianity)

You owe it to yourself to stop fighting the low-hanging fruit of Catholic literalist apologetical defenses of the OT.

The fact that apologists can’t give convincing or logical answers on that low-hanging fruit makes a person doubt that any better answers are awaiting higher up the tree.

So if you would like I’d ask if you can dig deeper on one aspect of violence in the OT. In other words, do more than say it’s not literal so forget it. Take the 3 step process I gave above and analyze how we can determine if a passage is literal, how to interpret its figurative parts, then show if it puts God in a bad light.

Or you can take the violence in the OT regarding slavery. There is no figurative section, no allegory. It’s in the middle of a list or rules and instructions. It’s all tort. Show us how one is not to be offended at the violence shown there.

 

[Vico]

Critical point.

OT = God getting sick and tired of humans unable to obey his laws

NT = God lovingly offering his only son so that man can have a decent chance to get to heaven. God didn’t have to do it. Remember in Genesis it was fall of Adam/Eve that inclined man to sin , thus so many couldn’t abide Gods law in OT

In my classes studying the Old Testament we found that God continually held to His covenant even though the people periodically fell into sin. God did not abandon Israel (for example, see Ezekiel 11:14 – 11:25). Forgiveness is conditional however upon repentance.

 

[Magnanimity]

It’s not perfect, as certainly no approach is It does have one advantage over religious ethics

Ethics is a fundamentally human endeavor—good, right action, within personal or social contexts. So, a proper contrast of consequentialism would be with deontology (eg, Kant) or virtue ethics (Aristotle and Aquinas). Whatever “religious ethics” might be, it would only build on that which is known naturally. As in, do folks need a list of “10 commandments” to know they should not steal or kill or lie? Obviously not. Knowing such things comes via the formation of conscience lived out in social contexts, right?

It’s enlightening when I read comments like these

The only “light” I intended to introduce with the Aquinas example was the logical coherence of his position, which you haven’t undermined. You instead asked several questions. To reiterate, IF Aquinas’ premises are true, then his position on heretics rationally follows. So, the only way to undermine the conclusion is to call one or more of the premises into question.
Not that I’m asking you to do this. I was merely challenging any suggestion that Aquinas’ position on heretics was not rational. It was imminently rational. (For my part, his conclusion does not follow because he in fact does have a false premise—eternal, conscious torment for some people is unlikely to be true. You likely agree, so his conclusion is undermined. Hence, his position on heretics is unwarranted.)

Stop. I never used the word superior. I said that all sides are not perfect. Viewpoints A and B can all not perfect, but A can be better than B. I AM superior in morality

I’ll be charitable and assume you were in a hurry here. Care to rephrase “A and B can all not perfect…?” Second, you balk at me using the word “superior,” then you emphatically self-describe as morally superior?! What in tarnation do you think you’re doing here?

Also, as I’ve just shown above, Aquinas’ fault lied not in having an inferior conscience to Mike from NJ, nor in committing an error in logic. Rather, it consisted in having a false premise—being committed to the bleak notion of an eternal and inescapable hell emanating the pen of St Augustine.

Incorrect. It is possible for two rational people to look at the same situation and not be in lockstep.

Not in the senses that you’re arguing here. If it were really possible for folks to have such widely divergent consciences, one to another, then you would have no argument. Everything you have thus far said about slavery, the raping of women, etc has used “always and everywhere it is wrong” language. The existence of these moral norms forms the thrust of your arguments. You can make no such arguments without (1) the existence of moral norms in the world and (2) the ubiquity of well-formed consciences. Without the existence of both, you’re just a guy named Mike having an emotional reaction to biblical stories and giving his strongly-felt opinions.

 

[Magnanimity]

By going in with a predetermined result one is likely to ignore/downplay disconfirming evidence and overplaying the slightest nibble that supports one’s end goal.

Unless one can see that conscience is absolutely primary, as St John Henry Newman did. As long as one listens to her conscience, it will be her solid guide. In this particular case, it was my guide. I read what the late apologist Norman Geisler had to say on all these violence-in-the-OT issues and was dissatisfied. I had no real idea how to resolve the problems, but I was fairly convinced that his answers were not cutting it. But I was a young Evangelical, as I’ve said. Evangelicals, much like yourself apparently, are at an acute disadvantage in knowing anything outside of the Modern Era when it comes biblical interpretation. By sharing the Hart video with you, I was merely trying to help you see what the Modern Era did to all Western approaches to the Bible, both Protestant and Catholic too (sadly for me). But by uniting myself with the unified approach of the church for 1500 years prior to Modernism, I am in step with that tradition.

 

[Magnanimity]

And that presupposition allow one to call good that which is evil, to claim that injustice is really justice.

Aside from being awfully ungenerous of you, I can only note my prior points which you should feel obliged to try to undermine. Consciences and moral norms are universal! If they are not, then, again, you are merely emoting and sharing your deep, internal convictions on these matters, but you would be incapable of arguing with anyone. Moral norms and functioning consciences are the bedrocks of all your opposition to violence in the OT.

One thing you and D.B. Hart have done

Goodness Mike, I hope you were just in a hurry. “Me and DB Hart?!?” Who are you kidding? The video was sent to help you see that the historical situation was, rather, 1500 years of unified church interpretive tradition, how about that? Mike and Catholic fundamentalists can be ahistorical all they want. You can insist (with no evidence) that oracular literalism goes back to the beginning. But if this is what you insist upon, I cannot take it seriously. I have no reason to. If this is the best you can do, I will have to leave this side-conversation of you and your literalist interlocutors to yourselves. And you can congratulate yourself when your interlocutors cannot address your criticisms because they (like Aquinas did) have bought into a faulty premise, which you also share. Namely, that the OT is simply literal, narrative history.

Again even if we say the OT isn’t wholly literal doesn’t mean that there can’t be parts that are

I need to ask you again the question I asked above because I don’t recall that you answered it. “Have you gone to Jewish commentaries to try to make more heads or tails of these OT passengers that trouble you? What Catholic/Orthodox commentaries have you sought out?” As I said above, I can only assume that any reasonable person would do such when engaging with any religious text, be it Mahabharata, Qu’ran or Bible, especially if they are entirely outside of those religious communities, as you are by admission.

A better way is to let facts take you where they may. If you look through various Catholic apologetics

Wasn’t it you yourself stating above that just going to the apologists for confirmation of what is previously believed may not be the best idea? Seems like you’re taking away with your left hand what you have given with your right. You don’t get to special-plead Mike. If the apologists are insufficient sources for me, so they are for you too. As I’ve said, and you can choose to willfully ignore as you see fit, there is a better way—it’s called church history. Modernism in the West has many peculiarities, but if you cannot get beyond it, then…ok! But just know you’re fighting the good fight against the low-hanging fruit of contemporary apologetics. If/when you’re ready to take things a little bit more seriously, I’ll be here. Take care.

 

[John10]

That is precisely why we trust in Church teaching in regard to interpreting the Bible. There are many hard passages which without the needed understanding and context can be easily misunderstood.

I would recommend an excellent book from Trent Horn on that regard it is called “Hard Sayings: A Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties”, another great book on this subject is called
“Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God” by Paul Copan.

They both did extensive studies on these issues.

 

[OneSheep]

Thank you all for your comments and recommendations! I just want to share that my dad has appreciated everything & is feeling much more at peace!

Hi Jen,

I have read most of the thread (which is a good one, I might add). I am glad that your father feels better about what he is doing.

I had seen that video by Bishop Barron before, and I really like it, and learned something from the approach of using the Gospel, and especially Jesus’ life and crucifixion, as a foundation upon which to read the rest of scripture.

Given this, I think that there is something to add, to help being able to accept the violence justified in the OT. From the cross, Jesus said “forgive them, for they know not what they do”. What Jesus exemplified in these words was the grace to understand why the crowd was murdering Him. (Note: “understand” means “to stand among”.) Jesus saw that crowd did not know who He was, His intrinsic value (neither His divinity or His humanity). The crowd had also misunderstood His words and ministry, were seeing Jesus as a threat to the establishment, and many other untruths.

So while Bishop Barron is guiding us to use a symbolic approach to addressing the violent acts, I think what the Gospel calls us to do is to prayerfully reflect on what stirs in us when we read about the violence. How do we feel about the perpetrators of violence? If we hold something against them, we are called to forgive, and Jesus calls us to a deeper forgiveness, one where we “stand among” the men as they are killing their enemies.

Parallels can be drawn between the crowd who killed Jesus and the soldiers who destroyed their enemies in the OT, both believed they were doing God’s will.

When I prayerfully “stand among” the warriors and their leaders, I reflect on what would be going on in my own mind as I am doing those horrific acts. First of all, I could be in a state of angry righteousness, in which case the humanity of my enemy is blocked in my mind, I am blind to their value. I could be in a state of despair, where my family is hungry, and I see slaughter and theft of resource as the only means to survive; despair also creates a blindness. My mind is again drawn to see what I am doing as “righteous”, even commanded by God, for it serves my and my families’ very survival. In order to do the violence, though, my mind finds some rationale, some means by which the evil I do is a justified punishment of the other. When my mind is in this mode of punishing, I am blind to the humanity, the value, of the other; this is an automatic phenomenon, it takes prayerful awareness, reflection, and forgiveness to overcome, to repent from, this aspect of our nature.

So what Jesus does from the cross is to show us the means by which we can overcome our nature, transcend the natural blindness, through understanding and forgiving those who we “hold something against”, those who we resent. One can understand (stand among) the mindset of wanting to punish injustice and also understand and forgive people for seeing such punishment as commanded by God.

 

[EndTimes]

A) Ignore that I’m an atheist.

B) There are great many believers who struggle with these violent passages.

Whereas (B) exists - and is deserving of more commentary, even (A) Atheist POV’s when viewed in potential broader contexts - cannot easily be taken as being totally disconnected

FOR. . Even Death (of the Body) Itself - cannot be fully understood by anyone - unless it’s viewed - and perhaps even re-viewed for the sake of digestion - along with One’s Undying Spirit - when placed against the Backdrop of Eternity in Heaven - or not.

And therein lies that rub…

What must be unacceptable for some… .
… is Qualitatively understood differently and thus fully accepted by others.

_

_

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

I’m going to jump around a bit. You asked about a miswitten word. It originally was “Viewpoints A and B and C can all not be perfect, but A can be better than B and B can be better than C.” Because there is a limit on characters in each post and I’m limited to three consecutive posts I had to pare them down. Because of this I’m going to just go over the general topics in your last posts instead of picking out each individual item.

As far as the point being made in my initial quote we know in general that things that are not perfect can be better than other non-perfect things. In basketball terms Lebron James isn’t perfect but he’s better than many other players. The same goes for ethical viewpoints, none are perfect but some are better than others.

With regards to similarities between believers in reading OT scripture, that’s simply a matter of self-selection. By specifically choosing the readings of believers – people who think the violence in the OT can be explained away – it’s certainly not a surprise that the answer you get all say the violence in the OT can be explained away. There are others who are not included in your scope who see things very differently (and IMO are not going in determined to whitewash the violence they read. And as I explained in my last set of posts these readings do have some variance. In the example I gave some state that the whole story of Jephthah and his daughter was figurative, some said just the meaning of “burnt offering” was figurative, and others said it was completely literal but that it was justified. If we bring this to the NT, the understanding of the Olivet Discourse leads some to preterism (in various forms) and others to futurism (in various forms). There is no one single definitive reading of the Bible.

As far as your point about conscience being absolutely primary with regard to my point about presuppositionalism leading to desired answers and not necessarily true ones, I’m glad that it led to the faith that you feel happy and comfortable with. But you would have to agree that there are people out there who apply their own consciences and come to very different results. By going in to Christianity ONLY accepting answers that won’t cast God in negative light it’s possible to strain credulity in accepting those answers. What happened when you came to the passage about David’s census which angered God because he wasn’t given 1 shekel per person, and David had to choose between three punishments for his people? How long and hard did you have to go to find an explanation that made moral sense to you?

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

And that’s the key: Can a reading of a Bible passage be applied so that one can feel that its violence is acceptable or justified? It’s very easy to say it’s not literal and leave it at that, but that doesn’t address any of the issues a reader can experience when encounter violent passages in the OT. It’s all vague. It’s all hippy-dippy language without substance.

That’s why I gave a very straightforward three step process to break down a passage to best focus on the meat of such a passage for violence:

1. How much of it is literal and how much is figurative?
2. Of the figurative portion in what specific way can we say that is figurative?
3. Taking into account the literal portion (if any) and figurative portion (if any), does this cast God in a bad light?

I asked if you would be able to take a passage that some have trouble with because of its violence and asked you to apply your reading to it so as to remove those concerns. It didn’t go unnoticed that this portion of my post was skipped. I asked if you could tackle the violence of slavery in the OT with your reading. That too was untouched. It would be like a teacher asking you to discuss the historical issues cited in “The Grapes of Wrath” and your response in full being “Tom Joad wasn’t a real person.”

So can you do it? Can you apply your understanding of these passages in general to a specific passage in a clear non-vague way to show the violence in it doesn’t reflect poorly on God and the faith?

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

@EndTimes I must admit to having a little trouble with the thrust of your post, and that may be on me. You say that believers deserve more commentary on the matter of violence in the OT; but you also say that what is unacceptable for some is fully accepted by others.

If you could, could you explain what specifically allows these others to accept this violence where others can’t accept it? To me, saying that some accepted and some don’t doesn’t really address the discussion being made in this thread.

 

[EndTimes]

I must admit to having a little trouble with the thrust of your post, and that may be on me

Could be on me maybe…

Without intending to… sometimes I get too dense in my attempts to convey a meaning

Getting back to this:

Even Death (of the Body) Itself - cannot be fully understood by anyone unless it’s viewed along with One’s Undying Spirit when placed against the Backdrop of Eternity in Heaven…

In other words, If one believes the death of the body is a Finality,
their view on violence must differ from those who believe we’re a body&spirit
of which the spirit lives. and when we align with Love and Truth
shall join with Love and Truth with God. .

In other words - by necessity there must be radically different ‘reactions’ of believers and atheists
with regard to pain, suffering and even death (of the body)

_

 

[Magnanimity]

Good to hear from you again, Mike. To begin, we know that in these forums there is always the dual-challenge of making the points that one feels are important and also addressing the issues raised by your interlocutor. In this particular thread, you and I have each raised points that we each clearly felt were important, but which were unaddressed by the other person.

Before I address your issues, allow me to raise again several of the points I’ve already brought up and invite you to address them.

1. Apparently, you believe that when you read the OT, you are simply reading history. What justification do you have for this belief? Does it come from your familiarization with the consensus of Jewish scholarship on the issue? Orthodox or Catholic scholarship? Fundamentalists? You’ve certainly arrived at this belief somehow. So, where did it come from? Scholarship today suggests strongly that many books of the OT have been redacted over time. Scholarship also suggests that most of the books speaking about various historical events (eg, when a particular non-Jewish king/ruler reigned) were likely written centuries after the events discussed in the sacred writing. And then, once these stories were finally written down, the prior point above often comes into play (eg, “Deutero-Isaiah” as a second author of the Book of Isaiah or the Psalms being an ongoing compilation of hymns, written and collected over centuries). So before these stories were eventually written, they were most likely what? They were most likely transmitted orally, generation to generation, for decades upon decades and centuries upon centuries. Given all of this, I have to ask again, what justifies anyone (including you) believing that what you are reading is simply history rather than carefully crafted religious writings? And I’m not asking about a genre issue. I’m specifically speaking about the books of the OT that seem to you to be historical (whichever ones you think those are—Judges, Samuel, Chronicles, whatever).
2. A reasonable person would seek out the religious community that produced the “sacred writings” for assistance with understanding those writings. How much of this have you done? What Jewish, Orthodox, Catholic sources have you sought out? (And no, neither CA nor CAF would count as scholarship.)

 

[Magnanimity]

1. Can you come to terms with the allegorical hermeneutical approach of 1500 years of church history, as Hart expressed it? Again, these principles were: to look for a true reading of the text, in harmony with the mind of the whole church, illumined by the grace of the Holy Spirit and testifying to Christ (who is himself the Revelation of God). Can you accept the historical data here, or can you not? And if not, why not? What reasons would you offer for disbelieving this? And can you see, as Hart argues, that the eroding of church authority in the time of the Reformation would naturally move the group who was rejecting church authority to rest that authority elsewhere—like just within the Bible itself (from which came concepts like “biblical infallibility” and, later, “biblical inerrancy”)? Can you see all this? Or is the historical information from the transition out of late Medieval to early Modernity too foreign to you?
2. Can you accept that moral norms exist in the world and that properly-functioning consciences are also the norm? And, further, can you see that outside of both of these realities, you are merely emoting and making no rational argument? That is, if you cannot appeal to my conscience through a commonly-held morality, how can you argue that anything in the OT might cast God in a “bad” light?

Try to address these concerns I’ve previously raised, and I’ll address the specific issues you’ve raised again.