Reconciling two partciular passages; help please?

  • Thread starter Thread starter PokeYouInDaEye
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
P

PokeYouInDaEye

Guest
Hi, I’m wondering if y’all can help me reconcile two passages in regards to our theology? I’m not too familiar with the Isaiah passage, and figured that there’d be some well-versed folk here:

–context → a prof. in a philosophy of religion class posed to us the question: how can Christians call God omni-benevolent in the light of such a contrast as these two passages?–
  1. (1 Corinthians 13:1-7) “I may speak in tongues of men or of angels, but if I am without love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal… I may have faith strong enough o move mountains; but if I have no love, I am nothing. I may dole out all I possess… but if I have no love, I am none the better. Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, not conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offense. Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other men’s sins, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.”
  2. (Isaiah 10:5-6) “Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger - the club in their hands is my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.”
 
My response in class was two-fold:
  1. Loving is not being a doormat - the rebuke and limits to toleration of abuse are valid in a loving relationship.
  2. The criticisms forwarded against the Christian God rely on statements such as “this does not seem loving,” or, “this is scandalous,” but such statements to not substantiate those claims with any cohesive theory of what is right or what is loving except with a half-formed concept based on personal opinion. An argument against why the Isaiah passage is not “loving” requires a reasonably demonstrated concept of love, which can be applied as a criticism of the Christian understanding of love and goodness (opinion does not suffice).
I look forward to hearing from y’all! Thanks in advance!
 
I’d suggest reading some Isaiah 10:1-5, which gives a little more clarity.

Just by the nature of the phrasing of the question, this seems intended to prey on the “God is all loving to the detriment of justice/righteousness/discipline” crowd. Does a father who spanks his child not love his child? Further, God is perfectly loving but his is also perfectly just.
 
The trouble I think is with #2, right?

Well, God is justice. Love is just. Just like a parent punishes a child a spanking out of Love, so does God punish those he loves to set them right again.

To modern standards, it may seems severe, but God is the inventor of Love and Justice…so to disagree with His ways implies something is wrong with our definition of Love, not His.
 
God’s purpose with the law and judgments against Israel were in order to preserve the Jews as a distinct ethnic group through history. Does anyone know a Hittite, or a Jebusite, or a Babylonian, or an Egyptian who worships Ra and Isis? The Jews had a role to play in Jesus ministry and, I believe, the end times since they are mentioned in Revelations. So God periodically sending a prophet to Israel warning them to shape up or face the consequenses was an act of love by warning them of judgment to follow disobedience.
 
Check out the first response given to a similar question, here. The response addresses the way Sacred Scripture sometimes attributes evil actions directly to God when He merely permits the evil actions of evil men or evil spirits to occur.
 
PokeYouInDaEye said:
Hi, I’m wondering if y’all can help me reconcile two passages in regards to our theology? I’m not too familiar with the Isaiah passage, and figured that there’d be some well-versed folk here:

–context → a prof. in a philosophy of religion class posed to us the question: how can Christians call God omni-benevolent in the light of such a contrast as these two passages?–
  1. (1 Corinthians 13:1-7) “I may speak in tongues of men or of angels, but if I am without love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal… I may have faith strong enough o move mountains; but if I have no love, I am nothing. I may dole out all I possess… but if I have no love, I am none the better. Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, not conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offense. Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other men’s sins, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.”
  2. (Isaiah 10:5-6) “Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger - the club in their hands is my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.”
Click to expand...
in both instances Love prevails; the difference is in the economy. At the Old Testament time the Word had not been Incarnate and man existed mostly within temporal laws and conditions (eye for an eye); but even during this corporeal existence there existed the shadow of the spiritual to which God was guiding all of mankind–with exceptional attention to Israel, His First-born son.

At Jesus Incarnation the corporeal conditions were elevated as the spiritual existence was no longer a mere shadow of times to come but brought/forged into the temporal: Love was no longer a mere condition to strive towards but a living experience in which we were called to be as the spiritual radiated into the temporal: the children of God began their ascention from the flesh into the spirit.

Maran atha!

Angel
 
stevekehl said:
God’s purpose with the law and judgments against Israel were in order to preserve the Jews as a distinct ethnic group through history. Does anyone know a Hittite, or a Jebusite, or a Babylonian, or an Egyptian who worships Ra and Isis? The Jews had a role to play in Jesus ministry and, I believe, the end times since they are mentioned in Revelations. So God periodically sending a prophet to Israel warning them to shape up or face the consequenses was an act of love by warning them of judgment to follow disobedience.
Click to expand...
…sorry, I must disagree with your conception of a ethnic pure Hebrew people as a condition prescribed by Yahweh God; thoughout the Old Testament we find that God cautions Israel not to be hatefull of foreigners and to treat those who lived among them as Israel’s own children as long as they accepted Yahweh God as the Only God and as long as they Worshiped alongside Israel Obeying all the conditions and Commandments set forth by Yahweh God.

Maran atha!

Angel
 
Thanks y’all. But any recommendations on good exegesis on the passage by someone in accord with Catholic theological teaching?
 
jcrichton said:
…sorry, I must disagree with your conception of a ethnic pure Hebrew people as a condition prescribed by Yahweh God; thoughout the Old Testament we find that God cautions Israel not to be hatefull of foreigners and to treat those who lived among them as Israel’s own children as long as they accepted Yahweh God as the Only God and as long as they Worshiped alongside Israel Obeying all the conditions and Commandments set forth by Yahweh God.

Maran atha!

Angel
Click to expand...
By your own admission foreigners had to convert to Judaism, in effect becoming a Jew, a child of Israel. The OT is also rife with God’s warning against marrying idol worshipers, as well as in the NT:
2Corinthians 6:14 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

The Jews weren’t required to be racially pure, but foreign converts had to be circumcised, and live by the commands of the Law of Moses. So a foreigner would have to be observant, or should have been, in order to marry into a Jewish family. This is the definition of an ethnic group, a common language, religion, food, customs, etc…
 
stevekehl said:
By your own admission foreigners had to convert to Judaism, in effect becoming a Jew, a child of Israel. The OT is also rife with God’s warning against marrying idol worshipers, as well as in the NT:
2Corinthians 6:14 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

The Jews weren’t required to be racially pure, but foreign converts had to be circumcised, and live by the commands of the Law of Moses. So a foreigner would have to be observant, or should have been, in order to marry into a Jewish family. This is the definition of an ethnic group, a common language, religion, food, customs, etc…
Click to expand...
…sorry I misunderstood the meaning (“distinct” threw me off, I thought that you meant “pure” or separate due to racial/geographical characteristics)… :o

I concur with you that the separation was due to religious form of worship!

Maran atha!

Angel
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top