Steve Ray-Amalekites 1-26-15

[PRmerger]

Ahh… there we go. Finally.

It’s not that Benedict says it; it’s not that Akin says it. It’s that you extrapolate from their statements to reach your own conclusion distinct from theirs.

Thank you.

Don’t forget that Fr. Barron says it as well.

 

[PRmerger]

Ahh… there we go. Finally.

It’s not that Benedict says it; it’s not that Akin says it. It’s that you extrapolate from their statements to reach your own conclusion distinct from theirs.

Thank you.

Could you please limn how my conclusion is “distinct from theirs”?

 

[Gorgias]

Could you please limn how my conclusion is “distinct from theirs”?

No, but I can certainly explain it.

You, yourself, said that it’s an extrapolation – therefore, it’s an application of a principle of theirs onto a context they didn’t assert. For example, Akin discusses rape and you extrapolated to the Amalekites.

This means that, in order to demonstrate the reasonableness of your case, you can’t just point to Akin or Benedict: you have to prove that your extrapolation is a valid application of their reasoning. And, in fact, you don’t do this – rather, you simply assert it, and then ask us to refute it. Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

But hey, since you’re excited about the word ‘limn’, let me limn it for you:

http://notreligious.typepad.com/.a/6a00e552e3404e8833014e86ba13fc970d-pi

Just picture ‘rape’ at x=today, and ‘Amalekites’ at “by late next month.” Your “four dozen husbands” assertion that “it must be metaphor” is what we’re complaining about.

 

[clem456]

The senses of Scripture

115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.

116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: "All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal."83

117 The spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God’s plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.

1. The allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ’s victory and also of Christian Baptism.84

1. The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written “for our instruction”.85

1. The anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, “leading”). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.86

118 A medieval couplet summarizes the significance of the four senses:
The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith;
The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.87 119 "It is the task of exegetes to work, according to these rules, towards a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture in order that their research may help the Church to form a firmer judgement. For, of course, all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgement of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God."88
But I would not believe in the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church already moved me.89

 

[clem456]

vatican.va/holy_father/be…domini_en.html

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.

 

[clem456]

vatican.va/holy_father/be…domini_en.html

The fundamentalist interpretation of sacred Scripture

1. The attention we have been paying to different aspects of the theme of biblical hermeneutics now enables us to consider a subject which came up a number of times during the Synod: that of the fundamentalist interpretation of sacred Scripture.[145] The Pontifical Biblical Commission, in its document The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, has laid down some important guidelines. Here I would like especially to deal with approaches which fail to respect the authenticity of the sacred text, but promote subjective and arbitrary interpretations. The “literalism” championed by the fundamentalist approach actually represents a betrayal of both the literal and the spiritual sense, and opens the way to various forms of manipulation, as, for example, by disseminating anti-ecclesial interpretations of the Scriptures. “The basic problem with fundamentalist interpretation is that, refusing to take into account the historical character of biblical revelation, it makes itself incapable of accepting the full truth of the incarnation itself. As regards relationships with God, fundamentalism seeks to escape any closeness of the divine and the human … for this reason, it tends to treat the biblical text as if it had been dictated word for word by the Spirit. It fails to recognize that the word of God has been formulated in language and expression conditioned by various periods”.[146] Christianity, on the other hand, perceives in the words the Word himself, the Logos who displays his mystery through this complexity and the reality of human history.[147] The true response to a fundamentalist approach is “the faith-filled interpretation of sacred Scripture”. This manner of interpretation, “practised from antiquity within the Church’s Tradition, seeks saving truth for the life of the individual Christian and for the Church. It recognizes the historical value of the biblical tradition. Precisely because of the tradition’s value as an historical witness, this reading seeks to discover the living meaning of the sacred Scriptures for the lives of believers today”,[148] while not ignoring the human mediation of the inspired text and its literary genres.

 

[clem456]

ewtn.com/library/CURIA/PBCINTER.HTM

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH
Pontifical Biblical Commission
…
F. Fundamentalist Interpretation

Fundamentalist interpretation starts from the principle that the Bible, being the word of God, inspired and free from error, should be read and interpreted literally in all its details. But by “literal interpretation” it understands a naively literalist interpretation, one, that is to say, which excludes every effort at understanding the Bible that takes account of its historical origins and development.
…
Fundamentalism is right to insist on the divine inspiration of the Bible, the inerrancy of the word of God and other biblical truths included in its five fundamental points. But its way of presenting these truths is rooted in an ideology which is not biblical, whatever the proponents of this approach might say. For it demands an unshakable adherence to rigid doctrinal points of view and imposes, as the only source of teaching for Christian life and salvation, a reading of the Bible which rejects all questioning and any kind of critical research.
…
Fundamentalism likewise tends to adopt very narrow points of view. It accepts the literal reality of an ancient, out-of-date cosmology simply because it is found expressed in the Bible; this blocks any dialogue with a broader way of seeing the relationship between culture and faith. Its relying upon a non-critical reading of certain texts of the Bible serves to reinforce political ideas and social attitudes that are marked by prejudices–racism, for example(hello)–quite contrary to the Christian Gospel.

1. The Literal Sense

It is not only legitimate, it is also absolutely necessary to seek to define the precise meaning of texts as produced by their authors–what is called the “literal” meaning. St. Thomas Aquinas had already affirmed the fundamental importance of this sense (S. Th. I, q. 1,a. 10, ad 1).

The literal sense is not to be confused with the “literalist” sense to which fundamentalists are attached. It is not sufficient to translate a text word for word in order to obtain its literal sense. One must understand the text according to the literary conventions of the time. When a text is metaphorical, its literal sense is not that which flows immediately from a word-to-word translation (e.g. “Let your loins be girt”: Lk. 12:35), but that which corresponds to the metaphorical use of these terms (“Be ready for action”). When it is a question of a story, the literal sense does not necessarily imply belief that the facts recounted actually took place, for a story need not belong to the genre of history but be instead a work of imaginative fiction.

 

[PRmerger]

No, but I can certainly explain it.

You, yourself, said that it’s an extrapolation -

Let me stop you right here.

What is the referent here, when you say “it’s”?

 

[Gorgias]

vatican.va/holy_father/be…domini_en.html

Clem,

We agree on all the things you’ve cited: there’s a literal sense and there are spiritual senses of Scripture; there are ‘dark passages’ in Scripture; and fundamentalism errs because it fails to understand that Scripture was written in a particular time and culture. (Incidentally, this last point doesn’t mean that historical narratives didn’t happen as written – it means that the presence of these historical narratives doesn’t imply that the same standards should be followed today.)

Interestingly, you quoted this line: “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.” You see, this doesn’t assert what you have (that is, that the “fog of history” and later revisionism account for the dark passages), but that these acts of violence “describe facts” – whether or not these practices are morally abhorrent.

Thank you for providing these citations. Now, please… read them; read them and recognize that your assertions are in conflict with them.

Blessings,
G.

 

[PRmerger]

But hey, since you’re excited about the word ‘limn’,

What a peculiar comment.

Could you please explain from whence it comes?

Do you simply mean that you didn’t know what the word means and you had to look it up first?

 

[PRmerger]

For example, Akin discusses rape and you extrapolated to the Amalekites.

No, Gorgias. He discusses genocide as well.

 

[clem456]

ewtn.com/library/CURIA/PBCINTER.HTM

The basic problem with fundamentalist interpretation of this kind is that, refusing to take into account the historical character of biblical revelation, it makes itself incapable of accepting the full truth of the incarnation itself. As regards relationships with God, fundamentalism seeks to escape any closeness of the divine and the human. It refuses to admit that the inspired word of God has been expressed in human language and that this word has been expressed, under divine inspiration, by human authors possessed of limited capacities and resources. For this reason, it tends to treat the biblical text as if it had been dictated word for word by the Spirit. It fails to recognize that the word of God has been formulated in language and expression conditioned by various periods. It pays no attention to the literary forms and to the human ways of thinking to be found in the biblical texts, many of which are the result of a process extending over long periods of time and bearing the mark of very diverse historical situations.

Fundamentalism also places undue stress upon the inerrancy of certain details in the biblical texts, especially in what concerns historical events or supposedly scientific truth. It often historicizes material which from the start never claimed to be historical. It considers historical everything that is reported or recounted with verbs in the past tense, failing to take the necessary account of the possibility of symbolic or figurative meaning.

 

[Gorgias]

No, Gorgias. He discusses genocide as well.

I took a look at his site, and the collection of posts on the topic. Couldn’t find the references. Could you point me to one?

 

[clem456]

ewtn.com/library/CURIA/PBCINTER.HTM

The fundamentalist approach is dangerous, for it is attractive to people who look to the Bible for ready answers to the problems of life. It can deceive these people, offering them interpretations that are pious but illusory, instead of telling them that the Bible does not necessarily contain an immediate answer to each and every problem. Without saying as much in so many words, fundamentalism actually invites people to a kind of intellectual suicide. It injects into life a false certitude, for it unwittingly confuses the divine substance of the biblical message with what are in fact its human limitations.

 

[Gorgias]

Gorgias:

But hey, since you’re excited about the word ‘limn’,

What a peculiar comment.

Could you please explain from whence it comes?

Sure.

PRmerger:

And the inspired author limned this metaphorical slaughter in the text.

PRmerger:

Could you please limn how my conclusion is “distinct from theirs”?

(and, from another active thread: )

(Did you ever limn what these historical errors are? Haven’t caught up with all the posts yet.)

You seem enamored with the word.

Do you simply mean that you didn’t know what the word means and you had to look it up first?

No; I’m just teasing that you’re using a $25 word, when “describe” would work just as well…

 

[Peter_Plato]

No. God never commands killing.

This seems to be question begging because he seems to have in the OT passages.

You claim he metaphorically commanded killing but did not really do so.

I take it that means something like Jesus saying, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.” In other words, Jesus didn’t really mean we should cut off hands. I would, however, insist that he meant what he said, qualified by the fact that he added that nothing outside the heart of a man or woman (nothing external to the will or centre of intention of a person) ever CAUSES a person to sin, but if it did a person SHOULD cut it off because it is better to enter eternal life without a hand than not enter at all. Jesus’ words are entirely literal but wrapped in metaphor.

If we take humanity as a corpus of sorts, then the Amalekites could have been very like that hand that Jesus counselled ought to be “cut off” if the entire body were put in jeopardy. The question is whether the Amalekites could reasonably have been understood to pose the same kind of threat to humanity that say a cancer poses to a human body. Could that have been a reason why they needed to be surgically removed?

I don’t know, but it is possible. Especially considering what needed to be safeguarded later on in history – the birth of the Messiah to a Jewish woman. This was an historical eventuality requiring the historical narrative to arrive there.

This opens huge questions in terms of God’s role in history and how his providential will is accomplished through time and with respect to human free will. How could God assure the birth of a blameless Virgin at a particular time in history? Sheer miraculous intervention? I don’t know about that.

What do you say to this, then: that you can think of no instances where rape would be permissible does not mean there can be none possible.

Again, God can give and take life as He sees fit.

Death has its place in terms of preventing determined agents from committing determinable evil. I am not clear that rape can function as a necessary preventative in the way that killing can. Which is why killing may be permissible – and IS under certain circumstances – but not rape.

God commanding* us* to kill an innocent? Not so much.

I don’t know. That would depend entirely on God having justifiable warrant. Clearly reasons human beings have for refraining from killing innocents do not entirely constrain God from having HIS reasons for doing so.

This just seems to reduce God’s moral will and constraints upon that will to being identical with constraints on human moral wills – which I find no reason, in principle, for thinking to be the truth of the matter.

 

[Gorgias]

ewtn.com/library/CURIA/PBCINTER.HTM
The fundamentalist approach is dangerous, for it is attractive to people who look to the Bible for ready answers to the problems of life.

This is one of the reasons that your assertions that I’m literalist/fundamentalist in my interpretive stance is so inexplicable. If we decide that the command to place the Amalekites under the ban is factual, it doesn’t make make for easy “ready answers” to any problems! In fact, it really challenges us!

it unwittingly confuses the divine substance of the biblical message with what are in fact its human limitations.

This, too, hurts your thesis. No one here is saying “if the Amalek narrative is historically factual, then it means that God wants to kill heathens.” Now that would be a fundamentalist take on the passage! No one here is asserting that. We’re just saying that the “human limitations” exist; and, although the spiritual sense (as advocated by you and PR, using a variety of examples, including Fr Barron’s homily) exists, it doesn’t absolve us from facing the fact that “the ban” was a real part of the human experience of the pre-exilic Israelites in the Promised Land.

 

[clem456]

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c2a3.htm

I. CHRIST - THE UNIQUE WORD OF SACRED SCRIPTURE

101 In order to reveal himself to men, in the condescension of his goodness God speaks to them in human words: "Indeed the words of God, expressed in the words of men, are in every way like human language, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when he took on himself the flesh of human weakness, became like men."63

102 Through all the words of Sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single Word, his one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely:64
…
108 Still, the Christian faith is not a “religion of the book.” Christianity is the religion of the “Word” of God, a word which is “not a written and mute word, but the Word is incarnate and living”.73 If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, "open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures."74
…
III. THE HOLY SPIRIT, INTERPRETER OF SCRIPTURE

109 In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.75

110 In order to discover the sacred authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. "For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression."76

111 But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less important principle of correct interpretation, without which Scripture would remain a dead letter. "Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written."77

The Second Vatican Council indicates three criteria for interpreting Scripture in accordance with the Spirit who inspired it.78

112 1. Be especially attentive “to the content and unity of the whole Scripture”. Different as the books which compose it may be, Scripture is a unity by reason of the unity of God’s plan, of which Christ Jesus is the center and heart, open since his Passover.79

The phrase “heart of Christ” can refer to Sacred Scripture, which makes known his heart, closed before the Passion, as the Scripture was obscure. But the Scripture has been opened since the Passion; since those who from then on have understood it, consider and discern in what way the prophecies must be interpreted.80

113 2. Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church”. According to a saying of the Fathers, Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church’s heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God’s Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture (". . . according to the spiritual meaning which the Spirit grants to the Church"81).

114 3. Be attentive to the analogy of faith.82 By “analogy of faith” we mean the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of Revelation.
…
125 The Gospels are the heart of all the Scriptures “because they are our principal source for the life and teaching of the Incarnate Word, our Savior”.98
…
128 The Church, as early as apostolic times,104 and then constantly in her Tradition, has illuminated the unity of the divine plan in the two Testaments through typology, which discerns in God’s works of the Old Covenant prefigurations of what he accomplished in the fullness of time in the person of his incarnate Son.

129 Christians therefore read the Old Testament in the light of Christ crucified and risen.

 

[Gorgias]

Let me stop you right here.

What is the referent here, when you say “it’s”?

We’re talking about your conclusion. Therefore, “your conclusion is an extrapolation”…

 

[clem456]

bibleversereflections.blogspot.com/2012/01/moses-and-amalek-icon-of-church.html

What is blocking a lot of people with their relationship to the church.
The number one problem I have found when talking to people outside the church and trying to get them to think about religion is the problem of religion and violence.

All of this has been exacerbated by the events of September 11, where some religious people performed this great act of violence. It stirred up a very old idea, namely that religion is irrational and therefore violent. If religious people disagree with each other and they can’t make good arguments about their point of view, all they can do is fight.

Well, people who are influenced by this view now go back through the Bible and what do they find?
They find lots of examples of violence in the Bible where God **seems to be commanding **all sorts of terrible things. Many atheists know these passages very well. They can run right to them. Even for people inside the church this is a serious problem.

What do you do with these texts that seem to be pretty dire and pretty violent. God or God’s people doing terrible things.

Let me give you one perspective on this.

Here is the principle.

The whole Bible, for a Christian, should be read from the standpoint of the Book of Revelation and I mean now a particular image within the Book of Revelation (Rev 5)

Up in the heavenly court and we see the Scroll which is sealed with seven seals.
The Scroll stands for the Scripture. You might say too it stands for all of history.
It is sealed with seven seals. That means it can’t be read yet.
The question is heard then “who will open this Scroll?” and there appears a Lamb, a wounded Lamb and He is able to open the seals. Who is the wounded Lamb, standing as though slain?

That is Christ, the Son of God, the crucified Lord.

The point is, it is in light of the crucified Christ that we properly read the whole Bible. He is the one that opens the seals to the whole of Scripture.
That is why the worst thing you can do is take a passage out of context and say “that is what the Bible says”.
The whole of the Bible should be read through the lens of the non-violent, crucified and risen Christ.

With that in mind lets go to a reading in the Book of Exodus that has to do with a battle between the Israelites and the Amalekites.
This is the period where the Israelites are making their way out of Egypt and they are coming toward the Promised Land but they are facing opposition.
It says "in those days Amalek came and waged war against Israel. Moses therefore said to Joshua “pick out certain men and tomorrow go out and engage Amalek in battle”.
The passage ends this way “and Joshua mowed down Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword”

A lot of opponents to religion know this passage and say “who is this God who is commanding basically this genocide against the Amalekites. Who are these so called holy people who are engaging in this war?”

Let’s read it though in light of the Book of Revelation. Let’s read it in light of Christ crucified.

Amalek, like the Philistines, like the Egyptians, like the Assyrians, like the Babylonians, like the Greeks and like the Romans **stand **in the Bible for all those powers that are arrayed against God.
Don’t think of Amalek here primarily as an ancient middle Eastern tribe.
I mean if this is just a story about a skirmish against ancient middle Eastern people, why should we be bothered listening to it.
It is in the Bible precisely because it is teaching us a profound spiritual lesson.

Amalek, like all the other opponents of Israel, **stand for **hatred, violence, self absorption, racism.
It stands for all those powers that are arrayed against God.

What is the command from God?
You must eliminate this power.
You must engage Amalek in battle and destroy him.
Now you know what comes to mind is in a few books later in the Bible we have the command of Yahweh to Saul to put the ban on, again mind you, the Amalekites.
Putting the ban on someone meant you kill every man, woman, child and animal.

Why is Yahweh mad at Saul? Because Saul didn’t put the ban, but kept some of the Amalekites for himself and in fact he kept the king of the Amalekites Agag.
Samuel the prophet comes forward. He’s bitterly angry with Saul and then it says he hacked Agag to pieces.

Again, people will say what is this terrible violent text doing in the Bible and why is God it seems countenancing this activity.
Again, you have got to read it in light of the Book of Revelation.
You have got to read it in light of Christ crucified, who opens the Seals.
The Amalekites in that Saul storey stand for the same thing. They stand for all those powers that are arrayed against God.
…
There are certain forms of evil and disfunction that simply have to be eliminated. They have to be opposed.
Saul put the ban on the Amalekites.
Now read it symbolically.
If it was an ancient story about an old battle, who cares?
But it is about us now.
…
So Israel battling it’s enemies. Yahweh commanding Israel to put the ban on their opponents is not a capricious cruel act on the part of God.
It is a profound and sobering spiritual truth.
…
…
Friends reread these text in light of the Book of Revelation, in light of the Lamb standing as though slain who opens the seals and then in your own way, according to your gifts and your own state of life enter in to this great struggle against Amalek and God bless you.