Struggling with The Tyrannical warrior God of the Old Testement

[MindOverMatter2]

It seems that many Christians tend to blindly accept the apparent tyrannical warrior aspects of God in the old testament as literal and try to defend it as acceptable, or they simply ignore the passages of the bible that present a problem. I have grown tiered of defending certain aspects of the bible that appear to me impossible to defend morally. This is a subject I have been struggling with. The last thing I want to do is end up being a heretic, but, as a response to my growing difficulties with the old testament, I have taken up a developmental understanding of scripture rather than a literal one, while trying to preserve the understanding that scripture is the word of God. For those Christians and sympathetic atheists who have been struggling with this issue, I have found a very interesting catholic link that blends well with my developmental understanding of scripture.

magisreasonfaith.org/ask%20fr%20spitzer/ask-fr-spitzer-how-do-i-reconcile-an-all-powerful-creator-with-the-god-of-the-judeo-christian-bible/.

I would not say that this is a complete answer to the problem, as I think it is more complex than Father spritzer makes out, but I would say that this is going in the right direction to an honest understanding of scripture that doesn’t attempt to insult ones intelligence.

 

[rskempf]

God wants us to fight evil. What is so unclear about that?

 

[Della]

The important thing to remember is the OT is pre-Messiah and the NT is the turning point in human history brought about by the Incarnation.

In OT times the world was dealing with the immediate effects of the fall of man–the brutalities of life were a given. Men didn’t think that all men were equals–far from it. They saw themselves as better if they were stronger, of higher rank, richer, etc. It took the revelation to Abraham to start the change and the Laws of Moses to bring men closer to accepting the principles of love and equality that Jesus preached.

God dealt with men as they saw themselves. It was the judgment they had brought on themselves by their own standards. He choose Jacob and his descendants to bring about a change in how men would see and think. Up until the time of Christ nations thought of themselves as better than each other due to wealth or power. The Romans in particular showed the world how great they were by their brutalities. They were proud of them and lived by them. It was the way things were.

But God didn’t wish for men to remain in such ignorance and sin. He wishes us to live in love and peace. He brought Christ to us to save us from all that and the need to treat us as we deserved–as little better than animals with higher brains. It’s ironic that modern man wants to return to that idea all the while ignoring the inevitable consequences of such a mind set. We only have to look to the Communist and Nazi regimes to see where it would lead us.

We live in the Age of Grace. The world keeps trying to reclaim the attitudes of superiority and brutality of the past. Humanists think they would bring about a Utopia if they only got rid of religion, especially the Catholic religion. They’d only usher in the old order and the old horrors if they succeeded, and would end up the victims of their own success.

 

[JackVk]

mindovermatter,

Think of the God of the Old Testament as a father. You know how He says that Israel is His “first-born son”? Think of Him as a Father who is protecting His child from the playground bullies (the Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, etc.) This helped me.

 

[Alexander_Smith]

I enjoyed the article, but I found it rather irritating that the author used the terms “BCE” and “CE” instead of “BC” and “AD” for dates. Rather odd thing to see coming from someone who is supposedly a priest.

 

[lemondiesel]

Hello,

Read the article and found it moderately interesting. However, I believe your troubling question is must easier to answer. When I have interpreting these passages, I have taken a more political approach. After all, the OT is what puts claims onto Israel and its surrounding regions.

I believe you would have a better time defending God’s actions of the OT by making the distinction of Unjust verse Just killing, and what Aquinas refers to as Just Wars.

Or in other words,

God wants us to fight evil.

 

[roelblomsma]

It seems that many Christians tend to blindly accept the apparent tyrannical warrior aspects of God in the old testament as literal and try to defend it as acceptable, or they simply ignore the passages of the bible that present a problem. I have grown tiered of defending certain aspects of the bible that appear to me impossible to defend morally. This is a subject I have been struggling with. The last thing I want to do is end up being a heretic, but, as a response to my growing difficulties with the old testament, I have taken up a developmental understanding of scripture rather than a literal one, while trying to preserve the understanding that scripture is the word of God. For those Christians and sympathetic atheists who have been struggling with this issue, I have found a very interesting catholic link that blends well with my developmental understanding of scripture.

magisreasonfaith.org/ask%20fr%20spitzer/ask-fr-spitzer-how-do-i-reconcile-an-all-powerful-creator-with-the-god-of-the-judeo-christian-bible/.

I would not say that this is a complete answer to the problem, as I think it is more complex than Father spritzer makes out, but I would say that this is going in the right direction to an honest understanding of scripture that doesn’t attempt to insult ones intelligence.

He there, I’ve had the same trouble with this part. It seems the message of Jesus is almost opposite of the message of God in the OT. The law of the Moses is very hars. People are ordered to be stoned if they do something against the will of God, but Jesus says, ye that has not sinned throw the first stone…

My understanding is that God needed to be strick with a people dwelling in the dessert. Therefore He ordered them to obey very specific laws. Once they where established in Israel there were new intepretations those laws necessary, but by the time Christ came to earth, those laws had been either corrupted or intepreted in a wrong way by the pharasees. Thus God send His Son to earth. I think a very good text is the last book of the Thora which is the book of Malachi. Check it out, read it carefully. Many things will fall in place.

 

[Sarpedon]

I think a large part of the problem stems from the idea that death is simply immoral. Many people think that death is bad, God causes death, and therefore God is bad.

It’s true that God commands the Israelites to kill tribes in the OT. It’s also true that God causes every single human that has ever lived to die at some point. There’s really nothing immoral about death itself- it’s simply the passage from one phase of life to the next.

Murder is immoral, certainly, but not because it just involves death. If that were the case, every death would be a murder. My understanding is that murder is immoral because it is an attempt to affect the plan of a person’s life. As people, we do not have the authority to say who should live and who should die at any given point. It’s not our prerogative to decide when the passage should take place. For God it is another matter, however, because God is in control of the overall story and does have the prerogative to decide when it should take place.

The whole plan of Catholicism is to bring human beings back to perfection. This necessarily involves a progression, as humanity as a whole progresses toward its goal. In this sense, the more primitive world of the OT needs more primitive and harsh methods. They are crude and violent by our modern standards, but they are not operating in our modern world.

 

[tonyrey]

Although the Old Testament is the Word of God it was written by fallible human beings who often interpreted events according to their own primitive beliefs. That is why it contains such statements as" Vengeance is mine… saith the Lord" and regards natural disasters as punishment for sin, regardless of the injustice of making innocent people suffer. Jesus replaced this naive concept of God with that of a loving Father. His teaching is the benchmark of what is true or false in the Scriptures.

 

[Della]

Although the Old Testament is the Word of God it was written by fallible human beings who often interpreted events according to their own primitive beliefs. That is why it contains such statements as" Vengeance is mine… saith the Lord" and regards natural disasters as punishment for sin, regardless of the injustice of making innocent people suffer. Jesus replaced this naive concept of God with that of a loving Father. His teaching is the benchmark of what is true or false in the Scriptures.

The problem with this idea is it throws doubt on the infallibility of Holy Scripture. At what point do we say this is true and this isn’t? As I understand it, the Church says that nothing in the OT is there because fallible human beings were biased or had political motives or that they didn’t understand God. God made himself quite clear in the OT. What people object to is the fact that God doesn’t fit into their ideas about what God ought to be.

God is not a sweet old grandfather who overlooks our sins just because he’s just that kind of guy, as some interpret the meaning of the NT. God still abhors sin. He still judges sinners. He still could wipe us all off the face of the earth for our sins. He hasn’t changed and the men who wrote the OT didn’t get it wrong. I explained the differences between the revelations of the OT and the NT in my first post in this thread, please read it.

I sometimes feel no one reads what I write or dismisses it because I’m a girl or something. But, I have a BA in Bible and religious education and so know something about these matters. God has chosen to reveal his love to all mankind in these “Last Days” because of the Incarnation. It’s just that simple and that profound.

 

[JackVk]

I’ve also been hearing about the New Atheists’ objections to the Bible. Dawkins labeled the God of the Old Testament a number of names, including “homophobic”, “misogynistic”, “megalomaniacal”, “murderous”…the list goes on. But Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, and these very things happen in evolution, which is a morally indifferent process. So where is the professor getting his appeal to morality if he condemns Christianity?

 

[Neil_Anthony]

This is a subject I have been struggling with. The last thing I want to do is end up being a heretic, but, as a response to my growing difficulties with the old testament, I have taken up a developmental understanding of scripture rather than a literal one, while trying to preserve the understanding that scripture is the word of God. For those Christians and sympathetic atheists who have been struggling with this issue, I have found a very interesting catholic link that blends well with my developmental understanding of scripture.

magisreasonfaith.org/ask%20fr%20spitzer/ask-fr-spitzer-how-do-i-reconcile-an-all-powerful-creator-with-the-god-of-the-judeo-christian-bible/.

I liked that link, thanks. As far as I know this way of thinking isn’t heterodox or un-catholic at all.

 

[mgreen77]

Jesus replaced this naive concept of God with that of a loving Father. His teaching is the benchmark of what is true or false in the Scriptures.

I kinda feel that way too, which is why I only have and read the NT.

I know that gets me into all sorts of heretical trouble, but just as I avoid themes of violence and killing on TV, I avoid it in the OT as well.

 

[OvrlapnMagstria]

I’ve also been hearing about the New Atheists’ objections to the Bible. Dawkins labeled the God of the Old Testament a number of names, including “homophobic”, “misogynistic”, “megalomaniacal”, “murderous”…the list goes on. But Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, and these very things happen in evolution, which is a morally indifferent process. So where is the professor getting his appeal to morality if he condemns Christianity?

I cannot speak for Dawkins as I have not read his books but I’ll give my best guess as to why this is objectionable.

True, many of those things happen in evolution, which is morally indifferent. But God is claimed not to be morally indifferent. If someone is “homophobic”, “misogynistic”, “megalomaniacal”, “murderous” and at the same time is claimed to be the source of morality, I think most can agree that there is a rather large question to be answered.

 

[davidv]

I cannot speak for Dawkins as I have not read his books but I’ll give my best guess as to why this is objectionable.

True, many of those things happen in evolution, which is morally indifferent. But God is claimed not to be morally indifferent. If someone is “homophobic”, “misogynistic”, “megalomaniacal”, “murderous” and at the same time is claimed to be the source of morality, I think most can agree that there is a rather large question to be answered.

Thankfully the One True God is none of these things and the subject of this question is someone else.

 

[Windfish]

As Catholics, we have a sophisticated view of Sacred Scripture - the notion that we can read the Bible and understand its plain meaning is simply ahistorical and non-Catholic. The Bible was written by both human and divine authors to be understood in relation to Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the teaching authority of the Magisterium inform and interpret one another as the deposit of faith given to the Church by the Christ. In addition, the Catholic Church also authoritatively teaches that the Bible cannot be read in insolation from the influences and the intents by both the human and divine authors. The divine author never violates the will of the human author - the Holy Spirit will not “dictate” to the inspired author like the angel Gabriel supposedly dictated to Islam’s prophet with force. The Holy Spirit works with the human author, with their limited human understanding and weakness. The Catechism of the Catholic Church also teaches that the Bible can be read according to different lenses and senses.

Needless to say, your developmental understanding of the Bible is hardly heretical. In fact, I would say this is the biblical/Catholic understanding. After all, the Old Testament is a saga of the Jewish people maturing in their understanding of who and what God is. It took some time for the Jews to understand that the Lord God is ONE, and even then, the Jews erred into idolatry and polytheism. It is a matter of fact that there is moral (and theological) development in the Bible. But this is still well within orthodoxy! In fact, it IS orthodoxy! So much has been taught and written about this. Jesus himself talks about this!

However, and this is important, this is not a license to abstract difficult passages in the Bible for the sake of easing your difficulties. This neither serves the truth nor your intelligence. Our goal should be to understand Sacred Scripture as it intends, which means taking into consideration all those things I mentioned before.

What are your thoughts, MindOverMatter2?

 

[Windfish]

I cannot speak for Dawkins as I have not read his books but I’ll give my best guess as to why this is objectionable.

True, many of those things happen in evolution, which is morally indifferent. But God is claimed not to be morally indifferent. If someone is “homophobic”, “misogynistic”, “megalomaniacal”, “murderous” and at the same time is claimed to be the source of morality, I think most can agree that there is a rather large question to be answered.

As davidv mentioned, He is none of those things - it is impossible for God to have feelings. But the point was, Dawkins or any other atheist has no ground at all to say those descriptions are anything but morally indifferent, so their objection is moot. For their outrage to have any real basis, they would have to adopt the Christian worldview (of moral realism), but that is precisely what they are trying to disprove and not prove. So the condition for their outrage requires God in the first place!

 

[Windfish]

I kinda feel that way too, which is why I only have and read the NT.

I know that gets me into all sorts of heretical trouble, but just as I avoid themes of violence and killing on TV, I avoid it in the OT as well.

I would embrace the Catholic view, which is THE view since the Bible is a Catholic book.

 

[tonyrey]

The problem with this idea is it throws doubt on the infallibility of Holy Scripture.

Only for fundamentalists who believe every sentence is literally true.

At what point do we say this is true and this isn’t? As I understand it, the Church says that nothing in the OT is there because fallible human beings were biased or had political motives or that they didn’t understand God. God made himself quite clear in the OT. What people object to is the fact that God doesn’t fit into their ideas about what God ought to be.

They object to the interpretation of God as vindictive Yahweh rather than the loving Father revealed by Jesus.

God is not a sweet old grandfather who overlooks our sins just because he’s just that kind of guy, as some interpret the meaning of the NT. God still abhors sin. He still judges sinners. He still could wipe us all off the face of the earth for our sins.

He could but He wouldn’t. It is impossible for God to destroy us, not because His power is limited but because He is Love. God is certainly not inconsistent. He would never destroy what He has made.

He hasn’t changed and the men who wrote the OT didn’t get it wrong. I explained the differences between the revelations of the OT and the NT in my first post in this thread, please read it.

I have read it - and reread it. I find nothing to justify the belief that God descended to the level of primitive people. That was their interpretation not the Reality.

I sometimes feel no one reads what I write or dismisses it because I’m a girl or something. But, I have a BA in Bible and religious education and so know something about these matters. God has chosen to reveal his love to all mankind in these “Last Days” because of the Incarnation. It’s just that simple and that profound.

I’m quite sure no one deliberately ignores your posts. There are so many we can’t expect a response to everything we write. In fact the more we post is the less likely it is - unless we are being provocative! The fact that women are in a minority on this forum gives you an advantage because men are naturally interested in what the other half think!

 

[Della]

Only for fundamentalists who believe every sentence is literally true.

Sorry if I gave the wrong impression by my reply. I don’t claim a literalist interpretation, either. The Church tells us there is more than one way to interpret Scripture, but that it tells us the truth no matter how any particular passage should be/is interpreted.

They object to the interpretation of God as vindictive Yahweh rather than the loving Father revealed by Jesus.

And so would I, if the OT indeed depicted God as vindictive, which is doesn’t. If people want to read that into the accounts that is their poor interpretation not how God is depicted, yes?

He could but He wouldn’t. It is impossible for God to destroy us, not because His power is limited but because He is Love. God is certainly not inconsistent. He would never destroy what He has made.

But he destroys people every day and night if by destroy you mean take people in death. God has the power of life and death. What he created he can destroy for any reason he may like. That he doesn’t tells us that he has another purpose besides mere justice in mind.

I have read it - and reread it. I find nothing to justify the belief that God descended to the level of primitive people. That was their interpretation not the Reality.

Again, I didn’t say God descended to the level of primitive people, whatever primitive means in this context. He dealt with people according to the kind of justice they dealt out to others. Jesus alluded to this when he said that how we judge others is how we will be judged.

I’m quite sure no one deliberately ignores your posts. There are so many we can’t expect a response to everything we write. In fact the more we post is the less likely it is - unless we are being provocative! The fact that women are in a minority on this forum gives you an advantage because men are naturally interested in what the other half think!

LOL! I thought I’d get some kind of response by writing my little rant. I sometimes feel the guys just do an end run around my posts because they love debating with one another just for the sake of it. Like most women I find that type of exchange a huge waste of time if a simpler, better answer has been given. Indeed, I often don’t respond when I see someone has given a good explanation. I guess it’s the overly efficient housewife in me.