Continuing our genocide conversation, Malcolm points to a women who divorced her husband after ‘signs from the Lord’. My (hopefully final) response is short and twofold:
a) Is she a prophet through whom divine revelation flows?
b) Where in that mess of self-justification does God directly and undeniably command her to divorce?
All I read looking through the link is someone selfishly deciding to do something, then looking for every possible excuse to not feel guilty.
****
Maybe I have not been communicating as effectively as possible. While a specific divine command may override more general commands for the specified action/time/event, this is not some lightly taken thing.
In the Bible these overriding commands occurred when God spoke directly to and through His prophets while shaping the God-chosen nation the of Israel. Anybody receiving and transmitting a divine command from the Lord is a prophet and being a prophet is not something taken lightly. It is a major, nation-shaping event and any proclaimed prophet has tests to pass for which the penalty for failure is death (and likely damnation).
Breaking God’s law under God’s command is not something done lightly. There is no, ‘I was praying and saw a whisp of smoke, then my preacher spoke on something vaguely related’ to it. It is ‘God spoke directly to me clearly and unmistakeably and called me to Himself through miracles, angels, and visions.’
In the Bible, the prophets were clearly and unmistakeably called by God. They were generally hesitant to obey God and had fairly miserable lives. Those they prophesied to/for/against generally did not like what they had to say (hence, Saul disobeying Samuel) and usually responded grudgingly, at best. So, when I write of following a revealed divine command, it is no small thing I speak of. It is a divine revelation of Biblical proportions that you will likely detest and will shatter your life and the lives of those around you.
A prophecy isn’t needed to call people to do what they want or would have done anyway. Anybody using a divine command to justify something they wanted to do already is engaging in delusional self-justification and anybody desiring divine revelation for themselves strikes me as foolish.
When I talk of a divine command it is something on a fundamentally different order than the everyday Christian interactions with God such as praying over which job to take, learning something revealing from a sermon, the small coincidences of life chalked up to God’s grace, ‘small morsels from God’, or feeling God uplifted you through worship.
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Finally, on the topic of divorce and divine command, we can look to Ezra.
While Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, a very great assembly of men, women, and children, gathered to him out of Israel, for the people wept bitterly. And Shecaniah the son of Jehiel, of the sons of Elam, addressed Ezra: “We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this. Therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all these wives and their children, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God, and let it be done according to the Law. Arise, for it is your task, and we are with you; be strong and do it.” Then Ezra arose and made the leading priests and Levites and all Israel take an oath that they would do as had been said. So they took the oath.
Then Ezra withdrew from before the house of God and went to the chamber of Jehohanan the son of Eliashib, where he spent the night, neither eating bread nor drinking water, for he was mourning over the faithlessness of the exiles. And a proclamation was made throughout Judah and Jerusalem to all the returned exiles that they should assemble at Jerusalem, and that if anyone did not come within three days, by order of the officials and the elders all his property should be forfeited, and he himself banned from the congregation of the exiles.
Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within the three days. It was the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month. And all the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain. And Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, “You have broken faith and married foreign women, and so increased the guilt of Israel. Now then make confession to the LORD, the God of your fathers and do his will. Separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives.” Then all the assembly answered with a loud voice, “It is so; we must do as you have said. But the people are many, and it is a time of heavy rain; we cannot stand in the open. Nor is this a task for one day or for two, for we have greatly transgressed in this matter. Let our officials stand for the whole assembly. Let all in our cities who have taken foreign wives come at appointed times, and with them the elders and judges of every city, until the fierce wrath of our God over this matter is turned away from us.” Only Jonathan the son of Asahel and Jahzeiah the son of Tikvah opposed this, and Meshullam and Shabbethai the Levite supported them.
Then the returned exiles did so. Ezra the priest selected men, heads of fathers’ houses, according to their fathers’ houses, each of them designated by name. On the first day of the tenth month they sat down to examine the matter; and by the first day of the first month they had come to the end of all the men who had married foreign women.
I suspect the answer will be that Ezra is describing a mass annulment rather than a mass divorce.
Or, we can have Luther’s own words in his Smalcald Articles:
Maybe none of it ever really happened… Because natural law.
One rule of thumb I live by: “Be wary when God’s will happens to coincide with your own”
Taking an opponents argument to absurdity only works when all the conditions of the argument are the same.
FN put only one condition on his assertion, that the person be a prophet with miracles, signs, et all. That condition was ignored to create Malcolms post…
Malcolm failed to understand what FN was doing and made an unrelated move.
Ziggy says checkmate in those comments (I saw them in glancing at his post for refernce, I doubt I should check anything over there again).
Indeed, checkmate Malcolm, FN has you in a scholars mate.
Hey FN. First off, I argue harshly, but you have been generous and polite, which I thank you for. No hard feelings. Also, you’ve given my blog lots of traffic, which is great!
That said, here are your exact words:
If after a period of prayer, fasting, consultation with trusted Christian leaders, and testing the spirits I understood the spirits were those of the Lord I would obey [and kill infants]. Depending on the ‘level of wrongness’ (for lack of a better term springing to mind), this period would be longer and more intense. I might also try to bargain with God as per Abraham.
You mentioned absolutely nothing about Prophets when you responded to my specific point, and if that is what you meant I suspect you should clarify that.
prairie,
I quoted FN and responded to his exact words. Now, FN might have meant something different. But that is not what he said. He said if he consulted trusted Christian leaders, prayed, and fasted, and decided that God was telling him to do this, he would kill infants.
This woman prayed, a lot, agonized, talked to trusted Christian leaders, got what she was convinced were signs from God, and concluded that God wanted her to divorce. The parallel is quite explicit.
If FN did not mean what he said, he should retract his statement.
You are too kind, FN. What God has joined let no man put assunder. Period. This is certain knowledge irrespective of any signs and wonders. Divorce is simply a logical impossibility for any (baptized) Christian. If one wants to argue the marriage never took place, then that would be different. (But unlikely.)
@malcolmthecynic
Its too bad that her signs and wonders that god so called provided is a supercharged rationalization hamster. Convieniently ignoring one of the commandments do not murder.
Is there any instance in the Bible – either Testament – where God commands or gives leave to someone to break a moral law? (As opposed to a ritual law?)
nickbsteves,
If you truly believe that then you understand the problem with FN’s comment. Also, if you think I was actually arguing that God can ever want divorce to occur, you haven’t read my original post anyway.
infowarrior1,
You are making my point for me. Her spiritual discernment process was off, despite her praying, consulting Christian elders, and awaiting signs from God, which she is sincerely convinced she received.
And yet, we still ALL agree she was wrong.
Now here’s FN saying that if he thought he heard God telling him to kill infants, and he prayed, and he consulted Christian leaders, and he “tested the spirits”, he would do it.
And this is apparently all right.
By the way, about Ezra – It is well known and accepted among Catholics that divorce was permitted under the Old Covenant. This really has nothing to do with justifying divorce now.
@ Malcolm:
I did not mention prophets for I did not make the connection hat if I were to receive visions from God giving me divine commands that would essentially make me a prophet until I was pondering the post after I had already posted it.
On the other hand, while writing the post I assumed that in the context of the rest of the post that it would be obvious that a divine command that violates general divine laws would not be something accepted lightly and without a very clear, unmistakeable, direct communication from God such as a miracle or vision.
I did not think people would take ‘the voice of God’ and ‘test the spirits’ to mean the equivalent of ‘I had a dream about a child dying, prayed about it, then we read Psalm 137 at church. Therefore God is commanding me to commit genocide.’
http://www.esvbible.org/Psalm+137/
On the other hand, while writing the post I assumed that in the context of the rest of the post that it would be obvious that a divine command that violates general divine laws would not be something accepted lightly and without a very clear, unmistakeable, direct communication from God such as a miracle or vision.
This woman may not have gotten a miracle or a vision, but she was certainly absolutely convinced God was speaking to her.
I did not think people would take ‘the voice of God’ and ‘test the spirits’ to mean the equivalent of ‘I had a dream about a child dying, prayed about it, then we read Psalm 137 at church. Therefore God is commanding me to commit genocide.’
But this woman had far more than that, to her. She prayed and prayed, she consulted her pastor, and she acted with great fear and trepidation, and even then she was still unsure she did the right thing until she got what she was convinced was a sign from God.
You don’t realize it (and you will disagree), but you’re actually making my point. You’d correctly conclude that in this case it was her discernment process that was messed up, and that God didn’t actually want her to divorce. But you fail to see how this same logic can be turned against you. You can, you believe, go through a rigorous discernment process designed to test the spirits and come to the conclusion that God wants you to come to. But as this woman shows, just because you THINK your process was rigorous, and you took the matter seriously, enough, doesn’t mean you did. And now you want to trust your own fallible self to judge whether or not God is telling you to break His natural law and kill infants?
I suspect (though of course I can’t know) that no matter how the visions or messages were revealed to you, you would always – not almost always, but always – conclude that the devil was the one communicating with you. This is to to your benefit, and you would be completely right.
I am only a recent Catholic, and even more recently come into these circles of the internet, so I could very well be wrong. But it seems to me that the consistent misunderstanding of the Catholic position on marriage (as evidenced by the comment on Ezra) is largely founded in an equally consistent failure to understand the nature of marriage as a sacrament and the distinction between sacramental and natural marriage.
Malcolm,
I too was going with the larger context of his post and thread.
You did quote specifically what you where dealing with, so your return comment is quite fair.
I would note that the woman’s failing in your hypothetical is the failing of her pastor though, not of the system FN posited per se. It’s on his conscience in the end.
One thing I’m surprised no one has brought up is the fact that the man being questioned on “if he properly discerned whether he was speaking to God or a devil” is Moses. The patriarch who spent the most time with God out of anyone in the Bible until Christ’s birth. He spoke with God regularly, argued and bargained with him, ate the manna of heaven, followed his presence for 40 years in the desert, and regularly performed miracles at God’s behest.
So, to say that Moses is not able to discern God from devil is a very tall claim, and one that has not been even argued. Instead, Zippy and Malcolm turn to how you or I would discern God from demon were we to receive such commands, and yet discounting a very literal life time spent doing just that while leading a horde of stuck up, ornery malcontents across a desert after saving their ungrateful lives and souls.
Related to that is the point that they made that we know Moses was not a perfect man and made mistakes. Very true. And yet when Moses made mistakes he was corrected swiftly and harshly. Especially when he did so in front of the tribes. For striking a rock instead of speaking to it he was instantly told he was not worthy of leading the people into the promised land.
And yet, when speaking to the people on God’s commands on how to conquer and claim the Promised Land, there is not a single deed done or action taken by God. Not immediately nor in the future. Never does he speak up and say, “Moses, you have made a demon out of me and a killer of innocent children. Therefore, your own descendants will be cursed. Out of my love for you it will not be your next generation, but his son upon whom my anger shall fall.” You know, the same kind of thing he does for every other time we see a patriarch go against how God desires to be known, worshipped, and followed.
Lastly, we never see God take away his favor from the tribes in battle for following this command. As God himself said through his prophets, and demonstrates to keep his promise, the Tribes of Israel were not defeated any time they were in the Lords favor, and ran like little ninnies to their mothers’ aprons any time they were in disfavor; but only after a whole bunch of them died.
“Therefore , my lord and master, do not disregard what he said, but keep it in your mind, for it is true: our nation cannot be punished, nor can the sword prevail against them, unless they sin against their God.”
– Judith 11:10
Never did any such disfavor come from the conquering of the promised land, where they were commanded to leave nothing alive that drew breath “as the Lord your God has commanded; that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices which they have done in the service of their gods, and so to sin against the Lord your God. ” – Deut 20:17-18
From the rest of Biblical history, all evidence seems to point to the fact that they, in fact, did not follow this command strictly enough to keep separate from the pagans.
So, while I will readily conceed any point trying to claim that these are actions we should emulate or use to rationalize our behavior or be led astray by demons, all arguments against it that I’ve read are either application of drastically different circumstances or saying that somewhere there is an error of interpretation. They do so without addressing how drastic such a claim is, addressing the original scripture, nor addressing further complications arising from whole books of the Bible should the new, ‘Moses was wrong’ interpretation be accepted. I haven’t even brought up that this calls all of Mosaic law into question as the command is given right in the middle of the laws and other commands.
So, while yes there are Bad and Evil interpretations of scripture, and I fully recognize I am capable of those and of poor discernment, none of such arguments have addressed these issues within their arguments. They solely deflect such responsibility from themselves and onto others. Such people have acted honestly to address such concerns, and you continue to tear holes in them while not addressing that the argument is not with them but with God and scripture. Such actioms are asking men and women such as me to take a very straightforward command with very clear reasons of staying true to God which proved to be a very hard thing for Israel to do without much suffering and death on their own part, as well as that of Christ, and still they are led astray afterwards.
And all you do is take that, throw up your hands, make a mess, and say deal with it.
I will, in fact, go through the effort of “dealing with it” if you can honestly address these issues. I will read writings of the saints and of the church should you give them that are in relation to this scripture rather than how a modern man should act. The two are not the same.
@Chad
Excellent comment.
Hi Chad,
First, I’ll reiterate that despite the fact my arguments and language are harsh I genuinely appreciate all of the discussion. My thoughts of the matter have significantly evolved from the beginning to
My quotations will be out of order as I pick on what stands out to me most at any given time – to warn you all in advance.
And now, further up and further in.
And yet, when speaking to the people on God’s commands on how to conquer and claim the Promised Land, there is not a single deed done or action taken by God. Not immediately nor in the future. Never does he speak up and say, “Moses, you have made a demon out of me and a killer of innocent children. Therefore, your own descendants will be cursed. Out of my love for you it will not be your next generation, but his son upon whom my anger shall fall.” You know, the same kind of thing he does for every other time we see a patriarch go against how God desires to be known, worshipped, and followed.
How do you know this? All you know is that it hasn’t been recorded down. Israel’s history was not a happy one, and it’s quite possible that a great many of the bad things recorded were a result of God punishing Israel. That the Sacred authors did not include those specific events as reasons for the punishments does not mean they had nothing to do with it.
And before you try to tell me that I have no evidence for this, whether or not it is even possible for God to order mass genocide is exactly what is at issue in the first place.
That said, I might be wrong in the way I’m interpreting things, but the fact of the matter is that things are not nearly as clear cut and simple as is being made out here.
So, to say that Moses is not able to discern God from devil is a very tall claim, and one that has not been even argued.
That is because our arguments rests on the fact that it is literally impossible for the Lord to order mass genocide. To crib from Mr. Holmes, when you eliminate the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. God ordering evil is impossible, because God is pure good. He, in a sense, IS natural law; suspending it would be like stopping Himself from existing briefly, or having Him create a rock He can’t lift, or making 2+2=5.
Instead, Zippy and Malcolm turn to how you or I would discern God from demon were we to receive such commands, and yet discounting a very literal life time spent doing just that while leading a horde of stuck up, ornery malcontents across a desert after saving their ungrateful lives and souls.
I merely will say that Free Northerner responded to my comment, and I responded to his in turn.
They do so without addressing how drastic such a claim is, addressing the original scripture, nor addressing further complications arising from whole books of the Bible should the new, ‘Moses was wrong’ interpretation be accepted.
You have simply not been paying attention, then, as Zippy has offered up several possibilities. From what I could see an interpretation of the verses as “God ordered men to kill babies” would lead us to learn one thing about God: He can order men to kill babies. It certainly tells me nothing about salvation history.
God can write straight with crooked lines, as the saying goes. That we now must interpret the verses to mean “Patriarch’s did wicked things God did not actually want them to do, and the Sacred authors recorded them doing these things” doesn’t really tell me anything except that the lines God was writing with were seriously crooked.
They solely deflect such responsibility from themselves and onto others. Such people have acted honestly to address such concerns, and you continue to tear holes in them while not addressing that the argument is not with them but with God and scripture.
And I would say that our argument is fully in line with God, and that because of this we need to figure out a way to align our understanding of Scripture with what we know of God and the natural law. You keep claiming that your interpretations HAVE to be correct, because it’s supposedly incredibly clear what the Bible is trying to say. But what you apparently don’t realize is that this means that your belief that your specific interpretation of a complex text in an ancient language is STRONGER than your belief that killing babies being wrong. This, to me, shows that there is a very, very large error in judgment being made here, and not by Zippy or me.
A line in the first paragraph got cut off. To finish:
My thoughts of the matter have significantly evolved from the beginning of the discussion to now, and it has helped me clarify my thoughts quite a bit. So thank you for that.
Ironically, it seems that we go through history and find many of the same themes over and over again. For instance, people now historically think of the Druids as more of a political than a religious entity, and some people now subscribe to the same belief about the Old Testament prophets.
Malcom,
You have not addressed my concerns. Indeed, you have only added to them.
Now you’re saying that the Jews were not given the Law by Moses correctly. That either in the middle of his discussion with God, God withdrew from a mountain he had surrounded with fire and thunder, but without taking away the fire and thunder, and Moses couldn’t tell the difference. And this, at the second time. That or he lied. That this happened, and that it was never corrected in a manner that was passed down to the Jews. God, contrary to all times he acts against public sins with public punishments; especially when the sin is against him… Well, he does so privately. He does so in a way that is not written down by Himself, the Holy Spirit. Thus he keeps the Jews from ever correcting the errors within the Mosaic Law as they received them, but to perpetuate them without correction.
If this is so, God is, at best, negligent. These books we read are the same books that were passed down. If the Law was given incorrectly, God has no reason to use the neighbors of the Tribes to kill and expel them, and every reason to send prophets to give them the law correctly instead of what he ended up doing – telling them to correctly follow the law as given. Indeed, Christ would have no ability to say that the Pharisees missed the heart of the law by living the letter, because both heart and letter would have never been given to them. Instead of saying:
“Do not think I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”
He would have said something along the lines of:
“Amen, amen, I say to you that the pride of men has corrupted the Laws and the Prophets. For they put words in the mouth of He who sent me. Now the Word is among you, and he will teach you correctly the correct Laws, to let you know them and obey them, until all is accomplished.”
You see, if the Law and commands were not given correctly to the Jews, a great deal of Christ’s teachings make no sense.
So no, you have not addressed my concerns. You have made one passage fit your interpretation of Natural Law, and have not questioned that possibility which you accuse others of – that your interpretation is wrong. You see, I have questioned mine, and in doing so I look backward and forward through scripture to see how the different interpretations reverberate through the Word. You seem to have not, nor has Zippy.
“But what you apparently don’t realize is that this means that your belief that your specific interpretation of a complex text in an ancient language is STRONGER than your belief that killing babies being wrong. This, to me, shows that there is a very, very large error in judgment being made here, and not by Zippy or me.”
No. What I am saying is that my trust in God is stronger than anything else I know, and that I have very real text in front of me that is given by God. All you have is an interpretation of natural law which you project your own morality onto, never considering that your morality is flawed, and then you project those interpretations onto God. Meanwhile I am doing all in my power to take my understanding of God, as given to me by Scripture, The Roman Catholic Church, and her saints, to project that understanding onto my morality and knowledge of the natural law. I do so precisely because I know my own flaws, so I work from God down through those that he has placed in authority over me. Meanwhile, you are working from a sinful world up to God.
As for the text. Yes, the text is complex. However, God and our Faith is amazingly, beautifully, God given simple. It can be boiled down to the words “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”
So, our faith is simple. It is complex in it’s simplicity, yes, because it is as infinitely deep as God is infinitely powerful. But I have not read a single part of the Bible that does not fit beautifully into a simple whole. That is why I accuse you and Zippy of making a mess and saying “You’re the ones at fault.” and then throwing your hands up in the air. It is because I see no way of fitting the Word together within your interpretation, as it shatters whole books of understanding whole sale. I’m ok with that, if you tell me how to fit it back together. I will under take any amount of hardship over a life time to understand God better, and have already committed to an eternity of just that should God allow me to.
So, take all your words and views to their logical conclusions, considering the whole of scripture, and I would recommend doing so with someone from the Church at your disposal should you want to argue with Patriarchs when God saw fit to leave them be. I am not able to question the authority of Moses, nor are you, because we are not in positions of authority as placed by God. Give me saints, councils, or Popes.
And, lest you accuse me of hypocrisy, I went to Augustine. I will admit that I have not read the book, but was looking for some quick answers on Deuteronomy 20. From a book examining Augustine’s views on war (St Augustine and the Theory of Just War by John Mark Mattox):
——————–
The law of war set forth in the Old testament contains surprisingly detailed instructions pertaining to jus in bello. These instructions enjoin cleanliness and decency on the part of soldiers, specify prohibitions against wanton destruction of the environment, and set forth generous rules for exemption from military service – certainly the most generous of any in the ancient world.
It is somwhat curious that none of Augustine’s extant writings seem to quote directly from Deuteronomy 20, the principal source document of war in the Old Testament. One might speculate why this is so. If Augustine had appealed to the Mosaic Law to justify his position on the propriety of Christian participation in war, his detractors conveniently could have charged him with founding his argument on what they could have argued to be a now superseded law. He does argue, however, that if this ancient law of war was not applicable to his own day, it was, at least, appropriate for the day in which it was given. For:
“What may be done at one time of day is not allowed at the next, and what may be done, or must be done, in one room is forbidden and punished in another. This does not mean that justice is erratic or variable, but that the times over which it presides are not always the same, for it is the nature of time to change. Man’s life on earth is short and he cannot, by his own perception, see the connexion between the conditions of earlier times and of other nations, which he has not experienced himself, and those of his own times, which are familiar to him.”
Indeed, Augustine elsewhere insists that God can just as easily enjoin warfare in the new dispensation as He could in the Old.
—————————–
So, a quick answer. One that, yes, leaves some holes as he did not write on it directly. But he also argues against just the kind of Positivism Zippy has been talking about – that of using modern circumstances to judge the past, and certainly not placing our own flawed perceptions over that of God.
You are doing that by taking your conscience, applying it to morality, applying morality to your interpretation of natural law, and then applying that natural law in your head to God. It is only at that point that you work down from authority to apply your understanding of God to Scripture.
So, show me saints, councils, or Popes. They will be just as flawed as Moses, and possibly wrong on the subject, just as you claim that Moses is possibly wrong on the Law.
Yet, it is from there that we can properly discuss what our betters, our God, has given us.
Oh, and here’s a link to the book. Sorry for serial posting, I meant to put this in the last comment and forgot.
http://books.google.com/books?id=eTnUAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA155&ots=b5D0CaPiFp&dq=st%20augustine%20on%20deuteronomy&pg=PA128#v=onepage&q=st%20augustine%20on%20deuteronomy&f=false
With the caveat again that this is probably going to end up out of order:
Now you’re saying that the Jews were not given the Law by Moses correctly. That either in the middle of his discussion with God, God withdrew from a mountain he had surrounded with fire and thunder, but without taking away the fire and thunder, and Moses couldn’t tell the difference. And this, at the second time. That or he lied. That this happened, and that it was never corrected in a manner that was passed down to the Jews. God, contrary to all times he acts against public sins with public punishments; especially when the sin is against him… Well, he does so privately. He does so in a way that is not written down by Himself, the Holy Spirit. Thus he keeps the Jews from ever correcting the errors within the Mosaic Law as they received them, but to perpetuate them without correction.
Lots to chew on immediately.
I think the Old Testament makes it quite clear that lying to God is a Very Bad Thing. The Sacred Authors were recording events; every single judgment God ever made about Israel might not, in fact, have made it in, and yet we still might be able to understand what God was trying to say.
And also, yes, I am arguing that something we previously did not consider must be at work here, since the interpretation that first comes to mind can’t be right.
By the way, we immediately differ in that I don’t think the Holy Spirit wrote the Bible. I think He inspired the Sacred Authors to write inerrant Scripture.
Indeed, Christ would have no ability to say that the Pharisees missed the heart of the law by living the letter, because both heart and letter would have never been given to them.
Except that “Kill the gentiles” was a command to specific Jews at specific times. It was not a part of Jewish law. There is a major difference.
So no, you have not addressed my concerns. You have made one passage fit your interpretation of Natural Law, and have not questioned that possibility which you accuse others of – that your interpretation is wrong. You see, I have questioned mine, and in doing so I look backward and forward through scripture to see how the different interpretations reverberate through the Word. You seem to have not, nor has Zippy.
Okay, I’m going to be very candid from here on out, with the acknowledged expectation that broadsides will be returned: What in the bloody Hell are you talking about? I am offering up some, possibly incorrect, theories because you insist on them. I don’t pretend that they’re necessarily right. My whole point is only that certain interpretations MUST be wrong. This nonsense about our “interpretation” of natural law makes no sense. You are really arguing here that it is more likely that your interpretation of verses in a several thousand year old book is correct than your understanding that killing babies is wrong. That the Bible says something does not turn good into bad, and your continued insistence that these verses should change my “interpretation” of natural law just shows how much you misunderstand natural law and how warped your moral values are.
Of course, I doubt they’re really warped. But, you know, ideas have consequences. So here we are.
What I am saying is that my trust in God is stronger than anything else I know, and that I have very real text in front of me that is given by God. All you have is an interpretation of natural law which you project your own morality onto, never considering that your morality is flawed, and then you project those interpretations onto God. Meanwhile I am doing all in my power to take my understanding of God, as given to me by Scripture, The Roman Catholic Church, and her saints, to project that understanding onto my morality and knowledge of the natural law. I do so precisely because I know my own flaws, so I work from God down through those that he has placed in authority over me. Meanwhile, you are working from a sinful world up to God.
Of course I’ve considered this very carefully, and in fact my argument and even overall opinion is quite different from when I’ve started. You are wrong if you think otherwise. I’ve concluded that it is far more likely that my interpretation of a complex text is wrong rather than the moral judgment “it is evil to kill infants, always”. This is not a matter of working from a sinful world up. It’s a matter of recognizing that my sinful self is going to both be interpreting the Bible and trying to reason my way through what it means for something to be right and wrong, and concluding that it is more likely that killing babies is wrong than my interpretation of Scripture is right.
I’m going to skip your paragraphs on how simple and beautiful the faith is since nobody disagrees and it has nothing to do with anything.
That is why I accuse you and Zippy of making a mess and saying “You’re the ones at fault.” and then throwing your hands up in the air. It is because I see no way of fitting the Word together within your interpretation, as it shatters whole books of understanding whole sale. I’m ok with that, if you tell me how to fit it back together. I will under take any amount of hardship over a life time to understand God better, and have already committed to an eternity of just that should God allow me to.
Then forget about our interpretation. You’re quite possibly right. We could be wrong. But you can deny it as many times as you want, and it really does bear repeating – you’re still claiming that your interpretation is so likely to be right that we can throw out the idea that killing babies is intrinsically immoral in order to accept it. Rather than accepting that maybe we just don’t understand the verse right now you’d rather throw out clear moral teaching to make sure your view of the Bible doesn’t get messed up.
In a way, you are completely right – admitting fault here would, for you, mean admitting that the entire way you view the Bible is wrong. It would require a major paradigm shift.
Frankly, I’m tired of the discussion. The more your (general “your”, not you specifically) view is clarified the more and more convinced I am that it is nonsense.
You get the official last word of the discussion. Thank you for the time. I’m cynical and biting but thankful regardless of your, and everybody else’s, discourse with me. Come down to my blog if you’re ever bored.
If you base your morality on your own views, and not on what God has told you to do or not to do, we will never agree on this subject. Especially if you cannot see that natural law, as humans know it, is an interpretation of this fallen world as viewed through a morality you appear to have determined before you even begin.
So yes, I am saying your understanding of both scripture and the world are wrong. I say so with, from what I can tell at this time, the full backing of the Church and St Augustine as I went and read more from the book I linked.
So far you have completely ignored any calls for higher authority, you rebel against the word of a patriarch, you cannot fit back together what you are trying to tear apart, and you pridefully insist that your understanding of natural law is so perfect as to render a command given by a patriarch as written by himself while guided by the Holy Spirit as to be an impossible command.
At this point I have to say you, sir, are worshipping your understanding of natural law over God.
If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.
– St Augustine
Chad:
Right. Nobody has made that argument.
Chad:
You are mischaracterizing what has been suggested. Moses himself (if you actually read Deuteronomy from the beginning up to the ‘offending’ passages in chapter 20 closely) doesn’t directly attribute the genocide order to God.
Samuel is actually much more ‘problemmatic’ on that front — again, until you actually read the entire Scriptures in context, and come to understand that the problem is in how you are trying to read the Scriptures.
“Especially if you cannot see that natural law, as humans know it, is an interpretation of this fallen world as viewed through a morality you appear to have determined before you even begin.”
This is the chasm we cannot traverse in this discussion. Every time we try to explain the difference between what the philosophy of natural law is and how people piece together what it actually entails they come back to saying it is the philosophy of an infallible law (and thus their interpretation of the philosophy must be equally infallible) .
They’re merely calling themselves infallible by putting their ideas into the idea of something infallible. It’s a sinister trick, but it a trick of the devil himself.
@ Zippy
“You are mischaracterizing what has been suggested. Moses himself (if you actually read Deuteronomy from the beginning up to the ‘offending’ passages in chapter 20 closely) doesn’t directly attribute the genocide order to God.”
Go back and re-read some of the laws then. I just did myself, to confirm what you were saying and also to check the other laws.
You see, while you’re right about him issuing how the tribes would wage a just war on the Canaanites, he also at no point (that I see, please correct me if I’m missing it) attributes any law at all to a command from God. So why should the tribes have followed any of it? If you are willing to write off the possibility of it falling under a Just War scenario, why should I not write off all of Mosaic law and why should the Jews not have done so as well.
The closest he gets to attributing anything to God is in Chapters 10 and 11.
“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of uou, but to fear the Lord uour God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I command you this day for your good?
– Deu 10:12-13
So, he pre-empts all the laws and commandments by saying theyre from God. So your argument is wrong, or you have to find significant difference to justify, in some way, that in the middle of a set of laws and commands he gives Moses goes off the rails. You also must make a case as to why all of chapter 11, multiple times saying that all the laws and commands he’s about to give must be followed, and if they do so they’ll be blessed, is wrong or not as all inclusive as it says it is
“You shall therefore keep all the commandment which I command you this day, that you may be strong, and go in and take possession of the land which you are going over to possess, and that you may live long in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them and to their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
– Deut 11:8-9
And, given that his pre-emptive “this is from God” back in chapter 10 is part of th very same sentance which so closely mirrors rhe words of Christ, you must have a strong argument to do so and now claim it is, in fact, not commanded by God.
This is on top of the philosophical problems I’ve raised on how a flawed set of commands makes God a negligent Father, Christ a half-wit, and rhe Holy Ghost an incompetent author of scripture through the men holding the pen. And, no one has taken me up on an actual, recognized church authority speaking on either passage as it being evil and not from God, while I have Augustine and will be looking into Aquinas if I have time later.
To me, your arguments are digging a deeper hole.
@ prarie
I, obviously, agree with you.
However, making that clear has not been helped by the fact that view people have argued that natural law wasnt broken in a clear manner. Most have argued God’s command supercedes natural laws as they pertain to this situation, which is not the same as saying God worked within natural laws and never broke them, and that the situation falls within natural laws of Just Wars.
Interestingly enough, the latter also fully supports every time God “unleashes his wrath” upon the tribes to have others slaughter them. Sin enough and you will be handed God’s Justice and his Wrath, instead of his mercy. The fact that the Canaanites were created by God, and chose at some point to leave the family of Noah, to practice abominable practices, and somehow they’re not subject to the same justice the tribes were, who had 1/3 of all their people put to the sword, 1/3 to famine, and 1/3 to pestilence? Now you’re arguing that his justice changes and favors the tribes less than people who chose not to be his chosen people, were then not included in later covenants, and had a MUCH longer time to turn from tbeir practices than God ever gave the tribes before he punished them.
Seems a bit… interesting of an interpretation
@ zippy
If you’re going to be petty, at least quote me in context
“Instead, Zippy and Malcolm turn to how you or I would discern God from demon were we to receive such commands, and yet discounting a very literal life time spent doing just that while leading a horde of stuck up, ornery malcontents across a desert after saving their ungrateful lives and souls.”
You have changed all the comments on Moses discerning if it was God or a devil into how you or one of us would discern that. As I stated before, they’re not the same thing.
So, the comment was less about the discernment argument and more that you have not actually done anything that wasn’t grounded in your own experience. We are bound by the realities of this world to do that, but also commanded to try and understand Christ, the Word made flesh, as He knows Himself.
So, lets begin to do so by saying you hear the voice of God putting you in charge of freeing your people from slavery years and years ago….
@ Chad,
“However, making that clear has not been helped by the fact that view people have argued that natural law wasnt broken in a clear manner. Most have argued God’s command supercedes natural laws as they pertain to this situation, which is not the same as saying God worked within natural laws and never broke them, and that the situation falls within natural laws of Just Wars.”
Indeed, FN and if I understand you would say God’s command superseded natural law at that point? I don’t strictly disagree as far as it goes, but it is true to say that my view is not the same, or at least does not approach the problem in the same way. I may have made things unclear by adding my own view to the mix, but I was told my views where the same when they are not, so I opted to clarify.
I would say God unleashes his wrath on those that are hopeless and beyond turning to him. They no longer have a purpose to serve. That may be longer for some peoples (such as Israel) than others. The command to eradicate everyone that identified with a people group isn’t a terribly common one, but when it happens it says to me that no decent person could be with them, nor could a decent person any longer come from them. Their end is the foremost of all natural laws, the wages of sin are death, those who will not repent will be destroyed.
That is to say, God’s wrath is not brought too many sins, but too many sins bring on unrepentance, and those who will not turn will be punished.
No. I believe it fell under Just War and is completely within natural law
Ah, then we are entirely on the same page.
Well, good posts and go with God.