"but He is under no obligation to do so"
Then you really don't know God since God's love is accountable to us. That's what unconditional love is. To explain and make up. God's not under complusion. God wants to be obligated to us. Haven't you heard of the Incarnation?
Dave your misunderstanding the issue here.
The question you are answering is "Can a perfect God that is the source of morality act in a way that to us appears wrong? Yes he can, because he's the perfect God, and he knows things better than we do. He knows if the sin will infiltrate the Jewish people, or if the nation is beyond repair, etc."
As a skeptic I agree with you on this point, but you need to address the point that forms the disagreement between us.
Here is my problem with I Sam 15. It's not that "God commanded something evil." The problem is, Samuel said God commanded what appears evil. Now if Samuel is really saying what God said, then I have no problem. God knows things better than us. But we don't know that with absolute certainty. Samuel might just be a big fat liar, like so many other people that claim to speak for God.
So which is more reasonable to believe? Should we believe that a guy claimed to speak for God, but in fact did not, like thousands of others have throughout history, or is it more reasonable to believe that a perfectly just God of love commanded that nursing infants be slaughtered because of sins their ancestors committed long ago (that's the reason given in the text, not your speculative reason that sin would infect the Jewish people or that the Amalekites were beyond repair). The later violates our intuitive sense of what is moral, and thus is difficult to reconcile with a perfectly good God of love, but the former represents something that has happened so many times before, and happens in Pentecostal churches and many other places every Sunday, so it is not too difficult of a scneario to swallow. You can see which belief I hold to.
For Christians, the certainty that Samuel was a true prophet who faithfully related God's message to Saul is ultimately founded on the steadfast tradition derived from authority of Christ and the Apostles, who accepted Samuel and the other prophets as true prophets. Since Christ demonstrated His truthfulness and His divinity for us by His resurrection from the dead, we trust Him when He teaches that the Old Testament prophets were authentic "mouthpieces" of God.
a perfectly just God of love commanded that nursing infants be slaughtered because of sins their ancestors committed long ago (that's the reason given in the text,
Where in the text does it say that is the reason God commanded that the Amalekites, even their babies, be killed? Aren't you just giving a speculative reason yourself? The text merely relates Samuel telling Saul what God wants him to do, and God says that He remembers what Amalek did to Israel some 400 years earlier. But it doesn't say that is the reason, let alone the sole reason, for God's sentence of death against the Amalekites.
Then you really don't know God since God's love is accountable to us. That's what unconditional love is.
Sorry, that makes absolutely no sense. God's love is not accountable to anyone, or else it wouldn't be God's love, and it wouldn't be unconditional. A love that is held accountable to other's conditions cannot be "unconditional."
God wants to be obligated to us.
God is never obligated. A God who is obligated is not God. God does all things freely, because of Who He is, not out of necessity or obligation.
Haven't you heard of the Incarnation?
How does the Incarnation make God obligated to say "How high?" when we say, "Jump!"
You don't seem to know what the words "obligated" and "unconditional" and "accountable" mean.
Timing is everything.
I have been having a very difficult time with the 'slaughter' passages commanded of the Jews in the O.T. vs. Pagans, for about the past 9 mos.
I have been turning it around and around quite a bit. I can see how heresy in the early church arose as a result of reading this, and then comparing it to the concepts of the God of the N.T. In all honesty, the two are very dissimilar. A straight reading of Deuteronomy and Joshua and comparing it with the N.T. takes no small act of faith in the Church when they say to believe these are two separate Gods is a belief in heresy.
I simply cannot - to this day - wrap my head around it. The thing is, I don't think I am too dense to understand this.
To be quite honest, it has been a huge challenge to my giving legitimacy to the scriptures, this being chief among many other logical issues I have turned up in the scriptures.
My wife is aware of my tossing and turning on this one. Oddly, I seem to have short periods of decent faith, but when I start to think about this and other issues, it starts to collapse.
I'd love to read a great explanation of this, many have tried, but so far to date, I've not seen solid reasoning and/or biblical exegesis.
I am quite certain I am not alone in this.
Dave, thanks for trying to tackle a most difficult topic.
I doubt I'm too popular here, so forgive me for intruding, but Dave has actually raised a few great points that I agree with. If I may add to his list of further reading my posts on The Problem of Pain and An Atheist Reads the Bible as examples of taking responsibility for our own actions and accepting the justly deserved punishments that God gives.
Those articles aren't exactly on topic, but they supplement what Dave is talking about.
An Atheist Reads the Bible. . . apparently, only one link per comment.
Enjoy!
Since Christ demonstrated His truthfulness and His divinity for us by His resurrection from the dead, we trust Him when He teaches that the Old Testament prophets were authentic "mouthpieces" of God.
I agree with your point here. If Jesus is raised from the dead, then what he said is true. And he did seem so say that the OT was the word of God. But consider what this implies. If his resurrection shows that what he taught was true, then logically if he taught anything false, this would have to mean that he wasn't raised from the dead. This is ultimately why I concluded that Jesus wasn't raised. I have other reasons now, but this is what got me out of Christianity initially.
Where in the text does it say that is the reason God commanded that the Amalekites, even their babies, be killed?
It's in verse 2.
2"Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt.
I guess I have the same problem regardless. Sometimes innocent people have bad things happen to them. When it gets really bad you wonder. It is the problem of pain. It is one of the two classic arguments against God and it does resonate with our feelings. Some things that happen feel so wrong it makes you question God.
The theological answer is not that hard. The emotional answer is harder. The real fact is that some things God does are offensive to us. They are to God too. God wants us to know it. He wants us to know what is happening is so wrong. We know it in the depths of our being.
Sin, pain, death, and hell are there and they are offensive. That is why Jesus came. That is why God wants to redeem us. If nothing offensive ever happened then we would not need that.
I agree with your point here. If Jesus is raised from the dead, then what he said is true. And he did seem so say that the OT was the word of God. But consider what this implies. If his resurrection shows that what he taught was true, then logically if he taught anything false, this would have to mean that he wasn't raised from the dead.
No, that's no logical at all, and doesn't make a lick of sense. If Jesus was truly raised from the dead, but taught anything false, then He is someone who was raised from the dead who taught something that was not true. But His resurrection demonstrates His divinity, verifying that what He said about Himself is true, and that we can trust what He taught, since God, if He is God, cannot lie or utter or commit any error.
This is ultimately why I concluded that Jesus wasn't raised. I have other reasons now, but this is what got me out of Christianity initially.
Then you had no adequate reason to abandon Christianity. But then abandoning Christianity is a fundamentally irrational thing to do. This instance of horrid logic you've provide is a demonstration of that fact.
2"Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt.
You're relying on a mistranslation -- the translator palmed off his interpretation of the original text as if it were a translation. The text says, "I remember what Amalek did to Israel," not, "I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel." Granted, his interpretation could be correct, but it's still an interpretation, not what the text actually says, which doesn't go so far as to directly attribute Amalek's past wickedness as the immediate or sole cause of God's punishment of the Amalekites.
I have been turning it around and around quite a bit. I can see how heresy in the early church arose as a result of reading this, and then comparing it to the concepts of the God of the N.T. In all honesty, the two are very dissimilar. A straight reading of Deuteronomy and Joshua and comparing it with the N.T. takes no small act of faith in the Church when they say to believe these are two separate Gods is a belief in heresy.
St. Paul's teaching is that the Old Covenant was "the administration of death," whereas the New Covenant is "the administration of life." In the Old Covenant, God showed Himself as the God of Justice and Mercy, but in the New Covenant God shows Himself as the God of Mercy and Justice. Different, and very important, emphasis. But the real difficulty is that we have trouble understanding what justice really is -- it's hard for us to accept that, if God were purely and strictly just with us, then what would happen would make Saul's war on the Amalekites look like the most lenient and merciful of acts. Justice and mercy, like the problem of evil and suffering in the world, and ultimately mysteries that we can
Continued . . . .
Justice and mercy, like the problem of evil and suffering in the world, are ultimately mysteries that we can never fully comprehend -- they can be accepted, though. That's the message of Job.
Oh yes, the great problem of evil and suffering!
I remember listening to a tape, many years ago, of Bishop Sheen telling the story of a poor grieving woman who came to him after loosing her son. “Where was God when my son was killed?” she asked. “The same place he was when his own Son was killed,” the bishop replied.
Sheen also told the story of another woman. This woman had suffered greatly at the hands of a Nazi. After the war, the woman’s husband introduced her to the Nazi solder who had inflicted so much terrible pain on her. “This is the man who killed your mother and your father, and all of your brothers and sisters,” he told his wife. Immediately, the woman ran up to the Nazi solder, embraced him, and said: “ As God forgives you, I forgive you.”
I've pondered these stories many times over the years.
The mystery of suffering. The mystery of the cross.
No, that's no logical at all, and doesn't make a lick of sense. If Jesus was truly raised from the dead, but taught anything false, then He is someone who was raised from the dead who taught something that was not true.
But I thought you had just said in your previous post:
Since Christ demonstrated His truthfulness and His divinity for us by His resurrection from the dead,
So one moment Jesus resurrection demonstrates the truthfulness of his claims, but now suddenly Jesus could be a guy that may have been raised from the dead that taught false things. Which is it? If his resurrection demonstrates his truthfulness, how is it possible that he could be resurrected and not be truthful?
The text says, "I remember what Amalek did to Israel,"
Why do you think this action by the Amalekites is brought to remembrance in the context of punishing the Amalekites?
So one moment Jesus resurrection demonstrates the truthfulness of his claims, but now suddenly Jesus could be a guy that may have been raised from the dead that taught false things. Which is it?
No, Jesus could not be a guy who may have been raised from the dead and who taught false things. The evidence is very strong that He is someone who is risen from the dead and who taught true things. His resurrection from the dead is a proof of His divinity, and thus His truthfulness -- He claimed to be Someone and that He would do Something, and He showed Himself to be who He claimed to be, not just by His miracles but by His resurrection.
If, however, Jesus is truly risen from the dead but was not God (for you don't have to be God to be resurrected), then He would not necessarily be incapable of error, nor would His resurrection be proof of His divinity -- since there wouldn't be any divinity to be proven.
If his resurrection demonstrates his truthfulness, how is it possible that he could be resurrected and not be truthful?
It's not possible. If His resurrection demonstrated His truthfulness, showing that His teachings are entirely correct, then there is no untruthfulness in His teachings.
You, however, said: "If his resurrection shows that what he taught was true, then logically if he taught anything false, this would have to mean that he wasn't raised from the dead."
That's gibberish. If His resurrection shows that what He taught was true, then logically if He is risen then He didn't teach anything false. We believe what He taught because He is risen as He said. But you believe, despite the evidence, that He isn't risen, because you think what He taught is false. You're going at it bassackwards, starting from the premise that His teachings are false, instead of looking at what He said about Himself and what He would do, and then looking at the evidence that He did what He said He would do, and then coming to a conclusion about the truthfulness of His teachings.
Why do you think this action by the Amalekites is brought to remembrance in the context of punishing the Amalekites?
One reason: to provide the historical background of God's punishment of the wickedness of the Amalekites -- that it wasn't just something God had put up with for a few years, but the hostility and cruelty of the Amalekites had endured for 400 years. This shows the patience God has with sinners, that He does not immediately inflict punishment, but gives great room for repentance. (One significant thing about God's remembrance of Amalek's initial cruelty to the weak and frail of Israel at the time of the Exodus -- when God "remembers" something, that doesn't mean just an intangible thought -- God's Mind defines reality, so His "remembrance" makes something as real as it can be. From God's eternal, timeless perspective, He was even then still witnessing the sin of the Amalekites in the time of Moses, as well
the sin of the Amalekites in the time of Saul.
Let me be a little more formal in showing to you the contradictions in your statements.
You had said that his resurrection proved the truthfulness of his statements. Let's put this in a syllogism
1-If Jesus rose from the dead, then his teachings are true.
2-Jesus rose from the dead.
3-Therefore Jesus teachings are true.
This is called a modus ponens form of argumentation.
If A then B.
A.
Therefor B.
I am taking the same premise you affirmed in 1 and extrapolating a modus tollens form of the argument. It goes like this.
If A then B.
Not B.
Therefore not A.
You say this is back asswards, getting the cart before the horse. Actually, this is nothing but textbook logic and consistency. You can look up these forms of argumentation for yourself. I'm not making this up.
1-If Jesus rose from the dead, then his teachings are true. (same as premise 1 above derived from your own statement).
2-Jesus taught something that is not true.
3-Therefore Jesus is not raised from the dead.
In your later post you write:
If Jesus was truly raised from the dead, but taught anything false, then He is someone who was raised from the dead who taught something that was not true.
This is a denial of premise 1 above, which you had previously affirmed. Suddenly it is no longer true that Jesus resurrection shows that what he taught was true.
It seems to me that for you premise 1 is true in the modus ponens case, because that leads to conclusions you like (I Samuel is the Word of God). When the same argument is put in a modus tollens form, suddenly premise 1 is no longer true, because it leads to a conclusion you don't like (errors from Jesus show that he is not raised).
This is precisely what lead me away from Christianity. For me I refused to change my standards, accepting premises when it suited me but rejecting them in other cases when I didn't like the conclusion. I decided I would not have a double standard. It seems to me that you have decided otherwise.
Let's focus on this issue, then get back to God's supposed reasoning on killing the nursing Amalekite babies.
As I've said, God has the perfect prerogative to take the life of any human being, and it would be just and right and good, because He is the Creator of all. This is what isn't comprehended. God is in a wholly different category than we are. he is infinitely high above us in the nature of things.
Secondly, this being the case, what difference does it make whether a child is killed by God (or by God's command, etc.) rather than an adult? The child is no ontologically different from an adult. He or she is a creation of God just as any adult is, and God can take the life away if He so chooses.
Thirdly, if such a child was to be saved in the end (which God knows by foreknowledge and middle knowledge) then it is of relatively small import whether it had a short earthly life. It has eternity in heaven with God. This life is but a puff of vapor
In atheism, of course, there is no such afterlife, and so it is the most unjust thing in the universe to deprive any living thing of the only life that it has.
Ah, but under that premise, we should expect atheists (that confounded logical consistency!!!) to be the most pro-life people on the earth, since abortion deprives a human child of the only life it'll ever have. They can't even make it out of the womb and take a single breath of air before the child-killer invades and snuffs out his or her life.
Murder is wrong precisely because it is the wrongful taking of life by one creature of another creature. We have no such right to murder (and we must rightly define that term; it isn't simply synonymous with "killing"). But God, as the Creator of life, can take it away or judge an earthly life and that is not unjust or wrong at all. It casts no doubt on His character as a loving and merciful God simply because He commanded killings.
Fourthly, in orthodox Christian theology, even an infant is guilty by means of original sin. This is very poorly understood, but it is our belief. Therefore, it is no more "unjust" for God to take the life of a child than of an adult, if we consider the aspect of "guilt" alone. That child is part of the fallen human race.
That's precisely why even Mary the Mother of God had to be preserved from original sin at the moment of her conception (Immaculate Conception).
So your appeal to "killing the nursing Amalekite babies" either flows from illogic or an attempt to infuse mere emotionalism into a serious philosophical / ethical / ontological discussion. God commanding such an act puts it on an entirely different plane from men deciding to start killing children, which would indeed be immoral.
So it seems, Dave, that your plan of attack is to simply ignore everything I said and just continue on and assume that Samuel's command is certainly a command of God. That works out real well for you since I already admitted that if that key assumption is true, then I agree that this is not immoral.
Take a second look at my initial post and respond to that, rather than spending time defending what is not in dispute.
I'm giving you the premises of Christian belief. I haven't delved into all that you wrote, for lack of time, and because I saw that Jordan was doing a good job. Nor have you dealt with all of my arguments, by any stretch of the imagination: especially if we include the links which are extremely in-depth.
Goose and gander . . . if you accept our premises for the sake of argument and find an internal inconsistency, then we can go fro there (either myself or someone else).
If you are determined to doubt anything and everything in the Bible, at your convenience, then the discussion (as so often with skeptics) really isn't an ethical one, but rather an examination of severe textual criticism, which is completely different. No one can ever convince a skeptic of biblical inspiration. It just goes round and round, and I tire of that very quickly.
Obviously, one must exercise faith in God, that He is able to preserve a Bible of inspired words. Yet we can defend what is in the Bible, for the most part, because truth is rational and internally consistent.
Finally, I was not writing to you alone, but making general observations, too.
I may or may not respond in more specificity. No promises . . .
If you don't want to bother replying to what I write, that's fine with me. My problem is that you pretend to reply to me, and yet nothing you say interacts with the arguments I made.
And I didn't claim to deal with all of your arguments. I spotted a bad argument, one that presented a caricature of what the skeptical position was, and I replied to it. Now, if you were to reply to one aspect of my reply, for instance focus on my claim that you are engaging in straw man argumentation, while ignoring my point about God's reasoning presented in I Sam 15, that would be fine with me. I might just respond to what you say. But if my response ignores what you wrote, and you object, would you be satisfied if I replied that I was entitled to basically ignore your argumentation, because you didn't respond to the entirety of my post?
You can feel free to reply to me, or not. But if you do, you need to respond to what I say, not just ignore it entirely and do nothing but repeat assertions that I've already replied to.
Right. Duly noted.
Jon, your syllogisms bear little resemblance to what I said. That's known in elementary logic circles as the fallacy of the Straw Man. Your error is that you have not accurately stated my premises. I never said, "If Jesus rose from the dead, then his teachings are true." I you yourself have noted, I have pointed out that the resurrection to be true without Jesus being God and therefore infallible. What I have said is that because Jesus claimed to be God, did things that God alone can do, predicted His own death and resurrection, and then was raised from the dead as He said, we put our trust in His teachings. His resurrection demonstrates His trustworthiness and is an expression of His divinity -- and if He is God, then there is no error in any of His teachings.
You see, it isn't just that Jesus was raised from the dead that proves His truthfulness -- it's that JESUS was raised from the dead. Resurrection alone doesn't prove truthfulness of teaching, and I never said it did. So we can't say, as you argue, that an (alleged) error in Christ's teachings disproves His resurrection.
Sorry, Jordan. I didn't know you had replied to me.
In your recent post you write:
His resurrection demonstrates His trustworthiness and is an expression of His divinity -- and if He is God, then there is no error in any of His teachings.
So his resurrection shows him to be divine, and divine beings are trustworthy. Sounds good to me. Would it be fair to re-state that as follows:
1-If Jesus rose from the dead, then his teachings are true.
or if you prefer
1-If JESUS rose from the dead, then his teachings are true.
Now, if you want to step away from this claim, that's fine with me. But in that case you need to withdraw your claim from your first post where you said:
Since Christ demonstrated His truthfulness and His divinity for us by His resurrection from the dead, we trust Him when He teaches that the Old Testament prophets were authentic "mouthpieces" of God.
You argue that resurrection proves divinity and divinity proves accuracy in teaching. It follows logically that inaccuracy proves lack of divinity and if he lacks divinity he couldn't be raised, since had he been raised, this would have proved his divinity.
Ken, the "tricky" part is the fact that Mr. White didn't establish that Fr. Stravinskas knew koine Greek well enough to debate the meaning of the word zemioo nor did he lay a foundation in the debate that zemioo was being used in the context that he contends. The explanation that I provide was to demonstrate that the underlying premises were debatable in and of themselves which is why several foundational questions should have been asked first. If it had been established that Fr. Stravinkas had a working knowledge of koine Greek and based on that working knowledge, agreed with White that zemioo means only "to suffer loss" then Mr. White would have been free to ask the questions the way he did. More on this later after I get back from Zanesville this evening.
Albus locuta est, causa finita est.” ~White has spoken, the matter is closed.
Plurium Interrogationum ~multiple questions
Meminimus, et ignoscimus ~We remember and we (still) forgive.
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