Don’t ask me, I’m Reform. After shul this morning I’m going to the annual Post-Bank Holiday Weekend Weekend Bacon Cheeseburger BBQ with the Liberals. We’re going to spend the afternoon tying and untying knots, writing two letters and erasing them, trapping deer, washing and dyeing wool, and of course the Eruv Relay Race where we see how many things we can carry from private to public spaces and back again.
Trapping deer? That must be a hell of aHave A Heart.
I’ll grant that I’m an atheist as well, but the OT fairly straight forwardly answers this question. God has chosen his people (the Jews) and will keep them successful and powerful, so long as they abide by his rules. He also says that, as the single and sole creator of the world, he is the only God worth worshiping.
To me this sounds fairly implicit that it’s God’s power to protect, reward, take, or punish and his desire to be worshiped (by at least the Jews) that is meant to be the core of his authority – moral or not. Christianity simply makes the argument that what God wants just happens to be moral behavior, and of course that he is more concerned about moral behavior than he is about whether you are a Jew or not. He will still protect and reward you for behaving as he desires.
Yes, but in the NT we are told (as I mentioned before) that “Everything is lawful.”
I am being serious when I think that biblically speaking, there is no such thing as moral authority. Things aren’t morally permissible or impermissible–rather they are either “expedient” for “edification” or they fail to be so. What you decide to do determines, not whether you have followed proper authority, but rather, well, basically, whether you’re a jerk or not.
In my view, biblically speaking, questions of “moral authority” are childish. They are not for grown-ups. And their answers are false.
The Bible tells you how it thinks you should live and behave. The question the OP asks is, “Where does God get off telling me how to live and behave?” You’re getting overly caught up in semantics.
I don’t know that I’m getting “caught up in semantics” so much as I am “reading the OP.”
But if you’re right to gloss the OP’s question as you do, then it’s good to have that clarified.
A+
It’s not glossing it. You’re debating the semantics of authority and morality, whether they’re real terms as the layperson thinks them, and whether one can even follow something like morality. But the OP explicitly states that “Granted that God […] has genuine moral authority”, i.e. that it’s a presupposition of the question. The quibble isn’t over the definition of “moral authority”, it’s just assumed to exist and God has it. The question from there is why we care. Is he right because he’s wise enough to know that some behavior is better than others? Or is he simply right because if you disagree, he’ll kick your ass?
WTF fella?
From the OP:
From you:
The latter is undebateably intended as a gloss on the former.
You go on to point out in your post that the OP intends it to be assumed that God has moral authority. Fair point–when I say I don’t think he does have that authority biblically speaking, I’m not “answering the OP on its own terms” as people say.
There’s no semantic quibble–or even discussion–happening at all. I’m just registering that one of the assumptions of the OP may be wrong in an interesting way. (I don’t anticipate there are many people at all who share the view I expressed).
If that’s the end of it, that’s the end of it.
None of that happened. I think (biblically speaking) there is no such thing as moral authority. But as to the semantics of the phrase “moral authority” I intend the phrase just exactly as the OP intends it. No semantic quibbling, debate or discussion is occuring.
wrong.
God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it; for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die.”
Thanks for biblical site.
One would think, however, that a message board that brings “nuanced reading” to absurdity*, it wouldn’t be particularly tenuous to see that they were admonished that if they disobeyed this clear rule that they would die—they’d receive the “death penalty.”
Which is exactly what they received. In the day they rebelled they were essentially sentenced to death. Their fate was sealed in that very day. (and you’re invited to site the dialogue that establishes that simple fact)
And…they died. If the fact that God didn’t execute them that very day means he somehow lied, then have at it.
*I’m often amazed at the contortionism that goes on in biblical threads----like the Genesis admonitions on homosexuality being about hospitality of all things. So it seems a little fishy when literalism rears it’s head here.
It involves reading with context in mind; I know many branches of Bible-based religions don’t emphasise this (US Protestant evangelicalism is currently the most prominent, but not the only, example of one of these branches).
It is.
It does.
Context, huh?
I hadn’t thought of that. Enlighten me, perhaps? With cites?
Sure thing - could you just clarify exactly what you’re looking for cites of?
Either of your contentions, really. I’m easy.
Well, heres one thing I’m kind of interested in you enlightening me over.
When is the earliest valid cite for the notion that the Genesis accounts are really being about hospitality, rather than homosexuality?
I mean, I think you’d agree that age—in and of itself----doesn’t confer legitimacy to a flawed conclusion/theory. (although it often assumes legitimacy through the tradition and ceremony of age)
But I noted you said, “…many branches of Bible-based religions don’t emphasise this (US Protestant evangelicalism is currently the most prominent, but not the only, example of one of these branches)…”, and that implies to me that at one time mainstream Christianity had the correct view on the text in question.
So my curiosity is this: How, when and why did the correct, mainstream Christian view on those Genesis texts evolve into a condemnation of homosexuality?
The cite for God lying (or at least saying something that isn’t true) is the text. The Hebrew is very emphatic that this day the humans will surely die, which doesn’t happen in the story. They don’t die that day.
I can tell you that the ‘sin’ of Sodom has been perceived, and discussed, as inhospitality for a few thousand years, and give you cites from Talmud from that. One of my favourites for slapstick:
To be honest I’m not very familiar with Christian theology so I’m not sure when the interpretation that Sodom’s fault was exclusively homosexuality began to take hold.
It’s in the Book of Ezekiel (c. 600 BCE).
I don’t know enough about Christian theology to say whether this is true or not. I certainly didn’t mean to imply it.
ETA: Thanks Dio!