Tom…I have tried to cite passages for everything I assert. I really wish you would do the same…otherwise it is impossible to tell if the material is actually there…or if you are just wanting it to be there.
Specifically:
That is absolutely incorrect. I defy you to cite a passage that says “most of the old rules were no longer to be followed.” In fact, to make it easier on you, I defy you to find a passage that says anything other than “circumcision and some dietry restrictions” no longer apply.
That is the only thing that Paul or any of the others ever dealt with.
I intend, by the way, to deal with this question in my next thread.
As for Jesus…he was about as clear as clear can be when he said he was not here to change anything about the law…not one word, not one letter, not even one stroke of one letter. So that argument falls flat.
I’d appreciate anything you can come up with from Paul, however…if you can.
I am not asking that it be shown to be the inerrant word of any god.
I would like some consistency, though.
And if the book contains errors about what pleases or offends the god…how does one use it in any way at all?
Do you simply pick the items you want to be important to the god…and disregard the items you think are not important?
For instance, the book says that the god thinks homosexual activity is an abomination deserving of capital punishment…but that buying, selling, and owning slaves is completely moral and okay.
How do you decide which of those is correct…which is not correct…or if either is correct or either not correct?
IMHO the reason is that is what the people wanted and assumed of God, so that was what God was to them. They thought God as unapproachable, and only the best of the best can come near Him at all, thye wanted a God so holy that His name should not even be spoken, and God complied.
Jesus shows what the Father really is and wants, to have a name, a face, someone you can approach and talk to and someone who will reach out to the people suffering the most and heal them.
Can’t speak for everyone…but I certainly am not saying that you, or any of the Christians and Jews involved here, consider the Bible to be the inerrant, literal “word of GOD.”
Essentially I am asking…of what value is the book to us in answering the two major questions involved in this issue:
One: Is there actually a god (or are there gods)?
Does the book give us any information whatsoever that we can rely on?
Two: What is the nature of that god (or what is the nature of those gods)?
Does the book give us any information whatsoever that we can rely on to tell us what pleases and what displeases any god or gods that might exist?
And if any of these questions get an unqualified YES from you…please tell us how you know what you can count on and what is undependable in the book?
So I think it’s valid to say that some religious people, even today, feel that those that are “blemished” are not worthy in the eyes of their God. The blemished are a “punishment” from their God.
I’m probably not the right person to be asking, since I don’t believe in the existance of the judeo-christian god (or indeed in any god from any other mythology).
I can only repeat what believers whom I respect have stated to me; namely, that there is a sense of the numinous that believers get from these works, but that they are the works of fallible humans, mixed up with works that are basically works of history or more accurately mythologized history, imbedded in the primitive social ethos of their time, containing stuff that is only tangentally about ‘god’ at all, but is more akin to law codes and medical treatises - see for example the discussion of infectious skin diseases.
Perhaps an imperfect analogy: imagine some primitive islanders see an airplane. They have never seen one before, but it really impresses them. They tell each other stories about this airplane, and eventually their priests write it down; it gets mixed up with a bunch of other priestly writings, about the sex lives of their chiefs, laws relating to how one trim’s ones’s beard, and the proper management of coconuts; milennia go by. Their descendants can still, in filtering through the texts, detect the existance (however imperfectly) of the airplane sighting …
Believers believe that the airplane actually existed and that the text is valuable evidence of that, albeit naturally distorted and imperfect.
Leaving the analogy for a second, in the case of god the texts re-enforce and is re-enforced by, in essence, mysticism (defined here as the intuitive experience of the numinous), the direct experience of at least some believers of the “presence” of their deity of choice; I am of the opinion that this experience exists though it has no actual focus, that it is understood by the believer through the lens of their particular culture (so a Buddhist mystic will find ‘evidence’ through meditation for the reality of nirvana, a taoist for the tao, and a Christian for Christ).
Non-believers such as myself are more of the opinion that the airplane is simply - more mythology. Personally, I am of the opinion that the ultimate “root” of it all is the sense of the numinous that crops up in all human populations, given a particular focus in tribal/chiefly society to a common tribal god or gods. God is simply the crystalized, mythological face of this, used naturally enough for other purposes (social control, focus of priestly authority, etc.).
It is much deeper then that. God chose to live in men and through them and allow men to use His power as their own. The whole system works on faith. If men believe God is as you say, those men will have such a God by the power God gave man. The men themselves will only ‘activate’ that aspect of God.
It part of God’s will that men be conformed to the likeness of His Son, having the power that Jesus had and do the things that Jesus did, and to use the name that Jesus has (this is why we pray in the name of Jesus, we are actually granted full use and authority to pray as if we are Jesus, as we are at that time) . The Israelites were/are waiting for God to send His savior, but that messiah is in each man, when they realize it. Till that God will be what their faith system allows God to be.
Thank you for at least trying, Malthus. I really appreciate the work you put into that answer and I understand and acknowledge the difficulty of your task considering you are not a theists of the Christian or Jewish persuasion. (Or a theist at all.)
Nearly as I can tell…the book is of no real value in answering either of the two salient questions I proposed.
It seems to me that it cannot tell us anything reliable about whether or not gods exist.
And…it seems to me that it cannot tell us anything reliable about the nature of any gods that might exist…nothing about whether or not there are things that please or offend it…and if there are, what those things are.
It is about as much help in this area as is Catcher in the Rye.
If there are any theists in the forum right now who think they can make a decent case otherwise…please hop on. I’d love to discuss it.
This topic is pretty much the thesis of Galatians, but chapters 2 and 3 probably spell it out most clearly. Here also is a broader article discussing Christian views on the subject.
People have been asking this question for centuries, and there’s any number of answers. I think the shortest answer would be that the grace of God inspires your decisions. Some churches would take the position that grace is expressed through the church. Obviously, if you’re not a person of faith, that answer won’t be very satisfying.
Even if you get past the question of how to decide, there’s endless disagreement about what the decision should be. Catholics and Protestants can’t even agree on what books are in the Bible. Martin Luther liked some books of the Bible better than others, and Lutherans still can’t agree on whether he thought the Bible was inerrant or not.
To the extent that you’re asking whether there are any clear answers provable without reliance upon faith, I think the answer is no.
Tom…cite the passage or passages. You can cut and paste it from an on-line Bible.
It will not do what you say it does, but I am willing for you to make your case.
I will cover the rest of your post after we deal with this…but my inclinations are that to sum up your position is: Pick and choose the ones you think apply and the ones you think do not…and say it was a “divinely inspired” choice.
Tom, to make this discussion about what does or does not apply easier, I have started a new thread with this subject as its topic. Here is a link to it.
Not totally caught up on the discussion, (as evidenced by which post I’m replying to.)
As Tom said, there are two covenants. The first is with a nation he chose. The second is with people who voluntarily choose to follow him, (except according to misguided persons who believed they had to convert at the point of a sword.) The requirements are different.
If you have a child and an adult friend, the rules you give them will be different, and the penalties as well. “Eat all your vegetables, finish your homework, don’t kick me in the shins when you’re mad at me.” You may say all these things to both individuals you’re dealing with. But, you might take away a child’s TV priviledges for each of these, where you wouldn’t even impose a penalty to an adult friend for the first two “transgressions,” and you probably wouldn’t suggest going over to your friends house and stopping him from watching TV for the third.
A nation is not a voluntary association. The requirements for keeping it running smoothly are almost necessarily more draconian. It’s really much like a child. (not everyone in it, of course. But a small element always has to be controlled in order to keep order.) That brings about laws that you wouldn’t need to enforce if everyone was, of their own free will, trying to get along.
This wasn’t to be cruel, but to keep Israel pure in belief. This wasn’t required when they attacked cities they weren’t going to inhabit. (v 10-15)
Large portions of the OT say that when Israel was obeying God, he blessed them; and when they disobeyed, he cursed them, let other nations overrun them, until they repented, etc. As an example to us and other nations, (Deut 4:6, I Cor 10:6.) But that can often be seen as a natural consequence: if you abuse a child, it doesn’t stop with that child. The evil can perpetuate itself over several generations. That child, may grow to abuse his children; or being broken himself, produce broken children. (Num 14, Deut 5)
And concerning purity… A pure sacrifice was to be offered by a pure individual… to cleanse the impure. Only purity can cleanse the impure. You don’t wash in filth to clean yourself. And it wasn’t just deformity that caused impurity. All sorts of things made a priest unclean… Until the point where, as the NT says, a perfect individual, offered himself as a perfect sacrifice, once and for all. (Hebrews… the whole book, but specifically, chapters 7,10 and 12)
And on Love. People seem to think that in the OT, God was wrath; in the NT, God is Love: what the??? But, most of the love evidenced in the NT can be found in the OT. Lev 19:13-18, but v18 will look very familiar to a NT reader…
But the audience is different. How do you keep an unconverted nation pure? With strict measures. How do you keep a voluntary friend pure? You forgive him when he repents and let him choose to do better next time. But, you also have stricter requirements of a voluntary convert:
People have been asking this question for centuries, and there’s any number of answers. I think the shortest answer would be that the grace of God inspires your decisions. Some churches would take the position that grace is expressed through the church. Obviously, if you’re not a person of faith, that answer won’t be very satisfying.