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Richard Dawkins wrote that the God of the Old Testament was:
arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully¹
Thomas Jefferson even described the God of Moses as “a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.”¹
There is little chance that a believer in God will accept that this is a fair assessment of the divine character. A Christian might even be offended by such a callous description. The argument is that this isn’t the God that is worshipped or that this was the God that was needed for humanity of the times. There may be other explanations or justifications beyond these, I don’t know. I suspect that the mythology of flood stories and creation arose from other religions, that they were borrowed from Egyptian, Persian and Greek myths. If not then it is almost guaranteed that the oral histories were corrupted and exaggerated over time.
Whatever the truth I think it is fair to regard the Old Testament reports on the character of God as a product of the times. Harsh realities make for harsh gods after all. Actually, that’s a little unfair. Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Judges, Numbers, Exodus. They have the real dodgy stuff in. They show the patriarchal, limited view that the human writers put forward as gospel. It really is no wonder that the New Testament is where Christians concentrate their beliefs.
In the New Testament God is pretty inactive, there are no floods, plagues or earthquakes slaying the evil, the unworthy or the just plain unlucky. Not till the Book of Revelations anyway and that is a prediction not a report of events. The New Testament concentrates on the fulfillment of Biblical Law and the reassessment of it by the man Jesus. It helps that the man is also the son of God and God incarnate. That helps to explain the miracles anyway.
Remove the supernatural from the New Testament and discard the Old Testament as mythology and what do you have left? The God of the Jefferson Bible. To be honest, you have the God that most Christians set as their example. We have a Jesus\God as a teacher of man, a person who sought to turn the established church of the time towards the betterment of people. He didn’t seek political power or political unrest, the “render unto Caesar” passage is proof of that. He, and I think it fair to make this comparison, acted much like the 20th Century preacher for peace, Mohandas Gandhi.
He preached a message of love and compassion, of sharing and understanding that was very different from the God of Moses and Abraham. That god who was reported to demand the sacrifice of children and burnt offerings. Don’t the miracles and the judgment from on high obfuscate the moral lessons from Jesus? Shouldn’t Christians be willing to cherry pick their scripture to discard the parts that paint their beliefs in a bad light. How else are Christians to answer the accusations from the likes of Professor Dawkins who shows God in his very worst light?
I know I’ve used some pretty harsh language here and I hope no-one is so offended that they decide not to think about the points that I’ve made. If you disagree with me (and I’m sure that many of you will) then I’d love to hear why.
¹The God Delusion - Chapter 2
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I think the Book of Revelations is a report of events (not a prediction) as revealed by God to John(?) although I don’t think anyone thinks there will be an *actual* dragon.
Can I add one more question to the mix, if Christians choose to focus on the Jesus of the New Testament who is decidedly much better behaved than the God of the OT, is it still the same God of the OT? Or did God change? I still don’t see how the immoral character of God in the OT can be brushed aside because his Son was a really neat guy.The inability for me to reconcile or find any decent explanation for this discrepancy was a major factor in my loss of faith.
I’ve heard the explanation that God chooses to interact with mankind in different ways depending on what mankind is ready to hear. Ok fine but that makes God’s message inconsistent.
For 4,000 years the Jews were great and everyone else sucked. Then one day God decides the Jews were boring and it was time to expand the message to all of humanity (well the Jews again at first but then the rest of humanity). I’ve also heard that God’s ways are mysterious, ok, that’s kind of a non-answer.
Perhaps the best answer is that we are judging God by Human standards of morality. I personally like this explanation only because it causes a whole set of problems for Christians regarding moral truths. Plus it opens a number of doors for me to speak to someone about the nature of morality.
Look up the word propitiation and then read Romans 3:21-28.
The reason the God of the N.T. looks different than the God of the O.T. is because his wrath is no longer poured out on the sinful world, but instead it was poured out on His Son, Jesus Christ in our place.
Your point is very true Sceptigator. Christians can’t simply focus on the God of the N.T. and define Him based on the characters they choose to see in Jesus Christ. That is where we are deceiving ourselves and the world. It’s easy for us to say, God is loving or God is merciful. And it’s hard for us to accept the reality of God and how he sees our sins. But let’s be honest. The reality is, God is just, and sin is wicked. Even our righteous deeds are like filthy rags (Is. 64:6) in His sight. Sin is not a finite action against a somewhat decent being. Sin is an infinite disgrace to a Holy and Righteous God who demands perfection. What penalty would be justifiable for a crime of this magnitude?
Jesus is more than a “neat guy.” He is our Savior. He took our sin upon Himself, and along with our sin, he took the wrath of God. God didn’t show Jesus, mercy on the cross. And because of Jesus (who was pierced for our transgressions/crushed for our sin) we can once again be seen as acceptable to God. Not by our works, or our righteous deeds, but by the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Can you please explain to me why God is “immoral”? And by whose standard is He considered immoral? At what point does justice become immoral, and who gets to make this decision? Personally, I think God has done a pretty good job of letting us know how offensive sin is to him and his character and yet instead of fleeing from our sin, we instead call him unjust and immoral. That doesn’t seem to add up to me!
Thank you Jesus!
Jason
Bill wrote:
This is interesting because I thought you regarded the Bible as the Inerrant Word of God i.e. 100% true in every detail.
If you remove the supernatural from the NT then you’ve removed God as well. So that can’t be quite what you meant. What supernatural elements are you removing and what stays?
ok first off, where did God in the Old Testament demand the sacrifice of children? He actually condemned those who
Huh? I don’t see the problem here.
And when do we remove the supernatural of the New Testament? Sure we see science and stuff as the process but that doesn’t mean we just chuck the whole “God did it” thing out the window.
Also, I agree with Jason. Though I usually focus on the God as described in the New Testament because I believe in the , I can’t ignore the God of the Old Testament.
I don’t think God necessarily changed. Too many people put God in a box. “He can’t be both.” Why not? How he treats us as humans can change but he doesn’t have to.
I don’t personally trust Dawkins’s account of Christianity because he’s a physicist and a scientist. He’s not a theologian. He should stick with what he knows.
Is the author of blog posts identified anywhere now? I can’t see who wrote this. It sounds more like Hoverfrog than Bill to me.
Uh-oh, it IS by hoverfrog! (It says at the top in the left margin.
My apologies, Bill!
Excellent points, hf
I have been a fan of Professor Dawkins’ work for years, but I do think that his book on religion is a bit light on theology. I don’t agree with the implication made by Kristina that one needs to be a theologian to comment on religion, but one should at least have a pretty up to date concept of the matter at hand.
I agree with Jason. Christians can’t simply side step the disturbing stories in the OT because they are a challenge or don’t make the idea of God compatible with what they want God to be. You are stuck with the whole book.
*Correction*
Sorry, but I could not resist correcting you Kristina. Richard Dawkins is a biologist, not a physicist.
What sin did Job commit? In fact, I’m pretty sure that the story of Job goes out of its way to say that Job “was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.” (acknowledged even by God hisself)
The crime (taunting) doesn’t quite match the punishment (being mauled by bears)
2 kings 2
2:23 And he [Elisha] went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
2:24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
Oh I hate bring out the typical atheist staples of genocide like Jericho or the Ammonites(?). Let’s put it in very discreet terms, what “sin” besides their existence did the children of Jericho commit against the mighty and just God.
I could keep going like the divving(?) up of the women-children as the spoils of war. And besides the obvious funniness of the story what is up with Balaam’s Ass (that version of God can’t quite make up his mind).
Oh and the standard of immorality would be the modern interpretations of what is immoral based on reason and evidence. For example,
1) genocide is bad because it, in general, leads to lots of dying but also it tends to be a bit indiscriminate since most genocides are based on religious, ethnic or economic groups and not on any specific action.
2) enslavement of women-children (no doubt for cooking and dishes) is generally frowned upon nowadays unless you are a [insert cult name],
3) gratuitous killing of children by bears. Again, today we have tendency to make sure that the punishment fits the crime. Thieving bread does not lead to drawing and quartering anymore. Stoning has gone out of fashion (except in certain backwards cultures)
4) Generally being a di, uh, meanie to Job. I’m not even sure where to begin with how or why the story of Job reflects very poorly on the big man.
Sceptigator:
I think you’re missing something in your summery of Job. Which can happen very easy, if we fail to take the entire Bible into account when reading a specific story. You don’t get the whole picture when you only look at a specific part of a book, and the assumptions start to fly. I can’t open any other book, read a part of it, and assume that I have the whole story; nor can I do this with the Bible or story of Job.
Because of Adam and Eve’s sin, perfection is not possible for mankind. Job falls into that category, so even though the story does not speak of Job’s sin, it is VERY safe to make the assumption that he was a sinner, like the rest of us, based on what scripture had revealed about sin.
Job may have been seen as “blameless and upright” because he feared God and shunned evil, but it wasn’t because he was perfect. Instead it was because he recognized his imperfection and lived his life in accordance with the law that God had written on his heart and depended on God’s promise of mercy and grace to those who had faith in the redemption to come through Jesus Christ.
Another point that I think should be made is that the “curses” God allowed to happen to Job were not because Job was an evil person. They were used to prove to the devil that Job’s faith in God’s was not based on the blessings he had received, and that God’s grace was sufficient enough to sustain him even in times of great loss. When all the ‘blessings’ had been removed from Job’s life and bad things [OK, very bad things] started to happen, Job refused to turn away from God, even when his friends and family told him to ‘curse God and die’ he remained faithful and was later blessed because of it.
What an amazing example of a man whose faith in God could carry him through even the darkest of human trials. It was that faith that God found favor with, and deemed ‘blameless and upright’.
Oops, that was suppose to read:
Skeptigator.
It was definitely me. I’m Spartacus, not Bill.
Why can’t you take the figure of Jesus in isolation as apart from the old Jealous God? Seriously.
Abraham and Isaac.
Genesis 22:2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”
Jephtha and his daughter in Judges 11:29-39.
My apologies.
But as for him speaking on theology, he speaks from an authoritative perspective as if he has studied it hard-core. Which is why i say he should just with his talent (which I guess is biology)
@Ben
whoops forgot that one. But this one is a little tricky. Some theologians say that this was a test and that Abraham knew that God would not ask him to kill his son. I’ll have to look at this a little more though.
More often than not in the OT, God condemned countries for sacrificing children.
whoops forgot to comment on Jephtha. Hmm…my first glance at this passage is that God did not command him to sacrifice the daughter. But I’ll have to study this more. I’ll get back to you.
@ hoverFrog
I think that the general belief is that Jesus and the “old jealous God” are one and the same. Different look, different attitude, same being in a brand new book. It’s commonly thought that the New Testament is a continuation of God’s redemption of man. The Old Testement has been included to cast light on the charecter of God and to provide a reference for the fullfilment of prophesy. It’s inconvienient that the charecter of that god is pretty bad, but that is the case. I mean sure you can simply decide to take what you like. No can stop you, but there is an intellectual culture behind those beliefs and those decisions. Without that culture it’s just arbitrary quote mining.
This was a test of faith. God didn’t allow Abraham to kill his son, in fact he never intended for Abraham to sacrifice his son. Abraham had waited a VERY long time for this promise from God [Isaac] to be born, and you can only imagine how much faith it would take for Abraham to even think about sacrificing him. But I wonder if this sacrificing your son idea was foreshadowing something to come…maybe the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross?
Also, God provided a ram to sacrifice in the place of Isaac. A blood offering was required, which was once again symbolic [as in the story of Adam and Eve and the animal that was killed to provide them clothes] of the blood sacrifice to come when God’s son was sacrificed in our place.
What greater story of love then this?
What an Awsome God we serve!
Maybe it’s time for a new Council of Nicaea to carefully re-create a new Bible for our times by discarding some of the more sinister parts. Jefferson was ahead of his time.
God didn’t allow Abraham to kill his son, in fact he never intended for Abraham to sacrifice his son.
The question was ‘where did God in the Old Testament demand the sacrifice of children?’ The answer is right there in Genesis 22. God demanded Abraham sacrifice his own son, and Abraham is held up as a positive example because he was willing to do so.
Jephtha DID sacrifice his only daughter to God to complete a deal God accepted about winning a battle. He never stopped Jephtha or his daughter.
Jason,
I suppose that’s the difference between you and I. I find the apologetics for why God would actively cause a faithful follower misery, I mean, remove his blessings, unsatisfying and smell like mental gymnastics.
I suppose those blessing were his cattle and, oh, his children but who am I to judge the big man with my inferior human morals.
The more I read this stuff and then look at the apologetics I just can’t help but see man reflected in God and not the other way around.
As for taking the whole Bible in totality to gain some insight into the individual stories. The OT reads like a group of people who feel special because they have the one true god and everyone else is literally in their way and deserving eradication.
It’s all about perspective I guess.
For this, I put the blame on Jephtha. To make such a rash statement without thinking resulted in losing his daughter. I don’t believe that God necessarily enjoyed the festivities.
As for your question on Abraham, in the case, God does as for a sacrifice.
The question is then does God take pleasure in such things? More on this later.
wait that last comment was a little rash. Let me chew on these passages a little bit.
Skeptigator:
You may be correct on our differences. And I think you are probably spot on about perspective.
That’s my point entirely. Job was not miserable. He was completely satisfied in God alone. His faith in God was not dependant on his cattle, children or anything else. He was satisfied in God alone, and because of it God was glorified. What an amazing blessing. God glorified in us when we are satisfied in Him. Where have I heard that before?
What good are “blessings” of this earth when life is but a vapor? Family, cars, cattle, a nice house, McDonalds French Fries…Yes, I’ll take them don’t get me wrong, but what good will those things do me (1) second after I die?
Thinking eternality here, 70+ years of pain or sorrow doesn’t really seem that hard to endure compared to an eternity of blessings in heaven. And the flip side, which I know by saying it will probably make me a bad guy, 70+ years of “blessings” on this earth is nothing compared to an eternity in hell.
It really all depends on where you place your treasure I suppose. On earth, or in heaven?
As far as your comment on the OT and how it “reads like a group of people who feel special because they have the one true god” I can’t really buy that argument. I mean look at the Book of Isaiah [and there are others as well]. God speaking to these very same “special people” who had been set free from their captivity and slavery and yet because of their pride, selfishness and greed rejected Him completely. And you also said that “everyone else is literally in their way and deserving eradication” but God didn’t play favorites with them. They were sinners who rejected his moral law and they were punished greatly for their rejection of God. His ‘chosen–special people” were given the very same wrath that God showed others in the OT and God even used godless nations to carry out his wrath! Talk about real mental gymnastics!
Sin is sin bud…and “special” or not the penalty of sin is the same for everyone. That’s the beauty of the Gospel. The diagnosis is the same no matter who you are and the cure is the same for us all as well. Salvation comes by the grace and mercy of God alone, through faith in Jesus Christ alone. The propitiation for our sins.
But then again, as you said, it’s all about perspective I guess.
Ben:
It could be my translations (NASB/ESV), but I don’t see where God ‘agreed’ to Jephthah’s vow at all. The Bible makes no mention of God playing a part in the decision nor does it state that God accepted this behavior as anything other than sin.
To me this points directly to another place in scripture [Mat. 5:33-37] where Jesus reminds us of the sinfulness of making superficial vows.
It was common practice for generals during that time to make vows to God if he would bring them victory. Why wouldn’t faith in God be good enough to ensure victory?
People still do this today. God if you just help me get an “A” on this test, then I promise I will read my Bible 2 times a day for a month!!!
The entire vow of Jephthah was sinful in nature. God didn’t demand anything from him other than his faith…But he took it upon himself to promise something to God as a payment for favor. That was the first mistake. The second was when he followed through with the vow even when the action in and of itself was sinful. Why didn’t he simply fall on his face before God and repent for his sinful vow? How different could that story have ended? Instead, the entire story, as shown in scripture, is a horrible tragedy.
At least that’s my take on it anyway.
I do think that it is key that the God of Abraham demanded, expected, and desired material sacrifice. Jesus supposedly made that sacrifice. Taking the OT as a kind of historical mythology I think it safe to say that it isn’t current or relevant to post-Jesus Christians.
The law has been fulfilled or so I’m often told. Do we concern ourselves with the details of a contract that has been fulfilled? If a carpenter builds a tree house for me as per a contract of work do I ever need to refer to it once the work is complete? Only if something breaks.
If Christians place their trust in Jesus then nothing has broken so you don’t need to go back to the OT. You may want to read it as background but the legalities are done with.
I may well be over generalizing but I hope you see my point.
The Israelites were treated specially by god, even going so far as to be called god’s chosen people. The Ammonites were treated slightly differently than Jews when they disobeyed. The Canaanites were as well.
God went out of his way to break the Israelits out of Egypt and the worse they got for being ungrateful was to aimlessly wonder around the desert. Let’s see the Egyptians were drowned. They were drowned pursuing the slaves they wanted back because God hardened Pharoah’s heart. So much for free will.
As for Jephtha, who is reading a story for exactly what it says technically as opposed to the whole of the Bible now? I suppose you don’t actually believe that anybody was actually sacrificed like this guy,
http://www.tektonics.org/gk/jepthah.html
I agree and that’s how I use most of the OT as background and maybe gaining some insight but overall that’s about it.
I see no reason why Dawkins should have written about theology. He was, for the most part, talking about the average Christian in the pew and in the US most of these people also know nothing about academic theology. Evangelicals follow a folk theology that they don’t even recognize as theology. In fact, in any of the churches I attended theology was frowned upon or outright ridiculed as false religion that had nothing to do with “real” Christianity and this is still the case today in the churches my relatives attend. I think if Dawkins had written about theology, he would have missed the mark completely in regards to 90% of people sitting in the pews in the United States. In addition, he explained why he did address theology in the book.
Skeptigator:
Who was God warning and punishing in Isaiah? He is dealing with the Israelites. Yes, God did call them his “chosen people” in order to fulfill a promise to Abraham, and the rest of those who are saved through Faith, but the way he deals with sin remains the same, chosen or not God pours out his wrath on sinners…even on his beloved chosen people, Israel.
Of course I believe that Jephthah sacrificed his only daughter. It says it in the Bible doesn’t it? My point wasn’t that the sacrifice never happened, but rather that it was not in accordance with God’s moral law. God never gave his blessing for that action. He never told Jephthah that he approved of this kind of praise. In fact, if we look at the rest of scripture we can make a very educated assumption that God looked at the entire situation as sin.
Jephthah’s Sin:
- Making a foolish vow before God, to give God something in return for His favor in battle. Why would God need/want anything more than Jephthah’s faith? God is glorified in us, when we are satisfied in Him…That’s it. Not the ashes of our dead children.
- Secondly, instead of understanding the sin in the vow he made to God and repenting of that sin…Jephthah sacrificed his daughter ‘for God’. It was murder and a disgrace to God who was anything but honored by this “sacrifice”.
Kings 11
29 Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah. He crossed Gilead and Manasseh, passed through Mizpah of Gilead, and from there he advanced against the Ammonites.
30 And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD : “If you give the Ammonites into my hands,
31 whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”
32 Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the LORD gave them into his hands.
Jephthah made an offer, God did not decline the offer AND God fulfilled his part, and never told Jephthah not to do his part. How is this not agreement? He told Abraham to stop. He did not tell Jephthah to stop.
The God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are the same God. Jesus is God in the flesh. To say we focus on one more than the other, is somewhat inaccurate considering we believe them the same. However, it is generically true that Jesus is the focus of Christianity given that he brought the new covenant and salvation. My problem with people like Dawkins is that in there being critical of God, name calling specifically, Old-Testament God or New, is that somewhere in it they become a God themselves. Who are we to say in the grand universe what is just or not? Only God is. To not believe in God is to designate your own beliefs as the truth. For instance, to state there is not such thing as Truth is flawed in itself, because the statement itself can’t be true! Anyhow, I believe the Bible is without error, God-breathed and word-for-word the way God intended. This incldues Genesis, Revelation and everything in the middle. Are there things in the Book I don’t understand … most certainly! But this book is but an instant of an eternity of information, and to judge the creator as a peice of His creation is in itself unjust. Just som quick thoughts …
Interesting post though, Hover, and one many Christians are unwilling to truly discuss. Thanks!:-?
Ben,
I could be off the mark here, so please don’t think I say this with absolute authority, but I think my understanding lines up quite well with the rest of scripture. It would be easy to look at this story and assume that God is condoning Child Sacrifice, but there is no other place in scripture that leads us to believe this would be the case. Therefore, automatically a red flag should be raised which calls for a deeper look into God’s character.
So, as far as I under stand, your take on this verse is that God wouldn’t have granted Jephthah’s army victory in the battle unless the child was sacrificed in return?
I disagree.
You asked the question, “How is this not an agreement” when God didn’t decline or intervene.
It’s not an agreement because God never asked Jephthah to give him anything in return. And just because God didn’t prevent Jephthah from killing his daughter doesn’t automatically mean that God approved of the behavior.
Nowhere in scripture are generals called to lay down offerings in exchange for God’s favor in victory. That actually seems like a very pagan practice. However, we are called throughout scripture to have faith in our heavenly Father, which is the point I think Jephthah missed. God didn’t need his ‘burnt offering’ in exchange for victory in battle to feel glorified. He simply desired Jephthah’s faith in Him for their protection and victory.
It is by grace we are saved, through faith. A gift of God so that no man can boast.
God wants the Glory for protecting his people. But that glory comes from our satisfaction and faith in Him. When we try to add to the ‘blessings’ of God by earning favor with our good works or sacrifices it takes away from the blessing that God gives us for our faith in Him alone.
Who initiated the Abrahamic covenant, Abraham or God? Why create a covenant with one man and his descendants to the exclusion of others? Why not offer this covenant to all? Before you attempt to say, He did. My point is why at that specific point in time did He only offer this covenant to Abe and no one else? Why did God change his mind (or at best, decide it was time to change the rules) when He sent himself/son down to Earth to free Jews from The Law.
…and the rest of those who are saved through Faith. That is a NT thing not an OT thing, if I’m not mistaken obedience to the Law was everything prior to Jesus. In fact, wasn’t that the main gist of Jesus’ message that Jews no longer have to follow the Law because he fulfilled it? Wasn’t Jesus message that Faith was supreme (or good works depending on who you believe) and that the rest was by the Grace of God?
These conditions/teachings were not available or pushed by anyone in the previous X amount of generations of Israelites. All of this sounds like a retrodicting of Jesus message back onto the OT, information/thought/philosophy that was not available to the Jews of the past.
I still say the *way* he deals with sin certainly had a double-standard when applied to his peeps. We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.
A: God Did.
The covenant was a promise to all men through Abraham. Not just in the NT, but in Gen. 12:3 where God promises Abraham that through him all the families of the earth would be blessed. This is another place in scripture where God speaks of the coming blessing through His Son, Jesus. How you ask? Jesus is a descendant of Abraham who was promised to the world from the very fall of man in the Garden of Eden. Why Abraham? Who knows…it really doesn’t matter God has used many unforeseen people to carry out his plan. He chooses the unsuspecting because in the end He gets the glory!
As stated above, this was not a new idea, change of plans, or a change to the rules. It had been promised by God to man since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. See Gen. 3:15 & Rom. 16:20, Heb. 2:14 and Rev. 20:1-3, 10. Abraham and all those before Christ were saved by their faith in Jesus! The only difference is that he had not been born yet. When Christ came, lived, dies and was resurrected we now still have faith in him but the promise has been revealed and fulfilled.
You are partially correct. Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law (Mat 5:16-18). However, we are still held to God’s moral law but Christ has paved a way for us to be redeemed from our failures to accomplish what God stillholds us accountable to.
I honestly can’t agree with you on the above statement either. I know I mention the book quite often, but the OT book of Isaiah is a very good parallel of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and how it related then and still relates today!
For His Glory,
Jason
You site Gen 12:3 as evidence that the Abrahamic covenant applied “all the families of the world” but God says to Jacob in Gen 35:11-13,
or Genesis 17:6
No mention of all the families here. I’ll have to pull all of the mentions of the covenant but I’m willing to be that more often than not there is no mention of those pesky outsiders.
Perhaps more problematically in the apostles scolding of the Galatians for departing from the doctrine of Faith alone and the grace of god will win you the prize (Galatians 3:10-14)
why would Galatians 3:10-14 specifically mention that the blessings of Abraham could be brought to the Gentiles through JC. Isn’t that like saying Jesus is the Son of God because he’s God’s Son? Weren’t the blessings of Abe available to the Gentiles before that? If so, why say this is in this way as if it were new? One final note, in the very same passages that slam the Law and pump up Faith as the only way in, you have a clear distinction being drawn as to who exactly the Abrahamic covenant did not apply to.
This is kind of side note but we are currently revamping/upgrading our web farm at work and there are a number of features that we want that Microshaft doesn’t turn on by default. Well that’s a red flag, if it isn’t on by default then there’s a reason for it. If it makes specific mention of something in the documentation about something that seems like it was already supposed to work that way anyway, it’s probably not working the way you think it is. I think the principle here works the same
Bryan said
An interesting interpretation but I have the ability, as do all humans, to determine for myself what is right and wrong. I can therefore look at an action or statement and determine whether I believe it to be just or not. It doesn’t particularly matter if I believe that my morals or cognitive abilities derive from God or not because having them is enough for me to be able to exercise them.
The search for truth is something that I think we all support. Philosophers, theologians, scientists of all backgrounds, all of us in our own way seek to determine what is real and true in the world we live in. Given the option of choosing a happy life of illusion or a difficult life of revelation I suspect most would choose hard fact over the lie. I know I would.
It is fair to say though that there is nothing that we can be 100% sure of, even our reason is subject to deception. The only thing that we can truly know is that we exist. Even if we are fooled on everything else there must be something to fool. That said we can only live as well as can reasonably be expected. I question the Old Testament and the New because I don’t believe them. I think that they may contain some wisdom and some advice but to take it completely and literally is to abandon the gifts that I have, that may be God given for the theistically inclined, and accept the word of another over my own thoughts. It is mental slavery at it’s worst.
I’m not saying that this is what Christians do. Christians look to the bible, to the church and to their own relationship with God (to use the words of many Christians) to make the best of the world, to understand their place within it. They don’t abandon reason but take what lessons they can from the sources that are available. I think that the bible writers (OT and NT) did the same and that subsequent generations continue that tradition.
When Professor Dawkins calls the OT God a monster he’s sniping at the extremes of rigid thinking and biblical literalism. Leviticus is much like parts of the Quran in terms of settling disputes or advising people of appropriate behaviour but it is trapped forever in the context of a society that had recently emerged from the Iron Age. I think that very little of that is relevant today. Even if it is, then it’s been superseded by newer writings.