Philemon
Last night my buddy Chris Flanders taught on the book of Philemon. He named the elephant in the room: that Paul does not specifically condemn slavery.
Because he didn’t, the pro-slavery crowd (in American history) loved Philemon. Here was the one chance for scripture to condemn the ownership of a human being . . . and it didn’t.
Thankfully, over time we’ve rejected that understanding of scripture. We’ve come to understand that Paul’s “conservative social ethic” stems, at least in part, from his belief that the second coming was right around the corner. Besides, he was part of a tiny Christian minority that had little influence on the practices of Rome.
But that doesn’t mean that he was supportive of slavery. He was trying to control the damage in this fallen world. And in the process, he and the early Christians were putting in motion forces of love and justice that would eventually upend the evil of slavery in many places.
We look back with embarrassment on how some of our American brothers and sisters of the nineteenth century argued that God is pleased with slavery.
It makes you wonder where else people will be looking back in the future, doesn’t it?
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Buried in comments from a couple days ago were these words I wrote to Leland. They don’t solve any problems . . . but Leland raised the critical question of what we’re to do with so much of the violence of the Old Testament, especially those passages where the Israelites are told to kill every living thing. Here are some thoughts after years of being bothered by this problem.
Leland – I have no easy answers for you, my friend. The passages bother me, too. The whole idea of “herem” (Hebrew word for “a devoted thing” to be destroyed completely – Num. 21:2-3; Dt. 7:2; Josh 6:21; 8:26; 10:28; 11:11, etc.) is mind-boggling. It has always thrown me for a loop as a believer. If I was writing a book to upend faith this is where I’d start (as, e.g., Sam Harris has).
I understand the Marcionites well! They couldn’t reconcile the God who is revealed by Jesus Christ (”turn the other cheek” . . . “love your enemy”) with the vicious God of the OT, so they insisted these were two different Gods.
And it wearies me that people have a way of reading Jesus through the OT stories like these — rather than let Jesus be the center of scripture through whom we understand redemption history.
I plead ignorance. At the end of the day, I am a follower of Jesus who puts my trust in him and his ways — including his confidence in the story of Israel.
These stories are not the high points of the Old Testament, for sure.
But what if . . . God had been pleading with the people of Jericho to yield to him, to turn from their ways of violence and oppression (as in Sodom)?
What if we read this story like the flood — God’s attempt to create a fresh start? He has chosen a people to held restore the world. He, in his sovereignty, offers them a land that has been promised. And through that beachhead, he intends to bless all people — ever country, every group, every family.
I know. I know. It doesn’t solve everything for me, either.
You ask good questions, amigo.
Martin, many of us have here expressed our belief that God did not do so. Read up.
“Doubting”, did you notice how Martin’s criticism is only germane in the fundamentalist world?
Keith: Like Jeff said above, you assume a penal substitution view of the atonement, which I believe is deeply flawed. Unfortunately, many people confuse it with “the Gospel”. I do not have to accept herem in order to accept Jesus or his victory over death on the cross.
Alan: Does a mother have the right to kill the child she bears? Of course not! We are not God’s playthings. We are his children. He is Father! That is the relationship he has chosen with us and he will not change his mind. He says he is LOVE. He says his true nature is revealed the face of Jesus. He cannot say these things about himself and then act as though he can do whatever he wants to us because he is God and he made us. He is the Potter, but that isn’t the end of the story. He is the Potter that is LOVE.
Doubting: I resonate so much with what you are saying. Listen to the advice of Richard and Steve and Jeff W. The fact is Hitchens is right on a lot of points he makes. But he isn’t attacking the true heart of Christianity. He attacks the Sunday School answers, which don’t stand up to close scrutiny. For some people, they are enough. But not for you. And not for me either. I don’t know exactly what “treasures” Richard is referring to. I wish he would elaborate. But I don’t know if I would be a christian today if a friend hadn’t put one of Brian McLaren’s books in my hands. I read a bunch of his stuff, then Rob Bell’s book Velvet Elvis. Those guys turned me onto N.T. Wright, a bible scholar who taught me to approach the bible in a new way, giving it more respect than ever before but at the same time understanding its complexity. Finally, I should also mention that reading this blog and Gordon Atkinson’s blog reallivepreacher(dot)com have been a great encouragement to me as well. Mike and Gordon are two preachers that aren’t afraid to admit they don’t have all the answers.
Martin F., you said “But that is just what your God did.”
This is where my main problem/crisis occurs these days. I lean more toward “But this is what some people (probably men) sat down and wrote about what they think God did, or what they wanted him to say or do” rather than accepting it as some sort of ontological reality.
Mark,
It is hard, maybe impossible, for a mortal mind to comprehend how the love and of God can coexist with his righteousness, justice, and wrath. We know we can’t be all those things at once, and so we can’t visualize how God can. But he can. It’s not a matter of being God’s ‘plaything.’ It’s a matter of God being all those things at once, and dealing with sinful man according to those attributes.
To reject God because we don’t understand him is foolish. Of course we can’t understand him. Who do we think we are?
Based on my interpretation of previous posts, some were trying to understand Jericho and other OT stories where the peoples against Israel were destroyed. It appeared there was an understanding of killing the adult enemies, but an outcry for the innocent babies/children. Now, the scholars will need to chime in here for specifics, but I believe there are examples in OT AND history where not eliminating all enemies (including potential ones) turned out to be a bad move. This is what happened and why it happened! Don’t you feel going through this period of time more richly illuminates the ministry of mercy and grace through Jesus?
WTF, ya’ll didn’t think I was some warmongering, serial killer did you?
Alan,
The wording of your first sentence appears to oppose love to righteousness and justice. That makes me think that you haven’t understood well the Bible’s language (in sum) about righteousness and justice. Their hallmark in the scriptures is not retribution, but faithful care for the lowly.
If divine retribution is your lens, then you will find retribution in the scriptures both where it is and where it isn’t.
C.,
I imagine you are anything but a warmongering serial killer. In fact, you are probably a really nice guy–someone I’d like to play golf with or have a beer with. You might be a leader in your church. A great dad. An upstanding member of your community.
If you were a deranged psychopath, it would be easy to dismiss your post. But the troubling thing is, MANY well-minded, easy-going church people who fit the description above buy into your line of reasoning, which is based upon a certain view of the Bible and inspiration that many of us find problematic.
Jeff W,
I said what about penal substitutionary atonement by pointing out three verses?
Apparently?
Keith,
You juxtaposed OT destruction of the wicked with Jesus’ crucifixion, so I told Leland what that you appeared to me to believe in penal substitutionary atonement. It was my best guess.
The way the Lord deals with Ninevah provides one counter point to the way he dealt with other cities that met their destruction. These OT passages that paint a wrathful God are hard to deal with, but we do see instances where He gives mercy to peoples outside of the Jewish community. As Mike eluded to, perhaps we don’t have every detail of those stories and certain communities had been unresponsive to the previous workings of God.
Beyond Jericho, the flood story is a tough one as well. But even in the flood narrative we see a redemptive God at work. Through Noah, God redreams a world that is more keenly aware of its Maker and a people that remember in whose image they are made.
Still, it’s not easy, but those are some of my thoughts.
Are you referring to my reasoning being that of literal interpretation? I read Joshua 6:21 and don’t know of any other meaning it could have. My earlier post was simply a recognition of why it had to go down this way. It really seemed to be more of a faith issue. In fact, in Joshua 7:11, God describes His instructions as a “requirement”. Not following through was deemed as sin, as Achan found out a little later. Is this what you find as problematic? Why would God require such?
Keith: You said, “If I can’t accept the flood or Sodom or Jericho or herem, then I can’t accept His role in the cross, either. I can’t accept Isaiah 53:10 or Acts 2:23 or Hebrews 12:2.” Those verses talk about Jesus dying for our sake.
I took you to mean that we would be destroyed too just like Sodom except that Jesus suffered God’s wrath in our place. That’s basically the penal substitutionary view of the atonement, which is widely held by a majority of evangelical Christians (but not by me and, I was very relieved to discover, many other christians).
If I misunderstood the point you were trying to make, I apologize.
No, and I’m sorry if my point wasn’t clear, but I meant that those verses involve God at the cross. He was on it, in the Person of Jesus. He was also in heaven, the Person to whom Jesus prayed that some other way be found if it could be His will.
He didn’t stop what happened at the cross.
Now, you can see that as cruel and inhuman and unloving – but that’s only one side of the story. He has chosen to let us in on the other side of the story, whether we fully understand it or not. Fully understanding all of its aspects isn’t a prerequisite to believing it. (Fortunately!)
But to say that “I can’t believe in God if He’s mean,” well, pick and choose the aspects of God that you like and believe in part of Him if you will – but whether I can grasp His full nature or not, I’d rather believe in the whole divine Person.
C.,
Yes, I think a literal reading of the conquest narratives is problematic.
And so do others.
A tradition of OT scholarship suggests that the conquest narratives are etiological, or foundational narratives, meaning these stories originated to explain some present phenomenon, in the case, the presence of the Israelites in Canaan. http://www.jstor.org/view/00027189/ap050014/05a00150/0?frame=noframe&userID=96fc4806@acu.edu/01c0a84869005087343&dpi=3&config=jstor
The etiological narrative tells more about the values of the people who wrote it than it tells of reality itself.
The story about George Washington and the Cherry Tree kind of illustrates the function of the etiological narrative. George Washington was kind of a bland character—very stoic. Soon after he died, the famous story of the cherry tree circulated among children to promote the value of rigorous honesty. The story tells more about our young nation’s view of morality than about Washington himself.
Cut back to the conquest narratives. I think they say as much, if not more, about the experiences and values and theologies of the Israelites, as they say about God. The “real” (meaning literal history) story about how the Israelites wound up in Canaan might be rather dull or uninspiring.
Yeah, this opens a can of worms about the inspiration issue. But the can was opened on this thread long before this post. It has to be opened before we can talk about the reasonableness of faith in the 21st century, and in light of the holocausts of the 20th. I’m way out of my league here so I should bow out.
Jon,
It seems that the figures of the NT (Jesus, Paul, Luke) believed those events were real.
And the difference is we all know and acknowledge that the George Washington story is a farce. Maybe it’s the Sunday School Orthodoxy in me, but I just can’t figure out how as believers in the 21st century we can sift through the scripture and declare some things to be literal (the crucifiction and resurrection) and others to figurative or metaphorical. If you say God didn’t actually say the things that the Bible quotes him on, then how do you approach scripture. I assume that most people here have an evolving understanding of God. So if you discredit a story in the Bible because it doesn’t fit your understanding of God and then you change your understanding of God and “re”credit that story aren’t you just creating God according to your own understanding.
Maybe this isn’t at all how you read scripture. I’d like to better understand.
Kyle, you said: ” It seems that the figures of the NT (Jesus, Paul, Luke) believed those events were real.”
A Devil’s Advocate might ask, “Did they really believe those events were real, or is it just that those fellows who wrote the NT wanted us to believe that Jesus and Paul believed those events were real?”
Jeff wrote:
> The wording of your first sentence appears
> to oppose love to righteousness and
> justice.
Ah, the message received was not the one that was sent. Garbled transmission!
I don’t think those qualities of God are in conflict with each other (love, mercy, justice, righteousness, wrath). He makes provisions so that he can love and display wrath at the same time; so that he can show mercy and justice at the same time; etc.
But I’m not so good at that. When I’m “feeling” the most love I’m typically “feeling” the least wrath. When I’m showing the most mercy, I am probably neglecting justice.
Kyle,
Regardless of how we read scripture, don’t we all have the tendency to create God in our own image?
Writing in the early 20th century, Albert Schweitzer wrote his famous “Quest for the Historical Jesus,” in which he reviewed 19th century biblical (mostly German) scholarship on the historical Jesus, and determined that the “historical Jesus” was presented in a way that reflected many of the values of 19th century Germany. So there’s a case of classic liberals fashioning God in their own image.
And of course we have examples galore of people who claim to abide by biblical literalism who also fashion God in their own image.
Creating God in our own image is a tension beyond the ability of one person, or perhaps even one community, to manage.
Which is why I think we need to read the Bible in a diverse community.
I was a missionary in Ecuador and the people there taught me to see a few things in scipture, and about God, that I never saw before.
So yes, my vision of God is evolving, as I encounter him in scripture and in the community that interacts (and lives in tension at times) with scripture. I’m so glad my vision of God is not what it was when I was a kid. God was out to get me, so I thought.
Kyle,
You are definitely on to something: people have been creating and recreating God from the beginning. In fact, when one realizes that he is just a social construct, then and only then does the Bible make sense.
Keith: I did misunderstand you. Sorry about that. Thanks for clearing it up.
I think the concept of herem is cruel and unloving. And that is why I don’t think it is of God, because he is neither cruel or unloving.
I don’t think God allowing Jesus to die on the cross demonstrates that he is cruel or unloving. Jesus himself chose the cross because, as I understand it, there was no other way to bring about reconciliation between God and man (or, as Sherry would say, to bring the wall down). Jesus prayed for an alternative, but there was no other way. So he chose death in order to prevail over death so we could have life.
So I don’t see God allowing Jesus to die as cruel or unloving. I do wonder why God couldn’t have thought of another way to bring about reconciliation. But if you want to talk about why God doesn’t intervene when something terrible is happening, allowing Jesus to die on the cross is only the beginning. What about earthquakes or tsunamis? Why does he refuse to intervene to stop the devastation? Why doesn’t he answer the prayers of children who go to sleep every night praying for God to stop daddy from hurting them?
I can’t tell you why God usually doesn’t intervene, but I don’t think it is because he is cruel or unloving. I have found comfort in Rabbi Harold Kushner’s work. He says that we have to accept God’s limitations and forgive him for not making a more just universe. Some would consider this heresy, but it has been an encouragement to me.
I’m sorry if I sounded ticky or judgmental. Bad day. Very bad day. Day that begins thinking about having seen your name the night before on a blog post about a journey away from faith that features your name as a blogging buddy in that journey – a journey which currently concludes that it can’t believe in a God who is mean – then you see something similar on another blog where people you care about are commenting, and then the day progresses with other personal concerns that have nothing to do with blogging but do involve people of deep conviction and their peace of mind, well, the day that pretty much gets worse from there.
If I were a drinking person, I’d go celebrate this Pearl Harbor day by getting bombed.
I’m trying to be a praying person instead.
So, I’ll just ask for your prayers – for me and some folks I love.
Keith: I don’t think any apology is necessary. I’m ticky and judgmental on my good days. Bad days? You don’t want to know.
I read the post you linked to. That would be hard for anyone of faith to hear. But I wouldn’t go off on a drinking binge worrying about your friend. It sounds to me like he is seeking truth and wants to be genuinely honest about where that takes him. It is a scary ride, but I like to think that everyone that sincerely seeks truth finds it eventually.
Hi GKB,
Can you define “thanatocentric”? I am not smart enough to understand…
Thanks,
Corny
What would we expect the literature of Israel to say about the conquest and its “techniques” and rough edges? Why are we surprised or concerned? The literature is like that of countless other nations in retrospect. The God experience is to be gleaned from the national story line, but not confused with it. Why do we think the Israelites have a monopoly on truth in national self-understanding? As Americans, surely we can understand how the myths of a nation are formed and perpetuated, can’t we?
Larry,
We are not God’s people (may think we are but we are not). I am surprised and concerned because it is diametrically opposed to the cross.
Just curious – is it possible that entire peoples were wiped out because the Israelites would never have accepted the surviving women and children of those “godless” nations into their own ranks and provided for them? Maybe God’s chosen people were just too barbaric (or whatever) at that point in time. Even Hebrew women and children who had no male to care for them were often poor and in desperate circumstances – how much worse for the foreigner? Is that a possibility?
A compilation of scholarly responses to “the New Atheism,” including reviews of Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, etc.
http://www.ericaustinlee.com/?p=1495
Could be, CK, could be, but could it possibly have been the opposite? Could the problem have been that the Israelites would accept the survivors of these “godless” nations? I think God, in His love, gave these nations every opportunity to accept Him. Unfortunately, they completely rejected Him. Therefore, the acceptance of these people would be a contaminant to the Israelites. In Jericho, the best heart available was one belonging to a prostitute! Yet, that was enough to save her and her family. If Sodom and Gomorrah had just “one” heart for God then they would have been pardoned. Thankfully, God’s intense love for those who love Him attempts to spare us from evil influence, just as He did with the Israelites regarding Jericho.
By the way, Jon, is Randall Helms an atheist like Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris? Please tell me you haven’t turned to the writings of an atheist to help you gain a better understanding of God.
Leland,
I don’t think Larry was suggesting that America is “God’s people.” He was just pointing out the inherent propensity of a nation to feel it is elect and paint its history in a favorable light. America is a pretty good example of that. Correct me if I’m wrong, Larry.
C.,
My apologies if this comes across as rude or inappropriate, but I have absolutely no idea what to do with your comments. Quite frankly, they baffle me.
Larry said, “What would we expect the literature of Israel to say about the conquest and its “techniques” and rough edges? Why are we surprised or concerned? The literature is like that of countless other nations in retrospect. The God experience is to be gleaned from the national story line, but not confused with it. Why do we think the Israelites have a monopoly on truth in national self-understanding? As Americans, surely we can understand how the myths of a nation are formed and perpetuated, can’t we?”
If all of the above is true, then what would we expect the literature of the early Christians to say about that problem their founder ran into with the Roman government. Isn’t that literature similar to other stories that speak of a god becoming a man? The Jesus experience is to be gleaned from the stories within the NT, but not confused with it. Why do we think the NT writers had any special sort of insight into real truth? As Americans, surely we can understand how the myths of a religion are formed and perpetuated, can’t we?
For those who may have missed the point in the second paragraph, let me spell it out: For all of these “higher critics” who like to show how much smarter they are than the rest of us with all of their talk of mythology and literary forms, I would like to know why you believe anything of the gospels regarding Jesus when you so easily dismiss and rationalize other parts of the Scripture?
Leland, we aren’t God’s people, but we sometimes get confused and act, think and speak as if we are. That, in fact, was a large part of my point. Nations find ways to justify their horrible acts and one prime way is to drag God into their rationale–ought to sound very familiar to us today in the US.
Ben, no apology needed. I don’t take anyone as rude. I just enjoy this forum to talk about things. Now, what is baffling to you?
C.,
I read Randall Helms as a requirement for a rhetorical theory class many years ago. His thesis is that the four Gospel are complete fiction–well, kind of like what Jim suggests above in his second paragraph. I was in grad school and yeah, it shook me up a little, well, my “Sunday School orthdodoxy” a least.
Jim
Speaking for myself (a “lower critic!”), I’m just trying to be intellectually honest with the nature of Scripture. Regarding the Gospels, yeah, there are undeniable problems with the Gospels if we insist that they be precise accounts of history in all of their details. Attempts to “harmonize” the disparities fall short.
However, I do believe that the Gospels faithfully attest to the salvific purpose of God in Christ and point humanity toward living a cruciform life, if we can define “faithfully” without insisting on complete historical accuracy.
Jon, if I write from the viewpoint of trying to identify problem areas with the gospel accounts, I believe the biggest problem area for a critic, higher or lower, would be this claim that a man rose from the dead. How unbelievable is that? Of all the historical claims of the gospels, this surely is the most troublesome to someone insisting on historical criticism as a means of Biblical interpretation. Would you agree with that?
First of all I have been accused of being a GOSPELS only Christian by many in the church of Christ, of which I am accused of being a member, what I really claim is that I am a member of Jesus’ new testament church. I attend and worship at a building with the words “church of Christ” out front. I am not a christian who stands with one foot under the old covenant, and one under the new. I believed my savior when he said he had not come to deny the old covenant, but to fulfill it. When a contract is fulfilled it is over null and void, when a new contract is signed it remains untill it too is fulfilled, especially one signed in blood. In my view the old testament is a history of things which did not work, and things we should not do.Even things God said he would not do ever again! Without history we are doomed to repeat our mistakes. If the old covenant worked so well that we must refer to it in our worship services, why did God see fit to execute a new one with so great a sacrifice as the gift of his own son’s blood.? when we argue over what went wrong in the old testament laws why just pick one? evidently God saw the flaw in it all, and changed it.
Jim,
You raise a a good question, The question really for those of us who claim faith in God through Christ.
As I understand this thread in its entire context, it appears that those who have insisted on freeing the Bible from overly literal interpretations do so with a pastoral concern. The whole discussion began with a post on Philemon and the fact that American slaveowners justified their commodification of human beings based on its endoresement in the OT and its tacit acceptance by Paul in the NT.
This led to discussions about how other parts of Scripture that condone war are used to justify continued nationalism and war.
Furthermore, the “new atheists” have come along to challenge the incoherence of Christianity, when in fact what they are attacking is fundamentalist accounts of Christianity.
Therefore, with these issues in mind, several in this discussion have raised serious issues about how we read the Bible. This conversation is anything but meaningless scholarly banter, given the issues raised here. This conversation raises pastoral and even global implications for how people who look to the bible live their lives.
As revealed in his recently released diaries, President Reagan, with his overly literal interpretation of prophetic literature and Revelation, armed our nation with the belief that we would play a decisive role against Russia (the Kingdom from the North) in the battle of Armageddon.
Much of the USA’s foreign policy toward Israel has been influenced by premil dispensationalists.
How we read the Bible is not only of eminent pastoral concern, but of global concern as well.
In this context, then, this conversation is relevant.
Thanks Larry
Jon, yes I don’t disagree with your response. My problem is this: When we balk at certain things in Scripture that just seem to fanciful for the modern mind to accept (for instance, David and Goliath or the story of Jonah), how can we then turn around and say, “Even though I don’t really believe Goliath was nine feet tall or Jonah was swallowed by a great fish, I believe this man rose from the dead 2,000 years ago?” It becomes a rather delicate balancing act, doesn’t it?
P.S. — I realize no one may have specifically commented in this thread on Goliath or Jonah — I only use them to illustrate my point.
Jon said “Furthermore, the “new atheists” have come along to challenge the incoherence of Christianity, when in fact what they are attacking is fundamentalist accounts of Christianity.”
No, Jon, I would disagree with this entirely. Atheists are attacking more than a fundamentalist account of Christianity. They most assuredly would deny the resurrection itself — which, I would hope, is not only now a belief of fundamentalists……..or is it?
You’re right. Atheists probably don’t go to church even on Easter.
Largely, both fundamentalists and atheists approach the bible from the same, modernistic perspective. Both are foundationalists, and both seek salvation “facts.” Both live by the acutely modern notion that “facts” determine “truth,” and that, historically, “truth” is merely a compilation of “what really happened.” Thus, it’s unlikely that you’ll find many atheists or primitive Baptists that enjoy Oscar Wilde, or Auden, or T.S. Eliot. The Patristic Church had quite a different approach to the Faith. Read St. John Chryosostom’s commentaries on the Gospels (Thomas Aquinas once said he would give the whole city of Paris for one book, St. Chrysostom’s Commentary on Matthew), and you’ll find a refreshingly different approach.
Unlike either the fideistic atheists, or the practical-atheist fundamentalists (see HERE esp. section 6), you’ll find not information, but meaning. Every minor difference becomes pregnant with “meaning.” I believe it was Origen who wrote that the reason God allowed discrepancies in the Gospels was to impress upon us that the meaning/truth was important, not the superficial details.
Thus, minor “details” like the “charcoal fire” of St. John’s gospel (21.9), prepared by Jesus, are no longer “minor details,” but become pregnant with theology (in this case, harkening back to the same Greek word, anthrakia, found in the Septuagint of Isaiah 6, the char-coal that cleansed Isaiah and made him fit for ministry (thus, Peter also becoming, again, the “Rock”). These details are not matters to reconcile between the Gospels, but tools of the Church to lead us toward Christ, the center of all things.
The “New Atheism” is attacking fundamentalism and modernistic Protestantism. And rightly so. They’re all playing with the same broken toys. Neither fundamentalists nor atheists understand the Resurrection. Take away fundamentalism, and Richard Dawkins has not a book but a 10 page pamphlet. This hardly makes them much money, either the author or the publisher.
Well, I suppose it is just a shame that there are Christian fundamentalists in the world or the entire world could be believers in God.
Why don’t you explain the resurrection to us, Kevin Burt? I am ready to hear you give us your explanation. I don’t know if I am a fundamentalist or not, but I believe Jesus physically died and on the third day he physically rose from the dead. Have I properly stated what happened or am I playing with broken toys?
Jim, I believe that Jesus physically died and rose the third day, too. You don’t have to be a fundamentalist to believe that. If I may ask, please be a bit slower to take offense; none was meant to anyone here. My point was not that no facts matter; clearly they do (see the Nicene Creed… “under Pontius Pilate”). Nor did I imply that fundamentalists are the reason all atheists disbelieve. My point was that the new atheists are similar to the typical fundamentalist. Both are more concerned about getting every detail to “harmonize” than understanding the historical meaning of the Faith. I would not have taken many at this site for fundamentalists; my post was directed primarily against the “New Atheism,” and certainly not against anyone here (I know none of you). Peace be with you as the Holy Nativity draws near.
And, Jim, I meant also to add: forgive me, a sinner, for any offense I did cause. Again, I meant none.
Kevin, there is no need to apologize, but I still want to know how fundamentalists misunderstand the resurrection. What did you mean by that?
One of the things that has gone on in this discussion is that many have advocated viewing as myth those parts of scripture, particularly in the OT, that seem to give pause to the modern mind. For instance, surely God would not have told Saul to kill all men, women, children and infants because God just would not do such a thing. Therefore, we must realize much of the scripture is mythology and it is only when we come to that realization that we have truly understood as we should. For instance, one poster said:
“What would we expect the literature of Israel to say about the conquest and its “techniques” and rough edges? Why are we surprised or concerned? The literature is like that of countless other nations in retrospect. The God experience is to be gleaned from the national story line, but not confused with it. Why do we think the Israelites have a monopoly on truth in national self-understanding? As Americans, surely we can understand how the myths of a nation are formed and perpetuated, can’t we?”
Now that all sounds very intelligent and well-thought out. Here is my problem with it which I don’t think has been addressed or if it has, maybe I am too dumb to see it. I can make a similar argument related to NT passages. For instance, what would we expect the literature of the early Christians to say about that problem their founder ran into with the Roman government. Isn’t that literature similar to other stories that speak of a god becoming a man? The Jesus experience is to be gleaned from the stories within the NT, but not confused with it. Why do we think the NT writers had any special sort of insight into real truth? As Americans, surely we can understand how the myths of a religion are formed and perpetuated, can’t we?
In other words, if certain parts of the scriptures are simply too fanciful for the modern mind to believe, then how can those same people turn around and insist we believe the most fanciful notion of all, that a man physically rose from the dead some two thousand years ago?
Sorry to repeat much of what I have already written, but as I said, I don’t think my questions have been addressed (which accounted for some of my crankiness with you). I am looking for someone to reconcile these things.
P.S. — I’m a sinner as well and you did not cause offense — I probably did though.
Mike,
How about those War Birds! I think AHS can go on to state with beating South Lake Caroll last week end and having a great game win toay. Go Eagle!!!!!!!