This is an interesting article I found through a link at Neil's blog. The link was to another blog that reprinted the end of the article. I found the entire thing quite enlightening.
This article presents info typical of both Hollywood and the homosexual movement.
First, as if it's any surprise, it shows how Hollywood airbrushed the warts and blemishes that is the real life of Harvey Milk. Not having seen the Sean Penn depiction myself, nor having any desire whatsoever to do so, I really didn't need anyone to tell me that the film presented Milk as some sort of saintly creature. I didn't need anyone to tell me that his true self would be left out. Hollywood, in some self-destructive, death wish-like mental defect, likes to push liberal crap that draws no one and makes them very little money. This movie obviously stuck to the game plan and so well that the Hollywood loons were properly smitten. But it only showed "their truth", not truth.
Secondly, the article points to the common tactic of the homosexual activist to lie to further their agenda. Milk knew this, apparently, and as is S.O.P., lied as needed. What a shocker.
Thirdly, like the Matthew Shepard case, the murder of the Milk was NOT because of his homosexuality. Yet the movie, and the memory of this low-life, is based on that lie. I had never heard that White supported the right of a homosexual teacher to teach. No. We're to believe he murdered Milk because Harvey was a homosexual.
Such lies, distortions and omissions are typical of the movement. How could anyone support a movement that so easily lies?
516 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 401 – 516 of 516So much to weed out, but until I'm done with dinner and some other responsibilities, I'll do two favors:
Applaud Marshall for recognizing, profusely, precisely at what level he can engage with me.
And directing Bubba, who comes out looking like the only one capable of making arguments in this gallery of rogues, to our former conversation on "Leviticus" not Samuel. Only in this post have we taken up Samuel.
Marshall's post titled,"Those Traitorous Bastards!!!"
Bubba, you do appear to have disappeared from the conversation on Friday at noon on May 29 after many lengthy exchanges in the days leading up. Marshall was left to cover for you while you took an early weekend somewhere without a computer, it looks like. But there, you did not come back for some reason.
Bye for now -- but I don't rule out that before I return, God can act in a mighty way through the Holy Spirit to change Tug's heart. Which makes him wrong again.
I'm glad you're impressed by your intellect and skills in the art of persuasion...
That makes one of us.
Bubba,
Your first reasoning paragraph is a disincentive to read further.
If the Bible is inerrant and to makes literal sense, then it should not be that difficult to reconcile possible contradictions.
And surely, if the Bible is inerrant and makes literal sense, then one need not read it with a commitment in hand that it is indeed so. If the Bible is inerrant and makes literal sense, then such qualities should appear of themselves in an honest reading.
Nathan says what he says and when he says the Lord God says something then that is exactly what the Lord God says. And since Nathan is speaking in direct and pointed discourse to David, there is no playful or testing parable going on here. Nathan's already covered that ground and exposed David to himself.
So, the method of your reading: going into it with a belief commitment in hand, working to reconcile seeming contradiction works in opposition to your theoretical or theological position on biblical hermeneutics.
In fact, going into a reading with a belief commitment in hand and finding contradictions that need to be worked out is exactly a liberal approach built on an understanding of biblical scripture as a complex and varied collections of texts written in particular times and places that situate it, but that nonetheless cohere into inspired Holy Scripture by virtue of the fact that the texts reveal the nature of God from within the limits of human language and understanding and, further, reveal how people can enter into and develop throughout a loving relationship with God through the Son in the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
What you do when you read scripture is exactly the opposite of what should follow from what you believe.
What you do when you read scripture is exactly what *should* follow what I believe.
I hope that is not too murky.
I should add that when one reads scripture with hermeneutic principles derived from the way I believe, a necessary corollary is that one can never be certain that one has it right.
Precisely because the bible is not inerrant and cannot always be read literally.
But I promise to read further!
Bubba,
Is it too much to ask you to acknowledge that how you unpack "one flesh" is your interpretation and not what one can reasonably expect the writer of Genesis to be saying? You may be making beautiful analogies, but surely you can recognize how this part is an argument by analogy. Surely you don't expect us to be able to say with any confidence that Genesis has in mind the nervous and digestive systems and organisms in mind, do you?
Whether you do or not, still there is no clear prohibition that a man cannot become one with one wife and then one with another wife, and one with a third wife.
After all, Paul's argument is that it is not right that a man become one with the prostitute. He is not arguing that a man and a prostitute cannot become one, he is saying that, indeed, they do become one (even though the man may be married) and that it is their becoming one that is not right.
It is not right because she is not his wife.
This does not "preclude" as you put it, his becoming one with as many wives as he has.
Paul goes on to say something which the host here laughed at me for saying: that our relationship with God is analogous to a sexual relationship. When in communion with God, we are one in Spirit with God.
The comparison is clear; yet Marshall, who denigrates sex in opposition to Paul in your passage, cannot stomach such intimacy with God.
It threatens something within him.
_______
And again, if God's will precludes anything other than monogamy, then why make a covenant with a polygamous people? Why give wives from one man to another? To a man after God's own heart, God's own chosen King?
This is too much slipshod operation for the kind of God you present at all other times, the stand up God, the narrow way God, the one, true, unchanging God.
Even here, things are precluded but not precluded. Opposed to God's will and yet established by God himself with a blessing on his favorite King.
Exemplified by Paul but not really.
No. You've got too many contradictions here. You've broken the "unity" of your reading and your understanding.
Bubba,
RE part 2, you're question has to be asked of someone who believes the Bible presents all truths, all eternal truths, all of the time.
I don't believe that. That polygamy was accepted (clearly more than tolerated) is not my problem and does not, for me and over half of Christianity, constitute a defense of polygamy.
You are trying to paint me into your corner of biblical understanding. But that is not the corner where I stand.
I/we find that much in the bible is culturally specific and has passed away: something akin to Christians performing miracles.
Do you think you can perform miracles because of your faith, or has "that age" passed away?
For me/us the age of the Patriarchs has passed away. As you suggest, there were good reasons at the time, just as there remain good reasons for polygamy in certain primitive deserts among nomads and primitive forests among other groups.
There were good reasons for boils, too, and the prohibition on split hoof animals (though we may not entirely understand them).
That "God" commanded such things, I take to be true to Israel's experience of God as they articulated it, but it is not true of mine.
So, the real God may or may not have been fine with polygamy. I'll never know on this side.
Likewise, Moses was a deliverer of his people and his people praise his name still. In Israel's faith, Moses was loved by God.
So, the real God may or may not have had a problem with the murder, though it was in defense of other men. And, this was clearly before he knew God.
But I'll never know on this side.
Fundamentally they do not matter. The time of the Patriarchs is over, much less the time of Moses.
These have passed away, have they not? The mosaic and temple laws?
But what I have before me are living human beings I am commanded by the living Christ to love. And in loving some of them, I witness their faith.
Not unlike Peter witnessing the faith of Gentiles. Peter's vision has even brought down the prohibition on Gentiles. Israel's time as the sole covenanted people has passed away.
Note, please, that Jesus did not do this. Jesus whole ministry did not say directly that Gentiles were perfectly welcome into the kingdom.
Paul made that plain, and he never knew Jesus. So, clearly things can happen in and to the kingdom that no one, not even Jesus instituted.
And yes, Paul was an Apostle and we are not. And yet we don't require woman to be silent and we don't require slaves to remain civil in slavery, and divorced men and women become presbyters, etc.
So, welcome your gay brother and sister. The Kingdom of Christ is not done with us, any of us.
Feodor,
"Applaud Marshall for recognizing, profusely, precisely at what level he can engage with me."
This is funny. You haven't the ability to dictate a high level of discourse and you haven't even kept up with me. I'm walkin' slowly, too. Using big words, dropping names of authors, none of this means you're making a case and it certainly doesn't put you out of MY league. You can't seem to get it through your brown matter that the only one impressed with you is you. And really, you're no judge.
Now truly, Bubba is the best at making an argument, as well as shredding yours, and you should really concern yourself with trying to raise yourself up to his level. As you fare poorly with me, you're not likely to score at all with him.
Now getting back to how the ball is still in your court as far as reckoning with me, you have yet to state how the mere mention that God gave David Saul's wives means that God views polygamy positively or even in a neutral sense. As I suggested, God could merely have said, "I gave you all that was Saul's when I gave you his throne." The point was that God had blessed David making David's sin more egregious. I also spoke of other possibilities that make more sense than to simply assume that God automatically was approving of polygamy. The fact is that you NEED Him to approve to make your other points regarding the sinfulness of homosexual behavior. So don't pretend that you're too tough an opponent when you can't even respond to simple speculations that are more consistent with the rest of Scripture than anything you've yet to present.
Keep in mind also, that God didn't want David to be king, anymore than he wanted any other dude to be king. The fact is that He didn't want a king for His chosen at all. Yet, because of THEY'RE hard-heartedness, he tolerated that they have a king.
So, you're still on the hook for showing how God's words to David through Nathan are in any way inconsistent with the proper view that my side has regarding marriage.
The next is another less than intelligent insight:
"So, the method of your reading: going into it with a belief commitment in hand..."
This would make sense if not for how well we, especially Bubba and also Neil and Eric, tie together the Bible from one end to the other. This would make sense if you could prove that Bubba or myself or anyone else on this side of the issue reads with anything preconceived. We aren't the ones looking for ways to make "Thou shalt not..." become "Oh, go ahead if it makes you happy."
"I should add that when one reads scripture with hermeneutic principles derived from the way I believe, a necessary corollary is that one can never be certain that one has it right."
How very bloody convenient. This allows for all sorts of behaviors, then, doesn't it? Good for you and other self-serving frauds.
"Surely you don't expect us to be able to say with any confidence that Genesis has in mind the nervous and digestive systems and organisms in mind, do you?"
Here you go exposing yourself as an idiot and moron once again.
more coming-
But then, unbelievably you say, and I'm sure with a straight face:
"...still there is no clear prohibition that a man cannot become one with one wife and then one with another wife, and one with a third wife."
And you dare to suggest one needs to elevate one's self to engage with YOU! I could almost pee myself laughing at the irony of one who just said the above quote after claiming a high level of intelligence. Becoming one with one woman, then another, and then another? Can you say, "Grasping at straws?" A man and his first wife have already become one. Does he then detach himself from the first one and become one with the second, until he wishes to be one with the first again, so he'll detach from the second and become one once again with the first, that is, until a third comes along and then he detaches and... or is it like a snowball where you fill each hand with snow and pack it together and then pack another handful, and then another handful until it's a giant snowball with all those handsful, that is, second, third, fourth, etc wives becoming part of the big oneness, that is, women becoming one flesh with all the new wives...or perhaps one with several individuals seperately at the same time? How does THAT work exactly. How can one become one with one woman and then be one with another while still one with the first? How much money did you spend on the education, anyway?
more coming-
And regarding your comment about Paul and prostitutes, I have only a vague memory of the verses in question, but I don't need to read it to know what is being intended there. So I'll cover two bases for ya.
"After all, Paul's argument is that it is not right that a man become one with the prostitute."
Paul's argument is that one shouldn't boogey with a prostitute because by doing so, one has made one's self one flesh with the chick, but will then go away after paying up and likely marry someone else. Looked at it in other words, if the man doesn't then marry the chick doesn't matter because having intercourse with her made them one flesh. Marriage with her would actually be a must here, but naturally men who rent whores don't marry them, but go back to their lives and then, more often than not, marry someone other than the whore. What Paul is saying is that the man is already one flesh with the whore when he gets married to the other woman. So, he's saying don't lay with whores because you are, by virtue of the sex, becoming one flesh with her and are then prohibited from having sex with anyone else.
The other base is if he was referring to married men, which I don't believe is the case, but works anyway. The married man is already one flesh with his wife. To rent a whore is then adultery. That's pretty easy to see, even for a troll like yourself.
"...that our relationship with God is analogous to a sexual relationship."
This is not how you stated it originally, but only a liberal sin promoter like yourself would think of using such an analogy to express a relationship with the Almighty. You almost have to in order to push the "anything sexual goes" mentality for which you will eventually pay dearly. I certainly can't stomach that. Reverence for Him won't allow it.
By the way, I don't denegrate sex, I put it in its rightful place. I don't pretend that it's some "wonderful gift from God", put merely a self-serving urge which God only tolerates within a real marriage, but is meant for procreation. Logic, and what any educated, but even moderately intelligent person should realize is that the pleasure of sex is a biological function that insures the act is even done. That is, it feels good so we do it, and by doing it, the species survives extinction. The urge to enjoy that pleasure has to be strong to populate the planet. It's so strong that people will elevate it to a place it never belonged and they do so in order to deflect their inherent knowledge that they are animals incapable of self-control. It's why there are so many Levitical prohibitions. People who wallow in pleasuring themselves are not thinking of pleasing God. But of course you're too educated to understand the obvious.
"And again, if God's will precludes anything other than monogamy, then why make a covenant with a polygamous people?"
God's people were guilty of many sins. You're insisting that what polygamy took place was the worst thing they ever did? That it has some special significance over any of the other many sins they committed, including continually turning to false gods, for example? The question is really, why did He make a covenant with them at all?
Well that's about it for now. I can't do this as much as I could before last week. So I'll leave it there for now. That's far more than you'll be able to rebutt without sounding even more stupid anyway. You're really too easy, but too stupid to see it.
Feodor, thanks for finally pointing out where I hadn't addressed your questions. I did eventually skim the comment to which you refer, a few days later, and after another exchange with Marshall that helped dissuade me from bothering. I was reluctant to join in that particular discussion from the beginning, and I simply opted out of continuing.
Here, I could certainly attempt to continue to engage you on every single point, such as this claim...
"And surely, if the Bible is inerrant and makes literal sense, then one need not read it with a commitment in hand that it is indeed so. If the Bible is inerrant and makes literal sense, then such qualities should appear of themselves in an honest reading."
...which introduces literalism (in a move that mimics Dan's m.o.) when no one here believes, for instance, that the Bible teaches that we're literally the bioluminescent sodium chloride of the earth, and which claims but never substantiates the contentious position that inerrancy ought to be absolutely obvious, but I'll note these problems without rebutting them in any detail.
(Other problems I'll note in passing is the suggestion that Jesus' ministry didn't directly include the Gentiles, when the Great Comission clearly had a universal reach -- we are told to "make disciples of all nations" in Mt 28:19, in arguably the most Hebrew-centric Gospel -- and the claim that Paul "never knew Jesus" when Paul himself claims that his authority as an Apostle hinges on his personal encounter with Christ on the Damascus road.)
But instead of commenting at length on every point, I think it suffices to focus on this one comment, about what the Bible records as divine commands.
"That 'God' commanded such things, I take to be true to Israel's experience of God as they articulated it, but it is not true of mine."
This low view of Scripture -- that it records ancient Israel's subjective experience of God, rather than God's objective revelation to Israel -- is simply not consistent with the recorded teachings of Jesus Christ, who affirmed Jewish Scripture to the smallest penstroke and routinely appealed to Scripture as the final doctrinal authority.
As much as I reject your low view of Scripture, I wish that it was at least consistently held. You shouldn't act as if Peter's vision in Acts is an authentic and authoritative revelation from God if you reject so much else as the outdated speculation of man. Just because a passage can be twisted to fit your desire to declare homosexual behavior morally permissible, shouldn't somehow make it a more authoritative or important passage; just because a different passage is inconvenient to your efforts, doesn't mean that it's inauthentic in its claim of divine authority.
Regardless, just because I have made a long-standing exception for Dan, it does not mean I'm all that interested in discussing the teachings of Jesus Christ with someone else who claims to follow Christ yet so obviously rejects a good bit of what Christ has clearly taught.
Bubba,
First, your note taking is a convenient method to avoid the central issues I raise. Never for a moment would I think that you read parables or metaphors as other than parables or metaphors.
A literal reading does not confuse all genres, it just reads them in an ahistorical framework in violation of the clearly modern (since the Enlightenment or Vico) that human experience notes that the passage of time changes viewpoint and understanding of abstract truths.
We cannot think of the stars like the Phoenicians did. We know something entirely different, a something which places a impermeable wall of unknowability between how we think and how they thought.
So, back to how you read literally. I know you know parables and metaphors like "you are the salt of the earth." To suggest otherwise would be to suggest that your mental aptitude is quite low. I reserve that judgment for others.
So, I'm pretty sure that you know that is not my position and, since you pretty much know that, this move of yours is an escape so that you don't have to address 2 Samuel, which is not parable, after the parable springs the trap on David, and is not metaphor. Nathan says that, "God says..."
I think we both have to read that literally as indeed what 2 Samuel is telling us. But you have to go further in you literal reading than I do.
You have to say that God did indeed say that. The real God, not just Nathan's experience of God. You have to say this because you go in to the reading with the commitment that the Bible is inerrant and is to be read as literally God speaking.
This is your problem when it comes to texts that disagree with your theology, and this you are not owning up to.
__________
With Sacred Scripture, which is not a scientific hypothesis or historically accessible event, errancy is much more tricky a proposition than inerrancy.
You are writing glibly and uncharacteristically lazily.
___________
Paul never knew the earthly Jesus. He witnesses on one place that he "heard" the risen Christ. In another place he says he "saw" the risen Christ.
This is why I put it exactly the way I did. The name Jesus is reserved for his earthly ministry.
This obviously also applies to the Great Commission, given by the risen Christ, not the earthly Jesus. Jesus did not, in his earthly ministry, open the door to Gentiles.
This is what I said, which is now clearer for you.
But none of this answers my further points about Paul in Galations, which I think is also clear for you but a problem for you, too.
Should I restate the problem?
Paul is not arguing that a man and a prostitute cannot become one, he is saying that, indeed, they do become one, but that their becoming one is wrong because they are not married. It is a violation of righteousness to become one outside of a covenant. In part because our union with God in the covenant of faith is meant to be a template for the union between men and women.
Now, if one read points like this in the literalist fashion you usually prescribe (which often finds agreement in Marshall's hysterical style of reading), one would have to acknowledge by analogy that just as God is one in union with many, so, too, a man may be in union with many wives.
While I can't read this way, I surely can point out that Paul's indication that God is indeed with more than one person at a time destroys Marshall's reading.
Thank God I don't abide a strict literal reading like you always consistently apply in practice (but now oddly back off in theory) or abide a hysterical reading like Marshall applies, where what the text says and what his mind reads are all mixed up and indistinguishable so as to cripple Marshall from honest discussion.
So, are you leaving Galations unaddressed? You cited the passage, but you did not fully comprehend the passage as presented.
Where are you now?
I asked if you could acknowledge that your unpacking of "one flesh" was not interpretation rather than a claim that digestive systems, nervous systems, and organisms are all in the intention of the Genesis text.
Will this Friday come with this question unanswered?
__________
In effect I am asking why don't you take the points on when that is always your usual method with Dan and myself, too, at times, in the past.
Your thoroughness usually even has a prosecutors outline complete with numbered items of point-counterpoint.
Why the unusual slacking off, now?I do discount biblical passages about boils and pigs, women being silent and slaves being disobedient.
Do you not?
I discount passages about polygamy, too. Your problem is refusing to acknowledge that you do the obvious while yet doing the obvious: ignoring it. You have to refuse that you do just as I do because you cannot give up your commitment to how to read the Bible. But your practice gives the lie up.
As I say, the inspiration of scripture is how it points to the risen Christ, not itself. It is sermon, it is prophecy, it is parable, it is metaphor, it is the recoding of people's experience under God in faith.
What better teacher, what better theologian, what better Savior is there than Christ who says, "he who has seen me has seen the Father." Not he who has read scripture has seen the Father.
Scripture is testimony of and for the faithful. It is not God, nor the revelation of God. It is the revelation of the revelation. This is the highest view of a written text that is possible and still be consistent and faithful.
And this, too, is a problem for you.
Regarding the previous post, you, Bubba, said that Matthew 19 was crucial to understanding polygamy.
My response was the following, which I again ask:
As for Genesis and Matthew 19, neither makes a case for monogamy. The concern in Genesis is that man not be alone. Oddly, and in opposition to Genesis, Jesus in Matthew 19 says that being alone is indeed meant for some people either 1) because someone is too prone to lust, or 2) a castrated slave -- which Jesus does not condemn, or 3) for religious reasons.
But the point of Matthew 19 has nothing to do and does not remark on monogamy. It has to do with divorce as social custom was then practicing it, which apparently resulted in the abandonment of women, willy nilly.
Do you want to outlaw divorce, Bubba?
Are you okay condoning castrating slaves?
And finally, are you against singlehood, thereby upholding Genesis, or are you a proponent of singlehood for the uncontrolled, the slave, and the monk, thereby upholding Matthew 19?
I'll await your biblical choices on these matters.
[And the following;]
And Bubba, this line of yours,
"I think it is quite easy to conclude that, if there are laws regulating polygamy (a big "if), they're concessions rather than God's plan "from the beginning..."
... conflicts with the principles of MAs scholars, Hodges and Olliff as set down in their article which forms the foundation of MAs thinking on these lines.
Well, right off, Feodor, you give us another of many, many examples of your poor interpretation ability. You can't even interpret MY words. To wit, I have never said that Oliff and Hodges form anything about my thinking. Indeed, I do believe I've even stated, likely at another time you've made such an assumption, that I refer to their writings because they say well, in a manner most people can easily understand, things I already believed, or if you like, conclusions I've already reached. You see, unlike yourself, I don't need other people to help me understand the plainly written words of the Bible. I don't need liberal scholars to tell me what to think about Scripture. For that matter, I don't need conservative scholars either, except that they already have in print explanations that are already well laid out and are easy for reference and also easy to reprint, rather than compose my own version of the same truths. This is not to mention that conservative theologians don't deal in bullshit like liberal "scholars" do.
To move on, I don't think Bubba's statement that concluded your last post conflicts with O&H at all. This shows that you don't understand O&H, or more likely, the subject matter they were covering. Try reading it again more slowly without your prideful arrogance.
Before moving to the head of your last waste of time, I find it annoying how you insist on putting meaning to things that don't in any way suggest those meanings. Once again, you are the one who is reading Scripture with preconceived notions and personal agendas. Otherwise, one couldn't possibly see in Genesis any suggestion of polygamy by reading that God didn't want Adam to be alone. You insist on using the translation "man" as opposed "the man" in order to confuse rather than to truly understand. Your version allows you to suggest all men who have yet been born when you have no real support for this or reason to believe that's what it's SUPPOSED to mean. At least you've presented nothing to that end. You've only stated it and expected us to buy your assertion. It's a lame one and only those with agendas similar to yours would buy it. '
Further, you MUST abide your version in order to put forth the comedy that God is mandating against singlehood. Pretty pathetic, really. Again, nothing to support this version other than your own choice to believe crap.
Before I forget, false priest, Paul did not speak of hooking up with prostitutes in Galatians.
"...human experience notes that the passage of time changes viewpoint and understanding of abstract truths."
So are you saying that God's Will is an abstract truth? Your interpretations are pretty abstract, but God's Word as presented in Scripture is quite plain for those who are truly concerned with conforming to His Will. "Abstract" is for those who wish to bend God to their own will.
"To suggest otherwise would be to suggest that your mental aptitude is quite low. I reserve that judgment for others."
Pretty cocky for one who's mental aptitude is low itself. That you think yours is quality enough to qualify you as a judge of others is typical of arrogant assholes like yourself, but about as far from the truth as one can get.
"You have to say that God did indeed say that. The real God, not just Nathan's experience of God."
This was never in question with me, as I feel confident in guessing that it wouldn't be with Bubba, either. The question is the meaning YOU lay over it, that for you HAS to be true in order to make your case regarding polygamy, the Will of God regarding marriage, culminating with your support for the enabing of sinful behavior. But nothing in all of your alleged education or in all of the books by authors that form the foundation of your thinking can provide you with supporting data for this wacky notion. You can't even explain why my several alternative possibilities don't work for that passage. No. Instead, you pretend my comments are not worth addressing and instead turn your attention to a discussion with Bubba, who, it seems, isn't really interested in dealing with a troll like yourself. Or couldn't you interpret that from his last comment?
Now, you're perfectly free to now proceed as if Bubba felt you were too much for him. Indeed, I'm certain an arrogant asshole like yourself will do just that. Personally, I'd love to see Bubba shred YOUR goofy arguments like he does with Dan. But you haven't given too many of us on the right any reason to take you seriously because of your asshole nature.
For me, I don't care what you do. It would be swell if you started over and pretended you really want to project yourself as the Christian you think you are. I'll then pretend there's a new visitor with the same name as this troll who fouls my blog with his asshole attitude. Of course I won't hold my breath expecting you to take the high road. You'll likely just continue to slither.
One more thing:
"or abide a hysterical reading like Marshall applies, where what the text says and what his mind reads are all mixed up and indistinguishable so as to cripple Marshall from honest discussion."
First of all, I don't get hysterical, either in my reading or otherwise.
Secondly, it isn't MY mind that is having any trouble with the tracts to which you've referred. That would be you,
Thirdly, there is little in your positions that resembles honest discussion. How typical of you that you would accuse me of sins that you yourself commit. When you can support your positions with something more substantive than crap about how views change with time and other such liberal squirming, then you can talk about honest discussions. Until then, you show yourself to be a fraud, which you are.
Feodor, Marshall has a point that your attitude doesn't always encourage me to reply, but the substance doesn't help either. I often don't know what to say, not because I'm overwhelmed by any brilliance in your logic, but because I find your argument incomprehensible.
You object to my position that polygamy can be ruled out from God's eternal plan for human sexuality, from the principle from Genesis 2 that Jesus quotes in Matthew 19.
I'll note again that, in the New Testament, the principle is cited in three different places and applied to three different situations. While I believe that the New Testament is authoritative in these applications of this principle, it doesn't say that these are the only possible applications, I think it's unnecessary to presume that there are no other applications, and I think the other applications that I've reached are reasonable, though certainly not authoritative.
Your response from the earlier thread, which you treat as so vitally important and which you repeat here, strikes me as not only less than devastating against my position, it seems nonsensical.
You ask:
"Do you want to outlaw divorce, Bubba?"
In short, no, but I'm not sure why that matters since Jesus didn't propose criminalizing divorce, either, and there's no reason to conclude that position from the text.
For one thing, Jesus didn't have a political program that would have involved new laws: what He preached were the deepest moral implications of God's law, not a set of political reforms.
And in this case specifically, Jesus still allowed for divorce in rare circumstances (19:9).
I don't see what would require me to answer your question in the affirmative, from my belief in biblical inerrancy or my belief that Genesis 2 has implications regarding monogamy, and thereby discredit one of those beliefs or the other.
You find it telling that Matthew 19 doesn't contain an explicit condemnation of the ancient practice of castrating eunuchs, "which Jesus does not condemn," and you apparently think this silence is so damning to inerrancy that you're trying to make this an issue, too.
"Are you okay condoning castrating slaves?"
To answer the question, no, but I don't believe Christ did condone the practice. Just because I'm ultimately trying to draw from Matthew 19 conclusions that aren't explicit, it doesn't follow that A) every conclusion that could be drawn beyond the explicit text is equally plausible, or B) I must believe in every such conclusion or none at all.
I think I understand what point you're trying to make with your third question, but it presents a very clearly false dilemma.
"And finally, are you against singlehood, thereby upholding Genesis, or are you a proponent of singlehood for the uncontrolled, the slave, and the monk, thereby upholding Matthew 19?"
Jesus cited Genesis 2 as authoritative without any qualifying remarks, and He then immediately taught that some are called to marriage and some to celibacy.
It seems clear, then, that Jesus didn't think Genesis 2 is "against singlehood." If His use of the passage is any indication, Genesis doesn't require marriage; it just limits the expression of sexual desire to marriage, which Jesus teaches is an insitution that God intended to be lifelong.
If Jesus' use of the passage precludes the position that Genesis 2 requires marriage, that's good enough for me.
I'll admit that my position that Genesis 2 precludes polygamy is beyond what is explicitly taught in the chapter and in later passages that invoke it, but the position that Genesis 2 requires marriage contradicts its use in Matthew 19, and that's a whole different ball of wax.
So, I don't see the relevance of any of these three questions. I've answered them -- no, no, and you're presenting a false dilemma -- but I don't see how they highlight some fatal flaw in my argument.
Heck, I don't even see how they apply to the discussion.
Feodor, about Nathan, I do believe that the passage accurately records what Nathan told David, and Nathan accurately conveyed what God told him.
But it doesn't follow that, just because God really did give David everything that was Saul's, that everything that was Saul's was within God's eternal will without any concessions to human hard-heartedness.
Think about it this way:
I absolutely believe that God gave Moses the Law, but while Christ affirms the authority of the law to the smallest penstroke, He still taught that the law contained concessions to our human hard-heartedness -- explicitly, concessions about divorce.
The law of Moses is of much more theological significance than the possesions of Saul.
So, if God truly gave Moses the law which contained concessions to human hard-heartedness, I don't see why it's so impossible to believe that God truly gave David Saul's possessions, but those possesions also account for human hard-heartedness.
About marriage being a "one-flesh" relationship, I do not believe and have not argued that the text requires my observation about human reproductive systems.
The observation was really an aside: because human reproduction requires components from both a male and a female, there is some validity in saying that a heterosexual union results in a single organism.
About Scripture, you write:
"What better teacher, what better theologian, what better Savior is there than Christ who says, 'he who has seen me has seen the Father.' Not he who has read scripture has seen the Father."
Never mind that the only trustworthy source of information about the teachings of our great Teacher and Theologian is Scripture itself: indeed, Jesus did not teach that one has seen the Father simply by reading Scripture, but He did affirm Scripture to the smallest penstroke and repeatedly cited Scripture as authoritative.
"Scripture is testimony of and for the faithful. It is not God, nor the revelation of God. It is the revelation of the revelation. This is the highest view of a written text that is possible and still be consistent and faithful."
The Bible isn't God -- no one would dispute this -- but you verge into error when you claim that it also isn't God's revelation.
What Christ taught about the Bible clearly points to its divine authorship -- to say nothing about what the rest of the Bible claims, including Paul's claim that Scripture is God-breathed, and the ease with which Paul moves between talking about what God declared and talking about what is written.
This "highest possible view" of yours isn't consistent with what the Bible claims about itself, nor is it faithful to the attitude toward the text that Jesus Himself exhibited.
Finally, Feodor, your distinction between the pre-Resurrection Jesus and the post-Resurrection Christ may be interesting, but it's not at all supported by the text of the Bible.
"Paul never knew the earthly Jesus. He witnesses on one place that he 'heard' the risen Christ. In another place he says he 'saw' the risen Christ.
"This is why I put it exactly the way I did. The name Jesus is reserved for his earthly ministry.
"This obviously also applies to the Great Commission, given by the risen Christ, not the earthly Jesus. Jesus did not, in his earthly ministry, open the door to Gentiles.
"This is what I said, which is now clearer for you."
In consulting Strong's to see what is found in the original Greek, I see that Jesus (Iesous) is mentioned by name frequently after the Resurrection.
Who met the women in Matthew 28:9?
"And behold, Jesus met them and greeted them. And they came up and took hold of His feet and worshiped Him." (NAS)
Jesus, by name.
Who drew near to the two who were walking to Emmaus in Luke 24:15? Who stood among the eleven and said "Peace be with you" in Luke 24:36 and John 20:19?
Who, in John 20:15, asked Mary Magdalene why she was weeping? Who, in John 20:29, blessed those believers who would not have the benefit of proof that Thomas had?
Who asked about the disciples' success in fishing in John 21:5? Who told Peter to feed His sheep in John 21:17?
When Saul asked "Who are you?" in Acts 9:5, what was the reply? When Paul relayed the story in Jerusalem in Acts 22:8, what was the reply? When he repeated the story to Agrippa in Acts 26:15, what was the reply?
In I Corinthians 9:1, Paul claims to be an Apostle because he saw someone; who did he see? In Galatians 1:12, Paul claims to have received the gospel through a revelation: who was revealed?
John begins the book documenting the last canonical appearance of our risen Lord as the revelation of someone: the revelation of whom? At almost the very end of the book, how does the speaker in Revelation 22:16 name Himself?
Jesus, by name.
Over and over again, the Resurrected Christ is called Iesous, Jesus, in these 15 different passages, from the Gospels to Acts to the Epistles to Revelation -- passages written by Matthew, Luke, Paul, and John.
Even the claim that the Great Commission wasn't uttered by Jesus -- by name -- is contrary to the text.
"This obviously also applies to the Great Commission, given by the risen Christ, not the earthly Jesus."
That's simply not so.
"And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, 'All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'" - Mt 28:18-20, NAS, emphasis mine
According to Strong, the Greek text contains the word Iesous. Your claim that Christ lost this earthly name after the Resurrection is frankly bizarre; more importantly, it is completely contradictory to the clear and repeated practice of the New Testament.
I began this morning saying that I sometimes find you incomprhensible, Feodor.
This particular claim of yours doesn't have a great deal of bearing on our discussions about homosexuality and polygamy, and the Bible's authority, authorship, and veracity. But it's a prime example of the off-the-wall comments you often make and rarely justify: it's so completely contrary to the Bible, I cannot fathom what convinced you of its plausibility.
Bubba,
Steering, for now, around the hypocrisy regarding attitude, I am in absolute agreement with your following:
"Just because I'm ultimately trying to draw from Matthew 19 conclusions that aren't explicit, it doesn't follow that A) every conclusion that could be drawn beyond the explicit text is equally plausible, or B) I must believe in every such conclusion or none at all."
Although, A and B are really different ways of saying the same thing.
You are indeed free to come to your own conclusions based on the foundations of your own faith as applied with reason, and, in the outcome, use certain lines of thought and reject other lines of thought based on your own reasoning.
In fact, in some ways, you are -- if "reason" is to be part of one's approach -- unfree from doing anything else.
This just isn't the framework of reading with the commitments of inerrancy (unless one is simply claiming that that while scripture is inerrant, human reason can't reach it, in which case what does that say except that one is left to read "as if" they do not hope to find inerrancy) or literal meaning that is clear within the text itself.
I also agree with you that Genesis 2 does not lay down a "law" of monogamy that Christ circumvents.
Marshall -- and his whirlybird scholars -- are the ones who must claim that, since, in their view, monogamy was the divine plan, the plan never changed (ignore Israel's participation in polygamy, i.e., turn a blind eye to it like God does) since God cannot change his mind and no other new law was, or could, be forthcoming.
So, you and I agree: Jesus was using his faith and reason -- and giving us a perfect model for doing such -- to interpret Genesis for his own times and the issues of those times.
Genesis 2 may have implications for monogamy in the way we read the Bible, particularly as formed by way in which Jesus, as portrayed in the NT, reads the Bible. In fact, as Christians and not Jews, this ought to be our paramount example.
But your belief in the implications of Genesis is far different from saying Genesis 2 is law. So, we agree that since Genesis 2 is not divine law, divorce is not necessarily a violation of it. Marshall, though, will want to say that Jesus is just merely tolerating divorce, since Genesis 2, for him and his scholars, is law, and Jesus does this just like God ignores polygamy.
Where you and I disagree is that, falling back into your literalist proclivities against your own theoretical principles, you feel a need to find the whole world in scripture summed up and wrapped.
You have to find the negation of polygamy in the NT. I don't. In fact, I don't think Jesus has to address polygamy for his time, because it had already been addressed in Israel at some point between the testaments -- indicating the lack of interest of scripture in every bit of social reality.
This would be why the discussions of marriage and marrying a brother's widow between Jesus and the Sadducees does not seem interested in the issue of polygamy, but the resurrection, since the Sadducees only took the Pentateuch as inspired, they did not believe in the resurrection as found in the prophets.
Interestingly, Jesus discounts the foolishness of marriage in heaven -- to the logical horror of Marshall who finds "being made one flesh" so ontologically timeless -- and perhaps a little uncomfortable for yourself in regard to corporeal resurrection and the destiny of the "one flesh" of marriage?
But then you get a little fuzzy:
"If His use of the passage is any indication, Genesis doesn't require marriage; it just limits the expression of sexual desire to marriage, which Jesus teaches is an institution that God intended to be lifelong."
I'm not sure one can, without moving to one's own interpretation, claim that "sex" is in Jesus' mind in Matthew 19. Separation of union is clearly in his mind, division of what God blesses is clearly on his mind (and I am willing to say that God blesses sex, contra Marshall's hypochondriacal anxiety about sex), but the gist of the testing by the Pharisees and the answer from Jesus is not about sex.
Now, sure, you can, with your beliefs of implications find such an interpretation meaningful for yourself. Who can deny you that?
But it is not literally or in-errantly there in any way that human minds can get at and that absolutely privileges your reading over mine.
Plausibility is ultimately in the mind of the beholder.
Not to say, by the way, that I am against monogamy. I am all for monogamy.
I just don't think you can make sexual identity arguments from Matthew 19.
More much later in the day.
Bubba,
Quickly, your argument that God gives us perpetual laws that contain allowances for that which is not best for us is a very dangerous and ultimately unacceptable one for all concerned, you and me.
God gave us heterosexuality, it is said. Which may contain an allowance for the hard-heartedness of homosexuals, I could say. (Or for the hard-heartedness of heterosexuals looked at from the other side of the coin).
God gave us the incarnation, I would say. Which may be an allowance for the hard-heartedness of refusing scriptural inerrancy, you could say.
Does God operate so half-heartedly?
(You may have exploded Marshall's hysterical brain, with this, if he caught on.)
Feodor, you write, "I just don't think you can make sexual identity arguments from Matthew 19."
Let's consider a hypothetical gay man. He's gay, yes, but he's also male.
Matthew 19 is clear why he was made male, why all men were made male, and why all women were made female.
You write:
"Quickly, your argument that God gives us perpetual laws that contain allowances for that which is not best for us is a very dangerous and ultimately unacceptable one for all concerned, you and me."
For what it's worth, this supposedly dangerous idea can't be properly employed to justify homosexuality.
"God gave us heterosexuality, it is said. Which may contain an allowance for the hard-heartedness of homosexuals, I could say. (Or for the hard-heartedness of heterosexuals looked at from the other side of the coin)."
You could say that -- in a sense that you could say anything, no matter how ridiculous -- but Christ appealed to God's will "from the beginning."
And in the beginning -- before sin entered the world -- God made us male and female.
Anyway, it's not my argument; it's Christ's claim, see Matthew 19:8.
If you think this idea is so dangerous, take it up with Him.
The idea that all Scripture is God-breathed -- divine revelation rather than merely human speculation -- and the idea that God made us male and female for a reason, these aren't the pet theories of Marshall or Bubba, or the early American Protestants for whom you have such contempt.
Your problem is not with us.
It's apparently with Peter, Paul, John, and even the Lord who chose them as His Apostles.
Take it easy on Feo, Bubba. He's trying to pretend he's too deep for me. Notice how he dismisses my comments as if they're too obvious for a mind so enlightened as his. I'm still waiting for a stumper through which anyone could not easily see.
He again makes wild claims, but has no means of supporting them. So far, what I've seen is one side using Scripture to support opinion and understanding, that would be our side of course, and the other side, now represented so poorly by Feodor, using little more than wild speculation tainted by personal preference.
As for any alleged anxiety about sex, you false and phoney cartoon priest, I have none whatsoever. What I have is the awareness of its place according to God's Will, so plainly revealed in Scripture, "which forms the foundation" of my thinking on these matters.
"Interestingly, Jesus discounts the foolishness of marriage in heaven -- to the logical horror of Marshall who finds "being made one flesh" so ontologically timeless..."
What an incredibly expert example of stupid assumption! What does, "'till death do you part..." mean to YOU? The underlying theme of these discussions revolves around understanding the Bible. I've shown why I believe what I believe, and have only used the Bible (except where I've directed people and moronic false priests like yourself to someone like O&H for a clear and concise explanation of what I would likely expend more keystrokes to do so myself) and in return I get unsupported bluster and nonsense.
I gotta tell ya, you steaming pile on the floor of a stable, you were far better off aiming your comical ideas of Biblical meaning toward me than you are doing so with Bubba. At the risk of swelling his head, I picture him involved in some complicated procedure like brain surgery while fending off your psuedo-intellectual droolings. Like sword fighting with you while he reads a book. You're just not all that, you fraud. And I'll tell you this, too: it's amusing to know that you really think you're too much for me. Some day you'll have to prove it.
Marshall, I'm not sure how productive it is to engage in name-calling to this degree. I do think Feodor is needlessly provocative, but I don't think it helps things to bite the bait; instead, let the strength of your arguments and the logical flaws in his, speak for themselves.
On the subject of substance, I am more curious about Feodor's claim about the name of Jesus than any of his other, often opaque statements.
He writes, "The name Jesus is reserved for his earthly ministry."
But I've shown that the name is invoked repeatedly in regards to Christ's post-Resurrection appearances -- by the Evangelists and Apostles and even Jesus Himself, in at least seven books spanning the breadth of the New Testament.
I've mispoken on occasion and have been either less clear, less thorough, or less thoughtful than I should have been, but this claim doesn't seem like the sort of thing one would stumble into.
Feodor, if you stand by the comment, I would really like to know where in the world you got the idea that "Jesus" is an earthly title, referring only to Christ's earthly ministry, specifically between His birth and death.
Where did this idea come from, and why would you believe a notion that so contradicts the clear and emphatic record of the New Testament?
An answer might make clear whether there's any point to discussing further other issues like God's will regarding sexuality. If your source for such theological claims is so far from the Bible, we may just be ships passing in the night.
Bubba,
Now you say, "Matthew 19 is clear why he was made male, why all men were made male, and why all women were made female."
I'd ask what is it that Matthew 19 makes "clear" about why a man was made male, which sounds to me like a tautology anyway. Adam was made as he was, not to be male, but just simply to be. And he was made as is without a woman, right?
So, in your awkward phrasing, why is a man made male... by God? And if I were you, I'd pick a big enough reason that precludes you from turning your back on those living out a Christian life as a celibate, as a single person who may not prefer to be single, a marriage where there is no sex for whatever physical or psychological reasons, and, from your list, a gay man who chooses not to have sex.
Are these not men? Was Paul not a man?
Again, why is it that men are made male, Bubba?
Don't let Marshall down, he's on pins and needles. You hold the fate of his faith in your hands.
Jesus is talking about willful separation, hard-heartedness toward women and Jesus' concern for the plight of women, as you have said not that long ago.
The meaning of your verses seem to be on the move, perhaps because of pressure.
So, despite what you said earlier, now you seem to infer that we must rule out singlehood as a possibility for living out the Christian life.
Bubba,
Under pressure now, you are abandoning your own words and trying to cover yourself by putting Christ in the middle.
Your argument -- your words, not Christ's -- is your wide ranging analogy from Matthew 19 to 2 Samuel 12. Now, there's nothing wrong with a searching interpretation, in fact, I applaud it. But don't slink your own work off as Christ's. That's rather a combination of extraordinary hubris and sacrilege.
Now to take up your words:
"But it doesn't follow that, just because God really did give David everything that was Saul's, that everything that was Saul's was within God's eternal will without any concessions to human hard-heartedness.
Think about it this way:
I absolutely believe that God gave Moses the Law, but while Christ affirms the authority of the law to the smallest penstroke, He still taught that the law contained concessions to our human hard-heartedness -- explicitly, concessions about divorce.
The law of Moses is of much more theological significance than the possesions of Saul.
So, if God truly gave Moses the law which contained concessions to human hard-heartedness, I don't see why it's so impossible to believe that God truly gave David Saul's possessions, but those possesions also account for human hard-heartedness."
Your argument would have some juice if, indeed, Nathan had said that God said something more general like you almost have him say: "I'm gave you all that was Saul's..." Then your point that maybe some part of that "all" was not entirely within God's will.
But what does Nathan say that God says? "I gave your master's house to you, and your master's wives into your arms."
I gave your master's wives into your arms."
Excuse me for seeing God's clear will in giving the wives.
And excuse me for pointing out that if you want to continue say that, even with this clarity of statement, God only gave Saul's wives to Davd in order to lure him out of his hard heartedness (which is NO WHERE indicated in scripture -- your pure imagination), then you put God in the position of being a pimp, trading sex for something he wants from David.
I don't believe any of this is your position. I think you are not taking your time with your own thoughts.
2 Samuel 7: 1-16, Bubba. Your hard-heartedness theory is made up out of whole cloth.
Bubba,
Another way in which you are not paying attention to yourself is how you have changed the meaning of Genesis 2 indicating that when a man and a woman become one flesh, they become "one organism."
Here is what you said originally, shortly before we reached comment #400:
"A husband and wife become one flesh -- or one organism."
Now, despite this being biological nonsense (two organisms are required for higher life forms due to genetics), you have nonetheless shifted ground today when you briefly agreed with me about what can be read in Genesis 2 and what is interpretation:
"About marriage being a "one-flesh" relationship, I do not believe and have not argued that the text requires my observation about human reproductive systems.
The observation was really an aside: because human reproduction requires components from both a male and a female, there is some validity in saying that a heterosexual union results in a single organism."
The word, "results," can be pretty vaguely have the effect of covering yourself by shifting your original point that "one organism" was the male/female union to "one organism" possibly now referring to offspring.
This kind of twisting seems less lazy writing and more conniving.
Bubba, finally for tonight, regarding Paul and scripture, what does he say?
Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.
Moses describes in this way the righteousness that is by the law: "The man who does these things will live by them." But the righteousness that is by faith says: "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down) "or 'Who will descend into the deep?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart," that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame." For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
When Paul talks of Israel and faith, he does not point them to scripture, does he? In fact, he says scripture does not point to itself either.
But what does it say, how does scripture reveal God's will to us? Where does it say the saving word of God is? In itself? No.
What does it say?
The word is near you. It is in your mouth. It is Jesus as Lord.
_________
In just this passage, you can see how Paul uses "Christ" and "Jesus." Jesus was a prophet walking around Palestine, preaching, working miracles.
Faith is belief in Jesus when he says that he is the Lord that was prophesied. Faith is believing that he is the Christ, the anointed one. Now the name Jesus was a common one, ordinary. What made this Jesus extraordinary was the he is the Lord, the Christ.
And acknowledging this shift in meaning, from Jesus to Jesus is Lord, Jesus is the Christ risen for evermore, is faith.
Feodor, What's your idea of Jesus is Lord? Your talk doesn't seem to be explanatory. mom2
Feodor, in Matthew 19, Jesus Christ is quite clear why we were created male and female.
"Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?"
God made us male and female so that each man (singular male) will leave the family of his birth to become one flesh with his wife (singular female).
Christ then allowed for an exception to this plan, an exception where sexual desire isn't expressed.
"Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can."
Those are the options:
1) The only proper expression of sexual desire: that is, marriage, lifelong heterosexual monogamy.
2) The mortification of sexual desire as a literal or figurative eunuch: that is, celibacy.
These are the only two options that fall under the traditional understanding of the virtue of chastity, and these are the only two options that Christ outlines.
The first option is almost completely universal, applying to all who have been made male or female, and excluding only genuine chromosomal X or XXY hermaphrodites.
The second option leaves another path for those who haven't been called to marriage, a path of celibacy.
About II Samuel, you write:
"Your argument would have some juice if, indeed, Nathan had said that God said something more general like you almost have him say: 'I'm gave you all that was Saul's...' Then your point that maybe some part of that 'all' was not entirely within God's will.
"But what does Nathan say that God says? 'I gave your master's house to you, and your master's wives into your arms.'"
You go on to assert, "if you want to continue say that, even with this clarity of statement, God only gave Saul's wives to Davd in order to lure him out of his hard heartedness (which is NO WHERE indicated in scripture -- your pure imagination), then you put God in the position of being a pimp, trading sex for something he wants from David."
There's no proof of David's hard heartedness? That conclusion is based purely on imagination? And, as you claim immediately after, the promises in II Samuel 7 prove that my theory "is made up out of whole cloth"?
Feodor, do you forget the reason that Nathan brought up David's many wives?
DAVID JUST COMMITTED ADULTERY AND SUCCESSFULLY CONSPIRED TO MURDER THE HUSBAND OF HIS MISTRESS.
The gift of Saul's many wives wasn't part of a list of various and sundry blessings for David.
Those wives were the reason his sin was so egregious, and it's reasonable (if admittedly speculative) to suspect that God gave David so many wives as a bulwark against precisely this sort of behavior.
David had plenty of wives at home, so he had no reason to seek out the physical company of anyone else's wife.
To use Nathan's parable, David had "very many flocks and herds" (II Sam 12:2), so he had no excuse in stealing the poor man's one precious lamb.
His "harem" was one reason David's sin was so egregious, and that's the reason Nathan brought it up.
Now, about "one flesh" or "one organism," I should have been more clear that my discussion of the human reproductive system was an aside -- my own speculation, and not something I think the text itself teaches.
I don't think it's a gross abuse of the text to speculate that marriage results in the two becoming one organism, but I never said that that's what the Bible explicitly teaches.
I should have been more clear that I was presenting my own opinion, but I'm not having to twist and connive.
But on that subject of twisting, you still haven't justified your position that, "The name Jesus is reserved for his earthly ministry."
You say that Paul wrote that Jesus is the Christ and that Jesus is Lord, and I agree, but that doesn't prove that Christ dropped the name "Jesus" after His death -- which is the claim you made to justify your incomprehensible position that the Great Commission was "given by the risen Christ, not the earthly Jesus."
You've gone from the absurd claim that the Christ is no longer Jesus, to the quite orthodox claim that Jesus is the Christ.
Don't tell me about shifting positions.
About Paul and Scripture, I agree that Scripture points to Christ, and that it is Christ who saves, not Scripture.
But I'm not arguing that the Bible saves. I'm simply arguing that the Bible is divine revelation and not mere human speculation.
In order for Scripture to point reliably to God's salvation of man -- to God's grace, to Christ's death, and to our faith -- it CANNOT be simply a record of "Israel's experience of God as they articulated it."
Rather, for Scripture to be a reliable guidepost to true salvation, it must have the same Author: God Himself.
"and it's reasonable (if admittedly speculative) to suspect that God gave David so many wives as a bulwark against precisely this sort of behavior."
Bubba, this utterly ridiculous, from a conservative or liberal standpoint.
And it still makes God out to be a pimp.
Regarding Genesis 2, I don't think you were unclear at first. And I appreciate your take on it, though I cannot so far as to find usefulness in one "organism."
The sacrament of marriage is, for me as well, a powerful visible sign of oneness that signifies and reflects the invisible oneness of communion with God. But I can't say that sex is an absolutely necessary constituent of how such a union, being "one flesh," should be seen. Lifelong commitment to join and share in life, to care for each other throughout life, and to mutually sacrifice for each other is the kind of marriage that represents Christ's love for the church and the Trinity's love for all of us.
Sex is a good, not doubt, created by God so that we do not feel alone and, again, to serve as a deeply natural sign of grace.
But way too many couples live out the sacrament and the grace without the sex.
And, I wouldn't want to call every single life celibate. Celibacy is voluntary, as you say, a call.
A lot of people go through life unwillingly single, and ministry with such folks, I think, means finding ways in which to acknowledge their life as fully normative in the church.
These folks don't have a place in your two options.
So, again, since the context is clear and the Pharisees are trying to trip Jesus up on divorce, the issue of willful separation of the bonds of marriage and abandonment is the one being dealt with.
Not the normative definition of what marriage is. For Adam and Eve were truly "one flesh" but neither "left father and mother to be joined" as Jesus says.
His focus is not on the front end of marriage, it is on the easy out at the back end that he had targeted.
Regarding Jesus as the Christ, I was wrong about the Great Commission, and appreciate your listing the other times when Jesus spoke after the Resurrection. I put my point badly regarding the figure of the Son of God who reigns today.
I find that there is a lot of dumbing down in expressions of Christian faith because western culture has lost the ability to relate to Christ theologically since the Enlightenment, largely as a result of Protestantism's co-option of the scientific conceptions of Reason.
When we say, "I have a personal relationship with Jesus," we are either passively accepting how western empirical rationale has de-mystified Christ, or, if we are being biblical, we'd have to claim that Jesus was speaking to us in a human voice.
For the following reasons:
As for the word of God, the Son of God, Jesus the Christ living and reigning in heaven, all these titles/names signify attributes of the second person of the Trinity. There are more, such as the Son of Man, which was a common phrase used throughout Mesopotamia in ancient times and was picked up by the writer of Numbers in one instance, Job, Psalms, Ezekiel and Daniel.
But the main ones are the first I listed. The Word of God, of course is most famously used by John to signify the role of the Son of God in creating something from nothing just like speech, a "word," does.
The Son of God refers to the position of the second person of the Trinity and is replete with signification.
Jesus is the human name given to the incarnation of the Son of God, "the Word made flesh."
Christ is the Greek title given to Jesus as the one of whom it was prophesied that he would liberate his people and usher in the kingdom of God, and reign over it as the Anointed, the Xristos.
Your examples are further evidence that the name, Jesus, is used when the Son of God acts in the form of a human being: with the woman, on the road to Emmaus, speaking to Paul, speaking to the writer of Revelation.
Finally, Bubba,
Regarding this:
"I'm simply arguing that the Bible is divine revelation and not mere human speculation.
In order for Scripture to point reliably to God's salvation of man -- to God's grace, to Christ's death, and to our faith -- it CANNOT be simply a record of "Israel's experience of God as they articulated it."
Rather, for Scripture to be a reliable guidepost to true salvation, it must have the same Author: God Himself."
1. Who is arguing that the Bible is human speculation? Human speculation is more like... The Celestine Prophecy, or... I don't know what.
2. I would think that any committed Christian could point reliably to Christ. I think you yourself could reliably point to Christ. You can relate the Gospel just like Philip to the Ethiopian. Was scripture necessary? No. The Living Christ will do all the filling in. You and I and carry the revelation around with us, whether we carry that leather thing or not. How is this different from scripture reliably pointing to Christ.
Now, agreed, my story will be much more full having read, studied, read, studied, prayed, read, studied the Bible. But that is not what another can live on. And the Bible is not sufficient either. What is sufficient? Who is sufficient?
The Living Christ will do all the filling in. Just like the trillions of Christians from the first day to now who have no leather book, no vellum, no parchment scroll. Maybe only the altar screen, the stained glass window, the rood cross above the transept.
Scripture, you, me, Chartres. All reliably pointing to Christ.
In fact, now that I think about it, I wonder, Bubba, if you think the story of Philip and the Ethiopian is not a big problem for your defense of scripture as THE reliable guidepost to salvation and your claim that Jesus endorses the view you hold?
The eunuch had the scriptures, the one you say Jesus defends to the smallest of marks. He simply had no one to point him to the Christ that was in it. He clearly was a willing reader, anxious to know the truth. But the scriptures were not reliably sufficient.
Or perhaps Marshall could take this project on since he seems to be eager to be seen as capable of biblical discourse and claims to find no merit worthy of thought in the many references to scripture that I have brought to this discussion.
You want to show us what you have, Marshall, on Philip and the Ethiopian? We've been waiting a long time for a cogent word from you.
Feodor,
You've heard from me more congent thoughts than you've delivered. You know this to be true but are too cowardly to engage my rebuttals to your inanities. You haven't explained why the mere mention of God giving David Saul's wives, along with everything else that was Saul's, HAS to mean that God somehow approves of polygamy, that He endorses it or is pleased with it. Any of my alternative possibilities run far more smoothly with the bulk of Scripture than does yours. But as I have said, you NEED it to mean He approves of polygamy in order to continue with the lie that somehow, through Muhammed-like revelatory inferences, frauds like yourself have come to know that God now blesses homosexual behavior. So there's just one more challenge you haven't the courage to address, just as you've failed to show how Lev 18:22 no longer applies to the here and now.
If I'm no pins and needles, it's due to unrequited expectations from one who claims a superior understanding. But no, you ignore and stick with Bubba who, quite frankly, is your better and has shown it.
Further, to repeat once again, God has tolerated much that ran contrary to His Will. Polygamy is only one thing, and I don't even believe He ever "tolerated" it, unless you expect Him to literally rain down punishment on everyone who ever transgressed. But He also tolerated kings for His chosen when He clearly preferred they not have any. As stated, He tolerated divorce, when He clearly prefers that spouses submit to each other and serve each other, as well as love each other, until death separates them.
more coming---
Regarding the divorce issue and eunichs, as shown, the use of the word "eunich" was also metaphor for those who choose celebacy. But for those who are single through no choice of their own, they are "eunichs" from birth in a metaphorical sense. In addition, simply because one hasn't found a mate doesn't mean there never was one somewhere.
Jumping back and forth as I try to catch up,
"Sex is a good, not doubt, created by God so that we do not feel alone and, again, to serve as a deeply natural sign of grace."
Speculation at best, and a lame one to boot. Sex is how we make other little Christians. That's why God created it. All else is subjective romanticism invented to asuage the guilt of wanting so badly to engage in it. Otherwise, Scriptural support is mandatory for such a comment.
more coming---
"Or perhaps Marshall could take this project on since he seems to be eager to be seen as capable of biblical discourse and claims to find no merit worthy of thought in the many references to scripture that I have brought to this discussion."
Oh gee, Feo! Could I, you collection of white blotches on the hood of my car? (Allow me my little vice, Bubba) Hmmm. Will I find that in Galatians, too, oh Biblical expert?
Oh, never mind. I'll just enlighten you on your latest grasping of straws.
Were the Gospels in wide circulation at the time of Philip and the Ethiopian? I think not, or the Ethiopian would have been pointed to Christ just as many Jews of today are. Even still, most Jews aren't pointed to Christ by OT readings alone, even when Christ is offered to them as the Messiah to which it points.
But for Christians today, as well as those investigating Christianity, Christ is the first point of reference because OT and NT are presented as one Book. Common terms show up in both OT and NT that serve to connect the two. The NT looks back to show how Christ came to be and the OT looks ahead to His coming. So Phillip stood in place of that which is written for us today. If the Gospels were not recorded, nor the Epistles either, who would point us to Christ then? YOU? Highly doubtful. You'd be a pagan priest engaging in all manner of deviancy. I'd likely be a Jew seeking to please the one true God.
Oh, and BTW, it's not that I "find no merit worthy of thought in the many references to scripture that" you "have brought to this discussion." It's just that I find no merit in any of your interpretations of those many references. In fact, the more I read of your "understanding", the more I find it ridiculous that you would dare disparage O&H or even mine. But to claim that our understanding as a community changes and thus somehow God's Will for us does as well is not only childish and immature, but it is possibly a sign of an age to come that I don't think will be very kind to you should that understanding be spreading as you think it is. Try as you might, you just can't force into Scripture, nor into any true teaching of God, Christ or the Spirit such a blatant contradiction of His Will as your defense of homosexual behavior.
Marshall,
You say that God tolerated much that ran contrary to His will.
Nathan says that God says to David, "I annointed you... I delivered you... I gave you... I gave you... and if this had been too little, I would have given you more..." in only the space of two verses.
You say that God tolerated much that ran contrary to His will.
If you can't even be clear about how you are opposing the clear sense of a pretty simple two verses of a prophet delivering God's own words where God clearly describes his will, his agency, and his bubbling-over happiness to do it for this, his chosen King, only to be greatly wounded by the man...
... then you are certainly not ready to read the gospel and understand the profundity of what it means that the Son of God *willingly* emptied himself for you, me, Bubba, ER, GKS, Alan, Tug, Mark, EL, and, yes, Izard and his beautiful videos of Ozark County where he and I continue to be in some contact with each other.
You fail the simple test. Maybe you are blinded because by your vehemence for me. But here you fail.
And I fear you will die of high blood pressure, angry at a changing and confusing world, because you can't see the glory of a wounded God who is magnificent beyond description, and yet is still only a description by the prophet Samuel of the true God who has no name and cannot be described, only seen by the blinding brilliance of light that is itself from God and itself still not God.
Your vehemence is blinding you. You'd be better off choosing to be blinded by love. Either way, none of us will see the real, until the other side.
"It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner."
For children? No.
For monogamy? No.
So that the man is not alone? Yes. To help... with life.
That's all there is here.
By the way, the Lord God failed for quite a while to make a helper suitable to partner the man. No beast would do (hint: beasts cannot be a partner for man).
Then God took a rib to make a woman (who did not leave any family to cleave to anyone), and God brought her to the man.
And did God say that he had finally made a helper fit for the man?
No. God did not. God left it to the man to decide.
"God brought her to the man. Then the man said,
'This *at last* is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
this one shall be called Woman,
for out of Man this one was taken."
He says it in Hebrew poetry, by the way, so I doubt any Adam said it like this.
But notice nitwit, the man gets to choose who he wants for a partner.
God did not. He tolerated the choice, I guess you would say.
Feodor is living proof that God tolerates much.
Marshall,
You must not be reading what I write – which makes your hysteria even more crazy – because, as I wrote to Bubba, I don’t need 2 Samuel to say that God approves of polygamy. That the writer of Samuel and ancient Israel thought so is clear from the text, but that has no absolute bearing on the God beyond knowing. That was simply Israel’s experience in faith and life.
Of course, you will get none of this. But I tolerate your naivete.
Leviticus 18:22 does not apply because Leviticus 18 is written in a context of an ancient society with polygamy clearly in the reasoning of why a man should not have sexual relations with women who are close relatives with one’s family. Sexual relations and the taking of wives should be done outside the family constellation.
This is the clear meaning of the text in and of itself. But you can’t read the text for itself because of the commitments you make to find things there before you even read it – that is, if you read it. And I don’t think you’ve read Genesis 2 very recently.
Since we find polygamy reprehensible for our moral social construction, I’d rather follow Bubba’s thinking that commitment can be analogized for ourselves and our times from Genesis 2 and the Corinthian hymn on love.
__________
The following blather misses entirely not my point, but Bubba’s point that the scriptures which Jesus upholds to the smallest mark as being “God breathed,” essential and reliable are precisely the OT writings which you find so wanting here:
“Were the Gospels in wide circulation at the time of Philip and the Ethiopian? I think not, or the Ethiopian would have been pointed to Christ just as many Jews of today are. Even still, most Jews aren't pointed to Christ by OT readings alone, even when Christ is offered to them as the Messiah to which it points.”
So your beef here is with Bubba, wad, and, as Bubba claims, with Jesus, too. Take it up with them, wad.
And, I add, you failed your moment.
______
“because OT and NT are presented as one Book”
You really don’t know shit, do you.
Don’t talk to any biblical scholar like this, Marshall, you’ll be laughed back to the helicopter society.
______
An example of Marshall logic:
“the OT looks ahead to His coming…” “So… who would point us to Christ then?”
How about the scriptures that “look ahead to His coming”? Something you just said 23 words before losing your own idea.
______
You’re a Jew, alright. The kind that show up precisely in Matthew 19.
_________
Try as I might, I guess I can’t just force you to read scripture right.
How will I pass the night!?
You might try explaining why, If God was in favor of polygamy to the point that he gave him all of King Saul's wives, (how many wives did King saul have, anyway?), then why does He warn in Deuteronomy 17:17 against the King "multiplying wives unto himself"?
Do these two verses cancel each other out, or can God just not make up His mind where He stands on the issue?
(Maybe He should just ask YOU what He thinks about it...)
God tolerated polygamy in the OT for some reason or other, perhaps because of the difficulty that an unmarried woman would have had providing for herself in that time, (a polygamous marriage being preferable to prostitution or slavery), or maybe because there were more women than men, and one man could hve several children instead of just one every year or so.
The truth is that none of us really know why God tolerated it.
But what we DO know is that polygamy was not the ideal for Marriage that God set up in the beginning, and whenever a polygamous marriage is described in any detail in the Bible, it was problematic in some way.
King Solomon was led into Idolitry by his wives, Jacob worked 14 years for his two wives (and he didn't even want the first one...)
And the entire World is to this very day still paying the price for Abraham taking another wife and having children with her, when God had promised the land of Israel to Abraham's seed. (So now, we have descendants of the two wives perpetually warring over the promised land, because both sides have a legitimate claim to it.)
All that aside...
You can no more find a verse which clearly blesses polygamy than you can one that blesses Homosexuality.
Even if you did find a verse in which God blessed polygamy, it wouldn't prove that He ever blessed a homosexual union, nor that He does now.
All those words... All the tap-dancing... All the redirection, the self-aggrandizement, all the insults and challenges...
You have proven nothing, Feodor.
(Except for the fact that you cannot admit when you have been beaten.)
It has been fun watching you lose, however.
Nicely done, Bubba.
You too, Marshall.
He's calling me a wad. That's funny. He's such a good priest. Such a good example for people like me.
What part of my explanation of the Ethiopian are you finding so difficult to understand? Phillip knew the story of Christ, so in effect, he was the NT for the Ethiopian. Eventually, the knowledge possessed by Phillip and others who knew the story was recorded. These people knew Christ, knew of Christ from those who knew Him and they could show people from other areas how the OT pointed to Christ. Indeed Phillip was sent to minister for that very reason, to bring the news of Christ to areas where He was unknown. But the recorded story, and along with the Epistles, point the way for the rest of us, seeing as how Phillip ain't around anymore.
And the Bible, which presents the OT and NT as one Book (did you get yours one book at a time until you had all sixty-six?) can point anyone to Christ, and without the use of a liberal theologian (which is as funny a combination a "liberal intellectual")one can find instances where the OT looks forward to Christ. It's not a freakin' mystery, dude.
Now, let's look at Matt 19:
Jesus is approached by the Feodors to ask about the lawfulness of divorcing one's wife for any reason. Jesus responds in the manner already covered by Bubba, by quoting Genesis. The Feodors then ask about Moses' command. Jesus responds as Bubba indicated regarding the hard hearts. But notice that Jesus then says,
"I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."
This is significant because He is clearly saying that divorce is not to be done aside from the one exception. That's because one is already one flesh with one's spouse. In other words, one can't marry another because divorce is prohibited and so to divorce and remarry would be adultery because one is still one flesh with one's first spouse. Polygamy would be impossible and still be true to the sentiments Jesus just expresses.
The rest is a follow up question by the Feodors to which Jesus responds with the eunich remarks. Which is unnecessary to even bring up if not for your nonsense about singlehood.
I'm telling ya, Feo, muh boy, it's like taking candy from a baby. When does your stuff get too tough for me?
more Feo-silliness coming---
"You say that God tolerated much that ran contrary to His will."
Yes I did. Indeed the whole nation of Israel ran contrary to His Will often and He tolerated them for periods of time.
"If you can't even be clear about how you are opposing the clear sense of a pretty simple two verses of a prophet delivering God's own words where God clearly describes his will..."
Uh Uh. I'm saying that YOU haven't come close to supporting your interpretation other than to say that because God said "I gave you..." that such implies a clear acceptance of or encouragement to engage in a behavior. He gave David Saul's wives. Fine. No issue there. The question is, why did He give David Saul's wives? Neither Nathan, nor God, says. That is, He doesn't say what David is expected to do with these women. I submit it was simply to care for these women rather than to turn them out into the street. Perhaps to serve David until arrangements could be made or simply to serve him indefinitely. But to assume that they were for David's sexual pleasure is a leap you make without supporting evidence. You simply WANT it to mean that in order to support your underlying disdain for a Levitical teaching of improper sexual behavior.
"You fail the simple test. Maybe you are blinded because by your vehemence for me. But here you fail."
My only failure is in bringing down to earth an arrogant ass like yourself and turning you toward God's truth. Perhaps it's my snark. But you are the perfect target of snark due to that arrogance and pretension. But there's certainly no failure on my part to understand the plainly stated Will of God as found within that leather bound Book you so easily dismiss and misrepresent.
My blood pressure is not at risk over the challenge of thwarting the will of those who wish to shred the Word of God in favor of their worldly desires. In the end, Christ will sort out your kind from mine and He and I will chill with other true believers in the warm glow of God's Grace. It's not too late for you to join us. My vehemence for you soul, indeed for Dan's as well, and ER, and Geoffrey and others who think they've got it all figured out but don't, only blinds me to your nasty attitudes. Well, not really, but those nasty attitudes are truly wasted on me because I know you're all still salvagable.
not done yet---
"So that the man is not alone? Yes. To help... with life.
That's all there is here."
This is absolutely silly. So Gen 2:24 is worthless because there are no quotes around it with a, "and God said," before it? You could not be more lame trying to run with this. Further, God brought Eve to Adam and Adam named her "woman". If you're gonna play high and inside with the verses, you can't say that Adam made the choice regarding Eve. God said He was going to make a helper for Adam. Do honestly want to say that He'd make a helper Adam wouldn't like? It doesn't say that He made all the animals as various attempts at helpers, it says He brought them to Adam to see what Adam would call them, and from them no helper was found. THEN God made the suitable helper. You're assuming that due to the order of the verses, that it means God made sheep to be helpers and Adam passed. It's amazing the points at which you choose to be literal with Scripture.
Further, it doesn't matter in the least that neither Adam nor Eve came from human parents in order to have Gen 2:24 stand as the intention of God for marriage.
"But notice nitwit, the man gets to choose who he wants for a partner."
He calls ME a nitwit. That's funny. "Let's see. Shall I choose Eve, or, uh, Eve? I think I'll choose.....EVE!!" Good choice Adam. I like how you narrowed it down. Are you sure you wouldn't rather have, maybe, Eve? Or how about that cow over there? Yeah, you're right, it's your choice. You're right in picking the only human female available.
"...the man gets to choose who he wants for a partner.
God did not."
"You can pick any woman you want, Adam, as long as it's Eve."
still more coming--
" I don’t need 2 Samuel to say that God approves of polygamy..."
Well you'll need a lot better than you've offered so far. Like perhaps a vision from above. You won't find it in Scripture, and none of your books has the authority of the Bible, so they're worthless to you in this regard.
"That the writer of Samuel and ancient Israel thought so is clear from the text"
Only to false priests, perhaps. Not to anyone who understands plainly written English.
"Of course, you will get none of this. But I tolerate your naivete."
More yuks from Feo. MY naivete? You need a ladder to reach my basic level of understanding. I keep hearing things that suggest you're a tough opponent. I feel like I'm boxing a little girl. When's this superior knowledge going to manifest itself?
"Leviticus 18:22 does not apply because Leviticus 18 is written in a context of an ancient society..."
Yeah, I keep hearing this kinda stuff about context, but I never see any proof that anyone should take it that way. The text itself suggests nothing of the kind. No later tracts do, either. The only place one can find such is in the minds of liberal theologians. Not a reliable source for Biblical understanding.
"This is the clear meaning of the text in and of itself."
Your saying so, doesn't make it so. Prove it.
"But you can’t read the text for itself because of the commitments you make to find things there before you even read it – that is, if you read it. And I don’t think you’ve read Genesis 2 very recently."
Right. Like this discussion hasn't prompted at least a few readings of the chapter. But worse, you project upon me a obvious fault in yourself. I bring no preconceived notions to my study of Scripture. In fact, study originally began with a challenge to myself that I would read the entire Bible, study it, and conform my life according to whatever I find within it. I had no cares about what people like you did with your boyfriends or your barnyard animals. Nothing was wrong for me at that time. Despite my upbringing, I was total lord of my life, deciding without input what right and wrong was. My initial study was borne out of a desire to see just how much of my ideas I could maintain as I had gotten to the point where there was nothing I couldn't justify. So any suggestions that I abide certain tracts because I hate fags or some such crap is without merit entirely. I didn't care about them at all at that point in my life. If they lived next door or died by the millions through disease or misfortune, it didn't matter to me. Now I care. Now I know their behavior is wrong but they are still deserving of respect and love by anyone who calls themselves a Christian. But that love doesn't include pretending their behavior isn't sinful or trying to reinterpret the Bible upon the thinnest of interpretations in order to enable their behavior. One doesn't prove one is Christian by such means. One defends the true Will of God as revealed in Scripture without fear of liberal derision. I'm not the one who's lost. I'm not the one who's naieve.
So,
"You really don’t know shit, do you."
Yes. And its name is "Feodor".
I just want to point out that the Ethiopian Eunuch was reading OT scripture at the time God placed Philip by his side. Since this was before the NT was written, the Eunuch, who didn't know who Jesus was, being from another country, and so, because he was reading about Jesus, desired to know and understand the things he was reading.
Here is what he was reading, according to Acts:
(ontinued)
Isaiah 53
1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
And who can speak of his descendants?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was stricken.
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes [c] his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
11 After the suffering of his soul,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
If one didn't know Jesus, one would naturally wonder who this scripture is talking about. The Ethiopian asked, and God placed Philip there to answer him. Thus the Eunuch was converted.
It's too bad Feodor and other Jesus seminar educated scholars don't have such childlike faith to accept only what the Bible says without needing it analyzed ad nauseum.
Re: "He calls ME a nitwit. That's funny. "Let's see. Shall I choose Eve, or, uh, Eve? I think I'll choose.....EVE!!" Good choice Adam. I like how you narrowed it down. Are you sure you wouldn't rather have, maybe, Eve? Or how about that cow over there? Yeah, you're right, it's your choice. You're right in picking the only human female available.
"...the man gets to choose who he wants for a partner.
God did not."
"You can pick any woman you want, Adam, as long as it's Eve."
LOL! Here's an oldie but a goodie:
Eve: Do you really love me?
Adam: Who else?
Tug, VERY good comment, I'd forgotten about Deuteronomy 17:17.
Feodor, I'm glad to see that it looks like you misspoke regarding the name of Jesus, and though I'm not a big fan of the phrase "personal relationship with Jesus," I'm not sure where you're going with your observations, except to guess that, broadly, the destination is what it often is, snark against Protestantism.
I don't understand your claim that the unwillingly single "don't have a place in [my] two options" of marriage or celibacy. The options aren't mine, they're the Bible's, but if someone is single -- temporarily or throughout his life -- but not sexually active, it seems that the life he leads is celibate and therefore chaste.
I also don't understand your claim that my position regarding David's polygamy "makes God out to be a pimp." It seems we both agree that God gave David Saul's many wives: how is the gift equivalent to prostitution if the motive is to preserve David from adultery, rather than if polygamy has always been part of God's perfect plan for marriage?
About Matthew 19, I absolutely agree that the focus is on divorce and not the composition of marriage, but we cannot act as if Jesus didn't invoke Genesis 2 at all. Just because He clearly invoked Genesis to repudiate casual divorce, it DOES NOT FOLLOW that there aren't other conclusions to draw from the passage.
We know for a fact that Paul invoked the passage twice, to apply it to two other situations.
I've used these analogies before with others, but they still hold:
1) If a student asks his teacher whether 22 is a prime number, and the teacher replies with a broad principle in addition to its immediate application...
"All even numbers are, by definition, divisible by two, so no even number greater than two is prime. Twenty-two is even and greater than two, so 22 is NOT prime."
...it's foolish to conclude that the teacher gave information that is only relevant to the question about 22. The principle also addresses a literally infinite number of even numbers, from 4 to 42 to 1,062.
2) Suppose a child asks his mother, "Can I have a cookie?" Suppose she answered with both a principle and its application:
"We're eating dinner in 30 minutes and I don't want you to spoil your appetite, so you can't have a cookie."
The principle obviously has broader applications: the child also cannot have cake, a candy bar, or even a healthier snack like a fruit salad. In most circumstances, I would conclude that a child who heard this answer and then ate a candy bar -- ostensibly because his mother didn't explicitly forbid the act -- is being deliberately obtuse in order to be disobedient.
Jesus Christ explained why we were created male and female, and from the principle He taught why casual divorce is forbidden: it does not follow that no other conclusions can be drawn, and it even strikes me as willful rebellion against the full weight of His teachings to presume that no other conclusions could be drawn.
[continued]
[continued]
About Scripture, you ask, "Who is arguing that the Bible is human speculation?"
That certainly seems to be your position when you wrote the following about at least specific teachings in the law of Moses, those regarding boils and kosher food:
"That 'God' commanded such things, I take to be true to Israel's experience of God as they articulated it, but it is not true of mine."
It seems to me that you believe the law of Moses records Israel's experience of "God" -- the scare-quotes are yours -- rather than God's revelation to Israel.
At the same time, you write the following:
"The time of the Patriarchs is over, much less the time of Moses.
"These have passed away, have they not? The mosaic and temple laws?"
It seems to me that the regulations regarding ritualistic purity have been merely fulfilled, since Christ was quite explicit in Matthew 5 that none of the law would pass away until history comes to a close. And Paul is clear, in Galatians for instance, that the promises made to Abraham are now available to us, who can become Abraham's sons in a spiritual sense.
I think it's wrong to say that while the Old Testament is a genuine and authoritative revelation from God, its contents no longer matter at all, but that's still a step up from denying its authority altogether, which IS what you seem to do when you dismiss Jewish Scripture as the Israelite's mere experience of a scare-quoted "God."
On the subject of the unique reliability of Scripture, I don't think Philip's witness to the Ethiopian helps your case.
Philip didn't downgrade the authority of Isaiah, did he? He didn't tell the Ethopian to ignore that passage since it only recorded what was true of Isaiah's experience of "God"?
Philip's witness presumes the authority of the book the eunuch was studying.
"The eunuch had the scriptures, the one you say Jesus defends to the smallest of marks. He simply had no one to point him to the Christ that was in it. He clearly was a willing reader, anxious to know the truth. But the scriptures were not reliably sufficient."
First, it's not simply the case that I say Jesus affirms Scripture to the smallest penstroke. I encourage you to read Matthew 5.
Second, it is enough to note the obvious: what the eunuch was studying WAS NOT THE COMPLETED AND CLOSED CANON. I believe the Old Testament contains what the New reveals, but my position is that it is the Bible -- in its entirety as the closed and completed canon -- which is the reliable and sufficient doctrinal revelation of God to man.
The Old Testament might not be sufficient, hence its own promises regarding a new covenant, but it's worth reiterating that Philip clearly thought that what it did teach -- sufficient or not -- is reliable.
On the subject of what the Bible teaches, I do have one question for you, Feodor, about the creation of man. You write:
"By the way, the Lord God failed for quite a while to make a helper suitable to partner the man. No beast would do (hint: beasts cannot be a partner for man)."
About that "hint," are you actually suggesting that, because no beast was a suitable partner for the first man, that tells us that bestiality is impermissible for us?
Tug,
The differences between Deuteronomy and Leviticus and Samuel are your problems, not mine. I'm fine with intertextual differences.
Differences don't twist and misshape my biblical reading like it does for you guys.
So, your question is a self-assessment. How do you reconcile God's willful and glad giving of Saul's wives to David in light of Deuteronomy?
Good luck.
"Even if you did find a verse in which God blessed polygamy, it wouldn't prove that He ever blessed a homosexual union, nor that He does now."
Because your God is boxed in between imitation leather binding.
Show me a verse that says Welches is good for communion. Or Manischewitz.
Show me a verse that says women should be preaching.
Show me a verse that says that slaves should be freed everywhere and slavery abolished.
You have no consistency in understanding your life with God and the function of the Bible in that life.
Got to go, now boys, I have a weekend date in Jersey with family and ribs.
But keep churning. This is like skeet shooting for me. Fun, fun, fun.
Foedor, I believe I covered all that in my comment.
As has Bubba, and Marshall.
As to my God being bound up in imitation leather binding...
My God still has the power to release people from Sin and sinful lifestyles.
The only thing that limits the power of my god is our willingness or unwillingness to follow His guidance.
Nice try.
Show me a verse that says Welches is good for communion. Or Manischewitz.
There isn't one. I never said there was.
Show me a verse that says women should be preaching.
There isn't one. I never said there was.
Show me a verse that says that slaves should be freed everywhere and slavery abolished.
There isn't one. I never said there was.
You know what is in there though?
There is a verse which says "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."
There are verses which say "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God."
There is a passage that goes like this:
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, [Feodor]
And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen."
Look 'em up.
That's what the BIBLE says, Feodor.
You see, I'm not trying to keep ANYBODY from coming to a saving knowledge of Jesus, and the wonderful salvation from Sin and degradation He offers.
I'm simply pointing to THE TRUTH as it is laid out for us in God's Holy Word.
My God is not trapped in a book.
Neither is He limited by Man's sinful nature or by Man's need to justify his unrighteousness.
"Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.
I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.
For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.
What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death.
But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
Notice that the passage above does not say "being then filled with love..."
It says "made free from sin".
I'm glad that you find losing these arguments so easy and so enjoyable, Feodor.
You are so good at it.
"But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers [Feodor] among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies [Practicing Gay Christians]even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them[God has no power to cure gayness, therefore it cannot possibly be a sin...], —bringing swift destruction on themselves." [As soon as Bubba logs on.]
Here's another one just for you and your fellow false prophets, Feodor...
"For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error.
They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.
If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.
It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them."
I think that pretty much sums it up.
Tug,
Nicely done.
Regarding Feo's "show me" list, it is a ruse to suggest that there have been changes that justify the overturning of Levitical law regarding human sexuality. For example, he believes that Jesus and/or Paul supported slavery. He'll point to Paul's teaching of how both a slave and a slave master should behave and claim it's a sanctioning of slavery, when it's a lesson for how both slave and master should relate to each other as Christians.
Poor Feo doesn't realize that it's not enough to shoot skeet. One must also hit a clay pidgeon once in a while. I'm confidant that one day he just might. Probably by accident and without his own awareness of having done so.
Marshall, 2 Timothy chapter 3 warns Christians not to waste time on people like Feodor.
"1This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
2For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
4Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
5Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
6For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
7Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
8Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.
9But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as their's also was. " (Emphasis mine.)
It goes on to tell us:
"14But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them;
15And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus."
Feodor is here not to try to lead anyone to the Truth, but to drive us to anger.
2 Timothy chapter 2 tells us: "
23 But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.
24And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient,
25In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;
26And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will."
I used to argue constantly with another blogger about all these things and more. This was someone whom I considered a friend in the beginning, but over the course of time I watched him drift further and further away from the tru teachings of the Bible, all the while becoming simultaneously more and more self righteous and beligerant.
There came a point when I felt myself come under conviction of the Holy Spirit, and I was led to disengage myself from struggling with him, not because I was in the wrong with the stand I took, but because he was using his misguided religeosity to drive me to rage and hatred.
I turned away from this person to avoid damaging my own witness for Christ.
And that is Feodor's purpose here...
To cause Christians to stumble.
Be careful.
Feodor is not shooting skeet.
He's slinging bovine excrement.
How many people could the three of us have led to Christ in the amount of time we've wasted on this moron, had we gone out to witness to the Lost instead?
He has no interest in building God's Church, only in polluting it and tearing it down.
How many different ways has the Truth been presented to him in this one thread?
He is serving his master.
We should be serving our's, instead of debating the Biblical approval of Polygamy, or other such nonsense.
Tug,
Mark has also wondered why I bother continuing with people like Feodor. There are several reasons. But first of all, he couldn't incite me to rage on his best day. He seems to think I get hysterical, that I'm on pins and needles, that I'm teetering between one point of view and another, clinging to what I "used to believe" rather than allow myself to join in with the change he thinks is sweeping the body of Christ. None of this is true in the least. But it makes him feel better to believe so. He needs to believe so as he runs out of lame arguments to support his morally retarded positions. It's really sad.
But to shake the dust of my sandles, as it were, makes more sense if he and I were more face to face. Here, in the blogosphere, I believe it is wiser to carry on in the face of such nonsense. I still don't have a counter on my site and I'm not sure I'd be able to easily discern how many hits I get without comments. I know Les stops by more often than he comments, and perhaps a few others are likely to be doing so. How many have visited without ever commenting I may never fully know.
Of these people, some may find the arguments of a Feodor or Dan Trabue to be sensible, and if their own experience with Scripture is cursory at best, it would be easy for them to be sucked in by those unfortunate points of view. I mean, think about it: to the non-religious, much of our beliefs could seem illogical. Why SHOULDN'T we tolerate, or even engage in ourselves, some of the sins we reject? Without someone around to explain things, our opponents offer what appears to be an easy and natural path to take.
Also, as some of these arguments are rehashed over and over, one never knows when the right combination of words and sentences will strike a chord in the hearts of these hard-hearted souls and bring them to a better and righteous understanding.
Further, it amuses me to hear some of the wacky arguments brought forth to defend the indefensible (and who's been better than Feodor?), and amuses me also to counter them, often with snark and mockery.
Finally, I truly do hold myself open to all points of view in an ongoing search for real truth (also in areas apart from faith) and to expect open minds in others, I need to maintain one of my own.
But don't worry. Feodor's not the intellectual he'd have us believe. His inability to support his weak positions have proven that repeatedly. The poor bastard doesn't even know how lame he is. But I'll need far better than he is to sway me from what I perceive as the truth; certainly more logic and sense.
I am about ready to close this thread for good. The wheels have been spinning for a while.
Tug,
If you do indeed silence women and uphold slavery, then, yes, you should follow the old laws that made sense in an epoch of ancient near eastern mesopotamia before 200 B.C.
But if you use grape juice or find women to be equal in the church or despise slavery, then you've already broken your belief in the inerrancy and literal plain sense of scripture.
Surely you can make on more concession for the sake of living our God's grace.
Marshall,
You close it and you like a coward, since I am only getting back to answering.
"You like a coward"?
No, Feodor, you have responded and responded and responded and responded and responded, with non-sequiturs, straw men, redirections, false delemmas, insults, and outright attempts at deception.
You have offered nothing worthwhile since you showed up here. (And by "here", I mean on the internet.)
Go away.
You've lost this one.
You're starting to look a little pathetic and sad.
Marshall, shoot me an email if you are going to close this thread, 'cause I'd like to add a comment summarizing a few things before I do. I might try to start a draft of the comment, and either way, I'd work to get it posted as soon as possible.
Feodor, I do not believe that opposition to slavery, for instance, requires a rejection of Scripture's inerrant authority. After all, when the Bible describes the Israelites' slavery in Egypt or our own spiritual slavery to sin (as in Gal 4), it approves of the situation.
If you really want to be persuasive in your position that opposition to slavery is incompatible with biblical inerrancy, you should try to make a substantive argument that the Bible actually requires support for slavery. I won't hold my breath.
You urge Tug to "make [one] more concession for the sake of living our God's grace."
I wonder, why stop at one, and why make that one concession about homosexuality? Fornication -- sex before marriage -- is probably far more widespread than homosexual intercourse. Would it not be more gracious for the church, not only to welcome fornicators as sinners in need of repentance and forgivenss, but as saints who have done nothing wrong in their sexually active lifestyle?
And I will reiterate my earlier question, because I believe the question is worth asking and deserves an answer.
Again, you write:
"By the way, the Lord God failed for quite a while to make a helper suitable to partner the man. No beast would do (hint: beasts cannot be a partner for man)."
About that "hint," are you actually suggesting that, because no beast was a suitable partner for the first man, that tells us that bestiality is impermissible for us?
"I wonder, why stop at one, and why make that one concession about homosexuality?"
Because the Holy Spirit has demonstrated once again that "God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right."
Bubba, do not call anything impure that God has made clean
Tug,
Bubba sure puts in a lot of effort to take on "nothing worthwhile," and you sure cheer him loudly in doing so.
So, I think your lying with words.
Getting back to you, Bubba, regarding many interesting and well put points:
1.
"I don't understand your claim that the unwillingly single "don't have a place in [my] two options" of marriage or celibacy. The options aren't mine, they're the Bible's, but if someone is single -- temporarily or throughout his life -- but not sexually active, it seems that the life he leads is celibate and therefore chaste."
Just as the Bible had no reason to have a sociological vision for economically independent women (thus polygamy in the OT and concern for widowed sisters-in-law in the NT), so the Bible has no sociological reason to think through the outlines of Christian life of singlehood, which is not a spiritual calling of celibacy.
We do.
So it is no surprise that the Bible does not have a category for such.
Or for resuscitation techniques, or artificial fertilization, or aid to developing countries, pharmaceutical patents, and an immense, unceasing host of issues which we have to think through ethically ourselves (except for those here who live in a cocoon), with some kind of semblance of re-interpreted Christian theological principles in hand.
All this, of course, is seen from my perspective as just additional material that wears away at the notion of the sufficiency of scripture to, alone, guide the Christian life. I think such a position mis-identifies the role of Holy Scripture.
2.
"It seems we both agree that God gave David Saul's many wives: how is the gift equivalent to prostitution if the motive is to preserve David from adultery, rather than if polygamy has always been part of God's perfect plan for marriage?"
I don't agree that God gave Saul's many wives to David. Again, this equation of biblical narrative to a precise knowledge of the will of God is a absolutist claim and a logical impossibility for those of us who don't hold to the unbiblical and ahistorical seventeenth-century conceptions of inerrancy and literal plain sense.
We cannot twist what we read in the OT to make sense in the socio-ethical sphere of my world. It is bad biblical reading to us. The literal and inerrant way of reading the Bible destroys the notion of the inspiration of the Christian OT, because it locates the nature of that inspiration in an absolutest, cosmically eternal way that something accessible to the human mind can never be -- since the human mind is limited cognitively and spiritually.
In short, if we can make terrifically good ense of it, then it necessarily must not be eternally and perfectly true. What is eternally and perfectly true lies behind a cloud of unknowing into which we lean with faith, not certainty.
When we do make terrifically good sense of something then we must proceed with thanks to God that we have this truth, but with humility in the knowledge that this truth, to the extent that we understand it, is helpful, saving even, but partial, fallen in the way we have it, nonetheless glorious in its capacity to transform human understanding, human community, human nature.
God moves perfectly, and we are imperfectly moved. Thus, God moves in a covenanted relationship with Israel, but ancient Israel is imperfectly moved. God moves in a favored relationship with a King named David, but David is imperfectly moved. God moves perfectly in Paul, but Paul is imperfectly moved.
Scripture is an inspired testimony to the imperfect movement of the faithful and always a clarion call to the community reading it to be ever better hearers and seers of God's perfect moving.
3.
If one then contextualizes what "conclusions" one draws from Jesus's teaching in this ground of humility, then I do not have an "ultimate" problem with honest "conclusions." If you conclude that homosexuality is wrong, grounding your conclusion as I do mine, in the condition that we cannot ultimately know the mind of God and that Holy Scripture cannot ultimately give us the mind of God, then I am in brotherhood with such a stance.
It is the claim of inerrant scripture as constructed in the last four hundred years which was constructed during Europe's religious wars just so to serve the goal of claiming to absolutely know God's will that I cannot abide.
4.
You write:
"It seems to me that the regulations regarding ritualistic purity have been merely fulfilled, since Christ was quite explicit in Matthew 5 that none of the law would pass away until history comes to a close. And Paul is clear, in Galatians for instance, that the promises made to Abraham are now available to us, who can become Abraham's sons in a spiritual sense."
My response is that the promise to Abraham's is ours without adhering to the law.
Circumcision is not necessary.
"Do not call unclean what God has made clean."
It was, indeed a new thing:
"'So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God'" When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, 'So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.'"
And look, God has done it again. Women are equal and called to the ministry of the Gospel, slavery is to be abolished, and our gay brothers and sisters have received the same gift as God gave us.
Welcome them, Bubba, God has granted it, finally, within the limits of our understanding.
The real challenge is to bear up under a history of violence against women, slaves, Jews, homosexuals, that has yet to let go.
And I am with you in the existential struggle against this realization. It makes me very, very uncomfortable.
But I cannot hide behind a paper and ink God. I am with those whose faith cannot bring Christ down from heaven, or bring Christ back up from the depths as if he had never sacrificed himself for this violence.
I am with Paul who cannot stoop to keep the word of faith bound in paper and ink.
As I've said before.
So, it is with this faith that Genesis and Leviticus and Samuel shimmers as it did for Jesus and Paul. It was not a millstone to imprison future generations. It is an interpretive storehouse continually powerful to provoke faithful searching for new life.
As Jesus interpreted Genesis and the Prophets and Paul internalizes the dynamics of the law in a new sense - as he filters them through his vision of the living Christ -- so they have handed off to the church the grave and glorious responsibility to interpret scripture in the light of the living Christ and the power of the Spirit which "blows where it wills." Our job together is to witness to the perfect movement of God as best we can.
For this grave and glorious responsibility, Christ promised to be present with us, in the sacrament of the breaking of bread and the cup of wine, and in the scripture written our new hearts of flesh as opposed to stone, and in our mouths as we confess the faith.
Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, and Paul's unique interpretation of them in Romans and 2 Corinthians.
I know you guys comfort yourselves with reassurances that this kind of thinking is all from Feodor's head and his liberal education.
The problem is that such liberal education pays strict attention to the ways in which the early church Fathers - and a few mothers little known - approached exegesis in every way imaginable except in the ways derivative of the rational Enlightenment that set the stage for a posited "literal" reading. We also paid strict attention to how the tradition of Jewish midrash and Christian interpretive practices influenced each other over centuries.
But as this is terrain not entertained by populist American protestantism, pointing these things out is just going to make you guys mad.
And who wants to do that?
Marshall,
I'm a little surprised that you haven't shut this down before now. I can't believe it's still going back and forth, and how far from the original post it's gotten.
I agree with much of your reasoning for allowing this to go on, but it's getting really long, and hard to follow.
What I would like to see is an ongoing dialogue between Bubba and Dan. Dan has obviously been ducking most of Bubba's questions, and it would be interesting to see where that would lead.
What about setting up a one on one thread for Dan and Bubba with no one else allowed in? Set the ground rules and let them go. If not here then I would be happy to host. I'm guessing Bubba would be up, and I bet Dan just might.
Craig, I would be game, at any reasonably moderated venue. Whether Dan would be willing for such a dialogue, and whether he would actually participate until his beliefs are actually made clear, is another question entirely.
If he agrees to a dialogue, please let me know.
Feodor:
You write eloquently -- and correctly -- that the will of an infinite and eternal God cannot be completely known by a finite and time-bound humanity.
The problem with this statement is, it has nothing to do with inerrancy. Inerrancy doesn't entail the claim that the Bible contains ALL truth; it entails the claim that ALL that it contains is true.
A large and merely human text like a phonebook is almost certainly not inerrant, but the claim that the 1970 Cleveland phone book is wholly accurate is NOT a claim that the book is complete -- that it contains numbers from 1960 and 1980, or numbers from Albany, or Social Security numbers for its Cleveland residents.
The fact is, the Bible asserts that it doesn't contain all truth. In Matthew 24:36, it teaches that only the Father -- and not even the Son -- knows the hour of Christ's return. In John 21:25, the Bible teaches that recording all that Jesus did is almost certainly an impossible task. In Revelation 10:4, we are told that John was commanded NOT to write down what he heard.
The Bible is clear that it doesn't contain "the whole truth," to use the courtroom phrase.
If inerrancy is correct and the Bible contains "nothing but the truth", then its own claims require a rejection of the idea that the Bible contains the whole truth.
Feodor, about your position that homosexual behavior is now morally permissible, you make some pretty bold claims without giving us much of a reason to believe those claims.
You tell me, "do not call anything impure that God has made clean."
I won't.
But you haven't convinced me that God has made homosexual behavior clean.
I absolutely agree that neither circumcision nor adherence to the law in ANY respect is necessary for salvation: we are saved by God's grace alone, in Christ's death alone, through faith alone.
But Paul is nevertheless clear that we were saved from the burden of the law so that Christ might fulfill its requirements in us.
"Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means!"
You yourself write, "the Holy Spirit has demonstrated once again that 'God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.'"
But doesn't that beg the question whether homosexual behavior qualifies as doing "what is right"?
You are presuming what you should be trying to prove.
You still haven't answered my question about fornication.
I absolutely agree that the church should accept homosexuals: we should do so as we should accept all fornicators, adulterers, liars, thieves, and murders who have repented of their sins.
If you don't think homosexual behavior is a sin from which sinners should repent -- all as a concession "for the sake of living our God's grace" -- WHY STOP THERE?
Why not accept liars, thieves, and fornicators on the same ground that you demand for practicing homosexuals?
And you still haven't answered or even acknowledged a question that I will now ask for the third time.
You write:
"By the way, the Lord God failed for quite a while to make a helper suitable to partner the man. No beast would do (hint: beasts cannot be a partner for man)."
About that "hint," are you actually suggesting that, because no beast was a suitable partner for the first man, that tells us that bestiality is impermissible for us?
He's not going to answer that, Bubba.
Not in any direct and understandable way...
I actually have a question for Feodor myself...
Feodor, does your church condone polygamy?
You've spent an awful lot of time trying to convince us here that the Bible does not say there is anything wrong with the practice, and that God Himself actually engaged in polygamous match-making from time to time...
Would your church allow a polygamous wedding?
Accept a pastor who had two wives?
Or a wife and a husband, even?
If not, then why not?
"The problem is that such liberal education pays strict attention to the ways in which the early church Fathers - and a few mothers little known - approached exegesis in every way imaginable..."
Proving it is you who needs someone to tell you how to think. Pathetic.
"You close it and you like a coward, since I am only getting back to answering."
If you think you're worth waiting over 450 comments for in order to get more poor responses, you're a bigger troll than I thought. In the future, try to answer simple questions directly and without wasting so much time trying to pose as an intelligent man. You'll get far more respect for your opinions that way.
As it stands, I'm not closing the thread yet, because far better than you have more to say.
Craig,
That's not a bad idea. For now, Bubba is dealing with Feodor who has the same lame arguments as did Dan, only with arrogance and condescension and a self-aggrandizing sense of his own importance and intellect.
Bubba,
1.
As you write:
"You yourself write, "the Holy Spirit has demonstrated once again that 'God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.'"
But doesn't that beg the question whether homosexual behavior qualifies as doing "what is right"?
You are presuming what you should be trying to prove."
Were the Gentiles without sin?
Then in what way were *they* doing right?
They were committing themselves to the revelation of Jesus Christ as the Son of God. For this reason they were accepted by God. My gay brothers and sisters commit themselves to God minister to others, increase the kingdom.
Don't call unclean what God has made clean.
2.
Regarding bestiality, no, I was playing with Genesis. I really don't think Genesis functions textually in a way that one can make immediate one-to-one comparisons with our issues. The opening of Genesis is a unique sacred text and one that shows clear signs of being two or three texts with slightly different interests and worldviews having been smartly woven together.
3.
As for liars and thieves, I can only assume you mean inveterate and incorrigible perpetrators, since I am sure all of us have lied at one time or another and may be guilty of stealing (since printing personal documents on company paper with company printers is technically stealing, or taking pens, pencils, binders, paper clips, staplers, putting in more hours than actually worked, not reporting certain interest revenue to the IRS or cash handed over, etc., etc.).
I don't think I've met any such inveterate folks outside of psychiatric hospitals, so we'll have to be hypothetical and say that would certainly welcome them to church -- though not to the offering plate or committee work.
But I generally feel that real sins will out, meaning that lives based on sin come to anguished or violent ends. Guilt is a natural reaction of human nature and works its burdens pretty well.
But judgment is God's work.
As for your antiquated term of 'fornicator,' I can only respond to what I would understand as sexual addicts and abusers of the natural human urge. They, too, are welcome to worship God as the father of us all. And they, too, will suffer the consequences of addiction and abuse unless they get help and work on recovery.
By their fruits you shall know them, which in my experience has always been wreaked consciences or, failing that, wreaked lives.
______________
And, when we have dinner and wine and it gets late in the night, when friends share with honesty the mystery of living our lives with faith and courage and discouragement, in sickness and health, with love and struggle... I am always honored by the deep and terrific and fruitful faith of my friends, gay, straight, married, dating, single but not wanting to be, bipolar, depressives, those in recovery, the sick, the well, the vegetarian, the Buddhist, the atheist, etc.
True human lives.
In this context here, thinking of you guys and your hard coffin of truth, I think of Henri Poincaré: “To doubt everything, or, to believe everything, are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.”
But that "reflection" is one way in which we reflect that we are made in the image and likeness of God -- and despite what you find in Genesis -- that ain't sex.
Tug,
Since Marshall finds Bubba the better "explainer," I'll let him explain to why you're failing to grasp the line of arguments and the following:
1. No, I don't condone polgamy.
2. No, I don't think God played match-maker with a harem.
Marshall,
I don't read the way the early Church Fathers do, since I live with completely different notions of everything.
But I do respect them and call upon their prayers in heaven.
Their work does point out the theological poverty of a view of scripture that wants to find the literal plain sense of a rationally "inerrant" scripture.
So, what I wont do is read the Bible like a frontier coon hunter who's never read anything else after leaving the school room at age 12. That's your job.
Feodor, I appreciate your answer. I kinda figured you didn't think the Genesis account of man's being created male and female had any bearing on modern sexual morality.
It's clear that Christ does think precisely that, since He and His Apostles invoked Genesis 2 to conclude that such things like prostitution and casual divorce are morally impermissible.
However, you still have not even attempted to argue persuasively that God has decreed that homosexual behavior is (or is now) morally permissible.
I have no intention to call anything unclean what God has made clean.
You still need to show that God has done precisely that.
If He hasn't, you run the risk of committing the opposite mistake, of declaring moral what He has outlawed.
I don't think the term "fornication" is archaic: what other term would you use to describe the sin of sexual relations before marriage?
Or is another aspect of basic Christian ethics that you ignore?
You respond to "sexual addicts and abusers of the natural human urge," but do you believe that that includes sex outside of marriage, or not?
About theft and lies, I actually wasn't talking about the "inveterate" offenders who need psychiatric help, or even the flagrant offenders who are now in prison and are (hopefully) being reached by prison ministries.
"As for liars and thieves, I can only assume you mean inveterate and incorrigible perpetrators, since I am sure all of us have lied at one time or another and may be guilty of stealing..."
You assumed wrong, because even supposed "white lies" are still lies, and even stealing company office supplies is still theft.
Heck, I know a religious teacher who taught that mere lust is as immoral as actual adultery.
(He certainly sounds like an ignorant American Protestant hick, doesn't he? He probably thinks Scripture is inerrant, too.)
Because I trust his teaching, I think we must admit that all of us are guilty of significant breaches of God's moral law.
The clerk who skims from the cash register is just as guilty of theft as the high-profile white-collar crooks, and they both follow the same path to adoption into God's family: faith in Christ's offer of forgiveness, which entails an admission of sins that need forgiveness and repentance from those sins.
A person who doesn't see the deep moral offense of "mere" skimming from his employer, might still find forgiveness, but he surely has a long way to go in Christian discipleship if he doesn't understand that his corrupt behavior requires forgiveness from God and repentance on our part.
And for the sake of the its integrity, the church should NEVER budge on the immorality of theft.
The same principle applies to sexual immorality, be it adultery where at least one person is betraying the covenant of marriage; or fornication where there is no covenant to break; or even lust that never even results in immoral behavior; or -- yes -- even homosexual relationships that, for all your talk about the beauty of creation, is an offense to the beauty of God's human creation, of His making us male and female for complementary matrimonial relationships.
In all of these cases, the church should welcome penitent sinners, but it should never compromise on the immorality of these sins for the sake of supposedly gracious concessions.
Grace -- real agape love that follows the Father's example -- doesn't tell people that the poison they're eating is healthy food, and it doesn't tell them that their sins are really morally innocuous or even virtuous.
What God has declared sin, we should never call virtue.
That same teacher taught that one who breaks even the most insignificant commandment and teaches others to do the same will be considered the least in God's kingdom. If he's right, you should be very, very careful to make quite sure that you're not condoning and even endorsing what God forbids.
Tug, for some reason Feodor wants me to explain his positions.
"1. No, I don't condone polgamy."
I actually didn't realize that this was position, and I don't know why it's not, since polygamy has a much stronger pedigree than sodomy.
"2. No, I don't think God played match-maker with a harem."
I think Feodor's explanation is that the Old Testament contains a subjective record of Israel's experience of God, not an objective record of God's revelation to Israel.
About kosher regulations, he has written, "That 'God' commanded such things, I take to be true to Israel's experience of God as they articulated it, but it is not true of mine."
But he insists that he isn't arguing that the Bible is merely human speculation rather than divine revelation.
I've noted that his thoughts about the Old Testament's description of the Almighty involves a scare-quoted "God," but I don't think he's responded to this to clarify what he originally meant.
Maybe he's just picking and choosing what he thinks he's authoritative. Even though Paul and Peter were both clear about God's will regarding sexual morality, he ignores their teachings on that subject while latching on (and I would say co-opting and perverting) Peter's vision and Paul's missionary journeys to the Gentiles.
If Feodor thinks that conclusion is unfair, he should not leave it to others to explain his sometimes less-than-clear-and-coherent comments.
Bubba,
Your juridical approach to morality (quaint, corrosive and unresponsive to the human heart) is the default huddle around which all of you circle in your Christian apologetics and which also constitutes the bedrock of the difference between what you guys read in the Bible and what people like Dan, ER, GKS, Alan, and myself hear in the Gospel.
If you want the good news of Jesus Christ to center on the ethics on the mild infractions of taking paper clips and printed newspaper articles from work, the hiding of a few hundred dollars from the IRS (not surprisingly, you don't reference this behavior since you are anti-government depending on the wind), then you go ahead.
As Dan and I always repeat, "the measure with which you judge others will be the measure used to judge you."
Even the way you can use the verb, "invoke," when talking about how Jesus may read the Bible sends chills of deep revulsion down my spine.
And your desire to ground Jesus in your notion of secondary "arguments" stemming from his slap down of the Pharisees who were trying to trap him is simple a similar trapping move of Jesus by you. The trap was about callous abandonment. Jesus goes to the heart of it by indicating that we are to be as committed to each other as God is to us. Any strong relationship we form should bear the imprint of God's love: un-conditionality, sacrifice, and un-ceasing bond. And this applies to more than just marriage: friendship, fellowship, parenthood, taking care of older parents and family.
Surely, Bubba, you don't think God hasn't joined one to one's parents, one's children, one's friends and fellow worshipers of Christ? Sure, the marital bond is preeminent among these bonds, but can they be discarded easier? You with your holy crusade against paper clip theft, surely you would argue against willful closing off of any of these God given relationships.
But there is no sex in these relationships.
But cannot one say about them, in a morally expansive reading of Genesis, "what God has joined together, let no one cut off willfully"?
But, perhaps you can’t unpack Genesis into such general abstraction. And this is part of longer complaint about those who “literally” read the Bible. They read one part literally only. Then they read another part literally only; And then another. And by the end the Bible is only a menu of proof texts ordered for whatever sin or perceived sin is at hand. There is no over arching vision of the sweep of God acting in history in ever new and glorious ways. The movement from creation to immediate trouble with ones’ best creation, to choosing a man to establishing a people to God’s own heart ache for his people, to the incarnation and the unimaginable gospel story. There is no sweeping narrative sense to the literalist reading. There is only “invoking.”
That Genesis 2 is not seen by literalists as a primal yearning of the human heart for story and narrative arc to meaning is perhaps the worst of the crime because it is the beginning of the crime.
How does your “invoking” of Jesus “invoking” of an etymological section meant to provide simple teaching to children “how” marriage started, embedded with a beautiful view of human commitment and love, and yes, sex, too to an extent not also fold in the universalizing transcendence of the fact that we are made in God’s image and likeness and find that the panoply of humanity is exactly the image and likeness of God?
Is this not the best of spiritual, theological truths of Genesis? The diversity of humankind is only a sign of the infinite breadth of God. And when I hold this, too, and continue on to see how the Bible reflects on this acting, breathing, management of God, how do you not see the thread that God’s love is equally infinite and broad and yearningly offered to his whole creation and that when people love with commitment, sacrifice, unceasing intent come what may, then they participate in God’s cosmic work of love?
Tug and Marshall and Mark want “proof.” You want an “argument.” I have been giving proofs and arguments night and day for days. But the proofs and the arguments are the movement of the gospel and you guys are prone to see only static law, eternal decree. I have been pointing to love as I was taught by the whole sweep of the OT story, by the story of the nativity and Jesus’ ministry, and the Passion of the Christ, and as I was taught by Paul, Peter, and John and others that the whole blessed point of such a divine scandal is love being offered. And I was taught that those who come to him in love should not be turned away.
But this is attention to the whole, while you give pay attention to the parts, one at a time, ironing out the crookedness between the parts with crooked logic. I am not worried the crookedness. The arc of the whole makes the straight path of love blaze through the whole. This is its inspiration. The whole, woven, joined sections of disparate fabric like a quilt, not a winding sheet.
This is why I press on polygamy and Marshall’s template of scholars who are hobbyists at scripture. Their understanding of a God who decrees and doesn’t change and sets up inerrant scripture like lined up bowling pins is too brittle to survive biblical literature. For them, and you, biblical law is true and eternal because God established it himself as Moses wrote it down in scripture.
[By the way, Bubba, do you think Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible?]
“The law does not pass away. Monogamy was established with the creation of Adam and Eve and God only, and only maybe, tolerated polygamy for a while and Jesus finally brought the hammer.”
Well, but then you face of the problem, as they say, of real life happening in the biblical text. You have the Lord gladly giving Saul’s wives to David as reward for military victory and righteous leadership. This is a problem you have danced around like Michael Jackson and are dancing still.
Because the parts don’t line up in a literal sense.
Adam and Eve did not leave their father and mother and cleave to each other. So Genesis and Jesus have their facts wrong. God did not choose the partner for the man, the man chose, so why isn’t this part divine law and I get to choose for myself, as well?
A man and a women become one flesh. But what about Abraham and Sarah AND Hagar? Jacob (Israel) and Rachel AND Leah? What about David and Saul’s wives?
Bubba, what about Hosea? Don’t tell Marshall that God directed a prophet to marry a prostitute. He’ll be up nights working out a Sudoku solution.
Because the parts don’t line up unless you put them under the arc of the promise of God.
You revolt at the inclusion of gay men and women under this arc, but you forget how momentous it was when Peter and the Jerusalem elders were in your shoes and God’s new act of love finally got through to them. You forget how patriarchy right up to this very day does violence to the divine truth that women were not made to be sexual objects of men’s desire or only to be paired off with them as you would have Genesis 2 do to them (in a sad replication of sociological styles that would exhibit not increase in understanding over the last two and a half thousand years). You forget that a woman, on her own, is created in the image and likeness of God, because you can only pay strict attention to one part at a time unless you are ironing out the wrinkles. You forget that racism is a violation of divine creation, and yet you live in the legacy of religious and political power and identity gained from the darkest machinery of racism. You cannot put the two Paul’s together because your parts have to literally agree and he does not agree with himself.
And here we are near the core of your theology: Romans and sin and law.
You say the law has not passed away, it is only fulfilled? Marshall’s whirlybird team of Oliff and Hodges agree and go further: the law is still in effect.
Do you agree that the law is still in effect, Bubba, though fulfilled (whatever that means in the concrete, and I’m not sure you’re sure what that all means)?
Romans and sin and law, your touchstones, seemingly the core of Paul.
The law cannot be put aside. Gays are not included under the arc of grace.
But are you reading Romans right, Bubba. It is a very difficult passage, those first seven chapters. Perhaps you have it wrong.
I mean, how do you explain polygamy? How do you explain Hosea? Marshall thinks you are the explainer.
The law has not passed away, it is only fulfilled?
Parts and parts and no whole.
“Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.”
Identify, Marshall, if you would.
I think you already know how I would apply this biblical verse under the whole sweeping arc of our expanding understanding of the love of God.
(By the way, Tug, this is why I don’t think polygamy is O.K. The Bible is an inspired text of our expanding experience of God’s love. We are just like biblical Israel and the early church, again, in Paul’s words: “ever growing in our knowledge and love of God.” The Bible does not close off that growth, it aids it, when read with love in one’s heart and in one’s mouth and on one’s tongue. This is its authority: its ability to increase our understanding of love.)
Welcome our gay brothers and sister, gentlemen and mom2: God has wondrously increased the size of our own small hearts.
And I guess we just have not yet " 'grown' in our knowledge and love of God" to the point that we should accept polygamous christians just yet.
Maybe all you christians who practice bestiality should just hold on another ten years, and maybe by that time, we will have " 'grown' in our knowledge and love of God" to the point where you and your sheep can both share in the blessings membership in our church.
Arm the ushers, and nail down the candle holders when you outgrow theft, Feodor.
Oh, and if my church ever outgrows adultery, I'm moving my membership to somewhere where I don't have to worry about wht my wife may be up to in the name of the Lord.
Don't you see how ridiculous and indefensible is that line of reasoning, Feodor?
Or have you failed to make it clear once again?
Do you need Bubba to explain it to me?
You know, now that i think about it, maybe we have hit on a plan here, Feodor...
Why don't you jusy let Bubba make your argument on everything, then knock your argument back down again?
Then you and I can just buy Bubba's book...
Feodor, your talk about God "wondrously" increasing the size of our hearts is a little hard to swallow, when you dismiss my views on morality as corrosive and unresponsive, and when even my use of the word "invoke" somehow -- inexplicably -- sends "chills of deep revulsion down [your] spine."
Your supposed compassion for homosexuals appears to be matched in intensity with the contempt you frequently display for Christians who dare to follow Jesus Christ in His approach to Scripture. What's really revolting is that you encourage disobedience to God and sneer at honest attempts to conform to God's word, all in God's name.
If the Holy Spirit has not revealed that homosexual behavior is (now) morally permissible -- I doubt that He has, and you certainly haven't provided persuasive proof that He has, and you're frankly delusional if you think you have -- then you're guilty not only of lying, but lying about God, which is tantamount to blasphemy.
For the record, I am not "anti-government." I'm not against government, I'm against big government, in support of small government.
Nevertheless, I do support paying taxes, in obedience to Romans 12. You're being needlessly and foolishly presumptuous to conclude that I didn't mention the IRS because I selectively support law-breaking as a general rule.
And, about Moses, I do think Moses wrote the Torah, in part because it appears Jesus Christ affirmed Moses' authorship.
Jesus frequently spoke about what Moses wrote or commanded, perhaps most noticeably in Mark 12:26, when -- on the subject of the resurrection of the dead -- Jesus referenced "the book of Moses."
Again, your problem doesn't appear to lie ultimately with those supposedly backward and ignorant eighteenth-century American Protestants, or with contemporary inerrantists like Marshall and me, but with Jesus Christ Himself.
If you were a Muslim or Buddhist, the apparent unwillingness to conform to all that Christ actually taught would still be regrettable, but understandable. As it is, Feodor, you claim to be a Christian.
Where's the attempt to be His disciple?
[continued]
Tug,
I promise to let Bubba make my arguments if you can guess, on a scale from 1 to 10, how stupid you are. Get the number right and Bubba can have the floor.
[continued]
Feodor, your reading of Matthew 19 is amazing: it's incredibly presumptuous and cannot possibly be justified by the actual text, but it is amazing.
"And your desire to ground Jesus in your notion of secondary 'arguments' stemming from his slap down of the Pharisees who were trying to trap him is simple a similar trapping move of Jesus by you. The trap was about callous abandonment. Jesus goes to the heart of it by indicating that we are to be as committed to each other as God is to us. Any strong relationship we form should bear the imprint of God's love: un-conditionality, sacrifice, and un-ceasing bond. And this applies to more than just marriage: friendship, fellowship, parenthood, taking care of older parents and family."
On the one hand, you've argued that Jesus was talking about divorce and just divorce, that no other conclusions can be drawn regarding other aspects of marriage. But, now, you're arguing that the passage has implications for "any strong relationship" that we have.
I don't have a problem with the idea of fidelity and faithfulness to other relationships, but it's not at all clear that the idea can be drawn from this particular text.
If you really think Matthew 19's explicit condemnation of the casual destruction of the bonds of marriage has implications for other relationships, you should explain why it cannot have other implications for the relationship that's being discussed -- and why drawing those implications is proof of trying to "trap" Jesus.
The fact of the matter is, the text much more strongly implies other implications for marriage than it does implications for other relationships. Again, Jesus Christ didn't simply answer that divorce is bad, HE EXPLAINED WHY, citing God's creation of man as male and female and His will for marriage.
You act as if Jesus never cited Genesis 2. You act as if the passage leaps from Matthew 19:3 to 19:6.
About Genesis 2, I must congratulate you for possibly displaying what may be the most obviously ridiculous claim in a very long conversation where there's a wealth of material.
"Adam and Eve did not leave their father and mother and cleave to each other. So Genesis and Jesus have their facts wrong."
Genesis didn't claim that they left their parents, and neither did Jesus.
"Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh." - Gen 2:24
The passage doesn't teach that Adam left his parents, but that WE are supposed to leave OURS. It's almost as if you've never read the passage yourself, as if you're simply inferring its contents from our arguments about it.
And if you really think Jesus got his facts wrong, what in the world are you doing claiming to be His follower?
[continued]
Bubba,
"Invoke"... as in legal speech... juridical... like casuistic law... like legalism.
So... quaint, corrosive and unresponsive to the human heart... and chills, because legalism is exactly the opposite of gospel grace.
God, Bubba, if you cant' get that, maybe you missed your morning coffee.
Bubba, don't give me crap about you "boldly" following Christ in how he reads the Bible. Your just a classic, predictable, reactionary protestant.
Like the fact that you really think Moses wrote the Pentateuch? Are you kidding me? So, Moses wrote all that about himself, about his own death and kept on writing? And gave us two creation stories?
And he wrote about the Exodus while on the exodus? When did he find the time to write all that?
You're killing me, Bubba, with your piney woods rhubarb tenets.
Jesus read and spoke from within the people's tradition. Remember, if you want to be literal, then you better read the Torah with the tefillin and th shel yad; otherwise you are not reading like Jesus.
He's not the one who said the revolutionary and -- according to your lights-- un-Christlike, "now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law."
Your argument is with the better nature of Paul and the Holy Spirit.
As you say, mine is with your paper and ink Jesus.
I'm fine with that tournament lineup.
[continued]
Feodor, about the claim that Christ came to fulfill the law rather than abolish it, I don't point simply to Paul's teaching Romans, but to Christ's own claims in Matthew 5. I thought I was clear on that point, when I wrote that "Christ was quite explicit in Matthew 5 that none of the law would pass away until history comes to a close."
I do believe the law is still active in highlighting the need for Christ and the salvation He provides, and I also believe that the redeemed ought to use their freedom from the law's condemnation to fulfill its moral requirements. I believe the Bible is clear on this point, not just in Romans, but in Galatians and James as well.
I think your conclusion that we're focused on bits and pieces of Scripture rather than the overarching message is misguided. I'm not only quite certain that I grasp the Bible's overall message better than you think, I also suspect your in no position to berate others on this subject.
You quote Galatians 3:25, but you seem to forget Galatians 5:16.
"Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh."
We most certainly are not saved by our own righteousness, but we have been saved FOR righteousness: we have been made free from the penalties of the law, not so that we can be live in defiant anti-nomianism, but so that the Spirit can make us holy.
But if the Bible's overarching message is what you say it is, why are you being so miserly in the application of that message?
You write, "The diversity of humankind is only a sign of the infinite breadth of God."
But you think that "infinite breadth" now extends ONLY to include homosexual behavior as newly condoned. You've made it quite clear that you don't think polygamy is okay, but why don't you embrace polygamy as just another option in the diverse experience of human bonding?
You write, "God’s love is equally infinite and broad and yearningly offered to his whole creation and that when people love with commitment, sacrifice, unceasing intent come what may, then they participate in God’s cosmic work of love."
And yet you still don't endorse polygamy.
For that matter, I doubt you endorse the even more eccentric expressions of commitment and love.
Don't tell me that you're so narrow-minded that you limit moral expressions of romantic love, not only to monogamous relationships, but to relationships that only involve consenting adults.
Consenting adults who are human, and who still have a pulse.
What narrow-minded bigotry, Feodor.
Do you not understand the diversity of humanity and the infinite breadth of God's love?
Don't call unclean what God has made clean.
Welcome all our brothers, Feodor, even those whose understanding of conjugal love isn't limited by such archaic notions of species, adulthood, and even death. Welcome the sheep-lovers and pedophiles and necrophiliacs.
After all, God has wondrously increased the size of our own small hearts.
When I follow your ridiculous literalist readings is when I mirror the ridiculousness of literalist readings.
It is the "therefore" conclusion that draws a principle from a case where the principle did not exist that is "wrong."
When I say the above paragraph, I am simply continuing the logic of reactionary protestants like yourself. When you read literally, your logic has to reach the casuistic conclusion that the there is a missing principle which becomes the established principle, namely, that what Adam and Eve did, *therefore*, we should do. But they did not leave father and mother.
Therefore (the literal plains sense reading must say) there is no therefore.
The only answer is interpretive. Which is how you bumpkins have labeled my reading of the Bible. As I have done many times, I admit that my reading is interpretive.
And as I have pointed out many times, yours is, too, though self-deceptively un-admitted. When, in fact, the interpretive reading is all there is, the Bible having very little literal plain sense passages in most key texts. This is what makes a key text key: it is impossible not to interpret in order to reach for understanding.
Feodor, about the Torah, it's quite reasonable to assume that another writer -- possibly Joshua -- completed the book by adding some seven verses at the end, recording Moses' death and burial, all while concluding that the bulk of the book was Moses' work.
Your other objections to this position are equally frivolous.
"Are you kidding me? So, Moses wrote all that about himself, about his own death and kept on writing? And gave us two creation stories?"
Is it really that much more sensible to conclude that an editor or group of editors combined two accounts of creation, than it is to consider the possibility that both accounts came from one writer?
"And he wrote about the Exodus while on the exodus? When did he find the time to write all that?"
The exodus from Egypt was such a short trip, wasn't it?
About my use of the word "invoke," I'm actually not sure the word entails legal or judicial speech.
But even if that were true, the use of a legal term doesn't imply legalism.
If it did, then even Paul was guilty of legalism because he routinely used legal language, such as the term justification.
(You might as well argue that, because he also talked about redemption, that imagery from the marketplace means that Paul sees salvation as a meager business transaction.)
About interpretation, you're making the same false claim that Dan has, that we're in denial about our acts of interpretation when such acts are necessary and are universally committed at any rate.
I haven't seen anybody here deny that we're interpreting the Bible. Our complaint isn't the mere fact that you're engaging in interpretation, but that your interpretation is implausible and is, furthermore, built on assumptions that contradict the text's own claims (and Jesus' claims) about Scripture's divine authorship and inerrant authority.
I will make myself as clear as possible: salvation does NOT come from the law.
We are not saved by God's law, by our obligations to Him, because we are incapable of meeting those oblications.
Instead, we are saved by God's grace, by His promises to us, because He is faithful -- willing and able -- to fulfill His promises.
We are not justified by our obedience to the law, but by our faith in His grace.
But our justification is only the beginning of God's plan for us, not the end. He intends to sanctify us as well.
I've become more and more convinced that, like justification, sanctification is also by faith alone. Regardless, our sanctification -- our being made holy -- is the goal.
Sanctification is the end for which we have been saved, and it is wrong to mistake it for the means by which we are saved, but it is equally wrong to ignore it altogether.
Should we accept homosexuals into the Christian faith? ABSOLUTELY, just as we should accept thieves, liars, prostitutes, hypocrites, and persecutors.
But, just as we should not condone theft, dishonesty, prostitution, hypocrisy, and persecution, we should NOT condone homosexual behavior: the behavior is immoral.
It is the case that too many congregations do not show true Christian love to homosexuals. Indeed, some do not extend to them the good news of salvation that God intends for everyone, but others condone that behavior which God's word very clearly condemns as sin from which we need salvation.
Both groups are wrong. You're just as wrong for telling people that the poison they're eating is healthy food, as others are for not telling the poisoned about the antidote.
Regarding this last, Bubba, you've really given voice to your paranoia.
And like all reactionary, populist protestantism, your paranoia takes it place with racist paranoia regarding sex. A pandemonium of sex outside marriage, "mongrel" sex between races producing monster babies, horned Jews, slant-eyed Japs, etc.
I am fine living with the moral code written in the human conscience which has steered us well enough given the evidence:
- at no other time in human history has such a large percentage of the world's population lived with such quality of life.
- at not other time in human history has such a large percentage of the world's population lived with such an investment of rights from violence and abuse.
- at no other time in human history has health been such wide-spread concerns.
- at not other time in human history has philanthropy been so central for so many to help our people in poverty or lack of equal access both here and in places of poverty around the world.
Granted, capitalism is soaking an unjust amount of the world's resources and warring against the act of godly, sacrificial love for our common humanity.
But it is a powerful machine, and if we can just regulate it to greatly reduce greed and expect those of us who benefit to "tithe" to the world's poor, the earth can be a wonderful place, indeed, reflecting better and better God's image and likeness.
So, I am good with recognizing domestic and international law in its role to work morals and ethics in the public sphere. Polygamy is clearly seen as temptation to bondage in almost all cultures. There may indeed be cultures where polygamy serves the better interests of women (primitive tribes, barely developing cultures, etc.) and this respect for the care ethic that can be found in each culture reflects biblical principles quite well.
So, this "rights based" approach in the public tends to cohere quite well with what Christians identify as "the image and likeness of God."
No one condones bestiality, theft, etc. Every society understands the detrimental effects of sinful perversion and addiction. And, as always, hate and violent oppression are being identified in new places and new acts, and fought against. The human consciousness in society, when that society is invested in rights and freedom and an economic bill of rights, ethics and morals increasingly rise.
And Christians, too, are growing in the knowledge and love of the Lord.
___________
So, your paranoia is only defensive splatter of fear.
And if you want to target sin, Bubba, if I were you I'd trade concern for polygamy or bestiality for the worldwide war against trading children for sex and slavery.
That would be worthy of a Christian.
___________
Hosea anyone?
And I suppose that, like Tug, you are simply saying that Galatians and Romans cancel each other out?
Got to make those wrinkles straight, Bubba. The future of a literalist reading of an inerrant bible depends upon it.
Ah, Moses plus seven.
The arithmetic calculations of the reactionary protestant.
How many days since creation?
Fossils there for faith testing?
Paranoia comes, then the absurdity.
Your following your tradition, Bubba, like a faithful soldier.
You've heard, haven't you Bubba, the two sets of vocabularies for the two main voices of Genesis?
And the two different, strictly separated words to refer to God?
A literalist may need to say that Moses was bipolar.
Marshall has denied that he interprets the Bible.
________
We are sanctified by Christ living within us in the power of the Holy Spirit. As you would say if you were a more developed protestant scholar and a closer reader of Paul:
Christ has become the law within us, we are under his supervision now, and as he is made known in the breaking of bread in worship and the testimony of the Spirit within us, we must pay attention.
We cannot call unclean what God has made clean -- and clear to us in Christ Jesus.
_____________
At bottom, I think you and Tug and Marshall are jealous. You've missed out on knowing a loving relationship with a gay person, and thereby prone to feel robbed - and defensively resistance to the idea - of God' moving.
I think you're jealous and miffed, and stalk off like the boy who didn't get picked to read the story to the class.
Hosea, anyone?
Feodor, what the hell is this?
"And like all reactionary, populist protestantism, your paranoia takes it place with racist paranoia regarding sex. A pandemonium of sex outside marriage, 'mongrel' sex between races producing monster babies, horned Jews, slant-eyed Japs, etc. "
You cannot possibly justify this race-baiting smear from anything that I've written, certainly not something as benign as opposition to promiscuity. The life I live, about which you know absolutely nothing, testifies to my regard for people without any consideration of their skin color, and to my conviction that, of all things that matter when it comes to marriage, racial composition is completely irrelevant; what I believe and what I have written does not contradict what I live.
I can take quite a bit of nonsense from you, but I won't stand for this.
There is still much that I could discuss, but -- barring a serious and significant apology -- I won't do so with you, and you're a fool if you think that a person would and should continue to discuss subjects like Hosea after you so easily smear him with such a vile accusation.
Your comment is intolerable, so I will not tolerate it, and I will not act as if we can continue to discuss Biblical inerrancy or any other issue, so long as the comment stands.
Your paranoia about gay Christian life lifting the lid on appropriate sexual expression is constructed out of the same fear mongering materials that formerly were used in fear of black bodies and female power.
It has the same DNA, as it were. The same legacy of fear and confusion in regard to the shrinking power of white male privilege.
And your false hurt is just another, though far less dangerous, defensiveness than your paranoia of sex.
That such paranoia are so deeply ingrained in populist protestantism -- and reactionary Catholicism as it became Americanized -- is a long, long tale told elsewhere.
How can you continue to discuss Hosea when you haven't started?
Correction, I won't continue discussing subjects like inerrancy, nor will I begin discussing subjects like Hosea, with a race-baiter like you.
Instead of an apology, Feodor, you attack me further by accusing me of "false hurt" -- implying what, exactly? -- and of "paranoia" that I haven't displayed: I've only asked why you stop short of other sexual deviancy, and you've apparently decided it's easier to accuse me of being paranoid than it is to confront the fact that you're not taking your argument to its logical conclusion.
(Polyamorous relationships are being re-examined in law schools and in the arts, and yet you don't condone polygamy: you display such paranoia, such fear and confusion.)
You're substituting ad hominems for arguments, going so far as to engage in race-baiting then attacking me for daring to find offense in your dispicable behavior.
And you still think discussion is possible? And you even think you're in a position to preach to others about Christian love?
You're out of your mind.
What's more, you're showing your true colors as a cultural Marxist who idolizes Progress -- who treats something that is new as if it is automatically good -- and who always attacks traditionalism in the same, predictable and reprehensible manner. Since racism was traditional, you denigrate all inconvenient traditions as having the same "DNA" as that racism.
This tactic isn't rooted in Christianity, and it isn't even compatible with Christianity since it's used against doctrines piecemeal as they become obstacles to the glorious political Revolution. You ultimately don't care about restoring the church of the early Christian fathers; that's just a useful weapon against your strongest opponents, and the legacy of the second-century Christians will almost surely be eradicated by the same tactic in turn.
But this tactic isn't simply antagonistic to Christianity, it is fundamentally indecent. It's not just the effective but dishonest tactic of a cultural Marxist, it's character assassination.
I sincerely don't wish you any harm, but I want nothing more to do with you, and I am not interested in discussing anything more with you.
Bubba finds a way out.
All this froth about licentious Marxist liberalism is old hat around here and in this thread as well. So spare me your offense. I'm still here.
Marxist, yes, I guess, at least in the same way the prophets Amos and Hosea, the writers of the gospel of John, the book of Acts, the letter to the Romans, and the writer of the Petrine letters are marxist.
Socialist, too, if we're talking about how F.D. Maurice, Charles Kingsley, Stewart Headlam, Kenneth Leech are socialists, much less Harold Laski, Keynes, FDR, LBJ, Abraham Lincoln, too, when it comes to that.
The verdict is still out on Obama but it does not look good in the current climate.
[Small government, by the way, contributed to our economic mess. Just ask the Madoff victims about the anemic and moribund SEC under Bush. Or those who worked for Bear, Stearns, Lehmann Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Sallie Mae and Feddie Mac and millions of Americans.]
At any rate, you are also right about the fact that I "ultimately don't care about restoring the church of the early Christian fathers."
Why should I? I live in a world of quantum mechanics, relativity, string theory, and the inflationary universe. Adam Smith, Darwin, Freud, even your Milton Friedman have all changed the way we understand the world.
To meet that world in love, we have to understand ourselves in it.
We cannot live in some restored way of the fathers and mothers of faith.
It is a lie when people try.
The world turns, the Spirit blows, the anchor is the living Christ.
Welcome it. Don't call bad what is a divine good in which we can participate.
When you call something bad that God is calling good (as I see it), I'll call you on it.
And I did. Disagree but don't act the adolescent.
Four of you and one of me and now you're all gone to pick on Dan.
Makes sense, I suppose. More fair that way.
If I say I'm gone for the day, someone's bound to creep back, though.
Gone for the day.
Hey, Guys...
Do you want to know how to tell when you've smacked one of Feodor's ridiculous positions soundly to the floor?
"Tug,
I promise to let Bubba make my arguments if you can guess, on a scale from 1 to 10, how stupid you are. Get the number right and Bubba can have the floor."
There.
That's how.
Poor Feo. It seems yet another chooses not to play. See what arrogance and bad manners can do? I had a good comment prepared and then accidentally wiped it out before publishing, but it ended somewhat like this:
I'm sure an apology will be required before anyone chooses to give you the time of day. I'm also sure you'll assume that you have bested all and that no one is up to the task of taking you on. Not only is this an incredibly funny liklihood, it is also likely that there will be many deleted comments as you lash out.
You've proven yourself to be the false priest I've already noted you are, as well as a very poor example of a Christian, which, as a poor Christian like myself can see, could be overlooked if you didn't pretend to be otherwise.
All that education. All those books. What a pathetic and unnecessary waste.
on you.
For what it's worth, the conversation I've been having with Dan is now continuing, in a sense, in this thread.
I say "in a sense" because -- along with raising a few points about Dan's attempt to act as if he actually cares about substantive evidence for one's contentious claims, and about his claim that his position regarding "gay marriage" is based on prayerful Bible study -- I've brought up a few issues that were left unresolved in this thread, but it's not as if Dan's finally provided clear and coherent explanations for what he believes.
It's just that, rather than continue to filibuster here, Dan is filibustering over there.
Bubba,
Been gone for a while, but I will repeat my offer of a spot for you and Dan to have continue without interruption. I'll try to get it up in the next day or so, and see if Dan's good.
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