BibleForums Christian Message Board
Other Categories => Controversial Issues => Non Christian Perspective => Topic started by: DavidGYoung on November 20, 2023, 05:00:47 AM
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Are there any Christians here who seriously believe the Pascal's Wager argument holds water?
If so, why?
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Do I find it compelling? No.
Do I think someone can choose to believe on the basis of it? No. (As Pascal himself gets at.)
Do I think that between the two options as presented in the wager, it makes more sense to (try to) believe than not? Yes.
Do I think that anyone who uses Pascal's wager as an attempt to demonstrate the truth of Christian belief has only ever read the wager and not the book it belongs to? Yes.
The wager does exactly what it was intended to: show the deficiencies of logical reasoning on matters of faith and God.
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True
Trying to prove the metaphysical/spiritual by use of the scientific or philosophic always leads to a requirement for faith in the presuppositions
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Are there any Christians here who seriously believe the Pascal's Wager argument holds water?
If so, why?
It's very loosely compelling as far as it goes, but obviously it completely fails to consider other options.
If it were as simple as "God" vs "no God" then it would make sense to assume the "God" option given the consequences of the two decisions. The trouble is that if you choose "Yahweh" but subsequently find out the correct answer was "Vishnu" then you get all the downsides of this life plus all the downsides of the next life. So unless you want to go around trying to pacify every possible god out there, while not falling foul of inconvenient complicators like "You shall have no gods before me", you have to accept there's more to it.
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I wonder how a missionary who uses the argument would react to the following:
"Hello. I would like to become a Christian because, although I do not believe in the existence of God, life after death or any supernatural authorship of the Bible, I am aware that I may still be wrong. If I convert to Christianity, I will continue to maintain that I do not believe in any of those, because it would be dishonest not to. What do I do next?"
I can see the point Athanasius is making, that it is more aimed at people who have never heard of Christianity as an attempt to persuade them to find out more or who have and are not all that enthusiastic to investigate further. However, that is not how it is conventionally used.
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I wonder how a missionary who uses the argument would react to the following:
"Hello. I would like to become a Christian because, although I do not believe in the existence of God, life after death or any supernatural authorship of the Bible, I am aware that I may still be wrong. If I convert to Christianity, I will continue to maintain that I do not believe in any of those, because it would be dishonest not to. What do I do next?"
I can see the point Athanasius is making, that it is more aimed at people who have never heard of Christianity as an attempt to persuade them to find out more or who have and are not all that enthusiastic to investigate further. However, that is not how it is conventionally used.
Its conventional use, to be fair, is a fundamental misunderstanding of Pascal's point in proposing the wager.
As to the missionary, "I would like to become a Christian" and "I will continue to maintain [my current beliefs]" are dissonant notions, so, at a bare minimum, the person speaking those words might be met with something like, "Okay well, when you make up your mind let me know". Meaning there has to be at least some level of curiosity, not outright bald assertion "I'm going to keep believing what I believe now".
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I wonder how a missionary who uses the argument would react to the following:
"Hello. I would like to become a Christian because, although I do not believe in the existence of God, life after death or any supernatural authorship of the Bible, I am aware that I may still be wrong. If I convert to Christianity, I will continue to maintain that I do not believe in any of those, because it would be dishonest not to. What do I do next?"
I can see the point Athanasius is making, that it is more aimed at people who have never heard of Christianity as an attempt to persuade them to find out more or who have and are not all that enthusiastic to investigate further. However, that is not how it is conventionally used.
I'm not sure how you can convert to something if you don't believe in any of the things it holds to be true. How would you propose someone convert to Christianity, if they don't believe that God exists or that there is a life after death?
Someone who isn't sure about whether God exists is usually referred to as an agnostic rather than as a Christian.
ETA: I'd have thought a missionary would use a more compelling argument than "ah yes, but what if you're wrong?". I think if I was going to dedicate my life to reaching people in some far-flung location I'd have a few more inspiring presentations up my sleeve than that one. Especially since the question could so easily be flipped - if we as Christians are wrong and we should be following the ways of the Qu'ran we're not going to have a great time in the afterlife. At least if the Hare Krishnas are right we get another go at it, even if we do come back as some lesser life form because we missed the point so badly this time around.
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Folks will follow Pascal into hell, as all have sinned and are in desperate need of the rebirth, which does not happen by mere intellectual assent or synthetic religion.
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The point about an unbeliever or doubter becoming a Christian is as follows:
The atheist believes there is no God, but acknowledges that there is always an outside chance that they might be wrong. They acknowledge that being wrong will send them to hell if Christianity is true. However, this second acknowledgement does not in any way persuade them that they are in fact wrong.
Their message to the missionary goes like this:
"If there is a talisman I need to wear that rescues me from hell, on the off-chance that I am wrong, then I'll wear it just in case. That said, no amount of threatening hell will make me believe something I don't believe. Therefore it is only a version of Christianity that requires no belief that I could ever be persuade to become part of, at least while I remain unconvinced. What is this version of Christianity which I am supposed to convert to?"
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There is no religion called Christianity that is salvific
There is a personal faith in Gods that is
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The notion that one can escape condemnation by adopting a lifestyle that approximates that of the believer - faker's heaven. An absurdity that many seem to adhere to.
Certainly there would be benefits in this world but not In the next.
And how does one work out these so-called probabilities when Rm 1 declares it a matter of conscience? Who needs probabilities for what the heavens declare?
Abstruse medieval theology.
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The point about an unbeliever or doubter becoming a Christian is as follows:
The atheist believes there is no God, but acknowledges that there is always an outside chance that they might be wrong. They acknowledge that being wrong will send them to hell if Christianity is true. However, this second acknowledgement does not in any way persuade them that they are in fact wrong.
Their message to the missionary goes like this:
"If there is a talisman I need to wear that rescues me from hell, on the off-chance that I am wrong, then I'll wear it just in case. That said, no amount of threatening hell will make me believe something I don't believe. Therefore it is only a version of Christianity that requires no belief that I could ever be persuade to become part of, at least while I remain unconvinced. What is this version of Christianity which I am supposed to convert to?"
It's pretty simple - in your analogy the talisman does nothing unless you believe it will do what is claimed. Anyone can put a rock on a string and wear it as an insurance policy. Believing it is not only an insurance policy but a guarantee is a different proposition entirely.
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The point about an unbeliever or doubter becoming a Christian is as follows:
The atheist believes there is no God, but acknowledges that there is always an outside chance that they might be wrong. They acknowledge that being wrong will send them to hell if Christianity is true. However, this second acknowledgement does not in any way persuade them that they are in fact wrong.
Actually, I'm not so sure that's what Christianity teaches, so much as it is what theologically illiterate sound-bite Christianity teaches. That one doesn't believe there is a God doesn't entail that one has rejected Jesus in believing so (one might have experienced severe trauma at the hands of a religious figure, for example).
You know what they say about desire coming after you've already started. But again, someone who is saying, "I won't believe" isn't someone any competent missionary is going to spend time trying to 'convince'.
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But again, someone who is saying, "I won't believe" isn't someone any competent missionary is going to spend time trying to 'convince'.
Reminds me of an evangelist I knew some years ago who once told me about someone who was constantly asking him questions, but in a manner that suggested he was trying to play games rather than understand anything. The evangelist asked this guy straight, "if I answer all your questions will you become a Christian?" and the guy said he would not. So the evangelist asked why he bothered asking the questions.
As you say there's a huge difference between someone who is looking for a reason to believe and someone who refuses to believe even if presented with something solid.
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The wager also sort of flies in the face of Pascal's Jansenism leanings which insist that grace cannot be resisted or aided by human assent.
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If an evangelist said to me "If I answer all your questions, will you become a Christian?", my reply would be "It depends what your answers are."
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If an evangelist said to me "If I answer all your questions, will you become a Christian?", my reply would be "It depends what your answers are."
So you say. Alright, what's one such answer?
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You seem to have missed the point of enquiry.
It's the absence of any satisfactory answers so far that persuade me not to return to Christianity. It's for the evangelist to suggest a convincing one.
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Really?
You think the evangelist is responsible for your salvation?
Wow
We played a flute for you, and you did not dance
We played a surge for you, and you did not weep
The job of the evangelist is to present the gospel, not to play games with skeptics
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If an evangelist said to me "If I answer all your questions, will you become a Christian?", my reply would be "It depends what your answers are."
... which would be an entirely appropriate response. If you receive satisfactory answers you consider what is being offered more carefully and maybe change your thinking and your life accordingly. But if you make it clear that giving complete answers to all of your questions will just result in ever-more questions, what's the point of asking and answering the questions?
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In response to the post by RabbiKnife, the backstory I am assuming here is that the evangelist approaches the unbeliever first, using the Pascal's Wager argument. I'm not talking about other interactions between evangelists and non-Christians.
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You seem to have missed the point of enquiry.
It's the absence of any satisfactory answers so far that persuade me not to return to Christianity. It's for the evangelist to suggest a convincing one.
Let's make it more concrete, God gives you a sign, will you believe again?
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What kind of sign are you thinking of?
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In response to the post by RabbiKnife, the backstory I am assuming here is that the evangelist approaches the unbeliever first, using the Pascal's Wager argument. I'm not talking about other interactions between evangelists and non-Christians.
That’s not what an evangelist does…
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That might not be your ideal evangelist, but such an evangelist exists whether you want one to or not.
"No true Scotsman..."
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Secular society does not get to describe what a Christian evangelist is.
Sorry, that’s not a true Scotsman fallacy.
You have to live with the definitions the Bible gives…
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If an evangelist said to me "If I answer all your questions, will you become a Christian?", my reply would be "It depends what your answers are."
... which would be an entirely appropriate response. If you receive satisfactory answers you consider what is being offered more carefully and maybe change your thinking and your life accordingly. But if you make it clear that giving complete answers to all of your questions will just result in ever-more questions, what's the point of asking and answering the questions?
To see what happens.
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What kind of sign are you thinking of?
Something that convinces you.
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If an evangelist said to me "If I answer all your questions, will you become a Christian?", my reply would be "It depends what your answers are."
... which would be an entirely appropriate response. If you receive satisfactory answers you consider what is being offered more carefully and maybe change your thinking and your life accordingly. But if you make it clear that giving complete answers to all of your questions will just result in ever-more questions, what's the point of asking and answering the questions?
To see what happens.
There's nothing to see. If you're asking a bunch of questions having already decided you won't accept the answers it's just a waste of everybody's time. If wasting time is your goal then it might be a successful endeavor. If drawing someone into an endlessly pointless argument is the goal it might be a successful endeavor. Aside from that it's a waste of your time and theirs.
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No, there could be answers I have not encountered before.
To give you a few examples from outside the realm of Christianity's truth claims, here are a few things I would and would not be interested in hearing:
Yes:
Any new argument in favour of Matthean priority that entered scholarship after 1994.
No:
Any argument that the Synoptic Gospels were all written independently of one another or that the Fourth Gospel was written first.
Yes:
Various versions of Christianity which firmly take one side or the other in the freewill-versus-divine-foreknowledge debate.
No:
Any argument that they are both compatible.
Yes:
Non-signs-and-wonders Christianity which acknowledges the theory of evolution to be true.
No:
Anything in the signs-and-wonders or creationist versions of Christianity.
Those are just a few areas where I would still be interested in what Christians, and other theologians, have to say.
However, it's the strength of the arguments that I am interested in and nothing more.
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You seem to have missed the point of enquiry.
It's the absence of any satisfactory answers so far that persuade me not to return to Christianity. It's for the evangelist to suggest a convincing one.
And you've missed the point of my rhetoric, which suggests that your response to the missionary would be disingenuous. No one is going to convince you on your behalf. You can make demands for other people to play along (as is popular these days), but you'll always know, deep inside, what you really think and believe.
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If an evangelist said to me "If I answer all your questions, will you become a Christian?", my reply would be "It depends what your answers are."
... which would be an entirely appropriate response. If you receive satisfactory answers you consider what is being offered more carefully and maybe change your thinking and your life accordingly. But if you make it clear that giving complete answers to all of your questions will just result in ever-more questions, what's the point of asking and answering the questions?
To see what happens.
There's nothing to see. If you're asking a bunch of questions having already decided you won't accept the answers it's just a waste of everybody's time. If wasting time is your goal then it might be a successful endeavor. If drawing someone into an endlessly pointless argument is the goal it might be a successful endeavor. Aside from that it's a waste of your time and theirs.
I suppose you're probably right. I personally am fascinated by what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, but you're right that most of the time absolutely nothing happens....sometimes though you learn stuff about the nature of unstoppable forces and immovable objects, sometimes you find that one or neither is unstoppable or immovable...but yeah most of the time its all sound and fury yada yada. Anyway i'll leave you alone about this.
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If an evangelist said to me "If I answer all your questions, will you become a Christian?", my reply would be "It depends what your answers are."
... which would be an entirely appropriate response. If you receive satisfactory answers you consider what is being offered more carefully and maybe change your thinking and your life accordingly. But if you make it clear that giving complete answers to all of your questions will just result in ever-more questions, what's the point of asking and answering the questions?
To see what happens.
There's nothing to see. If you're asking a bunch of questions having already decided you won't accept the answers it's just a waste of everybody's time. If wasting time is your goal then it might be a successful endeavor. If drawing someone into an endlessly pointless argument is the goal it might be a successful endeavor. Aside from that it's a waste of your time and theirs.
I suppose you're probably right. I personally am fascinated by what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, but you're right that most of the time absolutely nothing happens....sometimes though you learn stuff about the nature of unstoppable forces and immovable objects, sometimes you find that one or neither is unstoppable or immovable...but yeah most of the time its all sound and fury yada yada. Anyway i'll leave you alone about this.
It's often interesting to talk to other people with different viewpoints and opinions, whatever the subject matter, to get a better handle on what other viewpoints are out there and what supports them. It's not necessarily a bad thing to have such discussions - if anything I often find it's more interesting to talk with someone who has a different viewpoint because it challenges me to consider what flaws might exist in my own viewpoints. That said talking with someone else to understand what they believe and why is a very different beast to inviting them to convince you to change knowing all along that nothing they could possibly say will convince you to change.
If I invited you to come and visit me to see my pet unicorn, allowed you to see and pet the unicorn, verify the horn was real and the like, all as a way of convincing you that unicorns were real, and then you came and experienced that unicorns are real but still went away insistent that they were not, people might wonder why you bothered visiting in the first place. (Rhetorical situation obviously, since I don't actually have a pet unicorn but, you know...)
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If an evangelist said to me "If I answer all your questions, will you become a Christian?", my reply would be "It depends what your answers are."
... which would be an entirely appropriate response. If you receive satisfactory answers you consider what is being offered more carefully and maybe change your thinking and your life accordingly. But if you make it clear that giving complete answers to all of your questions will just result in ever-more questions, what's the point of asking and answering the questions?
To see what happens.
There's nothing to see. If you're asking a bunch of questions having already decided you won't accept the answers it's just a waste of everybody's time. If wasting time is your goal then it might be a successful endeavor. If drawing someone into an endlessly pointless argument is the goal it might be a successful endeavor. Aside from that it's a waste of your time and theirs.
I suppose you're probably right. I personally am fascinated by what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, but you're right that most of the time absolutely nothing happens....sometimes though you learn stuff about the nature of unstoppable forces and immovable objects, sometimes you find that one or neither is unstoppable or immovable...but yeah most of the time its all sound and fury yada yada. Anyway i'll leave you alone about this.
It's often interesting to talk to other people with different viewpoints and opinions, whatever the subject matter, to get a better handle on what other viewpoints are out there and what supports them. It's not necessarily a bad thing to have such discussions - if anything I often find it's more interesting to talk with someone who has a different viewpoint because it challenges me to consider what flaws might exist in my own viewpoints. That said talking with someone else to understand what they believe and why is a very different beast to inviting them to convince you to change knowing all along that nothing they could possibly say will convince you to change.
If I invited you to come and visit me to see my pet unicorn, allowed you to see and pet the unicorn, verify the horn was real and the like, all as a way of convincing you that unicorns were real, and then you came and experienced that unicorns are real but still went away insistent that they were not, people might wonder why you bothered visiting in the first place. (Rhetorical situation obviously, since I don't actually have a pet unicorn but, you know...)
Sweet I guess we're still talking about this..i'm down. I think my main issue is in the idea that I could approach anything with the intent of not being convinced and then be successful in that intention no matter what happens. Look if you let me take the unicorn and run the tests of my choosing I'd be happy to share the international biology prize with you. I think the disconnect between some Christians and folks of my persuasion is that you think you have a unicorn, you think you've given me the years and years of diligent scientific research and verification that it would take a team of good scientists to say that this is a new species of horned horses, and so when I'm like "meh" you believe that I've come to this thing with a hardened heart and blinded eyes and salted tongue and ears full of bees. Consider that maybe at best what you have is drawing of a unicorn and a claim that you have the unicorn pictured and you refuse any sort of tests because the unicorn is magic and gene sequencing wouldn't work on it, and I cannot see the unicorn unless I believe the unicorn is a unicorn, but you'll give me a book attesting to all the past magical and awesome feats of the unicorn, and you'll bring unicorn believers to give testimonials about how the unicorn came to them in a dream and healed their diabetes or whatever and you'll argue that if there wasn't a unicorn then where do rainbows come from!...then i'm like "bruh, you ain't got no unicorn" and then you go on to berate me about not coming at it with an open heart and ears and mind and whatnot. There isn't any realistic way in which God is like you having a unicorn, You do not have God in a stable somewhere, he kinda does his own thing, you cannot show me him, you cannot let me brush his hair at your whim, you cannot take me to feed him grains...nothing so tangible as any of that, but still even though you can't and you know you can't, there are bible verses about why you can't and shouldn't even try, for some reason it adds up to you that some folks are not convinced by whatever is left when you take away pretty much anything tangible, through strength of will alone because they don't want to accept all of this intangible evidence....seems sus to me.
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If an evangelist said to me "If I answer all your questions, will you become a Christian?", my reply would be "It depends what your answers are."
... which would be an entirely appropriate response. If you receive satisfactory answers you consider what is being offered more carefully and maybe change your thinking and your life accordingly. But if you make it clear that giving complete answers to all of your questions will just result in ever-more questions, what's the point of asking and answering the questions?
To see what happens.
There's nothing to see. If you're asking a bunch of questions having already decided you won't accept the answers it's just a waste of everybody's time. If wasting time is your goal then it might be a successful endeavor. If drawing someone into an endlessly pointless argument is the goal it might be a successful endeavor. Aside from that it's a waste of your time and theirs.
I suppose you're probably right. I personally am fascinated by what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, but you're right that most of the time absolutely nothing happens....sometimes though you learn stuff about the nature of unstoppable forces and immovable objects, sometimes you find that one or neither is unstoppable or immovable...but yeah most of the time its all sound and fury yada yada. Anyway i'll leave you alone about this.
It's often interesting to talk to other people with different viewpoints and opinions, whatever the subject matter, to get a better handle on what other viewpoints are out there and what supports them. It's not necessarily a bad thing to have such discussions - if anything I often find it's more interesting to talk with someone who has a different viewpoint because it challenges me to consider what flaws might exist in my own viewpoints. That said talking with someone else to understand what they believe and why is a very different beast to inviting them to convince you to change knowing all along that nothing they could possibly say will convince you to change.
If I invited you to come and visit me to see my pet unicorn, allowed you to see and pet the unicorn, verify the horn was real and the like, all as a way of convincing you that unicorns were real, and then you came and experienced that unicorns are real but still went away insistent that they were not, people might wonder why you bothered visiting in the first place. (Rhetorical situation obviously, since I don't actually have a pet unicorn but, you know...)
Sweet I guess we're still talking about this..i'm down. I think my main issue is in the idea that I could approach anything with the intent of not being convinced and then be successful in that intention no matter what happens. Look if you let me take the unicorn and run the tests of my choosing I'd be happy to share the international biology prize with you. I think the disconnect between some Christians and folks of my persuasion is that you think you have a unicorn, you think you've given me the years and years of diligent scientific research and verification that it would take a team of good scientists to say that this is a new species of horned horses, and so when I'm like "meh" you believe that I've come to this thing with a hardened heart and blinded eyes and salted tongue and ears full of bees. Consider that maybe at best what you have is drawing of a unicorn and a claim that you have the unicorn pictured and you refuse any sort of tests because the unicorn is magic and gene sequencing wouldn't work on it, and I cannot see the unicorn unless I believe the unicorn is a unicorn, but you'll give me a book attesting to all the past magical and awesome feats of the unicorn, and you'll bring unicorn believers to give testimonials about how the unicorn came to them in a dream and healed their diabetes or whatever and you'll argue that if there wasn't a unicorn then where do rainbows come from!...then i'm like "bruh, you ain't got no unicorn" and then you go on to berate me about not coming at it with an open heart and ears and mind and whatnot. There isn't any realistic way in which God is like you having a unicorn, You do not have God in a stable somewhere, he kinda does his own thing, you cannot show me him, you cannot let me brush his hair at your whim, you cannot take me to feed him grains...nothing so tangible as any of that, but still even though you can't and you know you can't, there are bible verses about why you can't and shouldn't even try, for some reason it adds up to you that some folks are not convinced by whatever is left when you take away pretty much anything tangible, through strength of will alone because they don't want to accept all of this intangible evidence....seems sus to me.
Sure, your points about God not being like a literal physical unicorn are perfectly valid. We're rather mixing scenarios here though - if you refused to believe in unicorns and were determined that whatever I said or did wouldn't change your mind one would have to wonder why you'd accept my invitation to come and see a unicorn. If you were at least open to the possibility that unicorns might exist, and seeing one up close and personal might change your mind, there would be a purpose in your visit.
In this scenario if you came to see my unicorn and found a regular horse with an ice cream cone glued to its forehead you'd be forgiven for being less than impressed. If you saw a living breathing unicorn, horn and all, and went away muttering about how you still don't believe there's any such thing others would be forgiven for thinking you were foolish for refusing to believe what was right in front of you.
Just to clarify something, and this relates partly to your comments here and partly to a discussion I believe I had with you many years ago when you said "I don't believe there is a God" (forgive me if I'm confusing you with someone else, but I think the statement matches what you're expressing here pretty well). Do you hold an active belief that God does not exist, or do you lack an active belief that God does exist?
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If an evangelist said to me "If I answer all your questions, will you become a Christian?", my reply would be "It depends what your answers are."
... which would be an entirely appropriate response. If you receive satisfactory answers you consider what is being offered more carefully and maybe change your thinking and your life accordingly. But if you make it clear that giving complete answers to all of your questions will just result in ever-more questions, what's the point of asking and answering the questions?
To see what happens.
There's nothing to see. If you're asking a bunch of questions having already decided you won't accept the answers it's just a waste of everybody's time. If wasting time is your goal then it might be a successful endeavor. If drawing someone into an endlessly pointless argument is the goal it might be a successful endeavor. Aside from that it's a waste of your time and theirs.
I suppose you're probably right. I personally am fascinated by what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, but you're right that most of the time absolutely nothing happens....sometimes though you learn stuff about the nature of unstoppable forces and immovable objects, sometimes you find that one or neither is unstoppable or immovable...but yeah most of the time its all sound and fury yada yada. Anyway i'll leave you alone about this.
It's often interesting to talk to other people with different viewpoints and opinions, whatever the subject matter, to get a better handle on what other viewpoints are out there and what supports them. It's not necessarily a bad thing to have such discussions - if anything I often find it's more interesting to talk with someone who has a different viewpoint because it challenges me to consider what flaws might exist in my own viewpoints. That said talking with someone else to understand what they believe and why is a very different beast to inviting them to convince you to change knowing all along that nothing they could possibly say will convince you to change.
If I invited you to come and visit me to see my pet unicorn, allowed you to see and pet the unicorn, verify the horn was real and the like, all as a way of convincing you that unicorns were real, and then you came and experienced that unicorns are real but still went away insistent that they were not, people might wonder why you bothered visiting in the first place. (Rhetorical situation obviously, since I don't actually have a pet unicorn but, you know...)
Sweet I guess we're still talking about this..i'm down. I think my main issue is in the idea that I could approach anything with the intent of not being convinced and then be successful in that intention no matter what happens. Look if you let me take the unicorn and run the tests of my choosing I'd be happy to share the international biology prize with you. I think the disconnect between some Christians and folks of my persuasion is that you think you have a unicorn, you think you've given me the years and years of diligent scientific research and verification that it would take a team of good scientists to say that this is a new species of horned horses, and so when I'm like "meh" you believe that I've come to this thing with a hardened heart and blinded eyes and salted tongue and ears full of bees. Consider that maybe at best what you have is drawing of a unicorn and a claim that you have the unicorn pictured and you refuse any sort of tests because the unicorn is magic and gene sequencing wouldn't work on it, and I cannot see the unicorn unless I believe the unicorn is a unicorn, but you'll give me a book attesting to all the past magical and awesome feats of the unicorn, and you'll bring unicorn believers to give testimonials about how the unicorn came to them in a dream and healed their diabetes or whatever and you'll argue that if there wasn't a unicorn then where do rainbows come from!...then i'm like "bruh, you ain't got no unicorn" and then you go on to berate me about not coming at it with an open heart and ears and mind and whatnot. There isn't any realistic way in which God is like you having a unicorn, You do not have God in a stable somewhere, he kinda does his own thing, you cannot show me him, you cannot let me brush his hair at your whim, you cannot take me to feed him grains...nothing so tangible as any of that, but still even though you can't and you know you can't, there are bible verses about why you can't and shouldn't even try, for some reason it adds up to you that some folks are not convinced by whatever is left when you take away pretty much anything tangible, through strength of will alone because they don't want to accept all of this intangible evidence....seems sus to me.
Sure, your points about God not being like a literal physical unicorn are perfectly valid. We're rather mixing scenarios here though - if you refused to believe in unicorns and were determined that whatever I said or did wouldn't change your mind one would have to wonder why you'd accept my invitation to come and see a unicorn. If you were at least open to the possibility that unicorns might exist, and seeing one up close and personal might change your mind, there would be a purpose in your visit.
In this scenario if you came to see my unicorn and found a regular horse with an ice cream cone glued to its forehead you'd be forgiven for being less than impressed. If you saw a living breathing unicorn, horn and all, and went away muttering about how you still don't believe there's any such thing others would be forgiven for thinking you were foolish for refusing to believe what was right in front of you.
Just to clarify something, and this relates partly to your comments here and partly to a discussion I believe I had with you many years ago when you said "I don't believe there is a God" (forgive me if I'm confusing you with someone else, but I think the statement matches what you're expressing here pretty well). Do you hold an active belief that God does not exist, or do you lack an active belief that God does exist?
yikes, okay. maybe i want to watch you squirm and make excuses for why you can't show me the unicorn. I've certainly played along with a person that I was sure was lying just to see how far they were gonna dig themselves into a hole. honestly it doesn't really matter to my assertion that I do not think that a person can guarantee that they will not be convinced no matter what, they can make that claim but idk why you would believe that. As for the unicorn, I've seen maybe 2 horses up close, it wouldn't take a whole lot to make a convincing looking unicorn to my naive eyes, this is why i'd want actual biologists, horse experts and other relevant scientists to access the unicorn and study it. Just seeing it doesnt tell me much about whether or not this is a horse with a horn adhered to its head, or if this is some sort of genetically modified horse that has grown an actual horn or if this is some new species of animal...or I guess if its magic or not. If you were salty that I wasn't willing to claim unicorns exist just because I saw what looked like a unicorn, then I think maybe your standards for unicorn identification may actually be lacking.
It is perfectly possible that we had a conversation like that and I said that, it lines up. Back then I would have cottoned to the idea that I was epistemologically required to not make a positive belief statement lest...idk the knowledge gremlins get me or whatever. I don't believe there is a God, I believe there is not a God. Please for the love of the God you believe in do not make me go on the merry-go-round of absolute knowledge, I do not know that there isn't a God, I just don't believe one exist, I believe one does not exist, God is not a thing that I believe is in the category of existing.
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God is existence.
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God is existence.
Gee, what an interesting thing to say IMINXTC, why don't you tell me a little bit more about what you mean?
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"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made."
John 1:1-3
"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds, who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had himself purged our sin sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high."
Hebrew 1: 1-3
Christian theology teaches indeed that God is existence. IMINXTC is summarizing orthodox Christian teaching.
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I disagree with the idea that the talisman analogy requires faith.
There are plenty of superstitions which are supposed to work 'whether you believe in it or not'. As a result, a complete sceptic might agree to make the gesture, carry the item or avoid walking under the appointed ladder just in case the myth is true. However, none of this is of the magnitude of 'Find this argument convincing or harm will come to you'.
The way the Pascal's Wager argument is most commonly used is this latter form. The only serious response I can see to it is 'Yes. It looks like I'm in trouble if it turns out I'm wrong. However, I don't believe I am wrong. Is there a point you are trying to make?'
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I disagree with the idea that the talisman analogy requires faith.
There are plenty of superstitions which are supposed to work 'whether you believe in it or not'. As a result, a complete sceptic might agree to make the gesture, carry the item or avoid walking under the appointed ladder just in case the myth is true. However, none of this is of the magnitude of 'Find this argument convincing or harm will come to you'.
The way the Pascal's Wager argument is most commonly used is this latter form. The only serious response I can see to it is 'Yes. It looks like I'm in trouble if it turns out I'm wrong. However, I don't believe I am wrong. Is there a point you are trying to make?'
As has already been shared, this is a misuse of Pascal's wager, so the informed sceptic's serious response is to reject it outright. Or to simply shrug and say, "okay, if you say so".
Besides, this isn't the world of Alan Wake, and even in Buffy, magicks require conviction and strength of character. There are no salvific talismen, irrespective of faith, trust, or whatever.
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If an evangelist said to me "If I answer all your questions, will you become a Christian?", my reply would be "It depends what your answers are."
... which would be an entirely appropriate response. If you receive satisfactory answers you consider what is being offered more carefully and maybe change your thinking and your life accordingly. But if you make it clear that giving complete answers to all of your questions will just result in ever-more questions, what's the point of asking and answering the questions?
To see what happens.
There's nothing to see. If you're asking a bunch of questions having already decided you won't accept the answers it's just a waste of everybody's time. If wasting time is your goal then it might be a successful endeavor. If drawing someone into an endlessly pointless argument is the goal it might be a successful endeavor. Aside from that it's a waste of your time and theirs.
I suppose you're probably right. I personally am fascinated by what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, but you're right that most of the time absolutely nothing happens....sometimes though you learn stuff about the nature of unstoppable forces and immovable objects, sometimes you find that one or neither is unstoppable or immovable...but yeah most of the time its all sound and fury yada yada. Anyway i'll leave you alone about this.
It's often interesting to talk to other people with different viewpoints and opinions, whatever the subject matter, to get a better handle on what other viewpoints are out there and what supports them. It's not necessarily a bad thing to have such discussions - if anything I often find it's more interesting to talk with someone who has a different viewpoint because it challenges me to consider what flaws might exist in my own viewpoints. That said talking with someone else to understand what they believe and why is a very different beast to inviting them to convince you to change knowing all along that nothing they could possibly say will convince you to change.
If I invited you to come and visit me to see my pet unicorn, allowed you to see and pet the unicorn, verify the horn was real and the like, all as a way of convincing you that unicorns were real, and then you came and experienced that unicorns are real but still went away insistent that they were not, people might wonder why you bothered visiting in the first place. (Rhetorical situation obviously, since I don't actually have a pet unicorn but, you know...)
Sweet I guess we're still talking about this..i'm down. I think my main issue is in the idea that I could approach anything with the intent of not being convinced and then be successful in that intention no matter what happens. Look if you let me take the unicorn and run the tests of my choosing I'd be happy to share the international biology prize with you. I think the disconnect between some Christians and folks of my persuasion is that you think you have a unicorn, you think you've given me the years and years of diligent scientific research and verification that it would take a team of good scientists to say that this is a new species of horned horses, and so when I'm like "meh" you believe that I've come to this thing with a hardened heart and blinded eyes and salted tongue and ears full of bees. Consider that maybe at best what you have is drawing of a unicorn and a claim that you have the unicorn pictured and you refuse any sort of tests because the unicorn is magic and gene sequencing wouldn't work on it, and I cannot see the unicorn unless I believe the unicorn is a unicorn, but you'll give me a book attesting to all the past magical and awesome feats of the unicorn, and you'll bring unicorn believers to give testimonials about how the unicorn came to them in a dream and healed their diabetes or whatever and you'll argue that if there wasn't a unicorn then where do rainbows come from!...then i'm like "bruh, you ain't got no unicorn" and then you go on to berate me about not coming at it with an open heart and ears and mind and whatnot. There isn't any realistic way in which God is like you having a unicorn, You do not have God in a stable somewhere, he kinda does his own thing, you cannot show me him, you cannot let me brush his hair at your whim, you cannot take me to feed him grains...nothing so tangible as any of that, but still even though you can't and you know you can't, there are bible verses about why you can't and shouldn't even try, for some reason it adds up to you that some folks are not convinced by whatever is left when you take away pretty much anything tangible, through strength of will alone because they don't want to accept all of this intangible evidence....seems sus to me.
Sure, your points about God not being like a literal physical unicorn are perfectly valid. We're rather mixing scenarios here though - if you refused to believe in unicorns and were determined that whatever I said or did wouldn't change your mind one would have to wonder why you'd accept my invitation to come and see a unicorn. If you were at least open to the possibility that unicorns might exist, and seeing one up close and personal might change your mind, there would be a purpose in your visit.
In this scenario if you came to see my unicorn and found a regular horse with an ice cream cone glued to its forehead you'd be forgiven for being less than impressed. If you saw a living breathing unicorn, horn and all, and went away muttering about how you still don't believe there's any such thing others would be forgiven for thinking you were foolish for refusing to believe what was right in front of you.
Just to clarify something, and this relates partly to your comments here and partly to a discussion I believe I had with you many years ago when you said "I don't believe there is a God" (forgive me if I'm confusing you with someone else, but I think the statement matches what you're expressing here pretty well). Do you hold an active belief that God does not exist, or do you lack an active belief that God does exist?
yikes, okay. maybe i want to watch you squirm and make excuses for why you can't show me the unicorn. I've certainly played along with a person that I was sure was lying just to see how far they were gonna dig themselves into a hole. honestly it doesn't really matter to my assertion that I do not think that a person can guarantee that they will not be convinced no matter what, they can make that claim but idk why you would believe that. As for the unicorn, I've seen maybe 2 horses up close, it wouldn't take a whole lot to make a convincing looking unicorn to my naive eyes, this is why i'd want actual biologists, horse experts and other relevant scientists to access the unicorn and study it. Just seeing it doesnt tell me much about whether or not this is a horse with a horn adhered to its head, or if this is some sort of genetically modified horse that has grown an actual horn or if this is some new species of animal...or I guess if its magic or not. If you were salty that I wasn't willing to claim unicorns exist just because I saw what looked like a unicorn, then I think maybe your standards for unicorn identification may actually be lacking.
It's one thing to agree to see something implausible to find out whether the person making bold claims actually has anything to back them up. It's another thing entirely to come and see my unicorn, witness with your own eyes the magnificence of this glorious glowing white horse with a silver horn, to see and touch the unicorn for yourself, see for yourself that the horn is part of the animal and don't duck-taped in place or photoshopped into a crude picture, and then to walk away insisting that unicorns don't exist. You might reasonably shift your stance from "unicorns don't exist" to "it looks like they might exist, but I'd want to look more closely" even if you hadn't become convinced that what you had seen was actually a unicorn, but if you still refused to accept that you had seen what you had seen one might wonder why you bothered coming to see it.
It is perfectly possible that we had a conversation like that and I said that, it lines up. Back then I would have cottoned to the idea that I was epistemologically required to not make a positive belief statement lest...idk the knowledge gremlins get me or whatever. I don't believe there is a God, I believe there is not a God. Please for the love of the God you believe in do not make me go on the merry-go-round of absolute knowledge, I do not know that there isn't a God, I just don't believe one exist, I believe one does not exist, God is not a thing that I believe is in the category of existing.
I don't expect you to conclusively prove that God doesn't exist - you can't prove that any more than I can conclusively prove that God does exist. I was looking to find out whether you hold an active belief that God does not exist, or a more passive lack of belief that God does exist. An active belief in the non-existence of God is arguably a more decisive stance than a more passive lack of belef.
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I disagree with the idea that the talisman analogy requires faith.
There are plenty of superstitions which are supposed to work 'whether you believe in it or not'. As a result, a complete sceptic might agree to make the gesture, carry the item or avoid walking under the appointed ladder just in case the myth is true. However, none of this is of the magnitude of 'Find this argument convincing or harm will come to you'.
The way the Pascal's Wager argument is most commonly used is this latter form. The only serious response I can see to it is 'Yes. It looks like I'm in trouble if it turns out I'm wrong. However, I don't believe I am wrong. Is there a point you are trying to make?'
Most of the talismanic magick I've ever come across involved at least a modicum of faith in the talisman. Otherwise it's little more than an ornament. Why would you wear or even carry a talisman if you don't believe it has any kind of powers to change things? You could get into arguments about whether the belief of the person who infused the talisman with magick were sufficient but, absent that, you'd have an inanimate object that nobody believes had any special powers that someone is expecting to have special powers.
Things like not walking under ladders have totally secular reasons to observe them. If you walk under a ladder and the worker atop the ladder drops something it could land on you.
I guess my experience is very different to yours. I have never heard anyone using Pascal's Wager in isolation as a particular argument for anything. As has been said elsewhere in the thread it kinda sorta works when the options are "follow God" and "don't follow God". The existence of other options and other deities renders it little more than an academic exercise when it meets the real world, especially when that pesky "you shall have no gods before me" rules out the option of simply worshipping every conceivable deity out there to make sure you covered all the bases.
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It's one thing to agree to see something implausible to find out whether the person making bold claims actually has anything to back them up. It's another thing entirely to come and see my unicorn, witness with your own eyes the magnificence of this glorious glowing white horse with a silver horn, to see and touch the unicorn for yourself, see for yourself that the horn is part of the animal and don't duck-taped in place or photoshopped into a crude picture, and then to walk away insisting that unicorns don't exist. You might reasonably shift your stance from "unicorns don't exist" to "it looks like they might exist, but I'd want to look more closely" even if you hadn't become convinced that what you had seen was actually a unicorn, but if you still refused to accept that you had seen what you had seen one might wonder why you bothered coming to see it.
okay can we take this out of the realm of analogy please? What is it that you could show me about God that you suspect that I might later go on to deny even though I definitely saw it? What is it exactly that is undeniable that I'd be denying? It is one thing to say I'll never be convinced no matter what, it is something else entirely to see and expirience any number of things and somehow maintain that. Denial is a thing, but i suggest that it is different from non-belief.
I don't expect you to conclusively prove that God doesn't exist - you can't prove that any more than I can conclusively prove that God does exist. I was looking to find out whether you hold an active belief that God does not exist, or a more passive lack of belief that God does exist. An active belief in the non-existence of God is arguably a more decisive stance than a more passive lack of belef.
Fine, put me in the more decisive category, what comes of that?
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Hell
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Hell
Pretty soon you are going to be down to posting individual characters. Anyway you ever going to get back to our morality discussion or are you done with that?
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You can’t have morality apart from God
So probably done
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Ultimately, faith in God is a matter of the heart, not the brain. One can ponder it objectively and dissect it intellectually at length, but apart from applied personal experience and emotional involvement, one will never understand it beyond the cerebral and abstract. That I believe, is where the disconnect lies.
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Ultimately, faith in God is a matter of the heart, not the brain. One can ponder it objectively and dissect it intellectually at length, but apart from applied personal experience and emotional involvement, one will never understand it beyond the cerebral and abstract. That I believe, is where the disconnect lies.
I could probably agree with that on some meaningful level. I do wonder how this strikes folks that believe that the evidence is overwhelming or that non believers are blind to the undeniable truth. I also wonder how this works for people that are not very emotional or are medically emotionally limited.
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Contrary to popular opinion, faith is not emotionally based. Certainly many people respond to faith emotionally, but faith is a metaphysical spiritual issue. As Dumbledore tells Harry after Harry dies, before Harry returns, “of course it’s all in your head, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real.”
Faith is not in your head, but in your spirit. It is an absolute trust in a being that you cannot experience except spiritually, even when you can’t prove its existence scientifically or philosophically or emotionally.
Faith is an informed step into light believing that more light appears when needed for the next step.
Like Indians Jones walking across the chasm on the invisible stepping stones
It is in trusting that additional grace for the next step is revealed
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Contrary to popular opinion, faith is not emotionally based. Certainly many people respond to faith emotionally, but faith is a metaphysical spiritual issue. As Dumbledore tells Harry after Harry dies, before Harry returns, “of course it’s all in your head, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real.”
Faith is not in your head, but in your spirit. It is an absolute trust in a being that you cannot experience except spiritually, even when you can’t prove its existence scientifically or philosophically or emotionally.
Faith is an informed step into light believing that more light appears when needed for the next step.
Like Indians Jones walking across the chasm on the invisible stepping stones
It is in trusting that additional grace for the next step is revealed
My spirit, spiritual expirience? So what do you mean when you say that i'm blind...is my spirit blind or am I somehow using my spirit wrong?
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You can’t have morality apart from God
I mean in principle one can follow the bible's morals even while not believing on God.
Such people are rare, but they do exist.
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I mean in principle one can follow the bible's morals even while not believing on God.
Such people are rare, but they do exist.
Where, according to Judaism, does such a person stand with God? Can following the Bible's morals earn an atheist eternal life, even if he denies God's existence?
I ask because Judaism is focused on obedience and morality--to which Christianity adds faith as fundamental. As the writer of Hebrews puts it: "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who approaches Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him." (Hebrews 11:6)
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Where, according to Judaism, does such a person stand with God? Can following the Bible's morals earn an atheist eternal life, even if he denies God's existence?
This is going to sound strange, but no place in the bible is one commanded to believe in God. The bible also doesn't mention eternal life.
I ask because Judaism is focused on obedience and morality--to which Christianity adds faith as fundamental.
Christianity doesn't so much "add faith" as make it more important than anything else. I know he's engaging in hyperbole here, but Martin Luther nonetheless is making a strong point on the subject:
"Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides... No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day"
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It's one thing to agree to see something implausible to find out whether the person making bold claims actually has anything to back them up. It's another thing entirely to come and see my unicorn, witness with your own eyes the magnificence of this glorious glowing white horse with a silver horn, to see and touch the unicorn for yourself, see for yourself that the horn is part of the animal and don't duck-taped in place or photoshopped into a crude picture, and then to walk away insisting that unicorns don't exist. You might reasonably shift your stance from "unicorns don't exist" to "it looks like they might exist, but I'd want to look more closely" even if you hadn't become convinced that what you had seen was actually a unicorn, but if you still refused to accept that you had seen what you had seen one might wonder why you bothered coming to see it.
okay can we take this out of the realm of analogy please? What is it that you could show me about God that you suspect that I might later go on to deny even though I definitely saw it? What is it exactly that is undeniable that I'd be denying? It is one thing to say I'll never be convinced no matter what, it is something else entirely to see and expirience any number of things and somehow maintain that. Denial is a thing, but i suggest that it is different from non-belief.
This whole thing started because I commented on an evangelist who met someone who asked lots of questions but made it very clear that even answering all the questions wouldn't result in them changing their mind. From there it's a small step to liken the situation to someone who refuses to believe unicorns exist and who makes it clear that even if they come and see my pet unicorn they still won't believe.
I don't expect you to conclusively prove that God doesn't exist - you can't prove that any more than I can conclusively prove that God does exist. I was looking to find out whether you hold an active belief that God does not exist, or a more passive lack of belief that God does exist. An active belief in the non-existence of God is arguably a more decisive stance than a more passive lack of belef.
Fine, put me in the more decisive category, what comes of that?
Nothing specifically, I was wondering whether your stance is more active or more passive.
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This is going to sound strange, but no place in the bible is one commanded to believe in God.
You're absolutely right. However, I don't believe Abraham, the father of Judaism, would have abandoned his land and people for a promised inheritance unless he had faith in the God who called him forth. Also, I doubt Judaism would be embraced so devoutly by millions of Jews unless they believed in the God of the Bible. Judaism is rooted in faith, which is why it's called a "faith".
The bible also doesn't mention eternal life.
Not specifically. But it would be hard for David to "dwell in the house of the Lord forever" without it, right? Also, what is the benefit of having one's name written in the book of life if they only get the same threescore and ten as those whose names are not written therein?
Christianity doesn't so much "add faith" as make it more important than anything else.
Faith is indeed critical to Christianity, but not to the exclusion of obedience to God or morality.
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You're absolutely right. However, I don't believe Abraham, the father of Judaism, would have abandoned his land and people for a promised inheritance unless he had faith in the God who called him forth.
Well, Abraham lived before the bible was given. So he's not an ideal example. Secondarily, God Himself spoke to Abraham. If Abraham didn't believe in God, then who was he speaking to?
Also, I doubt Judaism would be embraced so devoutly by millions of Jews unless they believed in the God of the Bible. Judaism is rooted in faith
Judaism is rooted in faith, and yet Judaism is a religion of rules, not faith.
Not specifically. But it would be hard for David to "dwell in the house of the Lord forever" without it, right?
Psalm 23 says "long days", not "forever".
Also, what is the benefit of having one's name written in the book of life if they only get the same threescore and ten as those whose names are not written therein?
This is in fact an excellent question, however, it does not change the fact that the Jewish bible does not promise the afterlife as a reward for obedience.
Faith is indeed critical to Christianity, but not to the exclusion of obedience to God or morality.
So what's up with the Luther quote?
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Faith is indeed critical to Christianity, but not to the exclusion of obedience to God or morality.
So what's up with the Luther quote?
Jesus Himself said, "For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot or a tittle will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." He therefore makes it clear that obedience to God is critical. And James said, "As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." Talking the talk is not enough. We must also walk the walk. Luther is a fallible human being, and is merely conveying his take on sin and grace.
Certainly, no sin is so egregious that it cannot be forgiven through faith in the shed blood of Jesus. But that doesn't mean we use grace as an excuse to sin (Romans 6:1-18). Repentance is an often-overlooked prerequisite to receiving forgiveness. Following Peter's preaching about Jesus in Acts 2, the Jews who believed him asked what was expected of them. The first word out of his mouth was "Repent".
The Greek for repent means to 'change one's perspective', and refers to seeing sin as God sees it rather than our own flawed perception. Recognizing that sin is unacceptable to God, and not to be practiced. We are not perfect, so sin will find its way into our daily existence. But when we do sin, we are expected to repent of it, and seek forgiveness. Sin that is not repented of, separates us from God, as a cloud separates us from the sun. So, the point is, faith notwithstanding, obedience to God and a moral lifestyle are no more optional for the Christian than they are for the Jew.
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Jesus Himself said, "For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot or a tittle will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." He therefore makes it clear that obedience to God is critical.
This sounds like something that you should bring up with your fellow Christians. Having been here a long time, I consider myself a fairly good student of Christianity, particularly Protestantism. And saying "obedience to God is critical" does not mesh with my understanding of your faith. I could be completely wrong, of course.
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Jesus Himself said, "For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot or a tittle will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." He therefore makes it clear that obedience to God is critical.
This sounds like something that you should bring up with your fellow Christians. Having been here a long time, I consider myself a fairly good student of Christianity, particularly Protestantism. And saying "obedience to God is critical" does not mesh with my understanding of your faith. I could be completely wrong, of course.
You think Christian theology precludes obedience to God? Christians do not keep the law of Moses, but by means of the new birth, keep the spirit of the law through our faith in Jesus, who fulfilled the law and the prophets. Your Luther quote essentially represents the idea that practicing sin is a way of proliferating grace. Paul contradicted that line of thinking:
1 "What then shall we say? Shall we continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2 Certainly not! How can we who died to sin live in it any longer? 3 Or aren’t you aware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life."
15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? Certainly not! 16 Do you not know that when you offer yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey, whether you are slaves to sin leading to death, or to obedience leading to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that, though you once were slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were committed. 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness."
Paul taught that the law is a constant reminder of our inability to live up to God's standard of holiness and our susceptibility to sin, but that the atoning sacrifice of Jesus paid the sin price. Until our feeble, mortal bodies are transformed into immortal, incorruptible bodies at Christ's return, we will struggle with sin in our daily lives. Until then we repent of our sins and look to Jesus as the mediator and high priest who makes atonement for us.
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You think Christian theology precludes obedience to God?
I think that Christianity is a principle based religion while Judaism is a rules based religion. I have heard many Christians speak of the saving grace of Jesus's sacrifice but none speak of the importance of obedience to God.
Christians do not keep the law of Moses, but by means of the new birth, keep the spirit of the law through our faith in Jesus, who fulfilled the law and the prophets. Your Luther quote essentially represents the idea that practicing sin is a way of proliferating grace. Paul contradicted that line of thinking:
Take it up with Luther.
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You think Christian theology precludes obedience to God?
I think that Christianity is a principle based religion while Judaism is a rules based religion. I have heard many Christians speak of the saving grace of Jesus's sacrifice but none speak of the importance of obedience to God.
I think the bit that Jesus said about "not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom, but only those who do the will of my Father" shows that it's important. Then there's the bit where he talks about separating the sheep and the goats and the thing about "when you did it not unto the least of these...".
Sadly you are right that a lot of people talk and/or act as if obeying God is an optional extra.
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Sadly you are right that a lot of people talk and/or act as if obeying God is an optional extra.
I... don't think that what you're describing is Christianity, but do go on. What Biblical laws do you follow?
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The same two Jews do
Love the lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength
And
Love your neighbor as yourself
I still break them both every day
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This whole thing started because I commented on an evangelist who met someone who asked lots of questions but made it very clear that even answering all the questions wouldn't result in them changing their mind. From there it's a small step to liken the situation to someone who refuses to believe unicorns exist and who makes it clear that even if they come and see my pet unicorn they still won't believe.
Yes, that is how this started, seems so long ago now. An evangelist, I've found, is answering questions by making at best unsubstantiated or unsupportable claims that are broadly plausible. The best of them offer credible reasons for why the sort of evidence a reasonable person might expect is impossible or unreasonable, and ultimately they are unable to demonstrate anything. I reject the idea that a person could guarantee that they will not be convinced by any of the evangelist's answers and be successful at this in spite of whatever the evangelist might say or demonstrate....it's like a 10 year old saying they'll never get married....Regardless that is a little beside the point imo, because failing to be convinced by someone making claims, offering credible rationale for why reasonable evidence is not available and just sort of talking about a thing that they cannot demonstrate in any tangible way seems to me to be the root of the problem, not so much that the person enters this exchange with a bad attitude. I cannot tell you how many times I've been told that If I just ask God to reveal himself that It will happen guaranteed without fail, and when I did and it didn't happen there was either a reason why what I did was wrong or that I need to wait for more time for him to reveal something to me or that I have somehow missed or have denied the sign that was surely given to me or that I was doing my spirit wrong or whatever or the worst one that I have to have faith that God will reveal himself to me before he does (you must believe the unicorn exists before you see it, right). So many excuses, this hypothetical person you are describing comes off to me as another excuse loaded up to explain why there are perfectly reasonable people who do not buy the insufficient "answers" that are actually on offer instead of unicorns.
Nothing specifically, I was wondering whether your stance is more active or more passive.
Phew, okay.
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I... don't think that what you're describing is Christianity, but do go on. What Biblical laws do you follow?
RK nailed this. The first four commandments pertain to our obligation to God, and the other six to our interaction with others. If we commit to the two precepts RK named, we keep the essence and spirit of the law. As he also alluded to, we are incapable of being 100 percent obedient 100 percent of the time, which is why we look to Jesus, whose faultless life and sacrifice fulfilled the law and the prophets and makes atonement for us.
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The same two Jews do
Jews follow 613, not 2.
And c'mon, this is bordering on dishonesty already. None of you believe that obedience to God is a prerequisite for anything, including the all important entering of the afterlife. Galatians 2:21 "... if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"
You believe that Christians enter the afterlife, regardless of their behavior. And non Christians don't enter the afterlife, regardless of the behavior.
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If we commit to the two precepts RK named, we keep the essence and spirit of the law.
I honestly have no idea what this means.
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And c'mon, this is bordering on dishonesty already. None of you believe that obedience to God is a prerequisite for anything, including the all important entering of the afterlife. Galatians 2:21 "... if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"
You believe that Christians enter the afterlife, regardless of their behavior. And non Christians don't enter the afterlife, regardless of the behavior.
Christians believe that any sin that is repented of can be forgiven through Jesus's vicarious sacrifice, and Paul taught that grace through faith saves, rather than keeping the law. But it's patently false to insinuate that Christians inherit eternal life regardless of immoral behavior:
Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor 6:9-10)
But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a verbal abuser, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat (1 Cor 5:11)
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If we commit to the two precepts RK named, we keep the essence and spirit of the law.
I honestly have no idea what this means.
Jesus said the essence of the law is espoused in loving God with all your heart and mind, and loving your neighbor as yourself. If we truly abide by these precepts, we keep all 10 commandments.
Jews seek to follow 613 rules, even though it's impossible to be 100 percent compliant 100 percent of the time. The standards of God's holiness are so high we can never measure up to His expectations. You are satisfied with trying and falling short, but I meet God's expectations vicariously through the One Who did measure up. Because He was God before He was a man. Our respective approach to God diverges simply due to divergent theological dynamics.
BTW, happy Hanukkah. :)
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Christians believe that any sin that is repented of can be forgiven through Jesus's vicarious sacrifice, and Paul taught that grace through faith saves, rather than keeping the law. But it's patently false to insinuate that Christians inherit eternal life regardless of immoral behavior:
So Luther's statement was in fact wrong? There are no devout believers in Christ who lived otherwise bad lives in heaven? I don't think you believe that. And if you do, it isn't what Christian dogma teaches.
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Jesus said the essence of the law is espoused in loving God with all your heart and mind, and loving your neighbor as yourself. If we truly abide by these precepts, we keep all 10 commandments.
But that's not necessarily true. You claim to love God, but do you keep the Sabbath? No? Why not? Don't you love God?
Jews seek to follow 613 rules, even though it's impossible to be 100 percent compliant 100 percent of the time. The standards of God's holiness are so high we can never measure up to His expectations.
So. One can do two things.
1) They can try to the best of their ability to do what God commands. And then when they fall short, they can ask God for forgiveness.
Or,
2) they can just give up and throw the whole list out.
I know which one I'm doing.
(This is not my great idea. It was actually shared with me by a Christian who converted to Judaism for exactly this reason.)
BTW, happy Hanukkah. :)
Thanks! Waiting for my wife and daughter to come home to light the Menorah.
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The same two Jews do
Jews follow 613, not 2.
And c'mon, this is bordering on dishonesty already. None of you believe that obedience to God is a prerequisite for anything, including the all important entering of the afterlife. Galatians 2:21 "... if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"
You believe that Christians enter the afterlife, regardless of their behavior. And non Christians don't enter the afterlife, regardless of the behavior.
Jesus was pretty clear about doing God's will. James talked of faith demonstrated by works. We don't gain salvation by works but works are evidence of inner change. We could just as easily quote Romans 6:1, "Shall we continue to sin that grace may abound? Certainly not!". We don't gain righteousness by doing good things, that would mean we could earn our own way into heaven. A key question is that if we don't do good things, if we don't do the things that Jesus called us to do, we might do well to examine ourselves as to why that is.
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Jesus was pretty clear about doing God's will. James talked of faith demonstrated by works.
And yet Christians do not follow biblical law.
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Jesus was pretty clear about doing God's will. James talked of faith demonstrated by works.
And yet Christians do not follow biblical law.
If you mean things like the dietary rules from Leviticus we believe they were superseded. Not what goes into a man's mouth that makes him unclean but what comes out of it, and all that.
If you want to get into a more detailed discussion of which rules should stay and which should go, that's a lovely can of worms to play with. Chances are if you ask 10 Christians that question you'll get 11 opinions. Hence the fallback to the concept of loving God and loving each other, which Jesus said was the foundation of the Law and the Prophets.
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If you mean things like the dietary rules from Leviticus we believe they were superseded. Not what goes into a man's mouth that makes him unclean but what comes out of it, and all that.
Which is exactly the opposite of what it says in Leviticus, for example "You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you." But whatever.
If you want to get into a more detailed discussion of which rules should stay and which should go, that's a lovely can of worms to play with.
But in the end it really doesn't matter. Jesus sacrifice covers everything.
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But in the end it really doesn't matter. Jesus sacrifice covers everything.
Amen, brother. ;D
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Amen, brother.
Which kind of goes against everything you've been saying.
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Amen, brother.
Which kind of goes against everything you've been saying.
How so? I seek forgiveness for my sins and acceptance before God based on the vicarious suffering and sacrifice of Jesus, who fulfilled the law and the prophets. For me, that equates to obedience to God's commandments. How is that any different than what I've said all along?
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How so? I seek forgiveness for my sins and acceptance before God based on the vicarious suffering and sacrifice of Jesus, who fulfilled the law and the prophets. For me, that equates to obedience to God's commandments. How is that any different than what I've said all along?
You've been saying how you follow God's commandments. But that boils down to accepting Jesus's sacrifice. You just said so yourself. "For me, that equates to obedience to God's commandments".
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Fenris, I believe that trusting in Jesus as messiah justifies me before God. Moreover, keeping God's commandments is fulfilled by virtue of loving and serving God with all my heart and mind, and loving others as myself--just as Jesus declared. I'm free to live that out in faith with a clear conscience, just as you're free to keep the law your way. I believe God ended animal sacrifice because His ultimate sacrifice died on a cross at Calvary. This was evinced when the earthquake that occasioned the crucifixion split the veil before the holy of holies. We'll have to agree to disagree.
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The day I was saved, at 14 yrs, was the greatest day of my
entire life thus far and I'm old.
Upon hearing the 3rd chapter of John, I immediately knew that God was intimately concerned with my sin, which was very awful, and earnestly desired that I allow Him to take my guilt and place it on the cross of Christ, which I did, and my condemnation was forever and completely lifted.
Nothing I have done, since that time, has caused me to be more saved or has made my salvation less secure in anyway.
The reality of my new life compels me to live in a way that is pleasing to Him, which is to obey Him in all things.
My initial act of obediance, which saved me forever, was to believe on Him whom God has sent. I have been His, without
variance, since that time.
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Amen, brother.
Which kind of goes against everything you've been saying.
I think you still have a wrong perspective of Christianity. Based on what you have said several times earlier, freely translated as, the fall of man in God's garden was a sort of blessing or something close, Christians believe what Scripture states, it was a curse [3:17] with big consequences.
God created mankind with the intention to live with Him in the Garden forever, no death, sickness etc. One sin changed all that, we were kicked out that heavenly place away from the presence of God and here we are, live a little while, suffer and then die. One sin.
Ask yourself the question, why did God not forgive A&E, we both believe God is merciful. Why this drastic measure and harsh punishment because of one sin?
The trouble started with sin and in Christianity sin is the main topic and how God in his wisdom decided how to deal with sin. As John the Baptist (Elijah) said when he met Jesus - The next day he (Elijah) saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! - John 1:29
While Elijah never died and went straight into heaven God even send Elijah back from heaven to the womb of a woman for the second time to announce the coming of Jesus. John the Baptist (Elijah) knew Jesus from heaven and knew Jesus mission - the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
Mal 4:5 - “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”
Psalm 53
1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity;
there is none who does good.
2 God looks down from heaven
on the children of man
to see if there are any who understand,2
who seek after God.
3 They have all fallen away;
together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.
I wish, hope and pray that one day you might see why we are here and not live in the presence of God as initial intended.
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Fenris, I believe that trusting in Jesus as messiah justifies me before God.
Yes, I understand this as standard Christian dogma.
Moreover, keeping God's commandments is fulfilled by virtue of loving and serving God with all my heart and mind, and loving others as myself
Which is not the same as keeping God's commandments in the bible.
We'll have to agree to disagree.
Yep.
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I think you still have a wrong perspective of Christianity. Based on what you have said several times earlier, freely translated as, the fall of man in God's garden was a sort of blessing or something close, Christians believe what Scripture states, it was a curse [3:17] with big consequences.
God created mankind with the intention to live with Him in the Garden forever, no death, sickness etc. One sin changed all that, we were kicked out that heavenly place away from the presence of God and here we are, live a little while, suffer and then die. One sin.
Ask yourself the question, why did God not forgive A&E, we both believe God is merciful. Why this drastic measure and harsh punishment because of one sin?
Who says that God didn't forgive them? God could have killed them outright for their disobedience.. Instead they lived long lives. Further, perhaps the introduction of the "knowledge of good and evil" was a benefit, as it gave our lives meaning.
The trouble started with sin and in Christianity sin is the main topic and how God in his wisdom decided how to deal with sin.
Yes. Interestingly enough, it's not the main topic in Judaism. I've observed this before. Judaism is about sanctification; of the individual, of the people, of the world. Christianity is about salvation. Not the same topic at all.
While Elijah never died and went straight into heaven God even send Elijah back from heaven to the womb of a woman for the second time to announce the coming of Jesus. John the Baptist (Elijah) knew Jesus from heaven and knew Jesus mission
John himself denies that he is Elijah.
John 1: They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”
He said, “I am not.”
Mal 4:5 - “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”
Yep. We are still waiting for this to happen.
Psalm 53
1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity;
there is none who does good.
2 God looks down from heaven
on the children of man
to see if there are any who understand,2
who seek after God.
3 They have all fallen away;
together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.
Have I denied God's existence? I have not.
I wish, hope and pray that one day you might see why we are here and not live in the presence of God as initial intended.
I already do. And it's not for the same reason that you do.
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If you mean things like the dietary rules from Leviticus we believe they were superseded. Not what goes into a man's mouth that makes him unclean but what comes out of it, and all that.
Which is exactly the opposite of what it says in Leviticus, for example "You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you." But whatever.
Sure, but it doesn't seem like a huge leap of faith to say there was a set of rules for one situation and several thousand years later that set of rules wasn't needed any more.
At a very basic level it's probably best to avoid eating things like pork and shellfish if you live in the desert and have no access to refrigeration technology. Back in Jesus' day they didn't have mains electricity and chest freezers but the lack of a prohibition isn't the same as a mandate, so if people felt they could process shellfish and pork without poisoning themselves they could make the choice. Now we know about food-borne pathogens and have lots of health and safety guidelines so there's less to worry about. But even today there's nothing to say you must eat pork.
If you want to get into a more detailed discussion of which rules should stay and which should go, that's a lovely can of worms to play with.
But in the end it really doesn't matter. Jesus sacrifice covers everything.
Somewhat cynical admittedly, but up to a point. We just get to play endless games over which rules to keep and which ones to regard as being cultural. And people have their own opinions, which naturally vary from person to person.
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Sure, but it doesn't seem like a huge leap of faith to say there was a set of rules for one situation and several thousand years later that set of rules wasn't needed any more.
This is the word of God that we're talking about here. These aren't friendly suggestions, they're orders from the Creator of the universe. Furthermore, there's no internal hints that point to any if these laws being temporary.
Let's look at Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. What does the bible say about that? Leviticus 23.
"You shall not perform any work on that very day, for it is a day of atonement, for you to gain atonement before the Lord, your God. For any person who will not be afflicted on that very day, shall be cut off from its people. And any person who performs any work on that very day I will destroy that person from amidst its people. "
Sounds very serious. And how long will these rules remain in effect? Let's look at verse 31.
"This is an eternal statute throughout your generations in all your dwelling places."
Eternal statute. Throughout your generations. In any place that you live.
That doesn't sound temporary to me.
At a very basic level it's probably best to avoid eating things like pork and shellfish if you live in the desert and have no access to refrigeration technology.
The bible doesn't talk about safety in this instance. It talks about being defiled. Lev 11-
"For I am the Lord your God, and you shall sanctify yourselves and be holy, because I am holy, and you shall not defile yourselves through any creeping creature that crawls on the ground. For I am the Lord Who has brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God. Thus, you shall be holy, because I am holy."
Why are you putting words in the bible that aren't there? Why are you ascribing motives to God that He Himself has not stated?
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We believe the law was fulfilled
You don’t
It is a question of faith
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Fenris, if I'm correct Jews don't believe that Jesus was the Messiah and therefore don't believe Jesus was God, and don't accept the New Testament as being inspired by God. If I'm wrong on that please correct me because I'd rather address what you believe than what I think you believe, if they are different.
As I'm sure you know Christians believe that Jesus was the Messiah and Jesus was and is God. So coming from the perspective that Jesus was and is God it follows that Jesus has the right to change the rules laid down by God, because they were his rules to change.
So when God laid down rules for the Jews they took effect from the point they were given until such time they were changed or revoked. As the good Rabbi said, we believe that Jesus fulfilled the law - he had every right to change the rules.
Furthermore if you believe the divine inspiration of the New Testament then the message given by God through Paul is every bit as valid as the message given by God through Moses. If they are different we would be wise to verify that Paul was actually speaking with divine authority but, if that is accepted, is there any reason why God doesn't get to change the rules that God laid down thousands of years earlier?
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We believe the law was fulfilled
You don’t
It is a question of faith
It's not a question of faith. I have faith too. It's a question of whether one believes that the NT is holy writ, or not.
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Fenris, if I'm correct Jews don't believe that Jesus was the Messiah and therefore don't believe Jesus was God,
Those are actually two separate topics.
1) We don't believe that Jesus was the Messiah, as messianic prophesies are unfulfilled.
2)There is nothing in the bible that leads Jews to believe that the messiah will be anything other than a man. The whole "Messiah is god" is not a Jewish concept.
and don't accept the New Testament as being inspired by God.
Correct.
As I'm sure you know Christians believe that Jesus was the Messiah and Jesus was and is God. So coming from the perspective that Jesus was and is God it follows that Jesus has the right to change the rules laid down by God, because they were his rules to change.
But there's nothing in the my bible that leads me to believe that God's laws would ever be changed. What about "eternal statute, throughout your generations, in any place that you live" sounds like anything other than permanent? If God meant the laws to be temporary, why didn't He say that? The opposite, see Deuteronomy 4 (one of my favorite chapters, by the way) begins with "Hear now, O Israel, the statutes and ordinances I am teaching you to follow, so that you may live and may enter and take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you." It continues "Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the LORD your God that I give you." I mean, that's it. What other words are even necessary?
So when God laid down rules for the Jews they took effect from the point they were given until such time they were changed or revoked. As the good Rabbi said, we believe that Jesus fulfilled the law - he had every right to change the rules.
There's no hint in the bible that the laws were something that could be "fulfilled". They are something that we are required to do. And it makes no sense that any one person could "fulfill" the laws, because the entire set of laws don't even apply to any one individual. Some are only for priests, or non priests, or kings, or farmers, or business owners, or men, or women, and on and on....
Furthermore if you believe the divine inspiration of the New Testament then the message given by God through Paul is every bit as valid as the message given by God through Moses.
Paul is certainly an interesting character, but a lot of musings in his books are clearly his and not divinely ordained. How many times does the bible says "And God said to Moses"? Dozens? Hundreds? How many times does Paul write "And God said to me"?
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We believe the law was fulfilled
You don’t
It is a question of faith
It's not a question of faith. I have faith too. It's a question of whether one believes that the NT is holy writ, or not.
If Jesus is God then Jesus gets to rewrite the rules.
If Jesus is not God then nothing Jesus said makes any difference to the rules.
I think that's the key difference between our stances here.
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Without wishing to create a new thread on the topic, I have never seen a theologian publishing in any peer-reviewed journal who has said 'Jesus is God' without adding any caveats.
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Without wishing to create a new thread on the topic, I have never seen a theologian publishing in any peer-reviewed journal who has said 'Jesus is God' without adding any caveats.
That would be a fairly short article…
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Without wishing to create a new thread on the topic, I have never seen a theologian publishing in any peer-reviewed journal who has said 'Jesus is God' without adding any caveats.
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God".
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"Substitute bus service runs for all or part of timetable."
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"Substitute bus service runs for all or part of timetable."
I guess I can’t accept your premise as it is not self evident
Isn’t the entire idea of a peer reviewed article to provide explanations and details related to one’s thesis?
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If Jesus is God then Jesus gets to rewrite the rules.
If Jesus is not God then nothing Jesus said makes any difference to the rules.
I think that's the key difference between our stances here.
No.
God can't rewrite the rules either. That's the difference between our stances here.
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Without wishing to create a new thread on the topic, I have never seen a theologian publishing in any peer-reviewed journal who has said 'Jesus is God' without adding any caveats.
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
So beautiful.....
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I think you still have a wrong perspective of Christianity. Based on what you have said several times earlier, freely translated as, the fall of man in God's garden was a sort of blessing or something close, Christians believe what Scripture states, it was a curse [3:17] with big consequences.
God created mankind with the intention to live with Him in the Garden forever, no death, sickness etc. One sin changed all that, we were kicked out that heavenly place away from the presence of God and here we are, live a little while, suffer and then die. One sin.
Ask yourself the question, why did God not forgive A&E, we both believe God is merciful. Why this drastic measure and harsh punishment because of one sin?
Who says that God didn't forgive them? God could have killed them outright for their disobedience.. Instead they lived long lives.
What I meant, why not let A&E live in the garden, I am not send to an even lower part of hell each time I sin.
Further, perhaps the introduction of the "knowledge of good and evil" was a benefit, as it gave our lives meaning.
How do you know the life of A&E had no meaning?
God created A&E in His image, has His image no meaning?
And it's obvious from the text it that God did not want A&E to fall from grace and experience evil.
More in the next post.
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While Elijah never died and went straight into heaven God even send Elijah back from heaven to the womb of a woman for the second time to announce the coming of Jesus. John the Baptist (Elijah) knew Jesus from heaven and knew Jesus mission
John himself denies that he is Elijah.
John 1: They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”
He said, “I am not.”
You got me there :) well, almost.
Matt 11:11 - Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. 12 From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. 13 For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, 14 and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. 15 He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
I consider Jesus word as final arbiter.
It's quite well possible John the Baptist did not about himself. We are dealing here with an IMHO unique situation of reincarnation as prophesied by Maleáchi.
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Psalm 53
1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity;
there is none who does good.
2 God looks down from heaven
on the children of man
to see if there are any who understand,
who seek after God.
3 They have all fallen away;
together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.
Have I denied God's existence? I have not.
The key point is verse 3.
3 They have all fallen away;
together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.
Unless you think you are excluded.
It's a main pillar in Christianity.
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How do you know the life of A&E had no meaning?
God created A&E in His image, has His image no meaning?
Our internal struggle and our choices give our lives meaning.
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I consider Jesus word as final arbiter.
I don't. And futher-
We are dealing here with an IMHO unique situation of reincarnation as prophesied by Maleáchi.
It can't be reincarnation. Elijah did not die. He ascended to heaven while still alive.
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The key point is verse 3.
3 They have all fallen away;
together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.
Unless you think you are excluded.
But I am excluded. Read the next verse. "Do all these evildoers know nothing? They devour my people as though eating bread..."
It's talking of the nations who oppress Israel.
Then the psalm ends "God scattered the bones of those who attacked you; you put them to shame, for God despised them.
Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion! When God restores his people, let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad!"
The psalm is talking about one thing, and when you only cite the part that interests you, you end up missing the entire meaning. Context matters.
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If Jesus is God then Jesus gets to rewrite the rules.
If Jesus is not God then nothing Jesus said makes any difference to the rules.
I think that's the key difference between our stances here.
No.
God can't rewrite the rules either. That's the difference between our stances here.
Why do you say God can't rewrite the rules? If he wrote them in the first place why can't he change them later?
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Why do you say God can't rewrite the rules? If he wrote them in the first place why can't he change them later?
If God said that something is in effect "forever", and then says that it isn't, wouldn't that make God a liar?
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Maybe what you thin “in effect” means is different from what God thinks.
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Maybe what you thin “in effect” means is different from what God thinks.
If God isn't communicating in clear language, then one can make the bible mean anything that they wish. So I don't think that's a great answer.
I mean let's take Yom Kippur again. Lev 23:31 "You shall not perform any work. This is an eternal statute throughout your generations in all your dwelling places."
It certainly sounds like it is meant to be permanent. "Eternal statute." "Throughout your generations." "In all your dwelling places."
If this isn't permanent, how else could God articulate permanence? "And I really mean it?" "Triple pinky swear"?
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Maybe what you thin “in effect” means is different from what God thinks.
If God isn't communicating in clear language, then one can make the bible mean anything that they wish. So I don't think that's a great answer.
I mean let's take Yom Kippur again. Lev 23:31 "You shall not perform any work. This is an eternal statute throughout your generations in all your dwelling places."
It certainly sounds like it is meant to be permanent. "Eternal statute." "Throughout your generations." "In all your dwelling places."
If this isn't permanent, how else could God articulate permanence? "And I really mean it?" "Triple pinky swear"?
If God promised to do something and then reneged on his promise I'd say you have a stronger case. If God lays down a rule - you're not allowed to do this, at any time, for any reason, from now until the end of time, wherever you may live and however many generations follow you - and then changes the rule to be more permissive that seems like a different concept. Can't God decide that a rule that restricted us no longer needs to apply?
To liken it to a human contract, if you pay your money but then don't get the promised goods you'd be entirely reasonable to be upset about it. But if the supplier decided to give you the goods without requiring payment, or cut the price in half, or delivered more than you paid for and didn't want the surplus returned, I don't know I'd be complaining very loudly about it.
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If God promised to do something and then reneged on his promise I'd say you have a stronger case. If God lays down a rule - you're not allowed to do this, at any time, for any reason, from now until the end of time, wherever you may live and however many generations follow you - and then changes the rule to be more permissive that seems like a different concept. Can't God decide that a rule that restricted us no longer needs to apply?
"I know I said you had to do this forever, but I didn't really mean forever" means that God lied.
To liken it to a human contract
As the bible says, God is not a man.
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And neither is God bound by our human understanding
He doesn’t answer to us
Never had
Never will
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And neither is God bound by our human understanding
No, but His communication to us is.
Amos 3:7 For the Lord God does nothing unless He has revealed His secret to His servants, the prophets.
Did any prophet say that the law was temporary?
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Hebrews 1:1-3
I know
Not in your Bible
Hence the eternal disconnect
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Hebrews 1:1-3
"In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son..."
A shame this wasn't articulated at some before the NT.
Still doesn't refute God saying "this is forever" and then "but you know akshully..."
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I’m not going to argue with you, friend
I hold the New Testament as sacred as you do the Torah
And you k is that
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26 "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?
27 And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." Luke 24, 27.
I search the scriptures because they speak of Him. Upon the resurrection Jesus cited the OT Law and Prophets as fully authoritative and evidentiary concerning His advent.
For the believer, the NT shines brightly into the OT, which is filled with types, shadows and prophecies foretelling Christ, the Lamb of God. For the believer all scripture OT & NT is authoritative and inspired.
Time will be well spent on this essential truth. Having a bit more time, I know that I, for one, should be up for it.
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If God promised to do something and then reneged on his promise I'd say you have a stronger case. If God lays down a rule - you're not allowed to do this, at any time, for any reason, from now until the end of time, wherever you may live and however many generations follow you - and then changes the rule to be more permissive that seems like a different concept. Can't God decide that a rule that restricted us no longer needs to apply?
"I know I said you had to do this forever, but I didn't really mean forever" means that God lied.
Not necessarily. It just means God decided to change the rules later on.
First there was one rule - don't eat the fruit from that tree. Then came ten rules. Then came hundreds of rules. Then came Jesus Christ, and from that point on what you believe and what Christians believe diverge.
When I read our Old Testament I see lots of things that point forward to Jesus Christ. Whether it be the Passover (where the blood of the lamb marked a home as safe from God's destruction) or the sacrifice without blemish to atone for sin, things point forward. If you don't accept Jesus Christ (and as a Jew I presume you don't, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that) then presumably you won't see Jesus Christ as the fulfilment of the laws.
To liken it to a human contract
As the bible says, God is not a man.
Well, yes, an analogy is pretty much by definition an imperfect comparison. So I guess we're stuck with the issue of whether God is allowed to change his mind.
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For the believer, the NT shines brightly into the OT, which is filled with types, shadows and prophecies foretelling Christ, the Lamb of God.
Yes, I understand that. And I'm going to make the observation that this can be done with any book of decent length. It doesn't mean that those intentions were there when the original book was written.
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Not necessarily. It just means God decided to change the rules later on.
No. God said these rules were "permanent" and then decided that they were not. This is not trivial.
First there was one rule - don't eat the fruit from that tree. Then came ten rules. Then came hundreds of rules.
God was always holding humanity up to being moral, so saying that there were no expectations of man between Eden and Sinai is simply not true. Regardless, a covenant was made at Sinai that involved a people, a land, and a set of rules. None of this was textually said or even implied to be of limited duration.
When I read our Old Testament I see lots of things that point forward to Jesus Christ.
I am sure that you do. The question is whether they were put there in the first place.
then presumably you won't see Jesus Christ as the fulfilment of the laws.
There is no such thing as "fulfillment of laws". The laws are something to be done, not "fulfilled".
So I guess we're stuck with the issue of whether God is allowed to change his mind.
Numbers 23:19 (NIV) "God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind."
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Not necessarily. It just means God decided to change the rules later on.
No. God said these rules were "permanent" and then decided that they were not. This is not trivial.
I don't think I ever said it was trivial. It's a matter of whether God is allowed to change things later on. You're saying no, I'm saying yes. This may be something where we will never agree.
So I guess we're stuck with the issue of whether God is allowed to change his mind.
Numbers 23:19 (NIV) "God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind."
When God called Abraham to sacrifice Isaac he provided an alternative so that the boy didn't have to actually die. When God was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah he agreed to spare the cities if ten righteous people could be found. When he called Ezekiel to cook his bread using human excrement as fuel he responded to Ezekiel's objection by allowing him to use animal dung instead.
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The Lord also changed His mind about killing Moses. (Exodus 4:24-26)
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God is inscrutable
God never lies
So if God says A
Then God says B
Then we must in faith trust God that A and B are compatible no matter how little understanding we have
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The law still takes people to hell. Christ fulfilled the Law by living in perfect righteousness then dying for all under the Law.
Christ met the demands of the Law without spot or blemish.
To reject Christ is to die under the Law.
No paradox, no contradictions.
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I don't think I ever said it was trivial. It's a matter of whether God is allowed to change things later on. You're saying no, I'm saying yes.
I'm saying that when God says that something is "forever", that's exactly what it means. God didn't have to include such strong terms for permanence, yet He chose to. If that doesn't mean "forever", what more should God have said?
When God called Abraham to sacrifice Isaac he provided an alternative so that the boy didn't have to actually die.
God didn't tell Abraham to kill Isaac. He actually said "bring him up as a sacrifice", which Abaraham did.
When God was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah he agreed to spare the cities if ten righteous people could be found.
Because God already knew that there weren't 10 righteous. The point was for Abraham to ask.
When he called Ezekiel to cook his bread using human excrement as fuel he responded to Ezekiel's objection by allowing him to use animal dung instead.
I can't believe that we're having this discussion, but anyway, it was symbolic.
And the Lord said, "So will the children of Israel eat their bread unclean among the nations where I shall drive them."
Ezekiel points out that he himself had never eaten unclean food, and God said that for that reason, he could bake bread with animal excrement instead. It's a symbolic act. It's not a permanent command of God.
Again. "God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind."
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The Lord also changed His mind about killing Moses. (Exodus 4:24-26)
If God meant to kill Moses, he would be dead. God did this to spur Moses to do something that he should have done.
Again. "God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind."
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God is inscrutable
God never lies
So if God says A
Then God says B
Then we must in faith trust God that A and B are compatible no matter how little understanding we have
God's mind may be inscrutable to man, but His communication with us must be comprehensible, otherwise what's the point?
This is why I have observed that while it's difficult to be Jewish and follow all the laws, it's theologically simpler than being a Christian. God didn't "change his mind" or say that something is "forever" when it wasn't actually forever.
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The law still takes people to hell.
My bible lists many punishments for disobedience to God. "Hell" is not one of them. Pardon me for sounding abrupt, or even rude, but all you've done is created a problem and then produced a solution.
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I don't think I ever said it was trivial. It's a matter of whether God is allowed to change things later on. You're saying no, I'm saying yes.
I'm saying that when God says that something is "forever", that's exactly what it means. God didn't have to include such strong terms for permanence, yet He chose to. If that doesn't mean "forever", what more should God have said?
Interesting you should ask that, given the comments on my examples....
When God called Abraham to sacrifice Isaac he provided an alternative so that the boy didn't have to actually die.
God didn't tell Abraham to kill Isaac. He actually said "bring him up as a sacrifice", which Abaraham did.
So when God said "bring him up as a sacrifice" what God really meant was "bring him up but he's not actually a sacrifice"?
When God was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah he agreed to spare the cities if ten righteous people could be found.
Because God already knew that there weren't 10 righteous. The point was for Abraham to ask.
"Hey, if you meet this criteria that I know you can't meet, maybe I'll do something else". Why not just say the place is a pit of corruption and be done with it?
When he called Ezekiel to cook his bread using human excrement as fuel he responded to Ezekiel's objection by allowing him to use animal dung instead.
I can't believe that we're having this discussion, but anyway, it was symbolic.
And the Lord said, "So will the children of Israel eat their bread unclean among the nations where I shall drive them."
Ezekiel points out that he himself had never eaten unclean food, and God said that for that reason, he could bake bread with animal excrement instead. It's a symbolic act. It's not a permanent command of God.
Presumably God already knew that Ezekiel had never eaten unclean food, and wasn't caught off guard by the sudden realisation of what he has asked of his prophet. I'm not sure how it doesn't count as changing his mind to tell someone to do one thing and then shortly afterwards tell them to do something else instead.
Again. "God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind."
And yet it seems God has either changed his mind, or plays mind games with people telling them one thing knowing the plan is really not to do that thing.
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If God meant to kill Moses, he would be dead. God did this to spur Moses to do something that he should have done.
"Now he was on the way, in an inn, that the Lord met him and sought to put him to death." God does not seek to do something without the intent of doing so. It was Zipporah's performing of their son's circumcision that changed the circumstances, causing God to "release" Moses. The fact that Zipporah performed the rite rather than Moses suggests that he was unable to do so--perhaps incapacitated due to some physical malady.
Again. "God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind."
You often emphasize context in determining the meaning of a passage, but fail to do so in this case. In this passage, Balaam is denying Balak's petition to curse Israel, because that would amount to God reneging on His promise to bless His people. Balaam is saying God is not a man that he should lie or vacillate regarding a promise. That doesn't negate the idea God has the capacity to relent or change His mind about something.
The Hebrew denoting the "change of mind" in Numbers 23:19 is the same as used in Genesis 6:6 to denote the regret God felt in making man after he proved incorrigible. Grieved in His heart over the intrinsic wickedness, He decided to wipe out everything that drew breath with a global flood. Yet He changed His mind when He saw the faith and virtue of Noah--destroying most of humanity, but preserving its seeds in Noah and his family. Clearly, it's within the divine prerogatives of God to change His mind if He chooses to do so. This point represents another instance where our faiths simply diverge. I'm fine with that.
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The law still takes people to hell.
My bible lists many punishments for disobedience to God. "Hell" is not one of them. Pardon me for sounding abrupt, or even rude, but all you've done is created a problem and then produced a solution.
The universal and final punishment for sin is death and all have sinned. That death is further revealed by Christ as condemnation in a place of burning as the human soul continues to exist in banishment.
A clear message understood for milennia by believers, Jew and Gentile alike, with little to no variance.
Be as blunt as you care to. You have previously stated in so many words that the types, shadows and prophesies concerning Christ are possibly the result of later manipulations of the original readings of the inspired text.
Regardless of how one interprets or even accepts the NT revelation of hell, death is coming and is the curse of sin.
Where does the human soul go after death?
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Interesting you should ask that, given the comments on my examples....
And yet no answer is forthcoming. If the terms "eternal statute" "throughout your generations" "wherever you may live" doesn't mean "permanent and forever", then pray tell, what does? If God wanted it to mean "permanent", what else should He have said?
So when God said "bring him up as a sacrifice" what God really meant was "bring him up but he's not actually a sacrifice"?
The Hebrew says "Bring him up for a sacrifice" not "sacrifice him". Abraham did as God requested and so passed the test, as the text helpfully tells us.
"Hey, if you meet this criteria that I know you can't meet, maybe I'll do something else". Why not just say the place is a pit of corruption and be done with it?
Genesis 18: Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? "
The text here separates Abraham from Noah.
Noah was given a mission, to save the world. And he fulfilled his mission. He built the ark. What he didn't do was plead with God to spare the world. And so, Noah "walked with God" as the bible tells us.
Abraham was a greater person, who did plead on behalf of people. And so the bible tells us that he walked "before God". This is why Abraham's descendants were given a special mission; because of his greatness.
It had nothing to do with changing God's mind. It has everything to do with teaching us about who Abraham was.
Presumably God already knew that Ezekiel had never eaten unclean food, and wasn't caught off guard by the sudden realisation of what he has asked of his prophet. I'm not sure how it doesn't count as changing his mind to tell someone to do one thing and then shortly afterwards tell them to do something else instead.
Because God values human input. We're not of Islam, which means "submission (to God's will)". The very name "Israel" means "struggles with God".
And yet it seems God has either changed his mind, or plays mind games with people telling them one thing knowing the plan is really not to do that thing.
I'm not a Christian and so don't have to believe that God "changed His mind".
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"Now he was on the way, in an inn, that the Lord met him and sought to put him to death." God does not seek to do something without the intent of doing so. It was Zipporah's performing of their son's circumcision that changed the circumstances, causing God to "release" Moses. The fact that Zipporah performed the rite rather than Moses suggests that he was unable to do so--perhaps incapacitated due to some physical malady.
The point is that it was a warning. God is not limited in any way, if He wanted Moses dead then he would have been dead. And human history would likely be very different. But that's another discussion.
You often emphasize context in determining the meaning of a passage, but fail to do so in this case. In this passage, Balaam is denying Balak's petition to curse Israel, because that would amount to God reneging on His promise to bless His people. Balaam is saying God is not a man that he should lie or vacillate regarding a promise. That doesn't negate the idea God has the capacity to relent or change His mind about something.
I don't see how this changes God saying "forever" and then saying "I didn't mean that".
Clearly, it's within the divine prerogatives of God to change His mind if He chooses to do so.
God is not bound by time as we are. God knows all of human history and every decision that every person will make throughout all of time. God can't "change His mind" because that implies that God was presented with new information that He previously did not possess. Which is not possible.
This point represents another instance where our faiths simply diverge.
And also an example of why Jews find the Christian arguments unconvincing.
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Interesting you should ask that, given the comments on my examples....
And yet no answer is forthcoming. If the terms "eternal statute" "throughout your generations" "wherever you may live" doesn't mean "permanent and forever", then pray tell, what does? If God wanted it to mean "permanent", what else should He have said?
Honestly Fenris, it seems like you're playing semantic gymnastics here, between this and your responses to other examples.
So when God said "bring him up as a sacrifice" what God really meant was "bring him up but he's not actually a sacrifice"?
The Hebrew says "Bring him up for a sacrifice" not "sacrifice him". Abraham did as God requested and so passed the test, as the text helpfully tells us.
So "bring him up as a sacrifice" might, or might not, mean that he is supposed to be a sacrifice.
Presumably God already knew that Ezekiel had never eaten unclean food, and wasn't caught off guard by the sudden realisation of what he has asked of his prophet. I'm not sure how it doesn't count as changing his mind to tell someone to do one thing and then shortly afterwards tell them to do something else instead.
Because God values human input. We're not of Islam, which means "submission (to God's will)". The very name "Israel" means "struggles with God".
What value is human input if God might not, you know, consider that human input and change his mind? And what is there to struggle with, if your opponent is utterly unyielding and will never change their mind? The best you can do is resist before submitting.
And yet it seems God has either changed his mind, or plays mind games with people telling them one thing knowing the plan is really not to do that thing.
I'm not a Christian and so don't have to believe that God "changed His mind".
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Nobody has to believe it, it's just good to have a bit of consistency in whatever you believe. The possibility of God changing his mind works with all the scenarios we've mentioned. In your stance where God will never change his mind it seems you have to perform semantic gymnastics to make it work, where "eternal" must mean "eternal" and can never change but a sacrifice might not actually be for sacrificing and a very clear instruction can become a different instruction if you come up with a compelling reason to protest it.
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And let’s not talk about why God establishes the Leviticus sacrificial system in the Law yet later speaks through the prophets saying how he is sick of their sacrifices and doesn’t want them
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Where does the human soul go after death?
The bible declines to tell us.
The bible has God telling Adam what happened as a result of his sin. It mentions several punishments, including having to work for food and becoming subject to death. "Hell" or "eternal damnation" are not mentioned.
You've introduced a problem and then presented a solution.
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Your Bible may not tell you but mine does
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Honestly Fenris, it seems like you're playing semantic gymnastics here, between this and your responses to other examples.
I asked a simple question.
If the terms "eternal statute" "throughout your generations" "wherever you may live" doesn't mean "permanent and forever", then pray tell, what does? If God wanted it to mean "permanent", what else should He have said?
And nobody has yet presented an answer.
So "bring him up as a sacrifice" might, or might not, mean that he is supposed to be a sacrifice.
Exactly.
What value is human input if God might not, you know, consider that human input and change his mind?
To show who we are.
Nobody has to believe it, it's just good to have a bit of consistency in whatever you believe. The possibility of God changing his mind works with all the scenarios we've mentioned.
Not necessarily. But even if that's true, it wouldn't apply to God simply throwing out the bible's laws, which He Himself explicitly said are permanent.
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And let’s not talk about why God establishes the Leviticus sacrificial system in the Law yet later speaks through the prophets saying how he is sick of their sacrifices and doesn’t want them
Not exactly.
Let's look at Isaiah 1.
God says to Israel-
“The multitude of your sacrifices—
what are they to me?” says the Lord.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
When you come to appear before me,
who has asked this of you,
this trampling of my courts?
Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Which seems to mean what you say, that God no longer desires sacrifice.
But let's look further.
God says
When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
I am not listening.
Now, nobody says that this means that God no longer wants our prayers.
Rather, God is saying that sacrifice or prayer are not magic; they're worthless if the person doesn't change their behavior.
As we see from later in the same chapter.
Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.
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Your Bible may not tell you but mine does
Seems like kind of a big omission.
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Fenris, when God beheld the inherent, limitless wickedness of man, He regretted making him, and decided to destroy the entire human race. End of story. But then He made the decision not to do so, preserving the seeds of humanity through the righteous Noah and his family and started over. Spin it any way you want, but that is clearly the love and mercy of God leading Him change His mind regarding the fate of mankind.
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Fenris, when God beheld the inherent, limitless wickedness of man, He regretted making him, and decided to destroy the entire human race. End of story. But then He made the decision not to do so
I know what the bible says, and it isn't this.
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Fenris, when God beheld the inherent, limitless wickedness of man, He regretted making him, and decided to destroy the entire human race. End of story. But then He made the decision not to do so
I know what the bible says, and it isn't this.
Genesis 6:5-7 according to the tanakh:
5 And the Lord saw that the evil of man was great in the earth, and every imagination of his heart was only evil all the time.
6 And the Lord regretted that He had made man upon the earth, and He became grieved in His heart.
7 And the Lord said, "I will blot out man, whom I created, from upon the face of the earth, from man to cattle to creeping thing, to the fowl of the heavens, for I regret that I made them."
I see in this text a heartbroken God deciding to destroy humanity--along with everything else that drew breath. What's your interpretation?
And how do we get from that scenario to preserving mankind through Noah, unless God changed His mind about wiping it all out?
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Where does the human soul go after death?
The bible declines to tell us.
The bible has God telling Adam wha t happened as a result of his sin. It mentions several punishments, including having to work for food and becoming subject to death.
I have not created a problem. You cannot define "death" outside of a vague interpretation of the OT, conveniently called "my bible."
A very apropo challenge forthcoming, LORD willing.
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Your Bible may not tell you but mine does
Seems like kind of a big omission.
Then that would be your dilemma not mine
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Honestly Fenris, it seems like you're playing semantic gymnastics here, between this and your responses to other examples.
I asked a simple question.
If the terms "eternal statute" "throughout your generations" "wherever you may live" doesn't mean "permanent and forever", then pray tell, what does? If God wanted it to mean "permanent", what else should He have said?
And nobody has yet presented an answer.
It's still coming back to the question of whether God can change his mind or not. You say no, I say yes.
I don't see a contradiction in God saying he is imposing a rule upon the Israelites that will last forever, and then subsequently deciding not to hold them to it any more. If God can tell Ezekiel "use human excrement" and presumably very shortly afterwards say "you don't need to use human excrement" why can't he tell the Israelites "do this forever" and then many millennia later say they don't need to it any more?
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The same reason the folks at IHOP say that God has to heal everyone because “He promised”
Or why the late Carlton Pearson became a universalist
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The law still takes people to hell.
My bible lists many punishments for disobedience to God. "Hell" is not one of them. Pardon me for sounding abrupt, or even rude, but all you've done is created a problem and then produced a solution.
Jona 3:10 - When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
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After telling Hezekiah he would not recover from his illness and was about to die, God changed His mind, healing him and adding 15 years to his life.
God's nature and essence are immutable and unchanging, and it's impossible for Him to lie or break a promise. But that doesn't mean His mercy and grace cannot lead Him to change His mind if He chooses to do so. Who are we to impose limitations on Hs divine prerogatives?
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ASIDE:These things reveal man's free will (freedom to obey or not) and the LORD's willingness to respond to repentance, in both testaments.
Free will being man's greatest, God-given attribute.
Just saying.
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Genesis 6:5-7 according to the tanakh:
5 And the Lord saw that the evil of man was great in the earth, and every imagination of his heart was only evil all the time.
6 And the Lord regretted that He had made man upon the earth, and He became grieved in His heart.
7 And the Lord said, "I will blot out man, whom I created, from upon the face of the earth, from man to cattle to creeping thing, to the fowl of the heavens, for I regret that I made them."
I see in this text a heartbroken God deciding to destroy humanity--along with everything else that drew breath. What's your interpretation?
To say that God is "surprised" or "learns something" or "expresses regret" is to say that God is somehow constrained by time in the same way that we are. It means He is not all powerful or all knowing and is in fact held in check by time, which is a creation of His.
And how do we get from that scenario to preserving mankind through Noah, unless God changed His mind about wiping it all out?
God doesn't "change His mind". Again, Numbers 23: God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent. God never intended to wipe out all of mankind.
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I have not created a problem. You cannot define "death" outside of a vague interpretation of the OT, conveniently called "my bible."
A very apropo challenge forthcoming, LORD willing.
I don't understand what you are saying here.
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Then that would be your dilemma not mine
I don't think so.
Any "later work" can "clear up" "difficulties" in some "earlier work". That doesn't make said "later work" correct or even true. Christians do not accept the Koran, or the Book of Mormon, or the "28 Fundamental Beliefs" of the SDA as authoritative, even though they come after the NT and can be seen as "corrective" in some ways.
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It's still coming back to the question of whether God can change his mind or not.
I think that's part of the issue, but not all of it. God used very specific language about biblical laws. "Eternal statute", "throughout your generations", "In anyplace that you dwell". Those sound very, I don't know, "permanent". If God didn't intend for them to be permanent and knew, or even thought, that He was going to be "changing His mind", why did He use such language?
If I discarded the Law under the premise that God "changed His mind", and then came before Him in the hereafter, and He asked me why I did such a thing after He used such strong language about the Law's permanence, what excuse would I have? None.
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Jona 3:10 - When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
Prophecies are a different matter entirely. The whole reason to have the prophet communicate God's word is to have people change their behavior so that God doesn't have to punish them. Otherwise why send the prophet in the first place?
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After telling Hezekiah he would not recover from his illness and was about to die, God changed His mind, healing him and adding 15 years to his life.
Again, as I said about the case of the prophet, above. The whole reason to have the prophet communicate God's word is to have people change their behavior so that God doesn't have to punish them. Otherwise why send the prophet in the first place?
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ASIDE:These things reveal man's free will (freedom to obey or not) and the LORD's willingness to respond to repentance, in both testaments.
Free will being man's greatest, God-given attribute.
That's right. God doesn't "change His mind", He gives human beings the opportunity to change theirs.
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Genesis 6:5-7 according to the tanakh:
5 And the Lord saw that the evil of man was great in the earth, and every imagination of his heart was only evil all the time.
6 And the Lord regretted that He had made man upon the earth, and He became grieved in His heart.
7 And the Lord said, "I will blot out man, whom I created, from upon the face of the earth, from man to cattle to creeping thing, to the fowl of the heavens, for I regret that I made them."
I see in this text a heartbroken God deciding to destroy humanity--along with everything else that drew breath. What's your interpretation?
To say that God is "surprised" or "learns something" or "expresses regret" is to say that God is somehow constrained by time in the same way that we are. It means He is not all powerful or all knowing and is in fact held in check by time, which is a creation of His.
And how do we get from that scenario to preserving mankind through Noah, unless God changed His mind about wiping it all out?
God doesn't "change His mind". Again, Numbers 23: God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent. God never intended to wipe out all of mankind.
I don't see how deciding to show grace and mercy instead of the judgment He had planned diminishes God's divine attributes.
If God decided to wipe out all of humanity from the earth, but then, out of grace, opted to preserve it and start over through the righteous Noah and his family, how is that not pursuing a different course of action?
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It's still coming back to the question of whether God can change his mind or not.
I think that's part of the issue, but not all of it. God used very specific language about biblical laws. "Eternal statute", "throughout your generations", "In anyplace that you dwell". Those sound very, I don't know, "permanent". If God didn't intend for them to be permanent and knew, or even thought, that He was going to be "changing His mind", why did He use such language?
If I discarded the Law under the premise that God "changed His mind", and then came before Him in the hereafter, and He asked me why I did such a thing after He used such strong language about the Law's permanence, what excuse would I have? None.
If the intention was that the rules would last long enough that they might as well be considered permanent by mortals it makes little difference if God says "forever" or "until further notice". If he said "until further notice" people would be endlessly watching for the further notice and there would be arguments over what it might look like. What practical difference would it make if he said "forever" or "for 4000 years or so"?
As for regaridng the rules having changed, if you believe that Jesus is God then Jesus gets to change the rules if he wants to. If Jesus isn't God then Christians will probably have bigger worries than whether we observed a festival or not, and if Jesus is God then we can point to the things he said.
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If God decided to wipe out all of humanity from the earth, but then, out of grace, opted to preserve it and start over through the righteous Noah and his family, how is that not pursuing a different course of action?
If God decided to wipe out humanity, we wouldn't exist. Nothing happened to make God "change His mind". He was not given any additional information. He's God, He already knows everything.
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If the intention was that the rules would last long enough that they might as well be considered permanent by mortals it makes little difference if God says "forever" or "until further notice".
It makes all the difference in the world. If God had said "until further notice" (or anything else implying non-permanence) we wouldn't be having this discussion.
As for regaridng the rules having changed, if you believe that Jesus is God then Jesus gets to change the rules if he wants to.
Actually, no, he can't. Deuteronomy states that "it is not in heaven". God gave the bible to man, and it is ours now. Even He can't change it.
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If God decided to wipe out all of humanity from the earth, but then, out of grace, opted to preserve it and start over through the righteous Noah and his family, how is that not pursuing a different course of action?
If God decided to wipe out humanity, we wouldn't exist. Nothing happened to make God "change His mind". He was not given any additional information. He's God, He already knows everything.
Since you neglected to address the point, I'll present it again:
5 And the Lord saw that the evil of man was great in the earth, and every imagination of his heart was only evil all the time.
6 And the Lord regretted that He had made man upon the earth, and He became grieved in His heart.
7 And the Lord said, "I will blot out man, whom I created, from upon the face of the earth, from man to cattle to creeping thing, to the fowl of the heavens, for I regret that I made them."
In the above, I see a heartbroken God saying He was going to wipe out humanity because it was hopelessly corrupt, and He regretted bringing it into existence. How do you interpret the text, and how do you explain Him not doing what He said He was going to do?
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In the above, I see a heartbroken God saying He was going to wipe out humanity because it was hopelessly corrupt, and He regretted bringing it into existence. How do you interpret the text, and how do you explain Him not doing what He said He was going to do?
How does the story end? In fact, what is the very next verse? "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord." God spares a righteous remnant to start over with. So obviously God did not intend to wipe out humanity, because otherwise He would have done so.
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In the above, I see a heartbroken God saying He was going to wipe out humanity because it was hopelessly corrupt, and He regretted bringing it into existence. How do you interpret the text, and how do you explain Him not doing what He said He was going to do?
How does the story end? In fact, what is the very next verse? "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord." God spares a righteous remnant to start over with. So obviously God did not intend to wipe out humanity, because otherwise He would have done so.
I made the point earlier that Noah's faith and righteousness is precisely the reason God decided to preserve humanity rather than wipe it out. Had Noah been evil and corrupt like everyone else, God would have destroyed all life as He originally intended. It's within God's divine prerogatives to respond to a change in circumstances, even if He already knows what the circumstances will be. This is yet another instance in which we'll have to agree to disagree.
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In the above, I see a heartbroken God saying He was going to wipe out humanity because it was hopelessly corrupt, and He regretted bringing it into existence. How do you interpret the text, and how do you explain Him not doing what He said He was going to do?
How does the story end? In fact, what is the very next verse? "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord." God spares a righteous remnant to start over with. So obviously God did not intend to wipe out humanity, because otherwise He would have done so.
In all fairness that is a bit circular
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In the above, I see a heartbroken God saying He was going to wipe out humanity because it was hopelessly corrupt, and He regretted bringing it into existence. How do you interpret the text, and how do you explain Him not doing what He said He was going to do?
How does the story end? In fact, what is the very next verse? "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord." God spares a righteous remnant to start over with. So obviously God did not intend to wipe out humanity, because otherwise He would have done so.
So when the Lord said "I will blot out man, whom I created" he didn't actually mean he was going to, you know, blot out man whom he created? He meant he was going to blot out most of them. So why would God say he was going to "blot out man" if that's not what he was actually going to do? God didn't say "I will blot out man except for the righteous few".
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It's within God's divine prerogatives to respond to a change in circumstances
But... there was no change in circumstances. It's not like God did intended to destroy humanity, then did a survey, and discovered that Noah existed. "Who's this guy? Maybe I'll save him". God did not only know that Noah existed, God always knew that Noah would exist. Even from before creation.
This is yet another instance in which we'll have to agree to disagree.
I suppose so.
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In all fairness that is a bit circular
See my above response.
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So when the Lord said "I will blot out man, whom I created" he didn't actually mean he was going to, you know, blot out man whom he created?
God actually did blot out man. Except for one dude, with whom he restarted.
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It's within God's divine prerogatives to respond to a change in circumstances
But... there was no change in circumstances. It's not like God did intended to destroy humanity, then did a survey, and discovered that Noah existed. "Who's this guy? Maybe I'll save him". God did not only know that Noah existed, God always knew that Noah would exist. Even from before creation.
No matter how you slice it, God decided to blot out mankind because it was rotten to the core, but then decided to preserve it instead when one man represented hope for humanity. Yes, God knew about Noah before man was even created, and that He would preserve the human race through him. But that doesn't negate the fact that Noah changed the dynamics of the situation and what God ended up doing.
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No matter how you slice it, God decided to blot out mankind because it was rotten to the core, but
No "but". "And".
God decided to blot out mankind because it was rotten to the core, AND decided to rebuild humanity from a good person.
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No matter how you slice it, God decided to blot out mankind because it was rotten to the core, but
No "but". "And".
God decided to blot out mankind because it was rotten to the core, AND decided to rebuild humanity from a good person.
Semantics, my friend. Preserving mankind through Noah was an alternative plan to wiping it out as He was about to do. And that's a change in plans no matter how you look at it. But, let's leave it there and consider the case of Hezekiah:
God sent Isaiah to tell the ailing king to set his affairs in order because his time was short. That was the plan. Yet, when Hezekiah prayed to the Lord, God stopped Isaiah before he left the house to tell the king his prayer was heard and he would be granted 15 more years of life. Yes, God already knew these things would take place, but Hezekiah's prayer prompted God to change His plan for the king by prolonging his life. That amounts to God responding to a change in the circumstances.
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Semantics, my friend. Preserving mankind through Noah was an alternative plan
Preserving mankind through Noah was the plan from the start.
But, let's leave it there and consider the case of Hezekiah:
God sent Isaiah to tell the ailing king to set his affairs in order because his time was short. That was the plan. Yet, when Hezekiah prayed to the Lord, God stopped Isaiah before he left the house to tell the king his prayer was heard and he would be granted 15 more years of life. Yes, God already knew these things would take place, but Hezekiah's prayer prompted God to change His plan for the king by prolonging his life. That amounts to God responding to a change in the circumstances.
It looks more to me like God was waiting for Hezekiah to pray, as He knows Hezekiah will.
God is not bound by time or space as we are. God created time and space and so is above them. God already knows everything that we're going to do and how the story ends. Nothing we do takes Him by surprise or makes Him change His mind.
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So when the Lord said "I will blot out man, whom I created" he didn't actually mean he was going to, you know, blot out man whom he created?
God actually did blot out man. Except for one dude, with whom he restarted.
If you want to argue that way you could say that God did require the festivals to be observed eternally, except for the time after about 33AD.
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If you want to argue that way you could say that God did require the festivals to be observed eternally, except for the time after about 33AD.
Except that God created the qualifier "forever" with regards to the commandments.
God does the same thing after the flood: Genesis 8:
...the Lord said to Himself, "I will no longer curse the earth because of man, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, and I will no longer smite all living things as I have done. So long as the earth exists, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."
and again in Gen 9:
And I will establish My covenant with you, and never again will all flesh be cut off by the flood waters, and there will never again be a flood to destroy the earth". And God said: "This is the sign of the covenant, which I am placing between Me and between you, and between every living soul that is with you, for everlasting generations. My rainbow I have placed in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Myself and the earth. .. And I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and between you and between every living creature among all flesh, and the water will no longer become a flood to destroy all flesh."
Now, according to your logic, even though God said that he would never again smite all living things in a giant flood, He actually could do it, because He didn't really mean that He would never do it. He just meant "I wont do it forever except until I do".