Now be fair: those of us who do in fact keep in mind the language characteristics and the socio-cultural context, know Gehenna can very easily mean more and other than merely “the Valley of Hinnom”. 
I have no problems with multiple meanings, Jason. It’s the translations that bother me. 
I don’t. Truth is truth, no matter where it is found. I don’t understand why some of you think picking and choosing is any different than picking and choose your interpretation of the text. MacDonald supported the idea to reject anything that we consider low. If it be true, we will at some point believe it. Asking me to believe that God wanted people to massacre women and children is asking me to violate my own conscience. But the way you state it, you have more respect for me if I reject Jesus along with the Amalekites than just the Amalekites. That makes no sense. Think about it.
There is no way to eliminate the severity of God from the scriptures in the Old or the New Testament. Believe me, I rejoice that mercy triumphs over judgment, and I believe at the root, everything God does is moving the corporate human towards the all in all, which is unbounded love. But I am not talking about picking a pea out of the soup. I am saying that the whole tone and much of the content of the scriptures become false and weightless if we remove the severity of God from them. God’s character is something we might want to project upon Him, rather than seeing Him for who He is- if the scriptures bear witness to Him, as I believe.
P.S. I was not speaking of rejecting Jesus. I was speaking of rejecting the whole idea of scriptural authority and veracity. However, if one rejects the testimony of the scriptures over so vast an area as the severity of God, then whatever witness the scriptures bear on Jesus is pretty shallow, since Jesus Himself bore witness to severe judgments to come, such as those that fell upon Jerusalem.
In the final outworking, is God any less guilty for that which He allows, than for that which He enacts?
In the final outworking, is God any less guilty for that which He allows, than for that which He enacts?
No because James said if we know to good and don’t, it is sin therefore if God can stop evil and does not it would appear to be sin according to James. Except for the fact there is a greater good in allowing evil that we simply can’t see right now because we can only look through the glass darkly.
One of the risks about parsing scripture is that it does undercut Jesus because he clearly affirmed Moses and the entire OT by his numerous references.
Yes, the OT is full of the supposed violence which Yahweh wreaks upon people. Just two examples:
Presumably God gave this law to the Hebrews:
And here, supposedly, are the words of Yahweh through His prophet:
I think that was the view of the Israelites concering the character of God. But Jesus, the LOGOS of God, came and revealed the Father as He really is!
He Himself, who is the exact imprint of the Father’s essence (Heb 1:3) didn’t kill people or put people to death, or require prostitutes to be stoned to death.Rather He did quite the opposite. He showed compassion to sinners, healed people, brought the dead back to life, etc.
Also Jesus’s description of the Father is quite different from the way God is depicted in the OT.
Why is it that God never tells us the content of this “greater good”? Since He never does, how do we know there IS a “greater good”? I wonder if this “greater good” idea is but man’s invention to try to get God off the hook. I think one of the main reasons God seldom prevents man’s inhumanity to man is that He wants man to come under His authority of his own free will, and He is patiently waiting for him to do so. Thus He seldom interferes with man’s free will.
Did Jesus EVER quote a passage about God destroying people or cutting off women’s hands, or commanding disobedient children to be stoned, or other heinous acts? Jesus depicted the Father only as supremely good!
Did Jesus EVER quote a passage about God destroying people or cutting off women’s hands, or commanding disobedient children to be stoned, or other heinous acts? Jesus depicted the Father only as supremely good!
But he referenced Moses several times and never hinted that anything Moses said should ever thought of as uninspired. Jesus did say "You have heard it said, — but i say to you—. However i never got the impression he was questioning Moses authority , but rather Jesus was actually giving new commands.
But he referenced Moses several times and never hinted that anything Moses said should ever thought of as uninspired. Jesus did say "You have heard it said, — but i say to you—. However i never got the impression he was questioning Moses authority , but rather Jesus was actually giving new commands
There is one thing Jesus said, that God granted divorces because of the hardness of their hearts. Makes me wonder if that process may have applied for any other things.
Before I came to recognize the truth of apokatastasis, I thought it obvious that the Bible taught everlasting damnation in Hell. Now, however, I shake my head at my former blindness on this point. The New Testament affirms the apokatastasis on virtually every page! It is humbling to me to remember that I was blind to the clear teachings of Christ and His Apostles.
Similarly, we are raised in our culture to interpret the Old Testament to teach that God commanded the Israelites to do wicked things. We thus get caught on the horns of a dilemma:
-
We can pretend that it’s somehow OK for God to command wicked things, or
-
We can pretend that the Old Testament is not accurate in its portrayal of God.
Choose your poison!
I assert that the problem is NOT with God nor with the Old Testament. It is with us, with you and me. We are so wicked, so stupid, so uneducated that we cannot yet see what is obvious in the Old Testament (even as we didn’t see the obvious universalism in the New Testament). Therefore, when I read a passage in the Old Testament that seems to me wicked, I do NOT doubt God nor do I doubt the Old Testament. I doubt myself. It’s the only safe and reasonable thing to do. I then try to look closely at the passage and ruthlessly exclude assumptions that I bring to the text. Often (as in the case of the Flood and of the Amalekites) I can see that the wickedness I thought I saw was only a delusion. Other times my stupidity reigns supreme. In the latter case, I simply tell myself, “I don’t see the truth in that passage yet. I will pray to God for more light. In any case, I will neither pretend that God is wicked nor that the Old Testament is wicked. There is no question, however, that I am wicked.”
George MacDonald counselled this practice. (I don’t have the quote to hand.)
Ah, here it is, from one of George MacDonald’s finest writings, his sermon “Justice”:
Excellent quote!
I agree with this, and with much of what Paidon posted. As God is bringing man out of chaos(Let there be light) in stages(and the waters above were separated from the waters below, and the waters above were called “heavens”), and those stages for reasons beyond our knowing(Who has known the mind of the Lord and who has been His counselor) and in an order He has predestined(Eacn in his own order 1 Cor 15)
A man could not do what God has done, or judge God in the doing, who makes a vessel for wrath or base use, and another vessel for glory, or noble use. Jesus certainly spoke of Sodom and Gomorrah as being more likey to repent before His works that Capernaam, but surely there were women and children in Sodom- and those children as yet not guilty of any sin, yet they were corporately destroyed, and the smoke of their punishment rises forever. Maybe this was like spiritually cutting out an infection. I am not trying to attribute to God works that an honorable man would abhor, so much as wondering if the Dr must take a gangrenous limb to save the life of the body, and God dealing with man in a much more corporate way than we imagine. But I must accept the testimony of scripture, and search for a higher reasoning than, “Gee that seems awful harsh”- or else I must forsake the authority of scripture altogether and render God according to my own reason and character.
I ask this in a spirit of gentleness, not of acerbity: How does this differ from the reasoning of those who believe in everlasting Hell?
As for myself, when my spirit is grieved after reading Scripture, I do not think that God has done any wickedness, nor do I think that Scripture attributes wickedness to God. Instead, I tell myself, “Geoffrey, YOU are wicked. Your spiritual sight is thereby so utterly corrupted that you are misunderstanding the Scriptures. It seems to you in your blindness that the Scriptures are ascribing evil to God! You had better try harder.”
That is what I did with the doctrine of Hell, and God granted me the mercy to see that Hell is not in the Bible. (NOT, please note, that the doctrine of Hell isn’t actually wicked, as common sense and decency dictates). I think the same thing is going on when we think that the Old Testament portrays God as commanding wicked things. I’m thoroughly convinced that the Old Testament is no less kind and gentle than the New Testament. Our translations, misunderstandings, cultural baggage, and personal wickedness blinds us to it–just as they blinded us to the Bible’s clear teaching of universal salvation.
I understand why you might ask the question, but the answer, for me, is clear.
I believe in Universal Recocnciliation because of the testimony of the scriptures. When ETrs use the scriptures they are not correctly interpreting the word, not properly prioritizing the building blocks, “the elementary principles of the oracles of God”(Heb 5). The arches, the stoicheion.
Their exegesis is in error. There translation is in error. They have not been taught by the Holy Spirit and have not sought out the “mystery”- which I certainly accept can be true of me as well on one level or another, but…
The only conclusion the scriptures allow is that God will be ALL IN ALL, and since God is love- that is a beautiful and reasonable conclusion.
There remains an open question in the mind of man about the process.
“Why need Christ die?”
“Why 10,000s of 10,000s be martyred”
“Why must death be the ground in which God sows the seed of life”.
“Why ever the law in the first place?” Why stone an adultress or adulterer?
“Why judge Sodom and Gomorah?” “Jericho?”
None of it makes a lot of sense to me unless there is something in operation that we don’t understand, because no wickedness can be ascribed to God except for our own misunderstandings, as you said.
I have to wonder if our abhorence of death is a misunderstanding based in our focus on survival as the ultimate good, causing misplaced priorities in our paradigm, because as yet, altho I would love to believe God never commanded men to kill one another or to judge a whole city or to cause a flood that destroyed millions or even billions of men, women and children- I believe He did, and recorded it.
I see an answer somewhere in the area of a post I read on here earlier about how God slew all the first-born of Egypt, but He also gave up His own first-born to die.
Even if God did not command the “genocide” of the Amalekites, and I am perfectly ok with that, in terms of the language as you put it, the same as “blown to hell and back”, a euphemism, hyperbolic language, etc. That doesnt change the issue much, since it seems clear that multitudes of women and children perished in Jericho, Sodom and Gomorah, the Flood, etc.
My earlier question about God’s guilt for what He enacts and what He allows was a rhetorical one, but does God leaving a handful of Amalakites to reproduce really mitigate the “crime” of putting so many to the sword?(again, rhetorical )
I accept that He is just and fulfills His will in mercy and love, but the seeds to those trees(mercy, love) are seemingly sown in a measure of chaos that I don’t understand, but I cant get around without turning the whole OT into a myth no different that the myths of the Sumerians, Egyptians, Babylonians and Greeks. If that is true then I probably wont see it in this life
I would also say that by the standard of “wickedness” set to the judgments of God against nations and cities and violence done to them- an eternal hell would be categorically “wicked” in my view, since there is no remedy for it. Death on the other hand is remedied already, and as such, the exercising of death upon the wicked is way more merciful than sending them to an eternal hell of torment.
I am however, very open to being shown I have missed evidence in the scriptures, or wrongly interpreted it.
When we read the bible, we run across things like this, and yes they do seem a bit strange. It doesn’t sound like the God we know as Jesus. When questioned, there are all sorts of different explanations. Some are plausible, some iffy, or it’s just said that we don’t understand. But,to me, if all the Old Testament is the infallible word of God, then why is there a New Testament?
But,to me, if all the Old Testament is the infallible word of God, then why is there a New Testament?LLC
Posts: 31
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2015 9:45 am
Private message
Because the OT said we would receive a New Covenant with God so that’s one reason.
I tend to see such OT judgments as God preventing flare-ups of the kind of wickedness which precipitated the flood, not as arbitrary wipe-out of folks because they were opposed to Israel (he left many opponents of Israel to test them, and at times to judge them as they had been used to judge others).
I see God shaping mankind as a corporate entity, teaching lessons to the entire human consciousness through the ages and the generations and the dispensations of law and the rising and falling of kingdoms and empires.
When it is written of Sodom, “The smoke of her torment rises forever”, I believe this is a testimony to the witness of God’s judgment of that level of sin smoking in the corporate consciousness of mankind as a continual witness to the divine nature and eternal power of God(as with the Flood). Likewise, I believe the cross of Christ is the ultimate testimony in the corporate consciousness of man- a testimony of that very same death in Sodom being swallowed up by immortality- “O death where is thy sting”.
Paul says of the OT in 1 Corinthians 10, “these things are written for our example that we should not fall after the same example of disobedience”.
I think in part, YHWH has done these things, not so much to teach us versions of who He is (as an awesome judge, loving Father, faithful Creator, patient Potter, etc.), but to teach us, as we grow into free inheritors of His estate, why absolute justice can only exist when absolute judgment is conquered by absolute mercy- to experience both, so that we can be in true fellowship with Him, not just as our Benefactor and Source, but as mature Sons and Daughters sharing ages of co-inherited world shaping with Him in one mind and accord. To cause us to “absorb” the divine nature, and become truly righteous, and truly merciful.
Acts 17:4 The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and** He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him,** though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”