Thanks. I asked above if God is portrayed as urging genocide (which you graciously clarify, “no doubt”) in order to ask if he felt “positive” about those who faithfully sought such slaughter. Your only answer appears to be that he is actually deeply disappointed when such efforts were inadequate to exterminate every last one of that race.
That’s correct and sufficient for me to agree that this is the God you claim to “know” is reality, and to illustrate that what I claim to “know” we must embrace as real differs from your convictions about God.
Again, your crass and emotive over-reach aside, I would say… God was probably deeply grieved in heart knowing the unnecessary pain to come to His covenanted people, i.e., those whom He set aside to be His kingdom priests on behalf of the wider world. That view of cause is predicated fully on believing the historical narrative.
So as it seems… although you have acknowledged you cannot find your deliberately misleading mischaracterisation that… God celebrates genocide in any biblical texts, at all, this notion however is still a deeply rooted conviction you maintain and seemingly so when you feel you can’t have God on your own terms, even when the biblical text describes otherwise — well, in the face of contrary evidence I must give you an ‘A’ for commitment to wearing your rose-coloured glasses.
Davo, No, I said those exact words are my words to summarize the OT’s frequent portrayal of God’s “positive” attitude toward efforts to slaughter everyone of a given race in lands he wants Israel to have. That did NOT mean that I agreed that commands to kill every baby within a people group does not warrant the term “genocidal,” much less than that I “deliberately mislead” about what I believe or about the OT’s characterizations toward herem!
I am finding that each time I perceive a text differently from you, you complain that I am too emotional, and repeat that I purposely lie. And I’m afraid that I find that tiresome refrain an untrue ad hominem that is irrelevant to displaying any interest in pursuing or engaging what Biblical texts actually portray.
So Bob, which text do you find best affirms your belief of… “God’s “positive” attitude” in this matter? Then answer this… is that text correct or not? IOW… do you believe said text can be trusted as a true record of Yahweh’s words?
On the 2nd, I clearly argue that the approach I find most correct is Jesus’’ (such as show tender “mercy,” Because “God is kind to the wicked”), compared here to many OT texts and outlooks.
So I appreciate you asking what OT texts show a “positive” outlook toward the efforts to slaughter enemies and destroy races that God commands! I’m all about texts, though traveling in Alaska and without a Bible. But here’s some brief relevant excerpts & texts from my paper here on “How Jesus Changes Traditional Beliefs.”
"In the O.T., external physical destruction was seen as a key, even in dealing with wayward family. So, killing your rebel child, a spouse or child teaching false ideas, those with a sexual sin, doing work on Saturday, etc., is seen as the divinely required solution. (Dt 13:6-11; 17:2-7; 18:20; 21:18-21; 22:22-4; Lev 20:9-13; 24:10-23; 27:29; Ex 31:12-17; 22:20; 2Kgs 2:23f; 23:30; 2 Chr 15:13)
Violence and ethnic cleansing were also the way to obtain land, and overcome pagan opponents. Thus, “Show them no mercy… kill everything that breathes… women, children, and infants.” Outside the land Israel seized, women can be enslaved as “spoils” of war: “Kill all the boys, but save every virgin girl for yourselves!” In Canaan, failing to slaughter every life made one unholy, and exposed to pagan values.
(Dt 7:1f,6,16; 20:14-19; 2:34f; 3:6; 1Sam 15:3; 27:9; Jos 6:21; 8:24f; 10:28-40; 11:11-20; Num 31:17f,27; Ps 106:34; Nahum)
In O.T. times, the best evidence your god was more powerful, was enabling your side’s violent power to “cut down all your enemies.” For “GOD trains hands for battle… to beat them as fine as dust.” So, it is crushing “the nations” that shows Israel is “the only nation God went out to redeem” (2Sam 7:9-23; 22:35,43).
Similarly: “Through GOD we trample…and destroy them… May a double-edged sword in Israel’s hands inflict Vengeance… This is the GLORY of God’s faithful people!” Thus this call for vengeance celebrates violent “hatred:” For “Blessed is the man who seizes your infants, and dashes them against the rocks.” (Psalms 44:5; 18:39f; 2:9; 149:6-9; 137:8f; 139: 21f; 55:15; 109:9-12; 60:12)}
(My papers on Following Jesus in how to read the Bible and Jesus Most Vital Ideas also develop this theme)
If you feel Jesus did not contrast with this positive approach to exterminating problem people, that’s fine. Or if you see such positive texts on such things as reflecting the human writers rather than the divine perspective, etc, I’m interested in why you heard my perception that this appears much more positive toward this way of seeing God heal evil than I see in Jesus, as so illiterate or outrageous?
So Bob… further up the page you made the adamant claim that the biblical text represents that… God celebrates genocide to which I strongly questioned I sought further clarification, and after significant wrenching of teeth you finally conceded such a claim was actually just your own language and you couldn’t really find any such representation in any text… something most reading along probably already knew — hence me calling you on your emotive language employed no doubt simply to create effect in favour of your position.
Again you then clarified further that your God celebrates genocide claim was to summarise your belief that such actually reflects God’s recorded “positive” attitude towards slaughter, or to quote you correctly, this…
So… given you acknowledge you use “God’s positive attitude”to equate to“God celebrates genocide” and in the context of this discussion YOU NOW apply this to the text references above in your last post saying this…
I went meticulously through EACH those historical references and found NO evidence of God declaring any positively celebratory genocidal attitude. So, based on our discussions it appears…
You have a deep-seated conviction that if certain scriptures be taken seriously then they in your estimation reflect a God who is positively and celebratory disposed to genocide… and thus you DON’T take such texts seriously to the point where you by some means explain these texts away as unreliable.
What I’m saying is… such war texts are in fact accurate of the historical narrative and yet the language used reflects a hyperbolic genre. IOW… such as was recorded need not be bound to your fundamentalist wooden literalism, but rather, expresses the gravitas of certain situation identified by and reflected in the hyperbolic language used, i.e., make good with routing your enemy lest they come back to bite you in the rear-end, etc — such was the nature of war. It is one thing to describe Israel’s victories in war accordingly… it’s totally another for YOU to claim the text represent “God celebrates genocide” positively or otherwise — as you had to finally admit… they don’t!
So no, I don’t hold your view that the text represents God as positively and celebratory disposed to genocide, but do accept the texts warts and all and acknowledge Jesus did indeed come to remove that old covenant of death because that’s what it wrought… death.
Davo, I’m grateful you provide a wonderfully clear summary rejection of what I see as an OT theme about how God deals with evil people through external change, and often by positively affirming their slaughter! You can insist that I’m an awful fundamentalist, but if you recognize “No evidence” of that, then we indeed have agreed that we plainly read these texts very differently.
I will repeat texts I find relevant and gladly leave to others here to evaluate if I am the one with blinders on to think the OT includes a “positive” disposition toward the slaughter of enemies or evil peoples :
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In the O.T., external physical destruction was seen as a key, even in dealing with wayward family. So, killing your rebel child, a spouse or child teaching false ideas, those with a sexual sin, doing work on Saturday, etc., is seen as the divinely required solution. (Dt 13:6-11; 17:2-7; 18:20; 21:18-21; 22:22-4; Lev 20:9-13; 24:10-23; 27:29; Ex 31:12-17; 22:20; 2Kgs 2:23f; 23:30; 2 Chr 15:13)
Violence and ethnic cleansing were also the way to obtain land, and overcome pagan opponents. Thus, “Show them no mercy… kill everything that breathes… women, children, and infants.” Outside the land Israel seized, women can be enslaved as “spoils” of war: “Kill all the boys, but save every virgin girl for yourselves!” In Canaan, failing to slaughter every life made one unholy, and exposed to pagan values.
(Dt 7:1f,6,16; 20:14-19; 2:34f; 3:6; 1Sam 15:3; 27:9; Jos 6:21; 8:24f; 10:28-40; 11:11-20; Num 31:17f,27; Ps 106:34; Nahum)
In O.T. times, the best evidence your god was more powerful, was enabling your side’s violent power to “cut down all your enemies.” For “GOD trains hands for battle… to beat them as fine as dust.” So, it is crushing “the nations” that shows Israel is “the only nation God went out to redeem”
(2Sam 7:9-23; 22:35,43).
Similarly: “Through GOD we trample…and destroy them… May a double-edged sword in Israel’s hands inflict Vengeance… This is the GLORY of God’s faithful people!” Thus this call for vengeance celebrates violent “hatred:” For “BLESSED is the man who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks!” (Psalms 44:5; 18:39f; 2:9; 149:6-9; 137:8f; 139: 21f; 55:15; 109:9-12; 60:12)
***************************************
Again, thanks for posing the choice so plainly. I’d be glad to hear from others who may agree with you that I’m nuts as a ‘progessive’ to admit that I see in such texts a “positive” approach toward slaughter.
Well, let me throw in - my two cents here. I found this article, via a Google search:
And let’s look at the last point - point 5:
The heart of the gospel message shifts from sin and redemption to social justice
Now I’m not one, who embraces progressive theology. I’m old fashioned…with me embracing EC / EO theology. And I found this EC video interesting:
But hypothetically…if I did embrace progressive theology…I would say God was concerned with social justice, in the OT…just as I’m concerned and identify with social justice, via this Country and Western song…as they call in, the social justice “experts”.
And here’s an interesting article, I found today - via the Patheos newsletter:
Davo, forgive me, but it sounds here like you’re hair-splitting, and side-stepping the bigger argument about what God’s true nature is like.
For myself, I openly acknowledge that I assign more weight to some Bible verses than others. I make my own judgments—hopefully as influenced by the Holy Spirit—in order to defend and preserve my personal concept of a loving Father God. I freely admit this, and concede that I sometimes find it necessary to disagree with prophets in both the OT and the NT.
Death has always been an enemy, not an instrument, of God, which will eventually be completely eradicated (1 Cor. 15:26).
I commend to everyone my subjective filter of choice for the study of the Scriptures–what I term my John 10:10 hermeneutic tool. (Please consider it, as I think a bipolar God produces bipolar followers.) So, when I read passages like—
–Isaiah 63:3– “I have trodden the winepress alone; from the nations no one was with me. I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing.
[Sounds to me like a drunken orgy of violence.]
–Deuteronomy 28:63– Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.
[Specifically in Deut. 28, it will please the “LORD” to curse the fruit of his own people’s wombs, send them confusion, plague them with diseases “which cannot be cured,” have mens’ wives raped, have people’s children kidnapped, and cause starving parents to eat their own children?? With friends like that, who needs enemies?]
–Proverbs 1:26-27– I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you; I will mock when calamity overtakes you—when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you.
[Ha ha! Makes us laugh every time we read it, right? ]
—I contend they misrepresent God, and that the prophet in that instance mistakenly confused the “god of this age” (Satan) with the LORD God (Jehovah).
Hence, I can rightfully assert that I do not pretend ‘to have my cake and it, too’; that I do not try ‘to play both sides against the middle.’ I contend God is unipolar, not bipolar—in the very face of certain Scriptures which, on their face, contradict this assertion.
When considering the widely held position that God sometimes kills, steals, and destroys people, I don’t have to try and defend it anymore, by saying,
-“That was then, and this is now.”
-Or, “I serve the new, improved NT God, who got all that violent OT gunk out of His system against Jesus on the cross–well, except for what He’s gonna do in Revelation."
-Or, “Love is a many-splendored thing, which, when it is God Almighty showing it, may include (ouch) slaughter, disease, and starvation.”)
I agree with you when you say that “Jesus did indeed come to remove that old covenant of death because that’s what it wrought… death.” Praise Jesus for redeeming us from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13)!
But I don’t agree that “dogma” was ever from God to begin with!
DOGMA: “…2. The rules and requirements of the law of Moses; carrying a suggestion of severity and of threatened judgment.” (Thayer’s)
Satanically inspired dogma—the legalistic embellishments and threats added to God’s communications by Moses—creeped into man’s relationship with God. Dogma was then used by the legalistic devil as a weapon, to bludgeon people with evil consequences—supposedly from God—for their sins. But God nailed that weapon to the cross:
Col 2:14-15 “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances [Gr. DOGMA]that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; And having disarmedthe powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
Jesus indeed came to fulfill the Law of Moses on our behalf:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill [plēroō] them.” Matthew 5:17.
But consider that the idea of “fulfill” is not the same as “popularize”; rather:
plēroō:
“after, be complete, end, expire, fill up” (Strong’s), “so that nothing shall be wanting” (Thayer’s).
During His earthly ministry Jesus functioned under the Old Covenant of the Law. But Jesus “expired” the Law.
The New Covenant—initiated by the death of Jesus on the cross—liberated us from the obstacle of the law by abrogating it. And thus, by his blood, Jesus brought us back to the original free blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant (Gal. 3:16-17)—blessings received by faith, not by works.
Also, regarding the Christus Victor position on the Atonement, as it relates to the law and Satan,we read,
By contrast, Christus Victor depicts Christ’s sacrifice, not as a legal offering to God in order to placate his justice, but as the decisive moment in a war against the powers of darkness; the law included. [My emphases]
Whoa! That is a good insight. No, it’s a great insight!
I ran across this following paragraph today from GMac.
Is this the ‘lens’ through which we can weigh various contradictory passages in the Bible? I myself find it difficult to consider all biblical passages of equal ‘weight’ when it comes to the most important thing of all - the character of the true God.
quote
“What Jesus did, was what the Father is always doing; the suffering he endured was that of the Father from the foundation of the world, reaching its climax in the person of his Son. God provides the sacrifice; the sacrifice is himself. He is always, and has ever been, sacrificing himself to and for his creatures. It lies in the very essence of his creation of them. The worst heresy, next to that of dividing religion and righteousness, is to divide the Father from the Son–in thought or feeling or action or intent; to represent the Son as doing that which the Father does not himself do. Jesus did nothing but what the Father did and does. If Jesus suffered for men, it was because his Father suffers for men; only he came close to men through his body and their senses, that he might bring their spirits close to his Father and their Father, so giving them life, and losing what could be lost of his own. He is God our Saviour: it is because God is our Saviour that Jesus is our Saviour. The God and Father of Jesus Christ could never possibly be satisfied with less than giving himself to his own!”
from Unspoken Sermons, “Life”
So Dave let’s go with what I don’t know… My understanding of the trinity is most of Christianity says that God (Yahweh) Jesus (Yeshua) and the Holy Ghost (spirit) are all one and the same, and so I would like a crib notes version of why they are not.
My point is about dividing, I’m sure you can explain…
I think folks are pretty tired of my opining on this, Chad, so I’ll not pursue it much. Christ is the exact representation of the Father’s will; in that perspective, to split their purposes and intentions apart is heretical from a certain point of view. ‘I and the Father are one’ - of course that doesn’t mean they are the same Person, one being God and the other a man, his son; but still, Jesus emptied himself of all human ambitions and privileges, and became one with his (and our) Father as to will and intention, love, and like that.
So I think GMac is really onto something.
I’m not sure how you see that as somehow… “hair-splitting, and side-stepping” when that’s my quite open and honest appraisal — and so I try NOT to read the bible with rose-coloured glasses, and those things I maybe at any given point not quite get my head rationally around I put back on my agnostic shelf — I do thatas opposed to editing or excising scripture just to suit my own dogmatic needs.
