No Gospel without Law, no Mercy without Wrath

I didn't mean to take away your Savior and I'm sorry if I seemed to be saying anything like that. My post started out with yours because it was a nice neat statement, but I didn't mean to be addressing only you personally, just the general issue. I thought you'd made a good statement about the conflict you experience, and it stands for the conflict that many others have also expressed here, and I was impressed that you have the courage to hold on to both sides of the conflict and struggle with it.But I do think it's hard to understand what Jesus did and why He did it and who He is if you don't accept what God did in the Old Testament. And I do think that it gets very muddled and complicated when someone rejects the wrath of God, and your various thoughts showed that, but I didn't mean that you personally are muddled, just that the ideas get muddled.My answer to the muddle is to point out that if one recognizes that the wrath of God is the reason God sent His Son Jesus to die for us, the whole problem is a lot simpler and clearer. This way the two aspects of God come together in one picture, and that brings the whole Bible together.>This message has been edited by Faith, 08-29-2005 03:20 AM

No I recognize that one too. I have been trying to assume that people will read the laws with a bit of common sense, and realize that some were appropriate for the times but not today, while gleaning basic moral principles where possible. In those tribal days women were treated as property to be given away by the father without any say in the matter, and family honor was the point of forcing a marriage.As a moral principle you can glean from this at least that the rapist has to make it right with the woman and her family, whatever making it right means in the particular culture. We'd do it differently these days. We'd put him in prison. But in those days she might have known the rapist and the families knew each other and the context was different all around.It's interesting to compare this law with the incident a few hundred years earlier of Jacob's daughter Dinah's being raped by Shechem, and her brothers murdering Shechem and his family in revenge. Shechem WANTED to marry Dinah. He was madly in love with her. Of course nobody asked Dinah what she thought of any of it, but it's even possible she liked him too. No way to know. In any case Shechem and his family were murdered and Jacob was very unhappy with his sons, and there's an example of the extreme vigilante vengeance which was typical of the Middle East, which the written Law sought to civilize.{EDIT to point out that I shouldn't have answered this because it's
not really on topic. It's about the moral law but only nitpicking about some of the culture-bound aspects of it. It would be difficult but good to have a list of all the relevant verses that pertain to the moral law as some have asked, but I don't want to get bogged down in such specifics. Maybe I should just leave it with the Ten Commandments.This message has been edited by Faith, 08-29-2005 03:57 AM

You aren't really saying anything different from what others here have said which is what I'm answering. For those who accept some of the Bible as true but reject the rest of it, it's still the case that the parts they accept as true have no more external evidence for them than any other part. In other words they have no more rational grounds for believing the parts they believe than for rejecting the parts they reject.

I was being ironic in a specific context.Also I don't think your speculations about the validity of Christianity have any place on this thread. I'm addressing the specific problem of Christians who reject the wrath of God (which I'm saying is God's punishment of transgressions of the Moral Law} but accept the love of God and the teachings of Jesus. Anything to contribute to that topic?This message has been edited by Faith, 08-29-2005 03:59 AM

This topic doesn't belong on this thread but has been discussed on other threads. But in a nutshell: The gospel of Thomas isn't a part of the Bible because its teachings are not consistent with the other teachings of the Bible. John and Peter both addressed the false teachings of the Gnostics, which is what the gospel of Thomas is.

Since Nuggin is an archaeologist it might be interesting for someone to start another thread about the issues you are discussing, but they are off topic in this thread.This message has been edited by Faith, 08-29-2005 04:24 AM

I don't want to get into a nuts and bolts discussion over this verse or that verse. It's Off Topic, I agree.My point was more about how things are different today than in the past. I am confused, and perhaps misreading earlier posts (ie conflict between Faith and Palanx). This quote seems to indicate that you are in favor of interpritation rather than literal truth.If so, that's great. I think you'll get much more out of the Bible by being able to sort out what's relavent to modern society vs what's archaic and can be left discarded as such.

I think I may be missing your point entirely.In my mind, it's very rational to believe that the Jews were enslaved by the Egyptians and that they fled that enslavement. There is plenty of external evidence (the Pyramids) for this story. I can see how someone would believe this story, yet discount a story that has no external evidence - Cain & Abel for example.Now, one could argue that the story of Cain & Abel has more Truth to it, philosphically, than the Exodus - but that doesn't mean it has to actually have happened.

Re: Off Topic postsYup, straying too far. My bad. If someone wants to talk Archaeology / Thomas / Christianity's adaptativeness, let's start a different thread.Meanwhile, let's keep this one on Faith's original topic.

Nuggin, you're new here, and unfortunately some conversations have been building on others for some time and it's hard to clue a new person in overnight.The idea that you see a conflict between "interpretation" and "literal truth" is a boggler to my mind. Maybe we should give some definitions of terms to clarify what we mean, but unfortunately this too is off topic and I hope it doesn't go past this one post. You seem to have come in with some preconceptions about what "fundamentalists" believe, which you've laid on me a number of times already. I accept the title "fundy" and even encourage it because at least it gets across that I believe the whole Bible is inspired by God. But this notion that I am therefore stupid and don't read things in context comes from a stereotype of your own that has nothing to do with how Bible-believers approach the Bible. Unfortunately, explaining how I read the Bible would be tedious considering that we start out with a confusion about "literal truth" and "interpretation."

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In my mind, it's very rational to believe that the Jews were enslaved by the Egyptians and that they fled that enslavement. There is plenty of external evidence (the Pyramids) for this story.

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Do yourself a favour and actually learn the basics of a subject before spouting off and embarassing yourself. There's no connection between the Pyramids and the supposed enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt.

If they are either children or parents, they probably wouldn't have trouble reconciling the 'wrath' of a father or mother who loved them yet was 'wrathful' when their behavior was such as to be wrong. The loving parent doesn't want to see it's offspring go astray - for the offsprings own good. And the child will probably (nay definitely) not understand the 'wrath' at the time it is applied - but will hopefully come to see the wisdom in it.Dr. Paul Brand, who worked with lepers, tried to develop an artifical pain system to help lepers (whose affected parts don't feel pain and can be for example, eaten by rats as they sleep). Pain, suffering, guilt, shame are all under the control of God (if not necessarily instigated by him). They are tools used by him to attempt to cause us to turn away from that which is harmful to us (before it's too late) and follow the direction he, as designer of us, knows is best.As the mother of a heroin addict loves her child but hates that the child steals stuff from the house to feed it's habit - and eventually must (at great cost to herself) banish the child from the house in order to protect the rest of the family - so God deals with us and will deal finally with us.Dumping the bits of the Bible one doesn't like is like a child who accepts the parent who lets it eat all the choclate it wants, when it wants, but who throws it's toys out of the playpen when asked to do the chores. Wrathful? yes, Loving? yes. Patient?...."He is patient with you not wanting that any should perish but that all would come to repentance..."

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"But the unspiritual man simply cannot accept the matters which the Spirit deals with - they just don't make sense to him" 1 Corinthians 2:14

You seem to be saying that nothing in the Bible has external evidence to support it.Suppose someone approaches the Bible like any other ancient book. In trying to decide what is literal and what is allegory, one looks for external corroborating evidence for the passages, whether other ancient literature or documents, archeolgical ,scientific, etc.It sounds as though you are saying there is nothing to support a literal interpretation anywhere in terms of external evidence.This reduces the notion of a literal interpretation to mere ideology, and negates any Biblically based arguments you make. For you must first defend the ideology with evidence.IMO, if this is what you are saying, allegorical interpretation must be regarded as the more rationally defensible approach (Setting aside, for sake of argument, outright rejection as worthless).

I think it would be helpful for you to understand that it's not a question of "like", it's a question of "credible".

You're absolutely right. If you read the Pauline writings or John or much of Acts, it is all about building the Franchise, the bureaucracy.It's a shame that, as you say, a bureaucracy can't sell that horse.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion