My Beliefs- GDR

You aren't getting my point. Just because somebody refers back to the ancient scriptures to make a point does not mean they believe they literally happened. What you're saying essentially is that what I applied to Israel pre-Jesus is not the same as what applies now. The trouble is then that the pre-Jesus god is very different than the God we see incarnate in Jesus.I agree that in a sense the OT laws were a foreshadowing of what it was that God wanted. For example this is from Leviticus.

quote:

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'Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the LORD.

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Jesus essentially that was correct but they had it wrong. He says it isn't just your fellow Jew that is your neighbour. He then asked the question who is your neighbour and then answered it by telling the story of the good Samaritan.Jesus never confirmed the laws of genocide or public stoning.The problem as I see it is that if your understand the Bible the way you do then it is done at the expense of Christ's message. You also said:How do we know that was only for those particular incidents?You apparently believe that when God's people, namely the OT Jews, were in danger of losing their lands or of being influenced by their pagan neighbours that He ordered genocide. Many Christians in the world today face the same problem. If God believed it was justified then why isn't it justified now?God as you picture Him has gone from commanding His followers to commit atrocities against their neighbours, as well as brutal capital punishment for minor offences involving large numbers of His followers as executioners, to a God that calls us to love our enemies and that we should pray to be forgiven as we forgive. I have no idea how you can hold those two concepts of the one God in any coherent fashion.

I guess I'm still not getting your point because this still makes no sense to me. No, GDR, that is not the right conclusion. I explained it at some length in that post, I don't feel up to repeating it here. Didn't I say a foreshadowing of the coming of the Messiah, not something vague like "foreshadowing of what it was that God wanted?" As I said, the so-called "genocides" were one-time special commands by God to the Israelites, they were never general commands to anybody; and again I already explained why we no longer have stonings. Well I don't see it that way. The Sermon on the Mount means just as much to me as it possibly could to you. I think it's obvious from just reading the scripture, but since it isn't to you this is no doubt where the point comes in that you refuse to take seriously the Biblical exegeses of orthodox teachers down the centuries. You seem to be completely unfamiliar with how the OT is to be read in light of the NT -- or you just reject it so you can't learn from it. Huh? It was never about the particular situation of the Jews, it was always about God's execution of judgment on idolatrous peoples who sacrificed babies and other human beings to their gods and made sexual sins part of their "worship" and other abominations that had been accumulating for hundreds of years to that point. God used the Israelites as the instruments of His judgments, but He could have used anything and anybody and these days He uses other means. First, again, it never had anything to do with the problems of His people -- except in specific cases where His people had been done a great injustice -- but was completely God's sovereign judgment of evil nations, and Second, God still judges nations according to His own sovereign will, which may involve all kinds of calamitous events (it's all spelled out in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 9) but He doesn't do it by commanding His people as He did then. That had a specific purpose for teaching us how His judgments work in this world. Supposedly we've learned it. His judgments haven't stopped, He merely uses different means. He may use an army, but not by commanding them as He did the Israelites, He may use terrorists, He may use economic collapse, famine etc., He may use destructive violent weather, or many other methods. He accomplishes the same purpose by different means -- although of course He also used all these other means in those days as well. I see no contradictions and have no problem putting it all together. Yes, the evils people suffer for our sins can be pretty horrifying, no doubt about that, and I think we all feel horrified at that, but we are to learn that such punishment is God's justice AND THE REASON WE NEED A SAVIOR FROM OUR SINS, while you instead prefer to judge God as the evil one because He punishes sin.His commandments to us have not changed though, that's what you don't see. Loving our enemies and forgiving and so on were ALWAYS God's commandments. The sum total of the Law and the Prophets is to love God and neighbor -- by OBEYING all the Commandments He's given us. If we all obeyed them, and if those people who were punished had obeyed them, they would not have been punished as they were and as we still are when we disobey.There is no contradiction at all. You simply refuse to accept the severity of God's judgments for sin, for our violations of those very commandments you like so much. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You remember how this turned out to be something you'd made up?

This is well known. I don't make these things up. YOU with your snarky nastiness accuse me of such things all the time but you are never right, you just get away with it because nobody else here knows anything either.

And untrue.

You know I've forgotten this incident in which you are accusing me of lying because I don't take your stuff seriously, so again you are playing your little childish game of cryptic communication for the purpose of obfuscation and namecalling. Grow up and tell me what you are talking about.

Blackstone uses the word "Bible" twice in the whole book. Once is where he says the King has the exclusive right to print it. The other, if I remember rightly, is where he's explaining the archaic procedure of trial by single combat. To say that his Commentaries are based on the Bible is therefore something of an overstatement.

I am not going to look this up right now but Blackstone is famous for saying that law must be based on the Bible. Whether he said it in his Commentary or not, or used the word "Bible" there or not, IS IRRELEVANT to whether or not his conception of law was based on the Bible.Thank you for reminding me of your assertion. It's irrelevant to the point.

That's not what he said at all.He was an 18th century educated bloke, living in England, he was therefore a default Christian like everyone.He takes the accepted view of the time that we are subservient to God and that God's laws are supreme. But he doesn't say that our laws are biblical he says that human law must not contradict god's laws . "No human laws should be suffered contradict these [the law of nature and the law of revelation]"He then goes on to explain human laws which he says are necessary because of man's corrupted state.Blackstone is a commentator on law, not an originator of it - common law is centuries old and is NOT based on the bible, it's mostly based on property and custom and practice. Law, both statutory and civil is a pure human invention.If Blackstone had been an atheist, it would not make one jot of difference to the actual law he was writing about and you wouldn't find a reason to comment on it.If you actually want to understand him, you can read him here:Page not found - LONANG Institute

IMHO it is very clear that the Gospel writers believed what they wrote. Yes there is very likely some embellishment in some of the accounts that would have grown over time. I just don't see any reasonable argument that they didn't believe the essence of what they were writing about. I agree. Before you can accept the resurrection as possible you have to be willing to accept the possibility of theistic beliefs. Well for one thing the flood, young earth etc are verifiable. Also the stories of the resurrection were written from the accounts of eye witnesses at a time.I'm going to be away from my computer for a few days so I'll be slow in responding to any reply.

Certainly you can find people who will agree with you. If someone's exegesis is based on an inerrant Bible then there has to be a rationalization of the two very different understandings of the nature of God. I have read many Biblical scholars who very much disagree with your position.If the Bible is read as a narrative written by men inspired to write down their thoughts and experiences then we can get a coherent understanding of the nature of God, a rough understanding of the ultimate plan for creation, and an understanding of His desires for how we should conduct ourselves in this life. In reading the Bible that way we can get a picture of how over time our understanding of God has evolved so that mankind has gradually gained a more focused picture of the things I just mentioned. So the solution then was to kill them all including the babies while at the same time hardening the hearts of those who were supposed to bring His message of love to the world. Hmmmm... And this is the God of love and forgiveness that we see in Jesus? There sure must be a lot of sinners in Oklahoma City. Why would you want to worship a god like that? The idea is that God wants people to turn away from evil in this life and desire that which is good. You believe in a god that wants to take that away and slaughter them all now.As I mentioned to ringo I'll be away from the computer for a few days.

My point is that Bible believers who believe in the Bible as entirely God's word go back 2000 years. While you will find heretics of many sorts here and there in that history, and the entire apostate RCC system as well, the "Biblical scholars" you are talking about who deny the inerrancy of the Bible are all modernists and liberals whose traditions are no more than a couple hundred years old. Even the RCC up until recently regarded the Bible as God's inerrant word, although they put their traditions on the same level of authority with it.

Interesting that the views you impute to him do demonstrate that his view of law was thoroughly Biblical although you try to denigrate that as a mere cultural artifact of no importance, despite the fact that the whole Biblical context of law at least in the US has since been overturned since Blackstone's time. It WAS Biblical, it no longer is. Since it was a commentary he must have found Biblical principles already well established in English law. Since the US has abandoned the Biblical roots of law I'd suppose the UK has too but that's just a guess. Here's a page that includes some quotes from his Commentary. It all sounds pretty Bible-based to me. Which you haven't really denied, you just ... in fact I'm not at all sure what you think you're saying. It's either Biblical or it's not. Clearly it is. Here's the view of him I'm most familiar with: Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Then you need to read more.I'll say it again, Blackstone was a commenter on the law, the law existed for many centuries before he commented on it - his views about how it should be do not affect how the law actually is.Law evolves from the society that it exists in, so it will include some of the attributes of the predominant beliefs of that society, so English Law had a blasphemy law until very recently, Islam of course has Sharia - but the vast majority of law is to do with protecting people and property and is entirely secular.

There are many elements of the law conceived from a Biblical perspective that also would be acceptable in a purely secular context, as well as particular laws needed by a particular Christian society that perhaps don't have a clearcut Biblical basis, and it still appears to me that Blackstone was commenting on English law as the Biblical conception it apparently originally was. Since he was writing a commentary it would make no sense that he was imposing his own biblical perspective on a nonbiblical legal system. And again, at least with respect to US law, which was originally based on Blackstone, it is no longer Biblical and Blackstone no longer applies.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.