Women were not considered the property of their husbands in the OT. Exodus 21:10-11 clearly allows a woman to divorce her husband.

More on OT divorce: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/october/20.26.html

What is clear is that Rachel Evans wants people to believe that the OT treated wives as their husbands' property, so that people will think less of the OT because of it. But her portrayal is untrue.

Just curious, though – where does it say that a husband is allowed to beat his wife? I don’t remember reading this, but then there’s a lot of things that get lost in that wash of 613+ rules. I haven’t read the book.

Hester, Dee didn’t write that. The article says that a master could beat a slave. I would like the Scriptural reference for it though.

Do we have to read the book to comment on Dee’s quotes from the book? I am confused.

“A woman did not have to marry her rapist. She could refuse. The law was about making the rapist take responsibility for what he had done. He could not refuse the marriage, but the victim could.”

The victim’s father could. Not the same thing.

Thanks Laura. It’s Exodus 21:20-21.

The OT world was very different than what we know today: http://bible-researcher.com/slavery.html

I should also add that RHE is already a marked woman in some circles because of her rallying people to take a stand against some of the bullyboy statements that have been aired online (like that offensive quote by Doug Wilson) So whatever she says or does is going to be automatically condemned and given the worst possible construction — because I think they really ARE afraid of her. The Calvinistas have tended to believe that dominance of the internet conversation is their right, and their fishing strip (if I can put it that way) for gaining more ‘disciples’ and the strongest pushback has come, not from the non-Calvinist theologians with doctorates, but from a young woman! This is incredibly offensive to them!

* If you were a slave or concubine, you had to be sexually available and ready to bear you master’s wife’s children if she could not.
* Your master could beat you but not kill you.
* If you were a wife, you were your husband’s property.You could not pursue a divorce (he could) and you could not own property (he could).
* If you were not engaged when raped, you had to marry your rapist.
* If your husband accused you of premarital sex, to get out of the marriage, your parents were expected to produce evidence of your virginity in the form of bloody sheets saved fro the wedding night.
* Polygamy was allowed. Men could have multiple wives and concubines. 2 Samuel 12:8 even says that God himself gave them these multiple wives. “I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more.” (NIV)

My standard response for those is “Welcome to the world of Iron Age Semitic Tribesmen.”

“Those were dark times, Harry. Dark Times…” — Hagrith

@Dee

I believe God did change something regarding marriage between the Old and New Covenants. In the OT, God tolerated polygamy. But in Matthew 19, Jesus quotes Genesis 2:24 to reestablish God’s original intent for monogamous marriage. I believe that St. Paul intended this as well when he required an elder to be married to only one wife. There are Christian polygamists today (and there were among the radicals in Luther’s day), but I believe “Christian polygamy” is a false teaching.

I do not defend complementarians who selectively quote OT passages on marriage but ignore others.

Concerning modern polygamy, have you heard of this guy: http://hughmcbryde.blogspot.com/2008/07/on-being-polygyny-advocate.html

The change, I believe, is Jesus. He restored the original purpose of marriage. Also, Jesus intensifies the moral law. Jesus makes lust into adultery, for example. He does this so that we will see our inability to keep the law, and realize that our only hope for salvation is in His death and resurrection.

While Jesus intesifies the moral law, the civil and ceremonial law is rendered nonbinding to Christians under the new covenant.

It seems that God didn’t give a clear answer as to why He tolerated polygamy in the OT. We shouldn’t try to answer what God hasn’t answered.

“For me, the question is why God tolerated polygamy in the Old Testament. He could have said it was not to be allowed. It is this sort of question that must be wrestled with. I used to think it was an easy answer-hardness of heart, etc. Yet God decreed many things that were difficult. The older I get, the more I realize that the “easy answers” are not so easy.
”

I used to cringe reading the OT. And I do not think there are any easy answers so I hope no one will think I am presenting one. Just another way to look at it. If we go way bck to Gen and after the fall we see the creep Lamech doing his evil with women. I used to always wonder about this. At some point an elderly women pointed out to me how much Satan hates women even more because God said Messiah would come from a woman. And because Eve “turned” (teshuqa) to Adam instead of God, Adam rules over her and the whole patriarchy business is in full swing. Satan loved it.

The question is why would God allow it after proclaiming a man and a woman ONE FLESH in union? Polygamy actually protected women because hearts were so hardened and patriarchy was in full swing. because of patriarchy women needed protection of a male even if the situation was not ideal. We are not talking about a decreetal determinist God here. He worked through and around His people.

As to the soiled sheets, how many think Eve had a period before the fall, raise your hands. :o) There is a reason it is called a curse.

“And why was she unclean more for a female baby than a male baby?”

I have often wondered if it was because the man would be disappointed with a girl and want to try too soon for another child who might be a boy. The longer time gave her time to bond with the baby girl who was basically seen as a disappointment all around. First born son and sons in general are very important. The irony is we see God NOT choose a first born son in the most pivotal stories.

I asked a patriarchalist wife a while ago what a daughter should do if she believes she has been called by the Holy Spirit to do something that her father does not agree with. Who should she obey?

She said it is the father’s decision, and pointed out the OT passage about how a daughter’s or wife’s vow can be annulled by her father/husband. (Something Doug Phillips loves to point out when emphasizing his point that women may not be independent).

It kind of shook me up, I guess because I was just starting to quietly question my beliefs and reject a lot of things my husband still believed. I believed the Holy Spirit was guiding me, yet wasn’t sure how to reconcile his guidance with what seemed like the biblical command to let my husband be my spiritual leader. Still struggling with it.

Hester, on the flip side, some say Islam is a religion of peace and want us to be tolerant of it’s views toward women. I am having a hard time seeing the difference between Doug Wilson, the Bayly or Doug Phillips and a Imam.

@ILooking for You

I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have been a member of that cult. Theonomy/Reconstructionism is a different gospel than that given by Christ. I’d say I was surprised that there are Baptist theonomists, but given Doug Wilson and Doug Phillip’s popularity among the YRR crowd, there are bound to be more of those in the future.

Example of darkness.

When a woman was raped back during the time of the OT, in other cultures, she was blamed and stoned, alone, while her rapist went free or paid a sum of money to her father.

Making the rapist accountable for what he had done AND deflecting the blame from the woman was a HUGE step in the right direction. Sure, it was only a step. But this is how God deals with us. We can’t take it all at once. We have to move in steps. If everything that was wrong with us was revealed to us the day we were born again, we would be overwhelmed and most likely despair. But God is very patient and charitable with us, just as He was as He began to work in Israel to move them from darkness to light.

OK… I got to a certain point in RHE’s book and had to put it down for the night. Anyone who’s read it (anyone with an ounce of sensitivity and compassion in their hearts) knows the part I’m talking about. (That and the quote from the daughter in a patriarchal family who starts an article by stating that her father literally owns her.)

We do not see the darkness that we ourselves perpetuate, do we? It’s so easy to identify when someone else is doing it (like all the average citizens in Hitler’s Germany who went along with the Nazi Party and it horrific, genocidal campaigns against Jewish people, gypsies, gay/lesbian people, etc. etc. …) But when it’s us, well, we want to look anywhere but at the things we;’ve done, or the things we’ve allowed to happen, or…

So very easy to tell everyone what’s wrong with them, but so very, very hard to confront what’s wrong with us.

(Just thinking aloud here… I also want to say that I’m grateful to RHE for taking on this project and living to write about it; it’s a monumental thing in more ways than one, and i feel her when she talks about all the nasty, harsh, cutting comments and emails that she received throughout the duration of it – and, of course, now. She and her husband are brave people!)

A touch off-topic, but not really:

The God who mandated these rules is still the same God that we follow today. However, it seems to me that most people in the church blow them off with a “Jesus changed all that so move along.”

Unless, of course, you are talking about the tithe, something in the Law that most preachers decided Jesus didn’t change.

I’m going to get this book so I can read it for myself. I’ve heard a lot about it from all sides. (RHE is on my Twitter feed, right up there with our glamorous blog queens.) If there’s one thing this book is doing, it’s provoking a lot of discussion in the blogosphere as well as outside of it. (I did see RHE’s interviews on Today and on The View. Very classy lady who is firmly supported by Dan. Would to God that more marriages were like theirs.)

@ Numo:

Ballads and folk tales are so illuminating. Frankly I’m surprised I’ve only found one ballad so far about wifebeating. Add in the ones about magic, murder, jealousy, rape, incest and assorted unsavory sexual intrigues and the “good old days” are pretty much a fantasy through and through.

I’ve put my foot in my mouth for about the second time regarding RHE. I won’t comment again on anything related to her book until I’ve read it.

“imagine a return, not only to the stoning (which gets a lot of press), but the bloody sheets, marrying your rapist, arranged marriage (which isn’t technically mandated in the Law, but is a logical consequence of lots of things in it)… ”

Hester,

The crazy thing is, the reconstructionist guys ACTUALLY think this stuff was just part of a well-ordered, godly society, and that this society WILL be reestablished on earth. They have no doubt (they are optimistic post-mils). I wonder if they’ve ever stopped to ponder how terrifying this sort of society would actually be to live in – especially for women. It boggles my mind to realize that their concept of moving forward is actually to move backward!

Mara, I’m tracking with you on some side benefits to women that are invisible now. Although a lot of it disturbs me in the OT (genocides especially). Some quick thoughts/observations:
I lived in South Asia (2 countries) for a year a while back. I went with a less then organized group and ended up doing my own thing there.

First, I lived in a boarding school run by an Indian lady living in Nepal. She had converted out of high caste Hinduism. Although she was a Christian, caste played a pretty big role in her time in Nepal – landlords would rent space for a school to her, but ban any untouchable or low caste children they tried to admit to the compound. She was a tough lady and fought them on it, so they relented. In S. Asia, you can convert, but never loose your caste.

If you are wondering what that has to do with OT. Purity, purity, purity. As a whitey, I was technically untouchable – all non-South Asians are. They have no clue what to do with African decent folks, and stare at them as if they exited a space ship. I knew a Canadian girl who was grilled about where she was from, ‘Canada’ was not an acceptable answer – her relations were from England, again, not acceptable, finally she would name one of the Caribbean Islands (I can’t recall which). They, clearly lacking geography, would go ahhhh (to save face). Then, since I understood enough Hindi, would consult each other about what part of Africa that place was- ha! Anyways, all this to say, we are all untouchables to devout Hindus. This means, we are unclean and can mess up their purity. To this day, women are banned from many Hindu temples since they have no way of knowing who is menstruating or not, they ban all women. Foreigners are banned from others – as are, often, low castes. Depending on the site.

How do women live under these laws? There are many poor women in India who cannot afford to live in separate rooms (one-room homes), don’t live in areas it would be safe to sleep outside, etc. They do get a reprive from their husband’s advances, they also get a bit of time off. We were on a camel safari and ended up spending a night at our camel driver’s family home one evening – talk about surreal. We all slept on the roof, his family slept below, inside (it was Feb. and freezing either place). His wife was maybe 18 and had just had a new baby – three weeks old perhaps. His mother (probably mid thirties, with at least 9 living kids and had a four year old herself), was doing all the work. The next day they got us involved (well of the 4 of us, the two women were asked) in prepping the food. The mother-in-law was busy. The new mom was inside the main room of the house all day with the little baby (the mud house had two rooms, no connecting door between the main room (for sleeping) and the kitchen). I asked one of the numerous brothers why she was always inside, why she wasn’t in the kitchen – a first for me, daughter-in-laws were usually invisibly chained to the cooking area in my S. Asian experience – and finally through our broken Hindi/English managed to figure out that the Daughter-in-law was not able to handle food until the little baby (boy) was blessed by the priests (I assume at some temple, but not sure). They were lower caste, so, presumably, my “untouchable” status beat the daughter’s “uncleanliness” status in household labour purity laws vs. work to be done needs 🙂

There are many other stories – as I lived in a girl’s home in India – very Hindu home, but very pro-women too. I learned a lot. Really, the anti-women purity laws were not nearly as awful as the second-class status in food, healthcare, and education. The higher a women climbs the success ladder in India, the less those taboos affect her life. Servants galore for the well-off render household tasks vs. purity a mute point. I did notice a lot of families employed male cooks – despite every lower-class household had women-only cooked food. It may have been about purity, but more likely because a women leaving the home to work is scandalous in many Indian households. Not Nepal – women work everywhere there, without losing their reputation. In India – well, patriarchs would approve (of the lower classes, anyways) – women don’t work out of the home unless it is dire. Not the upper class – equality there trumps equality in N. America – they even elect women presidents (India – two, Sri Lanka – one, Pakistan – one and Bangledash – one).

Also, in the OT – Deborah was a Judge and military leader – I doubt purity laws affected her much – she was likely from a powerful family, with servants galore. I don’t know, but that is how I read it. Usually class trumps gender in the East.

In India, there is a beautiful state called Rajasthan. It means “land of the Emperors”. The enemies never managed a genocide of the Rajasthani royal wives and kids – this area was heavily attacked by warring states and Mogul emperors – because the wives and kids would go throw themselves on the funeral pyres, while the men rode out to suicide warfare. Just as bad as killing losing tribes in the OT.

Was pre-christian ancient near eastern fertility cult/ure dark? Well, different, yes. Dark, tough to say. The Hindus are today’s last remaining ancient fertility cult (temple prostitutes are still brought in from the untouchable castes in some temples annually). With the advent of Buddhism in 500 BC, it has changed a lot, but the ancient elements are still there – purity laws, temple priests who do goat sacrifices, phallic symbols, god and goddess consorts, etc. The Hindus never practiced Human sacrifice and that is why their religion survived past the rest of the ANE religions. Is Hinduism’s influence any darker on the population than non- Hindu poor countries, even Christian countries? – well, I’d prefer to visit Nepal over Afghanistan any day. Or Bali over Nicaragua. But, Hinduism binds people, as does complementarianism. In both cases, poverty heightens the difficulty of the oppressed, while the rich barely notice – Sonia Gandhi vs. the poor camel driver’s wife; Carolyn Mahaney vs. some young mom trying to escape an abusive church without her husband’s support.

Can’t say I love the OT the way Piper does, but I get it. It makes weird sense after living in India and Nepal among the devout Hindus. It sounds brutal, and was. But the young women use their impurity to there advantage. Try to remember, sexuality and marriage are completely separate in S. Asia. You marry who you are told. Women have sex to have sons. They often sleep in the *same room* as their father and mother-in-laws, and have sex with their husbands in the same room as their father and mother-in-laws and, in the camel driver’s case her brother-in-laws were in the room too. It freaks me out, really, but it was common. A break from the demands of his family is a benefit for the young wife, not a punishment. I am not sure the women in the OT hated the purity laws as much as we think they would have.

The rape laws are a whole other matter. Women are extreamly vulnerable in India today. We know nothing of Nepal, no woman reports it and the police are too corrupt, but in India, they were campaigning against the ill treatment of women. Women are treated as prostitutes as soon as it gets dark – 6 pm I learned. We (another lady and I) went into a local restaurant during the evening – still light out. We emerged to a different world at 6:30pm. Men were coming up to us, learning, gesturing and generally just pigs. The thing that threw us was, it was 40 min. later. When entering the restaurant, everything had been fine. Apparently, in Rajasthan, women don’t go out alone at night (night being dark). We, the other woman and I, ended up walking one of the girls who was a nurse to and from her job when she had night shift – since the men were attacking her. Our white skin stopped them from trying anything on the three of us, although their comments and gestures were annoying enough. We could walk that road an hour before one of the girls at the home had to be at work and, since it was still daylight, nothing at all happened. I can imagine the rules and restrictions OT women had to live under not to get a reputation. Life would have been terrifying for a widow and her children. A lady and her two daughters lived in our home because it became too dangerous for them to live alone, women always needed male protection in India. Westerners have to stay at western-only hotels, I imagine to protect female tourists from disrespecting men. It shows how vulnerable Ruth really was when she chose to follow Naomi back to Israel. Two women alone in the Mid East couldn’t have been safe for long.

One thing that keeps coming into my mind is the scene in My Fair Lady (film version) where Higgins lashes out at Eliza, nearly punching her in the face (hard). She ends up cowering on the floor in terror.

I think that’s *still* very relevant today – and probably a far more shocking scene when the film was initially released.

In other words… none of these things have conveniently disappeared; people are still doing them, here, now.

And you don’t even have to be a Reconstructionist to find a convenient out. There are far too many people who are willing to give such actions a pass.

A little off-topic (I’ve yet to get Rachel’s book, so haven’t read it), but I often wonder what made people like Doug Wilson so, well, nutty and anti-woman. Was he maybe beaten up by a pigtailed five year old girl and is spending his life trying to cover the humiliation with outdated masculine bravado?

Bruce K Waltke in his OT Theology makes the following worthwhile points.

He starts with this general observation.

The varied contemporary versions of feminism have had the heuristic value of reasserting the equality of women with men. Unfortunately, as has been documented many times, both the synagogue and the church have not only failed to proclaim this glad truth but have shouted it down. Those are black marks in sacred history. The error, however,lies in the interpreters of Scripture, not in the Holy Bible itself. If a rusty can (ie the church) lacks pure water (ie the truth) we don’t blame the water but the can.

He then notes the following.

Equality in Creation
In the first creation account, both men and women are created in God’s image. Together, as his image, they share his derivative authority to be culture makers. The second account reinforces this equality and clarifies t. When I AM says I will make a helper suitable for Adam’s, he means that he will form a woman who is equal to and adequate for the man. She stands opposite him in her sexual differentiation bit equal with him in her dignity as a human being. Adam’s words in response to her formation from his own body are the only human words preserved from before the Fall. Untouched by envy and/or a desire to dominate and control her, he celebrates with admiration their being family (ie of the closest woman relationships). this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh at the same time, he represents her sexual differentiation from him – she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man’. The rest of the OT reinforces women’s equality in being and in dignity with men. After Sarah overreacts to the arrogance of her maidservant Hagar and drives her out of Abraham’s house, the angel of I AM finds the runaway and speaks to her. Of the many thousands of Near Eastern texts, this is the only instance when a deity, or his messenger, calls a woman by her name and thereby invests her with dignity. Hagar is the OT counterpart to the Samaritan woman spoken to by Jesus in John 4.

Equality in Parenting
Mothers stand on equal footing with fathers in teaching their children.(Proverbs31:26) The father’s command to the son, do not forsake your mother’s teaching’ seems unexceptional until we realise that the mother is not mentioned as a teacher in ancient Near Eastern literature. For the mother to teach Israel’s inherited wisdom, she herself had first to be taught, suggesting that’son’ in the book of Proverbs is gender inclusive, not gender specific.

Equality in Charisma
In the OT, women are called to be’prophetesses,’ on an equal footing with prophets… Huldah is a most remarkable prophetess with regard to the question of women’s roles in worship and ministry. When Josiah’s workmen find the Book of the Low while they re repairing the temple, Josiah directs five leaders to enquire of I AM about the book. Instead of going to Jeremiah and Zephaniah, they go to their contemporary, Huldah, to verify the book.

Equality in Prayer
Covenant women pray directly to God without the priestly mediation of their husbands. (Contrast Jacob’s prayerlessness with Ramchel’s effectual prayer). Barren Hannah seeks dignity and worth through childbearing. She goes directly to God in prayer, independent from her husband and from the high priest, both of whom are insensitive to her need.

Equality in Worship
Women sing and dance in worship, expressions of the acme of life. Miriam and Deborah compose the two oldest pieces of literature preserved in the Bible, which are regarded by scholars as literary masterpieces. Women celebrate before IAM with singing, dancing, and tambourines, although they are not part of the temple choir. Women offer sacrifices and gifts along with men. The role of women in the NT is better known. Luke takes pains to stress the important role that women play on Paul’s second missionary journey when he establishes the church in Macedonia and Achaia. The apostle has a vision of a man of Macedonia begging him to come and help him, and when he arrives he finds women in prayer who become his first converts in Europe. Women engage in church authorised ministries: Phoebe, Priscilla, Euodia, and Syntache are celebrated as ‘ministers/courier’s (diakanos) or ‘co-workers’ (synergos).

However in the church,as represented in the NT, no woman is appointed tonaposition of authority over men. Rather, a woman is to keep silent in the church if she has a question about her husband’s prophecy; she should ask him about it at home.

The mutual submission of men and women to one another is unique to the NT. Their equality before God in their nature, spiritual gifts, and prayer is found in both testaments.

Regards
Gavin

Lynne at Mon Nov 26, 2012 at 09:50 PM :

…every group that tries to define “biblical womanhood” does so with an inconsistent hermeneutic, picking and choosing which ‘commands’ are still binding.

I not only agree, I’d say that every group that tries to define “biblical” anything does so in exactly the same way. It’s one thing to give an honest account for what I believe, drawn from scripture as I’ve come to understand it. It’s quite another for me, in pride and self-importance, to foist that on everyone else as though I alone had read the bible. That attitude is quite common in the young and over-zealous, because when you first discover something, you can get over-excited about it. Certainly, when I first became a christian and discovered that the bible is inspired by God, I went around lecturing a lot of christians who actually knew the bible a lot better than I did, and frankly were a lot more christ-like than I was. Fortunately I grew out of that phase. Unfortunately, some men who discover the bible at 18 years old do not, and go on to found megachurches named after planets.

Mara at 11:43 – I believe you are on the right lines when you talk about husbands having to develop self-control. But, speaking as a husband, and one whose wife is gorgeous at that, I think you can go a lot further. It’s not about developing sexual self-control, but about sexual self-giving. So; regardless of my needs, wants, etc – what are hers? How do I, as the head of the household (and I don’t apologise for Ephesians 5) see to it that my wife’s needs are holistically met; that she ends the day/week/year fulfilled and happy; etc etc. As Christ loved the church and gave himself for her – it’s no small thing. But men who declare themselves “Gospel™” through quoting the letter of the law will always be straining out gnats and swallowing camels.

“By the way, in spite of some reviewers claims otherwise, she does bring up the fact that Jesus, Himself, often disregarded the “rules” of the Old Testament (gathering food on a Sabbath).”

Just have to take a little beef with this comment – If Jesus disregarded the “rules”, meaning the law of the OT, then he could not be sinless and can not be our passover lamb! If, and perhaps this is what was meant to be said, Jesus disregarded all those extra “rules” the pharisees had regarding what you could and could not do on a Sabbath, then yes, Jesus was a rebel – rebelling against the commandments of men!

I really can’t wait to read this book. It addresses a subject that is so important and, despite the controversy, neglected. When I used to go to church the way the OT was addressed really troubled me sometimes. Something just didn’t feel right. People are used to feeling a sense of disconnect between Jesus ‘love your enemies and pray for those who perecute you’ Christ and the kinds of things that God oversaw in the OT. But it was never really addressed in any Bible studies or sermons. Maybe that’s just because of the kinds of churches I was going to, I don’t know.

Most of the preaching I’ve heard on the troubling bits of the OT just flattens it out and boxes it in, and pulls out some ham-fisted metaphors, and processes it to fit a certain set of preconceptions, much as Driscoll processed Esther. Pastors would preach sermons on the whole Joshua killing everyone episode and frame it as a straightforward example of how if we’re faithful to God, we’ll make it to the Promised Land (the Promised Land being symbolic of success of some kind, whether that’s spiritual, relationship, financial etc). And yet this is a frankly harrowing story. Nobody ever framed it as, say, an example of how faithfulness to God led to indiscriminate slaughter.(“Just as the Chosen People butchered the Caananite babies, so God will butcher the ‘babies’ of discouragement in your life!”). But if all you’re going to do with such a disturbing tale is draw out a nice simple life lesson, then why not? I’m not saying that the OT has no valuable lessons to teach but unless the violence of some parts is dealt with beyond ‘yeah, things were nasty back then but hey, Jesus showed up and made it all better!’ then the teaching will always be dissatisfying. Don’t just avoid the violence altogether, especially not if you teach the literal truth of these incidents, which they did.

And the women. It reached the point where it was really hard to open the gospels and read them when I knew that there was all this misogyny lurking back there just a few hundred pages earlier. Weirdly it seemed that no other female Christian I knew appeared bothered by this stuff, by the concubine raped to death and the daughters of Lot and so on. So I bought Phyllis Trible’s Texts of Terror, which helped a bit. But I wish churches would do more to help their congregations address this stuff. I just felt that I was supposed to act like it wasn’t there and it didn’t matter. And I couldn’t, because I’m a female and if I’d been born a bit earlier it could’ve been me getting chucked to a mob. There but for the grace of God go I. Shame he didn’t have the same grace for that raped concubine, but hey, that was the before Jesus! The moral of the story is that if we are ever confronted by the ‘raping mob’ of financial difficulty, God will provide us with a ‘concubine’ of distraction to throw to it so that we can get by with just a small house until we can afford a big one! (I’m kidding of course; a lot of leaders would never even touch that story to begin with, let alone give it enough attention to totally mess it up).

Nicholas, I guessed as much. It wasn’t a mega church but it wanted to be one. I don’t think the preaching deliberately took that sort of character; I think it’s just that that kind of thing was all anyone knew. A lot of Christians approach the Bible in a similar way, in a sort of verse-for-the-day-ahead way, no matter whether it’s OT or NT, and regardless of any other considerations, knowing no other way to read it. I always read it that way when I went to church and then I just stopped reading it altogether.

(although I get that ‘you go girl’ is probably a more accurate interpretation of the sentiment)

Dee:

No one who want to keep his or her job dares to publicly cross Paige Patterson about anything he does or does not do. This may sound like to strong of a statement, but their is a long list of people who lost their situations either directly or indirectly due to this one person.

He is virtually untouchable in the Southern Baptist Universe.

Val, 2:54 AM

Yes, you go girl. I commented on what HUG said about those being dark times and I love his quote from Harry Potter every time he uses it.
So I focused on the darkness of that time.
But even as I wrote it, my mind kept coming back up to our own times and the darkness that is present all around us, manifested differently in different cultures, including our own.
For example, how rape is handled in some Muslim countries where the woman is punished and the men go free, or even the attitude that many have about rape here where the woman is still blamed for how she dressed or where she was, or whatever.

Gavin White, 6:24 AM, I also loved your comment. God instructed the Children of Israel to honor their fathers AND their mothers. Sometimes I think the Neo-Patriarchs miss how glaringly counter culture this was back in the hey day of patriarchy rule and how much this command kicks the feet out from under their assertion that God wants to establish ‘biblical’ patriarchy in our world.

And Nick Bulbeck at 7:09, I appreciate your comment. In my day job in social work, we work very hard with parents, who have lost their children to the state, to try to get them to the level of minimal parenting, up from the substandard parenting that caused them to lose their children. So, sometimes, when I see the substandard manhood and ‘husbandry’ displayed by the likes of Driscoll, I point it out for what it is, abuse and un-Christian. And I call upon them to repent from their substandard manhood and step up to at least a minimal level of husbandry, which would include leaving their wives the heck alone when they don’t feel good and stop demanding that these wives open themselves up for what some would consider to be the sin of sodomy.
But in truth, I agree with you, minimal husbandry or wifery is just that. Minimal, just barely getting by. God didn’t call us to that, just getting by. He has called us to live more abundantly.

Sophie, that story on the concubine in Judges… — Retha

An old RSV of mine has this notation on the top of the page in Judges:

A Horrible Crime

A crime so horrible it is still remembered OVER THREE THOUSAND YEARS LATER.

The crazy thing is, the reconstructionist guys ACTUALLY think this stuff was just part of a well-ordered, godly society, and that this society WILL be reestablished on earth. — Looking for You

With themselves on top as God’s Anointed, of course.

Val,

That was a fascinating and helpful description of life for women in India.

You said, “I am not sure the women in the OT hated the purity laws as much as we think they would have.”

I have wondered this as well. Certain commands that sound repressive to us may have actually had an element of mercy to them. I imagine it could have been a relief for women to be told that they could not participate in religious activities or really interact with others when they were bleeding (they certainly didn’t have the “feminine products” we have to day and it must have been very uncomfortable), or when they were recovering from childbirth.

I have wondered something similar about the passages about Levites with defects not being allowed to do priestly duties, which Dee has mentioned several times. Perhaps those “blemishes” were disabilities that would have made the duties of priesthood (which were rigorous, I’m sure) extremely difficult for those men. I noted that they were still to be allowed to EAT the offerings and were to be cared for – maybe it was the OT equivalent of receiving disability benefits?

Maybe disallowing women (who were often bleeding or recovering from childbirth) and disabled/defected men from various religious activities was not so much about THEM making GOD unclean by approaching him, but more to do with God wanting to protect his character as MERCIFUL in providing rest for the weary? However I am sure that men completely misunderstood God’s intentions, if that was the case…

Thanks, Retha, I’ll have a look at that. I think that one of the things that bothered me most when I read that story was the bit where they go to ask God if they should fight against the tribe of Benjamin and God says ‘yes’. But the woman’s husband/master was just as responsible for refusing to defend her and for pushing her out the door. I just wonder why God didn’t acknowledge the man’s guilt and say ‘hang on, that’s no way to treat a woman! This man must pay the price, too’ or something. Combined with the story of Lot and his daughters, it just seems as if God was happy to accept the formula that when a gang of vicious thugs gather round your house demanding sex, you should push the nearest women out the door and batten down the hatches til morning.

“An old RSV of mine has this notation on the top of the page in Judges:

A Horrible Crime”

HUG,

The note I wrote in my bible was “everyone is the villain.” Every character in that horrible story was the villain. There were no heroes. I think there were a few other stories in Judges where I wrote this notation as well.

I don’t pretend to know the reasons for everything in the OT. What I do know is that we read a lot of things through the eyes of a totally different culture and completely misunderstand it – plus accidently or purposefully miss parts that do not fit the picture people want to make.
For example, the “raped in the city and stoned with rapist if she do not cry out” part: The city at the time when that law was given was a bunch of non-soundproof tents, rather close together. If you wanted to be alone with a partner for you-know-what, you would, more often than not, not be two people entering a previously unoccupied tent, but would have to tell some other people: “Would you mind getting out? The two of us want to be alone.”
In a non-soundproof lots-of-people-close-together environment, people will hear it if a woman screams.
And if it was out in the field – far enough that nobody will hear her, the law say her word should be taken on face value, and he is to be regarded as guilty. Yet nobody say the Bible is anti-man for taking woman’s words on face value, and killing an alleged rapist on a woman’s word.
Nor could you ask: “what about a mute woman who did not shout?” The rabbi’s did not interpret the law in a wooden literal way, but tried to understand the principle behind the law. The mute woman – unless the rabbi is an idiot – would have been safe.

As for polygamy, in a world so bad that women need male protection, polygamy is the best imperfect solution there is. Are there a few rich, rather even-tempered guys in your ancient village that could afford 4 wives and 11 children, and would treat women rather well? Is there a moody drunkard in town that nobody wants to marry, or were there three men of your tribe killed in the last battle? With polygamy, all women could shun the bad guy and marry the better one, and there are still men to go around when your husband is killed in a battle.

Don’t ask me why God allowed everything He allowed in the OT. But I know that the mere cultural gap between me and them is so big that if I try to judge why, I will miss a lot of reasons that the people of the time would have partially understood.

There is one problem I have with reports on Rachel’s book. Whether it is Rachel or the reports, a lot of it say “God commanded this in the OT,” when much of it was allowed and not commanded, and some points less than true. For example, the Bible does not teach, as far as I know, that women should not own property. I think of Judges 1:15, the daughters of Zelophehad http://biblicalpersonhood.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/rumors-of-gods-patriarchalism-have-been-greatly-exaggerated-part-1-zelophehads-daughters/, the Proverbs 31 woman who bought a field. Nor does it teach she is property.

“…the law say her word should be taken on face value, and he is to be regarded as guilty. Yet nobody say the Bible is anti-man for taking woman’s words on face value, and killing an alleged rapist on a woman’s word.”

Excellent point, Retha.

Again I am so grateful for Wesleyan theology.

The idea that revelation was progressive handles so much of the angst over the old testament.

I think Mara gets it right–we dare not try to read the OT in the light of today’s society, but must read it in the light of the society of the time.

What may seem cruel and barbaric compared to how we handle things post Jesus would have been kind and affirming pre Jesus.

Even “eye for and eye” can seem barbaric to us. However, back then it was literally a Godsend. No longer could I kill you because you made a snide comment about me.

Barbarism was the law of the land, and these “barbaric” OT rules were such a huge step towards holiness and justice.

I’m just glad God is patient with us and gives us time to change our cultures.

It seems that most of the time I hear somebody trying to drag us “back to scripture,” they’re usually trying to push a somewhat recent doctrinal innovation.

Just a thought…….but I wonder if polygamy was a way for a man to have sex when wifey#1 was having her period, and wifey#2 just had a baby, so maybe he needs to visit #3? Gotta have it…………

I have not yet read the book but I read RHE’s blog and excerpts and watched her interviews.
I would like to comment on viewing the Old Testament from the perspective of the New. I agree with Linda, there is a progression. There are a few things I have come to understand. I realize that letting go of some traditional views goes along with seeing things in a fresh light.
Jesus said that “No one knows the Father but the Son…”. This means that everyone, including Abraham, David, and the prophets, sees God the wrong way. Jesus alone reveals the Father’s heart toward us because He was with the Father before the foundation of the universe. It is a loving, compassionate, merciful heart, not the way religion has portrayed it.
At the Fall, Adam and Eve painted the face of God with their own shame and fear, now seeing him as angry and vengeful. God did not change because of their sin but came to them as usual to find them cowering in terror in the bushes. He lovingly made clothes for them and made statements about the consequences of their actions. Their sin changed them not God. He could have given the ten commandments to Adam and Eve then but instead let them find out for themselves that the knowledge of good and evil does not produce peace with God. They were told to stay away from that tree. That is where religion started as humanity tried to find ways to please God and get back to him. Throughout the stories in the OT and the history of Israel, if we remember that humanity had a very distorted picture of God and were trying to live from their evil conscience (knowledge of good and evil) we can see the kinds of relationships they had and how the weak were treated by those who had power. Because they wanted their God at a distance, then we can see how He was gradually teaching them the vocabulary of sin, holiness, sacrifice, redemption and their need for a Savior in the context of a nation that was to be an example.
God let humanity try to live independently for a long time. Many thought they had all the rules down pat and were pleasing to God and others felt themselves failures without hope. That is what religion does. When Jesus died at the hands of an angry mob of humanity, God was reconciling the world to himself in their darkest moment. Jesus said, “Father forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing.” From the perspective of my relationship with the Father, Son and Spirit based on Jesus finished work, I can look at the stories in the OT and say “They didn’t know what they were doing.” They didn’t know the Father.

“For the people with the deepest faith, the Bible is something with which to wrestle. That is the problem with the Calvinistas. They don’t struggle.”

Dee, you’re right. They don’t struggle, they don’t encourage others to struggle, it is only SUBMIT SUBMIT SUBMIT. Being a calvinista was intellectually very easy for me – it seemed so logical, all the puzzle pieces fell together so flawlessly, gaps filled in with “God is the potter, we are the clay, who are we to question?” Thing is, when tragedy struck and made me stagger back a few steps, the big picture looked so… ugly. It was like doing a sudoku puzzle (anyone else do those?), having almost all the blanks filled in, and then realizing that somewhere along the line you put a wrong number in and you’ve “solved” nearly the entire puzzle based on the wrong premise. Best to just erase it all and start over.

So, yeah, struggling. It’s hard. But on the plus side, I’ve never felt so alive. Being alive is harder than being dead, and when I think back on my calvinista years, dead would be a good way to describe my faith.

About 5 years ago I made an uneasy peace with the OT after much study and research. Just a few things that helped me and I am NOT saying that any of it fits anyone elses paradigms of the OT. I simply offer it as part of my journey and if it helps anyone else, Praise God:

-Coming to grips that even the seekers and other free will people, like Patterson in the SBC, trotted out certain OT views that fit their paradigm for comp doctrine and tithing.
-Studying God’s Word to Women by Bushnell really helped me see some of the problems with OT interpretations. I often think of Isaiah 3:12 and what Bushnells research uncovered about the horrible translation that contradicts other parts of the OT. There are many like this but give this a read:
http://godswordtowomen.org/lesson_77.htm
-Realizing I had a totally wrong view of the Mosaic Law. This one deserves some explanation and I am sure I don’t get it all correct because it is a work in progress. I can remember reading through Leviticus several times before it hit me upside the head. I then connected some NT passage dots that made me realize something important: The Law was more about leading people to“God time” in a sense. Reading Leviticus makes you realize that from the moment they woke up to when they went to sleep, it was part of their life.
Map that to what we are told about the law being a “tutor” in the NT. As I researched that concept in Roman society, the tutor was not a teacher like we would think of today. The tutor was someone who “kept children out of trouble” so to speak. They might follow the children and make sure they did not get lost or fall into a ditch or something. They were a sort of guide/protector. I started seeing the law that way in converse to how the pagans at the time lived. It also fits in with the idea of the “spirit” of the law not the “letter”.
If Jesus kept the law perfectly and picked grain or “worked” on the Sabbath, then obviously the law was misapplied and even used for evil by mere men. So what else is new?
I just started adding up all these dots that started mapping them to each other. Then I started thinking how we view God. If we are using the Calvin lens to view God, then everything is pre determined and decreed and that poor concubine’s gruesome treatment and violent death was decreed by God. If we do not view God as a determinist decreetal God, then we can see it another way. God working through and around a very stiff necked people who were acting like their pagan neighbors.
Yet, I also accept ALL of God’s attributes including His wrath and justice. I tend to agree with Linda concerning progressive revelation. For one thing, only after the cross are we sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in believers. The indwelling God who first built earth as a dwelling place, then the temple……. and now WE are His dwelling place if saved.
We tend to forget, or at least I do, that NO one in the OT was saved by the law but by faith. We also tend to forget that just how evil the results of the fall were. Satan roaming this earth. And he really hates women because Messiah will come forth from her and bruise him by carrying and delivering to us the Messiah who conquers death. Satan loves death.

“Remember a few years ago when that Danish cartoonist drew those cartoons of Muhammad. And many Muslims flipped? And leading Islamic clerics went ballastic. THAT’s how I see Danny Burk, John Piper, Al Mohler and crowd.”

That’s a good comparison Eagle. Of course in our country (because it IS a free country, and not one based on their idea of how things should be run) they can’t physically hurt anyone. But they are trying hard to put RHE’s words and ideas and reputation to death. And making themselves look jaw-droppingly silly in the process…

They are like boys playing baseball, refusing to actually play against the girls team for fear of losing. They just keep their distance and poke fun instead.

Dee:

You said to Nicholas:

” Nicholas

How about firing a female professor because she is female and leaving her to find medical covergae for her severely sick husband? Not burning down buildings, mind you, but effectively hurting someone.”

All in the name of gawd and I am being very sarcastic. He destroys her life and career and just walks away from it and dares anyone of the “brothers” to say a word and they do not for fear of something similar happening to them.

It is all unbelievable.

They set up a false dichotomy because it works. If you discuss her book then you automatically agree with her and are one of her followers. If you denounce her book, then you are one of them. They have been doing variations of this “either/or” theme for years. Because it has worked well. — Anon1

“TRAITOR! THOUGHT-CRIMINAL! RACHELHELDEVANS-GOLDSTEINIST!!!”

“If Mark Driscoll teaches that women are sluts and whores like he did in calling Esther a Jewish whore…does that mean your wife is a whore or a slut becuase she’s a woman?” — Eagle

*********(ed)
GOD HATH WILLED IT!

If education is such a major issue with RHE then why does this crowd cuddle and hold CJ Mahaney? — Eagle

“TOUCH NOT GAWD’S ANOINTED!!! DO GAWD’S PROPHET NO HARM!!!”
Plus see below:

All in the name of gawd and I am being very sarcastic. He destroys her life and career and just walks away from it and dares anyone of the “brothers” to say a word and they do not for fear of something similar happening to them. — Mot

Ever heard of the phrase “Make an Example of one, cow a hundred”?

Denny Burk sided with Paige Patterson and SWBTS over the firing of Sheri Klouda: http://www.dennyburk.com/more-on-sheri-klouda/ See the comments.

From a book of interesting graffiti I used to own:

MEN ARE FROM EARTH. WOMEN ARE FROM EARTH. DEAL WITH IT.

🙂

I found the portion of the book on Proverbs 31 interesting. It isn’t used as a guideline for how ‘biblical women are to be – as it is taught within some christian circles. Since it is OT she looked to how the Jewish tradition sees this scripture.

In the Jewish tradition it is sung by the husband to the wife out of gratitude for being whom she is. Thank you for being my Proverbs 31 woman in other words.

Funny how it is used to show you HOW you should be in some circles, and in others? Thank you for whom you are.

Very telling I must say. Could be they got mad because they didn’t wish for that to be pointed out. The fact they have been ‘using’ that scripture in some circumstances to shame. How it is to be used to encourage. Their response shows how they don’t like being corrected it seems to me.

The God who mandated these rules is still the same God that we follow today. However, it seems to me that most people in the church blow them off with a “Jesus changed all that so move along.” Could it be that some of the anger directed towards Evans is due to the fact that she brings up very uncomfortable passages?

I completely agree with this. Calvinistas love to quote the OT when it suits their purpose, but they won’t confront the uncomfortable passages in the OT nor try to explain how this God can be the same one in the NT, since they believe that the words in the OT and NT are the words God wanted in there.

There are many such passages in the OT in addition to the ones RHE deals with, a prime example being the genocide ordered by God against the Canaanites, including the slaughter of women and children. Another is this passage from Jeremiah 19:9 where God tells the Israelites they will suffer a number of punishments for worshiping other gods, including this one, one that bothers me to no end:

And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and all shall eat the flesh of their neighbours in the siege, and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their life afflict them.

Calvinistas love to proclaim the “perspicuity” (clarity) of Scripture, but it’s easy to do so when you refuse to engage the tough issues dismiss those like RHE who aren’t afraid to.

Learned Christian theologians have been addressing these “tough issues” for centuries, long before RHE was on the scene.

To suggest that the OT God could be different from the NT God is the heresy of Marcion, who taught that the OT God was evil.

God made His will clear to the Israelites time and again: Don’t worship false gods.

Here again is evidence that conservative Christians can address straitforwardly the “difficult” passages such as the conquest of Canaan: http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=3262

RE: Looking for You on Mon Nov 26,2012 at 11:56 PM,

“…Some days I really want to just give up and walk away rather than keep trying to put this crazy puzzle together…”

You don’t have to walk away from Jesus, he will never walk away from you. You can however, drain the bathwater and rid yourself of what others claim you must believe. Listen to your inner core and the divine spark you do have, and like Jiminy Cricket once said, let your conscience be your guide.

@mot

The SBC’ers attacked Sheri Klouda instead:

http://peterlumpkins.typepad.com/peter_lumpkins/2008/03/dr-sheri-klouda.html

http://pastortimrogers.com/?cat=97

Anon 1,
Good post about Bushnell, I cried when I first discovered her book was on the internet. I hadn’t known there were so many great educated scholars like her when I was searching all this out with my cumbersome lexicons,dictionaries, translations,etc. It’s horrible how the evangelical world has hid these writings from us. I immediately ordered and devoured her book. But I was glad to have already done so much research on my own so that I am able to have come to some even different conclusions on a few minor nuances of the gender “debate.”
If anyone wants to read her book you can find it free on the internet. Katherine Bushnell, God’s Word to Women.

Nicholas:

You said:”The SBC’ers attacked Sheri Klouda instead:

http://peterlumpkins.typepad.com/peter_lumpkins/2008/03/dr-sheri-klouda.html

http://pastortimrogers.com/?cat=97”

Yep–these two guys are a loving bunch–NOT!!!!

Dee…I now see you peeking out of the leg hole of a gargantuan green velour leisure suit that you’ve taken to hiding out in… just how big is that thing? 😉

After being educated on how evil the Afgan women and girls are treated and the percentage of female suicides and horrific failed attempts at burning themselves to death, I suppose it’s all relative to one’s life on if God was wrong for wiping out evil nations. If I was one of those Muslim girls I might just tell God “bombs away!” If you don’t even have any concept of a better life anywhere…I mean God heard SOMEone crying out from Sodom and Ghomorra, and Ninevah. Maybe Canaan too?. But don’t mistake me for someone who says natural disasters are striking certain areas because of God punishing. I think Jesus makes it clear we are not to judge that. But we already have witnessed what the Islamic ALLAH and Satan will do for a thrill. Kill, steal and destroy.

Anon 1, I’d heard a little bit about Dr Bushnell before and knew that she was a missionary. I heard somewhere that she started studying Greek and Hebrew because she was horrified that when the Chinese she was a missionary to converted to Christianity only for the women to find themselves in just as much bondage as before, if not more so. And that really struck a chord with me because for a long time I swept all my discomfort with the gender stuff in the Bible under the rug, until one day I began to think ‘what if you preached this stuff in a patriarchal culture? What if you preached it to people in a certain African village, for example, where a woman wanted to start her own home business but her husband or father wouldn’t let her? Would the teachings of the Bible – ‘wives, submit to your husbands’ and ‘I do not permit a woman to have authority over a man’ etc, help her? Would they bring freedom and equality to the women of that village?’ And I concluded that the teachings as I was taught them would leave the women in bondage, and that those teachings were only relatively benign in a modern, western democratic context.

So hearing about Dr Bushnell was great because not only did that same thought occur to her way before me, but she already did all the hard work of turning that ‘no’ into a ‘yes’!

Dee wrote, “Then she turns her attention to 1 Peter 2-1 Peter 3 and makes an interesting observation. Slaves are admonished to submit to their masters in I Peter 2:13. Then, 1 Peter 3 turns to married women using the words  “in the same way submit yourself to your husband.” Could it be that this passage is telling women to submit like slaves did? But today, isn’t slavery outlawed? Yet, women are to continue to submit like slaves? Slavery is now a heinous, outmoded institution but women must still submit in the same way? There is some food for thought here.”
I’ve been thinkiing about this and would appreciate other’s thoughts- esp. Dee and RHE (have not read the book). It appears (and I stress appears) as if Dee or RHE is doing a Piperism with this passage. Let me explain. In Piper’s best-seller he quotes from Eph 5 “Wives, submit to your husbands…for the husband is head of the wife”. He leaves out the “AS UNTO THE LORD” motive/condition. Peter likewise has a motive/condition in between the slaves and wives passages, and in fact throughout the letter— Be subject FOR THE LORD’S SAKE to every human institutuon– I E because the Lord suffered unjustly, under wicked men for their sake, we ought to do the same. I haven’t studied commentaries yet, but it seems this is what Peter may mean by “Likewise” for both husbands and wives– like Christ. Slaves may be outlawed but Christ is not! So here’s the “rub” for me. I find myself *Appalled* over Piper and Patterson’s advice to domestic violence victims, but— should I be, based on I Peter? I think Peter’s description of Christ’s own suffering (some of the most beautiful/powerful words in scripture) and our imitation can’t be easily glossed over as cultural and certainly not as “Old Testament”! But I confess I pick and choose in this. I imagine I’d suffer persecution and martyrdom from ungodly rulers and kings, if necessary, but have sought my rights when bosses were unfair (failing to apply the “slaves” passage). I apply Peter’s advice to me as a husband to live considerately with my wife. I fall so short in this area I wouldn’t dream of *teaching* her on calling me “Lord” or being more modest (I joke about the “or of putting on of apparel” in the KJV). Still, for Christ-following women suffering under unbelieving and abusive husbands, it’s serious.

Dave,

Slavery didn’t become a bad thing, it has always been a bad thing, so when Peter exhorts slaves to obey their masters and is presumably speaking for God…it presents a whole different problem.

170 comments the first time I read the post. Who can keep up???

Oh, so many places to start….

Re interpretation of the Scriptures, this is indeed an argument that has actually been going on for centuries:

1. The church had to decide early on which writings to include in the Bible. However if you’ve read any of the apocryphal stuff, then I think the choice they made back in the early church was pretty good :-).
2. The Gnostics simply took the bits of the Scripture they liked and wrote the rest off, including in some cases the whole of the OT.
3. Quite a few of the early church fathers, including most notably Origen, got around the difficult or apparently unattractive parts of the OT by introducing the idea of allegory. This may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but reading some of their allegorical interpretations now you may find them a bit fanciful to say the least.
4. Others such as John Chrysostom decided that the text meant what it said, which is probably the position closest to the general understanding in mainstream churches, at least Protestant and Catholic.
5. Position 4 had more or less been accepted (as far as I understand) by the end of the Reformation period, but in the 18th and more particularly 19th century the “Higher Criticism” began to question the accuracy of the original documents, etc, etc, leading to a lot of debate on presuppositions, textual criticism, etc, etc.
6. Although it is popularly believed that Darwin shook the belief in a “literal” belief in Genesis, this is actually a misconception – geologists, including many Christian ministers, had decided decades before based on new research that the earth was older than, say, the popular suggestion by Ussher.
7. Neverthless YEC beliefs were not part of early 20th century fundamentalism, and are normally a secondary issue in most evangelical circles. For example a well-known proponent of biblical inerrancy, Jim Packer, wrote in “Fundamentalism and the Word of God” that attempts to make Scripture teach science had generally not worked out (or words to that effect).
8. To make your confusion complete, we could also throw in the distinction made by neo-Orthodox such as Karl Barth between the Bible and the “Word of God”, but I’m too tired to try to illuminate that one ;-).

So there you have several positions, at least 1 of which (no. 2) and I suspect others would be unacceptable now to most of us.

Re the story of the concubine and the Levite, I agree it is gross. It troubled me when I first read as I wondered if God was condoning it. However I have now come to believe that as the whole Book of Judges paints a very dark picture of that section of Israel’s history, the story is an indication of how far morally God’s people had gone astray. It does seem similar to the Sodom and Gomorrah episode in Gen 19, and I wonder if the parallel is deliberate.

Re the slaughter of Jericho and other Canaanite cities, I would not want to gloss over it either. It is fearful, and no such action could be condoned today – any such exegesis allowing such an action would be totally wrong. In the early OT there was no intimation of individual life after death, so to be killed under God’s wrath in this life was supposed to be a sign of judgement. In the New Testament, judgement is rather seen as coming after death – so whether someone dies young, is killed or lives to a great age and fabulous riches is no indication of either God’s blessing or his judgement.

But really we’re in deep waters here. Maybe I’m not qualified to discuss it, not being a Biblical scholar or having any knowledge of the Biblical languages. These are just my opinions.

Nicholas,

On what basis do I reject slavery?

Morality, when applied to an action reflects only the success of that action in attaining a goal. In the absence of a particular goal, saying that something is moral or not, doesn’t make any sense.

Assuming that I want to live in a society where people respect each other and where each individual is free to live and have control over their own life, the act of slavery would not be something which would promote or help people attain that kind of society, hence “immoral”, but it doesn’t imply some type of spiritual notion of good or evil.

(Dee, I so wish you had a spare room so I wouldn’t feel guilty about answering questions and hijacking the thread) 🙂

SMG, A friend in England scanned an NT Wright article where he mentions Phoebe in that context. Wright made it clear that there was more to delivering the letter than just dropping it off. For Taylor to use that insult with no backing is so typical. She is a woman, that is all the matters to make her being mentioned a problem.

Is Justin that ignorant he can ignore the cultural implications and what is in the letter? in that day and time. She woudl be expected to read and explain as Pauls messenger. . Phoebe is described IN the letter as not only a deacon but a protasis (sp?) which is a patron/benefactor of Paul and the church. Paul is building her up in that letter as someone to listen to.

Fendrel,

So your particular goal is to “live in a society where people respect each other and where each individual is free to live and have control over their own life.” But someone else might have a goal to create an unequal society where every caste had its assigned place, and for them it would be immoral to obstruct this goal.

You may personally reject slavery, but you have no basis, according to your own worldview, of saying that it has always been wrong. It can only be wrong to you. It might be right for someone else.

Critics of the Scripture seem to want St. Peter to have advocated a slave revolt, which would have been a good way of getting the slaves all killed.

Nicholas,

Yes and no…

Do you believe that there are people in the world, who if asked, would say that their idea of a perfect, idyllic, flourishing society, would be a place where most people went hungry every day, where terror and anarchy reigned, where people had no rights to anything, where murder and rape were encouraged.

Unless that person was very very demented, I think you can count on them not wanting to live in that kind of a world. We may disagree on what actions will bring us into a perfect world, and there are probably multiple paths to take, but I don’t think it is much of a stretch to say that the vast majority of earths population would envision a very similar goal.

Just finished Rachel’s book and am a big fan of it. I thought Mary Kassian’s review of the book had some fair points too. Here’s a link if anyone has not read it yet for themselves. http://www.girlsgonewise.com/review-of-a-year-of-biblical-womanhood/

I’ve been reading Philip Jenkins’ Laying Down the Sword – Why We Can’t Ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses recently, and think it’s good. He does tend to use the historical-critical approach, but I think his discussion of many issues (including genocide in Joshua and other OT books) is very thought-provoking and definitely worthy of consideration. (am leaning more toward historical-critical with many OT texts these days myself, but that’s just me.)

*

Another thought I had: Jesus constantly put himself in a position where he was talking to – and caring for – people who were marginalized. So… today’s equivalent to the rich young ruler of Luke could very well be a neo-Nazi skinhead, or… [fill in the blank].

What if we actually saw someone put aside their prejudices and hatred to follow Jesus? Could that change our hearts and minds?

I think RHE’s experiments/explorations are meant to help people think and act outside the box… very much in the same way that she did, throughout the course of the year she documents in the book. Am thinking that I need to do something – however small – as a takeaway after finishing the book.

Hmm…

Kassian must have found my comments on TGC blogs. She just posted a comment on my blog 20 min. ago saying she will pass along my suggestion to powers that be that they include “notifying authorities” in the CBMW Statement of Abuse.

http://bgbcsurvivors.blogspot.com/2012/11/complementarians-speak-out-about.html?showComment=1354062117178#c6121419599174337603

BTW, Dee – go check out Jeff Crippen’s site. He tears apart Grudem’s statement that Kassian posted in her article. Wow, it’s good and look at the responses!

http://cryingoutforjustice.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/abuse-and-divorce-wayne-grudem-and-the-council-for-biblical-manhood-and-womanhood-still-say-no/

I agree, numo. It did not engage the book in any substantive way.

I enjoyed this book very much (even though really, Dan should have been the one on the roof! #minor pet peeve)

Deb – – I find it interesting that they must have all gotten the same memo on the women/abuse day = perhaps a PR attempt to clean up their image based on some of their own from TGC being involved in an abuse lawsuit? If they looked at the site site, they would have read this:

“Millions of women and girls around the world are assaulted, beaten, raped, mutilated or even murdered in what constitutes appalling violations of their human rights.

So, it makes me think they got a specifically worded memo to focus on the subject of spousal abuse. I wonder if it’s all about the complementarian debate floating around that made them focus solely on wives instead of the more broad issue of the abuse of women/girls, because we see all the references to CBMW. BTW, why is it CBMW instead of CBWM? Gentlemen usually say ladies first.

Caleb W – somehow, I don’t think that complaining about an author being selective in quoting counts as a “review.” (I’m sure RHE had a word limit, like any other writer, for one.)

Anon 1:

I think these guys think–just a little PR and all this will go away.

Why are these men really in the ministry?

Thanks Patti for the commentary. Your view is most helpful!

Anon 1, these young men are not old enough to be Biblically qualified pastors/elders.

There is a parallel phenomenon in the IFB world: http://jeriwho.net/lillypad2/?p=2511

Dear Patti
I’ll try and respond more fully re:men and authority over women soon but I’m a bit busy just now.
Dear Fendrel
You make the same mistake regarding slavery as you do on other subjects but it’s nice to see your honesty in admitting your intention of hijacking the blog.
Dear Kolya
Good points!
Regards
Gavin

Anon 1:

How did these 20 years old in the Southern Baptist Convention get the point of being a know it all and yes I am being sarcastic, but I believe this is what they have been taught? They are the rulers and not servants.

Dear Hester
At 6.22 pm yesterday to dee “hijack the thread”
Best wishes
Gavin

I can understand why some Christian blogs might not want atheists to comment, because if you’re discussing something like, say, arminianism and calvinism, it isn’t constructive or helpful or relevant to have lots of atheists chime in with ‘They both sound ridiculous to us atheists! There is no sky fairy/ bronze age sky god/ spaghetti monster etc etc…’. But Fendrel doesn’t generally respond that way.

Thanks folks! Dee, I am s glad to know now that I have a purpose 🙂

Sophie, you are right, there are times when I read an article here and do not chime it, for the exact reason you mentioned. On the other hand please recall that I was a born-again Christian for 25 odd years, and I lived and breathed those same discussions on a daily basis…so sometimes it is hard to resist. 🙂

Gavin,
I always enjoy the sparring, but sometimes I get the sense that it is me and not my arguments you are debating with…I have no “agenda” other than to inject a third option into the fray of opinions. Having been a Christian I know how easy it is to make that first assumption of God’s existence without even realizing it.

Feeling extra good this morning…yesterday a young woman on Twitter mentioned that was have a bad day and thoughts of suicide, All we knew about her is that her profile had the word “Scotland” and her blogspot address as a .uk domain. So last night around midnight, I decided it would be prudent to phone the police in Scotland (just try and find that phone # on google) (Not Scotland Yard mind you, that’s in England). Finally found them, a wonderful woman dispatcher took my call…anyway…long story everything turned out alright, woman was very apologetic this morning, was just having a rotten day. Better safe than sorry! Anyway…celebrating with an English muffin and cream cheese! Enjoy!

See Dee, if you had an “atheist’s corner”, then we could move those discussions out of the main threads. 🙂

I haven’t had time to read any of the comments on this article yet. But I did want to say thanks to Dee for writing it. Eshet chayil! You’re a woman of valor! 🙂 And I also wanted to say that I have read the book and I absolutely love it. It made me think and it made me laugh. Maybe that’s what her critics are afraid of.

Many churches give a Sunday school class or two on “how to witness to an atheist’ giving a few talking points. ” These talking points are often easily dispatched for a well educated atheist. — Dee

You’ve never seen a Campus Crusade “Witnessing Class”, have you? Looking back on them, they are literally PAINFUL to recall. It was memorized canned spiels — one for Atheists, one for Muslims, one for Mormons, one for Catholics, follow the script, close the sale, Always Be Closing.

And the “practice exercises” always followed the script, too. Just like a Jack Chick tract with an Altar Call Ending. No resistance, no actual pushback, the “heathen” in the exercise would give a couple canned responses then break down (convinced by the Witnessing and Convicted by the Holy Spirit(TM)) and Say the Magic Words at the end. I knew several skeptics & gamers, and I KNEW how the canned spiel would go over on them. (Hint: very different from the “heathen” in the “Witnessing Practice exercises”.)

Like I said, it was PAINFUL to watch when you had some real experience outside of Crusade. You can’t tell how an engine is performing until you put it under actual load, and these “Witnessing Classes” NEVER put you under any actual load or actual resistance.

It is most amusing when the neo-atheists attempt to say that Stalin was a Christian. He is no more a Christian than Richard Dawkins is a small group leader. — Dee

“He’s an Obvious Big Name Bad Guy, so he HAS to be a Christian! Not one of Us! Not one of Us! Gooble! Gobble! Not one of Us!”

Sort of the flip side of the “All Great Men Were One of Us” myth. And tunnel vision about a traditional enemy. Maybe a little Conspiracy Theory, seeing the traditional enemy lurking everywhere.

And you don’t have to be Christian or Muslim to be a Fundamentalist/Calvinista about your belief system.

Sophie,

My pleasure, I am glad it worked out alright. Hey, just for fun, thought you might get a kick out of this (The UK explained)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10

Taking God’s name in vain is a very serious sin. The frequency that people committ it dulls them to the magnitude of it. Many people somehow think that sins committed solely against God are not as bad as sins committed against other people. This is not true.

Fendrel @ 10:18am –

I’m well aware that Dee can speak for herself, but really?!? You added quite a bit of nonesense to what she actually said. I found your comment quite twisted, actually. Look at what she does. She and Deb actually “do good” with their efforts to provide a platform here at TWW. Many people have been helped and/or gone on to healthier places. Actions often speak louder than words.

Mara, indeed. Mark Driscoll will answer to God for his heresy and perversion. Is Driscoll even saved? I have no idea. But I am starting to consider him a “false brethren.”

Nicholas, as a studier of the Song of Solomon, no one has been more enraged at Driscoll than myself. A book that I look upon as being able to help heal and restore people, women in particular, Driscoll twisted it into marriage porn and used it to manipulate women into becoming their husbands’ personal whores, complete with strip teases and commanded BJs. It was like a slap in the face, and even pigs blood in the Holy of Holies when I was made aware of his teachings.

I went through a very angry phase which can be seen on my blog in 2009.

Even so, I cannot go as far as questioning his salvation. He’s delusional and on a slippery slope. I might call him a false brother because he does not behave as a brother to his Christian sisters in the sex and marriage department. But I still have to leave whether or not he is saved in the hand of his Maker.
I guess my own salvation has been questioned by those who didn’t agree with me and I knew that those judging me didn’t know my heart so I am very careful with that concerning others.

Driscoll twisted it into marriage porn and used it to manipulate women into becoming their husbands’ personal whores, complete with strip teases and commanded BJs. — Mora

Make that “Fifty Shades of BeeJay Driscoll”?

Bridget,

I am not denying all the good things Dee and Deb do in their personal lives, I was simply extrapolating from her position that man can never build a good society. If you believe that it will fail then, other than obeying what you believe to be your God’s commandments or helping people simply because you want to, where is the logic in investing time and effort into a cause that you know from the outset is doomed to failure?

Dear Fendrel
The same can be said of your heroics last night. What was the point if there is no God no reason to live no hope for the future? You’ve helped someone to continue living a pointless life. And as for motives? To feel good? To boast about it? To demonstrate your ability to do something just because you can or want to? It’s not the world of Deb and Dee that’s futile. Look nearer home.
And to be honest yes it is as much about you as your specious arguments because you do have an agenda and you are playing a game.
Regards
Gavin

Gavin White said “The same can be said of your heroics last night. What was the point if there is no God no reason to live no hope for the future? You’ve helped someone to continue living a pointless life.”

Fendrel can certainly speak for himself, but this is a bizarre argument that Christians use. If there is no God, then the current life we have is the only life we are ever going to get. In that case, shouldn’t we cherish it and treat it as precious? Why is there no reason to continue living simply because there is no God? The purpose of your life is what you make of it, not some musings in a book written over two thousand years ago that has little relevance to modern life.

@ HUG:

Another definition floating around in some circles is that not paying attention in church is “taking God’s name in vain”…though I think I’ve said this here before. I may have read it in G. I. Williamson’s commentary on the Westminster Shorter Catechism. (I wonder if falling asleep in church qualifies as blasphemy – maybe that’s why the Puritans had those whacking sticks.)

“I actually heard someone (can’t remember who) say once that since Jesus is never shown laughing in Scripture, Christians shouldn’t joke around. God don’t think stuff’s funny.”

Hester, I don’t know if Vision Forum teaches this but it sounds familiar. I saw a man get involved with them who did pretty much stop laughing – or even smiling in any way other than a stiff, formal smile. He stopped joking, laughing at jokes, etc. Children’s cute antics that usually make people smile or laugh would cause him to frown. Sadly, you could see such strain and tension on his face, brows permanently furrowed and mouth drawn into a tight line. He looked so very tired. Very, very sad to see.

When one of my sons was a baby, he learned that a fake cough earned him attention. Everyone thought it was adorable, but this man’s reaction was a frown as he said sternly “foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child…” (thankfully for him he did not finish that verse, my baby was not even half-year old).

Dear AJG
No
Welcome to the bleak landscape of Nietsche, scientific realism and logical positivism. No God, no purpose, just random atoms who may or may not think they exist.
Regards
Gavin

Last night I was reading and responding to comments on Justin Taylor’s blog post about women and abuse at the Gospel Coalition site. A commenter named Sue shared her very sad story and also mentioned she is egalitarian now. Another man piped up who was egalitarian. After all these new positive comments on egalitarianism, the comments were closed. No surprises there, huh? They are so predictable.

Cynicism warning: I wonder if their collective efforts to spam us with the abused women posts (completely disregarding that the day was to highlight abused women AND girls, not just domestic violence) was an attempt at damage control because of their buddy, CJ, and to promote their complementarian position.

Dear Looking for You

Pane theism is part of process theology and states that God does not exist prior to or apart from the universe but is in the process of developing with it. And you can find out all about the lady here

http://onethousandgifts.com/about

Regards

Gavin

Let me ask a general question for those who would say that in the absence of God any choice I make has no value.

How do you, personally, make moral decisions, when required, on topics where the bible is silent?

Secondly, are those morals or values still valid, since you had to make them without any direct guidance from above?

Dear LfY
And the following is an apology from Tim Challies to Ann Voskamp which should I hope give you confidence to read the book when you’re ready.

In Which I Ask Ann Voskamp’s Forgiveness…

Tim Challies
05/28/12
0
Ann Voskamp sent me an email the other day. She invited me to bring my family to the Voskamp farm for a meal—they live just a couple of hours from us—to put people to the pixels, so to speak. It was a kind invitation and well-received. I am hoping that my family and hers can coordinate our calendars and make it happen.

Voskamp’s invitation came just a day after I reviewed her book One Thousand Gifts. I have a long history of reviewing books at this site. I didn’t set out to be a book reviewer—it just kind of happened. I love to read and I love to analyze what I’ve read. From there it is just a short step to put those thoughts into pixels and to post them for the world to see. I’ve done this five or six hundred times over the years, reviewing the good, the bad and the ugly of Christian publishing.

While I wouldn’t classify One Thousand Gifts as one of those books that inhabits the full-out ugly side of Christian publishing, neither did I find that I was able to recommend it. In fact, in my review I went so far as to say that it could well prove to be dangerous to some readers. The thread of mysticism influenced by the likes of Nouwen and Manning and Willard, the language of sexuality and ecstasy—these are genuinely troubling and I stand by the concerns I raised. If Ann and I manage to get together, I hope we can discuss these things as I will gladly share my concerns in far more words than I could use in my review. From the little I know of her, I believe she will be eager to hear and engage.

It bears saying as well that I feel no moral quandary about reviewing her book or any other and even warning of potential weaknesses. Any author who releases a book acknowledges that it is entering into the public sphere and may receive both praise and criticism. This is an inevitable component of making writing available to the public and it is one that authors welcome; it is an honor that other people consider your ideas worth discussing.

Having said all of that, something happened inside me when I saw Ann’s name in my inbox, and that’s what has compelled me to write this little article. Seeing her name brought a sudden and surprising realization and with it a twinge of guilt and remorse. It has happened to me before, this strange feeling that comes when I suddenly realize that the name on the front of the book—“Ann Voskamp” in this case—is not some cleverly programmed, unfeeling robot that spits out blog posts and magazine articles and books, but a person. A real person. That should have been no great revelation, yet there have been too many times over the years that I have had to remind myself of this simple fact. I try to remind myself before posting a review; sometimes it only comes later.

As I read back over my review of One Thousand Gifts I could see that I had neglected to remind myself while writing it that Voskamp is a real person and, not only that, but a sister in Christ. As a writer myself, I ought to remember that words are meaningful and revealing and in some way a part of the person who writes them. Every word comes from somewhere deep inside. Every word of One Thousand Gifts is a part of Voskamp just like every word I write is a part of me. There are no idle words in her book, no words that aren’t felt and meant. Yet in my review I had treated her as if her words mean less than mine, as if I was free to criticize her in a way I would not want to be criticized.

Looking back at my review, and perhaps even more, the process of writing it, there are at least two things that concern me. The first is that I would have said certain things differently had I known that she and I might soon be sharing a meal together. Let me give an example. Of Voskamp’s literary style I wrote, “There is clearly a kind of appeal to it so that those who don’t hate it, love it.” I ask myself, Would I have said that to a friend, that her words are hate-able, as if that could not be hurtful? Would I have said that to someone I had planned to share a meal with a few weeks later? Probably not. Why, then, would I say it at all?

The second concern is that I fear that I might have said certain things differently had I considered her an “insider,” a fellow member of whatever little circle of the Christian world I inhabit. That one may concern me even more. When writing about Voskamp’s experience in Notre Dame I asked, “What does she not understand about the gospel that her ecstasies have to happen in a place dedicated to a false gospel of salvation by grace plus works rather than a gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone?” Would I have asked it that way if Ann was someone I might be on a panel with at the next conference I attend? Probably not. I may even have assumed different things about the way she understands the gospel. And maybe I would have put more effort into discussing some of the book’s strengths and showing how they balance the weaknesses. I hope not, but I can’t deny that somewhere in my mind lurks this insider and outsider kind of thinking which somehow encourages me to extend greater courtesy to one group than another.

I did poorly here and I can see that I need to grow in my ability to critique the ideas in a book even while being kind and loving to its author. There was reason for the shame I felt when I saw that name in my inbox. I had put effort into reading the book and understanding and critiquing it, but no real effort into showing love and respect for the author. I had assumed poor motives and in arrogance and thoughtlessness had squelched useful discussion of the book’s strengths and weaknesses.

There is value in engaging the ideas in any book, and especially a book about this Christian life, but the desire to uphold truth has no business coming into conflict with love for another person. Truth and love are to be held together as friends, not separated as if they are enemies. In my desire to say what was true, I failed to love. I ask Ann’s forgiveness for this

Regards
Gavin

“a”lso think there’s something else going on too, perhaps on a more subconcious level. The single most useful thing to me about the book, which may also be the single most threatening aspect of it to a doctrinaire complementarian, is really a subtext that permeates it: how the Evanses, without making a big fuss about it or even giving it a name, model a successful egalitarian Christain marriage”

Bingo. This is very scary for them. I have come across it quite a bit. They do their whole comp gig thing and then wonder why no one notices their wives or listen to them. Well….you taught us that. Then they are offended when you don’t take their wives seriously or think they know anything of value. They want both worlds. It does not work that way. Smart women use their intellectual gifts no matter what they decide to do in life. What comp doctrine teaches as roles does not require intellect so they only have themselves to blame.. Comp requires mindless sumbission to someone who by dent of a penis is your spiritual superior..

Basically, all they do is admit to us they are not confident enough to marry women who are their intellectual equal. (Actually I think the women ARE smart but bury it so he can be the “leader”. The worst thing she can be is i some way superior to him in any way)

“Denny Burk especially is looking sillier than John Cleese, and not on purpose.”

LOL! Exactly! Denny is their point guy. He used to edit the CBMW Journal when he was at Criswell.

“you want to run that last one past me again, I missed your point (maybe I need a nap)”

My point is there is no such thing as right and wrong if there is no ultimate consequence to our actions. If there is no eternal being then we are a closed set. There is no such things as ultimate morality or justice. Going back to the analogy of my software programs, if I write a program that ends without being observed or leaving any data behind, ultimately its running is irrelevant: the end is exactly the same. What happened internally while it was running is meaningless. Suppose the objects and entities within my programs had feelings- they might for a time prefer certain events to occur, but after the program is done running and they are wiped out, whether they experienced joy or pain doesn’t matter, not even to them (because there is no “them” any more).

Given all of this, we CAN do whatever we want and seek the greatest happiness while we exist, but we can just as easily maximize our own pain. Most of us will choose to maximize happiness, but will also do so adhering to a code which demands we sacrifice for the greater good. This last point is actually nonsensical because there’s no value to “the greater good” except that it gives us a sense of having done the good which is pleasurable. The humanist would explain this need to sacrifice for the greater good by evolution (the theist would assert it was put there by God).

The happiest man would be the one who had no sense of a need to sacrifice for others and do whatever he wants, regardless of what others would prefer. This would be a sociopath: the only type of rational person in a godless world. His happiness would be maximized by everyone else’s irrational adherence to the social codes that make community work and not descend into anarchy. The short of it is, we NEED religion to function, even if it isn’t true, but if it isn’t, happy is the man who can convince everyone else to believe it while he lives outside the law.

Well, you know that the Calvinistas want us “oh so serious” while we contemplate our sinful selves.No room for levity unless it involves cage fighting. — Dee

Cage fighting? Why not go all the way with Gladiators in the Arena and blood on the sand?

Another definition floating around in some circles is that not paying attention in church is “taking God’s name in vain”… — Hester

That’s even more convenient a defining-down than cussing — at least if you’re an admiral in a rowboat/control freak in a pulpit where EVERYONE *HAS* TO PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEE!!!

Pane theism is part of process theology… — Gavin White

PANE Theism? Worshipping a window?

Sorry Headless
I was looking through the glass darkly.(as all good puritans do)

Regards
Gavin

Jeff S has already answered that point Fendrel.
Regards
Gavin

“How do you, personally, make moral decisions, when required, on topics where the bible is silent?”

The bible isn’t silent on any moral topic. Just about everything is covered in “Love God, Love tour neighbor”. Obviously the application can be tricky, but if there is a true moral consequence, I think it’s covered under that statement. And Atheists can absolutely make moral decisions. I think the scripture is pretty clear about this when Paul writes about the law being written on people’s hearts.

My point is that if the atheists are right then there ARE no moral decisions, whether atheist, agnostic, or theist.

Welcome to the bleak landscape of Nietsche, scientific realism and logical positivism. No God, no purpose, just random atoms who may or may not think they exist.

That’s far better than the idea that the vast majority of humans who ever lived will be spending an eternity it torment because they didn’t believe in the correct god or died without having the chance to believe in the correct god.

My point is that if the atheists are right then there ARE no moral decisions, whether atheist, agnostic, or theist.

The Golden Rule is necessary for civilization to exist and flourish. Even if you question whether an action can be moral without a God – which belies the idea that morality arose from naturalistic causes just like consciousness – acts that one would normally classify as moral are still beneficial from a practical standpoint for society as a whole. Also, people do good because it makes them feel good. You’re overcomplicating things by introducing God.

@Fendrel Yes I agree. So why is it that Christians are so quick to dismiss the value of the manner in which atheists derive their values or try to set them for society.
Because they are people, And people in groups almost always dismiss the ideas of those not in the group. Think politics, religion, nationalities, sports fans, whatever. It's wired into our brains in my opinion.
Now we can go down the path as to why it's there. Original sin? Evolutionary advantage. Evolutionary disadvantage what wasn't big enough to matter. Whatever. It seems to be wired in fairly hard with most everyone on the planet.

“The Golden Rule is necessary for civilization to exist and flourish.”

Correct, but it doesn’t make it optimal for the individual.

“Even if you question whether an action can be moral without a God – which belies the idea that morality arose from naturalistic causes just like consciousness – acts that one would normally classify as moral are still beneficial from a practical standpoint for society as a whole. Also, people do good because it makes them feel good.”

The “people do good because it makes them feel good” is not adequate to explain when people who make the ultimate sacrifice: the decision to give their his or her to save others. That person feels nothing for making this sacrifice because he or she is dead. It is an irrational act if there is no God. It is far better to prolong life and let others suffer unless you’d rather be dead than wracked with guilt for allowing others to suffer. I do not think that last statement is true of all people who make the ultimate sacrifice.

Philosophers have reasoned that the Golden rule was necessary for civilization so that’s why we had to have religion, but now that we are wiser we can (and should) reject religion. With this also comes any kind of rational adherence to the Golden rule, though all would prefer others adhere to the Golden rule so society continues.

“You’re overcomplicating things by introducing God.”

To be really specific (though I haven’t stated it), what is required for morality is some kind of permanence. Either God who can judge our acts (though if we are not permanent you can argue why we’d care if we acted morally or immorally), ourselves, or our descendents.

I would agree, for example, that if we could achieve immortality without God then there could still be morality.

If in the end all vanishes, it doesn’t matter what happened while we were here.

If we both agree that a decision is moral, yet there is no ultimate consequence for said decision, then regardless of our agreement that decision is not moral (or immoral).

This makes zero sense. Something is not moral because you will eventually be rewarded for it or immoral because you may eventually be punished for it. That’s a primitive Pavlovian response. Something is moral because it is right and something is immoral because it is wrong. We can argue and disagree on what the standards are for determining right and wrong, but that is not what you are saying here.

Sarah Flashing – not again!!!

She seems to be a one-woman “organization” that TGC and others cite whenever they get particularly irritated by a woman and/or when they view something as a “womens’ issue.”

Gah.

@ LFY:

“Everyone thought it was adorable, but this man’s reaction was a frown as he said sternly ‘foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child…'”

I once got a mini-lecture from a woman (SDA) when I said that babies couldn’t lie (since they don’t have the intellectual maturity to even understand the concept of truth vs. deception). She said that babies could tease and that teasing was a form of jesting and that that was bad because of Proverbs 26:18-19. Because a guy throwing firebrands = a baby trying to make mommy laugh? Only in the SDA cult universe.

The “people do good because it makes them feel good” is not adequate to explain when people who make the ultimate sacrifice: the decision to give their his or her to save others. That person feels nothing for making this sacrifice because he or she is dead. It is an irrational act if there is no God. It is far better to prolong life and let others suffer unless you’d rather be dead than wracked with guilt for allowing others to suffer. I do not think that last statement is true of all people who make the ultimate sacrifice.

In your opinion, of course. People sacrifice themselves for others for any number of reasons. You don’t get to dictate whether or not everyone’s actions are rational or irrational. Plenty of skeptics and atheists have died in battle to protect the lives or liberties of others. This is far more noble, in my opinion, than doing so with the hope of gaining a reward in heaven for the acts. Heck, even animals sacrifice themselves for their young. That’s an instinctual response. Perhaps it’s the same in humans or perhaps animals have more advanced emotional reponses than we realize. Self-sacrifice is not evidence for a God.

… or perhaps animals have more advanced emotional reponses than we realize.

AJG – my thought is that this is likely much more accurate than any of us could ever guess, but then… we’ll never be certain unless/until we learn to communicate with animals on their terms. I think a lot of people already are pretty skilled at “reading” animals (and I don’t mean in any kind of telepathic way; they just “get” animals), but far too few people in the scientific community are willing to invest their time and research grants in actual studies of how animals communicate with each other as it is… (And far too many “animal behavior” specialists are skeptical of the whole concept of intelligencee in animals and birds… sad, really.)

[/end digression]

RE: Dee on Wed Nov 28, 2012 at 08:37 AM,

“…I believe that there will be wars, slavery, poverty and pedophilia to the end of time-no matter how “smart” we think we are…”

True to a certain extent Dee (in my opinion). I have argued before that unlike tsunamis, earthquakes, decrepitude, and old age, these evils are fully within our power as humans to rectify and put an end to. Utopian and perfect? No, but it is fully reasonable to expect that we can restrain and minimize the worst abuses of human nature by collective will.

It begins with me on an individual level when I see what is truly right in my own eyes through the spark of divine I am born with. Toward the end of his life, John Adams a lapsed Calvinist, had this to say and I agree with him:

“…I am weary of contemplating nations from the lowest and most beastly degradations of human life, to the highest refinements of Civilization. I am weary of Philosophers, Theologians, Politicians, and Historians. They are immense masses of absurdities, vices and lies. Montesquieu had sense enough to say in jest that all of our knowledge might be comprehended in twelve pages in duodecimo, and I believe him in earnest. I could express my faith in shorter terms: He who loves the Workman and his Work, and who does what he can to improve it, shall be accepted of him…”

“It begins with me on an individual level when I see what is truly right in my own eyes through the spark of divine I am born with. ”

Amen. Even a 5 year old on the playground understands injustice in their little worlds.

@ Anon1 & others,

A word about Dr. Bushnell. Her writings are from an age before the world had moved on (as Stephen King would put it). It was an era long before our time increments and consequently our attention spans got chopped up into smaller and smaller pieces. Her stuff can be rough going at times, but it’s well worth the effort.

Her intellect was formidable, but more importantly, her heart was one of flesh and not stone. She heard the cries of the beaten down and fought ferociously for them. Her Christianity was action, not just theological navel gazing and a complacent form of blood covering.

Just before the meaning/God/atheism debate wraps up, and at the risk of giving at lots more meat, I think one of the problems in the discussion here has been the philosophical assumptions being made about the atheist side. Jeff S, correct me if I’m wrong, but your arguments all seem to come from a point where all atheism is seen as inherently nihilistic. But there are other philosophies that address the concepts of meaning and morality and reject the nihilistic ‘everything is meaningless’ approach. Have you read any Camus, by chance? He was an absurdist, so argued that meaning and absolute purpose cannot be grasped by humans (but aren’t necessarily non-existent), but at the same time argued that the pursuit of meaning, the desire to act in a meaningful way, is possible and desirable. Now, that isn’t the same as having an objective meaning and morality defined by God, but it’s also a far cry from nihilism, which outright rejects meaning and morality.

I think we are at an impass on this point, and that’s fine. We can agree to disagree, I think. I personally do believe that morality matters, that every decision is consequential, and that believers can act immorally just as athiests can act morally. If we free on those points, I think we’re in pretty good shape and we have little to quarrel over between us.

No problem, Jeff. Thanks for discussing this civilly even if I do disagree with you. I was a hardcore evangelical like yourself for 35 years, so I understand how faith is important to people like yourself. In the end, I got tired of forcing myself to believe in something that I founs implausible so I left Christianity for good.

Jeff

My point is that if the atheists are right then there ARE no moral decisions, whether atheist, agnostic, or theist

And if that is true, that there is no God, in what practical way will it have impacted your moral choices?

I would argue, that nothing would have changed…if that’s so, then the “need” for God, in terms of morals, goes away, regardless of His existence.

AJG, to be fair, I doubt many would consider me a hardcore evangelical, but by contrast I suppose I am. I enjoyed the discussion and could go all night with it, to be honest, but what is fun is not always wise 😀

I have recently undergone a major purging of a lot of my notions of faith, but the core still remains.

Pam, I can only conjecture what I’d really he like without faith. I happen to believe the good in me comes by way of the Holy Spirit and if I were to not be a believer I would move toward nihilism, but it’s easy to conjecture extreme positions when we don’t have to hold them 🙂

Also, about the story that women could not divorce, only men: That is not in the Bible. The OT law make specific mention of a woman who was paid for by her groom, and now want to divorce because he don’t provide for her. A woman like that can divorce without paying him back, she is not property that has to stay even though she was paid for.
Once again, from rabbi’s interpreting the spirit of the law – if even a woman that was paid for may leave, then surely a woman not paid for may leave too.
Many other things about “the Bible’s treatment of women” are myths. People from Bible times treated woman very badly, and the Bible as historic document report it. But to blame it on the Bible is like blaming a history book on WWII for treating Jews badly.

Sorry for the duplicate comment. My page did not reload correctly after posting the first time, so I thought it did not post.

oops…continued,

I am just saying sometimes God seemed/s to make people do things, but mostly, people are free to make their own decisions. So, it can’t be 100% free will, nor can it be 100% predestined. As people encounter God, all sorts of causes occur.

How can God say people can look at Creation and know about God and good, etc. Yet say we are also lead astray, like sheep without a shepherd. The truth is, the Bible doesn’t tell us how involved God is when sinful people can have faith, it just says some do. Then there’s the Holy Spirit, and not necessarily exclusive to Christians, but I digress.

Dear AJ G 5.52
According to that understanding there can be no morality, only doing what you want.
Regards
Gavin

Camus and Sartre were friends but disagreed on their philosophy. Sartre was considerably more cynical. Camus and Neitzsche had quite different ideas.

“Now, see why I don’t think Calvinism is Christian?”

Ouch– I’ve gone from hardcore evangelical to not Christian in the space of a few posts.

“Now, many may jump on this comment and say that isn’t correct, but, it is.”

Can you cite sources that your definition of Calvinism is “true Calvinism”? I’ve believed in Calvinism long before the new cool kids were doing it (and I am no fan of Driscoll or Piper) but I’ve never understood Calvinism to be predeterminism. I’m going to believe what believe because I think it’s what the Bible teaches regardless of what Calvin or his followers taught, but I’ve never heard anyone teach the kind of predeterminism that you (and others who comment here) accuse us of believing. In fact, Calvin himself said people act “voluntarily”, which does not sound like predeterminism to me. He did say that sinners lacked the ability to do anything but sin (which I would question, personally, but I think this may get into a question of definitions– as I’ve stated, I certainly believe unbelievers are capable of doing good things), but having a lack of ability is far different from being God’s puppet with no freewill.

Dear Pam and Jeff S

Here’s an interesting article from the Camus Society.

French writer Albert Camus and German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche are not normally two people mentioned in one breath. However, their body of work has a lot in common when it comes to morality. One of the most striking books in Nietzsche’s career as a philosophical writer on this theme is On the Genealogy of Morals. In an essayistic style he portrays how society changed over decades of time from being content with joy to utter discontent with feelings of revenge. Moral judgements changed enormously and Nietzsche is ought to examine the origin of morals questions by going back to the basic idea of good and evil. What is good, and if it is, why is that so?

Albert Camus’ concern directs itself into a similar direction. His major concern is the not origin of basic moral questions but rather the development that come with them, most notably freedom and the right to revolt. Camus continued to develop his idea of man’s rebellion against the absurd in nearly all his work. An undertaking he had begun in his essay collection The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). Several years later, in 1951, the book length essay The Rebel would refresh the idea of rebellion. It is actually implied in the title itself of the French original with L’Homme révolté, whose English translation The Rebel seems to give it a more political note.

Throughout, Camus examines several writers from Epicurus to Hegel, from Dostoevsky to Breton and analyses their portrait of man. Here, his work refers several times to Friedrich Nietzsche and most notably his sense of nihilism, a concept about the ultimate negation of all values. Camus mirrors Nietzsche’s own morality when he interrogates God as a moral instance. Both authors seem to start from a fairly humanistic viewpoint: God is the constructed being, a named abstraction and an uplifted instance to distribute what is morally right and morally wrong.

When man submits to God to moral judgement, he kills Him in his own heart. And then what is the basis of morality? God is denied in the name of justice but can the idea of justice be understood without the idea of God? Have we not arrived at absurdity? … man, in order to exist, must decide to act. 1

Even though the word itself is never mentioned in The Rebel, Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment seems to linger between the lines. Ressentiment, which is the feeling the many or few in society are highly frustrated with an aspect in their lives. The cause can be simple (such as jealousy) or complex (such as a feud), but the reaction is the same: in order to satisfy their hurt ego, these many or few need to direct their resentment/ ressentiment towards the cause of their feelings. In Nietzsche’s case, it results in a revolt between the master and the slave. A problem he tried to solve with the invention of the superman (‘Übermensch’), a person superior enough to overcome his own nature of guilt, desire and jealousy. He has no feelings of resentment, because he simply does not care about anything below his vision.

The ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge. While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is “outside,” what is “different,” what is “not itself”; and this No is its creative deed. 2

At first sight, both authors seem to strongly contrast in the idea of ressentiment. Then the reader should remember the purpose of Camus’ revolt: it is to overcome the absurd. If we put this equation into Nietzschean logic, then Camus’ chosen protagonists like Sisyphus direct their resentment towards the cause of their feelings, which is the absurd. However, instead of simply revolting against this abstract, Camus adds a valuable step to it: acceptance. Sisyphus, like the man in revolt, overcomes and rebels against the absurd by accepting it. In doing so, he internalises the focus of rebellion – it becomes a struggle between the self and the absurd alone.

The sequence of events is interesting because it asks if people are able to understand the abstract all by self (here justice) without another authority (here God). By stripping off God from this thinking, man is left with absurdity as the first obstacle to overcome. According to Camus, Nietzsche is confronted with this attitude, which is a possible reference to the latter’s famous claim that God is dead.

In The Rebel there are several claims to nihilism. Nihilism is often affectionately said to be a preceded version of existentialism. In philosophy as well as literature, an open discussion with ‘-isms’ is always very dangerous because of its lack of fixed definitions and examples. Further, Camus excluded himself from the existentialist writers, so the only direction left is to step directly from Nihilism to the absurd. A step that is per se not wrong because both concepts deal with the freedom of the mind.

Freedom of the mind, freedom of decision and freedom as a general theme are therefore connective points between Nietzsche and Camus. Nietzsche’s idea of freedom is to overcome ressentiment and also to live out the Dionysian life force as shown in his work The Birth of Tragedy. Camus’ idea of freedom starts in the very moment one experiences bitterness. In a way, Camus’ figures like Meursault, Jean-Baptiste Clamence or Sisyphus are the written outlook of ressentiment , which in French terms is nothing more than re-sentir – to re-feel.

Camus now pursues a different way and saves his figures from becoming slaves in Nietzschean terms. The negative part of ressentiment is turned around into a positive one: these figures try to re-feel themselves but they can only do so when they accept their fate as their own and not made by society.

In the end, both authors have more in common than their love for the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is not massively important for this comparison what Nietzschean text Camus had read. Nietzsche’s novels are throughout his life, luckily, in a state where one can say that each of his works combines his whole philosophical outlook. However, the concept of ressentiment is visible in Camus’ works. Vice versa, Camus detects a level of absurdity in Nietzsche. The reader can see how the French writer took the question of morality to the next level by adding self-fulfilment and offered a way of leading Nietzschean slaves out of their misery.

1 Albert Camus, The Rebel; translated by Anthony Bower (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), p. 57.

2 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals; Ecce homo; translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale; edited, with commentary by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books 1967), First Essay, Section 10, p. 36.

Regards
Gavin

Val,

Since you bring up “free will”, my other favorite topic, aside from believing in the supernatural, whether that is God, spirits or souls, on what basis do you think humans have the ability to make self-controlled decisions?

Fendrel wrote “Since you bring up “free will”, my other favorite topic, aside from believing in the supernatural, whether that is God, spirits or souls, on what basis do you think humans have the ability to make self-controlled decisions?”

I tried for years to rescue God from Himself by convincing myself to believe in free will. You can tie yourself into intellectual knots by trying to jusitfy the existence of free will with an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-benevolent God. You can resolve this conundrum by removing one of these characteristics from God. Calvinists jettison omnibenevolence. Arminians jettison omnipotence. Open Theists jettison omniscience. Atheists jettison God.

Dee
Thanks. I was aware of it from looking at the archive blogs and an introduction you have him after he changed his name.

And finally sorry not sore

Gavin, I have to admit that it is an act of faith that I believe God is all loving and all powerful while evil and suffering exist. I think it is the single greatest challenge to the Christian faith. I believe that it is true, but I apprehend it rather than comprehend it, the same as believing God is sovereign and man has freewill.

One thing I do know is that when it comes to suffering, God did not remain above our suffering, but in the person of Jesus Christ experienced suffering along side us. That counts for a lot in my book.

Gavin wrote “Sorry but Calvinists embrace the whole counsel of God. They don’t jettison anything.”

Keep telling yourself that. A God that preordained and created a subset of humanity to eternal torment never opening their eyes when He could have is not good in any sense of the word. Unless you want to redefine good to mean “anything that God does” but then the word has lost all meaning to finite beings.

dee wrote “Please know that I wish you joy and peace in this life.”

Thank you, Dee. I sincerely appreciate it. I have finally found it although it was in a place I never expected to find it. 🙂 Love your blog, BTW. I’m a long-time lurker but seldom post. Keep up the good work!

Dear Jeff S, AJG, Dee
Here is a little three step programme that may or may not help understand theodicy.

1 Mankind sinned at the fall and consequently was condemned.
2 God provided a Saviour so that forgiven sinners could, among other things,relate to sin in a better way and mitigate its effect on is
3 In Heaven, to misquote the Beatles, all our troubles will seem so far away and promote praise and worship.

It won’t satisfy everyone but it keeps it simple and confessional.

Regards
Gavin

PS Headless, it’s not John Piper with whom we have to deal.

Free will advocates believe God gives all the CHANCE, and what we do with it is what we will get in the hereafter.

Molinists will say that God knew who would, given the chance, respond positively to the gospel and then made sure all those got the chance. Those without the chance were those that would reject Christ anyway.

As to eternal punishment for crimes against God committed by finite humans: not all Christians, not even all Calvinists, believe that. Some are hopeful universalists and some are annihilationists.

But the key is not the size of the crime from our perspective, but the fact we have disobeyed and insulted an infinitely holy God.

As for me, I’m a mishmash of Wesleyan theology with an emphasis on free will, prevenient grace, and Christus Victor atonement.

So many of these “I could never believe in a god that would……” can at times, (probably wrongly), seem as cop outs to me since I don’t believe in a God that would do those things either and am still a devout Christian.

But that is just me.

Jeff S on Thu Nov 29, 2012 at 06:02 AM said:
“Now, see why I don’t think Calvinism is Christian?”
Ouch– I’ve gone from hardcore evangelical to not Christian in the space of a few posts.
“Now, many may jump on this comment and say that isn’t correct, but, it is.”
Can you cite sources that your definition of Calvinism is “true Calvinism”?

Sorry Jeff S. I wanted to say “I don’t think Calvinism lines up well with basic Christ teachings/actions”, but of course a Calvinist can be Christian, as can anyone who calls Jesus “Lord” and follows him as Lord – something I think all branches are pretty poor at doing, frankly. I would say any “ism” or denomination is NOT Christian, but a tool for Christians, so one could use Calvinism to read the Bible or explain why some reject Jesus – and other’s could completely disagree – and still have Christ as King of one’s life, while a fellow church attender could call themselves a Calvinist and not really put Jesus first and therefore not be a Christian at all. Just a Calvinist. My extended family was/is Anglican. I would say over half of my family were/are Anglican, but not Christian. I’m not judging their faith since some didn’t/don’t really know if God exist(ed)/(s), therefore didn’t have a faith in Christ to begin with, yet call/ed themselves Anglican!!! I don’t consider someone like that a Christian as a Christian believes Christ is God/King/Lord, not a pile of traditions. If one can’t even believe he was God – since they aren’t sure there is a God – can one really be a Christian? In my view, no. Different than judging someone who claims to follow Christ but in my view does it all wrong. That would be judgmental of me, and beyond my knowledge, but if one doesn’t (and never has) think Jesus was God, one can’t claim they are a Christian, just a traditionalist.

So, to sum up, Calvinism is not Christian, but neither is Baptist, Anglican, Anabaptist, or Pentecostal – these are denominations or theologies. A person, on the other hand, can be a Calvinist, Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, etc. and either be or not be a Christian. People are Christians, theology and denominations are tools.

You asked for sources – here is the main idea (you can google your own links or follow mine, at the bottom)

Universal causation is the umbrella term for determinism/pre-destination. It is larger than Calvinism, a broader branch of philosophy, that Calvinism, fatalism and other beliefs fits under.

JEAN CALVIN
Greatly influenced by St. Paul and St. Augustine, Calvin argued that Paul was preaching pre-destination; that the destination of each human being is determined by God on the basis of his foreknowledge of everyone’s character and life. He said that there was nothing anybody could do to change their destiny and went further to say that only 5% of the human race were destined for salvation, the other 95% were damned from the start. Everyone deserves to be punished, but the measure of God’s goodness is that he saves some. God’s justice is beyond human comprehension and should not be questioned. According to Calvin, there is no free will. Calvin therefore takes a hard determinist approach.

You could argue you never heard this, but that is because Calvinism now is usually taught as Soft Determinism – due to so many later doctrines and confessions to take the hard-determinist edge off.

SOFT DETERMINISM

Soft Determinism is the view that human freedom and moral responsibility are far from being incompatible with determinism; rather determinism is incomprehensible without it. The misconception that the two are incompatible comes from a considerable confusion over what we mean when we say we are free. Freedom is incompatible with fatalism, but not with determinism.

All actions are wholly governed by causes but there are two types of causes:

There are two types of causes;
1) Internal Causes
Lead to voluntary actions of free will, the results of one’s own wishes or desires, for example when you leave your country freely because it is your desire to go abroad.
2) External Causes
Lead to involuntary actions of compulsion, contrary to one’s wishes or desires, for example when you leave the country because you are forced out by the Government.

It is this distinction which explains why soft determinism requires free-will. According to soft determinists, when we say a person acted freely we mean they did not act under compulsion or external pressure – they acted as free agents, even though their actions were just as much caused as those that are not free. Soft determinists therefore define freedom as the liberty of spontaneity, the freedom to act according to one’s nature which is determined by external factors such as heredity, education and background.

The problem I have is with this view of External Causes. Jesus shows us how to react to persecution, authority and enemies in a way no one felt was useful or right, we actually have two choices – leave or stay. If we stay it would be stay and fight (probably die) or stay and voluntarily die. So, Jesus could have dashed off to the Saudia Arabian peninsula and not been put to death, Paul could have run off to Persia, Peter to the wilds of Lebanon – always a renegade hide out in the Roman and Ottoman Empires. Yet, they didn’t, they chose to stay and “fight the good fight” to the bitter end. Without Christ, the choice is made, with Christ, new (often very difficult) doors open. However, no one is called out for running away – all of Acts early church scattered – that proved beneficial too. Stephen stayed and died, he chose this too. Sure, life in Jerusalem wasn’t on offer, but choices were on offer, and always are. Determining God’s will is our job – Paul fails when he desperately wants to go back to Jerusalem – he ends up in chains, then jail, then death. The prophetesses don’t actaully correctly prophesy what will happen, that is very interesting, they get a few details mixed up, but they warn him, he chooses not to listen, and pays the price.

linda wrote AJG–oops, sorry, but Arminians do NOT jettison the omnipotence of God.

By allowing free will, God limits Himself; hence, He is no longer all-powerful. He can do almost anything, but he cannot force you to accept Him.

Regardless, free will almost certainly does not exist. There is no difference between a God that knows everything that will happen and a God that causes everything to happen. Either way, the future is predetermined.

linda wrote “As to eternal punishment for crimes against God committed by finite humans: not all Christians, not even all Calvinists, believe that. Some are hopeful universalists and some are annihilationists.”

I have never heard of a Calvinist who was a universalist. What does that Calvinist do with the doctrine of Limited Atonement? Anyway, what’s the point of Christianity if universalism is true? Nothing we do or believe matters in the end. It’s simpler to remove God from the discussion in that scenario.

Perhaps I did paint with too broad a brush in my labelings, but it’s clear that a all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing God is a logical fallacy given the world in which we live. God could have created a Panglossian (to steal from HUG) universe as that is the very definition of heaven. Instead, we live in one where entropy coldly destroys usable energy and conscious beings comtemplate the meaning of it all, and in the process, create a Deity who can restore order to their existence.

Can we generate a thought in the absence of an electrical impulse across a neural synapse? Please explain how? If we cannot, and one is required, then free will, is no more than an illusion.

eact?…what eactly does eact mean?

EXACT

Val, that link points out that Calvin believed in predestination in the salvation sense (which we all know), but every action of ours being predetermined by God? I don’t see that.

From Calvin:
“This liberty is compatible with our being depraved, the servants of sin, able to do nothing but sin. In this way, then, man is said to have free will, not because he has a free choice of good and evil, but because he acts voluntarily, and not by compulsion.”

I give no argument that he believed man could only sin without God, but he calls a person’s actions “voluntary”. It seems to me even Calvin did not believe we are mere puppets moving without any will of our own.

But regardless of Calvin himself, many Calvinists do not believe that (in fact, I’ve not met one). I think if a large number of people who identify as Calvinists believe we have Freewill and can act on our own desires, it is not fair to label them as believing something different.

DearBeaker J

I did say that it wouldn’t please everyone but it was written by a theologian who sought to express simply what is in effect a profound mystery or paradox, call it what you will.

I always feel uncomfortable when people try to second-guess God or think they know better.

Best wishes
Gavin

Fendrel

Then life is meaningless, random and we don’t actually have any soul or personality. And so on and so on….what’s the point.
Best wishes
Gavin

Val

decides whether our response is our own or stuffed into us by others and given in fear or heartfelt.

In either case, we have no control over the response, it simply comes out of us, for no other reason than a synapse fired. No matter how far back you go, there is no such thing as a thought without an electrical charge that caused it.

Gavin,

Imagine what I am now writing. Now if we could roll time back let’s say 5 minutes and have everthing be in exactly the same state that it was the first time, I would write exactly the same thing.

Now it is actually possible, given quantum fluctuations, that the electrical impulses might play out differently the second time around, and I might actually write something different, but that only adds a level of randomness, it does not imply any level of control. In the end, it is all plays out as deterministic.

“thought,” not “though.” [sigh – my typing!]

At any rate… maybe I’m coming across as too harsh, but between another commenter’s “definition” of feminism and your misleading comment about Buddhism, I’m finding myself annoyed.

Maybe I need to take a break from reading comments for a day or so…

Dear Numo

I’m sorry. It was written on my coffee cup and I thought it was true! I could see it, touch it, feel it so I thought it was real.

Regards
Gavin

“Val
decides whether our response is our own or stuffed into us by others and given in fear or heartfelt.
In either case, we have no control over the response, it simply comes out of us, for no other reason than a synapse fired. No matter how far back you go, there is no such thing as a thought without an electrical charge that caused it.” – Fendrel

Well, yes, thoughts by nature are synapses firing. My point is, how do we know that is all forms our feelings (emotional responses)? We can only know what we can measure, we can’t know if a soul exists within us if we can’t find physical evidence of it.

Yes, we have control over our thoughts, lots of research has showing re-directive thinking can create different responses in our brian, they are trying this, with some success with Depressed patients. Like muscles, nerves get trained to respond by what has happened in the past, and can be untrained. For example, a child who grows up in an abusive environment may learn to shrink down, hide or leave when an argument occurs – because that signalled danger to him. When he grows up, he can’t manage conflict. He can relearn the “hide” response to hearing loud voices, etc. And learn coping mechanisms. Then, over time, his brain responds differently. Yes, there are points of no return – orphanages in Russia have shown this but often damaging or self-destructive responses can be unlearned and retaught. It takes work for an abuse survivor, but it can get results.

“In either case, we have no control over the response, it simply comes out of us, for no other reason than a synapse fired.”

We have control over our fitness level and we have control over our neural responses, I know new books are out saying we are just products of our circumstances, etc. but that is not conclusive. I have been in Education for years and years, long enough to know that practices considered “ground breaking” about 15 year ago are now considered detrimental in the long term. Popular ideas are just that, ideas, it is not yet a scientific theory, and I won’t base too much on it till I see more evidence and more research – i.e. longer than 20 years – backing it up. What we pump into our brain will likely affect what it pumps back out. If I watch 5 Disney movies in a row (my kids would if I let them), I would dream of talking birds and magical bad guys. The next day I may think of the world as “good guys” and “bad guys”. If I continued to watch Disney, it would form synaptic triggers that would push my thinking in that way. Smells do this too – actually more effectively than visuals. Expose a child to a place with a certain smell and whenever they encounter this smell for the rest of their lives, it will trigger feelings they held about that place. This is showing us we are training our brain responses – they are in our control, but it is a slow climb, with lots of repetition, not a quick redoing. Thinking about good things (non-judgemental, positive thoughts) is a useful piece of advice (for a healthy brian, if someone suffers from a mental illness, it may not be possible). If one is typically judgmental, perhaps it is a signal to start managing those responses, taking them captive so to speak. I catch myself doing it. I could work harder, but I have a weird love/hate relationship with devotions right now, so I don’t meditate on much. I should – as mediation is another way to redirect thoughts in our brains. Sorry, but saying we have no control is similar to saying we can’t help it if we are out of shape – for some people with disabilities or medical conditions, it is true, but for everyone else, it is lack of prioritizing.

Gavin – I think I turned into an acorn squash about the same time. 🙂

Gavin wrote “It is playing with words to say or imply that God willed Adam to sin.

Let’s go over this carefully…

1) God foreknew everything man would do.

2) God knew man would sin.

3) God created man with the ability to sin despite the fact that He knew man would sin.

4) If you believe in the Garden of Eden story, God put man in an impossible situation, giving him a wife that He knew would disobey Him and cause man to sin.

5) Man sinned just as God knew he would sin. Honestly, what else could man have done but do that which God knew man would do before God decided to create him?

6) God punishes man with eternal torment for committing the sin that man HAD to commit because God foresaw it and chose to create man in spite of it.

7) A few humans are lucky enough to be born into a culture where they hear about God’s plan to rescue them from their sin by putting their faith in Jesus. The majority of the people who ever lived get to burn for eternity (ETERNITY!) because they were unlucky or didn’t believe hard enough. All so God can glorify Himself.

Tell me again how God gets off the hook here? Or is it just a mystery (i.e. you punt on the question)?

Dear Beakerj

I appreciated your comments , analogy and kind remarks. I didn’t come to this happy place very easily but I have resigned myself to trust what God says in His word and leave what I don’t understand (the mystery as AJG calls it!) with Him. It sounds naive, I know, and it does mean that I don’t like it when people seem to “diss” God. Hence my sometimes intemperate remarks in this blog. I feel obliged to defend my God by delivering the occasional metaphorical punch on the nose! although He is quite capable of looking after Himself.

My analogy would be more of father rescuing his child from danger and the child suddenly realising that his dad wasn’t being a spoilsport or killjoy when he had previously warned of danger.

For what it’s worth I have thought long and hard over some of the stories being discussed here like the invasion of Canaan, Tamar because they are awful but I have to trust that God is righteous and acts righteously in accordance with his holy and loving character.

Best wishes
Gavin

Just a (not-so) quick word on “mystery”- I absolutely agree that there are seemingly at-odds ideas that are difficult to accept. I find this true in every view I’ve looked at, including atheism. Believe me when I say I came to a crucial place in the last year where I questioned everything pretty hard core. I basically had nothing left invested in Christianity as far as the trappings go (my circle of friends, support system, etc.) and I was at a blank slate. I could have walked away.

But in the end, for the way my brain works there was far less cognitive dissonance in faith then there was in atheism and so that’s where I’ve hung my hat, and I’ve been happy that I have. The church and a lot of its people burned me, but God has not. My experience tells me he is real and he is the God of the Bible, even if I cannot make it all fit for every question I have. I am OK with some mysteries being out there as long as what I can understands makes sense to me, and the most powerful understanding I have is that I’ve blown it, I need grace, and God has provided that for me. I really just don’t have the ability to look at the world any other way than that. I’ll call that the Holy Spirit and the atheist can call it indoctrination.

I am quite sympathetic to others who have not answered all of the questions I’ve asked the same way or with the same level of importance. We are all individuals and have to be true of our view of the world. I do wish that all could find the faith and hope in Christ I have, because I DO believe that’s where the best and truest hope is, but I know not all will see it as I do.

Jeff,

What exactly was there in atheism which you found disturbing or irrational?

Muff,

Yes but that is not the God of Christian theology, one of who’s attributes is omniscience, in addition it raises other questions about God, like the old chestnut about whether God is so powerful can he create a rock…etc.

In other words, can God not be in control and still be God and if God cannot be defeated or have His plan thwarted is anything truly random?

Fendrel, I submit to you that God DOES share in responsibility in the fact that man sins. Imagine, if you have kids, and they choose to dislike or ignore you, or do something really bad like murder, but you still love them because they are your kids. God even laments in Genesis, the same as I’ve done about my own daughter, why oh why did I have kids?

As to God and the problem of evil. In the OT God spoke directly to people, and/or their designated kings or prophets. In the NT, Jesus came to point out the errors of the OT people and performed some miracles (if you believe the gospels, i mean), and the Holy Spirit is imbued into each believer. With technology and the industrial revolution, mankind should be able to “perform miracles”, but we don’t. I blame mankind for the evil, and I especially blame the church. We sit around and nitpick theology, and we forget to put faith into action. I can’t think about it often, because of the despair that sets in.

Muff wrote What if the Almighty decided to spin the roulette wheel or throw the dice just to see what would happen, without rigging the game from the get go? In my opinion, leaving the future open negates the need for a “hook” either way, for God or his humans.

That’s not the orthodox view of God although I know of many open theists who would argue that way. A God who would create man with the ability to sin and then be surprised that man actually did sin would be incredibly naive. A God who would then punish man for being what He created him to be would be incredibly vindictive.

AJG – well, not everyone posting here believes that God throws people into some sort of hell and punishes them forever and ever.

I just cannot believe that the passages that are interpreted as meaning that there is such a thing as eternal conscious torment are actually saying that.

Interestingly… in Judaism, there is no belief in “original sin,” though of course there is belief in people sinning.
I’m less and less inclined to accept the Western model of “original sin” as time goes on.

While I’m not a universalist, I can’t rule that out at this point, either. My beliefs and perspectives have changed a lot over the past 10+ years, so who knows?

“So what caused God?”

Nothing. Only effects (by definition) need a cause, but God is not an effect. However, everything we can observe and see as part of this universe IS an effect, so it requires a cause.

I know you believe the universe is not an effect, which by this (very broad) definition makes the universe “God” in your belief system, albeit an impersonal one.

Or to say it a different way:
1. Effects, by definition, must have a cause
2. For effects to exist, there must have been at one point a cause that was not an effect.
3. This non-effect is “God”.
4. This definition of “God” does not require the God of Christianity to exist
4. The God of Christianity fit this definition, albeit with many more attributes.

“I can appreciate moments like the ones you spoke of…a feeling of the divine, inspiration, whatever you want to call them, there is still no reason to attribute them to anything other then the brain chemistry in your body, in fact there has been much work in the fields of neuroscience, reproducing those exact feelings in people via stimulation of neural pathways…No God required, and His absence doesn’t diminish the experience.”

OK, so my options are to trust that people can duplicate my feelings (which they haven’t felt to know they are duplicating) are controlled solely by stimulation of neural pathways, or by God working in my life. It takes less faith for me to believe the latter.

“Cause/Effect is certainly true, at scales larger than the sub-atomic, but at smaller scales quantum effects take over, which is not driven by cause/effect…there is no reason to suppose that a prime cause is needed for the universe’s creation.”

Well, I can take your word for it, or I can take the Bible. Both avenues would require me to trust in mysteries that don’t fully make sense at my level of comprehension. I experience less cognitive dissonance trusting in scripture than Fendrel.

Dee,

By the way, how can you be “too binary” is that like a “little bit pregnant”?

Dear Beakerj
I’m so sorry to hear of how you feel. My father-in-law died suddenly three weeks ago and we had to make a mad dash to the west coast of Ireland. We got there in time, thank goodness to say our last goodbyes but I can tell you that it shakes you to your very foundations. My wife and her sisters are devastated. The husbands can’t believe it. Everything from the moment of death to the removal to the two night wake to the funeral just seems so unreal. I’m angry about it but take comfort from the fact that w were there when we were needed most. My son spoke to me in the car tonight saying that sometimes he was okay with the thought of dying because it happens to us all but sometimes he was scared and asked me what I thought. What can you say? Only that Christ offers hope of forgiveness, guaranteeing a safe and secure end.
God bless you.
Gavin

Sorry I meant Fendrel

Guy – i think a fair number of commenters here are familiar with WYSWYG editors.

so maybe you can pass on the big secret to us?

Guy – Blogger’s latest interface actually makes it necessary for me to be hand-doing “break” tags, which is beyond ridiculous – worse than WP.

The number of things that get broken when online services install “upgrades” never ceases to amaze me!

” In my opinion, and for too many centuries now, Jesus’ humanity has only been glossingly acknowledged by the Church, sanitized, and never too up close and personal.”

A big amen to that.

A simply “preview” of our posting would go a long way to make things easier in that regard. If not a preview, then the ability to edit a post where we could correct mistakes.

<b?How About Using Joomla Instead of Word Press, Guy Behind the Curtain

Have you thought about switching to the Joomla content management system since WordPress is always a nightmare and TWW has grown into a large website as opposed to still being the simple type of blog it started out as and for which Word Press is designed for.

I haven’t tried them, having used Jooomla after one bad WP experience, but there are several tools that reputedly make changing from WP to Joomla pretty seamless.

Just a thought…