Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Oct 04, 2022 7:52 pmWhether or not God IS as you want to characterize Him or not cannot be settled on how popular that idea might be. And that's all you appeal to. Then you go pure ad hominem, as if what IC is can have any bearing at all on that question. Neither how much you like the idea, nor how much you like me has anything at all to do with the question in hand. Anybody can see that. It's just basic logic.
The god defined by a priestly class in the Hebrew Torah is an amalgamation of voices. If you regard that 'voice' as, literally, having been intoned by the god Yahweh (as if thundering from on high) I will not be able to convince you otherwise. In any case, what I have recently been writing about this voice, and Yahweh, is exactly what I think: it is a literary creation or more properly put a theological creation. The purposes of all of that are various. At this point I do not have an allegiance to that Voice. However, that does not mean that I reject what I might call Hebrew genius. So the issue becomes seeing and distinguishing valuable content from that in which it is mixed.
For this reason I am and I suggest that all people are ethically obligated to see as clearly as they can into these matters. And I recommend
seeing though that voice. But I do grasp that you will not do this, that you cannot do this, because doing that would cause the pillars that uphold your believe to tremble.
Really lame thinking, AJ. You used to be able to do better.
What I want to say here, because I make all efforts to respect the forum, would be indecent indeed. I'll leave it to you to guess . . .
In any case, the truth is that the God of the OT is the God of the NT. And He is utterly intolerant of evil. That's the nature of being the righteous God. But He's also the Saviour of men. That's what "Jesus" means, in fact: "God saves." And "Jesus Christ" means, "God saves through Messiah." So God's primary characteristic is not as Judge -- though He assuredly is that -- but as the One who rescues the lost from judgment.
Don't lecture me on the god of any particular testament. I do not regard you as an authority or a resource of value. It is not you who should talk, it is you who should learn to listen. I grant you that there is a concept of a god "utterly intolerant of evil". And I also grant you that there exists a notion of 'rescue' and 'deliverance'. But I do not grant you that you have any valuable sense of what these words and notions mean. Or put another way I regard your ideas about them as perversions. And I assure you I am capable of explaining in detail what I mean.
In fact, if God were not righteous, then salvation would not be a big deal. We could imagine that God would simply look the other way while we carry on...that's what unrighteous judges do. But salvation is a very big deal, precisely because it is necessary that God must vindicate His righteousness, and prove that Harry's accusation is entirely false, by dealing with evil thoroughly and according to the manner that a truly righteous judge would.
You are stuck in a falsely-premised logic-loop. You are referring to a concept. I am referring to the actual voice and what the voice is said to have said. I am also looking at Yahweh as an emblem of non-righteousness insofar as the Voice is one handled and wielded by a priest class for dubious purposes. I do not have an alternative. Or if I were to concoct one it would be through the faulty, degenerate reasoning for which you have gained for yourself a certain fame.
And He saves all those who will believe in Him, just as a merciful God would.
I look at these matters -- of 'being saved' of 'rescue' and everything having to do with getting on a proper path in life -- with very different eyes and also background. The mysterious and mystical *belief* that you say is needed (here you speak as an Evangelical) has, even in Christian theological history, been filled out by far greater and wider concepts. I do not believe in your *belief* nor your sentimental 'salvation moment'.
What I do believe in (and understand to to true) is beyond your capacity
to hear. You are captured by your beliefs. They render you unable to hear
for all that you have ears.
The god-concept you define, and what is pictured in the Bible, is not a merciful being. This was carefully and painstakingly demonstrated to you by Harry.
That's the message this world hates. It wants, instead, an unrighteous God who indulges the wicked, and an unloving God who perpetuates evil. They don't want to see justice, and they don't want to need mercy. That's what makes the Christian message unpopular.
The statement you make here has to be carefully parsed.
It is very true that *the world* (i.e. people, the masses, the common people -- in truth all people generally) have a willful and a rebellious nature. We know, for example, that children require training and channeling. We know that without it they turn out badly. So we know that people generally, like children, require education-structures that they agree to submit to. There certainly exists straight force and coercion (necessary) but there also exists upper echelons of persons who *get it* and who agree to surrender to authority.
Once you understand that culture requires *sets of rules* and application of conventions, what I term
paideia then makes sense. It can be examined in a rational light. We definitely agree that 'authority' was seriously, and deleteriously, challenged and that disobedience to rational rules became the order of the day. And we also grasp that the Christian/Catholic social teaching which had been the sound base of cultural parameters has been seriously and consistently attacked.
All of this you and I both know.
So what the *world* hates and why it hates it, requires a careful conversation. It may indeed resist the conventional moral and ethical models. And I definitely stand on the side of understanding what those models are, or were, and
why they existed. But those models can only be presented and understood through processes of rational exposition. If people desire to act badly and perpetuate evil, they will, with our without religious authority.
Justice requires rational definition. And since 'god's mercy' is, largely, an empty abstraction, if we are to talk about mercy it will only have meaning if we talk about our own
merciful capabilities.
There are many many reasons why the *Christian message* has become unpopular. I do not think you really understand much of this. And you do nothing except to drive people away from it -- were understanding possible.
So the way I look at you is just as I say:
a religious fanatic incapable of sound reasoning. It is a terrifying defect, from where I sit.