The whole of the account reads, on one level, like someone having to deal with their snotty siblings who are taunting them — for whatever reasons siblings are at times taunting each other about. You never want to give snotty siblings what they want. In this case, they want Jesus to go to the Feast of Tabernacles and do something to demonstrate His Power — like when He went to the wedding at Cana and at some point there was not only no longer a wine shortage but the quality of it improved. That was a separate case. But in this case Jesus is taunted by His brothers to do something further to demonstrate who He is. It’s almost as if He did not want to play their game. That is, He was separating Himself from them a bit since the motives for their taunting were not exactly honorable or friendly. He did not go up to that Feast and put on a grand display as they wanted (“prove to me that you are the Christ…”). The text just says that He went up privately instead.And if you believe that Jesus is God-made-Flesh, then the God who “tabernacled” with Israel in past times — was again “tabernacling” with Israel (thus, something greater than water-into-wine) — but they did not know who He was, any more than His brothers did…at least not (for some of His brothers) until after the crucifixion and resurrection. The symbolism of the whole pericope is more intense, to me, than saying He told a lie.
Like any proper human, Jesus ‘lied’. God in Himself cannot. He can’t tell the truth or anything else either. Deceit is fundamental to even non-intelligent creatures: camouflage. It’s all about motive. Jesus’ was pure.
Thanks for sharing.
I agree the lie is neither wrong nor the important part of the event.
I interpret your post as recognizing Jesus did lie, but that is not what we should take away from the story.
However, this thread is about telling lies.
Bottom line is God “could” have created a universe with the appearance of age if He so chose to. Many are uncomfortable with this but we don’t have to be comfortable with it any more than we are with Jesus clearly lying in John 7. Some are very dismissive of the appearance of age argument but most for bad reasons. I mean should we also accuse God of being deceptive because from our limited perspective the world “appeared” flat at one time and the sun “appears” to rise as well? Mistaken conclusions from our limited perspective are not God’s fault and a universe with the appearance of age is not more problematic or difficult than a sun with the appearance of rising. The real problem with this argument is that it completely misunderstands the genre of the Genesis creation accounts. But most Christians entertaining this argument and rejecting it also misinterpret the genre of many other parts of the Bible themselves. Ergo, mistakenly claiming it makes God deceptive is all thats left for many.
Vinnie
How? He created the universe as if He didn’t.
Are you saying he created the universe as if He did? Meaning there is clear and unequivocal evidence for God’s existence to be inferred from cosmology?
I’m not saying that He created the universe as if He didn’t choose to have created it with the appearance of age, no.
I’m saying that He created the universe as if He didn’t create it. It shows no trace whatsoever of an intelligent designer. It more than suggests that He has no choice in the matter… whatsoever. It’s this or nothing. He could be willing it all in to existence from eternity, but He has no choice how. And on another tack, if He were lying, and the cosmos was created last Wednesday with all the appearance of age including mine with all my life lie, and the lie of all the trillion sapient worlds, it would mean that He’s not God. Who changeth not.
It’s madness rather than merely absurd like existence.
You seem to be making God a slave to his own nature probably because of too high a view of your philosophical learnings. Love has to be freely given or it’s not love. We only know of God what is revealed. All other claims or guesses are just human babble. “Words to be led out into battle against other word.”
I also see your point to an extent and feel from some atheists. We are an after thought if best, to a universe completely oblivious to us. Eden never happened and the theodice problem has never been the same since.
But we are not talking about the same issue in my mind. To many people God can create however he wants. Appearance of age or letting it roll over time. Your theology presents a lower view of God’s sovereignty than other models and would up talking past one another.
I see some merit in the idea God must have created like this in so far as evolution doesn’t look anything like the carefully planned creation of Genesis 1 and it helps with natural evil and free will but belief in heaven stands against this interpretation. If we can be free in heaven and experience a real and genuine existence, I’m not sure how we can claim this is the only way. We’d have to drop something.
God is a slave to Love, certainly. Aspects of which are truth, autonomy (I’ve no idea what free will is, does God have it?), soundness, consistency, humility, acceptance. Others. The natural is the only way to generate others for transcendence. Where we pick up everything.
You make some good points. I too have never seen or heard it satisfactorily explained how electromagnetic radiation from the beginning of the universe is reaching us only now, when nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. The question I would like to see answered is how did this earth get here first ahead of it by so many alleged millions of years?
A simpler example is to ask, Did the trees in the Garden of Eden have yearly growth rings or just one ring?
Such questions miss the intent and purpose of Genesis. Asking the correct questions provides a better answer. There is only one question about creation that is theologically relevant. Why did God create? The answer to this question is the same as the answer of another question. Why did God send His only begotten Son? Answer: For God so loved the world (John 3:16). This is the answer to why God created the world. One can elaborate on the meaning, but essential it was to implement the divine plan of redemption for the purpose of revealing certain divine characteristics to humankind.
To ask the question, “Can God lie?” is nothing but a philosophical mind game and has nothing to do with divine revelation and the theology to help understand God.
It may well be a “philosophical mind game” but I have learned a bit from this discussion. I think I have a fuller realization that lying is not the equivalent of sinning, that is, one can lie but not sin, so if Jesus lied about something, it is irrelevant as he could do so without sinning. No doubt in my mind that as a child he told some untruths, but if not morally responsible, those would not be sins. The issue becomes a bit sticky when applied to Father God, as well as a morally mature Jesus, as God’s nature is Truth. Hum, back to mind games it seems.
Of course, we have a bit different view of truth and lie in western society where things are seen in absolutes that in some cultures when truth is more fluid.
Well, on the last, a weird feature of standard big bang cosmology is that time and space themselves began at the big bang, and that space itself is expanding. It’s not a case of matter exploding forth through space. The analogy usually drawn is of dots on a balloon. Your universe is the surface of the balloon. Blow up the balloon. The dots all move away from each other. Dots that are further away from your dot, are receding at a higher speed than closer dots. There is no centre to the expansion.
As you point out, there is a speed limit.
However, the speed limit only applies to objects in a local spacetime reference frame, not to the expansion of spacetime itself, which can expand more quickly. This is why there is believed to be a (small) part of our Universe that is not observable, even though the entirety came from a single point. This might be a good place to start:
At the same time this is not a way to claim that objects that appear to be a long way away were actually created 6000 years ago, unless God faked an intervening field of propagating electromagnetic radiation to go along with them.
With that in mind, would agree that the same error inflicts those who insist by reference to Genesis that the Earth is 6000 years old and that the knowledge claimed with confidence across wide swathes of the scientific community is wrong?
Yes. Thinking of a Creation narrative as a record of something observed wold be akin to believing in fairy tales when the point is a morality tale. The Creation narrative of Genesis has nothing to do with the how or when the universe started but with why. A question for which science is unable to provide an answer. The first eleven chapters of Genesis are the theological foundation upon which the divine plan of redemption proceeds. These chapters set the stage for all the rest of the Bible. The New Testament is a theological requirement to complete the reason for Genesis 1-11.
The creation narrative of Genesis has nothing to do with science and science has nothing to do with the creation narrative in Genesis. That just practicing appropriate theology.
Those who attempt to force the Genesis account to fit science or vice versa, do so from an peculiar perspective about inspiration, inerrancy, and authority originating with the Protestant Reformation as an alternative source of authority to the Papacy. This peculiar perspective assumes for the Bible to be authoritative it must be inspired and inspired mean without error in all things. It is a logic without any necessity except for the assumptions being supported. The Bible can be authoritative without being declared without error about science, geology, geography, or history. Depends upon what subject does the Bible have authority. The same applies to inspiration. The cosmology of the Bible, Genesis through Revelation, is a flat land and sea with mountains supporting the three transparent shells of heaven with doors and windows. Such is not inspired or a requirement of faith nor is a Creation date of 4004 B.C.
Once supernaturalism is allowed then we should also expect that cosmology need not fit neatly within a neat naturalistic framework
The existence of background radiation may have a far more different explanation and need not necessarily be thought of as you say ‘faking it’. Once naturalism is assumed- all the rest is extrapolation.
I don’t know who first mentioned 6,000 years but it wasn’t me. The truth is no one knows how old the universe is. No point anyone pretending that they do.
There is also no point in pretending that evidence doesn’t heavily favor one end of that spectrum.
If by “all the rest” you mean deep time and biological evolution, then that wouldn’t be true. “Extrapolation” implies a lack of further data points, forcing one to assume a continued trajectory. But there are mountains of evidence (“data points”) that are consistent with consensus science in these matters. It would be more accurate to acknowledge that there will always be at least some interpolation - since no data set is ever continuous and thus infinitely complete.
No, but that’s not the same thing as arguing that scientists know essentially nothing, which is what YEC amounts to. (I note that complaint may not apply to you.) There is a ladder of astrophysical distance measurement techniques, that increase in uncertainty as they reach farther away. The lowest rung is geometric parallax, and it’s a very direct method that seems very unlikely to ever be proven radically wrong. And, there are geometric parallaxes measured beyond 30,000 light years.
I wouldn’t argue that scientists know nothing. I haven’t read anywhere that young earth creationists believe that scientists essentially know nothing. This too looks like extrapolation. Real science i.e. that based on observation is a valuable thing not to be readily dismissed. Still, much of what passes for modern ‘science’ is only theory based upon an a priori philosophical position. For example Lawrence Krauss believes that the universe came into existence because ‘nothing’ in and of itself is unstable and therefore ‘nothing’ calls for ‘something’ to fill the void. This isn’t science based upon observation, it is a naturalism at heart which is something else more akin to monist ‘religion’.
The YEC position is absolutely at odds, to an extreme degree, with what the vast majority of astronomers, geologists, biologists are convinced are truths about the Universe. As an ex-astronomer I certainly feel anyone who tells me the Earth is 6000 years old thinks the entirety of my field of expertise is false. Geologists and biologists reportedly feel the same way.
I have checked myself for pride, over and over, in thinking that, and I’m quite sure pride doesn’t colour that feeling. I think it’s hard for those who aren’t scientists to appreciate the depth and breadth of understanding that prompts scientists to feel confident in any theory.
There are many books that try to justify scientists’ confidence by laying out the evidence. I must admit even I struggle to take in 10% of what they say. And what they say is probably far less than 1% of what’s known. But I know from being in a natural science field that they’re not talking through their hats, so I take them at their word.
It probably doesn’t help that outside the natural sciences there are other sciences that are far more prone to overconfidence, financial temptation and so-on. What day of the week is it, is butter good or bad for me? Keynesianism today, or something else? Oedipus or archetypes, talk therapy or CBT?