[And my apologies for not acknowledging your generosity of spirit which I just read!]
So the Heresy of Peor is revelatory?
The genocide of the Amalekites is revelatory?
Etc, etc, etc, etc?
1 Like
I don’t know what that is.
But just to note … identifying something as revelatory (and authentically so) isn’t logically the same as asserting that everything must be.
I should have qualified that a bit more. Obviously the testaments are full of lots of histories, and straightforward information that presumably could have been recorded by historians generally whether under religious purpose or not. So I was playing fast and loose with “revelation” there. More carefully here, I’m thinking of revelation as something that probably couldn’t be known except that somebody receives divine communication about it.
I’ll build up a reply.
Hope you noticed my [And my apologies for not acknowledging your generosity of spirit which I just read!] above.
I know scientifically, by natural, general revelation, that the Flood didn’t happen neither 14 years before the ascent of Sargon of Akkad nor 14 thousand. Anyone who says otherwise has a different, non-scientific, non-rational epistemology. Rationally, God does not judge that way. There was no haste in that. It took me decades to dump the irrational. The assumption of the myth by early Christianity and Christ Himself is part of general - natural - revelation too. There is no specific revelation in it at all.
Aye. That’s tradition for you. The least of bases for belief.
Aye. He certainly did in the person of Jesus and continues to. But not in myth upon myth upon…
I came back at this already. The horrors of the OT are general revelation with hints, yearnings of the specific. Especially the sublime prophets on whose shoulders Jesus stood. And no, there isn’t much, but those silver linings are in the storm clouds and they aren’t just lightning. Hopefully. The specific is occulted in the general.
…at least not as it has come to be understood by some in modernist terms.
[my own emphasis added into your quote above.]
Is that yet another example of revelation you have received that God could not possibly speak to us through myth? [I like using ‘myth’ in what I will call a favored ‘Lewisian’ or ‘Tolkinian’ sense, but acknowledge that the ‘myth = falsehood’ sense that is more widely in use today, and also by an early apostle or two is probably how you are using it …which might force my agreement then. But it would not stop me from thinking that, of all of those, Lewis made the most enlightened - dare I say inspired - use of the concept.]
Amen to that! That was nicely put, though I had to think on it some. I like that turn of words.
[edit added above.]
No. I believe He did. Both in the sun behind the cloud and in the Son who - validly (but not by Enlightenment - postmodern criteria) - assumed the cloud of myth.
See link.
'Yahweh orders Moses to gather the chiefs of the people and hang up the idolaters before Yahweh to turn away Yahweh’s anger.
The scene then abruptly shifts from concerns about Moabites to those about Midianites. A man — Israelite Zimri, the son of Salu — brings a Midianite woman Cozbi into the camp in the sight of Moses, where the people are weeping. Phinehas, grandson of Aaron, thereupon rises up with a spear, follows the man into a tent and thrusts the spear through both the man and woman. The plague, from which 24,000 had died, then stopped. Because of his violent action, God then promises Phinehas a “covenant of peace” and a “covenant of eternal priesthood”.
God then commands Moses to wage a war of revenge against the Midianites.’
Inspired? In what way? To what end? What on Earth or in Heaven’s name has this got to do with Christianity?
Well okay - you call my bluff when I remark that I struggle to find stuff that isn’t revelatory, and rightly so. In case you hadn’t seen it yet, I had put in the follow-up post above with the requisite qualification.
And, sure! - there is a lot of history or historical commentary that will not make the cut for typical daily devotional material today, and rightly so.
Yes I did, sorry.
I don’t do falsehood! (Liar!). Aye Jack were inspired good and proper.
So in many ways we are grateful for the New Atheists. They are not the first to call out the dissonance between the warrior God of the OT and Jesus some of the church fathers and others more recently, like George Macdonald,did) ; but their open questioning enabled us to approach this honestly, as apologists.in fact, it seems they rescue us from postmodernity. From “Reasonable Faith”:
The idea that we live in a postmodern culture is a myth. In fact, a postmodern culture is an impossibility; it would be utterly unlivable. Nobody is a postmodernist when it comes to reading the labels on a medicine bottle versus a box of rat poison. If you’ve got a headache, you’d better believe that texts have objective meaning! People are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology;rather, they’re relativistic and pluralistic in matters of religion and ethics. But that’s not postmodernism; that’s modernism! That’s just old-line Positivism and Verificationism, which held that anything you can’t prove with your five senses is just a matter of individual taste and emotive expression. We live in a cultural milieu which remains deeply modernist. People who think that we live in a postmodern culture have thus seriously misread our cultural situation.
Thanks.
1 Like
?
Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.
But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.’”
3 Likes
Great point. However, a big struggle for me is where we find symbolism and literalism in Revelation (and hyperbole in many of Jesus’ extreme words elsewhere). What part of this is literal? The sword from the mouth? The warrior? The robes dipped in blood? I do not know.
Thank you.
I did read some of Dr Packer"s “Knowing God.” Thanks for your suggestion. Did you get a chance to read Greg Boyd’s “Cross Vision”?
Maybe I should revisit that.
Thanks.
The previous mentioned acts of God’s holy justice has everything to do with the Christ of Christianity.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”
Whoever does not believe in Him stands condemned already.
What kind of savior do you proclaim? If God does not condemn the wicked, then there was no reason for Jesus to come and die on the cross. If it only takes our death to enter into God’s glorious presence and be received by Him, then Christ’s death and resurrection was vanity.
Jesus came to save mankind from the holy, just and righteous wrath of God against all who continue in rebellion against God. Mankind needed saving. But when He returns it will not be to show mercy to those who continued in unbelief and rebellion against God. As the following description stated in another post shows the attitude and actions of Jesus at His return.
Heb 12:25 See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? 26 At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” 27 The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken — that is, created things — so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, 29 for our "God is a consuming fire."
1 Like
Sorry? What’s your point? Apart from Biblicist proof texting.
Your reasoning has failed you. It has caused you to fall into a ditch and anyone who follows will end up their too.
Your God, your Jesus and your spirit are all MYTHS.
They could well be. Please use your reasoning to show how mine has failed me.
Steady on, @Cody_G, remember:
A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. ~ Proverbs 15:1 (NIV2011)
It’s not like you to lose your cool 
I didn’t. It was speaking the truth in love. And I have all confidence Martin understood that.
2 Likes
As I believe it is Martin who likes to quote, “Let the dead bury the dead.” I was just returning the same sentiment. And it is Martin and others who claim so much of the scriptue is myth as well as saying blasphemous statements about the Father and the Son.
Of course Cody. Nay bother. Iron to iron my friend.
Blasphemous?!