How the Bible doesn't exactly condone slavery

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Mervin_Bitikofer

a very judicious response

Exactly. Judgement is required, and that necessarily implies some kind of standard.

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

Of course on never loves in a vacuum!

@Dale

Again, you are disparaging those who read music, figuratively,

I don’t follow your analogy in that. Can you help me connect those dots?

If anything … it would seem that love is the bigger picture (i.e. the ones who don’t need to read music so much but just play by ear? … am I connecting my own dots correctly?) If so, I do appreciate your analogy. To make the new covenant about law (at the expense of love), would be to say that music is nothing more than the mechanics of being able to read and play it. (no musical ‘soul’ in other words … may as well be a program playing a midi file). You are correct that I don’t mean to disparage those who can read it and play it by discipline. I only trust that they know music is so much more than merely that.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Speaking of, I just posted @beaglelady’s meme on Facebook.

But seriously… (to follow)

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Mervin_Bitikofer

To make the new covenant about law (at the expense of love), would be to say that music is nothing more than the mechanics of being able to read and play it. (no musical ‘soul’ in other words … may as well be a program playing a midi file).

 
You are not remembering part of the metaphor:

@Dale

On the other hand, those of us who read music may know the details, ‘the laws, rules and regulations’ (the laws of love of music?) that need to be followed correctly, and with practice, performance can [and will] become second nature and instinctive as well (me, maybe not so much ).

This prefaced it:

@Dale

Choices involve standards, and the OT moral law plus the myriad of instructions and mandated self-tests from both Jesus and in the epistles constitute those measures and laws of love for Christians.

We don’t need to continuously test our hearts against an extensive checklist of minutiae, guilt-driven and afraid of being disobedient, to see if we’re being godly or not. We do need to have read thoroughly and repetitively, however, so that those ideas, tests and standards become part of who we are and integrated in our hearts so that we can recognize ungodly behavior instinctively and instantly in ourselves and in others.

My distinct impression is that antinomians downplay and disregard some of the details that need to be analyzed and incorporated into our thinking and behavior, and we are talking about a case in point, above.

In western culture that has been influenced by Christianity for two millennia, we won’t typically see some of the extremes of behavior mentioned or recounted in the NT. Recall Simon Magus in Acts 8. If he had become baptized but continued his behavior, he would be a candidate to receive some more ‘church discipline’ – as it was, he received a very public and harsh rebuke, hardly in accordance with what we think of as ‘loving’.

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

Just for the record … I don’t know if I claim or even fit the label “antinomian”. It depends what all gets packed into that I guess. I’m not against social mores or norms as long as those aren’t elevated above love. Call it “a law of love” if that makes you feel better.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Mervin_Bitikofer

as long as those aren’t elevated above love.

They are incorporated in love. Love needs to be tough, sometimes.

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

@Dale

hardly in accordance with what we think of as ‘loving’.

He wasn’t the only one. Jesus probably didn’t feel very loving to the scribes and religious leaders either. His ire seems to have been reserved most for the powerful. The magician, Simon, that you mention was hoping to make money as I recall. Somebody wanting to capitalize on the Spirit at others’ expense. Yep … tough love.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Mervin_Bitikofer

…or even fit the label “antinomian”.

I don’t know that you do, either. It’s just a handy generalization, and as such, of course, should be used with an implicit caveat and cannot be taken as a perfect descriptor of anyone. Labels do have a place in streamlining communication, though.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Of course, the scribes and Pharisees were not believers, but hypocritical ‘church’ leaders who needed to be called out.

We had mentioned greed, above. Maybe another hypothetical church treasurer wasn’t greedy, but had a special needs family situation that she was not comfortable with taking to church leadership. So we cannot make blanket application and be without love, as @Daniel_Fisher was implying earlier.

@Daniel_Fisher

Now, working out exactly how and precisely to whom and when this does or doesn’t apply, when I should or shouldn’t “receive someone into my house” that “does not abide in the teaching of Christ,” when I should or shouldn’t eat with those who claim Christ’s name but who live and act as unbelievers, there is indeed much to be worked out, and there is clearly going to be nuance there (even Paul explicitly said he didn’t mean we should not associate with any and all unbelievers in the world). There is certainly complexity and nuance there.

What I am concerned about, though, is when people utterly ignore these instructions completely, and do not even attempt to ever apply them in any way whatsoever, or try to understand when or when not to practice them, because “love” somehow overrides, abrogates, or otherwise invalidates these principles and instructions in their entirety.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

This is reminiscent of the extended conversation about Andy Stanley’s ‘unhitching’ from the OT, only now we are addressing that, and the modern evangelical tendency to unhitch from the mandates included in the new covenant of grace. It is a covenant, and there are therefore mandates, not as Law, but of moral, loving law, what love in the heart looks like expressed, as well as what it doesn’t look like.

[Daniel_Fisher]

@Mervin_Bitikofer

So are you practicing all those things, Daniel?

In short, yes. Attempting to, at least, as I attempt to do with all the commands, guidance, and instructions in the NT.

@Mervin_Bitikofer

Are you going through your church roles and making sure that any who are not employed as well as they should or could be (idleness) are removed from membership?

No, certainly not. Doing so would be uncharitable.

(As would interpreting Paul’s instructions about those who are “idle” to mean “not employed as well as they should or could be”)

But basic charity means I am not on a witch hunt looking for those I can exclude… but when the biblical conditions are clearly presented, and when numerous warnings done exactly according to Christ’s specific instruction have been done, and there is still no repentance, then yes, I act, in love, toward those who are unrepentant in as close to the manner that Jesus and Paul both instructed and demonstrated.

And yes, love for the sinner, i.e., stern rebuke for the purpose and sake of their restoration, is the very reason that such discipline and excommunication are enjoined…

Let him who has done this be removed from among you… you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.

For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him.

And hence the exact concern I have with allowing some esoteric and non-specific “hermeneutic of love” to override specific commands of Jesus and Paul. Was Jesus violating Christ’s “hermeneutic of love” when he told us to warn an unrepentant person numerous times (for the purpose of “winning your brother”), and then to “let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector”? Was Paul violating the hermeneutic of love when he demanded a church member be excommunicated, and then enjoined the church to “reaffirm their love” for him after that very discipline led to his repentance?

A hermeneutic of love sounds all nice and good in theory, but in practice, I find it simply becomes a pretext for excising from the teaching of Jesus and the apostles any teaching or guidance that we personally don’t like.

Perhaps, just perhaps, Paul and Jesus did, in fact, know what actions are loving better than we do… and perhaps what they were telling us to do was, in fact, more consistent with the true hermeneutic of love than that we have largely embraced today, as informed by our own cultural preferences. What if what we think of generally in our culture as being “loving” is more likely to see people consigned to hell than if we followed the lead of Christ and the apostles?

To borrow again from the (other) master…

Suppose you found a man on the point of starvation and wanted to do the right thing. If you had no knowledge of medical science, you would probably give him a large solid meal; and as a result your man would die. That is what comes of working in the dark.

[Daniel_Fisher]

@Dale

This is reminiscent of the extended conversation about Andy Stanley’s ‘unhitching’ from the OT, only now we are addressing that, and the modern evangelical tendency to unhitch from the mandates included in the new covenant of grace. It is a covenant, and there are therefore mandates, not as Law, but of moral, loving law, what love in the heart looks like expressed, as well as what it doesn’t look like.

Indeed. What I see being unhitched is “The Old Testament and everything in the New testament that I don’t like.”