I think God can be a victim. Jesus surely was a victim. Yahweh seems to have had emotions that included being jealous and sad and even angry. When people in a covenant worships another god it seems to be the same kind of hurt as if someone cheated on their spouse. Need and expectation broken does not seem to be the exact thing.
Youâre right - that this is all there in spades among all the prophetic writings.
It is a highly anthropomorphized God (and necessarily so), for our sakes relationally speaking.
But it still strikes me as something that quite a few other scriptures will not completely own - to insist that God actually needs something from us that then hurts God if it is denied.
Maybe the way I should be looking at it is: God is hurt the same way that I hurt when somebody I love gets hurt. E.g. to victimize my child or any among family or loved ones, is to victimize me (even though I myself wasnât the one directly victimized). And yet - because of my âone fleshâ or âone bodyâ status with others or the body of Christ generally - I was!
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I think what we see throughout the Bible that God deserves our praise, to deny it, or worse to say something else deserves it, is cosmological defamation. But to deserve something is not the same as needing it.
As to the victim, I would say that the OT shows that we (and more specifically, the poor and defenceless) are the victims of idolatry. We are made it Godâs image are are suppose to reflect his attributes to the world. But what we see when the people of God fall into idolatry is that by worshipping a twisted image of the Divine, their virtues become twisted also. The poor are exploited, widows and orphans are denied their rights, those with power use it for selfish ends, etc, etc.
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You should definitely read his chapter on sexuality in COTC. As an advisory council member at Biologos, his view may be best considered as he presents it. In my opinion, itâs one of the most carefully considered, loving, and courageous views Iâm come across on the subject.
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Also, IMHO, Tremper Longman has forgotten more about the Old Testament than most of us will ever learn. I personally find him to be a first rate OT scholar, perhaps one of the best.
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Longman and Walton have been a tremendous help for me in navigating the challenge of reading the OT with modern eyes.
I also like how Longman and Allender turned out to be lifelong friends after an early childhood episode of bullying. Pretty remarkable that one turned out to be an expert in OT studies and the other is one in Christian psychology. And I love how their collaborative work brings together the richness of both fields.
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Could not agree more. Have you read his commentary on Proverbs (Baker Wisdom series)? it is superbly good.
Interesting, I didnât know that.
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Donât forget the scene in 2 Kings 2:23-25, where some boys make fun of Elishaâs bald head. Elisha calls in an air strike, and two bears come out and maul 42 of the boys. Not a Sunday school tale!
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He surely knows what profit looks like. A social media platform full of trolls, hate speech, and conspiracy theories will probably not be financially viable.
Probably.
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That KJV man, hoo boyâŚ
He certainly can be liabled and worthy of Justice.
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Why not? Itâs in the God breathed Bible.
On such high recommendations - Iâll have to check that out. I donât suppose there is free access to that chapter anywhere? COTC: âConfronting Old Testament Controversiesâ
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I found a handful of excerpts online. It really seems just like the same old interpretation almost all of us grew up on while the guy interjects a few times he does not hate them and feels bad for them. I think its the same as when you find a man who is pretty good as biblical scholarship for a lot of the Bible. Has multiple degrees , pastors and writes books that go in depth about specific topics and then has a chapter on the flood and the science that supports it.
Though this man does seem to accept evolution and ectâŚ.
Well - even just going back and reading some of the essays Longman has contributed to Biologos was a good to see to be reminded of his thought and approach. And what I read of his right here on this site was pretty solid. So it may serve as a good reminder that there are many different axes and approaches toward different issues when it comes to handling scriptures. Just because there is agreement to be had along one of these dimensions doesnât mean all conversation is concluded.
Among the important things we can glean from the practice of Jewish midrash is the appreciation that scriptures ought to be treated as being at the beginning and in the middle of our conversations, not just at the end of them. And maybe we can go even further to say despite the dogmatistâs protests: there is [should be] no such thing as âan endâ to conversation when it comes to scripture.
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Hoopla has it available for free through some public library accounts.
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Really? Itâs takes serious wisdom to rightly handle what this does and does not apply to.
I got a good one on how to interpret intentional sins in relation to the old and new covenants. That bit about how they could not be atoned in Leviticus was a real challenge for Jewish scribes, and when I surveyed what NT commentators had to say about it, what I found was very surprising.
Perhaps a daring claim.
Indeed. I think that is all part of the never-ending conversation. I think Jesus exemplified this in some pretty radical looking ways in how he handled the law and the prophets (even now yet, after 2000 years of so-called âsettlingâ Christian theologizing). We might conclude that Jesus was playing âfast and looseâ with Moses and the prophets such as they had received at the time. And that assessment would be putting it charitably compared with how the Pharisees and scribes of the time were putting it.
So what falls under the sexual immorality called out for the Church of Pergamum?
Itâs frighteningly surreal to hear Keener teach on this passage, a real breath of caution to the porn addict today.
Iâm not familiar with Keener.
So where do the N.T. ethics about sexual immorality fall: under âcontinued conversationâ vs. âclear and settledâ? I gather thatâs what youâre asking.
If seeing scripture as a âcontinued conversationâ means nothing more than beginning a new game of parsing between two ostensible categories: â100% clear / non-negotiableâ, and âup-for-grabs; you can take it or leave itâ - then I would say this is still to try to silence much of scriptures. I.e. â itâs still an attempted conversation-ender rather than actually engaging with scripture. Youâve just moved it, maybe, to some higher level - yes: a new covenant, but still one thatâs just as law-based as the old one was. Law 2.0, if you will.
To insist that the conversation continues is not the same as insisting that there are no real moral imperatives or prohibitions. I think literalists often straw-man everybody else with that. To them, considering anything as unsettled is the same as considering everything unsettled. I donât hear anybody today, even among the most liberal churches trying to preach any sexual free-for-all ethic.
Sexual immorality (by definition) is immoral. The details of what all gets bundled into that label will include quite a bit of culturally-conditioned input, and is not clearly spelled out in any testament of scriptures. And there are broad sweeps of things beyond sex, but very much including sexual behavior that will already be covered under the broad rubrics of: Am I just trying to justify myself because my conscience bothers me about something? Or ⌠is this a loving way to treat this other human being? Would I want to be treated this way? Long term? Am I harshly judging somebody else, and maybe using my own power to prevent them from having any access to sought-after community, while turning a much more forgiving eye toward similar or different (but still sins) of my own?
All of that is a whole world of needed on-going conversation even before we get to our vain attempts to adjudicate absolutes in the details all cultures, times, and contexts - and then claiming our response has been the final word from scripture ⌠conversation over.
Those who go that route often like to insist they have been conditioned 100% by scripture and not at all by any cultural influences. By insisting so, they have become blind guides.