God is the almighty Father of all. We need to bear in mind that in the Ancient World, in which the OT was assembled, a father had untrammelled power of life and death over his children.
God is the almighty Father of all. We need to bear in mind that in the Ancient World, in which the OT was assembled, a father had untrammelled power of life and death over his children.
That would explain why the writers of the OT thought it was acceptable, but God is where our moral progress leads towards rather than the changing with the times.
I would. And given how i came to faith, the OT was all I had for the first two years, maybe. The Prophets are especially good on this.
I genuinely don't get this. The message the OT on its own gives me is "why is God such a murderous shit?". You can barely turn a page without someone being smited for fuck all. Try to steady the ark of the covenant? Splat. Keep some treasure from a sacked city? Splat, along with your whole family. Be an infant at the wrong time in Jericho? Splat, you baby bastard! The OT God needs to calm down a bit. When he's not killing people he's demanding other people do it for him.
I'd probably have to sit down with you and walk through it, commenting on each passage as we reached it, to make it at all understandable to you what I'm seeing in it. I've tried to summarize in the past and clearly I'm not able to communicate well enough. All I can say here is, that's not the God I see, and if it were, I would have run a thousand miles from him rather than looking to him for help back in the days when I was being abused and on the edge of suicide.
I've no way of knowing whether this is the case or not. There's a fair bit of 'smiting' in the Book of Revelation, of course - which the Eastern Churches were reluctant to accept into the canon of scripture for a good while.
What I have heard, in an interview with a Jewish person on Radio 4 many years ago, is that when they read the Gospels some Jews think to themselves, 'What's the fuss about? This guy just sounds like a rabbi to me ...'
Make of that what we will.
FWIW whilst this doesn't resolve all the issues, I tend to 'Christianise' or allegorise the gruesome OT stories.
God is the almighty Father of all. We need to bear in mind that in the Ancient World, in which the OT was assembled, a father had untrammelled power of life and death over his children.
That would explain why the writers of the OT thought it was acceptable, but God is where our moral progress leads towards rather than the changing with the times.
Quite. God shouldn't be as bad as we are at any given time.
The Jews have many layers of understanding of their Scriptures, it isn't just the simple story. I delved into Jewish mysticism quite a bit a few years back but @Bishops Finger nowadays I find Advaita Vedanta to be more approachable, though at the deepest level they have many similarities.
Yes, but I don't think that's what @Alan29 is saying.
I know I bang on about my recent trip to Madagascar but what struck me when wandering through market-places there was the very matter-of-fact attitude towards creatures on sale. People would pick up a live rabbit and bung it unceremoniously into a sack to carry it home for the pot. Others would walk away with several protesting chickens held upside down by their legs to add to their stock of egg-layers.
I've mentioned elsewhere on these boards how shocked I was to read how revellers in 17th century London would put live cats inside effigies of the Pope before burning them to add some sound-effects to the spectacle.
I don't think we can air-brush the problematic incidents out of the OT.
But I think we can alleviate them to some extent by seeing some kind of 'progression' in understanding from the Bronze Age systems of sacrifice and judgement to the Christ of the NT.
I also take @Lamb Chopped's point about the witness of the prophets - often challenging to outward systems and forms - but not in a hippy-dippy kind of way. I also think we often overlook the emphasis on social justice found in some of the Minor Prophets.
I also take @Lamb Chopped's point about the witness of the prophets - often challenging to outward systems and forms - but not in a hippy-dippy kind of way. I also think we often overlook the emphasis on social justice found in some of the Minor Prophets.
I’d agree. That said . . .
It’s become increasingly clear to me that how we were formed in faith, as it were, can be very hard to shake. When @KarlLB says something like . . .
The message the OT on its own gives me is "why is God such a murderous shit?". You can barely turn a page without someone being smited for fuck all.
. . . it’s hard for me not to feel as though we must be talking about different writings. We’re not, of course, and I want to be very clear that I’m not suggesting KarlLB is simply misreading the OT. Rather, I suspect we both, early in the formative stage, were given very different lenses through which to read the OT.
In my case, the “lens” could be boiled down to “God is love.” Everything, per that lens, needs to fit that basic assumption to be in focus. For me, that has meant that when God is portrayed as, say, murderous or vengeful or “smitey” in Scripture, the lens requires me not to take the text at face value, but to assume something else is going on. That’s the default for me.
But I’m aware that some were formed in interpretations that acknowledged or even centered the angry and vengeful God. And I imagine that lens can be as hard for them to shake as the “God is love” lens is for me to shake,
While the vast majority of scientists say that matter produces consciousness, a small but growing number see it the other way round. That consciousness creates matter or, at the very least, our perception of it.
I'd like to know more about this. Have you got a book or something you could send me to?
If so, I did, and I thank you, but I was more interested in the bit where consciousness creates (originates, whatever) matter. I was familiar with the idea of everything having a spirit/mind/whatsit before, from animism, but had never come across the creation idea...
It was, yes. Hope you can find something more targeted.
But I’m aware that some were formed in interpretations that acknowledged or even centered the angry and vengeful God. And I imagine that lens can be as hard for them to shake as the “God is love” lens is for me to shake,
I suppose that for me this has become the bug of Christianity instead of its feature. There's no clear path. There are wildly divergent interpretations, many of which do more harm than good. Christianity is whatever its adherents say it is. It may have taken me longer than some to come to this realization, but now that I've made it I can't wrap my head around it any more. And a Pope hoping against his own doctrine only makes me think that the whole thing is entirely optional, especially the supernatural parts.
While the vast majority of scientists say that matter produces consciousness, a small but growing number see it the other way round. That consciousness creates matter or, at the very least, our perception of it.
I'd like to know more about this. Have you got a book or something you could send me to?
If so, I did, and I thank you, but I was more interested in the bit where consciousness creates (originates, whatever) matter. I was familiar with the idea of everything having a spirit/mind/whatsit before, from animism, but had never come across the creation idea...
It was, yes. Hope you can find something more targeted.
But I’m aware that some were formed in interpretations that acknowledged or even centered the angry and vengeful God. And I imagine that lens can be as hard for them to shake as the “God is love” lens is for me to shake,
I suppose that for me this has become the bug of Christianity instead of its feature. There's no clear path. There are wildly divergent interpretations, many of which do more harm than good. Christianity is whatever its adherents say it is.
I can see that, but I’m not sure how it can be avoided once a sufficiently large group of people is involved. It seems to me to be a dynamic found in pretty much every religious group of any size, barring cults.
I guess from my perspective, “bug” or “feature” may both miss the mark in how to think about. “Inevitable reality,” maybe?
I’ve long thought it highly significant that Israel, the name given the patriarch which in turn became the name of the people descended from that patriarch, means “wrestles with God” or “struggles with God.” The meaning is found, it seems to me, in the wrestling or the struggling, not in having the complete and final answer.
Meanwhile, is the pope really hoping against his own doctrine? Does Catholic doctrine require that hell not be empty?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity." Also, a bit later, "God predestines that no one go to hell, for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and a persistence in it until the end." In between those statement come this: "The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent on man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny."
Yet the idea that hell is empty is not new, for example it obviously connects with universalism. I don't think (scraping up my barnacled Catholic views from the past), that any senior Catholic has ever said that X is in hell, where X is anybody's least favourite politician or war-monger. Of course, those hostile to the pope have taken up cudgels, as they do.
Maybe not. But the Church's reversal on Limbo not all that long ago makes me wonder what other doctrines might be edifices to folly, and whether or not the Pope knows as much.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church also says 1058 The Church prays that no one should be lost. "Lord let me never be parted from you." If it is true that no one can save himself, it is also true that God "desires all men to be saved"(1Tim 2:4) and that for him "all things are possible" ( Matt 19:26). And as @quetzalcoatl points out, the Church has never claimed any individual is in hell. So, as with the Orthodox Church, as @Gamma Gamaliel has reminded us, soft or hopeful universalism is permissible for Catholics. Although I've been a passionate universalist for most of my life, I am now more of a hopeful one because I know that we can't gainsay God's authority in matters of salvation.
Maybe not. But the Church's reversal on Limbo not all that long ago makes me wonder what other doctrines might be edifices to folly, and whether or not the Pope knows as much.
Was there actually a “reversal” on Limbo? My understanding is that Limbo as the final destination for infants who died without being baptized may have been a common belief, but was never actually defined as doctrine, and that a variety of views can be found among Catholic theologians through the centuries.
Maybe not. But the Church's reversal on Limbo not all that long ago makes me wonder what other doctrines might be edifices to folly, and whether or not the Pope knows as much.
Was there actually a “reversal” on Limbo? My understanding is that Limbo as the final destination for infants who died without being baptized may have been a common belief, but was never actually defined as doctrine, and that a variety of views can be found among Catholic theologians through the centuries.
Nit was commonly, consistently taught by the Church for centuries. Limbo was dropped from the latest revision of the Catechism, though according to the Vatican, "It remains therefore a possible theological hypothesis."
The cruel episodes contained in the OT have been repeated down the ages of Christianity by all manner of Christians. Protestants usually remember the episodes where Catholics were the torturers whilst Catholics have similar stories of the brutality of Protestants.
Q. 632. Where will persons go -- such as infants -- who have not committed actual sin and who, through no fault of theirs, die without baptism?
A. Persons, such as infants, who have not committed actual sin and who, through no fault of theirs, die without baptism, cannot enter heaven; but it is the common belief they will go to some place similar to Limbo, where they will be free from suffering, though deprived of the happiness of heaven.
That was taught to RCs up until 1992. And it's still held as a possibility.
I notice that the above catechism says that 'it is a common belief'
Christians of all sorts have struggled over the ages to describe both Heaven and Hell.
Over the centuries most Christians were more willing to describe the tortures of Hell, freely using and adding to the words of Christ on the subject.
On Heaven there was as people saw on earth a sort of pecking order with the greatest saints being closest to the Divine Presence and the lowest down further away. Furthest away would be those who were not baptised and for those, particularly for babies who died without sin (but who would also have at the least the stain of original sin )there was the outermost part of Heaven to which was given the name o f Limbo.
The name Limbo has been incorporated into the general English language without ,for many, any particular Catholic context.
It is a bit like the descriptions of Hell,Purgatory and Paradise given in poetic language by Dante.
I don't think anyone could consider Limbo to be anything other than an obscene and disgusting doctrine or idea. The "need" for it arises from St Augustine's wrong headed and appalling doctrine on original sin. As when discussing things like the vengeful God of the Old Testament, an important principal applies. An eternal God must, in principal, be unchanging. But our perception of Him/Her/It can evolve and improve. Thank God!
Though God is unchanging our perceptions and still imperfect understandings of God do change.
It was ( and still is ) a firm belief of many Christians that baptism is necessary for salvation.
But what exactly baptism signifies or is can be understood in many ways by different followers of Christ.
For the Catholic Church there are three separate ways of understanding baptism
1. the usual,traditional method of immersion under water either by full immersion or by letting water cascade down from the crown of the head.
2. Baptism of Blood if one has given one's life for Christ (martyrdom) this is recognised as baptism.
3. Baptism of desire if it is felt that a person would have asked for baptism if they had been told of (and would have given their assent to) the teachings of Christ then they are as good as baptised and deserve whatever graces Heaven might bestow upon them
This in effect covers all of humanity apart from those who in full knowledge (not just ordinary human knowledge) have decided to reject God.
Though God is unchanging our perceptions and still imperfect understandings of God do change.
It was ( and still is ) a firm belief of many Christians that baptism is necessary for salvation.
But what exactly baptism signifies or is can be understood in many ways by different followers of Christ.
For the Catholic Church there are three separate ways of understanding baptism
1. the usual,traditional method of immersion under water either by full immersion or by letting water cascade down from the crown of the head.
2. Baptism of Blood if one has given one's life for Christ (martyrdom) this is recognised as baptism.
3. Baptism of desire if it is felt that a person would have asked for baptism if they had been told of (and would have given their assent to) the teachings of Christ then they are as good as baptised and deserve whatever graces Heaven might bestow upon them
This in effect covers all of humanity apart from those who in full knowledge (not just ordinary human knowledge) have decided to reject God.
No it doesn't. It doesn't cover most people I know who haven't "decided to reject God" any more than I've "decided to reject" the offer to be a millionaire by spending just £200 for a starter kit in a MLM scam.
Though God is unchanging our perceptions and still imperfect understandings of God do change.
It was ( and still is ) a firm belief of many Christians that baptism is necessary for salvation.
But what exactly baptism signifies or is can be understood in many ways by different followers of Christ.
For the Catholic Church there are three separate ways of understanding baptism
1. the usual,traditional method of immersion under water either by full immersion or by letting water cascade down from the crown of the head.
2. Baptism of Blood if one has given one's life for Christ (martyrdom) this is recognised as baptism.
3. Baptism of desire if it is felt that a person would have asked for baptism if they had been told of (and would have given their assent to) the teachings of Christ then they are as good as baptised and deserve whatever graces Heaven might bestow upon them
This in effect covers all of humanity apart from those who in full knowledge (not just ordinary human knowledge) have decided to reject God.
No it doesn't. It doesn't cover most people I know who haven't "decided to reject God" any more than I've "decided to reject" the offer to be a millionaire by spending just £200 for a starter kit in a MLM scam.
I think the operative words in @Forthview ‘s post are “those who in full knowledge (not just ordinary human knowledge) have decided to reject God.” By that, I take him to mean those who, after death and in the presence of God in such a way as to really, accurately see and know who God is, affirmatively reject God. By definition, no one still living can fall in that group, and may never fall in that group.
The idea of hell is one which is mentioned at times by Christ.
In next Sunday's Gospel passage which will be read in many churches Jesus says :
'if your hand should cause you to sin,cut it off - better to live life crippled than have two hands and go into hell , into the fire which cannot be put out'
He mentions hell and its torments twice more at the same time
If we believe that Christ is the Son of God then he must have said this for a reason.
It is,as the Catholic catechism teaches, a way of reminding us of the responsibilities incumbent upon us to lead a virtuous life.
As for the responsibilities of 'faith' we cannot believe in what we have not heard of.
In our interactions with other human beings we will all be aware in some way or another of what society (and we ourselves) consider to be right or wrong.
If God is indeed as the Creed says, 'the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible' then our knowledge, great as it might be in terms of our world, amounts to very little and we are unable to judge as God himself,can judge.
What we can do ,is try our best to live up to the standards which we have come to believe represent goodness in our eyes.
Comments
I'd probably have to sit down with you and walk through it, commenting on each passage as we reached it, to make it at all understandable to you what I'm seeing in it. I've tried to summarize in the past and clearly I'm not able to communicate well enough. All I can say here is, that's not the God I see, and if it were, I would have run a thousand miles from him rather than looking to him for help back in the days when I was being abused and on the edge of suicide.
What I have heard, in an interview with a Jewish person on Radio 4 many years ago, is that when they read the Gospels some Jews think to themselves, 'What's the fuss about? This guy just sounds like a rabbi to me ...'
Make of that what we will.
FWIW whilst this doesn't resolve all the issues, I tend to 'Christianise' or allegorise the gruesome OT stories.
Quite. God shouldn't be as bad as we are at any given time.
"Less squeamish" makes it sound like it's us with the problematic attitudes towards death and suffering.
I know I bang on about my recent trip to Madagascar but what struck me when wandering through market-places there was the very matter-of-fact attitude towards creatures on sale. People would pick up a live rabbit and bung it unceremoniously into a sack to carry it home for the pot. Others would walk away with several protesting chickens held upside down by their legs to add to their stock of egg-layers.
I've mentioned elsewhere on these boards how shocked I was to read how revellers in 17th century London would put live cats inside effigies of the Pope before burning them to add some sound-effects to the spectacle.
I don't think we can air-brush the problematic incidents out of the OT.
But I think we can alleviate them to some extent by seeing some kind of 'progression' in understanding from the Bronze Age systems of sacrifice and judgement to the Christ of the NT.
I also take @Lamb Chopped's point about the witness of the prophets - often challenging to outward systems and forms - but not in a hippy-dippy kind of way. I also think we often overlook the emphasis on social justice found in some of the Minor Prophets.
It’s become increasingly clear to me that how we were formed in faith, as it were, can be very hard to shake. When @KarlLB says something like . . . . . . it’s hard for me not to feel as though we must be talking about different writings. We’re not, of course, and I want to be very clear that I’m not suggesting KarlLB is simply misreading the OT. Rather, I suspect we both, early in the formative stage, were given very different lenses through which to read the OT.
In my case, the “lens” could be boiled down to “God is love.” Everything, per that lens, needs to fit that basic assumption to be in focus. For me, that has meant that when God is portrayed as, say, murderous or vengeful or “smitey” in Scripture, the lens requires me not to take the text at face value, but to assume something else is going on. That’s the default for me.
But I’m aware that some were formed in interpretations that acknowledged or even centered the angry and vengeful God. And I imagine that lens can be as hard for them to shake as the “God is love” lens is for me to shake,
I've been criticised on these boards for talking about 'lenses' in the past.
That was a while back though, when there were probably a few more very conservative posters around than there are now.
Equally, I probably over-did it at times as I have with the 'both/and' thing.
It was, yes. Hope you can find something more targeted.
I suppose that for me this has become the bug of Christianity instead of its feature. There's no clear path. There are wildly divergent interpretations, many of which do more harm than good. Christianity is whatever its adherents say it is. It may have taken me longer than some to come to this realization, but now that I've made it I can't wrap my head around it any more. And a Pope hoping against his own doctrine only makes me think that the whole thing is entirely optional, especially the supernatural parts.
I guess from my perspective, “bug” or “feature” may both miss the mark in how to think about. “Inevitable reality,” maybe?
I’ve long thought it highly significant that Israel, the name given the patriarch which in turn became the name of the people descended from that patriarch, means “wrestles with God” or “struggles with God.” The meaning is found, it seems to me, in the wrestling or the struggling, not in having the complete and final answer.
Meanwhile, is the pope really hoping against his own doctrine? Does Catholic doctrine require that hell not be empty?
Nit was commonly, consistently taught by the Church for centuries. Limbo was dropped from the latest revision of the Catechism, though according to the Vatican, "It remains therefore a possible theological hypothesis."
The cruel episodes contained in the OT have been repeated down the ages of Christianity by all manner of Christians. Protestants usually remember the episodes where Catholics were the torturers whilst Catholics have similar stories of the brutality of Protestants.
Q. 632. Where will persons go -- such as infants -- who have not committed actual sin and who, through no fault of theirs, die without baptism?
A. Persons, such as infants, who have not committed actual sin and who, through no fault of theirs, die without baptism, cannot enter heaven; but it is the common belief they will go to some place similar to Limbo, where they will be free from suffering, though deprived of the happiness of heaven.
That was taught to RCs up until 1992. And it's still held as a possibility.
Christians of all sorts have struggled over the ages to describe both Heaven and Hell.
Over the centuries most Christians were more willing to describe the tortures of Hell, freely using and adding to the words of Christ on the subject.
On Heaven there was as people saw on earth a sort of pecking order with the greatest saints being closest to the Divine Presence and the lowest down further away. Furthest away would be those who were not baptised and for those, particularly for babies who died without sin (but who would also have at the least the stain of original sin )there was the outermost part of Heaven to which was given the name o f Limbo.
The name Limbo has been incorporated into the general English language without ,for many, any particular Catholic context.
It is a bit like the descriptions of Hell,Purgatory and Paradise given in poetic language by Dante.
It was ( and still is ) a firm belief of many Christians that baptism is necessary for salvation.
But what exactly baptism signifies or is can be understood in many ways by different followers of Christ.
For the Catholic Church there are three separate ways of understanding baptism
1. the usual,traditional method of immersion under water either by full immersion or by letting water cascade down from the crown of the head.
2. Baptism of Blood if one has given one's life for Christ (martyrdom) this is recognised as baptism.
3. Baptism of desire if it is felt that a person would have asked for baptism if they had been told of (and would have given their assent to) the teachings of Christ then they are as good as baptised and deserve whatever graces Heaven might bestow upon them
This in effect covers all of humanity apart from those who in full knowledge (not just ordinary human knowledge) have decided to reject God.
Not my intention ..... obviously!
No it doesn't. It doesn't cover most people I know who haven't "decided to reject God" any more than I've "decided to reject" the offer to be a millionaire by spending just £200 for a starter kit in a MLM scam.
But as the scenario was posited by @Forthview, perhaps he has other thoughts?
It’s not a given that people would embrace God when seeing Him face to face. “The demons believe, and tremble.”
In next Sunday's Gospel passage which will be read in many churches Jesus says :
'if your hand should cause you to sin,cut it off - better to live life crippled than have two hands and go into hell , into the fire which cannot be put out'
He mentions hell and its torments twice more at the same time
If we believe that Christ is the Son of God then he must have said this for a reason.
It is,as the Catholic catechism teaches, a way of reminding us of the responsibilities incumbent upon us to lead a virtuous life.
As for the responsibilities of 'faith' we cannot believe in what we have not heard of.
In our interactions with other human beings we will all be aware in some way or another of what society (and we ourselves) consider to be right or wrong.
If God is indeed as the Creed says, 'the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible' then our knowledge, great as it might be in terms of our world, amounts to very little and we are unable to judge as God himself,can judge.
What we can do ,is try our best to live up to the standards which we have come to believe represent goodness in our eyes.