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Tuzvihar

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 12:05

I think you may find this interesting: God is not the Creator. Exclamation

"Music is much like f**king, but some composers can't climax and others climax too often, leaving themselves and the listener jaded and spent."

Charles Bukowski

Epignosis

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 12:19

Tuzvihar wrote:

I think you may find this interesting: God is not the Creator. Exclamation

While I disagree with that interpretation on the whole (largely because it's taking what would be a problem in English and making it a problem in the Hebrew), that idea is not new, and there actually is a bit of truth to it.

https://epignosis.bandcamp.com/album/a-month-of-sundays

Negoba

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 17:43

Sensationalist headline. The author extrapolated a probably correct change in translation to mean things that aren't necessarily there. Just because this particular story begins with God subdividing rather than creating the world as we know it says nothing whatsoever about who made things the way they were at the point preceding that action....oh well.

So Robert, I'm still wondering about the qualifiers you seem to have in your back pocket about the Sermon on the Mount.

You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all.

Epignosis

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 17:46

Negoba wrote:

Sensationalist headline. The author extrapolated a probably correct change in translation to mean things that aren't necessarily there. Just because this particular story begins with God subdividing rather than creating the world as we know it says nothing whatsoever about who made things the way they were at the point preceding that action....oh well.

So Robert, I'm still wondering about the qualifiers you seem to have in your back pocket about the Sermon on the Mount.

Be patient- I'll get to it as I said I would. And it's not "qualifiers in my back pocket." It's understanding Christ's words through proper hermeneutics.

https://epignosis.bandcamp.com/album/a-month-of-sundays

Negoba

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 17:50

Very well then, off to strum my guitar like the New Age Hippy boy I am.

You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all.

Epignosis

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 17:55

Negoba wrote:

Very well then, off to strum my guitar like the New Age Hippy boy I am.

What do I strum my guitar like? A Christian conservative man? Wink

https://epignosis.bandcamp.com/album/a-month-of-sundays

JJLehto

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 18:19

I'm a huge fan of Christians

Christian Bale over acted a bit...but good job in the Dark Knight

A Person

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 18:25

JJLehto wrote:

I'm a huge fan of Christians

Christian Bale over acted a bit...but good job in the Dark Knight

Christian Vander, however, is awesome.

JJLehto

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 18:29

A Person wrote:

JJLehto wrote:

I'm a huge fan of Christians

Christian Bale over acted a bit...but good job in the Dark Knight

Christian Vander, however, is awesome.

Not too familiar with Magma to be honest

Man With Hat View Drop Down

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 18:52

JJLehto wrote:

A Person wrote:

JJLehto wrote:

I'm a huge fan of Christians

Christian Bale over acted a bit...but good job in the Dark Knight

Christian Vander, however, is awesome.

Not too familiar with Magma to be honest

At least you knew he was from Magma.

Dig me...But don't...Bury me
I'm running still, I shall until, one day, I hope that I'll arrive
Warning: Listening to jazz excessively can cause a laxative effect.

timothy leary View Drop Down

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 19:35

" It " cannot be gotten from another. Those that know don`t say and those that say don`t know. Belief is not " truth".

Negoba

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 19:46

I'm just curious about someone else's perspective on a very important piece of history.

Those who know teach all the time. It's just that not all things can be communicated.

You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all.

timothy leary View Drop Down

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 19:56

so if nothing was communicated what was taught?

Negoba

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 20:04

It's more like pointing in the right direction. There are many paths to a single, though huge and multi-complex Truth. The wise recognize the limitation of their particular window, but there is no need not to share at least the nature of your vision. You cannot take someone the full distance, but you can help them further on their way.

You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all.

stonebeard View Drop Down

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 20:10

Negoba wrote:

There are many paths to a single, though huge and multi-complex Truth.

I wonder if that's actually true. Do you have any evidence? Wink

My soundcloud. Please give feedback if you want!

timothy leary View Drop Down

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Posted: October 11 2009 at 20:10

I agree and would enjoy the conversation but this thread would be the wrong place for the discussion, my religion is based on the fact of accepting my destiny not being saved from what I have coming to me, I trust life to live me and .......

someone_else View Drop Down

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Posted: October 12 2009 at 05:00

Negoba wrote:

I'm just curious about someone else's perspective on a very important piece of history.

Those who know teach all the time. It's just that not all things can be communicated.

I feel sort of addressed

. I may know a thing or two, but I'm not a teacher and even less a communicator.

When I read about the topic of God not being the Creator, the first thing that came into my mind was Job 38, in which God spoke to Job:

Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?

Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?

Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;

(Job 38:3-6, King James Version, 1611)

I don't want to push a clear opinion about it, I wasn't there. I just wonder what prof. van Wolde thinks about this.

Edited by someone_else - October 12 2009 at 05:21

Epignosis

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Posted: October 12 2009 at 14:06

I’ll try to make this as digestible as possible, though brevity often eludes me.

1. Love and Hate

To begin, you must realize that when we interpret a verse like Matthew 5:44, we are interpreting some heavy language! It is a translation of an ancient document written in a completely different culture than ours. Heck, if you ask ten people right now what love is, you may very well get ten different responses! So it’s careless just to assume a verse that uses terms like “love” and “enemy” can be easily imported into our own cultural and linguistic milieu.

If you wish to continue taking Christ’s words from their cultural and linguistic context and implanting them into your own, you will have a difficult time understanding a verse like Luke 14:26, which says:

If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.

The Jewish Midrash (commentary on the Old Testament) says that God hates the angels. Why? Because God chose to give man the Torah, and not the angels. That doesn’t mean God despises and wishes ill on Michael and Gabriel!

So straightaway we have a problem when importing the words “love” and “hate” from the Bible into our modern Western minds.

You must realize that biblical Hebrew (and the thought process) basically lacks comparative language when speaking about relationships, and so love and hate are not necessarily polar opposites. Luke 14:26 (quoted above) is actually a stronger recitation of a rabbinical proverb, which said that a man must love his master (a rabbi) more than his father, because his father brought him into this world, but his master will bring him into the next. What Jesus was saying then, is that he (Christ) must be the primary recipient of a man’s attention and devotion if that man expects to be his disciple.

A common error is the belief that Jesus came to teach people how to live happy lives- this is not so. Christ came to make disciples and instruct his disciples (not the world at large) on how to follow him, which is without regret, without reservation, and without reticence (nice alliteration, eh?). Basically that means that if you have no wish to be Christ’s disciple, then he wasn’t talking to you.

2. Honor

The main drive of the sermon on the Mount, then is to show the disciples that they were to be focused on sharing the Gospel and not get wrapped up in the everyday petty squabbles and honor-battles ancient Near Eastern men engaged in. They were not to repay insult for insult or seek to increase their honor.

The greatest loss in the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern world was not the loss of life, but the loss of honor (hence Jesus’s death on the cross was not spoken of in terms of how great the pain was, but in how great the shame was). Follows of Christ recommend Christ to others not just by the verbal sharing of the Gospel, but by their behavior also. Were his followers concerned with revenge for the slights of their enemies in the community, it would mean they were concerned with their own honor and not the honor of Christ, whom all Christians seek to glorify.

The point Christ was making throughout the Sermon on the Mount was that his followers were not to serve their honor first and worry about preserving it (like men in those days were expected to do), but were to divest themselves of honor (and therefore position in society) for the sake of bringing ultimate honor to Christ. That of course doesn’t mean going out of one’s way to bring dishonor, but that personal honor was not a requisite for following Christ (a HUGE turn of propriety, since in those days, someone who meant to follow a rabbi was expected to maintain a certain level of personal honor- Jesus doesn’t require that and in fact CHOOSES men of ill-repute, such as Matthew the tax-collector, a person rabbinical tradition said was basically unforgivable). What a savior that he is no respector of persons!

So what about friends and enemies then?

A Greek proverb was “A man should seek to outdo his friends in kindness and outdo his enemies in mischief.”

Who were a man’s enemies in this context? In a word, an enemy is one who seeks to bring shame on you (ridicule from the community, expulsion from the “inner-circle,” and severed ties with friends and family- effectively making them also your enemies). You must realize that in the ancient world, there were no neutral parties- people were either your friends or your enemies. There were those a person trusted and depended upon, and everybody else was an outsider, somebody to bring shame upon (although enemies often became friends through a number of ways).

From a Christian soteriological standpoint, all men were the enemies of God (Romans 5:10) because we, through our words and through our sin, brought shame upon God (Romans 2:23), but God so loved the world (John 3:16) that He blessed us anyway (Matthew 5:45) and in so doing, gained honor for Himself (Ephesians 1:11-12)! Therefore, we are to love our enemies just as God loved us. That doesn’t mean God did not sometimes bring swift judgment (death) upon those who would do bodily harm to His children or injure His church (Joshua 7:24-26, Acts 5:1-10, etc) or that we should let evildoers have at us, have at our families, or have at our nation- we are permitted to defend all that (Nehemiah 4, Luke 22:36,*** etc).

***(Many people will argue against Luke 22:36 as a support for personal physical defense on the basis of Matthew 26:52-54, where Peter draws his sword and cuts off a man’s ear, and Jesus says, “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" But note Jesus’ actual words: First, Christ did not tell Peter to throw away his sword, but to sheath it. Second, Jesus was rebuking Peter because Peter’s resistance was tantamount to suicide, since there was no way he would beat off the guards. Third, Peter’s resistance was a hindrance to the fulfillment of prophecy)

3. National Pacifism is not Taught in Bible

The ancient Near Eastern world was a decidedly agonistic one- it was replete on violence. By violence, I do not mean just murder or fighting, but forcing people to do things, coercing people to do things, and making people do this or that and go here or there. This was a way of life. In fact, a correct reading of John 6:44 says that nobody comes to Jesus unless the Father drags that person to Christ and salvation.

Males in this society used physical aggression, sexual aggression, and verbal aggression to gain honor. Jesus in Matthew chapter five was therefore telling his disciples that they could no longer participate in the honor “game” if they expected to follow Christ.

Read Matthew chapter five in this context: A disciple of Jesus may not make honor claims through boasts (Matt. 5:34-37), physical aggression (5:21) or sexual aggression (5:27-32). If a challenge to another’s honor had already been issued, the disciple must seek reconciliation (5:23-24) and settle with the challenger (5:25-26). If the disciple’s honor has been challenged, he may not make an insult (5:22), but should peaceably endure the humiliation (5:39-45; being slapped on the cheek in that culture was an insult, not an assault per se- it was as humiliating as being successfully sued in court or being forced to carry military gear a mile for the Romans). Even the hyperbole of plucking out one’s eye if it should offend you (5:29) speaks of honor more than physical maiming. In 1 Samuel 11:2, it says:

But Nahash the Ammonite replied, "I will make a treaty with you only on the condition that I gouge out the right eye of every one of you and so bring disgrace on all Israel."

This means that the context of the Sermon on the Mount is that those who follow Christ may not use these tactics to gain or preserve honor, but should endure the shame that comes from being a disciple:

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you (John 15:8)

When I open my mouth to tell a person he is a sinner (an enemy of God), and that only the sacrifice of Christ and becoming Christ’s disciple will bring him salvation, more often than not, he hates me for it. That doesn’t mean he tries to bludgeon me over the head with a stapler- it means our relationship will likely crumble.

True love must involve justice. If we do not actively protect the innocent when evildoers come around to harm them, we are not showing love- we are showing indifference and hate toward those who are harmed. This includes protecting our lives, families, and homes (and by extension, our nation). Exodus 22:2 says this:

If a thief is caught breaking in and is struck so that he dies, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed.

Clearly the Bible is replete with scenarios of God instructing Israel to either defend themselves (Judges 6-8) or to destroy the cities He had rendered judgment against (Joshua 6). If you view the Bible as a consistent metanarrative in which Christ is the fulfillment (as I do), then believing that Jesus teaches national pacifism is out of the question (Heb. 13:8, James 1:17).

Even Paul said we must submit to our governing authorities, and that governing authorities have the right and duty to act against those who would undermine it, as Romans 13:1-4 says:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

If you’ll notice in John chapter 2, so great was the Lord’s ire that he made a whip out of cords and drove out the moneychangers, the animals, and overturned the tables- hardly a passive act.

An the book of Revelation says this of the return of Christ:

And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. (Rev. 19:11)

True peace will only come when the world is at peace with God. This will only happen when all those who will become children of God do so and then God destroys the rest. God is very clear that good and evil cannot coexist- He will reap the former and obliterate the latter.

Christ’s words in his Sermon on the Mount were to his disciples about being his disciples, not to the nations of the world, and therefore do not in any way prohibit war in principal.

But- watch this!- does God delight in bloodshed? Look at the case of David. He slew Goliath the Philistine and waged many wars, all at the direction of God. Yet when David wanted to build a house unto the Lord, what did God say?

But God said to me, 'You shall not build a house for My name, because you have been a man of war and have shed blood. (1 Chronicles 28:3)

But the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Thou hast shed blood abundantly, and hast made great wars: thou shalt not build a house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood upon the earth in my sight. (1 Chronicles 22:8)

So David wasn’t disqualified for this ministry because of his murder of Uriah or his adultery with Bathsheba, but because of bloodshed. We view bloodshed very casually in our country, but to God, it is a huge deal, and must also weigh heavily on our hearts- even if we are doing the right thing!

So from the same author (David), on the one hand, we have this:

The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates. (Psalm 11:5)

But on the other, we have these:

Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle (Psalm 144:1)

He teaches my hands to make war, So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze (Psalm 18:34)

4. Hypothetical Application

You are walking to the store buy the latest album from Epignosis. Halfway there, you see a man with a switchblade on top of a screaming woman. The man is licking her face and trying to undo his trousers. You are alone and have forgotten your cellular phone. No one else is coming. What do you do?

Now take that scenario to a national level (after all, this is but a microcosm of why a nation might go to war, to protect itself from those that would do it harm, or to intervene on behalf of another country).

I believe you can make very thoughtful cases against specific wars, but I don’t think you can make a good case against war in general, and I certainly don’t see the Bible advocating national (or even personal) pacifism.

As we continue to rebuild our nation from the blow it suffered almost a decade ago, we have a duty to protect it, using violence if necessary:

Those who were rebuilding the wall and those who carried burdens took their load with one hand doing the work and the other holding a weapon. As for the builders, each wore his sword girded at his side as he built, while the trumpeter stood near me. (Nehemiah 4:17-18)

After I looked things over, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people, "Don't be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes." (Nehemiah 4:14)

https://epignosis.bandcamp.com/album/a-month-of-sundays

Negoba

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Posted: October 12 2009 at 14:47

I appreciate the time you took to write this...my first impression is that the same kind of error has been made that was made in the article reference by Tuzvihar. That is, to take into account new awareness of cultural surroundings of the setting of the passage, adds to our understand but does not negate our traditional understanding.

I will reflect before responding further.

You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all.

Negoba

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Posted: October 12 2009 at 15:52

Read Matthew chapter five in this context: A disciple of Jesus may not make honor claims through boasts (Matt. 5:34-37), physical aggression (5:21) or sexual aggression (5:27-32). If a challenge to another’s honor had already been issued, the disciple must seek reconciliation (5:23-24) and settle with the challenger (5:25-26). If the disciple’s honor has been challenged, he may not make an insult (5:22), but should peaceably endure the humiliation (5:39-45; being slapped on the cheek in that culture was an insult, not an assault per se- it was as humiliating as being successfully sued in court or being forced to carry military gear a mile for the Romans). Even the hyperbole of plucking out one’s eye if it should offend you (5:29) speaks of honor more than physical maiming.

No, no it doesn't. It is an enormous stretch and far from scholarly (both devout and secular) interpretation of those passages. You try to defang Jesus of his greatest triumph, his supreme gift to the world!!!

⁴³"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' ⁴⁴But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. ⁴⁶If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? ⁴⁷And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? ⁴⁸Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

No matter what your interpretations of love and hate, it is clear that you are to afford your enemy and your brothers with equal outpouring of your innermost self. It is about internalizing an ethos of selflessness where you rejoice for the triumph of the other. It is not about honor it is about the self and its relationship to others. Which is the point of the passage!!!

As we continue to rebuild our nation from the blow it suffered almost a decade ago, we have a duty to protect it, using violence if necessary:

Are you out of your mind? This is not the statement of a Christian. This type of idea is exactly what Jesus was trying to get rid of. And no amount of exclusionary, cultish, cut and paste rationalization is going to change the fact that you are deluding yourself. LOVE YOUR ENEMY. PRAY FOR THOSE WHO HATE YOU.

You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all.