Aug 9, 2010

a handy flowchart

4 comments:

  1. Looking at the right side, a couple of things struck me:

    1)The wages of sin is death, but since Jesus died, He took that punishment for us and forgave all of our sins: basics of Christianity. So (obviously) you can't kill Gingrich.

    2)Again the punishment for sexual immorality (all sin ultimately) was death until Christ changed that. (See John 8)

    3)Yes, there's lots of polygamy in the OT, but none of it was encouraged by God. Every instance of God-given definitions of marriage had one man and one woman. Plus there's plenty of verses like this rule for the king:
    He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray.-Deuteronomy 17:17

    4)No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the LORD.-Leviticus 18:6

    5)Policy for conquered cities:
    Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.-Deuteronomy 7:3-4

    Sure people in the Bible frequently broke pretty much all of the rules, but you can't confuse the passages that record history and the ones that act as commands to live by.

    My personal opinions: I don't expect the law to force non-Christians to obey the Bible. That doesn't make sense. The legality of any civil unions should not be determined by one group any more than the government should regulate religious marriage traditions. What I take issue with is the lack of research in this chart.

    Sorry for ranting on your blog, but you left the link on relevantmagazine.com, so I decided to reply.

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  2. @anonymous
    1 & 2) the point of the chart is that people who try to enforce JUST ONE ASPECT of "God's Law"--while ignoring the verses that condemn them--are hypocritical turds. the law's obviation makes that MORE despicable, not LESS--remember that parable about the servant who was forgiven a great debt and then went to shake down his fellow servant for a few coins?

    3) since when is "not many" = "just one"? God specifically made provision for polygamy (and concubinage, among other things) in the OT and never--EVER--disapproved of it anywhere in the Bible. also: god never "defined marriage." if you think otherwise, then quote the verse.

    4) the levitical code specifically bans every kind of incest EXCEPT father-daughter. the point of its ignored imperfection stands.

    5) really? in the cultural context of ancient near-eastern warfare, captive women (and often men) were systematically raped as a way of driving home the point, so to speak. in any case, women--and especially virgins--were spoils of war. thus, passages like this: "When the LORD your God hands [a town] over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you." Deut. 20:13-14

    also: Deut 21:10-14 and Numbers 31:7-18 specifically from the Pentateuch. more elsewhere of sanctioned rape after conquest and/or women as spoils of war, but cba to look them all up.

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  3. also: "He took that punishment for us and forgave all of our sins: basics of Christianity."

    oh dear.

    while intimations of substitionary atonement (christ suffers for our sake) can be traced back through Augustine, the modern conception of penal substitution (there's a punishment that someone has to take--a debt that someone has to pay God) is an essentially feudal notion propounded by Anselm and picked up by the Protestant reformers. it was not the dominant theology of the early church--indeed, being developed in 1098, how could it have been? there are other ideas, too: ransom theory, christus victor, and theosis, to name but three. Joseph Campbell (at one time the world's foremost authority on mythology), states quite bluntly (in Creative Mythology) that the ransom theory of salvation was "the doctrine of salvation that was most favored throughout Christendom for the first twelve hundred years" until Anselm. in any case the doctrine that you have just propounded as 'basic christianity' is still not fully embraced by the Catholic church, and is outright denied by the Orthodox. the irony of course being that YOU scold ME about lack of research.

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