The problem of interpretation

[orathaic]

Following on from the creation of Covid conversation, I happened to come across this YouTube on the book of Job: https://youtu.be/40cttQnEjpI

And it raises a clear question, is the God depicted here clearly evil, or merely easily manipulated?

I think this however is entirely the wrong question. I think the question we should ask what it tells us about the authors.

Whether inspired by God or not, the moral of the story is clear. It is easy to love God when things are going your way, but what matters is what you do when things seem their worst. Perhaps this message was important to the priestly caste. That it is especially when times are tough which you must pay due reverence to God (implied that the Priests, as mediators with God, will be the ones you turn to).

This perhaps tells us something about the culture they lived in. That the problem of evil, "why did God send us this plague" was being asked even then. No matter the hardship you can decide to blame God. This issue remains today (as demonstrated by the 'God creating covid' thread).

I suspect that the faithful have the more difficult task here. In claiming that this book is the word of God the message tells us something about God's need for worship, and depicts, not a malicious God, but a narcissistic creature, desperate for attention.

It is much easier to take a secular look at this, and presume it was in the interest of some priestly caste.

[Crazy Anglican]

I’ll admit to not watching the video firstly. Sorry it isn’t a convenient time. I am curious, as this occurred to me earlier in the COVID thread. In Job, God has really not asked anything of Job that He Himself didn’t willingly undergo in the person of Jesus Christ. That is He lost family (wandering and itinerate), underwent torture (boils or flogging), ultimately even dying before being restored fully (and even greater). They both suffered all of these things when they were explicitly stated to be blameless.

[orathaic]

That is a weird flex CA. You don't need to watch the video, as you clearly know enough about Job to discuss it.

So your argument is that God, while maybe still being malicious, is not hypocritical, as he was willing to subject himself to the same kind of suffering?

I jabe to say, I remain unconvinced. The whole Jesus died for your sins narrative... I mean it is reminiscent of earlier blood sacrifice style magic. But you end up with God set up the rules, gave us free will, and punished us with a flood. Realised that didn't work, there was still sin, so he created and sacrificed a son to, what purify us? And since there is still sin, does that mean this sacrifice wasn't enough?

Or was this a follow on from the flood of Noah, killing untold numbers of numbers was not a big enough sacrifice to cleanse the world of sin, so instead you need to sacrifice one actual God. It makes you start to question the omnipotent claim. Unless the sacrifice is merely symbolic. And symbols have power over humanity.

But that also means God only needed to create a symbol, not an actual son. Jesus wasn't any more divine than anyone else (if Adam was created by God, and we are descended from Adam, then aren't we all the children of God?) Jesus was instead a symbol.

[Crazy Anglican]

Hi Orathaic,

I like the three rough periods of Scripture that you've chosen. If I may, can I make an assertion? For the sake of argument, we're assuming that God exists and is revealing elements of His nature through Scripture?

[orathaic]

I am making the claim that whether or not some parts of the script are divinely inspired, you can interpret it as telling more about the culture in which it was written down than about the character of God.

Ie the 'why does God allow evil' is the wrong question.

Humans are inherently limited, so necessarily are their works. Whether divinely inspired or not. Otherwise God can make people act in perfect ways, and chooses not to. And the idea that some people can't possible be saved because they have never heard of Jesus, merely as a result of being born on the wrong continent at the wrong time... And the God of the Bible just said it was down to Christians to spread the word??

[orathaic]

@CA just to clarify. Are you saying for the sake of argument, let's assume that the Bible is the infallible word of God? Because if so. I think you are reduced to the problem of evil (which has been addressed elsewhere).

I'm more interested in looking at it from a different perspective for a change.

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

[Crazy Anglican]

That is a weird flex CA.

Sorry, I’m a little confused as to what that means. I’ve not seen flex used that way before.

You don't need to watch the video, as you clearly know enough about Job to discuss it.

.

I went back and watched it anyway. It seems to be a decent enough summary without going back to check it against the original book.

So your argument is that God, while maybe still being malicious, is not hypocritical, as he was willing to subject himself to the same kind of suffering?

No, not really. It was more about Him sharing our nature

I jabe to say, I remain unconvinced. The whole Jesus died for your sins narrative... I mean it is reminiscent of earlier blood sacrifice style magic. But you end up with God set up the rules, gave us free will, and punished us with a flood. Realised that didn't work, there was still sin, so he created and sacrificed a son to, what purify us? And since there is still sin, does that mean this sacrifice wasn't enough?

This seems to presuppose that God’s intent was ever to cleanse the world of sin. Sin seems to part of His plan and a necessary part, since free will is not possible without allowing sin to be a possibility. So the blood sacrifice analogy for the flood doesn’t ring true for me. A sacrifice is distinct from a punishment. Yet I see your point about the flood story telling a bit about the people who relate the story. They clearly saw God as a judge who could be swift to punish their transgressions. They seem to have seen God as wild and unpredictable. Yet, this early (the sixth chapter of the first book of the Old Testament) we see God willingly promise a more ordered and safer existence. This doesn’t really surprise me coming from a society that was probably moving into the earliest phases of civilization.

Or was this a follow on from the flood of Noah, killing untold numbers of numbers was not a big enough sacrifice to cleanse the world of sin, so instead you need to sacrifice one actual God. It makes you start to question the omnipotent claim. Unless the sacrifice is merely symbolic. And symbols have power over humanity.

Again, I don’t find it compelling that God intended to rid the world of sin. It isn’t stated in the story that this was His intent and it doesn’t seem to fit with any later narrative. God punished the wickedness of the world rather than sacrificing the greater part of creation for the redemption of a select few. This seems to show a transactional form of morality. Noah earns his place on the ark by pleasing God. In the end God upends this type of morality by promising no further cataclysmic events of that nature.

But that also means God only needed to create a symbol, not an actual son. Jesus wasn't any more divine than anyone else (if Adam was created by God, and we are descended from Adam, then aren't we all the children of God?) Jesus was instead a symbol.

Perhaps you could clarify here? I am not sure how this follows from the other points.

[Randomizer]

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ww ... 6yopWnODGR

Noah was righteous in his generation, is generally interpreted as compared to the rest he was good, but compared to more faithful times he wouldn't have been that special. So he and his family were saved because they were relatively better than those that weren't.

Early Old Testament God was very big on punishment from Adam and Eve down through the end of the prophets. If you look at the text, God only promises not to destroy the world again with the Flood, but reserves the right to use other means is implied. A loving God is a much later view.

[orathaic]

That is a weird flex CA.

Sorry, I’m a little confused as to what that means. I’ve not seen flex used that way before.

Like flexing a muscle, but this was an intellectual one.
Though on reflection, I was perhaps unfair of me. What is weird is the conclusion I drew from it, which I suspect says more about me than it does about you...

No, not really. It was more about Him sharing our nature

Could you elaborate on this? I think it may be interesting, I'm not sure I agree, but I think the only shared nature argumentation I have heard before was describing human as 'made in his image'...

I have* to say, I remain unconvinced. The whole Jesus died for your sins narrative... I mean it is reminiscent of earlier blood sacrifice style magic. But you end up with God set up the rules, gave us free will, and punished us with a flood. Realised that didn't work, there was still sin, so he created and sacrificed a son to, what purify us? And since there is still sin, does that mean this sacrifice wasn't enough?

This seems to presuppose that God’s intent was ever to cleanse the world of sin.

Good point.

Sin seems to part of His plan and a necessary part, since free will is not possible without allowing sin to be a possibility. So the blood sacrifice analogy for the flood doesn’t ring true for me. A sacrifice is distinct from a punishment.

Yes, I guess then the question becomes why was early god seen as a punisher and later god willing to make this sacrifice, assuming both are reactions to sin.

Yet I see your point about the flood story telling a bit about the people who relate the story. They clearly saw God as a judge who could be swift to punish their transgressions. They seem to have seen God as wild and unpredictable. Yet, this early (the sixth chapter of the first book of the Old Testament) we see God willingly promise a more ordered and safer existence. This doesn’t really surprise me coming from a society that was probably moving into the earliest phases of civilization.

Or was this a follow on from the flood of Noah, killing untold numbers of numbers was not a big enough sacrifice to cleanse the world of sin, so instead you need to sacrifice one actual God. It makes you start to question the omnipotent claim. Unless the sacrifice is merely symbolic. And symbols have power over humanity.

Again, I don’t find it compelling that God intended to rid the world of sin. It isn’t stated in the story that this was His intent and it doesn’t seem to fit with any later narrative. God punished the wickedness of the world rather than sacrificing the greater part of creation for the redemption of a select few. This seems to show a transactional form of morality. Noah earns his place on the ark by pleasing God. In the end God upends this type of morality by promising no further cataclysmic events of that nature.

But that also means God only needed to create a symbol, not an actual son. Jesus wasn't any more divine than anyone else (if Adam was created by God, and we are descended from Adam, then aren't we all the children of God?) Jesus was instead a symbol.

Perhaps you could clarify here? I am not sure how this follows from the other points.

OK, so I am (now) with you on the question of removing sin from the world. That may not have been the plan.

On this last point, I think the Martyr-dom creates a symbol, and a powerful one at that. Whether Jesus was actually God/the son of God isn't the important part of the symbol, what matters is people believe he was God/the son of God.

Taking the assumption that the biblical story of Jesus was divinely inspired, God creates a symbol to provide humanity with hope of redemption. What does that tell us about the people who wrote it? (again, this is disregarding whether Jesus was actual or fictional, also entirely ignoring any debate over his divinity, the symbol itself held power).

<snip>

Early Old Testament God was very big on punishment from Adam and Eve down through the end of the prophets. If you look at the text, God only promises not to destroy the world again with the Flood, but reserves the right to use other means is implied. A loving God is a much later view.

I wonder how much this reflects an idealised version of social order. At the time of Noah was the ideal family run by a father who punished those deserved it?
while in later times (when perhaps more centralised states began to monopolise violence) was the self-sacrificing father an ideal...

I can't really comment beyond this (I admit to lifting ideas from this linguistic analysis of PIE culture: https://youtu.be/ErXa5PyHj4I - which likely wasn't a direct predecessor of Jewish culture, though I suspect the two were influenced by each other).

*why yes I am correcting the typos in my own quote. Damn it why won't the forum let me edit all the typos away!

[Crazy Anglican]

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ww ... 6yopWnODGR

Noah was righteous in his generation, is generally interpreted as compared to the rest he was good, but compared to more faithful times he wouldn't have been that special. So he and his family were saved because they were relatively better than those that weren't.

Early Old Testament God was very big on punishment from Adam and Eve down through the end of the prophets. If you look at the text, God only promises not to destroy the world again with the Flood, but reserves the right to use other means is implied. A loving God is a much later view.

Hi Randomizer & Orathaic,

I was actually nearly with you on this idea of God reserving the right to destroy in other means, but in looking back at (admittedly only one version) Here is what I got

“Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though[a] every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

22 “As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”

Which seems to me to carry the promise of stability. I associate this with becoming a more agrarian society and less at the mercy of their environment. I do believe that the understanding of God has shifted (demonstrably so) over time. That is Bronze Age man had a different perception of nearly everything. We could not cure and preserve food the way they had to, and they would be baffled by an automobile. Thus I don't really expect to have much of a similar take on God to theirs. They seem to have been taking the first steps away from transactional morality in this story.
The later, in Job the break is complete. The importance for Job is faith that isn't transactional. It is everyone around Job who are still mired in the idea that God punishes evil and rewards good in this realm. God does ultimately reward Job (and hopefully his children and servants as well, but we're victims to supporting character blindness there). Why not ask the question. "Does Job refuse to curse God out of fear?". The answer to that question has to be, "no". Everyone around Job counsels him to curse God and die. They seem to offer this as a way for Job to end his suffering. Job resolutely refuses, then when Job demands God's answer; God shows up. This hints to a much deeper relationship with God than earlier Biblical figures had. For instance, Father Abraham specifically asked God's name and got "I am that I am" which was a specific declaration that "I'm not at your beck and call". By this time in the progression of the Jewish relationship to God they had begun seeing God as a protector. Their understanding of God at this point seems to be that He played favorites and delivered them from their many adversaries. He in beyond our understanding, but when the chips are down He will deal fairly with His people. There is a patronage and relationship here that specifically goes beyond gaining good boy points because this story specifically turns that kind of thinking on its head and shows it up as wrong. How did they know it was wrong? Probably because they lived in villages and cities and saw every day that some people got away with doing evil and others weren't reliably rewarded for doing good. So, Job reflects another step in the Jewish understanding of God.

[Crazy Anglican]

No, not really. It was more about Him sharing our nature

Could you elaborate on this? I think it may be interesting, I'm not sure I agree, but I think the only shared nature argumentation I have heard before was describing human as 'made in his image'...

This was a main point of the Chalcedonian council that resulted in the Chalcedonian Creed. The discussion was on the nature of Christ. Some said He was fully God, and others said He was fully man. The council basically said "Yes". In His divinity, He is truly of one substance with the Father; and in His humanity, He truly was human and shared in our nature in all things but sin.

I think this is where C.S. Lewis was coming from when he has his demon Screwtape constantly bemoaning the advantage "The Enemy" (God) had because He truly knows what it is to be human.

So, I find it hard to see the rationale that Jesus was no more divine than anyone else and his sacrifice was symbolic. I can see why you would say it, but I don't see it as representative of Christian doctrine which overwhelmingly sees Jesus as the divine Son of God made man.

[Crazy Anglican]

Interesting fact: Arius, the biggest proponent of the idea that Jesus was somehow inferior (not of the same substance) as God got slapped by St. Nicholas (Yeah, that one) at the Nicene council. St. Nick had to spend the night in the dungeon, had a vision of the Virgin Mary, and apologized to Arius the next day.

This is still one of the main issues between Islam and Christianity (the Arian heresy, not the Santa slapping thing).

[Crazy Anglican]

Perhaps you could clarify here? I am not sure how this follows from the other points.

On this last point, I think the Martyr-dom creates a symbol, and a powerful one at that. Whether Jesus was actually God/the son of God isn't the important part of the symbol, what matters is people believe he was God/the son of God.

Taking the assumption that the biblical story of Jesus was divinely inspired, God creates a symbol to provide humanity with hope of redemption. What does that tell us about the people who wrote it? (again, this is disregarding whether Jesus was actual or fictional, also entirely ignoring any debate over his divinity, the symbol itself held power).

These two (The Nature of Christ and the Councils establishing His Nature) seem to overlap. These two councils alone seem to establish that the nature of Christ as fully Human and fully Divine was important to the early Christian Church. The letters on Paul and the gospels do seem to support the trinitarian nature of God.

Now as to the people involved. When Christ came along God was no longer the national God of the Jews. Then we have a proselytizing religion where the question "What about those who have never heard?" can be asked. The answer seems to be that now with Christ as our advocate, we have become members of the plan to spread the gospel. The relationship that Job began to move beyond (that is a transactional relationship with God) is a thing of the past to an extent.
Jesus has redeemed you and all that remains is to live according to and in gratitude of that sacrifice. Any reward for doing the right thing is saved for an afterlife, and even that isn't an exact matchup to the original transactional morality. It becomes more "live a life that can be an example for others". The divine nature of Christ has to be essential to this because if Jesus is not God, then He cannot advocate for us. What human can bargain with God, and if he could then so could I. Also this is a prepaid sacrifice that we only have to accept.
The early Christian response to the Antonine plagues can be seem at work here. Physicians were leaving town. Christians didn't expect to have much of a long life anyway, so they ministered quite effectively to the sick. There are some who believe that this had more of an impact on Rome becoming Christian than the Edict of Toleration. You can clearly see that these people felt called to care for other and minister to them. You can also see at the time of The Edict of Toleration that many joined for personal gain within the Roman Empire. Thus you have some serving and others vying for positions of power. I think this reflects what I understand of the time in Roman society. The old institutions were not as stable and people were looking for ways to fit into the changing society.

[Crazy Anglican]

Man, Elijah Craig is some good bourbon, I was on a tear last night wasn't I?