Gospel Editing Precludes Divine Inspiration

[Paidion]

But we know nothing about Jesus other than what fallible men have written about Him - fallible, that is, unless the Holy Spirit inspired their writings.

Well then, if we know what fallible men have written about Him, then we know something about Him. Indeed we know a lot about Him and what He taught. Even if the gospel writers were "uninspired" (and this I have never suggested) we have no reason to doubt them as historians, two of which knew Jesus and walked with Him as His disciples.

It seems as if you almost said that we know nothing about Jesus, unless the gospel writers were inspired. But I guess you didn't quite say that. For surely you realize that we know a lot about history, and its characters and what they did, according to reliable historians who were not necessarily inspired.

[Homer]

Hi Paidion,

Let me give you an example of where your thinking is troublesome. Regarding divorce, only Matthew gives an exception for adultery. What confidence does your method give you that Matthew's exception is valid? Was Matthew mistaken or "playing to his audience"? Who can tell? And this is no trivial matter.

If God's hand is not involved in some manner in the writing of the gospels we can be confident we have the truth in a general sense, and the more so when all four gospels agree. But on matters where only one speaks to an issue then we have a big problem.

[Paidion]

I have recently instructed Paidion to refrain from posting here any further advocacy of his anti-biblical doctrine of the one-dimensional God, until he has at least answered the objections (rather than ignoring them) that have repeatedly been presented by me and others to his position. I am justified in describing his view as anti-biblical, since it is foundational to his argument that virtually every writer of scripture is untrustworthy when speaking about God—and this would include Jesus, if we take all of His statements into consideration. Any view that denounces virtually every book of the Bible cannot object to being labeled as "anti-biblical."

Well Steve, I can see by your emotional reaction that I have riled you, presumably because I have “ignored” your objections to my “anti-biblical doctrine of the one-dimensional God” (though Jesus seems to hold to the same “one-dimensional God” doctrine since there is no record that He ever portrayed God as commanding genocide, specifying the killing of men and boys and non-virgin women, while keeping the virgins for the Hebrew men's use, half for the army and the other half for non-military Hebrew men, that is, if Moses' commands are God's commands as you seem to think).

However, I don't think you are riled because I have continued to affirm my position of God being pure one-dimensional LOVE without answering your objections. I suspect that you are riled because somewhere deep down in your moral consciousness there resides the truth that the way Jesus and His disciples taught does contradict the violence which is depicted in the OT as having its source in God's commands.

It is because of the very belief that God commanded such death and violence, that many professing Christians throughout the centuries have carried out wars in the name of Christ, eliminating their enemies. After all, they are just doing what God does and commands, and thus demonstrating that they are His children indeed.

One of the consequences of the belief that the Mosaic law is tantamount to God's law was the establishment of the Connecticut laws of 1650—all based on Mosaic law, with chapter and verse quoted for each law—laws such as putting to death adulterers, homosexuals, and rebellious children.

You have expressed that God killing people isn't such a serious thing, since death is temporary. Everyone will be raised to life again. If this thought were translated into human action, then for the same reason it wouldn't be so serious for us to kill wicked people.

I truly believe that I have answered some of your objections, but to answer them all would require the writing of a book—at least a small book.

In any case, if I qualify to post by answering your objections, I will begin with the first thread to which you referred, the one from Sep 2008:

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:44-48)

Jesus revealed the Father to us. The Father does good for both the righteous and the unrighteous, and so should we!

David's hatred of his enemies (with a perfect hatred) in no way justifies our hatred of our enemies. David did not have the revelation of the Father as we have received it through Christ.

No matter how the Father appears to be as recorded in the Old Testament, Jesus revealed Him as He really is.

You replied:

I think many here are unnecessarily representing a discrepancy between the teaching of Jesus and the sentiments of the psalmist. Several posting on this thread speak as if David said that he hates his enemies (contra Jesus' teaching that we should love our enemies). However, David did not express hatred toward his enemies. He pitied Saul and Absolom (his two most malicious enemies). He would not kill them in battle (at the very time they were seeking to kill him), and he wept inconsolably when they died at others' hands. It is a slander to David's character to suggest that he was not a man who loved his enemies.

Oh yes. Clearly David didn't hate his Hebrew enemies. For presumably they didn't hate God. It was those cursed goyim from other nations that were the God-haters. So David hated them.

The scripture I cited in Psalm 139 says nothing about David's hatred for his enemies. He says that he hates those who hate God. They are God's enemies, not David's. He goes on to say that he has "counted them" as his enemies only because of their hatred of God. When God is at war against evil, and evil against God, those who will stand on God's side will, in that act, adopt His enemies as their own. "He who is not with me is against me." There are no neutral parties in this war. One must either have God's enemies as his enemies, or else have God and His friends as enemies.

If David counted the God-haters as his enemies then they were his enemies!

There's plenty in the New Testament about people who hate Jesus and God. Here are 3 examples:

John 15:18 "If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.
John 15:23 "He who hates Me hates My Father also.
John 15:24 "If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would have no sin; but now they have seen and also hated both Me and My Father.

But did Jesus or any of His disciples hate those who hated God? Did any of the NT writers advocate hating people who hated God? Not one!

This has nothing to do with what Jesus taught about loving those who strike you, who curse you, who abuse you, and who hate you.

I think it has everything to do with it.

When it came to dealing with these situations, David behaved in all respects as Christ acted and as Christ taught.

What! In ALL respects? David hated those who hated God. Where is it written that Christ ever hated those who hated God (or hated anyone for that matter)?

Jesus never spoke a word against the kind of loyalty to God's side that David expressed in Psalm 139.

Christ's manner of life and his teachings are determined by the way he lived and taught, not about what He didn't say.

If we think of hatred as the opposite of love, then we have difficulty finding a place for the former in light of the New Testament's insistence on the latter. However, if hatred is not seen as the antithesis of "love," but, rather, of "like," then there is no conflict whatever.

But why assign the meaning "dislike" to hate? If that is what is meant, why wasn't the word translated as "dislike"? When Jesus talked about those who hated Him and His Father, He clearly meant more than mere dislike.

When Jesus said,"If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. (Luke 14:26), is He saying that His disciples must dislike their parents, siblings, wives, and children as well as their own lives, in order to be His disciples? I have heard people say that "μισεω" in this context means "love less". Indeed Strong's Greek Lexicon gives this as one of the meanings, but none of the four reputable Greek lexicons which I consulted gives "dislike" as a meaning of the word.

[steve]

Thank you, Paidion, for answering one of my posts about this. And especially, thank you for answering in the manner that you did. It relieves me of the need to refute, since your arguments are so transparently lacking in substance. You have not made any new points, just repeated old canards that have been decisively refuted in our previous dialogues. It is a shame that you did not handle them one-by-one as they arose, back then (as I have done in answering your assertions). You have allowed a great many to slip through the crack unanswered—and probably forgotten. Fortunately, the old dialogues remain posted so that they can be read again.

Please do me a favor and answer all of my objections, as you have the time. Of course, the more recently-posted objections would be the best ones to answer first, since they are part of the current dialogue, and the readers are more likely to remember them and know their context. However, I hope that any who are interested in this subject will read the older posts, as well.

At some point in this dialogue, I would like to create a chart with three columns. The first column would present your arguments, one-by-one. The second would place my answers right next to each argument. The third would be for readers to place a "yes" or "no" by each argument and rejoinder, answering the question: "Did Paidion give anything resembling a relevant answer to Steve's argument?" You know how I am about "parallel" comparisons. It would be interesting to see how the tally turns out.

Blessings!

[Paidion]

Hi Homer,

Let me give you an example of where your thinking is troublesome. Regarding divorce, only Matthew gives an exception for adultery. What confidence does your method give you that Matthew's exception is valid? Was Matthew mistaken or "playing to his audience"? Who can tell? And this is no trivial matter.

I'm not clear as to what you consider "my method." Do you mean reliance on the gospels as history? If so, we all have reliance on history to some extent; that is, the basic facts. Of course the historians disagree on their interpretation of the facts, or in some cases, whether some historical assertions are or are not facts.

How would your question be answered with "your method," that is presuming your method is that of plenary inspiration of the gospels. Do you accept Matthew's exception as valid on the basis that he was more fully inspired than the other gospel writers who didn't include it? Or if the gospels are equally inspired, how do you determine that the exception is valid?

I have just thought a bit further, and I think I know your answer. You accept the exception as valid simply because it is in an inspired gospel. There is no necessity of considering its omission in the other gospels. I can see why this would work in this particular case. But how would it work in the case of Jude saying that the statement he quoted from the book of Enoch was written by the historic Enoch (the seventh from Adam)? With my "method," I can simply accept that Jude was mistaken. But what do you do with it, if you believe that Jude's writing is without error? But perhaps your theory of inspiration does not include the requirement that the inspired writing be without error.

[Homer]

Hi Paidion,

My method is not to insist there can be no errors in the manuscripts we have. We do not have the originals anyway. Having said that I would argue that in God's providence He would not allow a significant error in His word and has had a hand in its preservation. Your method appears to be the same as Jefferson: take the scissors to that which you can not fit into your paradigm. The same for Marcus Borg. In what way is your method different than theirs?

To Steve you wrote:

It is because of the very belief that God commanded such death and violence, that many professing Christians throughout the centuries have carried out wars in the name of Christ, eliminating their enemies. After all, they are just doing what God does and commands, and thus demonstrating that they are His children indeed.

Well, they made a big mistake. God spoke to Joshua. The crusaders, for example, had no blessing to do as they thought they should based on a specific command by God to Joshua.

Be blessed, Homer

[Paidion]

My method is not to insist there can be no errors in the manuscripts we have. We do not have the originals anyway.

Well, Jude's statement that his quote from the book of Enoch (written around 300 B.C.) was a prophecy of Enoch "the seventh from Adam" was no manuscript error.

Having said that I would argue that in God's providence He would not allow a significant error in His word and has had a hand in its preservation.

Jude error that he claimed the historic Enoch prophesied, taken from the book of Enoch, seems pretty significant to me, and God did not prevent Jude from writing it. Some of the other early Christians also believed that the ancient Enoch had written the book. At one time, I accepted Jude's words as fact, and for awhile assumed the book of Enoch was written by the ancient Enoch. I obtained the book, and found the writer's astronomical understanding was that the sun and moon moved through "gates" in the sky.

Your method appears to be the same as Jefferson: take the scissors to that which you can not fit into your paradigm. The same for Marcus Borg. In what way is your method different than theirs?

I know nothing about the methods of those two men. My method is similar to that of Brad Jersak and Derek Flood, in that, for us, the words of Jesus concerning God, take precedence over those of Moses or of any of the other prophets. We have no other paradigm. Jesus described God as kind to ungrateful and evil people, and indicated that we show ourselves to be His children if we pray for our enemies and do good to them. Why should we add hate, vengeance, and murder to this description of the character of God just because Moses and some of the prophets described Him as taking vengeance on Israel's enemies by ruthlessly destroying them including babies? (though not virgin women, of course).

[Paidion]

Please do me a favor and answer all of my objections, as you have the time. Of course, the more recently-posted objections would be the best ones to answer first, since they are part of the current dialogue, and the readers are more likely to remember them and know their context.

Okay, here is a recent post of yours, in which you asked me specifically for suggestions:

Suddenly the Lord said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, “Come out, you three, to the tabernacle of meeting!” So the three came out. 5 Then the Lord came down in the pillar of cloud and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam. And they both went forward. 6 Then He said,

“Hear now My words:
If there is a prophet among you,
I, the Lord, make Myself known to him in a vision;
I speak to him in a dream.
7 Not so with My servant Moses;
He is faithful in all My house.
8 I speak with him face to face,
Even plainly, and not in dark sayings;
And he sees the form of the Lord.
Why then were you not afraid
To speak against My servant Moses?”

God said that Moses heard God more clearly and more directly than did any other prophet. To cast doubt on Moses, then, is to cast even greater doubt upon all the prophets.

God further declared Moses to be "faithful in all my house," meaning that God had not found anything untrustworthy in Moses (as some here seem to think that they have found).

These words of high praise for Moses were not spoken to Moses alone (so as to make us doubt their veracity), but to his critics—one of whom was immediately struck with leprosy (by whom, I wonder? Any suggestions, Paidion?). Some of our participants ought to be asked the same question that God asked Miriam and Aaron:

"Why then were you not afraid to speak against My servant Moses?
Just sayin'.

First I want to asseverate that I know of NONE of our participants who have spoken against Moses. If you have me in mind as one of such participants, I fervidly deny it. What I have suggested is that although God did speak to Moses at times, sometimes Moses thought God had spoken to him when in fact He hadn't, and that the things Moses thought God had said, were in fact his own thoughts. I fail to see how this suggestion can be construed to be a dissertation against Moses—if, in fact, you did so construe it.

Nor am I aware of any participant who has claimed to have found Moses untrustworthy. To be mistaken is not tantamount to being untrustworthy. If it were, then any mistakes one's parents, spouse, or children should make would render them untrustworthy. Of course, you may be using “untrustworthy” in a narrower sense. You may mean that “some here” have found Moses untrustworthy in the sense that he may have taken his own thoughts as God's word to him, whereas, “others here” who find Moses “trustworthy” (in this narrower sense), believe everything he wrote was “the word of God.” Such a position seems to require that a regard for all of the Bible as “the word of God” is the sole basis for everything we believe about God. However, I still aver that I base my theology of the character of God on the words, life, and teachings of Christ, and that He revealed the Father as no one had ever done before.

You quoted from a writing of Moses that God said that He didn't speak to Moses in visions and dreams as He did to other prophets, but face to face. Then you made the statement, “God said that Moses heard God more clearly and more directly than did any other prophet.”Your statement can be known to be true only if you know that Moses was correct in all of his statements about what God said. But that is the very issue under debate—whether or not Moses sometimes understood his own thoughts to be the word of God.

And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him. See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. (1 John 2:28,29, 3:1-3)
I trust that when He appears and we are like Him, we will be loving (even our enemies), giving, forgiving, kind to ungrateful and evil people as Jesus was and as He taught in His description of the Father's character.
On the other hand when we see Him as He is, if it turns out that He hates His enemies, administers penalties—even death to them, and we become like Him in that respect, I don't know what we have been saved from. That is contrary to the way our Lord taught us to live. Why should we live loving, giving, and self-sacrificing lives now, only to revert to our former self-serving state when we see the Lord?

I see these character traits as opposites. You don't think there is any contradiction between the two. That is one way to deal with Biblical contradictions—try to believe both. Another way is to understand that there was development in the theology of the Hebrews over the years, and that there were still errors even in Jesus' day, and that He tried to teach the truth to counteract the errors that the Pharisees were constantly teaching.

An example occurs in the Old Testament itself. In 2 Sam 24:1,2 we read that God incited David to number Israel. David understood that he had sinned in doing so. In I Chron 21:1,2 we read that Satan incited David to number Israel. Chronicles was written centuries later.
.
At an earlier stage the ancient Israelites believed that God brings about both good and evil, a God who brings both joy and suffering to mankind. Satan was understood to be a servant of God who was sent by God to tempt or to test man or to bring suffering or death upon him. But Satan could do nothing without God's permission (as in the book of Job, where he brought suffering to Job and death to his children with God's permission).

At a later stage of development the Israelites saw Satan as an independent being who did evil in his battle against God and God's purposes, a view that carried right into New Testament times when Satan tried to tempt even the Son of God, opposing Him rather than being His agent.

[psimmond]

I would love to see the 3-column chart that Steve mentioned, but I'd like to see the 3rd column ask the reader which position makes the most sense in light of God's fullest revelation via incarnation. I could be wrong, but I suspect many who visit this forum are not as convinced as Steve is that God's Old Testament commands to slaughter everyone including the suckling infants and animals (but keep the pretty virgins as slave wives) align with the teaching/character of Jesus.

[Jason]

However, I still aver that I base my theology of the character of God on the words, life, and teachings of Christ, and that He revealed the Father as no one had ever done before.

Paidion, I have some questions regarding your method of theology. Not that I wish to disagree, but more from a place of curiosity.

1) How do you understand the so-called "hard sayings" of Jesus? Hating our families, cutting off an offending appendage to prevent sin, God's judgement of the wicked, etc. I assume you take these cases as "figures of speech," but even so, they seem to be emphatic warnings. This type of language can, in fact, paint God as rather severe. Those who've committed violent acts in the name of the church have sometimes quoted Jesus as well as the OT. I have a friend who believes Jesus acted violently when he drove the money changers from the temple, and uses that account to justify the rightful use of aggression against sinners.

2) Why should we trust any part of the Bible over other ancient Near Eastern spiritual texts? I'm not asking for a detailed apologetic, but why do you believe the accounts about Jesus at all? If this question doesn't seem relevant, I'm asking because it says more about our theological approach than most other considerations.

I appreciate the time you and Steve have given to this discussion. Thank you, brother.