Why did Jesus stop reading?

[steve]

Paidion,

Either I am incapable of making my points clearly, or you are incapable of understanding them. In any case, your post above misses my point altogether. Please, read my points again, and see if you can make sense of your answer in light of what I said. I would prefer not to have to repeat them.

[john6809]

Steve, I'm not sure I understand completely. I might even be missing the boat altogether but, I think Paidion has answered your question. Your question: ....wherein lay the necessity (as per Jesus'statement) of all of them being fulfilled?

Paidion agrees with you that not one jot or tittle was to remain unfulfilled. And, whether by observance or not, he believes those laws to be fulfilled. The difference is in what you and he define as law.

If, as Paidion has said, Jesus did not think Moses spoke for God when he commanded rebellious children to be executed, and if that law remains unfulfilled to this day, then Jesus obviously didn't believe it was a jot or tittle. Therefore, the law was actually fulfilled to the last jot and tittle. It's just that some of the things that most Christians believe to be God-inspired laws, are not (according to Paidion).

The difficulty here for Paidion (and, indirectly for anyone wishing to make a case against him) is that Paidion has fallen into a logical fallacy. The fallacy of unfalsifiability. His theory cannot be falsified because anything written by Moses, the prophets, and the apostles, that doesn't agree with his own interpretation of Jesus words, is not inspired. That's why he asked you for one clear verse where Jesus claims that every word ever written by Moses and the prophets was inspired. He knows you can't find one.

Regards,
John


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[Singalphile]

That's why he asked you for one clear verse where Jesus claims that every word ever written by Moses and the prophets was inspired. He knows you can't find one.

As I understand it, even if there was such a verse, Paidion might just argue that that passage itself was not authentic and/or inspired. That is where we reach a point where there's no point in further discussion. As far as I've known, Paidion does not teach or approve of sin, which I cannot imagine that the Spirit would long allow a Christian to do. If his opinion is wrong, then ... well, it's just a wrong theological opinion. No sin in that, is there? (Though there is sin in divisiveness (Titus 3:10-11.)

"Now accept the one who is weak in faith [which might be any of us here], but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions." (NASB, Romans 14:1)

That's my take.

[john6809]

That's why he asked you for one clear verse where Jesus claims that every word ever written by Moses and the prophets was inspired. He knows you can't find one.

As I understand it, even if there was such a verse, Paidion might just argue that that passage itself was not authentic and/or inspired. That is where we reach a point where there's no point in further discussion. As far as I've known, Paidion does not teach or approve of sin, which I cannot imagine that the Spirit would long allow a Christian to do. If his opinion is wrong, then ... well, it's just a wrong theological opinion. No sin in that, is there? (Though there is sin in divisiveness (Titus 3:10-11.)

"Now accept the one who is weak in faith [which might be any of us here], but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions." (NASB, Romans 14:1)

That's my take.

I have no interest in divisiveness, Singalphile. I was trying to help clarify something. I may not have helped. Your analysis of what Paidion would argue if such a verse may just be right. And I almost wrote the same thing as you regarding the pointlessness of further discussion but didn't feel it was my place to say so.

Regards,
John

[Singalphile]

I have no interest in divisiveness, Singalphile. I was trying to help clarify something. ....

I know, john 6809. I was generally agreeing with you. My parenthetical statement was only an aside, not directed at anyone in particular.

Some people enjoy and learn and grow from the back and forth of debate, I think. If they are mature enough in that area to do so without causing offense/stumbling or division then ....

[steve]

My concern is not with what ingenuity might be able to prove or to falsify. A man with a wrong belief can prove himself right (to his own satisfaction) to the bitter end by denying the validity (however illegitimately) of every argument against his view. But no one should mistake this policy for honest inquiry.

I am under the impression that most of us are not here to show how cleverly we can manipulate data in order to save face after having championed an embarrassing and discredited position. Dialogue about the things of God is not a competition, to see who can be the last man standing—even if this means pretending that death blows to our position will go away by our pretending not to notice them. My hope is that people here are interested in truth, and are even humble enough to recognize when they have been corrected from scripture. Defining Jesus does not come down to the guy with the fanciest arguments "winning." It is a matter of our understanding what Jesus said, our allowing Him to define His own position, and our humbly rejoicing in its discovery.

In order to adopt Paidion's position, it seems, Jesus must be viewed, not so much as a real person capable of expressing His own views, but as the mascot of some cherished ideal, created from a handful of carefully-selected proof-texts, while dodging and twisting many statements of Jesus that are hostile to this caricature.

When Jesus said "the Law and the Prophets," He and His audience knew very well to what body of literature He was referring. He was not using an uncommon or ambiguous expression in the hope that someone like Paidion would come along 2,000 years later and point out that no one had understood these words correctly before he did. To suggest that the Torah, of which "not one jot or tittle" could be seen as expendable, referred only to a smallish portion of the actual Torah (because a reader does not like a great deal of what the Torah contains) is disingenuous—no matter how many times an ideologue wants to assert or reassert it. There is not a shred of evidence that Jesus had such a specialized, and previously unknown, meaning hidden behind His use of "the Law and the Prophets."

Getting away from the Torah, for a moment—we have to observe that Jesus also included the Prophets in this statement. Paidion also rejects most of what the prophets wrote, seeing them as human errors. There is more in the prophets about God's judgment acts than in any other portion of scripture. The "Prophets," of course, include what the Jews called the "Former Prophets" (which we call "Historical Books") and the "Latter Prophets" (those that we call the "Prophetic Books").

In such books, we read that the slaughter of the Canaanites was God's fulfilling of the promises He made to the patriarchs (Josh.21:43-45). We read of God sending hail to kill Israel's enemies, and hornets to drive them out (Joshua 10:11; 24:12). We read that the Spirit of God came upon certain judges and kings, causing them to raise up armies for battle, and perform supernatural (lethal) feats of strength (Judges 6:34; 11:29; 14:6, 19; 1 Sam.11:6). We read that the presence of the Ark of the Covenant supernaturally brought disease upon the Philistines, when it was in their custody (1 Sam.4). We read of the Lord enabling David to deliver Israel from the Philistines by the killing of Goliath (1 Sam.17:46). We read of God sending lying spirit to the mouth of Ahab's false prophets, in order to lead him to his death at Ramoth-Gilead—followed by the divinely providential arrow, shot at random, finding the chink in Ahab's armor (1 Kings 22). We read of Gehazi's being instantaneously stricken with leprosy for his greed and dishonesty (2 Kings 5:27). We have the prophet of Yahweh announcing to Jehu that his divine mission is to exterminate the house of Ahab and Jezebel (2 Kings 9:6-7).

These, and many other passages, belong to 'the prophets", which Jesus said He did not come to "destroy." Yet, if Paidion is correct, Jesus disagreed with the all of these prophets, and did indeed come to destroy the doctrines taught in them, replacing them with a contrary view of God. The question we must ask is, "On what basis does Paidion believe that Jesus believed the opposite of what He taught?" If Jesus were to actually speak to those espousing Paidion's position, would He not say, as He said to others, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe everything that the prophets have spoken!" (Luke 24:25)? If Jesus agreed with Paidion, that most of what the prophets wrote was unreliable, why did He scold those who did not believe everything they wrote?

Paidion has clearly said that any passages that ascribe direct judgment activity to God are the product of human speculation and error. Since the Torah, the Psalms and the Prophets are replete with such passages—making up almost the entirety of some Psalms and some Prophets, we are being asked to believe that Jesus hoped His peasant hearers were sophisticated enough to know that when He spoke of "the Law and the Prophets," He wanted them to sort through the Tanakh with an editor's cutting tool, discerning which phrases and lines belonged to the material to which He was referring, and which did not. In other words, Jesus was requiring His peasant hearers to do the work of the modern higher critics.

This is an example of argumentation at a very "high" (or else sunken to a very "low") level. Such debate clearly is concerned less about whether its thesis has any likelihood of being true than about bailing water fast enough to keep a scuttled and foundering position afloat. There is no reason to credit desperate arguments with objective validity.

The points I made, which Paidion avoids by saying "I thought I answered those long ago," are not in any sense desperate points. They are the plain, common-sense understandings of statements that Jesus made in His attempt to communicate truth—not to obfuscate and imply hidden meanings that none of His listeners would get. Jesus knew as well as any objective reader today, that His listeners would see Noah's flood and the destruction of Sodom as direct judgment acts of God. There is no other explanation of them provided in any historical sources about them, nor is there any natural explanation for them that is not hopelessly desperate. Jesus was obviously satisfied to have His listeners believe that God did such things (else He could easily have corrected this universal belief, or simply avoided referencing the examples). He not only sponsored this universal view, but He deliberately likened these things to the unambiguously divine action of His second coming—another instance in which there will be great destruction of life (2 Thess.1:8ff), as "one is taken (in judgment), and the other left (alive)" (Luke 17:34-36).

The parables of the vineyard owner and the king who destroyed those murderers and insulters of his son (Matt.21 and 22), do not grudgingly include reference to this destruction as an unfortunately unavoidable peripheral detail in the tale, but as the central point of the parables. Jesus was very careless in His story-telling, if He was not deliberately seeking to identify the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome as an act of God's judgment.

I am taking these verses at face value. If there were hidden and unspoken caveats implied, which would make the statements mean the exact opposite of what His listeners could reasonably be expected to understand them to mean, then Jesus was one of the poorest communicators in history.He was incapable of making His point without sounding like He was saying the opposite thing—and He needed a decoder of His messages—someone like Paidion—to go around after Him, cleaning up His messes and correcting the misinformation He had inadvertently disseminated.

My position is that Jesus was a very astute communicator, capable of getting across exactly what He intended to convey. Among His readers today, there are two types—those who are prepared to twist His words in order to render Him a suitable mascot for a cherished sentiment, and those who are more interested in knowing the real Jesus, who actually lived on earth and spoke His mind to all who had ears to hear.

Each participant at this forum, likewise, falls into one of these two categories.

[Paidion]

Today, I just discovered Richard Murray, who like myself, believes that Moses misrepresented the character of God. Here is his explanation of Moses' statements about God's supposed hate and violence:

Moses sometimes heard the true God. Sometimes he heard the true Satan. Since he didn't know they were opposed to each other on every level, but rather working together, he confused their personalities, words and actions. We have a better understanding because of Jesus' indwelling and because of Jesus' Gospel teachings. Moses often misrepresented the character of God.

In fact, this is the sin-dynamic that kept Moses from entering the Promised Land. The story is told in Numbers 20:1-12, where Moses hears the true God tell him to "speak" to a "rock" to supernaturally command it to miraculously gush water to save His parched people. Instead, Moses "struck the rock" in anger while openly rebuking the people's lack of faith.

What Jesus sent to show His tender love and care, Moses deformed with his own Satan-inspired wrath. Now, the people thought God was disgusted and angry with them rather than tenderly concerned. In this episode, Moses heard BOTH God and Satan, first God but then immediately on top of it he heard Satan's wrathful distortions. The result-- God's character was misrepresented. Makes you wonder how many other times what God first spoke in love to Moses, Satan then quickly distorted with wrath by the time the people heard it.

[steve]

Then we must conclude that Moses was a false prophet, whose utterances were inspired by Satan more often than they were inspired by God. We must also fault Jesus for either believing that Moses' words were God's words, or else for knowing that they weren't, and teaching that they were. No thanks. I'll stick with Christianity.

[Homer]

So if Moses spoke falsely concerning matters that occurred during his lifetime, matters that he experienced, what chance is there that what we read about Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, etc., etc. are not pure fiction? Seems to me without some belief in inspiration everything falls apart. All that remains is a "made up" God. We are no better off than the Hindu or Muslim.

[Paidion]

No thanks. I'll stick with Christianity.

Belief in the complete inspiration and infallibility of the Protestant Bible is characteristic of one form of Christianity, and a very prevailing one—but not the only one.

So if Moses spoke falsely concerning matters that occurred during his lifetime, matters that he experienced, what chance is there that what we read about Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, etc., etc. are not pure fiction? Seems to me without some belief in inspiration everything falls apart.

So you believe, Homer, that God directly revealed to Moses the history of Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood, and other details such as the number of years that the various descendants of Adam and Eve lived, etc.? That's a lot of faith in the inspiration of Moses' writings. It is far more likely that this history was handed down from ancient times to succeeding generations. and that Moses had a record of that history. For example, virtually all ancient people groups had a story of the flood that substantially agreed with that recorded by Moses. Small details differed such as the species of bird that Noah released, and also his name, but in all major respects the stories are nearly identical.

All that remains is a "made up" God. We are no better off than the Hindu or Muslim.

If we believe that the truth of the history of these events is dependent on inspiration, then we are in exactly the same boat as Hindus' and Muslims.

The Muslims believe that the Quaran was directly dictated by God to Mohammed, and thus every sentence of it is infallible and therefore true.

The Hindus have their scriptures: the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. Hindus believe that the Vedas texts were received by scholars directly from God and passed on to the next generations by word of mouth.

So it seems, Homer, that your position is closer to that of the Muslims and Hindus than is mine.