(urth) The Wizard

[Daniel Petersen]

Great if so.  (That surely doesn't happen too often on this board, ha!)

-DOJP

2012/3/12 António Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>

> I *think* we are mostly in agreement, Daniel.
>
> Daniel Petersen wrote (11-03-2012 18:22):
>
>> 'Though I think a Christian should be able to defend the OT *also* in
>> strictly Jewish terms.'
>>
>> Agreed.  That's partly why I'm not down with the OT God is just the best
>> they could come up with at the time theory.  I think they were already
>> worshiping a good, holy, beautiful God.  And many of them were worshiping
>> him beautifully - that's why I take exception to the one-sided construal
>> of
>> God as nasty in the OT when there is SO much beauty in that library from
>> both God and people - it's just not as simple as 'here's some evidence of
>> brutality, etc., so it's clearly not legit'.  Sometimes I wonder if I'm
>> reading the same OT as its critics (and 'friends').
>>
>>     These strike me as FAR more fundamental to a good reading of the
>>>    Bible's own doctrine of God than incidences of 'genocide'
>>>
>>
>>    What's in the injunction to spare no breathing Canaanite that warrants
>>    those quotes?
>>
>>
>> Whether we consciously realise it or not I think we all take the word
>> 'genocide' to have built into its definition a negative moral judgment -
>> that it is a word that describes a certain kind of evil and injustice, a
>> large-scale /murder/ (wrongful killing). If a holy God did command the
>> Israelites to completely eradicate the Canaanites, then by definition that
>> God cannot have committed or commanded 'genocide' as understood in the
>> way I
>> have just described.  There must have been divine justice and goodness in
>> what he willed.  I tentatively went into that before, especially where I
>> emphasised that it's always important to remember God can eternally
>> console,
>> compensate, and surpass all that one suffers in this fallen life,
>> including
>> being unfortunately part of a people he decided had to be done living this
>> life (goes for the Flood too - and indeed, the fact that every human dies
>> one way or another).  The promise of a New Heavens and a New Earth (even
>> already in the OT - e.g. Isaiah) shows too that God doesn't value some
>> ethereal state over a bodily one, but that we have to WAIT for a renewed
>> bodily existence that is not suffering from the effects of sin.  I believe
>> that billions of people taken out of this life too early and so on are
>> going
>> to be rejoicing in a glorified material life infinitely greater than this
>> one and not a one of them will be complaining about the earlier phase.
>>  But,
>> of course, it's understandable that we struggle with bitterness and
>> unbelief
>> in this veil of tears.  (Also, I should mention, of course, that if we
>> believe in God as Judge at all, we have to make room for him to condemn
>> the
>> wicked - in this life or the next.  But both OT and NT teach consistently
>> that he does so exceedingly reluctantly and does NO injustice in his
>> 'final
>> call' on everyone.)
>>
>> 'I'm convinced Jephthah's daughter lived a long life, but most
>> commentators
>> have historically assumed otherwise -       all because the story is
>> laconic
>> and suggestion goes a long way.'
>>
>> This is an important example story:  either way it is interpreted in
>> regard
>> to his daughter, it was NOT a divine command that he do this, but his own
>> conception of how to live as an Israelite in a book that records a time
>> when
>> everyone was 'doing what was right in their own eyes'.  There's TONS of
>> that
>> kind of stuff in the OT as well.  Just because some bloke dismembers a
>> woman, doesn't mean God approved of it!  Yeesh.  Explicit context is
>> important as well.  (That's not directed to you - just a general vent.)
>>
>> But yes, I take your point about what's /un/said in both Wolfe and the
>> Bible.  I think what I'm trying to say here about a truly, recognisably
>> good
>> God in the OT (even if at times inscrutable - a theme the OT writers often
>> take up, but from a place of trust and worship) is really crucial to
>> understanding the theism in Wolfe's fiction.  I'm convinced he draws from
>> a
>> GOOD God in the OT very strongly to write his own modern Exoduses and so
>> on.
>>  And that he draws from that as much as from the NT and later Catholic
>> doctrine.
>>
>> -DOJP
>>
>>  ______________________________**_________________
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