The Old Testament Evil

Bob Ross

I have been trying to be fair and open-minded to the Christian view of the New Testament as the new covenant and the Old Testament as the old covenant; but I am finding the choices and actions God makes in the Old Testament to be littered with blatant atrocities. I would like to get other peoples' opinions on it.

First I need to elaborate what moral theory I am operating under to say these choices and actions of God in the OT are immoral, as this is an external critique. To be brief, I hold that:

1. Goodness is the equality of a thing's essence and esse;
2. God is perfectly good because His essence and esse are absolutely identical;
3. His essence and esse being identical (viz., Divine Simplicity) entails that He is purely actual;
4. He is the creator and purely actual, which entails that He cannot fail to order His creation perfectly (viz., He must be all-just);
5. It is unjust to directly intentionally kill an innocent person (viz., it is wrong to murder);
6. It is unjust to own a person as property; and
7. It is unjust to rape someone.

Of course, the above is overly brief and I am happy to dive into the details if needed. For now, let us assume the above is true. There are many verses which seem to contradict the above truths; three of which I will give now: (A) the Great Flood, (B) the Attack on the Amalekites, and (C) the Exodus Rules for Slavery and Indentured Servitude.

So that I am not accused of quoting out of context, I want to note I will be using snippets of the full story and I encourage everyone to read the entire account themselves. In an effort to encourage that, I will link the verses with the quotes.

A: THE GREAT FLOOD

I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you

(The Holy Bible, NIV, Genesis 6:17-19)

ACCUSATION

It is highly implausible that there were no children, including babies not developed enough to even be capable of sinning yet, on the earth when God flooded it intentionally; and Him drowning these innocent children was a means towards His end of cleansing the earth (to start over with Noah). Thereby, He directly intentionally killed innocent persons and murder is the direct intentional killing of innocent persons; therefore, God committed murder.

However, God is all-just and it is unjust to murder; therefore, this "God" who flooded the earth was not truly God Himself (viz., the purely actual, perfectly good creator of the universe).

B: THE ATTACK ON THE AMALEKITES

This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’

(The Holy Bible, NIV, 1 Samuel 15:2)

ACCUSION

As noted in accusion A, directly intentionally killing an innocent person is murder and God cannot commit murder. God commands Saul to attack the Amalekites and explicitly to murder infants and children (among presumably others, like innocent men and woman); but God cannot do this (as noted above) and therefore this "God" cannot be God.

C: EXODUS SLAVERY AND INDENTURED SERVITUDE

This is talking about beating slaves (or perhaps indentured servants) as permissible:

When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money.

This is talking about raping women, selling women into sex slavery, and the implicit permissibility of polygamy (although I will keep the whole passage so not to misconstrue the other parts)(emphasis added):

When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. 9 If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.

All of these can be found <here>.

ACCUSATION(S)

Rape, slavery, and indentured servitude are unjust and God cannot commit an injustice; so Exodus cannot be Divinely inspired.

OBJECTIONS

Since this is getting long, I will omit a cross-examination of objections and rejoinders except one (for now). One rejoinder I have oftentimes heard is that Christianity is about Christ and therefore the OT has to be analyzed through the purview of Christ and His teachings. Consequently, the OT is seen as a stepping-stone progression towards Christ Himself: the Divine Revelation of God's Love and Mercy.

The problem with this rejoinder is that it reduces God to a consequentialist. E.g., He codifies rules about slavery because no one would have listened to Him if He spoke the ethical truth that it is wrong; He wipes out nations similarly to what was custom for wars back then because He was guiding Israel like a wise teacher and wise teacher's give their students the truth in bite-size pieces so that they can digest it properly; He allowed humanity to become so immoral and Himself to commit mass genocide with the Great Flood because it was necessary for human's to see the depth of their sin and need for grace.

God cannot be a consequentalist: an action's permissibility can be influenced by the circumstances, but some actions are clearly bad or good in-themselves and actions like murder, rape, etc. are bad in-themselves. He cannot tip the scales of an immoral act because the consequences of doing it would be a greater good: God does not weigh actions on a scale of the most good for the most people.

What do you guys think?

frank

but I am finding the choices and actions God makes in the Old Testament to be littered with blatant atrocities. — Bob Ross

He was a bit of an asshole.

Bob Ross

↪frank

. Aren't you a Christian?

frank

Aren't you a Christian? — Bob Ross

No

Fire Ologist

5. It is unjust to directly intentionally kill an innocent person (viz., it is wrong to murder);
6. It is unjust to own a person as property; and
7. It is unjust to rape someone. — Bob Ross

From what I can tell reading your posts you are a good man Bob.

An immediate adjustment here is to humbly accept that the above rules apply to you and me, not God. The commandments say “THOU shalt not murder.” God was telling us. Jesus followed all of those laws as a man, but who knows if he has to as God, the creator of mankind and our universe. So immediately we can recognize that maybe we are not in a position to judge the goodness and badness of God’s actions.

We are told God is all good, by God. And if we have faith, we believe, and rely, on this. Keep that in one hand held close to your heart as you ask these questions.

So when God floods the earth and kills the “innocent” (another judgment of others we may not be in a position to make accurately), we can rightly trust that justice is for God to ultimately decide, and so we will have to ask God and expect Him to answer, but not now in the meantime think He can’t explain it.

So you and me can’t murder, and you and me can expect God to justify all things, and you and me can’t judge another as innocent (as to God) or sinful (as to God) and should just focus on ourselves and our actions and ask what laws God has for us (what is His will).

But all of that said - God can justify death in afterlife. It may not be murder when God takes life - meaning both who are we to judge God a murderer, and who are we to know God’s ways and plans?

I believe Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit are one God. And Jesus, the Son, referred to the God of the OT as his Father. So there is no difference between the God of the OT and the NT. If you look hard you see Jesus and the Father share the same Holy Spirit. Jesus made hard decisions and caused pain and division and inevitable death, and the God of the OT showed tenderness, mercy, forgiveness, and love.

It’s all there and worth looking for and understanding better, for all of us, for all time.

This discussion, to me, is not really for a philosophy forum. Because the best answers is to read the Bible and study it and pray over it with other people who love God. God will reveal himself to you more readily in that than what will likely happen here on the forum. Nothing against the forum, and I love the fact that you ask this question, but I have some trepidation.

Leontiskos

What do you guys think? — Bob Ross

This is a good question. It came up last year in quite a few places, and Jimmy Akin gave a broad-brush overview of some of the different approaches. I myself would follow Fr. Stephen De Young, who has written and spoken on the topic at some length.

---

I will come back to this, but to begin let's simply acknowledge your objection, particularly with respect to the Amalekites.

The God of the OT commanded Saul to put the Amalekites under the ban
There were innocent children among the Amalekites
Therefore, the God of the OT commanded the killing of the innocent
The killing of the innocent is unjust
Therefore, the God of the OT is unjust

I think that's your argument, no?

BitconnectCarlos

↪Bob Ross

IMO, the Flood is the first real moral juncture point in the Bible. It's the first time God truly wreaks mass destruction on humanity. The explanation is that mankind is evil, but this seems questionable. After all, as you mention, there are children and animals.

So it's easy to question God. We can even imagine ourselves as God answering, "How would I have solved world evil?" Remember, we can't infringe on free will. What should we do as God? Offer classes on moral virtue to those who are wicked? But who should teach it? Maybe the angels? But what if the evil don't want to attend? My point is that once we start trying to play God to rectify the issue, things quickly become absurd.

We must accept that God has the right to give and take life as he sees fit. To question this - to assume that we know better - is to take on the role of God ourselves. The question of ultimate justice for the individual is beyond the horizons of our cognition. The author of Ecclesiastes notes that whether one dies at 1 or 100, everything goes to the same place.

As for Samuel, it is worth noting that God in this book is entirely conveyed through the prophet Samuel. It is not God directly communicating to Saul.

Bob Ross

↪Fire Ologist

Hello, friend!

I've heard this rejoinder before, but the issue I take with it is that it absolves God of any moral responsibility. God is a person and persons are moral agents.

Moreover, God is perfectly good with perfect knowledge of His own perfect goodness; so He not only cannot sin but He always chooses not to....but this presupposes that He is capable of moral accountability!

If we take your argument with fervent seriousness, then I would say that the principle here is that "that which is the creator can do anything it wants to that which was created".

On the contrary, if God is perfectly good, then it would either have to be good for Him to have committed these alleged atrocities being no atrocity at all or it was not God (or did not happen).

What do you think?

Bob Ross

↪Leontiskos

Sounds good and I will listen to that video.

Yes, your summary of my argument is correct. I am curious what your thoughts are on it.

Bob Ross

↪BitconnectCarlos

Yeah, I see what you mean: I think that is the point of Job. However, I don't think we need to be able to give an account of what the perfectly good way to treat things is in order to know that certain treatment cannot be the perfectly good way to treat them. If we accept natural law theory, then we can look at the way God ordered things and know that murder is wrong and I don't see how God is exempt from that. Do you believe that which is the creator can do whatever they please with that which they created?

T Clark

What do you guys think? — Bob Ross

What you have described is one of the primary arguments used by anti-religionists against Christianity. How can you worship a God who does such terrible things? I don't have the knowledge or the inclination to give an answer to that question. I'm not an atheist or a theist, although I went to a Methodist church with my family when I was a kid. I will note the difference between your seven moral imperatives and the 10 commandments. The Old Testament God seems to have had a different understanding of morality than you do.

Fire Ologist

it is that it absolves God of any moral responsibility. God is a person and persons are moral agents. — Bob Ross

I wasn’t clear. I’m not saying God isn’t a moral agent and that because He is God he gets to do evil and have it not called evil.

God has revealed that He is all-good, all-just and never evil. I’m saying how that is the case, I don’t think we can just do some math, use our reason, and figure it out.

I’m saying all moral agency exists under an authority. I know my authority - it is God. My duty is to follow the will of God. I know I am moral most perfectly to the extent I know I am doing what God tells me to do.
But God’s duty and who is God’s authority, is himself. I only know God by revelation. God hasn’t revealed to me HOW what He does is all-good and always justified and never evil. God knows these things. God can explain them to me. And God will explain them if/when I seek them.

And God has a lot of explaining to do about our suffering.

But I don’t think we people, even if we were all philosopher saints, can figure this out ourselves. It has to be revealed.

If a man kills another person can you tell if he is an evil murderer without knowing his heart, his reasoning and his intention? I would answer this question “no”. This is why Jesus tells us not to judge our brothers and to leave justice to God.

We can’t even fairly judge each other - how can we conclude God is evil?

Are there any deaths of anyone that are not God’s plan? God sent Adam and Eve out to die and all of their offspring, all of us unable since the moment of conception to return to eternal life. Why pick certain stories from the OT to chastise God’s actions? None of us are Adam or Eve, but we have all been punished for original sin? Aren’t we innocent of the crimes that led us to know death?

I’m not saying this is not an important conversation. It’s the problem of evil, written about since Job and and since Adam and Eve. Why was Abel allowed to be murdered? I’m saying this is a theological question, mot a philosophical question. It’s a personal question we have to take up ultimately with God.

And if we find the answer in this life, the answer is not going to be found absent revelation - basically, we all need to ask God “why have you forsaken me?” I personally believe he will show me how, despite my days in this desert, I was never forsaken and will be satisfied (so long as I seek Him).

——

But left to my own wits, does God ask any one of us, or anyone in the OT to undergo anything Jesus (God) would not undergo willingly if asked by the Father? Is there any injustice done to my body if it is done because God asked me to do it? Is there any glory and honor that can be fashioned out of hard work, even unto death?

I think you can find that:
1. We cannot know the reasoning and will of God except only when he tells us (much like all persons, although we men and women are more predictable in our weakness). So we cannot judge Him, at least we must withhold judgment, (allow Him His day in our court so to speak). This is why we cannot judge each other’s sins, and why we can boldly demand “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
2. God is not the direct agent of injustice, because there are no innocents as each of us relates to God (except where God makes us innocent) - we all have already earned death for ourselves so much so that any particular death might be an act of mercy for all we will one day know.
3. We will one day know justice.

These are the better conversations there are on this earth. But they are not merely philosophical, if they are philosophical at all. The best way to find these answers is to love God, to read of his mercy and goodness and know that the all-powerful creator loves you, Bob, in particular, so much so that he would die for you, and did so on a cross - that is the person we are here asking to explain His deeds. And he will explain them to you because he loves you.

But I don’t think our human calculations will adequately sort out the flood, the killing of the first born in Egypt, etc, etc.

One of my favorite passages is John 15:15 “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.”
God has a lot of explaining to do if this is how he treats his friends, but I have faith we will have our explanation and it will be better than we could ever devise ourselves.

Hanover

What do you guys think? — Bob Ross

That your analysis of the text doesn't reflect the practice of those who rely upon it.

You can certainly say the text says X and X is immoral, but it's a different matter to say that the text says X and therefore those who rely upon the text are immoral unless those who so rely apply the text as you've interpreted it.

This is the argument that appears here every few months if not more often. A literalist interpretation is used to show the horrors and uselessness of the text, and then it is pointed out that not everyone accepts these literal interpretations and not everyone who relies on the Bible relies solely on the Bible for all direction. Some think that makes sense, but others keep resisting. There are two plain issues: (1) the Bible says what it literally says, and (2) the various religious interpret their texts and practice their religions as they do. You may believe there is no way to make those two compatible. Others disagree. Regardless though, exceedingly few religions do (2) as (1) says.

Those who practice according to the Old Testamant, those who practice according to the New Testament, and those who rely upon no text at all for some reason pretty much lives their lives the same morally. That is something worth considering.

Tzeentch

It's not even that interesting of a question, really. Anyone with eyes to see can tell that the teachings of Christ are completely incompatible with the Old Testament, and that the two should have never been conjoined in the way they have been.

frank

However, God is all-just and it is unjust to murder; therefore, this "God" who flooded the earth was not truly God Himself (viz., the purely actual, perfectly good creator of the universe). — Bob Ross

The idea of an omni-benevolent, omni-potent god is logically inconsistent, leaving the believer to struggle with various philosophical bandaids for the problem of evil.

So there are two ways out:

1. Reinflate one of the solutions to the problem of evil.

2. Stop believing that God is moral, but rather the fountain of universal creativity from which both good and evil take shape.

BitconnectCarlos

↪Tzeentch

Didn't realize you were a Marcionite, but it makes sense now.

However, I don't think we need to be able to give an account of what the perfectly good way to treat things is in order to know that certain treatment cannot be the perfectly good way to treat them. — Bob Ross

We don't know the soul's journey. Perhaps death is simply a soul being called back to its source. Perhaps suffering can be purposeful. When you shift the focus to the soul, instead of the material body, God becomes more sensible.

Leontiskos

Regardless though, exceedingly few religions do (2) as (1) says.

Those who practice according to the Old Testamant, those who practice according to the New Testament, and those who rely upon no text at all for some reason pretty much lives their lives the same morally. — Hanover

I actually wouldn't agree with either of these claims.

Regarding the first claim, namely that religions do not generally interpret their texts according to the literal sense, I would say that most religious, philosophers, and linguists recognize that the literal sense is the foundational sense of a text, upon which any other senses must be built. The question that sometimes comes up is not whether the literal sense is important, but what the literal sense is. If by "literal sense" one means "interpreting an ancient text according to modern idioms," then we are not talking about the bona fide literal sense. In that case we are talking about contextless misinterpretation.

This is the argument that appears here every few months if not more often. — Hanover

Well, every few months we get bad faith attacks on religion. I don't think @Bob Ross is doing that. I think he is open to different interpretations and different ways of looking at it.

The very fact that there are so many differing interpretations of such passages lends weight to the idea that they are difficult passages. I am guessing there are different Jewish groups who would disagree vehemently over the interpretation of some of these stories.

Tzeentch

↪BitconnectCarlos

No idea what that means, but in fact I am secular and simply thought the New and Old Testament being incompatible was a matter of the most basic logic.

Gregory of the Beard of Ockham

I’m saying this is a theological question, [n]ot a philosophical question. — Fire Ologist

OP's question is both philosophical and theological. His assumptions #1-7 are clearly philosophical, while the application of them to the three Old Testament episodes is theological.

I agree with OP's assumptions 1-3 and 5-7, but I have a quibble about

4. He is the creator and purely actual, which entails that He cannot fail to order His creation perfectly (viz., He must be all-just); — Bob Ross

It seems to me that for every level of perfect ordering of the creation, there might be a more perfect possible ordering, so that ordering the creation perfectly (i.e., most perfectly) would be impossible. However, I agree that God must be just, and that is the main point.

I hope to be able to respond to some of the other issues later, as time permits.

Bob Ross

↪Fire Ologist

↪frank

God has revealed that He is all-good, all-just and never evil. I’m saying how that is the case, I don’t think we can just do some math, use our reason, and figure it out.
…
We cannot know the reasoning and will of God except only when he tells us

I appreciate the clarification! I think that the fundamental disagreement between us lies in our approaches. You seem to be basing most, if not all, of your epistemic chips in God as Divinely Revealed and deducing from that how God is; whereas, I base most, if not all, of my epistemic chips in natural theology and deduce how God is from that.

This is a good example, as you think God is all-good and all-just only because God has revealed this to us; whereas I think we know God is all-good and all-just because we can reason about His nature from His effects.

Of course, if you believe that God exists solely because of the historical accounts in that the verses in the OP should be read in a manner where God did do those things, then I understand how you would arrive at the conclusion that God can do the same thing that we have done and it wouldn’t be immoral. The problem lies in the fact that we can know, through natural theology, that God cannot do those things because they violate His very nature.

If a man kills another person can you tell if he is an evil murderer without knowing his heart, his reasoning and his intention?

I think you are conflating absolute certainty with sufficient evidence.

This is why Jesus tells us not to judge our brothers and to leave justice to God.

I don’t believe Jesus teaches that we should never judge each other; and based off of your example, then, wouldn’t you need to hold that Jesus is teaching that you shouldn’t convict murderers on earth but rather leave it to God?

Are there any deaths of anyone that are not God’s plan? God sent Adam and Eve out to die and all of their offspring, all of us unable since the moment of conception to return to eternal life. Why pick certain stories from the OT to chastise God’s actions? None of us are Adam or Eve, but we have all been punished for original sin? Aren’t we innocent of the crimes that led us to know death?

I am not making a problem of evil argument, in the sense that that phrase refers to, because I am noting that God cannot contradict His own nature; and it contradicts His nature to commit murder.

The problem of evil, IMHO, as typically understood, isn’t that problematic to me. God allows evil for the sake of higher goods; but, crucially, He does not partake in evil. So if the OP is right, then God cannot do such acts because it would be evil for Him to do so.

God is not the direct agent of injustice, because there are no innocents as each of us relates to God (except where God makes us innocent)

Yes, but I would also argue that people with ‘original sin’ seem to be ‘innocent’ in the stereotypical sense we are discussing. This gets at another example to the point of the OP: is it morally permissible for God to do generational punishing for sins those generations did not commit but not permissible for North Korea to do?

I think you would say that God has a sovereign standing to do it and this is the differentiating factor; but, then, you are committed to saying generational punishment, like North Korea’s, is not always morally impermissible or unjust. That’s a bullet I am not readily receptive to biting (:

The best way to find these answers is to love God, to read of his mercy and goodness and know that the all-powerful creator loves you, Bob, in particular, so much so that he would die for you, and did so on a cross - that is the person we are here asking to explain His deeds. And he will explain them to you because he loves you.

I have deep sympathy for Christ; but the Bible has to make sense to me to accept him as the Son of God because Christ clearly relates Himself to the Old Testament God as if He is the Word of that God in flesh. So if the OT God is doing things that God cannot do because it would contradict His nature and Jesus is relating himself to that God, then Jesus cannot be the Son of God.

But I don’t think our human calculations will adequately sort out the flood, the killing of the first born in Egypt, etc, etc.

It just all seems blatantly wrong, by objective standards, and to dismiss it as a question we can ask God later seems problematic to me: it questions the integrity of the Bible itself, so I would argue we need to hash it out. I think most Christians throughout history would agree since there seem to be a great body of literature on it.

One of my favorite passages is John 15:15 “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.”

What do you think about Divine Hiddenness? Why did Jesus, if he is the Son of God, always speak cryptically, omit revealing most of ethics, came in an ancient time knowing we have technology that would greatly help solidify/safeguard the evidence of his existence as God, and avoid revealing himself to everyone?

I know that’s a separate topic, but Divine Hiddenness is another interesting topic.

Bob Ross

↪T Clark

What you have described is one of the primary arguments used by anti-religionists against Christianity. How can you worship a God who does such terrible things?

Yes, but the stereotypical arguments you are describing are low quality. If it is an internal critique, then a Christian could bite the bullet and say it isn’t unjust for God to do those things; and if it is an external critique from moral anti-realism, then who cares?

I will note the difference between your seven moral imperatives and the 10 commandments. The Old Testament God seems to have had a different understanding of morality than you do.

I agree!

Bob Ross

↪Hanover

You can certainly say the text says X and X is immoral, but it's a different matter to say that the text says X and therefore those who rely upon the text are immoral unless those who so rely apply the text as you've interpreted it.

It is an external critique of the OT from the perspective of my view as a nuanced, classical theist. I am not commenting on whether or not Christians themselves live moral lives or not: I am pointing out that the OT seems to suggest that God is doing unjust acts.

A literalist interpretation is used to show the horrors and uselessness of the text, and then it is pointed out that not everyone accepts these literal interpretations and not everyone who relies on the Bible relies solely on the Bible for all direction

I think the vast majority of Christians believe that one should interpret the text relative to what the author meant to convey; but what they meant to convey can be tricky. It’s not a debate in Christiology about whether we should abandon interpreting the texts literally.

(1) the Bible says what it literally says, and (2) the various religious interpret their texts and practice their religions as they do. You may believe there is no way to make those two compatible. Others disagree. Regardless though, exceedingly few religions do (2) as (1) says.

I partially agree insofar as I do think ethics evolves over time as we learn; but I do think most Christians would hold that we are not going against the Bible or abandoning it in that process: we are refining our understanding of the original meaning meant to be conveyed in the texts.

Those who practice according to the Old Testamant, those who practice according to the New Testament, and those who rely upon no text at all for some reason pretty much lives their lives the same morally. That is something worth considering.

If this is true, it has no bearing on whether or not the OT portrays God in a manner that contradicts His nature; and, by extension, whether or not one would be justified in rejecting the Christian faith on those grounds.

I understand your point though: people tend to behave relative to the norms of their day. That is true of everyone.

Bob Ross

↪Tzeentch

This is not self-apparent at all! Christians tend to disagree with you here.

Bob Ross

↪frank

The idea of an omni-benevolent, omni-potent god is logically inconsistent

How is it logically inconsistent? What logical contradiction arises from the two? I believe that.

1. Reinflate one of the solutions to the problem of evil.

This OP isn’t an argument for a problem of evil in the sense that phrase usually refers. I am arguing that God’s nature contradicts the actions attributed to God in the OT; and so that can’t be God doing it.

2. Stop believing that God is moral, but rather the fountain of universal creativity from which both good and evil take shape.

This completely misunderstands classical theism. The catholic church, the OG church, holds classical theism to be true.

Bob Ross

↪Leontiskos

:up:

I definitely am not trying to argue in bad faith and am genuinely interested to hear what Christians have to say on this. I listened to Jimmy's video, and it was good: I could see that as a semi-viable solution to the conquest of Canaan. However, the fact that, taking my verse as an example, the author specifically noted that God commanded them to wipe everyone out seems to incohere with the idea that the author is not meaning that literally; and the fact that it was hyperbole does not plausibly resolve the issue since there's usually a bit of truth to hyperbole: viz., when the author says they killed all the children as hyperbole it suggests they did kill at least some children.

However, to push back here, there are many examples of verses that I could use that are immune to this kind of rejoinder. E.g., the rules about slavery, mistreatment of women, etc. A divinely inspired outlining of rules for Israelites to follow isn't plausibly meant to convey anything other than those rules for Israelites to follow.

Tzeentch

↪Bob Ross

This is down to what people have been taught over centuries, and not down to people critically analyzing the two and concluding they are compatible.

Genuinely, they could hardly be further apart.

A child could ask you why Christ preached compassion and turning the other cheek, while the God of the Old Testament goes around commanding child sacrifice and genocide.

Bob Ross

↪Tzeentch

It is not at all: Christians hold they are harmoniously intertwined. The new covenant and the old covanent relate to each other in manner of succession. I agree though: the OT seems incompatible to me with the NT.

Bob Ross

↪Tzeentch

I would be interested to hear @Leontiskos response to this. I am inclined to agree; but I think Christians would say that the Old Covenant paved the way for the New Covenant. Jesus is God revealing Himself as love and mercy; and the OT is revealing how sinful and damned we are.

Bob Ross

↪Gregory of the Beard of Ockham

It seems to me that for every level of perfect ordering of the creation, there might be a more perfect possible ordering, so that ordering the creation perfectly (i.e., most perfectly) would be impossible.

Can you elaborate on this?

I would say that there has to be a best ordering to creation because the thing that has a property the best is the one that has it 100% (even if there could be multiple beings with it 100%); goodness then is said to be the most of something when it is 100% good; the ordering of things that is best is relative to how well they and their relations resemble what is 100% good; and what is 100% good is univocal (viz., there can’t be two different ways to be 100% good just like there are not two different ways to be 100% soft, clear, circular, etc.).

I think you would be implying (by saying there are possibly two ‘most best’ orders of things relative to any given quality) that there is a way to be 100% of some property and not be 100% of some property (because there is a different way to be 100% of that very property).

BitconnectCarlos

Genuinely, they could hardly be further apart. — Tzeentch

Kinda strange, considering Jesus prayed to the God of the Bible and seemed to hold the Law in high regard. The gospels record him attending synagogue and reading Torah to the congregation. Or was it all an elaborate ruse?

Leontiskos

I listened to Jimmy's video, and it was good: I could see that as a semi-viable solution to the conquest of Canaan. However, the fact that... — Bob Ross

Okay. Can you remind me of the view that he takes? It's been awhile since I watched that, and I was trying to use it to highlight some of the different approaches on offer. I don't recall his specific view.

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I would be interested to hear Leontiskos response to this. — Bob Ross

There was a time, particularly in the 19th century, when the "academic" approach to Christianity was very ahistorical. During that time there was a common trend wherein it was forgotten that Jesus was himself a Jew, and that in order to understand early Christianity you really need a historical understanding of Judaism - particularly the Second Temple period. Marcionism is common among those who retain an ahistorical approach to Christianity.

The Old Testament Evil

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