striderlives

In many of my recent biker bar fights with x-tians, whenever I point to the many cruelties in the OT they invariably respond "yeah, but JC fulfilled the Law, so we're no longer bound to that covenant..." as a means of dismissing everything negative or contradictory in the OT.

My usual response is to bring up Numbers 31, which I believe has nothing to do with any 'Law' - I haven't seen any indication that killing children and non-virgin women and saving the virgins to be raped is a 'Law' that Moses laid down - I read it as simply an example where Yahweh is monumentally cruel and evil.

X-tians just smirk and indicate that I don't really understand what the 'Law' is.

Do they have a valid point that I am missing? Is it that easy to divorce so much of the OT from the NT and somehow maintain a cogent religion?

pharoah

Christians have a long sorry history of cherry-picking the OT for passages that support their beliefs and ignoring the rest. For instance, they'll quote Proverbs to justify beating children and ignore the Torah which says to stone disobedient children. Or they'll try to ram the Ten C's down your throat despite the fact that most of the denominations ignore the sabbath.

Reena

Some intelligent Catholics I know argue that because human beings were so evil and backward (after having rejected God through original sin) God had to gradually bring them back. They say it would not have worked to just give them the good law right away, they would not have accepted. So initially they were given watered down versions and guided back to truth: Christ, who of course fixed everything and gave the complete law.

Anat

Reena, but that would imply that no moral development would be possible beyond Jesus, yet there have been obvious ones such as the attitude to slavery.

Reena

Catholics have an answer to that too. Revelation was complete with Jesus, but our limited human understanding of it has improved with time

They have convenient responses such as this for virtually every objection! There needs to be a more concentrated effort to refute Catholic claims.

Chris Weimer

Even the earliest Christians were doing so. Paul sort of hinged on this and Matthew was full fledged in divorce of the OT (as applicable by laws). Jesus was the new law for him.

Anat

OK, let's see: God gives people with low social development a law that is somewhat better than the one they can come up with themselves but far from perfect because that is their level of understanding. A bit later (say a millenium and a half, if we go by traditional dating) they are somewhat more developed socially, but really not by much, and he gives them the Perfect Law, which they are still incapable of understanding or following properly, and 2 millenia later they are still making progress, but aren't there yet. Doesn't sound very consistent to me.

And of course, leaves the supposed Perfect Law open to endless reinterpretation and controversy, because past interpretations were made by people who were incapable of correct interpretation, and there is no reason to thing that current interpreters are significantly better. Which basically comes down to - each generation has its own ideas of right and wrong and as long as their ideas can be somehow connected to scripture or tradition anything goes.

Reena

Well, it's not so much that they are incapable of understnading it, Catholics have to be consistent with the past. But that understanding of it can and does develop.

Not completely so, because the Catholic Church claims to be infallible in matters of faith and morals all new "developments" have to be consistent with all past authoritative teachings.

The practical consequence of it is that their theology is pretty consistent and they do have an explanation for everything.

Anat

Well, if understanding of the supposed perfect law can develop, why not give it first time around? From our POV how much were the people in Jesus' times more developed in their social and moral understanding compared with early Israelites? And how minuscle would the difference seem from the POV of people in the distant future?

Reena

You are making very good points. For that matter, it's not just that God didn't give the perfect law by omitting good things, he actively promoted bad things (i.e. slaves you may have as long as they're not Jews).

Why not give it the first time around? Their answer is that maybe God wants us to figure some things out on our own! Maybe that's the point.