Sven

In the peanut gallery about Jesus return, CJD argued that Jeremiah 18:1–11 shows that "Prophetic utterances are almost always intended to motivate action, not prognostication." and that the fulfillment of them was always (?) conditional. You can find his arguments in this post and some clarifications in the following posts.

In the final post he also gave a link to a scholar who holds this view:
http://www.thirdmill.org/files/engli...tingencies.pdf
(R. L. Pratt, Jr.).

This argument was entirely new to me. Does anyone else have ever dealt with it?

The most obvious counterargument is of course that this makes prophecies somewhat ambiguous or even meaningless - after all, who determines if the one telling it is a real prophet, what the conditions are exactly and when/if they have been fulfilled? But these problems may be only caused by my inadequate understanding of the argument.

Your comments?

gregor

Either they are implicitly conditional (which must be implicit, since the prophesies don't objectively say they are conditional), or it's a post hoc excuse to explain all the failed prophesies. Using Occam's razor / parsimony - the simpler explanation is that conditionality is a made up excuse.

CJD

… And there you have it.

Sometimes I fear that on the other side of Occam's razor stands a bunch of lazy-ass ostriches with their heads in the sand …

It's called "textual criticism." Try doing it some time.

Sven

Here are the most important verses in question [Jeremiah 18] explicitely:

An interpretation that Jesus prophecy of his return is covered by these verses is perhaps a bit stretched, but not entire unreasonable. I think it's difficult to decide which explanation Occam's razor has to cut here.

BTW, it's nice that CJD also is participating in this thread. He can clear up any misunderstanding of the argument if necessary.

Edited to add:
I think even CJD has to agree that these verses have only a limited scope. They only speak about destruction/reward of nations. And in verse 8, it's specifically stated "if that nation I warned".

Consider that the prophecy about Jesus return is neither about the destruction/reward of a nation, nor did he/god specifically utter a warning - then to apply Jeremiah to this prophecy becomes an even greater stretch. Perhaps gregor is right after all in applying Occam's razor to this explanation...

CJD

I admit that my argument is not self-evident. Please also take my "lazy-ass" comments with a grain of salt.

It seems the main contention thus far is that the Jer. pericope is addressed to nations, while Jesus' statements are not. However, it is a modern (and frankly, Catholic) misunderstanding that Christianity "replaces" Judaism, or that the Church replaces the nation of Israel. The concept is more like Christianity is an organic outgrowth, or continuation, of Judaism. Clearly, Jesus (and Paul confirms, as do the more "Jewish" apostles, James and Peter) did not conceive of two tiers of people in the kingdom of God. Paul's "to the Jew first and then to the Greek" does not mean this. It simply states the obvious: YHWH, in redemptive history, has almost always revealed himself first to his chosen nation.

In the new covenant, the point is made clear that not all who descended biologically from Abe constitute God's Israel; rather, all those descending from Abe in faith constitute the nation of God. Thus, Jesus' Olivet Discourse and other statements regarding his return were indeed uttered before a nation. Maybe not one with borders, but the NT reader has to admit that this shift takes place therein.

Further, the Jer. pericope assumes God's prophet doing the talking. It is "Jeremiah" who says "Thus sayeth the LORD" in chap. 18, after all. And even further, Sven, realize that the eschatalogical "coming" always (and I mean "always") included both salvation and judgment. It was a good coming for those faithful to YHWH and a bad coming for the renegades.

Regards,

CJD

Garnet

I don't know if this is off topic or not. Has anyone here heard Stan Johnson and the Prophecy Club? Anyway, he and his ilk made many predictions about the year 2000...all the disasters that were to happen, the beginning of the end, yadda yadda yadda. And they clothed these predictions as prohecies. ("Thus sayeth the Lord.") When none of their prophecies came true, they pulled out the Jeremiah verse and salvaged a lot of their audience by saying that true repentence of Christians in America had put off the end times.

Kind of scary, eh?

Sven

OK, that's why it's so easy to refute them :Cheeky:

Here the question naturally arises: Why does the creator of the univers even had a chosen nation? Doesn't this theme fit much better to a local deity, on the same level as all other deities of the nations around Israel?

Is the same hebrew word for nation indeed used somewhere for these people? Then you would have a point.

Does it? Where?

So what? This is god giving the explanation through Jeremiah why some prophecies have not (yet) been fulfilled, not about god given a warning in specific cases. Since god is also known to speak through burning bushes etc. directly, it seems reasonable that if he speaks about giving warnings, that he indeed meant giving warnings directly.
And this is also irrelevant to the point that Jesus didn't give a warning as he spoke his prophecy about his returning.


Again: so what? As long as your "nation" commentary is not substantiated, this means nothing.

CJD

Sven, before I begin, I must say you've not really raised a challenge here. You're just asking me to fill in the gaps for you. I will eventually stop this when it becomes clear that you are either uninterested or unable to do some serious textual criticism of your own.

I don't need to "demonstrate that this is indeed a rational point of view" here. I have done this already. Why do you think so very few posters engage this topic (besides it being well beyond their expertise)? Many have no concern for responsible textual criticism; they'd rather fill up on the Skeptic's Annotated Bible or some such thing.

Why? Why does it matter if the same Hebrew word is used?

At any rate, consider the apostle's words (Rom. 9:4-8):
Thus, the children of promise (whether Jew or Gentile) -- not the biological children -- equal the nation of Israel.

Not that this is relevant to the discussion, but yes, the theme does smack of local deity, and, in fact, I might add, that my God can beat up your god.

Absolutely incorrect. As I've already stated the very coming itself is both blessing and judgment. I suggest you read a little before you counter this claim.

Regards,

CJD

A couple old threads on prophecy for your reading pleasure:

Number One

Number Two

Sven

Well, that's why I post questions here: That others, who are more knowledgable than me, explain things to me.

Up to my last post, no. But your latest post looks like if you indeed managed this.

Well, I can think of lots of reasons; one of it that your solution simply looks to ridiculous to many to even bother with (note that I don't claim here that it is ridiculous).

But many have, and you should know this since you've been here for quite a time.

Just look at the latest thread on biblical contradictions, there PHF explictely warned not to use the SAB. I, for my part, have never looked into it, and don't plan to do ever; first, because of the occasional warnings, second because it's so easy to find contradictions in the bible that I simply don't need the SAB.

Um, sorry, we were talking about if "all those descending from Abe in faith constitute the nation of God" [emphasis mine]. The verses you quoted speak about Israel (nation is only implicit) and of the "children of God" - but don't state in any way that the "children of God" equal the "nation of God". This is just your personal twist on these verses. If you think that "serious textual criticism" can make this link, please explain how.
Edited to add: We see that it does matter that the same Hebrew word is used - as long as no unambigous word is used, Christian can always twist the meaning of other words in what they see fit. You perhaps claim that "the nation of Israel" = "the nation of god" - but this of course ignores the different meaning of "nations" here. Most Christians today don't belong to the nation of Israel with "nation" used in the sense of Jeremiah. You and Paul indeed make a formidable twist of words here - but you won't fool anybody who doesn't already believe in Christianity with this.

Thanks for conceeding this. Do you also agree that this fact gives the idea (at least a little bit) credence that the Christian god is no different than the other gods worshipped at that time?

I don't counter it, I admit I was flatly wrong. Sorry, I apparently didn't think at all when I posted this.

Thanks, I'll have a look.

OK, I had a look at the first one and I wholeheartedly agree with your opponents, especially with Kilgore Trout's last post. If your answers indeed are the result of "serious textual criticism", then you define "serious" entirely different than the rest of the world, and I have no need to read up on your version of it.


Another edit. You also ignored this:
This of course problems because there are some cases in which god didn't warn, but nevertheless later the non-repetance or whatever was given as an excuse why his prophecies/promises failes.

Dean Anderson

This is probably just a typo on your part, but I actually explicitly warned NOT to use the SAB.