Johnny Skeptic

Romans 9:15 says "For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." What does that Scripture mean? Does how a person acts have anything to do with it whether or not they receive God's mercy and compassion? Is God's mercy and compassion spritual, tangible, or both?

Joan of Bark

According to Calvinists, this passage proves the doctrine of predestination.

I think that what is being implied by the author is that God will ultimately decide someone's fate, and He cannot be coerced.

Gamera

Context is everything.

Paul is talking to a mixed gentile and jewish audience and explaining why God is suddenly being merciful to the gentiles, even though it is the jews who suffered the burden of being the choosen people (with all the persecution and restrictions that involved).

Apparently, some jewish christians were miffed that gentiles got a "free ride", and got mercy without having to obey the law (and get beaten over the head for failing to do so time and time again).

Thus he goes on to say

What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; 31but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. 32Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the "stumbling stone." 33As it is written:
"See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall,
and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."[m]

And then in the next chapter he goes on about how the Law didn't save, but faith did, so there really is nothing different between the jews and gentiles.

So, Paul isn't making God out to be arbitrary and amoral, but rather exceedingly merciful. Though admittedly the argument doesn't mean that much to modern Christians, since the audience has changed

Johnny Skeptic

God is not exceeding merciful. He deliberately withheld the Gospel message from hundreds of millions of people who died without hearing it. God endorses unmerciful eternal punishement without parole. In the KJV, James says that if a man refuses to give food to a hungry person, he is vain, and his faith is dead. One million people died of starvation in the Irish Potato Famine, most of whom were Christians. Many of those Christians must have begged God for food, but to no avail. Obviously, God is hypocrite. True love is concerned with peoples' spiritual AND tangible needs. Otherwise, why did God provide any food for humans in the first place? It is interesting to note that God provides food for many animals, but refuses to provide food for some starving people. Either God does not exist, he exists and is evil, or he exists is mentally incompetent. No loving, mentally competent being helps AND kills people.

If I recall correctly, what concerns you the most is that people be loving. If that is true, many skeptics are as loving, or move loving than the typical Christian is. Out of love and compassion, some skeptic police officers would be willing to risk their lives to save your life.

Do you believe in life after death?

Equinox

Gamera wrote:
I agree.

No. You are applying a human judgment of what is merciful and what is amoral to God. Paul’s point is exactly the opposite – that humans cannot every make any judgement on God, and that if God is going to act in a way that is cruel, you are to shut up because you are a lowly creation of God’s, not an equal. Paul’s main point is that whatever God is doing, whether it is just or unjust, is God’s decision, not ours to judge or question – in fact, Paul feels that the very term “unjust” can’t apply to God by definition, no matter what God does.

You can see this by reading the whole section around the verse in question:
See which example Paul used? Pharaoh. Exodus repeats over and over that God specifically made Pharaoh refuse to let the Jews leave, since it was God’s plan from the beginning to use Pharaoh as a tool to allow God to show bigger and more vicious displays of power, up to God’s slaughter of thousands of innocent children. God planned this all to show how powerful he was, and he created Pharaoh for this purpose.

Paul continues….

That’s the bottom line that Paul is preaching – that it is God’s right as creator to make people for whatever purpose he plans, including creating most people with the intention of burning them forever in Hell, which God decided to do before he created them.

The Christians and I may not agree on everything, but we agree on what the message of Romans 9 is.

Have a fun turkey day-

-Equinox

Gamera

This is a voluntarists view of Paul, and Paul was no voluntarist. Like the other authors of the Christian scriptures, he sees God's essence as Love, not Power. Hence 1 Cor. 13. An all-powerful God without morality would be anathema to Paul.

That's why he says:

2 Thessalonians 1:6 God is just.

An arbitrary amoral voluntarist God can't be just.

So I disagree. Here Paul is trying to show that the Jews who are teed off at the gentiles getting in on salvation without having to follow the Law, are being unmerciful and unloving. And God is just the opposite. They have miscontrued God's mercy, which is beyond human capacity, but intelligible nonetheless.

I admit in drawing on the Hebrew Scriptures Paul is forced to use what arguably are voluntarist texts, though ultimately that's only if you take them at face value and not as much more complex narratives in which God give people what they want even though he knows better, in a (usually fruitless) attempt to teach them that what they want is not what is best for their human condition.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to Gamera: You said that God is exceeding merciful. Upon what evidence do you base your assertion? God is not exceeding merciful. He deliberately withheld the Gospel message from hundreds of millions of people who died without hearing it. God endorses unmerciful eternal punishement without parole. In the KJV, James says that if a man refuses to give food to a hungry person, he is vain, and his faith is dead. What does that make God? For one thing, a hypocrite. One million people died of starvation in the Irish Potato Famine, most of whom were Christians. Many of those Christians must have begged God for food, but to no avail. Obviously, God is hypocrite. True love is concerned with peoples' spiritual AND tangible needs. Otherwise, why did God provide any food for humans in the first place? It is interesting to note that God provides food for many animals, but refuses to provide food for some starving people. Either God does not exist, he exists and is evil, or he exists and is mentally incompetent. No loving, mentally competent being helps AND kills people.

If I recall correctly, what concerns you the most is that people be loving. If that is true, many skeptics are as loving, or move loving than the typical Christian is. Out of love and compassion, some skeptic police officers would be willing to risk their lives to save your life.

Do you believe in life after death?

May I ask by what means you believe hurricanes go where they go? Do you believe that the Devil exists, and that he has had conversations with God and Jesus?

Equinox

Gamera wrote:
The view I mentioned is what Paul himself says. What part of Paul’s “But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?” is unclear?


You’ve got to be kidding me. Paul’s God is certainly loving to Christians, but judging anything God does to be immoral or moral is anathema to Paul – not the actions of God themselves. If Paul disapproved of his God killing innocents, then he certainly wouldn’t have picked the example he picked out of the hundreds of thousands of words in the old testament.

OK, let’s look at the passage you are referring to, 2Thes 1:

God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

So justice in this verse is to torture anyone who troubles the Christians, and then to torture all non-Christians. This is the verse you picked to show that Paul’s God is a God of love and not of power? At least it saved me the time of looking for examples.

One suggested way you may wish to respond to your own example is to point out that 2thes is known to be a forgery and not actually by Paul, so it doesn’t itself show that Paul’s God is as vicious as 1thes 1:6 would suggest. Thus, 2 thes only demonstrates how other new testament writers see the new testament God as a god of power.

How is something both “beyond human capacity”, while being “intelligible nonetheless”? I guess it is beyond my human capacity to understand how both could be true. (Or instead is it intelligible nonetheless that both are true?).

I’ve read the Bible, and the new testament several times. I assume you have too. So let’s be open about who says what. Both the old and new testaments say God is loving, at least to some chosen people. There are plenty of parts of the NT that talk about God being loving to Christians, and also plenty that talk about God being powerful and hurtful to non-Christians, which shows that God’s essence in the NT is love to some, power and punishment toward others. There are tons of examples, like when God kills two people because they fibbed (Acts 5), or the whole concept of Hell. From Mt 25:


Then the king will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

From Mk 9:

Jesus said, And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck.

According to the Christian scriptures, God is infinitely more punishing than he is in the old testament. The punishments in the old testament are usually an earthly disease, scabs, injury, or death. Sure all those are bad, but they don’t compare at all to eternal torture in Hell. I’ve been pretty sick or injured in my life, and after awhile, you are fine. Even death is not painful for long, and the old testament doesn’t talk about eternal torture for anyone, not even Satan. What’s worse than drowning with a millstone tied to your neck? Eternal torture. How do you get the idea that the God of the NT is more loving and less punishing than the OT?

Have a fun turkeyday-

-Equinox

P. S. - I'll be out for thankgiving from late this afternoon until monday, so if I don't reply to a question, I'm not ignoring you, I'm just gone.

neilgodfrey

You are right to say "context is everything", but your exegesis avoids the immediate context of 9:15 and thus avoids the question. Your reply is a good discussion of 9:30-33 though, and it's nice to read that somewhere along the line God treats jews and gentiles all fairly and equally.

But the context of 9:15 is 9:13-17 and this is a much better discussion of the meaning of 9:15. It explains that God never has and still doesn't treat everyone fairly or equally, but if anyone says so they are confused and simply 'don't understand' the insrotumable mysteries of God.

The immediate context of 9:15 explains 9:15: the overpowering might and will of a deity makes it right, regardless of any natural sense of justice. So anyone who thinks that God is unjust for playing favourites and making some people only to destroy them (v.22 -- still closer context than vv.30-33) is simply unspeakably arrogant (v.20).

I suggest you are turning to passages removed from the context to avoid the inscrutable mystery of the "justice of God" which is nothing but fancy theological gobbledegook for Might Makes Right.

This passage is a classic case of what Edmund Cohen in "The Mind of the Bible Believer" calls "logicide". The New Testament regularly denies the natural and obvious sense of our basic concepts of love and fairness and justice, not to mention logic, and twists them into something fairly opposite, hiding the obvious contradictions with cop-out theology-speak that ultimately threatens to kill ya if ya don't accept it.

Gamera

But you're missing Paul's argument. He's saying God doesn't treat everybody fairly, not because he punishes the good, but because he's merciful to the undeserving.

I submit that Paul was comfortable with that "logicide" and so am I. What he's really doing is undermining the complainers' claims about fairness. They just want the benefit of God's mercy while denying it to others. This is a theme Paul comes back to again and again to undermine self-serving invocations of God's various alleged qualities by those who really just want to claim God for themselves exclusively.