Wallener

Some of the comments here remind me why I believe it is a huge mistake to ever close a canon. People may not change, but culture does, and locking a canon gets us in this game where we're having to guess what was going on inside the head of a sheep herding nomad 4000 years ago. It makes no sense. Keeping canons open so the texts can continue tracking cultural evolution would preserve so much context.

Though I'm sure we'd find something else to argue about.

DeDia

Exactly Wallener! And Lee- I wouldn't invite Bin LAdeover for dinner, I'll leave that to the Bush family. Of course there are immoral and evil people. Usually there is an expalanaition for how and why they'd turned out that way , but not all the time. I'm siding with Voltaire when he said something like "I'm intolerant only towards the intolerant. I sound like and old hippie ranting over how alike people are, but we ARE. Not ALL people, ALL the time of course. Like a friend of mine once said "MEN their all the same-DIFFERENT".

John A. Broussard

Actually, Abraham--if he existed--undoubtedly knew or had heard of many cases where the dead had arisen. The dead coming back to life is almost a universal part of tribal myths. Where these beliefs come from has been debated for years in anthropological circles. One guess, for what it's worth, is that primitive peoples confuse dreams with reality. Meeting a dead person in ones dreams would then give the impression that that person had risen from the dead.

In any event, it's only with the develoment of more systematic beliefs in the supernatural (i.e, Egyptian religion) that the dead were relegated almost entirely to another plane. Even so, a nice touch for any belief in a divinity is to have her/him come back from the dead, even briefly. That reinforces the power of that divine being and also confirms the existing belief in an afterlife.

lee_merrill

Hi everyone,

I agree! I don't fuss with that, only there are some people you can trust, and some you can't…

Why do we have to insist on this, though?

Genesis 50:20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

I think the devil kind of fits in that category!

But without pain, aspirin would not be beneficial for pain relief...

It might be true! The author of Hebrews says that that is, in a way, what happened (Heb. 11:19).

Well, I'm not saying he knew this specific act God would do that would resemble his act, but in obeying God, we get to know what he is like.

Actually, they did:

Deuteronomy 12:17-18 You must not eat in your own towns the tithe ... Instead, you are to eat them in the presence of the Lord your God at the place the Lord your God will choose…

Now they didn't keep all of it, but that's a blessing, too.

Acts 20:35 … remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'

Not "more commendable"! More blessed…

Regards,
Lee

Wallener

Because angels have no free will. Without free will, they can be no more than servants. On a textual level, nowhere in the Jewish texts does any angel, Satan or otherwise, do something contrary to what is ordered by G-d.

Satan cannot create. Only G-d can create. And that includes "evil".

Anat

lee, the satan we see in Job wasn't acting against God, not even trying. He was reporting to God and got permission from God for his actions. he never did more than God explicitly told him to do. In Job the satan is a servant of God by design and intent, not as an umintended outcome of a bungled attempt to rebel against God.

John A. Broussard

Your evasiveness impresses me.


I've asked several times in several ways why your god requires real pain to overcome pain, and you come up with the above answer.

Sheesh!

lee_merrill

Hi everyone,

Certainly the demons are under God's control, yet I think they are unwilling servants, they do good they do not intend!

But "woe" need not mean evil per se, especially since here it is in contrast, not to "good," but to "peace," to "Shalom."

But doesn't this imply an intent to cross God's will and purpose?

Job 1:11 "But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face."

God's purpose must surely be for Job to maintain his integrity, and the devil's purpose must be for Job to curse God when he is struck.

There might be a better answer! I think it is actually probable that the good of raising rabbits does indeed require rabbits, though!

Regards,
Lee

John A. Broussard

An excellent analogy, Lee. Rabbits are raised to be butchered, to be eaten, to provide pelts for furs and to produce little bunnies for children at Easter. God, in his wisdom, undoubtedly has raised human beings for similar purposes.

Wallener

Satan obeyed G-d. By what logic does that signify "an intent to cross G-d's will"? Nowhere in the texts does Satan ever do anything other than what G-d explicitly tells it to do, I look forward to seeing your justification for the "unintentional Satan" claim.