[Peace-discuss] Bellicose rhetoric???

[John W.]

A very interesting perspective.  I think I agree with most of it, but words
have a way of being extremely elusive.  The final clause, "...you are to
have no image of God because the only image of God is man" can be
interpreted in more than one way, and most of the ways in which it's been
interpreted by man throughout the centuries have led to unmitigated
disaster.  It's just as bad having man narcissistically worshiping himself
as it is to have him worshiping the divinities supposedly indwelling
mountains and trees.

By the same token, Freedom is not the deity, but merely one characteristic
of the deity.  It's interesting to me how even people who devote their lives
to a study of the Bible tend to emphasize one aspect of God and ignore
others.  The God I know is male and female, Yin and Yang.  He is
longsuffering and merciful, but He is also a God of justice, a consuming
fire.  He gives us freedom but requires our obedience.  In other words, the
freedom He gives us is the choice of whether or not to obey Him, with
attendance consequences either way.

And on and on.  I definitely agree, though, that God is not a place or a
figurine.  As quickly as we get comfortable, He drives those of us who serve
Him out into the wilderness....

Now I suppose that EVERYONE on this list will think I'm full of it.  :-)

Joe Sixpack


On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 4:35 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:

That's true if we gloss "invented" in its original sense, = find, discover
> (Latin in- 'upon' + venire 'come').


Ah, "income".  So this is the origin of the Prosperity Gospel?  Hahahaha!



> A passage from my ghostly father (i.e., theological mentor):
>
>    "Yahweh is the God of freedom and there are to be no other gods. 'The
> prohibition of "other gods" is the basic demand made of Israel'. The
> important thing is not just to be religious, to worship something somehow.
> The important thing is to find, or be found by, the right God and to reject
> and struggle against the others. The worship of any other god is a form of
> slavery; to pay homage to the forces of nature, to the spirit of a
> particular place, to a nation or race or to anything that is too powerful
> for you to understand or control is to submit to slavery and degradation.
> The Old Testament religion begins by saying to such gods 'I do not believe
> and I will not serve.' The only true God is the God of freedom. The other
> gods make you feel at home in a place, they have to do with the quiet cycle
> of the seasons, with the familiar mountains and the county you grew up in
> and love; with them you know where you are. But the harsh God of freedom
> calls you out of all this into a desert where all the old familiar landmarks
> are gone, where you cannot rely on the safe workings of nature, on
> spring-time and harvest, where you must wander over the wilderness waiting
> for what God will bring. This God of freedom will allow you none of the
> comforts of religion. Not only does he tear you away from the old
> traditional shrines and temples of your native place, but he will not even
> allow you to worship him in the old way. You are forbidden to make an image
> of him by which you might wield numinous power, you are forbidden to invoke
> his name in magical rites. You must deny the other gods and you must not
> treat Yahweh as a god, as a power you could use against your enemies or to
> help you to succeed in life. Yahweh is not a god, there are no gods, they
> are all delusions and slavery. You are not to try to comprehend God within
> the conventions and symbols of your time and place; you are to have no image
> of God because the only image of God is man."   --Herbert McCabe OP, "Law
> Love, and Language" (1968), pp. 118f.
>
>
>
> Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
>
>> I guess what Carl is saying is that humankind displayed morality long
>> before
>> they invented God. My tho'ts precisely. --Jenifer
>>
>> --- On *Mon, 11/10/08, C. G. Estabrook /<galliher at uiuc.edu>/* wrote:
>>
>> From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss]
>> Bellicose rhetoric??? To: "John W." <jbw292002 at gmail.com> Cc:
>> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net Date: Monday, November 10, 2008, 10:35
>> AM
>>
>> God is not a necessary component of morality for the simple reason that
>> God
>> -- the answer (which we do not know) to the question, "Why is there
>> anything instead of nothing?" -- is not a component of anything.
>>
>> God is not a thing in the universe -- we can't point to something in the
>> universe as the reason for the existence of the universe -- and God and the
>> universe don't add up to two. (Two of what would that be?  Two things?  But
>> God is not thing in the universe, etc.)
>>
>> Morality is a component of human nature (for the existence of which God of
>> course is the reason, as for everything), as grammar is a component of
>> language. Just as an intelligent visitor from Mars would think that all
>> humans were speaking one language with regional variations, so human
>> ethics
>> might be regarded as the rules (or grammar) for humans' being together --
>> with some interesting regional variations... (That's what makes horse
>> racing,
>> or at least philosophical argument -- and literature.)
>>
>> Well over a thousand years of Christian philosophical reflection took it
>> as a
>> commonplace that the Decalogue is not a set of rules imposed from outside,
>> as it were, that might have been different, but rather rational
>> conclusions
>> from reflection on what it is to be human.  (They did think it was a
>> little
>> hard to derive the 3rd/4th Commandment -- there are different numbering
>> systems -- this way.)
>>
>> Christian theologians thought that, although ethics could be descried
>> rationally, that took effort (and time) -- hence all that literature -- and
>> so God generously provided in the Ten Commandments as it were an operating
>> manual ("documentation," we would say) for being human.
>>
>> More on this from me (quoting others), if you want, at "The Subversive
>> Commandments," <http://www.counterpunch.org/estabrook03292005.html>.
>> --CGE
>>
>>
>> John W. wrote:
>>
>>> ... I'd be more interested in hearing one or both of you Bible
>>>
>> scholars explain to Jenifer why God is a necessary component of morality.
>>  Or
>>  conversely, how one can be moral without a belief in God.
>>
>>>
>>> John Wason
>>>
>>
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