[Peace-discuss] Bellicose rhetoric???

Mon Nov 10 17:38:24 CST 2008

Gen 1:26f.

Mt 22:29ff.


John W. wrote:
> 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 
> <mailto: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 
> <mailto:galliher at uiuc.edu>>/* wrote:
> 
> From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu <mailto:galliher at uiuc.edu>> Subject:
> Re: [Peace-discuss] Bellicose rhetoric??? To: "John W." <jbw292002 at gmail.com 
> <mailto:jbw292002 at gmail.com>> Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net 
> <mailto: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
>