Yes...The Old Testament Laws Still Apply

[fiatlux]

thomastwo wrote

He says that he has come to fulfil it. He doesn't say that he is coming back to fulfil it. The natural reading of "it is finished" is that he has done what he came to do. One of those things is to fulfil the law.

WTF is a natural reading? Actually, your reading of that scripture is a supernatural reading.

The natural reading, if that's what you want to call it, of "it is finished" means "my suffering on the cross is finished 'cause I'm damn near dead." Like one would find in a Shakespearean tragedy. Or maybe "I'm just being dramatic."

Yet, obviously it's not finished at this point, right? Christ hasn't accomplished everything yet, right? Don't christians believe in a little thing called the resurrection as a requirement for all this new covenant mumbo-jumbo-presto-chango? I thought they did.

Hence, whatever "it is finished' means, it is not a proclamation of the end of Jewish law. Because the Jewish law isn't over until "everything is accomplished." And everything ain't accomplished yet.

And it's not even over with the resurrection. There is a lot that the king of the jews has yet to accomplish in the rest of the bible, no? Still lots of seals to open, horns to blow and baddies to slaughter.

And it ain't over 'til its over.

[Kate]

[babrock]

Well I can't argue with that. If you "read it" to mean this, and if you "take it" to mean that, then you seem to me to be making it say whatever you want.

Yes words and phrases, especially the English of the King James, have some latitude and flexibility. You, however, have gone beyond this to "read it" to mean something about as far from its initial meaning as possible.

"(H)e shall not be punished" is about as clear a statement can be to mean it is not prohibited. Not prohibited means allowed/permisable.

At no point were the landowners motives alluded to and I see no reason whatsoever to read unintended into the landowners motives. It says smite. That is as deliberate as it gets.

If instead of taking it to mean what it says, we are allowed to give consideration to what we"read" into it, I read into it that not even the smallest amount of concern was given to whatever human being had the misfortune it bring the slave here. It is entirely about the owner.

You say "In neither instance was there no punishment for the act". I say, that is just slapping the slaveowner on the wrist for murder and calling it "even Stevens".

I like the idea it not excluding theists from our site. So I am not giving you grief for posting here. But you are going to have to do better than to "read" wrong as right, call that a response, and expect to get much more of my attention.

[Demigod79]

thomastwo wrote

Matthew 24:6-7 predicts wars and rumors of wars with the rider "but the end is not yet"

Yes, it says such things will happen before the end times has come, which supports my idea that the end has not arrived yet and the kingdom of God is not yet here.

thomastwo wrote

Luke 17:20-21 - Jesus says that the Kingdom of God has already arrived.

Again, if the famed kingdom of God that Jesus promised is this world then Christianity is a pointless religion. If this world is the best that Jesus could produce then he is not worth worshipping. Honestly, you're not really doing much credit to your religion by posting stuff like this.

[Demigod79]

thomastwo wrote

Luke 17:20-21 - Jesus says that the Kingdom of God has already arrived.

BTW, as a side note, doesn't that passage sound suspiciously... gnostic?

[Irreligious]

thomastwo wrote

Try post #17 and post #33 in this thread.

OK. Let's see. Hmm:

thomastwo wrote

You're right Davin. There is disagreement between atheists on the forum. I was wrong about that.

--Posted in reply to Davin’s observation about an ongoing disagreement between several atheist posters that T2 initiated in the "No Morality in Christianity” thread and continues to be actively engaged in.

And:

thomastwo wrote

I agree that you are probably right. But it provides an answer to your question even if we are discussing myth and not history.

--An equivocal acknowledgement, posted in reply to Davin's observation that a literal Garden of Eden did not exist.

Why, you concilatory son of a gun, you! You actually have been listening to what atheist posters here have to say to you, and you've agreed two (actually 1 1/2) whole times with their (actually just one poster's) penetrating and insightful observations about consequential matters.

Keep it up and pretty soon you'll be playing on our team.

[Kinich Ahau]

Irreligious wrote

Keep it up and pretty soon you'll be playing on our team.

He'll be warming the bench!

[Kinich Ahau]

[Smellyoldgit]

Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible

By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

THE hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.

The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible.

“We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,” they say in The Gift of Scripture.

The document is timely, coming as it does amid the rise of the religious Right, in particular in the US.

Some Christians want a literal interpretation of the story of creation, as told in Genesis, taught alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution in schools, believing “intelligent design” to be an equally plausible theory of how the world began.

But the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are among those that this country’s Catholic bishops insist cannot be “historical”. At most, they say, they may contain “historical traces”.

The document shows how far the Catholic Church has come since the 17th century, when Galileo was condemned as a heretic for flouting a near-universal belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible by advocating the Copernican view of the solar system. Only a century ago, Pope Pius X condemned Modernist Catholic scholars who adapted historical-critical methods of analysing ancient literature to the Bible.

In the document, the bishops acknowledge their debt to biblical scholars. They say the Bible must be approached in the knowledge that it is “God’s word expressed in human language” and that proper acknowledgement should be given both to the word of God and its human dimensions.

They say the Church must offer the gospel in ways “appropriate to changing times, intelligible and attractive to our contemporaries”.

The Bible is true in passages relating to human salvation, they say, but continue: “We should not expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters.”

They go on to condemn fundamentalism for its “intransigent intolerance” and to warn of “significant dangers” involved in a fundamentalist approach.

“Such an approach is dangerous, for example, when people of one nation or group see in the Bible a mandate for their own superiority, and even consider themselves permitted by the Bible to use violence against others.”

Of the notorious anti-Jewish curse in Matthew 27:25, “His blood be on us and on our children”, a passage used to justify centuries of anti-Semitism, the bishops say these and other words must never be used again as a pretext to treat Jewish people with contempt. Describing this passage as an example of dramatic exaggeration, the bishops say they have had “tragic consequences” in encouraging hatred and persecution. “The attitudes and language of first-century quarrels between Jews and Jewish Christians should never again be emulated in relations between Jews and Christians.”

As examples of passages not to be taken literally, the bishops cite the early chapters of Genesis, comparing them with early creation legends from other cultures, especially from the ancient East. The bishops say it is clear that the primary purpose of these chapters was to provide religious teaching and that they could not be described as historical writing.

Similarly, they refute the apocalyptic prophecies of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible, in which the writer describes the work of the risen Jesus, the death of the Beast and the wedding feast of Christ the Lamb.

The bishops say: “Such symbolic language must be respected for what it is, and is not to be interpreted literally. We should not expect to discover in this book details about the end of the world, about how many will be saved and about when the end will come.”

In their foreword to the teaching document, the two most senior Catholics of the land, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, and Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Archbishop of St Andrew’s and Edinburgh, explain its context.

They say people today are searching for what is worthwhile, what has real value, what can be trusted and what is really true.

The new teaching has been issued as part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council document explaining the place of Scripture in revelation. In the past 40 years, Catholics have learnt more than ever before to cherish the Bible. “We have rediscovered the Bible as a precious treasure, both ancient and ever new.”

A Christian charity is sending a film about the Christmas story to every primary school in Britain after hearing of a young boy who asked his teacher why Mary and Joseph had named their baby after a swear word. The Breakout Trust raised £200,000 to make the 30-minute animated film, It’s a Boy. Steve Legg, head of the charity, said: “There are over 12 million children in the UK and only 756,000 of them go to church regularly.

That leaves a staggering number who are probably not receiving basic Christian teaching.”

[babrock]

And if the Catholic church can agree that those parts that they have decided on are "not actually true" , then how about extending that to also include the part between Gen.1:1 and the last bit of Revelations?

[Smellyoldgit]

I'll wager that the majority of catlicker folk with an IQ slightly above that of an amoeba, take fuck all notice of the opinions of the dress wearing wankers heading up their sham of a church.

[maxbjork]

West491 wrote

Matthew 5:18-19
And Jesus said,...... "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven." [/indent]

I wish I remembered this quote when discussing how immoral the OT was with this one Christian. She was one of those people that claimed the OT didn't apply anymore because of Jesus... or whatever she tried to tell her self.

[West491]

That faulty argument is so commonly used that it was yelling for some attention. Hence, my creation of this thread. And I've used this as a rebuttal so many times, I have it memorized.

[lostsheep]

maxbjork wrote

I wish I remembered this quote when discussing how immoral the OT was with this one Christian. She was one of those people that claimed the OT didn't apply anymore because of Jesus... or whatever she tried to tell her self.

Yes indeedy. I remember hearing this explanation from my Sunday school teacher: it was "explained" that god made a new covenant with humans because we were just too wretched to keep up with the commandments, so he had to send his son to die to make up for our wretchedness. I remember thinking that God should have realized we weren't going to keep those commandments anymore than we weren't going to eat that apple.

Also I wondered how his son's death made up for our sins. And why god wanted sacrfices to attone for bad acts in the first place, especially the sacrifice (murder) of innocent things that didn't have anything to do with anything. This shit probably doesn't make sense to any child to whom it is force-fed, but over time Christians are indoctrinated (and also indoctrinate themselves) to believe this non-sensical manure. I wonder if Orwell was thinking of religion when he wrote 1984.

[West491]

lostsheep wrote

I wonder if Orwell was thinking of religion when he wrote 1984.

Just finished reading Animal Farm. One hell of a book.