Let’s just keep to examining the text and refrain from examining what it is you think I’m doing. You’ve been very off the mark so far.
My reason has everything to do with keeping Noah and his family separate. This same plan is more specifically laid out during the Israelites time in the wilderness. The commandments given to them directly lays out that this is God’s intent. The Israelites being direct descendants of Noah and his family, it’s all relevant.
You are wrong. I am asking because I do respect the knowledge and experience of the Theologians throughout history. That’s why I want to understand their conclusions in these matters. I’m assuming there’s something I don’t understand or some base of knowledge that I lack that makes this seem so obviously flawed in my eyes.
I yield to the expertise of the Theologian here. That’s why I ask.
Yes, you’re right. The birth of Jesus changed everything between the OT and NT. Now, rather than having to keep all of these commandments, you simply have to believe. This was the goal of all of the events of the OT leading up to Jesus.
Yes, and these stories of the OT perfectly illustrate how human free will cannot be controlled.
So God made it possible for all humanity to have the chance to be included as ‘sons of God’ by simply believing. Making it a choice of free will.
I’ve done this, prayed to submit myself to God’s will. I’m sure you’ve done this too. Does it work? Do you feel everything you then do is completely consistent with God’s will? In my experience it is not. It’s my will to submit, yet it is my fallible will still in control.
I’ve been off “the” mark? Or off of the mark that you have made?
Keeping Noah separate is fine … but it doesn’t explain the boat.
And if your plan is to keep Noah’s offspring separate all the way to the birth of Jesus… then you are once again throwing a shoe into the works that Joshua is slowly building up.
From an Indo-European source? I thought the story was originally Sumerian.
We are talking specifically about the name of the Euphrates river. Is it some version of the Indo-European name in all or at least some other Semitic lanaguages?
If so, that sinks Jeremy’s thesis. But I can’t see any justification for Eden being in the Nile delta (or any other real location).
No, that wasn’t the question. Is the question now clear?
I can’t speak for you, but only for myself. I’m certainly not exemplary in the matter of submitting my will to God’s. But there are the great saints and martyrs – from those who died in the Colosseum to people like Bonhoeffer – who have been exemplary in that matter. Such people have existed. So why couldn’t such people have been God’s chosen writers for the books of the Bible? Remember, they only have to be fully in tune with God’s will during the times when they are writing the Bible. If between writing sessions they go out and commit some sin, the integrity of the Bible is not threatened.
It seems to me that not only Christianity but all revealed religions in which there are holy books presume that the holy books are written under divine guidance and therefore can be trusted. If one drops this assumption, and starts cherry-picking (“This part of the Bible was divinely revealed, but this other part was written by an uninspired, selfish human whose biases show through”), then one puts the whole Bible into question. Again, I’m not pushing for literalism or fundamentalism, or mechanical readings of Genesis 1, or anything like that. I’m just talking about the reliability of the Bible. If religious believers are going to start saying (as indeed they already have, especially in the liberal mainstream churches and the liberal synagogues) that only parts of the Bible are reliable, then they have pretty well given up the game.
But “believing” and “willing” aren’t the same thing. In fact, the hard-core predestinarians will say that no matter how hard you grit your teeth and “will” yourself to believe in Jesus, you won’t succeed in really believing in Jesus unless God has ordained from before Creation that belief will come to you. You can will yourself to profess in words, and you can will yourself to go to church services, and you can will yourself to do good deeds (on the external side), but you can’t will yourself into believing in Jesus. The very effort of trying to talk yourself into belief in Jesus by an act of will already indicates that you don’t actually have firm belief.
Things that you really believe, you don’t have to “will” yourself to believe at all. I believe that the earth goes around the sun, but I don’t have to make any effort of the will to believe it, because I think that it happens to be true.
In the Old Testament, on the other hand, the will does play a role. The people of Israel fail to follow the commands of the Lord (in whose existence they believe without exerting any act of will, because they have seen his mighty deeds) due to a failure of will on their parts. They let their resolve be weakened by momentary passions. Their faithlessness has nothing to do with failure to believe (they have more than enough evidence to believe in God), but in lack of steadfastness. That’s precisely what makes them blameworthy for their behavior: knowing that God exists, and knowing what he has done for them, they still disobey. And God holds them accountable for that disobedience.
As for the stuff on the interpretation of Genesis 4 and 5, I will leave that sit where it is. My goal was not to badger you into accepting a different interpretation, but merely to let you know that different interpretations are out there, and can be found if you look beyond the usual historical-critical sort of commentary. I leave it up to you to investigate, if you are interested.
On history you yield. But on theology. I haven’t seen you change your position an iota on any given THEOLOGICAL stance.
I think you’re misunderstanding me on this point. I understand that in the context of presenting an idea that consists of other humans existing before Adam, it’s important to maintain that connection between modern humanity and Adam and Eve. I’m assuming this is the aspect of what Joshua is building that you’re saying I’m breaking. But that isn’t the case.
Here again you specifically address Noah’s offspring being separated. You do understand the Israelites were also Noah’s descendants and that they were kept separated as well. It’s a pretty significant detail in the OT story.
So why is it that what I’m saying is such a departure from the mission statement but that isn’t?
A big part of what I’m saying does draw a direct line from Adam/Eve straight through to modern humanity. It’s a pretty important piece.
It does explain the boat. Tell me, in a region densely populated, if you’re looking to separate one man and his family, what better accomplishes this than the boat?
I am one of those artist types. I’m intimately familiar with inspiration. There’s a significant diffference between inspiration and channeling details of a story that are factually accurate.
So I come to a crossroads here. One direction is inspiration, which still very much ends up being a product of the inspired person. Most of it comes from them.
And the other way you have God working a writer like a puppet, which goes against everything the story seems to be explaining that God is intending here.
I still hold the bible in high regard. I don’t dismiss it. As you’ve seen here, I lean on it heavily.
I think it’s precisely what it needs to be. Not because the authors were somehow able to channel God’s will unfiltered and unobstructed. but because God is the master of time/space and can continually edit the beats in the progression of existence until everything plays out exactly right. If that makes sense.
In the same way I see God creating Jesus I can see Him creating the bible. I find that particular dynamic of the story infinitely fascinating. The natural world becomes just as He wills. There’s no guesswork there. No unknowns. But when it comes to humanity and free will, it’s a very different thing and handled a very different way.
There’s experimentation, there are tests done, a bit of scatter shooting here and there. It’s the story of an all powerful God who actually did create a stone so great that even He can’t move it. Free will is a powerful capability. And nothing emphasizes that more than the tale of God creating it.
No, Jeremy, It doesn’t explain the Boat.
How does putting Noah through the giant effort of building a cargo ship with his 3 sons help the plot line or narrative of your “separation” theme?
When the boat touches on down on a highland area … he is virtually in the same circumstances if he merely herded his animals a little higher up in the same area as where the boat would touch down.
I don’t think you understand a “plot twist” vs. a “plot excess”…
That is very wrong in my view. That’s not us willfully and freely choosing God, that’s God choosing some of us over others. What’s the point of living and experiencing life if the choice is already made?
Belief is a choice. It’s an acknowledgement. Even though it goes against all you know or have witnessed to be possible, you believe that a man was raised from the dead after three days. This is an acknowledgement that you believe God exists and is the master or all that is.
Life is all about our will and how we choose to live. For belief to not be a choice undermines all that life is about.
Yes it does. And I find this very telling.
Take God testing Abraham for example. Throughout the story God chooses particular individuals from the chosen bloodline. Noah exhibited traits that God found favorable. Like any breeder, you identify the characteristics that you want to bring forward and breed from that stock.
Again with Abraham it’s the same thing. It’s after this that God promises to make his descendants many. Because Abraham exhibited the ability to restrain his own will in favor of God’s will.
The Israelites in the wilderness really illustrate the power of free will. Like you said, they all had witnessed for themselves God’s power. There was no doubt He existed. This had nothing to do with belief. God literally tried everything. And still they did what they willed, overriding God’s will. God could not control them.
No, he’s in very different circumstances. If he merely herded his animals there’d still be other people, other animals, all around.
But here, when the boat touches down, there’s not another living thing for miles.
If God can warn Noah of a regional flood… I think he can make sure that nobody followed Noah… compare that to building a boat that had to survive all the waters…
Well, building a boat as instructed shows Noah’s willingness to do God’s will even when it’s a gigantic task, so there’s that.
Then, how would he make sure nobody followed? Humans are free to do what they want. He couldn’t make sure the Israelites followed his instructions.
That’s not what I mean by “inspiration.” An inspired writer does not lose all his or her literary skills, or the knowledge of the culture the message is intended for, etc. It’s quite compatible with divine inspiration that the Bible should communicate in a manner that readers of the time could make sense of. Thus, I would expect that the inspired writer would draw on his/her understanding of geography and history and would employ idioms, imagery, etc. suitable to conveying the divine message.
And remember how this started. I was not championing any view of “robotic” writing of the Bible. Quite the contrary, I was assuming human (albeit inspired) writers. You gave, as your reason for not believing that the Bible was inspired, certain “editing errors” you thought you saw in the Bible, e.g., the sister/wife narratives. My point was that the conclusion of “error” on your part was unwarranted, since a human author (divinely inspired or not) might well reuse the same idea several times, for pedagogical purposes, and the variations each time might reflect deliberate authorial intention (divine or human) rather than some hypothetical editing process where repetitions were accidentally introduced. So my response is that your example, far from disproving divine inspiration, doesn’t even disprove (non-inspired) single human authorship! So if you want to show that Genesis is non-inspired, you will need a better example than that one.
This is a theological side-point, that doesn’t affect the main discussion, but in Trinitarian belief, the Son is not created by the Father, but generated by the Father.
I’m not denying free will. My point was not that free will does not exist, but that one can’t “will” oneself into believing something. At least, I can’t. For me, belief is connected with reason and evidence, and the will has nothing to do with it. If a person doesn’t truly believe that a man ever rose from the dead, or that a God created the universe out of nothing, etc. – thinks it’s impossible, never happened, etc. – can that person “will” himself to believe it, against his reason? Can a person say, “I don’t believe this, but I want to believe it, because it would give me great emotional security if it were true, so I’ll declare loud and far that I believe it, hoping to conceal my doubts, even from myself, by a sheer act of wish-thinking?” I think it’s psychologically impossible. I think that such a person would always know, deep down, that the belief was a projection of his wishes or hopes rather than something cognitively defensible. And I think that knowledge would eventually eat away at the belief. Gritting your teeth and saying something is true can’t make it true – and intellectually honest people know that. This is why I find your presentation of “faith” a misleading one.
Of course, I may not understand what you mean by “faith”, but so far I’m getting the impression that it means “Believing something for which one has no evidence, but that one strongly wishes were true, because it would make one happier if one could believe it.” If that’s what faith is, then Christianity rests on very shaky psychological (not to mention philosophical) grounds. But I may have misunderstood you, in which case you can correct my impression.
Re: those editing errors
To distill this down to the root question here, is it an editing mistake, or is it deliberate? To say it’s deliberate is to assume God’s involvement and purposeful intent.
That seems a heavy expectation to put on the text. Where is this ensured to be true? Or is it a belief?
Re: Belief as a choice
Could you not choose tomorrow to not believe? You and I choose to believe, and you and I could change that at any point if we will it. It goes both ways.
No, not at all. One might suppose that Genesis is a wholly human product, and still think that the variations on the sister/wife story were the deliberate plan of a human author rather than the result of clumsy editing of multiple documents over the ages. The question of holistic versus text-chopping methodology is separate from the question of divine inspiration.
Of course, if the text is divinely inspired, then the holistic reading approach would be more appropriate than the text-chopping one; but that could be the case even on the assumption of merely human authorship.
I don’t know what you mean by “choose to believe” and “choose to not believe.”
Could I choose tomorrow not to believe that the earth goes around the sun? No, I couldn’t, because I think the earth does in fact go around the sun, and I can’t choose to believe that something is not true when I think it is true.
Similarly, I think the universe was created by God. Could I choose tomorrow not to believe that? No, I have no such option of non-belief, because I think it’s true.
If you are suggesting that I might, due to new reflection on things, over a period of time, come to believe that the universe was not created by God – yes, that is possible. But if you are suggesting that I can turn my belief on and off by an act of will, that without any new information or thinking, I could tomorrow just decide that I would no longer believe that God created the world – no, that is psychologically impossible – for me, at any rate. What I believe is not under the control of my will. It comes from my assessment of reality, that is, from my reason. Only a change in my reasoning could change my beliefs. That’s why, though I agree with you about the existence of free will, free will has nothing to do with whether or not I believe, or with what I believe.
Free will only comes into religious belief in this sense: I resent attempts to coerce me, bully me, badger me, etc. into believing or not believing anything (whether to do with religion, or evolution, global warming, or anything else). Against such force, my free will revolts. But the actual contents of my beliefs have nothing to do with what I “will.” Nor should they.
Like I said … you might listen to someone’s presentation of history … as soon as things get theologically engaged, you make whatever changes and manipulations you want and with relative impunity.
So an athiest doesn’t choose to be an athiest? Their disbelief is not under their control? There’s no hope for them because they are not predisposed to believe?
Acts 16:30-31- He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved- you and your household.”
Here, Paul tells the jailer what he must do to be saved. Is this not posed as if he has a choice?
Changes and manipulations? What did I change? I referenced another bit of text to make a relevant comparison.