Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Gagging on Agag

Jon Curry said:

JC [John Curry]: Bill did not assert that Scripture didn't cover any Amelekite history between the time they came out against Israel when Israel came out of Egypt and the time Saumel claimed God ordered the death of the descendents. In fact he repeatedly agreed that in some cases what appears to be horrific actions can be justified, depending on the motive. What he argued though was that these are not the reasons offered by God. We actually have the reasons from God in Scripture. They make the action evil.

SH [Steve Hays]: This assumes that Jewish readers would ignore the canonical context, as if the Book of Judges had never been written, or later parts of Samuel in which David must also contend with the Amalekites.

There’s a reason why the OT chronicles a continuous history of Israel and her adversaries.

Books of the Bible were never meant to be understood in isolation to other books of the Bible.

The reason given in 1 Sam 15:2 is not exclusive of other aggravating circumstances presented in Scripture.

A Jewish reader would know the history of the Amalekites.

And he would also appreciate the conditionality of oracles of judgment.

JC: Bill does not deny this. And if this were the reason offered by God for killing the nursing babies, perhaps you could make a case that it was justified. Unfortunately for you these are not the reasons offered by God. We actually have the reasons from God in Scripture. They make the action evil.

SH: i) See above.

ii) You think they make the action evil. That does not, however, reflect the narrative viewpoint.

JC: This statement is simply the opposite of the truth. Bill quoted the text, which provided the context and the reason. You simply assert this is "acontextual spin." Where is your evidence? Why don't you show us how he's violated the context.

SH: Samuel does not characterize God’s motive as immoral. That value-judgment reflects your brother’s extraneous and tendentious characterization. He is projecting his own moral assumptions onto the text.

JC: Again, your question is dealt with in Bill's post. Just read it. Bill isn't denying the existence of God. If you want to say God is the ground for morality, Bill does not object. What he's saying is that he knows certain things about right and wrong (based on J.P. Moreland's argument). Whether morality is grounded in God or something else, he knows certain things regardless. This motive attributed to God by Samuel is evil. So if God is good, then Samuel is not speaking for God.

SH: How does your brother know that certain things are right or wrong? What is his secular justification for this question-begging claim?

Moreland is arguing as a theist, not an atheist.

7 comments:

  1. A couple more notes.

    A. In order to make the motive of God here evil, you have to assume the innocence of infants and thus the injustice of their deaths. Don't forget, you're talking to Calvinists here. They affirm federalism. Adam was the federal head of the race. He fell. His guilt was imputed to the entire race, so infants stand as presumptively guilty. Treatment of them this way is not "unjust" from that standpoint. You'll need to make a wider theological argument v. covenantalism stick in order to make that particular objection hold up.

    B. Amalekites are descendents of Esau (I Chronicles 1:36), and this culture recognized the lineage of nations so that they were seen as related to each other in some sense. Noah begets the line of Shem which gives us Abraham. Let's not forget God is the God of Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob and Esau are Isaac's children. God rejected Esau from the covenant with Abraham unless he would proselytyze to his tents (per Gen. 9, for one could serve in the tents of Yahve in the House of Shem and find God and serve Him, but this would not happen until the advent of the New Covenant) but God did bless Esau materially. Edom, the Amalekites, etc. were all his descendents. In fact, the Hykssos derived from them, and they are the rulers who oppressed Israel in Egypt. The attacks of the Amalekites are thus a form of domestic violence, where one brother (Esau), who is apostate at that, has sought to usurp the birthright and blessing yet again attacking the other (Jacob), and they are, thus seen to be as vile as the Hykksos from whom the Israelites were fleeing. This is prolonged. They not only reject the God of their father's father, Jacob, but they attack their father's father's brother, Jacob, and steal his women, chidren, and property. Effectively, they murder; they worship idols; they even sacrifice children; they prostitute themselves; and they steal from not only the covenant people, but their own relatives. What, pray tell, is the penalty for such behavior under the Law? What just claim do apostates have on God's mercy?

    C. If your brother's objection is true, then what is to be done with these women and children? God would be leaving them in the desert where they would either die or be captured by another nomadic people, in which case the children would either turn out to be just as bad as their fathers, or, even worse, sacrificed to Molech.

    Here are the options:
    1. Take them back as slaves (or to be sold as slaves)
    2. Take them back and turn them over to social relief programs/processes in Israel.
    3. Leave them there in the desert to their fate
    4. Kill them there in the desert

    1 was the sin of the Amalkeites. There were no such programs for 2 at this time. 3 was truly cruel and unusual. 4 is mercy killing, for their countrymen would sell them into slavery, rape them, and maybe sacrifice the children to a pagan god.

    D. It is only after 200-400 years of opportunity and influences to change, and after 200-400 years of continued (and actually escalating) violence against Israel (who had not even been sanctioned or ordered to occupy Amalekite territory!), that God decides to execute the judgment given earlier, and never once did Israel trespass on Amalekite lands.

    E. These children and women were guilty of the same sins under the moral Law of God. (I Kings 15 and 16...the sins of Israel are the same sins of the Amalekites).

    F. Moreover, their fathers lived in this society and new that if they attacked Israel, their women and children would pay the price.They are victims, therefore, of their fathers' / husbands' crimes.

    G. The children and husbands killed are those of the Amalekite soldiers, not every Amalekite male.

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  2. To Steve:

    "Books of the Bible were never meant to be understood in isolation to other books of the Bible."

    When this statement was offered by Samuel to Saul it wasn't a book of the bible at all. It was presumably spoken first, then written perhaps years later.

    "The reason given in 1 Sam 15:2 is not exclusive of other aggravating circumstances presented in Scripture."

    This is the tack taken by Christians. You offer reasons for the executions. None appear anything like the reason actually offered in Scripture. Why do you want to invent other reasons beyond what is in the text? Is it because you can see that the reason offered is evil? I think you can see that this is evil. Because it is wrong to kill someone because of the sins of his long dead ancestors. Do you agree?

    "A Jewish reader would know the history of the Amalekites."

    Saul is not reading. He's listening.

    "And he would also appreciate the conditionality of oracles of judgment."

    What do you mean by this?

    "ii) You think they make the action evil. That does not, however, reflect the narrative viewpoint."

    That is apparent. But I think Samuel is a wicked individual.

    "JC: This statement is simply the opposite of the truth. Bill quoted the text, which provided the context and the reason. You simply assert this is "acontextual spin." Where is your evidence? Why don't you show us how he's violated the context.

    SH: Samuel does not characterize God’s motive as immoral. That value-judgment reflects your brother’s extraneous and tendentious characterization. He is projecting his own moral assumptions onto the text."

    You are not interacting with the point I've made. Obviously the text doesn't say that it is wrong to kill nursing babies because of the sins of their long dead ancestors. What Bill does is he reads the text in context and talks about the reasons for the execution given by God via Samuel. His appeal to J.P. Moreland then demonstrates that the motives that attach to an action determine whether it is moral or immoral, and further that this particular motive attributed to God would make the action immoral.

    "SH: How does your brother know that certain things are right or wrong? What is his secular justification for this question-begging claim?"

    As he explained he knows it through particularism.

    "Moreland is arguing as a theist, not an atheist."

    Moreland is not assuming theism in his argument.

    To Gene:

    "In order to make the motive of God here evil, you have to assume the innocence of infants and thus the injustice of their deaths."

    Not really. All I have to assume is that killing infants BECAUSE OF the sins of their long dead ancestors is wrong. I have biblical support for that. If God had said "Kill these infants because they were in Adam and caused his sin, and hence they are guilty" perhaps you would have a case. This is not the reason given.

    This seems to be the point I keep coming back to. Deal with the reason given in the Bible.

    "What, pray tell, is the penalty for such behavior under the Law? What just claim do apostates have on God's mercy?"

    First of all a nursing infant is not an apostate. But again, is any of what you stated listed in the Bible as a reason for killing these nursing infants? No, it is not. The reason is given. It is evil.

    "If your brother's objection is true, then what is to be done with these women and children? God would be leaving them in the desert where they would either die or be captured by another nomadic people, in which case the children would either turn out to be just as bad as their fathers, or, even worse, sacrificed to Molech."

    If God said kill them because we have to kill the Amelekites or else they'll kill us back, and further you must kill the infants because we just don't have the ability to care for them and this is a more humane way to die" then you would have a case. But of course I come back to the point I keep coming back to. We have the Scriptural reason for the killing. It is evil.

    "It is only after 200-400 years of opportunity and influences to change, and after 200-400 years of continued (and actually escalating) violence against Israel (who had not even been sanctioned or ordered to occupy Amalekite territory!), that God decides to execute the judgment given earlier, and never once did Israel trespass on Amalekite lands."

    More of the same. Supposedly you know the real reason. It's because of the escalating violence against Israel over the past few centuries. It's because this is a more humane way to die. Better than being sacrificed to Molech. It's because they've had opportunity to change and haven't done so.

    Isn't it really because their long dead ancestors did something that supposedly made God mad? And isn't that evil?

    "These children and women were guilty of the same sins under the moral Law of God. (I Kings 15 and 16...the sins of Israel are the same sins of the Amalekites)."

    I really don't know how a nursing infant can be guitly of all of these things.

    "Moreover, their fathers lived in this society and new that if they attacked Israel, their women and children would pay the price.They are victims, therefore, of their fathers' / husbands' crimes."

    Sounds a lot like affirmative action today. In the 50's a lot of white people benefited from preferential treatment of whites. The solution: Do these white people who benefited pay some sort of a price? No. They simply punish young white people that had nothing to do with it, by making it more difficult for them to get a job or get schooling. This is wrong. And it does not satisfy me to hear from the advocates of affirmative action "You are the victim of your father's crime."

    "The children and husbands killed are those of the Amalekite soldiers, not every Amalekite male."

    I was not aware of that. What are you basing this on?

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  3. "You shall not worship them [other gods] or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me..."(Ex. 5:3-6). That sounds to me like God holds the children responsible for the sins of the fathers if He so chooses when it comes to the sin of IDOLATRY. The underlying reason to the one given by Samuel in the text is the one Gene mentioned in his first point. In regard to the specific reason given by Samuel, therefore, it is not evil. It is an expression of God's justice upon idolaters and their children. You may have a problem with that, but that is because it is no offense to you for pagans to worship idols and blaspheme the Holy God who created the heavens and the earth...

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  4. Deuteronomy 24:16 “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin”

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  5. I discussed this issue with Jon Curry last year on Greg Krehbiel's theology board. As I explained then, it's common for people to give one reason for doing something when they have more than one reason. It's also common for people to give a reason for taking a series of actions when that reason only applies to the first action or a portion of the actions mentioned. We see this frequently in everyday life. If you're leaving the house to do a few things, and somebody asks you what you're doing, you only mention the primary reason for leaving. If you're going to pick up your son from school, you give that as the reason, even if you're also planning to stop at the gas station on the way. If a politician is discussing the war in Iraq, he may comment on how we went to war to give the Iraqi people freedom, even though we had other reasons for going to war as well. Etc.

    Jon is assuming that 1 Samuel 15:2 is meant to be a full explanation of all that follows in verse 3, but it can plausibly and more reasonably be read as a partial explanation. The execution of the Amalekite children would have punished the Amalekites in general, including their ancestors. But why should we conclude that no other factors were taken into account? A sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent God is going to take everything into account, even if only one factor is mentioned in what He chooses to explain to us. God is the author of life, and He can take it whenever He wants to. The fact that the execution of the Amalekite children punished the Amalekites for some sins they committed doesn't prove that the children are being held accountable for those sins in the same manner in which their ancestors were accountable. The animals Samuel mentions weren't being held accountable in the same sense in which Amalekites who chose to sin were being held to account. I believe in universal infant salvation, so I think that all of the infants went to Heaven. Their death did punish the Amalekites, but a sovereign God would be accomplishing other objectives at the same time. Ancient Jews would have known that, both by logical implication and from the portions of scripture that existed at the time, which is why Steve Hays mentioned the larger context in which the events of 1 Samuel would have been perceived.

    Are you suggesting, Jon, that it's wrong for God to decide that a person is going to die at time X rather than at time Y? Let's use an adult as an illustration rather than an infant. If an evil nation has a righteous leader who's leading the nation wisely, and God arranges for that leader to die a relatively early death in a war as a punishment to that nation, are you suggesting that it's inherently wrong for God to do such a thing? The early death of that leader would be a punishment to the nation, but that leader would go to Heaven, and the punishing of the nation wouldn't be the only factor God would be taking into account. A single event can accomplish more than one thing (Genesis 50:20). Are you claiming to know that it would have been better for the Amalekite children to have lived to an older age? If so, how would you know such a thing? What about the other people involved? How would seeing Amalekite children growing up around them influence the Israelites? What would those children think of the Israelites and attempt to do to them once they knew what happened to their parents? How might such an extensive execution of the Amalekites serve as an example to other nations and individuals regarding the significance of sin and its consequences?

    The primary issue here is whether the commandment to execute the Amalekites and their animals came from God. If we have good reason to conclude that it did, then there are many plausible possible explanations for why a just and loving God would do it. Thus, when you write in another thread (http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/07/amalekites.html#comments)...

    "What would Samuel have to say for you to finally admit that he's not speaking for God? Would he have to say that the babies need to be raped then killed?"

    ...you're leaving out some important context. The ancient Israelites were eyewitnesses of the crossing of the Red Sea, the fall of Jericho, and other supernatural events, including the miracles of Samuel. They had reason to trust God and reason to trust Samuel. And we today have reason to trust scripture, including objective arguments for Jesus' resurrection, the other miracles of Jesus, the miracles of the apostles, fulfilled prophecy, etc. One of the reasons why you and your brother have been giving so much attention to Biblical inerrancy is because you want to use a probability that the Bible contains at least one error to argue against the probability of the resurrection (using Bayes' Theorem). In my discussions with you last year, you had no good argument against the resurrection. You also had no good argument against some of the other evidence for the inspiration of the Bible. What you're doing is looking for an example of a Biblical error that you can use as a justification for rejecting the resurrection, even if the resurrection seems probable independent of a consideration of inerrancy. But the arguments you use to dismiss the resurrection and other Christian miracles are far more problematic than the arguments proposed in defense of inerrancy. And though believing in Jesus' resurrection while rejecting the inerrancy of scripture would be significantly problematic, and isn't the best option, it is more plausible than your choice to reject both.

    I addressed your rape example in our discussion last year. God didn't command rape. Rape is different from execution and has different implications. Nobody denies that it would be theoretically possible for Samuel to have said something that couldn't be justified, but those who believe in Biblical inerrancy don't have to defend every theoretical possibility. We have to defend what Samuel said, and what he said is plausibly defensible.

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  6. Jon,

    I knew you were going to go to Dt. 24:16. Since we have to interpret Scripture by Scripture, we must conclude that Ex. 5:3-6 has idolatry specifically in mind, while Dt. 24:16 has a broader and general application. So, idolatry is a sin for which fathers and their children are punishable, while stealing for example would be the sin of the father although not of the child...

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  7. Jon is assuming that 1 Samuel 15:2 is meant to be a full explanation of all that follows in verse 3, but it can plausibly and more reasonably be read as a partial explanation.

    And you're not assuming that some unwritten explanation for the actions exists?

    Jon is taking the information given. You are adding to it. Why might that be?

    Are you uncomfortable with the thought that Samuel's decree might have been immoral? Is that why you seek these "plausible and more reasonable" explanations?

    Why not assert something truly plausible, then, as though by suggesting that the infants bore some infectious malady that would surely infect and kill thousands of Israelites were the infected infants left living?

    While we're at it, let's assert some "plausible and more reasonable" explanations for other biblical atrocities. What if concubine in Gibeah was gang-raped because only large quantities of sperm could cure her syphilis? What if her master subsequently cut her to pieces because the cure failed, and her corpse was so fetid that the pieces needed to be sent far from each other?

    Obviously, these mocking examples are not "more plausible", but they are equally assertive. You have added your own commentary in lieu of the one provided, and the motive for this addition is to escape the evil that the motive provided entails.

    --
    Stan

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