Faulty marksmanship

HappyProphet said...

“I, for one, love reading about interesting things like talking plants, and fish used as cash drawers, and using wet wool to figure out life.”

1. There are no talking plants in Scripture. The speaker in Exod 3:2,4 is the Angel of the Lord, not the burning of the bush.

In Scripture, fire is a common element of theophanic apparitions or visions (e.g. Gen 15:17; Exod 13:21; 19:18; 1 Kgs 19:6; Ezk 1; 8; Dan 9:7; Rev 1:14).

Cf. D. Stuart, Exodus (B& H 2006), 113.

If HappyProphet wants to make the Bible look stupid, it would help his cause not to make himself look stupid by an elementary and persistent misreading the text.

But, of course, whenever you try to make the Bible look stupid, you end up making yourself look stupid in the process.

2. There's nothing all that unusual about fish swallowing flashy metal objects. The event is a miracle of timing.

Mt 17:24-27 is actually a very insightful story: a study in ethics. For it illustrates the way to finesse a pragmatic compromise without succumbing to a moral compromise.

On the one hand, the tradition of a temple tax existed in the time of Jesus. For several reasons, Jesus regards this tradition as essentially nonbinding: it’s an extrascriptural tradition; it treats the sons of the kingdom as if they were house-slaves or subjugated peoples; the need for the temple tax is mooted by the obsolescence of the temple itself in the person of Christ.

He points out that the royal family is naturally exempt from taxation. Indeed, a king provides for his own family rather than taxing his family members, as if they were commoners.

And Christians participate in the new world order of the new covenant, whereas the temple belongs to a defunct dispensation.

On the other hand, the issue is fairly trivial. Jesus picks his battles. Not every disagreement is a battle to the death. Jesus could rightly refuse to pay the poll-tax, but he’s not going to give unnecessary offense over a fine-point of symbolism. It isn’t that big a deal.

The solution is to pay his dues, but not to use his own money. That’s the beauty of the miracle. In this way, Jesus discharges a social convention without, however, conceding the obligation to do so.

So this episode is a very important lesson in tact and discretion. How to retain a sense of prioities. How to accommodate the other party without surrendering a point of principle.

The art of compromise—of how to be flexible without caving in—is a very important lesson for Christians to master and put into practice. This issue will crop up more than once in the life of the NT church (Rom 14:13-23; 1 Cor 8:13-9:1,12).

Many of the errors of church history result from either a disproportionate intransigence or an irresistible assimilation to the path of least resistance.

3.Our nullifidian commenter naturally misses the point of Judges 6:36-40 as well. As one commentator explains:

“Contrary to popular interpretation, this text has nothing to do with discovering or determining the will of God. The divine will is perfectly clear in his [Gideon’s] mind (6:16). Gideon’s problem is that with his limited experience with God he cannot believe that God always fulfills his word. The request for signs is not a sign of faith but of unbelief…He uses every means available to try to get out of the mission to which he has been called,” D. Block Judges, Ruth (B&H 1999), 272-73.

4.On a general note, the nullifidian commenter commits two systematic errors:

i) He merely advertises his disbelief in miracles. If you don’t believe in God, then it’s natural to disbelieve in miracles. So, on that assumption, it’s enough to smuggly cite some Scriptural miracle or another, as if citation were equivalent to disproof.

Notice, though, that our nullifidian never defends his position. He merely flaunts his personal opinion.

The miracles of Scripture are only absurd if miracles in general are impossible. Where’s the argument?

ii) By begging the question on (i), he doesn’t bother to exegete, or even read, what the Bible actually has to say on any given instance.

So this is another example of self-reinforcing ignorance. He never misses a chance to miss the target.