The Cat in the Hat

I'm going to comment on some of Lydia McGrew's latest statements on this thread:

http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2014/08/no-magic-bullet-copans-insufficient.html

I think if you have a real, absolute moral prohibition on killing infants, you should be very, very uncomfortable with these passages and especially with saying that it really happened just like that. You should have a serious conundrum. You should not be *just fine* with the, "God ordered it, so I guess then it's okay" response.

That's reversible. If you take Biblical revelation seriously, then you should question having "a real absolute moral prohibition" on killing infants.

There are plenty of reasons for not just taking it that it must be okay, the most important of which is that that would appear blasphemously to be saying that God ordered the murder of children. It's odd that those who are concerned for the honor of God aren't concerned that perhaps attributing this to Him isn't so honoring to Him.

Notice her tendentious tactics. Christians who defend Biblical revelation aren't saying that God ordered the murder of children. She smuggles in her own characterization, then imputes that to her opponents. 

As I said elsewhere, Scripture is full of statements that God is light, that God is love, that in God is no darkness at all, that God is good, that all goodness comes from God. If we are to consider that God ordered hacking infants to death, surely you can see that any attempt to say that our ideas of goodness are just radically faulty enough that we can't see why that is okay severely calls into question our ability to have any concept of divine benevolence! It raises the very real question of whether the passages could say that God ordered _just anything_ and people would believe it in the name of inerrancy. It also raises the very real question of what we are worshiping and whether we can be worshiping truly, truly adoring God's goodness, while attributing these things to Him. And if one were simply to accept such a thing, it raises the question of whether one who insists on doing that could literally _reverse_ the meanings of "good" and "evil" and still worship the god thus defined.

But that goes to the problem of evil generally. After all, infants have been "hacked to death" at various times regardless of whether or not God orders it. Since she considers that intrinsically evil, how is God benevolent towards infants if he twiddles his thumbs while that happens? 

As for its not being applicable to today, that seems to confuse the situation of the Israelites vis a vis the Canaanites with our situation vis a vis the Israelites. _They_ didn't get this order from a written canon of Scripture, because no such thing existed. _They_ couldn't have believed sola scriptura. Anyone who putatively received such an order today would presumably believe himself to be in _their_ position. He's not interpreting what God said to the Israelites but interpreting what he thinks God is telling him to do today. If you believe God could order the slaughter of infants over three thousand years ago, it seems rather too convenient, and argumentatively unsupported, to use the concept of sola scriptura to argue that God _couldn't_ do such thing today.

She's disregarding the specific reasons given in the text for the holy war commands. 

The putative slaughter of the Canaanites, with its apparent contradiction of the 6th commandment and even other OT statements, _does_ undeniably put strain on Judaism sans Christ, even as it puts strain on Christianity (which is a continuation of Judaism).

She keeps salting the mine. It's only in apparent contradiction to the 6th commandment if it's murder. That's the very question in dispute. 

First of all, I am not "setting" the Scripture against the Scripture. I am pointing out what seems to me a direct conflict, which would be there even if I never pointed it out. This isn't something I'm just making up. You yourself should be able to see the appearance of conflict, and simply resolving it by saying, "I believe in inerrancy" isn't much of a resolution. 

Notice that she's stipulating a "direct conflict." 

I would not apply the "consequentialist rationalization" label to God, because I've already said at the outset that the entire category of murder does not apply to God at all. It's just a category mistake to try to apply it to Him. So therefore the notion of a consequentialist rationalization of a wrong action cannot apply to God either.

If the entire category of murder does not apply to God at all, how does that mesh with her claim about "the very real question of what we are worshipping"? 

I'm surprised that you don't see the relevance of the hypothetical to the topic at hand. There are evidently some things that you would not believe to be true, even if found in part of the canon of what is designated as Scripture that has come down to us.
A counterfactual scenario can show a method to be mistaken. If your method is, as it seems to be, to take it as beyond question that anything that comes down to us in what is designated as the canon of Scripture must be true, even if that means attributing what appears to be an atrocity to God, and redefining our concept of "atrocity" accordingly, then that method is subject to a reductio ad absurdum. That reductio can be understand in terms of a counterfactual as to what that method would require us to do in the hypothetical case I have given. You cannot just say that the hypothetical is irrelevant because it isn't actual, because to do so is to show a failure to comprehend the nature of a reductio for a method of coming to a conclusion.
In trying to run a different reductio using a hypothetical, I'm simply finding something that you _would_ balk at.
Your method of believing whatever is in what is designated as the canon of Scripture _does_ have these absurd consequences as shown in my hypothetical. For some reason you just do not see that I have presented thereby a reductio of your method.
I'm pointing out, however, that someone could say exactly the same things you are saying, in exactly the same way, about *absolutely any content*. Since you don't apparently really want to say that you would accept *absolutely any content* as being true just because it is in the canon of Scripture, you should realize that what you are saying to me is also not argumentatively moving.
In that context, to try to move me *merely* by saying, "You can't call that into question. It's in the Bible" is a fairly weak argument and really does invite the sorts of reductios I have been bringing forward.
Why is this so hard? Why couldn't someone say the _exact_ same thing about "why the Bible shouldn't be the norm" if the Bible contained a record of God's telling the Israelites to rape the Canaanite children? The answer is, someone could.
This point has force whether you see it or not. If you have any line at which you would reject what is in the canon of Scripture, then you are prepared to do the exact same thing that I am doing.

i) Notice the bait-and-switch. When she asks, "What if the Bible said…?" she's no longer talking about the Bible, but something different. The fact that an inerrantist doesn't have the same deference for what's not the Bible as he has for what is the Bible proves nothing. That's not what has come down to us from the Jews, or Jesus, or the Apostles. 

ii) To say "what is designated as Scripture" is sleight-of-hand. Suppose an avid fan of Dr. Seuss founded the Church of Seuss. Members regard Dr. Seuss as a prophet sent by God to restore the true faith. In the Church of Seuss, his writings are designated as canonical Scripture. As a result, Green eggs and ham are the communion elements.

Suppose Lydia then says, "Well, if you balk at what Green Eggs and Ham teaches, then you ought to balk at what Deuteronomy 20 teaches." Really? How does that counterfactual scenario show that faith in Deuteronomy is misplaced? 

Yes, there are some things I wouldn't believe to be true, even if found in what the Church of Seuss designates as Scripture. I draw a line. And that's a reason to deny the Bible? 

iii) Lydia acts as if the designation of canonical Scripture is arbitrary. The title on the dust cover. What's inside could be anything. 

But, of course, the books comprising the canon aren't simply designated as Scripture by fiat, a la The Da Vinci Code. At least, not for Protestants. 

iv) In fact, this isn't just hypothetical. There are rival canons of the OT. The church of Rome, the Orthodox church, and the Ethiopian church have different OT canons than the Protestant canon. Protestants reaffirm the Hebrew OT canon because that has the best historical chain-of-custody. The OT apocrypha and pseudepigrapha arose during the Intertestamental period, and there's no good reason to think the Jews, or Jesus, or the Apostles, ever viewed those Intertestamental writings as Scripture. Content, per se, is not the criterion, but the chain-of-custody. 

If the idea is that the reason we don't need to talk about those hypotheticals is that the real-life situation *isn't really all that bad* and hence needn't be compared to such a hypothetical, then that, of course, is where we disagree.

So if her opponents don't think the real-life situation is intrinsically evil, then by her own admission, the hypothetical comparison has no traction. 

What is her argument, anyway? Is this an argument from analogy? If you reject child rape, you ought to reject child homicide, because the two are morally equivalent? But if that's the claim, where's the supporting argument? To say they're morally equivalent begs the question. 

In what sane moral universe, I ask you, do we say, "Raping little kids, that can't be justified. I draw the line there. But cutting off their heads with swords--yeah, I can probably find a workaround to justify that"?
But we're talking here about swiping the heads off of babies, which, on the contrary, *is* one of the things which has been condemned both by natural law and by tradition all along. Therefore all manner of special pleading is necessary to try to justify it in the case of the Canaanites.
For some reason, chopping off children's heads just doesn't do it for you, but raping children does.

i) Are we talking here about beheading babies? That's what she's talking about, but does the OT command the Israelites to behead Canaanite babies? Where does the Pentateuch prescribe that method of executing the Canaanites? Why is she suddenly imputing that imagery to the text? Is it because she finds that polemically useful, even if it's untrue? 

ii) Since, moreover, she's conceded that God has the right to end a child's life, then her comparison between raping children and killing children isn't analogous even on her own grounds.