Aggrad08 said:

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You can go after the nazis all you like, and we did. But there is no justification for the genocide of the German people. The world is better because we didn't do that. We did what it took to win. That's why this defense is so weak it only applies to complicit adults. Genocide declares none innocent or deserving mercy. It's beneath the morality of man, let alone God.

To put it simply, to believe the Bible you must assert the greatest being in the universe, the wisest, most loving being, when confronted with sin could think of no better solution than to kill all the men, kill all the mothers, kill all the children, kill all the babies, and keep some of the Virgin women to be forced into 'marriage'. That's the OT MO. That's what the smartest most merciful being could think of? Please.

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craigernaught said:

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Retired, I generally take the same approach theologically (although I try not to assume that the real meaning of OT texts is so jesus-centric). That's the Barthian approach that I was taught anyway - that Christian theology begins and ends with God's revelation in the person and work of Jesus. Still, the danger is that we inject our own pre-conceived notion of what Jesus must have been like onto our understanding of him. I don't think there's any escape of our own biases which means that our conception of God will inevitably look like our own conception of ourselves.

I don't mean to say anything other than to give you encouragement to be aware of your own biases and to rely on others both inside and outside the church for correction. Sounds like you try to do that anyway.

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Genocide declares none innocent or deserving mercy. It's beneath the morality of man, let alone God.

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kurt vonnegut said:

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UTExan said:

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fwheightsboy said:

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To loosely quote Christopher Hitchens, if you want otherwise good people to do really bad things, you need religion.

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Because we know atheism produces fine, upstanding moral citizenry driven to do charitable works by their love for, well....

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. . . Their fellow man.

Also, I'd say that the character of the fine upstanding atheists I know is a product of that love and not of the non-position that is atheism.

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Perhaps placing a baby into the superheated arms of a metal idol and celebrating as it strangled in torturous agony appeals to certain Texag posters. The scriptures indicate that the Canaanites had become sociopathic and sadistic, treasuring the pain of their victims as a sacred act, likely led and encouraged by their demonic overlords. I have no problem with removing all traces of them from the land they despoiled with their unholy violence, much like going after those who led the slaughter in the Nazi death camps, which were in some sense more humane than the Canaan tortures.

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RetiredAg said:

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craigernaught said:

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I think it just makes more sense to assume that the people who wrote it were justifying genocide by claiming that God commanded it, but God wasn't. We use God to justify terrible things all the time. Why should the ancient Israelites be any different?

If our interpretive strategy makes God out to be a genocidal monster, then our strategy needs to change. It makes little sense to me to hold on to a view that makes God out to be a monster and then say that we just can't explain it. The explanation is simple: your hermeneutic is flawed. Maybe a more "liberal" hermeneutic creates other problems, but it does avoid the whole "God commands the murder of babies" one.

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Exactly. I strongly believe that the first question that should be asked is "does it look like Christ crucified?" If the answer is no, then dig deeper. I think you'd like Crucifixion of the Warrior God which is a detailed look at the violent passages of the OT and how they testify to Christ. I know many are turned off by Greg Boyd's open theism, but this book does not really touch on that, at least so far. It's all about developing and using a cruciform hermeneutic.

TBH, I have been smiling nonstop since reading it. I'm about 250 pages in and those 250 pages have been focused on laying the foundation of the belief that Christ is the hermeneutic key to all Scripture and that the cross is the hermeneutic key to Christ. So, it's been basically 250 pages so far of reading about how amazing Christ is and why our entire faith centers on Him on the cross. Can't help but get pumped reading about Jesus.

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k2aggie07 said:

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This is a very deformed soteriology, a straw man. No one believes Jesus died to "save us from God".

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Do you not see that your hermeneutic assumes and requires god be perfect and righteous thus you dismiss any evidence to the contrary and seek any alternative explanation to justify your preconceived position?

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RetiredAg said:

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Do you not see that your hermeneutic assumes and requires god be perfect and righteous thus you dismiss any evidence to the contrary and seek any alternative explanation to justify your preconceived position?

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Wait, your criticism is that a Christian hermeneutic operates on the assumption that God is perfect and righteous? What Christian hermeneutic doesn't start with that assumption?

I don't "dismiss" evidence. When a portrait of God looks nothing like Christ, who is the exact revelation of God, then one needs to dig deeper to better understand the "evidence". It's not dismissing it, but trying to understand it in a way that is consistent with the portrait of God revealed through Christ on the cross.

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Jarrel04 said:

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RetiredAg said:

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Do you not see that your hermeneutic assumes and requires god be perfect and righteous thus you dismiss any evidence to the contrary and seek any alternative explanation to justify your preconceived position?

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Wait, your criticism is that a Christian hermeneutic operates on the assumption that God is perfect and righteous? What Christian hermeneutic doesn't start with that assumption?

I don't "dismiss" evidence. When a portrait of God looks nothing like Christ, who is the exact revelation of God, then one needs to dig deeper to better understand the "evidence". It's not dismissing it, but trying to understand it in a way that is consistent with the portrait of God revealed through Christ on the cross.

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Do you not see that with this reasoning you could turn any person place or thing into god? It doesn't allow for you to be wrong because the answer is predetermined and any contrary evidence is just misunderstood.

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good nuggets said:

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Did anyone (from either side of this circular debate) actually watch the video in the OP??

The only argument that should be going on in this thread is weather or not you believe the Canaanites were actually human.

If the Canaanite tribes were the fallen angels attempt to prevent the coming of the Christ.. God would obviously snuff them out.


By the way.. watch OP videos before hijacking threads. ty

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There's so much baseless speculation here, it's hard to know where to start. First and foremost, there is no consensus view of who the Nephilim really are. Some people say they are the offspring of fallen angels and human women, but I the Bible never comes out and says this. The term Sons of God can mean many different things, and that label is even used by Christ to refer to Christians in the Gospel.

So let's assume the Nephilim are angel/human hybrids for arguments sake. According to Genesis, only Noah and his family survived the Flood. So for there to be Nephilim afterward, either some Nephilim had to survive or these fallen angels had to produce new offspring. Now we have to take this one step further and say that all men, women, and children in Canaan are all offspring of these hybrids, and none of them could possibly be redeemed in any way. You're saying that their fallen angel ancestry, no matter how diluted or remote, completely overcomes the free will of their humanity and makes them God hating sociopaths.

Aside from the house of cards built from many speculative conclusions, the video is extremely disturbing. After all, humanity has a long history of atrocities justified by thinking of other people as less than human. It happened with black people, it happened with the Holocaust, it happened in Rowanda, and it keeps happening. The assumption of Christians should be that we are all equal children of God with the opportunity for redemption, not that some people are irredeemable monsters better off dead.

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craigernaught said:

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I rationally understand the appeal to God's authority. But to me, it does contradict God's goodness and common grace. The only argument I buy is: God has morally sufficient reasons to bring about or issue the command; even if we will never know them. To disagree you would have to demonstrate or prove logically that the probability of God having morally sufficient reason is equal to zero. I don't think that's possible.

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Or you could just say that it didn't happen. Considering the historical problems with the source, this is the likely scenario. You don't have to justify divine ordained genocide if the genocide never happened or if the divine never ordained it in the first place.

The problematic assumption here is that the text is accurately describing a historical event. There's absolutely no reason to assume this is the case.

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RangerRick9211 said:

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craigernaught said:

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I rationally understand the appeal to God's authority. But to me, it does contradict God's goodness and common grace. The only argument I buy is: God has morally sufficient reasons to bring about or issue the command; even if we will never know them. To disagree you would have to demonstrate or prove logically that the probability of God having morally sufficient reason is equal to zero. I don't think that's possible.

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Or you could just say that it didn't happen. Considering the historical problems with the source, this is the likely scenario. You don't have to justify divine ordained genocide if the genocide never happened or if the divine never ordained it in the first place.

The problematic assumption here is that the text is accurately describing a historical event. There's absolutely no reason to assume this is the case.

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So trade the problem of God ordained genocide for errant scripture?

Inerrancy doesn't mean everything is literally true; but what the Bible teaches is true or affirms to be true is true. I think you have to give up inerrancy to believe this never happened.

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kurt vonnegut said:

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good nuggets said:

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Did anyone (from either side of this circular debate) actually watch the video in the OP??

The only argument that should be going on in this thread is weather or not you believe the Canaanites were actually human.

If the Canaanite tribes were the fallen angels attempt to prevent the coming of the Christ.. God would obviously snuff them out.


By the way.. watch OP videos before hijacking threads. ty

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Sorry for my part in the derailment. I watched about half the video. I would have watched more, but it burned my ears the way holy water burns my skin.


Even if the Canaanites were demons or fallen angels or something of the sort, I might still question the decision to ask the Israelites to carryout the dirty work? And here is where his analogy half way through gets all twisted - in the Canaanites story, God isn't a father sitting in their kids room telling them that they will do everything in their power to protect them from an intruder. He is a father handing his son a sword and telling him to kill any MFers that break into their house and to then go hunt their children and families because their lives have no value.

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ramblin_ag02 said:

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Quote:

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The only argument that should be going on in this thread is weather or not you believe the Canaanites were actually human.

If the Canaanite tribes were the fallen angels attempt to prevent the coming of the Christ.. God would obviously snuff them out.

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There's so much baseless speculation here, it's hard to know where to start. First and foremost, there is no consensus view of who the Nephilim really are. Some people say they are the offspring of fallen angels and human women, (1) but I the Bible never comes out and says this. The term Sons of God can mean many different things, and that label is even used by Christ to refer to Christians in the Gospel.

So let's assume the Nephilim are angel/human hybrids for arguments sake. According to Genesis, only Noah and his family survived the Flood. So for there to be Nephilim afterward, either some Nephilim had to survive or these fallen angels had to produce new offspring. Now we have to take this one step further and say that all men, women, and children in Canaan are all offspring of these hybrids, and none of them could possibly be redeemed in any way. (2) You're saying that their fallen angel ancestry, no matter how diluted or remote, completely overcomes the free will of their humanity and makes them God hating sociopaths.

Aside from the house of cards built from many speculative conclusions, the video is extremely disturbing. After all, humanity has a long history of atrocities justified by thinking of other people as less than human. It happened with black people, it happened with the Holocaust, it happened in Rowanda, and it keeps happening. The assumption of Christians should be that we are all equal children of God with the opportunity for redemption, not that some people are irredeemable monsters better off dead.

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UTExan said:

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kurt vonnegut said:

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good nuggets said:

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Did anyone (from either side of this circular debate) actually watch the video in the OP??

The only argument that should be going on in this thread is weather or not you believe the Canaanites were actually human.

If the Canaanite tribes were the fallen angels attempt to prevent the coming of the Christ.. God would obviously snuff them out.


By the way.. watch OP videos before hijacking threads. ty

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Sorry for my part in the derailment. I watched about half the video. I would have watched more, but it burned my ears the way holy water burns my skin.


Even if the Canaanites were demons or fallen angels or something of the sort, I might still question the decision to ask the Israelites to carryout the dirty work? And here is where his analogy half way through gets all twisted - in the Canaanites story, God isn't a father sitting in their kids room telling them that they will do everything in their power to protect them from an intruder. He is a father handing his son a sword and telling him to kill any MFers that break into their house and to then go hunt their children and families because their lives have no value.

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I am glad the video disturbed you---not for shock value, but introducing a different soteriological viewpoint. Our seminaries have done a terrible job of educating clergy about demonology, the role of Satan and the fall of man.
If yo will go to about the 20:00 mark, your question about God using human agents to do His work is addressed. If you look throughout the Bible, you find references to divine councils---literally heavenly beings who decide in council what things will happen. Noah was used to build an ark of safety; in the New Testament we have the parable of the tenants in Matthew 21 where the tenants kill even the son of the property owner.

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