Does your God approve of pedophilia? Part 2: We can know what sin is by our conscience?

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Some Christians will try to argue that because we can know sin by our conscience, as the bible says, then we can know that sex within adult-child marriages is sin even if biblical law is silent about the subject:

 12 For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law;
 13 for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.
 14 For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves,
 15 in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them,
 16 on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.
 17 But if you bear the name "Jew " and rely upon the Law and boast in God, (Rom. 2:12-17 NAU)

I don't see how this passage proves anything.  The world is filled with shameless pedophiles whose consciences don't bother them regarding their sexual life.  

The only way this verse can be used to support identifying pedophilia as sin, is to favor the conscience of all people who decry this sexual practice, and arbitrarily discount the conscience of those who see nothing wrong with it.  That is anything but objective.  You might get the congregation to signal their agreement with your view by clapping, but locating groups of other people who have the same conscience as you, is hardly an objective argument that you've got the morals figured out correctly

---------Update:  March 20, 2023

Romans 2:15 ("...work of the law written on their conscience") is surrounded in the immediate context with references to the Mosaic Law.  So it cannot possibly be unreasonable to conclude that many conservative scholars are wrong when trifling that "work of the law" is something different than the moral precepts of the Mosaic law.  And indeed, that makes practical sense:  Did or didn't God put "thou shalt not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14) on your conscience?  

Shall we trifle about whether God did or didn't place some Mosaic moral law on your conscience?  Of course not.  Therefore, there is no room in Romans 2 to justify pretending that our "conscience" is an independent basis upon which to judge some human act to be sin.  That basis for the conscience in condemning some act as sin is still Mosaic law regardless, along with all of its omissions.

If Romans 2:15 is true, then your conscience troubling you as you think about pedophilia is not something that arises from the OT YHWH who gave the law.  

Inerrantists will carp that the OT YHWH also cleared up much in the NT thus it is the same God in both testaments, thus both words of God should be read harmonistically, but of course there is no universally recognized hermeneutic that says compilations of theological material produced by two different ancient religions who often disagree with each other on major points of doctrine (as Jews disagree with each other, Christians disagree with each other, and Jews disagree with Christians) still somehow "deserve" to be read harmonistically.  So when I refuse to do so, all I'm "violating" is a rule of exegesis that not even all Christians agree to (most Christian scholars deny inerrancy, it just seems otherwise because of how loud the inerrantist-minority bark about shit).

I lose no sleep violating a Jehovah's Witness's request that I clear all my bible interpretations with the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.

I also lose no sleep violating an inerrantist's request that I forget about all the numerous interpretive differences between Jews and Christians, and simply do whatever needs doing in order to find harmony between the OT YHWH and the NT Jesus.  I prefer rather to adopt the view of the 2nd century Marcion, who correctly held that the god of the OT was a demon, and not the father of Jesus.