Lydia McGrew's violation of New Testament ethics

Jesus taught that slanders come from an evil heart:

 19 "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.
 20 "These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man."    (Matt. 15:19-20 NAU)

Apostle Paul required Christians to be patient with those who are in error:

 24 The Lord's bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged,
 25 with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth,
 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.    (2 Tim. 2:24-26 NAU)

Lydia's god would probably think her violation of these NT ethics outweighs her scholarly credentials or arguments.

In my first communication to Lydia, I used a normal respectful tone:

barry said...

Hello Lydia,

"I'm a homemaker and homeschooling mom living in the Midwest. I also write analytic philosophy articles."

----------then unless I'm uneducated in this, there's about two other people in the world that are like you. I never thought I'd actually meet a homemaking housewife who was into philosophy. I was surprised as the level of thought you put into the Copan/Flannagan thesis on biblical genocide.

"As for real-world atrocities, God permits them but does not command them."

--------How do you answer the slew of bible passages where God is often not just commanding such things, but forcing people to kill and other sins?

Ezekiel 38-39, God will bring future pagan armies against Israel, in 38:4, the metaphor "hook in your jaws" brings to the minds of the originally intended hearers the ancient farming practice of forcing an animal to go in a direction it doesn't want to go, by putting a hook in its jaws (or gaffing a fish to force it into the boat). That is, a biblical prophet has characterized God's sovereignty over the human will in what appears to be a hyperCalvinist way.

Deuteronomy 32:39, God takes responsibility for all murder.

2nd Samuel 12:15-18, the Lord "struck" the child born to David/Bathsheba, it was very sick, then later it died.

Deuteronomy 28:15-63, God will bring unspeakable horrors on his people if they disobey. Worse, in v. 63, he will "delight" as much to do this, as he "delights" to bring prosperity on those who obey him. I can buy that God can be willing to "discipline" his disobedient people and for this to be consistent with his all-goodness, but to take "delight" to cause rape (v. 30), that's a whole 'nother ball of earwax.

Isaiah 45:7...even assuming the better translation is not "evil", but "calamity", God is still claiming to be the cause of "calamity" which is presented in the verse as the opposite of peace, and the opposite of peace would be war, famine, rape, murder, i.e., the very "evil" that modern translators are trying to avoid by rendering it as "calamity".

Jeremiah 15:1-6, God will "appoint" slaying-by-sword/beasts to devour, over Israel for their disobedience (here's a curious thought...if God chose to delay manifesting himself to Israel until the 20th century, would these kinds of bible verse say God appointed GUNS over Israel, to shoot them?

Hosea 13:16, God will cause Samaria to both fall by the sword, and cause her pregnant women to be "ripped up", because Samaria hath sinned.

Can we infer that when early church fathers characterize Marcion as a fool (who said the god of the OT was really just a demon), they were wrong?

"The idea of saying that baby boys deserve to be "executed" because otherwise it is probable that they will grow up to be evil is itself pretty wicked."

-----------It also contradicts a slew of bible passages about not only God's sovereign ability to turn the hearts of the wicked, but about how Hebrews should be confident their kids will remain in the Lord if they raise them in the Lord.

Since bible inerrancy never had any respectable level of probable truth in the first place, and since nowhere does the NT express or imply that one must harbor any certain view of inerrancy, I don't see any harm in a Christian excising from the bible those passages which he or she think do not harmonize with Jesus' ultimate teaching about love. And that would include possible excision of words of Jesus where he supported infliction of horrible fates on people.

 Barry

 2/28/2017 5:20 PM 

In my second communication with Lydia, I asked about the moral contradiction within the Christian who a) thinks a literal hell is an ever-present reality for unbelievers who could die at any moment, and yet b) asks unbelievers to take some time to investigate gospel matters.

barry said...

I was just wondering:

You mention Christian disagreement about the nature of hell. 

If it is at least possible that the literal fire and smoke eternal conscious torment version of hell is the one that is real, and if it is true that the unbeliever researching the nature of hell and Jesus' resurrection could die at any moment, then...

...doesn't this counsel against McGrew and other Christians telling unbelievers to take the time to examine Christian claims? 

The way the bible puts things, you could die in a car wreck somewhere between Lydia's gospel lecture and your attempt to locate the nearest library to follower her advice to study the gospel more.

And yet the bible nowhere expresses or implies how the unbeliever is supposed to balance the obvious need to avoid picking the wrong gospel, with the obvious urgency to get saved and quash the risk of hell as soon as possible. 

Lydia, if you believe the literal fire interpretation of hell could possibly be correct, I'd like to ask you: do you ever tell unbelievers to take the time to examine Christianity? If so, doesn't the threat of hell represent such an unspeakably infinite risk, that actually getting saved ASAP is more important than taking time to investigate? We don't take time to investigate when the police tell us to move away from a bomb that might explode at any moment...do we? 

What would you think of an atheist mother with no parenting issues, who became so worried about the possibility of hell being real, that she considered her job, kids and husband as mere distractions, and so gave up custody of the kid, divorced the husband, quit her job, and just sat in a local library all day long for years, researching the conflicting claims of Christian scholars on the person and nature of Jesus, visiting local church pastors, and not being very successful given that she isn't a bible scholar?

Would you praise her for doing what makes biblical sense (Matthew 19:29)?

Or would you condemn her for violating common sense (i.e., abandoning her family due to religious fanaticism)?    11/07/2017 8:40 PM  

In her first reply, she accused me of a) being a troll and b) having better things to spend my time on:

 Lydia McGrew said...

God is a) outside of time, b) not willing that any should perish, c) all-just, and d) all-powerful. If a person who does not presently know Christ seeks Christ and seeks the truth, he will find the truth. Just exactly how this works out it isn't my business to predict. God might miraculously preserve the person's life as he seeks here on earth. God might give a truly sincere seeker who wishes to know if God is real *and is prepared to submit to him* a second chance after death. God might send someone to the person. And so forth. Of course none of this means that a person should do intrinsically wrong things such as divorcing an innocent spouse (which Jesus himself commanded against), etc., in order to spend more time investigating Christianity. Nor is this necessary. Nor is that what that verse means. Virtually any non-believer has some opportunity in his life to ponder, to think, to pray ("God, if you are real," etc.), and, in our society, to investigate. Such a person might use the time that he's spending trolling Christian bloggers and asking them silly, hyperbolic questions, for example, and use that time instead seriously to investigate the evidence for Christianity. Most people have hobbies. Finding out if Christianity is true isn't more important than loving one's spouse and children, but it is more important than golf, TV, Facebook, etc., etc.

As for urging a person to "get saved ASAP" no matter what his actual state of mind, his heart, and his questions, of course I do not do that because "getting saved" is not some magic formula but a true request, made to a person (God, through his Son Jesus Christ), for a relationship with him and for forgiveness of sins. God would know if the person were faking it. I'm not going to urge someone to say a prayer like nailing a horseshoe over his door even though he doesn't believe in it. That would be pointless superstition and have no theological value or power to save. Which is what any moderately well-informed, intelligent Christian who knows a modicum of Christian theology should say, which makes the question quite pointless.

In short, I won't indefinitely answer such things, as both my time *and yours* could be better used.

11/08/2017 9:07 AM

I made a direct reply to another post of hers:

I don't understand why Lydia thinks Rabshakeh's taunt is some type of undesigned coincidence.

Lydia frames the questions as follows:

-----

This is very strange. Sure, it's a trash-talking Assyrian envoy. He could easily be telling lies. But why would he think the people would be susceptible to the claim that Hezekiah has angered Yahweh by taking away the high places and requiring them to worship in Jerusalem?...One might easily conclude, and not only from this passage, that the high places were only places of pagan worship. The people might not have been happy about Hezekiah's breaking them up, but they would not be likely to believe that Yahweh would be upset about it--Yahweh who had commanded again and again against idolatry. Why would the envoy even try such a claim?

-----------

Yes, they WOULD likely believe that Yahweh would be upset about Hezekiah's monotheism-inspired reform:

Immediately prior to Hezekiah's reign, the Hebrews tolerated worshiping Yahweh alongside other gods, see 2nd Kings 17. If then the Hebrews were tolerant of polytheism at the start of Hezekiah's reform, they would likely have interpreted Assyria's later dominance over Hezekiah as a sign that Yahweh was angered at Hezekiah's destruction of what were believed to be places of legitimately syncretist worship.

Sennacherib likely would have known the Hebrews under Hezekiah were other than strict monotheists, therefore, he would have reason to believe they'd automatically assume that if Hezekiah were defeated by Assyrians, then surely Yahweh had given this pagan army such a victory, and only because Hezekiah must have done something to anger Yahweh. Since they viewed polygamy as consistent with Yahweh worship, they'd have felt Yahweh was also satisfied with the syncretist worship occuring on the high-places, so that his wrath would come upon anybody tearing them down...such as Hezekiah.

Further, it appears that the Hebrews also gave in to the standard ANE view that whenever disaster strikes, somebody surely must have made a god mad. Deut. 28:15-63, Isaiah 13:15-16, Hosea 13:15-16. Sennacherib surely would have detected such attitude, and therefore taunted Hezekiah as he did, thinking the average Hebrew would take Hezekiah's losing the battle as a sign that Hezekiah's reforms angered the polytheism-promoting Yahweh.

So while I don't see much reason to accuse the Kings-author of making up a fictional speech from the Assyrian king, I don't think Lydia has shown how her "undesigned coincidence" argument has rendered the fictional-speech theory any less likely than the literal historicity theory. I am an atheist and a skeptic of bible inerrancy, there's nothing here that disturbs my views in the least. I don't join ranks with immature idiot skeptics less intent on scholarship and more intent on bible-bashing mania, but it appears the latter are the only type of skeptics Lydia was refuting.

If Lydia wishes to combat careful skeptics like myself, who stick to the academic matters, she might wish to explain why conservative inerrantist commentators have been turning themselves inside out trying, unsuccessfully, for centuries, to source the "great wrath" that came against Israel (2nd Kings 3:27) in something, anything, other than the wrath of a Moabite idol.

The issue is not whether the idol was a real god. It obviously wasn't.

The issue is whether the biblical author responsible for that story was a henotheist. I say "yes".

 Posted by barry | November 7, 2017 6:21 PM

Lydia's first reply leaped allow my having brought up a related issue from 2nd Kings 3:27, with her characterizing my question about it, as if I had inexcusably understood her article to be an invitation to a rock-throwing match (!?)

Well, first of all, Yahweh was *constantly* telling the people not to worship other gods, and all of your attempts to argue that *they* would have projected *their* desires to engage in idolatry onto Yahweh are pretty thin gruel--highly unconvincing. The mere fact that they worshiped false gods doesn't mean that they thought Yahweh approved of, say, Asherah worship. Asherah worship was always seen as being in competition with the worship of Yahweh.

But more: The envoy specifically says that the high places *were Yahweh's own altars*. Your theory does not explain this at all.

If the high places were pagan places of worship, one would be more likely to think that the god to which they were dedicated (whoever that was) had sent the Assyrians rather than Yahweh, if they weren't even his altars at all.

It's from the other, widely scattered verses that we learn that the altars apparently *were* altars to Yahweh. It's just that after the building of the Temple they were deemed, at least by some, Hezekiah inter alia, to be in the wrong place and no longer pleasing to Yahweh.

As for your other verse, I'm not going to give you my own opinion (though I have one, and it is one that has been given by many-a commentator for many-a year and therefore one that you, presumably, have already considered and disdained), for this reason: Not only are you presumably already immune to all reasonable interpretations of the passage, but I do not wish to give the impression that the force of an undesigned coincidence in one part of Scripture can be somehow held hostage to one's ability to give an answer satisfactory to the skeptic to a completely unrelated alleged Bible difficulty in some completely different part of Scripture. That's just silly. Making an argument from an undesigned coincidence is not an invitation to a verbal rock-throwing match, where I toss out an argument on my side and then you bring in something from a totally different place, toss it over here, and say, "Oh, yeah? Well, what about *that*!"

Oh, by the way, I'm not an inerrantist.

Posted by Lydia | November 7, 2017 6:51 PM

In other post, I asked Lydia what she thought of the atheist explanation taht says the savage god of the OT reflects nothing more than the mindset of the barbarians who authored it:

Blogger barry said...

Mrs. McGrew,

you said "On the other hand, skeptics shouldn't be able to overwhelm the Christian with a much larger list of allegedly problem texts in which God kills people or bamboozle Christians into treating God Himself as just a Big Man In the Sky who cannot morally take life, even by His own hand, without due process."

------------What do you think of the more down-to-earth atheist explanation for the savagery of this OT god, the explanation which says the reason why the Hebrew god ordered such wholesale slaughter of other peoples, is because this god constituted nothing more than the mindset of the ancient tribal people who worshiped him?

If you confess you cannot really explain why the God of Moses/Joshua ordered infanticide, then can you really be "sure" that classifying that god as nothing more than a reflection of the ancient Hebrew mind-set, is wrong?

Church fathers say many bad things about Marcion, but could it be that not all of Marcion's criticisms of the prevailing orthodoxy, were unjustified?

Lydia's first reply misrepresented me as doing little more than misrepresenting her, and accused me again of being a troller, and further asserted that she deleted one of my replies because she mischaracterized it as a long nuisance post:

11/11/2017 3:25 PM Delete

Blogger Lydia McGrew said...

I didn't say that I can't explain why the God of Moses ordered infanticide. In fact, I'm quite open to thinking that he didn't. In short, you do not understand where I am coming from. When I say that I do not know what to do with the passages, this expresses (among other things) the possibility that the attribution of the command to God is false,not that I assume that God did give the command but merely "don't know why" he gave it.

You have misunderstood my position again and again and are trolling in ignorance, despite the fact that I have addressed you directly. Over at W4 I said, "By the way, I'm not an inerrantist," and *after* that you posted a long, nuisance comment at this blog in which you went on and on about the ICBI statement on inerrancy. Are you not able to read, or what? I didn't publish that comment because it showed that you don't read what I write or don't care or something. Fortunately, I have full moderation here and am not obligated to keep wasting my time. So bag it, because it's unlikely I'll publish any more of your comments, since you keep ignoring what I say. I'm sure you have better ways to spend your own time as well, including taking more seriously the possibility that there is a God who has a claim on you.

 11/11/2017 3:49 PM

Some would argue that Lydia's lack of patience, her "fuck you" sounding spiteful replies and her slanders of her critics, mean that she has violated basic NT ethics, something God would probably find a bigger deal than whatever her atheist critic's misunderstandings were.



from https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=20704380&postID=7327561391327152165&page=1&token=1510448800274
"I'm astounded (okay, maybe not astounded) at the attitude by which you assume that anyone, including Matt Flannagan, is bound to "keep up with you" rather than ignoring you."
----------I never expressed or implied that Flannagan had any sort of obligation to "keep up" with me.  I merely pointed out that it is unexpected that he avoids a direct criticism of his book and clearly prioritizes his trifles with me about proving god from objective morals.

Yes, there might be an innocent explanation, yes, he has the freedom to ignore whatever he wishes, but since Flannagan wrote a book on the dispossession hypothesis, to make God appear more politically correct to modern western notions of love and fairness, you cannot blame me for drawing conclusions from his disinterest in answering my criticisms of his book's basic thesis.

"One wonders what world you are living in in which people are bound to answer your every accusation, question, comment, or stand accused of being prima facie paralyzed by the brilliance and difficulty of your objections. Good grief. This is what's wrong with the Internet."
--------Matt's fear of my criticism is a reasonable deduction from his carefully avoiding it, despite reminders, while yet he remains willing to continue trifling with me about matters the bible ascribes far less importance to, such as proving god from the alleged existence of objective morals, a type of argument not even found in the bible directly.

Lydia, when you ask what world I live in, you are implying that I am delusional.  Since that's factually false, that's slander, and Jesus said slanders come from an evil heart:

 19 "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.
 20 "These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man." (Matt. 15:19-20 NAU)

There is a reason why you find it constantly necessary to include implied insults in your replies to me, and you'd appear more scholarly if you stopping using them.

Is that too much to ask?

Read 2nd Timothy 2:24-26.






from https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=20704380&postID=7327561391327152165&page=1&token=1510448800274


Blogger Lydia McGrew said...
It's not an issue of a whole lot of importance to me,
--------------Some would argue that your online critique of Copan/Flannagan indicates its a bit more important to you than you let on here.

"but I'm inclined to disagree. Dispossession would result in death only indirectly and not as the intention of the act. Some acts are intrinsically immoral. Others aren't. Killing babies is. Driving people out of an area, arguably, is not *intrinsically* immoral.  11/11/2017 4:51 PM"
----------Not sure I see the significance of your distinction.  God credits himself with all human death (Deut. 32:39) and God  presumably knew the ANE harsh conditions the Canaanite children would endure as their parents reluctantly agreed to relinquish the land.  Spots of vegetation sufficient to permit homesteading and cattle raising would likely already be snatched up by other existing tribes, especially OUTSIDE the "land flowing with milk and honey", so that Canaanites who head in that direction would likely not be welcomed with open armsby those existing tribes, and if they were, the arms would belong to savages who would subjects the Canaanite kids to inhuman slavery or other crimes.  I'm sorry, Lydia, but viewing God as evil, given the dispossession hypothesis, remains reasonable, whether you can trifle that dispossession was less evil than killing them.

You are also disagreeing with scholarly Christian apologist Glenn Miller, who says the immediate killing of the Canaanite parents and kids would have been more loving and merciful, given the harsh realities of the ANE, than allowing them to walk away after military defeat.   That is, it probably isn't my spiritually dead nature, that causes me to say dispossession would have resulted in greater misery to the children.


https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=20704380&postID=8448328738616150409&page=0&token=1510450341743

"Moo criticizes Gundry for making assertions without arguing, for arguing circularly, for not taking seriously the possibility that Matthew was writing about events slightly differently because he was an eyewitness..."
---------one reason i don't take seriously the possibility that Matthew's author was an eyewitness (that is, not after I did my own extensive analysis of the sources, though I still answer apologetics arguments on the merits)) is because of the majority Christian scholarly opinion, confirmed true by my own investigations, that the author borrowed extensively from Mark.

Assuming as true that Mark is the earliest gospel, and that it is used extensively by Matthew's author (two theories most Christian scholars hold to)...

...then it doesn't matter if you can come up with a hypothetical scenario in which a eyewitness chose to use a non-eyewitness source to tell the world about events that the eyewitness saw and heard first-hand....eyewitnesses don't <i>normally</i> do that, so unless a Christian can show Matthew was an exception to the normal way of doing things, then the normal way (i.e., people who have first-hand knowledge do not rely as extensively on second-hand reports of same as Matthew did) will have greater plausibility (i.e., an eyewitness did not author Matthew).

Matthew's authorship is unlikely for several reasons Christians cannot easily dismiss, not the least being that

all church fathers agree he wrote in Hebrew letters,

NONE of them express or imply he ever wrote in Greek despite their interest in telling the reader which language he wrote in,

Jerome bluntly asserted that a) an unknown person was responsible for Greek edition of Matthew, and b) that person created that edition by translating Hebrew Matthew into Greek (Lives of Illustrious Men),

All church fathers are agreed Matthew intended to address "Jews", so that's another reason to believe he'd have found Aramaic or Hebrew sufficient to facilitate his intent.

and finally, most Christian scholars deny that canonical Greek Matthew reads like "translation Greek".

Those who declare anonymous authorship have far more historical support, than conservative who argue from silence that because Matthew could have, he likely did, create a second original in Greek.  The early fathers, intent to tell the reader the language Matthew wrote in, would more than likely have mentioned this Matthean Greek had they believed Matthew ever created such a thing.







https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=20704380&postID=1850990138266929579&page=1&token=1510451506551
Mrs. McGrew,

Could it be reasonably argued by a Christian that because the world is so utterly awash in sexual temptations far more than ever before, that there is a duty on Christian women to be a bit more conservative in their public presentation than they ever needed to be in the past, and thus to don full burka when in public?

Seems to me that the woman who says "I cannot control another man's choice to lust after me" sounds more like her attempt to avoid the place that spiritual maturity leads, than she sounds like somebody intent on being as godly as she can be.

Indeed, if Christians are not supposed to desire to dance near the edges of acceptable/non-acceptable conduct, then it would appear that donning full burkas is the only choice consistent with women professing godliness, even IF Tertullian didn't go to that extreme in his "On the Apparel of Women"




On November 13, 2017 I also posted the following reply to Lydia, it hasn't been made available for public viewing yet:
http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2014/08/no-magic-bullet-copans-insufficient.html?showComment=1510521307340#c3546813680585453207

Several problems:

1 – Do you deny the salvation of all scholars who disagree with you, who profess a Christian faith?  If not, then there are obvious problems with the fact that you are just as eager to dismiss views from another part of the body of Christ, as atheists are eager to dismiss another atheist’s views on politics.  If God works in mysterious ways, then you cannot be so sure that another conservative Christian scholar’s assessment of the biblical evidence and moral situation is faulty, that is, you cannot be so sure as to justify this apparent eagerness you have to just write off anybody and everybody who happen to disagree with you. 

I don’t think you can respond that you gave Glenn Miller a fair hearing.  For while I supplied you the link to his article, you merely quip that Miller is certainly wrong “IF he implies that it's morally better to hack a baby's head off with a sword than to dispossess the baby's family of their land…”  That sounds like you didn’t even read his article, thus sounding like you were willing to draw a conclusion for reasons other than scholarly analysis.  I don’t know…maybe you are a strong charismatic, and like apostle Paul, you cannot imagine that any Christian who disagrees with you, might actually be correct to do so.

2 – The bible has proven insufficient to enable conservative Christians to agree with each other about theology and morals (I assume you won’t take the sinfully prideful position that the bible IS this clear and all conservative scholars who disagree with you are just wrong), so you are forced to accept the possibility that God might be communicating his exact views through some of those Christian scholars who disagree with you.  In other words, it makes far more sense, given your Christian presuppositions, to be a bit slower to dismiss Christian scholarly beliefs opposite to yours, than you are with your “Honestly, I'll disagree with anybody”  Attitude.  Disagreeing with <b><i>other members of the body of Christ</b></i> about what God is like, carries serious risks, according to your conservative view of NT Christianity, does it not?

3 – I don’t understand how you can say killing children by sword is intrinsically evil, unless you think your God’s acts are intrinsically evil? 

Have you never read about God causing pagans to kill Hebrew children, rape Hebrew woman and forcing them to endure abortion by sword (Isaiah 13:13-18)?

Have you never read the nearly exact parallel in Hosea 13:15-16?

Have you never read that one curse God will inflict on Hebrews who disobey him, is parental cannibalism (Deuteronomy 28:15, 53-57)?

Have you never read that one curse God will inflict on Hebrews who disobey him, is causing pagan men to rape Hebrew women (28:15, 30)?

Have you never read that God will take just as much “delight” to cause these atrocities, as he takes in blessing those who obey him (28:63)?

Didn't you know that God thinks "hook in your jaws" is the appropriate metaphor to keep in mind when thinking about the degree to which God overrides human freewill and forces people to sin (Ezekiel 38:4, 16 - 39:6)?

4 - Do you believe that children who die before the age of accountability go directly to heaven?  If so,  how can you call their death by sword at such early age "intrinsically" evil?  Must we not do here, as we normally do when teaching kids morality, and discuss why the consequences that follow an act, dictate to what degree it is moral or immoral?  So if the murder of a young child results in the obvious good of their eternal salvation, then you aren’t being very thorough or scholarly to focus solely on the temporal earthly consequences of beheading children.  And do I need to argue that as a Christian, you are obligated to prioritize the spiritual eternal consequences of an action far above the earthly temporal consequences?