Demolishing Triablogue: Annoyed Pinoy revs the engine, but still spins the wheels

Mr. Pinoy,

I'm allowing your lengthy comments one last time, to which I respond.  But I would ask that in future, you keep your "replies" limited to one specific sub-topic.  The "reply" function limits me to 4.096 letters, so if I wish to provide a point-by-point response to what you say, I have to create a brand new original post, like I'm doing here.  Try to ask concise questions one at a time, such as why I don't think a bible verse you find to be relevant, is relevant to the debate.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:09 AM
Honestly, I haven't read all of your former blogpost, so I may say some things which you've already addressed or anticipated.

Thanks for your honesty.

I don't have the time to give my full attention to the issues brought up in both blogposts. I'm trying to give an answer as quickly as possible. My overall aim is to defend the truth of Christianity.

It would seem defending the truth of Christianity might require you to devote more effort than answering "as quickly as possible".

I wrote the following late at night, so my grammar may be messed up. Though I haven't proofread it, I think you should be able get the gist of my main points even if it might be incoherent at spots. I'm nodding off while I'm typing.
 The burden of proof is on the claimant.
 I agree. You wrote in the earlier blogpost, "No, your God only identifies two criteria, boobs and pubic hair. Ezekiel 16. " That's a claim on your part. A claim that seems to assume 1. that the only criteria God gave is in that single passage,

Yes, because

a) I cannot find any more biblical criteria God thinks must be fulfilled before the girl is ready for marital sex,

b) while Mosaic law certainly isn't exhaustive in fact, Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32 indicate the author wished the reader to believe it was exhaustive, in which case, no, you are not allowed to add "thou shall not have sexual relations with thy wife until she [insert whatever age or signs of maturity/puberty here]" to Mosaic Law.  So because Mosaic law doesn't condemn marital pedophilia, you, the Christian, have no biblical basis for saying God's view such act as sinful.  Do not say God thinks some human action is "sin" unless you have biblical authority for saying so; and

c) if Paul couldn't know coveting was a sin without Mosaic law specifically telling him so (Romans 7:7), it would appear that no Christian can know what human acts are sinful without Mosaic law specifically telling them so.

and 2. only explicit criteria count.

But when you try to argue for identifying sin on the basis of non-explicit criteria in the bible, you open the door to others being able to justify disagreement with you.  Indeed, it doesn't matter if Ezekiel 16:7-8 really does tell us what age of marriage for girls the ancient Jews deemed normative, it certainly isn't worded in an absolute way.  People 2000 years from now could legitimately say that Americans used to believe the minimum age of sexual consent was 18, and they would be correct, but that would hardly argue that therefore Americans always held that view even in earlier days.  The age of sexual consent in Delaware in the 19th century was 7.  So learning what the Jews of 600 b.c thought about the minimum age of marriage, doesn't provide reasonably reliable guidance for how Jews of 1200 b.c. thought about the same matter.

However, one can reasonably infer from OT and (especially) NT ethical standards [the latter building on the former]

Not really.  Christians are constantly attacking each others' morals by quoting the bible.

combined with inductive medical experience that it's biologically unwise and and therefore morally illicit to engage in sexual activity that will likely result in pregnancies that will (again likely) permanently injure or kill the mother.

That makes sense to me, but leaves you without ability to explain statements in the Babylonian Talmud that says girls aged three years and one day are "suitable" for sexual relations, such as

Abodah Zarah 36B-37A:

Said Rabina, “Therefore a gentile girl who is three years and one day old, since she is then suitable to have sexual relations, (!?) also imparts uncleanness of the flux variety.”  

Sanhedrin 55b  

R. Joseph said: Come and hear! A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabits with her, she becomes his. The penalty of adultery may be incurred through her;

If adult men having vaginal intercourse with three year old girls were as obvious a risk to the girl's life as we modern people believe it is, how do you explain these Talmudic rabbis finding girls of such age "suitable" for sexual intercourse?  How could these rabbis bother saying such things if they saw in the bible the same absolute prohibition on adult-child marriage/sex that you do?

Humans are made in God's image and therefore have dignity on that account.

If that dignity prohibits abortion, it would also prohibit infanticide, Numbers 31:17, 1st Samuel 15:3.  You are also assuming that dignity is degraded by sex within adult-child marriages, and while we see it that way today, the question is whether the ancient Jews and biblical authors saw it that way.  The Talmud rabbis and sages, well aware of man being made in god's image, didn't.

The quality and quantity of each others' lives are to be considered by fellow human beings [esp. in marriages and families]. This is true both before and after the times of Abraham, and later Moses [and the Mosaic Covenant]. The story of Cain and Abel implicitly teaches that we are our brothers keeper in some sense [especially the closer they are to us relationally, biologically, familially etc.].

If so, then you'd have to condemn Gary Habermas and Craig Blomberg for a) knowing that James Patrick Holding defamed and libeled me in extreme ways, but b) never approached Holding in the spirit of Matthew 18 to deal with it, despite my having consulted them first before suing Holding.

Before the distinction of Jew and Gentile, Noah was taught about human dignity (Gen. 9) as well as the brotherhood of mankind despite the different "races" (Gen. 10).

He was also taught capital punishment, Gen. 9:6, which many Christians oppose.

There's also the natural law consideration as well.

Which doesn't help matters, since it invites questions such as why God made females capable of conceiving as early as 10 years old, if their involvement in sexual intercourse at that age was against his intended design.

Presumably God intends women to bear children in such a way and in such a time that the likelihood of permanent injury and/or death is not maximized, but minimized.

But Triablogue Calvinist Steve Hays thinks it is God who causes the pedophile to rape girls, and that it is God who causes men to get barely pubescent girls pregnant.  You should go further with your point until Steve explains to you how it makes sense for God to inflict shame and guilt upon those who He causes to fulfill his "secret" will.  If God secretly wills for a 30 year old man to have full vaginal intercourse with a 4 year old girl, God can hardly condemn the acts that He desires to take place.

By "intends" I mean by God's Will of Delight, and God's Will of Design (see my 6 distinctions of God's will blogpost if one is curious, HERE). Someone might argue that God apparently didn't design pregnancy and birthing very well since infant skulls are so large that they can barely narrow pelvises. But if we really do live in a fallen world, then such an apparent flaw might be due to such a Fall.

True, but the biblical explanation for the "Fall" is that God intentionally "cursed" women to endure that pain and injury during child-birth, Genesis 3:16.  So God is still the cause, you cannot relegate it to the naturalistically degrading effects of Adam and Eve's bad freewill choice to disobey God.  David also disobeyed God by committing adultery with Bathsheba, but God apparently has the option to arbitrarily exempt David from the otherwise applicable death penalty ("the Lord has taken away your sin..." 2nd Samuel 12:13).

Even assuming a historical Fall didn't really happen, a design need not be perfect for it to genuinely be designed.

And the more you attribute to God the abilities of the human eye, the more you attribute to God the ability of 10 year old girls to get pregnant.  YOu cannot attribute precocious puberty to the Fall, since the Fall is a degradation, while puberty constitutes an increase in the young girl's complexity.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:09 AM
If God intends humans to be fruitful and multiply, then that assumes they do it in such a way that it doesn't leave the wife (or wives given OT polygamy) chronically sick and/or otherwise diminished in her ability to continue bearing healthy children.

No, read Genesis 3:16, God wanted women to endure injury and pain during childbirth.  So the fact that girls endure injury and pain if they give birth at 10 years old, isn't sufficient for you to prove your point.

If the wife dies, then she obviously cannot reproduce any more children, assuming the first one even survived. The common (though not universal) Islamic practice of not waiting for a female to be physically mature to engage in intercourse (IMO) stems from pedophilic desires of their men. With Mohammed being both the Prime Example and Exemplar.

Agreed, but again that leaves you unable to explain the above-cited Talmud passages.  One explanation is that the pedophile rabbis who made such statements believed that instead of delaying sex with girls until they were old enough to safely give birth, God would miraculously protect them from getting pregnant, meaning any girls who got pregnant and died, were those God intended to kill by that method:

Kethuboth 39

"|Three [categories of] women may use an absorbent4  in their marital intercourse:   a minor, and an expectant and nursing mother. The minor,  because otherwise she might become pregnant and die. An expectant mother,  because otherwise she might cause her foetus to degenerate into a sandal.   A nursing mother,  because otherwise she might have to wean her child [prematurely]  and this would result in his death.  And what is [the age of such] a minor?  From the age of eleven years and one day to the age of twelve years and one day. One who is under,  or over this age  must carry on her marital intercourse in a normal manner; so R. Meir. But the Sages said: The one as well as the other carries on her marital intercourse in a normal manner, and mercy  will be vouchsafed from Heaven, for it is said in the Scriptures, The Lord preserveth the simple.14”

 Footnote 14 reads:  

Ps. CXVI, 6; sc. those who are unable to protect themselves. From this it follows that a girl under the age of twelve is incapable of normal conception.

So the answer of Talmud Sages is that girls under the age of 11 are not allowed to use a contraceptive, because God would keep them safe from getting pregnant at such a young age. You really need to work on avoiding seeing the ancient Jews through the rose-colored glasses of your modern eyes.  Excuses we today find stupid, were deemed just back then.

I'm not aware of any passage of Scripture where God permits or encourages as morally licit sexual activity for prepubescent females.

Then read 2nd Samuel 12, the account of David's adultery with Bathsheba.  That she was prepubescent or near is legitimately inferred from Nathan's analogizing her to a young ewe lamb who was taken from her rightful owner.  God condemnation of the sex act implies pedophilia was considered acceptable, since God condemns the adulterous aspect, but says nothing about the fact that she was so young, yet you'd figure if God was as against pedophilia as you are, God would have cited her prohibitively young age first, since under your own reasoning, there is more that is sinful and wrong with specifically pedophilia than there is with general adultery.  Once again, the ancient authors did not always see things the way we do today.  The only thing you get from God's condemnation of David is that he sinned by committing adultery with another man's wife.

The fact that in the allegory YHVH WAITS for the female to develop breasts should say something.

Not according to your prior post, where you said "Moreover, you press the allegory beyond it's intended purpose..."   apparently indicating that we shouldn't be drawing conclusions about what the ancient Jews believed about the minimum age of girls for marriage, from Ezekiel 16

He didn't marry her when she was prepubescent.

But Calvinist Steve Hays thinks adult men are still fulfilling god's "secret" will when they vaginally rape 4 year old girls.  Again, Pinoy, it appears you are asking me to decide that Hays' views about what God wants are incorrect, but if spiritually alive people cannot even agree on whether or how god "wills" such things, you should conclude that spiritually dead people, which is the way you see me, will only fare worse, hence counseling that you shouldn't be telling me about what God "wills" until you resolve your disagreements with other Christians

Likely because He cared for her and wanted to bless her, not harm her. What's missing in your interpretation is how lovingly and tenderly YHVH took care of the child during her prepubescent years.

Ok, so apparently you've changed your mind, again, and now consider the allegory to be suitable for drawing conclusions about ancient Jewish morality?

Again, this is Ezekiel in 600 b.c, whose authority for representing the morals of Moses from 1200 b.c. is anything but clear, and about as prone to fallacy as using the morals of Americans in 2017 to tell us what the morals of Americans were like in 1417.  600 years more than likely introduces some changes.

Read the passage again:

 And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths.
5 No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.
6 "And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, 'Live!' I said to you in your blood, 'Live!'
 YHVH waited all this time and can't wait a few more months or a year(s) till it's relatively safe for her to have children, as opposed to when it's relatively and statistically risky?

The ancient Jews apparently thought the risk was negated by biblical promises that God would protect the simple.  See above.

You apparently are so hostile to Christianity and want to attack it so much that you have to take THE MOST Uncharitable interpretation as the natural and ONLY interpretation, contrary to the tenderness and patience YHVH is described as having exercised in the previous verses. [*cough* eisegesis *cough*] Your interpretation goes against the whole tenor of the passage.
CONT.

You first used the passage to draw conclusions about what God or the Jews believed about pedophile marriage, THEN you changed your mind and told me it was allegory and not to be pressed for details, NOW you changed your mind again and have decided the allegory does indeed reflect on what Jews thought about the proper age for marriage.  Some would argue that your own inability to keep to one interpretation suggests that the passage is too ambiguous to be useful in our debate.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:10 AM
In the ESV (v. 7) she is likened to a plant in a field "...and arrived AT FULL ADORNMENT. Your BREASTS were formed..." [ESV]. Other versions translate the verse differently. For example, in the ASV she is told, "...thou didst increase and wax great". The sense I get in some translations is that she is like a plant (or a field of plants) that's ready to be reaped because nearly fully ripe. That's contrary to your interpretation that reduces YHVH to a buck in heat that's ready to mate as soon as the gate is opened.

It's also contrary to the Talmud rabbis who felt three year old girls were "suitable" for sexual relations, see above, a view they'd hardly hold if there was something else in their religion that absolutely forbade girls of such age from having marital sex.

Notice too that verse 8 indicates even more time passed, when it says, "When I PASSED BY YOU AGAIN and saw you, behold, you were at the AGE FOR LOVE". Apparently the "age for love" is some time AFTER the mere and first appearance of (to use your words) "boobs and pubic hair".

I don't deny that the Jews of Ezekiel's day felt sex within adult-child marriages was taboo.  What I deny is your ability to establish from the bible that breaking such taboo would have been considered "sin".   God's original model for marriage was monogramy, yet evangelical scholar Richard Davidson (Flame of Yaweh) and others say God "tolerated" polygamy.  So even if you are correct that Ezekiel 16:7-8 provides the divine blueprint for minimum age of marriage for ancient Jewish girls, you aren't showing that the model is absolute.

It should be noted that not everything OT people (or ANE Semites in general) did was necessarily moral.

But what they did is material toward modern people drawing conclusions about what was acceptable and unacceptable to them.

The same is true for post-Tanakhian Jews (e.g. Talmudists). And even if some things were permissible or a concession on God's part, that doesn't mean it's the ideal.

Philsophically, it is unlikely that an infinitely perfect God, allegedly as angry at pedophilia-marriage as you are, would ever "tolerate" deviations from his original model of marriage.  So if Richard Davidson and other Christian scholars on marriage are correct that the bible god "tolerated" polygamy, then this god's perfection is not "infinite".

Moreover, there's God intended moral development within the OT as well as between the Testaments. For example, the ideal in the NT is monogamy, though polygamy in the OT was permitted/tolerated.

An infinitely perfect God who hated polygamy as much as you think he does, would not "tolerate" it, but would, like you, specify it to be sin.  Nowhere does the Mosaic law specify polygamy to be sin.  Deuteronomy 17:17 no more means a King cannot have two wives than it means he cannot have two horses.  He is not allowed to "multiply" wives to himself.  The infinitely perfect God is regulating, not condemning, polygamy

Jesus Himself taught that the OT Jews often misinterpreted and misapplied the OT laws. Or didn't interpret them in a truly consistent way.

And I teach that Jesus and Paul often misinterpreted and misapplied the OT Laws.

Had they, they would have had a more Christonomic interpretation of the Torah.

I'm an atheist, I don't find non-Christonomic Torah-interpretation to necessarily be faulty.

Finally, it's the Christian claim that its morality is higher than that of Judaism.

No, it was the claim of Jesus that his followers be careful to obey the spirit and letter of Mosaic law, see Matthew 5:17-20.  Paul's view of the Law was often at odds with the legalistic view held by Jesus.

The Messiah would magnify the law and make it glorious (Isa. 42:21).

Which seems to indicate that Christian parents need to burn their teen prostitute daughters to death.  Leviticus 21:9.

That's why Jesus could say, "BUT I say unto you" without contradicting the the OT (Matt. 5:17). And why Jesus said of the Jews that they added to the Word of God by teaching as doctrine the commandments of men (Matt. 15:8-9).

I see no reason to distinguish Jesus' view of the law from Moses' view, for purposes of this discussion.

BTW, I'm not a "Theonomist" as it's commonly understood. I agree with much of what they say, but I have enough disagreements to not use that term. I prefer, "Christonomist".
 as most ANE scholars agree that the age of 12, or menses or when signs of puberty showed, was when ANE peoples generally deemed a girl ready for marriage.
 Ready in what sense? Ready to marry, or start considering marriage?

Well according to Ezekiel 16:7-8, ready to actually marry, not merely consider it.

Since there was often a betrothal period that was also considered (in some sense) marriage even before consummation, that delayed period allows for even more time for the female to sexually mature even more.

But the betrothal itself was created by the act of vaginal intercourse with the three year old girl:

Tractate Sanhedrin Folio 69aR. Jeremiah of Difti said: We also learnt the following: A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabited with her, she becomes his. The penalty of adultery may be incurred through her... 

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:11 AM
What I said was true. Your God does not identify any other criteria in that passage for sex-readiness for the girl, except boobs and pubic hair.
 Now you seem to be reducing your claim to only Ezek. 16, when your original claim seems (?) to include ALL of Scripture (or at least the Tanakh).

No, I'm only pointing out that you have no textual justification for asserting that Ezekiel 16:7-8 expresses or implies that any criteria beyond boobs and public hair need be fulfilled to declare the girl ready for marriage.

As for quoting the NT, perhaps you didn’t know, but I am an atheist. I do not believe in biblical inerrancy, biblical inspiration, or harmony of morals or theology between the testaments. 

IF Christianity is true, then the OT can not only be interpreted in isolation, but also in light of the later fuller revelation.

But since Christianity is not true, I am free to limit my understanding of an OT text to just what the author intended by examination of his grammar, immediate context, chapter, and genre.  Discerning meaning that way is objective, while trying to read the OT through Christian-colored lenses is absurdly controversial.

Also, it touches on the issue of the consistency of the Testaments. I would seek to defend it. While you'd be fine with there being irreconcilable contradictions between the two. You wouldn't take the NT to be authoritative, but the consistency between the Testaments has some abductive argumentative force.

I don't see the point, not only is there nothing in the NT against sex within adult-child marriages, there is the theological principle that you cannot know a human act is a sin unless there is a prohibition against it specified in Mosaic Law.  See Romans 7:7.  Either Paul was wrong for speaking in such absolute terms about how sin cannot be identified apart from Mosaic law, or he, and by extension Christians, cannot know what acts are sin without Mosaic law telling them so.  If Paul wouldn't have known coveting was a sin without Mosaic law, YOU don't know that sex within adult-child marriages is a sin without Mosaic law telling you so.  Are you smarter than apostle Paul?

We have literally zero “records” produced by the Jews in the days of Moses, with the exception of course of the Pentateuch itself and a few fragments whose date is hotly contested... 

Apparently you claim we do have enough records from those very sources to tell us that adult-child marriages were accepted.

No, I think they were accepted on the basis of the biblical and Talmudic statements.

I'm dubious of the claim, but even if true, that doesn't make it morally licit according to the Mosaic Covenant or the teaching of the rest of the Tanakh. If it does, I'm not aware where.

See Romans 7:7, supra.  If you don't have a Mosaic Law specifying a human act as sin, you have no warrant for calling it sin in the first place.  So either find a Mosaic law that prohibits sex within adult-child marriages to the same degree that it prohibits coveting, and you'll dodge the Romans 7:7 bullet.  If you cannot provide such a text, then you never had any theological justification for labeling sex within adult-child marriages to be sinful in the first place.

You are also assuming that sex within adult-child marriages necessarily involved attempts to make the girl pregnant, 

Not necessary attempts, but that they always had that potential.

Well then the man could easily limit himself to sex acts that cannot make the girl pregnant, in which case  your rebuttal based on the dangerousness of potential pregnancy, is deprived of force.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:12 AM

Hebrews 13:4 and the Song of Songs counsel that cunnilingus was considered acceptable sexual practice, and if so, then the problem of physically traumatizing the underage girl in an adult-child marriage among the ancient Jews, disappears: 

Hebrews 13:4 says nothing about oral sex.

It also doesn't say anything about vaginal intercourse, but you certainly feel free to infer that the author's words "marriage bed undefiled" are saying vaginal intercourse between monogamous Christian couples is undefiled.

While Canticles MIGHT refer to oral sex in one or more passages, it's not certain.

Most conservative Christian scholars take it in its obvious sexual sense.  From the inerrantist-driven New American Commentary:

4:16 This, with 5:1, is the high point of the Song of Songs. She calls on the winds to make her fragrance drift to her beloved, thus drawing him to herself. Maintaining the metaphor of the garden, she invites him to come and enjoy her love. This is the consummation of their marriage.

...5:1 a,b The man responds. The poetry is discreet and restrained; it conveys the joy of sexual love without vulgarity; at the same time, the meaning is quite clear. The catalog of luxuries here (garden, myrrh, honey, wine, etc.) imply that he has partaken of her pleasures to the full.
Garrett, D. A. (2001, c1993). Vol. 14: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of songs (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 407). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

The important point is that in marriage coitus is the norm and would be expected to begin the marriage.

I don't see how that trifle helps you.  That's also the norm for marriage today, yet I've known many Christian couples who said they abstained from sex on their wedding night.  So again, while coitus was probably normative among ancient Jews for consummating the marriage, that doesn't argue that deviations were disallowed.

Without consummation via coitus the marriage wouldn't be fully legal. A bleeding hymen was meant to signify the cutting/enacting of the covenant of marriage.

By that logic, the marriage wouldn't be fully legal if the man had erectile dysfunction.  You need to stop interpreting what Mosaic law presents are normative, as if it was absolute and exclusive.

You refer to adult-child marriage, but I don't know what you mean by, and how you define "child".

In this discussion, by "adult-child marriage" I mean men who are in their 20's or older, getting married to girls who, by reason of lack of puberty, can still be called "child".

Or in what way you (presumably) frown upon adult-child marriages.

I frown on them for the same reason the Legislators and Congress do:  such unions are more productive of lasting physical and emotional harm to the girl.

I don't deny that a some females consummated marriage at an early age. Maybe even at 12. But some girls enter puberty earlier and progress faster than other girls.

That's right. the reality of precocious puberty means it is possible that in Ezekiel 16:7-8, God was thinking about a 9 year old girl whose breasts and public hair had grown, as the template for his allegorical language.

This is also true of the girls of some ethnic groups as compared to others. So, randomly citing the age of 12 is meaningless unless one also addresses and acknowledges the issue of the fact that different female would be sexually mature sooner than others.

I don't see your point, most scholars of the ANE agree that these people usually delayed marriage until puberty.  You appear to be concerned to make your trifles look like serious objections.  No dice.

I don't know what you're entire claim is, but my claim is that given OT ethics (and especially NT ethics), it would have been morally wrong for a female to have been given in marriage for consummation before she had sufficiently matured so as to lessen the chances of birthing complications.

That's not good enough.  Your claim is that your god views sex within adult-child marriages as "sin", so it is perfectly legitimate to ask why you call it a sin when you cannot provide any biblical evidence that it is.  Sin is trangression of God's law (Romans 7:7, 1st John 3:4), it is not "deviation from what's normative".

Regarding pedophilia of prepubescents in the Talmud, even if your interpretation were correct, that doesn't tell anything certain about the beliefs and practices of Jews during Biblical times.

It does it we accept the conservative Christian assumption that oral traditions among the ancient Jews were carefully handed down from generation to generation.  If you start screwing with the reliability of those oral traditions just to get out of this jam, then you increase the likelihood that the oral traditions laying behind the OT text were corrupted before being written.

Even then, the beliefs and practices of Biblical Jews is not sure indicator of what the OT law itself requires or allows.

I don't need to have a "sure" indicator.  I will be rationally warranted in my arguments if I have a "reasonable" indicator.

Since many things recorded are explicitly or implicitly taught to be wrong. Think for example of how the book of Judges records the general degradation and moral decline in Israel.

But from a historical perspective, it is how the ancient Jews were, not whether their acts squared up with their religious claims, that helps one form an opinion on which among the historical possibilities is most probable.  If the ancient Jews allowed pedophile-marriages, then it is unjustified for modern-day apologists to be shocked at my argument, as if the ancient Jews' morals were a mirror image of those held by modern conservative Christians.  What's "obvious" to us today doesn't tell us what would have been allowed by ancient Jews.

Much of the OT is a record of how the majority often disobeyed God, from generation to generation.

And the most substantial portion is the Mosaic Law.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:12 AM

Sure is funny that the God who hates the idea of 11 year old boys having sex as much as you hate it, never bothers to specifically condemn it, despite his ability to specify which exact sexual relations are indeed prohibited... 

That is or close to an argument from silence.

So?  Arguments from silence are not automatically fallacious, which is the sense you appear to be intending with your short unqualified sentence.  It is perfectly reasonable to assume that if the bible god exists and really does regard sex within adult-child marriages as abominable as you do, he would have specified a prohibition against it.

Laws and Case Laws are meant to be studied and applied to cover situations not mentioned.

And I see no biblical warrant to suppose that, where the 3 year old bride's father agreed to give her in marriage to an adult man who paid the dowry, the sexual relations between this couple after the wedding would constitute a legal case requiring application of law.

In America, one state's criminal law code is limited to less than 100 pages, so if Moses was inspired by God, he has no excuse for failing to specify as sin any and every human act god thought was a sin.  We specify the minimum age, why couldn't god?

Your duty as a Christian to obey Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32 is more important than your desire to come up with a clever way to read things into the law.

In fact, if the Mosaic Law included every possible situation the Pentateuch would be larger than the U.S. Library of Congress.

How much extra room in Moses' books would "you shall not marry a girl until she is at least 16 years old" have taken up?

Also, Natural Law gives us some indication.

You mean like the natural fact that most girls become capable of getting pregnant around 11 or 12 years old?  Does this natural law tell us anything about what God intended?

Especially when it's coupled with the OT Revelation. For example, the very passage you cite (Ezek. 16). If females should wait till sometime after puberty begins to get married and be sexually active, then it makes sense that that's the case for boys too. Nocturnal emissions happend after the onset of puberty, not before. Prior to that a boy is not fertile. The libido of both sexes kicks in at high gear at puberty. Since one of main the reasons for marriage is to propogate the species (Gen. 1:28), AND since the OT prohibits extra-marital sexual relations, AND since fertility only occurs after the onset of puberty, it therefore makes sense that the consummation of marriage was meant to also be after the onset of puberty in both the male and female.

I don't see the point, you are only specifying what makes sense and what's normal, you are not making a case that God believed sex within adult-child marriages was "sin".   "Sin" is not merely "deviation from the norm".

Whenever you wish to discuss your reasons for saying your bible god has always believed sex within adult-child marriages to be “sin”, let me know. 

I'm not sure I would say that it was/is always sin.

!?

At the very least I think the Biblical ideal (additionally attested by natural law) is that marriage should be between two sexually mature individuals of the opposite sex.

You haven't made a very convincing case that your god thinks marital pedophilia is sinful.  If my blog educated you, a thanks would be in order.

Another issue that one would expect some atheists to look down upon is arranged marriages (AM). AMs could potentially motivate adult-child marriages. Or what of the hypothetical where two groups of parents arrange the marriage of prepubescent children and foregoing the betrothal period. Would it necessarily be sin if a 7 year old "husband" and a 7 year old "wife" engaged in sexual intercourse? I'm not sure.

Well, if your God hasn't made clear to you that prepubescent kids having vaginal intercourse is "sin"...

What's clear to me is that if such a situation continued the girl would likely get pregnant long before her body could handle giving birth.

And since puberty is an increase in the girl's complexity, you cannot relegate the problem of girls becoming capable of conception while it is still dangerous to give birth, to the Fall. The "Fall" didn't cause human beings to increase in complexity, the Fall was a degradation.  So it would seem that nature's equipping girls to get pregnant at such dangerously young ages can be blamed squarely on your god, not the Fall and not "evolution".

Leading to the likely death of both her and the child. Also, I think an adult male with fully developed sexual organs engaging in coitus with a prepubescent girls can do serious damage.

That was probably also obvious to the Talmud Rabbis who said three year old girls are "suitable" for sexual relations:

Abodah Zarah 36B-37A:

Said Rabina, “Therefore a gentile girl who is three years and one day old, since she is then suitable to have sexual relations, (!?) also imparts uncleanness of the flux variety.”  

There are modern cases where death or infertility ensued. Whatever nearly ensures injury or death would likely be considered sin.

How much did the odds of injury/death increase when Moses roused the Hebrews to dispossess the Canaanites and make war?

Apostles boldly confronting their captors with the gospel would likely ensure their deaths, so perhaps there are times when preaching the gospel would be a sin?

The difficulty women have in childbirth is not due to "sin", but God's voluntary choice to curse the woman, Genesis 3:16.  From 2nd Samuel 12:13, God's nature does not "require" him to punish sin in any certain way, he can exempt a sinner from punishment by simply waving his magic wand.  So under your logic, God was sinning since his curse on the birthing process increased the odds of a women suffering injury or death.

The case of Adam and Eve is our exemplar. They were man and woman, not boy and girl when God presented them to each other for marriage.

But because God made concession for one deviation from this model (polygamy), you have to be open to the prospect that he'd make similar concessions for other deviations from the model.

He shows no intent to repent, there is no sign that any Christian brother confronted Holding in the spirit of Matthew 18, and to top it all off,
 I have no knowledge about the dispute between the two of you. I'll leave that between the relevant parties and the law. When it comes to Matt. 18, I think that's in the context of internal matters within the church.

No, Christians, especially Christians who take up the office of teacher, are required to have a good reputation with unbelievers, 1st Timothy 3:7, so when they fail Paul's standard, they fail their own self-imposed standard and have engaged in the biblical equal of sin.

Disputes between Christian brothers. If so, then it doesn't apply to you since you're not in the church.

So under your logic, if you murder me, none of your Christian brothers have a biblical duty to confront you about this sin since I'm not in the church.

You mention Rom. 13. That's the very chapter that acknowledges the state's role in the punishment of crimes. If there's a place for ministers to address Holding's sins, it would be his immediate elders and not random spiritual mentors who don't know or have the time or resources to investigate the issues.

Which is precisely the problem since Holding is the type of apostate who believes himself spiritually above any immediate elders.  Blomberg and Habermas would have known this, so because they chose to discuss the matter with him a little bit, they committed themselves to rebuking him for his sin.

When it comes to CRI, I suspect that folks like Perry Robinson who have complained about Hanegraaff's behavior for decades seem legitimate (from my limited knowledge). Also, I think the role of teacher and apologist are two distinct things. One can be one, or the other, or both. The role of a teacher implies authority and reliability in doctrine. Whereas neither need be the case with an apologist.

Yes, they do, at least for the apologist who thinks god works through him to promote the gospel.

Finally, what lies of Walter Martin are you specifically referring to?

He claimed to have been a descendant of Brigham Young

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:51 AM
What's the NAU translation?

New American Standard, 1995 Update.  You can't be serious.

Re-reading my comments I see I may have been slightly inconsistent. For example, in one place I wrote, "it would have been morally wrong for a female to have been given in marriage for consummation before she had sufficiently matured so as to lessen the chances of birthing complications." Yet, in another place I wrote, "I'm not sure I would say that it was/is always sin. At the very least I think the Biblical ideal (additionally attested by natural law) is that marriage should be between two sexually mature individuals of the opposite sex. "
 But those two statements need not be contradictory. In the former quotation I wasn't speaking absolutely, but generally and usually. While in the latter I was speaking in terms of absolute and unchanging designation and moral evaluation.

I think the fact that you can't make out a biblical case for saying God views marital pedophilia as "sin" speaks clearly enough.