Correcting Craig Blomberg on Matthew 5:22: it;s not *usually* wrong, but *always* wrong, to insult another person

Jesus forbade his followers from referring to each other as "fools" and the like:

 21 "You have heard that the ancients were told, 'YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER ' and 'Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.'
 22 "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, 'You good-for-nothing,' shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, 'You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. (Matt. 5:21-22 NAU)

Craig Blomberg says there must be an implied qualification of "where unjustified" to the v. 22 prohibition on calling another a "good-for-nothing".  Blomberg cites to Jesus himself labeling certain others with similar language as the reason to read at qualification into 5:22:

Jesus illustrates his point that not just murder but also anger is sinful in two additional, parallel ways. First, he considers those who accost their fellow believers with the epithet “Raca” (a quasi-swear word in Aramaic). The expression probably meant something like empty-headed.33 So too those who call someone a “fool” commit a sin. This word (mōros) carries overtones of immorality and godlessness as well as idiocy. As with the commands against anger, both of these prohibitions against the use of insulting names undoubtedly carried the implicit qualification of “where unjustified,” since Jesus himself uses the term mōros in 23:17, 19 (in direct address) and in 7:26 (in indirect address) when the label is accurate. Some have seen an increasing severity of judgment as Jesus progresses from the terms “judgment” to “the Sanhedrin” (the Jewish supreme court) to Gehenna (“fire of hell”)—a reference to the valley south of Jerusalem in which children were slaughtered in Old Testament times and traditionally associated with a perpetually burning garbage dump in later centuries. But given the close parallelism among the first clauses of each illustration, the entire sentences should probably be taken as largely synonymous. All three metaphorically refer to the danger of eternal judgment.
Blomberg, C. (2001, c1992). Vol. 22: Matthew (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 107). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

I maintain that common sense refutes Blomberg on this point:

First, Jesus doesn't say the offender would be put on trial in the court for hurling such names at another, he says the offender would be guilty before the Court for saying "raca" and guilty enough to go into fiery hell for calling another a "fool".  Apparently, insulting another in that society was prohibited either without exception, or if exceptions were allowed, Jesus didn't allow for them.  The immediate context thus supports an absolute interpretation and the burden of proof is on any who would say the immediate context supports a relative interpretation.

Second, by saying "where unjustified" Blomberg gives the genuinely guilty offender an alibi:  he's not in the wrong because the person he insulted really was a fool.  Does Blomberg seriously believe that Jesus would approve of Christians fighting amongst themselves on whether or not a specific Christian deserved to be called a "fool"?  Does the immediate context of Jesus' mandate suggest any such exceptions or caveats? Of course not.

Third, the fact that Jesus called others fools provides no contextual backdrop, as Blomberg thinks Jesus is God.  Just because God does something doesn't necessarily mean Christians should imitate it, such as when God inflicts a terrible sickness on a baby and causes it to suffer for 7 days before killing it:

 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died. (2 Sam. 12:15-18 NAU)

So without more, a mere "Jesus did it so why can't I do it too!" doesn't provide automatic justification for Christians to imitate it.   Jesus also died and raised himself from the dead, allegedly...does that mean Christians should do this too? Jesus also forgave sins not committed against him.  Can Christians forgive the sins not committed against them?  Catholics say yes, how about you?

Fourth, the NT comes to us from the first-century honor/shame societies of the Jews and Romans.  Had God decided not to start Christianity until 1980, and got pregnant some teen girl named Mary living in Tacoma Washington that year, it is beyond question that the NT arising from this circumstance would contain none of the honor/shame bullshit that it does, as Tacoma in 1980 wasn't an honor/shame society or city.  If that raises problematic questions as to how much of the 1st century NT ways of doing things that God wants modern day Christians to imitate/obey, that's Blomberg's problem, not mine.  If God transcends culture, then we have to believe that the honor/shame crap in the NT has more to do with the people involved in Christianity's origin, and less to do with the God who arbitrarily chose which exact culture and time-period in which to start that religion.  

Seems pretty clear to me that if Jesus was born and raised in Tacoma Washington in the 1980's, and then gave his Sermon on the Mount in 2000, it would be stripped of all honor/shame baggage that sermon currently has.  The bible does not require us to imitate the social realities of dead cultures.

Fifth, Blomberg is an inerrantist, and so he must reconcile what he has to say with the rest of the NT, and unfortunately, there are passages that impose on Christians an exceptionless mandate to avoid insulting words, behavior:

8 To sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit;
 9 not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead; for you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing. (1 Pet. 3:8-9 NAU)

Sixth, most Christians, at least in developed countries, were not born and raised in honor/shame cultures, and therefore, dealing with them today the way people were dealt with by 1st century Jews could be psychologically harmful.

Finally, Jude v. 8-10 contradict Blomberg's idea that an insulting accusation is allowed where it describes the target truthfully.  The devil is obviously deserving of many truthful railing accusations, but not even Michael the Archangel dared to accuse the devil with such condescension:

 8 Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.
 9 But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, "The Lord rebuke you!" (Jude 1:8-9 NAU)

Well, Mr. Blomberg?  If Michael the Arch-angel had called the devil and foolish stupid idiot moron, would that be an accurate description?  If so, how do you explain Mike's failure to call names even where justified? Could it be that you were too quick to conclude Christians are morally justified to imitate just anything Jesus did?

Like most apologists, Blomberg may say that those outside the church are fools if they know what's being taught and reject it, since he thinks there can be no reasonable skepticism of the gospel, but unfortunately, Christians and especially their leaders are to maintain a good relationship with non-Christians:

 7 And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. (1 Tim. 3:7 NAU)

How could Timothy have maintained a good reputation with those outside the church, if he exercised that right you believe he had (i.e., to label as fools all those who know the gospel but reject it anyway)?

1st century Christianity was a high-context society, so that the mandate to maintain a good reputation with unbelievers more than likely included even specific unbelievers who lived nearest too Timothy, and thus were well aware of, but still rejected, the gospel.

For all these reasons, Blomberg is incorrect to read an implied "where unjustified" caveat into Matthew 5:22.  Jesus didn't want his followers calling anybody "raca" or "fool", ever.  

My challenge to Christian apologist Jonathan McLatchie

The following is the challenge I emailed to Cross-Examined author Jonathan McLatchie,  his reply, and my response. McLatchie is describes himself as one of the "world's leading apologists" at his youtube site, and  apparently has a master's degree in evolutionary biology and is active in other apologetics ministries involving Frank Turek and Josh McDowell, and if that is the case, then his stated reason for refusal to debate me is even less sensible, since apparently he isn't a know-nothing hack, but is quite capable of understanding what needs to be done to validly defend something he believes.
 ==============

On Fri, Sep 8, 2017 at 10:36 PM, Barry Jones <barryjoneswhat@gmail.com> wrote:

to
jmclatchie@apologetics-academy.org

Though I am an atheist, I agreed with and replied to your blog post about how modern Christian apologetics can reduce "Christianity" to little more than a game of intellectual jousting.

In my reply, I insist that apologists Steve Hays, Jason Engwer, and especially James Patrick Holding, bear about as much spiritual fruit as a dead alligator.  The passion for holines seen in the NT epistles and in 3 more centuries of patristic writings is screamingly absent from their online writings.

James Patrick Holding libeled me and I sued him, and instead of doing the Christian thing and apologizing, he hired a lawyer at great expense to himself and his followers, to get both cases dismissed on technicalities...then continued libeling me anyway, as if he was just brick stupid.  Holding's claim to fame is his citing the Context Group to justify his belief that the NT authorizes Christians of today to belittle and defame anybody who publicly criticize Christianity, a position he cannot find support for in any published Christian scholar, including the Context Group, who have disowned him in no uncertain terms more than once.

https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/09/sometimes-christian-apologists-say-good.html

I am also finishing up a book to be marketed to doubting Christians, to motivate them to not be afraid to take that last step and actually stop having faith.  So since your goal is the exact opposite, perhaps you'd be interested in some discussions with me, especially since I use my blog to advertise reasons for doubt around the internet, potentially reaching the same Christians you are trying to protect.

As usual when I contact Christian apologists, I will be posting this email to you at my blog, to make sure that if you choose not to respond, you will likely be asked why by Christians who read my blog, and they can then decide whether your reason for refusal to engage was because you think I am not intellectually qualified, or because you were fearful that you could not defend your faith in light of my attacks.

Here's a short list of matters I'm willing to discuss with apologists:

1 - There are only 3 eyewitness accounts of Jesus' resurrection in the NT, at best, all the rest are hearsay.  And that's generously granting assumptions of apostolic gospel authorship that I am otherwise prepared to attack on the merits.

2 - Apostle Paul's gospel contradicts the one Jesus preached.

3 - The actions of the 11 apostles after allegedly experiencing the risen Christ indicate what they actually experienced, if anything, was something less than the "amazing transformation" lauded so loudly by apologists.

4 - Because Matthew is in all likelihood not responsible for the content in canonical Greek Matthew, he and his gospel are disqualified as witnesses.

5 - Because John was willing to falsely characterize divine words he got by vision, as if they were things the historical Jesus really said and did, John and his gospel are disqualified as witnesses.

6 – John’s intent to write a "spiritual" gospel as opposed to imitating the Synoptics which he knew had already disclosed the “external facts”, argues that “spiritual” here implies something different than mere writing down of eyewitness testimony.  The historical evidence that is accepted by even fundamentalists makes clear that John’s source for gospel material included visions and not just memory.

7 - The NT admission that most of Paul's converts apostatized from him for the Judaizer gospel, warrants skeptics to be a bit more hesitant than Christians before classifying Paul as a truth-robot.  The NT evidence against Paul's integrity is many, varied and strong.

8 - Papias asserted Mark "omitted nothing" of what he heard Peter preach.  Because Bauckham is wrong when saying Papias here was using mere literary convention, Papias meant that phrase literally...in which case Mark's silence on the virgin birth is not due to his "omission" of it, the virgin birth doesn't appear in his gospel because there was never a virgin birth story available for him to omit in the first place...a strong attack on Matthew's and Luke's credibility.

9 - Paul's belief that Mark's abandonment of ministry justifies excluding him from further ministry work (Acts 15) will always remain a justifiable reason (assuming Acts’ historicity here) to say Mark wasn't too impressed with gospel claims, even assuming he later fixed his disagreements with Paul and wrote the gospel now bearing his name.

10 - Mark's strong apathy toward writing down Peter's preaching supports the above premise that he was less than impressed with the gospel, and likely only joined himself to the group for superficial reasons.  Not a good day for fundamentalists who think Mark was inspired by God to write his gospel.

11 - Peter's explicit refusal to endorse Mark's gospel writing, militates, for obvious reasons, against the idea that Peter approved of it.

12 - stories of women becoming pregnant by a god in a way not disturbing her virginity, are securely dated hundreds of years before the 1st century.  The copycat Savior hypothesis is virtually unassailable, once the admittedly false skeptical exaggerations of the evidence are excluded, and rationally warrants skepticism toward Matthew's and Luke's honesty.

13 - The failure of Jesus' own immediate family to believe his ministry-miracles were genuinely supernatural (the logical inference from John 7:5 and Mark 3:21-31) provides reasonable and rational warrant for skeptics to say the miracles Jesus allegedly did, were no more real than those done by Benny Hinn and other wildly popular religiously fanatical con artists.

14 - The evidence for the specific contention that most of the apostles or earliest Christians died as martyrs (i.e., were forced to choose between death or committing blasphemy, and chose death) is furiously scanty and debatable, justifying skepticism toward this popular apologetic argument.

15 - the mass-hallucination hypothesis does not require the exact same mental images to have been shared by the original apostles.  Mass-hallucination need not require such impossibility any more than Pentecostals being slain in the spirit requires them to all move and talk in the exact same way before they can validly claim to have shared the same experience.

16 - There are contradictions in the resurrection accounts that are not capable of reasonable harmonization.

I am also willing to discuss whatever apologetics argument you think is the most clear and compelling.  Intelligent Design?  You'd be surprised at how easy that is to refute and how it justifies Marcion's heresy.  Messianic prophecy?  I'll discuss whichever one you believe is the most compelling.  Atheism?  I argue that "God" as believed in the Judaeo-Christian heritage is an incoherent concept, which provides all the rational warrant necessary to dismiss it just as quickly one dismisses pyramid power or telepathy. Epistemology?  I advocate empiricism, namely, you cannot give a convincing argument that anybody has ever learned a fact completely apart from their 5 physical senses, therefore, believing facts never come to our minds except via one or more of our five physical senses, is about as invalidly presumptuous as believing the cars I see continue to exist after I shut my eyes. 

I will discuss any other topic you wish. 

Sincerely,

Barry Jones

On Sat, Sep 9, 2017 at 10:20 AM, Jonathan McLatchie <jmclatchie@apologetics-academy.org> wrote:

So let me get this straight: you have a history of suing people, and you are basically saying that if I don't accept, you're going to assume that you won? I'm going to save us both the trouble now, because I am not predicting a fruitful exchange of ideas. Best wishes on your future endeavors.

Jonathan

Barry Jones <barryjoneswhat@gmail.com>           

12:14 PM (8 minutes ago)   to Jonathan

First, I said good things about you and agreed with your basic premise, so I'm a bit less incorrigible/ignorant than you imply.

Second, if you really are the good conservative Christian you paint yourself to be, then you have no rational basis to believe I might take something you tell me and sue you for it.  If you didn't plan to libel or defame me, then you leave yourself no reason to avoid debate with me, especially in light of the fact that in your reply you don't mention any such thing as lack of time or being too busy. If you are fearful that I twist the law to frivolously sue people for libel, feel free to request from me a copy of my two lawsuits against James Patrick Holding, and you'll quickly discover that I don't twist the law or the facts when I sue people for libel.  You might have to face the grim possibility that your Christian brother Mr. Holding is every bit the unrepentant dishonest scumbag my lawsuits and my blog allege that he is, whether this truth upsets you or not.

Third, I did not express or imply that I'd win a debate with you all because you refused to step in the ring.  What I said was

    As usual when I contact Christian apologists, I will be posting this email to you at my blog, to make sure that if you choose not to respond, you will likely be asked why by Christians who read my blog, and they can then decide whether your reason for refusal to engage was because you think I am not intellectually qualified, or because you were fearful that you could not defend your faith in light of my attacks.

That neither expresses nor implies "if you don't respond, I win!".  I leaves it to the reader to decide whether your excuse for refusing to debate is genuine, or pretext.

Fourth, I'm not seeing how my history of suing people is relevant to you and I discussing your favorite apologetics arguments.  You cannot avoid the criticism "the 'sign' in Isaiah 7:14 was not the girl's virginity while pregnant, but the timing between the defeat of the two rival kingdoms Ahaz feared, and the boy's ability to distinguish good and evil" by saying "you've sued people in the past!"   My suing people in the past wouldn't help you escape the sad fact that there are only 3 resurrection testimonies in the NT that come down to us today in first-hand form.  If you think 3 is sufficient to compel belief upon pain of being proved irrational, you can surely attempt to sustain that thesis without needing to bring up the fact that I sued people in the past.

Fifth, You don't say so, but I cannot help believing that some of the reason you are so terse with me is that I really slaughtered the reputation of James Patrick Holding in a rather brutal way, and you are merely miffed at this gaping wound in the body of Christ left by a person you think is a disciple of the devil.  All factual allegations I made against anybody in any of my lawsuits were true, especially the two lawsuits I filed against James Patrick Holding.  Mr. Holding, dishonest fake Christian that he is, chose to pay a lawyer $21,000 to obtain dismissal of my lawsuits against him on technicalities so that he wouldn't have to answer my charges on the merits...instead of settling with me for thousands of dollars less as Jesus required of him in Matthew 5:25, 40.

Mr. Holding's refusal to agree to reasonable settlement was in violation of Jesus' legal advice, supra, and when he finally couldn't stand the pressure anymore, he posted a video giving an interpretation of that passage that he still cannot find any support for from any Christian scholar, liberal or conservative.  Worse, his interpretation contradicts the one espoused by conservative evangelical scholar Craig Blomberg, as I prove in one of my blogs.

Sixth, shame on you for dishonestly pretending my litigation history makes you think I'd be an unworthy or unqualified debate opponent.   I offered you specific debate challenges on specific debate topics that do not require either of us to bring up any living person's litigation history or reputation.  The reader will have to decide what makes more sense:  You really think my lawsuit history somehow proves I'm either dishonest in my bible arguments or too stupid to be deemed a worthy opponent, ...or you are instead fearful that you would lose a debate with me, but saving face is more important than letting the gazing public know the humbling truth.   You are an apologist.  You cannot exactly afford to admit your true fears.  You wish to lead others to the light.  You cannot achieve that goal if you admit there are some unbeliever-arguments that really kick your theological ass to the moon and back.

Well given that my suing people in the past doesn't have jack shit to do with whether my views of the bible are correct, I'm guessing that you are genuinely fearful you could not sustain a reasonable defense of your faith in debate with me, and the reason you lie about why you refuse to engage is because your desire to save face is stronger than your desire to be honest.

One of these days, a doubting Christian will take you up on your offer to help them get over a biblical problem, and will mention that something at my blog encouraged their doubts, then you will have to explain why you think the fact that I sued a lot of people in the past is sufficient reason to turn away from my bible criticism and tell yourself I surely must have gotten something wrong somewhere.  Good luck with that.

I continue to say that your bible-god approves of sex within adult-child marriages.  You have no rational warrant to charge me with foolishness and cataclysmic ignorance until AFTER you have debated me and found out for yourself how much or little I can sustain that thesis as you try to refute it.

When you become prepared to handle academic criticisms of your cherished beliefs in a way that doesn't involve the childish irrelevant subject matter you are currently trying to hide behind ("you've sued a lot of people!", etc), you know how to contact me.

Best wishes,

Barry Jones

http://turchisrong.blogspot.com

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 Update: September 9, 2017:  I just found Mr. McLatchie's Youtube channel, and thus found out he has also formally debated atheists and others, so when this is combined with his academic degrees in evolutionary biology, his "you've sued a lot of people!" excuse for refusing to debate me is even less sensible than I first asserted, but for now, this is what I posted at his channel, and I predict that it will be deleted by him as soon as he notices it:




I responded to another of his youtube videos:




I posted the following to another one of McLatchie's videos, here: