The Wizard

António Pedro Marques · 12 Mar 2012, 10:56 · from 2012-March.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?QW50w7NuaW8gUGVkcm8gTWFycXVlcw==?=)
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2012 10:56:22 +0000
Subject: (urth) The Wizard
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I *think* we are mostly in agreement, Daniel.

Daniel Petersen wrote (11-03-2012 18:22):
> 'Though I think a Christian should be able to defend the OT *also* in
> strictly Jewish terms.'
>
> Agreed.  That's partly why I'm not down with the OT God is just the best
> they could come up with at the time theory.  I think they were already
> worshiping a good, holy, beautiful God.  And many of them were worshiping
> him beautifully - that's why I take exception to the one-sided construal of
> God as nasty in the OT when there is SO much beauty in that library from
> both God and people - it's just not as simple as 'here's some evidence of
> brutality, etc., so it's clearly not legit'.  Sometimes I wonder if I'm
> reading the same OT as its critics (and 'friends').
>
>>     These strike me as FAR more fundamental to a good reading of the
>>     Bible's own doctrine of God than incidences of 'genocide'
>
>     What's in the injunction to spare no breathing Canaanite that warrants
>     those quotes?
>
>
> Whether we consciously realise it or not I think we all take the word
> 'genocide' to have built into its definition a negative moral judgment -
> that it is a word that describes a certain kind of evil and injustice, a
> large-scale /murder/ (wrongful killing). If a holy God did command the
> Israelites to completely eradicate the Canaanites, then by definition that
> God cannot have committed or commanded 'genocide' as understood in the way I
> have just described.  There must have been divine justice and goodness in
> what he willed.  I tentatively went into that before, especially where I
> emphasised that it's always important to remember God can eternally console,
> compensate, and surpass all that one suffers in this fallen life, including
> being unfortunately part of a people he decided had to be done living this
> life (goes for the Flood too - and indeed, the fact that every human dies
> one way or another).  The promise of a New Heavens and a New Earth (even
> already in the OT - e.g. Isaiah) shows too that God doesn't value some
> ethereal state over a bodily one, but that we have to WAIT for a renewed
> bodily existence that is not suffering from the effects of sin.  I believe
> that billions of people taken out of this life too early and so on are going
> to be rejoicing in a glorified material life infinitely greater than this
> one and not a one of them will be complaining about the earlier phase.  But,
> of course, it's understandable that we struggle with bitterness and unbelief
> in this veil of tears.  (Also, I should mention, of course, that if we
> believe in God as Judge at all, we have to make room for him to condemn the
> wicked - in this life or the next.  But both OT and NT teach consistently
> that he does so exceedingly reluctantly and does NO injustice in his 'final
> call' on everyone.)
>
> 'I'm convinced Jephthah's daughter lived a long life, but most commentators
> have historically assumed otherwise -       all because the story is laconic
> and suggestion goes a long way.'
>
> This is an important example story:  either way it is interpreted in regard
> to his daughter, it was NOT a divine command that he do this, but his own
> conception of how to live as an Israelite in a book that records a time when
> everyone was 'doing what was right in their own eyes'.  There's TONS of that
> kind of stuff in the OT as well.  Just because some bloke dismembers a
> woman, doesn't mean God approved of it!  Yeesh.  Explicit context is
> important as well.  (That's not directed to you - just a general vent.)
>
> But yes, I take your point about what's /un/said in both Wolfe and the
> Bible.  I think what I'm trying to say here about a truly, recognisably good
> God in the OT (even if at times inscrutable - a theme the OT writers often
> take up, but from a place of trust and worship) is really crucial to
> understanding the theism in Wolfe's fiction.  I'm convinced he draws from a
> GOOD God in the OT very strongly to write his own modern Exoduses and so on.
>   And that he draws from that as much as from the NT and later Catholic
> doctrine.
>
> -DOJP
>

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