OT: divine justice

James Wynn · 22 Mar 2005, 22:30 · from 2005-March.txt.gz

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From: thewynns at earthlink.net (James Wynn)
Date: Tue Mar 22 22:30:45 2005
Subject: (urth) OT: divine justice
References: <20050323045126.VVZE1282.fed1rmmtao03.cox.net at smtp.west.cox.net>
Message-ID: <010a01c52f71$d8c07a70$60a3f63f@wynnhouse>

>All this talk of Abraham and his son has enticed me to post again after my
>silence through the Skinner, et al. posts.
>
>As a child, I always thought about why Jesus had to suffer for the evil of
>the world.  Then it came to me, one day.  It reminds me of Simmons analysis
>of the Abraham sacrifice [that Abraham was testing God].

I've never met or read a Jewish Rabbi or secular religion scholar that did 
not find the Isaac sacrifice problematic. But I can assure you as an 
authority that Fundamentalist Christians don't find it problematic at all.

A) Because they (believing all the events in the OT stories to be historical 
fact) recognize that the story is absolutely *stewing* in Christian imagery 
(which is undeniably true). So they read Abraham story as they read the rest 
of the Old Testament: as a deliberate allegory set up by God to point to 
Jesus the Messiah.

B) Because the letter to the Hebrews (NT) states that Abraham was trusting 
in God's goodness and integrity in following a command he did not 
understand. It says that Abraham knew that God had promised to make a great 
nation from Isaac, so he believed that, if nothing else, God would raise him 
from the dead after the sacrifice. It was an act of child-like or 
knight-like trust in God.

~ Crush

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