AF,
Thanks for the “suggestions,” but I will employ my own form of citation. A type of citation, I might add, that any rational agent with an IQ of 100 or less could understand quite readily. My current responses will be marked with the words DUNS. The letters AF will identify your latest remarks. I will also add that I will be breaking up my post because of the length. It might take me days to address your cumulative 32 page posts. But I want to expose your dishonesty thoroughly.
:Now on to the meat of my response. I trust you'll be able to follow my use of the ":" symbol and respond in accord with the above simple instructions.:
DUNS: As mentioned heretofore, thanks for the “suggestions,” but I really have no use for them.
:::: Abraham's actions were nothing of the kind. Since for true believers, whatever God says is ethical, is ethical, Abraham made no suspension of his ethics -- he changed his ethics due to God's command, just as surely as worshipers of Jehovah changed their ethics when they went from being under Jewish Law to being under Christian principles.:
::: For now I'll just say that I think there is a sense in which Abraham did indeed suspend the ethical to obey God. True, he did not violate any ethical laws to fulfill the divine directive concerning His Son. But my point is that Abraham suspended what seemed ethical for a higher telos.
:: He didn't merely suspend it -- he substituted another for it. I pointed this out but you never address it.:
: Abraham, I think, made an antisocial gesture that SEEMED unethical to outsiders. He did not "substitute" the ethical, but placed what men commonly viewed as ethical in a suspended state.
AF: Don't fall into the trap of this sort of fuzzy logic. If such conduct seemed unethical to observers, then it was unethical to them. Your use of language here is designed to obscure rather than enlighten. The fact that someone like you or other Christians might argue that Abraham merely seemed to suspend his ethics merely reflects your own personal thinking. It has nothing to do with the story of Abraham, or his thinking, or God's thinking. We only know what those characters were thinking by what we can reasonably infer from what the story says they did and said.:
DUNS: There is a distinct metaphysical difference between “seeming” and “being” as pointed by out Plato in his Republic. More importantly, the Bible tells us that both Jesus and John the Baptizer performed actions that “seemed” unethical to others, but clearly were not unethical in and of themselves or in the eyes of the Divine one (Matt 11:16-19). You wretchedly confuse epistemological issues with material axiological ones. We both know that Abraham’s actions may have seemed unethical to his contemporaries, and that therefore his conduct would have appeared unethical to them. My point, however, was that the ethical transcends what men think is or is not moral. The ethical, in other words, has material (objective) axiological value that supersedes human mores.
AF: This is very simple, dunsscot: Until the point in time in question, Abraham knew that God disapproved of child sacrifice, don't you agree? In fact, everything we read in the Bible up to that point indicates that child sacrifice would be murder. Then God told Abraham to 'murder' his son. But "murder" is the illegal killing of a human. And since God defines "legal", since he is the Supreme Lawgiver, whatever he says is or is not murder is or is not murder. Period. That's why he could tell the Israelites to wipe out man, woman and child wholesale at various times -- he acted as lawgiver, judge and often executioner. In our case here, therefore, God's telling Abraham to kill Isaac was by definition not murder. Since until the point that God ordered Abraham to kill Isaac, Abraham viewed such killing as murder, and after that point he did not, his ethics changed. Why did they change? Because God, in effect, forced him to change. Now, you can call such change a "suspension" if you like, but in any case, he applied a different set of ethics to his dealings with Isaac before and after God's command. Applying a different set of ethics before and after some event means that one has substituted the later ethics for the earlier.
DUNS: Let us get the facts straight, shall we? God did not tell Abraham to “murder” his son. That is your erroneous addition to the text. What YHWH actually requested is made clear by the author of the Pentateuch: “Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.” The text says nothing about “murder,” but implies that Abraham would sacrifice Isaac as a burnt-offering to God. However, the phrase “burnt-offering” vis-à-vis humans does not necessarily refer to literal human sacrifices as Judges 11:1-40 demonstrates. Nevertheless, the context of Gen 22:1-12 suggests that Abraham construed God’s command as a request for a human sacrifice. In the foregoing paragraph, however, you have made the same mistake you did earlier. God is the Supreme Lawgiver. But He always acts in accord with the principles that have been eternally exemplified in Him (Deuteronomy 32:4). In other words, God does not simply dictate laws arbitrarily and act according to the system of ethics delineated by Thrasymachus in the Republic: Might does not make right. Therefore, God only acts in a just and loving manner, never contradicting Himself (1 John 4:8). He has determined that murder and child sacrifices are wrong because they unlovingly and unjustly violate human life, which is sacred and holy in the eyes of God. Murder thus can never be right in His eyes (neither murder nor child sacrifices become just or righteous because God commands someone to commit either act). As you have rightly noted above, however, murder and killing are not the same thing. However, to state the point directly, your interpretation of the Genesis account makes nonsense of the narrative. The narrator makes it clear that God was ‘testing’ Abraham (Gen 22:1). The account also suggests that Abraham, though he readily obeyed, felt the command was unusual (the order of the waw consecutives in Genesis 22:3 may point to Abraham’s confused state as he prepared himself for the trip to Moriah). His comment in Gen 22:5 is also of interest: “I and the lad will go yonder; and we will worship, and come again to you.” If Abraham simply “substituted” the ethical, as you contend, I fail to see how the entire incident could have really served as a test. It could only have been a test if Abraham thought the command was unusual for YHWH: “To follow Yahweh’s direction may take a person to the very verge of the ‘unethical’ (Gen. 22). Abraham’s words in Genesis 22:7-8 also indicate that he did not think God would ultimately make him slaughter his son. God would provide the burnt-offering, Abraham thought. The quote concerning YHWH and the “unethical is taken from Smith, Ralph. Old Testament Theology: Its History, Method, and the Message. Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman, 1993. Page 350.
: Conversely, Kierkegaard also indicates that God's Will remained God's Will--even when He (God) told Abraham to slaughter his only-begotten Son. Therefore, onlookers could have thought he was DISOBEYING God when he as good as offered up Isaac.
AF: Let me make a point very clear to you, dunsscot. In posts subsequent to this one I will delete without comment any of your refereces to these philosophers that are unaccompanied by your own explanations of their arguments. I'm not about to read reams of esoteric claptrap just to deal with your pretentious way of arguing. I understand that you're playing some sort of game, but I will not continue playing along. Furthermore, I will delete without comment any of your windbagging and pretentious use of words. Therefore if you want to continue this entertaining dialog, you will henceforth have to do it on my terms, or you will be talking to yourself. Do you understand? I'm sure you do, as your windbagging is studied and deliberate.:
DUNS: Understand this, AF. I am going to dialogue with you in my way. I could care less what you or anyone else thinks about my style. Take it or leave it. I am leaving this forum anyhow.
AF: In any case, what ancient onlookers thought is irrelevant. We're not talking about their perceptions. We're talking about the perceptions of hopefully objective observers in the 21st century.
DUNS: The main point I am trying to extract from the Abraham narrative is this: Abraham engaged in an act that contemporary observers no doubt considered repugnant and unethical. But Abraham’s actions only seemed unethical. In reality, Abraham merely suspended universal ethical norms for a higher end. The religious, in Kierkegaardian terms, took priority over the ethical.
::: Certain scholars have pointed out that Kierkegaard meant Abraham performed what seemed to be an antisocial gesture in order to fulfill a religious commitment. Kierkegaard explicitly writes that Abraham showed himself willing to offer up Isaac for God and himself.
:: I wish you'd quit prattling on about Kierkegaard and such wordly philosophers. Just state what you believe and why.
: First, I am not sure what I believe in this case. As I mentioned, I'm in process regarding this issue.
AF: What??? You're arguing as if you have all the answers! If you're "in process", then don't be so arrogant about what you admittedly don't understand.:
DUNS: My comment especially pertained to blood transfusions and the Society’s treatment of those baptized Witnesses who decide to accept them in certain situations. I have not manifested any arrogance regarding that issue. I do hold, however, certain beliefs concerning the relationship between the ethical and the religious. I have heretofore stated such views humbly.
: Secondly, the apostle Paul asked, 'what do we have that we did not receive?' I thus give props to all those thinkers who preceded me. Sir Isaac Newton, whatever he meant by it, noted that if he could see any further than his contemporaries, it was because he stood upon the shoulders of giants.
AF: That's fine, and we should certainly take account of quality observations on various things. But in the final analysis, we need to make our own study and then our own judgment. To do less would be to foist on someone else your responsibility for your own life, or it would make you mentally lazy. I don't think you're into either of those options.
DUNS: I have made my own studies and subsequent judgments. However, you are woefully ignorant if you think any of us reasons from the locus of nowhere. Both you and I reason and make judgments based on a certain epistemological framework. We make certain conclusions and put forth contentions within the framework of certain traditions. It is less than honest to act as if we have brought forth ideas ex nihilo. One can critically evaluate the ideas of others, adjudicate the said concepts, and then report his or her conclusions on the concepts thus assimilated. As I indicated earlier, I am really in process on a number of issues and it will take more reading to finally decide where I stand. Until then, I will read different schools of philosophical thought and show from whence my thoughts derive.
AF: In practice, that means explaining in your own words what you think these authorities are saying, and also providing references and quotations, if you think that would be helpful. Simply saying, "Freud said blah blah blah" without explaining why he said it and the reasoning behind it is nearly worthless, especially to an audience that is not into reading esoteric philosophers.
DUNS: I am not writing a collegiate or university thesis here. Much more work, thought, analysis and polish would go into a formal essay. I am simply trying to think aloud on this forum and share an opposing point of view with other participants. Furthermore, I have honestly tried to avoid dogmatism for the most part. Most of my activity here has entailed sharing. Therefore, I do not have to produce a detailed argument in my own words when I am sharing information. When dialoging in earnest, however, I think that one does need to explain matters in his or her words.
AF: Why do you think that in my own writings that appear on Osarsif's website, I not only quote people, but comment on it in my own words?
DUNS: You are not telling me anything novel, AF.
::: The command to offer up Isaac was not necessarily unethical. But if God would have allowed Abraham to go through with slaughtering His Son, that act could have been construed--indeed, may have been!--unjust.
:: Why would it have been unjust? Isn't it true that JWs believe that the Bible teaches that the God-Abraham-Isaac story is an illustration and forerunner of what God actually did with his own Son? If the larger reality was just, then how could the smaller illustration of it -- even though uncompleted -- be unjust?
: In the pentateuchal account, God is clearly trying or testing Abraham (Genesis 22:1), and He prevents Abraham from murdering his OWN Son. In the NT telling of the divine Heilsgeschichte, it is not God who slaughters His Son, but the seed of Satan. God permits the Messiah to be crushed (Isaiah 53:10). But He does not "crush" or "make him sick" or even mortify him personally.
AF: You've failed to answer my question: Why would it have been unjust for God to allow Abraham to kill Isaac? He could have resurrected Isaac without a problem and there would have been no repercussions. And of course, God's orchestrating or allowing mass slaughters all through Bible history shows that he doesn't hesitate to kill or allow to be killed massive numbers of people when it suits his purposes.
DUNS: Malachi 3:6 emphatically states that YHWH does not change. This passage evidently deals with the unchangeableness of God’s faithfulness and standards. (The verse does not deal with God’s putative ontological immutability). If the rest of the OT is consistent with Malachi 3:6, then God cannot—in fact, does not—change His standards willy-nilly (as you claim). The OT makes it clear that YHWH refuses to accept child sacrifices (Deuteronomy 12:29-31). The prophets utter such statements at differing and various periods in Israel’s history. If God is the same God, with whom there is no turning of a shadow, then He would have acted according to His own express statements found elsewhere in the OT when dealing with Abraham and Isaac (Micah 6:7; James 1:17). I do not believe that God capriciously changes or violates His own expressly stated purpose. It would have been just, therefore, to command Abraham to take an innocent life and in this way violate the sanctity of human Being (Dasein).
AF: As for God's permitting "the Messiah to be crushed", the Bible is very clear that God himself ordained and controlled events so that the Messiah was killed. It matters not who the actual agent was -- God set it up and ensured that the killing took place. And again, because he set it up that way, it was by definition just.
DUNS: Acts 2:23 tells us that Jesus was “delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye [the Jews] by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay.” Notice that two factors were instrumental in Jesus’ death at the hands of “lawless men.” These two factors were God’s “determinate counsel” (hWRISMENH BOULH) and His “foreknowledge” (PROGNWSEI). John Sanders aptly notes that God purposed to “to deliver the Son into the hands of those who had a long track record of resisting God’s work” (The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence. Downer’s Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1998. Page 103). This observation is in harmony with Genesis 3:15 and Luke 11:50-51. God foreknew that certain humans would resist the Messiah and ultimately put him to death. Nevertheless, YHWH did not “ensure the killing would take place.” There is no evidence for such a notion in the Bible. The Jews, being free moral agents, could have brought it about that Jesus did not die. The Gospels and Luke-Acts assure us that God did not think the death of the Messiah was a just act (cf. John 15:19-27; Acts 3:17-26).
::::: and a modern JWs refusal to take blood. I even stated that I think blood tranfusions should be a matter of conscience, period.
:::: You are to be commended for this stand. It could get you DA'd, you know.
::: That's a consequence one has to live with for now. What happened to those persons who dared to defy wicked King Zedekiah or King Joash? I think you well know the answer to this question.
:: Of course, and so I think you understand my point: the Governing Body is no different from those wicked kings, in that they all demand obededience to their persons over obedience to God, and punish those who obey God first.
: I understand your point, and disagree with it.
AF: You can disagree all you want, but unless you explain yourself you haven't accomplished a thing. Contrary to what you claimed at the beginning of this post, you did not "address it".
DUNS: I notice your fallacious use of argumentum secundum quid above. You sensationalize matters by telling a blatant lie. Every Governing Body member does not/has not demanded obedience “to their persons over obedience to God.” There is no way you can verify this statement and you know it (cf. 4/1/88 WT) Additionally, not every Governing Body member has punished those who choose to obey God as Ruler rather than man (even those men taking the lead). I have now addressed your lie and shown that it is a false utterance en toto.
:: But there is a big difference in the situations. According to the Bible, the Israelite nation was a special possession of God, not because of anything they themselves did, but because of God's ancient promise to Abraham. Indeed, if God was to fulfill his promise, he had no choice but to put up with a certain amount of Jewish misbehavior.
: God and Christ also put up with much Christian misbehavior in the first century (Rev 2-3).
AF: And? What does that have to do with my point?
DUNS: How could an intelligent man like you miss it? The point is so obvious that it stares you right in the face, to wit, God’s long-suffering vis-à-vis misbehavior was not limited to the ancient Israelites. For, He also put up with misconduct practiced by first century Christians for a somewhat extended period of time. Since YHWH is evidently the same today as He was in the first century, it seems that He would also tolerate misbehavior among his people today for a time.
:: On the other hand, JW leaders claim to be in their positions not because of a promise made to one of their ancestors, but because JW (more properly, Bible Student) leaders from roughly 1880 to 1919 were so superior in every important way to other Christians that God selected them as his special earthly spokesmen.
: I do not think that your statement aptly describes the attitude of JW leadership. The Proclaimers book shows that other groups had a measure of the truth besides the Bible Students. But Russell thought that JWs were able to piece more of the biblical puzzle together through God's spirit. Russell and other men at that time believed that God's favor shone on them because of the scriptural understanding they had acquired. However, Russell was not haughty about the gems of truth available to the Bible Students at that time.
AF: Of course he was. Would you like me to produce reams of documentation to prove it? He called himself "God's mouthpiece". He taught that anyone who failed to read his books would, within two years, "go off into darkness". If I told you, dunsscot, that I was God's mouthpiece and that if you didn't study and apply my writings every day you'd go off into darkness in short order, you'd rightly claim that I was haughty. You display a double standard here.
DUNS: Calling oneself “God’s mouthpiece” does not mean one is necessarily haughty. Of course, I would expect documentation for such a claim and for the statement concerning Russell’s books. One or two pieces of evidence will do. But the historical evidence shows that Russell was a humble brother. Please note the following information. Quoting Russell, the Kingdom Has Approached book noted:
*** ka 345-6 17 The "Slave" Who Lived to See the "Sign" ***
Watch Tower issue of November, 1881, page 5. In the fourth- and fifth-last paragraphs of the article “In the Vineyard,” he [Russell] said:
We believe that every member of this body of Christ is engaged in the blessed work, either directly or indirectly, of giving meat in due season to the household of faith. “Who then is that faithful and wise servant whom his Lord hath made ruler over his household,” to give them meat in due season? Is it not that “little flock” of consecrated servants who are faithfully carrying out their consecration vows—the body of Christ—and is not the whole body individually and collectively, giving the meat in due season to the household of faith—the great company of believers?
Blessed is that servant (the whole body of Christ) whom his Lord when he has come (Gr. elthon) shall find so doing. “Verily, I say unto you, that he shall make him ruler over all his goods.” “He shall inherit all things.”
31 From this it is clearly seen that the editor and publisher of Zion’s Watch Tower disavowed any claim to being individually, in his person, that “faithful and wise servant.” He never did claim to be such. However, he did continue to edit the Watch Tower magazine down to the day of his death on October 31, 1916.
From the Proclaimers book, we also read:
*** jv 120 10 Growing in Accurate Knowledge of the Truth ***
He [Russell] mentioned by name older men such as Jonas Wendell, George Stetson, George Storrs, and Nelson Barbour, who personally contributed to his understanding of God’s Word in various ways. He also stated: “Various doctrines we hold and which seem so new and fresh and different were held in some form long ago: for instance—Election, Free Grace, Restitution, Justification, Sanctification, Glorification, Resurrection.” It was often the case, however, that one religious group was distinguished by a clearer understanding of one Bible truth; another group, by a different truth. Their further progress was frequently hindered because they were shackled to doctrines and creeds that embodied beliefs that had flourished in ancient Babylon and Egypt or that were borrowed from Greek philosophers.
*** jv 49 5 Proclaiming the Lord's Return (1870-1914) ***
Then how did Russell perceive the role that he and his associates played in publishing Scriptural truth? He explained: “Our work . . . has been to bring together these long scattered fragments of truth and present them to the Lord’s people—not as new, not as our own, but as the Lord’s. . . . We must disclaim any credit even for the finding and rearrangement of the jewels of truth.” He further stated: “The work in which the Lord has been pleased to use our humble talents has been less a work of origination than of reconstruction, adjustment, harmonization.”
Russell thus was quite modest about his accomplishments. Nevertheless, the “scattered fragments of truth” that he brought together and presented to the Lord’s people were free of the God-dishonoring pagan doctrines of the Trinity and immortality of the soul, which had become entrenched in the churches of Christendom as a result of the great apostasy. Like no one at that time, Russell and his associates proclaimed worldwide the meaning of the Lord’s return and of the divine purpose and what it involved.
DUNS: Pastor Russell was a humble servant of YHWH. Quod erat demonstrandum.
: I think the men presently serving on the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses also recognize that they are not a part of "God's Organization" because of what they have done.
AF: That's a misrepresentation of what I said. Perhaps not what they personally have done, but that's because the leaders who supposedly were so superior are all dead. Russell and his group were the prime examples until 1916, and then Rutherford and his stooges took over. In 1919, it is now claimed, Jesus came to the earth and found this group of religious leaders so superior to every other that he appointed them "over all his belongings". That is a fundamental teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses.
DUNS: You spew forth yet more lies. You are getting pretty sloppy and careless here, my friend. Get your facts straight! Jehovah’s Witness do not teach that their “group of religious leaders” were “so superior to every other” that Christ appointed the JW “leaders” over “all his belongings.” JWs do not even claim to have leaders and they do not believe that Jesus “came to the earth” in 1919. Most importantly, the JW “leaders” (as you call them) have never thought they were superior to other “leaders.”
From the Revelation Climax book:
*** re 162-3 25 Reviving the Two Witnesses ***
7 Why was John forbidden to measure the courtyard? He tells us in these words: “But as for the courtyard that is outside the temple sanctuary, cast it clear out and do not measure it, because it has been given to the nations, and they will trample the holy city underfoot for forty-two months.” (Revelation 11:2) We have noted that the inner courtyard pictures the righteous standing on earth of spirit-begotten Christians. As we shall see, the reference here is to the literal 42 months extending from October 1914 into 1918, when all professing Christians were put to a severe test. Would they uphold Jehovah’s righteous standards during those war years? Most did not. En bloc, the clergy of Christendom put nationalism ahead of obedience to divine law. On both sides of the war, which was fought mainly in Christendom, the clergy preached the young men into the trenches. Millions were slaughtered. By the time that judgment started with the house of God in 1918, the United States had also entered that bloodspilling, and the clergy of all of Christendom had incurred a bloodguilt that still cries out for divine vengeance. (1 Peter 4:17) Their being cast out has become permanent, irreversible.—Isaiah 59:1-3, 7, 8; Jeremiah 19:3, 4.
8 What, though, of the small group of Bible Students? Were they to be measured immediately in 1914 by their adherence to divine standards? No. Like the professed Christians of Christendom, they too must be tested. They were ‘cast clear out, given to the nations’ to be severely tried and persecuted. Many of them realized that they should not go out and kill their fellowman, but as yet they did not fully appreciate Christian neutrality. (Micah 4:3; John 17:14, 16; 1 John 3:15) Under pressure from the nations, some compromised.
DUNS: Notice that some of the Bible Students, according to the WTS publication, “compromised” their neutral stance. Other publications have also shown that the remnant of God’s people needed to be refined when Jesus came to the spiritual Temple with YHWH.
*** w87 6/15 15 Testing and Sifting in Modern Times ***
WHEN “the true Lord” came to the spiritual temple accompanied by his “messenger of the covenant,” shortly after the Kingdom was set up in heaven in 1914, what did Jehovah find? His people were in need of refining and cleansing. Would they subject themselves to this and endure any needed cleaning of their organization, activity, doctrine, and conduct? As Malachi put it: “Who will be putting up with the day of his coming, and who will be the one standing when he appears?”—Malachi 3:1, 2.
DUNS: Your unsupported contentions are thus exposed as lies, plain and simple.
Duns the Scot