Trump's Christian supporters are unchristian

[JonathanL]

IMO, that's probably the single most mistranslated and misunderstood passage in the bible.

It's so densely packed with technical terms (righteousness, law, faith, sin, grace, propitiation, justified etc) that the passage can be made to mean almost anything depending on how those terms are understood. Worst passage in the bible to try and base a theology on as it's so malleable and ambiguously interpretable. As Augustine once said, you should get your theology from the clearer and least ambiguous passages and only gradually work your way up to the more complex ones and interpret them in the light of the simpler ones. The heavy reliance of the modern evangelical theological paradigm of Penal Substitution on complex and ambiguously translatable passages like this ought to raise red flags.

Whatever you say, Mr. Bible-Scholar.

[JimL]

Yes, that's because you are neither just or merciful. Acting in a just or a merciful way isn't the same thing as having a nature defined as just and or merciful. You can only act in accordance with both terms if you are not by nature defined by either term.

[Starlight]

Whatever you say, Mr. Bible-Scholar.

Yes. And you're welcome.

[Tassman]

What you're saying is that "morality" is nothing more than a social construct with no objective grounding.

[lilpixieofterror]

IMO, that's probably the single most mistranslated and misunderstood passage in the bible.

It's so densely packed with technical terms (righteousness, law, faith, sin, grace, propitiation, justified etc) that the passage can be made to mean almost anything depending on how those terms are understood. Worst passage in the bible to try and base a theology on as it's so malleable and ambiguously interpretable. As Augustine once said, you should get your theology from the clearer and least ambiguous passages and only gradually work your way up to the more complex ones and interpret them in the light of the simpler ones. The heavy reliance of the modern evangelical theological paradigm of Penal Substitution on complex and ambiguously translatable passages like this ought to raise red flags.

Sorry Mr Bible Skollar, but God being just and merciful is established throughout the Bible.

[lilpixieofterror]

Yes, that's because you are neither just or merciful. Acting in a just or a merciful way isn't the same thing as having a nature defined as just and or merciful. You can only act in accordance with both terms if you are not by nature defined by either term.

[Starlight]

God being just and merciful is established throughout the Bible.

Merciful I will agree with, within limits - there are certainly plenty of instances in various places in the bible where God is depicted as merciful. Of course, there are plenty of places where God isn't merciful too.

"Just" is much more iffy and complex. Philosophical ideas of 'justice' can vary widely, and include opposites such as vengeance (against those thought guilty) and rescue (of those thought innocent), so to say whether the bible supports overall or in any particular passage any particular idea of "justice" is complex. And translations of terms used in the bible that sometimes get translated justice can be varied too - what one person translates as "justice" another renders "loving-kindness" or "righteousness" or "covenant faithfulness" etc. So even the question of whether "just" is an attribute ever ascribed to God in the entire bible has a rather vague answer. Overall I would say that the bible does not particularly present God as "just" in any standard modern sense of the word. The whole book of Job even focuses on the question of why God doesn't seem to be acting justly and the answer boils down to "don't ascribe human ideals like justice to a God who is above human comprehension". So I would say the bible overall is more against than it is for the idea that God is 'just'.

Of course, once it is noted that the biblical God's interest in the concept of distributive justice is pretty limited to the extent that it even exists at all, then the penal substitutionary paradigm pretty much falls apart. Because if God is quite happy to be merciful when he feels like it, and feels like forgiving sinners out of mercy, then he can. Then the notion of sacrificing himself on the cross to appease his own (non-existent) need for 'justice' no longer makes sense.

[oxmixmudd]

I've said nothing in this thread about voting. You are off in the weeds.


Jim

[oxmixmudd]

I agree with your definition of a moral standard, i.e. a codification of what people generally consider to be good within society or culture, but I don't agree with you that people are either moral or immoral as those terms merely define the specific behaviors of people in specific circumstances. Sometimes we opt to do what is generally thought to be right, sometimes we do the opposite, which we call sinning or acting immorally. But I think that the christian perspective, which claims humans to have this sin nature, tags humanity as being inherently immoral.

No - not inherently immoral. Inherently incapable of being truly good. Suppose I give a really poor starving fellow a meal. Now that is a good thing. But suppose the only reason I gave the really poor starving person a meal was because I could deduct the contribution on my taxes. Is it still a good thing? Well, it doesn't matter much to the poor starving person because he got a meal. But suppose the government pulls the tax break? Now only people that give for a reason other than the tax break will keep on giving poor starving people free meals for some other reason and there will be more hungry people and less free meals. Now suppose a famine hits and the only reason most of the people still giving out free meals was because they had extra food. Now that there is a famine there isn't any extra food. And there are lots of poor starving people and then some other people that happen to have a little more that aren't starving. But there will still be some that are truly compassionate that are willing to be a little hungry and help out a poor starving person every now and then so they can be a little less hungry. This last set exhibit true goodness, because they are willing to give to the helpless even when they are somewhat helpless themselves.

But there are not many people like that in the world, are there? True goodness is rare.

Christians believe we are all hampered by the sin nature. And that keeps us from being able to be truly good, no matter how hard we try. We may be the sort of person that would give to the poor starving guy, yet we would still struggle somewhere else to be truly good.

So it's not about morality Jim. It's about being truly good and the fact that we all have a nature that makes it almost impossible to be truly good.


Jim

[lilpixieofterror]

I've said nothing in this thread about voting. You are off in the weeds.


Jim

So what evil have I returned? Do explain.

[lilpixieofterror]

Merciful I will agree with, within limits - there are certainly plenty of instances in various places in the bible where God is depicted as merciful. Of course, there are plenty of places where God isn't merciful too.

"Just" is much more iffy and complex. Philosophical ideas of 'justice' can vary widely, and include opposites such as vengeance (against those thought guilty) and rescue (of those thought innocent), so to say whether the bible supports overall or in any particular passage any particular idea of "justice" is complex. And translations of terms used in the bible that sometimes get translated justice can be varied too - what one person translates as "justice" another renders "loving-kindness" or "righteousness" or "covenant faithfulness" etc. So even the question of whether "just" is an attribute ever ascribed to God in the entire bible has a rather vague answer. Overall I would say that the bible does not particularly present God as "just" in any standard modern sense of the word. The whole book of Job even focuses on the question of why God doesn't seem to be acting justly and the answer boils down to "don't ascribe human ideals like justice to a God who is above human comprehension". So I would say the bible overall is more against than it is for the idea that God is 'just'.

Of course, once it is noted that the biblical God's interest in the concept of distributive justice is pretty limited to the extent that it even exists at all, the the penal substitutionary paradigm pretty much falls apart. Because if God is quite happy to be merciful when he feels like it, and feels like forgiving sinners out of mercy, then he can. Then the notion of sacrificing himself on the cross to appease his own (non-existent) need for 'justice' no longer makes sense.

Not really. Several passages make it clear God has a nature that is both merciful and just. Do I need to dig up examples?

[oxmixmudd]

IMO, that's probably the single most mistranslated and misunderstood passage in the bible.

It's so densely packed with technical terms (righteousness, law, faith, sin, grace, propitiation, justified etc) that the passage can be made to mean almost anything depending on how those terms are understood. Worst passage in the bible to try and base a theology on as it's so malleable and ambiguously interpretable. As Augustine once said, you should get your theology from the clearer and least ambiguous passages and only gradually work your way up to the more complex ones and interpret them in the light of the simpler ones. The heavy reliance of the modern evangelical theological paradigm of Penal Substitution on complex and ambiguously translatable passages like this ought to raise red flags.

I don't really think you are being fair here Starlight. Yes, there are some technical terms, and yes, if one wants to swat at gnats or fight over nit picky stuff, there are many possible shades of meaning. But the overall thrust of the passage is quite clear. It is to address, as Chrawnus said, how God has balanced the requirements of righteousness and justice with the requirements of mercy and grace. And its primary message is that even though our sin can mean that we deserve punishment even death, God has provided a way for grace and mercy to win over the requirement of righteousness and judgement for those that are willing to accept God's provision.

Jim

[Starlight]

Christians believe we are all hampered by the sin nature. And that keeps us from being able to be truly good, no matter how hard we try. We may be the sort of person that would give to the poor starving guy, yet we would still struggle somewhere else to be truly good.

So it's not about morality Jim. It's about being truly good and the fact that we all have a nature that makes it almost impossible to be truly good.

But similarly few if any people are truly evil in all and every respect. So you could equally say that humans are good in general because they are not truly evil in all respects. It seems arbitrary which point of view you take.

The actions of humans in general are complex and motivated by multiple things at any given time and take place within social situations where actions have multiple effects... so it's pretty inevitable any action will have pros and cons and exist on a scale of gray. I obviously think we should all strive to do more good and less evil, and should all aim high. But the very ideas of 'truly' good/evil actions/people are almost nonsensical to the extent that actions have unforeseen consequences and multiple motivations and effects.

P.S. I would add on this topic, with regard to my other post, that I don't think the modern interpretation of the bible's use of "sinful" as meaning "sinned even once ever" is accurate. The bible typically uses 'righteous' / 'sinner' in a colloquial way much like we say Santa makes a list of 'naughty' and 'nice'. Santa's 'naughty' list is not a list of the kids who were naughty even once ever, it's a hand-waving characterization of the sum of their behavior as being more bad than good or as generally not good enough overall. The bible typically uses 'sin' / 'sinner' etc the same way. It's not a "sinned even once" thing, it's a hand-waving "overall, more bad than good" type of thing.

[Starlight]

I don't really think you are being fair here Starlight. Yes, there are some technical terms, and yes, if one wants to swat at gnats or fight over nit picky stuff, there are many possible shades of meaning. But the overall thrust of the passage is quite clear.

Certainly in the English translation given, the meaning is pretty clear.

If half the words were translated differently (as I think they should be) the meaning would be quite different (and I think it was/is).

It is to address, as Chrawnus said, how God has balanced the requirements of righteousness and justice with the requirements of mercy and grace.

Yes, that is at face value in that English translation the apparent meaning of the text. That was the interpretation I grew up with in an evangelical church environment. It was only after years of biblical study that I came to understand why and how that is a mistranslation/misinterpretion of Paul's meaning.

As I said to LPOT, I think a key concept is that the biblical God simply doesn't have the level of commitment to the philosophical concept of justice that evangelicals like to ascribe to him, and instead is perfectly happy to have an "I'm a loving and merciful God, so I forgive you" attitude when the mood takes him just like any parent has toward their child. So I think one of the errors that evangelicals make to reach their modern penal substitutionary paradigm is to project their own ideas about justice into the text and to too readily translate certain Greek and Hebrew words as "just" or "justice" when those words are better rendered into very different English terms.

[oxmixmudd]

Certainly in the English translation given, the meaning is pretty clear.

If half the words were translated differently (as I think they should be) the meaning would be quite different (and I think it was/is).

Yes, that is at face value in that English translation the apparent meaning of the text. That was the interpretation I grew up with in an evangelical church environment. It was only after years of biblical study that I came to understand why and how that is a mistranslation/misinterpretion of Paul's meaning.

As I said to LPOT, I think a key concept is that the biblical God simply doesn't have the level of commitment to the philosophical concept of justice that evangelicals like to ascribe to him, and instead is perfectly happy to have an "I'm a loving and merciful God, so I forgive you" attitude when the mood takes him just like any parent has toward their child. So I think one of the errors that evangelicals make to reach their modern penal substitutionary paradigm is to project their own ideas about justice into the text and to too readily translate certain Greek and Hebrew words as "just" or "justice" when those words are better rendered into very different English terms.

So how/why do you think it should be translated differently?

Jim