Gospel Editing Precludes Divine Inspiration

[backwoodsman]

But holding a heretical belief doesn't necessarily make someone not a Christian. They can just be mistaken.

True enough, but that's not the question here. The question is, can a disciple of Jesus believe Jesus was wrong on some major fundamental point(s)? Both Scripture and logic say the answer is, by definition, no. Those who disagree (psimmond in the present case, and Paidion in past discussions) have yet to offer anything more solid than their own opinions on which to base their case; yet they still insist they're right, and Jesus is wrong.

[morbo3000]

Stever wrote: If you do not accept the New Testament record of Christ, then why not just say so outright and be done with any pretense of being a disciple of Jesus.

I don't have a horse in the race of this thread. I'm coming in late, and there is too much to read.

But.

You don't have to accept the New Testament as a -perfect- record of Christ to be a disciple.

I don't have a problem saying both: I don't believe the New Testament is perfect. And I am a disciple.

Perhaps Steve is correct that it is helpful in a conversation or disagreement to admit those things ahead of time.

[mattrose]

But holding a heretical belief doesn't necessarily make someone not a Christian. They can just be mistaken.

True enough, but that's not the question here. The question is, can a disciple of Jesus believe Jesus was wrong on some major fundamental point(s)? Both Scripture and logic say the answer is, by definition, no. Those who disagree (psimmond in the present case, and Paidion in past discussions) have yet to offer anything more solid than their own opinions on which to base their case; yet they still insist they're right, and Jesus is wrong.

Ah, thanks for clarifying.

Since Jesus is the fullest revelation of God there is... I'm not sure how anyone would come to KNOW that something Jesus revealed was incorrect!

My 2 cents

[steve]

I don't have a problem saying both: I don't believe the New Testament is perfect. And I am a disciple.

Fair enough. Being a Christian/disciple does not necessarily require a belief in a perfect New Testament (though it helps!). Christianity is not so much a belief about the canon of the New Testament as it is about the Lord of the New Testament. One who doubts the perfection of Christ's own teaching implies the doubter's superiority to him (how can one know Jesus to be "wrong about something" without implicitly claiming to know more than He knows?).

I don't know whether Jesus knew that there are seeds smaller than mustard seeds or not (it is inconsequential), though His statement can easily be seen as deliberately restricted to the realm of Middle Eastern garden seeds without doing violence to His point. Jesus did not claim to be omniscient—but He did claim to be telling the truth.

He said that His teaching was not His own, but the Father's, who sent Him. If He emphatically taught that the Law of Moses was the same as the commandment of God (condemning His critics for not believing this), and He was Himself mistaken, then there is no moral or theological teaching of His that can be trusted. Those who can't accept His honesty and competence to speak for God should choose for themselves a label more suited to their beliefs than the one that advertises themselves as His disciples.

[Paidion]

I don't believe Jesus was mistaken. And I don't think Psimmond believes so either. I do believe that Steve Gregg is mistaken.

Wretched daughter of Babylon! blessed shall he be who shall reward thee as thou hast rewarded us. Blessed shall he be who shall seize and dash thine infants against the rock. (Psalm 137:8,9 A translation of the Septuagint)

Oh what a wonderful blessing David grants to those who dash Babylonian babies' heads against a rock! If we follow David's principles, we'll get our revenge against those who do us ill, by grabbing their babies and smashing their heads against a rock! However, there's no contradiction here, IS there Steve? David was a man after God's own heart, and so he held the same Godly principles as God Himself. God is not only love and justice, but He is hateful and vengeful, isn't He, Steve? To affirm that He is pure love is to assign a one-dimensional nature to God. So He would wholeheartedly approve of David's methods of revenge against the Babylonians by killing their innocent babies in this way. No inconsistency with His character whatever, for He's bi-dimensional! He's not just a God of love and grace whose kindness leads us to repentance, who is kind to evil and ungrateful people as Jesus taught. But He is also a God of hate and vengeance! His Son, who is the exact image of the Father's essence, and who taught us to pray for our enemies and love them and thus show ourselves to truly be sons of the Father, must also be bi-dimensional, hateful and vengeful, who would approve smashing our enemies' babies against a rock (though He never remotely suggested such an atrocity).

No, Jesus didn't agree with the Mosaic law. He didn't agree with the Pharisees who wanted to stone the adulteress, according to the Mosaic law. Rather He shamed the Pharisees, and so saved her life, instructing her to sin no more.

Yes, Jesus said these words:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (Matt 5:17,18)

But He wasn't talking about carrying out the Mosaic law in his life. That He didn't do. He broke the Sabbath (John 5:18). What Jesus was talking about in the above passage concerned the predictions of the part of the Hebrew scriptures known as "The Law" (The Torah consisted Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) and the part of the Hebrew scriptures known as "The Prophets." Jesus said that Moses wrote about Him. The prophets, e.g. Isaiah, also wrote about Him. He wasn't going to do away with these prophecies. Rather He was going to fulfill all of those prophecies about Himself.

According to Matthew, Jesus also summed up the instructions of the Law and the Prophets in this way:

So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. (Matt 7:12 ESV)

Doing to others what you wish they would do to you doesn't sound at all like smashing their babies' heads against a rock or killing them, or punishing them in any other manner. But those are the kinds of things that God supposedly commanded according to Moses and some of the prophets. If that was the character of God, it didn't show in the teachings of the Son of God who was the exact imprint of the Father's essence. At no time did He issue this type of command to His disciples. Jesus seems to have been entirely "one-dimensional." Should He be condemned as a heretic, Steve, as you are condemning PSimmond?

As for me, I will maintain my belief in the "one-dimensional" God of LOVE in whom there is NO DARKNESS AT ALL (1 John 1:5)

[steve]

Paidion,

David never said a word about dashing the babies against walls, nor did he lay down his harp by the rivers of Babylon. Even the exiled psalmist who wrote Psalm 137, which you cited, did not recommend that anyone do such things.

At the worst, psalmist was pronouncing a blessing on those whom God would use to repay the Babylonians in kind for their atrocities. Since the man who led the expedition accomplishing this was Cyrus the Persian, whom God called His "anointed" and "my shepherd, who will perform all my pleasure," such a beatitude would not seem inappropriate.

At best, the psalmist was only predicting the glee (happy are they...) with which they would do so. There is no recommendation or endorsement of that kind of behavior in the Psalm. You are reacting emotionally, rather than rationally, to its contents.

Your references from the Gospels are irrelevant to the point we are debating.

I never said (nor would I do so) that Jesus kept the Mosaic Law, nor that He taught New Covenant believers to do so. However, He did teach that the Law was of divine origin, and that Jews living under the Old Covenant were required to keep the Law, down to the very least of the commands (Matt.5:19-20).

That Jesus and Paul believed that God was the author of the Law is incontrovertible, if we take their own statements seriously, without imposing our pre-fabricated mold concerning what we think they should or should not have thought. You have presented no words of Jesus, or any other biblical voice, to prove (or even suggest) the thesis I have challenged you to defend—namely, that Jesus did not recognize God as the author of the Mosaic Law. The points you made in your previous post are not relevant to the issues we are debating.

Your limitation of "the Law" fulfilled by Christ to the direct "predictions" in the Law about the Messiah is arbitrary and without merit. Exactly how many "predictions" about the Messiah are found in the Torah? Five, perhaps? Maybe six?* If Jesus only had this handful of predictions in mind, then His phrase "not one jot or tittle of the Law" seems far too sweeping...and His teaching about the need to keep even "the least of these commandments," in the verse immediately following, gives a very different impression to your suggestion.

Christ's fulfillment of the Law, as the New Testament writers were fond of pointing out, was His fulfillment of the abundant types embodied in the ritual laws. Jesus fulfilled the spiritual meanings of, for example, Passover law, the sabbath law, the dietary laws, the sacrificial laws, the priestly laws, etc. One needn't look far in the New Testament to find these assertions. In other words, "I came to fulfill the Law" means far more than the three or four passages in Torah that might be regarded as containing Messianic prophecies. By the "Law" He primarily means the praxis prescribed to Israel in the laws God gave them.

Your errors arise, largely, from your failure to understand the primary or sole meanings of the passages you cite. On ambiguous passages, we might be permitted a certain breadth of interpretive liberty. However, we are not permitted to make Jesus believe the exact opposite of what He regularly declared to be His position. This is the creation of another Jesus.
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* Besides the oft-repeated promise of Abraham's Seed blessing the nations, these are the Messianic predictions in the Torah of which I am aware (some could be contested): Genesis 3:15; 22:8; 49:10; Num.24:17 (?); Deut.18:15 If all of these be accepted as predictions about Messiah, this comes to about six altogether (with one of them repeated numerous times). Maybe someone can point out a few more, but even if the number could be raised to ten, direct predictions about Messiah represent a very unusual phenomenon in the Torah, seemingly comprising no more than 20 verses, at most.

[Paidion]

Paidion,

David never said a word about dashing the babies against walls, nor did he lay down his harp by the rivers of Babylon. Even the exiled psalmist who wrote Psalm 137, which you cited, did not recommend that anyone do such things.

Well... not everyone believes that David was not the author of this psalm. According to Gill, Aben Ezra ascribes this psalm to David; and so does the Syriac version, which calls it, “a psalm of David; the words of the saints, who were carried captive into Babylon.” The Septuagint, Latin Vulgate, and Ethiopic versions also ascribe it to David. See:

http://biblehub.com/commentaries/gill/psalms/137.htm

At the worst, psalmist was pronouncing a blessing on those whom God would use to repay the Babylonians in kind for their atrocities. Since the man who led the expedition accomplishing this was Cyrus the Persian, whom God called His "anointed" and "my shepherd, who will perform all my pleasure," such a beatitude would not seem inappropriate.

At best, the psalmist was only predicting the glee (happy are they...) with which they would do so.

The Jewish Study Bible, produced by the Jewish Publication Society, translates verses 8 and 9 as: " Fair Babylon, you predator, a blessing on him who repays you in kind what you have inflicted on us; a blessing on him who seizes your babies and dashes them against the rocks!"

[morbo3000]

Steve replied to me: Being a Christian/disciple does not necessarily require a belief in a perfect New Testament (though it helps!). Christianity is not so much a belief about the canon of the New Testament as it is about the Lord of the New Testament. One who doubts the perfection of Christ's own teaching implies the doubter's superiority to him (how can one know Jesus to be "wrong about something" without implicitly claiming to know more than He knows?).

Agreed. I've heard you say this before. Which is one of the reasons I still hang out here and recommend you to others.

Steve wrote, replying to Paidon: - Your errors arise, largely, from your failure to understand the primary or sole meanings of the passages you cite. On ambiguous passages, we might be permitted a certain breadth of interpretive liberty. However, we are not permitted to make Jesus believe the exact opposite of what He regularly declared to be His position. This is the creation of another Jesus..

And then to me: He said that His teaching was not His own, but the Father's, who sent Him. If He emphatically taught that the Law of Moses was the same as the commandment of God (condemning His critics for not believing this), and He was Himself mistaken, then there is no moral or theological teaching of His that can be trusted. Those who can't accept His honesty and competence to speak for God should choose for themselves a label more suited to their beliefs than the one that advertises themselves as His disciples.

I think some scripture/doctrinal esoteric views come from stringing a set of micro-texts together to make them say something that the bigger picture doesn't. I have a friend who got enamored with William Branham. Even though my friend seemed like a fairly rational guy, once he got himself mired up in this weird biblical interpretation, it was impossible to talk him back out. Branham/his followers had this uncanny way of misrepresenting one or two words here and there, and then building an entire system by the conclusions they drew. And because they were using the bible it was difficult to convince them they were misusing it.

This is where critical scholarship can be useful. Most scholars, even liberal ones, are in agreement that there are genuine letters of Paul. How remarkable! An atheist can make claims that we can't know, or that christianity was corrupted in the early centuries. But no, that's not true. We have 7 genuine letters of Paul! [to the atheist] You can throw rocks at Christianity. But have you read Galatians? Thessalonians? Go ahead.. throw the others out. Spend 6 months in Romans, and come talk to me.

Similarly with Jesus. He may or may not have said some things. Some of the gospel writers may have put words in his mouth. There may have been sayings floating around that didn't originate from Jesus. But there are things scholars have a fair amount of certainty about. Those sayings and stories require a lot of me! The Jesus portrayed by Marcus Borg in "Meeting Jesus for the first time," is radical! He requires much from me. And in a lot of ways, more than my evangelical upbringing did.

What does this mean? If you get the meta-narrative of Paul, or of Jesus wrong, you can undermine, or over-emphasize this verse against that. In fact, that's probably more of a conservative problem than a progressive one. When someone holds a high view of scripture, they can misuse verses and claim divine authority, like the Branhamites. Scholarship has helped me to get out of the weeds, back up a little to get a telescopic/macroscopic view.

More often than not, many of the people I appreciate on this board take that telescopic view.

[TheEditor]

It seems there are some things to consder here. Pardon the length and flow of my post. I am sort of thinking out loud, so my thoughts may be disjointed, and I am quoting verses from memory.

It has been suggested that Jesus put his imprematur on the Law of Moses by citing it and him. Perhaps. But I am not certain what to do with some statements of Jesus while maintaining that paradigm. For sake of full disclosure, I was raised to believe that even when "men of faith" did bad things, unless God directly censured them, it was explained away, in some cases to the absurd (eg. Samson didn't have sexual weakness for Delilah, he merely needed a place to lodge for the night). So, I was weaned on "defend the record at all costs."

Jesus did cite the Law, specifically the 10 Commandemendst when he talked about Honoring your Father and Mother. He also made the statement about every 'jot and tittle.' However, did every "jot and title" include Moses' alllowance for divorce? Apparently not. At least he indicated that it was Moses and not Jehovah that issed that particular accomodation. If then it was Moses that issued the accomodaion, then what of other accomodations? Was the accomodaditon of taking attractive virgins as spoils of war one of Moses' as well? If so, are we wrong to believe that this was not of God? Do we miss out on some kinfd of great anti-type regarding Christ if we eschew the validity of this Mosaic law?

Can prophets be wrong? Well, I am convinced that there can be times that God-ordained prophets can speak a prophecy that does not come to pass. There are a few in the OT that scolars puzzle over. Jonah certainly gave a prophecy that did not come to pass. He was even so petulant over it that he got upset over a dead plant.

Jesus did use the Phaisees' reverence of Moses against them, by saying that he pointed to Christ. But Jesus' use of the Pharisees view doesn't seem like the tightest argument that could be made. To use an admittecly poor analolgy; If an atheist told a Christian that the Christian was not showing proper respect and love for their parents due to some neglect on the Christian's part, the atheist could say "Doesn't Jesus say to honor you father and mother? If you don't listen to him, why would I expect you to listen to me?"

I'm not saying Christ didn't recognize Moses as a divinely apponted/used agent, but Moses and Aaron both made terrible mistakes and there is no reason I can see to hammer on this particular point, that is, Moses' place in Scripture.

I also look at what came as the result of certain actions and commands when I read the Scriptures. Righteous Lot got drunk and slept with his daughters. There is no direct censure by God in the account, however, the bastard sons that came as a result of this union produced two nations that continually hounded the descendants of Jacob.

Likewise, the allowance to "take wives" of captured foreign virgins needs to be viewed in light of it's fruitage. Can anyone argue that the taking of foreign wives under any circumstance proved to be a positive thing for Israel?

Regards, Brenden.

[steve]

Hi Brenden,

Some of your points are based upon assumptions that I, and most Christians through history (I think) would not make.

First, you wrote:

However, did every "jot and title" include Moses' alllowance for divorce? Apparently not. At least he indicated that it was Moses and not Jehovah that issed that particular accomodation.

Jesus did not say, nor insinuate, that it was "Moses and not Jehovah," who made that accommodation. He mentioned Moses writing it, but He did not include or hint at the "not Jehovah" portion of your statement. There is nothing in Jesus' statement (either in Matthew 19 or in Mark 10) that suggests that Moses' commandments were not to be seen as God's commandments, and I doubt there was any Jew who would have dreamed of distinguishing between the two thoughts. Nothing but pure subjectivity could read such an excluding nuance into Jesus' words.

With Jesus, as with any Jew, the statement, "Moses wrote..." meant "it is written in God's Law..." I know of no Jewish teacher in Jesus' day, including Jesus, who gave any indication that he saw some dichotomy between the phrase, "Moses said" and "God commanded." In fact, Jesus used those two expressions as exact equivalents in Mark 7:9-13. What Jesus introduced with the phrase, "Moses said" (v.10) He referred to as "the word of God" (v.13).

There is no reason to assume that what Jesus (and all Jews) affirmed about Moses' divine authority, in Mark 7, was different from His view of the same subject three chapters later. If someone wished to argue that "Moses permitted..." meant anything to Jesus other than "God permitted" in Matthew 19:8 or Mark 10:4-5, it would seem that the innovator bears a crushing burden of proof, which simply can not be met.

Can prophets be wrong? Well, I am convinced that there can be times that God-ordained prophets can speak a prophecy that does not come to pass. There are a few in the OT that scolars puzzle over. Jonah certainly gave a prophecy that did not come to pass. He was even so petulant over it that he got upset over a dead plant.

Jonah was not wrong. He spoke the message God gave him, as all true prophets (including Moses) do. The prophet did not simply give a message of his own fabrication—in fact, he didn't want to preach the message at all. To suggest that there was no divine sanction behind Jonah's prophecy would require some fancy explanations about a storm and a fish.

The prophesied disaster did not occur at that time, but this is not because the prophesy was false or of human origin. The people repented, resulting in God's changing His mind and sparing the repentant city (Jonah 3:10). This turn of events has no bearing upon the question of whether Jonah spoke authentically from God in the first place—which is the only point relevant to our present controversy.

The fact that the merciful reprieve was a "change of mind" on God's part means that the original threat correctly represented God's mind before it changed. Nor is it surprising, since God said that He will always act this way when He has prophesied disaster and the people repent (Jer.18:7-10). This is not a case of a false prophecy by a true prophet, but a conditional prophesy, which God modified to accommodate the changed situation. Jonah must be removed from your list of examples for your point. Are there any others on the list?

I'm not saying Christ didn't recognize Moses as a divinely apponted/used agent, but Moses and Aaron both made terrible mistakes and there is no reason I can see to hammer on this particular point, that is, Moses' place in Scripture.

To say it is not important to establish Moses' place in scripture would seem to be missing the obvious trajectory of redemption history concerning God's self-revelation. The only people whom God expected to "know" Him, over a period of 1400 years were given no knowledge of His ways other than that provided through the Prophet Moses (and later prophets, who came to confirm Moses' words). "He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel" (Psalm 103:7). To neutralize divinely-inspired the role of Moses is to trivialize the very birth and existence of the nation Israel. This is not one of the lesser themes of the Bible, regardless which testament we are consulting.

If the Law is not from God, then we have no compelling reason to believe that Jesus was from God either. If we cannot trust that Moses wrote accurately the things God gave Him to record, then Israel had no certain promises from God about Abraham's Seed, who was to come as a blessing to all nations. We know of no promise of a Scepter-holder from the tribe of Judah, nor of the coming of another Prophet, like Moses. Without trusting the writings of Moses as being from God, in fact, we have none of those Messianic prophecies, of which (as even Paidion acknowledges) Jesus fulfilled "every jot and tittle." Jesus, in this case does not come as the fulfillment of 2000 years of clear divine promises. Who knows? He might be nobody special, any more than Moses was.

Moses (like Jesus) received daily, direct revelation from God, and his ministry was divinely confirmed by as many kinds of miracles as anybody's to prove Him to be God's true agent. If Moses saw God face to face, but still totally misrepresented the divine will and character, then God does not seem very competent in His choice of agents, nor in His ability to make His intentions clearly known to the agents He chooses.

Since Jesus is said to be just such an agent, we have no surer way to trust His (possibly mistaken) teachings and claims than to trust those of Moses or the Prophets. If we can't trust Christ or any of God's spokesmen, then what remains of the Christian faith?

Jesus said, "the scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35). What should be obvious is that we cannot tinker with a few parts of scripture without undermining confidence in the whole of it—since the writers expressed confidence in, and depended upon the trustworthiness of each other. Once you disagree with Jesus about a single jot or tittle, you must acknowledge that nothing else in the teachings of Jesus or His apostles can be trusted with certainty.

Paul said that he believed "all things that are written in the Law and the Prophets" (Acts 24:14). He made this declaration under oath, while on trial. He either believed everything written by Moses, or he was a conscienceless perjurer, who cannot be trusted even when relating his own conversion story, or his accounts of his divine revelations—or anything else. In a word, thirteen New Testament books need to be excised from the New Testament canon immediately, along with all the books from the Old Testament canon.

Now, if Paidion, psimmond and others wish to continue to say that Paul, as well as Jesus, was wrong on this point, I would have to ask two questions: "How do you know this?" and "What remains of your beliefs to justify calling them 'Christian'?"

Righteous Lot got drunk and slept with his daughters. There is no direct censure by God in the account, however, the bastard sons that came as a result of this union produced two nations that continually hounded the descendants of Jacob.

There is no comparison between Lot and Moses, simply because Lot was not an inspired prophet, leader or writer of scripture, and no one ever claimed that Lot's words were the commandments of God, as Jesus said about Moses.

Teachers receive the stricter judgments, and Moses was severely censured for the one mistake he made, which was his second striking of the rock. And what was God's objection to what Moses did? In a rather minor way, Moses had misrepresented God as being angrier than He actually happened to be at that moment (though God had previously been plenty angry on numerous occasions).

Imagine how much worse the censure would have been had Moses been falsely prophesying and totally convoluted the picture of God's nature by writing evil laws in the name of Yahweh—as some of our participants here believe he did! Why didn't God bring any of these things up when explaining why Moses would not be allowed to enter the land? Had Moses successfully concealed these forgeries from the eye of the Almighty?

Likewise, the allowance to "take wives" of captured foreign virgins needs to be viewed in light of it's fruitage. Can anyone argue that the taking of foreign wives under any circumstance proved to be a positive thing for Israel?

We could ask Jesus whether any benefit occurred as a result of Salmon's marriage to Canaanite Rahab, or Boaz's marriage to Moabitess Ruth. My guess is that He could identify some little benefit to Israel and humanity stemming from His own incarnation, which came through those marriages.

I need to ask everyone who keeps bringing up these virgins exactly what it is they think should have been done with them. Are they recommending that the captive virgins should be consigned, through no fault of their own, to the punishment of perpetual celibacy and childlessness? If so, why? Apart from going into a career of prostitution (would this be better?), such enforced barrenness would seem to be the only alternative to their marrying Israelites, since the men of their own nations would be dead, and they themselves became a part of Israelite society.

Does anyone find something dishonorable in a man marrying an eligible virgin—who, in any ancient culture, would probably prefer being married over perpetual singleness? Why punish these girls?

And why complain if the Israelite men chose wives whom they deem to be beautiful? Is this really a bad thing to do? All other things being equal, wouldn't any man prefer that his wife turn him on? Is it to convey reproach that the scriptures tell us that the wives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were all beautiful to look upon? I find my wife very attractive, and that played a role in my desiring to marry her, rather than to merely be lifelong friends. Should I feel guilty about this? Why is it found to be controversial that God would permit men to factor physical attraction into their choice of spouses? Please enlighten me as to the nature of this objection.

These absurd, oft-repeated objections are an example of what happens when emotions, rather than rational thinking, are permitted to dictate our religious attitudes. Emotions are a good thing, when under control. I too have emotions, but I am not willing to check my brains at the door in favor of a merely emotional approach to religion.

My position in this discussion not only represents what Christianity has always taught about the scriptures, but is simply the common-sense response to the evidence. Nothing should be more obvious than that those trying to prevent Jesus from endorsing Moses are continuing to flog, like a dead horse, their favored position, though it has long-since been unanswerably debunked in the earlier dialogue.

When Paidion or psimmond tells us, without a single line of scripture in their support, and despite all the scriptures that flatly deny their position, that Jesus did not recognize Moses as one who faithfully wrote whatever God told Him to write, and that Jesus did not view the entire Law, Psalms and Prophets as divinely sanctioned, do they not invite every reasonable Christian to ask:

"Because you say so? Why should we believe you?"