RE: The Immorality of God - Slavery in the Old Testament
January 24, 2016 at 4:59 pm
(This post was last modified: January 24, 2016 at 5:00 pm by athrock.)
(January 24, 2016 at 4:30 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: You can't have it both ways athrock. Either God's message was progressive and thus open to rejection, or it was simply reflective of the times. You have no objection to this god introducing a truly progressive morality in the New Testament, yet at the same time being impotent to deliver a similar message on slavery. You want to have it both ways, god being both potent and impotent to dictate morals to his people. That's nothing but special pleading on the issue of slavery.
Either or thinking? What about both and?
Maybe God was BOTH progressive (and thus open to rejection by the Israelites) AND reflective of the times in which the Israelites were currently living.
Yeah, I'm gonna go with that.
As products of the ANE, the people we would come to know as the Israelites were a crude, barbarous bunch of "bronze-age goat herders". But, shazam, God decided to form them into something much, much better.
So, taking them where they were at as product of "the times" in which they were living, God began to reveal a progressive message that was open to rejection.
He went slowly, taking a thousand years and more, giving them as much as they could handle, punishing them when they disobeyed, rewarding them when they were obedient, until they were ready to receive the fullness of His message, the Word, the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ.
Yeah, I definitely can have it "both ways" when viewed like this.
