[Vision2020] Religion and Morality

[Christopher Witmer]

[[ Job is not a resurrectionist . . . You must be referring to Job 19:26, the message of which is contradicted by Job himself: "He comes forth like a flower, and withers; he flees like a shadow, and continues not" (14:1-2).  Unlike a severed trunk that will sprout new branches, "man lies down and rises not again; till the heavens are no more he will not awake, or be roused out of his sleep" (14:12). ]]

Contrary to your bald assertion, there is absolutely no contradiction whatsoever between the verses you quoted and the verses in question: "For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me." 14:1-2 is simply saying that men die, and 14:12 specifies when the resurrection will occur: when the heavens are no more -- at the end of time when men are resurrected to go their eternal destination, either eternally with God or eternally separated from God.

[[ Gen. 22 says nothing about the possible resurrection of Isaac. ]]

Contrary to your bald assertion, the text says very clearly, "And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you." His clear intention is to do exactly as God commanded and sacrifice Isaac, and yet Abraham expects that Isaac will return with him. You tell me how someone can be sacrificed and yet return unless he has been resurrected.

[[ Your suggestion that Abraham doesn't have to worry about killing his son because he knows he will be resurrected takes all the Angst out of this horrible temptation, not to mention the weak consolation that Abraham would not see is his son again until a very distant Last Judgment ]]

THERE IS NO ANGST. NONE, ZERO, ZIP, NADA. God tells Abraham to do it and EARLY THE NEXT MORNING he gets up and goes out to do it. The only angst is in your imagination. There is none in the text. Abraham had no angst because he had faith -- and that is the whole point of God's testing here.

 [[ By the way, today Abraham would be arrested for conspiracy to murder an innocent child, and his defense that God told him to do it would be laughed out of court. ]]

Abraham wouldn't be arrested for murder if Isaac was resurrected, and if God is God, resurrecting Isaac is hardly an impossibility.

[[ What evidence, other than wishful thinking, can you give that the Hebrew Bible was intact ca. 1,000 BCE?  ]]

I never said the Bible was "intact" circa 1,000 B.C.; but the Bible itself makes it abundantly clear that at least large parts of it were written down promptly. I see no difficulty in having the recording of the death of Moses being a latter addition to the Pentateuch which was otherwise compiled primarily by Moses from both contemporary material first written down by Moses himself as well as earlier material dealing with the events of Genesis. Exodus 24 describes Moses as reciting and then writing down "all the words of Yahweh" (vv. 3-4) and finally taking "the book of the covenant and reading it in the hearing of the people" (v. 7).  In Deuteronomy 31:9, Moses writes "this law" and then commands the Levites to read it to "all Israel" every seventh year during the festival of booths (v. 11), which obviously requires a written document. The law's storage in the ark of the covenant and its public reading every seven years can only mean there is a written document. When Joshua!
  reads the law to the people on Mount Ebal in Joshua 8, the text emphasizes the comprehensiveness of the reading: "he read all the words of the law, the blessings and the curses, as it was all written in the book of the law. There was not a word of anything which Moses commanded that Joshua did not read" (vv. 34-35). Do I need to go on? There is a TON of evidence right in the text itself that a significant part of the Bible was already written down in Moses' day.

[[ No self-respecting Bible scholar would say that Gen. 3 or even Ps. 16 refer to a Messiah. ]]

Then I guess the united opinion of Bible scholars for millennia must prove that for millennia there was not a single self-respecting Bible scholar.

[[ As a Bible believer you have to tell me why the doctrine of the Trinity . . . has at most five references in the New Testament. ]]

It has five references because it's true. Everything is established by two or three witnesses, and by your own account there are five, and the creation account has God refering to himself in the plural, so what more do I need to say? The New Testament constantly applies Old Testament references to Yahweh to Jesus, and if the New Testament is divinely inspired then it follows that Jesus is God: thus giving you multiple persons in the godhead. If you don't want to believe it, don't. Only the Holy Spirit can open your eyes, but the evidence is there. The problem isn't the lack of evidence; it's you.

[[ OK, Japan had legalized prostitution before World War II. The Netherlands currently has legalized prostitution, and yet neither population has been corrupted by it, as their low crime rates indicate. ]]

Yes, the Netherlands has legalized prostitution, and when they're not sleeping with whores and doping themselves up they are murdering their unborn, their elderly, and their handicapped. The nation that produced a leader of the caliber of Abraham Kuyper and stood up to Hitler has gone to hell in a handbasket in the span of one generation, and the nation is being severely judged for its wickedness at this very moment, regardless of how they might choose to define or redefine what constitutes a crime.

[[ Why has Japan been able to produce a moral majority without Jesus? ]]

Are you're talking about the people who are killing themselves in record-breaking numbers each year? About the people who are rapidly going extinct as a nation? Oh yeah, they're doing just fine without Jesus . . . not!

[[ I'm afraid my post on the oxymoron Calvinist Libertarianism will have to wait ]]

Take your time; I could use a break myself.

-- Chris
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