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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Melynda Writes:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Although the argument may have moved on, I'd like to return to
Michael's assertion that a unitary God creates by means of masturbation--or its
divine equivalent--while a triune God provides a perfect model for earthly
marriage (presumably heterosexual marriage only).<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Me:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Well, we will see what happens in what follows, but I want to issue a
warning at the front end. The context of some of my particular claims were
very specific; I was either furthering arguments or providing further explanation
or analysis of points previously made. For example, the way God creates was
not the context of masturbation. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Melynda Writes: <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Surely God creates out of infinite plenitude and sufficiency? In
point of fact, throughout the Old Testament, God is particularly unitary:
a trinitarian conception of God would have been dismissed by the ancient Jews
as heretical polytheism (as it still is by modern Jews). For Abraham,
David, and Isaiah, God is one, and He is symbolically married to the nation of <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region></st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Me:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>The evidence for a non-unitary conception of God in the Old Testament
is significant. For me the angels of the Lord do the trick, of particular note
is the lord who visited Abraham before God destroyed <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City
w:st="on">Sodom</st1:City></st1:place>. God creating male and female
‘Like Us’ is another example of something that scratches my itch,
and for more reason than there mere Hebrew grammar. The plural form of Elohim
is another. But I just did a quick search and glanced at the first page that
popped up. This looks like a good start (although, of course, I can’t
ultimately vouch for its scholarly credentials):<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/triunity.html<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Apparently, the word for the oneness of unity, echad, is used to
describe God, whereas the word for absolute oneness, yachid, is not. E.g.
“Behold, they are one [echad] people” or “a man will leave
his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one
[echad] flesh.” (<i><span style='font-style:italic'>Genesis 2:24</span></i>)
Perhaps the mere insistence on the echad of God assumes some form of plurality.
For example, why would I go around holding an apple in my hand shouting this is
one apple, one I tell you. My apple is one. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>I’m not sure that a Trinitarian conception of God would have been
dismissed, but it is true that progressive revelation might not go over very
well if shoved back into time in full form. This would not be keeping with the
progressive nature of redemptive history. Not only does the Lord reveal more
and new things about himself over time, he shapes His people and even the world
in order to properly receive it. Many of the Jews, for example, did accept
Jesus as their Messiah and as the Son of God. Paul was one such Jew.
Jesus’ brother was another. Etc. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>As for symbolic marriage between the Lord and his people, I’m not
sure why this suggests a unitary God. It would be in keeping with a biblical
theology to understand the Lord’s relationship to us as an expression of
who He is from eternity. But if he is unitary, he has no communion,
friendship, or love. His marriage to us would be something entirely new to
Him; a virgin on his honeymoon: Wow, who would have thought that having a
relationship with another person would be like this?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Melynda Writes: <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>The Christian Trinity is a peculiarly bad image of marriage, in
fact. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is the traditional formula; 3 persons,
not 2; a father and a son (both implicitly male) and a non-gendered (although
arguably male) spirit don't map particularly well onto a male and a female
joined legally, economically, and sexually. LDS theology posits a
husband and wife god-partnership, which is much tidier.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Me:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Yes, the point is not to make some sort of one to one correlation. In
many respects (and this is part of the mystery Paul speaks of) it is
God’s relationship to His people or perhaps his role as Creator that is
expressed through marriage. Creation or His people are in the feminine role;
Christ is Husband of the Church, which is the first fruits of the new creation.
Regarding the Trinity, the point is more general: How do you even get anything
remotely like marital sex with God; How can God ‘be love’ if he
just dwells alone from eternity?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Melynda Writes:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>What does the Trinity make a good model for, if not
marriage? Well, a patriarchal society, for one thing--from the tents of
Abraham to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Rugby</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">School</st1:PlaceType></st1:place> under Dr. Arnold, the
Trinity offers a model of father in lovely and tutelary relation
to son united by a shared spirit. Marriage is perhaps best
understood in such a worldview as an exchange of property among men:
fathers barter daughters to cement treaties, secure relationships, or
buy favors (Saul's daughter Michal is a fine example). Interestingly, the
same model of marriage prevails in the pre-Trinitarian world of the Old
Testament, suggesting that the number of persons in the Godhead is of less
importance than regional and cultural tradition in determining marital
structure. That is, we make the Trinity serve as an excuse for a model of
society and relations between the sexes that we already embrace, which is
surely a kind of sacrilege.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Me:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>First, just because we understand the Trinity as Father, Son, and
Spirit, doesn’t mean that we import everything we know about creaturely
fatherhood into the eternal Trinity. In one sense, God is not
‘gendered’ as we are. So your claim about a Patriarchal God seems
to break down a bit; interestingly, a Patriarchal kind of theology was
precisely what you did not get in the early Church, and this was when everyone
was so riveted to this particular doctrine. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>I’m not very clear on your second point here. But I’ll
take a stab and make a few points: The Lord comes down to a fallen world and
begins redeeming it. Scripture assumes the sinfulness of its characters and
the condition of the people of God. If women were treated as property during
that time, then certainly you will see women treated like property in the
scripture; scripture is one of the most important history texts of the ancient
we even have after all. The question is rather how God redeems man by
liberating them, which includes liberating women from non-Trinitarian slavery,
from seen as vassal under the hand of a Berith Treaty Lord. What I think
feminists who are focused on deconstructing only the last 100 years of culture
usually miss entirely is the fact that the ministry of Jesus and apostles, and
even the Reformation of the 16<sup>th</sup> century, has done more for
liberating, freeing, and glorifying women than their own movement will ever do
(I’d argue that their movement largely enslaves women, but that is beside
the point here). <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Melynda Writes:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Jesus overturned this model through His teaching. For
example, He taught that there would be no marriage in Heaven, that the woman
required by Levirate marriage law to marry brother after brother would be no
one's wife/property in the next world, but could be herself, a person, in the
presence of God. His prohibition of divorce was directed at men who
were entitled to put aside a wife, leaving her destitute and unprotected, for a
host of reasons, while wives had no similar recourse. Moreover, in His
ministry, he touched, taught, healed, ate with, and just plain palled around
with women, both Jewish and Gentile, in flagrant violation of the Levitical
purity codes and the customs of his time. When Christ proclaimed freedom
to the captive, it is no stretch to say that freedom included a host of women
in the captivity of patriarchal marriage. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Me:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Well, I don’t know how to further answer this without being too
long winded; but some of my past posts regarding the nature of the history of
redemption and my explanation of the role ‘law’ played in the Old
Testament speak to this. I think we agree about Jesus’ and Paul’s
message for the most part; I think we disagree as to whether or not this was
total discontinuity with the history of redemption up until that point in
time. Your mention of the Levitical purity codes is interesting, since many
such codes were fulfilled in the brutal murder of Jesus himself. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Melynda Writes:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>I think, in fact, that we've come full circle to an earlier argument:
what is good? Michael seems to be asserting that whatever God wants
is good, by definition. So if God tells us to, we should smile as we
slaughter every last Amalekite baby, laugh as we walk past the desolate
Egyptian homes mourning firstborn children, cheer as we stone gay people.
witches, and disobedient children, and praise a God who creates millions of
people condemned pre-emptively to Hell, without any hope of salvation,
just because He wants to.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Me:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Only God is God, as Jesus said. The idea of God telling us to do X and
us becoming good because we did X is not biblical morality. Communion,
indwelling, participation, union, remade into the image of God and his Son;
these are the sort of concepts that ultimately deal with holiness. So the point
is not ultimately what God “wants,” since this is something that flows
from “who He is.” When we become like God through his mercy and
grace we are found to be ‘good.’ I also do not think that an Old
Testament or New Testament conception of the necessity of obedience to God ever
implies laughing, smiling, or cheering at capital punishment or the horrors of
war.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Melynda Writes:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>These are not precisely self-evident propositions. In fact,
for a great many people, they constitute an insuperable barrier to faith:
what is the difference between worshipping God and worshipping Satan, if God
conducts Himself in a manner so depraved? In the life and person of
Christ we see God's true character, the infinite love and patience which heals
and forgives everyone who asks, the Kingdom ethic which brings us
together to serve and care for one another as God cares for us.
In our sexual relations, as in all our relations, we are called to treat one
another with respect, with gentleness, with Godly love. Frankly, the
gender of the parties involved is of no particular importance. We
are as wounded in our heterosexuality as we are in our homosexuality.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Me:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>We may be as wounded in our heterosexuality as we are in our
homosexuality, but it is incoherent and unfaithful to Jesus not to accept his
own words about the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType w:st="on">kingdom</st1:PlaceType>
of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Heaven</st1:PlaceName></st1:place>. He claimed to
be God. He claimed to be the Messiah. He loved the Old Testament Law of God.
He loved <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Jerusalem</st1:City></st1:place>.
He honored his Father in Heaven and saw all goodness springing from Him; He
never speculated or went along with the politically correct, easy relativism of
his own time or the traditionalism of his elders. He spoke truth in love, never
abrogating or taking issue with the Hebraic Christian understanding of sexual
morality. He rather upheld it. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Thanks<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Michael Metzler<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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