"idea rich" indeed; thanks, great post

Well, Soloveichik over states his case, but that's not what I want to talk about:

Two weeks ago, in temple, we read the Torah portion having to do with Joseph and the coat of many colors. Being a college town, our temple pretends to a more contemplative Judaism, so we have brief discussions of the meaning of the Torah portion. One of the things we discussed was the trouble that is caused by Jacob's clear preference for Joseph over his other sons. The Talmud draws from this story the lesson that one shouldn't favor one child over the others and, in fact, sets down a rule that children should share equally in their parent's estate to avoid hurt feelings or one child being sold into slavery in Egypt.

The whole Torah portion is, as it happens, idea rich. (Why does Joseph make his preference so plain; does he understand what he is doing when he sends Joseph to spy on his brothers; what right does he have to be angered at Joseph's dream that his father and brothers would bow down to him, as prophetic dreams of future glory are the family business?) Because we had been discussing the "Chosen" issue here, I had the following thought I had not previously considered: The Torah, in this very portion, points out the danger of openly preferring one child to another, the anger that causes in the other children and the possibility of disasterous consequences for the preferred child. In short, the story neatly recapitulates the history of the Jews. On the one hand, here we have G-d warning us of a trap, into which He then seems to fall -- through the very act in which He gives us the warning. On the other hand, how often do we see prophecy, hardly veiled at all, so neatly carried out?

One might even suspect our Author of talent.

Ask a Philistine. He might have another take.

The Christian idea of loving, or at least not despising, everyone is appealing, but isn't theirs the same g-d who wanted to slaughter the Canaanites for no better reason than that they followed the rituals of their fathers?

Did monotheism really prevail? Can you tell me, with a straight face, we're dealing with the same g-d?

Harry:

God didn't comprehend us until He lived as one of us.

There you go again, Orrin, being heterodox.

Harry:

You've read the Bible--what else could Christ have meant when He said: "Forgive them Lord, they know not what they do." That and the moment when He despairs: "My Lord, My Lord, why hast Thou forsaken me?" are the moments that reconciled God to our mortality.

Has there ever been a religion whose dogma included the belief that God chose the other guys?

Your first quote does not support your position.

The second requires one to choose between homoousion and homoiousion, which as a faithless person I am not capable of doing.

I was taught, though, that g-d understood all things from the beginning.

It does not distress me that you are heterodox. I won't propose that you be burned.

But you ought to be more careful.

Why did God need Christ to explain that we didn't know what we were doing?

Robert:

Christianity does.

Harry: If you insist on the lower case, "god" is perfectly acceptable (or, at least, no better than "g-d").

Harry: As a Christian who considers himself rather orthodox, I'm somewhat uncomfortable with OJ's views there. But if you read Hebrews, it becomes fairly clear that he's more right than you're letting on, and more right than I'd prefer.

Robert:

Individually, sure. Check out Job. And didn't God choose the Babylonians over the Israelites?

God even loves people who don't know the difference between nominative and objective pronouns. "Who do you love?"

The way I learned the Bible, the particularist strictures of the Old Testament were needed at that time, to preserve the worship of the one, true God. At the coming of the Messiah, this view was SUPERCEDED by God's plan to reach all nations. The old plan was best in its time and the new time was best in its time. The new did not refute or denigrate the old, it SUPERCEDED it.

Now let us try to look at it from a neutral perspective, rather from that of a believer of either dispensation. Does anybody imagine that Judaism could have been sold to the Greeks or the Romans? It is asking too much of people to expect mass conversions to a religion which is so particularist that its adherents must run off and take a bath is they are seen talking to you. Is the world not now better off because the Jewish concepts of God and history was brought to the world by the heretical sect of the Christians? Would we have been better off if these contributions had perished in the ruin which the particularist fanatics brought down upon themselves in 70 A.D.?

Best for whom? Not for us Philistines, Lou.

I'm way more orthodox than you, Timothy.

We were brought up that god's never wrong.

You guys are trying to have it both ways.

Orrin occasional statements about whether he believes in homoousion or homoiousion have been, the put it mildly, unclear. I think, though, he's the last of the Arians.

In that case, though, the OT god and the NT god are different guys.

Actually, Orrin is more or less an atheist, but we love him anyways.

If Christ wasn't God the story makes no sense. The whole point is that God could not comprehend what it is to be mortal without experiencing it Himself. That He learns is most obvious when he says "Forgive them..." What He learns is most obvious when even He despairs ("why hast Thou forsaken me?").

Actually, that is one of the few things that Orrin has said that makes sense. Too bad it's not dogmatically correct.

Ever notice how much more dogmatic atheists think they are than believers?

I'm still trying to figure out how Harry's more orthodox than me. I'm a fundie baptist. He's an athiest. I'm almost positive I should win that round.

Timothy:

Because they can't wrap their minds around the miraculous, so are bothered by every difficult idea in the Bible.

The orthodox Christian view is indeed somewhat different than Orrin's take. It holds first that insofar as either Jesus or the Father is ignorant, it's Jesus, God-become-man, who is ignorant. Secondly, Jesus's prayer for his persecutors no more assumes that God is ignorant of either their nature or his morally proper response to them than Abraham's prayer for Sodom assumed those things. Thirdly, the nature of Jesus's despair on the Cross is an interesting and deep question; what is certain is that he is there praying Psalm 22, in the tradition of the time that called for praying first and last lines alound and the rest in silence.

Interpretations of Jesus's passion can range from what the classical-Jewish-Messiah interpretation might be, which wouldn't require actual despair at all but rather could be interpreted as Jesus pointing out with his last words that his Passion precisely fulfilled the prophecy in Psalm 22, to a Pauline/Lutheran sense that Jesus experiences the greatest of despair because he is assuming the burden of the sins of all mankind over all time, and must bear that burden alone if God's plan is to be fulfilled. To really answer the question of what Jesus experienced would require understanding the Mystery of the Atonement, which orthodox Catholicism holds is beyond our comprehension (hence "mystery"). Was it necessary for Jesus to despair for the Atonement to work?

Not God but God?

Well, that's another mystery. Jesus himself says, "But of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only." (Matthew 24:36) So it appears that God the Father can know things Jesus didn't.

I might also point out that Jesus was "like us in all things but sin" (Hebrews 4: 15), which implies that Jesus took on all the cognitive limitations of humanity, and therefore could not possibly have known everything God knew.

But He wouldn't have had to have been Jesus if He knew the things Jesus was going to. What's the point of the exercise if God learned nothing from it?

Hebrews makes it surprisingly clear that, counterintuitive as it seems, the reason God understands us is because he was one of us. As for the technical questions of "what did God know and when did he know it?" I'm less concerned.

OJ:
So, back in the days when the Temple stood in Jerusalem, could a Jew say "I know the outcome of making this sacrifice at the Temple, so I'll just claim the outcome and forget about actually making the sacrifice" I think not. God knew the outcome, but the sacrifice had to be made none the less. The "exercise" of Jesus' death on the cross was essential for the salvation of his chosen ones and their everlasting relationship with each other.

Now one thing that God may not have been able to comprehend until he died on the cross was what it meant to feel and experience being completely cut off from himself (which is the ultimate wage of sin).

oj - It's not that God learned, but that Jesus did. In orthodox theology, the point of the exercise is that Jesus had to perform his duty perfectly, remaining sinless, to bring about the Atonement and carry the rest of humanity through the eye of the needle -- and do it while as bereft from God as sinful men are. None of this requires him to lack knowledge of his duty; the hard part, as St Paul points out, is not knowing what's right, but doing it.

pj:

Jesus isn't God?

Dave:

Jews were God?

OJ:
Sorry if I implied that jews=God, that was not my intent.

Also, concerning your question to pj, Jesus was fully divine (God) and fully human (a Jewish male) while he dwelt among us.

Dave:

Yes, so Jesus wasn't fully God and not God.

And Jews had to make sacrifices because God required it of them.

Jesus is God, and man too. But being a man manifests itself in different ways at different times, e.g. before and after death, and being a God manifests itself in different ways at different times, e.g. during and not during incarnation.

So He's only a man at certain points and only God at others?

pj's version is what I was taught.

Timothy, I count myself 'more orthodox' in the sense that I memorized the Baltimore Catechism, and while I don't believe any of it, I know what's in it.

Most people have a tendency -- very pronounced on Orrin's part -- to rewrite the religion, but over the centuries there has been a central core.

No harm in going outside it, but you'd think a sincere Christian would do so carefully.

I too am a fundamentalist. Either every word in the Bible is god's certain word, or none of them.

No other position is intellectually defensible.

And thus, Harry, the paradox that is at the heart of civilization. Intellect cannot be reconciled with faith; yet intellect itself depends upon faith.

One of the real advantages of being a Jew is being able to avoid these types of theological discussions.

OJ,
The dogma about why God became Man is pretty basic stuff, first year cathechism. Original Sin created an accounts receivable entry in God's ledger that had to be paid by Man. Man proved incapable of paying the debt, and wanting to get this bad debt off His books, but being the stickler for accounting details that He is, God, rather than just write it off as a bad debt, paid it Himself. But He had to do it as Man, as it was Man's debt, after all. This whole arrangement makes me think that God isn't the highest authority out there, since it seems He has to worry about His books being audited.

I heard a Protestant pundit argue against Islam once by saying Islam was all about accounting, but Christianity wasn't. Sure!

Robert:

Yes, that answers none of these questions though.

David, I don't see that intellect depends on faith.

It must have preceded it. At least, we have plenty of ancient evidences of intellect at work, but evidences of faith are all recent.

A materialist might say that faith was an emergent property of intellect, as it stretched its muscles and invented new stuff -- toasters, politics, gods. All the same, really.

Harry:

You see it, you just have to deny it or become schizophrenic.

David:

If by that you mean that possessing and using intellect means having to make decisions in the face of imperfect, or absent, information, and that exercise constitutes faith, then you are correct.

But that is small-f faith, not Faith as religionists speak of it. It is no contradiction to possess intellect will not having Faith in the sense of finding all supernatural narratives empty exercises.

Perhaps you could explain why it is that Faith cannot be an emergent propery of intellect.

Jeff:

That's where you head of the rails, at the very beginning: all is Faith.

I can't decide which is the greater act of Faith, going to bed at night or getting up in the morning.

David:

�Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?"

G.K. Chesterton

You may not be allowed another one (and I might not either).