No its not. You need to reread my post because my thesis is nothing like what you described.
You greatly hurt my feelings by accusing me of “making up a story.”
I never said that nor would I. Nothing in my post declared the moral code of the Torah to be inapplicable. I am profoundly annoyed that you did not bother to read my post and are accusing me of horrible anomialism based on an argument I did not make and would not make.
Indeed, it typologically represents the Only Begotten Son and Incarnate Word of God, our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ.
Again, that is completely untrue. Since you didn’t read my argument, I will spell it out one more time, and failing that, perhaps
@prodromos or
@Ain't Zwinglian might be able to explain it.
The statement in Deuteronomy refers to the five books of the Pentateuch, or Torah. It is a self-referential statement that applies specifically to those five books. It exists so that the oldest, most sacred, and important part od the Old Testament, which represents the basis for all human morality, and also contains the only story of creation in any religion which is not contrary to science, the miraculous Genesis Chapter 1, and it also contains the first prophecies of our Savior, God the Son, and the first evidence of the Holy Spirit, and it contains the first prophecy of the eucharist, and it contains a vital moral and social code including the Noachide Laws, the Decalogue, and a moral code that prohibits homosexuality, incest and inappropriate behavior with animals, which the liberal mainline churches want to pretend doesn’t exist.
It is partially because of attempts to limit the applicability of the Torah, or gloss over the ban on homosexuality because our society has forgotten that homosexuality is a perversion, a dangerous paraphilia linked with child abuse, and ignores the fact that it is comorbid with a number of serious mental and physical illnesses, including HIV, and also is the primary risk factor for the deadly Monkey Pox pandemic sweeping the globe, that this verse exists. It also exists because of attempts to expand the Torah, for example, the Samaritan Torah’s obvious interpolation of a convenient eleventh commandment ordering worship at their holiest site, Mount Gerizim. This was clearly not part of the original, but was added by the Northern Kingdom after it broke away from Judah and Benjamin in the South.
Now that we have established the defensive purpose the verse in question is meant for, that is, to discourage modification of the Torah, we need to establish what it is not meant for:
- Everyone agrees the Pentateuch, the five books of the Torah, comprise the oldest part of the Old Testament.
- If the verse in Deuteronomy means what you suggest it means, then no other scripture could have been written. Indeed, the Samaritans interpret it the way you do, and as a result their canonical scripture consists only of the five books of the Torah. They have their own version of Joshua, but it is not regarded as sacred scripture but rather as a historical narrative.
- Because other scripture has been written and recognized as canonical, and indeed, in Christianity we added an entire New Testament, whose structure in many respects resembles the Old (the Gospels being like the Torah, Acts being like the Historical Books, the Epistles like the Prophets, and Revelation being an Apocalypse, like Daniel, with which it shares common thematic elements), the verse in the Torah does not mean what you think it means.
- Therefore, just as the Torah was not violating by adding additional books to the Old Testament, or adding the New Testament, the Torah is not violated by advocating for the baptism of infants; on the contrary, since the Torah specifies that infants be circumcised on the Eighth Day, and since Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the Eighth Day, the Torah combined with the Resurrection and Great Commission at the end of Matthew, and our Lord commanding His Apostles in Mark to “Suffer the little ones to come to me,” provides a compelling scriptural argument for the Baptism of Infants.
That was my argument. Whether you agree or not, nothing in that argument, which I have reduced to a simple four part statement, constitutes a deprecation of the importance of the Torah, a denial of its moral authority, an endorsement of sodomy, murder or other crimes prohibited in the Torah and elsewhere in the Bible, a denial that the Torah is the word of God, or a “made-up story,” a term I felt particularly hurt by, as stated previously.
Forgive me for the agitated tone of this message, but I feel like you either didn’t read my earlier post, or didn’t care what I had to say. I have paid close attention to all of your posts and I beg your forgiveness if I have catastrophically failed in my analysis of any of your replies.