All that God did and commanded in the Old Testament was just.

2PhiloVoid said:

Everyone here is reading the Bible in the context of "the Church." It just might not be your branch of the Church. But then again, who knows? In some way, it might be...........................

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Allow me to clarify: I’m referring specifically to the reading of Scripture within the liturgical or public worship of the Church, wherein it is exposited by the clergy. I believe, and I should add this belief is not controversial among traditional liturgical Christians of many denominations including Protestants, Easter/Oriental Orthodox and Roman Catholics, that our primary encounter with Scripture should be in the context of worship, and that our use of it otherwise should be in a secondary referential sense, in the same way we might refer to a hymnal or prayer book between worship services.

The Liturgist said:

Allow me to clarify: I’m referring specifically to the reading of Scripture within the liturgical or public worship of the Church, wherein it is exposited by the clergy. I believe, and I should add this belief is not controversial among traditional liturgical Christians of many denominations including Protestants, Easter/Oriental Orthodox and Roman Catholics, that our primary encounter with Scripture should be in the context of worship, and that our use of it otherwise should be in a secondary referential sense, in the same way we might refer to a hymnal or prayer book between worship services.

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I disagree with the premise that our "primary encounter with Scripture should be in the context of worship, and that our use of it otherwise SHOULD be in a secondary referential sense." The Gospel is obviously given through the Church, but it's not in all respects controlled by the Church.

Of course, I would expect someone who is an official speaker for a more traditional liturgical church to insist upon that principle. But I decline it. The Original Kerygma from the early 1st century, given by Christ to His earliest apostles and disciples can't be "chained" in that way. And I for one don't have to accept what Catholics or Orthodox might say otherwise in that regard. Tradition is fine, but it is that which is, to me, "secondary." Blame my sources if you don't like my view of ecclesiology or other areas of Theology.

PloverWing said:

This emphasis on Isaac being the miraculous child through which God's covenant with Abraham will be fulfilled is how the story was approached by most of the preachers I heard growing up (though you've expressed it more eloquently). And I think the story works well enough if we hear it in that way. God makes a promise to Abraham, and gives Abraham a magical thing through which the promise will be fulfilled, but then asks Abraham to give up the magical thing, because Abraham's trust should be in God alone and not in any particular magical thing. That's a pretty good sermon.

It was only when I became a parent that my focus of attention in the story shifted, because of course the "magical thing" is a child, and one of the primary moral duties of a parent is to protect one's children. That was the point at which I started seeing God's command to Abraham as monstrous -- not just a command that's difficult to carry out, but a command that's evil to carry out.

(Note that I'm not talking about being overprotective. Parenting is a complicated balance of many things. But, as our moral duty, we protect our children from starvation and disease and people trying to murder them.)

Sometimes when I'm reading a book or watching a movie with my family, and something implausible happens (like, how do they have gravity on that spaceship, or why don't the Hogwarts wizards use time-turners and luck potions all the time when they're fighting Voldemort), we laugh and say "Don't worry about it, it's not that kind of movie." So maybe this story was like that to the ancients who told it. The storyteller is telling me a dramatic story around the campfire, and I'm getting distracted by side details.

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The problem with that interpretation is that it is not sufficiently Christological.

If we read Genesis as Christological prophecy, according to Luke 24, rejecting any prior meaning the text might have had to practitioners of Judaism and instead regarding the book as being about Christ, which is what we clearly should do, based on the words of Christ our True God, we can surmise that:

Firstly, St. Isaac would not have been an acceptable sacrifice for our sins, and God especially does not desire, and indeed expresses horror, at human sacrifices, using elsewhere in the Old Testament the very strong language regarding those who passed their children through the fire to Moloch, “They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire forburnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind:” Thus God ensured St. Isaac was unharmed, and sacrificed Himself instead in the person of the only begotten Son and incarnate Logos. This is from a purely Antiochian historical-Christological perspective.

Secondly, and more importantly, using Alexandrian exegetical technique, we can say the following: St. Isaac became a typological prophecy of Christ, and also of baptism, because in the process of baptism we sacrifice the old fallen humanity in order to put on Christ, and this of course applies whether one is an infant, a child or an adult. Thus one’s willingness to set aside everything for Christ is an imperative.

In either case, we are positively assured by the text that God will never require a human sacrifice from us (except of ourselves, through what Celtic Christians referred to as either the red martyrdom of actual status as a martyr or confessor of the faith, or through the white martyrdom of Holy Matrimony, or the green martyrdom of Monasticism, of new life in Christ), and we are further assured of this by the fact that God sacrified Himself on the Cross in the person of the Son in order to ensure our deliverance from what would otherwise be the inevitable product of our sinful nature.

2PhiloVoid said:

disagree with the premise that our "primary encounter with Scripture should be in the context of worship, and that our use of it otherwise SHOULD be in a secondary referential sense." The Gospel is obviously given through the Church, but it's not in all respects controlled by the Church.

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If you accept the New Testament premise that the Church is the Body of Christ, however you define the Church, whether it is an invisible body of all believers, or is the local church, or based on a Lutheran model of the church being wherever the Gospel is preached, regardless of ecclesiology, then the Scriptures, since their sole function is to attest to the presence of Christ in the world, belong to the Church and are administered by it.

2PhiloVoid said:

But I decline it. The Original Kerygma from the early 1st century, given by Christ to His earliest apostles and disciples can't be "chained" in that way.

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The original kerygma was not contained within the books of Scripture but was rather preached, and then the Gospel as delivered by the Holy Apostles Matthew and John, and as recorded by the holy Evangelists Luke and Mark, was written down, and these four inspired recordings of the Gospel together with the interpretive guidance of the Holy Apostles Paul, Peter, James, John and Jude, became the basis for our scriptural New Testament.

This process took quite a while to finalize, with Latin speaking Christians not having access to a satisfactory set of Christian scriptures until the second century, and Syriac speaking Christians not having access to the 22-book New Testament of the Syriac Peshitta until the fourth, with the additional books of the Athanasian canon taking even longer to be translated into what was the prevalent language of the Christian East at that time. However, all this time the Gospel was being preached in all of these languages besides Greek, and also in Classical Armenian, Classical Georgian, Ge’ez, Numidian, and several other languages.

This is not a matter of a liturgical vs. non-liturgical style of worship but rather relates to the simple fact that historically, a significant population of Christians were either illiterate, lacked access to a vernacular translation of Scripture, or lacked the means to afford a complete set of Scriptures, but nonetheless they most definitely received the Gospel, and indeed the piety of early Christians exceeds that of most modern Christians, certainly myself; indeed I think only a handful of Christians in Ethiopia, Syria, iraq, Egypt, Armenia, and a few other places where there exists real suffering for Christ, real devotion for Christ and real martyrdom has happened within this decade, indeed within the past year in the case of Armenia and Syria, where one will find that level of piety. And in all of those places, due to the exigent circumstances imposed by persecution and economic suffering, access to the physical scriptures is likewise impaired, thus, the importance of the reading of Scripture in church becomes clear.

In other words, the one reliable means of accessing Scripture is in church, according to the lectionary.

Additionally, the use of the ancient lectionaries by the Orthodox, traditional Protestant and Eastern Catholic churches, which do not use the 3 year lectionary from 1969, or the Revised Common Lectionary*, ensure that the Scripture cannot be read arbitrarily or out of context but rather that each Gospel and Epistle and Old Testament lesson are appropriately linked through the liturgical cycle, either being read together in the same service in some traditions, or with the Old Testament read at Vespers the night before in others).

*These suffer numerous problems in terms of lacking important pericopes which are present in the older one year lectionary),

The Liturgist said:

If you accept the New Testament premise that the Church is the Body of Christ, however you define the Church, whether it is an invisible body of all believers, or is the local church, or based on a Lutheran model of the church being wherever the Gospel is preached, regardless of ecclesiology, then the Scriptures, since their sole function is to attest to the presence of Christ in the world, belong to the Church and are administered by it.

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Right. And I'm a part of "the Church" just as surely as most of my sources are, from WHICHEVER denomination they may happen to be from. I don't have to literally sit in a church pew, even yours at your local building, in order to engage and qualifiably receive what can be defined as Christian Doctrine or Official Interpretation. That definition belongs to your church sector, but no one has to accept it or abide by it in order to engage either the history of the Christian message or the remnant sources we all call "The New Testament."

The Liturgist said:

The original kerygma was not contained within the books of Scripture but was rather preached, and then the Gospel as delivered by the Holy Apostles Matthew and John, and as recorded by the holy Evangelists Luke and Mark, was written down, and these four inspired recordings of the Gospel together with the interpretive guidance of the Holy Apostles Paul, Peter, James, John and Jude, became the basis for our scriptural New Testament.

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Right. It was preached. Exactly. .... before it was written down. Do you think I'm not aware of this? That I don't know this?

Again, I notice you offer a lot of answers but put forth very few if any questions. I think you're over assured about the dominance of your particular Orthodox position.

The Liturgist said:

This process took quite a while to finalize, with Latin speaking Christians not having access to a satisfactory set of Christian scriptures until the second century, and Syriac speaking Christians not having access to the 22-book New Testament of the Syriac Peshitta until the fourth, with the additional books of the Athanasian canon taking even longer to be translated into what was the prevalent language of the Christian East at that time. However, all this time the Gospel was being preached in all of these languages besides Greek, and also in Classical Armenian, Classical Georgian, Ge’ez, Numidian, and several other languages.

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Yes, I'm aware of that. Guess how I'm aware of it? (It's not by using A.I. for quick answers).

The Liturgist said:

This is not a matter of a liturgical vs. non-liturgical style of worship but rather relates to the simple fact that historically, a significant population of Christians were either illiterate, lacked access to a vernacular translation of Scripture, or lacked the means to afford a complete set of Scriptures, but nonetheless they most definitely received the Gospel, and indeed the piety of early Christians exceeds that of most modern Christians, certainly myself; indeed I think only a handful of Christians in Ethiopia, Syria, iraq, Egypt, Armenia, and a few other places where there exists real suffering for Christ, real devotion for Christ and real martyrdom has happened within this decade, indeed within the past year in the case of Armenia and Syria, where one will find that level of piety. And in all of those places, due to the exigent circumstances imposed by persecution and economic suffering, access to the physical scriptures is likewise impaired, thus, the importance of the reading of Scripture in church becomes clear.

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You spend a lot of time trying to assert and establish generalities that many of us already know, and it still doesn't establish the dominance of Orthodoxy. Sorry to say.

The Liturgist said:

In other words, the one reliable means of accessing Scripture is in church, according to the lectionary.

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That's baloney, especially now in the 21st century. It's merely ONE WAY to "reliably access the Scriptures." You're putting too much value and weight on your particular brand and too easily dismissing other vehicles, other pathways, other doorways leading to the One True Doorway of Christ. But don't get your trousers ruffled because I said this, brother Liturgist.

The Liturgist said:

Additionally, the use of the ancient lectionaries by the Orthodox, traditional Protestant and Eastern Catholic churches, which do not use the 3 year lectionary from 1969, or the Revised Common Lectionary*, ensure that the Scripture cannot be read arbitrarily or out of context but rather that each Gospel and Epistle and Old Testament lesson are appropriately linked through the liturgical cycle, either being read together in the same service in some traditions, or with the Old Testament read at Vespers the night before in others).

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Well, goody.

The Liturgist said:

*These suffer numerous problems in terms of lacking important pericopes which are present in the older one year lectionary),

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2PhiloVoid said:

Right. It was preached. Exactly. .... before it was written down. Do you think I'm not aware of this? That I don't know this?

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I assumed you were aware of it, otherwise I would have explained the historical record for it, since I have encountered people on CF who seem to believe that individual access to the Bible was readily available and was understood as a concept in the first century, but I’ve never encountered such an idea in anything you wrote.

As I told you yesterday, I like and agree with most of what you have to say.

2PhiloVoid said:

You spend a lot of time trying to assert and establish generalities that many of us already know, and it still doesn't establish the dominance of Orthodoxy. Sorry to say.

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I’m not seeking to establish the dominance of Orthodoxy.

Also I would note that my views are not Orthodox-specific but rather are based as much as possible on a consensus of the liturgical churches including the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, but also Roman Catholicism, Eastern Catholicism, Old Catholicism, and the liturigcal Christianity of Reformed Catholics, Anglo Catholics, Evangelical Catholics, Moravians, Methodists and others (indeed the traditional Anglicans and Lutherans and other liturgical Protestants who are enduring severe persecution in the same locales, and also in Pakistan, where the Anglican Church of Pakistan and the Roman Catholic Church have been particularly severely impacted, and where there has not been a substantial Eastern Christian presence since the genocide of Tamerlane in the 12th-13th centuries, which obliterated the churches that had histoircally existed in central Asia, except in the Malabar Coast of the Indian subcontinent, which I don’t really regard as Central Asia).

The Liturgist said:

I assumed you were aware of it, otherwise I would have explained the historical record for it, since I have encountered people on CF who seem to believe that individual access to the Bible was readily available and was understood as a concept in the first century, but I’ve never encountered such an idea in anything you wrote.

As I told you yesterday, I like and agree with most of what you have to say.



I’m not seeking to establish the dominance of Orthodoxy.

Also I would note that my views are not Orthodox-specific but rather are based as much as possible on a consensus of the liturgical churches including the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, but also Roman Catholicism, Eastern Catholicism, Old Catholicism, and the liturigcal Christianity of Reformed Catholics, Anglo Catholics, Evangelical Catholics, Moravians, Methodists and others (indeed the traditional Anglicans and Lutherans and other liturgical Protestants who are enduring severe persecution in the same locales, and also in Pakistan, where the Anglican Church of Pakistan and the Roman Catholic Church have been particularly severely impacted, and where there has not been a substantial Eastern Christian presence since the genocide of Tamerlane in the 12th-13th centuries, which obliterated the churches that had histoircally existed in central Asia, except in the Malabar Coast of the Indian subcontinent, which I don’t really regard as Central Asia).

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Alright. I can generally jive with much of that.

2PhiloVoid said:

Somehow, I don't think Paul thought of it in that way. But hey, there's a better way to excise this passage by applying the Documentary Hypothesis or other intensive Critical studies of the Bible. If we want to do that.

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I'd be happy enough to put on my Liberal Hat and appeal to the Documentary Hypothesis, but I don't think it helps to resolve this particular problem. Regardless of how many literary layers are in Genesis, and regardless of whether this story is history or legend or somewhere in between, the author(s) of Genesis included it in their book because they saw it as telling us about God and about God's relationship with humans. So even if it's a fictional story, we still have to deal with it.

2PhiloVoid said:

We can also choose to think that because it seems fanciful in its awefulness, it must be a "fireside chat." Or we can apply some moderate historiography and consider that even if the story is legendary, it might be conveying an inverted precedent----------------that is, that God, by asking Abraham to prove his faith, also, at the same time, set up a typology of salvation AND.........AND..............established the point that God is never going to ask anyone to sacrifice their own children. (And I don't care what some folks think they find in Ezekial to the contrary).

The point is, the Akedah was a purposeful one-off event, to set up a pattern of meaning for the future, culminating in a fulfillment by Christ.

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The Liturgist said:

The problem with that interpretation is that it is not sufficiently Christological.

If we read Genesis as Christological prophecy, according to Luke 24, rejecting any prior meaning the text might have had to practitioners of Judaism and instead regarding the book as being about Christ, which is what we clearly should do, based on the words of Christ our True God, we can surmise that:

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I agree with both of you that the story ends with Isaac NOT being sacrificed, and that this sets an important precedent.

I don't know what I think of seeing this Genesis event/story as a Christological prophecy. This connection is why the story shows up in our lectionary readings for the Easter Vigil, and I see how Christians make the connection. I'll acknowledge this way of reading the passage (and it's not like I've got a better alternative to offer), but I'm not currently comfortable with it.

I would love it if we knew exactly what Jesus said on the road to Emmaus.

2PhiloVoid said:

Now, again, I know I'm just preaching to the choir. You're a highly educated sister, and I realize that. But it seems that too many folks these days all too easily adapt and impute to the biblical text their own "reader-response" interpretation because..............well, we now live in a postmodern and socialist leaning world where everyone can no longer bring in the heavier consideration of Philosophy. And I always put Philosophy and all of its environment (Hermeneutics, Epistemology, Historiography, Textual Criticism, etc.) before Theology.

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Well, I did say that we needed to bring a philosopher into this discussion.

PloverWing said:

I'd be happy enough to put on my Liberal Hat and appeal to the Documentary Hypothesis, but I don't think it helps to resolve this particular problem. Regardless of how many literary layers are in Genesis, and regardless of whether this story is history or legend or somewhere in between, the author(s) of Genesis included it in their book because they saw it as telling us about God and about God's relationship with humans. So even if it's a fictional story, we still have to deal with it.

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Yes, I guess we do to some extent. It's just that my philosophically inclined 'Realist' side of my brain says, "I don't like conditionals that have little going for them evidentially." But at the same time, I realize that spiritual beggars like myself can't be choosers ....

PloverWing said:

I agree with both of you that the story ends with Isaac NOT being sacrificed, and that this sets an important precedent.

I don't know what I think of seeing this Genesis event/story as a Christological prophecy. This connection is why the story shows up in our lectionary readings for the Easter Vigil, and I see how Christians make the connection. I'll acknowledge this way of reading the passage (and it's not like I've got a better alternative to offer), but I'm not currently comfortable with it.

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I can understand that discomfort. But when I see a superlative, supernatural story that indicates there's an "only miracle son" involved in association with an alternative sacrificial ram, it sounds like something more is providentially meant to be gleaned from it all.

PloverWing said:

I would love it if we knew exactly what Jesus said on the road to Emmaus.

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Wouldn't we all.....

But, hey, I'm willing to forgo that and be astonished by the testimony of a handful of women who previously walked with Jesus.

PloverWing said:

Well, I did say that we needed to bring a philosopher into this discussion.

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You're too kind. And with that, it's time for me to get back to looking for a real job. The testimony of women has spoken yet once again.

PloverWing said:

I don't know what I think of seeing this Genesis event/story as a Christological prophecy. This connection is why the story shows up in our lectionary readings for the Easter Vigil, and I see how Christians make the connection. I'll acknowledge this way of reading the passage (and it's not like I've got a better alternative to offer), but I'm not currently comfortable with it.

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I wish I could assist you in becoming more comfortable with it. If it helps, as far as I’m aware the story of Isaac is used by every liturgical church in existence, including your own, as part of the Paschal vigil. It is one of the commonalities between East and West, being of probable Hagiopolitan (Jerusalemite) origin, included in the12 lessons read during the Vigil in the Roman Rite in its pre-1955 form (before Pope Pius XII rewrote the entire Paschal Triduum, changing parts which dated back to Pope St. Gregory the Great), and the 14 lessons read in the Eastern Orthodox Vesperal Divine Liturgy, so to a large extent this lesson represents a common thread linking the four largest denominations (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran).

The church has always read this passage as Christological, and according to our Lord, in Luke ch. 24, all of the Old Testament is about Him.

I myself take the view that readings of the Old Testament which do not connect prophetically (either explicitly or typologically) with the Economy of Salvation for us in Christ should be avoided, because the value of the Old Testament to the Christian is as a promise, which God fulfilled on the Cross, and will continue to uphold in the Eschaton, from which we can take great comfort.

And remember - if you do interpret the passage in a literal-historical manner according to the tradition of the catechtical school of Antioch, you can be comforted by the fact that not only did God prevent the sacrifice of Isaac but forbade all human sacrifice, objecting in the strongest possible way to the passing of children to Moloch in fiery Gehenna.

Also I would argue that one of the most important accomplishments of Christianity was in supplanting the Mesoamerican human sacrifice religions, which should be understood as a separate event from the Spanish military conquest of those regions, since initially the Roman missionaries were unsuccessful in the colony of New Spain until the miraculous appearance of the Theotokos to Juan Diego, which resulted in the very important icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe (which is interesting in that it has Byzantine features despite Juan Diego having never seen an Orthodox church).