Is God the same now as 3000 years ago?

If God is the same now as 3000 years ago why are we not obeying the edicts of the old testiment, like all the lovely wisdom in Leviticus?

Originally posted by sonhouse
If God is the same now as 3000 years ago why are we not obeying the edicts of the old testiment, like all the lovely wisdom in Leviticus?

Because it is our relationship/standing with God that has changed not God.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
Because it is our relationship/standing with God that has changed not God.
Kelly

If I had known you 10 years ago and said:

1 I think we should execute people who commit homosexual acts
2 I ordered the stoning of someone for carrying sticks on a sabbath
3 Come round to tea and my slaves will cook you up a nice meal, or I will beat them, but not enough that they die within 2 days

and then you met me today and I said

1 Treat homosexuals with compassion
2 The death penalty for minor offenses is not acceptable
3 No-one should ever be enslaved.

Would you say I had changed, or would you just say that your relationship with me has changed?

If I had known you 10 years ago and said:

1 I think we should execute people who commit homosexual acts

I don't think the instruction for a man lying with a man for sex to be excecuted demonstrated no love whatsoever for the homosexual.

You have to remember that there were also the various offerings which the Hebrews could avail themselves of.

The consecration offering.
The sin offering.
The trespass offering.
The peace offering.

The existence of these offerings suggest to me that any repentant sinner among the Hebrews could go to the priests for a show of the prescribed atoning sacrifice on his behalf.

I find it hard to believe that some men who had homosexual sex did not afterwards decide to make things right between them and Yahweh with one of the offerings.

Impossibility of repentance is not written into the Levitical laws.

2 I ordered the stoning of someone for carrying sticks on a sabbath

Sometimes a person was made an example of.
Each and every person who broke the Sabbath could not have possibly been executed.

This was one of points of Jesus when He came. That is that no one could live up to the law. Did not the pious Pharisee even go out and untie his ass on the Sabbath.

The main purpose of the Law of Moses was to EXPOSE rather that to keep.
The Law was given to expose fallen man's desparate need for grace on a atoning world wide sacrifice in the Son of God, for the sins of the world.

3 Come round to tea and my slaves will cook you up a nice meal, or I will beat them, but not enough that they die within 2 days

I will not expound on the passage I think you may be aluding to. But in brief the passage teaches the PERSONHOOD of the slave RATHER than the mere property of the slave.

It was an improvement of the institution of slavery which God knew any ANE culture was going to practice.

By the way, can you find me an writing so ancient as the biblical book of Job which affirms that the servant of a man is on equal standing before God with the master ?

The oldest book in the Bible Job shows this patriarch's concern for the just treatment of his slaves -

Job 31:13-15 - "If I have despised the cause of my servant or my maid when they contended with me, What then will I do when God rises up? And when He visits me, what will I answer Him?

Did not He who made me in the womb make him? And was it not One who fashioned us in the womb? "

Can you produce a ANE document of this antiquity with an equal expression of fear before God at mistreating a servant ? If so your reply will contain that quotation, I hope. This writing goes back to about 2000 BC approximately 500 years before Moses wrote the Pentateuch.

Tired of reading yet anyone ?
Hang in there.

and then you met me today and I said

1 Treat homosexuals with compassion

I don't think the treating of any sinner with compassion has changed in TEACHING in the New Testament.

Look at Paul's writing. He lists homosexuality in the same breath with other sins. He does not indicate it as more or less and error but as run of the mill.

The strong implication is that if we realize the sinner's struggle with one kind of sin they also could struggle with another. Therefore they all need the Savior. Therefore they all need a loving presentation of the Gospel of Christ.

Too much reading for you yet? Press me on this point and I'll write more to demonstrate the point.

Would you say I had changed, or would you just say that your relationship with me has changed?

If you put the question to me, I would say that the fruits of the Holy Spirit are today what they were 2000 years ago.

And the bible says "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." (Hebrews 13:8)

From the time He rose from the dead, Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.

I think the Apostle Paul would have called the Westboro Baptist Church a group of fleshly and immature disciples 2000 years ago. And in 2013 such hatred for sinners under the banner of Christ is still a display of fleshly spiritual immaturity.

Jesus hasn't changed. Is it like the New Testament didn't give us disciples a heads up long ago?

"But know this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be ... having the form of godliness, though denying its power; from these also turn away." (See 2 Tim. 3:1-5)

Read the whole section. It includes religious people who will have a FACADE of devotion but deny the proper spiritual power associated with godly living.

Originally posted by Rank outsider
If I had known you 10 years ago and said:

1 I think we should execute people who commit homosexual acts
2 I ordered the stoning of someone for carrying sticks on a sabbath
3 Come round to tea and my slaves will cook you up a nice meal, or I will beat them, but not enough that they die within 2 days

and then you met me today and I said

1 Trea ...[text shortened]...
Would you say I had changed, or would you just say that your relationship with me has changed?

This post makes me jealous that I didn't write it.

Good post.

This is not a response to exactly what the OP is asking, but—

Staying strictly within the context of the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish understanding(s), Yes: God can change—since part of God’s essence is process/becoming, rather than stasis/being.

Classical (biblical) Hebrew, as opposed to modern Hebrew, only has two verb tenses: perfect and imperfect, which are more aspect-oriented than temporal; strictly, there is no present or future tense. The perfect tense captures the aspect of completed or finished or “closed” action or happening; the imperfect captures incomplete or unfinished or open/ongoing action or happening. Translations into a more temporal (tensed) language, such as English, should not be used to obscure the different grammar of the Hebrew (though it likely often does, perhaps inescapably).

The fundamental statement of God’s essence is eheyeh asher eheyeh (Exodus 3:14; where eheyeh is imperfect). This statement can be validly—even literally—understood to say any of the following (which examples are not exhaustive):

I am that I am.

I am that which [or who] I am.

I will be what I will be.

I will be who I am.

I will become what I become.

And so on . . .

Although Jewish scholars, too, may argue over the best understanding (which necessarily precedes any translation)—e.g., Martin Buber argued that it expressed the open-ended future (“will be” )—a reader/listener in the original language would hear all of those possibilities. That is, the understanding would—and should— also be open, and not “perfected”. That is just one example of the polysemous nature of Hebrew—how the language works—that is falsified by insistence on particular, definitive translations. If that creates problems for people who would like it to be otherwise (for their beliefs, philosophy, theology, or whatever), that’s too bad; the texts (Torah/Tanakh) just don’t support that kind of semantic closure.*

Further, the third-person construct from eheyeh—a construct that only refers to God—YHVH, is also really a verb**. Somehow that seems to have gotten lost, perhaps because of its general use as a proper name. Nevertheless, the further context suggests that a shift in understanding—from a substance theology to a process theology—is intended: “I appear/have appeared to Avraham, to Yitzakh, and to Yakov as el shaddai, but by my name YHVH I was not known to them.” (Exodus 6:3) That is, the shift from the substantive el shaddai to the verbal YHVH—“this is my name forever, this, generation to generation” (Ex. 3:15)—represents a new, process-oriented, understanding of God: “God is a verb” (to quote from the title of a book by rabbi David Cooper).

A shift from substance philosophy/theology to a process philosophy/theology is a major paradigm change, and the theological divide between proponents of the former versus proponents of the latter may be as wide (and unbridgeable) as that between dualist-theists and non-dualists (such as myself). Impasse is probably preordained, making argument (except perhaps for informative purposes) fruitless.

It does seem, however, that a process theology, based on a god that becomes—whose essence entails becoming—implies that “faith” (whatever else that word might mean) becomes an existential stance in the face of uncertain, un-pre-defined, change: i.e., becoming.*** Thus, one might find it better to embrace what Alan Watts called “the wisdom of insecurity”, rather than the security of an imagined stasis that Torah itself refuses.

How much of all this marks a general difference between Judaism and Christianity, I cannot say. Judaism itself is multi-vocal on such questions; nevertheless, neither the understanding of a “god who is always becoming”, nor nondualism, are marginal streams.

___________________________________________________

* And, in Jewish thought, that kind of semantic closure is generally considered idolatrous. This is not to say that “anything goes”. Even the deeper, more widely associative levels of midrash (traditional Jewish exegesis) still springboard from the text, and are based on how the particular polysemy of Hebrew works.

** In third person singular: “[That which/who/the one that] is/becomes.”

*** One rabbinical understanding of olam ha ba, conventionally translated as “the world to come”, is, rather, “the world that is always coming”—that is, the unknown future of “becoming” that we face as an existential fact.

__________________________________________________

POST-NOTE: Although this is a whole area of discussion itself, but in order to forestall some other objections that often arise in these discussions, I will just say that—

(a) Judaism follows an ongoing, open-ended Oral Torah,

— As rabbi and scholar Marc-Alain Quaknin states: “[T]he Jewish people is not the people of the Book!” (Ouaknin, The Burnt Book: Reading the Talmud; exclamation point his);

(b) historicistic/literalistic readings are not the norm (nor should they be: without going into detail about either midrash or the necessity of literary-critical hermeneutics),

(c) in ethical matters, I am not only permitted but even (ethically) required, to dispute claims in the text (even if they come from God);

—Again, I am staying strictly within a (admittedly multi-vocal) Jewish context here; but I would take this position anyway.

(d) in any event, I remain a gestaltic nondualist, not a dualist-theist; such a nondualism is a major stream in Jewish philosophy/theology, even among the Orthodox.

—I take the shema (Hear, O Israel, YHVH our god, YHVH is one) to be as nondualistic a statement as anything in the Tao Te Ching; again, this is a predominant stream in Jewish thought.

Originally posted by sonship
It was an improvement of the institution of slavery which God knew any ANE culture was going to practice.

Do you think Christians are still - now in the 21st century - permitted by God to own slaves, if local secular laws allow it?

I'm told God exists outside of time and knows exactly what will happen within the time construct,why would any change take place ?Unless of course a change is required to respond to an unknown future.

Originally posted by sonhouse
If God is the same now as 3000 years ago why are we not obeying the edicts of the old testiment, like all the lovely wisdom in Leviticus?

Oh, this thread again...

😞

Originally posted by Suzianne
Oh, this thread again...

😞

Cheer up Suzi

Originally posted by johnnylongwoody
Cheer up Suzi

But why don't they learn? Why?

Originally posted by sonhouse
If God is the same now as 3000 years ago why are we not obeying the edicts of the old testiment, like all the lovely wisdom in Leviticus?

I think it depends on what you mean by 'the same". I believe God's character traits are the same. It may be that it is our idea of God that is not the same from time to time.

Originally posted by RJHinds
I think it depends on what you mean by 'the same". I believe God's character traits are the same. It may be that it is our idea of God that is not the same from time to time.

Bill Clinton said it best when he said:

"It depends on what your definition of "is" is."

Originally posted by Suzianne
Bill Clinton said it best when he said:

"It depends on what your definition of "is" is."

Well, if that fits your purpose, have at it. 😏

Originally posted by Suzianne
But why don't they learn? Why?

Because you have never really addressed the underlying point being made.

You can't keep on not answering this question, and then complain that people keep asking the same one in varous guises. The answer 'Mosaic Law does not apply to Christians' is not a satisfactory answer to the real question being asked. It is irrelevant.

What we really want to know is why God ever thought it was acceptable to ask any of his followers to treat other human beings in a way which, if anyone in the world today were to do it, we would regard as immoral and criminal. If you cannot answer this, then why should anyone put any faith in the Christian version of this God?

Once you have answered this, we can move on to why God asked Christians to behave differently. But not before you have answered this question.