Bad Theology
Text for today: Exodus 10 i-iii
After sending seven plagues upon Egypt, God boasts to Moses that He has hardened Pharaoh's heart and the hearts of his servants, purely in order that He may afflict them with further plagues. Israelite parents and grandparents will, God proclaims, be at liberty to recount His cruelties in order to scare children into obedience.
God informs Moses of His personal responsibility for at least some of the foregoing plagues and for all those to follow, including the summary execution of every first-born child in Egypt as punishment for the policy which God Himself has imposed on Pharaoh. There is no reason to believe that this sadistic modus operandi was subject to the slightest modification by the Saviour: God's addiction to collective punishment is unabated in the New Testament, as Jesus made clear when He promised a fate worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah for any city in which His message is not heard (Matthew 10 xv). Jesus also clearly stated that all things are possible for God but not for humanity, thereby brazenly admitting His Father's culpability in the damnation of all those whom He made incapable of gaining His arbitrary favour.
God's mass torture and murder of Egyptians as an object-lesson for His chosen is a clear forerunner of the Saviour's proclamation that God had blinded a man from birth in order to gain advertising mileage from his eventual cure. Whether this dubious refinement offers much in the way of redeeming moral value must remain a matter for debate.
After sending seven plagues upon Egypt, God boasts to Moses that He has hardened Pharaoh's heart and the hearts of his servants, purely in order that He may afflict them with further plagues. Israelite parents and grandparents will, God proclaims, be at liberty to recount His cruelties in order to scare children into obedience.
God informs Moses of His personal responsibility for at least some of the foregoing plagues and for all those to follow, including the summary execution of every first-born child in Egypt as punishment for the policy which God Himself has imposed on Pharaoh. There is no reason to believe that this sadistic modus operandi was subject to the slightest modification by the Saviour: God's addiction to collective punishment is unabated in the New Testament, as Jesus made clear when He promised a fate worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah for any city in which His message is not heard (Matthew 10 xv). Jesus also clearly stated that all things are possible for God but not for humanity, thereby brazenly admitting His Father's culpability in the damnation of all those whom He made incapable of gaining His arbitrary favour.
God's mass torture and murder of Egyptians as an object-lesson for His chosen is a clear forerunner of the Saviour's proclamation that God had blinded a man from birth in order to gain advertising mileage from his eventual cure. Whether this dubious refinement offers much in the way of redeeming moral value must remain a matter for debate.
2 Comments:
At 7:18 pm ,
Brian M said...
ah, more lessens from our glorious Owner of All Infernal Names (Amazon still have the book!)
I enjoy the Father of Teeth, but these theology lessons are still a...treat?
At 12:29 am ,
Philip said...
And a fine book it is too - closely argued, nicely written and highly recommended, although John Zande clearly should have hired me as his proofreader.
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