Debriefing the Rauser/Lamb Debate

[@calebrogers693]

This is only a problem in wooden readings of the Old Testament law. The Torah operated much closer to case law to be followed in general principle than written law which is to be followed according to the letter.

[@vaskaventi6840]

^^

[@StephenSweeney-r5q]

Why allow moral outrage to be used only on those who are none believers but to who were abused by your own church the moral and sin is the fault of the abused victim.

[@KingoftheJuice18]

Hey, Randal. I admire the moral passion you bring to bear in these contexts, and I share your drive to have our religious commitments be founded on ethical standards of the highest order. But I think there are two problems with the way this was presented: (1) You didn't do enough work here to explore any thesis regarding how plenary inspiration could place the passage in a different light. As such, it leaves the religious believer in the position of not being able to reverence Scripture-even in a "plenary" sense-if your critique is correct and the text reflects a morality decidedly inferior to our own. You mustn't (in my view) do the critique part without offering the "function in Scripture" part. (2) I think, in this vein, you don't point enough to what Scripture does achieve in Deut 22. It makes the woman's intent absolutely essential. Yes, of course the practical measure used to gauge her intent is simplistic or crude. But it's pretty hard to imagine God teaching 1st millennium BCE Israelites about "tonic immobility." What the text does give us there is a principle we can use and apply today through interpretation: We now know that whenever a woman is r*ped, it's like she is "in the country"-unless there's hard evidence to the contrary. And we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's not always r*pe, and therefore we need to have ways of discerning when it's not so-when it's "in the city." (In Judaism, the interpretive process I'm describing is known as "Oral Torah.")

[@EnglishMike]

_" But it's pretty hard to imagine God teaching 1st millennium BCE Israelites about "tonic immobility."_ This type of argument always baffles me. God is supposed to be omniscient and omnipotent, and according to the OT, wasn't shy about demonstrating his power in truly unmistakable and unforgettable way on a routine basis (pillars of fire, manna from Heaven, etc). And yet people still want to argue that it's hard to imagine guiding his chosen people to be anything more than "slightly better morally" than the tribes around them? And even if that's what you want to argue, what's so hard about teaching his chosen people to understand how a person's body reacts under extreme duress? This is something easily observable, even if you don't have the terminology or training to understand the physiological and psychological factors involved.

[@Electricalpenguin]

Why is it hard to imagine God teaching the ancient Israelites about tonic immobility? Not necessarily using that phrase of course. I’m not really clear on what principle you’re saying we can draw from the text. The core premise of these rules seems to be “women will cry out loudly if they are being sexually assaulted”.

[@KingoftheJuice18]

@@Electricalpenguin The core principle is that a woman who doesn't consent to the activity is not guilty of anything. The "crying out" was a practical attempt at determining the reality of her intention in a situation with no witnesses.

[@KingoftheJuice18]

@@EnglishMike God has those attributes, I believe, but humans, and their understanding of things, are what they are. Now, demonstrating divine power, on the one hand, and giving laws and principles for running our own society, on the other, are two very different things. As Maimonides asserted in the 12th century, God doesn't miraculously change human nature. As for the difficulty in framing a law that incorporates the principle of "tonic immobility" or makes it a simple matter to judge instances of r, I would say it's much, much harder than you might imagine. And it needs to be fairly short, not pages and pages in a law code. (Try writing it yourself.) Remember, people are being asked to judge situations with no witnesses or any other, external evidence. Even today, with our more "advanced" morality and forensic sciences, how well do we do when judging these cases? But my real point was that we shouldn't see Scripture in such literalistic terms. If we have new ways of determining the woman's lack of consent, obviously (to me) Scripture means for us to use them.

[@eew8060]

​@@EnglishMike First of all what causes tonic immobility and how would you prove that 1st Millennium BCE Israelites were susceptible to it?

[@davethebrahman9870]

Rauser is a decent person, but the evangelical position is much more consistent. The biblical commands are incapable of reconciliation with the moral intuitions of modern people. The problem for Rauser is that Jesus insisted that believers should follow the Law, every single commandment. The obvious corollary is that the moral teaching of Jesus is inadequate and inconsistent.

[@jefftitterington7600]

I disagree. The whole of the NT is opposed to the idea of obtaining life through obedience to the law of Moses. Jesus himself broke that law, claimed he had the authority to do so, and claimed to be equal with God. He was pursued by religious leaders for blasphemy among other things, which would not be the case if he had not breached the Mosaic law. One of the early concerns in the early church was how to treat Gentile believers - should they be required to follow the whole law? The answer, by consensus, was no. Having been an evangelical for many years, I attest that their leaders are very selective about which OT laws should be followed by Christians. They seem to disregard the whole "love your neighbour" bit in favour of "homosexuality is evil". So hardly consistent.

[@davethebrahman9870]

@ Yes indeed Jesus broke the Law. But he taught his followers to obey the Law (Matt 5:17-21) and even to obey the ‘oral law’ of the Pharisees (Matt 23:2). But of course he wasn’t very consistent

[@Electricalpenguin]

@@davethebrahman9870 Consistency is an overrated virtue.

[@davethebrahman9870]

@@Electricalpenguin Ha! Yes, didn’t Emerson say it was the hobgoblin of little minds? :) Not sure I’d agree with that.

[@ChristianCatboy]

Jesus fulfilled the law. Not a single jot or tittle will pass away _until all has been accomplished_, and that process of fulfillment has already begun. "The Kingdom of Heaven is among you."