A charge made by some atheists is that the Bible supports rape and that the God of the Bible is therefore a moral monster.
There are a number of passages they appeal to, attempting to document this claim, but do they really support the charge that is being made?
Let's look at the matter . . .
What Does God Think of Rape?
(NOTE: This post is part of a series on the "dark passages" of the Bible. Click here to see all of the posts in the series.)
The claim that God has a favorable attitude toward rape is implausible on its face.
In all of the Bible passages that are cited to show this, the people involved are either married or unmarried. To rape a married woman would be forcible adultery, and to rape an unmarried woman would be forcible fornication.
As everyone knows, both adultery and fornication are strictly forbidden in the Bible. Doing either one forcibly would just make matters worse.
And, in fact, adultery carried the death penalty in the Old Testament:
Deuteronomy 22
[22] "If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman; so you shall purge the evil from Israel."
We'll deal with the subject of the Old Testament's harsh legal penalties--including the death penalty--in another post, but for now let's look at a couple of the passages that are being cited as evidence that "God approves of rape" . . .
Sex in the City
In fact, let's continue on with the verses that immediately follow the one quoted above, which dealt with the classic situation of adultery. It established the death penalty for adultery, where both the man and the woman consent to the act, but how was this principle to be applied in related cases? One of them that gets discussed is this:
[23] "If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her,
[24] then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor's wife; so you shall purge the evil from the midst of you."
Here we are dealing with the case of a betrothed virgin, not a woman who has been cohabiting with her husband. Already, she is legally married, as the next verse indicates. If a man violates her then he has "violated his neighbor's wife."
This situation of a married woman who is still a virgin seems unusual to us, because in our cultures the point at which marriage is contracted and the point at which it is consummated are usually separated by only a few hours, but in ancient Israel it was typically much longer.
The situation is thus, in principle, the same as if she had been cohabiting with her husband. She is already legally married, and so if she willingly has sex with a man other than her husband, it counts as adultery.
Despite the fact that this is sometimes portrayed as a "death to the rape victim" passage, that is not what it is. Note that it specifies that the woman is put to death "because she did not cry for help though she was in the city."
The fact that nobody heard her cry for help in a populated area is taken as evidence that she consented to the sex act, under the longstanding (!) legal principle qui tacit consentire, or "silence means consent."
You can argue that a more refined application of this principle is desirable, and--indeed--the Old Testament Law foresaw a role for human judgment in sorting out the facts of the case (as applied by a trial at the city gates), but this law is not prescribing the death penalty for rape victims.
It's trying to provide an objective way of telling rape from adultery: If other parties heard the woman cry out then she's a rape victim and is not to be put to death.
The law is not trying to have rape victims killed. Quite the opposite. It's saying, "Do not automatically assume that every sexual act is adultery. Some are not consensual, and the woman is not to be punished in those cases."
The law is even willing to extend the presumption of non-consent to a woman in the very next case examined . . .
Rape in the Country
The passage continues:
[25] "But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die.
[26] But to the young woman you shall do nothing; in the young woman there is no offense punishable by death, for this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor;
[27] because he came upon her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her."
Here the woman is presumed to be a victim of rape. It is assumed that she did scream for help, but because the country isn't populated like the city, nobody heard her.
Note that this means that the law was willing to let certain adulteresses go free. The ancient Israelites weren't stupid. They knew that a sexual act performed in a deserted spot could be consensual. But the woman carries a presumption of innocence because there would have been nobody to hear her cry out.
Unlike in a densely-packed, walled city (the kind that has gates, where the trial and any subsequent punishment were supposed to take place), where people were jammed in together far more closely than in a modern city, and where a scream would be heard.
So the law does not have an anti-victim bias here. It's trying to help people distinguish between cases of adultery and cases of rape. If the crime occurs in the city and the woman screams, she's identified as a victim. If it occurs in the country, whether she screamed or not, she is presumed to have screamed and thus presumed to have been a victim.
In each of these cases, though, the man is regarded as guilty.
And in neither of these cases does God approve of rape.
We will look at additional passages in a future post.
What Now?
If you like the information I've presented here, I'd invite you to join my Secret Information Club.
If you're not familiar with it, the Secret Information Club is a free service that I operate by email.
I send out information on a variety of fascinating topics connected with the Catholic faith.
In fact, the very first thing you’ll get if you sign up is information about what Pope Benedict says about the book of Revelation.
He has a lot of interesting things to say!
If you’d like to find out what they are, just sign up at www.SecretInfoClub.com or use this handy sign-up form:
Just email me at jimmy@secretinfoclub.com if you have any difficulty.
In the meantime, what do you think?
Comments
Post a Comment
Jimmy,
I’d like to hear more of the oral tradition as applied to such cases. Any good Jew knows that there’s an Oral Torah as well as a Written Torah, and that the latter doesn’t make sense except in the context of the former, and indeed in the context of the liturgical and cultural life of the Israelites through history.
It seems to me that such commandments as those you exhibit here are, in effect, incomplete or ambiguous without their surrounding context…not only the details of closely-packed cities and whatnot, but also the Oral Torah and associated commentaries or examples.
Now it’s to our disadvantage that for centuries a lot of that was never written down—hence the term “Oral” Torah—but was instead passed from rabbi to disciple through the process of memorization (far more common back then when one’s brain wasn’t otherwise packed with oodles of pop-culture trivia). So I guess we don’t have the early court-case records of these trials to reference! ...but I guess some of it was eventually written down, right? And in such a way as to illustrate the intent and application of these potentially-misunderstood laws?
Thanks for whatever information you have.
“The fact that nobody heard her cry for help in a populated area is taken as evidence that she consented to the sex act, under the longstanding (!) legal principle qui tacit consentire, or “silence means consent.”
Jimmy, this has always bugged me. I understand the principle here, but I do not see how it is fair to put the burden of proof on the woman here - in fact, to make her scream being heard as the necessary piece of evidence to prove her innocence (as opposed to proving guilt).
We can think of many, many situations in which a woman is too scared to cry out - literally cannot get the words out; has her mouth covered by her attacker; has her life threatened with a weapon; is unconscious; or simply no one was near enough to hear. Even today, there are cases where a woman, especially a young girl, can be raped in the next room and no one would be the wiser, dude to many of the reasons I listed above.
I do not see how this can NOT result in innocent women being killed, or how it is any less harsh than Sharia law.
Another issue I have a big, big problem with in the OT is the one about how a woman would be killed if her husband thinks she is not a virgin and she cannot prove she is a virgin - again, onus of proof on the woman. And never mind the fact that the hymen can be easily broken in many ways, or the fact that female fornicators are put to death and male fornicators are what ...?
I really struggle with Deuteronomy, because while I know we are not held to that code, I find it hard to believe that God, who is perfect, would make laws that are so subject to human error, and which encourage the same kind of behavior we see going on in the Middle East today. It’s all very confusing for me.
On what grounds can we even criticize Sharia?
Thanks for doing this series, I am looking forward to more.
Since presumably this subject has come to the surface in light of a certain Congressman’s remarks, the more interesting question is not whether God “approves” of rape, but whether a life conceived via rape is part of “God’s plan,” as the Congressman said. And, if so, whether the rape was part of God’s plan.
It’s two simple questions, really.
If the life was created by rape, and rape is not part of God’s plan, then how can the life be part of God’s plan? On the other hand, if we take it as a given that all life is part of God’s plan, and the life was created by rape, then how can the rape NOT be part of God’s plan?
Because God can bring something very precious and sacred out of very wicked deeds. Look at the crucifixion. God knew that his Son would be killed if He sent Him. He didn’t force anyone to kill Him. But he brought about the redemption of the world through it.
@Mercury3-You are rightly outraged at the idea that a woman must “cry out” in the physical sense at a rape. Still, I would stress a different understanding of what it means to “cry out.”- the crying out of the soul at injustice. If the soul is silent before God on the matter, then it convicts itself for condoning evil. After all, we are dealing with a God who can see what we cannot see, and hear what we cannot hear.
Fair enough, Don, but that doesn’t really answer the question.
Let’s indeed look at the crucifixion. You’re right that God knew about it. But certainly, the fact that he didn’t force anyone to crucify Jesus doesn’t mean that it wasn’t part of his plan. It’s not as if God noticed the crucifixion was happening and realized the opportunity it presented to save the world. The crucifixion was ordained. The simple fact is: it WAS part of God’s plan.
So if we use that as an analogy to the rape situation, then you seem to be suggesting that rape is in fact part of God’s plan, as the crucifixion was. Is that what you’re saying?
If not, the question remains about a rape that produces a pregnancy: if the life is part of God’s plan, how can it be said that the rape was not? The fact that “God can bring something precious out of wicked deeds” is a nice sentiment for a Hallmark card but it doesn’t answer the question.
Ryan M. - that’s good explanation, but it doesn’t seem to mesh with what the actual Deuteronomic code says - it doesn’t seem to go that deep. The code itself is concerned with putting to death people who represent blemishes to the body politic of Israel - there are several places in the code, particularly where it involves sex or women, where it is very easily forseeable that an innocent person could be executed. I cannot fathom the idea that God created the code knowing this - hence my confusion.
The code also seems to put a stamp of approval on the idea of all the men in the town getting all righteous and taking a woman outside and killing her while overlooking their own sins. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” was something Jesus introduced - there was no previous requirement for purity on the art of the executors.
It just bothers me that when I look at the stuff that goes on in the Middle East, to know that at one time, God actually commanded His people to carry out an even harsher code (and clemency was not an option in cases like these) - for example, a young woman was executed in a torturous manner for fornication, and not even Sharia calls for that.
This is compounded by the idea that Christ, being the Word of God, is the one who handed down the harsh penalties in the first place! I simply find it very hard to mesh the Old and New Testaments.
Jon, one has to also think of God’s natural law which in fact is part of his plan. It was made for our benefit, despite our abuse of it. God, the creator of this natural law for our benefit doesn’t contradict himself or this natural law of his. So, a child conceived with the necessary natural law requirements of an able sperm and an ovum has a soul just like you and me, and a free will to form part of God’s plan. Take the example of when we go against God’s desire and make babies inside a test tube (not to mention the killing and freezing of other conceived life in that process). That test tube baby has a soul just like you and me, and a free will to form part of God’s plan despite it’s un-Godly conception. Why? Well, the requirements of an able sperm and an egg fulfilled the requirements of God’s natural law, which God won’t contradict just because we do it in an un-Godly way. Does that make sense?
Thanks Jimmy for pointing this out. It’s good to have some contextual passages about this subject when talking to friends.
I would like to know what comfort you can offer to these women. I know that it is the dark passages you are writing about but there is not one with out the other!
Posted by R.C. on Monday, Oct 29, 2012 10:20 PM (EST):Jimmy,
I’d like to hear more of the oral tradition as applied to such cases. Any good Jew knows that there’s an Oral Torah as well as a Written Torah, and that the latter doesn’t make sense except in the context of the former, and indeed in the context of the liturgical and cultural life of the Israelites through history.”
**
Good point.I’d check this out with some Jewish sources, too.We tend to have misconceptions of the OT in general.
It’s a hard sell no matter who you are talking to, a friendly audience or an unfriendly one. The only way I can manage to put it in perspective is by thinking it’s the same primitive (relatively speaking) justice that was appropriate for a people of whom Jesus said, “Moses permitted you to do this because your hearts were hard.” But maybe I am wrong and the oral tradition really would clear things up.
@ ioannes,
Much of what you said does make sense, thank you. What doesn’t quite add up is this phrase:
“That test tube baby has a soul just like you and me, and a free will to form part of God’s plan despite it’s un-Godly conception.”
Hmm… “A free will to form part of God’s plan.” But it’s God’s plan. Not ours. We may have the free will to go along wih it, or not, but I don’t see how we have the free will to form it. Thus the test tube baby, as the rape-conceived baby, either was or wasn’t part of God’s plan. In which case we are right back where we started.
Unless you’re saying that God adjusts his plan in response to un-Godly actions of humans. If so, that would settle this question. But I’m pretty sure that’s not the case, and if not, then what you’re explaning why life has value regardless of how it is conceived, once it is conceived. What it doesn’t explain is how the manner of conception of that life be a violation of God’s plan, on the one hand, while the actual conception of that life is part of God’s plan, on the other hand.
Perhaps the distinction you’re looking for is the theoligical distinction between God’s permissive and perfect will? On my phone so can’t elucidate, perhaps someone else can.
@Jon: God planned that human’s reproduce through the sexual intercourse of a man and a woman (this is apparent by creating humans to sexual reproduce, despite other options). Anytime a child is born through this means, God’s plan is fulfilled.
God’s Will is that all acts of sexual intercourse be in the course of a loving married relationship. Anytime that happens, God’s Will is followed.
Thus, it is possible that God’s plan be followed (conception through intercourse) while God’s will be rejected (not by a loving married couple).
@Mercury3
“This is compounded by the idea that Christ, being the Word of God, is the one who handed down the harsh penalties in the first place! I simply find it very hard to mesh the Old and New Testaments”
Yes but God did not dictate the Torah word by word. The Bible is written by human beings, inspired human beings, but still people in their own culture.
Read what Jesus said regarding the Mosaic law concerning divorce, for example. Jesus tells his disciple that certain things were allowed in the old law because the people’s hearts were hard. The people itself was not capable of understanding a more refined law.
This might seem odd, but you must place yourself in a very alien culture, very different than ours. Many cultures surrounding Israel treated (certain) people as cattle, sometimes less than that.
The Mosaic Law was just, but incomplete. Jesus is the perfection of the Law.
To make an analogy: many modern law systems still base themselves on Roman Law, which contained some very wise and smart laws (and some not so wise and not so smart too). At the same time we do not live under Roman Law, as our laws got refined and perfected.
In this analogy Jesus is the ultimate perfection of the Law. Yet still people misunderstand him, sometimes willingly.
Never read Judges 21?
Fascinating essay: But here’s a question an atheist debated me on: Did God ‘invent’ evil? The entire debate is here: http://bit.ly/NJLjye
I agree with enness; how this discussion proceeds depends on the audience. Having sparred with them on several occasions, I see no reason to believe that the typical atheist one finds on the Internet is sufficiently honest to listen to an answer—beyond, that is, looking for ammunition with which to try to embarrass Christians. An answer to such a person is worse than useless; it is a case of Proverbs 26:4, not Proverbs 26:5. The situation is very different, however, if this is intended to strengthen those with real faith but whose catechesis leaves them woefully unprepared for such challenges.
It is my understanding that the death penalty is very hard to carry out under Jewish law, and that making a transgression subject to the death penalty is done to underscore the seriousness of the transgression.
Jon—Indeed, I’m going to share something with you that will change your life forever. When God makes his plan, he factors in what he already knows is going to happen. Take prayer for example. Why should one pray if his plan is already made? Well, the answer is quite simple; God, in making such plan, has already factored in if you were going to pray or not. How cool is that?! When it comes to the un-Godly conceived child, he already knew that terrible crime was going to happen, but one can imagine God thinking “what a great chance to take something horrible and make something amazing out of it” (In that case, a brand new innocent person in his image would be the amazing part).
The other day I was at a Lobby and a horrifying TVAD about a halloween attraction came up. Now, a lady sitting next to me scoffed at it and because of that we started a conversation and that conversation might very well save her soul. Was it a bad commercial to begin with? Yes. Did something good come out of it? Yes. Is it his desire for people to be using their free will to glorify evil? No. Will God stop something that goes against his desires? He can, but consider this: what would happen if he stopped everyone from doing what offends him? We would then all be robots without free will and that my friend, is not our purpose. Our purpose in life is to glorify him by using our will. How do we glorify him? By being righteous and the rest will flow from there. Joseph, in his righteousness (MT 1:19) turned out to be just the chaste husband that the Mother of our Lord needed. By him being righteous, he pleased God immensely. On the other hand, God, knowing what Judas would do, incorporated him in his plan, as suffering also has a purpose, which is, to release grace for others if offered up to God. If all humanity would be righteous, then bad things would not happen!
@GregB—I have heard the same from Jewish friends. I wonder, though, if it was always that way. For example, today many Jews even refrain from writing God, instead writing G-d; but “God” is a word of Germanic origins and very far removed from the Tetragrammaton. This pretty clearly was NOT always the case; when you see King David, for example, making oaths like, “As the LORD liveth, ...”, remember that what we write as “LORD” was the Name given to Moses. Clearly Jewish understanding and practice has changed over the centuries—as should be expected, after all.
@Jon—Think of it this way. In LORD OF THE RINGS, Frodo has mercy on Gollum and spares him. Who really made that decision—Frodo, or Tolkien? Both, but in different ways. Obviously Tolkien was not a character in his book who, with a powerful, magical will, bent Frodo to do his bidding and annihilated Frodo’s freedom, the way Sauron would have, but this is too often how we see God interacting with our own free wills.
Actually, ioannes, what you’re describing sounds terribly depressing because it actually precludes the very concept of free will. Any future event that is completely knowable in advance is by definition preordained.
Preordainment is incompatible with free will: If God knows every action that I will take, and knew them prior to my conception, then all of those actions have already been determined, and not by me.
Of course, this issue of reconciling man’s alleged free will with God’s alleged omniscience is not a new one. No one has ever explained it to me satisfactorily, so I welcome any attempts.
(But, Howard, I’m afraid your analogy doesn’t wash. Lord of the Rings is a work of fiction and every decision, in every way, was made by Tolkien. It simply can’t be said that Frodo made any decision at all, any way. I’m sorry if I’m being pedantic but if your point is to analogize Tolkien with God, and Frodo with man, then that’s very depressing indeed, because Tolkien did, in fact, “bend Frodo to do his bidding and annihilated Frodo’s freedom.” That’s exactly what happened.)
Jon, although he knows everything, that doesn’t mean that he’s making you do it. He just knows what you’re going to do and how your going to exercise your free will. Did he want you to get on this comment section and try to understand this? Yes! Did he make you do it? No! Did he know that you have an inquisitive mind and were going to pursue the subject? Yup!
Have you ever asked someone something, and they say exactly what you thought they were going to say? That person could have said anything in the whole wide world, yet they said exactly what you knew they were going to say. God, who knows each hair of your head (MT 10:30) knows exactly what your going to do, even though he doesn’t make you do it. Even this little conversation. God knew you were going to participate in it, and he’s pleased that your seeking the truth. Yet it is absolutely your choice to carry on or not, just as it was my choice to answer you. I chose to answer you not because God made me do it, but because I in my free will chose to do so. He just knew I was going to do it, and made plans accordingly. Pretty deep stuff no?
God does not support rape. He does not even support fornication and adultery. Rape is forced fornication and adultery. That is even worse. In the bible there is a story of a woman who was bathing and was going to be raped by two old men and when they got caught they said she was “okay” with them wanting to have sex with her even though she was not. A prophet of God, or some man of God, believed what she said that she wanted no part in it and screamed for help. The woman’s life was spared and the two old men were put to death.
If the ancient Israelites saw the woman crying, beaten up/bruised/ruffled up by the man and saw her with a look of absolute horror with what happened to her they would see she CLEARLY did not want to have sex with that man. If she was just walking around smiling and not giving a care about what happened to her that would prove it was not rape and she clearly wanted to mess around with him.
If you look in your history of all the God’s in the past you will see it is only our God that did not like rape. Zeus was okay with it and even raped women himself(even young boys as well).
And the reason for this is because he is the only God. While all the others were rapists, child molesters, theives, sadistic, and liars, the God of Israel was the only one that had sense. And its because he is the real and only one.
The reason we have so many lies about him today is simply because humans do not want to acknowledge his authority. Today it is no longer about them wondering if they can be forgiven of their sins or not. It is about not respecting his authority that he says the things they are doing is wrong. Todays it’s: “Why should YOU say what I am doing is wrong? Why should ‘I’ want your forgiveness? I dont want your forgiveness and I dont want you.” This is very foolish to do because without the human acknowledging God’s authority and asking for his forgiveness and repenting, they are DOOMED.
“God knew you were going to participate in it, and he’s pleased that your seeking the truth. Yet it is absolutely your choice to carry on or not, just as it was my choice to answer you. I chose to answer you not because God made me do it, but because I in my free will chose to do so. He just knew I was going to do it, and made plans accordingly. Pretty deep stuff no?”
Deep, yes, but nonsensical. With a handful of possible exceptions, future events simply can’t be known to an absolute certainty unless they are preordained. If God KNEW (not predicted but knew), 100 years ago (or 500 years ago), that you and I would be having this conversation, then you and I could not have decided on our own to have it. Because the events were decided before we were born or conceived.
“Have you ever asked someone something, and they say exactly what you thought they were going to say?”
Yes, sure. But I didn’t KNOW what she was going to say. I only knew what I expected her to say, and my expectation was right. That person could have surprised me. She just didn’t. What you’re saying, though, is that with God, there is no chance of surprise. God KNOWS. But if God (or anyone else, for that matter), knows, then the thing he knows has already been decided. Because only that which has been determined can be known. If it was decided before we were born, then it could not have been determined by us.
For the record, I think it is the omniscience part, and not the free will part, that is false. I do think God gave us free will and in so doing opened himself up to the possibility of being surprised by us now and then, and this does not diminish my view of him at all. One thing I definitely don’t need from God is for him know what I’m having for dinner next Wednesday.
“If she was just walking around smiling and not giving a care about what happened to her that would prove it was not rape and she clearly wanted to mess around with him.”
This is simply untrue. Many rape victims want to “wish” the rape away, to essentially pretend it didn’t happen in order to convince themselves on some level that it didn’t. This does not mean it didn’t happen, only that victims of trauma react in very surprising ways. So it is quite possible for a rape victim to “walk around smiling” and seeming to not “give a care.” This proves nothing.
@Mr.Patton
“Never read Judges 21?”
You just have to read a few more verses on to find the explanation. Judges 25 “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what he thought best” with an explanation in my bible’s side notes “The verse gives the reason why the lawlessness of the period of judges, and the events described herein, were possible.”
@ Post by Jon on Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 12:22 AM (EST):
Dear Jon—
The answer to that perceived inconsistency is answered by 2 facts.
God is omnipotent.
Humans have free-will.
To help one think about this, let’s suppose that a human created an ant and gave that ant “free will”. Does that jeopardize the over-arching power of the human? Is the human threatened by the ant? Etc.
Free will and omnipotence, that’s the answer.
To ask “can God grant free will that will usurp his power” is the age-old non-sense question “can God create a rock that he cannot lift?”. This is a question that does not make sense because, by definition, God is omnipotent. It is like saying “can God make a triangle with 4 sides” or “can God make true=false” and etc. Such utterances are “connected series of words” but they carry no meaning.
HTH.
Thanks and God bless you.
—Mark Kamoski
@ Post by ioannes on Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 11:36 PM (EST):
Dear ioannes—
That is a great comment you have there.
It reminds me that God is outside of time and space, etc.
He see all things, not linearly, but immediately.
As such, it gets tricky to talk about God’s perspective, (if we can do it at all). How do we say it? Do we say “he knows you are going to do X in the future”? Or do we say “he knows that you have done X in the past”? Or do we say “he sees you doing X in the present”? I suppose all things are “present” to God, including the “past” and the “future”, but that is a strange sentence to say, however, it may be accurate.
Thanks and God bless you.
—Mark Kamoski
@ Post by Jon on Thursday, Nov 1, 2012 8:38 AM (EST):
Dear Jon—
The trouble is that you keep comparing God to humans in terms of knowledge, space, and time.
God is outside of time.
As such, there really is no such thing as “God knows a given human will do X” because all things are present to God.
For God to observe the (human-perceived) unfolding of human will does not affect the human’s free will.
Of God, it is not proper, strictly speaking, to say things like “God pre-ordained X” or “God took into account that X will happen in the future”. All things are “present” to God. That is about as close as we can talk about it, but its probably still way off.
It is kind of like this. If I observe the ant climbing up and over a small pebble rather than walking around it, has my observation of the moment occurring in the present somehow affected the ant’s free will to make that choice?
To “will a mistake to happen right now” is very different from “observing that a mistake will happen right now”. With God, it is the latter not the former.
It seems paradoxical, but it really is not.
It is kind of like this—God knows what you have-chosen/are-choosing/will-choose because he sees it all happening in the “now” relative to his perspective.
HTH.
Thanks and God bless you.
—Mark Kamoski
@Jon/ioannes
.
Don’t get hung up on predestination and time. We do not really understand time. I always think of this as “God transcends time”. That is, He can look at our lives, across the span of our lives, and see what choices we make and how they worked out, but for God this is not past or present or future, he is not bound as we are in time.
To say that God knows what we will choose does not mean it is pre-ordained. It does not mean that it is already decided. It only means that somehow God sees it all.
Man gets hung up on pre-destination because we cannot imagine transcending time. So don’t worry on this. At best this is our understanding of God. .
I don’t think that even if God fully reveal his nature to us, in its entirety, we would comprehend it. Thus some thing are a mystery. Just as when you were a baby you could not comprehend your parents lives and decisions.
Howard wrote:
@GregB—I have heard the same from Jewish friends. I wonder, though, if it was always that way. For example, today many Jews even refrain from writing God, instead writing G-d; but “God” is a word of Germanic origins and very far removed from the Tetragrammaton. This pretty clearly was NOT always the case; when you see King David, for example, making oaths like, “As the LORD liveth, ...”, remember that what we write as “LORD” was the Name given to Moses. Clearly Jewish understanding and practice has changed over the centuries—as should be expected, after all.
****************************************************************************
If you are interested in the Names of God, a rabbi has a series on You Tube where he covers the Names of God. The series has 27 episodes. It is by Rabbi David Fohrman and is called “Exodus, A Hidden Agenda.”
“In all of the Bible passages that are cited to show this, the people involved are either married or unmarried. To rape a married woman would be forcible adultery, and to rape an unmarried woman would be forcible fornication.”....
Jimmy,
What if the rapist is the woman’s husband? (Neither adultery nor fornication) Or are we going with the old idea that a man can’t rape his own wife, regardless of force used?
‘CATECHISM of the CATHOLIC CHURCH, Second Edition’ -
CCC: ” 2356 Rape is the forcible violation of the sexual intimacy of another person. It does injury to justice and charity. Rape deeply wounds the respect, freedom, and physical and moral integrity to which every person has a right.
It causes grave damage that can mark the victim for life. It is always an intrinsically evil act.
Graver still is the rape of children committed by parents (incest) or those responsible for the education of the children entrusted to them. ”
Anne, I agree with the meaning behind your comment, but the article was about dark passages from the Bible - not the Catechism, and specifically mentioned were adultery and fornication as not being supported in the Bible. If a man rapes his own wife, that is neither of the two.
“Graver still is the rape of children committed by parents (incest) or those responsible for the education of the children entrusted to them. ” I would be inclined to mention that anyone raping a child would be committing a grave offense, but the article was about dark passages in the Bible….not parents and educators.
Catholics are not ‘Sola Scriptura’, and have never been.
In the words of Jesus - Mt 16:18-19.
And John 21:25.
“CATECHISM of the CATHOLIC CHURCH, Second Edition” is from the Magisterium.
Catholics are required to adhere to the teachings in the CCC - which include the Bible teachings.
In many instances the CCC contains references to the Bible at the bottom of each page.
Under God’s Commandment: Thou shall not commit adultery, the other sexual sins apply.
In Jesus’s words: Mk 7:20-23.
Is it not wicked to sexually abuse someone - even a spouse?
As an example: you won’t find the PRECISE words: “artificial insemination”, or “pornography” in the Bible, but you will find them in the CCC.
“This catechism will thus contain both the new and the old (cf. Mt 13:52), because the faith is always the same yet the source of ever new light.” - Pope John Paul II (CCC pg 4).
For more info on the CCC go to: “What Catholics REALLY Believe Source”.
http://whatcatholicsreallybelieve.com .
Anne, Actually, I have my own copy of the CCC, so I don’t need the website, but thanks all the same. Didn’t mean to get you all hot and bothered (a good indicator when people start quoting in Latin), I was simply pointing out that the article was about certain Bible passages that some have chosen to interpret as being in support of rape. While the explanation that followed was insightful, it failed to mention rape within marriage, and so I asked about that. My comments were limited to the narrow scope of the article, and only the article, not all Catholic teachings. As an example: I’m pretty sure that there’s not a Bible verse condemning the “Electric Slide”, but I didn’t bother to look it up in the CCC because the article didn’t pertain to “Ten Super Dance Songs for Weddings”.
@Jon—An analogy is only an analogy, and with any analogy describing God we have to remember its limits. But according to the story, Frodo made the decision of his own free will. That is to say, according to *the only standard according to which Frodo even exists*, he made the decision of his own free will. So yes, Frodo made the decision from within the context of the book, but Tolkien made the decision from a perspective outside the book. Frodo does not exist in the same sense as Tolkien, and you and I do not exist in the same sense as God.
@GregB—My point was just that Judaism has also experienced a development of dogma; modern Jewish practices did not emerge fully formed at the foot of Sinai. That does not equate to wanting to watch a 27-part series on YouTube.
Hey Rob, great way to put it. God does see everything happening at once.
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
-Hebrews 13:8
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give The National Catholic Register permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
The time period for commenting on this article has expired.