Re-read my previous post. I deal with the issue of 'the angel of the Lord' being used as someone descriptive of the very presence and speaking the very words of God. The fact that the OT does this is not proof that somehow God is literally an angel - a created or lesser being. You can't simply force the OT readers to conform to your understanding of what the relationship of the word angel and the word God should mean in the 21st century - they do this for very specific theological and literary reasons, and what they mean by it is very clear when you get out of the simple word study and actually examine the full set and context of the passages that do this.
I don't see how God appearing in a Jebusite temple somehow means he is Satan. Paul preaches at the Areopagus, a pagan temple. Jesus preaches in Gentile lands, and to Samarians. Does where someone appears somehow instantly make them supportive of the place in which they appear or preach to? It's also worth mentioning that the whole episode happens in the context of God's judgement against Israel - what does it mean to an Israelite to have God declare his temple should be built in, of all places, a barn belonging to someone of one of the unclean nations! I simply don't find it at ALL persuasive, and indeed it's clutching at straws, that God appearing in a Jebusite barn somehow therefore means Satan.
As to your argument about 1 Chron 21:1 bearing on 1 Chron 21:15, it's completely circular reasoning. For a start, in order to prove verse 15 is talking about Satan, you have to ALREADY CONCLUDE that God is Satan in verse 1, so you're simply begging the question. As to why 2 Sam says God and 1 Chron says Satan (or more accurately from the Hebrew - and also the LXX -, an adversary/slanderer), again, I dealt with this in my previous post, which you incidentally did not address in your reply.
Again, mere prescence in the same chapter means nothing, and your argument otherwise requires circular reasoning.
I don't think much of Wayne's or your evidence at this point, and I'm not arguing for the angel to be particularly Jesus. I don't particularly think it is, but it's not relevant to the point I'm making.
I think it's not at all clear that even one was killed. The language of 1 Samuel 15 is not clear, and 11-13 is standard ANE military rhetoric that does not, in itself, describe who was present. I gave you my reasons for this position and even linked you to an in depth academic paper on the subject. Entirely up to you if you want to read it or not, of course
- but if you're as distressed about Wayne's claims as you say in your OP, I don't see why you wouldn't take the time to read it.
I still think it's far from clear that infants were involved in 1 Sam 15:1-3. But let's assume there were.
IF there were, and IF God told me to do so, and IF I was certain this was from God because it came from an authoritative source, and IF it wasn't just me that had decided this, and IF, as in the case of Israel, I was dealing with a people who had, for at least 1000 years, brutally tried to assault and wipe out my own people, apparently engaged in religious prostitution and child sacrifice of their own and other people's children, than yes I would do it. I would not be happy about it, but if all the other caveats were satisfied, I would do it, even if I didn't understand at the time all the whys. Again, God is in control, is just, and is good, because he created all that is, and because it is in his nature to be all those things.
But I do not expect ever to be asked to do that, because I do not live in that culture and time and place.
We're talking thousands of years ago. You can't just simply apply your society to then. These kinds of protections were streets ahead of standard practice in the ANE. IF you were a soldier's child, or sister, or whatever, and your father/husband/brother was killed, you could generally expect to either be raped, or to be left to die. War was common, and people died as a matter of routine, regardless of who was the aggressor. This actually represents a third way. The woman could not be sold, could not be discarded, and if for what ever reason the husband became 'displeased' she was free to leave.
Do I think it's great to kill loads of people? NO! But that is the reality of the world in which the OT was written. Certainly, this passage is, if nothing else, not carte blanche to go out and kill people.Who said anything about sanctioning rape? Only you. I certainly don't sanction rape, and wouldn't advise even the practice of Deuteronomy in the ANE period on our societies today. But let me tell you, if only at least the Deuteronomical practice was carried out in conflict zones by the likes of ISIS and Boko Haram today, there wouldn't be nearly as much rape, or forced marriages, or kidnappings on the battlefield or at the hands of greedy warlords as there otherwise is!
No, Deuteronomy is not the gospel. No, as I said, the practice is not suitable for today, and indeed wasn't suitable 2000 years ago. No, I don't think the Charles Ramsey situation was right.
The problem with your whole argument is you seem to be projecting onto the ANE a 21st century concept of society. The reality was, brutal, immediate, and discard rape was commonplace. When it happens today, it's big news - when it happened then, it was routine. The practice of Deuteronomy:
a) forced people who took wives to marry then, and thus afford them all the protections and long term status and security of the Levitical law
b) forced them to allow a month for women to live in a protected time and space, which would also take all the heat out of the 'prize winning'
c) forced husbands to care for their wives, and at such point as wives who were former prisoners of war were not cared for or were not 'satisfactory' they were free to leave and were legally released from the marriage.
Again, women of soldiers who died on the battlefield were usually raped as immediate prizes of war, or simply left to die. The Deuteronomical practice, while no longer acceptable by modern Western cultural standards (and I think rightly so), was simply not comparable to the rape of normative ANE practice, which seems to also include pre-Levitical law Israelites.
It's still an argument from silence, but since I'm not arguing for Jesus appearing as an angel in the OT, except as you seem to view it as evidence for the angel of the Lord being Satan, I'll cede the point.
I refuse to interpret the ontology of the Trinity and whether the Son had any interaction with the creation prior the incarnation from a parable. The salient point of Mark 12 is that Jesus was sent by the Father. I don't see how you can try to derive anything sharper in support of your argument from the kind of language Jesus uses here.
... in a parable.
It doesn't say anything about whether God was anywhere physically. Are you also suggesting God actually signed a lease with human beings as well? Are you suggesting that we must also conclude that God was entirely absent from his creation from before the first slave/prophet? How far are you willing to push the language of a parable - enough to maintain consistency or enough as it serves the point you're trying to argue?
It's a false yardstick. Whether or not there is other proof of Jesus appearing on earth in advance of the incarnation in any form meaningfully 'the Son' has absolutely nothing to do with how we should interpret Mark 12.
For someone who started this threat seemingly looking for a way out of the conclusions drawn from some random guy on Youtube, you are going to extraordinary lengths to pull very narrow and specific conclusions from a range of texts.
What do you make of passages like the end of Matthew 22, then? Your argument has to presuppose a non-Trinitarian position - we are all children of God, and so in a sense of the Son, because all things were created by him and for him. However, Paul will also use the internal relationships of the Trinity to explain what it means to be in union with Christ - because we are in Christ, so also are we children of God, heirs and co-heirs with Christ. The two are not mutually exclusive, and the very fact that Paul understands Jesus as both creator and our co-heir shows that attempting to use the language in such a highly specific way is, if nothing else, constructing theologies that are not the theologies of the Scriptural writers. Now, of course, you can do that, but then it becomes mostly meaningless to have a discussion about what Scripture says
