Sunday, May 02, 2010

Some Footnotes on Frazer v. KOI on the Absoluteness of Submission to Rulers:

In my last post, I pointed to this post (and the thread below it) where I think Dr. Frazer properly answered all of KOI's claims about the Bible and its absolute command on submission to government, no matter how potentially tyrannical. Again that post and the comments section are especially informative.

I note two claims of KOI's in that thread and question their logical soundness and the assumptions that he and more orthodox biblicists might have when discussing them.

In the first, KOI writes:

If God uses special deliverers to rebel against the authorities as Othniel did then is God not endorsing rebellion? Your original position was that this was a sinful action that God used. ...

It seems that you are stating that all "rebellion" is wrong except when God tells someone to do it. That is inconsistent.


Except according to orthodox biblical hermeneutics, it isn't inconsistent. By way of analogy, incest. Orthodox biblicists believe that brother sister incest is, in the present era, absolutely prohibited. Yet, many of these same biblicists believe in a literal Adam/Eve creation story. As it were, by logicality necessity Cain and Abel either procreated with their mother Eve or their sisters (or some other close relatives, who by logical necessity, would have had to have engaged in incest that the Bible, as a current rule, categorically prohibits).

Now, orthodox biblicists can rationally explain why incest was okay in Genesis, but not shortly thereafter, having to do with the more degenerated genetic nature of Adam and Eve's offspring, the damage to our genes the Fall took on said subsequent generations (i.e., by the time of Moses). And if B/S incest marriages were permitted shortly thereafter the Fall, it would greatly damage the gene pool in a way that Cain and Abel's procreation with their close relatives did not.

But it remains a categorical moral prohibition -- brother/sister incest marriages -- could get a special exception by God for God's own particular reasons and then subsequently be absolutely prohibited.

Secondly, KOI wrote:

I disagree over how you use revelation. ... I believe we can receive specific revelation from God now. I think Washington probably did. ...


This is also very important. Orthodox biblicists believe that revelation stopped with the final book of the biblical canon. Therefore, accordingly, George Washington could NOT, as a matter of TRUTH, have received revelation from God excepting him as Othniel may have (or, accordingly, Othniel may have sinned like Lot when he had sex with his daughters, again to use a biblical example of God using man's sin to validate His will).

Yet, if God continues to reveal, leading to all sorts of potential possible books or additions to the biblical canon (like Mormonism), KOI has a point.

The premise matters tremendously; it is key.

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