Greg Boyd on Huckabee
January 19th, 2008 | Published in Links, Politics, Religion | 9 Comments
Greg Boyd, Christian pastor and author, responds to Huckabee’s desire to “amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards”:
Marriage throughout most of the book of “God’s standards” allowed for polygamy and even concubines. If the Bible is to be our standard for marriage in America, perhaps our constitution should be amended to reflect its comprehensive view of marriage.
So too, the Bible allows for (and even occasionally commands) slavery, as the good old pre-abolition Christian South was eager to point out to the liberal secularists in the North. Would Huckabee have us amend our constitution to fit this aspect of the book of “God’s standards”? Why not? If our goal is to conform to “God’s standards,” why be selective?
How about the way women are treated as property throughout much of the Bible? And let’s not forget the pervasive “holy wars” we find in the Old Testament. If we want a constitution that truly reflects “God’s standards,” why not incorporate these as well?….
[Christians] may want a constitution that “conforms to God’s standards,” but only certain passages carefully selected out of his book of holy “standards,” and certainly not the standards set by Jesus Christ!
Isn’t it ironic?
Read the whole thing.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:35 am (#)
Josh! Isn’t Boyd’s blog just an intellectually sloppy distortion of the Bible? He doesn’t cite a single passage in defense of any of the points you copied about marriage, slavery, women, or wars.
Sure, the Bible can be confusing. The Bible even says that… “God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe…For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom…” My point is that a sloppy reading of the Bible can lend plenty of ammunition to someone like Boyd, but that’s not the way to read the Bible. “When I was a child, a talked like a child, I though like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish was behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror…” (2Cor13) To understand the things of God we must exercise mature discernment. (Hos14:9)
Interestingly, he cut off a citation on another subject immediately before Paul goes on to write (in Eph 5), “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality…”
He also cites Romans to defend the idea that “…if it was in the U.S. constitution that whenever we… as a nation were attacked, we by law would have to turn the other cheek…” Ironically enough, it is once again the passage immediately following the one he cited that says that “the one in authority … does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”
If Boyd wants to argue that the Bible is full of genuinely inconsistent and contradictory passages, then he ought not to call himself a pastor or a Christian. Otherwise, he ought to make some effort to make sense of the Bible as a whole, at the very least reading a few verses past his “certain passages, carefully selected.” Either that, or keep quiet and not profess to proclaim the teaching of the Bible.
I don’t say any of this to defend Huckabee or the point he was making, by the way.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:13 pm (#)
I want to write a response but I don’t even know where to begin!
I think all that I can really do is to provide the most famous quote in American history concerning America’s adherence to God’s standards: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Regardless of whether or not Pastor Boyd thinks that God’s standards are foolish standards upon which to build a republic or not - I wish he would recognize that they are the standards upon which our republic is built.
If he thinks that there are preferable standards upon which to build a republic, a cogent argument would be preferable to mocking derision. Huckabee did not mention the Bible (directly), nor did our founding fathers think it was necessary to analyze the Old Testament and the words of Jesus in order to understand God’s standards for mankind (nor did the apostle Paul for that matter, see Rom 1). Nevertheless the founding fathers did believe that, “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle[d] them” to form the government of the US.
If we don’t get our laws from God, where the heck are they supposed to come from?
January 21st, 2008 at 8:38 pm (#)
I’m sorry, but this is pretty arrogant:
If we don’t get our laws from God, where the heck are they supposed to come from?
I’d say ask pretty much every nation, culture, religion, or person who does not follow the Hebrew god, and they might give you an indication that morality or law can come from many, many different places.
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:39 pm (#)
Edman,
What sort of other place might morality or law come from? I certainly agree that one need not believe in the Hebrew God to accept law or morality (hence my quote from the Declaration of Independence - authored by a person who clearly rejected the Hebrew God), but that does not clearly imply that their morality does not therefore come from God.
To give an analogy. I believe that things do not float in mid-air because there are invisible fairies everywhere on earth that pull things down towards the ground. Another person believes that things do not float in mid-air due to certain physical constants related to the mass of the respective objects that create a force of attraction between the two. The former believes in the same thing as the latter (gravity), but the former does not have nearly as justifiable way of explaining it as the latter. The former is certainly right to believe in the force of gravity, despite his fanciful explanation, but that does not mean his explanation is right.
In other words, my contention is not that people who do not believe in the Judeo-Christian God do not or cannot have laws, my contention is that everyone on earth has laws due to the existence of, “Nature’s God,” and that positing laws based upon the existence of such a being is not a radical, theocratic, evangelical move, but a deliverance of plain reason. (In fact, evangelicals like Greg Boyd are quite wrong to contend that going to the Bible to find laws might be a good way to do things - that is far too limiting.) Thus, “every nation, culture, religion, or person” does follow laws to some extent, and the only common ground that every human has for such laws is human reason. To what source does your reason ascribe the foundation for law or morality?
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:30 pm (#)
Edman,
You wouldn’t have to “follow” the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to get laws from Him, just like you wouldn’t have to follow Him to get rain from Him or to get the breath of life. On the other hand, some important things, like salvation from death and hell *only* come through faith.
January 24th, 2008 at 7:34 pm (#)
Gentlemen.
I understand that when one is a follower of such an exclusive religion, (ie: the Abrahamic faiths) there is no room for error. You simply cannot admit the slightest possibility of being wrong, or else the whole structure comes crumbling down. As a result, this kind of argument
You wouldn’t have to “follow” the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to get laws from Him, just like you wouldn’t have to follow Him to get rain from Him or to get the breath of life.
simply smacks of smugness. It doesn’t matter who I am, what religion I practice, or anything at all; in your belief system I am under the Hebrew god. And, by necessity of what I am arguing, I am flat wrong.
At that point, it is frivolous for me to argue, to I say “your god, your rules.”
Now, to the other gentleman. Morality can indeed come from many places, but it does seem to be relegated to human societies. So, as far as “Nature’s Law” is concerned, I don’t believe either of us would like to find ourselves in her court. I propose we call morality “Human Law,” because we are the only ones that practice it. As to where it comes from, most people seem to think that it comes from a deity of some sort. If I were a Hindu, it may have come from Brahma or Vishnu; if I were Zoroastrian, it would have come from Ahura Mazda; if I were Muslim, it would have come from Allah; if I were a deist, I would say it was simply Natural Law; and if I were myself, I would say that our sense of morality is simply a product of society.
Perhaps it started as simply as one telling another “I don’t like that you did that.” and thereby hoisting upon his neighbor the rudimentary beginnings of what would eventually be known as morality.
I personally see that as the most reasonable response, but I am open to something even more reasonable.
(I do find it a bit strange though, that you see a difference between explaining gravity by means of invisible faeries, and explaining morality by means of an invisible man in the sky.)
January 25th, 2008 at 8:31 am (#)
Hello Edman,
> It doesn’t matter who I am, what religion I practice, or
> anything at all; in your belief system I am under the
> Hebrew god. And, by necessity of what I am arguing, I am
> flat wrong.
> At that point, it is frivolous for me to argue, to I
> say “your god, your rules.”
I would agree with what you said, but you’re implying that something else might be expected. Isn’t it obvious that if God is God then the universe operates by His rules? Similarly, if God is God and you deny Him, what other kind of wrong can you be (other than “flat”)? Should I take God’s word as the foundational truth of my life and yet do so hesitatingly and half-heartedly, meanwhile “hedging my bet” by paying homage to other gods? Or is tolerance only available for the worship of my God so long as I don’t take Him too seriously, which is to say so long as I don’t treat Him as a real God, Creator of all that is, the One that grants my every breath, the One that ordains the fall of every sparrow that falls to the ground, the One with whom I’ve incurred an inconceivable debt of sin justly warranting my death and damnation? In other words, is tolerance only available for my religion so long as it’s really fundamentally your religion?
Are you imagining this doesn’t cut both ways? If you believe in some other god or in the non-existence of God, doesn’t that make me, by implication, “flat wrong”? Does it matter who I am, what religion I practice, in your belief system I am under some other god or no God at all, and by necessity of what I am arguing, I am flat wrong.
Regarding your response to Robert, if morality is a contrivance of mankind, why should I pay any respect to the rules and standards created by other men? Aren’t I equal to them? Why should they tell me what to do? Sure, if they can use force against me, I’d respect that, but I’d respect that force equally as much if I knew for a fact they were completely wrong. Should my conscience pay their rules any respect, though? Should I come up with my own rules? Why should I bother, especially if any rule I come up with is inherently no better than any other, because no rule would have any deeper foundation than my own whim or convenience (or someone else’s, perhaps historical, whim or convenience)? It seems clear to me that your position is ultimately untenable.
January 30th, 2008 at 4:39 pm (#)
Like I said before, as a follower of an exclusive religion, I certainly cannot expect you to buy into the idea that you may be wrong. That would, after all, defeat the purpose of you being a part of that religion. And I certainly don’t expect you to be “tolerant” in the sense that you accept what other people believe as truth. Tolerance is the willingness to respect other people’s beliefs and practices. That’s it. Not condescension. Not smugness. Respect. But I digress.
In regard to this:
why should I pay any respect to the rules and standards created by other men?
Well, if you expect them to pay respect to your ideas, then I would suggest paying respect to theirs. Is this not the very foundation of your morality? “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
I realize that this argument is absolutely fruitless, and am therefore taking leave of it. However, all I have been trying to say is that it sounds awfully arrogant to say that morality can only come from God, period.
I have no religion, yet I have morals. I do not find this to be unusual, and neither does anybody else who does not share your worldview.
February 10th, 2008 at 9:38 am (#)
Hello Edman,
I just now found your reply.
> Like I said before, as a follower of an exclusive
> religion, I certainly cannot expect you to buy into the
> idea that you may be wrong.
You or I could equally doubt our beliefs. In that respect, I don’t think it’s of any consequence whether we recognize the exlusivity of our religions.
As for tolerance, what do you mean by “respecting” others’ beliefs? When God, for instance, told the Israelites (Exodus 34:13): “Break down their [the Amorites’, Canaanites’, Hittites’, etc.] altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles,” what do you think they should have done? As a follower of what you call (implicitly) “inclusive” religion, how do you include that (albeit from another age)?
You talked about tolerance as accepting what other people beleive as truth. What does that mean when what other people believe is contrary to what you believe? It seems your position rests on the false assumption that all people really believe the same thing and thus tolerance doesn’t mean tolerating something different, but denying any difference. As I said before, is tolerance only available for my religion so long as it’s really fundamentally your religion?
I do, however, believe deeply in practicing tolerance. As it says in Romans (14:23), “But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.” Which is to say, the man that has a false belief about what’s wrong to eat ought to be given liberty to follow that false belief, because “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” (Rom 14:5b) Tolerance, properly understood, is respecting the right of another to make his own decisions and to live according to his own dictates. Tolerance, as such, applies perfectly well to beliefs that are “flat wrong.” Or do you think tolerance requires that I first respect as truth what you believe? What good would such tolerance ever accomplish?
Eric