Category: Bible

A reader writes:

I am having some trouble with an argument I have been
running into lately…

In response to numerous attempts by Catholics on a
message board to exegete James 2:24 a Protestant
seminary says:

"You are in gross error in your understanding of James
2:24. Your interpretation of James 2:24 CANNOT BE
CORRECT – because it places Abraham’s justification
before God AFTER his circumcision and Paul says in
Romans 4:10 that it was ‘NOT AFTER BUT BEFORE he was
circumcised’ that he was justified before God. The
offering of Isaac (which is what James 2 is
discussing) happened *long after* Abraham was
circumcized. Hence, you are misusing James 2:24. And
why are you misusing it – because your tradition tells
you what to find in Scripture, and lo and behold, you
find it – context means nothing. Let’s see if you can
offer a contextually sound defense of what you say…"

I am not sure how to answer this charge.  St. Paul
does, in fact, say "not after but before" – which
(while it may not prove that justification is a
one-time forensic declaration) *seems* to indicate
that St. James is eithr not using the word "justify"
as St. Paul does or he is contradicting St. Paul
(which both the Reformed and Catholic person must
reject), as it seems to create a chronology ("not
after but before") in which the Abraham’s
"justificion" in St. James *seemingly* cannot be the
same thing as the one in St. Paul…

I think I understand his argument… how can I answer
(in a satisfactory manner) it exegetically (i.e. a
"contextually sound defense")?

Your seminarian friend is presupposing that justification is an event that occurs only once in the life of the believer. This is a false assumption. Scripture does not indicate this. In fact, the case of Abraham demonstrates this quite clearly.

Begin by looking at Hebrews 11. In this chapter we read:

1: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped  for, the conviction of things not seen.
2: For by it the  men of old received divine approval.

This sets the context of the chapter as saving faith, the kind that receives divine approval. The chapter goes on to list a bunch of people who had this kind of faith, including Abraham:

8: By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a
place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not
knowing where he was to go.

Okay, so Abraham had faith of the kind this chapter is discussing (the kind that receives divine approval) when he went out from his homeland to journey to the promised land.

Now: When did that happen?

Genesis 12.

So Abraham already had divine approval in Genesis 12. But if that’s the case then he must have been justified at that point.

Now let’s more forward a bit in Genesis to chapter 14. What happens there? Abraham goes out and fights a battle and resues a bunch of people and afterward Melchizedek pronounces a blessing on him (14:19-20). This is more stuff sounding like Abraham is right with God (justified) at this point in his life. Also Abraham refuses to take anything from the king of Sodom, thus turning down any reward from the king of so wicked a place.

Then IMMEDIATELY when we turn the corner into chapter 15, with Abraham just having turned down a reward from the king of Sodom,  God declares:

1: . . . "Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your  reward shall be very great."

So Abraham is so right with God that God is promising him a really cool (i.e., great) reward for what he’s done and how he’s followed God and conducted himself in righteousness. Again: Abraham is justified at this point.

Then Abraham queries God what his reward will be because, no matter what God gives him, he has no son and so a slave will inherit it. He can’t pass on the reward that God plans to give him.

So God says:

5: . . . "Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be."
6: And he believed the LORD; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.

Now this (Gen. 15:6) is the verse that Paul uses in Romans 4:3 to say that Abraham was right with God (righteous/justified) before his circumcision in Gen. 17.

Fine.

But what kind of justification are we talking about here?

Protestant theology commonly conceives of justification as an event that occurs once in a person’s life, when he moves from a state of being unrighteous (not right with God) to a state of being righteous (right with God). If that’s what you interpret Genesis 15:6 as referring to then you’ve got a huge problem because the text gives us absolutely zero reason to think that Abraham only suddenly got right with God in Genesis 15:6. All the evidence is going the other way. He didn’t even get the promise of a multitude of descendants until God was wanting to reward him for having followed him so well. And he’d been following him well for years, for he left home to go to the promised land (AGAIN, trusting in a divine promise) back in Genesis 12, which Hebrews testifies was an act of faith of the kind that receives divine approval.

I mean, the alternative is saying that Abraham was this repropate guy in mortal sin who left his homeland trusting in God with the kind of faith that wins divine approval, yet for some reason God was really unhappy with him and didn’t give him divine approval. In fact, he was SO UNHAPPY with Abraham back in Genesis 12 that he had promised him a new homeland and that he would make him a blessing to everybody on earth. I mean, God must have been REALLY unhappy with Abraham back there since he promised to bless those who bless Abraham and curse those who curse him. Right? I know I’D think that God wsa unhappy with me if he told ME that.

And then Abraham deals magnanimously with his nephew Lot by letting Lot have the better pastureland in chapter 13 and then he rescues Lot’s butt in chapter 14 (putting his own life and those of his men at risk) and then Melchizedek pronounces a blessing on him and Abraham refuses to take a reward from the king of a wicked city and God is SO UNHAPPY with Abraham about all this that he promises him a really great reward–PLUS descendants who can inherit it–and it’s only when Abraham says "Yeah, okay, I guess I will have descendants" that God suddenly decides that Abraham is on his good side.

This is not a very plausible interpretation.

It is a much MORE plausible interpretation to say that Abraham was right with God (justified) no later than the time he left his homeland in faith, having trusted in the divine promises, and that he continued to act righteously in his dealings with others (or at least in many of them) so that God chose to give him a big reward and children he could leave it to. When Abraham believed that God would do what he said, that was yet another thing Abraham did that was righteous and so God, naturally, reckoned it as such.

Genesis 15:6 therefore does not refer to the time when Abraham passed from being unrighteous (unjustified) to being righteous (justified). It represents a continuing growth in his righteousness. He is more pleasing to God now than he was before because he has stayed faithful as he has walked with God.

This is problematic if your theology limits you to talking about justifcation only as a once-in-a-life event where you pass from unrighteousness to righteousness, with no potential for growth in righteousness. But it makes all the sense in the world if you acknowledge (as Catholic theology does) that justification is both something that happens at the begging of the Christian life to put you in a state of rightness with God and that you can then grow in righteousness.

Viewed from that perspective, it’s quite appropriate for Paul to point out that Abraham was right with God before he was circumcized, because he was. You DON’T NEED to be circumcized to be right with God, as Abraham’s case shows. He was right with God LONG before he got circumcized in Genesis 17. He was right with God no later than Genesis 12, and we have explicit testimony to his rightness with God in Genesis 15:6.

But suppose that, even though you are right with God and have been for years, God then asks you to get circumcized.

Whew! That’s a painful thing! You naturally want to avoid that pain. But–if that’s what God’s told you to do and you go ahead and do it–God’s going to reckon that you did a thing that was right (just).

("Right" and "just" are just different English translations of the same underlying word in Hebrew–as well as in Greek. "Justification" and "Righteousness" mean the same thing in biblical theology, as do "To justify" and "to make right." English has this crazy vocabularly that obscures the fact that we’re talking about the same underlying terms here, so I’m filling them in parenthetically.)

So you go ahead and get circumcized and God judges you righteous for doing it–for subordinating your natural desire to avoid pain to your desire to follow his will–and this represents one more stage in your growth in righteousness as you walk with God.

And that’s what James is talking about. He also is not talking about when Abraham first passed from unrighteousness to righteousness. Like Paul, he is talking about Abraham’s growth in righteousness (justice, justification).

Paul seizes on an earlier aspect of Abraham’s experience to show that you don’t need to be circumcized in order to be right with God (which is important to his gentile readers since–unlike Abraham–THEY have not been giving a divine command to be circumcized).

James seizes on a later aspect of Abraham’s experience to show the importance of more than intellectually assenting to the truths of theology but of actually obeying God–even when it’s painful. (Whis is important to his readers since some of them seem to have the idea that obeying God isn’t important, just acknowleding the truths of theology.)

In neither case, when they cite the story of Abraham, are they talking about the time when Abraham was first made right with God, because that happened years and years earlier–no later than Genesis 12.

Incidentally, in handling these passages the Catholic Church only cites James 2 in connection with growth in justification. Check Trent’s Decree on Justification and you’ll see what I mean. It mentions James 2 when talking about growth in righteousness–which is what James is talking about–but not in connection with how we first come to God and are justified at the beginning of the Christian life.

See my book The Salvation Controversy for more, as well as my other writings on the subject on the web (try Googling "Jimmy Akin" or "James Akin" together with "Abraham," "justification," etc.).

A reader writes:

A question I have long wondered about.

In the Gospels (which are historical –as noted by the Church)  various persons refer to Jesus as "lord’ and he himself refers to people saying "lord lord" but not doing what he teaches.

The question is — how are we to understand the usage of these people –who I think for the most part are Jews?  Do they mean ‘lord’ the same way as did the Church later in its profession "Dominus Jesus!"  Jesus is Lord!?

Some thoughts have been:

A. They were inspired by the Holy Spirit.  Thus they really profess that he is God.

B. The Greek they use must mean (in most cases) something else –some title of respect but not a calling Jesus –God.

C. Something else entirely.

Any help would be great!

What people meant in these cases is probably a mix of different things. For some the New Testament references to him as "Lord" are confessions that he is God. We know this because in the Greek text the word kurios is often used of Jesus when giving a quotation from the Old Testament, and when you look up the original in Hebrew it has Yahweh–the divine name–where the Greek quotation has kurios referring to Jesus.

These quotations tend to be later, though, and aren’t in the voices of people who were talking to him during his ministry (e.g., they’re in the mouth of a later author as narrator or epistle-writer), so what consciousnessness there was of Jesus as God during his ministry is not entirely clear.

Certainly there are references by people during the Gospels referring to him to his face as "Son of God," and this is certainly to be understood as reference to him as a supernatural and even a divine figure. Something similar applies (paradoxically) to the title "Son of Man," which is not simply a straightforward reference to Jesus’ humanity. (In some literature of the person "the Son of Man" was also a supernatural figure.)

How much of this conscoiusness is loaded into their use of "Lord," though, is unclear. They certainly weren’t walking around referring to him as "Yahweh" to his face. We know that in this period the divine name had already become taboo, so people showed their reverence for it by not pronouncing it (except on special occasions). That’s a big part of why we have kurios so much in the New Testament–because people used it as a Greek substitute for the divine name instead of writing Yahweh in Greek letters.

So if people didn’t call Jesus "Yahweh" to his face, what did they call him?

Maran.

Or at least Mar.

Mar is the Aramaic word for "Lord," and when you put the –an suffix on it it means "Our Lord." This is where we get Maranatha = Maran athe ("Our Lord comes").

The thing about Mar, though, is that it has a pretty broad semantic range, just like "Lord" does in English. "Lord" can mean God, but it can also be a title of nobility.

There’s also the possibility that in first century Palesting Mar functioned like the Spanish word Senor, which can not only be a title of Christ but also simply a term of polite respect, meaning "Sir" or "Mister."

I don’t know if we know precisely how broad the semantic range of Mar was in the first century, but it had significant flexibility and could certainly be used as a term of respect that did not presuppose either nobility or divinity.

This means that when we’re dealing with people who call Jesus "Lord" in the Gospels that we can’t say with certainty what was in their minds. Some of them (at least some of the core disciples after a certain point in his ministry) may have meant it to have divine overtones, but for many it was more likely undrestood as a term of respect.

I also suspect, though, that the Evangelists may have intended us to understand divine overtones even when the person using the term wouldn’t have had them in mind. In other words, when people called Jesus Maran (or Mari, "My Lord") they were in some fashion acknowledging his divinity without even realizing it. At least it’s possible that the Evangelists want us to hear the word with these unintentional overtones (the same way that the high priest prophesies about Jesus without realizing it in John 11).

In case you’re curious, Mar is still used with several different meanings in contemporary Aramaic. Today it is used sometimes distinctively of God (as in the term Maran for "Our Lord" or as in the greeting Mar hubba, or "The Lord is Love"–used by Maronites) but also of humans, as when it is used as the Aramaic equivalent of the title "Saint" in a name (e.g., Mar Toma = St. Thomas) or as the equivalent of the title "Bishop" in a name (e.g., Mar Ibrahim Ibrahim and Mar Sarhad Jammo = Bishop Abraham Abraham and Bishop Sarhad Jammo, the Chaldean bishops for the eastern and western United States, respectively).

Incidentally, whenever I’ve spoken to a Chaldean or Assyrian bishop, I’ve always greeted him as Mari ("My Lord" = Monsignor, a title used for bishops in Europe) and I’ve never had one blink when I used the term (except over the fact that it was an American cowboy so greeting him).

A reader writes:

I’m sorry to bug you.  I have been reading your blog for over a year now and have enjoyed it very much.  I know your busy but I have a problem I can’t seen to fix and you have that nice button on your site inviting people to email you.  😉   

My son who is 12 years old has a pretty severe learning disability.  He also has Asberger’s (a mild form of autism).  I am trying to find a very simple translation of the Bible he can use when he is at Sunday school.  Do you know any way to find out the reading level of different Bible translations or what would be a good translation for someone with learning disabilities.  Any help would be appreciated.

There are a number of guides to the reading difficulty of different Bible translations, but I’ve been out of that loop for a few years and can’t recommend such a guide of the top of my head.

What I can do is give you the names of a number of very easy to read translations, some of which were specifically done for children or people with restricted vocabularies (e.g., non-native English speakers).

So here goes:

• The New International Version. This is a fairly simple translation that you may wish to check out, though it is a bit above some of the others in reading level. There is an advantage with this one in that there is a Catholic youth version of the New Testament available in it.
• The New International Readers Version is a simplified form of the previous translation. It is meant for people who have difficulty reading.
• Today’s English Version A.K.A. The Good News Bible is one of the easiest to read that I have personal experience with. It also has a Catholic edition available. The deuterocanonicals are available in this translation.
• The Living Bible is a paraphrase that was done specifically for children. There are also a Catholic edition of this. The deuterocanonicals are available. There is also a revision of this one known as The New Living Translation, though I haven’t read that one.
• The EasyEnglish Bible has about a 1200 word vocabulary and is designed for those with trouble reading.
• The Contemporary English Version is another meant for easy reading. It also has the deuterocanonicals available in this translation.
• The Worldwide English New Testament was written for students in other countries whose grasp of English is limited.
• The Bible in Basic English has about a 1000 word vocabulary.

MORE VERSION INFO HERE.

Having metioned these, I need to give a couple of caveats. First, these versions (even ones for which there are Catholic editions) are Protestant and have a number of limitations. Some do not have all the books of the Catholic Bible. Others have theological bias in some passages and may in some editions have problematic footnotes.

Second, the fact that these versions are dynamic equivalence or paraphrases–plus the fact that many have restricted vocabularies–mean that they often flatten out the theology of the text and risk introducing more of the biases of the translators.

I say that not to discourage you from using them with your son, but just to say that you should check them out first and are likely to need to help your son with troublesome aspects of the texts. (I’d get a version without footnotes if possible to help avoid problems.)

More information is available about all of them online, and the links above will help point you to it. The complete text of some of these versions is also available online (check out Bible Gateway among other sites).

I don’t know how significant the reading problem that your son has is, but these could help him learn more about the Bible. He may eventually be able to graduate to reading more advanced versions of the Bible that will help him learn even more.

I’d like to be encouraging in this regard because I have a reading disability. I’m dyslexic. I had a lot of trouble learning to read as a kid, and I had to have special training. Eventually, though, I was reading above my grade level, and today I’m interacting with Bible versions that aren’t even in English, so I’d like to encourage you about what can happen in situations like this.

To that end, let me give another suggestion: Consider using audio versions of the Bible with your son.

One of the ways that they helped me with reading when I was a boy is they sat me down with a machine called a Reader Hoffman, which played a record and a filmstrip at the same time and read to me as I read along with the text.

There are a lot of audio versions of the Bible out there already, and if you use computer tech like what I recommend here (and here) you can produce audio versions of any Bible for which you can get an electronic text.

At least it’s something to consider and maybe experiment with.

Hope this helps, and God bless!

A reader writes:

Here’s a really quick one for you.  (I know your time is valuable!)  Father metioned something yesterday I don’t recall ever hearing before, namely, that Mary became pregnant immediately after "fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum [Latin, "May it be to me according to your word," Luke 1:38]."  Does the Church teach this definitively?

No, certainly not.

The Church has very very few Bible verses whose meaning it has addressed infallibly, and this one is not one of them.

I know that it’s customary for individuals to speak of Mary becoming pregnant during the Annunciation, as if the Holy Spirit were coming upon her that moment, but this is not what Scripture indicates, nor is it part of Church teaching.

In fact, that’s not what the Greek text here would suggest. In the Greek of Luke 1:35 ("The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you") the verbs are in the future tense, indicating that the Holy Spirit would come upon Mary at some point in the future.

Hypothetically, it could have been a few seconds later, but that’s not the natural sense of the text, and if it was then Mary showed no signs from what Luke records of being aware of the event when it happened.

It could have happened at any time up until shortly before Joseph and Mary began cohabiting (because Joseph already knew she was pregnant by this time; Matthew 1:20).

Personally, I tend to think the Incarnation of Our Savior was something that had phenomenal effects–i.e., that it was something Mary was aware of when she was overshadowed by God’s power–and this means that the exact moment of the Incarnation is likely one that is hidden from us–something not recorded in Scripture.

People tend to look at the Annunciation as if it were the moment of the Incarnation because it’s the closest thing we have in Scripture to a description of that moment, but if you read the text itself, it does not suggest that this is what was going on while Gabriel was talking to Mary.

But that’s just my opinion. If someone wants to hold the opinion that when Gabriel said "The Holy Spirit will come upon you" that he meant "in just a few seconds, during this very conversation" then that’s also permitted.

The religion correspondent for the Time of London–Ruth "I’m Too Dangerously Unqualified To Keep My Job" Gledhill–has given vent to her spleen again in another tantrum disguised as a news story.

Be warned! She has an excessively large spleen!

That spleen is on display in previous thinly-disguised crypto-tantrums such as THIS and THIS, as well as in comments recorded HERE.

It’s no surprise, then, that Gledhill would try to gin up more controversy with a story such as her new one, which she or her editor eggregiously and INACCURATELY titled

Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible

With a provocation like that, I’ve received links to the story from loads of folks looking for comment.

So let’s get to it.

Continue reading “Times Religion Correspondent Can Barely Keep From Swearing”

A reader writes:

Jimmy –

I know you get quite a bit of e-mail during the day but I found this article & thought you’d find it interesting.  It’s about a new book called  "The Bible and Its Influence" that’s intended to teach how literature, society, politics, etc, have been influenced by the Bible & it’s meant to be used in public schools.  I found it a very interesting piece.

So did I.

GET THE STORY.

Yes, but not enough of them, say some Catholic biblical experts. Too many Catholics apparently have not gotten the word that the Bible is not the sole domain of the clergy:

"While it may be a best-seller, the Bible still is not regularly read, nor has it become an integral part of many Catholics’ lives, said a panel of biblical experts.

"’Unfortunately, it must be said, there is still little Bible in the lives of the faithful,’ said Italian Bishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Catholic Bible Federation.

"Recent research conducted in Italy, Spain and France found that many Catholics consider the sacred Scriptures as something ‘reserved for the clergy’ rather than as an accessible resource for them to draw upon for truth and inspiration in their own lives, he said.

"Bishop Paglia, together with a number of biblical experts, spoke at a Vatican press conference Sept. 8 to present an upcoming international congress commemorating the 40th anniversary of Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council document on Scripture and divine revelation."

GET THE STORY.

On the bright side, Bishop Paglia notes that "It is by listening to the word of God, in fact, that the believer discovers himself to be a disciple and even an apostle, that is, an evangelizer" (emphasis added). Rather than distributing Bibles to Catholics, a la the Gideon Society (a plan that the bishop notes is problematic), a better approach might be to get Catholics back to Mass where they can hear the word of God every Sunday — or better yet, every day.

The reader with biblical questions concludes:

3. Okay, this one’s from the New Testament:  someone argued that the
notion of Mary being a virgin comes from an Egyptian belief in a virgin
mother & child ("Isis/Osiris").

Okay, this one is much easier than the former two.

First, in the accounts from Egyptian mythology that I am familiar with, there is no virgin birth here. In these accounts, Osiris was the son of the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut. (No virgin birth there.) Then he married Isis. Then he got kilt by Set. Then he got reanimated. Then he (or part of him) conceived a son with Isis. (No virgin birth there, either.) That son was Horus.

So I’m not seeing a virgin birth.

That being said, Egyptian mythology is a mess. I mean, it’s a horrible jumble of conflicting accounts.

I mean, no matter what contradictions skeptics charge the Bible with (which can be explained), they PALE in comparison with those of Egyptian mythology, which is a huge, disorganized, shifting chaos. (And I say that as one who has an interest in Egyptian mythology.)

That being the case, I can’t rule out that there is, somewhere, an Egyptian text that contains some kind of virgin birth in it.

If so, what does that prove?

Not much.

It certainly doesn’t prove that the Virgin Birth in the Bible "came from" the Egyptian counterpart. That would be the post hoc, ergo propter hoc ("After this, therefore because of this") fallacy.

Even if there were already Egyptians who believe in some kind of virgin birth for one of their deities, why does that explain the birth of Jesus? Couldn’t the explaination be this:

• Suppose that you are the true God and that you have a Son.
• You send your Son to be born among men, and you want men to understand that he is your Son.
• You could choose to have him be born of a human mother via a human father, but if you do that you know that he will be faced with the challenge, "How can you be God’s Son when your father is obviously Joseph the carpenter"?
• Therefore, you choose to have your Son be born without a human father so that the effect of this objection is blunted and you have done a miracle that–at least for those who accept the miracle–demonstrates that your Son is none other than your Son.

In history, Jesus did face the question "Is this not Joseph’s son?" but at least there was the miracle on record for those who would accept it.

For those who do accept the miracle, it’s a certain proof of Jesus’ identity. How could there be any clearer sign that a man is God’s Son than that he be born of a Virgin by a miracle involving no human father?

It might not convince those who won’t have faith in your son (who can always posit a natural explanation for Jesus being born), but for those who accept the miracle, it is a clear sign of who your Son really is.

The reader with biblical questions concludes:

3. Okay, this one’s from the New Testament:  someone argued that the

notion of Mary being a virgin comes from an Egyptian belief in a virgin

mother & child ("Isis/Osiris").

Okay, this one is much easier than the former two.

First, in the accounts from Egyptian mythology that I am familiar with, there is no virgin birth here. In these accounts, Osiris was the son of the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut. (No virgin birth there.) Then he married Isis. Then he got kilt by Set. Then he got reanimated. Then he (or part of him) conceived a son with Isis. (No virgin birth there, either.) That son was Horus.

So I’m not seeing a virgin birth.

That being said, Egyptian mythology is a mess. I mean, it’s a horrible jumble of conflicting accounts.

I mean, no matter what contradictions skeptics charge the Bible with (which can be explained), they PALE in comparison with those of Egyptian mythology, which is a huge, disorganized, shifting chaos. (And I say that as one who has an interest in Egyptian mythology.)

That being the case, I can’t rule out that there is, somewhere, an Egyptian text that contains some kind of virgin birth in it.

If so, what does that prove?

Not much.

It certainly doesn’t prove that the Virgin Birth in the Bible "came from" the Egyptian counterpart. That would be the post hoc, ergo propter hoc ("After this, therefore because of this") fallacy.

Even if there were already Egyptians who believe in some kind of virgin birth for one of their deities, why does that explain the birth of Jesus? Couldn’t the explaination be this:

• Suppose that you are the true God and that you have a Son.
• You send your Son to be born among men, and you want men to understand that he is your Son.
• You could choose to have him be born of a human mother via a human father, but if you do that you know that he will be faced with the challenge, "How can you be God’s Son when your father is obviously Joseph the carpenter"?
• Therefore, you choose to have your Son be born without a human father so that the effect of this objection is blunted and you have done a miracle that–at least for those who accept the miracle–demonstrates that your Son is none other than your Son.

In history, Jesus did face the question "Is this not Joseph’s son?" but at least there was the miracle on record for those who would accept it.

For those who do accept the miracle, it’s a certain proof of Jesus’ identity. How could there be any clearer sign that a man is God’s Son than that he be born of a Virgin by a miracle involving no human father?

It might not convince those who won’t have faith in your son (who can always posit a natural explanation for Jesus being born), but for those who accept the miracle, it is a clear sign of who your Son really is.

The reader with biblical questions continues:

2. What about God giving commands that seem to our post 9/11
consciousness to be more like those given by Osama Bin Laden:  i.e., I
think the prophet Samuel tells Sauls to kill all the women and children
of some town that they are fighting.

The
Church has not yet given guidance as explicit on this question as it
has on the previous one, but it has already recognized that there is a
divine pedagogy in which the children of Israel were led over the
course of time into a fuller and fuller understanding of God’s will.
Thus polygamy was tolerated under the Old Law but is not under the New.
Similarly, divorce was regulated at the time of Moses, strongly
discouraged during the time of the Prophets, and remarriage following
divorce was forbidden under the New Covenant.

In dealing with the commands in the Old Testament that seem
particularly barbarous, the logical approach would involve taking
account of this pedagogy and recognizing that God was gradually leading
his people into a fuller understanding of his will. In earlier times
(when these occurred), he was dealing with a people that had not yet
been fully catechized in his will and who were still heavily influenced
by the warfare practices of the cultures around them (which included
genocide). He was thus dealing with a "blunt instrument" in
moral-cultural terms and this may play a role in the bluntness with
which some of these commands are expressed.

This bluntness undoubtedly plays a role in these commands, but one may see the bluntness playing out in different ways:

1) On one interpretation, God himself may have decided that the
people of Israel were not yet at a stage of moral-religious development
in which they could approach the question in the nuanced manner that we
today can (and must!) approach it. Therefore, he gave them blunt
orders, these being the only kind they could effectively implement.

2) On another interpretation, one might say that God himself gave
more nuanced orders but the consciousness of the prophet or the
biblical author was not sufficiently nuanced to be able to articulate
these orders in a nuanced form. Whatever nuanced motions of grace the
prophet or author may have received, they ended up expressing
themselves in a blunt fashion due to the intellectual condition of
their day.

3) On a third interpretation–which grants the most nuance–one
might say that these accounts are written after the fact and the blunt
commands were not given in the original historical circumstances but
instead were written to symbolically express the unconditional break
with paganism that the children of God must make.

Each of these interpretations has challenges to face. The first one
is hard to square with the absolute goodness of God. If he is
absolutely good, why should he give such blunt commands? Against this
it might be argued that God is the author of life and so it is up to
him when and how one dies. All life is a gift, and if God chooses to
give some people less of it than others and to have them die in
particular ways, that is his choice.

The second interpretation is hard to square with God’s absolute
truthfulness. Since very assertion of sacred Scripture is an assertion
of the Holy Spirit, how could God allow such blunt commands to find
their way into the sacred text? In the case of the historical reporting
of what prophets said, this could be explained. If Samuel issued blunt
commands then the sacred author might accurately report this without
endorsing these commands (at least in an unqualified sense). However,
the same kinds of commands appear in non-historical texts, such as the
books of Moses, where this explanation is not as clearly available.

The third interpretation has the challenge that it is not obvious
(to us) that this is what is going on in the sacred text. However,
despite the fact that the ancients were at a lower level of moral
pedagogy than we are, they were at a remarkably high level of literary
development and thus capable of recognizing the non-literal nature of
many texts that we today tend to take literally (e.g., Genesis 1). This
being the case, the ancient audience reading the biblical text might be
much more able to recognize the symbolic nature of these commands and
that they were not necessarily given in the original historical
circumstances.

Not all ancient readers might have recognized this, but God has
shown that he is willing to write in a way that not all people will
understand.

Further, one might point out that few ancient readers at the time
the texts were written would be in a position to commit wholesale
genocide but all were in a position in which they needed to understand
the decisiveness of the break with paganism that God required.

As indicated, each of these views have challenges to face, though I
suspect that the third interpretation would be the preferred one of the
current pope and most current members of the Magisterium.