Dear Rev. Know it all,

I was always taught that God didn’t break His own rules of morality. How then can God have ordered Abraham to murder his own son? Even the bit about prefiguring Jesus’ sacrifice doesn’t do it. It wasn’t the good guys that executed Jesus. Another thing, St. Agrippa was supposed to have jumped into the fire on her own! Suicide dispensation? Married Virgins! What about accepting children lovingly from God and consummating the marriage?

I’m very confused!

Thanks,   

Tootsie  O’ Rist

Dear Tootsie,

God’s making or breaking his own rules isn’t the issue.  God does make rules that He changes. “Don’t eat pork. Okay, now you can eat pork.”  What’s with that? St. Thomas Aquinas answered that question quite neatly. There are laws that flow from the nature of God and there are rules that are made for  instructive ritual purposes. When the ritual is fulfilled, such as we believe the temple sacrifices were by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, there is a new dispensation. The purpose for the rule is gone, so the rule is abrogated. 

There are however, laws that flow from the very nature of God. These can’t be abrogated. They are divine law and come from God’s unchanging and eternal nature. The Hebrews had 613 laws. 603 were ritual and dietary laws. 10 of them were divine law. When the Messiah appeared the ritual and dietary laws had served their purpose and were no longer necessary.  The laws that flowed from the nature of God remained. Their purpose is to conform us to the very image of God. They are God’s power lifting weak and sinful humanity higher with the purpose of making us fully like Him as His sons and daughters.

The Lord says, “Thou shalt not kill!” Does this apply to God? No, of course not. The Bible says “He kills and makes alive.”   So why, if God can kill,  are we forbidden to do so?  Simple. We are not the all knowing Lord of Life who rewards everyone according to his deeds.  I don’t even know if you brushed your teeth this morning, much less whether or not you are worthy of continued existence in this world. Let us look carefully at the Abraham unpleasantness that you mention.  

First of all, I am sure you are assuming that Isaac was a little nipper when Abraham hoisted him up on the altar on Mt. Moriah. After all, that’s the way it is in all the pictures.  Read the text. Abraham was a hundred years old when Isaac was born. By the time Isaac was sacrificed he was an even older codger. In fact, the rabbis tell us that Isaac was perhaps thirty three years old when Abraham tried to sacrifice him, making Father Abraham a ripe 133 years old. He might have been a tough old bird, but he couldn’t have gotten Isaac to go along with anything he didn’t want to. Even if you dispute rabbinic opinion, Isaac was old enough to carry enough wood to burn a human body  up a steep hill. Had he wanted to, he could have said, “Get away from me with that knife, you crazy old man!” and run back home to Sara, and believe me, Abraham would have caught it!

Isaac cooperated with Abraham in the whole business, which is most properly called the “Binding of Isaac.”  Look at the text again. In Genesis 22:5 Abraham tells his servants to “wait here with the donkey. The boy and I will go yonder and worship then we will come back.”  “WE” will come back, not “I” will come back. The Letter to the Hebrews refers to this passage when it points out that Abraham believed God was able even to raise Isaac from the dead and thus fulfill His promise. That is the amazing thing about an infinite God. He can reconcile things in his nature that seem irreconcilable to me. He kills and brings to life. I, not being God, but a weak human being, am forbidden murder.  God never intended Abraham to commit ritual murder. He intended to show Abraham himself how completely he could trust God.

Islam and Calvinist Protestantism seem to believe that God is arbitrary and were He to wake up on the wrong side of the cloud one morning and declare murder a virtue, well, then murder would be a virtue. Jews and Catholics don’t believe this. We believe that the very universe is a reflection of the beauty and love inherent in God’s nature. There is an old question: “Could God make a stone so large that He Himself could not move it?” The correct answer for Muslims and Calvinists is “Sure. He’s God. He can do whatever he pleases.”  The correct answer for Jews and Catholic is “No, He wouldn’t do that any more than one reflected in a mirror would order his mirror image to make him a ham sandwich. The laws of nature and the divinely inspired commandments reflect the perfection of God and God is not arbitrary. Even Einstein believed this and said, “God doesn’t play dice with the universe.”

I have a friend who is a Jewish believer. When she was little,  she attended a very prestigious Jewish school. Her teacher proposed the question to her, “Could God make a stone so large that He Himself not move it?” She said “Yes. And He did! He made the human heart.” For all God’s omnipotence and perfection. He has given humanity the freedom to trust and love Him or to reject Him and His will. Abraham loved Isaac and God at the same time and knew that God could reconcile the impossible. God can always make a way if we trust. That is the goal; to trust God the way Isaac trusted Abraham, the way that Jesus trusted His Father in the Agony in the Garden. “Unless you are like a little child.....”

As for St. Agrippa, I’ve never heard of her. Perhaps she was a little over enthusiastic, though I have heard of martyrs who went joyfully to martyrdom. And married virgins, nothing wrong with it if by mutual consent and for a good purpose. Each of has a vocation and who am I to tell you what yours is. Just call me an old liberal and mind your own business.

In Him,

the Rev. Know it all