Re: Social Evolution

George,

Recently I was listening to Lamech's victory/taunt song read in an OT lesson, when it suddenly struck me: did Jesus have this passage in mind when he responded to a question of Peter's?

Lamech sings (Gen. 4:24):
    I have killed a man for wounding me,
    A young man for striking me.
    If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
    Truly Lamech sevety-sevenfold.

In Matthew's account (18:21-22), Peter says, "If my brother sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus says to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy times seven."

Bob
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: George Murphy
  To: steamdoc@aol.com ; asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 2:59 PM
  Subject: Re: Social Evolution

  There would be some force in David's argument if a kind of social Darwinism were the only type of ethic that social evolution had produced & if we were then trying to impose some different ethic. But along with survival of the fittest ethics there have also developed altruistic ones. (The illustrations of the "Tao" which C.S. Lewis gives in the appendix of The Abolition of Man is helpful here.) & in fact the ethics of the Bible can be seen to have gone through a kind of evolutionary process. E.g., there is a definite development from the demand for unlimited vengeance of Gen.4:23-24 through the limits placed on rettribution in the lex talionis of Ex.21:23-24 to the move beyond any retribution in Mt.5:38-39.

  Shalom
  George
  http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Tue Jan 24 21:45:07 2006