If this story were in any other binding other than the Bible then who would question the straight-forward literary meaning of the story?? This comes --- IMO --- from a profound disrespect of the people who authored the Bible.? We think they were too brutish to write great literature, so even though it is a beautiful work staring us in the face, with multiple levels of meaning all working together in a way that could only have been planned, many nevertheless choose to say that nobody can know what the [brutish, uneducated] author meant.
Sorry to dump on you; this is a pet peeve of mine.? I am upset that many non-Christians make sweeping, negative pronouncements against a book that they have not understood.? No offense intended at all. :)
Renaming Jacob wasn't negative.? He was renamed Israel = "wrestles with God", because that is what his entire life had been up to that point -- wrestling with God.? Added to that was God physically wrestling with him on the night before he faced Esau, which was the big climactic moment in which he faced the consequences of his poor life choices.? His chickens had come home to roost.? How dramatic that in that very moment the story says, simply and without explanation, "So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak."
Also, Genesis does use "man" for another appearance of God:
18:1-2a, 33? The LORD
appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting
at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby... When the LORD had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.
Phil
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Armstrong <jarmstro@qwest.net>
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 6:48 pm
Subject: Re: [asa] fall of Satan logic questions
Whoa! Perhaps a fairly traditional explanation, but there's an awful
lot of amplification here. And "by no means demonstrated any power over
the 'angel'" sorta ignores, "When the man saw that he could not
overpower him...". Of course, the language here is "a man", if that
provides a momentary refuge. It's not clear to me that the renaming was
a negative thing. Overall, it's a bit of a strange story, probably
largely because we don't possess the context of the day of its telling
or writing.? But if you're satisfied, that's OK.? I'm not trying to
change anyone's mind.
Oh, and I remembered too late that it was a hyperextension, not a
break. JimA
philtill@aol.com wrote:
Well, the angel who
wrestled with Jacob may have been a pre-incarnational appearance of
Christ.? Jacob by no
means demonstrated any power over the "angel" by wrestling with him.?
He could have broken
Jacob's neck at any moment had he wanted to.? He proved as much by
merely touching Jacob's hip to put it out of socket when the climactic
moment finally arrived, when Jacob was finally ready for it.? The angel
had condescend to a whole night of wrestling so that Jacob would be
wrestling with himself and thus discover who he was, that he was a
"heal-snatcher" (as his name means), a person who had defrauded Esau
and others and didn't fully trust God. Jacob had been wrestling his
whole life with God.? By coming down to physically wrestle with Jacob
the "angel" was creating a concrete symbol of Jacob's life to help h!
im see it.? At dawn he asked Jacob his name, "heal snatcher" and
finally Jacob understood.? The "angel" then pronounced that Jacob has
wrestled with God and man "and prevailed," which was a supreme irony
because he prevailed only by being defeated, by being humbled at the
knowledge of what he had been, and by being renamed.? He was then given
the limp, the "angel" requiring no effort more than a touch, which was
to be the lifelong reminder of his "defeat" so that he would no longer
be a heal-snatcher, but somebody who profoundly trusted 'God.
This story tells us a lot about God's condescension to wrestle with
sinful man and redeem us from ourselves, but it doesn't indicate
anything about the limitations of angels.
Phil
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Armstrong <jarmstro@qwest.net>
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 5:13 pm
Subject: Re: [asa] fall of Satan logic questions
This is
one example of a place where I don't think we think too
carefully, perhaps because it gets hard real quick. God is omnipotent.
There is some sort of conflict with an angel, which should be a rout if
God is omnipotent. Yet an angel wrestles with human Jacob and manages
to only break a leg. Something seems inconsistent here, so the stories
(and our understanding) would appear to be insufficient somewhere as
well. Am I the only one that "wrestles" with this? ? JimA [Friend of
ASA]
philtill@aol.com wrote:
Angels can be
"bound", so I have in my head an image more like wrestling than
sword-fighting.
-----Original Message-----
From: Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com>
Cc: ASA <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 3:47 pm
Subject: RE: [asa] fall of Satan logic questions (was:
ID/Miracles/Design (Behe vs. Behe))
I was telling my kid (2nd grader) the other day about a war in heaven with good
vs. bad angels. Good angels kicked-out the bad ones. The bad ones, led by
Satan, wanted to take over.
He had a good question I never thought about- can angels die?
Theology says no- that's why hell was made for them. Forever tormented.
But here we have a case of war with no death? What are they doing- just shoving
each other around? Do they have weapons, but these weapons can't kill another?
What's a war without death? Are they cutting off limbs? If Angels don't have
limbs (because they are spiritual and not material), are they just being hurt in
some way, but not completely dying?
What does this have to do with ASA? It is a matter of trying to apply logic to
faith... does the Christian faith make sense about angel warfare and the fall of
Satan, using modern day logic?
He asks a lot of interesting questions that somehow adults gloss over (including
myself). Maybe we jump too fast to the standard line "I don't know, but one day
we'll find out in heaven." Is that line a short-circuit for logic and truthful
understanding?
...Bernie
-----Original Message-----
From: Alexanian, Moorad [mailto:alexanian@uncw.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 12:36 PM
To: Dehler, Bernie
Cc: ASA
Subject: RE: [asa] ID/Miracles/Design (Behe vs. Behe)
Let us not forget the fall of Satan before that of man.
Moorad
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf
Of Dehler, Bernie
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 3:32 PM
Cc: ASA
Subject: RE: [asa] ID/Miracles/Design (Behe vs. Behe)
Dick said:
"If good, functioning, workable "designs" are due to God's handiwork, then
who or what is responsible for the flaws, defects and failures? Give
God all the responsibilty or none of it."
Haminists (followers of Ken Ham and his interpretation) say that God made it all
good- but man's sin wrecked it. Before the fall, there were no mosquitos, or
they probably didn't drink blood back when they were first made, just like the
first lions, bears, etc. didn't eat other animals either (no animal death before
the fall, and all people were vegetarians until after the flood). So God gets
credit for good; man's sin is the reason for bad (or corruption of the good
design).
...Bernie
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Received on Wed Apr 29 23:08:20 2009
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