Re: [asa] fall of Satan logic questions

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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