 Steve Hays |
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| "So you seriously believe that a Christian should KILL someone who wants to steal a TV?" | |
| The hypothetical involved looters who clean out entire stores. Destroy business after business. | And if I were a lowly Best Buy employee (who probably isn't allowed by my employer to carry a gun on the job anyway), you would advise me to pull out my gun and start shooting against a sophisticated criminal syndicate that had already amassed a record of destroying "business after business?" I should kill a human being created in the Image of God as probably my last act on earth in order to save some TV's?
I'm really supposed to take that advice as serious Christian ethical analysis? From a guy who thinks he James Bond. Right. I think I'll go mow the lawn and think about whether I want to continue this conversation. |
| "I did not 'conveniently ignore' the reference to 'nighttime...'" | |
| Sure you did. You cherry-picked your OT prooftext, even to the point of suppressing counterevidence in the very same passage. And this is not an isolated case. You have a devious habit of selectively quoting the OT. | |
| "in the New Covenant we are no longer in the dark of night but in the bright day of the Sun of Righteousness (Malachi 4:2)," | |
| Now he resorts to flights of allegory. | |
| "Genesis 9 (commanding the shedding of blood) is part of the 'ceremonial law,' and after the shedding of Christ's blood, must not be literally applied." | |
| According to your idiosyncratic interpretation, which: | |
| i) Fails to distinguish between punitive bloodshed and redemptive bloodshed. | |
| ii) Disregards the fact that the command is grounded in the imago Dei rather than "ceremonial" considerations. | |
| "Hard to continue taking you seriously." | |
| i) I'm responding to you on your own grounds. If you can't take that seriously, then you can't take your own argument seriously. That's something we can both agree on. | |
| ii) BTW, the only one who takes Kevin Craig seriously is his reflection in the bathroom mirror. | |
| iii) I can't continue to take him seriously inasmuch as I never took him seriously in the first place. He's just target practice (pardon the pun). | |
| "You cannot love your enemy if you kill him." | |
| Evidently, Kevin's too simpleminded to grasp a three-party transaction: A protecting B from C. | |
| "It's part of the mentality that transformed America into the most evil and dangerous entity on the planet." | |
| Kevin keeps backpedaling from his original claim. | |
| "If it is wrong for you to engage in the violent overthrow of a government (and it is wrong_, why is it OK for you to 'vote' for someone to destabilize a government by funding terrorists, or by directly staging a violent coup?" | |
| For the obvious reason that citizens of one state aren't subject to another state. Moreover, national defense may require destabilizing a hostile state. | |
| "Is circumcision (as given to Abraham) not part of 'the Old Covenant?'" | |
| It's a carryover from the Abrahamic covenant. | |
| "Acts 19:31 is not necessarily about "municipal magistrates." The Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon defines the word as 'priest of the Imperial cult in the province of Asia.'" | |
| So Kevin relies on a dated lexicon of Classical Greek, even though the NT was written in Koine Greek. If he bothered to keep up with the best exegetical literature, he'd be aware of inscriptional evidence (from Ephesus and elsewhere) that the term was used in this period to designate municipal magistrates. | |
| "John the Baptist prohibited soldiers from committing violence. 'And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.'" (Luke 3:14). |
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| Once again, Kevin relies on antiquated lexical resources to make his case: in this instance, the KJV of Lk 3:14. That, however, is inaccurate. Fitzmyer renders it "Avoid extortion and blackmail," while Bock and Johnson call it a "shakedown." Other commentators take the same approach (e.g. Edwards, Evans, Marshall, Nolland, Stein). Not "violence" in general. |
Why did Italy invade Israel before the birth of Christ? Why did Rome send centurions? To bring Toys for Tots? No, to engage in systematic "extortion," also known as "tribute."
If John the Baptist tells the Imperial Tax Farming Enforcers not to engage in a "shakedown," what are the soldiers going to do? |
| "The Communists in the Roosevelt White House were using U.S. GI's to support Communism in Eastern Europe and in China. The U.S. was on the side of Mao." | |
| You mean pinko military advisors like Eisenhower and George Marshall? Looks like you've been channeling McCarthy's queer sidekick, Roy Cohn. | "Queer" When you haven't got the facts, resort to ad hominem. Read The Politician or M. Stanton Evans' writings. |
| "If you believe someone is going to kill someone, then just like the owner of an ox that has shown a tendency to gore people, you have a responsibility (Exodus 21:29) to keep him under surveillance, or hire a security corporation to keep tabs on him, or something like that. You don't have the right to put a gun to my head and take my money to pay for your fence or security measures, but you do have the responsibility to prevent him from raping or killing if you believe that will happen." | |
| So Kevin thinks prospective murder victims (and rape victims) should hire a private security firm to tail their killer (or rapist). Aside from the prohibitive expense, how do prospective murder victims predict that they will be the killer's next victim? | |
| That's the reductio ad absurdum of pacifism. | |
| "I have repeatedly said we have a duty to protect people." | |
| Pacifists think we have a duty to engage in ineffectual gestures. | |
| "I've met a lot of anti-pacifists like you." | |
| That puts them in very good company. Thanks for the compliment! | |
| "You have no right to INTENTIONALLY KILL anyone. Even if they don't have a life preserver. Good grief." | |
| The poor sop can't follow his own argument. He originally said: "I don't have the right to decide who will live and who will die." | |
| When I cited a counterexample, he changes the subject. | |
| "You're saying it's not a sin to murder someone if you can't think of any other way to protect someone from him." | |
| Once again, the poor sop keeps imputing his own assumptions to his opponent. | |
| The "antipacifist" isn't saying it's not a sin to murder someone under those circumstances. Rather, he's saying it's not murder to kill someone under those circumstances. | |
| Kevin lacks the critical detachment to accurately state the opposing view. | |
| "I've met a lot of anti-pacifists like you." | |
| Then you've been blessed to find yourself in such creditable company. | |
| "If you can think of some creative way to kill someone without a weapon manufactured for that purpose, why can't you think of some creative way to prevent him from killing that doesn't involve you killing him?" | |
| We're talking about something that happens on the spur of the moment. This isn't something you prepared for. You reach for whatever's available, which may or may not be adequate to the purpose. | |
| Remember, Kevin says the future is unpredictable. You don't know if, when, or where, how, by whom, or to whom, an attack will take place. | |
| "Locking one's door is 'self-defense.'" | |
| And what's the fallback when the assailant breaks a window to get inside, or kicks the door down? Offer him a plate of brownies? | |
| "No pacifist anywhere, ever, says to allow violence to 'unchecked.' But there are ways to 'check' evil-doers other than intentionally killing them. They do not require violence, they do not require 'the State.'" | |
| One the one hand you have armed evildoers. On the other hand you have pacifists with foam baseball bats. |