| I may not have been as clear as I should have been. I was making a distinction between killing and murder. All murders are killings, not all killings are murders. If you kill somebody it may be acceptable or it may not be. Killing somebody in defense of another is fine so long as you are intending to protect the innocent not to kill. You may end up killing, but it would not be murder and as such would be justifiable. Bringing up the latitude and interpretation is a major problem some Christians have, but this is a modern problem. The Church, historical, had always believed there needs to be people involved to help guide people. The Bible itself makes the point in Acts 8: "So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him." You are highlighting a reason why somebody shouldn't just read the Bible and assume they know what it means. This is a problem that only applies to a portion of the Protestant churches not the remaining Protestant churches or the Churches that existed before the reformation (Catholic, Orthodox, etc). You bringing up English translations is why I was making it clear that murder was a more accurate way of understanding the decree against killing. I knew if I didn't specify that it was only murder, somebody would ask about war. Apparently I wasn't clear enough. Can you find a single prominent Christian or Jewish scholar, theologian, saint, etc who lived 1000 years ago who believed that Jesus was allowing suicide? Like I said, this is a modern problem because some Christian churches have gone off the rails and have rejected the traditional views held by the Church. They are clearly wrong. Using them as justification for something is ridiculous. Imagine if somebody said Stalin / Mao / whoever was a communist. Communists are atheists so that means atheists can kill people like those people did. You would argue that those people do not represent an accurate description of atheists. Just as you would reject that argument against atheists, I reject your argument against Jews and Christians. |
The debate on whether jumping on a grenade to save others is suicide or self secrifice, et al has passed you by?
Is it your claim that not a single prominent Christian or Jewish scholar / theologian has wrestled with that conundrum and if they had they all fell in line in unison?
> because some Christian churches have gone off the rails and have rejected the traditional views held by the Church.
There's cetainly less church sanctioned burning of Catholics and Cathars alike .. I don't believe there's a uniform monolithic corp of "traditional views" prior to modern times .. even the implication of a singular Christian "the Church" appears to be an ahistoric over simplification.