Christianity as Philosophy

[Immanuel Can]

The Ten Commandments are a statement of human rights and responsibilities.

Not really. Are you keeping the Sabbath this week?

[Belinda]

The Ten Commandments are a statement of human rights and responsibilities.

Not really. Are you keeping the Sabbath this week?

When I go to Tesco I am not morally obliged to buy the whole shop. The point is that Moses and Abraham and their Bronze Age civilisations were instrumental in formulating a moral code which underlies Christianity.

[MikeNovack]

The Ten Commandments are a statement of human rights and responsibilities.

Well...... those are for people of the tribe subject to the covenant. The more general set of laws they thought applied to all people would be the seven Noachian laws. The first refers to idols, which did not mean to them anything that was a focus for worship, just man made ones. Also things like murder or sexual impropriety were considered subject to cultural interpretation.

[Immanuel Can]

The Ten Commandments are a statement of human rights and responsibilities.

Not really. Are you keeping the Sabbath this week?

When I go to Tesco I am not morally obliged to buy the whole shop.

Do you “shop” for your moral values? Do you see morality as a kind of mixed dinner, where you get to scoop the stuff you find palatable, and leave the rest behind?

If so, then morality actually isn’t doing any work for you. You may as well forget it completely, and just go with whatever pleases you. But we generally look to morality to inform us in situations in which the right thing to do may not be easy, or may not be what we instinctively want to do, or may even require us to make some sort of sacrifice on principle. So again, the kind of morality you’re advocating here cannot do that work. It only tells us about stuff you find easy; it can’t tell you anything about anything that requires anything of you.

You see, B., that’s the problem with fusing “I want” with “it’s moral,” or our preferences with our view of the moral goods. Morality should instruct us as to what we SHOULD value, not merely repeat what individuals happen to choose to value.

The point is that Moses and Abraham and their Bronze Age civilisations were instrumental in formulating a moral code which underlies Christianity.

It wasn’t Abraham, actually: he was 430 years, if I recall correctly, before Moses would show up, and he did not articulate the 10 Commandments. They came with Moses. Any Jewish person can tell you that.

But this code…it does underly our current legal structures, and even our personal morality, but not in an obvious or simplistic way. If it did, you should be keeping the Sabbath, shouldn’t you?

[Belinda]

The Ten Commandments are a statement of human rights and responsibilities.

Well...... those are for people of the tribe subject to the covenant. The more general set of laws they thought applied to all people would be the seven Noachian laws. The first refers to idols, which did not mean to them anything that was a focus for worship, just man made ones. Also things like murder or sexual impropriety were considered subject to cultural interpretation.

Do you imply that I thought thought a Bronze Age tribe intended their laws to have universal import for all time ? Of course not! Mosaic Law is much earlier than Noahide Law

[MikeNovack]

Do you imply that I thought thought a Bronze Age tribe intended their laws to have universal import for all time ? Of course not! Mosaic Law is much earlier than Noahide Law

That bronze age tribe did not intend their laws to have universal import at any time. That's not how tribal people think. Tribal people think they have laws of conduct applying to themselves, and people of other tribes have possibly different laws applying to them. The tribal child is taught "we don't do that" (as opposed to say "good people don't do that"). At least that is true for tribal people where surrounded by, very well aware of, different neighboring tribes. There was no time in Jewish history that Jews felt the laws applying to them applied to anybody else.

And yes of course, discussion of the Noahide laws later (Talmudic times) but the sages were placing them temporally before (just post flood). They did think of THOSE as having universal application.