What Is Sound Doctrine concerning the Doctrinal Importance of Narratives in Scripture?

[Bert Perry]

The passage that you used for your premises to argue that logical consequences does not follow is Romans 6:14-16, and when taken in context, what we find is that your initial premise was wrong, and hence your conclusion is wrong.

2. In 6:15a, he (not I) raised the issue of what should be concluded as a result of what he declared to be true in 6:14b.

3. In 6:15b, he (not I) raised the issue of the conclusion that we should sin because we are not under the law but under grace.

4. In 6:15c, he (not I) categorically rejected that someone should conclude that we should do so.

The additional information in 6:16 and following is his inspired argumentation for why we should not do so, but his argument in those verses was not that they had arrived at a faulty conclusion because they had argued from faulty premises in the truth that was given in 6:14b. Although logically, based on what is taught in 6:14b, someone could argue that what is stated in 6:15b is what should be done, Paul denounced anyone arguing that is what should be done.

Paul and the Spirit show us here that people can go from valid and true theological statements to theological conclusions that are false and must be rejected.

You need to submit your fallible human understanding and logic to divine revelation.

[Bert Perry]

As I’ve demonstrated in other threads, if we allow guilt by association arguments, we can basically discredit anything, because Romans 3:23. Everybody’s guilty, thereby nothing is clean, so we might as well just stop breathing, I guess.

The bottom line is that God in His perfect wisdom and universal authority has prohibited our associating with certain evil peoples and their practices.

We are not wiser than God. We do not have the authority to set aside divine prohibitions and divine instruction by using faulty human reasoning and wrong notions about the implications of passages like Romans 3:23 to dismiss divine revelation against walking in the counsel of the ungodly, being conformed to the world, having fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, and so much more.

[Bert Perry]

Rajesh, let’s work through the syllogism Biblically:

1. Every thing associated with sin is to be avoided.

2. After the fall, everything (except for God) is associated with sin. See Romans 3:23

3. Ergo, guilt by association condemns everything.

The person with faulty thinking here is the guy (you) arguing that the rules of logic do not apply because they are somehow “worldly”. God’s Word needs to be interpreted according to the common rules of language, which are the common rules of logic. God gave us language, after all, and if the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture means anything, it means that we have to have common ground for interpreting it. Again, that’s dictionaries, linguistics, and logic.

Such use of loose phraseology is essential in your trying to get where you want to go. Saying in an unspecified manner that everything other than God is “associated with sin,” however, is a useless claim that does not support your positions.
For example, long after the Fall, Scripture says that the animals that God created are still good:
1 Tim. 4:4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:

If you want to say that all the animals in an unspecified manner are “associated with sin,” you will have to prove biblically how that assertion is legitimate and supportive of your positions. As it stands, merely saying that is useless.

On a different note, you have a pattern of making many patronizing, condescending comments about how badly I handle Scripture. I take such statements with the utmost seriousness and will continue to intensely combat all such statements.
After I was saved, I have devoted my entire life to intensive and careful study of the Bible and to handling it properly. I am not going to allow you to routinely take cheap shots at me.
It would be good if you would stop making such remarks, but the choice is yours.

[Bert Perry]

A side note is that it’s also historically incorrect, as African voodoo was a religion not of the Yoruba, but the neighboring G’be

That said, there are recognizable threads that unite the varying traditions of Voodoo. The African elements of the religious practice are derived mainly from the Dahomey region of West Africa (modern Benin) and from the Yoruba, Fon, and Ewe peoples of West Africa and the Kongo people from Central Africa. Many elements of African spirituality continue to exist in modern Voodoo, in the practices of transcendental drumming and dancing, worship of the ancestral dead, and worship of the spirits called lwa. [bold added to the original]

Far less known are the connections between the Yoruba [original has accent marks on this word that are not reproduced here] faith and the African-based religions of Haiti (Vodou) and New Orleans (Voodoo/Voudou).

Vodou, also spelled Voodoo, Voudou, Vodun, or French Vaudou, a traditional Afro-Haitian religion. Vodou represents a syncretism of the West African Vodun religion and Roman Catholicism by the descendants of the Dahomean, Kongo, *Yoruba,* and other ethnic groups who had been enslaved and transported to colonial Saint-Domingue (as Haiti was known then) and partly Christianized by Roman Catholic missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries. The word Vodou means “spirit” or “deity” in the Fon language of the African kingdom of Dahomey (now Benin). [From the article on Vodou in Encyclopedia Brittanica online; asterisks added to the original on “Yoruba”]

Vodou developed among Afro-Haitian communities amid the Atlantic slave trade of the 16th to 19th centuries. Its structure arose from the blending of the traditional religions of those enslaved West and Central Africans, among them *Yoruba,* Fon, and Kongo, who had been brought to the island of Hispaniola. There, it absorbed influences from the culture of the French colonialists who controlled the colony of Saint-Domingue, most notably Roman Catholicism but also Freemasonry. Many Vodouists were involved in the Haitian Revolution of 1791 to 1804 which overthrew the French colonial government, abolished slavery, and transformed Saint-Domingue into the republic of Haiti. The Roman Catholic Church left for several decades following the Revolution, allowing Vodou to become Haiti’s dominant religion. In the 20th century, growing emigration spread Vodou abroad. The late 20th century saw growing links between Vodou and related traditions in West Africa and the Americas, such as Cuban Santería and Brazilian Candomblé, while some practitioners influenced by the Négritude movement have sought to remove Roman Catholic influences. [From Wikipedia; asterisks added to the the word Yoruba in the original]

*****Of course, my citing these statements does not mean that I endorse any of these sources in general or any specific statements that they make about any other subject. By citing these statements from these sources, I also am not endorsing anything else that they may or do say about voodoo. The only point that I am using these sources to establish is that multiple published sources say that Voodoo did develop from the religion of the Yoruba (as well as the religons of other peoples).*****

[dcbii]

Quote:I’ll stop there, but suffice it to say that one could write a book length refutation of the links Rajesh endorses.

I won’t disagree with that …

I did not engage with these comments earlier because I did not want my thread to be potentially seriously derailed by addressing Bert’s statements back then.

I hope that you will do due diligence and consider carefully the matter of the sources that I have cited in my preceding comment that call into serious question the veracity of Bert’s claim that African voodoo is not from the religion of the Yoruba.
Perhaps, you may want to reconsider your expressing that you concur with Bert’s claim about the writing of “a book length refutation …”

[Bert Perry]

I’m a little more pointed than others, pointing to your logical flaws, and really, the reason it comes across as condescending is because the errors you’re making are really pretty basic, and the logical results of your errors are so drastic.

Case in point is the most recent set of references. You pointedly disavow them, which makes me wonder why you cited them in the first place, and they still don’t say what Brennan said, which is that it was from the Yoruba specifically. There’s nothing contradictory in what you cited vs. what I originally pointed out.

You are the one who has done all of the following:
—misused Rom. 3:23 to argue that everything other than God is “associated with sin”

—falsely made multiple claims about my views and positions based on your faulty reasoning with what I have actually said

—wrongly asserted that deriving doctrine from narratives is extremely dangerous

—repeatedly misused GBA to attack me by claiming that I got my views and positions from people whose views have some similarities to mine but were not the basis for my positions
It’s way past time that you put an end to your putting forth false information about me and my views.
As for my pointed disavowal of those sources, I did that so that you would not be able to engage in more nonsense tactics of finding something outrageous in one of those sources and then saying repeatedly that I endorsed it because I cited one specific piece of information from the source.
Moreover, based on the information from the sources that I presented, you are the one who has set forth historically false information by saying that voodoo is not from the religion of the Yoruba. Your one source that you put forth does not show that all the sources that I have presented are wrong. At best, what that means is there are conflicting views about what is and is not true about that matter.

[dcbii]

RajeshG wrote:

Dave,

I did not engage with these comments earlier because I did not want my thread to be potentially seriously derailed by addressing Bert’s statements back then.

I hope that you will do due diligence and consider carefully the matter of the sources that I have cited in my preceding comment that call into serious question the veracity of Bert’s claim that African voodoo is not from the religion of the Yoruba.

Perhaps, you may want to reconsider your expressing that you concur with Bert’s claim about the writing of “a book length refutation …”

Rajesh, my quick quotation and response were inexact. I apologize for that. Reading the material at those links back then gave me no confidence that the material in them was trustworthy (even if any of it was accurate). I meant to agree with the idea that the links did not appear to be good evidence/support. I haven’t gone back to them, but I haven’t changed my mind on that. That was all I was saying there. I haven’t researched which peoples use Voodoo, etc., so I can’t comment on that specific point.

Thanks, Dave. It’s too bad that you have not gone back and more thoroughly assessed the information for yourself.

Numbers 12:9 And the anger of the LORD was kindled against them; and he departed. 10 And the cloud departed from off the tabernacle; and, behold, Miriam became leprous, white as snow: and Aaron looked upon Miriam, and, behold, she was leprous. 11 And Aaron said unto Moses, Alas, my lord, I beseech thee, lay not the sin upon us, wherein we have done foolishly, and wherein we have sinned. 12 Let her not be as one dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed when he cometh out of his mother’s womb. 13 And Moses cried unto the LORD, saying, Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee. 14 And the LORD said unto Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days? let her be shut out from the camp seven days, and after that let her be received in again. 15 And Miriam was shut out from the camp seven days: and the people journeyed not till Miriam was brought in again.
This historical narrative passage written by Moses under divine inspiration records God’s fierce judgment against Miriam. Strikingly, several decades later, the Spirit directed Moses to issue a prescriptive statement based on this narrative account:
Deuteronomy 24:8 Take heed in the plague of leprosy, that thou observe diligently, and do according to all that the priests the Levites shall teach you: as I commanded them, so ye shall observe to do. 9 Remember what the LORD thy God did unto Miriam by the way, after that ye were come forth out of Egypt.
This instance of issuing a prescriptive statement from a narrative account of divine judgment is significant in several ways:
1. All the previous examples that I have provided were from the NT. This example is from the OT; it was not just the NT authors who issued prescriptive statements of this kind.

2. It shows the doctrinal and prescriptive importance of instances of divine judgment in narrative passages.

3. It shows that what Jesus did when He issued His prescriptive statement about remembering Lot’s wife (treated earlier in this thread) was not something unprecedented in that God had previously directed another prophet to do something similar with a previous narrative account of divine judgment of another person.

The examples of Moses and Jesus teach us that we must profit fully from the doctrinal and prescriptive importance of narrative accounts of divine actions, especially divine judgment!

Romans 3:8 And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just.
Through this statement, we get an apostolic perspective about slander—when person A affirms that person B says something, believes something, holds to a particular position, etc. when that affirmation is not true and person B has not said any such thing, does not believe it, and does not hold that position.

When such misrepresentation is intentional and especially when it is repeated after person B has made it clear that he does not hold to that position, it is biblical to hold that such statements are highly unethical and corrupt communication.

Such statements should not be tolerated at all on SI or in any Christian setting.

No one can correctly say that the “main point” or “big idea” of Stephen’s sermon in defense of himself as it is recorded in Acts 7 is to teach us doctrinally about the Golden Calf Incident. Nonetheless, Acts 7:39-41 provides divine revelation that decisively interprets for us the nature of what took place in the Golden Calf Incident.

Paying very close attention to how the historical narrative passage in Acts 7 uses information from the historical narrative passage in Exodus 32 provides us thus with vital doctrinal information!