Yes, we do. You’re a broken record that we’ve heard too many times to count. Just because we see it differently from you doesn’t mean we don’t fully know your opinion.
Please stop turning every thread into your blog.
So you see Love differently? To how the Godless see it?
On what basis was the God of the OT Love? How was the set-up (forbidden fruit, Satan serpent) in Eden, Love? How was The Flood, Love? How was The Gainsaying of Korah, Love? How was The Heresy of Peor, Love? How was Sodom & Gomorrah, Love? Or do we... passover Bronze Age Love?
Point of Order, Mr. Speaker: to my understanding, the serpent in the Garden of Eden is not Satan, or even a reptilian representation of Lucifer, who also isn't Satan.
Yes, we do. You’re a broken record that we’ve heard too many times to count. Just because we see it differently from you doesn’t mean we don’t fully know your opinion.
Please stop turning every thread into your blog.
So you see Love differently? To how the Godless see it?
Enough, @Martin54 you have had repeated explanations of the posting requirements and now you are ignoring the hosts - again. I am giving you shoreleave until the end of the month.
Martin54 wants to take everything in the Bible literally. Typical of most unbelievers. The myths presented in the Genesis accounts are just trying to explain why things are as they are. The key is not the negative consequences but how the Hebrews believed God acted gracously in spite of the negativity.
Poor form to talk about @Martin54 when he can't be here to answer, @Gramps49.
There are puh-lenty of very excitable Christians who only take the Bible literally -- wild-eyed fundamentalist crazies who believe the entire Bible is wholly perfect and inerrant and to be taken at face value. You'd do well to bring those people into the 21st century and leave Martin54 out of it.
Thanks for the lovely character you give me there. Or had you forgot we had inerrantists aboard?
@The_Riv also said "face value" and "literaly". I don’t think he was aiming at Inerrancy per se but that particular brand of it that includes wooden face value literalism.
The slightly more reasonable ones of that contingency are just YECcies; the real hard core of these are joining forces with the Flat Earthers now. I don't think that's a cap anyone thinks you're wearing.
Thanks for the lovely character you give me there. Or had you forgot we had inerrantists aboard?
You are in no way required to claim my characterization. I’m very glad for you not to be a wild-eyed fundamentalist crazy. But live in central Mississippi, and way down here in the sweaty, naval lint-filled folds of the Bible Belt, they are legion, and not helping your obviously learnéd case(s) very much at all.
Poor form to talk about @Martin54 when he can't be here to answer, @Gramps49.
There are puh-lenty of very excitable Christians who only take the Bible literally -- wild-eyed fundamentalist crazies who believe the entire Bible is wholly perfect and inerrant and to be taken at face value. You'd do well to bring those people into the 21st century and leave Martin54 out of it.
Martin himself says he no longer believes. Should have used the term nonbeliever. Martin is not about to respond at this time, but he will be back.
But your point about fundamentalists is true. Thier diehard positions are similar to atheist objections.
I think the initial post refers to "high" or "low" Christologies. High tends to over-divinize Jesus to the point that he's no longer human; low tends to over- humanize Jesus to the point that he's no longer divine.
I try to keep them in balance, in some way. I have no problem believing that Jesus, fully human, learned things along the way. Luke 2:52 says that Jesus increased in wisdom and in years. On the other hand, I do have a problem with the theory that Jesus was "just testing" the Canaanite/Syro-Phoenician woman by calling her and her daughter little bitches. It would not surprise me that, in the course of hanging out with a bunch of dudebros, that Jesus had picked up some... unenlightened views on women and minorities. I would rather believe that Jesus learned something in that encounter, than that he was deliberately cruel in testing, teasing, and using her and her sick daughter.
But - nobody has to believe as I do. I don't think I would be convinced by someone else attempting to persuade me otherwise, nor do I seek to persuade those who think differently.
On the other hand, I do have a problem with the theory that Jesus was "just testing" the Canaanite/Syro-Phoenician woman by calling her and her daughter little bitches. It would not surprise me that, in the course of hanging out with a bunch of dudebros, that Jesus had picked up some... unenlightened views on women and minorities. I would rather believe that Jesus learned something in that encounter, than that he was deliberately cruel in testing, teasing, and using her and her sick daughter.
But aren't those unenlightened views still cruel?
It seems to me that being cruel because you're unenlightened and oblivious to the hurt you're causing is worse than inflicting hurt for some greater good (as long as inflicting hurt isn't the point)?
It seems to me that this is a difficult story anyway - but what Jesus said is only justifiable if Jesus knew before he said it that the woman had the presence of mind to make that snappy comeback.
It seems to me that being cruel because you're unenlightened and oblivious to the hurt you're causing is worse than inflicting hurt for some greater good (as long as inflicting hurt isn't the point)?
It seems to me that this is a difficult story anyway - but what Jesus said is only justifiable if Jesus knew before he said it that the woman had the presence of mind to make that snappy comeback.
I'm interested in the word "justifiable" here. We agree that Jesus's response is problematic and inflicted hurt. We do not agree that being cruel because you're unenlightened and oblivious to the hurt you're causing is worse than inflicting hurt for some greater good (as long as inflicting hurt isn't the point). I think the latter is worse than the former. Even the criminal justice system recognizes the importance of intent, and in the former example, there is no intent to cause harm... even if it was 'justifiable' for the sake of a greater good.
Having problematic opinions about women and minorities, and then being able to change your mind when confronted, seems to me justifiable on the grounds of being human.
Insulting a desperate woman and her sick daughter, in the course of denying them the help they need which could have been promptly provided without insult or delay, even if some teaching effort is thought to be involved does not seem to me justifiable but rather sociopathic.
If an emergency room doctor were called upon in this scenario - and chose not only to deny treatment but to make misogynistic and racialized insults - I cannot see how that could be considered an ethically defensible choice. However, if such a doctor were swiftly educated as to the unacceptability of that choice, and promptly made amends, I can see that as a teachable moment for the doctor.
It seems to me that this is a difficult story anyway - but what Jesus said is only justifiable if Jesus knew before he said it that the woman had the presence of mind to make that snappy comeback.
This is the precisely why I started this thread.
MUST Jesus already know that the woman "had the presence of mind to make that snappy comeback"? HOW would he know that in advance, when it was someone he had presumably never met before? If he DIDN'T know this, does this make him NOT the Son of God? Or can our understanding of the divinity of Christ allow for the possibility of him needing to learn or be corrected?
(Increasingly, my reading of this passage is that Jesus made a snarky and rather offensive comment in order to get rid of this woman making demands when he clearly wanted to be left alone. It was her smart retort that made him "see the light" and correct his thinking.
Mark 7:24: "He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there.")
It seems to me that not seeing the humanity of someone else is intrinsically sinful. It doesn't matter why we don't - whether it's through negligence or weakness or our own deliberate fault - it's separation from our neighbour and from God.
If you sin it is obviously better to repent when you're challenged and to learn from it than not to repent. But repented sin is still sin.
Sin makes us less than human. It's not part of our humanity. If we are freed from sin we become more human, more ourselves, not less so.
I disagree that merely being oblivious to an ethical issue or to someone's humanity makes something okay. It makes it better than actual malice.
I note that medical treatment frequently involves things that would be harmful if not done for a greater good. Cutting someone open is a paradigm of harm, and yet surgery is morally good.
Jesus is fully human. That is, he is not made less human by sin. He is fully open to all other human beings. That is quite important from a theological point of view. There are many things he may have had to learn about other people, but he didn't need to be challenged to see other people as people.
If so we may assume that whatever was going through Jesus's head, he always intended to help the woman. The mother didn't take his response as a flat dismissal. He did not deny the mother treatment in the end. As for how he knew, well, we're told he could see what people had in their hearts, by which I presume is meant that he was empathetic and able to read character.
I think one problem for me with saying that it was ok for Jesus to need to be challenged is to ask whether his reaction would have been morally acceptable if he hadn't been challenged? What if there hadn't been anything for him to learn from?
It seems to me that not seeing the humanity of someone else is intrinsically sinful. It doesn't matter why we don't - whether it's through negligence or weakness or our own deliberate fault - it's separation from our neighbour and from God.
If you sin it is obviously better to repent when you're challenged and to learn from it than not to repent. But repented sin is still sin.
Sin makes us less than human. It's not part of our humanity. If we are freed from sin we become more human, more ourselves, not less so.
. . .
Jesus is fully human. That is, he is not made less human by sin. He is fully open to all other human beings. That is quite important from a theological point of view. There are many things he may have had to learn about other people, but he didn't need to be challenged to see other people as people.
Yes, this.
I think I said above that this is what makes me stumble on the idea that this story shows Jesus learning something. If that’s the case, Jesus failed to keep one of the two great commandments—to love neighbor as self. And that’s not just inconsistent with how the Gospels and the rest of the NT present Jesus, it’s directly contrary to the claim made throughout the NT that Jesus was without sin.
It seems to me that not seeing the humanity of someone else is intrinsically sinful. It doesn't matter why we don't - whether it's through negligence or weakness or our own deliberate fault - it's separation from our neighbour and from God.
If you sin it is obviously better to repent when you're challenged and to learn from it than not to repent. But repented sin is still sin.
Sin makes us less than human. It's not part of our humanity. If we are freed from sin we become more human, more ourselves, not less so.
. . .
Jesus is fully human. That is, he is not made less human by sin. He is fully open to all other human beings. That is quite important from a theological point of view. There are many things he may have had to learn about other people, but he didn't need to be challenged to see other people as people.
Yes, this.
I think I said above that this is what makes me stumble on the idea that this story shows Jesus learning something. If that’s the case, Jesus failed to keep one of the two great commandments—to love neighbor as self. And that’s not just inconsistent with how the Gospels and the rest of the NT present Jesus, it’s directly contrary to the claim made throughout the NT that Jesus was without sin.
Me too. If Jesus was racist, even before learning better, the whole sinless thing goes out the window--and how in the world would he be able to say later, "Which of you accuses me of sin?" Because racism isn't a minor sin, and he would certainly know that. You'd really have to figure on at least two sins, the racist thing and the false claim of sinlessness. And that would open up all sorts of questions about his own self-awareness (as in, not so great)...
The account involving the Canaanite/Syrophoenician woman looks like a story about racial slurs and exclusion. It seems integral that one of the participants is a Jew and the other is not.
What Christians seem to want from the person of Jesus is someone who can resolve their personal dilemmas between the desire for the inclusive nature of Love (a God of Love) and the desire to belong to accepting faith communities that, for the most part, emerge from long traditions and embedded practices of exclusion.
Yeah, but the point of the story is that Christ turns that on its head.
Whether he was being mean, or playing some kind of Rabbinical rhetorical game with her initially, or whether he could foresee a potential favourable outcome and wanted to teach his disciples a lesson, or however else we take it ... the fact is he was being pretty radical by even talking to her in the first place.
I don't want to anachronise the story and present it as a piece of subversive and ironic banter on his part - and we don't have the 'body language' or other cues to see whether the exchange was light-hearted or deadly serious and offensive.
What we do have is the outcome and the lesson, however problematic we may find it.
On one level, I'd suggest that Christ does resolve the 'personal dilemmas' that @Pease alludes to, but observe that these tend to be more 'corporate' than personal (or are both/and ) and that he does this by example.
'Go thou and do likewise ...', as it were.
Of course, as culturally and socially conditioned beings we can't avoid tribalism. @Nick Tamen often uses the term 'my tribe' when referring to his own Reformed tradition, for instance.
The late Dr Andrew Walker, a convert to Orthodoxy from a Pentecostal background, once observed that Donald Gee, a leading figure in the Assemblies of God, was 'in a sect but non-sectarian.'
Gee was remarkably eirenic for his time and affiliation and conducted warm correspondence and friendships with RCs and others from traditions very different from his own.
Ok, one could argue that this was still a narrow frame of reference. What about other faiths? What about people with no faith?
But we have to start somewhere.
'For the peace of mankind and for the union of all men, let us pray to the Lord ...' (excuse the exclusive language there).
Of course, as culturally and socially conditioned beings we can't avoid tribalism. @Nick Tamen often uses the term 'my tribe' when referring to his own Reformed tradition, for instance.
Technically, I use “my tribe” to refer to my particular denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), not to the Reformed tradition as a whole.
But you’re quite right about the tendency to tribalism.
I feel like we've arrived at an interesting intersection involving sin, error, omniscience, and what it means to be human.
Gamma Gamaliel wrote, and Nick Tamen agreed: "as culturally and socially conditioned beings we can't avoid tribalism." Yes! So why would Jesus be exempt from this, as he was incarnate in a particular body, culture, and society?
I consider cultural and social conditioning to be open to error. I do not think of such error as sinful - merely a fact of being human. As Jesus was truly human in a particular body, culture and society, he would have learned things we would now consider erroneous.
How he dealt with such errors internally - how he negotiated the omniscience of deity with the limitations of humanity - is, I think, necessarily opaque to human knowledge.
He was not incarnate as a post-Enlightenment philosopher, educated with ideas about the inherent dignity of all humans. Jesus was a man of his time and place... and also the Redeeming Word of God.
I wonder if there is mileage in thinking about whether the Rightness of Christ fulfills a basic human need.
Maybe that's too in the weeds, if so I will accept that it is an unwanted aspect to the conversation.
Er can you explain that a little?
I've been trying to think how to phrase a reply to this.
I suppose it feels to me like humans tend towards wanting heroes, and we like to create a kind of mythology of Rightness about them. We are not great at keeping in mind that they are human and make mistakes.
To take a (kind of) non-religious example. There exist people who think Mohandas K Gandhi was the greatest thing that ever happened and who spend a lot of time studying his books and writings. There's a level of mythologising at work in the memory of the man to the extent that he is sometimes remembered as a near perfect being. Then detractors who say actually he was pretty horrible to his wife or that maybe Dr Ambedkar had more progressive views on Dalits or whatever become dangerous subversives tarnishing Gandhi's memory.
I feel like we've arrived at an interesting intersection involving sin, error, omniscience, and what it means to be human.
Gamma Gamaliel wrote, and Nick Tamen agreed: "as culturally and socially conditioned beings we can't avoid tribalism." Yes! So why would Jesus be exempt from this, as he was incarnate in a particular body, culture, and society?
I consider cultural and social conditioning to be open to error. I do not think of such error as sinful - merely a fact of being human.
This is where I’d disagree, I think. I do see that tribalism we’re culturally and socially conditioned to embrace to be symptom of the sin that has a grip on humanity. It’s part of being a sinful human, but not part of what is intended for humanity.
I feel like we've arrived at an interesting intersection involving sin, error, omniscience, and what it means to be human.
Gamma Gamaliel wrote, and Nick Tamen agreed: "as culturally and socially conditioned beings we can't avoid tribalism." Yes! So why would Jesus be exempt from this, as he was incarnate in a particular body, culture, and society?
I consider cultural and social conditioning to be open to error. I do not think of such error as sinful - merely a fact of being human.
This is where I’d disagree, I think. I do see that tribalism we’re culturally and socially conditioned to embrace to be symptom of the sin that has a grip on humanity. It’s part of being a sinful human, but not part of what is intended for humanity.
Yes, and I think in that sense, Jesus was in constant communion with the Holy Spirit in the way we were intended to be but aren't, and that was the ultimate corrective on what he did and said.
Sometimes, we forget the writers of the Gospels would relay a story about Jesus that runs counter to our current thoughts. In the case of the syro phoenician woman we see it as verging on racism or tribalism; but, for Mark, it was probably no more than a learning opportunity for Jesus.
Would we think Jesus would condone slavery today? But, in his day, it was just an accepted fact. He is limited by his humanness. Nevertheless, he carried on a movement that would eventually replace most of slavery in the world. We have yet to see the final result, but we are a lot further now than in his time;
Sometimes, we forget the writers of the Gospels would relay a story about Jesus that runs counter to our current thoughts. In the case of the syro phoenician woman we see it as verging on racism or tribalism; but, for Mark, it was probably no more than a learning opportunity for Jesus.
While I agree that cultural presuppositions of Jesus’s day are quite different from those of our day, neither the prophets nor the Gospels shy away from calling out Israelite tribalism. The parable of the Good Samaritan is directly relevant here.
So you’re going to have to unpack how Jesus calling the woman a “dog,” which both Mark and Matthew report, doesn't reflect racism or tribalism, especially given all that Matthew reports Jesus saying: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel,” and “It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs.” (Mark has “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”) And this coming right after Matthew reports Jesus teaching that it is what comes out of a person’s mouth the defiles.
And I really haven’t seen an explanation yet as to why Jesus needed a learning opportunity if he hadn’t first sinned by failing to love his neighbor as himself and by failing to see the Syrophoenician woman as bearing the image of God.
FWIW, the standard Orthodox 'take' on this story in Matthew's and Mark's Gospels, is that Christ wasn't showing a lack of compassion but drawing out the Canaanite woman's faith.
That doesn't resolve the difficulties, though.
There's the 'Scandal of Particularity' of course. Christ wasn't incarnate as a 7th century Polynesian or 21st century Inuit or a post-Enlightenment philosopher or a washerwoman in 19th century London. Which doesn't mean that any of those would be beyond his compassion and concern.
I agree with @Nick Tamen and @chrisstiles that 'tribalism' and party-spirit as it were is part and parcel of the 'fallen' human condition. That's partly what the Tower of Babel story is about. At the same time, we are all products of our particular cultures and societies and Christ didn't float above all of that on a fluffy white cloud.
It's one of the tensions we have to live with and somehow to act counter-culturally within the constraints and between the 'now and the not yet.'
The thing about "learning opportunities for Jesus" is that those are entirely sensible in areas of life (most of them!) which don't contradict his nature as God or his nature as unfallen man; so there is no trouble about him learning to walk, to talk, to cook, to read, etc. etc. etc. It's compatible with both natures for there to be a time when those things were beyond him, and for those things to come as he continued to mature. They are a part of natural growth and development for someone of his species, culture and time. And natural growth and development (apart from sin) is perfect at every stage, even though limited.
What is NOT a part of natural development is a wrong turn into the sin of racism, not for Jesus or any of us. We can and do take those wrong turns; but they are due to the power of sin afflicting us, not to native human nature as God made it. To treat racism as part of Jesus' natural humanity is like treating a cancerous tumor as a natural part of his body. A tumor is not proper to the human body, it's an outrage on it, it's something that needs to be removed. It exists because the world is broken and not what God made it to be; but Jesus is in fact exactly what God made him to be.
Is there any evidence that the Christian Church throughout its entire history ever saw Jesus’ interaction with the Syrophoenician woman as something where He was mistaken or “learned something”? Was it seen as a test for her, or making a point to His disciples, from the beginning?
Let us consider, for a moment, a slightly different scenario.
Imagine someone (white and male) brought up within a household of slave owners in, for example, one of the southern states of USA in the mid 1800s. All this person has ever known is the assumption that black people are less than human and that women are lesser than men. If such a person makes a statement to the effect that a black woman is a lowly dog and not worthy of consideration, are they "sinning"? That is the world in which they have been raised and they know no other. Yes, we can say - with the benefit of our experience and knowledge - that such attitudes are wrong and we would be appalled if such comments were expressed today. But for that person in that particular situation - have they sinned? And would it not be a great thing - almost a miracle - if this person were to suddenly come to the realisation that they were wrong in their thinking?
Comments
@Martin54, please do not attempt to drag yet another thread off-topic onto the subject of your loss of belief.
Removes hostly hat, in the sincere hope it doesn't have to be donned again soon
North East Quine, Purgatory host
So you see Love differently? To how the Godless see it?
@Martin54 please read and inwardly digest @North East Quine's host post above.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
Point of Order, Mr. Speaker: to my understanding, the serpent in the Garden of Eden is not Satan, or even a reptilian representation of Lucifer, who also isn't Satan.
@The_Riv, as Martin54 has been asked to stop this tangent, please don’t continue it.
BroJames, Purgatory Host
Host hat off
Enough, @Martin54 you have had repeated explanations of the posting requirements and now you are ignoring the hosts - again. I am giving you shoreleave until the end of the month.
Doublethink, Admin
[/Admin]
There are puh-lenty of very excitable Christians who only take the Bible literally -- wild-eyed fundamentalist crazies who believe the entire Bible is wholly perfect and inerrant and to be taken at face value. You'd do well to bring those people into the 21st century and leave Martin54 out of it.
@The_Riv also said "face value" and "literaly". I don’t think he was aiming at Inerrancy per se but that particular brand of it that includes wooden face value literalism.
The slightly more reasonable ones of that contingency are just YECcies; the real hard core of these are joining forces with the Flat Earthers now. I don't think that's a cap anyone thinks you're wearing.
You are in no way required to claim my characterization. I’m very glad for you not to be a wild-eyed fundamentalist crazy. But live in central Mississippi, and way down here in the sweaty, naval lint-filled folds of the Bible Belt, they are legion, and not helping your obviously learnéd case(s) very much at all.
Martin himself says he no longer believes. Should have used the term nonbeliever. Martin is not about to respond at this time, but he will be back.
But your point about fundamentalists is true. Thier diehard positions are similar to atheist objections.
I don't really think so, myself. But again I'm not sure this is the same topic as the thread.
I think the initial post refers to "high" or "low" Christologies. High tends to over-divinize Jesus to the point that he's no longer human; low tends to over- humanize Jesus to the point that he's no longer divine.
I try to keep them in balance, in some way. I have no problem believing that Jesus, fully human, learned things along the way. Luke 2:52 says that Jesus increased in wisdom and in years. On the other hand, I do have a problem with the theory that Jesus was "just testing" the Canaanite/Syro-Phoenician woman by calling her and her daughter little bitches. It would not surprise me that, in the course of hanging out with a bunch of dudebros, that Jesus had picked up some... unenlightened views on women and minorities. I would rather believe that Jesus learned something in that encounter, than that he was deliberately cruel in testing, teasing, and using her and her sick daughter.
But - nobody has to believe as I do. I don't think I would be convinced by someone else attempting to persuade me otherwise, nor do I seek to persuade those who think differently.
But yes, I can see what you are getting at.
It seems to me that being cruel because you're unenlightened and oblivious to the hurt you're causing is worse than inflicting hurt for some greater good (as long as inflicting hurt isn't the point)?
It seems to me that this is a difficult story anyway - but what Jesus said is only justifiable if Jesus knew before he said it that the woman had the presence of mind to make that snappy comeback.
I don't understand...
I'm interested in the word "justifiable" here. We agree that Jesus's response is problematic and inflicted hurt. We do not agree that being cruel because you're unenlightened and oblivious to the hurt you're causing is worse than inflicting hurt for some greater good (as long as inflicting hurt isn't the point). I think the latter is worse than the former. Even the criminal justice system recognizes the importance of intent, and in the former example, there is no intent to cause harm... even if it was 'justifiable' for the sake of a greater good.
Having problematic opinions about women and minorities, and then being able to change your mind when confronted, seems to me justifiable on the grounds of being human.
Insulting a desperate woman and her sick daughter, in the course of denying them the help they need which could have been promptly provided without insult or delay, even if some teaching effort is thought to be involved does not seem to me justifiable but rather sociopathic.
If an emergency room doctor were called upon in this scenario - and chose not only to deny treatment but to make misogynistic and racialized insults - I cannot see how that could be considered an ethically defensible choice. However, if such a doctor were swiftly educated as to the unacceptability of that choice, and promptly made amends, I can see that as a teachable moment for the doctor.
We're human, we learn. As did Jesus.
I'm just not eager to get jumped on, if you know what I mean. And of course you all know what I think anyway.
This is the precisely why I started this thread.
MUST Jesus already know that the woman "had the presence of mind to make that snappy comeback"? HOW would he know that in advance, when it was someone he had presumably never met before? If he DIDN'T know this, does this make him NOT the Son of God? Or can our understanding of the divinity of Christ allow for the possibility of him needing to learn or be corrected?
(Increasingly, my reading of this passage is that Jesus made a snarky and rather offensive comment in order to get rid of this woman making demands when he clearly wanted to be left alone. It was her smart retort that made him "see the light" and correct his thinking.
Mark 7:24: "He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there.")
If you sin it is obviously better to repent when you're challenged and to learn from it than not to repent. But repented sin is still sin.
Sin makes us less than human. It's not part of our humanity. If we are freed from sin we become more human, more ourselves, not less so.
I disagree that merely being oblivious to an ethical issue or to someone's humanity makes something okay. It makes it better than actual malice.
I note that medical treatment frequently involves things that would be harmful if not done for a greater good. Cutting someone open is a paradigm of harm, and yet surgery is morally good.
Jesus is fully human. That is, he is not made less human by sin. He is fully open to all other human beings. That is quite important from a theological point of view. There are many things he may have had to learn about other people, but he didn't need to be challenged to see other people as people.
If so we may assume that whatever was going through Jesus's head, he always intended to help the woman. The mother didn't take his response as a flat dismissal. He did not deny the mother treatment in the end. As for how he knew, well, we're told he could see what people had in their hearts, by which I presume is meant that he was empathetic and able to read character.
I think I said above that this is what makes me stumble on the idea that this story shows Jesus learning something. If that’s the case, Jesus failed to keep one of the two great commandments—to love neighbor as self. And that’s not just inconsistent with how the Gospels and the rest of the NT present Jesus, it’s directly contrary to the claim made throughout the NT that Jesus was without sin.
This.
Maybe that's too in the weeds, if so I will accept that it is an unwanted aspect to the conversation.
Er can you explain that a little?
What Christians seem to want from the person of Jesus is someone who can resolve their personal dilemmas between the desire for the inclusive nature of Love (a God of Love) and the desire to belong to accepting faith communities that, for the most part, emerge from long traditions and embedded practices of exclusion.
Whether he was being mean, or playing some kind of Rabbinical rhetorical game with her initially, or whether he could foresee a potential favourable outcome and wanted to teach his disciples a lesson, or however else we take it ... the fact is he was being pretty radical by even talking to her in the first place.
I don't want to anachronise the story and present it as a piece of subversive and ironic banter on his part - and we don't have the 'body language' or other cues to see whether the exchange was light-hearted or deadly serious and offensive.
What we do have is the outcome and the lesson, however problematic we may find it.
On one level, I'd suggest that Christ does resolve the 'personal dilemmas' that @Pease alludes to, but observe that these tend to be more 'corporate' than personal (or are both/and
'Go thou and do likewise ...', as it were.
Of course, as culturally and socially conditioned beings we can't avoid tribalism. @Nick Tamen often uses the term 'my tribe' when referring to his own Reformed tradition, for instance.
The late Dr Andrew Walker, a convert to Orthodoxy from a Pentecostal background, once observed that Donald Gee, a leading figure in the Assemblies of God, was 'in a sect but non-sectarian.'
Gee was remarkably eirenic for his time and affiliation and conducted warm correspondence and friendships with RCs and others from traditions very different from his own.
Ok, one could argue that this was still a narrow frame of reference. What about other faiths? What about people with no faith?
But we have to start somewhere.
'For the peace of mankind and for the union of all men, let us pray to the Lord ...' (excuse the exclusive language there).
But you’re quite right about the tendency to tribalism.
Gamma Gamaliel wrote, and Nick Tamen agreed: "as culturally and socially conditioned beings we can't avoid tribalism." Yes! So why would Jesus be exempt from this, as he was incarnate in a particular body, culture, and society?
I consider cultural and social conditioning to be open to error. I do not think of such error as sinful - merely a fact of being human. As Jesus was truly human in a particular body, culture and society, he would have learned things we would now consider erroneous.
How he dealt with such errors internally - how he negotiated the omniscience of deity with the limitations of humanity - is, I think, necessarily opaque to human knowledge.
He was not incarnate as a post-Enlightenment philosopher, educated with ideas about the inherent dignity of all humans. Jesus was a man of his time and place... and also the Redeeming Word of God.
I've been trying to think how to phrase a reply to this.
I suppose it feels to me like humans tend towards wanting heroes, and we like to create a kind of mythology of Rightness about them. We are not great at keeping in mind that they are human and make mistakes.
To take a (kind of) non-religious example. There exist people who think Mohandas K Gandhi was the greatest thing that ever happened and who spend a lot of time studying his books and writings. There's a level of mythologising at work in the memory of the man to the extent that he is sometimes remembered as a near perfect being. Then detractors who say actually he was pretty horrible to his wife or that maybe Dr Ambedkar had more progressive views on Dalits or whatever become dangerous subversives tarnishing Gandhi's memory.
Do you see what I mean?
Took me a minute.
Yes, and I think in that sense, Jesus was in constant communion with the Holy Spirit in the way we were intended to be but aren't, and that was the ultimate corrective on what he did and said.
Would we think Jesus would condone slavery today? But, in his day, it was just an accepted fact. He is limited by his humanness. Nevertheless, he carried on a movement that would eventually replace most of slavery in the world. We have yet to see the final result, but we are a lot further now than in his time;
So you’re going to have to unpack how Jesus calling the woman a “dog,” which both Mark and Matthew report, doesn't reflect racism or tribalism, especially given all that Matthew reports Jesus saying: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel,” and “It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs.” (Mark has “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”) And this coming right after Matthew reports Jesus teaching that it is what comes out of a person’s mouth the defiles.
And I really haven’t seen an explanation yet as to why Jesus needed a learning opportunity if he hadn’t first sinned by failing to love his neighbor as himself and by failing to see the Syrophoenician woman as bearing the image of God.
That doesn't resolve the difficulties, though.
There's the 'Scandal of Particularity' of course. Christ wasn't incarnate as a 7th century Polynesian or 21st century Inuit or a post-Enlightenment philosopher or a washerwoman in 19th century London. Which doesn't mean that any of those would be beyond his compassion and concern.
I agree with @Nick Tamen and @chrisstiles that 'tribalism' and party-spirit as it were is part and parcel of the 'fallen' human condition. That's partly what the Tower of Babel story is about. At the same time, we are all products of our particular cultures and societies and Christ didn't float above all of that on a fluffy white cloud.
It's one of the tensions we have to live with and somehow to act counter-culturally within the constraints and between the 'now and the not yet.'
What is NOT a part of natural development is a wrong turn into the sin of racism, not for Jesus or any of us. We can and do take those wrong turns; but they are due to the power of sin afflicting us, not to native human nature as God made it. To treat racism as part of Jesus' natural humanity is like treating a cancerous tumor as a natural part of his body. A tumor is not proper to the human body, it's an outrage on it, it's something that needs to be removed. It exists because the world is broken and not what God made it to be; but Jesus is in fact exactly what God made him to be.
Imagine someone (white and male) brought up within a household of slave owners in, for example, one of the southern states of USA in the mid 1800s. All this person has ever known is the assumption that black people are less than human and that women are lesser than men. If such a person makes a statement to the effect that a black woman is a lowly dog and not worthy of consideration, are they "sinning"? That is the world in which they have been raised and they know no other. Yes, we can say - with the benefit of our experience and knowledge - that such attitudes are wrong and we would be appalled if such comments were expressed today. But for that person in that particular situation - have they sinned? And would it not be a great thing - almost a miracle - if this person were to suddenly come to the realisation that they were wrong in their thinking?