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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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But what /u/Quantumfreakonomics is saying is that it is something that God says prior to the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants. It's easy to write off a rule from Leviticus or Exodus, because, as you say, Jesus came to fulfill the law from a Christian perspective. But it is much harder to take a normative statement God said to Noah, the ancestor of all of modern mankind and prior to any Mosaic covenant, and say that it doesn't and shouldn't matter to modern Christians. Do you also think that Christians shouldn't be fruitful and multiply, or enjoy the beasts of the field and plants as food?

Do you also think that Christians shouldn't be fruitful and multiply, or enjoy the beasts of the field and plants as food?

Not in all situations, no. And in fact many Christian saints have been vegan, and many Christian sects over the years have eschewed childbearing and focused on individual salvation.

Modern atheists have an unfortunate tendency to equate all of Christianity with the beliefs of the most vocal, modern evangelical Protestants. I should know, I used to do the same thing.

Modern atheists have an unfortunate tendency to equate all of Christianity with the beliefs of the most vocal, modern evangelical Protestants.

I mean, I wasn't thinking of modern Protestantism per se at all, Evangelical or otherwise. I've read through documents like the Westminster Larger Catechism (albeit years ago now), and my general impression was that the Christian attitude towards the Old Testament was not that none of it mattered to modern Christians. There was a fairly extensive role for the Old Testament in those old confessions and catechisms beyond it being the old covenant that doesn't apply anymore. There was lots of emphasis on the importance of Adam and the Patriarchs of Genesis, and discussion of parts of the Old Testament (like the 10 Commandments) being moral instruction that was still relevant to modern Christians.

A quick search reveals that you're Eastern Orthodox, and I don't discount that they probably have their own traditions surrounding the Bible and Apostolic Authority that differ from any Protestant or Western Christian branch, but even so I would find it unusual if an Eastern Orthodox scholar said that what God said to Noah doesn't apply because of Jesus' covenant. At the very least it seems to me that rainbows still happen, and God still hasn't flooded the Earth again, so it can't be the case that the Noahide covenant has been completely superseded.