Questions

1. If God is that which nothing greater can be conceived, as St. Anselm teaches us, then surely He cannot be subject to the authority of anything outside of Himself. In other words, God is not restricted by any laws since He Himself is the Creator of those laws. Why, then, must sin be punished? Why did God pronounce condemnations on Adam and Eve after their disobedience if he was not forced to? Or did he take delight in doling out such punishment? Does he take pleasure in the woman's pain during childbirth? Or is God somehow ontologically bound to punish sins? If so, what does the binding? And is it greater than God? To ask this question another way, when Jesus died to pay the penalty for sins, to whom did he pay? And if the answer is "God," then what obligates God to demand sacrifice for sin? Why couldn't he just wink at it? Or if the cross was payment to Satan, then how is it that Satan has power over God and can make demands of God?

2. Leviticus 21:16-23 says: 16 The LORD said to Moses, 17 "Say to Aaron: 'For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. 18 No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; 19 no man with a crippled foot or hand, 20 or who is hunchbacked or dwarfed, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. 21 No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the offerings made to the LORD by fire. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God. 22 He may eat the most holy food of his God, as well as the holy food; 23 yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary. I am the LORD, who makes them holy. '" This seems completely inconsistent with the character of God as revealed in the New Testament through the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus welcomed the deformed, maimed, and imperfect. He came as a doctor to the sick, not the healthy. Indeed, the New Testament points us to the fact that God celebrates such misshapen and defective people. So what can I make of these verses in Leviticus? Is such a God even worthy of worship (pardon the sacrilege in asking such a thing)? How can I praise and adore a being who excludes from his presence those who were born with a defect not of their own choosing?

3. Leviticus 25:44-46 says: 44 "'Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly. How very progressive of you, God! But seriously, what on earth are you thinking here? I know that you contextualize yourself into human culture in order to communicate, but the cynic in me thinks you are not really the One writing this -- this comes from the hand of a power-hungry Hebrew. I thought we were agreed that human beings are not property. I thought we agrees that one nationality is not superior to another. You sound more like Adolf Hitler here than like the Jesus I know and love.

4. What relevance does the gospel message have to Nanook of the North?

5. How much of Christian spirituality is tied up in me being literate? We extol the virtues of Bible reading, study, knowledge of the classics, etc. But shouldn't an illiterate person have just as much access to the living God as a literate one? What do you say to the mentally retarded or the socially disenfrancised who cannot read -- "First, learn your ABCs and then come to the fountain"? In a related question, how much knowledge is required for salvation? By knowledge, I mean intellectual information. Must propositional statements be grasped and intellectually affirmed? Is that the point at which salvation occurs? I sincerely hope and pray not. What a petty system that would be.