Just a few thoughts to add:

> > > God endorsed capital punishment in the OT for murder, true. He also endorsed capital punishment for adultery, for disrespecting one's parents and for worshiping other gods.
> > >
> > > But Jesus stopped the Pharisees from stoning the adulterous woman,
> >
> > Who was being unlawfully punished without the man involved.
>
> So did Jesus ask them to bring the man out? No.
>
> Yes, it does reflect badly on his persecutors that they weren't following the Law, either. But Jesus didn't do the "right" thing and ask them to go find the man. He let the woman go. "Neither do I condemn you. Go now, and leave your life of sin."
>
> The point he made with the "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" was that *only* God really has the right to judge right and wrong, and Jesus *chose* not to condemn the woman. He chose to forgive her. (We later learn that God has chosen to forgive all who receive his atonement, in Paul's letters.)

Up until the last paragraph is all fine; the last paragraph starts speculating. There are many, many different interpretations; I would guess that there are almost as many interpretations as scholars. The reason being, of course, that the Bible doesn't give any interpretation, just what happened.

My own interpretation is simply that Jesus forgave her. That's what he does. I think that using this to support or refute political positions misses the point. It's not that only God can judge right or wrong, it's that only God can forgive all sins.

Jesus can and does forgive people who have committed heinous crimes. But one cannot stretch this instance of his forgiving nature to mean we ought to try to forgive similarly wicked crimes that weren't committed against us. Mercy is, essentially, withholding justice from the guilty.

> Love is the Law. But the Law is not love.

What?

> "Fulfill" has a pretty strong connotation of "end", at least to me. Maybe the original Greek has some nuance the translators missed?

I read Nyperold's response to this, but I can't help thinking it might not be a bad translation at all. Look at Romans 10:4 "Christ is the end of the law... ."

> BTW, *nothing* in the Law says anything about the soul or the afterlife (correct me if I'm wrong). The written Law's punishments are temporal; that's why the Hebrews had no concept of an afterlife beyond a hazy idea of Sheol, with some exceptions in visions from the prophets;

Well, it does mention them. See Dt. 6:5 and Dt. 10:12. But really, the law is law. One can't commit crimes against or consciously do much of anything with souls except *be,* so there's no imperative for the law to mention it a bunch of times.

> To argue otherwise and say that the mercy was just mercy with no eternal significance is to have a capricious, inscrutable, and ultimately unjust God. "Oh, I feel like forgiving Cain, but all other murderers get zapped. David's after my own heart; he still gets saved, but someone else with the same crime? Hell-fodder." More like the Greeks' Zeus than the lawful, just God the Jews loved and worshiped, than any God I would care to worship. (That's less of an arrogant, self-serving statement than it sounds; it has to do with how I define God.

This reminds me of a section from _The Best Things In Life_ where the character is asked, "If there were two Gods, one perfect in power but imperfect in goodness and the other perfect in goodness but imperfet in power, which would you choose to serve?"

I think the whole debate about whether God exists is too ironic. No quantity or quality of discussion or logical arguments makes any impact on the Truth of the matter. And the same goes for any sentence including "I believe God is/isn't/does/doesn't ..."--God Will Be What He Will Be, and our belief in his nature affects only ourselves.

> > > I believe God is a rational God and that he loves us enough to make his Word comprehensible to us to the extent necessary for us to live godly lives, and so I refused to give up trying to reconcile "turn the other cheek" with "eye for an eye".

Mercy and Justice, in their proper balance, is a big topic.

gab"butting in as usual"by