It’s popular in the zeitgeist to support positive consent, but the impression I get from the Bible is that negative consent is the correct model: that is to say, there is a duty to say No if you wish that answer to be respected and a just legal system to back you up if it is not respected
"If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
"But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. But you shall do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no offense punishable by death. For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor, because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.
Deuteronomy 22:23-27 (ESV)
The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.
For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.
I Corinthians 7:3-4 (ESV)
These do not seem to be operating either on a principle of “the default answer is no” (though there does seem to be a presumption in favor of the woman if there’s noone around to verify her story), nor on a principle of “there is no such thing as a requirement for consent” (as believe it or not I was strawmanned as defending). Rather, what seems to best explain these passages, is an underlying principle of negative consent: silence is considered consent, but voicing dissent does remove consent. I think negative consent both in and out of marriage is a slightly better interpretation here than negative consent outside of marriage but implied consent within marriage, because I Corinthians seems to assume some ability of both husband and wife to refuse eachother, or else why would it be necessary to tell them not to exercise that ability? That said, I can see how that’s a matter on which good men may legitimately differ
This was originally brought up as regards an analogy, but some members of this forum apparently didn’t think we were intelligent enough to follow along, and so buried the analogy along with attendant replies (including the one this is adapted from). The responses this line of discussion engendered suggest rather clearly that many on OGF need more exposure therapy to Christian ideas, so to the fellow Christians here, whether you agree with me in part, in whole, or not at all, please join me in arguing from the Bible, for nothing is more effective in building understanding between Christians who disagree on something, than mutual acknowledgement that both positions can be reasonably argued from the Bible
The intended topic is consent in the normal meaning of the word in this context, that is to say sexual consent. If, however, you feel that comparing to consent in other areas would be beneficial, the world be more than welcome as far as I’m concerned
What if the woman was helpless, and felt like she needs to “follow along” to save herself? Something like Stockholm Syndrome?
Honestly, when you don’t have the cards in power dynamics, the act of resistance is futile. The line between bravery and stupidity is quite thin.
Religions favors moral purity over pragmatism. Reality works the other way around.
Why would not calling for help mean she’s guilty of adultery, but if she does call for help let noone is there, she’s not guilty of adultery? My answer is that there’s an underlying principle of negative consent. If consent is not at issue here, what do you appeal to for this difference in treatment?
The passage doesn’t directly address this, but presumably you would apply the same principle as illustrated by the fields vs city example. That said, it seems popular today to just assume there’s no obligation to make any attempt whatsoever to get help on the part of a potential victim, and that does not appear to be what the Bible is teaching
If I ask you for borrow me money and you say no. Does this mean that you give me consent? You just say no. You did not give me a punch. So I can get money from you and it is not a theft.
As far as legal requirements for establishing lying perforce, correct, it seems the expectation is to make reasonable attempts at alerting someone to your situation, or else it’s assumed you’re consenting to adultery
It seems prima facie likely to me that the vociferousness of objection does not affect the ethical implications of it (provided it is sufficiently clear), but if the passages are clarifying that, I don’t see it
My intuitive analysis of this world be that it would still be theft, but if it turned into he said she said when the incident had taken place in city street with people around, the fact that the alleged victim did not say “stop! thief!” or something to that effect would cast doubt on their story, which aligns well with the Deuteronomy passage
I do not know about others, but I do not think that I am intelligent enough to follow along this discussion.
Things that I do/did not understand/know:
– What is positive and negative consent? Never heard of that one, I had to google those.
– What is the current legal basis for this in our society? (don’t know the answer to that, I assume that it is per case, as is my next point)
– How does that differ depending on the case and the context? (For example, if I send an application to the municipality saying that “I’d like to trim my trees and that I’ll put the cut branches on the pavement for 3 days till the truck comes over and picks it up” then if the municipality doesn’t reply within 30 days then it is considered that the municipality “agreed” to it since it is a trivial issue, but if I send them an application about building a house, then if they do not reply then that means “no”.) I assume this differs from legal system to legal system.
And then…
…another issue is why would Christians take legal advice from the whole Bible and not just the New Testament? The Old Testament is not only outdated as a legal document since it is mostly about the laws of a nomadic people around 3000 years ago and thus even the laws of modern day Israel are not based on it, though there still exist some religious courts according to this:
Most Christians though are not of israeli descent (so there is no cultural reason to uphold such laws) and Christianity is based on the New Testament, so any legal or moral example that is within the New Testament, supercedes anything that exists in the Old Testament. Most of the dichognomy of “both positions can be reasonably argued from the Bible” usually derives from the, sometimes extreme, differences of the Old Testament with the New Testament, but if we can establish that the New Testament is more important to us as Christians, then a lot of the dichognomies get automatically resolved.
Given all the above, I am not sure that the Bible (or the New Testament) has the capacity or the breadth of content to cover such nuance in most every day cases in a modern society. It was never meant to anyway (which is why it is called a “Testament” and not a “Legal Codex”), so stretching a text - however holy - beyond its intended specifications will most probably lead to more problems than more solutions.
I find that very amusing and I will explain why.
On the weekend I was playing basketball with some old friends and classmates from school. One of them kept getting fouled and never asked for it, claiming that he couldn’t talk while concentrating on scoring and that after he landed (past the illegal action) he was a bit ashamed to ask for a foul.
If we followed the Deuteronomy we would have kept fouling him all afternoon and he’d still probably not say anything, however because we are better than that, we started calling the fouls on our own to keep things actually fair.
Imagine some middle-aged morons playing a game, having more scruples and a better moral compass than an ancient religious text. Kind of funny, eh?
By definition a case where the victim cannot reasonably be expected to object or complain, after the crime was committed. Good question.
They’re not different here. This is from the Law of Moses. We are dealing with legal standards for determining guilt for adultery in Ancient Israel. Unless you want to play semantic wordgames, I have not switched context whatsoever
“Alleged thief found innocent”, which is different. And for what is the alleged victim to blame? because it’s not for theft, in my view, and it need not even be a moral flaw. Simply a reason a thief may get off because you need to balance getting justice for victims with protecting people from false accusations
Never, because murder is by definition unjustified killing. But the practical question at hand is not, are murderers guilty, but rather is this particular person a murderer?
Yes
You imply here that you googled these, so I assume you know now, but for the benefit of anyone else who had the same question, positive consent is the idea that one needs to make some positive affirmation in order to establish consent, whereas negative consent is the idea that one needs to make some positive objection in order to establish dissent
To my knowledge, it’s positive consent, at least in the US
I think that’s too different to assume the same principles of consent would apply
Because it’s the example we have of what laws Yahweh chose to give when He had a chosen nation to give whatever laws He wanted. We don’t apply those blindly to all people in all times, but we can look at the principles behind them to inform our legal systems, taking into account that some laws were given for the hardness of their hearts, others may have been amelioratory, some were symbolic specifically for Israel, &c.
Not as such, but that doesn’t mean there are no general principles behind them
Yes, when it weighs in on issues, but Yahweh’s character is still the same, so even if the application changes, the principle behind it will remain the same, and the manner in which the application changes can help shed light on the principle
Of course, the New Testament is often dealing with ethical behavior, not so much legal laws, so there’s also that domain difference to account for
If the NT directly supersedes the Tanakh in an area (such as most famously with dietary laws, though you can still have disagreement within Christianity as to whether the principle behind those laws was to set Israel apart from the nations, and thus it’s silly to follow them as Christians (unless it’s a to the Jew a Jew to the Greek a Greek situation), or for health reasons, in which case the NT makes it clear it’s within Christian liberty to choose to or to not follow them, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to follow them for the practical benefits), then yes, the NT takes precedence as the latest revelation, but interpretations which harmonize the two whether by showing they don’t have to be taken as contradictory or by showing an underlying principle whereby both can be explained is to be preferred in less clear cases
My opinion on that would depend pretty much completely on what the rules of basketball are
Of course, it would be a wonderful thing if someone who had lain with another perforce confessed to their crime, but that’s not normally the situation a legal system has to deal with (unless you’re forcing confessions like the USSR did, but then they’re essentially worthless for anyone interested in the truth)
The Deuteronomy passage is speaking about as a crime is being committed. It does mention murder briefly as a parallel, but seems to assume it falls into the category of non-consensual (which makes sense)
But why would we care about that? Ignoring the deep philosophical and religious rumifications of OT God having a “chosen nation”, while NT God is “pananthropic”, the fact remains that we do not belong in the “chosen nation”, therefore its laws do/need not apply to us.
Why though? If God wanted that, then he could have “also chosen” more people at the time. If God decided that all those laws would apply to a specific chosen people, so who are we to go against that and say “hey, we want those applied to us as well”. Seems quite arbitrary (and slightly blasphamous) to me.
Do remember that we do not know why God chose that specific people either, so it is a bit presumptuous from us to unilaterally decide that those laws should apply to as us well.
I am not sure about that.
In OT we have a clear hands-on retribution God (the great flood, the Jericho walls, turning people into salt just for turning back to have a final look to their hometown, the first born of the Egyptians, the 7 plagues and so forth) who is quite swift, brutal and, quite frankly, sometimes very unfair.
In the NT we have a hippie “live and let live” God ("he who is without sin let him cast the first stone, forgiving bandits, tax-collectors and so forth, healing people, resurrecting friends, feeding people in need, having the two thieves be the first people in to heaven, stopping Peter from attacking the guards and so forth).
Any human with such vast behavioural swings would have gotten the golden medal of “bipolar disorder”.
Considering all that, the idea of getting ethical, moral and legal pointers from both OT and NT, is very hard to balance practically.
Dietary laws are the ones that I find the least serious. To be completely honest I find their existence, in this era, laughable. I understand why they existed back in the day when sanitation, refrigeration and all those nice things we have now didn’t exist, but if we accept the premise that there is a God and an afterlife and judgement, I think that the concept of your soul getting set in front of God for judgement and God reciting a list of “bad menus” that you had some days is hillarious.
Standard ones for the nineties, though with the absense of an unbiased referee the rule of “whatever you ask/call, stands”. If you slip and pretend it was a foul and ask for it, then its a foul. We will smile and smirk and give the foul to you. But you have to speak up and say it, yourself.
Which is the exact part that makes the Deuteronomy’s idea practically bad in case of people with too much pride (in the case of my former classmate) or too much weakness of character or straight up lacking the courage to speak up for themselves or resist bullying or threats by the offending party or simply people that are naive and got tricked.
Let’s say that you are in the city square and someone you know from the town arrives with a car and tells you that a close relative had a car accident and tells you “quick, get into my car and I’ll get you there, we’ve called an ambulance already” and you hop in and instead he takes you outside of the city where a gang is waiting for you, they rob your wallet and keys and leave you stranded alone from any nearby road and town. Then while you are still stranded, they go back to town, open your house with your keys, rob it and run away with the loot.
Deuteronomy’s rules would say that since you were initially in the town and didn’t speak out, then you are now to have the same blame for whatever happened, as the tricksters and robbers.
Why would we not care about it? It’s revelation from God, and just because we can’t blindly map it to all peoples and places, doesn’t mean it’s not an extremely valuable data point when determining what sort of laws a society ought to have.
The laws don’t apply to us, but that doesn’t mean they’re not sources of wisdom to learn from. We can look at laws in other countries today and evaluate whether or not they make sense to implement in our own, how much more then to look at laws Yahweh wrote for another nation? With humans a law may be bad or good but not directly transferable to our own country. With God we know the laws weren’t bad, so we need only evaluate if and how to apply their principles today
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Genesis 12:1-3 (ESV)
The LORD said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.”
Genesis 18:17-19 (ESV)
And the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”
Genesis 22:16-18 (ESV)
I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed,
Genesis 26:4 (ESV)
Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
Genesis 28:14 (ESV)
And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.”
Galatians 3:8 (ESV)
It was never about just His chosen nation, it was always about all nations being blessed through His chosen nation
Why put the minds God gave us to use getting as much value out of the Scripture He left us? Because you’d need a very good reason not to do something so obvious
If He did, He didn’t tell us, but it’s a moot point as what we have is what He did tell us about the people He did choose to be His light to the nations
I am not arguing for the laws of Israel to be applied without qualification
Laws applying to one nation does not entail they oughtn’t be adopted in another
One sense of why is to bless all nations through them, which we absolutely know as shown in the citations above. Another sense of why, that is, why them in particular, is irrelevant. There will always be some extra piece of information one could name we do not have: that should not stop us from using what we do have, which is what Yahweh did with His chosen nation
The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy, and have extorted from the sojourner without justice. And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none. Therefore I have poured out my indignation upon them. I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath. I have returned their way upon their heads, declares the Lord GOD."
Ezekiel 22:29-31 (ESV)
Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.”
Matthew 11:20-24 (ESV)
but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
I Peter 3:4 (ESV)
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the LORD said, “Do you do well to be angry?”
Jonah 3:10-4:4 (ESV)
Different contexts call for different responses, God is a person, not a formula, and He is merciful in the Tanakh and promises judgement in the New Testament
Noone says we’ll get it perfect, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try
The question isn’t what precepts we do or do not find laughable, but which ones we ought to obey. We don’t keep the Tanakh dietary laws not for any such frivolous reason, but because the NT explicitly tells us we don’t need to and that it’s wrong to try and force gentile believers to. Ditto with circumcision. And to be honest, the dietary laws are pretty reasonable stuff that mostly aligns with what most people mostly eat anyway (Octopus and Ham and Lobster and Shrimp and Dog would be out off the top of my head), really wouldn’t be a big deal if we had to follow them
And if you don’t expect some minimum degree of cooperation with the public to prevent an attack by calling for help, you let women get off adultery charges by claiming they were forced. Laws need to balance multiple things to minimize the overall risk of injustice
Then clearly this is as the case in the field, when the plot was revealed, he called for help but there was noone to save him. Of course, stealing is covered by different laws, so we probably should be extremely wary of generalizing this principle to theft, anyway
This discussion feels a little strange to me. For starters, the Bible speaks to several different kinds of consent: parental consent, consent to marriage, consent in leadership and governance, moral and ethical consent, consent and obedience to God, consent in the Church, etc., some quite clearly positive.
Take the story of Rebekah, for example. Before she goes to marry Isaac, her own consent is explicitly sought:
In a more interpersonal context, Paul also highlights the value of voluntary action:
These are both examples of “positive” consent. And there are more examples along these lines. BibleHub has a pretty comprehensive list of verses where “consent” comes up, if you’re curious: Topical Bible: Consent
As for Deuteronomy 22, I’d be careful before treating it as a template for relationships today. You can’t read it without looking at it in the cultural context of the time and place. As Stephen L. Cook explains in Reading Deuteronomy, “Modern readers rarely grasp the workings of Deuteronomy’s vision of society due to unfamiliarity with decentralized societal organizations based upon kinship and lineage.” In those ancient agrarian settings, family structure and land inheritance weren’t just personal but were part of the nation’s identity and survival, not to mention biblical Israel’s relationship with God’s broader redemptive plan.
Interestingly, Deuteronomy does mention consent elsewhere in a volitional context:
There is significant doubt about that, but that is another discussion.
Just some bullet points: a) A lot of religious texts of the ancient time where written with the needs and geopolitical aspirations of the people of the time. This means that having the reputation of an “all powerful God for your cause” was a standard mode of operation for the clergy of most nations of the time. This also explains why the OT God is so mean and vindictive and smiteful/spiteful. b) Those texts are ancient and in ancient languages, thus prone to mistranscriptions and mistranslations. c) What we now call the Bible has been curated and compiled by humans and based on their political, religious and ideological needs of their time (and sure enough, if you read the history of the time, quite a few persecutions (even lengthy civil wars) occured in order to define what is “canon” and what is “heresy”).
If God wanted His reveleations to be clear and unambiguous, there have been plenty of chances and way and available mediums and miracles, but none of that happened so what we have is not direct revelations from God, but “what some humans at the time claimed to be revelations from God”… in that regard then, should we even take John Smith’s “revelations from God” seriously?
But let’s assume that it is a revelation from God.
Then God chose to not reveal/apply those laws to any other country/people.
Who are we to go against that will and retroactively apply them to us?
Isn’t it a vain action, trying to pretend that we are amongst the chosen, when we are not?
Quite so.
A lot of those laws were actually quite bad. Objectively bad and needlessly cruel to both humans and animals. Don’t make me open Leviticus.
The Chinese Gods probably laughed for a few centuries with that line
…through conquest, which never happened. Or, it did happen, within the small scope of the land that the people of the time were aware of.
Remember that unlike Jesus, who sent his disciples on an evangelising trip all over the world, the OT God had no such peaceful aspirations through talking and teaching.
Adding to the ones I mentioned earlier, I will add the small fact that according to the scriptures themselves: a) We were made in the image of God. b) We were given free will.
Therefore: a) It is easy to assume that “free will” and “strict adherance to scriptures” are not very compatible. b) If God wanted strict adherance to an instruction manual then God could have sent one and could have created a lifeform that didn’t have free will, but something more similar to Asimov’s laws of Robotics. Since God didn’t do that it is easy to deduce that if our life has any individual meaning (which is another question/discussion altogether) then God wants us to derive something more out of it, via our free will. Therefore we are sent here to create and invent, instead of obey and stagnate.
Therefore too much “biblical study” is not only counterproductive, but it could be actually against the intention of God’s creation. Seems like a good reason to me
On the contrary, it is highly relevant.
I asked that same question to the religion teacher at school.
I remember my wording almost exactly, because we were at the point where Moses got down from the mountain and found his people worshiping a golden calf.
I asked:
“Why did God chose them, if their faith was so easily shaken? In comparison, other people of the time kept their faiths for centuries and with far less direct divine intervention. For example the religious system in India lasted for almost a couple of thousand years, until the British came along and toppled it, so it was an external force and not lack of faith that was needed to make those people sidetrack, despite centuries of adversities. And then we have Jesus. Their own Messiah came along and they didn’t believe Him and they are still waiting until now.”
The teacher didn’t have a good answer for that.
Or, to be exact, she did give an answer, but I’d rather not divulge it.
But it is a good question and definitely not one with an irrelevant answer.
I do not see why we care about “God’s will” all the time but suddenly have no care about one of the most important choices God made in the history of our timeline.
Have you noticed that God has stopped doing that for the past 2500 years, even though extortion, robbery, oppresion and evil in general are not only abundant, but in some places prevailant.
Yes, but before you start juggling with swords, shouldn’t you first train by juggling with tangerines?
Doesn’t that contradict the earlier “blessings for all nations” though?
True, but if the solution to that is “stone them both just to be certain”, then I’d say some legal revisions are in order
How do you know that he is telling the truth, though?
You assumed that a woman could press false charges, but why couldn’t someone come up with a false tale like that for insurance fraud or something similar ( I know a very similar case where they were entrusted with valuables of other people and their house - conveniently - got robbed in a similar fashion. My examples are rarely totally imaginary).
The Old Testament is not only outdated as a legal document since it is mostly about the laws of a nomadic people around 3000 years ago and thus even the laws of modern day Israel are not based on it, though there still exist some religious courts according to this:
