What does the stone table represent, more specifically, were in scripture can we find the laws/rules that were broken with the sacrificing of the innocent?

If God is obligated by some kind of covenant with satan in regards to fair play, then would similar rules hold true for those held captive in hell.

Post Edited (sparknheart) : 12/13/2005 8:21:46 PM (GMT-6)

.............................................................................

PoW:

stine's analogy of a mousetrap. More influencial in the West...

In the East, Gregory Nyssa's illustration of a baited hook. Just a sermon model -- not serious.

And Gregory Nazianzas "REPUTIATED" the very idea that God uses trickery, at all!!!

If Jesus was the Mouse Bait, and the Cross was the trap, then it would appear that God was victorious in this cat and mouse game.  If there are winners and losers then there must be some rules to the game.  It's the notion of rules that I'm interested in. Are there some universal laws that govern spiritual warfare?

On The Victory Over Death/Sin/Devil)
"The devil was conquered by his own trophy of victory. The devil jumped for joy, when he seduced the first man and cast him down to death. By seducing the first man, he slew him; by slaying the last man, he lost the first from his snare. The victory of our Lord Jesus Christ came when he rose, and ascended into heaven; then was fulfilled what you have heard when the Apocalypse was being read, ‘The Lion of the tribe of Judah has won the day’ [Rev. 5:5]. . . . The devil jumped for joy when Christ died; and by the very death of Christ the devil was overcome: he took, as it were, the bait in the mousetrap. He rejoiced at the death, thinking himself death’s commander. But that which caused his joy dangled the bait before him. The Lord’s cross was the devil’s mousetrap: the bait which caught him was the death of the Lord." (St. Augustine, Sermons, 261)

Post Edited (sparknheart) : 12/13/2005 10:30:47 PM (GMT-6)

For me, the feel of the book was not that of a big, magical world,
but something more intimate. So the scale of the movie felt all
wrong. those big battle scenes? they were so, so so un-English.
As a kid, I used to make up play battles with the toys: building
block castles, and various figurines to populate it, the left over
soldiers, wandering animals from an old farm set, and the refugees
from the Lone Ranger ranch I got at age 4. Made sense to me to have
all those creatures jumbled together in a narrative. Narnia reminded
me of that. And of playing under the covers with the stuffed
animals. And roving through the local "wild woods" at dusk, with the
cold wrapped about you and the shadows, and nothing feeling
especially warm or welcoming. And the dream of becoming a king, some
one like in the stories who actually rescues (girls!), who vanquishes
the bullies, and all.... for me that was what Narnia tapped or
brought back. Well, nothing like THAT in the movie.

 

C. S. LEWIS’S NARNIA AND THE EDUCATION OF THE IMAGINATION

By Herman A. Middleton

http://www.conciliarpress.com/again/content/view/76/31/9/9/

In his 1939 sermon, "Learning in War-Time," he wrote:

I reject at once an idea which lingers in the mind of some modern people that cultural activities are in their own right spiritual and meritorious—as though scholars and poets were intrinsically more pleasing to God than scavengers and bootblacks. . . . Let us clear it forever from our minds. The work of a Beethoven, and the work of a charwoman, become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly “as to the Lord.”

The Fathers of the Church also do not romanticize man's imaginative faculty. . . .