Who is/isn't a Christian?

883: "Having read every single post in this thread, I think I would disagree with that characterisation of it, although it did get a bit boring at times." --

I think that depends on whether someone, somewhere thinking something has to do with a certain topic in itself makes that thing relevant to that topic. I understand why some Christians see the long soteriological discussions we were involved in as germane to the question of whether someone is a Christian or not, but frankly? They're wrong, and so it's not germane.

It is germane if the point being made is the following: If all are saved through Jesus Christ, then all are Christians.

Wait, was anyone arguing that everyone is a Christian?

"All" doesn't mean "just "Christians". All means all.

> 2. Wouldn't you say that anyone who is saved through the agency of Jesus Christ is a Christian?

>4 jburlinson:

No. And as I've said in the earlier thread, I think trying to make that the definition is just plain silly and has little connection to the way people actually use the word.

>5 cjbanning:

People use the word in a couple of ways.

889: "Well then, I must have you mixed up with another poster who has several times told me that one can't really judge the correctness or incorrectness of another's position. They may be talking with G-d, or may even be G-d, who is to say?"

Definitely confusing me with someone else. I can't imagine when I ever would have said "that one can't really judge the correctness or incorrectness of another's position."

~7

You're right, it was another poster who said in #854 above:

"" 852. I know people who will assert that they have spoken to G-d and are carrying out G-d's will. Should I therefore believe that to be the case?""

Sure you should, unless you have compelling evidence that they're lying. If these people have a powerful intuition and then interpret that as being "G-d's will", who are you (or who am I) to tell them, "No, that's really not what you think"? You (or I) might interpret what we understand of their intuition as being something else altogether, but that doesn't change the causative power of their conception, as far as they're concerned.

I was once told by an acquaintance that he voted for Bill Clinton because he liked Clinton's haircut. I didn't have to agree with him to acknowledge that that was, indeed, his rationale. (You had to know this guy.)"

> 8. I confess. I was the author of the apparently offending post.

As long as we're quoting from the parent thread, here's something you said in # 808 that ended up being repeated several times: "You really need to learn to read what someone is writing rather than what you would like them to be writing to justify your prejudices."

Unfortunately, you're failing to follow your own advice -- again. Nowhere in # 852 (quoted in # 8 above) did I say that "one can't really judge the correctness or incorrectness of another's position."

What I said was that if someone says they believe X, then, absent any evidence to the contrary (such as evidence that the person is lying or that the person doesn't understand the English language well enough to speak it accurately), one cannot say that the person does not believe X. One may not agree that X is "correct"; one may judge that X is absurd. But that does not mean that the person in question does not believe X.

In the example of my friend and Bill Clinton -- although I agreed at the time that Clinton had a pretty good head of hair, I did not agree that his haircut was an adequate reason to vote for him. I judged that my acquaintance was incorrect in basing his vote on a haircut.

But I had no reason to doubt that my friend was telling me the truth.

~9

Well, you apparently were maintaining, since that was the nature of my post you were responding to, that there might be a great deal of doubt that the speaker was REALLY "talking with G-d". Again, as you point out, there is a problem with reading and responding to what is being said, rather than to some related point that floats to the top of one's mind.

So, I just want to make certain that we have this straight going forward: Belief is only evidence of belief, not of "what is." Evidence of "what is" does not include statements of belief.

Do you agree with that position or not?

Or, as someone maintained in another post, is everything reducible to chemical reactions in the brain and there is really no such things as "evidence," only belief about evidence?

10> "Belief is only evidence of belief, not of "what is." Evidence of "what is" does not include statements of belief."

I would agree with that statement, and that was the crux of my argument with a minister thirty years ago, while I was recuperating in a hospital in upstate New York.

> 10. Evidence of "what is" does not include statements of belief. Do you agree with that position or not?

I don't think it's so easy to build a firewall between "what is" and "belief." Our understanding of "what is" is, IMO, inevitably contaminated (maybe influenced is a better word) by our beliefs.

Just as an example -- I'm sitting in my living room with my dog. Suddenly, I see him perk up his ears and go into alert mode. I don't hear anything or see anything out of the ordinary. However, I know that his sense of hearing (and smell) is better than mine, so I believe something's up. Then the doorbell rings -- it's UPS with a package.

I believe that Skippy probably heard the delivery guy coming. There's some evidence to that effect. I don't know that, however, and there's really no way I can find out for sure.

So "what is" is a combination of a sequence of sensory events experienced by me and beliefs supplied by me.

~12

You seem to delight in this linguistic technique.

Although it has been clear throughout this discussion, and our half dozen previous discussions on this same topic, that "belief" refers to what The Believers mean in the Read Your Bible Through In A Year thread when they say "I Believe". And while it is clear that "belief" in this discussion is not a synonym for "tentative hypothesis profferred for argument and testing," you will redefine it as such a hypothesis on an ad hoc basis just to create a disagreement that does not exist.

Poor performance. Excessive self-indulgence that is nothing but irritating and adds nothing to a discussion.

> 13. You seem to delight in this linguistic technique. -... Excessive self-indulgence that is nothing but irritating and adds nothing to a discussion.

I don't accept your characterization of my response. Although you're certainly entitled to think what you want, I would ask you to be sure you are hearing what I'm trying, however poorly, to say.

In # 10 you asked me a question -- "Belief is only evidence of belief, not of "what is." Evidence of "what is" does not include statements of belief. Do you agree with that position or not?"

My understanding of your question was as follows: (1) There is something in the common sense, real-world, objective, physical universe called "what is." (2) There is something subjective, personal, unverifiable, vague, and unsubstantiated that is expressed by a "statement of belief." (3) These two things are incompatible -- or at least a "statement of belief" has no legitimate place in a serious consideration of "what is."

Isn't that what you were saying?

And by asking "do you agree ...", I thought you were requesting a response from me of assent or non-.

My response in # 12 was simply my way of saying "no, I don't agree with that position." And the reason I don't agree with it is that we human beings can't help overlaying our beliefs (whatever they are) on our sense experiences of "what is."

I honestly don't see how that response is "self indulgence" or an attempt to redefine anything "to create a disagreement that does not exist." The disagreement does exist, and it's pretty basic (in the sense of fundamental.)

Such an interesting subject and very confusing comebacks...

BTW: a lot of "religions" claim that if you join them and/or do what they say to become a Christian, then you are. But sadly, they're wrong. Unless you have confessed your sin to Jesus, the One and Only Way to heaven, and repented within your heart, you're staggering down a broken road that ultimately will destroy you.

~14

Well, on reflection I think you are right, at least from your perspective. After all, if there is really nothing outside of oneself, or, alternatively, if you and you alone are the measure of all things, then the distinction between belief and reality is a myth. Whatever you believe IS, and whatever you don't believe IS NOT.

That is your premise, isn't it?

So which is it, pure solipsism or something like Leibniz's universe of self-dependent and completely independent monads?

>12 jburlinson: I'm sitting in my living room with my dog. Suddenly, I see him perk up his ears and go into alert mode...Then the doorbell rings -- it's UPS with a package. I believe that Skippy probably heard the delivery guy coming. There's some evidence to that effect. I don't know that, however, and there's really no way I can find out for sure. So "what is" is a combination of a sequence of sensory events experienced by me and beliefs supplied by me.

"Pussy not eat his fish, pussy get thin and waste away, I think...I imagine that is what will happen...but how can I tell?...Pussy think eat fish or not eat fish. I think it is better if I don't get involved...I think fish is nice, but then I think rain is wet, so who am I to judge?...Ah, I seem to see you eating it...I like it when you eat fish...because in my mind you will waste away if you don't."

"Fish come from far away...or so I am told. Or so I imagine I'm told. When the men come, or when in my mind the men come in their six black shiny ships, do they come in your mind too? What do you see, pussy?"
- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Os.

>14 jburlinson: And by asking "do you agree ...", I thought you were requesting a response from me of assent or non-.

No, by asking "do you agree...", he nearly always means "you must agree (without ambiguity) with this obvious truth, which I've stated without ambiguity. If you don't, I'll point out how incapable/unwilling you are of reading and understanding my well-written posts which clearly present the truth which is obvious to everyone else."

Or at least that's been my experience; or at least that's what I think has been my experience when I believe I've been reading his posts and responding to what I believe are his posts. But who, other than lawecon, is qualified to say if I simply believe that that's what I've been doing, or if I've really been doing what I believe I've been doing?

Os.

Oh my, I've offended Os, and now he is being peevish. What a shame.

Who have you NOT offended?

>20 lawecon:
Actually, I think I wrote that when I was feeling peckish. The two tend to affect my writing much the same. Feeling much better now.

Os.

Not to be rude, but you make me laugh.

Does anyone talk about the actual topic on these things?

In the introduction to a very interesting book, noted bibical historian and psychologist, Richard Gabriel states,

"It is always difficult to be objective about the life of the founder of a great religion. His personality is blurred by an aura of the miraculous, enhanced inevitably by the needs of the believers to, above all, believe. The earliest biographers, those closest to the time of his life, are preoccupied not with historical facts, but with glorifying in every way the memory of one they believe to have been a Messenger of God or even God himself. The result is a rich accretion of myth and miracle, mysterious portents and heavenly signs, of residues from other religions and religious traditions. These early biographies cannot pass as history; only the propaganda of an expanding faith. It is the task of the historian to locate and explicate the truth that lies behind the myth, to reconstruct the events of a real, as distinct from a symbolic, life. At the root of the effort rests the historians faith that the task can be accomplished at all.

This book is the result of more than thirty years of study and writing about the world of antiquity, a world that changed markedly with the coming of Jesus Christ. I cannot say with any exactitude just when it was that I began to realize that some of the religious beliefs which heretofore I had associated with my own Catholic faith bore a remarkable similarity to those developed by Egyptian theologians more than two millennia before Jesus appeared on the stage of history. Or when I first became aware of the remarkable intellectual integration with which Egyptian priests thought and wrote about such subjects as creation, the soul, resurrection, judgement beyond the grave, and eternal life.

Egyptian thinking on these subjects appeared to me to be theologically indistinguishable from the beliefs that formed the core of my own religious faith, a faith that held that Christianity was a singular historical event without human precedent."

Richard Gabriel (2005-04-12). Jesus the Egyptian: the Origins of Christianity and the Psychology of Christ (Kindle Locations 76-89). iUniverse. Kindle Edition.

>25 quicksiva: I cannot say...just when it was that I began to realize that some of the religious beliefs which heretofore I had associated with my own Catholic faith bore a remarkable similarity to those developed by Egyptian theologians more than two millennia before Jesus....

See, for me, it seems perfectly reasonable that there are similarities across cultures and religions, if God has been at work in the world all along. While humans differ across cultures and timeframes, they are not so different from each other that the ways God would use to reveal himself, and the ways His revelation would be interpreted would not appear similar to those reading about it centuries later. The idea that early Egyptians had a handle on God does not, in any way, suggest that early Christians were not recording what they actually experienced, as best they were able to interpret it. A lot of Jesus' teaching sound Buddhist to me. Might the Buddha have had a peek at the divine? Why not?

But to presume that the miraculous, or merely wondrous, events related cannot be the result of actual encounters with the divine, simply because they are not unique to one culture and/or one period in time, seems to me to be the result of looking through the lens of pre-concieved notions.

Os.

>26 Ealhmund: See, for me, it seems perfectly reasonable that there are similarities across cultures and religions, if God has been at work in the world all along.

Exactly. And these similarities with ancient religions were being taught in Catholic seminaries at least three decades ago, so they are not something new which is suddenly ripping apart the foundations of Christianity.

~26

"....The idea that early Egyptians had a handle on God does not, in any way, suggest that early Christians were not recording what they actually experienced, as best they were able to interpret it. A lot of Jesus' teaching sound Buddhist to me. Might the Buddha have had a peek at the divine? Why not?

"But to presume that the miraculous, or merely wondrous, events related cannot be the result of actual encounters with the divine, simply because they are not unique to one culture and/or one period in time, seems to me to be the result of looking through the lens of pre-concieved notions."

So, could we flip that around and conclude that Christianity isn't anything special, and that one need not be a Christian or believe what Christians believe to achieve any particular individual destiny?

>28 lawecon:

Well, it certainly isn't evidence FOR the specialness of Christianity. I'm not sure it is evidence AGAINST, though.

Depending on what you mean by " one need not be a Christian or believe what Christians believe to achieve any particular individual destiny" that may well already be the teaching of theChurch.

>28 lawecon: So, could we flip that around and conclude that Christianity isn't anything special, and that one need not be a Christian or believe what Christians believe to achieve any particular individual destiny?

As I suggested in my post, and as I've posted elsewhere, I see no reason to believe that God is limited to revealing himself only through Christianity. But individuals may very well be limited in how they comprehend God by their intellectual and cultural heritage.

So, the simple answer is 'no'. Christianity is special. It is, at least, special in that Jesus' teachings and the core of Christian belief is quite well suited to my cultural and intellectual heritage - that is, I get it and I find God (or, more appropriately, God gets to me) through it. That makes it quite special, and also makes it quite necessary for me.

Os.

~29 and 30

I am, perhaps, less than impressed by those responses, since what I was referring to is plain vanilla doctrine for most forms of Christianity. What I am referring to is, of course, the core exclusivity claim of Christianity - that if you have learned of the redemptive power of Jesus The Christ, and have then "rejected" him as the one and only path to redemption from sin that you will be eternally damned.

In my view that is a truly unique doctrine that sets Christianity apart from most other religions.

Most religions, of course, offer their own doctrines as "the best" path to salvation, or enlightenment or whatever label they attach to the ultimate and best destiny of individuals, but they do not maintain that if you reject their doctrines that you will be eternally doomed to the worst imaginable fate. You will simply be less well off than you could be if you accepted and acted upon their doctrines. (It might also be mentioned that Christianity seems unique in that "faith" is so important to the necessary condition for "salvation," albeit that may just be another formulation of the same core feature of the Christian outlook.)

Christianity is also unique in that its founder rose from the dead! And there have ben many who have tried to prove that He didn't, but no one has been able to do so. Many of those who have tried have discovered that the evidence shows that He did.

33: "but they do not maintain that if you reject their doctrines that you will be eternally doomed to the worst imaginable fate"

What is less than clear, though, is what exactly constitutes a "rejection." Is hearing a logically flawed argument for the existence of God and then quite correctly viewing it as logically flawed a "rejection"? Scripture is silent on the subject, and the vast majority of Christian tradition is content to leave the questions unanswered and to trust in the mercy and the mystery of the Lord God Almighty.

Osiris rose from the dead 4000 years ago if we believe the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Christianity is also unique in that its founder rose from the dead!

The current Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of Thubten Gyatso, who died in 1933.

And there have ben many who have tried to prove that He didn't, but no one has been able to do so. Many of those who have tried have discovered that the evidence shows that He did.

Ball's in your court: PROVE that the 14th Dalai Lama ISN'T the living reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama. All the evidence PROVES that he is.

>32 ambrithill:: Where would we find that evidence?

From the sixth century B.C. to the third century of the Christian Era resurrected gods in one guise or another were worshiped throughout western Asia, northern Africa, Europe as far west as Spain and as far north as the Baltic. Three common features were important in all these cults: the ecstatic experience in which communion was established with the deity, a sacramental meal to aid or symbolize this communion, and a drama to mimic the divine death and resurrection.

Homer W. Smith Man and His Gods

~32

"Christianity is also unique in that its founder rose from the dead! And there have ben many who have tried to prove that He didn't, but no one has been able to do so. Many of those who have tried have discovered that the evidence shows that He did."

That has got to be one of the looniest statements ever put into words.

>31 I am...less than impressed by those responses...what I was referring to is plain vanilla doctrine for most forms of Christianity...that if you have learned of the redemptive power of Jesus The Christ, and have then "rejected" him as the one and only path to redemption from sin that you will be eternally damned.

Well, if that's the topic of debate you were looking for, you poked at the wrong post. You'll have to bait someone who believes that.

Os.

>34 quicksiva: Do you believe that?

>38 lawecon: So you think the vast majority of Christians are loony?

>40 ambrithill: You mean you don't see the logic in my story. If Osiris didn't rise and make Meri (Isis) pregnant. Where did baby Horus come from?

~40

"So you think the vast majority of Christians are loony?"

I know that the "vast number of Christians," do not believe what you have asserted. Let's see:

(1) " "Christianity is ....unique in that its founder rose from the dead!"

(2) "And there have been many who have tried to prove that He didn't, but no one has been able to do so. Many of those who have tried have discovered that the evidence shows that He did."

As to (1), it has already been pointed out to you that many religions, including Judaism, hold that various people or deities have been "raised from the dead." So that statement is a denial of reality. Further, I suspect that it is a denial that is not based on mere ignorance, since you have never appeared to be that ignorant. Rather, you clearly want to deny well established facts so that you can falsely claim that Christianity is "unique" in this respect. What can be said of a person who makes a claim as the basis of his faith that can easily be shown to be factually false?

As to (2), there is no "evidence" at all that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead. That is merely an assertion in your Scriptures. Those Christians who are sane will tell you that it is a "matter of faith." Those who are not will tell you that there are skeptics, but that they have been refuted by "the evidence" when there is no "evidence."

> every statement quicksiva has made recently

Silly, dated autodidactic junk. The study of ancient cultures, languages and religions is hard. It takes serious, rigorous and specific training. It's not just a series of facts, but a deep immersion into the strangeness of the past and of academic method and argument. In short, it requires more than being a respected kidney doctor (Smith) or a professor of military studies at a Canadian war college (Gabriel).

Trained professionals in the fields at stake do not agree with these sorts of notions. You never hear them making them. Indeed, they are embarrassed by them. Mostly they just ignore the dated crap, autodidacts and calbe TV shows, knowing that most popular "revolutionary" ideas about ancient religion are really just wish fulfillment.

Even so, we should wonder what is upside down about the world that people who can read none of the ancient languages and have no training in the field are treated as experts in it.

the "evidence" that Jesus rose from the dead

Often in such contexts "evidence" is a substitute for "scientific evidence" of the sort that drives modern science, or perhaps CSI. Often archaeology seems to be in play, as if ancient history were only real when there was archaeological data. Obviously there is no such "evidence" that Jesus rose from the dead. And this is hardly a surprise. There is no evidence for most of what we reliably know about antiquity—or indeed most recorded human history! That's just not how history works.

Instead we have the sort of things that ancient historians look to as evidence—texts, mostly, and logical but less-than-mathematical arguments about best constructions, best explanations and so forth.

Do we have evidence that Jesus rose from the dead? Of course we do. We have a number of early Christian texts that say it. That's evidence in that direction. But does that amount to proof? Of course not. Ancient religious texts make a lot of claims, and nobody believes them all or even many.

Most importantly, however, the resurrection claim isn't just some fact about the past we can shift and evaluate—like whether Jesus was or was not a carpenter—but the assertion that something utterly un-scientific happened—a dead person came back to life! Such a claim can't be evaluated with the tools of normal historical inquiry, which takes as its base that the world behaves in a "normal" way, without miracles or divine intervention. For example, in evaluating the results of the Battle of Gaugamela, for example, no ancient historian would ever consider the possibility that God gave victory to the Macedonians. Maybe he did and maybe he didn't, but history isn't a tool-set capable of discovering that.

What can we say about Jesus' resurrection? I think we can say that many early Christians believed it. We can argue about how early, and what they believed. I have my views. Others have others. But we can't get at the event itself. We can only get to the question of what people believed. For in arguing about what early Christians believed we're back in the realm of historical analysis—that is, in what can be known by the tools of history.

~44
"> every statement quicksiva has made recently

Silly, dated autodidactic junk."

Tim, you are doing it again. Now I don't much care whether quicksiva is or is not a scholarly genius concerning ancient societies, but it really would pay you to not make posts asserting that you are. It would pay you not to make these sorts of comments because, frankly, it has become totally unbelievable that you are an expert with and conversant with the literature concerning as many fields as you claim.

For instance, I have never seen any evidence that you have much more of a clue about the state of Egyptology than quicksilva, and I know that you are nearly clueless about late Second Temple Judaism Yet on this topic you refer to what "Trained professionals" do or do not agree with and on the Second Temple Judaism topic you were telling us what was and what was not "the consensus of scholarly opinion."

This is getting a little silly.

but it really would pay you to not make posts asserting that you are

I'm NOT. That's the point. I'm NOT an expert in these fields. No, while I think I can reasonably chat about some of them (eg., Greek religion, but not Egyptian) in a non-academic context, I would never pretend I'm qualified to write a book, let alone a revolutionary book, about the topic. I know, for example, that the limited study I've done about Egypt—some courses and working through a standard intro to the language—is worth NOTHING as a platform for academic work in the topic.

No, about the best I can do is state something about the meta situation. I know something of what it is to do academic work in a difficult field. I know, for example, what it is to read Greek and Latin well enough to do academic work in them even if, frankly, my Greek and Latin are no longer of that quality. I know how badly people get such topics if they don't have training in them. Further, I know where real academic writing in religion is to be found, what it looks like, and how it is to be distinguished from bogus wish-fulfillment and autodidacticism. I do, frankly, have quite enough of a grasp on what experts in ancient religion do and don't say about the notion that Christianity is fundamentally an Egyptian religious idea. This is not a particularly rare skill. Anyone capable of distinguishing and understanding the difference between academic and non-academic sources could. (That does, however, cut out a lot of people.)

The point I'm making here—and have made before—is really not very exotic. We all do it easily in other fields. When a professor of history claims that he's got a new and revolutionary theory about the subatomic world, intelligent people don't pay him much heed. (A good example would be recent claims of perpetual motion machines.) Imagine Smith weren't writing about ancient religion. If a kidney doctor with no training in astrophysics were to write a book in 1952, rehashing late-victorian theories about star formation, quoting it online would bring only scorn. But when it comes to apparently "softer" fields, like ancient history, ancient religion and so forth, however, people who don't know better frequently can't distinguish between good stuff and bad—between solid, modern, peer-reviewed academic findings and the basest autodidactic junk.

>44 timspalding:: For in arguing about what early Christians believed we're back in the realm of historical analysis—that is, in what can be known by the tools of history.

Of course. No one would expect scientific evidence, reproducible by experiment, about most of history. But we usually look to more than a few ancient religious texts which make a lot of claims, and nobody believes them all or even many.

So for a sceptic, what is the evidence in the four texts, which no one seems to know for certain who were the authors, where they got their version of events, when they wrote them or in what language? Where is the convincing evidence?

>47 jbbarret: Perhaps it would have been better to put the word convincing in italics. Obviously people have different standards of being convinced. You may not be convinced, someone else is.

Even if there were evidence, the best said evidence could ever generate would be a tentative conclusion, to be rejected if new, contradictory evidence came along. That's not a very stable foundation upon which to ground a religion. I really think one needs to have a nonfalsifiable claim at the center if the project is going to work.

So for a sceptic, what is the evidence in the four texts, which no one seems to know for certain who were the authors, where they got their version of events, when they wrote them or in what language? Where is the convincing evidence?

That Jesus rose from the dead? Not there. I don't think history could address them, even if the evidence were better. That early Christians believed he rose from the dead? Quite good. (There is some counter-evidence and -argument, by the way, too.) But I'm not presenting that as a proxy for the other question—lots of people believe weird things.

For what it's worth, your worries—anonymous texts, uncertainty as regards source, etc., well, welcome to ancient history. These factors worry people who try to reconstruct the past a lot less than they do moderns. They absolutely essential to what ancient historians do. Sources don't always tell the truth, but they always tell you something. They don't come from nowhere. They don't tell you something because you know the name of the author.

~46

"I'm NOT. That's the point. I'm NOT an expert in these fields. No, while I think I can reasonably chat about some of them (eg., Greek religion, but not Egyptian) in a non-academic context, I would never pretend I'm qualified to write a book, let alone a revolutionary book, about the topic....

"No, about the best I can do is state something about the meta situation. I know something of what it is to do academic work in a difficult field. I know, for example, what it is to read Greek and Latin well enough to do academic work in them even if, frankly, my Greek and Latin are no longer of that quality. I know how badly people get such topics if they don't have training in them. Further, I know where real academic writing in religion is to be found, what it looks like, and how it is to be distinguished from bogus wish-fulfillment and autodidacticism. I do, frankly, have quite enough of a grasp on what experts in ancient religion do and don't say about the notion that Christianity is fundamentally an Egyptian religious idea. This is not a particularly rare skill. Anyone capable of distinguishing and understanding the difference between academic and non-academic sources could. (That does, however, cut out a lot of people.)

"The point I'm making here—and have made before—is really not very exotic. We all do it easily in other fields. When a professor of history claims that he's got a new and revolutionary theory about the subatomic world, intelligent people don't pay him much heed. (A good example would be recent claims of perpetual motion machines.) Imagine Smith weren't writing about ancient religion. If a kidney doctor with no training in astrophysics were to write a book in 1952, rehashing late-victorian theories about star formation, quoting it online would bring only scorn. But when it comes to apparently "softer" fields, like ancient history, ancient religion and so forth, however, people who don't know better frequently can't distinguish between good stuff and bad—between solid, modern, peer-reviewed academic findings and the basest autodidactic junk."

I guess I don't understand your point.

Your condemnations of other posters is often that they are dilettantes with radically mistaken conclusions, who really know little or nothing about the contemporary state of the discipline concerning which they are posting. In order to meaningfully make such a criticism you would have to have a good grounding in the contemporary state of the respective discipline in question. It is not a matter that you have sometimes read an article here or an article there or know someone in that field, or have some nebulous and general impression of the field in question. You yourself would have to know materially more about the field than the poster you are criticizing. Yet, as you have just admitted, you don't have that grounding. You probably, in fact, have read much less about the field in question than has the poster who you are criticizing. This sort of criticism is thus "the pot calling the kettle black." And you do this repeatedly, "all the time." It is what you typically do.

Now I don't know the source of this pattern of behavior, Tim, but I can guess. My guess is that while you are very successful in your field of work (witness the marvelous product that we are posting to) and probably have had training in other fields, that you have never ever had to develop the discipline to complete a terminal degree in any field. The difference that makes is that if you have engaged in Ph.D. studies, or the equivalent, and completed such studies it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that phrases such as "the consensus of scholarly opinion" are near to meaningless and just the sort of thing that the dilettante or sophmore says. The perspective from the outside may be that "the experts" are more or less unanimous on most or many conclusions. The perspective from the inside is that, while they may appear to be unanimous vis-a-vis certain looney popular ideas, they fundamentally disagree on many core issues, and will and should continue to disagree if their field is to remain a "living discipline."

Hence, every time you engage in this ploy it sets my teeth on edge. Not only are you disingenuous to imply that you know materially more about a field than the other dilettante you are criticizing, but you are also fundamentally mischaracterizing what is going on in most scholarly fields.

~49

"Even if there were evidence, the best said evidence could ever generate would be a tentative conclusion, to be rejected if new, contradictory evidence came along."

And that is a fine observation, except that, in this case, we never reach that point. Not only aren't there masses of disinterested authorities testifying to the miraculous rising of Jesus from the dead, there are no such authorities. All that exists are apologetic textss for a religion based on that claim, written materially after the fact, by nonwitnesses, that to some degree contradict one another about the particulars.

That is not "evidence," it is special pleading. It is, at best, argument. To characterize such argument as "evidence" that overwhelms other evidence doesn't pass the "giggle test" (an argument that you can't make in open court without looking like a fool and have the judge giggle, or that causes you yourself to giggle if you have any self-respect).

As I said, one cannot help but wonder what the mental state is of someone who makes such an argument, and, further, makes the argument as core to their belief system and mode of life.

>32 ambrithill:: Christianity is also unique in that its founder rose from the dead! And there have ben many who have tried to prove that He didn't, but no one has been able to do so. Many of those who have tried have discovered that the evidence shows that He did.

Not much support for that claim then.

That is not "evidence," it is special pleading. It is, at best, argument.

There's a basic vocabulary issue going on when people talk about "evidence"—whether evidence means things that make up a proof, or things that point in a direction. If the latter, there may be evidence in two contrary directions or that doesn't amount to a proof, and still be "evidence." The issue is just terminological, not real, so it's silly to argue over it.

How good is the evidence in the case of Jesus? You've stated some of the negatives. You might add that it's partisan, coming from people whose beliefs were absolutely central to their life, not disinterested neutrals. (Very little ancient writing is truly disinterested, of course.) And there are some signs that some of what they said may represent later stages in their understanding of Jesus. On the other side, however, we're dealing with relatively early sources—especially compared to those available in ancient history generally. The sources are substantial in both number and quantity, and they were preserved very well.(1) And we're not dealing with a single source, but a handful (let's say 6) distinct source streams, some of which appear to source critics to be entirely independent of each other. For example, most source critics think John did not know the synoptics, Luke did not know Paul's letters, etc.

Ancient historians tend to like multiple sources, doing their work by noting their agreements and trying to figure out what stands behind their disagreements. An independent source that disagrees on particulars is far, far better than a dependent source that agrees! Moderns without a sense of ancient history tend to take the other tack—that the inevitable disagreements between sources are a fatal blow to any truth the sources may reveal. But the blanket denunciations of "contradictions" only come out when it comes to religion. For example, the four major sources about Alexander the Great have at least as many serious "contradictions" but nobody—lay or academic—ever talks about how this makes it impossible to say anything for sure about his campaigns. You look at the evidence. You do the work. You make arguments. You array what you know along a continuum of probability. That's the best you can do it, and it can be quite a lot.(2)

As I said, one cannot help but wonder what the mental state is of someone who makes such an argument…

I owe you a reply to your longer post. But I certainly take offense at your assertions that there's something wrong with my "mental state." It's a pathetic attack, and does nothing to advance the credibility of your arguments. You usually just make bad arguments, so this is really a new low. It's sad to see you go there.

---

1. Want to study Roman history? You've got to deal with the fact that of the major works of Livy, Polybius, Cassius Dio and Tacitus, no more than half the books survive, and generally much less than half. These weren't the minor stuff—of which only a tiny fraction has survived in any form!—but the central texts, regarded as such by contemporaries. Christianity is much luckier—or rather Christianity's astounding rise changed the preservation context. If the study of Jesus were like other parts of ancient history, we might be trying to reconstruct the gospels from half of Matthew, a few papyrus fragments of John, a short and mangled paraphrase of Tatian, a few comments in a Roman guidebook, and a Coptic poem about the marriage of Cana.

2. Fundamentalists can't talk about sources this way. But few or none of us here are fundamentalists.

>46 timspalding:, 50, etc: For what it's worth, what I hear Tim saying is that he has some knowledge, training, experience, familiarity, scholarship or whatever in history and the interpretation of ancient texts, and thus although he is not an expert on particular aspects he is able to spot shortcomings in less rigorous treatments.

Reminds me a bit of how I feel after spending the best part of 30 years living and working in Sudan, and actively studying it, and then armchair critics in the USA Google "Sudan" and proceed to tell me where I have gone wrong based on a random selection of internet pages but without the necessary background to interpret and contextualise those texts.

More broadly, I wonder whether we rely too much on the "texts". As Tim says (>54 timspalding:), few of us who post here are bible literalists. If the bible had just been discovered last week, in a vacuum, without context, without an existing religion, then we would examine it in a certain way before coming to any conclusions. Of course we should still examine it in a critical way (as the Church has done in a modern way for the best part of two centuries, but as even ancients such as Augustine did in their own way). But Christianity was not invented last century as a result of the bible (except perhaps certain brands of US evangelical Christianity); Christianity is a living faith community with a 2,000-year tradition which began before anything was written down, and certainly long before certain texts were finally confirmed as being the definitive and authoritative Canon of Scripture. The Resurrection is in the bible texts but it is also in the tradition. It is something which our faith tradition has always held to be important, so we continue to struggle to understand what it means for us.

52:

My point is that a belief in resurrection based on "evidence" isn't really worth much in terms of religious understanding. That's true whether such evidence does or does not exist. I suspect the latter, but I don't have a dog in the fight, as my Christian faith is based more on first principles (to be specific, a Wittgensteinian mysticism) than on the shifting sands of "evidence."

You have alluded to it before, but I would really like to read a thread where you go into more detail on "Wittgensteinian mysticism." I read him a fair amount in Germany but his style, as you know, does not lend itself to dipping. Or to be more specific, it encourages it, but I am afraid that I end up missing a lot!

>57 cjbanning:: That must have been quite a wait for some. First principles of Christianity don't pop up until Wittgenstein.

Oh, Descartes had his own set. So did Aquinas. And Anselm. And Augustine.

Am I forgetting anyone important?

Certainly nobody who could compare with Wittgenstein.

Tim, you are not being fair to Dr. Gabriel.
A little online research shows that he is the author of thirty-seven books and 58 articles on various subjects in political science, ancient history, military history, anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, ethics, philosophy, and the history of theology. Many of his works have been translated into other languages and others have been used as primary sources for television programs produced by the Public Broadcasting Company. Dr. Richard Gabriel's work has also been featured in a number of made-for-television videos such as Discovery, The Learning Channel, and The History Channel.
Among his books are a number of definitive works. A History Of Military Medicine (2 vols, 1992), is the first comprehensive work on the subject yet published; Crisis in Command, the first major critique of American battle performance in Vietnam (1978); The New Red Legions (2 vols., 1980) and The Mind of the Soviet Fighting Man (1984), the first studies of the Soviet soldier based on interview data; To Serve With Honor (1981), the first treatise on military ethics written by an American in this century and used as a basic work in U.S. and foreign services senior leadership schools; Soviet Military Psychiatry (1985), the first work on the subject published in the West; and Operation Peace For Galilee: The Israeli-PLO War in Lebanon (1984), the first military analysis of that conflict and generally regarded as the definitive work on the subject.
Professor Gabriel has held positions at the Brookings Institution, the Army Intelligence School, the Center for the Study of Intelligence at the CIA, and at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Department of Combat Psychiatry, in Washington. Dr. Gabriel is a frequent lecturer to the academic, governmental, and military establishments of Canada, the United States, West Germany, China, and Israel. He has testified before the U.S. Senate, and been interviewed on CBS, NBC, CNN, and ABC national news programs, the Today show, Crossfire, Nightline, and 60 Minutes. Dr. Gabriel is a consultant to NBC and 60 Minutes for various news stories, and edits for two publishers, Hill and Wang and Greenwood-Press, where he edits his own series of political and historical books.
Among Dr. Gabriel's most recent works are The Great Battles of Antiquity (1994), A Short History of War (1992), From Sumer To Rome: The Military Capabilities of Ancient Armies (1991), The Culture of War (1990), The Painful Field: The Pyschiatric Dimension of Modern War (1988), The Great Captains of Antiquity (2000), and Gods of Our Fathers: The Memory of Egypt in Judaism and Christianity (2001), and Great Armies of Antiquity (2002) Dr. Gabriel is also the author of three novels, Warrior Pharaoh (2000), Sebastian's Cross (2001), and The Lion of the Sun (2003). His most recent books are The Military History of Ancient Israel (2003), Subotai The Valiant: Genghis Khan's Greatest General (2004), Ancient Empires at War (3 vols.) (2004). And Jesus The Egyptian: The Origins of Christianity And The Psychology of Christ (2005).
>46 timspalding:
Imagine Smith weren't writing about ancient religion. If a kidney doctor with no training in astrophysics were to write a book in 1952, rehashing late-victorian theories about star formation, quoting it online would bring only scorn. But when it comes to apparently "softer" fields, like ancient history, ancient religion and so forth, however, people who don't know better frequently can't distinguish between good stuff and bad—between solid, modern, peer-reviewed academic findings and the basest autodidactic junk.
=====
If Homer smith needed help on theories about star formation, he could have asked the person who wrote these words in the Foreword to Man and His Gods, a former clerk at the Patent Office who might be assumed to know a little science.
“Professor Smith has kindly submitted his book to me before publication. After reading it thoroughly and with intense interest I am glad to comply with his request to give him my impression.

The work is a broadly conceived attempt to portray man's fear-induced animistic and mythic ideas with all their far-flung transformations and interrelations. It relates the impact of these phantasmagorias on human destiny and the causal relationships by which they have become crystallized into organized religion.
This is a biologist speaking, whose scientific training has disciplined him in a grim objectivity rarely found in the pure historian. This objectivity has not, however, hindered him from emphasizing the boundless suffering which, in its end results, this mythic thought has brought upon man.
Professor Smith envisages as a redeeming force, training in objective observation of all that is available for immediate perception and in the interpretation of facts without preconceived ideas. In his view, only if every individual strives for truth can humanity attain a happier future; the atavisms in each of us that stand in the way of a friendlier destiny can only thus be rendered ineffective.”
- Albert Einstein

FWIW, I am proud of my formal education, but I gladly claim the title "autodidact."

~54

"There's a basic vocabulary issue going on when people talk about "evidence"—whether evidence means things that make up a proof, or things that point in a direction. "

There is no such thing as "a proof" of an empirical claim. Proofs are things that occur in logic or mathematics. In empirical accounts there is just cognizable evidence and stories that don't rise to that level.

My scriptures and your scriptures aren't "evidence" of particular facts in any meaningful sense of the term "evidence." They are apologetic works with a didactic purpose.

If you will excuse my saying so, your scriptures are particularly that sort of thing, since we have numerous other sources from outside your tradition, and none of those sources support the key pseudo-factual claims in your scriptures (e.g., that Jesus of Nazareth, at the time of his mission, was a well known and important figure in Judea, that his death and accession into heaven were occasioned by incredible events that were widely known, that his followers were numerous and the subject of a campaign of persecution, etc.) None of those purportedly historical claims are supported by non NT sources that are reasonably contemporaneous. Indeed, what we do know from the NT itself, specifically from Paul's correspondence, is that decades later the Judean Christian movement was still so unsuccessful and obscure that it had to receive one or more subscriptions from the remainder of the Empire to keep going.

My scriptures have the virtue of referring to pseudo-factual claims that are so historically distant that there are few if any other sources on those times or events. So they are refutable principally on the basis that they are fantastic, not that they are fantastic and no one else noticed the fantastic events.

"I owe you a reply to your longer post. But I certainly take offense at your assertions that there's something wrong with my "mental state." It's a pathetic attack, and does nothing to advance the credibility of your arguments. You usually just make bad arguments, so this is really a new low. It's sad to see you go there."

Unless your name is REALLY Ambritihill you seem to be mixing up posts. I have never said or implied that you are mentally unbalanced. Conversely, I would never say that someone who can so thoroughly deny the surrounding world as Ambrithill routinely does is mentally in good health.

My earlier post (#36) was in response to ambrithill's assertion in #32 that “many … have discovered that the evidence shows that” Jesus rose from the dead, and I questioned where this evidence might be found.

As might have been expected, this received some rather condescending comments regarding the nature of evidence and how one should go about interpreting ancient texts.

Then there was the defensive claim about how the “blanket denunciations of "contradictions" only come out when it comes to religion. For example, the four major sources about Alexander the Great have at least as many serious "contradictions" but nobody—lay or academic—ever talks about how this makes it impossible to say anything for sure about his campaigns”. Reading the Gospels and other texts can tell us so much about the life and teachings of Jesus. That is agreed, contradictions notwithstanding. But in asking for evidence of the extraordinary claim that Jesus rose from the dead I was wondering whether ambrithill or others might have proposed the type of evidence provided by former barrister, turned Anglican evangelistic minister, Nicky Gumbel when he sets out to “prove” the resurrection. Clearly not scientific, or even forensic, evidence, but the type of evidence which, he claims, would satisfy the requirements of the good men and women of a jury.

Firstly to those “denunciations of contradictions”. Gumbel uses the contradictions as “evidence” against those non-believers who claim that the Gospels were a put-up-job, a collusion. Putting a positive spin on the contradictions he dispels the notion of collusion.

Then to those first witnesses at the tomb, the women. At a time when the testament of women was not generally taken seriously it is extremely unlikely that if anyone were making up that story that they would expect others to take their claims seriously. If the writers of the texts were falsifying the record that is not the way that they would have gone about it. So the texts about the women at the tomb are given as another bit of evidence of factuality.

And so point by point, as a lawyer, he presents his case summoning all the bits of evidence, which each on its own is not proof, to claim his proof. I can't find a text of his presentation (perhaps it's in one of his books) and can't remember the rest of his points, so will have to listen to it again and perhaps return here with more, if it is relevant. It would be interesting to hear replies to his case, particularly from those with a legal background equal, similar, or possibly superior to Gumbel's.

Can anyone else remember the rest of Gumbel's case? Is it entirely his own, or are their precedents? Has his case been demolished elsewhere, or simply dismissed as evangelical claptrap?

>56 John5918:: Your point is, as usual, well made. But regarding the Resurrection and how you "continue to struggle to understand what it means", the struggle for many of us is partly how that belief can be so strong in others. It seems to me, and many will correct me if I'm wrong, that this is the one miracle that has to be accepted as true in order to be a Christian in terms of the understanding of the major religions. Virgin birth, water to wine, loaves and fishes; these we can take or leave, on the assertion of at least one Anglican bishop, but the resurrection is paramount - essential to the belief that Jesus was God made man. The difficulty in taking this on board is a barrier to some who would otherwise accept much, if not most, of the teachings of Jesus.

>65 jbbarret:

I don't think any serious scholar of ancient history or religion thinks the Gospels were a "collusion." The fallacy of this reasoning is rather like that of Lewis' trilemma—the options are not that something is either totally true or a knowing and intentional ruse. (Lewis also has a "crazy" spot.) There is a middle course, where something is neither 100% true nor an intentional deception.

But such arguments are, I suppose, useful against anti-religionists who've taken their hermeneutics from fundamentalists. Just as there are a lot of atheists who've somehow got it in their head that there's no evidence Jesus existed, there are a few who think the Gospels were all written by one wily joker.

>54 timspalding:

There's a basic vocabulary issue going on when people talk about "evidence"—whether evidence means things that make up a proof, or things that point in a direction. If the latter, there may be evidence in two contrary directions or that doesn't amount to a proof, and still be "evidence." The issue is just terminological, not real, so it's silly to argue over it......

How good is the evidence in the case of Jesus? ....
Ancient historians tend to like multiple sources, doing their work by noting their agreements and trying to figure out what stands behind their disagreements. An independent source that disagrees on particulars is far, far better than a dependent source that agrees.
________________________________________
1. Want to study Roman history? You've got to deal with the fact that of the major works of Livy, Polybius, Cassius Dio and Tacitus, no more than half the books survive, and generally much less than half. These weren't the minor stuff—of which only a tiny fraction has survived in any form!—but the central texts, regarded as such by contemporaries......

=======

Tim,

I am pleased that you recommend Tacitus as a central Text.

The Catholic Encyclopedia tells us that, “The calumny of onolatry, or ass-worship, attributed by Tacitus and other writers to the Jews, was afterwards, by the hatred of the latter, transferred to the Christians (Tac., I, v, 3, 4; Tert., Apol., xvi; "Ad nationes", I, 14).”
Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/The Ass (in Caricature of Christian Beliefs and Practices)

Tertullian referred to Tacitus when he wrote of African Christians who were believed to worship an ass headed deity (Seth).

“Chapter XI.-The Absurd Cavil of the Ass's head Disposed of.

In this matter we are (said to be) guilty not merely of forsaking the religion of the community, but of introducing a monstrous superstition; for some among you have dreamed that our god is an ass's head,-an absurdity which Cornelius Tacitus first suggested.

In the fourth book of his histories, where he is treating of the Jewish war, he begins his description with the origin of that nation, and gives his own views respecting both the origin and the name of their religion. He relates that the Jews, in their migration in the desert, when suffering for want of water, escaped by following for guides some wild asses, which they supposed to be going in quest of water after pasture, and that on this account the image of one of these animals was worshipped by the Jews.

From this, I suppose, it was presumed that we, too, from our close connection with the Jewish religion, have ours consecrated under the same emblematic form. The same Cornelius Tacitus, however,-who, to say the truth, is most loquacious in falsehood-forgetting his later statement, relates how Pompey the Great, after conquering the Jews and capturing Jerusalem, entered the temple, but found nothing in the shape of an image, though he examined the place carefully. Where, then, should their God have been found? Nowhere else, of course than in so memorable a temple which was carefully shut to all but the priests, and into which there could be no fear of a stranger entering.

But what apology must I here offer for what I am going to say, when I have no other object at the moment than to make a passing remark or two in a general way which shall be equally applicable to yourselves? Suppose that our God, then, be an asinine person, will you at all events deny that you possess the same characteristics with ourselves in that matter? (Not their heads only, but) entire asses, are, to be sure, objects of adoration to you, along with their tutelar Epona; and all herds, and cattle, and beasts you consecrate, and their stables into the bargain! This, perhaps, is your grievance against us, that, when surrounded by cattle-worshippers of every kind we are simply devoted to asses!”

Tertullian, Ad Nationes. translated by Peter Holmes, D.D.

~65

You totally misunderstand what "evidence" means in a court of law - what would be presented to a jury.

There are basically two sorts of admissible evidence. (1) Evidence from personal experience. The person on the witness stand, after being sworn under oath and admonished that he is subject to the penalty of perjury says "I was there. I saw X. I heard Y." (2) Extrinsic evidence supported by the above sort of testimony that places it in a certain context. "Yes, I found that bloody glove just outside to the victim's residence the morning she was knifed to death." The party introducing the bloody glove may then proceed with other witnesses to examine its relationship to the other party, albeit the tie-in had better be very very good or eventually the glove is going to be excluded from evidence as irrelevant.

A story, written many years after the fact, by someone who wasn't there, about people he never met, about an event that was highly unusual is not even conceivably evidence. It doesn't even arise to the level of objectionable hearsay. It is just a story.

Now you may want to have faith in the truth of this story, but this attempt to say that there is evidence of its principal features makes you and anyone else making such a claim look stupid and ignorant. There isn't. That isn't what "evidence" means. It isn't even what "evidence" means in its looser scientific meaning (where it refers to ESTABLISHED FACTS used to corroborate or suggest a hypothesis).

>68 quicksiva:

Roman writers had all sorts of crazy third-hand stories about Christians, whom they hated and considered themselves above actually learning about. They wrapped babies up in flour and punched the dumplings until the baby was dead and then ate them—some sort of garbled rumor of the eucharist. They got together for food and sex orgies—a garbled rumor of agape. Nobody has believed them in 1600 years, so it's extra fun that you do. In this case, however, the story is not even originally about Christians, but about Jews. Are you seriously suggesting that ancient Jews worshipped donkeys?

>67 timspalding:: Who's talking about a "serious scholar of ancient history or religion"? I was referring to an Anglican minister.

But are you suggesting by, "There is a middle course, where something is neither 100% true nor an intentional deception" that in your view the resurrection may not be 100% true?

But are you suggesting by, "There is a middle course, where something is neither 100% true nor an intentional deception" that in your view the resurrection may not be 100% true

I believe in the resurrection—that it's 100% as a simple fact, although obviously you have to pick your details. But the choice isn't between truth and deception (or truth, deception and madness). Religious ideas are much more complicated than that. Did the angel Gabriel actually dictate the Koran to Muhammed? I suspect not, but I am not therefore required to believe Muhammed was a mountebank, still less than he got his friends together and colluded to produce it. The gospel accounts of the resurrection are the same. It is possible to believe that they are neither a purposeful deception on credulous readers nor the absolute truth. Non-Christian scholars of religion basically all fall into this middle category.

You totally misunderstand what "evidence" means in a court of law - what would be presented to a jury.

I suspect you misunderstood Gumbel's point—not that it could actually be submitted to a jury, but that a small team of reasonable people (such as exists on a jury) would conclude the evidence was strong enough. I don't actually agree, but I suspect you merely don't understand the context.

>69 lawecon: : You are correct that I don't fully understand the full concept of what evidence would be accepted in a court of law. I wasn't proposing that I did. I was merely quoting from memory the proposals put by a lawyer as evidence. His wider presentation was an attempt to show, if not prove, that it wasn't hearsay. Perhaps the parallel with the law is a red herring. He was trying to justify a reading of history. For many, he has made a case.
You seem to conclude that as I quoted him then I must be agreeing (or trying to agree) with him. I don't. But as he has so many followers (converts?) I was interested to hear opposing views. Thank you for that.

>66 jbbarret: Thanks, jbbarret. Let me try to expand on that. Depending not only on the scriptures, the Christian tradition from the earliest times suggests that some people saw something special in the man Jesus; indeed they saw God in him. He was executed, but the tradition tells us that they continued to meet him after his death, very unexpectedly, this time with some differences. That's the Resurrection. Classic theology is very clear that it is not just resuscitation (a dead person being brought back to life) but there was a different quality to the new Jesus, now recognised as the Christ. In that sense I don't think it is a miracle in the same way as changing water into wine or healing people; it is far more important because it signifies something different about the way God and humanity interact. For those of us who experience the divine, and who come from a culture or other impetus which finds the Christian path to the divine to be the most natural, this is part of our journey of understanding.

Rereading that I'm aware that I probably haven't made anything clearer. I'm certainly not trying to convince anybody who doesn't believe in it, because I don't think one can convince anybody, but just trying to put it into words.

~72

You're right, I don't understand. Juries sit in courtrooms. They are selected in certain ways. Those ways do not assure that they will be "reasonable," only that they will evaluate the facts presented to them without prejudgment. Juries are, as far as I know, unique to judicial proceedings. They don't exist outside such a context, there is not "something like a jury," there are juries and there are other assemblies of persons.

Courts have rules as to what the jury may or may not consider. Those rules are called "Rules of Evidence." The term "evidence," therefore, has a definite confined meaning, particularly when referring to a jury and what it may conclude. I have given a broad sketch of that meaning above. That is THE meaning when one is speaking of "evidence" and a jury, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world.

I could, if I wanted to spend the time, find some of the key terms in programming and start abusing them in our discussions. I am sure that you would first correct me, and then, if I persisted, conclude that I was absurd and not too bright.

That is what is going on here. Certain posters have found a term that they think is prestigious, in that it connotes a strong case for what constitutes "the Truth." These posters want to attach that term to their religious beliefs. They are not disturbed that the term doesn't fit the stories for those beliefs, so they not only persist in using the term, but then turn around and claim that this is the way it is customarily used. They are wrong and they are acting in an absurd manner.

I would not think that you would want this sort of drivel going on in your forums, much less that you would encourage it, but apparently I would be wrong.

~73

Not being familiar with the person you refer to I can't help you with the particulars of a response to what he is saying. However, if he is saying that the Gospels are not hearsay, and he claims to be a lawyer, then I can only conclude that he is willfully lying. I, of course, have no information as to why he would want to lie about such a transparently false proposition.

I guess that I just don't understand this discussion. Are we now judging the validity of the cases for certain claims by the number of followers who want to believe a flim-flam man? If so, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are probably the Kingdom of God and the Messiah, respectively, or, alternatively, Shabbati Zevi was truly the Messiah, despite his subsequent conversion to Islam and his disturbing lack of all of the other attributes of the traditional messiah. (The Messiah, you know, can do "anything," including being not the messiah. It is very confusing .......)

>76 lawecon: "not hearsay". I used the words wrongly, intending to imply "not without foundation". He certainly wasn't suggesting that the Gospels were first hand accounts. So hearsay it is.

>76 lawecon:

"Are we now judging the validity of the cases for certain claims by the number of followers who want to believe a flim-flam man?"

Nothing new about that.

~77

Again, I don't understand what we are talking about. This started out with Ambrithill's claim in post #32 above that:

"Christianity is also unique in that its founder rose from the dead! And there have ben many who have tried to prove that He didn't, but no one has been able to do so. Many of those who have tried have discovered that the evidence shows that He did."

I characterized that statement as looney and one of our other posters pointed out numerous examples of other gods or persons who rose from the dead.

You then started talking about this person who apparently believes that he can prove the resurrection to a jury in a courtroom.

Now, all at once, we're back at the question of whether "there is a foundation for" the resurrection.

Of course there is a foundation. It is faith. That is the same foundation that caused the Gospels to be written in the first place. There were stories about someone called "Jesus The Christ" that appealed to people, for probably various reasons, and that they then believed in. They gathered some of these stories, elaborated on them and wrote down further stories. As you now state (finally) there are no first hand accounts, there is just what Jack told Mary who told Simon who told Paul who told....................... Indeed, there is virtually no evidence beyond the Gospels for anything about Jesus of Nazareth, other than he, or someone like him, probably existed as a historical hetrodox rural Late Second Temple rabbi.

>76 lawecon: and 78: Isn't that how elected offices in most modern democratic republics work?

~78

Nothing new at all. Fox News and the National Enquirer do it every day.

>79 lawecon: what Jack told Mary who told Simon who told Paul who told.......

lawecon has cracked it! There was no Q source, it was all down to good ol' Jack...

>64 lawecon: Thank you for the kind words!

I believe that you have to believe the Bible in its entirety. The heavens and earth were made in seven days, God split the red sea and allowed Israel to move across unscathed, Jesus was an immaculate conseption born of a virgin, Jesus performed every miracle as stated in the gospels, Jesus died on a cross and rose again three days later, Jesus now sits at the right hand of the Father God. If you cannot say the Bible is true in its entirety then what you are saying is that God is limited in his ablilty. The Bible I read tells I can trust otherwise. Jesus asks us to believe, to have faith, my belief and faith in him hold up in all circumstances.

~84

And there you have it.........

>84 If you cannot say the Bible is true in its entirety then what you are saying is that God is limited in his ablilty.

No, what you are saying is that the humans who wrote the various manuscripts that were later assembled by others and called the Bible (and there are many variations on the table of contents for what is called the Bible) are limited in their ability to percieve God perfectly and relate God in human language perfectly. Saying that the Bible is not totally factual (which I'm assuming is what you mean by "true in its entirety") says nothing about God; it simply states what should be fairly obvious about humans.

Os.

~82

A "Q Source" is a speculation about the sort of basis that may have been used by the authors of the Synoptics (or at least by Mark). It is a nice speculation for those who want to believe that Gospel authors worked primarily from written sources. But there is no real evidence that such is the case. If they did, Paul apparently missed the Q Source or didn't think that it was all that important.

Or Paul did not need to rehash what most people in his churches assumed.

>86 Ealhmund: Thanks, Os.

It is a nice speculation for those who want to believe that Gospel authors worked primarily from written sources. But there is no real evidence that such is the case.

No evidence the coincidences we call "Q" are not from oral sources? How off-base can you get? How about passages with coincidences of grammar and word-choice far too similar to be anything other than a shared written source? Nobody doubts this and even a Greek-less reader with no formal experience of textual criticism would notice it. When two people repeat a similar story they heard orally they differ in ways far more extensive than Matthew and Luke differ when they tell the same non-Mark story. We can see them do it already in what they take and rework from Mark. The level of changes does not differ. And even if one of the more complex, minority theories are taken (eg., priority of Matthew), the explanation can only be a shared written source underlying the major coincidences.

Unlike before, I don't think we're differing on what "evidence" means, but on a more basic question of ignorance of the evidence.

If you cannot say the Bible is true in its entirety then what you are saying is that God is limited in his ablilty.

There are two ways to go after this. One, preferred by atheists, is to attack the absurdities that result from fundamentalism. The Christian, however, has another attack—that this notion is a modern one. To get around this Fundamentalists Protestants need to be radically, deeply ignorant of 3/4 of Christian history—of how the Christian church understood the Bible and itself during the millennium and a half before Luther. Fortunately, they always are.

~88

Interesting response, but I assume, on the basis of that response, that we are reading two different sets of Paul's letters.

My set is mainly corrections of what people in his churches assumed. It seems that they (or a lot of them) got it wrong in almost every particular. He had to set them right, although he had "founded" most of the churches he addressed (Rome to the contrary).

But apparently in your set of correspondence everyone in his churches correctly "assumed" basically the same things? Odd that they never mentioned the common source of their assumptions when they stated their differences to Paul. Most people use "proof texts" when they engage in one of those "my views are really Christian" vs. "his views are not Christian" discussions, and one would think that Paul would refer to proof texts from Q in resolving their differences.

But I'm sure you must be right..........

>84 tommytoy:: So how do you get round the nasty bits? You know the parts I mean, the encouragement to genocide, the stoning a man to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath, how to beat your slaves, and all that sort of thing. We know how the theologians, the scholars, and the jargoneers deal with it; they contextualise, and apply hermeneutics, stuff like that. How do you fundamentalists wiggle round it?

~92

As Ambrithill has told us repeatedly, it is all inerrant, we just don't understand it all, and he's not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. (Which means it is all inerrant, we just don't understand it all.)

Now if he were of the fuzzi school of prophesy he would pray and the Holy Spirit would explain the difficult parts to him, but I guess his salvation wasn't complete.

Have you "got right with God" today? It sounds from your post like you may have strayed and been led into sin and error.

But perhaps tommytoy has something new to bring to the party.

Yes, variants on what absolute unquestioning belief in an idol mean are often interesting. I wonder if he sacrifices virgins or infants to The Word of God.

>93 lawecon:: Have you "got right with God" today?

Nope, can't say that I have.

It sounds from your post like you may have strayed and been led into sin and error.

Error, possibly. But as to sin, you might like to expand on that possibilty as I often fail to recognise it until it's pointed out.

>96 jbbarret:: It's OK, don't bother about that last question. I've just checked through the list and yes, sloth, there was a bit of that this morning. So there you are, right on both counts.

>95 lawecon: I wonder if he sacrifices virgins or infants

That might be a bit extreme to expect him to do that. A lamb to the door of the tent, perhaps.

~98

I thought you needed a Temple and High Priest for that, and then you need a pure red heifer to be turned into powder to purify the High Priest, and then.......

Virgins and infants sounds simpler.

Just joining and feel an urge to contribute on the topic.Becoming a christian is a combination of factors
STEPS
1)Calling a spade by its name (owning up that one have sinned against God)
2)Repentance from those sins
3)Confessing the sins to God and asking him to forgive one
4) Turning away from those sins
5) Accepting Jesus christ as Lord and personal savior into ones life by faith
6) Manifesting faith in the power of, and the blood of Jesus christ to wash one from every past sins
7) Inner resolve not to go back to the confessed sins. These are steps necessary to becoming a true christian.

~100

Good to know. Would you say that is a universal view among Christians ?

90> I would be curious to know if you have read the original texts associated with the bible? If not, have you read any of the more recent works discussing the texts, such as Misquoting Jesus... by Bart Ehrman?

>102 K.J.:: "I would be curious to know if you have read the original texts associated with the bible?"

What do you mean by "original texts"? Are you asking whether Tim has read the New Testament in Greek?

Or are you asking whether Tim has read other early Christian writings like the Didache, the Letters of Polycarp, Ignatius, and Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, etc.?

>100 Nwokoji:

True or not, to me, if you've been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, you are a Christian, whether you like it or not. Seven steps seem a bit much by comparison.

How good you are at it is another question altogether.

Well there you have it. The poisonous snake handlers that can heal anyone through the laying on of hands and the High Roman Catholics, Adolph Hitler and St. Theresa. Really no difference. All equally Christians. (I continue to be amazed that otherwise sane people want to take this line, but whatever.)

lawecon, why do you think it is okay for Jews to have different beliefs but do not afford that same right for Christians? This is not a jab, but an honest question.

No it isn't an honest question, ambrithill. I have posted this link a half dozen times now http://www.shelfari.com/groups/29350/discussions/74005/Fundamentalism So, I don't think "it is okay for Jews to have different beliefs" if those beliefs are dishonest, psychotic and potentially dangerous. Being a lunatic Jew doesn't get you special exemptions, you are still a lunatic.

>107 lawecon: Being a lunatic Jew doesn't get you special exemptions, you are still a lunatic

Indubitably. But are you also still a Jew? You appear to imply so by using the phrase "lunatic Jew". I would readily agree that some manifestations of Christianity are lunacy (and misguided or erroneous), but does that mean that the holder of those views is not a Christian or simply that she is a lunatic Christian (or a misguided or erroneous Christian)? I think that's where we have continued to disagree, lawecon. As msladylib says in >104 msladylib:, someone who is baptised is a Christian.

~108

As I said above, John, if you want to take that position you certainly can do so - and everthing that comes with it. Good luck with that. (Hasn't worked out very well so far, but you know what they say about trying the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.)

>107 lawecon: It was an honest question and it still is. I did not ask you about the "lunatic Jews" or the "lunatic Christians." What about those who's beliefs are NOT dishonest, psychotic and potentially dangerous? With this in mind, please answer the original question; why do you think it is okay for Jews to have different beliefs but do not afford that same right for Christians?

>109 lawecon: Thanks, lawecon. And is the "lunatic Jew" still a Jew?

~110

Ambrithill, we've had this discussion, how many times now.......

Yes, there is variety within legitimate Judaism. Yes, there is variety within legitimate Christianity. But there are also boundaries. The boundaries are basically boundaries of sanity, that make one livable with other human beings. Those Jews and Christians who believe that they have special access to G-d (either directly or through their certain intepretation of G-d's Word), that they are G-d's instrument, and, thus, that they can do whatever they want and it is justified, are not within those boundaries. Sane human beings make no such claims. Those who make such claims and mean them are very dangerous individuals. When they form themselves into groups they are still more dangerous.

~111

Only genetically. They have left Judaism and the Jewish People.

If the boundaries are doing anything they want, I agree that is not justified. However, I do believe that many sane humans have claimed to be an instrument of God, going all the way back at least to Moses. It appears that he would be disqualified from being a legitimate Jew by your way of thinking.

With due respect to msladylib and johnthefireman, being bapitized does not necessarily make a person a Christian. I - like legions of others - was baptized "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" by a Lutheran (WELS) church when I was an infant. However, as an adult, I am not a Christian (or a member of any other religion). I am not a member of any church (Lutheran or otherwise), do not profess Christian creeds, do not believe in the Christian tenets, and do not hold a belief in the Abrahamic god (or any gods).

If you're referring to adults who willingly undergo baptism due to their own beliefs, then yes, I'd agree those people are Christians. But even then, if they later leave the faith and convert to another, or to none at all, I'd argue that they are not Christians, and to label them as such is mistaken (and takes away from them their right to choose their own labels and identity).

Edited for epic HTML tag-fail.

>115 Essa: Thanks, Essa. I think we were referring to the basic criterion for entering the Christian community. In most "traditional" churches, it is simply baptism, both infant and adult.

You're right, of course, to point out that people can choose to leave the Church and no longer identify as a Christian. But I think the context of the conversation was that someone doesn't automatically become a non-Christian simply by being erroneous, misguided or whatever while themselves still identifying as a Christian, nor by sinning.

> 116 Okay, fair enough. :)

~114

"...However, I do believe that many sane humans have claimed to be an instrument of God, going all the way back at least to Moses. It appears that he would be disqualified from being a legitimate Jew by your way of thinking."

Do you consider yourself the equivalent of Moses?

In Judaism prophesy ended many centuries ago and was replaced by argument over the meaning of scripture. Even in the Age of Prophesy, G_d picked his prophets, not the other way around. In fact, most of those picked resisted and tried to avoid the responsibility being thrust upon them.

In some types of Christian fundamentalism and Settler Judaism, however, everyone is a prophet who speaks to G-d. They know they are. They tell their fellow men and G-d that they are.

Thank you for illustrating my point so very well.

> 118 Of course I do not consider myself the equivalent of Moses. Never said that I did. I was just taking your definition and showing that by using it Moses would qualify as a "lunatic Jew." Can you show me in Jewish Scripture where prophesy has ended? I do not remember reading that, and the New Testament clearly says that there is a spiritual gift of prophecy.

The only point that I see that I am illustrating is how you continually refuse to answer questions or turn what others say into something that they never said. I understand this is a good thing in a court room, but for someone who wants others to take their views seriously this is not such a good thing, imho. You even missed the part where I agreed with you (which, btw, is not the first time that I have done so).

~119

"Of course I do not consider myself the equivalent of Moses. Never said that I did. I was just taking your definition and showing that by using it Moses would qualify as a "lunatic Jew.""

And I was merely pointing out that you are not a lunatic if you are in fact selected as a prophet by G-d. Lunatics are those who only believe in their own minds that they are prophets and who self-select. See the distinction? (Since you apparently didn't see it when I just mentioned it above.)

" Can you show me in Jewish Scripture where prophesy has ended? I do not remember reading that, and the New Testament clearly says that there is a spiritual gift of prophecy"

Yes, well of course, Jews stopped thinking with the final addition to their scriptures - about 300 BCE.

Oh, maybe you meant, can I show you anything in the Talmud concerning this matter. Well, yes, there is a rather famous (among those who know anything about Judaism) Talmudic story that bears exactly on this point, the Oven of Akhnai

http://www.jhom.com/topics/voice/bat_kol_bab.htm

http://www.reformjudaism.org.uk/a-to-z-of-reform-judaism/contemporary-issues/hal...

What do you mean by "original texts"? Are you asking whether Tim has read the New Testament in Greek?

Or are you asking whether Tim has read other early Christian writings like the Didache, the Letters of Polycarp, Ignatius, and Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, etc.?

I've read them all in English and parts (from some to all) of all but Ignatius and Barnabas in Greek. I really should read more. Misquoting Jesus is on my to-read list (I started it, but dropped it), but Ehrman's views on the topic are hardly new to me. I think he's a very talented scholar who sometimes pushes the evidence farther than warranted. Where we you going with this?

Well there you have it. The poisonous snake handlers that can heal anyone through the laying on of hands and the High Roman Catholics, Adolph Hitler and St. Theresa. Really no difference. All equally Christians. (I continue to be amazed that otherwise sane people want to take this line, but whatever.)

Compare a debate about being a true Mainer. Some might say that to be a true Mainer you must enjoy lobster, be able to handle a kayak, say "ayuh" and a have dignified but non-nonsense approach to life. Others would say that it consists in being born within the confines of the US state, even if you spent every other day of your life in Morocco. I don't think there's any debating purely terminological questions, but neither side is insane. I do, however, think there's something irrational about dogmatism in such debates.

108

Oh dear, this is where we finally disagree John! Unlike you and msladylib, I don't think baptism makes one a Christian, unless it's adult baptism. That tiny little baby having water poured on its head, what does it know of anything? I don't believe Jesus endorsed the baptism of babies, nor John the Baptist.

An adult has the right to choose their religion or none, but a baby doesn't have that right. I agree utterly with Richard Dawkins on this point. (Apologies if this was
covered higher up - I've only read the last few posts in this conversation, and those two caught my eye).

>120 lawecon: So am I reading this story correct in understanding it to say that the majority is always right? Even and above God?

~121

"Compare a debate about being a true Mainer. Some might say that to be a true Mainer you must enjoy lobster, be able to handle a kayak, say "ayuh" and a have dignified but non-nonsense approach to life. Others would say that it consists in being born within the confines of the US state, even if you spent every other day of your life in Morocco. I don't think there's any debating purely terminological questions, but neither side is insane. I do, however, think there's something irrational about dogmatism in such debates."

I am glad to know that you don't think that there is any substantial difference between being a Christian and being a Mainer. And here I've been misled into thinking that Christianity had certain admonitions about moral behavior that one had to follow, or at least try really hard to follow. But since you apparently don't seem to mind classing Adolph Hitler as a Christian (at least you didn't object), I guess I was wrong.

>124 lawecon:

You fail to get my point at all. Could you, perhaps, try to?

As far as I can see, your point is the standard "true Scotsman" argument. You think it is a mistake to seek a coherent bounded definition of "Christian." It would be dogmatic or circular, or whatever excuse can be found for not requiring anything of a Christian.

As I said to John above, that is fine. The next time a Christian tells me that he is required to love his neighbor, I'll just tell him that he really isn't required to do anything. That Christianity is just a ritual that one goes through and that he is a Christian if he departs that ritual and participates in a baby roast.

As I also said to John, enjoy the consequences of that philosophic position.

~123

(1) Did you bother to read the second link?

(2) What would you suggest as an alternative? Perhaps, as an alternative, you and fuzzi could tell everyone what G-d means and what G-d wants?

If that doesn't work for you, ah, what is your alternative? (No answer expected. Time to ask another question.)

>126 lawecon: The next time a Christian tells me that he is required to love his neighbor, I'll just tell him that he really isn't required to do anything

No, a Christian is required to love his neighbour. Unfortunately I fail to do so quite often. That makes me a sinner, it might make me a rather poor Christian, but it doesn't make me a non-Christian.

>122 Tid: Thanks, Tid. I think it's about becoming part of a community, a family. A baby is born with a surname as part of a family. It is brought up as part of that family. When it becomes an adult it can change its name by deed poll and cut all links with that family. A baby is born a citizen of a country. It is brought up speaking the language and imbibing the culture and national myth of that country. When it becomes an adult it can go somewhere else, renounce its original citizenship, learn a new language and national anthem, and become a citizen of a new country. Likewise religion. A baby is born into a religious family, it becomes part of that religion, and is brought up as part of that religion (hopefully a religion which still allows it freedom to question and explore). When it becomes an adult, it can choose to leave that religion and go elsewhere. But I think it is mistaken to think of the child as not being part of its family's religion, any more than it is part of its family, its nation and probably other identifiers over which is has no control until it becomes an adult.

>127 lawecon:

1--yes, I did read the other link.

2--does that mean since you are not answering the question that your answer is yes?

3--apparently a skill at which you are very good.

The question was "who is/isn't a Christian?" I gave the simplest answer, and a straightforward one. Now, this person may say he's not a Christian, or she may be a really lunatic person, or almost anything in between, but the basic definition holds.

Any other answer is bound to get us into arguments. Of course, this one started some energetic discussion, but that's okay.

131

I'm afraid I haven't followed this argument from the beginning. There are only so many long posts I can absorb. So I apologise if this has already been covered.

My argument centres on how you define "Christianity". The original followers of Jesus didn't call themselves such, but were arguably closer to what Jesus asked of those who would follow him.

However, since then, so many variants of dogma, faith, and - to be honest - quite minor variants of belief, have arisen, and each variant "requires" a follower to subscribe to that position. So a Catholic is required to participate in the Mass and go to confession, a Mormon is required to believe that Smith was a true prophet who heard the word of God, a Lutheran that faith in Jesus and God's Word in the Bible are enough for salvation, Quakers that there is "that of God in everyone" and all else follows from that, Orthodox Christians something different, and so on and so on.

Then there are groups whose belief position is so tenuous and so varied within one denomination, it's hard to find what their 'requirement' actually is - Anglicanism for example, covers everything from Anglo-Catholic "high church" right through to near-fundamentalist evangelical churches.

Do these have anything in common? Most would say a belief that Jesus was resurrected from death and that whatever follows from that is the most important and significant thing for the entire human race. But it's not a given - Spong (retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark) believes the resurrection was not physical; Quakers are not expected to subscribe to the resurrection story, or even to a belief in God. Both of those positions would be regarded as 'non Christian' by some Christians, as it conflicts with their own belief position. Does that make Spong and Quakers any less Christian?

As I say, it all depends on how you define Christianity. My own view would be that anyone who practises "love thy neighbour" is doing what Jesus asked of them, and what they believe is less important than that.

121> As you appear to be a strong believer in the bible, I was curious to know if you had read the old, original texts in their original languages, because there seems to be some disagreement among scholars about some portions of the bible. My curiosity was whether or not any of your reading helped you form a stronger opinion about your faith, or caused you to question any portion of it.

I am not surprised that anyone who seems to to have a strong feeling about their religion would discount Ehrman's writing, but I would recommend picking it up again. For an 'outsider,' it was very interesting.

I would also be curious to know if you have ever read Baird T. Spalding's Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East? I have been surprised by how few people with a spiritual leaning have read this set of books.

~128

As much as I hate to say it, John, Tim had the right idea on this one (just the wrong application). He and you want to distinguish between "good Christians" and "bad Christians" but simultaneously maintain that anyone who ever came near a Priest or Minister with water is a Christian.

Apparently, in your world definitions work like this -

"Chicken - a medium sized omnivorous bird that is flighted for only short distances and is usually white or brown."

"Well then, this small black vegetarian bird usually seen in flying flocks is a chicken."

"Of course it is a chicken, it is a bird isn't it? It is just a bad chicken."

~130

Well, the one thing that is always certain is that you aren't answering the question.

>134 lawecon: I know you don't think it's appropriate, lawecon, but like it or not the Catholic Church and a number of other mainstream churches teach that you are a Christian if you are baptised. There are plenty of teachings on how a Christian should behave, but failure to live up to those teachings is generally not considered grounds for declaring someone a non-Christian. There are exceptions which lead to excommunication, which is a fairly rare and formal process, and in fact most of the grounds for excommunication are concerned with offences against the Church, not against one's neighbour or, for that matter, God.

>133 K.J.:: You shouldn't be surprised that people with an interest in religion--even people with a great deal of training in the field--haven't read any one particular modern study of religion, as there are literally thousands of them. There is no single author or book that is considered normative for the field. For example, my introduction to eastern thought was mainly through the studies of Huston Smith. Have you read any of his books?

This is also where we need to draw the distinction between reading modern secondary literature and reading sacred texts. I could read dozens and dozens of modern studies of Islam (and have, including, again, Smith and those of Bernard Lewis), but that's not going to get me very far nor is it much worth unless I have also read the Qur'an.

As far as I can see, your point is the standard "true Scotsman" argument. You think it is a mistake to seek a coherent bounded definition of "Christian." It would be dogmatic or circular, or whatever excuse can be found for not requiring anything of a Christian.

Well, no, that's not my point. So I'm glad to try to re-explain it. Perhaps if you don't agree, you can try to explain why you do not, and thereby indicate if you've gotten it now.

My point is that there are different valid definitions of terms like "Christian," used in different contexts for different reasons, and that debating terms alone is a fruitless task. So, while I think it's extremely valuable and important to ask what those who profess to follow Christ ought to do with their lives—and I further believe there is a real answer!—it is useless to argue about semantics of a mere word.

Was Hitler a Christian? Obviously he wasn't living up to any aspect of Christian morality in his actions. It is also clear that he didn't actually subscribe to the main points that make up the substance of Christian belief. It is, however, clear that he was legally a Catholic Christian under German law, and, as a baptized person who had not formally renounced his faith, a member of the Catholic church under Ecclesiastical law. (For example, he could be and should have been formally and publicly excommunicated; the church does not excommunicate muslims because they are not part of the church to begin with.) And if one were explaining the history of the world to a Martian, and he asked if Hitler were a Muslim or an Australian Aborigine, one would respond that no, he was a Christian, because his larger context was that of western, Christian civilization. None of these answers is wrong, but none of them would suit all contexts either.

So, no, I don't think there is a simple definition of Christian good for all people and all contexts one might apply it. That does not indicate the least trace of moral relativisim or doubt about the existence of facts. Real things exist, physically and morally. Words, however, are not real things, but tools of communication, and do not necessarily match the real world in a simple 1/1 relationship.

~138

"My point is that there are different valid definitions of terms like "Christian," used in different contexts for different reasons, and that debating terms alone is a fruitless task. So, while I think it's extremely valuable and important to ask what those who profess to follow Christ ought to do with their lives—and I further believe there is a real answer!—it is useless to argue about semantics of a mere word.

......

"So, no, I don't think there is a simple definition of Christian good for all people and all contexts one might apply it. That does not indicate the least trace of moral relativisim or doubt about the existence of facts. Real things exist, physically and morally. Words, however, are not real things, but tools of communication, and do not necessarily match the real world in a simple 1/1 relationship."

=============================================

I fully agree with the first paragraph, but I also believe that this observation misses the point I've been trying to make for 6 months now.

I don't believe I agree with the second paragraph (the "these are mere words.... not realities") line. Words are meant to express the coherent frameworks through which we understand the world. To make a distinction between words and "real things" is, I'm afraid, to endorse an epistemology that I can never agree with.

Back to the first point: While words may be ambiguous and may be differently defined in different contexts or different sorts of discussion, that does not mean that they can be indefinitely vague. Word are how we communicate with one another. "Look, a chicken" should have some boundaries of meaning, just as "Look, a Christian" should have some boundaries of meaning. If there are no boundaries, there is no meaning and the words are just meaning-less sounds.

139

The precise nature of language is a matter that many - including philosophers like Wittgenstein - have given much attention to. There are existentialists for whom language has no meaning beyond the internal and subjective, all the way to empiricists who demand that a term applies universally and be open to scrutiny by all.

"Look, a chicken" is not the same class of meaning as "Look, a Christian". The first has a generally agreed scientific definition involving precise species identifiers, and can be either 100% correct or 100% incorrect, depending on the sharpness and accuracy of the observation leading to the remark. The latter is not a scientifically defined term. There are too many different groups claiming it for themselves, and one group might deny its use to another group, and vice versa. Whereas a neutral onlooker might say that either or neither or both groups are "Christian" in their eyes. It's too subjective.

Look, a chicken!

Or, Tim, a Christian!

The easiest way to define a Christian is by church membership. Person X goes to Church Y and is therefore a Christian. (Of course, one has to be able to identify Church Y as a Christian Church, which is not an easy thing to do. Do the JWs count? The Mormans? If you are Orthodox (Pravdaslovnia--True Church) then you might have a narrower version than a Presbyterian or a liberal congregationalist. If you are a Baptist you might have a VERY narrow definition.

Next we move to beliefs. The basic belief would be some kind of belief in Jesus. If we want to put a finer point on it, we might talk about Jesus as Lord, or Lord and Savior. But after that we get into a whole wasps nests of beliefs. Bible? Inerrant, Infallible, or Just a Good Book? Virgin Birth? Baptism?

Finally there is the "Christian Life." A follower of Jesus acts like...Jesus? Paul? Follows the moral imperatives of the Bible?

In the end, it is probably easier to say what a Christian is not, although not much easier.

To complicate things, the Catholic at least believes in the possibility of the "anonymous Christian"—someone who, although not Christian and perhaps even an atheist and declared enemy of Christianity, has somehow responded to God's saving grace even so.

>144 timspalding:: This makes me wonder whether we haven't been going about this from completely the wrong direction. Rather than trying to come up with our own definitions, distinctions, clarifications, boundaries, transgressions, and failures to say "Who is/isn't a Christian?", perhaps we need simply to say this:

Christ determines who is/isn't a Christian.

~140

"The latter is not a scientifically defined term. There are too many different groups claiming it for themselves, and one group might deny its use to another group, and vice versa. Whereas a neutral onlooker might say that either or neither or both groups are "Christian" in their eyes. It's too subjective."

Well, I'm not having a conversation with "many different groups," I'm having a conversation with John and Tim. John and Tim claim to be Christians. Indeed, they claim that being Christian is very important in their lives. It is therefore more than a little disappointing to discover that all they mean by that term is that someone has, at some point, been baptised.

~145

Actually, I don't think that is a bad answer.

In a similar vein, there was a very nice article in the Arizona Republic the other day on Bar Mitzvah boys. One of the stories related was about the subsequently quite famous Bar Mitzvah boy who confessed to his rabbi after The Day that he wasn't really quite sure that he believed in G-d. His rabbi responded, "Really, Jacob, do you think that G-d cares?"

>135 lawecon: lawecon, as I have said previously in other ways, that is simply the pot calling the kettle black. Why don't you attempt to follow your own guidelines once in a while?

~148

What amazes me, ambrithill, is that you apparently believe that this stick is convincing. The pattern is boringly repetitive. You ask a "significant" question (which is so significant that anyone with any exposure to the topic knows the answer). You receive an answer and a question in return. You claim that you haven't received an answer (because it isn't the answer you want) and that is why you're not going to answer the question that was posed to you.

Yawn, really boring. Can't you find a new evasion?

What amazes me, ambrithill, is that you apparently believe that this stick is convincing

Speak softly, but carry a big shtick.

Well, I'm not having a conversation with "many different groups," I'm having a conversation with John and Tim. John and Tim claim to be Christians. Indeed, they claim that being Christian is very important in their lives. It is therefore more than a little disappointing to discover that all they mean by that term is that someone has, at some point, been baptised.

Nope, not understanding me, again. It depends on what you're asking. I at least don't find "What's a Christian?" an answerable question, without some sense of what you're getting at. Similarly, while you seem to resist it, I don't find "who is a Jew?" to be a serious question by itself, but only when you specify what sort of context you're asking it in. You apparently agree to some degree, since you have a category of "only a genetic Jew." If the question were so obvious and excluded genetics by its very asking, you wouldn't need such a category, you'd just say "no."

>149 lawecon: "What amazes me, ambrithill, is that you apparently believe that this stick is convincing. The pattern is boringly repetitive. You ask a "significant" question (which is so significant that anyone with any exposure to the topic knows the answer). You receive an answer and a question in return. You claim that you haven't received an answer (because it isn't the answer you want) and that is why you're not going to answer the question that was posed to you.

Yawn, really boring. Can't you find a new evasion?"

My question in 123 was this: "So am I reading this story correct in understanding it to say that the majority is always right? Even and above God?"

Your supposed answer in 127 was this: "What would you suggest as an alternative? Perhaps, as an alternative, you and fuzzi could tell everyone what G-d means and what G-d wants?"

So where is YOUR answer?

I find it amazing that you evade answering direct questions by accusing others of evasion. So let me ask the question one more time, very directly:

"Are you saying that the majority is always right?"

(I'll even do you the favor of leaving off the part about God for now so that maybe you can give a direct answer instead of answering with a question)

147

Which in turn reminds me of the story of the atheist and the rabbi. After listening to the atheist go on and on about why he doesn't believe in God, the rabbi thinks for a moment, then says: "This God you don't believe in? I don't believe in him either".

~150

"I don't find "who is a Jew?" to be a serious question by itself, but only when you specify what sort of context you're asking it in. You apparently agree to some degree, since you have a category of "only a genetic Jew." If the question were so obvious and excluded genetics by its very asking, you wouldn't need such a category, you'd just say "no.""

No, Tim, you have misunderstood. Being a Jew is, first of all, being a member of a tribe. Traditionally, one can be a member of a tribe by genetic descent. Being a member of Judaism implies further matters. You didn't ask "who is a member of the Jewish faith" you asked "who is a Jew." I responded with the fact that certain people have "left Judaism." In one sense, they can't leave being a Jew (albeit we all know that one can "pass" in most of the Western world today).

Think of "being Italian," Tim. You are Italian if you are of Italian descent, but, in the overwhelming number of cases, that also means that you are Roman Catholic. The two are not the same, however, nor is the analogy exact, because Roman Catholicism, for as much as it has tried, is not the traditional NATIONAL religion of Italy.

~131

Tell you what. I'll answer your question this time (although it is clearly answered in both the story and the commentary to which I gave you links). Then if you don't reciprocate I'll refer everyone from this point forward to this exchange. There goes your evasion, once and for all.

The Law (the interpretation of the Scriptures and of the traditions of Judaism) is determined by the majority of scholars. Period. It isn't determined by signs or a heavenly voice. (There is actually more subtlety to it than that, but I know that trying to explain it more fully would simply confuse you and/or provide a basis for your claim that you hadn't received an answer.)

Why you obviously won't answer my question is that the only alternative is that the Law is determined by people like you, fuzzi and Pastor Bob. No one other than your cult finds that answer to be convincing. No one believes that the choice is between having some group of human beings who have spent their lives trying to understand the right answers clarify and explain things and having G-d clarify and explain things. G-d isn't available these days. That stopped with the lapsing of the Age of Prophesy.

But let's hear your answer. Straightforward and simple now, since that is your standard for an answer.

>154 lawecon: Thank you for at least attempting to answer the question. I will first give my answer, then ask for a clarification of yours, so that you cannot say I am evading.

I do believe that God is always right. I believe that the Bible is the Word of God and it tells us what is right or wrong, not the majority. If the Bible is the Word of God, then God is most certainly available to us today.

Now to your answer...you said that the majority of scholars make the decision. What happened before there were scholars? Who decided then? And who decided the scholars should make all of the decisions? What supernatural power decreed that scholarship could now give commandments and laws?

Does this mean that your answer to the actual question, "Are you saying that the majority is always right?" is no? Only the majority of scholars? See, you still did not, as you say, make it "straightforward and simple."

~155

"I do believe that God is always right. I believe that the Bible is the Word of God and it tells us what is right or wrong, not the majority. If the Bible is the Word of God, then God is most certainly available to us today."

And, to make it explicit, you believe that people like you and fuzzi - people who don't have a clue about the original languages of the scriptures or the history of the scriptures, or the cultures in which the scriptures were authored - know JUST EXACTLY what G-d means in the scriptures. Yept, I understand. That is exactly what I've said repeatedly about fundamentalists. They are arrogant and proud, particularly about their ignorance.

"Now to your answer...you said that the majority of scholars make the decision. What happened before there were scholars? Who decided then?"

There were prophets. There aren't prophets today. You and your cult aren't prophets.

"And who decided the scholars should make all of the decisions? What supernatural power decreed that scholarship could now give commandments and laws?"

Try to focus now. We are trying to make particularistic sense of the scriptures. Do we choose really ignorant people who claim to speak to the Holy Spirit in the privacy of their minds or do we choose the majority of those who have devoted their lives to attaining to the background skills that most people believe would aid in understanding a text? Obviously, if you wanted your car repaired you would take it to Pastor Bob and ask him to pray over it. Most people wouldn't. They'd take it to a skilled and experienced car mechanic.

>152 Tid: "This God you don't believe in? I don't believe in him either".

Which is also a key stage in the spiritual journey. Many of us grow up with childish anthropomorphic images of God. At some point we may recognise that those images don't make sense, we have no experience of them, we have no relationship with that God, and we no longer believe in that God (although some people don't; they remain comfortable with the original images). Some then leave the church. Others explore further what God means to them and realise that they have experienced God and that there are different images of God which are consistent with their experience.

>153 lawecon: Think of "being Italian," Tim. You are Italian if you are of Italian descent

But that phrase is also open to interpretation. When I lived in the USA I would ask people, "Where are you from?", expecting them to say Chicago or New York or somewhere. Instead they would say Hungary or Italy or wherever, and it would be on the tip of my tongue to say, "Wow, you speak very good English for a Hungarian" before I realised that they didn't mean they were Hungarian or Italian, simply that one of their great-grandparents was. In Irish bars I had more than one disagreement with Irish-Americans who had a go at me because I'm British and we oppress the Irish, whereas in fact I have more Irish ancestry than many of them (and certainly knew more about "the Troubles" than they did) but don't claim nationality based on my great-grandparents. I saw the opposite dynamic in a primary school in West London where, in a geography class, the teacher was asking the kids where they come from, hoping to get a broad spectrum as most were from Indian and Caribbean families, but they all resolutely proclaimed, "I'm from Britain" as that is what they had been taught by their parents to assert against all-comers who might question their citizenship.

>155 ambrithill: I believe that the Bible is the Word of God and it tells us what is right or wrong, not the majority

ambrithill, I think many Christians would agree with you on the first part, at least up to the last clause, but will interpret it very differently from you.

Yes, the Bible is the Word of God. But as has been said over and over again, it was written by human authors, inspired by God, but nevertheless written in their own languages, in their own historical and cultural contexts, with their own level of scientific and other understanding of the world. It is a diverse collection of different genres of literature spanning centuries, gathered together gradually, with variations in different early manuscripts. It has been translated from the original languages over and over again into most of the languages of the world. The Canon of Scripture was only finalised long after the final book was written, and even so there is still disagreement as to whether the apocrypha are part of scripture or not.

So it needs interpretation. Biblical scholars in the main are not rabid atheists trying to undermine the Word of God. They are committed Christians who devote their life to studying the Word of God in order to help us to understand it. They do so prayerfully, guided, we believe, by the Holy Spirit. Christianity is not a "majority religion", in that we follow God's Word, not what a majority decide we should do by voting. Nevertheless, should we base our interpretation of God's Word on the consensus of wise and holy men and women who have studied and prayed about the Word of God for centuries and all in all have come up with a fair degree of common ground which is also accepted by most of the ordinary Christians? Or should we accept the view of a relatively small number of modern Christians who admit (indeed actually seem proud of the fact) that they have no deep understanding of the scriptures and who apparently come to a different conclusion to the rest of Christianity based on their belief that God guides them? Is God guiding only this minority, or don't you think God also guides the vast majority of other Christians?

>157 John5918:: I've been known to remark before that I sometimes envy those who have always felt comfortable with whatever notions of God they grew up with and have never felt the need to question those notions. Why do I envy them? Because they often seem so much happier than I am.

But it's always been in my nature to want to push farther, probe deeper, and constantly ask, "Why?" So I'm not content to nod my head in agreement with the Sunday School teacher and the pulpit preacher (and, if the argument my wife and I had in the car on the way home last Sunday is any indication, even when I do nod my head in agreement, it's often that I'm agreeing with what the pastor has said as refracted through my own theological lenses -- which is why what I heard the pastor say on Sunday and what my wife heard him say were apparently two entirely different things). I'm constantly chomping at the bit with questions, demanding that we see things from other angles or push the tension between two points further, rather than simply resting.

Inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te.

>160 nathanielcampbell: I'm agreeing with what the pastor has said as refracted through my own theological lenses -- which is why what I heard the pastor say on Sunday and what my wife heard him say were apparently two entirely different things

Which is perhaps also why some atheists see a Christian teaching and interpret it one way while some Christians see the same teaching and interpret it another way and neither one can understand why the other can't see it their way.

>156 lawecon: First, I do not know why you feel the need to bring fuzzi into our discussion.

Second, if Go could speak to the people in the past why not now? After all, Malachi 3:6 says, "For I am the LORD, I do not change."

Third, how do you define cults, since you think I am part of one?

Fourth, what about the scholars over the last hundreds of years who agree with my view and not yours?

Fifth, yes, I do believe in the guidance and leading of the Holy Spirit in understanding Scripture, along with studying what educated people have said about Scripture.

The car analogy has a flat tire or two.

>159 John5918: I did not mean to imply that I do not thin scholarship is important. I think it is very important, and I agree that much of the scholarly work done is done to gain a better understanding of God and Scripture. But when scholarship starts with the premise that anything supernatural needs to be thrown out, then I think they have another agenda.

"should we base our interpretation of God's Word on the consensus of wise and holy men and women who have studied and prayed about the Word of God for centuries and all in all have come up with a fair degree of common ground which is also accepted by most of the ordinary Christians?"

Absolutely. But these include those such as Luther, Calvin, Owen, Baxter, Bunyan, Augustine, and Chrysostom, just to name a few. Even these great men did not agree on everything. And Bunyan would not even technically qualify as a learned man. Yet I believe through his study of Scripture and willingness to follow God where ever He led him, including prison, makes his views scholarly, as do many others. Would you leave people like Bunyan off the scholarly list?

I believe that God leads any who will follow Him. However, we all make choices not to follow Him at times, and that leads us to making bad interpretation of Scripture, no matter how scholarly we are, myself included. But remember, according to scholars such as Alister McGrath, the main idea behind Reformation was that each person could read and interpret the Scripturre for themselves. And yes, this has led to many wacko ideas, but because people abuse it does not mean that the idea should be done away with.

>160 nathanielcampbell: "I'm agreeing with what the pastor has said as refracted through my own theological lenses -- which is why what I heard the pastor say on Sunday and what my wife heard him say were apparently two entirely different things"

Perhaps the Holy Spirit was using the same message to say two entirely different things to you and your wife. That is one reason the Bible is considered alive, because it can speak to us where we are.

>163 ambrithill:: You can read some of Augustine's comments on biblical interpretation and Genesis in comment 5 and comment 7 of the "Which came first: the earth or the sun?" thread.

>163 ambrithill: Thanks, ambrithill. Yes, I understand where you are coming from. Perhaps you are not the most extreme bible literalist posting on LT!

when scholarship starts with the premise that anything supernatural needs to be thrown out, then I think they have another agenda

Well, OK, but are there any such scholars amongst mainstream Christian biblical scholars?

Even these great men did not agree on everything

No, they didn't, but nevertheless there is a path in the development of biblical exegesis from the early Church up to modern times.

I'm not qualified to judge whether Bunyan was a scholar or not, I'm afraid. But as you mention Augustine, he apparently opposed the literalist view of the bible. Nathaniel quoted from him here.

However, we all make choices not to follow Him at times, and that leads us to making bad interpretation of Scripture

I don't think the first necessarily leads to the second. I also don't think we're talking about an individual scholar who makes a "bad" interpretation of Scripture due to choosing "not to follow Him". There's a body of scholarly opinion which does not depend on a single bad choice.

the main idea behind Reformation was that each person could read and interpret the Scripture for themselves

Well, we will differ to some extent because you come from the Reformation tradition and I from a non-Reformation tradition, you from sola scriptura, I from the interplay between Scripture and tradition. But the idea "that each person could read and interpret the Scripture for themselves" also has to be examined hermeneutically. It arose in a context where Scripture was in a foreign language (Latin) and since only a handful of educated priests read it, the ordinary people could only hear it filtered through the priests' lens. Translating the bible into local languages and encouraging people to read it for themselves was obviously a big step forward. There are many truths that one can get from the bible without any need for study ("Love thy neighbour" seems pretty easy to understand, albeit difficult to put into practise) and individuals can gain inspiration from the texts. But I don't think that is the same as saying that all "wacko ideas" are equally valid, nor that universal Christian truths are subject to the whim of each individual. Remember that it wasn't only the Catholic Church which burned "heretics", ie people who interpreted the bible differently to them!

~162

"Second, if Go could speak to the people in the past why not now? After all, Malachi 3:6 says, "For I am the LORD, I do not change."

Yes, oh Prophet Ambrithill. Hopefully in the next edition of G-d's Word you will get your own book.

~158

Once again, it would appear that you are just equivocating. You know perfectly well what it means to be of Italian descent, and you know that it doesn't mean to be of the Catholic faith (or even Christian), albeit the two are closely related historically and demographically. You know that Italian does not equal Catholic and Catholic does not equal Italian, yet you want us to believe that you think that Jew means someone who espouses Judaism.

Yawn, not even close to an argument.

>166 John5918: "but are there any such scholars amongst mainstream Christian biblical scholars?"

The first such name that pps in my head is Borg (I can remember his name because I am a Star Trek fan) and the Jesus Seminar, but there are others also.

I also agree that usually one person does not make doctrine for everyone, unless you include some of the decrees by different popes, so individual belief does not greatly affect the overall church.

"Remember that it wasn't only the Catholic Church which burned "heretics", ie people who interpreted the bible differently to them!"

I understand, and that is why I think that, as you said, loving your neighbor has definitely been proven to not be an easy thing to do. There are many areas that the Church universal has fallen far below God's ideal and will, unfortunately continue to do so. One of the areas that I think is often overlooked is the leading of the Holy Spirit in biblical interpretation and instead relying on the wisdom of men. Again, I am not saying to never use man's wisdom as guidance, as I do so often, especially the wisdom of men who have been dead for a while. I think most of the wisdom today does not come across as true wisdom on either side of the aisle, so I prefer readng the writings of old dead guys. What can I say? :-)

I guess my biggest concern in this area is that if anyone says they do believe the literal stories of the Bible, such as Creation, they are ridiculed and mocked and made fun of, even by other believers. I find it absurd to believe that everything came from nothing for no reason, but if that is what one chooses to believe that is their right.

As one who has ADHD and does not like long messages, I will stop now so that this does not go on too far.

> 167
"Yes, oh Prophet Ambrithill. Hopefully in the next edition of G-d's Word you will get your own book."

As one who believes that there is no need for a next book I am not concerned about that. However, I do hope that you read enough of the existing edition to realize the need to drop the cynicism.

>169 ambrithill: Thanks, ambrithill. As I've said before to fuzzi, I have not previously had the chance to interact with Christians of your persuasion, as they were a bit scarce where I grew up and subsequently lived and worked, so I am genuinely interested in learning about your beliefs from you, rather than secondhand, so excuse me if my questions seem a bit too persistent and intrusive. I disagree quite fundamentally with your interpretation of Chrstianity, but I hope I don't mock you.

the Jesus Seminar

I'm not too familiar with the details of the Jesus Seminar, but I do know that not all scholars who search for the historical Jesus are trying to deny the Christ, merely to complement our understanding of him.

One of the areas that I think is often overlooked is the leading of the Holy Spirit in biblical interpretation and instead relying on the wisdom of men.

Here I disagree with you. You appear to put the two in opposition to each other. The scholars are being guided by the Holy Spirit in their biblical interpretation, at least as much as you or I can claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit. In this case "the wisdom of men" is not independent from "the leading of the Holy Spirit". If you believe that the Holy Spirit guides you in your interpretation of the bible, why do you think the Spirit doesn't guide another Christian who just happens also to have a degree in biblical languages?

I find it absurd to believe that everything came from nothing for no reason

I think you'll find that many Christians (and people of other religions) would share that belief in some form or another. "Creator" is one of the titles we ascribe to God. But that is very different from insisting that the Genesis story is a literal account of how God created the universe. When a relatively small percentage of Christians assert this in the face of pretty overwhelming evidence that it is not the case, then I'm afraid they do make their views, if not themselves, an easy target for mockery.

There was an old gimpy-legged African American pastor in rural North Carolina named Pack. (During the week he would go door to door to fix things for people, and kept all his tools in a pack on his back, hence the name.)

A friend of mine was interning in Pack's community. He was driving around with some rednecks, who saw Pack, and demanded he get into the car with them. (This was the early '60s, and while North Carolina was not known for lynching, it was still a dangerous situation for Pack, and my friend was scared for him.)

"Why did you do that funeral for that shiftless n---- last week, Pack. You know he died in a knife fight, and he wasn't worth the shit on my shoes."

"Well, sir," said Pack, "I just take them to the river and cut them loose. I am not responsible for who come and get 'em."

>171 John5918: I would not say that you have mocked me, and I appreciate that. I know that there are many different beliefs within Christianity and feel that if we ge the core principles right the rest is just periphery. What I consider to be the core issues are that Jesus is the Son of God and that He lived a perfect and sinless life after being born of a virgin. He then died on the cross (literally died) to pay the ransom for mankind's sins. He was then literally resurrected and then arose into heaven to reign with God the Father. He sent the Holy Spirit to be our Helper, Teacher, and Comforter. He will come again one day to receive His bride, the Church. I have other believes, such as my belief on Baptism and Communion, but those are not beliefs that I think are necessarily core principles.

I understand, and agree, with your point about the Holy Spirit guiding interpreters. Of course, even that leaves open the decision about which text is being interpreted. I believe the Textus Receptus is more accurate than the Alexandrian text, even though there are scholars who disagree with me on this. However, I am sure that there are scholars on both sides of most of these types of issues, which I why I tend to try to stay mainly concerned with the core issues. However, I enjoy talking about all aspects of my faith, so therefore I come to places like LT to do so. I do not mind people respectfully disagreeing with me at all.

While believing in the Genesis account of creation may make me an easy target it still should not bring someone down to the level of crticism that is often seen by those who oppose this view on LT, imho.

>173 ambrithill:: "What I consider to be the core issues are that Jesus is the Son of God and that He lived a perfect and sinless life after being born of a virgin. He then died on the cross (literally died) to pay the ransom for mankind's sins. He was then literally resurrected and then arose into heaven to reign with God the Father. He sent the Holy Spirit to be our Helper, Teacher, and Comforter. He will come again one day to receive His bride, the Church."

I, too, would affirm those as "core issues".

>174 nathanielcampbell: Wonderful!

While believing in the Genesis account of creation may make me an easy target it still should not bring someone down to the level of crticism that is often seen by those who oppose this view on LT, imho.

Yes. It should. The Genesis account of creation is demonstrably wrong, and has been shown to be so repeatedly. We are sitting here in the twenty-first century and nineteenth century science demonstrated the Genesis account to be fallacious.

And the kicker is that many of the scientists who did the work that ended up demonstrating that the Genesis account could not be true were looking for evidence that would confirm the Biblical accounts. But as good scientists they followed the evidence where it led.

Young Earth creationism is a wholly bankrupt position. It has been thoroughly discredited. The only people advocating for it are charlatans who know better but think they can pull the wool over the eyes of believers, and people who have a scientific education that is sufficiently lacking that they fall for the charlatans. The charlatans are to be despised. The gullible to be pitied.

Those who persist even when shown the evidence that they are wrong? They are to be ridiculed.

Although I've linked to it before, it seems it would be best to actually provide the following section from ch. 19 of St. Augustine's The Literal Meaning of Genesis (composed between 401 and 415 A.D.):

Non-Christians know something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge they hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for a nonbeliever to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehood on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion (I Timothy 1:7).

~170

It is not cynicism. It is a logical implication of what you are maintaining.

157

It was actually supposed to be a witty story (in the great Jewish tradition of witty stories)! But of course there is also a deeper "teaching" level (another great Jewish tradition), so thanks for pointing out that aspect of it.

(lawecon - I hope you will excuse any pontificating on my part about "great Jewish traditions"?)

169

To be a literal Creationist is indeed the opposite to believing "that everything came from nothing for no reason". You have simply stated the two extremes, and ignored EVERYTHING in between. For example, the philosopher who asks "Could the universe have arisen from nothing?" (and is prepared to consider that the answer might be "yes" or "no"), or who asks "Is there a reason why the universe came into being?" (ditto).

It's both a category error and a logical fallacy to state two extremes and imply that they are the only choice.

I don't want to ridicule or mock you for your Creationist beliefs, but you do need to understand Ancient Hebrew and the context of the authorship of Genesis, before you can judge whether that particular account was ever intended to be taken literally. Augustine taught that it shouldn't be. Was he wrong, then?

171

Re. the Jesus Seminar, and the "Sea of Faith". Marcus Borg, Dominic Crossan, and John Shelby Spong, among others, are trying to continue the religious/philosophical/theology that follows in the traditions of Teilhard de Chardin, Don Cupitt, etc. Spong - for example - dismisses the idea of an external supernatural being (God) as symptomatic of our "childlike dependence", and that the discoveries of modern science have replaced just about all such primitive beliefs.

However, he most fervently does not dismiss Jesus, describing him as a "fully evolved human being" who manifests the "Divine at the core of our being" (see, he replaces an external God with an internal one, which isn't too far from Hindu philosophy).

~157

Yah, well each to his own. I think it is probably fair to say that I left Christianity initially because the "sophisticated" doctrines about G-d made absolutely no sense and were obviously self-contradictory (that and the pervasive hypocrisy I saw around me). I think it is fair to say that I was largely attracted to Judaism because of the " childish anthropomorphic images of God" in the Torah, which seemed to make a lot of sense if one wanted to explore the notion of a superior being, rather than an all knowing, all present, all good being who would condemn people to eternal hell fire for the "sin" of lusting in their hearts.

But each to their own.

~179

I don't see anything to forgive or excuse, and I'm blushing that you think my traditions are "great."

>180 Tid: As I said earlier, my core Christian beliefs do not include Creationism, so whether Augustine is correct or not is really not the key issue. Augustine also would never had said that there were two distinct writers for the first two chapters of Genesis. Would he be wrong about that?

Do I believe in Creationism? Yes. Do I believe that this belief is necessary for salvation? No.

You speak of other choices, but what are those choices? If one cannot explain how things came to be, then there must be an answer, even if that answer is a supernatural answer.

>181 Tid: "see, he replaces an external God with an internal one, which isn't too far from Hindu philosophy"

So going with Hindu philosophy is better than going with Christian philosophy?

Augustine also would never had said that there were two distinct writers for the first two chapters of Genesis.

Interesting question. I think you're right he wouldn't have said it, although, as I understand it, Augustine's hermeneutics didn't really care about the human author per se. But he believed that Mark was written as a simplified written epitome of Luke and Matthew. So I don't think he'd be utterly confounded by the notion.

>184 ambrithill: Augustine also would never had said that there were two distinct writers for the first two chapters of Genesis

Augustine didn't say it, but then the state of biblical scholarship at the time didn't necessarily give him enough knowledge to consider that option. But that's very different from claiming he would never have said it.

>185 ambrithill: So going with Hindu philosophy is better than going with Christian philosophy?

I don't think that's what Tid is saying. Just because some aspects of Christianity can be considered in terms which are familiar to Hinduism or some other religion does not mean we are rejecting Christianity in favour of the other. The idea that God is within is not exclusive to Spong, although I suspect that most Christians would disagree with him that the immanent God replaces the transcendent one; most would want to hold the immanent and transcendent in creative tension.

>184 ambrithill:-187: But practically every patristic exegete--including Augustine and Origen--did recognize that there are two different creation stories in Genesis and therefore tried to understand how it could be that "male and female he created them" in Gen. 1:27, but that God creates Adam first, then the animals, then finally Eve in Gen. 2. They all recognized that, at the absolutely literal level, there is a contradiction here; and they worked to find interpretive solutions to that contradiction.

Heck, if I were forced to summarize the principal characteristic of patristic exegesis in one phrase, it would be that: "finding interpretive solutions to textual contradictions."

184 185

What other choices? Well, for one thing, the scientific disciplines of astronomy, physics, cosmology, etc, have given us a picture of the origins of the universe far more extraordinary than the Genesis tale, which was written by people who had no knowledge of those things.

For another thing, you have to take into account that Genesis was written by the Israelites, long before Christianity came into being. It is not a Christian's story to interpret, except academically. It is known that the Israelites / Jews used a lot of parables and 'teaching stories', and the Genesis creation myth is quite likely to be one such. Sorry, "two such".

Then there is the choice of "ultimate cause", speculated upon from Aristotle (and before) onwards. If one goes with the idea of ultimate cause, one current theory posed by String Theory is that our universe is one bubble in a multiverse full of such bubbles, and possibly started from a singularity at the centre of a black hole in another universe. Then one would ask "how did the multiverse arise?". And so on, back and back.

----

As John says in 187, I didn't use the word "better". Obviously to a Christian the concepts of Hinduism might seem quite alien, and vice versa. However, as John also says, the concept of an 'immanent God' is not unique to Hinduism. I could have cited Quakerism, or medieval Christian mysticism such as John of the Cross, who speaks of the individual soul merging with the (immanent) Godhead. Citing Hindu philosophy was imply a device to point out that different religious philosophies may be closer at heart than at first thought.

>184 You speak of other choices, but what are those choices? If one cannot explain how things came to be, then there must be an answer, even if that answer is a supernatural answer.

Well, some might include God creating evolution (and physics, and chemistry; to use human terminology for aspects of the universe). Or the big bang. And, as the Universe evolved, at key stages He saw that it was good. And, as life developed (all in accordance with the great, complex laws He established as He created) He saw that it was good. And when humans developed, He made them in his image by placing a soul within them, so that they could know God; so that God could talk to them; so that they could understand Him and worship Him and live lives far greater than evolution alone could have provided them.

Just an off the cuff example of a way someone might see a God-created Universe (or multi-verse) that is consistent with the parables of Genesis and what humans have observed about the current and historical creation. Mainly, my point is that a supernatural answer doesn't have to be a literal reading of either of the Genesis stories.

Os.

If one cannot explain how things came to be, then there must be an answer, even if that answer is a supernatural answer.

There is always the answer "we don't know". And without some sort of evidence, "supernatural causes" is not really an answer. It is just an assertion. A wild-assed guess even.

>191 StormRaven: "There is always the answer "we don't know". And without some sort of evidence, "supernatural causes" is not really an answer. It is just an assertion. A wild-assed guess even."

And the same could be said about the lack of a supernatural cause.

> 182 I am sorry to hear that you "left" Christianity. However, Christianity is not theological doctrines at its center, it is Jesus!!

193

Sorry, it's much more complex than that. Christianity didn't exist in Jesus's day, and even IF he founded his "Church on the rock of St Peter" as Catholics believe, few would accept it has evolved as he would have wanted. On the other hand, Messianic Jews would not describe themselves as Christians, yet are probably closer to the early church than anything else in Christendom, accepting Jesus as their Messiah but in purely a Judaic context.

And the same could be said about the lack of a supernatural cause.

No, actually the same could not be said about the lack of a supernatural cause. You see, asserting that there is a supernatural cause is adding an extra item in the mix, an item that is not in any way supported by evidence.

It is a decidedly different thing to say that there is a lack of a supernatural cause because of a complete lack of evidence for such a cause. You see, "we don't know" means "we don't know". And as a result, there is no basis to posit a supernatural cause. Not positing a supernatural cause is a very different thing than positing one.

195

And if a supernatural cause WERE found, why then, it would no longer be supernatural! So it is completely ruled out
:-)

~193

No, I haven't found Jesus. Is he lost again !!

>197 lawecon: Why don't you try searching for Him and finding out.

~198

I'll be happy to supply material support to a search party, but you, of course, couldn't be a member. You've found him already, at least in your imagination. It must be nice to have regular conversations with a 2,000 year old man. (And here I never knew you spoke Aramaic.)

>199 lawecon: I don't have to speak Aramaic, because He, being God, can speak English, or any other language, just fine.

And please, don't just provide material support, join the search for yourself. That way, when you find Him you will know that He is real, not just some imaginary character.

"I don't have to speak Aramaic, because He, being God, can speak English, or any other language, just fine."

My goodness, how versatile. Of course, He did write His Word in King James' English.

"And please, don't just provide material support, join the search for yourself. That way, when you find Him you will know that He is real, not just some imaginary character."

No, you see, I'm not into hunts. Be we have a lot of people out here in the West who routinely form parties to pursue JackALopes, so I'm sure we could marshall a search party for Jesus. As a 2,000 year old guy he can't be moving that fast. (I just wish he wouldn't get lost all the time.)

~194

"On the other hand, Messianic Jews would not describe themselves as Christians, yet are probably closer to the early church than anything else in Christendom, accepting Jesus as their Messiah but in purely a Judaic context."

Oh, you mean the Chabad. But I really think that most of them have given up that thing about Schneerson coming back and all...... I mean, it is a little past the third day or the third year. (If one counts some of the premortem silliness
it is almost up to the third decade. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yechi#The_.22Yechi.22_statement )

But, hey, some other "messiahs" are still expected by their followers after a much longer time. So maybe there still is hope.

202

No, no. I'd never heard of the "Schneerson" thing until I read that. I'm talking about a group that have accepted Jesus as the Jewish Messiah - neither mainstream Christianity nor Judaism know quite how to 'categorise' them (Jews, Christians, neither?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messianic_Judaism

~203

Oh, you mean the silly ploy where evangelical Christians go around and try to convert Jews by superficially adopting some of their ritual dress, holidays, etc. Yah, they are quite amusing. Always good for a chuckle. http://www.jewishaz.com/issues/story.mv?071123+messianic Did you know that Jesus' "real name" is Jeshua (and other fascinating facts)? Did you know that the major Christian booksellers have an approved Jewish translation of the New Testament by these guys? http://www.christianbook.com/jewish-new-testament-commentary/david-stern/9789653... (Look for the name "David Stern." He is a biggie.)

Personally, I prefer the former Christians who go around and reconvert to Judaism when they find out that their ancestors were forced into Christianity. http://cryptojew.org/main_page.html

He's not talking about Schneerson, but about Messianic Judaism. I'm pretty amazed you've never heard of them, Lawecon.

Messianic Jews would describe themselves as Christian, but also as Jews.

~205

Did you not read #204 before posting this? I not only have "heard of them" but I read a biography of Ruben (the founder of Jews For Jesus) authored by his daughter just a month ago. I understand exactly what they are, how they arose, and their purpose. They play on matters very much like your purported confusion over who is a Jew and who is an adherent of Judaism.

And for the second or third time, Tid is not a "he."

Ah, glad to know you know of them. I was confused by your confusion.

> 201 "My goodness, how versatile. Of course, He did write His Word in King James' English"

Of course, back to the cynicism and sarcasm.

And why does it not surprise me that you would know about hunting Jackalopes?

But you still refuse to seek Jesus, for which I am sorry, because He is the Messiah that was promised to the Jews, as well as the Savior to all who will trust in Him.

From my experience with Messianic Jews, Jews for Jesus was originally a group composed of Jewish people who converted to Evangelical Christianity, not Evangelicals posing as Jews. Although I have not had any contact with them for the last ten years, and the nature of the group may have changed. One of my high school acquaintances was in that group.

I do know of Christians who are enamored with Judaism, and who adopt mannerisms, like keeping Sabbath, or even keeping kosher. (I only use the word mannerism for these activities because of who is doing them, not because of the activities themselves, so if LE is offended by that term, I do not mean to offend.)

"From my experience with Messianic Jews, Jews for Jesus was originally a group composed of Jewish people who converted to Evangelical Christianity, not Evangelicals posing as Jews. Although I have not had any contact with them for the last ten years, and the nature of the group may have changed."

From my experience with Jews For Jesus (which is, incidentally, only one of a much larger group of "Messianic Jews" who are quite diverse in background), the groups is and was comprised mostly of those who either were never Jewish in any sense or were only Jewish in the sense defined by Adolph Hitler (e.g., they had at least one Jewish grandparent, but no necessary personal contact with Judaism - i.e., they were at best "secular" or genetic Jews) Such types were recruited to engage in certain facially Jewish trappings and rituals while proselytizing actively for Evangelical Christianity.

How did your experience differ? Was your friend an active observant Jew who then converted to Christianity and became a Jew For Jesus?

I only knew this person as a Christian, so I only know what he told me. But according to him he was an observant Jew. I have no idea what he really meant by that, and given the tongue lashing I got from LE the last time I tried to refer to Jewish practices, I am not entering that thicket again.

Over the years I had a few people who joined our church who self identified as Jewish. Both were refugees from synagogues with type A rabbis, one who was publicly berated by her rabbi because her Jewish boyfriend couldn't properly explain the story of Esther. The other was told his children were not welcome because he had them baptized. (His wife was Christian.)

~211

I am not quite certain what the second sentence in your second paragraph means, but the third sentence in your second paragraph has nothing to do with type A rabbis. If you are baptized as a Christian you are not welcome to participate in a Jewish community unless you are doing so with the intention of (or at least the interest in) converting. Period. You don't say "Hey, I'm a Christian, and now I'd like to get up on the bima and read from the Torah during your next service." Similarly, unless your acquaintance was bringing his children to shul with the thought that baptizing them had been a mistake and he wanted to explore converting them, they would not be welcome.

I am somewhat surprised that this apparently surprises you. Would I be welcomed into your Church community with the expectation that I'd go around during services, or just generally as part of the community, and talk to people about how Christianity was a sham that no thinking person could believe in? I doubt it. But that is the Jewish experience with Christians, even (or particularly) with Jews For Jesus.

137> 'This is also where we need to draw the distinction between reading modern secondary literature and reading sacred texts. I could read dozens and dozens of modern studies of Islam (and have, including, again, Smith and those of Bernard Lewis), but that's not going to get me very far nor is it much worth unless I have also read the Qur'an.'

'Sacred texts. Hmmm. I guess this is where my 'constant' question remains unanswered: why is a book which was not even cohesively formed for several years (some say three-hundred, others say less), finally put down on paper not by the persons purported to be the authors, but done so by scribes - who at times were less than perfect in their use of words, and other issues with texts - considered to be the 'word of god?' If the god described in the work is real in the manner described, then he did not write it, and if he did 'write' it, then how does one come to terms with some of the horror between the covers. The Quran is no different in this, from my limited studies. And, if both books are 'the word of god,' then why are they not being followed to the letter?

Another question: why are these two books considered more 'important' than a combined journal prepared by scientists and explorers whose notes were put to paper by each individual and then combined for the five original volumes of Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East? Granted, Spalding's books may be considered 'modern' in comparison to the bible, since the expedition undertaken by Spalding and the others was just over 100 years ago. But, for me, the question remains, especially when instances in the Spalding diaries ring more true, based on my real-life experiences.

The other aspect of this is that from early childhood I learned that 'Christians' seemed to talk a good game, but rarely practiced what they preached. Sunday morning seemed like a 'put-some-money-in-the-dish, Frank-you-came-home-drunk-again' event, from a child's view. The cruelties I saw inflicted on children who were not Christians, in a small town on the East coast of the USA, were eye openers. What brought it even closer to home for me was how they reacted to a more feminine boy who lived his life in terror because of what the local churches said about 'his kind.' He didn't even know if he was gay, yet, but they felt compelled to tell their children he was and his life was a living hell.

I guess the bottom line is I have yet to see where the benefit of organized religion has ever been greater than its detriment to humanity. This is just an opinion, of course, and I am still searching for more answers.

>213 K.J.: from early childhood I learned that 'Christians' seemed to talk a good game, but rarely practiced what they preached

That's a valid experience, of course. Others have had a very different experience of the better side of Christianity.

>213 K.J.:: From early childhood I learned that pretty much every group of humans with aspirations to be something better seemed to talk a good game, but rarely practiced what they preached.

Would I be welcomed into your Church community with the expectation that I'd go around during services, or just generally as part of the community, and talk to people about how Christianity was a sham that no thinking person could believe in? I doubt it. But that is the Jewish experience with Christians, even (or particularly) with Jews For Jesus.

I cannot speak for congregations, but yes, you would be welcome, and yes, we have had members like you in my congregation. I do not know why they came, but when asked they would say pretty openly that they thought Christianity was a crock. One member in particular was an attender for more than 50 years, although to be fair, he joined and was baptized at the age of 95. (Lest anyone think this was a death bed conversion, he did die soon after...five years soon after.)

It was not my job to police the beliefs of the congregation. I would preach what I thought was pretty decent biblical teaching, but it was up to individual believers as to what they took from it. Given the fact that most of the congregation has a Ph.D in something, I was probably out of my league trying to tell them what to believe. They were smart people, and they could figure it out.

That rabbi was perfectly welcome to not welcome anyone she chose to not welcome. Over the years several of the attenders of my church had done Bar or Bat Mizvah's there, and I was usually welcome to attend. Again, that was up to the parents or the child in question. Maybe the synagogue up here is an outlier, and the rabbi who asked my friend to leave was just trying to get them back on track. I don't know, and it is not really my business.

212

I don't argue with your premise, not at all. I only raised the subject of Messianic Jews as being a group that is arguably closer to early Christians (who probably referred to themselves as Jewish anyway, and almost certainly started as a minor Jewish cult), than the majority of subsequent mainstream Christian denominations. I certainly never argued they were 'good Jews'!

If you are baptized as a Christian you are not welcome to participate in a Jewish community unless you are doing so with the intention of (or at least the interest in) converting.

The people baptized were children. So, you're saying that, if the Papacy had given Edgardo Mortara back to his parents, he'd have to grow up before he could participate in Jewish worship?

The fuller story is that the parents wanted to expose the children to the traditions of both parents and let each child choose which path they wanted to take. So for a while they went to synagogue on Saturdays and church on Sundays, until they were told not to return to synagogue.

~218 -219

You know, I'm really not surprised with you guys. But assuming ignorance rather than prevarication, here's some principles you may not have run across before:

(1) If you are baptized as a Christian those who don't know better might think you are a Christian. (Strangely, this is exactly what Tim and Arctic and John have been arguing for months, but now, somehow, it depends on whether you gave full and informed consent to the baptism. Very odd reversal when convenient.) Indeed, up this point I haven't even heard the condition "those who know better." (That is the position I've been trying to get them to endorse, and they've refused to endorse. Their position has been "if you're baptized you are a Christian, period".

(2) Christians are not Jews. Indeed, during most of their history Christians have been vehemently antisemitic. Their only interest in Jews, when they are not killing them or stealing their property has been to convert them. That is, in fact, very much in accord with the attitudes from their Scriptures, which just can't figure out why the Jews weren't the first to receive "their Messiah" and didn't convert en mass to an acknowledgement of "their Messiah," as all the previous prophets had predicted. Since they didn't, however, they can only be regarded as the spawn of Satan. Perhaps the most liberal attitude of the traditional Christian Church is that Jews shouldn't be just slaughtered but kept around as a bad example to the rest of humanity Augustine and the Jews

(3) Given (1) and (2) Christians are not welcomed to become a part of Jewish communities. They can, of course, visit (which is best done through invitation, solicited or otherwise), but they are not Jews, they are perceived as basically either hostile to or predatory upon Jews, and they are not welcome to become a member of most Jewish Communities. I guess, however, that things are different in Arctic's world. Undoubtedly he wouldn't mind at all if Muslims attended his Church, spread out their prayer rugs in the aisles and prayed in the direction of Mecca. (Right. Sure he wouldn't.)

What is different in my world is that I don't police what my congregants believe. That others do is of no concern to me. I would feel the same way about Muslims who spread out prayer rugs as I would about Christians who burst into Christmas hymns at a synagogue--totally inappropriate behavior. But if a Muslim wanted to come check things out, fine. (I am surprised you don't see the difference between attending a worship service, either as an onlooker or participant, and disrupting the service.

I do not quibble with your 1 or 2. Its just different from how I did things. I had my reasons, other people have different reasons. Again, it is not up to me to make up rules for them.

I have attended Jewish services, always by invitation, and was always warmly welcomed. I guess I have to add, for LE's benefit, that I did not celebrate communion, or baptize anyone while I was visiting. I should also add that I was with friends.

~221

Try to get it straight, Arctic. (I have said it several times now, but apparently you need more than several times.)

We weren't talking about "attending services" as some sort of visitor, we were talking about being a MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY.

This whole sideline started when you referred to an acquaintance of yours who "... was told ....his children were not welcome because he had them baptized." I presumed you meant welcomed as Jews into a Jewish community, when your acquaintance had no intention of having the children converted. I thought that was clear from my first response, but, somehow, apparently not.

Now if that is what you meant, then, no, Christian children are not going to be welcomed as members of a Jewish community. You are a member of a Jewish community if you are born a Jew and accept Judaism or if you are converted into Judaism. You aren't a member of a Jewish community otherwise, and you aren't going to be "welcomed" as a member when you are not a member. Judaism, you may recall having heard, is a tribal religion. You aren't a member of the tribe, you have been explicitly initiated into another tribe. You aren't going to welcomed as a member of the tribe.

Why is this so hard for you to understand?

I think the "I presumed..." part is a constant problem in our communication. Once you presume, you then assume a host of things, many of which are ...well a pigment of your own fantasy.

~223

So, what the hell were you saying when you referred to your friend's experience? (You see, I have to presume because you often are not very clear about what you are saying.)

All I was saying that the rabbi at the synagogue decided that, because the child was baptized, they were not welcome to attend. That kind of thwarted the parent's agenda of letting the child decide which religion to accept, if any.

I only mentioned this because they came as "refugees" from a congregation that was not open to that practice. We were. The rabbi had her reasons. I had mine. I think I went out of my way to say that what she did was well within her authority, but that it was not the way I did things.

I never said they brought any Christian practices to the synagogue, except for their decision to let the child be immersed in two religious traditions. I never said they did anything close to pulling out prayer mats and praying to Mecca. That was you.

So let me restate it. The congregation I pastored was open to people who wanted to explore what we were about. I did not set limits on what they had to believe to be there. The rabbi had a different view. The family was a little offended, but they dealt with it. Maybe they should not have been. According to you, they got what they deserve.

Whatever.

~225

"All I was saying that the rabbi at the synagogue decided that, because the child was baptized, they were not welcome to attend. That kind of thwarted the parent's agenda of letting the child decide which religion to accept, if any."

For the fourth time now, that is right. That is right practice. Obviously the mother wasn't Jewish. The children weren't, therefore, Jewish (except in recent years among the Reform who have readopted patrilinear descent). If the parents had them baptized that removed any ambiguity. They were Christian. Christians are not welcome to participate AS MEMBERS OF A JEWISH COMMUNITY. They can come to services as guests, infrequently, not every week. They will be treated respectfully if they act respectfully. But they are not members. They are not members. They are not members. They shouldn't act as if they were members, and they shouldn't expect to be accepted as members if they are not members.

I'm sorry if that state of affairs isn't satisfactory to you. But that is the way it is. If you want to be a religious Jew, you must first be a Jew. It is a necessary condition. Period.

Now if the parent's plan was not to have made the decision for the child, then I don't see why they had the child baptized. As I noted above, and you and John and Tim have noted previously. Baptism makes the choice, at least as far as Judaism is concerned. If you are a Christian you are not a Jew. Period.

I never said it was unsatisfactory for me. I just said I did things differently. Unless you assume a difference is overt rejection of another person's practice.

That is the part that is all in your head, the part where your presumptions are running neck and neck with your wrong assumptions.

Oh. When you say right practice, are you assuming EVERY religious tradition has to practice this way? Maybe I am making unwarranted assumptions about what YOU are saying.

~227
"Oh. When you say right practice, are you assuming EVERY religious tradition has to practice this way? Maybe I am making unwarranted assumptions about what YOU are saying."

I am saying AGAIN what I have said to you and others, in this very sort of discussion, many times before: Jewish Law is generally flexible and open to many interpretations, but there are some boundary matters that are not open to interpretation or argument.

One of those boundary conditions we discussed previously was that you couldn't worship idols and be a Jew.

Another border condition is that you can't be a member of another religion and be a Jew. Judaism is not Buddhism. If you are a Christian, you cannot be a member of Judaism or of a Jewish religious community. You simply can't. It violates one of the boundary conditions.

So this rabbi wasn't "type A," she wasn't being cranky or mean or fundamentalist, she was just enforcing the universally acknowledged boundary conditions. The children were not Jews to start with. Their parents, regardless of what may have been their intent, removed ambiguity about their religious affiliation by having them baptized. (Again, this is what you and Tim and John have repeatedly told me is what makes one Christian. This isn't my idea, it is yours.) End of story. If these children grow up and find out that they don't like the choice their parents made for them, they can denounce Christianity and go through the rather lengthy process of becoming a Jew. If a child is male and hasn't been circumcised he must be circumcised as a part of making the choice to become a Jew, but that is hardly the only requirement.

Now I certainly don't care how you run your Church or how any Church is run. You can have prayer rugs in the aisles, you can have hari kirshna processions as a part of the service. You can knell or stand or flop around on the floor or handle snakes. Do whatever you want, but don't go dictating to Jews how to form their communities or making assumptions about those communities that are antithetical to their core nature.

This discussion is, indeed, reminiscent of our previous discussion in that "there you go doing it again." In our previous discussion you assumed that a person couldn't be a Jew, or at least a "good Jew," because he ate pork and didn't keep shabbat. In this discussion you are assuming that a rabbi had to be "type a" because she told Christians that they were not a part of a Jewish community.

All this tells me is that one of my prejudices about most Christians is accurate: You guys don't have any detailed knowledge about Judaism at all, you have no real desire to obtain any such knowledge, but you are continually making judgments about what Jews and Judaism are all about. It is as pitiful as those ignorant Jews that believe that all you Christians are idol worshippers (and as accurate).

The judgments we are making are mostly in your head.

~229

I am just reading what you're writing. Perhaps you Really mean something different than what you write, but I can't read your mind. All I can do is poison your well or kill your children to make Passover matzos.

>227 Arctic-Stranger: Unless you assume a difference is overt rejection of another person's practice.

Ah, therein lies the roots of so many misunderstandings in these LT conversations. Very few people seem to be able to accept a win-win situation where both are right. Win-lose ("I'm right therefore you must be wrong") seems to be far more popular.

~231

Now that is, at best, a very strange comment. Judaism, for instance, is, in my view, very latitudinarian. Many different interpretations on most of the Law are, indeed, explicitly and simultaneously right. (It is one of those things that Westerners have difficulty grasping.) You don't have to be Jewish to be "saved" ("have a role in the world to come") you just have to abide by some very very basic behavioral rules.

But I get the impression from you, John, and I am now starting to get the impression from Arctic, that your liberal Christianities go a large step beyond such views. Although you seem to believe that certain very specific practices - child molestation, for instance - are definitely wrong. You also say, repeatedly, that you reallly reallly can't determine where the behavioral boundaries of your own people are at (beyond the barren formal act of baptism).

It is one thing, in my view, to say that a number of people can differ and still not be beyond certain boundaries. It is one thing to note that there are fundamentally different groups of people, each of which is "entitled" to its own views. It is quite another thing, however, to say that "I personally and for my group don't think that there are any boundaries. Beyond being baptized you are a Christian if you say you are a Christian." That is what I'm hearing. That is, in fact, what I've heard from you for some time. I have even given you horrible examples of those who were baptized and said they were are Christians, and your reaction is "Well, they may have been right, I can't say. They may have just been bad Christians, but still Christians."

This nihilism, this complete absence of any behavioral boundaries to define your own people is quite as disturbing to me as the traditional Christian particularism that one "must accept Jesus Christ as one's personal savior or burn eternally in hell fire." And I think that ther is a flip side to it. Since you can't define the boundaries of your own people, you have a tendency to define the boundaries of other people for those people - so if you can't say that X is not a Christian, you CAN say that "to be a Jew you must do Y and Z." But as I said above to Arctic, you do what you want in your own Church, just keep your hands off of my community (and, along the way, please don't, as Arctic and Tim frequently do, tell me what the people of my community should do to be True Jews, sorry that they aren't Scots).

232

The problem which you have outlined, is most probably enshrined in the difference between the three Abrahamic faiths. It seems - despite the Sunni/Shi´ite split and all the different branches of Judaism from Ultra-Orthodox to Reform - that Judaism and Islam share a comparatively tight definition of what each means and stands for and believes. This contrasts with Christianity which began as a Jewish sect and has since gone through so many transformations that it is almost unrecognisable from what began with a peripatetic ?Essene rabbi who travelled around Galilee with a radical message of love and God's "kingdom".

It is therefore much harder - as threads such as this confirm - to define precisely what Christianity is, and those who trot out the easy formulae may be utterly sincere in what they believe, but they do not reflect the near bottomless well of what it means to be a Christian. This difficulty of definition is not necessarily a bad thing though; it gives groups such as Quakers the freedom to be what they feel they are, practice their faith in their own inimitable way, and yet still be free to call themselves "Christian". For those who need clear and solid boundaries and definitions, this is inherently a difficult thing; fundamentalists get around the problem by falling back on 'The Book', which is their boundary and their definition. (Just don't point out, à la Dawkins, all the contradictions within it).

However, where I absolutely agree with you is: IF (and I mean IF) it's been said by Christians that they have a right to define the boundaries of other faith communities, then that is wrong. But I'm not sure that anyone has actually done so in this LT Group?

>228 lawecon: (lawecon): I believe you have stated that you were once a Christian before becoming Jewish. Were you baptized at any point? Is your mother Jewish? If not, how is it that you became Jewish?

234

Technically, I suppose I am Jewish too - my maternal grandmother, who died when my mother was a little girl, was Jewish. But since I was baptised a Christian and brought up C of E, I don't know what that really means, as far as Jewishness goes.

~233

I think you are missing the point, so let me say it yet again. It isn't a matter of "a definition," it is a matter of boundaries on possible definitions. If I say, as I said to John, "Was Hitler a Christian, and he responds (as he did) "I don't really know." there is something wrong. There are then no boundaries at all and the term "Christian" becomes vacuous. It is like this exchange:

Speaker 1: What color is this object?

Speaker 2: Red

Speaker 1: Well then, what color is this object?

Speaker 2: Red

Speaker 1: And what color is this object?

Speaker 2: Red

Speaker 1: Most people would respond that those three objects are red, blue and yellow, respectively.

Speaker 2: They are all red as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 1: Is there anything that is not red?

"However, where I absolutely agree with you is: IF (and I mean IF) it's been said by Christians that they have a right to define the boundaries of other faith communities, then that is wrong. But I'm not sure that anyone has actually done so in this LT Group?"

I don't think there there is a "claim of right," being made. I do think that many Christians are grossly ignorant of Judaism, think that all other religions are just variants on the patterns that are accustomed to in Christianity, and, in memory of Paul, feel quite comfortable defining Jewish concepts and make judgments about what Jews should be doing as Jews. If you haven't seen that, stick around.

~234

We probably haven't been through this since you joined. The rest of you just skip this post.

I was baptised and confirmed in the Methodist Church, but left shortly thereafter. (Around age 15 to 16.) My family tried other churches for a year or so thereafter and then eventually gave up. I had effectively given up before then, because my reasons for leaving were much more than just institutions and policies. I had thought about what I was taught during confirmation and found it wholly unsatisfactory as an organized world/life view.

For the next approximate 30 years I was somewhere in the spectrum of deism/agnosticism/atheism. I probably had a more or less Jeffersonian view of Jesus and his time, but I certainly didn't think that he was "the son of G_d" or that there was some sort of personal G_d who was continually looking over everyone's shoulder. That feeling intensified when I read this volume From The Maccabees To The Mishnah because it was offered by The History Book Club. I think it is probably accurate to state that at that point I moved from feeling that what I had been taught as a Christian was simply muddled and mistaken to thinking that it was a deliberately contrived lie. To put that differently, not only was Jesus not G_d, but all the major background "facts" concerning the story about him were false.

About a decade or so later my wife, who had insisted that she did not want to be married by clergy of any kind because of her independent and prior reaction to being "born again" in college, said she wanted to look into religion again. We tried out the Quakers, but found that, while they were satisfactorily noncommittal about Jesus, they were also not what they once had been in rejecting Earthly Authorities who challenged one's conscience. She then stumbled across Judaism and convinced me to have a look. I took a look and then, like most things that capture my interest, ended up with a library on the topic and very strong commitments to A CERTAIN SORT of Judaism. The thing that really impresses me about Judaism, at least the sort of Judaism I endorse, is how completely alien it is to Christian thought patterns. Muslims are much closer to Christians than Jews. Coincidentally, Jewish thought patterns are very similar to the thought patterns I had evolved before being exposed to Judaism.

>237 lawecon:: Thank you for the background. If it isn't too personal question, may I ask whether you would be accepted as a Jew by the rabbi we've been discussing who turned away the children who had also been baptized?

~238

The question seems at best rather vague.

If you are asking whether those who are baptized can attend a Jewish service at about any synogogue, then the answer is "Of course they can."

If you are asking whether I would expect ANY rabbi to "turn away" as members of his or her community those who have been baptized and have no present interest in converting, then the answer is "of course I would expect exactly that."

If you are asking whether a baptized Christian can convert to Judaism - ANY sort of Judaism, the answer is that all branches of Judaism accept converts from Christianity, albeit the training requirements and the after-conversion commitments may vary considerably.

Did you bother to read the above rather extensive exchange with Arctic before asking this question?

>239 lawecon:: I did read the exchange, but I think I failed to make clear just what I was trying to say in 238. Let me try again. What you didn't tell me in 237 is whether you formally converted to Judaism. That is my question: would you, lawecon, generally be recognized as a Jew by other Jews?

(I'm not trying to be snide. I'm just trying to understand something that I have little background to understand.)

~240

I formally converted to Judaism through a conservative shul/synagogue/rabbi. (The rabbi has since formed his own shul with a definite orthodox bent in all matters except for gender roles in ritual.) This means that I would be recognized as a Jew by all Reform Jews, all Conservative Jews, but generally not by Orthodox Jews. (The modern orthodox are now somewhat divided on this topic.)

Conversion in all branches of Judaism requires (1) a course of study, usually for at least 6 months (this rabbi required a year), (2) a commitment as to how one will practice Judaism, (3) circumcision if you are male or a drawing of blood if you are already circumcised, (4) examination and approval by a beit din. (5) ritual formalities such as reciting the Shema in Hebrew and certain prayers in Hebrew both before and during immersion. The contents of (1) and (2) and the composition of a valid beit din differ between the branches of Judaism and between the types of Orthodoxy.

As I said in an earlier exchange with Arctic, however, there are many interpretations of what it means to be Jewish (a member of the Jewish People) and what it means to be an observant Jew. I think most Jews other than the Haredi would recognize me as a Jew, the way Judaism is structured, views vary markedly as to what it means to be an observant Jew.

>236 lawecon: it is a matter of boundaries on possible definitions

There are boundaries to Christianity.

A Christian would normally be expected to believe certain core elements of the faith, but as Tid says in >233 Tid:, there are different views on what those elements are. However a Jew is not a Christian, a Muslim is not a Christian.

For most Christians, baptism is the formal entry into the Christian community. Someone who has been baptised and who has not renounced it or joined another faith community or become an atheist would generally be considered a Christian.

Christianity teaches good behaviour, but does not automatically expel people who don't live up to those teachings. If it did there would be virtually no Christians, as there aren't many people in the world who can live up to "love thy neighbour" all the time. But more than that, Christianity is all about love, forgiveness and reconciliation. We are a church of sinners as well as saints.

Maybe some people are more comfortable with vaguer boundaries than other? And less comfortable with forgiveness and reconciliation?

Christianity teaches good behaviour, but does not automatically expel people who don't live up to those teachings.

Christianity, at least the modern, Western kind, is largely based on orthodoxy - "believe and be saved." Judaism, by contrast, is based on orthopraxy. (Islam sort of splits the difference, requiring both correct belief and correct action.)

I wonder if that's what's causing some of the disconnect in these conversations. Lawecon quite rightly focuses on orthopraxy, as that is of such importance in Jewish practice (at least so it seems to me in my studies and conversations). Christianity, though, or some sects of it, lean so far in the opposite direction that you get the "deathbed conversions" of bloodthirsty serial killers, and so on. And in (some sects of) Christianity, that deathbed attestation of belief is enough to render the bloodthirsty serial killer "saved" and counted as a Christian, despite his whole previous life of distinctly un-Christian actions.

Interestingly, my understanding is that, in the Jewish tradition, t'shuva - repentance - is always open to the Jew, as well, and Jews who have gone astray -- the "Jews for Jesus" and so on -- have always the option to return to the fold and practice Judaism again. However, it does seem that -- again the focus on praxis -- this requires the person to commit with their actions to Jewish observance, and not just to make a statement of belief.

Lawecon, what do you think of the actual situation—where the family is going to synagogue as a way of connecting with original Jewish faith and letting the children decide?

As for baptism invalidating ones Jewishness, and requiring a baptized Jew to re-convert, I'm sure you are aware that this is a live issue, and that rabbis would disagree with you. For example, they would look to the Tractate Yebamoth ( http://www.come-and-hear.com/yebamoth/yebamoth_47.html#47b_33 ) which argues that if a pagan converts to Judaism and then reverts and marries a Jew, the marriage is valid (as marriage to a pagan would not be). It is presumed that his children are Jewish too (if they would be Jewish anyway, that is, passing over the question of descent). If this applies to someone who has intentionally left Judaism how much more so to a child who didn't intend anything at all? If you stick with your understanding, could I deprive a synagogue of Jews by turning a squirt gun on the congregation?

237

May I ask a question that sounds flippant but is not meant to be - I do want some understanding : would I, with a maternal Jewish grandmother whom I never knew, and not brought up in Judaism, be regarded as authentically Jewish as yourself, who converted to Judaism? Or is it a meaningless question to most Jews (but perhaps not to a few, e.g. Zionists or the passport authorities in Israel)?

243

I don't think "modern, Western" Christianity is centred specifically on "believe and be saved", at least, not those denominations that are 1) not Lutheran and 2) not fundamentalist. Quakers, Catholics, most Anglicans, Non-Conformists, for a start, wouldn't recognise it as a working definition imposed on their congregations. There is usually a set of beliefs involved but not required, though precisely what is often left to the individual (who is free to reject, for example, literal interpretations of scripture, the Virgin Birth, the physical nature of miracles, even bodily resurrection), but the concept of being "saved" through belief would be anathema to the largest denominations. They would ask of a member to "live a good life, as exemplified by Jesus", or "love thy neighbour", to pray regularly or meditate on aspects of scripture, and so on.

~243

"Interestingly, my understanding is that, in the Jewish tradition, t'shuva - repentance - is always open to the Jew, as well, and Jews who have gone astray -- the "Jews for Jesus" and so on -- have always the option to return to the fold and practice Judaism again. However, it does seem that -- again the focus on praxis -- this requires the person to commit with their actions to Jewish observance, and not just to make a statement of belief."

I think that the last sentence is the key one. However one defines Judaism, it is about practices (right acts and observed rituals) not about what one "believes" or confesses one believes. There is, of course, no question that one may repent, make recompense, and thereafter live a life as a fully observant Jew who is a honored member of one's community. There is little question, at least it was Maimonides view, that you can do so after a nominal conversion to another faith and a return to Judaism.

I think that one of the problems that people like Arctic and Tim are having is that Jews generally don't use terms like "community" metaphorically, as Christians seem to use those terms. You aren't "a member of the Church" if you simply profess Judaism among Gentiles. As a Jew, you are typically a member of a particular Jewish Community, usually centered around a synagogue or around a prayer group, or, at least, somehow centered. There is no metaphorical "membership." Similarly, outsiders can't "come and observe" for a couple decades so that their children can make a choice." Communities are communities, not public facilities. There are no observants, there are only participants.

~244

Tim, my new policy with you is that I'm not going to discuss these things. You already know the answers you want. Live with them.

~243

The first question is a sticky one, and is perhaps the main source of real division between the types of Judaism. The answers are perhaps surprising, but in assessing those answers, one has to sort out practice from theory.

All the Orthodox rabbis I have talked to about this question have said that you would be a Jew, but, of course, you would be a nonpracticing Jew, and, thus would have to make a commitment to a high level of observance (having your kitchen koshered, agreeing to have your children receive Jewish education, regularly attending services to which you walk on Shabbat, and innumerable smaller things) before being accepted into their communities. In other words, you'd have to do all the same things that a convert would do, but you would start out with the presumption that you were a daughter of Abraham.

The Reform rabbis tend to be a bit more honest. They would tell you that technically you are a Jew by Jewish Law, but that actually you aren't. You would thus be required to convert, and they would call it conversion.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

As to your second set of comments - I'm afraid I disagree. What I understand you to be saying is that the largest denominations (including Catholics, who, I believe, don't consider themselves a denomination) don't really require a profession of faith in core Christian beliefs - specifically, that Jesus is G_d incarnate who takes away the sins of the world and that an individual's belief in his saving grace is required for salvation from hell fire.

I agree that most of the largest denominations would not think that this was sufficient, but I am unaware of any of them that wouldn't profess that it was necessary. If you don't agree, try going to any of their ministers, telling them that you've looked into the matter and that you believe that the elements of this profession of faith are a bunch of bunk, but that you'd like to be accepted into their congregation.

There are, of course, many historically fringe types of Christianity that don't require a profession of faith in the core of Christian belief - Hicksite Quakers, Unitarian Universalists, etc. But they are a very small part of the total.

248

Thanks for enlightening me about the response of various branches of Judaism to the question of my 'Jewishness'.

As for your second part... Certainly, no Quakers or Unitarians would require that statement of belief at all, nor, I think, would Methodists. As for Anglicans, it's a long time since my confirmation so I can't remember what I was required to declare a belief in, or not. But one thing is certain, although lip service is paid to the Creed in every church service (which is a statement of belief, I agree), no-one checks if you actually believe it or not. Over the years, there have been Bishops of Durham who doubted much that was traditionally taken literally, e.g. the physical resurrection, individual vicars who have published books stating that there is no external supernatural God, and of course there is John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark, who rejects much traditional Christian dogma.

As for "an individual's belief in his saving grace is required for salvation from hell fire", only fundamentalists would even use the concept of hell fire in any kind of literal sense. Most denominations these days would reject that out of hand.

>248 lawecon: try going to any of their ministers, telling them that you've looked into the matter and that you believe that the elements of this profession of faith are a bunch of bunk, but that you'd like to be accepted into their congregation.

In the past it's been made clear to me by both Catholic and Protestant ministers nearby that I would be most welcome in their congregations, even though I'd made it clear that I didn't share their belief, that I was an unbeliever.

Although, you could be right. I didn't actually try telling them that elements of their profession of faith are a bunch of bunk. But there's a new vicar here now, I could try it. But he looks a tolerant sort of chap, so I might just get the same old response.

~249-50

You know, I really don't think that the "progressive" views of those in the heirachy of various "mainline" Churches has much effect on anything - other than perhaps protective cover for the intellectuals connected with those Churches.

Just try it out with your local minister or priest and see what the reaction is. My strongly held belief is that you will first be asked "So, why do you want to join this community with which you so strongly disagree?" followed by a much more belligerence and unequivocal reaction should you persist.

And you have to admit, this reaction makes a lot of sense. Why would you want to intrude on a community with which you fundamentally disagree? It is at best rather dishonest.

And if you don't think that what I have outlined is the fundamental core of Christianity, tell us what is. It is certainly isn't "be nice and be kind to people" or all Hindus, Jews, and I suspect most Muslims, would then be Christians and regarded by Christians as Christians. But they aren't, are they?

My strongly held belief is that you will first be asked "So, why do you want to join this community with which you so strongly disagree?" followed by a much more belligerence and unequivocal reaction should you persist.

I suspect that in many many cases, you'd be sadly disappointed.

251

"if you don't think that what I have outlined is the fundamental core of Christianity, tell us what is."

This is the basic problem which we've been discussing at great length in this thread. For starters, I don't think you can ignore 'progressive' views, even if it does take a long time for theological cutting edge research to make it to the pews.

But I'm prepared to bet that if you corraled together a few ministers / priests from various Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, Unitarian, Lutheran, Presbyterian, churches from around the world, and asked them to state what their personal core Christian beliefs are, you'd get a wide spread of answers (with some overlap, of course).

I personally think that anyone who said they were "walking in Jesus's footsteps", is giving as good an answer as any.

And what does that answer mean?

254

Meaning - someone who asks themself, whenever they are in any doubt about a choice they are faced with, "What would Jesus do or say about this?" That might mean they have to pray/meditate on it, but that is also what Jesus did.

All else, seems to me to be post hoc dogma, but I agree that's a personal view of an agnostic (albeit one who has had experience of High and Low Anglicanism, Quakerism, Congregationalism, Unitarianism..)

~255

"Meaning - someone who asks themself, whenever they are in any doubt about a choice they are faced with, "What would Jesus do or say about this?" That might mean they have to pray/meditate on it, but that is also what Jesus did."

Yes, and I suspect that the answers Jesus received and the answers that his self-described followers receive have often markedly differed. So the slogan doesn't seem to have much specific content, does it?

Just try it out with your local minister or priest and see what the reaction is.

Honestly, I don't think you've got a handle on what's likely and what's not.

While it's certainly true that most priests and ministers aren't going to baptize you unless they are sure you're "on board," attending Sunday services or mass just isn't something that "mainline" Christian churches police. This isn't for lack of effort or something--it's a deep cultural and religious attitude toward the thing.

In a Catholic context even someone officially excommunicated from the church is not asked to leave; in fact, they are encouraged and even obligated to come! What's true for someone excommunicated is even more true for a non-Christian. Numerous Christian churches around the world regularly receive non-Christian worshippers—a few, especially in North Africa, are used primarily by non-muslims!—and non-Christians regularly turn out for holidays in countries with mixed populations. If someone stood up in the middle of mass and yelled "Jesus was only a prophet! He wasn't the son of God!" you'd eventually be asked to leave. But polite, non-interference--prayers, listening, etc.--by a committed non-Christians are not going to get you kicked out of any "mainline" church I've ever heard of. I can't speak for what the evanglicals would do, but I'm guessing they'd be less likely to kick you out than to ask all the parishioners to gather round to help cast your demons out :)

~257

"Honestly, I don't think you've got a handle on what's likely and what's not."

Well, not wanting to model myself on your comments about Jewish practice, I will admit that is the case.

"While it's certainly true that most priests and ministers aren't going to baptize you unless they are sure you're "on board," attending Sunday services or mass just isn't something that "mainline" Christian churches police. This isn't for lack of effort or something--it's a deep cultural and religious attitude toward the thing."

That is nice, but what we were talking about is being a part of a community. Services are just one of those things that the community does regularly, but full participation in such services implies community membership - at least in my religion. Do you mean to tell me that I can be excommunicated from the Catholic Church and yet receive communion?

"In a Catholic context even someone officially excommunicated from the church is not asked to leave; in fact, they are encouraged and even obligated to come! What's true for someone excommunicated is even more true for a non-Christian. Numerous Christian churches around the world regularly receive non-Christian worshippers—a few, especially in North Africa, are used primarily by non-muslims!—and non-Christians regularly turn out for holidays in countries with mixed populations. If someone stood up in the middle of mass and yelled "Jesus was only a prophet! He wasn't the son of God!" you'd eventually be asked to leave. But polite, non-interference--prayers, listening, etc.--by a committed non-Christians are not going to get you kicked out of any "mainline" church I've ever heard of. I can't speak for what the evanglicals would do, but I'm guessing they'd be less likely to kick you out than to ask all the parishioners to gather round to help cast your demons out :)"

Will, with the exclusion of the last sentences, which indicates some sort of communal standards, what your above comments mean to me is that you guys don't have a community. You just have disconnected services and rituals. Which, of course, would be compatible with the emphasis on a profession of faith, and no real specific behavioral rules, rather than an identification with a People.

No, you're right, an excommunicate or non-Catholic would be expected not to present themselves for communion. Only those who receive the sacraments are fully part of the Christian community. But the lines are drawn somewhat differently. Examples:

1. Catholics do not think that those attending mass must participate in the mass; on the contrary, participation is theoretically required of excommunicated Catholics, who must also not receive communion.
2. The church speaks of catechumens as part of the church, even though they have not (by definition) received communion, or even been baptized.
3. The western church does not allow infants to receive communion, although it reckons them part of the Christian community. The eastern does.
4. The Christian community includes dead people. (Or perhaps we should say that some dead people aren't dead.)
5. Someone who wants to be baptized, but dies before it can be done, is reckoned to have been baptized by desire, and to be fully part of the Christian community. Similarly, not a few Christian saints—exemplary members of the Christian community, as understood by Christians—were baptized only "by blood"—by being cut down in the arena before they could be baptized.

Underneath all this is a concept of sacraments and of the Christian community that is not entirely fused. That is, the sacraments, especially communion, are core practices of the community, but not entirely constrained inside or outside it. As the limit case, the church believes that some professed non-Christians or even atheists may in fact be part of the body of Christ--that is, the Christian community. And we can be sure the church is handing out wafers to non-members of the community every day; a priest might know this almost perfectly, for example, in confession, yet still do so.

The notion of an "invisible community," partially but not completely the same as the visible one is, I think, one thing that distinguishes Christianity from Judaism. In Judaism this sort of mismatch would really only happen through gross fraud.

As a practical matter, I'm sure things differ. In my congregation at least we would all quite readily say that a certain person is a member of our community, although he is a professed Buddhist. He's part of the community because he wants to be--he wants to support his Catholic wife, and he finds meaning in our rituals and in helping out the various other things the community does, like feeding the poor. At parish meetings, which he very occasionally attends, he starts his remarks with a respectful statement that he is not a Catholic himself, but he speaks even so, and people listen to him. Is he part of the Christian community? God knows. Is he part of our parish? Sure.

I'd be interested in what you think of the concept of God-fearers? You can, perhaps, tell me what Jewish law says about such people.

>251 lawecon: Just try it out with your local minister or priest and see what the reaction is

If your local minister were a US fundamentalist, I have no idea what the reaction would be. But if you were anywhere else in the world with other Christian denominations I think you would find the reaction more varied and more tolerant than you might expect. Even many of the "theologically conservative" ministers are very tolerant when it comes to pastoral practice.

>253 Tid: I don't think you can ignore 'progressive' views, even if it does take a long time for theological cutting edge research to make it to the pews.

Again, leaving out US fundamentalism, I think you'll find that "progressive views" are often more common amongst the ordinary punters in the pews than amongst those in power. They may or may not be aware of the intellectuals who are putting together theological arguments, but they often have a gut feeling for what "Love thy neighbour" or "walking in Jesus's footsteps" means.

>256 lawecon: suspect that the answers Jesus received and the answers that his self-described followers receive have often markedly differed

True. "What would Jesus do" has become a fundamentalist bumper sticker slogan, and I tend to be suspicious of any bumper stickers. Albert Nolan has tried to explore the spirituality of Jesus in Jesus Today, perhaps a more sophisticated non-bumper sticker version of the question.

>258 lawecon: you guys don't have a community

I think Tim has answered in >259 timspalding:. Yes, there is a community, but a community that is open and hospitable.

rather than an identification with a People

I recall many posts in other threads where I have stressed the cultural and "belonging" aspect of Catholicism, which some other posters failed to understand or accept (can't remember what lawecon's response was).

An experience which may or may not be relevant comes to mind. Thirty-odd years ago I was working in an inner city parish in west London where the majority were of immigrant families. A young newly-arrived West Indian single-mother came asking for her baby to be baptised. She was not a church-goer. Fresh out of seminary I reminded the parish priest of all the regulations about baptism. His response was, "This young woman has just arrived in the country. She has no family, no job, no real support network, and is facing all sorts of problems in settling in. This is her first contact with the Church here. Let her first experience not be one of rejection." We baptised the baby. I know this is not the same as cases referenced above, as she was nominally a Catholic, but I would suggest that the charitable attitude which it demonstrates is more common amongst ordinary priests and ministers than outsiders might imagine. That was a parish where Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, the major religions in the area, were always welcome.

"That was a parish where Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, the major religions in the area, were always welcome."

Were always welcome at communion? How about a Catholic marriage (just as a precaution; you know. Pascal and all)? How about being buried in consecrated ground? How about reading the Scriptures from the altar? It IS an Open Church, isn't it? (In other words, this is getting a little old and way too silly.)

>261 lawecon: Communion, no, as Tim explained, although we didn't actually police it and we never refused communion to someone who presented themselves. There were many inter-faith marriages and the non-Catholic is part of the community, as Tim says. Reading the scriptures from the altar, yes. Is there still such a thing as consecrated ground? We didn't have a churchyard and we buried people in the municipal cemetery. Why is it silly to present examples of what actually happens in Catholic parishes?

~262

So, you had Hindus reading Christian scripture from the altar of your Catholic Church as a part of the mass. Could one get a film of that?

And an annual subscription to support the Church? Oh, wait a minute, unlike Jews, Christians are allowed to touch money on the Lord's Day. So the plate or basket can be, and typically, is, passed as a part of the mass.

You know Jews might also be more open to persistent interlopers at their services if it was profitable for them to be there. Maybe we should reexamine the Law on that point.........

>263 lawecon: Yes, and no: that was before the days when everybody thought it necessary to take videos of everything and post them on YouTube. It was a Christian community in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and relatively poor part of London just getting on with life. My apologies that it doesn't fit any stereotypes or caricatures of what Christianity should be.

PS: Even if there were a video it probably wouldn't do you much good as it's unlikely that you would be able to tell the difference between a Hindu and a Catholic. As far as I know there are no physical differences.

258

"Will, with the exclusion of the last sentences, which indicates some sort of communal standards, what your above comments mean to me is that you guys don't have a community. You just have disconnected services and rituals. Which, of course, would be compatible with the emphasis on a profession of faith, and no real specific behavioral rules, rather than an identification with a People."

Ah, I think you may have put your finger firmly on the most significant difference between Judaism and Christianity. Jews see themselves as a "People of God", and protect this identity as strongly as they can, with (as I understand it) quite firm rules about intermarriage. Catholics, too, have always had quite strong rules about marriage between Catholics and non-Catholics, but that is more to do with the upbringing of children rather than any 'adulteration of the gene pool'.

Communion, community , and a People, mean rather different things to Christians.

Communion generally refers to that sacred moment in a service where the congregants share "bread and wine" together, though most denominations regard the conversion of those elements into "the body and blood of Christ" as figurative not literal. Quakers, however, regard the whole of life as a sacrament and therefore have no form of ritual communion.

Community is a much more loose and undefined thing. There will be churches where apart from attending services, church members have no other formal contact with their 'community' other than the occasional social gathering. In the privacy of their own homes they may well observe many of the practices - prayer, diet, abstinence - but there is no policing of that. Quakers, on the other hand, have a strong sense of community, running their own Meetings and trying to involve everyone in that, not just religious meetings but business meetings too. Clerks are drawn from the membership, and serve for a few years before someone else takes over.

People... This is a very nebulous concept. Christians - all denominations? - regard themselves as a completely open religion, with freedom to join, attend, convert formally, etc. In that sense, the whole world is potentially "their people". Quakers are also open to anyone to join; I imagine Islam has much the same attitude as Christianity. I would suggest that Judaism differs here, being the oldest and first monotheistic faith, and using their identity traditionally to mark themselves out from actual or potentially hostile polytheists, from Babylonians, Egyptians, Samaritans, etc.

So is this the big difference, after all - that Jews strongly protect their identity "as a People", while Christians have no such concept of themselves?

"Catholics, too, have always had quite strong rules about marriage between Catholics and non-Catholics, but that is more to do with the upbringing of children rather than any 'adulteration of the gene pool'"

Please do not make this common mistake. There is no gene pool to adulterate among Jews. There are, to be sure, also Jews who make this mistake and think that they are Jews because they are genetically (not just metaphorically) the sons and daughters of Abraham and Sarah, but they are factually wrong. There is no Jewish Race, and if there ever was it disappeared at the time of Sinai, Babylon and, then again, when the mass of Jews were driven outside of the boundaries of the Eastern Empire.

What there is and what is more commonly claimed, is that Jews are a tribe. The tribe has certain responsibilities to its members and a charge regarding its nonmembers. With the exception of the Syrian Jews, who are probably now no more, the tribe has, and has always had, porous boundaries. One can enter upon condition. In ancient times there are stories that entire nations entered - Sheba, Kayzar, Yemen, to name some of the more prominent examples. But once you're in, the claim is that you remain in (albeit our Haredi have, once again, tarnished that claim by requiring the pre-rabbinic Ethiopian Jews to convert).

" I would suggest that Judaism differs here, being the oldest and first monotheistic faith, and using their identity traditionally to mark themselves out from actual or potentially hostile polytheists, from Babylonians, Egyptians, Samaritans, etc."

You would be right about this. The way I often put it to those who are familiar with Marxist-Leninist theory is that Hashem had a vaguely Marxist view of humanity prior to the Flood. He was going to explain things and everyone was going to understand and follow Him. Eventually he gave up that notion and became a Leninist. He invented a Party (or a People) who were to be "a nation of Priests" and lead the rest of humanity to His ways. The election is, of course, conditional on the other party keeping its part of the bargain, which it has been very timid about doing since Constantine and his laws. Jews, like Gentiles, are often confused about this, but that is what "chosen People" means.

266

Yes, I should have used the word "tribe" and not mentioned "gene pool" (otherwise converts would not be possible).

That does leave me with one question though - what weight does the term "Semite" still have within Judaism, if any? (I understand modern Semites as being native Israelis who have inhabited Palestine for as long as anyone can remember, but also includes the Palestinians who are now ?all? Muslim converts).

~267

You remember wrong. "Semite" is a language group that was applied by 19th century race anthropologists to certain groups. Those who still haven't gotten over that silliness call Arabs and Jews semites (which, of course, explains David's red hair and blue eyes).

The term "anti-semitic" (which, amusingly, was coined by an antisemite who was one of those 19th century racists) hasn't helped. Most informed Jews prefer the term "Jew Hater," but that is a bit too clear for most of the popular press.

Palestinians consider themselves as Arabs. Those who are not completely Westernized appear to be Arabs by culture - another tribe, but as evidenced by their language, a related tribe to Jews. Despite the disgusting propaganda efforts of the dictators of the surrounding countries, the conflict between Israelis and nonIsraeli Palestinians is political and geographic, not religious or racial.

The general term for Jews that inhabited Arab lands for centuries is Mitzrahi. There is no specific term that I know of for those Jews whose historical roots were in Palestine,

the conflict between Israelis and nonIsraeli Palestinians is political and geographic, not religious or racial

This was more true in the 70s or 80s than it is now. Back then the PLO, although majority muslim, included a number of prominent Christians and avoided religious rhetoric. That changed with the rise of Hamas, whose inspiration and rhetoric are decidedly religious. One may indeed claim this is not the root cause of the problem, but it and themes arising from it are certainly a mainstay of current anti-Israel rhetoric and inspiration.

"Semite" is a language group that was applied by 19th century race anthropologists to certain groups. Those who still haven't gotten over that silliness call Arabs and Jews semites (which, of course, explains David's red hair and blue eyes).

As for the racial dimension, talking about it is always both approximate and dangerous. Before the advent of genetics it was fashionable to react against 19th century noodling and note that language similarity has no necessary implications for genetics—think Mayans who speak Spanish! Since genetics it's become clear that, while there is no necessary connection, connects are very very likely to exist. Indeed numerous genetic studies have shown that speakers of Semitic languages, and especially Jewish and Palestinian Arab populations, are very closely related. In particular, Jews are far more closely related to Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinian Arabs than to any other group.

Some links:
http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/2009/01/shared-genetic-heritage-of-jews-and....
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/12/6769.full
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/05/000509003653.htm

Would that include the Jews from the Nordic countries?

Depends what you mean by "from." Converts to Judaism and their descendants do not, of course, partake of typically Jewish genetics. But as a whole Jews are a remarkably coherent genetic population wherever they are or have resided, even over thousands of years.

Perhaps the most recent NYT article on the subject, drawing on a recent study, would not go amiss:

NYT: "Studies Show Jews’ Genetic Similarity" by Nicholas Wade
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/science/10jews.html?_r=0

Will, with the exclusion of the last sentences, which indicates some sort of communal standards, what your above comments mean to me is that you guys don't have a community. You just have disconnected services and rituals. Which, of course, would be compatible with the emphasis on a profession of faith, and no real specific behavioral rules, rather than an identification with a People.

and

And an annual subscription to support the Church? Oh, wait a minute, unlike Jews, Christians are allowed to touch money on the Lord's Day. So the plate or basket can be, and typically, is, passed as a part of the mass.

Interesting statements from a person who quickly accuses anyone who even asks questions about Judaism of only seeing it through Christian a lens.

Now (and I am taking from your example of effective communication here) listen carefully, and try not to lay your interpretative lens on it, because you clearly do not understand what you are talking about whenever you bring up Christianity, and it is because you don't want to, so I probably should also follow your example and just say, "You know the answer, you just won't accept it," but here goes.

The Christian community is defined primarily by grace. Now I realize that word means nothing to YOU, but it is essential for Christianity. Grace is the gift of acceptance, given by God and humanity, to those who do not "deserve" it, but then we follow that up with the question, "Who really DOES deserve it?"

Imagine your own moral standard. Not the one a church or any other authority proposes, but your personal standard. How well do you do at keeping that? How well do people do at living up to the simple expectations they have of others? To paraphrase Paul, the things that really piss me off about other people are the very things I end up doing myself. For example, someone on LT gets really pissed off whenever anyone misinterprets Judaism, and tells people they ought to know better, and not lay their standards on Judaism, but that same person consistently misinterprets Christianity, and them demeans it because it is not what Jews do. (I have my own ways of doing this, which I am sure people on here can see better than I can.)

So, grace means that we all meet at that place where we find acceptance--and in Christianity, that is the Cross. Christian tradition has seen the Cross differently over the years, and across traditions but almost all forms of it see the Cross as a victory of sorts--of Jesus over Satan, of the nature of God over the nature of humanity, of sacrifice over greed--call it what you want, but it is a victory. In that victory we see that the way of exaltation is through service, the way of power is through love, and the way of fulfillment is through self-denial. (Not that these are original insights.)

The Christian community is based on that fact that we are all at best forgiven sinners, and while it is a human tendency to say, "Well my sin is not as bad is HIS sin," that is a response that kills real community.

Someone once came to me and said they stopped going to church because of all the hypocrites who attend. I told them we could put up a sign, "Hypocrites Not Welcome" but that my problem was people who were self-righteous, so we should put that on the sign as well, and before we knew it, we had a long list, not a sign, and that neither of us would be allowed inside.

I am sure for some that is not enough basis for a community, but for some following a sports team is no basis for a community.

Do Christians live up to the standards they themselves set for Christian Community? No. Are their flagrant abuses? Yes. There are *le Gaspe* judgmental Christians.

The one thing I miss most about not being in a Christian community these days is that sense of community. I could go on and on about how it DID work--community members who ripped up carpet and cleaned the walls in homes where there a suicide, who drove across the state to visit people in hospitals, who quietly and without fanfare, made sure that poorer people in their community had that new refrigerator they could not afford, or that "new" used car, so they could get to work, people who took other people's children into their homes, to the parents could work on their own issues, people who took the extra step and tried to reconcile with an enemy.

I know that this is not unique to Christian communities, but that is where I have experienced it. And to a much greater extent than what I experience away from that community.

268

Thanks for the explanation. I hadn't realised that Semite was a 19th Century term. Though I also note Tim's comments in 269.

~271

As I said, Tim, I'm not going to get enmeshed in another one of your "the consensus of scholars" nonsense discussions. Jews are hardly homogenous - genetically or otherwise. If your faith demands that you believe differently, so be it.

Of course, I can understand why it would be important to you to have a Jewish Race. The uses of such a concept are most convenient.

~272

"The Christian community is defined primarily by grace. Now I realize that word means nothing to YOU, but it is essential for Christianity. Grace is the gift of acceptance, given by God and humanity, to those who do not "deserve" it, but then we follow that up with the question, "Who really DOES deserve it?" "

Actually, I've understood this point for some time now. It horrifies me, but I understand it. I first ran across a similar but more narrow point decades ago, when I was teaching at a Catholic school and had a priest try to convince me that there was no such thing as plagiarism. In the matter in question, I showed him the source book, I showed him the paper that copied out whole paragraphs with no general or specific acknowledgement of source. He still claimed that there was no plagiarism, because plagiarism would require an adverse moral judgment, and since we all learned from and used other peoples' writings in composing our own writing no adverse moral judgment was possible. We would all be guilty of plagiarism if "plagiarism" made any sense.

Your point is simply a generalization of that view. We are all guilty (even those who may appear to be without sin and deserve recognition for their righteousness are secretly corrupt). We are all saved through grace, and since we are all the same and all saved through grace we are all one big community.

I've commented on thought patterns like this one at least 20 times previously. It is a very elementary philosophic principle. Terms get communicative meaning through exclusion. Red is red because it is not yellow or green or some other color. If we are all members of the same community, all the time, without any possible exceptions, then the term "community" becomes totally vacuous and without any content.

And, of course, that exactly describes your Christian Community. Those who torture others, those who engage in mass murder, and those who do acts of kindness are still subject to G_d's Grace at the Cross. We may aesthetically appreciate the latter sort more than the former, but they aren't excluded from the community just because they aren't perfect. Perfect or not, they are still a part of Christ's love.

Disgusting. The ultimate in barbarism.

>275 lawecon:: Grace is "disgusting" and "the ultimate in barbarism". Got it. (Do you know a man named Pelagius?)

Right here is where you lose any authority to tell Christians off for misunderstanding Judaism.

No, a cousin of yours?

Will he be joining this discussion as to how to undercut all moral standards in favor of grace?

>277 lawecon:: The problem is that your example of the priest and plagiarism gets it wrong. That's not how grace works -- it doesn't "undercut all moral standards" (unless, perhaps, you are a hardcore Calvinist). In case you hadn't heard, there's these things called "works" that go along with it.

>251 lawecon:

Just try it out with your local minister or priest and see what the reaction is. My strongly held belief is that you will first be asked "So, why do you want to join this community with which you so strongly disagree?" followed by a much more belligerence and unequivocal reaction should you persist.

And you have to admit, this reaction makes a lot of sense. Why would you want to intrude on a community with which you fundamentally disagree? It is at best rather dishonest.

This afternoon I decided to test your hypothesis. Our new local vicar is still not yet in place, so I called the vicar who is the team leader in a nearby parish. After explaining that I am a non-believer, I first had some other questions for him. Then I said, "just out of interest, I have no intention of attending church at the moment, but if I were to do so would there be any objection in joining your congregation, or any others?" He said that I would be more than welcome. I persisted. "Even though I'm a non-beliver and don't accept your core beliefs such as resurrection, and life after death?" I asked. "That makes no difference", he replied (with no belligerence).

I put it to him that it had been suggested that I might be intruding. He started to say that he was appalled. But stopped, and reflected for a moment and said, "That's a shame. That really is a shame". He then went on to explain how Jesus welcomed everyone, believer or not.

There a several reasons why someone might want to join (not intrude on) a community with which they fundamentally disagree. To do so without expressing those differences might be dishonest, but having been open about it then it would not be dishonest.

Closely related members of my family have been members of a church community, although being non-believers. For them the reasons were partly the community, partly the music. One played the organ at Sunday services, the other sang in the choir. One had a church funeral, the other a secular one. No dishonesty

Regarding your posts subsequent to 251: As for mixed marriages, when one of my children married in the local protestant church the ceremony was conducted jointly by an Anglican minister and a Catholic priest. So we have a little experience of that, but no problems.

And as for being buried in consecrated ground, there is still room in the local churchyard and if I am still in this locality when the time comes, that is where I shall be buried. My children, including one who is an atheist, strongly and sincerely support that for reasons I feel no need to explain here. The church has no problem with that, provided that one has been a member of the local community. Accepting their religion is not a pre-requisite. It was a Catholic church until the reformation, and has been Anglican ever since, but I needn't be of either persuasion or any other to be buried there.

These are just some of my personal experiences, as an unbeliever, of the Christian church, and they do seem a long way from your preconceptions of it. And a long way from New York.

Jews are hardly homogenous - genetically or otherwise. If your faith demands that you believe differently, so be it.

Again, you bring my faith into this. What horseshit. The genetics of Jews has been studied more than any group, with the certain exception of Icelanders. Studies show that Jews are a remarkably homogenous group, despite long periods where major Jewish groups were largely out of touch. Subordinate facets, such as priestly lineages, have also been studied. They tell a coherent story of a people who have lasted thousands of years by a strong bias against marrying outside the faith, and relatively few conversions. That you don't acknowledge progress in any academic field—seemingly in proportion to the degree to which it is well established—this isn't my problem. That I don't accuse you of ulterior motives is mine—it's far more than your horseshit non-arguments deserve.

>279 jbbarret:

Thanks for testing this out, and taking the time to tell us about it.

>279 jbbarret: Thanks, jb.

Edited to add: mixed marriages

I have also experienced marriages where Catholic and Anglican priests have co-presided, and in one case (in Germany) Catholic and Lutheran. Also civil marriages in front of a registrar where a religious minister has been invited to say a word or two, although at one I attended in a registry office in England it was made clear by the registrar that the religious minister was not allowed to speak specifically about religion, which I suppose is fair enough because if you want religion at your wedding you can have it in a church.

>263 lawecon: if it was profitable

Assuming that this is a suggestion that the reason we allow non-Christians into our services is because they might put money in the collection plate, I was reminded of an incident in that same west London parish. A young Hindu couple came and asked if we would bless their house. I went together with the curate (assistant parish priest) and we did so. Out of curiosity we asked them why they didn't get a Hindu priest to do it for them. They replied, "Oh, we asked him, but he charges twenty quid and we heard you would do it for free!" We did indeed do it for free, although they did give us some nice Indian sweets.

275

"And, of course, that exactly describes your Christian Community. Those who torture others, those who engage in mass murder, and those who do acts of kindness are still subject to G_d's Grace at the Cross. We may aesthetically appreciate the latter sort more than the former, but they aren't excluded from the community just because they aren't perfect. Perfect or not, they are still a part of Christ's love.

Disgusting. The ultimate in barbarism."

See, this is where I find it hard to follow your "judgement". I would never have brought the Cross into the argument, but I do follow the reasoning about grace. Those who torture, those who commit mass murder, are absolutely beyond the pale in any civilised society, and we condemn them for their appalling acts. But this is where Christianity (possibly even more than other religions?) raises a very difficult question. Who judges?

On earth, justice is handed down by the duly appointed guardians of morality, decency, and social behaviour. I imagine that very few Christians would have a problem with that. However, as I understand the teaching of Jesus, there is a 'beyond' in relation to justice, and that is the 'divine' that reaches ever beyond the merely 'temporal'. No-one, not even Adolf Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot or Peter Sutcliffe or Harold Shipman or Charles Manson, is beyond God's grace. That is the difficult lesson of forgiveness that - as I understand it - lies at the heart of Christianity.

Neither disgusting nor barbaric. Difficult yes (in the extreme) - perhaps the hardest lesson we could ever learn, but also the defining characteristic of the Christian community, if one had to be identified.

~283

Well, we're simply going to have to disagree. Here is why with reference to your words above:

"See, this is where I find it hard to follow your "judgement". I would never have brought the Cross into the argument,...."

I brought the cross into the argument because I was responding to Arctic and he brought it up as the nexus where sinners are forgiven.

"....but I do follow the reasoning about grace. Those who torture, those who commit mass murder, are absolutely beyond the pale in any civilised society, and we condemn them for their appalling acts. But this is where Christianity (possibly even more than other religions?) raises a very difficult question. Who judges?"

Well, human being judge human beings if they have formed a civilization with established laws and institutions. The problem is, as you well illustrate below, that such judgment about what can be tolerated in a human society is confused with G-d's perspective. Men are not G_d. They should not try to place themselves in G_d's perspective or role. They need not "forgive unconditionally and for all times" just because that may or may not be what G_d would do. In this respect I see no difference between the view being espoused here and the arrogance of fundamentalists. They want to act for G_d and become G_d, rather than simply acting as civilized human beings.

"On earth, justice is handed down by the duly appointed guardians of morality, decency, and social behaviour. I imagine that very few Christians would have a problem with that. However, as I understand the teaching of Jesus, there is a 'beyond' in relation to justice, and that is the 'divine' that reaches ever beyond the merely 'temporal'. No-one, not even Adolf Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot or Peter Sutcliffe or Harold Shipman or Charles Manson, is beyond God's grace. That is the difficult lesson of forgiveness that - as I understand it - lies at the heart of Christianity.

Neither disgusting nor barbaric."

Both disgusting and barbaric for the reasons I noted above. And let me say one further thing about that, just so you'll be absolutely clear that this isn't some "nice sentiments" discussion. If all that was going on here was John or Tim or Nathaniel or the clergy that they are citing to saying to a sinner "If you repent G_D WILL FORGIVE YOU." I would have no problem. But that isn't what is going on here. What is going on here is that they are maintaining that they as Christians, they and their Churches should forgive the sinner - without any precondition. They are advocating that such people are no different than the rest of us, as Arctic would say, and should thus be welcomed into their Christian communities. Nonjoke: Adolph Hitler walks into a Church and says "I'd like to join your Church." What does the pastor say? He says, "Sure, we're all sinners, no different than you, welcome brother."

As I said, disgusting and barbaric. Advocacy of a criminal conspiracy after the fact if not before the fact. The ultimate debasement of human morality.

>284 lawecon: Adolph Hitler walks into a Church and says "I'd like to join your Church." What does the pastor say? He says, "Sure, we're all sinners, no different than you, welcome brother."

He would probably also say, "But you'd better also go and give yourself up to the International Criminal Court and pay your penalty for crimes against humanity according to international law". I believe a humble carpenter once said something about giving to Caesar what is Caesar's...

~285

But it is so nice that he'll have a welcoming home to come back to during the court proceedings. (I am presuming, of course, that the judges of the ICC are Christians too, and thus will allow him liberty during the proceedings on his word as a fellow sinner.)

(Edited to add text after first paragraph.)

Further, John, I think you misunderstand the story about Jesus. (Oh boy, I get to tell a Christian what his scriptures really mean, what a reversal.)

Jesus is living in a society where Jews are being ruled by Roman gentiles. In Jewish beliefs, Gentiles shouldn't be ruling Jews.

The inquiry Jesus is answering is basically one concerning resistance to this unnatural state of affairs. In answering it Jesus refers to a coin with Caesar's image on it. As we've discussed, making images of persons and worshipping them is one of the highest sins in Judaism. What Jesus is thus saying is "give this sin back to the sinner who is responsible for it." Not exactly a general admonition to assiduously obey all human laws, is it?

>286 lawecon:: Again, you completely misconstrue the nature of grace. We do not produce it, it is not ours to give. God is the source of grace.

Christian charity does not demand that we let criminals off the hook -- indeed, Christianity has long demanded that, because God is perfectly just, so, in imitating our Father in heaven, we too must preserve and act for justice. That means Hitler doesn't go free. We put his ass in prison, and at the time, we probably execute him, too.

But we are also called -- as difficult as this is -- to forgive him in our hearts and to love him. Not to pervert justice, but to love, for love is the fulfillment of all that is good, including justice.

~287

That is a nice expression of your personal views and interpretations, Nathaniel, and I'm sure you can find other Christians who have said equally inconsistent things. But one has to note that this is the first time that human justice has entered into this conversation, and that you are the only one mentioning it as a duty of Christians.

Up to this point the sole emphasis has been unconditional forgiveness, as Christ would do, in recognition of our mutual sinful natures. That is the opposite of justice, but it is, apparently, not the opposite of Christianity.

>288 lawecon:: In post 285 (before mine), John said, "He would probably also say, "But you'd better also go and give yourself up to the International Criminal Court and pay your penalty for crimes against humanity according to international law". I believe a humble carpenter once said something about giving to Caesar what is Caesar's..."

Sounds like justice to me ....

And I think that you'd better reread 286

>290 lawecon:: Sorry, you posted the additional comments on rendering unto Caesar after I had read the original comment. I actually tend to agree with you that the rendering unto Caesar passage is more problematic than clear when it comes to establishing the relationship between the Church and secular society. (There's a reason that relationship has never been particularly stable.)

But your statement about the judges of the ICC being Christians and therefore having to let Hitler be free on his own recognizance during trial is simply ridiculous and stupid.

As I said, forgiveness does not abrogate temporal punishment. Indeed, even within the Church, it is recognized that all sin that you commit comes with temporal punishment, for you have committed a crime against God and must pay the price. It's called "penance" (from the Latin poenitentia, which literally means "punishment"). When you sin, two things happen: (1) you are broken away from the grace of God ("alienated", as it is has been put over in the Lies from hell thread); and (2) you incur guilt. Begging true forgiveness of God is sufficient to restore that grace you have broken; but the second consequence of sin--guilt--must be paid for, by penance.

>290 lawecon: OK, I've only just seen your later edit. You might well be right in your exegesis of the Caesar story. It was a tongue in cheek comment and it's many years since I've really studied that particular bit of scripture in depth.

But it doesn't take away the fact that Christian forgiveness is not in opposition to civil justice. It is in opposition to demonising criminals. They are human beings like the rest of us, albeit possibly sick and twisted human beings. They certainly deserve to be locked up where they can't do any further harm, but even in secular society rehabilitation is considered to be one of the pillars of the prison system. In other words we never give up on another human being, however appallingly they have behaved.

I am presuming, of course, that the judges of the ICC are Christians too

Are they? I have no idea. I don't think religion is one of the criteria for appointing them. But, as with most judges, presumably they have enough professionalism to implement the law rather than their own religious convictions? Or, if they feel a real conflict, they can recuse themselves.

The church response to Hitler would be to offer him the chance to meet with a priest for 30 minutes before being hanged.

>293 timspalding: He might well have chosen to have a slap-up last meal instead!

We had an doctor at our church who was on trial for trading drugs for sex. He started attending after he was arrested. The nurses in the church, and there were many, demanded that he stop coming. I had to explain to them that the church was not the place where those judgments took place. If I turned him away, who else would get the boot?

BUT...he was under the authority of the State, and they had some pretty specific guidelines about any public appearance he might make. When he was with us, his sponsor had to be with him. He was not allowed to be alone at any time, even bathroom visits.

LE finds grace to be "Disgusting. The ultimate in barbarism." I am not surprised. I could get all snarky and say he is judging grace through the lens of the Law, and he needs that law and the defined Jewish community because of....{insert all sorts of interesting psychological insights here gleaned from my work in the psych ward} but that would be...ungraceful.

What I will say is that I would hate to live in HIS world, where judgments fly like hornets from a nest. We see how his world works in his responses to people.

LE takes a very limited view of grace, in that he assumes the church does not support legal structures that mete out justice. (It traditionally has.) He assumes that the only people who get grace are serial killers, torturers and mass murderers. (I never met one, and they would be welcome in the church if accompanied by armed guards.)

He repeatedly makes assumptions about "real world" situations where the examples are extreme outliers (Muslims laying down prayer rugs during services, mass murderers lining up for communion) as if those were the norm, and ignores what really does happen in local congregations (as described in post #279).

If the Jewish tradition can embrace David, a rapist and murderer, Moses, a murderer, Abraham, a man who pawned his wife off as his sister, Jacob, whose very name means "Pulling Your Leg" and others, it is not without grace itself.

As LE contemplates what community is for him, he might want to browse through Job, which offers the mirror image of the subject of his contempt.

284

"I brought the cross into the argument because I was responding to Arctic and he brought it up as the nexus where sinners are forgiven."

My bad. I too was invoking 272 when I tacked the two sentences together - it should be read as " See, this is where I find it hard to follow your "judgement". Unlike Arctic I would never have brought the Cross into the argument, but"

The great difficulty presented by Christian forgiveness, has nothing to do with the arrogance of "assuming God's perspective" or "acting for God" - it's actually trying to follow Jesus's commandment when he was asked "How many times must I forgive my brother?" The reply seemed to be unequivocal and unconditional. So when John or Tim or Nathaniel say that as Christians they should forgive the sinner, rather than saying "If you repent, God will forgive you", I believe they really mean that as Christians, they should forgive the sinner.

The law of the land should be civilised enough to hand out appropriate punishments for wrongdoers. That's as it should be. What we are talking about here, is the duty of a Christian with respect to forgiveness, and that's something more. 'Beyond', as I said above.

Footnote : when I attended Quaker Meetings all those years, I don't think they would ever have said "If you repent, God will forgive you". They would have said something like (to echo something I believe Jesus also said?) "You are already forgiven." To which Jesus added, so that 'repentance' also got mentioned, "Go, and sin no more".

~296

"The law of the land should be civilised enough to hand out appropriate punishments for wrongdoers. That's as it should be. What we are talking about here, is the duty of a Christian with respect to forgiveness, and that's something more. 'Beyond', as I said above."

You see, I don't believe that schizophrenia is a virtue. The laws of the land should be just. Christians should be just. Appropriate forgiveness, when the person being forgiven is deserving of forgiveness, is just. Indiscriminate forgiveness on the rationale that we all need forgiveness sometime is unjust and inappropriate and encourages further injustice.

A person's personality cannot be divided in the way you suggest. If they are "overflowing with love" then they will be unwilling to see justice done, unless they are schizophrenic. If they simply love righteousness, then they will love people when they are righteous and not love them when they are cruel, barbaric and act stupidly. If you believe that there is a duty to love cruel, barbaric and stupid people then you are the source of great harm.

>297 lawecon: We've had a conversation before on concepts of justice, and it seems that your concept of justice is fairly narrow and clear-cut while mine is much broader. I work on a daily basis with transitional justice, restorative justice, distributive justice, economic justice, social justice and actually not very much at all with retributive justice.

I don't agree, lawecon, with your implication that holding two concepts in creative tension is necessarily schizophrenic. Loving righteousness and loving/forgiving the wrongdoer are by no means mutually exclusive.

I don't know how much you've read on "healing of memories"? Michael Lapsley would be one of the leading authors. In reality, forgiveness is often something which benefits me more than it benefits the person I'm forgiving.

~291 et seq

So, let me get this straight. You unconditionally love your fellow men, as Jesus would have done, but you are willing to imprison them, hang them, etc. if they misbehave in ways that you, as another flawed sinning human being, might do?

Kinda tough love.

Could you give an example of where Jesus or Paul or the Apostles endorsed this sort of distinction or activity? John's comment about judges seems particularly odd. Are Christian judges Christians until the don the robe, and then just executionors for the state?

>299 lawecon:

Lawecon: I think I know your answer, but let me ask it: Does God love us?

~298

John, what I'm talking about is acts, treatments of one human being by another, not "thoughts alone."

You can love/forgive the wrongdoer all you want in that secret world of yours that really has no implications for the common world we share. But many Christians don't want to stop there. Indeed, if they really believe doctrines like you and Tim and Arctic have been advocating, they shouldn't stop there.

If Adolph Hitler DESERVES our love, if he hasn't, by his own acts, placed himself beyond that love, then we shouldn't presume to judge him and punish him. You don't hang your child for being bad, and aren't we all each other's children? Aren't we all our "brother's keepers"? (Well, no, we're not.)

It is this sort of hypocrisy, and, yes, it is hypocrisy for those who refuse to carry through with the necessary logical implications of their doctrines, just as it is an abandonment of all morality for those who are consistent, that was one of the main reasons I left Christianity 45+ years ago. Words are one thing, actions another. Unconditional love of the sinner, is one thing, letting the sinner "get away with it" is another thing. Ah, no they aren't.

~300

G_d loves justice and he loves those who also love justice. "Be ye Holy as I am Holy."

G_d doesn't love you because you are organically a human being. On that one thing, Nietzsche was right: "It is said one cannot be more than a man, rather, one cannot be less." What we are talking about is what more you can be. What you seem to be suggesting is that you can ideally be either a man without morals or a schizophrenic.

So, God does not love those who do evil. Would it follow that God does not want your repentance? After all, you did evil. You deserve whatever you get. Am I right?

Second question:

When Numbers says "The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished" is this mere variatio? Could we replace the seemingly implicit distinction between love and lack of unpunishment, re-phrasing it as "The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he really does not love—indeed he hates—the guilty." Would that be a fair rewriting of sacred scripture, to correct the inexactitude? Or, perhaps, is there a distinction between God's love and appropriate punishment, which makes them complements, not opposites.

>301 lawecon: Well, I think we'll continue to disagree. If you're talking pragmatism (acts), there are a number of reasons for banging up a criminal. Protecting society (keeping murderers and rapists out of circulation), deterrence (persuading other would-be criminals that the price is too high), rehabilitation (definitely a practical act of love, helping someone not to reoffend) and punishment.

in that secret world of yours that really has no implications for the common world we share

I think you'll find that for many of the victims of apartheid in South Africa it has a lot of implications. Again I recommend reading Michael Lapsley, who lost both his hands and one eye. When the offence has been committed by a faceless person whom you will probably never know and who may never be brought to justice (whether retributive or, as in South Africa's TRC, a more restorative form), forgiveness becomes a very practical process in the common world which the victims and perpetrators share.

~303

Well, it seems, Tim, that "you deserve what you get" is what you and Arctic and John are saying (this time around). We will bless you and unconditionally forgive you and then turn you over to the state. (Let's not hear any complaints, we already said that we love you.)

For Jews, yes, there is a price for doing evil. The price varies on the basis of the type and extent of the evil. You must pay the price, then pay recompense, then you can seek forgiveness. That is, if you are unjust, you can seek to rectify your injustice and seek to once again become just. But you are not "entitled" to "unconditional love." Not from G_d, not from your fellow men. You earn respect and love, it isn't a duty of others toward you.

>304 John5918:

God clearly loved Adam and Eve. They don't appear to have "earned it." God had no "duty" to love them. Yet he seems to have done so. What a tool.

However, please answer my questions in 303. If you have any focused questions, I would be only so happy to answer them.

~303

"Second question:

When Numbers says "The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished" is this mere variatio? Could we replace the seemingly implicit distinction between love and lack of unpunishment, re-phrasing it as "The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he really does not love, indeed hates, the guilty." Would that be a fair rewriting of sacred scripture?"

I guess I don't understand your point. The first phrase means what we have talked about many times before - that the Jewish G_d, unlike the Christian G_d, does not damn you to eternal Hell Fire for a peccadillo. You have to grow into entrenched sin before you are fully rejected. Aberrations in behavior must be atoned for, and don't make you evil. However, there are those who have chosen to become evil, and, yes, G_d hates them. When there are enough of them in a society that the society itself becomes evil, he destroys that society. He doesn't love evil, as you seem to be recommending out of one side of your mouth.

that the Jewish G_d, unlike the Christian G_d, does not damn you to eternal Hell Fire for a peccadillo

Was this some rhetorical point, or just more evidence of deep ignorance?

When there are enough of them in a society that the society itself becomes evil, he destroys that society

"God hates fags," right?

He doesn't love evil, as you seem to be recommending out of one side of your mouth.

I don't know if you have any children. But if you do, and they have done evil, would you hate them? Approve of them going to prison, sure, but hate them?

Again, apparently tough love

Tough love? I thought God hated wrong. They are the paradigmatic example of it.

~306

Let's see, G_d loved Adam and Eve and cursed them with all sorts of maledictions. Again, apparently tough love.

Would you say the Torquemada also loved those who were subject to his good graces, because his whole purpose was to save their souls?

First your use of schizophrenic is just wrong. If you knew what schizophrenia really was, you wouldn't dare use it when you mean split personality, which, btw, is no longer a valid personality disorder.

Second, we juggle two things all the time. I have a commitment to my job, but also a commitment to my family. It would be easy to let one of the other take over, but I have to balance both.

Third, are you really arguing that the best form of loving a person is to let them run rampant, with no consequences for their actions? If I did that with my children I would be a piss poor parent.

Fourth, do you believe that you exhibit the forms of love and justice in your life? Do you not stand in need of any forgiveness?

>307 lawecon: the Jewish G_d, unlike the Christian G_d, does not damn you to eternal Hell Fire for a peccadillo. You have to grow into entrenched sin before you are fully rejected

Not sure where you get the idea of eternal hell for a "peccadillo". The Church traditionally taught the difference between venial and mortal sin. Many Christians would argue that hell might exist but there is probably hardly anybody there as you really "have to grow into entrenched sin before you are fully rejected".

~308 & 311

Well, Tim and John, it may not be your sort of Christianity, but it certainly is fuzzi's and Ambrithill's Christianity. Indeed, I believe that there is an exchange in the evolution thread where yet another Christian is saying "Well, without original sin and the absolute corruption of man, we would have no reason for Jesus." And Tim, it is you and John and Arctic who keep telling me that you believe that these guys are Christians. So why should I be prevented from quoting what they repeatedly say as Christian? Why is it "deep ignorance" to so quote?

So you are saying that you can pick and choose what ANY Christian says, use it for your advantage.

From now on I'm going to pick a random Jew and decide he speaks for all Jews. I shall now go into the hat and pick… Holy Smokes I picked Jesus!

I'm still waiting to see if Lawecon recognizes that a man may love his child, but know of and approve his punishment. This—to me—is the simplest and truest understanding of the compatibility of love and punishment, and nicely undermines the notion that God loves some people and hates others.

~313

I am saying that you can't flipflop whenever convenient to try to avoid logical deductions. If fuzzi, and Ambrithill, and TripleHHH and JaneAustinNut and the many others that have appeared in these threads are accepted by you as Christians, and if they all say the same thing about this topic, then it isn't "gross ignorance" of me to believe that such is a Christian perspective. If it isn't a Christian perspective then, ah, you need to say that their claim to being Christians is false. But, in fact, you've repeatedly said the opposite.

It is much like the present discussion. You really really really really love the mass murderer. You welcome him into your love and congregation. G_d also loves him. But you advocate executing him.

What? Do you really expect mature logical human beings to accept either of those contradictions? Are you really yourself serious about them? If so, then you have proved that you are an unreliable person whose word is not to be trusted.

>312 lawecon: Why is it "deep ignorance" to so quote?

Because you are not an idiot, you are a highly sophisticated and intelligent human being. It is well within your mental capabilities to distinguish between different types of Christianity. While I don't deny that some types of Christianity say things like that, at this point you are debating (and unfortunately it does appear to be a debate, not a conversation) with the likes of Tim, Nathaniel, Arctic-Stranger, me and agnostic Tid, all of whom you know very well do not espouse that particular brand of Christianity. Therefore it could be argued that "to so quote" is at best unhelpful and at worse "deep ignorance".

>315 lawecon: lawecon, it seems you are also a very "black and white" person. Everything for you is clear cut. There are no ambiguities, no paradoxes, no contradictions, nothing which depends on context. That's your personality type or a result of your life experience or studies or whatever, but a lot of other people accept shades of grey.

~314

"From now on I'm going to pick a random Jew and decide he speaks for all Jews."

You do that all the time, Tim. You just did it a few days ago (perhaps in this very thread). But somehow, even though you can cite any nut rabbi as what Jews believe, I can't cite to a whole segment of the Christian Community, a segment that we also see all the time in these threads and that you insist are Christians, as expressing Christian views? Get real. No one believes these flip flops.

~317

You seem to have it backwards, John. I love distinctions and contexts. I also love words that have meanings, rather than being place holders for "Ugh GOOD." "Ugh, BAD."

I thought, before coming across you and Tim and Arctic that "Christianity" had somewhat of a meaning, at least as much as "Judaism." I no longer think that. You have convinced me otherwise. I also thought that "love" had a definite meaning. I now realize that it has no meaning at all for certain sorts of Christians.

Both those terms apparently mean only "Ugh, GOOD." Whatever else they may mean one second, can be entirely different the next second, as convenient.

So you admit to no variety within Christianity. If it is not JUST "A" it is nothing at all. It cannot be blends of the alphabet.

Well for what its worth, if you had come to my church, even you would have been welcome. But I guess that just shows me to stand for nothing at all, since I stand for the radical notion that the Love of God can extend to every human.

Do you REALLY believe what you said in 319, or are you just pulling our leg?

Re forgiveness, my eye was caught today by a line in this obituary of Eric Lomax, author of The Railway Man.

It was only when he was in his 70s that Lomax achieved a kind of peace, by meeting Takashi Nagase, one of the men who had interrogated and tortured him, and striking up an unlikely but profound friendship with him

Barbaric!

I wrote a short piece on healing of memories as part of the resource material for "101 days of prayer for peace in Sudan" in the lead up to the January 2011 referendum. I post it here in case it is relevant. Re-reading it now I realise it doesn't actually mention the word "forgiveness", but nevertheless forgiveness is an integral part of it. Barbaric indeed!

The current international focus on justice is understandable in light of the terrible crimes against humanity which have taken place all over the world, not least in Sudan and Uganda. It aims to stop leaders from acting with impunity, and attempts to put the victims at the centre. To some extent it does, especially when restorative justice is emphasised rather than retributive justice. It is often linked to truth and reconciliation.

However it also has a downside. “Justice” and “vengeance” can look very similar. When watching news broadcasts, how often do we hear victims saying, "I will never be at peace until the perpetrator of this crime is brought to justice?” In other words, my future peace and happiness are in the hands of others; I have no control over my life; I am helpless and disempowered, a perpetual victim.

How can victims take control of their lives again, especially when they have no control over states, courts, tribunals and leaders? “Healing of memories” has been developed by, amongst others, Fr Michael Lapsley, an Anglican priest who lost both his hands and one eye in a bomb attack due to his part in the South African anti-apartheid struggle. It’s about remembering, the suffering being recognized, honouring the memory — and letting go. It doesn’t depend on others, because it’s about “me dealing with my stuff, me dealing with what I have in me because of the journey that I have travelled.”

It’s not always easy or comfortable. “God helped me.” said Fr Michael. “The safe space was prayer, love and support that gave me the room to, if you like, spiritually manoeuvre because I realised if I was full of hatred, bitterness, self pity, desire for revenge, that I would be a victim forever. They would have failed to kill the body, but they would have killed the soul and I would be permanently their prisoner.” Some victims spend their entire life in that prison, not realising that only they have the power to release themselves.

One of the great leaders of South Africa, Chief Albert Lutuli, once said, “Those who think of themselves as victims eventually become the victimisers of others.” The healing of memories breaks that chain of violence and victimisation.

297

"If they are "overflowing with love" then they will be unwilling to see justice done, unless they are schizophrenic."

? Complete logical and moral non sequitur. There is no lessening of love when justice is seen to be done. That is what Jesus exemplified as I said before, and he didn't espouse people 'getting away with' the consequences of their wrongdoing.

"If they simply love righteousness, then they will love people when they are righteous and not love them when they are cruel, barbaric and act stupidly."

If they SIMPLY LOVE RIGHTEOUSNESS, then your statement is perfectly correct. But I thought we were talking about unconditional love? Unconditional love is what it says. It doesn't open its door to the righteous and slam it in the face of those who do wrong. I don't believe in an external God, but I respect and understand those who do believe when they affirm that such a being offers unconditional love, indeed can do no other as that is - they say - what God actually IS.
And would you answer the repeated question about what a parent feels whose child has done wrong?

"If you believe that there is a duty to love cruel, barbaric and stupid people then you are the source of great harm."

This I believe, is your greatest error. Was it harmful either for him or society in general, when the Irish Senator forgave the IRA bombers who killed his daughter at Enniskillen? Was it a source of harm when the father of a 12-year-old boy who was killed by an IRA bomb blast in Warrington, publicly forgave the bombers? Was it harmful when Nelson Mandela set up the Truth & Reconciliation committee after he became president of South Africa? Was it harmful when the children of Nazis met with the children of Holocaust victims to talk through their experiences of what it meant to grow up under the conditions they had, and to seek out some form of dialogue and reconciliation and forgiveness? These are all people who gave a shining example of what forgiveness in practice really means, and caused a lot of ordinary people to stop in their tracks and start to think about this issue.

There is much in Christianity that I find dogmatic, silly, and far removed from the example and teaching of Jesus. But this question of forgiveness is not one of them.

""If you believe that there is a duty to love cruel, barbaric and stupid people then you are the source of great harm."

This I believe, is your greatest error. Was it harmful either for him or society in general, when the Irish Senator forgave the IRA bombers who killed his daughter at Enniskillen? Was it a source of harm when the father of a 12-year-old boy who was killed by an IRA bomb blast in Warrington, publicly forgave the bombers? Was it harmful when Nelson Mandela set up the Truth & Reconciliation committee after he became president of South Africa? Was it harmful when the children of Nazis met with the children of Holocaust victims to talk through their experiences of what it meant to grow up under the conditions they had, and to seek out some form of dialogue and reconciliation and forgiveness? These are all people who gave a shining example of what forgiveness in practice really means, and caused a lot of ordinary people to stop in their tracks and start to think about this issue."

I don't know what you are talking about, Tid, but what I am talking is about is regularized interactions between people. As John, Tim and Arctic have pointed out they "unconditionally forgive" the terrorist, the mass murderer and then want to see him executed. In my world, you don't execute those that you unconditionally forgive or love. In their world, and apparently in yours, you do.

What you are talking about above, in distinction with the we have generally been talking about (yes, John, contexts matter) is an end to mass struggles that amounted to war. War is not is a situation, a context, where normal rules of conduct between civilized people apply. The end of war is thus not such a situation. You may have noticed, or maybe not, that most Jews these days view most Germans as friends. They have forgiven the German People for past offenses. Indeed, it could well be argued that the German People are today the greatest living friends of the Jewish People. Does that mean that Hitler and Himmler and Goebels are forgotten or forgiven. Not at all. Those were evil men whose evil was so great that they will never be forgiven.

Distinctions matter. Words have meanings. Love doesn't mean execution. Forgiving a People does not imply forgiving, or "letting off" evil men who persist in evil ways.

One other word on this topic. John above (after I had gone to bed) gives examples of those who "achieved peace" by forgiving those who greatly sinned against them. That is fine in two contexts. In one context you are EXPECTED to forgive those who truly repent and do what is required of them to make recompense. To not forgive is also a sin. In another context, it may be personally therapeutic to "let go" of hatred when you, in fact, are and will be denied justice. If religion were just personal psychology that point would make a lot of sense (and that is part of what I meant above when I told John that I had no objection to him loving unconditionally in his private world), but that isn't what religion purports to be. What religion purports to be is a system for regulating interactions between people in this real world of interacting beings with often diverse and contrary interests.

Can you imagine loving your child, even as you recognize he must be punished for committing an evil act? I think we can agree that the just man, visiting his cell, might say "son, you earned this punishment." But would the moral man say, "son, I hate you"?

>325 lawecon: and then want to see him executed

Actually I don't. I'm against capital punishment, but I thought that would take us down another sidetrack. But I have no objection to protecting society from him by locking him up, whilst still trying to rehabilitate him in prison. And visiting him therein, which Jesus appears to consider rather important (Matthew 25:36).

What religion purports to be is a system for regulating interactions between people in this real world

The "real world" that I live in includes South Africans, South Sudanese, Sudanese, Kenyans and Ugandans struggling to come to terms with the suffering they experienced at the hands of others. In most cases it is unlikely that those who committed crimes against them will be tried, and the perpetrators are usually free, prosperous and visible. Healing of memories espoused by Michael Lapsley, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission espoused by Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and the love and forgiveness espoused by Jesus the Christ are all very much part of the regularised interactions between people in this real world. It's not just "personal psychology"; it's part of a nation which has endured civil strife rebuilding itself and preventing itself from being torn apart again.

~326

I don't think that most children are Adolph Hitler or that you are G_d interacting with the children-otherwise- known as other human beings. But I understand your difficulty in distinguishing between sinners, be they Adolph Hitler or your child. I also understand your difficulty in putting yourself on the same level as other people. After all, you're saved, and they're not.

>328 lawecon: After all, you're saved, and they're not.

I could understand you addressing that comment to fuzzi or ambrithill, as they are of the "saved" variety of Christians, but I think it's a bit meaningless to address it to Tim, who isn't.

How about answering my questions?

325

"I don't know what you are talking about, Tid, but what I am talking is about is regularized interactions between people. As John, Tim and Arctic have pointed out they "unconditionally forgive" the terrorist, the mass murderer and then want to see him executed. In my world, you don't execute those that you unconditionally forgive or love. In their world, and apparently in yours, you do."

I think we may have got our wires crossed here. I'm not talking about an individual forgiving a murderer with whom s/he has no connection apart from seeing them on the TV News. I don't think there is any call for a Christian to forgive everyone they ever heard of who has done wrong. No, it is - as you say - about "regularised interactions" between people who are the parties involved : injured and injurer. The exception to this would be an official state initiative such as the Mandela / Tutu Truth & Reconciliation Committee, and even there, Mandela had been an injured party, though not by the majority who passed before that committee.

It can also be - again, as you point out - between two nations, and the example of the Jews and Germans is one of the best there is, given the sheer scale of the atrocity perpetrated against the Jews.

The issue of executions is a more tricky one. Like John, I'm against capital punishment, and I don't see how a Christian nation (or any other kind that purports to have a moral or religious foundation) can take a life - how can the executed ever learn repentance, or have the opportunity to make some sort of recompense to the victim's family? Something on the scale of war crimes is different yet again; I don't know what stand to take on that, as it has never directly affected me. But could I pull the lever that opens the trapdoor and tightens the noose? I'm not sure I could, even if it was Adolf Hitler.

As for the "war" distinction, I'm not sure I follow you. The examples I gave above, were none of them to do with someone - combatant or civilian - being killed as a result of a wartime action. That would be a different situation, I agree, but does not apply to what we are discussing here.

As a matter of interest, how did the USA cope with the aftermath of its own Civil War? Were there any tribunals? Were any leaders charged with war crimes, or foot soldiers charged with rape, looting and murder? Did the Confederate states have to pay reparations or anything? Or was there a general reconciliation, recognising that the former protagonists had no choice but to live together and build a new nation?

And I should add that this is a completely innocent question asked out of total ignorance of the subject and not intended to make a point or anything.

>332 John5918:: It was a combination of both. The reparations weren't as draconian as those levied against Germany after WWI, but neither were they toothless. Part of the problem here is determining what qualifies as "lenient": the Republicans wanted to pursue a program of economic reconstruction but also stiff legal reform (making black suffrage and other civil rights a federal priority) -- and so it was for Andrew Johnson's "leniency" in not wanting to push for too many reforms that he was impeached (though ultimately, and narrowly, acquitted).

(Johnson was by blood a southerner, and distantly related to the man who cared for Traveller, Robert E. Lee's horse.)

332: Reconstruction is a huge topic, usually dealt with over the course of an entire college history course, and even then it doesn't touch on everything.

Basically, Lincoln and Johnson were moderates who supported a gentle reconstruction, but after 1866, radicals controlled enough of Congress that they were able to override Johnson's vetoes and implement a plan that put the South under military rule. Several thousand southerners who had been officers or significant officials in the Confederacy were denied the right to vote. Others had to take an oath of loyalty to regain the right to vote - the exact contents of the vote was a matter of much debate.

Interestingly, for political reasons having nothing to do with the local politics of the South, enfranchising the newly freed slaves was a prickly issue. Northern representatives were scared that enfranchising the freedmen would increase the representation of Southern states and serve as a "reward for treason".

~331

OK, well since you seem to be making sense and aren't using terms like "grace" and "unconditional love" in ways that don't make any sense, let me try again.

In my world, religion isn't mainly psychological therapy (prayer and participation in communal rituals may be mostly that, but religion, per se, isn't).

It also isn't some universal principle that is applicable through a SINGLE RULE to all situations. (Which is why I was so taken back when John accused me of not paying attention to context.) It isn't, for instance universal and unconditional love of all people, no matter how evil they have chosen to become. (And, yes, I think that some people in this discussion would argue that you should love the guy being executed on tv whether you know anything about him or not. AFTER ALL, HE'S A HUMAN BEING, would be an expected phrase.)

What religion is, in my world, is a system by which people deal in a mutually satisfactory way with each other. Such a situation is usually called "justice," but there may be elements of kindliness, forgiveness, etc. that are a part of such justice. In any case, the presumption is that "everyone" is an adult human being in their right minds and that they should deal justly with one another, and will do so if they endorse AND ACT UPON the correct creed.

This really has nothing to do with execution, per se, and because I don't trust any state with such power, I also oppose the death penalty. I keep mentioning execution because I was just struck by the incredible incongruity of Arctic's comment above, that it was OK to execute someone who you still unconditionally loved. (I still find that conception incredibly strange.)

Now the above question about war: Well, again, what I am talking about is a system for regularizing relationships between people in a society. The assumption is a society where people want to continue in some sort of at least tenuous relationship with one another and agree to, as a rule, not hit each other over the head or shoot each other or otherwise "take the law into their own hands."

Revolution and war beg that assumption. So although you may have arrived at a system that is universally agreed to as just in a society, it does not apply between hostile nations or hostile revolutionary groups. The system of justice may involve hearings and decisions and payments in money or in kind by one person to another. Those are the rules of the game. The situation of war or revolution has no rules other than beating your opponent into the ground first to such an extent that he can't retaliate.

All you can realistically do after a war or revolution has wound down and is no more is forgive and forget. You can't seek justice, because the context in which the harm was done to you and yours was not one where justice applied.
And, yes, I know your next question, and believe me, you're going to be very surprised by the answer.

~332

" Or was there a general reconciliation, recognising that the former protagonists had no choice but to live together and build a new nation?"

Neither. The South was largely ruined as an economic force and was under the political control of the North for several decades. There was tremendous bitterness for a hundred years thereafter, bitterness that has only dissipated in the past 40-50 years. There were no war crimes trials (fortunately). Jefferson Davis, although kept in confinement for many years, was not even tried or convicted of a crime (probably because the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court told the then President that if Davis was prosecuted he would defend on the basis of a right to succession, and the Supreme Court would vindicate him on that basis.) Of course, none of the Northern Generals were accused or convicted of crimes.

Personally I am against the death penalty, but mostly because of its unjust use, and not that it is in and of itself unjust.

How does one reconcile the death penalty with love and Christian charity? First, to quote LE, "It also isn't some universal principle that is applicable through a SINGLE RULE to all situations." Love and grace are two of the major thrusts of Christian praxis. Perhaps the prime two, but two of many.

Second, I have not deified life itself. (I find the phrase "Pro-life" to be particularly anti-biblical in many ways.) When all one has is this particular life, this particular life becomes an idol. To lose it is to lose all. I am not sure WHAT happens when people die (in a metaphorical sense, that is; I know EXACTLY what happens at the moment of death, having been there more times than I can count) but I do believe that this life is not All There Is. That said, the losing of a life is not the worst thing that can happen to a person, unless they see that life itself is sacred. (A peculiar position for an atheist, I might add, just for fun.)

People die. Get over it. I will die. Not today, I hope, but I could be wrong. The Redhead will die. That will grieve me greatly, but it will happen. I have little or no control over it.

Now, let's assume there are people who have done something so heinous, they can no longer be allowed in society. Which is better? To let that person rot in a prison for the rest of their lives, with no hope of any life other than the four walls where they care confined?

Or to tell that person, "You have a peculiar gift that few other people have. You know the moment of your death. Between now and then you can do what it is you have to do to become reconciled with that fact. If you want to die in a 'state of grace' you know when. If not, your choice. If you want to make amends to anyone, now is the time. If not, your call. But you will die on ____ the ___th. That is a choice you do not have."

>335 lawecon:: "What religion is, in my world,..."

So what you're doing is taking your religious lens (Judaism) and trying to see Christianity through it -- and the Christianity you see through that lens doesn't make sense.

Aren't you the one who consistently berates Christians for "misperceiving" Judaism because they do it through a Christian lens rather than your lens?

You haven't figured out that is EXACTLY what he is doing yet? Welcome to the party.

~338

Nathaniel, I think you are misunderstanding. I am not seeing Christianity through a "lens" of another religion. I am simply telling you (and anyone else who cares to listen) why and in what manner religion makes sense to me. It doesn't, for instance, make sense because I have an immediate intuition of a personal G_d who is infinite and ineffable and really really benevolent. I am sure that there are many Jews, particularly certain sects of the Haredi and Kabbalists, who would disagree completely. Who think that is what religion is all about.

Now if I'm wrong about Christianity. If it isn't merely a language game that misuses terms like "unconditional love" and "grace," and if it should make sense to me, given what I personally believe about either the social utility or uselessness of religion. Then please explain where I've gone wrong.

so you are not saying "why it makes sense to me AS A JEW." That has nothing to do with how you view the world.

Interesting religion you have there.

No, Arctic, I am saying just the opposite. Jews have all sorts of reasons for believing or not believing, and all sorts of beliefs when they believe. You don't BELIEVE AS A JEW because, as I've explained, oh, 60 times now, Judaism is not primarily about beliefs. Essa, in post #243 above, had it right. Judaism is not a religion that, like Christianity, is about a creed (or, as you've instructed me, about many different creeds under the same word). So I'm not talking about Judaism, although nothing I'm saying would per se constitute a rejection of Judaism.

What I'm doing is explain what I believe and why I believe it. I believe in the sort of religion that provides guidance to mankind about how to order their societies. Their societies here and now, not their societies in heaven. The goal is a modest one - the societies are ordered so that they are just and are acknowledged as just by their citizens.

I think that, by distinction, religions that are primarily expressions of programs for personal psychological therapy or that are about seeing visions of the divine or about people developing a community around babbling about how ultimately sinful they are and asking Jesus to save them, are largely useless and a waste of time. But as I said to Tid above, that is just me, many Jews would disagree (except on the last point, I think).

But the discussion above for the last 30 or so posts, despite Nathaniel's misperception, really has nothing to do with Judaism. It has to do with Christianity. I keep "seeking," as some Christians would say, to be enlightened about this great discovery of yours. But all I get back is self-contradictory babble.

You truly love the sinner, and are ready and able to demonstrate your love by hanging him.

You don't think that there are any real boundaries to being Christian, but when I mention a doctrine held by many Christians, those who often appear on these boards as Christians and that you acknowledge as Christians, then I am guilty of "deep ignorance" and, apparently , I am libeling Christianity.

What? Do you really expect people who are not committed to your word game to play that game to the extent that they ignore the contradictions that are apparently fundamental to that game? Maybe the Hindus and the Muslims and the other members of John's diverse Christian Community are willing to chant these words to be members, but most people aren't. Most people want to understand, without contradictions or "creative tensions," what you believe and what is so great about it.

Still waiting for the explanation, as opposed to the in-group snears.

>342 lawecon: I believe in the sort of religion that provides guidance to mankind about how to order their societies. The goal is a modest one - the societies are just and acknowledged as just by their citizens.

I think a lot of Christians would agree with that. Where they may disagree is whether religion needs to get involved in sanctions against people who don't follow the guidance.

You truly love the sinner, and are ready and able to demonstrate your love by hanging him

Actually I think most of us have now confirmed that we don't want to hang him. However we do accept that the state has the right and duty to administer the law, assuming that it is a relatively just law.

You don't think that there are any real boundaries to being Christian, but when I mention a doctrine held by many Christians, those who often appear on these boards as Christians, and that you acknowledge as Christians, then I am guilty of "deep ignorance" and, apparently , I am libeling Christianity

No, you are correct in engaging with fuzzi, ambrithill, etc according to their understanding of Christianity, and none of us deny that those manifestations of Christianity exist and are particularly prominent in the USA, but I would suggest that it would be more helpful when you engage with Nathaniel, Tim, Arctic-Stranger, Tid, myself, etc to do so according to ours.

And yes, there are boundaries, as has been pointed out. A Muslim in not a Christian. An atheist is not a Christian. That's clear. But the boundaries are not black and white, there are plenty of shades of grey. Christianity is a credal religion. There is a hard core that probably all Christians believe, but there's a lot more where they disagree. Shades of grey. And Christianity does not generally expel people because they fail to live up to the behavioural teaching. If that is different to Judaism, fine. It's part of the reason why I'm a Christian and you're a Jew, because we see things differently. Diversity can be a cause for celebration.

>342 lawecon: Ah, another edit while I was replying.

Most people want to understand, without contradictions or "creative tensions"

Well, it would be nice if life were that simple, but it isn't. There are contradictions, and "creative tensions" are, by definition, creative.

Maybe the Hindus and the Muslims and the other members of John's diverse Christian Community are willing to chant these words to be members, but most people aren't.

Not really sure what that is all about. Many people are committed to inter-faith dialogue and cooperation, and are willing to respect the scripture and worship of a different community when they are part of it, without in any way undermining their own beliefs and their own community.

335

You know my next question? Ok, not difficult! And since you know it is concerning "forgiveness" in relation to the Holocaust, then obviously my anticipated surprise is to do with the tenor of your answer? In which case, my follow-up question would be: Who is the real object of forgiveness here - the German people? (Not difficult - most of the current population had nothing to do with the crime). Or Hitler, Eichmann, Mengele, etc?

~345

I answered the question as to the German People above - again, my ridiculous expectation is that people are reading previous posts prior to writing their own post - but as we will see directly below, that apparently isn't the case.

As to Hitler, Eichmann, Mengels, etc., the answer is clear. They are not forgiven. Their crimes were deliberate, not accidental. They knew exactly what they were doing. They did not show the slightest sign of repentance, and, of course, no recompense would have been possible. They were evil men who will hopefully be rewarded by eternal extinction. They have no part in the world to come.

~343

"Actually I think most of us have now confirmed that we don't want to hang him. However we do accept that the state has the right and duty to administer the law, assuming that it is a relatively just law."

Well, once again, John, you are now starting to make distinctions that you have never made before "most of us have now confirmed." Well, my post was in response to Arctic, you know Arctic, he is one of your approved Christians. He has confirmed that he thinks that executing the sinner is just fine so long as the sinner is really guilty of the crime.

And let's talk about this "state administering the law" business. In the US among evangelicals, AND PREVALENTLY IN CATHOLIC HISTORY, the ideal has been that the Church sets the standards for the state. The standard you approved Christians, and, most ironically, Arctic, have been talking about is universal forgiveness and love. That is the difference between Christians and other people, blah, blah, blah.....

So I think it is entirely reasonable to ask why you so love the sinner so unconditionally and forgive so unconditionally that you will hang the sinner or incarcerate him or whatever punishment is deemed appropriate in a particular society. You're not going to dodge this one by saying "oh, well, that isn't US, that is the state and its laws."

So I ask you again, are your love and forgiveness really conditioned on what is appropriate for a just social order or are they truly "unconditional" and unlimited? Why would there ever be anybody in jail in a Christian society? Or is it the case, as I believe it is the case and have often observed that it is the case, that you like to talk about unconditioned love and forgiveness, but in fact practice just as conditional love and forgiveness as everyone else? (Which, as I said before, is either schizophrenic behavior or hypocrisy.)

"No, you are correct in engaging with fuzzi, ambrithill, etc according to their understanding of Christianity, and none of us deny that those manifestations of Christianity exist and are particularly prominent in the USA, but I would suggest that it would be more helpful when you engage with Nathaniel, Tim, Arctic-Stranger, Tid, myself, etc to do so according to ours."

Well, in the post you are responding to I was engaging with Arctic, who, apparently now, on this issue at least, isn't on your approved Christian list.

It is very strange, John, for a creedal religion to be so muddled about its creed that it is difficult to specify what any one person of that religion believes. Or maybe there really is no creed, even one about a substantive core - in which case, of course, the label "Christian" is also empty?

>346 lawecon: That answer was indeed given in 325.
But the question in #345 relates to the last line of your #335:

And, yes, I know your next question, and believe me, you're going to be very surprised by the answer.

>347 lawecon: Well, all I can say is that I still don't see any "schizophrenic" contradiction between individuals and church showing love and forgiveness towards a criminal, and the state implementing the law in a just fashion.

~349

As I just said, John, it is simply a cop out to try to separate what the state should do and what the Church should do, particularly when the Church in question has always maintained that it should dictate what the state should do. "Laws" are just the rules by which it is spelled out what the state should do.

If Christians are REALLY unconditionally forgiving and loving, and if they should dictate to the state what is right policy. then there would be no laws concerning punishment of sinners.

Think about it, rather than just reciting the catechism on this point. Your words about what marks out Christians as unique conflict with your endorsement of punishment under the law. Not all states, John, are Roman Pagan states (in fact, none are any more) and you and yours are no longer small groups of slaves hiding in catacombs. Time to take responsibility and act on what you say are your most basic beliefs.

>350 lawecon: when the Church in question has always maintained that it should dictate what the state should do

While the Church may well try to influence the state, as is the democratic right of any individual or group (oh no, we're not back to that argument about religion and democracy again, are we?), I doubt that it has tried to "dictate", at least not for quite a long while.

I would add that quite a few states have begun to discover that forgiveness and reconciliation, far from being just personal psychological or spiritual things, can in fact make a significant contribution to (re-)building a nation and preventing people from tearing each other to pieces. That may not be the experience in contemporary USA or Europe (although Ireland and the former Yugoslavia may be recent examples, and Spain, Portugal, Greece and eastern Europe are still within a couple of generations of totalitarian dictatorships) but it is certainly the case in many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

it is simply a cop out to try to separate what the state should do and what the Church should do

This is the western tradition, started, fundamentally, in the distinction between church and state and deepened during the enlightenment. I'm sorry to hear you oppose it.

This tradition is rooted not only in some sort of notion of separation of powers, but in the idea that law is not the same thing as morality. Thus the Christian church may tell you to love and forgive your neighbor, but the law merely prevents you from harming in certain specific ways, and sets limited conditions for parole. Of course, this distinction central to Jewish morality too. Hillel said "What is hateful to your neighbor, do not do to him; this is the whole of the law." He did not add "I am proposing legislation to this effect."

Nice sidestep. Of course no one who wasn't already reciting the catechism will be in the least convinced that you've responded.

Nothing in that relates to "the catechism" or anything like it. It's remarkable how bigotry offers some the excuse to avoid engaging with arguments.

Tim, would you like to address the questions I keep asking over and over and over again, or is this picking at terminology all you have to offer?

350

First, on the matter of creeds. No, I would claim that this is what Christianity has BECOME (in many but by no means all denominations - to Quakers, for example, creeds are close to an abomination). The reasons for this are historic - e.g. the Nicene creed was overseen by an exasperated Constantine who had given the bishops of the Church a fixed period to resolve their doctrinal differences, and when they hadn't, and when he had to leave to settle disputes elsewhere in the Empire, delivered an ultimatum from which the Nicene Creed emerged.

The teachings of Jesus seem to contain no creeds. Indeed, he even managed to whittle down the Mosaic Law to just "two commandments" and said that nothing else was needed.

* * * * *

There are no Christian states. By which I mean, the traditional Jewish system where the law and the religion co-exist symbiotically, has rarely (never?) been true of Christianity. It is true of Islam, of course, and some nations administer Shariya Law as the law of the land. Christianity traditionally took its authority - pre-Reformation - from the Pope, an extra-national figure who has no counterpart in Judaism or Islam.

The state and the church no longer co-exist, except nominally, or where a "tone" is required in a time of crisis. I don't think there is such a thing as a "Christian society" any more, not since the Middle Ages (and even then, it was one presided over by the Bishop of Rome). Even in Britain - a largely secular society - the relationship between Church and State is not regarded as that important to most.

"Unconditional love" is an ideal. It is an example set by many mothers, and a few rare individuals of high moral, religious, or humanitarian character. But for a society, the considerations of law are pragmatic, and contain an uneasy blend of the moral (laws against murder, torture, mistreating children and animals, etc) and the protection of property (laws against theft, robbery, riot, debt, usury, etc). Most of us as individuals follow the law of the land as we don't want to get into trouble, while breaking mere regulations governing parking, honest declarations on insurance claims, tax forms, etc.

The test of unconditional love is not how a religious or ethically-minded citizen regards the administration of their country's legal system. It is how we relate to our neighbours, our friends, our enemies, our family, our environment. It is a personal quality, and it will affect how we see the world and how the world sees us. The law of the land and the treatment of criminals is not a factor in that.

Only the last paragraph approaches my question, and it seems to reinforce my schizophrenia thesis. One is a Christian when reminded that one is a Christian, but not when one is a citizen or participating in administration of a society, etc. In other words, Christianity is merely sanctimonious hypocritical cant pulled out of one's pocket when convenient to assert moral superiority, but it has nothing to do with what anyone, including the Christian, should ACTUALLY DO. As I just said to John above, it is too late to plead that the state is a pagan entity run from Rome and you are mere slaves hiding in the catacombs. Many modern states are democracies and many more are moving in that direction. If you live in a democracy and you in fact have certain values you should vote for and demonstrate for those values - particularly if the society you are living in is prevalently ignorning those values.

Similarly, but not identical, the response to your previous paragraphs is that whether or not the Church is the State or vice-a-versa, Christians still have a duty to engage in unconditional love and forgivensss. They cannot say, as Arctic and John seem to want to say "Oh, well, that is the state, not me." They have a duty to try to influence the state toward unconditional love and forgivenss, and if they do not do so then my immediately preceeding paragraph applies. This is not something that most Christians have any doubt about when the topic is abortion, but when the topic is what is to be done to or not done to criminals, well, then, that's different. (Ah, no it isn't at all different if one ACTUALLY believes in unconditional love and forgiveness.)

I remain to be willing to be convinced, but you aren't approaching that point as yet. The "real Christians" in this thread spent a dozen posts talking about unconditional forgiveness and love and how that was the core of Christianity. However, when asked questions about substative policies of their societies, or their input into those policies, the "answer" is "well, that's different." They can unconditoinally love and forgive the sinner, but then still favor punishing the sinner, often for decades. That is an utterly obvious contradiction. You either advocate and try to follow unconditional love and forgiveness or you don't.

I don't, and I think it is irrational and probably morally reprehensible to do so. Those who claim that they do advocate and follow unconditional love and forgiveness need to provide some evidence of actually DOING SO rather than just mouthing pious phrases - but, of course, only when convenient.

357

I think (you will correct me if I'm wrong) that you are failing to understand what is meant by "unconditional love". I am picking up from your replies that you think it is being used in the sense of "love everyone, equally, no matter who they are or what they have done". Well, that may be Buddhism, but it isn't what I understand Christianity to say.

To me, unconditional love has an object. A mother, for example, may unconditionally love her child, but probably wouldn't extend that to the paedophile who moves into her street. However, there are no boundaries to the love she has for her child, even though she may not approve of everything her child does.

Unconditional love is love with no boundaries, no qualifications, no limits. Only a very few individuals love everyone that way - it's an almost superhuman achievement. But if a Christian, or anyone else, manages it towards their family and their neighbour, they have made a good start. If they widen that circle, then that's all that can be asked of most of us.

Yes, we live in democracies. It does behove us to vote responsibly and ethically, but to me it would not be the #1 priority.

LE,

I find it interesting that you only respond to my stance, and totally ignore the reasoning. I write a long post of capital punishment, and all you get out of it is "Arctic is for capital punishment."

I think I see why you are so confused in this debate.

Oh, and I have posed a few questions to you, none of which you answered.

>357 lawecon: They have a duty to try to influence the state toward unconditional love and forgiveness

I seem to remember saying that Christians will influence the state through democratic means in >351 John5918:. As with many things, it's not either/or. Christians have often been in the forefront of penal reform, for example, and opposition to the death penalty. Lord Longford is a high profile example of a Christian who cares for prisoners and is sometimes ridiculed for doing so.

But you seem to be ignoring all my comments about forgiveness and reconciliation in Africa and other post-conflict and/or fragile states. You seem to assume that the situation in the USA is the norm. It isn't. The Church is in the forefront of influencing the state towards love, forgiveness and reconciliation. It is no accident that Archbishop Desmond Tutu was asked to chair the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul the South Sudanese Presidential Committee on Peace, Reconciliation and Tolerance in Jonglei State earlier this year, or that Archbishop John Baptist Odama has led reconciliation attempts with the much-reviled Joseph Kony, or that Bishop Paride Taban retired in order to found a peace village amongst warring tribes, or that Bishop Kevin Dowling's church was bombed by the apartheid regime in South Africa, or that Archbishop Oscar Romero was murdered by government agents in El Salvador, or that Archbishop Denis Hurley was renowned for opposing the apartheid regime in South Africa... and these are just some of the high-profile episcopal ones, to say nothing of the ordinary Christians who are working for love and forgiveness all over the world.

Oh, and I have posed a few questions to you, none of which you answered.

Exactly. Indeed, he didn't pose any to me—at least, they weren't specifically to me, and I was intentionally avoiding the long and rather tortured arguments he was having with others.

However, nobody who isn't Jewish would bother reading what he says anyway.

Huh. I guess that sentiment looks just as stupid and bigoted when directed at Jews as it does at Catholics. Who would have thunk it?

Greetings ~ (to those whose names I recognize from before) ...

It's been a long, lonnnnng time since I've looked in on a group of this kind at Library Thing. So, I thought I'd start at the top and do my best to "catch up" to where this group happened to be today. Foolishly -- as the possibly too-trusting soul my closest friends continually chide me for being -- I read my way for the past two hours from the postings of a year-and-a-half ago all the way up to here . . . where, without a word or any ado, it suddenly and unceremoniously ceases. And that was two months ago. I can't tell exactly whether the group ended or is just taking a long break (it isn't listed as dormant yet, though perhaps it will eventually become so.)

If anyone happens back by, the somewhat surprising question I find rising in my mind is this, which I ask sincerely and pose at face value in basic non-erudite wonderment: After a year-and-a-half of what I truly regard as extremely intelligent conversing, would you say you now have a greater and deeper understanding of the faith (or non-faith) of each other -- and of your own faith or non-faith as well -- or less of either one or both?

Maybe, whoever sees this would leave a message in my mailbox; if so, I thank you in advance and promise you that it will be read and appreciated. -G.R.

362

I think the conclusion it's left me with is - Christianity has gone through so many eras of change, during which dogmas, myths, beliefs, and orthodoxy have formed, and sometimes (with Quakers, Unitarians, Levellers, Diggers, and the like) discarded, that it's now moved a long long way away from what Jesus intended (if that's something we can ever now know).

The term itself, and the label Christian, now seems to involve still accepting many of those orthodoxies. Even so, times change, and dogmas such as the Virgin Birth are no longer widely taken literally, particularly with the advances of science and our understanding of the universe.

It's very interesting to study the views and research of those who are around the edges of the Christian religion but are trying to influence mainstream thought and move it, however gradually, away from the myths and superstitious dogmas of earlier non-scientific eras : the Sea of Faith movement, theologians such as Don Cupitt, and the work - including many publications - of the Progressive Christianity movement, for example John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and Anthony Freeman.

This thread has made me - an agnostic - realise that Christianity is a kind of loose federation of different collectives, each one more or less basing their belief system around the New Testament. Even the oldest survivor of these - Roman Catholicism - took centuries to become what Luther railed against, and has changed further since then. This is in marked distinction to Judaism and Islam which seem to have firmer roots, and were not hijacked in their early days, as Christianity was, by Hellenistic Neo-Platonic Zoroastrian influences on the one hand, and a need to spread its message to a hostile Roman world by using some of the Roman templates (e.g. "Son of God"), on the other.

~36

Yes it does. But given the source I'm not surprised.

~363

"This thread has made me - an agnostic - realise that Christianity is a kind of loose federation of different collectives, each one more or less basing their belief system around the New Testament. Even the oldest survivor of these - Roman Catholicism - took centuries to become what Luther railed against, and has changed further since then. This is in marked distinction to Judaism and Islam which seem to have firmer roots, and were not hijacked in their early days, as Christianity was, by Hellenistic Neo-Platonic Zoroastrian influences on the one hand, and a need to spread its message to a hostile Roman world by using some of the Roman templates (e.g. "Son of God"), on the other."

No one has ever denied that Christians are not identical. That isn't the point, however. The point is that Christianity is purportedly a credal faith where one must believe and affirm certain ways. Despite common usage in America (at least America of 40 years ago before the warts became more apparent) "being a Christian" has, historically and now, not been/is not "being a nice person." There are many "nice persons" who decidedly are not Christian and many Christians who decidedly are not nice people. So the question is "What does it mean to be a Christian." As we are exploring in another thread, the question would not be a pressing one if Christianity were merely an affiliation group or if it didn't rest on belief, but since neither of those is true, the question still stands, unanswered.

~ 363 and 365

To Tid and lawecon -- Thanks to you both for the kindness of responding. I wasn't at all sure my message would even be seen by anyone. Your responses convey enough to give me a sense of ways in which the group has both helped and hindered the personal path you're traveling. As a fellow traveler . . . I wish you well in whatever the future holds for you both. Perhaps we'll bump into each other again sometime here in the passageways at Library Thing.

Cordially, and with kindest thoughts to each of you,

Gene

>363 Tid:: "This is in marked distinction to Judaism and Islam which seem to have firmer roots, and were not hijacked in their early days, as Christianity was, by Hellenistic Neo-Platonic Zoroastrian influences on the one hand, and a need to spread its message to a hostile Roman world by using some of the Roman templates (e.g. "Son of God"), on the other."

Perhaps more so with Islam (though one shouldn't discount the doctrinal differences that followed the political ones of the Sunni / Shia split), but certainly not with Judaism. Do you really think that the faith of the patriarchal period (early to mid 2nd millennium B.C.E.) was the same as that of the Davidic kingdom (c. 1000 B.C.E.) was the same as that of the Babylonian Exile (7th cen. B.C.E.) was the same as that of the Hellenistic Diaspora, e.g. Alexandria in the last three centuries B.C.E., was the same as that of the Maccabees and their successors in Jerusalem? Do you really think that Judaism wasn't constantly adapting and being influenced (and influencing in turn) the variety of cultures with which it came into contact over those two millennia?

365

"The point is that Christianity is purportedly a credal faith where one must believe and affirm certain ways"

Some denominations (most?) would certainly say so - though at local level, there will be communities who place as much emphasis, if not more, on how one lives, rather than mere lip-service to a credal belief. "Love thy neighbour" in other words. However, there are - and since the Reformation, have been - denominations like the Quakers and Unitarians where credal statements are not only avoided but actually rejected.

367

At the risk of lawecon telling me I don't know what I'm talking about, I cannot see how your analysis of Judaism's different eras actually equates to Christian orthodoxy? For one thing, Judaism has no central figure whose divinity or otherwise has been the subject of debate (none, from Abraham, through Moses, David, and all the prophets) : therefore Judaism can have no equivalent of Arianism, nor a split between its two main wings over the precise meaning of "filioque"; second, those eras you describe are long - far longer than the concomitant Christian eras of change : how much radical change to the central tenets of Judaism did they encompass?; third, Judaism is not a credal religion, as far as I'm aware - in fact, as lawecon so often tells us, it's not the same kind of religion AT ALL.

The point is that Christianity is purportedly a credal faith where one must believe and affirm certain ways.

While this is true for some streams, it is not true for all streams of Christianity. It was true for the early eastern branch but (and this surprises people) not so much for the early Roman branch. (Leo the Great vs. Athanasius) You can hold on to your insistance that Christianity be primarily a credal faith, and you will continue to be partially wrong.

This is chatter, dull and useless.

The last post was dull and useless.

The last post commemorates the dead.

The last post was show intense interest in the subject.

>370 therealdavidsmith:
I'm sure therealdavidsmith posted this simply to prove to himself that he could lower the bar.

Os.

The last two posters are my brothers.

> 362. After a year-and-a-half of what I truly regard as extremely intelligent conversing, would you say you now have a greater and deeper understanding of the faith (or non-faith) of each other -- and of your own faith or non-faith as well -- or less of either one or both?

Speaking only for myself (after all, who else can I speak for?), I'd have to say that, on the whole, yes, I do have a greater and deeper understanding of the faith of some of the other posters. Particularly the Roman Catholic posters. Their contributions have given me a greater appreciation for the catholicity (small "c") of their church.

The most interesting aspect of this thread has been the ways in which those who profess to be Christians (including myself) exemplify their faith commitments in their posts. Of nearly equal interest are the ways in which those antagonistic to Christianity seem to use Judeo-Christian principles as the rationale for their disdain.

As to my own faith or non-faith, I haven't learned all that much, to be honest: other than to be a little more confirmed in my conviction that, having been brought up as a Christian, having, so to speak, been totally immersed in the stories, the rituals & sacraments, the artistic representations, etc., there is no way that I can NOT now remain a Christian. There is just too much of it in my neural pathways. The best I can do now is to try to wipe away from my circuitry the sludge that doesn't do me or anyone else any good.

~369

Here is the problem, Arctic. I would like you to be right. I would very much like for John, for instance, to be a paradigmatic Christian. The reason is that, while I'm sure John truly believes and affirms the central doctrinal tenant of Christianity, IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE. It doesn't make a difference BECAUSE HE IS A PERSON OF GOOD ACTS, NOT SO MUCH OF DOCTRINES. However, I don't believe that John is paradigmatic. In fact, I don't even believe that he represents a significant minority. Limiting oneself purely to Roman Catholicism in its very forms, very very few of those forms don't in fact demand that the core doctrines are a necessary condition to being a Christian.

Let me give you a related example that sticks in my craw, and that I therefore see as exemplative of the fact I'm trying to make. I stated in one of my typically unproductive exchanges with Tim about four or five months ago, purely as an aside, that "at least the Catholic Church had finally come around to the position that Judaism was a separate religion from Christianity and had repudiated the prior position that Christianity was the successor to Judaism." Tim quite indignantly informed me that this was ridiculous. I looked it up, and despite some marginal weaselism, Tim is right.

Now I ask you, Arctic, given such a central sectarian and imperialist view, how can I take seriously your comment in post 369. Even Islam doesn't take such a position.

>367 nathanielcampbell:
the Davidic kingdom (c. 1000 B.C.E.)
>368 Tid:
Judaism has no central figure whose divinity or otherwise has been the subject of debate (none, from Abraham, through Moses, David, and all the prophets) : therefore Judaism can have no equivalent of Arianism, nor a split between its two main wings over the precise meaning of "filioque";
=========
Were Abraham, David and Solomon historical figures at all?

Two books have subjected the Abraham tradition to close examination: The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives, by Thomas L. Thomson of North Carolina, published in 1974, and Abraham in History and Tradition by John van Seters of University College, Toronto (1975). They both take a hard scholarly look at the traditional view that Abraham represents or sums up a nomadic tradition that is reflected in documents of the Middle Bronze Age - and the both, independently of one another, come to the conclusion that he does not.
Both find that the legal and social background reflected in the Patriarchal stories, which seems to be paralleled in these early documents, can be found just as easily in the first millennium BC as in the second. They point out the innumerable inconsistencies in the Biblical account, and argue strongly against the 'fundamentalist' view that the Biblical narratives can be used to reconstruct the history of the Middle East in a manner comparable to the archives of Mari or anywhere else, and vice versa.
The debate really centers on the questions of when the Biblical account was written, and why. There is a general and uncritical presumption that the Patriarchal stories were handed down orally, more or less unchanged, round the camp-fires of the nomadic Israelites until they came to be written down at the time of David and Solomon in the tenth century BC. This is contested by scholars who believe that the first books of the Bible were written considerably later, during the period of the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century BC. They reach this conclusion on grounds of textual and literary criticism chiefly, but also on social grounds: the trauma of the Exile created the need to construct and articulate a comprehensible historical past, a perspective of history which would give a meaningful context to the identity of the Hebrews and their special relationship, as they felt, with their god.”
“There is not a single contemporary reference to David or Solomon in the many neighbouring countries which certainly were keeping written records during the tenth century. At a time when the Bible tells us that Solomon created a major empire in the Middle East, none of his contemporaries, not even the Phoenicians, apparently noticed the fact. Without the Biblical accounts, history would be totally unaware of the very existence of the twin founders of the tenth-century expansion of Israel/Judah into a major power, and archaeology would have been able to do little to indicate that it had ever taken place. As far as archaeology is concerned, it was a paper (or papyrus) empire only”.
“Many radical scholars believe, on literary grounds, that the picture of the greatness of the period of the United Monarchy under David and Solomon was a late populist creation from the time of the Exile in the sixth century, transmuting whatever traditions or court annals may have existed into an image of cosmopolitan royal splendour (including a huge royal harem) modelled on the history of other major powers, like Egypt or Babylon”. P,155 Archaeology of the Bible MAGNUS MAGNUSSON

I was making a historical observation and you respond by talking about John. There are whole denominations that explicitly state they are non-credal. What do you want to say about John in response to that?

>379 Arctic-Stranger: Ditto.

~379

"I was making a historical observation and you respond by talking about John. There are whole denominations that explicitly state they are non-credal. What do you want to say about John in response to that?"

There are "entire denominations" that are non-credal, that no other Christians think of as "really Christian" and who have always understood themselves to be quite distinct from the rest of Christianity, Everyone else - that is about 99%+ of Christianity, now and throughout history, have been distinctively creedal. So quit trying to hide behind the skirts of the Unitarians and some of the anaBaptists. No one who does an objective survey of Christianity could possibly claim that it is a noncredal religion, as I'm sure you're very aware.

Also, quit being offended when I try to make sense out of some of your nonsense positions - like this one. As I pointed out, my reference to John was that, at least he, was not obsessed by the creed he nominally endorsed and did much good DESPITE that creed.

>381 lawecon:: I think the problem here is one of unshared assumptions about the relationship between creed and good works / behavior / morality. I think that you (lawecon) are trying to drive for harder distinctions and clearer boundaries between creedal affirmations and moral behaviors, i.e. no matter how "orthodox" a person is, if they behave heinously we should be able to call them out for being "unchristian"; and going in the opposite direction, we need to be able to draw lines that say that, no matter how angelic you are as a person, if you believe X when you should believe Y, you are not a Christian.

The problem is that for many streams of Christianity -- and crucially not just the unitarian-universalists or the ana-baptists, but many orthodox to the Eastern and Western traditions, as well -- the boundaries between those areas are far more fluid than you would prefer. Belief impels actions; action entails belief.

But more fundamentally, Christianity embraces an understanding of grace and the work of the Holy Spirit that underlies that impelling and entailing. Because it is God's grace and the Holy Spirit that impels us to good works and that enflames us in the faith, it is in the very nature of Christianity's emphasis on humility and charity/love that we don't draw the hard-and-fast human-made boundaries that you demand of us.

God determines those boundaries. We work within them by his grace and according to his love. I understand that this entire relational framework of human nature, sin, and grace is foreign to the Judaism you know -- and the result is that Christian explanations of Christianity within that framework do not make sense in your Jewish / humanistic* framework for determining the relationship between truth and morality.

*I am not trying to use "humanistic" in a pejorative sense, but rather to distinguish two models of human morality: one that relates human goodness entirely to human moral striving, and the other that sees divine grace as an essential medium for goodness and moral striving.

~382

I think you mostly understand my point, but are again drifting off into your own paradigm to interpret it. That doesn't work.

I am not trying to dictate to you or anyone else who is a Christian. And, yes, I understand that there is grayness at the boundaries between acceptable creeds. If you want to consider Universalist Quakers and Unitarian Universalists as Christian, that is your choice. (It is, of course, also the choice of your fellow Christians, who seem to be neglected in this conversation, but that is your problem, not mine.)

I do reject as counterfactual the assertion that a material number of Christians are noncredal, but that is an empirical matter regarding which either Arctic or I are right.

My basic point, however, is that Christian creeds - whether or not they are essentially homogenous - appear to be largely irrelevant to the actions of Christians. They are a mere metaphysical framework (using "metaphysical" in its most pejorative sense). Hence, my points about John and Hitler. It doesn't matter that they are/were Christians - at least it doesn't matter to the rest of the world. They could as well be Shintoists or followers of Ariosophy. They would apparently do what they do/did regardless of the formalities of their professed belief systems.

Curiously, however, you seem to be coming down on the opposite side of the fence from John, Tim and Arctic, You seem to want to argue that IT SHOULDN'T MATTER whether or not a particular person is Christian, at least it shouldn't matter for anyone other than that person. As you observe, I find that position to be abhorrent. The whole point of religion is that it regulates behavior in a social setting, behavior between human beings.

>377 lawecon:
Lawecom, you really think that showing how you are partially right proves you are not partially wrong?!

>381 lawecon:
Well, lawecom, the mainstream Protestant denomination I grew up in and remained a member of until around age 43 was founded in the early 1800s as non-credal and, with its 700,000 members and 2,700 congregations in North America, remains so. "No creed but Christ" is an oft heard statement from long-term members of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) when asked about their creed. Their official website says the following:

"...unity in Christ with openness and diversity in practice and belief." [emphasis added]

and

"We confess that Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of the living God,
and proclaim him Lord and Savior of the world."

And that's about all that one professes when joining this Protestant denomination. The rest is witnessing to this revelation and a lifelong pursuit of a better understanding of the nature of God within a community which accepts "diversity in practice and belief".

I'm sure Arctic-Stranger would be welcome to "hide behind the skirts" of these 700,000 non-credal Christians, but it seems unnecessary. Your repeated statement that Christianity is credal has always been only partially right, as Arctic said.

Os.

BTW, I am now a member of another mainstream Protestant denomination due needs related to family, but expect to return to the Disciples of Christ as soon as I know I can commit to regular participation and support.

>382 nathanielcampbell: (and 377)
I'm not as up on this one, but he United Church of Christ is a close relative of the Disciples of Christ. Their website says:

"...there is no centralized authority or hierarchy that can impose any doctrine or form of worship on its members. Christ alone is Head of the church. We seek a balance between freedom of conscience and accountability to the apostolic faith. The UCC therefore receives the historic creeds and confessions of our ancestors as testimonies, but not tests of the faith."

Of the 33,000 Protestant denominations, I'm sure there are many other non-credal, but I have no interest is tracking them down for you, lawecom. You need to educate yourself on this.

Os.

>383 lawecon:. The whole point of religion is that it regulates behavior in a social setting, behavior between human beings.

That's a very incomplete if not outright incorrect statement of the function of religion. Might be helpful to re-read your William James.

“The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely ‘understandable’ world”. Varieties of Religious Experience

>383 lawecon:: "As you observe, I find that position to be abhorrent. The whole point of religion is that it regulates behavior in a social setting, behavior between human beings."

In other words, Christianity is "abhorrent" to you because it doesn't fit within the purely ethical realm of social regulation that you understand Judaism to be. For all the times you reprove Christians for "reading Christianity" into Judaism and thus misunderstanding it, you'd think you'd have the self-awareness not to produce the same process in return.

Matthew 22:37-40: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets."

Notice that "regulating behavior in a social setting" really only applies to the second commandment there. The first and great command--love the Lord your God--surely issues in the second commandment, but is prior to it (as in the new commandment of John 13:34: "Love one another as I have loved you."). We love our neighbors (i.e. act ethically in a social setting) because we love God. Loving God, however, falls into what you tritely dismiss as the "metaphysical", with which your religion will not associate.

If you don't want to deal with ontology and metaphysics in your religious identity, that's fine. But you will never understand Christianity if you don't understand its fundamental connection between ontology and ethics.

~384

Obviously you and I mean quite different things when we use the term "noncredal".

Let me ask you a simple question about this. If I said "I believe only in Einstein's conclusions about physics as traditionally interpreted" would I have a prescriptive identifiable "creed" about physics? Apparently not if I then went on and said, "But I am, of course, not bound to any particular view about physics." So, apparently, if you started espousing the view that Muhammad was a prophet and the Qur'an was the word for word word of G_d in a Disciples congregation - no problem, so long as you also affirmed Jesus? Really.... really?

Even if your view made sense - which it doesn't unless you believe that "God is God and Allah is His Prophet" - isn't a creed - what percentage of Christians, now and historically, is 700,000? Just wondering.

~387

You misunderstand again. To the extent that you are right about Christianity - that is purely about "ontology" - then it is simply a sham. It doesn't matter that it is Christianity or some other sort of sham. You can, of course include shams based on chanting empty slogans among religions, but no one who thinks of themselves as "religious" will agree with you.

And I'm still waiting to hear that fundamental connection between ontology and ethics. A version of the venerable ontological argument, is it?

Incidentally, thanks for that interpretation of Jewish Scriptures. Try repeating it to any academic rabbi and see if they can keep a straight face. Not only are there not only 10 commandments (try 613) but your interpretation of the particular 10 you have in mind is not even close.

> 388. what percentage of Christians, now and historically, is 700,000? Just wondering.

Just wondering why that matters. Jesus started with 12.

~390

It matters because we're trying to separate out what "Christian" means or doesn't mean.

If virtually everyone outside of Christianity and most everyone who calls themselves Christian believes that Christianity is a credal religion, but 1/10 of one percent who call themselves Christians don't, then it doesn't much matter how that 1/10 of one percent use the terms "Christian" or "creedal." Sadly (or not), that is the fate of most widely used terms. Idiosyncratic meanings assigned by vanishing small groups just don't matter.

Perhaps what is confusing you is that I inappropriately referred, in post 383 above, to "a material number of Christians," when what I should have said is a "significant percentage of Christians." 700,000 may be a large number of people, but it isn't a material percentage of those who self-identify as Christians, now and historically.

Since some people still aren't getting this point, let me further elaborate. Christianity, of course, doesn't practice animal sacrifice. Well, some Christians do http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matagh Therefore, ah, "Christians don't practice animal sacrifice," by the standard employed by some in this thread, is a false proposition, although it is true of the overwhelming proportion of Christians, now and historically. Those proceeding in this way should probably rethink or we're going to have all sorts of even more repugnant practices identified with Christians and Christianity. Remember, you can't have it both ways.

> 391. If virtually everyone outside of Christianity and most everyone who calls themselves Christian believes that Christianity is a credal religion, but 1/10 of one percent who call themselves Christians don't, then it doesn't much matter how that 1/10 of one percent use the terms "Christian" or "creedal."

Christianity was founded by one of the greatest iconoclasts of all time. So people who refuse to be boxed into creeds and such like are following a good example. In fact, they're Christians.

~392

So, "iconoclasts" can just babble and make outrageously counterfactual statements, unlike those who speak to communicate with other people and be trusted? Got it.

>388 lawecon:
Being non-credal doesn't mean that we all believe whatever anyone believes, it means that, beyond accepting Jesus as Saviour and the Son of God, we support each other in our varying paths to a better understanding and closer relationship with God and we each share our individual insights and revelations for the good of all. If someone in the congregation believes Muhommed was a prophet of God, it doesn't mean that everyone in the congregation believes that Muhommed was a prophet of God (BTW - I sat next to someone for about 2 years in the choir who did believe Muhommed was a prophet of God. She was an alto, but I didn't hold that against her).

As I said, this denomination has about 700,000 members today. The other denomination I mentioned - probably about the same size. But, more importantly, I also mentioned that there are abouit 33,000 Protestant denominations in the world today, and I'm not going to put out the effort to figure out how many are non-credal and how many Christians that is, and what percentage that is. This is your hobby horse, lawecom, not mine. I find no value in such numbers. The most powerful Christian congregation I was ever a part of was only about 95 people. Their reach was un-measurable.

Os.

> 393. So, you're saying that affirming a creed is "factual" and the only way to communicate and gain trust?

>389 lawecon:: "Incidentally, thanks for that interpretation of Jewish Scriptures. Try repeating it to any academic rabbi and see if they can keep a straight face. Not only are there not only 10 commandments (try 613) but your interpretation of the particular 10 you have in mind is not even close."

I was trying to be respectful of your point of view, and here you go with some nonsense about "your interpretation of the particular 10 you have in mind." Just in case you didn't get this the first thousand times: Christians accept Jesus' interpretation of Jewish scriptures as authoritative; obviously, Jews do not.

In your more lucid moments, you have repeatedly admitted to me that we should work together to understand each other, recognizing that we each approach these questions with differing assumptions and worldviews. As you yourself wrote on my LT profile, "Personally, I think that our reasoning processes are not that far apart, it is just our presumptions that differ." In this post, however, you seem completely to have forgotten this.

Once again, you prove that you enjoy lambasting Christians for interpreting Scripture in ways you consider "non-Jewish". The least you could do is recognize that you consistently commit the same error for which you charge Christians: despite every attempt by myself and others to explain the differences, you insist on judging Christianity based on your own Jewish perspective, rather than understanding that Christianity approaches things from different presumptions than you hold.

You charge that Christianity's ontological claims are a "sham" without explaining why -- and crucially, you cannot explain why because you refuse to perceive that Christianity views the relationship between God and humans and between humans and other humans in a different light from the Judaism you live with.

God's fundamental being as relational Love (I believe it is cjbanning who has used the evocative phrase "perichoretic dialectic of conversation within Godself: Parent, Begotten One, and Spirit") is reflected in the world God created, sustains, and redeems -- and humans, made in that image and likeness, thus have relational Love at the root of their own beings. Thus, the nature of being itself gives rise to the nature of Christian ethics: Love for neighbor, a Love that is directed outward and is ultimately self-sacrificial.

Thus, when Christ summarizes "the Law" he does so in terms that relates his own being with his redemptive (ethical) mission: Loving God (who is Love) impels loving neighbor.

(A final question: why do you find a summary of the Law as loving God and neighbor so objectionable? After all, Jesus was really only riffing on Deut. 6:5 and Lev. 19:18. What is it about Love that you find so abhorrent?)

Jewish Meditation
In the Judaic literature, one also finds portrayals of contemplative or meditative exercises. As in other religious literatures, the end purpose here is union with God. The earliest form of mysticism in Judaism is Merkabolism, which dates back approximately to the first century A.D., the time of the Second Temple. Practices of this sect included various forms of asceticism, including fasting. Merkabolism’s meditative exercises focused on body posture and the dwelling upon hymns and a magic emblem. The meditator would place his head between his knees and whisper hymns and repeat the name of a magic emblem. Repetition of the magic emblem was used as the object to dwell upon and would chase away distractions and cause the “demons and hostile angels to flight.” A state of ecstasy was reached, which Gershom G. Scholem, a scholar of Jewish mysticism, has described as “an attitude of deep self-oblivion.”

Benson, Herbert; Klipper, Miriam Z. (2009-09-10). The Relaxation Response (Kindle Locations 1412-1419). HarperTorch. Kindle Edition.

>396 nathanielcampbell: (389)

"That which you hate, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole of the Torah, everything else is just explanation." - Rabbi Hillel

Writings on the techniques of mysticism in Judaism were prevalent in the thirteenth century. Many of the exercises involved dwelling upon the names of God or contemplating the letters constituting the name of God.

In his numerous works, Abraham Abulafia (1240-1291) focused on complex devices for uniting with the Agent Intellect, or God, through the recitation of divine names, together with breathing techniques and cathartic practices. Some of Abulafia’s mystic ways were adapted by the Ashkenazic Hasidic masters. Taking as his framework the metaphysical and psychological system of Moses Maimonides, (1135/8–1204), Abulafia strove for spiritual experience, which he viewed as a prophetic state similar to or even identical with that of the ancient Jewish prophets.

Rabbi Abulafia developed such a mystical system of meditating upon letters of the Hebrew alphabet as constituents of God’s name. The aim of his mystical theory was to “unseal the soul, to untie the knots which bind it.” Kept within the limits defined by one’s sensory perceptions and emotions, the soul’s life is finite, for these limits are finite. Hence, man needs a higher form of perception which, rather than blocking the soul’s deeper regions, will open them up. This perception must be capable of the highest importance without having any importance of its own. In order to accomplish this, one needs an absolute object upon which to meditate. Thus, Rabbi Abulafia used the letters of God’s name because the name is absolute. It reflects the meaning and totality of existence, yet to the human mind has no concrete meaning of its own.

Gershom G. Scholem, Kabbalah: A Definitive History of the Evolution, Ideas Leading figures and Extraordinary Influence of Jewish Mysticism, has characterized Abulafia’s teaching as “similar to Yoga.”
He writes that Abulafia’s …teachings represent but a Judaized version of that ancient spiritual technique which has found its classical expression in the practices of the Indian mystics who follow the system known as Yoga.
To cite only one instance out of many, an important part in Abulafia’s system is played by the technique of breathing; now this technique has found its highest development in the Indian Yoga, where it is commonly regarded as the most important instrument of mental discipline. Again, Abulafia lays down certain rules of body posture, certain corresponding combinations of consonants and vowels, and certain forms of recitation, and in particular some passages of his book “The Light of the Intellect” give the impression of a Judaized treatise on Yoga. The similarity even extends to some aspects of the doctrine of ecstatic vision, as preceded and brought about by these practices.

Benson, Herbert; Klipper, Miriam Z. (2009-09-10). The Relaxation Response (Kindle Locations 1425-1435). HarperTorch. Kindle Edition.

~398

And the relevance of that quotation to this discussion is...... ah?

Do you imagine, for instance, that Jews aren't continually critical of one another's beliefs? Ever visited a Yeshiva? Do you know what goes on there?

~396

So much to answer, and no expected response to half of what one answers. OK, let me give it a stab despite the expectation:

(1) Jesus generally did not interpret scriptures. As I pointed out in these forums ages ago, and numerous times since, the only "scriptures" that existed in Jesus' time were the Torah and some of the Prophets. It is not even clear that Jesus was literate - so what the stories say he sometimes quoted was an oral version of certain scriptures - at best. Even then we don't know if the ultimate source was the Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek text, since some of the Gospels attribute to him statements found only in one source and other allege he quoted another source. Those who "interpreted scriptures" were Christians who came long after Jesus' death and wrote stories about what he did and said, although none were witnesses to what he did or said.

The bottom line is thus that you and other Christians are simply making up interpretations of another Peoples' scriptures - a People which you typically claim were "superseded" but who sure are useful when your own tradition provides little guidance.

(2) I understand that Christianity approaches "things from a different perspective." That "different perspective" is what I'm usually referring to in these discussions (despite the claims of posters like Os that there is really no perspective at all). What you apparently don't understand is that the "perspective" reduces to "claims" that are not "claims about anything that matters" to most people most of the time. They are "empty claims" or a "sham." Who cares whether Adam and Eve ate an apple or a carpenter wandered around Judea 2,000 years ago making mostly obscure pronouncements? What I asked you in the last post was to trace the relationship between your all-important ontology and anything that would make any difference to anyone in living their life in this world. No answer. Never any answer from anyone who claims to be Christian in these forums - either a total evasion, in the form of claiming that Christianity really isn't anything in particular (Os, John, Tim) - or a claim that it is pure ontology, without any explanation as to why the particular ontology matters (you).

(3) The problem here is, of course, that "loving G_d" and "loving ones neighbor" are phrases that are hopelessly vague until filled with content. Jews have hundreds of books that try to fill in that content in very specific ways, e.g., http://www.artscroll.com/talmud?gclid=CIfvlLqjoLQCFQioPAodQVMAyQ Christians have more ontology.
In answer to your parenthetical and Os's continuing misunderstanding, the Hillel story ends with Hillel stating ".....the rest is commentary. Now go study the commentary." "Somehow" Christians seem to miss the duty to "study the commentary" - or even think in depth about the commentary. If the Torah prohibits "work" on the Sabbath, for instance, Christians know perfectly well what "work" is - everyone learns that as a baby growing up in an English speaking country, except, of course.......... Same with "loving G_d" and "loving your neighbor"..... it is OBVIOUS, isn't it?

Back to the issue of creeds---here is the Southern Baptist view on creeds, and in some ways it sounds like it might help in this debate bacause as it shows, the meaning of "creedal" can be quite different to different people,

In some groups, statements of belief have the same authority as Scripture. We call this creedalism. Baptists also make statements of belief, but all of them are revisable in light of Scripture. The Bible is the final word.

Because of this distinction, we are generally more comfortable with the word "confession." Still, we are "creedal" in the sense that we believe certain things, express those beliefs and order our institutions accordingly. There have always been Baptist limits. And within these limits, there have always been Baptist preferences.

~402

Your second definition is very near to the way I'm using the term "credal." I don't care whether a particular Christian or Christian group has thought about their beliefs sufficiently to have formulated a summary of necessary beliefs, I care merely that there are necessary beliefs and that they are not intuitive or obvious.

If it makes you comfortable to say that the beliefs of your group are somehow found in the Bible. Fine. But as I just said above, what is found in the NT is mostly platitudes. When Jesus gave specific direction to specific people ("Go sell all that you have and give the proceeds to the poor.") the Christian tradition is to limit such very specific direction to the person being spoken to. When Jesus tells someone to be "loving," however, that is taken with utmost seriousness - since it really isn't anything specific at all.

To put that formulation in a less Jewish way, and thus to partially satisfy Nathaniel, some Christians have, as you say, limits to what is a Christian belief - apparently many don't. When Os tells us that he doesn't bat an eye when another member of his congregation declares that Muhammad is a Prophet, he repudiates 1300 years of Christian belief to the contrary. If what Muhammad believed is found in the Qur'an and in the Haditha collections, then believing what Muhammad believed is, for all traditional Christians, mostly nonChristian (except, of course, for the platitudes - which guide what Muslims actually do as much as they do in Judaism). If Os and his group want to proceed in that way, fine. If other Christians accept such an attitude as Christian, then one can only conclude that what I just said above - that many Christians believe only in a completely empty ontology (or many, apparently, believe in less than ontology) - i.e., they hold beliefs without any prescriptive content.

This is, of course, an incredibly safe position. It is what Popper calls a "reinforced dogmatism" or what many atheists call "a faith." We had a similar discussion on hypocrisy before. The next thing to hypocrisy is retreating into tautology, e.g..
"I believe in being good." (Did Hitler then, imagine themselves as believing in being bad? I doubt it.)

>401 lawecon:: "What I asked you in the last post was to trace the relationship between your all-important ontology and anything that would make any difference to anyone in living their life in this world. No answer. Never any answer from anyone who claims to be Christian in these forums"

Your reading comprehension skills really are suffering these days, aren't they? To help you out, I will copy again what I wrote in 396, hoping that this time, you will actually read its content rather than making blind assumptions:

God's fundamental being as relational Love (I believe it is cjbanning who has used the evocative phrase "perichoretic dialectic of conversation within Godself: Parent, Begotten One, and Spirit") is reflected in the world God created, sustains, and redeems -- and humans, made in that image and likeness, thus have relational Love at the root of their own beings. Thus, the nature of being itself gives rise to the nature of Christian ethics: Love for neighbor, a Love that is directed outward and is ultimately self-sacrificial.

Thus, when Christ summarizes "the Law", he does so in terms that relate his own being with his redemptive (ethical) mission: Loving God (who is Love) impels loving neighbor.

>261 lawecon:, 262, 263, 264

I read Scripture at Roman Catholic masses back when I was in college and still openly identified as a neo-pagan. Heck, I was on the executive board the "Newman Board," named after good ol' John Henry of the Catholic community on campus for all four years I was in college! I served as secretary one semester.

404: "I believe it is cjbanning who has used"

Yep, that was me, as I suppose is obvious since you provided the link. Obviously I'm standing on the shoulders of giants when I talk about the Trinity that way--I don't make claim of any theological innovation--but I certainly can't find fault with your account in how a normative ethics flows from God's nature as relational Love, just as I have often made the argument that an interpretative hermeneutic similarly flows.

~404

Let me try once more.

When I said "relationship" in the passage you just quoted I meant "logical relationship." not some vague sort of "relational relationship." I am not asking for analogies between G_d's Love and Man's Love, I was asking for a statement of premises WITH SOME SPECIFIABLE CONTENT and the inferences that follow from those premises to conclusions about how humans should behave. Your answer is that G-d loves Himself internally because of the Trinity, as if the Trinity were a coherent premise, rather than "a great mystery." and therefore Man should love Himself internally - as if Man acts, rather than men acting. So we start out with an incoherent premise and deduce an incoherent conclusion about a categorial Being called Man, a being that is no where to be found.

Now returning to actual existing men and women, who do and can act in various ways toward each other: how should they act toward each other? I am NOT asking with what motive or type of will should they act toward each other (like thinking really nice thoughts as they dismember each other) but how, specifically, should they act toward each other? Should the relatively rich, for instance, sell everything they have and give the proceeds to those of them who are poor? Or should those who are Good Christians resist no evil when attacked or stolen from? Or,.........., just what, specifically, are your conclusions about the Right Interactions of men and women, and how do you get to those conclusions other than bibbity, bobbity, boo about a theological concept that Christians have never been able to explain to themselves or others?

> 403 so are you simply trying to say that beliefs matter?

~407

I am trying to say that some "beliefs" have implications for actions, some are just babble that give one a warm feeling of unjustified self-satisfaction and self-righteousness. You can actually have a conversation with those who hold the first sort of beliefs. You may agree or disagree, but in general you know what the agreement or disagreement is about. You can no more talk with the latter sort of believer than you can talk to a Nordic Berserker.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker in case you're not familiar with the reference. )

>406 lawecon: lawecon, I hesitate to jump back in as we have had this conversation often before, and I know that I can say nothing which is black and white enough to satisfy you.

But I would say that the two examples that you give have led to very real practical implications in action.

Should the relatively rich, for instance, sell everything they have and give the proceeds to those of them who are poor?

This has led, for example, from the communist-style early Church mentioned in Acts (can't find the exact reference at the moment) where they shared everything they had, through Christianity's historic concern with doing charitable good works, with the monastic tradition of some literally giving up all they have, to Catholic Social Teaching, and was an influence in liberation theology and the preferential option for the poor.

should those who are Good Christians resist no evil when attacked or stolen from?

Some denominations and many individuals have indeed taken that literally, often at great personal cost. Others have reflected on it and found it impossible to put into practice absolutely, but have nevertheless at least used it to moderate the degree to which one can respond. The Church developed a "just war" theory setting out some quite specific criteria for war.

Apart from a few bible literalists, Christians do not take every word of the bible as a literal instruction, but interpret them according to a host of criteria which have often been mentioned on LT. And Christians do not all agree on how they should be interpreted - a Latin American Catholic barrio-dweller and a US right-wing protestant evangelical businessman might disagree on the sharing of resources, while a Quaker and a Catholic might disagree on the concept of just war, for example. There is healthy diversity and disagreement on many of these issues within Christianity. Which actually sounds very much like Judaism as you often describe it...

> 409. Very well said. I want to be a fireman when I grow up.

>409 John5918: while a Quaker and a Catholic might disagree on the concept of just war, for example

Even within denominations or closely related Christian groups - some evangelical Christians reject the concept of a just war while others support it.

Os.

>400 lawecon: And the relevance of that quotation to this discussion is...... ah?

I'm sure, lawecom, you already knew this, but I posted it because, even though most folks on this thread probably are familiar with the quotation in one translation or another, it seemed relevent to discussion about Jesus' simple message to love God and love man. This may not have been as radical as I once thought, given Hilel's statement at about the same time.

For the rest of 400 - No, I don't. No, I haven't. No I don't.

>401 lawecon:
If you find such statements by Jesus or Hilel regarding loving one's neighbor to be hopelessly vague, lawecom, perhaps you should do as Hilel said - go and study the rest. The NT contains many simple, clear statements about what it means to follow these simple 'love' statements, as do subsequent writings by the church fathers, trying to fill in that content in very specific ways. I assumed you had read the NT.

Os.

ETA "to be hopelessly vague" to the first sentence of the last paragraph. Left that out, somehow.

>401 lawecon: lawecom's item 2

Fascinating - ignore what we post and then paraphrase what you want to claim we posted.

Os.

Edited to be more accurate.

>403 lawecon: When Os tells us that he doesn't bat an eye when another member of his congregation declares that Muhammad is a Prophet, he repudiates 1300 years of Christian belief to the contrary

I said nothing about what I did with my eyes. I simply implied that we did not eject a member because we didn't agree with a personal belief. The simplist evangelism is witnessing to a member of one's own congregation. This individual had left the church (Southern Baptist) and went looking for God by another path. Later in life, she discovered (through contact with this congregation) something which you, lawecom, don't seem interested in discovering - that some Christian denominations have no credal requirement for inclusion in the congregation. This created the opportunity for her to share her journey and for others to share their own faith. This can only be a good thing, and I know that she began to question her early rejection of Christianity at least partly due to the love revealed to her in that church family.

I suppose this may have 'repudiated' Church belief in some ways. It certainly was inconsistent with the goals of the Inquisition, the Crusades, expulsion of the Jews, etc. But whatever was going on with her and with us during that time, I know God was in it.

Os.

>410 jburlinson: Now that I have been a steam locomotive fireman for ten years or so I want to be a driver! Unfortunately my work in South Sudan means I can't spend enough time with the steam engines to complete the necessary training and internship, so I remain a humble fireman, although I do get to drive the locomotives occasionally. But I'm not sure when I will ever grow up...

~409

You are missing the point, John - at least this point. This point is whether Christianity is a creedal religion (virtually everyone other than Os and his proportionately minute groups says it is), and what it means for a religion to be creedal.

Of course if it isn't a creedal religion. or you would apparently like to say "religions," then there is no issue - at least no need to talk about the type of things in the creed that make the creed meaningful. (Whether it is one religion or many religions is the discussion we've had before. Again, your view is contrary to that of your Church tradition, but perhaps your Church has had a revelation? That isn't, however, this point, since even if there are many Christianities, each of them must BELIEVE certain doctrinal things that have some substantive content (meaning), if they each are creedal.)

My point here is simply that if it (Christianity) or them (Christianities) are creedal. then the creeds must be more than meaningless bumperstickers, chants or slogans - they must have content - they must prescribe certain actions and command other actions. If they don't, if they simply refer to what one recites, but which has no implications for action, then you again have a "solution," but the solution isn't one with implications that you will like.

~411

Again, Os, you seem to be arguing that there are many Christianities, not that a Christianity is truly without a creed. Those two positions are not the same logically, just as your statement "Even within denominations or closely related Christian groups....." is not stating synonyms.

~412

Yes, Os, I have read the NT. I find in it two sorts of things - just like I find two sorts of things in the OT - I find platitudes that are so broad as to be without content, standing on their own, and I find specific instructions to the faithful that are generally ignored or explained away by most Christians.

The question that I have been posting (4 or 5 times now) is whether there is any sort of creed that a Christian must believe AND ACT UPON to be a Christian. Your answer is apparently that there is no such thing - as I've pointed out before, that position is a very minority position, even if various Christians believe that the creed that is required has different content.

As I've further pointed out, the typical Jewish interpretation of the Standing On One Foot story about Hillel and Shamai, is that Judaism should be welcoming to potential converts BUT THEN REQUIRE THEM TO LEARN WHAT JUDAISM IS ALL ABOUT. The second part of that lesson is not dispensable in Judaism, but you would apparently have us believe that it is dispensable in Christianity. If you don't understand the point of a story, then perhaps you should refrain from trying to use it to prop up a questionable position?

~414

"I said nothing about what I did with my eyes. I simply implied that we did not eject a member because we didn't agree with a personal belief."

Try to keep it straight, Os. A Christian endorsing the central tenant of a competing faith is not a "personal belief." It is acceptance of a central tenant, perhaps the central tenant, of a competing faith. Such an acceptance is not considered as "private" and a "matter of personal choice" by most Christians, today or in the past. Most Christians have believed that if you accept Muhammad and his revelations, one of which is that Jesus was most definitely not divine, you are no longer a Christian. You have read the Qur'an and the Haditha, haven't you?

Is an endorsement of genocide also a "personal belief" in your ideal faith - apparently, since there is apparently no exclusion of any belief as how one should conceive the world or relate to other people that would preclude one from being your sort of noncreedal Christian.

"I suppose this may have 'repudiated' Church belief in some ways. It certainly was inconsistent with the goals of the Inquisition, the Crusades, expulsion of the Jews, etc. But whatever was going on with her and with us during that time, I know God was in it."

It certainly must be comforting to believe that G_d is "in" everything and its opposite. It is also nice in that excuses one from any action, since actions contrary to what G_d wants and causes to happen, are bad things. (And some wonder why our forum atheists are so rabid about what is presented to them as by the self-proclaimed religious as religion.)

>416 lawecon:: "My point here is simply that if it (Christianity) or them (Christianities) are creedal. then the creeds must be more than meaningless bumperstickers, chants or slogans - they must have content - they must prescribe certain actions and command other actions. If they don't, if they simply refer to what one recites, but which has no implications for action, then you again have a "solution," but the solution isn't one with implications that you will like."

At least you're willing to clarify the sticking-point: you define "creed" to be fundamentally an ethical statement, rather than a simple statement about the nature of reality. This, then, reflects the wider point of misunderstanding that pervades this conversation: you can only conceive of religion as "regulating social behavior" -- it is for you purely a human institution with human aims. The relationship between nature and supernature you consign to the category of "meaningless sham".

So here's the problem: you keep demanding that a definition of "creedal" Christianity fit inside your narrowly ethical definition of "creed". So when Christians talk about their "creed" in other ways that don't fit inside that definition, you get confused and upset. (It's kind of like the atheist who keeps demanding that explanations of God fit within the purely materialist framework the atheist works under -- the definition of reality thus precludes from the start the actual nature of God that believers perceive.)

Perhaps what you need to do is recognize that Christians approach this fundamental issue of "creed" from a completely different perspective that is not limited to the purely ethical.

To illustrate, I will copy down a commonly-used Christian creed, sometimes called "the Apostles' Creed", which is based on prototypical "Rules of Faith" found in the New Testament and in other apostolic and early Christian writings:

I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth;

and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried; he descended into hell; on the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty; from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.

Notice that that this "creed" (a word that comes from the Latin word "credo", "I believe," with which the Latin version of this statement of faith begins) makes statements expressing (1) belief in God, (2) belief in God's triune nature {the Father almighty, his only Son, and the Holy Spirit}, and (3) belief in that triune God's interaction with history. These are statements about what God is and what God has done, is doing, and will do.

The final section of the creed expresses belief in the Holy Spirit and then, by extension, belief in how God continues to work in the world by the Holy Spirit through "the holy catholic Church". What is that Church? "The communion of saints." What does that Church do? "The forgiveness of sins." What does that Church hope for? "The resurrection of the body, and life everlasting."

Thus, a most basic and most widely accepted Christian creed contains just one phrase that would fit within you narrow little box: forgiveness of sins.

I am sorry that Christianity doesn't fit into your narrow definition of what a religion should be. I am sorry that two thousand years of Christians didn't consult your all-knowingness before making the foundation of their religion an affirmation of God's being first, and only then, flowing from that being, an affirmation of ethical duties.

And I am sorry that you can't understand that fundamental difference in perspective from your own. Perhaps one day you will finally recognize that there are other definitions of religion operative in the world besides your own, and perhaps one day you will finally accept that those other definitions of religion need to be understood on their own terms, rather than arrogantly dismissed because they aren't your own.

>420 nathanielcampbell:

To confuse the issue, I would add that the great creeds of the church are not entirely neutral, disinterested statements of all Christians belief, but texts specifically crafted to address difficulties and differences. The motive behind the apostles creed are somewhat unclear, I think, but the Nicene/Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed, while originating, apparently, in the baptismal formula in use in Antioch, came about primarily to address Christological controversies in the early church. So it's not so much "here's everything we believe" as "here are some things we believe about matters you may have heard people disputing." A number of core Christian beliefs are not mentioned, or at least not detailed, in the creeds because they weren't at issue.

However, Christians have pointed to various passages in NT as normative in the way you believe creeds should be—the Sermon on the Mount, the sheep and the goats, etc. They, are, obviously, less specific (Lawecon called them "vague") than some Jewish commandments. The NT has nothing to compare with the complexity and specificity of parts of the Hebrew Bible—for example, that, if a gecko falls into a clay pot, you must break the pot, but if falls onto a piece of wood, you can immerse the wood in water and it's ritually clean by evening. Instead, Christians are to, say, visit the prisoner and feed the hungry. The details are left to time, the teaching of the church and our consciences.

418

"The question that I have been posting (4 or 5 times now) is whether there is any sort of creed that a Christian must believe AND ACT UPON to be a Christian."

If by 'creed' you mean what most Christian churches define as a creed (Apostles', Nicene, etc), then the answer to your question is No. Which is why Quakers - for example - can dispense with creeds and still regard themselves as Christians.

However, if your question is expanded to ask "Is there SOMETHING which a Christian must (or should) act upon to be a Christian?" then Yes. Christianity inherited the simplest form of Mosaic Law as enshrined in the 10 Commandments, but could equally say that even those have been superseded by Jesus's Two Commandments (Love God...., Love Thy Neighbour....). If those latter two are platitudes, then blame Jesus! I suspect however, that it is in the way that many Christians INTERPRET them that they can emerge as platitudes.

One thing I am vague on here. When LE uses the word "Christianity" what does he mean? Is he talking about the core essence of the faith as distilled from the many ways it is practiced? Is he talking aobut the Christianity of the Theologians? Is he talking about the official stance of religious Dow-Jones index of denominations? Is he talking about what is actually practiced in the pews, or what is practiced in the pulpit? Is he talking specifically about the forms of Western Christianity that he knows, or a more global view of the faith?

One interesting thing about the councils and creeds. They met to define the nature of Christ, the nature of the Trinity, the use of icons, self-castration, and various other topics, but they never defined soteriology. Apparently they were much more open on how to be saved than they were on the nature of Christ.

~423

"One thing I am vague on here. When LE uses the word "Christianity" what does he mean?"

Yes, and the fact that you are vague on what "Christianity" means is exactly the problem. At least one of the problems. The other problem is that if you want to define "Christianity" in purely metaphysical terms, then it remains metaphysical, and Genghis Khan could have been a good Christian.

I really don't see that what I'm asking is impossible to answer:

(1) IF Christianity is "creedal," what is the core creed (the beliefs that all Christians hold in common)? If there is no core creed, then are there multiple Christianities, or is there no Christianity? If Christianity is not creedal (as virtually no one outside these forums believes) what is its nature? Or, again, does it really have no nature?

(2) Is the creed, presuming there is a creed, more than metaphysical, or does it talk merely about doctrines like the Trinity, original sin, Jesus' redemptive nature in general, etc. ? Is there any way to separate Christians from other people, or can anyone, regardless of belief or action, be a Christian. (Again, that question appears to have a pretty clear answer historically, but not,e.g., when Christians start thinking that belief in Muhammad is compatible with being a Christian.)

Christianity is like the Chinese language. There is in fact a multiplicity within it, and not all forms are mutually intelligible, but nevertheless there is sufficient commonality at some level of shared origin and history which prevents use of the singular term from being completely vacuous.

So what is the commonality?

Could someone here be specific, for a change?

Are the questions somehow unclear? What is unclear?

(1) IF Christianity is "creedal," what is the core creed (the beliefs that all Christians hold in common)? If there is no core creed, then are there multiple Christianities, or is there no Christianity? If Christianity is not creedal (as virtually no one outside these forums believes) what is its nature? Or, again, does it really have no nature?

Where do you get your evidence that "virtually no one outside these forums believes" that Christianity is not credal? I guess you have a better bead on it than people who have been steeped in it and who have experienced it on different continents.

There is clearly no core creed that all Christians adhere to. The closest one can get is the Nicene Creed, but the East and the West differ on how it is said. Some streams use the Apostle's creed, but not the Orthodox. Some use no creed, and some of those are adament about that.

But then, this is a dead horse, and as far as I can tell, only one person does not get it yet.

(1) IF Christianity is "creedal," what is the core creed (the beliefs that all Christians hold in common)? If there is no core creed, then are there multiple Christianities, or is there no Christianity? If Christianity is not creedal (as virtually no one outside these forums believes) what is its nature? Or, again, does it really have no nature?

"Creedal" means two overlapping things in English—one relating to the specific existence of a creed and a second related to a religion being fundamentally about what you believe (credo), as opposed to who you are, etc.

All Christians subscribe to a number of credal statements in the New Testament itself (eg., 1 Cor. 15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Corinthians_15). And virtually all subscribe to the Nicene Creed, with the caveat that the Nicene Creed—coming as it did three centuries after the "start" of the religion—is a communal restatement of that Christian belief which already existed.

Although written, the Christian attitude toward creeds differs somewhat from some other religions. No doubt billions of Christians have died who were not directly aware of either 1 Cor. 15 or the Nicene Creed. They believed its contents, entirely or mostly, but they didn't know it specifically. Their ultimate belief may never have had any repeated or shared verbal form at all, but was a matter of inner belief. This is to be contrasted with, for example, the Islamic Shahada, which every Muslim in history has known and which, in addition to be something Muslims believe, is itself a speech act--the very thing that actually makes you a Muslim. Christians will say things when getting baptized, but there is no direct parallel.

Ultimately, therefore, Christianity is most directly credal in the second sense. Christians believe that belief is important, saving even. At its root, we're talking about belief in Jesus as the Christ, son of God and savior. Further, belief isn't enough. You have to have something else, like trust (the radical meaning of "faith"). After all, the devil believes the contents of the Nicene creed—indeed, he knows it for absolute sure while we do not. I suppose he'd really only disagree about the last statement--he doesn't "look forward" to the resurrection of the dead at all.

"Where do you get your evidence that "virtually no one outside these forums believes" that Christianity is not creedal? I guess you have a better bead on it than people who have been steeped in it and who have experienced it on different continents."

How many quotations would you like from history of Christianity texts, comparative religion texts, etc? You may not believe it to be the case, but virtually every scholar that has addressed the question says that "being creedal" is the characteristic that separates Christianity from other religions. The usual recitation is that Christianity is mostly right-belief oriented, Judaism is mostly right-action oriented and Islam is half and half, albeit nearer Judaism. What have you been reading that you don't know that to be true?

Whether all Christians endorse the SAME CREED is, of course, a somewhat different question, but to maintain that Christianity is not creedal is so far out of the mainstream that you seem to be making it up as you go along.

"Ultimately, therefore, Christianity is most directly credal in the second sense. Christians believe that belief is important, saving even. At its root, we're talking about belief in Jesus as the Christ, son of God and savior. Further, belief isn't enough. You have to have something else, like trust (the radical meaning of "faith"). After all, the devil believes the contents of the Nicene creed—indeed, he knows it for absolute sure while we do not. I suppose he'd really only disagree about the last statement--he doesn't "look forward" to the resurrection of the dead at all."

To be honest with you, I have no idea at all what your last two sentences mean. Your previous sentences, in this quotation, are just the sort of thing that I had in mind when I spoke of vacuous proclamations of faith. That Jesus is "Savior" means something only if there something to be saved from - most other religions don't believe there to be that something, or if they do believe there to be that something, they don't believe that it is irremedial outside of Jesus. Most other religions don't have a clue what it means for someone to be a "son of G_d," other than all people are sons or daughters of G_d, etc. These statements are not only doctrinal, they are purely doctrinal. They are circular and provide "solutions" for "problems" that don't exist, except in the same paradigm.

>429 lawecon:

I am sure your formulation has been used, but it's not the universal statement of all incontrovertible knowledge. For staters, it presumes action and belief are opposites, or at least shares of a fixed pie—if you are more about belief, you are less about action, etc. This is obviously a simplification. Simplifications are powerful things, but if you don't understand them as simplifications, your understanding will remain simple. I think that's the case here.

To poke at your formulation, while Islam certainly values right action—where Christianity might favor faith and forgiveness for bad action—Islam is indisputably creedal in that there is a single, short statement of belief which, if you say it, actually makes you a Muslim. Christianity and Judaism don't have that.

~430

So, reciting the Apostle's creed along with baptism don't make you a Christian? Really? I am curious, what else do you need to do?

Confess Jesus as Lord. In the Presbyterian church, that is the One Thing.

>431 lawecon:
No, reciting the creed, along with baptism, doesn't make you a Christian. But it's probably quite rare that someone does these things without beginning with the necessary belief that 1) Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and 2) accepting Him as Saviour.

Wording and nuance may be different across the spectrum of Christian denominations, but I think most would agree with this. My apologies in advance if I've assumed too much. The first part, as many have noted, even the Devil does. The second part (in some form), then, becomes necessary.

If you do this, then it follows that you would strive to adhere to the two most important rules that Jesus gave us - to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. The NT then contains many clear statements about just what all of this means for day-to-day living.

Os.

>429 lawecon:: "These statements (i.e. Jesus Christ is Son of God and Savior -- or FISH, if you prefer) are not only doctrinal, they are purely doctrinal. They are circular and provide "solutions" for "problems" that don't exist, except in the same paradigm."

Yes, in the strict sense they are "purely doctrinal" -- but why that makes them any less valid for Christians is not something you have given any reasonable argument to prove. We all know that you don't believe these statements about reality -- otherwise, you would be Christian rather than a Jew. But your argument boils down to this: I don't believe it, so you shouldn't, either, and anybody who does is irrationally ignorant. For the sake of both our dignities, I will avoid imagining you putting your fingers in your ears, scrunching your nose and yelling, "Nanner nanner boo boo!"

What you don't seem to understand is that the person of Jesus Christ is at the heart and foundation of Christianity. Jesus, the Word and Only-begotten, Incarnate Son of God, is himself the head of the Church, which is his body. Christians are members of the Body of Christ because of the saving grace that has joined humanity to the divine.

As I've said before (and probably will say again many times, not that you'll notice), the ontological reality of humanity, made by the Word of God in his image and likeness and redeemed unto divine perfection by the Word-Made-Flesh, impels the ethical duties of a humanity to act with the Love that is also at the heart of God's being.

Put another way: the ethical duty of concrete human beings is to be imitators of the perfect human being, Jesus, who has opened for them the way of perfection because he is himself true God and true Man:

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. (...) But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you. (...) For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (Romans 8:2-17)

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (...) For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. (Galatians 5:1 and 13)

Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:3-11)

>434 nathanielcampbell:
Nathan, unless you say what lawecom wants you to say, in the way he wants it said, I'm afraid you're typing is for naught. While accusing many of us of intentionally misunderstanding him, he's committed to doing the same until we say what he wants to hear. An excellent example is his post 424:

"One thing I am vague on here. When LE uses the word "Christianity" what does he mean?"

Yes, and the fact that you are vague on what "Christianity" means is exactly the problem.

He intentionally reverses the meaning of what he quotes to fit his argument. Arctic says he is vague about what lawecom means by 'Christianity', and lawecom decides that Arctic actually means that Arctic is vague about what Christianity means! With this approach, rational discussion with lawecom is pointless.

Os.

PS - Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. - John Kenneth Galbraith

> 424. If Christianity is not creedal (as virtually no one outside these forums believes)...

Genghis Khan could have been a good Christian.

As has been pointed out to you repeatedly, there are denominations that renounce creeds (e.g. Quakers) and yet remain Christian. There's an entire movement called "Progressive Christianity" or "Liberal Christianity" that is not dependent on any particular dogma or creedal statement.

There is a great deal of latitude.

This is not a particularly modern phenomenon, either. Genghis Khan is a good example. He had a Christian wife. He married his son to a Christian woman. He may well have considered himself a Christian. Many of the Mongols were technically Nestorian Christians, although their Christian beliefs were heavily mingled with other belief systems, and many Mongols saw no contradiction in being both Nestorians and adherents of other religions.

As follower of Tengriism, Genghis would have had no problem in self-identifying as Christian, if the mood struck him. Here's the creed of Genghis' grandson, Möngke Khan, the fourth Great Khan of the Mongol empire and the son of a Christian mother: “We believe that there is only one God, by whom we live and by whom we die, and for whom we have an upright heart. But as God gives us the different fingers of the hand, so he gives to men diverse ways to approach Him.”

So things haven't changed all that much.

edited to regain control of italics

Wait....are we talking about GOOD Christians? It would be easier if we could say what we mean.

~432 and 433

I am afraid you've lost me. Of course the Apostles' Creed includes more than "belief that 1) Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and 2) accepting Him as Saviour." and if what you've trying to get at all along is that it needs to be shortened as part of the test for "being a Christian," then it seems to me that you've achieved the opposite of what you may be aiming at. Such a view is not inclusive, it cuts off most traditional Christians - who believe that the Trinity, G_d Church, which is Jesus' Church, etc. are equally important to Jesus Himself. You might, in fact, be accused of doing what you wrongly characterize my post as doing - merely reciting rather than truly believing.

And surely you and Tim are not bigoted enough to believe that one becomes a Muslim merely by reciting, rather than believing, the shihādah? Well, maybe you are.

~436

Well, thank you for that insight. So Genghis Khan and Hitler were arguably Christians from your perspective. Any other greats of history you would like to claim as your own? This gets more and more fascinating as we tease out the implications (and makes my choice of Judaism over Christianity more and more reasonable).

And surely you and Tim are not bigoted enough to believe that one becomes a Muslim merely by reciting, rather than believing, the shihādah? Well, maybe you are.

You have to do both, as with many other speech acts. (In practice, muslims have often regarded the words alone as sufficient, but competent religious authorities do not agree.) But thanks for calling me a bigot.

Well, thank you for that insight. So Genghis Khan and Hitler were arguably Christians from your perspective. Any other greats of history you would like to claim as your own? This gets more and more fascinating as we tease out the implications (and makes my choice of Judaism over Christianity more and more reasonable).

Judaism is a perfectly rational choice, and I hope you made that choice rationally. But Hitler is more likely to be backstroking in a pool of marigolds in heaven than your posts are reasonable.

~434

"Yes, in the strict sense they are "purely doctrinal" -- but why that makes them any less valid for Christians is not something you have given any reasonable argument to prove. We all know that you don't believe these statements about reality -- otherwise, you would be Christian rather than a Jew. But your argument boils down to this: I don't believe it, so you shouldn't, either, and anybody who does is irrationally ignorant. For the sake of both our dignities, I will avoid imagining you putting your fingers in your ears, scrunching your nose and yelling, "Nanner nanner boo boo!""

No, Nathaniel, I make no moral judgment about what you should believe. Just like I make no moral judgment about the belief of certain other religious people that it is desirable to achieve Nothingness, because one then avoids the Pain and Suffering of Human Existence.

Irreconcilable sin is a "problem" for you. "Unavoidable pain and suffering" are a "problem" for them. I just point out, as have many many others in academia and elsewhere, that your beliefs are not some sort of objective rendering of reality, just because you'd like them to be (see, e.g., God Is Not One ). What you are doing is an exercise in logical circularity. You create a problem about unforgivable sin and how that makes individuals irretrievable irreconcilable with G_d, and then you create a "solution" to this problem. Since no one outside of Christianity believes that the problem exists, the solution becomes irrelevant.

Further, when you move from your system of manufactured problems and solutions to, your "conclusions" about substantive matters such as ethics, the conclusions are either logically unconnected to the premises or they are empty. If you don't believe that, try writing out the logic of the argument. The valid implications are not there unless the conclusions are things that neither you nor any other Christian believes in practice - like "unconditioned and unreserved love."

~440

Well, Tim, maybe what is unreasonable is an account of Christianity that concludes that Genghis Khan and Hitler were real Christians. But I guess that never occurred to you? Is it is so much more convenient to "kill the messenger," particularly when the messenger is pointing out that the king has no clothes.

>442 lawecon:

I don't suppose you'll get it, but no account of Christianity does that. Whatever. Can we move on to just making shit up like you do? Why IS IT that Jews must vote for Lyndon LaRouche?

In this and in lawecon's previous attempts to pursue this topic I'm afraid I fail to grasp his point. It's almost as if he is saying that there can be no Christianity unless it can be neatly defined in a particular way. Yet the reality is that Christianity does exist, in its own complex, sometimes confused, sometimes contradictory, often muddled way. Christianity is. It is a living faith, not just a set of intellectual assertions. Many of us have tried to describe it to lawecon, as it actually exists, but somehow we seem to fail to bridge that communication gap.

>436 jburlinson: as God gives us the different fingers of the hand, so he gives to men diverse ways to approach Him

Interesting. If I recall correctly, the modern Catholic Benedictine monk Bede Griffiths used a very similar analogy.

Is lawecon arguing just for the hell of it, in the face of very reasoned debate? Or is his question fair and reasonable? I think the answer to both questions is Yes! Leaving aside his argumentative style of debate, I think his question deserves careful examination, especially from people who are currently outside the Christian religion, and therefore have no particular axe to grind.

First of all, Christianity is unique among religions in one particular : Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, each owes their existence to the activities ("revelations") of one historical individual (leaving aside the other cultural and historical pressures that may also have contributed). Judaism, loosely in common with Hinduism, has evolved as one people's search for their own identity, particularly their religious identity; in both cases, the precise statements made in a core religious text - the Bhagavad Gita and the Torah - have helped to strengthen that identity and demarcate the followers from other religions and peoples.

Yet Christianity has as its core founding figure someone who was a sincere and faithful follower of another religion. So when lawecon asks "What separates Christianity from Judaism, what are the precise defining characteristics?", he asks a valid and pertinent question. Tim, in 428 you said "virtually all subscribe to the Nicene Creed, with the caveat that the Nicene Creed—coming as it did three centuries after the "start" of the religion—is a communal restatement of that Christian belief which already existed." While it is quite true that this creed came very late, it was hardly a 'restatement of that Christian belief which already existed'. It was in fact a cobbled-together compromise, presided over by the putative but highly political Christian the Emperor Constantine, in a final attempt to reconcile the opposing views of Arians and Athanasians, before he had to leave in a hurry to resolve a military problem on the northern borders. In particular, the phrase "begotten not made" (does anyone now really understand the subtleties enshrined in that?) was the whitewash that covered over those two conflicting views of who Jesus was.

Jesus was a Jew. Early followers of Jesus, putting his guidance and teachings into practice, were Jews. Then along comes Paul, and suddenly a minority Jewish sect expands into something wider. After a few centuries of theological debate and conflict, a creed emerges - the Nicene - intended to formulate and summarise exactly what Christianity is, in the nature of Jesus Christ and his relationship to God. Though NOT - as lawecon repeatedly insists - on how a Christian should conduct themself in their daily life. That has been left to all the different denominations to interpret, or reinterpret, many repudiating the position of other denominations (viz. the importance of the priesthood, the nature of the sacrament, the centrality of the Bible, the role of the Jews, the precise formulation of the Trinity, the role of women, the nature and path and necessity of salvation, the literality of the Bible and the miracles, etc etc).

What is left, after all that late-flowering edifice is stripped away? On the surface, not very much at all. A mysteriously empty vessel, which lawecon has every right to inquisit. Yet as with all religions, a deeper truth and spirituality lies beneath. George Fox, founder of Quakerism, searched high and low - within the Christian Church - for answers to his spiritual search, and found it nowhere. He was about to give up, when “I heard a voice which said, `There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition', and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy.” After meetings with like minded people, he formed his group "The Religious Society of the Friends of Seekers after Truth", and in time produced a core statement / instruction: “Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you.” It seems to me, that if Christianity is to be defined as "following in the footsteps of Jesus", then what better example is there than that?

To summarise - Christianity has its roots in a good Jew. Everything else arose later, and involved much theological debate. Yet, the creeds can be viewed as mere formulations, no more. Being a religion that Yoga would define as the Way of Devotion, its precepts and especially "how to live", have to be worked out anew by each individual, with Jesus as a template. All else, including and perhaps especially, creeds, could be legitimately rejected.

~444

"In this and in lawecon's previous attempts to pursue this topic I'm afraid I fail to grasp his point. It's almost as if he is saying that there can be no Christianity unless it can be neatly defined in a particular way. Yet the reality is that Christianity does exist, in its own complex, sometimes confused, sometimes contradictory, often muddled way. Christianity is. It is a living faith, not just a set of intellectual assertions. Many of us have tried to describe it to lawecon, as it actually exists, but somehow we seem to fail to bridge that communication gap."

Let's be clear about the reality, John. What exists is a variety of different sorts of viewpoints, viewpoints that often differ radically from each other regarding both what is believed and what is done, AND OFTEN CONTRADICT ONE ANOTHER. It apparently pleases some people, for rather mysterious reasons of their own, to call these varied and often contradictory viewpoints "Christian". Just read through the thread above, and listen to the voices who call themselves Christians.

The upshot of that, John, is not that there is this Great Movement with many parts, but that there are people who use similar labels for their often very different views. Your use of the term "confused" is quite accurate. As we are advised above, you don't even have to believe in a very basic creed anymore or, presumably, even be baptized, to become a Christian. All you have to do is murmur "I believe in Jesus." But the Jesus you believe in may be Jesus the warrior, Jesus the sectarian, Jesus the advocate of becoming rich, Jesus the pacifist, Jesus the universalist, Jesus the advocate of giving away all you have and joining a monastery, etc. If there are entirely different and contradictory Jesuses that "Christians" "believe in," and if the only mark of being a Christian is believing in Jesus, then the label has lost all meaning.

I am sorry you and others don't see that. It is a very simple point in linguistics and logic, and I can't really imagine that your failure to understand it is candid.

Now what I've been doing is testing the above propositions. You are right, I would like these propositions to fail the test. I would like to find out that Christianity is really something coherent with some core unity. What I find when I run this test, however, is what I've said a couple times in this thread: Either (1) Christians themselves deny there is any core doctrines to their faith, and seem to glory in that fact (although there is certainly no core behaviors to make up for the lack of core doctrines) or (2) Christians retreat into the totally empty (totally without content) labels described above, e.g., "I believe in Jesus, the Son of G_d, the Savior." Again, that is totally without content because we then have to ask "which Jesus is that?"

I just can't get over Lawecon's claim that the Queen of England is behind the drug trade.

>447 lawecon:: "Christians retreat into the totally empty (totally without content) labels described above, e.g., "I believe in Jesus, the Son of G_d, the Savior." Again, that is totally without content because we then have to ask "which Jesus is that?"

I give up. It has been explained again and again that such a statement ("I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior") does have meaning and content; it has been shown again and again what that content is. (Read again the passages I quoted from Paul in post 434, especially from Philippians 2, which I take to be the best of the prototypical rules of faith.)

Yet you still ignore those explanations. The only argument you have offered to support your ridiculous notion that these claims are "totally without content" is (quoting from 441):

Since no one outside of Christianity believes that the problem exists, the solution becomes irrelevant. Further, when you move from your system of manufactured problems and solutions to, your "conclusions" about substantive matters such as ethics, the conclusions are either logically unconnected to the premises or they are empty.

You make two claims here: (1) Because Christianity has beliefs that are unique to it, they are meaningless (even though you continually berate us for not asserting unique qualifiers for "Christianity"); and (2) Christianity must be reducible to a logical system, i.e. it must be entirely accessible by reason alone. This second presumption flows for your fundamental assumption that religion is simply a man-made institution and has no actual foundation in the divine.

I don't quite know how to respond to claim (1), as it seems utterly risible. In the American Revolutionary War, some Americans thought they should be independent of the British Crown; others thought they should remain loyal to the Crown. Thus, because one upheld a belief that was not shared by the other group, that claim must have been "totally without content". That is, to use your phrasing, "Since no one outside of the Revolutionaries believed that the problem of monarchical government existed, their solution (breaking away from the Crown) became irrelevant."

Claim (2) can at least be refuted by noting that a principle and fundamental claim of Christianity is that it is faith that saves, not reason. Faith is a gift of grace, a gift of God's Love -- it is more than just a man-made ethical system. To quote Anselm of Canterbury, "While the right order requires that we should believe the deep things of the Christian faith before we undertake to discuss them by reason, it seems careless for us, once we are established in the faith, not to aim at understanding what we believe."

So long as you demand that Christianity be reducible to a set of logical propositions, your demands will be frustrated, because for the Christian, faith must and always will be prior to human reason. This is why Scriptures--the Word of God--are so necessary: they contain truths that are not accessible to human reason alone, but require divine revelation.

Of his own accord, man can only dimly glimpse the divine, in moments fleetingly caught through "a glass darkly". God has revealed himself, however, first to the Children of Israel, and then to the whole world by becoming a human being: through those revelations, we come to know God fully and completely, in love and grace and truth.

449

Nathaniel, in whom I find no guile, until you admit he is right, he will never understand your points.

Yet Christianity has as its core founding figure someone who was a sincere and faithful follower of another religion.

I think it might be claimed that the Buddha started life as a sincere Hindu (whatever that polysemous and polymorphous label may imply), and Confucius does not seem to have rejected the ancestor worship of his culture, though I presume Muhammad may not have been much taken with the Arabian polytheism of his youth.

I would like to find out that Christianity is really something coherent with some core unity.

Why? You've more or less convinced me that the label "Jew" may be more or less vacuous, since no one can apparently agree on what it means, or understand what you mean by it.

> 450. until you admit he is right, he will never understand your points.

The odd thing about "whack-a-mole" is that, for some reason, the mole keeps sticking his head out of one of the holes. Why?

>447 lawecon: All you have to do is murmur "I believe in Jesus."

You say this to support your claims, even though you know full well it's not true. The minimum that has been stated as fundamental to being a Christian is to actually believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, AND to accept Jesus as Saviour. I'm pretty sure no Christian on this thread has denied this and I'm pretty sure you've read it, or something like it, more than once on this thread. Yet you insist on dishonestly paraphrasing it into "All you have to do is murmer I believe in Jesus".

Earlier, in your post 438, you take a basic, simple answer to your question, provided by two different members of two different mainstream Christian denominations, and then insist that it must be wrong because it doesn't fit your own conviction that only a Creed will do as an answer.

What a waste you have become of everyone's time and honest efforts at communicating.

Os.

>452 jburlinson:
It's that sore in your cheek that you just can't stop poking at with your tongue.

Os.

> 453. The minimum that has been stated as fundamental to being a Christian is to actually believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, AND to accept Jesus as Saviour. I'm pretty sure no Christian on this thread has denied this...

What about Unitarian Christians?

~449

You seem to have trouble sorting out an argument with several moving parts. Let me try again before I give up. Your comment that:

"I give up. It has been explained again and again that such a statement ("I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior") does have meaning and content; it has been shown again and again what that content is. (Read again the passages I quoted from Paul in post 434, especially from Philippians 2, which I take to be the best of the prototypical rules of faith.)"

Ignores completely my comments, in the same post from which you quote, that:

" All you have to do is murmur "I believe in Jesus." But the Jesus you believe in may be Jesus the warrior, Jesus the sectarian, Jesus the advocate of becoming rich, Jesus the pacifist, Jesus the universalist, Jesus the advocate of giving away all you have and joining a monastery, etc. If there are entirely different and contradictory Jesuses that "Christians" "believe in," and if the only mark of being a Christian is believing in Jesus, then the label has lost all meaning."

This is what everyone else has been saying in this thread, that the celebrate the "diversity" (aka ambiguity) in Christianity. Just make up a Jesus and believe in him, and, presto, you are a Christian.

And, again, to repeat over and over and over, what you quote from Paul is "freedom from" a slavery that no one other than Christians recognizes as existing. No one other than Christians believe that there is sin that will not be pardoned by G_d without Christ, or that The Law creates sin. Paul made those doctrines up. They don't exist elsewhere. As I've said to you many times before, you need to read something other than your own paradigm.

~451

""I would like to find out that Christianity is really something coherent with some core unity.""

"Why?"

Yes, I see your point. If Christians are satisfied that "Christianity" is a term without any specific content, why should I bother? It is really difficult trying to make a case for a doctrine that has perpetuated hatred of your people ever since its founding. I guess it is just the lawyer in me and the impulse to try to help the underdog.

"You've more or less convinced me that the label "Jew" may be more or less vacuous, since no one can apparently agree on what it means, or understand what you mean by it."

Well I've explained what I mean by it repeatedly. Perhaps you should pay attention? But if what you are looking for is a creed, there is, of course, no creed for Jews. That is the whole point of the differences between Jews and Christians. Jews put boundaries on acts, but not on creeds, Christians insist on right beliefs, but, as we've been told by Christians repeatedly in this discussion, really can't figure out if others are Christians by looking at their acts. Genghis Khan and Hitler "may have been Christians." Christians, apparently, really can't tell. I can tell you, however, that they weren't Jews.

~453

Os, you and Nathaniel really need to learn how to listen when the other guy responds to your statements of faith. I did so repeatedly above, in detail. I do so once more in Post 456. An answer to such a response is not to repeat the article of faith, or to repeat that you stated the article of faith. The answer is to take apart the response. You haven't even attempted to do so. Apparently you two are incapable of "joining" an argument. Strange, that is also a principal feature of other fundamentalisms. The criticisms are just "not heard."

According to my source, a Christian is someone who loves Elohim, JHVH, (in Hebrew spelled yod-hay-vav-hay) Jah, adonai, , Jehovah, Yod, God, G-D, or G!D; and follows the "Golden Rule". Everything else is mere verbage.

453

"The minimum that has been stated as fundamental to being a Christian is to actually believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, AND to accept Jesus as Saviour. I'm pretty sure no Christian on this thread has denied this"

On behalf of the Quakers whose Meetings I used to attend, I will repeat that this is NOT a central plank of their faith. Nor is it of Unitarians. Nor of Progressive Christians, of many different stripes. I do admit that the total tally of such Christians is still a small minority, but they stand as witness to the fact that those declarations are NOT fundamental.

455

You beat me to it!

>458 lawecon:: "An answer to such a response is not to repeat the article of faith, or to repeat that you stated the article of faith. The answer is to take apart the response. You haven't even attempted to do so. Apparently you two are incapable of "joining" an argument."

Having reading comprehension issues again, aren't you? For brevity's sake, I'll simply copy down again what I wrote in 449, addressing the two points you bring up again in 457, and doing so without "repeating the article of faith" but by actually "taking apart lawecon's response":

You make two claims here: (1) Because Christianity has beliefs that are unique to it, they are meaningless (even though you continually berate us for not asserting unique qualifiers for "Christianity"); and (2) Christianity must be reducible to a logical system, i.e. it must be entirely accessible by reason alone. This second presumption flows for your fundamental assumption that religion is simply a man-made institution and has no actual foundation in the divine.

I don't quite know how to respond to claim (1), as it seems utterly risible. In the American Revolutionary War, some Americans thought they should be independent of the British Crown; others thought they should remain loyal to the Crown. Thus, because one upheld a belief that was not shared by the other group, that claim must have been "totally without content". That is, to use your phrasing, "Since no one outside of the Revolutionaries believed that the problem of monarchical government existed, their solution (breaking away from the Crown) became irrelevant."

Claim (2) can at least be refuted by noting that a principle and fundamental claim of Christianity is that it is faith that saves, not reason. Faith is a gift of grace, a gift of God's Love -- it is more than just a man-made ethical system. To quote Anselm of Canterbury, "While the right order requires that we should believe the deep things of the Christian faith before we undertake to discuss them by reason, it seems careless for us, once we are established in the faith, not to aim at understanding what we believe."

So long as you demand that Christianity be reducible to a set of logical propositions, your demands will be frustrated, because for the Christian, faith must and always will be prior to human reason. This is why Scriptures--the Word of God--are so necessary: they contain truths that are not accessible to human reason alone, but require divine revelation.

Of his own accord, man can only dimly glimpse the divine, in moments fleetingly caught through "a glass darkly". God has revealed himself, however, first to the Children of Israel, and then to the whole world by becoming a human being: through those revelations, we come to know God fully and completely, in love and grace and truth.

> 456. This is what everyone else has been saying in this thread, that the celebrate the "diversity" (aka ambiguity) in Christianity. Just make up a Jesus and believe in him, and, presto, you are a Christian.

This is like berating a chameleon for not having a single color. It's part of the essence of the chameleon; it's what makes it lovable, or, I guess, hatable, depending on a person's tolerance for ambiguity.

I guess it is just the lawyer in me and the impulse to try to help the underdog.

Is that what lawyers do? Help the underdog?

> 460. Sorry, I'll let you have the next one.

>460 Tid:
Thanks. I know virtually nothing about Quakers except their non-violence stance; no little about Unitarians other than a broad opennness; and I suppose have not run into any Progressive Christian denominations that don't consider the statement you quoted as a minimum commonly held belief.

Os.

>458 lawecon:

See 453 (esp. last paragraph)

Os.