Thread: Purgatory: Lewis's Trichotomy Board: Limbo / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
I was thinking recently about C. S. Lewis’s famous assertion that Jesus was either a fraud, a loony or exactly who and what he claimed to be - sometimes expressed as “liar, lunatic or Lord”, or “conman, madman or Messiah”.

When I was a teenager, we thought that this was pretty cool and pretty unanswerable.

In the decades since, I have grown to regard such propositions as reductionist and simplistic pea and thimble tricks.

I retain an orthodox and credal Christology, but not because of the Lewisian trichotomy, though at the same time, I am not sure that it doesn’t contain a kernel of validity.

For that matter, I am skeptical in general about the role of apologetics in a pomo world, and while I still like Lewis as a person, and find him endlessly stimulating and suggestive, I have long since ceased to regard him as an oracle – his Problem Of Pain, for example, is itself extremely problematic.

Well, a thread on the continuing relevance of apologetics in general, or even C.S. Lewis in particular, would be rather unwieldy, but I would be interested to read Shippies’ opinions about his Christological “proof”.

[ 01. December 2012, 10:53: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
 
Posted by Mark Betts (# 17074) on :
 
C. S. Lewis never claimed that any of his works were infallible. You don't need to agree 100% with everything he says, but he must still have a lot of clout as most (if not all) of his books are still in print.

Of course there's still a place for apologetics today, especially with all this new theology which is so far gone from the Faith once delivered to the Saints.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
I think they're generally considered to be false alternatives today. That is, there are other possibilities, for example, that Jesus was just mistaken, without being mad.

I think the commonest scholarly view has been that it is possible that Jesus did not claim to be divine, and that this was retro-engineered. I think this is Ehrman's view.
 
Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :
 
I also query whether the syllogism is right.

Colin Morris once pointed out an alternative 4th possibility.

It also depends of whether Jesus made the egocentric claims on which it is based.

I dont believe he did.
 
Posted by Mark Betts (# 17074) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I think they're generally considered to be false alternatives today. That is, there are other possibilities, for example, that Jesus was just mistaken, without being mad.

I think the commonest scholarly view has been that it is possible that Jesus did not claim to be divine, and that this was retro-engineered. I think this is Ehrman's view.

The argument that C.S. Lewis was trying to counter here was the idea that Jesus was just a good moral teacher and nothing more.

If Jesus was mistaken, what was he mistaken about, since some claim he never believed he was divine?
 
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
The logic is pretty much irrefutable (in full text).

However:
In the shortened or colloquial form the words have an emotive aspect and are overloaded.

The situation has changed slightly so the debate has moved to denying the predicate* (on varying quality of grounds) is more common.
And people are more happy to describe Jesus as what is covered by mad/bad.
So in a sense he's kind of won. The irrational middle ground claiming has faded.

*I.E the "Jesus did and said [and was] as the gospel writers describe"

[edit cross post]

[ 02. September 2012, 08:09: Message edited by: Jay-Emm ]
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Of course, Lewis's argument is predicated on the acceptance of Jesus as a great moral teacher. Thus he seems to be arguing that it is difficult to accept that, and not his divinity.

So if you don't see Jesus as a great moral teacher, the trilemma collapses in any case.

But allowing for that, it always sounds quite naive and amateurish to me.

If you are willing to use it in argument, beware!
 
Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :
 
I dont tthink that Lewis' argument is predicated on Jesus as a great moral teacher.

It is predicated on the " I AM" sayings of Jesus in the 4th gospel.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
By 'predicated' I just mean 'follows on from'. This is one version of Lewis's text:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say

I take that to mean, that if you don't think Jesus is a great moral teacher, then the trilemma is meaningless.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I think the commonest scholarly view has been that it is possible that Jesus did not claim to be divine, and that this was retro-engineered. I think this is Ehrman's view.

quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
It also depends of whether Jesus made the egocentric claims on which it is based.

I dont believe he did.

I agree that these are the most common responses to Lewis' assertion. He doesn't seem to have anticipated that Christians would question the authenticity of the Biblical record.

Many religions, though, face a similar "trichotomy." Joseph Smith was either a fraud, a loony, or he really did find golden tablets.

I am a Swedenborgian. Swedenborg was either a fraud, a loony, or He really did spend decades traveling in heaven and recording his experiences.

The same is true of every biblical author who claims that the Word of the Lord was revealed to them, that God showed them miraculous things, or who records miraculous events. They were frauds, loonies, or these things really happened.

But I agree with others that these aren't the only or the most likely possibilities. The biblical authors could have been none of the above and have simply written their best understanding of events as they perceived them, either from their own experience or from others. The massively superstitious mindset of the times did not require looniness or fraudulence to believe and assert things that never happened.

My own belief, though, is that the Bible is true, the recording of events is reasonably accurate, God really did speak to these people, and Jesus really is who the Bible says He is.
 
Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :
 
Freddy, without wishing to diminish the claims of Swedenborg or, for that matter, Joseph Smith, I think your post highlights that Lewis didn't really think his point through. It has already been said or implied on this thread that we need to add "mistaken" and "misinterpreted" to the list. We could also add that he may have misinterpreted his own experiences, or may have been a mixture of any or all of those things on the list - I mean, there are plenty of discussions on these very boards that would lead you to believe that some of the participants are totally bonkers, but might actually have a point!

I think you've also put your finger on Lewis's biggest mistake, and I'm afraid I find it difficult to believe it wasn't a wilful one - that he was uncritical of the Biblical texts. It would be more accurate to say that it was one or more of the gospel writers, not Jesus himself, who were frauds, lunatics, etc. - because, of course, it's their claims we have, not his. I say I find it difficult to believe this wasn't a wilful mistake because textual criticism of the Bible had been going on for a very, very long time before Lewis - he must have known that it was not obvious that one should take the texts at face value.

Sometimes Lewis is brilliant. But I'm afraid it's arguments like this that give the impression to the world that even the best of Christians are intellectually weak.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
I think Christianity has a very dumbed down side to it, which is rather embarrassing. I suppose on the other side, there is a place for the naive and unsophisticated statement about the divine, and so on. And then there are pretty high-powered philosophical arguments; and there is stuff like Karen Armstrong, which is middle of the road. So I guess that a lot of people tip-toe amongst these different discourses.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
I think you've also put your finger on Lewis's biggest mistake, and I'm afraid I find it difficult to believe it wasn't a wilful one - that he was uncritical of the Biblical texts.

I think that's right. I'm sure that it was willful. He realized that the argument assumed that the texts are accurate and was happy to make, and assert, that assumption.

I agree with Lewis, so I'm inclined to accept his "trichotomy." But I agree that many people are not likely to do this, least of all people who are unconvinced of Christianity - the very ones that Lewis is addressing.

Still, whatever we say, Lewis has been amazingly effective. Just because someone can poke holes in an argument doesn't mean that it doesn't work.

Naturally, I find myself in a situation like Lewis' because I believe what Swedenborg wrote and know that hardly anyone else does. I want to make the same assertion Lewis does (there are no textual issues in this case), but I am in agreement that it is actually a weak argument. It doesn't allow for an author to be simply mistaken.
 
Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :
 
We discussed this before a few years ago, and it interests me because I, like the OP, found Lewis's argument absolutely compelling as a teenager. Now, while I still have a lot of admiration for Lewis, I find it hard to imagine how a writer who was trained as a scholar, even writing/speaking for a broad popular audience, could possibly have imagined that it held water.

The last time the discussion came round I remember writing up an alternative list of options in addition to Lewis's original three, something like:

1) Jesus claimed to be divine, and really was.
2) Jesus claimed to be divine, but was lying (and thus evil).
3) Jesus claimed to be divine, but was mistaken (and thus crazy).
4) Jesus never claimed to be divine; He made the statements about divinity attributed to Him but meant something different by them than the church has believed He did (e.g. He may have meant that we are all, in some sense, children of God or one with God).
5) Jesus never claimed to be divine; He never made the statements about divinity attributed to Him. These were put into His mouth by later gospel writers who already decided He was divine.
6) Jesus was a good man and great teacher but, like many great men, He had a blind spot; He believed grandiose things about Himself and His mission that weren't true, but was still capable of brilliance and great insight.
7) Jesus said or taught nothing distinctive or interesting and may not even have existed; the entire Jesus-story is a myth created by the early Christians (perhaps with its roots in the dying-and-rising-god myths of other religions) with some basic Jewish moral teaching tacked on for good measure.

If I recall correctly, even after I had made what I thought was an exhaustive list of the possibilities, as above, people kept coming up with more to add to the list, demonstrating that there are far more than three ways to understand Jesus' statements about His own divinity.

Really, Lewis's entire argument hinges on accepting the absolute veracity of the Gospel accounts, and since lots of people don't accept that, the argument collapses pretty quickly.

For what it's worth I still think #1 is the correct answer but not because I find Lewis's "proof" in any way convincing.
 
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Great topic for a thread, Kaplan. Like you, I admired the proposition as a young man. Indeed, I remember a Baptist chap using it during a long train conversation about faith - along with other propositions and apologetic arguments I later became more familiar with.

At the time, that was fair enough. It was one of the things that led to me coming down off-the-fence in the period leading up to my evangelical conversion - my 'born again' experience if you like.

Now, all these years later, it all sounds rather trite. But I am certainly now disputing that the Lord 'used' it, if you like, to arrest my attention and cause me to take more seriously 'the claims of Christ' to use an old evangelical phrase.

I think the pomo thing is pertinent. I'm not so sure these days that a modernist, propositional approach cuts the mustard. The evangelicals are children of the Enlightenment just as much as they are grandchildren of the Reformation.

My views are similar to Kaplan's. I feel that there's a core of truth to Lewis's apologetic - but equally that, wise and clever man that he was - he must have been aware of the weaknesses. Could it be that he was accommodating himself to a popular audience - dumbing down in effect?
 
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 
I think this thread is being unfair to Lewis. It is condemning him for not answering a different question from the one he was trying to answer. In his time, the argument 'I accept and admire Jesus's moral teaching. He was a great moral teacher. I just don't accept his claim to be the Son of God', was a very prevalent excuse people trotted out for not believing.

Whatever explanation people give, a lot (probably most) of those who say they don't believe, do so because subliminally they know they will be threatened by the challenge belief would be to them. If you believe, you have to do something about it. As long as you can say you are questioning, haven't made up your mind yet, have problems of faith, you can stay as you are.

The argument 'I don't have to believe because Jesus didn't really say that; his followers put it all into his mouth' is a different one, to which the answers are different. It isn't the one that Lewis was answering in making that statement.

The argument 'Jesus wasn't a great moral teacher at all' is a rarer one. The only people I can think of, off hand, who have maintained that are Nietzsche, Adolf Hitler and possibly the late Christopher Hitchens.

However, the argument, 'he was mistaken' does produce the same difficulty as Lewis was addressing. Even if you are not clinically mad, coming from a conventional C1 Jewish background and believing yourself to be the Messiah, God's anointed one, his Son, will skew your thinking fairly drastically It will make it difficult, if not impossible, to produce any sensible moral teaching at all, yet alone the Sermon on the Mount or the parables - unless, as Lewis suggested, your claim is true.

As to whether his writings resonate for a pomo or post-pomo generation, I can't comment. I'm now in my sixties, and don't have to bother about that.
 
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
I completely agree that apologetics ONLY work for the converted, Kaplan Corday, and then cease to. SOF has taught me that and Premier Christian and other sites. I have found with a strong weak atheist friend who is always messaging me on FB that we can go infinite bare knuckle rounds, beat each other to a standstill where we THEN get relational, existential, that if I THEN get evangelical (note NO big-E) the game's afoot again. I get the last word far more, which is ALL important obviously ...

I have THE perfect apologetic material proof of God but no one here gives it the time of day. These things are NOT transferable as they can't affect disposition, as is demonstrated by Roman Catholic and Protestant catholic apologetics.
 
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
...
1) Jesus claimed to be divine, and really was.
2) Jesus claimed to be divine, but was lying (and thus evil).
3) Jesus claimed to be divine, but was mistaken (and thus crazy).
4) Jesus never claimed to be divine; He made the statements about divinity attributed to Him but meant something different by them than the church has believed He did (e.g. He may have meant that we are all, in some sense, children of God or one with God).
5) Jesus never claimed to be divine; He never made the statements about divinity attributed to Him. These were put into His mouth by later gospel writers who already decided He was divine.
6) Jesus was a good man and great teacher but, like many great men, He had a blind spot; He believed grandiose things about Himself and His mission that weren't true, but was still capable of brilliance and great insight.
7) Jesus said or taught nothing distinctive or interesting and may not even have existed; the entire Jesus-story is a myth created by the early Christians (perhaps with its roots in the dying-and-rising-god myths of other religions) with some basic Jewish moral teaching tacked on for good measure.
...

To be fair in the Mere Christianity context some of these are referenced before. (possibly inadequately).

1-3) trivially (no pun intended)
4&6) "talking as if He was God. He claims... But this man, since he was a Jew...silliness and conceit unrivalled" (1 page before)

5&7) though, I can't find at the moment... (ok it is in a section entitled what Christian's believe) and prefaced with:
"I have been asked to tell you what Christian's believe...I was able to take a more liberal view... right and they are wrong" (start of sub-book)
 
Posted by Leprechaun (# 5408) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I think this thread is being unfair to Lewis. It is condemning him for not answering a different question from the one he was trying to answer. In his time, the argument 'I accept and admire Jesus's moral teaching. He was a great moral teacher. I just don't accept his claim to be the Son of God', was a very prevalent excuse people trotted out for not believing.


As Enoch has said, I think the problem here is the people who came after Lewis, not Lewis himself. All he was trying to do was to challenge the people who, at the time, tried to boil Christianity down to some moral tenets whilst ignoring Jesus' ostensible claim to divinity and to introduce us to God himself.

It's the rather over the top followers, the likes of Josh Mcdowell who have tried to turn it into a multi purpose knockdown argument for Jesus' divinity for any occasion. This is silly, not least because lots of people are happy to say that he is mad or God. I still think it holds some traction today for people who say they like the morals of Jesus teaching (as we have it recorded) but not Christianity. You don't have to read much of Jesus teaching to see that rather a lot of it was to do with himself, and specifically his return to judge the world. Whatever that is, it's not moral teaching as most people mean it. In that sense the trilemma can provide a useful to way to spur people out of their ignorance. But it's not the convert maker we might have thought in the 80s.
 
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
[QUOTE] But it's not the convert maker we might have thought in the 80s.

Though watching the Alpha Course talks recently, Nicky Gumbel still seems to think it is.
 
Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
... The last time the discussion came round I remember writing up an alternative list of options in addition to Lewis's original three, something like: ...
5) Jesus never claimed to be divine; He never made the statements about divinity attributed to Him. These were put into His mouth by later gospel writers who already decided He was divine.
6) Jesus was a good man and great teacher but, like many great men, He had a blind spot; He believed grandiose things about Himself and His mission that weren't true, but was still capable of brilliance and great insight.
7) Jesus said or taught nothing distinctive or interesting and may not even have existed; the entire Jesus-story is a myth created by the early Christians (perhaps with its roots in the dying-and-rising-god myths of other religions) with some basic Jewish moral teaching tacked on for good measure. ...

ISTM there were lots of contemporary examples on the "Summer season of miracles" thread.

I have been told by many Christians that if Jesus *wasn't* divine, there's no reason to follow His teachings over any others. It always surprises me when Christians go all Marshall McLuhan. Jesus is far from the only spiritual leader to advocate self-sacrificing love.
 
Posted by Squibs (# 14408) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I think they're generally considered to be false alternatives today. That is, there are other possibilities, for example, that Jesus was just mistaken, without being mad.

This is a really curious view.

If a member of the public stood up in court and declared that the crimes of the just convicted murder had been forgiven, and she insisted that she alone had such authority, would anyone think her simply mistaken? I think not. Why then should we entertain the idea that says anyone who believes themselves to be the creator and sustainer of the universe to be sane? Delusional doesn't begin to address how wrong such a belief is.

Perhaps there is another valid 4th option, but this isn't it.

As an aside, I wonder what Kaplan Corday would have Christians do to defend and promote their faith if not use apologetics? I would have thought that the presentation of a coherent message of what Christianity is about is one way of dispelling some of the more pernicious false beliefs about Christianity.

To be sure John Lennox, C.S. Lewis, William Lane Craig et al. are not going to be to everyone's taste, but that's besides the point. Christians (and other theists besides) are battling against the tide and simply having a voice to present a coherent message is a victory in and of itself. More so if this voice stops to make someone think.

I've certainly heard of enough people come to faith or had their faith strengthened by some type of apologetic for the practice of apologetics to be justified.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Well, I have done Zen meditation for 30 years, and I have quite often heard participants on retreats say something like, 'I am creator of all', or 'I alone am', or 'I love everything because I make it', or 'I am everything', and so on.

I didn't think they were mad at all. I don't know whether or not they are mistaken.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
Lewis is totally over-rated, in my opinion.

Jesus could have been mad
Jesus could have been bad
Jesus could have been misquoted
Jesus could have been misunderstood
Jesus could have been having a bad day
Jesus could have been just wrong

That is before even getting to the question of whether the gospels are an accurate record of what he said about himself.

I think it is a pretty unhelpful thing for Lewis to say, really.
 
Posted by daronmedway (# 3012) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
Jesus is far from the only spiritual leader to advocate self-sacrificing love.

Advocating self-sacrificing love doesn't get people crucified, which suggests to me that Jesus stood for a whole lot more than that.
 
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Well, I have done Zen meditation for 30 years, and I have quite often heard participants on retreats say something like, 'I am creator of all', or 'I alone am', or 'I love everything because I make it', or 'I am everything', and so on.

I didn't think they were mad at all. I don't know whether or not they are mistaken.

FWIW Lewis does actually make the point that they would be (much more) perfectly natural things to say in the Indian religions.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Jay-Emm:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Well, I have done Zen meditation for 30 years, and I have quite often heard participants on retreats say something like, 'I am creator of all', or 'I alone am', or 'I love everything because I make it', or 'I am everything', and so on.

I didn't think they were mad at all. I don't know whether or not they are mistaken.

FWIW Lewis does actually make the point that they would be (much more) perfectly natural things to say in the Indian religions.
Yes, the context is rather important! If someone stood up in Coventry magistrates court, and announced forgiveness for all present, it probably would be construed, well, as odd, certainly.

If you were in India, sitting with your guru, it might be unexceptional.

In this sense, in a Jewish context, it probably would (then and now) be seen as shocking, and perhaps mad.
 
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Lewis is totally over-rated, in my opinion.

Jesus could have been mad
Jesus could have been bad

quote:

Jesus could have been misunderstood
Jesus could have been having a bad day
Jesus could have been just wrong

I'm intrigued how he could be so wrong. I mean it's not exactly as simple careless mistake like 1+1=1643.*
And the interaction doesn't read as being sarcastic, and Jesus seems to have been given enough feedback to correct misunderstood.

quote:

That is before even getting to the question of whether the gospels are an accurate record of what he said about himself.
Jesus could have been misquoted

which does of course change a number of things. (and in John especially where the quotes end)

*yes we have the guys from the Taiping, but if that's not what the word mad/bad is for, then...
 
Posted by Squibs (# 14408) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Well, I have done Zen meditation for 30 years, and I have quite often heard participants on retreats say something like, 'I am creator of all', or 'I alone am', or 'I love everything because I make it', or 'I am everything', and so on.

I didn't think they were mad at all. I don't know whether or not they are mistaken.

I'm not sure that this is quite the same thing. But for what it is worth, if somebody thought that they were the creator and sustainer of the universe and that they had the power to do things like forgive moral failings and that through their death they would usher in a new type of existence then I would have to conclude that they were mad.

I don't see any other conclusion.

quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Lewis is totally over-rated, in my opinion.

Jesus could have been mad
Jesus could have been bad

====

Jesus could have been misquoted
Jesus could have been misunderstood

====

Jesus could have been having a bad day
Jesus could have been just wrong

That is before even getting to the question of whether the gospels are an accurate record of what he said about himself.

I think it is a pretty unhelpful thing for Lewis to say, really.

Firstly, you forgot the other option of the trilemma - "he actually was Lord". Funny that!

The trilemma was presented to people who weren't questioning the foundational reliability of what was written in scripture. These were and are the type of people who typically think that if Jesus is recoded as having said Z, Y and Z that Jesus actually said X,Y and Z. They then try to make sense of what was said. So it's not fair to present your additional options as if they have some bearing on what Lewis was saying. The historicity of the NT might well be a vital question, but it was not one that Lewis was dealing with in the trilemma.

Additionally, I'm not sure what "having a bad day" could mean. Not all the events recorded in the Gospels (or "are reported to have happened" if you prefer) happened in a day.

As for Jesus being "just wrong" that is already one conclusion reached by the existing trilemma.

It's like you are typing anything that comes to mind so as to create a list as long as possible. As if Lewis' argument will collapse under the sheer volume of additional options he never considered.
 
Posted by Squibs (# 14408) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
In this sense, in a Jewish context, it probably would (then and now) be seen as shocking, and perhaps mad.

I think it would have been seen as worse than that. Hence the crucifixion.

If you don't believe me just try imaging having the "I'm actually the Messiah and I'm here to judge you" conversation with some of the gun hoarding zealots over at the Golan Heights, especially if people elsewhere began to pay attention to you.

My prediction would be that the press would devote a few paragraphs or so to the life and death of an individual who though he was God.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Squibs wrote:

But for what it is worth, if somebody thought that they were the creator and sustainer of the universe and that they had the power to do things like forgive moral failings and that through their death they would usher in a new type of existence then I would have to conclude that they were mad. I don't see any other conclusion.

Well, my suggestion is that this is because you live in a rather narrow cultural milieu. I think in some parts of the world, and in some types of milieu, this would not be considered to be mad at all.

For example, in the famous Zen book, 'Pillars of Zen', there is the story of someone having a satori experience, who announces that Mount Fuji exists through his own making. (Rather Berkeleyan, actually).

However, certainly, in a first century Jewish context, I agree that it would certainly be considered shocking and probably blasphemous. Whether it would be considered mad, I don't know, as I don't really know much about views of sanity and insanity at that time.
 
Posted by Bostonman (# 17108) on :
 
I think Lewis starts with the assumption that the Gospels are at least consistent in reporting Jesus' words, rather than accurate. Either his claims of divinity AND his moral statements were made, or neither. This is supposed to prevent cherry-picking parts of his teaching. So if one questions the accuracy, it means one can't claim "he was a great moral teacher."

Of course it may be in itself a very dubious assumption.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Squibs:

Additionally, I'm not sure what "having a bad day" could mean. Not all the events recorded in the Gospels (or "are reported to have happened" if you prefer) happened in a day.

I wasn't speaking literally. The aspects of Christ's ministry which lead Lewis to suggest that he was a) mad, b) bad or c) Lord could have been things he said on a bad day. If you say he was perfect and that he couldn't have a bad day, then you've already decided that he is Lord, hence the formulation means almost nothing.

quote:
As for Jesus being "just wrong" that is already one conclusion reached by the existing trilemma.
I don't think so, the formulation is mad, bad or Lord. It is entirely possible that Jesus Christ could have believed things about himself which were not true without him being mad (mentally ill) or bad (deliberately misleading). Human teachers sometimes get things wrong. That doesn't make them mad or bad.

quote:
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (Mere Christianity pg. 52)
quote:
Squibs: It's like you are typing anything that comes to mind so as to create a list as long as possible. As if Lewis' argument will collapse under the sheer volume of additional options he never considered.
Not really, I composed a list of reasons why the Lewis formulation is not a good one. Which was the question asked in the original post.

[ 02. September 2012, 16:58: Message edited by: the long ranger ]
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

However, certainly, in a first century Jewish context, I agree that it would certainly be considered shocking and probably blasphemous. Whether it would be considered mad, I don't know, as I don't really know much about views of sanity and insanity at that time.

I don't think Lewis is talking about a reception in first century Palestine but in twentieth century Oxford.

Coincidentally, I was thinking about this in church this morning. As church people, we often say things which might sound more than a bit mad in another context. But the context is important - as is the regard with which the sayer is held.

I admit it seems unlikely that a group would today believe someone who claimed to be a divine being in our midst. But stranger things have happened.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Squibs:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
In this sense, in a Jewish context, it probably would (then and now) be seen as shocking, and perhaps mad.

I think it would have been seen as worse than that. Hence the crucifixion.
The Romans crucified the Christ not the Jews. The Jewish punishment for blasphemy was stoning.
 
Posted by daronmedway (# 3012) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by Squibs:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
In this sense, in a Jewish context, it probably would (then and now) be seen as shocking, and perhaps mad.

I think it would have been seen as worse than that. Hence the crucifixion.
The Romans crucified the Christ not the Jews. The Jewish punishment for blasphemy was stoning.
That's a bit like saying the US won WW2, not the allied forces. The Jewish authorities were complicit in the death of Christ, as St Peter's Pentecost sermon attests.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by daronmedway:
That's a bit like saying the US won WW2, not the allied forces. The Jewish authorities were complicit in the death of Christ, as St Peter's Pentecost sermon attests.

Well, years of misinformation by the church led to the Jewish pogroms.

The simple fact is that Jesus Christ was crucified for insurrection like many other rebels. The Jewish authorities may well have disliked his pretensions to divinity, but they did not execute him by crucifixion and the Romans had no reason to do it for them.
 
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Well, years of misinformation by the church led to the Jewish pogroms.

The simple fact is that Jesus Christ was crucified for insurrection like many other rebels. The Jewish authorities may well have disliked his pretensions to divinity, but they did not execute him by crucifixion and the Romans had no reason to do it for them.

It's pretty bold to claim as fact a hypothesis that contradicts all the available accounts.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Still working my way through this thread, so apologies if someone has already mentioned this and I haven't got there yet--

The trilemma IIRC comes from a book that was basically a set of short radio talks Lewis did for "the common man"--meaning by that intelligent people with no particular education and only a handful of minutes to listen during the war years. Under those horrendous constraints Lewis got to "say a few words" on key topics of Christianity. Therefore you're not going to get any nuance (no time!) or any consideration of textual critical theories (hey, he's got ten minutes to try to say something to John the butcher and Mary the typist; good luck even explaining the basics of textual theories, let alone the controversies thereof).

It's not quite fair to pick on Lewis for the limitations of his medium and audience. At least, give it a go yourself (I have) and see what you come away with. [Eek!]
 
Posted by daronmedway (# 3012) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Well, years of misinformation by the church led to the Jewish pogroms.

The simple fact is that Jesus Christ was crucified for insurrection like many other rebels. The Jewish authorities may well have disliked his pretensions to divinity, but they did not execute him by crucifixion and the Romans had no reason to do it for them.

It's pretty bold to claim as fact a hypothesis that contradicts all the available accounts.
Quite.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
We discussed this before a few years ago, and it interests me because I, like the OP, found Lewis's argument absolutely compelling as a teenager. Now, while I still have a lot of admiration for Lewis, I find it hard to imagine how a writer who was trained as a scholar, even writing/speaking for a broad popular audience, could possibly have imagined that it held water.

The last time the discussion came round I remember writing up an alternative list of options in addition to Lewis's original three, something like:

1) Jesus claimed to be divine, and really was.
2) Jesus claimed to be divine, but was lying (and thus evil).
3) Jesus claimed to be divine, but was mistaken (and thus crazy).
4) Jesus never claimed to be divine; He made the statements about divinity attributed to Him but meant something different by them than the church has believed He did (e.g. He may have meant that we are all, in some sense, children of God or one with God).
5) Jesus never claimed to be divine; He never made the statements about divinity attributed to Him. These were put into His mouth by later gospel writers who already decided He was divine.
6) Jesus was a good man and great teacher but, like many great men, He had a blind spot; He believed grandiose things about Himself and His mission that weren't true, but was still capable of brilliance and great insight.
7) Jesus said or taught nothing distinctive or interesting and may not even have existed; the entire Jesus-story is a myth created by the early Christians (perhaps with its roots in the dying-and-rising-god myths of other religions) with some basic Jewish moral teaching tacked on for good measure.

If I recall correctly, even after I had made what I thought was an exhaustive list of the possibilities, as above, people kept coming up with more to add to the list, demonstrating that there are far more than three ways to understand Jesus' statements about His own divinity.

Really, Lewis's entire argument hinges on accepting the absolute veracity of the Gospel accounts, and since lots of people don't accept that, the argument collapses pretty quickly.

For what it's worth I still think #1 is the correct answer but not because I find Lewis's "proof" in any way convincing.

Thank you for such a clear summary. I'm going to try to respond from what I know of Lewis (life, writings, and particularly from his work in the field of English and the classics, which is my preferred playground too).

First of all, the text. Lewis was definitely and clearly aware of the various textual controversies, as some have pointed out, how could he not be? He was after all an Oxford don with a triple first yadda yadda. He also did a fair amount of public debate and private letter answering, and issues like these would no doubt have cropped up quite a bit.

I'm of the opinion that what prevented him from taking the textual arguments as ... seriously? ... as many people do was precisely his knowledge of the classics (and English too). It inoculated him against the biblical controversies, just as it's done in my own case and doubtless that of many others.

This is what I mean. The whole "x didn't really write the book of X" stuff did not begin with biblical studies. It began with the classics--Homer is a major case in point. Of course there was no real Homer. Of course the work we attribute to the mythical Homer was actually a compendium of work done by two, three, eighty-five odd poets. Actually, scratch that. It "jest growed" as a product of community group-think and oral tradition. In fact, it evolved from a multitude of sources, more or less unconsciously, and no individual had much to do with it, bar perhaps the final scribe who actually set it down in some sort of order (and really, that makes us uncomfortable, we'd rather imagine several scribes working together).

Now this is just plain nonsense. Oral traditions there are, and legends there are, but it takes an author--a poet--to turn the mass of inchoate and often contradictory stories into a single coherent work. Not a committee, a poet--a maker (which is I believe what that word originally sigified, from poieo, no?). Even a committee won't do. What great work of art ever emerged from a committee? (I'm waiting for one of y'all to pop up with the exception that bops me over the head and sends me back in shame to my hideyhole, come on now! [Big Grin] )

After a while this "Homer isn't real" crap jumped the genre wall into biblical studies. (And what is it about that genre wall--I've discovered that you can predict the next up and coming fad in theology just by looking at what English lit was doing five/ten years ago. I mean, WTF?)

But back to Lewis--so he's seen the basic assumptions of higher criticism in his own field, and has seen the holes there. (AFAIK nobody still goes around saying Homer didn't compose Homer, I'm told that's quite old-fashioned nowadays). He's seen the same approach taken to other authors in his field, and seen those holes. And he's seen the same approach used on himself and on his fellow writers, the other Inklings--while they are still living, and able to contradic--as they did--the alleged "findings."

That kind of experience is enough to put anybody off blind faith in the findings of higher criticism. And Lewis himself said so, on several occasions--which I dearly wish I could give you chapter and verse for, but it's been several years since I last read his work. I'm suspecting "Introduction to Paradise Lost" and his essay "Experiment in Criticism", though it may have been somewhere more abstruse.

Finally, there's the fact that Lewis had a thorough grounding in what used to be called "lower criticism"--that is, the grinding painstaking work of collating manuscripts, following variants, establishing filiation of manuscripts, and so forth. Anybody who grinds away in that field (as I did, for five bloody years) learns to look with terrible jealousy at the textual witness for the New Testament. Green with envy, pah--I was chartreuse. All those manuscripts, all so closely, closely related, many of them so bloody early, with so very, very, VERY few variants among the humongous mass of them spread over a thousand years--a Shakespeare scholar would do murder just to get a thousandth of the textual authority for (say) the play Hamlet. Seriously. Some day I'll write a murder mystery around that idea.

Lewis would have known all that. And given that kind of overwhelming witness, there's not the least chance that "oh, the text has changed over the years, and Jesus didn't really make those claims for himself." Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I think this thread is being unfair to Lewis. It is condemning him for not answering a different question from the one he was trying to answer. In his time, the argument 'I accept and admire Jesus's moral teaching. He was a great moral teacher. I just don't accept his claim to be the Son of God', was a very prevalent excuse people trotted out for not believing.

That's right. I remember now. That's a great explanation.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
1) Jesus claimed to be divine, and really was.
Yes, I agree with this one too.
quote:
2) Jesus claimed to be divine, but was lying (and thus evil).
Yes, anyone who said such things knowing them to be false would be evil. Because Jesus' claims to divinity were offered in the context of "therefore turn to me, so that I can meet your needs for life, for forgiveness, etc." If he is in fact lying, then he is not only making false statements about himself, but he is doing so to induce people to rely on him in areas where there is no chance of him really helping. It's far worse than if I said, "I have a billion dollars in the bank. Everyone who is homeless and hungry, come to me and I will feed you!"

quote:
3) Jesus claimed to be divine, but was mistaken (and thus crazy).
Yes, in that culture above all, anybody who believed himself divine without being so would definitely be madder than a box of frogs.

quote:
4) Jesus never claimed to be divine; He made the statements about divinity attributed to Him but meant something different by them than the church has believed He did (e.g. He may have meant that we are all, in some sense, children of God or one with God).
Not as a Jew, he didn't! Of all the cultures in the world LEAST likely to use that kind of metaphorical language, post-exilic Judaism tops the list. They were rabid about it. You'd be safer to go around saying things like "Caesar is the father of a pig by the high priest's wife." The offense level would be about the same.

quote:
5) Jesus never claimed to be divine; He never made the statements about divinity attributed to Him. These were put into His mouth by later gospel writers who already decided He was divine.
See my post on textual stuff above. Lewis knew better.

quote:
6) Jesus was a good man and great teacher but, like many great men, He had a blind spot; He believed grandiose things about Himself and His mission that weren't true, but was still capable of brilliance and great insight.
Lewis himself noted that you don't get good men who are great teachers on the scale of Jesus who nevertheless have one truly HUGE and freakin' ginormous blind spot of that nature. I could maybe believe it if you told me that Jesus had a thing for talking to teapots, or was under the mild delusion that he was of royal descent. But to believe yourself GOD ... no. Not in that culture. Not in this culture, I don't think. And the better the man, the wiser the woman, the less likely they are to have or express delusions of this sort.

quote:
7) Jesus said or taught nothing distinctive or interesting and may not even have existed; the entire Jesus-story is a myth created by the early Christians (perhaps with its roots in the dying-and-rising-god myths of other religions) with some basic Jewish moral teaching tacked on for good measure.
See textual note above.

quote:
Really, Lewis's entire argument hinges on accepting the absolute veracity of the Gospel accounts, and since lots of people don't accept that, the argument collapses pretty quickly.
True. Lewis knew better than anyone that you can't argue people into the kingdom of God; the most an apologist can hope to do is remove some of the brush and weeds (misconceptions etc) before the true farmer shows up to plow the ground and plant the good seed. He therefore proposed that anybody who intended to do apologetics should if possible partner with a person capable of real evangelistic preaching--a gift he did not credit himself with having. He thought that work the more important of the two.

And so in the end, it doesn't really matter what we think of Lewis, or even of his arguments. Lewis would certainly say so. (and be highly entertained by this thread, I think)
 
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
What great work of art ever emerged from a committee?

I would suggest that the King James Version of the Bible might fall under that category. As a work of art it is thought by many to exceed the source material, and was translated and compiled by committee.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
If you say he was perfect and that he couldn't have a bad day, then you've already decided that he is Lord, hence the formulation means almost nothing.

Did Jesus ever NOT have a bad day? [Big Grin]
 
Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on :
 
quote:
3) Jesus claimed to be divine, but was mistaken (and thus crazy).
Yes, in that culture above all, anybody who believed himself divine without being so would definitely be madder than a box of frogs.

Sorry, not really disagreeing, just wondering why "in that culture above all"?
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
(6) just restates (3).
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Well, I'd love to read somebody's historical monograph on the effect of the Exile on Jewish monotheism. Because prior to that, they seemed to be about as mix-and-match in religion as they come--hey, we've got YHWH, now let's add a little Ashterah, and what about that guy Molech--I guess I can spare a kid or two... But by NT times it's gone so far in the opposite direction that Pilate has to call out the legions IIRC to quiet the uproar when he tries to hang golden shields with images of the emperor on them in Herod's palace in Jerusalem--not for worship, mind you, not in the precincts of the temple either, not as anything, really, to do with the Jews at all--and they pitched such a hissyfit about Commandment One and graven images that Tiberius himself got involved and told him to take them elsewhere. This is quite a turn-around from the people whose ancestors put up idols next to the very altar of the Lord itself! And astonishing that Tiberius and later emperors take such notice of their sensitivities, and grant them unparalleled freedom with regard to staying monotheist and avoiding emperor worship etc. Someone could get a truly awesome psych dissertation on that one (and probably has, oh well)
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
This is what I mean. The whole "x didn't really write the book of X" stuff did not begin with biblical studies. It began with the classics--Homer is a major case in point. Of course there was no real Homer. Of course the work we attribute to the mythical Homer was actually a compendium of work done by two, three, eighty-five odd poets. Actually, scratch that. It "jest growed" as a product of community group-think and oral tradition. In fact, it evolved from a multitude of sources, more or less unconsciously, and no individual had much to do with it, bar perhaps the final scribe who actually set it down in some sort of order (and really, that makes us uncomfortable, we'd rather imagine several scribes working together).

I've read somewhere that the Iliad and the Odyssey weren't really written by Homer, but by another blind poet with the same name.
 
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Garasu:
quote:
3) Jesus claimed to be divine, but was mistaken (and thus crazy).
Yes, in that culture above all, anybody who believed himself divine without being so would definitely be madder than a box of frogs.

Sorry, not really disagreeing, just wondering why "in that culture above all"?

Because it's monotheistic. (excuse the stereotyping, and cartoony nature and general ignorance) God is above the universe.

The Indian Aryan family is different, God is the universe. Claiming to be 'one' with the creator (e.g. the Zen quotes above) isn't such a big claim. Of course it's also true of everyone else.
And to claim a greater concentration would be a bit arrogant, without good reason (e.g. a life meditating or royal blood).

The western Aryan world (e.g. Greek) is different again, gods are in universe. Claiming to be divine just means that Zeus liked your grandmother and recognises you. It's still an arrogant claim, one you'd only expect of a Caesar. But possible.
 
Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :
 
George Rex was an English exile who founded the coastal town of Knysna in South Africa.

he firmly believed that he was the legitimate King of England although born on the wrong side of the blanket.

Nobody suggested that George Rex was insane.

He was simply mistaken. A bad genealogist.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Aye. But to get close to Jesus' claim, Rex would have had to believe himself a cat. A bit different.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I've read somewhere that the Iliad and the Odyssey weren't really written by Homer, but by another blind poet with the same name.

No doubt!
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
Many of the responses here seem to be missing the point already made: that what Lewis was answering was the notion of Jesus as a great moral teacher.

Yes, you can come up with all the alternatives based on Jesus not actually saying what the Gospels attribute him saying. But if you do that, how the blazes do you find these great moral teachings of Jesus? How can you maintain the notion that he gave you great moral teachings to follow while rejecting the record of his teachings?
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
How can you maintain the notion that he gave you great moral teachings to follow while rejecting the record of his teachings?

Rejecting a particular and rather stilted hermeneutic is not the same thing as rejecting scripture. What is so foul about Lewis' idiotic "Lord, liar, lunatic" trope is that it disingenuously pretends to be offering up an argument for the unconverted when in reality it is an assault on alternative ways of being faithful, and uses the religious novice as cannon fodder in that assault.

--Tom Clune

[ 03. September 2012, 03:49: Message edited by: tclune ]
 
Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :
 
Excuse my ignorance, but what does pomo mean?
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
Excuse my ignorance, but what does pomo mean?

Post-modern.

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I think this thread is being unfair to Lewis. It is condemning him for not answering a different question from the one he was trying to answer. In his time, the argument 'I accept and admire Jesus's moral teaching. He was a great moral teacher. I just don't accept his claim to be the Son of God', was a very prevalent excuse people trotted out for not believing.

That's right. I remember now. That's a great explanation.
Even seen in that light, the Lewis quote is poor. There is an issue about how exactly one would decide which were the moral teachings and which were the claims to deity to be rejected - but some have managed it, eg MK Gandhi.

CS Lewis was not an academic theologian, his celebrated 'triple first' was in Philosophy, Classics, and English and he was Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge. Whilst he was clearly a brilliant scholar, it is not impossible to believe that he retained a blind spot with regard to another field of study - which happens to many people.

I am happy to believe the quote is from a radio broadcast, but to me that is no excuse for poor logic, particularly when stating something as obvious when it is anything but obvious.

The popularity of the writings of CS Lewis seems to mostly derive from an attachment to him from Evangelicals. Which is odd in many ways, given that his professed theology was hardly consistent with evangelicalism as most would understand it.

He was a clever guy, on this he was wrong.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
On the “great moral teacher” issue, old-fashioned liberalism used to suggest that Jesus taught a radical and simple gospel of (in the gender-specific terminology of von Harnack) “the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man”, after which Hellenistic and Judaizing villains such as Paul came along and buried it under an esoteric Christology and a vindictive soteriology and eschatology.

However, a number of Paul’s writings (Galatians, Thessalonians) predate the Synoptics, so on the face of it, it should be equally possible to theorise that Jesus’ original message was in fact all about his divine and incarnational status (demonstrated by miracles), his mission to die and rise in order to save people from the final judgement, and the necessity to believe on him, after which it was doctored by those who wanted posterity to believe that he instead preached merely an immanent ethic.
 
Posted by Leprechaun (# 5408) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Even seen in that light, the Lewis quote is poor. There is an issue about how exactly one would decide which were the moral teachings and which were the claims to deity to be rejected - but some have managed it, eg MK Gandhi.

To say "Ghandi managed it" is merely to say that he chose the bits he agreed with and chose to disregard the bits that he didn't. Lewis is (IMHO correctly) pointing out that lots of people do this and it is a strange thing to do - to view someone as an outright liar and also treasure their moral teachings.

quote:

CS Lewis was not an academic theologian, his celebrated 'triple first' was in Philosophy, Classics, and English and he was Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge.

But his point is, surely, about the wider literary form of the Gospels. They are not, he is suggesting, a moral tract with some bit of supernatural pizzazz put in. The supernatural is as important to the writer as the "moral teacher" bit. It's not a theological point as much as a literary one that he's making.
 
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
I am with shamwari here. Jesus does not need to have been mad, bad, god, or mistaken.

He could have been a man, full of God's Spirit, not in the least mistaken or mad.

Not God or 'I AM' as John would have him - but filled to overflowing with God in the way no person has been, before or since.

This explains Him to me.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I think this thread is being unfair to Lewis. It is condemning him for not answering a different question from the one he was trying to answer. In his time, the argument 'I accept and admire Jesus's moral teaching. He was a great moral teacher. I just don't accept his claim to be the Son of God', was a very prevalent excuse people trotted out for not believing.


As Enoch has said, I think the problem here is the people who came after Lewis, not Lewis himself. All he was trying to do was to challenge the people who, at the time, tried to boil Christianity down to some moral tenets whilst ignoring Jesus' ostensible claim to divinity and to introduce us to God himself.

It's the rather over the top followers, the likes of Josh Mcdowell who have tried to turn it into a multi purpose knockdown argument for Jesus' divinity for any occasion. This is silly, not least because lots of people are happy to say that he is mad or God. I still think it holds some traction today for people who say they like the morals of Jesus teaching (as we have it recorded) but not Christianity. You don't have to read much of Jesus teaching to see that rather a lot of it was to do with himself, and specifically his return to judge the world. Whatever that is, it's not moral teaching as most people mean it. In that sense the trilemma can provide a useful to way to spur people out of their ignorance. But it's not the convert maker we might have thought in the 80s.

I agree with Enoch and Leprechaun (not a sentence I'm going to write very often).

Lewis wasn't making a universal argument for the divinity of Jesus. He was arguing against a particular attitude which claims to respect Jesus but does not engage with, or account for, the challenging things that Jesus seemed to treat as the heart of his message.

And "Jesus" here quite obviously means "the Jesus of the gospels". If the gospels misrepresent the actual flesh-and-blood human being who was teaching around 30CE (which they might) we have no way that is not utterly speculative of getting at that human being's real teachings. The "Jesus" who people claim to respect, or follow, or attend to, or believe in, is the Jesus of the gospels - whether that person is a historical figure, or a literary composition, or an amalagation of both. That's where the trilemma bites: John's Jesus clearly makes sensational claims about himself which, if made by, for example, me, no one would have any hesitation in considering to be evidence of folly or deceit. Therefore we cannot say that John's Jesus was just a good moral teacher. That is a bad reading of the gospel. It doesn't account for what is in the text.

Saying "I don't believe that the real Jesus could have said all that stuff" is a perfectly sensible reply to the trilemma - and I don't think there's anything in Mere Christianity that would contradict that. Someone who rejects the claim that Jesus' teachings were substantially as presented in scripture isn't and can't be under any duty to explain away the content of that teaching. The only thing that they might want to explain is how the gospel-writers came to believe (or claim) that Jesus said such crazy stuff, which is a different problem. It is only the people who claim that they have the highest respect for Jesus as the gospels portray him who then run into difficulties if they reject a core part of his message. And that attitude is still around, though is probably much less common now than when Lewis was writing.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Lewis knew better than anyone that you can't argue people into the kingdom of God; the most an apologist can hope to do is remove some of the brush and weeds (misconceptions etc) before the true farmer shows up to plow the ground and plant the good seed.

That’s right.

Acceptable apologetics consists of presenting the gospel as clearly as possible, which will probably involve correcting misunderstandings.

Dubious apologetics involves alleged knock-down arguments, such as fulfilled prophecy, or evidences for the resurrection, or contemporary miraculous healings.

Having said that, we are forced to recognize that all of these, and many other things besides, such as the polemical use of the Lewis trichotomy, have at times helped people to faith.
 
Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :
 
I think the trilemma or trichotomy or whatever would have more power if it were better placed in context -- which, as some have pointed out, may not have really worked in the original format in which Lewis delivered the talks. The context in which I think it makes sense is if you say to someone, "Look, you think Jesus was a great moral teacher, you obviously accept the gospel accounts as valid, because where else do you get those 'great moral teachings' from? Given that acceptance, how do you explain away the OTHER things the gospels say about Jesus, the grandiose claims of divinity?"

Once you have that framework for the question, then you can pretty much drop the whole textual issue (although you would still have deal with Jesus-Seminar-type people who say that the bits they like are authentic and the bits they don't like are later additions) and assume that when you say "Jesus" you mean "Jesus as presented in the gospels," which makes it much simpler.

Somebody made the point that #3 in my list, which is one of Lewis's options (Jesus was mad) is essentially the same thing as #6 in my list (Jesus was mistaken about his own divinity but right about other things). I don't think it is the same. The option Lewis is offering says, "Jesus thought He was divine but wasn't, therefore He was crazy, therefore nothing else he says is valid." I think it's possible -- then and probably still now -- to have a person who believes insane things about themselves, probably because they suffer from some kind of mental illness, yet is wise in other ways and right about lots of things.

The example that immediately sprang to mind is probably one that only Canadians would know: Louis Riel. At the risk of being taken to task by fellow Canadians for vastly oversimplifying a complicated story, Riel was a 19th century Metis leader who was involved in two rebellions against the Canadian government during its push westward, but who was also certifiably nuts (more at some points in his life than others) and believed he was the Messiah, son of God, etc. Both in his own time and in historical analysis since then people have been able to appreciate that the fact that he was obviously deluded about being the Messiah didn't mean that he was wrong about how the government was treating the Metis. I was thinking that some people might see the Jesus of the gospels the same way -- a good, wise, holy man who also suffered some kind of mental imbalance that led him to think he was the Messiah. That wouldn't necessarily have to invalidate everything else Jesus said (as Lewis suggests it should).
 
Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :
 
Oh, and Lamb Chopped, I have also read almost all of Lewis's work, and I'm well aware that he had no time for higher criticism, but if he was trying to speak to the issue of Jesus' divinity in a broad universal sense (rather than in the limited sense I suggested above -- ie speaking to people who already respect the gospels as a source) then it was disingenuous of him not at least address the textual issues. Just because HE didn't accept the arguments of higher criticism doesn't mean nobody did, and in fact I'm pretty sure that for most people today who admire Jesus but don't believe He was God, the argument, "Oh well, Jesus didn't really make all those grandiose statements, they were added by his followers later" is probably the #1 argument you'd hear. So I think Lewis was leaving a major weakness in his argument by not even addressing that issue.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
How can you maintain the notion that he gave you great moral teachings to follow while rejecting the record of his teachings?

Rejecting a particular and rather stilted hermeneutic is not the same thing as rejecting scripture. What is so foul about Lewis' idiotic "Lord, liar, lunatic" trope is that it disingenuously pretends to be offering up an argument for the unconverted when in reality it is an assault on alternative ways of being faithful, and uses the religious novice as cannon fodder in that assault.
I guess that's one way to look at it. It gets at an interesting thing about why Lewis may have used this "trope."

I see nothing wrong with assaulting "alternative ways of being faithful" with this formula. It may be more effective in that usage than as an argument for the unconverted. I see nothing foul about it.

At stake, I think, is the central epistemological issue of Christianity. Questions of source and authority are vital in any field of knowledge, and this is the point of Lewis' rejection of the "great moral teacher" argument. Lewis is saying "Either you accept Jesus' divine authority or you don't accept Him at all."

To harp again on my own denomination, Swedenborgians face the same issue. Swedenborg's voluminous works have quotable bits, and his ideas have been popular in various circles at various times, particularly in the 19th century. Some apologists like to use his more popularly acceptable thoughts to present him as an interesting moral voice. Whole branches of the church (Swedenborg started no religion so there is no official branch) have devoted themselves to this. This, however, enrages purists like myself, because without accepting Swedenborg's central claims these interesting bits are meaningless and have no authority.

I see Lewis coming from the same outraged position. Christians can't pick and choose which of Christ's words they wish to accept. The founding proposition is that it is all Divine, because Jesus is Divine and the sources of information Divinely given. If you throw that out it vitiates the whole project. [Disappointed]
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Even seen in that light, the Lewis quote is poor. There is an issue about how exactly one would decide which were the moral teachings and which were the claims to deity to be rejected - but some have managed it, eg MK Gandhi.

To say "Ghandi managed it" is merely to say that he chose the bits he agreed with and chose to disregard the bits that he didn't. Lewis is (IMHO correctly) pointing out that lots of people do this and it is a strange thing to do - to view someone as an outright liar and also treasure their moral teachings.
First you can't spell Gandhi. Second, you're not reading what I said - there are ways to hold a teacher in high esteem without holding to all of what they say without them being an 'outright liar'.

I don't think it is a strange thing to do in the slightest.

quote:
quote:

CS Lewis was not an academic theologian, his celebrated 'triple first' was in Philosophy, Classics, and English and he was Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge.

But his point is, surely, about the wider literary form of the Gospels. They are not, he is suggesting, a moral tract with some bit of supernatural pizzazz put in. The supernatural is as important to the writer as the "moral teacher" bit. It's not a theological point as much as a literary one that he's making.
Not really - he is putting across a theological view that says a) the gospels give a consistent message about Jesus as God b) that this is an accurate record of the Christ c) that Jesus understood the words he used in the same ways as the writers of the gospels and therefore d) the only option if you are to take the gospel accounts at all seriously is to reject them outright or to accept them outright.

Clearly this is not true. One can, like Gandhi, take the Sermon on the Mount as the basis of an ethic. I'm sure there are many other ways to read the gospels as well.

And neither you, nor CS Lewis, are really entitled to tell me that there is only a binary choice between wholly accepting or rejecting the message that you say is the gospel.

[ 03. September 2012, 11:55: Message edited by: the long ranger ]
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
there are ways to hold a teacher in high esteem without holding to all of what they say without them being an 'outright liar'.

I don't think it is a strange thing to do in the slightest.

I think that Lewis' point is that it depends on how outrageous the claims are.

To compare, I'm sure that the esteemed recently departed Dr. Moon has some very nice quotable sayings that we could all get behind. But his central claims, in many people's opinion, are so outrageous that they wouldn't dream of quoting him. The same is true of Joseph Smith. They are not really esteemed moral teachers because they are viewed by most people as "outright liars." No offense to their faithful.

Lewis is just putting Jesus into that same camp, and saying "love Him or leave Him."
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:

I think that Lewis' point is that it depends on how outrageous the claims are.

To compare, I'm sure that the esteemed recently departed Dr. Moon has some very nice quotable sayings that we could all get behind. But his central claims, in many people's opinion, are so outrageous that they wouldn't dream of quoting him. The same is true of Joseph Smith. They are not really esteemed moral teachers because they are viewed by most people as "outright liars." No offense to their faithful.

Lewis is just putting Jesus into that same camp, and saying "love Him or leave Him."

Or Swedenborg, presumably.

But this does underline my point anyway - reasonable people are Mormons and Swedenborgians and (I'm guessing) Moonies. You and I might not accept these leaders as great moral teachers, but there are a range of opinions about them which range from 'divine' through to 'mentally ill criminal' via 'don't care', 'wrong' and 'some right, some wrong'.
 
Posted by Leprechaun (# 5408) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
First you can't spell Gandhi. Second, you're not reading what I said - there are ways to hold a teacher in high esteem without holding to all of what they say without them being an 'outright liar'.


Yes, if you are selective about their teachings and assume some of what they said isn't true.

Your options then are that
a) they knew they weren't true or
b) they were mistaken about being true.
The discussion on the thread has been about whether believing you are God is such a big mistake as to count as madness. Keep up!

quote:

Not really - he is putting across a theological view that says a) the gospels give a consistent message about Jesus as God b) that this is an accurate record of the Christ c) that Jesus understood the words he used in the same ways as the writers of the gospels and therefore d) the only option if you are to take the gospel accounts at all seriously is to reject them outright or to accept them outright.

Have you read Mere Christianity? There's actually quite a lot of discussion about the genre and historicity of the Gospels.

quote:

Clearly this is not true. One can, like Gandhi, take the Sermon on the Mount as the basis of an ethic. I'm sure there are many other ways to read the gospels as well.

I'm sure there are.

It depends really whether you think we need coherent or responsible reasons for our beliefs. Of course you can believe anything you like about the Sermon on the Mount (although even that contains a section about Jesus judging the world) but Lewis is not trying to impose beliefs. He's pointing out that it is epistemologically strange to use that as a source for ethical beliefs whilst adopting a general worldview which would count other things Jesus said as vicious lies or deluded rantings, or the Gospels as fundamentally unreliable. So of course me or C.S. Lewis can't tell you what believe. But he can point out epistemological irresponsibility. In fact, as a philosopher, that might be what you would expect him to do.

[ 03. September 2012, 12:17: Message edited by: Leprechaun ]
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
First you can't spell Gandhi. Second, you're not reading what I said - there are ways to hold a teacher in high esteem without holding to all of what they say without them being an 'outright liar'.


Yes, if you are selective about their teachings and assume some of what they said isn't true.

Your options then are that
a) they knew they weren't true or
b) they were mistaken about being true.
The discussion on the thread has been about whether believing you are God is such a big mistake as to count as madness. Keep up!

The discussion is not dictated by you, I don't happen to believe those are the only options available.

It is entirely possible to read the gospels and understand the words that Jesus used to mean something other than him accepting he was divine.

quote:
quote:

Not really - he is putting across a theological view that says a) the gospels give a consistent message about Jesus as God b) that this is an accurate record of the Christ c) that Jesus understood the words he used in the same ways as the writers of the gospels and therefore d) the only option if you are to take the gospel accounts at all seriously is to reject them outright or to accept them outright.

Have you read Mere Christianity? There's actually quite a lot of discussion about the genre and historicity of the Gospels.
Yes.

quote:
quote:

Clearly this is not true. One can, like Gandhi, take the Sermon on the Mount as the basis of an ethic. I'm sure there are many other ways to read the gospels as well.

I'm sure there are.

It depends really whether you think we need coherent or responsible reasons for our beliefs. Of course you can believe anything you like about the Sermon on the Mount (although even that contains a section about Jesus judging the world) but Lewis is not trying to impose beliefs. He's pointing out that it is epistemologically strange to use that as a source for ethical beliefs whilst adopting a general worldview which would count other things Jesus said as vicious lies or deluded rantings, or the Gospels as fundamentally unreliable. So of course me or C.S. Lewis can't tell you what believe. But he can point out epistemological irresponsibility. In fact, as a philosopher, that might be what you would expect him to do.

Only someone who had an elevated and unwarranted inerrent view of the bible could even say this. In normal speech and practice, we do not take every uttering of every great teacher as being useful, because most of us accept that humans are flawed, have strange ideas, say things they don't mean, are misunderstood, are misquoted and so forth.

Few here would doubt that a handful of Martin Luther King Junior's speeches had unusual amounts of moral power over and above their rhetorical delivery. But we're not forced to accept them only to be literal (in fact, some passages within them are clearly not literal) nor are we forced to accept that every other thing he said or is recorded as saying is helpful.

There is nothing strange about accepting the Sermon on the Mount as the ultimate in ethical teaching. There is nothing "epistemological irresponsible" about it outside of your individual subjective claims about what should and should not be allowed as options for belief.
 
Posted by Leprechaun (# 5408) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
]Only someone who had an elevated and unwarranted inerrent view of the bible could even say this. In normal speech and practice, we do not take every uttering of every great teacher as being useful, because most of us accept that humans are flawed, have strange ideas, say things they don't mean, are misunderstood, are misquoted and so forth.

First of all, you can't spell inerrant.


quote:

Few here would doubt that a handful of Martin Luther King Junior's speeches had unusual amounts of moral power over and above their rhetorical delivery. But we're not forced to accept them only to be literal (in fact, some passages within them are clearly not literal) nor are we forced to accept that every other thing he said or is recorded as saying is helpful.

There is nothing strange about accepting the Sermon on the Mount as the ultimate in ethical teaching. There is nothing "epistemological irresponsible" about it outside of your individual subjective claims about what should and should not be allowed as options for belief.

You have underlined the problem here perfectly. No one is asking me to take MLK's speeches as "the ultimate ethical teaching". If they were, the ethics of the man himself would be extremely important to me in deciding whether their request for me to believe that is acceptable. I would use the historical sources at my disposal to decide about his ethics. That is all Lewis is suggesting.

And I have no idea what you mean by the last paragraph. Is there some assertion I have made that is not rational in some way? If so, can you point it out instead of obfuscating about me trying to decide for other people which beliefs are acceptable. I have already said it's not my job to do that, but by engaging in a discussion I had assumed you wanted to discuss the reasonableness of particular views without endlessly resorting to "People are free to believe whatever they want."
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
I am curious if anyone would still use the trilemma as a kind of evangelizing tool of some kind. To me, it just sounds, well, naff, but perhaps there are contexts where one might use a version of it.

It would obviously apply to someone who saw Jesus as a great moral teacher, but then baulked at the God-stuff.

Perhaps in our post-Christian times, that is quite a common position, I'm not sure. I doubt if the trilemma would have much effect in that case, although it might if the person in question had some kind of epiphany about the nature of God and Christ. But in that case, the trilemma is a bit redundant.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
You have underlined the problem here perfectly. No one is asking me to take MLK's speeches as "the ultimate ethical teaching". If they were, the ethics of the man himself would be extremely important to me in deciding whether their request for me to believe that is acceptable. I would use the historical sources at my disposal to decide about his ethics. That is all Lewis is suggesting.

Nope, he is suggesting that one is not left the option to regard the Jesus Christ of the gospels as a great moral teacher - because he is either who he said he is, a liar or deluded. I quoted the excerpt under discussion in this post..

The rest of what you've said above is irrelevant.

quote:
And I have no idea what you mean by the last paragraph. Is there some assertion I have made that is not rational in some way? If so, can you point it out instead of obfuscating about me trying to decide for other people which beliefs are acceptable. I have already said it's not my job to do that, but by engaging in a discussion I had assumed you wanted to discuss the reasonableness of particular views without endlessly resorting to "People are free to believe whatever they want."
well you are implying that the only rational and reasonable way to read the gospels is the way that you read them. You then state that reading them in any other way (including choosing to take sections of them which are clearly presented as ethical teachings as a moral system for life) on their own is "epistemologically irresponsible" with the clear impression that your view is one of only two which are left open to the person who is trying to be honest and logical in their ethical framework.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:


It would obviously apply to someone who saw Jesus as a great moral teacher, but then baulked at the God-stuff.

Perhaps in our post-Christian times, that is quite a common position, I'm not sure. I doubt if the trilemma would have much effect in that case, although it might if the person in question had some kind of epiphany about the nature of God and Christ. But in that case, the trilemma is a bit redundant.

Almost entirely useless, I'd wager. The person who has actually read the gospels and decided that the ethical teaching was worth keeping but had doubts about the value of the 'God-stuff' is not going to have any qualms about keeping the former and rejecting the latter - no matter how much the believer gnashes their teeth at the desecration of their holy book.
 
Posted by Leprechaun (# 5408) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:


The rest of what you've said above is irrelevant.

Nice way to get out of engaging with the issue.

quote:
well you are implying that the only rational and reasonable way to read the gospels is the way that you read them. You then state that reading them in any other way (including choosing to take sections of them which are clearly presented as ethical teachings as a moral system for life) on their own is "epistemologically irresponsible" with the clear impression that your view is one of only two which are left open to the person who is trying to be honest and logical in their ethical framework.
Of course I currently think that the way I read the Gospels is the most rational way, or else I would adopt another way. I'm perfectly open to learning about other ways to read them. All you have done so far is assert that there are other, better, ways. And an assertion does not an argument make.

Prima facie it does seem irrational to me to elevate part of Matthew/Jesus' teaching to be the highest possible ethical standard, somehow binding on humanity, whilst thinking other bits are reported exceptionally badly, plain mistaken, or made up. I don't think I am alone in that.

Can you explain to me how that is rational? If it's something to do with higher criticism, fine. If it's some redactor thesis about some bits being more reliable, also fine. We can discuss those. Simply saying "I can believe whatever I want to believe" is factually true, but doesn't really leave anything to discuss.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
Lewis is just putting Jesus into that same camp, and saying "love Him or leave Him."

But this does underline my point anyway - reasonable people are Mormons and Swedenborgians and (I'm guessing) Moonies. You and I might not accept these leaders as great moral teachers, but there are a range of opinions about them which range from 'divine' through to 'mentally ill criminal' via 'don't care', 'wrong' and 'some right, some wrong'.
Sure. Reasonable people can have all kinds of opinions and still be reasonable. We can pick and choose all we want.

However, if pressed, no one but a believer thinks its reasonable to assert things such as "I am God" or "what I'm saying is a message directly from God."

Isn't the point about provenance? If something is said to be an ancient artifact, its provenance is immediately at issue. The same is true of the supposed commandments of God.
 
Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :
 
The most likely reason I've ever seen for accepting the "ethical teachings" part and ditching the "I Am"-type statements would be the Jesus Seminar kind of reasoning that says that Matthew, Mark and Luke were all drawing on a lost text (Q?) which is primarily a collection of Jesus' sayings, not a narrative, and which leaves out all the grandiose stuff in John. But that view has always seemed to me to beg the question: i.e. it presumes the ethical teachings are older because statements about Jesus' divinity MUST reflect later church teachings -- not because there's anything in the text itself that indicates they are older.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Nice way to get out of engaging with the issue.

The discussion is about the Lewis formulation.

you said
quote:
No one is asking me to take MLK's speeches as "the ultimate ethical teaching". If they were, the ethics of the man himself would be extremely important to me in deciding whether their request for me to believe that is acceptable. I would use the historical sources at my disposal to decide about his ethics. That is all Lewis is suggesting.
This is not part of the formulation under discussion, is not one of the conclusions of CS Lewis in the excerpt I quoted previously. I contend that this point is so far from what Lewis is actually suggesting as to be irrelevant.

quote:
Of course I currently think that the way I read the Gospels is the most rational way, or else I would adopt another way. I'm perfectly open to learning about other ways to read them. All you have done so far is assert that there are other, better, ways. And an assertion does not an argument make.
Actually I didn't. You are saying that CS Lewis is correct in implying that there are only two options when faced with the Christ of the gospels - either to accept him as Lord or to reject him as mad/bad. I am saying that there are a range of other, reasonable, options. At no point did I say which were better as I am simply standing up for the widening of options from this oversimplistic binary choice.

quote:
Prima facie it does seem irrational to me to elevate part of Matthew/Jesus' teaching to be the highest possible ethical standard, somehow binding on humanity, whilst thinking other bits are reported exceptionally badly, plain mistaken, or made up. I don't think I am alone in that.
Bully for you. Fortunately, the measure of what is reasonable belief is not measured against you.

quote:
Can you explain to me how that is rational? If it's something to do with higher criticism, fine. If it's some redactor thesis about some bits being more reliable, also fine. We can discuss those. Simply saying "I can believe whatever I want to believe" is factually true, but doesn't really leave anything to discuss.
You really want me to explain what is rational about accepting as accurate and life-changing the ethical teaching of an ethical teacher? It seems to me that you are so wrapped into your worldview that you've lost the ability to appreciate that other reasonable views are available.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Prima facie it does seem irrational to me to elevate part of Matthew/Jesus' teaching to be the highest possible ethical standard, somehow binding on humanity, whilst thinking other bits are reported exceptionally badly, plain mistaken, or made up. I don't think I am alone in that.

Can you explain to me how that is rational? If it's something to do with higher criticism, fine. If it's some redactor thesis about some bits being more reliable, also fine. We can discuss those. Simply saying "I can believe whatever I want to believe" is factually true, but doesn't really leave anything to discuss.

But Lewis was presumably educated enough to know that the whole trilemma was a lie. Iranaeus, for example, felt that it was imperitive to include the Gospel of John in the canon because the three synoptics did not insist that Christ was God incarnate. ISTM that Iranaeus was clear on the actual scriptures, and was not encumbered by 2000 years of "interpretation."

So insisting that Christ would have to be mad to say what the educated people who shared His culture failed to see Him saying at all is just dishonest. Lewis cast the trilemma as he did because, like all apologists, he wanted to win his argument by stacking the deck -- it's just another "when did you stop beating your wife" manipulation, and it's shameful.

Let me add, I believe that Christ is God Incarnate, and I find the scriptures as critical to understanding that. My disgust with Lewis is that he insists on extorting what the Lord Himself refused to extort from the people that He taught. There is nothing Godly in Lewis' manipulations. Or so ISTM.

--Tom Clune

[ 03. September 2012, 15:07: Message edited by: tclune ]
 
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
You really want me to explain what is rational about accepting as accurate and life-changing the ethical teaching of an ethical teacher? It seems to me that you are so wrapped into your worldview that you've lost the ability to appreciate that other reasonable views are available.

What does that actually mean, though? Do you mean that by reading Matthew's account of Jesus, you can come to the end of it and think, 'I've received a moral insight, and I wouldn't have received it if I hadn't read this book'?

If so, I think Leprechaun's question is then, why you think this moral insight is actually worth anything, given that either Matthew or Jesus were deluded or mistaken on some fairly significant points?
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
The most likely reason I've ever seen for accepting the "ethical teachings" part and ditching the "I Am"-type statements would be the Jesus Seminar kind of reasoning that says that Matthew, Mark and Luke were all drawing on a lost text (Q?) which is primarily a collection of Jesus' sayings, not a narrative, and which leaves out all the grandiose stuff in John. But that view has always seemed to me to beg the question: i.e. it presumes the ethical teachings are older because statements about Jesus' divinity MUST reflect later church teachings -- not because there's anything in the text itself that indicates they are older.

There are other, simpler, reasons. Some genuine seekers after truth examine the New Testament and are attracted to the ethical teachings of Jesus presented there. For various reasons, they might not accept the church teaching about the divinity of Christ.

Sometimes this involves ignoring texts which do not seem to fit (hardly rare practice even amongst believers), sometimes it involves reading things that the Jesus of the gospels says about himself in a different way to the church teaching - for example when Jesus states that 'I and the father are one', some read this as being a statement of being 'of one mind' rather than as insisting he is divine.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
What does that actually mean, though? Do you mean that by reading Matthew's account of Jesus, you can come to the end of it and think, 'I've received a moral insight, and I wouldn't have received it if I hadn't read this book'?

Yes. Why is that so unreasonable? Gandhi read the Sermon on the Mount and decided that it was the greatest explanation of non-violent resistance that he had ever seen, and as as result pledged to live it in his life.

quote:
If so, I think Leprechaun's question is then, why you think this moral insight is actually worth anything, given that either Matthew or Jesus were deluded or mistaken on some fairly significant points?
Again, the point is that this is only a question if you believe that inerrant teachers are the only useful ones. That you can only learn Mathematics from the greatest Mathematician, that a text-book is only useful if it is correct in every respect.

Life isn't like that. We all learn things from flawed materials and individuals.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Some genuine seekers after truth examine the New Testament and are attracted to the ethical teachings of Jesus presented there. For various reasons, they might not accept the church teaching about the divinity of Christ.

In my tradition this is what is meant by Abraham telling people in Egypt that Sarah was his sister rather than his wife. He thought that this would avoid problems and make him more acceptable.

Presenting something as a reasonable moral teaching is like saying that it is your sister. Claiming that it is the authoritative Word of God Himself is like saying that it is your wife. This latter claim will cause people to, figuratively speaking, hate and kill you. But reducing the affiliation to the status of "sister" reduces the danger.
 
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Why is that so unreasonable?

I don't think it's unreasonable, but I don't wholly understand it, which is why I'm asking the question. I think I came across more aggressive than I intended.
quote:

quote:
If so, I think Leprechaun's question is then, why you think this moral insight is actually worth anything, given that either Matthew or Jesus were deluded or mistaken on some fairly significant points?
Again, the point is that this is only a question if you believe that inerrant teachers are the only useful ones. That you can only learn Mathematics from the greatest Mathematician, that a text-book is only useful if it is correct in every respect.

Life isn't like that. We all learn things from flawed materials and individuals.

But, as other people have said, there are degrees of infallibility. I would ignore a maths textbook that defined division by zero, even if it had true things to say about trigonometry, because I could probably find those trigonometric truths expressed more reliably elsewhere.

Also mathematics is subject to proofs that can be independently verified. Now the question is whether Jesus' ethical teaching can be independently verified. If so, one could I suppose subject all four gospels to the verification test and keep hold of the bits that pass. The question is what is that test.

ISTM that in order to keep Jesus' ethical teaching but reject his teaching about his relation to God you have to apply some pretty heavy-duty filters, with the result that you are putting into the Gospels more than you take out.
 
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:

The discussion on the thread has been about whether believing you are God is such a big mistake as to count as madness. Keep up!

Yes it is - but I put in another option which everyone has ignored -

I said Jesus does not need to have been mad, bad, god, or mistaken.

He could have been a man, full of God's Spirit, not in the least mistaken or mad.

Not believing he was God or 'I AM' as John would have him - but filled to overflowing with God in the way no person has been, before or since.

What do you think?
 
Posted by Leprechaun (# 5408) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
You really want me to explain what is rational about accepting as accurate and life-changing the ethical teaching of an ethical teacher?

Yes please. Thanks.

That, at least, will give me some idea of how you are using the word rational, which is mysterious to me at the moment.
 
Posted by Leprechaun (# 5408) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:

The discussion on the thread has been about whether believing you are God is such a big mistake as to count as madness. Keep up!

Yes it is - but I put in another option which everyone has ignored -

I said Jesus does not need to have been mad, bad, god, or mistaken.

He could have been a man, full of God's Spirit, not in the least mistaken or mad.

Not believing he was God or 'I AM' as John would have him - but filled to overflowing with God in the way no person has been, before or since.

What do you think?

The quote you had there was actually from me, not from long ranger.

In answer to your question, I think your formulation leaves us with the same problem with the Gospels - does what they record about Jesus claims that seem to suggest considerably more than what you have suggested have to be "written out"? A later interpolation? Misinterpreted by the church?
 
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:

In answer to your question, I think your formulation leaves us with the same problem with the Gospels - does what they record about Jesus claims that seem to suggest considerably more than what you have suggested have to be "written out"? A later interpolation? Misinterpreted by the church?

Yes - I think John's gospel does claim considerably more for Jesus than the rest of the gospels.

How could Jesus claim that we would be able to do the same as Him and more if we couldn't be filled with God's Spirit as He was?

If Jesus was God then we couldn't begin to emulate Him - it would be unattainable and we may as well give up at the start line. If he was fully human but filled with the divine, then we have a chance.

[ 03. September 2012, 14:48: Message edited by: Boogie ]
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
But, as other people have said, there are degrees of infallibility. I would ignore a maths textbook that defined division by zero, even if it had true things to say about trigonometry, because I could probably find those trigonometric truths expressed more reliably elsewhere.

Possibly mathematics was a bad choice on my part, given that less complicated proofs are used to build more complex ones. In many of the physical sciences, school textbooks frequently use outdated, disproved and over-simplified explanations which are no longer accepted by the academic community. Often this is just accepted, and the student pursuing higher studies learns to disregard much of what he/she was taught at school.

Most probably similar things are discovered when studying literature, history, etc.

quote:
Also mathematics is subject to proofs that can be independently verified. Now the question is whether Jesus' ethical teaching can be independently verified. If so, one could I suppose subject all four gospels to the verification test and keep hold of the bits that pass. The question is what is that test.
Well in a sense that depends on what it is that you want the ethic to do. If you want a model of non-violent resistance, I'd argue that the base of the Sermon on the Mount has been proven to work. But of course, 'success' and 'failure' is a purely subjective concept in this.

quote:
ISTM that in order to keep Jesus' ethical teaching but reject his teaching about his relation to God you have to apply some pretty heavy-duty filters, with the result that you are putting into the Gospels more than you take out.
I'd suggest this is a matter of opinion. To read the doctrine of the Trinity requires far more 'reading between the lines', I'd argue.

The plain truth is that we all apply filters to the text. Most of us leave out the things we don't like and add things we do. That just seems to go with the territory.
 
Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
... Clearly this is not true. One can, like Gandhi, take the Sermon on the Mount as the basis of an ethic. ...

The Magnificat covers much of the same material, but Mary makes no claim to divinity (or as regards her conception, or her future assumption.)
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
You really want me to explain what is rational about accepting as accurate and life-changing the ethical teaching of an ethical teacher?

Yes please. Thanks.

That, at least, will give me some idea of how you are using the word rational, which is mysterious to me at the moment.

Hum. Well, I think many people are looking for direction in life and are searching around for a moral teacher upon which to build a life ethic - in the sense of a set of beliefs upon which they can build their lives.

Sometimes they come across the Sermon on the Mount, which can be clearly distinguished from much of the rest of the gospels as a distinct piece of moral teaching by Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Sometimes in reading this those people find a special kind of truth within it and decide to take it on as the basis of a personal ethic, in much the same way as one might accept the writings of Buddha or other religious teacher.

They may decide that the other teachings in the New Testament are confused, confusing, untrue or irrelevant.

I can't see that is an unreasonable position.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Probably off-topic, but one of my close friends is a Sufi, and he states that everything is God, which as far as I can see, contradicts Islamic teaching, but never mind.

However, this is quite different from the trilemma, as he is not saying that he is God, and I am not, or the carpet is not, but that we are all God. Maybe the carpet especially (joke).

He is certainly not mad. Whether or not he is mistaken I find impossible to discern. But I am just making the point that today, and maybe throughout human history, there are all kinds of strange and exotic views about divinity, although saying that everything is God is not particularly exotic, I accept. Even that full stop might be God!
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
Incidentally, I'm using the notion of rational in a Kierkegaardian sense - in the sense of a choice that any reasonable, balanced person might make in a given situation.

As opposed to an unreasonable position - such as reading the gospels and deciding that it is a first century telephone directory, that Jesus was a piece of cheese or whatnot.

I don't think it is true to indicate that a reasonable person would read the gospels and only reject/accept Jesus as Lord. Hence I don't believe those are the only two rational options available.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
You are saying that CS Lewis is correct in implying that there are only two options when faced with the Christ of the gospels - either to accept him as Lord or to reject him as mad/bad. I am saying that there are a range of other, reasonable, options.

There aren't many other options, unless you start to question the accuracy of the gospel accounts themselves. Which, of course, you have every right to do, but then you are not responding to "the Christ of the gospels".

It's as if you were to ask me whether I thought Shakespeare's Richard III was a bad king, and I replied that I thought that the historical Richard was a nice guy whom history had treated badly. I might be right as a matter of history, but I would be missing the point that Shakespeare very definitely writes him as a villian. Reading him as a maligned good gut is a misreading of the play - reading Jesus as just a moral teacher is a misreading for the gospels.

The gospels (all of them, not just John) write Jesus as a person confidently claiming divine authority. Considered as a character in the story, that claim is fundamental to "the Christ of the gospels". Assessing his character without that would be like assessing Shakespeare's Richard without acknowledging that he murdered his nephews. You can say that the play, or the gospels, misrepresents the lead character, but you cannot meaningfully engage with that character if you do not engage with one of the most important facts being portrayed.

You could claim, of course, that an uncompromising claim to have authority from God is the sort of thing someone can be wrong about, without being so wrong that "bad" or "mad" can fairly describe the error. I disagree with that, and I don't think it is a reasonable view. What psychology are you imagining for the Christ of the gospels, that he could claim such a thing if it were wrong? And that applies to the synoptics: add the claims of actual divinity in John's gospel, and you have things that no one who was at the time both good or sane would ever say.

It seems to me that you cannot say that the Christ of the gospels offers a coherent portrayal of a good and wise person, if his claims are wrong. If he was wrong then he was utterly deluded, or outrageously lying, in either case far outside the usual bounds of human frailty.

Of course that doesn't prove that Christ was divine, and I don't think Lewis anywhere claims that it does. What it it establishes is that the 'good moral teacher' Jesus is not the Jesus that the gospel writers were trying to tell us about. That Jesus, the Christ of the gospels, makes claims which are either true or blasphemous.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
Oh, and Lamb Chopped, I have also read almost all of Lewis's work, and I'm well aware that he had no time for higher criticism, but if he was trying to speak to the issue of Jesus' divinity in a broad universal sense (rather than in the limited sense I suggested above -- ie speaking to people who already respect the gospels as a source) then it was disingenuous of him not at least address the textual issues. Just because HE didn't accept the arguments of higher criticism doesn't mean nobody did, and in fact I'm pretty sure that for most people today who admire Jesus but don't believe He was God, the argument, "Oh well, Jesus didn't really make all those grandiose statements, they were added by his followers later" is probably the #1 argument you'd hear. So I think Lewis was leaving a major weakness in his argument by not even addressing that issue.

To the italicized section--as I mentioned, these were ten-minute radio talks, done to an intelligent but relatively uneducated audience, many of whom would never hear more than the one talk in the series. Under those constraints, doing theology becomes a game of Lifeboat. You can't fit in everything you'd like to say, you can't even fit in everything that you think you OUGHT to say--you do the best you can. If Lewis had managed to accomplish a survey of the textual controversies along with everything else in ten minutes flat, I think he would be the one we were evaluating for Messiahship.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
tclune, I'd like to see the Irenaeus quote. Because Christ's deity is at the very least implicit in the other three Gospels, and I'd expect Irenaeus would have known that far better than I. Perhaps he meant that John is the one who comes right out and says it in unmistakeable terms?
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
tclune, I'd like to see the Irenaeus quote. Because Christ's deity is at the very least implicit in the other three Gospels, and I'd expect Irenaeus would have known that far better than I. Perhaps he meant that John is the one who comes right out and says it in unmistakeable terms?

I was thinking the same thing, wondering exactly how Irenaeus put it.
 
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Well in a sense that depends on what it is that you want the ethic to do. If you want a model of non-violent resistance, I'd argue that the base of the Sermon on the Mount has been proven to work. But of course, 'success' and 'failure' is a purely subjective concept in this.

Indeed. I think underlying the debate is another debate about ethical realism. If you believe - as Lewis clearly did - that there are real ethical truths in some sense 'out there', independent of the human mind, and that it's possible to discern them to a more or less efficient degree, then Matthew's Jesus is a very flawed vessel indeed for discerning ethical truths, like trying to look at the sky with a telescope that is known to have warped glass.

If you're less of an ethical realist than Lewis, then a different set of considerations apply.

quote:
I'd suggest this is a matter of opinion. To read the doctrine of the Trinity requires far more 'reading between the lines', I'd argue.
I agree to an extent. I think it's quite easy to use the gospels in support of Arianism or any number of alternative Christologies that make Jesus more than human. I think it's difficult to read them in such a way that he's only a human.
quote:
The plain truth is that we all apply filters to the text. Most of us leave out the things we don't like and add things we do. That just seems to go with the territory.
It goes with the territory if you're reading the gospels.

It doesn't go with the territory if you're interested in reading ethical philosophers. You don't need to apply anything like the same degree of filtering if you read Aristotle or Confucius or Kant or Bentham. Which raises the question: why go to the gospels at all, when ethical philosophy has been written about more efficiently by other people?
 
Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
Oh, and Lamb Chopped, I have also read almost all of Lewis's work, and I'm well aware that he had no time for higher criticism, but if he was trying to speak to the issue of Jesus' divinity in a broad universal sense (rather than in the limited sense I suggested above -- ie speaking to people who already respect the gospels as a source) then it was disingenuous of him not at least address the textual issues. Just because HE didn't accept the arguments of higher criticism doesn't mean nobody did, and in fact I'm pretty sure that for most people today who admire Jesus but don't believe He was God, the argument, "Oh well, Jesus didn't really make all those grandiose statements, they were added by his followers later" is probably the #1 argument you'd hear. So I think Lewis was leaving a major weakness in his argument by not even addressing that issue.

To the italicized section--as I mentioned, these were ten-minute radio talks, done to an intelligent but relatively uneducated audience, many of whom would never hear more than the one talk in the series. Under those constraints, doing theology becomes a game of Lifeboat. You can't fit in everything you'd like to say, you can't even fit in everything that you think you OUGHT to say--you do the best you can. If Lewis had managed to accomplish a survey of the textual controversies along with everything else in ten minutes flat, I think he would be the one we were evaluating for Messiahship.
But to be fair, he did get the chance to edit them before they were collected into Mere Christianity, which is what we're all using as a source, so he could have added at least a bit about that.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
tclune, I'd like to see the Irenaeus quote. Because Christ's deity is at the very least implicit in the other three Gospels, and I'd expect Irenaeus would have known that far better than I. Perhaps he meant that John is the one who comes right out and says it in unmistakeable terms?

I don't have it bookmarked, so I'll have to devote a fair amount of time to digging it back out. I can't do that now, but remind me if I haven't gotten to it in the next couple of weeks.

Yes, the sense was that the explicit assertion was not there. I personally have very little love for John's Gospel, but find Mark more than compelling in his implications of Christ's divinity. But the point is that Lewis is depending upon the usual uninformed misinterpretation of such Jewish technical terms as "Son of God." Lewis himself is undoubtedly not confused by those terms, but he nonetheless relies on the ignorance of the people he is trying to persuade. I find the whole agologetics enterprise foul, and Lewis is a prime exemplar of it.

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by Leprechaun (# 5408) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:


Sometimes they come across the Sermon on the Mount, which can be clearly distinguished from much of the rest of the gospels as a distinct piece of moral teaching by Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Sometimes in reading this those people find a special kind of truth within it and decide to take it on as the basis of a personal ethic, in much the same way as one might accept the writings of Buddha or other religious teacher.


The bit I don't understand I have italicised. I cannot comprehend finding a special type of truth in such a way that I considered it binding on my life from a source that I thought was made up, or weird or just plain wrong on a huge number of other things. To take the MLK example again, I could appreciate his speeches as beautiful poetry but would not find them in the least bit morally persuasive was it not for his amazing legacy, which I have access to historically. I realise that the connection between moral philosophy in writing and in action is a complex and controversial area, but a "special kind of truth" is not, IMHO a rational connection.

Also what Eliab said, who is getting across what I think in a much more eirenic way.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
The bit I don't understand I have italicised. I cannot comprehend finding a special type of truth in such a way that I considered it binding on my life from a source that I thought was made up, or weird or just plain wrong on a huge number of other things.

Maybe that is just you.


quote:
To take the MLK example again, I could appreciate his speeches as beautiful poetry but would not find them in the least bit morally persuasive was it not for his amazing legacy, which I have access to historically.
Again, maybe that is just you. I think they stand alone as morally persuasive speeches, which is at least one reason why they had such a powerful effect.

quote:
I realise that the connection between moral philosophy in writing and in action is a complex and controversial area, but a "special kind of truth" is not, IMHO a rational connection.
I think the word you are looking for is objective rather than rational. It might be entirely rational to believe something significant and special about a piece of writing that moves you. That might not appear to others to be rational. But again, as I said above, rational is to make a choice that any reasonable person might make in the circumstances. They don't have to make a single choice and there may be several rational choices in any circumstance.

quote:
Also what Eliab said, who is getting across what I think in a much more eirenic way.
Yes, Eliab has a far better argument than you do. I am still wondering about how to respond.
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
tclune, I'd like to see the Irenaeus quote. Because Christ's deity is at the very least implicit in the other three Gospels, and I'd expect Irenaeus would have known that far better than I. Perhaps he meant that John is the one who comes right out and says it in unmistakeable terms?

I don't have it bookmarked, so I'll have to devote a fair amount of time to digging it back out. I can't do that now, but remind me if I haven't gotten to it in the next couple of weeks.
This site, on the development of the canon, quotes Irenaeus on the topic of John:
quote:
Irenaeus writes in Adversus Haereses:
Now the Gospels, in which Christ is enthroned, are like these. For that according to John expounds his princely and mighty and glorious birth from the Father, saying, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,' and, 'All things were made by him, and without him nothing was nothing made' . Therefore this Gospel is deserving of all confidence, for such indeed is his person. (3.11.8)

Not too explicit, but it has quotes about each of the gospels and none have this same emphasis.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
Not too explicit, but it has quotes about each of the gospels and none have this same emphasis.

This is a translation of the Chapter 11 of Book 3 of Against Heresies.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Not really - he is putting across a theological view that says a) the gospels give a consistent message about Jesus as God b) that this is an accurate record of the Christ c) that Jesus understood the words he used in the same ways as the writers of the gospels and therefore d) the only option if you are to take the gospel accounts at all seriously is to reject them outright or to accept them outright.

Are you sure that's what he's doing? I don't have a copy of Mere Christianity to hand so I can't confirm this. But reacting to the trichotomy as if that represents the entirety of Lewis' position is pretty much the same sort of intellectual endeavour as proof texting. Proof texting Lewis is no more sensible than proof texting the Bible.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Are you sure that's what he's doing? I don't have a copy of Mere Christianity to hand so I can't confirm this. But reacting to the trichotomy as if that represents the entirety of Lewis' position is pretty much the same sort of intellectual endeavour as proof texting. Proof texting Lewis is no more sensible than proof texting the Bible.

I am pretty sure that is the argument of the section under discussion, though I don't have a copy of the book to hand either. And you are right to say that proof-texting is unhelpful.
 
Posted by Truman White (# 17290) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Lewis knew better than anyone that you can't argue people into the kingdom of God; the most an apologist can hope to do is remove some of the brush and weeds (misconceptions etc) before the true farmer shows up to plow the ground and plant the good seed.

That’s right.

Acceptable apologetics consists of presenting the gospel as clearly as possible, which will probably involve correcting misunderstandings.

Dubious apologetics involves alleged knock-down arguments, such as fulfilled prophecy, or evidences for the resurrection, or contemporary miraculous healings.

Having said that, we are forced to recognize that all of these, and many other things besides, such as the polemical use of the Lewis trichotomy, have at times helped people to faith.

Aren't the gospels themselves "evidences for the resurrection"?
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
@Eliab - I wanted to try to respond to your post, which I found challenging and interesting. Ultimately, I think the difference is that the assumptions implicit in your Shakespeare example are not the same as the New Testament. In fact, a closer analogue would be to suggest that Shakespeare's description of Richard is the definitive and most accurate possible rendition of the person described.

This is not the situation we have in the gospels, although I acknowledge I totally muddied the water by talking about the Jesus of the gospels, which was not in the original excerpt from Lewis. Most of us would agree that the gospels are biographies of a real person - hence by definition the person is more than is written down about them.

I can see that if one could not argue about the reliability of the record in the gospels, there are fewer possible options. But even here, it is possible that Jesus honestly believed that he was the Messiah and/or divine, that the writers of the gospel honestly reported and believed this, but that they were both wrong. It is also possible that the gospel writers honestly misunderstood the reports of the Christ.

I guess my point was more that a) the gospels do not present an equal Christology b) that it is possible to believe that one or part of a gospel gives a better/more accessible picture of the Christ c) that an honest person might try to look between the lines of the gospel accounts and try to see a great teacher.

If you want to narrowly define what it is that is being talked about (and maybe this is what Lewis is doing), such as suggesting that Jesus of Nazareth was the only guy around who used the term Son of Man of himself and so on, then maybe you are right.
 
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Not really - he is putting across a theological view that says a) the gospels give a consistent message about Jesus as God b) that this is an accurate record of the Christ c) that Jesus understood the words he used in the same ways as the writers of the gospels and therefore d) the only option if you are to take the gospel accounts at all seriously is to reject them outright or to accept them outright.

Are you sure that's what he's doing? I don't have a copy of Mere Christianity to hand so I can't confirm this. But reacting to the trichotomy as if that represents the entirety of Lewis' position is pretty much the same sort of intellectual endeavour as proof texting. Proof texting Lewis is no more sensible than proof texting the Bible.
He kind of does (at least as regards a, c&d) before.

He starts with "Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if he were God. He claims to forgive sins. He says he has always existed. He says he is coming to judge the world at the end of time"

Which is a broadly speaking a more specific variant of (a) with elements of (c).
He doesn't give the links but they're fairly recognisable and spread throughout the gospels (including the sermon on the mount).

He then says something broadly similar to (c), with a lot more backing than the counter assertion.

Then there's a bit (c'/d') where he concludes that it's not a mistake you could make by accident.

Then he concludes with the trilemma effectively being a re-statement of (d).
 
Posted by Leprechaun (# 5408) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
The bit I don't understand I have italicised. I cannot comprehend finding a special type of truth in such a way that I considered it binding on my life from a source that I thought was made up, or weird or just plain wrong on a huge number of other things.

Maybe that is just you.



Maybe. I'm guessing that your position is more unusual. Most people get pretty pissed about people making ethical judgements when they consider the purveyor of advice to be unreliable or unethical themselves. Remember MP's expenses?

I think I do mean "rational" not objective. "It speaks to me in a strange way" is not a use of reason.

Saying "you are fundamentally untrustworthy, but I choose to follow the way of life you describe to the letter" is irrational.

You still haven't actually put forward any rational argument for your position at all - except to say, some people hold it.

But, as it seems you'd rather engage with Eliab's argument, I'm pretty much done here.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Maybe. I'm guessing that your position is more unusual. Most people get pretty pissed about people making ethical judgements when they consider the purveyor of advice to be unreliable or unethical themselves. Remember MP's expenses?

I think I do mean "rational" not objective. "It speaks to me in a strange way" is not a use of reason.

Well, that is an opinion. As I said before, if reasonable people think that a person might respond to MLK's speeches by changing their mind on the issue, then I'd say that was logical and reasonable. That you might not is not evidence that it is not logic or rational. How are you defining those terms?

quote:
Saying "you are fundamentally untrustworthy, but I choose to follow the way of life you describe to the letter" is irrational.
I don't think I am saying that. I don't consider believing that Jesus was wrong about his divine status is necessarily evidence of his being fundamentally untrustworthy. But you think differently, which is fine.

quote:
You still haven't actually put forward any rational argument for your position at all - except to say, some people hold it.
And that is the hilarious thing - this is not my position. I happen to hold that Jesus is Lord and is divine. I just also happen to hold that other people can honestly and rationally hold that he was a great teacher without resorting to saying that they're doing something akin to calling him a boiled egg. I don't see anyone as a threat who doesn't hold the divinity of Christ.

quote:
But, as it seems you'd rather engage with Eliab's argument, I'm pretty much done here.
OK. I'm pretty much done with your constant twisting of what I say.
 
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
(given the comments above about not having the passage we're debating, I believe this is ok under fair use, but please forgive me as you delete it if not)

[Book 1 is an argument from moral law]
[Book 2- What Christians Believe]
[Chapter 1 The rival conceptions of God]
Atheism, Monotheism and Pantheism
[Chapter 2 -The invasion]
We recognise the existence of bad
We recognise this as not how things should be

[Chapter 3]
Begins with an assertion of free will being a possible reason for the state of reality.
And an assertion that God hasn't left it alone.

quote:

And what did God do? First he left us conscience, the sense of right and wrong: and all through history there have been people trying (some very hard) to obey it. None of them quite succeeded. Secondly, he sent the human race what I can good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered throughout the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again, and by his death has somehow given new life to men.
Thirdly he selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was, that there was only one of him and that He cared about right conduct. Those people were the Jews and the Old testament gives an account of the hammering process.

Then comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly comes a man who goes aqbout talking as if he was God. He claims to forgive sins. He claims to have always existed, He says he is coming to judge the world at the end of time.

Now let us get thus clear, among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was part of God, or one with God; there would not be anything odd about it. But this man, since he was a Jew could not mean that kind of God. God in their language meant the being outside the world, who had made it and was quite different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was quite simply the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.

...[a bit on forgiving which I'll skip because it's already to long]..
not, noticing that if He were merely a man, humilty and meekness are the veryy last characteristics we could attribute to some of his sayings.
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I#m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God'. That is the one thing we must not say.
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is the son of God, or else a madman, or something worse. You can shut him up as a foold, you can spit at him and kill him as a dimon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising noncense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

direct quotation of 1 page from 150 (spelling my mistakes) from Mere Christianity CS Lewis
 
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
Thanks Jay-Emm that's great context.
 
Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :
 
May I go back a bit because I think that debate about Jesus' ethics and whether He was a great moral teacher is tangenital to the OP

I go back to a comment by LC who remarked that John's gospel made explicit the implicit claims of Jesus in the Synoptics. Hence the " I AM" sayings.

I do not doubt that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. But I would deny that Jesus ever made such explicit claims himself.

The Synoptics evidence this. In these gospels the claims are always implicit. The crucial implication is that people must make up their minds as an act of Faith/Trust.

A classic text is Matt 11. John baptist sends two of his disciples to ask the question "Are you he who is to come" ( i.e. Messiah) Jesus answers by reference to an Isianic passage which is, by implication, Messianic. His implied answer is "Yes" but Jesus leaves it up to John to evaluate the answer.

But, even so, Messiah is not a Divine figure. And so the Messianic claims that Jesus made by implication cannot be adduced in favour of Hid divinity.

Lewis does not argue from implied Messianic claims. He argues from the explicit "I AM" sayings and accepts that John is quoting Jesus word for word.

I believe that for John ( as for me) the "I AM" sayings are true of Jesus. But I do not believe that Jesus ever made those explicit claims for himself. To say that "Jesus is Lord" and to believe that he was God incarnate is a Faith Statement, not a Fact Statement.

Lewis is illogical ( as many posters have pointed out). The illogicality derives from the basic premise. I take Lewis' to be false.

The crucial question facing all of us is Jesus' "Who do you say that I am?" And that question can only be answered in faith.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
The crucial question facing all of us is Jesus' "Who do you say that I am?" And that question can only be answered in faith.

[Overused] [Overused]

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
tclune, I'd like to see the Irenaeus quote. Because Christ's deity is at the very least implicit in the other three Gospels, and I'd expect Irenaeus would have known that far better than I. Perhaps he meant that John is the one who comes right out and says it in unmistakeable terms?

I don't have it bookmarked, so I'll have to devote a fair amount of time to digging it back out. I can't do that now, but remind me if I haven't gotten to it in the next couple of weeks.

Yes, the sense was that the explicit assertion was not there. I personally have very little love for John's Gospel, but find Mark more than compelling in his implications of Christ's divinity. But the point is that Lewis is depending upon the usual uninformed misinterpretation of such Jewish technical terms as "Son of God." Lewis himself is undoubtedly not confused by those terms, but he nonetheless relies on the ignorance of the people he is trying to persuade. I find the whole agologetics enterprise foul, and Lewis is a prime exemplar of it.

--Tom Clune

tclune, I haven't commented on it up till now, but you really have some highly emotional language on this. I mean "foul," "disgusting," "relies on the ignorance of people," "I have very little love for..." and so forth. Why does this get under your skin so much? I mean, first Lewis and now John. Are you just having a very bad day or something?
 
Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
Apparently the 'trilemma' predates Lewis by over a century .

The reason it's such a great argument is that is does what any good apologetic should - gets people thinking and engaging with the issue. The fact that, even on this thread, it's sparked a number of lines of discussion around who Jesus is and what he thought about himself is testament to the simple brilliance of the proposition.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
I am pretty sure that is the argument of the section under discussion, though I don't have a copy of the book to hand either. And you are right to say that proof-texting is unhelpful.

I wouldn't doubt that's what he's arguing in the section under discussion. But I'd be surprised if the trichotomy under discussion is supposed to establish all those points on it's own. As a number of people have said, most notably Eliab, the trichotomy itself is intended as an argument against a quite specific position.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Why does this get under your skin so much? I mean, first Lewis and now John. Are you just having a very bad day or something?

I am rather. Lewis irritates me (as do all Christian apologists) on my good days, but I imagine I'm being more than usually combative today. Sorry for the attitude.

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by Squibs (# 14408) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
Lewis irritates me (as do all Christian apologists) on my good days

Why is that, Tom? Apart from "there is a God" and a few other things besides I don't imagine they are saying the same thing in the same way.

[ 03. September 2012, 21:37: Message edited by: Squibs ]
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
What Eliab said yesterpage. With bells.

quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
@Eliab - I wanted to try to respond to your post, which I found challenging and interesting. Ultimately, I think the difference is that the assumptions implicit in your Shakespeare example are not the same as the New Testament. In fact, a closer analogue would be to suggest that Shakespeare's description of Richard is the definitive and most accurate possible rendition of the person described.

This is not the situation we have in the gospels [snip]

What more definitive or accurate rendition of Jesus do we have?

[ 03. September 2012, 22:33: Message edited by: mousethief ]
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
S'kay, Tom. I've been a bitch on wheels today and will have to eat humble pie to Mr. Lamb tonight.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
But Lewis was presumably educated enough to know that the whole trilemma was a lie. Iranaeus, for example, felt that it was imperitive to include the Gospel of John in the canon because the three synoptics did not insist that Christ was God incarnate. ISTM that Iranaeus was clear on the actual scriptures, and was not encumbered by 2000 years of "interpretation."

So insisting that Christ would have to be mad to say what the educated people who shared His culture failed to see Him saying at all is just dishonest. Lewis cast the trilemma as he did because, like all apologists, he wanted to win his argument by stacking the deck -- it's just another "when did you stop beating your wife" manipulation, and it's shameful.

Let me add, I believe that Christ is God Incarnate, and I find the scriptures as critical to understanding that. My disgust with Lewis is that he insists on extorting what the Lord Himself refused to extort from the people that He taught. There is nothing Godly in Lewis' manipulations. Or so ISTM.

--Tom Clune

Presumably Irenaeus was educated enough to know that the Synoptics include Matthew 26:63-66, Mark 14:61-64 and Luke 22:70-71.

Jesus' blasphemous claims were an absolutely essential part of the reason the Jewish religious authorities wanted him dead.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Truman White:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Lewis knew better than anyone that you can't argue people into the kingdom of God; the most an apologist can hope to do is remove some of the brush and weeds (misconceptions etc) before the true farmer shows up to plow the ground and plant the good seed.

That’s right.

Acceptable apologetics consists of presenting the gospel as clearly as possible, which will probably involve correcting misunderstandings.

Dubious apologetics involves alleged knock-down arguments, such as fulfilled prophecy, or evidences for the resurrection, or contemporary miraculous healings.

Having said that, we are forced to recognize that all of these, and many other things besides, such as the polemical use of the Lewis trichotomy, have at times helped people to faith.

Aren't the gospels themselves "evidences for the resurrection"?
Depends what you think of the gospels.

I think that they are, yes, but we can't assume that everyone will.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
The gospels are evidence of the resurrection, period. They are historical documents that record the event. Whether they are conclusive evidence, or reliable evidence, is another question.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
tclune, I haven't commented on it up till now, but you really have some highly emotional language on this. I mean "foul," "disgusting," "relies on the ignorance of people," "I have very little love for..." and so forth. Why does this get under your skin so much? I mean, first Lewis and now John. Are you just having a very bad day or something?

Don't hold back, TC, tell us what you really think....

Actually, extrapolating from what gets me grumpy makes me hope there isn't a rift in the lute chez Clune.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
The gospels are evidence of the resurrection, period. They are historical documents that record the event. Whether they are conclusive evidence, or reliable evidence, is another question.

Fair enough, I suppose, but getting away from the gospels and the resurrection, and speaking in a general, semantic sense, I can conceive of a situation in which a purported record of an event could be regarded as so compromised as not to constitute evidence at all, even shonky evidence.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
Possibly. I can't imagine anybody without Paul Bunyan's axe to grind who would say that of the gospels.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Fair enough, I suppose, but getting away from the gospels and the resurrection, and speaking in a general, semantic sense, I can conceive of a situation in which a purported record of an event could be regarded as so compromised as not to constitute evidence at all, even shonky evidence.

Rather reminds me of a case in my old tribunal job. One of the lawyers was spluttering and getting flustered after the tribunal member I worked for agreed to receive some material from the other side as evidence.

My boss' response was to say "Mr X, I haven't decided what weight I'm going to give it".

And in his final decision, he ended up making it clear that he hadn't given that material any weight at all.

[ 04. September 2012, 05:14: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Ultimately, I think the difference is that the assumptions implicit in your Shakespeare example are not the same as the New Testament.

Sure. The point was that there is a distinction between the literary portrayal of a person, and the person themselves. And it is possible to ask meaningful questions about the one that would not be meaningful about the other. There are things that are very definitely true about the Shakespeare character that have to be taken as true to make sense of the play, even if one doubts that they were true in history, and it's fine to ask questions about those things provided that the scope of the question is limited to the play.

quote:
Most of us would agree that the gospels are biographies of a real person - hence by definition the person is more than is written down about them.
Yes, but the scope of the trilemma is limited to the gospel accounts. It makes no sense to raise it about the unrecorded history of Jesus.

That is not a problem, because it also makes very little sense to say that one personally accepts the unrecorded Jesus as a moral authority, but not as divine. The unrecorded Jesus has left us no teachings. One could reject the gospel accounts and believe in the fact that Jesus was a moral teacher, but if one claims to accept his teachings as a personal authority, the gospels have to be the basis of that, because we have little else. It is only the Jesus of the gospels who is actually present to us as a moral authority.

quote:
I guess my point was more that a) the gospels do not present an equal Christology b) that it is possible to believe that one or part of a gospel gives a better/more accessible picture of the Christ c) that an honest person might try to look between the lines of the gospel accounts and try to see a great teacher.
a) Possibly true, but the actions of Jesus of the sort which Lewis relies on to support claims of divinity (the right to forgive sins, the right to abrogate OT dietary laws) are in the Synoptics, and there are certainly explicit and implicit claims of divinely-bestowed authority in all of them. All of the gospel writers think that Jesus was at the very least uniquely sent by God.

b) Yes, but it is not possible to read ANY of the gospels in the ‘good moral teacher only' way without misinterpretation. IMHO.

c) An honest person might dismiss the grandiose claims as implausible, while accepting the ethics. They could then ask what historical reality lies behind the gospel accounts, and reconstruct a speculative historical figure who might indeed be imagined as a moral teacher to whom extravagant beliefs later became attached. But that person is not then saying that the Jesus of the gospels as a great moral teacher. He is saying that the gospels contain great moral teaching, which is not the same thing. The character of Jesus portrayed in the gospels is both moral teacher and extravagant claimant - discount either of those aspects and you are no longer talking about the Jesus of the gospels.

quote:
If you want to narrowly define what it is that is being talked about (and maybe this is what Lewis is doing)...
That's exactly what I want to do. I think the trilemma is a sound piece of reasoning within quite narrow limits, and inapplicable outside those limits. It is addressed to people who say that they accept the Jesus whom we know through the gospels as a personal authority, but treat as insignificant the utterly shocking claims which that Jesus is reported as making.

Lewis talks about the reconstructions of the historical Jesus elsewhere in his writings (there's a passage in The Screwtape Letters IIRC) and his critique of that enterprise is that it is hopelessly speculative, that the novel interpretations which sprang up in each publishing year had no substance. I don't think he invokes the trilemma to attack them - and he shouldn't because claiming that the historical Jesus as a moral teacher who never claimed to be divine takes us outside its proper scope. As Leprechaun says, plenty of people have applied the trilemma outside its proper scope, as a multi-purpose knock-down argument that Jesus must be God, but I can't see any evidence that Lewis so employed it. In his hands, it is a call for people who claim to take the gospels seriously as authority to engage in good faith with the implications of what the gospels say, and that is (in my view) an appropriate use of it.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
Lewis does not argue from implied Messianic claims. He argues from the explicit "I AM" sayings and accepts that John is quoting Jesus word for word.

That's not actually right. He directly argues the point from Jesus' claim to be able to forguive sins without the permission of the people those sins had injured, and from his claim to be able to set aside the requirements of Jewish law and tradition.


On the wider point, I think this is another case where distinguishing the literary portrayal of Jesus from the historical Jesus is helpful. I think it is arguable (from the gospels) that the historical Jesus very rarely put people on the spot to make a decision about his divinity. He hinted, he let his actions speak for him, and he cloaked his personal teaching in parables to obscure parts of his meaning. He made the explicit claims (if at all) almost always to his intimates.

But I don't think that policy was necessarily followed but Matthew, Mark and Luke, and it was completely disregarded by John*. It seems very likely to me that the writers are all more concerned that their readers consider who Jesus
is, than Jesus was for his hearers. I think the gospel writers have a discernable intent to put the implicit and explicit claims of Jeses forward for our attention, and those claims are an inseparable part of their portrayal of him.


(*For example, John records that fact that Jesus characteristically spoke in parables, but does not himself relate a single one. He very definitely wants to speak more plainly than Jesus did).
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
One could reject the gospel accounts and believe in the fact that Jesus was a moral teacher, but if one claims to accept his teachings as a personal authority, the gospels have to be the basis of that, because we have little else. It is only the Jesus of the gospels who is actually present to us as a moral authority.

Yes - but the point is that Lewis is talking about a take-it-or-leave-it situation with regard to the gospels. However much you dislike it, honest people have taken moral teachings from the gospels as accurate representations of the teaching of Jesus and none of the rest.

quote:
All of the gospel writers think that Jesus was at the very least uniquely sent by God.
I can't see that this contradicts what I said. There is a great difference between believing Christ was sent by God (as a prophet, perhaps) with great moral authority and believing him to be divine.

Some of the early Christians seemed to believe he wasn't divine, and they were around before the New Testament canon was even agreed, so I can't see how it can possibly be as cut and dried as you're trying to make out.

I'd be nice in a lot of ways if it was.

quote:
b) Yes, but it is not possible to read ANY of the gospels in the ‘good moral teacher only' way without misinterpretation. IMHO.
It is possible to read the gospels in many different ways. All require interpretation.

quote:
c) An honest person might dismiss the grandiose claims as implausible, while accepting the ethics. They could then ask what historical reality lies behind the gospel accounts, and reconstruct a speculative historical figure who might indeed be imagined as a moral teacher to whom extravagant beliefs later became attached. But that person is not then saying that the Jesus of the gospels as a great moral teacher. He is saying that the gospels contain great moral teaching, which is not the same thing. The character of Jesus portrayed in the gospels is both moral teacher and extravagant claimant - discount either of those aspects and you are no longer talking about the Jesus of the gospels.
I have already partly conceded this point. You're now presenting a circular argument - in that you can't believe in the Christ of the gospels without believing Christ is accurately and fully described by the New Testament. Simple answer is that someone could just say that they don't believe in the Jesus-as-God explanation of the New Testament. Seems to me the crux of the argument is actually whether or not the lack of faith in the Jesus-as-God presentation of (parts of the) New Testament is serious enough as to be illogical, which ultimately is a value judgment. Clearly people of faith cannot conceive of their faith without it, but people without faith are not working on the basis same assumptions.

quote:
That's exactly what I want to do. I think the trilemma is a sound piece of reasoning within quite narrow limits, and inapplicable outside those limits. It is addressed to people who say that they accept the Jesus whom we know through the gospels as a personal authority, but treat as insignificant the utterly shocking claims which that Jesus is reported as making.
Yes, I agree. But how many people are actually like that? And is that the way that people post-Lewis have attempted to use this as a trump card in a form of apologetics? I think it is a rhetorical device which may be applicable to a vanishingly small number of people, but which is made to sound like it has much wider applicability because it disguises the implicit assumptions of the people to whom it is apparently directed.

quote:
Lewis talks about the reconstructions of the historical Jesus elsewhere in his writings (there's a passage in The Screwtape Letters IIRC) and his critique of that enterprise is that it is hopelessly speculative, that the novel interpretations which sprang up in each publishing year had no substance. I don't think he invokes the trilemma to attack them - and he shouldn't because claiming that the historical Jesus as a moral teacher who never claimed to be divine takes us outside its proper scope. As Leprechaun says, plenty of people have applied the trilemma outside its proper scope, as a multi-purpose knock-down argument that Jesus must be God, but I can't see any evidence that Lewis so employed it. In his hands, it is a call for people who claim to take the gospels seriously as authority to engage in good faith with the implications of what the gospels say, and that is (in my view) an appropriate use of it.
It is a long time since I read the screwtape letters, but it is essentially a work of fantasy. To use it to make wider points is pretty silly, in my opinion. But then to attempt to use much of CS Lewis as an apology for Christianity is also pretty daft, given the vast majority was not written for this purpose.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
However much you dislike it, honest people have taken moral teachings from the gospels as accurate representations of the teaching of Jesus and none of the rest.

And on what basis is that distinction made?

I think that's the point. It's perfectly possible to select parts of the gospel on this basis, but it seems to me that it's being done purely on personal preference. Not on the basis of solid evidence that the selected portions are the 'correct' text and that the rejected portions were somehow not a valid part of the text.

Lewis' entire point, as I understand it, is that this kind of personal preference is based on nothing more than a dislike of parts of the text. And an unwillingness to declare that one dislikes THE TEXT - ie all of it.

[ 04. September 2012, 11:35: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by Eirenist (# 13343) on :
 
In his biography of Lewis, A.N. Wilson makes the point that Lewis' father (who was his only parent after the death of Lewis's mother) was a solicitor-advocate in the Belfast magistrates' courts, and conversations over the dinner-table were conducted alsong forensic lines. The 'trichotomy' is a typical forensic device, to pin an adverse witness to a false position. (Answer Yes or No!) As Wilson points out, in debate Lewis was fatally liable to fall back on 'police-court' tactics, which didn't always work, notably in his encounter with Elizabeth Anscombe. This is an instance of that tendency.

None of this detracts from the fact that Lewis was, and remains, influential, readable, and, taken as a whole, a good man.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:

I think that's the point. It's perfectly possible to select parts of the gospel on this basis, but it seems to me that it's being done purely on personal preference. Not on the basis of solid evidence that the selected portions are the 'correct' text and that the rejected portions were somehow not a valid part of the text.

I agree, though I don't accept this is irrational, illogical or unacceptable. Reasonable people read the text and don't buy all of it.

quote:
Lewis' entire point, as I understand it, is that this kind of personal preference is based on nothing more than a dislike of parts of the text. And an unwillingness to declare that one dislikes THE TEXT - ie all of it.
Well that is certainly the dichotomy that he appears to be presenting. But why should those be the only rational options available? Why can't a rational person like, and appreciate, some bits and ignore the others?
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
It depends on the reason for ignoring those other bits. If it's because they say things that are utterly crazy and outlandish, then I think it's fair enough to ask: why take moral advice from a person who appears to say crazy and outlandish things in the texts available to describe what he said?

I think it's perfectly rational in the case of an ordinary person to say you like some of what they say and not other parts. But if you're dealing with somebody who appears to mentally unhinged, how can you safely say that the bits you're taking are the 'hinged' bits?

It seems to rely on one's own pre-existing views. In which case, it's not so much Jesus giving people moral advice, it's people giving Jesus moral advice - telling him which things he ought to be saying.

[ 04. September 2012, 12:15: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
It depends on the reason for ignoring those other bits. If it's because they say things that are utterly crazy and outlandish, then I think it's fair enough to ask: why take moral advice from a person who appears to say crazy and outlandish things in the texts available to describe what he said?

Well, maybe you take the bits that sound sane and decide that the other bits cannot be by him because they don't sound sane. I'm not sure this is as difficult as you're trying to make out.

quote:
I think it's perfectly rational in the case of an ordinary person to say you like some of what they say and not other parts. But if you're dealing with somebody who appears to mentally unhinged, how can you safely say that the bits you're taking are the 'hinged' bits?
Well, you're assuming that people who hold this position think Jesus of Nazareth was mentally unhinged. I've already offered several reasons why such a person might not think Jesus of Nazareth was unhinged.

quote:
It seems to rely on one's own pre-existing views. In which case, it's not so much Jesus giving people moral advice, it's people giving Jesus moral advice - telling him which things he ought to be saying.
Not really. One can read the Sermon on the Mount as a moral code, taking it seriously and applying it to one's life. I can't see that it therefore follows that such a person is projecting a moral code onto Jesus Christ. At all.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Squibs:
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
Lewis irritates me (as do all Christian apologists) on my good days

Why is that, Tom? Apart from "there is a God" and a few other things besides I don't imagine they are saying the same thing in the same way.
I find them morally offensive because the arguments that they offer are uniformly logically invalid, and pretty widely understood to be such. They seem to be running a religious con game, trying to trap the weakest of the herd by turning their weaknesses against them. In moral terms, I object to apologetics in the same way that I object to cult recruiters. It's just predatory behavior masquerading as piety.

From the other end of the telescope, I worry that the person who has been taken in by a bad argument. What happens if and when they become sophisticated enough to recognize that they've been duped? If their faith was built on sand, I would expect the worst.

Finally, apologetics lead folks to concentrate on the wrong things. What is needed is an encounter with the living Lord, not a clever argument. Even if the arguments were sound, they would not lead people to a real and meaningful faith. So every fiber of my being is repelled by the folks who sell this snake oil in the name of my Lord and my Redeemer.

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by Thyme (# 12360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:

Finally, apologetics lead folks to concentrate on the wrong things. What is needed is an encounter with the living Lord, not a clever argument. Even if the arguments were sound, they would not lead people to a real and meaningful faith. So every fiber of my being is repelled by the folks who sell this snake oil in the name of my Lord and my Redeemer.
--Tom Clune

[Overused] Thank you so much for this.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Well, maybe you take the bits that sound sane and decide that the other bits cannot be by him because they don't sound sane. I'm not sure this is as difficult as you're trying to make out.

Exactly. Here's how the argument runs.

I like Jesus' moral teaching. Therefore he was sane. Therefore I shall ignore all the bits that demonstrate he wasn't sane.

That's called excluding evidence that doesn't fit your pre-existing theory. It's resolving the cognitive dissonance by simply excluding whatever doesn't fit, rather than adjusting the theory to fit the evidence actually presented.

The evidence that Jesus said absolutely outrageous things is sitting there on the page. There isn't any other source of evidence that contradicts this. The only 'evidence' that he DIDN'T say these outrageous things is the pre-existing disposition of some readers to exclude outrageous statements... because they don't want Jesus to be outrageous.

It's a completely circular form of reasoning.

[ 04. September 2012, 12:39: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:

The evidence that Jesus said absolutely outrageous things is sitting there on the page. There isn't any other source of evidence that contradicts this. The only 'evidence' that he DIDN'T say these outrageous things is the pre-existing disposition of some readers to exclude outrageous statements... because they don't want Jesus to be outrageous.

It's a completely circular form of reasoning.

Well, no, the evidence that some people that wrote the gospels (not Jesus) wanted that message to go out there. And in that circumstance it is entirely reasonable to take the bits that make sense and leave the rest. You don't need a previous disposition to believe anything about Jesus, you just need a brain and an ability to judge things that you're being told.

Heck, I've even been told to do that in church.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
What really sticks in my gullet is the implication that someone can read my religious text with an open mind and yet be illogical if they conclude that it is 'good in parts'.

It isn't a curate's egg, you know. There is no obligation to take-it-all or leave-it-all.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Presumably Irenaeus was educated enough to know that the Synoptics include Matthew 26:63-66, Mark 14:61-64 and Luke 22:70-71.

Jesus' blasphemous claims were an absolutely essential part of the reason the Jewish religious authorities wanted him dead.

First, as I read the Gospels, the Jewish authorities wanted Him dead because He was an inconvenience to them, not because He claimed to be God.

Second, what they asked Him was whether or not He was the annointed one -- like David and Cyrus before Him. Christ answered with a truth that they couldn't understand, but they were not asking Him if He was God. They were too clueless to ask the real question.

One of the things that I love about Mark is that it makes clear all the confusion of everyone around Christ in these things. But, by its very nature, it is quite possible to read Mark and stay unclear on who Christ is. It is a wonderful Gospel by my lights precisely because it cajoles the reader to a proper understanding rather than demanding that you agree with the conclusion the author already reached.

I think that Mark especially highlights the ambiguity in the Gospels if you understand them in the context of their times. For example, we can't hear "Son of God" without hearing a synonym of "Jesus Christ." But it meant something more like "authorized leader of the Jews" at the time. When we see the text as Iranaeus read it, we see that it does not force a particular answer. Rather, it encourages you to come to the truth. Turning the lingusitic drift of 2000 years into an argument is really unfortunate. The great power of the Gospels is not enhanced by the accretions of the centuries, but is made less accessible. Or so ISTM.

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
I'm reminded of the book Who Moved the Stone?. For all its faults, Frank Morison develops a particularly compelling argument about what happened during Jesus' trials.

One of the most compelling bits of all is the evidence that Jesus predicted his own resurrection. At the very least, the evidence that he said something referring to raising a temple again "in three days".

The evidence for this is pretty overwhelming. It was actually part of the case against Jesus at his first trial. But interpreted as literally threatening to destroy the temple.

So either Jesus was predicting his resurrection, or he was asserting that he could literally destroy the temple and rebuild it in 3 days.

Neither of those options seems to negate the proposition that Jesus said some darned outrageous things.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
First, as I read the Gospels, the Jewish authorities wanted Him dead because He was an inconvenience to them, not because He claimed to be God.

Yes, I should probably amend that to: they needed a basis for getting him dead. As inconvenience was not a justifiable reason for it.

Jesus was kind enough to provide them with the evidence of blasphemy that they needed.

My question to you is: why did they consider his answer blasphemous?

[ 04. September 2012, 12:55: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
My question to you is: why did they consider his answer blasphemous?

Because they interpreted Him as claiming a Divine authority that they did not recognize Him as having.

--Tom Clune

[ 04. September 2012, 12:59: Message edited by: tclune ]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
My question to you is: why did they consider his answer blasphemous?

Because they interpreted Him as claiming a Divine authority that they did not recognize Him as having.

--Tom Clune

Agreed.

The inevitable next question is: if this Divine authority did indeed exist, what was its source?
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
But how many people are actually like that? And is that the way that people post-Lewis have attempted to use this as a trump card in a form of apologetics? I think it is a rhetorical device which may be applicable to a vanishingly small number of people, but which is made to sound like it has much wider applicability because it disguises the implicit assumptions of the people to whom it is apparently directed.

Sorry, is your argument overall against Lewis or against people post-Lewis?
If your argument is that people post-Lewis have abused the argument, then you oughtn't to be talking about Lewis does this or Lewis does that - you can't hold Lewis to blame for subsequent abuses. If Mere Christianity presents the argument as directed against a particular position, you can't criticise Lewis on the ground that the argument doesn't address some other position.

quote:
It is a long time since I read the screwtape letters, but it is essentially a work of fantasy. To use it to make wider points is pretty silly, in my opinion.
There are a lot of implications there that I think is wrong.
a) What is fantasy for, if not to make wider points? Pure escapism? That's not to say that all fantasy should be of the same form as The Screwtape Letters, but fantasy that is merely pure escapism is a waste of ink. (Or worse - fantasy that thinks it's escapism usually ends up unthinkingly endorsing the ideology of the status quo.)
b) The Screwtape Letters is a mixture of spirituality and satire that uses a paper-thin fantasy as a vehicle. It belongs on the bookshelf with Lewis' Letters to Malcolm on Prayer or The Four Loves rather than with Narnia or Till we have Faces.

[ 04. September 2012, 13:31: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
It is a wonderful Gospel by my lights precisely because it cajoles the reader to a proper understanding rather than demanding that you agree with the conclusion the author already reached.

Just so I understand you: you're saying that you like Mark because instead of being open about trying to persuade you Mark tries to persuade using flattery and deception? And this underhand method of getting people to what Mark thinks is a 'proper' understanding is what you call an encounter with the Living Lord?
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
Dafyd, you understood me completely. What a wonderfully insightful mind you have...

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Freddy, without wishing to diminish the claims of Swedenborg or, for that matter, Joseph Smith, I think your post highlights that Lewis didn't really think his point through.

Wait a minute. These other examples are not really comparable, because they are not widely accepted as "great moral teachers" by people who don't swallow their claims whole. Most non-Mormons would say that Joseph Smith has nothing to say to them, at best: how can anyone who advocates polygamy be a great moral teacher for our age? And Swedenborg? Never heard of him
(so most would say). But in Lewis's day, most Westerners would at least give lip service to the importance of Jesus as a moral teacher. We've probably all heard the cop-out ourselves. "Jesus was a great moral teacher, but I don't go in for in organized religion."

This attitude is probably less common now. It is more respectable to question anything or everything in the Bible. Other world religions and their claims to allegiance are better known. The premise is not so applicable. If the Bible is questioned, then the authenticy of Jesus is questioned as well-- in every way, not just His divine claims. But this does not make Lewis's trilemma a mistake when he articulated it given the premise.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
The gospels are evidence of the resurrection, period. They are historical documents that record the event. Whether they are conclusive evidence, or reliable evidence, is another question.

There is no record of the resurrection as an event, merely appearances after the event and an empty tomb.

Also, I am not happy with the term 'historical document' - the Gospel are faith documents and the resurrection is an eschatological event claimed to have happened proleptically inside but not as part of history.
 
Posted by Erroneous Monk (# 10858) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
One can read the Sermon on the Mount as a moral code, taking it seriously and applying it to one's life.

It'd be a pretty shit moral code. Absent the context of Jesus's divinity, what sense can you read into "How happy are those who mourn"? Or "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven..."

And how about not resisting evil/turning the other cheek? Do you read this as a call to civil disobedience?

What about not worrying about what you have to eat, drink or wear, because God will take care of that? If Jesus isn't the Son of God, that means nothing at all.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I'm reminded of the book Who Moved the Stone?. For all its faults, Frank Morison develops a particularly compelling argument about what happened during Jesus' trials.

However, that book, like Lewis's 'trichotomy' depends on the gospels being accurate history, which I don't believe to be the case.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
The gospels are evidence of the resurrection, period. They are historical documents that record the event. Whether they are conclusive evidence, or reliable evidence, is another question.

There is no record of the resurrection as an event, merely appearances after the event and an empty tomb.
I didn't say they were a record of the resurrection. I said they were evidence. If you find some ancient letter in which some schmuck says, "The Syrians came to the door today with tracts about their gods," then that is evidence that the Syrians were proselytizing door-to-door. It may turn out it is bosh, and the person was lying or making a funny. But it is, prima facie, evidence.

quote:
Also, I am not happy with the term 'historical document' - the Gospel are faith documents and the resurrection is an eschatological event claimed to have happened proleptically inside but not as part of history.
That's one interpretation. But from a historian's point of view, sifting theological interpretations of the text aren't the issue and aren't terribly relevant. They are historical documents by being documents that record alleged events.
 
Posted by The Great Gumby (# 10989) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I'm reminded of the book Who Moved the Stone?. For all its faults, Frank Morison develops a particularly compelling argument about what happened during Jesus' trials.

One of the most compelling bits of all is the evidence that Jesus predicted his own resurrection. At the very least, the evidence that he said something referring to raising a temple again "in three days".

The evidence for this is pretty overwhelming. It was actually part of the case against Jesus at his first trial. But interpreted as literally threatening to destroy the temple.

Just so we're clear here, the evidence still consists solely of the four approved accounts written by his followers many years after his claimed resurrection?

I'm not sure how I'd describe evidence like that, but "overwhelming" would be a long way down the list.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
However much you dislike it, honest people have taken moral teachings from the gospels as accurate representations of the teaching of Jesus and none of the rest.

And those people therefore do not believe that the gospels' portrayal of Jesus is accurate. Unless they purport to do so, Lewis' trilemma has nothing to say to them.

An illustration: A few years ago I read a book by James Dobson on parenting. And there was some really great stuff in it. One thing in particular that helped me was the advice to always try to understand why a child is misbehaving: the effective disciplinary response to a child who wants attention is different to that for a child who is wilfully bad. Dobson was spot on, there. But I didn't agree with everything. One of Dobson's major themes was an almost superstitious attachment to the efficacy of corporal punishment, which I found absurd and revolting.

It is therefore quire rational of me to take the things from Dobson which I agree with, and use, them, and reject what seems to me to be obvious rubbish. And that's exactly what I do. But I should not then say that I accept Dobson as an authority on parenting, because quite blatantly I do not. I am in fundamental disagreement with him on crucial issues. If I claim to be a Dobsonite parent, it would be entirely appropriate for someone to point out to me that having never beaten a child in my life, I am fooling myself.

The trilemma works like that. It's fine for anyone to take the true bits of Jesus' (or Dobson's) teachings - they are, after all, true - and apply them, but if you go further and say that Jesus (or Dobson) is your personal moral authority, you really ought to pay attention to their teachings, not just the bits that have an immediate appeal. In Jesus' case, his teachings include, in prominent place, statements which would utterly discredit him as any sort of authority at all if they were not true - good and sane people simply do not claim stuff like that.

quote:
There is a great difference between believing Christ was sent by God (as a prophet, perhaps) with great moral authority and believing him to be divine.

Some of the early Christians seemed to believe he wasn't divine, and they were around before the New Testament canon was even agreed, so I can't see how it can possibly be as cut and dried as you're trying to make out.

You are right. There are a range of opinions possible about what the gospels say that Jesus was claiming, and how we interpret that. I think (and should have made it explicit) that for the purpose of this discussion, the relevant distinction is between what might be called ordinary claims ("I am right...", "I have a vital insight into this...", even "I am inspired by God...") that ordinary sane and good people might possibly make and believe, and outrageous claims ("I am God's chosen one..."; "I have ultimate authority to proclaim God's word...", "I am God himself incarnate of earth...") which are either true or proud blasphemy. If it were a discussion on soteriology, say, I might make a different distinction, but it seems to me that this is the important one here.

All of the gospels are on the "outrageous claim" side. I don't think there is any serious debate about that. All of the gospel writers quite clearly wanted to tell us that Jesus was, and claimed to be, someone of enormous authority and importance. You can take the gospels seriously and argue that they (or three of them) support a "great, but not quite God" view, but not, in my opinion, that there is any support at all for a "good moral teacher" view. If someone believes that Jesus was a only good moral teacher (and they are allowed to believe that, of course) then if they are consistent they necessarily have to say that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were all fundamentally wrong about one of the most important things that they wanted to tell us about him.

The trilemma only bites when people who hold to the good moral teacher view present it as belief in the Jesus of the gospels, purporting to accepting the accuracy of that account, while not engaging with the claims that are made by it.

And that's how Lewis employs it. I think, appropriately.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
the resurrection is an eschatological event claimed to have happened proleptically inside but not as part of history.

What does that mean?

That Jesus was dead and came back to life?

Or something else?
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
You are right. There are a range of opinions possible about what the gospels say that Jesus was claiming, and how we interpret that. I think (and should have made it explicit) that for the purpose of this discussion, the relevant distinction is between what might be called ordinary claims ("I am right...", "I have a vital insight into this...", even "I am inspired by God...") that ordinary sane and good people might possibly make and believe, and outrageous claims ("I am God's chosen one..."; "I have ultimate authority to proclaim God's word...", "I am God himself incarnate of earth...") which are either true or proud blasphemy. If it were a discussion on soteriology, say, I might make a different distinction, but it seems to me that this is the important one here.

But this is too cute by half. David was God's chosen one par excellence within Judaism. But no-one would insist that failing to buy all that David did or said shows that you are somehow denying that he was God's chosen one. There is one and only one claim that Lewis must insist on -- that Christ claimed to BE God. Failing that, the trilemma isn't even plausible on it's face.

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
the resurrection is an eschatological event claimed to have happened proleptically inside but not as part of history.

What does that mean?

That Jesus was dead and came back to life?

Or something else?

I think it means that Leo bought a theological dictionary.

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
But this is too cute by half. David was God's chosen one par excellence within Judaism. But no-one would insist that failing to buy all that David did or said shows that you are somehow denying that he was God's chosen one.

Not relevant. The trilemma rests on a particular reading of the Gospels, and in particular outrageous claims that Jesus makes for himself therein. Nobody is making any such argument about David, nor did David make any such outrageous claims.

quote:
There is one and only one claim that Lewis must insist on -- that Christ claimed to BE God.
He's not insisting on it. He's reading it straight out of the text, as the presumptive prima facie meaning thereof.

quote:
Failing that, the trilemma isn't even plausible on it's face.
Yes. As Eliab has taken great pains, time and time again, to point out.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
There is one and only one claim that Lewis must insist on -- that Christ claimed to BE God.
He's not insisting on it. He's reading it straight out of the text, as the presumptive prima facie meaning thereof.

Sing with me: "That will bring us back to do, do, do, do..."

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
Idiot that I am, this particular bit of snark is completely lost on me.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
Sounds like the Sound of Music, but I am at a loss to know why..
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Sounds like the Sound of Music, but I am at a loss to know why..

True. It is a (slightly wrongly remembered) line from a song from that film.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
I didn't think it was that obscure. Go figure. Taking issue with the quoted part of Mousethief's post was precisely what started my participation in this thread. We have gone around and around and ended right back where we started.

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by Mark Betts (# 17074) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
It is a long time since I read the screwtape letters, but it is essentially a work of fantasy. To use it to make wider points is pretty silly, in my opinion. But then to attempt to use much of CS Lewis as an apology for Christianity is also pretty daft, given the vast majority was not written for this purpose.

It is more than just fantasy - it is allegory which has within it apologetics. The same can be said of (IMO) his greatest works - the Chronicles of Narnia, and also his sci-fi trilogy.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:


The trilemma works like that. It's fine for anyone to take the true bits of Jesus' (or Dobson's) teachings - they are, after all, true - and apply them, but if you go further and say that Jesus (or Dobson) is your personal moral authority, you really ought to pay attention to their teachings, not just the bits that have an immediate appeal. In Jesus' case, his teachings include, in prominent place, statements which would utterly discredit him as any sort of authority at all if they were not true - good and sane people simply do not claim stuff like that.

I have no doubt you honestly believe the above, but you are quite wrong. Indeed, your understanding reflects simply your culture, upbringing and experience.

Gandhi held Jesus' teachings in very high regard. He could accept Jesus claims to the deity by saying that we are all children of God and that there is something of God in all of us. And don't forget that he came from a culture with an oral tradition of many man-gods. For him, claiming to be the Son of Man and the Son of God was not an exclusive claim to be God.

We feel the restrictions you articulate above, others simply do not have them. For example, Gandhi managed to assemble a devout religious life based on the Gita, which is a dialogue between a deity and a man about conducting a massacre. I still have no idea how he managed to reconcile that with a lifestyle of non-violence.

Someone else asked above what an ethic based on the Sermon on the Mount would look like, and the answer is Gandhi and Tolstoy - both of which attempted to build lives based on reading the Sermon on the Mount as if it was talking directly to them in their circumstances.

Hence it certainly is possible to do all the things you, Eliab, state above as being impossible.


quote:
[There are a range of opinions possible about what the gospels say that Jesus was claiming, and how we interpret that. I think (and should have made it explicit) that for the purpose of this discussion, the relevant distinction is between what might be called ordinary claims ("I am right...", "I have a vital insight into this...", even "I am inspired by God...") that ordinary sane and good people might possibly make and believe, and outrageous claims ("I am God's chosen one..."; "I have ultimate authority to proclaim God's word...", "I am God himself incarnate of earth...") which are either true or proud blasphemy. If it were a discussion on soteriology, say, I might make a different distinction, but it seems to me that this is the important one here.
I'm not interested in long-winded bible verse trading, but I'd be interested to see which verse in particular explicitly states that Jesus says "I am God himself incarnate of earth" because I'm pretty sure there isn't one. In many of the gospels Jesus is interestingly cautious about making claims about himself - asking the disciples who they say he is, making cryptic statements (which can be taken in an indirect way as being blasphemous), shutting the recently healed up when they want to go around telling everyone what had happened (though, interestingly, these professions of faith do not seem to me to include directly the statement of Jesus deity over and above his messiah-ness).

quote:
All of the gospels are on the "outrageous claim" side. I don't think there is any serious debate about that.
I think there is plenty of debate about it, because the gospels simply do not present the same Christology.

quote:
All of the gospel writers quite clearly wanted to tell us that Jesus was, and claimed to be, someone of enormous authority and importance. You can take the gospels seriously and argue that they (or three of them) support a "great, but not quite God" view, but not, in my opinion, that there is any support at all for a "good moral teacher" view.
I don't understand your distinction between 'great' and 'good moral teacher'
quote:
If someone believes that Jesus was a only good moral teacher (and they are allowed to believe that, of course) then if they are consistent they necessarily have to say that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were all fundamentally wrong about one of the most important things that they wanted to tell us about him.
I agree with this. But again, that is no particular problem for the person who is not operating from the worldview you are articulating.

quote:
The trilemma only bites when people who hold to the good moral teacher view present it as belief in the Jesus of the gospels, purporting to accepting the accuracy of that account, while not engaging with the claims that are made by it.

And that's how Lewis employs it. I think, appropriately.

I guess that depends what you mean by the 'Jesus of the gospels'. Gandhi certainly felt that he was engaging with the Jesus of the gospels and that he was rejecting the later doctrines which were built up by the church about him.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
It is a long time since I read the screwtape letters, but it is essentially a work of fantasy. To use it to make wider points is pretty silly, in my opinion. But then to attempt to use much of CS Lewis as an apology for Christianity is also pretty daft, given the vast majority was not written for this purpose.

It is more than just fantasy - it is allegory which has within it apologetics. The same can be said of (IMO) his greatest works - the Chronicles of Narnia, and also his sci-fi trilogy.
Huh, I'd be fascinated by anyone who tried to use This Hideous Strength as a form of apologetic. Here, and with almost all of his 'religious' texts, CS Lewis presents opinions that are way beyond any accepted understanding of orthodox Christianity.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
Dafyd, you understood me completely. What a wonderfully insightful mind you have...

What part of my description of your position was wrong? If apologetics is a religious con game, how is cajoling people into a "proper" understanding not even more so?
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
the resurrection is an eschatological event claimed to have happened proleptically inside but not as part of history.

What does that mean?

That Jesus was dead and came back to life?

Or something else?

That the resurrection is a future event, at the end of time, which has been backdated, as it were, as a sort of 'firstfruits' (a Pauline metaphor).

The end of time is not part of history. it is post history.
 
Posted by Squibs (# 14408) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
It is a long time since I read the screwtape letters, but it is essentially a work of fantasy. To use it to make wider points is pretty silly, in my opinion. But then to attempt to use much of CS Lewis as an apology for Christianity is also pretty daft, given the vast majority was not written for this purpose.

It is more than just fantasy - it is allegory which has within it apologetics. The same can be said of (IMO) his greatest works - the Chronicles of Narnia, and also his sci-fi trilogy.
Huh, I'd be fascinated by anyone who tried to use This Hideous Strength as a form of apologetic. Here, and with almost all of his 'religious' texts, CS Lewis presents opinions that are way beyond any accepted understanding of orthodox Christianity.
Apologetics.com spoke in depth about Lewis' space trilogy and how it could be used in cultural apologetics.

[URL=[/URL] http://www.apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=750:science-fiction-and-cs-lewis-space-trilogy-boldly -going-into-life-the-universe-and-everything&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74]here

[ 04. September 2012, 19:14: Message edited by: Squibs ]
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
the Gospel are faith documents and the resurrection is an eschatological event claimed to have happened proleptically inside but not as part of history.

Mornington Crescent!

I win again.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Someone else asked above what an ethic based on the Sermon on the Mount would look like, and the answer is Gandhi and Tolstoy - both of which attempted to build lives based on reading the Sermon on the Mount as if it was talking directly to them in their circumstances.

Well, yes, but that doesn't mean that they weren't both discarding chunks of the Gospels that they disagreed with. Both got at least some of their ethics from sources other than the Sermon on the Mount (for instance, both had a bonkers(*) horror of sexuality completely in excess of anything in the Gospels).

(*) a technical term. Tolstoy's 'short' story The Kreuzer Sonata is a work of genius, and completely bonkers.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
[T]he resurrection is a future event, at the end of time, which has been backdated, as it were, as a sort of 'firstfruits' (a Pauline metaphor).

The end of time is not part of history. it is post history.

So is Jesus still in the grave? I don't understand what else you could mean here.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
There is one and only one claim that Lewis must insist on -- that Christ claimed to BE God. Failing that, the trilemma isn't even plausible on it's face.

--Tom Clune

Indeed. The only place where Jesus 'claims to be God' is in the fourth Gospel, which is usually seen as a theological meditation, post-resurrection/exaltation, on the Christ.

The Jesus of the synoptics, especially in mark, always diverts attention way from himself - the so-called 'messianic secret'.

Having liked some of Lewis's other stuff, especially his books on miracles and theodicy, I went right off him when i read this mad, bad or God thing.

[ 04. September 2012, 19:16: Message edited by: leo ]
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
To be serious, I think there's a fundamental difference in the way different people read the gospels that needs underlining. It is implicit in some posts here, but might be assumed in others.

I accept the authority of Jesus based on who I believe him to be. Therefore, if I read a parable or teaching of his, and disagree violently with it as my initial reaction, then because I believe in His authority to say challenging stuff I do my best to reconcile myself to it.

If, on the other hand, I was to not recognise his authority, and consider his more religious musings as a bit misguided at best, nevertheless I might sometime identify something that resonates, and find it a useful moral direction, sometimes not. I might still be challenged, in that I might find something that seems awkward or daft, but on detailed consideration find something worthwhile in it.

However, in the latter scenario I don't think it would be fair to say I am regarding Jesus as a great moral teacher. I might regard some of the things that are attributed to him as great moral teachings, but since I regard much of what he says as lunacy he isn't really the great teacher. There may well be the sayings of some great moral teacher mixed up in the account that is currently attributed to Jesus, but if we reconstruct a personality based on the account in front of us, I consider it to be more likely a composite account of a great moral teacher with superimposed bits that someone else wrote with a particular agenda. "Jesus the great moral teacher" might be somewhere in there, but the gospels don't really afford us much of a glimpse of who he was.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Well, yes, but that doesn't mean that they weren't both discarding chunks of the Gospels that they disagreed with. Both got at least some of their ethics from sources other than the Sermon on the Mount (for instance, both had a bonkers(*) horror of sexuality completely in excess of anything in the Gospels).

(*) a technical term. Tolstoy's 'short' story The Kreuzer Sonata is a work of genius, and completely bonkers.

I totally agree. I think Gandhi was almost entirely wrong (in a similarly bonkers fashion) on a few things and more right than most others on quite a few others. I don't think he was mad or bad or a boiled egg though.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
I think Gandhi was almost entirely wrong (in a similarly bonkers fashion) on a few things and more right than most others on quite a few others. I don't think he was mad or bad or a boiled egg though.

Nevertheless, I wouldn't believe anything merely because Gandhi had said it. I do however believe that one should not retaliate violence for violence on the strength of what Jesus said about it. (I mean, I believe it's compatible with everything I believe on other grounds. But I don't think everything I believe on other grounds would of itself suffice to establish the point.)

I think the case Lewis is considering is closer to saying that the late Reverend Moon was right on quite a few things. I'm sure Moon must have said some high sounding things about universal love somewhere.
 
Posted by redderfreak (# 15191) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
There is one and only one claim that Lewis must insist on -- that Christ claimed to BE God. Failing that, the trilemma isn't even plausible on it's face.

--Tom Clune

Indeed. The only place where Jesus 'claims to be God' is in the fourth Gospel, which is usually seen as a theological meditation, post-resurrection/exaltation, on the Christ.

The Jesus of the synoptics, especially in mark, always diverts attention way from himself - the so-called 'messianic secret'.

Having liked some of Lewis's other stuff, especially his books on miracles and theodicy, I went right off him when i read this mad, bad or God thing.

And I go right off people like you when I read this sort of rude, subjective thing. We all believe what we want to, every day about everything. Please don't pretend your idea of truth is any better than mine, Lewis's or anyone else's.
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
If a man says that he is a poached egg, then one might reasonably conclude that either:
- he knows it isn't true and is saying it to achieve some ulterior purpose
- he is in a state of mind where he doesn't know what he is saying (perhaps a chemically-induced state), or
- he is so far advanced in mysticism as to perceive truths beyond the comprehension of the uninitiated
and in none of those cases would it be reasonable to trust his next utterance to be wise in a conventional sense.

So there does seem to be a valid logic.

The difference is that a poached egg is something well-defined and well-understood, so that the straightforward interpretation of the statement is obviously false. The Jews thought they knew what God is like and Jesus wasn't it.

But we, having grown up in post-Christian societies, are used to the idea that whatever God is is not totally incompatible with humanity. We know that God is beyond our understanding and yet capable of bearing human attributes such as goodness and mercy.

And so the force of Lewis's point is lost on us.

Best wishes,

Russ
 
Posted by Mark Betts (# 17074) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Huh, I'd be fascinated by anyone who tried to use This Hideous Strength as a form of apologetic. Here, and with almost all of his 'religious' texts, CS Lewis presents opinions that are way beyond any accepted understanding of orthodox Christianity.

I've read it - I remember it was a bit gorey, and it was some years ago, but I still stand by what I said. If there was any blatantly unorthodox message hidden within I'm sure I would have noticed.
 
Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
I'd be fascinated by anyone who tried to use This Hideous Strength as a form of apologetic.

Its not apologetic, its a fantasy novel. With deliberate nods to Charles Williams and David Lindsay and Olaf Stapledon and HG Wells (& possibly even CP Snow, though I am less sure about that). Its also maybe his best novel [Razz]
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
I'd be fascinated by anyone who tried to use This Hideous Strength as a form of apologetic.

Its not apologetic, its a fantasy novel. With deliberate nods to Charles Williams and David Lindsay and Olaf Stapledon and HG Wells (& possibly even CP Snow, though I am less sure about that). Its also maybe his best novel [Razz]
Avert! That Hideous Novel is by far the worst thing he ever wrote, Pilgrim's Regress included. His best novel is of course Till We Have Faces.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I'm reminded of the book Who Moved the Stone?. For all its faults, Frank Morison develops a particularly compelling argument about what happened during Jesus' trials.

However, that book, like Lewis's 'trichotomy' depends on the gospels being accurate history, which I don't believe to be the case.
And yet we have nothing better.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I'm reminded of the book Who Moved the Stone?. For all its faults, Frank Morison develops a particularly compelling argument about what happened during Jesus' trials.

One of the most compelling bits of all is the evidence that Jesus predicted his own resurrection. At the very least, the evidence that he said something referring to raising a temple again "in three days".

The evidence for this is pretty overwhelming. It was actually part of the case against Jesus at his first trial. But interpreted as literally threatening to destroy the temple.

Just so we're clear here, the evidence still consists solely of the four approved accounts written by his followers many years after his claimed resurrection?

I'm not sure how I'd describe evidence like that, but "overwhelming" would be a long way down the list.

My point is that it has Jesus' friends and enemies alike agreeing on what he said.

They have completely different interpretations of what he MEANT, but the fact that they're recorded as disputing what he meant, rather than whether he actually said it to begin with, is to my mind quite significant.

Although I suppose you could, if you were being terribly clever, not only make up a saying of Jesus but also make up the fact that the saying was then used as the primary evidence in his first trial. But why would anyone bother? If the point of your story is that the trial was unjust, why would you bother substituting a fake piece of dodgy evidence for the real piece of dodgy evidence that made you think the trial was unjust in the first place?

Unless you think the trial is entirely made up as well...

[ 05. September 2012, 03:31: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
He could accept Jesus claims to the deity by saying that we are all children of God and that there is something of God in all of us.

Which is to say: by not actually accepting Jesus' claim. By rewriting it into something he could accept.

PS It seems terribly odd of you to explain Gandhi's cultural viewpoint as if it's a good explanation of what a 1st century Jew meant by his statements in 1st century Judaea. What a 20th Century Hindu in India might have meant by the same statements about being a child/Son of God is a complete red herring.

[ 05. September 2012, 03:37: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
Every time I see this g-d thread I see it as, "Lewis's Tracheotomy."
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:


Unless you think the trial is entirely made up as well...

It seems many scholars think the trial is either totally or largely made up. The reaction of Christ to the accusations is quite different in the gospels, and you also have to ask why a Roman occupier would defer to the local judicial system in the way described.

Also, given there are no Roman records about it, who exactly is supposed to have attended the trial in order to give such a detailed account of it? All of the disciples are supposed to have run away in fear of their lives.

We view the Christ through an imperfect lens. The real question for all of us who claim any kind of allegiance to him is how we deal with that.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
and you also have to ask why a Roman occupier would defer to the local judicial system in the way described.

I have no idea what you mean by this, as there isn't any evidence in the gospels of deference to the local judicial system. Quite the reverse. The local judicial system has no power to enforce its sentence.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I have no idea what you mean by this, as there isn't any evidence in the gospels of deference to the local judicial system. Quite the reverse. The local judicial system has no power to enforce its sentence.

I'm fairly sure Jesus gets passed around from Washing-his-hands Pilot to evil-local-ruler Herod and back again.

[ 05. September 2012, 07:40: Message edited by: the long ranger ]
 
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
The issue, AIUI, is that in the Gospels Pilate wants to release Jesus but is afraid of the Jews, which is out of character based on what we know of Pilate from other sources.
 
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:


Unless you think the trial is entirely made up as well...

It seems many scholars think the trial is either totally or largely made up. The reaction of Christ to the accusations is quite different in the gospels, and you also have to ask why a Roman occupier would defer to the local judicial system in the way described.

Also, given there are no Roman records about it, who exactly is supposed to have attended the trial in order to give such a detailed account of it? All of the disciples are supposed to have run away in fear of their lives.

For the first phase.
Peter is recorded as following nervously in all 4 gospels.
In John somebody else (referred to obliquely as 'known to the high priest') is also there. This being John it could be John, but e.g. Nicodemus also fits the description.
(and there were enough other people, Malcus?)

For Pilate&Herod there are also the guards, etc...

(incidently what sort of records do we have from the Romans. I know we're missing vast parts of Livy/the troy set so I'd have thought it would be a case of having lots of examples of any type of record, but the odds of having a particular record very low.)

quote:

We view the Christ through an imperfect lens. The real question for all of us who claim any kind of allegiance to him is how we deal with that.

Incidently Luke explains the Herod situation as one of (alleged) jurisdiction. In the Gospels Pilate is consistently seen as trying to evade the situation. Now from history we have other experiences of Pilate
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I have no idea what you mean by this, as there isn't any evidence in the gospels of deference to the local judicial system. Quite the reverse. The local judicial system has no power to enforce its sentence.

I'm fairly sure Jesus gets passed around from Washing-his-hands Pilot to evil-local-ruler Herod and back again.
Herod isn't part of the local judicial system, though. The first trial is in front of the High Priest, not Herod.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Didn't he once receive a dressing down from his superiors for dealing insensitively with Jewish authorities and picking fights.

Perhaps he was avoiding another dressing down, or had recently received one.

Actually, there's probably a fascinating thread to have on the character of Pilate.
 
Posted by The Great Gumby (# 10989) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I'm reminded of the book Who Moved the Stone?. For all its faults, Frank Morison develops a particularly compelling argument about what happened during Jesus' trials.

One of the most compelling bits of all is the evidence that Jesus predicted his own resurrection. At the very least, the evidence that he said something referring to raising a temple again "in three days".

The evidence for this is pretty overwhelming. It was actually part of the case against Jesus at his first trial. But interpreted as literally threatening to destroy the temple.

Just so we're clear here, the evidence still consists solely of the four approved accounts written by his followers many years after his claimed resurrection?

I'm not sure how I'd describe evidence like that, but "overwhelming" would be a long way down the list.

My point is that it has Jesus' friends and enemies alike agreeing on what he said.
But it doesn't. It has Jesus' friends claiming long after the events described (both the supposed prophecy and the supposed fulfilment) that this charge was laid, with no corroboration from anyone who wasn't one of his followers.

If I have a car accident, I could claim to my insurer that the other guy instantly admitted full responsibility. I may be telling the truth, or I may not. But it would be very unwise to take my word for it without checking with him.

Putting a claim in someone else's mouth doesn't change anything - claimed corroboration isn't the same as actual corroboration. You'd doubt me if I claimed to have a pet unicorn, so why should that be any different if I claim that Bertrand Russell was once very complimentary about its horn? If Russell had written to that effect in one of his essays, though...
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Herod isn't part of the local judicial system, though. The first trial is in front of the High Priest, not Herod.

That is irrelevant. According to the story, Pilate felt that Herod has the authority to decide on the fate of Jesus. There is no reason to believe that a Roman occupier would think like that.

[ 05. September 2012, 08:24: Message edited by: the long ranger ]
 
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Herod isn't part of the local judicial system, though. The first trial is in front of the High Priest, not Herod.

That is irrelevant. According to the story, Pilate felt that Herod has the authority to decide on the fate of Jesus. There is no reason to believe that a Roman occupier would think like that.
If we follow Luke, Pilate's reasoning is that Jesus is an expat from Galilee, which is outside Pilate's jurisdiction but within Herod's. Remember Pilate was governor of Judaea - which was an actual province of the Roman Empire - whereas Galilee and Perea - Herod's territory - was a client state.

I don't know if expat status actually counted for anything but it's not a case of the occupier deferring to the conquered. Pilate wasn't occupying Herod's territory.

[ 05. September 2012, 08:44: Message edited by: Ricardus ]
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
It still seems highly unlikely that a Roman ruler, having caught someone apparently causing trouble under the label of his own Kingdom (here is the King of the Jews) would have palmed him off to anyone. Romans crushed anyone leading insurrections, there is no reason for them to mess about asking permission or wondering whose jurisdiction they are living under.

And just because one of the gospel writers says that was the reasoning is no real reason to suspect it actually happened like that. The accounts of who said what at these trials are so varied and different as to be impossible to put together to make a coherent narrative.

It seems most likely that it was known Jesus was taken before the religious authorities and Pilate and the rest was simply made up afterwards.

Some of the writers seem to have a particular beef with the Jews and want to make the crucifixion their responsibility, despite it being a Roman punishment conducted by a Roman occupier on someone they considered to be an insurrectionist.
 
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
It still seems highly unlikely that a Roman ruler, having caught someone apparently causing trouble under the label of his own Kingdom (here is the King of the Jews) would have palmed him off to anyone. Romans crushed anyone leading insurrections, there is no reason for them to mess about asking permission or wondering whose jurisdiction they are living under.

But, according to Luke, Pilate had no evidence Jesus was calling himself King of the Jews.

The impression I get from Luke is that Pilate didn't understand what was going on and asked Herod in the hope that the Tetrarch's local knowledge would elucidate matters. Which actually doesn't seem all that implausible.
quote:
Some of the writers seem to have a particular beef with the Jews and want to make the crucifixion their responsibility, despite it being a Roman punishment conducted by a Roman occupier on someone they considered to be an insurrectionist.
Actually I suspect it was more that they wanted to absolve the Romans from all blame, so as to prevent any suggestion that Christians were disloyal to the Empire. From what I can tell, the earliest Christians would have regarded themselves as Jews.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
But, according to Luke, Pilate had no evidence Jesus was calling himself King of the Jews.

The impression I get from Luke is that Pilate didn't understand what was going on and asked Herod in the hope that the Tetrarch's local knowledge would elucidate matters. Which actually doesn't seem all that implausible.

Presumably they must have thought something otherwise why put the sign on the cross? I find it very hard to believe that the Romans asked Herod for factual information, I actually find it hard to believe that the Romans were all that bothered about the exact truth regarding the execution of political prisoners.


quote:
Actually I suspect it was more that they wanted to absolve the Romans from all blame, so as to prevent any suggestion that Christians were disloyal to the Empire. From what I can tell, the earliest Christians would have regarded themselves as Jews.
Yes, I think this too. Which is also very interesting.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
David was God's chosen one par excellence within Judaism. But no-one would insist that failing to buy all that David did or said shows that you are somehow denying that he was God's chosen one. There is one and only one claim that Lewis must insist on -- that Christ claimed to BE God.

Since Lewis does think that Christ claimed to be God, and his formulation of the trilemma is based on that, this is possibly a moot point, but I think the trilemma does still work with any extravagant claim to have teaching authority. The argument isn't evaded by saying "Jesus never actually claimed to be divine" - that may be so but on any view of the gospels he certainly did make grandiose claims, claims of the sort that people don't get wrong by accident.

As Freddy points out above, you could plausibly trilemmate Joseph Smith, Moon, Swedenberg... any religious leader whose following depends on their personal authority or integrity, and it would make sense. Either Joseph Smith really did have a word from God, found the golden plates, and translated them with divine assistance and inspiration, or he didn't. And if he didn't, it's not the sort of thing he could claim because he was innocently mistaken. If he thought all that stuff had happened, when it didn't, that would be a monumental delusion of the sort that most people would call insanity. If he knew that it hadn't happened, but claimed it did, he would be lying. "Deluded, fraudulent, or prophet" exhausts all the really plausible explanations for Smith's revelation. I'm sure it's not beyond human ingenuity to contrive some unlikely fourth explanation, but I'd bet that it won't be a very credible one.

And as Alogon says, the reason why no one does trilemmate Joseph Smith is because practically no one who is not a Mormon has much of a problem saying that Smith was almost certainly a fraud. The world is not full of people claiming to respect him as a good moral teacher. If it were, it would be entirely appropriate to ask those people to engage with the claims that Smith actually made, decide what they believe about that, and reconcile their answer with their view of his authority. That would apply even though Smith didn't (as far as I know) claim to be God.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
The trilemma works like that. It's fine for anyone to take the true bits of Jesus' (or Dobson's) teachings - they are, after all, true - and apply them, but if you go further and say that Jesus (or Dobson) is your personal moral authority, you really ought to pay attention to their teachings, not just the bits that have an immediate appeal. In Jesus' case, his teachings include, in prominent place, statements which would utterly discredit him as any sort of authority at all if they were not true - good and sane people simply do not claim stuff like that.

I have no doubt you honestly believe the above, but you are quite wrong. Indeed, your understanding reflects simply your culture, upbringing and experience.
It is, of course, trivially true that my understanding of anything reflects my culture, upbringing and experience. But asserting that says absolutely nothing about whether I'm right or wrong.

quote:
Gandhi held Jesus' teachings in very high regard. He could accept Jesus claims to the deity by saying that we are all children of God and that there is something of God in all of us.
Are you putting that forward as an accurate way to interpret the gospels? Is it remotely plausible that what Jesus meant by his claims (if he said them) or what the gospel writers wanted their readers to understand what he meant, was simply that "we are all children of God and that there is something of God in all of us"?

That would be nonsense, an obvious and gross misreading of the text. Utterly unbelievable. If Gandhi thought that was what the gospels were saying, then he was wrong, in any culture.

quote:
Someone else asked above what an ethic based on the Sermon on the Mount would look like, and the answer is Gandhi and Tolstoy - both of which attempted to build lives based on reading the Sermon on the Mount as if it was talking directly to them in their circumstances.

Hence it certainly is possible to do all the things you, Eliab, state above as being impossible.

Except I don't state that it is impossible. No one has said that. Everyone agrees that it is possible to mine the gospels for nuggets of moral insight. I don't get your point here.

quote:
quote:
All of the gospels are on the "outrageous claim" side. I don't think there is any serious debate about that.
I think there is plenty of debate about it, because the gospels simply do not present the same Christology.
What possible reading of the gospels (any of them) is there in which Jesus does not make outrageous claims (at least impliedly)?

There are certainly plausible readings of the gospels to the effect that the four writers had different views on exactly how Jesus was uniquely important and sent by God, but that they all thought him uniquely important and sent by God, and thought that he had believed and taught (or at least hinted at) that himself, is in my opinion beyond dispute.

quote:
I don't understand your distinction between 'great' and 'good moral teacher'
Good: that which I could, without undue arrogance, credibly claim after delivering the best sermon of my life.

Great/grandiose/extravagant/outrageous: that which I couldn't.

The Jesus of the gospels claims things in the latter category. On your account (and I don't know whether Gandhi would have endorsed it) Gandhi didn't engage with those claims, but was able to personally reconcile them with his respect for Christ's ethics by attributing to them a meaning which they could not possibly have had for the gospel writers.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
But a delusion is defined psychiatrically as a non-evidenced belief which is not consonant with the prevailing culture.

For example, some Maoris still practice ancestor worship, and therefore a NZ psychiatrist would not view that as a delusion, since it is a long held part of Maori culture.

In relation to someone like Joseph Smith, I don't really know what the cultural background was, but it is possible, I would think, that it was sufficiently tuned into vague apocalyptic ideas, to be considered non-delusional.

'Delusion' doesn't mean, 'something which I find hard to believe'.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
I'm not interested in long-winded bible verse trading, but I'd be interested to see which verse in particular explicitly states that Jesus says "I am God himself incarnate of earth" because I'm pretty sure there isn't one.

I won't be longwinded, then, but "I and the Father are one," "It is my Father--and you claim him as your God--who ...." and "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father!" come to mind. Also "I keep sending you prophets and wise men" {whom you promptly kill off]. There are shedloads more.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
I won't be longwinded, then, but "I and the Father are one," "It is my Father--and you claim him as your God--who ...." and "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father!" come to mind. Also "I keep sending you prophets and wise men" {whom you promptly kill off]. There are shedloads more.
None of which are "I am God himself incarnate of earth" and all of the above can be interpreted in various ways that suggest Jesus did not think himself God.
 
Posted by Thyme (# 12360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Every time I see this g-d thread I see it as, "Lewis's Tracheotomy."

Me too. I wondered for ages why a discussion about a fictional TV detective's* tracheotomy was in purgatory. Eventually I had to read the thread to find out...... [Hot and Hormonal]

*There is a TV detective called Lewis in the UK.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
In relation to someone like Joseph Smith, I don't really know what the cultural background was, but it is possible, I would think, that it was sufficiently tuned into vague apocalyptic ideas, to be considered non-delusional.

'Delusion' doesn't mean, 'something which I find hard to believe'.

No chance. If Joseph Smith did not receive the book of Mormon as he describes, and he wasn't consciously lying about it, his false recollection of angels, golden plates, and divinely inspired translation from an utterly unknown language counts as delusional by any sensible use of that word.

And it doesn't matter what Smith's culture was, or how plausible the story is in itself. There could have been angels handing out ancient golden testaments on every street corner in C19 America, but if Smith had imagined that he had received one and gave a detailed personal account of how he had translated it which he personally believed, when in fact none of that was true, it would have been a delusion.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
I won't be longwinded, then, but "I and the Father are one," "It is my Father--and you claim him as your God--who ...." and "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father!" come to mind. Also "I keep sending you prophets and wise men" {whom you promptly kill off]. There are shedloads more.
None of which are "I am God himself incarnate of earth" and all of the above can be interpreted in various ways that suggest Jesus did not think himself God.
Really? Seriously?

I'd be darned interested to see how you reinterpret "I keep sending you prophets", for starters.

[ 05. September 2012, 13:21: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I'd be darned interested to see how you reinterpret "I keep sending you prophets", for starters.

One traditional way of evaluating the intended meaning is to look in the other synoptics that have the same pericope: Luke 11:49.

I should add, in the interest of honest discourse, that I personally believe that each Gospel should be taken on its own, and compared only to highlight the context between them, not to interpret what the other is actually saying. But that is not the most common Christian hermeneutic, and I rather doubt that it was Lewis'.

As I have already mentioned, I do find the synoptic Gospels to each make a case for the divinity of Christ, so I find myself in a somewhat uncomfortable position of arguing for what I personally don't believe. My point, however, is that my interpretation of these texts is not the only one that can in good conscience be made of them.

BTW, my feeling is that, without acknowledging the divinity of Christ, the Gospels very clearly present an ethical vision that may be characterized as cutting-edge first century Judaism. The notion that the Gospels have no moral content if one denies the divinity of Christ is truly bizarre, and strikes me as only defensible for those who imagine that Christ was a complete break from Judaism in a way that made His message divorced from the flow of Jewish thought and history -- a view that I find primitive, benighted, and indefensible.

--Tom Clune

[ 05. September 2012, 13:50: Message edited by: tclune ]
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
No chance. If Joseph Smith did not receive the book of Mormon as he describes, and he wasn't consciously lying about it, his false recollection of angels, golden plates, and divinely inspired translation from an utterly unknown language counts as delusional by any sensible use of that word.

Well in one sense that depends what you mean by delusional. I was thinking about this in another context a few days ago - with regard to how urban myths are created and spread. Christian urban myths seem to spread very quickly, and I was wondering how and why anyone would spread things they knew to be wrong.

I am no expert, but I suspect many of these begin as stories half-heard or half-remembered which are then repeated or embellished by people who want them to be true. Hence we have the vanishing hitch-hiker myth, which I distinctly hearing about 'a friend of a friend', which apparently originated from the 1800s. My friend was not being deliberately deceitful, he just wanted it to be true so badly that he passed it on as truth.

So one significant aspect of these things might be the receptor - how they hear and report things they want to be true.

Using the Joseph Smith example (of which I know very little about the detail), maybe he is misquoted or exaggerated by subsequent followers who want it to be true. What he actually said might not be delusional.

Second, to underscore the fact that delusional might not necessarily mean mentally ill, nor is it necessarily a sign of unreliability in other aspects of life. I used to know someone who regularly saw angels. Sometimes he'd say other weird shit. Most of the time he was perfectly normal and coherent and logical (strangely it was only in church that he became that odd).

In fact, I could even talk about things that happened in my life which seemed pretty vivid and miraculous to me at the time, but in explaining would sound delusional. I am not, and was not, mentally ill.

Maybe Joseph Smith saw something which for some unexplained reason (overtired, been out in the sun too long or something) he observed as writing on a golden plate or whatever the story is.

In itself, I don't think that is evidence that the man is mentally ill and is on the par with the person who thinks he is a boiled egg.


quote:
And it doesn't matter what Smith's culture was, or how plausible the story is in itself. There could have been angels handing out ancient golden testaments on every street corner in C19 America, but if Smith had imagined that he had received one and gave a detailed personal account of how he had translated it which he personally believed, when in fact none of that was true, it would have been a delusion.
Yes, but that doesn't mean (necessarily) he was either mad or bad.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
BTW, my feeling is that, without acknowledging the divinity of Christ, the Gospels very clearly present an ethical vision that may be characterized as cutting-edge first century Judaism. The notion that the Gospels have no moral content if one denies the divinity of Christ is truly bizarre, and strikes me as only defensible for those who imagine that Christ was a complete break from Judaism in a way that made His message divorced from the flow of Jewish thought and history -- a view that I find primitive, benighted, and indefensible.

--Tom Clune

This has already been more than adequately answered by others. There is a difference between saying that the Gospels contain great moral teachings, and saying that Jesus was a great moral teacher.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
This has already been more than adequately answered by others. There is a difference between saying that the Gospels contain great moral teachings, and saying that Jesus was a great moral teacher.

Yes, but if Jesus was the one doing the teaching, that turns into a distinction without a difference.

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
In relation to someone like Joseph Smith, I don't really know what the cultural background was, but it is possible, I would think, that it was sufficiently tuned into vague apocalyptic ideas, to be considered non-delusional.

'Delusion' doesn't mean, 'something which I find hard to believe'.

No chance. If Joseph Smith did not receive the book of Mormon as he describes, and he wasn't consciously lying about it, his false recollection of angels, golden plates, and divinely inspired translation from an utterly unknown language counts as delusional by any sensible use of that word.

And it doesn't matter what Smith's culture was, or how plausible the story is in itself. There could have been angels handing out ancient golden testaments on every street corner in C19 America, but if Smith had imagined that he had received one and gave a detailed personal account of how he had translated it which he personally believed, when in fact none of that was true, it would have been a delusion.

But what is your 'sensible use of that word'? I've already indicated the psychiatric one, which takes the cultural context into account.

I have seen this definition used in those interminable debates with atheists, when they argue that a religious belief is a delusion, since according to the standard psychiatric view, it is not, if the prevailing culture contains such beliefs.

So, what's your definition of delusion?
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Definition of delusion:

false beliefs based on incorrect inference about external reality that persist despite the evidence to the contrary and these beliefs are not ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture.

DSM-IV-TR
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
Yes, but if Jesus was the one doing the teaching, that turns into a distinction without a difference.

But who is this Jesus? Is he a great moral teacher, who's words were later added to and reinterpreted by a gang of 12 minus 1 then plus 1 again with an agenda... or a madman who said bizarre grandiose things but purloined great moral teachings from 1st Century Judaism to give credibility to his other rantings... or a flawed genius... or simply a very post-hoc accretion of different teachings and myths into one person. Or many other possibilities.

Some of these possibilities one can consider less likely on historical evidence of how the gospels developed, others seem counter-intuitive.

Lewis's trichotomy doesn't take account of many of these possibilities, although I think some are implicitly dealt with by Lewis but not spelt out. For my money, Lewis's trichotomy is lacking because of that, but nevertheless makes me think about those possibilities in a clearer way than I otherwise would. And framing the implausibility of certain options listed is, to my mind, helpful. YMMV. As yours did up thread.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
And it doesn't matter what Smith's culture was, or how plausible the story is in itself. There could have been angels handing out ancient golden testaments on every street corner in C19 America, but if Smith had imagined that he had received one and gave a detailed personal account of how he had translated it which he personally believed, when in fact none of that was true, it would have been a delusion.

I think if Smith belonged to a culture where many churches were filled with people claiming similar encounters then it wouldn't make sense to describe him as deluded in the strict psychiatric sense of the word. One might describe his culture as deluded in a relaxed lay sense of the word (i.e. sharing a belief in something that is very unlikely to be true) but that doesn't make him deluded.

However this is theoretical, I think, since it seems to me that in the early 19th C America was not awash with settlers claiming similar things, and it seems not to have been treated as culturally normal by those who came into contact with Smith. It seems to have been treated as an extraordinary claim that either converted them or made them think he was unhinged.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
mdijon

That's not my quote actually. Someone else's.

[ 05. September 2012, 16:24: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
I'm not interested in long-winded bible verse trading, but I'd be interested to see which verse in particular explicitly states that Jesus says "I am God himself incarnate of earth" because I'm pretty sure there isn't one.

I won't be longwinded, then, but "I and the Father are one," "It is my Father--and you claim him as your God--who ...." and "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father!" come to mind. Also "I keep sending you prophets and wise men" {whom you promptly kill off]. There are shedloads more.
The first 3 of those are from the 4th gospel and it has already been stated by me and others that its historicity is doubtful.

As for the first, if you mean Matthew 23, that is about some future event, not the past. Or is there another verse that I have missed? (The past tense does occur in the words of jesus in the musical Godspel).

[ 05. September 2012, 16:27: Message edited by: leo ]
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
That's not my quote actually. Someone else's.

My apologies. I started quoting your post and in editing didn't notice I was mistaking your quote of Eliab's for you.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I have seen this definition used in those interminable debates with atheists, when they argue that a religious belief is a delusion, since according to the standard psychiatric view, it is not, if the prevailing culture contains such beliefs.

And I expect that the atheists slap down such folly. The psychiatric definition covers such delusions as are symptomatic of a pathological mental state. Hence it excludes from the definition mistaken beliefs that an ordinary sane person might hold, and defines ordinary and sane with reference to that person's culture. An entirely sensible approach when talking about psychiatry, but clearly nothing to do with what atheists mean when they write books entitled "The God Delusion" and such.

A person who believes that an angel has spoken to him, given him engraved plates of gold which he can translate using a special stone, and from which he has produced a lengthy book, is deluded, if in fact those things did not happen. Arguing otherwise is just silly.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
He/she might be deluded, but they don't have a delusion. Clear?

Joking aside, I think that this point of distinction isn't relevant to J. Smith since there doesn't seem much evidence that his experience was culturally appropriate.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
The first 3 of those are from the 4th gospel and it has already been stated by me and others that its historicity is doubtful.

Ah, that settles it then.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
Well, it certainly does for anyone who has followed scholarly debates since about 1940.

BTW when I speak of doubtful historicity of the 4th gospel, I am aware of a movement, since John Robinson's 'Redating....' to posit an early date for it and some more accurate history of EVENTS than the synoptics, but that does not include historicity of its WORDS.

[ 05. September 2012, 18:59: Message edited by: leo ]
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
Setting aside the question of whether the Gospels are accurate:

Suppose a televangelist is reported as saying that he has a special hotline to God. Does that count towards his authority on moral matters? Neutral? Against?

I am going to stick my neck out and say that everyone on this thread would agree that a televangelist who claims a special hotline to God is less of a moral authority just by virtue of making that claim. I think that is the point that the trichotomy is making - if someone claims to have special personal authority from God that is in itself a reason not to pay attention to what they say. And I think one has to be sceptical about the Gospel records above and beyond the call of reason to think that Jesus didn't claim special personal authority from God.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I am going to stick my neck out and say that everyone on this thread would agree that a televangelist who claims a special hotline to God is less of a moral authority just by virtue of making that claim.

That's it for me. So because Gandhi was a bit odd about medical intervention, diet and sex, doesn't cause alarm bells for me. But if he had claimed to be God's mouthpiece, or a special incarnation of God, then I would view him with much more suspicion.

Either way it doesn't make me reject his teaching on non-violence, but my view of him as an individual is changed.
 
Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Yes, you can come up with all the alternatives based on Jesus not actually saying what the Gospels attribute him saying. But if you do that, how the blazes do you find these great moral teachings of Jesus? How can you maintain the notion that he gave you great moral teachings to follow while rejecting the record of his teachings?

If we can acknowledge something as an edifying moral teaching, what difference does it make whom it came from or how it reached us?

Mind you, I'm not sure I'm convinced by this observation myself. Many things that Jesus said are not self-evident as great moral teachings but sound rather crazy on first blush. So many sermons must begin with something like, "This is a difficult saying from Jesus that we have to think about today." They must be considered in context with other passages and events. Only if we get a sense of a Gestalt that includes the personal character of the source can we make sense of some of them.

While we must admit that the reliability of the gospels could be challenged on various grounds, someone must point out that Catholic apologetics (at least as I understand it) does not use them as a starting point. The inescapable fact to be faced first is not the testimony of inspired scripture, but the existence in those days (mid-to-late first century AD) of the same institution that we can see today: the Church. These particular reports in the New Testament do not depend on its being inspired. The conclusion plausibly follows from the same kind of reading that historians give any other ancient primary source.

We can go on to treat these particular sources as inspired (if we do) because they have been declared so (and other similar sources not declared so) by this same body, which has existed continuously since then until now. On its authority and testimony we must in any case depend. As Isaac Watts wrote in one of my favorite hymns, "Give me the wings of faith", "the great cloud of witnesses points the same pathway to heaven." Without this unbroken tradition, how many of us would even have heard of the books in the New Testament?
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
I won't be longwinded, then, but "I and the Father are one," "It is my Father--and you claim him as your God--who ...." and "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father!" come to mind. Also "I keep sending you prophets and wise men" {whom you promptly kill off]. There are shedloads more.
None of which are "I am God himself incarnate of earth" and all of the above can be interpreted in various ways that suggest Jesus did not think himself God.
If you're looking for the exact words "I am God himself incarnate of earth" you ain't gonna find them there, partly because they're woefully ungrammatical. More important, I did the poster the honor of assuming he was after the meaning and not the exact words--which any Google search could have answered.

As for "can be interpreted in various ways that suggest Jesus did not think himself God," well, certainly. ANY chunk of language can be interpreted to mean virtually anything as long as you're prepared to take sufficient liberties. In which case why bother discussing the matter at all?

ETA: Oh dear, you WERE the poster. Apparently I did you more honor than you feel appropriate. My apologies.

[ 05. September 2012, 23:03: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
If we can acknowledge something as an edifying moral teaching, what difference does it make whom it came from or how it reached us?

To the reputation of the teaching, it makes no difference at all. For the repuation of the teacher it makes a great deal of difference.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
The first 3 of those are from the 4th gospel and it has already been stated by me and others that its historicity is doubtful.

Ah, that settles it then.
Also, all the bits with miracles? Never happened. We KNOW such things are impossible.

PS I think we should shift the trichotomy along a bit. The gospel writers: mad, bad or divinely inspired?
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
As for the first, if you mean Matthew 23, that is about some future event, not the past. Or is there another verse that I have missed? (The past tense does occur in the words of jesus in the musical Godspel).

Leo, I've no idea about Godspell, but the Greek of Matthew 23:34 is present tense (apostello), which tense is often (usually?) translated in a continuous sense. Thus "I am sending you" or "I keep on sending you". This is all the more interesting as the future tenses occur in descriptions of what Jesus' enemies would do to his servants the prophets and etc.--surely the most natural habit of speech would have been to say "I will send... and you will kill..."? Unless, of course, Jesus had another emphasis he wished to stress--that in fact he had done this already, was doing it at the moment of speech, and was going to continue doing it into the future. This is further supported by his prophecy that because of this, "On on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar." Both named victims are obviously in the past, and clearly sent by God himself. So the present continuous is a perfectly appropriate tense for God himself to use when he describes an action he has been taking throughout human history, past, present, and future.
 
Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :
 
OK, Orfeo, but we are talking about teachings that are largely distinctive of the Christian faith and are attributed to Jesus. You (or someone) is suggesting that maybe Jesus didn't really say them. Who did, then? Give me some plausible alternatives, and then we can discuss how much difference it makes.

[ 05. September 2012, 23:19: Message edited by: Alogon ]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
As for the first, if you mean Matthew 23, that is about some future event, not the past. Or is there another verse that I have missed? (The past tense does occur in the words of jesus in the musical Godspel).

You've missed the part where the tense makes a jot of difference to the word "I".
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
OK, Orfeo, but we are talking about teachings that are largely distinctive of the Christian faith and are attributed to Jesus. You (or someone) is suggesting that maybe Jesus didn't really say them. Who did, then? Give me some plausible alternatives, and then we can discuss how much difference it makes.

I'M not suggesting any such thing, so I'm in no position to offer you alternatives. Sorry. Others may offer their views.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
As for the first, if you mean Matthew 23, that is about some future event, not the past. Or is there another verse that I have missed? (The past tense does occur in the words of jesus in the musical Godspel).

You've missed the part where the tense makes a jot of difference to the word "I".
Ouch. (and Orfeo nails in one sentence what all my roundaboutation missed.) [Snigger]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
As for the first, if you mean Matthew 23, that is about some future event, not the past. Or is there another verse that I have missed? (The past tense does occur in the words of jesus in the musical Godspel).

You've missed the part where the tense makes a jot of difference to the word "I".
Ouch. (and Orfeo nails in one sentence what all my roundaboutation missed.) [Snigger]
Yeah, occasionally I hit the target. But I actually wonder if my comment was too obtuse for those not on the same wavelength so I'm coming back to expand on it.

Suppose, leo, that you're correct and an accurate translation is "I'm going to send out prophets". Where does that get you?

Do you know any other rabbi who would talk about personally sending out prophets? Do you think anyone in a 1st century Judaean audience would find this unsurprising?

I put it to you that anyone who heard a remark along those lines would immediately think that God sends prophets. Whether he sent them in the past, is sending them now, or sending them in the future. They're not messengers of rabbis or kings. They're people who say "God says this". If there's a bunch of future prophets who are goig to come and say "Jesus says this", it doesn't assist you anymore than past-tense prophets.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
In a similar vein, and from a Synoptic no less:

quote:
"Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?"
(Mark 2:7, NIV)

There you go. In Mark, the Gospel we've been told doesn't spell it out for us. Even if you want to argue some fine distinction between claiming to be God and claiming to have powers that are uniquely characteristic OF God, the audience is recorded as understanding perfectly well that Jesus was claiming abilities that no ordinary mortal man - not even a rabbi who was a great moral teacher - ought to be claiming. Whether it's forgiving sins or sending out prophets, it's sitting there in the Synoptics.

[ 06. September 2012, 00:48: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I am going to stick my neck out and say that everyone on this thread would agree that a televangelist who claims a special hotline to God is less of a moral authority just by virtue of making that claim. I think that is the point that the trichotomy is making - if someone claims to have special personal authority from God that is in itself a reason not to pay attention to what they say. And I think one has to be sceptical about the Gospel records above and beyond the call of reason to think that Jesus didn't claim special personal authority from God.

But televangelists claim exactly that all the time, and a great many folks who would gladly quote Lewis as some kind of divine savant have absolutely no problem with it. What does that do to the power of the trichotomy? Do you insist that it is powerful, but only to those who post on this thread?

--Tom Clune

[ 06. September 2012, 01:02: Message edited by: tclune ]
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
I'm actually going to disagree. I have no problem with someone claiming special authority from God provided they actually do have it. Aye, there's the rub. How do you decide whether they are lying (in which case they are scumbags of the worst order for taking advantage of vulnerable people in a matter of huge, huge personal importance), deluded (in which case get them to a shrink ASAP, even a mild delusion in this area can be very dangerous--not letting them babysit MY kid), or telling the truth? (Oh dear, I seem to have restated the tracheotomy. Just can't get away from the bloody thing.)

I submit it is the same for Jesus and for the televangelist. You look at their lives, in so far as you can do so (for Jesus, through the reports of witnesses--e.g. the Gospels; for the televangelist, you're probably using media reports unless you are so (un)fortunate as to know him/her personally, or to watch his/her show). You examine their track record--does what they predict come true? (that will get rid of the sincerely wrong types) You consider consistency--does their message match up with what God is known to have said elsewhere (duh, I mean the OT here, if you think God has NEVER spoken authoritatively anywhere you'll have to skip this bit).

I may be missing out a standard or two, but these are basically the same standards that both Old and New Testaments recommend for evaluating would-be prophets.

(and before someone gets started on "perhaps the televangelist is just meaning 'we all have a deep inner connection to God' or some such," we are speaking here specifically of someone who claims SPECIAL authority from God, not available to you or me. So we can wash out the fourth, fifth, sixth legs of the multi-lemma.)

[ 06. September 2012, 02:36: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Oh, and now you folks are making me vacillate between reading this thread title as Lewis' tracheotomy or Lewis' trichinosis. And then there's tritillomania... I hate you all.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I'm actually going to disagree. I have no problem with someone claiming special authority from God provided they actually do have it. Aye, there's the rub. How do you decide whether they are lying (in which case they are scumbags of the worst order for taking advantage of vulnerable people in a matter of huge, huge personal importance), deluded (in which case get them to a shrink ASAP, even a mild delusion in this area can be very dangerous--not letting them babysit MY kid), or telling the truth? (Oh dear, I seem to have restated the tracheotomy. Just can't get away from the bloody thing.)

The reason you can't get away from the... thingy... is because it contains the 3 logical options when someone claims authority from God, or indeed claims ANYTHING:

1. The claim is correct.
2. The claim is incorrect and they know it.
3. The claim is incorrect and they don't know it.

Seriously, that's all that this thing we're particularly associating with C S Lewis boils down to. Any claim that anyone makes about anything is either true, knowingly false or mistaken.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Oh, and now you folks are making me vacillate between reading this thread title as Lewis' tracheotomy or Lewis' trichinosis. And then there's tritillomania... I hate you all.

Trigonometry?

Tribolitomy (you'd be surprised where people put tribolites and then have to have them surgically removed)?
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
Trilobites I know. What the heck are Tribolites?
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Why do I think I will be sorry to find out?
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
A tribolite is three monobolites.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Are those like Stylites? Or metabolites?
 
Posted by PD (# 12436) on :
 
The thing that crosses my mind, simply because nothing else has passed that way for at least half an hour, is that Lewis comment is consistent with a familiar line of Apologetic - that of the balance of probability. I associate it with a tradition going back to Butler and Paley in the 18th century. The reason those two marshalled their evidence to establish a balance of probability in favour of Christian orthodoxy is because that was the methodology used by contemporary skeptics such as Tolland and Clark. In that respect nothing much changed between the 1740s and the 1940s.

As for Biblical criticism, I think Lewis had the same problem with it that I do. With a background in his case in the Classics, and in mine History you tend to get the impression that without the odd outrageous theory or three to throw around they would have bugger all to discuss. I some areas of history - for example 5th and 6th century Britain - I would gladly kill to have M/S sources as close to date and relatively consistent as the Four Gospels, or the Epistles of Paul. My general reaction to the liberal critics is WTF are you bellyaching about? The thing that constantly amazes is me is how a climate has been created where the presumption is that, unlike all other ancient manuscripts even the historical books of the Bible are assumped incorrect until proven correct whereas all others get the benefit of the doubt.

PD
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Yes! This!

The bellyaching, I mean. Oh for a text where the biggest and worst variant you had to cope with was the three endings to Mark. Pffffffttt.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Trilobites I know. What the heck are Tribolites?

Dyslexia Rules, KO!
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
Trilobites I know. I know trilobites very well. Some of my best friends are trilobites. And you, sir, are no trilobite.

@Lamb Chopped: Didn't the Stylites do "You are Everything" and "Betcha By Golly Wow"?
 
Posted by Thyme (# 12360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Trilobites I know. What the heck are Tribolites?

A tribolite is an immature
tribble
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
In a similar vein, and from a Synoptic no less:

quote:
"Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?"
(Mark 2:7, NIV)

There you go. In Mark, the Gospel we've been told doesn't spell it out for us.

So the Jewish religious got upset when someone from outside their clique claimed to speak for God. Meh.

We read these texts as people who are already convinced. People who are not already convinced and do not have the weight of doctrine and history do not read the 'obvious' things we see there.

On thing I have found illuminating about this thread is to put myself in the shoes of atheists and other unbelievers with regard to Christians. Many of us make all kinds of claims about God - specifically that he (God) is communicating with us and is directly involved in our lives.

According to the Lewisian mindset, the unbeliever should think that we're either mad, bad or true witnesses to the triune God.

But the turd in the fruitcake is that there are plenty of people 'on our side' who are saying all kinds of things that we disown. Even people who, according to the perception of an unbeliever, are very similar to us. So the task of evaluating claims is not as simple as we're making out.

The second thing I was thinking is about how atheists relate to Christians. Most of us, I suspect, want to be treated as rational and reasonable human beings. But if you are an atheist, then belief in the supernatural is a sign of a delusion (or something worse) and according to Lewis, they ought to decide that we are too way off the chart to be trusted with anything.

Certainly not their children, their elderly, hospitals or running the country.

The fact that there are intelligent (and above all, I suspect, reasonable) Christians who can relate to atheists and unbelievers on the level (thinking about Rowan Williams, for example), is enough for some atheists to admit that not all Christians are totally bonkers or deluded.

I'm not sure where else to go with this train of thought, though.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
But televangelists claim exactly that all the time, and a great many folks who would gladly quote Lewis as some kind of divine savant have absolutely no problem with it. What does that do to the power of the trichotomy? Do you insist that it is powerful, but only to those who post on this thread?

I trust that it will be no surprise to you if I think that people who trust televangelists claiming a hotline to God are wrong to do so. Rational argument has no power to convince people who don't care about rational argument, but that's not a fault of rational argument.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
In a similar vein, and from a Synoptic no less:

quote:
"Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?"
(Mark 2:7, NIV)

There you go. In Mark, the Gospel we've been told doesn't spell it out for us.

So the Jewish religious got upset when someone from outside their clique claimed to speak for God. Meh.
Your willingness to read a different text to the one actually there is truly astounding.

It does NOT say that their clique had the capacity to speak for God in the area of forgiving sins - quite the reverse - so the clique has nothing to do with it.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
According to the Lewisian mindset, the unbeliever should think that we're either mad, bad or true witnesses to the triune God.

Indeed. But the intensity of the adjectives needs to vary with the intensity of the claim. So, for instance, Jesus claiming to be the Son of God might get the full intensity of mad/bad/Son of God.

A televangelist claiming to have a special encounter probably gets deluded/bad/prophet.

A Christian claiming regular spiritual experiences might get easily misled/ bit of a fantasist/ follower of true God alternatives.

And someone saying "On balance a lot of this rings true for me" might get wrong/sloppy thinking/got a point.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
But the intensity of the adjectives needs to vary with the intensity of the claim.

Exactly. Lewis' version of the 3 options is based on the fact that Jesus made extraordinary claims.

And I think that's why the attack against Lewis involves playing down the idea that Jesus actually made those claims. Because, as I've said, the basic logic of 3 options is impeccable regardless of the claim that you apply it to. The only way out of the Lewis version is to reduce the intensity of what Jesus said.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Your willingness to read a different text to the one actually there is truly astounding.

It does NOT say that their clique had the capacity to speak for God in the area of forgiving sins - quite the reverse - so the clique has nothing to do with it.

Ahem, that isn't what I meant.

You assume it was blasphemous because only God can forgive sins and therefore by forgiving sins Jesus was claiming to be divine.

I'm saying it is a possible interpretation that anyone claiming to speak for God outwith of the religious norms would have been described as blasphemous. And furthermore, by saying what he said, maybe Jesus was claiming to speak for God rather to be God.

It would be a whole lot easier if Jesus saying in the gospel 'hey you people, I am a member of the triune God, y'know! You haven't heard of it, but I'm a god-man, fully God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father in heaven! Born of a virgin!"

But of course he doesn't, he speaks in riddles.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Indeed. But the intensity of the adjectives needs to vary with the intensity of the claim. So, for instance, Jesus claiming to be the Son of God might get the full intensity of mad/bad/Son of God.

A televangelist claiming to have a special encounter probably gets deluded/bad/prophet.

A Christian claiming regular spiritual experiences might get easily misled/ bit of a fantasist/ follower of true God alternatives.

And someone saying "On balance a lot of this rings true for me" might get wrong/sloppy thinking/got a point.

That makes some kind of sense, except that is a subjective view. Some might think that believing in miracles and/or a God who communicates with you is on the level of believing you are God or believing you are a boiled egg.

Tell me - if you believe God has told you to sacrifice your own children on an altar, is that more or less intense than stating that you think you might be divine?
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
It would be a whole lot easier if Jesus saying in the gospel 'hey you people, I am a member of the triune God, y'know!

And imagine how different his ministry would have been had he done that. He would have needed to really back up those claims with something spectacular as well. (Unless he was going for the instant stoning option). Something really in your face like turning stones to bread and leaping off the top of the temple to be caught by angels. And probably the inevitable follow up would have involved conquering the world.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
And imagine how different his ministry would have been had he done that. He would have needed to really back up those claims with something spectacular as well. (Unless he was going for the instant stoning option). Something really in your face like turning stones to bread and leaping off the top of the temple to be caught by angels. And probably the inevitable follow up would have involved conquering the world.

Or like walking on the water, raising the dead, healing etc? I'm not sure your argument works.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
the long ranger wrote:

On thing I have found illuminating about this thread is to put myself in the shoes of atheists and other unbelievers with regard to Christians. Many of us make all kinds of claims about God - specifically that he (God) is communicating with us and is directly involved in our lives. According to the Lewisian mindset, the unbeliever should think that we're either mad, bad or true witnesses to the triune God.

That's very interesting, as is the whole post it is taken from. I chat with atheists and skeptics quite a lot on t'internet, and in actuality, most of them don't see it like that. The word 'delusion' pops up again, since I suppose this is one of the commonest epithets used, following Prof. Dawkins.

But being deluded doesn't mean mad. I suppose some skeptics do indicate bad, not in a moral sense, but really in a kind of instrumentalist sense, that theists haven't really got a handle on life!

But I'm a (sort of) believer but the trilemma makes me cringe. Funny old world, eh?
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
You assume it was blasphemous because only God can forgive sins and therefore by forgiving sins Jesus was claiming to be divine.

I'm saying it is a possible interpretation that anyone claiming to speak for God outwith of the religious norms would have been described as blasphemous. And furthermore, by saying what he said, maybe Jesus was claiming to speak for God rather to be God.

The first sentence of your second paragraph completely ignores the fact that the passage says WHY they regarded it as blasphemous.

Whether or not they might have misinterpreted Jesus' claim is another thing which I'll come to in a minute. But it's quite clear how THEY interpreted it was: it's blasphemous not because of some other rule you've just made up, it was blasphemous because only God can forgive sins.

And then, the second sentence of your paragraph completely ignores the next bit of the text. Verse 10. Jesus doesn't say "you misunderstand my intent, I'm just the messenger here". HE ASSERTED HIS AUTHORITY TO FORGIVE SINS.

I'm not actually asking you to agree that the Gospel of Mark is an accurate record here. I'm asking you to agree that this is what the Gospel of Mark ACTUALLY SAYS. It says that Jesus said "your sins are forgiven", and that the religious powers who heard this regarded it as blasphemous BECAUSE ONLY GOD CAN FORGIVE SINS. It then records Jesus as ASSERTING HIS AUTHORITY TO FORGIVE SINS.


In other words, I'm not assuming anything. It's all sitting there in the text. And your "possible interpretation" is (it seems to me quite wilfully) ignoring the actual words of the text to create an alternate version that is missing parts of sentences that don't suit you.

[ 06. September 2012, 09:20: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
@orfeo I'll thank you not to shout at me.

quote:
Mark 2 from bible.org

2:1 Now after some days, when he returned to Capernaum, the news spread that he was at home. 2:2 So many gathered that there was no longer any room, not even by the door, and he preached the word to them. 2:3 Some people came bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. 2:4 When they were not able to bring him in because of the crowd, they removed the roof above Jesus. Then, after tearing it out, they lowered the stretcher the paralytic was lying on. 2:5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” 2:6 Now some of the experts in the law were sitting there, turning these things over in their minds: 2:7 “Why does this man speak this way? He is blaspheming! 14 Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 2:8 Now immediately, when Jesus realized in his spirit that they were contemplating such thoughts, he said to them, “Why are you thinking such things in your hearts? 2:9 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up, take your stretcher, and walk’? 2:10 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,” – he said to the paralytic – 2:11 “I tell you, stand up, take your stretcher, and go home.” 2:12 And immediately the man stood up, took his stretcher, and went out in front of them all. They were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

Now, I appreciate that it is offensive to you, but it is possible to read this passage and not believe that Jesus was claiming to be God.

1. Jesus preached.
2. Jesus told the man that his sins were forgiven
3. The teachers of the law were offended because only God can forgive sins
4. Jesus asked them which was easier - forgiving sins or healing the man?
5. Jesus stated that to show he had authority to forgive sins, he would heal the man
6. The people were amazed and praised God.

The implication at 3. is that only God can forgive sins, and that as in 2. Jesus is claiming to forgive them, he must be claiming to be God.

However in 5. Jesus does not claim to be God but claims to have the authority to forgive and to heal, which can be interpreted to mean that he is answering 3. by claiming to be God or that he does, in fact, have the authority from God to do it.

In fact, given 6, the people did not appear to believe that Jesus was God - because they then praise/worship God and not Jesus.

I know you don't like this interpretation. But it is an interpretation which fits the passage.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
Moreover, later in the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, characters are shown both healing and forgiving sins. By the same logic, they're being blasphemous (because only God can forgive sins) and hence they're claiming to be divine.

Clearly they're not, they are just claiming to have authority from God/Jesus to heal and forgive sins.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
And imagine how different his ministry would have been had he done that. He would have needed to really back up those claims with something spectacular as well. (Unless he was going for the instant stoning option). Something really in your face like turning stones to bread and leaping off the top of the temple to be caught by angels. And probably the inevitable follow up would have involved conquering the world.

quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Or like walking on the water, raising the dead, healing etc? I'm not sure your argument works.

It's not really an argument actually. It was simply a speculation based on the temptations of Christ in the desert.

It is interesting that Jesus often told people not to tell anyone about his miracles. Walking on water was only known by the disciples, not by any others. Although raising Lazarus might be a bit showy, the passage might be at pains to indicate Jesus was driven to acting based on his emotions.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
It's not really an argument actually. It was simply a speculation based on the temptations of Christ in the desert.

It is interesting that Jesus often told people not to tell anyone about his miracles. Walking on water was only known by the disciples, not by any others. Although raising Lazarus might be a bit showy, the passage might be at pains to indicate Jesus was driven to acting based on his emotions.

Well feeding the five thousand was pretty obvious and also one of the temptations in the desert. In fact there is a stream of theology that suggests the feeding of the multitude stories were the temptation.

I see what you're saying, but given the text is full of miracles, claiming unambiguously to be divine makes more sense rather than less.
 
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
quote:
mdijon: It is interesting that Jesus often told people not to tell anyone about his miracles. Walking on water was only known by the disciples, not by any others.
I guess they disobeyed Him then, by writing about these miracles in the Gospels [Smile]
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Well feeding the five thousand was pretty obvious and also one of the temptations in the desert.

Possibly, except that doing it by gradual breaking of bread and passing it around is a bit less showy than an alakazam-bread-out-of-a-hat moment. For instance, people have been able to suggest that the bread was in fact already kept by various members of the crowd who were hanging on to it for themselves, and the boy coming forward and Jesus passing the broken pieces around led people to start sharing.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
The implication at 3. is that only God can forgive sins, and that as in 2. Jesus is claiming to forgive them, he must be claiming to be God.

However in 5. Jesus does not claim to be God but claims to have the authority to forgive and to heal, which can be interpreted to mean that he is answering 3. by claiming to be God or that he does, in fact, have the authority from God to do it.

Yes. That is a correct analysis.

That is a different analysis to your previous one, however, which involved Jesus claiming authority to speak for God. He isn't claiming that. He is claiming authority to forgive sins.

Now, whether or not it is correct theology that only God can forgive sins, is a separate question which we can now explore.

[ 06. September 2012, 10:01: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
mdijon: It is interesting that Jesus often told people not to tell anyone about his miracles. Walking on water was only known by the disciples, not by any others.
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I guess they disobeyed Him then, by writing about these miracles in the Gospels [Smile]

I guess it was more like an embargo than a permanent secrecy clause.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
The same, by the way, for the question of whether only God has authority to send prophets.

[x-post: should follow on from my previous post.]

[ 06. September 2012, 10:04: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
I'm very sorry if you think that 'speaking for God' is different to 'having the authority from God to forgive' - but either way, the passage does not necessarily imply that Jesus claimed to be divine, which was the basis of why you introduced it into the conversation in the first place.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
I'm very sorry if you think that 'speaking for God' is different to 'having the authority from God to forgive'

You mean, you don't? You think being a messenger and being the person who actually does things are no different from each other?

I really should try that with my boss and see if he'll agree...

EDIT: I'll also have to go and see whether the language used by God's other messengers - the prophets - is consistent with this. I suspect it isn't, and I suspect that's precisely why we don't say that Jesus was simply another prophet, but you never know.

[ 06. September 2012, 10:20: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
I'm very sorry if you think that 'speaking for God' is different to 'having the authority from God to forgive' - but either way, the passage does not necessarily imply that Jesus claimed to be divine, which was the basis of why you introduced it into the conversation in the first place.

I think that's the view of people like Ehrman, isn't it, that the synoptics can be mainly seen as about someone who is appointed/adopted by God, but who is not necessarily God himself? Sometimes it seems a fine line, and no doubt, confirmation bias plays some role here.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
As for the first, if you mean Matthew 23, that is about some future event, not the past. Or is there another verse that I have missed? (The past tense does occur in the words of jesus in the musical Godspel).

Leo, I've no idea about Godspell, but the Greek of Matthew 23:34 is present tense (apostello), which tense is often (usually?) translated in a continuous sense. Thus "I am sending you" or "I keep on sending you". This is all the more interesting as the future tenses occur in descriptions of what Jesus' enemies would do to his servants the prophets and etc.--surely the most natural habit of speech would have been to say "I will send... and you will kill..."? Unless, of course, Jesus had another emphasis he wished to stress--that in fact he had done this already, was doing it at the moment of speech, and was going to continue doing it into the future. This is further supported by his prophecy that because of this, "On on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar." Both named victims are obviously in the past, and clearly sent by God himself. So the present continuous is a perfectly appropriate tense for God himself to use when he describes an action he has been taking throughout human history, past, present, and future.
Matthew 23 is so blatantly anti-Semitic that the mainstream churches who use the lectionary have omitted all but the first few verses, which is near as you can get to tearing pages out of scripture.

It is likely to have been written at the parting of the ways of church and synagogue and, therefore, reflects the arguments going on between the pharisees and the leaders of the church rather than reflecting the actual words of Jesus.

My point still stands, too, that the tense is not PAST - the person who suggested that it was seemed to be arguing that Jesus identified himself with the God who 'sent' Isaiah, Jeremiah et al. and was this 'claiming to be God'. Thisd is simply not the case.

Also, the chapter seems to be in the style of some sort of oracle, so the 'I' that Jesus speaks about isn't necessarily himself - as one fairly conservative commentary suggests:
quote:
The I here is emphatic: "I am sending," that is, "am about to send." In Luke 11:49 the variation is remarkable: "Therefore also, said the wisdom of God, I will send them," &c. What precisely is meant by "the wisdom of God" here, is somewhat difficult to determine. To us it appears to be simply an announcement of a purpose of the Divine Wisdom, in the high style of ancient prophecy, to send a last set of messengers whom the people would reject, and rejecting, would fill up the cup of their iniquity. But, whereas in Luke it is "I, the Wisdom of God, will send them," in Matthew it is "I, Jesus, am sending them"; language only befitting the one sender of all the prophets, the Lord God of Israel now in the flesh. They are evidently evangelical messengers, but called by the familiar Jewish names of "prophets, wise men, and scribes," whose counterparts were the inspired and gifted servants of the Lord Jesus; for in Luke ( Luke 11:49 ) it is "prophets and apostles."
source here
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Your willingness to read a different text to the one actually there is truly astounding.

It does NOT say that their clique had the capacity to speak for God in the area of forgiving sins - quite the reverse - so the clique has nothing to do with it.

Ahem, that isn't what I meant.

You assume it was blasphemous because only God can forgive sins and therefore by forgiving sins Jesus was claiming to be divine.

I'm saying it is a possible interpretation that anyone claiming to speak for God outwith of the religious norms would have been described as blasphemous. And furthermore, by saying what he said, maybe Jesus was claiming to speak for God rather to be God.

It would be a whole lot easier if Jesus saying in the gospel 'hey you people, I am a member of the triune God, y'know! You haven't heard of it, but I'm a god-man, fully God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father in heaven! Born of a virgin!"

But of course he doesn't, he speaks in riddles.

Indeed - and Jesus referred to the authority of the enigmatic 'Son of Man' not 'Son of God'.

This passage seems to be saying that forgiving sins need not be seen as a divine prerogative, as Peter, later on all the twelve and, in James, all Christians can forgive sins.

My priest regularly forgives me my sins but she doesn't see herself as divine.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
My priest regularly forgives me my sins...

I don't think she does. I think she pronounces your sins to be forgiven by God, but I don't think she sees herself as doing the forgiving.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
We read these texts as people who are already convinced. People who are not already convinced and do not have the weight of doctrine and history do not read the 'obvious' things we see there.

On the contrary. I first read these texts as a complete unbeliever, in fact with a mild prejudice against Christianity and a determination not to be tarred with that brush. It was the text that converted me. I was then about as lacking in Christian knowledge or understanding as it is possible to be in a Western country--and that's pretty possible when it's suburban California.

You talk here as if you were a cradle Christian and in fact still a believer--is that correct? Because if so, it is more than a little ironic that the former unbeliever is arguing my position, and the Christian, yours.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
As for the first, if you mean Matthew 23, that is about some future event, not the past. Or is there another verse that I have missed? (The past tense does occur in the words of jesus in the musical Godspel).

Leo, I've no idea about Godspell, but the Greek of Matthew 23:34 is present tense (apostello), which tense is often (usually?) translated in a continuous sense. Thus "I am sending you" or "I keep on sending you". This is all the more interesting as the future tenses occur in descriptions of what Jesus' enemies would do to his servants the prophets and etc.--surely the most natural habit of speech would have been to say "I will send... and you will kill..."? Unless, of course, Jesus had another emphasis he wished to stress--that in fact he had done this already, was doing it at the moment of speech, and was going to continue doing it into the future. This is further supported by his prophecy that because of this, "On on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar." Both named victims are obviously in the past, and clearly sent by God himself. So the present continuous is a perfectly appropriate tense for God himself to use when he describes an action he has been taking throughout human history, past, present, and future.
Matthew 23 is so blatantly anti-Semitic that the mainstream churches who use the lectionary have omitted all but the first few verses, which is near as you can get to tearing pages out of scripture.

It is likely to have been written at the parting of the ways of church and synagogue and, therefore, reflects the arguments going on between the pharisees and the leaders of the church rather than reflecting the actual words of Jesus.

My point still stands, too, that the tense is not PAST - the person who suggested that it was seemed to be arguing that Jesus identified himself with the God who 'sent' Isaiah, Jeremiah et al. and was this 'claiming to be God'. Thisd is simply not the case.

Also, the chapter seems to be in the style of some sort of oracle, so the 'I' that Jesus speaks about isn't necessarily himself - as one fairly conservative commentary suggests:
quote:
The I here is emphatic: "I am sending," that is, "am about to send." In Luke 11:49 the variation is remarkable: "Therefore also, said the wisdom of God, I will send them," &c. What precisely is meant by "the wisdom of God" here, is somewhat difficult to determine. To us it appears to be simply an announcement of a purpose of the Divine Wisdom, in the high style of ancient prophecy, to send a last set of messengers whom the people would reject, and rejecting, would fill up the cup of their iniquity. But, whereas in Luke it is "I, the Wisdom of God, will send them," in Matthew it is "I, Jesus, am sending them"; language only befitting the one sender of all the prophets, the Lord God of Israel now in the flesh. They are evidently evangelical messengers, but called by the familiar Jewish names of "prophets, wise men, and scribes," whose counterparts were the inspired and gifted servants of the Lord Jesus; for in Luke ( Luke 11:49 ) it is "prophets and apostles."
source here

Leo, this is one of the more scattergun answers I have had the privilege to read. You appear to be claiming that Jesus is not in fact presupposing his own deity by making the statement "I am sending you prophets etc." BECAUSE:
1. It's antisemitic. To which I reply, WTF? and second, if you truly think that's so, take it up with Jesus, not me.
2. Out of thin air you date it long after the life of Christ (which I take leave to doubt, your grounds being so flimsy) and THEN blithely skate over the question of whether it derives from an eyewitness or not. Which question has nothing to do with the date it was finally written down.
3. You ignore everything you've been told about the verb tenses in the Greek (go read it for yourself, why don't you?) and in particular pretend you never saw the point about the subject of the verb ("I") indicating a claim to Godhood regardless of what tense the verb may be in. Come on, there are two posts on the subject. You can't pretend you didn't see them, can you?
4. You then drag in a commentary as if it were the final clinching authority, and waffle on about something called "oracle style" that apparently means people can claim something without actually claiming that thing. (And why should I credit your commentary over the text as it stands? First century (or even second!) beats twentieth any day.

Leo, it isn't working. Just give it up.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
Not 'out of thin air' at all but you don't want pages and pages of commentary and you probably wouldn't accept it anyway.

If commentators and mainline denominations reckon that chapter to be dodgy, that is good enough for me and I still think that Lewis's mad, bad or God thing rests on a fundamental lack of knowledge of biblical scholarship - after all, it wasn't his field.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Leo, go off please and get some education in all these areas you are so blithely dismissing. Then maybe the rest of us will be able to communicate with you. It's hard to even know where to start when you waffle on about mainline denoms to a member of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod, and about antisemitism to someone with immediate family who are Jews. I don't need eggsucking lessons, thank you very much.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Leo, go off please and get some education in all these areas you are so blithely dismissing. Then maybe the rest of us will be able to communicate with you. It's hard to even know where to start when you waffle on about mainline denoms to a member of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod, and about antisemitism to someone with immediate family who are Jews. I don't need eggsucking lessons, thank you very much.

The Lutherans in Missouri don't have thast passage in their lectionary - unless they have recently reintroduced it.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
1. It's antisemitic. To which I reply, WTF? and second, if you truly think that's so, take it up with Jesus, not me.

Why 'take it up with Jesus' when I am convinced he didn't say it?
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Hmmmmmmmm,. Do I allow myself to get suckered back into this? What to do, what to do . . .

Nah. I'll go read Hebrew galley proofs. Much more fun.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
I note how LC gives a very detailed list of problems with leo's post, and leo ignores all of it except two (of the more minor) points. Are you running for president by any chance?

Oh, and ignores a point by mdijon, too, that skewers one of his arguments:

quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
My priest regularly forgives me my sins...

I don't think she does. I think she pronounces your sins to be forgiven by God, but I don't think she sees herself as doing the forgiving.
If she does, RUN.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Dyslexia Rules, KO!

Don't you mean, "Dyslexia Lures?"

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I note how LC gives a very detailed list of problems with leo's post, and leo ignores all of it except two (of the more minor) points. Are you running for president by any chance?

It seems to me to be the other way round - he dismissed what i said without engaging with it.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
It seems to me to be the other way round - he dismissed what i said without engaging with it.

In the words of our Lord, "Go and do likewise..." [Big Grin]

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
It seems to me to be the other way round - he dismissed what i said without engaging with it.

She.

And she did begin by engaging before concluding her time would be best spent elsewhere.

I notice you only made it to the 2nd line of MT's post.
 
Posted by Elephenor (# 4026) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
The Lutherans in Missouri don't have thast passage in their lectionary - unless they have recently reintroduced it.

I'm probably wasting my time saying this, and prolonging a pointless tangent, but the LCMS have a helpful table on their website and in point of fact their lectionary does include Matt 23:34 - on St Stephen's Day. (The CofE schedules it that day too.)

There is life beyond the Principal Sunday Lectionary...
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
Now I'm wondering if the word "I" is anti-Semitic, and if so what a reasonable alternative is.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Elephenor:
I'm probably wasting my time saying this

Not in the sense that I think it worth knowing that that element of the argument was incorrect, so thanks for the research. But if you were hoping to get some acknowledgement from Leo regarding your skewering of that element of his argument then I'm afraid you probably are a bit hopeful.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
I'd be surprised if Matthew 23 was considered particularly antisemitic. In my observation it is verses where the Jews are portrayed as declaring themselves responsible for the death of Jesus that have caused the most problems - particularly Matt 27:25. Whatever the purpose of the original writer of putting in that verse, there is a history of it being used as blood libel to justify pogroms.
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
Perhaps leo will pop along and tell us why that Matt 23 verse is antisemitic. And address some of the other responses to his claims so far. I'd certainly like to hear what he has to say on those issues, if only to see if he's really thought them through for himself. Shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and all that.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Now I'm wondering if the word "I" is anti-Semitic, and if so what a reasonable alternative is.

איך
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
In Hebrew that appears to be the word for 'how', in aramaic 'like, similar to', in Yiddish the first person singular.

Remind me of why we're using words in Yiddish again..
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Well I thought it was funny. Quotes file level, IMO.

[ 07. September 2012, 11:32: Message edited by: mdijon ]
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Elephenor:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
The Lutherans in Missouri don't have thast passage in their lectionary - unless they have recently reintroduced it.

I'm probably wasting my time saying this, and prolonging a pointless tangent, but the LCMS have a helpful table on their website and in point of fact their lectionary does include Matt 23:34 - on St Stephen's Day. (The CofE schedules it that day too.)

Yes, the bit about people being killed, but not any more of the chapter except for the first few verses.

The Lutherans have done less work on antisemitism that, e.g. the RCC
quote:
The Lutheran liturgists and the liturgists within the other Christian denominations who became interested in the Lectionary for Mass and in adopting it with modifications for their own use apparently had no concerns about the expanded use of defamatory anti-Jewish texts (twenty-three in the Lectionary for Mass compared to six in the "historic pericopes") either. In fact, the liturgists from my own Lutheran tradition added ten more viciously and blatantly anti-Jewish selections in the Lutheran three-year lectionary, as can be seen above.
This article from which the above is quoted, details all the passages that have been incliuded or excluded.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Now I'm wondering if the word "I" is anti-Semitic, and if so what a reasonable alternative is.

That seems to be a very silly dismissal of a very serious issue.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Leo, go off please and get some education in all these areas you are so blithely dismissing. Then maybe the rest of us will be able to communicate with you. It's hard to even know where to start when you waffle on about mainline denoms to a member of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod, and about antisemitism to someone with immediate family who are Jews. I don't need eggsucking lessons, thank you very much.

See the link I gave earlier that details how the lutherans have done less work on antisemitism in the Lectionary than other mainline denominations.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
You then drag in a commentary as if it were the final clinching authority, and waffle on about something called "oracle style" that apparently means people can claim something without actually claiming that thing. (And why should I credit your commentary over the text as it stands? First century (or even second!) beats twentieth any day.

Leo, it isn't working. Just give it up.

Since when is 'oracle style waffling?

Prophets used it throughout the Hebrew Scriptures when they said 'Thus says the Lord....' - see, e.g. See Isa 13:1 The oracle concerning Babylon which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw.
Isa 14:28 In the year that King Ahaz died came this oracle:

Also in Isaiah: 19:1, 21:1,11,13,””:1, 23:1, 30:6, Ezek 23:10, Nahum 1:1, Habakuk 1:1, Zech 9:1, 12:1, Malachi 1:1

They spoke on behalf of God, much like Jesus seemed to do - but that does not amount to a claim that they, or Jesus, are divine.

See 'Literary form' in this article.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
2. Out of thin air you date it long after the life of Christ (which I take leave to doubt, your grounds being so flimsy) and THEN blithely skate over the question of whether it derives from an eyewitness or not. Which question has nothing to do with the date it was finally written down.

I don't I know about eye witnesses - can't say it interests me.

But the idea that Matthew's redaction has issues which reflect the time when it was written, rather than the time of Jesus, is hardly 'out of thin air' but had long been accepted. From the Vatican itself, no less, in The dogmatic constitution Dei Verbum, following the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s Instruction Sancta Mater Ecclesia, distinguishes three stages:
quote:
The sacred authors wrote the four Gospels, selecting some things from the many which had been handed on by word of mouth or in writing, reducing some of them to a synthesis, explicating some things in view of the situation of the Churches, and preserving the form of proclamation, but always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus” Hence it cannot be ruled out that some references hostile or less than favourable to the Jews have their historical context in conflicts between the nascent Church and the Jewish community.
Here's a fairly standard, dominican, RC:
quote:
Matthew’s Gospel was written in a Jewish-Christian setting and reflects the early controversies of the church as it tried to settle its relationship to its Jewish roots and observances. It is filled with the controversy it was experiencing.

 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
I admire your determination to get Catholic documents to appear on your side in this debate, but the key phrase there is "always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus" - which is precisely what you deny.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I admire your determination to get Catholic documents to appear on your side in this debate, but the key phrase there is "always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus" - which is precisely what you deny.

You have your idea as to what constitutes a key phrase.

The phrase that is key to answer LambChopped is the acceptance that parts of the gospels were written nup in the light of controversies current at their time of writing rather than at the time of Jesus.

Lambchopped seems unaware that this is mainstream thinking and seems to have thought that i made this up 'out of thin air.'
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
2. Out of thin air you date it long after the life of Christ (which I take leave to doubt, your grounds being so flimsy) and THEN blithely skate over the question of whether it derives from an eyewitness or not. Which question has nothing to do with the date it was finally written down.

I don't I know about eye witnesses - can't say it interests me.
On reflection, what is the implication of eye witnesses? Do you envisage somebody being there listening to Jesus and writing it all down?

If so, then i don't.

There is a development - certainly the oral tradition is the first stratum - some bits, especially the Sermon on the mount, are mostly likely to reflect the actual words of Jesus.

Then there's preaching - a second stratum ion which memories of Jesus are bought out to bear on the particular issues facing a congregation.

Then there is the redaction by the evangelist, adding a further layer in which he relates this to the church for whom he is writing.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Now I'm wondering if the word "I" is anti-Semitic, and if so what a reasonable alternative is.

That seems to be a very silly dismissal of a very serious issue.
Not any more silly than your argument about past versus present tense while ignoring the word "I".

You're tremendously fond of talking about anti-Semitism. You manage to bring it up in all sorts of threads. Threads where it's relevant and threads where it's a total distraction from the fact that you can't actually answer the question at hand.

Guess which one this was?

[ 07. September 2012, 15:21: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Perhaps leo will pop along and tell us why that Matt 23 verse is antisemitic. And address some of the other responses to his claims so far. I'd certainly like to hear what he has to say on those issues, if only to see if he's really thought them through for himself. Shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and all that.

I said that the whole chapter was antisemitic, not merely one particular verse. (The 'verse' was one that LambChopped used to somehow prove Jesus claimed divinity - like the other 3 verses he quoted, this is ob dubious origin)

It is, surely, very obvious that ch. 23 is anti-Semitic.

In other passages where Jesus talks about Judaism, he is engaging in typically pharasaic debating style with fellow pharisees/reformers.

In ch. 23, it is virulent anti-Jewish polemic.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I said that the whole chapter was antisemitic, not merely one particular verse. (The 'verse' was one that LambChopped used to somehow prove Jesus claimed divinity - like the other 3 verses he quoted, this is ob dubious origin)

It is, surely, very obvious that ch. 23 is anti-Semitic.

In other passages where Jesus talks about Judaism, he is engaging in typically pharasaic debating style with fellow pharisees/reformers.

In ch. 23, it is virulent anti-Jewish polemic.

I do wish you'd stop talking shite like this because it is not obvious that this passage is anti-Semitic.

What is obvious is that the Pharisees are being described repeatedly as hypocrites. The last time I looked, there is nowhere in the New Testament which conflates Pharisees with all Jews (which would be plainly ridiculous) and I don't know anyone who thinks that all modern Jews are somehow condemned as hypocrites by this verse (unlike other verses which have been used in this way).
 
Posted by Stejjie (# 13941) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:

In ch. 23, it is virulent anti-Jewish polemic.

But is it? It's anti-Pharaisic (is that a word), certainly. It maybe grossly unfair and a huge caricature of the Pharisees. But surely for it ot be anti-Semitic it would have to be offensive to something intrinsic within the whole of Judaism (eg "all Jews are crooks", "there's a Jewish conspiracy to run the world in their interests" etc). And unless the Pharisees represented the whole of 1c Judaism, then Jesus' reported words can't be aimed that broadly.

Who knows? If Jesus did say those words (which I know you dispute), who's to say there weren't Jews cheering him on?

eta: Cross-posted with the long ranger

[ 07. September 2012, 15:37: Message edited by: Stejjie ]
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Now I'm wondering if the word "I" is anti-Semitic, and if so what a reasonable alternative is.

איך
Do you mean אני?

איך according to wikipedia means "how."
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Not in Yiddish it doesn't. OK, I know, but there you are. It was still a funny line, for those of us without the background to experience the Yiddish vs Hebrew cognitive dissonance.

[ 07. September 2012, 16:37: Message edited by: mdijon ]
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
I see. In Yiddish (which is of course a dialect of German), it corresponds to the German "ich." When I see Hebrew letters, I always think of Hebrew (fancy that), because I've studied Hebrew at University, but not Yiddish.

I remember once in a previous life, when I lived in Chicago (1983-1988), a friend had found what he thought was a Hebrew Bible. He handed it to me and asked me to read some of it. So I flipped to the beginning and read out loud,

"Im Amfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde."

"Tim," I said, "This isn't Hebrew. It's Yiddish."

And other than terms that have passed into colloquial English such as "meshugga" that's my only exposure to Yiddish. [Smile]
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Leo, man you must have had your coffee. Congrats on that. But I'll be resisting engaging with you until you post something that suggests you've read for comprehension first.

Mah fellow linguists, I stewed most mightily over whether to use the Hebrew or the Yiddish (for two whole minutes, even), but finally settled on the Yiddish for fear Leo would identify Biblical Hebrew studies as another antisemitic plot. Led, no doubt, by the Lutherans.

I now wait with bated breath to be told I should have used Ladino.

[ 07. September 2012, 17:12: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I admire your determination to get Catholic documents to appear on your side in this debate, but the key phrase there is "always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus" - which is precisely what you deny.

You have your idea as to what constitutes a key phrase.

The phrase that is key to answer LambChopped is the acceptance that parts of the gospels were written nup in the light of controversies current at their time of writing rather than at the time of Jesus.

Lambchopped seems unaware that this is mainstream thinking and seems to have thought that i made this up 'out of thin air.'

Where do you get that LC seems "unaware" of anything? She questioned whether you had good reason to date that particular discourse as later, other than convenience for your theory. And as LC points out, "later" doesn't mean inauthentic.

As it happens, Matthew 23 is not obviously anti-semitic - there's nothing "obvious" about that at all, as I am just the last in a line of people to point out to you on this thread. And plenty of it is quoted with great regularity in the churches I've been involved in all my life - in fact, it contains some of the most memorable and powerful of Jesus's sayings.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
I don't think anybody is saying what you OUGHT to have done, my dear LC, only that, and why, it confused them.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
I confess to having been totally ignorant that Yiddish was German in Hebrew script. Makes total sense now.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
What is obvious is that the Pharisees are being described repeatedly as hypocrites. The last time I looked, there is nowhere in the New Testament which conflates Pharisees with all Jews (which would be plainly ridiculous) and I don't know anyone who thinks that all modern Jews are somehow condemned as hypocrites by this verse (unlike other verses which have been used in this way).

In other places where Jesus talks of hypocrisy, he uses phrases and terms which also occus in pharisaic literature.

But Mt. 23 is unprecedented.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
You talk here as if you were a cradle Christian and in fact still a believer--is that correct?

Raised by an atheist father, converted in my teens and baptised against my family's wishes.

Believer and licensed lay minister.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
ETA this is to Mousethief:

Oh aye. I didn't take it that way at all. My annoyance at the moment is with only one poster and his not so carefully concealed accusations of antisemitism. Come make your insinuations at our Thanksgiving table, dude. I'll let my brother's family deal with you.

[ 07. September 2012, 17:44: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
ETA further: Mousethief is not the one oozing accusations.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
I confess to having been totally ignorant that Yiddish was German in Hebrew script. Makes total sense now.

Not quite. It is a language of its own, though with lots of German influenceand imports.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
I'd be interested to have a conversation with some rabbis about Christian texts which they find, today, in the 21 century anti-semitic. I have my doubts that they would even mention Matthew 23.

I've read quite a lot about Christian pogroms and theological justifications and I've never heard of anyone using this passage to condemn all Jews.

In a lot of ways, this is a very odd conversation. There are some passages which were commonly used by anti-Semites and racists throughout history. And there is a legitimate scholarly study of a strand of opinion within the New Testament that sort to separate the new religion from the old rather than to continue as a Jewish sect.


But the two things are not necessarily related. Give me some references that suggest that it is, please.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
I confess to having been totally ignorant that Yiddish was German in Hebrew script. Makes total sense now.

Not quite. It is a language of its own, though with lots of German influenceand imports.
I believe it is classed as a Germanic language though, right? A sister to what we now call German (if not a daughter). It's not a Semitic language.
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
What is obvious is that the Pharisees are being described repeatedly as hypocrites. The last time I looked, there is nowhere in the New Testament which conflates Pharisees with all Jews (which would be plainly ridiculous) and I don't know anyone who thinks that all modern Jews are somehow condemned as hypocrites by this verse (unlike other verses which have been used in this way).

In other places where Jesus talks of hypocrisy, he uses phrases and terms which also occus in pharisaic literature.
Supposing for the sake of argument I take your word for that - and?
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
But Mt. 23 is unprecedented.

What's your argument? That this passage is so unlike any other "authenticated" Jesus saying that it cannot be His? Make your case, already.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
OK, a brief google indicates I was wrong. How interesting.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
I'd be interested to have a conversation with some rabbis about Christian texts which they find, today, in the 21 century anti-semitic. I have my doubts that they would even mention Matthew 23.

I have done that - three years, meeting monthly, with the Council of Christians and Jews.

And they single that passage out.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Maybe their congregations might identify less with the pharisees?
 
Posted by Squibs (# 14408) on :
 
Does it strike you as odd, Leo, that people from disparate denominations, and possibly even some outside the fold, don't agree with your anti-Semitic charge in relation to Matthew 23?

You've not backed up your claim, just repeated it.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
On a quick review I make the unanswered points;

a) explanation as to why Matthew 23 is anti-semitic (apart from simply linking to an article)
b) engaging with the fact that the initial assertion that Matthew 23 was left out of the lectionary turns out to be wrong (and not limited to the first few verses either)
c) engaging with the fact that the priest doesn't forgive sins, he/she pronounces them forgiven by God
d) supporting what is meant by "doubtful historicity" of the 4th Gospel beyond simply referring to scholars
e) the tense of Matthew 23:24 (apparently abandoned as an argument now in favour of anti-semitism as a disqualifying criteria for the verse)

So the list of unaddressed issues seems to be lengthening with almost equal pace as the thread.

[ 07. September 2012, 20:13: Message edited by: mdijon ]
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
With reference to your first point, mdijon, some Jews take exception to the words used by Jesus of the Pharisees in Matthew 23. As I said, it is the first I'd heard of it, but appears to be widespread on the web.

The unanswered questions are whether a) these people are just being over sensitive b) this is a widely held view amongst modern Jews c) whether this can have intended to be anti-Semitic given Matthew's gospel is the most Jewish of the four d) and whether it really matters if a group of other people take exception to something directed at a particular ruling group of religious figures 2000 years ago.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
I see thanks. It has to be said Christians have a bad record with regard to anti-semitism, sometimes a lethally bad record, and it is difficult to call Jews hypersensitive if they see it that way.

But it does seem to me that Jesus (Jew) was taking issue with Pharisees rather specifically. (Other Jews).

I am not sure why we would therefore regard the whole chapter with suspicion.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
On a quick review I make the unanswered points;

a) explanation as to why Matthew 23 is anti-semitic (apart from simply linking to an article)
b) engaging with the fact that the initial assertion that Matthew 23 was left out of the lectionary turns out to be wrong (and not limited to the first few verses either)
c) engaging with the fact that the priest doesn't forgive sins, he/she pronounces them forgiven by God
d) supporting what is meant by "doubtful historicity" of the 4th Gospel beyond simply referring to scholars
e) the tense of Matthew 23:24 (apparently abandoned as an argument now in favour of anti-semitism as a disqualifying criteria for the verse)

So the list of unaddressed issues seems to be lengthening with almost equal pace as the thread.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that this passage is mad, bad, and dangerous to use, not because of any logical objection but because Leo simply doesn't like it.

And there are a host of others we could cite from the three permissable gospels (since he refuses to have John either). Should we try that next?
 
Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
With reference to your first point, mdijon, some Jews take exception to the words used by Jesus of the Pharisees in Matthew 23. As I said, it is the first I'd heard of it, but appears to be widespread on the web.

The unanswered questions are whether a) these people are just being over sensitive b) this is a widely held view amongst modern Jews c) whether this can have intended to be anti-Semitic given Matthew's gospel is the most Jewish of the four d) and whether it really matters if a group of other people take exception to something directed at a particular ruling group of religious figures 2000 years ago.

My understanding is the Pharisees were not the leading group amongst the Jews (none could really be called ruling given Rome) that was more the Sadducees who controlled the Temple though certain Pharisees were respected. However the Judaism that survived in the long run after the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, Rabbinic Judaism, claims a continuing heritage from the Pharisees. I have no doubt that Matthew was used against Jews as a group by Christians for most of the centuries between its writing and the present day even if its initial purpose was in house fighting between two Jewish groups.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
Random thought: there are large chunks of the books of Kings and Chronicles that say extremely nasty things about the rulers of Judea.

CLEARLY anti-Semitic!
 
Posted by gorpo (# 17025) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Lewis is totally over-rated, in my opinion.

Jesus could have been mad
Jesus could have been bad
Jesus could have been misquoted
Jesus could have been misunderstood
Jesus could have been having a bad day
Jesus could have been just wrong

That is before even getting to the question of whether the gospels are an accurate record of what he said about himself.

I think it is a pretty unhelpful thing for Lewis to say, really.

All of those hypothesis are logically valid, but if true, they would make Christianity a complete joke. Therefore, it´s unbelieveable to me that someone may honestly believe in any of those hypothesis and at the same time claim to be a christian believer.

If Jesus was misquoted or misunderstood by the gospels, wouldn´t it make sense to just leave the Jesus story alone and admit christianity makes no sense?

I am aware that there are theologians and clergymen who believe those things and at the same time retain their positions in the church simply because they are unable to find another job.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Maybe their congregations might identify less with the pharisees?

Impossible since Judaism post 70 CE is pharasaic.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Squibs:
Does it strike you as odd, Leo, that people from disparate denominations, and possibly even some outside the fold, don't agree with your anti-Semitic charge in relation to Matthew 23?

You've not backed up your claim, just repeated it.

No, because although the leadership of mainline denominations, especially of the RCC, has done a lot of work in this area it hasn't filtered down to the pews and very few Christians are involved in dialogue with Jews and the seminaries hardly touch on it yet - a study of their curricula by the Woolf Institute shows how lamentable this state of affairs is.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
What is obvious is that the Pharisees are being described repeatedly as hypocrites. The last time I looked, there is nowhere in the New Testament which conflates Pharisees with all Jews (which would be plainly ridiculous) and I don't know anyone who thinks that all modern Jews are somehow condemned as hypocrites by this verse (unlike other verses which have been used in this way).

In other places where Jesus talks of hypocrisy, he uses phrases and terms which also occus in pharisaic literature.
Supposing for the sake of argument I take your word for that - and?
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
But Mt. 23 is unprecedented.

What's your argument? That this passage is so unlike any other "authenticated" Jesus saying that it cannot be His? Make your case, already.

Conservatives are unlikely to be convinced in a brief exchange since ingrained attitudes are hard to shift. If this tangent really moved them to seek further understanding, then the following would help:

Preaching without Contempt: Overcoming Unintended Anti-Judaism – M. Salmon (Fortess 2006)

Preaching the Gospels without Blaming the Jews: A Lectionary Commentary – R. Allen & C. Williamson (John Knox 2004)

D. Harrington – The Synoptic Gospels Set Free: Preaching without Anti-Judaism (Paulist Press 2009)

Sharing the Scriptures – P. Cunningham (Stimulus 2003)

Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity - Daniel Boyarin
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
plenty of it is quoted with great regularity in the churches I've been involved in all my life - in fact, it contains some of the most memorable and powerful of Jesus's sayings.

Then your preachers seem not to have been following the guidance laid down by he Vatican.
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
plenty of it is quoted with great regularity in the churches I've been involved in all my life - in fact, it contains some of the most memorable and powerful of Jesus's sayings.

Then your preachers seem not to have been following the guidance laid down by he Vatican.
What? Now you've got to be kidding, right?
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
What's your argument? That this passage is so unlike any other "authenticated" Jesus saying that it cannot be His? Make your case, already.

Conservatives are unlikely to be convinced in a brief exchange since ingrained attitudes are hard to shift. If this tangent really moved them to seek further understanding, then the following would help: [list of books I need to read to understand leo]
I see what you did there, leo - but I want your argument. I repeat: make your case.
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
plenty of it is quoted with great regularity in the churches I've been involved in all my life - in fact, it contains some of the most memorable and powerful of Jesus's sayings.

Then your preachers seem not to have been following the guidance laid down by he Vatican.
Lest you should be serious, this is the very first hit I got on google for "catholic lectionary Matthew 23".
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
With reference to your first point, mdijon, some Jews take exception to the words used by Jesus of the Pharisees in Matthew 23. As I said, it is the first I'd heard of it, but appears to be widespread on the web.

The unanswered questions are whether a) these people are just being over sensitive b) this is a widely held view amongst modern Jews c) whether this can have intended to be anti-Semitic given Matthew's gospel is the most Jewish of the four d) and whether it really matters if a group of other people take exception to something directed at a particular ruling group of religious figures 2000 years ago.

Matthew 23 in my Bible has Jesus saying that the scribes and pharisees, as inheritors of Moses' position, have teaching authority, that the Temple is holy, that the altar on which Jewish offerings were made is also holy, and that the prophets sent to and revered by the Jews were godly. Looking at the personal criticisms of the pharisees without noticing that this is in the context of an endorsement of the Jewish religious tradition is an inept reading of the passage.

It ought to go without saying, of course, that Chrisitians these days simpy do not apply Matthew 23 in an anti-semitic way, and the response on this thread to leo, that it would never occur to most of us to do so, is probably typical and representative of all mainstream churches.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Maybe their congregations might identify less with the pharisees?

Impossible since Judaism post 70 CE is pharasaic.
Ah. I see. Jesus couldn't have said these terribly nasty anti-Semtitic things because the Pharisees weren't a large enough target until 40 years after he died?

Good grief, Leo. Here's another option. He actually said things against the Pharisees, and no-one took it to mean that he was against all Jews in general because at the time he said these things it didn't have that connotation.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Good grief, Leo. Here's another option. He actually said things against the Pharisees, and no-one took it to mean that he was against all Jews in general because at the time he said these things it didn't have that connotation.

Lawks, look at you, child, all puffed up with that logic 'n' stuff, bless your heart.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Whether one refers to a strand of Judaism as Pharasaic, that clearly isn't what Jesus was referring to in his criticism. The word Pharasee refers to the religious leaders Jesus was criticising.

He was criticising a group of religious leaders. (In fact I believe the phrase is teachers of the law and pharasees, or scribes and pharasees). Pharasees does not equal all pharasaic jews.

But Leo knew that.
 
Posted by Stejjie (# 13941) on :
 
Just a couple of thoughts about all this:

1) What Eliab said. To read this as anti-semitic does require a hell of a lot of context-ignoring with all the positive things Jesus said. And even if people do manage to ignore all that and read it as anti-semitic, doesn't mean that they're right to read it that way, or that most people would read it that way.

2) With regards the lectionary debate. Firstly, I had a quick look through my SPCK copy of last year's RCL and found Matthew 23 in amongst the daily (not Sunday) readings. So it's there.

Secondly, I'm really not convinced that taking out difficult, awkward, even offensive passages is a good thing. How does it help to simply ignore them? What's wrong with looking at them together as churches, hearing the voices of those who have difficulties with these passages or who find them offensive, hearing the voices of those who don't (as this is far from a settled debate, as must surely be clear from this thread) and working things out from there.

Taking passages like this out of the lectionary does no one any good at all. It assumes that the only way to read them is in an anti-semitic way, which many of us simply don't accept. It assumes that the difficulties with passages like Matthew 23 cannot be addressed so they must simply be got rid of. It actually gives freer reign to people who will read them as anti-semitic, as there'll be less chance of others being able to address those issues, or challenge them about the way they're reading them.

Taking difficult passages such as these out of the lectionary would not solve the (very real) problem of anti-semitism among Christians. It would just sweep the issues under the carpet and pretend they don't exist.

3) (OK, I lied about the number) Dismissing those who don't accept your view of this passage, leo, as "conservatives", a grouping you don't agree with or approve of, is a pretty low blow. I'm not conservative theologically (not sure what label I'd put on my theology, tbh - not sure it matters), but I agree with all those who struggle to see the anti-semitism in this passage.

But why can't we debate this properly? Why throw around the accusations about those you disagree with? Why not state your case and listen to those of us who disagree with you, without dismissing us as "conservatives", regardless of whether or not we are conservative.

(Oh, and I'm sure C S Lews had something to do with all this...)
 
Posted by gorpo (# 17025) on :
 
In any case, C.S. Lewis owns the argument. You can´t say Jesus was a great moral teacher if you believe he has not said what the gospels attribute to Him. We can´t even know what He taught if that´s the case, or if He even existed. So either you believe Him as Lord or you don´t believe Him at all (liar, mad, myth hypothesis). The hypothesis of Him being only a great teacher and a good person is completely excluded. Liberal christianity is the least coherent of all christian traditions, and it´s no wonder that churches that adopt this type of thought always have shrinking and indifferent membership.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by gorpo:
In any case, C.S. Lewis owns the argument. You can´t say Jesus was a great moral teacher if you believe he has not said what the gospels attribute to Him. We can´t even know what He taught if that´s the case, or if He even existed. So either you believe Him as Lord or you don´t believe Him at all (liar, mad, myth hypothesis). The hypothesis of Him being only a great teacher and a good person is completely excluded. Liberal christianity is the least coherent of all christian traditions, and it´s no wonder that churches that adopt this type of thought always have shrinking and indifferent membership.

Very direct assertion of the stupidity that underpins Lewis -- the view that many people hold cannot be held. Apparently, the reason it is impossible is because many other people don't hold it. The proof that those people are right is that their views of Christ are incompatible with the other people's views. QED.

--Tom Clune

[ 08. September 2012, 18:41: Message edited by: tclune ]
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
plenty of it is quoted with great regularity in the churches I've been involved in all my life - in fact, it contains some of the most memorable and powerful of Jesus's sayings.

Then your preachers seem not to have been following the guidance laid down by he Vatican.
Lest you should be serious, this is the very first hit I got on google for "catholic lectionary Matthew 23".
Uh yes - I just said above that this first bit plus the final few verses om S. Stephen's day were in. The rest is definitely out.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by gorpo:
In any case, C.S. Lewis owns the argument. You can´t say Jesus was a great moral teacher if you believe he has not said what the gospels attribute to Him. We can´t even know what He taught if that´s the case, or if He even existed. So either you believe Him as Lord or you don´t believe Him at all (liar, mad, myth hypothesis). The hypothesis of Him being only a great teacher and a good person is completely excluded. Liberal christianity is the least coherent of all christian traditions, and it´s no wonder that churches that adopt this type of thought always have shrinking and indifferent membership.

Well, I am not a liberal. On antisemitism in the gospels, I follow very much the current RC line.

However, it is not true that liberal churches are declining. I work in one and it is growing (33% increase on last year's electoral roll) - though i wish it was more orthodox!
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Stejjie:
2) With regards the lectionary debate. Firstly, I had a quick look through my SPCK copy of last year's RCL and found Matthew 23 in amongst the daily (not Sunday) readings. So it's there.

SPCK's daily readings are not from the RCL. They are a C of E add on for the daily office and owe nothing to the vast, ecumenical work that went into the RCL. (Which may be why I am bored to tears with reading, yet again, Acts, at Morning Prayer - even though today is Our Lady's birthday - we had that all through Easter, can't we have something more interesting?)

[ 08. September 2012, 19:09: Message edited by: leo ]
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
On antisemitism in the gospels, I follow very much the current RC line.

I'll try to get back to you after supper, leo - but on this thread you absolutely do not represent the "current RC line" on the Gospels. Whether you realise this or not, it's not fair to allow others to think you do.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
plenty of it is quoted with great regularity in the churches I've been involved in all my life - in fact, it contains some of the most memorable and powerful of Jesus's sayings.

Then your preachers seem not to have been following the guidance laid down by he Vatican.
What? Now you've got to be kidding, right?
Have you read the guidelines on antisemitism and correct treatment of Judaism in preaching? Do so and then tell me where I am wrong, instead of always asking me to do your homework.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Maybe their congregations might identify less with the pharisees?

Impossible since Judaism post 70 CE is pharasaic.
Ah. I see. Jesus couldn't have said these terribly nasty anti-Semtitic things because the Pharisees weren't a large enough target until 40 years after he died?

Good grief, Leo. Here's another option. He actually said things against the Pharisees, and no-one took it to mean that he was against all Jews in general because at the time he said these things it didn't have that connotation.

But he was part of the pharisaic movement, for goodness sake.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
It ought to go without saying, of course, that Chrisitians these days simpy do not apply Matthew 23 in an anti-semitic way, and the response on this thread to leo, that it would never occur to most of us to do so, is probably typical and representative of all mainstream churches.

I wish that were true but it isn't. While the mainstream churches are trying very hard, we get people like Mel Gibson and those who rapsodise about him plus the fundy charismatic nondenominational churches. Go to 'sermoncentral.com and Mat 23 to see what rubbish and hate you can find.

[ 08. September 2012, 19:23: Message edited by: leo ]
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
I just looked at the first 5 hits on sermoncentral for Matthew 23 and it was all drawing general conclusions from the rebuke to the pharasees, inviting the listener to examine their own lives, rather than anything specific regarding Jews.

I don't doubt that there is anti-semitism out there and I don't doubt that Jews have good reason to be suspicious of Christians. But I don't think it is rife in preaching on Matthew 23, and I don't think Mel Gibson can be considered normative.

[ 08. September 2012, 19:43: Message edited by: mdijon ]
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
fundy charismatic nondenominational churches

Enough already with the canard that evangelicals are anti-Semitic.

The authoritarian (ie intolerant of ambiguity) mentality produces the syllogism:

Evangelcais are conservative.

Conservatives are anti-Semitic.

Ergo, evangelicals are anti-Semitic.

In all my decades as an evangelical, I have never come across anti-Semitism, and historically, evangelicals have been quite sympathetic toward Jews; to quote just two examples, it was Cromwell who let them back into England in the seventeenth century, and Orde Wingate who helped defend them against genocidal Arabs in the twentieth.

What I have encountered (though by no means amongst all evangelicals) is a mindless Zionism - and I say that as an unapologetic, though by no means uncritical, supporter of Israel.
 
Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:

Good grief, Leo. Here's another option. He actually said things against the Pharisees, and no-one took it to mean that he was against all Jews in general because at the time he said these things it didn't have that connotation.

But he was part of the pharisaic movement, for goodness sake.
The pharasaic movement was not monolithic; Pharisees disagreed among themselves.

Moo
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
For leo, Kaplan C and Moo all at once, this is a conservative evangelical paper on Jesus and the Pharisees that makes many of the same observations that other posters (such as moo, Kaplan, orfeo, mdijon) have here, including that Jesus Himself was a Jew, that he was criticising but one set of Jews (for behavioural failings rather than ideological ones), the pharisees were not monolithic and were self-critical, etc. I'm not taking it as, um, gospel, but it seems reasonable to me.
 
Posted by gorpo (# 17025) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by gorpo:
In any case, C.S. Lewis owns the argument. You can´t say Jesus was a great moral teacher if you believe he has not said what the gospels attribute to Him. We can´t even know what He taught if that´s the case, or if He even existed. So either you believe Him as Lord or you don´t believe Him at all (liar, mad, myth hypothesis). The hypothesis of Him being only a great teacher and a good person is completely excluded. Liberal christianity is the least coherent of all christian traditions, and it´s no wonder that churches that adopt this type of thought always have shrinking and indifferent membership.

Well, I am not a liberal. On antisemitism in the gospels, I follow very much the current RC line.

However, it is not true that liberal churches are declining. I work in one and it is growing (33% increase on last year's electoral roll) - though i wish it was more orthodox!

You´re talking about a local congregation, not a denomination, and this type of statistics is useless when it comes to the bigger picture. Local churches sometimes grow simply because smaller churches around it are closing.

I don´t think it´s a very effective way of bringing people to faith to tell them they cannot trust what the new testament says about Jesus.

By taking Matthew 23 out of your Bible, you´re not only missing one chapter that has a strong and important message, but also telling people that the New Testament is bollocks, which gives them more then a fair reason to walk away from the church thinking your faith is bollocks.

In my entire life I have always heard that passage on sundays and I have been Roman Catholic/Mainline Lutheran, and I never heard anyone sayng it was about the jews. In fact, most people I know seem to apply that to the hypocritical leaders of their own denominations. It´s a lesson about hypocrisy and has nothing to do with jews. Of course, the particular leaders Jesus was adressing happened to be jews, but that could have happened in any other religious context.

Most of all, I don´t think "mainline Christianity" is any sort of authority when it comes to faith. I don´t think churches should censor what the Scriptures say, insetead the Scriptures should censor what the churches say.
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
plenty of it is quoted with great regularity in the churches I've been involved in all my life - in fact, it contains some of the most memorable and powerful of Jesus's sayings.

Then your preachers seem not to have been following the guidance laid down by he Vatican.
What? Now you've got to be kidding, right?
Have you read the guidelines on antisemitism and correct treatment of Judaism in preaching? Do so and then tell me where I am wrong, instead of always asking me to do your homework.
Enlighten me, leo - which guidelines. A link would suffice. In the meantime, I already answered this post of your with this one. If Dei Verbum no longer represents the "current RC take" on Sacred Scripture, I'm sure you'll let me know why not and why you chose to quote it in your defence anyway.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Maybe their congregations might identify less with the pharisees?

Impossible since Judaism post 70 CE is pharasaic.
Ah. I see. Jesus couldn't have said these terribly nasty anti-Semtitic things because the Pharisees weren't a large enough target until 40 years after he died?

Good grief, Leo. Here's another option. He actually said things against the Pharisees, and no-one took it to mean that he was against all Jews in general because at the time he said these things it didn't have that connotation.

But he was part of the pharisaic movement, for goodness sake.
And Christians criticise other Christians all the time, for goodness sake. Where exactly is it that you think you are posting?

Honestly Leo, next you'll be telling me that Luther couldn't have possibly written the 95 Theses.

[ 09. September 2012, 02:13: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Of course not. And he never criticized Germans either.
 
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :
 
Yay! A thread on C.S. Lewis!

...

Oh my. It seems to have veered into a discussion of anti-Semitism.

...

Hmmm. Well, my own two cents here are that in context, with the matters Lewis discussed outside of that immediate passage concerning the accuracy of the texts and so on, then the trichotomy is fine. Obviously with some of those other issues (were Jesus' words mis-reported, and so on) then that would change the trichotomy.

Well, that was fun. On to another thread! It's been so long...
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
I know. Where ya BEEN, dude?
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:

Good grief, Leo. Here's another option. He actually said things against the Pharisees, and no-one took it to mean that he was against all Jews in general because at the time he said these things it didn't have that connotation.

But he was part of the pharisaic movement, for goodness sake.
The pharasaic movement was not monolithic; Pharisees disagreed among themselves.

Moo

I said as much somewhere earlier on this thread.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
For leo, Kaplan C and Moo all at once, this is a conservative evangelical paper on Jesus and the Pharisees that makes many of the same observations that other posters (such as moo, Kaplan, orfeo, mdijon) have here, including that Jesus Himself was a Jew, that he was criticising but one set of Jews (for behavioural failings rather than ideological ones), the pharisees were not monolithic and were self-critical, etc. I'm not taking it as, um, gospel, but it seems reasonable to me.

A very good paper, especially considering where the author is coming from - though because he is a conservative, he cannot say that parts of the chapter don't go back to Jesus - in all other respects, this is an important paper and i intend to put a link to it next time i update my stuff about pharisees.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
plenty of it is quoted with great regularity in the churches I've been involved in all my life - in fact, it contains some of the most memorable and powerful of Jesus's sayings.

Then your preachers seem not to have been following the guidance laid down by he Vatican.
What? Now you've got to be kidding, right?
Have you read the guidelines on antisemitism and correct treatment of Judaism in preaching? Do so and then tell me where I am wrong, instead of always asking me to do your homework.
Enlighten me, leo - which guidelines. A link would suffice. In the meantime, I already answered this post of your with this one. If Dei Verbum no longer represents the "current RC take" on Sacred Scripture, I'm sure you'll let me know why not and why you chose to quote it in your defence anyway.
quote:
‘An explicit rejection should be made of the historically inaccurate notion that Judaism of that time especially that of Pharisaism was a decadent formalism and hypocrisy. Scholars are increasingly aware of the closeness on many central doctrines between Jesus’ teaching and that of the Pharisees. Many Jewish teachers adopted positions similar to those of Jesus on the critical religious and social issues of the time.’
(Jewish Christian relations National Conference of Catholic Bishops US Guidelines for Catholic-Jewish Relations 1985 Revision p. 4)

quote:
Jesus and his teachings should not be portrayed as opposed to or by “the Pharisees” as a group (Notes III, 24). Jesus shared important Pharisaic doctrines (Notes III, 25) that set them apart from other Jewish groups of the time, such as the Sadducees. The Pharisees are not mentioned in accounts of the passion except once in Luke, where Pharisees attempt to warn him of a plot against him by the followers of Herod (Lk 13:31). So, too, did a respected Pharisee, Gamaliel, speak out in a later time before the Sanhedrin to save the lives of the apostles (Acts 5). The Pharisees, therefore, should not be depicted as party to the proceedings against Jesus (Notes III, 24-27).
Guidelines and Suggestions for the Implementation of ‘Nostra Aetate’

quote:
“The sacred authors wrote the four Gospels, selecting some things from the many which had been handed on by word of mouth or in writing, reducing some of them to a synthesis, explicating some things in view of the situation of the Churches, and preserving the form of proclamation, but always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus” Hence it cannot be ruled out that some references hostile or less than favourable to the Jews have their historical context in conflicts between the nascent Church and the Jewish community. All this should be taken into account when preparing catechesis and homilies for the last weeks of Lent and Holy Week
Sancta Mater Ecclesia

quote:
“True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God
source here

quote:
“Jews and Christians share a rich common patrimony that unites them. It is greatly to be desired that prejudice and misunderstanding be gradually eliminated on both sides, in favour of a better understanding of the patrimony they share and to strengthen the links that bind them.”
THE PONTIFICAL BIBLICAL COMMISSION’s THE JEWISH PEOPLE AND THEIR SACRED SCRIPTURES IN THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE

quote:
Judaism in the time of Christ and the Apostles was a complex reality, embracing many different trends, many spiritual, religious, social and cultural values.

- The Old Testament and the Jewish tradition founded upon it must not be set against the New Testament in such a way that the former seems to constitute a religion of only justice, fear and legalism, with no appeal to the love of God and neighbour (cf. Deut 6:5, Lev 19:18, Matt 22:34-40).......“the formula “the Jews sometimes, according to the context, means “the leaders of the Jews’ or “the adversaria of Jesus’, terms which express better the thought of the evangelist and avoid appearing to arraign the Jewish people as such”.
.... “When commenting on biblical texts, emphasis will be laid on the continuity of our faith with that of the earlier Covenant, in the perspective of the promises, without minimizing those elements of Christianity which are original….. With respect to liturgical readings, care will be taken to see that homilies based on them will not distort their meaning, especially when it is a question of passages which seem to show the Jewish people as such in an unfavourable light.”

GUIDELINES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPLEMENTING THE CONCILIAR
DECLARATION "NOSTRA AETATE"
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
[Roll Eyes] Good grief, leo. I'll get back to you when I've got a drink to hand.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
I've scanned up and down and I can't see that bit that says "Don't read Matthew 23".
 
Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on :
 
For those trying to follow along at home...

leo's first cite:Jewish Christian relations National Conference of Catholic Bishops US Guidelines for Catholic-Jewish Relations 1985 Revision

His second attribution is incorrect - the quote isn't from "Guidelines and Suggestions for the Implementation of ‘Nostra Aetate’", it's from here: Criteria for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion (USCCB)

The third cite is just "Holy Mother Church", which isn't very specific; a document commonly brought up by a Google search on "Sancta Mater Ecclesia" is subtitled "Instruction Concerning the Historical Truth of the Gospels" which certainly sounds promising, but it doesn't contain the quote given; rather, it appears to come from Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church

The fourth cite is correct - it's Nostra Aetate.

The fifth cite is pretty much correct, though the sentence actually starts "Dialogue is possible, since Jews and Christians..." It's here: The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible

The last quote is from Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration 'Nostra Aetate', though the pieces are a little mixed up.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Thank you kindly. That seems like an enormous amount of work looking through and organising the material.

I've clicked through the links and can't find anything prescriptive about which chapters of Matthew to avoid preaching on. Did you find anything?

Otherwise it looks like a bit of an information dump/smokescreen effort.

[ 09. September 2012, 18:06: Message edited by: mdijon ]
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
The pharasaic movement was not monolithic; Pharisees disagreed among themselves.

I said as much somewhere earlier on this thread.
You did? Where?
quote:
A very good paper, especially considering where the author is coming from [...] this is an important paper and i intend to put a link to it next time i update my stuff about pharisees.
I'm delighted to hear you say that, though I hold no brief for it myself. But that paper's pretty much a direct refutation of what you said earlier, viz:
quote:
In other passages where Jesus talks about Judaism, he is engaging in typically pharasaic debating style with fellow pharisees/reformers [but] In ch. 23, it is virulent anti-Jewish polemic.
Something's gotta give. And at any rate you spoil it by adding:
quote:
though because he is a conservative, he cannot say that parts of the chapter don't go back to Jesus
Why the blinking flip should he say that? What you mean is, if he were right-minded/honest enough he'd admit that those words obviously aren't Jesus's - which is both shamelessly to beg the question and patronisingly to insult the author.
quote:
I just said above that this first bit plus the final few verses om S. Stephen's day were in. The rest is definitely out.
You didn't, actually. You were talking about the Lutheran lectionary at the time and what you actuually said was "the first few verses" - what I pointed out as being in the RCC lectionary was damn-near a third of the whole chapter. And those first 12 verses contain some pretty strong stuff against the pharisees. And anyway, you said:
quote:
the whole chapter [is] antisemitic, not merely one particular verse.
So by your reckoning of the RC attitude towards Matt. 23, the whole chapter ought to be omitted from the RC lectionary. Which it clearly isn't.

Dave W's got more patience than me, and thanks to him for ploughing through your citations as to why the Catholic Church opposes the reading of or preaching on Matt. 23 - but as mdijon has already pointed out, those citations say nothing whatsoever about that, except a general exhortation not to distort such texts when preaching about them.

The fact is, as I pointed out to your upthread when you quoted another Catholic document (indeed, I used the very words of the document you quoted), that the Catholic teaching on the Gospels remains that they relate the events of Our Lord's life and teaching "always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus". Since you explicitly deny this teaching, please don't drag the Catholic Church in to support your argument.
 
Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on :
 
Only one of the six documents seems to shed light on the RCC view of Mt 23:
The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible - has an entire section on Jews in Matthew which includes several mentions of Mt 23, which is characterized in part as follows:
quote:
Jesus many times confronts the opposition of the scribes and Pharisees, and finally responds by a vigorous counter-offensive (23:2-7,13-36) where the phrase “Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” occurs six times. This invective certainly reflects, in part at least, the situation of Matthew's community. The redactional context is that of two groups living in close contact with one another: Jewish Christians, convinced that they belong to authentic Judaism, and those Jews who do not believe in Christ Jesus, considered by Christians to be unfaithful to their Jewish vocation in their docility to blind and hypocritical guides.
There's no condemnation of the passage as "anti-semitic", nor any suggestion that it should be singled out as somehow inauthentic, and the last part of the document ("Pastoral Orientations") reiterates:
quote:
In the New Testament, the reproaches addressed to Jews are not as frequent or as virulent as the accusations against Jews in the Law and the Prophets. Therefore, they no longer serve as a basis for anti-Jewish sentiment. To use them for this purpose is contrary to the whole tenor of the New Testament. Real anti-Jewish feeling, that is, an attitude of contempt, hostility and persecution of the Jews as Jews, is not found in any New Testament text and is incompatible with its teaching. What is found are reproaches addressed to certain categories of Jews for religious reasons, as well as polemical texts to defend the Christian apostolate against Jews who oppose it.
while also warning against the misuse of such polemic:
quote:
But it must be admitted that many of these passages are capable of providing a pretext for anti-Jewish sentiment and have in fact been used in this way. To avoid mistakes of this kind, it must be kept in mind that the New Testament polemical texts, even those expressed in general terms, have to do with concrete historical contexts and are never meant to be applied to Jews of all times and places merely because they are Jews.

 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
Well thank you again. It all sounds very reassuring and sensible to me.
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
I second that, Dave - much appreciated. It's getting to the stage where if leo were to state that Rome is a city in the Italian peninsula I'd be reaching for my atlas just to check - and I've been there.

A plea to leo: please, leo, check your citations before making claims about them and posting them here as evidence for your own theories. It would save folk so much time and effort and save you some face-egg.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Thank you kindly. That seems like an enormous amount of work looking through and organising the material.

I've clicked through the links and can't find anything prescriptive about which chapters of Matthew to avoid preaching on. Did you find anything?

Otherwise it looks like a bit of an information dump/smokescreen effort.

It was response to Chesterbelloc about using the passage, which is largely omitted from the lectionary - to choose to preach outside the lectionary is likely to inflame the very thing which the RCC guidelines seek to diffuse.

It seems to me, also that Chesterbelloc and some others pay close attention to the words of these documents and not to their spirit.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
So the words of these documents don't say "don't preach from Matthew 23" but their spirit does?

The problem with the "spirit" of a document is that it's undetectable, and liable to be interpreted differently by different people (as witness the Scriptures themselves). As opposed to the words, which are right there, eminently readable.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
I'm sorry, I don't understand leo - are you saying that the guidelines tell RCC preachers that there are passages in the New Testament that they should not be preaching upon (either directly or inferred)?
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
A very good paper, especially considering where the author is coming from - though because he is a conservative, he cannot say that parts of the chapter don't go back to Jesus

What evidence is there that parts of it don't?

If you read a reported speech in which the speaker criticises a group of muslims, and in the course of doing so makes clear that he thinks (a) Muhammed was a prophet of great authority; (b) Mecca is a very holy place; (c) Islamic worship is sacred; (d) the Quran was sent by God; then you would hardly call that "virulent anti-Islamic polemic". If you were then told that the person said to be speaking was a muslim known to have had public disagreements with the muslims being criticised, you would think that that explanation covered all the relevant facts. There would be no particular reason to doubt it on the grounds of content.

But here we have a speech in which the speaker criticises a group of Jews, while saying that (a) Moses was a prophet of great authority; (b) the Temple is a very holy place; (c) Jewish worship is sacred; and (d) the prophets of Israel were sent by God. The whole thing purports to be the words of a Jew arguing with Jews, and for some reason you think it is obviously anti-semitic and that Jesus couldn't have said it.

I can see some sort of case for saying that Jesus could say this stuff because he was a Jew, but as most of us aren't, we should be more wary, lest it encourage prejudice and the suspicion of prejudice, but no case for saying that this is an especially dubious attribution of words to Jesus. And you would need it to be very dubious indeed for it to knock out by association the personal claims of Jesus found in close proximity, which is what you were arguing. I don't see what you are basing any of this on.

[ 10. September 2012, 15:22: Message edited by: Eliab ]
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I've clicked through the links and can't find anything prescriptive about which chapters of Matthew to avoid preaching on. Did you find anything? Otherwise it looks like a bit of an information dump/smokescreen effort.

It was response to Chesterbelloc about using the passage, which is largely omitted from the lectionary
Except that it isn't omitted from the lectionary at all. A third of the chapter including some of the strongest anti-pharisee stuff is scheduled to be read in churches all over the world for the 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time in Year A (i.e., at least once every three years).
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
to choose to preach outside the lectionary is likely to inflame the very thing which the RCC guidelines seek to diffuse.

This is pure bluster without substance.
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
It seems to me, also that Chesterbelloc and some others pay close attention to the words of these documents and not to their spirit.

And what is that supposed to mean? Whose interpretation of "the spirit"? Yours? A ban on reading or preaching from Matt 23 is what you implied, then you modified that to a guideline discouraging it and now you say the "spirit" of a guideline that says no such thing either must be appealed to.

Give over, leo. People can read for themselves.

[ 10. September 2012, 18:39: Message edited by: Chesterbelloc ]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
largely omitted

One of these words renders the other largely illusory.
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
It seems to me, also that Chesterbelloc and some others pay close attention to the words of these documents and not to their spirit.

<giggle.>

Thanks. You've put me in a much better mood.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
largely omitted

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
One of these words renders the other largely illusory.

Two thirds of the chapter is largely absent. Proving that they don't include it. Mostly.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
I suppose that means that leo roughly has a point.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
More the spirit of a point than an actual point per se.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
Agreed.

More or less.
 
Posted by Chesterbelloc (# 3128) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
largely omitted

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
One of these words renders the other largely illusory.

Two thirds of the chapter is largely absent.

Whereas the other third of it is prescribed, despite "the whole chapter" being anti-semitic (according to leo). How odd, eh?
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Whereas the other third of it is prescribed, despite "the whole chapter" being anti-semitic (according to leo). How odd, eh?

Something is odd, yes.
 


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