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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Do you believe in a "Fall"?
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
I know you don't think much of Paul, but what do you suppose he meant when he said "sin sprang to life, and I died" (Rom 7:9)?
Even if you think he was just ploughing his own furrow and the fact we still have his writings and debate them is a historical accident, what do you think he was referring to?
Knowing it's broken? Does Romans 7 as a whole not resonate with you at all? I not infrequently get people describing their life to me almost word for word in terms of Romans 7; it's fun watching their eyes bulge out of their sockets when I read them the passage and show them Paul felt exactly the same way.
As to "relationship with God", I certainly didn't use the word "intimate". I mean that God indwells believers with his Spirit - the essential component of the New Covenant as prophesied in Jeremiah - and by degrees, enables them to gain a greater understanding of who he is, what is and is not in his character, and in doing so gradually changes them also.
"Relationship" is a way of saying there's something more going on than book learning, if you prefer.
John's gospel records Jesus talking in terms of eternal life as being about knowing God, and seems to frame that in terms of something other than intellectual knowledge.
[ 20. August 2016, 21:11: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I know you don't think much of Paul, but what do you suppose he meant when he said "sin sprang to life, and I died" (Rom 7:9)?
Even if you think he was just ploughing his own furrow and the fact we still have his writings and debate them is a historical accident, what do you think he was referring to?
Knowing it's broken? Does Romans 7 as a whole not resonate with you at all? I not infrequently get people describing their life to me almost word for word in terms of Romans 7; it's fun watching their eyes bulge out of their sockets when I read them the passage and show them Paul felt exactly the same way.
As to "relationship with God", I certainly didn't use the word "intimate". I mean that God indwells believers with his Spirit - the essential component of the New Covenant as prophesied in Jeremiah - and by degrees, enables them to gain a greater understanding of who he is, what is and is not in his character, and in doing so gradually changes them also.
"Relationship" is a way of saying there's something more going on than book learning, if you prefer.
John's gospel records Jesus talking in terms of eternal life as being about knowing God, and seems to frame that in terms of something other than intellectual knowledge.
I think you have to read the verse in context, ignorance of sin apart from the law. 'I was once alive apart from the law' is paralleled with 'when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.' Humans were clearly alive physically and 'spiritually' before the giving of the Law at Sinai, the death of which he speaks afterwards is also physical, IMO. The following verse, literally translated reads something like 'and the commandment that is [to lead into] life is being discovered by me [to lead] to death.' It is notoriously obscure, the Greek extremely convoluted. And I cannot see why Paul would not envisage a very physical kind of death alongside 'the death to righteousness' of which he speaks.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
Yes, Rm 7 speaks to me, and I actually do think very highly of St Paul; I merely disagree that the soteriology he laid out can still be a firm foundation for contemporary Christianity.
If by relationship one simply means the indwelling of God's Spirit, why call it a relationship at all?
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
And I cannot see why Paul would not envisage a very physical kind of death alongside 'the death to righteousness' of which he speaks.
I'm not sure where you're getting Paul speaking of being "dead to righteousness" from. But that aside, you seem to be acknowledging that not all Paul's talk of death meant physical death, or primarily physical death.
In Colossians and Ephesians he talks about us being "dead in our sins" and being made "alive in Christ", and is obviously not referring to physical death.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
I think I too need to apologise about the tone of some of my remarks. It's just that all this high-minded talk by many Christians of having a 'personal' relationship with God, being 'alive in the Sprit,' 'spiritual death,' Jesus being enough and what have you often leaves me feeling like I'm no Christian at all.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
[x-post]
quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Yes, Rm 7 speaks to me, and I actually do think very highly of St Paul; I merely disagree that the soteriology he laid out can still be a firm foundation for contemporary Christianity.
My apologies for casting aspersions on your view of Paul.
The question then becomes, if his soteriology is dodgy, what if anything are we to make of still having his writings as part of our canon? Which is far beyond the scope of this thread, indeed it's more or less where the thread that spawned this thread started.
quote:
If by relationship one simply means the indwelling of God's Spirit, why call it a relationship at all?
The New Covenant promise in Jeremiah talks of individuals "knowing" God, as does Jesus. I think "relationship" is a fair enough term.
But if you prefer, to get back to the "Fall", we could say that what is depicted is a time when God's Spirit ceased to dwell in humankind as it had before. A bit like when the Spirit left the Temple, as seen in Ezekiel.
[ETA: mutual apologies are good, especially on a Sunday morning ![[Angel]](graemlins/angel.gif) I really appreciate the spirit in which you're engaging with me on this. There's a lot of mutual incomprehension to get through, and getting through it is really helpful even if we don't end up agreeing]
[ETA 2: and assuming you're ministering today, all the best in doing so. I hope you have a good enough time to end up saying "yes" to the final MW question, "did this service make you feel glad to be a Christian?". I am often pleasantly surprised to find myself answering in the affirmative against my initial misgivings!]
[ 21. August 2016, 06:44: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
Yes, I've got three services and a baptism lined up today, so I'll be too brief: should God withdraw the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life, humankind would simply die and ceae to be held into being.
Furthermore it seems to me that to restrain the debate thus to the Letter to the Romans is dangerous. Paul often speaks of 'I' dying, but sometimes not as a good thing: 'In fact it is no longer I that does it, but sin in me.' as well as 't'is no longer I who lives but Christ in me.' I am quite unsure as to how figuratively we are meant to read this. When he talks about the flesh/Spirit opposition however, he sounds seriously literal to me: to live according to the flesh has carnal death as an end, not just a broken relationship, whereas to live according tot he promptings of God's Spirit leads to eternal life in a 'Spirit' body (soma psychikos)... and the flesh is doomed because it is inherited: biologically, chronologically and ontologically, from Adam's.
I've read a lot of the new (is it really new?) Evangelical scholarship trying to steer this kind of soteriology away from literalism, but I'm really not sold.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
How do you interpret passages like 'wretched man that I am: I see in my own limbs another law at war with the spirit's, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my limbs. Wretched man! Who will rescue me from this body of death?... with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.'
'for if you live according to the flesh, you will die (in the flesh) but if you live according to the Spirit and by it put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.'
Have you tried reading Doug Campbell's huge book on this matter?
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
should God withdraw the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life, humankind would simply die and ceae to be held into being.
I think there's room for a distinction between 'common grace' by which God keeps the current order of things going, and the indwelling of the Spirit in a believer's life making them "alive to Christ".
I'd venture to suggest this line of thinking can be found in the gospels, particularly John, as well as in the epistles. John has Jesus coming not to further condemn an already condemned world but to save it, which suggests it has something to be saved from.
quote:
't'is no longer I who lives but Christ in me.'
I don't have the time or the scholarship to look into this in depth, but since I am currently preaching through Galatians, I was surprised to notice that this well-known and oft-quoted phrase is preceded in the Greek (at least in the interlinear I checked) by the words "I live" (putting paid to all those "let go and let God" types).
In short, we live amid the tension of the "now" and the "not yet" in which the working out of our salvation is something ongoing and we struggle against relapsing into a former view of ourselves and how to please God. quote:
I am quite unsure as to how figuratively we are meant to read this.
I'm quite unsure too. Controversy rages over just who "I" is in Romans 7 and some people even think it refers to a state before being in Christ. All I can say is that it seems to mirror lots of believers' experience. quote:
When he talks about the flesh/Spirit opposition however, he sounds seriously literal to me: to live according to the flesh has carnal death as an end, not just a broken relationship
Understanding just what Paul meant by "the flesh" is another vexed question. I have seen where a belief that it means just our bodies can end up (in short, a belief that there are no sins of the intellect) and prefer to see it in terms of "our former identity without Christ".
On the latter basis "the flesh is doomed" would mean "life without being made alive in Christ by the Spirit is doomed" and I don't think it's that clear that biological or chronological inheritance from Adam really underpins Paul's arguments.
Whatever "the flesh" means, though, my contention is that having to cope with its doomedness (?) is not an original component of the human condition but a flaw that was introduced through a breaking-off of relations with God; that humanity once existed in a beter condition.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I think there's room for a distinction between 'common grace' by which God keeps the current order of things going, and the indwelling of the Spirit in a believer's life making them "alive to Christ".
Not to pick on you personally but I think it is interesting that one argument against the Real Presence sometimes given by memorialists is that God is not (or even "cannot be") present in some places more than in others. This statement of yours would tell against that in a very big way. I wonder how many people hold your view yet deny the R.P. in the mode I describe? Very big "hmmmmm."
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
I see 3 options to account for the imperfectness of life:
- God is responsible for all (except the choices we make). Carnivorous lions were intended - if only as a way to evolve a perfect antelope
- God and the devil share responsibility for Creation. God intended vegetarian lions but somehow the devil corrupted the laws of physics so that they came out carnivorous
- We are responsible for the badness. Lions were actually vegetarian until we came along and started making bad choices.
I don't believe in a Fall - a before and an after with humankind at the trigger point.
The idea that at some point in human prehistory the laws of physics all changed in response to some human act seems to me the same sort of philosophical dead-end as the Matrix. Or the idea that the universe was created with fake memories and a fossil record of animals that never were. The proposition contains the root of its own immunity to evidence.
So I'm left with the choice between options 1 and 2. God as less-than-fully good or less-than-fully powerful.
Do you worship goodness or worship power?
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Not to pick on you personally but I think it is interesting that one argument against the Real Presence sometimes given by memorialists is that God is not (or even "cannot be") present in some places more than in others. This statement of yours would tell against that in a very big way. I wonder how many people hold your view yet deny the R.P. in the mode I describe? Very big "hmmmmm."
That's the first time I've heard such a thing. The bread and wine aside, how would proponents of such a thing explain Jesus' promise to be "there" where two or three are gathered in his name?
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
The idea that at some point in human prehistory the laws of physics all changed in response to some human act seems to me the same sort of philosophical dead-end as the Matrix.
Can you point to anyone on this thread espousing such a view?
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
That's the first time I've heard such a thing. The bread and wine aside, how would proponents of such a thing explain Jesus' promise to be "there" where two or three are gathered in his name?
An excellent question, and one which I will use as ammunition next time I talk with these people.
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Not to pick on you personally but I think it is interesting that one argument against the Real Presence sometimes given by memorialists is that God is not (or even "cannot be") present in some places more than in others. This statement of yours would tell against that in a very big way. I wonder how many people hold your view yet deny the R.P. in the mode I describe? Very big "hmmmmm."
That's the first time I've heard such a thing. The bread and wine aside, how would proponents of such a thing explain Jesus' promise to be "there" where two or three are gathered in his name?
Jesus isn't 'there' in the bread and wine even in the most orthodox forms of RC speculation on the matter, 'space' is an accident, all the accidents of the bread and wine remain even when the substance changes at consecration. Not that I believe it, but Christ is not 'spatially present' in the elements.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
So what does "real presence" mean?
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So what does "real presence" mean?
It's an unfortunate way of saying transubstantiation, but if by 'real' one means existing with any of the accidents that any thing that 'beg in this world possesses: quantity, quality, relation, habitus, time, location, situation (or position), action, and passion... then, at least in RC terms, it's rank heresy.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Not to pick on you personally but I think it is interesting that one argument against the Real Presence sometimes given by memorialists is that God is not (or even "cannot be") present in some places more than in others. This statement of yours would tell against that in a very big way. I wonder how many people hold your view yet deny the R.P. in the mode I describe? Very big "hmmmmm."
That's the first time I've heard such a thing. The bread and wine aside, how would proponents of such a thing explain Jesus' promise to be "there" where two or three are gathered in his name?
figuratively... I don't believe in ghosts. Unless you mean some ultimate beatific state in which/whom 'God will be all in all' a la St Paul, again.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
So do NO substances have location, or only THIS substance?
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So do NO substances have location, or only THIS substance?
Only the divine substance/being, Mouse. That's precisely the point: when the host in the ciborium passes by, it's not God himself passing by... and bleeding hosts etc. are really dodgy.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
So how can it be Christ's body if it isn't Christ? ![[Help]](graemlins/help.gif)
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
That's the first time I've heard such a thing. The bread and wine aside, how would proponents of such a thing explain Jesus' promise to be "there" where two or three are gathered in his name?
An excellent question, and one which I will use as ammunition next time I talk with these people.
I must stay out of this BUT ... where two or three are gathered in His name, there He is. That's it. In the two or three. Nothing 'more', whatever that could be. Where two or three are gathered in His name, that IS His presence. That IS Him. A configuration of Him. Not a locus where He turns up 'more', as well.
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Love wins
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
So when one person is there, Christ isn't, but as soon as the second person shows up, so does Christ. There. Where the two are. Where He wasn't before, either with the one person, or with the other person, until they meet up.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So how can it be Christ's body if it isn't Christ?
Don't know if this was directed at me. In scholastic RC terms: it is Christ's body, but we must not think of it as moving from place to place, or being circumscribed, or having a certain weight, a certain taste, of being different from anything or like anything... all the accidents remain those of the bread and wine. It makes some sort of sense: unless we are to believe that there's 'a bit of' Jesus in the chalice and 'another bit' in the ciborium, and yet a third 'bit' staying in the aumbry, and another in the church next door. Locality is an accident in the created world.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So when one person is there, Christ isn't, but as soon as the second person shows up, so does Christ. There. Where the two are. Where He wasn't before, either with the one person, or with the other person, until they meet up.
nah, it's a figure of speech.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So when one person is there, Christ isn't, but as soon as the second person shows up, so does Christ. There. Where the two are. Where He wasn't before, either with the one person, or with the other person, until they meet up.
What perfect affirmation of a disjunct.
[ 22. August 2016, 08:37: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
And of course no attention is EVER paid in this universal declaration of magic to context.
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Love wins
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
God might not always be clear, but I don't think he goes out of his way to obfuscate.
Luke 8:10
10 He said, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that,
“‘though seeing, they may not see;
though hearing, they may not understand.’
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So when one person is there, Christ isn't, but as soon as the second person shows up, so does Christ. There. Where the two are. Where He wasn't before, either with the one person, or with the other person, until they meet up.
There is no 'showing up' for me. No invisible theophany. Even if it's there. It's something I'm invincibly ignorant of. And I'm happy for everyone for whom it is an article of faith which invalidates mine. That doesn't invalidate theirs. It's entirely and sufficiently metaphoric for me, going with joesaphat. As in communion, which I nonetheless appreciate more than ever. I walk with God (make up that metanarrative) BEST when I'm out walking alone, I feel. Jesus seemed to do the same. And still not very well, me. What He thinks about it He doesn't say. Although Pete Green knew (Oh) Well!
Two's company: My wife and I used to walk together and take turns praying (she has Achilles tendinopathy now). We still do it when driving far enough. It's an interesting exercise as we explore at the time. Serial monologues. Diatribes. Lectures. Shopping lists. The artificiality, the strain of it is ... obvious and explored. So we loop back to gratitude. 'Praise'. The tension is unmanageable when one tries to pray whilst writing this. Two's company.
So, to context, a brother errs. You know does something loveless that causes harm, that really needs apology, rectification, atonement, restitution. He won't hear you. Take an honest broker or two (TWO or THREE in total, notice that?) from the fellowship, a witness or two. Whatever follows, done in love, all the way up to the top, whatever is AGREED in love, ASKED in love, by TWO or THREE, is bound or loosed in heaven. Is done by our Father. A done deal. Sanctioned. "Yeah, go for it guys, you have My blessing." And yes that can be extrapolated from nicely to all that Christians socially engage in. Or alone. In love. In Christ is yes after all. As Jesus nicely allows for in the context.
If it has to mean mandatory mysterious things for others, God bless them and I'm happy to agree to walk together with them if they can with me.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So when one person is there, Christ isn't, but as soon as the second person shows up, so does Christ. There. Where the two are. Where He wasn't before, either with the one person, or with the other person, until they meet up.
nah, it's a figure of speech.
I think it's more than a figure of speech. I think that at least part of what he was saying was that when at least two or three people are gathered in his name, the Body of Christ is constituted in a tangible way.
That said, I've frequently heard Jesus's "where two or three are gathered" statement described as his take/modification of the Jewish minyan.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So when one person is there, Christ isn't, but as soon as the second person shows up, so does Christ. There. Where the two are. Where He wasn't before, either with the one person, or with the other person, until they meet up.
nah, it's a figure of speech.
A figure of speech that means.... what?
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
If it has to mean mandatory mysterious things for others, God bless them and I'm happy to agree to walk together with them if they can with me.
Now that I can sign up to. Including the mandatory mysterious things you appear to hold to from where I'm sitting.
It's my observation that the Bible "works" as a key means of God imparting his Word to us by his Spirit, for a huge range of interpretative approaches.
I meet people who read the Bible at such a fundamentalist/naive level to my mind that I have a job keeping myself from laughing out loud, yet it seems to transform their lives and produce the fruit of the Spirit. I see the same thing in people whose theology seems so liberal or deconstructed to me that it has me climbing the walls.
I think the real challenge, embodied in Martin's comment above, is to not only to recognise ourselves in one of these places and perhaps different places over time, but also recognise the Spirit at work through other interpretative frameworks that seem woolly or childish to us. "Who are you to judge another man's servant?".
As a regular preacher to a wide constituency of people I find it a real challenge to preach with integrity, reflecting my convictions, in a way that will edify all my listeners rather than violate their consciences or cause them to stumble, no matter where they are on this particular map.
And I think similar things apply to the understanding of Scripture across different ages.
For my part, I still think there was a time "in the beginning" when things were as God designed them in a way that they aren't now. I can't get past that without the narrative breaking for me. For now.
But I'm happy to be walking, albeit virtually, with those who've interacted with me here.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Thank you, brother. WHAT?! What "mandatory mysterious things"?! I hold to none but those we share creedally in and around Jesus. Explain yourself Sir! If you wouldn't mind. Awfully.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
You say things that are wholly mysterious to me, and seem to hold to them pretty mandatorily as far as you're concerned (well, until you repent ![[Biased]](wink.gif) ). Even post-modernists can be hidebound, you know
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Bugger. Fair enough. Hoist with muh own compulsively gnomic petard.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So when one person is there, Christ isn't, but as soon as the second person shows up, so does Christ. There. Where the two are. Where He wasn't before, either with the one person, or with the other person, until they meet up.
nah, it's a figure of speech.
A figure of speech that means.... what?
Sometimes, I wonder if it's not the Christian version of the minyan: you don't need ten righteous Jews to have a synagogue... or maybe that God honours what we agree on.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
Posts: 418 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2015
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
How widespread is this interpretation? Can you point me to a theologian or two that believes this? The more ancient the better, of course.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
I'm intrigued too.
Nick Tamen above: I've frequently heard Jesus's "where two or three are gathered" statement described as his take/modification of the Jewish minyan.
I've never heard this, but it fits Jesus' Jewishness far better than Greco-Roman literalism-mysticism.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
How widespread is this interpretation? Can you point me to a theologian or two that believes this? The more ancient the better, of course.
I cannot, it's not widespread, it's my own.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
Posts: 418 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2015
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Joesaphat:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
How widespread is this interpretation? Can you point me to a theologian or two that believes this? The more ancient the better, of course.
I cannot, it's not widespread, it's my own.
Your own and others' own. As I said, I've heard it more than once over the last 20 or 30 years.
I can't say how widespread it is, but I'll see if I can find some sources.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Joesaphat, I hope you're sitting down, because I'm pretty sure I've heard this at least once before, too.
(One of the reasons there is basically never a Jewish religious service in my prison is because there are never ten Jewish inmates...)
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Hmmmmm. Been composing a deconstruction of Romans 7. Suffice it to say I find it VERY easy to resonate with Paul. Always have. Becoming a raving postmodern liberal CANNOT change that. Sin, rebellion, rabid ruinous lust are REAL. Are human. Mine. We are at our most obviously violent when two years old. My earliest memory is of just having bitten my baby sister at that age. I don't remember biting her. But HAVING bitten her and the FEAR and guilt of it all. We just get subtler after that.
The Fall is the human condition. Exacerbated by social evolution: greater and greater opportunity for evil with less and less excuse.
And The Fall is personal. MY human condition. It has NOTHING to do with myths. I don't need ANY myths, including the nonetheless troubling ones of supernatural sentient evil beings, of a fallen angelic realm, to BE guilty. To explain my sin.
The shock of the Christ event, conception-life-death-resurrection DOES cut through that for me. Is my way out of CONCURRENT meaningless unfulfillable desire, of brokenness, of loss, of suffering, of feckless evil ending in oblivion. Gives me hope. By the Spirit I accept, but have no idea how or why me.
I'd rather Jesus HADN'T died, hadn't HAD to die, not to satisfy some arbitrary divine justice that WE impute and He HAD to believe, but to get my attention, but nothing else would.
My utter disbelief of a mythical fall, of an impossible failure to rise (Fulke Greville's 'Created sick, commanded to be sound' comes to mind) doesn't mean I'm not a fallen, failed (successful?!), miserable sinner saved by Jesus' blood.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
I'm intrigued too.
Nick Tamen above: I've frequently heard Jesus's "where two or three are gathered" statement described as his take/modification of the Jewish minyan.
I've never heard this, but it fits Jesus' Jewishness far better than Greco-Roman literalism-mysticism.
Martin, I'm not sure why you'd suspect there was no mysticism involved in Jesus's Jewishness. Judaism had its own beliefs about God's presence in the temple, in the gathered congregation and elsewhere.
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
And The Fall is personal. MY human condition. It has NOTHING to do with myths. I don't need ANY myths . . . .
But the human condition, individual and universal, is precisely precisely the matter of myth. The issue too often is that people confuse a myth bring factual with a myth bring true.
[ 23. August 2016, 22:27: Message edited by: Nick Tamen ]
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
Sorry for the double "precisely."
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Joesaphat, I hope you're sitting down, because I'm pretty sure I've heard this at least once before, too.
(One of the reasons there is basically never a Jewish religious service in my prison is because there are never ten Jewish inmates...)
Oh no, I'd be delighted. I like not to feel like an oddball. Even though the passage was probably devised to allow early Christians to exist and worship apart from the mainstream. I've never ever read it anywhere, however. God, I hope N T Wright did not write it, I could not bear to agree with Wright.
![[Waterworks]](graemlins/bawling.gif)
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
Posts: 418 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2015
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
You may be reassured to know I have never read more than a few pages of the guy.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
You may be reassured to know I have never read more than a few pages of the guy.
I think he writes so much, so fast so as to make it impossible for anyone to disagree with him. You cannot say anything he has not said or denied somewhere on page 842 of his 26th book.
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
Posts: 418 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2015
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Aye Nick, the narrative is full of weirdness, but that's a different category to running away with a figure of speech.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
In the Daily Mail (don't ask, it's a weird voyeuristic addiction) this morning there is a video of a python slowly suffocating, eating then regurgitating an antelope. God's perfect plan. Glory!
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
Posts: 418 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2015
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
I was hoping the debate had moved beyond "vegetarian lions"... ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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