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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Final Straws - why do religious moderates keep the faith?
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El Greco
Shipmate
# 9313
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anselmina:
I guess, for me, as for others here, it's the person of Jesus. Even if only a fifth of what's recorded about him in the Gospels were true he would still be the most challenging human being to have lived; and his challenges would still require a response of some sort.
I guess this depends on which fifth we are talking about.
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
My brand of Christianity finds the obsession with survival truly foreign. My savior chose to die for me, and admonished His followers to not seek their lives lest they lose them. Nonetheless, the Church has managed to fixate on "growth."
Well, that's one element of the Christian story. That savior did indeed die, but he also resurrect, and will come back in glory, and every knee shall bow before him.
That savior did indeed admonish his followers not to seek their lives lest they lose them, but he also commanded them to make disciples of all nations, and to baptize them...
My point being that there are other elements to the Christian story, and that one can't legitimately just take one element and over-stress it, and ignore the others.
[ 17. June 2009, 12:43: Message edited by: §Andrew ]
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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.
Posts: 11285 | Registered: Apr 2005
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sanityman
Shipmate
# 11598
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
We don't get to decide what the word means.
[snip]
If (or iff) one believes that Jesus represents a unique instance of Divine intervention, then I think the label Christian is appropriate.
This is contradictory. First you say we don't get to decide what the word means, and then you go on and give your own definition of who is a Christian and who isn't.
I was aware of this dichotomy, but didn't attempt to clarify as I thought I'd gone on long enough ![[Smile]](smile.gif) .
I am a great believer in language being a tool, not a battleground. On the one extreme, insisting on one's personal definition of a contested word in order to rule other points of view invalid is unhelpful, because it becomes all about semantics and the "right" to define the word in question. If persons exist that don't conform to my opinion, then I don't have the right to call them wrong ipso facto. I might ask them to explain themselves, as we would obviously disagree, but that's the start of a discussion, not the end of one.
On the other extreme, humpty-dumptyism ("a blank check we can fill any way we wish") is at least as bad, as it destroys meaning and the common ground that language is supposed to provide. You're right in that the word "Christian" is not arbitrarily defined, and right that the historical background of the church(es) is important in assigning meaning to that word. You're wrong to suggest that that is the end of the story, and wrong to restrict the definition of Christian to the strict orthodoxy you can no longer accept. As this thread has shown, there are plenty of people who don't fit your definition, but still self-describe as Christian.
quote:
In my thought though, when I speak of traditional Christianity I mean the very specific group of people that emerged through those ancient battles and is the group that got to define things its way through the ecumenical councils we can read about in a history book.
But history hasn't come to an end, and battles are still being fought. To say that one can either engage with the Gospels through a traditionalist lens or not at all is wrong-headed. People can and do.
- Chris.
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Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only the wind will listen - TS Eliot
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
Sure, if one feels free to define Christianity the way they want, then being a Christian is essentially deprived of any specific meaning and content. It's all about what the individual or the group wants it to be.
In my thought though, when I speak of traditional Christianity I mean the very specific group of people that emerged through those ancient battles and is the group that got to define things its way through the ecumenical councils we can read about in a history book.
Sure, the label of Christian can have any meaning one wants, but the content of the ecumenical councils, the groups those councils represented and their theology are very specific and not open to the individual's tastes or opinions.
They were open to the councils tastes and opinions. Why are our tastes and opinions not valid today?
The scriptures aren't good enough? You have to resort to councils?
If the Holy Spirit worked through the councils, why can it not work through us today?
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a theological scrapbook
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Jason™
Host emeritus
# 9037
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Posted
Wow, ask a question, go to bed, and wake up to 49 replies.
I want to respond to a lot of people, so pardon my upcoming post explosion. But first, to those who are confused by my OP's premise:
Timothy the Obscure said, "Those things are consistent with Jesus' message as I hear it," and Haydee said, "Nothing Jesus said is incompatible with this list."
But what keeps you from doubting whether you know what Jesus said at all? As soon as the Bible loses its (admittedly idolatrous) pedestal as the Inerrant Word of God, at some point the question comes up, "What if this book is just made up then?"
Keep in mind I'm not arguing that it's a necessary cause, but I think it's more than sufficient, in logic terms.
Seb asked me, "Are you asking why believe if you're a liberal?" No, I'm not asking that. I'm asking about the eventual, potential consequences and conclusions that often arise out of the belief-path described, in part, by my OP list.
Yerevan and dj_ordinaire assume I was asking why be a Christian if you're not a conservative evangelical. That's not what I was asking, either. It's not about being a conservative evangelical, or a liberal, specifically. But as you accept or reject certain premises, the core of the argument starts to break down. My question was about how (and why) people re-bolster the argument.
Posts: 4123 | From: Land of Mary | Registered: Feb 2005
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A Feminine Force
Ship's Onager
# 7812
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Posted
I have read through the thread and would like to add a comment to my original post.
It does seem to me that Jason.I.Am's original question implies that he would like everyone whose beliefs fit the description to kindly fck off and leave the label "Christian" to those he can comfortably identify with.
Which reminds me of the other reason why I identify as a Christian: because if people like me don't own the label, then it gets to be defined in increasingly narrow terms.
Christ lives and reigns over all. That's a pretty wide net to cast, don't you think?
LAFF
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C2C - The Cure for What Ails Ya?
Posts: 2115 | From: Kingdom of Heaven | Registered: Jul 2004
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
Christianity is not a blank check we can fill any way we wish. It does have specific content, exactly because it didn't come to exist yesterday, but it's already in use for two millennia.
quote:
In my thought though, when I speak of traditional Christianity I mean the very specific group of people that emerged through those ancient battles and is the group that got to define things its way through the ecumenical councils we can read about in a history book.
Yes, but you know what? That group of people changed over time. And they changed because they argued over what they meant, and over what made sense.
And they decided that some things that they thought were important were not. For example, they was a controversy early on over what the date of Easter should be. They thought that mattered. But after argument they decided that it didn't matter.
For centuries, the Oriental Orthodox churches were dismissed as orthodox for rejecting the Council of Chalcedon. Now that controversy is being revisited, even by the Eastern Orthodox, and people are coming to the conclusion that actually the division was mostly verbal.
I assume you no longer believe that Jesus dictated the Complete Works of Gregory Palamas to his disciples after the resurrection, with strict instructions not to write them down for twelve hundred years.
So do you believe Justin Martyr had any opinion on how many wills Jesus had? Of course he didn't. He neither knew nor cared. Nobody had ever asked him the question. It had never become controversial. Nobody had to think about what made sense, or what the implications would be of either answer.
And again, I don't know when the earliest mention of the use of icons by what you call traditional Christians is. I strongly suspect that it's after Constantine. Given that there are mentions of bishops apostasising by surrendering scriptures to the Romans rather than become martyrs, but no mention of bishops surrendering icons or refusing to do so, it seems clear that the practice of using icons evolved as well.
The apostles did not use icons. The apostles would have thought that the use of icons was idolatrous. But just as Peter thought eating unclean creatures was forbidden until Paul and the Holy Spirit convinced him otherwise, so the Church was convinced otherwise about icons several centuries down the line.
And like it or not, there are now lots of groups that call themselves Christian. And most of them have just as good a claim to the title as any other.
Jesus did not hand down the entirety of what you call traditional Christianity to the apostles once for all. Christianity has rationally evolved. And it will continue to do so. That's what a tradition is. Not something fixed in stone that gradually gets eroded and worn away. But something living and growing.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Dave Marshall
Shipmate
# 7533
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
To call yourself a Christian, you must also believed that Jesus was a "special case" of divine intervention.
Why?
Posts: 4763 | From: Derbyshire Dales | Registered: Jun 2004
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Seeker963
Shipmate
# 2066
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
But what keeps you from doubting whether you know what Jesus said at all? As soon as the Bible loses its (admittedly idolatrous) pedestal as the Inerrant Word of God, at some point the question comes up, "What if this book is just made up then"
Made up what?
Made up stories of experiences of God?
It's obviously not meant to be like the Koran and doesn't claim to be an infallible book of instruction. For goodness' sake, very orthodox Jewish people admit that there are different interpretations of the Old Testament and they've even - ironically - codified those interpretations; and these interpretations disagree with each other!
I'd have to assume that over thousands of years, the Jewish and Christian authors of these texts were all saying 'Well, we don't really believe in this God business, but let's sit down and write some texts that suggest that this non-existent God has touched us in some way.' L Ron Hubbard may have done something analogous when he invented Scientology, but I have trouble believing that such a thing happened with scripture.
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"People waste so much of their lives on hate and fear." My friend JW-N: Chaplain and three-time cancer survivor. (Went to be with her Lord March 21, 2010. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.)
Posts: 4152 | From: Northeast Ohio | Registered: Dec 2001
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
My brand of Christianity finds the obsession with survival truly foreign. My savior chose to die for me, and admonished His followers to not seek their lives lest they lose them. Nonetheless, the Church has managed to fixate on "growth."
...That savior did indeed admonish his followers not to seek their lives lest they lose them, but he also commanded them to make disciples of all nations, and to baptize them...
My point being that there are other elements to the Christian story, and that one can't legitimately just take one element and over-stress it, and ignore the others.
I agree entirely with your last point. Indeed, that is precisely the point I was trying to make. But I find it very interesting that the Church always quotes Matthew when they talk about the Great Commission. That is not at all the emphasis of Mark's Great Commission, for example. There, the emphasis is not on maximizing the number of folks who get into the club, but upon preaching the Word to all the nations and letting the chips fall where they might. Why do you suppose that Matthew is the tune that is always played?
--Tom Clune
[ 17. June 2009, 13:33: Message edited by: tclune ]
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Posts: 8013 | From: Western MA | Registered: Jul 2004
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
But what keeps you from doubting whether you know what Jesus said at all? As soon as the Bible loses its (admittedly idolatrous) pedestal as the Inerrant Word of God, at some point the question comes up, "What if this book is just made up then?"
I'm reading a history of China at the moment. As far as I know, nobody thinks the author is divinely inspired. Yet, I don't think it's all made up. The author as far as I can tell is using sources in a way that conforms to modern historical standards of accuracy. Yet his primary sources are not. Some of his sources are dubious and biased, but he's assuming that even the dubious and biased ones have some basis in reality.
So we don't have a divine guarantee of the inerrancy of the Bible. We get by in most of our lives without one. Instead, we assume that the Bible falls somewhere on the scale between divinely guaranteed and completely made up. We have to use our judgement as to where on that scale it falls. The question 'is it all made up?' arises. But just because the question arises doesn't mean that we're forced to reply 'yes'. We try to answer the question according to our best judgement. And my judgement of the arguments of scholars that I've read about it is that the gospels are good enough. The gospels no doubt fail by the standards of inerrancy. (Especially Matthew.) But on the whole, they're good enough.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Jason™
Host emeritus
# 9037
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Posted
Thanks to all of you who tried to engage with the OP. I saw several thematic responses that I want to pose some follow up questions to, en masse.
quote:
Because I believe in goodness, redemption, love, etc.
You can believe in these things without any belief in the person of Jesus whatsoever. That you may think the story of Jesus embodies these things doesn't really change that.
And this gets to a bigger point -- several of my OP bullets dealt with the complexity of moral issues, the uncertainty of Hell, and the accuracy of the Bible text. As soon as you set yourselves up to judge which passages are to be used for modeling your lives after, vs. the ones that are contextual, etc., you've recognized some other authority outside of text and tradition.
What reason do you have for calling that authority "God" or "revelation" or "the holy spirit"?
quote:
I don't know if it's not true
quote:
Experience...
So you've experienced God in your life or you know someone who has. Why shouldn't you treat that claim the same way you'd treat someone's claim that they have experienced Elvis, and they know he's still alive?
As an honest aside, it was Sam Harris's question about this particular point that got me thinking about this whole question in general. He often asks about a man who believes there's a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried in his backyard.
quote:
When asked why he thinks that there is a diamond in his yard that is thousands of times larger than any yet discovered, he says things like, “This belief gives my life meaning,” or “My family and I enjoy digging for it on Sundays,” or “I wouldn’t want to live in a universe where there wasn’t a diamond buried in my backyard that is the size of a refrigerator.” Source
The last reason I've heard quite a bit is
quote:
The Incarnation
I admit, this one surprised me a lot. I'm not sure I fully understand what you all mean by it. Are you saying that you just know that "incarnation" is the way the world should work, so the fact that Christianity includes incarnation just makes it true?
If those of you who mentioned incarnation as your reason could expand on it for me, I'd appreciate it a lot.
Posts: 4123 | From: Land of Mary | Registered: Feb 2005
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El Greco
Shipmate
# 9313
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
But history hasn't come to an end, and battles are still being fought. To say that one can either engage with the Gospels through a traditionalist lens or not at all is wrong-headed. People can and do.
Yes. But for the most part, they are unwilling to admit that they are no longer being inside traditional Christianity. They do not want to accept the fact that traditional Christianity teaches things different than what they believe.
I have no problem with people moving on and moving beyond traditional Christianity. I only have a problem with people moving on and pretending they haven't.
As long as we are open about the changes we propose and hold, I have no problem with that.
quote:
Originally posted by Seb:
If the Holy Spirit worked through the councils, why can it not work through us today?
The problem with the Holy Spirit doing the talking is that it's rather unreasonable to attribute all the changes to him, because he would then contradict himself, and he would be more of a spirit of the age rather than the holy spirit.
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Jesus did not hand down the entirety of what you call traditional Christianity to the apostles once for all. Christianity has rationally evolved. And it will continue to do so. That's what a tradition is. Not something fixed in stone that gradually gets eroded and worn away. But something living and growing.
I agree with that. There are two problems here though.
First, there is an issue of methodology.
While you are right, and they were indeed developing doctrine, this is not what they said they were doing. Those people and councils were very clear and adamant that what they were doing was to stay firmly in the tradition of the apostles and the previous councils.
The argument went like this:
"What we are saying is what those ancient fathers and apostles said as well, and what you are saying is not."
And they went to great pains to "show" from the earlier fathers that they [the previous fathers] held their views and not their opponents' views.
So, you are suggesting a different understanding of what they were doing, and a different way of doing that than what they used. This is a discontinuity that has no legitimacy in the traditional framework.
And secondly, there is an issue with the content of the teachings.
Even though there were differences among the fathers, there was one common body everyone agreed on. What are the practical implications of Jesus being God, issues pertaining to man's salvation and eternal loss, what the "one baptism" of the creed means, etc, the content of that faith is different than the content of the faith suggested today by many.
So, modern people also have a problem with the content of the faith, along with a problem in methodology.
Yes, the modern way you suggest might be better, and even truer, but this doesn't make it compatible with traditional Christianity!
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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.
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Jason™
Host emeritus
# 9037
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PhilA:
Jason I. Am,
I would reverse the question. What is the point of believing something so demonstrably untrue as the YEC position or that Scripture is infallible? You have to jump through so many hoops and ignore so much evidence in order to do so that the image of God left is one of trickery and deceit.
First off, you act as though nobody believes any of this. Many, many do. I'm not saying that should make anyone else believe it, or that it necessarily defines Christianity, but I wouldn't write it off so easily as you seem to do.
Second, if you've then decided to "believe something that is informed by our senses, reason and experience," and if you use that as a starting point, how do you get all the way back to Christianity? (Especially when you go on to say later that you think all religions have the same amount of truth?)
Posts: 4123 | From: Land of Mary | Registered: Feb 2005
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Jason™
Host emeritus
# 9037
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
I would say that your list leaves out one important criterion which could swing the balance on that question: "I believe that God has intervened/intervenes in human history"
Why believe that?
Posts: 4123 | From: Land of Mary | Registered: Feb 2005
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
[*]The Bible isn't necessarily infallible or inerrant. It may be divinely inspired, but it was still written and compiled by humans.
Many creative people (artists, inventors) speak of receiving inspiration, for which they thank God. The inspiration is sometimes in complete form, the human merely records it, but USUALLY in the form of an idea to be worked out through the human creative effort. Why would the inspired Bible be different? Some bits quoted from God (and we see "thus sayth the Lord") much of it ideas received and carried to us through the human agent's personality and manner of expressing, like when you write down one of your dreams you are using YOUR words to describe the images you saw.
"Inspired" and "written by humans" are not mutually exclusive categories. An evangelical parallel might be - is someone attracted to God through a preacher's words or through the action of the Holy Spirit. Isn't it sometimes one, sometimes the other, usually both together?
quote:
[*]PSA isn't the only way to understand Christianity, and it's probably not the best way either. In fact, it might do more damage than good.
God is a good parent even moreso than human good parents are good. What good parent rejects his wayward children who want to return into relationship, offers only conditional forgiveness? First the kid has to die or kill something? The blood-thirsty anti-loving anti-forgiving character of the Father in PSA kept me distressed for years about who is this Christian God and how is he different from any blood-thirsty demon?
Then I discovered PSA is a minority view in Christianity. Jesus died "for" us doesn't necessarily translate to "instead of" us. There are other, gentler, more loving meanings of "for."
quote:
[QB][*]Other religions contain elements of truth{/QB]
How could they not? "Even the devil cites scripture" - if even the devil can point you to truth (intentionally or not), of course the efforts of wise people of all cultures to observe the nature of reality will result in their discovering some truth. Don't all major religions have similar ethics, for example? Does "thou shalt not steal" become untrue merely because Buddhism teachs "do not take anything from anyone unless it is willingly given"? Or is that Buddhist teaching somehow untrue and unloving merely because it uses different words to say "thou shalt not kill"?
Whether Christians can find any spiritual truth in other religions that cannot be found in Christianity is a whole different issue, but to say all other religions teach only nonsense about all spiritual matters is to demonstrate total ignorance about their teachings.
I'm trying to budget my time so I'm not responding to the rest, but yes it is possible, even common, for someone to be vibrantly God-aware, desiring to know God more and live in tune with God, delighting in God, confident that Jesus is the physically resurrected Son of God, and heaven is our destination thanks to God, without agreeing with some or all of that list.
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
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Jason™
Host emeritus
# 9037
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anselmina:
For me to drop the faith, I would have to reject the whole Christ/Incarnation event and come to the conclusion that he was a deluded fool. In which case, I would feel my only other option would be atheism.
Thanks. I think this is what I was getting at with my addendum of "Why would you even believe in God at that point?"
However, I don't think you'd have to believe he was a deluded fool. He could have been honestly mistaken, or people could have made up things about him. There are probably other possibilities as well.
Posts: 4123 | From: Land of Mary | Registered: Feb 2005
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
Missed the edit window, partly due to a slow connection here. Y'all will figure out the details I should have corrected.
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
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Jason™
Host emeritus
# 9037
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Why do you still stay a Christian at all?
Because I believe that Jesus was - and is - the Son of God.
But... why? Those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God have a clear answer for this question -- "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so". You can say that yes, the Bible seems to indicate such a proposition, but you've rejected other parts of the Bible based on outside authority determining that some things are metaphor, allegory, contextual, etc.
At that point, what makes you decide that the more extraordinary claims about Jesus being God, rising from the dead, etc. are still probably true? Based on what?
quote:
I'm trying to decide whether you're genuinely asking why anyone should bother to believe in God at all if they subscribe to your list, as if that list is some kind of anti-creed, or if you're taking a subtle swipe at those fundamentalists who by their posts here make it look as if without their certainty about those issues there would be no religion for them to follow.
I don't think I'm doing either. I wasn't being snide and saying there are no other reasons, I was asking people what reasons they had, and was trying to ask people to not say "Because it says so in the Bible".
I think that the beliefs in that list create a certain momentum that requires an active, deliberate pressing of the brakes to stop or else it ends in agnosticism or possibly atheism. I'm interested in why people push the brake.
Posts: 4123 | From: Land of Mary | Registered: Feb 2005
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
quote:
The Incarnation
I admit, this one surprised me a lot. I'm not sure I fully understand what you all mean by it. Are you saying that you just know that "incarnation" is the way the world should work, so the fact that Christianity includes incarnation just makes it true?
If those of you who mentioned incarnation as your reason could expand on it for me, I'd appreciate it a lot.
I didn't use the 'I'-word directly but that's part of what I meant by 'Jesus': the unique, God-breaking-into-history-by-becoming-Man event that, for me, were I to be as liberal as your OP suggests, would keep me 'Christian' as opposed to '(mono)theist'.
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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Why do you still stay a Christian at all?
Because I believe that Jesus was - and is - the Son of God.
But... why? Those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God have a clear answer for this question -- "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so".
This is just faulty reasoning. Folks who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God are no better able to answer the question "Why?" than MtM may be at answering why he believes that Christ is the son of God.
The silly kid's game of always asking "Why?" is pointless. The basic question is, "What do you believe?" not "Why do you believe it?" There are some beliefs that are predicated on believing other things, but for the most part belief is not a game of derivation.
That is one of many things wrong with systematic theology -- we just don't work that way, and there is nothing particularly wrong with believing things that, as expressed, appear to contradict each other. It may even be the case that there is no great problem in believing things that are actually contradictory. Walt Whitman seemed to have it pretty much right on that score. Or so ISTM.
--Tom Clune
[ 17. June 2009, 14:02: Message edited by: tclune ]
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Posts: 8013 | From: Western MA | Registered: Jul 2004
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
To answer the question "why", I would reply: "by choice." I choose to believe. Now we can argue the old Calvinist -v- Arminian canard about the extent to which that choice is entirely my own as opposed to the Holy Spirit guiding and directing my path, but that's essentially what it boils down to.
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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
Posts: 14304 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Jan 2002
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
The OP seems to be surprised that there is any point to remaining a Christian once one stops believing the list bullet-pointed.
I see it the other way round - I am a Christian precisely because I DO NOT believe those childish statements.
If they were a description of mainstream Christianity, then I would STOP being a Christian.
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Jason™
Host emeritus
# 9037
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
This is just faulty reasoning. Folks who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God are no better able to answer the question "Why?" than MtM may be at answering why he believes that Christ is the son of God.
It's actually rather sound reasoning, it's just the premises that are up for debate. If the Bible really is the inerrant Word of God, then certain beliefs necessarily follow.
And of course it matters why you believe something. Most people believe what they believe because they think there are good reasons to do so. As the reasons begin to disappear, so do the beliefs. Unless other reasons begin to take their place, of course.
Posts: 4123 | From: Land of Mary | Registered: Feb 2005
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
If your reasons have anything to do with why you actually disagree with any of the above premises, I'm less interested in discussing that because it's more of the same. What other reasons are there for self-identifying as Christian, and for maintaining belief in God?
I don't remember anyone in a position of authority in my church ever asking or expecting me to believe any of the propositions you listed. How can anyone presume to gainsay the Christian bona fides of those who have no trouble saying the same creeds that Christians have been saying for some 1700 years? What parvenu upstart has substituted these other criteria as yardsticks?
On a more positive note, one reason I remain a Christian is that, on purely material and cultural grounds, I wouldn't want to trade places with anyone outside of Christendom. The church built the civilization that we enjoy.
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Haydee
Shipmate
# 14734
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
And this gets to a bigger point -- several of my OP bullets dealt with the complexity of moral issues, the uncertainty of Hell, and the accuracy of the Bible text. As soon as you set yourselves up to judge which passages are to be used for modeling your lives after, vs. the ones that are contextual, etc., you've recognized some other authority outside of text and tradition.
What reason do you have for calling that authority "God" or "revelation" or "the holy spirit"?
There are enough contradictions in the Bible for us all to have to make judgements about which bits to use as models for our lives. Including the inerrant-ists. So we all have to fall back on God/revelation/the holy spirit, mixed up with a lot of human error and limitations…
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Why do you still stay a Christian at all?
Because I believe that Jesus was - and is - the Son of God.
But... why? Those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God have a clear answer for this question -- "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so". You can say that yes, the Bible seems to indicate such a proposition, but you've rejected other parts of the Bible based on outside authority determining that some things are metaphor, allegory, contextual, etc.
At that point, what makes you decide that the more extraordinary claims about Jesus being God, rising from the dead, etc. are still probably true? Based on what?
Based on faith?
Instead of belief that the Bible is inerrant therefore Jesus is/was son-of-God, a belief that Jesus is/was son-of-God (and the Bible is inspired by God).
Different conclusion, same process…
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Jason™
Host emeritus
# 9037
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm reading a history of China at the moment. As far as I know, nobody thinks the author is divinely inspired. Yet, I don't think it's all made up. The author as far as I can tell is using sources in a way that conforms to modern historical standards of accuracy. Yet his primary sources are not. Some of his sources are dubious and biased, but he's assuming that even the dubious and biased ones have some basis in reality.
Is anyone suggesting you base moral decisions on the History of China book?
I think it would be quite possible to believe that the dubious and biased New Testament has some basis in reality while not believing any traditional Christian claims. If people say, "I don't believe that the Bible is inerrant but I do think that Jesus was God because of what I read in the Bible", I think it's appropriate to ask "Why, of all things, would you believe that part of the Bible?"
Posts: 4123 | From: Land of Mary | Registered: Feb 2005
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El Greco
Shipmate
# 9313
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
I admit, this one surprised me a lot. I'm not sure I fully understand what you all mean by it. Are you saying that you just know that "incarnation" is the way the world should work, so the fact that Christianity includes incarnation just makes it true?
Spot on!
I think Christians are so focused on the beautiful things Christian theologians say about the incarnation, that they often miss the fact that the world and the human civilization went on for ages before the idea of the Incarnation was put forth!
People lived happy and fulfilling lives without imagining God could or would become Incarnate.
In my view, the Incarnation solves a problem of purely Christian origin!
quote:
Originally posted by Anselmina:
For me to drop the faith, I would have to reject the whole Christ/Incarnation event and come to the conclusion that he was a deluded fool. In which case, I would feel my only other option would be atheism.
The problem is that we don't have Jesus' verbatim words available. We don't have books he wrote. We have books about him, written by various groups (the canon by no means represents all groups that wrote gospels!), serving various purposes, several decades after the events.
It's not Jesus making claims about himself, but other people making claims about Jesus and putting things in his mouth in books they wrote decades after Jesus died.
Perhaps he was just a rabbi, and he knew that. Then his disciples thought he was the expected messiah. There was nothing unique in that. There were many messiahs in that period of time. Then Paul made the connection between the Jewish messiah and the savior of the cosmos, connecting Judaism with Hellenism. And someone else drew the connection between Jesus and the Word Philo was speaking about... The rest is history...
My point is that what Jesus said and what Jesus is portrayed to have said in the canonical gospels is not necessarily the same.
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
The silly kid's game of always asking "Why?" is pointless. The basic question is, "What do you believe?" not "Why do you believe it?"
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with this. It's not silly at all to ask why one believes what he believes. There are so many religions and so many ways of life. Why choose this and not another? Why does this group believe this and that group believe that?
It's not a fight of assertions. This would make them all meaningless.
I think the real issue is the role between faith and reason. In antiquity, when the view of the world the people had was very limited, it made sense to believe in Christianity. Today it seems to many that it doesn't. And sometimes we are left with the faithful dropping the issue of reason, in favor of a faith that cannot be explained, that cannot be justified. And this is a problem.
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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.
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Jason™
Host emeritus
# 9037
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Haydee:
There are enough contradictions in the Bible for us all to have to make judgements about which bits to use as models for our lives. Including the inerrant-ists. So we all have to fall back on God/revelation/the holy spirit, mixed up with a lot of human error and limitations…
I agree, except I might substitute a part of your last sentence to say, "So we all have to fall back on [something], mixed up with a lot of human error and limitations..." There's no good reason for [something] to mean "God/revelation/the holy spirit".
quote:
quote:
But... why? Those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God have a clear answer for this question -- "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so". You can say that yes, the Bible seems to indicate such a proposition, but you've rejected other parts of the Bible based on outside authority determining that some things are metaphor, allegory, contextual, etc.
At that point, what makes you decide that the more extraordinary claims about Jesus being God, rising from the dead, etc. are still probably true? Based on what?
Based on faith?
Instead of belief that the Bible is inerrant therefore Jesus is/was son-of-God, a belief that Jesus is/was son-of-God (and the Bible is inspired by God).
Different conclusion, same process…
The process of... believing something for no reason, and then basing other conclusions on that first foundational belief?
[ 17. June 2009, 14:31: Message edited by: Jason I. Am ]
Posts: 4123 | From: Land of Mary | Registered: Feb 2005
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Haydee
Shipmate
# 14734
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm reading a history of China at the moment. As far as I know, nobody thinks the author is divinely inspired. Yet, I don't think it's all made up. The author as far as I can tell is using sources in a way that conforms to modern historical standards of accuracy. Yet his primary sources are not. Some of his sources are dubious and biased, but he's assuming that even the dubious and biased ones have some basis in reality.
Is anyone suggesting you base moral decisions on the History of China book?
I think it would be quite possible to believe that the dubious and biased New Testament has some basis in reality while not believing any traditional Christian claims. If people say, "I don't believe that the Bible is inerrant but I do think that Jesus was God because of what I read in the Bible", I think it's appropriate to ask "Why, of all things, would you believe that part of the Bible?"
Why, of all things, do you believe the Bible is inerrant?
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Fëanor
Shipmate
# 14514
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
quote:
quote:
But... why? Those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God have a clear answer for this question -- "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so". You can say that yes, the Bible seems to indicate such a proposition, but you've rejected other parts of the Bible based on outside authority determining that some things are metaphor, allegory, contextual, etc.
At that point, what makes you decide that the more extraordinary claims about Jesus being God, rising from the dead, etc. are still probably true? Based on what?
Based on faith?
Instead of belief that the Bible is inerrant therefore Jesus is/was son-of-God, a belief that Jesus is/was son-of-God (and the Bible is inspired by God).
Different conclusion, same process…
The process of... believing something for no reason, and then basing other conclusions on that first foundational belief?
Essentially, yes.
There's nothing sillier about believing the Nicene Creed a priori than believing that the Bible is inerrant a priori and deriving the creed from there.
Edit: It might be more convenient to have "the bible is inerrant" as one's a priori (since it's arguably more concrete than an ephemereal "belief system"), but it's just as silly (insofar as silly is an appropriate term to use).
[ 17. June 2009, 14:44: Message edited by: fireforgedxtian ]
Posts: 177 | From: Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell | Registered: Jan 2009
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Jason™
Host emeritus
# 9037
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Haydee:
Why, of all things, do you believe the Bible is inerrant?
I don't.
Posts: 4123 | From: Land of Mary | Registered: Feb 2005
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El Greco
Shipmate
# 9313
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
How can anyone presume to gainsay the Christian bona fides of those who have no trouble saying the same creeds that Christians have been saying for some 1700 years?
The creeds do not stand on themselves. They come with tons of theological baggage. What did the "one baptism" in the creed mean to those that wrote the creed? Why does it remit sins? What is the reason for our needing remission through baptism in the first place? What does it mean for Christ to come "for our salvation"?
And so on and so forth.
The creeds are not blank cheques, but they have a very specific content. So, no, I don't agree that just reciting the creed makes one part of the same group with those that created the creed.
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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.
Posts: 11285 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Haydee
Shipmate
# 14734
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
The silly kid's game of always asking "Why?" is pointless. The basic question is, "What do you believe?" not "Why do you believe it?"
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with this. It's not silly at all to ask why one believes what he believes. There are so many religions and so many ways of life. Why choose this and not another? Why does this group believe this and that group believe that?
It's not a fight of assertions. This would make them all meaningless.
I think the real issue is the role between faith and reason. In antiquity, when the view of the world the people had was very limited, it made sense to believe in Christianity. Today it seems to many that it doesn't. And sometimes we are left with the faithful dropping the issue of reason, in favor of a faith that cannot be explained, that cannot be justified. And this is a problem.
I agree that the role of faith and reason is a key issue, but I don’t see it as either/or. Even reason/logic requires a basic set of premises that cannot be explained rationally/logically, some fundamental beliefs about how the world works, on which you construct a logical framework.
Examining why you believe something is good up to a point, but at some point all you can say is ‘I believe because I believe’. That applies to the most rational atheist as much as anyone else.
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
quote:
Originally posted by Haydee:
There are enough contradictions in the Bible for us all to have to make judgements about which bits to use as models for our lives. Including the inerrant-ists. So we all have to fall back on God/revelation/the holy spirit, mixed up with a lot of human error and limitations…
I agree, except I might substitute a part of your last sentence to say, "So we all have to fall back on [something], mixed up with a lot of human error and limitations..." There's no good reason for [something] to mean "God/revelation/the holy spirit".
No, there’s no good reason at all. It’s not about reason, it’s about faith.
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
The process of... believing something for no reason, and then basing other conclusions on that first foundational belief?
Yes, we all have a ‘first foundational belief’. Inerrancy of the Bible, there is no God it’s all chance, Jesus is/was the son of God, all in much the same position. You can test your beliefs against your experiences/the beliefs of others. But it seems to me that none of us can ever ‘prove’ our foundational beliefs, we can only believe.
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Fëanor
Shipmate
# 14514
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
How can anyone presume to gainsay the Christian bona fides of those who have no trouble saying the same creeds that Christians have been saying for some 1700 years?
The creeds do not stand on themselves. They come with tons of theological baggage. What did the "one baptism" in the creed mean to those that wrote the creed? Why does it remit sins? What is the reason for our needing remission through baptism in the first place? What does it mean for Christ to come "for our salvation"?
And so on and so forth.
The creeds are not blank cheques, but they have a very specific content. So, no, I don't agree that just reciting the creed makes one part of the same group with those that created the creed.
Oh goody -- the battle between ideas and the language used to express them.
The point of having a "creed" and not a "library of ideas" is that the language used in the creed is sufficient to communicate the necessary ideas behind it. Otherwise, they could have said Yabba-Dabba-Do 25 times in a row (or indeed any other mnemonic device) and simply taught the catechumens "The first 'Yabba' signifies our belief in One God...," etc.
[ 17. June 2009, 15:02: Message edited by: fireforgedxtian ]
Posts: 177 | From: Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell | Registered: Jan 2009
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by §Andrew:
the world and the human civilization went on for ages before the idea of the Incarnation was put forth!
People lived happy and fulfilling lives without imagining God could or would become Incarnate.
Yes, and human civilization went on for ages without accomplishing much by way of scientific discovery as we would describe it. Then, around 500 years ago in the bosom of Christendom, it took off.
Are you suggesting that the doctrine of the Incarnation, with all it implies for the reality and dignity of the physical world, had nothing to do with that development?
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Ynot
Shipmate
# 14620
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Posted
The OP list describes me fairly accurately and the questions “Why do I still stay a Christian?” and “Why believe in God at all?” I have thought about often, over most of my life. These are my conclusions as of today –
Why God?
• Quantum theory is the best we have concerning matters tiny. Newtonian physics is the best we have concerning things on earth. The theories of relativity are the best we have concerning the universe. God provides the best theory we have concerning the creation of the universe and things beyond, and the Bible provides the best clues (perhaps the only clues) I’ve come across regarding the nature of God.
• The universe starting with a Big Bang I can understand as a theory, but an atheist theory of a universe emerging from nothing and a mythical God of human creation strikes me as silly, I just can’t get my head round it.
Why stay Christian?
• I was born C of E, educated C of E, and grew to love C of E literature, architecture, music, art and culture. No reason to believe God was a Christian but good enough to keep me on board.
• English translations of the New Testament give me good reason to stay Christian.
• Yes, I’m a ‘cherry picking’ Christian – I pick the bits I like, and I push aside the bits that don’t fit in with my prejudice. But isn’t every Christian a ‘cherry picker’?
• I didn’t go to theological college. I don’t understand the detail of the Christian faith, so I’m not qualified to judge the merits of one theory against another. All I can do is take a simplistic overview, and go where my instincts lead me.
• I come into contact with lots of people either atheist or faithless. A few have thought about, and deliberately chosen their viewpoints, but most use lack of faith in an established religion as an excuse for a morality of their own invention, to their own standards. I don’t want to be a member of this club.
Posts: 178 | From: Thailand | Registered: Mar 2009
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Jason™
Host emeritus
# 9037
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Haydee:
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
I agree, except I might substitute a part of your last sentence to say, "So we all have to fall back on [something], mixed up with a lot of human error and limitations..." There's no good reason for [something] to mean "God/revelation/the holy spirit".
No, there’s no good reason at all. It’s not about reason, it’s about faith.[/qb
What do you mean by that? If it's not about reason, why don't you accept, by faith, all of the Bible, word for word? If you do choose to think about it and decide which parts are relevant and which aren't, then it is, in fact, about reason, at least in part.
Where that line is drawn is pretty much the thrust of this whole thread, for me.
quote:
Yes, we all have a ‘first foundational belief’. Inerrancy of the Bible, there is no God it’s all chance, Jesus is/was the son of God, all in much the same position. You can test your beliefs against your experiences/the beliefs of others. But it seems to me that none of us can ever ‘prove’ our foundational beliefs, we can only believe.
So there are never any reasons for picking one of these understandings over another, because like you said, it's not about reason, it's about faith? Faith defined as either the will to continue believing whatever you happened to be born into, or as the courage to pick one understanding out of a hat and hold fast to it until the end, it seems.
Posts: 4123 | From: Land of Mary | Registered: Feb 2005
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El Greco
Shipmate
# 9313
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by fireforgedxtian:
The point of having a "creed" and not a "library of ideas" is that the language used in the creed is sufficient to communicate the necessary ideas behind it.
That it was sufficient then, when it was composed, and inside the framework under which it was composed does not mean that it is sufficient now, unless the framework remains the same.
Moreover, the creed is not self-explanatory. It was intended to make sense within a particular framework; it was not an intellectual achievement that was supposed to make sense in all frameworks at all subsequent ages.
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Are you suggesting that the doctrine of the Incarnation, with all it implies for the reality and dignity of the physical world, had nothing to do with that development?
The dignity of the physical world and of man can well be part of humanism. True, humanism can be Christian, but it's found outside Christianity as well.
And the converse is true. Lots of anti-world and inhuman views have been part of Christianity and characterized many Christians.
Nobody has a monopoly on supporting the dignity of the world nor on opposing the dignity of the world.
quote:
Originally posted by Ynot:
Why God?
• Quantum theory is the best we have concerning matters tiny. Newtonian physics is the best we have concerning things on earth. The theories of relativity are the best we have concerning the universe. God provides the best theory we have concerning the creation of the universe and things beyond, and the Bible provides the best clues (perhaps the only clues) I’ve come across regarding the nature of God.
It's one thing to say that God explains much, and another thing to say that the Christian version of God explains much.
Often people confuse between the two, and assume Christianity has a monopoly on the divine. This, however, is not the case.
God can well be the explanation to the religious experience of people from all cultures all over the globe and throughout the ages, and to the existence and emergence of all the diverse life forms that exist, but this does not mean that an all-loving all-powerful personal God who has a Son and a Holy Spirit that sends his Son to become human in order to save mankind from the Fall of an imaginary first couple is a good explanation.
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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Why do you still stay a Christian at all?
Because I believe that Jesus was - and is - the Son of God.
But... why? Those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God have a clear answer for this question -- "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so".
They merely defer your "but why" question, they don't clearly answer it at all. Believing that the Bible is inerrant is still more than worthy of a "but why?" as well.
quote:
You can say that yes, the Bible seems to indicate such a proposition, but you've rejected other parts of the Bible based on outside authority determining that some things are metaphor, allegory, contextual, etc.
At that point, what makes you decide that the more extraordinary claims about Jesus being God, rising from the dead, etc. are still probably true? Based on what?
1) I don't justify my faith based on the Bible. Or not solely on the Bible, anyway.
2) I base my faith on revelation, which certainly incorporates the witness of the writers of Scripture but is not limited to them. I've learnt more about God, Jesus and Christianity from devout members of my Church than I ever have from reading the Bible.
quote:
I wasn't being snide and saying there are no other reasons, I was asking people what reasons they had, and was trying to ask people to not say "Because it says so in the Bible".
I think people have done you proud on that front.
quote:
I think that the beliefs in that list create a certain momentum that requires an active, deliberate pressing of the brakes to stop or else it ends in agnosticism or possibly atheism. I'm interested in why people push the brake.
I don't push the brake. I question everything I believe, and guard constantly against becoming certain of those beliefs (I'm only human, and more than capable of error!)
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Haydee
Shipmate
# 14734
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
quote:
Originally posted by Haydee:
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
I agree, except I might substitute a part of your last sentence to say, "So we all have to fall back on [something], mixed up with a lot of human error and limitations..." There's no good reason for [something] to mean "God/revelation/the holy spirit".
No, there’s no good reason at all. It’s not about reason, it’s about faith.[/qb
What do you mean by that? If it's not about reason, why don't you accept, by faith, all of the Bible, word for word? If you do choose to think about it and decide which parts are relevant and which aren't, then it is, in fact, about reason, at least in part.
Where that line is drawn is pretty much the thrust of this whole thread, for me.
quote:
Yes, we all have a ‘first foundational belief’. Inerrancy of the Bible, there is no God it’s all chance, Jesus is/was the son of God, all in much the same position. You can test your beliefs against your experiences/the beliefs of others. But it seems to me that none of us can ever ‘prove’ our foundational beliefs, we can only believe.
So there are never any reasons for picking one of these understandings over another, because like you said, it's not about reason, it's about faith? Faith defined as either the will to continue believing whatever you happened to be born into, or as the courage to pick one understanding out of a hat and hold fast to it until the end, it seems.
But as Marvin the Martian pointed out, inerrancy also leads to the question ‘but why?’. The same with atheism. We all reach a point where the answer to 'why' is 'just because I do', we all have faith in something.
I don’t accept all of the Bible, literally and word for word, because I see internal inconsistencies. But I do see ‘truth’ in what I read when I see themes that fit with my experience of the world.
We can test whatever worldview we’re born into against our experiences, against what we learn from others, and from ‘inspiration’, however you conceptualise that. And then we have to find our own understanding of foundational beliefs, which will probably change as we have further experiences and learn more.
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Fëanor
Shipmate
# 14514
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
So there are never any reasons for picking one of these understandings over another, because like you said, it's not about reason, it's about faith? Faith defined as either the will to continue believing whatever you happened to be born into, or as the courage to pick one understanding out of a hat and hold fast to it until the end, it seems.
There are always reasons. They may not be useful for convincing someone else, but they're always there. For some people, it might be that the little voice in the back of their head that tells them "this is true," or "that is false," happens to tell them that Christianity is true. For others it might be that they knew/saw a Christian, thought to themselves, "I like the way she seems to be living, let me try that." But there is no trump card. If you find yourself torn between wanting to believe and not-believe, then there's nothing anyone can say that will be guaranteed to flip your switch. That's a place you have to come to, and a choice you have to make.
If the belief in an inerrant scripture and/or fear of hell was the only thing "keeping you in the fold," so to speak, then it's unsurprising that you're finding yourself re-examining your beliefs. But for many of us, Christianity (or belief in God) aren't the "final straws," rather they were the first straws -- and any flirtations (if any) with inerrancy, psa, hell, gay-bashing, etc. were simply experiments in looking for a proper expression of that underlying belief.
Posts: 177 | From: Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell | Registered: Jan 2009
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Jason™
Host emeritus
# 9037
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
They merely defer your "but why" question, they don't clearly answer it at all. Believing that the Bible is inerrant is still more than worthy of a "but why?" as well.
Possibly. But here's the question, before we get too far off course:
1) What authority do you use when deciding if pieces of theology or scripture or revelation are "really from God*" or not?
2) Why does that authority accept miracles, resurrection, and other fantastic events that most people here still claim to believe on little to no evidence?
*substitute "really from God" with "true", "believable", etc.
Posts: 4123 | From: Land of Mary | Registered: Feb 2005
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Jason™
Host emeritus
# 9037
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Haydee:
I don’t accept all of the Bible, literally and word for word, because I see internal inconsistencies. But I do see ‘truth’ in what I read when I see themes that fit with my experience of the world.
If you don't mind me honestly asking, which experiences of the world have led you to see 'truth' in the story of Jesus coming back from the dead?
Posts: 4123 | From: Land of Mary | Registered: Feb 2005
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
The silly kid's game of always asking "Why?" is pointless. The basic question is, "What do you believe?" not "Why do you believe it?" There are some beliefs that are predicated on believing other things, but for the most part belief is not a game of derivation.
This is quite the wrong way around.
The basic question is 'what is the case?'
From 'what is the case?' we move on to 'why do you believe that?' or 'how do you know?' These are the questions that open the distinction between 'what is the case' and 'what I believe is the case'. We ask somebody to give their testimony to what is the case. When we ask them to give testimony, we take what they say to be the case. Only once we have asked whether their testimony is reliable, do we start to treat it as a fact about them.
So we move from 'what is the case?' through 'why do you believe that?' to 'what do you believe?'
The child's question 'why?', far from being silly, is vital in order to understand.
quote:
That is one of many things wrong with systematic theology -- we just don't work that way, and there is nothing particularly wrong with believing things that, as expressed, appear to contradict each other. It may even be the case that there is no great problem in believing things that are actually contradictory.
It is impossible to state or believe things that actually contradict each other. By asserting contradictories you assert everything and thus nothing. If they are only apparent contradictories, then in order to be understood it needs to become clear that somehow your apparent contradictories are not actually contradictory.
What cannot be meaningfully asserted by you to other people cannot be meaningfully believed by you either. Wittgenstein showed us that much.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Jason™
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Posted
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Originally posted by Alogon:
...human civilization went on for ages without accomplishing much by way of scientific discovery as we would describe it. Then, around 500 years ago in the bosom of Christendom, it took off.
Are you suggesting that the doctrine of the Incarnation, with all it implies for the reality and dignity of the physical world, had nothing to do with that development?
Aside: I'd love for you to start a thread about that, because I don't see how the two are even remotely connected.
Posts: 4123 | From: Land of Mary | Registered: Feb 2005
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Dave Marshall
Shipmate
# 7533
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Posted
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Originally posted by Haydee:
we all have a ‘first foundational belief’. Inerrancy of the Bible, there is no God it’s all chance, Jesus is/was the son of God, all in much the same position. You can test your beliefs against your experiences/the beliefs of others. But it seems to me that none of us can ever ‘prove’ our foundational beliefs, we can only believe.
It depends what you mean by foundational. Our initial beliefs are the result of our experience as a child of becoming aware of the environment in which we exist. They very soon become tangled in the culturally-influenced interpretations our carers and others place on those experiences, and only then lead to the kinds of beliefs I think you mean.
I've found that as I've hit problems with the various cultural beliefs I've adopted during my first thirty or forty years of growing up, it's only been the process of unlearning those interpretations, of returning to verifiable reality as the basis for my beliefs, that has allowed me to continue to have confidence in my capacity to make sense of the world.
Posts: 4763 | From: Derbyshire Dales | Registered: Jun 2004
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
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Originally posted by §Andrew:
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Originally posted by Dafyd:
Jesus did not hand down the entirety of what you call traditional Christianity to the apostles once for all. Christianity has rationally evolved. And it will continue to do so. That's what a tradition is. Not something fixed in stone that gradually gets eroded and worn away. But something living and growing.
And they went to great pains to "show" from the earlier fathers that they [the previous fathers] held their views and not their opponents' views.
So, you are suggesting a different understanding of what they were doing, and a different way of doing that than what they used. This is a discontinuity that has no legitimacy in the traditional framework.
When you argue like this, you're presupposing the truth of what you argue. That is, you're assuming that in order to accept traditional Christianity at all we have to accept all of it, including this methodology. But that's precisely where we disagree with you.
And that's granting that the Fathers gave this methodology the degree of prominence that you give it.
I believe that it's part of Eastern Orthodox theology to say that what is done in worship is of primary importance, rather than what is said in books of theology. Theology results from practice and is governed by practice. So if the Fathers argue by one method, but say they are arguing by another, then it is what they do that takes precedence and defines what is traditional Christianity, not what they say they are doing.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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sanityman
Shipmate
# 11598
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Posted
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Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
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Originally posted by sanityman:
To call yourself a Christian, you must also believed that Jesus was a "special case" of divine intervention.
Why?
Because this seems to me to be a unique identifying point to Christianity. Without Jesus, there is no Christianity, and without some "above and beyond" to his position he just becomes another moral teacher - you can find the golden rule elsewhere (everywhere, in fact). Your position may well differ: I'm really just saying what I think it would take for me to self-describe as Christian. Unfortunately, the less conventional your usage of the word, the more the burden is on you to explain yourself.
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Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
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Originally posted by sanityman:
I would say that your list leaves out one important criterion which could swing the balance on that question: "I believe that God has intervened/intervenes in human history"
Why believe that?
Why indeed. My point was that, personally, I couldn't call myself a Christian if I didn't (it's probably the major point I struggle with, and usually lose). But I can see that if one did believe this, and furthermore believed on the basis on the (non-infallible) Biblical evidence that Jesus was a case in point, then one would be/remain a Christian.
Your point (made elsewhere) "why believe the Bible on this, if you don't think it's infallible?" is a good one, but I think it's a bit black & white to say one either believes all of the Bible or none of it. You will doubtless say that to believe the least "likely" bit of it seems to preclude disbelieving any of it. I find words like "likely" or "improbable" to be weasly in this context, as they carry an a priori judgement of what is or isn't likely, which is very likely to be naturalistic. The argument becomes circular at that point, as you disprove miracle accounts by assuming miracles never happen.
I'm no expert in faith, but ISTM that part of the point is to suspend judgement on what is "likely" based on trust that God (what/whoever hesheit is) is capable of making unlikely things happen. Circular as well, but a different circle.
- Chris.
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Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only the wind will listen - TS Eliot
Posts: 1453 | From: London, UK | Registered: Jun 2006
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Jason™
Host emeritus
# 9037
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
...human civilization went on for ages without accomplishing much by way of scientific discovery as we would describe it. Then, around 500 years ago in the bosom of Christendom, it took off.
Are you suggesting that the doctrine of the Incarnation, with all it implies for the reality and dignity of the physical world, had nothing to do with that development?
Aside: I'd love for you to start a thread about that, because I don't see how the two are even remotely connected.
Posts: 4123 | From: Land of Mary | Registered: Feb 2005
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
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Originally posted by Jason I. Am:
But here's the question, before we get too far off course:
1) What authority do you use when deciding if pieces of theology or scripture or revelation are "really from God*" or not?
*substitute "really from God" with "true", "believable", etc.
My own (albeit God-given and [hopefully] Spirit-driven) conscience. Which is why I gleefully proclaim the possibility that my belief is in error.
And in the end, can any of us really say we do differently? Even those who delegate all moral decisions to the Bible are subject to the same fallibility of decision and interpretation as me. As, for that matter, were the writers of the Bible in the first place.
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2) Why does that authority accept miracles, resurrection, and other fantastic events that most people here still claim to believe on little to no evidence?
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Jason, than are dreamt of in your philosophies ![[Biased]](wink.gif) . Or to put it another way, why wouldn't it?
But all of this is pretty peripheral. At the end of the day I choose to believe, and that's really all there is to it.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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