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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Why Dogma?
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Only few doctrines are dogma, after all, and they are quite generally of the kind that stumps the non-believer.
Okay, I'll play. Stump me, IngoB!
Do you understand how God can become incarnate then? If so, please explain it to me, because I sure do not! I merely know that I cannot prove this to be logically impossible. But that it in fact has happened I believe by faith alone, and the precise mechanism is a near complete mystery to me. (And yes, I did try to understand. The more I learned, the more mysterious it became...)
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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blackbeard
Ship's Pirate
# 10848
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by shadeson:
....Belief in statements means nothing unless they cause a change in a person - when they then become 'faith'.
The problems with belief arise when we try to teach them as truths to others and say why they must be accepted.....
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
Love this.
One of the difficulties of dogma, it seems to me, is when it goes from "this is what we consider, after much thought, to be right", through "this is the official teaching" through "This is the truth, and if you don't agree, you are WRONG!" and ending up with "You must formally agree to this, and you MUST NOT think about it lest you fall into error and heresy!"
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm completely incapable of seeing a statement on any matter of importance without thinking about it and wondering if it is, in fact, correct (or if it really is that important).
Posts: 823 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Dec 2005
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by shadeson:
The power of Jesus to change lives lays in the acceptance of Jesus as God himself and the start of a personal relationship with him.
I'm with you on the power of Jesus to change lives and the Holy Spirit shaboodle, but the "personal relationship with Jesus" language leaves me cold.
Kim Fabricius says it beautifully:
quote:
A “personal relationship with Jesus” – what’s that all about? If it’s equivalent to “faith in Jesus Christ”, fine. But it’s not, is it? It’s a shibboleth that inflates to an unmediated experience of walking and talking with an invisible person, of spending quality time together, and if it doesn’t work out, well, “Down, dooby do, down down”.
In fact, with Luther and Barth, having a “personal relationship with Jesus” could be said to be the opposite of faith, a theologia gloriae, faith being unanchorable in psychology, not a feeling but a self-negation, sub specie crucis.
The phrase itself is hardly biblical; indeed it is quite zeitgeisty, religious coinage in our being-in-a-relationship economy. In fact, talking with people about their “personal relationship with Jesus”, I invariably conclude that they are in the realm of projection and fantasy.
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a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Part of what KHANDS states is rather reasonable, and maybe just a little overstated. It's worth saying that the word "dogma" is overused and has the taint of blind acceptance of some authority's idea, which may speak more the motivation of those uttering the dogma that any inherent truth. Might be better to go with words like "belief".
Some dogma has no real consequence for everyday life. Most of the various ideas about Mary, what exactly happens during the consecration of the elements, miracles or powers attributed to saints or popes, etc. If most of the point of Christianity is to try to live following the example of Jesus, with many of the ideas about other aspects less important and able to take care of themselves. It may be that a particular belief enhances the faith of someone, such as meditations on Mary. In that case, there's no need to consider a problem, but also no need to insist on it being necessary.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
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Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
quote:
Originally posted by shadeson:
The power of Jesus to change lives lays in the acceptance of Jesus as God himself and the start of a personal relationship with him.
I'm with you on the power of Jesus to change lives and the Holy Spirit shaboodle, but the "personal relationship with Jesus" language leaves me cold.
I could agree with this sentiment, but not the ensuing quote. I am not a fan of the phrase, "personal relationship with Jesus." But I think the reality that motivates it is right on target. Until we come to recognize the reality of the living Lord, we really are in the dark. And, once that reality has come to life within us, we are truly alive. As long as Christ is an abstraction, the notion of faith is an odd one, rather like believing in quarks. We may be able to muster the argument, but none of it has any life-changing reality AFAICS.
--Tom Clune
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Posts: 8013 | From: Western MA | Registered: Jul 2004
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
It's ironic, though, that KHANDS himself puts forward a set of beliefs, without any argument or evidence, thus 'spiritual engagement is essential', a mind set of holier than thou 'is wrong headed', Christians should drop their beliefs, and embrace the teachings of Christ.
Maybe the argument is 'true because I say so'!
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Only few doctrines are dogma, after all, and they are quite generally of the kind that stumps the non-believer.
Okay, I'll play. Stump me, IngoB!
Do you understand how God can become incarnate then? … the precise mechanism is a near complete mystery to me.
Oh, sorry. When you said there are doctrines that stump the non-believer, I took it that you meant we were confounded by them and unable to offer an explanation. In the example you cite, however, the non-believer is not the least bit stumped, and easily answers that he believes it’s all arrant mystical nonsense. So, we’re in the same position of not-stumpedness.
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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KHANDS
Apprentice
# 17512
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It's ironic, though, that KHANDS himself puts forward a set of beliefs, without any argument or evidence, thus 'spiritual engagement is essential', a mind set of holier than thou 'is wrong headed', Christians should drop their beliefs, and embrace the teachings of Christ.
Maybe the argument is 'true because I say so'!
I'm offering these thoughts as my opinion not as any hard and fast absolutes.
Bostonman: You seem to be confusing the teachings of the man Jesus with the Christ, established after the fact by the Gospel writers and Paul.
Anglicanbrat: The value of the liturgy, music, art, architecture is (or can be) aesthetic in nature and in that way provide considerable solace and beauty, which, I guess, is religious in nature.
IngoB: I offer my signature: belief is truth to the believer.
Robert Armin: Thanks.
Shadeson: Yes. Following Jesus moral teaching makes sense to me; the power of Jesus to change lives fall into the realm of psychology.
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belief is truth to the believer
Posts: 29 | From: minnesota USA | Registered: Jan 2013
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shadeson
Shipmate
# 17132
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong :
I'm with you on the power of Jesus to change lives and the Holy Spirit shaboodle, but the "personal relationship with Jesus" language leaves me cold.
_________________________________________________
Sorry - that phrase was a cop out from expressing something difficult to express. My relationship with God is through knowing his nature to be that of Jesus. It is definitely a relationship based on sometimes (often?)frustration often wonder and often trying persuasion. I'm often thankful and deeply puzzled. What you would call all this, I don't know.
Posts: 136 | From: uk | Registered: May 2012
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The Silent Acolyte
Shipmate
# 1158
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by KHANDS:
The value of the liturgy...is (or can be) aesthetic in nature and in that way provide considerable solace and beauty, which, I guess, is religious in nature.
This, of course, deracinates liturgy in such a way as to make mummery of it.
In its nature, liturgy is a bridge from the cosmos to the divine.
Music, art, architecture, solace, and beauty are merely consequences of the mystical interchange—intercourse, commerce, communication—between the created and the uncreated.
[ 28. January 2013, 15:11: Message edited by: The Silent Acolyte ]
Posts: 7462 | From: The New World | Registered: Aug 2001
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Ronald Binge
Shipmate
# 9002
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Posted
I like dogma.
Especially the sort of silly bouncy dogma that sticks its head with its tongue hanging out from moving Karma.
Posts: 477 | From: Brexit's frontline | Registered: Jan 2005
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Oh, sorry. When you said there are doctrines that stump the non-believer, I took it that you meant we were confounded by them and unable to offer an explanation. In the example you cite, however, the non-believer is not the least bit stumped, and easily answers that he believes it’s all arrant mystical nonsense. So, we’re in the same position of not-stumpedness.
No. If this is your attitude, then it would rather be correct to say that the believers are stumped, whereas the non-believers are not. Of course, I think your attitude is intellectually lazy, to say the least. But my original point was not at all to insult your mental capacity. Rather, my point was that dogma typically safeguards important doctrines against "common sense", where that "common" includes both believers and non-believers. It is exactly because the Incarnation is common-non-sensical that one needs a dogma to secure it. That was my actual point. (Please note that common-non-sensical is not the same as illogical. But if one listens to a Christian mystery and does not intellectually respond with "WTF?", then one has not understood it properly...)
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Silent Acolyte:
This, of course, deracinates liturgy in such a way as to make mummery of it.
Is today Professor Irwin Corey day on the Ship? It seem like half the posts I read today are gibberish.
--Tom Clune
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Posts: 8013 | From: Western MA | Registered: Jul 2004
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
It is exactly because the Incarnation is common-non-sensical that one needs a dogma to secure it. That was my actual point.
Right, okay. Yes, I can go along with that. Thanks for explaining it so honestly.
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by blackbeard:
One of the difficulties of dogma, it seems to me, is when it goes from "this is what we consider, after much thought, to be right", through "this is the official teaching" through "This is the truth, and if you don't agree, you are WRONG!" ....
If you are able to believe something is true, and yet not believe its opposite is false, then you have jettisoned the excluded middle and with it reason itself, and can consequently prove anything and nothing.
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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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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
If you are able to believe something is true, and yet not believe its opposite is false, then you have jettisoned the excluded middle and with it reason itself, and can consequently prove anything and nothing.
I have read this five times and still can't understand what you are saying.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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The Silent Acolyte
Shipmate
# 1158
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Posted
quote:
snark from a host:
quote:
Originally posted by The Silent Acolyte:
This, of course, deracinates liturgy in such a way as to make mummery of it.
[and here is what the snark omitted:]
In its nature, liturgy is a bridge from the cosmos to the divine.
Music, art, architecture, solace, and beauty are merely consequences of the mystical interchange—intercourse, commerce, communication—between the created and the uncreated.
Is today Professor Irwin Corey day on the Ship? It seem like half the posts I read today are gibberish.
No, I'm thinking its more of a Why Johnny Can't Read Day on the Ship.
deracinate: Uproot
mummery: a ridiculous, hypocritical, or pretentious ceremony or performance
nature: inherent character
So, ya put it all together and ya get: To equate liturgy's essential character with aesthetics is to sever liturgy from its true nature, a link to the divine. This turns liturgy into an empty performance.
Posts: 7462 | From: The New World | Registered: Aug 2001
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
I have read this five times and still can't understand what you are saying.
Welcome to my world...
--Tom Clune
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Posts: 8013 | From: Western MA | Registered: Jul 2004
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Bostonman
Shipmate
# 17108
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by KHANDS:
Bostonman: You seem to be confusing the teachings of the man Jesus with the Christ, established after the fact by the Gospel writers and Paul.
What means of access to the teachings of Jesus, un-mediated by Paul and the Gospels, are we supposed to have? These are the earliest documents relating to Jesus; even the "Gnostic" gospels are later.
Did you dig up his diary or something?
Posts: 424 | From: USA | Registered: May 2012
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shadeson
Shipmate
# 17132
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB
It is exactly because the Incarnation is common-non-sensical that one needs a dogma to secure it.
I thought we were taught to love God with .....our minds?
In any case, why is the dogma associated with the virgin birth so neccessary? It's there because of more dogma about God needing a perfect sacrifice. And so on and so forth.
Incomprehensible to the modern mind.
Posts: 136 | From: uk | Registered: May 2012
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Bostonman:
What means of access to the teachings of Jesus, un-mediated by Paul and the Gospels, are we supposed to have? These are the earliest documents relating to Jesus; even the "Gnostic" gospels are later.
Did you dig up his diary or something?
This deserves its own thread, I think.
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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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Leaf
Shipmate
# 14169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
I have long thought that a sort of ideal solution would be to keep the buildings, the organisations, community groups, etc of the CofE, but simply remove God! We could keep the rousing hymn tunes, the routine, even the colourful robes and flowers.
This sounds like, "I love your hair, your skin, your teeth... it's just that the person inside is so annoying! If only you were dead, the rest would be perfect! Then I could still wrap your arms around me..."
To you it seems like admiration; to others, creepy necrophilia.
Don't mind us if we don't join you in your enthusiasm.
Posts: 2786 | From: the electrical field | Registered: Oct 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
If you are able to believe something is true, and yet not believe its opposite is false, then you have jettisoned the excluded middle and with it reason itself, and can consequently prove anything and nothing.
I have read this five times and still can't understand what you are saying.
A) Johnny has stolen the car.
B) Johnny has not stolen the car.
I A is true, the B is false. If B is true, then A is false.
Tertium non datur. (A third [possibility] is not given.) Because proposition A is the negation of proposition B, and vice versa. This is what mousethief refers to with the "excluded middle". Aristotle is the first person known to have discussed this law of logic.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
What Ingo said.
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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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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by shadeson:
I thought we were taught to love God with .....our minds?
I'm rarely accused of not loving God sufficiently with my mind... it is my heart that I worry about. At any rate, I hardly preach obscurantism here. Quite to the contrary, I do believe that attempting to comprehend God to the best of our individual intellectual ability is an outright duty of a good Christian life. However, this does not mean that God can be comprehended fully, in this life or the next, by a finite intellect. Rather it is the case that where we truly start to see God our ratiocination must break down, just as our eyes must be blinded if we attempt to stare at a supernova from close distance... The point of our intellectual effort is not to pin down God with our concepts. Rather it is to eliminate intellectual idolatry, it is to not stop short of what we are capable of thinking, being content with a false godlet of our own imagination. We must push our mind to where it cannot go any further towards God, then the remaining mystery truly is God, at least to us.
quote:
Originally posted by shadeson:
In any case, why is the dogma associated with the virgin birth so neccessary? It's there because of more dogma about God needing a perfect sacrifice. And so on and so forth.
In what sense are you talking here of "necessity"? It is not absolutely required that a doctrine be crucial for salvation to become dogma (of the RCC), merely that it be true. Anyhow, here are some reasons from the Catechism:
quote:
Mary's virginal motherhood in God's plan
502 The eyes of faith can discover in the context of the whole of Revelation the mysterious reasons why God in his saving plan wanted his Son to be born of a virgin. These reasons touch both on the person of Christ and his redemptive mission, and on the welcome Mary gave that mission on behalf of all men.
503 Mary's virginity manifests God's absolute initiative in the Incarnation. Jesus has only God as Father. "He was never estranged from the Father because of the human nature which he assumed. . . He is naturally Son of the Father as to his divinity and naturally son of his mother as to his humanity, but properly Son of the Father in both natures." [Council of Friuli (796): DS 619; cf. Lk 2:48-49]
504 Jesus is conceived by the Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary's womb because he is the New Adam, who inaugurates the new creation: "The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven." [1 Cor 15:45,47] From his conception, Christ's humanity is filled with the Holy Spirit, for God "gives him the Spirit without measure." [Jn 3:34] From "his fullness" as the head of redeemed humanity "we have all received, grace upon grace." [Jn 1:16; cf. Col 1:18]
505 By his virginal conception, Jesus, the New Adam, ushers in the new birth of children adopted in the Holy Spirit through faith. "How can this be?" [Lk 1:34; cf. Jn 3:9] Participation in the divine life arises "not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God". [Jn 1:13] The acceptance of this life is virginal because it is entirely the Spirit's gift to man. The spousal character of the human vocation in relation to God [cf. 2 Cor 11:2] is fulfilled perfectly in Mary's virginal motherhood.
506 Mary is a virgin because her virginity is the sign of her faith "unadulterated by any doubt", and of her undivided gift of herself to God's will. [LG 63; cf. 1 Cor 7:34-35] It is her faith that enables her to become the mother of the Savior: "Mary is more blessed because she embraces faith in Christ than because she conceives the flesh of Christ." [St. Augustine, De virg., 3: PL 40, 398]
507 At once virgin and mother, Mary is the symbol and the most perfect realization of the Church: "the Church indeed. . . by receiving the word of God in faith becomes herself a mother. By preaching and Baptism she brings forth sons, who are conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of God, to a new and immortal life. She herself is a virgin, who keeps in its entirety and purity the faith she pledged to her spouse." [LG 64; cf. 63]
And just for kicks, here is St Jerome slamming typical (modern day) Protestant objections to the perpetual virginity.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
If you are able to believe something is true, and yet not believe its opposite is false, then you have jettisoned the excluded middle and with it reason itself, and can consequently prove anything and nothing.
I have read this five times and still can't understand what you are saying.
Mousethief has got his terminology incorrect. He meant to say 'you have jettisoned the law of noncontradiction'.
The law of noncontradiction is the claim that you can't assert something and not assert it at the same time (in the same sense). Any attempt to say anything is an attempt, however inadequately and with waving of hands, to say things are this way - and therefore rule out all the possible states of affairs in which they are not this way. And therefore if you then deny it you end up not saying anything.
There is a logical proof, dating back to the middle ages, that if you reject the law of contradiction absolutely everything follows.
You can say something and then deny it as a form of irony - the point there is that you're not denying what you've just said in quite the same sense as you said it, so that the saying and unsaying leave traces behind them.
[ 28. January 2013, 19:15: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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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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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by blackbeard:
One of the difficulties of dogma, it seems to me, is when it goes from "this is what we consider, after much thought, to be right", through "this is the official teaching" through "This is the truth, and if you don't agree, you are WRONG!" ....
If you are able to believe something is true, and yet not believe its opposite is false, then you have jettisoned the excluded middle and with it reason itself, and can consequently prove anything and nothing.
I think there is a difference between:
a) 'this is what we consider, after much thought, to be right, and therefore if you don't agree we're logically committed to thinking you are wrong unless you can show us otherwise,' and;
b) 'this is right and therefore if you don't agree we don't have to listen to you because you are WRONG'.
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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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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by KHANDS:
So, it makes me think that a mind set of holier than thou (Jesus is my savior, I'm just a humble servant, accept the lord or perish)-the exclusivity of the perspective-is truly wrong-headed. Christians would serve the earth and mankind more effectively by dropping the beliefs that make one a 'Christian' and embracing the teachings of Christ.
I put it to you that the Religious Right believe they are embracing the teachings of Christ and that is why they are holier than thou. You and I might think that, for example, Jesus never said don't have sex standing up because it might lead to dancing is not one of the Gospel sayings; but their belief that he would have said it if it hadn't been obvious doesn't depend on any dogma. In fact, it seems to me that the point of believing that Jesus is my saviour is surely to cancel out any holier than thou attitude. (There but for the grace of God go I is supposed to express the opposite attitude.)
A holier than thou attitude is a tough thing and can try to assimilate almost any dogma or ritual or ethical teaching in any religion. But that doesn't make those things pointless. And certainly I don't see that back to the teachings of Jesus has any magic pass. (Leo Tolstoy was a pain to live with.)
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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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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I think there is a difference between:
a) 'this is what we consider, after much thought, to be right, and therefore if you don't agree we're logically committed to thinking you are wrong unless you can show us otherwise,' and;
b) 'this is right and therefore if you don't agree we don't have to listen to you because you are WRONG'.
You've moved the goalposts by adding in "we don't have to listen to you." It becomes an entirely different argument, and nothing to do with what I said.
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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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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
I think what several Shipmates above are dancing around is the difference between a community having a set of propositional beliefs, and the intensity (or lack thereof) with which these are presented to those individual members who may from time to time come to doubt them.
Having a body of doctrine is one thing. Saying that those who don't 100% subscribe to it will rot in hell seems to me a sizable step beyond.
Other successful voluntary organisations (RSPCA ? National Trust ? ) seem to manage with commitment to an ethical imperative rather than a body of metaphysical statements, so the first question (whether there should be doctrine) is perhaps not as trivial as some have suggested.
But it's the second question - how dogmatically that doctrine should be upheld by those who believe it against those who doubt it - which seems to be more divisive.
On seeing the thread title "why dogma ?" my initial answer was "because children go through a stage when they need to be given a definitive framework". That as they mature towards adulthood they will first rebel against and then reach some sort of accommodation with...
Not setting out to upset anyone - it's a genuine psychological insight.
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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KHANDS
Apprentice
# 17512
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Posted
to:
The Silent Acolyte:what empty performance?What could possibly be a greater indication of divine presence than a positive aesthetic experience.
Bostonman: My inclination is to accept Jesus as an insightful humanitarian but suggest his 'god-hood' be attributed to those who put the gospels together. There simply is too much precedence for virgin births, resurrections, etc. in earlier traditions to not see this as a political move to solidify the early church.
[ 28. January 2013, 20:51: Message edited by: KHANDS ]
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belief is truth to the believer
Posts: 29 | From: minnesota USA | Registered: Jan 2013
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
quote:
Having a body of doctrine is one thing. Saying that those who don't 100% subscribe to it will rot in hell seems to me a sizable step beyond.
No one has said that, though it's been a very frequent accusation. It's enough to clarify our position without rebutting completely imaginary objections.
quote:
On seeing the thread title "why dogma ?" my initial answer was "because children go through a stage when they need to be given a definitive framework". That as they mature towards adulthood they will first rebel against and then reach some sort of accommodation with...
Not setting out to upset anyone - it's a genuine psychological insight.
Not it isn't. It's grade A, smug, condescending, bollocksy bull flop. The ability to view reality coherently and objectively is adulthood, not childishness.
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
Posts: 9148 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Aug 2002
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by KHANDS:
to:
The Silent Acolyte:what empty performance?What could possibly be a greater indication of divine presence than a positive aesthetic experience.
Bostonman: My inclination is to accept Jesus as an insightful humanitarian but suggest his 'god-hood' be attributed to those who put the gospels together. There simply is too much precedence for virgin births, resurrections, etc. in earlier traditions to not see this as a political move to solidify the early church.
Liturgy is NOT primarily about aesthetics. It's certainly not about what we the participants feel or get out of it. It is worship with our senses.
And as for Jesus being merely an insightful humanitarian, as CS Lewis famously says, He does not give us that option.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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Anglican_Brat
Shipmate
# 12349
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Posted
quote:
Bostonman: My inclination is to accept Jesus as an insightful humanitarian but suggest his 'god-hood' be attributed to those who put the gospels together. There simply is too much precedence for virgin births, resurrections, etc. in earlier traditions to not see this as a political move to solidify the early church.
The mythic parallels argument has been largely discredited because anyone who actually studied the specifics of the Jesus story will realize that the so-called parallels don't make sense. The death and rising motif in mythic stories has to do more with etiological explanations of the changing of the seasons or harvest times. Neither of these are remotely present in the death and resurrection story of Jesus. In the case of the Virgin Birth, most pagan birth narratives usually involve a sexual encounter between a deity and a human woman. But the story of the virgin conception of Jesus does not depict it as a sexual encounter.
Posts: 4332 | From: Vancouver | Registered: Feb 2007
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blackbeard
Ship's Pirate
# 10848
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by blackbeard:
One of the difficulties of dogma, it seems to me, is when it goes from "this is what we consider, after much thought, to be right", through "this is the official teaching" through "This is the truth, and if you don't agree, you are WRONG!" ....
If you are able to believe something is true, and yet not believe its opposite is false, then you have jettisoned the excluded middle and with it reason itself, and can consequently prove anything and nothing.
There has been some discussion on this. While it has, to an extent, explained what you were trying to say, I still can't see what relevance it has to what I said. Maybe it's relevant to something you think I had said, though I can't imagine what.
Can you enlighten us?
Posts: 823 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Dec 2005
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by blackbeard:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by blackbeard:
One of the difficulties of dogma, it seems to me, is when it goes from "this is what we consider, after much thought, to be right", through "this is the official teaching" through "This is the truth, and if you don't agree, you are WRONG!" ....
If you are able to believe something is true, and yet not believe its opposite is false, then you have jettisoned the excluded middle and with it reason itself, and can consequently prove anything and nothing.
There has been some discussion on this. While it has, to an extent, explained what you were trying to say, I still can't see what relevance it has to what I said. Maybe it's relevant to something you think I had said, though I can't imagine what.
Can you enlighten us?
The upshot being that asserting anything is true necessarily implies that every contrary proposition is false, and that the people who believe those propositions are wrong.
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
Posts: 9148 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Aug 2002
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
In other words what you represent as two "steps" are in fact identical.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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blackbeard
Ship's Pirate
# 10848
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Posted
Well, yes - but there still doesn't appear to be any relevance to what I originally said.
Have a look at all of it, rather than just the bit quoted.
I'm just going to have to assume that you think I said something which I actually didn't say.
Posts: 823 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Dec 2005
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blackbeard
Ship's Pirate
# 10848
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Posted
Zach, MT - sorry to double post on this, and I don't know if this makes things any clearer ...
Is your point simply that, if A and B are incompatible, and I assert A is true, then I am thereby asserting that B is false? and that if I am sure A is true, then I can be certain that B is false? (we will assume no middle ground here, and a simple black/white situation)
Well, OK. The reason I can't see the relevance of this point is that I wasn't discussing it. What I was discussing is the way one person, or a group of people, can force an opinion on to another person (or, at least, attempt to). In other words, to be "dogmatic" about something in a rather negative sense. Now you may see this as, not dogma, but an abuse of dogma; OK, so I was discussing, not dogma, but abuse, if you wish to see it that way.
You will of course be familiar with instances where strongly held opinions within the wider church have been met with equally strongly held but different opinions, and this has in some cases led to assent to a specific dogma being enforced by whatever means, sometimes with disastrous consequences. The problem is not necessarily with the dogma being right or wrong, but its enforcement.
To take a more trivial case: I may be convinced of something, and you might not be; I may attempt to persuade, but have no authority to over-ride your opinion, however convinced I might be.
Does that help? or have I misunderstood your position, in the way that (it appears to me) you have misunderstood mine?
And I'm posting far too late at night.
Posts: 823 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Dec 2005
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Here's the thing. You gave a progression of thoughts/attitudes, which you presented as going from more acceptable to totally unacceptable. Here they are (cleaned up grammatically):
1. This is what we consider, after much thought, to be right.
2. This is the official teaching.
3. This is the truth, and if you don't agree, you are WRONG!
4. You must formally agree to this, and you MUST NOT think about it lest you fall into error and heresy!
The problem that I have with this is that #1 and #3 say exactly the same thing (granted #3 leaves out the "after much thought" bit). It's not a progression at all.
(a) #2 is a natural step -- why would you make something an official teaching if you thought it was wrong? If you think something is right, and it's important enough, why wouldn't you teach it?
(b) #4 is in fact problematic, but it in no wise follows from #1/#3 or #2.
But I wasn't discussing points (a) or (b) at all, merely pointing out that #1 and #3 are logically indistinguishable.
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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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The Silent Acolyte
Shipmate
# 1158
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by KHANDS:
The Silent Acolyte:what empty performance?What could possibly be a greater indication of divine presence than a positive aesthetic experience.
You said the value of liturgy was in the aesthetics. I said quote:
In its nature, liturgy is a bridge from the cosmos to the divine.
Music, art, architecture, solace, and beauty are merely consequences of the mystical interchange—intercourse, commerce, communication—between the created and the uncreated.
Of course aesthetics follow the divine presence.
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
I have read this five times and still can't understand what you are saying.
Welcome to my world...
I believe one of your fellows is adrift on a sea of surreality. Not quite gibberish, not quite Coreyistic, but not infrequently unmoored from plain speech.
I apologize for lashing out at your expression of frustration.
Posts: 7462 | From: The New World | Registered: Aug 2001
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KHANDS
Apprentice
# 17512
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
quote:
The mythic parallels argument has been largely discredited because anyone who actually studied the specifics of the Jesus story will realize that the so-called parallels don't make sense. The death and rising motif in mythic stories has to do more with etiological explanations of the changing of the seasons or harvest times. Neither of these are remotely present in the death and resurrection story of Jesus. In the case of the Virgin Birth, most pagan birth narratives usually involve a sexual encounter between a deity and a human woman. But the story of the virgin conception of Jesus does not depict it as a sexual encounter.
I'm sure Christian apologists find the parallels discreditable but sound biblical scholarship yields significant commonalities between various early religious beliefs and those associated with the Christ.
But, the point is moot anyway right? These events don't need to be identified as actual physical occurrences since their validity is a matter of faith. Isn't it?
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belief is truth to the believer
Posts: 29 | From: minnesota USA | Registered: Jan 2013
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
You've moved the goalposts by adding in "we don't have to listen to you." It becomes an entirely different argument, and nothing to do with what I said.
I think it's what blackbeard means when he implies a distinction between not being right i.e. being wrong, and being WRONG. WRONG and wrong are not the same.
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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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shadeson
Shipmate
# 17132
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB : I'm rarely accused of not loving God sufficiently with my mind
Phew! I think I must have trodden on the dogma's tale.
I was not making an accusation but merely pointing out that Jesus made a very significant addition to the most important commandment.
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind"
Its very difficult to love God with all our minds and teach irrelevant beliefs as part of Christianinty.
Posts: 136 | From: uk | Registered: May 2012
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
But I wasn't discussing points (a) or (b) at all, merely pointing out that #1 and #3 are logically indistinguishable.
And, among Vulcans, you would have a point. Among humans, not so much...
Humans rarely discuss truths as an end, they almost always use them as means to some other end. In fact, religious truth is by its nature aimed at some end (in the Christian case, God, or more mundanely, one's salvation).
When you state a proposition, in particular a religious one, people generally do not simply ask "is it true or false?" That would be academic; a mode of discussion I much favor, but not the regular one. Rather they will ask "why do you bring this up?" Or more precisely, "why do you bring this up with me, here and now?" And until that is settled to everybody's satisfaction, the purported truth value of the proposition will be driven by the implied agendas rather than driving them.
Or in other words, just because the filioque is true, and provably so, does not mean that you will accept it - even in a thousand years. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
quote:
Bostonman: My inclination is to accept Jesus as an insightful humanitarian but suggest his 'god-hood' be attributed to those who put the gospels together. There simply is too much precedence for virgin births, resurrections, etc. in earlier traditions to not see this as a political move to solidify the early church.
The mythic parallels argument has been largely discredited because anyone who actually studied the specifics of the Jesus story will realize that the so-called parallels don't make sense. The death and rising motif in mythic stories has to do more with etiological explanations of the changing of the seasons or harvest times. Neither of these are remotely present in the death and resurrection story of Jesus. In the case of the Virgin Birth, most pagan birth narratives usually involve a sexual encounter between a deity and a human woman. But the story of the virgin conception of Jesus does not depict it as a sexual encounter.
Excellent. Yes, as far as I can see, this kind of parallelomania has been discredited by scholars, but hangs on on the internet, esp. amongst atheists. They never give any sources for this stuff - rather like the Mithras or Horus-type junk - because there aren't any, except for Dan Brown-type websites, which screech about thousands of dying and rising gods, but usually don't examine just one of them in detail, as then the parallels start to crumble.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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blackbeard
Ship's Pirate
# 10848
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
But I wasn't discussing points (a) or (b) at all, merely pointing out that #1 and #3 are logically indistinguishable.
And, among Vulcans, you would have a point. Among humans, not so much...
...
Thank you, IngoB.
Posts: 823 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Dec 2005
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Anglican_Brat
Shipmate
# 12349
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Posted
quote:
I'm sure Christian apologists find the parallels discreditable but sound biblical scholarship yields significant commonalities between various early religious beliefs and those associated with the Christ.
It isn't Christian apologists who alone find the parallels discreditable. In historical Jesus scholarship which not every scholar is a raging Christian fundamentalist, I don't know any scholar who takes the mythic parallels theory seriously.
Usually the mythic argument is trotted out by people who have a gripe about Christianity and not serious about examining the issue further.
quote:
But, the point is moot anyway right? These events don't need to be identified as actual physical occurrences since their validity is a matter of faith. Isn't it? [/QB]
Well, if your faith is that God entered into history, that God became human in Jesus Christ, then history does matter.
Posts: 4332 | From: Vancouver | Registered: Feb 2007
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
In addition, most scholars within comparative mythology, and comparative religions, are negative about the 'dying and rising gods' idea.
Let's face it, this idea was developed by Frazer, and Massey, and they were, let us say, very imaginative in their reconstructions.
Atheists hang on to it, as a way of discrediting Christianity, but nearly always, with no discernible scholarship.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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