|
Source: (consider it)
|
Thread: What should we do about 'our own' terrorists?
|
Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
He does not tell us that he has the authority to declare an allegory and we don't, or tell us not to try this at home.
He doesn't have to.
A few seconds' thought would show that the right of any Christian to allegorise anything anyhow would spell exegetical suicide.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
it is now down to you to refute them,
Which I have done all along by a.pointing out that Christianity prioritises the NT over the OT, and b. pointing out that the NT does not contain a single verse condoning religious violence.
If there is any refuting to be done, it is incumbent upon anyone who disagrees with either of those points, and so far no-one has done so successfully, because it is impossible.
quote:
denying their existence isn't credible.
Which I have never done - denying their validity and legitimacy is not the same as denying their explicit or implicit existence.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Which I have done all along by a.pointing out that Christianity prioritises the NT over the OT, and b. pointing out that the NT does not contain a single verse condoning religious violence.
That's refuting the right-ness of the hermeneutic not the fact that the hermeneutic exists and that scholars have studied and written about it.
You seem unable to grasp the difference.
quote:
If there is any refuting to be done, it is incumbent upon anyone who disagrees with either of those points, and so far no-one has done so successfully, because it is impossible.
No, it really isn't.
Jamat doesn't believe that the hermeneutic existed. Scholars showed that it did. You don't believe that the hermeneutic is credible -
except that people did actually believe it. So in fact it was credible to them.
Simply coming back and repeating your opinion is not refuting or answering anything at all.
quote:
Which I have never done - denying their validity and legitimacy is not the same as denying their explicit or implicit existence.
Good, maybe you can tell that to Jamat and instead of piling in when he pretends that scholarship doesn't exist you could try posting with a little more nuance. If you don't like the scholarship, then refute it or take it up with the scholars. It isn't my problem that historians are finding things you two don't like.
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
|
Posted
Hear, hear.
(Sorry, I'm lurking)
I'll get me coat ...
Otherwise I'll get drawn in again and it's futile because Kaplan fails to differentiate between a text and how we understand or approach a text. He'll tell me otherwise but the way he's been posting suggests to me that he hasn't thought this one through.
From what I've read about the way 1st century Jews approached the scriptures they believed that there was an infinite number of meanings that could be derived from them - from allegorical to literal from whacky to sensible to ...
I don't see any of the NT writers operating within the kind of neat grammatical-historical hermeneutic that Kaplan favours. They just didn't.
Ok, Jesus is Jesus and Paul was Paul and we aren't.
But even so ...
It's obvious to anyone who has read any of the early Christian writings that whilst there was a broad consensus on what consituted the 'apostolic deposit' - and we can see/infer that from the NT text itself ... what there wasn't (as yet) was a consistent hermeneutic other than in embryonic form.
It's not as if there was a hermeneutical gold-standard from which St Augustine and others were later to depart. Rather there were overlapping and interlocking approaches that either diverged or coalesced over time.
And in the context of community.
I've said enough.
--------------------
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
it is now down to you to refute them,
Which I have done all along by a.pointing out that Christianity prioritises the NT over the OT, and b. pointing out that the NT does not contain a single verse condoning religious violence.
If there is any refuting to be done, it is incumbent upon anyone who disagrees with either of those points, and so far no-one has done so successfully, because it is impossible.
quote:
denying their existence isn't credible.
Which I have never done - denying their validity and legitimacy is not the same as denying their explicit or implicit existence.
As I close the door gently on my way out ... (yes, I am going to leave this particular thread, honest)
a) Yes, Christianity does prioritise the NT over the OT. Nobody is suggesting otherwise. I doubt Charlemagne would have suggested so either.
b) The NT does not condone religiously-motivated violence. It does appear to condone slavery - and many Christians believed it did for a very, very long time.
It also appears to condone state-sponsored violence against malefactors. One can readily see, surely, that if a ruler thinks of themselves as 'appointed by God' ('Look, the Apostle Paul says that even pagan Roman authorities are God's appointed ministers ... how much more should I be as a Christian king/emperor?') then they are going to think that offering violence or punishment to recalcitrant, potential fifth-column pagans is justifiable ...
And no, the NT doesn't talk about setting up theocratic governments either, but neither does it talk about motorcycle maintenance, methods of contraception, garden design or quantum mechanics ...
Context, context, context.
If you are an 8th or 9th century ruler then you are going to bring the presuppositions and world-view that this entails both to your understanding of the NT and to the way you act.
If you are an 18th, 19th, 20th or 21st century believer, or a 13th, 6th, 12th or umpteenth century one then the same applies.
We've addressed this a million times. And yes, Jamat and Kaplan agree on that, but still continue to argue as if hermeneutics don't actually exist (Jamat) or that one's own hermeneutic is the obvious and 'given' one (Kaplan).
I'm no expert but from what I can gather historians claim to have discerned at least 35 variations of Christian belief in the early centuries. Some of them in line with what emerged as received orthodoxy, others somewhat Gnostic to some extent or other and some completely 'out-there' by anyone's standards ...
We get tantalising glimpses of some of this in the pages of the NT itself. Who were the Nicolaitans for goodness sake?
So, yes, there was an emerging and recognised consensus of what was 'kosher' in an 'apostolic deposit' sense from the outset. This doesn't mean that everything was a done-deal. Heck, had things worked out somewhat differently the Arians could have won ...
The same applies to hermeneutics. You can protest until you are blue in the face but the onus is on you to demonstrate that there was some kind of hermeneutical consensus from around 100 AD.
Early Christianity was somewhat chaotic. I think we can all see that. The only ones who might be inclined to deny such a thing are arch zealot Orthodox or extreme RC traditionalists on the one hand - who believe that St Luke painted the first icon of the Virgin Mary or who imagine the earliest Christian gatherings to have been like High Mass at the Brompton Oratory or a full-on Byzantine rite ...
Or fundamentalist or very conservative Protestant evangelicals on the other who fondly imagine that everyone was (or should have been) operating with IVP hermeneutical credentials from the end of the 1st century - and that naughty people like Augustine subsequently fell away from this received standard.
Nowhere, nowhere, nowhere have I seen any historical evidence to indicate that there was a single, dominant hermeneutical consensus from the earliest times. Nowhere.
That isn't to say that what emerged as the grammatical-historical method didn't exist in some form. It clearly evolved from somewhere otherwise it wouldn't have come into existence.
I'm no Patristic scholar. I've only read snippets. But from what I have read of these guys' writings they seem to employ a whole range of hermeneutical approaches at the same time - and in a sometimes contradictory way - from our perspective.
It's all about perspective. All about viewpoint.
What it isn't about is insisting that something is the case in the face of all the evidence to the contrary and having the audacity to accuse other people of not 'thinking' when they arrive at a different conclusion to oneself.
This isn't a door-slam or a flounce, but it is an explanation as to why I'm withdrawing from this thread.
It's got nothing to do with Pavlovian conditioning or whatever else I've been accused of.
It's got everything to do with this:
![[brick wall]](graemlins/brick_wall.gif)
--------------------
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
As I close the door gently on my way out ... (yes, I am going to leave this particular thread, honest)
I see you've attended that speaking class, Gam:
1. Say what you're going to say
2. Say it
3. Say what you said again
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
And no, the NT doesn't talk about ... garden design.
Perhaps not: but what about urban planning for garden cities? ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
As I close the door gently on my way out ... (yes, I am going to leave this particular thread, honest)
I see you've attended that speaking class, Gam:
1. Say what you're going to say
2. Say it
3. Say what you said again
Yeah, but the speaking class also taught me not to talk bollocks. Shame some of the others here didn't attend the same one.
--------------------
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
|
Posted
quote:
Kaplan C: Which I have never done - denying their validity and legitimacy is not the same as denying their explicit or implicit existence.
Mr Cheesy: Good, maybe you can tell that to Jamat and instead of piling in when he pretends that scholarship doesn't exist you could try posting with a little more nuance. If you don't like the scholarship, then refute it or take it up with the scholars. It isn't my problem that historians are finding things you two don't like.
You have not shown that any scholarship exists that legitimately supports your view. You may be able to find a revisionist historian or two but this is not relevant. It is the assertion that the NT can be used to support violence is what does not fly here.
Gamaliel, welcome back.
quote:
Gamaliel : If you are an 8th or 9th century ruler then you are going to bring the presuppositions and world-view that this entails both to your understanding of the NT and to the way you act.
The assumption in here seems the essence of the argument. I do not see that they way they acted can be sheeted back to anything in the NT which, to me, it would have to be if it was to be genuinely 'Christian'.
Certainly, they had a world view; certainly it was shaped by medieval Catholicism. Why do you think that this was in any way hermeneutical? They were all about power and politics motivated by their agendas. God's will to that lot was what the Pope thought it was but why does this mean their actions are NT based or in fact in any way 'Christian'? Those actions fly in the face of Jesus' injunctions and stated purpose.
[ 31. July 2017, 14:27: Message edited by: Jamat ]
--------------------
Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
You have not shown that any scholarship exists that legitimately supports your view supports your view. You may be able to find a revisionist historian or two but this is not relevant. It is the assertion that the NT can be used to support violence is what does not fly here.
No, stop talking bilge. The crusaders had a hermeneutic that justified violence via their reading of the bible.
It is only you who seems to think it didn't exist. And you supply zero evidence for this position other than bluster.
At least I have actually supplied something, Jamat. Even though it is something you disagree with, it is still something.
You've supplied exactly nothing.
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
You have not shown that any scholarship exists that legitimately supports your view supports your view. You may be able to find a revisionist historian or two but this is not relevant. It is the assertion that the NT can be used to support violence is what does not fly here.
No, stop talking bilge. The crusaders had a hermeneutic that justified violence via their reading of the bible.
It is only you who seems to think it didn't exist. And you supply zero evidence for this position other than bluster.
At least I have actually supplied something, Jamat. Even though it is something you disagree with, it is still something.
You've supplied exactly nothing.
The whole of the NT is what I supply. Nothing there supports you. Prove the opposite if you can but there is no proof is there?
And forget about telling me crusaders were Bible scholars. That is risible.
--------------------
Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The whole of the NT is what I supply. Nothing there supports you. Prove the opposite if you can but there is no proof is there?
And forget about telling me crusaders were Bible scholars. That is risible.
Ye gods, what is wrong with you.
People exist who read the bible differently to you. People in the past existed who read the bible differently to you.
The fact that you don't see violence in the NT says nothing about whether it is possible to see violence in the NT. In fact, the historical evidence is that it is perfectly possible to see violence justified by the bible - including the NT.
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
|
Posted
It is certainly possible if you have a hermeneutic that makes it possible.
The Crusaders had a hermeneutic that made it possible. Oliver Cromwell had a hermeneutic that made religiously motivated violence permissible - 'God made them as stubble to our swords.'
I know you want to blame everything on medieval Catholicism but it's more complicated than that.
You are still talking as if you can have a NT without a hermeneutic. You can't.
You and I have a hermeneutic that doesn't find religiously motivated state-sponsored violence in the NT.
Other people in previous generations didn't.
Dutch Reformed Christians used to have a hermeneutic that found white-supremacy in the Bible. You and I don't. Or at least I assume you don't.
White slave-owners in the Southern US and elsewhere had a hermeneutic that found justification for slavery in the NT. Medieval Popes didn't.
You have no idea what you are talking about. You can parrot Bible verses til the cows come home but have no idea whatsoever how hermeneutics operate and how we interpret and interact with texts. It's embarrassing even discussing these things with you on account of your monumental ignorance of the processes involved.
Kaplan isn't as bad but he ought to know better. He thinks that if he says something often enough it becomes fact despite all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Anyhow - I'm supposed not to be posting here but I'm aghast at the level of ignorance some posters are bringing to this thread.
'I'm bringing the whole of the NT.'
No you aren't. You are bringing YOUR interpretation of the NT. It happens to accord with mine in this instance, but at least I'm aware that my interpretation is an interpretation ...
--------------------
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
I don't understand why the idea that other people ("people in the past") having different ways to understand the bible is such a radical concept.
It seems to me, Jamat, that you've already decided that the NT decries crusader violence and therefore it follows that it cannot possibly be the case that the crusaders justified themselves with reference to the NT.
That's circular, and plain wrong given that we have evidence of crusaders doing exactly that: justifying their actions within the framework of a Christian understanding of the bible.
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Early Christianity was somewhat chaotic. I think we can all see that. The only ones who might be inclined to deny such a thing are arch zealot Orthodox or extreme RC traditionalists on the one hand - who believe that St Luke painted the first icon of the Virgin Mary or who imagine the earliest Christian gatherings to have been like High Mass at the Brompton Oratory or a full-on Byzantine rite ...
Chaotic or not they all refer back to and use what we now call the Old Testament. Full of smiting and sacrifices but tempered by justice and mercy.
If there was a difference it is that the OT was driven by a material God, while the NT depends more on the Holy Spirit.
YMMV.
--------------------
"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Early Christianity was somewhat chaotic. I think we can all see that. The only ones who might be inclined to deny such a thing are arch zealot Orthodox or extreme RC traditionalists on the one hand - who believe that St Luke painted the first icon of the Virgin Mary or who imagine the earliest Christian gatherings to have been like High Mass at the Brompton Oratory or a full-on Byzantine rite ...
Chaotic or not they all refer back to and use what we now call the Old Testament. Full of smiting and sacrifices but tempered by justice and mercy.
If there was a difference it is that the OT was driven by a material God, while the NT depends more on the Holy Spirit.
YMMV.
![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif) ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
No, my mileage doesn't vary. I have no idea what you are talking about ...
God is Spirit. He was no more 'material' in the OT than he is in the NT - if we can put it that way.
If anything, through the Incarnation God is MORE material in the NT than in the Old.
Sorry, Sioni, but this is cobblers.
I can see that I don't just need to leave this thread, I also need to have a long lie down ...
Before I do so, here's my two-happ'orth ...
Yes, the OT is chaotic, the NT is chaotic - the early Church was chaotic. The Christian scene today is chaotic.
Yet, somehow, through it all, God the Holy Spirit is working and active ... and the Incarnation is the key to the whole thing.
There. Sorted. If only it were that simple and everyone was as sane and balanced as me ...
![[Biased]](wink.gif) ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
--------------------
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
I think it is quite hard to believe that Pope Urban II didn't understand the crusades in the context of the New Testament - he clearly saw himself as the leader of the church.
quote:
Most beloved brethren, today is manifest in you what the Lord says in the Gospel, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them." Unless the Lord God had been present in your spirits, all of you would not have uttered the same cry. For, although the cry issued from numerous mouths, yet the origin of the cry was one. Therefore I say to you that God, who implanted this in your breasts, has drawn it forth from you. Let this then be your war-cry in combats, because this word is given to you by God. When an armed attack is made upon the enemy, let this one cry be raised by all the soldiers of God: It is the will of God! It is the will of God!
from here
Of course one can criticise it, one could presumably argue that the records are wrong or fake.
But one cannot in all seriousness suggest that the crusades and Urban II were not working from a particular Christian hermeneutic. Diss it, criticise it, hate it.
But stop saying it didn't exist.
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The whole of the NT is what I supply. Nothing there supports you. Prove the opposite if you can but there is no proof is there?
And forget about telling me crusaders were Bible scholars. That is risible.
Ye gods, what is wrong with you.
People exist who read the bible differently to you. People in the past existed who read the bible differently to you.
The fact that you don't see violence in the NT says nothing about whether it is possible to see violence in the NT. In fact, the historical evidence is that it is perfectly possible to see violence justified by the bible - including the NT.
None of that is in dispute and all of it beside the point apart from one wee thing. Let's say for argument's sake that a medieval warlord could and did read the NT. It is yours to prove they justified violence from it.
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
None of that is in dispute and all of it beside the point apart from one wee thing. Let's say for argument's sake that a medieval warlord could and did read the NT. It is yours to prove they justified violence from it.
As I've posted above - twice now - there is scholarship showing that they did and there are records suggesting that they did.
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
None of that is in dispute and all of it beside the point apart from one wee thing. Let's say for argument's sake that a medieval warlord could and did read the NT. It is yours to prove they justified violence from it.
As mr cheesy points out, mediæval popes would seem to qualify as both "warlords" and "people who read the New Testament". They even used the New Testament on occasion use it to justify violence.
--------------------
Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
Also found this in a book:
quote:
The charity texts of the New Testament insisting on forgiveness were interpreted as applicable only to private persons and not to the behaviour of public authorities, to whom, both Gospel and Pauline texts could be marshalled to show, obedience was due. In Jerome's Latin version of the Bible, the Vulgate, which became the standard text in the medieval West, the exclusive word for enemy in the New Testament is inimicus, a personal enemy not hostis a public enemy. Paul, conceding that 'kings and those in authority' protect the faithful in a 'quiet and peaceful life' sanctioned public violence to police a sinful world.
Christopher Tyerman (2004) Fighting for Christendom - holy war and the crusades
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
|
Posted
Yep. Paul's appeal to obey civil authorities applied to state-sanctioned religious violence.
We can carp, we can criticise, we can deplore. But that's how they thought.
The evidence is all on this side of the argument. I wish it wasn't, but it is.
Anyhow, I shouldn't come back - I'll get a sword up my backside for saying one thing and doing another.
--------------------
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
the fact that the hermeneutic exists
Which I have never denied.
It existed and was crap.
How many times do I have to say it?
When are you going to start thinking about what you are saying instead of replying with mindless kneejerk recordings?
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
As I close the door gently on my way out ... (yes, I am going to leave this particular thread, honest)
I don't believe you.
You stage more comebacks than Nelly Melba.
quote:
imagine that everyone was (or should have been) operating with IVP hermeneutical credentials from the end of the 1st century
You are still setting up straw men.
There is a difference between claiming that everyone from the first century on operated with a conscious and articulated grammatical-historical hermeneutic, and recognising that such a hermeneutic was (and had to be) the default position, with all its corruptions and perversions, if Christianity were to exist and survive.
You are intelligent enough to see the difference, but for some reason you cannot bring yourself to admit it.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
But stop saying it didn't exist.
I'll keep saying this in the (probably vain) hope that it will eventually sink in:
No-one is saying that it did not exist; it existed and was crap.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Also found this in a book:
quote:
The charity texts of the New Testament insisting on forgiveness were interpreted as applicable only to private persons and not to the behaviour of public authorities, to whom, both Gospel and Pauline texts could be marshalled to show, obedience was due. In Jerome's Latin version of the Bible, the Vulgate, which became the standard text in the medieval West, the exclusive word for enemy in the New Testament is inimicus, a personal enemy not hostis a public enemy. Paul, conceding that 'kings and those in authority' protect the faithful in a 'quiet and peaceful life' sanctioned public violence to police a sinful world.
Christopher Tyerman (2004) Fighting for Christendom - holy war and the crusades
Any attempted acrobatic leap across the exegetical chasm between what Paul actually says in Romans 13, and the assertion that the Bible requires governments to slaughter heathens and heretics, involves hermeneutical contortions so tortuous as to ensure inevitable death.
Once again, the fact of such an attempt's existence is in no way incompatible with its interpretative crappiness.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
I'll keep saying this in the (probably vain) hope that it will eventually sink in:
No-one is saying that it did not exist; it existed and was crap.
Serious question: are you actually reading what Jamat is writing?
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Once again, the fact of such an attempt's existence is in no way incompatible with its interpretative crappiness.
Everyone agrees it was crap.
It was you who suggested it wasn't 'valid' and it was Jamat who tried to suggest it didn't exist and that the scholarship I introduced were from off-the-wall historians who didn't know shit.
It was valid, it was biblical, it was believed by Christians who understood it within the context of the New Testament.
That you don't agree with it is irrelevant.
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
There is a difference between claiming that everyone from the first century on operated with a conscious and articulated grammatical-historical hermeneutic, and recognising that such a hermeneutic was (and had to be) the default position, with all its corruptions and perversions, if Christianity were to exist and survive.
What are you talking about? How was that the "default position" and what does that even mean?
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
|
Posted
There is an interesting comment below that backs up the idea that crusading warfare was defended on Christian grounds despite being indefensible on Christian grounds.
There was not really a hermeneutic to justify their actions however much the crusaders and Pope Urban 2nd would have liked there to be one. So what they did according to Tyernan or this reviewer of his book at any rate was to invent one. There is a kind of smashing together of Christian ethics with apocalyptic texts from the book of Revelation to justify the first crusade.
IOW, their so called "hermeneutic" was rubbish. What they did was what they were determined to do not they were convinced they should do as Christians nor what any sane reading of the NT or Christian ethics would have urged them to do. Here
I think in the wash-up, you may say that they sought a hermeneutical justification but that would be as far as it goes. I do not think you can reasonably say they found what they were looking for.
--------------------
Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
]
There was not really a hermeneutic to justify their actions however much the crusaders and Pope Urban 2nd would have liked there to be one.
OK, now you need to define how you are using the term hermeneutic.
Kaplan, I hope that you are now seeing that Jamat is in denial that there was a hermeneutic.
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
Also I don't think that review whilst interesting (a) does justice to the book or (b) says what you think it says.
You seem to be suggesting that Pope Urban made up something to justify the crusades.
But that's not quite what the review says:
quote:
Tyerman answers carefully: By the time of the Crusades Western Christianity had become only indirectly a scriptural faith. The Church Fathers, Origen, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory I, accomplished the task of translating the New Testament's "inappropriate, obscure, incomplete, contradictory or idealistic apothegms into an intelligible and satisfying system of thought and action within the context of the institutions of an active religion, a temporal church and the daily lives of believers." (29). In other words, detours had to be found around the Sermon on the Mount.
Yet Tyerman is no iconoclast. He goes on to point out that the teaching of the Fathers was not so much a violation of the ideals of the New Testament as one might think. Pacifism and forgiveness pertained to the behavior of the private person. On the other hand, John the Baptist had told soldiers to remain in the army, and Christ told his disciples to pay taxes to Caesar. The Apocalypse of John is full of violence, and the Old Testament is a story of wars that were pleasing to God. The New Testament, then, is an ambiguous heritage, and out of that ambiguity came the thinking of those who preached the Crusades.
As always, it is worth seeking out the actual book in question rather than just poorly paraphrasing a short review.
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
|
Posted
quote:
mr Cheesy :I hope that you are now seeing that Jamat is in denial that there was a hermeneutic.
You wish! I would contend that their justification for violence was a never a valid hermeneutic or even one at all!
A hermeneutic, since you bring it up is not about justifications for actions via a text, but about a method of interpreting or discerning what a text is saying. It would begin with the text itself. Obviously much more should be said about this but not here.
I never suggested crusaders did not try to justify their actions via a Christian meta narrative but that is rather different.
--------------------
Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Your nasty response is impossible not to comprehend, clone of any random Romanlion post that it is.
The last time I looked Romanlion was an atheist.
Obnoxious superior stupidity has no particular faith position.
[ 01. August 2017, 07:43: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
--------------------
Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
mr Cheesy :I hope that you are now seeing that Jamat is in denial that there was a hermeneutic.
You wish! I would contend that their justification for violence was a never a valid hermeneutic or even one at all!
You seem to be disagreeing with yourself here and then agreeing with me that you are in denial that they had a hermeneutic.
Also you don't seem to understand the term "valid", it is distinct from "correct" as I have pointed out many times.
quote:
A hermeneutic, since you bring it up is not about justifications for actions via a text, but about a method of interpreting or discerning what a text is saying. It would begin with the text itself. Obviously much more should be said about this but not here.
A hermeneutic is a framework of understanding scripture. Now explain using terms that are generally agreed (and not in a way that only you understand) how this is not a hermeneutic.
Unless the Pope stood up and said some stuff that he didn't actually believe, I fail to see how he wasn't expressing a framework for understanding scripture.
quote:
I never suggested crusaders did not try to justify their actions via a Christian meta narrative but that is rather different.
How is it? How are you defining these words?
--------------------
arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
A few seconds' thought would show that the right of any Christian to allegorise anything anyhow would spell exegetical suicide.
As far as I'm aware the early Church thought that the right of any Christian to employ any exegetical method including grammatical-historical hermeneutics would spell exegetical suicide.
The early Church went from a period in which eyewitness testimony was considered of critical importance to a period in which Apostolic succession was considered of critical importance. There's no trace of a period in which unmediated access to Scripture was considered authoritative.
Unless literacy was far more widespread than we believe, unmediated access to Scripture could never have been held the primary authority.
--------------------
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
| IP: Logged
|
|
Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
There's no trace of a period in which unmediated access to Scripture was considered authoritative.
Unless literacy was far more widespread than we believe, unmediated access to Scripture could never have been held the primary authority.
Not only was literacy not widespread, but texts were relatively rare, and most of them were in the possession of groups of Christians, rather than private individuals. The texts were read aloud in churches and this is how ordinary Christians came to know them.
Moo
--------------------
Kerygmania host
---------------------
See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
As I close the door gently on my way out ... (yes, I am going to leave this particular thread, honest)
I don't believe you.
You stage more comebacks than Nelly Melba.
quote:
imagine that everyone was (or should have been) operating with IVP hermeneutical credentials from the end of the 1st century
You are still setting up straw men.
There is a difference between claiming that everyone from the first century on operated with a conscious and articulated grammatical-historical hermeneutic, and recognising that such a hermeneutic was (and had to be) the default position, with all its corruptions and perversions, if Christianity were to exist and survive.
You are intelligent enough to see the difference, but for some reason you cannot bring yourself to admit it.
Well, thank you for damning with faint praise.
Yes, I do stage far too many come-backs. Mea culpa.
Perhaps it's my ego. Mea culpa. However it is difficult not to post when I see comments like yours.
It's not that I am intelligent enough to grasp your point but so recalcitrant as to admit it, rather it's the opposite.
I do grasp your point but don't agree with it.
Why? Because it is unhistorical.
The reason Christianity continued to exist and survive wasn't because there was a particular default hermeneutic to sustain it - as much as I like, admire and share your commitment to the grammatical-historical approach.
Rather, it was because there was a community of faith which gathered around a particular apostolic deposit in such a way as to ensure its continuance.
That community of faith used various hermeneutical models, many of which, quite rightly, we are rubbishing or distancing ourselves from here.
Despite your protestations to the contrary, it ain't that big a leap for medieval Christians to have applied the Apostle Paul's observations about civil authorities to what they considered to be appropriate conduct by Christian rulers.
I very much doubt that Charlemagne had those pagan Saxons executed simply because they were pagans, rather it was because he felt they'd become some kind of 5th column once he'd absorbed Saxony into his empire.
Had a wandering Saxon trader ventured into his dominions I very much doubt he'd have had them arrested and executed. But a whole bunch of them defying what he'd have considered a reasonable request to convert, that was a different matter ...
I'm not justifying it or condoning it. It's a bollocky thing to do by anyone's standards.
But given the theocratic hermeneutical framework these guys were operating with then it makes some kind of twisted sense.
Where I will agree with you is that it would clearly have made Christianity harder to sustain if everyone adopted a completely allegorical approach. Of course, no-one ever adopted a totally allegorical approach - not even Augustine although he could be prone to that, of course.
As could the Apostle Paul, as has been pointed out upthread.
But nobody, apart perhaps from some very extreme fundies, has ever taken a completely literal approach either.
No, what we've ended up with is a fusion of various approaches with what we now know as the grammatical-historical method effectively coming out on top - within the framework of received Tradition or small t traditions of course.
Whatever else I believe, I do believe in the workings of God the Holy Spirit in history, through people and through the Church / churches - however we might define them within the framework of broadly historic, creedal Christianity in the overlapping Venn Diagram sense.
As do you.
So we are on the same page there, I think.
To a certain extent I think we are talking past each other, but equally, I'm afraid, I do think you are redacting your own particular position into history to some extent and assuming that it was always somehow the default position.
Which is disputable, I would suggest.
Which is why I've been disputing it.
I don't know what it is that I am refusing to 'admit'. That you are right and I am wrong?
You haven't even scratched the surface let alone provided any compelling evidence for your assertion other than to claim that it's obvious that Christianity would have collapsed and fragmented if your unfounded claims hadn't been the case.
I'm saying it's not obvious and you haven't proven that it is.
--------------------
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
But nobody, apart perhaps from some very extreme fundies, has ever taken a completely literal approach either.
Actually not even them. They're just either not self-aware enough to realize it, or not honest enough to admit it.
--------------------
This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Yes, I do stage far too many come-backs. Mea culpa.
On which topic I had this to say. This isn't a hell call, just I couldn't say it here.
--------------------
mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Russ
Old salt
# 120
|
Posted
Setting on one side for a moment the question of whether the actions of the State can be terrorism.
Seems to me that the logic of Kaplan's position is that Charlemagne wasn't a Christian terrorist because he was a medieval Catholic rather than a real Christian. He's too polite to put it so baldly, but is saying that such a massacre is outside the range of acts that (modern reformed = real) Christianity would countenance.
Whereas the logic of Gamaliel's position is that the massacre wasn't an atrocity - something self-evidently wrong that only an evil person would do. But was just a mistake - a moral error that a good Christian could commit in good faith.
Indeed, you might even say that if history had taken a different turn we might be looking back on that massacre as the good and noble act of a wise king. So it's only a moral wrong by today's standards ?
Or is that not what you mean ?
--------------------
Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
|
Posted
quote:
Russ: It seems to me that the logic of Kaplan's position is that Charlemagne wasn't a Christian terrorist because he was a medieval Catholic rather than a real Christian
Well, no doubt he will clarify this himself but upthread somewhere he denied this. The contention AFAI understand it is that despite these violent actions being perpetrated by Christians, they were not 'Christian' actions because they cannot be justified by any authoritative teaching from the New Testament...with which I agree.
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
|
Posted
But they can be justified if you have a hermeneutic that works that way. Which is what Charlemagne and his contemporaries had.
The whole issue is around context and hermeneutics.
Having a hermeneutic that justifies it doesn't make it right.
That's the point.
--------------------
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Whereas the logic of Gamaliel's position is that the massacre wasn't an atrocity
How the fuck do you get that from anything Gamaliel has said?
--------------------
This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
|
Posted
Russ is even worse for not reading for comprehension.
FWIW, I believe it was an atrocity.
Because it would be logically possible to justify it using a medieval, theocratic hermeneutic doesn't diminish that.
Because Cromwell's massacre of the garrisons of Drogheda and Wexford could be justified by the rules of engagement in warfare at that time doesn't make that any less an atrocity either - and there was a religious dimension to that as RC clergy and monks were put to the sword as well as combatants and civilians caught up in 'collateral damage.'
So, no, I'm not saying it was an ickle mistake. I'm saying it was wrong on all sorts of levels.
Carry on ...
--------------------
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Russ
Old salt
# 120
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Whereas the logic of Gamaliel's position is that the massacre wasn't an atrocity
How the fuck do you get that from anything Gamaliel has said?
If you read the rest of the sentence, you'll see that I'm suggesting that "atrocity" carries the sense of something self-evidently wrong. Or maybe evil.
If something is justifiable, then it's not self-evidently wrong.
How can it be an atrocity and at the same time something that it's perfectly reasonable to do, as a valid interpretation of Christianity ? For someone who believes in Christianity ?
I'm not seeing how you can square this circle...
--------------------
Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
It was valid, it was biblical, it was believed by Christians who understood it within the context of the New Testament.
It was never valid or biblical, and those Christians who believed otherwise were wrong.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
There's no trace of a period in which unmediated access to Scripture was considered authoritative.
Unless literacy was far more widespread than we believe, unmediated access to Scripture could never have been held the primary authority.
Not only was literacy not widespread, but texts were relatively rare, and most of them were in the possession of groups of Christians, rather than private individuals. The texts were read aloud in churches and this is how ordinary Christians came to know them.
Moo
True but irrelevant.
Amongst those who were literate, had access to the texts, and participated in theological dialogue, the underlying hermeneutic had to be essentially (though never uncorruptedly) historical-grammatical, because the arbitrary and subjective alternatives (such as freewheeling allegory) would have rendered communication and discussion and development impossible.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Where I will agree with you is that it would clearly have made Christianity harder to sustain if everyone adopted a completely allegorical approach. Of course, no-one ever adopted a totally allegorical approach - not even Augustine although he could be prone to that, of course.
Arbitrarily rather than "totally".
Augustine inherited his allegorising indirectly from from Origen and directly from Ambrose, and found it useful for dealing with criticisms of the Bible from sources such as his old mates the Manichaeans, by using it to pretend that difficult passages were 'really' allegorical.
quote:
As could the Apostle Paul, as has been pointed out upthread.
You don't need me to spell out for you the problems with the implied proposition; "the inspired and canonical writer Paul used allegory, therefore all subsequent Christians are entitled to do so when and as they are inclined".
quote:
But nobody, apart perhaps from some very extreme fundies, has ever taken a completely literal approach either.
There is not, never was, and never will be, a "complete" literalist, "fundy" or otherwise.
The term literalist is lazy and meaningless when used generally, and can only be used in specific contexts such as YEC, dispensationalism, and sacramentalist controversies ("hoc est corpus meum").
[ 01. August 2017, 23:02: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
Printer-friendly view
