Review Stephen’s words before they stoned him and at the same time, check who were the killers.
Yeah.... What dealings? You know actual historical dealings. In the past two, four hundred thousand years?
You reject the scripture as a historical record apparently, on the basis of ..what exactly? If that does not change, I fear there is no other option but the black hole of uncertainty.
Review Stephen’s words before they stoned him and at the same time, check who were the killers.
Yeah.... What dealings? You know actual historical dealings. In the past two, four hundred thousand years?
You reject the scripture as a historical record apparently, on the basis of ..what exactly? If that does not change, I fear there is no other option but the black hole of uncertainty.
Most people take the bible as meaningful story of belief, allegory and myth. Some of it is wisdom, some of it is stories of what not to do. It's not rejection of the bible, it's rejection of certain ways of reading it, understanding it, misusing it.
Review Stephen’s words before they stoned him and at the same time, check who were the killers.
Yeah.... What dealings? You know actual historical dealings. In the past two, four hundred thousand years?
You reject the scripture as a historical record apparently, on the basis of ..what exactly? If that does not change, I fear there is no other option but the black hole of uncertainty.
Most people take the bible as meaningful story of belief, allegory and myth. Some of it is wisdom, some of it is stories of what not to do. It's not rejection of the bible, it's rejection of certain ways of reading it, understanding it, misusing it.
And some people see it as God's revelation, historical, poetic, accurate as to fact, a guide to truth and fundamentally a metanarrative. If you decide to limit it then who are you limiting? The bottom line is whether you allow it to judge you or whether you judge it. If you do the latter your skewed interpretive filter will never allow you to hear what God is saying through it.
I have no problem with the OT at all unlike the OP because I see it as a dispensational narrative. God has revealed himself in it progressively and consistently and the basic bones of: creation, fall redemption and destiny are evident. It helps to see it as Jewish because it was originally their metanarrative. Jesus was a essentially a Jewish messianic figure. A lot of it begins to cohere if this is allowed for.
Review Stephen’s words before they stoned him and at the same time, check who were the killers.
Yeah.... What dealings? You know actual historical dealings. In the past two, four hundred thousand years?
You reject the scripture as a historical record apparently, on the basis of ..what exactly? If that does not change, I fear there is no other option but the black hole of uncertainty.
Most people take the bible as meaningful story of belief, allegory and myth. Some of it is wisdom, some of it is stories of what not to do. It's not rejection of the bible, it's rejection of certain ways of reading it, understanding it, misusing it.
And some people see it as God's revelation, historical, poetic, accurate as to fact, a guide to truth and fundamentally a metanarrative.
Yes, and many others see it equally as God’s revelation, but do not believe that the power of God’s revelation is dependent on the historical accuracy of every single story contained in it.
Review Stephen’s words before they stoned him and at the same time, check who were the killers.
Yeah.... What dealings? You know actual historical dealings. In the past two, four hundred thousand years?
You reject the scripture as a historical record apparently, on the basis of ..what exactly? If that does not change, I fear there is no other option but the black hole of uncertainty.
Most people take the bible as meaningful story of belief, allegory and myth. Some of it is wisdom, some of it is stories of what not to do. It's not rejection of the bible, it's rejection of certain ways of reading it, understanding it, misusing it.
And some people see it as God's revelation, historical, poetic, accurate as to fact, a guide to truth and fundamentally a metanarrative.
Yes, and many others see it equally as God’s revelation, but do not believe that the power of God’s revelation is dependent on the historical accuracy of every single story contained in it.
True. Your point is perhaps that it is efficacious despite inaccuracies? In the end it is a faith story. Faith is the evidence of things unseen.
Did Samson really take those gates 5 kms up a hill or catch 300 foxes and tie their tails together or kill several thousands with the jawbone of an ass? Well, without God's power he could have done none of those things. Did Joshua make the sun stand still? Is Hezekiah's sundial a real event? Did the waters of the red sea open.? Did Jesus really open the eyes of the man born blind and raise Lazarus?
If you want to pick and choose, what basis do to you use? It has all been done and really you can be a sceptic or a believer. If you are a sceptic, how is it at all efficacious?
Obviously there are extremes; we know that the earth is billions of years old and that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa, so we know the creation stories and garden of Eden are not historical records. At the other extreme, the spread of the Early Church from Jerusalem and around the Roman world is a matter of historical record.
In between there are lots of things that may or may not be more or less historical; perhaps a group of slaves escaped Egypt during an unusual event which enabled the crossing of a usually water covered area, maybe not. It doesn't matter much. My problems with the OT (eg the mass murder of Canaanites in Joshua which would make IS turn round and say "steady on there!") are however somewhat lessened if it's not a historical record but a national origin myth. I don't have to "draw a line" however because I don't think it's a question that can readily be answered, nor one which particularly needs to be. Did Philip really get teleported to an Ethiopian eunuch' s chariot or is it an early bit of historically questionable hagiography? Who knows?
That one can either be a sceptic or believer in every detail is clearly disproved by this Shipful of people who are clearly, in the main, neither.
Review Stephen’s words before they stoned him and at the same time, check who were the killers.
Yeah.... What dealings? You know actual historical dealings. In the past two, four hundred thousand years?
You reject the scripture as a historical record apparently, on the basis of ..what exactly? If that does not change, I fear there is no other option but the black hole of uncertainty.
On the basis that unless it is correlated, crosscast with science it isn't history.
And some people see it as God's revelation, historical, poetic, accurate as to fact, a guide to truth and fundamentally a metanarrative.
One of the questions here is whose metanarrative? There is evidence that the selection of the canon imposed a metanarrative from those involved in that selection.
Review Stephen’s words before they stoned him and at the same time, check who were the killers.
Yeah.... What dealings? You know actual historical dealings. In the past two, four hundred thousand years?
You reject the scripture as a historical record apparently, on the basis of ..what exactly? If that does not change, I fear there is no other option but the black hole of uncertainty.
Most people take the bible as meaningful story of belief, allegory and myth. Some of it is wisdom, some of it is stories of what not to do. It's not rejection of the bible, it's rejection of certain ways of reading it, understanding it, misusing it.
And some people see it as God's revelation, historical, poetic, accurate as to fact, a guide to truth and fundamentally a metanarrative.
Yes, and many others see it equally as God’s revelation, but do not believe that the power of God’s revelation is dependent on the historical accuracy of every single story contained in it.
True. Your point is perhaps that it is efficacious despite inaccuracies?
No, that is not my point. My point is that Scripture comprises a variety of writing styles and genres—history (as understood by the writers, and not in the modern sense), psalms and hymns, poetry, parables, revelation and prophecy, myth and others. Some are intended to convey with accuracy an event that happened, some relate traditional understandings—accurate or not—of an event that happened, and some are intended to convey a message by means of a story, the historical accuracy of which is irrelevant.
Did Joshua make the sun stand still?
A) No. If anyone did that, God did. Humans do not have that power.
b) Are you aware that there is a long line of rabbinic teaching that this is a figure of speech referring to the summer solstice?
If you want to pick and choose, what basis do to you use?
Pick and choose what? What to believe or what to interpret as describing an event that actually happened? Folks I'm talking about aren't picking and choosing; in general, they do not think that's an option. They are approaching Scripture seriously and wrestling with it to do their best to understand what it means. They do this by studying the Scriptures to understand how those in the time they were written would understand the texts, by studying the style of writing and the implications of that, by reference to how the Scriptures have been understood by the church for the last two millennia (and the case of the OT, how it has been understood by Jews), and by a variety of other tools and practices—paramount of which is reading it all in light of the definitive revelation of God in Jesus.
It has all been done and really you can be a sceptic or a believer. If you are a sceptic, how is it at all efficacious?
As with the charge of "picking and choosing," the repeating riff on the idea that those who agree with you are believers and those who do not are skeptics or non-believers is tiresome. Rejecting your understanding and interpretation of Scripture =/= rejecting Scripture.
Review Stephen’s words before they stoned him and at the same time, check who were the killers.
Yeah.... What dealings? You know actual historical dealings. In the past two, four hundred thousand years?
You reject the scripture as a historical record apparently, on the basis of ..what exactly? If that does not change, I fear there is no other option but the black hole of uncertainty.
Nick Tamen:They are approaching Scripture seriously and
Tiresome? To whom? To hypocrites who pretend to be Christian while attempting to redefine its basic terms? to the pathos of: Jesus is a good man, a great teacher, but not really God’s unique son. (What does Anglicanism really do with CSLewis?)
So what is seriously? Really, if you discount supernatural events and you discount historical truth and along with miracles, you downgrade prophecy to the meanderings of Bronze Age superstition, what actually is there left to take seriously?
Nick Tamen:They are approaching Scripture seriously and
Tiresome? To whom? To hypocrites who pretend to be Christian while attempting to redefine its basic terms? to the pathos of: Jesus is a good man, a great teacher, but not really God’s unique son. (What does Anglicanism really do with CSLewis?)
So what is seriously? Really, if you discount supernatural events and you discount historical truth and along with miracles, you downgrade prophecy to the meanderings of Bronze Age superstition, what actually is there left to take seriously?
MPaul, there are simply too many unwarranted, biased and dismissive assumptions in this to even make it worth a response.
The one response I will give: tiresome to me and other Christians over whom you appear to stand in judgment.
And some people see it as God's revelation, historical, poetic, accurate as to fact, a guide to truth and fundamentally a metanarrative.
One of the questions here is whose metanarrative? There is evidence that the selection of the canon imposed a metanarrative from those involved in that selection.
The OT is the Jewish metanarrative. All Christians were originally Jews who became convinced Jesus was their promised messiah. It was Paul who extended the impact of Jesus beyond Judaism and enabled inclusion of the rest of us.
Karl LB: we know that the earth is billions of years old and that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa, so we know the creation stories and garden of Eden are not historical records.
No we do not. Millions of people do not believe this. You choose to adopt that as your over arching meta narrative is all. It is nothing more than a sustaining fiction
Karl LB: we know that the earth is billions of years old and that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa, so we know the creation stories and garden of Eden are not historical records.
No we do not. Millions of people do not believe this. You choose to adopt that as your over arching meta narrative is all. It is nothing more than a sustaining fiction
Many in the world lack the opportunity to benefit from education. Others have no excuse.
In reality rejecting the age of the Earth and African human origins is as batshit insane as flat-earthism. Willfull ignorance in anyone who's been through any reasonable education system.
Nick Tamen:They are approaching Scripture seriously and
Tiresome? To whom? To hypocrites who pretend to be Christian while attempting to redefine its basic terms? to the pathos of: Jesus is a good man, a great teacher, but not really God’s unique son. (What does Anglicanism really do with CSLewis?)
So what is seriously? Really, if you discount supernatural events and you discount historical truth and along with miracles, you downgrade prophecy to the meanderings of Bronze Age superstition, what actually is there left to take seriously?
No one here but you discounts historical, as a subset of forensic, scientific, truth. No . one .
Hardly any one here, including me, doubts that Jesus is really God's unique son. The unique human. He isn't the sole incarnation of course. That is utter meaningless nonsense in the face of the fact of infinity from eternity.
A large majority here do not discount the miracles of Jesus or His immediate followers.
Prophecy cannot be upgraded to foretelling the future as it hasn't happened. Even God can't know what it is in His physical realm. Beyond obvious broad historical brush strokes and common sense at the local level based on omniscience of the past and present. And any actual intervention He actually has planned. If any.
So who are these hypocrites pretending to be Christian?
What there is left to take seriously when you get rid of all of the delusional, irrational, a/anti/un-historical, unscientific dross is that Jesus is the only hope.
So, MPaul, in what sense is your Dispensationalist, highly literal interpretation of scripture any less of a 'judgement' on scripture than anyone else's interpretation?
As for Anglicanism and C S Lewis, well, officially at least Anglicanism as a whole and C S Lewis are on the same page on the Deity of Christ irrespective of whether individual Anglicans adhere to it themselves.
But that's a different issue.
I can't speak for anyone else here but I'm a Trinitarian believer who has no problem whatsoever with evolution nor with the idea of aspects of scripture being mythogical.
It's only an issue if we insist on the scriptures supporting a particular form of conservative Protestant belief.
Why should it? Because conservative Protestants say so?
Nick Tamen:They are approaching Scripture seriously and
Tiresome? To whom? To hypocrites who pretend to be Christian while attempting to redefine its basic terms? to the pathos of: Jesus is a good man, a great teacher, but not really God’s unique son. (What does Anglicanism really do with CSLewis?)
So what is seriously? Really, if you discount supernatural events and you discount historical truth and along with miracles, you downgrade prophecy to the meanderings of Bronze Age superstition, what actually is there left to take seriously?
MPaul, there are simply too many unwarranted, biased and dismissive assumptions in this to even make it worth a response.
The one response I will give: tiresome to me and other Christians over whom you appear to stand in judgment.
Nick Tamen:They are approaching Scripture seriously and
Tiresome? To whom? To hypocrites who pretend to be Christian while attempting to redefine its basic terms? to the pathos of: Jesus is a good man, a great teacher, but not really God’s unique son. (What does Anglicanism really do with CSLewis?)
So what is seriously? Really, if you discount supernatural events and you discount historical truth and along with miracles, you downgrade prophecy to the meanderings of Bronze Age superstition, what actually is there left to take seriously?
MPaul, there are simply too many unwarranted, biased and dismissive assumptions in this to even make it worth a response.
The one response I will give: tiresome to me and other Christians over whom you appear to stand in judgment.
Any personal judgement is unintentional. The question Of what is left to take seriously in the OT if one dismisses, historical and supernatural elements, is genuine.
Yes. If someone thinks the world isn't billions of years old, then I know something they don't. Can't see why that's a problem for you. It's not a fiction. It's not competing with anything. It just is.
Yes. If someone thinks the world isn't billions of years old, then I know something they don't. Can't see why that's a problem for you. It's not a fiction. It's not competing with anything. It just is.
Sure, it is your faith statement. Whatever another believes isn’t a problem at all for me. However, I have a competing faith statement. There is a supernatural revelation available to us, the Bible. You could argue a viewpoint that faith stances are necessarily fictions or invented creations that we use to create meaning. These are merely tenets to which we ascribe truth value. It does not make them axiomatic though.
The question Of what is left to take seriously in the OT if one dismisses, historical and supernatural elements, is genuine.
I think it could be argued that if one insists on treating as historical writings in the OT that were not meant to be historical, one is not taking the OT seriously.
It's a shame there isn't some kind of systematic empirical method of gathering and testing evidence to help with deciding between different truth claims. Someone ought to come up with something or we'll be all at sea. The Latin root for knowledge was sci-, so perhaps we could call it "science" or something.
So, MPaul, in what sense is your Dispensationalist, highly literal interpretation of scripture any less of a 'judgement' on scripture than anyone else's interpretation?
As for Anglicanism and C S Lewis, well, officially at least Anglicanism as a whole and C S Lewis are on the same page on the Deity of Christ irrespective of whether individual Anglicans adhere to it themselves.
But that's a different issue.
I can't speak for anyone else here but I'm a Trinitarian believer who has no problem whatsoever with evolution nor with the idea of aspects of scripture being mythogical.
It's only an issue if we insist on the scriptures supporting a particular form of conservative Protestant belief.
Why should it? Because conservative Protestants say so?
Well, I am certainly judging, just not personally. We have been round this bush many times Gamaliel so it has all been said. I cannot guarantee my interpretation is right. I do not consider though that it is mainline or conservative either. Those are merely labels to tilt at. However it IS mine and I guess, when I die, if the rapture does not occur first, I will see if I am right.
Nick Tamen:They are approaching Scripture seriously and
Tiresome? To whom? To hypocrites who pretend to be Christian while attempting to redefine its basic terms? to the pathos of: Jesus is a good man, a great teacher, but not really God’s unique son.
What do you mean when you say you are not judging personally? If any one of us makes some kind of judgement here it's axiomatically a personal judgement. It may be the same as other people's judgements within our particular faith tradition, but it's still our personal judgement.
Do I believe in God's supernatural revelation through Christ? Yes I do.
How is that lessened as a belief in a supernatural dimension to Christian revelation if I also believe in evolution or think that dispensationalism and the Rapture is a load of old hoo-ey if understood in 19th century fundamentalist terms.
What does Anglicanism do with C S Lewis? Same as what anyone else does. They read him. Why pick out Lewis? Why not other Anglican writers?
I've got news for you, if you didn't know it already, Lewis wasn't an evangelical.
Evangelicals appropriating Lewis is rather like them appropriating Bonhoeffer who wasn't an evangelical either.
At least Anglicans don't have to appropriate Lewis. He was an Anglican.
Besides, the last time I looked the Anglican communion affirms the Trinity and the Deity of Christ, the Deity of God the Holy Spirit.
If individual Anglicans cross their fingers behind their backs when reciting the Creed that's another matter.
I think Lewis believed in evolution as far as I know. I doubt if he believed in a pre-tribulation rapture nor had any truck with arcane eschatological speculations.
It's a shame there isn't some kind of systematic empirical method of gathering and testing evidence to help with deciding between different truth claims. Someone ought to come up with something or we'll be all at sea. The Latin root for knowledge was sci-, so perhaps we could call it "science" or something.
OK but when you define knowledge as excluding non empirical then you are doing what Dawkins does. You end up dismissing the non empirical as irrational. That is what not allowing a divine foot in the door amounts to. It excludes faith aand revelation and relegates these to sky fairy status. Science in the inductive sense as you demand for an evolutionary mindset, is just another truth claim. It is a fiction when extended beyond naturalistic limits. It does not and cannot tell us fundamental answers. If I concede I evolved, the logical corollary is that all I read in scripture is ancient attempts to grapple with knowledge and in modern terms, nonsense.
It's a shame there isn't some kind of systematic empirical method of gathering and testing evidence to help with deciding between different truth claims. Someone ought to come up with something or we'll be all at sea. The Latin root for knowledge was sci-, so perhaps we could call it "science" or something.
If I concede I evolved, the logical corollary is that all I read in scripture is ancient attempts to grapple with knowledge and in modern terms, nonsense.
And yet many, many faithful—and thoughtful—Christians find that assertion to itself be illogical and nonsense.
Gamma Gamaliel: What do you mean when you say you are not judging personally? If any one of us makes some kind of judgement here it's axiomatically a personal judgement
I mean that by stating a belief that is claimed as Biblical which will fire debate, one is judging. However, in doing this, there is no personal offence intended.
It's a shame there isn't some kind of systematic empirical method of gathering and testing evidence to help with deciding between different truth claims. Someone ought to come up with something or we'll be all at sea. The Latin root for knowledge was sci-, so perhaps we could call it "science" or something.
If I concede I evolved, the logical corollary is that all I read in scripture is ancient attempts to grapple with knowledge and in modern terms, nonsense.
And yet many, many faithful—and thoughtful—Christians find that assertion to itself be illogical and nonsense.
Well, no problem from me. If they are what you say, they are all good.
It's a shame there isn't some kind of systematic empirical method of gathering and testing evidence to help with deciding between different truth claims. Someone ought to come up with something or we'll be all at sea. The Latin root for knowledge was sci-, so perhaps we could call it "science" or something.
OK but when you define knowledge as excluding non empirical then you are doing what Dawkins does. You end up dismissing the non empirical as irrational. That is what not allowing a divine foot in the door amounts to. It excludes faith aand revelation and relegates these to sky fairy status. Science in the inductive sense as you demand for an evolutionary mindset, is just another truth claim. It is a fiction when extended beyond naturalistic limits. It does not and cannot tell us fundamental answers. If I concede I evolved, the logical corollary is that all I read in scripture is ancient attempts to grapple with knowledge and in modern terms, nonsense.
You're dismissing the empirical as irrational when you say scientific discoveries are a "faith position." Science isn't faith. It's science. You're peddling a false equivalency (among other fallacies).
Mousthief: You're dismissing the empirical as irrational when you say scientific discoveries are a "faith position." Science isn't faith. It's science. You're peddling a false equivalency (among other fallacies
The problem with that is you are assuming all Science is equal. It most certainly is not. There is nothing testable about evolution as a theory of origins of humanity. It is a faith position.
Mousthief: You're dismissing the empirical as irrational when you say scientific discoveries are a "faith position." Science isn't faith. It's science. You're peddling a false equivalency (among other fallacies
The problem with that is you are assuming all Science is equal. It most certainly is not. There is nothing testable about evolution as a theory of origins of humanity. It is a faith position.
You clearly know very little about evolution. But at any rate you've moved the goalposts. I was talking about the age of the earth.
Nick Tamen:They are approaching Scripture seriously and
Tiresome? To whom? To hypocrites who pretend to be Christian while attempting to redefine its basic terms? to the pathos of: Jesus is a good man, a great teacher, but not really God’s unique son. (What does Anglicanism really do with CSLewis?)
So what is seriously? Really, if you discount supernatural events and you discount historical truth and along with miracles, you downgrade prophecy to the meanderings of Bronze Age superstition, what actually is there left to take seriously?
No one here but you discounts historical, as a subset of forensic, scientific, truth. No . one .
Hardly any one here, including me, doubts that Jesus is really God's unique son. The unique human. He isn't the sole incarnation of course. That is utter meaningless nonsense in the face of the fact of infinity from eternity.
A large majority here do not discount the miracles of Jesus or His immediate followers.
Prophecy cannot be upgraded to foretelling the future as it hasn't happened. Even God can't know what it is in His physical realm. Beyond obvious broad historical brush strokes and common sense at the local level based on omniscience of the past and present. And any actual intervention He actually has planned. If any.
So who are these hypocrites pretending to be Christian?
What there is left to take seriously when you get rid of all of the delusional, irrational, a/anti/un-historical, unscientific dross is that Jesus is the only hope.
If someone defines a category, Christian, they can mean by that and usually do their version of the Christmas and Easter stories. That is fine by me.
However it is unsatisfying. Let’s look at Peter. Dear chap who was with Jesus for the entire 3 years. How would Peter define that category? I think that if I want to redefine it different to him then it is not really ‘Christian’. If I want to say, for instance that the ascension did not happen or the man at the beautiful gate was not cured of lameness or that tongues of fire did not appear on the day of Pentecost or that the resurrected Christ did not appear to the 120, or that there was no miracle of th3 loaves and fishes then I have to call dear ole Pete a liar. What I say is Christian is not what he would say is Christian.
Instead I want a symbolic or cosmic or other Christ that I can interpret as a symbol of hope then will not another symbol do as well? Why must I reinvent Christianity and insist that I am Christian and ole Pete was deluded regarding his story. None of that stuff really happened! I know cos I am an enlightened technologically educated and unsuperstitious 21st century homo sapien and I evolved Into my present status of being.
But wait, I am Christian..my version of it anyway..Or amI? I don’t know what I am..Help!
Re the history and antiquity of the earth, MPaul, thou seemest a Doubting Thomas. The continents, they move. The earth orbits. Our galaxy is one of a local cluster of 20+ galaxies. And our solar system revolves around its galactic centre every 225 million years. Creation is far, far grander than the Genesis story renders. The rocks and stones, planets and galaxies sing.
"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." (Charles Darwin, Origin of Species)
Mousthief: You're dismissing the empirical as irrational when you say scientific discoveries are a "faith position." Science isn't faith. It's science. You're peddling a false equivalency (among other fallacies
The problem with that is you are assuming all Science is equal. It most certainly is not. There is nothing testable about evolution as a theory of origins of humanity. It is a faith position.
You clearly know very little about evolution. But at any rate you've moved the goalposts. I was talking about the age of the earth.
The age of the earth is impossible to know apart from revelation which is provided in Exodus 20:11. You are correct regarding my lack of knowledge of evolution. I do however know that nothing can come of nothing as King Lear says to the fool and it is even more unlikely that molecules became man by natural processes only. I am also not familiar with a lot of other folk tales.
But you see, the bible reveals a story of belief. Of faith. It must not be applied to matters of science where evidence shows what is in the material world. Mustn't confine God to the bible.
What science actually says about "something coming from nothing" (which isn't stated properly with my quote of you) is that from energy comes matter. From energy came all of the matter, the material physical universe. Science calls it The Big Bang. It's a far cry from a universe of a sun revolving around an earth with stars merely points of light in the night sky. And life is far more than a man of clay: DNA and the processes by which all life is constituted. Let's not be comfortable with God as we humans think God might be.
The age of the earth is impossible to know apart from revelation which is provided in Exodus 20:11.
Is it possible to know your own age? Or mine? Or mousethief's? Where in the Bible can we find these revelations? If not there, where?
Not that I've conducted an exhaustive search of Scripture for notes about my own little sojourn here among the stones and stars and stories, but I'm confident nobody will find a syllable about any of us in the Good Book. Yet here we all are, little images of God, our own sacrificial soft targets for one another's judgment.
At any rate, you haven't 'evolved' as an individual. You were born the same way as the rest of us. You weren't created out of thin air or the dust of the earth in any direct sense. You were conceived in your mother's womb and 'fearfully and wonderfully made' just as the rest of us are.
Did our ancestors evolve? Are human beings as a species continuing to evolve? Yes. All the evidence points that way.
Does that make the Genesis account of Creation 'nonsense'? Only if you insist on it carrying a particular weight as an historical account in the modern sense of the term. You are projecting your own late 19th / early 20th century frame of interpretive reference back into an ancient document.
Is Milton's Paradise Lost an accurate account of the pre-lapsarian world and of cosmic struggles between good and evil from the dawn of time?
Why hold onto a brittle and binary set of assumptions that force everything into a series of stark choices based on highly literal interpretations that elide any form of nuance or context?
I'm sure it makes life a lot simpler but in so doing it also raises a shed load of additional complications.
Coming back to the C S Lewis thing. You missed my point. I was being rhetorical. 'What has Anglicanism got to do with C S Lewis?'
You post as if Lewis's 'Mad, Bad or God' trope is the defining tenet of Anglicanism and as if somehow a failure to accept that is a defining feature of present day Anglicanism.
I 'bought' Lewis's neat little formula and it was a contributing factor in my conversion. Fine. I no longer cite or use it though as it's a circular argument and whilst it sounds clever at first, on closer inspection there are lots of holes in it.
Does that mean that I'm denying the Incarnation?
No. Far from it. It simply means that I no longer use Lewis's somewhat awkward little sound-bite to argue the case for it.
That doesn't make me smarter than Lewis. I'm just coming at it differently from him at this particular point.
Mousthief: You're dismissing the empirical as irrational when you say scientific discoveries are a "faith position." Science isn't faith. It's science. You're peddling a false equivalency (among other fallacies
The problem with that is you are assuming all Science is equal. It most certainly is not. There is nothing testable about evolution as a theory of origins of humanity. It is a faith position.
You clearly know very little about evolution. But at any rate you've moved the goalposts. I was talking about the age of the earth.
The age of the earth is impossible to know apart from revelation which is provided in Exodus 20:11. You are correct regarding my lack of knowledge of evolution. I do however know that nothing can come of nothing as King Lear says to the fool and it is even more unlikely that molecules became man by natural processes only. I am also not familiar with a lot of other folk tales.
Rubbish. Let me introduce you to a little thing called geology which has some inarguable* evidence to show that the planet is billions of year old.
* Well I suppose that's technically incorrect - one can stand in front of deposits that clearly, obviously took many millions of years to be laid down, stick fingers in the ears and say lalala I don't believe it. But that's not even slightly credible.
Nick Tamen:They are approaching Scripture seriously and
Tiresome? To whom? To hypocrites who pretend to be Christian while attempting to redefine its basic terms? to the pathos of: Jesus is a good man, a great teacher, but not really God’s unique son. (What does Anglicanism really do with CSLewis?)
So what is seriously? Really, if you discount supernatural events and you discount historical truth and along with miracles, you downgrade prophecy to the meanderings of Bronze Age superstition, what actually is there left to take seriously?
No one here but you discounts historical, as a subset of forensic, scientific, truth. No . one .
Hardly any one here, including me, doubts that Jesus is really God's unique son. The unique human. He isn't the sole incarnation of course. That is utter meaningless nonsense in the face of the fact of infinity from eternity.
A large majority here do not discount the miracles of Jesus or His immediate followers.
Prophecy cannot be upgraded to foretelling the future as it hasn't happened. Even God can't know what it is in His physical realm. Beyond obvious broad historical brush strokes and common sense at the local level based on omniscience of the past and present. And any actual intervention He actually has planned. If any.
So who are these hypocrites pretending to be Christian?
What there is left to take seriously when you get rid of all of the delusional, irrational, a/anti/un-historical, unscientific dross is that Jesus is the only hope.
If someone defines a category, Christian, they can mean by that and usually do their version of the Christmas and Easter stories. That is fine by me.
However it is unsatisfying. Let’s look at Peter. Dear chap who was with Jesus for the entire 3 years. How would Peter define that category? I think that if I want to redefine it different to him then it is not really ‘Christian’. If I want to say, for instance that the ascension did not happen or the man at the beautiful gate was not cured of lameness or that tongues of fire did not appear on the day of Pentecost or that the resurrected Christ did not appear to the 120, or that there was no miracle of th3 loaves and fishes then I have to call dear ole Pete a liar. What I say is Christian is not what he would say is Christian.
Instead I want a symbolic or cosmic or other Christ that I can interpret as a symbol of hope then will not another symbol do as well? Why must I reinvent Christianity and insist that I am Christian and ole Pete was deluded regarding his story. None of that stuff really happened! I know cos I am an enlightened technologically educated and unsuperstitious 21st century homo sapien and I evolved Into my present status of being.
But wait, I am Christian..my version of it anyway..Or amI? I don’t know what I am..Help!
You seem to think that the world is divided into YEC fundamentalists and unbelievers, with some of the latter claiming the Christian label.
As so often, nuance seems to escape you. As does the evidence of most of the active contingency of this website who are neither of those extremes. Do I smell an excluded middle here?
But I can underside why someone pinning their faith to literal interpretations of Genesis 1-3 via a "slippery slope" argument would not be very interested in evidence. Even the blindingly obvious.
<snip>The age of the earth is impossible to know apart from revelation which is provided in Exodus 20:11.<snip>
Read literalistically, Exodus 20.11 could be argued to be saying that the universe was created in six days*, but it doesn't tell us anything about how old the earth is.
The age of the earth is not impossible to know (within certain limits of accuracy), but because the knowledge is built up from a great number of smaller elements, it is easy to dismiss in the context of an internet forum. It is particularly prone for that reason to attack by Gish gallop.
(*or it could simply be seen as a reference to the account found in Genesis 1, the historiographical intent or otherwise of which has to be assessed on its own merits.)
Rubbish. Let me introduce you to a little thing called geology which has some inarguable* evidence to show that the planet is billions of year old
Evidence really only shows what we want it to show. It is not evidence that determines what we believe. What determines that is hope.
No, come on now. Have you ever actually stood and looked at a big bed of limestone? I bet you haven't, because people like Ken Ham don't tend to like people who check things out for themselves.
There is no mechanism for material like that to be laid down in any way other than very slowly - a flood wouldn't do it.
And it is thousands of feet thick.
The evidence doesn't show what we want it to show - I'd have been quite happy if reality matched the words in a religious book.
But it doesn't. Reality is the way it is, and no amount of denial can change the evidence. The simplest explanation is that the limestone took a long,long time to be laid down in a shallow sea. Any other explanation requires a combination of wishful thinking, ignoring hard facts and magical earth system mechanisms.
Comments
You reject the scripture as a historical record apparently, on the basis of ..what exactly? If that does not change, I fear there is no other option but the black hole of uncertainty.
Most people take the bible as meaningful story of belief, allegory and myth. Some of it is wisdom, some of it is stories of what not to do. It's not rejection of the bible, it's rejection of certain ways of reading it, understanding it, misusing it.
And some people see it as God's revelation, historical, poetic, accurate as to fact, a guide to truth and fundamentally a metanarrative. If you decide to limit it then who are you limiting? The bottom line is whether you allow it to judge you or whether you judge it. If you do the latter your skewed interpretive filter will never allow you to hear what God is saying through it.
I have no problem with the OT at all unlike the OP because I see it as a dispensational narrative. God has revealed himself in it progressively and consistently and the basic bones of: creation, fall redemption and destiny are evident. It helps to see it as Jewish because it was originally their metanarrative. Jesus was a essentially a Jewish messianic figure. A lot of it begins to cohere if this is allowed for.
Did Samson really take those gates 5 kms up a hill or catch 300 foxes and tie their tails together or kill several thousands with the jawbone of an ass? Well, without God's power he could have done none of those things. Did Joshua make the sun stand still? Is Hezekiah's sundial a real event? Did the waters of the red sea open.? Did Jesus really open the eyes of the man born blind and raise Lazarus?
If you want to pick and choose, what basis do to you use? It has all been done and really you can be a sceptic or a believer. If you are a sceptic, how is it at all efficacious?
In between there are lots of things that may or may not be more or less historical; perhaps a group of slaves escaped Egypt during an unusual event which enabled the crossing of a usually water covered area, maybe not. It doesn't matter much. My problems with the OT (eg the mass murder of Canaanites in Joshua which would make IS turn round and say "steady on there!") are however somewhat lessened if it's not a historical record but a national origin myth. I don't have to "draw a line" however because I don't think it's a question that can readily be answered, nor one which particularly needs to be. Did Philip really get teleported to an Ethiopian eunuch' s chariot or is it an early bit of historically questionable hagiography? Who knows?
That one can either be a sceptic or believer in every detail is clearly disproved by this Shipful of people who are clearly, in the main, neither.
So I don't Adam and Eve it. No.
A) No. If anyone did that, God did. Humans do not have that power.
b) Are you aware that there is a long line of rabbinic teaching that this is a figure of speech referring to the summer solstice?
Pick and choose what? What to believe or what to interpret as describing an event that actually happened? Folks I'm talking about aren't picking and choosing; in general, they do not think that's an option. They are approaching Scripture seriously and wrestling with it to do their best to understand what it means. They do this by studying the Scriptures to understand how those in the time they were written would understand the texts, by studying the style of writing and the implications of that, by reference to how the Scriptures have been understood by the church for the last two millennia (and the case of the OT, how it has been understood by Jews), and by a variety of other tools and practices—paramount of which is reading it all in light of the definitive revelation of God in Jesus.
As with the charge of "picking and choosing," the repeating riff on the idea that those who agree with you are believers and those who do not are skeptics or non-believers is tiresome. Rejecting your understanding and interpretation of Scripture =/= rejecting Scripture.
It's not a 'record'.
So what is seriously? Really, if you discount supernatural events and you discount historical truth and along with miracles, you downgrade prophecy to the meanderings of Bronze Age superstition, what actually is there left to take seriously?
The one response I will give: tiresome to me and other Christians over whom you appear to stand in judgment.
No we do not. Millions of people do not believe this. You choose to adopt that as your over arching meta narrative is all. It is nothing more than a sustaining fiction
Many in the world lack the opportunity to benefit from education. Others have no excuse.
In reality rejecting the age of the Earth and African human origins is as batshit insane as flat-earthism. Willfull ignorance in anyone who's been through any reasonable education system.
No one here but you discounts historical, as a subset of forensic, scientific, truth. No . one .
Hardly any one here, including me, doubts that Jesus is really God's unique son. The unique human. He isn't the sole incarnation of course. That is utter meaningless nonsense in the face of the fact of infinity from eternity.
A large majority here do not discount the miracles of Jesus or His immediate followers.
Prophecy cannot be upgraded to foretelling the future as it hasn't happened. Even God can't know what it is in His physical realm. Beyond obvious broad historical brush strokes and common sense at the local level based on omniscience of the past and present. And any actual intervention He actually has planned. If any.
So who are these hypocrites pretending to be Christian?
What there is left to take seriously when you get rid of all of the delusional, irrational, a/anti/un-historical, unscientific dross is that Jesus is the only hope.
As for Anglicanism and C S Lewis, well, officially at least Anglicanism as a whole and C S Lewis are on the same page on the Deity of Christ irrespective of whether individual Anglicans adhere to it themselves.
But that's a different issue.
I can't speak for anyone else here but I'm a Trinitarian believer who has no problem whatsoever with evolution nor with the idea of aspects of scripture being mythogical.
It's only an issue if we insist on the scriptures supporting a particular form of conservative Protestant belief.
Why should it? Because conservative Protestants say so?
Who’s version of it? You can’t have it both ways. It always comes down to, I know what someone else doesn’t or, we have a bunch of competing fictions. Any personal judgement is unintentional. The question Of what is left to take seriously in the OT if one dismisses, historical and supernatural elements, is genuine.
Do you mean pathos or bathos?
Do I believe in God's supernatural revelation through Christ? Yes I do.
How is that lessened as a belief in a supernatural dimension to Christian revelation if I also believe in evolution or think that dispensationalism and the Rapture is a load of old hoo-ey if understood in 19th century fundamentalist terms.
I've got news for you, if you didn't know it already, Lewis wasn't an evangelical.
Evangelicals appropriating Lewis is rather like them appropriating Bonhoeffer who wasn't an evangelical either.
At least Anglicans don't have to appropriate Lewis. He was an Anglican.
Besides, the last time I looked the Anglican communion affirms the Trinity and the Deity of Christ, the Deity of God the Holy Spirit.
If individual Anglicans cross their fingers behind their backs when reciting the Creed that's another matter.
I think Lewis believed in evolution as far as I know. I doubt if he believed in a pre-tribulation rapture nor had any truck with arcane eschatological speculations.
You're dismissing the empirical as irrational when you say scientific discoveries are a "faith position." Science isn't faith. It's science. You're peddling a false equivalency (among other fallacies).
You clearly know very little about evolution. But at any rate you've moved the goalposts. I was talking about the age of the earth.
If someone defines a category, Christian, they can mean by that and usually do their version of the Christmas and Easter stories. That is fine by me.
However it is unsatisfying. Let’s look at Peter. Dear chap who was with Jesus for the entire 3 years. How would Peter define that category? I think that if I want to redefine it different to him then it is not really ‘Christian’. If I want to say, for instance that the ascension did not happen or the man at the beautiful gate was not cured of lameness or that tongues of fire did not appear on the day of Pentecost or that the resurrected Christ did not appear to the 120, or that there was no miracle of th3 loaves and fishes then I have to call dear ole Pete a liar. What I say is Christian is not what he would say is Christian.
Instead I want a symbolic or cosmic or other Christ that I can interpret as a symbol of hope then will not another symbol do as well? Why must I reinvent Christianity and insist that I am Christian and ole Pete was deluded regarding his story. None of that stuff really happened! I know cos I am an enlightened technologically educated and unsuperstitious 21st century homo sapien and I evolved Into my present status of being.
But wait, I am Christian..my version of it anyway..Or amI? I don’t know what I am..Help!
"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." (Charles Darwin, Origin of Species)
The age of the earth is impossible to know apart from revelation which is provided in Exodus 20:11. You are correct regarding my lack of knowledge of evolution. I do however know that nothing can come of nothing as King Lear says to the fool and it is even more unlikely that molecules became man by natural processes only. I am also not familiar with a lot of other folk tales.
“The heavens declare the glory of God”
What science actually says about "something coming from nothing" (which isn't stated properly with my quote of you) is that from energy comes matter. From energy came all of the matter, the material physical universe. Science calls it The Big Bang. It's a far cry from a universe of a sun revolving around an earth with stars merely points of light in the night sky. And life is far more than a man of clay: DNA and the processes by which all life is constituted. Let's not be comfortable with God as we humans think God might be.
Is it possible to know your own age? Or mine? Or mousethief's? Where in the Bible can we find these revelations? If not there, where?
Not that I've conducted an exhaustive search of Scripture for notes about my own little sojourn here among the stones and stars and stories, but I'm confident nobody will find a syllable about any of us in the Good Book. Yet here we all are, little images of God, our own sacrificial soft targets for one another's judgment.
At any rate, you haven't 'evolved' as an individual. You were born the same way as the rest of us. You weren't created out of thin air or the dust of the earth in any direct sense. You were conceived in your mother's womb and 'fearfully and wonderfully made' just as the rest of us are.
Did our ancestors evolve? Are human beings as a species continuing to evolve? Yes. All the evidence points that way.
Does that make the Genesis account of Creation 'nonsense'? Only if you insist on it carrying a particular weight as an historical account in the modern sense of the term. You are projecting your own late 19th / early 20th century frame of interpretive reference back into an ancient document.
Is Milton's Paradise Lost an accurate account of the pre-lapsarian world and of cosmic struggles between good and evil from the dawn of time?
Why hold onto a brittle and binary set of assumptions that force everything into a series of stark choices based on highly literal interpretations that elide any form of nuance or context?
I'm sure it makes life a lot simpler but in so doing it also raises a shed load of additional complications.
You post as if Lewis's 'Mad, Bad or God' trope is the defining tenet of Anglicanism and as if somehow a failure to accept that is a defining feature of present day Anglicanism.
I 'bought' Lewis's neat little formula and it was a contributing factor in my conversion. Fine. I no longer cite or use it though as it's a circular argument and whilst it sounds clever at first, on closer inspection there are lots of holes in it.
Does that mean that I'm denying the Incarnation?
No. Far from it. It simply means that I no longer use Lewis's somewhat awkward little sound-bite to argue the case for it.
That doesn't make me smarter than Lewis. I'm just coming at it differently from him at this particular point.
Rubbish. Let me introduce you to a little thing called geology which has some inarguable* evidence to show that the planet is billions of year old.
* Well I suppose that's technically incorrect - one can stand in front of deposits that clearly, obviously took many millions of years to be laid down, stick fingers in the ears and say lalala I don't believe it. But that's not even slightly credible.
You seem to think that the world is divided into YEC fundamentalists and unbelievers, with some of the latter claiming the Christian label.
As so often, nuance seems to escape you. As does the evidence of most of the active contingency of this website who are neither of those extremes. Do I smell an excluded middle here?
But I can underside why someone pinning their faith to literal interpretations of Genesis 1-3 via a "slippery slope" argument would not be very interested in evidence. Even the blindingly obvious.
The age of the earth is not impossible to know (within certain limits of accuracy), but because the knowledge is built up from a great number of smaller elements, it is easy to dismiss in the context of an internet forum. It is particularly prone for that reason to attack by Gish gallop.
(*or it could simply be seen as a reference to the account found in Genesis 1, the historiographical intent or otherwise of which has to be assessed on its own merits.)
No, come on now. Have you ever actually stood and looked at a big bed of limestone? I bet you haven't, because people like Ken Ham don't tend to like people who check things out for themselves.
There is no mechanism for material like that to be laid down in any way other than very slowly - a flood wouldn't do it.
And it is thousands of feet thick.
The evidence doesn't show what we want it to show - I'd have been quite happy if reality matched the words in a religious book.
But it doesn't. Reality is the way it is, and no amount of denial can change the evidence. The simplest explanation is that the limestone took a long,long time to be laid down in a shallow sea. Any other explanation requires a combination of wishful thinking, ignoring hard facts and magical earth system mechanisms.