Well, I once heard someone compare truth (aka binary thinking, I guess) to the skeleton in a body. You need the firmness of bone so the muscles have something to react against; without it, you won't go anywhere. See if that analogy explains where I'm coming from better.
Yes, thanks, I understand this analogy, but for me the bone (or bedrock) is whether or not something is (empirically) true, or if I'm being fair, overwhelmingly probable based on what we can and do know as (empirically) true.
Yes, I did Aramaic, but I spent so little time on it (a month?) that it doesn't seem right to claim it as something I know at all. I'd have to pull out the textbooks and dictionaries to do anything with it nowadays.
As for the other issues you mention, I've studied that stuff too, all my life--but it's probably a leap too far for this thread. Seriously, you thought I stopped worrying about truth when I confirmed that the translators got it right?
I want to know what is. I don't want to mistake it for what is not, or vice versa.
I can only receive and react to what you share, so no, I didn't think you stopped worrying about truthfulness at the end of your translations -- you just paused your response there.
Surely you've grappled with these ideas that plague me: we can and do know that ancient manuscripts are fragmentary, and that there are a myriad of discrepancies between them. We can and do know that many of those discrepancies are immaterial to the message they're conveying, but we also can and do know that some of them render significant contradictions and implausibilities, that there have been deliberate, purposeful alterations, additions, and deletions. We can and do know close approximations of the time gaps presented between the best estimations of when events in the bible happened and when they were first written about, by whom, and in what context. What we cannot and do not know is what Jesus actually said and did. Of course, the same is true of Socrates, but he didn't make the claims Jesus & Jesus' followers allegedly did. We can and do have a pretty good grasp on the idea that Paul (& others) didn't actually write all of the letters attributed to him (& them). That's a huge problem considering the harmful legacy of some of those disputed letters. There's the Apocrypha -- canonical to only a select collection of Christians. There are other Gospels and other books that have been removed from those traditions, but survive in others. And yet the Bible is a fundamental aspect of the faith(s), taken by many/most Christians only via the RCL which is a mere fraction of the whole text. So, I struggle mightily to think of it as anything more than an anthology of wonderful literature. Divine? Absolutely not. Inerrant? Absolutely not. Univocal? Absolutely not. Prophetic? Absolutely not. Historical? On the whole -- absolutely not. Can it be "true," then? True?! I don't see how.
I mean that I test everything. I don't care if it's a historical issue, or a psychological statement (like the one where Jesus puts obedience and "knowing the truth" in a semi-causal relationship), or "Do this and you shall live"--I pick at stuff (in the Bible, and elsewhere) to figure out what it means, and what it meant to the first hearers, and what I ought to do about it--and whether it holds water. I'm not really sure how to explain it more clearly than that.
That's fine. I get it. I just struggle with the parts that reveal how much we simply cannot know. You have an ability to make decisions and take affirming actions for yourself in spite of that. I commend you.
I think you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick when you talk about "the validating power of what you infer as the messages of Jesus". I'm not looking for something that is "true for me," anymore than KarlLB is. I want something that is true across the board, something that remains true even if I reject it, even if everyone rejects it. I want to know the truth about the universe and who made it, and those who live in it, and so on and so forth. If the truth turns out to be something that makes me unhappy, I'm still better off than if I lived in error or ignorance.
I understand your aspiration to determine something universally and objectively true, but for the reasons I've mentioned and a bunch of others I haven't, I don't understand that you, or Karl, or anyone will ever to be able to arrive there. All fine and good if the journey is the destination, and in my estimation that is essentially what Jesus taught, but you'd have to steer clear of all of the metaphysical claims until death reveals them to you, or doesn't, and either way that's of no value at that point to anyone other than yourself. I, for one, don't think there's anything selfish or dubious for working to determine what is "true for you" insofar as something like a religion presents. In many ways, I actually think that's all one really can do. There's no "true across the board" empirically speaking when it comes to religion, and it doesn't have to be. But that also makes me scratch my head when you include something like "the truth about the universe and who made it," because in our day and age the gap that god has been relegated to in cosmological terms is now quark-small. We can and do know things about the origin of the universe, and god is not required. But that's a digression.
Lewis once called himself a dinosaur for believing what he did in a culture that didn't. You could call me that--or childish, for holding to Jesus as the center of my universe. I'm not really fussed about it. Feel free to ask me what you like, I'm here for it.
Well, the smarmy answer belongs to Christopher Hitchens: "Believe it if you can!" For myself, though, all I can say is that I am genuinely glad you've identified the anchoring source and refuge of your life. I call no names against anyone who does, not the least of which are Mrs. The_Riv, my parents, my brother and sister and their families, and with my wife's extended family. I'm just not among them in that regard any more, and I'm still working through that.
The fundamental basis of Christianity is not that it is belief in Jesus that saves us.
Jesus saves us.
Whether or not people believe in Him (or on Him)? Or regardless of whether people accept Him or reject Him?
While I personally am a universalist (as was St Paul imho) but of course many Christians are not.
Regardless, I think all theologians of whatever mainstream tradition would agree that our belief is no more than our reception of the saving grace of God. It's like the decision of the person in the water not to resist being pulled into the lifeboat.
The fundamental basis of Christianity is not that it is belief in Jesus that saves us.
Jesus saves us.
Whether or not people believe in Him (or on Him)? Or regardless of whether people accept Him or reject Him?
While I personally am a universalist (as was St Paul imho) but of course many Christians are not.
Regardless, I think all theologians of whatever mainstream tradition would agree that our belief is no more than our reception of the saving grace of God. It's like the decision of the person in the water not to resist being pulled into the lifeboat.
That's mainstream for you. I expect much, much better of my God. Because a God that saves on belief is a graceless bastard.
Blaise Pascal understood, as he puts it in his Pensées, that there are simply those who are “so made that they cannot believe.” If we could know, empirically, we would never engage faith. Yet we hear from the devout that religion/spirituality is a way of knowing. Granting that they understand they don't mean empirically knowing, they mean gaining understanding via other means, by which we can take at its most generous as inferred via experience, and at its more narrow, revealed via some etherial, privileged conduit. This leaves those who are "so made" wanting in regard to the prospect of orienting one's only and entire life on an objectively unknowable prospect. The struggling "So Made" are left with this:
Whether it's actually true is irrelevant in relation to the effect that the belief that it's true has on your life now, or anyone else's for that matter.
Hence, Pascal's Wager, shockingly invoked about a year ago by William Lane Craig who admitted in a podcast that even with a one-in-a-million chance that Christianity is ultimately, empirically true -- that's more than enough reason for him to adopt it. Dedicated thread here.
Do we not have to agree that the religious Truthers (no disrespect) among us have no more or better information than the rest of us? Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health who led the Human Genome Project, has shared that it was during a winter hike that he came upon a waterfall frozen in three streams. Apparently, and with not much further explanation, it was this Trinitarian sight that stuck him so profoundly that he immediately dropped to his knees on the spot and became a Christian. Fascinating, and so fortunate for him that the rocks in the stream above hadn't revealed four frozen streams instead.
A sideline here is the question of what proof could exist that would invalidate a given religion. For example, ancestor worship is common in much of the world; what could invalidate it? (Even if DNA testing denies that person X is your ancestor, still someone was.) Maybe this should be a separate thread.
Jesus has made himself a place where I can rest; and that's worth more than gold to me.
Well, that's fascinating.
Although I received Roman Catholic education for 12 years I took everything with a grain of salt. I did not have faith. As a child, It was not a concern for me one way or another.
As I went through the joys and sorrows of becoming an adult, when I was first exposed to people of (Christian) religious faith I yearned for it because it was clear to me they had everything I considered important
I started praying for that faith in the late 70s.
Long, long story — I never gave up but had only my own head for guidance. I studied all religions with the exception of Christianity, which I knew well, or so I believed.
I did finally receive the gift of faith, and it did happen in a moment when I admitted to myself that I did deeply desire a savior.
Regarding the very beautiful way that Francis Collins received faith, why the silly editorializing?
ISTM that some highly intellectual types may need more obvious, less subtle invitations. Off the top of my head St Paul, Pascal and Francis Collins come to mind.
If you are having a crisis of faith, I sympathize, deeply. But, IMVHO, it would be helpful to at least try to keep a child’s mind.
Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health who led the Human Genome Project, has shared that it was during a winter hike that he came upon a waterfall frozen in three streams. Apparently, and with not much further explanation, it was this Trinitarian sight that stuck him so profoundly that he immediately dropped to his knees on the spot and became a Christian. Fascinating, and so fortunate for him that the rocks in the stream above hadn't revealed four frozen streams instead.
The “apparently” and “with not much further explanation” appear to indicate some lack of familiarity with what Collins has said about coming to faith. The has described there being much more to it, and a larger context for why the waterfall elicited the reaction in him that it did.
You may, of course, still find that reaction overly-imaginitive, bizarre or silly. But ignoring the wider context just to get in a dig at a reaction to a waterfall does undercut some credibility.
And fwiw, with regard to:
. . . the religious Truthers (no disrespect) among us . . .
when you use a loaded term like “Truthers,” a parenthetical “no disrespect” really just makes it worse.
I don't have a religious belief - but it strikes me that it is healthy (for almost all beliefs I can think of) to hold onto the possibility that one might be wrong.
In which case it seems worthwhile to consider the gains of believing in Thing even if it turns out to be wrong.
Pascal was very influenced by the Jansenists, I believe. They tended to take a very deterministic view of things from what I can gather. Rather like some forms of Calvinism on the Protestant side of things ... and yes, yes, I know (before our Reformed brothers and sisters take offence) I know there is more to Calvinism than that and it's not as reductionist as I've made it sound here.
But it explains why he might have asserted that some are 'made so they might never believe.'
I'm no scientist but I've been discussing the issue of whether there is a 'religious gene' with people who have looked into these things. An atheist friend whose son has epilepsy was telling me that many people who have that condition have religious tendencies and some believe it affects the so-called 'God-spot' in the brain. I suppose they must be conflating or linking things like fits and seizures with visionary experiences etc. I have no idea whether this is sound or pseudo-science or whether serious biology or neurology is involved.
On the Francis Collins thing ... I'd not heard that before. 'Some said it thundered ...'
If there'd been a fourth stream then they might have seen it as symbolising the four Gospels or seen themselves represented by the fourth stream entering some kind of mystic union with the Godhead.
Who knows?
Why does it matter?
To their own master they stand or fall.
I can understand why those posters here who have lost faith or are wavering in their faith - and we all of us who are people of faith do - can become rather exasperated or sound a bit 'campaigning' at times. That's part of the process. Converts to Christianity - I can't speak for any other world faith - can sound smug and 'superior' at times without a doubt.
These are all things we have to come to terms with in our own way.
I don't have a religious belief - but it strikes me that it is healthy (for almost all beliefs I can think of) to hold onto the possibility that one might be wrong.
I do have a religious belief, and I very much agree.
I think I've thought of a couple of occasions where it is probably healthy to not question ones faith/belief in something.
For me, I don't think it would be very healthy to constantly question my faith in the integrity of lifts and bridges. Being anxious about these kinds of things would make life difficult and unhealthy.
Having faith in the engineering is warranted. One of Coventry's fortes. 37 years. I remember it well: My youngest was born the last time they won the FA Cup. If I only had faith eh? Real faith would change that! No?
Having instincts about heights, unless you're Mohawk, that haven't caught up with engineering, gives one the opportunity to exercise rationality over fear.
How that will work when the time comes I can't imagine. Which is a lie. Been close before, not happy times. Must try gratitude. If there's headspace for that. Agony can be all consuming.
I like the frozen waterfalls. I've often seen people struck by something in nature, which changed them in some way. "The essence of the tree is my essence", rather beautiful.
I can only receive and react to what you share, so no, I didn't think you stopped worrying about truthfulness at the end of your translations -- you just paused your response there.
Surely you've grappled with these ideas that plague me: we can and do know that ancient manuscripts are fragmentary, and that there are a myriad of discrepancies between them. We can and do know that many of those discrepancies are immaterial to the message they're conveying, but we also can and do know that some of them render significant contradictions and implausibilities, that there have been deliberate, purposeful alterations, additions, and deletions. We can and do know close approximations of the time gaps presented between the best estimations of when events in the bible happened and when they were first written about, by whom, and in what context. What we cannot and do not know is what Jesus actually said and did. Of course, the same is true of Socrates, but he didn't make the claims Jesus & Jesus' followers allegedly did. We can and do have a pretty good grasp on the idea that Paul (& others) didn't actually write all of the letters attributed to him (& them). That's a huge problem considering the harmful legacy of some of those disputed letters. There's the Apocrypha -- canonical to only a select collection of Christians. There are other Gospels and other books that have been removed from those traditions, but survive in others. And yet the Bible is a fundamental aspect of the faith(s), taken by many/most Christians only via the RCL which is a mere fraction of the whole text. So, I struggle mightily to think of it as anything more than an anthology of wonderful literature. Divine? Absolutely not. Inerrant? Absolutely not. Univocal? Absolutely not. Prophetic? Absolutely not. Historical? On the whole -- absolutely not. Can it be "true," then? True?! I don't see how.
Okay, since you keep bringing this stuff up... Do you want me to start a separate thread where I can go through the many and various LOOOOOONGGGG answers I have to these questions? Because if I do it here, truly I think someone will bite my face off. And they'd be justified.
Jesus has made himself a place where I can rest; and that's worth more than gold to me.
Well, that's fascinating.
Although I received Roman Catholic education for 12 years I took everything with a grain of salt. I did not have faith. As a child, It was not a concern for me one way or another.
As I went through the joys and sorrows of becoming an adult, when I was first exposed to people of (Christian) religious faith I yearned for it because it was clear to me they had everything I considered important
I started praying for that faith in the late 70s.
Long, long story — I never gave up but had only my own head for guidance. I studied all religions with the exception of Christianity, which I knew well, or so I believed.
I did finally receive the gift of faith, and it did happen in a moment when I admitted to myself that I did deeply desire a savior.
Regarding the very beautiful way that Francis Collins received faith, why the silly editorializing?
ISTM that some highly intellectual types may need more obvious, less subtle invitations. Off the top of my head St Paul, Pascal and Francis Collins come to mind.
If you are having a crisis of faith, I sympathize, deeply. But, IMVHO, it would be helpful to at least try to keep a child’s mind.
Due to my insomnia I was thinking about this overnight.
I was thinking that maybe it matters more to other people if your religion is untrue.
You personally are already convinced of the truth of it, you are likely already working within the mindset and worldview. Objectively it probably wouldn't make much difference if it wasn't true because you'd probably not recognise it as untrue without a significant worldview change.
And obviously a big worldview change would matter to you personally.
For example, maybe there's a person who is a Buddhist monk and spends many hours a day doing Buddhist things. If it wasn't true (and what does 'truth' even mean in this context?) then he's basically committed his life to breathing exercises. It is tricky to say whether that's any more worthwhile or worthless than anything else on a personal level.
But I guess it would be reasonable to say that there's a loss carried by other people. Maybe he entered the religious life as a child and his family have missed out on his childhood. If the religion isn't true, presumably those people would be entitled to think that something had been 'stolen' from them.
The fundamental basis of Christianity is not that it is belief in Jesus that saves us.
Jesus saves us.
Whether or not people believe in Him (or on Him)? Or regardless of whether people accept Him or reject Him?
While I personally am a universalist (as was St Paul imho) but of course many Christians are not.
Regardless, I think all theologians of whatever mainstream tradition would agree that our belief is no more than our reception of the saving grace of God. It's like the decision of the person in the water not to resist being pulled into the lifeboat.
It's a familiar analogy, but one that overlooks the significance of the identity of the rescuer. I would say, at the least, salvation includes: a desire to be saved; and a belief that it is Jesus doing the saving.
I've never been universalist. And the various verses in the New Testament about belief and salvation suggest to me more than an absence of resistance. What do you make of verses that talk about being saved through belief, such as the following?
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.
The fundamental basis of Christianity is not that it is belief in Jesus that saves us.
Jesus saves us.
Whether or not people believe in Him (or on Him)? Or regardless of whether people accept Him or reject Him?
While I personally am a universalist (as was St Paul imho) but of course many Christians are not.
Regardless, I think all theologians of whatever mainstream tradition would agree that our belief is no more than our reception of the saving grace of God. It's like the decision of the person in the water not to resist being pulled into the lifeboat.
It's a familiar analogy, but one that overlooks the significance of the identity of the rescuer. I would say, at the least, salvation includes: a desire to be saved; and a belief that it is Jesus doing the saving.
I've never been universalist. And the various verses in the New Testament about belief and salvation suggest to me more than an absence of resistance. What do you make of verses that talk about being saved through belief, such as the following?
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.
Interpreting those as you appear to do means nearly everyone ends up unsaved, whatever that means. Which renders the effectiveness of the Incarnation rather underwhelming. Add to that the fact you can't actually do that as an act of will because you can't make yourself believe things and it doesn't seem a very good strategy for the salvation of humanity.
While I personally am a universalist (as was St Paul imho) but of course many Christians are not.
Regardless, I think all theologians of whatever mainstream tradition would agree that our belief is no more than our reception of the saving grace of God. It's like the decision of the person in the water not to resist being pulled into the lifeboat.
It's a familiar analogy, but one that overlooks the significance of the identity of the rescuer. I would say, at the least, salvation includes: a desire to be saved; and a belief that it is Jesus doing the saving.
I've never been universalist. And the various verses in the New Testament about belief and salvation suggest to me more than an absence of resistance. What do you make of verses that talk about being saved through belief, such as the following?
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.
Are you asking me how as a universalist I interpret those verses, or are you asking how mainstream Christian tradition (much of which is not universalist) interprets those verses?
Also I don't make anything of proof texts taken in isolation.
...
I've never been universalist. And the various verses in the New Testament about belief and salvation suggest to me more than an absence of resistance. What do you make of verses that talk about being saved through belief, such as the following?
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.
Interpreting those as you appear to do means nearly everyone ends up unsaved, whatever that means.
Well - maybe that's the case. I don't find that view inconsistent with verses like the following:
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.
Which renders the effectiveness of the Incarnation rather underwhelming.
Contrary to what appears to be fairly widely accepted here (on these forums), I find the idea that "God is Love" means that He would implement the most numerically inclusive salvation policy we can imagine, flawed. It reduces God to a rather human-like moral agent. And whatever else Job is about (cf your post elsewhere), it's that God is not a moral agent like us - He does not measure life in the same way as we do.
Add to that the fact you can't actually do that as an act of will because you can't make yourself believe things and it doesn't seem a very good strategy for the salvation of humanity.
I'm not totally sure what you're saying here, but based on previous posts of yours, I would hazard that it comes from *you* not being able to make yourself believe things (in the absence of empirical evidence). It seems that many people have less of a problem with this, in the case of religious and related forms of belief.
Okay, since you keep bringing this stuff up... Do you want me to start a separate thread where I can go through the many and various LOOOOOONGGGG answers I have to these questions? Because if I do it here, truly I think someone will bite my face off. And they'd be justified.
Due to my insomnia I was thinking about this overnight.
I was thinking that maybe it matters more to other people if your religion is untrue.
I appreciate the question. I think it’s definitely an issue here in the U.S., insofar as we have a right-wing evangelical movement openly saying they want to institute their hyper-conservative Christianity throughout American society. I don’t think that’s the thrust of your question, but that’s one way it’s manifesting itself here.
You personally are already convinced of the truth of it, you are likely already working within the mindset and worldview. Objectively it probably wouldn't make much difference if it wasn't true because you'd probably not recognise it as untrue without a significant worldview change.
And obviously a big worldview change would matter to you personally.
"Worldview" has more often than not been problematic in my brain. Does absolutely everyone have a worldview? When does a collection of ideas become a worldview? Again, here in the Deep Evangelical Southern US, "worldview" tends to be the lens, judge/jury and framework via everything is assessed. It predetermines answers in advance, and then evaluates only in terms of those answers -- an entire cart-before-the-horse approach to life.
For example, maybe there's a person who is a Buddhist monk and spends many hours a day doing Buddhist things. If it wasn't true (and what does 'truth' even mean in this context?) then he's basically committed his life to breathing exercises. It is tricky to say whether that's any more worthwhile or worthless than anything else on a personal level.
This seems as good a place as any to make the oft heard quip that Buddhism may not be a religion as much as it is a philosophy. But yes -- if the tenets of Buddhism were revealed (at death, supposedly) to be false, the practitioner would be the only one who (finally) knew. This echoes the earlier comment about belief in a religion's truth being more important than whether a religion is ever determined to be true.
But I guess it would be reasonable to say that there's a loss carried by other people. Maybe he entered the religious life as a child and his family have missed out on his childhood. If the religion isn't true, presumably those people would be entitled to think that something had been 'stolen' from them.
I don't know, maybe I'm overtired
Yes indeed -- sunk cost. There are bound to be intrinsic values in the practicing of a religion, but there are also sure to be sunk costs, the greatest of which is whether a single, unique, finite life has been utterly wasted in the pursuit of something completely fictional.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.
It strikes me as important to note that Jesus never said things like that.
Bearing in mind that this is a thread about the Truth of a religion, I'm not sure it matters that much. The people who assembled the religion's primary text thought it was important enough to include.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.
It strikes me as important to note that Jesus never said things like that.
Bearing in mind that this is a thread about the Truth of a religion, I'm not sure it matters that much. The people who assembled the religion's primary text thought it was important enough to include.
Indeed, I went back and re-read the OP, and you are absolutely correct -- this thread is about the Truth of religion. Thanks!
Jesus has made himself a place where I can rest; and that's worth more than gold to me.
Well, that's fascinating.
Although I received Roman Catholic education for 12 years I took everything with a grain of salt. I did not have faith. As a child, It was not a concern for me one way or another.
As I went through the joys and sorrows of becoming an adult, when I was first exposed to people of (Christian) religious faith I yearned for it because it was clear to me they had everything I considered important
I started praying for that faith in the late 70s.
Long, long story — I never gave up but had only my own head for guidance. I studied all religions with the exception of Christianity, which I knew well, or so I believed.
I did finally receive the gift of faith, and it did happen in a moment when I admitted to myself that I did deeply desire a savior.
Regarding the very beautiful way that Francis Collins received faith, why the silly editorializing?
ISTM that some highly intellectual types may need more obvious, less subtle invitations. Off the top of my head St Paul, Pascal and Francis Collins come to mind.
If you are having a crisis of faith, I sympathize, deeply. But, IMVHO, it would be helpful to at least try to keep a child’s mind.
...
I've never been universalist. And the various verses in the New Testament about belief and salvation suggest to me more than an absence of resistance. What do you make of verses that talk about being saved through belief, such as the following?
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.
Interpreting those as you appear to do means nearly everyone ends up unsaved, whatever that means.
Well - maybe that's the case. I don't find that view inconsistent with verses like the following:
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.
Which renders the effectiveness of the Incarnation rather underwhelming.
Contrary to what appears to be fairly widely accepted here (on these forums), I find the idea that "God is Love" means that He would implement the most numerically inclusive salvation policy we can imagine, flawed. It reduces God to a rather human-like moral agent. And whatever else Job is about (cf your post elsewhere), it's that God is not a moral agent like us - He does not measure life in the same way as we do.
I think the problem with all this is it leads to utter despair. Given that most of the people I've known and loved have not been believers, my "best hope" by this theology is that I get to spend eternity knowing they're "unsaved", whatever that means (and you've avoided spelling out the implications). The best hope, again, there is that they've simply ceased to exist at all. At worst they're suffering somewhere. Because the scenario that Christianity set forth to them, the creedal hoops they had to jump through, just didn't seem to be true and therefore they didn't believe them. By definition.
I don’t know about you, but that looks like it'd put a massive downer on whatever pleasures heaven can offer. There is, in fact, no good version of eternity for anyone who cares about the fate of others. Hence despair. In my darkest moments I experience absolute terror that you might be right; if you are, I think I'd want oblivion. Because I'd want nothing to do with the God who'd made it thus. It would not be gospel - Good News. It would be terrible news
Add to that the fact you can't actually do that as an act of will because you can't make yourself believe things and it doesn't seem a very good strategy for the salvation of humanity.
I'm not totally sure what you're saying here, but based on previous posts of yours, I would hazard that it comes from *you* not being able to make yourself believe things (in the absence of empirical evidence). It seems that many people have less of a problem with this, in the case of religious and related forms of belief.
Actually, no, it's quite orthogonal to that. I just don't see how you can decide to believe something is true. If it seems to be true to you then you already believe it; if it doesn't, then you already don't. Could you decide, and really believe, tomorrow, that God doesn't exist? Or decide to be sure that fairies are real?
You are the only person I know @KarlLB, who is actually afraid that God could be an an absolute self-righteous psychotic evil bastard. I know many Abrahamics who are blissfully awed in delicious pre-orgasmic terror that He is, and many who are looking for a glimmer of hope that He isn't, that their atheist rellies won't be twice burned (or thrice in the case of my dad), but no one but you believes that God might not be Love.
You are the only person I know @KarlLB, who is actually afraid that God could be an an absolute self-righteous psychotic evil bastard. I know many Abrahamics who are blissfully awed in delicious pre-orgasmic terror that He is, and many who are looking for a glimmer of hope that He isn't, that their atheist rellies won't be twice burned (or thrice in the case of my dad), but no one but you believes that God might not be Love.
I don’t see why it would be that unusual - the world is surely full of ex-conevos who can't shake the nagging fear that they were on the money back then.
I have no idea what you are talking about @Martin54. What's this 'King's Revival'?
I suppose I'm 'ex con-evo' up to a point. Or was 'post-evangelical' in my 'pre-catholic' stage ... 😉. I'm using 'catholic' in a broader sense than 'Roman Catholic' or 'Eastern Catholic' of course.
I'm not sure I'm bedevilled by a nagging fear that I used to be on the money back then but aren't now. I don't do a tick-box thing either such as looking back to assess how small o orthodox or quasi-Big O Orthodox I was at certain stages. Or I try not to ...
I was once asked by @Nick Tamen on these boards why I pray for the dead. Well, it was a general question addressed to all 'catholic'-ly minded Christians who do that. My response was that I do so because I love them.
I don't lie awake at night worrying about the eternal destiny of my departed relatives, whether they were believers or otherwise. I pray for all of them whenever I remember to do so. Not because I think there are 'heavenly toll-booths' or purgatorial log-jams which my prayers will unblock as if by magic but because 'will not the judge of all the earth do right.'
Somehow I'm able to live with the Mystery of all that. Same as I trust I'm gradually leaning into the Mysteries of the sacraments and much else besides.
Whether I am or not is a mystery itself of course.
FWIW I see my current Orthodoxy as some kind of 'fulfilment' of where I was at or heading in my evangelical days. I don't say that to arrogantly assert that everyone should head in the same direction as me or that evangelicals can't be 'fulfilled' within their own tradition.
But somehow - and I don't think it's because I'm some kind of heartless git - I no longer get exercised about who is 'saved' or not. I pray for everybody - well not literally but you know what I mean.
I don't get uptight as our good friend @Martin54 here appears to as to whether God is a spiteful, vindictive bastard - because I don't believe he is. But neither do I find much traction in speculating about universalism etc etc.
Sure, I believe in a 'wider hope' as per Romans 2 but don't go round speculating as to whether this, that or the other person is 'saved' or will be 'saved' or not. That's God's business not mine.
...
I've never been universalist. And the various verses in the New Testament about belief and salvation suggest to me more than an absence of resistance. What do you make of verses that talk about being saved through belief, such as the following?
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.
Are you asking me how as a universalist I interpret those verses, or are you asking how mainstream Christian tradition (much of which is not universalist) interprets those verses?
I was asking what you made of them - as a universalist, if that's the case.
Also I don't make anything of proof texts taken in isolation.
Well - take them in context then. Or any of the other verses that link belief and salvation.
... Interpreting those as you appear to do means nearly everyone ends up unsaved, whatever that means.
Well - maybe that's the case. I don't find that view inconsistent with verses like the following:
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.
Which renders the effectiveness of the Incarnation rather underwhelming.
Contrary to what appears to be fairly widely accepted here (on these forums), I find the idea that "God is Love" means that He would implement the most numerically inclusive salvation policy we can imagine, flawed. It reduces God to a rather human-like moral agent. And whatever else Job is about (cf your post elsewhere), it's that God is not a moral agent like us - He does not measure life in the same way as we do.
I think the problem with all this is it leads to utter despair. Given that most of the people I've known and loved have not been believers, my "best hope" by this theology is that I get to spend eternity knowing they're "unsaved", whatever that means (and you've avoided spelling out the implications). The best hope, again, there is that they've simply ceased to exist at all. At worst they're suffering somewhere. Because the scenario that Christianity set forth to them, the creedal hoops they had to jump through, just didn't seem to be true and therefore they didn't believe them. By definition.
I don’t know about you, but that looks like it'd put a massive downer on whatever pleasures heaven can offer. There is, in fact, no good version of eternity for anyone who cares about the fate of others. Hence despair. In my darkest moments I experience absolute terror that you might be right; if you are, I think I'd want oblivion. Because I'd want nothing to do with the God who'd made it thus. It would not be gospel - Good News. It would be terrible news
I think you might be getting closer to the uncompromising, incomprehensible nature of God's Love. Approaching God requires sacrifice, of everyone and everything we hold dear.
I find the primary appeal of God to be that He is astonishingly not like us. I find the un-appeal of church to be that its participants treat Him as though He is.
Add to that the fact you can't actually do that as an act of will because you can't make yourself believe things and it doesn't seem a very good strategy for the salvation of humanity.
I'm not totally sure what you're saying here, but based on previous posts of yours, I would hazard that it comes from *you* not being able to make yourself believe things (in the absence of empirical evidence). It seems that many people have less of a problem with this, in the case of religious and related forms of belief.
Actually, no, it's quite orthogonal to that. I just don't see how you can decide to believe something is true. If it seems to be true to you then you already believe it; if it doesn't, then you already don't. Could you decide, and really believe, tomorrow, that God doesn't exist? Or decide to be sure that fairies are real?
Hmm. It's taken rather longer than a day, but I wouldn't say that the progression of my belief in God had nothing to do wit my conscious decisions - my beliefs about God are, as much as anything, a result of decisions I've made and that I continue to make about what I consider and think about. It seems reasonable that I take some responsibility for what I believe. I can't imagine having no agency at all in the process.
Actually, no, it's quite orthogonal to that. I just don't see how you can decide to believe something is true. If it seems to be true to you then you already believe it; if it doesn't, then you already don't. Could you decide, and really believe, tomorrow, that God doesn't exist? Or decide to be sure that fairies are real?
If you act like the thing is true, if you modify your behaviors and go about your life as if the thing is true, it doesn't really matter whether or not there's an internal assent and affirmation to the thing being true. In this case, you could simply decide that there's value in acting like the thing is true. If you do this for long enough, then eventually it comes to be true. It begins pragmatically and then builds over time.
Ceasing to care about those I know and love in order to obtain my own salvation sounds like the heights of narcissism to me.
I've been through this game of twisted logical alchemy whereby God rejecting most of humanity for all eternity is somehow cast as his "love" but I didn't buy it then, which is why I'm no longer a con evo, and I don't buy it now.
neither did your saviour Dawkins, but he developed it.
Now that is cheap and silly isn't it? And how did young Dickie save me? And please quote from his development of Newspeak. Where does He equate hate and love as most believers do?
neither did your saviour Dawkins, but he developed it.
Now that is cheap and silly isn't it? And how did young Dickie save me? And please quote from his development of Newspeak. Where does He equate hate and love as most believers do?
Dawkins has become quite unpleasant in his views on race and trans rights, mostly out of some inane commitment to "science." I don't know of his saying hate and love are equivalent, but then I don't know of any Christians who do that either.
Comments
Well, count me among those grateful for your saving.
I can only receive and react to what you share, so no, I didn't think you stopped worrying about truthfulness at the end of your translations -- you just paused your response there.
Surely you've grappled with these ideas that plague me: we can and do know that ancient manuscripts are fragmentary, and that there are a myriad of discrepancies between them. We can and do know that many of those discrepancies are immaterial to the message they're conveying, but we also can and do know that some of them render significant contradictions and implausibilities, that there have been deliberate, purposeful alterations, additions, and deletions. We can and do know close approximations of the time gaps presented between the best estimations of when events in the bible happened and when they were first written about, by whom, and in what context. What we cannot and do not know is what Jesus actually said and did. Of course, the same is true of Socrates, but he didn't make the claims Jesus & Jesus' followers allegedly did. We can and do have a pretty good grasp on the idea that Paul (& others) didn't actually write all of the letters attributed to him (& them). That's a huge problem considering the harmful legacy of some of those disputed letters. There's the Apocrypha -- canonical to only a select collection of Christians. There are other Gospels and other books that have been removed from those traditions, but survive in others. And yet the Bible is a fundamental aspect of the faith(s), taken by many/most Christians only via the RCL which is a mere fraction of the whole text. So, I struggle mightily to think of it as anything more than an anthology of wonderful literature. Divine? Absolutely not. Inerrant? Absolutely not. Univocal? Absolutely not. Prophetic? Absolutely not. Historical? On the whole -- absolutely not. Can it be "true," then? True?! I don't see how.
That's fine. I get it. I just struggle with the parts that reveal how much we simply cannot know. You have an ability to make decisions and take affirming actions for yourself in spite of that. I commend you.
I understand your aspiration to determine something universally and objectively true, but for the reasons I've mentioned and a bunch of others I haven't, I don't understand that you, or Karl, or anyone will ever to be able to arrive there. All fine and good if the journey is the destination, and in my estimation that is essentially what Jesus taught, but you'd have to steer clear of all of the metaphysical claims until death reveals them to you, or doesn't, and either way that's of no value at that point to anyone other than yourself. I, for one, don't think there's anything selfish or dubious for working to determine what is "true for you" insofar as something like a religion presents. In many ways, I actually think that's all one really can do. There's no "true across the board" empirically speaking when it comes to religion, and it doesn't have to be. But that also makes me scratch my head when you include something like "the truth about the universe and who made it," because in our day and age the gap that god has been relegated to in cosmological terms is now quark-small. We can and do know things about the origin of the universe, and god is not required. But that's a digression.
Well, the smarmy answer belongs to Christopher Hitchens: "Believe it if you can!" For myself, though, all I can say is that I am genuinely glad you've identified the anchoring source and refuge of your life. I call no names against anyone who does, not the least of which are Mrs. The_Riv, my parents, my brother and sister and their families, and with my wife's extended family. I'm just not among them in that regard any more, and I'm still working through that.
If He exists, then by that alone He does, of course.
And there's nothing smarmy about it @The_Riv.
Regardless, I think all theologians of whatever mainstream tradition would agree that our belief is no more than our reception of the saving grace of God. It's like the decision of the person in the water not to resist being pulled into the lifeboat.
That's mainstream for you. I expect much, much better of my God. Because a God that saves on belief is a graceless bastard.
Ah go on. I can't believe, beyond JTBs, Gettier notwithstanding. Bar that you're worth it.
Hence, Pascal's Wager, shockingly invoked about a year ago by William Lane Craig who admitted in a podcast that even with a one-in-a-million chance that Christianity is ultimately, empirically true -- that's more than enough reason for him to adopt it. Dedicated thread here.
Do we not have to agree that the religious Truthers (no disrespect) among us have no more or better information than the rest of us? Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health who led the Human Genome Project, has shared that it was during a winter hike that he came upon a waterfall frozen in three streams. Apparently, and with not much further explanation, it was this Trinitarian sight that stuck him so profoundly that he immediately dropped to his knees on the spot and became a Christian. Fascinating, and so fortunate for him that the rocks in the stream above hadn't revealed four frozen streams instead.
Although I received Roman Catholic education for 12 years I took everything with a grain of salt. I did not have faith. As a child, It was not a concern for me one way or another.
As I went through the joys and sorrows of becoming an adult, when I was first exposed to people of (Christian) religious faith I yearned for it because it was clear to me they had everything I considered important
I started praying for that faith in the late 70s.
Long, long story — I never gave up but had only my own head for guidance. I studied all religions with the exception of Christianity, which I knew well, or so I believed.
I did finally receive the gift of faith, and it did happen in a moment when I admitted to myself that I did deeply desire a savior.
Regarding the very beautiful way that Francis Collins received faith, why the silly editorializing?
ISTM that some highly intellectual types may need more obvious, less subtle invitations. Off the top of my head St Paul, Pascal and Francis Collins come to mind.
If you are having a crisis of faith, I sympathize, deeply. But, IMVHO, it would be helpful to at least try to keep a child’s mind.
@The_Riv. Pascal. WLC are damnationists. No reason to believe. Love . is . not . a . bastard. Or triune.
You may, of course, still find that reaction overly-imaginitive, bizarre or silly. But ignoring the wider context just to get in a dig at a reaction to a waterfall does undercut some credibility.
And fwiw, with regard to: when you use a loaded term like “Truthers,” a parenthetical “no disrespect” really just makes it worse.
In which case it seems worthwhile to consider the gains of believing in Thing even if it turns out to be wrong.
But it explains why he might have asserted that some are 'made so they might never believe.'
I'm no scientist but I've been discussing the issue of whether there is a 'religious gene' with people who have looked into these things. An atheist friend whose son has epilepsy was telling me that many people who have that condition have religious tendencies and some believe it affects the so-called 'God-spot' in the brain. I suppose they must be conflating or linking things like fits and seizures with visionary experiences etc. I have no idea whether this is sound or pseudo-science or whether serious biology or neurology is involved.
On the Francis Collins thing ... I'd not heard that before. 'Some said it thundered ...'
If there'd been a fourth stream then they might have seen it as symbolising the four Gospels or seen themselves represented by the fourth stream entering some kind of mystic union with the Godhead.
Who knows?
Why does it matter?
To their own master they stand or fall.
I can understand why those posters here who have lost faith or are wavering in their faith - and we all of us who are people of faith do - can become rather exasperated or sound a bit 'campaigning' at times. That's part of the process. Converts to Christianity - I can't speak for any other world faith - can sound smug and 'superior' at times without a doubt.
These are all things we have to come to terms with in our own way.
I think I've thought of a couple of occasions where it is probably healthy to not question ones faith/belief in something.
For me, I don't think it would be very healthy to constantly question my faith in the integrity of lifts and bridges. Being anxious about these kinds of things would make life difficult and unhealthy.
Having instincts about heights, unless you're Mohawk, that haven't caught up with engineering, gives one the opportunity to exercise rationality over fear.
How that will work when the time comes I can't imagine. Which is a lie. Been close before, not happy times. Must try gratitude. If there's headspace for that. Agony can be all consuming.
Happy days!
Okay, since you keep bringing this stuff up... Do you want me to start a separate thread where I can go through the many and various LOOOOOONGGGG answers I have to these questions? Because if I do it here, truly I think someone will bite my face off. And they'd be justified.
Thank you for stating this, so plainly @Dafyd. Right word at the right time.
I was thinking that maybe it matters more to other people if your religion is untrue.
You personally are already convinced of the truth of it, you are likely already working within the mindset and worldview. Objectively it probably wouldn't make much difference if it wasn't true because you'd probably not recognise it as untrue without a significant worldview change.
And obviously a big worldview change would matter to you personally.
For example, maybe there's a person who is a Buddhist monk and spends many hours a day doing Buddhist things. If it wasn't true (and what does 'truth' even mean in this context?) then he's basically committed his life to breathing exercises. It is tricky to say whether that's any more worthwhile or worthless than anything else on a personal level.
But I guess it would be reasonable to say that there's a loss carried by other people. Maybe he entered the religious life as a child and his family have missed out on his childhood. If the religion isn't true, presumably those people would be entitled to think that something had been 'stolen' from them.
I don't know, maybe I'm overtired.
I've never been universalist. And the various verses in the New Testament about belief and salvation suggest to me more than an absence of resistance. What do you make of verses that talk about being saved through belief, such as the following?
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.
Interpreting those as you appear to do means nearly everyone ends up unsaved, whatever that means. Which renders the effectiveness of the Incarnation rather underwhelming. Add to that the fact you can't actually do that as an act of will because you can't make yourself believe things and it doesn't seem a very good strategy for the salvation of humanity.
Also I don't make anything of proof texts taken in isolation.
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.
Contrary to what appears to be fairly widely accepted here (on these forums), I find the idea that "God is Love" means that He would implement the most numerically inclusive salvation policy we can imagine, flawed. It reduces God to a rather human-like moral agent. And whatever else Job is about (cf your post elsewhere), it's that God is not a moral agent like us - He does not measure life in the same way as we do.
I'm not totally sure what you're saying here, but based on previous posts of yours, I would hazard that it comes from *you* not being able to make yourself believe things (in the absence of empirical evidence). It seems that many people have less of a problem with this, in the case of religious and related forms of belief.
How could anyone decline such an invitation.
I appreciate the question. I think it’s definitely an issue here in the U.S., insofar as we have a right-wing evangelical movement openly saying they want to institute their hyper-conservative Christianity throughout American society. I don’t think that’s the thrust of your question, but that’s one way it’s manifesting itself here.
"Worldview" has more often than not been problematic in my brain. Does absolutely everyone have a worldview? When does a collection of ideas become a worldview? Again, here in the Deep Evangelical Southern US, "worldview" tends to be the lens, judge/jury and framework via everything is assessed. It predetermines answers in advance, and then evaluates only in terms of those answers -- an entire cart-before-the-horse approach to life.
This seems as good a place as any to make the oft heard quip that Buddhism may not be a religion as much as it is a philosophy. But yes -- if the tenets of Buddhism were revealed (at death, supposedly) to be false, the practitioner would be the only one who (finally) knew. This echoes the earlier comment about belief in a religion's truth being more important than whether a religion is ever determined to be true.
Yes indeed -- sunk cost. There are bound to be intrinsic values in the practicing of a religion, but there are also sure to be sunk costs, the greatest of which is whether a single, unique, finite life has been utterly wasted in the pursuit of something completely fictional.
It strikes me as important to note that Jesus never said things like that.
[Sorry for the double post -- was interrupted during the edit window]
Indeed, I went back and re-read the OP, and you are absolutely correct -- this thread is about the Truth of religion. Thanks!
You would do.
I think the problem with all this is it leads to utter despair. Given that most of the people I've known and loved have not been believers, my "best hope" by this theology is that I get to spend eternity knowing they're "unsaved", whatever that means (and you've avoided spelling out the implications). The best hope, again, there is that they've simply ceased to exist at all. At worst they're suffering somewhere. Because the scenario that Christianity set forth to them, the creedal hoops they had to jump through, just didn't seem to be true and therefore they didn't believe them. By definition.
I don’t know about you, but that looks like it'd put a massive downer on whatever pleasures heaven can offer. There is, in fact, no good version of eternity for anyone who cares about the fate of others. Hence despair. In my darkest moments I experience absolute terror that you might be right; if you are, I think I'd want oblivion. Because I'd want nothing to do with the God who'd made it thus. It would not be gospel - Good News. It would be terrible news
Actually, no, it's quite orthogonal to that. I just don't see how you can decide to believe something is true. If it seems to be true to you then you already believe it; if it doesn't, then you already don't. Could you decide, and really believe, tomorrow, that God doesn't exist? Or decide to be sure that fairies are real?
I don’t see why it would be that unusual - the world is surely full of ex-conevos who can't shake the nagging fear that they were on the money back then.
It's not like we ever actually know.
I suppose I'm 'ex con-evo' up to a point. Or was 'post-evangelical' in my 'pre-catholic' stage ... 😉. I'm using 'catholic' in a broader sense than 'Roman Catholic' or 'Eastern Catholic' of course.
I'm not sure I'm bedevilled by a nagging fear that I used to be on the money back then but aren't now. I don't do a tick-box thing either such as looking back to assess how small o orthodox or quasi-Big O Orthodox I was at certain stages. Or I try not to ...
I was once asked by @Nick Tamen on these boards why I pray for the dead. Well, it was a general question addressed to all 'catholic'-ly minded Christians who do that. My response was that I do so because I love them.
I don't lie awake at night worrying about the eternal destiny of my departed relatives, whether they were believers or otherwise. I pray for all of them whenever I remember to do so. Not because I think there are 'heavenly toll-booths' or purgatorial log-jams which my prayers will unblock as if by magic but because 'will not the judge of all the earth do right.'
Somehow I'm able to live with the Mystery of all that. Same as I trust I'm gradually leaning into the Mysteries of the sacraments and much else besides.
Whether I am or not is a mystery itself of course.
FWIW I see my current Orthodoxy as some kind of 'fulfilment' of where I was at or heading in my evangelical days. I don't say that to arrogantly assert that everyone should head in the same direction as me or that evangelicals can't be 'fulfilled' within their own tradition.
But somehow - and I don't think it's because I'm some kind of heartless git - I no longer get exercised about who is 'saved' or not. I pray for everybody - well not literally but you know what I mean.
I don't get uptight as our good friend @Martin54 here appears to as to whether God is a spiteful, vindictive bastard - because I don't believe he is. But neither do I find much traction in speculating about universalism etc etc.
Sure, I believe in a 'wider hope' as per Romans 2 but don't go round speculating as to whether this, that or the other person is 'saved' or will be 'saved' or not. That's God's business not mine.
I don't think it's that uncommon a thought really.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_(novel)
An homage to Lovecraft.
I'm afraid you're right. That one could doubt that God is Love by our demanding liberal criteria, because of the power of ancient texts.
Well - take them in context then. Or any of the other verses that link belief and salvation.
I find the primary appeal of God to be that He is astonishingly not like us. I find the un-appeal of church to be that its participants treat Him as though He is.
Hmm. It's taken rather longer than a day, but I wouldn't say that the progression of my belief in God had nothing to do wit my conscious decisions - my beliefs about God are, as much as anything, a result of decisions I've made and that I continue to make about what I consider and think about. It seems reasonable that I take some responsibility for what I believe. I can't imagine having no agency at all in the process.
If you act like the thing is true, if you modify your behaviors and go about your life as if the thing is true, it doesn't really matter whether or not there's an internal assent and affirmation to the thing being true. In this case, you could simply decide that there's value in acting like the thing is true. If you do this for long enough, then eventually it comes to be true. It begins pragmatically and then builds over time.
I've been through this game of twisted logical alchemy whereby God rejecting most of humanity for all eternity is somehow cast as his "love" but I didn't buy it then, which is why I'm no longer a con evo, and I don't buy it now.
Now that is cheap and silly isn't it? And how did young Dickie save me? And please quote from his development of Newspeak. Where does He equate hate and love as most believers do?
Dawkins has become quite unpleasant in his views on race and trans rights, mostly out of some inane commitment to "science." I don't know of his saying hate and love are equivalent, but then I don't know of any Christians who do that either.