There is also what John Walton suggests, that Genesis should be read differently in terms of "function," though I have not read his book thus far. He's been interviewed on an excellent podcast called The Holy Post that I follow.
I don’t see why the parousia in particular has any conflict at all with any model of the universe.
Nor do I, unless someone is thinking in very literal terms about ascending into and returning from Heaven, i.e., Outer Space, rather than that being either figurative language or a description based on perception.
Not so much in conflict per se, but it does raise questions that aren't there with earlier understandings of the universe. As I asked earlier:
What are the implications of our being a tiny speck in an unimaginably massive universe, our human timecales a fleeting fraction of a second in cosmic terms, for the Parousia? Will a new heavens and a new earth involve the remaking of that entire universe, all its billions of galaxies? Or is it to be understood more figuratively or more locally?
Does the Parousia mean an entirely new creation so these future events* will never actually occur? Or is it merely local, in which case what happens to our new redeemed and recreated earth when the Sun does expand? Or something else?
*Sun becoming a Red Giant, heat death of the universe...
Both the beginning and the ending are effectively outside of what we think of as time. I don't really think of either as being problematic in any sense. The middle, the incarnation, that's the anomaly. The ends are shrouded in myth and mystery and will be revealed in the fullness of time. The incarnation, though, that's where things are odd.
That all being said, what happens to the world we know after the return of Christ? Well who the fuck cares, strictly speaking. I mean you can just ask him when the time comes. More practically, it's outside the narrative. It's like asking how Sherlock Holmes would have used AI, idle speculation.
Look, if you think it's a stupid question, then that's fine, but I happen to think it's not. Clearly you don’t see the problem I do.
As for "who the fuck cares?" - well, I do.
Suppose there are other civilisations in the universe? Does the Parousia happen for them too? How is it arranged so it's the "right time" for them too? Or is it just us, humanity, dragged out of earth into some heavenly universe? Will there be millions of Parousiae? Have there been millions of Incarnations?
It opens so many questions.
I'm amazed your response to them is "who cares?" and to belittle curiosity as "idle speculation".
"Outside the narrative" - yes, I know, because the universe the people who created the narrative imagined was very different to the one we know know exists. So how do we in our modern time adapt and expand the narrative to work with what we know now about deep time, the history of life and the extent of the universe and our place in it?
It seems to me that the whole idea of the Creation, Fall and Parousia are rooted in a Greek cosmology - or even a Hebrew one - where this earth is central, created ex nihilo by God in a human timeframe with a relatively small universe around it, and of primary significance in that universe. Unfortunately that's not the universe we actually have, and that leads to questions like the ones I'm posing here.
I think that you have nailed it here.
In order to continue to believe in a literal Creation, Fall and Parousia, you have to dismiss all that we now know about the universe, its age and construction.
This has been clear for some time with regards to Creation and Fall but I am not aware that there has been that much awareness of how the Parousia is affected. By that, I mean that there are still many Christians who will happily accept the knowledge that we now have about the universe and so will also accept a non-literal Creation and Fall but who still hold to a literal (and even imminent) Parousia.
About 3 to 4 thousand years ago. the Hebrews thought they needed to explain how things started. They came up with the first few chapters of Genesis. Based on what else we know, I don't think they got it right, but I also don't thinks it's important.
Yes, although I think there's more to it than that, @Telford.
There's a school of thought that suggests that the Hebrew writers cast and shaped their own creation accounts/myths to differentiate their views about God from the polytheistic approach of surrounding cultures.
Some of the creation stories circulating in antiquity were quite 'fruity' to say the least.
About 3 to 4 thousand years ago. the Hebrews thought they needed to explain how things started. They came up with the first few chapters of Genesis. Based on what else we know, I don't think they got it right, but I also don't thinks it's important.
Yes, although I think there's also more to it than that.
There's a school of thought that suggests the Hebrew writers shaped their own creation stories in a way that deliberately contrasted their views about God with the polytheistic creation myths of surrounding cultures.
It was part of a process of differentiating themselves and their beliefs from those of other cultures.
I don’t see why the parousia in particular has any conflict at all with any model of the universe.
Nor do I, unless someone is thinking in very literal terms about ascending into and returning from Heaven, i.e., Outer Space, rather than that being either figurative language or a description based on perception.
Not so much in conflict per se, but it does raise questions that aren't there with earlier understandings of the universe. As I asked earlier:
What are the implications of our being a tiny speck in an unimaginably massive universe, our human timecales a fleeting fraction of a second in cosmic terms, for the Parousia? Will a new heavens and a new earth involve the remaking of that entire universe, all its billions of galaxies? Or is it to be understood more figuratively or more locally?
Does the Parousia mean an entirely new creation so these future events* will never actually occur? Or is it merely local, in which case what happens to our new redeemed and recreated earth when the Sun does expand? Or something else?
*Sun becoming a Red Giant, heat death of the universe...
Both the beginning and the ending are effectively outside of what we think of as time. I don't really think of either as being problematic in any sense. The middle, the incarnation, that's the anomaly. The ends are shrouded in myth and mystery and will be revealed in the fullness of time. The incarnation, though, that's where things are odd.
That all being said, what happens to the world we know after the return of Christ? Well who the fuck cares, strictly speaking. I mean you can just ask him when the time comes. More practically, it's outside the narrative. It's like asking how Sherlock Holmes would have used AI, idle speculation.
Look, if you think it's a stupid question, then that's fine, but I happen to think it's not. Clearly you don’t see the problem I do.
As for "who the fuck cares?" - well, I do.
Suppose there are other civilisations in the universe? Does the Parousia happen for them too? How is it arranged so it's the "right time" for them too? Or is it just us, humanity, dragged out of earth into some heavenly universe? Will there be millions of Parousiae? Have there been millions of Incarnations?
It opens so many questions.
I'm amazed your response to them is "who cares?" and to belittle curiosity as "idle speculation".
"Outside the narrative" - yes, I know, because the universe the people who created the narrative imagined was very different to the one we know know exists. So how do we in our modern time adapt and expand the narrative to work with what we know now about deep time, the history of life and the extent of the universe and our place in it?
I think it's a good question.
I'm a humanities bod through and through and don't understand any of the science. I did O'Level Geology and quite enjoyed the bit of Biology we did at school. I fled from Physics and Chemistry at the earliest opportunity.
That says more about me than it does about them.
So I find @KarlLB's questions stimulating as they force me to think about issues I've either not considered before or brushed under the carpet or filed under 'too difficult'.
I agree that it all hinges on the Incarnation. That raises plenty of questions in and of itself, of course.
About 3 to 4 thousand years ago. the Hebrews thought they needed to explain how things started. They came up with the first few chapters of Genesis. Based on what else we know, I don't think they got it right, but I also don't thinks it's important.
Yes, although I think there's also more to it than that.
There's a school of thought that suggests the Hebrew writers shaped their own creation stories in a way that deliberately contrasted their views about God with the polytheistic creation myths of surrounding cultures.
It was part of a process of differentiating themselves and their beliefs from those of other cultures.
I think that's right. To best understand the Creation stories in Genesis, you need to have read the other Creation stories in ANE and compare and contrast.
For example, the emphasis on "it was good" becomes quite striking.
The incarnation is the middle of sacred history I presume. In a literal, linear version of that, when He returns, He pacifies the Earth for a thousand years with the angels and then the transcendent, resurrected and twinkled, Church. That ends with Judgement Day. The entire cosmos then transcends. The end. The beginning of sacred history, the once-upon-a-time, is of God creating the earth, with its waters obviously, in typical ANE manner.
One can, of course, dilute, metaphorize, to taste. And introduce Ptolemaic epicycles in the illusion of time to justify the waters being prevenient of God creating which itself becomes a metaphor for ordering chaos. He ordered watery chaos in to heavens and earth.
There is no end of yeah-buttery.
We're still in to the circularity of Genesis having to be unnatural in some way to justify the Jesus myth.
I'm amazed your response to them is "who cares?" and to belittle curiosity as "idle speculation".
Okay, but what kind of propositions would you consider ? Because it's all very well saying that the an answer has to 'adapt' to our modern understanding of 'deep time' etc. but as soon as you get into the territory of 'expanding the narrative you are of necessity stepping beyond that.
This is partly why I commented on 'free will' above, because obviously you have an additional set of presuppositions over and above our modern understanding of such things against which you evaluate what's on offer.
I don’t see why the parousia in particular has any conflict at all with any model of the universe.
Nor do I, unless someone is thinking in very literal terms about ascending into and returning from Heaven, i.e., Outer Space, rather than that being either figurative language or a description based on perception.
Not so much in conflict per se, but it does raise questions that aren't there with earlier understandings of the universe. As I asked earlier:
What are the implications of our being a tiny speck in an unimaginably massive universe, our human timecales a fleeting fraction of a second in cosmic terms, for the Parousia? Will a new heavens and a new earth involve the remaking of that entire universe, all its billions of galaxies? Or is it to be understood more figuratively or more locally?
Does the Parousia mean an entirely new creation so these future events* will never actually occur? Or is it merely local, in which case what happens to our new redeemed and recreated earth when the Sun does expand? Or something else?
*Sun becoming a Red Giant, heat death of the universe...
Both the beginning and the ending are effectively outside of what we think of as time. I don't really think of either as being problematic in any sense. The middle, the incarnation, that's the anomaly. The ends are shrouded in myth and mystery and will be revealed in the fullness of time. The incarnation, though, that's where things are odd.
That all being said, what happens to the world we know after the return of Christ? Well who the fuck cares, strictly speaking. I mean you can just ask him when the time comes. More practically, it's outside the narrative. It's like asking how Sherlock Holmes would have used AI, idle speculation.
Look, if you think it's a stupid question, then that's fine, but I happen to think it's not. Clearly you don’t see the problem I do.
As for "who the fuck cares?" - well, I do.
Suppose there are other civilisations in the universe? Does the Parousia happen for them too? How is it arranged so it's the "right time" for them too? Or is it just us, humanity, dragged out of earth into some heavenly universe? Will there be millions of Parousiae? Have there been millions of Incarnations?
It opens so many questions.
I'm amazed your response to them is "who cares?" and to belittle curiosity as "idle speculation".
"Outside the narrative" - yes, I know, because the universe the people who created the narrative imagined was very different to the one we know know exists. So how do we in our modern time adapt and expand the narrative to work with what we know now about deep time, the history of life and the extent of the universe and our place in it?
I don't think it's a stupid question, I think it's perfectly unanswerable. If there are other civilizations in the universe how will the eschaton impact them? Gosh, that's a weight bearing 'if.' We don't know--can't know.
Also, my 'who the fuck cares' was meant good humoredly, not negatively, so maybe pull off the throttle a bit. I apologize for not making that clear.
By outside the narrative I mean that it is literally outside the scope of what we know and what we can know. Sure, you can say that is because the narrative was written by people who thought that the universe was quite different from the one we have but that's not what I mean. What I mean is that the eschaton is literally outside the scope of the scriptures and the deductions of reason. I'm all for curiosity and believe there are many areas of seeming pointlessness that can and should be studied. How the return of Christ will impact speculative civilizations that we don't know about? We're getting a bit far away there. For all we know they are Christians and when Christ incarnated there were a million incarnations at the same time. We can't know, in any sense of the word, we simply can't know.
But if you are keenly interested in this topic and think that it can be answered, then I would think that the best place to start is with accounts of the eschaton. I've done really any reading in this area, but there are many theologians who have. I think finding an account of the eschaton that makes sense and respects the data we have could be a good first step.
I also think rummaging around in Maximus the Confessor could be useful, as his account of Christ was specifically cosmic. Of course, it was cosmic in Hellenistic thought terms, but it has proven influential with modern day theologians who try to think in cosmic terms.
I don’t see why the parousia in particular has any conflict at all with any model of the universe.
Nor do I, unless someone is thinking in very literal terms about ascending into and returning from Heaven, i.e., Outer Space, rather than that being either figurative language or a description based on perception.
Not so much in conflict per se, but it does raise questions that aren't there with earlier understandings of the universe. As I asked earlier:
What are the implications of our being a tiny speck in an unimaginably massive universe, our human timecales a fleeting fraction of a second in cosmic terms, for the Parousia? Will a new heavens and a new earth involve the remaking of that entire universe, all its billions of galaxies? Or is it to be understood more figuratively or more locally?
Does the Parousia mean an entirely new creation so these future events* will never actually occur? Or is it merely local, in which case what happens to our new redeemed and recreated earth when the Sun does expand? Or something else?
*Sun becoming a Red Giant, heat death of the universe...
Both the beginning and the ending are effectively outside of what we think of as time. I don't really think of either as being problematic in any sense. The middle, the incarnation, that's the anomaly. The ends are shrouded in myth and mystery and will be revealed in the fullness of time. The incarnation, though, that's where things are odd.
That all being said, what happens to the world we know after the return of Christ? Well who the fuck cares, strictly speaking. I mean you can just ask him when the time comes. More practically, it's outside the narrative. It's like asking how Sherlock Holmes would have used AI, idle speculation.
Look, if you think it's a stupid question, then that's fine, but I happen to think it's not. Clearly you don’t see the problem I do.
As for "who the fuck cares?" - well, I do.
Suppose there are other civilisations in the universe? Does the Parousia happen for them too? How is it arranged so it's the "right time" for them too? Or is it just us, humanity, dragged out of earth into some heavenly universe? Will there be millions of Parousiae? Have there been millions of Incarnations?
It opens so many questions.
I'm amazed your response to them is "who cares?" and to belittle curiosity as "idle speculation".
"Outside the narrative" - yes, I know, because the universe the people who created the narrative imagined was very different to the one we know know exists. So how do we in our modern time adapt and expand the narrative to work with what we know now about deep time, the history of life and the extent of the universe and our place in it?
I don't think it's a stupid question, I think it's perfectly unanswerable. If there are other civilizations in the universe how will the eschaton impact them? Gosh, that's a weight bearing 'if.' We don't know--can't know.
Also, my 'who the fuck cares' was meant good humoredly, not negatively, so maybe pull off the throttle a bit. I apologize for not making that clear.
By outside the narrative I mean that it is literally outside the scope of what we know and what we can know. Sure, you can say that is because the narrative was written by people who thought that the universe was quite different from the one we have but that's not what I mean. What I mean is that the eschaton is literally outside the scope of the scriptures and the deductions of reason. I'm all for curiosity and believe there are many areas of seeming pointlessness that can and should be studied. How the return of Christ will impact speculative civilizations that we don't know about? We're getting a bit far away there. For all we know they are Christians and when Christ incarnated there were a million incarnations at the same time. We can't know, in any sense of the word, we simply can't know.
We know. With a certainty of 1. Or by as many sigmata as you like. We know because we can know, by knowing. We can believe that we don't know. Fine. Belief is free and weightless.
If Love were the ground of being, and incarnation fully in to culture were Their way, then there is nothing whatsoever particular about Earth, let alone its universe. All they'd have to do is demonstrate their necessity to explain anything at all and the infinity of universes would teem with incarnation from Christmas to personal eschatons. But we certainly don't know, we certainly cannot know, until we die.
We won't have to try and square the circle of sacred history in to reality.
But if you are keenly interested in this topic and think that it can be answered, then I would think that the best place to start is with accounts of the eschaton. I've done really any reading in this area, but there are many theologians who have. I think finding an account of the eschaton that makes sense and respects the data we have could be a good first step.
I also think rummaging around in Maximus the Confessor could be useful, as his account of Christ was specifically cosmic. Of course, it was cosmic in Hellenistic thought terms, but it has proven influential with modern day theologians who try to think in cosmic terms.
The reason it vexes me is alluded to in @Rufus T Firefly 's post earlier.
Our understanding of the cosmos has moved from a supernaturally created unique world, at the centre of its universe, with a timeline that corresponds to a recently, supernaturally created, human race, to a universe which came to its current form through natural processes, and in which neither our earth nor our species are central. So we've happily extended the Creation back through time by many orders of magnitude, and while we've also extended our species' existence by orders of magnitude it's many fewer, and we realise we occupy a tiny proportion of the earth's history. And to the best of our knowledge, monotheism has occupied a small proportion of our species' history.
So if we take a mythological, metaphorical if you like, view of Genesis 1-3 - which we're forced to really - then we see God's mode of action being to work through natural processes, however long that takes. It appears to be in his nature to do so, because if your intention is to build a house for someone you've got to have a pretty strong commitment to working through natural processes to wait for a suitable cave to erode via the dissolving of calcium carbonate in underground watercourses (for example) rather than throwing some bricks and mortar together.
Under the old cosmology there is a symmetry - a rapid supernatural creation at one end of history and a rapid supernatural eschaton, parousia, second coming, doomsday, call it what you will, at the other end.
Moreover, the universe is such that it does have a natural progress, a natural future. The sun, left to its own devices, will form a red giant. Entropy will eventually lead to the heat death of the universe, unless it is able to collapse in on itself in a big crunch. It has a natural end point therefore - either a energetically uniform expanse where nothing can happen because energy cannot flow, or a collapse into a new singularity, potentially a new universe.
But most religious versions of this end still propose rapid supernatural event. So the symmetry is lost. And more importantly, God suddenly decides natural processes aren't up to scratch and goes off-script. Against the nature his mode of creation has revealed.
So I look up into the night sky, and think about how the universe will unfold in the future, and religion pops up and says "nah, Jesus'll be back in a humanly comprehensible time frame. None of that will happen. No collision with the Andromeda galaxy. No sun expanding to a red giant. No new generations of stars from supernovae yet to occur." And they're contradictory. One or both of them is wrong.
And that vexes me. Which is why I'm surprised so people seem inclined to speculate. I can't not. If I don't, I compartmentalise; I put religous beliefs in one box and what I know about the universe in another, and I'm left struggling to believe the first in the light of the second.
About 3 to 4 thousand years ago. the Hebrews thought they needed to explain how things started. They came up with the first few chapters of Genesis. Based on what else we know, I don't think they got it right, but I also don't thinks it's important.
Yes, although I think there's more to it than that, @Telford.
There's a school of thought that suggests that the Hebrew writers cast and shaped their own creation accounts/myths to differentiate their views about God from the polytheistic approach of surrounding cultures.
@KarlLB, there is no reason to believe in a two-stroke universe. The expansion of space-time is accelerating and dragging matter with it. Eventually, after a practically infinite amount of time, that will happen within matter and inflate it to nothing. For now the sun is burning hotter and there will be no water on Earth billions of years before it becomes a red giant. Life on Earth has a billion years or so to go. Human life 0.01% of that at best. In between then and matter disappearing there will be sunshine and life in the universe for two hundred trillion years, when the last red dwarfs go dark. The only hope beyond hope is sci-fi pre-empted by Fermi after that, which would have had to be realised before for a civilization to outlive its star. Uploading to silicon near absolute zero.
Meanwhile when m-branes collide in 11D (some dimensions being extended, explaining the weakness of gravity) bulk hyperspace, universes start.
We're nowt.
I'll be delighted forever if I wake up and that's all grounded by Love. Love not in, beyond, without meaningful connection to, sacred history.
Both the beginning and the ending are effectively outside of what we think of as time. I don't really think of either as being problematic in any sense. The middle, the incarnation, that's the anomaly. The ends are shrouded in myth and mystery and will be revealed in the fullness of time. The incarnation, though, that's where things are odd.
That all being said, what happens to the world we know after the return of Christ? Well who the fuck cares, strictly speaking. I mean you can just ask him when the time comes. More practically, it's outside the narrative. It's like asking how Sherlock Holmes would have used AI, idle speculation.
Oh, I don't know. We're doing better and better at thinking about very long timescales. Theres this. And this. I think the encouraging thing is that we can and do know more and more about the beginning of the cosmos. What's problematic, IMO, is trying to hold all of that in some kind of forced balance with Biblical accounts. Stephen Jay Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" is about as generous as one can be in that regard. We can say with pretty fair certainty that the actual, cosmological end of the Earth will be realized, not revealed. Assuming, of course, we don't encounter a more sinister Apophis.
The incarnation is an allegation, not an anomaly, and not based on anything we can and do know. Heaven and Hell: an allegation. Parousia: an allegation. We don't know these things. Worldview doesn't come into it.
I have said it before, and will say it again: The first chapter of Genesis is am explanation of why there are seven days in the Jewish week, ending on the Sabbath.
The incarnation is an allegation, not an anomaly, and not based on anything we can and do know. Heaven and Hell: an allegation. Parousia: an allegation. We don't know these things. Worldview doesn't come into it.
Our worldviews aren't so much about knowledge, but about our underlying beliefs and assumptions. There are a wide range of worldviews in evidence on these forums.
Both the beginning and the ending are effectively outside of what we think of as time. I don't really think of either as being problematic in any sense. The middle, the incarnation, that's the anomaly. The ends are shrouded in myth and mystery and will be revealed in the fullness of time. The incarnation, though, that's where things are odd.
That all being said, what happens to the world we know after the return of Christ? Well who the fuck cares, strictly speaking. I mean you can just ask him when the time comes. More practically, it's outside the narrative. It's like asking how Sherlock Holmes would have used AI, idle speculation.
Oh, I don't know. We're doing better and better at thinking about very long timescales. Theres this. And this. I think the encouraging thing is that we can and do know more and more about the beginning of the cosmos. What's problematic, IMO, is trying to hold all of that in some kind of forced balance with Biblical accounts. Stephen Jay Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" is about as generous as one can be in that regard. We can say with pretty fair certainty that the actual, cosmological end of the Earth will be realized, not revealed. Assuming, of course, we don't encounter a more sinister Apophis.
The incarnation is an allegation, not an anomaly, and not based on anything we can and do know. Heaven and Hell: an allegation. Parousia: an allegation. We don't know these things. Worldview doesn't come into it.
Yer call that long? What about a googol years for a start?
10^10^105-120 years from now without proton decay.
The incarnation is an allegation, not an anomaly, and not based on anything we can and do know. Heaven and Hell: an allegation. Parousia: an allegation. We don't know these things. Worldview doesn't come into it.
Our worldviews aren't so much about knowledge, but about our underlying beliefs and assumptions. There are a wide range of worldviews in evidence on these forums.
I guess my point is that worldviews are susceptible to knowledge, and to the extent that we can and do know more, worldviews benefit from changes that reflect those realities instead of ignoring them.
The incarnation is an allegation, not an anomaly, and not based on anything we can and do know. Heaven and Hell: an allegation. Parousia: an allegation. We don't know these things. Worldview doesn't come into it.
Our worldviews aren't so much about knowledge, but about our underlying beliefs and assumptions. There are a wide range of worldviews in evidence on these forums.
I guess my point is that worldviews are susceptible to knowledge, and to the extent that we can and do know more, worldviews benefit from changes that reflect those realities instead of ignoring them.
Absolutely agreed. Your links come with Trojan Horses that I never allow.
I've not encountered a theology yet that actually deals with the fact of infinity.
But if you are keenly interested in this topic and think that it can be answered, then I would think that the best place to start is with accounts of the eschaton. I've done really any reading in this area, but there are many theologians who have. I think finding an account of the eschaton that makes sense and respects the data we have could be a good first step.
I also think rummaging around in Maximus the Confessor could be useful, as his account of Christ was specifically cosmic. Of course, it was cosmic in Hellenistic thought terms, but it has proven influential with modern day theologians who try to think in cosmic terms.
The reason it vexes me is alluded to in @Rufus T Firefly 's post earlier.
Our understanding of the cosmos has moved from a supernaturally created unique world, at the centre of its universe, with a timeline that corresponds to a recently, supernaturally created, human race, to a universe which came to its current form through natural processes, and in which neither our earth nor our species are central. So we've happily extended the Creation back through time by many orders of magnitude, and while we've also extended our species' existence by orders of magnitude it's many fewer, and we realise we occupy a tiny proportion of the earth's history. And to the best of our knowledge, monotheism has occupied a small proportion of our species' history.
So if we take a mythological, metaphorical if you like, view of Genesis 1-3 - which we're forced to really - then we see God's mode of action being to work through natural processes, however long that takes. It appears to be in his nature to do so, because if your intention is to build a house for someone you've got to have a pretty strong commitment to working through natural processes to wait for a suitable cave to erode via the dissolving of calcium carbonate in underground watercourses (for example) rather than throwing some bricks and mortar together.
Under the old cosmology there is a symmetry - a rapid supernatural creation at one end of history and a rapid supernatural eschaton, parousia, second coming, doomsday, call it what you will, at the other end.
Moreover, the universe is such that it does have a natural progress, a natural future. The sun, left to its own devices, will form a red giant. Entropy will eventually lead to the heat death of the universe, unless it is able to collapse in on itself in a big crunch. It has a natural end point therefore - either a energetically uniform expanse where nothing can happen because energy cannot flow, or a collapse into a new singularity, potentially a new universe.
But most religious versions of this end still propose rapid supernatural event. So the symmetry is lost. And more importantly, God suddenly decides natural processes aren't up to scratch and goes off-script. Against the nature his mode of creation has revealed.
So I look up into the night sky, and think about how the universe will unfold in the future, and religion pops up and says "nah, Jesus'll be back in a humanly comprehensible time frame. None of that will happen. No collision with the Andromeda galaxy. No sun expanding to a red giant. No new generations of stars from supernovae yet to occur." And they're contradictory. One or both of them is wrong.
And that vexes me. Which is why I'm surprised so people seem inclined to speculate. I can't not. If I don't, I compartmentalise; I put religous beliefs in one box and what I know about the universe in another, and I'm left struggling to believe the first in the light of the second.
Thanks for this, I understand now what you mean.
I still think it's outside the scope of the narrative. But it's also possible that as the beginning of the universe happened aeons ago, the end of the universe constitutes the end of the story and the beginning of the parousia.
Part of the Christian story is that the natural progress of things is upended from time to time. Certainly that happened with Christ, if you believe all of the claims, and so from that it isn't insane to think that the natural progress of things will once again be disrupted.
But does the Christian story mean that everything will happen all at once, as a rapid supernatural event? Idly speculating here but I don't know, maybe Jesus comes back when the human race has finally killed itself. Maybe the eschaton occurs when the universe runs out the clock and snaps back into an infinitely dense ball of matter or whatever. I think there are ways of making it work that preserve the propositions and facts of science with the propositions and revelations of Christianity.
Both the beginning and the ending are effectively outside of what we think of as time. I don't really think of either as being problematic in any sense. The middle, the incarnation, that's the anomaly. The ends are shrouded in myth and mystery and will be revealed in the fullness of time. The incarnation, though, that's where things are odd.
That all being said, what happens to the world we know after the return of Christ? Well who the fuck cares, strictly speaking. I mean you can just ask him when the time comes. More practically, it's outside the narrative. It's like asking how Sherlock Holmes would have used AI, idle speculation.
Oh, I don't know. We're doing better and better at thinking about very long timescales. Theres this. And this. I think the encouraging thing is that we can and do know more and more about the beginning of the cosmos. What's problematic, IMO, is trying to hold all of that in some kind of forced balance with Biblical accounts. Stephen Jay Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" is about as generous as one can be in that regard. We can say with pretty fair certainty that the actual, cosmological end of the Earth will be realized, not revealed. Assuming, of course, we don't encounter a more sinister Apophis.
The incarnation is an allegation, not an anomaly, and not based on anything we can and do know. Heaven and Hell: an allegation. Parousia: an allegation. We don't know these things. Worldview doesn't come into it.
I didn't mean that we are incapable of understanding very long timescales. I meant that the events are outside the narrative framework. Like the birth of Molly in Joyce's Ulysses, it's not in the story. We can only speculate.
And I am aware all of the tenants are allegations, but as the thread is about the ramifications of these allegations for the scientific epistemology of the faith, treating them as more weighty than mere allegations is warranted.
But does the Christian story mean that everything will happen all at once, as a rapid supernatural event? Idly speculating here but I don't know, maybe Jesus comes back when the human race has finally killed itself. Maybe the eschaton occurs when the universe runs out the clock and snaps back into an infinitely dense ball of matter or whatever. I think there are ways of making it work that preserve the propositions and facts of science with the propositions and revelations of Christianity.
I think this empties the traditional Christian beliefs about the Endtimes of any real meaning.
The plain facts are that the early Church believed that Christ would return suddenly and that would be the end of earthly history. And they believed initially that this would happen in their lifetime. Even when that idea of an imminent end began to fade, the belief remained that it WOULD still happen at some point.
As 10CC put it:
Two thousand years and he ain't shown yet
We kept his seat warm and the table set
In other words, it just hasn't happened and it is difficult to seriously claim that it will.
Given all we know now about the age and size of the universe, and how slowly things happen (we need to think in terms of millions and billions of years), any suggestion of Jesus suddenly returning and ending everything becomes harder to maintain. I think we need to think seriously about how Christians should look to the future centuries and millenia.
"Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again."
Increasingly, I find it difficult to say the third part of that piece of liturgy with any real conviction. What do I really think the future will hold?
The incarnation is an allegation, not an anomaly, and not based on anything we can and do know. Heaven and Hell: an allegation. Parousia: an allegation. We don't know these things. Worldview doesn't come into it.
Our worldviews aren't so much about knowledge, but about our underlying beliefs and assumptions. There are a wide range of worldviews in evidence on these forums.
I guess my point is that worldviews are susceptible to knowledge, and to the extent that we can and do know more, worldviews benefit from changes that reflect those realities instead of ignoring them.
Ah - I see what you mean. Although the evidence on these forums suggests to me that it's just as possible for people's worldviews to suffer as a result of acquired knowledge.
Yull 'ave uh bluddy long wait till't th'end u't universe, even if protons decay. Staring u't t'kettle is nothing. Watching paint dry. Nowt. Why wait? There'll be no life within two hundred trillion years. 'e can come back then for everybody 'o's ever lived in t' universe.
Absurd isn't it. The plains of heaven are infinite. The dead have always been rising in them. All theology is metaphor.
Part of the Christian story is that the natural progress of things is upended from time to time. Certainly that happened with Christ, if you believe all of the claims, and so from that it isn't insane to think that the natural progress of things will once again be disrupted.
But does the Christian story mean that everything will happen all at once, as a rapid supernatural event? Idly speculating here but I don't know, maybe Jesus comes back when the human race has finally killed itself. Maybe the eschaton occurs when the universe runs out the clock and snaps back into an infinitely dense ball of matter or whatever. I think there are ways of making it work that preserve the propositions and facts of science with the propositions and revelations of Christianity.
Suspensions of the natural order are indeed a part of the Biblical narrative, but we (now) know that those things can't and/or don't happen. Like we know the universe isn't going to retract back onto/into itself -- it's going to keep accelerating apart until there's no record of it ever being at all. The problem with continuing to insist that there's some version of theology that jibes with science is that each advance of science requires religion to re-contort its claims. How long can religion keep this up? How far can it rationalize?
I didn't mean that we are incapable of understanding very long timescales. I meant that the events are outside the narrative framework. Like the birth of Molly in Joyce's Ulysses, it's not in the story. We can only speculate.
And I am aware all of the tenants are allegations, but as the thread is about the ramifications of these allegations for the scientific epistemology of the faith, treating them as more weighty than mere allegations is warranted.
I understand you re: timescales -- thanks. Strong allegations, then. Unprecedented allegations, even!
The incarnation is the middle of sacred history I presume. In a literal, linear version of that, when He returns, He pacifies the Earth for a thousand years with the angels and then the transcendent, resurrected and twinkled, Church. That ends with Judgement Day. The entire cosmos then transcends. The end. The beginning of sacred history, the once-upon-a-time, is of God creating the earth, with its waters obviously, in typical ANE manner.
One can, of course, dilute, metaphorize, to taste. And introduce Ptolemaic epicycles in the illusion of time to justify the waters being prevenient of God creating which itself becomes a metaphor for ordering chaos. He ordered watery chaos in to heavens and earth.
There is no end of yeah-buttery.
We're still in to the circularity of Genesis having to be unnatural in some way to justify the Jesus myth.
Goodness me, you are sounding like an atheist millenialist ... 😉
It was a joke, @Martin54. Clearly not a very clear one. I was riffing with the idea of pulling you up over a theological issue, your Millenium reference, rather than your atheism. I'm an a-millenialist you understand ...
It'd be lime asking whether you were a Protestant atheist or a Catholic one.
And yes, I'm aware of your journey from Armstrong-ism to the charismatic evangelical end of Anglicanism and its more 'emergent' aspect with elements of Steve Chalke and Oasis thrown in.
Yeah @Gamma Gamaliel, I've encountered specifically-and-only Catholic atheists. Just a total infidel now me. And yeah, I was a totally linear post-trib parousia premillennialist. We were all going to be raptured - not a term we'd touch - to Petra... Where the hell we got that from I don't recall. Still shaking my head. I've been the worst believer of they all.
Part of the Christian story is that the natural progress of things is upended from time to time. Certainly that happened with Christ, if you believe all of the claims, and so from that it isn't insane to think that the natural progress of things will once again be disrupted.
But does the Christian story mean that everything will happen all at once, as a rapid supernatural event? Idly speculating here but I don't know, maybe Jesus comes back when the human race has finally killed itself. Maybe the eschaton occurs when the universe runs out the clock and snaps back into an infinitely dense ball of matter or whatever. I think there are ways of making it work that preserve the propositions and facts of science with the propositions and revelations of Christianity.
Suspensions of the natural order are indeed a part of the Biblical narrative, but we (now) know that those things can't and/or don't happen. Like we know the universe isn't going to retract back onto/into itself -- it's going to keep accelerating apart until there's no record of it ever being at all. The problem with continuing to insist that there's some version of theology that jibes with science is that each advance of science requires religion to re-contort its claims. How long can religion keep this up? How far can it rationalize?
I didn't mean that we are incapable of understanding very long timescales. I meant that the events are outside the narrative framework. Like the birth of Molly in Joyce's Ulysses, it's not in the story. We can only speculate.
And I am aware all of the tenants are allegations, but as the thread is about the ramifications of these allegations for the scientific epistemology of the faith, treating them as more weighty than mere allegations is warranted.
I understand you re: timescales -- thanks. Strong allegations, then. Unprecedented allegations, even!
Well it's easy to say that the natural order can't be suspended if you disregard all the reports of the natural order being suspended.
I don't know why it's problematic for Christianity to continuously revise itself in the light of new information. Like that's what it has been doing since the beginning, why would it stop now? Doctrine and theology has developed, it will continue to develop as new knowledge is gained. If we didn't develop then we'd be criticized for not developing.
I'm not a physicist but the theory that eventually everything will just drift apart because of blahblahblah is a theory, just like the theory that everything will snap back together is another theory. We revise our accounts of things in light of new information. Religion is not exempt from this.
But does the Christian story mean that everything will happen all at once, as a rapid supernatural event? Idly speculating here but I don't know, maybe Jesus comes back when the human race has finally killed itself. Maybe the eschaton occurs when the universe runs out the clock and snaps back into an infinitely dense ball of matter or whatever. I think there are ways of making it work that preserve the propositions and facts of science with the propositions and revelations of Christianity.
I think this empties the traditional Christian beliefs about the Endtimes of any real meaning.
The plain facts are that the early Church believed that Christ would return suddenly and that would be the end of earthly history. And they believed initially that this would happen in their lifetime. Even when that idea of an imminent end began to fade, the belief remained that it WOULD still happen at some point.
As 10CC put it:
Two thousand years and he ain't shown yet
We kept his seat warm and the table set
In other words, it just hasn't happened and it is difficult to seriously claim that it will.
Given all we know now about the age and size of the universe, and how slowly things happen (we need to think in terms of millions and billions of years), any suggestion of Jesus suddenly returning and ending everything becomes harder to maintain. I think we need to think seriously about how Christians should look to the future centuries and millenia.
"Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again."
Increasingly, I find it difficult to say the third part of that piece of liturgy with any real conviction. What do I really think the future will hold?
I agree, it was idle speculation. I don't think that's what the faith teaches or expects. The early church was an apocalyptic end-times cult. We maintain that heritage, although it's been toned down in certain wings.
(Sorry I don't know what 10CC is.)
I don't know why it's difficult to seriously claim that it will happen. Like we don't need to go all Humean skepticism to point out that something not happening yet doesn't mean it can never happen, barring any kind of logical impossibility or whatever.
All of the eschatological claims of the church are bizarre and fly in the face of how we ordinarily think about the world. The eschaton is a sudden snapping shut of the book; the story doesn't end, it just stops.
That all being said, the church has always developed and refined doctrines. We've done that with creation, I don't see why it can't be done with the eschaton. (When the Roman Catholic Church gets around to it, the document saying that the eschaton is "an immanence already occurring at the final stage of the universe is how the Church has ALWAYS taught the matter but here we're refining it.") Certain doctrines have received more attention in development than others, perhaps this is all just an invitation by the Holy Spirit to think more deeply about what the eschaton is, what do the scriptures really say, etc etc etc.
I don't find any of these things to be anymore disturbing for the faith than any other facet of life and thought.
Having not read every comment here, I will just respond to my understanding of the Genesis account. I do not see it as a "fall. As if humans accidently tripped, and bruised their knees. It was not about eating a forbidden fruit. It was about not taking responsibility for what they had done. The man blames the woman which God had given him. The woman blames the snake which God created. (It is all God's fault, you know). Some see this as an absolute rebellion.
The deal of it is, the Hebrews never talked about a fall. They actually see it as a time when humankind became independent beings.
Jesus never talked about a fall. He talked about God so loving the world that God gave his only son for it.
Paul first hints at original sin, but it really did not become a full doctrine of the Western church until after St. Augustine. The Eastern Church does not accept Augustine's theory, though. I will differ to Gamma Gamaliel to explain the Orthodox position.
I believe the Western Church's position on original sin has caused a lot of psychological problems over the millennia. We really have to take a look at what Genesis is really saying.
A book that helped me take another look at this doctrine is Original Blessing: Putting Sin in Its Rightful Place, by Danielle Shroyer.
Another book that speaks to this is also entitled Original Blessing, A Primer on Creation Spirituality by Matthew Fox
Sorry. It's a reference to "Second Sitting For The Last Supper" - a song by the 70s & 80s group called 10CC. It comes from their album "The Original Soundtrack" - probably their best album.
Paul first hints at original sin, but it really did not become a full doctrine of the Western church until after St. Augustine. The Eastern Church does not accept Augustine's theory, though. I will differ to Gamma Gamaliel to explain the Orthodox position.
I believe the Western Church's position on original sin has caused a lot of psychological problems over the millennia. We really have to take a look at what Genesis is really saying.
You're right to attribute the full development of the doctrine to Augustine. One key reason why he was so influential in the West but not the East is that he wrote in Latin, not Greek. Therefore, his writings were not greatly read in the East. The same thing applies to Jerome, who has also had a rather baleful influence in Western thinking.
The notable Church historian Diarmaid MacCulloch has spoken about Augustine and Jerome and the way their writings about the Fall and attitudes to such things as sexuality have affected the Western Church but not the East. He is bringing out a book on a history of sex and christianity later this year, which I think will be very interesting. I'm pretty sure it will touch on some of these matters.
Original Sin (& the associated deep distrust of sex) do not have to be parts of Christianity. And I would hope that we can finally reject them and move to more healthier ways of seeing human living in all its aspects.
So Margaret Meadwas right? And outside the Latin world all is well in Christian, indeed Abrahamic, Hindu etc culture, sex?
Augustine, like Paul who inspired him, was entirely unenlightenedly naturally patriarchally conservative in his attitude to sex, strengthening it by the sexually transmitted disease of sin.
If you want healthier sexuality development learn Greek.
Without going around with a possibly prurient questionnaire I have absolutely no idea whether attitudes to these things are any healthier in non-Latin Christianity or other faiths.
The Orthodox claim to have a healthier attitude than the delinquent West, but then there is a tendency to blame absolutely everything on 'the West.'
My first impressions though, is that they aren't as fazed by these things as some forms of pietistic Western Christianity. The mileage will vary.
I've heard some appalling attitudes expressed by Orthodox 'zealots' and some loud and lairy convert clergy in the US. Some beardy-wierdies in Russia, Greece and the Balkans are probably cut from similar cloth despite not having a highly conservative Protestant background.
But by and large I'm finding the Orthodox aren't at all squeamish or Victorian when it comes to 'that sort of thing.'
So they're more enlightened? Their sexual dysfunction, pathology, both individual, psychological, and social is better? Because of their language divergent religious culture?
No, I'm not saying that. Did you not see the comments about 'appalling attitudes' in some quarters.
You talk about 'language divergent religious culture' as if English (or Latin) is the default option and any variation on that is a divergence from 'the norm'.
I'm sure that's not what you intended to say.
All I am saying is that I don't encounter the kind of Victorian style prudery that still exists to some extent in pietistic forms of Western Christianity. It's not particularly apparent here on the Ship, of course.
I'm told it's more an issue of church canons rather than dogma, but whatever the case, we are sure to be waiting a lo-ooo-ng time.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to have 'started'. I was simply discussing issues around original sin and ancestral sin. That's far from trying to pick a fight.
Unless holding different to yours is in and of itself seen as threatening in some way.
Comments
AN OVERVIEW OF JOHN H. WALTON’S LOST WORLD OF GENESIS ONE
Look, if you think it's a stupid question, then that's fine, but I happen to think it's not. Clearly you don’t see the problem I do.
As for "who the fuck cares?" - well, I do.
Suppose there are other civilisations in the universe? Does the Parousia happen for them too? How is it arranged so it's the "right time" for them too? Or is it just us, humanity, dragged out of earth into some heavenly universe? Will there be millions of Parousiae? Have there been millions of Incarnations?
It opens so many questions.
I'm amazed your response to them is "who cares?" and to belittle curiosity as "idle speculation".
"Outside the narrative" - yes, I know, because the universe the people who created the narrative imagined was very different to the one we know know exists. So how do we in our modern time adapt and expand the narrative to work with what we know now about deep time, the history of life and the extent of the universe and our place in it?
Thanks. I'm glad you get it!
Yes, although I think there's more to it than that, @Telford.
There's a school of thought that suggests that the Hebrew writers cast and shaped their own creation accounts/myths to differentiate their views about God from the polytheistic approach of surrounding cultures.
Some of the creation stories circulating in antiquity were quite 'fruity' to say the least.
Yes, although I think there's also more to it than that.
There's a school of thought that suggests the Hebrew writers shaped their own creation stories in a way that deliberately contrasted their views about God with the polytheistic creation myths of surrounding cultures.
It was part of a process of differentiating themselves and their beliefs from those of other cultures.
I think it's a good question.
I'm a humanities bod through and through and don't understand any of the science. I did O'Level Geology and quite enjoyed the bit of Biology we did at school. I fled from Physics and Chemistry at the earliest opportunity.
That says more about me than it does about them.
So I find @KarlLB's questions stimulating as they force me to think about issues I've either not considered before or brushed under the carpet or filed under 'too difficult'.
I agree that it all hinges on the Incarnation. That raises plenty of questions in and of itself, of course.
But it's all linked.
I think that's right. To best understand the Creation stories in Genesis, you need to have read the other Creation stories in ANE and compare and contrast.
For example, the emphasis on "it was good" becomes quite striking.
One can, of course, dilute, metaphorize, to taste. And introduce Ptolemaic epicycles in the illusion of time to justify the waters being prevenient of God creating which itself becomes a metaphor for ordering chaos. He ordered watery chaos in to heavens and earth.
There is no end of yeah-buttery.
We're still in to the circularity of Genesis having to be unnatural in some way to justify the Jesus myth.
Okay, but what kind of propositions would you consider ? Because it's all very well saying that the an answer has to 'adapt' to our modern understanding of 'deep time' etc. but as soon as you get into the territory of 'expanding the narrative you are of necessity stepping beyond that.
This is partly why I commented on 'free will' above, because obviously you have an additional set of presuppositions over and above our modern understanding of such things against which you evaluate what's on offer.
I don't think it's a stupid question, I think it's perfectly unanswerable. If there are other civilizations in the universe how will the eschaton impact them? Gosh, that's a weight bearing 'if.' We don't know--can't know.
Also, my 'who the fuck cares' was meant good humoredly, not negatively, so maybe pull off the throttle a bit. I apologize for not making that clear.
By outside the narrative I mean that it is literally outside the scope of what we know and what we can know. Sure, you can say that is because the narrative was written by people who thought that the universe was quite different from the one we have but that's not what I mean. What I mean is that the eschaton is literally outside the scope of the scriptures and the deductions of reason. I'm all for curiosity and believe there are many areas of seeming pointlessness that can and should be studied. How the return of Christ will impact speculative civilizations that we don't know about? We're getting a bit far away there. For all we know they are Christians and when Christ incarnated there were a million incarnations at the same time. We can't know, in any sense of the word, we simply can't know.
But if you are keenly interested in this topic and think that it can be answered, then I would think that the best place to start is with accounts of the eschaton. I've done really any reading in this area, but there are many theologians who have. I think finding an account of the eschaton that makes sense and respects the data we have could be a good first step.
I also think rummaging around in Maximus the Confessor could be useful, as his account of Christ was specifically cosmic. Of course, it was cosmic in Hellenistic thought terms, but it has proven influential with modern day theologians who try to think in cosmic terms.
We know. With a certainty of 1. Or by as many sigmata as you like. We know because we can know, by knowing. We can believe that we don't know. Fine. Belief is free and weightless.
If Love were the ground of being, and incarnation fully in to culture were Their way, then there is nothing whatsoever particular about Earth, let alone its universe. All they'd have to do is demonstrate their necessity to explain anything at all and the infinity of universes would teem with incarnation from Christmas to personal eschatons. But we certainly don't know, we certainly cannot know, until we die.
We won't have to try and square the circle of sacred history in to reality.
The reason it vexes me is alluded to in @Rufus T Firefly 's post earlier.
Our understanding of the cosmos has moved from a supernaturally created unique world, at the centre of its universe, with a timeline that corresponds to a recently, supernaturally created, human race, to a universe which came to its current form through natural processes, and in which neither our earth nor our species are central. So we've happily extended the Creation back through time by many orders of magnitude, and while we've also extended our species' existence by orders of magnitude it's many fewer, and we realise we occupy a tiny proportion of the earth's history. And to the best of our knowledge, monotheism has occupied a small proportion of our species' history.
So if we take a mythological, metaphorical if you like, view of Genesis 1-3 - which we're forced to really - then we see God's mode of action being to work through natural processes, however long that takes. It appears to be in his nature to do so, because if your intention is to build a house for someone you've got to have a pretty strong commitment to working through natural processes to wait for a suitable cave to erode via the dissolving of calcium carbonate in underground watercourses (for example) rather than throwing some bricks and mortar together.
Under the old cosmology there is a symmetry - a rapid supernatural creation at one end of history and a rapid supernatural eschaton, parousia, second coming, doomsday, call it what you will, at the other end.
Moreover, the universe is such that it does have a natural progress, a natural future. The sun, left to its own devices, will form a red giant. Entropy will eventually lead to the heat death of the universe, unless it is able to collapse in on itself in a big crunch. It has a natural end point therefore - either a energetically uniform expanse where nothing can happen because energy cannot flow, or a collapse into a new singularity, potentially a new universe.
But most religious versions of this end still propose rapid supernatural event. So the symmetry is lost. And more importantly, God suddenly decides natural processes aren't up to scratch and goes off-script. Against the nature his mode of creation has revealed.
So I look up into the night sky, and think about how the universe will unfold in the future, and religion pops up and says "nah, Jesus'll be back in a humanly comprehensible time frame. None of that will happen. No collision with the Andromeda galaxy. No sun expanding to a red giant. No new generations of stars from supernovae yet to occur." And they're contradictory. One or both of them is wrong.
And that vexes me. Which is why I'm surprised so people seem inclined to speculate. I can't not. If I don't, I compartmentalise; I put religous beliefs in one box and what I know about the universe in another, and I'm left struggling to believe the first in the light of the second.
Meanwhile when m-branes collide in 11D (some dimensions being extended, explaining the weakness of gravity) bulk hyperspace, universes start.
We're nowt.
I'll be delighted forever if I wake up and that's all grounded by Love. Love not in, beyond, without meaningful connection to, sacred history.
Oh, I don't know. We're doing better and better at thinking about very long timescales. Theres this. And this. I think the encouraging thing is that we can and do know more and more about the beginning of the cosmos. What's problematic, IMO, is trying to hold all of that in some kind of forced balance with Biblical accounts. Stephen Jay Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" is about as generous as one can be in that regard. We can say with pretty fair certainty that the actual, cosmological end of the Earth will be realized, not revealed. Assuming, of course, we don't encounter a more sinister Apophis.
The incarnation is an allegation, not an anomaly, and not based on anything we can and do know. Heaven and Hell: an allegation. Parousia: an allegation. We don't know these things. Worldview doesn't come into it.
Yer call that long? What about a googol years for a start?
10^10^105-120 years from now without proton decay.
That gear reduction machine is a mechanical googol! I only said we're doing better re: large timescales!
I guess my point is that worldviews are susceptible to knowledge, and to the extent that we can and do know more, worldviews benefit from changes that reflect those realities instead of ignoring them.
Absolutely agreed. Your links come with Trojan Horses that I never allow.
I've not encountered a theology yet that actually deals with the fact of infinity.
Thanks for this, I understand now what you mean.
I still think it's outside the scope of the narrative. But it's also possible that as the beginning of the universe happened aeons ago, the end of the universe constitutes the end of the story and the beginning of the parousia.
Part of the Christian story is that the natural progress of things is upended from time to time. Certainly that happened with Christ, if you believe all of the claims, and so from that it isn't insane to think that the natural progress of things will once again be disrupted.
But does the Christian story mean that everything will happen all at once, as a rapid supernatural event? Idly speculating here but I don't know, maybe Jesus comes back when the human race has finally killed itself. Maybe the eschaton occurs when the universe runs out the clock and snaps back into an infinitely dense ball of matter or whatever. I think there are ways of making it work that preserve the propositions and facts of science with the propositions and revelations of Christianity.
I didn't mean that we are incapable of understanding very long timescales. I meant that the events are outside the narrative framework. Like the birth of Molly in Joyce's Ulysses, it's not in the story. We can only speculate.
And I am aware all of the tenants are allegations, but as the thread is about the ramifications of these allegations for the scientific epistemology of the faith, treating them as more weighty than mere allegations is warranted.
I think this empties the traditional Christian beliefs about the Endtimes of any real meaning.
The plain facts are that the early Church believed that Christ would return suddenly and that would be the end of earthly history. And they believed initially that this would happen in their lifetime. Even when that idea of an imminent end began to fade, the belief remained that it WOULD still happen at some point.
As 10CC put it:
Two thousand years and he ain't shown yet
We kept his seat warm and the table set
In other words, it just hasn't happened and it is difficult to seriously claim that it will.
Given all we know now about the age and size of the universe, and how slowly things happen (we need to think in terms of millions and billions of years), any suggestion of Jesus suddenly returning and ending everything becomes harder to maintain. I think we need to think seriously about how Christians should look to the future centuries and millenia.
"Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again."
Increasingly, I find it difficult to say the third part of that piece of liturgy with any real conviction. What do I really think the future will hold?
Absurd isn't it. The plains of heaven are infinite. The dead have always been rising in them. All theology is metaphor.
I understand you re: timescales -- thanks. Strong allegations, then. Unprecedented allegations, even!
Goodness me, you are sounding like an atheist millenialist ... 😉
So it may! The entire universe gone in less than microseconds! That's the way to go.
It'd be lime asking whether you were a Protestant atheist or a Catholic one.
And yes, I'm aware of your journey from Armstrong-ism to the charismatic evangelical end of Anglicanism and its more 'emergent' aspect with elements of Steve Chalke and Oasis thrown in.
Coz after all, this is a Wonder wall.
Well it's easy to say that the natural order can't be suspended if you disregard all the reports of the natural order being suspended.
I don't know why it's problematic for Christianity to continuously revise itself in the light of new information. Like that's what it has been doing since the beginning, why would it stop now? Doctrine and theology has developed, it will continue to develop as new knowledge is gained. If we didn't develop then we'd be criticized for not developing.
I'm not a physicist but the theory that eventually everything will just drift apart because of blahblahblah is a theory, just like the theory that everything will snap back together is another theory. We revise our accounts of things in light of new information. Religion is not exempt from this.
I agree, it was idle speculation. I don't think that's what the faith teaches or expects. The early church was an apocalyptic end-times cult. We maintain that heritage, although it's been toned down in certain wings.
(Sorry I don't know what 10CC is.)
I don't know why it's difficult to seriously claim that it will happen. Like we don't need to go all Humean skepticism to point out that something not happening yet doesn't mean it can never happen, barring any kind of logical impossibility or whatever.
All of the eschatological claims of the church are bizarre and fly in the face of how we ordinarily think about the world. The eschaton is a sudden snapping shut of the book; the story doesn't end, it just stops.
That all being said, the church has always developed and refined doctrines. We've done that with creation, I don't see why it can't be done with the eschaton. (When the Roman Catholic Church gets around to it, the document saying that the eschaton is "an immanence already occurring at the final stage of the universe is how the Church has ALWAYS taught the matter but here we're refining it.") Certain doctrines have received more attention in development than others, perhaps this is all just an invitation by the Holy Spirit to think more deeply about what the eschaton is, what do the scriptures really say, etc etc etc.
I don't find any of these things to be anymore disturbing for the faith than any other facet of life and thought.
The deal of it is, the Hebrews never talked about a fall. They actually see it as a time when humankind became independent beings.
Jesus never talked about a fall. He talked about God so loving the world that God gave his only son for it.
Paul first hints at original sin, but it really did not become a full doctrine of the Western church until after St. Augustine. The Eastern Church does not accept Augustine's theory, though. I will differ to Gamma Gamaliel to explain the Orthodox position.
I believe the Western Church's position on original sin has caused a lot of psychological problems over the millennia. We really have to take a look at what Genesis is really saying.
A book that helped me take another look at this doctrine is Original Blessing: Putting Sin in Its Rightful Place, by Danielle Shroyer.
Another book that speaks to this is also entitled Original Blessing, A Primer on Creation Spirituality by Matthew Fox
Sorry. It's a reference to "Second Sitting For The Last Supper" - a song by the 70s & 80s group called 10CC. It comes from their album "The Original Soundtrack" - probably their best album.
You're right to attribute the full development of the doctrine to Augustine. One key reason why he was so influential in the West but not the East is that he wrote in Latin, not Greek. Therefore, his writings were not greatly read in the East. The same thing applies to Jerome, who has also had a rather baleful influence in Western thinking.
The notable Church historian Diarmaid MacCulloch has spoken about Augustine and Jerome and the way their writings about the Fall and attitudes to such things as sexuality have affected the Western Church but not the East. He is bringing out a book on a history of sex and christianity later this year, which I think will be very interesting. I'm pretty sure it will touch on some of these matters.
Original Sin (& the associated deep distrust of sex) do not have to be parts of Christianity. And I would hope that we can finally reject them and move to more healthier ways of seeing human living in all its aspects.
Augustine, like Paul who inspired him, was entirely unenlightenedly naturally patriarchally conservative in his attitude to sex, strengthening it by the sexually transmitted disease of sin.
If you want healthier sexuality development learn Greek.
The Orthodox claim to have a healthier attitude than the delinquent West, but then there is a tendency to blame absolutely everything on 'the West.'
My first impressions though, is that they aren't as fazed by these things as some forms of pietistic Western Christianity. The mileage will vary.
I've heard some appalling attitudes expressed by Orthodox 'zealots' and some loud and lairy convert clergy in the US. Some beardy-wierdies in Russia, Greece and the Balkans are probably cut from similar cloth despite not having a highly conservative Protestant background.
But by and large I'm finding the Orthodox aren't at all squeamish or Victorian when it comes to 'that sort of thing.'
You talk about 'language divergent religious culture' as if English (or Latin) is the default option and any variation on that is a divergence from 'the norm'.
I'm sure that's not what you intended to say.
All I am saying is that I don't encounter the kind of Victorian style prudery that still exists to some extent in pietistic forms of Western Christianity. It's not particularly apparent here on the Ship, of course.
Let's not get into 'Orientalism' please.
And no, it's the opposite of what I'm saying. All culture is divergent relative to all others of different languages. For a start.
Ooh, and got in female priests in the big-O?
I'm told it's more an issue of church canons rather than dogma, but whatever the case, we are sure to be waiting a lo-ooo-ng time.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to have 'started'. I was simply discussing issues around original sin and ancestral sin. That's far from trying to pick a fight.
Unless holding different to yours is in and of itself seen as threatening in some way.