What do you think about the concept of Hell as sinners' intolerance of God's love as presented there? Of course, that concept is pretty closely tied with his "Atheists really hate God" argument, yet you can't deny that many atheists consider the literal character of God as presented in the Bible quite immoral.
Yes, I was thinking about this. It's not an idea I've encountered before so I don't know how original it is to that author. In some ways it's quite neat, as it removes the problem that God seems to treat some people differently from others - instead he treats everyone the same way, and the fact that this is heaven to some and hell to others is entirely down to them. So that's quite good.
But I think it has problems too. You're right that many people think that God, as presented in the Bible, is an immoral character. But obviously Christians believe that he is not an immoral character (either the Bible is wrong to portray him as doing certain things, or these things are not immoral). One would think that, when God is revealed to human beings in the new heaven and the new earth, or in the temporary heaven to which they go before this occurs, these things would be made plain to them. In the presence of God himself, no-one could have any delusions about God's goodness. In which case, anyone who wrongly believes God to be an immoral character would realise their error.
Moreover, the Orthodox Church has a strong tradition of regarding God as true Goodness and Beauty. He is not simply good and beautiful, he
is goodness and beauty, that by which other things are good and beautiful. So again, it is hard to see how anyone could be in the full and unmediated presence of the true Goodness and the true Beauty and yet be unable to recognise that it is good and beautiful. So I think the idea that hell is the presence of God for sinners is hard to reconcile with the Orthodox understanding of God.
(I actually think that hatred of someone is possible without necessarily acknowledging the existence of your object of hatred. There are some people that hate on literary characters - though a prolonged hate for a literary character is a sad characteristic).
Of course, but no-one would think that a literary character is fictional
because they hate him, would they?
Your comment on Theosis though, confused me a bit. According to the Augustinian tradition, isnt original sin the cause of man's inability to be divine in the present world? If it is, then doesnt Theosis tend to more or less minimize the negative infleunce of original Sin?
The Augustinian tradition isn't the only way of regarding original sin. Moreover, all Christians of whatever denomination think that human beings can be saved and come to the presence of God despite original sin (however that is conceived). So original sin can be overcome. The only difference is that the Orthodox tend to see this in terms of theosis rather than in other terms (such as the traditional western notion of the vision of God). And both Orthodox and Augustinians believe that salvation (or whatever) is possible only through the grace of God, because original sin means that human beings cannot save themselves. So I don't see a contradiction here.
(Also, of course, Orthodox believe that although theosis begins in this life it is a long process - perhaps even an infinite one - so no-one can truly be called divine in this life, other than Jesus himself.)
And if it wasnt for veneration of saints (I remember Jeremiah clearly condemning this somewhere), I would have changed to Orthodox Christianity a long time ago.
I don't know what passage of Jeremiah you're referring to. But I don't really see how Jeremiah could have condemned the Orthodox veneration of saints, given that he was an ancient Jewish prophet and the Orthodox practice didn't exist then. If there were a clear condemnation of the Orthodox practice in Jeremiah, then the Orthodox wouldn't do it!
Also, what do you think about Pastor Yonggi Cho, founder of South Korea's largest congregation, the Yoido Full Gospel Church?
I don't know much about him. As far as I can tell he preaches a fairly standard evangelical "prosperity gospel" not unlike that of many churches in the US, such as Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church.
Very adroit, but rather missing the point, I'm afraid. (But see the last quote.)
I can't even remember what the point was. What was it again?
Now where does that assumption come from that I refer to a saying of Jesus "as if it is definite and certain that he said it"?
"...they would obey such a saying of Jesus..." seems to suppose that Jesus said it. If that's not what you meant, what did you mean?
Whether the gospels are historical sources is another matter, that they "are full of fiction" isn't something I said...
That's true. What you actually said was "What is
fact in them and what
fiction has, I believe, been a further source of discussion ever since they were made public." That at least commits you to the view that they contain fiction and that no-one is sure which bits are fictional and which are not.
...that corrections have been made is historical fact...
Erm, OK, if you say so. I suppose you won't provide any evidence to back that up so there's no point my asking for any, is there?
Here you seem to confuse issues (again!). The subject was Paul's views on Christianity.
Perhaps I missed a page or two. I thought the subject was Paul's views on whether to preach to gentiles, and whether he disagreed with the Jerusalem disciples on this matter. We also took in Paul's views on circumcision and the law, and his views on eating meat sacrificed to idols. That is what I was talking about here, and I was saying it in response to something you said. I don't know why you've chosen to ignore the point I was making, and I don't know what aspect of "Paul's views on Christianity" I should have been addressing.
(And why pick out that quote - again?)
What quote?
"That looks like": indeed, but appearances can be deceiving.
All right, so now I must ignore the actual words you use and just guess what you mean? What
did you mean, then?
"All Christians of the first generation were converts." True as can be... but wasn't the topic discussed whether and to what extent the early Christians were Jews or Christians? And I thought we already agreed that such a distinction would be very hard to make...
Right, so
why point out that Paul was a convert, then? What bearing did that have on the matter? If you agree that they were
all converts, what of relevance can we possibly conclude from the fact that Paul was one?
Conspiracy thinking, no less... but see next quote:
That doesn't answer what I said, though, does it?
And because Paul says so it must be true.
Because Paul said that what's it represented, it's true that
that's what it represented to Paul. The disagreement here is over what the collection represented. As far as Paul was concerned, at least, it wasn't a "fee". So why suppose that it represented anything different to anyone else? Where's your
evidence?
But the apostolic council didn't end in "unity and solidarity", as Paul claimed. The matter of circumcision, for instance, was not definitely decided upon until much later, when Paul's views on it had become the dominant view.
This is perfectly consistent with what I said. Indeed the fact that Paul was so concerned about a collection which, to him, represented unity and solidarity is a good indication that there wasn't perfect unity and solidarity - otherwise, why be so concerned? So the continuing disagreements are quite consistent with the collection's being, in part, an attempt to bring about unity and solidarity.
So all that we have is the fact of the payment to the Jerusalem community, which Luther for instance translates as a fee.
If
all we have is the fact of payments being made, you are going beyond the available evidence to assert that it
was a fee - all you can say is that there was a collection. How Luther chose to translate the word is really neither here nor there.
Another simplification - and an error -: Paul insisted that gentiles need not be circumcised when converting. The Jerusalem based (hence "Judeo-Christians" or Jewish Christians) insisted that they should.
It seems that no matter how many times I explain this you simply will not understand. Let me try to spell it out as clearly as I can.
First, the term "Judeo-Christians" or "Jewish Christians" does
not refer to the disciples who were based in Jerusalem. They were no more Jewish than plenty of other Christians who were based elsewhere, including Paul himself. Being in Jerusalem did not make someone more Jewish than people who were not in Jerusalem; indeed at this point in history there were more Jews outside Palestine than there were in it. So we call the disciples who were based in Jerusalem the "Jerusalem disciples". Their leader was James and Peter seems to have acted with him.
Second, Paul was involved in
two disputes (well, more actually, but we are interested in these two). The
first dispute was with the Jerusalem disciples, primarily James and Peter. It concerned whether to eat with gentiles and led to a public disagreement between Paul and Peter in Antioch. Paul describes this in Galatians 2:11-14.
The
other dispute that Paul was involved in concerned whether gentile Christians should be required to be circumcised. His antagonists in this dispute are known as the "Judaisers", since they seem to have thought that in order to be a Christian one must be completely Jewish in every way. This dispute is the background to most of the rest of Galatians. The Judaisers seem to have been active in Galatia, and to have been telling Paul's converts there - who were gentiles - that they needed to be circumcised.
However,
we do not know who the Judaisers were. Again,
we don't know who they were. We don't know if they were associated with the Jerusalem disciples or not. We don't even know if they were
Jewish or not! I've already explained that one can plausibly argue that the Judaisers were gentile converts who got a bit over-enthusiastic. Now from the evidence in Galatians and elsewhere, we can at least be certain that they were active in Galatia. We can also see that they seem to have been active in Antioch as well, because Paul tells us in Galatians 2:12 that Peter's refusal to eat with gentile Christians there was partly motivated by fear of these Judaisers. That in itself suggests that the Judaisers were
not identical with the Jerusalem disciples, since Peter is presented as
distinct from this party, although for some reason not wishing to offend them. In Galatians 2:3, Paul explicitly states that the leaders of the Jerusalem disciples did not require Titus, a gentile convert, to be circumcised. So the Jerusalem disciples were
not Judaisers - at least according to Paul. Indeed, the reason Paul describes his meeting with the Jerusalem disciples at all is not in order to give future historians useful biographical information, but to convince the Galatians that the teachings of the Judaisers conflict not only with his own teachings but with those of the Jerusalem disciples.
Finally, Acts 15:5 suggests that there were some Judaisers in Jerusalem, and portrays them as Pharisees. It also portrays them as a relatively small faction among the people there, and distinguishes them from the apostles (as far as we know, Paul was the only apostle who was also a Pharisee). This limited-at-best role for the Judaisers in Jerusalem itself fits well with the evidence from Paul that I have just described.
So then, we have two disputes - one with the Jerusalem disciples over eating with gentiles, and one with the Judaisers over circumcision. These are distinct disputes although Peter's actions in Antioch suggests links between them. The key thing, though, is that
they were with different people. Or, at least,
we do not know them to have been with the same people. There is no reason to suppose that the Judaisers were identical with the Jerusalem disciples, and I have given at least one reason to suppose that they were not.
You seem to have conflated these two disputes and assumed that in both of them Paul was debating with the Jerusalem disciples.
You also seem, furthermore, to suppose that this argument concerned not only eating with gentiles and circumcision, but also
whether to preach to gentiles or not. You have said that it was Paul's innovation to preach to gentiles and that he disagreed with the Jerusalem disciples over this.
There is no evidence for that claim at all. Again -
there is no evidence that Paul disagreed with the Jerusalem disciples about whether to preach to gentiles. Since you seem not to have read it yourself, here is Galatians 2:7-9:
Paul said:
...when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the Gentiles), and when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.
You will notice that there is absolutely no mention there of any dispute concerning whether gentiles should be preached to. Neither will you find any evidence of such a dispute elsewhere in the New Testament.
Baffling indeed, as you again twist my words. Where do you come up with these assumptions?
Instead of asking that, why don't you explain what your words were actually intended to mean? You'll notice that when you misunderstand me, I respond by trying to clarify and restate what I intended to say. If you extended the same courtesy to me instead of making such cryptic statements and basically forcing me to guess what you mean, perhaps these pointless arguments could be made a lot shorter and much more edifying.
To start with the latter: Paul, at the time, was the main advocate of coverting gentiles...
Again, I have yet to see evidence for this. Paul was a missionary who
did convert gentiles. It is by no means certain that he was the
main missionary who converted gentiles (how do we know, for example, that he converted more than Apollos, an independent missionary to gentiles?). But even if we assume that he was, as he claimed to be, the main missionary to gentiles, that doesn't mean he was the main advocate of converting them. It just means he was the one who did it. And the evidence I have given you from Paul's own writing doesn't suggest that there was any argument at all about the desirability of converting gentiles.
...and his waiving of circumcision seems like a clever way not to deter wavering ones.
Does this mean you're suggesting that Paul refused to require circumcision not because of any theological conviction, but simply as a rather cynical means of making Christianity more attractive to gentiles? I wonder if you've read Galatians at all. Haven't you noticed how Paul argues there? I've already summarised his argument in an earlier post. His opposition to the requirement of circumcision stems from his belief that salvation comes through Christ, not through anything else. If Paul only opposed the requirement of circumcision as a sort of PR move, then basically everything in Galatians is a lie - just argument after the fact intended to shore up a non-theological position.
If you really think that, you're going to have to provide
evidence. I know I'm sounding rather like a broken record here, but it would be really nice to see actual
evidence for your claims rather than just endless assertions and references back to earlier assertions.
Also, if you've read Galatians you will know that that letter is addressed to gentiles who have
already converted to Christianity, and who now
want to get circumcised. Why would telling them otherwise be a way of "deterring wavering ones"? Why would Paul write such a vehement letter ordering them not to get circumcised, and providing theological reasons why they should not do it, unless he really believed that it was wrong?
Finally, I just don't understand what this new series of weird assertions about Paul is meant to address. You say "To the latter..." but the last thing I had said in the post you quote was:
It is true that "gentile" Christianity "won out", as you put it. I did not deny that. The question is when. Did it do so in the first generation or two of Christians, as you insist? Or did it take much longer than that? I have already told you that Christianity remained a small, minority religion within the Roman empire until the fourth century, when, under imperial patronage, it swelled rapidly and attained a completely new position in society. The "virulent anti-Jewish stances" to which you refer mostly date from after this time. Why, then, could it not be the case that Christianity remained basically Jewish until the fourth century - being passed on by word of mouth mainly among people who already knew each other, because they were already co-religionists (and remember that we know of very few missionaries from the second and third centuries) - and this is why it remained a minority religion? After the conversion of Constantine, large numbers of non-Jews began to join the religion for the first time.
I am not saying that that is what happened. I am saying that that may be what happened, and there are scholars who think that it is what happened. What I am saying is that we simply don't know. We certainly don't know that Christianity became majority gentile within a generation or two, let alone that this was all down to Paul.
How does
any of what you said have
anything to do with this? How does your assertion that Paul concocted the "no circumcision" rule just to entice more gentiles to convert address what I say in this quote? You don't engage with what I say at all.
To the former: we already established that the exact moment when Jewish Christianity died cannot be established - for various reasons, as we discussed.
It's not about when Jewish Christianity "died", whatever that means. It's about when Christianity became majority non-Jewish.
As to the question when anti-Jewish trends started (I can't remember bringing that up)...
You quote yourself bringing it up - let me remind you:
JEELEN said:
And since Christianity developed soem virulent anti-Jewish stances afterwards, I think it is fair 'gentile' Christianity itself considered it a triumph. and I wouldn't know how else to describe winning out then as a triumph.
...that is another matter; quite early, I presume, judging from the infamous "Let his blood come over us and our descendants!" insertion.
I don't know why you call it an "insertion"; perhaps this is another reference to these earlier editions of the Gospels that you believe is a "fact" that they got "corrected". In any case, the verse you quote is indeed infamous, but I don't see how it proves anything. All it shows is that the author of Matthew thought that the descendants of those who called for Jesus' death shared their guilt. Does that mean he identified these people with all Jews? Or just all Jews who rejected Jesus? That's the question. If you can show that he meant
all Jews, then this is evidence that, by Matthew's day, Christianity was mainly non-Jewish. But how could you show this? After all, there is plenty of other evidence that the author of Matthew's Gospel
was Jewish himself. Presumably he didn't think that
he himself shared in the guilt for Jesus' death.
Again misreading? Circumcision?
That's not even a sentence. I don't know what you're trying to say.
Well, I have no knowledge of 19th century theology - only of 20th century theology.
Well, you don't seem to have imbibed much of it then, considering that much of the twentieth century was spent reconsidering the views of the nineteenth, including the very ones you have repeated.
I am sorry: I assumed John knew the earlier gospels. I assume it stands to reason more than assuming he did not.
Thank you! So please don't present such guesswork as if it were fact.
At a) the writers of the gospels may not have known Jesus personally, but they must have heard from them.
And in that respect, they were in exactly the same position as Paul, who also met with Jesus' immediate followers (see the aforementioned Galatians 2).
At b) since Paul wrote letters they are by their very nature different from the gospels. (May I remind you of the allegory-myth discussion we had earlier.) It is not relevant, as Paul did not intend to write a gospel, never knew Jesus and wrote letters to his congregations. So why would a gospel writer even consult them? (Not to mention that they were directed at a different audience.)
I don't see why you think they were directed to a different audience. As for the other points, yes, of course Paul's letters were a different genre from the Gospels. But why would that mean that a Gospel writer wouldn't be interested in what they said? If Matthew, for example, had read Romans, don't you think he would have wanted to address its "salvation by faith alone" message given that this contradicts his own message of salvation by faith and works?
Moreover, there are many elements of Jesus' teaching in Paul's letters. Obvious examples include the ethical exhortations in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12, the account of the Last Supper in 1 Corinthians 11, the resurrection appearances in 1 Corinthians 15, and the eschatological material in 1 Thessalonians 4. So a Gospel writer might well have been interested in this stuff.
Still, I don't see much purpose in arguing about this given that you've already conceded the point about whether John knew the earlier Gospels or not.
Since Luke and Matthew knew Mark, I don't see any problem.
With what? I don't even know what claim you're defending here any more.
Are equivalently improbably polemics found with roughly equal frequency in western texts about Orthodoxy, or is it more of an Orthodoxy issue?
I can't really say, since I have limited exposure to this sort of thing, but I think it is more of an Orthodoxy issue. Western Christianity looms larger in the Orthodox world than Orthodox Christianity does in the western world. One could find plenty of monasteries in the Middle East where the monks are willing to spend much time explaining why the pope is the tool of the devil, but I doubt you'd find many Catholics who are so bothered about the ecumenical patriarch. This is just my hunch though.
Unfortunately, Christian history if replete with examples of guys like St. Augustine or Martin Luther dehumanizing Jews for whatever reason. You'd do yourself a great disservice by buying into that sort of nonsense.
