Thanks! Do you know any particular reason why the Syrians may have been more extreme in this area? (Did they have more desert pillars to hang out on than, say, the Egyptians?) The only thing in particular I can think of particular to the Syrian church was the significantly increased popularity of the Diatessaron there, but since as far as I can tell that didn't have many doctrinal differences from the canonical gospels, I doubt there's a link.
The
Diatessaron didn't have any doctrinal differences from the canonical Gospels, since it was entirely composed of material from them. I don't know what made the Syrian church more ascetic. It just was! The pillars aren't relevant because they weren't used by hermits until the fifth century, and the practice was a peculiarly Syrian one - Egyptian hermits didn't sit on pillars. The pillar phenomenon was an expression of the typical Syrian emphasis on asceticism (rather than a cause of it) because part of the idea of the pillar was that the ascetic was displayed to the crowds in all his asceticism.
Another question, if you don't mind! What was the early Christian idea about when the soul entered the body after conception? As far as I can tell, there wasn't much of an idea of ensoulment at conception until much, much later, but there were ideas floating around of a couple of weeks (40 days?) in the middle ages. But I'm not aware of anything from the Church Fathers on this topic. Can you think of any references for me? (I realize that they found it somewhat academic, since abortion was prohibited for other reasons, anyway, even though that's mostly why it's argued about today.)
I don't know of any speculation about this subject among the church fathers. There was some disgreement over whether the soul is created directly by God or is generated from the parents' souls, just as the body is generated from their bodies. This latter idea is known as "traducianism" and is associated with Tertullian and one or two others (Jerome rather implausibly attributes it to most eastern theologians). So I suppose that a traducianist would say that the soul is present in the body from the moment of conception, since it is derived wholly from the parents. Those who disagreed with this said that the soul is added to the body by God, but as far as I can tell they didn't discuss when this happens.
It's only a case of self-deception if you oppose the belief in the existence of God on a rational basis. To take the example of the window, it is self deception to believe the window is closed if you know, reasonably, it is open. If you have a compulsion to close the window, and on that irrational basis you believe it is open, is it really self-deception to convince yourself that it is closed?
I don't see why the basis for my belief makes any difference. If I believe the window is open, then
I think the window is open whether or not my belief is rational (and whether or not I think it is rational). If I believe it is open, I believe that it is false that it is closed. (If I don't believe that it's false that it's closed, then I don't really believe that it's open.) Again, that's true whether or not my belief is rational. So if I want to believe that it's closed, then I want to believe something that I think is false. Now I can understand
wishing to believe something that you think is false. Someone might lose their belief in God but wish they that they still believed in him because they were happier that way, even though they now think they were mistaken. However, it's one thing to wish you believed something that you think is untrue. It's quite another to
choose to believe something that you think is untrue or to take active steps - whatever they could be - to make yourself believe something that you think is untrue. It would be, quite literally, deliberate self-deception.
Similarly, I think most people, myself included, didn't reject the existence of God on the basis of reasoned opposition, but on a vague sense of him not existing. In my case, a general pessimism that we, and particularly I, would not be lucky enough to live in a universe with god.
I'm not convinced that this is the most common reason for atheism. I think that most people who think God doesn't exist do so because they don't see any reason to believe that he does, not because they consider themselves too unlucky for him to exist. I think that most people who think God doesn't exist wouldn't want him to. I don't think there are many atheists who like the idea of God or who wish that he did exist.
Largely because I always professed that the church did important work, and I wanted to take part in that.
I admit it's an unintended effect, which I suppose undermines my claim of it as an example of a choice to believe.
I'd agree! What you describe is an example of coming to believe in God as a result of immersion in a group - a well documented kind of phenomenon. But it's not an example of someone choosing to believe in God when they previously didn't.
That seems a rather poor explanation though, for a couple of reasons.
It wasn't an explanation, though. I wasn't saying that the fact that the Bible gets translated while the Koran doesn't explains Christianity's greater willingness to change to match cultural contexts. I was citing that fact as an
example of that willingness (or tendency).
There is nothing distinctly magical about the healing in John 9. No less an ancient authority than Pliny devotes a chapter in
Natural History to the medicinal benefits of human spittle (and Pliny was a self proclaimed enemy of the magical arts see,
Natural History XXX.1).
That is interesting and I didn't know that. But I don't think it makes the story any less "magical". Pliny advocates a course of spitting on the eyes as part of a natural healing process. Jesus does it just once and a blind man can suddenly see. You might say it's an impossibly accelerated "normal" cure, but the impossible acceleration makes it non-natural. What makes it "magical" rather than "miraculous", at least in tone, is the fact that physical means are employed at all, rather than simply a command or invocation of God (as with most of Jesus' other miracles).
Christians avoided magic only insofar as they avoided calling what they did magic. But of course, self-identification of your practices as magic is extremely rare, it is almost always someone else who is performing magic. At a superficial level, they borrowed imagery, Igantius medicine of immortality, (though this could also come from Isis mystery religion or medical terminology) Clement of Alexandria designating God as the holy charmer of sick souls who places a love-charm within man (Paed 1.2-3).
I don't think the Ignatius quote is particularly magical, or for that matter notably Isist, but the Clement quote is good, as are the others.
John Chrysostom complains that members of his congregation in Antioch use magic, specifically golden coins as amulets (coins used as amulets was common in the ancient world, evidently the older the coin, the more power it was thought to posses). In addition, he accuses certain members of bringing in Christian women to practice magic.
Many of these Christian magical spells have been preserved and several Coptic ones have been collected into a book called Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power edited by Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith.
You are of course right and I have actually read that book - possibly after writing the post you quoted above. I think that Christians had an attitude to magic not unlike pagans of the time (or indeed people today): educated ones rubbished it, and uneducated ones believed in it. Hence Chrysostom's annoyance in the passage you quote. And when I say "magic" here I mean sympathetic magic, which I think is always regarded as such. You're right that even educated characters such as Origen believed in practices that we would call magical, even though they didn't call them that; but I don't think this applies to sympathetic magic.
How well-thought of is C.S Lewis in theological circles?
Not at all - he is never mentioned, and if he is, it's dismissively.
Is there a contradiction between the following two passages?
madviking translation: "You guys aren't servants since I've told you everything."
madviking translation: "Err...actually there are a few things I haven't told you guys yet cause you can't handle the truth."
I suppose that in the first passage Jesus says that he's told his disciples everything
that the Father has told him, while in the second he says there are other things he hasn't told them, so these could be things he knows that he didn't receive from the Father. However, that would conflict with the idea that everything that the Son has, he received from the Father. So there does seem to be a bit of tension there!
I have a few questions. They could have been asked by now, but I didn't see them in the fields where I think they would be found.
1.) Do you think that if Jesus, or the true messiah from Judaism, were to come to earth, anyone would believe their word? Would they be recognized by the people of earth as who they truly are or would they be categorized as more mindfreaks?
This is impossible to answer because I don't know what such an event would be like. If "the true messiah from Judaism" (and I'm not sure that phrase has any meaning, because Judaism isn't really about messiahs) came to earth riding on the clouds of glory and speaking with the voice of God, presumably people would sit up and take notice. If he came as just some ordinary person, presumably people would notice him to the same extent as any other self-proclaimed messiah in history - i.e. a few nutcases would believe him and no-one else would.
2.)What do you think would be the likely hood of a major religious war between Christianity and other religions if Jesus were to return to earth and Christians accepted him?
This is like asking what the likelihood would be of a war between the countries of Earth in the event of an alien invasion. I don't know what an alien invasion would be like or how people would react, because there are all kinds of ways an alien invasion would happen and play out. Similarly, I don't know what "Jesus returning to Earth and Christians accepting him" would be like.
3.) A previous question was asked about alien civilization. My scenario is just the reverse: what would happen if an advanced alien civilization arrived and they were Christians? How would this effect the religion of earth?
Again, I don't think this is possible to answer! What does it mean to say they're Christians? Do they believe in Jesus of Nazareth? If so, how do they know about him? Or do you mean they have a religion of their own which is exactly like Christianity, with some alien equivalent of Jesus? As for how human beings would react to either of these scenarios, your guess is as good as mine.