I disagree. Certainly biblical authors may have had views on issues that the later church fathers did not, because the biblical authors lived in different times and faced different problems. (Consider Paul's endless wrestling over the Law, a complete non-issue for the church fathers.) But I would not say that the Bible is the source of Christian doctrine; rather, it is an expression of the state of Christian doctrine at the time it was written. Obviously it acted as an influence on the subsequent development of doctrine, because it was regarded as canonical, but that's not the same thing as being the source of Christian doctrine. Patristic authors such as Irenaeus and Tertullian thought that the source of Christian doctrine was the (oral) teaching of the apostles, and that the New Testament was important because it was the record of this teaching, allowing people to check that the churches were still teaching what the apostles taught. But on that view the New Testament was not itself the source of the doctrine, merely a witness to that source.
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I disagree. Certainly biblical authors may have had views on issues that the later church fathers did not, because the biblical authors lived in different times and faced different problems. (Consider Paul's endless wrestling over the Law, a complete non-issue for the church fathers.) But I would not say that the Bible is the source of Christian doctrine; rather, it is an expression of the state of Christian doctrine at the time it was written. Obviously it acted as an influence on the subsequent development of doctrine, because it was regarded as canonical, but that's not the same thing as being the source of Christian doctrine. Patristic authors such as Irenaeus and Tertullian thought that the source of Christian doctrine was the (oral) teaching of the apostles, and that the New Testament was important because it was the record of this teaching, allowing people to check that the churches were still teaching what the apostles taught. But on that view the New Testament was not itself the source of the doctrine, merely a witness to that source.
GhostWriter16
Deity
Interesting....
Question: If Biblical Infallibility was not an Early view of the church, how did they interpret 2 Timothy 3:15-17? It says the Scripture is "God-breathed." How can God breathe something with errors?
Maybe they applied logic (*gasp*) and deducted that Paul could not possibly have meant the New Testament as that did not even exist at the time of the writing of 2 Timothy?
Edit: Which brings up a question of my own: What did the writer of 2 Timothy likely refer to as "scripture"? The Torah? The Septuagint? Anything else?
Or is it mistranslated in protestant translations and should rather read "all scripture inspired by God is [...]"?
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Jewel Runner
Do you know anything about the veneration of Pontius Pilate by Ethiopian Christians?
Ajidica
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This is probably way to general of a question, but based of accumulated writings by various theologians, how theologicaly 'sound' is Born Again Christianity? From what I have gathered it is similar to Evangelicalism, but with a far greater emphasis on an individual relation with Jesus/God to save your soul.
GhostWriter16
Deity
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=420768&page=34
What do you make of the debate in this thread? Who has the more valid view, me or El Mac? And more importantly, where did Ancient Theologians stand?
What do you make of the debate in this thread? Who has the more valid view, me or El Mac? And more importantly, where did Ancient Theologians stand?
I didn't say biblical infallibility wasn't a view of the early church. I said they didn't think that the Bible is the source for all doctrine. That's not the same thing.
In fact the church fathers generally operated on the assumption that everything in the Bible was true (in some sense), on the basis that the Bible came from God. I don't think this was because of the 2 Tim verse, though - it was more because they instinctively treated the Bible in the same way that pagans treated the poets. The 2 Tim verse is an expression of this view rather than the source of it (pagan authors similarly talked of the gods "inspiring" Homer and Hesiod, speaking through them just as a musician plays an instrument).
But although the church fathers thought everything in the Bible was true, they still didn't see it as the source for all doctrine (a notion which you won't find in the Bible). They saw it as part of the "Rule of Faith", which also included the (oral) teachings of the apostles and the teachings of the apostolic churches.
I'm sure that "all scripture is inspired..." is the proper translation, but of course you're right that it leaves open the question what "scripture" refers to. It's not impossible that books we think of as the New Testament are included - 1 Tim 5:18 apparently cites a saying from Luke as "scripture", and 2 Peter 3:16 refers to Paul's letters as "scripture". (2 Peter was written a lot later than 1 Timothy, though.) But even if solely Jewish books are meant, there was no "canon" corresponding to the Old Testament at this time. Jews generally treated any sufficiently ancient-seeming book as authoritative and did not draw a strict line between "canon" and "non-canon". I would suspect that the author of 2 Timothy is thinking along the same lines, although he's thinking of the books in question in a more pagan than Jewish way (as mentioned above).
Not much, beyond the basic fact that he is so revered and I believe has a feast day. This reflects the ancient Christian belief that Pilate was a pretty decent character, a belief that developed in the first and second centuries as anti-Jewish views developed. The more the Jews were blamed for Jesus' death, the less Pilate was, and the more he was presented as a victim of circumstance. You can see this trend in the New Testament itself, if you compare Mark's presentation of Pilate with Matthew's, and then John's. It continues outside the New Testament in books such as the Acts of Pilate, in which Pilate is the hero. Tertullian, writing at the end of the second century, thought that Pilate was really a Christian.
I have always taken "Born Again Christianity" to be just another name for Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism pretty much revolves around the idea of the individual's relation with God through Jesus, and the need for a personal conversion experience, so it's hard to see how there could be a greater emphasis than that.
I'm afraid I would say that El Mac's view is much more biblical (at least much more in line with Jesus' teachings as presented in the Gospels), and certainly far more in line with the ancient theologians, who were absolutely unequivocal in their condemnation of all violence and killing, whatever the circumstances. This is why ancient Christians were unanimously opposed to abortion, exposition of infants, capital punishment, gladiatorial combat, and war, and why Christians who were soldiers were not allowed to hold officer rank since they might have to order executions or other violent acts (and many Christians thought that Christians shouldn't be soldiers at all in the first place). Of course, once the Roman empire itself converted to Christianity, all o these views began to get rather watered down.
I'd say, though, that in my view trying to base a system of ethics upon the New Testament, let alone upon the words of Jesus, is always going to be problematic, because they don't constitute a system of ethics. Jesus doesn't explicitly say what one should do in all kinds of situations. So one cannot use his teachings as any more than, at most, the basis for a system of ethics which goes beyond what he actually says. This is why some twentieth-century Christian moralists, notably the situation ethicists and (I think) Karl Barth, argued that to be true to Jesus' teaching you shouldn't try to construct a system of ethics at all. You should just take to heart the basic principle of love - of God and neighbour - and then work out what to do in each situation as it comes up, following the spirit of love, rather than trying to work out rules in advance. On this view, the Christian moralist wouldn't say "This is wrong" or "That is wrong" - he or she would just react in a loving way when faced with the actual situation.
I'd add that Jesus' action in the Temple probably wasn't an act of violence anyway. It is more likely to have been a prophetic action. By turning over the tables, he symbolically prophesied the future destruction of the Temple itself. E. P. Sanders makes the nice point that it would have been rather irrational to object to the presence of the moneychangers anyway; it was perfectly logical to have moneychangers there, since people came to the Temple from all over the civilised world and were carrying all different kinds of currency. It was also perfectly logical to have people selling sacrificial animals there, since again, people were arriving from all over the place and could hardly be expected to carry live animals all that way. There's no evidence that the moneychangers or the animal sellers were dishonest; given that there was a Temple guard and the place was closely watched by the high priest and by the Romans this would have been unlikely anyway. So the traditional interpretation of Jesus' action as an angry reaction to corruption in the Temple seems rather unlikely.
It's certainly not by Paul, if that's what you mean. That doesn't make it not part of the Bible, though.
Well, that's precisely what I do, but that's selective, not Biblical and un-Protestant, apparently.
GhostWriter16
Deity
Why were early Christians opposed to Capital Punishment? Paul certainly supported it!
Romans 13:1-7
Acts 25:11
punkbass2000
Des An artiste
I think because they took "Do not kill" seriously to mean a prohibition against taking human life under any circumstances.
I don't see any reference to capital punishment there. I only see a claim that the civil authorities have the authority that they do because God gives it to them.
I wouldn't be so sure that Paul really said or thought the things attributed to him in Acts. At any rate, again I don't see any support for capital punishment in that verse. Paul allows the possibility that he has done something deserving of death, which implies that he thinks that there are actions which deserve death. It doesn't follow from that that he thinks it's right that death be inflicted upon people who have performed these actions. That's because even though someone may deserve a certain fate, it doesn't necessarily follow that the state has the right to inflict that fate upon them. After all, in Rom 1-3 he argues that everyone deserves condemnation, but it doesn't follow from that that he supports the right of the state to condemn everyone. Remember that Paul also wrote:
Romans 12:17-19 said:
That's a fairly clear statement that such things are God's provenance, not man's. It's also a fairly clear injunction to live in peace and never to use violence. In fact, in this chapter Paul's exhortations mirror those attributed to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels quite closely.
Of course, Paul never had to face questions like the one you and El Mac were considering about whether violence could be justified to protect others, and he certainly never had to consider what Christians should do if they found themselves in the army, or the legislature, or running an empire. Questions like those never occurred to him, so it's anachronistic to suppose that he had any answer to them. However, it seems to me that making Paul into a supporter of capital punishment or anything like that is to distort him much more than making him an opponent of it is.
I would mostly like to know why a theologian wouldn't be posting in this thread?
I'm not sure what the OP of that thread is really asking for. I don't know if I could say anything helpful.
I thought that the fact that I was willing to skip between gospels, in order to create a narrative, would be too jarring to a non-literalist! I cannot unthink the concept of "Matthew's Jesus" or "Mark's Jesus" or "John's Jesus", except with effort.
Speaking of Matthew's Jesus: I was thinking about the 'story' of Jesus, and was wondering when we first have evidence of the story of Jesus' tomb being guarded? I flipped through Paul's writing and through Peter's (and the Acts), and, unless I missed something, I don't think it's there.
Is the gospel of Matthew the first recording of the idea that there were Roman soldiers there to prevent the stealing of the corpse? If it was part of Peter's story, I'd think that it's something that he would've told Paul. But (afaik), Paul doesn't refer to it ...
no?
Is there an inferred intent as to why this detail was included? I mean, it's a pretty powerful piece of the story, it certainly adds credibility to the narrative of 'his body wasn't stolen by disciples', which I've run into. Or is the author of Matthew doing more than the obvious with that addition?
Speaking of Matthew's Jesus: I was thinking about the 'story' of Jesus, and was wondering when we first have evidence of the story of Jesus' tomb being guarded? I flipped through Paul's writing and through Peter's (and the Acts), and, unless I missed something, I don't think it's there.
Is the gospel of Matthew the first recording of the idea that there were Roman soldiers there to prevent the stealing of the corpse? If it was part of Peter's story, I'd think that it's something that he would've told Paul. But (afaik), Paul doesn't refer to it ...
no?
Is there an inferred intent as to why this detail was included? I mean, it's a pretty powerful piece of the story, it certainly adds credibility to the narrative of 'his body wasn't stolen by disciples', which I've run into. Or is the author of Matthew doing more than the obvious with that addition?
Yes, you're right, Matthew is the earliest text which has the tomb being guarded. You'll see that it appears in the context of a fear on the part of the Pharisees and chief priests that Jesus' disciples might steal Jesus' body and claim that he had risen from the dead. In the event, Matthew tells us, after the resurrection the Pharisees and chief priests deliberately started the rumour that the disciples had done precisely this, and Matthew says that this story remains current at the time of writing. So the obvious implication is that Matthew (or perhaps one of his sources) has invented this story of the Pharisees' and chief priests' plot, including the guards on the tomb, in order to "explain" why non-Christian Jews of his day said that Jesus had never been raised from the dead at all but his body had just been stolen by his disciples. It's supposed to undermine that anti-Christian argument.
Paul not only doesn't mention any guard, he doesn't mention the story of the empty tomb at all. Mark is the earliest source for this story. It seems to me quite possible that in Paul's day, Christians believed that Jesus had been raised from the dead in a non-physical sense which did not involve his corpse re-animating at all; and that by the time the Gospels were written, this had developed into the view that his resurrection was physical and involved his body getting up and walking out of the tomb. But that's really speculation and other people would argue that even though Paul never mentions the empty tomb his understanding of resurrection was sufficiently physical to require it. In fact Paul's explanation of the nature of resurrection in 1 Cor 15 is quite baffling and lends itself to either interpretation, since he denies that resurrection is physical, but insists that it's bodily.
Paul not only doesn't mention any guard, he doesn't mention the story of the empty tomb at all. Mark is the earliest source for this story. It seems to me quite possible that in Paul's day, Christians believed that Jesus had been raised from the dead in a non-physical sense which did not involve his corpse re-animating at all; and that by the time the Gospels were written, this had developed into the view that his resurrection was physical and involved his body getting up and walking out of the tomb. But that's really speculation and other people would argue that even though Paul never mentions the empty tomb his understanding of resurrection was sufficiently physical to require it. In fact Paul's explanation of the nature of resurrection in 1 Cor 15 is quite baffling and lends itself to either interpretation, since he denies that resurrection is physical, but insists that it's bodily.
GhostWriter16
Deity
Then why could Christians be soldiers?
Different Christians had different views on this, as you'll know if you followed the link I gave to Tertullian's On the Crown (although that deals mainly with the problem that being a soldier meant being involved in paganism). And different churches had different standards and requirements. Soldiers did plenty of things other than killing, so some Christians may have thought that it was a worthy profession to help protect the empire and keep the peace. Also, they may have distinguished between killing on someone else's orders (acceptable) and giving an order to kill (unacceptable). And it seems to have happened at least fairly often that soldiers became Christians, rather than vice versa.
GhostWriter16
Deity
OK that makes more sense.
OK, another question, does the Apocrypha belong in the Bible? What are the best arguments on both sides, and which one do you agree with?
OK, another question, does the Apocrypha belong in the Bible? What are the best arguments on both sides, and which one do you agree with?
There is no answer to that, because "the Bible" is not a thing but a collection of books, and the church decides which books are in it. There is no universally agreed criterion for inclusion. So if different churches have different views about which books are in it, then there's really no way to decide who's right.
I suppose the main argument for including the Apocrypha is that the early church regarded these books as canonical, and it was only at the Reformation that they were removed. The main argument for removing it is that the early church really regarded these books as deuterocanonical, so they were never fully canonical even from the beginning. Also, rabbinical Judaism did not regard them as canonical, although I'm not clear on why that makes much difference.
This is, of course, part of the problem with any view of the Bible that makes it different in kind from other books, because the edges are fuzzy. Not only the apocrypha, but with other passages that are present in only some manuscripts and are of dubious authenticity, such as John 8:1-11 or Mark 16:9-20. If the Bible is divinely inspired in a way that makes it different in kind from other texts, what about them?
GhostWriter16
Deity
I think that texts like John 8 1-11 and the last 11 verses of Mark were probably added later.
If there is serious question as to whether the Apocrypha should be included, is this evidence that the books are of lower quality and so less likely to be valid Scripture than the other books?
And would you agree that there was valid (Even if incorrect) reasoning for removal of the Apocrypha besides "We don't like whats in it?" Because Catholics seem to think that's the reason they were removed.
I'm curious -- do you recall if they had an explanation, then, for the rather surprising lack of condemnation from Jesus in the Gospels for the soldiers he encountered? I'm thinking particularly of Luke; in Luke 3:14 he's given a golden opportunity to tell them to stop soldiering, or refuse to kill people, or refuse promotion, or whatever, but instead basically tells them to not abuse their position. (And this is in the context of avoiding being metaphorically tossed in a fire by God.) Jesus is also pretty happy with a Roman centurion in Luke 7. There's also references to a "devout soldier" of some kind who is an attendant of Cornelius in Acts 10:7.
So wait -- is this just a Luke thing, after all?
Maybe he was an army doctor....but even if this pro-army view is an idiosyncrasy of this particular author, both Luke and Acts were part of the fairly early canon, and were seen as authoritative, weren't they? So that leaves the question of how the early Christians dealt with them. Did they just say the absence of condemnation doesn't imply there was none? That seems like the simplest explanation, but it seems a bit odd that they'd think Jesus told them the surface issue but ignored the fundamental problem they had.I have a book on situation ethics on my bookshelf (which I never finished). Your summary of it is quite interesting because I'm really not very aware of its history. How well did it fare in theological/philosophical circles? It doesn't seem to have gone very far.
I have a friend -- well, a semi-friend/acquaintance -- who has attempted to construct a similar-sounding system of ethics around just acting loving all the time, as determined by the Fruits of the Spirit. My response, which she never quite gets around to genuinely responding to, is that there are implicit ethical propositions in what you interpret to be loving or spiritually virtuous in a given situation. (For instance: is it loving to give a drug addict more drugs? On the one hand, it makes him happier. On the other, it feeds their physically unhealthy addiction. We'd generally say this is a bad thing, and immoral. But to say that it's unloving is to implicitly argue that happiness is significantly less important than physical and mental health. I think that's a generally sound principle, but it's a value that's not found within any sort of "law of love.") I don't see how any system of ethics based off of love can avoid a significant listing of fundamental values, and definitions of those values, through which love is expressed. But that makes it increasingly sound like more orthodox ethical systems, and less different.
Did that make sense, at all? I realize that was rather clumsily expressed, but I hope it was clear enough. Are you aware of any objections to situational ethics along these lines and the general responses? (I can't imagine my objection is particularly novel.)
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