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Jewel Runner
What do you think of Rev. Dr. NT Wright's Bob Dylan cover?
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MagisterCultuum
Great Sage
1 John 5:7 said:
It is not exactly 1 John 5:7 that is often considered non-canonical, but rather the portions of 1 John 5:7-8 that the translation I quoted places inside brackets. (Most more modern translations end verse 7 where the brackets start, start verse 8 where they end, and might include the bracketed test in a footnote) That section is not present in most of the oldest manuscripts, and is present only as a marginal note in many others. It may be that someone included it as personal commentary or a note for use in a sermon, and later a lazy scribe mistook it for part of the main text.
If I recall correctly, another reason to assume it does not belong is that the surrounding text in the original Greek is a poem whose structure is totally ruined if the additional text is inserted.
Even if you do not consider anything infallible you can still consider some sources vastly more reliable than others. It is quite reasonable to assume that sources closer to the original source are more reliable. The canonical epistles and gospels are certainly older and more reliable than any extant non-canonical accounts of Christ's teachings (except perhaps the Didache).
I am sure than are many who consider Christ himself infallible but would not ascribe infallibility to all those who recorded his words and deeds, or to the opinions of the Apostles. For them it makes since to consider scripture to the the highest authority but still study it with a critical eye, rejecting things that they think conflict with core doctrines such as loving your neighbor as yourself.
It seems quite possible for someone to be inspired to write something, and then also include some non-inspired words in the same text. There are a few places in Paul's epistles where he makes it pretty clear that he is only giving his own opinion, even contrasting it to what the Lord himself taught.
Most preferred the Septuagint over the Hebrew because all New Testament quotations of the Old Testament use the Septuagint. These include every instance where Jesus quoted the Old Testament, which led many to believe that Christ himself preferred the Septuagint.
Of course, it could also be explained by the fact that the authors of the New Testament were all writing in Koine Greek and wanted their audience to actually understand what they were saying, and were too lazy or not confident enough in their reading to make their own translations rather than using that with which their audience was already familiar.
According to tradition, 70 different Jewish scholars worked independently in 70 different rooms without once collaborating, yet managed to produce completely identical texts. The ancients considered that a miracle that proved the translations infallibility, but I suspect it is just a lie.
The ancient's preference for the Greek text is probably best explained by the almost universal human tendency to prefer that which is familiar over that which is unknown. Almost all of them spoke Greek and had used that text for generations. Very few of them knew any Hebrew. When a new translations was made from the Hebrew and differed from what they knew, they were naturally suspicious.
The original Hebrew is obviously more authoritative, but there there actually are valid arguments for preferring the Septuagint over the Hebrew texts we have now. The oldest extant manuscripts of the Old Testament are in Greek rather than Hebrew.
The Septuagint was translated long before Hebrew had any system of recording vowels. Before then, Jews had to rely on oral traditions to distinguish between different words that had the same consonants; this tradition was certainly more reliable twenty three centuries ago than it is now.
Even if we ignore vowel points, modern Hebrew is not the script in which the scriptures were originally written. Today's Hebrew is written in a stylized Aramaic, which Jews started using in the 5th century BC. Paleo-Hebrew was still common when the Septuagint was written though, and indeed was still used in Jesus's lifetime. (Since Galilee was so close to Samaria, Jesus himself may have preferred the Paleo-Hebrew. The Samaritans never abandoned the Paleo-Hebrew, although very minor differences evolved since then.) There are many instances where the Septuagint agrees with the Samaritan Torah instead of the Masoretic text. It was once thought that it was based on both sects' texts, but since then we have found that older Jewish texts (like the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of which are in Paleo-Hebrew) agree with the Septuagint here too.
How are we defining Catholic? The primacy of Rome took a while to develop. There were many local churches in communion with each other. Some local churches were more dogmatic than others. Plotinus has in the past pointed out that of the 6 main centers of the early church, only Carthage insisted on the doctrine of Eternal Damnation, Ephesus preferred Conditional Immortality, and the others had no official position but were generally accepting of Universalism.
There were plenty of Heresies that disagreed with what is now deemed Orthodox. If I recall a heretical Syrian Church was once larger than all the churches in the west. Some writings imply that even in the west Modalism (Sabellianism) was at times much more popular than orthodox trinitarianism, particularly among laymen.
Simply put there has never been one church. Even within the Roman empire there was hardly ever a time when there was agreement on all theological issues. But Christianity extended beyond the empire: there were Christians in Parthia/Persia, Central Asia, India and beyond and ofcourse in Ethiopia; none of these were Catholic, either before or after the term was coined.
It occurs to me that I don't know - insofar as a definition is possible, how does one define evangelical Christianity?
Is it simply Biblical fundamentalism (using the more-or-less original definition, of seeing the Bible alone as the foundation of theology)? Does it relate to how evangelical Christians "witness"? Who decides these things anyways?
Is it simply Biblical fundamentalism (using the more-or-less original definition, of seeing the Bible alone as the foundation of theology)? Does it relate to how evangelical Christians "witness"? Who decides these things anyways?
MagisterCultuum already answered this - I think hardly anyone considers it authentic today, because it only appears in late and marginal manuscripts. In addition to this, the theology expressed in the line is entirely anachronistic for the period when 1 John was written.
You can answer that for yourself. I take it that you go to church regularly and you listen to the preacher expecting to hear something worthwhile, but you don't consider him to be infallible. Why, then, do you bother to listen to him? Presumably because you think that he's got a lot of relevant knowledge and experience and knows what he's talking about. You don't have to think he's infallible to think that. And the same could be said for anyone else you consider authoritative, such as your teachers.
Similarly, someone can perfectly reasonably think that the Bible is an important authority without thinking that it's infallible. And many people do think this.
The problem with your question is that you frame it simply in terms of "believing the Bible" or "not believing the Bible". But it's not as simple as "believing the Bible" or not. The Bible is a complex text. You can believe that some bits of it are correct and others aren't. You can also believe that one and the same bit is correct in some ways but not in others. A person who thinks that the Bible is authoritative, but not infallible, is likely to take a complex attitude to it of this kind. To ask whether and why such as person "believes the Bible" is to ask the wrong question, because it's not as simple as that.
Why would "inspired" entail "infallible" anyway? The word "inspired" can mean all sorts of things. People apply the word "inspired" to everything from poetry to football. It doesn't mean they think these things are infallible. At most it means that someone acts in a way that calls to mind the supernatural, as if something superhuman is acting through them. That's what it meant in antiquity. You know the Iliad is a good example: it begins with an invocation to the Muses, and the author writes as if the Muses are speaking through him. (In fact he consistently adopts a divine point of view throughout the book.) The ancient Greeks all agreed that the Iliad was an inspired text. I don't think they regarded it as infallible, though - not because they asked whether it was infallible and concluded that it wasn't, but because the question didn't occur to them. "Inspired" meant something about how the text was written, the sorts of things it talked about, the kind of wisdom and insights it imparted, and the viewpoint it expressed. It didn't mean a formal state of inerrancy.
Similarly, a liberal Christian can perfectly reasonably say that the Bible is inspired in the sense that its authors had great insight into divine things, they understood God and such things in a very profound way, and they articulated great truths that remain vital and authoritative today - without having to say that the Bible is infallible. There's nothing inconsistent about that.
We all pick and choose. Why do you choose to be a Christian rather than a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Wiccan? Why, having chosen to be a Christian, do you choose to be a Protestant evangelical rather than a Catholic or a Monophysite or a Kakure Kirishitan? Not because the Bible tells you to, because it's only after you've adopted the viewpoint of an evangelical Christian that you think you've got to do what the Bible tells you to do. You choose the religion you have because it appeals to you in a way that the others don't. That may be because you've been brought up that way, or it may not, but either way, you're still picking and choosing as long as you've consciously thought about your religion and decided to remain in it.
The thing is that you're still viewing alternative traditions from the point of view of an evangelical. An evangelical believes (more or less) that the Bible must be the foundation of all belief. So one should believe whatever the Bible says. From this point of view, the notion of discriminating between different things that the Bible says, and believing some but not others on the basis of extra-Biblical ideas, is abhorrent. But a liberal might believe that the foundation of belief is broader than the Bible alone. They might believe that the true foundation of belief is personal experience, or reason, or a combination of them. Or if they're more Catholically minded they might think that the church's teaching is the true foundation of belief - or if they're Orthodox they'd think tradition is the true foundation. Or, if they're a middle-of-the-road Anglican, they might believe that none of these things is the true foundation of belief, but all of them taken equally are, so that one must weigh up the Bible, personal experience, reason, church teaching, and tradition, with no simplistic right answers about which of these trumps the others. The point is, for people with any of these different views, there's nothing problematic about saying they agree with some parts of the Bible and not others, because they just don't accept the basic evangelical idea that the Bible must be the sole foundation and trump everything else. For example, the liberal who disagrees with the author of 1 Timothy when he says that no woman may have authority over a man does so because this sentiment is repugnant to reason and experience. And the liberal doesn't think in the first place that the Bible must necessarily trump reason and experience. Why should it? Why is it more reasonable, or more Christian, to suppose that the Bible must trump reason on this matter? The evangelical accuses the liberal of "cherry picking" the Bible, but the liberal could equally accuse the evangelical of "cherry picking" reason by deciding, in some matters, to believe the Bible instead of reason.
The point is that, from the evangelical's point of view, the liberal is being unforgivably cavalier with the Bible - but from the liberal's point of view, the evangelical is being unforgivably cavalier with reason. (And from the Catholic's point of view he's being unforgivably cavalier with the teaching of the church, and so on.) You can't understand the other person's point of view unless you understand the basic position that he's starting from, and that this is different from your own.
Authority isn't the same thing as infallibility, as I said before. I'm not sure if there's anyone who tries to make the Bible the sole authority who doesn't also believe that it's infallible - although I don't see why one couldn't try. But there are lots of people who consider that the Bible is an authority among others - perhaps even the most important of them - who aren't thereby committed to thinking it infallible.
As an analogy, imagine a historian trying to understand (say) the career of Gladstone. There are an awful lot of sources such a historian might use. Pre-eminent among them would be Gladstone's diary, which he maintained in considerable detail throughout his life. Other sources would include Gladstone's letters to other people, their letters to him, government papers, diaries and letters of other people he knew, newspapers of the day, and so on and so forth. The historian must weigh these different sources against each other and try to work out the truth, to the extent that such a thing can be worked out at all. Now because there is such a wealth of sources, we can know an awful lot about Gladstone with near-certainty, even where sources conflict and we have to decide which ones to follow in different matters. But to construct the story in this way, the historian doesn't have to believe that any of the sources are infallible. He doesn't even have to believe that the most important source, Gladstone's diary, is infallible. (Gladstone could have made mistakes or been outright dishonest, knowing that his diary would one day be used to reconstruct his life.) All he has to believe is that the sources are sufficiently reliable between them to allow him to reconstruct the story to a tolerable degree of certainty and accuracy.
Similarly, a Christian might think that spiritual information can be found in a variety of sources - the Bible, church tradition, the current teaching of the church, the preaching of particular individuals such as his own pastor or bishop, personal experience, reason, direct revelation from the Holy Spirit, and so on. He might well think that, of these, the most important source is the Bible. But that doesn't mean he has to think that any of them, including the Bible, are infallible - only that, taken together, they're sufficiently authoritative and reliable to gain sufficient understanding of God. In practice I think that this is what an awful lot of middle-of-the-road Christians believe, although they might not articulate it quite like that.
The church fathers weren't much interested in the intent of the authors - that's not how they thought. MagisterCultuum addressed this one well too, but I'd add that I think part of it was deliberate anti-Jewish sentiment. If the Jews were saying that their collection of ancient Jewish books - in Hebrew, and with the canon settled at Jamnia - was "the" proper one, then the Christians would be all the keener to insist that their collection of ancient Jewish books - in Greek, and with the canon settled by the "seventy" translators - was "the" proper one. It was a case of Christian canon versus Jewish one.
I think one can draw a reasonable comparison with the more fervent supporters of the King James Bible in America, who think that no other translation is acceptable, and only the AV correctly articulates God's intentions. That also utterly ignores the origins of the text and is basically completely unsupportable in any rational way, but they insist upon it because they're familiar with it, and because they see people they think are theologically mistaken using other translations and therefore associate the ideas with the translations.
The others have mentioned heretical sects. It's important to recognise that being heretical (even assuming we accept this anachronistic category) is different from being a different church. E.g. there were certainly gnostic Christians who were part of the mainstream church - they just had slightly eccentric ideas. So the existence of different doctrinal standards doesn't necessarily entail the existence of independent church organisations.
There certainly were independent church organisations, though. The Marcionites were a major group, founded by Marcion after he got chucked out of the church at Rome for his dodgy ideas. The Montanists were also an important group, founded by a group of prophets whose prophecies were rejected by the mainstream churches. More important than either were the Valentinians, who are traditionally viewed as gnostics, although precisely how gnostic they really were is a matter of great debate. The Valentinian church was large and widespread, so much so that it seems itself to have split into two rival churches, one in the east and one in the west.
Then there was the Novatianist church, created after a schism between rival factions in Rome in the third century, which existed alongside the mainstream church throughout the Roman empire. This was a particularly interesting rival church, because it apparently had no doctrinal disagreement with the Catholics at all. It was just an alternative church structure.
Finally, one of the most important ancient "other" churches was the Donatist church in Africa, which was extremely powerful for much of the fourth century and may even have been the "main" African church for some periods, eclipsing the Catholic church there. The Donatists had rigorous views about ecclesiastical purity and split off from the Catholic church in the early fourth century after a row about whether Catholic bishops who had denied Christ during state persecutions could consecrate new bishops, and whether these new bishops had any authority. Augustine devoted much of his career to arguing against them.
All of these churches were repeatedly denounced by the Catholics, partly on the grounds that all such schismatic churches inevitably fell into heresy even if they weren't heretics to start with, and partly because schisms of this nature was just intrinsically wrong anyway. I think it was Cyprian who said that Christ would treat those who tore apart the church, which was his body, just as harshly as he would treat those who tore apart his body on the cross.
I'm very impressed. I had previously had a low view of his musical tastes after reading an article in which he was rather rude about the blues, but evidently he's not a completely lost cause.
It's notoriously hard to define, and the definitions keep changing (plus the German equivalent just means the same as "Lutheran", which complicates things). I'd say that a good working definition is someone who accepts the Doctrinal Basis of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, which I take to be a typical statement of belief from a typical evangelical group. If pressed I would say that the following beliefs are typical of evangelicalism:
(1) The infallibility and sole authority of the Bible.
(2) Penal substitution, i.e. the idea that Jesus was literally punished in the place of sinners.
(3) The necessity of a personal faith in, and relationship with, Jesus for salvation (meaning that anyone without it will be eternally punished).
(4) A very conservative attitude to sexual matters.
(5) A complete lack of ecclesiology and sacerdotalism - i.e. they don't care what church you belong to as long as you believe these things, and they don't think that priests have any special status or abilities, and they don't believe in sacraments.
However, evangelicalism is also a liturgical and social phenomenon (as all varieties of Christianity are) and can't be reduced to a set of beliefs. For one thing, most churches considered Pentecostal would probably also believe all the things listed above, but Pentecostalists are normally considered distinct from evangelicals, and you will certainly see the difference if you go to one each of their churches. Evangelicals have far more practical emphasis on cognitive teaching and exposition of the Bible. They still spend an awful lot of time singing, though.
Hey Plotinus, it's probably the first time I post in your thread so first of all I like to say that I really appreciate how much work you invest here and I've gotten a great amount of insight on multiple topics already.
Now I thought I'd also burden you with some extra work in form of a question. I hope it's not too much "out there" because it concerns a topic which is very confusing too me.
I'm referring to what I would call the "popular Christian" notion of heaven and hell. I think I can safely claim that most people who grew up in a predominantly Christian country would immediately associate a couple of attributes with them.
For example, heaven is often associated with being above us (the German words for heaven and sky are even identical), pictured as consisting of fluffy clouds, is sometimes depicted as the place where both angels and the souls of dead people "live" in some sort of wish-fulfilling paradise.
Hell on the other hand is portrayed as the domain of Satan, a place of fire and brimstone that's somewhere "below", where those who are not permitted into heaven are subjected to torture or other unpleasant penalties.
I'm calling these portrayals "popular Christianity" because everyone seems to know them, but from all I know about Christian theology, this is not what Christians actually believe in at all (am I right about that?).
Nevertheless, most everyday Christians, like those who consider themselves Christians but don't put a lot of emphasis on the details, seem to subscribe to these notions. Things like "I'll see my dead relatives in heaven" or "you'll end up in hell if you do that" are actually believed in, with all the implications I've sketched above. At least that is my impression.
So in the end, my question is, is this observation correct? Or do I take Christians who say something like that too seriously and/or literally? If so, can you explain where these ideas come from and how they became so closely associated with Christianity?
Thanks for your trouble
Now I thought I'd also burden you with some extra work in form of a question. I hope it's not too much "out there" because it concerns a topic which is very confusing too me.
I'm referring to what I would call the "popular Christian" notion of heaven and hell. I think I can safely claim that most people who grew up in a predominantly Christian country would immediately associate a couple of attributes with them.
For example, heaven is often associated with being above us (the German words for heaven and sky are even identical), pictured as consisting of fluffy clouds, is sometimes depicted as the place where both angels and the souls of dead people "live" in some sort of wish-fulfilling paradise.
Hell on the other hand is portrayed as the domain of Satan, a place of fire and brimstone that's somewhere "below", where those who are not permitted into heaven are subjected to torture or other unpleasant penalties.
I'm calling these portrayals "popular Christianity" because everyone seems to know them, but from all I know about Christian theology, this is not what Christians actually believe in at all (am I right about that?).
Nevertheless, most everyday Christians, like those who consider themselves Christians but don't put a lot of emphasis on the details, seem to subscribe to these notions. Things like "I'll see my dead relatives in heaven" or "you'll end up in hell if you do that" are actually believed in, with all the implications I've sketched above. At least that is my impression.
So in the end, my question is, is this observation correct? Or do I take Christians who say something like that too seriously and/or literally? If so, can you explain where these ideas come from and how they became so closely associated with Christianity?
Thanks for your trouble
That's exactly what I'm thinking of. It's concept that's often employed in shallow proselytization, either by intimidation ("believe or you'll go to hell") or promise ("believe and you'll go to heaven after you die"). Cessation of existence and resurrection of the dead are much less appealing, although I'm unsure currently what the orthodox position is on the time between death and resurrection.
Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
So did Jesus, who said, "But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him."
Luke 12:5 (NIV)
That doesn't actually describe "hell" at all though. Let alone say that Satan is in charge of it.
MagisterCultuum
Great Sage
Also, the word used should not be "Hell," but "Gehenna." This proper noun refers literally to the garbage dump where garbage (including the lifeless corpses of animals and notorious criminals considered undeserving of proper burial) was burned. It makes much for sense for it to refer to annihilation than to eternal torment.
Nothing in the bible even implies that Satan and his demons rule hell. The only world he rules is this one.
Nothing in the bible even implies that Satan and his demons rule hell. The only world he rules is this one.
Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
Hell is temporary. The Lake of Fire is eternal. That is where Satan is headed.
Revelation 20:10
"And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever."
There's not really a place where the Bible directly says Satan that rules Hell, only that he once had the power of death over all mankind.
Hebrews 2:14
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of deaththat is, the devil
Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
What do you think this means?
2nd Peter 2:4
"For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment;"
Seems like there are demons who are bound in hell, not that they rule over it.
I agree that Satan currently rules this world, albeit illegitimately.
GhostWriter16
Deity
I've never heard of any Evangelical who didn't believe in baptism and (Symbolic) communion...
Everything else seems more or less accurate.
Well, I think there is a difference between practicing the ritual, and actually believing that the performer has special divine authority to do so.
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Jewel Runner
Thanks! The first blog post's synopsis seemed essentially Sabellian. It even used the word "modes" in its clarification. What's the difference exactly?
I also recall you being pretty big on Social Trinitarianism in the past. Did Leftow change your mind?
I can imagine you wouldn't take that well. What did he say that was so rude?
Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
I think not. I treat it is as literal, with both symbolism and linguistic limitations when describing future events. How could a man 2,000 years ago describe nuclear weapons, after all?
I disagree. Obviously Paul would not have complete knowledge of the afterlife, as Jesus does, but he does have some revealed knowledge about it. How else could Paul say, "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." (Philippians 1:21) Paul was revealing that, for him and other Christians, the afterlife would be better than this one. He said nearly the same thing a few verse later: "If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body." (Philippians 1:22-24)
If you mean as an imitator of Paul, one John the Apostle, then John had an entire vision of the afterlife that matched or supplemented that of Daniel from the Old Testament. Other prophets saw the afterlife; even Job saw it: "I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!" (Job 19:25-27)
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Jewel Runner
He couldn't and he didn't, and anybody who disagrees with me is almost certainly wrong.
Perhaps because he didn't? You can read anything into prophecy if you try hard enough.
That sounds like a simple statement of faith to me. I can say that the heaven that I am looking forward to is eternal unity with an all-loving God, but that doesn't that said knowledge has been revealed to me from on high or that you should believe me if I suggested that it had.
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