Which contemporary philosophical school do the teachings of Jesus as presented in the Gospels appear most in line with (if that's even possible to answer, of course)? I'm aware that the Christians adopted a lot of neo-Platonic and Aristotelian thought, but I've also heard that elements of the Gospels seem to line up more with Stoicism.
Jesus dying before the Passover and Jesus being alive after the Passover are independently plausible.
Which scenario do you feel has the best or most evidence? Is it more likely that he died or lived in that famous week?
Do advances in science alone account for the decline of evangelicalism in Britain in the latter half of the 19th century, or were there other factors involved?
Plot - your thread is an island of Intellect in a sea of ignorance. I commend your work and also the insights of others. Meanwhile can you give me a concise opinion of the metaphysics and theology of Meister Eckhart?
Anyone care to wonder why Dawkins really refuses to debate this man? Of course the first reaction is that he's scared, but that seems unlikely. Doesn't it?
Maybe because William Lane Craig is an intellectually dishonest showman? Watch any WLC debate and you'll see what I mean. I thought the part about being an apologist for genocide was explanation enough. I wouldn't even want to breathe the same air as someone like that.
Do advances in science alone account for the decline of evangelicalism in Britain in the latter half of the 19th century, or were there other factors involved?
There's a nice line in either Barclay or Hastings saying the evangelicals declined because they sent all their best men* to die in the swamps of West Africa. It wasn't simply that there were new scientific advances, the problem was that they lacked the theologians and scientists to integrate them into their theology.
Why?
Bebbington argues that they become far more introspective, because Romantic influences on the Keswick/holiness movement encouraged introspection rather than involvement in the public square. He also points to the growing strength of Anglo-Catholics.
On science, he says most evangelicals accepted evolution in the 19th century. He suggests it's only in the early 20th century, when liberals (well, Canon Barnes specifically) began to use evolution as a polemic against evangelical theology, that it became a polarizing issue. So some traditional stereotypes need re-examination.
My thoughts: the ending of religious tests at Oxford and Cambridge meant the loss of a lot of intellectual resources previously reserved for theologically conservative Anglicans. That can't have helped.
*(Actually, they sent their best women too, but the quotation predates feminism).
Maybe because William Lane Craig is an intellectually dishonest showman? Watch any WLC debate and you'll see what I mean. I thought the part about being an apologist for genocide was explanation enough. I wouldn't even want to breathe the same air as someone like that.
That does make a very good cover for Dawkin's notoriously poor grasp of basic philosophy, doesn't it?
Here's a question- how do you think it would have gone down if Brown had, on similar grounds, refused to debate Cameron at the last election? Cameron is at least as much an apologist for genocide as Craig is, given that he heads up a party which cheerfully oversaw a few of them, and yet I don't think that we'd all be standing around nodding about Brown's forthrightness and refusal to deal with cretinous delinquents. Rather, we'd call him a transparently terrified buffoon and find very few opinions to the contrary. So what's the big difference with this?
Edit: I'm forgetting that this is an "Ask a..." thread and not a "Why doesn't Traitorfish natter on about..." thread, so this should really just be ignored. (Also, as Plotinus has pointed out, my analogy kinda sucks.)
Pelagius' opponents in his lifetime, principally Augustine and Jerome, portrayed him as focusing on the ability of human beings to do good and be saved (Augustine) and to be perfect (Jerome). They were right that Pelagius believed these things to be possible but his focus was of course on people's almost universal failure to achieve them.
Today Pelagius is often presented much more positively as someone who stressed the ability of human beings to do good and who stressed free will. But, again, Pelagius was actually a pretty gloomy character who thought that almost everyone was going to be damned. The important point which tends to be overlooked is that Pelagius was at heart a reformer who thought that the church was dreadfully corrupt and that all Christians should live as monks all the time. This was part of a tendency that was going on at the time to make the nascent monastic movement the model for the Christian life in general. Priscillian was another example, and in some ways Augustine himself - who throughout his Christian career regarded himself primarily as a monk and always wore the outfit of a monk, not that of a bishop - although Augustine of course did not think that such a lifestyle should be normative for everyone. Nevertheless, he was one of the key people who helped to bring monasticism to the west, and in that regard Pelagius was right alongside him.
I agree that the polemics are over-simplified, as are the characterisations of conservatives and liberals. I don't believe that western Christianity can be mapped onto a simple two-pole model like that. However, I think his basic point, that the church fathers were neither conservatives nor liberals in the modern senses, is exactly right.
A film like that must be so hard to make - basically lots of talking that they rather desperately accompany with shots of pages of books being flipped and the like. And a lot of people with very bad hair. I don't know why theologians always look like that! I'm also always suspicious of people who use the AV. I just don't see any need for it.
There are some straight-out errors in the film. For example, it mentions that Jews and Muslims accept that Jesus died on the cross, but Muslims do not believe that. It says that the notion of loving your enemies has no tradition in Judaism, which is as false as it is offensive. It also says it's an accepted fact that the disciple Thomas went to India and founded a church there, which is simply not true. And it says that Matthew's Gospel talks about the three wise men who visited Jesus at his birth, but in fact Matthew's Gospel does not say how many of them there were.
The ideas in the film are extremely outdated. This is because it seems that the basic working hypothesis of the film is that everything in the Bible is true apart from the supernatural bits, which is how the first secular biblical scholars of the late eighteenth century thought. So the only criterion for distinguishing between truth and falsity is whether it involves a miracle or not. Thus, it's pretty much taken as read that Jesus was crucified and later turned up and talked to his disciples, but this is reinterpreted as resuscitation rather than resurrection. Again, the story of the wise men visiting Jesus at his birth is taken as straightforward fact and the question is asked whether they were Buddhist monks who took him off to India. The notion that this plainly legendary story describes a true event doesn't seem to be questioned. But of course it's not good historical practice to assume that everything in a text is true provided it doesn't conflict with your own metaphysical prejudices. Quite apart from the fact that your metaphysical prejudices may be false, there are plenty of things that don't conflict with them but nevertheless aren't true.
Ever since David Strauss in the early nineteenth century, biblical scholars have recognised that the events described in the Gospels did not necessarily happen. Simply assuming that the events really happened but trying to find non-miraculous explanations for them (Jesus just fainted on the tomb, he trod on rocks just below the surface of the sea, he inspired everyone to share their lunches, etc.) introduces artificial distinctions into the stories that aren't there in the text. The stories are better understood as genuinely miraculous in their own right, but just not necessarily true (at all). That goes for the resurrection appearances as much as anything and it also goes for non-miraculous elements such as the wise men or indeed anything else.
Oddly, however, the film also seems to think that Jesus' miracles were real, since it draws parallels between them and the Buddha's miracles in the section that suggests Jesus was brought up as a Buddhist. Presumably the idea is that Jesus got the idea for his miracles from the stories of the Buddha, but this would suggest that his miracles were real. In which case, if you're going to accept that Jesus really walked on water or fed the five thousand, I don't see why one shouldn't also believe that he really rose from the dead.
A fundamental problem with the film is that it assumes that only the Gospels are of any relevance to the question of what happened to Jesus. So, for example, it treats the story of the ascension as unworthy of consideration because it appears only briefly in late additions to Mark's and Luke's Gospels and not in the others. But of course it appears much more fully in the book of Acts. If Luke's Gospel is a viable source for what happened to Jesus, why isn't Acts, which was written by the same author?
The film is happy to use extra-biblical evidence where it supports its own claims, such as Nicolas Notovitch's Unknown Life of Jesus Christ. But that book was an outright fraud and is universally recognised as such by the scholarly world. The film glosses right over it, which is not only misleading to the point of dishonest but quite weird - if the book were authentic then it would surely pretty much prove that Jesus was a Buddhist monk, in which case all the vague speculation in the rest of the film would be rather pointless. At any rate, if you're going to accept that as allowable evidence, it seems odd to ignore the whole of the Bible other than just the four Gospels.
More importantly, the film never once mentions Paul as a source for Jesus' death and resurrection. It makes much of the fact that the earliest Gospel is Mark and this Gospel does not feature Jesus' resurrection except in a later addition. That in itself is misleading, since although Mark's Gospel doesn't describe Jesus' resurrection it certainly predicts it, e.g. 10:34. But the obvious point here is that 1 Corinthians, which talks about the resurrection in considerable detail in chapter 15, predates all of the Gospels. So to imply that the doctrine of resurrection was some kind of later addition is daft.
More fundamentally still, the film suggests that Jesus survived crucifixion and that he and his followers mistook this survival for a miraculous resurrection. But this is in direct opposition to the evidence of the New Testament, which is that Christians originally thought of Jesus' resurrection in rather non-physical terms and only later developed it into more physical terms. Paul talks about Jesus' resurrection frequently but never once mentions an empty tomb or a post-resurrection Jesus who ate and drank. In 1 Corinthians 15 he explicitly states that the resurrection is non-physical (although it is still bodily). It is only later, in Mark's Gospel, that we first explicitly find the notion that Jesus' resurrection involved his tomb being empty. And it is in the later Gospels, most notably John's - the latest - that we find the risen Jesus walking about and eating breakfast. This evidence is certainly patchy - the mere fact that Paul doesn't mention an empty tomb does not, in itself, mean that he didn't believe in it, and even if it does, Paul might have been unusual among Christians of the first generation. Nevertheless, it seems to me that, to the extent that we have evidence for development of very early Christian beliefs about the resurrection, the evidence is that the kind of resurrection they believed in became more physical and resulted in the picture of the post-resurrection Jesus as a revived human being. It didn't begin with that picture and one hunts for it in Paul's writings in vain.
The basic problem with the argument presented in this film is that there's no argument. The whole thing is speculation. We're told that Jesus might have survived the crucifixion - well, of course he might. But where's the evidence that he did? We're told that Jesus might have had a romantic relationship with Mary Magdalene. Again, of course he might. But the only evidence provided for this is that according to John's Gospel (though not the others) she was the first person to see him after his resurrection. That seems to me evidence only that Mary got up earlier than the others, not that she was closer to him. The only "evidence" given for the idea that Jesus lived in France or in India is vague local legends, but you can find vague local legends of that kind everywhere. By that argument Jesus visited England and Joseph of Arimathea set up the Church of England in Glastonbury. This sort of thing may be useful if you have any more reliable historical evidence that it may help to support, but not by itself.
That's why this sort of thing is not reputable history but conspiracy theory. A characteristic feature of all conspiracy theories is that they confuse possibility with evidence, and take the fact that something could have happened to suggest that it did. Another characteristic of conspiracy theories is that they instinctively assume that "official" beliefs are false, and believe alternative theories solely because they are alternative. So in this case the entirely hypothetical supposition that Jesus survived, married Mary Magdalene, and wandered off to France is preferred to the traditional supposition that he died and rose again purely because it's supposedly counter-cultural. The obviously superior supposition (from a historical point of view) that he died and his disciples simply believed that he had been risen isn't even considered, because like most religious conspiracy theories, this one is presented solely in opposition to traditional orthodox belief as if that's the only alternative. Which is of course a gross mischaracterisation.
Which contemporary philosophical school do the teachings of Jesus as presented in the Gospels appear most in line with (if that's even possible to answer, of course)? I'm aware that the Christians adopted a lot of neo-Platonic and Aristotelian thought, but I've also heard that elements of the Gospels seem to line up more with Stoicism.
I'm not sure that that is possible to answer. I suppose that one might cite Stoicism as the closest, given that Stoicism involved the teaching that happiness lay in being virtuous, not in material possessions or anything that the world considered good, and that would seem to be roughly in line with Jesus' teaching. But really Jesus' teaching should be understood in the context of Jewish traditions, notably those associated with Hillel.
Jesus dying before the Passover and Jesus being alive after the Passover are independently plausible.
Which scenario do you feel has the best or most evidence? Is it more likely that he died or lived in that famous week?
I think that the probability of Jesus being crucified and yet surviving are staggeringly low. The film linked to above argues that this is plausible because it happened to one of Josephus' friends, but Josephus' friend was taken from the cross in the knowledge that he was still alive, and revived. The notion that the Romans might execute someone and accidentally leave them alive seems pretty far-fetched to me, as I think that Roman soldiers generally knew what they were doing. The idea that they'd do this with a religious leader who had a bunch of followers seems even more improbable. So I'd say that if Jesus was alive after the Passover it was because he wasn't crucified at all.
But the one thing we know about Jesus more certainly than anything else is that he was crucified, if only because the early Christians were so obviously at such pains to blame the Jews for his death even though he suffered a Roman punishment. If he hadn't really been crucified it's the last thing they would have invented. So I would say that the overwhelming balance of evidence is that Jesus died as he is traditionally supposed to have done.
Do advances in science alone account for the decline of evangelicalism in Britain in the latter half of the 19th century, or were there other factors involved?
I'm not sure that there was such a decline, but if there was one, I don't see much reason to suppose that advances in science had anything to do with it. Evangelicals were not, I think, notably more bothered by science than anyone else, and if they were, the rise of science actually helped them - it fostered the emergence of fundamentalism, which proved to be extremely strong. I would guess that if evangelicalism was in decline during this period it was more to do with the rise of the Anglo-Catholic movement, but I really don't know much about nineteenth-century religion.
Plot - your thread is an island of Intellect in a sea of ignorance. I commend your work and also the insights of others. Meanwhile can you give me a concise opinion of the metaphysics and theology of Meister Eckhart?
Thank you. But I'm afraid that's something I know little about. What I know is that, like the other Rhineland mystics, Eckhart was strongly in the apophatic mystical tradition which went back to Pseudo-Dionysius (and, beyond him, to Gregory of Nyssa). And like the author of The Cloud of Unknowing he stressed that God cannot be known and that the task of the Christian is to find other ways to relate to him. However, Eckhart went rather beyond most other mystics in this tradition by insisting that everything that is believed or said about God is downright false, and saying that the Christian must advance to a a point beyond "God" or the "Trinity" or anything like that. And that has often been regarded as effectively atheism. I think that's not a very fair conclusion, but unfortunately I don't know enough about Eckhart to draw a fairer one.
Anyone care to wonder why Dawkins really refuses to debate this man? Of course the first reaction is that he's scared, but that seems unlikely. Doesn't it?
I don't see any reason to suppose that Dawkins isn't honest in the reasons he gives, although it does seem a little odd that he says that Craig isn't worth debating and then devotes a whole newspaper column to explaining why. I also note that Dawkins is another person who quotes the Bible in the AV, which doesn't really commend him intellectually. It gives the impression that he thinks the Bible was written four hundred years ago.
His suggestion that Craig isn't a philosopher is just insulting rhetoric; it reminds me of people who refer to Russell Brand or David Mitchell or any other comedian they don't like as a "comedian" in inverted commas. If you think a comedian is unfunny, that doesn't mean he's not really a comedian, it just means he's not a good one. If you think that Craig's philosophy is bad, that doesn't mean he's not a philosopher, since he quite blatantly is one - it just means he's a bad one. He is at least more of a professional in the field of philosophy of religion than Dawkins is - not that that makes him more right, of course.
My inclination is to guess that Dawkins thinks he can score more points over Craig, or more generally over the movement that Craig represents, by commenting in this way than he can by either debating him or ignoring him entirely. Whether he's right or wrong in that assessment, I don't know.
Maybe because William Lane Craig is an intellectually dishonest showman? Watch any WLC debate and you'll see what I mean. I thought the part about being an apologist for genocide was explanation enough. I wouldn't even want to breathe the same air as someone like that.
I don't know a great deal about William Lane Craig, but then I haven't watched any such debates. I have to say, though, that Dawkins' point about being an apologist for genocide is pretty disingenuous. It makes Craig sound like a Holocaust denier, when the genocide he's defending is the invasion of the Canaanites by the Hebrews. Given that this probably never even happened, denouncing people for defending it seems rather petty to me. Certainly I agree that the views Dawkins quotes are morally abhorrent and they would be even more morally abhorrent if the events in question had really happened, but I find it hard to take them seriously.
That does make a very good cover for Dawkin's notoriously poor grasp of basic philosophy, doesn't it?
Here's a question- how do you think it would have gone down if Brown had, on similar grounds, refused to debate Cameron at the last election? Cameron is at least as much an apologist for genocide as Craig is, given that he heads up a party which cheerfully oversaw a few of them, and yet I don't think that we'd all be standing around nodding about Brown's forthrightness and refusal to deal with cretinous delinquents. Rather, we'd call him a transparently terrified buffoon and find very few opinions to the contrary. So what's the big difference with this?
My respect for David Cameron is pretty much negligible, but nevertheless I wouldn't let the claim that he's an apologist for genocide pass without asking for some kind of evidence. Saying that he heads a party that oversaw a few of them could be applied to any British political leader (it was Gladstone who invaded Egypt, after all). So that's the difference: Craig has, at least, actually written stuff arguing that supposed genocides were morally acceptable, whereas Cameron hasn't, as far as I know.
When you say the AV, are you talking about the King James Bible of 1611? I know it's the darling of many US Protestant groups, but what makes it so bad?
Almost no one uses the 1611 edition of the KJV. A lot of people think they do, but they actually use later revisions with modernized spellings and various other minor changes. My late grandfather got a lot of KJV-only types at his church to change their mind by giving them reproductions of the original 1611 edition, which they could barely read.
The original KJV was written to be archaic when first released, under the idea that it would give the scripture greater gravitas. Older translations like the Geneva bible sound much more modern. The main reason for the KJV was an attempt to suppress more popular English translations that were filled with commentary attacking the notion of the divine right of kings. A real KJV contains no commentary other than a brief preface explaining the translation process.
I wouldn't say that KJV is bad (it is certainly much better than NIV), but there are several better options available. We have many more ancient manuscripts available today than we did in 1611.
Hence why I called him a showman. He just goes around repeating the same crappy argument over and over again. It's as if he only wants to preach to the choir, rather than convert people. He likes to give himself the out that if people don't convert, it's their own fault, and his arguments are true even though he might be a crappy apologist. Whatever. I still can't blame Dawkins for not wanting to give this guy more attention than he deserves.
About the Jesus-as-buddhist theory:
You would think that you could dismiss this on strictly theological grounds, apart from biblical history.
If we trust almost any part of the bible as a source on Jesus's teachings, then Jesus either wasn't a Buddhist by the time he taught, or was an exceptionally bad Buddhist.
About the Jesus-as-buddhist theory:
You would think that you could dismiss this on strictly theological grounds, apart from biblical history.
If we trust almost any part of the bible as a source on Jesus's teachings, then Jesus either wasn't a Buddhist by the time he taught, or was an exceptionally bad Buddhist.
The majority of what Jesus taught was in line with the Old Testament, and with the Judaism of his day (especially the school of Hillel the Elder). The core of his message, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind" and "love thy neighbor as thyself," are actually direct quotes from Leviticus.
When you say the AV, are you talking about the King James Bible of 1611? I know it's the darling of many US Protestant groups, but what makes it so bad?
It's not that it's an intrinsically bad translation, although it's obviously been superseded by superior ones since then. It's that it's four hundred years old and written in language that no-one uses today. When people quote Homer, or Plato, or Aquinas, or any other very old author, they do not quote translations that are centuries old. Why would they? So why do so with the Bible? The AV is not the Bible, it is simply a particular translation of the Bible that a lot of Americans still use but which is quite obsolete. If you're interested in what the Bible actually says rather than what some Americans use in church then it's simply perverse to use it. I suspect that Richard Dawkins cites it because it makes the Bible seem old and irrelevant. I suspect that the BBC film cites it because it makes the Bible seem holy and institutional. Neither of these is helpful in rational discussion.
About the Jesus-as-buddhist theory:
You would think that you could dismiss this on strictly theological grounds, apart from biblical history.
If we trust almost any part of the bible as a source on Jesus's teachings, then Jesus either wasn't a Buddhist by the time he taught, or was an exceptionally bad Buddhist.
Well, quite. That film tries to draw parallels between Jesus' teachings in the New Testament and Buddhist thought, but they're pretty feeble, and in fact there's precious little similarity between them.
Of course Jesus would have read the Old Testament - it would have been unthinkable not to have. He quotes the Old Testament frequently in the Gospels and he is portrayed as reading it. Jesus' teaching, as portrayed in the Gospels, is wholly in line with mainstream contemporary interpretations of the Law and the Prophets. For example, his summary of the Law (Matthew 22:40) was a standard one of the time.
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