Ask a Theologian IV

[Atticus]

About Buddhist Jesus: I didn't watch the documentary since I recently read a critique by a honoured theologian of it. but anyhow... I think Jesus is associated with Buddhism because both of the teachings skirt around same things, namely, how a person can improve their own life by being kind to others, not judging and by forgiving instead.

Since there is connection in teachings, it's natural to try to find historical or metaphysical connections between these. Personally, I think the connection exists because both of the views are inspired by the Truth (let's call it that ok). Both Siddharta and Jesus were enlightened, and fitted what they understood into their own world and metaphysics.

Long time I called myself agnostic (or ignostic), but now've came to think, why not call hat truth they saw God? Ok, one good reason is that the word has historical burden, but that burden can be turned into advantage too, and it wouldn't be the first time a reserved word is used for whole other purpose.

Anyhow, to add some theological significance to this blabbering, I've understood that Baha'i guys think all the religions are basically the same and from the same god, given just differently to people in different times and cultures.

 

[Arakhor]

I've only ever used the KJV (a Cambridge University Press edition with the two-page Epistle Dedicatory at the beginning), so I'm entirely used to reading the Bible in archaic English. What would you say would be a good modern alternative?

 

[Plotinus]

About Buddhist Jesus: I didn't watch the documentary since I recently read a critique by a honoured theologian of it. but anyhow... I think Jesus is associated with Buddhism because both of the teachings skirt around same things, namely, how a person can improve their own life by being kind to others, not judging and by forgiving instead.

Since there is connection in teachings, it's natural to try to find historical or metaphysical connections between these. Personally, I think the connection exists because both of the views are inspired by the Truth (let's call it that ok). Both Siddharta and Jesus were enlightened, and fitted what they understood into their own world and metaphysics.

Long time I called myself agnostic (or ignostic), but now've came to think, why not call hat truth they saw God? Ok, one good reason is that the word has historical burden, but that burden can be turned into advantage too, and it wouldn't be the first time a reserved word is used for whole other purpose.

Anyhow, to add some theological significance to this blabbering, I've understood that Baha'i guys think all the religions are basically the same and from the same god, given just differently to people in different times and cultures.

There are two related problems with that sort of approach. The first is that whatever similarities there may be between Jesus' teaching and the Buddha's, there are an awful lot of differences. Buddhism is all about reducing suffering by eliminating desire. There's nothing in Jesus' teaching about that. Jesus' teaching is all about God and focusing on him, which is alien to the Buddha's thought, as is the notion of the imminent Kingdom of God which is absolutely central to Jesus' preaching as described in the Synoptics. They may both say that you should be kind to other people and not be judgemental, but I don't think you have to be enormously enlightened to realise that. It's a bit like saying that JFK and Bertrand Russell were in basic agreement on everything because they both had lots of affairs. Yes, they are similar in that rather narrow regard, but of course they differed on all sorts of other things, and the fact that each had lots of affairs is not the most important thing about them.

The similarities between Jesus' teaching and Buddha's - to the extent that there are any - can surely be adequately explained by the hypothesis that they were both reasonably nice and insightful. I don't see any need to bring in either a historical hypothesis of some kind influence from one on the other, or a metaphysical hypothesis that they were both in touch with some kind of higher truth.

The second problem is that whenever someone says that two religions or religious teachers are saying basically the same thing, this always reflects the speaker's own views more than it does those of the religions in question. So, for example, if someone says that Jesus and the Buddha were basically saying the same thing, then that person is saying that the elements of Jesus' and the Buddha's teaching that overlap are more important and fundamental to their thought than the elements that disagree. But that is begging the question.

It also risks being positively patronising. John Hick is a well known example of this. Hick argues that Christianity needs a "Copernican revolution" in which Christians stop assuming that their own religion is the true one and judging everyone else's religion by how closely it approximates to Christianity. Instead, he says, we should recognise that all religions, including Christianity, are attempts to get at the Truth, and all of them may have parts of that Truth. This sounds very noble until you try to think out the actual details. After all, what counts as a religion that has part of the Truth? Does Nazism have part of the Truth, or Satanism? Hick's answer is that different religions have different understandings of Reality, and a religion is true inasmuch as it grasps Reality and teaches that human beings are dependent upon Reality for happiness and salvation. Since Nazism and Satanism do not teach this, they don't count as truthful religions; but Christianity and Buddhism do teach it, so they have part of the truth. The problem is that Hick's own criterion - that a religion must teach the existence of "Reality" and that human beings are dependent upon it for salvation - sounds an awful lot like Christianity with the names changed. Why should that be what makes a religion good or bad? Isn't it rather patronising to walk up to a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Muslim and tell them that their religion is good because it includes an element that more or less meshes with your own beliefs? They might think that that element isn't particularly important to their religion - who are you to tell them otherwise?

This is why, although it's valuable and often helpful to look at the similarities between religions and see that everyone isn't so different after all, it's rather counter-productive if you take it too far. It's a mistake to assume that people have to agree if they're going to get on - far better to recognise each other's differences and respect them as such, and not try to tell other people what they believe.

I've only ever used the KJV (a Cambridge University Press edition with the two-page Epistle Dedicatory at the beginning), so I'm entirely used to reading the Bible in archaic English. What would you say would be a good modern alternative?

The RSV, or the NRSV. That is the standard one.

 

[SeekTruthFromFacts]

The RSV, or the NRSV. That is the standard one.

In my experience, it's now impossible to get an RSV in the UK. I assume this is because the publishers need to get back their investment in the new version. The RSV was the prescribed translation for my degree, and I could only find a bizarre edition with the 'less important' bits in smaller type!!

If you liked the old RSV, your best bet is an ESV. No thees and thous though.

 

[timtofly]

Jesus and Buddha?

1. Jesus was getting back to the roots of the Law, and bypassing Judaism?

2. Hebrews and Asians are of the same familia?

Seems to me both are oriental and both having the same roots. Ideology wise they are different than European, even though at the time of Jesus, the Jews were Hellenized.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

"Oriental" is a very broad category with no real defining features other than being to the east of us westerners. India and Europe share common Indo-European roots with each other which they do not with the Semitic Israelites.

 

[timtofly]

"Oriental" is a very broad category with no real defining features other than being to the east of us westerners. India and Europe share common Indo-European roots with each other which they do not with the Semitic Israelites.

Even 2500-3000 years ago?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Probably more so then than now, but less so than a thousand years before that.

 

[Plotinus]

Jesus and Buddha?

1. Jesus was getting back to the roots of the Law, and bypassing Judaism?

I don't see any evidence for that at all. To be honest even the term "Judaism" is somewhat misleading when talking about Jesus' day. This is partly because it risks raising associations that have nothing to do with the first century (much of what we think of as "Jewish" culture is really eastern European culture, and many of the distinctive features of Jewish religion derived from the rabbinic movement which began after the destruction of the Temple) - rather as calling the Roman equestrian order "knights" may be accurate in one sense but brings in a whole load of misleading cultural baggage in another. The other reason why "Judaism" is potentially misleading is that Judaism in Jesus' day was far more varied and fragmented than it would later be, to the extent that one could legitimately talk about "Judaisms" in the plural. In fact, if the Gospels are to be believed, Jesus nailed his religious colours pretty firmly to the mast of the relatively liberal Pharisaic tradition associated with Hillel the Elder, as has already been pointed out. The fact that Matthew 22:23-33 presents the Sadducees as assuming that Jesus shares distinctive Pharisaic beliefs such as the resurrection of the dead confirms this (as does Jesus' response, which indicates that they are right in this assumption).

2. Hebrews and Asians are of the same familia?

Seems to me both are oriental and both having the same roots. Ideology wise they are different than European, even though at the time of Jesus, the Jews were Hellenized.

As MagisterCultuum said, that's just far too broad. One might as well say that from a Chinese person's point of view Hebrews and Europeans are western and have the same roots.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

Was there any consideration among early Christians to disregard Judaism and thus make Christianity a new religion entirely?

 

[Berzerker]

1) Why is it called "original sin" when Adam and Eve were the only people who sinned? I know they're supposedly our parents but isn't it weird that all the other people who did not sin eventually got wiped out while God saved the original sinner's lineage?

2) And if this "original sin" is something quite important, does this mean Adam and Eve were given an ability the other people did not possess?

3) Were the 6th day people also like Adam and Eve before obtaining the knowledge, ie still "innocent" kinda like the critters?

 

[Yui108]

I was browsing through some of the old versions of this thread, and came across this post in which you said "Of course Christianity wasn't founded in Europe. It was founded in the Middle East, and indeed until the late Middle Ages it was more successful in central and southern Asia than it was in Europe (the Church of the East at one time dwarfed the Catholic and Orthodox churches put together)."
So are you saying there were more Nestorians than Orthodox and Catholics until the 15th century? This would be quite surprising

 

[civ2]

Whiskey
1. What ELSE do you think happened???
2. What began as a diluted antivirus version for noobs, turned into a huge virus that spams itself over the internet.
(Kinda like the one that shows you "You have a gazillion of viruses at your computer" - whereas the only virus is the program itself... LIKE THESE...)

 

[Plotinus]

Was there any consideration among early Christians to disregard Judaism and thus make Christianity a new religion entirely?

Of course. That is what Marcionism was all about. Marcion wanted to remove all elements of Judaism from Christianity, a process which involved taking a pair of scissors to the New Testament with rather ruthless results, and the churches he founded survived for a fair time. One might see at least some forms of gnosticism as having similar aims (and indeed Marcion is sometimes, though controversially, classified as a kind of gnostic). However, such attempts were generally regarded as heretical by the mainstream church, to the extent that such a thing existed.

1) Why is it called "original sin" when Adam and Eve were the only people who sinned? I know they're supposedly our parents but isn't it weird that all the other people who did not sin eventually got wiped out while God saved the original sinner's lineage?

I don't know what you mean by saying that Adam and Eve were the only people who sinned. Orthodox Christianity holds that everyone has sinned, including all of Adam and Eve's descendants, at least for those Christians who think that Adam and Eve were real people. It's called "original sin" because it was the first sin, i.e. the sin that was the origin of all the others.

2) And if this "original sin" is something quite important, does this mean Adam and Eve were given an ability the other people did not possess?

There is a strong tradition in some elements of Christianity since at least Augustine to stress the prelapsarian abilities of Adam and Eve. That is, to say that they had all sorts of powers and abilities that were subsequently lost in the Fall. For Augustine the most important of these was the ability to choose between good and evil, which he thought was effectively lost as a result of sin. So on this view, they had abilities that we lack, but this isn't because God favoured them in some special way but because they lost these abilities themselves by misusing them.

It's interesting to note that much of the seventeenth-century rise of modern science was motivated by a desire to regain the lost abilities of Adam and Eve. For example, Hooke spent so much time investigating the world of microscopy because he thought that he was rediscovering the minute details that Adam, with his superior prelapsarian vision, could see unaided. So this belief in prelapsarian perfection has had more of an influence on intellectual history than one might think.

3) Were the 6th day people also like Adam and Eve before obtaining the knowledge, ie still "innocent" kinda like the critters?

I don't know what you mean by this.

I was browsing through some of the old versions of this thread, and came across this post in which you said "Of course Christianity wasn't founded in Europe. It was founded in the Middle East, and indeed until the late Middle Ages it was more successful in central and southern Asia than it was in Europe (the Church of the East at one time dwarfed the Catholic and Orthodox churches put together)."
So are you saying there were more Nestorians than Orthodox and Catholics until the 15th century? This would be quite surprising

Not quite the fifteenth century, but perhaps the late fourteenth, since it was the invasions of Tamerlane that really crushed the Church of the East. It had been declining in many areas thanks to the Arab invasions centuries earlier, but Tamerlane had a special hatred for it and pretty much destroyed it throughout much of the area. For example, what is now Iraq was still a largely Christian area before Tamerlane got there.

 

[civ2]

Orthodox Christianity holds that everyone has sinned, including all of Adam and Eve's descendants

Ahem???
1. The word "including" is definitely weird here (you already said "everyone").
As if not all people are their descendants.
2. If no one ever was truly righteous - what point would there be to give commandments and even starting such a project???
(Why I'm asking is, cause according to the JEWISH view, everyone has the ability to NOT sin the ENTIRE life, though this is a truly RARE thing.)
ALSO, the thing about Augustine (lost the ability to CHOOSE between good and evil) is plain stupid - cause it says we are:
a. Choiceless robots (and we know we do have the free choice to choose).
b. Born to be punished (and we know that the very idea of commandment implies we do have a choice).
c. Etc.

 

[Plotinus]

Ahem???
1. The word "including" is definitely weird here (you already said "everyone").
As if not all people are their descendants.

No. There are, on the one hand, Adam and Eve, and, on the other, there are all their descendants. So there are some people who are not descendants of Adam and Eve, namely Adam and Eve themselves. The questioner seemed to think that Christians believe that Adam and Eve are the only people who sinned. I pointed out that Christians believe that all their descendants sinned as well.

2. If no one ever was truly righteous - what point would there be to give commandments and even starting such a project???
(Why I'm asking is, cause according to the JEWISH view, everyone has the ability to NOT sin the ENTIRE life, though this is a truly RARE thing.)

Paul had all sorts of answers to that, which weren't particularly consistent with each other, as you can tell if you read Galatians and Romans - ranging from the idea that the Law was given specifically to condemn everyone to the idea that it was given as a sort of nursemaid to the idea that it is an oppressive evil force.

Personally I don't really see the problem. The difficulty lies not in giving commands that cannot be obeyed but in blaming people for not obeying them.

The Augustinian view would be that people can be responsible for the things they have done even if they had no ability to do otherwise, because they still chose to do those things. They choose it using their will, which is what makes it their own.

ALSO, the thing about Augustine (lost the ability to CHOOSE between good and evil) is plain stupid - cause it says we are:

Calling someone like Augustine of Hippo "plain stupid" isn't a very good idea. He may have been wrong about all sorts of things but he was undoubtedly far cleverer than any of us.

a. Choiceless robots (and we know we do have the free choice to choose).

I think this is wrong on three scores. First, we certainly do not "know" we have the free choice to choose. I don't see how anybody could know that, even if it happens to be true. Second, just because we can't choose between good and evil wouldn't mean we can't make choices. It would just mean we can't make choices of a certain kind. For example, it could still be the case that you can choose between two evil courses of action. Third, even if we can't make such choices, that wouldn't make us "robots".

b. Born to be punished (and we know that the very idea of commandment implies we do have a choice).

I don't see what the objection here is; perhaps we are born to be punished. You haven't given a reason why we can't be.

As I said above, Augustine would not deny that people have a choice. He simply said that they always make the wrong choice. If you choose to do something wrong, then you are morally responsible for that choice irrespective of whether you had the ability to do otherwise, because you willed it. Augustine was one of the first people to talk extensively about the "will" as a human choice-making faculty. If people aren't able to obey the Law, this is not the fault of the Lawgiver, and the Law is still the standard of right and wrong irrespective of whether people are able to follow it or not.

 

[civ2]

1. Again, it sounds like we're BOUND to sin, which makes the choice pointless.
2. If you limit the choice to the intention only (and actions being forced onto us 100%), then you're stuck with pointless punishment (for actions!) - and thus god=devil. (Plain idiotic, sorry.)
3. Again, by implying that G-d is blaming people for doing something they couldn't NOT do, you end up with an EVIL "god", which is not how we "define" Him (as 100% GOOD).
4. Sorry about Augustus - but I meant the ideas, not anyone personally.
5. http://www.delrifkah.com/Deuteronomy_30_15-20.htm

 

[El_Machinae]

It is a pretty common conclusion that the Abrahamic god is not actually 'good'. Not liking the conclusion of reasoning isn't often a good reason to ignore the reasoning, though.

 

[Leoreth]

But it all rests on Augustine's assumption that we in fact can't choose between good and evil. I'm in no way educated about his reasoning there, but as it's (shortly) presented here I share Civ2's skepticism that it makes sense to assume that considering the other factors mentioned and the consequences it would have.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

While Augustine may have been a very intelligent man, it does seem that he is treated as having far more authority than he ought to have, especially considering that he could not read the bible in its original languages.

No. There are, on the one hand, Adam and Eve, and, on the other, there are all their descendants. So there are some people who are not descendants of Adam and Eve, namely Adam and Eve themselves. The questioner seemed to think that Christians believe that Adam and Eve are the only people who sinned. I pointed out that Christians believe that all their descendants sinned as well.

Actually, I am pretty sure that the questioner is someone who considers the Genesis 2 creation account as describing an eighth day of creation, and thinks that Adam and Eve were two individuals created after God had already made other humans of both genders in his image on the sixth day. He views the lineage of Adam as one among many, and so inquires into how their fall would effect the peoples that most scripture believing Jews and Christians would deny ever existed.