[RD] Ask a Theologian V
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Gary Childress
Student for and of life
How does this relate to your previous comment about the comments in Ephesians regarding slavery not seeming all that "heinous"?
It doesn't. It relates to your comment about it being hard to discuss with victims of slavery, or the descendants of those victims.
Gary Childress
Student for and of life
How does it even relate to discussing slavery with the descendants of those victims? As I pointed out, "be fruitful and multiply" doesn't carry direct reference to rape. It seems entirely irrelevant to the discussion of slavery being condoned in the Bible.
Gary Childress
Student for and of life
Your analogy doesn't fit, though. So how does it matter? The point is condoning slavery can be seen as "heinous". It is literally saying slaves should obey their masters. It would literally be like saying "rape victims obey those who rape you." Saying that "be fruitful and multiply" is like that is a bit like saying "be hard working and industrious" must therefore imply slavery.
The take-home point from this is that the Bible doesn't directly tell us what to do: we have to interpret and apply even the most unmetaphorical passages, and we do that according to what we want them to say.
Gary Childress
Student for and of life
And (I will add) when we read something like John Rawls' A Theory of Justice or some other contemporary text we typically don't read it as though our personal salvation relies on abiding by every word to the letter. We read such books with a critical eye. But some of those same people who read contemporary theories critically (as they should) will not read the Bible critically. The Bible is considered "sacred" to many and to fundamentally question it seems to many to be an act of blasphemy. I question whether it's healthy to take a 2000+ year old text and NOT read it critically.
I suppose it depends on whether you think it was written by God or not. If it was, I don't imagine he's changed his mind particularly over the intervening centuries.
Not to my knowledge. Gregory was awesome.
I certainly don't think there's anything in the Bible that's so amazing it must have come from divine inspiration. There are lots of good bits in the Bible but nothing like that, at least as far as I can tell. Obviously as most of the Bible tends to assume not only the existence but the centrality of God, I'm not going to think it gets much right on that score, as I don't believe in God. But if I did, I'd point to 1 John as a pretty decent text for the most part.
Maybe some of the Psalms are pretty inoffensive? Or the less interesting dietary laws? I'm not sure. But then I wouldn't equate "getting it right" with "being uncontroversial". Quite the contrary really.
I think they're a bit unfair to the text there; this is what happens when people who aren't actually biblical scholars or well versed in the context of the times try to criticise something as if it were a contemporary text. E.g. they criticise it for being a "bad sermon" and lacking a clear theme, but of course it's not really a sermon and has been assembled from lots of sayings, so you'd expect that. They also accuse Jesus of inconsistency for teaching that the Law won't pass away while also breaking the Law, but Jesus is not presented in the Gospels as breaking the Law (though I think that the disciples do in Mark 2:23-28).
Sure, but you can't blame the Bible for that! I don't think you're right to say that the authors of the Bible try to present their work in the way described, certainly not the vast majority of them. The fundamentalist view of the Bible is a post-biblical phenomenon. And the context you're coming from will greatly colour how you approach this. If the most contact you've had with the Bible and with Christians is with American conservative evangelicals then certainly it will look to you like everyone treats the Bible in the way described and it will frustrate you. If, on the other hand, you come from a liberal Christian or academic background, people like that will hardly figure on your radar at all. I have had friends and colleagues from backgrounds like that for whom the Bible really is a record of humanity's attempt to understand God, with good bits and bad bits, and for whom the notion of treating the whole thing as a monolithic oracle from the mouth of God would be literally laughable; for them, fundamentalists exist only in the past or in strange foreign countries (or are all undergraduates) and aren't a serious concern.
I really don't think there's anything intrinsically unusual about the Bible in all of this. You mention Plato, but there have been people (e.g. Marsilio Ficino) who thought that Plato's work was all divinely inspired wisdom too. It's only because such views are so rare today that the Platonic corpus is treated as different in kind to the biblical corpus, but really what's the intrinsic difference between them, from the point of view of treating them as sources of wisdom? I'd say that the sensible thing to do would be to look at many sources of guidance and not expect any to be infallible guides. The Bible does no worse than most and better than many when read in the same way as others. The problem comes from expecting infallibility in the first place, not in the text that's fixated upon.
I don't see why not. Americans seem to have this general idea that slavery in America was far worse than ancient slavery. But while it's true that some slaves in the ancient world were well treated and led quite decent lives, one can also say the same thing of some slaves in America. Slaves in ancient Rome, for example, had absolutely no rights whatsoever, and were utterly dependent on their masters for their wellbeing. If the master felt like torturing or murdering his slave he had every legal right to do so. So no, it's true that a slave who is treated humanely is not as badly off as a slave who is treated badly, but that has always been true whenever slavery has existed. There's something quite unpleasant about attempts to justify Ephesians 6 on the grounds that slaves in antiquity were all perfectly happy and it was nothing like modern American slavery - as if you can somehow distinguish between Good Slavery and Bad Slavery.
Also, I don't want to seem pushy or ungrateful or anything, but you missed my question on Teilhard de Chardin.
Sorry - I haven't read any of his stuff at all, so I have no opinion!
Gary Childress
Student for and of life
Doesn't the Bible more or less say (in many places in fact) one ought to believe in God or else? People get caught up in stuff like that because the Bible has so much legitimacy as a prominent text in our society. Honestly, I read passages sometimes and just knowing it's the Bible makes me think; "gee, what if this were right? What if I am a blasphemer for not believing in God" or something. The word of God seems to carry a lot of weight to it. All someone needs to do is say, "God told me you're going to burn in hell." What am I supposed to do, prove him wrong? I could just think he's a nutter but then maybe that's sort of mean spirited for me to think that and doesn't really accomplish anything either.
Clearly you study the Bible objectively as an educated scholar but evangelicalism (or whatever it should be called) IS a big problem in the US from my (albeit limited) experience. I'm driving down the road occasionally and there'll be a couple young men on some street corner with signs saying the world is coming to an end or we need to get back to the Bible or something. I wonder if it wouldn't be just as effective to hold up a sign that says, "be kind to others, or else you'll be burned alive".
Creationists seriously want to teach creationism in public schools along side archaeology and paleontology and there are probably many thousands of young American Christians who seem to think the world was Created in 6 days and only 6000+/- years old. I've personally met some of them. I wrote to a University Astronomy professor once who even told me that he believed the universe was 6000 years old! A college professor!!??
They seem to literally think that if they don't believe that, then they are being unfaithful to God. I mean, the Bible is a sacred text and it says right in the beginning of it that the world was created in six days. Ergo it must be true. They seem to think that unless I start believing in the Bible then there's something wrong with me. Honestly, it really seems to be the opposite to me. I mean if human beings can be in such radical disagreement over the age of the earth based on the best data available then there will never be agreement on anything.
Many of us just don't know how to read the Bible as anything but a set of imperatives because the clergy basically teaches it that way. I've attended sermons before both Catholic and Protestant and Priests don't seem to encourage people to think critically toward the bible. It's not considered a historical text. There really seems to be some sort of fear among clergy that if they don't teach the Bible as sacrosanct then all moral pandemonium will break loose. I was raised completely outside the Church and I can assure you that I have not lived in moral pandemonium. I mean should we really look at this 2000+ year old text and think, well, there's an answer for everything in there?
timtofly
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The Hebrew Portion of the Bible is made up of the Writings of Moses, and the Law. Then there are the Prophets and Writings. It is alleged that God gave Moses the first 5 books directly. Most today do not accept that Moses even existed.
The Prophets were called that because they were supposed to have been inspired by God to tell what would happen to those who do not follow God and for the most part those who rejected the Law of Moses. They were given orally and scribed by those who were taught to write Hebrew on parchments or scrolls.
The rest is just called the writings. People wrote what they experienced or what was going on around them at that time.
The Christian part of the Bible is still just human writings on what the First Christians recalled happened. It was written from all different perspectives, from admonitions to what they did.
What is inspiration to begin with? Most people come up with ideas from the subconscious. They either reject such ideas, write them down, turn them into scientific inquiries, or turn them into works of art or music. Ideas are kicked around and used by humans or rejected. The Hebrews and Jews by extension have talked about the concept that G-d writes his word on the subconscious and it is then expressed to others. What was important was recorded and even commented on (the Talmud). Then they instructed others to memorize this even to the point that it could be recalled word for word. They expressed this as the heart, separate from the reasoning and thinking aspect of the mind. We know that the heart is just an organ today, but it would seem that it was the subconscious part of the mind that was separate from the normal thought processes. That is how we got the Scriptures we have today called the Bible. There is a lot of speculation why a majority of the greatest ideas that have entered the Human conscious have seemed to have come from Hebrew ancestry.
The reason why most humans today reject the Bible could come from the fact that religion has always been used as a control mechanism. That does not seem to be why we have the Bible though, except for the Law of Moses that was given to a particular group of humans. It seems to me that any one can take what I say, or what any one else says with a grain of salt, meaning that humans are capable of making decisions on their own without other humans telling them what to do. I think there are some humans that would prefer to keep others in the dark and enslave them to whatever whim they may have though. I don't see that as being why the Bible was written though. I think that at the time people were telling others their internal thoughts, which they claimed to be from God, is not that much different now as it was back then. If only God has control of the subconscious it would not make that much difference any ways. That is why some say there is no free will. I still say that free will is not the control mechanism of our thoughts, but what we do with the thoughts we do receive. Unless of course one feels they have no control over their actions. Is the Bible closer to a connection with a God we cannot experience? If God controls our thoughts, we experience God all the time, but we cannot separate the humanity from the divine.
If we claim that only a few people are in tune with God, we alienate a lot of humans and then it is just a control mechanism. I contend that all are in tune with God, it is obeying God that is the problem. Then there are those who claim our thoughts come from no where.
The Prophets were called that because they were supposed to have been inspired by God to tell what would happen to those who do not follow God and for the most part those who rejected the Law of Moses. They were given orally and scribed by those who were taught to write Hebrew on parchments or scrolls.
The rest is just called the writings. People wrote what they experienced or what was going on around them at that time.
The Christian part of the Bible is still just human writings on what the First Christians recalled happened. It was written from all different perspectives, from admonitions to what they did.
What is inspiration to begin with? Most people come up with ideas from the subconscious. They either reject such ideas, write them down, turn them into scientific inquiries, or turn them into works of art or music. Ideas are kicked around and used by humans or rejected. The Hebrews and Jews by extension have talked about the concept that G-d writes his word on the subconscious and it is then expressed to others. What was important was recorded and even commented on (the Talmud). Then they instructed others to memorize this even to the point that it could be recalled word for word. They expressed this as the heart, separate from the reasoning and thinking aspect of the mind. We know that the heart is just an organ today, but it would seem that it was the subconscious part of the mind that was separate from the normal thought processes. That is how we got the Scriptures we have today called the Bible. There is a lot of speculation why a majority of the greatest ideas that have entered the Human conscious have seemed to have come from Hebrew ancestry.
The reason why most humans today reject the Bible could come from the fact that religion has always been used as a control mechanism. That does not seem to be why we have the Bible though, except for the Law of Moses that was given to a particular group of humans. It seems to me that any one can take what I say, or what any one else says with a grain of salt, meaning that humans are capable of making decisions on their own without other humans telling them what to do. I think there are some humans that would prefer to keep others in the dark and enslave them to whatever whim they may have though. I don't see that as being why the Bible was written though. I think that at the time people were telling others their internal thoughts, which they claimed to be from God, is not that much different now as it was back then. If only God has control of the subconscious it would not make that much difference any ways. That is why some say there is no free will. I still say that free will is not the control mechanism of our thoughts, but what we do with the thoughts we do receive. Unless of course one feels they have no control over their actions. Is the Bible closer to a connection with a God we cannot experience? If God controls our thoughts, we experience God all the time, but we cannot separate the humanity from the divine.
If we claim that only a few people are in tune with God, we alienate a lot of humans and then it is just a control mechanism. I contend that all are in tune with God, it is obeying God that is the problem. Then there are those who claim our thoughts come from no where.
first, I think that lots of Asians would strongly disagree that the greatest ideas all came from the Hebrews and their descendants. Post your list of the "greatest ideas" in a thread and let's have that discussion.
Second, the Hindus' belief in the unity of all with god predate the Old Testament.
I'm not sure why 'God' would tell anyone that. The God in the OT seems a very firm believer in instant justice. So it's not really consistent with anything biblical. (Apart from something which the awesome Gregory of Nyssa pointed out, that an infinite God cannot be known by finite beings.)
Apart from what I just mentioned, this is not consistent with anything Jesus taught. (Although one should not exclude the possibility that Jesus himself believed it, it is nowhere mentioned explicitly.)
Another issue of inconsistency. Teaching astronomy (which has proved an universe aged several billions years of age) and holding a private belief that the world is about 6,000 years old. But as to the first point, creationism is not really a par with anything scientific. In other words, you can't 'teach' creationism 'alongside with' archeology and paleontology, as these are scientific disciplines.
As any Christian may point out, believing in God and taking the Bible literally are two very different things. (Leaving apart certain internal inconsistencies within the Bible itself. which already starts with Genesis containing two creation stories.)
Speaking of inconsistencies:
It this were true, then the slavery which 19th century Christians sought to abolish becomes rather unexplainable.
Which brings me to something Plotinus mentioned: the concurrence of abolishment of slavery and the spread of Christianity. While this suggests a correlation, it ignores the fact that slavery was an economic phenomenon (besides being a legal one). Simply abolishing slavery does not mean human bondage does not exist. Far from it - as the 19th century Tolstoy realized when contemplating serfs. And of course, the abolition of serfdom did not end human exploitation, as we all know.
In short, while slavery may have disappeared while Christianity spread, this may suggest a false correlation - that is, merely one of time. It does not prove to any effect that Christianity was the cause of this disappearance. Which would be consistent with the reappearance of the selfsame slavery centuries later. (As in: if the Most Catholic monarchs of Spain were really so appalled at Columbus's' enslaving of the native Americans, why weren't they equally appalled at the large scale introduction of black slaves - who remained such in spite of the fact that in time they became all Christians?
timtofly
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I will consider it. How much do we know about how the Hebrew bloodline is not mixed in with other Asian lines? We could also say the same thing about Arabs. Something to think about. I am not saying that any one people group has any more of a special connection with God, but that God may favor one Blood line with more knowledge than other bloodlines. That line would include Babylonians, Iranians, Indians, Chinese, All other Asian groups including Indonesia, North American Indians, South American Indians, Arabs, and Jews. It is also unclear how much Hebrew bloodlines muddied the European waters as well.
I never said unity of all with God, and that could very well be said of most if not all Eastern religious thought processes. The OT covers a lot of historical time span. I am not sure that the bulk of any Eastern Religion can truthfully claim a time before the dispersal of religion from Iran and the Fertile Crescent. That would be a claim that a group of humans would have split off hundreds of years earlier and somehow developed the same if not similar belief system. Hinduism started around 500 BCE, but the Babylonians had already set up camp and was influenced by the Hebrews at least 90 years, if not 200+ years prior to that. What we know as Judaism started much later, but you would have to throw out most of the History of the Jews as just made up, to prove there is a striking difference.
The reason Western thought is so much different can be blamed on the philosophy and reasoning of the Greeks and their influence on the Western Religious experience. The human form of God on earth can only be traced as a claim to 400 BCE. The claim is that Krishna was born in 3228 BCE. Noah was born in 3068 BCE. Krishna would have lived before the Flood. The Story of the Hebrews started with Abraham in 1813 BCE, and was allegedly made up around 500 BCE. Moses was born in 1391 BCE, and the Law came around 1270 BCE. Christians did not make up the story about the Law. Christians and Jews historically were at odds with each other from almost the start of Christianity. Jesus lived and died before Christianity, and is a proven historical person, but lived 400 years after the Hindu's claim to Krishna. The Law which was the reason that Jesus was born to die for, happened in a totally different time frame than Krishna. The Jews made a claim about the Law, and their history 100 years before the Hindu's made the claim about Krishna. The Babylonian captivity was between 580 BCE, and 510 BCE. The Jews claim that their Hebrews Scriptures were translated into Greek around 300 BCE until around 120 BCE. I am not sure how it can be confused that The 3 religions were trying to copy or even outdo each other for being the ambassadors of God.
I Quote: "The Vedic period is held to have ended around 500 BC. The period after the Vedic religion, between 800 BCE and 200 BCE, is the formative period for Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. According to Michaels, the period between 500 BCE and 200 BCE is a time of "ascetic reformism. Muesse discerns a longer period of change, namely between 800 BCE and 200 BCE, which he calls the "Classical Period""
The Vedic Period was between 1750 BCE and 500 BCE in Northern India. The Jews claim Moses and the Law happened between 1270 BCE and the captivity of 590 BCE.
I would have to conclude that two different people groups were developing and processing their own histories. Perhaps not totally separate from each other's influences, but were living out their own histories that neither one "made up" nor copied from the other group. I contend that there were people from Judea that were dispersed around 600 BCE throughout Asia, and even some Babylonian and Persian influences would have been noticeable in the Indo-Asia population, but not necessarily could it be said that Indo-Asian people groups headed to Judea and influenced Judaism. It may have been possible, but not probable. That there was a Greek influence was more pronounced. As a westerner, I am still putting together what I know about history, and there is a lot I do not know about what took place East of Iran, but for the most part what has been found from an archeological standpoint, does not totally rule out the biblical account.
Gary Childress
Student for and of life
It sounds like we are in agreement that American fundamentalist Christianity is pretty wacky.
I would note that it wasn't until my tenure in Off-Topic that I encountered people who genuinely thought that "Christianity" only applied to their particular Protestant sect. Literally just the other day, I accidentally ran into a web-answers page where someone was asking if it was okay for a "Christian" to marry a Catholic.
It sounds like we are in agreement that American fundamentalist Christianity is pretty wacky.
That's not quite how I would summarize it, but fundamentalists tend to have a bit of a tunnel vision view of what constitutes a true believer - leading to such questions as Arakhor mentioned "Can a Christian marry a Catholic?" I know from experience that they can, but possibly this is not the answer the poser is looking for.)
