It's from the red ink in Matthew.
Leftists
- Thread starter GhostWriter16
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Repetivelations cribbed from a lot from other Biblical writings.
Ajidica
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Ah, thanks. I still sort of like revelations due to the apparently LSD inspired passages and its theme that even existance will end. Offers a nice sense of closure.
Just to stay on topic, the social worker Dorothy Day was both Catholic (she converted as as adult) and was a fervent socialist. Shes just one of the examples in history but throught history people like her, St. Francis, and Mother Theresa seem to be the most common and well liked intepretations of Christian social obligations. I don't know anyone who hates Mother Theresa.
Just to stay on topic, the social worker Dorothy Day was both Catholic (she converted as as adult) and was a fervent socialist. Shes just one of the examples in history but throught history people like her, St. Francis, and Mother Theresa seem to be the most common and well liked intepretations of Christian social obligations. I don't know anyone who hates Mother Theresa.
I think the generation He is refering to is all humans.
Why does loving your neighbor have to be political?
Ajidica
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Loving your neighbor becomes political in exactly the same way 'Marriage is only between a man and a woman.' Its the theocratizing of secular politics. People confuse religion with morality and assume they are the same thing.
Love your neighbor has been a pretty common moral belief going back to Epicurian Hedonism with his Golden Mean idea. That might have been Aristotle though. Epicurus had a similar belief that was closer to 'love thy neigbor' but I'm blanking out on its exact name.
Using religion as a basis for determining morality is fine. Its when you make it into a theocracy it becomes bad. I've never really seen a stable, benevolent theocracy. At some time or another they violate their principles.
Love your neighbor has been a pretty common moral belief going back to Epicurian Hedonism with his Golden Mean idea. That might have been Aristotle though. Epicurus had a similar belief that was closer to 'love thy neigbor' but I'm blanking out on its exact name.
Using religion as a basis for determining morality is fine. Its when you make it into a theocracy it becomes bad. I've never really seen a stable, benevolent theocracy. At some time or another they violate their principles.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Because politics is just interpersonal ethics applied on a grand scale; it's not some sort of arcane and exclusive sphere. Any system of interpersonal ethics necessarily implies a broader set of political ethics, as most Christians throughout history have agreed- I would've though that a devout Roman Catholic such as yourself would be familiar with this sort of think, especially given that several Popes have actually developed political and economic systems to that effect. Even the nominally apolitical teachings of Jesus-as-Apocalypticist are still political, in their own very peculiar way; more or less everything is political, in some way or another.
And, for the record, "love thy neighbour" is excellent politics. If only, as Gandhi lamented, more Christians were more like their Christ...
I'll comment on this religious stuff briefly but I think it would be a good idea for the thread to get back on track - although it's hard to see how it can do so, given that the question in the OP has been pretty comprehensively answered.
The correct term is eschatological prophet, rather than apocalypse. Technically, apocalypse is a genre of literature concerned with exposing the true reality. Typically, apocalypses are eschatological in subject matter (that is, dealing with the end of the world) because it is at the end of the world that the true reality becomes apparent.
The interpretation of Jesus as basically an eschatological prophet is pretty common among New Testament scholars. It was of course Albert Schweitzer's interpretation of Jesus, and the basis for his claim that Jesus was a sort of tragic hero, who was fundamentally deluded and realised his delusion in his dying moments - hence his cry that God had abandoned him. More recently, a much more historically rigorous version of Jesus the eschatologist has been presented by E.P. Sanders.
The basic problem with Jesus is that the evidence goes in different directions. It's really about his Kingdom of God sayings and how you interpret them, but there are different categories of these sayings. There are sayings which seem to indicate that he was an eschatological prophet and thought that the Kingdom of God was coming soon and would break up the established world when it did. However, there are other sayings which suggest that the Kingdom is a worldly reality, existing within society or within the individual. So it's a matter of which sayings you take to be the most fundamental. I don't think there is any scholarly consensus on this matter.
Believe me, there are plenty of people who do.
That is a good way to get around the problem that Jesus apparently said something false, but it's a pretty strained interpretation. As far as I know, there is no reason to interpret the saying in this way other than out of a desire to avoid believing that Jesus said something false. And that's not a very good interpretative method.
In fact there is very good evidence that Jesus did believe that the Kingdom was coming very soon, and that this would be a great eschatological event. This evidence includes the fact that the early Christians all believed this too, and that they had to keep revising their expectations as it kept on not happening. You can follow the history of these revised expectations in the different books of the New Testament which date from different periods. I'm sure I've talked about this at greater length in the Ask a Theologian thread, linked to in my sig.
The correct term is eschatological prophet, rather than apocalypse. Technically, apocalypse is a genre of literature concerned with exposing the true reality. Typically, apocalypses are eschatological in subject matter (that is, dealing with the end of the world) because it is at the end of the world that the true reality becomes apparent.
The interpretation of Jesus as basically an eschatological prophet is pretty common among New Testament scholars. It was of course Albert Schweitzer's interpretation of Jesus, and the basis for his claim that Jesus was a sort of tragic hero, who was fundamentally deluded and realised his delusion in his dying moments - hence his cry that God had abandoned him. More recently, a much more historically rigorous version of Jesus the eschatologist has been presented by E.P. Sanders.
The basic problem with Jesus is that the evidence goes in different directions. It's really about his Kingdom of God sayings and how you interpret them, but there are different categories of these sayings. There are sayings which seem to indicate that he was an eschatological prophet and thought that the Kingdom of God was coming soon and would break up the established world when it did. However, there are other sayings which suggest that the Kingdom is a worldly reality, existing within society or within the individual. So it's a matter of which sayings you take to be the most fundamental. I don't think there is any scholarly consensus on this matter.
Believe me, there are plenty of people who do.
That is a good way to get around the problem that Jesus apparently said something false, but it's a pretty strained interpretation. As far as I know, there is no reason to interpret the saying in this way other than out of a desire to avoid believing that Jesus said something false. And that's not a very good interpretative method.
In fact there is very good evidence that Jesus did believe that the Kingdom was coming very soon, and that this would be a great eschatological event. This evidence includes the fact that the early Christians all believed this too, and that they had to keep revising their expectations as it kept on not happening. You can follow the history of these revised expectations in the different books of the New Testament which date from different periods. I'm sure I've talked about this at greater length in the Ask a Theologian thread, linked to in my sig.
Yared
That Guy
"All the people living at the same time or of approximately the same age."
How does that even make sense? You're bending the word generation, which explicit means people around the same age living at some specific point in time, to include all of Mankind?
One generation to cover 2000 years?
It's seems more like you're suspending your disbelief.
To be more precise, the word is not "generation", because Matthew's Gospel was written in Greek. The word is "genea", the meaning of which is all the people living at a given time (i.e. something very close to what we mean by "generation").
It appears fairly often in the New Testament, as anyone can find who bothers to use a concordance; indeed its first appearance is right at the start, in Matthew 1:17, where it is impossible for it to mean anything other than "generation". And in no known text, either in the New Testament or elsewhere, does it mean anything else. This is why those who claim that it means something else in Matthew 24:34 have no basis for this interpretation other than the fact that they want it to mean something else.
It appears fairly often in the New Testament, as anyone can find who bothers to use a concordance; indeed its first appearance is right at the start, in Matthew 1:17, where it is impossible for it to mean anything other than "generation". And in no known text, either in the New Testament or elsewhere, does it mean anything else. This is why those who claim that it means something else in Matthew 24:34 have no basis for this interpretation other than the fact that they want it to mean something else.
Yared
That Guy
Oops. 
Well, the fact that Jesus is quoting as saying that 'the stars will fall' pretty well shows anybody educated in the later half of the 20th century that the prophecy is false. It's as objectively silly as Mohammed saying that God uses shooting stars to shoot at devils.
I don't see why. If God is omnipotent he could make the stars fall if he wanted to, no matter what we know about them.
However, I must say again that this is going wildly off-topic. I don't want to have to do another thread split...
However, I must say again that this is going wildly off-topic. I don't want to have to do another thread split...
Yared
That Guy
Sorry, Plotinus...
What would a falling star be, exactly? Astronomically speaking, a star is just hanging in the middle of space. How would the act of "falling" take place?
But I suppose you're right. God could just create some new state of being.
What would a falling star be, exactly? Astronomically speaking, a star is just hanging in the middle of space. How would the act of "falling" take place?
But I suppose you're right. God could just create some new state of being.
They thought that meteorites and stars were the same thing, so he was just imagining that all the stars were 'shooting stars'.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
What would a falling star be, exactly? Astronomically speaking, a star is just hanging in the middle of space. How would the act of "falling" take place?
Hurling all stars towards Earth? I mean we'd all die in a fiery death long before they hit the surface but there's nothing logically inconceivable about it.
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
Actually, if you define falling as giving in to gravity ... and ignore a couple of other criteria ...
I think you mean meteors, not meteorites. However, the ancients didn't think that meteors were stars - they thought they were atmospheric phenomena, hence the name, which comes from the Greek word for atmosphere. It wasn't until the nineteenth century, incredibly, that meteors were confirmed to be extra-terrestrial.
No doubt an omnipotent God could arrange for the stars to fall without burning us all to death. He could transform the stars into small, cool objects and move them towards the Earth, for example. Or he could just prevent the heat or gravitational pull from harming us by suspending the normal operation of physical laws. He could do anything that's logically possible and he doesn't have to be constrained by the laws of physics, which govern only physical possibilities, not logical possibilities. He could move celestial bodies around and transform their natures as he pleases. So given an omnipotent God, it's quite false to say that our modern state of scientific knowledge makes it impossible that the stars will fall at the end of the world; you're just not thinking big enough.
That's just looking logically at the possibility of the claim, of course. It doesn't mean that there's any reason to think that this will actually happen or that there is an omnipotent God who will bring it about.
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