Well, I would say that you have to sincerely believe it, not just say it, but yes, belief in Christ makes one a Christian more than belief in the Bible.
The wheat and the chaff
- Thread starter Bozo Erectus
- Start date
One can believe the bible is the word of god, and still understand that it's a metaphor. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Swedishguy
Deity
"Because all my friends are christians!"
fugazi
King
Jesus might have been the Son of God but those that wrote down his words and teachings surely weren't. The fact one of them betrayed him while he was still alive should give us enough proof that they're as human as can be. What if they added their own thoughts to Jesus his words? What if they deliberately left things out? Sure, we may never find out unless we invent a time machine and I think if we were to do that - the one going back in time would be dubbed the new Son of God.
I think most people forgot who truly wrote this book, put it together and altered and edited it over the years. It's anything but pure and to truly believe and follow all that's written in it makes one a sheep.
Any faith that requires indoctrination to stay alive has no faith in itself. It assumes by default that it is flawed. I think it goes without saying I'm not a Christian and after two girlfriends who were, one a Catholic and one a Lutheran, I can say I'm permanently cured.
Go forth and write so that our children may never catch up on the complete truth.
Oh and as for people cherry-picking parts of the Bible they believe in ; welcome to the 21st century where people need to have the illusion of freedom to do and act as you want them to.
I think most people forgot who truly wrote this book, put it together and altered and edited it over the years. It's anything but pure and to truly believe and follow all that's written in it makes one a sheep.
Any faith that requires indoctrination to stay alive has no faith in itself. It assumes by default that it is flawed. I think it goes without saying I'm not a Christian and after two girlfriends who were, one a Catholic and one a Lutheran, I can say I'm permanently cured.
Go forth and write so that our children may never catch up on the complete truth.
Oh and as for people cherry-picking parts of the Bible they believe in ; welcome to the 21st century where people need to have the illusion of freedom to do and act as you want them to.
PrincepsAmerica
Nothingness made flesh
Bozo, how the hell have you gotten it into your head that God can't speak in metaphors? What clear-minded logic or yours makes that a reasonable belief just after you'd agreed earlier in this thread that Jesus himself spoke in parables. It just comes accross as a load of biased crap you've brought in to your judgement of how people should read the Bible.
C.S. Lewis, for example, one of the most widely approved of modern Christian theologians, basically believed that religion itself was one giant metaphor. Not that that would matter to you, clearly he's just a "neo Christian" aka a Christian just like the ones you rejected already like Augustine. I guess somehow Augustine is a "Neo Christian"? Or could it be that the literalists, who only recently arose in 19th century English-speaking world are the ones bringing something new to the table?
Now, if you've read and understood my posts and the links I gave I would hope you shouldn't be so confused still. I'm not bewildered by your opinion itself, I'm more just baffled at why you push it with such passion and self-assuredness. You sweep aside thousands of years of Christian tradition, among which theologians have sprung up who were far more intelligent than you or me, with an interesting combination of disdain and single-mindedness.
I guess if you're mission is to prove that pretty much all Christians, past and present, are doing their own religion wrong somehow, nothing I say will stop you. But you could at least stop portraying yourself as a disinterested party who's just telling like it is. I love you Bozo but you're lost on this one.
Bozo Erectus
Master Baker
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I think I said more than once in the thread that parables and metaphors are teaching tools, and that just because they can be found in the Bible, doesnt mean that everything in the Bible is a metaphor. Is Genesis supposed to be a parable? How about the Flood, Noah and his Ark? The story of David and Goliath? The plagues God sent to Egypt, and the parting of the Red Sea? I could go on and on. You can chop the branches off of a tree up to certain point, but if you keep going, the tree dies.
Ohhhhh, I just got something. Your focus is on the great Christian thinkers throughout history. Extremely intelligent and well educated men who wrestled to somehow find some plausible, rational way of reconciling their powerful intellects with the irrationality of religion. Sure, throughout the history of Christianity, smart people like them couldnt swallow the Bible, theyd choke on it. While St Augustine was coming up with all of his rationalizations, at that same moment in time, were the preachers shouting from the pulpit that the Bible and all of religion is all just one big metaphor? Of course not. Not many do that even today. Now, we could have an argument about whether you can get a more accurate snapshot of a religion at any given moment in time, by speaking to the parishioners filling the pews, or by checking with the relatively small handfull of theologians alive at the same moment.
I think that when those hyper intelligent people were alive, they had their time to think about these things, ask questions and come to their own conclusions. Now its our turn. We're alive and theyre dead. The dead shouldnt have veto power over what the living can think.
I do feel like Im telling like it is, but even though I say Im no longer Christian, it doesnt mean that I have no interest in it.
Thanks
But I suspect what Im lost in is your intricate maze created with the old opinions of people who are long dead and buried.
Veritass
Emperor
Indeed, for God to express in a way that humans can understand, metaphor is practically required.
And that's not going all the way to the assumption that all language is metaphor.
Bozo but ahhh, ahhhhhh.
I refer the honourable gentleman to the argument I gave some moment ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgSn7VG5Odc&mode=related&search=
And.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70IAwHTzrHI
And of course.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q-DO6Bav4I
Mate your spinning a semantic web, belief isn't black and white, if it is your a fundie minority and those guys are scarey.
I refer the honourable gentleman to the argument I gave some moment ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgSn7VG5Odc&mode=related&search=
And.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70IAwHTzrHI
And of course.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q-DO6Bav4I
Mate your spinning a semantic web, belief isn't black and white, if it is your a fundie minority and those guys are scarey.
Nylan
Characters Welcome
If you believe in Christ wholeheartedly you will believe his word to be truth.
Whether it is literal or metaphorical has little or no bearing on whether or not you are a Christian. Because you have the wrong idea on a doctrine (because you didn't know better!) does not mean you are condemned forever
It's when you know better that things become a problem
Whether it is literal or metaphorical has little or no bearing on whether or not you are a Christian. Because you have the wrong idea on a doctrine (because you didn't know better!) does not mean you are condemned forever
It's when you know better that things become a problem
Now, I accept all of Christ's words. But I cannot accept that ever single phrase in the Bible is truly his. " . . . as far as it is translated correctly" and all that.
Nylan
Characters Welcome
well naturally the accuracy of the record is in question, hence the JST
but the point was denying the bible as a whole or even parts of it (Story of Moses for example) is a contradictory action for one who accepts Christ. If you believe in Christ, you will believe his words (whatever those words may be)
PrincepsAmerica
Nothingness made flesh
Well you were the one implying there could be no metaphors. You admit now that they do exist in the Bible? That's good. Anyhow I have to reiterate my earlier point that you're ignoring the subtleties of exegesis that I hinted at before. In fact I didn't hint I gave you an explicit link to the Catholic Encyclopedia all about it. Last time I checked most scholars who analyze the Bible don't have black and white categories of "THIS A HISTORICAL EVENT THAT COMPLETELY HAPPENED" and "OMG THIS IS ALL FAKE TO JUST MAKE A POINT". There are shades and context which I don't have the time to study not being a Christian, but if you would just do some research you'd see that the people who make a life out of analyzing the books of the Bible have a complexly shaded system based on different contexts, different authors, and different messages. It's immensely close minded of you to push this essentially false dichotomy.
Now read very carefully, because it comes down to this (and I'm getting tired of making these points and you basically ignoring them for your next opportunity to take a swipe at basically any Christian you don't agree with): There's no way, without some education on the subject, that you will truly understand the meaning and context of texts which for instance, written 3,000 years ago, for a Semitic tribe in the Middle East in Hebrew. There are more genres than blatant parable or literal history. That's all there is to it. You've made a false dichotomy and you need to educate yourself on why it's false.
Yes that would be your biased interpretation of their motivations. Regardless you actually did not get why I mentioned those men right at all. I mention Augustine and Aquinas and the whole of traditional Christian teaching to show you how the people who believed fully in those texts interpreted them. It's a useless ad hominem for you to disregard them automatically for a couple reasons. First of all, you are arrogantly defining a religion you are not a part of against the teaching of it's majority throughout history. Second of all you are saying whatever way you interpret the Bible is clearly the correct, literal way. It's interesting isn't it how all the common sense literalist interpretations always turn out different.
I think that when those hyper intelligent people were alive, they had their time to think about these things, ask questions and come to their own conclusions. Now its our turn. We're alive and theyre dead. The dead shouldnt have veto power over what the living can think.
I do feel like Im telling like it is, but even though I say Im no longer Christian, it doesnt mean that I have no interest in it.
Thanks
How does the fact that someone is dead devalue their opinion. In fact it would seem the democratic thing to give those billions who are dead a fair vote. They shouldn't have veto power, but neither should we, especially you or me when neither of us have any formal Theological education. And you are still persisting in Bibliocentrism. You need to understand that Christianity is not Islam and the Bible is not the center of the religion that the Koran is to Muslims. But I'm not going to push the point any more because you just completely ignore it.
I'm really running out of things to say here Bozo, either you can acknowledge that the vast majority of Christians throughout history and up until this day and their leaders and theologians who taught such are in fact fully consistent Christians, or just say that somehow a few pure literalists (who in truth are not purely so because as we've already acknowledge that the Bible is filled with symbolism and metaphors) and Bozo Erectus are the only ones who truly know how to be Christian.
Quasar1011
King of Sylvania
In at least one place, the writer did:
Mark 13:14
"When you see 'the abomination that causes desolation' standing where it does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains."
That was simply added for emphasis in the Greek. In Hebrew, the emphatic article eht (aleph-tahv in Hebrew, which would be alpha-omega in Greek) could have been used. There is no translation for the emphatic article into English.
The writers recorded exactly what God wanted them to!
2nd Peter 1:19-21
And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
The Apostle John did deliberately leave things out. Why?
John 21:25
Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.
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