a deep, philosophical question

What difference hundreds of years make...Theology was at one time considered one of the most scholarly pursuits undertaken.

I contend that society is in the downward spiral it currently finds itself because so many church goers have no conception of how to "think God's thoughts after him." [In my seminary days, this was the best definition I ever heard concerning Theology.] If we did, we'd certainly reach out lovingly across the religious divide...without malice or forethought. We'd care more about being the selfless servants of this world instead of browbeating so many with platitudes that do not reach where they are in life.

In his book How Do I Live For God, Dr. D. James Kennedy concludes all too well...

"Ours is an era of malnourished church members who have been spoon-fed tapioca and cheesecake religion until their spiritual stomachs are bloated and their hearts are clogged with the cholesterol of meaningless 'I wanna be me' self-fulfillment".

If we were truly "others centered" the world would behold the substance of the study of theology, after all.

Steven King

 

Rich is "rich,"

but has no one seen "Bedazzled?" (1966)
[You can cheat. Just look it up at imdb.com
and read viewer reviews....]

--Orson

 

Pascal's wager is fine but what if you put your money on the wrong horse (religion?) Perhaps you have a better chance of heaven on earth if you buy a lottery ticket?

 

This is exactly what Karl Marx propogated, and the result--almost a century of political/social corruption. Or as a great man once called it, an "evil empire."

However, the opposite would seem to be true. Those who believe in a literal hell are not the ignorant masses, they are the most illuminated of all.

 

I have challenge to propose to all of you theologians:


Without begging the question, what is the logical argument that Jesus Christ is the savior of the World. In other words, what makes Christians think that the Holy Bible is the word fo GOD! This question cannot be logically answered by quoting scripture because you are using the very thing that is in question as proof of its fidelity. If the goal is to convince the masses that the book is right, it is really convenient to state that it is right because it says so and have people accept it. Futhermore, how do you reconcile the differences in the doctrines of the mainstream organzized religions without eventially having to say, "I am right, but you have got to have faith?"

Trust me, I don't mean to alienate anyone, but I have been through this spiritual journey that has led me through Christianity, to this place of unwavering belief in the perfectness of the Universe, without reliance on faith.

I eagerly await your comments!

 

Reagan and hell and communists, oh my:

There was more to the "evil empire" than communism, and more to communism than Marxism, and more to Marxism than the belief that religion is the proverbial opiate of the masses (an idea that did not originate with Marx), and more to that belief than the doctrine of hell (Marx was more concerned with earthly religious power structures).

The person who gave birth to the evil empire was Stalin; if Lenin's reins had been picked up by a more conscientious figure (and there were friendlier candidates--Stalin had them all killed, imprisoned, or exiled), the USSR could have been our most loyal ally. My reading of Marx is that he was personally antireligious but would not have supported religious oppression; all he would have asked for was full church-state separation. (Those of you who have spent a little more time reading Das Kapital may feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)


Cheers,

 

The best argument I've seen in favor of the Bible's inerrancy is Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands a Verdict, but since I don't personally believe in the Bible's inerrancy, I don't know how much that recommendation is worth.



Cheers,

 

===================================


I don't think McDowell's two books (there is a 'More Evidence" too, Tom) are much of an argument for inerrancy. In fact, as I sit here looking at the table of contents of both books by Josh, I don't think he goes into inerrancy at all -a subject that interests me more than the issue of basic inspiration. You may know that that topic is a hot debate now within "Christendom." Inerrancy gets into tricky hermeneutical areas of grammar and lexics and textual transmission which I so love to study. Tell you what, were anyone wanting to "scrap" willing to even feign belief .or honestly believe, in the general inspiration of Scripture regardless of what theory or degree he'd opt for (eg genius, illumination, partial, plenary, verbal, or mechanical) would in this mock debate then care to deny inerrancy, while pretending or holding commitment to basic inspiration understand, then I'd hop aboard with ready rhetoric. I shouldn't do this either as I like all of us have plenty else to do. But personally I don't find apologetic challenges such as "Is there a God" or "Is the Bible true" very inspiring!

======================================

 

Isn't personal belief interesting? You ask for defense apart from faith, which belies the faith vs. reason understanding of Christianity.

Where greater faith is required, less reasoning is employed and vice versa...Faith is not the antithesis of reason - it helps us to "see" what can't be seen. Cf...Hebrews 11:1...

So, I choose to believe that if God desired to give 40 or so authors, over a period of 1100 (or 1200, or 1500) years, the wherewithal to write a histiography of the nation of Israel...
And further choose to believe from the humble beginnings of that nation would come an understanding to the nonending conflict in the Middle East...
And understand that from the lineage of David would come the Nation's greatest prophet...

It is not "illogical" to believe that this prophet would completely fulfill the covenantal relationship desired between God and those he labeled his own. It does require faith to understand that lowly, little ole me could ever appropriate a relationship with God based on what this prophet accomplished.

I have learned to be charitable to those who understand the nuances of Christianity differently, than I...

For instance, Russell Morris pastors a Church of God (Cleveland, TN), the same denomination in which I originally sought ministerial licensure, but I can not affiliate with this denomination any more because I am persuaded along more cessationist lines with respect to spiritual gifts. I have come to appreciate Russell's posts and point-of-view...but I suspect we'd differ on spiritual giftedness.

I don't believe in New Testament tithing and have read some pretty interesting defenses of amillenialism---although I'd call myself premillenial and pretribulational. Five point Calvinism and Arminian teachings both leave things to be desired...and perhaps The Reign of the Servant-Kings by Joseph Dillow is really on to something.

I have books by Bishop Spong in my library but agree with very little he writes. I like Yancey[because our pathways have been similar] and Lucado[because he's a great storyteller]...and think Steven Covey would make an incredible Christian.

It is obvious you've been burned in your spiritual pilgrimage. Many of us carry battle scars from members of the religious establishment that have shaped our current understandings of what it means to have faith.

I remain,
Steven King

 

NO Tom...

If Lenin had survived, Stalin's evil could have been avoided in Utopia (Tom says differently: "loyal [US] ally").

BUT the view that the Gulag and Pogroms and Police State was all Stalin's fault--that he uniquely "gave birth to the evil empire"-- has been definitively discredited! IT DIDN'T begin with Stalin--it began with Lenin. Leninism was not somehow more benign--Leninism was communism.

It's true there were doubts about this view before the Fall of Communism--but not thereafter. Russian archives have settled this, and many other doubts too.

"Lenin: A Biography" by Robert Service (2002)
"Utopia in Power" by Michel Heller, et. al., (1988)
First to use Soviet sources to make the overwhelming case for the regime's inherent brutality and stupidity from Lenin on.
"Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917"
by R. J. Rummel (1996) Political Scientist Rummel shows that every Soviet dictator from Lenin to Gorbachev committed mass murder.
"The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression" (1999)
For the larger context of the socialist ideal in , see
"Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism" by Joshua Muravchik (2002)

 

========================================

Here I was cheering "Go Steven, go Steven, go Steven", then you had to say that!!!!!

Stop waffling! Go get that MDiv. Now let's see. Where to get it? I know: THE REFORMED SEMINARY! ( toothy smile..I will mail a -small- donation in if we can get those smilies back;I had adopted two of them!)

see ya friend,

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

GOOD of Roy to recognize...

Pascal in "Bedazzled."

Perhaps you know of philosopher George H. Smith's counter-wager-- he calls this "Smiths Wager:"

"I want to offer you a kind of counter-wager, called the "Smith's wager." Here are the premises of my wager: 1. The existence of a god, if we are to believe in it, can only be established through reason. 2. Applying the canons of correct reasoning to theistic belief, we must reach the conclusion that theism is unfounded and must be rejected by rational people. Now comes the question, "But what if reason is wrong in this case?", which it sometimes is. We are fallible human beings. What if it turns out that there is a Christian god and He's up there and He's going to punish for eternity for disbelieving in Him. Here's where my wager comes in. Let's suppose you're an atheist. What are the possibilities? The first possibility is there is no god, you're right. In that case, you'll die, that'll be it, you've lost nothing, and you've lived a happy life with the correct position. Secondly, a god may exist but he may not be concerned with human affairs. He may be the god of traditional Deism. He may have started the universe going and left it to its traditional devices, in which case you will simply die, that is all there is to it, again, and you've lost nothing. Let's suppose that God exists and He is concerned with human affairs -- He's a personal god -- but that He is a just god. He's concerned with justice. If you have a just god, he could not possibly punish an honest error of belief where there is no moral turpitude or no wrongdoing involved. If this god is a creator god and He gave us reason as the basic means of understanding our world, then He would take pride in the conscientious and scrupulous use of reason the part of His creatures, even if they committed errors from time to time, in the same way a benevolent father would take pride in the accomplishments of his son, even if the son committed errors from time to time. Therefore, if there exists a just god, we have absolutely nothing to fear from such a god. Such a god could not conceivably punish us for an honest error of belief. Now we came to the last possibility. Suppose there exists an unjust god, specifically the god of Christianity, who doesn't give a damn about justice and who will burn us in Hell, regardless of whether we made honest mistakes or not. Such a god is necessarily unjust, for there is no more heinous injustice we could conceive of, than to punish a person for an honest error of belief, when he has tried to the best of his ability to ascertain the truth. The Christian thinks he's in a better position in case this kind of god exists. I wish to point out that he's not in any better position than we are because if you have an unjust god. The earmark of injustice is unprincipled behavior, behavior that's not predictable. If there's an unjust god and He really gets all this glee out of burning sinners and disbelievers, then what could give him more glee than to tell Christians they would be saved, only to turn around and burn them anyway, for the Hell of it, just because he enjoys it? If you've got an unjust god, what worst injustice could there be than that? It's not that far-fetched. If a god is willing to punish you simply for an honest error of belief, you can't believe He's going to keep his word when He tells you He won't punish you if you don't believe in Him because He's got to have a sadistic streak to begin with. Certainly He would get quite a bit of glee out of this behavior. Even if there exists this unjust god, then admittedly we live in a nightmarish universe, but we're in no worse position than the Christian is. Again, if you're going to make the wager, you might as well wager on what your reason tells you, that atheism is correct, and go that route because you won't be able to do anything about an unjust god anyway, even if you accept Christianity. My wager says that you should in all cases wager on reason and accept the logical consequence, which in this case is atheism. If there's no god, you're correct; if there's an indifferent god, you won't suffer; if there's a just god, you have nothing to fear from the honest use of your reason; and if there's an unjust god, you have much to fear but so does the Christian. We come back full-circle to our original point, that atheism must always be considered within the wider context of the respect for reason and the respect for truth. I think that, as atheists, when you try to communicate the atheistic message this is the central point you should hammer home again and again."
SOURCE:
<http://members.aol.com/Rsvperstar/DefendingAtheism.html>

 

Bill,
I hope to join the ranks of public teacher very soon and then it's time to return to seminary. I like the looks of Columbia in South Carolina...

:-]

Steven King

 

Re: GOOD of Roy to recognize...

 

==========================

sounds great!

 

While I'm definitely not one of the Degreeinfo theologians, religion is a passion of mine, so I'll respond.

I think that the heart of the matter is epistemological. In a nutshell, how can we possibly know that any finite experience has revealed an infinite object?

Although it probably wasn't meant that way, the movie 'Independence Day' made a great philosophical point. If some tremendous super-human visitations appear in the sky, how could we ever tell whether we were dealing with gods or space-aliens?

Miracles? Walking on water? Healing? Is it divine power, technology or something as yet unsuspected?

Holy spirits? How do they differ from mind-control or demon possession? How *can* one tell the difference between a god and a deceitful demon, anyway?

The serious point behind the colorful examples is that transcendence comes in different grades, and that we probably can't tell them apart from the human end.

If all of the different sorts of transcendence transcend human understanding by definition, then how can we possibly tell them apart?

Nevertheless, we exist in a world of multiple and often competing faiths. How is it possible for mortal man to distinguish which, if any, represent some kind of pipeline to the divine?

 

Re: NO Tom...

I don't think it necessarily would have been a Utopia; there is still no evidence that communism, as a system, works. I also did not say that the Soviet Union would have been better off if Lenin had survived; I said that the Soviet Union could have become our most loyal ally if he had been replaced by someone other than Stalin. Do you really think there would have been a Cold War if someone with Alexander Dubcek's temperament ran the Soviet Union during the twenties and thirties? Stalinism--which dominated Soviet politics for 60 years--would never have existed.

Leninism was communism, but it was not the Great Terror. Lenin didn't bring about Stalin's murder of 22+ million Soviet civilians (at least 1 million executed by the secret police, 4 million starved during the terror-famine, 17 million dead in the gulags); in fact, he only got the chance to rule the USSR for a little over two years (1922-24), and that was its formative post-revolutionary period. Neither you nor I have any way of knowing whether he would have created a quasi-Stalinist society; he was never presented with the option.


Peace,

 

Yes, I agree. A major problem for Pascal was that he apparently lived in a cultural environment that only offered one viable religious choice - take it or leave it.

But I think that there is another fundamental problem here:

Is it desirable, or even possible, to will one's self to believe something, simply because it would serve your interests if it were true?

My beliefs certainly don't work like that. If I believed in the Judeo-Christian God, it would be because I believe that the words and imagery found in that tradition have reference, and that they best describe the nature and actions of the divinity referred to.

If I was to accept Jesus as my savior, it would have to be because I truly believe that such an individual existed, and that his nature, role and importance are being properly interpreted and reported.

Bottom line: When I believe a proposition, I do so because I think that it's true. The truth is what justifies the belief.

Thinking that a proposition is true simply because I choose to believe it is just another word for wishful-thinking.

 

Re: GOOD of Roy to recognize...

And then there's Martin Buber's comment (I've misplaced Ten Rungs, so this is probably a paraphrase): When is it good not to believe in God? When we see others suffer, and come to the conclusion that we must deal with it ourselves.


Cheers,