Reality Testing Wanted

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9 responses to “Reality Testing Wanted”

1. 

   2006-10-09

   bls

   So how will you test the data about God, i.e., how many Persons there might be? Also whether or not Jesus was divine?
   Just curious.

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2. 

   2006-10-09

   D. C.

   BLS, the proponents of a religious doctrine (e.g., the Trinity; the Incarnation; the supremacy of Scripture) can believe what they want, as long as they don’t interfere with the rest of us.
   The problem arises when doctrinal proponents demand that the rest of us conduct ourselves as though their claims were true. We don’t have to look very far for examples, do we, even if we limit our search to just the Christian world.
   When doctrinal claimants make such a demand, the burden must be on them to adduce evidence that reasonable people would agree is sufficient to establish their claim to a reasonable degree of certainty. (Yes, I know, the definition of “reasonable” is wide open to debate.)
   Challengers of a doctrine often come up with refuting evidence, to be sure. But it cannot be their burden to do so. Otherwise, we’d be bombarded with weird and often-contradictory doctrinal claims from all sides, with each proponent arguing that we must accept his claim unless we can adduce evidence to refute it. That just isn’t the way it works — at least not for rational people.
   So now, answering your specific question: I can’t imagine how trinitarians, incarnationists, or scripturalists could adduce real-world evidence to support their claims. In various writings on this blog, I’ve summarized some of the contrary evidence, but it’s not my burden to refute their claims — if the proponents of those doctrines want the rest of us to govern ourselves as though their claims were true, it’s up to them to persuade us with sufficient supporting evidence. Until they do, the rest of us must be unconditionally free to accept or reject their doctrines.

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3. 

   2006-10-09

   bls

   Well, sure: you’re completely free to reject the doctrines. Nobody would argue otherwise; nobody’s forced to go to church anymore.
   But these ideas didn’t just arise from nowhere. I know we’ve had this conversation before, but once you accept the divinity of Christ, then the Trinity (or something like it) is inevitable; you just can’t avoid it. (I’m not averse to a change in this doctrine, but I haven’t seen anything better yet.) And if you don’t accept the divinity of Christ, then is there any reason to be a Christian at all?
   I think that’s fairly tight logic, actually. Religion is all assumption anyway; there’s no real-world proof of God, either. I think it’s more akin to something like mathematics, actually; there’s nothing in the real world like the square root of negative one, either – but it’s quite a useful concept, and has all sorts of applications. Same thing for, say, projective geometry; although it’s internally consistent, it can’t be arrived at empirically.

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4. 

   2006-10-09

   bls

   (BTW, I did find this website not long ago, a discussion of Unitarian Christianity. I don’t really disagree with much of what they say – except that I think they do accept the divinity of Christ. They call him “Lord,” after all.
   Here’s their “Confession”:
   A Unitarian Confession:
   We believe in one God, the Creator and Preserver of all things,
   And in Jesus Christ, the one Lord of the Church,
   whose teachings and life form the standard of our faith and practice,
   And in the holy spirit, the influence of God within us;
   We believe in the divine element in conscience,
   In free will and the responsibility that comes with it,
   In the inspiration and sanctity of Scripture,
   In the forgiveness of sins,
   In God’s universal love for all humankind,
   And in the future advancement of the whole human family to holiness and happiness.
   

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5. 

   2006-10-09

   Steve Jones

   bls: “And if you don’t accept the divinity of Christ, then is there any reason to be a Christian at all?”
   Steve: The earliest preachers of the gospel (see the Acts of the Apostles) seemed to think that Jesus’ messiahship and resurrection were ample reason to be a Christian. Never do they appeal to Christ’s Godhead as a reason to repent and be baptized.

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6. 

   2006-10-10

   bls

   Well, I can’t agree with that. Paul certainly found divinity in Christ; the road to Damascus vision is, in fact, the impetus for the rest of his ministry. Peter had earlier said that Christ was “the Son of the living God.”
   We can argue, I think, whether they believed the Son was equal to the Father, but I think it’s fairly clear that they believed Jesus was not simply another human being like themselves.
   In any case, sometimes it takes awhile for an understanding to crystallize; “earliest” does not imply “most correct.” (The earliest observers of the sun and the cosmos were not, for instance.) And I’d also add that the earliest preachers of the gospel were in fact Jews and considered themselves to be Jews – so there’s another example of the movement of the faith.
   I could accept some sort of intermediate status for Jesus – but of course that’s something like what Chalcedon came up with anyway.

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7. 

   2006-10-10

   bls

   (Anyway, again: I can’t figure out why anybody worries about this. Do people really get into huge confrontations over the Trinity these days? I personally have never heard anybody argue about this; I’ve heard some interesting alternative takes on it, though, things that probably wouldn’t have come up if Trinity didn’t already exist as a philosophy. As D.C. notes, the more ideas the better and more interesting the conversation, usually – and of course, Episcopalians don’t normally demand conformity to any one sort of belief in order to attend or belong.
   And if Trinitarianism doesn’t do it for people, there’s always Unitarianism. So there’s something available for every sort and condition of person, no?)

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8. 

   2006-10-12

   Wayne

   Bls, all:
   Just thought I’d add a point to a good discussion: I think a lot of the wrangling over the divinity of Christ is lost in semantics. I think terms like “divinity” are used without supplying an adequate definition. What does it mean to be divine? Aren’t we all sons and daughters of the divine? If so, was the only difference between Jesus, Buddha and other spirit-persons and us that they were better mirrors (or lenses)of the divine than we?

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9. 

   2006-10-12

   bls

   Well, you make a good point about the definition of “divine,” Wayne; there isn’t a single definition. Here’s a list of various meanings.
   But I can say that I would not be a Christian if I thought of Jesus as an ordinary human being who was simply a better “mirror” than anybody else; worshipping a human being isn’t something I can consider doing. I would not be involved in the Church at all; I’d be a solitary seeker, or else perhaps somebody who talks with other people about God over the internet. The Church is simply not necessary, IMO, unless it deals with divine things – and to me, that means that Christ is uniquely part of God in a way I am not. Otherwise, I’d hope to be doing lots of healings and forgiving of sins and raisings of the dead adn etc.
   Personally, I like exploring the various ideas that Christianity carries with it. As I said above, I’m not at all averse to a new understanding of what the divinity of Christ actually means – I just haven’t come across anything better yet. I don’t take the Nicene Creed precisely literally anyway; I assume that the realm of God is quite unlike the material universe we know anyway, so none of this bothers me in the slightest. The Creeds are simply the best we can do, in my view.

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