The Questioning Christian

Tag: epistemology

  • Response to a commenter about Jesus, God, etc.

    Commenter “schari” raised some points that had enough meat in them that I thought I’d respond in a separate posting.

    Thanks for the response, @schari. Unfortunately we’re going to have to agree to disagree about some fundamental points.

    The inherent riskiness of revelation

    @schari writes:

    I can’t help but notice your greater concern is more about what people think or perceive as apposed to what GOD or JESUS said & is the truth. That should settle it. Christianity is not a democracy, and truth is not subjective but objective. May you have a revelation of the love of Christ, that God came in the flesh to set you free to perfect relationship with Him. …

    When people claim that we can distinguish between “what people think or perceive as apposed [sic] to what GOD or JESUS said & is the truth,” they risk wallowing in wishful thinking — which is a form of idolatry that violates the First Commandment. That’s because, given that people aren’t God, it’s impossible to separate what God or Jesus might have said, on the one hand, from what people think or perceive they said.

    Even assuming, as you and I both do, that there is such as thing as objective truth, it seems inescapable that every single person — bar none — perceives it through the distorting lenses of his or her own biases, experiences, and physical- and intellectual limitations.

    Moreover, when someone claims that God said X or that Jesus said Y, my immediate response is Favorite Theological Question # 1: And how, exactly, do you know that?

    (See also my recent post, Too bad there was no Twitter in 33 AD.)

    Still another favorite theological question is: Why should I accept Christian ‘revelation’ on this issue, as opposed to that of the Jews, or the Muslims, or the Hindus, or the Buddhists, or even the atheists? What privileges the intuition of Christians about how things are, to exalt them over the intuitions of other people? It’s not as though Christians can demonstrate that their intuitions are a better fit with reality in ways not shared by any other belief system.

    Christianity wasn’t supposed to be a new religion

    @schari writes: “Christianity has ONE focul [sic] point. JESUS.”

    I see it differently. As I read the New Testament and the writings of the early church, it seems clear to me that Jesus wanted our focal point to be God. I think he would have been horrified to learn that his later followers had begun focusing on him, and had started worshiping him as though he were God.

    (See also my posting from a few years ago, The Apostles’ Teaching Didn’t Seem to Include a Divine Jesus.)

    Jesus-worshipers don’t own the name “Christian”

    @schari writes: “Take the CHRIST out of christianity and u have insanity. Otherwise look for a another name for your religion to express your views.”

    Um, check your spelling on that. Seriously, though, the New Testament writings make it clear that Christianity was not supposed to be a new religion: it was supposed to be God-worship for all, not just for Jews.

    (See my recent posting Goyim for God: A reformed Judaism, open to gentiles, like Paul wanted in the first place.)

    Orthodox- and evangelical Christians are certainly entitled to their opinions about Jesus. But they’re not entitled to claim the name Christian exclusively for themselves, any more than Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken can reserve the term “American” exclusively for people who agree with them.

    “But,” you might say, “the term ‘Christian’ is based on ‘Christ,’ which implicitly refers to God Incarnate.” No: The Greek word christos, used in the New Testament, corresponding to maschiach or messiah in Hebrew, means simply “anointed one,” someone tapped by God to carry out a particular mission. Cyrus of Persia is referred to in the OT as a maschiach.

    (You yourself are probably a christos — see Are You a “Christ”? Quite Possibly.)

    In order to emulate and follow Jesus, one doesn’t need to believe he was THE Christ, nor that he was God Incarnate; his followers who actually knew him in life didn’t seem to.

    (See also What Did “Messiah” Mean to the Apostles?)

    —————-

    @schari, I do appreciate your having taken the time to comment, and wish you all the best.

  • Too bad there was no Twitter in 33 AD

    From a story in NPR's Weekend Edition of today:

    "What we are losing is editing," [Daniel] Schorr said. "I grew up and nothing could be communicated to the outside world that didn't go through an editor to make sure you had your facts right, spelling right and so on.

    "Now, every person is his or her own publisher and/or her own editor or her own reporter. And the world is full of people who are sending out what they consider to be news. It may be, it may not be, it may be made up and it doesn't matter anymore.

    "That, to me, is the worst part of this. The discipline that should go with being able to communicate is gone."

    In response, I offered up two recent examples of breaking news stories that played out on Twitter: the attacks in Mumbai and the riots in Greece. Occasionally, you'd see stories circulating on the Internet — or even on air — that weren't necessarily true but because it was happening so fast it was hard to keep up with it.

    And then people on Twitter and Facebook started asking, 'Are you really sure about that? Did you see this yourself? Did you get this from a news source? Did you get this from a blog?'

    And so, in a way a system of checks and balances kicks into high gear with people who are just innately very skeptical — wanting to get to the heart of a matter.

    And sometimes stories actually get debunked that way.

    (Emphasis and extra paragraphing added.)

    Related stories:  See the Distortions category

  • Rocky Mountain News was not above inventing its news

    From Saturday's NY Times: 

    In many ways, Rocky stories and Denver stories are synonymous, partly because the paper’s unabashed mission, especially in its early days, was to help Denver grow and prosper, sometimes even at the expense of the facts.

    The first owner and publisher, William Byers, who founded the paper on the second floor of a saloon, decided early on, for example, that Eastern moneyed investors would want Denver to have good steamboat access — a profoundly unrealistic prospect here on the High Plains. So he simply invented it. Shipping news, complete with the made-up names of arriving and departing vessels, heading out on the South Platte River, bound east with made-up loads of freight, became a fictional staple.