Not sheepish, but individ-ewe-al

83 Responses to “Christianity confuses me!”

1. shreena Says:
   February 8, 2004 at 2:02 am

   Interesting post. I more or less agree, although I think that the big thing for me is the text issue rather than the proselytizing. It really unnerves me how often a conversation with a Christian reveals that I know more about the Bible and biblical interpretation than they do. Admittedly this is largely because it’s such a large part of my PhD, but still it bothers me that virtually all of the Christians I have come across have such an unscholarly attitude towards the Bible. If I were to decide to base my life around what a text said, I would damn well want to study it extremely closely and, for the most part, I don’t see Christians doing this even where they are otherwise intelligent and scholarly people. (Hopefully, this won’t offend the Christians I know reading this. Will use icon that contains my lovely, cuddly, Catholic boyfriend )

2. kht Says:
   February 8, 2004 at 2:23 am

   Yes, the whole “justification by faith” thing bothers me somewhat. I can live my life doing my very best to do good things, but if I’m unlucky enough to choose the “wrong” religion or be born into a non-Christian culture, I’m condemned to hell for ever? And this is the action of a just and loving God? Hmmm. Not convinced.

   And evangelists: much as I like my evangelist friends, and much as appreciate their concern for my immortal soul, it annoys me when they tell me that my life has no meaning and cannot possibly be fulfilling without God.

3. chickenfeet2003 Says:
   February 8, 2004 at 2:27 am

   Personally I find all religions incomprehensible. For example, how can anyone seriously believe that the Supreme Being cut a special deal with an obscure band of nomads? Doesn’t the whole idea of a Chosen People imply massive disrespect for everybody else?

4. kht Says:
   February 8, 2004 at 2:31 am

   I suppose every obscure bunch of nomads wants to feel special…

5. livredor Says:
   February 8, 2004 at 3:16 am

   Yay, this seems like a very good opportunity for my text obsession icon!

   I wouldn’t expect every practising Christian to do a PhD in biblical interpretation, no. That would be taking things too far. But I do find it odd that an active engagement with the text is so rare among Christians.

   And I agree with you, that it’s odd that people who are generally scholarly suddenly become totally uncritical with respect to the Bible. Now, I do know Jews who are a bit like that, but at least they do study texts in depth, just with a different approach from what they would use for studying anything else.

6. livredor Says:
   February 8, 2004 at 3:27 am

   You put that very well; this is pretty much exactly how I feel about the issue.

7. livredor Says:
   February 8, 2004 at 3:45 am

   Personally I find all religions incomprehensible.
   That goes back to the ‘not hearing the music’ thing. I think it’s very hard to understand a religion unless you’re seeing it from the inside. This may well mean that religion is all baloney and based on circular arguments; I don’t happen to think this is the case, but it may be so. I find religions other than Judaism confusing, but I expect this because I simply don’t know enough about them. And this is why I try to learn as much as I can through my interfaith work. But I know I’ll always be an outsider.

   The thing is, with Christianity, simply from being immersed in it, I know more about it than other religions that are not my own, and yet it still confuses me far more than, say, Islam or Sikhism. I just keep choking on the proselytizing thing, which makes it that much harder for me to say, oh well, different set of concepts and different culture from mine, no wonder I don’t really understand.

   For example, how can anyone seriously believe that the Supreme Being cut a special deal with an obscure band of nomads?
   This doesn’t seem significantly more remarkable than that said Supreme Being cares about humanity at all, much less that mere humans can have an almost-personal relationship with God. I can easily see why someone might have a problem with those things, and indeed that strikes me as a perfectly respectable argument for deism. But given a personal, involved God, why should a special deal with obscure nomads be particularly problematic?

   Doesn’t the whole idea of a Chosen People imply massive disrespect for everybody else?
   I honestly don’t think so. No more than the fact that I’d choose a plumber to fix my boiler implies that I have disrepect for electricians.

   I think that people who are not part of my group have a different contribution from me to make to God’s plan. Their beliefs may be good or bad, they are just not my beliefs. Christians, AIUI, think that people who are not part of their group are simply wrong, and their beliefs are worthless. To me, the second attitude is far more disrepectful. It may be that I am misrepresenting Christianity here, but that’s the impression I have, and that’s what bothers me.

8. chickenfeet2003 Says:
   February 8, 2004 at 4:05 am

   Does Islam not also proselytise and hold that other groups are wrong? Granted they hold Christians and Jews in less contempt than other religions but they are still considered to be outside the House of God.

   On the personal God thing, I have seen it from the inside. I was once a practicing Anglican. Ultimately I find the phlosophical and logical contortions necessary to reconcile a loving God with the presence of evil quite bizarre. Certainly in other context than organised religion such beliefs would get one diagnosed as schizophrenic.

9. wychwood Says:
   February 8, 2004 at 4:15 am

   I’m not going to go into detail on most of your post, though I found it interesting (and not in the least offensive). But to bring up the proselytising point: this varies very greatly from denomination to denomination. As far as I understand it for the Catholic communities I’ve been a part of, you certainly *don’t* go around pushing it down other people’s throats; instead, you try to show other people *through your life* what it means to be a Christian, and if someone asks you, then you do the best you can to explain things to them. But door-knocking and so on is something that strikes me, also, as extreme arrogance. I may believe that my religion *is* true, but I could be wrong, and besides, who am I to judge others? That’s not what God told us to do. Spread the word, yes, but don’t bury people under it.

   Similarly with faith, I pretty much follow what CS Lewis says:

   “the Glorious One…said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me…if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him… But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have searched so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.” - The Last Battle

   Not that I think any of the major religions follow Tash or his equivalent, but the idea that the seeker after truth will not be disappointed is one that makes a lot of sense to me. I cannot believe that a truly good, loving God (be he the Jewish or Christian one, or another entirely) could condemn people for living good, loving lives, but honestly believing and following something which was not the truth. That could just be my interpretation, but Jesus was not harsh or judgemental.

   Yeah. Generally, all comments in this post are reflections of my opinion rather than Catholic doctrine, but hopefully don’t contradict said doctrine. I may come back later and talk about some of the other points, because, again, I don’t entirely agree with all of what you’re saying.

10. neonchameleon Says:
    February 8, 2004 at 4:57 am

    Translated texts
    In the vast majority of Christian societies, there has been no way of getting at the source texts and even for those that could, there was no way of getting as close to the source as the translators managed- after all, they were supposed to be experts. This view has unfortunately stuck in many places.

    Vows
    Most people don’t like to break them. They therefore provide an extra source of strength for people thinking of tuning their back on Christianity. As for vows taken on behalf of someone else. Grr! (They rely on notions of responsibility).

    Original Sin
    With any religion, you need to explain the nature of evil. This way works. It’s both abhorrent and incorrect, but it is logically near-sound.

    Faith
    If by this, you mean the doctrine of “Salvation by Faith Alone”, that’s an artifact of the Reformation that has grown far beyond its usefulness and is misunderstood by many of its proponents anyway (see point 1). Pre- the Reformation (and in the West…), your standing with God was thought to be equivalent to your standing with his Holy Church and the priests that represented him on earth. The Catholic Church pre-reformation used this to make money by e.g. the selling of indulgences. The answer to this was Salvation by Faith Alone - i.e. your standing with God rather than with any mortal agency. Unfortunately this has both grown out of control and been corrupted over the years- if one has faith then one should act accordingly and e.g. works should come out of this- although the corruption is to forget this. Good idea (in fact one I agree with to an extent) but one that has been perverted by misunderstanding.

    Proselytizing
    You see someone doing something wrong and you often want to help them. If you know (and here you and I differ from evangelists) that you are right and they are wrong, you try to get them to do the right thing. At root it is a charitable, if unflattering impulse.

11. neonchameleon Says:
    February 8, 2004 at 4:58 am

    How many other bands of nomads from that period are still around?

12. greengolux Says:
    February 8, 2004 at 6:52 am

    I’m very interested in this kind of thing, being an atheist half-Jew who did a degree in Christian theology. My view of Christianity is probably a bit skewed, given that all the Christians I know were on my course, and therefore approaching their religion in a critical and scholarly light.

    [Texts]
    Obviously, this was one of the things that all my Christian friends took very seriously. All of them learnt both Biblical Greek and Biblical Hebrew. All of them agree that you can’t properly engage with the texts without learning at least some of the original language.

    [Faith]
    I had some talks with my Christian friends about whether or not God would blame me/punish me for being a non-believer, even though I do my best to be a morally upright person. They all agreed that since God is good, there’s no way he’d heap blame on me simply for not becoming a Christian. Some Christian thinkers and philosophers of religion argue that God would actually be angry if an atheist tried to force themselves to believe something that goes against their natural God-given faculties of reason or intuition.

    [Proselytizing]
    I can understand why this upsets people, and coming fromcertain types of Christian it upsets me too. But I can also understand that if you believe that you’ve found something incredibly special and true in the Christian faith then you’d want to share that with other people.

    Obviously, my experiences have been with inquiring, open-minded Christians. I’m sure there are other Christians out there who are not nearly as reasonable. But I’m not sure whether to blame the whole religion for this, or just those particular Christians.

    I like your analogy of looking in through the window and not hearing the music. Despite lots of thought, discussion and study of religious ideas, I still don’t ‘get it’ and probably never will. In fact, I think I’ve even opened the door and gone right into room, but I seem to be deaf.

13. anonymous Says:
    February 8, 2004 at 11:32 am

    I don’t like christians
    Je n’aime pas les chrétiens (crétin và)

    http://boostmobile.alkapote.net/

14. livredor Says:
    February 8, 2004 at 4:41 pm

    Anon, I don’t consider this a very helpful comment. This is not a discussion where making unsubstantiated offensive remarks about Christians (or the mentally ill, for that matter) is the order of the day. I’m therefore going to screen it, because I want my friends, including my Christian friends, to be able to feel comfortable in the discussion.

    You’re very welcome to contribute if you are prepared to keep your tone polite.

15. kemelios Says:
    February 8, 2004 at 11:30 pm

    Have you seen this article about Mel Gibson’s new film The Passion? It’s “one of the greatest opportunities for evangelism in 2,000 years.” Ick, ick, and more ick.

16. pw201 Says:
    February 9, 2004 at 12:45 am

    But those who do think that Scripture has authority really confuse me when they don’t bother to learn the original languages.

    The serious Bible reading Christians I knew would usually have several translations of the Bible and would make use of tools like Blue Letter Bible. Actually knowing enough Greek to read the NT in the native language was rarer, though.

    how can one follow a God who would be so utterly unfair as to blame the whole of humanity for something Adam and Eve did?

    I never really saw this as being about blame, but rather about the spiritual state of humanity after the Fall. A bit of a fine distinction, perhaps, since in either case the effect is that without faith in JC it is impossible to please God.

    It does seem a bit odd that it’s predicated on having exactly the right views about such things as the nature of God

    I’d be very surprised to see Christians saying that a correct understanding of the Trinity is essential for salvation, since it’s practically impossible to talk about the Trinity without falling into some heretical -ism or other. Have you come across this?

    It’s really, really hard for me to respect a belief system that is based on such a total lack of respect for not only my beliefs, but for those of anyone who thinks differently from the believer.

    I’m hardly going to disagree here, although, again, I am surprised that the Christians you have encountered place such an emphasis on theological correctness for salvation, although not surprised that some consider it very important for church order.

    One thing which S came up with about salvation by faith was “how much faith is enough?” My ex, K, and I once had a discussion in which she said that salvation by faith was fairer because otherwise you didn’t have somewhat arbitrary pass mark for good works, but I never thought to ask S’s question. I think that question rather telling, since it exposes arguments within Christianity about whether faith is a work, Calvinism vs Arminianism and so on.

17. hatam_soferet Says:
    February 9, 2004 at 1:11 am

    I love you! Your analysis of faith is SO rabbinic! Letting the converse pass on the principle that forgiveness is good…ah, you’re pure Gemara.

18. livredor Says:
    February 9, 2004 at 2:46 am

    How many other bands of nomads from that period are still around?
    How is this question relevant? It depends massively how you define the continuity between the nomads who originally joined the Abrahamic covenant and modern day Jews!

    To say that the band of nomads is still around is a near-meaningless assertion. You might as well argue that the Trojan empire still flourishes because Aeneas founded the Roman empire and parts of Europe still show Roman influence.

19. livredor Says:
    February 9, 2004 at 3:01 am

    Well, I’m a long way from being an expert on either Islam or schizophrenia, but I’ll express some inexpert opinions anyway.

    Does Islam not also proselytise and hold that other groups are wrong?
    Sorta. From what I know about it I find their attitude a lot less offensive than the Christian equivalent. Muslims, in my experience, feel that it is their duty to educate people about Islam, so that they are able to make informed decisions. This can still result in the annoyance of being pamphletted and buttonholed and generally preached at (indeed, in the past few months I have encountered Muslims who are nearly as annoying as the worst kinds of Christians!), but the annoyance isn’t really what bothers me, so much as the core attitude that we’re right and everyone else is wrong, which seems to be largely absent from Islam.

    Muslims, I believe, also have the nice getout that anyone who lives a life that is acceptable to God counts as Muslim anyway, regardless of whether they formally convert or even have heard of Islam. Well, still I prefer the attitude I have picked up from Judaism that non-Jews are just as likely to be good people as Jews. But at least saying that everyone who lives a godly life is de facto Muslim is, IMO, preferable to saying that non-Christians are intrinsically inferior, no matter how exemplary their life. I do know of some liberal Christians who have a similar idea; yes, you have to be Christian to be saved, but it’s possible in their view to be a Christian without knowing it.

    On the personal God thing, I have seen it from the inside. I was once a practicing Anglican.
    I do apologize if I implied that you were speaking from ignorance. I meant to emphasize that I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I can see how it could be interpreted to apply to you, which wasn’t my intention at all.

    Ultimately I find the phlosophical and logical contortions necessary to reconcile a loving God with the presence of evil quite bizarre
    Hmm, the problem of evil. That was something I was thinking about adding to my list of ‘why I don’t get Christianity’. Because it seems to me that by theologizing evil you risk making evil sound like a positive thing. I will try to formulate a more properly thought out comment than that, though.

    This kind of thing is tangential to my not getting the concept of faith, though. The thing is, there are plenty of Jews, probably even the majority, who have heterodox views about all sorts of things, and for the most part they’re still Jewish. Whereas if you’re Christian, you have to accept all that doctrine wholesale or else stop being Christian. That strikes me as putting a huge burden on Christians; it seems to me, as a person of rather little faith as these things go, rather difficult to be constant and unwavering in all your beliefs, especially where such fraught metaphysical questions are concerned.

20. livredor Says:
    February 9, 2004 at 3:05 am

    I found it interesting (and not in the least offensive)
    Oh, thanks for the reassurance! I occasionally worry that I may be saying things that Christians might find offensive, because of the problems I have with understanding Christianity, and you seem to be very good at coming along and being all not offended. This I appreciate!

21. chickenfeet2003 Says:
    February 9, 2004 at 4:04 am

    Islam and proselytising

    Islamic states traditionally levied extra taxes on non-believers and excluded them from all kinds of public office.which was certainly intended as an incentive to convert. According to the Koran it also a capital offence to become an apostate or to seek to convert Muslims to another faith.

    Whereas if you’re Christian, you have to accept all that doctrine wholesale or else stop being Christian

    I don’t think we are comparing apples to apples here. ‘Being Jewish’ isn’t just about religion whereas ‘being Christian’ is. So you can still claim to be Jewish even if you reject all the religious stuff (my father in law for example).

22. neonchameleon Says:
    February 9, 2004 at 9:11 am

    You are aware of The Athanasian Creed?

    One of the three major creeds of the church (with the Apostles and the Nicene- the three endorsed by the 39 articles of religion for the Anglicans (although the Athanasian Creed seems to be in eclipse and have been dropped from the liturgy), endorsed by the Catholic Encyclopaedia and seems to also be necessary for the Orthodox), it starts “Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all, keep the Catholic faith. For unless a person keeps this faith whole and entire, he will undoubtedly be lost forever.” and ends “This is the Catholic faith. Everyone must believe it, firmly and steadfastly; otherwise He cannot be saved. Amen.”

23. lisekit Says:
    February 9, 2004 at 8:41 pm

    I don’t get how anyone is prepared to take someone else’s word for what a sacred text actually says.

    The inner linguist in me agrees entirely; but on the other hand one of the most radical moments in Western Christianity came about with the first vernacular translations of the Bible. The illiterate peasantry in the 16th century couldn’t really be expected to learn Hebrew, Greek or Latin, and so were theologically restricted by the clergy’s version of what was actually being preached. You get a lot of genuinely radical thinking once Tyndale’s bible appears in Britain, and people start to take issue with “offical” versions of what Scripture is said to mean.
    Likewise, you get another radical shift when literacy becomes more widespread in the 18th century, and people read along in their Bibles and debate over the meaning of the text. What I’m saying is, that when people gain access to Scripture (in this case, through translation and through increased literacy), then you see vigorous and interesting debate; wheras when people sat passively through sermons in non-vernacular languages, you have much less in the way of theoloical thinking among the masses. So I think the vernacular translations of Scripture have been a healthy thing, enabling people to access new dimensions of the Christian faith.

    I would add that I woud expect any serious mondern scholar to be conversant with the original texts; but of course not everyone is a serious scholar, and I still think it’s important for the lay to be involved at an appropriate level.

    (Obviously, vernacular translations worldwide were an important part of proseltysing!)

24. pw201 Says:
    February 9, 2004 at 10:20 pm

    I’m assuming this is in response to my bit about how Christians don’t generally insist on a particular understanding of the Trinity. I vaguely recall that the Athanasian Creed was formulated specifically to address the doctrine of the Trinity and to anathemise anyone who disagreed. It is less commonly used than the Apostles or Nicene creed, and I suspect this is because most Christians don’t believe that being a modalist will send you to hell.

    The parties in the Protestant churches who would most like to anathemise the rest of the church these days are mainly concerned with the status of scripture and the workings of the atonement (and have formulated their own credal statements to serve as the equivalent of the Athanasian creed for that purpose).

    The 39 Articles aren’t really rules, merely guidelines. When was the last time you heard someone preach from the Book of Homilies for example?

25. rysmiel Says:
    February 9, 2004 at 11:43 pm

    This is lovely. Thank you. You’re pretty much exactly on the reasons why I formally abjured Catholicism thirteen years ago, I too have issues, with faith, with proselytising, with lack of familiarity with the original texts, and with original sin; I think the biggest philosophical “yuck” I get from the whole construction of Christianity is how appallingly patronising it is to deem us all evil and in need of redemption, and they say we’ve all been redeemed and should be grateful for it. Redemption without consent squicks me utterly.

    wrt Mel Gibson’s Passion film, I’ve seen trailers for it in the last couple of weeks, and it looks thoroughly tangled up in its own self-consciousness and self-importance and generally icky. There is no need to retell that story that way again, and when I compare it to a work of genius like Jesus de Montreal, [ which we saw again a few weeks back ] which does a phenomenal amount with how the story of Jesus echoes and has relevance in the modern world, there’s just no need for it to exist.

26. neonchameleon Says:
    February 10, 2004 at 1:40 am

    That’s only one (or rather two) of the three standard views of the crucifixion. Substitutionary Attonement and Penal Substitutionary Attonement. The former tends to be the Roman Catholic belief and the latter the main Protestant/Evangelical belief, although the distinction between the two is a matter as to whether it was the sin or the fact the sin was against God that made it such a serious matter.

    The third (and Orthodox) belief is that of overcoming death and breaking its power (and possibly that of hell)- it is a matter of the rules having been changed for the better rather than one of redemption.

    Anglicans seem to believe any or all (or occasionally none (Abelard uncombined with anything else)) of the above… not that this is out of character for Anglicans.

27. neonchameleon Says:
    February 10, 2004 at 1:50 am

    The 39 articles tend to get ignored rather than have been repealed. I also think that there are rather more Arians to send to hell than Modalists in this day and age

28. neonchameleon Says:
    February 10, 2004 at 5:35 am

    preferable to saying that non-Christians are intrinsically inferior, no matter how exemplary their life

    Ask any who say that (or that only Christians can be saved) just why they are putting limits on Divine Grace.

    Whereas if you’re Christian, you have to accept all that doctrine wholesale or else stop being Christian.

    Depends on what you mean by “all that doctrine” and which church. Judaism isn’t just a religion, it’s a culture as well, and it is hard to say that someone isn’t a member of a culture. A better perspective would be to say that they aren’t an Orthodox Jew or the like.

    ‘Sides, there have been at least two heretical Anglican/Episcopalian bishops in the last 20 years (and I think it’s three). If the Bishop of Durham can claim not to believe in the Resurection…

29. neonchameleon Says:
    February 10, 2004 at 5:45 am

    [devil's advocate hat on]

    Christians, AIUI, think that people who are not part of their group are simply wrong, and their beliefs are worthless. To me, the second attitude is far more disrepectful.

    But by virtue of being one of God’s chosen people, you automatically have a major part to play. It is * dificult to become one of God’s chosen people, whereas almost anyone can become a Christian. Is it more disrespectful to believe that people have smaller parts due to birth or due to choice and that they can fix their choices?

30. livredor Says:
    February 10, 2004 at 5:48 am

    Islamic states traditionally levied extra taxes on non-believers and excluded them from all kinds of public office.which was certainly intended as an incentive to convert.
    If I wanted to be really snide, I could draw a comparison with how Christians were treating non-Christians at the equivalent point in history. But that would derail the discussion from what I’m actually trying to talk about; it’s far too easy to point to examples of representatives of any given religion behaving despicably, and so what?

    Seriously, maybe I’m just weird, but here I am, I’m neither Christian nor Muslim. And somehow, the idea of Muslims saying to me, you’re not one of us, extra tax, offends me much much less than the idea of Christians saying to me (however kindly), you’re not one of us, I feel so sorry for you because your life is completely meaningless and you haven’t understood the fundamental truth.

    According to the Koran
    I don’t really want to get into the game of matching up scriptural quotations. It would only take me a little digging to provide a list of liberal-sounding quotes from the Koran and compare them to the most exclusive, illiberal soundbites from the Bible. I don’t think that would be productive though, especially as I have only a passing familiarity with the NT (and no solid idea of how Christians generally read it), and an absolutely minimal knowledge of the Koran. To the extent that I don’t even know where I can find a reliable translation.

    it also a capital offence to become an apostate or to seek to convert Muslims to another faith.
    It’s true, Islam’s emphasis on physical justice is one of the things that can make it unpalatable to western liberals. I personally am against the death penalty, and have serious issues with any kind of corporal punishment, particularly when it’s excessive as the mutilation prescribed by Sharia. But really, most cultures have practiced capital and corporal punishment at some point during their history, so this isn’t a fundamental problem for me. And I can’t help feeling some sympathy for the concept of severe punishment for people who try to convert others!

    It’s hard to put my finger on why Islam seems perfectly reasonable and sensible to me, while I have such a strong reaction against (certain aspects of) Christianity. Neither is my tradition, after all. I can perfectly well make a case against Islam, if I want to (I can even more easily make a case against Judaism, of course!) but it’s a purely intellectual exercise, I don’t feel a gut reaction against it.

31. neonchameleon Says:
    February 10, 2004 at 5:51 am

    Obviously, my experiences have been with inquiring, open-minded Christians. I’m sure there are other Christians out there who are not nearly as reasonable. But I’m not sure whether to blame the whole religion for this, or just those particular Christians.

    I think, alas, that your experiences are firmly in the minority. On the other hand, there is AFAIK nothing inherent in Christianity to say why this should be so.

    (The people that amuse me are the Sola Scripturam won’t-look-at-the-sources people (who usually take the KJV as authoritative))

32. livredor Says:
    February 10, 2004 at 6:15 am

    I love you!
    Aww! Thanks badger *hug*

    you’re pure Gemara
    Really? I don’t think I’ve ever been called that before! I’m no less delighted with the epithet, mind you.

33. chickenfeet2003 Says:
    February 10, 2004 at 6:37 am

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m noy trying to say Islam is worse/better than Christianity. I do believe that they both believe in proseletising (sp?) and in different times and different places have displayed considerable intolerance for people of other faiths or none.

34. pw201 Says:
    February 10, 2004 at 8:12 am

    Christians, AIUI, think that people who are not part of their group are simply wrong, and their beliefs are worthless.

    Christians who know their NT should know that this is specifically not true of the Jews. Paul seems to say something like “you Gentiles had better not get too uppity”. Forgive me if you know this already, I’m not sure how far your knowledge of the NT goes.

    I expect that this passage doesn’t quite prevent Christians who are keen on evangelism from evangelising Jews, since the previous chapter makes it clear that Paul thinks the Jews of his day have missed the point and need to hear his message (though 10:9 is interesting for just how little theology Paul says Christians do need to be saved). But it chapter 11 is probably useful against uppity Christians

35. lethargic_man Says:
    February 10, 2004 at 9:05 pm

    Oooh, badger!

    (Sorry; it had to be done, sooner or later.)

36. livredor Says:
    February 11, 2004 at 5:39 am

    I’m noy trying to say Islam is worse/better than Christianity.
    I don’t think it’s better or worse than Christianity either, which is why I find it strange that Islam provokes a ‘different, but interesting’ reaction, whereas Christianity makes me feel, ‘woah, weird, I don’t get that at all’. I’m not claiming my reaction in either case is entirely rational.

    I do believe that they both believe in proseletising (sp?)
    I’m not confident of how to spell it either! It’s true that some Muslims proselytize some of the time, and I’m not mad on this, because I don’t like proselytizing in general. But I find it more palatable than Christian evangelism, I think mainly because of the underlying views of the standing of non-Muslim religions.

    It’s easier for me to live up to my standards of tolerance when it comes to Islam; it doesn’t emotionally appeal to me, but I accept it as part of desirable religious diversity. I know I should take a similar attitude to Christianity, but I struggle. That’s more something wrong with me than something wrong with Christianity, I’m well aware of this!

    in different times and different places have displayed considerable intolerance
    Well, sure, all religions have intolerant people and sometimes the intolerant approach is in the ascendant. There are even a few historical examples of Jews proselytizing aggressively and even violently, and a few fringe Jewish sects who effectively proselytize nowadays, and I disapprove of them too, even though they’re theoretically part of the same religion as me. But somehow, even tolerant, fluffy, liberal Christians seem to be expressing coming from a viewpoint that I find very difficult to accept on an emotional level.

37. livredor Says:
    February 11, 2004 at 6:06 am

    Christians who know their NT should know that this is specifically not true of the Jews.
    That’s a very interesting point, thank you. The truth is that this doesn’t comfort me as much as it might; I’m reminded of an occasion when a friend of mine was explaining that he was avoiding a former friend, on the grounds that said friend held rather racist views. My friend thought this unpleasant chap would probably be ok with me “since you’re white”. I was really bothered by that; if bigotry was going on, I wanted to be in the out group, not the in group! Not that I’m even slightly comparing Christian evangelists to racists, you understand.

    It’s inevitable given the history that there’s going to be some kind of special relationship between Christians and Jews. Indeed, that’s why I find Jewish-Christian dialogue in some ways more exciting than general interfaith. But I’m always wary when generally intolerant, right-wing Christians lean too heavily on that special relationship.

    Forgive me if you know this already, I’m not sure how far your knowledge of the NT goes.
    My NT knowledge is… patchy, I think is the best word. I know the Gospels reasonably well, on the level of knowing what they say rather than anything deeper. And there are odd bits of NT that I’ve studied in depth, and odd bits that repeatedly come up in debate. That means it’s almost always worth pointing stuff out! I wasn’t aware of Romans 11, as it happens, and I appreciate your flagging it for me. Besides, in this sort of discussion I’m always pleased when opinions are properly textually supported
    I have a close friend, PM, who recently completed a PhD in Jewish-Christian relations. Her title was going to be along the lines of ‘Jews in the NT’, but that turned out to be too broad, so she ended up doing ‘Jews in John’s Gospel’. From what I’ve picked up from her, I get the impression that the topic is fascinating. Clearly, the varying attitudes of Christians towards Jews can’t entirely be explained by reading the Bible, but it’s very interesting to see what is there.

38. livredor Says:
    February 11, 2004 at 6:31 am

    But to bring up the proselytising point: this varies very greatly from denomination to denomination.
    I am reasonably aware of this, yes. I was trying to pick out themes that are, as it were, common to Christianity ‘in general’, while acknowledging that there’s never really any such thing. But precision of this sort is always good.

    As far as I understand it for the Catholic communities I’ve been a part of, you certainly *don’t* go around pushing it down other people’s throats
    I get the strong impression that since Vatican II, the Catholic church as a whole has been far more progressive on the issue of interfaith relations than most of the rest of the church. My personal attitude towards Catholicism is unfairly coloured by my mother’s rather bad experiences at a Catholic school. I know, and she knows, that Catholics aren’t all like that, but I also grew up with the horror stories!

    you try to show other people *through your life* what it means to be a Christian
    That sounds quite a lot like an attitude you could hear many Jews expressing, living as an exemplar rather than trying to change people’s views through argument or any other tactics. Cool.

    I may believe that my religion *is* true, but I could be wrong, and besides, who am I to judge others?
    You are an excellent counterexample to my negative view of Christian evangelizing. This kind of attitude I can easily cope with!

    I cannot believe that a truly good, loving God (be he the Jewish or Christian one, or another entirely) could condemn people for living good, loving lives, but honestly believing and following something which was not the truth.
    This is pretty much exactly how I feel, so I’m very pleased to find a Christian taking the same attitude. It certainly suggests that the contrary pov is not as fundamental to Christianity as I was previously imagining. And thanks for that CS Lewis snippet; good illustration. Yay for lovely fluffy Christians like you and Lewis.

    Lewis is interesting, actually; both ultra-liberal types and really scary obnoxious types seem to be fond of him. We use some writings of his for the ‘guesting’ section of our liturgy, incidentally.

39. livredor Says:
    February 11, 2004 at 6:57 am

    My view of Christianity is probably a bit skewed, given that all the Christians I know were on my course, and therefore approaching their religion in a critical and scholarly light.
    The Oxford theology faculty is an excellent context to meet the most delightful, intellectual, open-minded and generally lovely Christians! Several of them were involved in the CCJ group I used to run.

    I guess part of the reason why I have such angst about proselytizing is that many of these liberal Christians that I encountered were very bothered about the conflict between what they perceived as their duty to save souls, and their generally liberal views that evangelizing is not a respectful way to treat people. I suspect these conflicts came to the fore because proselytizing directly clashes with attempting to do interfaith dialogue.

40. pw201 Says:
    February 11, 2004 at 8:34 pm

    she ended up doing ‘Jews in John’s Gospel’. From what I’ve picked up from her, I get the impression that the topic is fascinating.

    John’s the odd man out among the 4 gospels in that he doesn’t share a common storyline with the others. I’ve heard him called anti-semitic before, since he tends to attribute negative comments about Jesus to “the Jews” rather than, say, “the Pharisees”. I like him for the writing, which I find more numinous than the other gospel writers, thinking of things like John 1 for example.

41. wychwood Says:
    February 12, 2004 at 12:59 am

    Just to get this out of the way now, though:
    There are many, many illiberal, fanatically right-wing, extremely unpleasant elements in the Catholic church, even today. I have always been brought up within a fairly “Low Church”, liberal, laid-back atmosphere, and therefore am speaking from that viewpoint. Unfortunately right-wing elements have grown dramatically within the last few years, and can present a very different perspective; there are a lot of people working to try and reverse many of the Vatican II reforms.

    Mel Gibson’s “Passion” seems quite likely to be an example of this. Though I admire his dedication to his faith, I understand that he is a member of a particular group within the Catholic Church that denies the rulings of Vatican II, and sticks to the older ways of doing things. That in itself says a lot about the kind of perspective he is likely to have.

    And thank you for the compliments As a follow-up to the whole “offensive” idea, I wish to offer the observation that an individual honestly seeking after truth cannot be offensive to any other honest person.

    The issue of translated texts is a contentious one; we put ourselves into the hands of translators when studying the Bible, it is true, but as pointed out, using translations has allowed any literate individual an immediate, personal access to the scriptures. While I think there are arguments both ways, the ability to refer easily to the actual source (though second-hand) seems preferable to me.

    Interfaith dialogue has certainly been a substantial part of my Christian experience while at university. In my home parish, we don’t have much interfaith contact, but a fair amount of interdenominational work. But at the Chaplaincy there was always at least one explicitly interfaith event every term. I think perhaps that it may be more of a Catholic than generally Christian thing in this country because we are a minority; there are times and places where Catholics are still subject to discrimination, or at least insults and unpleasantness, in a way that Church of England people are not. Jews, Muslims and so on also have that experience and awareness, and therefore there is more of a common ground that way.

    CS Lewis is wonderful. His stance on women is… well, not especially liberal. But he writes so well on so many subjects, and has always seemed to me to have much of the core of the matter in him. You might well enjoy “The Screwtape Letters”, which are unfailingly clever, humourous and exceptionally thought-provoking, as well as “Mere Christianity”, which is based on a series of radio talks he did; it tries to find a Christianity which is not “Anglican” or “Catholic” or “Orthodox”, but merely Christianity. I think he succeeds quite well, and thus provides a good overview of some of the most important ideas of Christianity.

    I’ve just tried to comment on vows and original sin, but I can’t seem to say what I mean, so I think I’ll leave that for others who can answer more articulately…

42. livredor Says:
    February 12, 2004 at 7:37 am

    extremely unpleasant elements in the Catholic church
    All religions, and all denominations, have their share of idiots. For my part, I just strive not to be one of them; I don’t think their existence proves much except possibly about human nature.

    Mel Gibson’s “Passion” seems quite likely to be an example of this.
    A lot of different groups seem to be rather up in arms about it. My impression has tended to be, well yes, the Bible is controversial; are we supposed to be surprised by this? But I don’t know a great deal about the background, and I’m a bit inclined to regard it as someone else’s problem!

    an individual honestly seeking after truth cannot be offensive to any other honest person
    That’s an excellent maxim, I must say. I think it applies quite well to me, but I know I’m more thick-skinned about my religion than some, and I’d rather over-compensate than accidentally offend people.

    The issue of translated texts is a contentious one
    I’m not against the principle of translation! I just believe strongly in parallel texts, that’s all.

    at the Chaplaincy there was always at least one explicitly interfaith event every term.
    Oh yes, I went to a couple of those. I also knew more than a few Anglicans who joined CathSoc because it seemed so much more palatable than OICCU.

    because we are a minority… there is more of a common ground that way
    That’s a very good point, and one that hadn’t occured to me. I can think of several examples of really productive interfaith collaborations which have arisen out of various religious groups approaching Jews and asking, how do you cope with being a minority?

    I’ve just tried to comment on vows and original sin, but I can’t seem to say what I mean
    Well, if you do manage to frame something, I’d be really interested. With your background in mythology you’re probably more aware than most of why vows are supposed to be important.

    CS Lewis is wonderful.
    Indeed he is. Thank you for the recommendations; Mere Christianity sounds like exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for.

43. kathrid Says:
    February 13, 2004 at 2:08 am

    Translated texts. OK, some Christians don’t take the Bible seriously, which is fine. But those who do think that Scripture has authority really confuse me when they don’t bother to learn the original languages. I don’t get how anyone is prepared to take someone else’s word for what a sacred text actually says.

    If you add to this the fact that the people who actually wrote down the gospels almost certainly weren’t the people who originally knew Jesus (it is generally held that the gospels were written at least 60 years after his death, and so most if not all the apostles will have died by the time of writing) it gets even more silly that people take them as being entirely true. They have been translated from texts that might well have been based on flawed spoken versions of what actually happened.

    Also, many other sections of the New Testament are only there because they have been judged to be genuine from their manner rather than due to any genuine evidence that they were written by the people claimed as author. Basically, and good forger could have got a section of letters accepted as by Saint Paul simply by copying the style of known examples of his work. Plus, over quite a few centuries texts were added and removed or ‘retranslated’ by the catholic church, often changing the New Testament to match the theological fashions of the time. Given all this, it becomes fairly obvious that the New Testament’s content is entirely subjective to the views of the Pope that last had it re-compiled.

44. livredor Says:
    February 14, 2004 at 1:27 am

    Whereas if you’re Christian, you have to accept all that doctrine wholesale or else stop being Christian

    I don’t think we are comparing apples to apples here. ‘Being Jewish’ isn’t just about religion whereas ‘being Christian’ is. So you can still claim to be Jewish even if you reject all the religious stuff
    This is a good point, and one I’d forgotten. I was rather thinking about being, if you like, actively Jewish, being involved in the (religious) Jewish community, living a recognisably Jewish life, etc, without necessarily believing anything much. But the distinction is of course blurred, and I do tend to forget that not all religions work like that.

45. livredor Says:
    February 14, 2004 at 1:44 am

    John’s the odd man out among the 4 gospels
    This much I was aware of, yes.

    I’ve heard him called anti-semitic before, since he tends to attribute negative comments about Jesus to “the Jews” rather than, say, “the Pharisees”
    I think that’s why PM wanted to focus on John for her thesis. She was trying to look at lots of contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish (don’t think there was much Christian stuff around at that time) texts to try and see if there was a reading that was faithful but not antisemitic. And avoiding the easy liberal route of saying, lots of nasty stuff in the Bible, but, you know, cultural context and all that, we don’t have to take it literally nowadays.

    Whether or not he’s antisemitic (to speak anachronistically), John is certainly less geared to a Jewish audience than the other Gospels. He’s the one who really emphasises theologically strange stuff about Incarnation and the rest. And he’s less interested in fitting Jesus into OT prophecies or describing plausible-sounding Jewish practice.

    I like him for the writing, which I find more numinous than the other gospel writers
    Oh yes, absolutely. The smattering I have of classical Greek is enough to be able to see that John was doing much more interesting stuff with the language than the other gospel writers.

    things like John 1
    *smile* Yay, that was the first proper sentence we ever read in Greek. But it’s impressive poetry even if I don’t have much idea what it means.

46. livredor Says:
    February 14, 2004 at 2:30 am

    In the vast majority of Christian societies, there has been no way of getting at the source texts
    This is possibly an explanation why there isn’t much emphasis on reading texts in the original. But it doesn’t make the attitude particularly palatable to me. It also seems a bit chicken-and-egg; why has there been such restricted lay access to texts through Christian history? It’s not just a technology problem of not having access to physical books, because other cultures have sustained much higher levels of literacy and access against the same technological background.

    Vows
    Most people don’t like to break them. They therefore provide an extra source of strength for people thinking of tuning their back on Christianity
    Yes, that’s exactly my problem! Because it means that people who do turn their back on Christianity (or a marriage, or the priesthood, or whatever) are breaking vows as well as doing something which is considered to whatever extent bad. The idea of using a sacred vow just as a crutch to try to motivate yourself to keep resolutions is something I have real problems with.

    It’s blasphemous, for a start; I don’t know how Christians read the Commandment not to take God’s name in vain, but the most literal meaning of it is that one shouldn’t invoke God’s name to make gratuitous vows. But regardless of whether you care about that, I can’t see any possible argument for taking vows lightly. I don’t think you even have to be a theist to see that vows are important. The whole concept of a vow is hugely devalued if people go about making vague vows, or vows they more or less expect, and are expected, to break.

47. livredor Says:
    February 14, 2004 at 4:14 am

    Thanks for that article, it’s interesting. The thing is, if you start from the principle that evangelism is good, things like this follow quite logically. I mean, to my mind there’s a lot less wrong with using the opportunity of a high profile film which is relevant to Christianity, than with the principle of going around trying to get converts in the first place.

    Actually, what I find really disturbing about that article is the quote about how exciting it will be to see what it would have been like to have been there in person to see Jesus crucified. That’s starting to get to the point where it’s sick; whatever the theological significance (which I don’t claim to understand) of the crucifixion, it’s unpleasant to take that much delight in someone being tortured to death.

48. kemelios Says:
    February 14, 2004 at 4:47 am

    Yes, I completely agree about the sickness of wanting to be in the virtual crowd at Gethsemane. I also think that Christians haven’t considered the potential for a major sympathy backfire here, especially among the younger set who might not react with the horror that is expected. Torture and violence in the media has become common fare, what makes a crucifixion particularly shocking? Perhaps they’ll even market a companion PS2 game for the movie.

49. livredor Says:
    February 14, 2004 at 6:31 am

    The serious Bible reading Christians I knew would usually have several translations of the Bible
    That’s definitely a good start! As far as I’m concerned, there’s simply no adequate substitute for reading in the original, but this is considerably more encouraging than the leave-it-to-the-experts attidude I’ve often encountered.

    tools like Blue Letter Bible
    Ooooh, resource! Um, yeah, sorry, where were we?

    Actually knowing enough Greek to read the NT in the native language was rarer, though.
    What’s missing, in my view, is not the expertise you’re talking about here. There are probably (in my estimation) only slightly fewer Christians than Jews who can read Biblical languages fluently. What surprises me about a lot of Christian attitudes is the lack of the intermediate level, anyone who’s not an expert doesn’t even try. There doesn’t seem to be an expectation that non-experts (in which group I very much count myself!) will do things like check against the original to see where a translation is coming from, or be aware of salient words, or that kind of thing.

50. livredor Says:
    February 14, 2004 at 7:44 am

    how can one follow a God who would be so utterly unfair as to blame the whole of humanity for something Adam and Eve did?

    I never really saw this as being about blame, but rather about the spiritual state of humanity after the Fall. A bit of a fine distinction, perhaps, since in either case the effect is that without faith in JC it is impossible to please God.
    OK, I can see that this is different from the way I summarized it. But it’s still completely opaque to me. I really can’t deal with the idea that everyone is inherently… what’s the word here? bad? tainted? corrupt? unless they go through the right ritual.

    It seems pretty intuitive to me that people are inherently neutral until they’ve actually done some actions, and that their moral status depends on the outcome of those actions. I’m prepared to buy into the idea that people are inherently good, just because it’s appealing, as a basis for a moral structure. But the idea that people are inherently bad really repels me.

    Explaining this in terms of the far-reaching effects of what Adam did just seems plain nonsense, unfair in the way that primary school children use the word. I am aware of the dangers of being too literal about the way that religion and religious morality derive from scripture, though!

51. livredor Says:
    February 14, 2004 at 9:02 pm

    It does seem a bit odd that it’s predicated on having exactly the right views about such things as the nature of God

    I’d be very surprised to see Christians saying that a correct understanding of the Trinity is essential for salvation, since it’s practically impossible to talk about the Trinity without falling into some heretical -ism or other. Have you come across this?
    OK, I may have exaggerated slightly for rhetorical effect, but precision is good in this kind of discussion.

    My understanding is that you need to believe in God, which implies to me that you must have some kind of comprehension of what Christians mean by God. And as soon as I ask Christians what their view of God is, by and large they start talking in Trinitarian language and lose me fairly quickly. I think, but ICBW here, that you also have to believe in (have faith in? Do these terms mean something different that I haven’t grasped?) Jesus, and there’s no way you can believe in Jesus unless you have a basic idea of the structure of the Trinity and the concept of Incarnation. Now, these are the two concepts which really break my head!

    Maybe you don’t have to be absolutely theologically correct and aware of all the twists and turns of 2000 years of Christian thought, but you still have to understand some basic concepts which are very confusing to me at least. Also, if understanding these things properly isn’t essential, why have heresies at all? Why can’t people just believe anything that’s vaguely on the right lines?

52. livredor Says:
    February 14, 2004 at 9:43 pm

    I am surprised that the Christians you have encountered place such an emphasis on theological correctness for salvation, although not surprised that some consider it very important for church order.
    Do you have to be an actual Christian to get at this salvation, or is it sufficient just to believe the right things? Because if salvation is contingent on being accepted into the Church itself, then anything that is important for one is also going to be important from the other.

    One thing which S came up with about salvation by faith was “how much faith is enough?”
    Yes, I suppose that ties in with what I’m asking. OK, so you don’t have to understand every detail of Christian theology, but there does seem to be a belief requirement in there somewhere. To me, pretty much any belief requirement is too much. Because talking about God is always going to be complicated, and really stretching (and I think, largely exceeding) the limits of human language and understanding. So having anything at all riding on having the ‘correct’ beliefs is awfully harsh.

    And even if people basically do believe in Christian teaching, surely they’re going to have moments when they doubt things; that’s only human. Asking people to have perfect faith in complex theological conecpts all the time seems to me even more unreasonable than saying that people can only be saved if they never sin, which I suppose was part of the point of making everything depend on faith in the first place.

    salvation by faith was fairer because otherwise you didn’t have somewhat arbitrary pass mark for good works
    I don’t see why you need an arbitrary pass mark. Mainly because, in my world view, it’s not the place of humans, or human institutions, to decide whether someone is acceptable to God. If you posit omniscience and perfect justice, then you don’t need to be arbitrary at all.

    Actually, that’s quite important, now I think of it. Maybe that’s why I have a problem with the whole salvation concept in Christianity: the church is taking on itself decisions about the state of people’s souls, which I don’t think it has the right to do.

53. livredor Says:
    February 14, 2004 at 11:10 pm

    Wow, that’s a really interesting historical perspective, thanks for that. And I love the idea that you have an inner linguist.

    I should point out here that I am not at all against translations. I’m not like certain Muslims who believe that the Koran can only ever be in Arabic, or like the rabbis who instituted a fast to mourn the tragedy of the Septuagint existing. What surprises me about a lot of (not all, by any means) Christians is that they don’t look at the original at all, they’re satisfied with a translation only.

    The illiterate peasantry in the 16th century couldn’t really be expected to learn Hebrew, Greek or Latin
    The thing is, though, that the church had loads of resources and influence. There was nothing to stop them from educating people, but this was never seen as a priority. I am aware of Muslim Sharia schools where even illiterate people are taught the Koran (and enough Arabic to at least get by). And Jews have pretty much always made general literacy and familiarity with scripture a priority, even in the middle ages when they lived in largely illiterate societies. That this didn’t happen in Christianity is an indication that access to the texts wasn’t taken seriously.

    I would add that I woud expect any serious mondern scholar to be conversant with the original texts; but of course not everyone is a serious scholar, and I still think it’s important for the lay to be involved at an appropriate level.
    I think I disagree with you here. I have no issue with serious Christian scholarship; it exists, and have no reason to believe it’s at anything less than the highest standard. What bothers me is precisely that lay people and ‘ordinary’ people have so little engagement with the text. If it’s the basis for your religion, it ought to be of more than just academic interest.

    (Obviously, vernacular translations worldwide were an important part of proseltysing!)
    Yes, but being nice to people is sometimes part of proselytizing too. The goal is the problem here, not the means. I have to admit that the Hebrew translation of the New Testament is considerably freaky, mind you.

54. livredor Says:
    February 15, 2004 at 12:14 am

    This is lovely.
    I’m a bit unhappy with the application of lovely when I’m being horrid and intolerant. Um.

    Thank you.
    Not at all; I’m glad you talked me into posting this. The thinking was good for me, and I’m getting a lot out of the discussion, and my lovely friends are being very understanding towards my cluelessness.

    You’re pretty much exactly on the reasons why I formally abjured Catholicism thirteen years ago, I too have issues, with faith, with proselytising, with lack of familiarity with the original texts, and with original sin
    That’s fascinating; I didn’t expect that recognition. Because I suppose I’d assumed that lots of my blind spots about Christianity come from my own Jewish background.

    how appallingly patronising it is to deem us all evil and in need of redemption
    Yes! This is one of the reasons I got into such a huge fight with my junior school form teacher: I flatly refused to read an assembly in which I was supposed to tell all the other kids that they were evil. I wish I’d been more articulate in explaining why I found the idea so horrible, because of course the answer I got was that I wasn’t allowed to have religious objections to stuff that’s in the OT. I still have the same reaction now; even though Christians generally do include themselves in declaring that everyone is evil, it always comes across with the slightly smug overtones of ‘but I’m ok because I believe in Jesus, whereas you’re really evil’. It’s particularly annoying that the generalization includes people who are really evidently not evil.

    and they say we’ve all been redeemed and should be grateful for it. Redemption without consent squicks me utterly.
    I hadn’t thought of the consent question, but it does make sense. I can imagine a deeply religious person wanting to tell God, no, I don’t want your son to suffer and die for me, let me take control of my own fate.

    Have you read Sarte’s Le diable et le Bon Dieu (I assume its English title is God and the Devil)? The protagonist in it decides that since he’s already committed a mortal sin, it doesn’t matter how many other evil things he does. But it’s pointed out to him that God could decide to redeem him anyway, because nothing is impossible for God. That really is redemption without consent! (Actually, very, very cool book, just about the only thing I’ve ever read that comes close to putting plausible, non-circular arguments against theism.)

55. livredor Says:
    February 15, 2004 at 12:32 am

    Thanks for this comment, . (And so glad you’ve finally succumbed to LJ!)

    I personally don’t have a problem with the accuracy of scriptural transmission. After all, my religion is just as much text-based as Christianity, and subject to the same problems. I can completely understand people who don’t want to take authority from text, for the reasons you’ve given or other reasons. My problem is that if you do believe that scripture has divine authority, you should make the effort to read it in the original.

    Plus, over quite a few centuries texts were added and removed or ‘retranslated’ by the catholic church, often changing the New Testament to match the theological fashions of the time.
    Now that sounds absolutely fascinating! Do you have a source for this statement, or are you just assuming that this is what happened? I’m quite interested in the question of text canonization, and from this it sounds as if Christian scriptures went through a very different process from Jewish ones. For how long did the NT remain fluid, do you know?

56. kathrid Says:
    February 15, 2004 at 2:45 am

    Plus, over quite a few centuries texts were added and removed or ‘retranslated’ by the catholic church, often changing the New Testament to match the theological fashions of the time.

    I’m afraid I can’t really say much more than what I said above. The NT went through a while where it wasn’t in the form it is today, mostly because various parts of it weren’t collected together by the catholic church straight away. I’ve heard that there’s at least one or two gospels that were thought ‘unreliable’ and either weren’t put in or were removed later. I think more of this was done to the Epistles, where it was quite difficult to determine which were really written by (for instance) St. Paul and which were written by some one claiming to be him or just some one called Paul who liked preaching.

    Early Christianity was a mess, with sects all over the place following different interpretations of events and Christs sayings. The Catholic church started out just as one of these sects, but over the first few centuries it grew more powerful and started to absorb the other branches of Christianity. Some of the other sects were also quite powerful and as part of the merging of the two the NT was changed to fit the beliefs of both sides as much as possible.

    It wasn’t just other Christian sects that were absorbed this way. The original halo around Christs head came from when the Catholic church absorbed the worship of a roman sun god (possibly Sol Invictus, but I may be mistaken). The image of this god was of a man with the sun shining around his head, and the halo was taken directly from it and placed around Christs head.

    These changes were all part of the politics of the time. Religions had a lot of power, and by merging two beliefs (either by agreement or by a deliberate changing of one religion to try and attract worshipers from another) the people at the top could gain more power. This power-play made permanent changes in the iconography of Christianity, the scripture and even the practical day to day running of worship as feast days were moved and daily worship changed to aid the conversion of ‘heretics’.

57. pw201 Says:
    February 16, 2004 at 12:51 am

    Ooooh, resource!

    Rather a good one, too: Greek and (I think) Hebrew texts available (unless they give you the Septuagint for the OT), I hope you noticed.

    What surprises me about a lot of Christian attitudes is the lack of the intermediate level, anyone who’s not an expert doesn’t even try.

    I think that depends on where in the church you are. The more Roman Catholic bits of the church have almost taken on the OT priesthood idea of the priest as an intermediary (think what “vicar” literally means) and the church building as a place where you meet God. This shows in the design of church buildings, too, interestingly. My ex-church thoroughly disagreed with that sort of thing, and had taken great care to ensure that there were walkways through what used to be the Most Holy Place in their church building (since they’d taken over an old parish church done to the old design).

    The low church, evangelical people are much more keen on line by line study of the Bible with study aids like concordances and whatnot, a style of study I think is more familiar to Jews from what I’ve seen you and others write (it’s interesting to see the parallels between two Temple-less forms of religion here). If anything, the fault of the evangelicals around here is that they are too intellectual. I’d also say there was a gender distinction here: my ex was much happier looking after the kids than getting involved with the Bible study side.

    I’m going to get someone who’s a Catholic saying that they study the Bible now, so I’d better point out that these are generalities, and that educated Christians of whatever church background study the Bible.

    As I say here, I think the problem with evangelical engagement with the Bible is the uncritical acceptance of the cannon, and of traditional authorship and dates of writing.

58. pw201 Says:
    February 16, 2004 at 12:59 am

    I really can’t deal with the idea that everyone is inherently… what’s the word here? bad? tainted? corrupt? unless they go through the right ritual.

    You’re not going to find me disagreeing here. I find the Total Depravity doctrine repellent, as I’ve said in my essay.

    Interestingly, the verse that my ex-minister liked to quote to back up that doctrine was Jer 17:9. I expect the Jewish interpretation of that isn’t quite the same as the evangelical Christian one

59. pw201 Says:
    February 16, 2004 at 1:25 am

    And another thing… I think Total Depravity is about convincing people they’re ill so you can sell them the cure. Without it, Christianity would have a terrible time convincing nice, happy people that they need to convert. It says “even the good people are bad according to God, but if you follow our way, you’ll be OK”. Grrr.

60. pw201 Says:
    February 16, 2004 at 7:17 am

    Do you have to be an actual Christian to get at this salvation, or is it sufficient just to believe the right things?

    wrt “the belief/have faith in” question from the previous post, I was taught that faith is more than just belief in the abstract. After all, as James says, even the demons believe that there’s a God. The missing ingredient to make faith is was to be trust, ISTR (although James makes it out to be good works, hence Martin Luther’s famous aversion to that letter).

    As to whether there is salvation to be found outside the church, that depends on who you ask. I think the RCC officially taught that there was no salvation outside the church (by which they meant the RCC) until relatively recently (by which I mean the last few hundred years, say). Protestants tend to have a much more individualist view, such that someone who has faith is a Christian and is saved. As far as the Bible’s concerned, Paul talks about the church community as Christ’s body and seems to regard expelling someone from the church fellowship as handing them over to Satan, but is also the source for favourite Protestant proof texts about salvation by faith. Just to add to the fun, it’s common to make a distinction between the visible church and invisible church, that is, the people and organisations you can see, and those people who are actually saved, respectively.

    I personally think that the NT has no single coherent answer to the question of what one must do to be saved. Different churches have different traditions on what the answer is, which amount to ways of prioritising the bits of the NT which address this, plus any other ideas that church has had along the way. If one is an evangelical, one must pretend that one’s tradition is not a tradition at all but comes directly from the Bible, because tradition is Catholic and bad (the evangelical tradition is that Paul trumps James, so what James means is that saving faith shows itself in good works).

    So having anything at all riding on having the ‘correct’ beliefs is awfully harsh.

    Indeed, although to be fair, if we’re taking Paul’s word for it, one must believe that Jesus is “Lord” (and it’s not clear that Lord means God here, arguments about how 1 Cor 8:6 self-consciously parallels the Shema notwithstanding) and the God raised him from the dead, neither of which are that theologically complicated. However, at various times, people have decided that one cannot possibly get by without adding some other stuff on to that.

    If you posit omniscience and perfect justice, then you don’t need to be arbitrary at all.

    I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Both faith and good works exist in a continuum. If you’ve got discrete destinations for people, you’ve got to partition that continuum somehow, and it’s likely that there will be people just either side of any line that you draw. This is a bummer for those people who just miss out on a First, as it were. Are you saying that God’s omiscience means he draw the line fairly?

    the church is taking on itself decisions about the state of people’s souls, which I don’t think it has the right to do.

    The churches I was a part of explicitly disclaimed any attempt to do that. They would say that it was God who judged, not them, although they did feel able to tell people what they thought God had told them about what his criteria were going to be

61. lisekit Says:
    February 16, 2004 at 7:29 pm

    I agree with quite a lot of what you are saying above, but I think that

    lay people and ‘ordinary’ people have so little engagement with the text. If it’s the basis for your religion, it ought to be of more than just academic interest.

    could be the source for a whole different discussion. Certainly, for some practising Christians, personal faith is of far greater importance than Scripture or law or ritual (I know that in itself is moving outside the textual frame as well, but I guess that’s also part of the issue - for some, text is not all-important).

    Some sects of course place a great deal of emphasis on textual interpretation and discussion and scriptural understanding; but some place more importance on either personal faith, or a relationship with God mediated by a spiritual authority.

62. pw201 Says:
    February 16, 2004 at 9:18 pm

    This site seems to be rather good on what was considered canonical and when. They’ve also got a rather neat table summarising it.

    I think the concept of an NT canon might be a little anachronistic for 1st and 2nd century Christianity. Initially what you’re looking at is who regarded particular writings as authoritative, usually implied by quotations from them, rather than people or church councils writing lists of books they approve of. The idea of new scriptures and canon seems to come from the need to oppose various ideas which are now regarded as heresy, as this article seems to say.

    From what I remember, Mark is the earliest gospel at about 60 AD (not 60 years after J’s death, which is usually thought to be 33 AD). Matthew and Luke seem to quote both Mark and another source, usually known as Q (pay attention, 007!)

    There are a few notorious additions thought to have happened once the canon had been established. I’m not aware of how much the church diddled with translations into Latin and other languages; modern Bibles translate from Greek or Hebrew manuscripts.

63. livredor Says:
    February 20, 2004 at 9:19 pm

    saying that non-Christians are intrinsically inferior, no matter how exemplary their life
    Ask any who say that (or that only Christians can be saved) just why they are putting limits on Divine Grace.
    Oh dear, now we’re into Capitalized Christian Concepts. I was afraid that would happen. One of the major obstacles I have found to getting more of a handle on Christianity has been that when I ask about something, it often turns out that there’s some CCC that I don’t understand. I’m never going to make sense of what’s confusing me until I understand the concept of Salvation, or Faith, or Love, or… Grace.

    The CCCs are mostly things that have correlates in normal English, except that they seem to mean something entirely different when they’re capitalized. And I suppose they’re part of the reason why I listed Faith as one of the aspects of Christianity that bother me. I mean, if in order to feel any less alienated by Christianity (let alone achieve whatever goal it is that Christians think I should be aiming for) I have to understand these CCCs, which no-one seems to be able to explain to me, what hope is there?

    The thing is, I wasn’t talking about any sort of limits on anything to do with God. I was talking about limits on humanity; my understanding is that, because of original sin, people who are not Christian are inferior in God’s eyes. So how does that connect to putting limits on Divine Grace? And would you care to have a try at explaining what you, at least, mean by Divine Grace? I’d appreciate it. Even if the answer is ‘if you have it, you just know’, at least that would be something I could interact with logically.

    That said, there’s also a fairly strong philosophical tradition within Judaism (the Kabbalists ran away with it, but it’s in other places too) that it is necessary to invoke some kind of limit to the Divine, so’s to speak, in order that physical reality can exist. But that’s starting to get complicated.

64. livredor Says:
    February 20, 2004 at 9:39 pm

    Judaism isn’t just a religion, it’s a culture as well, and it is hard to say that someone isn’t a member of a culture.
    Um. People keep telling me that Judaism is a culture, which I suppose is fair enough. But are you seriously telling me that Christianity isn’t a culture?

    The idea that a religion can exist entirely outside culture seems implausible to me. I find it less difficult to grasp the idea that one’s religion could be restricted to cultic matters, without any influence on culture and daily life, but I personally would find it hard to have much respect for any religion that worked like that.

    A better perspective would be to say that they aren’t an Orthodox Jew or the like.
    I think you’ve slightly misunderstood what is meant by the term Orthodox Jew. I mean, it’s an easy enough mistake to make, because the very word Orthodox looks like it ought to mean ‘believing the right stuff’. But that’s not in fact what Orthodox Judaism is. You’ll probably find as many Orthodox Jews who don’t believe in anything as you will in other movements; possibly you’ll even find more, because a lot of the time belief is simply not discussed in that sector of the community.

    There are indeed a few groups within Judaism who put more emphasis on belief than the norm; the Liberals used to, but that was when they were explicitly modelling themselves off the C of E. You will also find groups within Judaism who hold that those who are not part of their group are not Jewish. But those are pretty fringe; on the whole Jews (of the intolerant sort) are much more likely to argue that those who are not part of their group are bad Jews than not Jewish at all. And the basis of the argument will usually be that the bad Jews are doing the wrong things, not that they have erroneous theology.

65. livredor Says:
    February 20, 2004 at 10:11 pm

    [talkin' to the hat]

    But by virtue of being one of God’s chosen people,
    Given that so many people seem to misunderstand the chosen people concept, I’m at least prepared to accept the possibility that we’ve been explaining it wrongly all this time. I suspect it’s partly a language problem; the word chosen has connotations of being in primary school and not being chosen for the team.

    you automatically have a major part to play.
    Well, yes, but everybody automatically has a major part to play by right of birth, by right of being human. It’s just that Jews don’t (on the whole; there are always the odd exceptions) particularly feel that anyone else’s part is our business to define.

    people have smaller parts due to birth
    If you seriously believe that the whole of human achievement is a smaller part than religious ritual… well, I suggest you swap that devil’s advocate hat for a tonsure.

    they can fix their choices
    I don’t believe that everybody who thinks differently from me needs to fix their choices. At least, I don’t start from the assumption that all choices different from mine are wrong. Some of them might be, but I don’t assume it unless the consequences of those choices give me a good reason to believe so.

    it is * dificult to become one of God’s chosen people
    I would say that a valid criticism that could be made against Judaism is that most of the religion really needs to be a lot kinder to converts. This is an area where we could learn from Christians; Christians are, on the whole, welcoming to converts. I’m really talking about attitudes towards people who don’t want to convert, though.

    Does that make it any clearer?

66. livredor Says:
    February 20, 2004 at 11:10 pm

    I think that depends on where in the church you are.
    Oh, it always does, doesn’t it? I knew I was going to get into trouble by generalizing about anything.

    The more Roman Catholic bits of the church have almost taken on the OT priesthood idea of the priest as an intermediary
    Hm. I’m not sure that the analogy between OT priests and Catholic priests is that close, but then I’m not an expert on either. But yeah, the priest-as-intermediary thing may play large part in the lack of lay scholarship or involvement which bothers me, I can see that.

    the church building as a place where you meet God
    This is a very interesting thread, thank you. I hadn’t thought much about the role of the church as a physical building and how that ties into theology. Cool.

    The low church, evangelical people are much more keen on line by line study of the Bible with study aids like concordances and whatnot
    This is a really interesting perspective. The main attitude I’ve come across among Evangelicals is to answer everything with a Bible verse, with no thought to things like wider context or translation or interpretation issues, (or even whether it’s germane to the discussion). They know their Bible well in the sense that they can recite lots of it. (I’ve also come across Muslims who do the same thing with the Koran, they just use it as an irrefutable argument card.) But I’ve obviously met with the wrong sorts of Evangelicals!

    a style of study I think is more familiar to Jews
    Yes and no. I think the huge difference is that Jews (mostly) start with the Hebrew and use translations as study aids. That’s what I was griping about in my original post. Also there are huge swathes of the Jewish community who never study the Bible just like that; they’re much more interested in the rest of scripture, and will only use the part of Torah that is Bible for back-up.

    The other difference (and this could be part of my getting a false impression of Evangelicals) is that Jews when they’re engaged in serious study work in pairs, or singly if for some reason they can’t find a partner. So they’re very personally engaged with the text. Whereas I get the impression that Christian Bible study is much more about being in a class or lecture type situation, learning from a teacher. Obviously you need some element of both, you won’t get very far unless you get some guidance.

67. livredor Says:
    February 21, 2004 at 11:57 am

    If anything, the fault of the evangelicals around here is that they are too intellectual.
    Is it possible to be too intellectual? No, seriously, what really gets to me is the ‘Don’t ask questions, just have Faith’ attitude (and yes, I have quite often come across Christians who literally say that).

    I suppose if it’s very important that everybody holds the same core beliefs, (whatever you define as the core; I accept that I was exaggerating when I talked about the whole mass of complicated doctrine), then people taking a very intellectual approach is going to lead to at least some people questioning those core beliefs and finding themselves in troubling dilemmas. On the other hand, I feel that a religion that’s worth anything ought to be able to stand up to rigorous intellectual probing.

    I’d also say there was a gender distinction here: my ex was much happier looking after the kids than getting involved with the Bible study side.
    Sexism happens everywhere. If you start from a basically sexist perspective, your religious practice will likely be sexist. (There’s a really weird gender distinction in some sectors of the Jewish community, whereby men study Talmud and Jewish law exclusively, whereas women study philosophy and history and all the stuff pertaining to actually applying the law, and secular studies within a Jewish framework.)

    educated Christians of whatever church background study the Bible
    Fair enough, I’ve just got the wrong impression, then. I’m still a little bothered by the emphasis on translation rather than original, but that’s just my personal prejudices.

    the problem with evangelical engagement with the Bible is the uncritical acceptance of the cannon, and of traditional authorship and dates of writing
    Hmm, that’s not something that bothers me as much as it appears to bother you. It’s a bit like reading, say, Shakespeare; sure, it’s a good idea to be aware that he wasn’t historically accurate, that a lot of what he was writing was propaganda for his Tudor patrons and so on. But it would be really annoying if the only valid sort of scholarship were to compare Shakespeare’s account with as much evidence as one could gather for what really happened historically.

    Similarly, I am aware that the Bible was a product of its historical context, that the text has been imperfectly transmitted, that it was written over several centuries and by multiple authors. (And it’s true that there are some Jews who don’t take this kind of attitude to the Bible, but think about revelation in much more literal terms than I do.) But it’s also a text in the form that we currently have it, and I believe it has something worthwhile to say as an integral text. This kind of stuff may be interesting, but I don’t think it has a lot to contribute religiously.

68. livredor Says:
    February 21, 2004 at 1:40 pm

    I find the Total Depravity doctrine repellent
    Gosh, there I was trying to use not too emotive terms like bad, inferior. And the proper word is depraved? Um, wow.

    As for verses, I know of a handful of prooftext verses for original sin. I don’t actually think the OT does a much worse job of supporting Christianity than it does Judaism. I mean, it annoys me when Christian readings do things like gratuitously capitalizing the word son, but hey. There are occasions when Jewish tradition uses the Bible to demonstrate the opposite of what it appears to be saying.

69. livredor Says:
    February 21, 2004 at 1:44 pm

    I think Total Depravity is about convincing people they’re ill so you can sell them the cure
    That’s a very cynical way of looking at it, but yes, I can see where you’re coming from. I think I prefer that approach to telling people who actually do have real problems that all they need to do is believe in Jesus and everything will get better. But hey, that’s a whole different rant.

70. pw201 Says:
    February 21, 2004 at 2:06 pm

    I’m not sure that the analogy between OT priests and Catholic priests is that close, but then I’m not an expert on either.

    Me neither, really, but I do recall that the RCC’s theology of the Mass (what other churches call Holy Communion or the Eucharist) is that it is in some sense timelessly connected to the original sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, so that in the RCC the priest offers sacrifices just as the OT priesthood did (the Catholic Encyclopedia article on this seems to agree, from a brief skimming). The RCC buildings have an area called the Tabernacle, for example.

    I hadn’t thought much about the role of the church as a physical building and how that ties into theology.

    I’m not sure how common it is for Christian churches to think about this stuff. Despite my twitter and bistedness about StAG, it’s to their credit that they had thought about how to put their “you are all priests” theology into practice in that way.

    But I’ve obviously met with the wrong sorts of Evangelicals!

    Possibly. There are threads within evangelicalism which are more intellectual than others. I’d expect the charismatics to be less book-based, for example (I’ll post something about that in another reponse, I think).

    Whereas I get the impression that Christian Bible study is much more about being in a class or lecture type situation, learning from a teacher.

    That can be true. The line by line method was applied to sermons at my old church, for example. In Bible study groups, which were usually composed of about 5 or 6 people, how much it was a lecture depended both on the personality of the group leaders and on how much work the other people in the group were prepared to do. Having been on both the giving and receiving end of Bible study groups, it’s not always that the leader dominates so much as that the other people want to be spoon-fed Most of the use of study aids would have been done by the leader beforehand, really, since the actual sessions tended to only last an hour or so.

71. pw201 Says:
    February 21, 2004 at 2:34 pm

    Is it possible to be too intellectual?

    I know that’s sort of sarcastic, but yes, if that is in opposition to a more experiential sort of faith. The conservative (rather than charismatic) threads within evangelicalism tend to be deeply suspicious of getting too carried away with feelings and the like. Currently, university CUs are rather annoyed about a charismatic CU alternative (not to say rival) group called Fusion. As Angela Rayner, who I know from uk.religion.christian, points out, this split is partly an intellectual vs experiential one.

    people taking a very intellectua