Ten Commandments test

[Adam]

[Adam]

[Josh]

Nice job, Adam.

[alliebath]

I do hope that you are not accusing me of being a young theological student who has just discovered the Gospel of Thomas, Adam?



Although truth is not always dependent on age or the time one has studies a subject, I have been studying theology for thirty-four years.

It would be true to say, on top of that, that I have rediscovered a radicalism to my theology, and that five or six years ago I would perhaps have been arguing from different perspectives.

I cannot say that I believe that the OT/Tanakh is particular more important in its understanding of God than any other pre-Christian religious writings. Each culture in some way produces some unique insights, but then shares it with the surrounding cultures and understanding and perception grow.

I believe it is quite clear that that has happened within the Hebrew scriptures, particularly after the Exile. However the reinterpretation of their own history post-Exile and also the evidence of the Jewish community in Egypt shows that was a lot more divergence of faith and belief than was recorded.

I think that there are significant and important elements of other non-Christian beliefs that we should learn from and grow with.

Many of the theological images that draped over the actual person of Jesus are quite clearly inherited from all sorts of other faiths—the earliest graffiti of the risen Jesus is decidedly Apollo-like, and the sun became the halo thereafter. Images of virgin and child quite clearly are taken from Isis and Horus as iconic. The list is probably endless.

Even the documents that we have have been influenced in their writings by this. And throughout the history of the church and its theology that is even truer—the Trinity, for example, is easily traced back to triads of gods and goddesses from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. There is no Trinity in the earliest Gospel records nor in Paul, and backdating into Elohim and the visitors at Mamre is really just that, superimposing on a text.

It is interesting talking to Jews who believe in Jesus, but who are not Christians as such, some of whom trace their continuous faith back to Ebionite times, how much influence there has been of what they refer to with some bitterness as Hellenistic take-over (and particular the bitterness in their tradition towards Paul).

We have begun to rediscover Jesus the Jew, the roots of the Church and Christianity. We have also begun to question the assumed right of the church to become part of the Roman state and the suppression of alternative, and sometimes more biblical assumptions about Jesus with regard to God the Father. And we have discovered other parts of Christian exploration that were suppressed.

This has been the work of western theology, which thankfully has begun to be less subjective and more objective in its addressing of the story/stories of God.

There is of course a tremendous conservative and evangelical backlash to all of this, and a want to preserve some static stae like the pause button on a DVD or video machine, and to somehow live by perceived 1st century or sixteenth century value systems. But you cannot turn back to a mythical past or recreate a false paradise.

Now there are many more ways of using the texts that analysing them and disputing them. Story is a powerful shaper of mind and spirit, a conduit of prayer and imagination and an inspiration to live a more godly life. But enjoying a piece of music or a good film or book does not stop a person also appreciating its composition or structure, its influences and parallels. That is what theology is to faith—and hopefully it ensures that faith is not blind, not unreasonable in the path to commitment, and ever challenged and challenging and not just a comfort and a sanctusry.

[alliebath]

[duplicated posting deleted]

[Adam]

Your admitted radicalism, such as your mention of the oppresive conception of Y*h as a male, calling Paul a misogynist, the relativity of the authority of the canon, and the accusation that the Gospels are anti-Jewish, all struck me as the sort of eagerness I see in my first year theology students to appropriate the historical-critical reading of Scripture to serve their politics. It is a practice that I look upon with the same distaste that I have for ecclesiastic dogmatics. It is not that I am particularly invested or even the slightest bit interested in defending the politics of the dead, but to read sexism into the conception of Y*h as male is to ignore than cultural significance that this attribution had at the time, when it in fact was made at all; more particularly, I would argue that Y*h is understood to play roles that are assigned to male figures, but that the gender, as we would understand it, was incidental, compared to the cultural role or sexual position, which was relevant. To read Paul as a misogynist is to misunderstand his interpretation of faithfulness, ignore his eschatology, and make the same mistake that modern Christians do of universalizing into categorical imperatives what Paul intended as counsel for particular communities that he knew personally. And the fascination with non-canonical texts and extra-Biblical authority is always pursued with the subtle subtext of revolting against an ideologically oppressive church (as though there was any institution to exercise any power to speak of in the first two centuries) and dismiss the fact that the Greek and Latin fathers were well acquianted with all of these texts, and did not fail to explain, often in detail, what they found useful in them and what they found troublesome about them.

In short, I think that such an approach as is reflected in your statements represents an abuse of the historical-critical method, of the sort that is common in popular literature, and perhaps too common in professional circles as well. The ultimate goal, to recapture lost voices of history, is pushed aside in service to ideology, but of course because this time it is the "right" ideology, of liberation and freedom and equality, then somehow it is acceptable. The fact that this practice is often exercised by the same theologians who chastise the church for twisting Scripture and Tradition to serve their own politics is one that I find humorous.

Paul has been unjustly Hellenized by the Church and by Her detractors. But I am heartened by the growing movement to Judaize him, to read him as a Pharisee or rabbi who followed the Jewish messiah, and not as Luther or Calvin or Billy Graham. Unfortunately, our progress is impeded both by those untrained in the historical-critical method, who insist that Paul is exactly who their Protestant pastor claims he is, and, in a greater act of betrayal, by those historical-critical scholars who have made a name for themselves attacking Paul for being a Republican.

[Pete]

alliebath, did you see my post - on the previous page?

[alliebath]

[alliebath]

[Karen]

[Josh]

[Josh]

[Adam]

alliebath,

It is popular to believe that the progress of of the physical sciences is a linear one from primitive incompleteness to evolved completeness. In contrast, I understand the progress of science to be shifts in paradigms, the rise and fall of entire systems of thought, with each successive system containing more facts and ignoring fewer anomalies.

I think the progression of religion is similar in that it consists of shifts in paradigms, though in the case of religion I do not necessarily believe that each successive system includes broader boundaries for its explanation of phenomena.

For this reason, we largely agree on the failures of Christianity to incorporate certain people and experiences into it's system; as a language of thought, it should evolve as a language, and when it ceases to be able to adapt to new events or objects, it must be discarded.

I am optimistic, however, about the evolution of Judeo-Christianity and in regard to it's ability to adapt to new experiences.

And finally, I believe that there is necessarily a distinction between criticizing an older paradigm for explaining fewer facts and ignoring more anomalies than a current system that we hold, and criticizing an older paradigm because it is dissimilar to our own. Reasonable people can draw the line for this distinction in different places, but I would suggest that some of the brief criticism you have offered here crosses the line, and as evidence I would assert that these criticisms are unfounded judgments because they ignore some of the facts; as I have noted previously, for example, to criticize Paul's understanding of the role of women without understanding his eschatology is little different than the error of accepting his perceived understanding of the role of women without understanding his eschatology; in such a case, the error of the conservative churches and of the progressive critics is the same.

[alecto]

Adam, are you the undergrad theology student who just discovered the Gospel of Thomas?

[Adam]