Posted on 02/16/2009 12:41:27 PM PST by annalex
How do you know that?
The alternative is to believe that the Apostles taught what they wrote, then everyone immediately following them taught something very different until 300 years later when your men arrived and set everything straight. That doesn't make any sense.
That would leave nine others who have written nothing. It is only our guess what they taught, but we do know that Christianity was a heterodox movement, consisting of a wide range of beliefs and practices, with only Christ's name in common (not much different than today).
The Holy Spirit was either with them or He wasn't. But if we even suppose for a minute that Apostles didn't have it right, then how can one stake his claim to Apostolic succession?
First there is no mention that Paul told them to check the scriptures. Second, it is reasonable to assume that only the rabbis did. Third, it says that "any believed" which also means that many didn't. And the scripture could not be the reason, both believers and nonbelievers consulted the scriptures. Fourth, what Paul was telling them was that, based on the Old Testament Jesus was the Christ. Fifth, and most importantly, if that were the case, then we wouldn't need the New Testament at all! We could just use the Old Testament and be "Christians!" And, sixth, last but not least, Paul really does not treat Jesus as God but as someone God raised, someone lesser than the Father, the only God as far as Paul is concerned.
Christian theology was like a puzzle made up of many unrelated pieces, like someone cutting out desired words from the New York Times and making up a paragraph and then claiming that the paragraph is from the NYT! Well, the words are but the paragraph isn't!
I'm sure there are many examples of that across Christianity, but a true believer would have no use in comparing himself to anyone else
Hinduism and Zoroastrianism beat us hands down
I am not aware of any historical evidence in Hinduism and the rest. They have legends told as legends, and they have moral and philosophical teachings told as such. We have a human chain. Besides, indeed I am not a Christian merely because I believe certain miracles took place, but also because the Christian religion makes logical and moral sense, and the miracles fit in the Christian worldview. It is a productive system of thought. It is possible for other people to think something similar about other religions and derive some benefit from that; that doesn't make me wrong.
that [Christ makes a reference to Jonah's story] doesn't prove that Jonah story actually happened
Sure it does. The alternative is that Jesus implied that his death and resurrection is likewise a legend that did not happen, or that Jesus while being God believed a falsehood.
If in your imagination you believe that you can actually fly who am I to say you can't fly in your imagination?
Yes, if I have a private revelation, for example, of Mary, as some people get, you don't have to share im my belief. The revelation of Christ, however, was public: His teaching, miracles, trial, death, and resurrection were all public events. It is true that some miracles of the Bible are possibly literary devices of some kind or are legendary, and it is possible to retain one's Christian faith while disputing the factual nature of those. As far as I know, the Church does not teach that every miraculous event in the Bible is a historical fact. However, we have enough miracles a disbelief in which excommunicates: the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection and ascention, the Real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and some others. It becomes a strange, quite a bit schizophrenic personal theology to separate the minor miracles from these and proclaim them all fiction.
Who actually saw Christ resurrect?
They saw Christ die, and then they saw him walk, talk, fish, eat, touched His wounds, etc. Again, theories exist that explain it away, but direct evidence is that the death and resurrection did happen.
Kosta”that [Christ makes a reference to Jonah’s story] doesn’t prove that Jonah story actually happened”
Alex: “Sure it does. The alternative is that Jesus implied that his death and resurrection is likewise a legend that did not happen, or that Jesus while being God believed a falsehood.”
Alex what you say doesn’t follow at all. +Basil the Great, Isaac the Syrian etc, etc spoke of the allegorical nature of OT stories and I doubt that any of them entertained the notion that Christ’s death and resurrection were legendary.
Eh, no. You are, of course, correct that the Church produced the New Testament scripture as a colossal feat of writing, selecting, editing, and philosophizing that spanned centuries. But it doesn't follow that the process was not inspired and even divinely dictated, or that the original pieces were not saying what they say now as a part of the whole.
There has always been the Sacred Deposit of faith that Christ left with the disciples. This gave them an internal compass: an ability to sort out the stories, reminiscences, parables, moral teaching into those that rang true and those that did not ring true. Some hypotheses, -- for example that Jesus was a ghost and not man, or that the Old Testament God was hostile to Jesus Jewish God -- were tested and found wanting. The Orthodox sense was always there; this is why St. Irenaeus may not have the entirety of the Christian theology, but those things he writes about a modern orthodox theologian could write. The councils confirmed what the Church already believed.
The Jonah's story in particular is a good candidate to be taken factually as well as allegorically, because of the way Jesus builds a parallel from it to Himself.
The alternative, if not absurd, is at least illogical. Did the Fathers devote any particular attention to this story in light of Mt 12:40f? I ask because not the least of them, St. John The Chrysostom most emphatically denies the allegorical reading:
For as Jonas, says He, was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (Matthew 22:40 [sic]) Thus, He said not indeed openly that He should rise again, since they would have even laughed Him to scorn, but He intimated it in such manner, that they might believe Him to have foreknown it. For as to their being aware of it, they say to Pilate, That deceiver said, these are their words, while He was yet alive, After three days I will rise again; and yet we know His disciples were ignorant of this; even as they had been beforehand more void of understanding than these: wherefore also these became self-condemned.But see how exactly He expresses it, even though in a dark saying. For He said not, In the earth, but, In the heart of the earth; that He might designate His very sepulchre, and that no one might suspect a mere semblance. And for this intent too did He allow three days, that the fact of His death might be believed. For not by the cross only does He make it certain, and by the sight of all men, but also by the time of those days. For to the resurrection indeed all succeeding time was to bear witness; but the cross, unless it had at the time many signs bearing witness to it, would have been disbelieved; and with this disbelief would have gone utter disbelief of the resurrection also. Therefore He calls it also a sign. But had He not been crucified, the sign would not have been given. For this cause too He brings forward the type, that the truth may be believed. For tell me, was Jonah in the whale's belly a mere appearance? Nay, you can not say so. Therefore neither was Christ in the heart of the earth such. For surely the type is not in truth, and the truth in mere appearance. For this cause we every where show forth His death, both in the mysteries, and in baptism, and in all the rest. Therefore Paul also cries with a clear voice, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Whence it is clear, that they who are diseased in Marcion's way are children of the devil, blotting out these truths, to avoid the annulling whereof Christ did so many things, while to have them annulled the devil took such manifold pains: I mean, His cross and His passion.
“St. John The Chrysostom most emphatically denies the allegorical reading....”
And +Maximos the Confessor, in “Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy and Virtue and Vice” goes to great lengths to explain the allegories in the Book of Jonah.
But does he deny the factuality? No one disputes that the allegorical reading is present there, and is, perhaps, more important to apprehend.
Be it as it may as concerns St. Maximos, St. John makes a very strong point on factuality.
Kolo: And +Maximos the Confessor, in “Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy and Virtue and Vice” goes to great lengths to explain the allegories in the Book of Jonah
yaught=taught
“He rose again in accordance with the Scripture” doesn’t quite leave much room to “in accordance with the legendary and purely allegorical content of the Scriptures”, does it?
Pretty much so, FK, with only a few decades separating the two events. The Creed was finalized at the First Council of Constantinople (Second Ecumenical Council), only about a decade before the canonization of the Bible in the west.
But I thought that you all use circa 33 A.D. as the starting point of your particular church. Wouldn't that mean that everyone had it wrong for 300+ years? Wouldn't that also mean that either the Apostles were teaching different things or that they were terrible teachers? :)
Moreover, extant Bibles dating from circa middle of the 4th century contain books that are no longer considered canonical. Any copies of the New Testament books prior to the Nicene Council are mysteriously missing (presumably destroyed by the Church), but fragments and indirect evidence shows that the post-Nicene sources have been heavily redacted to more closely reflect the new trinitarian dogma of the Church.
Do you infer from that that the original manuscripts were altered to match a man-made theology? If so, then the Bible would really be of no spiritual value. It would be no better than, say, Dianetics. :)
Yes, I just read them. Your description of these passages is correct: he explains the allegories (typos, ellipses mine):
St. Maximos the confessorVarious texts on theology
"The clefts of the mountains are the counsels of the evil spirits ... the lowe depth of the earth are [ignorance of] divine knowledge... the abyss [is] evil disposition
"The king represents the Natural Law. The throne is an impassionate disposition, etc.
"The spirit of scorching heat signifies not only trials and tempptations but also that abandonment by God which deprived the Jews of the gifts of grace.
"The scripture represents Jonah as grieving on account of the booth and the gourd - that is to say, on account of the flesh and the pleasure of the flesh -- and it represents God as caring for Nineveh...
Nowhere does St. Maximos offers the opinion that all that this book is, is allegory. The patristics, as we know, are filled with such mystical exegesis: the two fishes are the two books of the Bible, the five loaves are (I forget what), the initially imperfect vision of the blind man in Mark 8 is his weak faith, etc. The allegorical explanation never supplants the factual reading, it supplements it. St. Maximos's passages are no exception.
Searching the Philokalia further, however, I found this beautiful text:
St. TheogonososOn the Practive of the Virtues
Once more I shall tell you dsomethign strange at which you are not to be startled. A mystery is accomplished secretly between the soul and God in the higher reaches of perfect purity, love and faith. When a man is completely reconciled to God he is united with Him through unceasing prayer and contemplation. Such was Elijah's state when he closed the heavens, causign a drought (cf. 1 Kgs. 17:1), and burnt the sacrifice with fire from heaven (cf. 1 Kgs. 18:26-38), In such state Moses divided the sea (cf. Exod. 14:21) and defeated Amalek by stretching of his arms (cf. Exod. 17:11-13). In such a state Jonah was saved from the whale and from the deep (cf. Jonah 2:1-10). for the person found worthy of this mystery compels outr most compassionate God to do whatever he wants. Even when still in the flesh, he has passed beyond the limits of corruption and mortality, and he awaits death as if it were an everyday sleep that peasurably brings him to the fulfillment of his hopes.
Not a trace of doubt inthe factuality of the miracles here. They are, quite simply, attributes of sanctity. And whom do we get sanctity from? The Old Testament is all about Jesus. It is not optional and not fables.
I'm not certain about the Co-Redemptrix concept, but on the Mediatrix concept and on his Marian devotion in general, Pope Leo XIII was influenced by St. Louis de Montfort, a French priest who lived in the late 17th and early 18th centuries (he beatified him). He sought to preach missions throughout France, but like many orthodox believers of this period of time, he was persecuted by many of the bishops of that time, and was restricted to preaching in Brittany and the Vendee. Interesting enough, those two regions in France were the only two to resist the violent secularization of the French Revolution, which took place seven decades after his death (though with limited success, since the Revolutionaries more or less committed genocide against the devout Catholics there). Go figure.
First there is no mention that Paul told them to check the scriptures. Second, it is reasonable to assume that only the rabbis did.
On the first count we have this a few verses earlier:
Acts 17:1-4 : 1 When they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. 2 As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. "This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ," he said.
Paul's habit was to reason from the scriptures. It is reasonably inferrable that Paul approved of what the Bereans did and even invited them to. It would not make sense if he didn't since he was reasoning from the scriptures to proclaim Christ. On the second count it is unknowable if only rabbis made the comparisons. We aren't told. What difference would that make anyway?
Third, it says that "[m]any believed" which also means that many didn't. And the scripture could not be the reason, both believers and nonbelievers consulted the scriptures.
It is the Holy Spirit who opens eyes and ears to accept the Scriptures. The fact that non-believers read the scriptures is irrelevant to the factual truth of them.
Fourth, what Paul was telling them was that, based on the Old Testament Jesus was the Christ.
Paul preached Christ crucified and raised from the dead, and he used the OT to back him up. I'm sure there were plenty of Jews (and Gentiles) who were surprised at this.
Fifth, and most importantly, if that were the case, then we wouldn't need the New Testament at all! We could just use the Old Testament and be "Christians!"
The NT explains the New Covenant as is needed. The OT was sufficient for faith, as evidenced by the OT righteous. Both the NT and OT are needed for Christianity.
And, sixth, last but not least, Paul really does not treat Jesus as God but as someone God raised, someone lesser than the Father, the only God as far as Paul is concerned.
I could not possibly disagree more. If what you say is true, wouldn't all the Apostolic successors of Paul have to wiped from the rolls? :) Or, did those who came hundreds of years later know what Paul meant in his writings better than he did? It would seem that would have to be the claim.
But that's not what the Bible says because the credal statement is a paraphrase from 1 Cor 15:4, which reads somewhat differently. I am not sure why the Church chose to change from Paul's ἐγείρω to ἀνάστασις, but the difference between the active (he rose) perfect tense of the Creed and the passive one (Christ was raised by God [sic]) tense of 1 Cor 15:4 reflects, in my opinion, a significant yet subtle alteration of the scirpture.
I would say it is rather characeristic of the conceptual theological difference that resulted in the span of nearly 300 years between Paul's idea of Christ, and the evolving theology of the Church.
The other issue, of course, is the κατὰ τὰς γραφάς (referring, no doubt to Isaiah 53 [LXX]], which is urse disputed by some (mostly Jewish) scholars as being prophetic of Jesus.
Of course the τῇ τριτῇ ἡμέρᾳ part is not a "prophesy" of any scriptures but a ex post facto statement found in the New Testament.
urse=of course
I hate to tell you, but aside from historical names and places to which the stories have been attached, historical Judaism is in the same boat. There is evidence of Judaism as a historical fact, but not of its myths and legends, just as there is evidence of Christianity, but there is no evidence of anything else except from sources with a vested interest. The "historicity" of Biblical events is a matter of belief and not of fact. There is no solid evidence of any Jews being in Egypt, Exodus, Slaughter of the Innocents, extra biblical accounts of crucifixion, or resurrection etc. (and no, Jospehus' much plagiarized account is not "evidence")
They have legends told as legends...We have a human chain
We also have legends and we have a human chain but with a twist. The Gospels are unsigned. The apostolic authorship of the Gospels is an afterthought made late in the 2nd century. We have facts embellished with unsupported claims.
Besides, indeed I am not a Christian merely because I believe certain miracles took place, but also because the Christian religion makes logical and moral sense, and the miracles fit in the Christian worldview
Christianity makes a lot of moral sense. It teaches that it is better to coexist in love than in hate. It also has a (Platonic) human role model we should strive to imitate, thereby becoming better human beings. We all know that love feels good and hate feels bad. So, there is an element even of Pavlovian stimulus-response behavior present.
There is an element of psychological conditioning in it: behavior that results in rewards tends to be repeated. In other words, it becomes a habit. The world is generally better off if it is producing and benefiting rather than destroying and hurting.
But, other religions make moral sense as well, even if they lack in a viisble, humanly cocneivable role model. They all aim at some sort of "love" condition, peace and satisfaction. Some are more altruistic then others, but the elements are all there. Late (Post-Babylonian, messianic) Judaism and Islam have escatholigical and soteriological beliefs, but so does Zoroastrianism, form which Judaism acquired its messianic beliefs along with the introduction of dualism.
Buddhism leads to eventual nirvana. Ancient Egyptian religions had soteriological overtones as well. The mechanisms and different, but the end result is the same.
It is a productive system of thought
So are other religions, Alex. Hinduism is the oldest written religion, older than the Ten Commandments. Which religion is not productive? Islamic philosophy and science was very advanced at one time.
It is possible for other people to think something similar about other religions and derive some benefit from that; that doesn't make me wrong
Beliefs are not wrong. But they are beliefs, not facts. They become wrong when they become the measure of reality, of worse, become the reality. Hope is not a guarantee.
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