Will Obama say "So help me God" ?

[Kulindahr]

If one wants to see contemporary theology done well, read Emil Brunner and Karl Barth. I would suggest their books on natural revelation. Brunner's book is called Nature and Grace. Barth's book is called No!: An Answer to Emil Brunner. They are published in English in one binding called Natural Theology. The whole thing is only about 125 pages.

Ooh, that sounds tempting!

 

[construct]

I don't think the arguments over canon really belong here. What we have is a community's book. What's in the book is what the community accepted. Canon wasn't fixed until after Constantine's death, and I don't really think Constantine cared much about the theological issues of his day anyway. I don't think Constantine had anything to do with decisions about canon.

Kuli's summed up the rest pretty well. The philosophical/theological ideals in the apocryphal books are foreign to the canonical books and significantly later, and the Apostolic Fathers are mostly later than the canonical books. But it really was mostly about what was used.

 

[Kulindahr]

You are utterly failing to grasp the very concept of God as mentioned in the Bible.

As you put it, FAIL!
You're imposing Western philosophical categories on God, instead of reading what's there. That means you;re introducing a being in place of the God of the Bible, and using that caricature to make your claims.

Here's the evidence:

YES!!! A being of infinite power and ability would be capable of acts that we would define as magic.

LOL! EPIC FAIL! If I could convey ANYTHING to you in that manner (as a being of infinite power easily could) then I could also convey any cultural or linguistic context which would allow you to understand it. Pull your head out of the sandbox and recognize your God for what he really would be PLEASE. lol

You're suggesting that God could change me into someone else, which is what you've described. You're claiming that He would violate my person by dumping into me things I am not, instantaneously rather than naturally. You're arguing that God would discard the way He'd set things up, and contradict His own character in so doing.

Given the subject matter of the Bible, if it's not a book about that, then what good is it. If Jesus was not a real person, if his acts were not real, then what use is the Bible to anyone?

Dang, you're either good at changing the subject to something you think favors you, or totally missing what is written. By the record here, it's a bit of both.

It's not about dismissing anything. There are statements of fact and of opinion. And you have a penchant for labeling facts as opinions. You are failing to distinguish between them.

Fact: the Bible was not written in English; you're treating it as though it was.
Fact: the Bible was not written to be a science text; you;re treating it as though it was.
Fact: Genesis 1 is in a form of literature called "royal chronicle", and you;re abusing it.

pot, meet kettle. You will never accept an argument that leads to an error in the Bible, no matter how well reasoned.

Well, that shows you're not reading the thread.
But I knew that already.

Never had any problem or disagreement with that. I just view MANY more parts of the bible the same way, which you want to take literally.

Excrementum.
You've been denying it's a royal chronicle all along. You have to, in order to make your claims about "scientific error".

And there aren't many other pieces of royal chronicle in the Bible, at least any as extensive as this. So what your admission establishes is that you arbitrarily assign literary genres according to your own desires, instead of paying attention to reality.
So far, I haven't assigned any part of the Bible as being "literal". Actually, that's a really bad term to assign to rather large portions. I suppose it goes for the Prophets, because they're relating what was said and done, but then the content of what they said isn't very "literal", and on occasion neither is what they did, so....

We're both stating opinions, the difference between you and me is that you don't know it.

No, I'm giving you solid scholarship. You haven't heard any of my opinions, because I haven't given any.
Unless you want to characterize my preference for scholarship and research over imposing one;s own views on a document as "opinion" -- in which case, I'll take my opinion over yours any time of the day.

Well, maybe not after a few drinks....

 

[hotatlboi]

I don't think the arguments over canon really belong here. What we have is a community's book. What's in the book is what the community accepted. Canon wasn't fixed until after Constantine's death, and I don't really think Constantine cared much about the theological issues of his day anyway. I don't think Constantine had anything to do with decisions about canon.

Kuli's summed up the rest pretty well. The philosophical/theological ideals in the apocryphal books are foreign to the canonical books and significantly later, and the Apostolic Fathers are mostly later than the canonical books. But it really was mostly about what was used.

My argument really wasn't that the apocryphal books should have been included, it's that the decisions about canon even existed.

I view that as just another example of why the Bible is not divinely inspired. I don't think any message can be entirely perfect, holy, righteous, and without error when it is subject to human (and therefore potentially flawed) decisions like the arguments over canon were.

 

[Kulindahr]

None of us were there and none of us know for sure. The only rational thing to do is accept that the Bible is, at best, an interpretation of God. "Word of God" is purely subjective. Some people want God packaged all nice and neat in a book that they carry around, nothing more nothing less. Life is more complex than that.

The process of the formation of the canon is pretty well known. The Eastern church has preserved a multitude of records of early councils (sort of a parallel to a Roman canon law precedent collection), and there's plenty of evidence that local councils listed what their churches had agreed was trustworthy, based on the trading of material, so it's known that it was what we'd think of as a grassroots movement.

The criticism of wanting a packaged God is valid. So many, many Christians get very uncomfortable over the fact that there are any variant readings in the New Testament at all, even though among the many thousands there are few (if any) which are substantive, and those are obvious alterations. The first time I got my hands on a Greek NT (Nestle, editio XXIV) and saw all those variations, I got a big grin on my face, because I knew that here was something that would drive those who wanted a packaged God into convulsions -- and because since it was there, it must have meaning (which it turned out to, in a twofold way).
Of course dealing with all those variants led to study of all sorts of things I thought irrelevant, like whole stacks of things in Koine of the two centuries on either side of the birth of Christ (whatever actual year that ma have been) -- I had the notion still clinging to me that the Bible was sufficient by itself, which isn't true of any book. I ended up reading contemporary Greek philosophers, older Jewish rabbis, and all sorts of things, and those journeys turned out to frequently be delightful... though perplexing, as I had to rip my mind open once more to grapple with yet another alien worldview.

 

[construct]

Let me throw yet another monkey wrench into the mix. The biblical god is not the god of the "omnis." Omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and similar concepts are not front and center in the biblical notion of God. When God investigates things in Bible stories he finds out things he didn't know. Sometimes he changes his mind. The biblical god also doesn't love everybody. There are some people he hates (like Esau). God hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he would not let the children of Israel go so that God could manifest his power by visiting plagues on the Egyptians. At the same time, he manifested his love by freeing the Israelites from slavery.

Of course, there are biblical writers who disagree with all this, but mostly the god of the "omnis" was a later development. So no, I would not expect a book inspired by this god (whatever that means) to be anything other than time-bound and culturally determined.

 

[hotatlboi]

Fact: the Bible was not written in English; you're treating it as though it was.
Fact: the Bible was not written to be a science text; you;re treating it as though it was.
Fact: Genesis 1 is in a form of literature called "royal chronicle", and you;re abusing it.

Fact: The Bible contains multiple statements that modern understanding would generally regard as false.

All facts have to fit into a larger framework. Simply picking out ones that support your viewpoint does not make it valid.

You've been denying it's a royal chronicle all along. You have to, in order to make your claims about "scientific error".

No, I generally view all of it in a similar style. i.e. it's all metaphorical etc. What I disagree with is treating parts of it as that and then other parts as literal. For example Jesus recognized the law as almost entirely literal. That's pretty clear to me from his sayings.

YAnd there aren't many other pieces of royal chronicle in the Bible, at least any as extensive as this.

In that case how do you explain the scientific errors in other parts of the Bible besides Genesis?

No, I'm giving you solid scholarship. You haven't heard any of my opinions, because I haven't given any.

You've given your interpretations. Those are your opinions of how you see scripture. Just because you haven't said "in my opinion" doesn't mean you haven't given opinion. This is what you are failing to realize.

Unless you want to characterize my preference for scholarship and research over imposing one;s own views on a document as "opinion" -- in which case, I'll take my opinion over yours any time of the day.

If scholarship and research is all you have to value to come to a conclusion on this, then all I need to do is point you toward the wide myriad of scholarship available which holds the Bible likely to be unreliable and full of errors. You will find a wide and varied selection.

 

[Kulindahr]

My argument really wasn't that the apocryphal books should have been included, it's that the decisions about canon even existed.

I view that as just another example of why the Bible is not divinely inspired. I don't think any message can be entirely perfect, holy, righteous, and without error when it is subject to human (and therefore potentially flawed) decisions like the arguments over canon were.

The alternative to there being decisions is God floating it down from heaven in a basket (I kid you not; I;ve seen 'instructional' materials with that actually in a picture -- right after one showing the writer sort of drugged out and God moving the writer's hand....)

I've never managed to think of another way God might have delivered inspired material except the way we see, without violating the way He'd determined to do things.

 

[hotatlboi]

Let me throw yet another monkey wrench into the mix. The biblical god is not the god of the "omnis." Omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and similar concepts are not front and center in the biblical notion of God. When God investigates things in Bible stories he finds out things he didn't know. Sometimes he changes his mind. The biblical god also doesn't love everybody. There are some people he hates (like Esau). God hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he would not let the children of Israel go so that God could manifest his power by visiting plagues on the Egyptians. At the same time, he manifested his love by freeing the Israelites from slavery.

To me this is just another biblical contradiction. The Bible is full of internal inconsistencies like this. yes there are verses where God finds out things he doesn't know but there are also verses where it says he knows all things, and it says that "all power in heaven and earth is given to him". If that's not describing omnipotence then I'm not sure how you would characterize it.

 

[Kulindahr]

Of course, there are biblical writers who disagree with all this, but mostly the god of the "omnis" was a later development. So no, I would not expect a book inspired by this god (whatever that means) to be anything other than time-bound and culturally determined.

A much later development, in fact -- it didn't begin until the Latin theologians had begun using the terms, and then a later generation failed to realize that those words didn't really reflect what the Greek had. It went downhill from there, but hit arguably its worst in the Enlightenment, when philosophers were enamored of Latin concepts and categories (those being much tidier than their Greek and Hebrew counterparts -- the sort of things a lawyer would love).

Ah, if I had back the money spent on beer and snacks while poring over ancient, and arguing over our own, definitions of "inspiration"!

 

[hotatlboi]

The criticism of wanting a packaged God is valid. So many, many Christians get very uncomfortable over the fact that there are any variant readings in the New Testament at all, even though among the many thousands there are few (if any) which are substantive, and those are obvious alterations. The first time I got my hands on a Greek NT (Nestle, editio XXIV) and saw all those variations, I got a big grin on my face, because I knew that here was something that would drive those who wanted a packaged God into convulsions -- and because since it was there, it must have meaning (which it turned out to, in a twofold way).
Of course dealing with all those variants led to study of all sorts of things I thought irrelevant, like whole stacks of things in Koine of the two centuries on either side of the birth of Christ (whatever actual year that ma have been) -- I had the notion still clinging to me that the Bible was sufficient by itself, which isn't true of any book. I ended up reading contemporary Greek philosophers, older Jewish rabbis, and all sorts of things, and those journeys turned out to frequently be delightful... though perplexing, as I had to rip my mind open once more to grapple with yet another alien worldview.

At this point I'll go ahead and disagree with what you said previously about "wanting to get rid of religion". You've invested far too much of your life into it to ever be able to conclude that it is false, no matter what evidence you are presented. So I'll leave you with this thought again (heading to bed now), I can respect your viewpoint because you have come to it through your own thought process and through critical thinking. I hope you can respect mine as well because whether or not you realize it, that's how I have come to believe what I do as well.

The world would be pretty boring if we all agreed on everything.

 

[construct]

To me this is just another biblical contradiction. The Bible is full of internal inconsistencies like this. yes there are verses where God finds out things he doesn't know but there are also verses where it says he knows all things, and it says that "all power in heaven and earth is given to him". If that's not describing omnipotence then I'm not sure how you would characterize it.

The Hebrew notion of "all powerful" and the Greek notion of "omnipotence" really are two different things. The former is "powerful enough to do the things that he does." The latter is "powerful enough to do all kinds of things he's never done nor even wants to do." The former is a statement from experience; the latter is a theoretical statement. The Greek notions are there in Hebrews and maybe a couple of other books, but they really don't come into seriously play until after the first century.

 

[Kulindahr]

Fact: The Bible contains multiple statements that modern understanding would generally regard as false.

So far, the only way you've managed to "show" that is by mangling what the text means.
The Bible indeed contains multiple statements which, understood by lifting them from their origins and stuffing them into a modern worldview, appear as false, but that's not the same thing.

All facts have to fit into a larger framework. Simply picking out ones that support your viewpoint does not make it valid.

I'm not picking out anything -- you're doing the picking; I'm just responding.
And as I indicated in a comment to construct, there are better places to pick. One of my favorites is the assertion that Joshua had the sun stand still.... there's not much to be done with that (though it's fun to try -- we even turned it into a drinking game once [don't ask the rules; I got too wasted to remember]).

No, I generally view all of it in a similar style. i.e. it's all metaphorical etc. What I disagree with is treating parts of it as that and then other parts as literal. For example Jesus recognized the law as almost entirely literal. That's pretty clear to me from his sayings.

That right there is a confession of your ignorance: you haven't bothered to find out what's what, or even what the options are. That rather disqualifies your conclusions from the start.

In that case how do you explain the scientific errors in other parts of the Bible besides Genesis?

I'd have to know what alleged errors you're referring to, because there are a number of literary types involved. For example, I'll dismiss the entire book of Psalms as not legitimate for claiming scientific error, given that it's poetic, and within that contains other not-so-literal types as well.

If scholarship and research is all you have to value to come to a conclusion on this, then all I need to do is point you toward the wide myriad of scholarship available which holds the Bible likely to be unreliable and full of errors. You will find a wide and varied selection.

I've read samples of it. Most begins with the assumption that the Bible can't really be true, and proceeds to "prove" that. A lot is just ignorant of the facts, such as types of literature and cultural context. I had to read serious chunks of it for some courses I took, and although I could generally count on it to be a little higher intellectually than fundie "apologetics", that wasn't a hard and fast rule.

 

[Kulindahr]

... it says that "all power in heaven and earth is given to him". If that's not describing omnipotence then I'm not sure how you would characterize it.

It means all the power that there is. It doesn't mean the power to do self-contradictory things, or to violate the principles He's established.

 

[hotatlboi]

I've read samples of it. Most begins with the assumption that the Bible can't really be true, and proceeds to "prove" that.

Sure there is some of that, but it's a two way street. I great deal of the apologetic scholarship starts with the assumption that the Bible is true. You've even used some of those a priori arguments in this thread.

For many people on both sides of the debate, it's hard to extricate themselves from what they believe and look at the facts objectively. That's why I prefer science to religion in general. Science is most often inductive, starting with facts and leading to theory. Religion is usually deductive, starting with premises and making the facts fit them.

A lot is just ignorant of the facts

That's exactly how I would characterize your brand of scholarship, but once again, we'll agree to disagree.

 

[Kulindahr]

The Hebrew notion of "all powerful" and the Greek notion of "omnipotence" really are two different things. The former is "powerful enough to do the things that he does." The latter is "powerful enough to do all kinds of things he's never done nor even wants to do." The former is a statement from experience; the latter is a theoretical statement. The Greek notions are there in Hebrews and maybe a couple of other books, but they really don't come into seriously play until after the first century.

I'd say you're stretching the Greek concept there. As for the Hebrew, that's a bit limited; you have to include the thought of "what can actually be done" (that's putting it badly, but I'm running tired and dealing with a sore throat that doesn't want me to sleep).

The real problem comes with the Latin, though, which verges on "powerful enough to do whatsoever thing one could imagine, regardless".

 

[Kulindahr]

I great deal of the apologetic scholarship starts with the assumption that the Bible is true. You've even used some of those a priori arguments in this thread.

There's a lot of that out there.

But I haven't done that here.

 

[construct]

I'd say you're stretching the Greek concept there. As for the Hebrew, that's a bit limited; you have to include the thought of "what can actually be done" (that's putting it badly, but I'm running tired and dealing with a sore throat that doesn't want me to sleep).

The real problem comes with the Latin, though, which verges on "powerful enough to do whatsoever thing one could imagine, regardless".

For heuristic purposes, I'm not making a distinction between the Greek and Latin Fathers. I'm grouping all those as influenced by the Platonic thought from which the "omnis" derive.

As for my limitation of what I'm calling the Hebrew notion, I agree that God is portrayed as capable of doing the things he decides not to do as well as the things he actually does. I guess that's what you meant.

 

[hotatlboi]

There's a lot of that out there.

But I haven't done that here.

Not overtly, but I'd say that's only because you've done so previously. That's what your entire position is based on imo. A lot of what you have said is based on "what God would do", how he would communicate with man, what the Bible is saying that fits within how you would see God saying it, etc. This is all assuming that first God exists and second that he used the Bible as his communication to man. A reading of the Bible unencumbered by those assumptions leaves it a decidedly man made document of an ancient period to me. It talks about a God, that doesn't mean he is real or that it came from that being.

 

[construct]

The Bible is too serving of Christianity to be the true word of God. There are many people around the world who believe in God but know nothing of Christ. Are they ignorant to the true word? Ofcourse ego-centric Christians would have you believe that. Truth is, parts of the Bible may be one authority, but hardly the only authority on God.

The Bible is the only authority on the biblical god. Well, I guess secondarily the community that produced and preserved the Bible is an authority on the biblical god, but they fight so much among themselves that you can't depend on them for a definitive (or even a reliable) answer.

Now, when the future President puts his hand on the Bible and says "So help me God," what do you think he will think he means? I think it will have something to do with Jesus. Don't you?

Of course, if I were a Taoist, I would laugh at the presumptuousness. After all, the name that can be named is not the eternal Name.