Against Fundies: You are but one among many people who claim to be Christian. The "fundamentals" is another way of labeling "essential doctrine/teaching." These essential teachings differ from community to community, and for any single community to condemn (either directly or insituation through exclusiveness via "orthodox" teachings) is wrong! Your kind has always been attacking other Christians and the world. Woe to you. Your job as a Christian is to love everyone, be they a spiritual brother or a brother of humanity. If, in your eyes, those who love gently and peacefully are to be condemned…then I stand condemned. I feel for anyone trying to be a Christian in the same way Moses felt for Israel; I'd rather die with them than live on and condemn them.
Against Trinitarians: I've become increasingly unconfident in views founded on this supposed axiom. No where can I find in the NT or OT any foundation for the Trinity. All verses including "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" give me the message they are all united in purpose; as in, the [son], in the [spirit], is aligned with the Father. No where have I seen any unshaky foundation for the Trinitarian view. In fact, I distrust you more than the Fundies. For example, once the Trinitarian concept was developed, 1 John 5:7 was inserted into the oh-so-holy Bible you people claim to revere.
Biblical Authority my arse. Show me one person who has consistantly followed the Almighty, Inerrant, Infallible, Bible. You might say Jesus. I say bull. The Bible was not around back then. You say: "Oh, but the OT was." I say "Wrong! The OT never came into canon until around 90 AD. Ask the Jews."Silent? There goes all your claims to Jesus' supposed view of Scripture (which, btw, was most likely the Catholic OT). And, in fact, he only USES scripture, he never submits to it after his rebirth. He submitted to it, and then realized that trust in God is not about obeying the Law, but living truth. It is then he became reborn (was baptized). Anywhere in the NT where you find him appealing to the authority of "Scripture" is when he is debating with someone trying him. When he teaches, he teaches his own interpretations of God and points out where his theology is evidenced in their scripture. Even the books within the NT appeal to Scripture outside the OT. Oops! Didn't catch that one, did they? The Bible was assembled, "fixed," and mass-produced by the church for a general guideline, not prescription.
If, because of my conviction that [the Fundamentalist Trinitarian who lives under their interpretation of the Bible] is not the only way to live as a Christian, I am condemned, then I will happily accept my condemnation and be on my merry way to living in faith, hope, and love with other condemned God-fearers who are ashamed of the church, but not of Christ.
The more I understand the Bible, the less I understand Christianity as it is. The more I stand under the Bible, the less I stand under Christianity as it is.
Re: Against Fundamentalists, Trinitarians, and those who claim B
An impressive tirade for which I have some sympathy! I agree with the general point that reading the Bible leads us to see modern Christianity in a rather different light, but there may be less negative ways of dealing with the contradictions and discrepancies that emerge.
On trinitarianism: there are certainly difficulties with reconciliing classical formulations of trinitarian belief with the scriptures, and I would agree that the biblical texts probably for the most part have to do with something other than ontological identity. But I think that there are other ways of approaching the question that do not immediately fall into the conceptual abyss between the text and the later rationalization.
For example, I would argue that the reference to baptism 'in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit' in Matthew 28:19 presupposes a specific narrative-eschatological relationship between the Father who creates new community, the Son who suffers and is vindicated because of the eschatological crisis, and the Spirit of prophecy who characterizes the life of the renewed community. The eschatological narrative about the vindication of the Son of man puts Jesus at the right hand of God as one who embodies a radically transformed notion of divine sovereignty in contrast to the oppressive and idolatrous 'divine sovereignty' represented by Caesar. And if Jesus is the one through whom the creational promise is recovered for the people of God, we have a credible bridge to the thought that he represents for the believing community the original wholeness and purpose of creation.
What these perspectives point to is a real need somehow to integrate the narrative relationships between Father, Son and Spirit into the definition of God. I would regard classical trinitarian belief as another layer of discourse superimposed on the more narrative biblical forms, but that doesn't necessarily make them either wrong or irrelevant - they are merely the inevitable product of more systematic ways of organizing biblical thought.
On Jesus and the authority of scripture: it may help to differentiate between the authority of the Jewish law and the authority of the Jewish prophets. I would suggest that Jesus actually believed that the law remained binding on the people of God, the heirs of the promise to Abraham, until the end of the age - that is, until the climactic judgment on Jerusalem enacted in the Roman war (cf. Matt. 5:18). But he also believed that the law ordained judgment on a rebellious and wicked people, a theme which is developed in the prophets as a coherent eschatological narrative about judgment and renewal.
Here a rather different kind of authority comes into play - not the authority of law but the authority of prophecy. Jesus is not a scribe or Pharisee intent on maintaining Israel's obedience to the law. He is a prophet who very creatively restates the eschatological argument for a people heading towards political-religious disaster. But we should be clear that he draws deliberately and consistently on the Jewish scriptures in order to do this. I don't think we can say that he merely illustrates his own theological innovations by reference to the sacred texts of his opponents.
Re: Against Fundamentalists, Trinitarians, and those who claim B
"Your kind has always been attacking other Christians and the world. Woe to you. Your job as a Christian is to love everyone, be they a spiritual brother or a brother of humanity."
As an orthodox Trinitarian Anglican who holds the high view of Scripture you despise and reject I don't quite know where to start.
Certainly there are or have been some of our kind who have not been guilty of such things. Are we to be condemned for stating and defending our beliefs as passionately as you have stated yours in your post? In your condemnation and accusations are you loving us in the same way in which you direct us to love others?
"Even the books within the NT appeal to Scripture outside the OT. Oops! Didn't catch that one, did they?"
I am not sure what this proves unless it proves the New Testament writers had nothing to hide and wrote what they saw and heard. I think Peter and Paul preached their gospel tailored to their audience. You don't need to tell a group of monotheistic Jews that God is one and the creator of the heavens and the earth, they already believe that. Paul on the other hand in preaching to a gentile audience would be wise to proceed slowly and establish common ground. What better way to establish that common ground than to incorporate the sacred texts or poetry familiar to his audience to help preach Jesus Christ to them? A message something like on Mars hill-"I am telling you about the God who created the heavens, and you and me and in whom we live and move and have our very being."
"Anywhere in the NT where you find him appealing to the authority of "Scripture" is when he is debating with someone trying him. When he teaches, he teaches his own interpretations of God and points out where his theology is evidenced in their scripture."
First, Jesus claims, according to Scripture, to be doing his Father's will, saying nothing that the Father has not told him to say. Jesus says his very food is to do his Father's will. So what ever Jesus is teaching about God is from God, not Jesus' private revelations or musings about God.
Second, Jesus told two of his disciples that they were dim witted and foolish because they did not believe all the prophets had spoken about. According to the Scriptures:
"And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." Luke 24: 27
This not Jesus debating a Pharisee but rather teaching his disciples about what the Scriptures said about him.
I should point out that, in my opinion, Jesus appeals to the authority of Scripture and identifies himself intimately with it in ways that are possibly less than obvious to you.
Jesus reads in his temple the scroll of Isaiah and at the high point tells his hearers that that day the Scripture had been fulfilled in their hearing and to their eyes. As the Scripture puts it, on the last, great day of the Feast of the Jews (tabernacles) and at the high point of the worship which entailed much imagery of water, Jesus stands up and yells out-If anyone is thirsty let him come to Me and I will give him living water… An extremely impertinent and audacious move for someone other than the God who tabernacled among us.
I feel obligated also to tell you that your low view of Scripture does little for your argument as your argument is, to some degree, based in your reading and interpretation of Scripture.
Anyway, it's late Sunday night where I am and I'm in my office at work catching up before the grind begins again and I am very tired. Just one more thing, though.
The question I really want to know is, what aspect of your beliefs, what component of your life does orthodox Christianity stand against, or rub the wrong way?
Re: Against Fundamentalists, Trinitarians, and those who claim B
1) I do not reject, nor do I despise Scripture. - I revere all of Scripture. However, I don't see the church having that much reverence for it if it puts words in it to support the majority of the church's claims.
2) Your kind - did I name anyone specific? Did I say you? Did I even know you existed until you replied? No.
3) Am I condemning you? I most certainly am putting a charge to Fundamentalist Trinitarians who claim to be biblical - as if that was the whole point of Christianity. My charge was the irreverend dogmatism of poor biblical quality and loose contruction - and condemnation of all those who do not hold to the trinitarian view. Wikipedia (I know this might be the worst source in your eyes) says this on nontrinitarianism:
Critics also argue the doctrine, for a teaching described as fundamental, lacks direct scriptural support, and even some proponents of the doctrine acknowledge such direct or formal support is lacking. The New Catholic Encyclopedia, for example, says, "The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not taught [explicitly] in the [Old Testament]"[14], "The formulation 'one God in three Persons' was not solidly established [by a council]…prior to the end of the 4th century"[15], and The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia adds, "The doctrine is not explicitly taught in the New Testament". The question, however, of why such a supposedly central doctrine to the Christian faith would never have been explicitly stated in scripture or taught in detail by Jesus himself was sufficiently important to 16th century historical figures such as Michael Servetus as to lead them to argue the question. The Geneva City Council, in accord with the judgment of the cantons of Zürich, Bern, Basel, and Schaffhausen, condemned Servetus to be burned at the stake for this, and for his opposition to infant baptism.
As to if there are some of you who are not like that, of course. But for me, it's almost as if someone decided to pick out all the bad apples and sell me that bushel.
"Even the books within the NT appeal to Scripture outside the OT. Oops! Didn't catch that one, did they?"
- referring, under the assumption that others had similar experiences, to my professor on Bib Lit 1 and 2, that when any reference in the canon is to outside the canon, then it's only that part of the source that is correct."Anywhere in the NT where you find him appealing to the authority of "Scripture" is when he is debating with someone trying him. When he teaches, he teaches his own interpretations of God and points out where his theology is evidenced in their scripture."
First, Jesus claims, according to Scripture, to be doing his Father's will, saying nothing that the Father has not told him to say. Jesus says his very food is to do his Father's will. So what ever Jesus is teaching about God is from God, not Jesus' private revelations or musings about God. - ok…so we know it comes from God. I'm not arguing about the ultimate source. We all know babies come from properly times climaxes in the sexual intercourse of male and female bodies (or by artificial insemination), but around here at my college it comes from dancing. Rumor even has it that if you look at a woman, they get pregnant :P . But anyways….God made the world in six days. Six literal or six periods? Did so-n-so really live 900 years, or around 900 years? God made man from the dust of the earth. My question is not of ultimate source, but of method and conduit. Just because whatever Jesus got was from God his father (the father of all of humanity), it doesn't mean God used only Jewish writings or only Jewish prophets, or only Jewish tales.
Second, Jesus told two of his disciples that they were dim witted and foolish because they did not believe all the prophets had spoken about. According to the Scriptures:
"And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." Luke 24: 27 - honestly, if we just dropped the Christianise, it might make a whole lot more sense. "Scripture," is church-language for "writings," or more specifically the Writings. Today's OT was then in three sections, the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. The Writings were poetic, and very…licensed in the wordings.
This not Jesus debating a Pharisee but rather teaching his disciples about what the Scriptures said about him.
I should point out that, in my opinion, Jesus appeals to the authority of Scripture and identifies himself intimately with it in ways that are possibly less than obvious to you.
I feel obligated also to tell you that your low view of Scripture does little for your argument as your argument is, to some degree, based in your reading and interpretation of Scripture.
MY VIEW OF SCRIPTURE IS NOT LOW. WHAT I HAVE A LOW VIEW OF IS YOUR KIND'S AB(USE) OF IT.
"This is God's Word, and if you contradict what we say - you're contradicting the Word of God, because this is how you are to interpret it." No actual quote of anyone, but it's the basic message I'm getting from everyone who seems to contradict everyone else's interpretation. The church seems to be condemning itself and all other parts of the world along with it.
The question I really want to know is, what aspect of your beliefs, what component of your life does orthodox Christianity stand against, or rub the wrong way?
1) Thinking for myself, which leads to me
2) arriving at different conclusions, and therefore want for
3) getting an education, which brings me back to 1.
4) appreciating women - I was raised with a majority of female cousins and 1 sister, no brother, and my aunts. Although I never support what we deem "nazi-feminism."
5) taking care of the body as well as the spirit. Honestly, what is a young Christian male who is unmarried supposed to do when he is not financially able to start of a family? It may be better to marry than to burn, but if I cannot marry without starting on a road through hell, then what am I supposed to do other than to please myself? And yes! it is possible to go it alone without lusting.
6) My choice of music, books, and entertainment. I like to watch the popular things unless they focus on nudity, sex, or murder. However, that stuff in passing, I can ignore it. Desensitization is not a bad thing.
7) Church, church, church, church, church. Sunday morning corporate worship is not the spiritual equivalent of a body shop for a car.
8) Too many questions the church fails to answer or chooses to ignore.
Re: Against Fundamentalists, Trinitarians, and those who claim B
myklyost:
I very much enjoyed reading your reply. I believe you are a latent orthodox. Taking into account the reverence with which you read Scripture, it's only a matter of time before you are a dyed in the wool orthodox Trinitarian. If given enough time, you might even become a creed confessing Anglican who baptises his yet to be born infants of his yet to happen marriage. I pray that God blesses you in these things as He has me. I was once young, single and a Christian. You are right, it's not easy. I empathize with your fears of embarking on the journey with a spouse with little more than faith in God, a good wife, a sound education and a good head on your shoulders. My wife of thirty years and I have raised five children fairly succesfully and started out feeling just as you do now. I would say to you there is less to fear than you are imagining and all of the struggle is worth the rewards.
Now that I have a better understanding of your positions let me restate briefly my position.
Obviously, you and I disagree on much though we both reverence Scripture though neither of us worship it as an idol. I believe that you castigate Christians different from yourself for confessing and defending beliefs they hold with the same passion and obstinancy with which your views are expressed. Your first post made mention of the need to love our spiritual brothers and I was expressing that the love you advocated seemed a little lacking in the blanket accusations of fundamentalists, the orthodox and trinitarians.
Though I am not sure these are exactly the groups you are arguing against, let me create three types for you to consider.
I believe there are a lot of ignorant (in some instances possibly stupid) people claiming to be biblical fundamentalists who will sell you a pile of horse manure in the name of God. Their theology is for the most part fairly recent (within 200 years or so) and much of it is misguided, individualistic and self-centered. I greatly disapprove of them. I only disagree with you on some points you made. They will give you abortion clinic bombings, biblical justifications for racism, snake handling and will disrupt military funerals with no respect or compassion for the grieving family. I have never (nor have any of the folks who are part of our community) bombed an abortion clinic though I am vehemently opposed to abortion, I am not a racist though I was born, raised and live in the United States' Deep South, I have handled snakes only when necessary when they had gotten into my boat while fishing and I have two sons who served as infantry in the US Marines. The people I am speaking about are dangerous, crazy and stuck on stupid. This first group of "fundamentalists" are people on which you and I can agree, I think.
A second group is less easy to deal with. They hold a line of biblical literalism and will not be moved. Though I have no sympathy with the first group, I do with the second because like you and I they revere Scripture and I believe are interested in truth and pleasing God. Ignore some of their more extreme positions, focus on common ground and you will find many, if not most of these people to be salt of the earth, bible believing, walking the walk Christians. What about these people? Is there any room at your table for them?
I will use my church as an example of a third type which is orthodox and trinitarian. We believe the Scriptures contain all that is necessary for us to grasp God and His relationship to humanity and humanity's relationship to God. As commanded by our Lord, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, we baptise infants and adults into the Church which is the body of Christ here on earth. We remember and celebrate Jesus' passion, death, resurrection and ascension in the sacrement of communion. We worship using an ancient order and express our shared beliefs as expressed in the creeds and we sing psalms and hymns in praise and honor of our Lord. All of which we believe we are doing in obedience to God's will as expressed in the Scriptures. If you polled our members (which include two MDs, two architects, a retired NASA type and a goodly number of academic doctors) you would find low church types, high church types, charismatic types, biblical literalists, several old line calvinists and a Roman Catholic who keeps coming back for more. Other than giving God the credit it's a little hard to pin down exactly what holds us together as a faith community. I believe our use of the Book of Common Prayer to order our liturgy, worship and devotions, adherence to the Scriptures as final authority on matters of doctrine and faith, our common, regular confessions of the creeds and our somewhat high view of the Church explains our community, our fraternity and our agape.
You would no doubt be surprised to find out our Thursday night bible study used Ecclesiastes as a lens through which we viewed recent movies which wrestled with the eternal questions. We watched Magnolia, Run, Lola, Run, Crimes and Misdemeanors and About Schmidt. We all have diverse musical tastes. My friend, our choir-master, pursued music at college in the States and post graduate study at Oxford in the UK. He prefers St. Matthew's Passion to my Mozart's Requiem. I don't dare tell him I have Dropkick Murphys yoked in uneasy fellowship with Dean Martin on my IPod and that I am looking forward this Friday taking off work and driving to New Orleans to realize a dream come true and hear the Belfast Cowboy perform live.
We are an assorted, odd lot, not easily catagorized, but we agree among our selves that we are orthodox, which, your objections notwithstanding, is to say trinitarian. I blush to share that, as a community, we engage in charitable giving and charitable works which our faith calls for us to do. Individuals and families give time and money over and beyond these corporate efforts. I am not boasting about us. I want you to get a feel for the kind of people you are labeling and making accusations against. We may not be as bad as you think.
I will grant you that we are pretty much-church, church, church-every Sunday morning corporate worship, be there or be square! Maybe it's more like a pit stop in the Daytona 500 where all the cars come in at the same time than a spiritual body shop. Possibly if you met us and visited on a Sunday morning you might find you like where you find yourself, the people you are with and the glorious worship of our great God and Savior.
PS I like Wikipedia.
Alario
Re: Against Fundamentalists, Trinitarians, and those who claim B
Alario, thank you very much for being patient with me. I guess I do have tendancies of being rather "brash" when it comes to getting things started…not that I do it for the heck of it. About meeting some people like you.., my mentor who is also a lay pastor suggested that I ask a few of my professors about going to their churches. My professors and I can dialogue for hours with little heat. And it turns out that when analyzed by my mentor, the profs I get along with most (being that they agree, but just can't openly profess due to the contract) are very liberal, although still conservative in most respects.
I guess I'm more liberal in the theology, and moderate in practice. I'll see what comes of it.
Re: Against Fundamentalists, Trinitarians, and those who claim B
myklyost:
I can empathize with your postion to a great degree. As a Gnostic Deacon ['lay pastor' to you] I am asked similar questions, as I ask them myself, frequently. I asked them frequently when I participated in an Evangelical church. I find it difficult to respect any form of fundamentalism in any form. I have chosen to participate in a tradition that views scripture as allegorical and archetypal, yet divinely inspired. This decision does 'condemn' me as a 'heretic' in the eyes of most Christians, yet I grow more excited and motivated to study Jesus' teachings each and every day.
Even those of us not considered 'Christian' by Fundamentalist Trinitarians view the Trinity as an expression of God. In fact the concept of the Trinity was as common among early Christian Gnostics as it was Orthodox Christians [note the distinction I make here]. This taken from the Gospel of Phillip, is one example:
Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in the types and images. It will not receive it in any other fashion. There is a rebirth and an image of rebirth. It is fitting for those who do not only receive the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but have obtained them for themselves. If anyone does not obtain them for himself, the name also will be taken from him. But one receives them in the chrism of the fullness of the power of the Cross, which the apostles call the right and the left.In my own experience, I sought proof of the validity of certain elements of Christian worship I considered to be errant or superflous. To my suprise I found that the doctine of the Trinity, the celebration of the Eucharist and other 'Fundamentals' were essential elements of the early Church. I'm not saying you have to be a Gnostic like me to understand or avail yourself of these traditions, rather I'm saying that much of where 'Emergent' Christianity takes issue with Fundamentalism and Orthodoxy comes from the negligant loss of symbolic meaning so prevalent in Modern Christianity.
PEACE
Reverend Gilberto 'Padre G' Morales, Ecclesia Gnostica
rosaderosas.blogspot.org
Re: Against Fundamentalists, Trinitarians, and those who claim B
Sir, I agree with you very much so: symbolic, arhetypal, but divinely inspired. The thing I hate is when people make inspiration to mean divinely written as in…every single word they wrote contains the power of God, and if we respect the authors or the pages of their veyr bibles as anything less than a fourth to the trinity or a paper Jesus, then we are anti-Christian.
And, just as you said, it is AN expression of God, not the only one. How do the fundies reconcile Jesus claiming to be God with the OT where it keeps saying there is one God, the almighty Father? Again, as in the past posts on this, the "theos" could be being used as an adjective to men divine.
Also, with the "trinity" - I suppose that as long as it is kept as a divine council rather than God, I can accept it. The Father is God, even without the Son, and even without the ever-so-personified Spirit. Jesus is not equal to the Father, but is right underneath him, as his chosen son, thruogh the Father's Holy Spirit. That's my trinity.
As far as those doctrines being of the early church, well…no one can ever really say for sure. For the sake of getting along, I'll go along with that, but the earliest church (the disciples and their disciples <the first 2 generations of Christians>) had a very loose theology. The only reason some ignorant Christians went out and slaughtered the other Christians is because they wanted the remaining and otherwise barely surviving Christianity to be theirs.
I've never really met a Gnostic, so, this is cool you actually admit to being one. Awesome indeed. As I also believe it is very awesome your branch has survived the trimming the "orthodox" ones have done. Speaking of branches and trimmings…wouldn't you agree that the most beautiful type of forest or park is the one that's untainted and uncontrolled?
RE: Biblical Authority
Myklyost,
I would agree that you are on the right track. I would advise you to read widely as possible in order to develope your own views.
As regards to Biblical Authority some have used the Bible as a source of proof texts, which is not its purpose. The authority of the Bible is its message of love, joy, and peace. It is not the source of rules that people must obey or doctrines that people must believe. Read the Letters of Paul for what they are, letters to struggling churches, and the first books the NT for what they are, the story of the founding of a new faith.
As I said the Bible is primarily the history of God’s relationship with God’s people, not a book of rules or doctrines. The Trinity is a summary way of speaking of the relationship between God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit, found in the New Testament. It points to the fact that differences between persons do not mean inequality.
Peace and Joy,
Relates