Does it though? Is it only divinity that makes a claim either bad, mad or true?
This discussion is about a specific argument (Lewis’s Trilemma) about a specific claim in a specific context—identifying oneself with the one God, in a culture where such a claim was unquestionably blasphemy.
What makes other claims bad, mad or true or whatever, or how divinity does or doesn’t play into them, seems irrelevant.
It doesn't seem irrelevant to me. It might make sense in that context, but loses a certain amount of power if the same formulation could be used about the founders-of-religions-we-don't-believe
As I said, I'm not saying that I'm any kind of Sikh expert. But I also don't see that claiming to be divine is the only way one could be either bad/mad/truthful.
Sikhism has a lot of Hinduism in its intellectual ancestry, and Hindu thought can be strongly pantheistic. For that matter I think the versions of Islam in the Punjab at the time had lot of Sufi presence and Sufism has a strong streak in which created beings have no real existence and the worshipper is absorbed into the divine.
In that context, a claim to be divine is a rather different affair than it would be in a strongly monotheistic culture which affirms a real distinction between creator and created. (There may have been more going on in Second Temple Judaism than we know about but other than Jesus's sayings we have no evidence of any belief in which the creation/creator distinction wasn't affirmed.)
Does it though? Is it only divinity that makes a claim either bad, mad or true?
This discussion is about a specific argument (Lewis’s Trilemma) about a specific claim in a specific context—identifying oneself with the one God, in a culture where such a claim was unquestionably blasphemy.
What makes other claims bad, mad or true or whatever, or how divinity does or doesn’t play into them, seems irrelevant.
It doesn't seem irrelevant to me. It might make sense in that context, but loses a certain amount of power if the same formulation could be used about the founders-of-religions-we-don't-believe
I would agree if the starting points are the same: a claim to being God in a religion that believes in only one God and believes that claiming to be that one God is about as seriously wrong as possible. Which I think, if we’re talking about major religions, limits us to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In those three, Jesus is, so far as I know, the only person who has (arguably) made such a claim.
I am utterly confused how you think you come into this. I was thinking of an earnest orthodox traditional kind of Christian who was using language that, while familiar to him/her and comfortable for use, was nevertheless giving wrong ideas to people outside his/her community by choosing terms, verses and imagery that was likely to mislead them. And I do have a life outside the Ship, where i regularly have to give this sort of advice in the course of my job. While i cannot at the moment recall precisely who I was talking to—could have been several people—I’m quite certain you were not one of them. Or are you the sort who goes around saying things like “It’s such a blessing to be washed in the blood of the Lamb!” I hadn’t thought so…
Seemed very much like you were trying to get it through my head "yesterday", and was unclear from your post that you were speaking of an encounter in person. Thanks for clarifying.
However, while I don't go around saying it, you can sure bet I value that font, its precious contents and their work.
Look, I went back and looked, and I see a single interaction between me and one of your posts--a very low-key interaction, where I was not trying to "school" you or in any way put you down. Nor was I trying to "get it through your head"--why would I use that kind of language about someone I've had a single interaction with, which was far more focused on responding to your content than it was to you personally?--I would be far more likely to use it (the phrase "getting it through their heads") of a person who is in a long-term real life relationship with me, who is repeatedly "not getting it" and really ought to be, because I know them well and we've had that conversation repeatedly and no amount of simplification is making the issue clear.
Really, I'd like to turn the heat down on this. I have no personal issues with you--I hardly know you! My example above about "the blood of the lamb" was chosen, not as a dig at you and wherever you happen to stand with regard to the Christian faith, but as an extreme example of what we were just discussing--language that can be easily misunderstood with the result of putting non-Christians off.
This is not bobbing and weaving. This is not 'being concerned what the neighbors will think." This is me sharing a very narrowly confined aspect of my work in real life, which involves helping Christians speak about their faith in ways that don't put off the very people they are trying to speak to. None of it was a personal referendum on your faith or your modes of expression. It's a discussion board, not a chance for me or anybody to score points. I simply thought the illustration might be helpful.
Tell me, would you prefer I simply don't respond to your posts in the future? Because you seem to be taking all this uncomfortably personally, and from my side, I had to go back and review my post history to even figure out where we'd interacted. It's not all personal on my side. But I can stay out of the conversation if you'd prefer.
I'd like the heat turned off.
As you said, we barely know each other. If you don't clarify when you're talking about your personal life, I have no way of knowing. If you have some other exchange in mind that's not related to the thread, well...I can't read your mind.
When you lay into a view hypothetically, a view I hold by the way, how do I know your intent is not personal?
Many of your responses were evasive and focused on editing my questions or criticising my asking them, rather than answering them.
And you have blamed me now for not understanding the intent behind the actual words you wrote.
I would prefer that you consider the basics of clear communication and proofread for tone, context and assumptions. This is, after all, a public forum. We are strangers.
Kendel, please believe me when I say that you were not even in my mind while I was placing my general thread posts on the thread. i was utterly thrown for a loop when you made it clear that you thought we were in some kind of ongoing conversation, let alone a heated one; the only post I ever made to you was the one that started with your name, and that one was not emotionally heated in the least. This is all I can tell you; perhaps you had me mixed up with someone else.
I was trying to understand how other Christians make sense out of Jesus' the sacrificial nature of Jesus' death. The one that is referred to throughout the NT as a blood sacrifice in reference to the OT sacrificial system. The Lamb of God wasn't a pet.
The first thing to note is that Jesus's death is also referred to as a ransom. A ransom is not a sacrifice. Then in John Jesus speaks of himself as lifted up like the bronze serpent in the wilderness; again neither a sacrifice nor a ransom. Paul says that as in Adam all die, so in Christ all are made alive (in Romans and 1 Corinthians). We die with Jesus, and whoever has died is free of sin. (This is perhaps the very opposite of substitution.) The sacrificial imagery is perhaps the most common imagery in the New Testament but it's by no means the only imagery.
The second thing to note is that the sacrificial lamb is not being punished. There is a sacrifice in which the sacrificial animal takes on the sins of the community and punished for them: the scapegoat is cast out. But the scapegoat isn't killed. Whatever is going on in sacrifice where the animal is killed it isn't vicarious punishment.
I think one of the things that goes on in sacrifice is that the party who sacrifices is hosting God, and this repairs relationship by offering hospitality like Abraham does the three angels. I am not a scholar and cannot back that up.
The New Testament doesn't have any settled theory as to how exactly the atonement works. Not even Paul is a systematic theologian. That said, I think there are two lines that are important and that belong together. One is Paul's assertion earlier that we die with Christ and live with Christ. The other I think is the eucharist. That the eucharist is in some way linked to Christ's sacrifice seems clear. Christ is the host at the eucharist, and the meal. Well, that is to answer one mystery with another mystery. But I think any more definite attempt would fail to do justice to the variety of the New Testament witness.
(I note also that the only passage in the Bible that seems explicitly penal substitutionary is Isaiah's suffering servant. I don't think it's quoted often in the NT, as it surely would be if the NT writers thought it important - in fact I can't think of a single instance. And Isaiah is not the sort of work in which everything is a literal statement. When Isaiah says that every valley shall be exalted does he really want us to understand that God will engage in large scale landscaping?)
@Dafyd thanks for this. It was helpful. I haven't had time this week to go over it carefully enough to respond in any depth, though.
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But thanks for the heads-up on Guru Nanak. I was unaware that there were claims for his divinity.
It doesn't seem irrelevant to me. It might make sense in that context, but loses a certain amount of power if the same formulation could be used about the founders-of-religions-we-don't-believe
In that context, a claim to be divine is a rather different affair than it would be in a strongly monotheistic culture which affirms a real distinction between creator and created. (There may have been more going on in Second Temple Judaism than we know about but other than Jesus's sayings we have no evidence of any belief in which the creation/creator distinction wasn't affirmed.)
Kendel, please believe me when I say that you were not even in my mind while I was placing my general thread posts on the thread. i was utterly thrown for a loop when you made it clear that you thought we were in some kind of ongoing conversation, let alone a heated one; the only post I ever made to you was the one that started with your name, and that one was not emotionally heated in the least. This is all I can tell you; perhaps you had me mixed up with someone else.
Agreed.
@Dafyd thanks for this. It was helpful. I haven't had time this week to go over it carefully enough to respond in any depth, though.