@Kendal:And I really didn't answer @Martin54 's OP question, because I can't. Sorry, sir.
Well To be frank I doubt that was expected .. I think the OP was rhetorical.
@MPaul , Maybe. I have been working for years (and frequently failing) to refrain from speaking for other people or for substituting my understanding of what they must have meant for what they actually said. I was trying again above.
I think it would have been interesting if the responses had focused more tightly on answering the question as stated in @Martin54 's OP. But it might have been a fairly short discussion.
I expressed in a different forum recently my frustration with apologetic arguments that I am familiar with. Many, like the trilemma, are a kind of logic puzzle that only work if the apologee accept faulty assumptions that are foundational to the argument. In the end, the discussion revolves around the argument itself and its faults.
Leaving a person like me with one less reason to believe.
@Kendal:And I really didn't answer @Martin54 's OP question, because I can't. Sorry, sir.
Well To be frank I doubt that was expected .. I think the OP was rhetorical.
@MPaul , Maybe. I have been working for years (and frequently failing) to refrain from speaking for other people or for substituting my understanding of what they must have meant for what they actually said. I was trying again above.
I think it would have been interesting if the responses had focused more tightly on answering the question as stated in @Martin54 's OP. But it might have been a fairly short discussion.
I expressed in a different forum recently my frustration with apologetic arguments that I am familiar with. Many, like the trilemma, are a kind of logic puzzle that only work if the apologee accept faulty assumptions that are foundational to the argument. In the end, the discussion revolves around the argument itself and its faults.
Leaving a person like me with one less reason to believe.
Then don't use reason. Seriously. Use your heart. Only. Something happened within a couple of years or so of Jesus' death. The Church broke the surface. It was a threat to the social order, to the ruling class which had to persecute it. Within 300 years it had subverted the Roman Empire and gone beyond. Unfortunately! It became institutionalized and subservient to the state. Lost its subversive, egalitarian edge. If Love is the ground of being, that's what They want. Social justice. Which can only be obtained non-violently.
1) Then don't use reason. Seriously. Use your heart. Only. Something happened within a couple of years or so of Jesus' death. The Church broke the surface. It was a threat to the social order, to the ruling class which had to persecute it. Within 300 years it had subverted the Roman Empire and gone beyond. 2) Unfortunately! It became institutionalized and subservient to the state. Lost its subversive, egalitarian edge. If Love is the ground of being, that's what They want. Social justice. Which can only be obtained non-violently.
1) You make an interesting point, @Martin54. I know that "rational apologetics" has been around for a long time, but in the background. No more. Certainly it's the online spaces I hang out only since the last few years. But also churches and parachurch organizations that used to focus on faith and thoughtful study (Bible, theology, application) have begun to incorporate apologetics more and more. It seems now that faith is no longer adequate, even in the church.
2) You've challenged me elsewhere on what constitutes the Gospel. While we still see that differently, I have come to understand that the church's testimony is absolutely tied with it's commitment to follow Jesus's commands regarding justice. If we aren't doing this, we demonstrate we are as loveless and self-focused as anyone we point our fingers at.
@Kendel, I know the gospel is more than 'just' social, it's personal. We all need a higher power, Parent, a hero Sibling. But without the social, we're dead all ways.
@Kendel, I know the gospel is more than 'just' social, it's personal. 1) We all need a higher power, Parent, a hero Sibling. 2) But without the social, we're dead all ways.
2) Yes. If I understand you right, I agree.
1) Possibly. Perhaps Pascal wasn't entirely wrong (about that hole)? I wonder what elicited this point, though.
1) We're everything we've ever been. Still. Helpless infant on up. It's all in there. Fish. As for the eliciting (not elicitation, though I wish it were), it's trying to see the same gospel, on my part. And I therefore interpolated idealized human need.
(a) Sorry for being unclear. For me there is nothing anachronistic about the character in the synoptic gospels, there is nothing in them from the setting of 30-40 years previously that's unnatural for and from the culture of the time. His emphasis on kindness is a natural progression from the Hebrew prophets and all the way back to the Babylonian Counsels of Wisdom well over a thousand years before him via the unbelievable beauty of Aeschylus' tragedies half way back. With the Pericope Adulterae (PA) as a back projection, a loop of cognitive dissonance in itself, refined for centuries in the future, not as what happened in 30 AD, nothing stands out, nothing is impossibly anachronistic about the Jesus of the 60-70s gospels. The Jesus of the later Johannine school is very different. But still not anachronistic of 70-110 as it evolved.
(b) Again forgiveness, mercy, kindness even to enemies is entirely human, natural. What isn't (although of course it is) is the bizarre proposition that above all things we need forgiveness from God and that is obtained through penal substitutionary atonement in the plain reading of the gospels. It's fine as shock therapy to make us more forgiving, anciently and for a lot of us now, but it totally misses the target, doesn't even aim at it, of revealing Love. God as love. Love as the ground of eternal infinite being would reveal itself clearly, unnaturally. Where does it, do They, do that in the gospels? In Jesus? It's a distraction and an extremely toxic one, regardless of that marginal shock value. The cure is nearly as bad as the disease. Worse.
What we need above all things is the fact, the truth, the proof of Love. For me the PA was it. And now, walking home upriver, for the first time ever, due to @Nick Tamen and @Dafyd on the 'Could...' thread, I'm wondering if it isn't there either, that despite being the most beautiful, moving Biblical account, even if it happened as writ, in 30 AD, not 400-500 years later, is it that good? It's exceptionally good compared with anything else in the gospels. But would that have been good enough if it were attested to 30AD?
Why do we need the gospel to be decent human beings? We were before it, and we aren't that much better after it. It just takes a lot of time on the long arc of human progress.
I see I'd promised to come back to this after picking my son up. Well, I did so, though it's a couple days ago...
I still have great difficulty seeing how human nature, or culture, is supposed to have evolved in any direction, really, during recorded history. I mean, we meet the same mix of good and evil, great beauty and pure horror, in any age. The Aztecs had their human sacrifices; we had our Nazi Germany. It seems to me that human beings are at once both extremely good and extremely bad, going by their behavior, and trying to predict which one will happen to you is not easy.
As a result, I don't think we need the Gospel to be decent human beings. I don't think God intends us to be decent human beings at all. I think he intends us to be a joy and a delight, creatures that, when other people see us, they shake their heads at the sheer beauty of what's going on in our lives--and want in on that. Though he doesn't always get what he wants, at least with the speed of change I'd like to see in Christians...
But the offer is for everyone--"Take me," Jesus says, "And you will have real, everlasting life, like nobody has had it from the beginning of the world. You will have my love, and my Father's love. You will have my joy confirmed in you--a joy so great that it can even face crucifixion without going out like a candle. And you will have one another, an ever-increasing family of humanity, continually growing in love for one another, all being perfected into a unity that mirrors the beauty of God." (this is a paraphrase of John 13-17)
And now for something else.
As far as I can see, penal substitutionary atonement (which you mention as the normal Christian position) is in fact not a biblical teaching at all. I will be on the lookout for it as I go through my next reading of it, but while there are a few passages which would support a general substitutionary model of the atonement, the penal bit seems to be right out of court. I begin to suspect it for at best a distortion, and at worse possibly a heresy. Again, I'm going to be looking out for the proof of it during my next read-through.
What would happen if, instead of using the PSA horror as your baseline for Christianity, you took any of the other models (Christus victor, healing, even Origen's weird little theory!) and used them instead? Or avoid the models altogether and just leave what Christ was doing as the mystery it is in its inner workings--"God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself"--and go no deeper into speculation than that?
We're everything we've ever been. Still. Helpless infant on up. It's all in there. Fish.
1. Is "fish" here a reference to having aspects from our evolution from fish to land-dwellers to mammals, etc., or something else? (Presumably not the US TV series of that name starring actor Abe Vigoda.)
We're everything we've ever been. Still. Helpless infant on up. It's all in there. Fish.
1. Is "fish" here a reference to having aspects from our evolution from fish to land-dwellers to mammals, etc., or something else? (Presumably not the US TV series of that name starring actor Abe Vigoda.)
2. If I'm right, do I win a prize?
1.
2. You have already in Darwinian terms. But not the award!
I mean, we meet the same mix of good and evil, great beauty and pure horror, in any age.
The Aztecs had their human sacrifices; we had our Nazi Germany.
I'm sorry, but is a casual comparison with a specific instance of genocide really necessary to make you point?
I have never recovered from discovering Auschwitz nearly 60 years ago, in the book by Miklós Nyiszli, at childhood's end. It was one of two spikes driven in to my brain that sealed my existential angst, La Nausée, and made me ripe for the false meaning given by religion. And @Lamb Chopped (I'll deal with you later! : ) is right. It's banal. Human. All too easy. Falling off a log. Nature.
We're everything we've ever been. Still. Helpless infant on up. It's all in there. Fish.
1. Is "fish" here a reference to having aspects from our evolution from fish to land-dwellers to mammals, etc., or something else? (Presumably not the US TV series of that name starring actor Abe Vigoda.)
2. If I'm right, do I win a prize?
1.
2. You have already in Darwinian terms. But not the award!
OK, since “1” is blank above, I’m totally confused now. If I didn’t figure it out, what does “fish” mean? I really did think my answer (the first one) fit with “We’re everything we’ve ever been.” What does “fish” mean in your post, then? For a moment I even wondered (since you said “helpless infant”) if you meant this:
I mean, we meet the same mix of good and evil, great beauty and pure horror, in any age.
The Aztecs had their human sacrifices; we had our Nazi Germany.
I'm sorry, but is a casual comparison with a specific instance of genocide really necessary to make you point?
Is there a better example of “pure horror” from our own age to point to? When we think of “evil from the 20th century,” they’re kind of the default example, surely?
We're everything we've ever been. Still. Helpless infant on up. It's all in there. Fish.
1. Is "fish" here a reference to having aspects from our evolution from fish to land-dwellers to mammals, etc., or something else? (Presumably not the US TV series of that name starring actor Abe Vigoda.)
2. If I'm right, do I win a prize?
1.
2. You have already in Darwinian terms. But not the award!
OK, since “1” is blank above, I’m totally confused now. If I didn’t figure it out, what does “fish” mean? I really did think my answer (the first one) fit with “We’re everything we’ve ever been.” What does “fish” mean in your post, then? For a moment I even wondered (since you said “helpless infant”) if you meant this:
(a) Sorry for being unclear. For me there is nothing anachronistic about the character in the synoptic gospels, there is nothing in them from the setting of 30-40 years previously that's unnatural for and from the culture of the time. His emphasis on kindness is a natural progression from the Hebrew prophets and all the way back to the Babylonian Counsels of Wisdom well over a thousand years before him via the unbelievable beauty of Aeschylus' tragedies half way back. With the Pericope Adulterae (PA) as a back projection, a loop of cognitive dissonance in itself, refined for centuries in the future, not as what happened in 30 AD, nothing stands out, nothing is impossibly anachronistic about the Jesus of the 60-70s gospels. The Jesus of the later Johannine school is very different. But still not anachronistic of 70-110 as it evolved.
(b) Again forgiveness, mercy, kindness even to enemies is entirely human, natural. What isn't (although of course it is) is the bizarre proposition that above all things we need forgiveness from God and that is obtained through penal substitutionary atonement in the plain reading of the gospels. It's fine as shock therapy to make us more forgiving, anciently and for a lot of us now, but it totally misses the target, doesn't even aim at it, of revealing Love. God as love. Love as the ground of eternal infinite being would reveal itself clearly, unnaturally. Where does it, do They, do that in the gospels? In Jesus? It's a distraction and an extremely toxic one, regardless of that marginal shock value. The cure is nearly as bad as the disease. Worse.
What we need above all things is the fact, the truth, the proof of Love. For me the PA was it. And now, walking home upriver, for the first time ever, due to @Nick Tamen and @Dafyd on the 'Could...' thread, I'm wondering if it isn't there either, that despite being the most beautiful, moving Biblical account, even if it happened as writ, in 30 AD, not 400-500 years later, is it that good? It's exceptionally good compared with anything else in the gospels. But would that have been good enough if it were attested to 30AD?
Why do we need the gospel to be decent human beings? We were before it, and we aren't that much better after it. It just takes a lot of time on the long arc of human progress.
a) I see I'd promised to come back to this after picking my son up. Well, I did so, though it's a couple days ago...
b) I still have great difficulty seeing how human nature, or culture, is supposed to have evolved in any direction, really, during recorded history. I mean, we meet the same mix of good and evil, great beauty and pure horror, in any age. The Aztecs had their human sacrifices; we had our Nazi Germany. It seems to me that human beings are at once both extremely good and extremely bad, going by their behavior, and trying to predict which one will happen to you is not easy.
c) As a result, I don't think we need the Gospel to be decent human beings. I don't think God intends us to be decent human beings at all. I think he intends us to be a joy and a delight, creatures that, when other people see us, they shake their heads at the sheer beauty of what's going on in our lives--and want in on that. Though he doesn't always get what he wants, at least with the speed of change I'd like to see in Christians...
d) But the offer is for everyone--"Take me," Jesus says, "And you will have real, everlasting life, like nobody has had it from the beginning of the world. You will have my love, and my Father's love. You will have my joy confirmed in you--a joy so great that it can even face crucifixion without going out like a candle. And you will have one another, an ever-increasing family of humanity, continually growing in love for one another, all being perfected into a unity that mirrors the beauty of God." (this is a paraphrase of John 13-17)
e) And now for something else.
As far as I can see, penal substitutionary atonement (which you mention as the normal Christian position) is in fact not a biblical teaching at all. I will be on the lookout for it as I go through my next reading of it, but while there are a few passages which would support a general substitutionary model of the atonement, the penal bit seems to be right out of court. I begin to suspect it for at best a distortion, and at worse possibly a heresy. Again, I'm going to be looking out for the proof of it during my next read-through.
What would happen if, instead of using the PSA horror as your baseline for Christianity, you took any of the other models (Christus victor, healing, even Origen's weird little theory!) and used them instead? Or avoid the models altogether and just leave what Christ was doing as the mystery it is in its inner workings--"God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself"--and go no deeper into speculation than that?
a) How's your boy? Good to see you back.
b) Agreed. The average stays the same. But the natural oscillations of, opportunities for good and evil amplify with population. Jesus, a population of one, but in a culture of millions, was the greatest amplification up to his time at least.
c) I don't see that in Christians any more than non. Less in many regards. But I see that transcendental hope makes some difference.
d) We all need nice ideas, nice meanings. We all need reasons to be kind, grateful.
e) The penal bit centre court. And I'd rationalized it away, angled my head to put it in the blind spot, when I was a believer, as all liberal Christians have to. I de-reconstructed. I was happy with the mystery. The mystery of faith only, sola fide. Because I had knowledge, certainty below that. Until I saw that that emperor has no clothes. Without God actually doing something, having done nothing in nature, there can be no reconstruction.
The penal bit centre court. And I'd rationalized it away, angled my head to put it in the blind spot, when I was a believer, as all liberal Christians have to.
The penal bit centre court. And I'd rationalized it away, angled my head to put it in the blind spot, when I was a believer, as all liberal Christians have to.
The penal bit centre court. And I'd rationalized it away, angled my head to put it in the blind spot, when I was a believer, as all liberal Christians have to.
“All”?
Well some are terrified that it's true, true.
I’m quite sure that you can find, even on these boards, liberal Christians who would quite clearly point out that they haven’t rationalized anything away, angled their heads to put it in a blind spot, etc. You may regard yourself as having done that, but I don’t think you can speak for everyone else.
The penal bit centre court. And I'd rationalized it away, angled my head to put it in the blind spot, when I was a believer, as all liberal Christians have to.
“All”?
Well some are terrified that it's true, true.
I’m quite sure that you can find, even on these boards, liberal Christians who would quite clearly point out that they haven’t rationalized anything away, angled their heads to put it in a blind spot, etc. You may regard yourself as having done that, but I don’t think you can speak for everyone else.
I did that. I feel for those who can't. Who have liberal hearts terrified that God is the worst monster possible.
My quibble here is with “as all liberal Christians have to.” The word “all.” Not everyone has had the same experiences you have, @Martin54.
Nobody has. So what have you met oxymoronic liberal Christians who nonetheless have to believe in PSA?
That's not what you said. What you said was:
The penal bit centre court. And I'd rationalized it away, angled my head to put it in the blind spot, when I was a believer, as all liberal Christians have to.
My point was that not all liberal Christians (or Christians in general, frankly, but you mentioned liberal ones in particular) "have to" rationalize the "penal bit" away, or "put it in the blind spot." The faith they came to, or were raised in, may not have even included the "penal bit" in the first place. Not to mention the suggestion of intellectual dishonesty by "rationalizing" (not reasoning) or "putting it in the blind spot." People can be raised in, or converted to, Christian beliefs that don't start with "the penal bit" in the first place. Regardless of whether or not that doctrine is true, false, or more complex or complicated, it's not a given that "all liberal Christians have to" do this. There are (to take one example) Quakers of the Christocentric variety (not all are, in our era) who are liberal Christians but who just don't have that as a starting place at all, and weren't raised with that as part of their theology. (Early Quakers are not the same as current Quakers. There is a wide variety of belief among current Quakers all over the world. And Quakers are just one type of "liberal Christian.")
Now, you could say "many" liberal Christians, and that would be absolutely true. But certainly not all.
Indeed, good point @ChastMastr. Although PSA type thinking suffuses even Roman and Orthodox Catholicity, damnationism certainly does. I'm sure some liberal Christians will never have been exposed to it. I don't accuse anyone of intellectual dishonesty. I don't know any intellectual who is dishonest with regard to these toxic issues. Belief comes before intellect.
I mean, we meet the same mix of good and evil, great beauty and pure horror, in any age.
The Aztecs had their human sacrifices; we had our Nazi Germany.
I'm sorry, but is a casual comparison with a specific instance of genocide really necessary to make your point?
Okay, please set me straight. Is simply naming a horrific historical event now the sort of thing that needs hiding?
I mean, I can if people want me to. It just seems odd.
It seems odd to me as well... and since xenophobia, racism, antisemitism, and related stuff are issues we're now having to deal with again in overt full force, remembering how easy it is for those to take hold seems to me like something we don't want to cover up, especially when talking about human depravity.
But the penal thing... I see how some people come by the idea, certainly, though it horrifies me. But I've spent 40-odd years in the Lutheran church now, and haven't run across it in real life. When I first heard of it on the Ship I was... well, horrified. As a real thing, I mean, not a caricature I saw somewhere else.
This is why I spend so much time in real life explaining Scripture, because it freaks me out to see what some people get out of it. Yikes yikes yikes yikes yikes. Not that human beings don't routinely misread everything else as well, including instructions for microwaves...
I mean, we meet the same mix of good and evil, great beauty and pure horror, in any age.
The Aztecs had their human sacrifices; we had our Nazi Germany.
I'm sorry, but is a casual comparison with a specific instance of genocide really necessary to make your point?
Okay, please set me straight. Is simply naming a horrific historical event now the sort of thing that needs hiding?
I mean, I can if people want me to. It just seems odd.
Thanks for asking - the point I was making was whether it was necessary to reference those events at all - your argument doesn't seem to require any examples; it doesn't look stronger with them, nor weaker without them. And it's about having respect for the living survivors and families of the victims of genocide, which I take to be in line with the forum guidelines:
If you have a pressing need to reference dehumanising views of identity groups or specific slurs used against such groups, please use spoiler tags to hide the pertinent phrases - so Shipmates are not obliged to read them repeatedly. Such phrases should never appear in thread titles.
We consider that some topics are sufficiently sensitive that they require their own space, with a different emphasis - these include discussions about topics of identity where people are personally invested, where academic detachment just isn't possible, and where issues and identity significantly overlap.
And, for me at least, it's about your choice of historical events. The context of your post is a thread about Christian attitudes to human behaviour. I think Christians should be more careful about whose atrocities they point the finger at. The idea that "real" Christians and "real" Christianity have played no role in conquest and genocide seems ... convenient. I suggest that Christians could do a better job of "owning" the more egregious historic outworkings of their faith.
I think @Lamb Chopped didn’t mention dehumanizing views or slurs themselves, but the name of the regime that did horrible things. She didn’t even mention the specific atrocities in question, just the regime and country that committed them. I don’t think that the name of
Nazi Germany
counts as something that needs hidden text any more than, say, fascist Italy.
I mean, we meet the same mix of good and evil, great beauty and pure horror, in any age.
The Aztecs had their human sacrifices; we had our Nazi Germany.
I'm sorry, but is a casual comparison with a specific instance of genocide really necessary to make your point?
Okay, please set me straight. Is simply naming a horrific historical event now the sort of thing that needs hiding?
I mean, I can if people want me to. It just seems odd.
Thanks for asking - the point I was making was whether it was necessary to reference those events at all - your argument doesn't seem to require any examples; it doesn't look stronger with them, nor weaker without them. And it's about having respect for the living survivors and families of the victims of genocide, which I take to be in line with the forum guidelines:
If you have a pressing need to reference dehumanising views of identity groups or specific slurs used against such groups, please use spoiler tags to hide the pertinent phrases - so Shipmates are not obliged to read them repeatedly. Such phrases should never appear in thread titles.
We consider that some topics are sufficiently sensitive that they require their own space, with a different emphasis - these include discussions about topics of identity where people are personally invested, where academic detachment just isn't possible, and where issues and identity significantly overlap.
And, for me at least, it's about your choice of historical events. The context of your post is a thread about Christian attitudes to human behaviour. I think Christians should be more careful about whose atrocities they point the finger at. The idea that "real" Christians and "real" Christianity have played no role in conquest and genocide seems ... convenient. I suggest that Christians could do a better job of "owning" the more egregious historic outworkings of their faith.
For what it's worth, the atrocities we are (not) discussing took place in Germany, which was largely Lutheran. I can't get much closer to owning it than that.
Historic atrocities such as the Huguenot massacre or the Jonestown suicides should certainly not be forgotten and should not be used as a model for actions in our own times.
I mean, we meet the same mix of good and evil, great beauty and pure horror, in any age.
The Aztecs had their human sacrifices; we had our Nazi Germany.
I'm sorry, but is a casual comparison with a specific instance of genocide really necessary to make your point?
Okay, please set me straight. Is simply naming a horrific historical event now the sort of thing that needs hiding?
I mean, I can if people want me to. It just seems odd.
Thanks for asking - the point I was making was whether it was necessary to reference those events at all - your argument doesn't seem to require any examples; it doesn't look stronger with them, nor weaker without them. And it's about having respect for the living survivors and families of the victims of genocide, which I take to be in line with the forum guidelines:
If you have a pressing need to reference dehumanising views of identity groups or specific slurs used against such groups, please use spoiler tags to hide the pertinent phrases - so Shipmates are not obliged to read them repeatedly. Such phrases should never appear in thread titles.
We consider that some topics are sufficiently sensitive that they require their own space, with a different emphasis - these include discussions about topics of identity where people are personally invested, where academic detachment just isn't possible, and where issues and identity significantly overlap.
And, for me at least, it's about your choice of historical events. The context of your post is a thread about Christian attitudes to human behaviour. I think Christians should be more careful about whose atrocities they point the finger at. The idea that "real" Christians and "real" Christianity have played no role in conquest and genocide seems ... convenient. I suggest that Christians could do a better job of "owning" the more egregious historic outworkings of their faith.
Who was saying that though? I read the point as being that there have been horrors and atrocities through the ages. One could obviously easily think of two other examples, including some close to home. That humanity, as a whole, is capable of evil and it isn't just something weird and horrible that happened in the distant past.
Indeed, good point @ChastMastr. Although PSA type thinking suffuses even Roman and Orthodox Catholicity, damnationism certainly does. I'm sure some liberal Christians will never have been exposed to it. I don't accuse anyone of intellectual dishonesty. I don't know any intellectual who is dishonest with regard to these toxic issues. Belief comes before intellect.
I can't speak for Rome but can't say I've noticed 'PSA type thinking' suffusing Orthodox Christianity. Quite the opposite in fact.
Where did you get this idea from?
It may horrify the estimable @Lamb Chopped and others but I was steeped in PSA type thinking for decades as an evangelical Christian and it's taken me - and is taking me - a long time to slough it off.
It's been so much a part of my spiritual psyche that even now I was surprised to read that it hadn't formed part of @Lamb Chopped's understanding of things as I'd assumed that Lutherans would share that with the kind of Protestants I knocked around with back then.
In fairness, the particular groups I knew best did have a broader view which included a Gustav Aulen 'Christus Victor' type element.
But PSA was an evangelical shibboleth.
On 'damnationism' as you put it, Orthodox views seem to vary from an almost medieval 'take' to forms of universalism - although full-on dogmatic universalism is frowned upon.
You also get bizarre folk-religion style beliefs such as the 'heavenly toll-booths' thing which most sensible Orthodox theologians also frown upon.
As with other things, the Orthodox don't tend to dogmatise these issues and a range of views are permissible - within certain limits.
I do wonder, @Martin54 whether you are allowing your experiences within particularly conservative forms of Protestantism to colour what you see of other Christian traditions which don't necessarily adhere to what you accuse them of believing.
We all do this, so I'm not singling you out for censure. I do it myself.
I've assumed things about the Lutheran tradition, for example, based on my experience of other Protestant traditions. It's only by interacting with Lutherans here that I've realised that I can't make assumptions or presuppositions about their particular tradition - or anyone else's for that matter.
It seems odd to me as well... and since xenophobia, racism, antisemitism, and related stuff are issues we're now having to deal with again in overt full force, remembering how easy it is for those to take hold seems to me like something we don't want to cover up, especially when talking about human depravity.
It's not about covering these things up, it's about remembering that "having to deal with" them means something very different depending on whether you're a victim, someone who has to live with the threat, or someone who gets to watch these events happening to other people.
It's also about remembering that victims often have little choice or control over reliving traumatic events.
Indeed, good point @ChastMastr. Although PSA type thinking suffuses even Roman and Orthodox Catholicity, damnationism certainly does. I'm sure some liberal Christians will never have been exposed to it. I don't accuse anyone of intellectual dishonesty. I don't know any intellectual who is dishonest with regard to these toxic issues. Belief comes before intellect.
I can't speak for Rome but can't say I've noticed 'PSA type thinking' suffusing Orthodox Christianity. Quite the opposite in fact.
Where did you get this idea from?
It may horrify the estimable @Lamb Chopped and others but I was steeped in PSA type thinking for decades as an evangelical Christian and it's taken me - and is taking me - a long time to slough it off.
It's been so much a part of my spiritual psyche that even now I was surprised to read that it hadn't formed part of @Lamb Chopped's understanding of things as I'd assumed that Lutherans would share that with the kind of Protestants I knocked around with back then.
In fairness, the particular groups I knew best did have a broader view which included a Gustav Aulen 'Christus Victor' type element.
But PSA was an evangelical shibboleth.
On 'damnationism' as you put it, Orthodox views seem to vary from an almost medieval 'take' to forms of universalism - although full-on dogmatic universalism is frowned upon.
You also get bizarre folk-religion style beliefs such as the 'heavenly toll-booths' thing which most sensible Orthodox theologians also frown upon.
As with other things, the Orthodox don't tend to dogmatise these issues and a range of views are permissible - within certain limits.
I do wonder, @Martin54 whether you are allowing your experiences within particularly conservative forms of Protestantism to colour what you see of other Christian traditions which don't necessarily adhere to what you accuse them of believing.
We all do this, so I'm not singling you out for censure. I do it myself.
I've assumed things about the Lutheran tradition, for example, based on my experience of other Protestant traditions. It's only by interacting with Lutherans here that I've realised that I can't make assumptions or presuppositions about their particular tradition - or anyone else's for that matter.
Just sayin'.
I replied to your initial question on the wrong thread,
No matter how it's dressed up, originating with Origen, it was and remains there in mass folk Christianity:
It originated in the early Church, particularly in the work of Origen. The theory teaches that the death of Christ was a ransom sacrifice, usually said to have been paid to Satan, in satisfaction for the bondage and debt on the souls of humanity as a result of inherited sin.
Writing in the 4th century, St. Athanasius of Alexandria proposed a theory of the atonement which similarly states that sin bears the consequence of death, that God warned Adam about this, and so, to remain consistent with Himself must have Jesus die as Man's perfect prototype, or let humankind die mired in sin. This has some similarity to the satisfaction view, although Athanasius emphasized the fact that this death is effective because of our unity with Christ, rather than emphasizing a legal substitution or transfer of merits and that when Jesus descended into hades (variously, the underworld or hell, the abode of the dead) he eliminated death with his own death, since the power of death cannot hold God, Who is Life, captive.
East and West, people believe that Jesus died for our sins, that he's our saviour, that he fixes us. Or damns us. Evangelicals are just honest about it.
I'm sure my experience of Anglicanism above all, but Baptist, Methodist, non-conformist, 'free', and every UK Christian group and church bar one, where unspoken and spoken damnationism and orgasmic devotion to bloodied Jesus, including here, allows my experience to colour what I see of every Christian tradition bar emergent. And even then.
Being monist by name and monist by nature, it's all one package, damnation-atonement, which is orthodox. You really have to work at it as a liberal, emergent, which I did, as many here have, to deconstruct that and reconstruct Love from it.
If Love were known as the ground of being, we'd still have that argument. But as They cannot be known, only believed, it's moot.
It seems odd to me as well... and since xenophobia, racism, antisemitism, and related stuff are issues we're now having to deal with again in overt full force, remembering how easy it is for those to take hold seems to me like something we don't want to cover up, especially when talking about human depravity.
It's not about covering these things up, it's about remembering that "having to deal with" them means something very different depending on whether you're a victim, someone who has to live with the threat, or someone who gets to watch these events happening to other people.
It's also about remembering that victims often have little choice or control over reliving traumatic events.
We’re literally talking about referencing N-z- G-rm-ny here. It’s a really basic relatively recent historical situation. It just pops up in all kinds of places.
I think @Martin54's issue is with what he calls 'damnationism' per se rather than simply PSA in particular.
So much so that he projects it - as far as I can see - onto each and every Christian tradition we can think of, even those where it may be understood in a different way or where it isn't presented in the terms he is familiar with.
The Orthodox Tradition does emphasis the Cross, but always in connection with the Resurrection (and of course we aren't alone in that).
Incidentally, you can tell I'm Orthodox because of the capital letters ... 😉
We don't go in for 'orgasmic devotion to bloodied Jesus' to borrow Martin54's caricatured representation of emphases in certain Western traditions.
You will find Orthodox theologians who will acknowledge juridical and 'forensic' imagery in connection with the atonement (or Atonement) but only alongside other images and 'models' - if we can put it that way.
But no, the Orthodox are not 'suffused' with penal substitutionary understandings of the atonement as Martin54 alleges.
Neither are all Protestant traditions.
Within Anglicanism, for instance there are a range of views. Methodism the same. Heck, various Anabaptist groups have different 'takes' on this too.
Just because various forms of evangelicalism are big on PSA doesn't mean everyone else is but are being disingenuous about it.
It seems odd to me as well... and since xenophobia, racism, antisemitism, and related stuff are issues we're now having to deal with again in overt full force, remembering how easy it is for those to take hold seems to me like something we don't want to cover up, especially when talking about human depravity.
It's not about covering these things up, it's about remembering that "having to deal with" them means something very different depending on whether you're a victim, someone who has to live with the threat, or someone who gets to watch these events happening to other people.
It's also about remembering that victims often have little choice or control over reliving traumatic events.
We’re literally talking about referencing N-z- G-rm-ny here. It’s a really basic relatively recent historical situation. It just pops up in all kinds of places.
To be clear, I'm talking about references to the Holocaust, which you appeared to accept in your initial response to my post:
I'm sorry, but is a casual comparison with a specific instance of genocide really necessary to make your point?
Is there a better example of “pure horror” from our own age to point to? When we think of “evil from the 20th century,” they’re kind of the default example, surely?
Either way, I find the idea that references to specific people and events "just pop up in all kinds of places" profoundly trivialising and an evasion of personal responsibility. On this forum, all the words that appear in a post are a direct consequence of a conscious decision by a human being to write or copy text and press the "Post Comment" button. Nothing "just pops up".
(a) I think @Martin54's issue is with what he calls 'damnationism' per se rather than simply PSA in particular.
(b) So much so that he projects it - as far as I can see - onto each and every Christian tradition we can think of, even those where it may be understood in a different way or where it isn't presented in the terms he is familiar with.
The Orthodox Tradition does emphasis the Cross, but always in connection with the Resurrection (and of course we aren't alone in that).
Incidentally, you can tell I'm Orthodox because of the capital letters ... 😉
We don't go in for 'orgasmic devotion to bloodied Jesus' to borrow Martin54's caricatured representation of emphases in certain Western traditions.
(c) You will find Orthodox theologians who will acknowledge juridical and 'forensic' imagery in connection with the atonement (or Atonement) but only alongside other images and 'models' - if we can put it that way.
(d) But no, the Orthodox are not 'suffused' with penal substitutionary understandings of the atonement as Martin54 alleges.
(e) Neither are all Protestant traditions.
Within Anglicanism, for instance there are a range of views. Methodism the same. Heck, various Anabaptist groups have different 'takes' on this too.
Just because various forms of evangelicalism are big on PSA doesn't mean everyone else is but are being disingenuous about it.
(a) It is, he see's them as perichoretic.
(b) He does. No matter how it's dressed up.
(c) He sees it here, from Judaism through the NT to the Early Church Fathers up to the C11th, and therefore in folk memory throughout East and West. And here.
(d) To him mass, folk Christianity is. No matter what the official teaching.
(e) Yes he's encountered such minority, emergent positions, including in Baptists, especially Steve Chalke of course. Baptists seem more likely to emerge (he met two such excellent ministers outside Oasis circles) than dominant damnationist-PSA evangelical Anglicans who occupy a couple or three standard deviations from the mean in the four congos he was a member of.
As he found with the theology group he joined, and is still party to on the very best of terms, they have excellent inclusive universal theology extrapolated from the Jesus of faith.
e) Apparently there are Baptists, and there are Baptists. From my insider pew in my corner of the Baptist world, Baptists in the US are, for the mostpart, theologically conservative, politically conservative, and deeply suspicious of all forms of secular thought.*
There are "liberal" American Baptists, but few in my state.
In the US, I have not known a Baptist who has emerged. My truly deconstructed friend was a Lutheran whose dad was a pastor. And Bill was not emerging. He was exiting.
There may be reasons Steve Chalke and Oasis are overseas (from my perspective).
(a) I think @Martin54's issue is with what he calls 'damnationism' per se rather than simply PSA in particular.
(b) So much so that he projects it - as far as I can see - onto each and every Christian tradition we can think of, even those where it may be understood in a different way or where it isn't presented in the terms he is familiar with.
(a) It is, he see's them as perichoretic.
(b) He does. No matter how it's dressed up.
Which seems to me awfully close to claiming that you understand the teachings of traditions that you are not and never have been part of, and perhaps have little actual experience with, better than people in and very familiar with those traditions.
It seems odd to me as well... and since xenophobia, racism, antisemitism, and related stuff are issues we're now having to deal with again in overt full force, remembering how easy it is for those to take hold seems to me like something we don't want to cover up, especially when talking about human depravity.
It's not about covering these things up, it's about remembering that "having to deal with" them means something very different depending on whether you're a victim, someone who has to live with the threat, or someone who gets to watch these events happening to other people.
It's also about remembering that victims often have little choice or control over reliving traumatic events.
We’re literally talking about referencing N-z- G-rm-ny here. It’s a really basic relatively recent historical situation. It just pops up in all kinds of places.
To be clear, I'm talking about references to the Holocaust, which you appeared to accept in your initial response to my post:
I'm sorry, but is a casual comparison with a specific instance of genocide really necessary to make your point?
Is there a better example of “pure horror” from our own age to point to? When we think of “evil from the 20th century,” they’re kind of the default example, surely?
Either way, I find the idea that references to specific people and events "just pop up in all kinds of places" profoundly trivialising and an evasion of personal responsibility. On this forum, all the words that appear in a post are a direct consequence of a conscious decision by a human being to write or copy text and press the "Post Comment" button. Nothing "just pops up".
I’ve started a thread in the Styx about whether or not we should use spoiler tags when referring to Nazi Germany (or for that matter the holocaust). This seems like an issue for the Hosts and Admins to determine what the rules should be there, so I’m waiting for their decision. Please feel free to comment.
Comments
@MPaul , Maybe. I have been working for years (and frequently failing) to refrain from speaking for other people or for substituting my understanding of what they must have meant for what they actually said. I was trying again above.
I think it would have been interesting if the responses had focused more tightly on answering the question as stated in @Martin54 's OP. But it might have been a fairly short discussion.
I expressed in a different forum recently my frustration with apologetic arguments that I am familiar with. Many, like the trilemma, are a kind of logic puzzle that only work if the apologee accept faulty assumptions that are foundational to the argument. In the end, the discussion revolves around the argument itself and its faults.
Leaving a person like me with one less reason to believe.
Then don't use reason. Seriously. Use your heart. Only. Something happened within a couple of years or so of Jesus' death. The Church broke the surface. It was a threat to the social order, to the ruling class which had to persecute it. Within 300 years it had subverted the Roman Empire and gone beyond. Unfortunately! It became institutionalized and subservient to the state. Lost its subversive, egalitarian edge. If Love is the ground of being, that's what They want. Social justice. Which can only be obtained non-violently.
1) You make an interesting point, @Martin54. I know that "rational apologetics" has been around for a long time, but in the background. No more. Certainly it's the online spaces I hang out only since the last few years. But also churches and parachurch organizations that used to focus on faith and thoughtful study (Bible, theology, application) have begun to incorporate apologetics more and more. It seems now that faith is no longer adequate, even in the church.
2) You've challenged me elsewhere on what constitutes the Gospel. While we still see that differently, I have come to understand that the church's testimony is absolutely tied with it's commitment to follow Jesus's commands regarding justice. If we aren't doing this, we demonstrate we are as loveless and self-focused as anyone we point our fingers at.
2) Yes. If I understand you right, I agree.
1) Possibly. Perhaps Pascal wasn't entirely wrong (about that hole)? I wonder what elicited this point, though.
1) We're everything we've ever been. Still. Helpless infant on up. It's all in there. Fish. As for the eliciting (not elicitation, though I wish it were), it's trying to see the same gospel, on my part. And I therefore interpolated idealized human need.
I see I'd promised to come back to this after picking my son up. Well, I did so, though it's a couple days ago...
I still have great difficulty seeing how human nature, or culture, is supposed to have evolved in any direction, really, during recorded history. I mean, we meet the same mix of good and evil, great beauty and pure horror, in any age. The Aztecs had their human sacrifices; we had our Nazi Germany. It seems to me that human beings are at once both extremely good and extremely bad, going by their behavior, and trying to predict which one will happen to you is not easy.
As a result, I don't think we need the Gospel to be decent human beings. I don't think God intends us to be decent human beings at all. I think he intends us to be a joy and a delight, creatures that, when other people see us, they shake their heads at the sheer beauty of what's going on in our lives--and want in on that. Though he doesn't always get what he wants, at least with the speed of change I'd like to see in Christians...
But the offer is for everyone--"Take me," Jesus says, "And you will have real, everlasting life, like nobody has had it from the beginning of the world. You will have my love, and my Father's love. You will have my joy confirmed in you--a joy so great that it can even face crucifixion without going out like a candle. And you will have one another, an ever-increasing family of humanity, continually growing in love for one another, all being perfected into a unity that mirrors the beauty of God." (this is a paraphrase of John 13-17)
And now for something else.
As far as I can see, penal substitutionary atonement (which you mention as the normal Christian position) is in fact not a biblical teaching at all. I will be on the lookout for it as I go through my next reading of it, but while there are a few passages which would support a general substitutionary model of the atonement, the penal bit seems to be right out of court. I begin to suspect it for at best a distortion, and at worse possibly a heresy. Again, I'm going to be looking out for the proof of it during my next read-through.
What would happen if, instead of using the PSA horror as your baseline for Christianity, you took any of the other models (Christus victor, healing, even Origen's weird little theory!) and used them instead? Or avoid the models altogether and just leave what Christ was doing as the mystery it is in its inner workings--"God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself"--and go no deeper into speculation than that?
1. Is "fish" here a reference to having aspects from our evolution from fish to land-dwellers to mammals, etc., or something else? (Presumably not the US TV series of that name starring actor Abe Vigoda.)
2. If I'm right, do I win a prize?
1.
2. You have already in Darwinian terms. But not the award!
I have never recovered from discovering Auschwitz nearly 60 years ago, in the book by Miklós Nyiszli, at childhood's end. It was one of two spikes driven in to my brain that sealed my existential angst, La Nausée, and made me ripe for the false meaning given by religion. And @Lamb Chopped (I'll deal with you later! : ) is right. It's banal. Human. All too easy. Falling off a log. Nature.
OK, since “1” is blank above, I’m totally confused now. If I didn’t figure it out, what does “fish” mean? I really did think my answer (the first one) fit with “We’re everything we’ve ever been.” What does “fish” mean in your post, then? For a moment I even wondered (since you said “helpless infant”) if you meant this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory#:~:text=The theory of recapitulation, also,hatching (ontogeny)%2C%20goes%20through
What’s the Darwinian “prize”? Having survived? Something else?
???
Is there a better example of “pure horror” from our own age to point to? When we think of “evil from the 20th century,” they’re kind of the default example, surely?
Sorry. 1. 1st half is the right answer. We were fish. We've been emotional for at least half a billion years.
& your final question, yes, the 1st half, or 2/3rds. You've survived. Contributed to the greater good.
a) How's your boy? Good to see you back.
b) Agreed. The average stays the same. But the natural oscillations of, opportunities for good and evil amplify with population. Jesus, a population of one, but in a culture of millions, was the greatest amplification up to his time at least.
c) I don't see that in Christians any more than non. Less in many regards. But I see that transcendental hope makes some difference.
d) We all need nice ideas, nice meanings. We all need reasons to be kind, grateful.
e) The penal bit centre court. And I'd rationalized it away, angled my head to put it in the blind spot, when I was a believer, as all liberal Christians have to. I de-reconstructed. I was happy with the mystery. The mystery of faith only, sola fide. Because I had knowledge, certainty below that. Until I saw that that emperor has no clothes. Without God actually doing something, having done nothing in nature, there can be no reconstruction.
“All”?
Well some are terrified that it's true, true.
I’m quite sure that you can find, even on these boards, liberal Christians who would quite clearly point out that they haven’t rationalized anything away, angled their heads to put it in a blind spot, etc. You may regard yourself as having done that, but I don’t think you can speak for everyone else.
I did that. I feel for those who can't. Who have liberal hearts terrified that God is the worst monster possible.
Nobody has. So what have you met oxymoronic liberal Christians who nonetheless have to believe in PSA?
Okay, please set me straight. Is simply naming a horrific historical event now the sort of thing that needs hiding?
I mean, I can if people want me to. It just seems odd.
That's not what you said. What you said was:
My point was that not all liberal Christians (or Christians in general, frankly, but you mentioned liberal ones in particular) "have to" rationalize the "penal bit" away, or "put it in the blind spot." The faith they came to, or were raised in, may not have even included the "penal bit" in the first place. Not to mention the suggestion of intellectual dishonesty by "rationalizing" (not reasoning) or "putting it in the blind spot." People can be raised in, or converted to, Christian beliefs that don't start with "the penal bit" in the first place. Regardless of whether or not that doctrine is true, false, or more complex or complicated, it's not a given that "all liberal Christians have to" do this. There are (to take one example) Quakers of the Christocentric variety (not all are, in our era) who are liberal Christians but who just don't have that as a starting place at all, and weren't raised with that as part of their theology. (Early Quakers are not the same as current Quakers. There is a wide variety of belief among current Quakers all over the world. And Quakers are just one type of "liberal Christian.")
Now, you could say "many" liberal Christians, and that would be absolutely true. But certainly not all.
It seems odd to me as well... and since xenophobia, racism, antisemitism, and related stuff are issues we're now having to deal with again in overt full force, remembering how easy it is for those to take hold seems to me like something we don't want to cover up, especially when talking about human depravity.
They have added gasoline to the fire, certainly.
But the penal thing... I see how some people come by the idea, certainly, though it horrifies me. But I've spent 40-odd years in the Lutheran church now, and haven't run across it in real life. When I first heard of it on the Ship I was... well, horrified. As a real thing, I mean, not a caricature I saw somewhere else.
This is why I spend so much time in real life explaining Scripture, because it freaks me out to see what some people get out of it. Yikes yikes yikes yikes yikes. Not that human beings don't routinely misread everything else as well, including instructions for microwaves...
And, for me at least, it's about your choice of historical events. The context of your post is a thread about Christian attitudes to human behaviour. I think Christians should be more careful about whose atrocities they point the finger at. The idea that "real" Christians and "real" Christianity have played no role in conquest and genocide seems ... convenient. I suggest that Christians could do a better job of "owning" the more egregious historic outworkings of their faith.
counts as something that needs hidden text any more than, say, fascist Italy.
For what it's worth, the atrocities we are (not) discussing took place in Germany, which was largely Lutheran. I can't get much closer to owning it than that.
But thank you for the explanation.
Who was saying that though? I read the point as being that there have been horrors and atrocities through the ages. One could obviously easily think of two other examples, including some close to home. That humanity, as a whole, is capable of evil and it isn't just something weird and horrible that happened in the distant past.
I can't speak for Rome but can't say I've noticed 'PSA type thinking' suffusing Orthodox Christianity. Quite the opposite in fact.
Where did you get this idea from?
It may horrify the estimable @Lamb Chopped and others but I was steeped in PSA type thinking for decades as an evangelical Christian and it's taken me - and is taking me - a long time to slough it off.
It's been so much a part of my spiritual psyche that even now I was surprised to read that it hadn't formed part of @Lamb Chopped's understanding of things as I'd assumed that Lutherans would share that with the kind of Protestants I knocked around with back then.
In fairness, the particular groups I knew best did have a broader view which included a Gustav Aulen 'Christus Victor' type element.
But PSA was an evangelical shibboleth.
On 'damnationism' as you put it, Orthodox views seem to vary from an almost medieval 'take' to forms of universalism - although full-on dogmatic universalism is frowned upon.
You also get bizarre folk-religion style beliefs such as the 'heavenly toll-booths' thing which most sensible Orthodox theologians also frown upon.
As with other things, the Orthodox don't tend to dogmatise these issues and a range of views are permissible - within certain limits.
I do wonder, @Martin54 whether you are allowing your experiences within particularly conservative forms of Protestantism to colour what you see of other Christian traditions which don't necessarily adhere to what you accuse them of believing.
We all do this, so I'm not singling you out for censure. I do it myself.
I've assumed things about the Lutheran tradition, for example, based on my experience of other Protestant traditions. It's only by interacting with Lutherans here that I've realised that I can't make assumptions or presuppositions about their particular tradition - or anyone else's for that matter.
Just sayin'.
Help!
It's also about remembering that victims often have little choice or control over reliving traumatic events.
I replied to your initial question on the wrong thread,
I'm sure my experience of Anglicanism above all, but Baptist, Methodist, non-conformist, 'free', and every UK Christian group and church bar one, where unspoken and spoken damnationism and orgasmic devotion to bloodied Jesus, including here, allows my experience to colour what I see of every Christian tradition bar emergent. And even then.
Being monist by name and monist by nature, it's all one package, damnation-atonement, which is orthodox. You really have to work at it as a liberal, emergent, which I did, as many here have, to deconstruct that and reconstruct Love from it.
If Love were known as the ground of being, we'd still have that argument. But as They cannot be known, only believed, it's moot.
We’re literally talking about referencing N-z- G-rm-ny here. It’s a really basic relatively recent historical situation. It just pops up in all kinds of places.
So much so that he projects it - as far as I can see - onto each and every Christian tradition we can think of, even those where it may be understood in a different way or where it isn't presented in the terms he is familiar with.
The Orthodox Tradition does emphasis the Cross, but always in connection with the Resurrection (and of course we aren't alone in that).
Incidentally, you can tell I'm Orthodox because of the capital letters ... 😉
We don't go in for 'orgasmic devotion to bloodied Jesus' to borrow Martin54's caricatured representation of emphases in certain Western traditions.
You will find Orthodox theologians who will acknowledge juridical and 'forensic' imagery in connection with the atonement (or Atonement) but only alongside other images and 'models' - if we can put it that way.
But no, the Orthodox are not 'suffused' with penal substitutionary understandings of the atonement as Martin54 alleges.
Neither are all Protestant traditions.
Within Anglicanism, for instance there are a range of views. Methodism the same. Heck, various Anabaptist groups have different 'takes' on this too.
Just because various forms of evangelicalism are big on PSA doesn't mean everyone else is but are being disingenuous about it.
(a) It is, he see's them as perichoretic.
(b) He does. No matter how it's dressed up.
(c) He sees it here, from Judaism through the NT to the Early Church Fathers up to the C11th, and therefore in folk memory throughout East and West. And here.
(d) To him mass, folk Christianity is. No matter what the official teaching.
(e) Yes he's encountered such minority, emergent positions, including in Baptists, especially Steve Chalke of course. Baptists seem more likely to emerge (he met two such excellent ministers outside Oasis circles) than dominant damnationist-PSA evangelical Anglicans who occupy a couple or three standard deviations from the mean in the four congos he was a member of.
As he found with the theology group he joined, and is still party to on the very best of terms, they have excellent inclusive universal theology extrapolated from the Jesus of faith.
There are "liberal" American Baptists, but few in my state.
In the US, I have not known a Baptist who has emerged. My truly deconstructed friend was a Lutheran whose dad was a pastor. And Bill was not emerging. He was exiting.
There may be reasons Steve Chalke and Oasis are overseas (from my perspective).
*i won't go into the qualifiers.
I’ve started a thread in the Styx about whether or not we should use spoiler tags when referring to Nazi Germany (or for that matter the holocaust). This seems like an issue for the Hosts and Admins to determine what the rules should be there, so I’m waiting for their decision. Please feel free to comment.