Reply #47: and an answer

[kodi]

Wow, what a concentrated, prolonged vicious attack. When you spit hate, you really go on like an abuser who just likes to attack people, which of course, you are. I hardly know where to start, you were so vindictive

Oddly, I did not attack anyone. I asked for logical and rational proof for the opinion that Jesus died and rose again. As of yet, there has been no response to that question.

I asked what empirical evidence is there for the event happening.

You are the one who used ad hominum and put your own words in my mouth.

I will refer to only a few things, because actually, you really make me uncomfortable.

Yes, I see how I can. You are unable to articulate you position without personal attacks.

BTW How do you know the Good Lord did not put me here to test your faith, like Balaam was tested (Numbers 22:21-24)?

You are an atheist who hates Christianity,

I am not, and you do not know what you are talking about.

yet you are the one who decides, by official pronouncement, who gets to be a Christian, and who does not; and I cannot decide and think for myself, and I am a Christian

No, classical Christian doctrine going back nearly two millennium delineates that one needs to believe in the Resurrection. If you know of a sect that calls itself Christian that does not accept the Resurrection, other groups professing Christianity will not accept the former sect as Christian.



You are the great omniscient know-it-all,

There you go. A personal attack.

yet even with all your years of scholarly research, you somehow managed to miss the rather basic fact that the Nicene Creed is not original to Christianity, it dates from about 381, replacing the earlier creed from 325 issued by the Council of Nicaea.

The basic fact is that the Nicene Creed exhibits the basic tenets of orthodox Christianity, and it forbade the influence of the Gnostics whose methods undercut the authority of the bishops.

Tertullian wrote over 140 years before the first Nicene Council that for the majority of Christians, the orthodox position was that Jesus rose bodily from the grave, so every believer should anticipate bodily resurrection.

The orthodox position adopted the literal view of the resurrection because it legitimized the authority of certain men who claimed exclusive leadership over the churches as successors of the Apostle Peter. From the late second century, CE this doctrine served to validate the apostolic succession of bishops and is the basis for the papal authority today.

This was in response to the ideas of Marcion and the Gnostics, who felt, like Luther, there was no need for an intermediary between Man and God. In fact, Marcion was attacked for appointing female priests and bishops.

Neither was original, as both replaced the Apostles' Creed. Your scholarly research apparently failed to turn up the rather obvious fact that the creed is recited at Mass-

Another personal insult, how, well, Christian of you.

BTW, 12 years of Catholic school, religion taught to me by Jesuit priests. I do know a little bit about the Mass, being an old altar boy, but do you know about the Love Feat, the Agape that was split off from the antecedent to the Mass around the same time, again, to legitimize the authority of the bishops.

-that would make it Catholic, asshole,

Yet another nice Christian remark there. Storing up those treasures in heaven are we?

and therefore not followed by Protestants, like me, and had never been followed by the Eastern Orthodox Church, which predates Catholicism,

well now you have me, because I was unaware that the Eastern Orthodox Church used a different bible, you know, The New Testament canon as it is now recognized was first listed by St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in 367 in a letter written to his churches in Egypt.

You see, that which was around for say 1,000 years before Luther all followed the basic tenet I mentioned earlier, a belief in the resurrection.

That was the point here was it not, the resurrection?

or by the very first Christian churches, the Syrian or Coptic churches.

Which also preached the resurrection, and used versions of the texts incorporated into the Vulgate of St. Jerome

If you ask most real Christians what makes them Christian, they will probably not even check with you first, but will just go ahead and say, either that they follow Jesus Christ, or the New Testament of the Bible.

They may not check with me, but they had better check with their priest or minister and ask them if one can be a Christian without believing in the resurrection. I doubt you will find they would.

The purpose of living a religious life is to try to become the sanctified thing yourself, and find salvation, not to memorize and recite the dead legalisms you prize so highly: "for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life" (2 Cor. 3:6).

What “sanctified thing" does one “become?”

Seriously, what does that mean?

Did you note that I had pre-empted your quoting "for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life" (2 Cor. 3:6) when I mentioned the need to know the difference between the denotation and connotation of the Jesus stories? Because that is what it means.

I will not try to explain the whole background of the Christian quest to absorb the teaching into each one's own conscience,

You shouldn’t, because you can’t. That path is for each of us alone.

to then set it aside outwardly and pursue now the Spirit of God--an ordinary Christian pursuit--as you seemed to have so much trouble comprehending anything, and even insulted me with the claim that I am not a Christian or religious or anything else, because you pronounce that I am wallowing in some fantasy world "mish-mash" of your invention. You whine that it is "not even fundamentalist," a remark I still cannot understand;

Fundamentalism is a belief in the literal truth of the Bible. The Resurrection is professed in the New Testament, ergo, fundamentalists believe in the Resurrection. Understand it now?

and stupidly claim my beliefs are not Evangelical, showing what a totally ignorant phony you are. I am a liberal Lutheran who belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, so that is precisely what I am.

I comprehend you quite clearly, that you are speaking now not as a Christian, but a mystic Sufi.

I did not say that anyone was “not” a Christian. I stated that the Nicene Creed articulates the theological precepts and dogma of orthodox Christianity, and that one who is considered a "Christian" follows the basic tenets and dogma laid out in the Creed. Professing that you are a Protestant is not the issue because the Nicene Creed, the lodestone of Christianity holds the orthodoxy 1,000 years before Luther was even born. However, if you have any information that Luther denied the resurrection, stand and deliver it.

After viciously bashing me about five or six times, you add this phrase, "I shall let pass without comment" some other supposedly egregious act I commited, as if you are holding back and being kind.

Actually, I am, very much so. Moreover, I did not insult you personally, as you have repeatedly in the post I am responding to here.

What a strange comment. "Can you put it in your pocket? Can you hold it in your hand?" I can hardly even believe such ignorance still existing in the modern scientific world. Science tells you that material objects are actually moving atoms which you cannot see or hold, and you take it on faith. I claim that there is such a place as Italy, yet I cannot produce it and have never been there. Does it therefore "not exist"? What a simpleton.

Another Christian-like insult.

You seem to have little understanding of logic, reason, empiricism, or scientific method. As to Italy, one can travel there, many people can, and all who so will agree that Italy exists. We are talking here about corresponding truth, and you are mixing it up with faith. I was allowing you an out; to take the chance to grab on this dichotomy of flesh and spirit and recognize that they are not explained in the same way. Alas, you missed it.

As for combinations of belief among seekers, I think you actually appear to be ignorant of something here. We are not living in a church or even a uniform religious culture, but a totally secularized, corporate-capitalist media environment that never even refers to religion anymore authentically.

No, we are living in a culture that employs as a major part of interpersonal communication powerful emotional metaphorical imagery derived from ancient texts that were sacred when everyone thought the earth was flat and stomach ailments were a result of evil spirits. In addition, some people still believe the metaphors are factual and are incapable of looking past the imagery.

That is the problem with any religion, not simply Christianity.

If people can be drawn to a true religious belief by way of what was out there to encourage their interest and further study, I am grateful for it and accept them, and they will not be kept out of Heaven or away from the Table that was large enough for all because, thank God, you and your Litmus test do not apply.

Do you understand that a true religious belief is based upon the anticipation of a true religious experience? Was there any other way that early Christians walked without fear into a coliseum filled with lions?

I will not answer you again, no matter what kinds of remarks you post.

Ah, a hit and run artist.

Go with Jesus.

and perhaps read John Bishop Spong's "Why Christianity must change or die"

"The gospels are only first century narratives from first century interpretations, nothing more and never have been. You must not read them to find the literal truth about Jesus, rather to be seen and read as the way into the Jesus experience they were written to convey. The experience always lies behind the inevitable distortions by the limiting factor of mere words. To see the revelation of truth, you must go beneath the words, and discover the experience that made the words necessary. Only in this manner will the meaning of the words be revealed. Do not identify the text with the revelation or of the messenger with the message. The gospels are not in any literal sense holy, they are not accurate and they should not be confused with reality. The gospels represent the stage in the development of the Christian faith story where ecstatic exclamation begins to be placed into narrative form. The stories in the gospels were designed for a different age, and were to be understood as Midrashic writings, not literal ones.

When the gospel stories of Jesus were composed, circa 90CE, they were created to help interpret the meaning of his life. His followers believed that their experience was that in Jesus they had met God, and it was that reality to which they were responding. However like Paul before them, the authors of the gospels were limited by the use of language and the current and prevailing definition of God. God had always been thought of as an external and unlimited source. They saw in Jesus a transcendence and only God could have created him. They were attempting to say that the qualities found in Jesus were then not within the capabilities of human beings to create. Therefore he must have been the product of God’s spirit. To show this and pass on the ecstatic experience they mined both their sacred traditions and their vocabulary in order to speak rationally of what they had experienced by themselves capable."