The "Historical Jesus" and Christian Faith (page 2)

hmike

from a believer's perspective.

2 is the same as 1.

nvrgnbk

Since there is no afterlife, why waste time on them?

Why waste time pointing out erroneous beliefs that end lives prematurely?

How many have justified killing their fellowman because they were convinced that God was on their side and that any life sacrificed in the cause would be rewarded in an afterlife?

Why try to convince people that this life is for living, that it's not just a test or a rehearsal?

It's precisely the fact that there is no logical reason to believe in an afterlife that makes it so important to free ourselves from our delusions.

You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe. -- Carl Sagan

XJW4EVR

Why waste time pointing out erroneous beliefs that end lives prematurely?

If that is their truth, then what difference does it make to you? Who are you to impose your truth on others?

How many have justified killing their fellowman because they were convinced that God was on their side and that any life sacrificed in the cause would be rewarded in an afterlife?

How many followers of the Khmer Rouge, Stalinists, Maoists, and others that followed atheism justified their actions with the idea that there is no God, and because of their atheism? I find it odd that the anti-theist refuses to realize that everytime they point a finger at other religions that three are pointing back at them.

Why try to convince people that this life is for living, that it's not just a test or a rehearsal?

If what a person believes as truth is relative, which is what would happen if there is no biblical God, so what? Who are you to impose your truth on others?

It's precisely the fact that there is no logical reason to believe in an afterlife that makes it so important to free ourselves from our delusions.

If there is no afterlife, for you, why impose your beliefs on others? Is not that what anti-theists like yourself rail against, the imposition of another person's belief?

You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe. -- Carl Sagan

Sadly, Dr. Sagan, was a prime example of the fideism he decried. As far as I have seen it takes much more faith to believe in random, chaotic evolution than to believe that the comos was created.

Midget-Sasquatch

I think # 1 is worse for the ardent believers because myths nowadays are looked down upon as being fabricated stories. People can get the valid points made by some of them, but ultimately they are just somebody else's points. Nothing coming from a suprahuman source. I don't think there are many christians today who claim having direct communion with a divine Jesus. So without that experiental element feeding their faith, I imagine they need some historical basis to validate it.

jwfacts

None - I choose not to play.

How is a mythological man different from a real man that has been turned into a myth?

If I thought Jesus was God and then found out that he was no more real than Monty Python's Bryan, it would not affect me any more than if I believed Cheop's was God and then finding out he was just ordinary men. In either case the human parts of the story represent real life and the important parts of the story (the miracles and future promises) turn out to be without substance.

hmike

Narkissos,

From your background, you know what answer we would give you. I'm waiting with patience and curiosity to find out what you have in mind with this question.

I noticed that you did not specifically rule out his resurrection in #2, which could put that somewhat in the class of Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide, who supports the historical resurrection but interprets its meaning differently than Christianity.

Mike

Narkissos

Thank you for your replies.

Contrary to what hmike thinks I am partly surprised by the general rush on # 2. Certainly because, as Midget Sasquatch pointed out, we do not assess the word "myth" the same way. To me it is entirely possible for a myth to generate a genuine religious or "spiritual" experience. I would even say that no "historical event" could ever generate such an experience without some mythical mediation.

And from this perspective (also re: Double Edge), I think that actually neither # 1 nor # 2 can threaten the experiential core of Christian faith (in Johannine terms: "whether he's a sinner, I don't know. I know one thing, I was blind and now I see" -- "and nobody can take that back from you"). What they both threaten in their own way is the rationalisation of the experience, and particularly its objective extrapolation onto the falsifiable (in Popperian terms) field of ancient history. Iow you can "move on" from an interpretation of your experience, not from your experience itself -- if it is an experience, that is (and then whether it is "caused" by the actual encounter of a godman or an angel, by a dream, by a warm sunbeam on your back in the middle of the storm, or by the reading of a good fiction is quite secondary; something did happen to you). And sometimes I wonder if "deductive apologetics" (with its dramatic ab absurdo rhetorics, "if it is not true IN THE WAY I INTEND IT TO BE TRUE, I would move on, drop it, despise it, trample it") doesn't betray either a lack or an oblivion of experience -- or perhaps just, as Kierkegaard put it, a Judas kiss of stupidity.

Now if we leave the field of subjective experience for that of dogmatic theology, following Leolaia's suggestion, I can indeed feel the Christian attraction for # 2, as a kind of superlative realism of incarnation (with the accompanying kenôsis). Again I can sense some sharp Kierkegaardian irony: the perfect divine incarnation being totally misunderstood, even by its unique protagonist. But in the end it would give reason to Hegel against Kierkegaard: the real and intelligible truth would really emerge in the church's dogmatic synthesis about Jesus, not in Jesus himself.

With a very very large brush: I suppose Western Christianity would rather go for # 2 and Eastern Christianity for # 1...

(side question to Lilly: did Dalí paint a llama? )

jaguarbass

If one was a believer in Jesus as God, I would say they are both bad choices.

If you dont believe Jesus is God, your not a believer.

Deputy Dog

Nark

In for a penny, in for a pound.

1Co 15:13

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. 15Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; 17 and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.

nvrgnbk

If there is no afterlife, for you

You mean there's an afterlife for everyone else?

That's not fair.

The "Historical Jesus" and Christian Faith

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