Let me suggest, leavingwt, that these sorts of lists, developed from these sorts of web sites as you link, are attacks on a particular, American-fundamentalist, mode of reading scripture. They're fine, so far as they go. But to read these points as somehow having any bearing on the ancient traditions of reading these works (Jewish and Christian) is a pretty big mistake.
Posts by Sulla
-
268Is Biblical Morality Situational, Based Upon the Arbitrary Whims of Yahweh?
by leavingwt inis biblical morality situational, based upon the arbitrary whims of yahweh?
murder is wrong... if god orders it however, then murder is right, and failing to murder is a sin.. .
exodus 20:13 versus 1 samuel 15:1, 7-11. .
-
-
-
7
Some Things I Have Learned Up Till Now
by AllTimeJeff in(interspersed with opinions of course...) .
it will be 6 years since i left the sickness known as jehovah's witnesses.
whew!
-
-
Sulla
Good advice, ATJ. I'd just add that part of the problems lots of JWs have is figuring out how far to prune. By that, I just mean that JW-ism is both profoundly harmful and, after enough time, so intrinsic to one's outlook that it is quite a challenge to know what (if anything) you can keep. Smoking, to pick an example, is not good simply because the JWs think it's bad.
The other risk is that, cut free from the very restrictive modes of thought, we often wind up a little helpless. Since most JWs haven't developed their thinking, the first order of business is to develop effective reasoning. Since the education that we didn't focus on takes a very long time to get, we shouldn't expect that this is an easy process.
-
64
Transubstantiation?
by leavingwt indoes anyone here accept the doctrine of transubstantiation?
if so, please elaborate.
theology: the changing of the elements of the bread and wine, when they are consecrated in the eucharist, into the body and blood of christ (a doctrine of the roman catholic church).
-
-
Sulla
Well, then, you have a problem with Christianity from the very beginning. It has always been vaguely cannibalistic.
-
64
Transubstantiation?
by leavingwt indoes anyone here accept the doctrine of transubstantiation?
if so, please elaborate.
theology: the changing of the elements of the bread and wine, when they are consecrated in the eucharist, into the body and blood of christ (a doctrine of the roman catholic church).
-
-
Sulla
But why should anybody suppose Jesus was raised from the dead in a way to preclude his ever dying again ...dispensed the Paraclete to aid his Church, and ... died for our sins? There is as much evidence that Elvis is alive as there is for Jesus' resurrection. There is far more evidence for the miracles of Sri Sathya Baba than for those you attribute to Jesus.
Well, whatever, cofty. But this is what is making it completely beside the point. It's like arguing with a pacifist about whether the war with Iraq was right or wrong: he thinks all wars are wrong, so you can't have a discussion. That's what you are doing here: you figure all of Christianity is wrong and, therefore, all the doctrines associated with it are also wrong. But that's not this discussion.
-
64
Transubstantiation?
by leavingwt indoes anyone here accept the doctrine of transubstantiation?
if so, please elaborate.
theology: the changing of the elements of the bread and wine, when they are consecrated in the eucharist, into the body and blood of christ (a doctrine of the roman catholic church).
-
-
Sulla
Actually, no, cofty. I'm simply pointing out that your comaprison is not valid, since we don't suppose Elvis was any of the things the Jesus is. Since claims to his divinity are antecedent to concepts like transubstantiation, a criticism like yours is simply a non sequitur.
-
64
Transubstantiation?
by leavingwt indoes anyone here accept the doctrine of transubstantiation?
if so, please elaborate.
theology: the changing of the elements of the bread and wine, when they are consecrated in the eucharist, into the body and blood of christ (a doctrine of the roman catholic church).
-
-
Sulla
If somebody claimed that by saying the correct incantations their morning toast and orange juice turned into the actual flesh and blood of Elvis Presley we would not hesitate to judge their sanity.
Had Elvis been raised from the dead in a way to preclude his ever dying again, had he dispensed the Paraclete to aid his Church, and had he died for our sins, perhaps we would view things differently.
I don't accept it was the practice of early Christianity. Early Christianity is a relative term.
Well, the early 2nd century should count as plenty early, even in your book, Band.
-
64
Transubstantiation?
by leavingwt indoes anyone here accept the doctrine of transubstantiation?
if so, please elaborate.
theology: the changing of the elements of the bread and wine, when they are consecrated in the eucharist, into the body and blood of christ (a doctrine of the roman catholic church).
-
-
Sulla
Chapter 6, tec. The oldest tradition is that St. John taught St. Polycarp and St. Ignatius and that Ignatius was one of the little children about whom Jesus said we must be like in order to gain the kingdom. This is most particularly shown in his letter to the church at Smyrna. It isn't very long, so you can see for yourself.
As for what it tastes like, that is the distinction between essences and appearances that Aquinas goes into great philosophical lengths to discuss.
-
64
Transubstantiation?
by leavingwt indoes anyone here accept the doctrine of transubstantiation?
if so, please elaborate.
theology: the changing of the elements of the bread and wine, when they are consecrated in the eucharist, into the body and blood of christ (a doctrine of the roman catholic church).
-
-
Sulla
Yes, of course, leavingwt. While the specific theological language of transubstantiation is a later development (the way homoousious was, for example), the belief that the wine and bread are Jesus is the ancient teaching of Christianity. We find it quite explitly stated in the early 2nd century by guys like Sts. Justin Martyr and Ignatius of Antioch, both writing prior to 135 A.D., I believe. For that matter, it is pretty explicit in the Gospel of John. In any case, the Orthodox and Catholics both teach it (or something arbitrarily close to it) and always have.
Probably the best place to get a detailed explanation of the theological basis of the teaching is Aquinas, who leverages the philosophical concepts of essences and accidents to describe what he thinks is going on. It is an interesting treatment, but from my perspective, the more important aspect is simply that it was the original teaching of the Christian community.
-
-
-
Sulla
Yes Yahweh put an end to Canaanite child sacrifice by having Joshua's army slaughter all the children - bible god is a genius!
Well, cofty, has it been your experience that great wickedness is often removed except with violence? American slavery wasn't ended through a strong argument, it was ended by a very grim fellow cutting a swath through Georgia and "making the south holler." Nazism wasn't ended by protests, but by psychos like Patton and the Russians, who raped their way through the eastern part of Germany. Your complaint reads more like somebody who is disappointed that God isn't Sky Wizzardy enough to get stuff accomplished except through whatever political structures happen to exist at the time.
I'm genuinely not sure what sort of argument you are making whan you point out that Joshua wasn't converted, first, into Ghandi before attempting to end child sacrifice (among other goals) among the hyper-violen people of Caanan. What mechanism, exactly, were you hoping to see?
We are living in the here and now Sulla. Now that science has answered some of the scary questions, and we ALL understand that human sacrifice really doesn't win wars or bring good harvests, we need to ask a basic question---which you keep ignoring.
I doubt very much that we all understand this, NC. But that is a conversation for some other day. But let's not ignore your question.
Today---this culture---does it make sense to defend a god that ordered genocide, slavery, subjection of woman, stonings and human sacrifice? This is not a question of whether it made sense thousands of years ago---this is a question of does it makes sense today? With the accumulated knowledge of a couple of millenia---does it make sense? Who would support it today? And why do they do so?
Well, I'm not sure I've defended those actions. What I have tried to do is to contextualize them to some degree. And I have simply tried to point out that, in the Hobbesian nightmare that was the late bronze age middle east, progress is a relative concept -- the same way it is a relative concept today. Establishing 21st century Sweden seems not to have been an option for Joshua, even if he could conceptualize such a political order. And so the question is, given a brutal society that practices child sacrifice and a brutal society that does not, which one do you like better?
The concept shouldn't be so tough to grasp: we do it all the time. Given a society that tolerates Jim Crow laws and excludes citizens from the ful protection of the law and a society that slaughters Jews by the million, which one do you like better? Is it somehow a cosmic failure that the US wasn't made perfect prior to the time it destroyed the German state? Of course not. So, where is your sense of proportion?
Finally, Good Friday is not a celebration of death. It is a rememberance of the worst day in history, when we killed God. But you are not grasping the idea of it: He didn't need to die so much as we needed to kill him. You are working from a framework that asumes we are not profoundly broken, so the entire story can't make sense to you.
Let me try to go at it from this direction and see if this helps. Here is the thing: in all those cultures where humans were sacrificed, in all those cultures where some human scapegoat was required to keep a population from tearing itself apart, whenever this sort of thing goes on, one thing is always true in the minds of the people doing it. That thing is this: the sacrifices and scapegoats are all guilty. None of the victims were innocent from the perspective of the people doing the killing.
-
-
-
Sulla
As for the moral insight and courage to object, I lost somewhere around 90% of my cherished family relationships by taking a stand for my views. Ergo, shut the fuck up about that which ye not know.
Golly. I had it all wrong:r You really are some kind of hero! Lost your cherished family relationships for deciding to leave the JWs! Who among us could ever question your moral superiority after that? You've earned it, SBC, you've earned it!
Anyhow, once you ignore your comments that are designed to change the topic, we really are left with my basic claim that everybody here would have merrily sacrificed kids along with everybody else at the time. You find it unbearably arrogant for me to assume you are not the moral hero you have now shown yourself to be, never mind that the list of moral heroes against this practice have, as a matter of historical fact, been really violent, unappealing, and grim fellows like Josiah, who stopped the practice of child sacrifice with long knives. One is left to presume guys like you, who after all have been through the crucible of unanswered text messages from cherished family members, would have launched some sort of "occupy Moab" movement and brought the whole thing down.
You and your moral vanity really outta get a room.