The way of Christ is to change society from the inside out, one person at a time. Unlike the loud voices of “so called” black leaders who never met a camera or a public gathering they didn’t like.

What Paul did teach that slaves and masters alike had a duty to live together as brothers who loved and respected each other. The grand idea of Christianity is not to change our circumstances but to learn to be Christlike in them.

His peace,
Royce

Oh, Laymond..Ever hear of the word “supernatural”?

http://www.matthewsblog.waynesborochurchofchrist.org

These are the simple questions I have.

What I had in mind primarily was that “fundamentalists” may be so overly concerned with “how many people saw Jesus at the grave” or “who saw him first”– as if a logical “proof” of “historicity” would “prove” the truth of the Resurrection– that they largely miss the real meaning of the Resurrection, the theological import of it. But, I suspect many do not, further, understand the very thing they may first neglect. I’ve heard plenty of erroneous ideas of both the Resurrection of Christ and (thusly) the resurrection of humanity in the final day.

The Fathers of the Church had no problem believing the “literal historicity” of every single event described in the Bible. If God can create out of nothing, and physically rise from the grave after defeating the powers of Hades, he can do anything, including preserving St. Jonah in the belly of a great fish. I don’t really think that is the issue.

More to the point is whether the premodern ancients intended every detail to be understood as “literal fact,” or if such a question ever even entered their mind! It has been shown repeatedly that the ancients saw “truth” in different ways than we moderns do. We tend to see it more “scientifically”: if a story is told about an event of which a picture could not have been taken, thus proving it with footage, it wasn’t “true.”

I think it’s rather clear that there are two creation accounts in Genesis. I think, also, that the scribes of Israel were intelligent men. Were they really so careless as to miss the problem of this “contradiction”? Or, is the more likely scenario that they weren’t asking the same questions of “contradictions” that we moderns do? I think the latter is the case. The Creation stories/myths are TRUE. They tell exactly what they intend to. The Word of God shall not return to Him void. But, if they were not intended to spell out photographable events, then aren’t the atheists and the fundamentalists who argue over the harmony of Gen. 1 and 2 missing the real point?

In the prayers just prior to the Holy Eucharist in the Orthodox Church (to which I belong), we beseech God to receive us as he did “the harlot, the thief, the publican, and the prodigal.” Notice that the first two were “historical,” the latter two “parables”; but, all four were truth. Yet, we say that all four “were received” by Christ. The point is that truth is not always defined by what “literally happened.” This does NOT mean that “nothing had to literally happen,” only that this is not the only test of “truth.”

My response would be this, in a nutshell (and this is off the point of this thread, so I’ll make it brief): we know which things must be “historical” and which stories may just be pious “myth” (though still convey truth), by living in the Church and hearing the Church. Our Creeds and Traditions and Life are ongoing, and we live in a People, a history, and a Tradition. Striking out on one’s own with a Bible and good intentions will not end up knowing what must be insisted upon as “historical” and what as “allegory.” Only in the life of the Church of the Fathers can we know how to sort that all out. But, I speak as an Eastern Orthodox, so my view on this is likely not that of most on this thread. I offer it only as how I “make sense” of the difficulty of numerous texts and interpretations.

Blessings to you and all.
Thomas Kevin

One of the things that has gone on in this discussion is that many have advocated viewing as myth those parts of scripture, particularly in the OT, that seem to give pause to the modern mind. For instance, surely God would not have told Saul to kill all men, women, children and infants because God just would not do such a thing. Therefore, we must realize much of the scripture is mythology and it is only when we come to that realization that we have truly understood as we should. For instance, one poster said:

“What would we expect the literature of Israel to say about the conquest and its “techniques” and rough edges? Why are we surprised or concerned? The literature is like that of countless other nations in retrospect. The God experience is to be gleaned from the national story line, but not confused with it. Why do we think the Israelites have a monopoly on truth in national self-understanding? As Americans, surely we can understand how the myths of a nation are formed and perpetuated, can’t we?”

Now that all sounds very intelligent and well-thought out. Here is my problem with it which I don’t think has been addressed or if it has, maybe I am too dumb to see it. I can make a similar argument related to NT passages. For instance, what would we expect the literature of the early Christians to say about that problem their founder ran into with the Roman government. Isn’t that literature similar to other stories that speak of a god becoming a man? The Jesus experience is to be gleaned from the stories within the NT, but not confused with it. Why do we think the NT writers had any special sort of insight into real truth? As Americans, surely we can understand how the myths of a religion are formed and perpetuated, can’t we?

In other words, if certain parts of the scriptures are simply too fanciful for the modern mind to believe, then how can those same people turn around and insist we believe the most fanciful notion of all, that a man physically rose from the dead some two thousand years ago?

Sorry to repeat much of what I have already written, but as I said, I don’t think my questions have been addressed (which accounted for some of my crankiness with you). I am looking for someone to reconcile these things.

Why don’t you explain the resurrection to us, Kevin Burt? I am ready to hear you give us your explanation. I don’t know if I am a fundamentalist or not, but I believe Jesus physically died and on the third day he physically rose from the dead. Have I properly stated what happened or am I playing with broken toys?

Unlike either the fideistic atheists, or the practical-atheist fundamentalists (see HERE esp. section 6), you’ll find not information, but meaning. Every minor difference becomes pregnant with “meaning.” I believe it was Origen who wrote that the reason God allowed discrepancies in the Gospels was to impress upon us that the meaning/truth was important, not the superficial details.

Thus, minor “details” like the “charcoal fire” of St. John’s gospel (21.9), prepared by Jesus, are no longer “minor details,” but become pregnant with theology (in this case, harkening back to the same Greek word, anthrakia, found in the Septuagint of Isaiah 6, the char-coal that cleansed Isaiah and made him fit for ministry (thus, Peter also becoming, again, the “Rock”). These details are not matters to reconcile between the Gospels, but tools of the Church to lead us toward Christ, the center of all things.

The “New Atheism” is attacking fundamentalism and modernistic Protestantism. And rightly so. They’re all playing with the same broken toys. Neither fundamentalists nor atheists understand the Resurrection. Take away fundamentalism, and Richard Dawkins has not a book but a 10 page pamphlet. This hardly makes them much money, either the author or the publisher.

No, Jon, I would disagree with this entirely. Atheists are attacking more than a fundamentalist account of Christianity. They most assuredly would deny the resurrection itself — which, I would hope, is not only now a belief of fundamentalists……..or is it?