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