Subject:
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Re: This God thing...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 17 Sep 2001 19:05:48 GMT
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Viewed:
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732 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, James Simpson writes:
>
> > From a practicing Christian perspective, there isn't any need to adhere to
> > Mosaic Law because our New Testament letters clearly state that Jesus did away
> > with the Old Covenant of sacrifices and that they needn't be practiced any
> > longer. Christianity has this question completely and soundly resolved for
> > those who chose to practice it.
>
> But does that resolution also indicate that certain aspects of
> Christianity must remain in force ("the new and everlasting covenant"), or
> might there be a point at which the body of believers can legitmately say
> "this or that is no longer relevant, and Christ would have wanted us to
> discard it if it became irrelevant"? I'm not trying to be flippant, but
> since my perspective is that of a person who can't ascribe absolute
> authority to a book or series of traditions, I'm genuinely curious about how
> believers distinguish the relevant from the irrelevant.
In the case of Mosaic Law, our letters record Christ himself declaring it
irrelevant, so the authority has in fact settled it for those who accept that
authority. Some things have in fact changed, and the majority of believers
recognize it as such; For example, the legitimacy of female authority or an old-
Earth perspective (I'd guess that about 80% of Christians in America have come
around to the latter.) Regarding the former, most reasonable believers in the
Western world recognize that Paul's admonition for women to remain silent and
cover their heads in church is no longer culturally relevant or appropriate (1).
Will Christians ever come to the point where the core essentials of the faith -
incarnation, resurrection, salvation, etc.- are considered irrelevant? If so,
they won't be able to honestly call themselves Christians because that term does
imply a certain set of necessary standards and beliefs. (Though I admit to a
certain degree of nebulousness in the Christian experience, there is a point at
which the core can be reached.) I'd say that intellectural honesty demands that
a person who no longer wishes to hold the deity of Christ should walk away and
call himself something else rather than trying to keep a tenuous foothold in the
tradition of the faith without a firm stance in its practice. So, yes, I think
that many things can legitimately change within the faith, but the kernel of the
nut will always remain the same (the challenge, and perhaps the real issue, is
to find the kernel that remains independent of subjective assent.)
>
> **snip of a nicely-worded and well-steeped in tradition analogy of a river**
>
> > Christianity has changed and will change and I can offer you no statement of
> > faith that will remain changeless in all its nuances and offer a
> > comprehensive explanation of all that Christianity is and all of the hard
> > questions that it tries to answer.
>
> I can accept that answer both from a pragmatic and an aesthetic
> standpoint, but it seems directly opposed to a system of belief based on
> objective truth.
Many of the things are based on absolutes, but not all things. Secular society
seems to on one hand condemn the church for taking an immoveable stand on some
issues, but will declare the church inconsistent and unfaithful to its
principles if the church yields to development of thought or progression (the
very thing which the critical secularists demand of the church.) I believe that
Christ is objectively God, but I do not by default believe that my view/worship
of God have found an objectively flawless practice. The real shaper of the
body universal is the collective Christian experience of God--which is, though
subjective and unique to each individual, united by the shared lens through
which each experience is interpreted and understood.
> Is there some conceivable point in the future in which it
> might be "okay" for Christians to profane Christ, simply because society and
> the nature of faith have changed? Obviously, that's an extreme and unlikely
> example, but it speaks once again of the underlying question: how can
> someone know which parts of faith can be discarded and which parts of that
> faith are inviolable?
Perhaps we have found the kernel. My short answer is no. If a body of people
within the tradition find it consistent with the practice and historic precedent
of the faith to profane Christ, then they have in fact moved outside of the
tradition and are making that decision from an external viewpoint. Christianity
can, at some point (just like every other institution) change to the point in
which it's historically-defined self-definition no longer applies. At some
point a person who is intent on apostasy (which is at root, the profaning of
Christ by one who has legitimately been a participant in his worship) should ask
himself why he insists on clinging to a tentative grip on a tradition and set of
beliefs that he finds such little common ground with or yields such meager
assent to. If people and society change to the degree that you hypothesized,
then contemporary Christianity will no longer exist. It may be something - call
it Religion Q, or Z or X-but it won't be Christianity ("the practice of
following Christ".) Christianity will then be a thing only of historic record.
Christianity dies when its members consider profaning the person of Christ a
legitimate practice. It would be absurd to call something X when it no longer
possesses any of the defining characteristics of X, but is instead
characteristic of Y.
(1) This issue of women remaining silent in church et al is in some respects one
of the most attacked straw men of Pauline wisdom. I'm fully prepared to say
that Paul shared the bigotry common to his age if that is at heart the reason
for his pronouncements, but a very substantial argument can be made that Paul
was admonishing his congregation to observe local Jewish tradition (in what is
now southern Turkey) regarding religious social customs as they apply to women
for the sake of preventing persecutions to the church. He was, in other words,
trying to prevent the small group of believers from being accused of inciting
and flaunting unacceptable changes to the social order.
james
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: This God thing...
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| (...) I have heard others criticise Paul in a similar way, basically saying that his ranting is not necessarily representative of what Jesus would have preached... but that I suppose is as much interpretation as anything else. Which I think is the (...) (23 years ago, 17-Sep-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: This God thing...
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| (...) But does that resolution also indicate that certain aspects of Christianity must remain in force ("the new and everlasting covenant"), or might there be a point at which the body of believers can legitmately say "this or that is no longer (...) (23 years ago, 17-Sep-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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