A concern I have with evangelical churches

FireDragon76 said:

My guess is that some liberals do not want to acknowledge this reality because they are so addicted to their self-importance as religious leaders, they want to have their cake and eat it too.

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This kind of speculation about motives is a bad idea, particularly for Christians. I know someone who believes that. He's a good Christian, whose experience of Jesus is closer to what evangelicals see as the ideal than mine is. He believes that Paul's experience was real but non-physical, and that later Christianity became more literal in their understanding.

I don't agree, but it's a position that an intellectually honest Christian from his background could well feel is the safest. There's no reason to attack his motives or his commitment to Christ.

FireDragon76 said:

Why does it seem like Western Christianity, and evangelicalism in particular, views denial of the resurrection in with the virgin birth, as both being equally bad. It seems to me that denial of the resurrection is far, far more serious. If Jesus is not risen... then Christianity is a waste of time, really. The other "fundamentals" of the faith... not so much. But the resurrection is the lynchpin.

If Jesus corpse really is just laying in some mass grave devoured by dogs and only lives on as a happy memory in our hearts... then Christianity is wishful thinking and we'ld all be better off becoming Stoics or some other natural philosophy that deals with the harsh realities of life head-on. My guess is that some liberals do not want to acknowledge this reality because they are so addicted to their self-importance as religious leaders, they want to have their cake and eat it too. This reduces Christianity to theater and politics, play acting for the dumb masses addicted to religion, and belittles the intelligence of the average human being.

No wonder religion is in the decline in the West... we demand so little from our religious leaders. To him who has much, much will be expected, but to him who has little, even what he has will be taken away!

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Sorry, I'm not sure I'm following your point.....



BUT (perhaps only showing my ignorance to your point), let me share some quite likely entirely unrelated points:


1. Traditional Christianity does have an "absolute" quality to it (for lack of a better term).... I DO think it's..... weird...... that we tend to classify these (such as de fide dogma, dogma, doctrine, binding teaching, confession, pious opinion)..... that's done a LOT in Traditional Christianity which does, perhaps, throw a bit of a wretch into the idea that truth is absolute. The way I tend to resolve this is that while truth is absolute, there are varying degrees of certainty among us as to exactly what is truth and what is not - varying degrees of such embrace. Perhaps another thread for another day...


2. I have my own less-than-sweet feelings about FUNDAMENTALISM: regardless.... regardless..... of what it embraces. Without going far down that hole (because I like to avoid it), there is a characteristic list of stuff that is just defended - no matter what (which emphasis on the last 3 words). Bugs the livin' ____ out of me. But I admit.... there is a fine line between that and what we all do: embracing what cannot be seen. Perhaps cuz some Authority (God, Scripture, Jim Jones..... ME) we hold unaccountable says so. But evangelicalism and fundamentalism are not related, IMO. Fundamentalism can be found there but it can be found everywhere, imo.


3. One of MY big complaints about Western Christianity is how we tend to overthink everything..... then how we declare OUR thoughts to be HIS thoughts, and divide His church over them. Whatever happened to mystery? Humility? When did it become a sin to admit God is smarter than me, that I can't always wrap my puny, sinful, limited brain about God? Whatever happened to "the fine art of shutting up?"


4. And my OTHER big complaint is the institutionalization we've made of things. I understand why (we are the WEST - born from Rome, obsessed with power, centrality, control, institutions) but we seem more focused on preserving the denominations than the Kingdom of God, more concerned with protecting the powers of a denomination than the truth of God. The increased radical individualism of the past few centuries has made this all worse..... people, churches, denominations... the ME, ME, ME, ME stuff they chant.... I think many are sick of it, disgusted by it, and note how it is the antithesis of what Jesus talked about. On the other hand, the west seems willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater - making it all even worse, so we are left with nothing but billions chanting "Jesus and ME" all day long in their own worship service in the tabernacle of their shower.



Sorry.....


Forgive me.....


- Josiah

FireDragon76 said:

Why does it seem like Western Christianity, and evangelicalism in particular, views denial of the resurrection in with the virgin birth, as both being equally bad. It seems to me that denial of the resurrection is far, far more serious. If Jesus is not risen... then Christianity is a waste of time, really. The other "fundamentals" of the faith... not so much. But the resurrection is the lynchpin.

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While in theory I would agree with you I think that in practice the whole of the life of Christ should lie as the linchpin, look at the works of two of the more influential theologians in the 20th Century Karl Barth and T.F. Torrance, for both of them the incarnation is linked so inextricably to both the death of Christ and the Resurrection of Christ to various degrees, in just the same way if Jesus just appeared on the scene having lived as a hermit all his life and died off in some corner for the justification of all can we be assured of Him? God so deemed it right and necessary and was pleased to have Christ live the life he led that for us to say this part of it is necessary, this part is not is to do as Thomas Jefferson did when he "revised" the Bible.

hedrick said:

I don't agree, but it's a position that an intellectually honest Christian from his background could well feel is the safest.

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He is a goof. I'll breach the British-derivative decency ethic to say so.

FireDragon76 said:

Why does it seem like Western Christianity, and evangelicalism in particular, views denial of the resurrection in with the virgin birth, as both being equally bad. It seems to me that denial of the resurrection is far, far more serious. If Jesus is not risen... then Christianity is a waste of time, really. The other "fundamentals" of the faith... not so much. But the resurrection is the lynchpin.

If Jesus corpse really is just laying in some mass grave devoured by dogs and only lives on as a happy memory in our hearts... then Christianity is wishful thinking and we'ld all be better off becoming Stoics or some other natural philosophy that deals with the harsh realities of life head-on. My guess is that some liberals do not want to acknowledge this reality because they are so addicted to their self-importance as religious leaders, they want to have their cake and eat it too. This reduces Christianity to theater and politics, play acting for the dumb masses addicted to religion, and belittles the intelligence of the average human being.

No wonder religion is in the decline in the West... we demand so little from our religious leaders. To him who has much, much will be expected, but to him who has little, even what he has will be taken away!

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To deny the resurrection is to deny the Christian faith. Any group that teaches the denial of the resurrection is not a Christian based group.

FireDragon76 said:

Why does it seem like Western Christianity, and evangelicalism in particular, views denial of the resurrection in with the virgin birth, as both being equally bad. It seems to me that denial of the resurrection is far, far more serious. If Jesus is not risen... then Christianity is a waste of time, really. The other "fundamentals" of the faith... not so much. But the resurrection is the lynchpin.

If Jesus corpse really is just laying in some mass grave devoured by dogs and only lives on as a happy memory in our hearts... then Christianity is wishful thinking and we'ld all be better off becoming Stoics or some other natural philosophy that deals with the harsh realities of life head-on. My guess is that some liberals do not want to acknowledge this reality because they are so addicted to their self-importance as religious leaders, they want to have their cake and eat it too. This reduces Christianity to theater and politics, play acting for the dumb masses addicted to religion, and belittles the intelligence of the average human being.

No wonder religion is in the decline in the West... we demand so little from our religious leaders. To him who has much, much will be expected, but to him who has little, even what he has will be taken away!

Click to expand...

Umm. The virgin birth is fundamental to the earliest creeds.

RDKirk said:

Umm. The virgin birth is fundamental to the earliest creeds.

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Even without a creed, without the virgin birth, Jesus was just a normal man and would not have been able to save us.

Protestant/Evangelical/Fundamentalist churches place a heavy emphasis on the belief that the bible is inerrant and infallible. Everything written in them have to be correct. Sometimes that's more of a sticking point than the theology contained within the bible.

I can't say I have really observed this. The only people I have met who think the Resurrection isn't important tend to be ones who also don't think Christ is God.

In general I would have said most western Christians i have met think that the Resurrection is far more important than the virgin birth - a lot don't seem to care much about the latter at all.

dysert said:

Even without a creed, without the virgin birth, Jesus was just a normal man and would not have been able to save us.

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Huh? Jesus was a normal man. What makes him unusual is that the human nature was united to the Logos hypostatically. But that doesn't require there to be anything unusual about his birth as a human.

I haven't yet heard an explanation of why the virgin birth is essential to salvation that didn't turn out to be docetic. But maybe you have one I haven't heard.

I'm not arguing agains the virgin birth. But I see it as a sign of God's involvement in the process, and not what makes Jesus son of God.

hedrick said:

Huh? Jesus was a normal man. What makes him unusual is that the human nature was united to the Logos hypostatically. But that doesn't require there to be anything unusual about his birth as a human.

I haven't yet heard an explanation of why the virgin birth is essential to salvation that didn't turn out to be docetic. But maybe you have one I haven't heard.

I'm not arguing agains the virgin birth. But I see it as a sign of God's involvement in the process, and not what makes Jesus son of God.

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You mean an argument for the necessity of the virgin birth that doesn't boil down to virginity being prized, right?

What then of Barth's argument for the virgin birth as a light upon the hypostatic union, as something which makes the Incarnation a knowable event?

duolos said:

You mean an argument for the necessity of the virgin birth that doesn't boil down to virginity being prized, right?

What then of Barth's argument for the virgin birth as a light upon the hypostatic union, as something which makes the Incarnation a knowable event?

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That sounds like what I said, that it's a sign. But it's not the only one, and thus not the only thing that makes the Incarnation knowable. Otherwise we'd have to say that the Incarnation isn't visible in John or Paul, which would be absurd. I maintain that pretty much everything in the NT shows the incarnation in some way, but historically the theology tended to come from John and the preexistence passages.

dysert said:

Even without a creed, without the virgin birth, Jesus was just a normal man and would not have been able to save us.

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hedrick said:

Huh? Jesus was a normal man. What makes him unusual is that the human nature was united to the Logos hypostatically. But that doesn't require there to be anything unusual about his birth as a human.

I haven't yet heard an explanation of why the virgin birth is essential to salvation that didn't turn out to be docetic. But maybe you have one I haven't heard.

I'm not arguing agains the virgin birth. But I see it as a sign of God's involvement in the process, and not what makes Jesus son of God.

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You missed the just part. Without the virgin birth, Jesus was just a normal man, i.e., not the union of God and man. The Holy Spirit's taking part in the incarnation is what makes Jesus unique and the "only begotten" of the Father.

dysert said:

You missed the just part. Without the virgin birth, Jesus was just a normal man, i.e., not the union of God and man. The Holy Spirit's taking part in the incarnation is what makes Jesus unique and the "only begotten" of the Father.

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The point of the Incarnation is that God can be present in and work through humanity. Full humanity. The Incarnation doesn't depend upon the Holy Spirit replacing something that would ordinarily be human.

Watch for crypto-Nestorianism in this thread.

Cappadocious said:

Watch for crypto-Nestorianism in this thread.

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I would not consider myself in awe of the Chalcedonian definition, but would agree with its sentiments that to talk of Christ in parts misses the point of the Incarnation, I think it does so in overtly Greek categories, same is true of the Modern Western discussions of the immutability of God imo, they're too caught up with either denying or affirming the Greek constructs of immutability that they don't deal with the Hebraic or Biblical ones.

FireDragon76 said:

Sure... but I don't think its quite as important as the resurrection.

And I guess we are engaging in the western practice of dividing and classifying the details. But this started a long time before me, Western Christianity has been focused heavily on the virgin birth narrative and crucifixion so long I almost think the average Christian doesn't even really consider what Easter is about. It should be much bigger than Christmas, and yet... it's a whimper.

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That's because it's easier to merchandize and commercialize a birthday party than a funeral.

I had no idea some Christians denied the resurrection. That is beyond heretical.