Bridging the Gap

[Silmarien]

I doubt it sir

Let me break it down one last time...

- Claims to 'Adam and Eve' false, via later evolutionary discovery
- Claims to a flood falsified, via independent and multiple scientific disciplines
- Claims to an Exodus account falsified by archaeology
etc etc etc

(All in the same book)

But the resurrection is somehow true because?

Do you believe that there is evidence that Adam and Eve existed?

Do you believe that there is evidence for a global flood?

Do you believe that there is evidence that Moses existed?

Do you believe that there is evidence that Jesus of Nazareth existed?

Really, unless you're going to be a Mythicist, which most people would agree is pure lunacy, the New Testament is in a different historical position than the Old Testament. You could certainly reject its miracles as embellishment, but the argument you're running with here is completely fallacious. The fact that they're in the same book is irrelevant, since all the stories come from different time periods entirely. At least pick a good criticism of the New Testament.

 

[devolved]

Have you read some of those parables? The orthodox take on Christianity is written all over them, particularly in Luke. You could try to ditch the Greek framework of theology, but you'll still end up with some form of incarnational theology.

Orthodox thought is pretty broad, but there's not tons of different orthodoxies.

I have a minor in Christian Theology, so I did more than read them .

Keep in mind that we are discussing your comment about necessity for physical bodily resurrection for Christianity to remain Christian, which I challenged. In certain context there is no need to structure the double-standards in interpreting these narratives, because ALL we have is a narrative. Of course, we relate some ordinary everyday narrative as "literal", and some "out there" narrative as an allegory, but there's no solid ground for such dichotomy in religious narrative to begin with. And that's largely my point.

When you read that narrative, you are not reading it to learn historical facts about the past. That's not the predominant reason why this narrative survived to this day. I would argue that you can't really derive any viable facts from it, apart from the overlapping facts that we can verify today, but again, that's not what people read that narrative for. They are largely reading it to fill the gaps in the unknown.

The problem with unknown claims is precisely that... you can put a multiplicity of concepts in that unknown box and keep it coherent.

For example, we COULD say that God used a story to inspire people's perception of reality and clarify its own character in order to move human development in a positive direction. You would still have a person that demonstrates of what a God incarnate would be like without any need for literal historicity of any of these things actually transpiring.

So, please explain to me why the above couldn't be recognizably Christian at the level of how Christians actually experience and execute Christian beliefs in reality.

If it's not current YEC, then it's not YEC.

Obviously you're not going to get more than hints of evolutionary thinking before Darwin, since nobody had yet connected the dots quite that much, but there's a ton of synergy between stuff like Thomistic metaphysics and evolution. You're not going to find many modern Aristotelians even on the ID side, much less the YEC one.

Current YEC is fairly close to Lutheran view on YEC, and that's virtually all of the protestant foundation there. Luther didn't get that position out of thin air. There's a steady trend of theological development that lead to that view, and it was a common for various church figures to approximate the age of creation to be within 6k years.

I'm not arguing that Christianity MUST include it, but I do argue that if you are going to go with Orthodoxy, that's a difficult concept to go around. Orthodoxy isn't merely creeds, but also the "unspoken agreement" that didn't need to be consolidated and guarded.

Is it in the Nicene Creed? Was there any ecumenical dispute about it? If it's not official doctrine, then it's not part of the institution.

There was no need for disputing things that were in general agreement at that time. The creeds contained beliefs that established orthodoxy and separated the "true believers" from "false believers" in the matters that were disputed at that time.

There were very few Christian leaders at the time who thought that special creation as outlined in Genesis is not literal (in context of special creation of Adam and Eve... the actual people), and that creation is much older than 10k years. That was not the prominent view.

You do realize that you're simultaneously trying to argue that Christianity can be whatever you want it to be, and that orthodox Christianity ought to be interpreted as defending solely a YEC view? Why do you go full blown deconstructionist on the Gospels and then abandon that for an artificially narrow reading of Christianity as an institution?

I'm not trying to do that. There are limits to what Christianity could be in context of its own narrative, but it CAN be and actually IS a story when it comes to how people today know about it. Of course, you can distill the story into some orthodox creeds, but these orthodox creeds are not what Christianity is all about... at least these don't have to be.

The reason why I go full-blown deconstructionist is to show you that in context of Christian history itself, the institutionalized version of Christianity is a "filtered shortcut" for interpretation of the narrative. If you view that shortcut as Christianity itself and think that Christianity can't exist without it... then I disagree.

 

[Silmarien]

Keep in mind that we are discussing your comment about necessity for physical bodily resurrection for Christianity to remain Christian, which I challenged.

I never said physical bodily Resurrection. I said literal Resurrection, since if you're going to take it as a metaphor or some sort of subjective spiritual experience on the part of his followers, then there's nothing uniquely Christian about it anymore. You could get a decent Christianized Platonism out of it, but that is a totally different paradigm.

For example, we COULD say that God used a story to inspire people's perception of reality and clarify its own character in order to move human development in a positive direction. You would still have a person that demonstrates of what a God incarnate would be like without any need for literal historicity of any of these things actually transpiring.

So, please explain to me why the above couldn't be recognizably Christian at the level of how Christians actually experience and execute Christian beliefs in reality.

Yeah, no. I wouldn't recognize the above as Christianity. A God who is willing to take the suffering of the world upon himself to redeem it is a completely different entity than one who would order history around a gruesome execution. We cannot demonstrate a God who is actually self-giving to the point that the Christian God is without literal historicity.

It's really all or nothing here. If people want to embrace some sort of Christian flavored alternative instead, that's fine, but it's clearly not the same thing.

Current YEC is fairly close to Lutheran view on YEC, and that's virtually all of the protestant foundation there. Luther didn't get that position out of thin air. There's a steady trend of theological development that lead to that view, and it was a common for various church figures to approximate the age of creation.

There was a steady trend of theological development that lead to Ockham's radically nihilistic take on God as well. That doesn't make it institutional. The fact that Christian theology eventually degraded to the point where YEC seemed inevitable in some circles is a historical peculiarity, not an indication that orthodoxy leads to YEC.

There was no need for disputing things that were in general agreement at that time. The creeds contained beliefs that established orthodoxy and separated the "true believers" from "false believers" in the matters that were disputed at that time.

There were very few Christian leaders at the time who thought that special creation as outlined in Genesis is not literal, and that creation is much older than 10k years. That was not the prominent view.

There were prominent theologians who held to allegorical views about Genesis, particularly in Alexandria where everyone basically just followed after Philo. If this were a problem, it would have been anathematized. It wasn't.

I'm not trying to do that. There are limits to what Christianity could be in context of its own narrative, but it CAN be and actually IS a story when it comes to how people today know about it. Of course, you can distill the story into some orthodox creeds, but these orthodox creeds are not what Christianity is all about... at least these don't have to be.

The reason why I go full-blown deconstructionist is to show you that in context of Christian history itself, the institutionalized version of Christianity is a "filtered shortcut" for interpretation of the narrative. If you view that shortcut as Christianity itself and think that Christianity can't exist without it... then I disagree.

I'm not asking why you're going full-blown deconstructionist. I disagree with it, but given how postmodern you are, I understand why you're doing it. What I don't understand is why you're applying the complete opposite treatment to orthodoxy and conflating it with Young Earth Creationism.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I have a minor in Christian Theology, so I did more than read them .

Keep in mind that we are discussing your comment about necessity for physical bodily resurrection for Christianity to remain Christian, which I challenged. In certain context there is no need to structure the double-standards in interpreting these narratives, because ALL we have is a narrative. Of course, we relate some ordinary everyday narrative as "literal", and some "out there" narrative as an allegory, but there's no solid ground for such dichotomy in religious narrative to begin with. And that's largely my point.

When you read that narrative, you are not reading it to learn historical facts about the past. That's not the predominant reason why this narrative survived to this day. I would argue that you can't really derive any viable facts from it, apart from the overlapping facts that we can verify today, but again, that's not what people read that narrative for. They are largely reading it to fill the gaps in the unknown.

The problem with unknown claims is precisely that... you can put a multiplicity of concepts in that unknown box and keep it coherent.

For example, we COULD say that God used a story to inspire people's perception of reality and clarify its own character in order to move human development in a positive direction. You would still have a person that demonstrates of what a God incarnate would be like without any need for literal historicity of any of these things actually transpiring.

So, please explain to me why the above couldn't be recognizably Christian at the level of how Christians actually experience and execute Christian beliefs in reality.



Current YEC is fairly close to Lutheran view on YEC, and that's virtually all of the protestant foundation there. Luther didn't get that position out of thin air. There's a steady trend of theological development that lead to that view, and it was a common for various church figures to approximate the age of creation to be within 6k years.

I'm not arguing that Christianity MUST include it, but I do argue that if you are going to go with Orthodoxy, that's a difficult concept to go around. Orthodoxy isn't merely creeds, but also the "unspoken agreement" that didn't need to be consolidated and guarded.



There was no need for disputing things that were in general agreement at that time. The creeds contained beliefs that established orthodoxy and separated the "true believers" from "false believers" in the matters that were disputed at that time.

There were very few Christian leaders at the time who thought that special creation as outlined in Genesis is not literal (in context of special creation of Adam and Eve... the actual people), and that creation is much older than 10k years. That was not the prominent view.



I'm not trying to do that. There are limits to what Christianity could be in context of its own narrative, but it CAN be and actually IS a story when it comes to how people today know about it. Of course, you can distill the story into some orthodox creeds, but these orthodox creeds are not what Christianity is all about... at least these don't have to be.

The reason why I go full-blown deconstructionist is to show you that in context of Christian history itself, the institutionalized version of Christianity is a "filtered shortcut" for interpretation of the narrative. If you view that shortcut as Christianity itself and think that Christianity can't exist without it... then I disagree.

Yeah, I'd have to say that despite my devotion to the application of Philosophical Hermeneutics (and maybe even because of it) and to some moderate levels of reasonable deconstruction, I'm going to have to lean more toward what @Silmarien has said in response here regarding the nature of the Resurrection.

In fact, I don't think that we can really get away from the implications established by the New Testament writers. On top of this, we have to recognize that the Christian Church has carried along within its various, articulated Traditions that Jesus has in fact risen from the dead in some kind of corporal---even if "very strange"---fashion.

Not even the expurgated ending of the Gospel of Mark leaves us to think, in semantic terms, that Jesus' disappearance somehow didn't involve His body.

 

[Silmarien]

It probably ought to be said also that discounting the Pauline Epistles is the most irresponsible thing you can do if you're actually interested in historicity. They're earlier than the Gospels, so even if you want to reject a specifically Pauline theology, you should still be gleaning what you can about historical context from those letters.

 

[devolved]

I never said physical bodily Resurrection. I said literal Resurrection

Is there any other kind of literal resurrection (see John 20)?

A God who is willing to take the suffering of the world upon himself to redeem it is a completely different entity than one who would order history around a gruesome execution. We cannot demonstrate a God who is actually self-giving to the point that the Christian God is without literal historicity.

Well, you can't demonstrate literal historicity, and that's the first problem. All you have is a claim of historicity that doesn't match actual history recorded in many cases. Neither it matches our conceptual understanding of the world that we live in today.

So, what you have is you preference to interpret some aspects of that story as literal in order to maintain a concept of God that you prefer to believe in (the one that actually suffers next to you), which seems to be a rather anthropocentric concept of God to begin with.

First of all, your first sentence above is meaningless in any context of reality of our suffering. You can't "take suffering". You can suffer instead of someone, in some cases. You can co-suffer in some cases. And that's the core concept behind Christian allegory. What you can't do is claim that you can take suffering (as some literal concept of suffering) upon yourself, because suffering is a conceptual umbrella of experience. It's not a thing.

So, first question for you would be... What do you LITERALLY mean by "A God who is willing to take the suffering of the world upon himself to redeem". What does it mean in a actual reality that we live in today? How does that work?

The fact that Christian theology eventually degraded to the point where YEC seemed inevitable in some circles is a historical peculiarity, not an indication that orthodoxy leads to YEC.

Orthodox literalism leads to YEC. That was my point. There's a clear correlation between literalism orthodoxy and YEC. Would you agree with that?

Would you agree that YEC exists today largely because of progressive development of strict fundamentalist literalism, and that such view exist in history of institutional Christianity. By that I don't mean that ALL of Christian theologians in history agreed that 24hrs were literal, but even those who didn't would date the age of Earth in 100s of 1000s. Would you agree with that?

There were prominent theologians who held to allegorical views about Genesis, particularly in Alexandria where everyone basically just followed after Philo. If this were a problem, it would have been anathematized. It wasn't.

Byzantine Christianity is actually a bad example for that, because it has a history that eventually ends up with Alexandrian and Byzantine era, including the calendar that dates from Anno Mundi, and that's over 1300 year of Christian history in that region.

It's very difficult to make a case against YEC view in such context.

I'm not asking why you're going full-blown deconstructionist. I disagree with it, but given how postmodern you are, I understand why you're doing it. What I don't understand is why you're applying the complete opposite treatment to orthodoxy and conflating it with Young Earth Creationism.

I'm not conflating Orthodoxy with YEC. I'm saying that when you adhere to literalism... you end up with YEC. There are few ways around it. And it's very difficult to maintain both as a coherent framework.

The reason why Christianity is in decline today is precisely because it ventured out too far into a strict tradition of literalism, and it's paying the price for it in the era where sceintific reductionism is a dominant philosophy in the academia, at least until very recently.

 

[Silmarien]

Is there any other kind of literal resurrection (see John 20)

Sure, you could have some sort of literal not-quite-physical Resurrection. As long as the Resurrection experiences represent some sort of objective encounter, as opposed to being some inner realization, I would consider that literal.

That said, bodily is probably a better interpretation, but I don't think it's terribly crucial.

Well, you can't demonstrate literal historicity, and that's the first problem. All you have is a claim of historicity that doesn't match actual history recorded in many cases. Neither it matches our conceptual understanding of the world that we live in today.

Not being able to demonstrate literal historicity isn't a problem at all. Obviously we cannot go back and examine the evidence, so a leap to faith has to be made at some point. I think that's the point, not a problem.

As for matching actual history and conceptual understanding of the world, I'm not a naturalist and thus fail to see a genuine conflict.

So, what you have is you preference to interpret some aspects of that story as literal in order to maintain a concept of God that you prefer to believe in (the one that actually suffers next to you), which seems to be a rather anthropocentric concept of God to begin with.

Yes, Christianity presents a somewhat anthropomorphic depiction of God, I agree, with concepts like justice and mercy. You can take issue with that, but if you drop it, what's left is not recognizably Christian.

Beyond that, don't tell me what my preferences are. There are reasons I spend a lot of time identifying as a Platonist--orthodox Christianity is very difficult for me, but I can't compromise at some sort of easy, contentless version instead. I've tried.

First of all, your first sentence above is meaningless in any context of reality of our suffering. You can't "take suffering". You can suffer instead of someone, in some cases. You can co-suffer in some cases. And that's the core concept behind Christian allegory. What you can't do is claim that you can take suffering (as some literal concept of suffering) upon yourself, because suffering is a conceptual umbrella of experience. It's not a thing.

So, first question for you would be... What do you LITERALLY mean by "A God who is willing to take the suffering of the world upon himself to redeem". What does it mean in a actual reality that we live in today? How does that work?

If you understood my sentence, it wasn't meaningless. If you would rather phrase it differently, go ahead. I don't share your ontological assumptions, though, and don't see any real incoherence in the concept of assuming the burden of suffering.

Nor do I know what "actual reality" you're speaking of. Even today, there are a multitude of different worldviews floating around.

Orthodox literalism leads to YEC. That was my point. There's a clear correlation between literalism orthodoxy and YEC. Would you agree with that?

Now you're conflating a literal understanding of the Resurrection with literalism in general. They're two different things and need not go together.

Would you agree that YEC exists today largely because of progressive development of strict fundamentalist literalism, and that such view exist in history of institutional Christianity. By that I don't mean that ALL of Christian theologians in history agreed that 24hrs were literal, but even those who didn't would date the age of Earth in 100s of 1000s. Would you agree with that?

I don't see how this is relevant to the question of whether one can simultaneously maintain a literal understanding of the Resurrection while rejecting strict fundamentalist literalism.

Byzantine Christianity is actually a bad example for that, because it has a history that eventually ends up with Alexandrian and Byzantine era, including the calendar that dates from Anno Mundi, and that's over 1300 year of Christian history in that region.

It's very difficult to make a case against YEC view in such context.

I don't think the Orthodox care whether or not their flock believes in evolution. This sort of stuff seems to be a non-issue in that neck of the woods.

I'm not conflating Orthodoxy with YEC. I'm saying that when you adhere to literalism... you end up with YEC. There are few ways around it. And it's very difficult to maintain both as a coherent framework.

Only if you present a false dilemma between fundamentalist literalism and complete allegorization. I have no idea why anyone would take such an approach.

The reason why Christianity is in decline today is precisely because it ventured out too far into a strict tradition of literalism, and it's paying the price for it in the era where sceintific reductionism is a dominant philosophy in the academia, at least until very recently.

How is this relevant to the question of whether or not you can adhere to a literal Resurrection while rejecting YEC? Nobody is obligated to pay any attention to either strict literalism or scientific reductionism.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

The reason why Christianity is in decline today is precisely because it ventured out too far into a strict tradition of literalism, and it's paying the price for it in the era where sceintific reductionism is a dominant philosophy in the academia, at least until very recently.

I'd probably add that religious wars, a scientific revolution, the onset of Darwinian theory, two massive world wars with a Holocaust in the middle of it, suffering brought about by Communism, as well as the technology to televise decades of Christian hypocrisy have all been social contributors to the modern decline of Christianity.

Of course, as you've implied, the deficiencies present in an ultra-literalistic reading of the Bible likely haven't helped either. [edited ]

 

[cvanwey]

Most definitely, and I wouldn't knock this observation you have since I think we both know that this can be the case from time to time.

Ok. Since you've decided to run with me on this short jog, I'm just going to put "out there" a few more things. One of these things is that the 3 categories of truth I offered above are actually those that Neil deGrasse Tyson offered to a skeptical atheist on a very recent talk-show/youtube segment. And I think we should both take a listen to his fuller (albeit intentionally introductory level) explication about these 3 categories of truth. And then we can move on to other nuances about the Truth of biblical truth as we might try to conceive it:

Okay, I watched the video.

 

[cvanwey]

Do you believe that there is evidence that Adam and Eve existed?

Not really

Do you believe that there is evidence for a global flood?

Evidence suggests against it.

Do you believe that there is evidence that Moses existed?

Not really concerned with whether Moses actually existed or not.

Do you believe that there is evidence that Jesus of Nazareth existed?

Depends on the day, quite honestly. The more I study it, the less likely it seems to be.?.?.? But I do not adopt the 'Jesus mythicist' following.

Really, unless you're going to be a Mythicist, which most people would agree is pure lunacy, the New Testament is in a different historical position than the Old Testament. You could certainly reject its miracles as embellishment, but the argument you're running with here is completely fallacious. The fact that they're in the same book is irrelevant, since all the stories come from different time periods entirely. At least pick a good criticism of the New Testament.

I disagree. You cannot have the NT w/o the OT.

 

[Silmarien]

I disagree. You cannot have the NT w/o the OT.

Seriously, there were gnostic sects that thought the God of the Old Testament was a demon. I wouldn't go that far, but you can definitely have the NT without the OT.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Seriously, there were gnostic sects that thought the God of the Old Testament was a demon. I wouldn't go that far, but you can definitely have the NT without the OT.

Wow, Sil! This is perhaps the first thing you've ever said here on CF which I can say I fully disagree with (assuming I'm fully understanding the context through which you're asserting this). So, depending on what you mean, I might even have to agree with @cvanwey on this point: I don't think we can really apply the New Testament in a valid spiritual way without recognizing that it emerges out of, and as a part of, the Old Testament worldview. Of course, there will be nuances in the middle of all of this that we'll all want to haggle over..................................................which is the fun part (for some of us, anyway)!

****************************************

Okay, I watched the video.

Which, by the way, @cvanwey, leads us to STEP 2 after that video with Tyson.

And STEP 2 is for us to recognize the complex matter of Jewish handling(s) of Jewish Scriptures, and to do this, I'm going to imply that for us to really even begin to do this correctly---even if NEVER comprehensively since, well, we can't really put God in a commercially marketable box---we'll need to apply at least 3 paths of inquiry:

1) Philosophical Hermeneutic(s)
2) Philosophy of History
3) Jewish Historiography and Jewish Hermeneutic(s)

And of course, STEP 3 (in my estimation), would then to be to wrap all of this together and import it into the additional application of various----

4) Biblical Hermeneutics

 

[Silmarien]

Wow, Sil! This is perhaps the first thing you've ever said here on CF which I can say I fully disagree with (assuming I'm fully understanding the context through which you're asserting this). So, depending on what you mean, I might even have to agree with @cvanwey on this point: I don't think we can really apply the New Testament in a valid spiritual way without recognizing that it emerges out of, and as a part of, the Old Testament worldview. Of course, there will be nuances in the middle of all of this that we'll all want to haggle over..................................................which is the fun part (for some of us, anyway)!

Oh, I don't think that you should go be a Marcionite, but it's clear that people did, so it's definitely within the realm of possibilities. I frankly think it's less stupid than the approach being put forward here as the only possible solution.

People have been dealing with the question of how to interpret the OT in the light of the NT for 2000 years. You can't say that the only valid reading is a completely literal one from Genesis to Revelation, leaving out all subtlety and nuance, since that's never been true.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Oh, I don't think that you should go be a Marcionite, but it's clear that people did, so it's definitely within the realm of possibilities. I frankly think it's less stupid than the approach being put forward here as the only possible solution.

Lol! I just love the way you've qualified your evaluation on this.

People have been dealing with the question of how to interpret the OT in the light of the NT for 2000 years. You can't say that the only valid reading is a completely literal one from Genesis to Revelation, leaving out all subtlety and nuance, since that's never been true.

You're right! I can't say that.

Well, poop! Scratch yet one more point of disagreement off the ol' "points to argue with Silmarien" list!

 

[cvanwey]

Seriously, there were gnostic sects that thought the God of the Old Testament was a demon. I wouldn't go that far, but you can definitely have the NT without the OT.

What about the 100's of prophecies, and the 10 Commandments, just for starters? Those are all in the OT. Take those out, and the NT crumbles. Sorry.

 

[cvanwey]

Wow, Sil! This is perhaps the first thing you've ever said here on CF which I can say I fully disagree with (assuming I'm fully understanding the context through which you're asserting this). So, depending on what you mean, I might even have to agree with @cvanwey on this point: I don't think we can really apply the New Testament in a valid spiritual way without recognizing that it emerges out of, and as a part of, the Old Testament worldview. Of course, there will be nuances in the middle of all of this that we'll all want to haggle over..................................................which is the fun part (for some of us, anyway)!

****************************************


Which, by the way, @cvanwey, leads us to STEP 2 after that video with Tyson.

And STEP 2 is for us to recognize the complex matter of Jewish handling(s) of Jewish Scriptures, and to do this, I'm going to imply that for us to really even begin to do this correctly---even if NEVER comprehensively since, well, we can't really put God in a commercially marketable box---we'll need to apply at least 3 paths of inquiry:

1) Philosophical Hermeneutic(s)
2) Philosophy of History
3) Jewish Historiography and Jewish Hermeneutic(s)

And of course, STEP 3 (in my estimation), would then to be to wrap all of this together and import it into the additional application of various----

4) Biblical Hermeneutics

I'm going to try and cut to the chase again. Was the resurrection claim a 'literal' claim? If so, what evidence supports this literal claim, of Jesus postmortem?

 

[Silmarien]

What about the 100's of prophecies, and the 10 Commandments, just for starters? Those are all in the OT. Take those out, and the NT crumbles. Sorry.

What about them? I honestly don't care. It's the potential prophecy about the Crucifixion in Plato's Republic that gives me the most pause, seeing as how I'm a shameless Hellenizer and all. The Old Testament isn't the only thing that you could say has been fulfilled here.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I'm going to try and cut to the chase again. Was the resurrection claim a 'literal' claim?

Is the Resurrection, as it is presented in the New Testament, a literal claim?

Yes, I believe that it is.

If so, what evidence supports this literal claim, of Jesus postmortem?

Man, cvanwey, you don't ask for much, do you?

The thing is, I'm going to cut ahead in the middle of your chase and again say that we'll need to apply steps 1 through 4 in order to even begin to crack this open. Moreover, we have what I'm going to call here, the "cvanwey subjectivity problem." And this problem is that your Christian interlocutors will need to know what you mean by the term "evidence" and what kinds of it will satisfy you.

So, we have to argue first over the nature of evidence and to what qualifies as evidence. If it isn't the same thing epistemologically and ontologically as it is in, say, science, then we have a problem, and the outcome would then look something like this: Christian after Christian after diverse Christian offers to cvanwey some notions, citations, or evaluations of evidence pertaining to the Resurrection of Jesus, BUT because none of those things fits how cvanwey conceptualizes "evidence" in this sphere of philosophical discourse, then he simply bats away each and every offering that is given to him in the process of time.

I mean, I don't know about you, but I so hate playing games where the goal posts not only move, but are basically invisible.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

What about them? I honestly don't care. It's the potential prophecy about the Crucifixion in Plato's Republic that gives me the most pause, seeing as how I'm a shameless Hellenizer and all. The Old Testament isn't the only thing that you could say has been fulfilled here.

That's interesting. What book and page of the Republic would that be, Silmarien?

 

[Silmarien]

because


That's interesting. What book and page of the Republic would that be, Silmarien?

I ran into it yesterday--I've been reading Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity, and it came up. It was pretty shocking.

Republic bk2, 361e-362a

"They'll say that a just person in such circumstances will be whipped, stretched on a rack, chained, blinded with fire, and, at the end, when he has suffered every kind of evil, he'll be impaled, and will realize then that one shouldn't want to be just but to be believed to be just."

(Obviously Plato is not Macchiavelli and not actually suggesting not being just. Just being his good old Socratic self.)

Some translations, including the one that showed up in the Ratzinger book, use "crucified" instead of "impaled." I freaked out, then grabbed my own copy and found "impaled" instead. I looked it up, and while "impaled" is the more literal translation, it refers to the form of capital punishment used in Greece that eventually became Roman crucifixion, so both are apparently legitimate.

There are lots of parallels between Platonism and Christianity (especially once Plotinus formulates a God/Logos/Spirit trinity in the 2nd century), but this is one I hadn't been aware of until last night. (Granted, he could have been thinking of Socrates, but this is very different imagery than what would fit with Socrates' execution.)