I always (to allow myself to feel better) try to view the world as everything being true relative to the person. That is, not literally true but if one believes it that way then that is true to them and that the will achieve whatever they believe will happen. Thus All religions are true, as well as no religion being true. We all can pull proof for anything out of our hats. I know that I can debate every side because every side is right. We create truth rather than truth existing as pure. OMGosh, so why am I still looking???
Therefore the scriptures being non literal.
Literal truth or relative truth!
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_Imwashingmypirate
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Literal truth or relative truth!
Just punched myself on the face...
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_Imwashingmypirate
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_CaliforniaKid
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This is from my blog today:
Some time ago Pastor John Shuck of First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethton, TN blogged about the Fall. Shuck rightly pointed out that the story of Adam and Eve is not historically viable and that it needn't even be read as a "Fall" narrative-- many scholars read it as the "rise of consciousness," to use Shuck's phrase.
But beyond that, Shuck suggests that the concept of a "Fall" is problematic in itself. For one thing, the concept that death and suffering are the result of human sin disparages a fundamental part of the cycle of life and of human existence. "Any theology that is anti-death is therefore anti-Earth and anti-Life," Shuck asserts. Perhaps more importantly, he adds, "to say that we are sinful and fallen is to disparage humanity. We are who we are...I do not think there is any advantage seeing the world or seeing human beings as fallen."
I'm not so sure about Shuck's argument here. Yes, death and suffering are both part of life, and yes, there is good in humanity. The doctrine of "total depravity" is perhaps too negative about humanity and the world we live in. But I don't think it does us any good to deny that life is nasty, brutish, and short and that we wish it weren't so. Nor do I think it does any good to deny that there's something wrong with us at our core: we want to live in peace, but for some reason we just can't seem to pull it together. The reason that the narrative of the Fall has been so popular throughout Jewish and Christian history is precisely that it captures in mythic form our suspicions about the state of the world. So rather than ejecting the narrative altogether, I think it's useful to provide a liberal reading of it. The Fall may not be historical, but it is nevertheless a powerful metaphor.
I think the advantage of the myth of fallen humanity, even if not literally true, is that it expresses the hope that human beings are capable of ideal behavior. If you believe that there is a fundamental capacity for goodness at the core of all of us, then the failure to realize our potential can be conceived of as a "fall" of sorts. But it's a fall from an ideal standard rather than from one that has ever really been actualized. To use Neo-Platonic philosophy as a metaphor, our world is an imperfect or "fallen" version of the world of Forms. As Plotinus believed we could ascend back to that ideal world, I hold out the hope that humanity can "ascend" in moral wisdom and political/scientific savvy to the point where we can actualize something like the ideal world on the soil of the real one.
Some time ago Pastor John Shuck of First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethton, TN blogged about the Fall. Shuck rightly pointed out that the story of Adam and Eve is not historically viable and that it needn't even be read as a "Fall" narrative-- many scholars read it as the "rise of consciousness," to use Shuck's phrase.
But beyond that, Shuck suggests that the concept of a "Fall" is problematic in itself. For one thing, the concept that death and suffering are the result of human sin disparages a fundamental part of the cycle of life and of human existence. "Any theology that is anti-death is therefore anti-Earth and anti-Life," Shuck asserts. Perhaps more importantly, he adds, "to say that we are sinful and fallen is to disparage humanity. We are who we are...I do not think there is any advantage seeing the world or seeing human beings as fallen."
I'm not so sure about Shuck's argument here. Yes, death and suffering are both part of life, and yes, there is good in humanity. The doctrine of "total depravity" is perhaps too negative about humanity and the world we live in. But I don't think it does us any good to deny that life is nasty, brutish, and short and that we wish it weren't so. Nor do I think it does any good to deny that there's something wrong with us at our core: we want to live in peace, but for some reason we just can't seem to pull it together. The reason that the narrative of the Fall has been so popular throughout Jewish and Christian history is precisely that it captures in mythic form our suspicions about the state of the world. So rather than ejecting the narrative altogether, I think it's useful to provide a liberal reading of it. The Fall may not be historical, but it is nevertheless a powerful metaphor.
I think the advantage of the myth of fallen humanity, even if not literally true, is that it expresses the hope that human beings are capable of ideal behavior. If you believe that there is a fundamental capacity for goodness at the core of all of us, then the failure to realize our potential can be conceived of as a "fall" of sorts. But it's a fall from an ideal standard rather than from one that has ever really been actualized. To use Neo-Platonic philosophy as a metaphor, our world is an imperfect or "fallen" version of the world of Forms. As Plotinus believed we could ascend back to that ideal world, I hold out the hope that humanity can "ascend" in moral wisdom and political/scientific savvy to the point where we can actualize something like the ideal world on the soil of the real one.
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_CaliforniaKid
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Moniker wrote:I like the metaphor of Christ rising from the grave, a rebirth of sorts. I wish I could write 4 pretty paragraphs on it... :)
You probably could, if you gave it a try. :-)
This is one of my favorite Emerson quotes:
Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, `I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.' But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, `This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a man.' The idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece and of Egypt, before. He spoke of miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines, as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.
1838 Divinity School Address
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_Gazelam
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Gaz, why do you say Pirate's wrong?
Are you saying that there is no such thing as absolute truth?
How do we excercise faith in a God who teaches different modes of salvation to different groups of people?
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. - Plato
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_Moniker
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Gazelam wrote:Gaz, why do you say Pirate's wrong?
Are you saying that there is no such thing as absolute truth?
Heh. If I said "there is no such thing as absolute truth" I'd be making a statement I think is true and I'd be contradicting myself. :)
Uck.
Nah, I wasn't saying there was no such thing as absolute truth. I asked you why you say Pirate's wrong.
Take this statement:
Therefore the scriptures being non literal.
Is that statement wrong in your opinion? Why?
How do we excercise faith in a God who teaches different modes of salvation to different groups of people?
I have no idea...
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_CaliforniaKid
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