Protestantism

[torridon]

Characters from a fourteenth century sensibility? What are you going on about?

I don't care what you or others here think. I wouldn't use anyone here as the mark of what is moral or immoral. What matters to me us what is right according to God.

That of course assumes that there is a god and furthermore a god that takes moral positions of human affairs and furthermore that your understanding of said positions is correct.  That seems like an awful lot of huge assumptions when the alternative is to simply think things through yourself.

[Robbie]

Robinson,

That makes no sense. If "Jesus had to die" the presumably it would have been because "God" engineered it that way. What choice then was there?

This will mean nothing to you but Christians believe we all had a hand in crucifying Christ.
However what I meant was individuals have choices whether or not to take part in physically killing someone.

Moving on from that i wonder whether all Orthodox churches teach exactly what Ad_o believes about the Jews, i feel there must be more to it than he has explained to us. There's a lot of information on the internet which will take a long time to plough through but am going to make a start.  Would be helpful if we had another Orthodox believer on here so if anyone knows one, please invite them over!

[floo]

This will mean nothing to you but Christians believe we all had a hand in crucifying Christ.
However what I meant was individuals have choices whether or not to take part in physically killing someone.

Moving on from that i wonder whether all Orthodox churches teach exactly what Ad_o believes about the Jews, i feel there must be more to it than he has explained to us. There's a lot of information on the internet which will take a long time to plough through but am going to make a start.  Would be helpful if we had another Orthodox believer on here so if anyone knows one, please invite them over!

The Jesus was responsible for his own death by getting up the noses of the religious leaders of the day, who had the Romans  do their dirty work for them.

[torridon]

This will mean nothing to you but Christians believe we all had a hand in crucifying Christ ...

You can't blame people who were not present and had no knowledge of it.  End of Story.

Unless you are treating the whole thing as allegory, an underpinning for ways of thinking about life, in which case the claim of 'truth' has to be dropped.

[floo]

We are only responsible for our own screw ups, not those of past generations.

[Robbie]

You can't blame people who were not present and had no knowledge of it.  End of Story.

Unless you are treating the whole thing as allegory, an underpinning for ways of thinking about life, in which case the claim of 'truth' has to be dropped.

I understand what you are saying but it is a Christian doctrine that Jesus died because of our sins. As I said that will mean nothing to most people so please let's not get bogged down with it.

My main point was that individuals have choices when it comes to physically killing someone.

[floo]

I understand what you are saying but it is a Christian doctrine that Jesus died because of our sins. As I said that will mean nothing to most people so please let's not get bogged down with it.

My main point was that individuals have choices when it comes to physically killing someone.

Hmmmmm, maybe.

[bluehillside Retd.]

ad,

Characters from a fourteenth century sensibility? What are you going on about?

I'm "on about" someone in this day and age telling us apparently with a straight face that he believes in "God", "Satan", saints of various stripes "sitting on thrones" on one side the other of this God etc. This stuff is straight out of mediaeval iconography, long since discarded by rationalists and to a large extent by the theists who prefer to think of these stories as allegories.

I don't care what you or others here think. I wouldn't use anyone here as the mark of what is moral or immoral.

But you have mounted a rationale - wittingly or not – for the persecution of "the Jews" collectively. What could be ore immoral than that? 

What matters to me us what is right according to God.

By which presumably you mean your beliefs about "what is right according to God" – a very different matter.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Robinson,

This will mean nothing to you but Christians believe we all had a hand in crucifying Christ.

You're right – it doesn't. It does make me grateful that I'm not one of them though - all that pointless and misplaced guilt!

However what I meant was individuals have choices whether or not to take part in physically killing someone.

You may have done, but you seemed to think the killing bit (OK, "killing" just for three days then) was inevitable, which means that someone would have had to have been God's patsy. What choice then would that person have had?

Moving on from that i wonder whether all Orthodox churches teach exactly what Ad_o believes about the Jews, i feel there must be more to it than he has explained to us. There's a lot of information on the internet which will take a long time to plough through but am going to make a start.  Would be helpful if we had another Orthodox believer on here so if anyone knows one, please invite them over!

I have no idea I'm afraid but just one of them is bad enough. After all, if you think it's fine to blame the descendants of the gang that allegedly "killed" a Messiah 2,000 years ago, what punishment wouldn't be too harsh for them? That's why it's the morality of the gas chamber guard.

[ad_orientem]

Blue,

Wait a minute! Who said anything about persecuting anyone, let alone Jews? I certainly never.

[ekim]

I understand what you are saying but it is a Christian doctrine that Jesus died because of our sins. As I said that will mean nothing to most people so please let's not get bogged down with it.

I think that doctrine should be examined as, on the face of it, to a rational person it seems an odd statement.  The word translated as 'sin' in the New Testament, I believe, is 'hamartia'.  Hamartia means 'to miss the mark' i.e. deviate from following the Will of God and in the case of Jesus, even if it kills you.  If that doctrine means that within his ministry Jesus provided a method, or straight and narrow way, to overcome any such deviation and by his death demonstrated
what it can take to do so, then it is understandable.  I suspect, however, that there are many Christians who have alternative interpretations.

[DaveM]

Dave:- if I had been standing amongst that crowd before Pilate on that early Friday morning in April AD30, I would have had no choice but to join in the chorus of cries to ‘Crucify Him’.

You would have had a choice Dave. I'm not a brave person but would rather have stayed away than bayed for anyone's blood.
As a Christian I accept Jesus had to die but don't believe everyone who wanted him dead (at the time) had no choice about the doings of it.

Hi Robinson,

Apologies, I have taken some while to respond to your post.

Yes indeed I would have had the choice and in all probability would have elected to remove myself from the scene. And yes indeed had I been unfortunate enough to get caught up in that crowd on that day, with the understanding I would have had then, I would not have called for His crucifixion.  And neither would Mary had she been there (which she almost certainly was not).  Not because of the church tradition that she was sinless, which has no basis in Scripture, but for the same reason that I would not have made that call.  Neither would the gospel writer John have made such a call (the only one of Jesus followers who might possibly have been there as an observer on the outskirts of the crowd).

I think a key point of my post #268 which has been missed is the opening phrase about ‘the understanding we have today’.  Before the Resurrection and indeed before Pentecost, even the closest of Jesus’ followers did not have a full understanding of the consequences of Christ’s finished work on the Cross. Their Messianic hopes were still very much centred on the expected conquering military hero along the lines of King David and for them it represented disaster rather than victory.

But since Pentecost we have the advantage of a fuller understanding of the Cross and the absolute necessity of a crucified and resurrected Christ if we are not to remain ‘dead in our sins’.  Which is why with the exactness of hindsight I recognise that I would have needed to call for the crucifixion.  And it is also why I recognise that I am as guilty as any in being the cause of Christ’s death and have no right to point to either Jew or Roman as having the greater guilt.

[Anchorman]

Blue,

Wait a minute! Who said anything about persecuting anyone, let alone Jews? I certainly never.

-
Whoa!
The 'blood guilt' drivel which many -traditional- branches of the Church laid on 'perfidious Jews' led to mass persecution in both East and West - to our shame.

[bluehillside Retd.]

ad,

Wait a minute! Who said anything about persecuting anyone, let alone Jews? I certainly never.

I said you provided a rationale for it. If you think that somehow millions of descendants of a tiny number of people who supposedly killed someone who was supposedly a "Messiah" were and are to blame for that event, what more rationale would you need for killing them?
   
Try reading some history for examples of people who used the same rationale for their actions.

[Owlswing]

Mary was just an ordinary girl who got up the duff before a ring was placed on her finger. After that she only has a bit part in the Bible, even her own son didn't seem to give her much credence. Goodness knows why the catholic/orthodox churches make such a fuss about her, even calling her the 'Queen of Heaven'. Do they think she and god are still having it off up there?

Quite a lot of the veneration of Mary was included because the Pagans the Church was trying to convert were not at all happy with being told that only the male God existed - the oldest religious artifact ever discivered (so far) - 25 to 23,000 BCE, is a statue of a WOMAN - Pagans were aware that both sexes were required to create life and mistrusted the Christain patriachy.

[ad_orientem]

-
Whoa!
The 'blood guilt' drivel which many -traditional- branches of the Church laid on 'perfidious Jews' led to mass persecution in both East and West - to our shame.

I'm not defending persecution but it's not the fault of the prayers and has no bearing on their truthfulness. And btw, perfidious means faithless or unfaithfull.

[ad_orientem]

Quite a lot of the veneration of Mary was included because the Pagans the Church was trying to convert were not at all happy with being told that only the male God existed - the oldest religious artifact ever discivered (so far) - 25 to 23,000 BCE, is a statue of a WOMAN - Pagans were aware that both sexes were required to create life and mistrusted the Christain patriachy.

Where did you get that from, Dan Brown?

[Anchorman]

I'm not defending persecution but it's not the fault of the prayers and has no bearing on their truthfulness. And btw, perfidious means faithless or unfaithfull.

Ad-o, the Church - in too many of her denominations - has prayed against Judaism, encouraged persecution or, at best, stood aside and let her members do the dirty work.
We should have condemned these actions down the centuries - and protected the persecuted.
In too many cases, we did nothing.

[Owlswing]

This will mean nothing to you but Christians believe we all had a hand in crucifying Christ.
However what I meant was individuals have choices whether or not to take part in physically killing someone.

Moving on from that i wonder whether all Orthodox churches teach exactly what Ad_o believes about the Jews, i feel there must be more to it than he has explained to us. There's a lot of information on the internet which will take a long time to plough through but am going to make a start.  Would be helpful if we had another Orthodox believer on here so if anyone knows one, please invite them over!

That is the problem! He never "explains" anything. He makes "statements" from his religion's perpective.

He keeps banging on about scripture and the Gospels - FFS the four Gospels contradict each other in matters of fact and some things from one Gospel, important things to Christians if this Forum is anything to go by, are not even mentioned in one or more of the others.

These are supposed to be four people who were all with Christ for his whole miniastry and they can't even agree on what actually happened.

I had High Anglican Christianity beaten into me, literally in some cases, and in one sermon it all fell apart for me I'm glad to say!

   

[Anchorman]

Where did you get that from, Dan Brown?

Weeeeeeel.....
No.
The earliest Marian statues showing the lady nursing the infant Christ come from Egypt - dating from around the third century.
Curiously, they mirror exactly the pose of Isis nursing Horus - a Hellenised form of one of the myriad aspects of the convoluted Egyptian religious map.
There's even an example of the so-called 'virgin' offering the Ankh - traditional heiroglyph for 'life' to the Christ child.
Howzat for idolatry?

[ad_orientem]

Weeeeeeel.....
No.
The earliest Marian statues showing the lady nursing the infant Christ come from Egypt - dating from around the third century.
Curiously, they mirror exactly the pose of Isis nursing Horus - a Hellenised form of one of the myriad aspects of the convoluted Egyptian religious map.
There's even an example of the so-called 'virgin' offering the Ankh - traditional heiroglyph for 'life' to the Christ child.
Howzat for idolatry?

Even if the first was true, then you would still have to prove that that is where they got their inspiration from, which you can't. So up yours!

[bluehillside Retd.]

ad,

I'm not defending persecution but it's not the fault of the prayers and has no bearing on their truthfulness. And btw, perfidious means faithless or unfaithfull.

But you validate a rationalisation for it when you privilege faith over reason and evidence. However strongly you feel your beliefs to be true, the crucial missing part is doubt. If you just once you said something like, “of course I could be wrong about all this”, or “I realise that I have no objective evidence to support my opinions”, or “albeit that I have nothing to offer that would demonstrate to anyone else that I’m right” then at least you’d allowed for the possibility of error.   

That’s the real problem here – not the content of your claims (which can be as bizarre as you like), but rather the absolute certainty with which you assert them. When you’ve convinced yourself utterly that the Jewish diaspora is responsible for the death of a “Messiah” (and when there are people daft enough to agree with you), what treatment of Jews is then beyond the pale?

Certainty in other words is the enemy of humanity, and you’re full of it.

[ad_orientem]

Ad-o, the Church - in too many of her denominations - has prayed against Judaism, encouraged persecution or, at best, stood aside and let her members do the dirty work.
We should have condemned these actions down the centuries - and protected the persecuted.
In too many cases, we did nothing.

The Church has prayed for the conversion of the Jews, as in the ancient  Roman Good Friday prayers, and also for heretics and schismatics and also pagans

[floo]

The Church has prayed for the conversion of the Jews, as in the ancient  Roman Good Friday prayers, and also for heretics and schismatics and also pagans

No doubt others are praying for you lot to convert to their brand of the faith, LOL!

[bluehillside Retd.]

ad,

The Church has prayed for the conversion of the Jews, as in the ancient  Roman Good Friday prayers, and also for heretics and schismatics and also pagans

A bit presumptuous isn't it? Maybe the Jews have prayed for the conversion of orthodox Christians too.