I would say this issue is not real but just “apparent” – a sham and a scam frankly – empty rhetoric.
Absurd reductionism for all sorts of things abound.
I would “reduce” it to the gathering of information in the context of an intention. All living organisms do this, gathering information about both the environment and themselves in order to survive. The nervous system is just one technique for doing this and not even the most powerful one at that. Humans have something even more effective in language which also gives the ability to concoct additional complex intensions other than survival.
And yet there are serious biologists who do reduce it that way. I like how John Lennox shows how silly that is, yet scientifically it’s an open position.
Baal was the god of the Canaanites and the Baal cycle is about that god, a storm deity who is also associated with fertility. The Israelites would have had to study the Canaanite religion in order to use it in the Bible. But the Canaanite religion was supposedly so evil and corrupting that a genocide was required to get rid of Canaanites. Wasn’t that the problem, the Canaanite religion itself? It doesn’t make sense to kill the faithful and then adopt their beliefs. It would be like the Nazis murdering every Jew they could find and then embracing Judaism.
I certainly object to the implication that our religion should be defined by a negation of some other religion. Baal and Hades are not real, so nothing belongs to them, is their creation, or is their responsibility. Only the God who is real can do any of these things. Can God make a barren woman fertile? Oh wait… didn’t God do that with Sarah, Abraham’s wife when she was 90 years old? How about affecting the mortality of people or their wealth? Yeah God did those things also. Our God is the God of everything. Are there things attributed to the gods of other religions that God is not or does not do? Definitely.
No more than I have to study rap music to know about it – so many people play it loud enough to be heard two blocks away that I can’t avoid knowing about it.
Sorry for the long delay in responding, I was on a journey.
A crucifix reminds how Jesus suffered for our sake. If/when a crucifix turns our thoughts to Jesus and the great mercy God showed in sending Jesus to save us, that is a good thing.
Yet, a crucifix is just a religious object. It does not have power in itself, although it might strengthen the faith of the user by guiding the thoughts to Jesus. To be more blunt, cross was just a devious equipment to make a person suffer as much as possible before death. Jesus is not on a cross anymore - if he would be, we would be in trouble. But he won, resurrected and has the power. We need the power of the resurrected Jesus. Any kind of religious objects cannot replace the presence of the living Lord.
Us, yes – but to any subject of the dark realm, a crucifix is a declaration that death, the grave, and bondage to sin were defeated and that Man on the Cross shortly thereafter showed up and kicked in the gates of Hell.
And terrify minions of darkness. The more astute ones might maneuver to try to say it’s just some guy on an instrument of torture, but a typical crucifix includes the little sign on top that identifies it as the Victor. They feared Him enough before that victory, now they know that the game is done, they’re at best just waiting for the final whistle.
No, but when your best friend scored the winning goal in the ultimate championship context, which do you want – a picture of the goal, or a picture of your friend making the winning play?
Especially when the other team got tricked into enabling that play! That’s something not easily recognized about the temptations Satan tossed at Jesus: he wasn’t really expecting to score any points there, he was fishing for information as to what Jesus was up to – that’s why Paul could write that if the dark powers had known what was up they never would have let Jesus get anywhere near the Cross instead of pushing Him there.
We humans have a tendency to focus our eyes on what is visible and let that become the source of trust (or mistrust) in our life. I guess that was a key reason why any kind of graven images of God were strictly forbidden.
The religious objects may have a great symbolic weight in our thinking but they may not be that important in the thinking of other humans or possibly, have such weight in the invisible world.
A cross or in a catholic context, a crucifix is a general symbol that can be found in most church buildings around the world. We have grown to associate the symbol to the core teachings of Christianity. Therefore, we have a belief that the cross or crucifix is something powerful.
I have tried to see past the current worldview and think what that symbol meant to the first Christians. My understanding is that it was a serious reminder of the price of following Jesus Christ. Being a believer included accepting the risk to loose everything, to be tortured and killed for the sake of Jesus. Cross had a double message in that it was a terrible reminder of the price but also a reminder of the death of Jesus on the cross - a shameful death according to Roman culture but a victory in the eyes of the Christians. Although the latter meaning grew in importance with time, cross was not intended to be used in ‘magical’ ways, as a source of power. It was just a symbol that told an important message.
I fear that if we treat religious objects, such as a crucifix, as sources of power in the invisible world, we miss the target - the power is not in objects, it is in the invisible God.
It’s not power, it’s message: a crucifix is a declaration to a demon that it is already defeated, because it knows what that crucifix means.
BTW, according to the Orthodox priest I knew who helped with an exorcism, a bare cross is useless and will just result in mockery – it’s the victory of Christ on the Cross that means something.
Though he said what truly terrifies a demon is the Eucharist; they know that Christ’s words “This is My Blood” has the power of Creation behind it, and the one thing they fear second only to Christ Himself ‘in the flesh’ is His Blood.
And apparently anything blessed in the Name of Christ can set them off; we may not be able to tell, but apparently any entity in the spiritual realm can tell when the Name has been “attached” to an object (cf. the cloths from the Apostles that healed people and drove out demons).
There is still much I do not know about the invisible world and spirits. It is true that the Bible mentions cases where an exceptionally strong presence of God has left some power in visible objects, such as in the case of Moses (shining face), occasionally prophets (even dead bones in a grave could revive a dead person) and seemingly in the case of Peter (clothes mediated the healing power). Yet, I rely on the invisible God, not on visible objects. Better to be safe than sorry.
The hypothesis of (belief in) transsubstation is something I do not support because I do not find sufficient support for it in the scriptures but see points that seem to speak against it.
When we are speaking of God’s morality and justice, the invisible world with ‘heavenly creatures’ might be something that plays a role although we do not see or understand it. There are verses in the biblical scriptures that seem to suggest this.
The ethically most ‘correct’ option often depends on a combination of factors. If we do not know all factors, we may end up with misleading conclusions. What happens in the future and in the invisible world are among the factors we do not know. An allknowing entity (God) knows all factors and can therefore make decisions that are more correct but sometimes in conflict with what we think is the ‘correct’ decision.
Would you also just stay silent? Objects are speech; that’s why the Orthodox have rules about how icons are done – not that any modern culture holds to the concepts/worldview from which those rules derive, but if you know them then an icon becomes a theological message. It’s a “a picture is worth a thousand words” situation: rather than engage in a soliloquy describing and explaining the Crucifixion and what it means, one can present the Crucifix, and by some accounts where a demon may regard the words of a human being as constituting nothing ore than “blah, blah, blah”, it knows exactly what that crucifix means.
Indeed that objects are speech is why the conservative Reformation kept statues, stained glass windows, etc. – a properly executed piece of art is a Bible lesson.
As for objects blessed with the Name of Christ, those too are a form of speech but also a test: if an apparently possessed person reacts to the presence of an object blessed in His Name it’s a strong sign that a demon really is present since no normal person can tell the difference between an ordinary handkerchief and one that has been blessed whereas a demon can.
Considering which, do you think that cloths themselves did anything? No – but they bore the connection to the Apostle and through him to Christ. And there’s the essence of the matter: some objects essentially have power not in themselves but because of “the invisible God”. One may as well insist that no words be spoken for an exorcism!
The doctrine of transubstantiation is the result of attempting to make the scripture fit Aristotelian philosophy, and the very human attempt to explain instead of just believing. The Orthodox, in the tradition of the ancient church, effectively say, “Jesus said it – believe it and celebrate!”; the same is true of Lutherans and many others. And by the reactions of demons, apparently they believe it and wail.
“Most correct” is a good wording; there are many times in life where if one is picky then ethically there is no correct choice, only the least wrong – another reason, BTW, that law cannot lead to righteousness, it can only point to the Righteous One.
edit: I was reading something else and got reminded of a situation when I was on summer camp staff and found myself in a situation where several rules applied and I was going to have to break two of them no matter what I did. Since it was a matter of getting an injured junior staff member back to the dining hall staff room, I broke the two that meant I could move fastest.