Stages of spiritual development?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Righto Richard…lets address that very complaint of yours. “Adam is quoting out of context with short passages”…

Start with 2 Peter Chapter 3

1Beloved, this is now my second letter to you. Both of them are reminders to stir you to wholesome thinking

2by recalling what was foretold by the holy prophets and commanded by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.

3Most importantly, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.a

4“Where is the promise of His coming?” they will ask. “Ever since our fathers fell asleep, everything continues as it has from the beginning of creation.”

5But they deliberately overlook the fact that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water,

6through whichb the world of that time perished in the flood.

Read those texts and tell me Peter is not making a direct comparison with what Christ also said in Matthew 24?

Now read Maathew 24 and tell me that the prophecy there about end times is not foretelling a real global event (the second coming of Christ is a global event right? (Tell me im.theologically wrong on that claim)

Show me the evidence where a global second coming is not also referencing the global flood as an historical event in Genesis 6 and 7?

Peters statements and Christ statements are no less direct than the event Noah was faced with in Genesis chapter 6…God forewarned Noah to build an ark in order to be saved from a catastrophe that would wipe out every living creature on earth that roamed on land.

Here we have both NEW and OLD Testament descriptions of historical global events…the second coming of Christ and the abomination of desolation were both future events being prophesied by Christ (which also demolishes the claim that the abomination of desolation was antiochus ephiphanees but that is another subject).

Whyis Matthew 24 not fulfilled in its entirety in AD 70 when Titus ransacked Jerusalem? Because the Apostle John wrote Revelation on Patmos 20 years after in AD 90s and claimed it, the fulfillment of the final part of the Old Testament Sanctuary (second coming and laying on of hands onto the scaegoat by high priest) was still in the future!

These things are simple and straight forward biblical history and biblical theology…there is nothing complicated there and the texts prove im not intepreting this with my own ideaology. You claim i make this up amd i post other theologians who support the bible claims and you continue to claim im making it up. That image posted against me yesterday with my head up my ass…thats the person who ignores biblical self interpretation.

Proof of my claim there is found in your jext statement…which i find deeply troubling…

Remember the Berean Jews?

Acts 17
11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true

You are certainly not following their lead…you are claiming to be above scripture now…that for Chrietians, science is above scripture. It is not and neither are you.

In addition to that, you are not following the evidence in any way shape or form…you keep returning to non theological wives tales that do not use any consistent scriptural supporting references and then attempt to claim im a liar.

To be honest, i find your last statement there deeply troubling…no Christian should make that claim.

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Acts 8???

Um hello, the title of Acts 17:11 is pretty clear in your Bible if you actually care to take a look seeing as you claimed to have red it…

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Its talking about the importance of referencing scripture to see if what people are teaching is true or not. It evens starts out by calling that practise “noble minded” inferring all Christians should follow the lead of the Berean Jews!

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Using this scale, I was probably in the complexity stage in my early teens when I got into apologetics. I was in the perplexity stage during my crisis of faith that lasted until my senior year in college. Since then I have probably been in serenity/harmonization. I still value being able to construct a rational case for Christianity and defend it on an intellectual basis, I think the most important reasons for why I am still a Christian are more personal these days. I find the Christian narrative of justice and reconciliation compelling and I have experienced God being personally active in my life.

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I think the Bereans were noble enough to study the scriptures more deeply than just checking if they could find the texts that were claimed to be in the scriptures.

The Bereans did not have a modern worldview and did not have all the methods and books we have today, so it is likely that the studying could not go to such details that is possible today. They studied the texts with the skills and mindset they had.
In some details, their worldview would have given them an advantage that we modern readers lack. Although their worldview might have changed somewhat from the Ancient Near East culture of Genesis, their worldview was still closer to the ANE than our modern, materialistic worldview, and closer to the historical use of Hebrew language. They had not read modern history books or learned the knowledge that modern science has revealed. They could have understood the messages of the scriptures through their knowledge, without expecting that the scriptures are modern-type history or scientifically correct in the modern, materialistic sense.

Modern or Berean, the purpose of the studying should be to understand the messages of the scriptures more deeply than just reading the words.

I have met many people, fellow Christians, who try to answer to the questions of faith by citing biblical scriptures. That sounds good and gives the impression that these persons know their Bible well. It may be a safe way to answer to the difficult questions but it is also a way to transfer the responsibility to those listening. Biblical scriptures need interpretation to become something that is useful in our life. When the person cites a verse without explaining the meaning of the passage, the responsibility for a correct interpretation is pushed to the listeners.

Edit:
I started to study the basics of theology after I had been a believer for almost 40 years and had read the Bible almost every day during those years. I imagined that I knew the Bible fairly well when I started. It did not take long to realize that my understanding of the biblical scriptures was too shallow and I had misunderstood some passages because I did not know the context.

The first weekly tasks in basic exegesis were crushing but illuminating because they revealed how shallow my previous interpretations (exegesis) had been. The teachers (fairly conservative believers but they had academic training and doctor-level knowledge) did not only give grades, they explained what I should have taken into account in the exegesis and what was the context. I learned through the teaching more than I had learned during the decades of just reading the scriptures, listening to sermons and participating in church activities.

Based on my own experience, I can tell that being able to cite what is written in the biblical scriptures does not quarantee that the person understands the messages in the scriptures correctly.

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What are you trying to do here?

Prove your faith or destroy mine?

Is that the purpose of Scripture?

So Paul refences Creation and the flood? And?

That is Paul’s faith, in a time where such things were taken as fact. Paul also accepted slavery, is that also obeying Scripture?

What is the purpose of Scripture/

I have no doubts about what Paul believed. Now tell why I must believe what Paul did about the flood? Why does it matter? Or are you claiming !All of nothing!"!

besides, why did you stop at v6? because that was the part you were interested in. Continue reading. Is the purpose of the passage the historical fact of the flood, or the certainty of the second coming? Is it about what was or what will be? Why did he reference the flood? What was his purpose ? what was he trying to prove? Do you think that if I do no accept a worldwide flood that I do not accept the promise of a Second Coming? Is that argument for me?

What was the purpose of that letter? Was it to prove the fact of the flood? What is the purpose of Scripture? Is it to prove the fact of the flood? Why does it matter to you! Why must the historical accuracy of Genesis 1-11 matter to you! Does Scripture vanish of the first 11 chapters are viewed in a different manner?
Why must my faith be based on the same view of Scripture as yours?, Does that invalidate it?
Whose faith are you trying to bolster? Yours or mine?
I will give you a clue. Mine is very secure , thank you. Does that make me false? (think carefully before you answer that one. I claim to be baptised in the Holy Spirit!)

Richard

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@MarkD, @mitchellmckain, @richard and @Jay313 all of your “stages” input here has been interesting and helpful. No system is perfect and few people actually fit neatly into any, but it helps me see “where the shoe rubs” and will continue to cause blisters.

As always I am frustrated by the feel of “progress” exhibited in McLaren’s and the CoE scale. I don’t think the feel of a rating system is helpful or desirable. At least.not to me. Richard, I think, pointed out that to some extent, we are what we are.

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You are by no means alone. I think that there is sometimes pressure to “improve” based on the idea that we start not just at zero but somewhere bellow that. When God talks about His ways are not ours, one of them is the need for comparison either with each other or to some artificial standard or level.
Christianity does not hav to be a trial, or self imposed stringency. The basis of Christianity is still love and you cannot love others as yourself if you do not actually love yourself.

Richard

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There is or should be a place for self acceptance but there should be something aspirational in religion too or so it seems to this outsider. “Everyone is a sinner” should establish a kind of common ground from which cooperation and good will can ensue. It shouldn’t be an endorsement for any and all depravity. Stages make sense in terms of physical and mental maturation, why not for spiritual maturity too?

I’ve been sharing this a lot elsewhere but haven’t done so on this thread but maybe it fits. Author and book store owner Ann Patchett on accepting what one is warts and all.

But more apropos here in the first five minutes is Brian McClaren talking about why he feels talk of stages makes sense:

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If you are not a Christian, why would you accept this?

Richard

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I accept a secular version of the same sentiment, that we are all in process and that there just are certain constitutional difficulties built into being human.

This gets at the difference between beliefs and understanding. If I can only have one, I’ll take understanding.

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If we are pragmatic, it takes a single dot to make a page not perfection and the notion of perfection would be impossible *Christ accepted) but, the point within Christianity is that God makes an allowance by sacrificing His son, so tat we do not need to reach that perfection.

Biut

Religion has both God and a goal beyond life that would be irrelevant if this life is all we have.

I am all in favour of tying to do the right thing, and admitting that we will ultimately fail, probably due to circumstance beyond our control. f you take away Heaven, Hell and Sin, then the secular ideal model may well match the Christian ideal.

I would add that my faith goes beyond beliefs, but that much of my security is a consequence of having the faith in the first place. It is always the start that proves the most difficult. Perhaps it is not a prerequisite for God? I do not know, but I would like to think so.

Richard

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Yes. To what one aspires, however, may be quite different from what appears to be progress on the various scales we have seen. Let’s look at the first column of McLaren’s that you linked to:

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For example, this first column is, I think, intended to describe nearly all the people I’ve ever been in church with, and I think belittles or ignores what they would understand as spiritual progress. In my tradition there is a great focus on right and wrong, that is on sin and righteousness, because of the damage caused by sin and the enormous cost of setting it right. Whether one frames the problems of the world this way or not is another matter.

The motive that goes along with this is not pleasing any particular authority figure, but the God whom we see as our maker and the supreme authority over all. The focus of that motive has allowed all sorts of Christians of “simplicity” to flatly refuse to bow to worldly authorities when faced with a legal requirement to sin. The motives of German Christians who remained true to Jesus during the Holocaust gave them backbone to stand against worldly authorities who demanded sin from all citizens. This isn’t the only example.

Again, with the key values that McLaren lists, I think some are almost correct. But for Christians, it’s ideally not about being right for the sake of being right; it’s about understanding rightly in order to act rightly, that is righteously in order to glorify God. The Christians I know are not so interested in staying to faithful to tradition for the sake of tradition, but for the sake of staying faithful to God, who they think is best understood through their tradition.
And so on.

For the Christians I know that McLaren would classify in the “Simplicity” column, spiritual growth is a deepening love for God, all three persons, a deepening relationship with and desire for this triune God. It includes, then, a deep desire to obey God out of love as well as reverence, and through faith. It includes a deepening faith or trust in God and a reliance on God for existence, meaning, a future and the ability to demonstrate God’s love for and glory in the world. And it is informed by what they understand to be correct understanding of what they understand to be true revelation from God.

Kierkegaard’s narrator Johannes de silentio finishes up Fear and Trembling with this, which I think sums up well, the kind of progress that the “simple” Christians I know are striving for, which isn’t nothing:

Faith is the highest passion in a person. In every generation there are perhaps many who never even come to it, but no one comes further. … But the person who has come to faith—whether he be the remarkably gifted person or #[210]# the simple person makes no difference—he does not remain standing at faith. Indeed, he would be indignant if someone said that to him, just as a lover would be offended if someone said that he had remained standing at love, for he would say, “I do not remain standing at all, for I have my life in it.” Yet neither does he come any further, not to anything else, for when he discovers this, then he has another explanation.

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The simplicity column describes people who end up as the Pharisees in the Gospels: it’s all about rules.
That’s not the lesson of the prophets; they derive principles from the rules, and they show how the rules point beyond themselves. Jesus does the same in the Sermon on the Mount.
Most of the Christians I’ve known would never be able to derive a moral system from its core in the scriptures, namely the Cross as the epitome of the Incarnation, but it is from the Cross that all theology flows. Why? Because they’re stuck on worrying about sin and following rules – which is what our flesh delights in because rules can be used to exalt one’s self and to condemn others.

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You know I care about and respect you and that has made it hard to respond. But my thoughts resonate with St. Roymund’s.

When what counts as understanding rightly is something that could be written down and is something everyone in the tribe already knows … that sure looks to me more like prefigured belief than it does understanding. I believe understanding requires a more open minded desire for the truth and the humility to start off admitting you don’t already know. If it is just something one reasons to from established axioms that seems different than understanding.

I’ve been preoccupied by RL so I haven’t been able to work out what to say but this gives you some idea what I’m thinking.

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Sort of a long YouTube, but excellent in explaining the D-K effect. Why I posted it here is that while watching, I was reminded of this post, and how the learning curve of the D-K effect somewhat parallels the spiritual development, especially at the beginning of the curve, where fundamentalist thought seems to prevail, and at the end, where knowledge lead to greater humility and comfort with uncertainty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpMreN8dceE

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Boy I wish I had a transcript of that video. There were so many statements I would have liked to sit with a while. But definitely a more nuanced explanation that I’ve come across before. Thanks for sharing it.

This is part of why I think being a human being is structurally challenging as I was telling @RichardG regarding why saying “we are all sinners” is comprehensible even for someone without a technical grasp of what sin means for Christians: it is simply true that we all must go wrong a lot before we can ever get right.

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Ethics and spiritual life that rests on principles rather than hard rules has to lead to humility – it’s the difference between “You shall not kill” and “You shall not even call your neighbor a fool!”, and that progression will (should) make a person ask “What about feeling like calling my neighbor a fool? Where does the progression start?”
That it starts at all then reminds us that we are fallen, that our impulses are far from perfect or righteous, and we can say with the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom that “I am the first of sinners”.

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One item really grabbed me, about a preference for quick answers: I read a book recommended to me by a social worker where the author identified pausing before answering as an indication of lying! That certainly would have brought a lot of laughter from my university professors.

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  1. You are ignoring the concept of divine revelation to those ancients…if Christ and the Apostle Peter, both claimed Moses really existed, that the flood and destruction of Sodom and Gomorah were real events, your statement there is unsupported by any scripture (and that is the significant point here…no scripture supports your view

  2. ANE cannot make historical claims such as, “the ancient Hebrews worldview was closer to ANE than our own modern…” the main reason being that scholarship aims to return to the ancient language, context, history, and interpretations…we know we are doing this because of a wide range of papyri, ancient bible texts, historical writings that align with the modern view etc. Your claim is ignorant of an overwhelming wealth of evidence against ANE beliefs.

  3. you two statements above contradict each other in that you say on the one hand “their worldview gave them an advantage”, then you say (and I’m summarising here) “they did not have access to modern materialisic science”

The single biggest problem here is that Christ (God) denies any claim the earth is more than his own genealogy shows. We have an historical timeline of all the fathers along a variety of family trees that all show the same time period back to Adam.

We know from careful intellectual study of the bible timelines that:

Adam knew Methuselah
Methuselah knew both Noah and Shem (he was Noahs grandfather and Shems great grandfather)
Both Terah and Arbraham likely knew Shem (Noahs son) and even if they didn’t know him, given Shems notoriety and his having lived for such a long time after the flood (600 years), it is certain that historical claims of the flood through Shem would be far too recent for Terah and Abraham not to have believed them…especially given that the bible claims of grounding of the Ark on the mountains of Ararat in modern Turkey are so close the the Chaldeans area of the city of Ur in northern Iraq.

Its about 750km from Ur to Ararat…not a big distance over a period of 600 years after the flood for the population to spread out that far and the Bible story I think indicates a migration from that region in a southerly direction for all of its historical Old Testament stories.

Anyway, since Abrahams son Isaac raised Jacob and Esau relatively soon in the timeline, they also would have believed that the flood story of Noah passed on down through Shem, Terah, Abraham, and Isaac. AS we get further along the lineages, we have individuals who we can increasingly prove really existed. Because of the historical ties these provable individuals have to earlier persons, its pretty hard to deny the historical claims in the bible.

The biblical fact remains, that none of those ancients who preceded Moses told him that the earth was old…not a single one. If they had told Moses that, he would have written it down that way, however, Moses nor any subsequent writer in the bible have recorded any such claim or even notion that the earth is ancient to the evolutionary meaning…Christ and Peter put the nail in the coffin in the New Testament and this destroys any argument about Genre, literary style, moral reasoning whatever.

The internal consistency test provides a very strong weight of evidence proving that claim…certainly a lot stronger than claims of millions of years with zero recorded evidence from any ancient writers!

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You’re ignoring how the ancients viewed divine revelation and replacing it with a MSWV understanding.
No scripture actually supports your view; you have to apply human tradition to it to get there.

This shows incredible ignorance! Scholarship figures out what a lot of Hebrew words mean by referencing the roots as used in other ANE languages, for starters; additionally, archaeology shows that the Hebrews shared most of the ANE worldview and culture right up into the divided kingdom period.

There is no such evidence – I don’t know where you’re getting that claim.

There’s no contradiction. The issue is that you think that they had a modern scientific worldview, which is ridiculous.
You seem to regard inspiration as some kind of automatic writing where the writers didn’t use normal language, didn’t use their own types of literature, didn’t adhere to their own worldview, and didn’t even write in accord with their own culture!

Where? I find no such assertion in the scriptures.

Why? Moses wasn’t writing history in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, he was doing theology. If he’d been writing history, he wouldn’t have used the Egyptian creation story as his framework for the first Creation account.

Here’s a question for you: to an Israelite at the time of Joshua, what was the criterion that made a writing true?

Why would they have cared?

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