Two questions about how central the question of origins is to your core beliefs

You’re expressed an interesting perspective I hadn’t thought about. What differences would you expect there to be in the reception of the texts by a community in contrast to the reception by an individual?

Those are good words, and it’s an honorable work you are doing in getting to the bottom of what’s going on.

Then the bottom drops out.

One time that happened for me was thinking that I could know God through a philosophical argument, and then being persuaded Jesus was a myth. Yeah. That got weird.

I still think those arguments disprove atheism, and I regained a solid belief in Jesus.

I mentioned Keener as the author of the book on miracles, he is also a highly respected NT scholar in league with Tom Wright if that’s a name you recognize. Or Bart Ehrman. Keener has a book on the historical Jesus that I’m reading now (on and off) it’s been great. I can recommend a video of him discussing errors in the gospels if you’re interested.

Checks and balances. Varieties of views and interpretations.

But start from historical context. Availability of texts was massively limited because of the need of hand-copying. In today’s world of massively available printing, we almost completely overlook the massive cultural change introduced by the Gutenberg printing press.

It’s a huge topic. But in summary we need to recognise:

  • the origins of all scripture in a pre-printing context
  • the reception of the texts by “ordinary folk” being almost exclusively listening, which would have been mostly communal
  • the writing of the texts being in that same communal-reception context

And even today, this is largely the case:

  • clergy are trained in seminary communities
  • scripture is expounded in church communities
  • church communities are themselves rooted in wider communities (e.g. denominations)

Devotional work may be largely (not exclusively) individual. But deeper study is largely (not exclusively) communal.

And this communal aspect, which is implicit, and woven into the DNA of the writing and original reception of scripture, assumes, allows and even encourages debate about meaning and differing interpretation. We even see this within scripture itself. Example 1: the almost opposite message of Ezra-Nehemiah and Ruth about Moabite-Jewish marriage. Example 2: Jesus “you have heard it said… but I say…” (which itself is a feature of Second Temple Judaism).

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No one is more disappointed in the lack of curiosity of most atheists you meet online than myself. I can see how you might jump to the conclusion that it is universal if your online experience has been anything like mine. But you’d be mistaken if you conclude that anything about a disbelief in a being such as the God of the Bible as popularly conceived necessitates an irrational optimism in the ability of science to answer all questions. If you’ve yet to meet an exception to that rule … how do you do.

But as for starting a discussion on the origins of life in this thread, I fear it might get lost. I’d started this thread as a way to survey the kinds of belief people held and the way that had changed in their lifetime. So I don’t think a debate over what one ought to believe about origins would be conducive to the original intent.

If you wanted to start such a thread I’d be happy to tell you what I think of your worry about establishing a threshold for the start of life. In general though I think our access to the early history of life is inconclusive enough to allow people to hold their heads high in regard to their own opinion on the matter, recognizing this as an issue over which reasonable people may disagree.

I do, and have created one I have named LUCA. This shall be my first attempt at this, so guidance is appreciated.

So it is posted here: LUCA, is a single event sufficient or are many necessary?
My question relates not to who did it, but was LUCA a one-time event or many? Is there genomic evidence for either?

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Perhaps you need to take a step back? Instead of pursuing what you do not know, perhaps you need to concentrate on what you do know. If you feel the need for a church, find one you ae comfortable with. If you think you need a break then let it go for a while. They will still be there if and whan you want to return.

First you need to decide if you have a need or room for God. Do not let the concerns about what may follow distort the life you have now. Let tomorrow look after itself for now and find meaning in this life.

If you have specific concerns about the Christian faith please feel free to message me or find someone you trust to talk with. Above all, remember, it is your faith, and your life, and ultimately your decisions that matter, rather than what I or anyone else believes.

Richard

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Hi Merv and @MarkD,

I started Rohr’s book. Completely independent of any reviewer’s or pendant’s view of the book, it’s one I just don’t have the spiritual energy for right now. That surely sounds inside out. But he’s too close to home and too far from it for me simply to read it and hear what he says. There will be a good deal of clawing my way through, whenever I get back to it.

I need to direct those energies toward confessional documents right now. My husband and I are considering the possibility of joining a Presbyterian (PCA) church and have a good deal of reading to catch up on that is usually completed by the time kids are done with middle school I think. Most Baptists jettisoned confessions over a hundred years ago, even our own. Again, it surely sounds inside out to say that reading confessional documents is refreshing. For me it is.

Unlike most women (and men) that I know, I enjoy reading and learning theology. I suppose it’s an “safe” intellectual space that is still challenging and enormous. I don’t mind exploring many other places that are hard work and challenge me and my assumptions. Rohr is different. He’s going to have to wait.

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Understood. Everything in its season - or some things only when or even if the spirit leads!

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Good luck with your new church and with the completion of the needful task which will mark your joining. When your time is less spoken for I’d love to hear from you what it is about theology that draws you in.

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Honestly, I think it’s my duty as a Christian to study Christian theology, to know the claims I claim to adhere to and how they were developed.

One example I can give you relates to a topic I’m sure I’ve repeated (and will again) throughout various threads in the forum – theology of two kingdoms. It’s one I may not live long enough to study fully enough, but was formalized by Augustine in his doorstopper City of God (which I have NOT read). Calvin and Luther (among many others) relied on Augustine’s work and developed (or maybe more accurately applied it) in their own contexts. Luther’s relatively brief treatment of it can be found here. I found it particularly helpful at the beginning of lockdowns in 2020.

The theology of Two Kingdoms examines the differences between the secular world (Kingdom of Man or the World) and God’s Kingdom, which includes but is not limited to the Church, and the relationship between the two. While this may all sound like archaic mental gymnastics and a comfortable source of self-justification for churchy people, it is not. The practical implications of this portion of theology are enormous for Christians’ engagement in the world today. Having studied power relationships through critical theory and literature placed a brighter spotlight on it for me.

My criticism of Evangelicalism today stem directly from my understanding of the theology of Two Kingdoms. We (American, evangelical Christians) have largely put our functional faith in the worldly means of political power, capitalism and wealth in order to bring about what we claim to be “spiritual ends” (saving the culture, currying God’s favor for America, etc, etc, etc.) in ways that benefit us and help us maintain power. We have let our effective spiritual tools rust in the shed: faith, prayer, service to anyone, open-handed generosity, love, lovingly sharing the Good News of Jesus, hospitality, valuing all people and the like, dying if it serves the needs of another, etc., because we lack functional faith in the One we claim to trust with our souls. The One we insist others trust with their souls.

The mishandling of this theology either deliberately (see Kuyper) or ignorantly or lazily has had disastrous implications for the witness and work of the Church here. The Christian message is controversial enough, but when we utterly confuse what we are doing and how, we destroy anything we might have to offer.

There are other directions I’m interested in as well (Communion/the Lord’s Table, Eschatology, a clearer (articulable?) understanding of the harmony between my faith and science, and much much more). But this is the clearest example I can give you right now.

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A post was split to a new topic: Message with political edge

Sure, i will take a look.

I think this is a good option for me as of now considering i will be starting my automotive course at tech in may so i will need to direct all my focus on that for the time being.

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For me this is a difficult question i often ask myself and i am still trying to figure that out.

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I hope you find it informative. Best regards.

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I do like your superpositioning. Having your cake and eat it too : ) I do that.

But. And I think you answer it below. Nearly. Sort of. A bit. They are the same. As @Bucky_Wood says. Theist.

I think His timing was perfect. Therefore He had no choice.

The superposition. That is as good as it gets from a theist! Sovereignty is not what Evangelicals say it is. Or rather it is, but that has nothing to do with God’s sovereignty as it is.

The encounter, if at all, is in Christ and by His Spirit subsequently. Nothing else. Certainly nothing prior to that, not in history. You don’t have to go as far as another universe to get creatures with Homo levels of intentionality. Our galaxy alone will have an order of magnitude of concurrent civilizations if not six. We’re the badger dead in the road. The woods are full of them.

That’s the only way that God can be involved. As the ground of eternal being. And incarnating. And by the Spirit. And no, He obviously can’t interfere beyond incarnating. Things are necessarily bad enough as it is. They’d only be worse. He can only do worse.

There is no lack of natural explanation for nature whatsoever. Which doesn’t disprove God either. And your thinking is perfectly paradoxical. Wave and particle.

How do you manage this? : ) You actually contradict yourself, which is fine. But you do. Contradiction is fine.

And yes, there are no signs in the OT that were signs of our incarnation at the time.

I am certain that many things appear to be contradictions when they are really taken out of context. But I do find myself with conflicting beliefs on some nuanced issues, and then see that expressing them becomes a contradiction. Guilty as charged sometimes, but not often.
Life began 3.5-4 Bya. At some point, through extinction, cell death, and cellular acquisition of organelles, there was an evolution to a LUCA. This then became the single parentage of all life we find today. Here is a good summary of the science to this point.
Regarding the alleged miracles of the OT there are so many instances of figurative and metaphorical stories that it seems possible that there were none. Certainly they are not necessary for ones belief in God, Christ and the resurrection. To me, there is more comfort drawing a line between those incidences and the core beliefs we all share. Science must be accounted for and should not be exclusive from core beliefs.

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I was looking at some posts in this thread that I hadn’t read, and saw your question again. I realized I never actually answered it. What draws me in?

There are a few reasons I can put my finger on:

  1. Theology (the study of the God I worship, love and believe to be my savior) is where I can find help pulling together the bits and pieces of information about God, his work, his world, his relationship to the world and its relationship to him, etc. that are scattered around the Bible. There is a lot to know. Some things are hard to understand. To consult with master students, who knew the Bible better than I do can be an exciting and incredibly rewarding endeavor. I.want.to.understand.

  2. Theology is where I can find out how different doctrines were developed and clarified, where different groups differ and why, and how this affects me. One topic I have been interested in understanding better, for example, is Communion (also known as the Lord’s Table or the Eucharist). This is a ceremony that is performed regularly in churches(but at different intervals in different churches) and involves Christians eating a small amount of bread and drinking a small amount of wine (or grape juice) together.
    In some churches, this is seen as a rite of obedience (Jesus told his disciples to do this rite) and remembrance. In some churches it is a spiritual act in which Jesus is with the congregation feeding us with the bread and wine and reminding us of his loving sacrifice for and redemption of us as individuals and as the local and wider church binding us to himself and to each other. In some churches, it is the actual act of sacrificing Jesus again and the congregants feeding on the body of blood of Jesus transformed from the bread and wine.

As utterly simple as this rite is, it’s central in Christianity. I want to understand it as well as I can. And in doing that, I believe I can participate in and benefit from it far more than if I took part in ignorance.

  1. Theology is immensely practical. One of my crit lit profs for my MA in Ed contrasted what we were doing in the theory based program done by English profs in the English department to what the Ed students were doing in the practice based program in the Ed school, saying something like: We aren’t going to help you answer the question “What will I do on Monday?” We will work on understanding why we do anything. Theology is much like that, I think. When I wrangle with questions about a Christian’s participation in the world, in politics, in church, in an economy I’m not looking for parochial principles taken from the book of Proverbs or tidy little proof texts. I’m looking to develop the foundational thinking that will help me deal with hard questions of living (and death) that I might not even want to face. While theology may not be equivalent to philosophy, it informs whatever becomes the philosophy evidenced by our lives.

  2. Theology gives me hope. Christianity is about redemption and incomprehensible renewal. Studying this spelled out in the precise, careful words of a good theologian, someone who can help show how many different hard things actually fit together, gives me immense hope. Far more than I’m inclined to, if I’m just on my own “with the text.”

I hope I came close to what you hoped to find out.

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Didn’t have a clear idea but my impressIon is that most Christians scarcely read the Bible. I think the value of having that common source book is the unifying effect it can have on the shared vision of what is sacred and the satisfaction in enacting the same rituals and other practices in response. Obviously it has the potential to serve as the unifying glue for a society and that can help to explain why religion seems to have been selected for in the competition at the borders between societies.

While I think we share a high regard for creativity and intuition I think you also have strong rational side.

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