Again, not having read the entire thread, but the significance of Lewis’ critique still seems quite relevant.
Even if we grant certain commonalities between ancient Israel and surrounding cultures, there remain many possible explanations:
Pure coincidence.
Common development because certain developments in similar cultures, societies, or locations seem to make sense. E.g., if we find two cultures in cold climates that both use animal skins to keep warm in the winter, do we automatically assume the idea had to borrowed from one from other? Or perhaps simply a result of “great minds thinking alike.”
Further, if the ideas were in fact dependent, there remain various possibilities… e.g.,
Did the Israelites borrow from the Egyptians?
Did the Egyptians borrow from an earlier pronto-Israelite culture?
Did they share back-and-forth and mutually influence each other ?
Were they both influenced by another earlier culture?
Not to mention, the reality could be various combinations of all 6 of the above. It is far too easy and simplistic, in my mind, to simply make a blanket claim that such and such was borrowed from Egyptian culture, etc., unless we are talking absolutely conclusive and very solid evidence.
Lewis’ observations in his article I find still of great relevance here.
“But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!”
If only Jesus shared this viewpoint. But perhaps he was at a disadvantage, not having the benefit of our modern, “scientific” / secular views about free will, justice and responsibility…
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
245
No. There’s no such thing.
No. The evolution is obvious and striking and the retention of motifs over four thousand years. This is one story. There is no comparison with Hinduism or Dreamtime.
Yes.
No. Not even slowly.
No. Egypt came first by a thousand years or three.
No. See 5.
Lewis’ observations aren’t in any way comparable. That is a category error of orders of magnitude.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
246
We haven’t the faintest idea what Jesus’ viewpoint was. We know how He tried to motivate people. I do regard it quite possible that in His human ignorance He did include stark damnationism in the mix, but then all I have to do is consider His radical, all inclusive, universal reconciliation and it trumps it.
Whenever He used threatening language it was about there and then. Nothing whatsoever to do with eternal life. They was 'ard times. People were unutterably dim. Still are.
Funny… I regard it as quite possible that his human ignorance included said stark universalism, but then I consider his radical, consistent, unmistakable and routine threats of hell and seeing people consigned to “everlasting fire” which obviously trumps it.
You see, it is a game that goes both ways, if we start claiming that the things we don’t like about Jesus’ teaching are erroneous accretions attributable to his faulty human ignorance, but the things we like about his teaching are the “true” teaching that is eternal and from God and which trumps his errors, there is nothing that keeps me from arguing the exact opposite. And essentially, we have discovered nothing… we only created a teaching that satisfies our own desires and preferences.
More importantly, if Jesus was not inerrant in everything he taught, how exactly do we trust him about anything he says about eternal matters? If all his teaching of these matters is not pure revealed truth because he had access to eternal divine knowledge, and rather, he was just giving his personal guesses, influenced by erroneous and faulty cultural influences, on what basis do we trust anything he said about what happens after death? Why trust what he said that (in your apparent opinion) endorses universalism? He is just as fallible in his opinions about that as he would be about hell, no?
It is a dangerous and fallacious approach to say, essentially, “Jesus was correct in all those doctrines of which I approve… but in all the doctrines Jesus taught with which I disagree, on those he was clearly mistaken.” Determining theology according to personal preference is a rather problematic approach.
“Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels… And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Ummm, right…
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
249
Who’s this devil of whom you speak? Let alone all his angels.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
250
There’s nothing erroneous about being fully human, apart from it being intrinsic to the acquisition of knowledge, one’s epistemology, one way and the other. Jesus’ epistemology is the most complex of any human. To err is human. That which is not assumed is not redeemed.
I trust Jesus’ full humanity suffused by His full divinity. The divine is not psychotic.
Bottom line and to wrap up my thoughts… if Jesus could err when speaking about eternal truths, then his (supposed) belief in universalism could well be one of those errors. So appealing to Jesus as an authority on that subject gets you nowhere.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
252
When was it established that Jesus erred on eternal truths? Much more commonly discussed is Jesus erring on natural truths (like germ theory, or the smallest seed, etc).
the Old Testament may have ONE sentence on the idea that “some” humans experience an afterlife. There is nothing in the O.T. about eternal punishment for everyone else.
I’m pretty sure @Daniel_Fisher is saying that if Jesus was simply thought to be in error about so much (even casual stuff), then why would we need to take him seriously about eternal stuff? Daniel wasn’t accepting the premise. He was pointing out a potential problem for others if they were operating from that premise.
Such a challenge may have more traction with me since I’ve already suggested above that Jesus may have speculated wrongly about 2nd coming time tables. And I can certainly provide some answer, but won’t do so here and now since the question wasn’t directed at me. I just kinda butted in here.
@Mervin_Bitikofer’s comment is quite correct… I would hardly claim it is established that he so erred, but that certainly seems to have been Martin’s claim:
Thus if Jesus so often, repeatedly, and so solemnly and seriously spoke of damnation, and such was so central to his teaching, an oft-repeated theme of his parables… this is not a minor or trifling Inaccuracy about inconsequential minutiae. He was repeatedly making grandiose, momentous claims about the actual status of some people after death, claims of which he “taught with authority”… these were hardly couched as speculations. In fact, he claimed in no uncertain terms that he was himself going to be there handing out the decision about each person’s eternal destiny, judging some to “eternal punishment” and others to “eternal life.”
If Jesus was in error there, this is hardly a minor inaccuracy: He would be shown to have aN established habit of claiming grandiose knowledge about eternal truths and verities that he had no basis for so doing.
So if @Klax were in fact correct, that Jesus’ belief in hell or damnation was due to his ignorance, perhaps having unwittingly appropriated a backward, baseless, first-century superstition (or worse, he intentionally fabricated this idea in order to motivate people’s behavior) … then on what basis should I believe anything he said about eternal life? Wouldn’t his belief in an eternal heaven, about his going to prepare a place for us, all be just as baseless and groundless as his belief that there will be a hell that he will be consigning people to?
Very close, but not quite… One correction… personally I don’t think Jesus was inaccurate about small trifling things… especially if we account for obviously colloquial language (smallest of seeds, e.g., …, is that a claim to absolute scientific accuracy or just the way people talk).
But my point was not quite so overarching as that… while I don’t personally believe it, I could grant the logic that Jesus could have had access to great (otherwise inaccessible) truths about eternal life and eternal damnation, and could have been a faithful teacher about such things generally conveying the truth of what had been revealed to him, even if, hypothetically, he made minor errors of history, science, etc. I don’t hold that myself, but I could respect the basic logic of that position.
But that is a radical difference from what Martin seemed to be saying above… that Jesus erred in “ignorance“ in his repeated, consistent, clear, and absolute claims about damnation, not to mention his claim that he himself would be there making the final judgment… if Jesus was in fact mistaken about something like that… I ought to trust nothing he said about eternal life (or anything else for that matter). This is not a minor innocent mistake, the kind of error we have all made… the kind of “to err is human” kind of mistake. He really believed that he would be there, after his angels gathered the people, who would stand before him and receive a final judgment from he himself… If this was an error made in “ignorance”… WHO MAKES THIS KIND OF ERROR??? The only kinds of people I know of that make those kinds of “errors” are typically confined inside mental institutions.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
257
Jesus’ ignorance cannot be questioned as He was fully human and of His culture. He knew what He was qualitatively, that made all the difference. He was fully divine by nature. So He was not in error in any meaningful way by the criteria of His culture, apart from turning it on its head qualitatively of course. His divine nature enabled Him to read people qualitatively and with what appear to be orthogonal views in His mind’s eye, by the Spirit. Nathaniel comes to mind. And the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus declared the Kingdom with no caveats, with no ‘but not yet’. He used the extant tropes of damnation, of hell, of judgement, of paradise; metaphors of kings and their torturers and rich men and landlords and vineyard keepers and fathers of errant sons. All literary allusions. He never spoke an eternal, quantitative, factual, objective truth about the afterlife. Because He knew nothing about it, never having experienced it as a human being. His use of afterlife motifs was crafted to shock people in to changing their ways. He worked divinely, transcendently, yearningly within the confines of His humanity and His culture’s. No mistake. Where the boundary was between what He believed and what He said is irrelevant. Makes no difference. I more than suspect He didn’t believe a word of it. So what? And it is surrounded by white space. What happened to the unforgiving servant?
Ok, fair enough. Then it appears you essentially concur with me so far as to agree that - if what you say is true - we cannot believe, literally, one thing Jesus said about Resurrection to eternal life, paradise, and the rewards that accompany it any more than we believe what he says about hell and damnation?. The idea that he was going to prepare a place for us, that he would be returning with his angels, etc.? All of them are falsehoods, both damnation and paradise? If so, I appreciate the consistency at least.
One quick question for you, if I may, to clarify: Did Jesus, himself, actually believe in the hell (And heaven) he was threatening/promising? Did he consciously believe it, and taught it because he thought it was, in fact, true?
It does make a great deal of difference… after all. It is one thing if someone mistakenly shares a falsehood… this is called an “error.” If someone deliberately shares a falsehood, it is called a “lie.” There is, in my mind, a significant difference between the two.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
259
Metaphors that you know good and well your audience or reader will understand and interpret literally are lies, yes. If I’m filling out a mortgage application and I write, metaphorically, that my annual income is $1,000,000… then yes, that is a lie.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
261
Yeah. Nothing metaphoric about it. So which of Jesus’ metaphors is literal?
