To show it’s “historically false” you quote something that isn’t even relevant to that “statement in the paper”? That statement is an observation about Christians today in Western culture, not an assertion about Luther or anyone else in the past! For all that you claim to follow the common use of language, you totally missed what that paragraph says in plain and common language.
And the other 99.9% of the scriptures? It’s plain that God isn’t interested in the details of its words since He allowed so many variant readings.
Where? I don’t recall any claim in scripture that it the only place God has ever spoken to people; in fact it suggests the opposite – Jesus’ promise to the Apostles that the Spirit would guide them into all truth points to there being more communication coming.
“Only place” does not equal “complete coverage”. There’s a name for the logical error you make here, but I can’t recall it at the moment.
You go on to make the same logical error repeatedly.
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
326
The Christian option does have adverse outcomes. If you have worshiped the wrong God then you will be punished in the afterlife.
This means the atheist choice is just as sound. For all we know the real deity that will judge us in the afterlife purposefully hid itself and will only reward those who didn’t believe in any deities.
Or … at least those are the claimed options. If they aren’t actually true, then that would remove that adverse (after-life) outcome whether or not somebody had believed in it. But what doesn’t get removed is the adverse outcome of believing wrongly about God here and now. Those who have adhered to various “wrathful God” theologies get a headstart on hell both for themselves and others here and now already! One historian recently shared with me a theory that today’s populist attraction to autocrats and power-mongering despots is historically rooted in the Protestant Reformation of all things! Once somebody has trained people that they are worthless and despicably evil beings deserving only torture for all eternity unless they sign on with “the blessed solution” (available from the same people who’ve sold you on your worthlessness of course!) - then after you’ve imbibed this theology, you will crave and cling to the dispensers of said antidote - your one and only ticket out of hell and into bliss. Theologies that train people like this (cut you down till you only see yourself as a pile of crap, with the only solution on offer coming from the same people who can then dangle your only way back to self-worth), you’ve been primed to chase after anyone on whom you fixate or imprint as any kind of a savior figure.
Given this state of affairs, wayward and non-biblical Protestant theologies have now come home to roost in all these pernicious ways in the west - but especially in the U.S. It is a highly visible bad outcome of false and anti-biblical theology!
Few theologies have produced more atheists in the world than theologies like these - and rightly so. Better to worship no god at all than to worship the evil ones we’ve been creating in our own wrathful and violent images.
To borrow one old authors turn of phrase … most would probably lay that case out using “less glaring pigments” … but no matter how much they “soften” it or update the language to try to put some compassionate veneer over the underlying wrath … the product is the same - and not of Christ.
And much worse I’m sure. Anabaptists are already heretics to a great many.
I once read that it took radical Protestant theology to bring about the concept of “the divine right of kings”, though the description of the theology seemed almost Calvinistic.
No kidding.
I remember a Lutheran pastor/priest who stood patiently while some woman downgraded a bunch of teens as “worthless and depraved” and when she ran out of steam and paused to take a breath the pastor smiled and asked, “Depraved? So what? But worthless?! They are worth more than the universe because they were bought with the Blood of the Lamb, the Savior – never call anyone worthless!”
Anyone who emphasizes the depth of sin over the Blood of the Savior undrstands neither sin nor what it means to have a Savior.
The Calvinist insistence that kings and rules were just as subject to obeying God, and ought to be rebuked if they went astray, strongly annoyed royalty who favored the divine right of kings, like Mary Queen of Scots, James VI/I, and Charles I. (It seems odd that James was more hostile to the Presbyterians, who wouldn’t comply with his mother’s demands, than to the Anglicans who executed her.) The main reason that James I wanted a new version of the bible was to get rid of the footnotes in the Geneva Bible that rejected the divine right of kings. Some printers helpfully copied the Geneva footnotes over into their printing of the KJV.
Given that autocrats and despots have been around well before Protestants, and that there tends to be a correlation between Protestantism and less autocratic government, the historical thesis seems rather questionable. During the Reformation, Protestantism was associated with political reform and Catholicism with royal authority, though to a significant extent that merely reflects status quo versus innovation. Politicization has not been good for any religious position. A presbyterian church government, with a balance between local and larger groups, is less conducive to autocracy than either the episcopal system with central authority dominant or the congregationalist approach with autonomous congregations potentially becoming individual authoritarian systems.
Recognizing that all of us are sinners, deserving punishment but having the offer of mercy, is an egalitarian principle. The idea that we are all basically good is equally egalitarian, but not very realistic. Autocracy claims that some are better than others. Prosperity theology promotes such inegalitarianism, as does claiming that we are saved by good works, or that only some can get the inside knowledge to be the really spiritual. However, Christianity does not promote a sameness the way that Marxism claims to, but rather calls us to value the diverse gifts of each individual.
There seems a danger here in both generalisation and box making.Claimig all are anything isust black & white theology. The point being that some seem to claim all are corrupt, which ignores any good in the world, ut i have never claimed the ooposite. Clearly there is evil and corruption in the world but it tends to grab attention to itself whereas much goof goes unnoticed and unappreciated.
One has to ask the quetion whether God ever intended all to be righteous? He could easily have done so by decree or just programing. The fact that He didn’t do either should point to an error in those trying to do it for Him.
The converse of all being unrighteous is basically claiming that God mucked up.
Logic would dictate some sort of middle balance, but perhaps Scripture is not seen as logical to some, just dogmatic.
That wouldn’t be righteousness any better than the righteousness of a river or eclipse.
That’s incredibly shortsighted. C. S. Lewis had something to say about this; I vaguely recall it having something to do with the idea that it’s only possible to achieve the highest good if the deepest evil is not allowed, and that the human race is connected on a level more basic than the material.
You are claiming that God made it so that only He could cure or even prevent sin, and that humans are not only susceptable but forced, by their nature, to sin. That shows that God mucked up in our make up. It is self defeating. God has to have made us neutral, otherwise the bias is cruel nd evil. We have to be able to choose. We cannot be forced to sin. It would makw life meaningless, and Christ becomes the virus killer for a virus God made.
Now you are lying – I cite the scriptures, and you dismiss then as someone’s opinions or because they’re “Jewish” or some other subjective opinion. There’s no point sharing the scriptures with someone who feels authorized to pass judgment on them.
In theology, as in science, we have to rely on the data. How I think things should be is unlikely to precisely line up with how things really are.
Why humans are corrupt is addressed in Genesis 3 and Romans, for example. But one major reason why theology has to be so complicated is that the Bible is written almost exclusively as occasional rather than systematic theology. In other words, the Bible deals with assorted issues as they come up, rather than setting out an academic treatise explaining each area of theology point by point. Even there, it is not a conventional exposition of occasional theology, but rather it relies primarily on illustrating God’s relationship to humanity through narratives. Such stories are much easier to relate to and communicate much more readily to almost anyone versus a volume on systematic theology. But they also tend to require more interpretive work by the reader. The account in Genesis 3 fairly clearly depicts humans choosing to reject God’s authority and bringing problems on not just themselves, but wider humanity. But just how it fits into chronological history is a challenge, as are many details.
The Bible consistently affirms that humans are corrupt, in need of the salvation which God makes available. What physical processes were involved in our getting in trouble or how all of us come to have these problems aren’t topics particularly addressed in the Bible.
That is so true! Exegetical theologians and systematicians don’t get along well for that very reason; systematics requires extrapolations to bridge concepts and fill in gaps.
I’ve never been much of a systematician – the Creed is enough systematics for me generally.
This is why some scholars say to read the Bible as you would a novel: it’s primarily story and has to be read as story.
It’s a challenge to us – but an ancient Israelite would ask, “Fit it into chronological history?? Why??”
Yes – they had a different concept of what makes something true.
I suspect theology is complicated because it attempts to not only make what is beyond the remit of language comprehensible but also make it satisfying and reassuring as well.