I think we have gone considerably off-topic.
I don’t think so. I think I have refuted your argument using the same character you wanted to use to strengthen it.
Great question that we all have wondered. There were great scientists who believed in God and they were Christian. Some of the greats, were Newton, Galileo Galilei, Maxwell, Kepler, Faraday, Pascal, Lematire, Francis Collins. They did not see science as disproving God. Science does not prove God. If we could prove God where would our faith be? However, there is evidence of a creator. Some of us will call that creator God who before the creation of the world predestined that man would be found holy and blameless in his sight through Jesus Christ.
I see the Bible as telling us what God did and what he promises in the future bothe spiritually and physically and science from a material view as telling us how God did it and when.
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Unfortunately that’s historically been a recipe for ignoring what the text has to say and replacing it with subjective whims. It’s a great way for conforming the message to one’s preferences.
The fact is that the real surprise is that even in the Synoptics Jesus so baldly acts and speaks as though He is GOd that He lasted as long as He did.
That ignores the reality that Paul and the Gospel writers were communicating with and to scores of people who did in fact “know the historical Jesus”, and echoing that those people already knew.
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That might not be a very reassuring response to the OP. Apart from Collins, is the best we can do dead guys from a bygone era of classical physics? I do not question their brilliance, and Galileo’s letter the the Grand Duchess Christina should be required reading for every would be apologist, but the question really concerns the contemporary challenges of such seminal thinkers as Hawking and Weinburg, and recognized goto communicators such Nye, Tyson, Hossenfelder, and Krauss.
Part of the issue is that the outstanding questions in physics have become so fundamental as to press against what was once the domain of metaphysics - the search for a unified theory, the nature of spacetime and information, the resolution of quantum and cosmic scales. If methodological naturalism is to lead to any progress at all, investigators may need to presume upon territory once reserved for philosophy and theology.
All purported proofs for and against God, based on some conclusion from the material universe, are category errors. Nonetheless, the fine tuning of nature is compatible with divine intent, and is widely although not universally acknowledged as a standing problem even among leading scientists.
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In other words, you ignore what the words actually say and replace it with something pleasing to you.
That is a recipe for chaos.
I was trained in taking words for what they say in their context as opposed to “what it means for me”. The latter is a way to ignore an actual message and substitute what one would like to believe.
You missed it: You can have the mindset of Jesus because as the text says He was God but He emptied Himself.
And thus you threw away the text – you threw away the Jesus of the scriptures and chose a different one. You did the very same thing the Adversary did when he decided he was equal with God.
Having your own view is your privilege – just stop pretending that what you are holding to has anything to do with the scriptures.
That’s false. The core was already accepted before the end of the second century, and most of the other writings you refer to were written later than that and were recognized as false when they were offered.
Absolutely – it was an interpretation that didn’t drag in things from outside but emerged from the core.
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The solution is not to reject the rational system, but to embrace the Love it commands/commends.
Most certainly.
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Agree- All truth is God’s truth.
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And in fact the first letter of John teaches it with utmost clarity. 1 John 4:16: “God is love; whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”
But the same letter also teaches, in 1 John 2,22-23: “ who is the liar, if it is not the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father, but whoever confesses the Son has the Father as well.”
Setting love in opposition to truth is a satanic lie. Which doesn’t mean that all of those who do it are bad people or Satan’s disciples, far from It. But it does mean that this error, the error of setting love in opposition to truth, is satanic in nature.
While it’s true that the canon was not established from the very beginning, the earliest writings (those accepted as inspired from the outset ) consistently affirm Christ’s resurrection. Indeed, the earliest creed we possess, found in the First Letter to the Corinthians, as u ah e already documented, already contains the central supernatural claim that was, and still is, the foundation of Christianity: the resurrection of Christ. And that was a creed that Paul himself received.
Unfortunately, claims like this can easily impress those who know little history and already have a negative bias. What amuses me, though, is that some people make these arguments in places where Christians actually know what they are talking about and aren’t easily deceived
I concede that classical theology is ‘correct’ within its own category. It operates within a carefully constructed intellectual framework shaped by philosophical reasoning, doctrinal reflection and the need to articulate faith systematically. Within that framework, its conclusions can be coherent and internally consistent for those who accept its assumptions.
However, there is another category of understanding that arises from lived experience. In this sphere, encountering reality is primarily experiential rather than analytical. It encompasses the interior life, including conscience, compassion, suffering, love and the moments of awareness that people often describe as spiritual or mystical. In this domain, subjectivity cannot be excluded because human beings become aware of meaning, value, and transcendence precisely through subjective experience.
These two categories therefore operate differently. Classical theology seeks conceptual clarity and doctrinal precision, whereas lived experience explores the ways in which ultimate reality is encountered and expressed within the texture of human life. Neither necessarily invalidates the other, but they speak in different registers.
What I am trying to acknowledge is that a theological system may be logically sound within its own conceptual framework while, simultaneously, human experience can disclose dimensions of reality that cannot be fully captured by that framework alone. The intellectual category aims to define and explain, while the experiential category invites recognition, participation and transformation. Both attempt to approach the same mystery, but through different modes of understanding.
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Yes, but Christianity was born out of the lived experience of those who lived with Jesus and witnessed His death and Resurrection. The creed preserved in 1 Corinthians 15 is not the product of abstract speculation, but above all a testimony of lived experience.
Your argument makes Christianity sound like something invented in isolation from reality, when in truth it arose precisely from direct encounter with real events.
So real, indeed, that the very people who witnessed these events were willing to endure lives of extreme hardship, with nothing humanly to gain and everything to lose, in order to bear witness to the good news.
1 Cor 4,19-13: “For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong!You are honored, we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted,we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world—right up to this moment.”
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Rob, I understand the distinction you are drawing between conceptual theology and lived experience, and I can see why that framework makes sense to you. My own position is different. My faith rests on the historical claims Christians have made about what God has done in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, not primarily on mystical experience or on the idea that the world’s religions are different symbolic expressions of the same underlying reality.
I should also say that I have no objection to compassion, nor do I wish to place limits on how compassionate anyone should be. How compassionate a person is, to whom, and how that compassion is expressed is something I see as lying between that person and God. My point has never been to restrict compassion, but simply to say that my faith is grounded in the historical claims about Jesus rather than in a mystical or universalist interpretation of religion.
For what it’s worth, the history of Christian charity suggests that compassion and doctrinal belief have not historically been opposites. Much of the institutional care for the sick and poor—including the development of hospitals—grew directly out of Christian communities acting on what they believed about Christ. This article gives a good overview: From poorhouse to hospital
We begin from different assumptions about the nature of Christian faith, and those assumptions naturally lead us in different directions.
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This makes it sound as though no further lived experience is required. This only makes sense if the most important consideration is scoring a good seat in the next life. But I don’t think transcendence is about later or somewhere else. It is always and only possible in a here and now. I will cast my fate in with those who seek to achieve some heaven here on this earth.
- I should clarify that I don’t view heaven as a feast of pleasure but rather a felt presence of something greater within filled with meaning.
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Why though? Because I’ve never made the argument “no further lived experience is required”. I was simply telling him that what he views as purely abstract theology is not pure abstract theology at all, in fact it’s a testimony of a lived experience .
Why “only”, though? Why this dichotomy? It’s not needed
Luke 17,20-21: “Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”
Well, even now I can still see the same dichotomy I pointed out earlier. ;))
Belief in the final resurrection means that the body itself will also partake in eternal bliss, since human beings were not created as purely spiritual beings (unlike angels). Yet the primary and central source of bliss will be the presence of God, and the ever-deepening capacity to know Him more fully just like we are known by Him.
1 Cor 13,8-13: “Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
P.s: I always appreciate your posts.
The problem with Rob’s argument is that it’s circular. Even though the earliest Christian testimony we possess refers to the lived experience of those who knew and loved Jesus and witnessed His Resurrection, he assumes from the outset that this testimony is not genuine testimony, but merely a theological construction. In other words, his conclusion is already embedded in his premise: that the lived experience attested in 1 Corinthians 15:3–5, the earliest nucleus of the tradition, is not in fact testimony to lived experience at all.
He is absolutely entitled to have this view, but the circularity of his reasoning is there to see.
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P.s: Mark, about the “only”…
I told you that yes, the Kingdom of God is already here in some sense, but i don’t see the reason for a dichotomical view on the subject where the adverb “only” is needed.
“There is a growing consensus in New Testament scholarship that the Kingdom of God is in some sense both present and future.”
— George Eldon Ladd, The Presence of the Future: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974), p. 3.
“If, however, the Kingdom is the reign of God, not merely in the human heart but dynamically active in the person of Jesus and in human history, then it becomes possible to understand how the Kingdom of God can be present and future, inward and outward, spiritual and apocalyptic.”
— George Eldon Ladd again in the same book at page 42.
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- I don’t see the circularity, I see this:
1. Religious traditions develop historically.
2. Scriptures were selected and shaped by communities.
3. Therefore our understanding of Jesus is mediated through tradition and interpretation.
4. He then concludes: Christianity is a historically developed interpretation of religious experience. - That is a historical-critical argument, not a circular one. The historical-critical argument usually follows this pattern:
- Jesus preached a simple message about God and ethics.
- His followers interpreted that message in different ways.
- Over time those interpretations became theology.
- Church authorities eventually selected some writings and rejected others.
- Therefore Christian doctrine reflects historical development, not pure revelation.
- My source tells me that what Rob is saying is not new. It follows a very familiar line of reasoning that emerged in modern biblical scholarship beginning in the 18th–19th centuries.
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Correct, but I would argue that his line of reasoning is a very outdated one when it comes to biblical scholarship. To make an example, his view seems more in line with the pre-third quest biblical scholarship.
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I can’t do this now as I keep my sleep time safe. But my impression has been that Rob keeps building bridges between your positions while you and others respond combatively rather than improving those bridges. I have a letter to finish tomorrow first and I’m my wife’s menial as she recovers from her second knee replacement at 83. (Sure glad I got the only one I’ll need done in my sixties.).
But I’ve been following the conversation a while and would like to answer you better soon. Just don’t expect me to be conversant with scripture or church history. I have a number interests but no room for those.
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