"... for the conviction that the cause of Jesus goes on, or a metaphor for the fact that his followers, even after his horrific death, felt forgiven by their Lord. But this is utterly incommensurate with the sheer excitement on display in the Resurrection narratives and in the preaching of the first Christians. Can one really imagine St. Paul tearing into Corinth and breathlessly proclaiming that the righteous cause of a crucified criminal endures? Can one credibly hold that the apostles of Jesus went careering around the Mediterranean and to their deaths with the message that they felt forgiven? Another strategy of domestication, employed by thinkers from the 19th century to today, is to reduce the Resurrection of Jesus to a myth or an archetype. There are numberless stories of dying and rising gods in the mythologies of the world, and the narrative of Jesus' death and resurrection can look like just one more iteration of the pattern. Like those of Dionysus, Osiris, Adonis and Persephone, the 'resurrection' of Jesus is, on this reading, a symbolic evocation of the cycle of nature. In a Jungian psychological framework, the story of Jesus dying and coming back to life is an instance of the classic hero's journey from order through chaos to greater order.... Declaring a man's sins forgiven, referring to himself as greater than the Temple, claiming lordship over the Sabbath and authority over the Torah, insisting that his followers love him more than their mothers and fathers, more than their very lives, Jesus assumed a divine prerogative. And it was precisely this apparently blasphemous pretension that led so many of his contemporaries to oppose him. After his awful death on an instrument of torture, even his closest followers became convinced that he must have been delusional and misguided. But when his band of Apostles saw him alive again after his death, they came to believe that he is who he said he was...."
From "Recovering the Strangeness of Easter/For Christians, the holiday is about recapturing the surprise and excitement that the Resurrection brought to Jesus' first followers" by Bishop Robert Barron (Wall Street Journal).
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Without the resurrection, there’s no certainty of Jesus’ divine status. Without Jesus’ divine status, there is no Christianity. What kind of corrupted theologians argued the resurrection was symbolic? Absent this, who would even bother being a theologian?
We broke the Year of Silence last night at Vigil Mass. We sang hymns.
How do we forgive our Democratic friends for the violence, fraud, lying and imprisonment they inflicted on us over the past year?
Maybe the evil has passed over. Maybe we can be resurrected.
First we have to throw off the yoke of this illegitimate government.
It's amazing how early in the history of the Christian church the idea of Jesus as not just the Messiah, but that Jesus is God is introduced. Modern Biblical scholarship holds that most of the Pauline Epistles are earlier redacted texts than the Gospels. In Paul, e.g. Philippians 2:9-11, you find texts such as this:
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:
That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
That a text like this, which explicitly claims Jesus to be Yahweh ("a name which is above every name") could be written within 30-40 years of the death of Jesus is amazing. It points to there being some sort of incipient binitarian if not trinitarian strains of thought in 1C CE Judaism, which are definitely there (e.g Philo of Alexandria), and which provided a framework for the early Church to understand the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Hallelujah. He is risen. He is risen indeed!
The bare cross is the testament to the Risen Christ, explaining why the symbol of the bare cross is so powerful. Christ defeated death.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ provides us with the gift of freedom. Freedom from fear of death, freedom from fear itself. It also frees us from the anxiety that we are the only source to our salvation. Christ turned the cross, a Roman symbol of fear and torture into a symbols of hope and love. The greatest turnabout in all history.
This is the most important Easter of my life as freedom for all people around the world is under satanic, totalitarian threat. Good Friday Services shut down by police in London, a Pastor in Calgary chases police out of his church telling them “the gestapo is not welcome here”. Perhaps head-counts of parishioners are still being taken in Madison, WI. Our nation is suffering due to the lefts turn toward godlessness.
The one entity to unite the black and white communities is Christianity and Jesus Christ. Jesus unites our souls; the content of our characters. It’s why the left vilifies and tries to constantly destroy it. It is why they put up a spit in your face “science tree” at the Wisconsin State Capitol, and let the Satanic Temple have their display. Jesus unites. Satan and identity politics divides.
Those that supported our dissent into this totalitarian state, including Pope Francis and Robert Barron, will be forgiven when they finally repent their false prophecy. Like the Jesuits, Barron also fell victim to the woke. A few years ago he looked to be the next Bishop Fulton Sheen. Since going to California he’s lost that path. Perhaps the Easter he will find his way back. I hope so. I used to be a huge fan of his. God bless him.
Resurrection
"Jesus gave up his weekend for your sins."
Bishop Robert Barron is one of the better lights in the grouping known as the American RCC Bishops.
St. Paul was basically a Democrat totalitarian persecuting Christians and doing anything he could to shut down the message of Christ, until God intervened and turned this flawed man into his greatest Apostle. Paul then went and spread the word to Rome, and paid for it with his head.
I wonder who God will choose to rise out of the depths of our modern totalitarian state to challenge the godless woke? For this weekend, and his comments last night, I think it might be Charles Barkley. He nailed it. A good man, speaking well.
Actually, it's about colored eggs.
Jesus challenged the Pharisees and the Sadducees to.allow the “unclean” into The Temple. He walked among the lepers. Today, Robert Barron wears a mask while performing the socially distant Mass. Barron, and the Catholic Church have knelt before the state; something Jesus Christ never did.
God’s Temples are meant for all, and head-counts by local authorities is a sin. Sending police in to shut down black church services on Chicago’s south side was Roman. Forced limitations on singing praise is blasphemy. Vaccine passports to participate in commerce are the Mark of the Beast.
Lord have Mercy. Christ have Mercy.
Great comments, Gusty Winds.
I would add that encouraging parishioners to worship the idol of self-preservation is a serious sin. Some degree of prudence is fine in that it does not interfere with the vital activities of the church, but those vital activities must continue with a recognition that a life of faith on its most elementary level means continuing to do the things we’ve been asked to do personally and in community while wasting zero time worrying about things we do not control (such as when we are called home).
Modern day martyrs such as Bonhoeffer and Eric Liddell are good examples of this.
Sadly, the beautiful Gesu Cathedral on the Marquette Campus in Milwaukee will be quite empty today. The Jesuits and Marquette liberals have ruined it. You actually have to register beforehand to attended the Mass, of course wear a mask, and remain socially distant even if from the same household. It’s just like the Pharisees and Sadducees requires. Only the clean can enter. I wish Robert Barron would have the guts to speak out against this. Fulton Sheen would openly challenges it. I guess the Holy Water no longer cleanses you on Wisconsin Ave.
From the Gesu website regarding Easter Mass.
Masses are at 8am and 11am.
Due to our limited seating capacity and social distancing requirements, you must reserve your place at Mass according to the guidelines avaiable here.
The 11am Mass will be streamed live to Facebook and posted to YouTube for viewing anytime. This will continue indefinitely.
I'm providing a link to a lecture concerning the evidence of Jesus' resurrection that even skeptics believe. It is pretty long, an hour and twenty minutes, but some might find it of interest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay_Db4RwZ_M
Wishing all of my Christian friends and neighbors a beautiful Easter Sunday.
All the nations, all the governments, and all the political factions are dust under the feet of Jesus.
The Easter story is where I left Sunday School. It made no sense and makes no sense now. It's a narrative construction failure. Too many risings and descendings.
Jean Genet resonates for that reason
"So she ran back until she came to Simon Peter and the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them: They have taken our Lord from the tomb, and we do not know where they have put him. So Peter and the other disciple came out, and went the tomb. The two ran together, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and reached the tomb first, and bent down and looked in and saw the bands lying there, but did ot go inside. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and he went into the tomb; and he saw the bands lying there, and the napkin, which had been on his head lying not with the bands but away from them and folded." You see how he writes in his Funeral Rities and the remains: with the assiduous gestures of a philologist, and archeologist, a mythologist bent on dispersing, destroying, crossing out whatever he finds or reconstitutes. The most critical operation. But his assiduousness is strange, as if distracted from itself. He always seems in fact to be assiduous about something else, detached from what he does. He tells you another story, you follow the narrative attentively, he show you this or that with a finger, and yet this hanging counterpart fucks you, his eyes elsewhere. He thus fully comes, as in his paradigm, and thinks there "I recognize a recurrence of my childhood love of tunnels. I bugger the world."
I will point this out as an agnostic.
The Christians have a much more believable hypothesis than the secular Atheists have. The New Testament is very compelling. Not much of a fan of the Old Testament though.
The Atheists have shit. Their religion is more empty than Islam is. Their morality is on the same level too for large part.
I understand that being agnostic is the worst. It sucks.
rhhardin, you do realize that was just a word salad? Not an actual critique? I'm adding you to my prayer list.
james said...
All the nations, all the governments, and all the political factions are dust under the feet of Jesus.
Out of all of the possibilities I hope this is the truth.
I might end up in the fire for eternity but at least some people will be good in the end.
But the assertion of Jesus' divinity, and of the resurrection, are barriers to faith in a scientific age.
As opposed to the miracles in the Jewish Testament?
Being Jewish, I'm grateful to be surrounded, at least here in North Carolina, by Christians rather than pagans. But the assertion of Jesus' divinity, and of the resurrection, are barriers to faith in a scientific age.
Judaism has no such barriers. You get the same God, a similar relationship to Him, and you can be as rational as you like. And you get the guidance of the Torah, which is a diary kept by a people who posited God and acted as they felt necessary to remain faithful to Him. The diary shows what happens when you do that - mostly bad things, as the surrounding pagans, not similarly constrained, follow power-based relations and do as they will do.
Christianity is indeed more inspiring, and I hope it flourishes, but it faces a rocky road.
rhhardin said...
The Easter story is where I left Sunday School. It made no sense and makes no sense now. It's a narrative construction failure. Too many risings and descendings.
You left at the wrong time. That is when your questions should have really kicked in. There is only one rising. The story is very simple to understand once you read it as one historical event through the eyes of hundreds of people.
Even a non-believer sees this.
And that is the one question I have about the whole thing. It is all words by people, humans, describing something.
The mistake that was made was Jesus coming down for Doubting Thomas. I understand he is busy. But it is a bit of a precedent that was set. And no matter what humans say down here on earth I just don't believe them much.
I see Christians are happier and better adjusted than those of us who don't have belief. Most non-Christians act like animals out of tribal/pre-enlightenment thinking patterns. Christians(and Jews) are the only people that have risen out of the tribalist muck of the River of History. It may be enough some day to compare Christians and non-Christians in that way.
It would be a massive relief to know. But words from people will never be enough.
I think Christianity is like to prosper in the future.
Protestantism is dying, and for good reason. Over the long history of the Reformation, the real goal was separation of church and state. This has now been accomplished in most of the West.
But, the Protestant theology of protesting, that is of creating schism, has become an addictive habit. Gay marriage, and gay and female clergy have emptied out the Protestant churches. The families walked out. Still, the mainline Protestants keep digging deeper into cult weirdness and schism. They won’t stop until the last parishioner walks out the door.
Time to reunite Christianity within the Catholic Church. The demands of the Reformation have been mostly met. This, I think, is the future.
I will point out that the story of Buddha is compelling as well. But that is a tangent to the main topic so I will just let it sit.
Can one really imagine St. Paul tearing into Corinth and breathlessly proclaiming that the righteous cause of a crucified criminal endures?
That's exactly why the Democrats and the establishment minions wanted to impeach and now cancel Trump.
Still waiting for the tag: Trump is like Jesus.
For the second Easter in a row Christians in Western Culture are not allowed to gather in mass to celebrate Christ’s victory over death, because our secular leaders have made us fear death. Robert Barron and Pope Francis support all of this. Even large family gatherings in some Blue States are still “illegal”, and Christians are encouraged to turn in other Christians gathering. It’s just like in Ancient Rome when the Disciples and early Christians had to gather in secret and hide. The modern left has brought us full circle. This history is repeating itself. And some still doubt the authenticity of Jesus Christ, and Satan’s influence on modern America.
Not very Easter of me, but perhaps MLB can have ANTIFA sacrifice a few Christians at this year’s All-Star game for the 7th inning stretch (wherever the decide to move it). Perhaps Candlestick Perk in SF would be a good venue. Milwaukee is lobbying hard for the game. Although the cardboard cutout fans will make it a little dull, they’re going to need something to increase viewership. Keith Olbermann will boycott The Masters, but I’d bet he’d volunteer to do color commentary for that event.
Lord have Mercy. Christ have Mercy.
It's funny how some people believe fake news was invented only recently and by the other side.
Shouting Thomas said...
I think Christianity is like to prosper in the future.
Protestantism is dying, and for good reason. Over the long history of the Reformation, the real goal was separation of church and state. This has now been accomplished in most of the West.
Now this is a proper discussion. I think you are wrong.
But, the Protestant theology of protesting, that is of creating schism, has become an addictive habit. Gay marriage, and gay and female clergy have emptied out the Protestant churches. The families walked out. Still, the mainline Protestants keep digging deeper into cult weirdness and schism. They won’t stop until the last parishioner walks out the door.
This is why it will succeed where Catholicism will fail. Everyone will find the answers they are looking for. The vast majority of protestant churches out there are good solid houses of faith. I have been to many of them.
Only the churches trying to bring down the Protestant edifice make it into the news. They are very few in number. You need to ask yourself why you are buying into this propaganda.
Time to reunite Christianity within the Catholic Church. The demands of the Reformation have been mostly met. This, I think, is the future.
The Catholic Church is the cult. There is no way that Jesus would have approved of the creation of Saints and demi-gods and idols.
More importantly the centralization of power within one person and one institution has obvious shortcomings, given the current Pope, that any good Catholic should realize make the entire edifice untenable.
This is the re-emergence of the Centralized vs. Decentralized paradigm that constantly pops up.
Just like in economies and education providers and health care and pretty much every other situation decentralized is better.
Shouting Thomas said...Time to reunite Christianity within the Catholic Church
Not while Pope Francis, a false prophet, is in charge, And I can’t tell the difference between a Jesuit and a Unitarian. At the moment the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church seems to have found the porridge that’s just right.
Although, their is something strange I admire about those crazy Southern Baptists that dance with snakes. That’s some good faith right there. Bet they don’t wear masks at church either.
I vote Christians unite in the Black Baptist Churches, but not Obama kind. The kind that gathered in Wal-Mart to sing praise because the gov’t closed their church. I admire those people. Bring the races together to worship. Get white people to take a step toward black Christian Culture. Plus...the music is a heck of a lot better. I miss live music.
I bailed out of Sunday School because it was a badly constructed story, storywise. Genet notices something that resonates in the style of telling, the crossing out of everything said. He has his own homoerotic take but the crossing out is real.
There are well constructed stories, say by Martin Luther, in the lyrics to Bach's Christmas Oratorio
Er ist auf Erden kommen arm,
Daß er unser sich erbarm,
Und in dem Himmel mache reich,
Und seinen lieben Engeln gleich.
He came to earth poor,
So that He might have sympathy for us,
And make us rich in heaven,
and like His dear angels.
the excellent construction being how beautifully it rhymes in German (not in English!)
Recitative between chorus lines, making the rhymes distant and only remembered.
youtube
Achilles
"... words from people will never be enough."
Very true. Ask for faith. Or, to put it another way, ask to know your true God-given mission on earth and to have the strength to carry it out.
Viva Christo Rey.
Easter morning is the most symbolic time of year for Christians, when new hope is born, and in that spirit here is Cat Stevens “Morning Has Broken” https://youtu.be/e0TInLOJuUM
These days we need hope more than ever. The last year has been a real struggle for me and countless others but every morning, with the new day ahead, a new start, filled with options and choices, feels like a rebirth. And most especially Easter morning.
Our church is open today, with reduced numbers of course, and we will be there. I look forward to the joyous hymns and celebration. Happy Easter!
rhhardin said...
I bailed out of Sunday School because it was a badly constructed story, storywise.
One thing I am not looking for in all of this is a good story.
Jeff said...
"Actually, it's about colored eggs."
And chocolate. Lots of chocolate.
Which, along with beer, is proof of Gods love for us.
I think these other beliefs are attractive because believing in them is so much easier than being a Christian. Charity is hard.
He is risen!
Without Easter, Christianity is nothing.
That’s why they want to water it down.
James @ 6:54:
Then we Christians need to start acting like that.
One thing is for certain. On Monday, Americans and our corrupt secular leaders will be back to throwing stones. Boulders in fact.
BTW...Althouse...is Planned Parenthood open for abortions today, or should I ask a Jesuit? There...I started early.
1. As liberal as the Jesuits are, I never heard such foolishness from them in denying the Resurrection.
2. The older Jesuits at Creighton were imprisoned for nearly a year at their residence.
Gusty Winds
Heard a discussion on Henry Jaffa at the Power Line podcast that explained that Christianity was essential to our Revolution and the creation of our democratic republic. Only a Christian country could believe in the assertion that all men are created equal even if they have different religions and wealth. I’m not doing the discussion justice, but that’s the core.
I now understand why China will never have democracy; a tiny Christian population. The Jesuits failure in China was really a disaster.
GW
You are way too hard on the Jesuits.
The jesuits produced the current anti pope. There’s no “too soft” to be on them.
Here in Omaha there is a Catholic parish that has a huge congregation from all over the city. The draw? Great music by mostly Black musicians. The liberal white people love it! Senator Bob Kerry used to attend. I went once and it really is great.
The good thing is that they support a thriving elementary school that is 100% minorities.
"But the assertion of Jesus' divinity, and of the resurrection, are barriers to faith in a scientific age."
This is what Rudolph Bultmann argued. And he is one key person who argued the symbolic nature of resurrection.
It's not a bad argument but misses the key point that the resurrection is an barrier in any age. Even the first century! Unless it happened. That's the crazy part about it. It's absurd, but absurd things do happen and if it happened it changes everything. It changed Saul of Tarsus and led a significant amount of men and women to live in light of its truth even being to die rather than recant. Something potent happened. If we, even in a scientific age, are open to the miraculous it makes a good explanation. And in our age of advanced science we know the world isn't as mechanical as we thought.
I also know that Judaism without miracles is, made acceptable for a presumably scientific age, isn't much better. What hope have we in a constrained God, what does Passover become but a fairytale?
The amazing thing about the resurrection is there are really good reasons to believe in it if we don't rule out such things out if hand. There are also really good reasons not to believe in it. We are thrown back to taking a risk either way, and risk is always faith mixes with trust one way or another. Commit or don't. The resurrection can't be a half-assed belief. It either changes everything if it happened or nothing. Half-assed Christians who say they believe it but don't live out the implications in the power of the Spirit are the worst, denying Christ in their lives while praising Christ with their lips distorting how Jesus is experienced and tarnishing the testimony through out history.
Another time for your bitching and moaning Gusty. All your raging against Bishop Barron and others about losing their way and you dragging politics into all this on this day itself is unfaithful to Easter.
For the second Easter in a row Christians in Western Culture are not allowed to gather in mass to celebrate Christ’s victory over death
And yet, here YOU are inviting others to similarly not celebrate Christ's victory over death so that you can go on your rant.
It's not just that Jesus arose from the dead; it's that He lives with us:
Everybody falls sometimes
Gotta find the strength to rise
From the ashes and make a new beginning
Anyone can feel the ache
You think it's more than you can take
But you're stronger, stronger than you know
Don't you give up now
The sun will soon be shining
You gotta face the clouds
To find the silver lining
I've seen dreams that move the mountains
Hope that doesn't ever end
Even when the sky is falling
I've seen miracles just happen
Silent prayers get answered
Broken hearts become brand new
That's what faith can do
It doesn't matter what you've heard
Impossible is not a word
It's just a reason for someone not to try
Everybody's scared to death
When they decide to take that step
Out on the water
It'll be all right
Life is so much more
Than what your eyes are seeing
You will find your way
If you keep believing
{chorus}
Overcome the odds
You do have a chance
When the world says you can't
It'll tell you that you can!
(chorus)
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: William Scott Davis / Scott A Krippaehne
What Faith Can Do lyrics © Life Of Rhyme Music Publishing, Pirk Music, Word Music, Llc
The Jesuits failure in China was really a disaster.
>>
East is East and all that.
The Atheists have shit. Their religion is more empty than Islam is. Their morality is on the same level too for large part.“
“The atheists” do not have a religion at all, but a disbelief in a god. Morally, they run the gamut from good to bad, as is absolutely true as well of believers.
”All the nations, all the governments, and all the political factions are dust under the feet of Jesus.“
Under the feet of time.
Per Achilles: The New Testament is very compelling. Not much of a fan of the Old Testament though.
The NT is the fulfillment of the OT. Most of Jesus' narrative has OT roots. It's easy to want to reject the God of the OT but he remains a God of wrath as well as love. The difference is His Son, who is our salvation from that wrath.
"I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by Me".
Listening to Bach’s Easter Oratorio. Much art, much great music would not exist if Christ had not risen.
I dislike the attempts to make Christ & Christianity subject to rational explanation. If we could understand the crucified Christ and the Resurrection, somehow work it into our naturalistic and historical world view, it couldn't be true.
“Only a Christian country could believe in the assertion that all men are created equal even if they have different religions and wealth.”
And my dad is smarter than your dad!
Jesus was seen by many more people than just the disciples. Know your Bible!!!
1 Corinthians 15:6-7.
If we're going to have another atheism versus believers argument about whether or not atheism is a religion, can the participants please start by agreeing to a definition of "religion?" My experience is that these debates are useless precisely because both sides are operating on different assumptions about what that means.
Prominent theologians? What are they? Modern Sadducees or Pharisees? Our leaders in Washington DC? True leaders with vision?
The key is not scholarship or power or money. The key is humility, a striving for purity, and a soft and willing heart. Otherwise you won’t feel the truth when you hear it.
No, Paul described it perfectly:
My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God. Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.
The tomb is empty. Praise be!
Easter may seem strange, but Christians also believe that the man who was resurrected on that morning was born of a virgin.
Much like the pharisees and saduccees of old, it took 400 years totally misunderstand the message.
Bishop Barron: Declaring a man's sins forgiven, referring to himself as greater than the Temple, claiming lordship over the Sabbath and authority over the Torah, insisting that his followers love him more than their mothers and fathers, more than their very lives, Jesus assumed a divine prerogative. And it was precisely this apparently blasphemous pretension that led so many of his contemporaries to oppose him.
It has always seemed to me to be of the utmost significance that Paul (after whom I am named—there are no other Pauls in my family tree) wrote that to preach Christ crucified was understood to be madness at the time—"a stumbling block to the Jews" (of which Paul was one) "and folly to the Gentiles" (the Greeks, who were busy coming up with nice logical conundrums like Epimenides' paradox, which Paul addresses in his epistle to Titus.
The central claim of Christianity, which we observe today, not only makes no sense today, it made no sense to those who claimed to witness it at the time, nor to those who were not eyewitnesses but were impelled to belief after, like Paul.
I studied physics and computer science, and make my living by literally waving my hands at clumps of highly-refined beach sand, which thereupon does more-or-less what I tell it to do (actually, it does exactly what I tell it to do, which, per "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," is actually the problem). I live at the intersection of "science!" and "magic!" every day of my life. But the biggest wonder of all, and it's not a close race, is that every evil thought/word/deed I have ever committed, or ever will commit, has already been wiped clean by this literally senseless act of God.
Robert Cook said...
The Atheists have shit. Their religion is more empty than Islam is. Their morality is on the same level too for large part.“
“The atheists” do not have a religion at all, but a disbelief in a god. Morally, they run the gamut from good to bad, as is absolutely true as well of believers.
A disbelief is a belief.
Definitional.
The problem with atheists morally is they believe they are rational when they are not. And more than that they believe they are the lone source of rational thought. They believe this gives them license to act in ways that are reprehensible. There is a reason atheists killed so many millions of people in the 20th century and committed the greatest atrocities in history.
Marxism and Atheism go hand in hand and at this point are fundamentally evil. Any atheist of moral character would label themselves an agnostic.
Happy Easter to believer and non believer.
I’m sorry but the sentence structure “...came to believe that he is who he said he was...” makes me think of Denny Green talking about the Bears. Christ forgive me, but for a moment I have this vision of Jesus doing a post- resurrection interview and telling his disciples in no uncertain times that they can go crown Pilates ass, but that’s not why he took the field.
Interesting how the sideline spectacles of a sport (football) - which will likely fade in time before belief in Christianity - can seep into your mind when trying to think of how that first Easter went 2000 years ago.
religion - definition
From R H Webster's unabridged - the one you can bludgeon someone unconscious with.
Page 1628, column 2:
religion
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affirs.
2.a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.
other definitions less relevant follow those
Mr Wibble: If we're going to have another atheism versus believers argument about whether or not atheism is a religion, can the participants please start by agreeing to a definition of "religion?" My experience is that these debates are useless precisely because both sides are operating on different assumptions about what that means.
"If 'religion' is a system of thought requiring belief in unprovable propositions, then, thanks to Gödel, we know mathematics is the only religion that can prove it is one." — John Barlow
Jesus had been preaching the same message for 3 years, so any expectations his followers had was their problem
John BARROW, darn it! Availability error.
Even if the literal resurrection story falls out of favor, I like what C. S. Lewis has the tempting devil say:
“The use of fashions in thought is to distract men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is in the least danger, and fix its approval on the virtue that is nearest the vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running around with fire extinguishers whenever there’s a flood; and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gone under.”
CS Lewis | The Screwtape Letters
temujin, your post here is, as always, excellent, elegant and appreciated. G*d Bless.
i have wrestled all my life (ok, since 11 or 12) with the "facts" of Christianity versus Reality and versus other ways of pursuing the "Most High Radiant I Am". No matter how baffling or quaint, I cannot rid myself of a relationship that exists in my heart.
I have come to rest in the fact that my relationship to Most High g*d has been embodied in me by evolution: My very body carries the imprint of a lineage that has been profoundly protestant christian for 600 years, and generally christian another 600. That means that the day-by-day structures of mind and temperament of my ancestors surely affected their genetics and those structures are deeply marked in me.
I am grateful to allow the great, demanding but compassionate survival success of theirs to have its way in me.
He is Risen. Let it Be.
Big O's Meanings Dictionary said...
religion
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
2.a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion
; the Atheist religion.
Hard to come up with a more succinct and pertinent example.
cf: He is Risen. Let it Be.
It has occurred to me more than once that, as much as I value my reason, in spiritual matters all it is good for is finding excuses to reject gifts because it can't "make sense" of them. But this perspective is anti-human, nevermind Antichrist.
"can the participants please start by agreeing to a definition of "religion?"
When I teach a class on world religions, I ask students (graduate level mind you) at the beginning of the quarter to define religion. Lots of ready answers. And I ask again at the end of the quarter. A lot of uncertain stares. Religion is hard to define because actual labeled religion s don't fit into a neat, tidy package. In the West it is usually meant to apply to belief in God or gods, but thatsnannartow view. I define religion as an orienting conception of reality that helps us navigate human meaning and purpose.
Atheism as a whole isn't this, but everyone has something that fills this role, even atheists. There's just doesn't have a divinity.
Cmon man. It’s a marketing tool. Religion was invented so the priests didn’t have to go prune the grapes or pick the peaches. And some of them get altar boys. Or the girls in the choirs.
Religion is a poeticization of ethics.
"But the assertion of Jesus' divinity, and of the resurrection, are barriers to faith in a scientific age."
Claims of any sort of deity which is supernatural---literally, outside of the natural world---will not be accepted by those who think that the material natural world is all that there is and all that there ever could be. Ok, I get that, and it was my world view until I was in my thirties and I still struggle with faith today. I thank G-d for letting us know that's Ok too: "I believe, Lord. Help thou my unbelief."
What I don't understand is the idea---for those who do believe in a supernatural Creator--- that a literal, physical and spiritual resurrection of Jesus is just too far-fetched to believe. A G-d who created a universe from nothing; who breathed life into dust to create human beings, can certainly arrange for Jesus to rise. You can argue with G-d, but I don't think you can tell Him what the limits of His power are, lol.
atheism - definition
From the same bludgeon.
Page 130, column 2:
1. the doctrine or belief that there is no god.
2. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.
No more definitions.
Definitions are numbered merely to indicate their frequency of use, no more. So, an atheist who subscribes to the first definition is practicing dogma, one subscribing to the second is not. The first could be considered by others as religious, the second not.
It is amazing how the commenters here, both Christian and not, can befoul the joy that is the resurrection of Jesus and the reuniting of God with his sinful world. To all those of good faith, and to all those seeking answers rather than arguments, I send you the Good News of Jesus' resurrection. Happy Easter!
Someone (an atheist, obviously) suggested that Jesus was mistakenly thought to have deceased, and, after being seen alive for a few days, died of his wounds. Modern cases of people who erroneously "died" have been recorded.
Robert Cook said...
["The Atheists have shit. Their religion is more empty than Islam is. Their morality is on the same level too for large part."]
“The atheists” do not have a religion at all, but a disbelief in a god. Morally, they run the gamut from good to bad, as is absolutely true as well of believers."
It's been my experience that many atheists, but not all, have accepted the Almighty State as their lord and savior.
Gotta serve somebody.
The atheist has only two options. 1. He can believe the universe (or that which existed before the Big Bang, whatever that was) has always existed. 2. Or he can believe the universe (or its predecessor)simply sprung into existence out of absolute nothingness.
If he believes in the first, he is relying on the concept of infinity, a fundamental notion that he shares with those who believe in God. On the other hand, if he believes in the second, he bases his belief on the notion of magic, a prehistoric belief that goes back tens of thousands of years ago.
New York Magazine had a section by Mary Ann Madden with various contest questions for readers to send in, one being single letter typos that change meanings amusingly. My favorite was
Easter Airlines
the wings of rabbit
(airline tagline was wings of man)
Paul described thisworld in broadstrokes in romans 1
"Don't know." - definition
A perfectly valid option to many questions.
This option is frequently ignored by posers of (or respondents to) questions as a member of the option set.
Interestingly, this is just as frequently the correct answer to those questions.
example:
How did the universe come into being?
1. "The Big Bang."
2. "God dunnit."
3. "Don't know."
Gnostics, which most Americans are, believe that they were present at the creation of the universe.
Well thats patently silly, theylittle and areconfident about alot
Thanks for linking to this! Robert Barron is a gem.
The West has on the whole benefitted from the division of religion into sects and continents into nations. Religious or political unity seems attractive at first but comes at the cost of dynamism and innovation.
Of course, the Resurrection is symbolic. The question is, is it only symbolic or did it really happen. The answer is that it is a mystery, one of many in religion. If you believe that it happened, you are a Christian. But you have a hard time saying that it happened as a proven historical or scientific fact. It is a matter of faith.
If you don't disbelieve all claims of miracles as a matter of course, I don't think it's a great stumbling block to believe that Christ rose from the dead or turned water into wine or multiplied the loaves and fishes (or that God sent plagues to Egypt, drowned Pharaoah's army and gave Moses the ten commandments). The bigger stumbling block is believing that life after death (or eventual resurrection from the dead) is available to us now (or at some point in the future).
Atheism has no logical basis. You may not be able to prove the existence of any god, but you certainly can not preclude the possibility of one. They very fact that you can conceive of something like god allows for its existence.
One of my strangest experiences was celebrating Easter in Jerusalem in mid-eighties. I was staying at Hebrew U in West Bank. So had the experience of walking home after midnight mass on completely deserted road back, and being stopped by a heavily armed patrol wondering what the hell I was doing walking at that hour. Then walking the streets of the Old City on what was just a regular, bustling weekday for the masses of Jews and Muslims making up 98 per cent of the population.
Atheism basically means going about living one's life as if there is no God. By that definition it has long struck me that the West is teeming with atheists.
"A disbelief is a belief."
A disbelief in god may be stated as a belief that there is no god, but this is insufficient, in itself, to be considered a religion.
conception - definition
The capacity, function, or process of forming or understanding ideas or abstractions or their symbols.
Many people confuse conception with reality.
example:
The very fact that you can conceive of something like god allows for its existence.
counter example:
The concept that there are no gods.
"The problem with atheists morally is they believe they are rational when they are not. And more than that they believe they are the lone source of rational thought. They believe this gives them license to act in ways that are reprehensible. There is a reason atheists killed so many millions of people in the 20th century and committed the greatest atrocities in history."
Everyone believes they are rational. Many millions of people have been killed throughout history by others who believed in god, and often their killings were carried out as an expression of their belief in god. No group of people--believers or nonbelievers--have a monopoly on mass murder.
"Marxism and Atheism go hand in hand and at this point are fundamentally evil. Any atheist of moral character would label themselves an agnostic."
Why do Marxism and atheism go hand in hand? Why are either "fundamentally evil?" If the mass murders committed by purported Communists marks communism as evil, so does the mass murders committed by capitalists mark capitalism as fundamentally evil.
Atheists with moral character--which probably describes many or most atheists--have no obligation to call themselves agnostic.
With regard to pagan resurrection stories, pagans were not obligated to profess belief in any particular myths. There generally was no dogma. It was enough to respect the civic gods and participate in local rites and festivals. One need not believe that Dionysius, for example, actually rose from the dead.
I think it was Gibbon who noted that the Christian resurrection story caught on with many pagans was because it was not from the mists of time. Jesus was a contemporary who walked in the same real world that they lived in. Jesus had been witnessed by many people who had become believers and told his story. This set Jesus’s story apart from he pagan tales, and many found it convincing.
What I heard preached at a UCC Church one year: "It's all symbolic. It's not literally true."
Seemed pretty thin stuff to maintain a congregation, but what do I know?
Faith is a mystery. Rationality is neither here nor there.
"Christ turned the cross, a Roman symbol of fear and torture into a symbols of hope and love. The greatest turnabout in all history." [from a comment above]
Good line. In fact, a great line!
"Death, where is thy sting," in the words of St. Paul (who was a genius by the way).
Jesus's emphasis, in the three synoptic gospels at least, is not on the forgiveness of sins so much as it is on the idea that if you make your life a living sacrifice, you will be rewarded in the end, even after death!
And in the process there is the buried subtext: life on earth will be politically transformed, oppression ended, liberty and justice for all, for the poor and the weak as well as the strong, established forever. Quite a prophecy! And one that has been partially fulfilled, at least in the Western parts of the world. No wonder we celebrate the guys life as greater than that of any other historical figure.
At least this is the way I read the message of Jesus. Hope I'm not alone.
Because temple teaching was hollow, he preached from isiah and they could not recognize it
The Christians have a much more believable hypothesis than the secular Atheists have. The New Testament is very compelling. Not much of a fan of the Old Testament though.
The New Testament fulfills the Old Testament.
Matthew 46: And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (King James Version)
This has been interpreted to mean that Jesus on the cross had doubts. But that's just ignorant. Jesus was demonstrating that what they were witnessing was the fulfilment of a Psalm written about a thousand years earlier.
Psalm 22
King James Version
1 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
2 O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.
3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
4 Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.
6 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.
7 All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
8 He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.
9 But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts.
10 I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother's belly.
11 Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
12 Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
13 They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.
14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.
15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.
17 I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.
18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
19 But be not thou far from me, O Lord: O my strength, haste thee to help me.
20 Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.
21 Save me from the lion's mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.
22 I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.
23 Ye that fear the Lord, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.
24 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.
25 My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him.
26 The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the Lord that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.
27 All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.
28 For the kingdom is the Lord's: and he is the governor among the nations.
29 All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul.
30 A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.
31 They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.
The problem with atheists morally is they believe they are rational when they are not. And more than that they believe they are the lone source of rational thought. They believe this gives them license to act in ways that are reprehensible. There is a reason atheists killed so many millions of people in the 20th century and committed the greatest atrocities in history.
Nothing worse than a zealous atheist.
Just wanted to add a little more of C. S. Lewis on this subject:
“In the New Testament, the thing really happens. The Dying God really appears—as a historical Person, living in a definite place and time. . . . The old myth of the Dying God . . . comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens— at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We must not be nervous about ‘parallels’ [in other religions] . . . : they ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t.”
Joy to the world, He is risen! Allelujah!
That Jesus proclaimed Himself not merely a prophet (as Islam, for instance, still styles him), but one with powers literally given to God alone, like the forgiveness of sins, has been an important thread in Christian apologetics for a long time. C. S. Lewis remarks on it, for example, and says that a man who claims to forgive your sins against others is either a literal nutter ("on a par with someone who thinks he is a poached egg," I think were his words), or else he is what He says He is.
The idea that "miracles can't happen, because science proves it" was, obviously, stale almost before it was uttered. Either you are a materialist, and therefore think that the regularity of events that we perceive is absolute, or you aren't, and both options were available beliefs in the First Century every bit as much as the Twenty-First. "Science" almost definitionally doesn't treat of the miraculous at all. That the regularities we undoubtedly do see -- you let go of the apple, it falls to the ground -- are real doesn't by itself preclude the possibility of exceptions; that's an extra premise added to the facts of the apple, the hand holding it, the ground.
Chesterton, another great apologist, has some amusing remarks on two book titles. One was Who Moved the Stone?, which sounds like a locked-room mystery, and ends up being one -- the mystery of what happened at Christ's tomb. The argument of the book, I think, was that if the body of Jesus had been merely stolen, obviously it was in the interests of many powerful people to produce it. I see from a couple of articles in the last day or two that there were 19th-c. attempts to revive it, but by saying that Jesus was still alive after six hours of unspeakable torture, and that apparently he just dusted Himself off, got away with the help of the disciples, and spent the rest of a lengthy life living in obscurity in India or Japan or somewhere else. The stumbling-block that one hits is the plain, solid character given of Jesus in the Gospels. Retrospective they may be, but no one can deny that they portray a remarkably, not to say intimidatingly, consistent and strong character. Would such a man slink off and let His followers die in horrible ways because He wanted a little peace and quiet? Bleh.
The other title Chesterton remarked on was a book called The Great Problem Solved. Which he picked up, of course, on the assumption that it was a murder mystery. But, no, it wasn't a tale of who put more wood on the fire to make the time of death seem wrong, or who had the opportunity to poison the patriarch's after-dinner brandy or some such genuinely interesting question; it was another book about how the Gospels were merely symbolic. So Chesterton put it back again; the mystery writer, having set himself a Great Problem, would presumably actually solve it, but this particular Great Problem was never going to be solved at all by the kind of man who would write the book.
Pauline Christianity was first revealed to Paul and his fellow believers by the Holy Spirit. And it still is. Without that Pentacost experience, Christianity makes little sense, but with it , all makes perfect sense.
From the reincarnation standpoint Jesus Christ made a sacrifice that created a vibration that influenced all successive earthly incarnations. Every time one incarnates the burden of the sins of the past of the persons karma has been clarified due to this sacred energy.
One thing I forgot to mention: Some people remain consumed with the idea that America is self-consciously "Christian." Oddly, this belief is increasing as the number of actual Christians decreases. But then it's always been like that; the churches are always emptying, the pews are always bare, Christianity is always done for. Chesterton wrote about that, too: There was an article in the Illustrated London News, I think (GKC kept that weekly column going for over 25 years, with few interruptions), about how "The churches are empty today because young people today want good news and uplift, not stuff about some guy who lived 2000 years ago. Take that away, and people will flock to the churches." To which GKC responds, more or less, that as a business model it seems to be lacking some steps; he couldn't see why young people would "flock to" a building where a total stranger meets them at the door, promising not to mention something that happened 2000 years ago. I may be misremembering details, but that's the gist.
The creeds are always crumbling, and yet, mysteriously, they are still there. Odd, that.
Anyway, my gripe was with a guy on the WaPo Op-Ed page who said that our school schedules are thinly-disguised glosses on the Christian calendar: "Winter Break" is Christmas, and "Spring Break" is Easter. Um, no, it's not. I could have pointed out to him that in OR, at least, "Spring Break" just managed to encompass Palm Sunday, and school (such as it is here) was up and running all through Holy Week. The only schools I have ever seen connect Easter to "Spring Break" were Catholic ones, and even for them, often enough it's de facto Ski Week. Good Friday and Easter are the holiest days in the Christian calendar, and of them one is not and never has been a school day, and the other is a school day. A friend of mine had his freakin' doctoral orals on Good Friday.
All of this has, in the WaPo, a connection to a particular controversy in (I think) Fairview, where some parents thought the school calendar was under-inclusive of "minority religion" holidays, one faction suggested 15 holidays of various religions, another suggested four (IIRC, Yom Kippur, Good Friday, Eid, Diwali), and then yet others protested that the current pro-Christian tilt was excessive, and so screw Christmas and Easter. Me, I think that the end-of-year break is natural and spontaneous, and that songs about Santa and Rudolph are not offensively "Christianizing" for your "Winter Break" concert, and that the only people trying to make a religious muddle out of something that's currently as much about the Winter Solstice as anything else are the few trying to keep the slightest sight of, oh, giving or charity or even "Happy Holidays" out of it. But that's just me.
" And I can’t tell the difference between a Jesuit and a Unitarian.
And a Unitarian, Pantheist and Atheist.
As in Frost's poem, the road divides. One branch (we've now left Frost) has a sign that says There Is A God. The other branch has a sign that says There Is No God. (BTW if you think there are multiple "gods", the No God branch is for you. In my hypothetical "God" means one God. If you don't like that, create your own hypothetical.) If you accept that God exists, you should have no trouble accepting that God might have caused Jesus to be born of a virgin. (If you're on the No God branch you might accept Leda and the swan, but that's not the same thing.) If you're on the God branch, none of the stories about the ministry of Jesus should be beyond your ability to accept. And the same is true of the resurrection stories.
That doesn't mean that if you're on the God branch you HAVE to believe in the Christian stories. Maybe you think the Jews or Buddhists or or Muslims or whoever have better stories. I don't challenge that. But if you start from the proposition that there is no God, you're like a chemist who starts with the proposition that there is no oxygen. You can't do chemistry.
As in Frost's poem, the road divides. One branch (we've now left Frost) has a sign that says There Is A God. The other branch has a sign that says There Is No God. (BTW if you think there are multiple "gods", the No God branch is for you. In my hypothetical "God" means one God. If you don't like that, create your own hypothetical.) If you accept that God exists, you should have no trouble accepting that God might have caused Jesus to be born of a virgin. (If you're on the No God branch you might accept Leda and the swan, but that's not the same thing.) If you're on the God branch, none of the stories about the ministry of Jesus should be beyond your ability to accept. And the same is true of the resurrection stories.
That doesn't mean that if you're on the God branch you HAVE to believe in the Christian stories. Maybe you think the Jews or Buddhists or or Muslims or whoever have better stories. I don't challenge that. But if you start from the proposition that there is no God, you're like a chemist who starts with the proposition that there is no oxygen. You can't do chemistry.
The Jesuits at Santa Clara University sound just like the Social Justice Presbyterians at First Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto. You could not tell where you were just from the sermon/homily.
The schism in the Christian Church runs through denominations, not between them. I have more in common with a faithful Catholic than a heretic "social justice" Presbyterian. The empty tomb is the key. We are promised eternal life. Will we accept the gift?
I have wondered about one Paul lists as seeing Jesus risen, James, Jesus brother. He thought he knew his brother. Now he learns his brother is God. Such a transformative moment. I can picture Jesus explaining to James who He is, with James trying to wrap his mind around this amazing thing. How would you react to learning your brother was God!?!
Notice that James is not at the crucifixion. Jesus tells his mom that John will take care of her. Where is James? He later becomes head of the Jerusalem church. We don't know the story how that happens. Plenty we don't know.
Jeremy Abrams wrote: "But the assertion of Jesus' divinity, and of the resurrection, are barriers to faith in a scientific age."
No, because in the practice of Christianity, we are given a set of guidelines that do allow us to empirically test the basic truth of what Jesus told us. Whether to do so is an individual choice. That is why Christian faith persists. In every generation, some do test it and discover to their shock that it is real.
As to the rest - as Paul observed, the law does not save. The Law does not serve its purpose, because the sins of the fathers really are visited upon the third and fourth generations, and a Law which may not be obeyed by some for reasons beyond their control but which exacts its penalties upon those who were not able to choose not to transgress the Law is not really a valid law.
Jesus came, and died, and was resurrected to allow individual human beings, through him, to forgive and reverse the effects of prior sin. It restores freedom to human beings. For those who want to live a Christian life, and who try this out, it turns out that it does work. So, as Jesus told us, he came to fulfill the law. The Law is eternal, the Law is sacred, and the Law is largely futile without Jesus.
"There were a number of prominent theologians during the years that I was going through the seminary who watered down the Resurrection, arguing that it was a symbol..."
WTF? "We're not really Christians, but we're going to tell you how to be one"?!?
If Jesus isn't resurrected from the dead, then Christianity is a joke. How the hell does someone call himself a "Christian theologist" while denying the central precept of Christianity?
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