Jesus was considered to be a saviour god in the very early days of the church; Paul (formerly Saul) the Apostle wrote all his 80 thousand words on Xianity in the form of allegories about how Jesus never lived on Earth, but as a saviour god in a mythical realm. The he was a god (i.e., divine), however, was the sine qua non of Paul's teachings.
Why don't christians know more?
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davefoc
Philosopher
This is the kind of statement that leads to semantic discussions of questionable value, IMHO. I absolutely agree that in some contexts the word Christian might be taken to mean that.
But in other contexts it might not. For instance, I could well imagine that in some Islamic countries I might be identified as a Christian. I grew up in a country with a significant Christian heritage, I celebrate some Christian holidays, I went to a Christian Sunday school, my wife is Roman Catholic. I think it is reasonable to say that I am culturally a Christian which in the right context might be shortened to just that I am Christian. It is, perhaps, an unfortunate expansion of a more restrictive definition of Christian but that happens all the time to words as their definitions are stretched in the daily course of normal useage.
Even in using the word in the way that you envision using it there are others that would modify the defintion in subtle ways. Some would define it so as to restrict its useage to people that have views that are consistent with what they think a Christian should be so that even believing Roman Catholics are excluded. Others would try to expand the definition to include beliefs that Jesus was divinely inspired or divinely created but not necessarily divine. I think that somebody that belonged to a Christian denomination church, went to church every week, but only believed in a divinely inspired Christ is a Christian in most contexts, unless in that context the word Christian was explicitly defined to include only people who believed that Christ was some kind of divine entity.
My guess is that a lot of Christians don't have a fully formed view of the relationship between God and Christ and might not even understand exactly what their denomination has to say about the relationship between the two. Still I think in most contexts they would be thought of as Christian.
Just to dwell, unnecessarily longer on this topic for a second, assume that somebody in this forum wrote honestly in a post without any other surrounding relevant comments, "I am a Christian".
What exactly do we know about him based on his use of the word, "Christian"? Would your definition of Christian apply in that context?
I'm not sure what you're getting at with the part of your post I've bolded above.
I've discussed this elsewhere, but the surviving Pauline letters indicate that Paul believed at least the following about Jesus' life:
- He was born, in the flesh, and of a woman
- He lived a life of voluntary poverty
- He instituted the Eucharistic rite at the Last Supper
- He was betrayed on the same night
- He died, specifically by crucifixion, at the behest of actual persons within the Jewish community
- He miraculously rose from the dead
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How can you be a Xian if you don't subscribe to the tenets of Xianity? That's just lazy with-us-or-against-us bifurcation fallacy. I am never a Xian, whether I am in Tehran, Tokyo, or London.
If somebody said they were a Xian, I would take them at their word, but the inherent implication of such a statement is that they accept the divinity of Christ. If they do not accept that divinity but still maintain that they are a Xian, then they don't knwo enough about Xianity. Which is what started this thread, remember?
"Although Paul did write about Jesus at around 60 C.E., The documentary reveals what most Christians don't know about Paul: If Jesus really had lived as a historical human being, nobody told Paul about it. In all of Paul's epistles, (about 80,000 words), he never mentions a historical Jesus! He never heard of Mary, Joseph, a birth in Bethlehem, King Herod, the miracles, ministry, no trial by Jews, or trial by Pontius Pilate. In other words, the man who invented Christianity had no idea that Jesus walked the earth."
--Brian Fleming, "The God Who Wasn't There"
http://www.nobeliefs.com/GodWhoWasntThere.htm
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
Actually, the first dictionary definition of a Christian I came across, in Webster's New International (first ed) Dictionary, is "one who believes, or professes or is assumed to believe, in Jesus Christ, and the truth as taught by Him...etc." The second definition is cultural: "One born in a Christian country or of Christian parents, who has not definitely become an adherent of an opposiing system." In some sects, such as the Universalists, the divinity of Christ has always been questioned (though plenty of other Christians have always thought Universalists were something else).
I must agree with you on your last sentence, however. If one actually believes in the teachings of Jesus Christ (as opposed to a non-religious affinity to them), it would be hard to contend that when JC talked, as he did, at length and explicitly about God, what he meant was not the God of scripture or something very like it. There may be some kind of Christianity without a God, but it would be a pretty thin excuse for a religion.
Bruto, dictionaries don't give definitions, they give usage. To see what I mean, look up the entries for "atheism" and of "atheist"...
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
When speaking of what you mean when you use a word, which is what we've been talking about throughout this thread: i.e. when you use the term "Christian," what meaning is reasonably meant by it and what beliefs and practices are encompassed by the term; the usage is the definition as far as I'm concerned. Cutting the definition finer is the province of Christians or those who claim to be Christians arguing sectarian theology, and since neither of us is the first, we have no business doing the second.
The dictionary I have at hand says atheism is "disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a God." An atheist is similarly defined, first as "one who disbelieves or denies the existence of a God, or supreme intelligent being," and second as "a godless person; one who lives as though there were no God." Despite the editorial bias of the subjunctive in the second definition, it seems pretty straightforward. How else would you define an atheist?
davefoc
Philosopher
Kimpatsu,
You seem to believe in the mythical Jesus idea.
That idea obviously has supporters. It is, I think, not beyond the realm of reasonable possibility, but it is not the mainstream scholarly view. So, with respect, I think your posts that assert it as established fact are overstating the case by a great deal.
I think what ceo_esq wrote is a pretty good refutation of the idea that Paul's letters suggest he wasn't referring to an historical jesus that had lived as a human being.
This is slightly off the topic, but I think the reason that the mythcal Jesus idea has any traction at all is that there is no direct evidence of the life of Jesus. That is a very important fact that one needs to keep in mind in any search for an historical Jesus. By direct evidence I mean that there are no writings that have survived by anyone that knew him directly and wrote about it or any archeological evidence. Everything that can be surmised about the man's life must be based on sources significantly removed from his life. And the credibility of those sources is often low given the biases and goals of the people who were writing and copying them. This leaves room for speculation that he didn't exist at all. I think, though, for a variety of reasons that have been discussed in several JREF threads on the topic that he did exist, but his existence can't be confirmed like the existence of most people that beome known to history.
ETA: I think there is a possibility that the author of a proto Mark or the author of an early Q might have been contemporaneous with Jesus. So I wouldn't want to say that it is absolute that we don't have any writings from somebody that knew Jesus directly.
You seem to believe in the mythical Jesus idea.
That idea obviously has supporters. It is, I think, not beyond the realm of reasonable possibility, but it is not the mainstream scholarly view. So, with respect, I think your posts that assert it as established fact are overstating the case by a great deal.
I think what ceo_esq wrote is a pretty good refutation of the idea that Paul's letters suggest he wasn't referring to an historical jesus that had lived as a human being.
This is slightly off the topic, but I think the reason that the mythcal Jesus idea has any traction at all is that there is no direct evidence of the life of Jesus. That is a very important fact that one needs to keep in mind in any search for an historical Jesus. By direct evidence I mean that there are no writings that have survived by anyone that knew him directly and wrote about it or any archeological evidence. Everything that can be surmised about the man's life must be based on sources significantly removed from his life. And the credibility of those sources is often low given the biases and goals of the people who were writing and copying them. This leaves room for speculation that he didn't exist at all. I think, though, for a variety of reasons that have been discussed in several JREF threads on the topic that he did exist, but his existence can't be confirmed like the existence of most people that beome known to history.
ETA: I think there is a possibility that the author of a proto Mark or the author of an early Q might have been contemporaneous with Jesus. So I wouldn't want to say that it is absolute that we don't have any writings from somebody that knew Jesus directly.
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trvlr2
Muse
Thank all of you respondees./ I am curious. And still not satisfied.
I have asked many times for an explanation many times , from people professing faith. I have gotten more from you than any before.
Apparently there is a great disparity of bleef, and yet all claim the xian mantle;many would state clearly that all others are wrong.
Obviously not all can be correct.
All could be wrong, also. This is the most parsimonius explanation.
Seems to me, that people of faith can't think past a certain place, whether from fear, nature, I don't know.
But, it seems clear that people profess faith in cults ,the fine details of which they are ignorant.
I have asked many times for an explanation many times , from people professing faith. I have gotten more from you than any before.
Apparently there is a great disparity of bleef, and yet all claim the xian mantle;many would state clearly that all others are wrong.
Obviously not all can be correct.
All could be wrong, also. This is the most parsimonius explanation.
Seems to me, that people of faith can't think past a certain place, whether from fear, nature, I don't know.
But, it seems clear that people profess faith in cults ,the fine details of which they are ignorant.
That is incorrect as a definition. Atheism is the ABSENCE of belief in god.
You should also try the OED, which defines an atheist as "immoral".
If Jesus really did live, then he was at best an uppity rabbi. Nothing in the NT was authored by an actual eye witness or contemporary of Jesus, and the claimed attributes of Jesus are merely rehashes of earlier Greco-Roman legends. (Kinda like bad TV today....) No evidence for a divinity there, then.
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
Of course I suppose I could ask from what source you get your own definition, and how you know it is correct, and why it is exempt from the sin of being a matter of usage, but I'm not sure it matters. The difference doesn't strike me as very great. Not believing and disbelieving come pretty close, but since the more passive "absence" seems more satisfactory and inclusive than "disbelief" I'll concede the point, though it seems to me that most of the atheists who post here are quite assertive enough to fit the old definition as well.
I have one in front of me. It does not.
This just doesn't make sense to me, since Paul does mention all the things I noted above which appear to relate to the life of an actual person. Although I suppose it's possible to argue that he might have meant it all spiritually - or something strange like that - rather than historically, I think there's naturally a strong presumption that Paul was talking about a person he believed to have "lived on earth" in the customary sense. To my knowledge, Paul never wrote anything that strikes one as inconsistent with a belief that Jesus was an actual person, either.
Kimpatsu said:
While I have no belief in the divinity of Jesus, I find it reasonable to suppose that his earliest followers did (and that Jesus himself may have, as well). It's wrong to say, by the way, that nothing in the NT was authored by a contemporary of Jesus. After all, Paul was not an eyewitness to the historical Jesus, but he definitely would have been alive at the same time. Now that I think of it, there's no reason why the author of Mark's Gospel couldn't have been a contemporary as well. In fact, I suppose we can't rule out the possibility that the lifetimes of all four Gospel writers overlapped with the lifetime of a historical Jesus, even if the Gospels were written down decades after Jesus' death.
As for the idea that Jesus was a rehashing of Greco-Roman legends, we've discussed it not infrequently in R&P, and I've found that the closer one examines the "rip-off" thesis the weaker it appears. The handful of books and the various essays written in support of it tend almost uniformly to be atrociously researched, once you scratch beneath the surface. Just my opinion.
Kimpatsu said:
Actually, the OED is pretty close to the dictionary that bruto was using. The first OED entry for atheist is "One who denies or disbelieves the existence of a God." The second entry is "One who practically denies the existence of a God by disregard of moral obligation to Him; a godless man." It doesn't really define an atheist as "immoral", however.
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No they're not.
Pacifism is a dying belief, one that is becoming more and more ridiculous, daily.
OK, then, if an atheist is one who believes that god does not exist, what term do you use for one who has no belief in the existence of god?
The Shorter OED certainly does. I have a copy in front of me.
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
Good question, which requires, I think, that any atheist clarify the reason he doesn't believe in a god. There aren't too many reasons. Either you have not made up your mind yet, in which case I would suppose you're really agnostic, or you do not believe in the existence of a god because you are convinced that there is no god in which to believe. I suppose we could argue around the clock about the finer points of the word "belief" and whether this constitutes a belief that god does not exist or something else. Perhaps this is why dictionary definitions usually use a stronger term than simple absence of belief. Most atheists would, I think, be found in the camp of those who assert that there is no god.
I realize this is a loaded subject, because owing to the cultural bias in our language it is hard to find a way to define the term that does not assume as a default that there is a god to deny, and that disbelief in god is a failure of belief or a position contrary to the norm, but there's a social sense in which that is the case. Of course god is in a special category, being something that cannot be demonstrated or proven in the way anything else is. To say you do not believe in god is not quite the same thing as saying you do not believe, say, in bigfoot. I do not believe in bigfoot because I see no reason to, but obviously if a bigfoot knocked on my door I would change my mind. The existence of a bigfoot would not turn my view of reality upside-down and force me to reevaluate everything I believe. My not believing in bigfoot is stronger than simply being an agnostic and saying "I don't know," but obviously weaker than that of someone who bases large portions of his world view on the impossibility of there being one. This is because the possibility of bigfoot is not supernatural, but also because it is not very important. I do not believe in Jehovah because I am convinced that such a god is impossible and irrational: I assert that this is so, and to change that position would be to change my life. That of course doesn't make me an atheist in the total sense, if I am reserving the agnostic option for impersonal, vague, wishy-washy second-string deistic compromises, but that's another story.
Perhaps it's just a difficult thing to be, or to define, a "pure" atheist in a society and a language which is permeated with theism. It will be a long time before a term like "godless" is neutral.
Those Oxford folks should get together with themselves. The Oxford Universal Dictionary adds to the standard definition (the one you don't like) one who "denies God morally," which is not the same thing, and the DK Illustrated Oxford (pretty worthless one) doesn't even have the word!
Lonewulf
Humanistic Cyborg
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It seems to me like the majority of Christianity, no matter what denomination you go to, is based around personal opinion and interpretation; thus, whatever seems "okay" to one person is his belief.
That's cool and all, but what's the point of any sort of deity telling us what to do if it's just subject to personal interpretation? It seems pretty... uhm... confusing to me, at the least.
That's cool and all, but what's the point of any sort of deity telling us what to do if it's just subject to personal interpretation? It seems pretty... uhm... confusing to me, at the least.
brooklyn44
Thinker
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To start with the definitions first, maybe not having the word is the way to go. After all, thre's no "a-unicornist" listed...
The thing about supposed agnosticism was addressed by Bertrand Russell, who said that supposedly we are all agnostics on whether there's a singing teapot in orbit around Mars. As we can't know for sure there isn't, we should be agnostic on the subject, but in reality everyone is an atheist when it comes to the teapot. So it should be with the fantastic magical sky fairy. Or, as Richard Dawkins put it, we can assign probability values to things, and as the probability of god(s) existing is fantastically small, in all practical terms we can be atheists on the subject.