Saltpetre: Walrus in memory of Snub Pollard.

Dear George,

I was not arguing with Peter Sellick’s beliefs as much as I was arguing with his apparent expectation that stating them would be a compelling argument for them.

You stated the four pre-suppositions of your faith. We part company on pre-supposition one. Since we disagree on that there seems no point in arguing that matter since we disagree on a statement of faith. I appreciate the fact that you stated the pre-suppositions of your faith so well and admit that I have different pre-suppositions in my faith.

I do not equate the Nazis with evil. Evil is a theological term which I generally avoid using. When I stated there is a little bit of the Nazi in all of us I was referring to the Nazi’s hatred and suspicion of the Other which in their case were the Jews and other race enemies. I think we all make gradations of those we feel closer to and farther from. Those gradations may not be based on shared ethnicity or religion. I feel less distant from you than I feel from Peter Sellick.

However, I feel that you have created an entity called western civilization instead of recognizing that it is a process rather than an entity. There was no entity that gave us anything. There were conflicting trends in Europe from which various ideas and actions arose.

Spinoza’s ideas proceeded from an examination of both Judaism and Christianity and a rejection of them both. The Amsterdam of Spinoza’s time was free enough so he could voice his ideas and have them considered by other intellectuals. The Jewish community of Amsterdam excommunicated him as he was a heretic who denied basic concepts in Judaism.

Moses Mendelsohn came from a sealed Jewish world and entered a Christian one where he managed to be largely accepted. However, note that his grandson, Felix, and other descendents were no longer Jews. Read Amos Elon’s “The Pity of it All – A Portrait of Jews in Germany” for an account of Mendelsohn’s interaction with the Christian community.

Continued

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Einstein challenged the accepted physics of his day. He was working in the Swiss Patent Office in 1905 when he developed many of his ideas as his Jewishness apparently precluded his getting an academic post.

Actually I find things to admire in Luther. He was a man of his times and challenged some abuses that existed in his time. Other evils of his time he accepted. He accepted authoritarian rule and supported the German rulers in their suppression of the Peasant’s Revolt. Thomas Müntzer who accepted Luther’s theology was a leader of the Peasant’s Revolt.

The persecution of the Jews by the Catholics was generally the result of local action. In general the popes tried to restrain it. Like Luther the Catholic Erasmus was not all of a piece. He was a humanist and a civilising influence, but his feeling toward Jews was not much different from that of Luther.

From “The Roots of Anti-Semitism” by Heiko Oberman p. 38:

“in order to stem the new tide of Judaism, Erasmus was even prepared to jettison the Old Testament. In this way the New Testament and the unity of the church could remain intact: “If only the church would not accord the Old Testament such great significance. It is a book of shadows, given on loan, until the coming of Christ.””

Ibid.; p. 40:

“If to hate the Jews is the proof of genuine Christians then we are all excellent Christians.” (Si christianum est odisse Iudeos, hic abunde Christiani sumus omnes.)

“The Roots of Anti-Semitism” is published by Fortress Press, a Lutheran publishing house. Fortress has done a terrific job in confronting the Lutheran past. Unfortunately there is a split. I was talking to the pastor of a Lutheran church, and he told me about the sophisticated exegesis of the Bible and other searching topics at St. Olaf’s Seminary where he studied. I asked him how much of this material he discussed with his congregation. He said he ‘did not want to disturb their simple faith.’ He has since left the faith. How many other clerics are there like that?

Dear Sells,

You wrote: To understand that you have to let go of scientific rationalism and use your imagination. Your posts show the usual imaginative restrictions of someone trained in scientific rationalism for which if there is no evidence and the evidence cannot be tested then it cannot be true. If you miraculously became a Christian from your present state you would be a biblical literalist, a fundamentalist.

The above is disturbing. You have created a false dichotomy. One can use one’s imagination and still subscribe to scientific rationalism. Good scientists do precisely that. The pre-eminent example of that is Einstein. He used his imagination to conduct thought experiences which revolutionised physics. You reveal your predatory nature when you state “If you became a Christian…” I get the feeling that some Christians have little respect for the views and belief systems of other people. I certainly would make any statement to you starting, “If you became a rationalist…” I am satisfied that you are what you are and believe what you believe. Although I disagree with your views and faith I respect your right to have them and have no desire to missionise you. I would like the same respect from you.

You also wrote: Christians … know what they believe and believe what they know. This is heresy for science and rightly so, but for faith it is the only way, because skepticism does not get you very far.

Scepticism gets us a long way.

According to the Gospels Jesus was sceptical of the religious practices and beliefs around him. Luther was not a faithful Catholic. He doubted the actions of the church and the doubts he voiced were powerful.

Humans have invented many new religions. They all were founded on scepticism regarding existing beliefs. Then the controlling body of those religions demand faith because they want no further questions or doubt. Doubt leads to understanding. Faith leads to conformity to what exists. If early man had faith in the tribal conditions in which they were living we, their remote descendents, would still be living in those conditions.

Sells,
I do not think the point is whether you speak here as a scientist or as a theologian, but whether you can make yourself understood by those who are not theologians and can see science only in an atheist context. Christianity is a religion, hence comparable with other religions, whatever our evaluation of the comparison might be. Though I am not a theologian, I can understand if you “jump off” Christology as a preacher but not as somebody who is trying to explain his world-view/religion to outsiders.

As a fellow Christian I don’t see myself as a complete outsider but still don’t understand how you can talk about Christology without assuming (not proving or arguing for) the existence of a transcendental God. I do not think Barth did. I can understand Barth’s dislike of natural theology, also his view that the task of theology (he does not speak of philosophy) “is one with the task of preaching” but I do not think he would have thought that “a general idea of the existence of god is dangerous”.

The fact that something is the receptacle of our own hopes and fears does not mean that it is dangerous to speak about its existence, just because Feuerbach might overestimate the psychological dimension of our faith. Like the fact that a finger is pointing to the moon, and we can see only the finger, does not imply that we should not talk about the moon’s existence.

>>arguments about the existence of God lead us nowhere<<
Here I tend to agree.

>> a more fruitful discussion between believers and unbelievers is about the truth of the gospel.<<
Here we are back to square one: you can discuss “truth of the gospel” only with somebody who shares your understanding of the word “truth”.

As established in our previous encounter, where we differ is that, using Galileo’s language, I prefer to read both the Books - that of the Scripture and that of Nature - as complementing each other, whereas you prefer to see the Bible taking absolute precedence over science and even philosophy.

Dear david f,

Thank you for the interesting posts and information, especially regarding Erasmus and the Jews that I did not know about.

>>I feel that you have created an entity called western civilization instead of recognizing that it is a process rather than an entity. <<

I admit my use of the expression is influenced by Arnold Toynbee, a controversial historian (and philosopher of history). However, in my dictionary “the West” is defined as “Europe and its culture seen in contrast to other civilizations”, so implicitly also the West is seen as a civilization, and googling "Western Civilization" brought up 7.38 million pages that contained the phrase. So process or entity (I used neither description), Western Civilization seems to be a widely used expression.

George,
I think Barth would protest at the general idea of God, surely that is what the German Christians held to and it was found to be a facade. The general idea of God is an empty concept that allows the believer to act as they will.

Ah, the two books! I have tried to investigate the origin of this concept with little success. I think it is a convenient division in epistemology that allows us to have knowledge about the world that does not come from Scripture. This presupposes a time in which all knowledge was thought to come from Scripture and room had to be made for the rise of natural science. The problem is that the two books are incommensurable. Scripture is a compendium of imaginatively conceived history, poetry, song, legend and story put together by a people who had no concept of nature as a reality separate from God. It does not pretend to talk about nature as would today’s natural scientist. Calling the act of scientific investigation a reading of a book is interesting because it presumes a writer, God. So the concept relies on the argument from design that I find infelicitous. The thing about the doctrine of the two books is that they cannot contradict each other. Well of course, one is a map of the human heart and the other is an ordering of data and hypothesis, two completely different things.

I know my atheistic approach to Christian theology is disturbing and confusing. It does not mean that I am an atheist simply that when I look to the cross I see God disposed by human hands. The problem of whether God exists is not a biblical problem, the argument in the NT is how the truth of the gospel destroys belief in the false gods of religion and law. Christianity is the only religion with an antireligious polemic. It was religion and law that crucified Christ and they are both condemned. After the cross God cannot be general, he must bare the face of Christ.