Dear George,

I am sorry to question your use of ‘western civilization.’ The west, western civilization, western culture etc. can be a geographical, cultural, religious, political or other designation. Like many words and phrases it has many meanings. Ghandi made a quip to the effect that he thought western civilization was a great idea and should be tried.

I try to avoid the words western civilization, right/left (in a political sense), ultimate, Judeo-Christian, fantastic, awesome and other expressions which are either overused or have too many conflicting meanings, but I have no right to expect that of others.

Sells wrote: “After the cross God cannot be general, he must bare the face of Christ.”

Dear Sells,

Your bigotry is evident. Believers in Allah, the Jewish God and the Bahai’i God still have deities which have nothing to do with yours. You misused the word truth to mean acceptance of your mumbojumbo.

I believe that in the future Christ will take his place along with Apollo, Mithra, Thor, Jupiter, Adonis and the other humanoid Gods that humans have invented. The humanoid Gods will be joined on the deity rubbish heap by the non-humanoid Gods of Jews, Muslims and Bahai’is.

Although I hope humanity will stop creating gods of any kind I don’t believe our species will stop the activity. Humans will probably invent new Gods, and some of the believers will claim, like you, that their God is the real God and all others are Brand X. They will continue to confuse belief with fact.

Davidf - for your announced long years of life you seem to have accumulated much wordy knowledge but which appears limited to fact and unfolding fact from that which can be observed and measured or deduced.

For you to confuse Jesus Christ with what you call humanoid gods displays a greater accumulated ignorance or is it just plain old bigotry. Your general antipathy towards the Christian faith seems to cloud your understanding of its underpinning values of love for God and neighbour in western civilisation. This meme is embedded in our culture and has served us well. The reality of war and tribal / religious disharmony has always existed ( our Creation story gives us an understanding) but saw its zenith with the meme from Social Darwinism - the survival of the fittest - that perverted the intellectual and cultural ( militarist) elites of the 19th / early 20th centuries.
Jesus Christ was a man and, in faith, God. Understandably an absurdity to reason on earth, but such truth comes to us from the transcendent where reason - Logos - was, is and ever shall be. He exists, not by our own human making through desirous love but rather through the agape love of God. The God that has chosen to reveal himself through the history of a people and finally through a man, for all nations and peoples.

I shared the light from the Paschal Candle at the Easter vigil Mass through an aged lady from Asia and I passed it onto a young woman from Kenya and her children. The Lord is Risen - alleluia - and our faith extends to all peoples and all nations. That we shall all be one, and, to have life to the full. What human being could not hope such offerings.

Self-delusional (and hence 'blind') belief or faith is fundamentalist fanaticism (or ignorance), and would be a sad thing if it weren't so dangerous. One might just as well suppose that gravity is proof that the Earth 'sucks'?

“After the cross God cannot be general, he must bare the face of Christ.” Interesting slip, writing 'bare' instead of 'bear'. But then, with Sells it appears that all things are possible, and nothing (except faith) may be taken for granted.

David f, and George, thanks for the insights and rationality.

As a Christian, and a non-practicing Catholic, I hold a simple faith embracing nature as a sacred possession, and humanity's task being to nurture and to understand, taking nothing for granted, and facing all challenges with goodwill.

In almost all human endeavours there are rules which must be followed, to ensure safety and fairness, etc. If only we had an effective set of universal rules for living, people could believe what they might, follow any faith, and the world could move forward in harmony and mutual respect. But, I guess, there may always be some who will reject a path of peace, on any pretext.

Dear boxgum,

I don’t confuse Jesus Christ with humanoid gods. He is one. Invent a god in the form of a cow then you will have a bovine god.

You wrote: “The God that has chosen to reveal himself through the history of a people and finally through a man, for all nations and peoples.”

The above neatly describes what is wrong with some believers in Christianity. You are not content to believe in your religion and try to live up to its ideals. You must push it on “all nations and peoples.”

http://markhumphrys.com/christianity.killings.html tells of the many massacres by Christians of people who didn’t want their beliefs or simply did not share their beliefs.

From the website: “The Church started killing unbelievers as early as the 4th century. The killing (often with torture) of heretics, church splinter groups, dissenters, atheists, agnostics, deists, pagans, infidels and unbelievers was supported by almost all mainstream Christian theology for over a thousand years, starting with the intolerant St. Augustine (died 430 AD).”
….
“Christian thinkers such as St. Thomas Aquinas continued to justify the killing of heretics and unbelievers throughout the medieval period.
o St. Thomas Aquinas justifies killing people who are not convinced by his arguments.
o See the Summa Theologica, 2nd Part of the 2nd Part, Question 11, Article 3.“

The scientists, Servetus and Bruno, were murdered by Protestants and Catholics, respectively. Christians have a history of murder and massacre. The secular state tamed the murderous conduct of Christianity. A few years ago I could have been murdered by Christians for saying what I am free to say here.

My antipathy to Christianity is due to its history and the fact that JWs and other Christian missionaries have tried to push their beliefs on me. I have no objection to people seeking out a religion or other people telling about their religion to people who ask for it.

However, unwanted missionising is simply harassment.

Stop harassing people. Respect the fact that other people have a different outlook neither needing nor wanting yours and there will be less antipathy to your beliefs.

Sells,

I am not a theologian, and certainly not a specialist on Barth as you seem to be, but I doubt it very much that Pius XII would have described him as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas, had Barth explicitly claimed that “the general idea of God is an empty concept which allows the believer to act as they will”.

It is a different thing to ask whether the God Christians worships is the same One worshiped by e.g. Jews or Muslims, and referred to by Western philosophers. It seems that here we have to agree to disagree. It has perhaps something to do with your objections to seeing the God who inspired the Bible, and the God who created - more precisely, keeps on creating - the material Universe, as the same God.

>>Ah, the two books! I have tried to investigate the origin of this concept with little success.<<
“Galileo then wrote a long letter to Christina of Lorraine, where he developed the view that God speaks through the book of nature as well as through the book of Scripture, and that the Bible teaches people how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go” (http://www.enotes.com/galileo-galilei-64681-reference/galileo-galilei-174759).

“Bacon's famous argument that it is wise not to confound the Book of Nature with the Book of God comes into focus, since the latter deals with God's will (inscrutable for man) and the former with God's work, the scientific explanation or appreciation of which is a form of Christian divine service.” (from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon/).

I agree with more or less all you say about the two books. None of that contradict my belief that it is the same God who can be seen as being behind both.

>> My atheistic approach to Christian theology is disturbing and confusing.<<
I agree.

>> The problem of whether God exists is not a biblical problem.<<
I agree.

Dear George,

You wrote: “It is a different thing to ask whether the God Christians worships is the same One worshiped by e.g. Jews or Muslims, and referred to by Western philosophers.”

In my view it is a different God. The God of western Christianity is even a different God from the God of eastern or Orthodox Christianity. There is a dualism in western Christianity which exists to a lesser extent in Orthodox Christianity and not at all in Judaism or, I think, Islam.

I’m sure you will tell me where you think I am wrong in the following.

One difference is the Trinity which does not exist in the Muslim or Jewish concept of God.

Theodicy is a branch of Christian theology explaining the presence of evil in a world created by an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good God. Judaism does not pose such a God. Everything comes from God - evil as well as good. The book of Job deals with Job handling that. Satan in Job acts as God’s agent rather than as an opposing entity.

That evil proceeds from God is explicitly stated in Isaiah.

Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

One can ask where was God during the Holocaust. That is a question in post-Holocaust Jewish theology. However, accounting for the presence of evil or theodicy is not a Jewish problem. Everything comes from God including evil.

Another difference is the concept of Original Sin. In Christian terms the Fall of man was effected by Adam and Eve committing sin in the Garden. Jesus took on the sins of mankind in his redemptive sacrifice.

In normative (there is no central authority in any branch of Judaism who can make pronouncements that all Jews must follow.) Jewish thought the guilt for the sin of Adam and Eve went with their death. It was not transferred to their descendants. No one can take on another’s sins. Every child is born with a clean state. One is responsible only for one’s own sins.