So much anger toward Christianity. Yet anger or criticism of Islam should be silenced. "Progressive" logic.

//So much anger toward Christianity. Yet anger or criticism of Islam should be silenced.//

I've just re-read all the 37 posts in this forum and the only person who has thus far suggested that criticism of Islam be silenced is you, Aristocrat. You're way off topic.

What is your position on the metaphysics of time?

I have just read Augustine's Confessions 11th Book in which he deals with time. A good start on the metaphysics of time but not on theological time. Better is Barth's Church Dogmatics 1.3 sect 14. If we lose God's time we also lose man's time.

Dear Sells,

I have also read Augustine's Confessions. His speculations on time are sublime. He evidently had a great mind. Unfortunately those with great minds can be as neurotic as those with trivial minds. As a teenager he stole pears from an orchard. As a grown man he had a connection of many years which produced a son. He suffered from neurotic guilt due to his teenage dereliction and his love. He got Original Sin adopted as church doctrine thereby transmitting his neurotic guilt to generations of those who came after him. Augustine thought that sex in itself was sinful, and he should embrace celibacy on becoming a Christian. The much more reasonable Pelagius who maintained that humans are born with a clean slate and what they do in life determines what they are was forced into exile.

Pelagius emphasised a natural, innate human ability to attain salvation. That sensible attitude did not go with the ecclesiastical nonsense that asserted that salvation was only possible through belief in mumbojumbo.

There is a Hasidic story that Reb Zosya said, "When I meet the Lord he will not ask me why I was not like Moses. He will ask me why I was not like Zosya."

Pelagius and Reb Zosya had the sensible idea that humans can reach salvation if they are all that they can be. Unfortunately the ideas of the steeped-in-neurotic-guilt Augustine prevailed. One is guilty if one is not perfect, and no human can be perfect.

Dear David,

>>nonsense that asserted that salvation was only possible through belief in mumbojumbo.<<

The word salvation in this context is used in the theological - that you call mumbojumbo - meaning of the word. So it itself should be part of that mumbojumbo. Actually, the whole assertion should be described as mumbojumbo since it makes sense only as a theological statement.

"There are fundamentally only two doctrines of salvation: that salvation is from God, and that salvation is from ourselves. The former is the doctrine of common Christianity; the latter is the doctrine of universal heathenism." (B.B.Warfield)

In http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/pelagiannatural.html it is claimed that “Pelagius saw salvation in purely naturalistic terms - the progress of human nature from sinful behavior to holy behavior, by following the example of Christ (the concept unthinkable without that of God). This to my diletant eyes shows rather that Pelagius was on the Christian side (using Warfield's distinction), and, anyhow, I think the Augustine-Pelagius dichotomy is being now resolved in the post-enlightenment theologies. Peter Selick will certainly know more about it.

>>"When I meet the Lord he will not ask me why I was not like Moses. He will ask me why I was not like Zosya."<<

This resemles the Chistians saying: When we meet the Lord He will not ask me whether I followed your conscience, neither whether you folloed mine, but the other way around.

Yes, Augustine had a problem with sex. He feared the loss of mental control that sexual ecstasy evoked. He was a man of the mind. I have no problem with the idea of original sin, although misnamed. I would be fine if I lived alone on a desert island but as soon as I get into a relationship with anyone I know there is something up with me that is not good.