waterboy,

But it is the Church of Paul, Constantine, Origen and Augustine. Doctrine was institutionalised. Moreover, I still maintain a strong Greek influence and syncretion of Roman mystery cults you deny. "The Church" as you call it, is patch-work of temporal priestly interpretations made under political pressure.

Also, following on the them of mystery cults, the "other" Christian Church, the Orthodox holds that some creeds, are mysteries, Holy of Holies, which are known only to the priests.

Even if Jesus was some extra-human entity, the debates about nature of divinity a generation either side of Nicaea seem to be undisclosed to church goers. If a religionist needs to revisit the debates, rather being led by the nose.

Cheers.

O.

Oliver,

I love your posts.

In them I sense a determined effort to discredit the christian church. Your logic is flawed and your conclusions, when you eventually arrive at them, are delightfully incomprehensible while revealing a total misunderstanding of Christian theology.

I guess you are trying to discredit the christian church by discrediting its origins but that does not actually work and noone really cares if the origins of Christmas are pagan. They still love Christmas and they're not going to give it up for anything.

In fact it is much easier to discredit the church by reference to its actions in the world today. West's critique of the church is far more potent then your chaotic ramblings because it is relevant.

But keep trying. You might actually have an important point to make one day.

The discovery of Christ's truth is not best represented by converted pagans and polytheists who call themselves "Christian" unless they have studied carefully the principles of his message eg, "love your enemy", and understood the character of God and live by the virtue of His principles.

The focus of Christian truth is not found in one individual or any one Church it is only found in Christ - the perfect expression of the word. All persons and Churches fail to always faithfully represent God - that is the nature of sin in man.

I suggest you look for character and attitudes you truly admire as graceious and just and you have a glimpse of God. However you undoubtly will fail to fully follow that image, but that is no reason to abandon the virtue of that image. The virtue will remain even if you live to it in violent opposition. Sin is always condemned, that Christians sin is not a condemnation of the virtue of Christ.

Philo and waterboy,

I have always regarded "The Church" and "Christ" as separate constructs. Churches and priests are social phenomena. If God existed in History, it would seem best, to examine the situation from the perspective of an historian.

Philo, I continue to respect your OT scholarship and knowledge of Hebrew tethers. No one can help but admire Jesus. However, there have occasionally lived self-actualised humans [Maslow]: Truly remarkable people. Likewise, only a fool would condemn the ten commandments, but great/similar codes are other societies too.

waterboy, from my reading of history, you seem to have been "fed" inaccuracies. Have you been provided tracts of made-up/blinkered history? Some Jesus' Jewish contemporaries were so Greek many didn't even understand Hebrew. Isra-EL. According to Karen Armstrong, "El" refers is to the Old God Cannite Baal. Some of this stuff caved in stone, literally. Read Psalm 82, there is a different godhead to that discussed at Nicaea. Some of the current era "Mysteries" are evident in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

I do believe in the reasoned questionning of authority. I prefer Abelard and Luther, to Origen and Augustine. Doctrine and creed arrest cultures.

I do my best to provide citations. You just say things, stop.

Yes, I do believe "The Church" is potentially very dangerous. That said, I have many friends whose faith, comitment and conviction I greatly respect.

Waterboy there it is , Christ and Church are two different things. I say it again I am not against peoples right to believe what they wish but I am against the god politic. Even in the home the parent trying to convert their child , the child trying to convert the parent, the Government acting as if its god is a normality and thus an subliminal message that all who do not follow the god of those in power are cast out too the fringe. This is nicely habitually demonstrated by our health minister and very much so by federal education grants in the United States which dont mind which god children believe in as long as it is in monotheism.

I stand to defend Oliver also because history is everything. History was everything past the last split second. We classify a serial killer by the history of his/her deeds and to be fore warned is to be fore armed. We know we love the Artichoke pie because of our experience of it before. We can also know what is true through history. The fact the history of the bible is that of a collection of fiction by known authors and out of context with universal history discredits all the claims of the bible as true. There is no point throwing garbage onto the front garden because Jesus will come to take us away from all this , simply he will not by the same reckoning Harry Potter will not. To quote George Santayana ? ? 'he who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it'.

West,

You have a hangup about the church because itis less than perfect.
Check your history books again and find out which human institutions are perfect and therefore worthy of their place in our society or our culture. Well... none! History handled in the simple-minded way of the Olivers of this world is just as dangerous as the church! Consider the Marx-Stalin connection. History is notjust the awareness that certain things happened in the past but rather the way that the past informs the present. Oliver has no constructive agenda for the present and no really contemporary historical impetus.

The church is not going away and as you see in American Politics particularly and recently also in Australian Politics (Howard, Costello, Abbot and recently Rudd have all jumped onto the religious bandwagon) religion can become a potent political force. It is simply not good enough to pontificate about the evils of the church and look forward to the day of its demise because that isnt going to happen. It amounts to burying your head in the sand and leaving the field open for the real religious nutters.

The church must be challenged to be Christ present today because that is what it claims to be and that is its proper place in society. Theology is the mechanism by which the church is engaged and disciplined to hold to its proper task.

Your assertion that Christ and Church are different things is inappropriate. The Church ought to be the incarnation of Christ and to the extent that it preserves the Christ story it actually is one with the Christ. It matters not one whit whether Christ is an historical figure or if the religious culture has picked up a few extraneous embellishments over time. Christ is an organising symbol that informs our shared values and sense of meaning and that is true even for those, perhaps particularly for those, who have abandoned the simple-minded acceptance of Jesus as an historical figure and engaged the story through which they can imagine something that we can call the 'Kingdom of God' into being.