“ --the gods or god were not in this world but were in another place."

I can’t agree with that one. The Greeks seemed to thrive on the close presence of their gods; even had them nipping down to have a bit of nookie with the locals from time to time.

With this sort of rot it is no wonder people are deserting the Anglican church in droves. Peter writes 'the assertion that God is the agency behind the material world leads us into a morass of theological and scientific problems that continue to embarrass the Church in its attempt to speak to the world of natural science' It is not the true church of Jesus Christ who should be embarassed but those who have swallowed the the hopelessly flawed theory of evolution. Anyone who sees more evidence for evolution than the obvious fact that we were designed needs therapy to come out of denial. I suggest people you Peter either repent and have your eyes open or find another job. The church needs men of God not men who compromise with pseudo science. IT sounds like the blind leading the blind. Thank God that their are still many who hold to the truth of Jesus Christ being the Creator of all things.

Runner,

Once again you claim that evolution is hopelessly flawed. You avoided my response in another thread, so I shall ask you here.

On what basis do you make this claim? What would convince you otherwise? What do you offer as a testable alternative?

Poor Sells stuck in the absurd dilemmas of his own provincial "religious" mind and his fear saturated meat-body personality.

As though the mythological stories invented by a small tribal cult in Israel/Palestine over 2000 years ago have some kind of binding effect on the totality of Humankind in 2008.

And yes the Jewish "creation" stories do provide some extraordinarily profound ESOTERIC Wisdom re the appearance and structures of both the human body-mind and "creation" altogether.

Unfortunately Sells is very much trapped within the meat-body mortalist/materialist paradigm which has defined Western "culture" for over 200 years now. A paradigm which makes it almost impossible to even begin to Understand the ESOTERIC secrets contained in the Biblical "creation" stories--or any other creation story including that of quantum physics.

And what about the rest of the Great Tradition of Humankind and its multifarious "creation" stories. In this day and age the Great Tradition altogether is our collective inheritance and we are obliged to go to school and de-provincialize our minds from our inherited TRIBAL and entirely cultic belief systems.

There is a book in my local library that features brief descriptions of over 2000 names of God from all culturs, times and places.

And what about quantum physics that tells us that everything is just an infinite beginningless and endless eternal play or dance of Primal Energy in which all forms appear, are modified, and then disappear. Primal Energy being always constant.

And what about Consciousness which is THE FUNDAMENTAL REALITY (the Radiant Sea of Conscious Light) in which all of this playful energy and its infinite variety of forms appear.

Sells doesnt even begin to write about Consciousness and Energy.

He is essentially religiously illiterate---a purveyor of (perhaps) comforting fairy stories which do not provide any kind of substance or basis for a truly adult life in this day and age.

They never did of course.

Lev

You

'On what basis do you make this claim? What would convince you otherwise? What do you offer as a testable alternative'

The simple answer is that the theory of evolution has and will never be proved. Out of the millions of fossils found not one backs the theory. It is a theory that requires more assumptions ( along with the big bang) than most theories. Text books have to be continually rewritten as each 'missing link' turns out to be a fraud. It is a shame that many more scientist have not got the integrity and courage to say what they really believe when it comes to the evolution myth.

Evolution has failed the testable theory test in that it can't be validated by true science. Many honest scientist who are smarter than you and me will testify to this.

No scientific theory has been able to explain the existence of our planets. Common sense points to a designer. Faith in that designer is a choice. Most don't choose to believe and thus try to patronize those who do with the ridiculous flawed theory of evolution.

A good article, likely to attract the ire of both militant fundamentalists and militant atheists.

While in my experience most Christians today accept scientific explanations for the origin of the earth and evolution of life, it leaves some in a rather embarrassed relationship with the Genesis stories, as if these were crude attempts of a primitive people to explain what we now understand scientifically, rather that being crafted with a quite different purpose in mind

Peter, your article brings to mind Kuhn's notion of scientific revolution and paradigm shift. When the existing system of explanation can no longer accommodate the facts without excessive mental gymnastics a tension is produced which gives rise to some new system of explanatory dogma that either accommodates the untidy bits and pieces or renders them irrelevant. Why not be more explicit than you are? "God", as you refer to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is an epiphenomenon of human consciousness and society. The old paradigm of God the Creator is abandoned, and we are left to explain that human urge to do good, to love one's neighbor, and to think of the wellfare of posterity. I think I would be described as a secular humanist, and so my paradigm does not have to contort in attempts to rationalise the Holy Trinity. But maybe other difficulties are more implicit in my view. I am keen to understand more. But drop all this metaphysical stuff Peter, or stick to physiology :-)

I was actually thinking about a serious analysis of the article, but having read the sort of incredibly ill-informed creationist claptrap (sorry runner, but that's as toned-down as I can manage)that passes for serious thought, I am reduced to three observations.
1. Reading Richard Dawkin's 'The God Delusion' might be useful for anyone whose mind is not so closed that 'belief' always trumps logic and 'faith' always trumps evidence.
2. It is hardly rocket science to work out that omniscience and omnipotence are mutually exclusive properties.
3. There is a God and it is the Higgs field.
Amen.

Well this is just plain dumb.

Sells is essentially arguing that the early Hebrews had no concept of 'make', thus when someone said 'Jebediah made that bed' according to sells, they wouldn't really understand that Jebediah caused the bed to be created from the wood.

It is clear that Peter shows little understanding of the biblical interpretation and science with this irrational but heroic attempt to keep the NOMA view of science and theology intact.

Sells either ignores the many other places in the Bible where God is credited with the creation of everything or he implicitly is arguing that his interpretation is correct over Paul's, John's etc (thus also implicitly rejecting the inspiration and inerrancy of the bible).

One has to wonder why anyone should view the Bible as touching reality based upon Sells approach...but then I guess that is the obvious conclusion that those wanting to be consistent in their approach to finding truth make when they aren't willing to twist logic and reason as Peter is

Fencepost
Your reference to Kuhn is apt in that it describes what happened to theology in the Copernican revolution. The tension between the medieval synthesis and the new discoveries in nature brought about its end as I indicated in my essay. However I do not see it operating to discredit the whole field of theology. The reason being, and this is the same reason that God is not and “epiphenomenon of human consciousness and society” is that the Son anchors God within human history. God is an event, God is what happens between Jesus and us. God is thus immaterial in the same way that patriotism is. So theology is empirical, it relies on Israel’s remembrance of historical events even if these events have been embellished in what we see as supernatural ways. This is why it is important that Jesus was actually a man who lived and died, he is not a myth. All theology must begin with him because he was the true man. So we need no mythical conundrums, no resorting to the extranatural because theology has at its base an objective historical event even if that event does not live up to modern historicism.

It is certainly interesting to see how the freedom of the pseudonym allows contributors to these pages to say things that they would never say face to face. This is a great pity and it allows writers to replace denigration and abuse for sound argument. You will notice that I only answer those posts that are free of such denigration and will continue to do so

*puts on his 'militant' Fundamentalist garb*....

Ok Sells.. the villagers are a gathering.. torches all lit up... time for a lynchin.... :)

Good grief.. the Church has withstood such shallow and empty 'theology' ? from day one.

If Sells does not believe in God the Creator..then I'm sorry but dear Sells has abandoned any right or claim to the name 'Christian'....

I disagree with Sells... what he is saying is
-heretical..
-wrong..
-sinful..
-destructive..
-dangerous..
-holds Christians up to public ridicule.. and contempt.

BUT.. GUESS WHAT... I'd rather be in a society where he is FREEEE to say all that.. and let the ideas themselves win or lose on the strength of them and those behind them.....

than...

live in a society where to vilify religion is UNLAWFUL...

Oh wait.. I DO! live in JUST such a society..its called Victoria.

But don't worry Sells.. even though our RRT2001 DOES apply to things said interstate... I won't be raising a complaint with the EOC..
I welcome your contribution.

I can't let this end without some kind of affirmation to the contrary of what Sells said.. and it's ooooo so simple.. yet profound.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" Gen 1:1

Personally, I find it difficult to see how science can dispute that.

Sells, thank you for accepting my humour in like spirit. When I weigh the evidence I am convinced enough that Jesus was an historical figure, and from what is known and can be gathered from the Gospel records he was a really good person. At moments of my highest aspiration I would like very much to be more like him, in his toughness, gentleness, compassion, and insight into what is most important about life. Sure, he was a "child of his time" as is any historical person set in a specific context, but for me he epitomizes what is universally good. But personally I find all the Pauline christology stuff, and the Councils' holy trinity stuff stumbling blocks. The New York Review just had a couple of pages about Peter Gomes'new book, (the resident preacher at Harvard), with some quotations that appealed to me: "although Jesus came preaching a disturbing and redistributive gospel, we do not preach what Jesus preached. Instead we preach Jesus" Not a bad exhortation. Treat yourself to a paradigm shift, abandon the metaphysics, and settle for the best that man can do. Maybe to help others make a transition to this approach it is necessary to use the old christological paradigm, but what a shame to be so burdened. Sincere regards.

Who cares?

From an non-believer I am constantly tickled by the thought that modern physics for decades supported the notion of a steady state universe, one that always was and always will be, then along came the 'big bang' theory - the grand daddy of all creation stories.

I must confess a little sneaking suspicion that all those old buggers sitting around desert camps from Uluru to Sinai might just have some Capra style insight that is totally incapable of being proven but nonetheless is a delicious thought.

Therefore, though I never thought I would be saying this to Peter, keep the faith son! There are many colours between black and white on the good ol' electro-magnetic spectrum.

I think that this is one of Peter Sellick's better offerings. It clearly expresses his impossibly schizoid personal struggles to reconcile his faith with his intellect (and job).

That he is uncomfortable with the blind faith expressed so eloquently by e.g. Boazy, Grey, runner et al, is hardly surprising, since his various introspections indicate that he possesses a generally rational and keen intellect. This, of course, is why his desperately attempts to accommodate his apparently continually evolving faith within the scientific establishment that pays his wages is quite painful to read at times.

The only rational outcome of Peter's various discourses is his conscious adoption of a formal agnosticism. Otherwise he's bound to go completely ga-ga :)

Fascinating article, thank you.

Rhian, I agree with you.

Fencepost, No irony intended, but thank you for your short word-portrait of Jesus’ character and disposition. Wouldn’t it be strange if, in some sense or other, He is more clearly seen from outside the fold? One thing Christians should do is spend less time in the corral – jump the fence and refresh their perspective.

I’m not trying to sell you Jesus’ divinity, but perhaps you can understand why someone like me, who is actually acquainted with this person (or fancies themselves to be) might blur the distinction between what Jesus preached and Jesus himself. Many Christians would say heatedly that the only way to preach Jesus is to preach what Jesus preached. On the other hand, to be bonded by love to Jesus (or, to imagine it) is slightly exhilarating and disconcerting like any other strong love.

Pax,

Dear Boaz-David,

I find it extraordinary that after your G-d correctly commands you not to judge others least you be judged yourself you have the temerity to say "Sells has abandoned any right or claim to the name 'Christian'".

Luckily I have not placed myself under the same authority so I feel quite comfortable letting you know I regard your particular brand of Christianity as a total perversion, tainted with the same attitudes from the American deep south from whence it was born.

Indeed I see it as a "McDonalds" version of Christianity, neat but bland packages of token righteousness devoid of any nuances and when you 'Supersize' it you just get more of the same.

There seems to be so little of what you stand for in the bible I read I'm not sure it can be the same book that you wield with such pontification.

Every faith seems to have to shoulder the burden of its fundamentalists but BD you might think of helping the brothers and sisters and just lighten up a little.

Or am I being a little too judgemental?

Fencepost.
The conclusion that you draw that Jesus was a good man, even an exceptionally good man was drawn in the 19th century by Protestants and was before that God’s emissary who was sent to us to teach us to be good. There are certainly many liberal Protestants who would also agree in our own time. But that does not do justice to the vast array of New Testament writers. It is obvious that Jesus was more than a moral exemplar, although he was that as well. When the church called Jesus God it changed the way we understand divinity and thus overturned religious thought, especially the Greek. When the mob howled for the blood of this innocent man after he had walked to Jerusalem in full knowledge of what was going to happen something was said about us and something was said about what is truly divine. It is out of this history that the news of the resurrection proclaimed that the event of his trial and death would become the hinge of history, nothing would ever be the same. This is why the writers of the NT are so effusive, placing him at the centre of creation from who all things are made. It is this event that saves us from ourselves. You must look at the story and see what it imports and if you are lucky you will see that it imports God, the event that makes sense of everything and which calls a new world into being.

La di dah - yet another 'religion' article. Just what is it that is so fearful about death? Me, I am an atheist who is assured of eternal existence (as are we all)- matter cannot be destroyed, and within 60 years of my death my atoms will be incorporated into those of many other living things, just as I am composed of matter from other living beings over the ages, perhaps even Jesus, if he really existed. Now there's a puzzle - how can I contain Jesus-atoms and yet not believe in god, not even a teeny, teeny weeny bit?

The Big Bang theory depends on the assumption that the speed of light in vacuo is a constant, and has been so for at least the last 13 billion years that we see through to the edge of our observed universe. What if that assumption is wrong?.THAT would a paradigm shift that would shift our cosmologists to the red.

CSTEELE :) You last line was soooo gratifying :) in short YES :)

Your response raises many questions. But your conclusion 'Am I being too judgemental... on me' should be regarded as a bit of a mirror.

Nevertheless.. I totally support your freedom to criticize me.

Let me ask you.. 'r u open to discussion' ? a 'bigot' would not be.

Sells denial of the Creator of Genesis, is also a denial of the foundation of Jesus proclamation. Your observations about the Jesus of the Gospels.. is encouraging. I hope you will take more time to delve into the depths of what Paul was saying.

Jesus said:
"Father, ........because you loved me before the creation of the world" John 17:24

Question. "before the what?" ... "that" is what is judging Sells mate.

If I were to pick a new testament book which most 'fits' you..it would be "James".. have a read and see if I'm wrong.

James focuses on the issue of 'works' and 'faith'... it's one of the most heartwarming books of the Bible. Even so, it does not reject the 'faith' on which the works it so warmly speaks of.. are based.

My 'judging' of Sells.. is really an opinion. I'm not campaigning for his excommunication. The New testament, including the Lord Himself.. includes 'judging' of others. Example "Woe to you scribes, pharisees..HYPOCRITES" said Jesus. The distinction needs to be made, between evaluating others beliefs based on OUR 'righteousness'..or.. on an objective standard.. like 'law'....or principle.
I'm assessing Sells position not by 'my own' condition, but by an objective standard. If we couldn't do that, then none of us would say much about anything. True?

Did Jesus himself not warn about 'false prophets, false teachers'?

From OUTside 'The Church' you are welcome to say what you like about us, with reasonable immunity. (But don't start saying we kill babies or drink blood or I'll hunt ya down :) I speak as one 'INside...to one claiming to be 'in'side.

Unfortunately for Peter the only evidence for a loving history-creating God comes from exactly the same unreliable sources as the 'evidence' for a cosmological universe-creating God. There is no logical reason to dismiss one without dismissing the other.

Evidence, please, believers, evidence - your personal assertions are of no interest or value to anyone.

Like many others here Boazy I find you incorrigible in your certainty - but alas, you'll probably see that as a compliment. Your beliefs presume the sciential. You present us merely with a more naïve and less sophisticated version of a 'systematic certainty' you reject - i.e. Christian orthodoxy.

If humans are capable of certainty at all, it is surely of the sort that is capable of mixing with doubts. Your judgement of Sells, by an 'objective' standard, puts him 'INside' as much as you - your claim to be truly Christian does not make you exclusive, just nauseatingly pious.

I found this article of little value unless the point of it was to call 'creationists' back to a less 'Taliban' view of Biblical interpretation and stop embarassing the wider Christian community with childlike (US Evangelical) interpretations of the 'rapture.'

If the author was dismissing the veracity of the (unscientific, but prosaic) way the bible depicts creation, searching for a less literal interpretation, fine, but, I am not sure we can remove God from the equation because we don't really understand the mystery that God is and the complexities of the universe.

The fundamental question - is there a Creator? - is initially more important than who is the Creator and how did they do it? If I am to believe only in the here and now, then my perspective on a number of issues, eg justice, mercy, suffering etc could well be different.

This doesn't mean we react according to fear, but, perhaps awe is an undervalued concept. If someone, like Jesus is able to direct us to more fully appreciate God, then this is, as they say 'truly awesome!'

No Boaz-David it was not just opinion nor an objective standard, but a reckless judgement of another man's claim to Christianity that I am questioning and viewing as dangerous.

Likewise I can also question an intemperate, judgemental, diatribe of your Lord against the 'Jews' and can see the distorted thread to Hitler's statement in Mien Kampf; "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

I used to debate freely with Creationists friends until I realised their vulnerability to any weakening of the fundamentalist pillars upon which their faith is based. At the risk of you calling me a bigot, as with my friends, I won't debate you about Genesis unless you could convince me that if I won your faith would be strong enough to stand without its creationist pillar. Maybe Peter’s article displays a strength you are yet to experience.

I shouldn't get angry at you, though I can get angry that a bunch of men in the 1920's could put forward a doctrine of the essential belief requirements that has perverted the messages of Christ and precluded many potential followers from walking a life enriching path.

I see you BD, unwittingly I know, as doing the work of those false teachers, turning away far more than you attract to the faith you profess so much love for. Luckily for you Jesus seems to have kept his ire for the false prophets if my reading of the bible is correct.

Therefore I do hope for your sake when you ask ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t I prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons and do many powerful deeds?’ you don't hear the words 'I never knew you'.

Perhaps an apology to Peter might help that cause.

Peter,
Thanks for a thought provoking article concerning in fact the relation between Christian faith and science. Comments on what you wrote by those who reject Christianity, (or even belief in a personal God) are like comments on the proper use of an English word by those who do not speak English; they should simply be ignored. Disregarding those as well as those who feel unconventional ideas threaten their faith, there are still some things I would like to comment on myself.

In the sense of Ian Barbour‘s typography (of possible relations between science and religion), conflict, independence, dialogue and integration, your presentation, as I understood it, falls mostly under the label “independence”, where science and religion are seen as “two magisteria" that operate in “complementary not contrary fashion in their totally separate realms." (Stephen Jay Gould). Perhaps too much. I think dialogue (or even integration) are more fruitful approaches, at least as seen by the well know scientist/theologian duo Polkinghorne-Peacocke, as well as Barbour himself.

I think the problem lies, at least partly, in different uses of terms like origin, creation, cause etc., depending on whether the context is religion/theology or natural science. For instance, causation, like time, can be clearly expressed in the mathematical language of relativity theory. However, independent of this, we have an innate sense of time and cause, so we cannot think very well outside these categories, including speculations about our very being, be it at a sophisticated theological/metaphysical level, or just the unsophisticated level of the religious “man in the street”.

Roughly speaking, a scientist does not think outside the realms of time and causation, the (pure) mathematician does, and the philosopher or theologian has problems trying to. The same about origin, creation. Of course, you are right that the Big Bang cannot be identified with the act of creation the Bible (symbolically) speaks of, exactly because physics/cosmology does not speak about creation or origin (like mathematics does not speak about time, or theology about electrons).

I think these remarks are valid irrespective of your interesting interpretation of the historical background.

I have no doubt in the existence of God, put that down to a sense of faith.

I do have serious and ongoing doubts and misgivings about the Church, the claims by different denominations to being the monopoly conduit to the true “God” and the authority they seek to exact demands upon people both of their denomination and beyond it.

Similarly, the Bible is claimed to be the word of God which is treated as literal; when it is really a collection of fables and folklore written by men and re-interpreted to suit the politics of Popes and Kings gone past and passed down in that rewritten state.

That some (fundamentalist) Christians are prepared to treat the literary work of the Bible as fact and demand it be imposed on all as the literal word of God tests their credulity but then, a fundamentalist view, at the edge of mainstream is where all the zealots, the gullible and the fringe believers exist

Hi Fencepost, In a previous article you noted "But personally I find all the Pauline christology stuff, and the Councils' holy trinity stuff stumbling blocks". I can understand that, because the "Trinity" doesn't exist and never did. Nowhere in the Bible is the word "Trinity" mentioned. Jesus Himself, clarified who He is simply in John 1:1-14, also 2 Corinthians 5:19,18,17, Colossians 1:15-19, there are many more scriptures in regards to who Jesus is. Note though the word "Son" doesn't have the same meaning biblically as it does in today's language. Son means the 'firstborn'. Even "Christening" the sprinkling on the head that one often has had done as an infant, is a man-made tradition. Jesus commands us as per Acts 2:38 to be baptized (fully immersed under water)in His name. That is in the name of Jesus, not under the titles of the Father,Son and Holy Spirit.

I'm reading from the King James Bible, this link may be of some help http://www.allonlinebible.com - this is a searchable online bible.

I hope this is of some help.

Thanks Z

Grey and George.
Grey makes a valid point about our causal sense. We intuitively link events as causative and life would look pretty strange without it. However the kind of causality discovered by natural science is not intuitive, indeed it is often counter to our senses and hence in a way the opposite of empirical. The most obvious case being that our experience is that the sun rises and sets. So there is a causality that can only be obtained through observation and theory. This is the kind of causality that prescientific peoples do not have and since cosmogony requires this then I think my point is valid.

I do not think that theology and science are independent of each other. As I indicated, science rests on the totally unproven notion of the biblical writers that the world is natural. However science must be free to find what it finds. This means that theology is not directly involved in what results come to light in the lab, as it were. I have always had trouble with Peacock and Polkinghorne, they are not theological enough and want to blend a Greek understanding of God with the Christian tradition that does not work. The key insight comes from the Cappadocian fathers that God is not a being, there is nobody out there. Rather, as I indicated “God is what happens between us and Jesus” as pure event. This overturns the Greek necessity to have a causal agent that produces a cause. If we say that God “is whoever raised Jesus from the dead” we identify the God we are talking about but we do not have to have a physical agent that did the raising. Thus the resurrection endures without any visible means of causal support other than it points to the truth of what happens in this man Jesus.

This all means that Christianity is closer to atheism than we might think and of course that the atheists have the ground cut from underneat

To me religion is a construct that is designed to make us feel safe and answer the questions that are as yet unanswerable.
Many religions exist, but very few acknowledge the truth of other faiths. So which religion is correct? The one with the greatest number of people or the one in which faith is strongest.
I am not sure, but think that John Paul II was the first pope to say that other religions can be a road to God.
Science is fluid and only puts forward its best supposition
Religion is static and states unproven information as fact.
I believe that the majority of religions generating factors have been elucidated using science and hence religion has little relevance.
Imagine you were on the market for a religion.
How would you choose? They all have very similar ethics, but then I think these ethics are inbuilt for all humans.
Heliocentricity was heresy but is now considered fact. Is it not suspect that once this contradiction of religion is considered fact the church changes its view. In that case I will chose to believe that I will go to heaven but not choose to believe that god exists.
Consider Occams razor “all things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually correct”
Conversely to all of the above Human conscience seems to contradict Survival of the fittest (we help each other) Unless Darwinism can be applied to survival of species. But if not then perhaps there is something to this religion thing
This is just some random thoughts and I know it is not a logical progression of thought but then this is the order these thoughts have occured in.
I mean no offence to anyon

To runner
The theory of evolution is not flawed.
I study molecular biology and evolution Fits in with genetics perfectly.
How does the bible explain things that were almost man, but not quite.
According to the Bible, counting the generations since Adam and Eve, the earth is approximately 6000 years old (as opposed to the more accurate 4.54 billion). And besides science is not trying to force its belief on people it just states what is considered correct by the scientific community and asks anyone to improve on it. If you have emperical proof of creation, present it to a scientific journal, and if it is accurate it will be accepted. However, as yet no religion has been able to do this. Instead the religious community seems to think that belief without proof is acceptable and then tries to force it down other peoples' throats.
I can't believe there are still people in this world that actually reject evolution. My mother is a strict catholic (as I once was) and she even believes that evolution occured. She believes that god used evolution as a tool anyway you have a right to your belief.
It does not matter how many times you tell a lie. It will not make it any more true.

thecat

Summary of the age of the earth by prominent scientist.

Who? Age of the earth When was this?
Comte de Buffon 78000 years 1779
Abraham Werner 1 million years 1786
James Hutton Perhaps eternal 1795
Pièrre LaPlace Indefinite, long ages 1796
Jean Lamarck Long ages 1809
Georges Cuvier Untold ages 1812
Charles Lyell Millions of years 1830–1833
Lord Kelvin 20-100 million years 862–1899
Arthur Holmes 1.6 billion years 1913

I could go on but now you give me the absurd 4.5billion as the latest guess by men using totally flawed methods. Please keep me a break from such blind flawed faith.

I quite believe you , Peter, when you cite atheism as being close to Christianity. Perhaps unique to Christianity is the introspection and myth that does not condemn you as a kafir. Thomas Altizer’s death-of-God theology perhaps offers a solution to our modern experience of Godlessness. Altizer’s theology is founded on the conviction that the dialectic theology of the 1920’s was not dialectical enough. It is Altizer’s claim that Barth, Bultmann, Tillich, and the other dialectic theologians were never able to transcend an inherited dualism. It was Nietzsche who originally gave us the prophetic realization on the death of God.

Do not death-of-God Christianity and Zen here unite?

We encounter the radical, abyss-wide oppositions of life and death, beginning and end, innocence and Fall, the light of Spirit and the darkness of flesh, the certainties of primordial Being and the uncertainties of history, the abstract and the concrete,

True cognizance for 'the Christian who bets that God is dead risks both moral chaos and his own damnation. . . . [He] must do so with a full realization that he may very well be embracing a life-destroying nihilism; or, worse yet, he may simply be submitting to the darker currents of our history, passively allowing himself to be the victim of an all too human horror. . . . [There is the] very real possibility that the willing of the death of God is the way to madness, dehumanization, and even to the most totalitarian form of society yet realized in history.' - Altizer

A literal descent into hell becomes a truth, no longer a metaphor.
Ironically, atheism gives us respite.

The world, like Dionysus, is torn to pieces by pure intellect; but the poet is Zeus; he has swallowed the heart of the world; and he can reproduce it as a living body.

If anything, the fullest expressions of the modern imagination are even more apocalyptic in form, movement, imagery, and symbolism than is the New Testament; or so, at least, it would appear to the Christian today who inherits almost two millennia of demythologizing an originally apocalyptic faith.

Relda.
A thoughtful post. Certainly the god of Nietzsche’s madman is dead. This is the Hellenic form of god that displaced the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, ie the god who appears in the history of Israel and is among us as Jesus. But rumours of the death of God are highly exaggerated. God does exist as a history of events. God exists and takes up residence in the human heart and mind when the import of the biblical stories are understood and the sacraments of the church are celebrated. We have claimed too much for God in wrong directions and that has devalued his name. We now need to go about the theological task of retrieval and reconstitution so that this name may again command a place in our lives that is not just religious or instrumental. God is not just a social construct, God has reality apart from us as historical events and the reality of the world exist over and against us

Runner,

<<Out of the millions of fossils found not one backs the theory.>>

We all know about the Piltman Down hoax, but could you point me to some references that state that none of the fossils found backs the theory of evolution?

You can't can you?

<<It is a theory that requires more assumptions ( along with the big bang) than most theories.>>

Could you please list these "assumptions"?

What about the Creationist assumption of a God?

<<Text books have to be continually rewritten as each 'missing link' turns out to be a fraud.>>

Continually? How many times approximately?

<<It is a shame that many more scientist have not got the integrity and courage to say what they really believe when it comes to the evolution myth.>>

And you know what they all believe, do you? Who are you referring to exactly?

<<Evolution has failed the testable theory test in that it can't be validated by true science.>>

Then how do you explain speciation?

<<Many honest scientist who are smarter than you and me will testify to this.>>

Like who?

<<No scientific theory has been able to explain the existence of our planets.>>

Not quite.

Either way, how does that automatically mean that a God must've done it?

<<Common sense points to a designer.>>

That's what they used to say about rainbows and lightning.

Complexity is not synonymous with design. Simplicity is one of the main objectives in design. There are simple things that are designed, and complex things that originate naturally.

So what's this “common sense” that you speak of?

<<Summary of the age of the earth by prominent scientist...>>

Notice all the scientists you mentioned pre-dated the multitude of reliable dating methods we now have; all of which point to the same magnitude of age?

How were the dating methods that they used, better than radiometric dating?

Peter,

I have to admit, I was not sure whether I could understand your article; now I am certain I could not. If “God is not a being, there is nobody out there”, then who (or what) is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (who you claim was displaced by the now dead “ Hellenic form of god”). I am not sure how to understand Him who SPEAKS in the Old Testament if He only “exist as a history of events“. Were Abraham, Isaac and Jacob aware of, and heard the voice of, not a personal God, but only a “history of events”? Do you indeed subscribe to Thomas Altizer’s death-of-God theology as quoted by relda? That is your prerogative, but it is certainly not the only, (perhaps not even “mainstream”) version of what one would call Christian theology. To me it sounds as a rather sad version.

Well, I have to admit, I am even less “theological” than Peacocke and Polkinghorne, but I know that whatever one can say about (the Christian model of) God, one always has to have a balance between the immanent and transcendent aspects (of our attempts to understand Him), though both aspects can be exaggerated by this or that school of theology. Are you (and Altizer, for that matter) not downplaying the transcendent aspect? I am not criticising, I am just trying to understand your version of Christian faith.

<<Christianity is closer to atheism than we might think>>

Could you please explain what you mean by this; closer than what? Christianity can be defined by a set of doctrines (creeds), atheists insist that they do not subscribe to any doctrines, so this closeness cannot be along doctrinal lines. Perhaps along psychological lines, but then the statement is too sweeping, unless by Christianity you mean only the Christianity of Altizer’s death-of-God theology. (ctd)

(ctd) <<Peacock and Polkinghorne ... want to blend a Greek understanding of God with the Christian tradition that does not work.>>

Well, they are not the only ones. As you might know, the present pope - who is not a scientists but you can hardly claim he is “not enough theological” - dedicated his controversial talk at the Regensburg university in September 2006 (controversial only because of his quote from an obscure medieval source that outraged islamic fanatics) to more or less the same, the relation of Christianity and the Hellenic culture. For instance:

“Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. ... In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. .. The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenization of Christianity - a call which has more and more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the modern age“ etc.

He will probably disagree with Nietzsche and Alzinger but I do not think he disagrees with the above scientists-theologians. Of course, one has to read the whole speach to understand his point.

George,

On the surface, the theology of Altizer may appear as rather depressing or sad with his apocalyptic visioning. However, a more contextual reading (as you suggest of the Pope) is appropriate. Undoubtedly , the theology offered is radical but he suggests a new beginning. It is only on the basis of this understanding that we can see how radical the choice between an apocalyptic hope and an apocalyptic despair would be.

One should remember Newton not only as not a scientist, but as a heretic and apocalyptic theologian (as his later years show) - he was also a profoundly Christian believer. It is only Spinoza in that world who rivals Newton as a radical theological thinker, and we could even understand that finally Newton made possible not only Spinoza but the whole tradition of modern radical theological thinking. Newton understood God’s presence as a substantial presence in the world, and just as God exists necessarily, ‘by the same necessity He exists always and everywhere’ (Scholium Generale).
Through the Newtonian revolution, and for the first time, infinity is fully realised as the infinity of the world.

The type of thinking offered by Newton was but a starting point. Altizer's belief in an absolute apocalypse that is the death of God, looks like a stubbornness, from the perspective of the surface, but should be read as kenotic—as the absolute emptying that makes the surface sacred, and not just a space of possible experiences. Thus, not only is Christianity the origin of our nihilism, but a full or absolute nihilism is necessary and essential for Christianity, or for an apocalyptic Christianity, or that Christianity which is an original Christianity.

To runner
Since 4.54billion is the currently agreed age as determined by experts in the area who have been studying for quite some time, I will agree until proven otherwise. It is certainly more accurate than 6000 years. Why is it that you accept some branches of science while rejecting other. Scientific method does not differ between branches. It is not as though those who study medicine (the science I am assuming you accept), instead of using empirical testing, sit in prayer groups and pray for new cures. They also develop a theory and test it. They have also been wrong in the past but it is no reason to reject their current findings Why is it that religious types are experts in every subject; genetics, geology etc
Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and 1 Chronicles 16:30 "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved."
Do you still believe that the earth is the centre of the universe? No because religion finally caved in to science
Will your opinion change when religion accepts evolution (as it will)
And do not think what I say is crap because there was another “runner” back in the time of Galileo His name was Simplicius
Since there is not a single shred of proof for creation and there is proof for evolution I will believe evolution. The difference between one who believes in evolution and one who believes in creation is that the evolutionist is willing to listen to the argument of anyone who has proof. A creationist blindly rejects all other points of view. As I said previously Present your proof of creation to a scientific journal and if it is accurate it will be accepted.

Using an example from a fictional but well meaning book; I, like Thomas, will not believe without seeing. At least he received proof.
So if Jesus sees it necessary to show proof (holes in hand) then perhaps you should emulate him in this way as well.

George and Relda.

You might like to look at two other articles:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5101

and

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=439

Much of 20th century Protestant theology has pursued a doctrine of God that is not grounded on the usual ontology of things. Reading in 18th C theology I am struck with how the doctrine of the Trinity was understood in terms of persons, following the disastrous translation by Boethius from developed and subtle Greek understandings of hypostasis and ousia into the Latin substance and Person and thus injecting a materialist understanding of God that the Eastern church found reprehensible. Thus God, in the West, became an immaterial substance, whatever that it, and lost the event nature of God so painstakingly elaborated in the East. An immaterial substance is still a category of substance, a category that invited speculation but not much else and destroyed a competent Trinitarianism.

The controversy with Greek thought is that they understood God as distant and unapproachable and above history. Their conception of the universe was a hierarchy of beings with God on the top.

The Cappadocians laid that structure on its side so that time became the x axis, hence my statement that the Hebrew God exists in a transcendence of time and not of space. Certainly we had a lot from the Greeks, it is apparent that the New Testament could not have been as theologically sophisticated in Hebrew. And also the pope’s suggestion that without Greek understanding of reason being central that things might have been very different for us is warranted. However, as Jenson says “The gospel mission did in fact meet with another and fundamentally incompatible identification of God, that of the Greeks, which could not be ignored.” It was in this conversation with Greek thought that endangered the original Hebrew conceptions and threatened the continuity of the Old and NTs.

thecat

You ask why is it that religous types are experts in every subject? Who made that claim? You know as well I do that their are plenty who have studied geology and are still Creationist (sometimes as a result of studying dating methods) there are plenty of Creationist doctors who reject evolutionary biology and plenty of Creationist astronauts. The fact that they are not in the majority means little to me. I would rather listen to those who believe in a Creator than those who make up other stories. Your figure of 4.5 billion years is the latest in a long line of guesses. Evolution is an unproven theory. Creation can't be proved scientifically but the evidence sure points to it a lot more than the other fallacy.

Runner,

You're mistakingly assuming that a belief in God, automatically means that Christian scientists are Creationists.

There are certainly some Geologists who believe in a creator. But I don't know of any who believe the in young Earth creation.

The vast majority of Scientists who believe in God, don't take the Bible entirely literally, and accept that the Earth is very old, and believe that God created life on Earth through an evolutionary process.

Why? Because they can't dispute it.

Could you name for me, some Creationist geologists?

Remember, I don't mean “Christian”, I specifically mean “Creationist”.

Even if you can name some Creationist doctors and astronauts, it doesn't mean much. I could reject the laws of physics and still drive a car.

<<I would rather listen to those who believe in a Creator than those who make up other stories.>>

How is evolution “made-up” when the evidence suggests it? You still haven't provided evidence for Creationism.

<<...4.5 billion years is the latest in a long line of guesses.>>

The difference is though, that they're not “guesses” in this day and age because of all the methods of dating that suggest that the Earth is billions of years old. Here are several links that conclusively disprove your claim. The third link contains hundreds of pages, so take your time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLFKM886l4Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8Ii-dpRrXM
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

<<Creation can't be proved scientifically but the evidence sure points to it a lot more than the other fallacy.>>

Yet you can't show a shred of evidence for this claim of yours!

Admit it, Runner... You're just making things up.

Oh goodie, Peter is back talking teddy (god) again which should bring a lot of fun comments. We certainly see that there is no end to the many different teddies out and about but in effect they always seem to operate from an irrational distrust of others, exhibit a disorder of perception and have delusions that are highly manipulative and troubled. There are all mighty powerful creator teddies, vengeful jack-in-the-box teddies, some particularly virulent forms with wild apocalyptic and messianic visions and even teddies with a real estate focus.

From Peter's article it seems he is attempting to again describe the residual perpetuation of a teddy mind virus. i.e. a teddy as a piece of software existing, that somehow "takes up residence in the human heart and mind". However, unfortunately this cannot be seen as anything special, other than this reverse notion of the mind or intelligence first concept which, however one looks at it is a social construct developed out of the superstitious understanding of a pattern of events.

This teddy of the mind is essentially materialist although it vainly seeks to transcend all manner of unwanted and confusing noise. However, to be concerned with events and happenings, its very existence cannot deny the actuality of matter. There are simply no objective moral laws existing independently of sentient beings in the way that laws of nature exist.

Peter,
Thanks for your two earlier articles, which I thoroughly read through. I think I would still summarize http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5101 as an argument for restricting God to what classically would be only His/Its only immanent aspect. As to http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=439 advocating a strict divorce of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob from the God of philosophers and scientists, I noticed that it brought out only one comment. So I think this forum is not an appropriate place for dissecting it in detail, almost sentence after sentence. Let me just say, that my understanding of, and approach to, the two great books, the Bible and the Book of Nature (written in the language of mathematics, as Galileo put it), is more balanced.

I know, I have no theological qualification, but I think I do not need them necessarily for my faith (and I believe neither do most Christians). However, my faith in the 21st century needs to admit interpretations compatible with certain (of course, not all) interpretations of the findings of contemporary physics, biology, neuroscience, psychology etc.

My favourite joke is that I can understand Russell but do not agree with him, whereas I agree with Whitehead but do not understand him. Perhaps i should also say that I understand Dawkins but do not agree with him, whereas I agree with the Christian perspective of Peter Sellick but do not understand him (in the sense that some of your statements sound to me - in my theological ignorance or pre-postmodernist thinking - as contradicting each other).

Perhaps this is one reason why I prefer to be a Catholic: I can shop around for many interpretations of the Gospel and its metaphysical underpinnings, but it is only the version advocated by the pope where I have to worry if I cannot understand it. And his version, as I already mentioned, is compatible with the way scientists/theologians see it (which, of course, was not always so), and hence is easy to understand even for a mathematician (ignoring here some controversial positions on sexual morals).

relda,
Thank for your info. I have to admit, I did some reading about Altizer on the internet. Of course, not nearly enough to understand him.

<<On the surface, the theology of Altizer may appear as rather depressing or sad with his apocalyptic visioning.>>

If his intention was not to sound sad or depressing, why does he speak of the “death of God”? If you were told your loved one was dead, would you not expect the explanation of circumstances, whatever they were, to be sad, depressing? Also ‘apocalypse‘ in my dictionary means “an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale”, and I do not know of any other meaning of the word. So how can apocalyptic visioning, or even apocalyptic hope make any sense?

As I understand your interpretation of Newton and Spinoza, it does not contradict the complementarity of immanent an transcendent ways of looking at God, that I referred to in my response to Peter.

“Altizer ... has never been interested in what things are in and for themselves apart from human experience. ... The reality with which he has concerned himself is humanly experienced reality and that alone ”[http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=1105&C=1152].

So my first impression is that before one can understand Altizer, one must understand his (post-modernist?) philosophy. Perhaps something like in order to understand Rudolf Bultmann one has to be familiar with Heidegger‘s existentialist philosophy.

I might be completely wrong with my first impressions, but the controversy around whether/how God exists, what is the truth about Him etc. reminds me of the “science wars” triggered by Sokal’s hoax [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair], where working scientists - atheist or not - defended their search for “objective truth“ against post-modernists and social constructivists of science. One could find some merit in the debate, often just parallel monologues, if one was able to look at the problem from a philosophy of science perspective.

As I said, these are just my very superficial impressions, and I am certainly thankful to you for calling my attention to Altizer.

George.
The meaning of apocalypse in the NT is not simply the destruction of all things but a revelation that carries all before it.
I have a problem with the two books in that it confirms that our knowledge is fragmented. I offer this piece out of my embryonic thesis as an aide to what I mean.

“The binding together of Father, Son and Holy Spirit sets the stage for the unity of all knowledge and potentially defeats all dualism. If the Father, the truth of all things, cannot be separated from the Son, His revealing of Himself in the man Jesus, and if, further, our knowledge of both Father and Son can only occur in the power of the Spirit then all knowledge of both heavenly and earthly things is an indissoluble unity. Jenson (1995) “The Triunity of Truth” argues that all knowledge is a unity on the basis that all knowledge points to a truthful narrative of the world.

The incarnation of the Son dissolves the separation of earthly and the heavenly that was established in Platonism in which the soul was imprisoned in the body and in Aristotle in the separation between the earthly and the celestial carried forward in Ptolemaic cosmology.
Platonism tends to hold that the mind is continuous in some respect with the divine, while the bodily and material is at best irrelevant. While for Platonism the forms, with which our souls were acquainted before we were imprisoned in our material bodies, are the mediators of our knowledge of God, Christian theology, lacking such a view of the divinity of the mind, must be taught by the Holy Spirit. (Gunton 1998)

The mistake that the church, both Protestant and Catholic, made in the 16th C in response to the accumulation of scientific knowledge of the solar system courtesy of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler was to cling to the authority of the bible as the unifying centre of all knowledge and not to the unification of all knowledge in the most holy and undivided Trinity.”

AJ Philips,

You know as well as I do that their are many scientist who believe in a young earth. They interpret the facts differently from the evolutionist and come up with completely different answers. You also know that those questioning evolution are likely to be failed at university (and schools) because many of the scientist are insecure about their dogmas which have to continually change. I have met a number of geologist who believe in a young earth. In university they play the game (not questioning dating methods) in order to get qualified. Far from making it up you are obviously blinded to the fact that many scientist believe in a young earth. Simply google to find that out. Attached is a list of every kind of scientist you can think of who believe in Creation and many of them a young earth.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/bios/default.asp

Sells,
In 'How does God exist' you express , 'Christian atheism consists in a retrieval of the God of the Bible who is identified in the events of the particular nation Israel and etc….' The atheism, however, as found in the death of God offers a contradiction . A Theistic Christianity is 'close' to Atheism in terms of its dualism as is light and day but Christian atheism is not a mysterious paradox but rather an unmistakably clear contradiction

If it is impossible biblically, philosophically, and theologically to accept a literal interpretation of the death of God in his own being, there remain two possible alternatives: either God exists now, always has and always will or he never did exist, does not now and never will. These alternatives make it plain that whatever Christian atheism may be, it cannot consistently claim to be both Christian and atheistic at one and the same time. In so far as it is Christian it cannot be atheist, and in so far as it is atheist it cannot be Christian. Christian atheism, far from reconciling the two doctrines, becomes neither.

If there are those who would be come atheists and, at the same time, avoid this obvious contradiction, they must look elsewhere for their theoretical models.

Jean-Paul Satre and Albert Camus are note worthy of the atheistic existentialist persuasion where the starting point was with the Nietzschean slogan "God is dead. But for atheistic existentialism, unlike Christian atheism, the death of God does not mean that God once actually existed, but rather that a supreme being or God never has existed and never wilL

As a theologian, Sells, my guess is you realise the existentialist thought encompassing the uncompromising atheism of Nietzsche and Sartre and the agnosticism of Heidegger - originating from the intensely religious philosophies of Pascal and Kierkegaard. Despite your differing theology, I gather your common ground with Protestant theologians Tillich and Bultmann, Roman Catholic theologian Gabriel Marcel and Jewish philosopher Buber, is a personal sense of authenticity and commitment - beyond a love of theology

George,
As mentioned by Altizer (Absolutely New Space, 2007), Newton's thinking helped set in chain a new process of radical theological thought - not only through his science but his theological understanding, "..it is Newton more than any other thinker who has given us an infinite space that is simultaneously the body of the universe and the body of God.." His unorthodox anti-Trinitarian beliefs certainly meant an uneasiness (if not, certain excommunicable heresy) within the established Church - the same Church which had also shaped his God-belief. By comparison, Alitzer is no more radical than Newton in his departure from Church orthodoxy, but instead places himself in the 21st Century rather than the 18th.

Whilst I find some of what Alitzer has written hard to grasp, he will no doubt strike a chord with many, 'When a contemporary Christian confesses the death of God he is giving witness to the fact that the Christian tradition is no longer meaningful to him, that the Word is not present in its traditional form, and that God has died in the history in which he lives'(Alitzer). His attempt to get off his theological pulpit is laudable. In more concrete terms he believes the church's concept of God today is the product of the encounter between primitive Christianity and Greek philosophy, an idol that is no longer relevant to secular culture and has been either neutralized by overexposure or rejected entirely. Ironically, Sells almost seems in agreement with this.

I can also agree with him when he says, ".. that never in my lifetime has the church been so paradoxical. On the one hand, it is seemingly stronger than ever before. On the other, it is weaker and more mindless than ever before. In all major denominations, fights are going on because fundamentalism is so extraordinarily powerful today. Fundamentalism is in ultimate conflict with the modern world.”

Relda.
I really must disagree with Altizer’s take on Newton. His idea that space was God’s sensorium, whatever that means, was a backward step to Stoicism, that removed the dividing line between creator and creature that is so firmly implanted in the Hebrew tradition. It is a short step to seeing God as the agent in the force of gravity and thus Him being a part of the mechanics of the universe. This is what I mean about the latent materialism of the West’s conception of God that makes him so vulnerable to scientific critique. I am with Laplace in saying that we have no need of that hypothesis.

Yes, I do agree with Altizer when he says that we have inherited a compromise God from the collision of the Hebrew and Greek concepts that is neither fish nor foul and that is thus the cause of modern atheism.

It does seem that fundamentalism is in conflict with the modern world but is in fact a product of it. Newton was the ultimate fundamentalist. It is interesting that among the scientists we find mostly atheists but if they are Christian they are mostly fundamentalist. It seems to come with the territory of empiricism, one really does want to have evidence instead of living by a hope in that which is unseen.

Runner,

<<You know as well as I do that their are many scientist who believe in a young earth.>>

OK. I'll admit it. I was baiting you and I knew exactly what your response was going to be too.

<<They interpret the facts differently from the evolutionist and come up with completely different answers.>>

I’m glad you raised this, because this is where Creationist “science” falls down before it even starts…

Normal Scientists:
"Here are the facts, what conclusions can we draw from them?"

Creationist Scientists:
"Here’s our conclusion, what facts can we find to support it?"

And hence, the only theory that is “hopelessly flawed”, is Creationism.

<<You also know that those questioning evolution are likely to be failed at university (and schools) because many of the scientist are insecure about their dogmas which have to continually change.>>

Firstly, there is nothing 'dogmatic' about evolution at all.

Scientists are constantly putting evolution to the test. That's how they further their discoveries. It is just plain dumb to assume that it will never be proven wrong just because it hasn't yet been proven wrong. Did it ever occur to you that it may not have been proven wrong yet because it isn't?

Secondly, the only scientists who are insecure about their beliefs are Creationist scientists.

This is evident in their slipperiness; their need to plead when putting forth a case; the deceptive tactics they use, such as only telling half the story; and the dishonesty that is rife within the Creationist order, such as their false claims that the evolution videos on YouTube – using their material to demonstrate the absurdity of Creationism – were breaching copyright law, when they weren't.

<<In university they [Creationist geologists] play the game (not questioning dating methods) in order to get qualified.>>

Why wouldn't they question the dating methods? Normal scientists did, and still do. That's how we know they're reliable.

You act like the science community is an authoritative order. It's not. Scientists question other scientists all the time. That's how they make progress and develop new theories.

Continued...

...Continued

Scientists generally appreciate being questioned, as they are passionate about scientific progress.

Unlike Creationists, who are only there to push the beliefs that they will never change.

Also, we're not just talking about a few dating methods here, Runner. Where taking a LOT. There are fifteen different methods of radiometric dating alone. Different methods working on different clocks, and different principals. All of which point to the same magnitude of age.

<<Far from making it up you are obviously blinded to the fact that many scientist believe in a young earth.>>

I was more referring to all your uneducated assertions about evolution.

If I were “blinded”, then I wouldn't bother looking into the claims of Creationists.

On the contrary, not only am I a former-Creationist myself, but I've read virtually all of their scientific arguments, and every one of them can either be conclusively dis-proven; shown to be using deceptive tactics by telling half-truths; or gross displays of naïvety.

<<Simply google to find that out.>>

Speaking of Google, why can’t you use it enough to realise that you’re claims about evolution are rubbish?

Because you don’t want to.

You display the same kind of ignorance displayed by the Creationist scientists with their cherry-picking of facts. You didn’t even check the links I posted, did you?

<<Attached is a list of every kind of scientist you can think of who believe in Creation…>>

Believing in ’creation’ doesn’t always imply a belief in ‘creationism’. All Christian scientists believe in a creator. But not many of them at all, actually believe in ‘creationism’.

<<…and many of them a young earth.>>

I went looking through that link you provided, and many of the scientists mentioned don't have their interpretations published there – even the ones that have links to their biographies.

But I read many of the interpretations that were published at that website, and all of their claims (that I read) can either be dis-proved, or brought into serious question (mostly dis-proved though) by the three links I provided you with earlier – that's how I know you didn't check them out.

Peter

I am a bloke whose mind has never been disciplined enough to grasp mathematics and science, but whose soul has long sought truth and meaning. We are stilled pained by the cuckoos who fly into your nest, but I find the contributions of others ( George, Relda ...), though difficult for me to penetrate, worthwhile for the glimpses of knowledge in their light.

My prevailing interest is where "the rubber hits the road" in the domains of religion and politics. I find your pieces enlightening as they are breaking open new thought whilst based on well grounded doctrine which of course itself is founded on reflection of The Word. In a sense they are radical in the "root" sense of the word.

I have come to talk of my faith in terms of story and events under your influence. It is a language that can satiate a terrible thirst as it is an entrypoint. And one that cannot be appropriated by those who propound the negative, "we are not of God". I am yet to hear of their story. No beginning.. no end - only a big bang and an eventual whimper.

Notwithstanding my earlier comments, I say Amen to the accessible thoughts you relate from your "embryonic thesis". I hope it forms to a full and vibrant birth to add to our story, or at least, contribute a new view of it.

Best wishes

AJP

One further point worth adding is that in order to attract the interest of scientists an hypothesis must be refutable. Since you cannot construct any experiment either to replicate or refute creation it is simply of no interest scientifically. Furthermore creationism does not suggest any interesting lines of investigation which might be of scientific interest. As a 'scientific hypothesis' it is still-born.
As a scientific hypothesis evolution, on the other hand, has been enormously productive in terms of inspiring new and interesting avenues of scientific research. While no-one is trying to disprove creation as a scientific hypothesis evolution continues to be a productive hypothesis and along with the derived research from it many interesting and useful discoveries are being made every day to the benefit of humanity and our whole environment.
For my part the creationists can go on making their case as long as they like but until 'creation science' proves itself to be scientifically productive it will remain an essenitally 'non-participating' partner to the field of biological science.

Biblical Creation, on the other hand, as literature, is a powerful story of human relationships and the nature of being human. It is at once an affirmation of human sexuality and a warning that there are both blessings and dangers associated with this gift of life.
As compared to other 'creation myths' the Biblical story asserts the freedom of Adam and a certain equality in his relationship to God. Creation is a Divine gift from which the Creator steps back enough to give Adam a high degree of freedom and responsibility. It is a beautiful but challenging and disturbing story. But surely this is how it really is. We humans enjoy a high degree of freedom and have the capacity to make very significant changes to the world in which we live. Great responsibility attaches to this capacity and this freedom. Enjoy!

Sells, relda,
Yes, I was naive in my understanding of apocalypse. I used to object to the use of the popular meaning of ‘logical’ in serious debates, and now I made the same mistake. Though there is apparently a difference between ‘apocalyptic’ and ‘eschatologist’, ‘eschatologist vision‘ and ‘eschatologist hope‘, makes more sense to me.

<<I have a problem with the two books in that it confirms that our knowledge is fragmented. >>

If you read a book on physics and another book on chemistry - and they do not contradict each other where physical chemistry is concerned - you do not get a fragmented knowledge. Neither do I think that if one accepts the two books as two Revelations - one with an accent on the past (scripture, tradition) the other on the future (ever deeper understanding of creation, through scientific investigations) - one is a lesser Christian than the one who wants one of the books be just an Appendix to the only one book he/she can understand. (Atheists do the same thing, they only swap the two books.)

“all knowledge of both heavenly and earthly things is an indissoluble unit”
What does here ‘indissoluble‘ mean?

<<Altizer ... says that we have inherited a compromise God from the collision of the Hebrew and Greek concepts>>

The same here. Two perspectives on the same thing, especially if they complement each other, usually enrich our knowledge. There are many philosophical or theological schools that integrate the two, showing that the Greek heritage, so important for modern science, enriched our understanding of Yahweh; take for example Aquinas and his successors, disciples or critics.

Peter, do you accept relda’s observation that you share common ground with existentialists? Existentialism can be seen as the 20th “continental“ complement to British analytic philosophy, is “pre-postmodern“ in its language, which makes it more accessible to me. For instance, neither Neitzsche nor Sartre etc. claimed to be Christian, neither Bultmann nor Marcel etc. claimed to be atheist: they all avoided the label “Christian atheist”, probably because they saw it, like I do, as a ‘contradictio in se’. (ctd)

(ctd) <<"..it is Newton more than any other thinker who has given us an infinite space that is simultaneously the body of the universe and the body of God..">>

This makes Newton sound like a pantheist, although as far as I know this is widely disputed. He rejected the trinitarian doctrine which is not disputed. I am not sufficiently qualified to judge these things, but what I know is that Newton tried to reconcile what he could read in the two Books mentioned above, the same as Barbour, Polkinghorne, Peacocke et al do it today. Of course, the latter have read many more Chapters in the Book of Nature than Newton; they also did not have a need to criticise or reject e.g. the trinitarian doctrine.

<<When a contemporary Christian confesses the death of God he is giving witness to the fact that the Christian tradition is no longer meaningful to him, that the Word is not present in its traditional form, and that God has died in the history in which he lives' (Alitzer)>>.

I think e.g. Malcolm Muggeridge said the same thing (The End of Christendom, 1980) without having to express this as the death of God, with its not only cultural but also metaphysical implications, irritating and confusing, intentionally or not, for the “ordinary Christian“.

<<(The church) is weaker and more mindless than ever before. In all major denominations, fights are going on because fundamentalism is so extraordinarily powerful today. Fundamentalism is in ultimate conflict with the modern world.>>

Alitzer is certainly not the only one who realises that the established churches are in a deep crisis. However, I believe that an escape to neither a “Christian atheism” nor evangelical fundamentalism is a solution. Neither for an individual nor a community. Whatever the solution, I do not think it can bypass the achievements (epistemological not technological!) of contemporary science by proclaiming a collision between the Hebrew God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the Greek God of philosophers and scientists.

Sells,
I think you are too dismissive of Newton. There appears little doubt Newton arrived at many of his views through a strict biblical literalism, deriving from the Puritan tradition that had driven England to civil war. This literalism, incidentally, is not to be confused with the Christian fundamentalist movement of the early to mid 1900's (evolved from a reaction to the 18th. Century enlightenment thinking). It needs to be understood however, Newton's thinking was framed within a time where he had the psychological necessity of reconciling his scientific achievement with his pre-existing religious dogma.
Newton was also an alchemist, where alchemy was not only about the 'magic' of transmuting metals into gold but ultimately about matter itself and how God governed it. It’s fair to say that alchemy was the scientific theory of matter at that time. We need to look at 'science' in its real context.

Perhaps Newton's greatest intellectual but quite understandable blunder was he devoted as much time to investigations into eschatology or the divine timetable for the End of Days — the prophesied arrival of the Day of Judgment — as he did to his research in mathematics and physics. Paradoxically, this is also the inspiration that drove him.

Newton, no less than his frankly materialist or Deist successors, was well aware that the cosmological picture flowing from his own achievement left little room for an interventionist God, the miracle-working being whose constant attention is necessary to the steady functioning of the universe. An examination of Newton's religious writings (displayed in Israel’s National Library in Jerusalem)show he sensed that his own brilliant ideas constituted an argument for the deus absconditus (where philosophy can no longer be used as a theological starting point). This a conceptual innovation that was soon to become a standard item of skeptical Enlightenment thought.

cont'd..

Cont'd..
Interestingly enough, ardent atheist Richard Dawkins has also seen through the so called 'Fundamentalism' of Newton, 'December 25th is also the birth of Issac Newton, who revolutionized how we looked at the world through his laws of gravity. In so doing, he set us free from the shackles of religious dogma and allowed us to think for ourselves.'- R.D. (from New Statesman, 2008). It is important the reaction to Fundamentalism, however, does not now become scientifically dogmatic.

George,
I'm also interested in the ‘contradictio in se’ as given in Sell's "Christian atheism' - maybe he can shed a little light on how he reconciles the obvious, if not blatant illogicality.

Altizer certainly isn't the only one responding to a deeply divided Church - an organisation basically mute to many. Undoubtedly we often find a coherence in finding out 'what is not' where an escape to neither a “Christian atheism” nor evangelical fundamentalism is a solution'. Saying 'what is not', however, offers no solution. As irritating as someone like Alitzer is to 'conventional' Christians I find he express a coherence of thought where he describes us reaching a 'truly new communal space' arrived at not through a man-made revolution but through the 'power of an ancient or primordial praxis'. In other words there is a continuing movement within history outside of our own making.

George and Relda.
I do not like the term Christian atheism, certainly when it is applied to me. I do believe in God and attend church to worship Him. The point that I have been trying to make is that the God that the atheists do not believe in is also the God that I do not believe in because that God is defined in terms of immaterial or supernatural conscious being. Thus the concept of God is tied to Aristotelian understandings of being, substantia in the Latin. I think this is unbiblical in that the story of God constitutes a continuous narrative from the call of Abraham to the fulfilment of all things that presents him as being “in” the events. The Christian God is a God who lives in verbs, God creates, calls, divides, promises. Likewise in the liturgy God is present in the act of preaching and in the celebration of the sacraments. Christian worship is about the presence of God and he is present in action. This was the great discovery of Gregory of Nyssa, one of the Cappadocian fathers and it was the crucial distinction that was not transmitted to the West by Boethius. Thus the doctrine of the Trinity, as expressed in the West had no hope of continuing without all kinds of logical problems that eventually led to its virtual demise. More on Newton later.

In earlier OLO posts I have attempted to simply describe my early experiences as a child growing up in the bush, playing, observing, wondering and being with my mates. These experiences aroused great curiosity about life that could be beautiful and chaotic, ancient and new, peaceful and cruel in the extreme as well as forever changing and evolving. It is not surprising with such a down to earth reality that I came to believe that the universe is infinite, unbounded and of an unbroken wholeness ....... never created and far from anthropocentric. i.e. a wholely world rather than some holy type needing an invented teddy father figure along with concocted religious role models and a priest class.

Over something like forty years since, along with all manner of reading and investigative experience, next to nothing has altered this personal, formative view of the universe and our place in it. It seems for some people there is this will to not allow ourselves to be deceived which also translates to the will not to deceive.

Take this situation. Aristotle said ... "That there never was a time when there was not motion, and never will be a time when there will not be motion", which I found understandable. However, later he (and probably pressured to,) changed and adopted this idea that an infinite regress is impossible. Why is the question.

To this day we see lies built on lies because of this now obsolete assumption of finite universal causality where people prefer not to need the real world when they can have an inexorable and schemingly designed fake one ....... and throw in a teddy as a perpetual broadcaster too? As two examples .... AGW and the big bang fictions.

relda,
<<he express a coherence of thought where he describes us reaching a 'truly new communal space' arrived at not through a man-made revolution but through the 'power of an ancient or primordial praxis'. In other words there is a continuing movement within history outside of our own making.>>

This, I think, in pre-postmodern language would simply mean that there is a Providence, perhaps with a pantheist flavour, acting throughout history (or a Hegelian formulation of the same, if you do not like the term Providence). That would just give another ‘model of God’, among many others, Christian or not, compatible or not with that of the ‘conventional’ Christian as you put it. For instance, where Peter and I differ is that he considers the two models - God of Abraham etc. and God of philosophers and scientists - incompatible, whereas I do not: though they are not reducible to one another, where they overlap they do not contradict each other.

Sells,
<<the doctrine of the Trinity, as expressed in the West had no hope of continuing without all kinds of logical problems that eventually led to its virtual demise.>>

This is another sentence I do not understand. The West and the East differed in ‘filioque‘ but not in the acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity since at least AD 325. Neither do I understand the part on its ‘virtual demise‘: which Christian church proclaimed its demise? Otherwise I can only agree with what you wrote, and do not see how it is in conflict with the ‘natural theology’ model of God (certainly very vague and unsatisfying for a believing Christian), though, of course, it does not follow from it. This brings us again to the complementarity (not mutual exclusion): natural theology and revealed theology.

Keiran,
thank you for inadvertently supporting my point with your reference to the “AGW and the big bang fictions”: Not only faith and trust in what science tells us are compatible, but apparently also ignorance and mistrust of both the perspectives are compatible.

George,
Rather than to merely go to the self limiting 'pre-postmodern' I'd prefer the ancient Hebrew damah or the prophetic metaphor, where the known is merged with the unknown and the transcendent. The Greek logos describes but does not become this.

relda,
I prefer analytical philosophers and existentialists to postmodernists for about the same reason I prefer English to Turkish: I can understand the former but not the latter. If this is self-limiting, so be it.

On the other hand, damah, metaphor or model roughly express the same as the oriental saying about the finger the "fool" looks at (because he can access it) without realising that it points to the inaccessible moon. The rest of us do realise that the "finger" points to Something but are still limited by the direct inaccessibility of this Something. And yes, there are many "fingers" trying to point to the same "moon". Being a Christian means for me a preference (called faith) for one particular "finger", not an a priori condemnation of others.

As said before, I do not have an absolute preference for the Hebrew or the Greek way of seeing things: I admire the (Greek) God of philosophers and scientists through His creation, whereas I worship and pray to the Hebrew (and Christian) God, because I know the difference is not in Him but in our limited ways of seeing Him.

Perhaps I've made my point George, as the language we use will always be inadequate for the expression of any 'ultimate truth' - liturgy, as poetry, can but merely express this abstraction (sometimes poorly, sometimes well). As you do, and in this regard, I believe our sight is limited.

Not to condemn nor to judge is my priori is also - a condition of early Christianity, undoubtedly. Christianity began with its Hebraic roots to be eventually fused with Greek philosophy, and it is true, philosophers such as Voltaire, Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell and others have made insightful critiques of a repressive Christianity - the alternatives they offered did not seem all that viable.

It was really in the 3rd century where Christianity discarded its roots. Since Marcion, one can historically witness a periodically emerging religious opposition to the significant role accorded to the Old Testament in Christianity. A continuing trend cut out the Hebrew heritage, and had Christian faith and culture begin with Jesus and the Gospels.

From Constantine on there was a campaign to eliminate much of the ancient wisdom, ritual and practice (including that of the east) of the time and bring about a forced Christianity. In 529 Emperor Justinian closed down the last school of philosophy. The Church of Rome ruled for over a thousand years - the Dark Ages. This is not necessarily a total indictment of today, but a certain legacy remains. One cannot, however, ignore the mediaeval Christian mystics, such as Aquinas, Eckhart and Boehme etc. I do not count myself as anything great or clever (quite the reverse) but find my measure, in spirit, through a simple telling of the Gospel story.

There is the ambiguity in being 'truly' Christian or nominally so - those brave souls who continue to rock the boat (or is it the establishment?) in the hope of reform or restitution are to be admired. Alas, I'm not so brave.

George, sounds like you are a carbon sinner and as confused as usual but I enjoyed your little playful quip. You are correct, there is reasonable evidence that the bigbang and AGW are both anthropogenic because we can only really find them in the human mind where they are usually created from careless data acquisition and dodgy data processing. ( i.e. When you have a virtual monopoly of research funding who needs integrity?)

Peter's efforts in this article, even to a hardened non believer, are noteworthy when he says.... "The assertion that God is the agency behind the material world leads us into a morass of theological and scientific problems that continue to embarrass the Church in its attempt to speak to the world of natural science and which renders unrecognisable the God of the Bible." One may add that honest science rather than the church has become the true casualty. But a teddy, unconnected with the material universe, I'd like to see that one explained and debated more fully.

What is honest science then? If I can put it another way, good scientific knowledge is learned, by studying those things that do not fit what you expected. e.g. We want the observed details, and want to know WHY this particular data set is not conforming to the conventional theories. That is what honest science is all about ..... discovery. Real progress stems from finding new ways of acquiring information, and the results are not predictable and cannot be directed. All the people involved with the bigbang nonsense and AGW are not about DISCOVERY but are involved in an outcome directed pseudo science trying to force/fudge raw data to conform to something that is expected to be seen.

relda,
It is true that it took Christianity and the Church well over a thousand years, including the so called Dark Ages, to turn the semi-savage barbarians into civilised nations that gave humanity Kant and Voltaire, Newton and Beethoven. Perhaps some other religion, or some godless replica of religion, would have achieved this faster, and without having to pass through Dark Ages. This we shall never know, because you cannot replicate situations in history, changing some circumstances, like you can in natural science, e.g. by laboratory experiments.

To speak about rocking boats is, on its own, a negativist approach. To “rock the boat" - of established Christianity or civilised West - is much easier than to work on its improvements; it is easier to rock a building (until it collapses, even if that was not the original intention) than to repair it. I would certainly more admire the repairer, reformer with an eye on what he wants to achieve, than the destroyer, revolutionary with an eye only on what he dislikes on the status quo.

The 16th century Reformation might have wanted to rock the boat of the Roman Church but fortunately it ended up creating an alternative, actually more alternatives, where also the Catholic Church can draw inspirations for its own improvements, as slowly as they might have been coming. Unfortunately, the 20th century “boat rockers” did not stop at the established churches, they went for the very civilisation that we call the West. After the disastrous Nazis and Communists came the “gentle“ boat rockers of the late sixties and seventies. These did not want to bring down the West, only to soften it up from the inside, that used to be the Christian religion. They probably did not realise that for the next generations they were leaving behind a weakened West to face the new “barbarians” - the Islamist fanatics who are after the destruction of everything we arrived at while overcoming our Dark Ages.

Otherwise thanks for your kind words on where we agree, which is not a negligible part of our respective world views.

keiran,
I guess calling an argument you cannot follow confused apparently gives you the same warm feeling as when you call a metaphysical and cultural concept of a Being you cannot relate to a teddy. There is nothing wrong with that, except that it cannot lead to the broadening of one's own world view through dialogue.

Your arguments about "honest science" and "good scientific knowledge" in rejecting (or just criticising?) big bang and indirectly other findings of cosmology and mathematical physics, reminds me of the creationists' arguments criticising neo-Darwinian or other evolution theories. I do not think there is a need to repeat all the counter-arguments of which there is an abundance also on this forum.

Thanks again for a good example supporting my contention that divorcing the concept of God as provided by revelation theology based on the Bible, from that hinted at by natural theology based on a certain interpretation of scientific knowledge, leads to a rejection of the very Reality that is behind both these Western models of God.

Quite right George, '...rocking boats is, on its own, a negativist approach' - but its something I've neither suggested or inferred. What I said was, '..to rock the boat ... in the hope of reform or restitution..'

The term "Dark Age" (as you infer) is a bit of a 'wooly' axiom - Its generalisation tends to ignore and appreciate cultures that arose in Europe after the fall of the western Roman Empire. However, the phrase as first coined by Italian Scholar, Francesco Petrarca, laments not only a lack of secular Latin literature, but within recognised religion there was an intitutionalised moral hypocrisy where Popes ruled as kings and pagan superstitions promoted the relics of its saints by a celibate priesthood. In other words, there was a grave inconsistency with the system of religion as presented in this particular age with that of its original basis. In our 'post-modernism' we bear similar inconsistency.

The curbing of this magisterium has meant even a "good Catholic" can no longer be forced into assent. Bishops, certainly, may encourage their flock to follow this 'infallibility'. Today, our freedom suggests decisions are made more on the basis of personal conscience - for those in the West..

It is important for the secular to be cognizant as to what might 'inform' this morality. Our 'progress' from an age of darkness may yet become more a myth than reality.

Sells is not a Christian, Boaz is correct.

If I’m an Australian Liberal Party MP who believes Communism is the true creed I’m obliged to leave and join the communists I’m not free to speak as some hero fighting against the wrongheadnesses and persecution of my fellow Liberal MPs.

What is so sad is that the science he thinks renders orthodox Christianity incomprehensible solidly supports a transcendent cause of the universe - a first cause that by Sells lights somehow excludes personhood or immanence.

Orthodox Christianity is ALL about the eternal God entering into a universe and human history instigated by Him. If the author has a problem with that story he ought to join the atheists not pretend to be a Christian.

Daniel Dennett in a recent debate accepted the premise that the universe began to exist at the Big Bang, and the second premise that it was caused, but then said that the universe caused itself. An incredulous Dr William Lane Craig brought his attention to the minor problem of how something could exist before it existed! To which Dennett in stunned silence, said he would have to go back to the premises (the ones that lead to an unsought conclusion). We’re talking about a Tufts University Professor of Philosophy here. So natural science explains everthing - except the entire universe. This supernatural (transcendent) character pervades the whole material universe and it takes many years of education to wipe that most basic of understandings out of the human soul.

The tension between immanence and transcendence is a creative one, it posed no insurmountable problem as far as Origen or Augustine were concerned. General revelation and special revelation are not incompatible but complimentary and the author has not added anything to the virtually two thousand year reflection on how the God of the Athenian philosophers is reconciled with the God of Jerusalem.

Martin,
If you are going to call up the spirit of Origen you should be aware, Origen's ideas were in direct opposition to the earlier orthodox writers, Justin and Irenaeus. For example, while Justin called 'heretics' so-called Christians who forsook the Jewish idea of an earthly physical Kingdom of God, Origen called the idea of an earthly Kingdom 'fables.' He thought the hope of a physical Kingdom was absurd, and also denied the resurrection of the body for the saved, same as the Gnostics.

Catholic theolgian Karl Rahner had the grace to even say, '... a Buddhist monk… who, because he follows his conscience, attains salvation and lives in the grace of God; of him I must say that he is an anonymous Christian'. If Sells has the temerity to actually admit his Christianity, whether you agree with it or not - it is not for you or any other individual to deny it.

Origen complained of the literalists of his day, and, quite ironically these laments apply today, "Literalists," he said, "believe such things about [God] as would not be believed of the most savage and unjust of men". These 'Literalists' misunderstood the meaning of poetry, metaphors, parables and figures of speech and had no concept of the need to understand what the original author of the text was seeking to express to his audience - i.e Martin and David Boaz, go back to your bibles before condemning another's Christianity.

You'll notice relda I said nothing about Sells salvation, only that if we are to communicate words must retain their commonly understood meaning. Someone who believes God did not create the universe and is not transcendent and who is not the source of all being is simply not a Christian, the person may be correct but they are not Christians. This is not controversial :)

Aren't we lucky these great men, (Augustine was the greatest mind of the Roman Empire) fully versed in Greek philosophy sorted out these major issues in the first six or so centuries of Christianity. What sells wants to do is bypass that history and its fruits and remold Christianity in a way that better suits his own prejudices and preferences. To pretend that they are NOT settled is unhistorical and bad metaphysics.

What the coming of the Kingdom would actually look like was an open question 1800 years ago - not now mate.

Scoundrels find refuge in the new 'f' word, fundamentalism. You seem to be calling orthodox Christianity a fundamentalist creed, the irony is the authorities you use in your exegesis have to be read literally.

I rely on the authority of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church to interpret scripture for me (see Dei Verbum) I'll stand here you may use your own authority, but we must not call each other names we must argue.

I hope you're a literalist when you read the label of a can of rat poison and a can of soup.

Martin,
Firstly, as I take the Bible to be neither rat-poison or a bowl of soup so there's no sense in taking it literally - those who do tend to fall into two main doctrinal sources of fundamentalist thought - millenarianism and biblical inerrancy. Unless you deny Biblical scholarship with its historical-critical method you are probably trapped into either (or both) of these approaches.

Secondly your statement, "..the person may be correct but they are not Christians" is an absurdity, especially so if in the next paragraph you determine the early Church fathers were incontrovertibly correct. Or is it that you assert Christians now days are above being correct.? If such a fait accompli did in fact exist, all philosophy and theological thinking that followed becomes irrelevant - which seems a little tenuous to say the least.

Finally, I'm not calling the Orthodox creed Fundamentalist but I do suggest there are some who take it literally.

Martin you said
You'll notice relda(sic) I said nothing about Sells salvation, only that if we are to communicate words must retain their commonly understood meaning.

It is interesting that you make the distinction between 'being Christian and 'being saved'. One can only assume therefore that 'being Christian' is not necessary for salvation and therefore is merely a cultural affectation and of little real importance.

You also said
Someone who believes God did not create the universe and is not transcendent and who is not the source of all being is simply not a Christian, the person may be correct but they are not Christians. This is not controversial :)

Technically, what makes one 'Christian' is Baptism. The term 'anonymous Christian' is a somewhat ungracious acknowledgement that salvation in Jesus Christ is universal and not the exclusive privilege of any particular Church or religious sect.

The ability to give intellectual assent to one or another dogmatic proposition neither makes one Christian nor effects salvation. Salvation is a Divine prerogative and far be it from us to judge such matters. Actually, to be concerned with your own salvation is one of the few ways Jesus identified as a certain path to losing your life. If you would follow Jesus then consider carefully what implications this has for your priorities!

Grace and Peace.

relda,
<<'..to rock the boat ... in the hope of reform or restitution..'>>
Exactly, just “in the hope of” is what I am suspicious of. I never claimed the “boat rockers” always wanted to sink the boat they were rocking, the negative consequences were mostly unintended (probably with the exception of those who brought about the Nazi rule). The political, social and economic disaster in the countries where communists ruled for decades were not “hoped for“ by the naive Marxist, or rather Marx-Leninist idealists and dreamers, not even seen by some of them living in the “free world” (as we called it then) when this disaster already became a reality. Neither did the “gentle boat rockers” of the sixties and seventies foresee the weekended West having difficulties with defending the West (except militarily) against the Islamist threat.

Returning to our topic, neither did the post-Vatican II “boat rockers” aim at emptied churches when they introduced all sorts of shallow zeitgeist-following liturgical and other practices, thus leaving the field free for evangelicals and other emotional forms of religiosity divorced from the rational backbone of faith. They probably did not foresee that neither would the ecumenical rapprochement help too much, since the traditional non-Catholic churches would empty (in the West) even faster than the Catholic ones.

Please note, I do not feel bitter about Vatican II. On the contrary, it was an overdue correction brought about by knowledgeable, still a bit too conservative and cautious but responsible elders of the Roman Church. I feel bitter about the liturgical, and other small innovators, driven by the zeitgeist who saw an opportunity to rock the Church, weakened through the post Vatican II transition, from below. There are many other unintended consequences of these boat rockers that neither they nor I shall live to see.

Your view of Dark Ages is the standard one, although with somewhat darkened anti-Catholic glasses, but certainly based on facts. And another thing: Freedom of conscience is certainly no invention of the Catholic “boat rockers”; it has always been part of the Catholic moral teaching, though with different emphases.

Relda,

What is to be read literally and what is to be contextualized is dependent on some outside authority – experts in the environment of the ancient near east, archeologists, historians, biblical scholars and theologians. You just prefer non-Christian authorities who want Christianity to affirm their worldliness.

For example those who believe in Jesus’ Resurrection are sometimes called fundamentalists or literalists, but this is simply prejudice. Two hundred years of modern biblical scholarship (the various quests for the historical Jesus) has ended in greater historical confirmation of Christianity.

One of the greatest living Biblical scholars:
http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Jesus_Resurrection.htm

relda a dedication to philosophical naturalism decides for you the parts of Christianity you accept and reject, don’t pretend modern biblical scholarship supports naturalism, it supports orthodox Christianity and therefore supernaturalism.

You misunderstand the difference between explication and disputation. The time for disputation about the Trinity is over, consequently we now can say Christianity is some thing and not another thing. We can improve our explication of Christianity by growing in understanding and ability to teach the faith, but one cannot be a Christian and simultaneously deny its essential identity. One cannot be half pregnant. I’m sorry if Sells thinks he can still be a Christian without theism!

I’m angry that he uses a Christian platform to undermine orthodox Christianity. Sellick must not call himself a Christian or teach under its auspices – with ready made congregation, status, buildings and resources.

Sellick’s line that Christianity needs to accommodate this present age is narrow and provincial. Christianity is growing faster now than at any time in its history. Global Christianity is predicted in fifty years [Jenkins] but orthodox biblical Christianity not the Frankenstein Sellick proposes.

Because some white people have apostatized and are dying out (see fertility levels in Europe) ultimately will have little effect on the continued global impact of Christianity. Church’s who are committed to time tested orthodox Christianity have flourishing congregations, those that accommodate secularism (which really means assimilation by secularism) are dwindling.

George,
Perhaps 'Rock the Boat' is a poor use of metaphor. The prime motivation for most is to preserve the status quo.True enough, the risk of 'rocking the boat' might just make it worse. The vehicle bringing a change in Russia to Communism in 1917 surely 'rocked the boat' but it was based on a false premise, coupled with assassination and terror. The ideology governing Lenin was, as with Marx and Engels - that history was merely a logical and scientific process. The myth of proletarian October is the myth of the triumph of the alienated and dehumanized masses over all their sufferings and deprivations. As you'd agree, the Communist Party apparatus was the most gigantic Mafia the world has ever known.

My anti-Catholic shades could also extend to a good part of Protestantism with Luther's vehement anti-Semitism in later life. Luther's blindness (or should I say, ignorance ) was based on his reliance toward the Bible as the sole source of Christian authority which fed his later fury toward Jews over their rejection of Jesus as the messiah. For Luther, salvation depended on the belief that Jesus was the son of God, a belief that adherents of Judaism do not share.

Luther did, however, form a significant part of a 'revolution' resulting in the Catholic Church no longer legitimately holding vast tracts of land it taxed and defended, and whose justice it administered; it was no longer legitimate for its bishops to hold temporal offices under princes and kings; nor would the Pope be able to depose secular rulers through his power of excommunication; most importantly, the Holy Roman Emperor would no longer legitimately enforce Catholic uniformity.

It appears Vatican II splits the traditionalists within RC ranks from a more modern approach. Amongst other things, it appears to challenge:
• the belief that the Catholic Church is the one and only true Christian church founded by Jesus Christ;
• the belief that the modern idea of religious liberty is to be condemned;
• the belief that the books of the Bible are historically inerrant;
Cont'd...

..Cont'd
These challenges are hardly revolutionary but certainly appear as a major improvement to old RC dogma. I'll also note, the contradiction of "infallible" doctrines has caused some very conservative Catholics to believe that John Paul II is not a valid pope, and the Second Vatican Council was not a valid council. It has also caused some very liberal Catholics to believe that Pope Pius IX taught doctrinal errors. To the simple man in the street this religion business must seem all a little messy and confusing and not worth the bother - I'm quite empathetic toward this but do enjoy both the intellectual and spiritual challenge of the polemic.

Martin,
The 'authority' to which you refer belongs in an age before the Reformation and the Enlightenment - I don't live there. Neither do I attend to the naturalist philosophy of Bloom in his, 'The Lucifer Principle'. Rather I'm happy to partake in a culture where rationalism, self-criticism, freedom of thought, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state with the rule of law and equality under the law - are all grounded in a uniquely significant Judaeo-Christian heritage.

relda,
I think we have somewhat deviated from the original theme of the article, but I m grateful to you for bringing up these not easy to resolve controversies in hoping to broaden my own perspective on them.

You are right that beside those who “rock the boat“ without thinking much about the possible consequences, there are also those who just want to preserve the status quo. What the two have in common is their obsession with the past, which they either want to preserve or just change, and see what happens; in both cases at almost any cost. There is a third way, and the case you mention is a good example: Beside those who wanted to preserve the status quo of 19th century capitalism and the Communists who wanted to do away with it without much thinking about the viability of the replacement they were suggesting, there were also those who worked gradually on improvements (e.g. the social democrats) bringing about (in the second half of 20th century) a situation in the West not perfect but much better (not only economically) than the one achieved by the Communists.

However, I agree that working diligently on gradual improvements is much harder than both, do nothing, or just do away with the unpleasant features of the existing situation without much thinking of what to replace them with, or what will move in by itself if they create a vacuum of opportunities.

I think, retrospectively, there is no doubt Luther did a lot of good for Christianity and even the Roman Church itself. I am no historian, but I think his “antisemitism” should be judged in the context of his time.

The split of traditionalists vs those who prefer a modern approach is somewhat of a simplification. For instance, I am a liturgical traditionalist, conservative in the sense of refusing to sacrifice the timeless (often expressed just in symbols) to the ever changing zeitgeist, but would probably be considered a heretic by the good souls who cannot understand me. The three items that you say “appear to be challenged”: (ctd)

(ctd)
<<• the belief that the Catholic Church is the one and only true Christian church founded by Jesus Christ;>>
The bone of contention (with non-Catholic Christians) is how to interpret Mat 16:18-19. I think the solution is neither to require that all Christians return to the flock of the Roman Church (as pre-Vatican II demanded) nor that Rome abandon its interpretation of Mat 16:18-19, and regard themselves as just one of the myriad of Churches and “churchlettes“ thus losing its identity rooted in history, if nothing else.

<<• the belief that the modern idea of religious liberty is to be condemned; >>
This is, if at all, a pre-Vatican II position. It might have been implicitly stated then, but Vatican II has for instance its “Declaration on religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae)“ (http://www.rc.net/rcchurch/vatican2/liberty.asc) respected by both the “traditionalists” and “progressives”.

<<• the belief that the books of the Bible are historically inerrant; >>
This is a literalist position that I do not know if the RC Church ever held. Certainly not after Vatican II, see for instance the document “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church“ presented to JPII by the Pontifical Biblical Commission (http://www.salvationhistory.com/library/scripture/churchandbible/pbc/ibc.cfm).

<<To the simple man in the street this religion business must seem all a little messy and confusing and not worth the bother>>
I agree. Like relativity theory and quantum mechanics must sound “confusing and not worth the bother“ to the “simple man in the street” using his navigator and mobile that depend on these theories. However, this “simple man” is never asked how come he uses those gadgets without understanding the theories behind them, whereas some “liberated” Church activists tell him, he has to understand abstract theological positions as interpreted by a variety of theologians, (often contradicting not only the official version, but also each other), before deserving to be called a modern, enlightened, Christian.

Martin.
I really must protest at your interpretation of my stance as being an accommodation to modernity. My aim is to reach back beyond modernity and even medieval scholasticism to a post Nicene Christianity in which Trinitarian theology took center place. The God you accuse me of not believing in looks very much like the god of the early English Enlightenment, that is an altered Greek monotheism that has nothing to do with Christianity. The theology of Isaac Newton and Samuel Clarke and William Whiston was essentially materialist in that God was part of the system of the universe even if he was “immaterial”. This was a theology that glibly talked about the material body and the immaterial soul, the only difference between Jesus and ordinary men was that his soul consisted of the divine logos. This makes a mockery of the doctrine of the Atonement because only the body of Jesus dies on the cross while the divine logos returned to the Father. Theology was weakened during this time because it had lost key insights from theologians such a Gregory of Nyssa of the immateriality of God. This is the real reason that Christianity has declined in the West, because it was no longer credible and no longer made the world and our lives intelligible. The alienation of theology in intellectual circles is virtually total for good reason, it does not make sense.

I have some hope that the future will be different particularly when reading living theologians and the present pope but it will take a long time for this rethinking to filter down to the public, especially since the media is so hostile, or better, ambivalent to challenging theological thought. By the way, I do believe in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit and can say the creeds of the church without my fingers crossed behind my back, not that I get a chance to say them in the Anglican church.

George, I am not about warm and fuzzy feelings which I leave to people who need to worship a teddy father figure or some artificial role model or a misrepresentation of logic or obvious pseudo science or models of finite universal causality or a universe created as a fixed-in-place system. The problem here as i see it, rests with this worship mindset that should not be confused with love as you seem to demonstrate. My point is just how with this weak false behaviour can humanity collectively ensure a continued appreciation of the beauty of existence?

I dismiss the old “gravity-only” bigbang fantasy for many reasons. Gravity simply plays a relatively insignificant role because very clearly electrical forces are billions upon billions times more powerful and more far-reaching. There is this overbearing belief that electricity doesn't work in 'outer space' like it does right here on earth denying the fact that earth is in outer space. Another consideration is that the matter in the universe could not have formed from the energy of an explosion (in a vacuum?) because matter cannot be 'created' from energy.

Similarly, underlying the entire analysis of human-caused global warming there is this premise that nature has been designed as if it were a printed circuit board forcing electrons to follow a certain path, and the human influence is like unsoldering and replacing a component. It is a ridiculous notion and like the bigbang nonsense, just a new age wrapper for the revival of an insecure pre-Copernican mindset.

It is LOVE that leads to discovery but this "worship of the golden calf" is where people learn to be stupid becoming justification for the hidden agendas.

George,
I'm highly appreciative of your candid reply and the consideration you give in our discussion - it is something not commonly found on this forum amongst people of differing views.

Your reference to Matt 16:18-19 is interesting and is certainly a contentious point for Protestants, whose movement was based on sola fide (faith alone). And yet, to further peel another layer off the onion, we can also refer to Matt 28:19, which cuts to the heart of the Trinitarian issue as offered by Sells. Ratzinger (whilst still a Cardinal) admits the formulation of the RC faith '...took shape during the course of the second and third centuries in connection with the ceremony of baptism. So far as its place of origin is concerned, the text (Matthew 28:19) came from the city of Rome.' The text in other words has been transmitted in a form expanded by the [Catholic] church in an effort to reinforce Trinitarian doctrine. This I guess is no real big deal, if you accept all scripture is written by man (albeit via inspiration) anyway and therefore quite fallible.

I think Carl Jung lends great insight into the dilemma of the religious. What is natural to the soul, he insisted from his early writings, is not any particular set of religious doctrines, experiences, images, or rituals, but rather the drive to heal the wound that our nature has inflicted on us, to become a truer, fuller Self in symbols coincident with the religious symbolism encoded in language, culture, and art throughout human history.

Kieran leads us into another area - the subject of love and the golden calf. His comment is important because love will discover many new aspects and angles to a truth that without this color and shading it might well have a destructive impact - i.e. all this theology and dogma without love is but a waste of time (or a golden calf).

I am really flummoxed by those who are prepared to say professing Christians are not Christians after all, particularly since I see such an act as unchristian. Curiously I'm not even sure why it distresses me, but it does.

I am reminded of the words of Rabbi Kushner in his book 'To Life'.

"When we talk about what we as Jews believe about God, we must remind ourselves of Rule one; Some Jews believe certain things, other Jews believe differently, and there is no central authority to declare one group correct and the other in error. This is partly because of the relatively minor role that theology plays in Judaism: God is important; talking about God is not all that important. But mostly it is because statements about God are not so much about God as they are about us."

An old rabbinical text says "God is like a mirror. the mirror never changes, but everyone who looks at it sees a different face."

Martin and Boaz-David might like to think of themselves as a central authority on what constitutes a true christian, they certainly are not, perhaps now they might like to contemplate the mirror rather than just their own reflections.

In “The Biology of Ultimate Concern” Theodosius Dobzhansky noted that humans are unique in coming sooner or later to self-awareness [the ability to say “I AM”] followed by death-awareness. With dying, death and disintegration all around, we wonder about life after death! We ask, “Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death?” At least in his younger years, it dawned on Charles Darwin “there is more in man than the breath of his body.” In 1919 Pierre Teilhard SJ asked, “What exactly is the human body?” He concluded what “I” call MY matter is not a PART of the universe which “I” possess TOTALLY. MATTER is the TOTALITY of the universe which “I” possess PARTIALLY – and temporarily. For the basic substance of the cosmos as a whole is streaming from Christ and to Christ in the wake of his ascension from the beginning [15 billion years ago?] to the end of time – albeit by way of the Cross and his pierced and broken Sacred Heart. Indeed scriptures attributed to Paul and John proposed that the basic stuff of all creation was made by God the Father for the incarnation of God the Son – through him, in him and for him (Col.1:16). And we – having been chosen in Christ before the world was made – are each given an everp-changing PART of the cosmic body of the TOTAL Christ for the duration of our own earthly lives. After that, we shall see God as God really is! As Blessed Franciscan John Duns Scotus saw it, Jesus the Christ did not come down from the heaved-up “heavens” 2000 years ago in response to what Dominican Saint Thomas Aquinas called some “Felix Culpa” or “Original Sin” that “Eve” committed 100,000 years ago. On the contrary, Christ was in the world from the beginning. Scotus called that the PRIMACY of Christ. Likewise, in “Redemptor Hominis” Pope John Paul II said the Redeemer of Man – Jesus Christ – is the centre of the universe and of history, which extends from the beginning to the end of time.

Roch

Keiran,
I do not know how “can humanity collectively ensure a continued appreciation of the beauty of existence” but what about starting with respecting other people’s world views, instead of denigrating them as you seem to be doing with your constant reference to a “teddy”, e.g. in this paragraph? I read it as a statement not about religion, Christianity, science, theology or what, but about you, your psychological disposition. You must have been hurt by somebody or something that was associated (in fact or just in your perception) with traditional religion. And that is regrettable, irrespective of where the fault lies.

I do not comment when people attack (or defend) neo-Darwinian theory because I am neither a biologist nor a geneticist. However, my understanding of what models of mathematical physics are about (and for) tells me that your understanding of the big bang theory (today widely accepted by cosmologists) is rather naive, although this is not the place to explain why. Neither do I think calling contemporary scientists pre-Copernican needs any further comment.

On the other hand I agree that Love (as the term is usually understood) and not the worship of the golden calf (as it is understood in the Old Testament, meaning worship of material things) leads to discovery of ... well whatever you had in mind. This is more or less the topic of the present pope’s first encyclical (Deus Caritas Est). Most higher religions speak of love in this or that form, it is also an essential part of the Christian message, but nobody, not even Christians, have a monopoly on it. And, I am afraid i have to add, neither have you.

relda,
Thanks for the kind words. I always thought the Trinitarian doctrine was an indispensable part of any version of the Christian message, Catholic or not, so there was no disagreement with Sells’ point of view. I only wanted to emphasize that there was another, albeit “entirely this-worldly”, perspective of the concept of God, that complements the Hebrew, or Christian, before the Greek heritage, both Platonic and Aristotelean), had its influence on it. So I welcomed the pope’s emphasis (in his Regensburg lecture) on the need not to neglect this contribution to the Christian (or at least its Catholic version) model as it evolved through history.

I can also see what csteele means when he quotes Rabbi Kushner seeing the advantages of “no central authority“ declaring “one group correct and the other in error ... partly because of the relatively minor role that theology plays in Judaism,” This is also due to the fact, that there is only the Hebrew but not the “Greek“ approach to (model of, as I like to say) God. Rabbi Kushner‘s speaks also from my heart when he says that “statements about God are not so much about God as they are about us”: this is what I tried to explain to Keiran in my previous post. However, I have to admit that when interpreting Judaism I am a complete dilettante.

Of course, I agree completely with what you say about Carl Jung.

I was uneasy about Keiran’s reference to Love only insofar as he posited it in opposition to the rational aspects of faith. You cannot have flowers without the plant and its roots, you cannot admire a beautiful body, of which you see only the smooth skin and soft muscles, if there were not an “uncuddly” skeleton to hold it together. And we cannot have a faith talking about love, satisfying our heart, without being aware, and accepting, the rational framework it is built on, that satisfies our brain (which in 21st century is very much oriented on science).

Surely ontological arguments for the existence or being of God are tautological. To describe the cosmos or universe as a whole as CREATION is to beg the question – who is, was and ever shall be the uncreated CREATOR? “GOD” is a word with which to “name” or label the mystery beyond all other mysteries in one [?] who alone can truly say “I AM.” I can and do say “I AM” but “God” alone can truly say “I AM”. All else exists because “God” is and because “God is Love.” “God” revealed as “the Father”has loved the basis stuff of the cosmos into creation primarily for the incarnation of the Total Christ or the Perfect [complete] Man (Eph.4:13). That means all mankind and all creation centred on Christ and informed by his indwelling and all-embracing Holy Spirit of love. Moving on – whereas the “gospels” of Paul and John focused on the “history of Christ” as the PANTO-CRATOR or Lord of All – Matthew, Mark and Luke focused mostly on the “Christ of history” as the NAZARENE. After Maximus the Confessor (580-662) died – 30 years after Muhammad (570-632) – there was an eclipse of the cosmic dimensions of Christology – at least in Western Christianity. “While the revelation of God to the individual soul is the essence of all religion” (R.H.Tawney), it seemed for centuries that the rest of creation didn’t really matter. Then Pierre Teilhard SJ (1881-1955) revived the Cosmic Christology and Christic Cosmology of the early Church. He infuriated Peter Medawar and others because he persisted in putting together what the 18th century Deists had insisted on putting asunder – namely CREATION and its CREATOR linked in Christ (2 Cor.5:19; Gal.6:14). Thus there has been, is now and ever shall be only ONE BODY – the cosmic body of the Total Christ. And we – having been chosen in Christ before the world was made (Eph.1:4) – are each given an ever-changing part of that one body for the duration of our own earthly lives.

George,
Whether one ascribes to Christianity or not, the Trinitarian doctrine was certainly not a part of the original message. At best, it is dogma by implication. No Apostle would have dreamt of thinking that there are Three Divine Persons, whose mutual relations and paradoxical unity are beyond our understanding. There is no 'mysterium logicum’, no intellectual paradox, no antinomy of’ ‘Trinity in Unity'. There is simply no place of it in their testimony.

The baptismal words, 'Father, Son and Holy Spirit', as ascribed to Jesus in Matt 28:19 were, as mentioned in my previous post, added centuries later via Church magisterium. Roman Catholics are perhaps able to be more consistent through believing established Church traditions being equal to the authority of holy scripture. Protestants, however, suffer an inconsistency with Trinitarianism where they need to honour their sola scriptura (scripture alone) principle. The breakaway, almost cult like groups, such as the JW's for example, or Pentecostal type groups attest to this significance. I would expect Isaac Newton (if alive today) would have belonged to neither of these groups - but have still been recognised as devoutly Christian.

Theistic evolution or our growing models of God (or destroyed models) are, as perhaps our anti-evolutionist friends might suggest - far from proven, nevertheless, they do attest to a reality. Medieval Thomism and Reformation Protestantism held that God intervenes as a direct cause of particular events, in addition to his more usual action working through secondary natural causes - a model now largely rejected. From Newton we have, God the divine clockmaker model - still disputed. Through the Christology, as suggested by Roch, we obtain Christ as the exemplar in the Christian paradigm - but more than just an historical exemplar; he is a model for God, and expressed through Christian community - often hypocritical in its failure to imitate the perfect model.
Cont'd...

...Cont'd
I also rather quite like the Zen model - which is neither pantheistic nor lacking in moral content - 'If I should say “I am God” it is sacrilegious. No, not that. I am I, God is God, and at the same time I am God, God is I. That is the most important part.'

Where Kieran suggests love, I would apply your same consideration, as love without regard for its justice becomes mere sentimentality (as with the 'teddy' he suggests). In material terms, it is certainly our science leading us to discovery. But on a metaphysical plane the bona fide question is, 'How does love discover us - or more appropriately, (in using a sexual metaphor) what is the agape we require - the 'love' so desperately desired?

If in our acts of 'love' (where we might feed the hungry or help the poor) and don't reflect agape, our love will appear as paternalistic, arrogant or self-centered. The spirit of agape also expresses a universal concern - a sense of surpassing our own ego. When Christianity interprets and distinguishes the relationship between agape love and the more ego-centric group love, it transcends any pious irrelevance. For many, I would hope, the figure of Jesus Christ has done just this.

Peter,

You present your extreme liberal version of Christianity as the outcome of modern biblical criticism but you know this to be false.

Your idiosyncratic understanding of Christianity and frustratingly arrogant belief that you can see through the text to find its ‘real meaning’ is a heresy as old as Marcion. You only pay lip service to our understanding that the spiritual stands on the natural, that meaning stands on real events and that Jesus’ miracles are not arbitrary but illuminate the connection between Grace and nature and His Lordship over it. Instead any reading of the New Testament that retains any hint of the supernatural you call fundamentalist.

CS Lewis’ ‘Fern Seeds and Elephants’
http://members.tripod.com/orthodox-web/papers/fern_seed.html

You have nothing to say about the fruits of modern biblical criticism as explained by NT Wright in the article I linked to, nor John Meier, Luke Timothy Johnson, Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, etc. Which would include as nuanced an understanding of Scripture as Dei Verbum which is authoritative for the entire Catholic Church!

You persistently invent false oppositions – the real meaning of the Gospels vs the literal meaning, the God of human liberation vs the God of Creation, to induce in the reader the idea that yours is the sophisticated reading when it is simply a refusal to do proper business with the Gospels and decent philosophy.

"Substance dualism is the correct Biblical position and not a Greek intrusion into Biblical thought we need not opt for a facile Christianized physicalism. The over-stated false dilemma between Hebraic holism and Greek dualism is one of the worst ideas in western thought since Descartes claimed that animals were mere machines."
JP Moreland

I have zero respect for a someone in an official teaching role within an organization writing to an audience of amateurs about that organisation’s beliefs but who then proceeds to present beliefs overwhelmingly and explicitly rejected by that very organization. With no mention of this fact

relda,
Thanks again for info about the Trinitarian doctrine. I have to concede that it is not an “indispensable part of all versions of the Christian message“, though e.g. in Wikipedia you can find the sentence “Most denominations within Christianity are Trinitarian, and regard belief in the Trinity as a mark of Christian orthodoxy“.

As far as I can see it, Newton could not fit into his mechanistic world the notion of “one Being Who exists, simultaneously and eternally, as a mutual indwelling of three persons“ the same as he would not have been able to understand how something could be a particle and a wave at the same time. Today we are more used to hard to visualise concepts even in science.

The problem of “God intervening as a direct cause of particular events, in addition to his more usual action working through secondary natural causes“ is today heavily discussed by scientists/theologians with a professional insight also into the seeming paradoxes of quantum physics, again in a way Newton could not have possibly understood.

To complete my, probably simplistic, theological insights, Teilhard de Chardin introduced an extended understanding of Christ as the God incarnate: not only in (human) history (with the focus some 2000 years ago) but also in the evolving material world (with the focus, point Omega, in the far future).

As for love, there are its two expressions eros (reflecting the individual's desires or self-centred as you put it) and agape (unconditional love), and I can only agree with what you wrote about the importance of the latter. On the other hand, the present pope in his Deus Caritas Est seems to have “rehabilitated” the Catholic view of eros.

The polarity eros-agape can perhaps be seen also from a different angle, as two intimacies in the psychological make-up of a human being: a horizontal, sexual one, (eros) concerned with a partner (real or virtual, accepted or denied), and a vertical, religious one, (agape) concerned with God (real or virtual, accepted or denied).

Following Paul (Ph.3:2), Pierre Teilhard said – Beware of those who would cut the TOTAL Christ down to the Mediterranean dimensions of the Nazarene.[1] Even Pontius Pilate was moved to probe more deeply and ask, “Where DO you come fiom” (Jn.19:9). Whereas the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke focused mostly on the “Jesus of History” [roughly 33 years] Paul and John focused rather on the “History of Jesus” from BEFORE the beginning to BEYOND the end of time. TIME is a dimension of CREATION but not of its CREATOR – revealed to us by Jesus as a trinity of uncreated persons whom he encouraged us to call “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Just before he died on Easter Sunday in 1955 (10 April) Teilhard said there is more in the TOTAL Christ than MAN and GOD – there is also He who gathers to himself the whole of creation.[2] Ten years later [1965] Vatican Council II affirmed that we - through our bodily composition or incarnation – gather to our selves the elements of the material universe. In our genes and reflective brains they reach their crowning glory and through us they are able to raise their voices in praise of the Creator. 14 years later Pope John Paul II extended that doctrine specifically to Jesus. The Redeemer of Man, he said, is also the CENTRE of the universe and of history. In Christ we find the on-going and ascending CENTRE-POINT of the cosmos as a whole and of its history, which extends from the beginning or ALPHA POINT [15 billion years ago?] to the end or OMEGA POINT of time (Rev.1:8, 21:6, 22:13). In other words – Christ is the “centre of centres.”[3][1] Gabriel Allegra OFM 1971 “My Conversations with Teilhard on the Primacy of Christ”[2] Teilhard 1955 p.93 in :The Heart of Matter” 1978[3] Teilhard 1944 “Centrology” pp.97-127 in “Activation of Energy” 1970

Relda and George.

Just because the doctrine of the Trinity is post biblical does not mean that it is not true. Any religion in which God is revealed in history as in Judaism and Christianity is Trinitarian at its base because God is revealed as the given in the past, experienced in the present and comes to us from the future. This is the unique structure of time that is the centre of faith. The mistake that was made in the West was that the three ousia became the three persons and thus materialised. Instead of their existence being essentially relatedness to each other as in the Eastern conception they could not help but exist as three different gods. The Western tradition always reduces to pantheism.

Thus Trinitarianism is integral to all speech about God, we cannot say God without also saying Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If we do we become pagan, Stoics really. I get the feeling I have said all this before but am too lazy to check.

My concern with Teilhard is that his cosmic Christ again gets mixed up with the material universe and we are back to something more sophisticated than Newton’s physico-theology. But I have never read him, he seems to have dropped out of mainstream consideration.

The point of my article is really that theology is high culture not natural science even though natural science finds a place under its umbrella.

SELLS said – “My concern with Teilhard is that his cosmic Christ again gets mixed up with the material universe and we are back to something more sophisticated than Newton’s physico-theology. But I have never read him, he seems to have dropped out of mainstream consideration.”

Having emptied himself of his divinity or equality with God (Ph.2:6-7) – omniscience and all the rest – so as to relate to us and save us not as a “god” but as a man like every other man [except in sin], there was a certain “development of doctrine” [1] in the life of Jesus of Nazareth (Lk.2:52). A similar “development of doctrine” may be seen in scriptures attributed to St Paul. The first disciples were finally given the fullness of revelation in Jesus. “I call you my friends,” he said, “for I have revealed to YOU all that the Father has revealed to ME”(Jn.15:15). But there was too much for them to grasp – so Jesus promised to send to them not another set of books but the Holy Spirit to remind them of all that he had said and done and to open their minds to complete truth (Jn.14:16; 16:12-13). Similarly, Teilhard was led from the “Christ of History” to the “History of Christ” – and from the “Cosmic Christ” to the “TOTAL Christ.” It became increasingly apparent to him that there is more in the TOTAL Christ than the Cosmic Body of his incarnation. There is also MAN [the “perfect” or complete man] fully mature with the fullness of Christ – the utter fullhess of God (Eph.4:13; 3:19) - [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_doctrine

Sells,
It is not Western tradition which has led to Pantheism (the idea that God is the entire universe) but rather an extreme realism. Pantheism mutes or rejects the biblical teaching of the transcendence of God in favor of his radical immanence - it is, rather ironically, a polite form of atheism where 'God' becomes indistinguishable from any sense of reality or 'truth'.

The idea of total immanence eventually birthed logical positivism, with Ludwig Wittgenstein its founder. For the logical positivists, "since statements about God are in principle not empirically verifiable ... they are not only false but are from the outset meaningless as assertions."( Wittgenstein)

I would also hardly say the Stoics were related to the pagan folk religions of the day as, for example, those associated with Pantheism. Their idea of nous (mind) was a part of the divine logos residing in each human individual - the Stoics divided their philosophy into three branches: Logic, Ethics and Metaphysics. Stoicism is also the forgotten ancestor of our own psychotherapeutic tradition. Whilst no longer a living tradition, this ancient philosophy has given us Erasmus, Calvin, Descartes, Spinoza, Shakespeare, Milton and Michel de Montaigne, amongst others.

Gregory of Nyssa, who exemplified the Eastern view with his hypostases Father, Son and Spirit, said they should not be identified with God because the divine nature is unnameable and unspeakable. This is very similar to a Judaic conception even if, as a result, Father, Son, and Spirit are only names we use to refer to the ways he has made himself known to us. Trinitarianism, thus, is certainly not integral to all speech about God. Perhaps, quite ironically, the West can actually embrace Gregory's eastern view through an Hebraic idea - as found within our own Judaic tradition.

Your last point I do agree with as Science arose alongside of and in many cases out of religious worldviews - Christianity played a particularly important role in the rise of modern science. For most historians of science, they now recognise the complexity and inter-relatedness of the history of scientific and religious ‘knowledge'.

Roch

Teillhard, as Sells points out, does not represent mainstream theology. His role in Piltdown, while probably quite innocent, has brought discredit to him in the scientific community and therefore also in the theological community.
At any rate he is more of a 'scientific' mystic than a theologian. He is therefore widely misunderstood. His most accessible work is probably 'The Phenomenon of Man' in which his scientific thought is prominent in what is still primarily a 'mystical' interpretation of 'creation'. Its appeal is still limited and generally of little interest to the wider theological community. Much of this work, however, foreshadows current work in the field of 'biological complexity' and is interesting for that.

Sells interpretation of the Trinity in terms of time is not 'orthodox' and has a very similar structure to the misinterpretations of both Newton and Teillhard in that it identifies a physical structure, in this case time, that coincidentally has three parts and concludes that there is a connection between the triune nature of God and the triune physical nature of time. Its cute. It might even be modestly productive theologically. It remains, however, just a slightly more sophisticated version of Newtons materialistic panentheism.
While I am entirely sympathetic to Sells objection to metaphysical dualism I must acknowledge that his Trinitarian musings illustrate the difficulty in formulating a non-dualistic theology. At best Trinitarianism is an honest attempt at making sense of the Christ event historically and theologically. It is Christian orthodoxy in its Nicene formulation but all attempts to explain it seem to fall into one or another heresy. Orthodoxy, however, does not guarantee its 'truth'. The Jews manage without it and most certainly are not pagan as Sells asserts.

waterboy,
<<Teillhard, as Sells points out, does not represent mainstream theology.>>
Well, this might be true if you exclude Catholic theology from what you consider “mainstream”, see for instance

http://www.traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_034_RatzTeilhard.htm.

His work can indeed be seen as a 'mystical' interpretation of 'creation'. However, I am not sure if one can say that his “appeal is still limited“. The speculations about the Omega Point by the cosmologists John Barrow and Frank Tipler (The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, OUP 1988), or the “selfish biocosm” of James F. Gardner (Biocosm, 2003), both inspired by Teilhard de Chardin, are probably just that, speculative, but hardly of limited appeal. Teilhard’s (and others’) interpretations might be “generally of little interest to the wider theological community“, depending on what you define as the wider theological community, see the link above.

Waterboy said – “Teilhard does not represent mainstream theology.” Where is “mainstream theology”? Who are “mainstream theologians”? On what or on whom are they centred? By what or by whom are they inwardly informed? We need to avoid “idolizing” the LOGOS of one’s preferred, most comfortable THEOLOGY instead of remaining ever open and obedient [attentive] to the God or THEOS of reality. Theology is “faith seeking understanding.” It starts with the gift of faith and then tries to account for the hope that is within us (1 Pet.3:15; Acts 26:6). What is faith without hope – and without love? To hope is to remember. Tertullian asked, “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” Christian faith is based not on philosophical speculation but on the Christ who survived physical [bodily] death and disintegration 2000 years ago. Dominican Thomas Aquinas changed the WATER of philosophy into the WINE of theology by adding the Blood of Christ and the fire of God’s Holy Spirit. Thus – Christian spirituality is not just a matter of words but of power, energy, dynamism [Greek `dunamis’] (1 Cor.4:20). Pope Paul VI asked – whatever happened to “the energies of the Gospel” and “the dynamism of Christian faith” [Octogesima Adveniens nn.37, 48]? Do those “mainstream” theologians burn with the Spirit of Christ [Vat II Laity n.2]? If not - why not? Consider St Symeon (949-1022), the “New Theologian” – the “Mystic of Fire and Light!” [George Maloney SJ 1975].

Waterboy – Teilhard’s “role in Piltdown” – 1913 [aged 32] 95 years ago – “brought discredit to him in the scientific community and therefore also in the theological community. At any rate he is more of a 'scientific' mystic than a theologian. He is therefore widely misunderstood.”

What is a “scientific mystic”? We need to be wary of the “second death” – the second kind of death – spiritual death. Unspiritual persons can accept nothing spiritual but see it all as nonsense (1 Cor.2:14). Like other true mystics, Teilhard (1881-1955) was “doomed” [!] “to seem the stranger” [“Hymn of the Universe” 1966 p.67; Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ 1885].

Roch/George

Here is the Catholic Church's official attitude to Teilhard:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/dechardin.txt
In essence this attitude is shared by academics in the Anglican and Uniting Church's in Australia. He has some following in the US but mainly with 'pop' theologians rather than with the teaching academia of the Church. Given the official attitude of the his own Church and his reputation as a mystic rather than a theologian I think it is fair to say that 'he does not represent mainstream theology'.

Do not get me wrong! For my part I find his writing sublime but as poetry not as theology.

In April 1942 the Apostolic Delegate to China asked Gabriel Allegra to review “Le Milieu Divin” – written by Teilhard in 1927. Allegra refused his “Nihil Obstat.” He then admitted - “leaving aside” [or “prescinding from”] any scientific aspects [in which he admitted incompetence] - he had found nothing “wrong.” In fact – “All you are saying is part of the tradition of the Franciscan School. It re-presents the great contribution that John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) made to Christian thought.” Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) “exulted” in that “Felix Culpa” [“happy fault”] that caused God the Father to send God the Son down to earth 1200 [now 2000] years ago in response to the “Original Sin” that “Eve” committed 100,000 or more years before! In Scotus's view, Christ had been in the world from the beginning [15 billion years ago?] – as expounded by Paul and John. Scotus called that the PRIMACY of Christ.

On 30 June 1962 – 103 days before Vatican Council II opened on 11 October – the “Holy Office” issued its infamous “monitum” warning the world’s Catholic Bishops that - “prescinding from” [“leaving aside”] “points concerning the positive sciences” – certain unspecified “ambiguities” and “even serious errors” had been found in certain unspecified “works” of Teilhard. That “warning” was re-issued by the Press Office on 20 July 1981 in the midst of celebrations [especially in Paris] for the Centenary of Teilhard’s birth on 1 May 1881.

Forced to “recant” – to “deny” that Earth spins and moves annually around the sun – Galileo allegedly murmured “Eppur si muove!” Likewise, whether latter-day “mainstream immobilists” like it or not, all mankind and all creation are “on the move” – as Teilhard said [2] – in the wake of Christ’s ascension from the beginning or ALPHA Point [15 billion years ago?] to the end or OMEGA Point of time – albeit by way of the Cross and Christ’s broken Sacred Heart or genetic cor.
[1] Gabriel Allegra 1971 “My Conversations with Teilhard on the Primacy of Christ” p.26
[2] 1920 “A Note on Progress” pp.11-24 in “The Future of Man” 196

Unlike Galileo, Teilhard was able to survive without recanting his unorthodox view. Basically, his notion was about the existence of a spiritual reality that suffused all matter (man and animals included) and had evolved into a "noosphere" ( his term for a layer of human awareness or consciousness that enveloped the earth like some psychic biosphere). His orthodox critics found that his vision destroyed the distinction between man and nature, and veered perilously close to pantheism where, in the final analysis God has, in a certain theistic sense at least, been dissolved.

Teilhard appears to shows a concept where God which has grown organically out of science itself. He also echoes the same sentiment of Einstein with, '..Humanity is no longer imaginable without science. But no more is science possible without some religion to animate it'. Undoubtedly, biologist Stephen Gould, is in total disagreement - he could also legitimately state that in the final analysis, Teilhard returns to the Bible and finds within the Scriptures of his own tradition a God who is most compatible with a world in continual evolution. Two great founders of modern science, Newton and Darwin, however, have done the same thing.

Undoubtedly, Teilhard makes a gallant attempt to reconcile the supernatural elements in Christianity with the facts and implications of evolution - but is modern science now less inspired without the old theism? Probably not - but a God of some description is found and does remain.


Cont'd..

...Cont'd
A common religious explanation within Christianity has been that God made the world perfect but that man messed it up. The general acceptance now is that the world has evolved, and this explanation doesn't fit the old religious model. Darwin's teaching was felt to be an attack on the very heart of Christian philosophy, with theistic belief a distinct part of it. There was a defense, not only of the theological content of the Mosaic account of creation, but also fought for was the original static theory of life. When the first Christians adopted a static world-view, they simply reflected a view which was universal and which remained essentially unchallenged until the scientific revolution.

I do believe there is great insight in the mythical legend of Jacob where he wrestled and even fought with God until he emerged the morning after with a clearer sense of his own destiny. In a type of reversal, one can certainly also see the atheistic thinking of astronomer Fred Hoyle to be eventually shaken through his intuitive thinking re: the carbon atom, "...A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.." His later thoughts, before his death, echo that there is much, much more than what meets the eye: that humanity is still in the early hours of its awaking to a wondrously vast universe. Hoyle's thoughts remain - with many of his scientific colleagues now disowning him as he has also challenged their world-view with a differing one.

waterboy,
I have to admit that my reaction to your note on Teilhard was too hasty. He indeed “does not represent mainstream theology” with emphasis on “represent”. Nevertheless, his thinking – an attempt to reconcile orthodox theology with 20th century science, notably evolution - had its influence also on Vatican II, e.g. the conciliar constitution “Gaudium et spes“.

This thinking is not part of “mainstream” Catholic theology the same as e.g. Einstein’s - or contemporary physicists’, thinking is not part of “mainstream” (i.e. pure) mathematics. But in both cases the influence is enormous; at least in the second case nobody disputes this. Your distinction of “mainstream“ and “pop“ theology, reminds me of the distinction between pure and applied mathematics. The “man in the street“ thinks that the first is just useless speculation and can appreciate only the second one whose benefits are readily tangible. In both cases. During my active years I felt strongly on the side of pure mathematics, the only proper way of doing things and viewed its applications, as important as they were, only as second rate mathematics. Age and experience taught me otherwise. Perhaps something similar could be said about the relative importance of mainstream and pop (e.g. Teilhardian) theology.

You are right that until Vatican II the Roman Church felt very uneasy about evolution, and some (not only) Catholic theologians do until today, because, in (not only) my opinion, they do not understand it, hence confuse it with atheist ‘non sequiturs‘ a la Dawkins.
As to your link to Vatican positions dated 1962, and the much weaker “reservations” dated 1981, the first precedes Vatican II and the second JPII‘s statement issued to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in which he endorsed evolution as being “more than just a theory“. I know, this is unfortunately not the end of the story. In July 2005 the Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Cardinal Schoenborn published in NY Time his now notorious “Finding Design in Nature”, where, among other things, he tried to downplay the above JP II’s statement. (ctd)

(ctd) This shocked many European Catholics who thought the Church had already learned its lesson, and would keep out of the grotesque American debates that want to play scientific theories of evolution against Christian faith and vice versa.

During a meeting in Castel Gandolfo of a group of scientists and theologians (including Schoenborn) with Benedict XVI, the pope, in my opinion, did his best to on one hand defend his personal friend, the Cardinal, and at the same time to keep the Church out of this unfortunate controversy. The proceedings of this meeting (Schoepfung und Evolution, Sankt Ulrich 2007), will appear in English in April 2008 as “Creation and Evolution: A Conference With Pope Benedict XVI“.

As to Teihard, I think his contribution to the philosophical appreciation of theology and science is more than just poetic. I prefer an extension of your earlier description as 'mystical' interpretations of 'creation' (that science does not deal with) and ‘evolution’ (that Revelation Theology does not deal with).

May I end with a quote from the end of a booklet (J.V. Kopp, Teilhard de Chardin, Mercier Press 1964, with an Imprimatur from Francis cardinal Spellman):

“There was never one word of complaint in his letters. … He chose silence. The strength to do so was drawn from his unshakable conviction that a thought, properly conceived in any part of the universe, could not be destroyed. He knew that hi idea would be brought to fruition later by others. … Like Moses on the mountain, he saw the promised land, but it was not granted him to lead the people into it.“

Born in the volcanic province of Auvergne in central France, Pierre Teilhard’s father introduced him to the COSMOS as a whole. His mother introduced him to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which he later came to “see” – with the eyes of a mystic or “seer” – as the Sacred Heart of all creation [the universe as a whole] and even the Sacred Heart of God [Father, Son and Holy Spirit].

By 1901 when R.M.Bucke published “Cosmic Consciousness” – followed in 1911 by Evelyn Underhill’s “Mysticism – A study in the nature and development of Man’s spiritual consciousness” – the young Jesuit (1881-1955 – ordained in England in 1911) had begun to sense the cosmic nature, dimensions and implications of our incarnation as we ascend to “Cosmic Life” [1916 pp.13-71 in “Writings in Time of War” 1968]

Towards the end of his life in New York on Easter Sunday 1955 [10 April] prayed for a “New Nicaea” to affirm that there is more in the Total Christ than Man and God – that there is also the Cosmic Body of his incarnation. Ten years later, Vatican Council II affirmed the cosmic nature, dimensions and implications of OUR incarnation [Gaudium et Spes n.14]. 14 years later – in the first words of his first encyclical [“Redemptor Hominis” 1979] – Pope John Paul II extended that doctrine specifically to Jesus as the on-going and ascending CENTRE of the universe and of its history from the beginning to the end of time.

In other words – there is only ONE BODY [the Cosmic Body of Christ] and we – having been “chosen” in Christ before4 the world was made (Eph.1:4) – are each given an ever-changing PART of the cosmic body of the TOTAL Christ fur the duration of our own earthly lives. After that – stripped to the very point of one’s own existence – we shall see God as God really is. We may then say “YES” or “NO” to that Beatific Vision – according to the habits of a lifetime.

George,

Interesting analogy! There is something deeply satisfying in Teilhards integrative conception of the Cosmos that is perhaps experienced also by the Applied Mathematician who connects the world of mathematical ideas with the physical realities of the material world in which we participate.
The idea that all Matter is 'infused' with Spirit and that even this is not 'everything' (which is probably panenthiesm rather than pantheism), while not strictly orthodox, does have practical implications for how we relate to everything in our world.
Provided we understand that the Biblical Creation story is literature of a similar sort then there is no conflict between these two 'cosmic stories'.
It is such a pity that people diminish Creation by insisting on a literal interpretation.

Hey runner, the theory of gravity hasn't been proved either. Maybe you deny it has any value? You stirrer you!

Roch,
Given the current state of the world, the arrival of a "noosphere" seems a little way off yet. Our 'cosmic consciousness', where we are stripped to the very point of our own existence and see God as God really is, may take some ground-breaking understanding in eschatology. Is the Eschaton, the ‘final end' of evil (the end of the conditions of its rise and the reconciliation of its destruction) to occur without the Armageddon (or final battle)?

I tend to think, the final Advent of God, the Escharon, which is, at the same time, the supreme Adventure of God with the world, is the origin of the creative process. Many have been unsure as to the time of its occasion in the universe - but I do believe, it hangs perilously close.

Teilhard’s Noosphere - To Jews “boasting about the LAW [of Judaism] and then ignoring it,” Paul said, “you bring God into contempt. It is YOUR fault that the Name of GOD is blasphemed amongst the Gentiles” (Rom.2:23-24). Misrepresentation has plagued human progress from the beginning. In 1864 - observing what the MARXISTS had made of his MARXISM – Karl MARX remarked, “Thank God – I’m not a MARXIST!” Likewise – discovering what the Americans had made of his PSYCHO-ANALYSIS, Freud said, “America is gigantic – a gigantic mistake!”[1]

Moving on, I deplore what certain “experts” have made of Teilhard’s “Noo-sphere.” Fascinated from infancy with all the “forms” of matter – culminating in “Forma Christi”[2] – Teilhard learned that Eduard Suess had described Earth’s surface as concentric litho-, hydro-, atmo- and bio-spheres of solid, liquid, gaseous and “living” or reproductive forms of matter. Likewise about 1925 - with Edouard Le Roy and Vladimir Vernadsky - Teilhard described our brains potentially linked together as a global “NOO-SPHERE” of reflective or “thinking” forms of matter. Indeed, in the whole of the known universe our genes and the brains that stem therefrom [now over 6 billion] are unmatched in molecular complexity and reflective competence. By way of our brains [if we choose to use them] we are collectively able to gain reflective IN-SIGHT into the inner form or INFORMATION of everything – even the depths of God (1 Cor.2:10) – and to ascend to the heights of cosmic SUPER-VISION, putting all things under our feet (Ps.8:6; Eph.1:22; 1 Cor.15:26; Heb.2:8).

Teilhard’s NOO-SPHERE is not just a “matter” of philosophy. His NOO-SPHERE is real matter, consisting of our brains [now over 6 billion] potentially linked together by a world-wide-web or internet of communications media able to function around the world and beyond at the speed of light [nearly 300,000 km per second].[3]
[1] Bruno Bettelheim 1983 “Freud and Man’s Soul.”
[2] Pierre Teilhard SJ 1918 “Forma Christi” pp.249-269 in “Writings in Time of War” Collins 1968
[3] Samson & Pitt 1999 “The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader”

I would agree Roch, a fundamental delusion is our sense of separation from the world we are “ in,” including our separation from other people. Physicist, David Bohm stated metaphysically, "Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one. This is a virtual certainty because even in the vacuum matter is one; and if we don't see this, it's because we are blinding ourselves to it." If, by adopting an apocalyptic eschatology as our view instead of a more prophetic perspective, we'll become self-delusional, self-important and arrogant. Apocalyptic thinking is usually about all the evil people “out there” beyond what we can control. McCarthyism or the 'red under the bed' are certainly good modern examples of an extreme witch-hunt.

Some emphasis can be made on the argument given by Gregory of Nyssa - " that since evil has no real existence, its "relative" existence will be completely annihilated at the end of time". Divine judgement, according to Gregory, is not to punish the sinners. Instead, it "operates by separating good from evil and pulling the soul towards the fellowship of blessedness." Eschatology is a difficult area of theological thought - it tries to reveal something of the future, often in a language and understanding we cannot fathom. The problem of evil cannot be ignored unless as inferred, mankind will simply, through process of evolution, become 'perfect'.We mustn't confuse the metaphysical with science , for as David Bohm concurs," our "objective reality" is largely a construct of thought, and not recognizing this leads us to endless circles of self-deception - in science as well as in life in general." We have minds, but we are not our minds.

Bohm also mentioned the dangers we face as a society and the changes we will have to make in our thinking in order to have a future. He said we need a more holistic approach to the ecological problem and must find something else in life besides economic growth. I have full empathy with this view but the struggle for an holistic approach will certainly not come naturally.

Jesus was only concerned with teaching people The Golden Rule:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule

He understood this was the way to peace. The Gospels describe a society oppressed and any deconstruction of the story reveals who the oppressors are. The irony is, it was 'religious' people who engineered the death of Jesus. Jesus' ultimate gift to the world was to show how self-proclaimed religious types hold people back from creating Heaven on Earth

relda, Roch,
“McCarthyism or the 'red under the bed' are certainly good modern examples of an extreme witch-hunt.“

I think these are two different things. The first one means persecution of individuals (of a very mild form, compared to what I had experienced in Czechoslovakia during those years: e.g. my uncle, a postgrad student in 1950 - caught translating a prayer book from French - was sentenced as a “Vatican spy” to 9 years in jail, most of it spent in uranium mines). The second one means fears that turned out to be unsubstantiated. Let us hope our fears of a nuclear or climate catastrophe will turn out to be equally unsubstantiated.

David Bohm is perhaps best known as the author of a quantum theory interpretation (Bohm interpretation, a so called a non-local hidden variable deterministic theory) the strongest competitor of the more standard Copenhagen interpretation. Perhaps his sacrifice of locality to preserve the strict determinism (using an extra variable with no apparent physical meaning) had led him to embrace oriental mysticism/metaphysics in his interpretation of physics and his philospphy. In this he resembles the more popular Fritjof Capra (author of e.g. “The Tao of Physics“) although he, to my knowledge, prefers the Copenhagen version. This, I think, distinguishes both of them (Bohm a Jew, Capra an ex-Christian) from Teilhard, whose mystic interpretation of Western science does not lead him outside his Western metaphysical tradition, though in a certain sense Teilhard is also “non-localist”.

For me, a theological layman, one of the crucial characteristics of Christianity, and indirectly of our Western tradition, is Jesus’ promise made not to a community, nation or any “non-local” (impersonal) entity but to an individual, the repentant criminal: “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.“ (Luke 23:43).

Progress? – In his “Creator of Heaven and Earth” Peter Sellick said, “The Judeo/Christian tradition contains no information about the origin of the material world.” He concluded – “If the Christian God did not create the physical world, what does He create? In the first creation story God calls the world into being. John’s gospel … talks about the Word of God which he identifies with Jesus. Jesus in turn calls his disciples into a new way of being. As Bonhoeffer was fond of saying, “When Jesus calls a man he bids him come and die.” This is a calling that puts to death the old man and calls the new out of his grave. While this is on the personal level we must remember that the history of Israel does not begin properly with the creation but with the call of Abraham to leave his home. Thus the call of God creates a new history. The creative work of God is not to do with setting the universal constants or igniting the big bang but in calling individuals and nations into a life freed from the “elemental powers of the universe” - of enslavement, death and decay…”

Waiting to be hanged in 1945, Bonhoeffer [39] also asked, “Who am I?” Informed from within, he concluded, “Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God – I am Thine!”

Far from containing “no information about the origin of the material world” – the key concept in the Judeo-Christian tradition is INFORMATION. 90 years ago Pierre Teilhard said, “The word that comes nearest to defining the universal influx of Jesus Christ – the centre of the universe – is INFORMATION.” Indeed, “The whole history of the universe is that of its progressive INFORMATION by Christ.”[1]

Humans are able to be INFORMED not only from the PAST and the PRESENT [the world OUTSIDE] but also from the FUTURE or world WITHIN us. “I have food to eat, “Jesus said, “that the world knows nothing about!”(Jn.4:32; Mt.4:4; Dt.8:3).

[1] Teilhard 1918 “Forma Christi” pp.253-4, 266 in “Writings in Time of War” 196

Roch
"The whole history of the universe is that of its progressive INFORMATION by Christ."[1]

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit:

How things were and why? How things are and why? How things could be and why?

George,
Communism, as an imposed form of Marxism has been proved fundamentally flawed in its process. The 'evil' of this was reacted to via Macarthyism. Marxism, as with Capitalism is a Western development - both, however, are prone to being deeply flawed when taken as absolute ideology. A totally free market economy bears similar contradiction in establishment as does the Church with Christendom. A genuinely free market requires the imposition of political process, whereas the 'Church' needs to be devoid of it - and is essentially so.

For me 'repentance' in an old word, I guess now out of vogue for many - its original meaning carries with it a flexibility of mind and heart without which growth in spirit cannot occur. There a many view points in giving clarity to one truth - some, I find, are just more intelligible than others. Mine (from an early youth) has been derived through a Christian tradition - but in ignoring the view of others my 'repentance' would be severely lacking.

relda,
please believe me, you do not have to explain to me what Communism is, I had a first hand experience of it. It indeed is a "form of Marxism (that) has been proved fundamentally flawed in its process", perhaps like Nazism can bee seen as a form of patriotism that has been proved fundamentally flawed in its process, although in both cases this is a very mild description of the reality.

I am sorry if you do not like the word "repentant" but I think you missed my point. I was quoting Luke 23:43 just to show that the promise of Jesus is to each individual who wants to accept him, not to a nation, class or community (as are the promises of most ideologies and some oriental religions).

George,
Obviously my intent was not to be patronising - sorry if it sounded that way. Neither do I intend to gloss over the effects of a totalitarian run society - the reality of which eludes most of us in our relatively free and comfortable democracy.

My point is, as with 'repentance', there are many who simply do not understand nor even find the idea of 'paradise' appealing. Naturally, there are also many who believe in its appeal - but taken out of the context of both community (where a personal approach might be made) and its historical one, the promises in Luke 23:43 are generally quite meaningless. All who write in the forum come from a different perspective - none of us will ever agree. As you may understand, it is only through dialogue we'll learn from our disagreement.

As both Teilhard and Bohm give stong emphasis to a gaining of knowledge this quote, from eastern thought, puts it better than I'm able, "Love of goodness without love of learning degenerates into simple-mindedness. Love of knowledge without love of learning degenerates into utter lack of principle. Love of faithfulness without love of learning degenerates into injurious disregard of consequences. Love of uprightness without love of learning degenerates into harshness. Love of courage without love of learning degenerates into insubordination. Love of strong character without love of learning degenerates into mere recklessness".

relda,
The expression 'repentant criminal’ was of my choosing just to explain what the quote was about; I could have chosen another word because it had nothing to do with what I wanted to say. On the other hand, the term ‘paradise’ is not of my choosing; you can check e.g. on http://bible.cc/luke/23-43.htm that it is in practically all English translations of Luke 23:43. This is so, irrespective of whether many in the 21st century “simply do not understand nor even find the idea of 'paradise' appealing“. There are many who do not find the idea of ‘kingdom‘ appealing either, nevertheless the word stands in most of the English translations of Luke 23:42 symbolising, similarly to ‘paradise’, something that was apparently self-explanatory to the authors of NT (or the translators).

Of course, every time, including our own century, and people coming from all sorts of perspectives, will have their own interpretations also of this passage of the NT. My own interpretation, that you are free to disagree with, was that the Good News of the Gospels spoke to individuals not to communities. Irrespective of how you interpret ‘heaven’ (or ‘hell’), what I think is important is that it refers to hope (or hopelessness) for individual PERSONS, not communities.

I can only agree with your last paragraph. My ‘philosophical creed’, as displayed on my homepage:

LOVE of KNOWLEDGE complements KNOWLEDGE of LOVE, or the Yin in Yang complements the Yang in Yin.

George

I really must take issue with you here. While personal repentance and salvation are addressed in the gospels I think you make a grave mistake to dismiss the importance of community and social justice in the gospel message. To 'Love thy Neighbour' is surely about the importance of relationships in community. Note it is not 'Love your Wife.. or Children.. or Friends..'.
You surely cannot deny that the Gospels repeatedly use the metaphor of Kingdom to describe Jesus' purpose. Kingdom is social. The Kingdom of God describes a community which lives in concord with the will of God. I would venture to suggest that the emphasis of the Gospels is on Kingdom and not personal salvation.
Jesus also said that seeking your own salvation leads to death. This is surely an admonition against too great an emphasis on personal salvation.

Sorry, I was typing in a hurry.

"The Kingdom of God describes a community in which EVERYONE lives in concord with the will of God."

waterboy,
I can agree with everything you wrote - it is more or less the standard reading of what the NT is all about - except where you seem to have misread what I said. I was not offering an evaluuation of the Gospel as such, only an interpretation of Luke 23:43. There are many other places in the NT where Jesus addresses one individual, or many individuals in a crowd, but never a crowd itself like Hitler, Lenin or other demagogues (and politicians?) did and do.

Of course, the importance of community and social justice are part of the message, but these things exist in many other messianic systems- whether or not we see them as being influenced by the NT - but not the promise of personal salvation that many Christians - I agree that nowadays not all of them - draw e.g. from Luke 23:43.

For instance, people accepting - voluntarily or not - the Soviet system were supposed to be looking forward to a paradise on this earth - called the communist society, with no state, no private property, everybody having access to whatever he thinks he needs, etc. - in the far future. However, there was nothing to replace the simple promise of Luke 23:43 that the Comrades could offer a dying person, and they were very well aware of this.

Yes, I know, today there are many people, Christian or not, who do not care about personal salvation, but there are also many who do, and miss this assurance in other (Western) systems that want to replace Christian faith. That was all I wanted to emphasise, certainly not that you can seek and attain personal salvation without loving your neighbour, living in a community and striving for social justice, however understood.

Hello all

What a fine discussion this has been.

Roch, I have enjoyed your enunciation of Teilhard's thoughts and work, and its place in this emerging age of faith/life seeking understanding. For me, Teilhard's thoughts opened the vista of an emerging world, and a single life, my own. It broke the static view of life being a test on a set stage, with a plot engaging a single and mundane hope; that I die in a state of grace so as to go to heaven, or more likely as a motivation to escape hell. Teilhard's notions of the static/dynamic, passive/active, natural/supra natural opened the vista of a purposeful life in the everyday. And of course, given his deep love and trust in Jesus, a reason for me to come to know more of Him. Then, Him. At least enough to know His love and respond; in His worship ( mainly via the Catholic Mass - Word and Eucharist) , service to the other and forgiveness (received / given) to lead to a far fuller, rounded, patient, persevering, happy and joyful bloke. I also write as one a bit bruised in engaging in the world where I found truth hitting up against the interests of others.

In this age of comfortable excess I believe we should focus more on the "here and now" Kingdom, at this place and this time as it is needed. There needs to be an urban ministry to the fat and comfortable ( intellectual/spiritual/physical) who are bloody miserable.

"I have come that so that they may have life, and have it to the full" (John 10:10). To die without knowing the loving intimacy of God through Jesus would be a life lived less, by choice. Such knowing, of course, will bring discomfort as has been promised. But to know the love is the great pearl.

Our western world has confused comfort for happiness, and places man as sovereign. The freedom and love Peter talks of in our Christian story have become, in the wider world, commodities attained and consumed through power

George,
As we are agreed, knowledge is an important pre-requisite for understanidng - so we should perhaps go back a little in history to see how different beliefs and ideas have been disseminated - relevant here is early Christianity. Marcion, an early Church Father, had considerable influence on Christian philosophy where he taught it was only the letters of Paul that taught true Christianity, and the god of the Jewish Bible was evil, as were the Jews. Some contradiction certainly arises when Christianity chose also to spread the Jewish writings of the Bible. Ironically, it was the Christian Reformation through using the same Bible to topple Church hierarchy and its 'evil' ways making the contradiction more apparent. The underlying, even if understandable, anti-Semitism of Luther (and others), were perhaps masked somewhat by the reformation. An evolving process of a better attitude towards Jews and Judaizing among Christians began. The Reformation, however, was only successful to a point.

Going back even further historically, we can recall the Ebionites, an early Jewish sect whose followers were amongst the earliest supporters of Jesus Christ. The Ebionites held a very early version of the Gospel of Matthew – this is where the entire Jewish Law needs to be kept, down to the smallest letter. It is worth noting in this Gospel, when a rich man comes up to Jesus and asks him how to have eternal life, Jesus tells him that if he wants to live eternally he must keep the commandments of the Law (19:17) Paul was not just wrong about a few minor points, according to the Ebonites, he also countered Matthew. He was the archenemy, the heretic who had led so many astray by saying that you could be saved even without keeping the Jewish Law, and who forbade circumcision. The Aramaic version of Matthew used by Ebionite Jews would have lacked the first two canonical chapters, which narrate Jesus' birth to a virgin - a notion that the Ebionites rejected.

Quite arguably, the Ebionites represented the views of Jesus better than many other early Christian groups.
cont’d…

..cont’d
The term Ebionite (from Hebrew 'Evyonim) means "Poor Ones" and was taken from the teachings of Jesus: "Blessed are you Poor Ones, for yours is the Kingdom of God" based on Isaiah 66:2.
Some key tenets of the Ebonites included:

• Yahshua (Jesus) was a religious Jew and not divine.
• His teachings were fully within the framework of Yahwism, yet may have conflicted with other sectarian views.
• He was a reformer, trying to recapture an earlier spirit and purity of Yahwism.
• He was not a Messiah but undertook a messianic mission – calling people to prepare for the Messianic Age by living through righteousness and loving-kindness.

Christianity is not just a religion but also the heir of Western culture enveloping vestiges from all of the ancient Near Eastern and European gentile civilizations. The arrival of Orthodox Christianity (and virtually every other form of Christianity), is far from the original syncretism. Original followers of Yeshua did not worship him or look to him for salvation. They did not turn away, add or subtract from God's commandments (Torah). They worshipped only the God of Israel.

The question of "being saved" is a Christian paradigm asking something based purely on a doctrinal derivation - often an anathema to a non-Christian who does not accept the basis for Christian belief or the Christian religion. The question of "being saved" is a bit like a Christian being asked, “ how many lives did you have until you became a (Buddhist) "bodhisattva?" As traditional Christianity has taught that mankind is basically "depraved" (and thus incapable of truly doing good), the idea of repentance is also different. The word teshuvah means "return." It is often mistranslated as "repentance." According to Judaic thought, Teshuvah is a return to the path God has set when we were born, the path that our souls know as homeward bound, and the path of goodness, of becoming a better person. A simple translation would be, we return from our mistakes on the basis of the law (Torah or teaching)– which in turn has its basis in love.

BOXGUM said – “Roch, I have enjoyed your enunciation of Teilhard's thoughts and work, and its place in this emerging age of faith/life seeking understanding. For me, Teilhard's thoughts opened the vista of an emerging world and a single life - my own. It broke the static view of life being a test on a set stage, with a plot engaging a single and mundane hope” – a hope “that I die in a state of grace so as to go to heaven, or more likely as a motivation to escape hell. Teilhard's notions of the static/dynamic, passive/active, natural/supra natural opened the vista of a purposeful life in the everyday. And of course - given his deep love and trust in Jesus - a reason for me to come to know more of Him - at least enough to know His love and respond - in His worship (mainly via the Catholic Mass - Word and Eucharist) – in service to the other and forgiveness (received / given) to lead to a far fuller, rounded, patient, persevering, happy and joyful bloke. I also write as one a bit bruised in engaging in the world where I found truth hitting up against the interests of others.”

ROCH – Thanks, “boxgum”!

BOXGUM – “In this age of comfortable excess, I believe we should focus more on the "here and now" Kingdom, at this place and this time as it is needed. There needs to be an urban ministry to the fat and comfortable (intellectual/spiritual/physical) who are bloody miserable.”

ROCH – Sadly there are none so poor as those who are spiritually empty. In “Build Soil” [1932] Robert Frost said, “We’re always too much out or too much in. At present from a cosmical dilation we are so much OUT that the odds are against our ever getting inside IN again – but inside IN is where we’ve got to get!” Many, it seems, sadly live their whole lives never discovering the inner dimensions of their own beings – infinite and eternal – made to be filled with the utter fullness of God!

relda,
Thanks for your interesting post. It very nicely illustrates what I had claimed, namely that “today there are many people, Christian or not, who do not care about personal salvation".

I do not see how this should conflict with the hopes of those Christians who do (whatever metaphysical and/or psychological dimension they associate with the term ‘salvation’, mostly probably rather naive). Unless, of course, somebody forces his way of interpreting Jesus on others, as it unfortunately happened too often in the past.

I am sure your interpretation can be convincing for many Christians. But so can the traditional interpretation; that is just how interpretations work. However I agree that for those outside the Abrahamic faiths the very concept of personal salvation, personal afterlife, does not make much sense, and I cannot see why it should.

George

Luke 23:43, along with 12:20, 16:19-31 and Acts 7:55, 14:22 are often quoted as evidence of Luke's indiviualizing of eschatology.
Some of these are ambiguous and can only be so interpreted if one approaches them with a pre-conceived notion of individual salvation. Luk 16:19-31 is perhaps the most sustained reference to individual eschatology but here the main point is that the Pharisees misunderstand Moses and refuse to believe that Jesus has risen from the dead. It also borrows heavily from a pre-Christian story.
Acts 7 is mainly about Stephen's speech although it does include a clearly individual escahatological note.
The main point of Luke 23:43 is Jesus' authority and propensity to dispense forgiveness, a Divine prerogative. It is about Jesus rather than about the fate of the individual robber. This is evident in Luke's logical problem of placing Jesus in Heaven that very day when elsewhere Jesus return to Heaven is significantly delayed. In his eagerness to make a point about Jesus he has introduced a difficult logical flaw to his wider story.
I believe that interest in/belief in individual salvation derives largely from poor reading of scripture and particularly from 'snatching' individual verses and short passages from S without regard to their context and without any possibility of considering the author's real purpose.
Sorry to harp.. but I do not believe individual salvation deserves the emphasis it has received in Christian teaching as it is a relatively minor theme in the NT. The Gospel is social through and through.

waterboy,
Although I still cannot share your perspective, I am thankful for your explanation, since I am learning about Christian perspectives I was not aware they existed. Nevertheless, it somehow convinces me more and more that “sola scriptura” is not sufficient.

“Jesus' authority and propensity to dispense forgivenes”.
Exactly, since forgiveness, as I understand it, is dipensed to persons not nations, communities or other groups.

I think every exegete can say, about the interpretation of another exegete that he does not agree with, that it “derives largely from poor reading of scripture and particularly from 'snatching' individual verses and short passages from S without regard to their context and without any possibility of considering the author's real purpose.“ As a theological layman I am only aware that I could not pass such a judgement about any interpretation of what Jesus, or this or that evangelist, actually wanted to tell us. As far as I can see there is no objective adjudicator like mathematics and experiments in e.g. physics.

So I cannot see why I should “deconstruct” centuries old interpretations that e.g. the Catholic Church supports. The perspective of a personal existence that is well beyond our understanding of what it might be, is an additional extra to this interpretation that, I think, is the essence of faith (that is more than ‘intellectual consent’).

But again, I do not want to contradict you, since I am a theological outsider. I only have the feeling that there are exegetes that might better be able to formulate the difference between our two interpretations that we both, I presume, base our faith on.

Hi George – As you rightly said, “the essence of faith is more than `intellectual assent’.” The “logic of the Cross” is scandalous to “Jews” [brethren who expect signs and wonders] and madness to “Greeks” [worldly philosophers] (1 Cor.1:23). The LOGOS of one’s theology is his or her idea or model of the God or THEOS of reality. Ironically, the “GOD” or “THEOS” that any atheist rejects is surely one that I too would reject! St Anselm (1033-1109) – second Archbishop of Canterbury (1093-1109) after the Norman Conquest - described “Theology” as “faith seeking understanding.” Christian or Christ-centred theology STARTS with the gift of faith and Christ-centred people the strives to account for the hope and love that are within them (1 Pet.3:15). For what is “faith” without hope and without love? So what is “mainstream theology” and where is it to be found? Likewise – who are closer to God – “mainstream theologians” or “theological outsiders”? St Thomas More (1477-1535) reminded the first Protestants of England that that Jesus promised to send to his followers the Holy Spirit of enlightenment – not another set of books! But “If the `light’ within you is darkness, what darkness that will be!” (Mt.6:23).

Am I being arrogant in saying so? Is the inner light of enlightenment denied to anyone?

George

For the Hebrews the nature of their relationship with God was a covenant between God and His People. Certainly God deals with individuals in various ways but the community's covenant with God was the basis of everything. Everyone in the community depended on that covenant. This was the basic mindset of the Jewish people in 30CE and any reading of Scripture that fails to recognise this inevitably leads to errors of interpretation. Christianity was born within a society that had a very strong sense of the relationship between God and nation (community).

In Christianity there is a slow shift away from this to an emphasis on personal salvation that has accelerated in the last 100 or so years. Science, the Enlightenment and modern psychology have all contributed to giving us a very strong sense of being individuals. If we project this back into our interpretation of Scripture then we can objectively say that our interpretation 'misrepresents' the original sense of the story.

As for personal salvation, it is a little like the Greens slogan "Think globally, act locally". We are social creatures and depend on society for identity, nourishment and purpose. The big picture is the Kingdom of God. As individuals we must play our part to 'create' that Kingdom but individually and without God we cannot do it.

Perhaps the best way to understand 'Sola Scriptura' is to take the view that Scripture is our primary access to what Jesus said and did and that the direct teachings of Jesus must be the 'yardstick' of all that the church says and does. The Book is the medium and not the message. It may be said that the Church is another 'medium' for the transmission of Jesus teaching but, unfortunately, the Church has too often proven to be wrong to be worthy of our ultimate trust. There are churches, for example, that teach creation as 'scientific' fact.

Waterboy,
I believe your emphasis on community is correct - the Bible presents a 'salvation history' in narrative form. From this narrative, it recounts the acts of God in accomplishing his intention for creation. From beginning to end the intent is the establishment of community. The narrative of a person's life is always embedded in the story of the communities in which the person participates . The community is crucial in the process of identity formation, because it mediates to us the transcending story, bound up with which are traditions of virtue, common good, and ultimate meaning, by means of which we construct our own narrative. The biblical vision of community shows both the goal of history and the experience of each person who has come to know God.

George,
As Anselm of Canterbury echoed from Augustine, “I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand” - this you seem to admirably reiterate. However, this 'faith seeking understanding' needs to address both the skepticism and atheism of today

We live a fertile field for a myriad of old and new religions. This proliferation of rival beliefs is but another intellectual problem making the Christian truth claim highly suspect. There's a rebirth of interest in the supernatural amongst 'children of the Enlightenment'. This new supernaturalism is not necessarily well informed - the reality of the God of Abraham and the Father of the Christ is now in the context of the rivalry of many ‘gods' - as found at Christianity's inception.

'High' Christology as a late Hellenistic development was preceded by the 'low' Christology of the "original" Jewish Christian teaching. The Jewish apocalyptic needs to be understood, for it is in the New Testament we find this same symbolic world

Roch,
You put it very nicely, and I agree with everything you wrote except for the point of the last two questions. Today, everybody seriously approaching the relation religion-science appreciates Teilhard as a visionary and builds on his ideas, - except perhaps for some details - whether they admit it or not. My favourite contemporary is Polkinghorne. You might be interested in his view of Teilhard as expressed e.g. in http://www.crosscurrents.org/polkinghorne.htm.

It is interesting that you mention St Anselm’s “fides querens intellectum” since especially in the last decades not only faith is looking for understanding, but also science, particularly physics. Following Anselm you “start with the gift of faith” as you correctly say. When seeking to understand modern physical theories that seem to contradict common sense, you also start with a theory (1) supported by mathematical coherence, experiments and practice, (like quantum physics), or (2) just mathematical coherence with no experiments to support it (like string theory, loop quantum gravity). You seek to understand these anti-intuitive theories, i.e. to interpret them. In the first case you want to find out WHY the theory works (you have e.g. the Copenhagen or Bohm’s interpretations of quantum theory). In the second case you want to find out WHAT it would mean if these theories were accepted. In the first case (of quantum physics) your starting point is that of a firm believer who seeks understanding, in the second case your starting point is that of a skeptic, a potential believer.

waterboy, relda
I indeed appreciate your posts except that I really do not understand why they contradict what I said. When I write “you certainly cannot seek and attain personal salvation without loving your neighbour, living in a community and striving for social justice” how can you claim that I “dismiss the importance of community and social justice in the gospel message”.

“The Gospel is social through and through”. Sorry, waterboy, but this statement, that I had heard many times from my marx-leninist teachers, reminds me of those recent neuroscientists who claim to have found God in the temporal lobe of the brain. Certainly in both cases there is a relation between the message and its carrier, but the latter is not the whole story.

Our parallel monologues have been triggered by my defence of the promise of personal salvation. I never spoke of individual salvation, though I perhaps should not have used the term ‘individual’ at all, since you seem to associate it with individualism (perhaps something like associating community with Communism).

The OT revolves around the covenant with His (a priori) chosen people, whereas my reading of the NT, and certainly of the Christian tradition, is that it is more concerned with (a posteriori) chosen persons (e.g. saints in the Catholic tradition). I think Christianity is incomplete without either of these perspectives, but both, the personal and the communitarian aspects, can be exaggerated at the expense of the other. The 20th century mystic Thomas Merton warns very pointedly (although this only indirectly relates to personal salvation): “The notion of ‘spiritual perfection’ is appropriate rather to a philosopher, who ... has arrived at a state of tranquillity where passions no longer trouble his pure soul. This is not the Christian idea of holiness.”. And there are many warnings about opposite exaggerations, about communities emotionally carried away up to turning themselves (or being turned) into fanaticised crowds.

Perhaps the personalist philosophy of Emmanuel Mounier is the proper compromise between extreme individualism and extreme communitarianism that is also compatible with the Christian message. the “Eastern approach“ is through Khomyakov’s Sobornost.

I guess it is a degree of emphasis George, where our personal salvation is not the goal but the by-product. The gospel does not appeal to us on the basis of our self-interest. The goal is restoration of all that is good and right and beautiful in the entire world. Our personal salvation is only a supporting process, and, I agree this process is not merely social.

Dave here
When are people going to stop arguing their belief on others like I said before no-one can prove God exists no-one can prove he doesn't answer what came first the chicken or the egg the big bang caused the making of the universe who or what created the big bang evolution is the making of life & its' forms but who or what created the first life form it goes on & on.
The belief or non-belief in God or a God of your own belief is your right
If people want to do something worthwhile why not pressure the DoCs ministers to stop the abuse of children & get a decent soceity going in this country
Thanks for your time & again may your lord shine on you well
God Bless Dave

Well, relda, I agree, we do not disgaree in principle, only in a different reading, a different emphasis if you like, of the Good News. That in itself is not bad news.