Dear Glorfindel,

1. The persecution of the Christians was not unrelenting between Augustus and Constantine.

The fourth century Christians acted much like today’s Taliban by persecuting other faiths.

Before Constantine, “the Ancient Christians were animated by a contempt for their present existence, and by a just confidence of immortality, of which the doubtful and imperfect faith of the modern ages (written 1776) cannot give us any adequate notion” (Edward Gibbon).
The Christianity, which has grown-up since Constantine, is not the Christianity of the first and second centuries. Had Christian path disregarded Paul and leaped frogged Nicaea, Sells would say it would not be Christianity. Yet, it is the substitute the Churches revere.
Likewise, the significance of the Jews appointing a Latin bishop after Hadrian founded Aelia Capitolina on Mount Sion is not entertained by Sells at OLO, because here one sees Jewish Jesus groups transmuting into the proto-Christians.

2. Jesus appears as an emancipator. He, is an agent of the new covenant and struggles with Jewish authorities, preventing the Pharisees et al, from arresting the free minds of individuals. Mark 2:27 is illustrative. Man is put above the Sabbath in ways the OT would never countenance.

Albert Weisbord notes, “Liberals have initiated revolution and have fought against it”. Jesus the Liberal, in many ways an orthodox Jew, was also a change agent acting counter to orthodoxy.
Jesus places God’s creation above obsolete creed and doctrine. His liberalism is an ancient forerunner to the humanism of Eramus, wherein men were unwilling to accept theological dogma as the sole basis of their conduct” (Louis Wasserman. 1944.

3. Sells reminds me of the faithful OT Jew, elevating the Church above what the NT actually says. Here, I can see an ancient Sells upholding the zillion Jewish purity and other codes whilst fighting against Jesus’ deliverance from doctrine, as our contemporary Sells fights against the products of the Enlightenment today, e.g., liberty, egalitarianism and free thought.

4. Whether God exists or not, Church is a human contrivance. It is this shadow Sells' defends against, either God or history, which if one is true.

DAVIDF: It's that I won't engage when you debate dishonestly.

Dear Glorfindel. It still might be better to remain silent than to call someone else names.

Glorfindel wrote: Jesus' prediction that Christians would encounter violence (as they did in nearly 300 years of persecution) is certainly not the same as his encouraging his followers to use violence and conflict. You know this but prefer to twist, distort and give gratuitous offence.

Dear Glorfindel,

The quotes I cited encouraged violence. I distort and twist nothing. You took offense. I didn’t give it.

Some Christians such as Bishop Spong, the Evangelical Sisters of St. Mary and Pope Paul VI in Nostra Aetate referring to Muslims and Jews have admitted the ugly past of Christianity and tried to change things for the future.

In atonement for the Holocaust Mother Basilea Schlink founded the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, a Lutheran community, in 1947, Part of their statement at http://www.kanaan.org/international/israel/israel7.htm:

"Instead of being united in love for God, we as Christians have sinned grievously against God's covenant people. Two thousand years of Church history have left a trail of blood: contempt, hatred, hostility, persecution and wholesale slaughter.

Time and again the Jewish people have suffered at the hands of Christians. They have been humiliated, deprived of their rights, accused of murdering God and blamed for every imaginable calamity. During the Crusades, the Inquisition, the pogroms and, most horrific of all, the Holocaust, millions of Jews have suffered flagrant injustice.

At the beginning of the third millennium we can only confess this terrible guilt in deep shame before God and the Jewish people, deploring the involvement of many Christians. We seek His forgiveness for all the anguish that Israel, His chosen people, have suffered. By the grace of God we resolve to turn from these ways."

Christians and Jews were intolerant of each other before the Empire became Christian. The adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire gave official sanction to Christian intolerance.

See http://www.cup.es/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=052105057X for the attempt of scholars of both traditions to examine the period.

DAVIDF: You seem to be saying "Who's that trip-trip-tripping over MY bridge?"
Like Aunt Sally (she's on Wikipedia), Google that one too.

I don't wish to re-cover ground I covered in my previous posts.

All you prove is that the human animal, whatever cap he affects to wear, has a strong tendency to evil. Always did, still does. Jesus refers to "the one who is in the world" - the one who indeed has captured the institution in The Grand Inquisitor. But his time is limited.

I am motivated by a pursuit of the good, the beautiful and the holy.

What motivates you, David?

What a bizarre question, Glorfindel.

>>Solzhenitsyn writes in The Gulag Archipelago: "The distinction between good and evil does not run between one nation and another, or one group and another. It runs straight through every human heart." Is that meaningless crap to you?<<

What on earth led you to think it would be?

It is a beautifully expressed view that we are all individually good and evil. Those of us who take responsibility for our own actions understand fully where that line is drawn. Religionists defer that responsibility to those who have arrogated to themselves the task to interpret the "laws" that apply to their unique view.

Which is why I pointed out that Jensen vs. Aspinall is just another power struggle between two men who would each like to be the one who defines those "laws". Each would prefer their flock to adhere to their specific rules, while ignoring all others'.

Solzhenitsyn himself would, I suspect, have been pretty unimpressed with both of these guys - his embracing of the Orthodox Church was pretty full-on, was it not?

All this is about, of course, is the age-old fear of religious folk that ordinary people can actually lead good lives without the emotional crutch of a church.

You appear to be of the mind that God is the creator of these laws. Which leaves open the question, who was it that described the laws to God? Or did he make them up himself, arbitrarily. Either way, there is nothing that particularly distinguishes them from the laws we make for ourselves, simply in order to provide a framework for civilization..

Glorfindel wrote: All you prove is that the human animal, whatever cap he affects to wear, has a strong tendency to evil. Always did, still does. Jesus refers to "the one who is in the world" - the one who indeed has captured the institution in The Grand Inquisitor. But his time is limited.

Dear Glorfindel,

I didn’t write of generic evil. I wrote specifically of Christian evil. Christians like Bishop Spong, Basilea Schlink and Pope Paul VI have looked at the beam in the eye of Christianity rather than the mote outside. They have confronted it and tried to change Christianity for the better. If we talk about humanity in general rather than our institutions or ourselves we don’t call ourselves to account.

The doctrine of original sin in Christianity holds that that the human animal has a strong tendency to evil.

We are born neither good nor evil. Whether we are good or evil depends on what we do. Evil and good lies in every human heart.

Pericles mentioned Solzenitsyn. Solzenitsyn, an Orthodox Christian, wrote:

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

Orthodoxy is less influenced by dualism than western Christianity that sees evil as external.

One can externalise evil by imagining a devil and think it is something outside of us. Judaism maintains that there is a yetzer ha tov, a spirit of good, and a yetzer ha ra, a spirit of evil within each of us.

If we believe we have a tendency toward evil we can excuse our evil by believing we were acting naturally. There is no excuse. We cannot put our sins on the shoulders of Jesus or imagine a devil and escape the consequences that way. We must confront our evil.

Thanks for not calling me names or impugning my motives in your last post.

Glorfindel,
Whilst your concern for conformity to the Wesleyan Quadrilateral may seem prudent and reasonable in terms of a theological reference point, the “Spirit of Truth” and biblical exegesis require the academia of a differing discipline. The Trinity, for example, is hardly supported by anything more than hypothesis and doubtful logic. From a purely scriptural view, greater minds than mine with accompanying Christian belief (e.g. Isaac Newton) reach this supposition. Trinitarian logic declares, If Jesus is (literally) God, and that if we will become just like him and bear his image when we are raised (literally) from the dead, then we will also (literally) be "God" - clearly a fallacious concept to the dramatis personae of the New Testament, as previously mentioned.

As far as St. Mary’s is concerned, I gave expression to my opinion here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8567#135503

To further add: “The community [at St. Mary’s] is engaged in full, conscious active participation of the liturgy; authority is exercised in service to the community; there is a deep, authentic and adult search for the presence of God in our daily lives; there is a sense of inclusivity; a deep concern and care for one another, especially those felt excluded from mainstream Catholicism. And blessed are those who are not scandalised by us.”

A question is, however, asked from the piety of many, “Are you an authentic Catholic community?” At St Mary’s, the homeless are housed, the poor are clothed and fed, the mentally ill are cared for, young mothers are supported, prisoners are visited, and refugees are welcomed – all of which, I fear, are generally politically incorrect.