Dear fellow posters
what a rich thread this is. To Oliver, (thanx Rhian for those insights) please look up Wiki on any point such as the Baptism of Jesus etc, they don't have a 350 word limit :)

FH. you scallywag. I am hoping that you will truly read John and comprehend the words there.. John 8 and John 10.
"hate" :) thereeeee you go a-again. 2night I was at gym, my best most warmest buddy is a Shia Muslim from Iran. I'm hoping (when I get a house) to invite him and his family for a meal. Its not about hate of "Muslims"...for the umpteenth zillionth time.
But the events of the past few days have underlined a mantra of mine..

-RADICALS. (you know the rest)
-Estimated 3000 Muslim young people in Sydney 'vulnerable' to radicalization. Survey done by a MUSLIM !
But hey..I was not born yesterday.

a) Yes..I know the federal government funded the study.
b) I also note the 'timing' of this 'sudden terror threat' as it is being portrayed in NewsLimited tabloids.

Just on that, a cynic might say 'Aboriginal crisis is 'Tampa2' and
3000 baby terrorists is 'Children Overboard 2'

He is a sly fox the old rodent :)

Arjay. The thing which did 'evolve' was the fine tuning of various doctrines considered 'orthodox' due to heresies which picked loopholes in the previous version.

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed

That link shows some evolving of the creed. (But God remained the same :) The evolution of the creed is mainly in tightening up some historical bits, and reference to the Holy Spirit is expanded in the 381 version.

"Does his God evolve?" - Ajay

Yes. From the God of Abraham to the God of Moses to the teaching of one Jewish Messiah [Jesus], to the Hellenisation of Jesus [Paul], to the institutionalisation of Jesus [Constantine], to the reinterpretations from/after Augustine to Vatican II. Within that religion, we see borrowings from other relations and schisms and denominationalism.

A key disadvantage of Christian monotheism is it places multitudes of the "others" in opposition: Conflict. A key advantage of an individual-god relationship in a monotheist religion is its moral code and rites exist across the rise and fall empires: It is sustainable. Together, with these elements, we see tensions between Islam and Christianity, relatively strong across the centuries. Except, perhaps, where both are overwhelmed in another culture [China, India].

Boaz,

It’s strange you can’t see the difference. I guess your position is OK as long as you accept it if it’s reciprocated (ie if your Iranian friend tells you “your faith suck but Islam loves you Boaz”).

The article re the 3000 young Muslims in Australia caught my attention as well.
I think the US and Australia are doing a better job than the UK security in terms of getting local communities support. I can’t see the local community support in the UK with the home grown incident and the foreign ones.

Youth problems are about managing them so I guess further analysis is needed in above figure so the government can address through program management (ie intellectual engagement, motivation, counselling, re-education, etc.).

Maybe you are right re-timing, fear can be scarecrow to influence elections .

Rhian,

Thank you. I wonder how the Quelle reconstruction dealt with the Baptism of Jesus? As you suggest, his Baptism could merely been identification with a reference group or compliance to a more generalised sect rite. Between second and fourth centuries CE, the rite was all over the place. Over time it seems to have been rolled back from adult to infant as the intercession of the Church seems to mediate in matters religious, especially for the RCs.

Thanks Oliver.

Luke seems to have re-written the story so Jesus is not baptised by John (maybe to delineate their ministries more clearly), and Matthew has added his elaborations with John’s protests, so it’s hard to guess what Q might have said about Jesus’ baptism. Mark is probably closest to actual events, but exactly what people thought was happening and what it meant is hard to guess. You’re right, baptism was quite a common ritual at the time.

It’s also highly questionable whether Mark (or the other synoptics) meant that Jesus was divine when they called him “son of God”. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the title is used for mortals. In fact it's striking how little the Gospels other than John have to say about what Jesus' Messiahship means.

I mostly agree with your points about God evolving – or rather, our understanding of, and relationship with, God - and the unfortunate tendency of Christianity to equate monotheism with exclusiveness. I also agree on the importance of the individual-God relationship.

I may be more inclined than you, however, to value the church – or at least membership of a faith tradition. The insights we have now are derived from the intellectual and moral struggles of the past 3,000+ years. It is precisely because we are evolving that we need institutions to carry and interpret the insights of the past into the future (even though I’ll admit they do it in an imperfect and self-serving fashion). And Christianity is not just an intellectual exercise – we need collective worship, the symbolism of liturgy, and the pastoral context and capacity for action of a community

Hello Rhian,

Thanks.

Like you, I do appreciate the Church(es) has provided a means of establishing a moral code and providing an organising principle. Some scientific models such "design" owe much to creation myths.

Moreover, the performance of the various reference groups is capable of establishing a sense of the Self for the believer and allows for sometimes principles to reinforced by "indwelling" [Polanyi] with the performance.

Guess the difference with sucular humanism and the more moral aspects of some religions, is not so much what is seen to be right behaviour, rather the reason people need to behave rightly. The former requires an Overseer and the later Personal Responsibility.

The danger with religion is Churches and Priesthoods can push buttons and pull levers that would have others perform behaviours, often odds with the faith's kernel moral codes "in the name of God":
A Church with a priesthood, wherein the congregation "follow". Said presumed agents of God have lead to the miseries of the ages.

Guess it is difficult to trace Biblical events before Mark, remembering the gospel writers are using [authoritative] nom de plumes, as was the convention of the period.

BOAZ,

What do you feel about the Isalmic concept of "The People of the Book", which would seem quite a comprise for a monothesistic religion?

Earlier, we touched on Jesus and the Money Lenders and The House of The Lord. By flipping-out was Jesus not identifying The House of The Lord as an Icon? Jesus must have been Russian Orthodox ;).