Jazzns' History of Belief

I've only got a couple of minutes so this will be brief. Yes the concept of spirit is there but that does not mean that we are intended to live a disembodied existence. The message of the Bible is that we are to have resurrected bodies of which the resurrected Jesus is the prototype so to speak, in our re-created world.There are no doubt many Christians who believe in the idea of a disembodied future but it isn't the view of the majority of Christian scholars. Arguably the most influential Biblical scholar in the world today is N T Wright
Here is one quote of his.

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"As long as we see salvation in terms of going to heaven when we die, the main work of the church is bound to be seen in terms of saving souls for that future. But when we see salvation, as the New Testament sees it, in terms of God's promised new heavens and new earth and of our promised resurrection to share in that new and gloriously embodied reality ... then the main work of the church here and now demands to be rethought in consequence."

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Here is the link to the interview that came from. Conversation with "Tom" Wright on Resurrection, Heaven & Hope on Earth

I’m glad that you made it clear that you’re asking for opinion and not certainty. Everything about this will be my belief. It ain’t God speaking. To start with I’d like to have a go at answering a different but related question. That question would be: are you closer or further from God because of your change of faith.I’d like to quote two passages from the Bible. I’ve quoted these passages before but it is pertinent to the question. The first is from Micah 6 in the OT.

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6 "With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" 8 He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

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The second is from Matthew 22. I know you know these verses but I need them to make my point.

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34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sad'ducees, they came together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. 36 "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" 37 And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets."

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I don’t normally suggest cherry picking verses to make a point but in my opinion these do encapsulate in both the OT and the NT message of what God wants of us. I also suggest reading the sheep and goats passage at the tail end of Matthew 25.In the quoted NT passage you will notice that we are told to love God. At first glance this is a rather nebulous concept but I don’t think it need be. I think we can look at it in an anthropomorphic manner. The idea of loving God means to me that I love His ideals, what He stands for, and how that plays out. I can say He has given me life for which of course I’d be grateful, but just like a human father I don’t have to love or like Him.So in order to have an opinion on the question of whether or not you are closer to God or not, I’d have to know which God you rejected. If you rejected the God that is sometimes depicted in the OT, the one who sanctions genocide at the hands of His people, or who sanctions the stoning to death by the community for difficult children, prostitutes or I believe even those who break the Sabbath laws as it suits him then IMHO you are now closer to God than you were previously.If however you reject the God as seen in the context of the entire scripture, the one who tells us to love our enemies, the one who tells us to love our neighbours, the one who tells us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoners etc then I would suggest that maybe you have moved away from Him.As an aside, I just hate to see the Bible being misused so that it becomes an impediment to Christianity rather than a something hugely positive. We should remember that it was written by ancient Jews and we can’t just read it with a 21st century mindset. It is told primarily as narratives as part of a metanarrative.In other words I guess it is a question of which god you have decided not to believe in.If it is simply a matter that intellectually you no longer believe, which I believe you would say is the case, then you may not have moved closer or further away as I have nothing to base it on. However, as a Christian you must have had an image of God in your heart. It’s worth considering just what it is you’re rejecting.Now to the question you asked. Although some would argue otherwise, I think my views on this are orthodox along the lines of Augustine to C S Lewis. Here is another quote by C S Lewis that I’ve quoted before. It’s from the book The Great Divorce which is a quick and easy read and deals with the whole question of hell in metaphorical fashion.

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There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.

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So finally I get around to answering the question you asked. You framed your question with the phrase what is your best guess as to what is going to happen to me when I die given my change in faith?I don’t see your change of faith necessarily having any particular impact on the question. The question is about embracing the concepts of truth, justice, love, forgiveness, kindness, mercy etc and rejecting their opposites. Of course nobody does it perfectly or even close but it is about a desire to be part of world that is characterized by those qualities. Hell is the choice we make when we choose the love of self over the love of others, and life is all about me. My point is that God cares about our hearts and not our theology.Once again that can be confirmed by the sheep and goats allegory in Matthew 25. Those He called righteous were those that acted lovingly without any thought of reward and if you read Matthew 7:21-23 and you will see that it isn’t just about giving intellectual assent to doctrine.So I see it as being up to you, and only you can know where your heart is. I can’t even give an opinion but I definitely do not believe that your decision means that you are automatically condemned to hell or that you will cease to exist.The question then is why even bother with Christianity. It is my belief that through aligning ourselves with Him through faith that He does impact our lives and thoughts through His Holy Spirit. I think that believers are called into community, what Jesus called the Kingdom of God, in order to bring His truth, mercy, forgiveness, judgement etc to the world. That isn’t to say that the church does a great job of it but I believe that is our call.

I agree with that from both a scientific and a theistic POV. The question you asked was phrased by "what do you think". I gave my opinion but I don't have a specific reference. He does use somewhat ambiguous terms.However here is a quote from the interview I gave you the link to earlier.

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In order to confidently assert the purpose of something, you have to know what the thing or process was that designed it. And so, too, with any human artifact. You can look at a car and be pretty confident that it's designed to move along the road, but the reason you are 100 percent sure is because you know who designed it and why.

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Now when we look at the process of evolution, we're in the dark about the designer. That's the question we are grappling with here. If you accept directionality in evolution, you can say things like, "Well, like an animal, evolution seems to develop in a certain direction." Just as an animal matures in a certain direction, evolution seems to develop in a certain direction. And in fact, the combinations of genetic and cultural evolution have led the entire planet to seem increasingly like an integrated organism. Every decade it seems more like that. Every year the Internet seems more like it's drawing people into a giant planetary brain.

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So you can point to these patterns that are suggestive of a larger purpose, but you just can't say for sure. My only point is that a scientific worldview gives you more evidence of some larger purpose at work than most scientists concede. And you can argue about what the purpose is, and you can argue about what the nature of the designer would be. It could be that some intelligence set evolution in motion and then went to another universe or something. But I think there is more evidence of purpose than most people concede.

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I am only referring to mu understanding of Plato's views on the separation of the material and the spiritual, with the belief that the spiritual could exists separately from the physical and that the spiritual would ultimately leave the physical.From wiki

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The word metaphysics derives from the fact that Aristotle's musings about divine reality came after ("meta") his lecture notes on his treatise on nature ("physics"). The term is in fact applied to Aristotle's own teacher, and Plato's "metaphysics" is understood as Socrates' division of reality into the warring and irreconcilable domains of the material and the spiritual. The theory has been of incalculable influence in the history of Western philosophy and religion.

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I think that you have understood Wright correctly. I guess I would say I don't have a problem accepting that as part of the process but as a theist I don't see it as being the whole picture. But he does keep referring to social evolution just the same. I just don't understand him the way you do. Cultural/technological progress leads to ongoing changes in culture. If my parents are altruistic it is likely that I will be too, and maybe even more so, which gets passed on to my kids and so on. I don't see him as suggesting that would bring about genetic changes. If it was all genetically driven then you would think that it would always go in the same direction but altruistic parents still can produce selfish offspring. I get that, but all I was saying that it took a first cause to provide the simple beginning and a direction. Of course you do. We agree that there is such a thing as intelligence that is a feature of our existence. We also agree that it appears that the origin of all that we know came from a singularity billions of years ago. You contend that the intelligence that we now experience evolved from that without any intelligent intent. In other words intelligence exists out of nowhere. There are theories about how consciousness evolved but where is the objective evidence. You have simply drawn subjective conclusions based on the objective evidence. Once again, I'd like to point out though that I don't find that idea contrary to my theism, if that is your point. I would see it as an answer to how God did it and not if He did it. On that we just disagree.

I am not saying that the soul, which I think you have done a good job of depicting, doesn't exist. I am only saying that the idea of it existing eternally in a disembodied form isn't scriptural.The best known of the creeds is the Apostle's Creed and what does it say towards the end of it? "I believe in - the resurrection of the body".
Here is a quote from Martin Luther.

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Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.

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Luther believed that after death the soul would exists unconsciously to awaken in a resurrected body. Personally I'm not married to that specific idea, I think I'll wait and see. This about John Calvin from this site

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Despite his strong, almost Platonic emphasis on the "immortality of the soul", Calvin realised that the final state of the elect will not be disembodied bliss. He points us beyond death to the final resurrection hope that will be ushered in when Christ returns,

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Augustine and Lewis both preached on the resurrection of the body. It is orthodox Christianity.I could go on but I think you get my point.

I don't claim that at all. I'm just saying that it is a subjective conclusion as to whether or not consciousness and intelligence evolved from non-intelligent origins or intelligent ones. I'm not talking about process, I'm talking about first cause.Frankly I agree that the two positions aren't equally rational, but I have a hunch we disagree on which position that applies to.

I frankly don’t see it as about what is good specifically and what isn’t. As I’ve said before, we choose between selfish love or unselfish love. Nobody does either completely but which is it that ultimately brings you joy, peace and contentment.My beef with fundamentalists is they confuse believing with believing in. Doctrine may be important but it isn’t the whole picture at all. It is about the world we want and how we respond to that call. Do we believe in a world characterized by love, peace, joy, forgiveness, mercy, truth etc, as taught and lived by Jesus, or do we believe in a world characterized by the concept of looking out for number one’ or maybe if it feels good do it. Except that my faith has to a large degree formed my idea of morality. I have a very definite answer for that. I don’t know! The fundamentalists on this forum like to spell out in perfect detail what’s going to happen. All that the Bible is clear on concerning our future is that in the end the Earth will be renewed in a great act of re-creation and that we will have resurrected bodies. In some way the heavenly dimension and our earthly one will be brought together. I have not the foggiest idea of when or how. There are those who will be a part of that and it appears there will those who won’t.Frankly I find that speculating about the next life interesting but what it is that really matters is where my heart is now and where it will be for the rest of life. That’s all I can control. What happens after I’m gone is something I will deal with then. For now, I just pray that I will be given a heart that desires humble justice and kindness, and hopefully I will respond to that still small voice. If I do that the rest will look after itself.I think that it is quite possible that after a life time here living selfishly it may be impossible for us to actually have a change of heart after we shuffle off but I don’t pretend to know that to be the case. I certainly don’t see myself as a deist at all. I am definitely theistic. I’m just prepared to agree that there are all sorts of questions about God that we don’t have answers to. As to what I do with those Christians who don’t agree with me is talk to them just like I’m talking to you. I simply contend that they misunderstand how the Bible is to be read and understood, so it follows that I disagree with their doctrine. I think my thinking would be similar to the majority of those in my congregation. I belong to an orthodox Anglican church. I think that the US has more Christians that subscribe to the version of Christianity that you describe than the rest of the world does. Frankly I don’t consider those views mainstream. My views are generally consistent with C S Lewis and I am very much influenced by N T Wright. There are a considerable number of talks and articles by him on the linked site. Here is a link to a good book by Timothy Keller. It has a good section about hell in it. Once again, I don’t know. My understanding though, is that it would be an existence where the primary characteristic of the society would be the love of self.

One of the problems I see is this. The fundamentalists say that by reading the Bible as if it was dictated by God are able to come up with all the answers. An atheist then is able quite rightly point out the inconsistencies in their beliefs. However, it seems when a Christian doesn’t have all the answers then you are critical of that as well.I am not going to have all the answers partly because all the answers aren’t there to be had.If we read the Bible in the I believe God intends, as narratives within a metanarrative, and if we understand Jesus is the word of God and read the OT through that lens then we get a picture that is sufficient for our understanding, but still we will be far from having all the answers.The Christian God is a God who is loving, understanding and above all just. God wants us to reflect that image of Him into all of creation. We make choices about whether we wish to reflect God’s image or not, and somehow in ways that I don’t understand those choices matter. The thing is that God is just, and in the end what happens to us after the entropic world that we know is renewed will remain a mystery to us, but I have faith that we will see perfect justice done.

Why isn’t I don’t know an acceptable answer. If I ask a scientist what it is that caused the singularity to suddenly expand at time =0, he might come up with theories, but it would be honest to add that ultimately he/she doesn’t know. I can come up with theories about hell but ultimately I don’t know, but I do trust in a loving and just God. I understand the entire Bible in context to be a metanarrative that is the story of God relating to His image bearing creatures. His call to us is that we reflect His image, the image of love and justice into the world. An overview of the metanarrative would run like this. Creation — Israel and the Prophets — Jesus — the church — the renewal of all things. That metanarrative that is the Bible is made up of a series of narratives, (as well as some poetry, drama etc), as told by a number of different writers throughout history. These narrative are told by a number of writers inspired to write the stories of the people of the era and their understanding of their own times and histories. As a result, the entire Bible is written in a way that is both personally and culturally influenced. Yes I believe that God’s revelation is involved and is reflected in the stories, but so are the influences of the pagan nations around them. Sometimes they actually worshipped other gods but often they simply transferred other beliefs on to Yahweh, in ways that suited their own purposes. The societal means of getting rid of undesirables was public stoning and so when it suited their purposes some bright light would suggest that this is what Yahweh wanted. If they wanted to slaughter their neighbour to take the land and/or goods, then again someone would suggest that Yahweh wanted this done and it would become part of the story.God’s solution to the problem was Jesus. In reading through the Gospels we can see that the vast majority of quotes by Jesus have an OT reference. Jesus fulfilled the Hebrew scriptures and at the same time gave us teaching that allows us to sort out what was of God in those scriptures and what was of man.Back to hell then, (figuratively speaking ). Let us for a second assume that the God of the OT that sanctioned genocide and public stoning represented an accurate picture of the God that created us. I find the idea repugnant. Why would I worship a God like that? Why would I want to spend eternity with a God like that? If that is heaven I don’t want it. However there are those in this world who have willingly followed human leaders like that and so the idea of spending eternity with a god like that might not sound like such a bad idea.I believe in a God who believes that as part of wanting us to be kind and just wants us to be forgiving. For some the idea of giving up the need for revenge is unthinkable yet that would be a characteristic of this renewed creation. I have often been told on this forum that I’m weak for having to have a sky Daddy to look after me. There will be those whose pride just won’t allow them to accept a world characterized and ruled by Jesus, a man whose idea of leading was to wash the feet of His followers. Would it be the act of a loving God to force people into a situation for eternity that they choose to reject?My understanding of hell is that it is an existence that is characterized by the hearts of those that reject the renewed world characterized by the love as expressed through Jesus. For most of us that sounds like an existence that would be unpleasant in the extreme but for many it seems that either that, or even final and total death, would be preferable, to an eternity with God.

The way you want things to be would deny the opportunity to choose unselfish love. If we choose to love unselfishly because of what it will mean to us in the future then it is no longer unselfish love but selfish love. The choice isn’t directly about choosing hell or not, it’s about choosing who or what you love. Is it all about me or do I find joy in the joy of others? I covered this in my last post. He eliminated the bad inaccurate stuff through Jesus. The OT stories stay as they are because it was what was already written, and besides it tells the story of the Jewish people, warts and all. Encapsulated in that is the narrative of a loving God. Here is a quote from the book Miracles by C S Lewis.

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My present view--which is tentative and liable to any amount of correction--would be that just as, on the factual side, a long preparation culminates in God's becoming incarnate as Man, so, on the documentary side, the truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long process of condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History. This involves the belief that Myth in general is not merely misunderstood history ... nor diabolical illusion ... nor priestly lying ... but, at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination. The Hebrews, like other people, had mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology--the mythology chosen by God to be the vehicle of the earliest sacred truth, the first step in that process which ends in the New Testament where truth has become completely historical. Whether we can say with certainty where, in this process of crystallization, any particular Old Testament story falls, is another matter. I take it that the memoirs of David's court come at one end of the scale and are scarcely less historical than St. Mark or Acts; and that the Book of Jonah is at the opposite end.

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I don’t pretend to know the origins of all of the ancient scriptures but I believe that we can learn from them. When we stand back from the whole metanarrative we can see that there is a thread of redemption flowing through the whole story. When we put the biblical account of history up against other historical accounts we can see that there is an ongoing evolution within mankind, as erratic as it is, towards a kinder and more just humanity. No doubt there is a long way to go, but barring some major calamity this world looks like it has quite a few good years left in it so there is still lots of time for God working through mankind to bring about a truly kind and just world.Even in Galations 4 Paul treats the story of the sons of Abraham as an allegory.

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21 Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman.23 His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way; but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise.24 These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written: "Be glad, O barren woman, who bears no children; break forth and cry aloud, you who have no labor pains; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband."28 Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise.29 At that time the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now. 30 But what does the Scripture say? "Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son."31 Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.

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Actually, I contend that my view is pretty consistent with traditional Christian orthodoxy. Objectively we know that The Bible exists. We come to our own conclusions about how it should be read and what relevance it has. I believe that it is immeasurably relevant and it is to be read in the context of the God story written through human minds and history and conditioned by the cultures in which they were written. I suggest you might want to read The Great Divorce by C S Lewis. It is a short and easy read with an allegorical account of heaven and hell. IMHO God honours our choices.When you read the Gospels it is clear that the Jews in the time of Jesus did not understand what a messiah would actually do or be like. With hind sight we can go back through the Hebrew scriptures and understand Christ’s messianic life and message which ran contrary to the then popular notion that a messiah would be a military leader that would defeat their enemies and rebuild the physical temple. Jesus brought a very different message.The Christian message is that all creation will be renewed under the headship of Jesus the Christ. Yes, there are all sorts of clues about how this plays out but I suggest that, in the same way they didn’t understand what God’s Messiah would look like 2000 years ago, we don’t have an accurate picture of just how things will look whenever this act of re-creation happens. I’m not going to claim that I know who will be part of all this and who won’t. I just know that I’m prepared to accept on faith that however things look in the end it will be just.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

Well...yes and no. I see it this way. In this life we establish a trajectory for the direction in which our choices take us. Every time we commit an unselfish act something changes inside our heart so that next time being unselfish comes just a little bit more natural for us. The converse of course is true when we act selfishly. Eventually loving selfishly or unselfishly just becomes natural for us.So, when I ask which type of world we believe in, I’m not asking anything about what we give intellectual assent to, but about which world is it that we choose in our heart. In the end then I would say that every act of unselfish love does draw us closer to the God’sworld that will come about with New Creation and as a result does draw us closer to God. We aren’t that far apart but I’d like to draw a bit of a distinction when you say that it is about how we act in this life. Jesus talks about this when He talks about those who make a big show about their piety in front of others. Here’s a parable. Jack heads off down to the soup kitchen on a Saturday afternoon. The night before at a staff party he made sure that his boss knew about this wonderful charitable side of him as there was a promotion coming up that he hoped to get. In the meantime Jill, who was at the same party also goes to help at the food bank without mentioning it to the boss. The act is still the same but in John’s case it wasn’t an act of unselfish love and it might even be considered the opposite. In Jill’s case she is there unselfishly because of actively loving those less fortunate than herself.The point is, as imperfect as that metaphor may be, is that it isn’t about what we do but what our heart ultimately desires. We aren’t in a position to understand what is really in someone else’s heart. John in the above case may well have been raised in an abusive unloving home and has been physiologically damaged and as a result actually is acting unselfishly but at the same time has a desperate need for recognition. As I said, I believe that in the end perfect justice will prevail and it isn’t our job to judge. ...which may make your contribution more unselfish than it would have previously. I would add though that my understanding of Christ’s message is that the world we live in is an integral part of the re-created world to come and that we are to be good stewards of the planet as it has eternal ramifications. I just don’t accept that our choices are made in ignorance and mystery. Unless we are mentally ill we all have the ability to choose between love and hate, mercy and vengeance, forgiveness and unforgiveness, or love of self at the expense of love for others. As I said to Rahvin if God were to come down in the way you suggest it would take away our free will and our opportunity to love sacrificially. We would always be in the position of Jack telling his boss about his volunteering in the soup kitchen.It isn’t a head decision, it is a heart decision. The Bible isn’t really very much about hell. The modern problem is that the church has in many instances turned the Gospel message into a question of personal salvation. I’m not saying that isn’t part of it in the sense that if we truly do believe in Jesus, (which again, does not mean intellectual assent to his the Bible stories but you acknowledge Him as King and believe in His message of love, forgiveness, mercy, justice etc), the He is with us through our hearts and minds in establishing that trajectory towards more and more perfectly loving our neighbours as much as or more than ourselves.The Gospel message is that Jesus has established His Kingdom and desires that we become now a part of that kingdom that ultimately stretches beyond this age, and that as a part of that Kingdom we have the job of loving and serving this created world and all of its inhabitants, as well as telling the Jesus story. I am in no position to judge anyone. However if I have to place a bet I would say no. It appears to me that what you have rejected is something that you rejected for mostly the right reasons. I don’t see you as rejecting the message of love as we receive through Jesus, but the much more ambiguous message that is received by attempting to understand the Bible as being the inerrant Word of God which can lead to a different idea of God altogether.I do want to add to that though, that Jesus understood the message of love through the Hebrew Scriptures. It is all there, including loving God and neighbour and even loving your enemy. I just want to be sure that it is clear that I am not saying that the Jewish faith worships a tyrant as opposed to the loving God of Christianity. Jesus was a Jew preaching to Jews and it is important that we understand Him in that context. It only comes out that way when we try to turn the Bible into something that I don’t believe God ever intended.