Politcally Correct Christ

I wouldn't mind it so much if the New Agers, instead of introducing fraudulent interpretations of scripture, said something like the following:"Listen up, folks. We're going to clean this mess up. World War II, that overtly racial war, taught us that we've got to stop these inter-tribal hatreds. We've got to get away from the idea that one tribe is superior to another tribe. So we're going to throw out the Bible, which has all sorts of negative ideas in it, and start a new church in which all tribes will have equal respect. However, we are going to continue to call it Christianity. True, it will have nothing in common with Christianity as it was believed for 1950 years, give or take a few decades. The reason we call it Christianity is that if we pick a new name, it will sound like a cult. But an old church by definition is a respectable church, not a cult. So we will continue to call it Christianity. We're going to wipe out all prejudice, racial and otherwise, and we are going ferret out all those nay-sayers and nihilists and unsocialized persons, and we're going to send them to counseling and socialize them so that they will obtain self-love and become public-spirited and interactive with others, no matter what tribe the others belong to. It's going to be great."Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.

Yes.

I'm talking about interpretation of scripture, not how somebody behaves.

I wish people would stop telling me what I'm supposed to not care about or what I'm not supposed to be interested in. I have various interests. A nihilist doesn't sit around all day thinking of ultimates, any more than anyone else. By "correct," I mean merely what the authors of the Bible had in mind. I've explained above why the PC version irritates me.

Newman's "Grammar of Assent" is perhaps more adult fare.

I think we can set this aside, since there can be no reasoned argument here. If I interpret a passage of scripture in what seems to me a plausible way, you can just say, "Well, that's not what it means. According to my divine inspiration, it means soemthing quite different from what you think it means." Now in this case, what they had in mind is what the Bible means. So if you add some ideas to the Bible that they did not have in mind, in order to modernize it, what is the point of employing the Bible as a guide at all? You might as well discard it and just use your own ideas.Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.

I'm not talking about literal vs. figurative, I'm talking about concepts. If there's a concept in the New Testament that the New Agers don't like, they change it to some modern concept (the blood propitiation idea is an example). There are plausible and implausible interpretations. The New Agers' modern ideas grafted onto the Bible are extremely implausible.

Yes you are, and at any rate Jar is, and I assume you agree with him. The central idea in his religion comes right out the New Testament, so the New Testament is a guide for his religion. However, he changes the meaning around to make it New Age. Why bother with that? Why not just state the idea without these misleading references to the Bible?

The problem is that what the authors meant is the message of the Bible, and what the authors meant does not fit your ideas, which are modern ideas, not ancient ideas.

I don't have any choice. Every time I ask you a direct question about your beliefs, you refuse to answer.

What does that mean?

Are you a Christian?

But the book doesn't change. What the authors intended doesn't change.If you graft modern ideas onto passages that the authors never intended, then the book as any sort of authority has no value. In that case, it's just a book like any other. In such a case, it does not matter that the idea came out of the Bible, and so there's no point in trying to foist modern ideas onto it that aren't there.You might as well just throw out the Bible, in which case you get rid of some ideas that don't fit modernity (and I'm not talking about little details of daily life, like where to park your ox, but central concepts), and then you won't have to ignore them or try to wiggle some new meaning out of them that the authors never intended.

But if the Bible is going to be an authority, you can't be picking and choosing among these central ideas that are in the Bible. You can't say, as you did say, that the notion that Christ died for our sins is a stupid idea: it's a central idea in the New Testament.If you reject some ideas and retain others, then the Bible is not an authority. It's just a book like any other.What you can try to do is offer some very unplausible interpretations which any unbiased person would see right away is a false grafting of your ideas onto Biblical passages.

It may not have logical or reasonable support, but it's got plenty of Biblical support. Or have you forgotten the last supper? Have much plainer can you get?