Charismatic Chaos

It reads nothing like history. I read a lot of history, my academic training is in history. The bible reads like no history. It read like fiction. It reads more like Tolkein and C.S.Lewis than history. Lewis was not a historian. He taught literature not history. If you have an reason to think that Lewis was a historian please present it.

Apologetics seeks to defend the Christian faith. Recently, I read a good book (or am reading now) called The Logic of God. Basic Apolojartics says that it is ok to throw God away. Apologetics begs to differ.From Chapter 6:

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Paul Tillich, the noted existentialist theologian, traveled to Asia years ago to hold conferences with various Buddhist thinkers. He was studying the significance of religious leaders to the movements they had engendered. Tillich reportedly asked what if, by some fluke, the Buddha had never lived and turned out to be some sort of fabrication? What would be the implications for Buddhism? Mind you, I would conclude that Tillich was concerned with the indispensability of the Buddhanot his authenticity. The scholars did not hesitate to answer. If the Buddha was a myth, they said, it did not matter at all. Why? Because Buddhism should be judged as an abstract philosophyas a system of living. Whether its concepts originated with the Buddha is irrelevant. As an aside, I think the Buddha himself would have concurred. Knowing that his death was imminent, he beseeched his followers not to focus on him but to remember his teachings.

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thus in the case of Buddhism, all agree.
What about Christianity though?

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Jesus is absolutely indispensable to Christianityand His claims are also unique. First is His description of the human condition. He declared that the heart is in rebellion against God. Second, Jesus offers a unique solution to the problem. The provision He gives for you and me is utterly unique, and it is not cheap. It is the cross. This graciousness of forgiveness is not found in other worldviews. For instance, Islam says that for you to get to heaven, your good deeds will have to outweigh your bad. In other words, you pay. When Christ comes and says to you and me that He is offering forgiveness and doing so through the payment of His life on the cross, it is an extraordinary truth. The Bible says we need a Savior and we need forgiveness. There is only one place in the world where love, forgiveness, and justice come together, and that is at the cross. This truth of Christ’s grace is unique. Third, Jesus is unique because in Him was no sin; He lived a perfect life. Even Pontius Pilate declared, I find no fault in this man (Luke 23:4 KJV ).demonstration of His uniqueness. Christianity, therefore, is Christ. Indeed, Englishman John Stott wrote, If Jesus was not God in human flesh, Christianity is exploded. We are left with just another religion with some beautiful ideas and noble ethics; its unique distinction has gone.1 At the very heart of Christianity, Jesus is the image and the incarnation of the invisible Godthe One who came to live among us to show us God’s love, perfection, and grace. And this reality changes everything.

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This apologetic defense is to me hardly snake oil. I know that you never liked the idea of Jesus paying the penalty for us...as if it were somehow cheating. On this note, however, I must go with the apologetics rather than the apolojartics.

What case would you make for throwing this apologetic away?

If one day you discovered that you were supposed to trust Christ rather than throwing Him away, would you feel any need to repent or do you believe--as do the secular humanists, that Heaven has room for consensus and uniqueness?

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Critics would accuse you of marketing a Christianity without Christ. Are you guilty? Is Jesus any more than a character that we can learn examples from?

Col 1:19-23 writes:

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For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, 20 and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.

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21 And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled 22 in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight -- 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.
NKJV

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John 17:1-5 writes:

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Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: "Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, 2 as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. 4 I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. 5 And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.
NKJV

Note: That they "may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent". Key concept: That we should know God through Jesus and by accepting Jesus as more than simply a character in a book.

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Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

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Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. ~RC Sproul
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain "
~"We, humans, are engaged in an ongoing war of ideologies. I see it in this microcosm of EvC Forum just as I see it in the governments and attitudes of people throughout the world. Take your pick: Oppression or Seduction .
"~Thugpreacha

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You can "get answers" by watching the ducks. That doesn't mean the answers are coming from them.~Ringo

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As the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, so the denial of God is the height of foolishness.
? R.C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith

All just word salad with no value or information.

Pure contentless blather.

C. S. Lewis says it does not read like fiction, and he should know.

Why should he know Faith?Stop and think about the number of histories of talking snakes.

Supply the Lewis quote so it can be examined in context. Lewis was not a historian. His view on history are actually not relevant.

Easy for you to say. I've noticed that when you cant frame an argument the way that YOU want it to read.I noticed the online definition of word salad: Really? You accuse me of mental illness?

To all of you academicians: One does not necessarily need a degree to be relevant. A Holocaust survivor, for example, would likely be more relevant to a source than a WW II Historian.

A holocaust survivor is a more relevant source for their experience, but a historian that studied that period would be an actual expert on the holocaust and that period. Experts are experts for a reason. A holocaust survivor is not an expert on the holocaust. They are on expert on their own personal experience. Nothing more. This is a very silly argument.
C.S Lewis was not an expert on History or historical texts.

True. But he was an expert on his own personal experience with Christianity and his subsequent left-brain attempt at explaining it. To you, facts are all that count. In the case of a mystical and/or lifechanging experience, the creative literary side of us comes out more than our analytical side.To be fair, the creative side of us can also be more deceptive. One must weigh all of the evidence from those who have actually experienced religious transformations or epiphanies. Or would you discredit all such as hearsay?

Learn to read.You presented what you considered to be intelligible quotations of some relevance to the topic. and example is below.

quote:

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Jesus is absolutely indispensable to Christianityand His claims are also unique. First is His description of the human condition. He declared that the heart is in rebellion against God. Second, Jesus offers a unique solution to the problem. The provision He gives for you and me is utterly unique, and it is not cheap. It is the cross. This graciousness of forgiveness is not found in other worldviews. For instance, Islam says that for you to get to heaven, your good deeds will have to outweigh your bad. In other words, you pay. When Christ comes and says to you and me that He is offering forgiveness and doing so through the payment of His life on the cross, it is an extraordinary truth. The Bible says we need a Savior and we need forgiveness. There is only one place in the world where love, forgiveness, and justice come together, and that is at the cross. This truth of Christ’s grace is unique. Third, Jesus is unique because in Him was no sin; He lived a perfect life. Even Pontius Pilate declared, I find no fault in this man (Luke 23:4 KJV ).demonstration of His uniqueness. Christianity, therefore, is Christ. Indeed, Englishman John Stott wrote, If Jesus was not God in human flesh, Christianity is exploded. We are left with just another religion with some beautiful ideas and noble ethics; its unique distinction has gone.1 At the very heart of Christianity, Jesus is the image and the incarnation of the invisible Godthe One who came to live among us to show us God’s love, perfection, and grace. And this reality changes everything.

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It is a classic example of word salad; the words are intelligible and it is pretty much grammatically correct but it is also totally irrelevant to the topic of reality.It begins with a truly silly truism, that Jesus is indispensable to Christianity. Of course it is but in exactly the same sense as Buddha is indispensable to Buddhism. You even quoted the relevant reasoning and logic and in fact I have presented you the exact same argument related to Christianity a Brazillion times over the years.Even if Jesus was simply a tale told around the campfires the lessons and message is still relevant and important.But back to the word salad example. After that first truism all of the rest is simply the Snake Oil Salesmans Medicine Wagon Spiel. It is the standard sales pitch of the Get Outta Hell marketeer. It is also yet another example of dogma that is directly contradicted by the Bible itself; the Jesus was without sin absurdity.We have been over examples of Jesus sinning found in the Bible and just as with examples of God being unsure, no0t all powerful, confused and in error, they really are there and you and I have gone over such examples many times. Your standard answer has been "It is impossible for God to be ..." regardless of what was actually written.I have not yet accused you of mental illness but it would be wise for you to at least critically examine the evidence. When you cannot see that your quotes in support of your position are pointless and have absolutely no meaning beyond truisms and echoing the Christianity made in YOUR image, when you deny the reality of what is actually written in the most basic foundation of the religion you claim can you say that is not an indication of mental illness?Can you not see that everything in the quote you chose was simply an unsupported assertion that the Christianity being marketed is in some way special apart from the beautiful ideas and noble ethics.But as the quotation related to the Buddha said, "If the Buddha was a myth, they said, it did not matter at all. Why? Because Buddhism should be judged as an abstract philosophyas a system of living. Whether its concepts originated with the Buddha is irrelevant. As an aside, I think the Buddha himself would have concurred. Knowing that his death was imminent, he beseeched his followers not to focus on him but to remember his teachings." and I would echo that if Jesus was a myth, it does not matter at all. Why? Because Christianity should be judged as an abstract philosophyas a system of living. Whether its concepts originated with Jesus is irrelevant. As an aside, I think the Jesus himself would have concurred. Knowing that his death was imminent, he beseeched his followers not to focus on him but to remember his teachings. It is called the Great Commission and we are all called to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the sorrowful, shelter the homeless, defend the weak and do as we are told to by Jesus in the stories.Edited by jar, : applin spallin

So you agree with me that he is solely an expert on his own personal experience and admit your analogy with the holocaust survivor was silly and did not support any of your arguments.

The point, Thugsy, and Theodoric, was that C.S. Lewis was an EXPERT ON LITERATURE, ON FICTION. IT was on that basis that he said that the Bible is unequivocally NOT FICTION. And we don't hve to doubt that he also had extensive knowledge of history too, it would be silly to think that an Oxford professor wouldn't.

And you have still not presented any evidence that he said that or the context at the time.Sorry Faithy but CS Lweis was not so stupid as to think much of the Bible was not just fiction and folk tales.