Fundamentalism and the True Christian

This topic is a spinoff of the 'creo/evo creative movies/books/plays' thread. The current discussion there has evolved from the mention of the play and movie Inherit The Wind, via a few posts on the nature of Christian fundamentalism, into a descant over what type of person is a "true Christian".I want to respond to this from Columbo:

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Christ is our example, not events in the OT. Christians follow God's example of how to live (he himself lived in Christ ). Are you saying I should ignore Christs teachings " love your enemy " e.t.c. Because of events in the OT?
And what will be my excuse on judgement day? - When a perfectly sinless life was lead by God - BEING a person.

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Using the OT will not change anything. For 1. I don't even believe you are capable of understanding, that's not an insult, but are you reading it without wiz's wager?
A lot of people use "events" in the OT, but ignore the "teachings" directly aimed at ALL people by Christ, not solely jews.

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But the whole point is that Christ IS God, and as docpotato pointed out God's behavior in the OT is reprehensible to put it mildly. He could almost be called pure evil. The OT is riddled with examples of God's malevolence, they've been mentioned on this message board repeatedly and should be well known to anyone who's been paying attention. It is not enough to say that Christ brought a "new covenent", or that in those ancient times God saw it necessary to rid the world of the enemies of Israel, or some other such nonsense. There can be no justification for ordering rape, pillage, enslavement, torture or murder of whole societies of innocent people, but that's how God behaves if we accept the OT as "inerrant". If this is God, and Jesus is God, then why the hell are we supposed to be so scared of Satan?As I see it, the true Christian, if that is a good thing, would have to be one who rejects the OT outright (except perhaps for the 10 Commandments since Jesus mentioned those), rejects at least those NT passages that rely on the OT, places the greatest emphasis on the Gospels and tries to conduct his or her life as he or she truly believes that the Christ therein represented would have them do. This person would not be a fundamentalist, at least not as we understand that term here in the US South.[This message has been edited by berberry, 01-16-2004]

Well what this Christian does is to suggest that wherever the OT concept of God and God as revealed in Jesus are in conflict, it is the latter that wins.This is because, it is my contention, revelation is progressive. On my website I wrote:

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The Bible is not the Word of God

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No. The Bible talks about the Word of God. It says that Jesus is the Word of God. It never makes that claim for itself. What does it say about itself? Well, very little, actually! There is Paul's statement that all Scripture is "God breathed" and goes on about it being "useful". How that has been turned into 'inerrant, infallible' and all the rest I really don't know. Perhaps it's because it is easier that way. If you start with the axiom that Scripture is infallible, then everything follows. But tidiness is no indicator of truth; in fact, truth is rarely tidy.

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Is the Bible special then? Yes, I think so. It is a unique record of God's people over the centuries and His revelation of Himself to them. But it is a human artefact. When things happen, people put interpretations to those things. The Bible contains a lot of such interpretations. Let me give you an example. Back when David was King of Israel, he decided to take a census of his kingdom. There followed some natural disasters. The people and prophets put an interpretation on those events, that God was punishing David for taking the census, and some pretext as to why that was wrong was put in place. So far, so good. Now, as it happens, this event was recorded twice in the Bible. Once, either in about 900BC if you believe the conservative scholars, or about 500 if you believe the more liberal ones, in the book of Samuel, and once again, around 450-400BC, in the book of Chronicles. So, let's have a look at the opening verses in each of these two accounts:

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2 Samuel 24

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Again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, "Go and take a census of Israel and Judah."

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1 Chronicles 21

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Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.

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Who did it? God or Satan? An interesting feature here is that, whoever you believe about authorship and date, between the two accounts an important event took place - the Jews were taken into exile into Babylon. This national disaster had affected their theology. Before, they had seen God as the author of both good and evil; now, they had come across Zoroastrian dualism, and the concept of an evil anti-God had crept into their theology. So when the Chronicler was writing his work, using the Book of Samuel as one of his sources, he took the opportunity to 'correct' the earlier 'defective' theology.

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The Bible shows, it seems to me, a progressive revelation. It starts imperfect; God is seen as a narrow tribal god, even with a physical body, the back of which Moses sees. But later we are told that no-one has ever seen God (John 1:18). Early on He is seen as jealous and judgemental, even to the point of being petty and unjust:

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Exodus 20 v. 5

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...punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those that hate me,

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although something of God's great love also shines through even at this stage (verse 6):

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but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me...

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But then the prophets, writing later, do not agree with this idea of God's judgement:

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Ezekiel 18 1-2 & 20

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The word of the LORD came to me. "What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel.

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'The fathers eat sour grapes
and the children's teeth are set on edge'?

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"As surely as I live," declares the Sovereign LORD, "you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel...The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the huilt of the son"

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Clearly ideas about justice have moved on. Yes, I know you can 'get round' these and make the different bits of the bible harmonise, but isn't it much easier, and more obvious, and more engaging with the text as it is, to accept that the texts are saying different things?

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No webpage found at provided URL: http://freespace.virgin.net/karl_and.gnome/believe.htmAs you say, God as taken literally in the OT can be a complete ogre at times.

Thread moved here from the Coffee House forum.

Elsewhere, Angeldust posted the following. I thought that this was a significant point, that better belonged in this topic. Another possibility would have been the "Fundamentalists" topic.

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It seems like half the problem here is that we can't decide on what the term "fundamental" means. I don't know if this will help but the term Christian fundamentalist comes from a series of books that a wealthy man paid to have printed and given out to pastors in the early 20th century. A fundamentalist is one who agrees with the basic doctrine contained in these books. They were simply called "The fundamentals." I don't know what they contained though and I can't find them on-line. I'll ask my Prof. later today, I think he has a copy.

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I guess if this definition is used, it would be easy to establish the actions of a true "fundamentalist." Or maybe I'm just making things more complicated......

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Adminnemooseus

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Comments on moderation procedures? - Go to
Change in Moderation?
or
too fast closure of threads

Karl, that believe page of yours has got to be the best analysis of Christianity by a believer that I have ever seen on the web. I've thought about the issues you address, and drawn similar conclusions, but the thoughts leading to those conclusions were nowhere near as clear or lucid as yours.I printed it off. I know a couple people who will be really anxious to read something like that. I'll let you know if your page makes it to the Friday night village meeting :-).

Adminnemooseus quotes Angeldust:

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It seems like half the problem here is that we can't decide on what the term "fundamental" means. I don't know if this will help but the term Christian fundamentalist comes from a series of books that a wealthy man paid to have printed and given out to pastors in the early 20th century. A fundamentalist is one who agrees with the basic doctrine contained in these books. They were simply called "The fundamentals." I don't know what they contained though and I can't find them on-line. I'll ask my Prof. later today, I think he has a copy.

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A google search produced this site: The Fundamentals HomepageWhen I was in college about 22 years ago my Western Civ professor had copies of these books. I read portions of them. They are laughable today but might well have seemed plausible at the time they were written. I think the main purpose of the books was to counter and attempt to stop studies in higher criticism and evolution.BTW, the site linked above seems to still be under construction, but substantial portions of the books are available there.[This message has been edited by berberry, 01-29-2004]

I definately have to agree that revelation is somewhat progressive. However to say it is imperfect is a stretch. For example the first four chapters of Genesis do not in my opinion ascribe the attributes of a "narrow tribal God" in any way.
God Bless

[/qs]But the whole point is that Christ IS God[/qs]Jehovah, the father is the god of Jesus, god Jehovah's son. He is also the god of Jesus, as Jesus states over and over in the NT. The son, Jesus, always does the will of the father, Jehovah. Jehovah is the head of Jesus in authority. The function of the father and the son are different. Jesus is the mediator through whom we reach the father, either in relationship or communication in prayer. The new covenant/testament age under Jesus is not the same as the old.If you need scripture references to any of the above I can furnish for all. It will take some time so if you don't want them I won't bother.

I would like to respond to a statement made by berberry in the thread where this all came from: I hesitate to bring this up again, but because the last thread was closed soon after I made this point I will repeat it for everyone here. Remember the wholesale massacres perpetrated by Stalin and Mao Zedong in the last century? Atheism also has had many adherents who did very nasty things. And following on logically from your statement, berberry, it doesn't really matter whether they were atheists or not as long as they believed themselves to be...

I can't find where you got this purported quote. I can't find it anywhere in this forum, by any poster.In defender's own posting history, he has only once posted in a thread that was subsequently closed. His last post to that thread was Message 35; and it was nothing to do with actions of anyone.This new post appears more than a month after the last post. It refers without any link or reference for context to another post.When that thread was eventually closed, it was because no points of any kind were being made by anyone, and it had become dominated by a rather spectacularly clueless individual, who had tried to use a new ID to get around a suspension. The problems had nothing to do with making points that lead to closures.The not so subtle implication that this is a point which causes threads to be closed is false. Moderators may request people to stay on topic in a thread. If there is a relevant periphsal matter, just start a new thread in the appropriate forum. You can link back to the original thread for context.It is quite possible I might even agree with the point being made; but how about a better indication of where the quote came from?

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Remember the wholesale massacres perpetrated by Stalin and Mao Zedong in the last century?

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The numbers of deaths attributed to Stalin and Mao (along with motives) is mostly 30+ year old anti-Communist bullshit.

I've noticed that every time this subject comes up, you pipe up with something along these lines. The problem is that, without some supporting evidence, it looks a little like the kind of argumentation that generally characterizes things like Holocaust denials.Do you suppose you might open a thread sometime and explore some of the history and evidence about this?

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I've noticed that every time this subject comes up, you pipe up with something along these lines. The problem is that, without some supporting evidence, it looks a little like the kind of argumentation that generally characterizes things like Holocaust denials.

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I've already discussed this issue and referenced relevant articles in peer-reviewed journals like the Slavic Review. The belief that Stalin/Mao killed X million people is based on bad demographic analysis and nothing more.

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Do you suppose you might open a thread sometime and explore some of the history and evidence about this?

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There doesn't appear to be an appropriate forum for it. I have no problem discussing anything in this thread or in the other threads I have posted in. Frankly, most people who make those claims don't even know how those figures are arrived at in the first place, so there usually isn't anything to talk about.

Here's the thread defender was talking about, I think. It's the one I mentioned in the first message of this thread. Perhaps I should have provided this link in that first message; my bad.That topic had meandered into a discussion about the nature of religious fundamentalism. Since that was far afield from the thread's original subject I created this thread.

defenderofthefaith writes:

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Atheism also has had many adherents who did very nasty things.

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I think you very seriously misunderstand the nature of atheism. For most atheists it is simply a lack of belief in a deity. We are quite simply not theists. Most of us are not out to destroy religion. Some are, I'll grant you, and Stalin was a supreme example.Atheism is not a religion. If it can be defined by any belief at all, it would have to be the belief that religion is either illogical or irrelevant (or both) and therefore undesirable. Just because one is an atheist, one does not necessarily see oneself as a member of an anti-God army.