No Gospel without Law, no Mercy without Wrath

Okay, the string is well past this quote, but I'm trying to catch up. You all write so damn much.Faith said: As an Archaeologist, I gotta tell you this is way off. There is quite a lot of external evidence for many things in the Bible. Several stories in the OT are based in fact, if not wholey (holy) true. More in the NT.This, however, does not mean that all the stories in both are true. (Or, to be clearer, that they are factual. IMHO a story can be "true" meaning that it carries some moral or philosphical truth, even though it is not a factual accounting of real events -- see Aesop's Fables).Much of the Bible is nuts and bolts stuff that doesn't apply to us today at all. There's a passage - I'll get the quote if I need to - that basically says, if I rape a woman who's a virgin, she's gotta marry me.Good luck selling that one to the victom's family.

Well, some would argue that there wasn't a single anonymous writer. Just about everything Jesus preached could be found in the writings of other philosophers in the century or so before Jesus' birth. It's easy to theorize that either a collection of works was tied together and that the overall story is a collection of wisdoms from several writers, or that Jesus in the "missing years" was well read and built a "unifying theory" of religeon which became his message.As for the OT stories and geniuses. Some of the OT is pretty bad. I'm not talking about the murder sections either. I'm talking about the long string of begots, or the spoils of war sections. Parts of the OT read like an accountants ledger.Still, there are gems. But, the OT is hardly the only source. Every religion in the world has stories of equal granduer and substinance. These stories often develope over time, becoming "better" as tellers find ways to make them more and more relivant to current society.A large problem that faces Christianity is it's inability to adapt. The archaic stories of the OT often have no relivance to modern society. As a result, society grows further away from the religion and newer "better" religions rise up to take it's place.This is exactly what launched the Protestant revolution.Mormonism and Scientology have both enjoyed a great deal of success largely due to the fact that they address issues in modern people's lives more directly than religions trapped in tradition.

And yet it was the bureaucracy that got the last laugh. The Gospel of Thomas isn't a part of the Bible. Why? It's because that Gospel is very dangerous - not to worshipers, or to Jesus, but to the Church.Thomas quotes Jesus as saying, "The Kingdom is Heaven is HERE". Not, that it's coming. That it is here. That all that's needed is that people open their eyes.That's almost Buddist (but that's not my point).My point is this: The Church (the Bureaucracy to end all bureaucracies) can't sell that horse. There's no power in telling people that the Kindom is here. The power is in telling people they are "almost there". Then you can get people to do whatever you want.

I don't want to get into a nuts and bolts discussion over this verse or that verse. It's Off Topic, I agree.My point was more about how things are different today than in the past. I am confused, and perhaps misreading earlier posts (ie conflict between Faith and Palanx). This quote seems to indicate that you are in favor of interpritation rather than literal truth.If so, that's great. I think you'll get much more out of the Bible by being able to sort out what's relavent to modern society vs what's archaic and can be left discarded as such.

I think I may be missing your point entirely.In my mind, it's very rational to believe that the Jews were enslaved by the Egyptians and that they fled that enslavement. There is plenty of external evidence (the Pyramids) for this story. I can see how someone would believe this story, yet discount a story that has no external evidence - Cain & Abel for example.Now, one could argue that the story of Cain & Abel has more Truth to it, philosphically, than the Exodus - but that doesn't mean it has to actually have happened.

Re: Off Topic postsYup, straying too far. My bad. If someone wants to talk Archaeology / Thomas / Christianity's adaptativeness, let's start a different thread.Meanwhile, let's keep this one on Faith's original topic.

Whoa, not at all. Now you're misunderstanding me. although, to be fair, I screwed up in my previous post and said Phalanx when I meant Rahvin (sorry both)I was refering to Rahvin's post #46 where he says and Faith's post #47 My comments are not a well calculated attack on a "fundy". I simply think that Rahvin is correct, you don't have to take the Bible as word for word literally true. And, to me, it seemed like you agreed in post #62.For the record, I completely agree with you on the whole moral / diety / ceremonial law issue. I think the categories are fairly self evident and easily sorted.If what you are saying in #62 (or this whole thread for that matter) is that Moral laws are literally true, but the diety/ceremonial laws are more laws of Man than God's law and therefore should be taken with a grain (pillar?) of salt, then I think I'm up to speed with the rest of the thread.This message has been edited by Nuggin, 08-29-2005 10:54 AM

edit - deleted off thread. Trying to stay on topic. This message has been edited by Nuggin, 08-29-2005 10:59 AM

This leads us to this obvious question:Do literalists think that other religions are false / wrong?If Rahvin is correct, then many (most) other religion are equally valid. That there are many paths to salvation, that intent is important but structure is not.If structure is what's important, that we're essentially saying that other religions are useless, or worse, have a negative effect on one's salvation.I can't buy that. If a person authentically believes in their religion and practices it to the best of their belief, how can we say, "That person there is wrong and this person here is right"?

Wait a second Faith,You are coming down on people for being Off Topic or On Topic, but many of the posters here believe that they are on topic and are explaining why. Their explainations are not "Off Topic". Obviously no one is going to be able to point to physical proof that God's wrathful events happened/didn't happened or were/weren't caused by God. Even if we found a pillar of salt, we couldn't prove it was Lot's wife or even that God had changed her into said pillar.So, in order for their to be discussion, we need to look at parts of the Bible that we do have evidence for or against.The topic boils down to -- "Do you have to believe the whole Bible to believe one part"Your possition, as best I can figure, is that it makes no sense to say that part A of the Bible didn't happened because I don't like what it says, but part B did happen because I agree with it.What Jar, myself and others are suggesting is that there are parts of the Bible that appear to be complete fiction.If all pieces have equal weight, then either the "discredited" pieces must be believed as factual as the Resurrection, or the Resurrection should be considered as fictional as the "discredited" pieces.What we are saying is that giving the whole thing equal weight is a big problem. Many Christians believe more in one part of the Bible than another, be it the Resurrection, the Flood, or the Conquest of Canaan. We see no problem in people picking and choosing which parts of the Bible they want to found their religion. (Wrathful v Loving, etc).This is very much on topic.

Think of it like a race. You can hold a race where the first ten people are "winners" and the last ten are "losers". Or you can have a race, like the Boston Marathon, where just completing it is a victory. You don't have to come in first to win, and no one has to "lose"People are not saved because they've managed to escape the wrath of a spiteful mean-spirited God. They are saved because they strive to achieve something more than the terrestrial existance they find themselves in.You yourself have said that no one is without sin. By that reasoning, no one is saved. All will fall before God mighty wrath and spiteful hatred. That's no foundation for a religion. Well, several of us have repeatedly made a very rational argument. It's predicated on the belief that the Bible is a guidebook, but not an infallible document.You disagree with that belief, but that doesn't make that belief less rational than your own. The good stuff makes sense on it's own. "Love thy neighbor" can stand alone as a doctorine. You don't need any of the rest of the Bible at all to have a working religion. You don't need "Love thy neighbor... or else" for it to work. You are saying that people are not making a ration decision because they are discarding parts of the Bible that they disagree with and keeping parts they agree with even though there is no evidence for or against any of the parts.But, aren't you doing the exact same thing? You are saying, I'm keeping the the parts I like, (in this case the whole thing) despite the fact that there is no evidence that any of it happened.What's worse, your position, unlike Rahvin's, runs counter to evidence to the contrary. (ie Flood).I really think that you're on the verge of a breakthrough here. If you can accept the message of the Bible as what's important instead of the words that bring the message, I think it'll resolve almost all the conflicts you find in these threads.I'm not saying don't accept the wrathful parts. If those parts make sense, by all means keep them. But look deeper than the words, what's the meaning of the story.Is the story of loaves and fishes, a story about a clever way to slice food, or is it a story about how faith can sustain you? The event does not need to have literally taken place for the message to be true.I doubt that many (I want to say any, but there's always one) of the ToE people here would argue that there isn't meaning behind the Flood story. They just don't agree that it literally happened.Think of Jesus' parables as a microcosism of the whole Bible. The parable has meaning, it isn't meant to be literally true.I'm not saying that everything in the Bible is false. In fact, I believe that many things in the Bible are literally (or near literally) true.What I am saying, and what I believe Rahvin is saying, is that the greater message is what's important.

I find Rahvin's 139 posting covers much of what I was going to say in response, however I'll still say this --I find the position of the Literalist to be a very dangerous and scary standpoint. It's only a small step from there to genocide.If your version of the religion is the only true religion, and everyone else - be they Southern Baptist or Hindu, is completely wrong, then there is no reason to accept any faith's belief's about anything. There's no need for protection under the law. There's no need to even treat them like people.Further, the willingness of Literalists to say, this one thing is absolutely true and no amount of evidence, no matter how damning, could ever convince me otherwise, means simply if they as a group decide to, let's say, "deal with the Jewish Problem." There's NOTHING to stop them. There's no reasoning to be done whatsoever.Very very scary. At least with groups that respect one anothers religion, people can find common ground.It makes me wonder if there truly is a wrathful god, or just a collection of wrathful followers

Wow! I mean, WOW!From the top -- Gonna have to start a seperate thread for this one, as it's clearly not true and will result in a number of very long posts. Really? And here I thought your point on this thread was that you had to obey God's moral laws to get salvation. That's no different than obeying the Hindu laws or the Buddhist laws, etc. So every other form of Christianity / Non-Christianity is by your definition a heresy? And your church has a history of doing such nice things to heretics... Explain to me again how I'm paranoid? Too bad no one knew it at the time, huh? I bet if you asked on of the inquisitors if they knew they were heretics, it wouldn't have gone so nice for you. Kind of makes me wonder if you know that you're a heretic as well? Can you please explain why M / JW / CS / U are heretical? Or is this simply a bigotted statement? We know that's not true. You know that's not true. We know you know that's not true. The only person here you stand to convince with such lies is yourself. Um, Faith, YOU WEREN'T THERE! Thomas WAS! You can't say, this book about Jesus is right and that one is wrong.How do you know that Thomas isn't spot on about what Jesus was saying and the "heretical" Catholic Church (in the THOUSAND YEARS) they had dominance over the Bible didn't tweek what was in it to support a beauracratic organization? You don't. Like they have a choice? You won't defend your possitions with anything that remotely resembles logic. You won't accept any evidence that contradicts you way of thinking. Everyone who disagrees with you is going to Hell because they are heretics.If you want to discuss your beliefs, that's fine. But you aren't doing that here. You're just insulting everyone who doesn't believe what you believe.But, what's worse, you aren't even able to back up what you believe!Here's the thing about throwing stones. You NEED TO HAVE STONES!

Then why are Mormon's heretics? Don't they believe in that Jesus came and died for our sins?

But can you disprove their gospel? Perhaps it's your version of Christianity that's gotten it wrong.Just like the protestants came after the Catholics and are therefore better than them, the Mormons, being later still, are logically more informed than your religion