Jayhawker Soule

This position struck me as interesting. Once the Old Testament is acknowledged as folklore, its value as prophesy dissipates, and the NT references to the Patriarchs, the Flood, etc., must be viewed in a new light. What type of Christianity is left?

Kosh

The type that just likes the feeling of
belonging to a big "brotherhood".

Sojourner553

Just an FYI:

Gnostic Christian sects which were later persecuted out of existance by the Orthodox Christians taught the Old Testament could not be inspired because God acted like a villain (their demiurge):


First a discussion on Marcion, and the next on Gnostic Christians in general:
*************************
(from:
<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/CHURCH.TXT)" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/CHURCH.TXT)</a>

One important offshoot of the Docetists was a movement known as the
Manichees. The leader of this sect, a Greek Christian convert named Marcian
quarreled with the Roman Christian authorities in 144 C.E., and took his
body of believers eastwards with him. Marcion believed that only the
letters of Paul and the gospel of Luke and Acts were inspired. Stressing
a pure God of "love", Marcion rejected the use of coercion and force to
bring about obedience. (Jehovah of the Old Testament was rejected as
the "true" God according to this view). Manichees held the gnostic
dualistic view that all matter was evil. The true God gave humanity a
spark of the light that could lead one to salvation through self-knowledge.

Although none of Marcion's writings have survived, orthodox Christian
critiques of his movements do exist. The orthodox Christian Tertullian
raged against followers of Marcion for their naive belief that only love
of God is needed to be a good Christian, and not fear:

"They say it is only an evil being who will be feared, a good
one will be loved. Foolish man! Do you say that he whom you
call LORD ought not to be feared, whilst the very title you
give him indicates a power which MUST be feared?' Without fear,
men would "boil over into lust" thus indulging in all the
sinful activities such as frequenting games, circuses, and theatres."

********************
(taken from:
<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/GNOSIS.TXT)" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/GNOSIS.TXT)</a>


Early Christian Gnostic Heresies

Gnosticism was a competing religion with Christianity. Although a
sizeable number of gnostics were among the first groups successfully
converted to Christianity (as we have seen by largely identifying Jesus
as the bringer of "gnosis"), still they held fundamentally different
beliefs than other Christian groups. These differences represented vastly
variant views regarding the nature of Jesus, God, and the universe.

Many Christian scholars have observed that the God of the Old Testament
appears much different than the one presented in the New Testament.--That is,
the God of the Old Testament is more commonly depicted as a God of power
and obedience, while the God of the New Testament is depicted as a God of love.

Prior to the arrival of Christianity, Gnostics explained the existence
of good and evil in the world by supposing that a genuinely good, all powerful
God ruled over the universe, while a lower-level demon-like God controlled
the lower regions of the universe--including the earth. When gnostics
began converting over to Christianity, they took the Old Testament stories
relating God's anger and jealously to be proof that the God of the hebrews
was in reality this lower evil divine being--known as the Demiurge. This
also seemed to explain how an "all powerful" God would create a world full
of suffering, pain, and disease.

The SECRET BOOK OF JOHN argued that because the Old Testament God
had declared to the hebrews that he was a jealous God--that this "proved"
the presence of other divine beings:

"in his madness ... he said ' I am God, and there is no other god
beside me,' for he is ignorant of the place from which he had come...
And when he saw the creation which surrounds him and the multitudes of
angels around him which had come forth from him, he said to them, 'I am a
jealous God, and there is no other god beside me.' But by announcing this
he indicated to the angels that another God does exist; for if there were
no other one, of whom would he be jealous?"

Gnostics also pointed to Genesis verses where God says in the plural,
"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness (Genesis 1:26) and
"Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil,"
(Genesis 3:22) to prove that he was speaking to other lower divine beings
such as himself.

Gnostics argued that the Old Testament God was really evil for destroying
the earth with a Flood. Their position that the God of the Hebrews was
in reality the demiurge led them to an especially heretical interpretation
of the Adam and Eve story. In the gnostic work THE TESTIMONY OF TRUTH
(found with the Nag Hammadi texts) the author repeated the story of how
God had become so angry that Adam and Eve had listened to the serpent
and eaten from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that He cast Adam
out of Paradise "lest he take from the tree of live and eat and live forever."

The author continued then with the following heretical analysis:

"But of what sort in this God?
First [he] maliciously refused Adam from eating of the tree of knowledge.

And secondly he said, 'Adam, where are you?' And God does not have
foreknowledge; (otherwise), would he not know from the beginning?
Afterwards he said, 'Let us cast him [out] of this place, lest he
eat of the tree of life and live for ever.' Surely he has shown himself
to be a malicious grudger.

And what kind of God is this? For great is the blindness of those who
read, and they did not know him. And he said, 'I am the jealous God; I will
bring the sins of the fathers upon the children until three (and) four
generations'. [see Exodus 20:5].

And he said, 'I will make their heart thick, and I will cause their mind
to become blind, that they might not know or comprehend the things
that are said' [see Isaiah 6:10]

But these things he has said to those who believe in him [and] serve him!"

These gnostics in analyzing the Adam and Eve story in Genesis, went on to
argue that the demiurge forbade Adam to eat from the fruit of the tree of
knowledge, to prevent Adam from obtaining knowledge (giving him enlightenment
or gnosis). The highest good God, saw what was happening and sent the serpent
to the Garden to induce Adam to eat of the tree of knowledge, thus
escaping from his bondage of ignorance to the demiurge.

(taken from the general site:
<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html)" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html)</a>

Sojourner

David Bowden

That info would seem to mesh pretty well with what I've recently read in Freke & Gandy's somewhat irritating but still entertaining Jesus Mysteries. One point they keep hitting on is that a "mystic Christianity" can exist if we stop insisting on the historical interpretation of scripture.

Not that that's really any more attractive than any of the historicist denominations...

Could Christianity survive being redefined in gnostic-ish terms? I tend to think that most practicing Christians, including many Xtians who are fairly intellectual, would tend to agree with Roland de Vaux, the Catholic scholar: "If the historical faith of Israel is not founded in history, such faith is erroneous, and therefore, our faith is also." I think it would be hard to reconcile Jesus' apparent belief in the historicity of the OT and his supposed omniscience, if it becomes impossible to defend the Torah as history. This would lead me to think that Christianity must find some way to salvage as much as possible from the Torah, or wither away.

Just my $0.02

-Wanderer

Toto

Those Gnostics make a lot more sense than Christians, don't they? I guess the victory of orthodox Christianity is another example of Gresham's law.

BTW - Sojourner - when you copy a link, UBB will automatically hotlink it correctly if you leave a space before and after the URL. When you leave a ')' directly following the URL, it doesn't work. You need:

<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/CHURCH.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/CHURCH.TXT</a>

and

<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/GNOSIS.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/GNOSIS.TXT</a>

and

<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html</a>

Vorkosigan

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Toto:
Those Gnostics make a lot more sense than Christians, don't they? I guess the victory of orthodox Christianity is another example of Gresham's law.

LOL.

M

Bartok

Without the Old Testament, more broadly without the Jews, there is no Christianity. One may say "No, without Jesus there is no Christianity." True. And Jesus was a Jew.

Now, the popular theory as to how the Torah formed is basically that different tribes that would later make up Israel began with oral stories that they preserved, based on their experiences wandering throughout the land. As these tribes came together, they began to weed out which stories to keep and which stories to throw away. This includes one section of the larger tribe that experienced an exodus from Egypt. They were finally written down by different writers and redacted depending on their perspective (different slants depending on their historical position). Similar to the exodus account, there is dispute as to which parts of the tribe conquered Palestine to contribute to the books of Joshua and Judges, and so on.

The Old Testament is not primarily a historical text. It is a faith text. It is a theological text. It is making sense of Israel's world in terms of what Yahweh wanted and did. There is most likely some underlying history to some of the stories (exodus, conquest of the land, monarchy), but the OT was not primarily meant to be some factual historical document.

The type of Christianity that is left when these things are recognized is one that is honest with itself, that recognizes and accepts mystery and ambiguity on some things, that truly lives by trust rather than "proof," and even (gasp!) pays attention to scientific and other historical discoveries and methods.

My take, anyway.

Toto

But what actually is left of Christianity when you have to admit that there was no original sin, no need to redeem the world, that Jesus wasn't perfect (since he didn't know a lot)? Is there more than just a lot of real estate with historic architecture and a tax exempt status?

Are you thinking of Bishop Spong, or other liberal Christians who are secular humanists in all but name only, or perhaps essentially Buddhists without the meditation thing? Why should anyone not raised in the tradition want to become a Christian?

Sojourner553

Thanks for the URL lesson,Toto! I am pretty new to this site.

By the way -- why pick on Bartok? He's got the basics right to keep a rational, questioning mind and respect science. Is it therefore really important whether or not he ALSO keeps the "symbols" of religion for his personal comfort?

Sojourner

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

Kosh

Free dating service?