andrewcriddle

Hi Jake

There is a real argument that Brodie ought not to be in a position where resigning from the RC priesthood would mean the loss of his teaching position.

But that doesn't seem to be the argument here. Brodie seems to be be trying to present his current views as compatible with being a RC religious. And I just don't see that as a defensible position.

Andrew Criddle

Steve Weiss

Who could rationally disagree with you? No Christ, no Christianity. After all who could Christianity be about with no Christ? No belief in a deity, no Yahweh and no tribe to worship him. The whole fiction crumbles. People write fictions and then take them seriously. Not very rational.

Steve Weiss

The number of people who believe a fiction is no indication of its truth. The truth is not subject to a majority vote. It also doesn't matter how many experts and professors agree on certain arbitrary claims, how many witnesses claim to observe miracles or what the consensus is, just give us the facts and only the facts and let the chips fall where they may.

James The Least

I would say that all modern so-called NT scholarship has been a pushback against Ludwig Feuerbach, David Freidrich Strauss, and Bruno Bauer in the 1830s and 1840s. People were perfectly fine with discussing Greek and Egyptian religious stories as mere myths. It was when Strauss and others pointed out that Christianity's sacred texts deserved no special privilege that the church realized they had better start finding ways to sound modern and rational when talking about their magic book or they would soon be joining Pharaoh in the Antiquities Museums of the world. For the first time ever, we started hearing rationalizations that were not needed before, like, "Having women discover the tomb must have happened, because women's testimony wasn't accepted in court," etc. Strauss and Bauer were "discredited."

Anything to keep the myth alive.

mountainman

The fact is according to Ehrman


Can you believe such a tyrannical statement?

Docetism can be swept under the front door mat.

Toto

Ehrman is right. Every ancient source assumes that Jesus existed - but they all assumed that spirits and ghosts and gods and demons existed.

When more modern societies stopped believing in demons and gods, they had to decide if Jesus was a non-existent god, or a human. The Great Man theory of history became popular about this time, so Jesus was assigned to the "Great Man" category, a demotion if you believe in gods, but perhaps better than being classified with Zeus and company.

mountainman

If one takes off the Christian glasses Ehrman uses one may argue that the docetists who believed that Jesus "did not appear in the flesh" (compare this to the antii-christ formula provided in the letters of John) actually believed that Jesus "did not appear in history".

Secondly there is this reference in NHC that you have previously questioned in another thread but have since ignored my responses:

Steve Weiss

Assumptions make an ass out of you and me. Assumptions count for zero. What could be evidence for the existence of a miracle-working man/god? There is no possibility of any evidence confirming the existence of an historical biblical Jesus. Again, it matters not how many authors repeat nonsense assuming what needs to be proved. Begging the question and truth by authority or majority should be rejected as of no historical or cognitive weight.

spin

Is there really some manner in which mountainman can eke out some advantage from this text? An exegesis of this sentence reveals that our fleeing generation doesn't yet believe! It in no way suggests that Jesus is not alive (present tense here) in the religion of the speaker. Statements about the current generation usually reflect its inability to believe the truth. The truth here is that Jesus is alive. Further, we see that mountainman has avoided implications from context.

[T2]The Interpretation of Knowledge
(Initial preserved lines: )
... they came to believe by means of signs and wonders and fabrications. The likeness that came to be through them followed him, but through reproaches and humiliations before they received the apprehension of a vision they fled without having heard that the Christ had been crucified. But our generation is fleeing since it does not yet even believe that the Christ is alive. In order that our faith may be holy (and) pure, not relying upon itself actively, but maintaining itself planted in him, do not say: "Whence is the patience to measure faith?", for each one is persuaded by the things he believes. If he disbelieves them, then he would be unable to be persuaded. But it is a great thing for a man who has faith, since he is not in unbelief, which is the world.[/T2]
Unbelief is bad. Belief that the Christ is alive is good. There is also the notion that "the Christ had been crucified"; in the context, people had fled before hearing that the Christ had been crucified".

It's dead, Jim.

Toto

You are missing my point. The docetists who believed that Jesus did not come "in the flesh" believed that their non-fleshly Jesus was real, or more than real, and had appeared in history. Modern materialists would reject that possibility. Historicists have convinced themselves that docetists would expect to see a human form if they were in Jesus' presence, but they would just deny that his flesh was lowly material flesh.

I've ignored your responses because life is too short. You have yet to convince anyone that you have done anything other than take a phrase out of context.