Clivedurdle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Movement

A fascinating summary in wiki - and actually its influence is probably still around in many attitudes in xianity in Britain, and the world because of the Empire.

Maybe the current fetish on the HJ is a further secularisation away from the true apostolic faith that met Christ in vision!

:devil1:

Surely the true faith is about dressing up, ritual and good works? An HJ gets in the way of changing the world!

Roger Pearse

The Wiki article isn't wrong, but is too short and limited and gives no real idea of the importance of the movement. (I've added a bit more in, since I've spent the afternoon on books.live.com trying to find out more about the Library of the Fathers). It gives no idea of the luminous power of Newman's preaching and personality, of which we get such an excellent idea in the essays of Augustine Birrell. Nor do we learn that snapdragon used to grow under the window of his college room, as he tells us in the Apologia pro sua vita, or so I gather from Birrell.

The rottenness of the Church of England at that period -- just a gravy-train for the idle younger sons of the gentry -- is evident in all literature of the period. As someone remarked, "a church of which holiness is NOT a keynote is sure to find many friends."

All the best,

Roger Pearse

spin

I get tired of people who cannot see more than the banal dichotomy between "historical" and "mythical" jesuses. Try to understand ancient forces. Is Ebion a "historical" or a "mythical" figure??

History is not -- as I have noted many times -- a democratic process. It is not what the majority wants it to be, so I don't give a damn about what the mainstream view is if that view is not based on evidence. There is no historical evidence for a Jesus. This doesn't mean that he didn't exist. It means that a responsible analyst cannot decide ad hoc that he did.

So if people want to judge the past along such simplistic adversarial lines, don't expect to understand.


spin

Roger Pearse

Stating as fact what is evidently untrue tends to discredit the man making the statement however.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

spin

Roger is a master of self-irony.


spin

lpetrich

(On the burden of proof being on Jesus mythers...)
So what's your point? Are you claiming that the Jesus Christ of the Gospels is only partially historical? If so, then how do you propose to distinguish the historical and the unhistorical parts?

youngalexander

For being you of course!

Hint: lighten-up fella.

spin

Do you know who Ebion is? I have mentioned him a number of times on this forum. Take a moment to look him up and answer the question I put to you in my first response to your comments.

One distinguishes historical from non-historical based on historical evidence. Got any? Apparently not. You seem to be one of the hordes who want to assume what they have no evidence for, then say it's up to anyone else to show us wrong. Hey, ya know, it simply doesn't work like that unless, you don't really care about evidence at all -- but then, what's the point?

At the same time, you seem to be using a loose understanding on the term "mythical", which you ill-advisedly threw about when first responding to me. I am not a mythicist, nor for that matter am I a historicist. Both positions are in my eyes evidenceless, though either might be correct. However, there is at least a third position if one uses the term "myth" in a rigorous manner. (When we talk of Greek myths, we use it differently from those who talk generically about things that have no historical basis.) Reports about the past can simply be wrong yet not mythical. Myth is merely one way to represent a past that did not happen in reality.

I don't know whether the Jesus of the gospels is historical at all, but then neither do you. There is no way to link the gospels to any historical anchor, so they in themselves don't help, despite the fact that they might contain historical information. Then again, how would you know? Can you put forward a meaningful test to functionally get history out of the gospels?


spin

Chris Weimer

Odd, another person thought I was being too stressed out over this. I'm not. Hell, I'm studying Cicero for a reason. Between the wine and my knowledge of just how poor IIDB is for real scholarship, you think I actually care if someone here says that I do poorer research than mountainman? They have no clue - I know this!

If you think I'm angry, I'm not. I have blood pressure problems, I'm not bursting an aneurysm over these jokes.

JoeWallack

JW:
Roger always reminds me of Mister Mxyzptlk. Almost everything he does is harmful to us but I still find myself liking him because he does not intend to harm and he comes here from a completely different dimension. Spin, you can make Roger temporarily disappear to his own dimension by tricking him into saying )BB) backwards.



Joseph