DrJim

Or:
The aim of theology is bad. It can't hit the broad side of reality.

George S

Theology is ... uppity. The ultimate hubris.

First postulate an omniscient, omnipotent and all-loving Theos. And then claim the ability to study and understand said entity.

If I were such a being I would consider the human idea that I could be studied and understood to be the limit of arrogance.

squiz

Jeffrey hasn't posted here since March. Maybe he got sick of all the ignorance on this forum.

This is the sort of thread, though, where you would expect him to pull someone up with something like "do you know for a fact from personal experience that all theologians are biased?".

Yellum Notnef

If it were ignorance that bothered him so much why did he always argue with the wrong people? There's a plethora of kooks here, but for some reason he decided to focus on Toto and other atheists while never admitting his own theological stance.

andrewcriddle

I'm not sure why you find this so objectionable. IIUC it is saying that Christianity offers a "truer and more fully human" alternative to living ones life as an isolated, supposedly self-sufficient, individual without any resources beyond oneself when disaster strikes.

I can perfectly well see why someone could strongly disagree with this claim, but I am less sure why it is inappropriate to argue such a claim within an academic meeting.

Andrew Criddle

spin

Umm, what sort of academic meeting would that be?? The parish aerobics and makrame thinktank?

Society of Biblical Literature, pretensions of scholarly analysis of literature in a historical context? Who deals with topics such as "truth" or being "more fully human"? Perhaps a lawyer could kid themselves with the truth, but this "truth" is usually the best, or least unacceptable, hypothesis. Scholars don't deal with truths. They deal with evidence and where that leads. Truth is for closet philosophers.

But "more fully human"?? Shite, Andrew, I'm mortified that you don't have trouble with such a concept in academia. What department would that one be in? The New Age Faculty of Pranotherapy and Miscellaneous Wankery? The notion of "human" in the expression is certainly not a scholarly one. It is a vague value judgment of the touchy-feely kind. Or is "more fully human" about having all five fingers on each hand (or close to it), approximately all the bits and pieces? Again what department? It's certainly nothing to do with modern philosophy, science, history, sociology, anthropology... so where would academics be at home waffling on about it?

I guess SBL has to cater for scholarship challenged types with puerility arguing claims like "the gospel offers an alternative both truer and more fully human".



spin

bacht

I see this differently. Christianity copied the synagogue system and established a self-help network across the cities of the empire. The social value was in providing support for isolated individuals cut off from traditional land and family ties.

But I don't see how meditating on the afterlife makes this existence better or fuller. I would argue the opposite: escapism is a cop-out, not unlike infantilism or drugs in allaying the stress of facing adult life with eyes wide open.

andrewcriddle

The idea of a "fully human life" is prominent both in ancient and in modern philosophy. Google fully+human+life

Andrew Criddle

Yellum Notnef

If I'm not living a "fully human life" right now than what other species of life am I living?

Nonsense begets nonsense.

spin

Did you look at it? If you wanna call that stuff philosophy, then you're giving me further understanding into your troubled mind. OK, I'll grant you some of it is rehashing history of philosophy (eg of Kant and Marx), some of it is freshman quality, some religious or quasi religious shlock (christian, Jewish, aikido), but some of it just gives me pause (eg "Social and Political Philosophy: a Contemporary Introduction" -- sort of quasi-vocational for social workers etc.). Still nothing that reaches academia in my eyes at least on the first few pages. Sorry.


spin