judge

I think that this sets up a false dichotomy, that being, either fundamentalist ideas about the bible are true or god is imaginary.

I don' t think therse are the only two options.

I think the same applies here.




I think the god hypothesis becomes more believable generally over a longer period of time. It becomes believable to an individual. I think this is where there might be some misunderstanding of my claims in this thread.
In science we can get others to do the work to verify hypotheses, and this is agreat system and a very powerful tool.
But we cannot get anyone else to test the god hypothesis for us, each must do it him/herself. Only this can convince us. How could we be convinced merely on the word of another?



Maybe... I think I probably have done some of this, but now I dont believe in a god who answers some prayers and chooses to not answer others.
Thinking of, or calling god a person is just a metaphor IMHO. The problem is when we (or religions) mistake the metaphor for reality.






The real discomfort comes, I believe , by us being conditioned by fundamentalist interpretations. There is a lot that could be said on the topic of hell, but for starters with Matthew 25 the greek (or the aramaic) does not mean a never ending period of time, yet this is how we are conditioned to think of this passage.
On top of this the entire passage is eschatological ,or to do with the end times (which happened long ago). It is written in language and metaphors that the audience would have been familiar with but that we are not, and so what we imagine it might mean can be very different to someone living at that time.

This article might be at least an introduction to another perspective. Jesus' Teaching on Hell

:devil1:

Maybe we should get rid of that "god idea" then? It sounds like you are saying that secretly you know that "god idea" is a sham anyway, and you go easy on it becasue you have been taught to, or becasue you should do so.

For that matter is there even such a thing as the god idea?
Some people think god is an entity, some a process, somethink god is love.
At the end of the day i think they are just all metaphors.

I met a man a while ago and he said "there is something there, and we dont know what it is...but some people think they connect with it."

I think I know what he meant.

Anyway I have rambled enough ,and probably gone way off topic..but again I wish you the very best with this stuff.

-

judge

I see what you are saying but I think one can verify this through life experience and through this life experience have this certainty, if that makes sense. I did not mean to say this was exactly scientific only that is shared some common ground with that approach.

eheffa

I have to say that I am getting lost in all these divergent (but very interesting threads).

It would seem that the answer to my original question is that the first references to the gospels by early Christians isn't until around ~150-180 CE




IWhat other options do you envision?



I am finding the opposite ie that the longer I live with the God Hypothesis, the less believable it is.



What good is a metaphor that has no connection to reality?




The NIV translation ends the chapter with the statement that the goats will go off to "everlasting punishment".

I read this article with interest. The author seems anxious to separate Jesus from the Catholic style Fire & Brimstone concept of Hell. According to this author, Gehenna is just a local landfill dump near Jerusalem & should be interpreted as a place of National judgment as in the Romans coming to punish the wicked Israelite nation who failed to repent in time. This focus on the word Gehenna avoids dealing with the passages like this one in MT 25 where Gehenna is not used but the torment or punishment doles out to the goats is "everlasting"

The "God idea" is an important concept to many people for various reasons. If by God one means the all-powerful creator of the universe and final judge of all men (& women), we have a singular entity that should be verifiable in some way. If He is simply a metaphor for human emotions or ideas taken to the infinite extreme, then he can safely stay in the realm of unknowable, unverifiable ideation. The Historical Jesus would seemingly have violated this version of God by becoming a knowable, touchable man. When one goes looking for evidence of this historical person, he is however as elusive as a metaphor would be anyway. At this stage in history, 2000 years later, it does seem unlikely that we can know very much about him with any confidence.



Thank you Judge. I appreciate your thoughtful replies.

-evan

judge

Well that is a good question. I think fundmentalists have it wrong but that god does exist, but my ideas are still evolving quite a bit.
I think I am still in the process of letting go of wrong ideas.
I may have to come back to this.


Who knows I may come to that conclusion myself one day, but presently I am not heading in that direction.


I think it is connected to reality but the problem is however good the metaphor is it is still only that, only a clue to the reality.

I don't think god is personal being who hands out punishments and rewards, but I think the nature of reality is such that this metaphor can be helpful.



I am no greek or hebrew scholar but there are in the bible hebrew and greek words that are translated "eternal" or "everlasting" but when we look at how they are used they cannot mean everlasting in the sense we use that word.

There is probably a lot better stuff than this out there and you should get some betterinput than mine here but this might be a start for you.


I think one can find in Hebrew thought , both in thier bible and in other hebrew literature from around that time an idea of the "end of days" or the end of an age.
A time of great trouble occurs and the kingdom of god is ushered in, a new age, the dead are raised and the messiah rules.

It is this kind of idea that I believe Jesus draws on in Matthew 25.
The age comes to an end the son of man is seated on his glorious throne "separating the wheat from the chaff".

So when Jesus talks this way, it is about the judgement coming. It is about the end of the age.

Later on churchmen misunderstading that the age had ended made the idea of an eternal hell orthodoxy.

"In the first five or six centuries of Christianity there were six theological schools, of which four (Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea, and Edessa, or Nisibis) were Universalist, one (Ephesus) accepted conditional immortality; one (Carthage or Rome) taught endless punishment of the wicked. Other theological schools are mentioned as founded by Universalists, but their actual doctrine on this subject is not known."
"The Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge"
by Schaff-Herzog, 1908, volume 12, page 96

Most of early christianity was universalist according to the above quote.



I think the concept of an all powerful being is a metaphor. As Paul wrote we see thru a glass darkly"
God , reality, the fullness of it all it, just too marvelous for us to even begin to comprehend intellectually, so we use metaphors.
The ones we inherit come via the bible from the near east. Jesus uses them because He was in that culture.

I have quote from William James on a book on my desk it says....We may be in the universe as cats and dogs in our libraries, seeing the boooks and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all..."

I dont know the exact context he wrote it in but it might be a good description. Life on earth is mysterious and god is a mystery, so we use metaphors.

In science we try as far as possible to verify by setting up the exact same condictions for the test, but we can't do that with life. Every instant is different, both in ourselves and without.



Yes..if only they had the bloody internet.:devil1:



Not at all it is fascinating topic for me, and this forum has some excellent contributors.

Here is an old thread on hell that helped me. I amy have changed some of my ideas sisnce then though.

Roger Pearse

1. Check whether this 'quote' is actually found in the work in question. There's a reasonable chance it may be in google books, at that date. Now that more and more stuff is online, I have noticed that the nonsense peddlers are increasingly falling back on specific editions of offline general encyclopedias which sound authoritative but are unlikely to be accessible to their readers. It should always ring warning bells if we see this, thus.

2. Check whether the statement is true. (It isn't).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

judge

Thanks for that Roger. Can you point me in the direction of a more accurate indication of what these schools taught?


Added in edit:
Google books gave me this ,so it appears the quote is found in the work.

Added in edit: Roger are you able to expand on your remark here?

After a little poke around I am suspecting Alexandria (with Clement and Origen as examples) might have and Nibisis and Antioch (with Theodore and Gregory as examples) also have taught universalism.
Just where is the quote wrong?

This article has some perhaps worthwhile info.

The doctrine of the final restoration of all souls seems to have been not uncommon in the East during the fourth and fifth centuries. It was clearly taught by Gregory of Nyssa9 and is attributed to Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia,10 and some Nestorian theologians.11 Others, such as Gregory of Nazianzus, regarded it as an open question.12 Augustine took the trouble to refute several current versions of universalism, as well as views on the extent of salvation which stopped short of universalism but were more generous than his own.13

Origen's universalism was involved in the group of doctrines known as 'Origenism', about which there were long controversies in the East. A Council at Constantinople in 543 condemned a list of Origenist errors including Apokatastasis, but whether this condemnation was endorsed by the

Fifth Ecumenical Council (553) seems in doubt. At any rate the condemnation of Origenism discredited universalism in the theological tradition of the East. In the West, not only Origen's heretical reputation but also Augustine's enormous influence ensured that the Augustinian version of the doctrine of hell prevailed almost without question for many centuries.

Toto

The quote from "The Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge" is from Christian_Universalism

Schaff-Herzog_Encyclopedia_of_Religious_Knowledge says you can blame Christian Classics Ethereal Library, not google books.

eta: if this is in error, perhaps it should be corrected. Can you provide specifics, Roger?

andrewcriddle

I suspect the issue may be that, whereas universalism was an option in many parts of the ancient church, it was not a local orthodoxy. Eg Origen's universalism does not mean that Universalism was ever the agreed position of the Church in Alexandria.

Andrew Criddle

Roger Pearse

Thank you Andrew for this. No, I can't provide chapter and verse on this, since I've never looked at it in great detail. But the assertion was that all these schools taught universalism. Whereas (iirc) even Origen did not do so; it was merely inferred from his works, after his death, that he did.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

robto

To try to get back to the OP, in addition to looking at uses of the word "gospel", you should consider writers who quote verses that could have come from a gospel. Maybe others can improve on this list, but to the best of my memory:

1 Clement - c. 90 AD - Ambiguous. Uses some phrases that could be gospel quotes or could be sayings in general circulation.


Ignatius - c. 110 AD - Ambiguous. Uses numerous phrases that could be gospel quotes or could be sayings in general circulation.


Didache - 1st-2nd century - Ambiguous. Cites the Lord's Prayer, saying to recite it "as the Lord commanded in his gospel", but since this is a composite document, portions of which were written at different times, it's hard to say how early this reference is, or if it was from a gospel or from oral tradition.


Barnabas - late 1st-early 2nd century - Ambiguous. Uses a few phrases that could be gospel quotes or could be sayings in general circulation.

And then there are numerous Christian writings, like the Shepherd of Hermas, that DON'T quote the gospels at all.

So, there is SOME support here for a knowledge of the gospels among early Christians, but it's not very strong. Certainly, there is no evidence that ALL early Christians considered the gospels authoritative, or central to their beliefs, or thought they were written by eyewitnesses (when 1 Clement describes the apostles traveling and teaching, he doesn't mention any of them writing anything).