Toto

Jim West linked to an essay by Peter Berger

Some Theologians Never Die—They Just Wait to be Googled.

Berger then goes on to point out that the growth in Christianity is happening among the Pentecostals, who do believe in the supernatural: "The world today is full of millions of electricity- and radio-users who have no difficulty believing in spirits and miracles—and not only in the less-developed regions of the planet. "

Vorkosigan

The essay couldn't be published..... lol.

mountainman

Overview here? or New Testament & Mythology (or via: amazon.co.uk)



Rudolf Bultman.

sotto voce

I wonder which modern agent has sufficient authority to make this view official. Professional scientists around the world are religious, perhaps more so than professionals in the arts. America has deity recognised on its coinage; Britain, likewise, and successive British governments continue to subsidise religious education (currently, in an obsessive, barely legal manner). European democratic governments, though Europe has become highly polychromatic in matters of belief, still retain many more or less formal links with religion. In the last century, several European governments used the religion of Vatican City State, itself granted existence by a fascist state, with 'transubstantiation' giving kudos to 'priests', as tools of totalitarianism.

Hitchens is dead. Dawkins has finally admitted agnosticism. Despite that, Grayling continues with his atheist project. Perhaps because of it, he is struggling to establish it. "We are not in it to get rich, God knows that is not going to happen." So no agent of the West can constitute authority enough to define modern societies as being ruled by a closed system of scientific rationality. When push comes to shove, Western officialdom turns to the supernatural, albeit the supernatural dispensed officiously!

In the rest of the world, evangelicalism, Catholicism and Islam compete, and, with Hinduism, between them surely hold a majority. There is no single modern worldview, because so many believe that the supernatural exists, and will eventually intervene in human affairs, even if this does not occur presently. The worldview that Bultmann called 'mythological', in which ordinary reality is 'constantly invaded', is aggressive overstatement, a straw man.

Not fair at all. The NT indicates that the miraculous attached mainly to the personal manifestation of God, and that miracles would not be generally supplied after the resurrection of same, because that event would be evidence enough (the sign of Jonah). Supernatural action was, but does not remain, as common, easily visible occurrence, according to the NT. So Bultmann did not read carefully enough.

In a more rational, more informed world, his publisher seems to have thought otherwise. Perhaps we will see, have seen, the reasons.

Agreed, that is a problem. It bears not a trace of supporting rationality. It looks like tub-thumping demagoguery, not philosophy or theology.

Today, in the USA, that unique but strange land, that hotbed of cults, some of which are dangerous, most of which are exported, there are four great antichrist sects: Catholicism, Calvinism, Charismatism and Creationism. (A fifth, KJVOnlyism, was prevalent, but has in recent years its popularity has receded, due to ridicule.) Charismatism, aka Pentecostalism, is growing, as the OP observes. Charismatism may be said, and quite often is said, to have no genuine charisma, and to have no more connexion with Pentecost than it has with the planet Pluto. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that it believes in the supernatural any more than Catholicism, Calvinism, and Creationism believe in it, or more than, say, the Anglican Communion, Bultmann's Lutherans, and global Baptists believe in it. It merely sees a need to make 'church' more credible by association, however tenuous, with the charismata mentioned in the New Testament. Their practice has spread, and now Anglicans, Catholics and even straight-laced Calvinists raise their arms, drone and mutter, to order.

But this novelty is secondary; very secondary. Willingly, or otherwise, all of these groups, and many more, believe that all mankind will be resurrected; to life, or to judgment. They believed it from their respective origins; most of them, long before the rise of 'Pentecostalism'. Almost all of them use electricity, and believe, as did Michael Faraday, as did James Clark Maxwell, who effectively provided them with that commodity, that Jesus raised Lazarus, and that the dead will be raised.

James The Least

Bultmann was being way too optimistic if he expected that people would give up the mythology of the Jesus Redivivus cultus just because they now drive cars and have modern medicine. People need mythology every bit as much as they need food and water, and here in the west the Jesus brand has unsurpassed prestige. It's the Rolls-Royce of mythology.

"Demythologizing" the Bible has always been a quixotic venture. It's like someone who watches a science-fiction movie and tells you everything that's factually wrong about it.

EarlDoherty

I think SV and others are missing the point. I'm sure Bultmann realized that Christians DO use electric light and radio and modern medicine even at the same time as believing in spirits and miracles. What they don't do is recognize the contradiction they are engaged in. He was speaking of what one OUGHT to do in this day of electricity and medicine if they are going to be logically consistent.

There is no better example of the compartmentalization of world outlook where religion is concerned, even on the part of allegedly intelligent and accomplished scholars. Room must be left for the indoctrination which produced the irrational and pre-modern beliefs of religion. And so a separate compartment is created in the brain to accomodate it. Does anyone really think that a modern theologian has subjected the apparent contradiction to rational study and resolved it in a way that the brain of the non-believer could accept? Of course not.

In Lee Strobel's interview of Dr. Gary Collins (The Case for Christ, p.152), Strobel asks:

"But is it really rational to believe that evil spirits are responsible for some illnesses and bizarre behavior?"

Collins responds:

"From my theological beliefs, I accept that demons exist. We live in a society in which many people believe in angels. They know there are spiritual forces out there, and it's not too hard to conclude that some might be malevolent..."

And I responded in my "cross-examination" of Dr. Collins (in Challenging the Verdict: A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ, p.110):

Well, you have only corroborated my previous observations, Dr. Collins. You accept that demons exist because your theological beliefs, based on the convictions of more primitive times and cultures, require them, not because modern science or rationality supports them. I know full well that many people do believe in angels, but there is no more evidence for their existence than for the existence of demons. Popular entertainment today may thrive on both, but they reflect the popular imagination, not demonstrable reality.

Bultmann's observation was correct. It is impossible to accept the rationalities of modern science and our knowledge of the observable universe and still believe in spirits and miracles as recounted in the New Testament. It is impossible to accept that the picture of Jesus in the Gospels as driving out evil spirits and communicating with them is anything more than the superstitions of the people who wrote them. Otherwise, you are living a life of irrational contradiction and even insanity.

What is our definition of insanity? Can we really say that those Christians who daily live with the expectation of being Raptured are not certifiably insane? And what has created that insanity? What else but the indoctrination of irrational religion? It's probably the most powerful force in the human psyche, even in our evolved DNA. Fortunately, some in this modern age seem to be undergoing mutation. Unfortunately, it's a race against time on our planet.

Earl Doherty

sotto voce

Doubtless because nobody has ever confronted them with a valid contradiction. It's not valid to state that, because illness is traced to medical conditions, that all illness is due to medical conditions. It's not valid to state that, because illness due to demon possession was apparently common in NT times, that it is common, or even exists, now. It is not valid argument to state that, because an alleged phenomenon is not detected by scientific method, that it cannot exist. That is an approach that merely betrays ignorance of science.

For theism, there is simply no case to answer, from any aspect of science. Which is doubtless why there is no 'official' modern worldview, and why the billions of people who maintain theist belief, who would very possibly prefer to do without it, can, perhaps must, ignore the hollow protests of atheists. Nothing whatsoever has occurred since the Renaissance to necessarily even modify theist belief, let alone discount it. Modernity counts for absolutely nothing.

'Science has nothing to do with Christ.' Charles Darwin

EarlDoherty

Again, you are missing the point. It is not a case of whether it is a "valid contradiction" to declare that there are pink elephants living on the far side of the moon who live forever and are beaming their mental telepathy to earth to make us behave in certain ways. The point is, modern science and rationality has given us no reason to believe such a thing and every reason to reject it.

If an "alleged phenomenon is not detected by scientific method" and there is no other basis on which to postulate it which does not contravene rationality and what science could possibly support, then it is not a question of whether technically "it cannot exist" but whether we have any valid reason to postulate it.

Otherwise, one could postulate the existence of anything which science and rationality do not or cannot support, and reasonable intelligent people have no basis or right to dismiss it. Is that what you are advocating?

I don't think I have ever read a more nonsensical statement than this on FRDB. Those last two sentences are so thoroughly bizarre that you totally discredit yourself. Clearly, your lead-lined compartments are effectively isolated from each other.

But let's see what we're actually dealing with here. Do you, sotto voce, like Dr. Gary Collins, believe in the existence of demons, and that they malevolently cause at least some illnesses?

Earl Doherty

sotto voce

But science cannot demonstrate that this is not the case. More to the point, it cannot prove that Jesus did not rise from the dead. It is absurd to suppose that it can do so.

It's perfectly rational to suppose that a creator of the cosmos can break his own rules....

... in which case, science becomes nugatory.

Remember Darwin.

The New Testament is regarded as valid reason. The products of the New Testament, changes of personal behaviour, are regarded as valid reason.

Correct, they cannot do that. People can and will believe whatever they see fit to think, without permission from you and me.

Toto

What Darwin really wrote