Toto

The glorifyhisname website is back up, and I have skimmed Brother Lawrence's biography. I see no evidence that he believed in a Historical Jesus. In fact, he was a simple Catholic who lived before the Quest for the historical Jesus got going. He went to war under the banner of Jesus, and he joined a monastery. But he believed in his own mental experiences, not a historical construct.

The Catholic Church requires a belief in a Jesus who was part of the triune God, a spiritual being who was born as a man of a virgin and rose from the dead. Is this a historical Jesus? Even if that qualifies as a historical Jesus, that story seems to have been irrelevant to Brother Lawrence.

Ben C Smith

You cannot possibly have misunderstood matters this egregiously. I am not claiming that Lawrence believed in an historical Jesus in the way that phrase has been understood since the Enlightenment. My claim was, to recap my own words, that Lawrence had access to the entire NT and was not a closet mythicist. If at some point I happened to use the phrase historical Jesus where you would prefer gospel Jesus or such, I am hoping that you will overlook the misstep and take me for what I obviously intend. Do you think Lawrence accepted that Jesus once walked and talked on the earth or not? Do you think he knew the gospels or not?

Ben.

Toto

I don't see that Lawrence cared if a historical Jesus walked on earth. It's not even clear if he read the entire NT, or how he read the gospels. He was just a simple working man with intense experiences of God, and he interpreted them in the framework of the prevailing religion of the time.

You are trying to use his writings as evidence that someone can believe in a historical Jesus but not mention it. You need to start with the case that he actually cared one way or another about a historical Jesus.

Did he read the gospels? He didn't have enough education to become a proper monk, and his parents only taught him what he needed to know.

Catholic doctrine required that he affirm that Jesus lived on earth. But Catholic doctrine has been a bit flexible in its interpretation and emphasis.

So its your case to make. Why do you think that Brother Lawrence believed in a historical Jesus? Just because he was labeled a Christian?

gurugeorge

But as I said, that point goes both ways, you are hoist with a double-edged sword petard and have won a Pyrrhic victory with it

Because: while the argument from silence doesn't actually depend on such an assumption (only your strawman version of it does), the traditional Christian way of arguing about Paul does depend on such an assumption.

IOW all you have done is highlight the circular nature of the standard picture of Paul.

Rick Sumner

We know about an awful, awful lot of Christians contemporary with him. We know of none who did not affirm that there was an historical Jesus. That is subsequently the default position. If you wanted to suggest otherwise, you would own the burden of proof.

But even beyond that, we can throw "historical Jesus" right out the window, if you'd like. Doherty would like to suggest that such silences are indicative of a lack of knowledge of the gospel narratives. Would you like to suggest that Lawrence did not know the gospels?

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Ben C Smith

And I do not see that Paul cared if an HJ walked on earth (except for the crucifixion, which we do hear a lot about from Paul). This is the point of my argument.

Because of the two quotes from Joseph de Beaufort, because Lawrence would have heard the Catholic liturgy, presumably including the Bible readings, on a regular basis, and because the notion that Jesus was only a myth postdates Lawrence by a couple of centuries.

Ben.

Gamera

Not to be a pedant, but a petard isn't a sword. A petard is an explosive device. Renaissance battles involved building a trench with a hoist that would swing the lit petard over a fortification to explode among the enemy. Hence to hoist a petard. Of course Hamlet memorialized the famous phrase to be hoisted with one's own petard, which refered to having the hoisted petard explode among your own ranks, hence to do harm to yourself as a result of a plan to harm others.

I know, I'm a pedant.

gurugeorge

Umm, it was a joke Gamera - horribly mixed metaphor

Toto

I don't know what Lawrence knew, but someone who asserts that he must have known the Gospels should be able to show that. This was 17th c France, and the Catholic Church did not encourage the reading of the gospels, which would have been in Latin in any case. What did semi-literate French peasants know of the gospel story? If he were German, he would have seen Passion Plays, at least.

Just as you tend to read modern materialism back into the first century, people may be reading modern American-style Christianity back into 17th c. France. It in inconceivable that anyone in modern American doesn't know the basic story of Jesus. Is that true of all so-called Christians at all times?

And we don't ever hear about the crucifixion from Brother Lawrence.

Here are those quotes, from you: So a second hand source says that Brother Lawrence wanted to walk in the footprints of Jesus. This is an obvious metaphor. Was it supplied by Joseph do Beaufort or were those the words of Brother L?

It seems to me that Brother L. had his own internal religious experience and fit it into the available religious institution, without troubling himself over theology or history.

Is this what Paul did? If so, which way does this cut?

gurugeorge

We do know, because his biographer says so, that he believed in a the Jesus of the gospels, and moreover he belonged to an order that believes in the Jesus of the gospels. But you wouldn't think that just from reading Lawrence, would you?

I'll repeat what I said much earlier, although Ben quite rightly pointed out that it wasn't exactly relevant to the precise point of the OP. However, it is relevant to you HJ gloaters out there who think Ben has just won a little victory with his strawman argument. It's really quite simple and blindingly obvious:

Lawrence's writing is obviously not proof of a historical Jesus.

But for the same reason, neither is Paul's.

The mythicist position is precisely what you get when you don't come to Paul with any preconceptions about what he must, could, should or would have said, based on any special assumptions about his character or supposed facts of his life. It just assumes a normal human character, a neutral human character one might say, looks at what he says, and takes it from there. So the first thing this neutral stance sees is that, if the historicist story is true (i.e. if the assumption were true that Paul knew people who'd known a living human Jesus), there's no evidence of that truth in Paul. What's in Paul is as mythical-looking as what's in Lawrence, and just as that mythical-looking nature of Lawrence means that (should one ever wish to do such a bizarre thing) nobody could ever use Lawrence as proof of the historical Jesus, the mythical-looking nature of Paul means exactly the same thing.

See, it's irrelevant how the silence about a historical Jesus in either Lawrence or Paul comes to be, there simply is that silence. HJ-ers can pile argument upon argument for why that silence is there, according to various historicist assumptions about Paul's character and circumstances, but none of that amounts to evidence for a historical Jesus.

OTOH, there isn't silence at all, there's positive garrulousness - about a mythical entity. And unlike with Lawrence, we have no reason to assume that Paul isn't talking about a merely mythical entity. We have none of the behind-the-scenes knowledge about Paul that we have about Lawrence.

Remember who bears the burden of proof here. It is no part of the business of the mythicist to prove that a historical Jesus didn't exist. It's her business merely to point out that, if a historical Jesus existed, there's scant to no evidence of it, while there is plenty of evidence for a myth (with some "historical" references that gradually become historical).

Therefore it's reasonable to believe it's myth all the way down.

That is the deft and appropriate use of Ockham's razor.