Well, *almost *everyone.
I have run into fundies who say that even the events described in the parables were all true stories.
And Jonah.
Yeah, Paul says a bunch of things that one wishes he hadn’t, especially about women and marriage. But it would be a mistake to dismiss him out of hand (other than as part of a dismissal of Christianity out of hand, which is a whole 'nother thing); he’s pretty amazing when he’s not being a bit too much of a [del]dick[/del] creature of his times.
Depends. Most I know do, but I do have one Christian friend who says that Jesus was just an awesome guy. She calls herself a liberal Christian because she follows his teachings.
I asked because it said “liberal Christian” on her Facebook profile. I was hoping it just mean a Christian who was not part of the Religious Right (which is what I am).
There can be people other than Christians who believe, literally, in the Old Testament, miracles and all, while not believing in the Resurrection. There are fundamentalist Orthodox Jews who believe in the O. T. literally – 6-day creation, snake, Flood, entire Moses and Exodus story, etc. But they don’t buy the New Testament stuff.
ETA: And, BTW, they wouldn’t necessarily believe literally in the 8-day Hanukkah miracle either, since that isn’t from the O. T.
Yeah, I know. That’s why I specified Christians and not Jews.
Progressive Quakers can believe just about anything they want. But there is an expectation that everyone believe that there was something special about Jesus. This doesn’t necessarily mean you believe he performed miracles and rose from the dead. But you do have think to believe Jesus was more than just an awesome guy.
You can be agnostic and still be a Quaker, though.
I imagine he has something in mind like this: Progressing Spirit : The Resurrection
I suppose that I am probably a little more congenial to Bp. Spong’s POV than FriarTed (but I don’t know that for certain, I don’t know what FT’s take on him actually is).
I think that believing in Jesus’ resurrection is ***the one ***defining characteristic of Christians. Beyond that, your mileage may vary.
St. Paul on Christ’s resurrection:
“if Christ be not risen, our faith is foolish”
That sums it up, for me.
At the risk of making myself sound crazy, some people have been drawn towards the idea that the Bible is entirely symbolic, but ALSO that most of it has been altered (such as the inclusion of demons, Hell, etc) by priests and leaders to better control the people they ruled over. As for the existence of Jesus Christ, I’d even heard it said that he was TWO people. One person who was born of a virgin, but died in Japan. And another who came only as an adult to teach and be crucified, but was resurrected. This was all apparently planned and executed by an advanced civilization that wanted to help these people improve spiritually.
Depends on what you mean by taking the Bible literally. There is a difference between not taking literally the parts of the Bible that weren’t meant to be taken literally and not taking literally those which clearly are meant to be historical, factual accounts.
Considering only about half the world’s nominal Christians are Roman Catholic, the stance of the Pope should have little bearing. Also depends on what you mean by there being no Hell.
Again depends on the definition of literalism.
Some may call themselves “Christian” but those who do not believe in the Resurrection are in no reasonable sense of the word, “Christian”. The Resurrection is a fundamental part of Christ’s work of atonement and salvation. If one does not believe that , one is at best a Christian-inspired theistic rationalist.
Sounds like a bunch of New Ager/UFO cultist bullshit to me.
Catholics officially do, the idea being (and I think it’s in one of the Letters but it’s almost midnight and I can’t remember which one) that resurrection is what gives sense to everything that went on before, that without resurrection the rest is basically Yet Another Prophet. Individual Catholics, you’d have to ask: for many it’s one of the “Pascal’s Wager dogmas” (the ones where you can’t really claim to understand it but say ‘ok, whatever, I’m just not going to give myself a headache trying to’), others are absolutely certain it happened.
A lot of that New Ager/UFO stuff is by Erich von Däniken. Another guy, by the name of J.J. Benítez, claims that Jesus was an alien “trojan horse” (his Caballo de Troya series is on volume 9), but I don’t know if his books have been translated to English.
So of course, what you should have also been mindful to include in this:
was that this also depends on what it means to believe, and what it is we understand the Resurrection to be (and how people might have described, in perhaps imperfect, evocative language, an otherwise miraculous, beyond-human-comprehension event).
Yeah, but it sounds a lot better than some of the absolute filth people have tried to pass off as reality. Such as the idea that we are the only planet with the only forms of intelligent life ever to exist in the millions of years the universe has been around.
I know a small handful of Christians who believe that the resurrection was a metaphor, to one degree or another.
One guy holds that it’s all a metaphor. Another believes that the spirit of Christ rose from the dead, but not the body. Yet another is so lost in the depths of theosophist mysticism, nobody can make any sense of what he believes!
There’s room for an astonishing variety of beliefs.
Raised Catholic, practicing Catholic, and I guess the most accurate way of describing my beliefs is that it could have happened if God had decided to go that way. I’m not too concerned about whether or not it did actually happen, or if it did happen, how accurately it was reported in scripture as it has come to us today. I’m a big supporter of “in God, all things are possible.” To me, that’s the crux of the message. It’s possible.
It’s common within neopaganism* to consider Jesus Christ “An Ascended Master” (a concept I believe we stole from the Theosophists). Other Ascended Masters include Mary, Confucius and Kwan Yin. Ascended Masters are teachers who have “gotten it,” and align their God-selves with their human selves and can, if they choose, take their bodies with them when they die.
So, it’s a bit more than “just this really cool guy,” but Ascension is something that, eventually and given enough lives, we’ll all do. It’s just, y’know…hard.
So I believe (as much as I believe anything, which is that it sounds good at the moment) that Jesus’ Resurrection as described in Scripture sounds a whole lot like what my people call Ascension. But I most certainly don’t believe in a literal Bible!
*which is a huge umbrella term for a bunch of New Religious Movements which are often contradictory, so this does certainly not apply to all neopagan paths or practitioners
So, WhyNot, just to be super clear…you *do *believe in Ascension.
Millions, huh? The ghost of Carl Sagan would like to have a word with you.
I…think so. Sometimes, anyhow. I’m very ambivalent about my religion at the moment. (In the actual definition of ambivalent: strong feelings on both sides.) Some days I’m Agnostic, some Atheist, and a few a True Believer.
Honestly, I feel like religiousity is hard wired. You either have the wiring for it or you don’t. I’m wired for it. What I can’t decide is if that wiring was entirely random, selected for by natural forces because it helped us survive and thrive as a species…or if that wiring was put in place by some Divine (of which I may be a part) fiddling with DNA to remind us that we’re more than talking sacks of meat.
Sorry, I guess I can’t be super clear. I’m not at all super clear in my head right now.