The Mosaic Law (like many, many ancient religions) specified that for certain sins, a blood sacrifice must be made as atonement. Presuming you don’t want it to be your blood, that’s why you’d bring forth a spotless bird or a newborn lamb or whatever: it’s blood takes the place of yours and pays the price for your guilt.
Christian Doctrine holds that Christ “fulfilled” the law in that He – the sinless Son of God – took the place and paid the price. Thus, Christians don’t have to kill doves or lambs: Jesus paid the blood sacrifice for all their sins, past present and future.
Most of the ritualistic parts of the OT law (the things you cite) had to do with the concept of “cleanness,” which, by various removes, all connect back to the process and the ritual of sacrifice (e.g. don’t bring a blemished lamb to the altar; don’t blemish yourself with a tattoo before coming to the altar, don’t blemish your clothes, etc.). For Christians, the sacrifice is over and done with for all time, and so there’s no need to keep the ritual purity, any more than you need to keep shining your shoes for your court appearance after the judge dismisses the charges.
Well, that’s an interesting interpretation. How about the railing on the roof? Is that about cleanliness too? I’ve never associated any of the “don’t mix unlike stuff” rules with cleanliness, but I suppose one could argue that.
Fwiw, it’s a common Christian misconception that sin offerings had to be blood. There are a long list of offerings in the Bible, some for sin, some for guilt, some that were really just a form of taxes to support the temple and the priests… But the sin offering is described in Leviticus 5.1-5.13, (and somewhere else, I think, probably Deuteronomy) and it is usually an animal, but it has to be something the sinner can afford, and if he can’t afford a big animal, it’s a small animal, and if he can’t even afford a small animal, it’s just a measure of good flour.
And I see no indication anywhere in the Tanach that you CAN use your own blood for any sort of offering. The story of Abraham and the non-sacrifice of Isaac is as close as I can think of, and (1) that has nothing to do with sin and (2) that is traditionally thought of as the implementation of a divine BAN on human sacrifice.
The ancient Israelites were a pastoral people. Their wealth was their animals. While the Bible never explicitly says why animals are the most common sacrifice, I think it is highly likely that it was simply a sacrifice of something valuable. (And something the priests could live on.)
It’s not some unique theory of mine: I just tried to give a simplistic description of Atonementas most Christians today believe in it (the subsititutionary model is dominant). Christians argue over the details, but Atonement, as a concept, is an absolutely core doctrine to all of them.
Probably. Not sure. Much of the ideas of cleanness was metaphorical/symbolic in nature, but IANARabbi.
Point is, Christians believe the non-moral parts of the Mosaic law are null and void w/r/t them. Some hold the moral parts of the law are, too, (e.g. Ten Commandments) and only the NT moral injunctions obtain.
I just made about six generalizations in two sentances.
Sounds like a good reason for a knowledgeable Jew to decide he rejects Christian theology.
furt - We’re here to fight ignorance and I’ll concede that for the purposes of this thread, you have me pegged, or close enough anyway. You’ve posted some good material. Let me jump to the bottom of your post though.
Ok, but look. When you say that your inerrancy group -a minority of Christians- are the only True Christians, that is terrible sociology and worse theology. It’s also highly offensive. Calling it insular is a kindness.
Separately, there’s the matter of the rather hard edge of Southern Baptism relative to Northern Baptism, especially during the 1970s heyday. But one important fact I left out was the SB’s 1995 denunciation of racism. My characterizations, parody and brickbats were unfair - but guess what? All of that was more tolerant than the True Christian argument. That’s how bad it is. I did after all affirm that they were Christians.
Flyer basically called Aslan a Satanist. Turnabout is fair play and I argue I was more accurate in a relative sense. Why can’t moderate Christianity have a hard edge?
Look again. I was riffing off of Corinthians. I guess I should have put that paragraph inside the indentation.
I don’t have a problem with denouncing young earth creationists on a theological level, nor do I have problem denouncing those that are wholly out of touch with 19th century Christian charity, a charity of the spirit – one that I affirm was mostly absent in my parody and when I argued that Biblical literalism displaces Christ’s message.
I realize it is not unique to you. But you gave a particularly clear justification for throwing out much-but-not-all of the Mosaic law. Thank you for that.
Much of it was completely practical, and not even a little bit symbolic. The determination of whether an animal is “clean” or not is a health inspection, where a trained person examines the carcass and judges whether particular blemishes might make the carcass unsafe to eat or are okay.
When mold became a hot issue in homeowner’s insurance a few years back, it was popular to quote the Biblical verses on how a priest determined if a dwelling that was contaminated with mold could be cleaned and made safe to live in, or had to be destroyed. That was almost certainly a practical health regulation as well. So are the rules about skin blemishes and lepers. (What is translated as “leprosy” in the Bible appears to be a disease which is no longer extant, perhaps due to good public health measures.)
Other elements of cleanliness are probably both practical and symbolic. The period of time after childbirth during which a woman is unclean for intercourse is pretty close to the period of time that modern obstetricians advice new mothers to abstain. But modern obstetricians don’t distinguish between birth of a male or female infant. And the prohibition on sex-after-childbirth is linked to bleeding/closeness to death, so there was certainly a symbolic component as well.
Of course, following the Biblical laws on when a woman is clean or unclean for sex is an excellent way to improve the odds of conception. Yes, you can do better with a thermometer and examining mucus and a pee test, but given the technology of the times, those rules work pretty well. (if you make the reasonable assumption that a couple who has had to abstain for a couple of weeks is likely to get it on as soon as the prohibition is lifted.)
Other Biblical laws, like not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk, were probably practical in the sense that they kept the Israelites from drifting into the practice of competing religions.
Of course, you still need to judge which laws are “moral”. Personally, I would include the slaughter laws in the “moral” category, as they appear to be about minimizing the pain and suffering of the animal. But no Christian group seems to have kept them.
Contrarily, many Christians quote the Old Testament on the sinfulness of male-on-male sex, but the language used there is identical to the language used in condemning shellfish, and I think both were seen by the authors of the Bible as forms of uncleanliness.
And how do you judge laws that seem to be about reminding people of God, like the requirement to wear tassels on the corners of a cloak? I guess the standard Christian stance is to ignore them.
Yes. There are a lot of things that I think are extremely attractive about Christianity, but the theology isn’t one of them.
Catholics believe they are the One True Church. All of the Eastern Orthodox churches, as well as the Anglicans/Episcopalians, look down on the protestant traditions because they lack apostolic succession. Even the Methodists like to call themselves the “Extreme Center,” which is, IMO kind of a backdoor way of saying “everyone else is an extremist.” I don’t know of any tradition that doesn’t think theirs is in some way “right” or “better.” All of the Protestant churches are, at some point, an offshoot of another church, and they shot off because they thought they other guys were wrong.
I have fond memories of a dinner one Christmas break: I was home from Moody, and my dad, a Southern Baptist pastor, had as dinner guests an Arminian Orthodox preist and his wife, and two Catholics (One Irish, one Italian). Obviously, there’s some pretty serious theological disagreement at that table, but nobody was a dick about it, and it was a terrific evening.
I’ve had Muslim freinds who think I’m an infidel. So long as they aren’t rude about it, it doesn’t bother me a bit. And I find the less it bothers me, the less people are rude about it. YMMV.
I’m not sure what you mean by “Northern Baptists.” Southern Baptistsare a specific denomination, which are mostly in the south, but extant everywhere; I grew up in New Jersey. There is, currently no “Northern Baptist” denomination. If you mean the American Baptists, that split happened ages ago.
The inerrancy controveries of the 70s and 80s were primarily intra-denominational; that is there were people on both sides within all of the major evangelical denominations.
Sounds to me like Bricker’s “if they’re being assholes, why can’t I be one too?” argument. You can, if you want, but then ISTM you’re losing some of the value of the whole “moderate” thing.
Presbyterian Church in America, the conservative/evangelical branch of Presbyterianism. PCUSA is the liberal/mainline wing.
Yeah, there was no way you’d know that: Philadelphia College of the Bible, which is one of the traditional strongholds of fundamentalism along with Moody and Biola but which has changed names like nine times.
I am sorry but that isn’t true at least in my experience. I was raised in the Methodist church. It is a very mild branch of Protestantism and many of the key points are about not judging others or thinking you are better than they are even if we didn’t believe it ourselves. We certainly never tried to convince other groups like the Southern Baptists that were predominate in the town that they should switch over. The door was always open to for them or anyone for any event but there was no expectation other than that.
Half of my family was Southern Baptist and I was sent to Vacation Bible School a few times at their church. That was a completely different atmosphere. I wasn’t intimidated because it was a very small town and I already knew almost everyone there but I heard more about Heaven, Hell, Satan damnfire and destruction in a day there than I heard in all my time in the Methodist Church. We also learned about Bible mythology but we mainly just focused on fellowship, charity and good works.
I became an Episcopalian as an adult because my then wife was a Catholic who wanted out because of the sex scandals and there was a very good Episcopal Church nearby. It did not disappoint. The only requirement to joining the Episcopal Church is to show up and say that you were baptized in any other church during your life. If you haven’t been yet, they can arrange that too very easily. The Episcopal Church is even more lenient than the Methodist Church and tends to be very affluent. You go to the services, sing a few hymns and then have a social party afterwards with lots of good food hosted by a different family every week. They also tend to have lots of extra social activities like harvest fests and wine tastings. Bible talk doesn’t play into it very much.
I attended many churches growing up because that was the required activity for most of my friends if I stayed with them over the weekend. Southern Baptists were pretty extreme in my view but even they had nothing on the Pentecostals and the Church of Christ congregations. I saw everything including people passing out in the aisles and speaking in tongues in the latter two. They also really wanted to convert me young so that I wouldn’t go to Hell. I appreciated the sentiment but I always had to kindly pass on the offer. We never did anything close to that in the Methodist church.
If I may nitpick, it appears to me that you are looking at the American Protestant landscape and declaring it to be the “Christian” position (which, in American Protestantism today, I can see those positions being pre-eminent due to the largest denomination, by far, being Southern Baptist and the second largest being Assembly of God Pentecostals). However, I feel you go to far when you label things like the “substitutionary model is dominant” based on that viewpoint. The largest Christian denomination in the world, and it isn’t really close, is the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church does not believe in substitutionary atonement - it believes in Anselm’s satisfaction theory of atonement. Satisfaction may be similar to Penal Substitution (fleshed out by Protestant reformer John Calvin), but it isn’t the same.
Personally, I don’t have a dog in the fight between satisfaction and substitution (though I personally find penal substitution to be more abhorrent), as I am a Christus Victor ELCA’er (that’s the mainline Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for those who don’t know the initials). Though Girardian scapegoat mimetic atonement theories are quite interesting to me (but I’ll stick with Aulen’s Christus Victor, personally ;)).
No, no: it was fine. Basically, I’m glad I posted my mockery - but I’m also glad I was called out for it.
Well, as Shagnasty notes, churches do vary in terms of the ecumenicalism. But I actually don’t have a problem with believing yours is the true church (though most say something like “Best for me”). I mean that’s why you’re there, right? It’s just that calling others nonChristian because they don’t believe in your idiosyncratic beliefs crosses some sort of line IMHO. As does eg claiming an as yet unbaptized infant is going to hell. Grave risks? Ok. Automatic hell? That’s just wrong on multiple levels. Or that you must keep kosher no matter what. Mature religions don’t go in for that stuff (Judaism renounces the latter pretty explicitly). Now I’m guessing (and FriarTed assures me) that plenty of tough Fundamentalists nonetheless grasp the concept of common sense. Still, some things rankle.
This. I can imagine that an adherent of the True Christian concept being discrete and not-a-dick about it. That actually counts for something in my book.
I’m alluding to the pre-Civil War split and am working off of my link.
The big difference though is that I admitted my lack charity. Great religions have a mixture of hard and soft, so provided I’m willing to backpeddle my stance in this thread is pretty much in keeping with Christian tradition. More generally, some points need to be made though it’s also beneficial to acknowledge their unfairness where it occurs. And substantively, an anti-science position is morally questionable, beyond that really given its capacity for good.
Or taking another angle, some positions are sufficiently preposterous that mockery is the best tool for the job. Give me a serious argument (possibly “Grave risk” if you do X.) and I’ll consider addressing it seriously.
…Or 3) once you cross your beliefs into the political realm – once you’re in my face that is – I may contemplate rhetorical retaliation. With the same caveats applying about seriousness and acknowledging weaknesses in argument.
Also: Er. If you don’t mind me asking were you from southern or northern NJ? I grew up in northern NJ and didn’t encounter much fundamentalism.
Lol, and I have Orthodox Jewish friends who complain constantly about having no actual vacation because they have to use all their paid time off on the required holidays.
(Swype initially wrote “bacon” for vacation, which I thought awfully funny in context.)
It still stands to reason that the Bible was the work of humans . It is humans who state it is the word of God, or inspired by him , so we know it is belief in other humans, not any God.
You didn’t try to convert them, but that doesn’t mean that your church, as a matter of doctrine, didn’t think they were wrong (and most evangelicals frown on trying to “convert” people who are actively involved in other congregations; you convert the unchurched, you don’t “steal sheep” from the church down the road. That shit gets your pastor disinvited from the monthly interdenominational prayer breakfast). You probably just didn’t pick up on some of what you were being taught.
While “don’t judge others” may be what you took as the core of Methodism, plenty other Methodists would say it’s about being “born again.” The denomination has a lot of diversity in it, from solidly conservatve evangelical to pretty liberal mainline churches.
Like everyone else, Methodists have specific doctrines they believe in, some of which necessarily entail saying that others’ doctrines are wrong: e.g. they pretty clearly are disagreeing with the Catholics when they say “The Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardon, worshiping, and adoration, as well of images as of relics, and also invocation of saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warrant of Scripture, but repugnant to the Word of God.” Or to pick a less obvious one, when they say that humans have free will to choose to follow God or not, that’s a direct contradiction of what the Presbyterians across town believe. Or for a ripped-from-the-headlines issue, Methodist churches still consider the practice of homosexuality to be sinful. That puts them at odds with some other mainline denominations.
So yeah, there are indeed ways that the Methodists think they’re right and others are wrong. They’re just not being dicks about it.
And that’s the point I was making: thinking someone else’s theology is wrong and that yours is right, and being rude about it are seperate issues. I’ve seen fundies eating with papists at those breakfasts.
It definitely reflects well on you. … though I’m not sure about the last bit. The apostles were jockeying for position while Christ was still around, things got chippy shortly after he left, and we’ve been casting out, anathematizing, and excommunicating each other ever since.
Being broadminded, tolerant and accepting is in keeping with A Christian tradition, but not the only one.
Papist here. I too have been to events where papists and fundies and Jews discussed and debated religion. Among people of good will, it’s one of life’s great pleasures.
It’s hard to discuss religion here at STMB without things degenerating into unpleasantness and accusations of bigotry and invocation of the flying spaghetti monster and the invisible sky magician and and all that. This thread has avoided that.
Thanks for a coherent, enlightening and non-argumentative (something that’s rare on these boards) explanation of literalist (or whatever word you prefer) beliefs.
Indeed. Cheers to the folks who have participated in this thread! It’s been great reading (and more times than not a religion thread on SDMB tends to devolve into not so great reading).
