Can you give a cite from the Gospels that Christians are to use ONLY the Gospels for formulating Christian beliefs and standards of practice?
No, what He actually preached is “as you forgive, so shall you be forgiven”. That’s a very different message.
Likewise, if He preached UNCONDITIONAL forgiveness, why is He recorded as saying
(Matthew 18:5-7)
Hardly sounds like unconditional forgiveness for those people, does it?
(Luke 17:1-3)
Well, it looks like we are commanded to forgive IF the offender repents, not regardless of whether or not the offender repents.
Hardly unconditional, and this is by words attributed directly to Christ.
However, they pre-excluded anything “supernatural” or “miraculous”. Likewise, their method specifically prohibited any sort of explication as to why they reached their conclusions. Instead, each candidate verse was voted on as yes/no/maybe, WITHOUT any justification. The votes were tallied and the majority vote was determined to be the “true” interpretation.
So basically, what this says to me (former satanist, present pantheist, married to atheist) is that if you love someone enough to die for him, the way Jesus-as-Godhead did, then youre living right and true and youll be happy and go to heaven. If youre a selfish prick and think only of yourself and your own pleasures, which is what the ten commandments more or less boil down to, youre in for some trouble.
No, I can’t, I won’t, and I don’t believe that we are – we are to use the Scriptures and Apostolic Tradition in shaping our beliefs and standards of practice; you know that.
But with “every man his own Bible expert,” it’s possible to find, somewhere in that immense collection of wisdom, gems of guidance that would lead one to believe that there is no God (Psalms 2:14b), that nothing is worth doing (Ecclesiastes), that one should immediately take after all Wiccans with a high-powered rifle (Exodus 22:18, in the most common translation), and numerous other fun stuff that I’m sure you would agree are parts of the Christian tradition. :eek:
I am committed to Jesus Christ – I have taken Him as my Savior and my Lord. And so I look to the record of what He said as my primary guide to behavior. I will use everybody from my namesake to the Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong, including particularly Paul, James, and John’s letters, as illumination on how to implement His words – but if His words are not key to what someone else believes is “Christianity” that’s their problem and not mine. If it’s possible to read a Pauline passage contrary to what the Summary of the Law and the New Commandment calls for, then that is the wrong reading, the wrong interpretation to place on it.
Tell you what: you forgive as you feel called to forgive, and we will forgive as we feel called to forgive. I have too many sins that call for forgiveness to invoke the “with the measure with which you judge you will be judged.” And I might also note that none of us is the Lord sitting in judgment – those who “cause one of these little ones to sin” are His duty to judge, not mine. (And I might add that the transforming effects of His grace in my life took hold as a direct result of something that happened when I showed mercy and compassion to one of those who had “caused one of these little ones to sin.”
We are not to sit in judgment over others – the most along those lines that we are called to do is to form judgments about what will help or harm them, and then, with overt love, speak the truth of His message to them in a way that will help them to see for themselves what is wrong with what will harm them and what is right with what will help them.
There’s so much right with the things you post about our faith that I hate to get into one of these exchanges with you – but I think there’s a problem with how you are looking at the issue, and it feels like what I’m called to do is to point it out to you.
Peace.
He also forgave those who crucified him without condition and without any repentance on the part of the forgiven. He certainly didn’t preach vengence.
That’s true only as it pertained to the deeds of Jesus, not the words. There is no dispute in the Jesus Seminar that Jesus may have believed in the supernatural or have spoken of it.
The miraculous deeds attributed to Christ are not so much a priori discarded as they are regarded as assertions so extraordinary that they cannot be accepted without extraordinary proof. The assumption is that naturalistic deeds are more likely than miraculous, but the miraculous is not ruled out absolutely, just as the most unlikely explanation of certain events.
This seems to offend a lot of Christians but remember the J.S. is a historical enterprise, not a religious one. They are trying to find out what a purely historical method of research can tell us about Jesus, and they are using historical assumptions about what is possible. It would be unscholarly (from a purely historical perspective) to do otherwise.
diogenes…he didn’t forgive them…he prayed for
God to forgive them…
that J. seminar sound really stupid to me. they are trying to interpolate what would be said by someone whom they have limited resources on. and they don’t believe that he said what was attributed to him? that isn’t history. that is idiocy.
I thought Christians believed that he was God. It’s the same difference anyway. Praying for God to forgive someone is the same as forgiving them yourself
I don’t think you know what “interpolate” means. maybe you mean “interpret?” How about “extropolate?”
The JS tried to assertain what sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels were most likely to have been said by the historical Jesus and what was likely to have been altered or written later. They are not asserting anything as certain, they are presenting what the best available historical methods (including such disciplines as historiography, linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, theology and good old classical history) can tell them. These guys all have PHDs and most of them are professors at major universities.What personal research or expertise can you present to support your claim that they are “stupid?”
Jesus’s teachings of forgiveness and “judge not…” don’t mean not taking evil seriously or saying, “Eh, whatever anybody does is fine, no matter who it hurts.”
If I’m hurting people (say, walking down the street firing a semiautomatic all over the place), is it okay to use force to stop me? I think just about everyone, Christians included, would say yes. There would be disagreement about how much/what kind of force is justified, who should have authority to wield this force (private individuals? police officers? soldiers?), and other specifics like this.
The Jesus Seminar violated basic scholarly principles. They did not state the reasons for their conclusions. Indeed, their terms specifically prohibited explication of why they reached their conclusions. Instead, they took a pure “yes/no” vote without any explication.
In a way, it’s the ultimate in anti-scholarship, just boil everything down to pat answers and work a posteriori to rationalize them.
Several members of the JS, including John Crossan and Robert Funk have written entire books explaining their methodology and conclusions.
All done a posteriori. The actual “conclusions” of the group as a whole were not subject to normal scholarly methods. It was just a mechanical tallying of simple votes.
You do need to remember the context in which this happened - here’s the whole passage - notice verse 6 says that “they were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him”. Notice also, that Jesus does not tell the woman that everything is OK now, but says “Go now and leave your life of sin.” He walks the fine line between blind application of the laws of judgement and the bland forgiveness of all sins…
Grim
I don’t think He did preach unconditional forgiveness. Afterall, as Christians, we believe that a condition for forgiveness is a payment of debts. If it was all guaranteed, why would he have allowed Himself to be crucified. Doesn’t seem like there would be much need as there would be no “condition” that needed met.
As further verification that He didn’t preach unconditional forgiveness, He talked many times about the wheat and chaffe, goats and lambs, the brides w/lamp oil vs. unprepared brides. I think many of His parables focus around being left out of the Kingdom. If it were all guaranteed forgiveness, who would be left out? Who would be the goats, chaffe, etc.?
Sorry no chapters: verses. I’m at work without my bible.
mmm…
Well, I don’t think that He was advocating that one should be a doormat!
I completely agree with you, Dogface. I know that I’m in complete denial of my own sins when I start comparing them to others’ and trying to come out on top. But I know it’s human nature (alas) to do that. It really irritates me that people do this because I think “judgementalism” is the #1 reason people stay away from Christianity. I’m not saying “whatever goes,” because hedonism is not a Christian principle but Christians have to understand that they cannot impose their will or even their understanding of God’s will on others. Even God Himself refuses to do that.
Sorry if that’s a hi-jack but I think it goes to the OP.
mmm…
Crap! I mostly meant to refer to Dogface’s last two paragraphs.