Is there a term for something that can only be defined using itself in the definition? A cyclodrome? An oxysphere? Because “a Christian is someone who calls him/herself a Christian” would fit pretty well.
I suppose the same is true of any other religion. I guess this thread is pretty much done.
Quite correct. Harrowing Hell is a version of the journey to the underworld undertaken by many mythological deities & heroes, including Herakles, Inanna, Psykhe, and Odysseus. Hell, even Aragorn did it.
I believe Sheol and Hades/Hell are exactly the same place, but like so many things in scriptures Sheol is the veiled Hell, while in the NT Hell is revealed for what it really is. I believe also people sent there, before they know Jesus personally go to the veiled Hell, the effects of the torment are hidden, they are refined by the fires, but much of the cruel nature of Hell is hidden - this is the great mercy of our God. Once a person gets to know God as the person Jesus all truths start to be revealed, and the horrible nature of Hell is no longer blocked.
You use the word mercy in an … idiosyncratic … way.
A God willing to torment mortals for an infinite amount of time for their obviously-finite amount of evil they committed during their mortal lives is a vile fiend. You worship the Demiurge.
I took him to be saying the first and pointing that out was the intent of my statement (I was saying that he was being silly), though obviously the wording must have been poor.
Apologies for the delay in responding.
Indeed, and that makes discussion of it impossible. Hence why I find it silly to follow that standard.
There’s no way to talk about Christianity when:
Some believe in God
Some don’t believe in God
Some believe God is actually the devil
Some believe Jesus was God
Some believe Jesus was just a man
Some believe Jesus was the false prophet and it was John the Baptist who was the true prophet
Some believe there’s a Hell
Some don’t believe there’s a Hell
Some believe there’s Heaven
Some don’t believe there’s Heaven
Some believe that we have a soul
Some don’t believe that we have a soul
Technically, between all the variants of Christianity, there’s zero theological overlap. So for all practical conversations on Christianity, if you want to be inclusive and understanding of everyone, there’s exactly zilch you can talk about. The term “Christianity” means nothing and just plain off can’t even be used.
If there was no commonly accepted, majority that a reasonable person would assume upon hearing the word, “Christianity”, then I’d go along with laborious definition crafting. But that’s not the way it is. Most people are aware of the protestant/catholic split in terms of there being a Pope or no-Pope. But otherwise I wouldn’t expect your average person to know whether his own church believes in or doesn’t believe in angels, and I wouldn’t except him to know what various policies are on the afterlife, or any other sort of theological talking points. All he will know is whether something is or isn’t commonly related to Christianity, even if he himself doesn’t believe in it.
If I talk about Christianity and Hell, there’s no reasonable-minded native English speaker who’s going to be perplexed that the one could possibly be attached to the other. Just watching Tom & Jerry as a kid, you’d see angels and devils on everyone’s shoulders telling them to be good or bad. It’s unavoidable to have Hell associated with Christianity, even if you don’t personally subscribe to that belief.
Conversation is based on basic assumptions. There’s no ability to discuss any concrete topic unless we make assumptions that we share a common set of abstract knowledge.
NASA is “An American group that makes and flies spacecraft.” I can reasonably assume that that will be understood by anyone without having to lay it out ahead of time. I wouldn’t expect them to know that NASA is also the world center for tracking climate data, or any other such fiddly stuff.
But now, if someone complains to me because I’m assuming that NASA makes spacecraft–when really they just outsource it to other businesses–then I’d really rather just say that person is nitpicking for no other sake than the sheer glory of being able to nitpick.
Another person could get up and say, “NASA doesn’t build spacecraft, they just take money and burn it up as they litter astronaut bodies over American soil!”
Yet another person could say, “I work for NASA, and in my view, all NASA is is a bureaucracy that can’t find it’s own hand to wipe with!”
They might disagree with the basic, assumed knowledge of who NASA is, but they’re just being assholes to pretend like they don’t know what that assumed knowledge is. I realize that nitpicking is the favorite hobby of most of the SDMB, but there is a point at which you’re not actually nitpicking. All you’re really doing is trying to bully people into your own minority political belief and/or derailing the main topic in favor of meaningless minutiae.
It’s not a standard. It’s a fact.
I suppose you could argue that this is a rough, tongue-in-cheek description of what Gnostic Christians believed, but I’m not aware of any contemporary Christians who believe this. Certainly no one believes it literally.
I am aware that there is a sect that believes this, but I’m not aware of any self-identified Christians who believe this.
And yet somehow I was able to attend a graduate school in theology with a very diverse body of students and faculty which comprised all of those categories (except the two I noted) and was able to have lots and lots of conversations about Christianity in which no one was misunderstood or excluded.
And yet somehow people manage to have conversations about Christianity all the time without overgeneralizing or ignoring the differences. Look at almost any thread about Christianity here on the Dope. Someone asks what Christians believe about X and one person will explain Catholic teaching and another will explain mainline Protestant teaching and someone else will explain the historical teachings of the church and several other people will explain the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons and kanicbird will come by and explain the unique, never-before-believed-in-heaven-or-on-earth teachings of kanicbird (which are nevertheless Christian) and everyone goes home happy and educated because no one came in and tried to speak for all Christians or to insist that one answer had to fit everybody.
No one is saying you have to discuss every tiny variation on Christian belief in order to talk about Christianity. Unless kanicbird comes by, no one is likely to bring up kanicbird’s beliefs (not that they aren’t worth discussing, but no one else is likely to hold them or even know what they are). But disbelief in hell isn’t a fringe belief among Christians. As I said earlier, I would guess that the majority of white, middle-class, American mainline Protestants disbelieve in or are agnostic about hell. They may be a small minority globally and historically, but they make up a lot of the Christians many of us are likely to know and a lot of the Christians right here on the SDMB.
Which brings me to another point. No one likes being told what they believe. It’s one thing to ignore the beliefs of some third party, but when you are having a debate about Christianity and someone comes up to and says “I am a Christian and this is what I believe,” it is incredibly rude to claim that they’re beliefs have nothing to do with the debate. Especially when several people come up and say that they share those beliefs and the beliefs you wish to debate are not representative of Christianity as they know it.
It is one thing to ask, “Why do black people like Tyler Perry?” True, it would be better to ask why some black people like Tyler Perry, or even why so many black people like Tyler Perry. But it is a whole other thing to respond to someone who says “I’m black and I don’t like Tyler Perry,” that they are not representative of the generic “black people” you want to talk about. You can’t be surprised when people start objecting to that.
I don’t believe that many will be in torment forever, I don’t believe scripture states that, though there are a few that this will be the case. IMHO most people are totally incapable of committing the unpardonable sin, therefore can receive forgiveness and salvation through Jesus even from Sheol/Hell.
No. That’s the cop-out excuse of the millions or billions of pseudo-christians who can’t bring themselves to emulate the life of Jesus or take any heed of his teachings when it clashes with their prejudices, received or otherwise.