FireDragon76

I'm not certain, I have only read some of Borg's books. Borg understands Jesus mysticism as something that may prompt social action, so I am guessing he is not really challenging the apocalyptic aspects of the traditional understanding of Jesus. N.T. Wright is helpful in understanding the apocalyptic imagery in the Gospels as mysticism. People like Schweitzer may have accidentally understood it in more concrete terms and may have based some of their conclusions on false assumptions.

I always dislike this sort of (mis)use of religious language. Usually, we associate such verbs with acts of will. Which makes the term "God" much more appropriate. But I think that just shows how Burl's observation is accurate. Most people here would probably be much happier in a Unitarian Universalist church where people can be happy pantheists asking speculative questions for the rest of their lives. Christianity has always been about believing in and following Jesus, even if the exact way that belief and discipleship unfolds look different in different time periods and levels of understanding.

I think that's true. Progressive Christians would be many Episcopalians or the UCC. They reinterpret some things in Christianity, they might emphasize creedal belief less, but they still value Christian identity and traditions, even if they understand them very differently from fundamentalists. Whereas Unitarians really have no shared beliefs and few shared religious practices (many of them are not Christians), only shared values. They value intellectual inquiry primarily, individualism, and western humanism - not very different from the old ethical societies in the 19th century. They are really different, only similar in their liberalism/modernism.

I don't believe apocalyptic prophet and mystic are two different things. Apocalyptic language is just the way that the Abrahamic traditions use religious symbols to articulate their mysticism. We are used to thinking of a prophet as someone who prognosticates the future, and I don't believe that captures the whole reality of what a prophet was in Judaism.

Almost all historians believe that is a reasonable conclusion. Mythicists are simply not taken seriously in academia for the most part.

Making distinctions does not necessarily negate nondualism. Trying to reduce our understanding of reality into a naive monism risks excluding certain elements from our experience, the opposite of being mindful. All major religions, east and west, have a narrative that there is something wrong with the fundamental state of affairs in the human condition; something that needs fixing in the human person. Whether we talk about sin or delusion doesn't really change that. Evangelicalism simply focuses on a subjective rather than metaphysical approach.

You're going to find fundamentalism and literalism in any world religion. As they say, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. I studied Buddhism in the past. Certain forms of Tibetan Buddhism are full of dogmas similar to Christianity. The presentation we have of Buddhism in the US is primarily a Japanese and Taiwanese originated movement called Buddhist modernism, similar to liberal Protestantism in its impulse (make Buddhism compatible with the modern, scientific and technocratic nation state). D.T. Suzuki was primarily the one that first introduced Americans to this notion, but it has earlier antecedents in Soyen Shaku's reformist ideology in Japan in the 19th century. Soyen Shaku was responding to the new Meiji regime's critique of Buddhism as superstition and unsuited to a modern nation-state.

Not all Biblical scholars see it that way. Marcus Borg, for instance , didn't see Jesus having a particularly political message, as if he were in the Zealot camp. Borg favored a more mystical interpretation of "Kingdom of God", as do many traditional Christians.

That's a good point. It's a mistake to think of religion only as about manipulating people to control them (Marx). That's a very limited perspective, and does not respect the diversity of reasons why people are religious.

Most homeless people I've encountered weren't drug addicts. One person I knew who had been homeless simply had misfortune in her life.

Many scholars have simply misread Jesus' Olivet Discourse. N.T. Wright discusses this point in his works. Jesus is not referring to the end of the world as we would understand it, just to a judgement that will befall Jerusalem. Jesus uses apocalyptic imagery that was misunderstood by 19th century liberal scholars.

I consider myself a "progressive Christian". I am an Evangelical Lutheran and I support the full inclusion of gays in the life of the Church, and I also do not believe being politically "pro-life" is a litmus test for Christian discipleship (in this respect, I'm very much in line with my denomination's own social statements). But beyond that, I am very much a traditional, creedal sort of Christian, as are most Lutherans I know. So in one sense, I do see myself as a progressive Christian relative to American evangelicalism with its moralism, biblicism, and politicization of religion, but on the other hand, I am not a progressive Christian by the standards of this site- of espousing theological liberalism. Yet I think there are far more folks like me out there in churches than there are Christians who are essentially wedded to theological liberalism. So what really is "progressive Christianity"?

I think that's just soft-peddaled judgmental, puritanical, and narrow attitudes. You may cloak your ethos in the language of love, but you'ld consign a great deal of humanism to the scrapheap just because it doesn't measure up to a medievalist religious vision of the world. I frankly don't care what most other Christians believe about sexual ethics. Most Christian sexual ethics is far too much about controlling other peoples naughty bits and falls far short of a real ethic of love that doesn't denigrate pleasure or the human body. Sexual repression is not healthy. Realistic teaching and instruction on sex is healthy.

I don't believe all forms of sex work would necessarily involve degradation or exploitation. Have you heard of sexual surrogacy, for instance? You are making sweeping judgments on things I don't think you have much knowledge of. Prostitution is a concern for us. Officially, our church takes somewhat conservative stances on this issue in its social statements. However, ultimately the individual's moral agency on these matters is what counts. Our social statements are meant to be persuasive, not coercive. I believe you simply don't understand the Lutheran way of doing things, so I give up debating this with you. You seem to have a real problem with a non-legalistic approach to Christian ethics.

This is a pastoral issue and it's ultimately up to the congregation. However, most of us would be reluctant to excommunicate or ostracize anyone merely because they don't live up to our ideals. We would primarily be concerned about exploitation more than issues of moral impurity. Prostitution is legal in Germany, BTW, an historically Lutheran country, so this may not be an academic issue there at all.

Perhaps you did not read that essay by Pr. Ed Knudson, he made it clear that the Lutheran view of the individual conscience is not that it is autonomous, as in liberal accounts of ethics, but that it is in relationship with God and the Church. Still, moral agency does rest with the individual, that's how it works. We are all individually responsible as human beings before God for our lives. The principal way love is expressed in the Lutheran tradition is in our sacramentalism and our Eucharistic spirituality. This is how God shows love for us, by imparting to us grace through the power of the Word. We ought to love each other as a result, but our standing before God is not dependent on our ability to love in kind, nor will we be able to perfectly actualize God's love in this life.

Divine Command Theory is like what conservative Muslims, Orthodox Jews, or conservative Reformed Christians think of morality. God just hands people a list of do's and don'ts and you'ld better conform to them. No consideration is given to the concrete circumstances of individuals. It's a kind of moral absolutism or fundamentalism.

Lutherans aren't opposed to love. I think you have misunderstood what I am saying if that is what you have taken away from our conversation. Prostitution may not measure up to some peoples ideals but many people marry for more ignoble reasons than a prostitute has for selling her body. So really, who are we to judge?

Even though I doubt this person is Lutheran (or even necessarily a Christian), I agree with him that Jesus is focusing ethics outside of divine command, and instead focusing on human-centered compassion. My church would be in agreement on this point. Moralism and legalism are insufficient as genuinely Christ-like ethics. Loving actions are grounded in our concrete relationships with finite others. http://zimmer.fresnostate.edu/~afiala/documents/FialaGoodSam.pdf

Prostitution is selling sex for money. I was focusing on the prostitutes themselves, not the people that utilize their services. There are many reasons why someone would turn to prostitution and it seems to me overly judgmental to say these people are excluded from God's kingdom, in the same way that saying just because somebody is a man married to another man, they are excluded as well. I don't think that's the point of Jesus teaching, I think its abusive in fact and misses the humanistic emphasis on his ethic, which is that good ethics is determined within concrete human relationships with actual persons (the Levite and pharisees are on potentially good legal grounds, from a Jewish religious standpoint, to avoid the beaten man in the parable of the good Samaritan, to avoid becoming impure themselves, but Jesus condemns them anyways because of their lack of compassion).

Jesus accepted people. Some Christians want to have hierarchies of sinners, or a certain invariant standard for who is and is not properly repentant, and that's just not how how my church generally does things.

The sacrificial role has been fulfilled in Christ. When did Jesus actually preach against prostitution? He speaks about sexual morality only in the vaguest terms. And his preaching concerning divorce doesn't preclude it altogether as a realistic possibility. If Jesus Christ was concerned about moral purity, he would not have hanged out with tax collectors and prostitutes.

I really don't see Jesus articulating an ethic based on moral purity. That was more what his opponents thought was important.

I don't think Jesus expects us to live a sinless life and that isn't what we understand the Christian life as primarily being about: moral purity.

Lutherans still practice private confession, though use is much lower today (as it is among Catholics as well). My pastor grew up in an LCMS church in rural New Jersey and people went to confession monthly. Luther considered it a sacrament, though modern Lutherans differ on whether it is still considered one (some scholastics said since there is no "matter" in the rite, it cannot be a sacrament). I believe the "go and sin no more" is often abused, especially by people that demand other people live according to their standards of biblical morality. It's often a way of having the Law be the last word. And, given our theology, it's a bit problematic to say "don't ever sin again" as an absolute requirement, because sin isn't just outward behaviors but permeates our being. I've always simply understood this as Jesus saying "stay out of trouble" to the woman that was caught.