Burl

"In my most mystical moments, when I sense or perceive that there is no separation between my self and God, I'm still aware of my self, but it doesn't impede my relationship with God. In fact, I'm not sure I could feel "at one" with God unless there was an "I" to feel this."

 

Bill - There is at least one Christian mystic I know of who would say that your experience of "God", or "oneness with God" actually IS the self, and not "God". You can ponder that or not, but I throw it out as a possibility.

 

 

"Reincarnation and karma do not make sense unless there is a durable 'self' which maintains its integrity after death."

 

Burl - Buddhism does not accept the notion of a "durable self", and therefore there is no integrity of such a construct after physical "death". Then again, birth and death as we normally conceive of them are illusory. What is "real" is constant flux and transformation.

 

Steve

The physical self is unique and absolutely central to our purpose. Is this not completely and undeniably obvious?

I do not believe death is the end of the self, but it is an absolute reality.

Reincarnation and karma do not make sense unless there is a durable 'self' which maintains its integrity after death.

My personal view is that these are folk beliefs which persist because they do a good job of explaining why life is not fair.

This thread points to what I think is an irreconcilable ontological difference between Christian and Buddhist doctrine.

 

Buddhism claims that all “things” are empty of inherent existence. Therefore, there can be no permanent “self”. Existence/ non-existence are contingent upon various causes and conditions manifesting in time. When these causes and conditions are exhausted, a thing no longer manifests.

 

Christianity, as its basis, posits an immortal “soul” which presumably survives physical death and is eternal. At least this is what I believe to be the orthodox Christian view.

 

Leaving that difference aside, one can still argue for both a Christian and Buddhist perspective that respects the existence/manifestation of entities within what we know as “reality”. For Christianity, that looks like “love thy neighbor as thyself”. Buddhism calls for honoring all things simply because they exist, and that existence, or manifestation, is considered a very rare and fortuitous occurrence.

 

Steve

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13

"Scripture" in the NT always refers to the Tanach (Hebrew Bible).

Best article I have read here, JosephM.

Bill, you are taking a lot out of context and too literally. There are difficult passages, so feel free to start a thread about one. Discounting an isolated verse because of its literal English meaning is the same faulty logic used by those who accept Scripture on the basis.

The passage in 2 Timothy says all scripture is useful for teaching righteousness. It does not say that all is literally true, or that all are positive examples.

Take the passage where Jesus tells the apostles to buy swords. You know they are not going to join the army or kill people. The Roman short sword was a multi-purpose instrument in a day when steel was still precious. The sword was used to chop trees, kill & dress game and even as a shovel. Kind of a hunting knife/axe/machete. It was the most available tool, and valuable for people about to be persecuted and driven to every corner of the near east.

>>It was never a place of fellowship, in that just about everyone at least twice my age<<

After 45 years, I'm guessing this is not an issue anymore

Seriously, it is hard to find a good church but there are things to look for. One is to find a church with a strong social justice ministry. Get involved in what the church does outside the walls.

A second is to look for a church with a lot of retired clergy. They will be able to discuss theology on an intelligent level.

Third is to look for a church with an eye for what you can bring to it rather than what it can bring to you.

Disciples of Christ or the Wesleyan Church are often good liberal choices. Free-thinking, but still based on Christ and not pop psychology.

Dali's 'Corpus Hypercubis'

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_(Corpus_Hypercubus)

From Ecclesiastes

God only grudgingly allowed the selection of a king of Israel. Prophets, priests and judges yes but it was the arrogance of Israel which demanded a king. See 1 Samuel 12.

All of the above.

Before Jesus, there was a firm separation between mankind and God. God only reached mankind through the prophets. At Pentecost, we see this separation destroyed and mankind capable of developing a direct relationship with God.

Jesus is not a matter of belief. Jesus enabled our ability to directly connect with God.

2 Timothy 3:14-4:2English Standard Version (ESV)

14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom[a] you learned it 15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

4 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.

Before his Damascus Road experience, Burl, the apostle Paul was convinced that he was doing God's work in hunting down Christians and having them executed as traitors to the Jewish faith. After Damascus Road, Paul became an advocate for the Christian cause. He even went so far as to say that the Jews were blinded by God. That, to me, would acknowledge a significant change of Paul's understanding of who God is and what God desires. This is why I said that he let go of one understanding of God in order to embrace another understanding, especially an understanding that embraces tolerance and diversity. I suspect that such is the lot of all spiritual seekers. May we all see God more clearly.

 

PS - I by no means speak for all Progressive Christians. I speak only for myself.

You are a bit confused, Bill.

We were created human by a non-human entity. How can an omniscent God experience fear? How can an omnipotent God experience temptation? How can an impassible God experience suffering?

Experience is not the same thing as knowledge. Ask any woman who has been through childbirth.

The experiences of fear, suffering and temptation were all brought to the divine council by Jesus. They previously had knowledge, but not experience. Now we have a perfect human advocate in heaven who has lived our problems and who has been placed in authority as our lord and mediator. (Hebrews 4:14-5:12)

Great question. First, the kingdom of God is not heaven. A common confound that needs to be put aside immediately.

The kingdom of God is where God's will is honored "on earth as it is in heaven". Because of sin it is diffuse and incomplete, but still here.

The effects of sin are not predictable or proportional. Reducing sin and increasing self-sacrifice for the sake of others is the key to ushering in the kingdom of God.

God and good are synonyms. Good is not an attribute of God; it is his definition.

Paul did not "let go" of the Jewish God. Jewish worship became impossible after the destruction of the second temple, and Paul said the Jews were grafted on to Jesus's rootstock.

This was Jesus role as messiah. Today Jews worship, sacrifice and purify via prayer instead of blood. They have adopted Christian methods. A good thought now that the High holy days have just closed.

In "Hold to that which is good", good refers to God. We do not get to define good, but are expected to compare results with the objective good defined in scripture. Paul is not inviting us into narcissism.

It is not "Hold to that which you think is good". That would make Paul would sound a lot like Trump ;-)

We need to balance Scripture, experience, tradition, and reason.

We are not isolated intelligences responsible only to ourselves. The human race - past, present and future - are responsible for repairing this broken world together. It is a group project, and Jesus is the crux where the human and the divine intersect.

The NT, as we have it, is the best available data. Even in English bible.

This is not theory. We cannot procrastinate demanding an unassailable truth. We need to make a command decision - immediately! - based on the most reliable data available to us. The teachings of Jesus, which is indeed the New Testament, should guide every moment of every day.

We are like Captain Kirk and we need to make a decision. Now. We cannot waffle, or be indecisive, or waste time smooching strange alien women. Every moment counts. The moving finger writes . . .

We follow Jesus, and the Bible is the only reliable data. Not doctrine; data. Old and incomplete, but good enough to form saints and science, art and western civilization. Mendel, Newton, Descartes, Carravagio, Michelangelo, St. Francis - the NT is has an excellent track record.

The NT does contain some Aramaic phrases. I guess it is possible some of the NT was originally Aramaic, but it seems unlikely the apostles hired scribes to write in a localized dialect when the universal language of Greek was so common.

Rome even hired rabbis to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek decades earlier. The literary trend had established Greek as a standard long before Jesus.

It is more likely the Greek was translated back to Aramaic.

If you want to noodle over non-existent Aramaic autographs, you still have all of the issues surrounding the Greek plus many more including an increasing irrelevancy to the present. Even the Aramaic targums were based on the Greek text.

I think Aramaic is best left to ancient language doctoral candidates in search of dissertation material. I don't think it is going to be of much benefit to contemporary people without deep scholastic analysis.

There are many more than three choices. I think the simplest is that God has a plan for humanity, but that individual free will makes small changes which have no effect on the final outcome.

The casino is a good analogy. The house controls and correctly predicts the profit every year to a mathematical certainty but to the individual player everything is random.

Just out of interest Burl, what do you consider the 'original' NT? Do you look at a particular version that you consider original, or do you use the term more loosely to capture the earliest copies we have access to (which I understand are hundreds of years younger than Jesus).

 

In English bible I use different translations for different purposes. I like the ESV in general and grudgingly overlook the occasional Calvinist bias.

Everything we have in NT was written in the Koine Greek language where the entire book is just one long, uninterrupted string of letters without even spaces between the words. Undoubtedly the autographs were as well, which is what I meant by my post.

Your guess is indeed a possibility. The original NT does not contains any punctuation. No quotation marks; not even a period. Quotes are for readability, as there was nobody writing down exactly what Christ said in vivo.

The author of Luke is relating Luke's recollections. The section overall describes a series of reversals and inversions in the present and future. This section is unique to Luke, and several scholars have questioned the authenticity of this section.

2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c

5:1 Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy.

5:2 Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman's wife.

5:3 She said to her mistress, "If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy."

5:7 When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, "Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me."

5:8 But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, "Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel."

5:9 So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha's house.

5:10 Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean."

5:11 But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!

5:12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?" He turned and went away in a rage.

5:13 But his servants approached and said to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean'?"

5:14 So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.

5:15c Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, "Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel."