Kelly of the Phoenix
Well-Known Member
People will bow before anyone.
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Why So Much Trinity Bashing?
- Thread starter Rival
- Start date
Just speaking as someone who was familiar with JW interpretation, they don't believe the knowledge of those early church leaders was in question, but their agenda, and sincerity of preserving meaning. They believe in intentional corruption of the gospels to serve their own purposes was something present.
This sounds rather far-fetched and conspiratorial from their end.
Secret Chief
Veteran Member
cough Trump cough 74 million cough
Kelly of the Phoenix
Well-Known Member
That doesn’t mean Jesus is God, only that he’s been saying that he is.
Less conspiratorial more cultural bleed. Just another story of people trying to superimpose their contemporary beliefs on either the immediate or distant past to maintain consistency of the beliefs they want to preserve.
I.E. Christians who think Abraham, like them, believed in a fallen angel and Jews who will tell them he absolutely did not.
What I am seeing here is, inherited from Protestantism usually, a dislike of authority and Tradition. As someone used to the Anglican Church, which has both, this form of Christianity and other beliefs is strange to me. I don't know what then they are basing their religion on because the Bible was not completed until hundreds of years after the Church came into existence. Every religion is a cultural tradition, and oral story, a narrative. To then take this out seems to completely undercut religion itself. As someone studying theology this has become even more stark to me, given how oddly people are interpreting Biblical books in line with, as you said, cultural norms etc. which are wholly inappropriate. The fact of them throwing out the people who decided which books make up the Bible in the first place also strikes me as shooting oneself in the foot; it's akin to saying 'everything we believe they got right, but everything we don't they didn't'. That's incredibly uncomfortable a position to take because it means nothing could ever prove you wrong, no matter how many ancient authorities disagree with you.
I guess folks like myself are much more comfortable with authority and Tradition, given these towering intellects, closeness to the time period, knowledge of the ancient languages in their native settings etc. It strikes me that folks will just literally throw them out because 'THAT'S NOT WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS' as though these authorities had never... read those books? It's just so confusing. Just because they didn't reach the same conclusions a 19th c. Protestant did.
As someone incredibly suspicious of tradition or authority as a source for truth or morality, I can relate to those people. Closeness to an event or the existence of a oral tradition does not garuntee accuracy or consistency in a historical context.
Again, so many Christians will say that the belief in the devil as a fallen angel in opposition to God was the traditional story since Abraham, whereas others will say no, that's a modern (and Pagan, that word likes getting thrown around) tradition that was incorporated into the oral tales. Some protestants think similar of the trinity. Both groups are convinced that their version is authentic and the other is unnecessarily adding to or taking away.
Kelly of the Phoenix
Well-Known Member
I’ve seen what happens when people just roll over for authority figures. I also disagree with how smart you think they are.
I believe in lots of things, just not absolutism. And especially not outsourcing moral and ethical judgments to a third party. No matter how authoritative that party claims to be.
With those protestants like jws who don't believe in the Trinity still believe in authority, just not in the same authority. They believe that the Bible is preserved against error divinely, but that the clergy are not and the Trinity is just another golden calf adopted by errant people.
But it's these same authorities who put that Bible together.
So I'm still seeing hypocrisy there.
That's actually a really interesting question. I think the JW that I know would have said that having an inerrent scripture is what sets them apart from other religions with oral traditions alone, and that Christianity indeed would not exist today without its perfect instruction.
They decided which books go in, which those protestants believe was divinely guided. They don't believe that means they had a correct or inerrant interpretation of those assembled books.
Their understandings and interpretations aren't seen as inerrant though (I'm not sure who's saying this or if this is a myth some people believe?) they are often different (Tertullian believes different things to Origen of Alexandria re Greek Philosophy, for example). We take them as being authorities seeing that they took their information from the Apostles (Ignatius, for instance, in the late 1st early 2nd century almost certainly knew John the Elder), along with Polycarp. We have Ignatius' writings and it would seem beyond absurd to me to just call them an opinion when he's there in the first decades of Christianity with Polycarp. Ignatius have known Paul personally, for example, if Eusebius' dates are right.
To ignore what these men have to say, even if we disagree with some of it in favour of other theologians, strikes me.
As there was no Bible until around the 4th c., Christians must have been listening to and taking instruction from something other than a written text. These are those men whose writings we go to as what these earliest Christians were listening to in sermons and homilies etc.
What a lot of these people seem to be saying, forgive me if I'm wrong, is that they would not have been convinced by this unless it were supplemented with some kind of text, and that Paul coming to preach the Gospel simply wouldn't have been enough?
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You're fine.
That is a very good question.
To some extent, at least here were I live, Christianity is more of a theme than a belief. In most random situations people aren't particularly expected to believe in it, but they are expected to show a degree of reverence to it - and definitely to have some familiarity with the basic ideas and concepts. Some people are outspoken about adherence to their church or even to their belief in Christ in a more general sense, but that is not really expected of the random person.
But claims of adherence to Christian values can be demanded almost unconsciously. For many people that adherence is understood as somehow necessary or even unavoidable, even as a prerequisite for citizenship and participation in civilization.
So it is not as much that they are Christians as that they are expected to say that they are - and end up shopping for a Church or group that is compatible with their specific beliefs or prejudices.