Kelly of the Phoenix
Well-Known Member
People will bow before anyone.How do you explain the worship of Christ?
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People will bow before anyone.How do you explain the worship of Christ?
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.So you guys are saying you know better than the men closer to the Apostles, the men who drew up the creeds and wrote the theological texts?
The men who read the Bible in its original languages?
You know better?
This sounds rather far-fetched and conspiratorial from their end.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.
cough Trump cough 74 million coughPeople will bow before anyone.
That doesn’t mean Jesus is God, only that he’s been saying that he is.The Gospel of John is different. Jesus is not represented as a mere man.
The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” (John 10:33)
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.This sounds rather far-fetched and conspiratorial from their end.
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.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.
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.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.
I’ve seen what happens when people just roll over for authority figures. I also disagree with how smart you think they are.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.
This is all very confusing.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.
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.This is all very confusing.
No one would believe anything, in that case?
But it's these same authorities who put that Bible together.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.
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.I guess, if there were no Bible, some people wouldn't be Christians?
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.But it's these same authorities who put that Bible together.
So I'm still seeing hypocrisy there.
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.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.
You're fine.Sorry sometimes I really get stuck on Jesus words and agreement with him so much.. I can stay offline some..
That is a very good question.So on what basis do people believe in Christianity at all if they have no Tradition?