Christianity at the Tip of a Blade - The Violence or Non-violence of Religion

[obssesednuker]

Awkwardly, there is good reason for a religious rabble-rouser who got crucified at the request of the populace overriding the will of a Roman prefect to be mentioned in Roman records. Especially given the Roman military was used to do it and the near-riot conditions described.

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Well the problem there is a shitton of Roman records have been lost, as the collapse of the Roman Empire wasn't exactly healthy on them. So while Jesus's execution record (on the assumption that Jesus actually existed, which is frankly pretty plausible given how Messianic preachers/prophets in Roman controlled Palestine/Israel/Judea/Whatever-you-wish-to-call-it were a dime-a-dozen, although the odds the historical Jesus bears little resemblance to that in the Bible is vastly greater) may be sitting around somewhere in Italy in a forgotten, buried cellar from Roman times it's far more likely to have either been destroyed or decayed to dust.

Considering you've disingenuously decided to frame the question differently from what was noted (specifically the totality of circumstances), it's worth pointing out we have two commentaries on Pilate's run as Prefect of Judea from Philo and Josephus that would both argue the story in the gospels is somewhat implausible, simply because Pilate never acted with respect to the Jews and would not have bowed to their will this way.

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There's also the fact that the Gospel's give contradictory accounts of Pilate's interrogation of and execution of Jesus. The earlier ones portray Pilus as pretty perfunctorily deciding to execute while the later introduces the whole thing of him pleading with the mob to spare Jesus in favor of executing that murderer. The later account was probably an attempt to play to audience, as they emerge at the time Christianity split from Judiasm and had become a evangelizing religion within the Roman Empire.

There is a whole lot here and I don't want to engage in spaghetti posting. Let me say that I think we are not communicating well because you are asking these questions from the perspective of treating receiving eternal life like a reward and the failure to receive it as a punishment, which is contrary to the position I explained before. Any questioned based on that assumption is one I won't have an answer for, because I think it is wrong.

I'm also not a universalist and have my own criticisms of their positions, but I did want to represent them fairly, because they represent a large and ancient group of Christian believers. I will point out that "suffering" is very rarely interpreted as physical pain by universalists, but as sadness or shame resulting from being in a state of sin in the presence of perfection and grace. And the reconciliation comes from giving up the elements of one's nature that are in conflict with the divine, like selfishness and hatred.

The idea that the soul is immortal and naturally has to exist forever unless it is actively destroyed is Neo-Platonist philosophy, and not something I believe. We are native to this universe where things die. God has opened the way to eternal life. He has done for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Gaining that eternal life requires synergos, literally working together, with God to transform our nature. We do this by partaking in Christ's eternal nature, which was made available to us by his incarnation, death, and resurrection in our world, and which is attained by the sacraments and by acts of holiness. God grants us all that we are able to receive, it is our work to be able to receive what He would give us. That is our cooperation in our salvation.

As to the question about free will, I don't pretend to understand what the nature of existence in the presence of God is like and wouldn't like to speculate.

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On the contrary: I'm treating the reception, or denial, of eternal life merely as something God does. Whether it is rewarded or bestowed or whatever is beside the point. The point is God does it. But Christian Theology makes it pretty clear that God has conditions for making his judgement in favor of eternal life. Some of those conditions I find perfectly reasonable (like living a good life, although the nature of said good life is rather more up for interpretation) while others I take greater issue with (belief in God and acceptance of Jesus, despite the absence of solid proof for any of this and the dubiousness of the material which acts as the existing "proof"). Whether you want to characterize it as a reward or as something else is beside the point. It is God who gives it and it is God who has made his criteria for it's grant.

I guessed you weren't a Universalist, but I also figured you might know some of the reasoning behind those details of the Universalist belief I asked about. If you don't, that's okay. In any case, emotional suffering is still suffering and a paradise and it strikes me that a supposedly omnipotent God cannot or will not create a paradisical afterlife where such suffering is eliminated as part of it's entry says more about God then it does about the entrants.

I care little about whether the soul is supposedly immortal or whether it has to exist forever (in part, since I don't really buy into the soul's existence to begin with). I'm more interested in the soul's relation to God and his wish to grant it eternal life. You treat this as if we are a necessary part of the process but it strikes me that as Christian theology characterizes God as a omnipotent being who wishes to grant the salvation of eternal life, the idea that God needs our assistance for us to achieve salvation or has to go through the whole charade of Christ comes off as asinine. As a omnipotent being God can simply grant the salvation of eternal life upon (or even before) our death and be done with it. If he is both willing and able to do this, then he will do it regardless of our own actions and beliefs. According to such a characterization of God, he will not merely open the door... he will also pull us through that door, kicking and screaming if necessary, at the end of our lives. If he is either unable or unwilling, then that calls into question the entire characterization of God in Christian theology. In this, I feel that universalism's assumption of automatic grant is more true to the Christian characterization of God's motives towards humanity, even if I take issue with some of the details (like the point of the whole Jesus escapade).

In sum, if our actions/beliefs are a necessary part of the process as you profess and we accept the Christian position that God is omnipotent, then the only conclusion is that this is the case because God has made it so that our access to eternal life is contingent upon those actions/beliefs. Or in other words, there are conditions set by God. That leads, of course, to the question of why those conditions are there and what they are.

I'm fine with your acknowledgement of uncertainty about the existence of free will in the afterlife.​

 

[all fictions]

Remove Revelations from the Christian canon and then we'll talk.

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This is such a bizarre position, I can't help but comment. Most religions you care to name have some form or other of eschatology concerning the end of everything. Christianity has the Final Judgement, Judaism has olam ha-ba and Islam has the Qiyammah, but other non-Abrahamic religions also have their versions as well: the end of Kali Yuga and the start of a new Satya Yuga in Hinduism, frashokereti in Zoroastrianism, the arrival of Maitreya in Buddhism, the arrival of Li Hong in Taoism, the Three Ages in some Confucian schools, etc.

By this point, might as well proclaim most of the world religions to be apocalyptic cults, which just makes the term useless.

Actually, my main beef with Christianity is its claim to exclusivity. Intolerance is baked into its dogma.

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Inclusivism can also be a Christian doctrine for your information, with the most evident being the Nostra aetate of the Roman Catholic Church.

Saying "intolerance is baked into its dogma" shows an unfamiliarity with the history of Christianity and its dogmas.

 

[Zap Rowsdower]

The later account was probably an attempt to play to audience, as they emerge at the time Christianity split from Judiasm and had become a evangelizing religion within the Roman Empire.

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AKA the period after the destruction of the Temple. Once it became clear that A. Rome wasn't going away and exile was coming, and B. Jesus wasn't coming back anytime soon, the idea that he was the prophesied savior sounded increasingly absurd to Jewish audiences and the explanations for why he was a savior regardless sounded like ex post facto justifications for continued treatment of him as the annointed one, whereas it sounded extremely appealing to people not raised on the prophesies in question as religious/political independence aspirations (aka, its very appealing to people for whom it offers hope of something better than present circumstances, but not appealing to people for whom it was a declaration that hope for present circumstances to improve was a misinterpretation).

Speaking as an ethnically Jewish atheist that's my guess as to where the whole "is god" thing came from, after-the-fact justification for continuing the movement after the whole "return of the king" thing failed, but that's just guesswork and it very well might have been something he claimed (you couldn't throw a fucking rock without hitting a supposed One True Heir in those days, since everybody was hoping for one, so variation from the standard dogma interpretation was inevitable).

 

[Sulemain]

No gods, or demons. I reject all superstition and religion.

 

[all fictions]

AKA the period after the destruction of the Temple.

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Are you saying Christianity wasn't evangelizing before that? Because that would be wrong since we know Nero persecuted Christians in Rome, years before the sack of Jerusalem.

 

[Zap Rowsdower]

Are you saying Christianity wasn't evangelizing before that? Because that would be wrong since we know Nero persecuted Christians in Rome, years before the sack of Jerusalem.

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Well, it was, but it wasn't dead with the Israelite population either and AFIK there was something of a tension/debate going on there on what the center of the new religion would be (where the evangelizing was going on or the heartland?) and if it'd be a Jewish sect or its own religion or even if it'd supplant the growing rabbinic tradition before it really took root. This was ages before Nicea after all, what Christianity was beyond great respect for and following of Yeshua Bar Yosef hadn't really been pinned down yet.

Then the facts on the ground changed and one side of that tension/debate suddenly went "well fuck that dead end" and the other side was still there.

 

[mesonoxian]

Well the problem there is a shitton of Roman records have been lost, as the collapse of the Roman Empire wasn't exactly healthy on them. So while Jesus's execution record (on the assumption that Jesus actually existed, which is frankly pretty plausible given how Messianic preachers/prophets in Roman controlled Palestine/Israel/Judea/Whatever-you-wish-to-call-it were a dime-a-dozen, although the odds the historical Jesus bears little resemblance to that in the Bible is vastly greater) may be sitting around somewhere in Italy in a forgotten, buried cellar from Roman times it's far more likely to have either been destroyed or decayed to dust.

There's also the fact that the Gospel's give contradictory accounts of Pilate's interrogation of and execution of Jesus. The earlier ones portray Pilus as pretty perfunctorily deciding to execute while the later introduces the whole thing of him pleading with the mob to spare Jesus in favor of executing that murderer. The later account was probably an attempt to play to audience, as they emerge at the time Christianity split from Judiasm and had become a evangelizing religion within the Roman Empire.



On the contrary: I'm treating the reception, or denial, of eternal life merely as something God does. Whether it is rewarded or bestowed or whatever is beside the point. The point is God does it. But Christian Theology makes it pretty clear that God has conditions for making his judgement in favor of eternal life. Some of those conditions I find perfectly reasonable (like living a good life, although the nature of said good life is rather more up for interpretation) while others I take greater issue with (belief in God and acceptance of Jesus, despite the absence of solid proof for any of this and the dubiousness of the material which acts as the existing "proof"). Whether you want to characterize it as a reward or as something else is beside the point. It is God who gives it and it is God who has made his criteria for it's grant.

I guessed you weren't a Universalist, but I also figured you might know some of the reasoning behind those details of the Universalist belief I asked about. If you don't, that's okay. In any case, emotional suffering is still suffering and a paradise and it strikes me that a supposedly omnipotent God cannot or will not create a paradisical afterlife where such suffering is eliminated as part of it's entry says more about God then it does about the entrants.

I care little about whether the soul is supposedly immortal or whether it has to exist forever (in part, since I don't really buy into the soul's existence to begin with). I'm more interested in the soul's relation to God and his wish to grant it eternal life. You treat this as if we are a necessary part of the process but it strikes me that as Christian theology characterizes God as a omnipotent being who wishes to grant the salvation of eternal life, the idea that God needs our assistance for us to achieve salvation or has to go through the whole charade of Christ comes off as asinine. As a omnipotent being God can simply grant the salvation of eternal life upon (or even before) our death and be done with it. If he is both willing and able to do this, then he will do it regardless of our own actions and beliefs. According to such a characterization of God, he will not merely open the door... he will also pull us through that door, kicking and screaming if necessary, at the end of our lives. If he is either unable or unwilling, then that calls into question the entire characterization of God in Christian theology. In this, I feel that universalism's assumption of automatic grant is more true to the Christian characterization of God's motives towards humanity, even if I take issue with some of the details (like the point of the whole Jesus escapade).

In sum, if our actions/beliefs are a necessary part of the process as you profess and we accept the Christian position that God is omnipotent, then the only conclusion is that this is the case because God has made it so that our access to eternal life is contingent upon those actions/beliefs. Or in other words, there are conditions set by God. That leads, of course, to the question of why those conditions are there and what they are.

I'm fine with your acknowledgement of uncertainty about the existence of free will in the afterlife.​

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My understanding of Heaven isn't a nice place God put together for good humans. What we are offered is the chance to share eternity in the presence of God, participating in the joy and love of the Trinity.

If Heaven were just a cozy afterlife for us, then its conditions would be laid directly at the feet of its Creator, and the criterion for entry would be set by the same One. But it isn't that. It is participation in the fundamental reality of God Himself that underlay all of the created universe.

Thus, the requirements for salvation aren't an arbitrary standard set by God. It is the set of conditions necessary for us to be able to coexist with God. God has done all he can to make the impossible possible, but it requires our active participation because we are the ones with power over own lives. We are the ones who choose what we are going to be.

I believe that if we make that effort and truly take on the nature of Christ, we'll be received by God into his presence, because if we have done this, we will belong there. If we haven't, then we remain in time, and have only our lives here. Not because God judges us unworthy, but because we remain creatures of a dying world.

 

[all fictions]

This was ages before Nicea after all, what Christianity was beyond great respect for and following of Yeshua Bar Yosef hadn't really been pinned down yet.

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There was the Council of Jerusalem and the Apostolic Creed at least.

 

[OneirosTheWriter]

Heh, funnily enough the old man was actually telling me recently how he gets asked a lot to preach on Revelations, and always leads off with the warning that he's going to piss off a lot of people by telling them how little of the Left Behind-type material actually exists in the text, especially when you tie it back to the original language of the text.

 

[Zap Rowsdower]

There was Council of Jerusalem and the Apostolic Creed at least.

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I'll give you the former, but the latter wikipedia claims only can be reliably dated to 390.

The Council of Jerusalem kinda proves my point; the fact that they had to have a council settling debate on the matter shows that it was, in fact, a point being debated.

 

[obssesednuker]

My understanding of Heaven isn't a nice place God put together for good humans. What we are offered is the chance to share eternity in the presence of God, participating in the joy and love of the Trinity.

If Heaven were just a cozy afterlife for us, then its conditions would be laid directly at the feet of its Creator, and the criterion for entry would be set by the same One. But it isn't that. It is participation in the fundamental reality of God Himself that underlay all of the created universe.

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This continues to manage to miss my point: if God is truly omnipotent, then he is perfectly able to have us coexist with him in his presence without us suffering. To say otherwise is to deny God's omnipotence.

Thus, the requirements for salvation aren't an arbitrary standard set by God. It is the set of conditions necessary for us to be able to coexist with God. God has done all he can to make the impossible possible, but it requires our active participation because we are the ones with power over own lives. We are the ones who choose what we are going to be.

I believe that if we make that effort and truly take on the nature of Christ, we'll be received by God into his presence, because if we have done this, we will belong there. If we haven't, then we remain in time, and have only our lives here. Not because God judges us unworthy, but because we remain creatures of a dying world.

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To say God is incapable of setting the requirements of salvation such that we achieve it regardless, which is essentially what you are saying, is an implicit admission of God not being omnipotent. The moment you say "God can not..." you have admitted to a lack of God's omnipotence. That is in direct contradiction of the assertion of God's omnipotence in Christian theology.

Welcome to heresy, my friend.

 

[OneirosTheWriter]

This continues to manage to miss my point: if God is truly omnipotent, then he is perfectly able to have us coexist with him in his presence without us suffering. To say otherwise is to deny God's omnipotence.

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Useless sophistry that runs counter to principles of freedom of choice in people. Do not come to this discussion with gotchas in mind, it serves neither you nor us any good purpose.

 

[mesonoxian]

This continues to manage to miss my point: if God is truly omnipotent, then he is perfectly able to have us coexist with him in his presence without us suffering. To say otherwise is to deny God's omnipotence.

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God's nature is eternal and unchanging. Our nature can be changed, and God has given us the means to do so. It is up to us to actually make that change. For it to be otherwise, God would have to change us fundamentally without our participation, which is something I don't think is desirable.

 

[obssesednuker]

Useless sophistry that runs counter to principles of freedom of choice in people.

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I don't know about characterizing it as sophistry, but that leads into the issue of the contradiction between the assertion of a omnipotent being and a non-deterministic universe (and hence freedom of choice).

Do not come to this discussion with gotchas in mind, it serves neither you nor us any good purpose.

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That was a "gotcha"?
...
Huh. Didn't think of it that way.

God's nature is eternal and unchanging. Our nature can be changed, and God has given us the means to do so. It is up to us to actually make that change. For it to be otherwise, God would have to change us fundamentally without our participation, which is something I don't think is desirable.

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Even if said change occurs after our death? You have already left open the possibility of a extremely fundamental change (ie: your acknowledgement of the uncertainty that free will exists in heaven or not). I don't know if I'm risking another "gotcha" here (I certainly don't want my first ban to be from SufficientVelocity) so may the mods interject if I overstep my bounds but if we posit, for the sake of argument, that free will does not exist there, that it is torn from us as part of our entry... would you still find this all desireable?​

 

[Jemnite]

Heh, funnily enough the old man was actually telling me recently how he gets asked a lot to preach on Revelations, and always leads off with the warning that he's going to piss off a lot of people by telling them how little of the Left Behind-type material actually exists in the text, especially when you tie it back to the original language of the text.

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More evidence why Calvinism and the doctrine of predestination is heresy, I see.

 

[Spacehillbilly]

No gods, or demons. I reject all superstition and religion.

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Now that's what I call edge!

 

[obssesednuker]

More evidence why Calvinism and the doctrine of predestination is heresy, I see.

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Were Tim and Jerry Calvinists?

 

[mesonoxian]

Even if said change occurs after our death? You have already left open the possibility of a extremely fundamental change (ie: the uncertainty that free will exists in heaven). Do you find that desirable?​

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If we can enter into God's presence, it will be because we have made ourselves into beings that can exist in God's presence in this life, through the grace and mercy of God through the Church. I won't speculate on what the afterlife is like, so I have no idea whether concepts like free will would continue to be relevant. I have no reason to think they won't either. I just don't know. That doesn't mean God is going to suddenly start radically altering who we are without our participation.

It seems as if you are trying to catch me in a contradiction, which I don't quite understand. My intention is to explain my understanding of Christianity, not to debate against atheism or any religion.

 

[Susano]

Now that's what I call edge!

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I mean, it is indeed somewhat, ahhh, let's say, socially awkward to proclaim it like that - it's a very theatrical "look at me". But edge? Nah, it's a valid position to hold after all.

 

[Hendryk]

The idea that Christianity is "exclusive" is baffling to me considering the reason why Christianity (and by that extension Islam) was able to spread so quickly was because it was so attractive to the low rungs of society. Who were the earliest Christians? The poor, the slaves and the desperate.

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A few of them. Then the powerful got in on the fun, and imposed it by force of arms to everyone else. Christianity did not become the official religion of the Roman empire and its medieval successor states by consensus.

But that's neither here nor there as far as exclusivity is concerned. The Christian dogma is extremely explicit in its rejection of any alternative spiritual paths, and Christianity as a religion has only learned to coexist peacefully with other faiths recently in its history. And whenever they get the chance, its old habits resurface.

 

[obssesednuker]

If we can enter into God's presence, it will be because we have made ourselves into beings that can exist in God's presence in this life, through the grace and mercy of God through the Church. I won't speculate on what the afterlife is like, so I have no idea whether concepts like free will would continue to be relevant. I have no reason to think they won't either. I just don't know. That doesn't mean God is going to suddenly start radically altering who we are without our permission.

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My problem is I'm not really grasping why an omnipotent being couldn't bring us into his presence regardless without radically altering who we are and without us suffering any undue consequence. A omnipotent beingshould be able to do that. By definition, there is nothing it can not do.

It seems as if you are trying to catch me in a contradiction, which I don't quite understand. My intention is to explain my understanding of Christianity, not to debate against atheism or any religion.

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Your understanding of Christianity does have a contradiction, although that contradiction may be the fault of Christianity and not you. When you said that God "has done all he could", the implication is that he can do no more. That places a limit on God's power, proclaiming him not to be omnipotent. And to proclaim God to not be omnipotent is as much a unpardonable heresy, at least according to the Church founders, as modalism or arianism. You don't see the contradiction between that and your professed faith in Christian theology?

I mean, I'm okay if you accept the contradiction and chalk it up to the mysteries of God and continue to believe. But I'm having a hard time understanding how the assertion that "God can do no more" is not contradictory with belief in the omnipotence of God...

 

[Sandy River DL]

My problem is I'm not really grasping why an omnipotent being couldn't bring us into his presence regardless without radically altering who we are and without us suffering any undue . A omnipotent being, by definition, has no limits. There is nothing it can not do. It should be able to do that.

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So... you're saying that it should be possible to change a mortal being into an immortal one without changing it at all.

 

[Vehrec]

So... you're saying that it should be possible to change a mortal being into an immortal one without changing it at all.

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Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't it a very common point of christian dogma that all humans are actually immortal beings already, just in the afterlife, not this life? Sure, sometimes it's immortality as a punishment for the dead, but it's still a religion where nobody vanishes or reincarnates.

 

[obssesednuker]

So... you're saying that it should be possible to change a mortal being into an immortal one without changing it at all.

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Hmm... I wasn't think along those lines (more like the immortality is the only real change here) but, logically (or illogically) speaking, a omnipotent being should be capable of that too. Nothing is impossible for an omnipotent being, including actions that should be outright contradictory. That's why it's omnipotent. To proclaim something to be omnipotent, as Christianity (and, lets be fair here, several other religions) does, is to imbue it with a whole slew of paradoxes and logical problems that come loaded with the concept... especially if, as Christianity (and, again, some others) does, you then start attaching other characteristics to the entity.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't it a very common point of christian dogma that all humans are actually immortal beings already, just in the afterlife, not this life? Sure, sometimes it's immortality as a punishment for the dead, but it's still a religion where nobody vanishes or reincarnates.

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Mesonoxian indicated to me "no" earlier...​

 

[Susano]

But that's neither here nor there as far as exclusivity is concerned. The Christian dogma is extremely explicit in its rejection of any alternative spiritual paths, and Christianity as a religion has only learned to coexist peacefully with other faiths recently in its history. And whenever they get the chance, its old habits resurface.

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This is like complaining that leftism is dogmatically exclusive because it doesn't recognizing the value of neoliberalism or early capitalism. If you hold X to be true, then it only makes sense that you regard non-X as false. In fact, one can argue anything else is logical nonsense.

I am aware that classical polytheistic faiths weren't exclusive, but the flipside of that was that they also weren't universalist in the way Christianity or Islam is. Praying to the Greek gods was a sign that you were a Greek, praying to the Celtic gods a sign you were a Celt, praying to the Germanic gods a sign you were a Germanic. Of course, "cross-pantheon worship" did happen, especially during the cosmopolitan Roman Empire, and there also were attempts via Interpretio Romana to "unify" the pantheons in a way, but by and large religion, culture and nation were one and the same. Meanwhile, Christianity managed to build up the universalist nation of a united Christendom existing across all borders and cultural identities.

So, well, there are advantages and drawbacks to everything.