Monday, December 31, 2007
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Agnostic Christianity: Oxymoron or honesty?
I say honest. Thomas the Apostle is only the best known agnostic Christian. In the Bible, no less!
Some blogs:
The Christian Agnostic (I've just glanced at it, but she looks like somebody I could blog with peacefully!).
An Agnostic Christian (Ditto).
Couple of post from a guy whose blog is Relatively Faithful ... Agnostic Christians? and More on Agnostic Christianity.
--ER
Comments:
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ER, Thomas did not stay an Agnostic. After the encounter with Jesus, he was a believer. (I'm really not 200. :-) Who has not had some doubts, but let's just not entertain them. :-) Best to get in the Word and get the answers or pray and seek. I'm still going to like you ER, even if we disagree on some things. We will just have to be patient with one another. Ha!
Mom2, I confess that I have grown fond of you, too. Yer like an aunt or something. :-)
On Thomas: He was an agnostic until he was given proof -- the wound in the side and the nail holes in the wrists of Jesus. That's what an agnostic is: One who will not believe until given proof. I daresay that all agnostics alive today -- except for a few real devils in disguise -- would convert if given similar evidence!
We differ on what to do with doubts. I DO entertain them, I rassle with 'em constantly, and I try to be pretty open about that -- because it's honest and true. I STOKE my doubts deliberately. My doubts are as much part of my relationship with God as my hopes.
On Thomas: He was an agnostic until he was given proof -- the wound in the side and the nail holes in the wrists of Jesus. That's what an agnostic is: One who will not believe until given proof. I daresay that all agnostics alive today -- except for a few real devils in disguise -- would convert if given similar evidence!
We differ on what to do with doubts. I DO entertain them, I rassle with 'em constantly, and I try to be pretty open about that -- because it's honest and true. I STOKE my doubts deliberately. My doubts are as much part of my relationship with God as my hopes.
A careful reading of the verses concerned show that Thomas was no more a doubter than all the male Apostles. They all at first did not believe Mary Magdalene. In John 20:19&20 it shows that Jesus showed the same holes in his body to all of the other deciples in order to convince them.
"On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord"
So why does Thomas Judas Dedymus the "twin of Jesus" get so much grief? It is because many of the forms of Christianity in the first two centuries did not believe that Christ rose from the dead. The earliest known Marks for example leave that part of the story out of the manuscripts. The whole account(or actually acounts) appear in latter versions of the Gospels. The Orthodox(or what became the Orthodox) were fighting the fight in favor of the physcial resurection almost from day one, and they won.
The orthodox view requires a virgin birth and a physical ressurection and total faith that both occured. Now those two things I am agnostic about.
"On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord"
So why does Thomas Judas Dedymus the "twin of Jesus" get so much grief? It is because many of the forms of Christianity in the first two centuries did not believe that Christ rose from the dead. The earliest known Marks for example leave that part of the story out of the manuscripts. The whole account(or actually acounts) appear in latter versions of the Gospels. The Orthodox(or what became the Orthodox) were fighting the fight in favor of the physcial resurection almost from day one, and they won.
The orthodox view requires a virgin birth and a physical ressurection and total faith that both occured. Now those two things I am agnostic about.
I sedond that, as a defense against those who say that no "real" Christian would ever have serious doubts. Pshaw. The disciples themselves repeatedly exhibited dounbt and incredulity in the very face of the Lord, the Bible says.
(Goose is cooking nicely, BTW, although it might take longer since it's so dang cold! But I started it earlier than I'd planned ...)
(Goose is cooking nicely, BTW, although it might take longer since it's so dang cold! But I started it earlier than I'd planned ...)
Doubting Thomas got a bad rap. The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
Dude! You can't possibly be so thick-headed as to believe Thomas was an Agnostic! You're way too intellectually savvy for that!
And Mom!!! "Thomas did not STAY and Agnostic..."? Thomas NEVER WAS an Agnostic!
Thomas didn't doubt who Jesus was or what He meant to Thomas personally. Only the veracity of his fellow disciples assertions that the LORD had appeared to them while he was out and about.
Thomas an Agnostic? Ridiculous! I challenge both of you to reread John, chapters 14 and 15 specifically-- keeping in mind that Judas had already left to betray the LORD --and then tell me that Jesus would have said the things He did to any of His disciples.... like the following:
"Ye are my friends... Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ORDAINED you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you." [15:15-16]
This is not a speech Jesus would have made to anyone who was not thoroughly and completely sold on who Jesus was.
Thomas was not Agnostic. He acted very human, in fact! Much like Peter when Peter denied the LORD. Was Peter an Agnostic too?
Good grief! Open the Bible and read it!
In answer to your original question:
OXYMORON... of the highest order!
And Mom!!! "Thomas did not STAY and Agnostic..."? Thomas NEVER WAS an Agnostic!
Thomas didn't doubt who Jesus was or what He meant to Thomas personally. Only the veracity of his fellow disciples assertions that the LORD had appeared to them while he was out and about.
Thomas an Agnostic? Ridiculous! I challenge both of you to reread John, chapters 14 and 15 specifically-- keeping in mind that Judas had already left to betray the LORD --and then tell me that Jesus would have said the things He did to any of His disciples.... like the following:
"Ye are my friends... Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ORDAINED you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you." [15:15-16]
This is not a speech Jesus would have made to anyone who was not thoroughly and completely sold on who Jesus was.
Thomas was not Agnostic. He acted very human, in fact! Much like Peter when Peter denied the LORD. Was Peter an Agnostic too?
Good grief! Open the Bible and read it!
In answer to your original question:
OXYMORON... of the highest order!
"...the opposite of Faith is Certainty"??? Huh?
Soooo... that means Faith is "Uncertainty"???
"Pshaw!!!!!"
Hebrews 11:1 says quite the opposite. Faith IS Certainty... ABSOLUTE certainty.
Soooo... that means Faith is "Uncertainty"???
"Pshaw!!!!!"
Hebrews 11:1 says quite the opposite. Faith IS Certainty... ABSOLUTE certainty.
Nice rantlet, EL. Interesting take on Thomas. I've never ever heard that what he doubted was the word of his fellows. Kinda makes the need to put his fingers in the wounds, which he presumably could see with his eyes, so much overkill, doesn't it?
Pending further thought, I consider Thomas an agnostic -- and, acknowledging it to be a loaded word, I assert than any honest Christian has bouts with doubt. "Knowing" within the context of one's doctrinal assumptions, or within one's own sense of logic as to the story of the Gospel, or within the specter of what one has always believed, those are different from doubting EVERYTHING, including oneself, in the dark night of the soul -- and THAT's when, once on the other side, I usually see only one set of footprints in the sand, to borrow the metaphor, when I'm being carried.
If you're so confident, be very glad.
Pending further thought, I consider Thomas an agnostic -- and, acknowledging it to be a loaded word, I assert than any honest Christian has bouts with doubt. "Knowing" within the context of one's doctrinal assumptions, or within one's own sense of logic as to the story of the Gospel, or within the specter of what one has always believed, those are different from doubting EVERYTHING, including oneself, in the dark night of the soul -- and THAT's when, once on the other side, I usually see only one set of footprints in the sand, to borrow the metaphor, when I'm being carried.
If you're so confident, be very glad.
Your rejoinder to ELAshley will be met with horror, ER. Why think when it is all there in black, red, and white (the red being the words of Jesus) in the Bible. His brand of certainty may keep him in some kind of equanimity, and I am happy for him. For others, however, there is, as you say, that "dark night of the soul" (St. John of the Cross) in which we all wrestle with the demon of doubt. Faith being the assurance of things not seen, according to the passage ELAshley wishes us to consider, is it any wonder we struggle with doubt?
I like that quote from Spong you used a while back, ER, in which he talked about the inescapability of his own faith even in the face of the various doubts and questions he has posed in his various works; he even doubts whether his faith is as limited as his works might seem to suggest. If you could find that again, I would appreciate it.
I like that quote from Spong you used a while back, ER, in which he talked about the inescapability of his own faith even in the face of the various doubts and questions he has posed in his various works; he even doubts whether his faith is as limited as his works might seem to suggest. If you could find that again, I would appreciate it.
EL, you are right! Thomas was not an Agnostic. I just hastily wanted to reply to the claim of his unbelief and did not want to leave him in that state.
Did anyone mention http://bartdehrman.com/ a confessed agnostic who lists
" UNDERGRADUATE COURSES TAUGHT
New Testament Introduction; Jesus in Myth, Tradition, and History; The Birth of Christianity; Apocalypse Now and Then; Heresy and Orthodoxy in Early Christianity; Jesus in Scholarship and Film; The Life and Letters of Paul; Jesus and the Synoptics; The Gospel and Letters of John; The Problem of Suffering in the Biblical Traditions; Introduction to Hebrew Bible.
GRADUATE COURSES TAUGHT
Problems and Methods in New Testament Studies; Early Christian Apocrypha; The Apostolic Fathers; The Greek Apologists; Heresy and Orthodoxy in Early Christianity; Christianity in the Early Roman Empire; Readings in the Greco-Roman Religions; New Testament Textual Criticism; New Testament Greek and Exegesis. " ..Christian agnostic, or ??
" UNDERGRADUATE COURSES TAUGHT
New Testament Introduction; Jesus in Myth, Tradition, and History; The Birth of Christianity; Apocalypse Now and Then; Heresy and Orthodoxy in Early Christianity; Jesus in Scholarship and Film; The Life and Letters of Paul; Jesus and the Synoptics; The Gospel and Letters of John; The Problem of Suffering in the Biblical Traditions; Introduction to Hebrew Bible.
GRADUATE COURSES TAUGHT
Problems and Methods in New Testament Studies; Early Christian Apocrypha; The Apostolic Fathers; The Greek Apologists; Heresy and Orthodoxy in Early Christianity; Christianity in the Early Roman Empire; Readings in the Greco-Roman Religions; New Testament Textual Criticism; New Testament Greek and Exegesis. " ..Christian agnostic, or ??
BB, those class titles say nothing at all about what Bart E. believes or thinks -- they're class titles; any studious person could teach any of them with enough study.
Bart E., also, as of the publuication of his "The Lost Gospels" a few years ago, was a professed agnostic.
My good friend DrLoboJo, who was over for supper tonight, with his lovely bride, told me that in March or thereabouts Bart E. declared his atheism. I have not confirmed that. If so, I find that sad. It tells me that the box he had God in was too small all along.
Bart E., also, as of the publuication of his "The Lost Gospels" a few years ago, was a professed agnostic.
My good friend DrLoboJo, who was over for supper tonight, with his lovely bride, told me that in March or thereabouts Bart E. declared his atheism. I have not confirmed that. If so, I find that sad. It tells me that the box he had God in was too small all along.
Bart the Agnostic or Atheist; We Report You Decide:
Washington Post
The Book of Bart
By Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 5, 2006
"For Ehrman, the dark sparkling bubbles cascaded out of him while teaching a class at Rutgers University on "The Problem of Suffering in Biblical Traditions." It was the mid-1980s, the Ethiopian famine was in full swing. Starving infants, mass death. Ehrman came to believe that not only was there no evidence of Jesus being divine, but neither was there a God paying attention.
"I just began to lose it," Ehrman says now, in a conversation that stretches from late afternoon into the evening. "It wasn't for lack of trying. But I just couldn't believe there was a God in charge of this mess . . . It was so emotionally charged. This whole business of 'the Bible is your life, and anyone who doesn't believe it is going to roast in hell.' "
He kept teaching, moving to Chapel Hill, kept hanging on to the shreds of belief, but the dark bubbles fled upward. He was a successful author, voted one of the most popular professors on campus, but he awoke one morning seven years ago and found the remnants of faith gone. No bubbles at all. He was soon to marry for the second time and his kids were grown. He stopped going to church.
"I would love for him to be there with me, and sometimes wish it was something we share," says Ehrman's wife, Sarah Beckwith, a professor of medieval literature at Duke University, and an Episcopalian. "But I respect the integrity of decisions he's made, even if I reject the logic by which he reached them."
"Bart was, like a lot of people who were converted to fundamental evangelicalism, converted to the certainty of it all, of having all the answers," says Dale Martin, Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University, and a friend of three decades. "When he found out they were lying to him, he just didn't want anything to do with it.
"His wife and I go to Mass sometimes. He never comes with us anymore."
* * *
Life after the loss of faith, even for the deeply religious, is not necessarily a terrible thing.
Ehrman tools home from campus on a recent morning in his BMW convertible. He has a lovely house in the countryside, a wife who loves him and an ever-growing career. He is, he says, a "happy agnostic." That emptiness he felt as a teenager is still there, but he fills it with family, friends, work and the finer things in life.
He thinks that when you die, there are no Pearly Gates.
"I think you just cease to exist, like the mosquito you swatted yesterday."
The whole article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/04/AR2006030401369_5.html
My opinon: I think he long ago moved from "I don't know" to "No, there is not". To call himself an agnostic prevents a PC backlash to one who wants to teach and write about which he does not believe or is even nutral.
Washington Post
The Book of Bart
By Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 5, 2006
"For Ehrman, the dark sparkling bubbles cascaded out of him while teaching a class at Rutgers University on "The Problem of Suffering in Biblical Traditions." It was the mid-1980s, the Ethiopian famine was in full swing. Starving infants, mass death. Ehrman came to believe that not only was there no evidence of Jesus being divine, but neither was there a God paying attention.
"I just began to lose it," Ehrman says now, in a conversation that stretches from late afternoon into the evening. "It wasn't for lack of trying. But I just couldn't believe there was a God in charge of this mess . . . It was so emotionally charged. This whole business of 'the Bible is your life, and anyone who doesn't believe it is going to roast in hell.' "
He kept teaching, moving to Chapel Hill, kept hanging on to the shreds of belief, but the dark bubbles fled upward. He was a successful author, voted one of the most popular professors on campus, but he awoke one morning seven years ago and found the remnants of faith gone. No bubbles at all. He was soon to marry for the second time and his kids were grown. He stopped going to church.
"I would love for him to be there with me, and sometimes wish it was something we share," says Ehrman's wife, Sarah Beckwith, a professor of medieval literature at Duke University, and an Episcopalian. "But I respect the integrity of decisions he's made, even if I reject the logic by which he reached them."
"Bart was, like a lot of people who were converted to fundamental evangelicalism, converted to the certainty of it all, of having all the answers," says Dale Martin, Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University, and a friend of three decades. "When he found out they were lying to him, he just didn't want anything to do with it.
"His wife and I go to Mass sometimes. He never comes with us anymore."
* * *
Life after the loss of faith, even for the deeply religious, is not necessarily a terrible thing.
Ehrman tools home from campus on a recent morning in his BMW convertible. He has a lovely house in the countryside, a wife who loves him and an ever-growing career. He is, he says, a "happy agnostic." That emptiness he felt as a teenager is still there, but he fills it with family, friends, work and the finer things in life.
He thinks that when you die, there are no Pearly Gates.
"I think you just cease to exist, like the mosquito you swatted yesterday."
The whole article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/04/AR2006030401369_5.html
My opinon: I think he long ago moved from "I don't know" to "No, there is not". To call himself an agnostic prevents a PC backlash to one who wants to teach and write about which he does not believe or is even nutral.
Thanks for posting that. He is living the eventual, sad end of many people who look too hard at what they actually think they believe about the Bible. Better to look to the inspired search for God IN the Bible than to look for "proof" OF God there, I think.
Oh, and I saw where somomebody caslled Ehrmann "an atheist without balls."
Oh, and I saw where somomebody caslled Ehrmann "an atheist without balls."
"Faith IS Certainty... ABSOLUTE certainty."
LOL. That's the silliest thing I've read in a while. Thanks for the laugh. If we were certain, we wouldn't need faith.
BTW, check your translation. A more accurate translation of Hebrews 11 says: "1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
Nice try.
LOL. That's the silliest thing I've read in a while. Thanks for the laugh. If we were certain, we wouldn't need faith.
BTW, check your translation. A more accurate translation of Hebrews 11 says: "1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
Nice try.
Reality check: regardless of Ehrman is Ag or Ath is scholarship seems to be intact. It is only in his conclusions that his veiwpoint sems to overide. And of course he is not alone in pointing out the variances that call so much into question.
Faith is certainty:
The Royal Gorge Suspension Bridge, I know with absolute certainty that the bridge is not going to fall, but walking out on to it, and having it sway in the wind, or a car rumble by while you stand on the edge, makes me want to turn and crawl off of it on all fours.
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Faith is certainty:
The Royal Gorge Suspension Bridge, I know with absolute certainty that the bridge is not going to fall, but walking out on to it, and having it sway in the wind, or a car rumble by while you stand on the edge, makes me want to turn and crawl off of it on all fours.
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