DWill wrote:I think you didn't mention that these anathemas were handed down in 553, about 300 years after Origen died. So what conclusions can you draw about Origen's own times from an event so far in the future?

you don't anathematise something that is no threat to your full spectrum dominance, all these years later "Origenism" needs the jackboot applied and so applied it will be.

This involves incredibly complicated study. You can see that just by referring to any standard history. Scholars don't agree as to the extent the accusations really apply to Origen's thought.

as i referenced, they destroyed the documents so all we have is from the mouth of his accusers.

The point about his allegorical interpretation involves a technical dispute in theology that I don't begin to want to understand,

then i'm happy to leave it here

but I feel comfortable saying that in an orthodox view, allegory was permitted interpretation.

as i said as long as the allegory is no threat to orthodoxy it will be permitted, the moment it illuminates the power's lies it's jackboot time baby.

The knock against Origen seems to have been that he allegorized too freely.

and his allegorising allowed a light to begin to shine in some and so... anathema!!!! can't have the ignorant herd turn and stampede the power elite, gotta keep 'em down.

Maybe you are thinking of RCs as literalist/fundamentalists of the sort produced by the Protestant Reformation.

power elites are always the same. totalitarian scum.

There's a great deal more sophistication in the RC way of reading the Bible.

maybe there is in places but challenge vatican authority and it's jackboot time baby.

Origen is not condemned by the church today, but is rather praised.

so what, americans praise the founding fathers who would be repulsed by the pathetic sight we see today, and would be the first to condemn the very ones who praise them.

It's easy to make too much of this council held in 553.

and easy to make too little of it.

Origenism wasn't the main point of the council anyway.

irrelevant, again you don't bother to anathematise that which is no threat or potential threat.

this thread title cracks me up

Re: No Evidence that Jesus was a Myth

the bible is the evidence

virgin born son of god turns water into wine walks on water rises from dead

that IS mythology and the bible IS the evidence.

Stahrwe? are you hiding again?

Flann 5 wrote: I think there is a tendency towards a black and white polarising of Literalist versus Mythicist. While I don't accept the view of Christianity and the biblical literature as myth, I don't accept the literalist tag as it's understood.
For example, the miracles of Jesus in the gospel of John are designated "signs".Our word significant comes from this.
Thus the miracle of multiplying the loves is not just a miraculous party trick,or even just a good deed of feeding hungry people, but Jesus points to a deeper significance in relation to himself, saying, "I am the bread of life."
Or the parable of the prodigal son for example, is clearly a parable but the characters correspond to the real people hearing the story. The obvious sinners and the self righteous Pharisees.
I'm sure you are well aware of these things.

Thanks, Flann. Sorry for the belated response. I agree that the literalist position is probably misunderstood and discussed too often in black and white.

I once had an interesting conversation with a Catholic priest who knew I was a lapsed Catholic. He and I were discussing my son’s pending baptism (which we were doing primarily for his grandmother’s benefit). Anyway, this priest began sharing with me his deep emotional connection to many of the Church's rituals. I had never quite thought of the rituals—such as the communion at mass—anything more than monotonous and irrelevant. Us materialists tend to focus exclusively on what’s really true. I think what that priest was trying to show me was another realm of human experience that has nothing to do with “truth,” per se. The rituals for him were meaningful and beautiful. I'm pretty sure I didn't get it at the time, but thinking back now I have much admiration for that priest for taking a moment to share that with me.

There's a great distinction to be made between subjective meaning and objective reality (the mass of the moon, for instance) and I believe confusing the two will always lead to absurdities. Inevitably we will ask valid questions such as, why doesn't God stop child cancer? Because a literal (personal) God who does nothing but sit around and watch children die of cancer doesn't make any damned sense. But probably even literalists don’t think of God in such black and white terms. There seems to be a great divide here between theists and nonbelievers and I think it’s useful to try to identify those areas of nonoverlapping magisteria that separate us.

William James, who studied the psychology of belief and weighed in on the age-old conflict between religion and science, also makes the important distinction between truth and "personal utility."

. . . The new test of truth was of course an ancient one; and the honest philosopher described pragmatism modestly as "a new name for old ways of thinking." If the new test means that truth is that which has been tried, by experience and experiment, the answer is, Of course. If it means that personal utility is a test of truth , the answer is, Of course not; personal utility is merely personal utility; only universal permanent utility would constitute truth. When some pragmatists speak of a belief having been true once because then useful (though now disproved ), they utter nonsense learnedly; it was a useful error, not a truth.

That Catholic priest, in my hindsight, seemed to have a good handle on the fact that the rituals were personally meaningful for him. I don’t think such feelings are right or wrong any more than one’s personal taste in music is right or wrong. And I have no doubt that your religious beliefs are personally meaningful—and therefore true—for you as well.

Clearly, humans were once much better at thinking in terms of metaphor and poetry. Before science showed us how the world really is (to the extent that we can understand it), we relied more on ambiguity. We didn’t have to make that distinction between subjective meaning (James’ “personal utility”) and objective reality, but now I would say we do.

Hi Geo, Thanks. Actually I missed your post here having become embroiled in the "crimes of God" one.
In fact I agree with you in relation to imagination and creativity in literature and the arts. I think it's part of being human to have this desire for creative imagination and expression.
I don't know if science works against that or maybe it's just the way it's taught. Science reveals many amazing and stupendous things about nature.
I don't think there's a necessary extrapolation from the imaginative and creative in man to biblical literature being mythological. In the end there either is a supernatural God or there isn't and it seems to come down to where we line up on that question.
As a matter of interest I watched a youtube video of Richard Dawkins lecturing on cuckoos of all things. He was 'demystifying' their behaviour by giving evolutionary explanations of their behaviour. As you know I find their behaviour intriguing with their producing similarly marked eggs and the apparent co-complicity of the chick in turfing out the other genuine eggs.There's a kind of criminality about it all.
It may be that science has this effect of demystification and maybe that's what you are alluding to.Needless to say I detected some logical flaws in Dawkin's presentation of this, but I won't weary you with that.

Flann wrote:having become embroiled in the "crimes of God" one.

i thought of it more as the "unworkable conception of god that is orthodoxy" one

embroiled, i love being embroiled.

great choice of word there m8

embroil
ɪmˈbrɔɪl,ɛm-/
verb
past tense: embroiled; past participle: embroiled

involve (someone) deeply in an argument, conflict, or difficult situation.
"the organization is currently embroiled in running battles with pressure groups"
synonyms: involve, entangle, ensnare, enmesh, catch up, mix up, bog down, mire
"she became embroiled in a dispute between the two women"
archaic
bring into a state of confusion or disorder.
"what merit do you claim for having embroiled everything in which you are concerned?"

Origin
early 17th century: from French embrouiller ‘to muddle’.
Translate embroiled to
Use over time for: embroiled

The author of the article (and I've read a number of things written by O'Neil going back a good 25 years or more) is saying that the baptism story must have really happened or the gospel writers wouldn't have gone through pains to recast it to each fit the Jesus they were pushing (ordinary man adopted by god at the baptism, miraculous from birth, pre-existent messiah, etc.) but I find this questionable. If various churches or communities were pushing a different Santa Claus (Pelznickel, Sinterklaas, Knecht Ruprecht), I'm sure they would all push the belief that he wore a fur or fur-lined suit and carried gifts. That doesn't make him real.

Very good point, DB Roy.

Thank you, Chris. Another point to make here is that Paul's writings are the earliest of all the NT writings--well ahead of the gospels--and he never spoke of the baptism at all. In fact Paul never wrote anything about the life of Christ as a historical creature--not even where he walked or when. Pretty strange for someone who was supposed to have been a contemporary. Another very early writing in the NT is the epistle of James (some date it before Paul) and James says not a word about the baptism or anything about a historical Jesus. The writer doesn't give the impression that Jesus had ever walked on earth but was only now (in that time) getting ready to do so.

DB Roy wrote:Thank you, Chris. Another point to make here is that Paul's writings are the earliest of all the NT writings--well ahead of the gospels--and he never spoke of the baptism at all. In fact Paul never wrote anything about the life of Christ as a historical creature--not even where he walked or when. Pretty strange for someone who was supposed to have been a contemporary. Another very early writing in the NT is the epistle of James (some date it before Paul) and James says not a word about the baptism or anything about a historical Jesus. The writer doesn't give the impression that Jesus had ever walked on earth but was only now (in that time) getting ready to do so.

Hello DB Roy. I'm not sure whether you're arguing for mythic elements in Jesus or the full mythicist stance, which as I understand it would claim that Paul never conceives of a man when he uses the name Jesus in his writings (over 200 times). He is instead referring to a transcendent spirit, equivalent to his Christ.

The problem for NT scholars is that they are not at all sure WHAT Paul is talking about because he is all over the place. In, what is considered by many to be the earliest writing of the NT, 1 Thessalonians, Paul brings up the Rapture. The problem is, he never mentions it in any other epistle. Did he change his mind? What is just a ruse? Was it an important part of his belief system or minor? No one knows.

In the opening paragraph of Romans, Paul writes about "the gospel he [God] promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead." In no other writing does Paul ever say that Jesus Christ was a descendant of David nor does he ever use the phrase "Son of God in power" in any other epistle--let alone explain to us what it even means. Near as I can figure, these were the two groups he would be meeting up with in Rome and was trying to address them in their own jargon in hopes of bringing them under his banner--whatever that was.

In Galatians 2:20, we find this odd statement: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me."

In 1:11-12 Paul writes: " I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ."

So is he talking about a creature of history or not? It would seem not.

In Galatians, Paul went to Jerusalem but never stated it was the city where he lord was crucified, never claimed to have visited the spot where the cross was erected. He wrote of meeting Peter (Cephas) and James but never stated these men actually knew Jesus. In fact, judging from his arguments with Peter, it is clear he did not believe these men knew Jesus--which casts doubt on the entire gospel story. He doesn't call James "the Lord's brother" as the dishonest English translations put it. In the Greek, he calls him "the brother of the lord." The former implies a familial relationship and the latter a title.

In 1 Corinthians 9:5, Paul writes: "Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a wife, as the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?" Here we see the brothers of the Lord is a religious order of some kind. Paul couldn't be talking about the biological brothers of Jesus or his statement makes no sense.

Like a politician, Paul seems to don different personas speaking in different Christian terms to different Christian enclaves and communities that he visits or writes to. Because of that, we cannot be at all certain what he truly believes about the nature of this Christ Jesus of his. We can only be certain that Paul did not regard this personage as a flesh-and-blood human being that was a contemporary and, by his own admission, knew nothing of any history of this personage but received his knowledge by some kind of revelation.