Most American religious believers, including most Christians, say eternal life is not exclusively for those who accept Christ as their savior, a new survey finds.
Of the 65% of people who held this open view of heaven’s gates, 80% named at least one non-Christian group ”” Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists or people with no religion at all ”” who may also be saved, according to a new survey released today by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
This means 52% of Christians do not agree with the doctrines many religions teach, particularly conservative denominations.
Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, calls the findings “a theological crisis for American evangelicals. They represent at best a misunderstanding of the Gospel and at worst a repudiation of the Gospel.”
We would all have to acknowledge that the leadership of ECUSA, especially the current PB, has been woefully deficient in this respect. One could hope at least a formulation of someone like C.S. Lewis, who, in many ways, proposed the thought that the proposition “salvation comes only through Christ” might allow for the possibility that non-Christians might be saved.
The present Pope’s “Truth and Tolerance,” written while he was still a Cardinal, also (if I recall correctly) addresses the issues raised by this article. It may be time to read that again.
Franz, good advice – this looks like a good book. Also helpful, I believe, would be [url=http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html]Dominus Iesus[/url], the encyclical of Pope John Paul II:
Id. at ¶ 15.
Since it’s exam time for the young people in my household, here’s an essay question for those who claim that “all those who are saved [are] redeemed only through Christ”: And you know this, how?
Warning 1: Any answer based on an appeal to the authority of others, whether of today or of ancient times, will get a zero grade unless it offers support for the authority’s claim of knowledge, in terms that would be taken seriously by an intellectually-honest skeptic who isn’t already persuaded of the conclusion.
Warning 2: An answer that cites an ancient scriptural prediction, which by its terms was supposed to have been fulfilled thousands of years ago, must explain — again, in terms that would be taken seriously by our intellectually-honest skeptic — why reasonable people should not shrug their shoulders and dismiss the prediction as mistaken.
Warning 3: An answer that posits an explanation for reported phenomena (e.g., post-mortem ‘appearances’) must explore known possible alternatives and explain why the posited explanation is the compelling one.
#3 —
I am not going to try to respond to your proposed quiz. I’m not sure that it can be answered on the terms you propose. I know that I can’t — I accept the answer on authority. Then again, I accept a lot of what I think I know on authority, including, but not limited to, the establishment of Plymouth Colony in 1620, the basic outline of the Pelopponesian War, the existence of the Republic of Georgia on the shores of the Black Sea, the existence of the Black Sea, the existence of both Barack Obama and John McCain . . . the list goes on.
But, surely it must strike all of us as strange that those who identify themselves as Christians (and presumably accept a lot of things on authority) hold belief on a subject contrary to that which appears to have been a central doctrine of Christianity for roughly 2000 years.
I wouldn’t expect a Buddhist to hold Christian views on salvation (in fact, I would expect a Buddhist to hold very different views on whether the Christian concept of salvation was something to be desired). But it is a little bit odd to find Christians not really dealing with the tough minded assertion “I am the way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the Father but through me . . . “
That’s an interesting supposition, No. 3. I would query what exactly you mean in “Warning 3” by the terms “intellectually honest skeptic” and “support for the authority’s claim of knowledge.” I am taking that caveat to mean that the writer of the essay can’t just argument “X is true because Y says so. Period. End of discussion.” I am taking your meaning to mean “If X is true because Y says so” that I must argue also “Y is an expert because of Z.” In other words, cite your sources and why sources are relevant and persuasive in themselves.
I am also presuming that the parameters of Warning 2 is basically a variation of Warning 1’s logic. The writer can’t just argue, “X is true because Y-scripture predicted it. Period. End of Discussion” which is basically circular logic because If I say, “Y means this, and X is derived from my interpretation Y, then therefore X is true (because what I said about Y was true.”
Likewise, Warning 3 is a variation on 2 and 1. One can’t just say, “The bible says Jesus rose, so therefore it must be true, and if that is true, then he must be the only way for Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life…’.” Or, as the bumper sticker says, “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.”
Am I correct in presuming these parameters?
#3 – cause the Bible tells me so!
Correction, I meant Warning 1 (not 3) in the first paragraph.
Franz,
Not to mention some questionable ‘theoretical science’ that is being passed off as fact, and which we are told we cannot question.
All knowledge we have today is based on evidence of eyewitnesses or those to whom they passed their knowledge, aka “based on an appeal to the authority of others”.
Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, The The Peloponnesian War etc. We don’t know anything about them except “based on an appeal to the authority of others”.
Josh McDowell’s book [i]”Evidence that Demands a Verdict”[/i] does a very good job of explaining WHY and HOW the Bible can be accepted as a reliable witness of the events especially when compared to the historical writings of the same period that are accepted as authoritative by historians and scholars today.
Thus DC’s requirements are, if not impossible, then at least supremely ridiculous.
Peace in the RISEN Christ Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life.
Jim Elliott. <>< Florida
I do believe that Jesus is the only way to salvation, but in practice this might not look anything like the way many conservatives believe. It probably looks a lot more “pluralistic.”
The phrase “Jesus is the only way to salvation” often seems merely like a intellectual or verbal assent, a loyalty oath. And in this way, it is trivial. We can say all sorts of things. What is more interesting is what we say to ourselves (“Jesus loves me”), whether or not it is true, and if it changes lives.
What is interesting is that Christianity and other religions have long interacted. Philip Jenkins recently wrote about how Eastern Christianity Saved Buddhism – before the Mongol invasion. And Early American Christianity was influenced by nature and American Indian religion.
Further popular piety is often much different than what theologians, professors, and the righteous believe. It has always been thus. It probably took the 19th century Methodists to teach the average Englishman to read scripture. Remember, most Christians throughout history didn’t know how to read, much less read scripture.
My own view is that the RISen Christ probably freed us from the need for self-righteousness and certainty from religion. The perfect Christian, perhaps, is able to be friends with all religions that preach love. And this is, truly, is a narrow gate.
And the alternative, it seems, is war: the outer darkness of certainty, maliciousness and all sorts of things that allow people to kill each other in order to impress their God. The cross taught us, at the very least, we don’t need to impress God with our piety. This is why it is particular. And this is also why there is no need for religious warfare anymore.
If we only understood (“forgive them…”).
Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
#4 Franz writes: ” I would expect a Buddhist to hold very different views on whether the Christian concept of salvation was something to be desired.”
C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce expresses a similar view: when offered salvation, not everyone is interested. Many are quite pleased with where they are and would not “get on the bus”. Even if they know that Jesus is the only way, many will reject Him – and many did. However, it does not help if leaders of Christian churches proclaim there are other ways – for this provides a justification for such people to stay where they are.
Franz [#4] and LibraryJim [#6], we ‘accept’ ancient authority about the Peloponnesian War, but only up to a point. It’s mostly an academic exercise. Few if any people would make big bets, with serious real-life consequences, that depended on the correctness of the ancient accounts of that war. Yet orthodox Christians want us to make exactly that kind of bet on the assertions made in the second and third ‘chapters’ of the Nicene Creed.
I’m perfectly willing to accept that the New Testament provides a reasonably-accurate outline of the main historical points about Jesus. What I cannot accept (and honestly don’t understand how others can accept) is the syllogism of belief derived from the following evidence:
• The tomb in which Jesus was laid after his crucifixion was found empty some 36 hours later. Fine, but simpler explanations than resurrection come readily to mind. My own conjecture is that after the Sabbath was over, Jesus’ body was moved to a permanent resting place by Joseph of Arimathea — who is not mentioned before or after in the New Testament accounts, who seemed to move in more exalted circles than the hoi polloi Eleven, and who evidently took custody of Jesus’ body without so much as a by-your-leave to his disciples or even his family — without telling those who later founded the early church.
(It’s curious, isn’t it, that we never hear of Joseph of Arimathea again, nor of the influential Nicodemus. For that matter, we never hear again of the wealthy Lazarus; of all people, you’d think he would have figured prominently in the movement founded by the bosom friend who reportedly called him out of the tomb.)
• Some of Jesus’ followers believed they had encountered him in person. Fine; but there are simpler alternative explanations for this too. We can’t rule out the well-documented phenomenon of grief hallucination. Neither can we discount the distinct possibility of story exaggeration over the decades.
(I can’t explain Paul’s ‘encounter’ on the road to Damascus. His personal history and his letters make him out to be more than a little strange. Even now we know little enough about the mind and the brain; who knows what was going on in Paul’s head.)
• Some of Jesus’ followers concluded he was the long-awaited Anointed One, and predicted that he would soon return to usher in the reign of God and promote Israel to its rightful place in the world. Well, that didn’t happen, did it. For 1,900+ years, the orthodox have made excuses for that busted prediction. None of those excuses is enough to hide the prediction’s utter failure.
(Archer of the Forest [#5], that’s what I meant in my Warning #2.)
• Some of Jesus’ disciples concluded that he had been God himself, who had voluntarily redeemed the world of sin by taking on human form and submitting to a self-sacrificing death. That gives rise to the essay question again: And those disciples knew these various things, how? And we should accept the reliability of their assertions, why?
——————-
Archer of the Forest [#5], you’ve pretty much hit it on the head, save for my comment below about Warning #2.
——————-
LibraryJim [#6], I’m fairly sure I’ve read McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict. If memory serves, it professes to be a neutral report, but doesn’t come to grips with some of the graver deficiencies in the orthodox argument, such for example as those mentioned above. Sometimes the verdict demanded is the old Scottish one: Not proved.
Further #1 Franz, C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity on page 209 (my bold added):
Perpetua of Carthage put some of the C. S. Lewis quotes together in her post Creeping Universalism or Mere Christianity.
D.C. Toedt (#3), an interesting exercise, but I’m interested to know by what proofs (and authority?) you posit the three warnings that you do.
Seems to me that there are some unprovable assumptions involved in your Olympian warnings. But then, this is ground that you and I have covered before.
For others interested in robust answers to this sort of “play by the rules of empirical materialism, or don’t play at all” games that positivism et al foisted on the human intellectual endeavor, I refer you to the writings of Michael Polanyi (Personal Knowledge) and, more accessibly, of the late Bishop Lesslie Newbigin (particularly The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, and the shorter book, Proper Confidence). You will find the time spent with their writings repaid many fold.
As Saint Paul hath written: “Don’t feed the trolls.”
[url=http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2_Timothy_2:14-26 ;&version=31;]2 Timothy 2:14-26 [/url]
#8 and #13
Exactly.
One can dismiss Mr. Toedt’s objections, not because they are unsound, but because he has so powerful a bias that his objections are a form of attack, not an attempt to understand. To be sure, for the anti-religious, such an approach is common enough. For the attack dog, it is easy to bite, and those who get too close, find it easy to be bitten. This is, I suppose, a form of truth.
But there are other possibilities, although I have always thought that Lewis’ position is clear and highly probable: God has told us how Christ and his Father can save, but he hasn’t the faintest reason to explain to us what His plans are for all mankind, past and future. And, by implication, he is suggesting that it is intellectual vanity of the most patent sort for us to suppose that we know – or that He should speak up when asked.
In any case, it is also possible that Christ’s well known paradigm is to be applied, not to all mankind regardless of time and place,, but to those who know of Him. He is, after all, speaking to a specific audience, and He Himself has said that his task here on earth was specifically for the Jews. I have always accepted His own limitation literally. Nor did He say what God intended to do with those who were not Christians, so neither Christ nor God spelled out what lies in waiting for the vast bulk of mankind. But we DO know that He is merciful and just, so that placing all non-Christians in hell would deny what we regard as His central quality.
Can a Zoroastrian see paradise? You don’t know and neither do I.
Thank Heaven. Or to put the matter another way. We are told that Christ died for us all. Does that mean He died only for Christians?
Does it really mean that? Since I have “heard” Christ speak through Scripture, I cannot dodge what that knowledge brings. I go to Christ……..or else. But my Zoroastrian above?
Or do all souls carry indwelling the knowledge of the far shore; can they find t heir way home as the migratory birds know where north is, and how to get there? Evolution removes all those who do not know, so many perish without regard to their merits. And so I wonder if Christ’s message is most simply the guarantee that, from now on, of those who have heard Him, none need perish as evolution demands. Larry
Well, D.C., I’ll take a swing at it, if you don’t mind 🙂
First of all, I agree with you about the reliability of the gospels as historical records — that is, while the bulk of the gospel accounts stands up pretty well according to the standards by which historical texts are judged, nobody would imagine treating any other such text as being a perfectly accurate, word-for-word account of the historical events. So the gospels (and Acts and the epistles) are most likely correct in depicting generally what happened, but we should expect a certain amount of error, fudging, and editing for dramatic purposes.
That being said, if the gospels and Acts are reliable at all, then immediately after Jesus was killed his followers were in exactly the sort of despair that one would expect… but then something happened which caused them to go around preaching that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Not only that, the message that the apostles preached after this was Jesus’ message radically reinterpreted in the light of this new fact; not only was Jesus not dead, but his not-deadness had given them a profoundly different understanding of everything he had done and said. The apostles appear to have been unanimous in saying that this “something” that happened was, in fact, an encounter or encounters with the risen Jesus.
So. Possible explanations:
Hypothesis 1: the apostles deliberately fabricated the story.
Sub-heading A: the apostles deliberately fabricated the story in order to secure for themselves cushy jobs as leaders of a religious cult. I mention this theory only because I’ve actually heard it bruited about. For the apostles to believe that publicly claiming to be the leaders of a cult whose founder had just been brutally executed by the Romans would lead to a life of ease, they would have had to have been morons of the first order. And if tradition is any guide, most of the apostles met exactly the ends that any rational person of the time would expect to follow from figuratively kicking the Roman authorities in the ‘nads.
Sub-heading B: the apostles deliberately fabricated the story in order to keep the “Jesus Movement” alive. I think this one is more plausible, in that it doesn’t require the apostles to be total idiots; but I still find it doubtful. They could just as easily have continued the movement based on the genuine martyrdom of its founder, without relying on a risky and likely-to-be-exposed ruse about Jesus coming back from the dead. Moreover, this hypothesis does not account for the way in which they recast the entire message of the “Jesus Movement” by interpreting it through the lens of his death and resurrection; if their goal was to continue the teachings he’d given while he was alive, that would be the last thing they would do.
Hypothesis 2: the apostles genuinely believed they had encountered the risen Jesus, but were mistaken.
I can see how this could happen — you mention “grief hallucinations.” Couple that with the hotbed of rumor that Jerusalem during the Passover and in the wake of Jesus’ crucifixion would likely have been, and I can imagine that “I saw someone who looked just like him” could become “I saw him” could become “She saw him and spoke to him” could become “He’s back and talking to everyone.”
And yet, and yet… to my mind, it still doesn’t quite account for that reinterpretation of Jesus’ message through his death and resurrection. Compare the thrust of the synoptic accounts of Jesus’ preaching to Paul’s theologizing in his letters; there is an entirely new understanding of not only Jesus’ teaching but his whole life and particularly his death. The resurrection of Jesus has become the theological linch-pin of the apostles’ preaching, and I don’t think they would have made that move just based on rumors — even sincerely believed rumors — that he was still somehow alive.
Hypothesis 3: Jesus really did rise from the dead, and the apostles really did see him and talk to him.
And, I should add, the apostles insisted in their preaching that he did not just rise from the dead — there are countless stories of people recovering from brief or even not-so-brief periods of clinical death — but he rose from the dead in a singular way, to a new kind of life.
Of course, the argument against this hypothesis is that it requires a genuinely miraculous occurrence, and therefore violates Occam’s Razor if an equally good explanation that does not rely on a miracle is to be found. On the other hand, the event as asserted is by nature singular, so the fact that it’s not reproducible is to be expected; and Occam’s Razor is only a guideline and depends greatly on a subjective assessment of which is the “least” hypothesis.
And this hypothesis does explain the way in which the apostles’ message was transformed by Jesus’ resurrection, because they were confronted unmistakably with the fact and so had no choice but to make it the central point of their understanding of Jesus.
So, to my mind at any rate, it is the third hypothesis that is the best fit for what appear to be the observed historical facts. It’s not a rock-solid case, I grant you; but it’s sufficient for me.
Actually, I should clarify that by “take a swing at it,” I am referring to the question of the physical resurrection of Jesus; not the question of salvation through Christ alone which D.C. originally posed. What the resurrection does or does not imply is another topic.
I would also add, Kendall, that there are useful differences between syncretism, universalism and pluralism. The first is a more academic notion (is incense syncretistic if both buddhists and Anglo-Catholics use it? Can christians pray by prostrating like Muslims? Can we pray on Friday? What if we have a little ceremony on the shortest day of the year?). Universalism has a long history in the Anglican church; and pluralism is simply how American Christians are expected to be, by law. Christians who are not pluralists, for example, would be – by nature – bad citizens.
Ross [#18], nice job on the three hypotheses. Unlike you, I incline toward Hypothesis #2: Some of Jesus’ disciples mistakenly thought — or convinced themselves — that someone they had seen (the gardener; the fellow traveler on the road to Emmaus) had not been the stranger they first thought, but the Teacher, returned to life. As so often happens, the tales mutated as they spread; soon enough, they took on a life of their own.
My problems with your Hypothesis #3 include, among other things: • We have no accounts of post-mortem sightings of Jesus that we can confidently label as first-hand; • the hearsay accounts we do have were written decades later, in another language; • Luke evidently felt it necessary to investigate the stories in circulation about the church’s early days, implying that he didn’t regard the extant accounts as sufficiently consistent or reliable, which makes us wonder how good a job he did and to what extent he himself got it right; • Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians alludes in two places to forged letters, purportedly by him, in circulation, raising the possibility of other forgeries; • there are big holes in the New Testament accounts that smell of story mutation — for example, why were the apostles in despair after Jesus’ death, but then were shocked to encounter Jesus, given that supposedly he had repeatedly told them what was going to happen; why weren’t Jesus’ influential friends part of the early church; why weren’t John the Baptist and Jesus’ mother and siblings among his disciples during his lifetime; etc.
I don’t view the apostles’ reinterpretation of Jesus’ message as supporting Hypothesis #3. That strikes me as a not-abnormal example of people putting 2 and 2 together and getting a fried egg sandwich. Look at the sequence of events from the apostles’ perspective: Before Jesus’ death, the crowds reportedly hailed him as the Anointed One. After his death, some thought they had seen him, but then he stopped ‘appearing.’ Someone connected the dots in a way that made sense, at least to them, and Peter and others began preaching that that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, who would be returning Real Soon Now to liberate Israel, so everybody repent of your sins, be baptized, and get ready. (And it didn’t happen.)
This curious connecting of the dots is no stranger than that done by, say, the early Mormons, or various millennial movements, or the Heaven’s Gate cult. That’s not much of a credential, especially given that the key prediction of the early church, namely that of Jesus’ imminent return, went bust.
(Paul’s embellishments on that reinterpretation seem to have been the product of his fertile imagination. I speculate that much of his theology sprang from his desire to get Jewish Christians to accept Gentiles in fellowship even though the latter didn’t follow the Law — Jesus, Paul argued, was the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of humanity, meaning that further sacrifices were no longer necessary, and by extension, strict obedience to the Law was now optional.)
What a great thread! Thanks to all of you. While I disagree with much of what our PB says and has said, I read what she said about this question what back when, and I agreed with her. Basically, she said that for us, as Christians, Christ is the only way. For others, we don’t know, and to say others are banned from heaven because they are not Christians, puts God in an awfully small box. For us to decide if anyone else is going to heaven, is not our job, nor do we come close to having the knowldege or qualifications for it. We do know, however, that having been taught Christianity, that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life for us, and we don’t get to the Father, except through Him. This question always boils down to the baby who dies in deepest darkest Africa (always used when I was growing up as the most isolated place, where one would not hear of Jesus) without having the chance to ever know Jesus – does that baby go to heaven? I’ve heard some say absolutely “yes.” I’ve never heard anyone say “no.” I say, who knows but God. I say Revelations seems to give Jews a chance after death, so why not others. I say, if you have a chance to know Jesus, and you turn away from Him, then you may be giving up your only chance. But I say if you don’t know Him, don’t have a reasonable chance to know Him, then who knows what happens to you after you die? If fact, if you turn away from Jesus in life, who knows what happens to you when you die? Only God … and he ain’t telling. So why worry too much about it. Jesus gave us three commandments – Love God, Love our Neighbors, and then that tough one at the Last Supper – love others as He has loved us. Those are the things we need to worry about – loving God and loving our neighbors and doing that by going into the world and making disciples of all in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Let’s get on with it, wherever we find ourselves.
I am sorry but I am having a very difficult time stomaching the insults to our Lord and Savior in the above post especially so close to Christmas.
You may believe that Jesus Christ was a liar and His apostles scoundrels and fools of the first order. That He was nothing more than a shrewd teacher who preyed upon the gullible populace’s hope for deliverance from Roman tyranny. Who finally got too uppity for Hiw own good and came a cropper as fitting any common thief and rebel. His end being the scattering of His bones in some remote scratch of wilderness. And we can only conclude His followers were either dolts or malicious con men or to be gracious suffering from mental illness.
But the end result is the same. Christianity is a lie. Well obviously it would be wrong to allow a lie to further ensare the less anaylitical and reasonable amongst us. It surely would be our duty to do everything possible to make sure this gross insult to our common good is stamped out. That the deluded are stripped of their delusions. That the preachers, pastors, priests and laity who cash in on the Christian message be exposed for the frauds they are.
And it must tear some people up that year after year Christ continues to become Incarnate in people’s hearts. That He will not stay dead. That He will not bow to their superiority. That He remains very inconvenient to their vision for the world.
And I count these people as my enemy and I will pray for their defeat every day. But even worse for them I pray their defeat is in the form of them coming to believe in Christ. So that they may say Credo with full conviction and passion. And I understand in a way their hatred of Christ and Christianity.
What I do not understand is why anyone who believes as they do would ever set foot into a Christian Church or call themselves Christian. Such dishonesty is beyond my ken.
#21, D.C. you are asking a lot of “why” questions, some of which have answers (John the Baptist was no longer around after Jesus started His ministry, for instance; why were the apostles in despair and then surprised, when He rose from the dead, given that He told them before – think of all the things He told them during His time with them that they never understood until after His death; Mary has other children but how old were they to become disciples – and remember no one is ever honored in his own family or town; and isn’t it generally thought that Jesus’ brother James was one of the Jerusalem leaders of the disciples, post ressurection, along with Peter). You are asking for empirical evidence of matters about which faith has been required for 2000 years. If you had empirical evidence, what is the need for faith. If you had the empirical evidence, you would have eaten of the tree of knowledge and be equal to God – and we know what happened the last time that was tried. If you want a go at all of this, however, read or re-read Mere Christianity. Mr. Lewis does a pretty good job of taking us through the evidence until he gets to where faith has to take over. Then you can make your own decision about what you believe and what you then have faith in. You have always seemed to have a pretty powerful intellect. Perhaps that is getting in your way.
#21 D.C.
To take your objections to Hypothesis 3 in order:
• We have no accounts of post-mortem sightings of Jesus that we can confidently label as first-hand;
• the hearsay accounts we do have were written decades later, in another language;
True, but it does appear that the resurrection of Jesus was the core of the kerygma of the early church from Day One. Or Day Three, depending on how you choose to count 🙂 It’s not a first-hand account, no, but it is an account of people purporting loudly and consistenly to have first-hand accounts.
• Luke evidently felt it necessary to investigate the stories in circulation about the church’s early days, implying that he didn’t regard the extant accounts as sufficiently consistent or reliable, which makes us wonder how good a job he did and to what extent he himself got it right;
• Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians alludes in two places to forged letters, purportedly by him, in circulation, raising the possibility of other forgeries;
Well, sure, as I said we have to expect some flaws in the transmitted record, and several of “Paul’s” letters in the NT are generally believed to be by other people. But while Luke and Paul had their own agendas, they were also a lot closer to the events and to the original accounts than we are. We can evaluate their texts as we have them, but it’s very hard for us to second-guess their own research because we have nothing to go on.
• there are big holes in the New Testament accounts that smell of story mutation — for example, why were the apostles in despair after Jesus’ death, but then were shocked to encounter Jesus, given that supposedly he had repeatedly told them what was going to happen; why weren’t Jesus’ influential friends part of the early church; why weren’t John the Baptist and Jesus’ mother and siblings among his disciples during his lifetime; etc.
As for the first, I suspect a lot of the predictions Jesus made of his own death, as recorded in the gospels, are back-insertions made by the evangelists writing after the fact. Or at least the evangelists have “clarified” his statements in light of what they now understood him to have meant. And in any event, the synoptics are consistent in making the point that the apostles had a poor track record in understanding what Jesus was getting at. I don’t think it’s surprising that the apostles weren’t expecting what happened to happen.
For the other two, I think a plausible answer is “well, maybe they were and it just didn’t get written down.” Or, maybe they weren’t for any of dozens of perfectly likely reasons. I don’t consider that these rise to the level of “holes” in the accounts.
23, welcome to the wonderful world of DC.
Must we return to the Catechism once again?
[blockquote]
“Outside the church there is no salvation”
846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
[blockquote]Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.[/blockquote]
847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:
[blockquote]Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation.[/blockquote]
848 “Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men.”[/blockquote]
26. I fear I would soon freeze to death in such a barren landscape.
Paula [#23], I’m sorry you take such offense. A corollary of the First Commandment is face the facts; that’s all I’m trying to do.
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Billy [#24] writes: “John the Baptist was no longer around after Jesus started His ministry ….”
If we’re to believe Luke’s story of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, it’s more than a little strange that John the Baptist didn’t grow up hearing all about his kinsman of whom such great things were expected, and then joining Jesus’ public ministry as soon as it got started. Evidently that didn’t happen — so perhaps the stories Luke collected weren’t as complete or accurate as he had intended.
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Ross [#25] writes: “And in any event, the synoptics are consistent in making the point that the apostles had a poor track record in understanding what Jesus was getting at.”
Agreed; the NT shows us a picture of disciples who, while good-hearted (mostly), were not always the sharpest knives in the drawer, and according to Acts were uneducated even for that time. And while Paul seems to have been brilliant, he was also more than a little strange, as I remarked in a previous comment. We moderns are not necessarily any more intelligent than the apostles were, but we certainly know more about God’s creation than they did. We can legitimately wonder why we are all supposed to be bound by the apostles’ interpretations of their experiences, as opposed to taking into account two millennia of additional knowledge and insights (which would seem to be called for if we’re to be good stewards of God’s gifts of memory, reason, and skill).
“For those who believe, no proof is needed.
For those who refuse to believe, no proof is possible.”
–St. Ignatius of Loyola (also attributed to others)
Folks, you’re playing the game by the dictated rules (read, axioms) of empirical materialism, which as a metaphysics are no more provable by any outside standard (there being no “objective” standards in the first place) than are historic orthodox Christian dogmas.
If you argue by his rules, you will always lose, because the rules of this particular plausibility structure are set up to exclude the dogmatic claims of any other plausibility structure (this is a feature of plausibility structures, not a bug). I’m not saying that argument and conversation are impossible between those whose beliefs are formed according to radically different plausibility structures, but useful conversation is not possible when one party – in this case D.C.’s materialist-positivist philosophy – dictates the terms of the conversation as though they were entirely and solely reality-defining.
Read Newbigin. Read Polanyi.
28, Paul summed it up well: [blockquote] 1 Corinthians 15:12-14 12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. [/blockquote]
But it is true and DC is wrong.
D.C A little bit more humility would go a long way too making your post less offensive as well as that apology.
I have no trouble facing facts. The fact of my sinfulness, the fact of my need for a Savior. The fact that Jesus alone is Savior. The fact that every word of the Creed is True. And during this time of year I am most humbly grateful for this Truth:
” For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.”
And no I do not believe this as only some kind of mythical truth but as real, physical, actual fact. And that applies to the Resurrection as well. I am no Gnostic. My Christianity is quite messy. The stick your hands in His side messy. The get crumbs on the table while you break bread with Him messy. And it is no doubt an embarrasment to my betters to have such a crude, peasant, superstious faith.
33, Paula, you and I are in complete agreement. A blessed Christmas to you and yours. Pax.
Todd Granger [#31], FYI, at Christmas 2006 my wife gave me Weston’s compilation of selected Newbigin writings. (I had asked her for it, motivated by your recommendation.) Like nearly every other traditionalist, included the much-praised N.T. Wright, Newbigin seems simply to assume the truth of the Gospel accounts; my professional training and experience don’t allow me to do that, and in fact have led me to pose the questions I have.
I’ve also read (some) and appreciate the merits of Polanyi’s views about the metaphorical lenses through which each of us observes reality. +Wright draws on those views in the early chapters of The New Testament and the People of God. I’ve tried to take that phenomenon into account in my own thinking.
Paula [#33], I don’t mean to sound churlish, but I have to correct a possible misunderstanding: My comment #29 was not intended as an apology for having expressed the views that I did, in the way that I did. Like Br. Michael, though, I do wish you a Merry Christmas.
Thanks for the clarification DC. And may God bless and keep you this Christmas and always.
Br. Michael, A Joyous and Peaceful Christmas to you and yours. Thanks, I am a bit done with clever in my life.
Mr. Toedt asks us to face the facts. But as I have read his remarks, I saw very few facts – “facts’ in the sense that their existence is corroborated by wholly credible outside evidence. Indeed, much of wht I read was speculation of the sort, “Given what we know about the present world, how credible is it that…?” I have no objection to this latter approach, but they responses to such propositions cannot be called facts in any sense.
Accordingly, I am obviously in entire agreement with Todd Granger. One cannot approach Christ’s historical existence as one approaches the existence of Socrates, because the outside evidence presented for Christ’s historicity is a priori open to question by those who frame the question; but Socrates, who too wrote nothing, has witnesses whose credibility no one questions, Plato’s or Herodotus’. The case against Christ’s existence can be made against Confucius’s existence in parallel ways. And yet no one questions Confucius’ existence because there are none to question, and this is an act of faith, not historical evidence, “facts.” The two men are almost equally powerful, if their effect on history is the issue, so that both pose this improbable proposition: A figment of imagination has shaped empires. Larry
Many who are saved have not known or “accepted Christ. But anyone who is saved is saved only because Christ redeemed all of creation.
Ii have always favored that interpretation, Rob. But is this retroactive? Or is it that God and Christ, operating outside of time, see past and future as all one present, so that “retroactive” is a meaningless term?
Larry
Larry Morse [#39], to reiterate my response to Franz [#12]: Suppose you were to ask me a question about Socrates. My response would be something along the lines of “it’s generally thought ….” It’d be an academic exercise; it’s hard to foresee any real-life consequences if I were wrong.
But now suppose you were to urge me to dramatically and permanently alter my worldview and indeed my entire life: Not because what Socrates said made sense on its own merits, but on grounds that (you claim) he was endowed with a unique authority, as proved by his having done something truly wonderful — a ‘something’ outside all known human experience, before or since. Before going along with such a radical request, I’d certainly want to see compelling evidence of the truth of your assertion. I’d also want to rule out likely alternative explanations of what you claim is your supporting evidence, just as a doctor wants to be reasonably confident that s/he has correctly diagnosed a patient’s illness before deciding how to treat the illness.
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Rob K [#40], your assertion that “anyone who is saved is saved only because Christ redeemed all of creation” seems indistinguishable from the claim that anyone who recovers from illness is cured because we pray each Sunday for “all who are in danger, sorrow, or any kind of trouble.” It brings us back to the original essay question I posed in #3: And you know this, how?
Yawn.
D C being the deaf man at the symphony again?
Wake me up when he can prove by his own methods that he loves his wife – the cad.
Actually, D.C., the recommendation to tolle, lege Newbigin and Polanyi was for other folks than for you. But, that’s being said, I would have to admit that you’re right: Newbigin does indeed assume the veracity of the Gospel accounts. And that is precisely the point.
The suggestion that other folks read Newbigin and Polanyi is to commend to them an epistemology that suggests the falseness of your own arrogantly-asserted limits to conversation (see your initial comment), requiring that we all become good empirical materialists in order to engage you, the culture, whatever in a conversation about the person of Jesus.
If all you’ve taken from Polanyi is a notion of “metaphorical lenses” through which we view reality, then you haven’t really grasped Polanyi’s essential point (from which Newbigin constructs his apologetics): that all knowledge is personal. I would argue that you view reality through the empirical materialist lenses that you do precisely because you have a priori committed yourself to empirical materialism not only as a scientific methodology (where, to be sure, it has borne some good) but also as a reality-defining metaphysics. It is the latter that is unprovable, because you demand that we believe your assertion based on a prioris that we don’t share with the empirical materialist viewpoint.
I recommend Newbigin and Polanyi to folks because the empirical materialist epistemology has been regnant – dare I say hegemonic? – for the past two or three centuries in Western thought. This hegemony exerted over epistemological thought has become interpreted by most people as being reality-defining in some externally verifiable or “provable” sense. But the reality is, you can no more verify the assertions of empirical materialism without having recourse to the methods and underlying assertions of empirical materialism than I can verify the assertions of historic catholic Christianity without having recourse to the personal commitment that the community of Christian faith has made to those beliefs in the first place.
There is no Archimedean point on which one may stand and judge between plausibility structures, those reality-defining world views in which we live and by which we interpret everything that we call data. Only similar criteria: coherence, perhaps the effects in the lives of those committed to the plausibility structures, can be used to judge within and between them. If you want to have a conversation based on those criteria, then I’m all for it.
But if you want to continue to assert from an Olympian height those strictures derived from your own unprovable plausibility structure, count me out. Of course I’ll lose if the house insists on my playing by the house’s unique rules.