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Hello everyone!, I became a Christian about four years ago and have been hungry for the Gospel ever since my conversion. I belong to a large southern baptist seminary in the United States, and love the idea of melding faith with reason, and that is partially why I want to share with everyone. I will do my best not to respond to anyone's questions irrationally. Some questions that could be asked include: how do I feel about the shooting in Orlando? I can't emphasize enough that I strongly disagree with those Christians that say that those people got what they deserved - Yes the Pentateuch does speak harshly about homosexuals, and its completely true that Christians are not justified by the Law of the Old Testament, but it is still in the cannon for a reason (for us to reflect on it and remember it and to show us the nature of sin) - Christ calls us to love those we disagree with - Yes there is evidence in the New Testament that is against homosexuality, not just Leviticus( I can explain this if anyone desires) - Looking back at the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis, we see that Abraham begged God to spare the people several times. we are called to treat people that don't agree with what we do with love. This doesn't mean we don't hold on to what we believe to be true. How can I believe in God without any evidence? Isn't that immoral? - Its true that empirical evidence is hard to find(other than there being something rather than nothing), but that doesn't mean there isn't other types of evidence. The main arguments For the Existence of God that Christian philosophers usually put forth fall into one of these four categories: Contingency argument, Ontological argument, Moral argument and Teleological argument (ask away!) Why does God allow evil to happen in the world? -some discussion about this in the thread already has taken place and I encourage the debate to continue Southern Baptist are not considered a form of liturgical Christianity and I don't really think this discussion would fit well in that thread. Yehoshua Eben fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 02:14
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Yehoshua Eben posted:- the very admission of there being such a thing as evil is in itself evidence for God (otherwise there would not really be 'good' and 'evil' because nothing would have universal meaning aka postmodernism) Holy poo poo  Anyway, your attempted justification for why god allows evil to happen only includes the human action half, and completely ignores basic terrible poo poo that doesn't involve people at all. When people ask why bad things happen it also includes children getting incurable diseases, puppies getting hit by cars, all manner of natural disasters, and etc. Anyone who's read and studied the bible over many years can offer no explanation for why an all-loving all-powerful omnipotent deity is perfectly content to send tragedy and disease after us in wave after indifferent wave of uncaring blasts other than "it's his plan". His plan is that this god just loving loves suffering and death. LOVES it. Will do nothing to stop it. Thrives just watching us suffer and die. THAT is the evil that people cant figure out. We know why humans do hosed up poo poo.
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Jun 20, 2016 02:45
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Scudworth posted:
Ok, so let me summarize what I think your position is on this and correct me if I misunderstand 1. There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse 2. An omniscient wholly good being would prevent the occurence of any instense sufering it could,unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse 3. There does not exist an omnipotent omniscient wholly good being. My response is this: If there were a reason sufficient to justify God in allowing this evil, would we know it? if not then how can we say there is no reason sufficient to justify God in allowing this evil? We simply do not have the capability of making such a deduction Yehoshua Eben fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 03:16
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Theology isn't interesting, tell us about your parents.
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Jun 20, 2016 05:09
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Yehoshua Eben posted:My response is this: Yes, for the same reason that we know it's good when the Army Core of Engineers helps prevent a flood, or the NIH creates a cure for cancer. -- You can go the full agnostic-route and say that it's impossible for humans to know which acts are good. After all, it's always possible that we're missing some unforeseen consequence. But then you don't know which acts are good; there could be some unforseen consequence. Maybe curing childhood leukemia is secretly evil. After all, God didn't do it. And who are those NIH folks to question his wisdom?
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Jun 20, 2016 06:00
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Do you have hosed up masturbation habits?
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Jun 20, 2016 08:00
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falcon2424 posted:Yes, for the same reason that we know it's good when the Army Core of Engineers helps prevent a flood, or the NIH creates a cure for cancer. If I were taking my dog through the local dog park, and upon thoroughly exploring the park I concluded that there were no rhinoceros in the park, I would be justified in concluding this. However if I concluded that there were no dog whistles in the park, that would not be a justified belief. Curing cancer is the rhinoceros, Gods reasons for allowing cancer to happen is the dog whistle. Curing cancer is obviously something beneficial, but when asking God's motives we don't have the access to all of the epistemological data.We are not entitled to make this claim because we do not have sufficient access to the situation to judge reasonably whether there are dog whistles in the park or not. 1. it appears there is no reason to allow cancer 2. therefore, there probably is no reason to allow cancer this only works if: 3. if there were reasons for God allowing cancer to exist, we would probably know it. Yehoshua Eben fucked around with this message at 08:55 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 08:36
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Was it worth the ten bucks?
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Jun 20, 2016 08:52
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Gibbo posted:Was it worth the ten bucks? What are you getting at with that exactly? Do you believe in banning me because I practice a particular faith?
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Jun 20, 2016 08:59
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I do, but I'm not a mod. I don't see this going anywhere good though. Why were you afraid to make this on your real account?
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Jun 20, 2016 09:15
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Yehoshua Eben posted:How can I believe in God without any evidence? Isn't that immoral? This seems a rather odd question to even ask yourself. Why did you choose the word immoral? You can substitute 'irrational' there sure, but I don't think I've ever heard it been said that believing in something without evidence is immoral. That said, yes, theology is boring. Tell us about you. Why did you convert?
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Jun 20, 2016 10:16
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we've had a christianity thread here in a/t for a while now, you should come check it out if you're not scared to argue with goons
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Jun 20, 2016 10:17
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Gibbo posted:I do, but I'm not a mod. Your making an inference that I have another active account, when the reality is that I used to be a lurker for many years here back when I was a teenager. I technically have another account but I havent used it since something like 2010, nor do I remember what email address I used to register it, nor did I ever make more then a handful of posts on it. That is not the important thing about what you said here. The fact that you believe in banning someone of a particular faith is insidious when you do not offer any sort of rationale behind your statement. I surely would not you in charge of my civil liberties. With that said I did not realize there was a Christianity thread here on ask/tell, sorry. Yehoshua Eben fucked around with this message at 13:07 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 13:03
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You maybe should just lurk more. Edit: Bringing up your civil liberties because someone mocked you is a good indication that a banning is on your horizon, and it's not about your religion. Scudworth fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 13:04
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Namarrgon posted:This seems a rather odd question to even ask yourself. Why did you choose the word immoral? You can substitute 'irrational' there sure, but I don't think I've ever heard it been said that believing in something without evidence is immoral. There are many things in life that we do not fully reason out but choose to believe in because if we did then we would spend all of our time trying to understand the most minute things in life. However regarding the most central object of our world view we should probably have good reasons for holding our belief (to be ethical/moral). I agree the choice of words was not perfect I grew up as a atheistic vapid kid who spent a lot of time in TCC reading the stuff in there. I developed full blown schizophrenia and spent 6 trips to the psch ward. I spent some time in rehab where I worked the 12 step program (to no personal avail - I realize it works for some but it did not for me). After some hard times including a stint of homelessness in Baltimore I returned home and began reading the Bible. I came to believe in God because I made the decision that from what I had witnessed in my life experience plus the evidence of what the scripture attests to that what I had previously thought of as 'just a belief' had become a strong belief in the reality of His existence. Yehoshua Eben fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 13:26
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Why Southern Baptist? I am sure that you know that the reason the Southern Baptists split from the main convention was their acceptance of slavery. I simplify of course, but like many divisions during this time, slavery was the one thing people could not agree on. Given your choice of Southern Baptist, and the fact that the Bible accepts and endorses slavery: Are you in favor of slavery? Would you own slaves? Do you believe that Biblical texts condoning slavery, ie Leviticus 25:44-46, Ephesians 6:5-8, are moral and a foundation for a moral life?
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Jun 20, 2016 14:58
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shame on an IGA posted:Theology isn't interesting, tell us about your parents. My mom died when I was 19 a month or two before I went in the air force. She was well educated but not a practicing believer ( I dont know what she believes). The other one is a Christian we got baptized on the same day.
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Jun 20, 2016 15:03
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SubjectVerbObject posted:Why Southern Baptist? I am sure that you know that the reason the Southern Baptists split from the main convention was their acceptance of slavery. I simplify of course, but like many divisions during this time, slavery was the one thing people could not agree on. Given your choice of Southern Baptist, and the fact that the Bible accepts and endorses slavery: For me its not why they split back then (which from what I understand was because of the ordination of slave owners) but what they stand for in modern times. There really is a double edged sword when speaking about the Bible and Slavery. For example the short book of Philemon is about a run away slave that visited Paul while he was on house arrest preaching in Rome. While Paul leaves the decision to release Onesimus up to Philemon (the slave owner) he strongly urges him to release him for service to the early church (because Onesimus had been converted to Christianity). I personally find the issue of slavery to be horrible institution, and Christians have led the way in abolishing the institution throughout western history. (Medieval Europe abolished it, William Wilberforce spearheaded the effort in later in a different time period of Europe, the abolitionist of the north USA were often strong Christians.) The issue here may be the idea of slave revolts like there were in the biblical time period (like Spartacus) However involving the institution in the big picture, I feel the Gospel throughly covers the fact that there is no partiality by God concerning them or their slaves. Giving slaves the order to rebel against their owners was not going to be productive but destructive. I feel strongly about the Southern Baptist Convention. We maintain a commitment to Biblical in-errancy. Lower historical criticism is one thing but higher historical criticism is a completely different one (if anyone cares to know the difference I can elaborate). Also we have a strong missions board that does a great deal of work overseas and by pooling our efforts into the IMB we keep missionaries from having to constantly come up with funding on their own. We don't believe in compromising Biblical truth for inclusiveness. Thats not to say we don't love those who don't agree with us, but as far as getting into the pulpit to teach we protect it from apostasy. There are many denominations heading in the wrong direction to me due to the compromise of what the scripture says regarding sin. Lastly we have a democratic church governing system which is very appealing to me (at least on an executive level ie the president of the convention) Edit: fun fact about your name subject verb object: in Hebrew it is usually Verb-Subject-Object ! Yehoshua Eben fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 15:24
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Scudworth posted:You maybe should just lurk more. I do not mean to invoke my civil liberties in regards to my posting on this forum, just pointing out the irony of their own intolerance for different worldviews
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Jun 20, 2016 15:40
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Are you continuing treatment for your schizophrenia?
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Jun 20, 2016 15:43
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Antivehicular posted:Are you continuing treatment for your schizophrenia? Yes I take medicine daily and my symptoms are nearly non existent. I do still constanly hear a stream of information in the form of english words that correlates to any outer noise (or inward thought) that does not seem to come from my own personality. That I have gotten use too over the past 5 years. The worst part of it to me was the manic depressive episodes. With medication that is firmly under control (also a clean lifestyle has healed me)
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Jun 20, 2016 15:55
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Yehoshua Eben posted:For me its not why they split back then (which from what I understand was because of the ordination of slave owners) but what they stand for in modern times. 1. If slavery is truly wrong, what took them so long? 2. The SBC's views on slavery were Biblically based. If the Bible is in-errant, why did the SBC change those views? Is it appropriate to use SBC for Southern Baptist Convention?
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Jun 20, 2016 16:11
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Antivehicular posted:Are you continuing treatment for your schizophrenia?
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Jun 20, 2016 16:19
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SubjectVerbObject posted:But you understand that while Northern Christians were using the Bible to promote abolition, the Southern Christians were using it to defend slavery. it seems odd to me that you would state with apparent pride that Christians lead the way in ending slavery when your own sect did so much to oppose them. From my understanding, the SBC only officially denounced slavery in 1995. While there have been many Southern Baptist's who have defended the cause of slavery (and even in today's church's you will find some among the older members) it is not dogma of the denomination. You will scarcely find anyone who believes we should bring the institution back. There was discrimination regarding funding of southern missionaries in addition to other reasons like ordination which led them to break from the northern baptists. I can not defend slave holding in the least. It certainly was a huge hurdle for a lot of southerners I don't deny that. Still, that was 21 years ago, and if the SBC was pro slavery today it would be an issue, but we are not. Not only that but in the time period from 1900ish - 1979 there was a major liberal movement in the denomination. If we still believed what we did then I would not be a part of the SBC. Around that time there was a major shift that began towards biblical in-errancy. The point is the denomination itself has made many mistakes in the past, but we look to the bible, not just our own elders, for guidance. I can not tell you why it took them so long to make the declaration they did in 95, but I feel strongly the body of the Church was not looking to bring the instistuion back even before them. The remembrance of the Southern Heritage in the southern states is more a function of the area we live in and not so much a function of the SBC. Our interpretation of the scriptures are not inerrant, the orginal manuscripts are what we hold to be inerrant. Like I said, you can also make a strong biblical case against slavery Luke 4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, Yehoshua Eben fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 16:45
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photomikey posted:I'm gonna go with 'no'. well you would be wrong sir I have not missed a dose of medicine in the last few years as well as doctor visits every three months
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Jun 20, 2016 16:51
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Yehoshua Eben posted:While there have been many Southern Baptist's who have defended the cause of slavery (and even in today's church's you will find some among the older members) it is not dogma of the denomination. You will scarcely find anyone who believes we should bring the institution back. There was discrimination regarding funding of southern missionaries in addition to other reasons like ordination which led them to break from the northern baptists. I can not defend slave holding in the least. It certainly was a huge hurdle for a lot of southerners I don't deny that. So if there is scripture that is both in for and against slavery, which is correct? How can something that is in-errant say yes and no at the same time? How do humans determine which is right? Why was it correct 21 years ago to say that slavery was ok, but now it is not? You are saying that the denomination made mistakes in the past, but if the bible is inerrant, and they were basing their beliefs on the bible, how is it that they were wrong? Could it be possible that in 21 years a Southern Baptist would be saying "mistakes were made' about some of your current beliefs?
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Jun 20, 2016 17:17
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Yehoshua Eben posted:my symptoms are nearly non existent. I do still constanly hear a stream of information in the form of english words that correlates to any outer noise (or inward thought) that does not seem to come from my own personality. These are two extremely incompatible statements.
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Jun 20, 2016 17:18
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SubjectVerbObject posted:So if there is scripture that is both in for and against slavery, which is correct? How can something that is in-errant say yes and no at the same time? How do humans determine which is right? Why was it correct 21 years ago to say that slavery was ok, but now it is not? You are saying that the denomination made mistakes in the past, but if the bible is inerrant, and they were basing their beliefs on the bible, how is it that they were wrong? This is an interesting question. There is a parallel question to this in fact: about grace and works. Paul's epistles are fervently against justification by works, while the book of James says that faith without works is not justified. So which is correct? Well, I believe they both are, and that the word justification is used in different senses in the two scriptures. I believe Paul is referring to the impossibility of rightly earning salvation, as well as to the impossibility of justifying our faith by the letter of the Law of the Pentateuch. James I believe is using it in a different context. He refers to the person who claims faith in Christ yet does not repent on sinning. In this case, his faith is found to be useless, because the person doesn't back it up with their deeds. In this case, Paul may be affirming the situation between an already existing situation of slaves and masters. It was heavily ingrained into the Roman society that was all over the empire during the first century A.D. This change had to happen from the top down and not from the bottom up. Rebellion to the establishment was sure to be put down harshly. However if the aristocracy became Christian, they would change their mindset from pure economic forces to spiritual considerations. In the immediate sense it was in the slaves interest to not revolt but the powers that be had to repent. I believe the failure occurred when they brought the practice over to the new world 1700 years later when slavery was being abolished in Europe and that the slave traders made very lucrative profits off the industry. It sent people backwards as far as their beliefs concerning slavery and they returned to the old way of thinking. I do not think the new world slave trade was developed because of what the bible says about the relationships between slaves and their masters, it was because they could make a lot of money off of it, and once it was here and people were prospering, they justified themselves with selective scriptures without properly taking into consideration the Gospel truth of all being equal in belonging to Christ. Yehoshua Eben fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 17:48
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SubjectVerbObject posted:
On primary issues I would say no. The issue of slavery is not a primary issue in the SBC today though.I don't forsee it ever being put on the table again. On things such as the virgin birth and the in-errancy of scriptures, Baptist beliefs in 95 and today are pretty similar and they probably will be in another twenty years. In fact, the Nicene Creed was written in 325 and that summarizes the primary beliefs of what we hold today pretty well. Yehoshua Eben fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 18:15
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Yehoshua Eben posted:This is an interesting question. There is a parallel question to this in fact: about grace and works. Paul's epistles are fervently against justification by works, while the book of James says that faith without works is not justified. So which is correct? Well, I believe they both are, and that the word justification is used in different senses in the two scriptures. I believe Paul is referring to the impossibility of rightly earning salvation, as well as to the impossibility of justifying our faith by the letter of the Law of the Pentateuch. James I believe is using it in a different context. He refers to the person who claims faith in Christ yet does not repent on sinning. In this case, his faith is found to be useless, because the person doesn't back it up with their deeds. So basically people interpret the bible according to their own cultures and beliefs, yes? How are you any different? You talk about bible being inerrant, but how do you know you are not using selective scriptures to justify yourself? Also, you edited your OP. I understand that you are wanting to summarize some of the discussion, but in some ways it looks like you are adjusting your positions.
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Jun 20, 2016 21:49
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Yehoshua Eben posted:I became a Christian about four years ago and have been hungry for the Gospel ever since my conversion. Have you considered taking some Ambien and eating the bible? Reference: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3109410&userid=170817#post419832976
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Jun 20, 2016 21:52
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SubjectVerbObject posted:So basically people interpret the bible according to their own cultures and beliefs, yes? How are you any different? You talk about bible being inerrant, but how do you know you are not using selective scriptures to justify yourself? I edited it for a couple of reasons. After thinking about it some more its not that I change my position on anything I said but what I said was not a complete well thought out defense of God when talking about evil in the world. I rather deal with it more specifically as the question arises, and I want to add to it myself, it will just take some time to form what I want to say. The proper method to determine what the truth of scripture according to hermeneutic principles is this: What the author intended is the what the scripture means
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Jun 20, 2016 22:02
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Omar_Comin posted:Have you considered taking some Ambien and eating the bible? I can think of two instances of eating scripture in the bible : ) Ezekiel 3 : And he said to me, “Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the people of Israel.” 2 So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. Revelation 10:10 I took the little scroll from the angel's hand and ate it. It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour. I have actually ate several pages of the Bible to see how Ezekiel felt after doing this. The Paper was heavy almost like cardstock and it took too far too long to chew in my mouth. Yehoshua Eben fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 22:05
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So what's it like attending a southern baptist seminary? What's your day-to-day routine like, how has choosing this path impacted your relationships with those close to you and those you meet casually as you go about your business? I don't mean the impacts of your faith and beliefs but specifically the decision to seek in-depth education from an institution dedicated to that sole purpose. Do you feel like you've had to sacrifice anything? What have the tradeoffs been, what pros and cons would you advise to someone considering doing the same? I understand you want to jump into deep, fine-resolution theology because you and everyone around you at school are surrounded by it but the more mundane topics invited by your thread title seem both more accessible and more interesting. I'm sorry I was so flip in my first response to this thread, these are the things I wanted to get at but it was late and I was tired. E: Disregarding the possibility of metaphor, wouldn't those scrolls have been parchment? Most of us here have probably consumed more than our fair share of poultry skin. shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 22:50
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I'm curious about what goes into the education and training of a typical seminary student. Traditionally, Christian theology has a rich history of university type study, with theology and divinity studies usually occurring in large institutions and focusing on the scholarly development of theological study over the last 2000 years or so. So for example, a Roman Catholic priest will have a master's degree, be able to at least read and write Latin and usually another language, and will have studied a great deal more than simply the Bible and Canon. Similarly, the other apostolic traditions have the same kind of educational requirements and parameters for priesthood, and so you can expect a fairly high level of education from clergy in those traditions. On the other hand, it's not uncommon these days to see a kind of movement of extremely devout and devoted Christians with a fairly weak level of education on theological matters or even simply matters of ritual and so on. These kinds of preachers tend to come out of the revivalist, born-again, or evangelical traditions and generally lack even a strong knowledge of the Bible. Beyond that, the seminary is also where priests learn the rituals and rites of their profession, which I believe would be absent in any kind of formalized manner from Baptist traditions. In your OP, you've addressed some very simple historical apologetics of the Christian God as an example, presumably, of what you're learning. Is there much more to it? What makes this seminary a seminary rather than a crash course on Christian apologetics with the aim for winning converts? I also know recently there has been a focus on pastoral ministry as a form of counseling, does the seminary include that kind of thing? Edit: I like that you have quoted scripture appropriately above, it's nice that you're at least getting a good education in the Bible itself. There are a great number of preachers and so on within the evangelical movement who simply don't know the Bible that well, even its contents, let alone have any ability to extract meaning from it or use it skillfully - so it's a good thing to know it to be able to quote it readily, and it's even better if you can do so in a meaningful way. Paramemetic fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Jun 20, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 23:05
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shame on an IGA posted:So what's it like attending a southern baptist seminary? What's your day-to-day routine like, how has choosing this path impacted your relationships with those close to you and those you meet casually as you go about your business? I don't the impacts of your faith and beliefs but specifically the decision to seek in-depth education from an institution dedicated to that sole purpose. Do you feel like you've had to sacrifice anything? What have the trade offs been, what pros and cons would you advise to someone considering doing the same? It is similar in many ways to a liberal arts education you would get at a "normal" school, and at the same time it is completely different. History classes, philosophy classes, even business classes are part of the curriculum. The major difference in their approach to these normal subjects are that the professors are evangelical Christians. There is obviously more emphasis on defending the existence of God than you would find in state schools. The other side of that is there are many subjects that are not offered at a typical liberal arts university (I talk about some of them below) A big difference between me and other students of the university is that I take my full load of classes online from a small farm that I live on with my 12 rescued dogs where we grow vegetables similar to the ones the man is throwing around in your avatar. Most of the people in my life have been strongly encouraging about the path I have taken, but you have to keep in mind that I live a very church centric life compared to other people in their 20's. My daily life during the summer is to devote 4 sessions to scripture reading per day, to tend to my animals, to cultivate our crops, and I study my Hebrew in preparation for next semester. My ultimate goal is to become a pastor, it is why I go to the school I do. In order to be qualified for that role, I need to be sure I have studied the issues of the faith in depth and to learn the nuances of the different subjects that I have not considered prior to the training I receive in order not to lead the church astray. Yehoshua Eben fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Jun 21, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 23:14
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Yehoshua Eben posted:The proper method to determine what the truth of scripture according to hermeneutic principles is this: What the author intended is the what the scripture means This is an interesting approach to hermeneutics, because the entire field of hermeneutics is deducing meaning. The problem I see here is that this is a pretty brief answer that depends on knowing what the author intended. It's easy for me to find out what a modern, human author intends when they write something. It's much more difficult to determine what an ancient, dubiously human author has intended. For example, we know from historical documents that the Mormon scripture "Doctrine and Covenants" is reacting to specific issues at specific times. Mormon men need to stop chewing tobacco because the women were getting sick of cleaning up their spit, so God told them to knock that poo poo off. Similarly, plural marriage was okay until there were political problems with it and God said "alright then nevermind on that one for now, follow the law." Within Buddhist hermeneutics, we can generally determine the intent of a teaching through internal consistency. It's trivial to determine the intent of teachings within the Vinaya (the monastic code of conduct) because that, too, is directly responsive to certain issues that arose as Buddha and his disciples worked through the process of figuring out what makes a good ordained community - we do this with the understanding that Buddha and his disciples were all just some dudes working through an experiment. One of those dudes was fully enlightened, but they were just some humans dealing with human things. The Bible can be a bit tricky, because authorship is often questionable, dating is often questionable (there are unresolved historical hypotheses regarding the time of writing as well as the directness of sources even in the Gospels, let alone the Old Testament), so it is a bit bold to pronounce that the truth is whatever the author intended. We can generally ascribe an intent retrospectively by looking at the thrust of the narrative. For example, John was into theology and fulfilling prophecy, Matthew liked the narrative of Jesus as a teacher, so John intended to show Jesus as a Messiah figure and Matthew intended to show Jesus's wisdom, Luke liked showing Jesus as a healer of afflictions, because Luke was a physician, and so on. But it's again tricky when we look at Matthew and Luke being written so long after Jesus, and both relying on the Q-Document, whose author and timeline we know nothing about. So, if what the author intended is where the meaning lies, how do we get to what the author intended? The histories were histories - how are they pertinent to our modern life, if they were intended as histories? The psalms are songs, how do we take meaning out of those? And if we are to believe that God is the author of all of it through divine inspiration, then doesn't it seem a bit bold to claim to know the intentions of God for writing scripture?
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Jun 20, 2016 23:22
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Paramemetic posted:I'm curious about what goes into the education and training of a typical seminary student. Traditionally, Christian theology has a rich history of university type study, with theology and divinity studies usually occurring in large institutions and focusing on the scholarly development of theological study over the last 2000 years or so. So for example, a Roman Catholic priest will have a master's degree, be able to at least read and write Latin and usually another language, and will have studied a great deal more than simply the Bible and Canon. -Nearly every course is a standard 3 hour class with a full but manageable workload / paper writing / projects. -There are several courses pertaining to the study of Theology, there are the basic "I, II, III" that are required as well as specifics such as systematic theology, apologetics, soteriology, eschatology, homiletics, etc. - My track is requiring mutiple OT and NT surveys, 2 semesters of Greek and 2 semesters of Hebrew, an array of pastoral education classes,hermeneutics, the main theology courses, worldview and philosophy classes, 2 Church History semesters, Baptist History, and some psychology as well. (totals well over 100 hours) - Many book- specific courses are offered for diving deeper into the nuances of the individual books (bible books) and there are several "great book seminars" featuring..well..great books!! (Plato's republic, Augustine's City of God, even a class devoted to C.S. Lewis) -. I find myself leaning more towards moderate realism (Thomas Aquinas) than the Revivalistic mindset of the divison of faith and reason that was a response to what the enlightenment had produced with Descartes, Kant, etc - Calvinism is somewhat prevalent, with many people taking a 3 or 4 point version of the argument while denying the idea of limited atonement, but many 5 pointers are in the SBC. It is possible for one to be on either side of the Calvinist - Armenian argument in what I have experienced so far - subjects such as apologetics are anything but a crash course, there are some pathways that specialize in that field particulary devoting at least 3 semester of apologetics,then Christian Aesthetics and culture, critical reasoning, history of philosophy , and more - the only two sacraments of the Southern Baptist are baptism and communion, with the idea of grace being imputed wholly to the believer through faith vs the Catholic stance that it is imparted through the act of sacraments here is a timeline I made last semester in a church history class http://timeglider.com/timeline/b9ba0856f0c43361 Yehoshua Eben fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Jun 21, 2016 |
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Jun 21, 2016 00:31
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Paramemetic posted:This is an interesting approach to hermeneutics, because the entire field of hermeneutics is deducing meaning. The problem I see here is that this is a pretty brief answer that depends on knowing what the author intended. Yehoshua Eben fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Jun 21, 2016 |
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Jun 21, 2016 00:59
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Some of your previous posts have already touched on this, but I'd appreciate hearing more about your conversion, if you don't mind. Why did you decide to go to seminary? What do you hope to do once completing your education? Completely unrelated: What is the meaning of life to you?
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Jun 21, 2016 01:24
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