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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34441 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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As an ex-Christian I find this view somewhat flawed. To me Christianity and religion in general are things that people do. If Christians start disbelieving in Jesus's divinity that seems totally fine from an outsiders perspective. Lot's of tiny Muslim sects in the Middle East believe in later prophets after Mohammed and other things an orthodox Muslim would decry. The most fundamentalist Muslims consider almost all practicing Muslims today kafirs due to the practices they follow.

I don't think God came on down from heaven and created some platonic definition of Christianity. I think it has changed a lot since it was founded and the early Christians would likely consider your practices far outside the acceptable range and you a non-Christian. I don't really care and trying to push this sectarian line as if it was some kind of obvious ground truth that can't be argued with is silly from an outsiders prospective.

Though the inner Catholic in me agrees with you, just another reason why I can't ever consider myself a Christian again.

The problem with your argument is that denying the divinity of Jesus goes way far beyond the other examples you mentioned. There are a lot of dogmas in Christianity that you could deny and be super heretical: the Trinity, that Jesus was legitimately human, and so on. The Muslim example, or the early Christian practices differing from today, are in that ballpark. Orthodox Christians (small-o, not the denomination) would be aghast at a lot of things and say "this is heresy and you are bad", but at least those people would still be nominally Christian.

Denying the divinity of Jesus is in a whole other ballpark. That's the one thing Christianity is about at its core. The entire point of the faith, in every denomination, is "Jesus is God, and so we worship him". That's the fundamental split with Judaism (and with Islam too for that matter). If you don't agree on that, then you are not Christian and there's no two ways about it.

Are Arians Christian?

No, even Santa Claus knew they were heretics who needed to be excommunicated and placed on the naughty list.

I'm not familiar with the nuances of that school of thought, but a quick skim on the wiki page says to me no. They believe Jesus is the son of God, but not God, therefore they aren't Christians.

Then you are denouncing many early Christians as not being "real" Christians. Which I suppose could be valid. I think the more common sentiment is that they were misguided heretics.

heretic

That word typically meaning someone who does not believe correctly (with implications of having chosen that path). Or in the vulgar form, not a real believer.

Indeed. Pagans, Jews and atheists are not and cannot be heretical Christians. To be a Christian heretic one must be a Christian and also be wrong about some important theological point.

And Arianism was historically referred to as heresy.

That's the one thing Christianity is about at its core. The entire point of the faith, in every denomination

And, yet it moves. And, yet we are arguing about Christian denominations that don't believe in this immutable fact.

Well no, it doesn't. That's kind of the point. A person can call themselves anything they want, but that doesn't make it so. These people calling themselves Christian is kind of like me calling my fat ass athletic. It's certainly something nobody can stop me from doing, but it doesn't somehow make it true.

I don't accept the ground premises you do physical and metaphysical. If I accepted your premises I would agree with your definition of Christianity and agree these people were not Christian. The epistemological and inferential differences between us are to great for us to really resolve this debate. I am just giving my materialist, sociological view on the issue. You are free, from your devote Christian view, to believe the Progressive Churches to not be real Christians, but this debate can't be resolved by appealing to these definitions that rest on assumptions I don't agree with, you have to defeat the assumptions first.

That some Christians consider others not really Christians is completely meaningless to my epistemology of religion.

I don't know why you're claiming materialistic worldview as a reason why we can't agree. What we are talking about is a materialistic matter. One need not believe in the divinity of Jesus (or even that such a man existed at all) in order to evaluate whether or not the church teaches that it's true. That is a materialistic matter, not a spiritual one. Similarly, I don't need to believe in the tenets of Hinduism to say whether or not they teach that reincarnation is real.

Ultimately it sounds to me like you just don't care about the issue of what the church teaches, which is fine. But that doesn't mean we can't resolve the debate because I believe in spiritual things and you don't. It means we can't resolve the debate because you don't really care to hammer out what the church teaches.

Which church is that again? The multitude of them disagree heavily, including very conservative ones considering other conservative denominations as hellbound. For example, a lot of the people in this thread arguing against these progressive churches being a type of Christian appear to be Catholics. The "trad" evangelical church I went to growing up taught that Roman Catholics are not Christians, they practice a form of Roman pagan polytheism and constantly demonstrate their break from monotheism by:

-  Groveling before graven images and idols.

  • Use of magic talismans like rosary beads and "holy" water, belief in sacred relics and those having magical powers.

  • Belief in literal cannibalism in the form of transubstantiation.

  • Worshipping humans and pagan deities with the serial numbers filed off labeled "saints.

  • Treating Mary like a goddess and often absorbing Mesoamerican pagan deities renamed Mary through all the "Virgin of [location] stuff.

  • Belief in spells resolving sins in the form of confession and stuff like reciting Hail Mary's rather than faith alone, and the historic practice of indulgences.

  • The most powerful Catholic religious leader and most powerful Roman pagan religious leader both sharing the title Pontifex Maximus and being based in Rome.

Catholicism's historic hostility to making the Bible accessible to normal people was also interpretated as being a move by this pagan religion to keep people from reading the Bible and noticing discrepancies between Catholic teachings and "real" Christianity, the persecution of other denominations being persecution of many "real" Christians, use of priests for confession and praying to saints as a way to minimize people trying to directly contact god, and infant baptisms as invalid and a way of tricking people into not getting "real" baptisms as a conscious adult choice.

I'm sure the Catholics in turn have plenty of reasons arguing how these are compatible with Christianity and why that evangelical sect is wrong about them and damned. From an outside perspective this stuff is just like watching Sunnis and Shia arguing and insisting the other isn't a type of Muslim when both are clearly divergent branches of the same religious traditions.

One need not believe in the divinity of Jesus (or even that such a man existed at all) in order to evaluate whether or not the church teaches that it's true. That is a materialistic matter, not a spiritual one.

From a materialistic point of view, "Jesus is the son of God" and "Jesus is God" look pretty much the same. The followers are still ascribing supernatural power to Jesus and still believe that he teaches morality and forgives sins. There's no practical difference between those at all, except that it's used as a shibboleth by some Christians.

This is especially so since "Jesus is God" isn't a straightforward belief that Jesus is God; it involves the Trinity, which to non-Christians usually seems incoherent. Why would it matter if Christians adhere to a belief that nobody can understand?

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