"Classical" Theism

[Peter_Plato]

I’m getting really sick of this discussion, which makes me wonder why I resurrected it. But as far as I can tell, the Bible seems to imply both classical theism and theistic personalism depending on where you look. And if I had to say which it implied more, I’d say, the latter, by a large stretch - and its not a matter of a few passages you can just pooh-pooh away, it’s like, the narrative and poetic content of the entire thing. It certainly makes the claims of people like Bart Ehrman that the theological content of orthodox Christianity was just lifted from Neoplatonism very plausible.

There is a difference between “being consistent with” and “implying.”

The Bible has a huge audience of whom God, as the one who breathes life into it, must be very aware. Readers as diverse as young children who hear and try to understand, to the best of their ability, must have their current capacities addressed in terms of the extent to which they can possibly understand God. Therefore the ways that God is portrayed and the motives that move him must be presented in certain analogical ways - with traits that all humans can grasp despite different levels and abilities. This means that the portrayal of God has to be consistent with the ability of diverse human capacities to comprehend. That does not mean theistic personalism is implied, however.

Jesus intentionally presented his teachings in parables, where actors, motives and events were consistently dressed in personal human form. That does not mean God is really the owner of a vineyard or really is setting a banquet table - though such images do have a certain appeal to that in us which draws us to the pleasantries of a human social gathering.

That doesn’t mean individuals who own a winery ought to lose their faith when they find out God isn’t one of the Gallo brothers, or is not, in some other way, just like them.

Ehrman, as thorough and meticulous he is as a historian and Biblical scholar is a lousy theologian and philosopher. He consistently makes inferences that simply are unnecessary and do not follow from the premises he expounds. Perhaps that is because he hasn’t grown beyond the adolescent idea of personalist God that he grew up with in his fundamentalist Christianity.

For one thing, he seems to miss the fact that neoPlatonism is definitely not the system of philosophy that logically follows from the writings of people like Paul or John, or even the Church Fathers, because he doesn’t have a good handle on what the tenets of neoPlatonism are beyond a surface familiarity.

The Bible is the living Word because it can be read differently by individuals at different levels of spiritual growth. The problem comes when we ascribe to it as “gospel” what we understood it to mean when we were children or adolescents and can’t or refuse to get beyond that level. I would suggest that Ehrman is just such a case. Not growing beyond his fundamentalist personalist view is precisely what has caused Ehrman to lose whatever faith he had because he can’t understand that such a limiting perspective is NOT the one that necessarily follows from the Bible, understood in its entirety at different levels.

I suspect that your motives for raising these issues are not entirely forthcoming. You seem to be rationalizing a change of heart rather than sincerely trying to understand, which is why you keep attempting to bow out of the discussion when you are challenged AND why you keep ducking back in to substantiate some aspect or other of your rationalizing.

I, too, am losing “interest” in continuing, mostly because I suspect you are not as interested in the truth of the matter as you are in justifying what you have already decided to be the case. You become irritated, it seems, because your justifications aren’t as solid as you first perceived them to be and, therefore, try to regain some reassurance by poking what you think are weak points.

Not only do we not know God except through Jesus Christ; we do not even know ourselves except through Jesus Christ. - Blaise Pascal

 

[Peter_Plato]

It certainly makes the claims of people like Bart Ehrman that the theological content of orthodox Christianity was just lifted from Neoplatonism very plausible.

The fact that neoPlatonism started 200 years after Christianity is a glaring issue for Ehrman (and you.)

Also, Plotinus, the “founder” of neoPlatonism thought the soul was trapped in the body and not the “form” of it as orthodox Christianity a la Aristotelian Scholasticism holds, so Ehrman, if he, indeed, makes such a claim is completely off base precisely because he doesn’t have a solid grounding in either philosophy or theology.

NeoPlatonism is much more in line with Gnosticism, not orthodox Christianity. The fact that Gnosticism, in its varied forms was and continues to be heretical should seal the case and make it, not only very implausible, but, not even worth debating.

To demonstrate that not all classical theists are humourless twits, try…

tofspot.blogspot.ca/2014/10/in-psearch-of-psyche-day-of-triffids.html

 

[Kevin12]

The fact that neoPlatonism started 200 years after Christianity is a glaring issue for Ehrman (and you.)

Also, Plotinus, the “founder” of neoPlatonism thought the soul was trapped in the body and not the “form” of it as orthodox Christianity a la Aristotelian Scholasticism holds, so Ehrman, if he, indeed, makes such a claim is completely off base precisely because he doesn’t have a solid grounding in either philosophy or theology.

To demonstrate that not all classical theists are humourless twits, try…

tofspot.blogspot.ca/2014/10/in-psearch-of-psyche-day-of-triffids.html

I meant more generally, that Christian Orthodoxy was lifted more from the Greeks than the Bible. This article from NT scholar R. Joseph Hoffman is pretty clear on the view I am pointing to, and the more I look at so-called classical theism, the more Hoffman’s view seems accurate, and that theology is not an attempt to reconcile the God of the philosophy with the God of the Bible, but to purge the God of the Bible until nothing is left but a metaphor.

Again, I don’t want to agree with this fellow, but people like Feser and Davies are constantly making his hypothesis (and it is almost the same as Ehrman’s) seem more likely.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I meant more generally, that Christian Orthodoxy was lifted more from the Greeks than the Bible. This article from NT scholar R. Joseph Hoffman is pretty clear on the view I am pointing to, and the more I look at so-called classical theism, the more Hoffman’s view seems accurate, and that theology is not an attempt to reconcile the God of the philosophy with the God of the Bible, but to purge the God of the Bible until nothing is left but a metaphor.

Again, I don’t want to agree with this fellow, but people like Feser and Davies are constantly making his hypothesis (and it is almost the same as Ehrman’s) seem more likely.

Do you understand what confirmation bias is?

Your methodology seems to smack of it.

I suggest you read others like NT Wright, Simon Gathercole or Richard Bauckham to balance your perspective. As it is, you appear to be looking for the “data” that confirms or reaffirms what you want to believe. Not only that, but you are reading into Feser and Davies what you expect them to be saying - as I demonstrated with your taking the term “experience” and ascribing to Davies what he never intended to be there.

Perhaps spend some quality time here:

thesacredpage.com/2006/04/philosophical-issues-and-methodology.html

Again, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and arriving at predetermined conclusions about what other writers and belief systems imply is an easy trap to fall into.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I meant more generally, that Christian Orthodoxy was lifted more from the Greeks than the Bible.

The truth of it is that the people to whom the Gospel was addressed for the first 300 years were immersed in Hellenic culture, therefore to speak to these people, the Church Fathers and teachers used words and ideas that were the cultural norm to get their message across in ways that could be understood in the broad culture. Not only that, many of the early converts were gentiles and pagans who held an underlying belief and language system that coloured the way they wrote and spoke. Augustine started out as a Platonist and Manichaean. Using Platonist language and ideas allowed him to address his hearers on their terms.

 

[Kevin12]

I don’t know how it is confirmation bias if I don’t want to agree with them, as I have already said. But I would really rather not continue this conversation.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I don’t know how it is confirmation bias if I don’t want to agree with them, as I have already said.

Perhaps because truth is not a matter of what we want or don’t want - it is a matter of what objectively is the case.

Again, confirmation bias.

But I would really rather not continue this conversation.

Fair enough.

You’ll see whether what you want to be true actually turns out to be true soon enough, I guess.

Either that, or you’ll keep deluding yourself no matter what the truth really is.

Bye