How the World Is Marking the 500th Birthday of Protestantism

[Green1]

Don't feel bad, BU.

I went to a Southern Baptist academy when I was in high school. Know what it did for me?

It made me want to "assert my POV--an interpretive framework" to be that The Bible is full of [poop].

Just like The Book of Mormon, Dianetics, Quran, Book of I Ching, Buckland's Big Blue Book of Wicca, the Vitas, and a multitude of other works. These books are the Alex Jones of literature. At least Alex Jones is so full of it he is hilarious for a few minutes.... until you find out people actually believe that crap that have real money/influence.

[Elok]

What?  An atheist?  On the internet?  How shocking!  I shall have to replace my monocle.

[Syn]

Don't feel bad, BU.

I went to a Southern Baptist academy when I was in high school. Know what it did for me?

It made me want to "assert my POV--an interpretive framework" to be that The Bible is full of [poop].

Just like The Book of Mormon, Dianetics, Quran, Book of I Ching, Buckland's Big Blue Book of Wicca, the Vitas, and a multitude of other works. These books are the Alex Jones of literature. At least Alex Jones is so full of it he is hilarious for a few minutes.... until you find out people actually believe that crap that have real money/influence.

The Bible would be more fun if it said the government was turning the frogs gay.

[Buster's Uncle]

No, it isn't.

YES it is.  You're telling me what I mean, and getting it wrong.  Have some integrity.

[Lorizael]

We generally favor King James above other readily available English texts because it comes from the received text, and (so I read) the argument that everything has to be reinterpreted in the light of umpteen other textual variants as they're dug out of holes in the ground is, according to our theologians, crap.  I haven't looked into this all that deeply, since I don't care that much.

I am curious about this attitude here, which is not uniquely yours but you're at least being explicit about it. Specifically, you not caring much about some particular way in which the Bible is presented to you. I understand willing to accept there are people who have dedicated more time and effort to various theological arguments and trusting their expertise. After all, there are a variety of very difficult mathematical derivations of physical laws I haven't looked into closely because I am confident smarter people have done them correctly.

But the parallel isn't perfect, because the Bible is the whole thing for Christians, the reason you might be a Christian in the first place. You accept that it is right about there being a god and Christ dying for your sins and all that. This is such a gigantic, life-defining piece of information that I don't understand not wanting to investigate the matter as closely as possible yourself before coming to a conclusion.

Because before you accept the validity of the Bible and place your trust in theologians who have studied it, there are a dozen different religions out there with theologians making arguments about their respective holy texts. There's every reason to believe they've put the same care and attention into their study as your theologians have, but none of that convinces you to switch religions. You are somehow convinced to be a Christian, presumably based on what the Bible says, while admitting you are not an expert on the Bible. So what parts of the Bible inspire belief but don't require theological expertise to do so?

[Lorizael]

No, it isn't.

YES it is.  You're telling me what I mean, and getting it wrong.  Have some integrity.

An example of critical thinking and self-awareness. I long ago came to the conclusion that Elok is an extremely reasonable guy who generally makes good, thoughtful arguments about a lot of subjects. However, on those occasions when he disagrees with me about stuff I care intensely about, I start to believe he's making bad arguments. And I think to myself, "Gosh, Elok, you usually make such good arguments! Why are you making bad ones about this one thing I happen to care about?" And then I step back and consider whether that's likely and realize that if the only variable that differs is me caring a lot, then it's probably not something Elok-related making me think his arguments are bad.

[Green1]

Luke Skywalker: [Yoda appears as a ghost] Master Yoda.

Yoda: Young Skywalker.

Luke Skywalker: I'm ending all of this. The tree, the texts, the Jedi. I'm going to burn it all down.

Yoda: [Yoda summons lightning to burn down the tree and the Jedi texts. He laughs] Ah, Skywalker. Missed you, have I.

Luke Skywalker: So it is time for the Jedi Order to end.

Yoda: Time it is for you to look past a pile of old books, hmm?

Luke Skywalker: The sacred Jedi texts?!?

Yoda: Oh, read them, have you? Page-turners they were not. Yes, yes, yes. Wisdom they held, but that library contained nothing that the girl Rey does not already possess. Skywalker, still looking to the horizon. Never here, now, hmm? The need in front of your nose.

    -The Last Jedi

[Elok]

Ignoring Xpost containing spoilers from schlocky movie.

The other possibility is that it's something I feel strongly about, which, to be fair, it is.  So no clear help there.

We generally favor King James above other readily available English texts because it comes from the received text, and (so I read) the argument that everything has to be reinterpreted in the light of umpteen other textual variants as they're dug out of holes in the ground is, according to our theologians, crap.  I haven't looked into this all that deeply, since I don't care that much.

I am curious about this attitude here, which is not uniquely yours but you're at least being explicit about it. Specifically, you not caring much about some particular way in which the Bible is presented to you. I understand willing to accept there are people who have dedicated more time and effort to various theological arguments and trusting their expertise. After all, there are a variety of very difficult mathematical derivations of physical laws I haven't looked into closely because I am confident smarter people have done them correctly.

But the parallel isn't perfect, because the Bible is the whole thing for Christians, the reason you might be a Christian in the first place. You accept that it is right about there being a god and Christ dying for your sins and all that. This is such a gigantic, life-defining piece of information that I don't understand not wanting to investigate the matter as closely as possible yourself before coming to a conclusion.

Because before you accept the validity of the Bible and place your trust in theologians who have studied it, there are a dozen different religions out there with theologians making arguments about their respective holy texts. There's every reason to believe they've put the same care and attention into their study as your theologians have, but none of that convinces you to switch religions. You are somehow convinced to be a Christian, presumably based on what the Bible says, while admitting you are not an expert on the Bible. So what parts of the Bible inspire belief but don't require theological expertise to do so?

The short and simple answer is that I follow the Church, not the Bible per se.  I accept the judgment of the Church as a general rule, because in my experience they have the correct analysis of what is wrong with human nature and how it needs to be fixed.  It's also my experience that Bible translations don't vary tremendously except where blatantly dishonest (Mormon and JW "translations") or trying too hard to be hip with modern English.  If one translation is confusing, I can check against other translations if need be.  There's also the matter that I'm not qualified to judge a good translation from a bad one, and it's a bit late in life to learn New Testament Greek.  I'm going to be taking things on authority no matter what I do, and I'm unlikely to come to a radical new insight in my reading that thousands of theologians haven't found already.

Also, TBH, I don't read the Bible as much as I should.  We're really supposed to, but I find Paul borderline unreadable in the way he staples clauses together for half a page until you forget what the original subject of the sentence was.

[Buster's Uncle]

No, it isn't.

YES it is.  You're telling me what I mean, and getting it wrong.  Have some integrity.

An example of critical thinking and self-awareness. I long ago came to the conclusion that Elok is an extremely reasonable guy who generally makes good, thoughtful arguments about a lot of subjects. However, on those occasions when he disagrees with me about stuff I care intensely about, I start to believe he's making bad arguments. And I think to myself, "Gosh, Elok, you usually make such good arguments! Why are you making bad ones about this one thing I happen to care about?" And then I step back and consider whether that's likely and realize that if the only variable that differs is me caring a lot, then it's probably not something Elok-related making me think his arguments are bad.

This is excellent.  Thing is, while I'm saying, more or less, all the same stuff I would have when I believed, I'm just arguing the internal logic according to the rules as I see them; I threw up my hands about what the actual truth was of God, Jesus and the rest a long time ago, save concluding that Christ was indisputably a great master who had the truest of answers.  -So on some level, I'm only arguing for fun, and started this thread explicitly/openly as a troll of 'Lok, who's fun to kick around when it comes to - ooh, other denominations exist.  (I'm also deadly earnest, and it's complicated - but I think the proposition that it's me only goes so far when I started this joust precisely because it's in a blind spot my pal has about the reformation and everything.  Maybe I'm not wrong to still see blind spot.)


'Lok, I'm out of sorts today because I just burned the better part of three days getting a four-page letter in the mail to a lonely cousin in need, because of multiple ludicrous RL holdups and frustrations - and didn't get to the post office, after all the struggle, in time for it to go out before Monday morning.  -And so that's probably the most of why I'm being so short.  Type away with your own smrt self, but I'm waiting 'til tomorrow, when I'm hopefully stable again, before I try to assay substantial/useful responses...

[Elok]

No problem.  Final question for the time being: how do you distinguish a "blind spot" from merely having a different perspective on it?  Again, this country is incredibly Protestant.  I've had at least incidental exposure to Protestant ideas for my whole life; your exposure to Orthodox ideas has come, AFAICT, almost entirely from stuff I happened to say in internet arguments.

[Buster's Uncle]

This is a very strong point - but I dunno that it doesn't underline the blindspot point; you should understand better, considering.

I mean, I don't know that I ever once so much as heard of Eastern Orthodox in a church setting where they weren't real well-educated or faintly sophisticated, on average, and barely bad-mouthed the Mormons, let alone the Catholics, who barely existed from all you could tell.  Not a church real given to bad-mouthing other than the godless, I'm happy to report, and I don't know how typical that is.

-But I know a little history, have read the odd book, not all genre fictions, and would have said, five years ago that one would have hit the right ballpark to think of EO as Catholicism w/o a pope, hierarchy only going up to national level, in Greek/Eastern European clothes and iconography.  You've certainly deepened my understanding, and I think I prefer the central rationality you describe, to the extent that's accurate and not just you, over the profound core of fanaticism almost glorifying mindlessness in serious RC - but I'd still point the same way at the ballpark.

I suppose you've noticed that the general calm central attitude of EO you describe sounds a lot like COE/Episcopalian's core, as I've been given to understand it?

[Elok]

Oh, we can get het up with the best of them, as in Putin's Russia, though that's a hypocritical culture-war mess.  IIRC Anglicans traditionally tout the via media, the middle way, avoiding extremes and fostering compromise as a matter of policy.  At present, this policy is being sorely tested as the CoE gets pulled between extremely liberal European and American members and far more conservative congregations from developing countries.  Or so I hear.

I wouldn't describe RC as fanatical or mindless; their tradition is, from our perspective, annoyingly pedantic and hair-splitting, focused on defining everything in terms of rigid categories.  Thomas Aquinas was insufferable, but far from mindless.  I'm sure they do have fanatics, but everyone has fanatics, they just express their fanaticism different ways.  Ours grow big beards and bellow about defending holy tradition from Western corruption while ignoring Russia's gross militarism, defense of Stalin, and sky-high abortion rate.  Protestants can go a whole bunch of different ways; you've got your apple-pie Reagan cultists, your Reformed quasi-Puritans aghast at violations of Deuteronomy 12:16.275, your deep-end mainliners who've gone in for "Liberation Theology" pseudo-Marxism,  Pentecostals who've forgotten to have a sense of humor ... etc.

We resemble the Catholics insofar as we are closer to them than we are to any other Christian tradition you're likely to be familiar with.  We split with the Catholics about a thousand years ago--twice as long as Protestantism has existed--and Protestants split from them.  So we're "in the same direction" as the Catholics from your perspective, but if you actually dig into it there's a lot that would strike you as deeply alien.  We don't have categories of mortal vs. venial sin, or talk about salvation in punitive terms; we believe in theosis, the deification of man (1 Peter speaks of "becoming partakers of the divine nature").  A famous Orthodox quote goes "God became man that man might become God."  Sometimes translated as the milder "might become like god."  Salvation is a gradual process, partially achieved in this life, of becoming less wretched human beings by the power of God's grace.  There's a meditative tradition that goes along with all this, which I'm bad at because I can't shut up my inner monologue.

American Orthodoxy is in the middle of a weird transitional phase, as all the old immigrant churches become assimilated, and a lot of the grandchildren of old immigrants lose interest in a religious identity expressed (sometimes, tragically) primarily as a component of belonging to a culture they've never been a part of.  At the same time, we're becoming a bit better known and opening up to converts.  These converts tend to be disgruntled former Episcopalians, or other Protestants who went digging for the roots of the "primitive church" and found us at the bottom.  So yes, a lot of the Orthodox you meet in America are going to be well-educated or well-informed.  They're the ones who were motivated to find us in the first place.

I'll be out all day today, first church then work, so I won't get back to you for a while after this in all likelihood.

[Buster's Uncle]

Monty Python - Bells (atheist,agnostic)

I'll always treasure this routine, from one of their post-TV albums, for that last line...

[Elok]

Erm ... okay.  I take it that's funny to somebody?

[Buster's Uncle]

Mostly only that last line, to me.  The rest needs a LOT of polishing.  Probably helps a great deal to be British.