On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 12:56:09 -0800, penitent leper
<bastaschs@peak.org> wrote:
telige@mail.clara.fl.com (William)wrote:
penitent leper<bastaschs@peak.org> wrote:
telige@mail.clara.fl.com (William)wrote:
Matt Silberstein <matts2nopam@ixnetcom.nospamcom> wrote:
telige@mail.clara.fl.com (William):
Your "questions for Christians" are only applicable to that noisy
minority of Christians who are biblical literalists. Educated
Christians take these narratives seriously, but not literally, viewing
them as teaching devices, parables, metaphors, and allegories.
If they are not literally true then they can be mean whatever you
like. That's the beauty of fiction - it doesn't have to relate to
reality.
Nonsense. Words do not fit into just one of two boxes,
descriptions of actual events and fiction. Is the Declaration of
Independence either literally true or fiction?
Is it literally true that Thomas Jefferson Drafted the Declaration of
Independence in June 1776?
That's not exactly the point here. The point is that the DOI was
and is subject to interpretation. Like the biblical narratives. Did
JC literally turn water into wine? If he did, interpretations
differed: some thought these miracles were the mark of a spirit-filled
Messiah; others thought they were the calling cards of an evil
sorcerer. Thus even if water-to-wine miracles were literally true,
they are open to interpretation.
If JC literally turned water into wine then that event occurred in the
real world. An event either takes place in the real world or it does
not.
But the real world includes the internal spirit as well as external
matter. You've limited your choices severely here. An event which is
wholly subjective, e.g., thinking of a mathematical formula or seeing
one's love as a "red, red rose", remains an event. It is a
subjective, not an objective event, but it takes place in the real
world of your own psyche.
But if you are not a solipsist you will know that there is a
distinction between the internal subjective world and the independent,
external objective world. If someone tells you they fell into a rose
bush in their garden you take that as describing an event in the
external world of objective reality. You would also expect to see some
objective evidence for the event, like the person covered in
scratches. If, however, they use some quality of a rose to make an
abstract comparison with their lover then they have not described an
event in the external world. As with the rather silly point raised
by the previous poster, most people know the difference.
If you want to see the event also as a sign which can be
interpreted to mean things beyond the event then that is an entirely
different question. The event itself tells you one thing; JC can
perform miracles. The narrative states that it was as a sign
demonstrating his authority. Others might have seen it demonstrating
something else but if it was literally true then the event still
occured.
If it was not literally true then he didn't demonstrate anything
Not if the story is patterned on the kinds of things that he was
remembered as doing. And the story demonstrates a timeless,
nonliteral, nonobjective truth - even if it didn't happen in external
spacetime.
His miracles were done as signs (specifically stated in the above
event). If they didn't happen in external space-time then they are
completely worthless as a sign. If someone claimed that George Bush
had walked on water as a sign that he had God on his side it would
have to have actually happened in external space-time or it would be
nonsense.
and interpretations of what the writer might have meant will
be legion.
Quite the contrary, if it was not literally true, then we have an
example of a rich teaching metaphor - a parable of the miraculous.
The story is saying that the Kingdom of God is "like a great wedding
where the wine never ran out".
That's one of the legion of things it could be interpreted to say.
JC could have actually performed a
historical miracle, or not. The point is, his _meaning_ is that of a
gracious provider, whether or not he actually performed this miracle
in external spacetime (I don't think he did, but that's another
story).
I have already pointed out that there are two issues here. There is
the question of whether the event happened as objective fact, and
there is the question of whether it could be used to illustrate
something else, whether it happened or not.
If it never happened as objective fact then all you have is the use of
it for illustrations and even I could think up a couple dozen
illustrative uses for it. If it did happen in objective fact then it
tells you specific things. It tells you that Jesus had the power to
perform miracles which the average person did not. It tells you that
it was such a significant event that his followers believed in him on
the basis of it. None of this has can be drawn from it if it was just
a fictional illustration.
The fact that Christians are now turning so much of the biblical
narrative into fictional illustrations should be very worrying to
those who think it tells us anything new about reality.
William
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