If I changed, how much would I change?
I occasionally wonder what I would believe if I were to become a Christian again. Most of my positions about religion would not change.
• I would believe in evolution.
• I would believe that religion is a by-product of evolved mental processes used for other purposes.
• I would believe questions about whether Christ was God are totally irrelevant to being a Christian.
• I would believe that Christians need to be fully engaged with the world while they live in the world.
• I would believe that God does not lay down principles by which people should live.
• I would believe that God demands of Christians that they search for the truth in God’s name, and that there is no royal road to those truths.
• I would believe that Christ’s great teaching was the Sermon on the Mount.
• I would believe that much of fundamentalist religious belief in every religion around the world is destructive of the world and humanity.
• I would read Marx and have no problem with him and my Christian beliefs.
• I would believe the soul is mortal and material.
• I would believe that God does not intervene in human affairs.
Some might say, Lynn, you can’t be a Christian if you believe all those things. I suppose they are right. It’s fun to try to reconcile Epicureanism with Christianity. Still, Christianity has been reconciled with Platonism, Aristotelianism, and other philosophical positions. Maybe, the folks who did that were flat out wrong, or only partially right?
posted by Lynn @ 3:39 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
With the possible exception of:
• I would believe that God does not lay down principles by which people should live.
You would probably be a Reformed Jew, not a Christian in the parochial sense... Which is what I think Jesus was talking about anyway.
epm,
I figured that some folks had been there before me.
Lynn,
Being an evangelical who believes strongly in the theological importance of the atonement, I'd have to quibble with any view that Christ wasn't and didn't claim to be God, but other than that, I don't see any problems with any of those statements. I'm sure you'd expect that sort of disagreement, but I'd love to have a theological, rather than political debate for once. ;)
Curtis,
I knew I was in deep water with some of those propositions. I would like to have a theological debate with you for a change. I better sharpen my ideas and arguments. At this point, you'd just be having a battle of wits with an unarmed man. :)
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