Re: A profound disturbance found in Yak butter.

I would add to this one point. When Buddha and Mohammed rise from the
dead, we have something comparable.
Dave

On Sat, 27 May 2006 20:26:54 -0400 "George Murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com>
writes:
If there is no progress in revelation then Abraham knew about the Trinity
& the Incarnation of the Word. In the days before the critical study of
scripture theologians claimed things just like that but there is no
evidence that it's true. (Yes, of course there's Genesis 18 & its use as
an icon of the Trinity by Christians but that's a very different matter
from thinking that Abraham understood the "three men" to be Father, Son &
Holy Spirit.)

What distinguishes Christianity from Buddhism, Islam &c is not that they
talk about progressive revelation & Christians think that revelation all
got dropped down in one load. It is the different claims about the
content of revelation.

One reason (not the only reason) that Islam cannot be considered
"progress" beyond Christianity is that it is in fact a regression to an
essentially legal religion. There is little qualitative difference
between Islam & Pharisaic Judaism. There are different rules, different
holy places, different rituals &c but the structures are fundamentally
the same.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
----- Original Message -----
From: glennmorton@entouch.net
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Saturday, May 27, 2006 7:57 PM
Subject: RE: A profound disturbance found in Yak butter.

HI David,
> As another exYEC, I think I have some responses relevant to
> your questions. The first is that the Christian revelation is
> progressive, from the early Hebrews through the prophets to
> the apostles, with the life, death and resurrection of Christ
> central to the message. We know what neither early Hebrews
> nor Maccabean Jews could know.
This is a fascinating response because this is precisely what buddhism
(over here) beleives). Revelation is progressive. You can't believe how
many temples and high places on mountains I have been to where a buddhist
would invite me to burn incense before the statue. When I would tell them
I couldn't cause I was a Christian, they would tell me it is ok because
Jesus too was an enlightened one. They have no difficulty with the
change of message so I can only infer, that practically, they believe in
progressive revelation.
Secondly, I know that this is what the Islamacists believe. And since
Mohammed came after Jesus, his progressive revelation is more important.
 
So, I guess with this approach, I feel a bit like dealing with Lane
Lester and Ray Bohlin's concept enshrined in the title of their book,
"Natural Limits to Change". The question I ask them biologically is what
keeps change from going further into macro-evolution. Theologically,
with progressive revelation, I see no way to rule out macro-theological
change. What is the natural limit to theological change?

> Second, things are not quite as we learned them in Sunday
> school. Consider the difference between Joshua and Judges. In
> Joshua, almost everything went forward without a hitch. The
> land was conquered. There was no idolatry mentioned among the
> tribes. Judges tells a different story of continued battles,
> idolatry, one mess after another. One of the great heroes was
> Jerubbaal, nicknamed Gideon. Recall that he broke up the
> local idols. His son was a catastrophe. The situation during
> the time of the prophets seems similar. There was the Temple,
> but a lot more was going on. The record we have does not tell
> us everything. A lot of it is slanted.
Maybe, but if it is all slanted, who did the slanting? If the accounts
really are a case of human authors slanting history to match their
preferred viewpoint, wherein lies any divine inspiration? What part of
the slant is inspired and what is human rubbish? What are the rules for
telling them apart?
> Finally, when we come to Christ, we have a solid historical
> basis for our theology. It would be there if virtually
> nothing of the Old Testament remained. I note that many
> tribes have only a New Testament in their language. Indeed,
> some have only a single gospel, but they've gotten the
> message of salvation. Dave
As I have often said, things would be a whole lot easier if the Bible
said this:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now Jehovah said
unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from
thy father’s house, unto the land that I will show thee:
with nothing in between Gen 1:1 and Gen 12:1
I am sure that there were HEbrews who saw Christians as victims of the
latest fad. But to say Christ is the only thing important in theology, to
the exclusion of anything else is to say, IMO, that nothing else matters.
 But that undercuts the entire reason for Christs sacrifice because it
was based upon him being the lamb of the world--the lamb being a hebrew
concept. And if things are progressive, does at some future time
Christ's sacrifice is outdated? Was Mohammed right?
I guess, sadly I may never get out of this tautological conundrum where
Christians define true theology as what they believe and then point to
their theology as the true theology. But when one sees other religions
doing precisely the same thing, one must wonder if this is all some sort
of Wittgensteinian game where there is truly no meaning to it. The only
way out of this Wittgensteinian game is through observational
data--something must be there that is REAL (and you know my view that
from the 21st century we can not verify (scientifically) the resurrection
anymore than we can verify the existence of the golden tablets that
Joseph Smith translated--both body and tablets went to heaven)
Received on Sun May 28 00:53:22 2006