From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Mon Jul 01 2002 - 18:03:10 MDT
Max More wrote:
> At 02:01 AM 6/29/2002 -0700, Samantha wrote:
>
>>> They may *say*, but I think they should not be considered Protestants
>>> at all. They can't really be considered Christians even. The early
>>> Church did have protracted and heated discussions about exactly what
>>> it meant to talk about "the son of God". However, as a matter of good
>>> cognitive practice we should stick to the usage according to which a
>>> Christian are all and only those who believe in the divinity of Jesus
>>> Christ. [To
>>
>>
>> I don't think so. The early Christians didn't necessarily have this
>> belief. It took the Catholic Church 3 or 4 centuries to sort out what
>> they thought dogma should be in this regard. The Catholic take cannot
>> be said to reasonably subscribe non-Catholic Christianity. It is not
>> good cognitive practice to drop the complexity of the real situation
>> for something easier.
>
>
> In the first 3 or 4 centuries, there was no Catholic/Protestant
> division. There were numerous sects with various divergences in belief,
Well sure. So? ...
> but the Protestants didn't come into existence for another thousand
> years or so. There wasn't even a state-backed official Church until the
> conversion of Constantine in the early fourth century. The early
> arguments, as I recall vaguely, were not about the divinity of Jesus but
> about in exactly what *way* he was divine. That was reflected in
> arguments about the incarnation and the immanence of the Holy Spirit.
>
They were also about the divinity of Jesus and whether Jesus was
both human and divine or some Eastern notion like an enlightened
master. There were strong pressures to make Jesus himself
divine to weave together a lot of current local myths in
Greek/Roman mythology (if you ask me). The Holy Spirit thing
was another kettle of fish entirely. The trinity notion was the
wacky outcome of the entire mess.
> I think that to be considered a Christian, someone needs to believe more
> than that J.C. was a really cool kind of guy.
>
Actually, you can be a perfectly fine Christian and believe
Christ is a title meaning fully enlightened. Mystics throughout
the ages have spoken of being one with God. There is no reason
to interpret the actual text as saying otherwise. There is also
the small point of the "I" in especially the Gospel of John not
necessarily refering to the personal dude, Jesus, but to the
Self, the fully enligtened state of being, the Christ. The
early church decided to lose that in order to create something
unique that would trump other sects and local religions.
>> Actually, they need to seek to be Christ-like, to follow the purported
>> teachings of Christ. All of this other stuff is derivative from this
>> or that sect.
>
>
> No, that's clearly insufficient. There are plenty of unreligious
> humanists who have explicitly said that Christ as portrayed in the
> surviving writings is a archetypal figure to be emulated. But they most
> certainly would object to being called Christians, and I think they
> would be right to so object.
>
I am not talking about considering Jesuse a figure to emulate. I
am talking about seeking and acquiring a similar state of
consciousness and living from within that. Almost no so-called
Christians or admireres of the Christ story do anyting of the
kind. Most of them would even vehemently deny any such thing is
possible.
Are you claiming you have to believe in dogma X to be a follower
of Christ?
> Look, Samantha, there are enough of them as it is. Why try to define
> more into existence?!
>
Because the ones that claim to be largely don't deserve the
title, the actual number is far less.
- samantha
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