That one does not care about a question.... — Leontiskos

All right, tell us what a Christian is. Don't waste our time telling us what someone else said. You either know and can say, or you do not know. And don't be arbitrary: being a Christian - you appear to say - is a definite something: say what that something is.

As to who gets to call themselves a Christian, as the whole topic is based in nonsense, who cares?! — tim wood

You seem not to like this. Show the sense, then.

Why can't I appreciate and adhere to Christian principles — ENOAH

Principles as ideas, amen. Is there more to it? Or not? And whichever side you're on, what do you say to the other side? In my view, there may well have been a time when being a Christian meant something definite; and of that I think only the ideas/principles remain. Of those, I cannot think of any that are clearly originally Christian - anyone?

Love your enemy.

Love your enemy. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes, but if only [that one stuck around]

Yes, but if only it were as simple and straightforward as it sounds, and it isn't. And there's evidence that it was expressed both well before Jesus's time, and also far away.

I understand that implementation & interpretation is a whole other matter.

Where and when was it said? And by who? Don't leave me hanging.

Here is the translation for the hard of hearing: Christians believe in God. They do not worship a "God the Father" who has a human past. The Christian concept of God is strictly incompatible with the Mormon view that God was somehow a former human and that all good Mormons will become gods and inherit their own planet. For Christianity this is not a minor mistake; it is a category error that destroys one of the most basic and most fundamental presuppositions of Christianity.

Why can't I appreciate and adhere to Christian principles and deny its history. Who says that you have two choices, believe and belong, or reject and stay clear? — ENOAH

Yes, you could follow Christian principles without believing in its supernatural aspects.
Some Christians, I suspect, do exactly that.
I'd add that choice in the OP if I were to do it again.

Just search online, that's all I did. You will also see reference to the enemies to be loved as not just any enemies, but only those that meet certain criteria. I'm not much interested in the details. For more I refer you to this series of undergraduate lectures at Yale, starting here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo-YL-lv3RY

Given by Christine Hayes, and all of them worth the watch.

I asked for a source on "love your enemies" that predates Jesus. You did not provide one. ChatGPT attributes the idea/quote to Jesus.

For Christianity this is not a minor mistake; it is a category error that destroys one of the most basic and most fundamental presuppositions of Christianity. — Leontiskos

Agreed. Christians believe in God. Now the question, if one's God is not the supernatural being of most Christians' belief, can a person still be a Christian? And I trust you will see this as a not-so-simple question, and not to be answered in a knee-jerk reflexive way.

Proverbs 25:21–22, and go from there. I refer you to your own devices not because I'm lazy, but because there are more than I care to list, and because you will see them "when they're at home," when you can judge them for yourself best.

if one's God is not the supernatural being of most Christians' belief, can a person still be a Christian? — tim wood

Depends. Can one's saviour still be Jesus Christ? I'd think so, regardless of hte divinity instantiated from on high within the person of Jesus Christ.

it is a category error that destroys one of the most basic and most fundamental presuppositions of Christianity. — Leontiskos

I guess that's where we disagree. Almost all simple definitions of Christianity that weren't explicitly designed to exclude Mormons, don't exclude Mormons. The most basic and fundamental presuppositions of Christianity are in tact in Mormonism. Those are mainly belief in Christ and in his resurrection, and seeking salvation through that belief. I don't think fundamental Christianity requires any super specific philosophy about what God exactly is. Hell, I don't think most Christians in history even gave that question much thought - and that's equally true of most Mormons, among whom this "god as man" doctrine is obscure and niche and not at all universally accepted.

I asked for a source on "love your enemies" that predates Jesus. You did not provide one. ChatGPT attributes the idea/quote to Jesus. — BitconnectCarlos

You do realize - yes? - all the problems with this?

News to me that ChatGPT is any kind of reliable research tool. Ideas and quotes are not the same thing. Any notion of a quote by anyone not a direct recording is hearsay; not itself a disqualification, but a qualification. Absolutely guaranteed Jesus, or any person prior to about c. 1400 AD, never said, "Love your enemy." Which leaves open the question of what was attributed to him, which centers on the ancient Greek word we all love and think we understand, agape, which used as a verb, άγαπἀω, doesn't quite correspond to the noun, neither being well-served in translation by "love."

But Jesus makes clear in Luke 6: 27-36 (& Matt. 5: 43-48) what he does mean and why, and that worth a look and some consideration by anyone who claims to care.

In sum, I am ignorant (and thus subject to correction) of anything in Christianity not recounted or foreshadowed in some earlier story that predates Christianity and Judaism, the novelty of Christianity being the uses, "spin," applied to those stories in their retelling - and nothing wrong with that, as the judgment of the world for almost 2,000 years attests.

Proverbs 25:21–22, and go from there. I refer you to your own devices not because I'm lazy, but because there are more than I care to list, and because you will see them "when they're at home," when you can judge them for yourself best. — tim wood

I see the two are in the same ballpark, but J goes further with it. "Love your enemy" is not a part of Jewish tradition or the Hebrew Bible. If it was you'd hear Jews talking about it. It is a thoroughly Christian teaching. Maybe the seeds of it can be found in prov. 25? Jesus makes strong, memorable formulations.

Love your enemy." Which leaves open the question of what was attributed to him, which centers on the ancient Greek word we all love and think we understand, agape — tim wood

I believe J spoke aramaic which was then translated into greek for the gospels.

But Jesus makes clear in Luke 6: 27-36 (& Matt. 5: 43-48) what he does mean — tim wood

we should keep in mind that much of the gospels is likely elaboration by evangelists, at least this is the conclusion of the jesus seminar - a group of some ~200 biblical scholars.

the novelty of Christianity being the uses, "spin," applied to those stories in their retelling - and nothing wrong with that, as the judgment of the world for almost 2,000 years attests. — tim wood

I'd count new spins (interpretation) on old words as innovation.

I find these. I have not verified them.

"Do not return evil to your adversary; Requite with kindness the one who does evil to you, Maintain justice for your enemy."
(the Akkadian "Counsels of Wisdom", circa 2000 BC)

"In this world hate never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible."
(the Buddhist scripture "Dhammapada")

"Return love for hatred. Otherwise, when a great hatred is reconciled, some of it will surely remain. How can this end in goodness? "
(the Taoist "T'ai Shang Kan Ying P'ien", circa 200 BC.)

No reason to think Jesus was familiar with these in particular, but it's a lesson life teaches often enough in one or another form that a person sensitive to such things would pick up on. And Aramaic ->Greek->English, what I take note of is Jesus's simple transactional nature of the "love" called for - do these things and you will be rewarded.

Thanks for those references.

No reason to think Jesus was familiar with these in particular, but it's a lesson life teaches often enough in one or another form that a person sensitive to such things would pick up on. — tim wood

I know "love your enemies" circulates now but consider it in 30 AD under Roman occupation in Judea. Were Jews supposed to love their Roman occupiers? It's a strange notion, especially in an ancient world with strict hierarchy and honor. It is not one that I'm aware of any rabbis - ancient or current - ever teaching.

Sure one is taught not to hold a grudge, but to love one enemy is a very different matter. I find Jewish ethics to be quite practical and realistic. There's an emphasis on making things doable. One is not expected to love one someone who severely wronged you.

And Aramaic ->Greek->English, what I take note of is Jesus's simple transactional nature of the "love" called for - do these things and you will be rewarded. — tim wood

Yeah, I can see how the transactional nature devalues the statement. In the Jesus seminars they consider "your reward will be great" (Luke 6:35) to be a later addition. "Love your enemies" and "forgive and you'll be forgiven" remains core, genuine Jesus. IMHO by limiting the scope of what Jesus says you'll find a stronger Jesus.

I think I was about 8 when I decided if Christians knew God's truth they would all agree and there would be only one denomination. Therefore, if I want to know God, I have to study what everyone believes of God since the beginning of religion and around the world. Like the Roman's did, after learning all we can, we choose what the most people believe is true and decide what is God's truth from there.

However, I have since learned science requires us to observe what we wish to study and test what we think we know. Since no one directly experiences God, that is not possible. Even if I could interview Him, I don't think I would understand Him any more that I would understand Einstien and his explanations. I just do not know enough to understand much of anything.

Maybe if we lived 300 years I might know enough to understand God.

It's a strange notion.... I can see how the transactional nature devalues the statement. In the Jesus seminars they consider "your reward will be great" to be a later addition. — BitconnectCarlos

Do you see the trap - that most of us are caught in most of the time? That of judging what we ought not judge. Of deciding what is right/wrong, good/bad, better/worse in a text, especially an ancient text; and in this case claiming it sacred and divine, while at the same time saying that parts of it aren't. I have become very suspicious of such eisegesis, especially if it claims to say better what the original author was trying to say and would have said if only he or she had been wise or knowledgeable enough to say it.

The right way is to establish as best one can what they said and by saying it what they meant. That done, then our critic can tell us what works for him and what doesn't. What we have in the NT is the text itself, its form in its original language mostly agreed upon, warts and all - for most of us a settled matter. That is, the suggestion that it has been edited, which I think most educated folks understand and accept, is simply (imo) irrelevant (although evidence of it might be interesting).

So I think this,

IMHO by limiting the scope of what Jesus says you'll find a stronger Jesus, — BitconnectCarlos

is part way on the right track but would modify it to focusing on what he did say or is credited with saying and trying to understand what he meant.

Suppose you somehow became convinced that Christianity is false. — Art48

I’m Catholic. Go to church every Sunday because the Church tells me to. Believe the history in the New Testament (because of the ethics in the whole Bible). Etc., etc. Am inspired almost every Mass to do something better.

But in my down time (most of the time) I use reason and my own wits to get through the day. I have little use for God in philosophical discussion for instance, or when crossing a busy street.

At one time I was convinced that the whole Catholic thing was another story, like so many others.

I became an atheist.

If Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead and didn’t promise eternal life, why would I (or anyone) bother to make some new delusion? Or look for some less interested form of “God” than a man who would die on a cross for me, to show me He is God and pave a way to eternity? With all of that out the window, what do we need any gods for anyway?

But then the question is, what if Reason itself was false, would you throw away all of your thinking and your languages and definitions and meanings (except for those meanings that were useful to cross the street safely, or as safely as possible I should say)?

If I realized that everything I realized was false, including this sentence, I wouldn’t do philosophy anymore either.

Do you see the trap - that most of us are caught in most of the time? That of judging what we ought not judge. Of deciding what is right/wrong, good/bad, better/worse in a text, especially an ancient text; and in this case claiming it sacred and divine, while at the same time saying that parts of it aren't. — tim wood

It's called textual analysis and I don't have an issue with it. We can go through texts and glean different "layers" - what is earlier and what was a later addition. I'm reading Alter's 5 Books of Moses now and he does this with the Torah. From memory, I was reading Deut 30 yesterday and Alter mentioned 4 different authors in this passage -- a very ancient source, an ancient one, a redactor, and a later editor. Books/texts in those days were more open. There are different layers to them and a skilled textual critic/translator can discern them.

If I'm going to construct Jesus -- I'm going to start with what is core - what scholarship has determined is definitely him and I can circle outwards from there into the "probably Jesus" and "maybe Jesus" layers. We need a way of correctly & reasonably prioritizing information otherwise we can get bogged down/hyperfocus on scarcely mentioned details that were likely if not certainly later additions. The Jesus seminar seeks to start with the certainties and broaden from there. We're also able to resolve certain contradictions with this approach.

And something can be useful but also be a later addition. Later addition doesn't mean necessarily mean wrong. Later additions can be good interpretations or give us insight into the writer's personal understanding. But if something isn't in the earliest manuscripts that is notable for me. So no, I don't just treat every single word the same weight.

is part way on the right track but would modify it to focusing on what he did say or is credited with saying and trying to understand what he meant. — tim wood

sure -- focus on what he definitely said and start with that. and yes it needs to be interpreted.

Aside from all this, I find Jesus a strange and radical figure. Many of his parables are morally dubious. They really do make me question. E.g. the parable of the workers in the vineyard - could a society survive long term with something like that? Absolutely not.

That parable and many others cut against the grain of traditional wisdom or what we would expect. A lot of his teachings have this aspect - unconventional, often short term in scope -- that imo sets him apart from other itinerant jewish preachers at this time.

Agreed. Christians believe in God. — tim wood

It is simply the question of what is meant by "God" in that sentence. And we don't even need to do a deep dive into the term. We need only ask, "Would it include a formerly mortal human who is eventually given special powers?"

And I trust you will see this as a not-so-simple question — tim wood

It is an enormously simple question to determine whether the Mormon believes in the "God" just mentioned. I'm still perplexed that we are having this conversation at all.

I don't think fundamental Christianity requires any super specific philosophy about what God exactly is. Hell, I don't think most Christians in history even gave that question much thought - and that's equally true of most Mormons, among whom this "god as man" doctrine is obscure and niche and not at all universally accepted. — flannel jesus

Mormons think they will ontologically become an independent "God." Christians think it is blasphemy to say such a thing. But no biggie, right? No significant difference there. :groan:

You, if I understand aright, maintain that they held that God existed. I merely that they believed that God existed and were explicit in that distinction. — tim wood

This strikes me as deeply confused, and I have no idea why you believe such a thing.

Cutting to the chase, you think that ancients, including Christians, did not make firm claims about supernatural entities. You think they only "believed" things about supernatural entities, which you say does not even rise to the level of predicating existence.

The simple answer here is the one I gave at the outset: any belief that is worth killing and dying for is a belief held with strong certitude and conviction, and the ancient world was full of religious and supernatural beliefs worth killing and dying for. Speaking specifically about Christians, they were willingly martyred for their beliefs, and there were severe internecine persecutions following the Council of Nicea on both sides. There was leniency up to a point in the Empire, but there was also some umbrella of orthodoxy which was enforced quite strongly, before and after the Christianization of the Empire.

To take but one famous example, for refusing to accept Monothelitism in the 7th century Maximus the Confessor was found guilty of heresy, was tortured, had his tongue cut out, had his right hand cut off, and was sent into exile for the rest of his life. Apparently Maximus' opponents did not fully understand the nuance of your distinction between Maximus' "believing" Dyothelitism and Maximus' "holding" Dyothelitism. :grin:

...And again, I think your distinction is nonsensical all throughout. On this forum we have some rare folk who go about saying they believe X but they do not believe X is true, and this strikes me as a deeply confused position. No one can ever get them to say what it means to believe X without believing X to be true. Traditionally the "belief" distinction has to do with the mode of assent, not with the conviction or certitude involved.

You, if I understand aright, maintain that they held that God existed. I merely that they believed that God existed and were explicit in that distinction. — tim wood

I could go on, as there are so many problems with your theories... The reason folk in the modern world are shy about professing belief in God is because the society is increasingly secular, and because of this it is unfashionable. So they make up new concepts of "belief." But in the ancient world most everyone believed in supernatural entities, it was only a question of which one(s) and where. That God or gods existed in some form was a fact of the ancient world, and there was no shyness about affirming it. The trouble came only with worshipping or denying the wrong ones. In the ancient world to say, "I believe that gods exist," would be like saying today, "I believe that cars exist." The natural response would be, "And...?"

It is perhaps also worth noting that the Creed was never primarily about the existence of God. That was taken for granted and obviously affirmed. The profession of the Creed is much stronger than that. It is something like a marriage vow. It represents a kind of relationship and covenant with God, hearkening back to the Hebrew Shema.

That some christians think what other christians think is blasphemy seems... normal, for religion. Sunnis think Shias are blasphemous too, big whoop.

It is an enormously simple question to determine whether the Mormon believes in the "God" just mentioned. I'm still perplexed that we are having this conversation at all. — Leontiskos

In discussing Mormonism, you're confusing me with someone else; I've expressed nothing on the subject. Maybe that the source of your perplexity. Which might account for why you failed to understand my question. .

This strikes me as deeply confused, and I have no idea why you believe such a thing.
Cutting to the chase, you think that ancients, including Christians, did not make firm claims about supernatural entities. — Leontiskos

You seem unclear about your own topic. On the one hand, people will claim all kinds of things, on the other is the question as to what something is and is not. If you want to assert that there are people who claim to be Christian and at the same time affirm that God exists, then no disagreement. I've met such people; they're not rare. And when asked about any of the details of that existence - that I call predicates - they all (in my experience all) blow up or run away. They call themselves Christians, but in a significant way they're not.

On the topic of what Christianity is, with respect to the existence of God, I offer the following excerpt.

"[T]he proposition ‘God exists’ would seem to mean that there is a being more or less like human beings in respect of his mental powers and dispositions, but having the mental powers of a human being greatly, perhaps infinitely, magnified.... I have no fear of being contradicted when I say that the meaning I suppose to be attached by this author to the proposition ‘God exists’ is a meaning Christian theologians have never attached to it, and does not even remotely resemble the meaning which with some approach to unanimity they have expounded at considerable length....The creeds in which Christians have been taught to confess their faith have never been couched in the formula: ‘God exists and has the following attributes’; but always in the formula: ‘I believe’ or originally ‘We believe in God’ ; and have gone on to say what it is that I, or we, believe about him." An Essay on Metaphysics, pp. 186-188. And here:
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.187414/page/n195/mode/2up

And this:
"We believe.., but no Christian can hope to know, at least in this life, the truth which he believes.... Such is the ultimate meaning of Augustine's famous formula: 'Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that thou mayest believe, but believe that thou mayest understand." Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, pp. 18-19.

Or to dumb it down, I hope not fatally, two questions to be answered in turn. Do you believe in unicorns? Do they exist?

Mormons think they will ontologically become an independent "God." Christians think it is blasphemy to say such a thing. But no biggie, right? No significant difference there. :groan: — Leontiskos

"Christians" have been accusing each other of blasphemy, setting each other beyond the pale as apostates, heretics, heathens, or whatever, from before the time when the Bible as we know it was compiled; the texts to be included and those to be exiled to the Apocrypha were part of that conflict. Whatever consensus of belief has come to be accepted by you or anyone else about what constitutes a Christian has been arrived at through debate and conflict that has rejected more inclusive positions.

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." — Matthew 16:24

Thus speaks the man who ought to know, and according to His standard, there are very very few Christians or have ever been; nor is belief the criterion.