181–190 of 310 posts
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Note that to non-Christian monotheists, the Christian resolution of that problem is often seen as polytheism with circumlocution.
This arises from a confusion of multiplication 1x1x1 with addition 1+1+1 in the abstraction of facets of truth.
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There's a ton of textual evidence for the existence of Santa Claus.
Correct, he lived in Turkey around the late third-early fourth century.
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Even today plenty of Christian sects refuse to recognize the council of Nicaea's interpretation of the trinity, including the Mormons and the Jehovah's witnesses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontrinitarianism (Whether or not any of these flirt with polytheism is up for debate.) Meanwhile, the Catholic church's own profusion of saints whom you are supposed to beseech for specific blessings is dangerously close to a…
In a taxonomy of religious belief the communion of saints is much closer to ancestor veneration than it is polytheism. If you're going to see anything in christianity as potentially polytheistic it's the triune god come on.
Nobody hesitates to call Shintoism polytheistic, and its core practices, to an outsider, seem strikingly similar to how a Christian, especially a Roman Catholic, interacts with the saints.
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As somebody outside of religions (thank you both parents, probably the greatest gift one can give to one's kids - freedom of faith and self determination, something almost impossible as adult if indoctrinated young), these kind of discussions are funny to me. Why? They are present in every corner of the world, every religion. And all you need is to take few steps back and stop taking everything literally, trying to f…
that's all brave and probably well intentioned, but there is another side to it. The Bible was specifically "a single agreed upon text" so that groups of people in real life could stop fighting about theology points, big and small. It still exists today. "The Bible is the Truth" end of statement. It is not because you personally cannot find new meaning in non-Bible things.. it is specifically to get groups of people…
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Yes, with "saint" I wasn't even trying to invoke a discussion involving Mary at all, because in practice she's so far above the saints that to equate them feels like heresy (and might literally be heresy in some contexts; hyperdulia vs. dulia and all). In practice the absolute adulation of Mary is such that she nearly feels like the fourth member of the trinity.
Who judges what appears to happen in practice?
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I've never heard anyone say the early church wrestled with polytheism. Maybe that's my bias nestled in Christian circles of not using that word, in favour of something more like "the nature of the triune Godhead", etc.
Even today plenty of Christian sects refuse to recognize the council of Nicaea's interpretation of the trinity, including the Mormons and the Jehovah's witnesses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontrinitarianism (Whether or not any of these flirt with polytheism is up for debate.) Meanwhile, the Catholic church's own profusion of saints whom you are supposed to beseech for specific blessings is dangerously close to a…
What relevance in an age when the moral high ground is now a weakness or, at best, simply an ineffective strategy?
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There is scientific consensus that Jesus was a historical figure, so the book referred here is probably fiction.
> There is scientific consensus that Jesus was a historical figure It's fair to say that there is general consensus amongst Biblical scholars that there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth. Calling it a scientific consensus is a bit of a stretch though. As far as I'm aware there's zero scientific evidence for His existence. Just that the surviving textual evidence makes little sense if He didn't.
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> The eastern Orthodox church refers to itself as the "Catholic Church" in internal documents. After the west fell in 476, they continued to present themselves as "the" Catholic church... Is that really so odd? Doesn't "catholic" mean something like "universal," and I think it would be very odd for one faction of a split organization to cede that kind of title to its rival faction. I might be misunderstanding your po…
> "catholic" mean something like "universal," Christians make a distinction between churches and the church. The former is the physical building or even denominations like Lutherans or Roman Catholics. The latter is the group of people that are part of Christianity, across time and denominations. The Universal Church refers to the latter. Galatians 1:2 "…the churches of Galatia…" vs Colossians 1:24 "…for the sake of…
I find it pretty cool how the spread of Christianity can be tracked so finely that a 50 update in earliest arrival time is exciting! I started listening to a podcast called "the history of the early church" to learn a bit more about that but unfortunately I think the target audience was Christians interested in theology rather than nerds interested in history. Recommendations for books etc are welcome!
Someone already said The Rest is History, but one of the presenters of that podcast Tom Holland (not the actor) has also written extensively about the history of the catholic church in Millennium and Dominion. Highly recommended.
It is also a useful corrective to the Western tendency to see its values and attitudes as universal, even where they are a product of a particular history and culture.