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Practical Differences Between the Orthodox and Evangelicals
First Orthodox Cathedral built in Georgia in 1,000 years.
I am a Baptist and a missionary that was on the field for 14 years and I worked primarily in Georgia but other Orthodox countries as well. My experience with culturally Orthodox and faithful Orthodox believers are from these countries in descending order of interaction, Georgia, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, and America. I was inspired by this post from @heavywater on the conversion of the Bible Answers man to Orthodoxy. What I wanted to do here is to lay out the practical differences I found between not just the teaching of Orthodoxy and Evangelicals generally but how the teaching is put to work in the real world. I am a Baptist and I would be a Reformed Baptist, on the question of salvation, to lay down a theological marker.
I am not trying to win or even make an argument here, I am not interested in this post who better reflects the teaching in the Bible or the wishes of Christ, instead I want to lay out how the differences in the teachings of the two churches play out in the lives of people practicing the two faiths. I want to illuminate what motivates the conversions that move people from Orthodoxy to Evangelicalism and what often motivates the reverse. I intend to take a more bottom-up look at what happens here so instead of starting with theology and then working down to the people I am going to start with the people and work my way up to some insights on the theology.
Let’s get started with part of a testimony of a girl that went from Orthodoxy to Evangelicalism.
“My first doubt about my faith is when we went to sacrifice a chicken to the Lord at the local Orthodox church. We had sinned and the Priest said we needed to sacrifice a chicken to Lord to atone for it. So my parents brought the chicken and while we prayed the Priest slaughtered the chicken and threw half in a basket before the altar and then took the other half for himself. Before I could control myself, I said aloud, “That is for God, why are you taking it?” My parents were mortified but the Priest just smiled at me and said, “Christ also takes care of his Priests.”
Now any, even nominally educated, Orthodox believer will quickly tell you the above story is a mess. Orthodox theology does not need chickens, no one atones for sin with the blood of animals. Some even question whether the above incident could have even happened. No one in Georgia would bat an eye at it however, they all know it happens. I am here to tell you though that Orthodox theology does not allow the Priest to act the way he did and it is true even if the people believed the chicken was sacrificed for their sins it was only because they were taught incorrect Orthodox theology.
Even Priests in Georgia, educated ones used to foreigners, will tell you what we see here is simple folk practice. Country priests have to find various ways to supplement their income to survive and people build up stories about once simple rituals to give them greater importance and so we get bad theology. But they are also quick to assure you that it is alright and the people’s faith in the Church is justified and their salvation is secure. Why is that? Well, one more story.
My sister in law, Nino, is out on a camping trip with her girlfriend and some male cousins and friends. They are feasting on fish the boys have caught in the stream and the next day they are going to a church up in the hill country called Tetri Giorgi (White/Silver George) the church is ancient and very holy. It is said the earth all around the church is black from the tens of thousands of cattle sacrificed there over the centuries. One of the boys noticed a gold chain around her neck and said, “You better hide that or even bury it out here.” Shocked Nino responded, “No, way. Why would I do such a thing?”
The boys explained that Saint George and other Saints located at the church are very hungry for sacrifice and if they “see” the gold they will demand it from her and if she does not give it they may even curse her causing her death. Nino, then explained that the church they are going to is simply a piece of cultural heritage to her and there are no saints who do anything like they say, and that her faith is in Jesus Christ regardless and Jesus doesn’t really need nor wants her necklace.
The boys then launched into long stories about how magical the church was, how the Saints can mess with the Earth’s magnetic field and essentially tell horrifying ghosts stories with gruesome ends for those that tried to defy the Saints of the church of Tetri Giorgi. When Nino and her friend still weren’t moved and tried to explain that even according to normal Orthodox teaching what they were saying about the church was wrong. The boys were so angry the girls were frightened and asked to go home and one the cousins drove them away from the camping trip.
What to make of these two stories, stories used often when explaining to others why the people that experienced them became Baptist instead of Orthodox? Well, normally the conversation derails on high theological grounds and defenses based on the fact that the bad actors in this story were not acting as true Orthodox and who seem ignorant of basic Orthodox teaching.
I think this misses the point. The Orthodox are basically unchallenged in Georgia. They have government backing and have been free of Communist oppression for more than a generation. If the Orthodox Church in Georgia wanted to stop these practices, they certainly could. A priest or monk coming out of the church of the Tetri Giorgi and telling everyone with a cow in tow that there was no reason to kill the cow and that it would bring them no advantage would swiftly put an end to the practice. They chose not to end it. Why?
Church Authority in Salvation
The reason these practices horrify Baptists and usually get rueful shrugs from Orthodox Priests is their different views of the role of the Church in salvation. For the Orthodox, the membership in the right church brings a person to salvation. The hard work of the priest and the church hierarchy is to bring their flock into salvation the flock does not have to do much more than belong and stay members in good standing with the church to make it into heaven.
Imagine for a moment that you are a priest and strongly believe that people need salvation and that salvation is on offer in the Orthodox Church. You head out to a village or small town and start caring for the flock. As you teach standard Orthodox theology you find that many people are surprised by what you are teaching and they start questioning many of their folk’s beliefs. As you try and reassure them that their folk beliefs are wrong they begin to worry about their dead grandparents and other relatives and get upset. The flock is troubled and there is dissension in the flock with many accusing you the Priest of teaching bad or “new doctrine”. You have a big mess on your hands, you are barely paid anything, you depend on donations from the flock who are upset and angry, other Priests around rebuke you for rocking the boat, and in general your life becomes very unpleasant. What would you do?
Well, I think we can forgive a Priest for asking, “Do the people really need to know any of these things?” They are in the right church, it is your job to secure their salvation by blessing a few folk practices you make a lot of people happy and you will give them correct sacraments and really isn’t that the most important thing?
People yearn for the supernatural and the unexplained, they desire meaning in their lives and folk practices, superstitions, legends, and Saints give them something to get them through hard days and for the Priests there really is no harm done since the people are in the right church. They obey their “Fathers” and they get the correct and very powerful sacraments and that is simply enough for salvation. I should say here too that the Priests I knew of or knew personally did not, for the most part, hide their deeper theological truths from their people but they took a very God-focused approach to sharing theology. If God moved someone to really ask questions and wanted to read books the Priest would help them do those things and teach them, because they figured they really wanted to know. They were always careful to leave some wiggle room for the customs and practices of the local people however, no matter how weird. As long as the practice did not detract from the authority of the Priest or the church he served.
There is a movie that gets at this as well. It is called Leviathan. A 2014 film from Russia. In the movie a man is losing his lands to a corrupt official but the innocent man knows a lawyer so he fights back to keep his land. This land stealing has been normal for a while in the region and the corrupt official Vadim is giving some of the land to the Church and using some of his wealth to build up the church in the area. There is Bishop in the movie and he is pretty good. I could not find the scene I wanted on YouTube but when Vadim thinks he is about to be undone by his victim’s lawyer he goes to the Bishop for advice. The scene starts at the 1:11-minute mark in the movie and Vadim confesses he is feeling uneasy about his criminal behavior, he is not sure if he will succeed. The Bishop carefully keeps himself from hearing any details of crimes and instead checks in on the man’s faith. He asks if he is going to the mass and talking with his confessor and then spiritualizes the conflict for him. The Bishop says that the realms of the two men are different, Vadim is in the secular realm and must use his strength to solve his conflicts. Vadim is doing God’s work, yes? Then act like a man and don’t let the Enemy win over him. The Bishop rebukes him for being a child and having doubts and then blesses him and sends Vadim off. Sure enough, the lecture works and Vadim solves all his problems with some carefully applied violence and fear and soon all his enemies have fled, committed suicide or are in jail.
Again this is not what the great moral theology of the Orthodox theology would teach. What is shows how easy the Orthodox fall into the trap separating what happens inside and outside the church. In the Secular world, you do what you must to accomplish your goals and the “greater good” when you are in the world of the church you obey the church authority and trust in them for your salvation.
Again the point here is to not show how the Orthodox Church “really” works I am discussing flaws in the system thate convince people to leave the Church for another denomination or faith.
A Nominal Orthodox confesses her faith in Christ.
So what about the Baptists?
While I have been discussing cracks in the Orthodox practice, it has to be said that the system overall is quite popular. Things like this don’t last if they are not popular and do not appeal to a side of our human nature. Since this post is about conversion, I thought I would line up how Baptist practice, and Protestant more generally, match up against these fault lines.
The first is the practice that matters here is the emphasis on Bible reading. It is often alleged that the Orthodox don’t read the Bible because they are not allowed too. That was not what I experienced working and living with Orthodox for 14 years. There is rarely, if ever, any command not to read the Bible by any Orthodox authority. Instead nearly all Orthodox believe, especially those in Orthodox countries where I have direct experience, the Bible is challenging and confusing. Reading the Bible directly is a holy exercise that requires regular access to a Priest and a lot of time. It is troublesome to read the Bible so it is better to read the readily available and curated books that Priest have put together where you read Bible verses and/or chapters with explanation in one book. Passages that are too troublesome are just left out.
This usually meant that the normal Orthodox member you ran into wasn’t just ignorant of the Bible, most people everywhere are Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox or other notwithstanding, they were shocked to learn what was in the Bible. In other words, Orthodox were often truly ignorant of the Bible but confident they were not. Reading the Bible, especially passages they didn’t know existed, would shock many Orthodox and undermine their trust in the church. I would say that of all the Georgians and others who sat down and read the Bible with me over the course time 80% of them became Baptist. Now, getting them to read the Bible with you for a period of time was very difficult but if they did they were very likely to convert.
This was not because the Bible “disproves” Orthodoxy; it was because they had been told for their whole lives that the Bible was confusing and that the Church would take care of the salvation. Reading the Bible, they did not find it very confusing and the Bible was pretty clear about having faith, yourself, in Christ to be saved. The church hierarchy didn’t seem to factor into this according to the Bible.
The second aspect of the Baptist practice that attracted people away from the Orthodox Church was fusing their normal secular lives with their faith. As a missionary, the hardest lift for me in teaching and preaching was not convincing people that Jesus loved them and they needed a personal faith Christ but that faith in Christ meant their “public” life was to match up with the “church” life. When people realized that Christ could affect their whole life, through a relationship with Him, the rituals of the Orthodox Church would feel empty or even pointless. Doing rituals to get rid of sin as you went pales in comparison to Jesus Christ who forgives all sin, once and for all so that we can love Him and love others more freely. This strikes many Orthodox as a life of greater integrity and fulfillment than one of ritual obedience to the Church. Once you believe that you are in a relationship with Christ and his Holy Spirit dwells within you the idea that Saints of any kind or Holy Water, Blessed Crosses, Holy Candles or any other aid or intercessor is necessary loses their appeal. Instead, converts felt these things distracted from Christ instead of drawing Christ closer to them. If Christ loved them instead of being angry with them, why do you need someone that Christ “really” loved, like a Saint, intercede for you?
This post is more than long enough. I will write a part II that will be up early next week where I will write an “Ode to Orthodoxy” about how the practical aspects of Baptist practice will lead people to the beauty and ancient wonder and wisdom of the Orthodox Church.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
So which is it? Is Matt. 25 about all who have made this choice? Does it definitely “open up salvation” to these people?
Or only to the tiny subset of them who happen to be alive at the time?
Well, you should reject an argument if it relies on a lousy premise.
I don’t think rejection of miracles is a lousy premise. The term “miracle” can be used in different ways. Some people think that when the US hockey team beat the Soviet team in the 1980 Olympics it was a miracle. Al Michaels, the announcer, said this: “Do you believe in miracles?”
That’s one way of defining miracle, an unlikely, but possible, event. But if one were to say, “I don’t think a donkey can talk,” that’s very reasonable and on that basis one might disbelieve the story in Numbers about a talking donkey.
You ought to know that this is entirely beside the point.
I, Hank Rhody, and the NT scholars to whom he refers are using the term “miracle” without any such ambiguity. A “miracle” is not a metaphor for an unlikely but–by merely natural means–possible event. A miracle is an event which is not possible by merely natural means. (I prefer the definition a divinely-caused suspension of the laws of physics.)
You really need to clarify this. Do you not mean what you say here?
If I do some Rico-research and find one of the older comments where you admitted that an empiricist should assume that miracles are possible, will you tell me that you were only talking about purely natural events which were somewhat improbable?
I have to wonder why do you think Jesus would want us to read this passage in isolation? So if we take Matthew 22:
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
You would say that verse 40 is in error? Since Salvation is only dependent on the second commandment. As long as we love our neighbor as our self we don’t even need the Lord our God exists and that certainly means that we don’t have to love him. Isn’t that the interpretation of Matthew 25?
Was Jesus being misleading here Matthew 28:
6 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[b] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Make disciples why I wonder? Baptizing them is pointless, teaching them all Jesus commands necessary.
Should Jesus not have said, “ask everyone everywhere to take care of those in need.” ? I wonder way he did not reinforce his meaning from Matthew 25 here right before he went to heaven?
Further when you read the whole chapter of the Bible we have the parable of the ten virgins and the parable of the talents both parables talk about women with lamps not being ready for the coming of the groom and being cast out and the next parable is about receiving gifts from their master that they do not put to “work” earning interest and growing the gift. The person who hides his gift is cast out.
The third story in the chapter and the story your reference talks about the return of Jesus and there are some that were ready, by doing the will of God in taking care of the poor, and there are those that were not ready are cast out. The “talent” and “lamps” were symbolic for doing the will of God and caring for the poor is one of the duties that God asks of us but not the sole one. Jesus used one example of caring for the poor materially. But this is not all he does.
Here in Matthew 15 we see Jesus in another encounter:
21 And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22 And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” 23 But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” 24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” 26 And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” 27 She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” 28 Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.[e]
Why all the talk of her faith? Why drag out what she believes about Jesus? Jesus taught and believed that knowledge of him and faith in him is pointless. Would he not have wanted to see her take care of other poor and then in secret and by surprise heal her daughter? Was Jesus just having a little fun with her?
Let me try to put it another way so as to be more clear.
In some sense, I think that anything could happen.
For all I know, maybe leprechauns exist. Maybe the Great Pumpkin exists. Maybe there is a supernatural being named Urloof reigning over all of us, punishing us for our transgressions against him.
Do I believe that there are leprechauns, that there is a Great Pumpkin that there is a being named Urloof? No.
The response could easily be, “Why are you so closed minded? Why are you locked into a purely naturalistic way of thinking?”
My response is that as I process the information flowing into my brain (via my senses, my eyes, ears, nose, touch, etc.) a naturalistic view of the world makes sense to me. I admit that my cognitive abilities are limited. So, there could be something “out there” beyond my knowledge.
So, if someone asks me, “Do you believe the story of Jesus’s virgin birth?” My answer is, essentially, “I think that story is a myth. I don’t think it actually happened.” If I am asked if I believe that Jesus rose form the dead, I would respond that I think this event did not happen.
I could certainly be wrong. Maybe God intervened to create a virgin birth. Maybe God intervened to raise Jesus from the dead.
But this means that there has to be a God in existence, which I am not convinced of. This isn’t to say that God couldn’t exist in my mind. It’s just that as I observe the world around me, God seems either to not exist or to be so well hidden from us that God appears to not exist.
I hope that answers your question. If needed, I could elaborate further.
I think one can approach the Bible in one of two ways (or maybe other ways I have not thought of).
[A] One way is to view the Bible as being written by dozens of different authors, yet still having a single “real” author behind it: God. Viewing the Bible in this way, when one reads Matthew 22:34-40, one would not interpret it’s meaning in isolation, but would view it in the context not only of other words Jesus is reported to have said in the Gospels, but in the context of the entire New Testament and even in the context of the entire Bible.
[B] Another way is to view the Bible as having multiple authors (same as in [A]) but being open to the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that these authors disagree with each other. Also, even within a single book of the Bible there might be multiple authors.
The Old Testament book of Isaiah is a good example. Many biblical scholars refer to 1st Isaiah, 2nd Isaiah, 3rd Isaiah.
Even in the Gospels, many scholars believe that the Gospel writers received many of their stories from oral tradition and in the case of Matthew and Luke, the written source of the Gospel of Mark. And these authors put their own spin/edits on some of the stories they inherited while leaving some stories alone.
It is interesting to read Matthew and Luke side by side with Mark and look at those stories where Matthew and Luke tell the same story differently than the way Mark tells the story and where they just copy Mark word for word (or almost word for word).
So, in a single Gospel, like the Gospel of Matthew or the Gospel of John, you can end up with different views on salvation or on other issues.
You can choose [A] or [B].
Continued from pervious comment.
We can speculate as to why the accounts of, say, the trial of Jesus are different depending on whether we read Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.
Did Jesus say, “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?” as reported Matthew and Mark? Did Jesus say, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” as reported by Luke? Did Jesus say, “It is finished,” as reported by John?
All of the above?
Then, if we want, we can speculate as to why the accounts differ. Did Mark want to depict Jesus as suffering on the cross like a human being? Did Luke want to depict Jesus as being above suffering and thus, calm in the face of his crucifixion? Did Luke (and John) intend to emphasize the divinity of Jesus on the cross while Mark/Matthew choose to emphasize Jesus’s humanity/suffering?
And we don’t have to actually believe that Jesus ever received a trial by the Romans either. We could view all four accounts of Jesus’s crucifixion as being invented by the Gospel authors. Even if we think that Jesus was crucified, we might not think that the Romans, as ruthless rulers as they were, would even bother with a trial of Jesus. We might not even think that Jesus received a burial. We might think that Jesus was thrown into a mass grave and eaten by predators over a period of weeks.
There’s lots of speculation done among scholars who do not necessarily believe that the Bible contains “the truth, and nothing but the truth,” but instead includes lots of myth as well. The challenge for those scholars is to justify believing that some things in the Gospels are historical while others are not.
How might you react if you were to encounter a miracle? Would you be open to the experience? Would you recognize a miracle for what it is, or step away from it and assume a naturalist explanation would be forthcoming at some later date?
The funny thing with miracles – we tend not to see them even when we see them, often because they’re not the miracles we want to see at that moment. I’ve seen some odd things, and I know others who have too. Perhaps you have as well, but not recognized them for what they were at the time.
I suppose it would depend on the details of the miracle.
For example, me meeting my wife was sort of a miracle. I was living in Southern California and I lost my job. I found a job in Denver, Colorado. My wife had moved from Dallas, Texas to Denver, Colorado 4 years before I did. We wound up at the same apartment complex. During my first month in Denver, I received her mail by mistake. So we met.
If I had found another job in Southern California or had found one in Virginia or in Florida, I would not have met my wife.
So, let’s say that I concluded from that experience that God exists and that God performed a miracle for me and executed divine punishment for my wife (that’s a joke).
But would this lead me to believe in Jesus? The Bible? The Koran? Buddha? Mormonism? Judaism?
I think lots of people could look at events in their lives and see miracles.
But as I mentioned above. Does that mean that Islam is the faith that one should convert to?
I met my wife therefore I need to stop eating pork?
Well, I became a total vegetarian 8 years ago, but not for religious reasons; for health reasons. I read a book by a PhD in Nutritional Biochemistry and his book convinced me that I would benefit, long term, by giving up junk food and going “plant based.”
Now, there are Paleo folks in my family who think I made the wrong decision. I think nutrition is as controversial as religion and politics. Okay. I’m veering off topic. What else is new?
Quoting my previous post:
Maybe I have subtly converted to Jainism without realizing it.
Yes, thank you.
Now maybe we can get back on track.
You admit that miracles–real ones–are possible and should not be ruled out a priori (i.e., prior to examining the evidence.)
So do you reject all those scholars’ arguments insofar as they rely on the assumption you miracles simply cannot happen? You should reject an argument if it relies on a lousy premise.
Another hockey game: This is a paradigm case of what appears to be not a miracle, but improbable enough that some people (not me) loosely refer to it as a “miracle.”
Yes, the details of the miracle matter. If my shoe miraculously turns into a winged bear and flies out the window, it probably does not mean I should change my religion.
You conclude from the miraculous event what it shows. You are avoiding SkipSul’s question by correctly pointing out that not every possible miracle narrows down which religion is correct.
His question is whether you would conclude from some miracle the minimum thing a genuine miracle means–that the laws of physics are not the final authority on how things work.
If you want to know which religion is correct, you can safely ignore most miracles and look at the evidence for the putative miracles that would help us answer that particular question. Foremost is the account of the Resurrection of the Messiah–a miracle whose meaning is infinitely greater than that of a transmogrified shoe.
You can also start with B, and follow the evidence where it leads. It can lead to A, and that’s not for us to resist just because we started off with B.
But, as I said in # 93, I think your remarks about authorship in context of a question like this are a meandering off subject. Brian is talking about what the text means–not whether it’s true, not even (except perhaps as a clue to its meaning) who wrote it.
I would read their book and consider their argument. If there argument is simply, “People don’t rise from the dead and therefore we should not believe that Jesus rose form the dead,” I might tentatively agree with the author on this point. But I would be disappointed with the book if the author didn’t bring any additional scholarship to the table.
I have read Dr. Bart Ehrman’s 1999 book, “Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium.” In this book, Ehrman explains, in detail, why he and many other scholars believe that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet.
I am currently reading E. P. Sanders’ book “Jesus and Judaism.”
So, let’s say my uncle, who died in 2002, appeared to me.
Maybe that would make me think that human beings can rise from the dead.
But would this mean that God raised my uncle from the dead? Not necessarily.
Let’s say I notice one of my cats performing calculus. Would that cause me to believe in God? Not necessarily.
Let’s go further and say that I conclude that Jesus did rise from the dead. Does that mean that Jesus is God? Not necessarily. Maybe people rising from the dead is a common occurrence.
So you “might tentatively agree with” an argument relying on a premise you reject?
Another point. One of my wife’s sister-in-laws said that if you don’t accept Jesus as lord and savior, you don’t go to heaven.
But where is the evidence that heaven exists? And where is the evidence that heaven is populated by people who accepted Jesus as their lord and savior during their earthly lives?
It seems that my wife’s sister-in-law is reaching her conclusions without evidence to support it.
If I say to someone, “If someone doesn’t study hard for their physics exam, they will not get a passing grade,” at least my statement can be determined to be true or false. Maybe we can find some genius, an outlier, who didn’t study at all, but simply attended each physics lecture and got a B in physics.
With the heaven/hell issue, there’s no way to verify what my wife’s sister-in-law says is true or not. It’s an assertion.
Why not answer SkipSul’s question?
Why feign ignorance? We already know it’s not a common occurrence.
And of course it wouldn’t mean that by itself. But the whole point is to take a miracle in conjunction with other things known.
She gets her evidence by interpreting the Bible.
That the Bible counts as evidence is a separate point to be established separately.
I tentatively believe that the universe is naturalistic, that human beings do not rise from the dead, that donkeys do not talk, that people can not turn water into wine and so on.
So, if I were reading an author who agrees with me on this point, I would judge his book on the substance of the book, not based on his skepticism of miracles.
I think we are engaged in a bit of hair splitting.
Up until this very moment, I am convinced that people don’t rise from the dead, can’t turn water into wine, can’t heal lepers with their touch and so on.
Could I change my mind in the future? Doubtful. But I wouldn’t rule it out.
It depends on what kind of miracle I had experienced.
If my uncle who died in 2002 had appeared to me, I might think, “Wow. So, human beings can rise from the dead.” Or I might think, “So, my uncle didn’t really die. It was just a bad dream I had. Now I am waking from that bad dream.” Or I’d think, “Maybe God or multiple gods raised my uncle from the dead. If so, thanks be to God or gods or whomever.”
Say you had splendid evidence he had indeed died. And splendid evidence you’re not hallucinating now.
There’s no need to pretend that we do not know the humans do not rise from the dead 17 years afterwards by their own natural abilities. We know that.
In this situation, would you admit that the laws of physics are not absolute?
I think this is the problem I have with words like “miracle” and “supernatural.”
Let’s say that some person has the ability to read another person’s mind simply by looking at the other person.
We could say, “Ah, this person is capable of performing miracles.”
Let’s say that some person can, by put his hand on someone else’s body, cure that person’s disease.
We could say, “Ah, this person performs miracles.”
But does that mean we should worship this person who can read minds and/or heal another person? What if thousands of people have this ability? Are they all divine? Are they all Gods?
Maybe one “miracle worker” can teach others on how to do exactly the same thing. You could go to a community college and take a class on how to turn water into wine or how to heal someone by touching them.
This would no longer be “supernatural.” It would be natural; it would represent an advancement in medicine.
No, you are just assiduously avoiding the point.
Try to remember what we are talking about.
If need be, review Hank Rhody’s # 95 and my # 116.
We were talking about scholarly arguments that historical evidence does not count as evidence on the grounds of a premise you reject. Hank was talking about books whose substance is, to a large extent, arguments relying on a premise you reject. I asked you in # 116 if you reject the scholarly arguments when they rely on a premise you reject.
Then your problem appears to be that you are more interested in speculating about a bunch of conceivable weird scenarios when what the rest of us are trying to do is reason about the facts.
I suppose. It’s hard to imagine the laws of physics only being operable on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays.
But, sure. If that was the world that I believed I lived in. I would have to accept it.
Rubbish. They are always operable. The question of miracles is whether anything else is operable.
Better.
But you reject the Resurrection miracle. Why?
Recalling what we were talking about, it should have something to with the criteria for solid historical evidence, which you mentioned in # 92. So, recalling my # 97, why not talk about those criteria and how they apply to the NT testimony?
I’ve set up a short list of some of the criteria at # 159 of “Knowledge and Faith Can Be the Same Thing.”