RE: Literal and Not Literal
August 30, 2019 at 5:29 am
(This post was last modified: August 30, 2019 at 5:37 am by Belacqua.)
(August 30, 2019 at 5:26 am)Fake Messiah Wrote:(August 30, 2019 at 5:10 am)Acrobat Wrote: That doesn’t follow. Calling someone a dumb American doesn’t equate to saying they’re not a real American.
Calling some christians poorly educated, poor readers of the Bible, doesn’t equate to saying they’re not real Christians.
Yeah it's called Full of Shit, because you are saying that he is saying that they are (true) Christians except they wrongfully interpret the Bible.
I am saying that they interpret the Bible in a literal way, and that we have good historical reasons to believe that it hasn't always been interpreted literally. There are also good arguments to indicate that the original authors didn't mean many things literally.
I have never said that anyone is or is not a True Christian.
Here's an example we could ponder.
There is a minority tradition of Christianity which held that Jesus was not a literal flesh-and-blood human. Or rather, if it turned out that he was a myth, and never lived as a person, this wouldn't have affected their theology.
Probably the last notable believer in this vein was William Blake, who was never threatened with burning at the stake. He took the main lines of his argument from Lutheran mystic Jacob Boehme, who published in German and had to keep out of the headlights of the Lutheran authorities, but was supported by a network of rich educated men. Translations of his works were available in England, where they were never threatened with censorship. Boehme's career as a mystic began with a vision, but continued as he learned, again with the help of an educated elite, about the hermetic and philosophia perennis traditions.
No doubt some people will say that Blake, Boehme, et.al, were not true Christians. But I have never said that. I think they are among the most interesting Christians, and I won't judge whether they were Real Christians or not. Their next-door neighbors probably believed in a literal flesh-and-blood Christ and, guess what, I can't say whether they were Real or not either. Real is not my concern.
