RE: What value do you see in studying theology in concerns to Christianity?
September 6, 2019 at 6:31 pm
(September 6, 2019 at 10:36 am)Chad32 Wrote: I guess I'll try to stop calling Jesus a scapegoat, then. still kind of a stupid idea, but that's another topic/
No doubt some Christians think of Jesus as a scapegoat. And it may well be stupid, but, as you say, that's a different story.
I'm glad Acrobat brought up René Girard's work here because it's a great example of how religious stories work. How the tradition continues to enrich itself.
Girard took a number of very old concepts -- the scapegoat, Jesus, etc. -- and recombined them, and reread them, in a way that adds to our thinking about the world. It's significant that he used these old symbols because they are so rich with connotation -- any thinking person who thinks of Jesus doesn't just think of one historical guy, but of the full range of meanings and associations that have been derived from him.
There is no way to test Girard's ideas with an MRI machine, and no units available to quantify the truth of what he says. This is not literal in any scientific way.
And it may well be a set of ideas that couldn't have occurred to any of the early Christians. They didn't have the background yet, or the time to develop it. If someone wants to state arbitrarily (as has been stated on this forum) that the REAL meaning of religious stories is the meaning the original author intended, then Girard's reading isn't REAL.
Having the book in mind, though, gives us a new interpretive framework that, when we look at events in the world, adds to what we can think and judge about the world. This is what poetry and scripture do, in my opinion. Enrich our thinking.
