(September 5, 2023 at 2:27 am)FrustratedFool Wrote: But a Christian who has studied, one would expect both. Some who study lose one or both. But some retain them.
It looks as though it could go either way.
The Japanese Christians I know, and one American lady who does therapy for young children, just say that the metaphysics is for the experts to argue about. They see it purely as a call to service.
The economist I mentioned earlier is comfortable with the fact that all of the miracle stories are fiction, and that arguments like those of Thomas Aquinas won't persuade anybody. He also takes his religion as an ethical system.
William Blake, who was solidly in an old but minority Christian tradition, made it clear that it didn't matter to him whether Abraham, Moses, and Jesus were historical people or not. To him, they were states of the human condition which we may pass through -- with Jesus being the ideal, of course.
Like everything else, this approach goes back to Plato. When Phaedrus asks Socrates if he believes the Greek myths are true, Socrates says he leaves that to the experts; he reads the myths for what they can tell him about himself.
