(February 26, 2015 at 4:30 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:(February 26, 2015 at 4:01 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: I have asked Christians this for years. Yet to get a reasonable answer.Swedenborg already answered that question in the twenty-two volumes of 'Arcana Coelestia'.
So, I just looked up 'Arcana Coelestia' on Wiki. They summarize it like this:
"It consists of an exposition of the spiritual sense of the books of Genesis and Exodus, according to the doctrine of correspondence (theology), and demonstrated by many supporting quotations from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. While not denying the historicity of the stories of the Patriarchs (Bible) and The Exodus from Egypt, it explains them as describing symbolically the process of spiritual growth and struggles in each individual person."
Is this accurate as you see it?
If so, it sure just sounds like cherry picking to me, and I'm sure a lot of other theologians see it the same way.
Do all theologians accept his thesis? If not, as I expect, again I ask, why should I accept his explanation and not the other theologians that disagree with him?
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
