RE: What value do you see in studying theology in concerns to Christianity?
September 6, 2019 at 6:37 am
(This post was last modified: September 6, 2019 at 6:51 am by Belacqua.)
(September 6, 2019 at 5:50 am)Grandizer Wrote: You don't need to [thoroughly] study theology in order to understand what Christianity itself entails overall.
Well, sure. Nobody needs to detail the difference between Aquinas and Duns Scotus to have a serious grasp of Christianity. But some sense of the non-stupid version allows us to have non-stupid discussions.
Quote:And only a few, if any, really believe that Christians believe in an angry man in the sky.
I know that, and you know that.... Eventually I hope other people will stop saying it. When thoughtful Christians get accused of believing in pixies, it is just an insult to shut down understanding, not related to real religion.
Quote:It's also misleading to imply that the theologian's God is the same as the philosopher's God because they're not. The theologian's God is somewhat the philosophical God + some other attributes/properties/acts that are exclusively Christian-based, and in many respects is closer to the Bible God than to the philosophical God.
Understood.
Even the God of the philosophers has many variations. And of course the God of the Christian theologians will include Jesus, whereas Spinoza's doesn't.
In an effort to get away from the sky-daddy-is-angry version, it has sometimes seemed to me useful to speak about the general outlines of the better version[s]. There are things that many of the better versions have in common, like impassibility.
Once we can get people to stop saying that God is always the Kim Jung Il of the skies, we can work on the differences between Augustine and Spinoza.
But I have few allies in this.
