[Serious] The Story

[Neo-Scholastic]

So something can't be perfect unless it's omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent? Ordinarily, perfect means 'without flaws'. I wouldn't say not being all-powerful is a flaw.

I agree. It seems to me that perfection is a measure of how closely a thing is to it's intended or ideal type. A perfect circle is perfect insofar as it conforms to whatever specifications a circle must meet, even though it is nothing like a square.

Now, I would assume that when Genesis called each creative act good, even exceedingly good, that it implies that creation was perfect insofar as it aligned with God's intended outcome.

Perhaps this is an example where the overarching narrative matters. Neo treated the snake in the garden as a flaw, or imperfection. However, within the SDA narrative the snake is an outsider, an intruder. It is Satan, and that was the beginning of bringing the heavenly war to Earth.

But we can see from Neo's comments that there is perhaps a different narrative that people believe, in which the snake was unintentionally created. Or perhaps it was intentional for the sake of avoiding perfection.

Yes, indeed, I have a more esoteric perspective in part because growing up congregationalist we were not committed to a literal reading of Scripture the way say Southern Baptists were. That was the 70's though and it seemed like the more fundamentalist people started forming this wierd Christian sub-culture. Anyway.

Different cosmic frameworks steer the interpretation of scripture different ways. Is the cosmic framework a Judaic Divine Council or a Neo-Platonic pleroma? The more fundamentalist people treat Satan as a wayward member of a divine council. And while I love the imagry of Our glorious King surrounded by the Heavenly Host in all their stations, its not very good theology. A more mystical type, like me, considers Satan to be representative of the not-godness of Creation.

[The Grand Nudger]

We did not descend from two human beings; if you want to respin that narrative, go right ahead.

I think it's more that we do come from two human beings, and come together as human beings to make another, as a matter of our own experience ofc not as a species.  As long as that's true of how we see ourselves and how our lives are lived it will speak to audiences.

[Silver]

The interesting thing about stories is that they're fictional.

When we refer to events in our reality, we don't call them stories, after all.

[John 6IX Breezy]

The interesting thing about stories is that they're fictional.

When we refer to events in our reality, we don't call them stories, after all.

That's an interesting comment. Rather than fiction the word sometimes used by cognitive scientists is verisimilitude. Narrative is how we process the social world around us, or rather how we filter it into plots and characters spread across a sequence of events.

Of course, fiction exist, but I see it more like an offshoot or extension of the purpose of storytelling.

[Belacqua]

Growing up in the SDA church, I learned what I thought was a very common narrative on the story of the fall and subsequent redemption of mankind.

If anyone wants to answer, I'm curious what you believe the overarching biblical plot is—what is the story behind the scenes in other words—whether it's your own interpretation or the one you were taught. What led up to the creation mankind, and where is it all going after the fall?

(Or do you even process it as a fall/redemption story in the first place? Perhaps that phrasing is already too bounded for some interpretations.)

To me the most interesting story is the very old one, rooted in Neoplatonism, that has always been influential, though never mainstream.

Here the Christian God is very like the One that Plotinus wrote about. The One is complete non-division, excluding nothing. People who could, through mystical vision, encounter the One knew the truth of things by direct vision. There was no need to analyze, conceptualize, memorize, etc., because all these things are only necessary when knowledge is incomplete. 

The soul's true home is with the One. The Fall of Man is separation from the One. Separation doesn't come about through disobedience but through perceptual narrowing. The soul loses its ability to know through direct perception, fully, and becomes individual and cut off from the rest of the universe. Or I should say: it begins to APPEAR to us that we are separate from the rest of the universe. But this is an illusion caused by narrowness of vision.

Our immorality doesn't cause the Fall; the Fall causes our immorality. Because, as all Platonists know, no one chooses to do evil. We do evil because we misunderstand what's good. When we lose our direct connection to the One -- which is also the Good -- we become capable of choosing poorly and thinking we're doing right when we're not. 

Resurrection is the restoration of full perception.

There is a lot of variation among people who used this story, but for the most part they say that the Fall and Resurrection doesn't occur in historical time -- that is, there is no calendar date. It takes place in mythical time, which means that it remains a possibility for individuals at any time. 

As I say, this was a very common story used by mystics, spiritual alchemists, and people like that for centuries after Plato. 

It was common, for example, to interpret myths of katabasis as stories of fall and return to the One. So for example when Persephone is abducted and taken to Hades, the literal words of the story say that she began in our world and was taken to the underworld. But it was common to interpret the story by saying that Persephone's starting point was really the One, and the lower world was really our world of materiality. All the katabatic myths got used this way -- Hercules, Orpheus, Odysseus, Aeneas, etc.

When metaphysics changed into the modern version, this story was revived and put to new -- but very suitable -- uses. So for example when Newton and Kant started saying that there is a noumenal world to which we do not have direct access, and we know it only by analysis of mentally-created phenomena, this new metaphysics mapped nicely onto the Neoplatonic story. The thing-in-itself, to which we never have access, is the One, and the fact that our perceptions have only limited and problematic relationships to the thing-in-itself corresponds to the limited perception of the fallen soul. 

Anyone interested in Romanticism or German Idealism is familiar with this version, which is used throughout as a kind of guide map, with varying degrees of literalness. There would be no Hegel without this foundation, for example.

[Jehanne]

We did not descend from two human beings; if you want to respin that narrative, go right ahead.

I think it's more that we do come from two human beings, and come together as human beings to make another, as a matter of our own experience ofc not as a species.  As long as that's true of how we see ourselves and how our lives are lived it will speak to audiences.

It's the old Burger King moto, "Have it your way".

From the POV of biology, we most certainly do *not* descend from two human beings. If you wish to reinterpret centuries of Christian tradition, such is, of course, your right & prerogative.

[Pat Mustard]

At a cosmic level if God created a Perfect Being it would also be God. And since there can be only one God it follows that it cannot be done. The notion that creation is imperfect is embedded in the narrative. There's a snake in the garden.

So something can't be perfect unless it's omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent? Ordinarily, perfect means 'without flaws'. I wouldn't say not being all-powerful is a flaw.

Edit: Sorry for the double post.

Problem with tgat formulation is that it is impossible to be both omniscient and omnipotent. If one is omniscient it means they know everything, which means that the universe is perfectly deterministic. In a deterministic universe there is no power because every action is mapped out ahead of time with no chance for deviatoon.

[Pat Mustard]

Hi Vicky,

A couple of points:

1)  What OT passage are you appealing to for the "Suffering Servant"?

2) Outside of Nero's persecution of Christians in the 60s, what historical evidence can you present for any Empire-wide persecutions of Christians during the 1st century?

Vicky can't even point to a Neroan persecution, because a) there is no evidence for one and b) the cults which would later be christian were still fully jewish. The first (and only non local) persecution of christians was in the time of Diocletian and even he quickly abandoned it as counter productive.

To see Roman religious persecution on a sustained, widespread and genocidal scale one has to wait until the christian emperors.

[Belacqua]

On the notion that if God knows everything it would make everything pre-determined:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/omnis...maFreeActi

The problem here, as usual, is that people are imagining the Christian God to be like a big guy who acts more or less as people do. No doubt there are many Christians who think this way, and it is reasonable to argue against them.

For most theologians, however, the argument misses the point, and misunderstands what an omniscient God would be like.

For people, "knowing" requires two things: a knower, and a known thing. The two must be separate, as subject and object.

In classical theology, nothing exists independently of God, therefore it is impossible for him to know in the way that people do. Like many terms, "omniscience" applies differently to temporal limited beings than it does to God. In God's case, it means that everything knowable is contained within God. God is the source and ground of all knowable things, including abstractions like numbers.

Similarly, "omnipotence" doesn't mean, in God's case, that he can do everything. It means that all potencies are actualized by and aimed toward God.

But I have been told that for political reasons I am not supposed to talk about theology on this forum. The purpose here is to badmouth the Christians whose politics we dislike.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think it's more that we do come from two human beings, and come together as human beings to make another, as a matter of our own experience ofc not as a species.  As long as that's true of how we see ourselves and how our lives are lived it will speak to audiences.

It's the old Burger King moto, "Have it your way".

From the POV of biology, we most certainly do *not* descend from two human beings.  If you wish to reinterpret centuries of Christian tradition, such is, of course, your right & prerogative.

OFC we don't - but that's how it works in our experience. Fwiw, the fall is not a christian story, and it's of no dogmatic importance to judaism.