2009-06-19

The Medieval Origins of the “Christ paid the penalty for us” Gospel.

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by Neil Godfrey

I was about to start the next post in my series attempting to justify seriously questioning the “bedrock fact” status of the crucifixion of Jesus when I came across a new publication by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon.

There are some interesting enlightening details in it, and, (sorry to say, but Borg and Crossan are big enough to take and deserve it) some incredible howlers of both method and conclusions that I would never have expected in a work by scholars of such high repute. Maybe this is because they were leaning more to accessing a popular reading public than the scholarly guild with this one. I am reminded of earlier posts where I have expressed some disgust against scholars who know better yet see fit to short change their popular readership like this. For my most recent protest, see my remarks on Pagels and King in A Spectrum of Jesus Mythicists and Mythers. I’ll address one of these lower high school level howlers in a future post. But first, something good and interesting from the book. (Anyway, I guess that’s one of the reasons for my blog — to attempt to make a bit more accessible some of the thinking of scholars on these sorts of topics.)

On page 127 they write:

For many centuries, the death of Jesus has been understood by most Christians as a substitutionary sacrifice for sin, as a substitutionary atonement, as this theological understanding is called.

This way of seeing the death of Jesus is very familiar. Most Christians today, and most non-Christians who have heard anything about Christianity, think that the cross means, in slight variations:

Jesus died for our sins.

Jesus is the sacrifice for sin.

Jesus died in our place.

Jesus is the payment for sin.

For this understanding, the notions of punishment, substitution, and payment are central. We deserve to be punished by God for our sins, but Jesus was the substitute who paid the price. The issue is how we may be forgiven by God for our sin and guilt.

Then follows what must be a bombshell for most fundamentalists in particular:

But this understanding is less than a thousand years old. (p.128)

So where did it come from?

Borg and Crossan answer: It came from a theological treatise, Cur Deus Homo? = Why Did God Become Human? by Anselm of Canterbury, first published in 1097.

Anselm of Canterbury

This is Anselm’s argument:

  1. All people have disobeyed God. So all people are sinners.
  2. Someone has to pay for our sin. Forgiveness means that compensation must be made for the offence or crime. If no payment was required for sin, then it would imply God does not think is anything very important.
  3. Since God is infinite, our debt to him is also infinite. But we are finite, so are incapable of paying the price owed.
  4. Jesus is infinite, and when he became human he could pay the full cost of the penalty for us as a substitute sacrifice. So we can be forgiven.

And this has been the understanding of Christianity in general ever since! Well, I never knew that! Just Kipling Just So story, only it’s probably true! 😉

Mel Gibson and his “patron pope”, John-Paul II who apparently loved his The Passion of the Christ movie, have both preached the same Anselm Cur Deus Homo? doctrine.


2009-05-09

Happy Vesak Day

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by Neil Godfrey

Today in Singapore is a public holiday, Vesak Day. It’s a Buddhist festival. One positive about Singapore is that public holidays are officially sanctioned for each of the faiths in this multicultural city state: Buddhist (+Taoist), Christian, Moslem, Hindu (+Sikh).

I’m not a Buddhist and I shy away from its sermonizing about mind-control/thought stopping or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to “remove one’s mind from what might cause suffering”. Not that I’m against CBT. I’m sure it’s a great benefit to many people.

I’m not a fan of the Dalai Lama, either. I don’t like his politics and I especially don’t like his giggly way of justifying a report of poor villagers raising money for a local temple or statue when their health and lives remain at risk from a lack of basic sanitation. Nor do I keep my patience when monks pretend to be striking up a welcoming conversation only to lead the conversation to where they can try to bite me for money. But at least they do provide an alternative floor to sleep on for those who would rather not opt for the subway, so I believe.

But for all that, I do find all the colour and paraphernalia that comes with special Buddhist festivals (and even some of their less ostentatious temples) to convey a happy peacefulness and tranquility.

Sure there are the devotees who are there handing out literature. Maybe it’s my bias, but it does seem to me that they have a more laid-back attitude to their task than their Christian counterparts. These latter have generally come across to me as more intense in their desire to get you to take and read their tracts. (I cannot forget one extreme case of a Jehovah’s Witness looking frantic and fearful and crying out that God holds him accountable for my hearing his message — as I was closing the door on him. First time I ever had the guilt trip put on me in reverse in order to win me over.)

But a happy smiling Buddha, and lots of lotus flowers and tranquil pools of water and graceful statuettes is undeniably a far more positive, relaxing and happy image than the suffering figure of a crucified man. One focuses one’s thoughts on peace and wellbeing for “all sentient beings”, and the other on guilt, pain, suffering, horror, desolation, especially guilt and sin.

Is it surprising that Buddhists I know or know of seem so much more tolerant and at peace with difference, than so many Christians who, speaking generally certainly, at best, struggle with difference and “the other”?

A couple of pics from the opening night of Vesak right in the Aljunied area of Singapore — all recently set up for the coming weekend:

A few more, for what they’re worth, on flickr.


2008-11-14

Psychologist Dorothy Rowe: “Churches keep me in business”

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by Neil Godfrey

One of my favourite interviewers, Philip Adams, discusses the role of religion in depressive disorders with world renowned psychologist, Dorothy Rowe.

She spends a lot of time talking with her patients, not only about their problems, but about their philosophy of life – which is unusual in a psychologist. But for her it’s essential because she says that our ideas about life and death, the afterlife, about good and evil, are the window to our sense of self. And much of our unhappiness stems from having an insecure sense of self.

Download the podcast (about 12 MB and about 15 or 20 minutes of discussion) and check the blurb here.

Some clients, she says, can’t be cured because the rewards from their belief systems and consequent depression are too great for them to change. Clients of different belief systems become depressed in different ways. But the root of it all is the sense of sin and guilt and unworthiness that churches inculcate.

Dorothy’s website: http://dorothyrowe.com.au/

Philip Adams interview and podcast:  http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2008/2413425.htm


2008-05-22

Religion in Public Life — 2 bad arguments by Professor Roger Trigg

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by Neil Godfrey

Roger Trigg

Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, Roger Trigg, was interviewed on ABC Radio National’s Religion Report this week (see the transcript — and the podcast if you’re quick enough — here) and 2 of his arguments in favour of keeping religious debate in the public political arena struck me as very bad.

Bad argument #1:

Addressing the controversy Prime Minister Tony Blair raised when he publicly declared that God would judge him on his decision to invade Iraq, Professor Trigg said that he thought people would like the idea that their leaders felt they were accountable to someone above them as opposed to thinking they themselves had the last say.

Why bad Continue reading “Religion in Public Life — 2 bad arguments by Professor Roger Trigg”


2007-12-24

Why religious arguments do not belong in public debate

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by Neil Godfrey

Philosophers and political theorists holding a wide variety of philosophical views use the terms ‘public reason’ and ‘public justification’ to describe a broad framework for a discussion in which everyone in a community can take part. Supporters of the idea of public justification see democratic politics not so much as a battle for power, settled by elections, but rather as a kind of public conversation about issues of common concern, with a decision-procedure for reaching temporary closure on these issues when the time for action has come. When we take ­part in this conversation, we seek to justify our views to others, and in so doing we should acknowledge the fact of political and religious pluralism. Continue reading “Why religious arguments do not belong in public debate”


The ethics of belief

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by Neil Godfrey

Notes from Peter Singer’s The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush (pp. 114-119)

What are we to think, ethically, of someone who bases his or her life on unquestioning faith, of someone for whom religious belief is “an unquestioned foundation that will not shift”? Continue reading “The ethics of belief”


2007-11-01

The ethics of Peter Singer and Jesus compared

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by Neil Godfrey

Singer

Peter Singer is a moral philosopher currently based at Princeton University (see his Princeton homepage). He is most famous for his pioneering work on animal liberation but has advanced his utilitarian philosophy into a range of other controversial public areas as well. He has expressed disappointment that his arguments for alleviating human misery have been less influential than those he was expressed to reduce animal suffering.

The Singer Solution to World Poverty is a timeless argument, elegant in its simplicity and lacking only in suggestions that are consistent with what people have become habituated to doing and thinking. (And as “Bad” commented, it is essentially a discussion of Peter Unger’s argument in his 1996 Living High and Letting Die.)

Unger

I won’t repeat the argument here. It is only the equivalent of a 6 page chapter in his book, Writings on an Ethical Life. It’s readily available to all online.

But let’s compare relatively modern utilitarian ethics (judging an action to be right or wrong according to its consequences) with the ancient ethics of Jesus in relation to the poor. Continue reading “The ethics of Peter Singer and Jesus compared”


2007-09-04

T-shirts, Basilicas and the appeal of Power in Christianity

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by Neil Godfrey

Amid all the sights to attract a tourist in Singapore one that drew my attention was the t-shirt of a young Chinese girl traveling in the same train floor space on my way to their famous zoo. It was a “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us – Romans 8:37” t-shirt, with that phrase encircling the word “Conquered!” stamped over what I took to be a stylized map of Singapore. Happily the girl who wore it and her companion did not look like fearsome conquerors, and their cheerful conversation did not give any hint of either being among the humiliated conquered. It seemed almost like a unseemly invasion of their privacy for me to try to think of them communally praying for and singing of the conquering power of Christ in their lives, so I kept my thoughts at the sociological and historical level. Continue reading “T-shirts, Basilicas and the appeal of Power in Christianity”


2007-08-18

Beyond Christian ethics: a list spun off from Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto

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by Neil Godfrey

Have just completed Michel Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto and can’t go past the review of the book you can find at that link — so won’t bother with my own. (The original French title could more literally be translated “Tract on Atheology” which would do more justice to the contents of the book, it being less a rationale for atheism per se than a polemical essay against the respected status and functions theology has long held among inheritors of the Judea-Christian and Moslem worlds.)

It is refreshing to see in print ideas that one has arrived at on ones own and only hitherto shared with trusted audiences. I imagine many who have rationally worked their way from faith to atheism have similarly found themselves afterwards thrilled to find such luminaries as Nietzsche having long before paved a way in the direction are now treading. Although as Onfray rightly reminds us, to learn from Nietzsche is to pave one’s own path, not to walk in his same steps.

Anyway, Onfray’s book reminded me of a list of ethical values that to my mind would be one huge advance on the current values that dominate our species. Most are not even hinted at in his essay, so this is really my own list of some of the changes — rooted in science and humanism as opposed to archaic mythical views of what makes us human — that I would think would make for a far more humane society: Continue reading “Beyond Christian ethics: a list spun off from Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto”


2007-08-17

Beyond Christian ethics – crime and punishment

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by Neil Godfrey

The foundational institutions, attitudes and values of our modern societies are still based on a legacy of Christian and pre-Christian assumptions of human nature that take no cognizance of the modern advances in biology, neurology, genetics, psychology. The power of the black book still binds our ethical senses. Continue reading “Beyond Christian ethics – crime and punishment”


2007-08-13

Paul’s torment and notes from Hitchen’s “God is Not Great”

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by Neil Godfrey

“The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are impossible to obey. The resulting tyranny is even more impressive if it can be enforced by a privileged caste or party which is highly zealous in the detection of error. Most of humanity, throughout its history, has dwelt under a form of this stupefying dictatorship, and a large portion of it still does. Allow me to give a few examples of the rules that must, yet cannot, be followed.” (God is Not Great, p.212)

Hitchens then cites the biblical command forbidding people to even think about coveting goods. I’m not sure there is a command not to even think about it, but the principle is certainly there. The New Testament certainly echoes this with its injunction which says that to even look on a woman in the wrong way is to actually already have committed adultery.

There can only be two possible responses to such commands: Continue reading “Paul’s torment and notes from Hitchen’s “God is Not Great””


2007-08-07

If I lived like Jesus tells me to . . .

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by Neil Godfrey

. . . . I would not follow Jesus and let myself be angry with thieves in the temple or let myself denounce hypocritical clerics who rob the poor. Continue reading “If I lived like Jesus tells me to . . .”


2007-07-30

Thank (the non-theistic) God for Spong: Why religious violence

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by Neil Godfrey

Spong may not present the strongest arguments for the historicity of Jesus but who cares when he delivers such a clearheaded critique of the sins of religion and advances a wonderfully humane message for religious and nonreligious alike, as he does in his new book, Jesus for the Non Religious.

In explaining religious anger (does one need any examples here? Spong says of the 16 serious death threats he has received not one was from an atheist, Hindu, Buddhist, Moslem, leaving only you-know-who) Spong points the finger directly at the violent and angry god Christians worship. Christians are quick to deny this, saying they worship a God who sent his Son to die for our sins, who always extends his mercy to us. And that message, says Spong, was not the message of the earliest disciples and it contains the seeds of the most pernicious and destructive of attitudes. Continue reading “Thank (the non-theistic) God for Spong: Why religious violence”