Wednesday, 8 May 2013
I am the way, the truth and the life?
John 14:6 is used often by Christian fundamentalists as irrefutable truth that Jesus and Christianity are the only path to salvation. I agree that the author of John, who most scholars do not believe would have been the disciple himself, had as his primary objective, making Jesus the Christ. Chapter 20 verses 30 and 31 even say, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing you may have life in his name.”
And so, it is likely that the author meant exactly what he wrote. In the Greek original, the definite article “ho”, which is in the nominative singular feminine form (in case you were wondering), is clearly present. “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” However, there is no other way to say this in Greek. The indefinite article is seldom used and specifically means “one.” No clarification needed here.
Monday, 22 April 2013
Marking Waterloo
The victory of the Duke of
Wellington over the Emperor Napoleon I on 18 June 1815 – and his subsequent
removal from power – is an event, which is traditionally interpreted as
bringing much rejoicing and thanksgivings for the end of a 25-year war. This
would overlook the fact that Napoleon I, and the system he represented, had
considerable support amongst the political and religious radicals groups – such
as Unitarians and Methodists who did not and could not celebrate the downfall
of their idol.
News of the victory at Waterloo
arrived in London on Sunday 25 June 1815, by which point Napoleon had abdicated
and Provisional Government formed. Wellington’s dispatches had travelled
overland, carried by a Mr Lane. Lane had left Paris on 20 June, arriving at
Boulogne on Saturday 24 and, whilst there, acquired copies of the Parisian
papers (dated 20 and 21 June) which contained details of the French victories
at Quatre Bras and Ligny. The Morning Chronicle announced the abdication
of Napoleon on Monday 26 June.[1]
The Morning Post, however, published details of Waterloo from the Moniteur
(the French state newspaper) dated 22 June as well as particulars of the
battle from the Belgian newspapers of 23 June.[2]
News of the victory travelled fast – it reached Bury St. Edmunds on 28 June –
and Edinburgh on the 29![3]
Monday, 31 December 2012
Love is all you need?
Jesus is said to have summed up the entire Christian life in terms of love: “‘Love
the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all
your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The second
is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the
prophets depend on these two commandments” (Mat 22.37–40).
But Jesus didn't actually say that! Shock! Horror! It was the expert in the Law who says them. Jesus agrees with the answer (Lk. 10.28), but he’s not the one who actually puts forth that translation of Deuteronomy 6.5. In Matthew 22.37 Jesus does say “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and in Mark 12.30 he says “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (NIV2011) We have in the Gospels three citations of Deuteronomy 6.5 (two of them spoken by Jesus) and each uses different wording.
But regardless of whether or not these are accounts of the same event, we don’t necessarily have the exact words that Jesus spoke, or even know if they were originally in Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic. The gospel authors record Jesus’ message in Greek (a dynamic translation?) but for the most part we simply don’t know precisely what Jesus said. The message that the Gospel writers are trying to convey is that Jesus replied by quoting Deuteronomy 6.5:
These commandments captures the essence of who we are. We can’t fully love God, we can't fully love ourselves or others, if we only love emotionally, we can’t fully love if we only offer intellectually support — we can only truly and fully love [God] if we do so with everything we have.
These commands aren’t simply feel-good platitudes, they are a powerful call toembrace a specific and active love. The realities of life challenge love at every turn, and love alone, as a disembodied feeling adrift on the Platonic ether, cannot save us. But love as a practice, love as a way of life, love as an experience of God, love that encompasses the totality of God’s plan — that love can save us. Love requires participation, it requires maintenance, it requires attention: “Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet. 4.8).
Love doesn’t obviate other aspects of a Christian life, love holds those aspects together. Love is not a solitary requirement, it is the thread that unifies and empowers all the other requirements. If we don’t have love, nothing else works. If we don’t show love, we can’t expect to receive it. If we don’t love God, how can we hope to love our neighbor? “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High because he is kind to ungrateful and evil people. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6.27–36).
Love is a means of relationship - not only between human beings, but between humans and the rest of nature. Having been privelaged to be at the birth of my kitten and seeing the love, the nurturing between the new mother and her kittens, and between Ginger - my kitten - and myself there is more than just just chemical impulses and pheremones. Love is also the means by which the Divine, all that is Holy can be related to.
“All you need is love” may be inaccurate in a strict sense, but to those who accuse some of us of putting an inordinate amount of emphasis on love, one must remember that it was Jesus himself who set the precedent. Love, properly enacted and expressed, subsumes the distractions of theology and overpowers our personal tendencies to judge and criticize.
But Jesus didn't actually say that! Shock! Horror! It was the expert in the Law who says them. Jesus agrees with the answer (Lk. 10.28), but he’s not the one who actually puts forth that translation of Deuteronomy 6.5. In Matthew 22.37 Jesus does say “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and in Mark 12.30 he says “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (NIV2011) We have in the Gospels three citations of Deuteronomy 6.5 (two of them spoken by Jesus) and each uses different wording.
But regardless of whether or not these are accounts of the same event, we don’t necessarily have the exact words that Jesus spoke, or even know if they were originally in Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic. The gospel authors record Jesus’ message in Greek (a dynamic translation?) but for the most part we simply don’t know precisely what Jesus said. The message that the Gospel writers are trying to convey is that Jesus replied by quoting Deuteronomy 6.5:
Deuteronomy 6:5
You must love the LORD your God
with all your heart (leb),
all your soul (nephesh),
and all your strength (me’od).
You must love the LORD your God
with all your heart (leb),
all your soul (nephesh),
and all your strength (me’od).
Luke 10:27
You must love the LORD your God
with all your heart (kardia),
all your soul (psyche),
all your strength (ischus),
and all your mind (dianoia).
You must love the LORD your God
with all your heart (kardia),
all your soul (psyche),
all your strength (ischus),
and all your mind (dianoia).
These commandments captures the essence of who we are. We can’t fully love God, we can't fully love ourselves or others, if we only love emotionally, we can’t fully love if we only offer intellectually support — we can only truly and fully love [God] if we do so with everything we have.
These commands aren’t simply feel-good platitudes, they are a powerful call toembrace a specific and active love. The realities of life challenge love at every turn, and love alone, as a disembodied feeling adrift on the Platonic ether, cannot save us. But love as a practice, love as a way of life, love as an experience of God, love that encompasses the totality of God’s plan — that love can save us. Love requires participation, it requires maintenance, it requires attention: “Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet. 4.8).
Love doesn’t obviate other aspects of a Christian life, love holds those aspects together. Love is not a solitary requirement, it is the thread that unifies and empowers all the other requirements. If we don’t have love, nothing else works. If we don’t show love, we can’t expect to receive it. If we don’t love God, how can we hope to love our neighbor? “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High because he is kind to ungrateful and evil people. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6.27–36).
Love is a means of relationship - not only between human beings, but between humans and the rest of nature. Having been privelaged to be at the birth of my kitten and seeing the love, the nurturing between the new mother and her kittens, and between Ginger - my kitten - and myself there is more than just just chemical impulses and pheremones. Love is also the means by which the Divine, all that is Holy can be related to.
“All you need is love” may be inaccurate in a strict sense, but to those who accuse some of us of putting an inordinate amount of emphasis on love, one must remember that it was Jesus himself who set the precedent. Love, properly enacted and expressed, subsumes the distractions of theology and overpowers our personal tendencies to judge and criticize.
Monday, 3 September 2012
Religion and Language
In the Graphic Novel "Promethea", Alan Moore speculates that without langauge there could be no God (or at least, no idea of God, yet alone religion) because there would be no way of expression an experience of the Divine to others, no means of communicating that relationship.
"Promethea" explores various faith traditions, including Paganism and Jewish mysticism, especially the Qaballah. He has this to say on the monotheism of the Abrahamic religions:
"Monotheism is, to me, a great simplification. I mean the Qabalah has a great multiplicity of gods, but at the very top of the Qabalic Tree of Life, you have this one sphere that is absolute God, the Monad, something which is indivisible. All of the other gods, and indeed everything else in the universe, is a kind of emanation of that God. Now, that’s fine, but it's when you suggest that there is only that one God, at this kind of unreachable height above humanity, and there is nothing in between, you’re limiting and simplifying the thing. I tend to think of paganism as a kind of alphabet, as a language, it's like all of the gods are letters in that language. They express nuances, shades of meaning or certain subtleties of ideas, whereas monotheism tends to just be one vowel and it's just something like 'oooooooo'. It's a monkey sound."
"Promethea" explores various faith traditions, including Paganism and Jewish mysticism, especially the Qaballah. He has this to say on the monotheism of the Abrahamic religions:
"Monotheism is, to me, a great simplification. I mean the Qabalah has a great multiplicity of gods, but at the very top of the Qabalic Tree of Life, you have this one sphere that is absolute God, the Monad, something which is indivisible. All of the other gods, and indeed everything else in the universe, is a kind of emanation of that God. Now, that’s fine, but it's when you suggest that there is only that one God, at this kind of unreachable height above humanity, and there is nothing in between, you’re limiting and simplifying the thing. I tend to think of paganism as a kind of alphabet, as a language, it's like all of the gods are letters in that language. They express nuances, shades of meaning or certain subtleties of ideas, whereas monotheism tends to just be one vowel and it's just something like 'oooooooo'. It's a monkey sound."
Sunday, 2 September 2012
More "God" ponderings....
God is not an object but an idea. The object of God is extinguished in
the mind when we realize that All / Everything is God. God is the whole
of the Universe in action. God is not a separate thing. God is
Everything
The bigger and bigger we find the universe to be, the farther and
farther away any God actually seems to be. All current religions are
worried about that. I'm not, of course, because I'm a Unitarian, I have grown to understand
that God is not what mankind has thought God to be. There is no Creator
God Being in the traditional "Genesis" sense, but there is a Life Force of the Universe that is at work in
all that we do, see and have.
When you realise God is everything, you can consider that God is nothing, but when God is everything, I consider God to be everything. So the Life Force of the Universe is for me the perfect way to express this God in everything. Then instead of praying to a God, worshiping a God and caring about a God - we can begin to pray to and for others, worship and respect all others as well as all creation, and care about others and all of creation, which is God. There is not God and us, there is only God as us and everything else as well.
God is the Spirit of Life Itself everywhere present throughout the Universe, that connects all Life to all other Life, and that created and continues to create all that we know and have, that's the real God. The Life Force of the Universe, which for me explains what God really is
Whatever God is or might be, and certainly no one knows anything for sure about the concept we call God, we do know, or should know, that God is Universal. God does not take sides. The sun shines on the good and the bad. The rain falls on the crops and the weeds. When God is seen to be for everybody, when God is seen with an "extra O", as in Goodness, then the world can start to become the Kingdom of God, that all religions say they want, but only humans can make it so.
When you realise God is everything, you can consider that God is nothing, but when God is everything, I consider God to be everything. So the Life Force of the Universe is for me the perfect way to express this God in everything. Then instead of praying to a God, worshiping a God and caring about a God - we can begin to pray to and for others, worship and respect all others as well as all creation, and care about others and all of creation, which is God. There is not God and us, there is only God as us and everything else as well.
God is the Spirit of Life Itself everywhere present throughout the Universe, that connects all Life to all other Life, and that created and continues to create all that we know and have, that's the real God. The Life Force of the Universe, which for me explains what God really is
Whatever God is or might be, and certainly no one knows anything for sure about the concept we call God, we do know, or should know, that God is Universal. God does not take sides. The sun shines on the good and the bad. The rain falls on the crops and the weeds. When God is seen to be for everybody, when God is seen with an "extra O", as in Goodness, then the world can start to become the Kingdom of God, that all religions say they want, but only humans can make it so.
All scripture is innerant
On the Unitarian facebook group recently, a Conservative, Literal Christian posted the well-known and well-abused passage from Timothy: (2 Timothy 3:16) “All scripture is inspired by God ...”
But the Greek text raises a number of problems: πᾶσα γραφὴ θεόπνευστος καὶ ὠφέλιμος πρὸς διδασκαλίαν, πρὸς ἐλεγμόν, πρὸς ἐπανόρθωσιν, πρὸς παιδείαν τὴν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ
First of all, there is no “is” (ἐστίν) in the Greek text, and there are a number of different ways one can construct the syntax.
Second, the term γραφή, which is often translated as “scripture,” is just the basic Greek term for any “written text.”
Third, the Greek term θεόπνευστος (often translated as “inspired by God”) is a pagan term meaning “inspired.” Indeed, in the New Testament there is no definition of “inspiration.”
The New English Bible (my preferred translation) translates the first part of 2 Timothy 3:16 as: “Every inspired scripture has its use for teaching…” But it could just as easily be translated as: “Every writing, both inspired and useful, is for teaching …” Thus the claim that 2 Timothy 3:16 claims that “All scripture is inspired …” is debatable. Furthermore, in the context of 2 Timothy 3, the written text in question does not and cannot possibly include the New Testament because it did not exist: it had not been written yet! It might refer to the Hebrew scriptures as they are now known, and certainly not to the Chrsitian Old Testament. Rather it refers to the texts which Timothy may have read from early childhood and were in use in Judaeism in the 1st Cenutry CE. We don’t know what Timothy read from early childhood, but it might have contained some Old Testament book, and it might have contained other non-canonical books of the early Christians.
Thus, as Rev. Ant Howe pointed out, the Unitarian stance that "All scripture is inspired by God" (i.e. more than just the Bible) can be seen as just a valid interpretation - if not more so - than the Literalist view that "All Scripture( i.e.Bible only) is inspired....."
But the Greek text raises a number of problems: πᾶσα γραφὴ θεόπνευστος καὶ ὠφέλιμος πρὸς διδασκαλίαν, πρὸς ἐλεγμόν, πρὸς ἐπανόρθωσιν, πρὸς παιδείαν τὴν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ
First of all, there is no “is” (ἐστίν) in the Greek text, and there are a number of different ways one can construct the syntax.
Second, the term γραφή, which is often translated as “scripture,” is just the basic Greek term for any “written text.”
Third, the Greek term θεόπνευστος (often translated as “inspired by God”) is a pagan term meaning “inspired.” Indeed, in the New Testament there is no definition of “inspiration.”
The New English Bible (my preferred translation) translates the first part of 2 Timothy 3:16 as: “Every inspired scripture has its use for teaching…” But it could just as easily be translated as: “Every writing, both inspired and useful, is for teaching …” Thus the claim that 2 Timothy 3:16 claims that “All scripture is inspired …” is debatable. Furthermore, in the context of 2 Timothy 3, the written text in question does not and cannot possibly include the New Testament because it did not exist: it had not been written yet! It might refer to the Hebrew scriptures as they are now known, and certainly not to the Chrsitian Old Testament. Rather it refers to the texts which Timothy may have read from early childhood and were in use in Judaeism in the 1st Cenutry CE. We don’t know what Timothy read from early childhood, but it might have contained some Old Testament book, and it might have contained other non-canonical books of the early Christians.
Thus, as Rev. Ant Howe pointed out, the Unitarian stance that "All scripture is inspired by God" (i.e. more than just the Bible) can be seen as just a valid interpretation - if not more so - than the Literalist view that "All Scripture( i.e.Bible only) is inspired....."
Saturday, 1 September 2012
Naming "God"
When
we were kids in Sunday School, we were taught that God was a white man with a
beard who sat on a throne and did nothing but have people stand around him and
bow and tell him how amazing he is.
A
Quaker friend of mine asked this question “What sort of omnipotent, omniscient
God demands to be worshipped?”. Well, none. But just imagine if you applied the
traditional imagery and personality we apply to God to a human being:
all-knowing, all-powerful but yet with such low self-esteem that they want others
to tell them how amazing they are, even try to control you and if they don’t
get it they hate you. You’d send them for therapy! Would you want to even be
friends? But yet this is the image many have of God: and indeed I and my
atheist friends do not believe in exactly the same God – the one outlined
above!
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