Evidence for God from Science

jlay wrote:Bart, I have an EO in my men's group, and it has definately brought some new perspective.

We have RCC, EO, Pentacostal, Nazerene, Baptist, Methodist, Pres, Non-Denom,

RickD wrote:Bart, that interview spoke to me pretty strongly. He hit on some things that I see as the conservative right, in US politics. And he also hit on the same compassion I felt when listening to an atheist podcast, that was posted on a different thread. I was vilified, because I felt compassion for certain atheists, that only knew of a "western" image of God, and that God's followers, who feel it's their duty to "hate" and judge unbelievers. A lot of what that man said, is the exact same stuff, that God seems to be showing me, especially lately.

Oh, and as interested as I was, listening to the speaker, I was distracted by the background in the interview. Is that Vancouver? That has to be the most beautiful city I have ever seen in a picture.

PaulSacramento wrote:One can't "disconnect" man from religion.
The atrocites committed by Man in the name of God are horrific but have very little to do with God or religion or doctrine even, they have to do with man being a fallen creature and believeing that HE can "be God", that is why we get man judging, trying to save, trying to redeem and trying to convert ( even by force), all things that ONLY GOD can do.
We have things like the inquisition and the index, the "auto de fe", wars and persecutions of "heretics" because MAN is trying to "BE GOD" instead of allowing God to do the judging and the condeming (or saving).
For every person in the "western church" that took part in those atrocites there were 1000's that didn't, even those that tried to stop it.
Anyways...
Back to the video:
I do agree that we do NOT view sin as the illness that it is and that yes, religious people in general ( all religions) tend to focus on THIER view of moral correctness and try to force others to that view and in that regard, morality can be a heresy for it becomes a stumbling block against God and Christ.

Canuckster1127 wrote:Good points B.W.

Of course, Eastern Otrthodoxy has a very broad number of traditions and not all of them agree, just as that is true in Western Christendom too (probably more broad in the west than the east though.)

I think what this gentleman had to say was worth listening to on it's own merits apart from the heritage. I noted it because his appearance is such that many might see it as a barrier to hearing what he had to say.

It's a short interview (relatively, although I dare say it would be hard to get almost 15 minutes on US TV for something like this (something that I very much miss from Canada now that I am in the US), and his statements are in some regards broad generalizations, which they almost have to be as the scope of what is being discussed is so broad.

Stepping back from that the overall focus of what he's saying is I think a very important thing. It reminds me of something I've seen and thought in a few other contexts when discussing things in this area and intellectual concepts come to be thrown around and epistemology is examined and appealed to and that something is this: Scripturally I think a case can be made that believing the "right things" without love for God or for one another is a heresy. That, in and of itself is an indictment of that Western Aristotilian approach with a Roman Law dialectic (I've often used the term Greek Philosophy and Roman Law when addressing similar things) when we separate truth into intellectual components and disregard the wholistic themes of scripture and christ-like living. It's one of the reasons why many areas of Christendom have histories of wars, executions, inquisitions and tortures all in the name of "truth" where the living of truth is secondary to the intellectual analysis of it.

I know that there are some challenging things in that video to the way that we're accustomed to undestanding different issues, such as sin and the atonement. Up front, I didn't link to it as an endorsement of every detail of the in...terview nor as an endorsement of Eastern Orthodoxy. Some of what he said, however, is a very appropriate challenge however, in my opinion.

I don't expect you or anyone else to take my word for it, so I hope that you will follow-up and check on and think on some of these things that I'm about to say, and if you disagree with me, that's fine too.

What this man said about the atonement in a nutshell is that the "traditional" way that protestants in the west look at the atonement, and I don't think he used the word, but it's what he was referring to is Penal Substitutionary Atonement. When most evangelicals think of a gospel presentation it follows along the lines of what is sometimes called the 4 spiritual laws.

Here's a link to campus crusade's site where they're laid out.

http://www.campuscrusade.com/fourlawseng.htm

This man is Eastern Orthodox. What he's saying is that the early church and since then the Eastern Branch of the Church hasn't looked at the atonement in quite this manner. The early view of atonement picked up on several different themes or metaphors to explain what the atonement was like and primarily the view taken is Christ championing us to obtain victory over sin and the evil one in order to give us freedom and standing with God. Some today refer to that as a Christus Victor understanding of the atonement. It's easy to google if you want to learn more about it. It's more than I can convey in a FB post.

About the 11th century, over 1000 years after Christ rose from the dead, a man known as Anselem of Canterbury promoted a different view of atonement which came to be known as Substitutionary Atonement. This is close to what then about the time of the reformation became known as Penal Substitutionary Atonement and that's what we're most familiar with today in the west, so much so that it wouldn't occur to most of us to even look at or think about whether that's what Scripture is primarily conveying.

I personally believe that PSA is a legitimate and viable view of the atonement. I believe that it is in scripture and not just read into it, but that being said, I think that the western view that focuses upon PSA is out of balance and one of the results of that is that we view God, salvation and to a great extent our continued walk with Christ through the lens of Greek Philosophy (something this archbishop mentioned) and Roman Law. John Calvin was a key to this in the reformation and not surprisingly before he wrote his Institutes of Christianity he was a law student and a philosopher. With the institutes, Calvin also introduced a new way of understanding scripture that wasn't in place for the previous 15 centuries that we call Systematic Theology. When we prooftext concepts with multiple verses to try to establish a fact from Scripture we're using that tool as it was given to us by Calvin (even those who aren't necessarily Calvinists.)

There are several different metaphors used in Scripture to explain what the atonement is like. Roman law is one of them and Paul uses some imagery from that in some of his epistles. A metaphor, as you know, is a helpful way of showing what something else is like by appealing to something that is already known. Where we get confused I think, is when we mistake the metaphor for the thing itself and begin to act as if God is simply a judge, we are the accused and in order to save us from this angry, vengeful, wrathful God, Jesus throws himself in front of the judgement rightly owed to us and then takes the punishment or execution that we deserved. If that's all we see however then we're missing a great deal and if that's the primary way that we view the nature and character of God (Holy and so He must punish sin) then we're very much out of balance.

That's what this archbishop is saying about the Western Church as he sees it. We've traded in a loving God and exchanged the good news for a gospel that elevates law and morality to the point where it seems that at times the primary message of the protestant churches isn't about knowing, loving and being known and loved by a merciful and benevolant father, but rather we've entered into the metaphor of Roman law to where we live as if we're lawyers and our lives and service to God is all about staying on the good side of the judge.

That ties into the view of sin that the archbishop mentions as well and it is, as you discern different than how we view sin and I'm not going to try to enter into that discussion or defend his view because that gets even deeper into the weeds in this and I accept that there is a difference there and it's arguable as to whether the west or the east is comprehensively correct.

A lot of this is very much at the core of a lot of discussion and controversy in different areas of the church. The Shack for example challenges the traditional PSA view in it's touches on theology and that is part of the reason why it is reacted against so strongly by some. Rob Bell has tapped into some of this in his writings and not surprisingly that has garnered strong reaction from the same quarters mostly.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, but for what it is worth that is some of what I see and am thinking. If anyone is interested in more of this, I can recommend some good reading (in addition to reading the Scriptures on your own and being more aware of how our culture and traditions affect the way we read and accept how passages are interpretted.