CADRE Comments

Happy Fourth of July!

My first post on John's genre explored the expressed authorial intent and audience reception. The intent to impart "truth" and eyewitness accounts pointed to the genre of ancient biography or historiography. The second post dealt with John's subject matter, which focused on the life and significance of Jesus, and concluded that this strongly pointed towards the genre of ancient biography. In this post, I conclude that the prologue of the Gospel of John reinforces the analysis pointing towards the genre of ancient biography, both in its content and as a literary device. John's Prologue In the third part of this series, I begin to examine the literary features of the Gospel of John, starting with its prologue. Richard Burridge, along with many other scholars, concludes that the Gospel of John’s prologue runs from verse 1 through 18. The prologue begins and ends clearly referring to Jesus: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word ...

I wasn't sure I'd be available Sunday to post up the essay this year, so I'm doing it a bit early for the weekend. No particular revisions again this year; so just a link to my annual Independence Day sermon that I like to put up every year. {g!} (The only substantial comments so far can be found at last year's entry here, by the way. Although the comments turn out not to be about the post at all. {wry g}) God’s hope to all our readers, around the world, on this day, and every day! Jason Pratt

(Note that this post is extremely tentative and exploratory; I have not framed the issues as well as I would like, and my sketch of the two approaches to divine action is not the best formulation they could receive. I'm simply jotting down some thoughts that I will expand more carefully in future posts) As a person who takes the current scientific consensus very seriously in the way I understand the world, one of the most challenging issues I face in theological reflection is how to understand God's action in the world, not primarily his creating and conserving the world in existence but those 'special' acts we ordinarily call miracles. The problem is that the narrative of modern science-certain controversies over the implications of quantum mechanics notwithstanding-is one of finding ever more precise regularities in the goings-on of the natural world, which many scientists are tempted to summarize as laws which govern the behavior of all objects in the natural world. ...

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion. Steven Weinberg The claim underlying this and many similar critiques of religion is that religion, disproportionately among human activities, makes people act irrationally and immorally. The implication is that, if we were to eradicate religion, we would also eradicate many of the social ills that plague our species, such as dogmatism, tribalism and intolerance. One thing that my studies of anxiety and ideology have made clear is that this claim is patently false. Certainly there is dogmatism concerning religious beliefs, the intolerance it gives rise to, and the unspeakable violence with which believers try to defend their beliefs. But religion is not the root of those evils. Rather, they arise from very deep in our nature as vulnerable, mortal, self-aware creatures. The philosopher Spinoza a...

In my opening post on the genre of the Gospel of John, I explored the expressed intent of the author and the Gospel’s reception by its audience. John’s emphasis on eyewitness testimony and imparting the truth about Jesus were consistent with genres such as ancient biography and historiography but not consistent with ancient fiction, such as novels or wondrous travel tales. However, to develop an accurate understanding of John’s genre we must review the dominant cluster of elements rather than just a few, albeit important ones. To that end, this post proceeds to examine what the Gospel of John’s subject matter indicates as to genre. Put simply, the subject matter of the Gospel of John is Jesus. From beginning to end, the focus is on Jesus, with the goal of demonstrating that Jesus is the Christ. That information is not just interesting, but is crucial to the reader. In John’s own words, “many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not writte...

This is from the blog Debunking Christianity  Our efforts here at DC are Having an Effect By John W. Loftus at 6/10/2010 "Here's an email I received from a man  named Robert:" John, Thank you for the time and effort you have put into your writing.  I am a  Christian of nearly 30 years; devout, church going, prayerful.  I first  found infidels.org about 2 years ago and it opened me up to the  possibility that the Bible is false.  I always beware when I see one of these "long time Christian realized faith is buss shit." It really makes me angry and sick because whatever he says, no matter how banal or silly, he claims he's a Christian so he has to be one. This is one of the basic tenets of the New atheist faith, that there is no such thing as a false members of a group, any and all members of groups regardless of their experiences automatically represent that group it it's fullest and most articulate epitome. Otherwise, if anyon...

I said last time that I was not trying to prove anything but just explecating my views. So angry atheists write and say "You don't back anything up, you can't prove anything." why should anyone get angry because of my opinion? I said point blank I wasn't trying to prove anything! Meaning is a function of truth, and truth is the limit on meaning. In other words The only way that something is meaningful is in proportion to the extent to which it represents the truth of some situation or outlook. By the same token, meaning is limited by truth. A lie is not meaningful in terms of its falsehood, only in terms of what it tells us about the liar. Meaning is subjective, one cannot deduce meaning from the order of things as one might try to deduce a designer from the apparent design in the universe. For that matter, I don't think one can logically deduce a design in the universe. The fact that meaning is subject does not indicate that God can't best...

part 1 of 4 Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) See The Ultimate Online Sartre resource: "have a coffee Break With Jean-Paul." I have decided to flesh out several themes that are implicit in the piece I wrote in "Open Letter to John Loftus and  the DC crowd."In so doing I will be speaking in a very general sense. Obviously I can't lay out the whole history of western civ. in a blog spot. I realize I will be painting with a broad brush. But this is an attempt to spell out the ideas that have always acted as under girding for my belief system and spur me on to faith. I don't claim to be making pronouncements from on high. I don't claim that I could prove all my beliefs. Rather I shall attempt to spell out some of the basic reasons for my world view. Perhaps the most important underlying theme of that essay is that of meaning and transcendent truth. Meaning in life plays a big role in the playing out of my youthful formation; as a Sartian existentialist ...