Christianity

[henry quirk]

one presumes people use standard and precise philosophical words for philosophical ideas, or at least try to do so.

I believe if one is confronted by an unfamiliar term or notion, or a notion or term is used in what one thinks is an novel way, one ought do a little research (or mebbe just ask what the other means)

[Alexis Jacobi]

Unless I misunderstand here, you mean "needed" for the improving of civilization, and "necessary" to save the Western world...or something like that, no? Well, as noble as such goals may be, they're merely instrumental and arbitrary, of course.

Will it work, if we encourage people to pretend to believe in that in which they do not actually believe? If we tell them "act Christian but don't be a Christian," will we save civilization that way? Can we expect them to have a durable commitment to Christian moralizing, if they have no commitment at all to Christ?

I have my doubts, and think maybe you do, too.

What follow are just musings but I do not mean to say that they are superficial:

If I have doubts those doubts are really of another order. On one hand I have no choice really, as a person who lives in our world, to believe and hope that improvement and betterment are possible. Yet there are times when it seems to me that it is larger, prevalent systems which will determine the larger part of all outcomes. But yes, I have felt associated with and perhaps *linked to* certain ideas that have to do with renewal, renovation, recovery as these pertain to *Occidental Civilization*. But of course any perspective that recognizes decadence or decay in linked, in one way or another it seems to me, with traditionalist and I think (essentially) religious viewpoints. So for example I could reference here René Guénon (The Crisis of the Modern World) as a discourse that explains how 'decadence' and the loss that results from it can be conceived and understood. I have read his works and, I find, I agree with him -- but always with some reservations (as one must have when confronting any declarative system).

I am also aware that René Guénon, and his critique, deals in what I think can be fairly said to be 'metaphysical terms'. I do not think he is a Christian (oddly his tradition, his post-Christian tradition, is in some branch of Islam) yet I think he sees Christianity in the sense that I also see it: as a system through which metaphysics are concretized into a 'believable system'. But what is storified is not, in fact, really representable. And for this reason René Guénon describes an intellectual approach which, as you gather, I also have. I do not take *intellectual* to be something less however. If I say *intellectual* I mean what I am capable of believing in and what seems sound to me.

So if I have doubts they are doubts that anything at all is possible to arrest or alter the general direction. Thus the only possibility that I really have is simply in relation to myself and the people in my immediate vicinity.

I disagree strongly when you say such goals are 'instrumental and arbitrary' -- but this general difference of opinion has run through this entire conversation. I accept imperfection and to a degree *luke-warmness* since, in fact, it is the norm not the exception. Let us suppose for a minute what is generally asserted by many Christians -- we are basically f****ed -- unless we can rely on something like 'infinite mercy'. I think from time to time something that Oscar Wilde wrote in De Profundis (his long letter from Reading Gaol and as many know Wilde had a very very bad time of it given his moral and social fall) when some former associate of his took the risk of going to see him (which would have implicated his reputation and social standing). Wilde noticed that this man made some small gesture toward him, some tiny act of kindness and sympathy, for which Wilde said (I paraphrase) such gestures are the acts that open heaven.

You want to draw a distinction and a contrast between, let us say, the outcome of a Christian moral project (a good person capable of making moral choices and also well grounded in social and spiritual reality) and that person who has been, according to your definitions, 'saved' and 'born again'. I do not agree that you (here I refer to you-plural as Man and as men) have any say in the matter. But I do not mean to say that your opinions, or your interpretations, are invalid or that I dismiss them. If there is a Deciding (judging) God and if there is some process that we face at the End, what that is is entirely between the person, the soul, and that supreme being (and whatever hierarchy of being and of beings has been or is established -- if indeed there is such a thing).

And I think I have expressed before that it seems to me that any number of different things are possibly when, as we generally conceive it, we have left our bodies in death and now exist in some incorporeal form -- to the degree that form is conceivable. Within that *space* anything is possible, and it seems to me that all sorts of transformations are possible. I am not sure if I make myself clear. If one has an existence after death, and if in that existence one comes face to face with the Creator (or his hierarchy) it seems quite possibly to me that one could live entire lives within a mere Earth-second, and in that process be guided through one's own intuitive, internal moral processes, to other possibilities. So I have uncertainty about how *Hell* and infernal realms should be viewed. However, so much of Christian view -- Protestant and Catholic and everything in-between -- depends in fact on the definition of Hell. I find that I cannot believe intellectually in an eternal hell-realm. Though I do understand the *logic* (such as it is) that defines Hell as necessary, and as an expression of cosmic and metaphysical Justice.

Finally (insofar as anything is final!) it is at this point, and to some degree as a result of our conversation in late 2021, that I am really quite uncertain how even to define 'Christ'. I do not have the emotional inclination. (I refer here to people whose commitment seems emotion-based). I do think that emotion (sentiment) is a very powerful motivator in all things human. But that does not change that the entire direction of my life has been toward intellectual realization, not to be convinced emotionally or sentimentally. There is a point where the two modes conjoint however, I recognize this.

Obviously, what one faces is the fact that -- soon enough -- we will all venture, against our will as it seems, into the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns (nor even sends messages back!), so there is an imperative to make all efforts to get clear about what one is, and what one is not, doing here and now.

[Alexis Jacobi]

That's also controversial. I know that during the Shoah, no amount of "assimilation" or "relevance" to German society was sufficiient to protect a person who was biologically or religiously Jewish. That should suggest, I think, how the greatest threat comes, when it comes; not from the assimilationists within the community, but from the external, implacable hatred of all things Jewish for the sake of HaShem.

Except there is one problem, and it is one that has always dismayed me:

20 The Lord will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him.[a] 21 The Lord will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. 22 The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. 23 The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. 24 The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.

25 The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth. 26 Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away. 27 The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. 28 The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind. 29 At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.

30 You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and rape her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit. 31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. 32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand. 33 A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labor produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days. 34 The sights you see will drive you mad. 35 The Lord will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.

36 The Lord will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your ancestors. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. 37 You will become a thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule among all the peoples where the Lord will drive you.

38 You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it. 39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. 40 You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off. 41 You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity. 42 Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the crops of your land.

43 The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. 44 They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, but you will be the tail.

45 All these curses will come on you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the Lord your God and observe the commands and decrees he gave you. 46 They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever. 47 Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, 48 therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.

49 The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young. 51 They will devour the young of your livestock and the crops of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine or olive oil, nor any calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks until you are ruined. 52 They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the high fortified walls in which you trust fall down. They will besiege all the cities throughout the land the Lord your God is giving you.

53 Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you. 54 Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, 55 and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. 56 The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter 57 the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.

58 If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the Lord your God— 59 the Lord will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses. 60 He will bring on you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you. 61 The Lord will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. 62 You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the Lord your God. 63 Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.

Obviously, whatever you do any whatever happens, don't eat bacon!!

But note that those enemies will arrange for you to get a settlment and to *return* to that Promised Land where you will get things all set up in a situation where you will still have to battle constantly, without real security, as well as oppress those who settled the land after your own God chased you out, bashing your figurative heads with diaspora baseball bats and sending you, wandering, into that realm where you suffered for 1,500+ years . . . (See Malcolm Hay's Europe and the Jews for the concise outline).

Jewish history is tragic history. And Jewish history never ends!

So it has always seemed to me -- or maybe I have a twisted understanding? -- that it is God who brings, and who brought, these outcomes. This is a philosophy forum and not a religious commitment forum so we have to confront certain things.

If you really really really try to get to the essence of what being Jewish means you will have no choice, in my view, but to face what I call these *cores*. The essential core upon which Jewishness is based.

I admit that I find myself strangely affected when you use terms more proper to Judaism (HaShem, etc.) as if you see yourself, more or less, as a Christified Jew! (And I hope that you will not mind that I speak so directly to this, there is no negative animus of any sort not even slightly).

[Immanuel Can]

I receive your musing as a musing, which is to say, as a stream-of-consciousness kind of reflection on where your thinking is presently going. And as such, I hesitate to seem to take issue with any part of it. A person is surely allowed to think, no? And what sort of a killjoy would carp about a person musing his or her way through an issue -- would insist on every part of it coming out fully formed and declarative? Such a reaction would be unreasonable. Yet to sit in stony silence risks that the speaker will perceive the hearer not to be listening, and will not know that the hearer is being reflective and respectful of the content. So something must be said, somehow...but not contentiously or by way of objection.

Before I respond, may I offer something by way of a musing of my own?

It's a pleasure to speak with somebody in this manner -- reflectively, patiently, through a process of reasonable and polite exchange. I wish that all exchanges were so civilized as this. And I very much appreciate your thinking, which is not superficial, not unforthcoming, and clearly not driven by any perverse desire to "win" points. Too few conversations here are of this type.

So I will perhaps just offer a few such musings of my own, in response to yours...and we shall see where things go from there.

On one hand I have no choice really, as a person who lives in our world, to believe and hope that improvement and betterment are possible. Yet there are times when it seems to me that it is larger, prevalent systems which will determine the larger part of all outcomes. But yes, I have felt associated with and perhaps *linked to* certain ideas that have to do with renewal, renovation, recovery as these pertain to *Occidental Civilization*. But of course any perspective that recognizes decadence or decay in linked, in one way or another it seems to me, with traditionalist and I think (essentially) religious viewpoints.

That is fair. Of course, the issue, I think is not whether or not the world needs improving -- I think everybody knows it does -- but on what terms improvement is possible. My own conviction is that, to quote the great agnostic/Atheist writer, Thomas Hardy, "...if way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst."

That is to say, if the world is going to improve, the first thing we must be is honest about the present state of it. And not merely of the world, but of the agency (ourselves) toward which men urge us to look in order to improve it. Both the problem and the instrument of its recification must be seen in plain day. And I think that when we do, we realize that very much of the badness in our world is our own doing -- we are so often the cause of our own misery, and of the misery of others. And that obvious fact raises the question: what sort of creatures are we, that we could do this? How could we created the Inquistions, the gulags, the Shoah, the nuclear waste, the corruption that starves people in Africa, the torturers, the vandals, the thieves and pyromaniacs, the envious haters, the gossips and the liars...

And we see that we are not merely the solution to the problem: we are its cause. That is, we are deeply involved ourselves in the problem we live with. We both created Western civilization and morals, and we now pull them down with our own hands.

And when we look at the problem honestly, like that, it raises another important question: how can we look to ourselves, who are the cause of so much misery and vice, for the solution? How do we prevent our worst impulses from wiping out our best yet again? And it seems to me evident that what we must first do is clean up The Human. We need to become better people before we can expect ourselves to do better.

But how shall we become better people? We are what we are; and Lord knows we're often at the mercy of our own worst dispositions. That's the problem: an unregenerate mankind will not fix mankind's problems. But to where do we look for a new nature, a new disposition toward the world, such that we can look to humanity as some sort of remedy to the ills of the world, so many of which mankind itself is the cause?

This is where the genuinely Christian solution becomes urgent. When we know what we are, when we see ourselves honestly, we realize that however much goodness we might think is resident within humankind, there's enough toxins there to destroy it all. Without ourselves being changed, we shall not change the world. But we cannot change ourselves.

Hence, the urgent need for God to intervene. As Isaiah wrote, "We continued in our sins for a long time; yet shall we be saved? For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our wrongdoings, like the wind, take us away." (Isaiah 64:6)

Given global plague, the environmental crisis, geopolitical turmoil, economic disaster, and today's massive technological overreach, shall we survive what we are? That's a real question a lot of people have, and legitimately so: the human race is at a level of technological development and civilizational reach that we can literally end ourselves with one bad decision. The need for a change is crucial.

But will a return to a christianesque morality, all by itself, be sufficient? Apparently it wasn't, the first time we did it; for we ended up abandoning it when we created the present. So what next?

So for example I could reference here René Guénon (The Crisis of the Modern World)

I confess my ignorance about him.

I disagree strongly when you say such goals are 'instrumental and arbitrary'

Sorry. Perhaps I was unclear about what I meant.

What I mean is that the idea of using "christianesque" values to restore the Modern world makes those values arbitrary, because they are no longer grounded in an actual belief in their truth value. And it makes their application "instrumental" in the sense that one is looking to "christianesque" values not as an expression of truth but as a means to an end one sees as desirable, i.e. the "saving" of civilization.

And my question is, "Can people who do not really believe Christianity muster enough belief in Christian values to empower them to save civilization? And I think, given what has actually happened in history, the answer is "no." For once, as you have said, Western civilization was indeed "christianesque," but that veneer of morality proved too thin the last time; what would give us assurance it would be any better now?

You want to draw a distinction and a contrast between, let us say, the outcome of a Christian moral project (a good person capable of making moral choices and also well grounded in social and spiritual reality) and that person who has been, according to your definitions, 'saved' and 'born again'. I do not agree that you (here I refer to you-plural as Man and as men) have any say in the matter.

I can only say that Christ does say that they do, and that human choice indeed gives us a "say in the matter." But it is not a "say" we can have on our own, without reference to Him. He is "the way, the truth and the life." (John 14:6) And without Him, nobody comes to the Father, He says.

But I do not mean to say that your opinions, or your interpretations, are invalid or that I dismiss them. If there is a Deciding (judging) God and if there is some process that we face at the End, what that is is entirely between the person, the soul, and that supreme being (and whatever hierarchy of being and of beings has been or is established -- if indeed there is such a thing).

That is true. In the Judgment, all answer for only themselves. Nobody answers for anybody else. But too few of us give thought about what answer we will make to God when we stand before Him.

I am not sure if I make myself clear. If one has an existence after death, and if in that existence one comes face to face with the Creator (or his hierarchy) it seems quite possibly to me that one could live entire lives within a mere Earth-second, and in that process be guided through one's own intuitive, internal moral processes, to other possibilities. So I have uncertainty about how *Hell* and infernal realms should be viewed.

Justifiably so. We have little information about the afterlife...only the assurance that it exists, and that there are two sorts of it: one is too wonderful for words, and one is too awful to contemplate. But we do have more details about the latter than the former, and a few of them are as follows. "Hell," (though we must be careful how we use that word) is a place people decide to go. They decide it on the basis that they do not want God. But God is the Source of all light, life, health, goodness, happiness, blessedness, joy, truth, faithfulness, relationship, love and so on...so what they are asking for is a place of their own, which turns out to be one in which all these qualities (which they refuse to identify with gifts of God) are no longer present.

This then presents to us the existence of a place of separation, resentment, darkness, pain, spiritual deadness, illness, and isolation. This is what they are craving, when they crave not to know God. And because of the surpassing value of persons freely being able to choose to love God, God has to grant to those who do not love Him the destiny they crave; for there is no possibility of choice where there are not live options. To choose God is one choice that will be honooured. To reject God is the other choice that shall be honoured.

As C.S. Lewis put it, "all who are in Hell choose it."

I do understand the *logic* (such as it is) that defines Hell as necessary, and as an expression of cosmic and metaphysical Justice.

That's another aspect of the necessity of Hell. If God is truly good, righteous and fair, He must reconcile the debt we are running up against goodness, light, truth and fairness with the proper count. That's what true justice is. Were God to overlook these things, He could not, by definition, be just at all. He would be a corrupt judge.

And is this not the very thing Judaism says about the Shoah? How could HaShem not call the monsters who did it to account? As Elie Weisel said, such a God could not be believed in or trusted at all. One's faith would " die at Auschwitz." But there have been many kinds of "Auschwitz" since the dawn of time, and there are many accounts to be reconciled...not least, yours and mine. No wonder, then, that Isaiah exclaims, "and shall we be saved?"

Hence we throw ourselves on the mercy of the Court, pleading what sacrifice HaShem may receive, and not pleading our own innocence. And this is deep in Judaism, within the system of sacrifice itself. For there is no remission of sins without a cost; and that cost is the death of the perpetrator, or else the death of his sacrifice. The cost of balancing the scales of sin is the loss of the life. "The soul that sins, it shall surely die." (Ezekiel 18:20)

Finally (insofar as anything is final!) it is at this point, and to some degree as a result of our conversation in late 2021, that I am really quite uncertain how even to define 'Christ'.

Well, it's a Greek word, of course; but it means "anointed one," which you will recognize as identity with its Hebrew equivalent, "Messiach." That is the claim that is being made in the name, "Jesus Christ": that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel and Saviour of the world.

Obviously, what one faces is the fact that -- soon enough -- we will all venture, against our will as it seems, into the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns (nor even sends messages back!),

Well, Hamlet's wrong, of course.

Even in the Tanakh, did not Samuel speak to Saul from beyond the grave? And in the New Testament, were not men raised from the grave...Lazarus, I mean, and the widow's son, among others. And consummately, Jesus Christ Himself returned from that "country." Hamlet was a good Catholic-Anglican boy...he should have known better.

so there is an imperative to make all efforts to get clear about what one is, and what one is not, doing here and now.

I cannot possibly disagree with you there.

[Immanuel Can]

...there is one problem, and it is one that has always dismayed me:

The Lord will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke..."If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the Lord your God—

Ah, the blessings and the curses! Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim. Yes, I know the passage. It is indeed fearful.

I think Judaism is quite attuned to this problem. It is the massive weight that is placed upon the nation that takes the name of HaShem upon it, and presumes to uphold His reputation to the nations. That burden is a blessing, but also a curse...and the outcome depends on what the nation itself does with The Name.

So it's not about "bacon," nor about mixing cloth. It's about what it takes for a nation to say, "We are the light to the world, the beacon of the One True God." It takes perfection. That is no easy thing to attain. And one is certain to fail. So this explains the Jewish sacrifices as well; for some atonement for sin, some Yom Kippur must be made, or imperfect men will never be adequate representatives of the perfection of HaShem.

And absent one such, how shall the nations, the Gentiles, be saved? For was not that the promise to Abraham? "...in you, all the nations shall be blessed." (Genesis 26:4)

"Blessed Gentiles." Imagine that!

Jewish history is tragic history. And Jewish history never ends!

And yet, it will, as will the history of us all, as we presently know it. But in its day, it serves a unique purpose, lying between Ebal and Gerizim, for the world to see.

If you really really really try to get to the essence of what being Jewish means you will have no choice, in my view, but to face what I call these *cores*. The essential core upon which Jewishness is based.

I could not agree more. And I think that even for us Gentiles, a deep engagement with the question, "What does being Jewish mean" is essential; for to truly be Jewish -- that is, to be a son of Abraham -- is to know and stand in relationship to HaShem.

I admit that I find myself strangely affected when you use terms more proper to Judaism (HaShem, etc.) as if you see yourself, more or less, as a Christified Jew! (And I hope that you will not mind that I speak so directly to this, there is no negative animus of any sort not even slightly).

I did not think there was any animus at all. So far as I can tell, you and I are speaking amicably and without subtext. We're just saying what we believe. And it's very refreshing.

Yes, I am the servant of a Jew. Of THE Jew, the Jew of Jews, the King of the Jews. It is my honour to know HaShem, and I am deeply conscious of the debt I owe to the people who preseved His Name for me to hear. It has saved my life. It is everything to me, both now and forever. How can I not be grateful?

What poison of soul I would have if I would turn around and say, "You brought me The Name -- now I hate you"? How could I do that?

[Belinda]

one presumes people use standard and precise philosophical words for philosophical ideas, or at least try to do so.

I believe if one is confronted by an unfamiliar term or notion, or a notion or term is used in what one thinks is an novel way, one ought do a little research (or mebbe just ask what the other means)

I agree. Moreover it's the duty of the transmitter to send accurate and lucid information.

[henry quirk]

it's the duty of the transmitter to send accurate and lucid information.

which I did

I cannot know, am not responsible for, what you know from the start

I can answer your questions, but I can't anticipate them (not regularly or accurately)

if you think I use deism in a novel way: ask me about it (sumthin' you still haven't done)

save the lectures and preachiness for your book club or coffee klatch

[Nick_A]

one presumes people use standard and precise philosophical words for philosophical ideas, or at least try to do so.

I believe if one is confronted by an unfamiliar term or notion, or a notion or term is used in what one thinks is an novel way, one ought do a little research (or mebbe just ask what the other means)

I agree. Moreover it's the duty of the transmitter to send accurate and lucid information.

Why did Jesus speak in parables? It seems superficially as an unnecessary attempt to confuse the issue. Why not just say it like it is and let a person decide if it is worth listening to? From Matthew 13:

…12Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. 13This is why I speak to them in parables: ‘Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.’ 14In them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled: ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.…

[Immanuel Can]

Why did Jesus speak in parables?

And Jesus said,

“For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”

Those who were with Him from the Pharisees heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?”

Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now that you maintain, ‘We see,’ your sin remains."

[Nick_A]

Why did Jesus speak in parables?

And Jesus said,

“For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”

Those who were with Him from the Pharisees heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?”

Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now that you maintain, ‘We see,’ your sin remains."

Do you sense a relationship between what is written in Matthew 13 and John 9 with Plato's description of the darkness of Plato's Cave?

[Belinda]

one presumes people use standard and precise philosophical words for philosophical ideas, or at least try to do so.

I believe if one is confronted by an unfamiliar term or notion, or a notion or term is used in what one thinks is an novel way, one ought do a little research (or mebbe just ask what the other means)

I agree. Moreover it's the duty of the transmitter to send accurate and lucid information.

Why did Jesus speak in parables? It seems superficially as an unnecessary attempt to confuse the issue. Why not just say it like it is and let a person decide if it is worth listening to? From Matthew 13:

…12Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. 13This is why I speak to them in parables: ‘Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.’ 14In them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled: ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.…

The parables of Jesus represent the art of creative language at its best.The Parables are sharply and elegantly aimed at the mainly rural or village audience that listened to Jesus. It's we modern urbans who have a problem with the parables.

I usually like Henry's brief and succinct style, and he mars it by sloppy vocabulary.

[Nick_A]

I agree. Moreover it's the duty of the transmitter to send accurate and lucid information.

Why did Jesus speak in parables? It seems superficially as an unnecessary attempt to confuse the issue. Why not just say it like it is and let a person decide if it is worth listening to? From Matthew 13:

…12Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. 13This is why I speak to them in parables: ‘Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.’ 14In them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled: ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.…

The parables of Jesus represent the art of creative language at its best.The Parables are sharply and elegantly aimed at the mainly rural or village audience that listened to Jesus. It's we modern urbans who have a problem with the parables.

I usually like Henry's brief and succinct style, and he mars it by sloppy vocabulary.

Doesn't it seem unfair to you? The person who has will be given more but the one who doesn't will lose the little he has?

[Janoah]

...there is one problem, and it is one that has always dismayed me:

The Lord will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke..."If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the Lord your God—

Ah, the blessings and the curses! Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim.

it is interesting! I see Mount Ebal-curse (on the right) and Mount Gerizim-blessing (on the left), and Shechem between them, - from my home. Welcome!

[henry quirk]

I usually like Henry's brief and succinct style...



...and he mars it by sloppy vocabulary.

[Immanuel Can]

Do you sense a relationship between what is written in Matthew 13 and John 9 with Plato's description of the darkness of Plato's Cave?

No, not really.

I think Plato's cave is much more like our media-saturated culture. Consider the "shadows" that the cave-dwellers take for real. Consider their hatred of those who argue they're shadows, and their "games" based on the shadows...