/lit/ - Literature

>>20493789
Father, LORD God Almighty, have mercy and forgive the jannies, for they know not what faggots they/them are.

I grew up in a Christian household and I don’t see why you would voluntarily join a church. Reading the bible is cool but it’s the least based religon. At least the Quran is about ethically gaining revenge for people who sin.

The whole idea of forgiveness was stolen from pieces of paper somewhere and used to convince everyone to do what gives your amygdala pleasure. Hence the ascetic life which is about gaining self control simply to edge for a long time and then blow your load in some young bride.

If you’re going to become a Christian speak to people who had parents who were nutcase cultists.
(Pic related) These are the hymns I grew up with by the way.

How can we be so sure that Jesus was a real person? Ignoring the Gospels, all we have are a few mentions from Josephus and one mention from Tacitus. Josephus refers to Jesus as the messiah, but seeing as how he was a Pharisee, we can only assume that what he allegedly said was tampered with. Even the Gnostic gospels raise more questions than answers about the life of Jesus and whether or not he was real.

>>20493915
>I grew up in a Christian household and I don’t see why you would voluntarily join a church. Reading the bible is cool but it’s the least based religon. At least the Quran is about ethically gaining revenge for people who sin.
revenge good
>The whole idea of forgiveness was stolen from pieces of paper somewhere
Uh what
>gives your amygdala pleasure.
Forgiveness gooder

pick a side

>>20493938
Three distinct historical documents claiming the existence of historical Jesus who was a random villager executed in the Roman Empire's backwater is pretty tremendous. Herodotus is often the only source for many of his claims and so are cuneiform texts for Sumer and Babylon

>>20493946
Pick a side? I already have one. What’s your point.

>>20493915
I don't understand what you're trying to say. Is Christianity bad because Christians are not quick enough to punish sinners while Muslims are?

>>20493938
With the synoptic Gospels we have three independent or semi-independent sources for a man named Jesus was lived in 1st century Galilee and Judea who had a mother named Mary, who was baptized in the Jordan by John the Baptist, preached, incurred the ire of the Pharisees, and was eventually crucified around the time of Passover. This same basic narrative is affirmed by the totally independent source in the Gospel of John. The letters of Paul are sources in themselves, which tell us the names of some of Jesus’ main disciples, and basic facts such as him being crucified. Paul also directly interacted with said disciples and even traveled with some of them. The followers of Christ felt they had very real and tangible experiences of the risen Christ, just as did enemies of Christ and his followers such as Paul, who was a Pharisee as well. Even Paul is also very clear that in a sense Jesus Christ was a human being (but also much more). Then along with the letters of Paul, which are a collection of very important early sources, we have the other epistles of Peter, James, John, etc. The epistles of Peter even directly allude to the transfiguration event on Mt. Tabor. There are two mentions of Jesus in Josephus, one of which may be interpolated to an extent, and one of which mentions the brother of the Lord, James, and refers to the fact that Jesus was called the Christ / Messiah, which are basic details that fit with the sources in the Synoptics, the Gospel of John, the epistles of Paul, etc. We also know that many churches were even directly founded by the apostles who knew Christ, and that there are Church Fathers in the ante-Nicene period who are barely removed a single degree from the Apostles who walked with Christ and saw him risen. To think that they made all of this up and not even a man named Jesus existed *at minimum* stretches all belief. The Gnostic Gospels are later sources from the 2nd century that are from Hellenic syncretists, they are a move away from the staunchly Jewish and Biblical tradition of Paul and the Apostles.

Absolute minimum:
>Jesus was real
>He preached
>He was crucified
>He was known for miraculous healings and miracles
>He was thought from an extremely early period to be an incarnation of Israel’s God
>Friends and enemies alike claimed to have seen him in the flesh after his death

>>20493915
>Reading the bible is cool but it’s the least based religon.
‘Based’ is a term which has nothing to do with truth.

> At least the Quran is about ethically gaining revenge for people who sin.
God determines what is ethical.

Christianity is fundamentally the imitation of God, and God loves, forgives, does good, and we are exhorted to be like him. Muslims will never even get close to the goals of Christianity, which is theosis, participating in the divine nature, being transformed by grace into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ, the Man-God, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Islam is living like a barbarian, living a carnal, soulless and legalistic life.

>>20493974
Well what I’m saying is that Christians have no one to blame but themselves for the fact no spread of it’s ideology has happened. Atheists and degenerates don’t fear them because they believe in a good god. Change happens through force. The strongest religious leaders in the surreal religions just end up outside of society acting like schizoids.

Even Roman Catholics at least used their imaginary god to gain both side of the coin - aristocratic influence and storytime for the women and children. Christians will say “I was trying to get to heaven I don’t want you in my church anyway”.

>>20494008
>Well what I’m saying is that Christians have no one to blame but themselves for the fact no spread of it’s ideology has happened.
It's the largest religion in the world. If you're talking about the West then it has very little to do with the nature of the religion but moreso the spirit of the age. The spirit of Mammon and the spirit of the Antichrist.

>>20494000
I suppose my main argument against what you believe is that I argue you, anon.. if grown up in the exact same circumstances but with nobody telling you of the concept itself you would be saying God exists while Christianity does not exist. If you truly believe that god would speak to you if you had never met another person telling you about him then you should continue as you have a strong foundation.

>>20494008
>Well what I’m saying is that Christians have no one to blame but themselves for the fact no spread of it’s ideology has happened
A quick google search says that there are about 2.38 billion practicing Christians globally.
>Atheists and degenerates don’t fear them because they believe in a good god. Change happens through force.
There's a verse in the Gospel of Matthew that talks about a sheep straying away of from its herd. Once the shepherd finds the lost sheep, he rejoices and is elated, and the verses specifically emphasize that the shepherd is more happy to have found the lost sheep than if the sheep never left the herd. What that roughly means is that humans will always be breaking the covenant with God, but what makes God so great and powerful to Christians is that he's very patient with us and will forgive us if we repent. Sure you can force someone to convert, and while you may change the behavior that person, their true convictions won't change, and they will arguably be driven from God. To me, rebellion is by all means to be expected and precedes devotion.

>>20494068
I believe I have a very sound foundation. I have had direct experiences through prayer that confirm Christianity in my life. And it is not just some isolated delusion, we can look at history, we can look at Biblical prophecies, and we can look at the tradition of the Church, and see two millennia (and more) of testimony in the same truth. No other religion comes close, and I have looked. I have chanted the names of Hindu gods, and all of that nonsense in the past. Humans transmit information from generation to generation as well—it’s part of who we are fundamentally, being told about Christ doesn’t invalidate it at all. I didn’t grow up Christian, but came to it as an adult. Even those philosophies and religions that arose before and after Christ in isolation from him affirm many of the same ideas, even if in distorted ways. This is to be expected, as they dimly know God.

What's the best
>typeface
>layout for text (single- vs double-column)
>layout for notes (center-column, page-bottom, inner/outer side-column)
>layout for headings, if included (side-column, page-top, in the text)
>etc.
for your ideal Bible?

Does anyone have any good texts on reconciling the batshit insane/morally questionable parts of the Old Testament with the loving and forgiving God of the new?
Not Gnostic texts.

>>20494451
‘God is a Man of War: The Problem of Violence in the Old Testament’ by Fr. Stephen DeYoung might help a bit.

>>20494466
Thanks!

>>20494238
Thomas Nelson. Premiere collection. Thinline KJV. Goatskin cover. Red letter edition. 2k Denmark 12 point comfort print on 36gsm European paper.

>>20494136
He's relying on his unjustified presups to judge a religion. Total relativist.

>>20494615
Church Bible Publishers. Cameo Compact Reference. Ironed Calf. Bible Protector certified Pure Cambridge Edition KJB (not """version"""). Whatever font, whatever paper. Printed and bound by free Independent Baptist hands in the United States of America.

Damn, do these Bible threads get jannied often? How is it not /lit/ related?
I asked a question here the other thread and a helpful anon pointed me in the right direction. To sum up, I asked how a Christian would deal with/handle the following sentiment:
>I am extremely depressed at the moment and feel there is no point in doing anything. I am controlled utterly by the feeling that anything I do will always be so small an inconsequential in an unfeeling, cold, and empty world that has existed long before I have and will continue to exist long after I'm gone.
One anon pointed me to Ecclesiastes, Job, and the "terrible Sonnets" of GM Hopkins.

I read Ecclesiastes today. The observations on nihilism are very eloquent, but now I have questions pertaining to applicable wisdom from this Wisdom Book.
Pursuing wisdom is a good course of action, but one will never be able to understand everything that there is, so endlessly searching 4chan threads for scraps of esoteric knowledge is a bad idea, even if it leads me to these very passages? (Ecclesiastes 7, 8)

It is better to be alive than dead, because the dead cannot hope. Hope for what? That they will see something new under the sun? (Eccliastes 9)

Remember your Creator when you are young. I should follow the ways of my heart, but also remember that God will judge my actions? So I begin with desire and then temper it with virtue, instead of the other way around, as if God were an afterthought?
I ask this to tie into Ecclesiastes 7. It says not to be too righteous or too wicked. This combined with the above idea from Ecclesiastes 11 suggests that following some middle-of-the-road, benign hedonism that seems to be a popular way of life today is the way to go. Is this one of those things that, because it's from the Old Testament, is something that Jews do but Christians have something different revealed in the New Testament?

>>20495073
>deal with/handle
Mean respond to/handle, as in, how would they respond to someone else with it, or deal with it themselves.

>>20494665
>Baptist
>doesn't believe in the Biblical understanding of Baptism
lol. I follow Jesus Christ, not John the Baptist.

>>20495073
you didn't understand. read commentary on all of those verses. i recommend Biblehub.

especially on that last paragraph, Ecclesiastes 11:9, see Numbers 15:39. he's being ironic. (again, commentary says it better, go read it.)

>>20495073
> >I am extremely depressed at the moment and feel there is no point in doing anything. I am controlled utterly by the feeling that anything I do will always be so small an inconsequential in an unfeeling, cold, and empty world that has existed long before I have and will continue to exist long after I'm gone.
Ecclesiastes is definitely a good starting point for one who feels this way, but it doesn’t go deep enough. I would tell such a person to begin regularly reading the Gospels and the New Testament at large, and to begin praying regularly, even if it feels like no one is listening or if they feel silly. God is listening, and if he so chooses he can make himself known and felt unmistakably. And to also associate with Christians in real life, and to not sit online and inside all day. Once you realizing that God is real, he loves (you), even as fallen and as fucked up as you may be, everything will change, including yourself. I used to regularly think that I would inevitably kill myself, and even seriously considered it in August 2021, but since I began to do everything that I said above, I have not felt anything like that, and I’m probably the happiest I’ve ever been.

There’s a definite pre-Christ context to some of the words of Ecclesiastes, especially regarding death. In this line of thought there are some very pessimistic Psalms as well such as Psalm 88. Now, since the crucifixion and resurrection, we know that Christ went down into Hades and trampled down death by his death, freeing those who trusted in him and had faith in him. Christ’s very rising is a sign of a great hope and renewal of mankind as well. There is hope, and the dead are not lost forever. The boundless love of God and his desire for all of humanity to come back to him in live is revealed in the NT. Solomon seems to have some idea of coming judgment, but takes a dreary note towards death and the life to come that is very different from the deeper revelation in the NT.

The general message is that without God, all things are empty and vain. This holds true today just as it did in Solomon’s time. Things that seem to advocating for hedonistic living in Ecclesiastes 9, e.g. ‘Eat, drink and be merry’ should be carefully contextualized with the rest of Scripture. Interestingly, Jesus quotes it in the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:16-34, and in a negative sense. Make of that what you will. I think Ecclesiastes 11:9-10 is ironic—hedonism isn’t the solution, because walking in the way of your heart is impossible, and youth is vain, and God will bring judgement. The opposite of vanity is fearing God, and this in itself is the beginning of all Wisdom (Proverbs 1:7). So God is not the afterthought, he is the center.

>>20494615
Define comfort print.
Also, you didn't answer the other specifics, m8.

>>20495073
you didn't understand. read commentary on all of those verses. i recommend Biblehub.

to get what the author is saying, see the end:
>When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man.

>>20495073
oh, and as it bears adding, there's nothing "esoteric" about the Bible. you just haven't studied it yet.

>>20495335
very well written. i'll add to the argument of irony Numbers 15:39.
"follow your heart and eyes(desires) if you want, but know that you'll be held accountable for it.".

>>20493789
To answer a question from a previous jannied thread that used the same OP picture. Yes, that's from Easton.
>https://www.eastonpress.com/all-categories/bibles-and-religion/rembrandt-family-bible-0251.html
I'm not sure why you'd get it, though, unless you're an Eason Press fanboy. You can get a nicer floppy King James for much less or you could get an actual vintage King James of the same size and hardcover-leather type, only from the 1800s rather than a 2000s imitation of the 1800s, for around the same or a bit more.

>>20495335
very well written. i'll add to the argument of irony Numbers 15:39.
he's cautioning you against it, not advocating for it.

>>20495387
Interesting verse there, I had never drawn the connection, but that’s certainly the reference there.

>>20495324
I'm not concerned with theological nitpicks over very subtle matters (though I do not know any specifics of wrongs in their understanding of baptism), nor am I personally Baptist, but I am very grateful that a church of Christians is hand producing a Holy Bible so that there is no need to be reliant on corporate widget makers and third world exploitation outsourcing for our Holy Scripture.

>>20493938

The Talmud, written by the people who have the most incentive to deny the existence of Jesus (despite schizo pagan fan-fiction), makes extensive reference to Jesus in order to slander him and his mother, and also confirms that he worked miracles, but attributes it to witchcraft.

The other Anons ITT mentioned the neutral pagan sources, and those pagan sources confirm they hear that he has performed miracles.

So you have three types of sources:
The gospels, direct witnesses of Christ, who acknowledge his existence, acknowledge him as God, and as having performed miracles.

The pagans, second-hand witnesses of Christ, who acknowledged his existence through second hand accounts, heard him performing miracles, and attributing it to sorcery.

The jews, direct witnesses of Christ, who acknowledge him as a blasphemer and heretic, who slander him and his mother, acknowledge him as performing supernatural acts from witchcraft.

Three simultaneous types of sources, all agreeing that he was a person, and performed supernatural acts, all disagreeing on interpretation of it, is absurdly strong evidence not only of Jesus's historicity, but the fact that materialism is blatantly false.

I know this is a silly question, but is there supposed to be something more to Jesus teachings? From my basic reading of the Gospels, his teachings seem to boil down to: fear God, follow these precepts, and expect a second coming. Is there more to this? And if so, how do I get at it?

>>20495557

Try to fulfill his teaching to eating his flesh and drinking his blood. You'll need to find the actual lineage of succession of Christ's apostles to find true priests who can serve eucharist to do that. The reason this is his teaching, is because Christ didn't become incarnate to give teachings - if it was just teachings we needed, he could just reveal teachings through a prophet. What Christ came down to do, was to redeem human nature, and to deify it, and that involves eating his flesh and drinking his blood to purify our own human nature, by becoming literal ontological extensions of his body.

Other than that necessity to join into the actual lineage of Christ, and the actual body of Christ, the teachings of Christ are very straightforward and simple - but actually fulfilling them, and continually fulfilling them to deeper depths, is difficult. Remember the man who said he fulfilled everything, and Christ told him to sell everything he had and to follow Christ? You have to reach a truly high spiritual level to actually be able to fulfill Christ's commandments to that basic level of the man asking, let alone selling everything you have.

The idea of climbing a mountain is simple. Actually climbing a mountain takes effort.

>>20495557
From a purely secular standpoint, his teachings were "the Bible."
He taught a return to the true teachings of the Bible at a time when believers relied more on extrabiblical works than the Bible itself.
If you trust the alleged St. John and the bonafide St. Paul, then reading their works is a goof way to understand Jesus' teachings.

>>20495557
Not a silly question at all, anon. At the core, Jesus has very simple teachings, but there is also a deeper part of it too that is very easy to understand once one sees it—that is theosis. The basic core of the Gospel is of course to love God with all of your heart, soul and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:30-31). One can even say that the core of the Gospel is the imitation of God, as is said in Matthew 5:43-48, where the takeaway is to be perfect as heavenly Father is perfect, or the idea in Luke 6:39-40 that a disciple is not above his teacher, but that a fully trained disciple is like his teacher—what does this say about us and Christ? Christ teaches to put God as the absolute highest value, and to not worry ourselves over things on this earth which pass away, but to instead seek that which is endures and is eternal (Matthew 6:19-34). The Gospel of John talks about things such as our union with Christ, how he will abide in us if we abide in him (John 15:1-11) and how if we keep his commandments, he and his Father will come and make their home with us (John 14:23). The peak of this is John 17, where Jesus prays to the Father that we may all be one, as the Father is the Son, and the Son in the Father, and that we may be in them, one as they are one, perfectly one, abiding in the perfect love of God (John 17:20-26). This is the Kingdom of God, in a sense, abiding in Christ, and Christ in you, and it follows that those who are not are already condemned (John 3:16-18). The Gospel ultimately ends in union with God—but not a union of annihilation of self, but of abiding in love, following God’s will, participating in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). Of course judgment is a part of it as well—Jesus teaches us to ‘stay awake’ and live with a wakefulness of God in every moment (Matthew 24:42) because we do not know when the end will come, and because we were meant to live like this anyway, before we fell and became his lost sheep (Luke 15:3-5) Those in Christ have nothing to fear (1 John 4:18).

>>20495335
>Once you realizing that God is real, he loves (you), even as fallen and as fucked up as you may be, everything will change, including yourself.
See that is the thing. I realize that God is real from a purely rational point of view, but I don't "feel" it so to speak, I feel empty.
To elaborate: although I was raised in the faith, I grew away from it. I was never a hardcore atheist or anything, just agnostic/vaguely deist. Eventually I reasoned about the very strong arguments for a God existing (some good threads here actually contributed to that), and basically familiarized myself with >>20493982 , the fulfillment of prophecy by Christ, etc etc, to come to the conclusion that Christianity, probably some High Church tradition specifically being the best bet (though biased because raised Catholic), is truly divine. I am not too passionate on the details because I barely got the basics down.

I don't feel illumined by God or anything like that at all. You say to go to church and not be eternally online and that will help -- and that's true, I haven't gone to Church since Palm Sunday (laziness, maintaining a terrible sleep schedule). I think it helps, sure, but I'm afraid that the "good feelings" that arise from church attendance are solely the benefit of fulfilling our mind's desire for being with people, not anything divine, despite the recitation of Scripture and sacraments. I pray regularly, every night a Lord's Prayer and a Hail Mary, and the occasional Lord's Prayer during the day accompanied with an informal prayer to God to help me with my situation/bless me with whatever virtue. I don't know if this is correct or not, it's just something I've always known. Regardless, I still feel like a small, worthless nobody doing nothing worthwhile.

So over the past few months for instance, despite praying and going to Church a few times, I feel so empty my motivation and work ethic has been dogshit, far worse than plenty of utterly godless people who don't go to church at all but still have the motivation to self-actualize. Why is that? Also, plenty of retards exist that I know for a fact don't try to figure any of this out, that just shout "GOD IS GREAT" or "Yeah God exists" and feel happy and fulfilled and go about their lives with enthusiasm and drive. They may act virtuous or they may act wicked and still feel fulfilled, purposeful. So my point is: I've realized God is real, but I still feel nihilistic.

>>20495655
Thank you for this very insightful post, Anon. I'll keep this post bookmarked so I can come back to it when I reread the Gospels.

>>20495335
>without God, all things are empty and vain

Part of me accepts this as true and the other part feels its tautological. Things have meaning because of God and God put us here because he loves us and we have meaning. I don't really understand humanity's destiny.

Maybe some of this comes from something I watched recently, I think it took a lot from Alan Watts. That we don't actually want things, we want the feelings that come from things. Regardless of how hippie it is, I think there's some truth to this. It's like working out: I don't enjoy the process of it, but I still do it because I like the feelings that come after. However, the logical conclusion of this is that so long as you can get the good feelings from something there's no use in really striving for anything, since striving for things makes you miserable as you're reminded every day that you don't have them. This seems to run directly contrary to Christian tenets though. I mean, why work out when I can just re-program myself to get the same satisfaction from playing hard video games? Some might say "health benefits," but health is just an avoidance of misery, pursuing it is akin to hedonism.

>>20495352
>I didn't understand
Yeah I know
>>20495355
>nothing "esoteric" about the Bible
True, I was just making a wry remark on my habits in general

>>20495712
Read up on theosis too and Eastern Orthodox teachings, it will really expand your understanding of the Gospel. Praying will help as well. Glad it was helpful for you.

>>20495712
You'd be advised to screenshot it, this thread will likely be deleted at any random moment by the Satanic faggot fucking hell bound (barring God's mercy) jannies.

>>20495723
> I don't really understand humanity's destiny.
It’s this: >>20495655, particularly the parts about union

Man, this thread really has some excellent posts. What a shame that the Satanic faggot jannies are such Jews. I am grateful to this OP for making this and the last despite the ban risks. I got a 3 day for a Holy Bible General just a few back, but the one I made after was merely deleted with no ban.

I do not know what lies ahead in this holy war, but I pray that enough of you will keep these going and always make a Holy Bible General when there is none, so that insights such as this contains can come through as they do for whomever is around to contribute to and/or benefit from them.

As this current OP is doing, I began stripping mine down to only saying something like "Discussion of the official literature of the Creator of all existence" rather than the expanded intros I once provided including references to versions, some resources and such (I have not done them in months, and am not behind the numbered ones), and I recommend others do the same...just keep it streamlined, completely "non partisan", and relentless against the deletions and bans.

There have been times of deletions in the past, but this one seems elevated with the bans and frequency. It helps me to realize how important it is for us to be here providing shared knowledge/insight between each other (iron sharpening iron), and information/example/answers for non Christians.
>>20495704
Just break up your fallow ground and keep sowing seeds within yourself for the LORD God Almighty, then await His rains. Hold on to whatever you have and are able to, do not let go no matter what, and do not require a "feeling".
>>20495655
Bless (You) for such as this and so much more.

>>20495704
> I pray regularly, every night a Lord's Prayer and a Hail Mary, and the occasional Lord's Prayer during the day accompanied with an informal prayer to God to help me with my situation/bless me with whatever virtue. I don't know if this is correct or not, it's just something I've always known
It’s not wrong in itself at all, my general prayer rule isn’t too different—I would maybe suggest trying more spontaneous prayer. I use my prayer rule in a sense as ‘kindling’ to get me focused and in the right mindset, and move from there in spontaneous prayer. It’s only in spontaneous prayer that I have ever had God interact with me in any tangible way. Only a few times. Most of my prayers are mundane, but when God has made himself felt it was life-changing. I will pray for you, anon, that he makes himself and his love felt.

>>20493938
if you pray, He'll come to you and you'll perceive His love at work in you

>>20494451
christianthinktank.com

>>20495073
>Pursuing wisdom is a good course of action, but one will never be able to understand everything that there is
Pursuing wisdom is good, but there's a point at which you have learned enough. Although it may sound rude, I don't think you are yet at that point. (IMO) Solomon's counsel is for those who are beginning to lose themselves on an endless treadmill of scholarship and learning for the sake of learning, rather than for the sake of truth.

Solomon was writing before the coming of Christ, and so his perspective is necessarily limited. Nevertheless, it remains true that there is no more hope in death. Either you get what you were hoping for, or you don't. All that remains in heaven is love.

>Remember your Creator when you are young. I should follow the ways of my heart, but also remember that God will judge my actions? So I begin with desire and then temper it with virtue, instead of the other way around, as if God were an afterthought?

My interpretation of that and similar passages is that we should relax a little bit, and not be so eternalist with our lives. We should see the vanity of human things and use that as an excuse to better love God (and not fear man). I may be wrong, but I think that if you really follow your heart, you will come to God, because He made your heart, and He made the world such that all paths return to Him. Yet delusion is very easy, and sin is everywhere. So Solomon's ultimate counsel to fear God is very important.

>I ask this to tie into Ecclesiastes 7. It says not to be too righteous or too wicked.

I believe that those verses have been controversial, historically. My interpretation is that they should lead us to humility. "Don't be so righteous that you destroy your soul through the sin of pride. It is better to be humble and flawed than proud, even if less outwardly flawed."

When I hear Solomon say: "Don't be too wicked..." I take that to mean, perhaps, that while we shouldn't be destroyed by perfectionism, we should still try to avoid sin. For as he himself says elsewhere, there is not a person on earth who is without sin. Christians still believe that is true. Nevertheless, sin is wrong, and we should keep away from it.

From a Catholic perspective, as well, there is more "hedonism," in a certain sense, and more "middle-of-the-road" thinking to morality than one might expect. St. Thomas takes from Aristotle the idea that the good man is happiest and most moderate in all he does.

Of course, there can be no moderation in love itself (or honesty, etc.), but virtue is generally a mean, and generally it leads to joy, happiness, even eventually a deeper pleasure than hedonism itself.

Aristotle writes that hedonism fails as a worldview because pleasure just by its nature is not intended to be an end. It's meant to ensue as a consequence. St. Thomas agrees with him, and I do as well (although it's hard, really the whole struggle of life, to put that into practice).

>>20495335
Powerful witness and testimony anon.

>>20495557
I would argue that the core of Jesus is what He did (and does), not so much what He taught. He actually does something, there's more to it than more information/gnosis. Although there is a knowledge and understanding that He pours in our hearts.

The way I boil it down is that He made it so that we could be happy with God forever. And this consists in knowing and loving God and neighbor, which duty He gives us the power to fulfill through the Holy Spirit.

That said, I find this very hard to practice in my own life, so I may be wrong.

>>20493938
My point about Jesus-historicity is incredibly simple, but it's very hard for people (scholars, for example) to get their heads around. I blame myself for this, because there is probably a much clearer way for me to express my position on this.

Let's contrast three possible positions (obviously there are more than these three categories; let's just use these for simplicity):

(1) >90% certainty that Jesus existed

(2) 50/50 (the evidence is too weak to support a case either for or against Jesus-historicity)

(3) >90% certainty that Jesus did NOT exist

As soon as you move from the 50/50 point, you are making a positive case in either the historicity direction or the non-historicity direction. Remember that I'm 50/50 on this. So I don't think that Jesus was a myth. I just don't see how you can make the case in either direction. So I stay on the fence.

What's interesting is that mainstream-scholars in the field are apparently adamant that this figure existed: "He certainly existed." Certain sounds...like 100% or close to 100%. That is bizarre; I don't see how you can get that certain on this. I'm 50/50, again, and even to move 1% in either direction would require me to build a case on shaky/ambiguous evidence. That's why I'm baffled at 100% certainty, or even 90% certainty...

How do these scholars get there?

That's why I'd like to see them open up the black box and really show their work and expose it to daylight. Let's see their inputs and estimates. Let's see how they got "certain" on such a difficult question. If they said they were 60% on this, then that would be fundamentally plausible.

But that's not what they say, apparently.

From the "Jesus" Wikipedia article:

In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Bart Ehrman wrote, "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees".[15]

That is what is bizarre (for me). 60% certainty is a conversation. But 100% certainty? Or even >90% certainty? I would be shocked if I saw a confidence-interval like that in either direction (either for or against Jesus-historicity). The evidence is in awful shape; there's no way you can get that certain on this question (in either direction). Then you add the fact that most scholars in this field are Christian believers. Then you also consider, the entire faith hangs on his resurrection, so he would have had to be a real person, for that to have happened.


So my point is that we have two things that make this consensus extremely interesting:

(1) certainty (or near-certainty) on an issue where the evidence is in abysmal shape (lost evidence, deliberate document-destruction, intentional forgeries, etc.)

(2) doctrinal commitment to historicity on the part of the majority of scholars in the field (because a majority of scholars in the field are Christian believers)

I personally find these two facts (1) and (2) to be grounds for suspicion regarding this consensus.

>>20495704
>I realize that God is real from a purely rational point of view, but I don't "feel" it so to speak, I feel empty.

I'm in a very similar boat, anon. I have been in the Catholic Church for a couple years now (your intuition is right btw, it is the one Christ founded), yet there is something missing from my experience, from my soul.

People say that you shouldn't rely on feelings, but my concern is that I've never really felt that God loves me. Or if that is too strong (or even blasphemous), I have not ever felt, I think, so many of the things that Christians say they feel. There is a world of love that I feel like I have never even begun to take part in. And I don't know why. I even did Exodus 90, but prayer was almost always just a burden. I have never really felt like I loved God. I don't know what it is. Sometimes I worry that I'm a reprobate, condemned by destiny, but I don't think that God works like that.

I mean, for example, I have contemplated the passion for a long time, and I know that it's the core of reality, but I never really feel anything for it. This disturbs me, as many people have promised that the contemplation of the cross is irresistible, that it's virtually impossible to think on it without being moved, at least in some small way, to love.

And I know that love is in its essence only willing the good of the other, but the essence of a human being, a soul, is "dead" (at least from a worldly point of view). I don't ask to feel everything every time, or even most of the time. I just want to feel more than nothing.

I guess the bright side which we can agree on is that we have been brought from comparative intellectual darkness (atheism, in both our cases) to understanding, or even faith. I know that through prayer and actions I came from a vague faith in an impersonal deist God to faith in Christ. Presumably by persevering, I will attain to or truly receive hope and love as well.

>>20496293
Blessed post. Please say a prayer for me as well, though half as much, cause I came second.

>>20495557
Mythicists will claim that all of Christian dogma and lore was invented from whole cloth through a process of oral tradition/embellishment. Historicists will claim that there was a person(s) who inspired the myth, but then concede that Paul (the primary progenitor of Christian dogma) never physically met Jesus, and that the gospels were written decades after Paul and incorporated a significant amount of Christian oral tradition and mythmaking. To me, it sounds like two camps violently agreeing with each other.

You are right - whether Jesus did exist or not has little bearing on the authenticity of the New Testament, which is regarded as largely mythical by both camps.

With people in ancient times evidence of their coming and goings in places tends to be limited to things like eyewitness accounts or second or third hand accounts or something like surviving public records if they were an important person. On top of that one would have to evaluate evidence for the existence of particular locations, like such and such a town. You can find pieces of written attestation and material, archeological evidence for places and events. You can date things to see if some records or artifacts match up with the time in which someone was said to have gone somewhere and done something.

You can’t really do this with miracles. You can either believe or disbelieve someone’s claim to have seen something remarkable and ephemeral. You can consider the effect that such purported experiences seem to have had on a group of people, but without being there you can only ultimately speculate. For example, if you read a story even today, where someone claims to have been miraculously cured of an illness in a place that lacks medical records or anything like that and you have a handful of eyewitnesses who say they saw it happen, how do you know empirically if it’s true or not? So much the harder for something purported to have happened thousands of years ago.

That’s why academics generally shy away from arguing whether some miracle certainly did or didn’t happen unless they have some kind of agenda with it.

>>20496635
> Blessed post. Please say a prayer for me as well
I will be sure to.

>>20496614
>Cites wikipedia
>so much text and I didn't read it
Just repent and move on dude, praise Christ. He quite obviously existed, there's more time period written evidence of Him then most roman emperors

>>20496707
> That’s why academics generally shy away from arguing whether some miracle certainly did or didn’t happen
Not to necessarily disagree with what you have said, but most of what goes on in academia is governed by materialistic / naturalistic assumptions as well. They just will not accept supernatural explanations of any kind. It’s axiomatic for them. I took a class last semester on the Qur’an and it was interesting to hear the historical-critical methodology laid out, because that is a key aspect of it, as well as the idea that nothing happens in a vacuum, things are a product of their context, and that everything has natural explanations.

>>20496717
I like how our earliest surviving manuscripts of Plato are from like the 9th century AD and yet no one questions them.

I’m about the ask a question that might sound theological or religious in nature, but I don’t intend it to be. I’m really just curious about how, over time, God has become conceptualized as unconditionally loving all of humanity?

I read all of the Hebrew Testament in which he clearly prefers one group to all others and even that group he seems to love on very specific conditions, and frequently punishes very severely.

Even in the New Testament, Jesus message, while very positive is also mixed with great frustration towards sinners and warnings of post life retribution.

I’m halfway through the Quran which seems to every other page be warning sinners of hellfire. Indeed, it describes God as intentionally hardening the hearts of some so that they will never have faith. In other words, they are already destined for hell.

So I honestly just don’t grasp how from these texts one can develop a concept of a God that loves unconditionally. And yet, some obviously do. But I don’t think they always did, so when did that shift happen?

why is the angel of the lord sometimes yahoel sometimes surya and sometimes metatron in hekhalot literature?

>>20496734
The idea of God being unconditionally loving can be seen dimly in the Old Testament. The primary emphasis of the OT, in my reading, is God’s righteousness and justice, while in the New Testament this being revealed as God’s unconditional love towards mankind is shown unveiled. In the Old Testament, we can read Psalms such as Psalm 136, which has a continual refrain that God’s “steadfast love endures forever”. The relationship of God with his people is shown as being like that between a husband and his wife in prophetic books such as Hosea, and his love for them is so strong that even after Israel’s spiritual whoredom is railed against, and even after God outright declares that “you are not my people, and I am not your God” (Hosea 1:9), God soon declares that he will draw Israel back to him in the days to come, and speak tenderly with her, and Israel will call God ‘My Husband’, and God will say: ‘And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord.’ (Hosea 2:19-20). Even his judgment is to bring repentance.

>in which he clearly prefers one group to all others and even that group he seems to love on very specific conditions, and frequently punishes very severely.
Read the Book of Jonah—God sends a prophet all the way to Nineveh to tell them to repent and avoid disaster. God cared for them, and even for the beasts of Nineveh (Jonah 4:10-11). We can even see Moses marry an Ethiopian (God afflicts Miriam with leprosy when she protests), and Ruth, a Moabite and ancestor of Jesus, coming to be accepted into Israel in the Book of Ruth. God’s plan always included the entire earth, as was promised to Abraham that all nations would be blessed through his offspring (Genesis 22:18). Isaiah and the other prophetic books all show in clear relief though that the Messiah will be the light to the world, and that all of the gentiles will come to trust in God and the Messiah. Malachi 1:11 has a good example, saying that God’s name will great among the nations, and incense will be burned for him in every corner of the globe. My favorite though is Isaiah 19:24—“In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth” — Israel is third? And is a coincidence that Israel’s enemies are among the blessing of the earth, and that Egypt was a key place of early Christianity (desert fathers)? In general, many Psalms such as Psalm 117 call for the nations to come and praise the Lord, and that “For great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever. Praise the LORD!” (Psalm 117:2). It’s also clear that Israel was not ethnic in a religous sense, as I have already hinted at. Historically, there were even forced conversions of Edomites into Judaism under John Hyrcanus.

cont.

>>20496734
Man has fallen. God creates man and man sins and apostates and falls away from God. Now man is cursed, along with the rest of creation, and the apostate angels as well. This is what happened to creation, because a righteous God will not create sentient beings without free will.
>but will punish those who go against his, despite never being given a 3rd option
Yes, and we can never know why. God is unknowable, we are to have faith in His power and not in our own wisdom.

>>20496734
>>20496842
2/2
So, as I see it, Israel was a nation established by God expressly for bringing the Messiah into the world eventually, but even then, they struggled to follow God, and were often scattered around the world and fell into apostasy. They are not special in any sense beyond this.

>Even in the New Testament, Jesus message, while very positive is also mixed with great frustration towards sinners and warnings of post life retribution.
Don’t think that unconditionally loving means that one tolerates evil or has no righteousness. The primary form of God’s love is the term ‘agape’, which is a sort of selfless love of goodwill towards another. God wants us to be like him—loving, virtuous, good, etc. This is why Christ tells us to repent, i.e. reorient our lives back towards God, to be more like him. Sinners are ultimately destroying themselves and are turning away from the only source of true life, which is God. God allows us free will, but he desires that all be saved (1 Timothy 2:4), and rejoices with the angels when a sinner repents and comes back to him, as we see in the parable of the prodigal son.

On the topic of hell, the solution is the Eastern Orthodox conception of hell. Here is what St. Isaac the Syrian wrote:
> As for me I say that those who are tormented in hell are tormented by the invasion of love. What is there more bitter and violent than the pains of love? Those who feel they have sinned against love bear in themselves a damnation much heavier than the most dreaded punishments. The suffering with which sinning against love afflicts the heart is more keenly felt than any other torment. It is absurd to assume that the sinners in hell are deprived of God’s love. Love is offered impartially. But by its very power it acts in two ways. It torments sinners, as happens here on earth when we are tormented by the presence of a friend to whom we have been unfaithful. And it gives joy to those who have been faithful.
>That is what the torment of hell is in my opinion: remorse. But love inebriates the souls of the sons and daughters of heaven by its delectability.
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2012/02/06/the-audacity-of-mercy-st-isaac-the-syrian/

I urge you to read this when you have time:
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/the-river-of-fire-kalomiros/

If we do not believe in Christ, we are already condemned (John 3:16-18), we are already tasting hell, because participation in God is the Kingdom of Heaven, in a sense. What then is lack of participation? Alienation from the good, from love, from beauty, from truth, from light, from everything. This is hell, the outer darkness, the undying worm, the weeping and gnashing of teeth. The pains of hell are not created by God, according to saints such as Basil the Great. We cause them. And God will respect this decision, and his love will not depart regardless, for he sends rain on the good and evil alike (Matthew 5:45).

>>20496730
yes but no one founds their lives on Plato. No one is asked to die for Plato.

That said, I think that this debate over the historicity is kind of pointless. Faith in Christ is supernaturally given. There are 'motives of credibility' which mean that faith isn't contrary to reason, but Christ's resurrection can't be proven from history; or at least not to the degree that it would have to be as a living reality. But the proof of faith is higher than the proof which would come from history alone.

>>20496734
Love is not contrary to punishment, if the punishment leads the punished to change his ways. God always loved all mankind, but He chose to focus on Israel in order to develop a holy people into which Christ could be born.

>>20496891
To this I would also add the words of St. Antony the Great:

>It is not right that the Divinity feel pleasure or displeasure from human conditions. He is good, and He only bestows blessings and never does harm, remaining always the same. We men, on the other hand, if we remain good through resembling God, are united to Him, but if we become evil through not resembling God, we are separated from Him. By living in holiness we cleave to God; but by becoming wicked we make Him our enemy. It is not that He grows angry with us in an arbitrary way, but it is our own sins that prevent God from shining within us and expose us to demons who torture us. And if through prayer and acts of compassion we gain release from our sins, this does not mean that we have won God over and made Him to change, but that through our actions and our turning to the Divinity, we have cured our wickedness and so once more have enjoyment of God’s goodness. Thus to say that God turns away from the wicked is like saying that the sun hides itself from the blind.

>>20496734

>I read all of the Hebrew Testament in which he clearly prefers one group to all others

Did you read it from Genesis? If you pay attention closely, then for at least two points in time, 100% of the world's population - the pre-fallen Adam and Eve, and the 8 people on Noah's ark - had favour in God's sight.

The people that fall out of God's favour, are people that sin against God for doing things like inventing murder (Cain).

The only reason why God has preferred one group to all others, is because this group is, from historical circumstance, the one group that has actually retained the faith of Adam and Noah. They retained faithful to the one true God.

Does that mean that God doesn't love those that have fallen away from Him? No - otherwise he would not accept repentance. When do we know this? As early as Adam and Eve - when Adam and Eve first sinned against God, God gave them an opportunity to own up to their actions, and ask for forgiveness - which they didn't. He even did the same with Cain, the inventor of murder. God, since the very beginning of the narrative, has nothing but patience and love for his creations.

For some reason, it's very easy for people to skip this plain and obvious fact of God's patience and condescension to the very first sinners to ever commit sin. I didn't even see it myself until I read it in St John Chrysostom's Homilies on Genesis.

This should be a clue that people have really, really, really fucked up when they've corrupted the culture of the world so bad that it prompts God to flood the world. It is out of unconditional love for humanity that he swept the corrupt people of the world away - otherwise, not even Noah's family would have survived the moral degeneration of the pre-flood people, and all of humanity would have been estranged from God.

>>20493789
Should I even read the Old Testament? I'm really only drawn to the New Testament and Jesus Christ.

Your real opinions on it?

>>20497170
Literal garbage is what the copy I got became.