Twice now I was explaining to atheists that the Eastern Orthodox approach to apophatic theology invovles the idea that God is beyond our understanding but we know certain realities about God through mystical union. I said it was a tradition and they said "the tradition is old and out modded." A tradition, Old? Pull the other one! Being old is what you want in a tradition. No one every says "this is a bran new tradition it must be good." The idea of a tradition is that it is a conversation, it serves as a guide to mistakes and successes of the past by recording what's been said. People who don't understand the nature of religious belief assume tradition is arbitrary and outmoded because our education system stopped teaching how to learn and began imprinting technology on kids about 40 years ago.
Well, that's just not true. John's gospel certainly gives the most and clearest claims, but the idea that without it the claim of Jesus' divinity is on shaky ground is just not serious.
3 comments:
The claims of Jesus to be God are so interwoven with John's Gospel the whole thing falls apart if you remove that aspect.
see my essay
On Metacrock's blog
Twice now I was explaining to atheists that the Eastern Orthodox approach to apophatic theology invovles the idea that God is beyond our understanding but we know certain realities about God through mystical union. I said it was a tradition and they said "the tradition is old and out modded." A tradition, Old? Pull the other one! Being old is what you want in a tradition. No one every says "this is a bran new tradition it must be good." The idea of a tradition is that it is a conversation, it serves as a guide to mistakes and successes of the past by recording what's been said. People who don't understand the nature of religious belief assume tradition is arbitrary and outmoded because our education system stopped teaching how to learn and began imprinting technology on kids about 40 years ago.
Well, that's just not true. John's gospel certainly gives the most and clearest claims, but the idea that without it the claim of Jesus' divinity is on shaky ground is just not serious.
The whole bit about claiming to forgive sin is in the Synoptics, not in John.
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