Ve'hoe

No,, Christ is in the title of your thread,,,,so you did mention it, despite the denial, YOU brought it up. Unless your liberal mind allows you to deny that as you deny the rest of his teaching in favor of your own......

rumitoid

Lol, read the title again: did I say Christ was the problem? In my comments, have I denied Christ or disavowed him? Lol, very weak.

rumitoid

In the beginning, Christianity was the pure preaching of the grace and love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Far from being a new moral teaching, the New Testament (and the Old Testament as well, although perhaps not quite so obviously) was an “antimoral.” The Christian does not receive a set of rules, or even a set of guidelines from God. Rather, the believer has an encounter with his own sinfulness and God’s graciousness in Christ. In Ellul’s words, “there is an acknowledgment of the revealed God, faith in his love, acceptance of his will and from there a search for a way of life that responds to the love of God and his will.” 11 Indeed the idea of a Christian morality is impossible for Ellul.

The Christian is always a sinner, justified by God, and so a new moral will do nothing at all to help him out of his fallen state. Then Christianity became a state religion in the early 300s AD. Suddenly ‘mass evangelization’ became more important than careful catechesis in the faith. The genuineness of conversion could no longer be ascertained. The end result was a church that had to develop a morality, a standard of conduct for the masses of people who had just flooded its sanctuaries.

Morality replaced the freedom of the converted man to love God and his fellow man. Laws imposed by the church from the outside replaced the Spirit leading the believer into the revealed will of God. Sadly, the fallen state of man found this state of affairs quite pleasing. Ellul notes that even when the freedom of the Christian in the Gospel was rediscovered at the time of the Reformation, it was not long before the church returned to its old moralizing ways: (Morality was) the breaking point, everyone knows, of the Lutheran reformation. But the slope is so steep that as soon as the first generation, which rediscovered Christian liberty, passed, (the church) returned, particularly with Calvin, to rigid morality and the MORALITY.

This is a huge point. Ellul totally gets that eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is judgment and is at the root of all sin (see chapter IV). The Kingdom revolution is a revolution of the Spirit -- which is the antithesis of living on the basis of ethics. He continually stresses that the New Testament and the early Jesus-movement "has no morality." Once Christianity became a ruling power and a successful mass movement, however, it had to control people with rules.

SUCCESS. The Kingdom only works when it's lived out in small numbers. Once it becomes a mass movement, it becomes an ideology and loses its soul.
* MONEY. A movement that was founded on people renouncing all possessions got seduced into sanctifying the "right" to possessions.
* MORALITY. This is a huge point. Ellul totally gets that eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is judgment and is at the root of all sin (see chapter IV). The Kingdom revolution is a revolution of the Spirit -- which is the antithesis of living on the basis of ethics. He continually stresses that the New Testament and the early Jesus-movement "has no morality." Once Christianity became a ruling power and a successful mass movement, however, it had to control people with rules.
* RELIGION. The Jesus movement is anti-religious. But people crave religion. They have "religious needs" that the Jesus movement undermines. When the movement became a mass movement, it became a Christianized version of pagan religion.
* PRAGMATISM. The Kingdom was founded on the singular concern to be faithful to God, not a concern to fix the world. Once Christianity became successful, however, it wrongly assumed responsibility to rule the world and got practical. Since most of Jesus' teachings are impractical, they had to be set aside.
* VIOLENCE. Non-violence never seems practical, so it was among the things that needed to go. (Here Ellul curiously argues that the example of Islam was the main influence in making Christianity a violent religion, see Chapter V).
*
* POWER. The heart of the problem, Ellul argues, is that we fear the freedom the Kingdom offers us. It's the radical freedom of possessing nothing -- including power. We rather crave the security of things, of power, of rules, and of pretending we are free (e.g. by having a vote) when in fact we are in bondage. The Spirit was to set us free, but this requires relinquishing all these things.
It is the natural propensity of man to attempt to get everything figured out with finite reasoning. This is particularly true of man in Western civilization, following in the footsteps of Aristotelian reasoning, and seeking to explain all phenomena in the linear logic of direct cause and effect. Man wants to turn his observations into syllogisms and rational laws based on deductive inferences and inductive persuasion.
The philosophers and the theologians, in particular, have served as thought-mechanics to ratchet and wrench human thought into ideological constructs. They are not content to allow the conceptual-artists of poetry and drama and music to express ideas in abstraction. The logicians can allow for no paradoxes or antinomies which are against the law of reason. Their minds short-circuit whenever there are loose-ends of thought that cannot be tied-down into an outline of reasonable categories. Contrary to Eastern thinkers who are more prone to accept a both-and explanation rather than a polarized either-or explanation, the Western thinkers have a difficult time accepting the balance of a dialectic tension. Western philosophy and theology has thus tended to analyze, categorize, compartmentalize and systematize their thought into tightly formulated structures, propagated in academic disciplines such as systematic or dogmatic theology. They have a lust for understanding and certainty that cannot be satiated until they have conceived, created and constructed an ideological ...ism.
   Behind these narrow classifications of rational explanation is the quest to cast all thought into an explicable entity. They seem to think that all phenomena must be made conceptually comprehensible and coherent. It must be reduced and consolidated into an understandable unit, which can then be labeled with an ...ism. By this process of reductionism men have attempted to box up and package human thought, to nail it down in air-tight compartments, which can then be stereotyped and "pegged." Little do they seem to realize that air-tight compartments are stale, stagnant and static, chambers of death, tombs of tautology.
When the living reality and expression of the being and activity of the eternal, infinite God in His Son, Jesus Christ, is subjected to this simplification and summarization of rational explanation, He is completely diminished and transposed into a conceptual ...ism that in no way explains the divine reality of Christianity. God cannot be put in a box! When men attempt to do so, they have only devised an idea of God that is no larger than their cranial cavity, and who would want a god that small? Yet, evidencing the deification of their own human reason, men have continued since the Fall to attempt to reduce God to a unit of thought. In doing so they have accepted the original temptation they can "be like God," for they can then take the religious formulation of thought they have created in their minds, manipulate it in their own interest, and control the collective society of people thereby. Thus it is that religionism attempts to "play God" in the lives of people, and propagates a particular belief-system that becomes a distinctive ...ism of a sociological movement.

Christian Religion and its ...isms

Tasine Loc: Southwest US

I had no idea, rumi, that you are so very old. To have been around "in the beginning" must have been exciting. Given that is the ONLY way you could possibly know what Christianity was at that time, we must accept you are as old as you indicate.

Know what I think? I think you are a replica of my paternal grandfather that most everyone despised. He KNEW everything about Christianity, everything about the church, everything about God, and he was one sorry sob. Hateful as could be. I think I had him pegged. I told him that I believed he had been called to preach and had refused and was then resigned to spend the rest of his life preaching to atone for refusing the calling. He got so mad that I think I must have really hit the nail on the head. I KNOW he turned his entire family away from church. I think the LAST thing any of us wanted was to be anything like him. Are you like him? Trying desperately to atone for something you see as horrible?

Ve'hoe

What is the differnece in what you describe, and your "rationalized version" of christianity? Wherein you have spoken of concepts like "collective salvation" by means of "what we do for the least of these" etc etc etc

I once listened to a Croation pastor, through a translator, an in one lesson he said, "Be careful, not to "sophisticate" the bible,,, christ didnt need your help nor editing.

It isnt me who is weak...it is in your assumptions about your strength and verity, that you become "at risk" and I would dare say, wrong.

Ellul,,, may be right or just a new "trend" I tend to stay away from "movements" as well,, since the bible says the road to hell is broad (the size of I-5, both north and south lanes, and completely packed),,,, the road to heaven is a lonely and sparsely traveled goat path... the group on I-5 is laughing and jeering at the people on the goatpath calling them idiots and jeering at them... but who is wrong?

I am careful, who I let control my belief, study, and walk,,, as I have discovered in life in general, as well as war and other human endeavors, that not all people are kind nor do they care about the outcomes for others, not even all christians. And I dont follow,,, "Dobson" I dont follow "Haggard" I dont follow any human,, because you get too much opinion, and with a human there is always intent,.,, that intent, is to be "right" more than most anything.

robby1

The Bible say's we don't know as we ought to. We don't know what we will become, but we know we will be like Christ, because we will se him as He really is.

Ve'hoe

And that will remain a mystery, until we do. And most of what we "thought" will be wrong.

robby1

Absolutely Right.

cant beleve Loc: Planet Kolob

Amen!

rumitoid

There are a number of sources for how the Early Church worked, including letters from Early Church Fathers. Acts is another source. Then there are Roman Chronicles. We also have the writings of those considered heretics to the new State religion of Roman Catholicism, writing about the loss of many traditions. But mostly it is my eyewitness testimony that seals it.

robby1

don't worry about it. We were already judged before the foundation of the world. Some saved some going to hell. Read all about it in Gods word or not.

robby1

It doesn't matter what people are. It is God who saves.

Armageddun Loc: The show me state

Rich you are right.

To paraphrase Jesus, He said, some of you will swallow a camel but gag on a gnat.

This is nothing but a source of potential arguments and self-righteousness. A play on words. It is true parts of the Christian beliefs are becoming worldly, but that does not mean Christianity as a whole. One should never throw the baby out with the bath water.

We know who the stumbling block is, and we also know who the cornerstone is. His name is Jesus.

Why waste time in useless chatter? We should spend more time in describing the greatness of The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit.

robby1

When God made man and woman He said the two shall become one flesh.

rich boise Loc: Idaho

HUH??????????????????