Group Discussion Continued
We began the discussion below by looking at the Kingdom of God. In the comments posted under that discussion, different views about this concept emerged. Some of us felt that the Kingdom of God is represented here on earth by following what Jesus taught as a way of life, accomplishing God's will on earth. Some felt that the Kingdom of God was accomplished through salvation and, therefore, eternal life with God in heaven. This led to a discussion about postmodernism and the Emerging Church.
I consider myself to be part of the Emerging Church, and explained that we're really all just a bunch of different groups trying to work together and build on our similarities, despite the fact that we also have differences. We want to hold on to our differences, but we also want to work toward the good that is found in our similarities. Our goal, (in my opinion) is mostly about having a conversation about who God is, and how we can act to make this world a better place, based on Jesus' life teachings.
Both my oldest sister, and an Air Force Chaplain who had joined the discussion explained the history of postmodern thought and how it was formed when "WWI made (everyone) take stock of what they were teaching as the kingdom seemed to be coming apart a lot faster than it was being built" (Chaplain). Because of these tragic historical instances, people began to realize their idea of who God was was wrong, so they started searching to find where they went wrong and to learn more about who God really is. So, Postmodernism was born "in rejection of the god of (people's) imaginations, which was caused by 1) a lack of unification in the church, 2) bad training and a bad explanation of substitutionary atonement, 3) a misunderstanding of the real message of the Bible, which caused us to 4) shy away from the biblically accurate terms and descriptions and explanations" (older sister).
Then, my "middle" sister joined the discussion by bringing up a television show she had recently watched about how the books of the Bible were selected. She "was surprised about the process and criteria used to select the books, but even more surprised about where the rejected books went," mentioning that she thought those books may have been adopted by other religions. I had heard these ideas as well and was interested to hear that my oldest sister has been researching the original documents of the bible herself (she is a very ambitious researcher).
And this leads back to Postmodernism and a search for the true God, in a sense. . .If people feel there is something missing or wrong in the current/most popular line of thinking, they're going to start searching.
So, that's where we are at in our discussion. It's been interesting, and fun so far. What further thoughts or input does everyone have?
I consider myself to be part of the Emerging Church, and explained that we're really all just a bunch of different groups trying to work together and build on our similarities, despite the fact that we also have differences. We want to hold on to our differences, but we also want to work toward the good that is found in our similarities. Our goal, (in my opinion) is mostly about having a conversation about who God is, and how we can act to make this world a better place, based on Jesus' life teachings.
Both my oldest sister, and an Air Force Chaplain who had joined the discussion explained the history of postmodern thought and how it was formed when "WWI made (everyone) take stock of what they were teaching as the kingdom seemed to be coming apart a lot faster than it was being built" (Chaplain). Because of these tragic historical instances, people began to realize their idea of who God was was wrong, so they started searching to find where they went wrong and to learn more about who God really is. So, Postmodernism was born "in rejection of the god of (people's) imaginations, which was caused by 1) a lack of unification in the church, 2) bad training and a bad explanation of substitutionary atonement, 3) a misunderstanding of the real message of the Bible, which caused us to 4) shy away from the biblically accurate terms and descriptions and explanations" (older sister).
Then, my "middle" sister joined the discussion by bringing up a television show she had recently watched about how the books of the Bible were selected. She "was surprised about the process and criteria used to select the books, but even more surprised about where the rejected books went," mentioning that she thought those books may have been adopted by other religions. I had heard these ideas as well and was interested to hear that my oldest sister has been researching the original documents of the bible herself (she is a very ambitious researcher).
And this leads back to Postmodernism and a search for the true God, in a sense. . .If people feel there is something missing or wrong in the current/most popular line of thinking, they're going to start searching.
So, that's where we are at in our discussion. It's been interesting, and fun so far. What further thoughts or input does everyone have?
posted by Danielle | 10:05 AM
8 Comments:
I have been studying this for the past 5 years, as time allows me to study. My focus is cyclical because during our home school process, the freshman and sophomore year of high school we spend studying and learning about the time period of ancient history on up to and through the Reformation. We study and examine all of the historical sources together. Therefore, in our cycle, I am about to begin going through all of this again with Katherine, which gives me a refresher, too. That fact, and the space limitations here, only allow me to give you the highlights (which may be all you want).
The book Eusebius: The Church History translated by Paul L. Maier really is the most helpful in examining the process because the first three centuries of the church WAS the process of deciding, from everything that was being written, what exactly made for scripture. I know The DaVinci Code represents the selection process as taking place at the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.), but this is a distortion. The selection had already taken place throughout the course of the first two centuries, as the church weighed and sifted everything that was being written—and a LOT was being written. No edict was issued from Nicea as to what comprised scripture—it was more of a theological conference for a creed accurately stating the stance of the church on the Deity of Christ. About one hundred fifty years later another council met at Chalcedon to further define the Deity of Christ. And councils continued and do continue to meet. Our list of books of the New Testament actually comes from a personal letter one pastor was writing to another several decades after Nicea, a scrap of which survives. He was recording a list of the books which had been agreed upon for 100 – 200 years.
You have to keep in mind how very different the church was in the first three centuries from how it is now. People were widely separated because of how difficult travel was, even though the Roman roads and ships were excellent for the time. Letters by apostles and people writing in association with them that were written were specific to groups of people they addressed, while also having application to the entire church. However, the entire church didn’t actually receive each individual letter. The letter was read aloud, to the people to whom it was addressed, and those who could afford to make copies or have a scribe make them a copy wrote and copied these letters. These copies were circulated.
Therefore, spelling and copywork type errors exist in all these copies, as you would expect. I have been in an experiment where the teacher read out a long New Testament passage and we all copied as he read. We then turned in our copies and the same types of errors of copying were found as are found in these early copies—words run together, spelling, dropped words, etc. By comparing the many copies we easily come at what the original said.
Tens of thousands of copies of each letter or gospel that came to a church, in all of the various locations, were made of the ones which were deemed to be authentically inspired by God—this is why we have so many abundant original copies of these. People copied the letters and copied copies and sent them by courier to other churches, who made copies, etc. Authorship by an apostle, or by one working with him, being one of the criteria, but not the only one—apostles of the first century included a bigger group than we usually think of, as about 15-16 men are listed as such in the New Testament. The ones which were not written by an apostle, or by one directly associated with and under the direction of an apostle, and/or not deemed as being God-inspired (perhaps just a letter from one pastor to another of no significance to the entire church, or from one pastor to a church, or not by an apostle, or from someone not in agreement with what the apostle had written in the letter) were not copied as much at all. If you can only afford limited parchment, you save it for the important stuff—the one right from the apostle.
When you read these other documents that weren’t copied much because they didn’t meet the criteria, it is similar to reading a Christian or Christian-related book today. The ideas are interesting and you learn a lot, but there is always a glaring factor that reveals it is not God-inspired. For instance, I really like Clement of Rome’s letter to the Corinthians and there is a lot to learn from it, but some errors of fact concerning a local legend (the phoenix) in the letter show this is not a God-inspired letter, for instance. Most of the Gnostic documents from the Nag Hammadi findings read like they were written by someone on a bad LSD trip. When you study the culture of the Greeks in which all of these people are steeped, you see these Gnostic writings are much influenced by the Mysteries of Eleusis, a temple cult in Greece, and, hence, not Christian doctrine but are an attempt to make Christianity be about Greek doctrine pertaining to their deities. It very apparent they were not God-inspired. Though far out to read!
This is why so few fragments of these other documents survive, while we have tens of thousands of the copies of the ones deemed God-inspired, and why we just found some fairly recently, along with the Dead Sea Scrolls—the Nag Hammadi finding near Alexandria. Alexandria, Egypt was like the Harvard or Cambridge of the age—the best library of documents of all sorts in the entire world was kept there. The conditions were dry and this kept parchments well preserved. Many intellectuals gathered there. And, just like Harvard or Cambridge today, you would find documents of everything—agreed upon orthodox Christian writings on down to everything in opposition.
Eusebius is fascinating to read because you see this selection process at work as pastors agree and disagree over documents, and you learn how they came to agreement. The gospels and Acts were immediately accepted—approximately written 45 – 65 A.D. Mark is believed to be the earliest gospel written first (45 A.D.)—dictated by the apostle Peter to John Mark—the same John Mark (also just called Mark) you read about in Acts and the epistles in those footnotes at the end of the letters. It is probably the mysterious Q you hear about, not some other missing document. Matthew & Luke use Mark as a source and probably wrote ten years later, but because they are eyewitness accounts they differ in perspective. Matthew being the apostle Matthew, though some scholars try to make it out as otherwise, the historical record is certain. Luke being the physician who traveled with Paul and whom you also read about in Acts. Luke’s gospel is the most Greek/Gentile in nature because he was not a Jew and his gospel was written after extensive research from many, many eyewitnesses to Christ’s ministry and life. Throughout the book of Acts, also written by Luke, the different letters were written by Paul to various churches. You discern this through examining each of these letters and the circumstances that led to the writing of the letter in Acts. John wrote his gospel much later in the century with the purpose in mind of explaining how we know Jesus in God in human flesh, since the Deity of Christ was the fact that had to be settled, and he also wanted to tell the events the others had not included in their accounts—Jesus’ early ministry, for instance. John’s other writings were written around this time, too: 85 – 95 A.D. Both John and Paul got writing done because they were in prison for being part of the “cult” of Christianity. Christianity being considered a cult because Christians did not worship Roman gods, but claimed there was one God, and worshiped him—an unknown God to the Romans.
Anyway, it eventually became necessary to have a list of which of the documents were authored by apostles and their associates, and were God-inspired because there were so very many letters and documents out there, and centuries were passing. The few letters who don’t have immediately evident authorship were disputed into the 100s, the ones that the entire church agreed on were the bulk of the New Testament—especially the four gospels and Acts--and were already settled in the first century. The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke (and later John), and Acts immediately accepted, and the other gospels floating around were immediately recognized as not God-inspired because all of these people, the authors, were still living and could verify. No official list was made that had official church sanction until centuries later because it was commonly agreed on fairly early. Everybody at the time knew these other documents did not have the significance that the God-inspired documents had. For instance, while I like my book by John Piper, I do not consider his words to have the weight of scripture, though he may be talking about scripture. Same thing then. Some of the epistles took longer to agree on due to limited geographical availability--one region of the church had the letter, not the others.
This is the other reason it was necessary to have the list of authentic documents. Not all churches had access to all the documents—remember the distance apart and the means of copying and that the Roman empire went from Judea to Britain by the mid-100s. If you only have part of the New Testament, you don’t have the whole story and your doctrines and beliefs can easily tilt off in a direction that ends up not being in balance with the counsel of the whole. For instance, keep our two parents in your mind. Imagine if you only got counsel from one and never from the other. In fact, you don’t even know one of them at all. You would be a far different person, only having received the counsel of one, not the counsel of the whole (both of them). Another for instance, if you read Matthew’s gospel only you get a very Jewish centered gospel, whereas if you read Luke’s you get a very Gentile centered gospel. Reading both lets you see that the gospel is for the entire world—not Jews only, but every one else, too. What Paul advises the Corinthians might not be a problem to the Philippians because they don’t have the priestesses of Delphi in such close proximity influencing their worship services since everyone in Corinth grew up steeped in those practices, but if you don’t have that letter to the Corinthians you don’t have the most extensive section teaching specifically about the proper use of spiritual gifts in the church, and about settling disputes in the church.
This is really long, but is very, very much condensed from what I could go on and on and say. But, sums up in a brief, simple way (hopefully :) ) the selection process and how we arrived at what we’ve got. It has been fascinating for me to study these cultures and this history, and to read these documents, and I am really, really glad I did it. Thanks for asking. If you want to ask me any questions about any of these specifics, or feel I've left out anything you wonder about, or wonder about anything that happened later, just let me know, and I'll see if I can address that. Studying this has been the best thing I have ever done academically, and has solidified my confidence in the bible.
Melinda
Wow! I'm going to have to read this more than once to take it all in! Thank you for that very interesting history lesson! :)
Interesting...I didn't realize this little comment box would let you type so much...I guess I need to explore the limits of this communication tool a little better :) Like Dani, I will probably have to read this again.
As a side note...you referenced the DaVinci Code. I personally don't know anyone believes the DaVinci Code book was factual. Do you really know people that believed it vs thinking it just probed some interesting thoughts? I loved the book by the way....
Now back on topic. From what you have written and from the show. I felt that the summarization of how the books were selected went something like this:
1) age of the book or document - ie..had it survived the test of time (probably to your point about the number of times the document was copied and how far it had traveled given the constraints and whether or not the book was written in close proximity of the event or with a long lag.)
2) popularity and acceptance of the message (your comment on LSD trip)
3) how much time did the "selectors" want to dedicate to a certain topic and it's overall relevance. Example: They mentioned a Book of Eve (I think that was right anyway, other books on the beginning). They decided they didn't want to spend more than 1 book on the beginning so they could get on with the story.
4) And yes, just what felt like general marketing. leaving out stories that didn't fit the general message they wanted to send...example: they said there were books about Jesus youth. There is obviously a huge gap in the bible related to age. They said most of the books on Jesus youth were rejected for various reasons - and several have made their way into the Coran (Qu'ran)..
Did this capture it or did I miss a summary item or do you disagree with a summarization point?
Good for you for studying so much on this. I am less sturctured in my research apporach....now I am reading about native american believe systems (mainly Cherokee - mainly women. The focus was on "harmony" with nature etc. Their whole system...spiritual, daily etc. revolved around keeping a balance with the earth, animals and each other. They used nature to model their spiritual rituals etc. They saw themselves as equals to nature not as destroyers of nature.
So, ther you go.. I tested the limits of this little box... :) Very flexible it is....take care
Melodie
I need to clarify that I am talking about the books of the New Testament, not the Old Testament. That is the process with which I am familiar, and which I have studied. The most important criteria in that process is a sub-point you don't mention: being able to verify that the author is an apostle, or someone writing under the authority and/or direction or with the assistance of an apostle, and having copies of those documents which survived beyond the first century (not all letters by apostles did). Also, age of the book wasn't necessarily relevant since most of the New Testament was verified and accepted while the authors and/or close associates of the authors were still alive in the first century and into the early 100s. Popularity, acceptance of the message, "marketing" (hardly possible at that period of time), and whether or not that topic had already been covered had nothing to do with the criteria either. Some of the writings of the New Testament are hard teachings that make you very uncomfortable--hardly the popular message you'd choose since many people were getting killed and losing their property for believing the contents of the material.
If all of those points were what the History channel was saying they are presenting a very biased message without much historical support, which is unfortunate. Most people are gullible and believe what they hear on TV, or read. Which is why, yes, I do know people who didn't know enough about the actual writing of the New Testament that they actually believed the message of the book. You knew the book was fiction and kept that in mind as you read--I know you're an investigative person. You would probably enjoy reading Eusebius' history so you can draw your own conclusions from a primary source.
Melinda
Danielle, I would like very much if you would considering posting on here those quotes you put on the family website. And, if you would comment on them. Everybody else is doing a lot of commenting, and I really would like to hear what you think as well. I wonder if vocabulary, or unfamiliar terms and ways of putting things, are what is causing so much confusion about the emergent writers.
Melinda
I sort of figured it out half-way through that you were talking about the New Testament.
I will post the comments from the myfamily.com discussion and state my thoughts about them later this evening when Sean goes to work. This is my cleaning day, and I'm also working on arrangements for where we'll live when we move (yeah!). :)
Yeah, I wasn't very clear about that. The topic of the Old Testament would be another entire long explanation. :\ The best point to make about it that is brief is that Jesus used its words, quoted it, read aloud from it during His ministry, and explained it more so we could comprehend it more fully. I trust His endorsement.
I also wasn't very clear about which "book" I was saying that Melodie, unlike others, understood to be fiction--that would be The DaVinci Code.
I have been so engrossed in this discussion that my normal activities have sometimes ground to a halt. I have been trying to get the stuff done first that I have to do before I even log on. That helps somewhat. So, in the spirit of cleaning the house--I say good bye and look forward to reading your comments later.
Melinda
Danielle, I have tears in my eyes as I read through these comments from all of you, my precious family. I am so touched by the love I sense in each comment! I am so happy to call you three girls my precious nieces and to call your momma my sweet sister!
Melodie, I LOVED that beautiful memory you shared with all of us! How precious! Thank you!!!
Danielle, back to your post, I cannot tell you how happy I am that you have so VERY diligently sought for truth. When I saw from your postings that you were so very honestly seeking for truth about God, I felt so thankful, for I knew you would find truth. That is because I very much believe the promise of Jesus that when you ask (as you said you did) you will receive, when you seek you will find, and when you knock the door will be opened. Danielle, I am so glad you have been seeking for what you could believe instead of just accepting someone else's creed. This way, your belief system is truly yours! It's not just what you borrowed from someone else.
Danielle, like you, I think there is something in each one of those definitions that gives us another aspect of why Jesus gave His life for us. Just the very fact that it works that way is a reminder of how God has created us each one as a unique person and given us each a different piece to add to the puzzle. It's another reason why we need to listen to one another, I believe.
So, in summation, Danielle, I thank you for just being you and being so transparent in your sharing! We can and will all benefit from that! I also want to thank you all as Danielle's family for the love I see that you each have in your hearts. I really thank God for the very beautiful work I am seeing Him do in each one of you, as you each are His unique creation, being yourselves and doing it very well! I just love you all!
I will add this to those of you who are not related to Danielle: I apologize for the "family love" talk. Thanks for understanding!
Love,
Aunt Jackie
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