Response

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Elastico’s comment toWhy I write needs a response.

Religions are not rival parties. They are various types or brands of spirituality, which use various languages to express the reality we call God. Religions offer a variety of images to express this spiritual reality but, at their core, they have a common purpose—to bind or connect humanity with Spirit.
Our ways of imagining Spirit may vary, but we do not have to compete. Trying to best each other only hurts us all. Let’s respect each other’s differences and cooperate for the good of all.

Kathleen’s facts are correct.

Florian is troubled by my inclusive interpretation of Christian doctrine, unfamiliar to him and, to him, wrong. (By the way, I take pains to point out that portrayals of the historical Jesus are educated guesses.)
I’ll let readers decide whether Florian and the more bitter comments of Elastico accurately describe my language and my evidence in God Is Not Three Guys in the Sky, but I urge all to distinguish between dissent and insult, between disagreement and lack of respect.
Jeanette

Comments

Anonymous said…
You call for respect and then label basic Christian beliefs (as the divinty of Christ, etc.) a myth. You dismiss a poster with you last line--"the power of myth". You throw these punches into the face of believers and then call for mutual understandng. You deliver your blows with warm fuzzies and ask why we can't all get along. Also, you don't come across as committed to what you preach and to what you think you have discovered as the truth, the reality of exisence. The simple point is you don't believe in the Eucharistic presence, no doubt think the Church is sexist with all those male prists saying the Mass and making all those rules, and yet you show up at a gathering you don't believe in. True to the age, you redefine the gathering for yourselfnot for what the instituion intended. You create your own bliss out of it. It is what "I" get out of it. What "I" want to make it. Going to Mass is very peculiar behavior for someone who implies she has insight and objectivity into a totally different reality than what is being clebrated. You are being a false witness to the worshipers and to yourself and to what you write. (No need to post this on the blog. Just something to chew on while you are sitting at the next Mass---a communal celebration of myth.)
February 29, 2008 at 5:56 AM
Anonymous said…
One of Kathleen's facts is not quite correct. She says that Emperor Constantine established many of our "beliefs" at Nicea. First of all, I don't think Constantine established anything, the Nicene Council did. There was only one principle belief that I know of that was established at that council: the divinity of Jesus. And it was not so much established as solemnly affirmed. It was already established in the first century as the New Testament clearly indicates. We do not continue to accept it without question, as Kathleen says. The results of the Nicene Council have been studied for centuries. I as well as other Christians throughout the centuries conclude that the council reached the correct interpretation of the New Testament.

The Nicene Council was not as critical as some make it out to be.
Yet, people still spread around the idea that there is something to the Da Vinci Code claim that Christians somehow really didn't believe in the divinity of Jesus until the Council of Nicea. That is an utter lie.

-Florian
February 29, 2008 at 12:35 PM
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