Quote for the Day
"I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what
we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony." -- John 3:11
Libertarians, My Libertarians!
Cruel to be kind means that I love you . Because, while I think you are mistaken, your hearts are in the right place -- yes, even you, Silas -- unlike some people . This Breitbart fellow (discussed in the link above), by all appearances, deliberately doctored a video of Shirley Sherrod to make her remarks appear virulently racist, when they had, in fact, the opposite import. I heard that at a recent Austrian conference, some folks were talking about "Callahan's conservative turn." While that description is not entirely inaccurate, I must say that a lot of these people who today call themselves conservative give me the heebie-jeebies.
I think L. Ron Hubbard said something to that effect as well.
ReplyDeleteOh, wow. And once Hitler said something Jesus had said previously! So that's that.
DeleteOh Gene - so defensive you miss my point! The point is that a statement like this is only as you good as the guy that says it. If you can demonstrate something about the reliability of the guy making the claim, then we'd have something to talk about.
DeleteEveryone who has made comparable claims recently - L. Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith, Edgar Cayce - we universally consider charlatans. Why should we expect different from similar claims in an even less accessible period of history?
It seems like a reasonable question to me.
"If you can demonstrate something about the reliability of the guy making the claim, then we'd have something to talk about."
Delete*I* am making the claim.
"Everyone who has made comparable claims recently we universally consider charlatans."
Pope John Paul II, CS Lewis, JRR Tolkein, Sister Teresa, Dalai Lama, Dorothy Sayers, Alasdair MacIntyre, Karl Barth... I could, of course, go on and on with my list, but, oops, it turns out a very tiny percentage of people making such claims recently are universally considered charlatans!
No, none of those that you listed had ever witnessed what Jesus was claiming to have knowledge of in that passage. Not one of them. They believed it but they had not seen it.
DeleteWow, that's working hard at disbelief there, Mr. Daniel.
DeleteThere is a tremendous difference between the one who says "I've seen this, believe" and the one who says "I've seen this, come see for yourself".
ReplyDeleteYes, that is true, Daniel. Christ clearly said the second. (As a whole: I don't mean in this quote.)
ReplyDeleteGene, you know I love your posts on faith, but I think Daniel is being reasonable on this one. The particular quote you put there, is John saying, "I saw this with my own eyes, yet nobody believes me." So since that's the quote you chose to put up, Daniel's reaction is understandable.
ReplyDeleteYikes I even misunderstood the quotation Gene, so maybe Daniel did too. I didn't look carefully at the chapter and verse, so I thought this was John telling his readers that everything he had just laid out, was true because he saw this stuff firsthand.
ReplyDeleteSo if that's what Daniel thought this was too, then I hope his reaction makes more sense. It wasn't obvious from the quote itself that it was Jesus talking (though of course I'm embarrassed I didn't realize that right away, which I should have both from the quote but also from the chapter and verse).
Right, it's Jesus talking to Nicodemus, right? It's right before good ol' 3:16 so I figured that was him.
DeleteHe claims to have seen these things. Maybe he has. Do we know? I don't know. If you think you know I'd have serious doubts.
And actually I should correct that.
DeleteThis is John saying it, not Jesus.
John said Jesus said it. Is John being faithful to the historical Jesus? If so, did the historical Jesus have warrant to say it? We really have two layers to dig through. If you just like reading scripture, there's no need to dig. If you want to structure your life around the claim, it seems smart to investigate the claim (by both John and Jesus) a little more.
A God that endowed us with brains would expect nothing less, I think.