Shared Religious Thought

Tradition and Mercy

2008-05-09T08:14:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you all but I find that many of the traditional and ancient prayers were for mercy. The Jesus Prayer "Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." A prayer for mercy. I pray this prayer quite a bit, when I was walking to class I had a pocket devotional I would pray this pray while I walked. From the time it took me to get from my car to class I would have prayed the prayer about 100 times or more. It made me very aware of my everyday sins and how much I really do need mercy.

The same thing is true of praying the Rosary. "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed art the fruit of they womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now at the hour of our death." Mercy is not stated anywhere in the prayer, but the theme is mercy. Not for the Blessed Virgin to have mercy on us, but to ask her Son, our Lord, to have mercy on us.

Even in the Daily Prayer of the Anglican Church, the confession starts out "Most merciful God..." we are pleading for mercy from the beginning, by reminding ourselves that God is merciful. In one set of the Suffrages we say the lines, "Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy. Lord, show us your love and mercy;" And again in the General Thanksgiving we start with, "Almighty God, Father of all mercies," It is God's mercy that sustains us, it was mercy that allowed Adam and Eve to live on after they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is mercy that sent Jesus to die for us, that we might come back to God. It is mercy that keeps us going through out our lives today. And it is mercy that will bring us to the Throne of our Lord and God when we pass away. And it is mercy that will allow us to once again eat from the Tree of Life and live with God on the New Earth.

It seems that the prayer for mercy has been with us since the beginning of the Christian movement. Mercy is a very persent theme in the Catholic/General Epistles. We should join in our forerunners and beg for mercy from God.

CHRIST IS RISEN! ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA!!!

2008-03-22T19:47:00.000-07:00

(Well at least for us Western Christians) Just wanted to make a quick post saying happy Easter and stuff like that. So hope you have a good Easter and that your Lenten fasts were not too hard. For you Easterners, I pray that you may stay strong through your Lenten fasts.

Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels,
and let your trumpets shout Salvation
for the victory of our mighty King.

Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth,
bright with a glorious splendor,
for darkness has been vanquished by our eternal King.

Rejoice and be glad now, Mother Church,
and yet your holy courts, in radiant light,
resound with the praises of your people.

Help! Help! I'm Being Repressed!

2008-03-04T08:38:00.000-08:00

I hope that you all got that great line from Mighty Python and the Holy Grail. But it is true I am being repressed. You may remember a few posts ago when I was talking about the Christian discussion board, that I had found, bibleforums.com. Well I would like you all to know that as of now my account has been suspended. I can no longer post until I argue successfully that I was not promoting Roman Catholic Doctrines. Which I was not.

Let me set it up for you. There was a post in the "Bible Chat" forum called "Saints and Patron Saints." So I think this should be fun and also what is this doing here that should be in the "World Religions" section (this is where the banish all the posts that have to do with Catholic stuff, I know it is sad). So the person wants to know where they can find some stuff about the Saints and Patron Saints. So I help out by giving them a website that has all the Saints on it. I also go on to explain that it is not really praying to Saints but asking the Saints to pray for us; because someone had already misunderstood the idea. So this morning I got a message saying that my post has been deleted so that they will not have to move the thread to the "World Religions" section. Their reasoning is that I was promoting Catholic Doctrine. This is not correct because I started out the post saying that I was Anglican and I was going to explain the idea from an Anglican point of view. Then later this morning I got a message saying that they are suspending my account until we can discuss my promoting Catholic Doctrine.

Following is what I posted in the original thread. (Stars is the person who asked the question: "Is there a place I can learn about all saints and patron saints?")

"Stars,

Here is a list of Saints and Angels, it has a very long list of saints on the site. With a description of them. http://www.catholic.org/saints/stindex.php

I don't see asking the saints to pray for me as anything bad. A lot of Protestants misunderstand the concept. I know I did before I studied it and before I became Anglican. It is not praying to the saints it is only asking for the saint to pray for you as you pray for yourself also. A lot of people ask the saint to pray for them if they are having trouble with one certain problem. For instance if I was having trouble writing a paper then I might ask a saint who wrote a lot to pray for me because he/she dealt with writing a lot and knows better then I do what I need help with or why I am having problems. I like to think about it the same way that I would ask a friend or fellow Christian to pray for me. The more people I have praying for me the better. The saints just happen to be dead. But they have better access to the Father then we living people do because we still have to get through our sinful nature, whereas the saints who are in heaven have had then sinful natures taken away from them because they are in heaven in the presence of God and he can not have sin anywhere near him.

I hope that makes some sense. "

I go into the explanation because of this post: "Stars, honestly a saint is a born again child of God and a patron saint is a fantasy. There is a RCC dogma (teachings) that say you can pray to your patron saint and they will make intercession for you, but that just plumb ain't true. We only have and need one advocate and that's Christ Jesus. 1st John 2:1 My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: 2:2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world."

So later you will find a post on here that will be an allegory about bibleforums.com and some other stuff. It should be pretty fun or funny, whatever.

So I think I will be kicked off of the board. Which really it took longer then I thought it would have. So I would not suggest posting on this forum unless you are uber-Protestant, or can get along with them, really, really well.

Jesse

What Kind of Heretic Are You?

2008-02-25T14:37:00.001-08:00

Hey found this neat little survey thought we might all get a kick out of it.

Survey

I am 100% Chalcedon Compliant, in other words I am not a heretic in any way shape or form from what the quiz says. However it did not ask about a lot of areas only a few so I might be a heretic in some other area. But you can rest assured knowing that I have been church approved since 451 AD. Other areas in the quiz I am 67% Monophysitism, 58% Modalism, 33% Adoptionist, Nestorianism, and Pelagiansim, 25% Monarchianism and Apollanarian, 8% Donatism, and 0% Albigensianism, Ariansim, Socinianism, Docetism, and Gnosticism.

So let me ask you what kind of heretic are you? Take the quiz and post your results in the comments.

Personhood

2008-02-21T12:06:00.000-08:00

This discussion that came up in a discussion group I'm in, and so I thought I'd post here as well. The issue deals with when a person becomes a person in general. What we have kinda concluded there is that when a human is embodied with a soul from/by God, then it becomes a person. Or: body + soul = person. Being Christians, we also all agreed that God is the one implants the soul into the body (indicated by the 'from/by' above). Two questions then emerge:

1) When does this take place?
2) Does this always happen? (This was my own question.)

There have been several issues at stake with (1). One lady has posted Psalm 51:5 and Jer 1:5 as precedence for personhood beginning at conception. Those texts:

Psa. 51:5 (KJV) Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Jer. 1:5 (WEB) Before I formed you in the belly I knew you, and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you...

I then replied that these are great precedents, but logically, precedents can (and do) get broken. Which brought another question:

1b) Does God follow the same precedent every time?

So before I give all my thoughts, I'll let a few people chime in.

Christian Forum

2008-02-16T20:05:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone, I know that some of us like to post on boards and forums. So I thought I would make a post about it. I will post a link to it over on the links tab. If you all get on there I don't think it will be too hard to spot me on there, but you can't my screen name is jtalexanderiv. Hope you all at least check it out. The sight is http://bibleforums.org/forum/

Grace and Peace,
Jesse

Our sufferings

2008-01-30T11:10:00.000-08:00

Col 1:24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you and I am filling up what is still lacking of the inflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body, which is the church. (own translation)

Here's an interesting verse to be sure, particularly the part of "what is still lacking of the inflictions of Christ." Is this supposed to be arguing for the incomplete accomplishment of the atonement upon the cross? Is Paul suggesting that we, as individuals, must contribute to the atonement by filling a alloted portion of suffering prepared for us? This has puzzled scholars and theologians alike, and a quick look into the commentaries will show that many people do not know what to do with this verse.

I will offer one helpful suggestion. While Christ's accomplishment on the cross was sufficient for its own purposes, it did not accomplish God's total plan. God's total plan was for the formation of the church, the collection of the saints. Christ's sacrifice makes this possible, but it is only through the sufferings of individual Christians that this comes about. Paul as a missionary fills up this alloted amount of suffering to fulfill the complete plan of God.

I think several points come from this. Any system of theology that suggests that Christ's sufferings were all that were needed for salvation should be considered wrong. Obviously there is a portion of sufferings reserved for Christians who take the gospel to others. This is the other point, which I will form as a question. Is every Christian individual expected to contribute to this allotment of suffering, or only certain ones that like Paul, have been called to such work? Obviously we are called to die to ourselves, so that Christ might live in us, so that we might indeed truly live, but this does not involve the type of suffering that Paul has in mind here. Although I think an argument for only the suffering of certain individuals can be made here, I'll leave it for discussion.

Maryology Cont.

2008-01-26T05:10:00.000-08:00

While I definitely don't believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary, there can clearly be a case made for it assuming that James is not a blood relative of Jesus. If one were to see Joseph as a widower who already had children who needed a mother, the concept of a virgin with a old impotent man is not something hard to see. Of course this is the case in the Gospel of James.

Of course the Gospel of James opens up the whole can of worms about Mary being a sinless being who runs faster than a speeding bullet, jumps tall buildings in a single bound, flies through the air, and has both heat/x-ray vision. Of course this Mary becomes powerless when exposed to genitalia. But regardless, the concept of perpetual virginity is not a far reach and deserves some thought.

Oh and as for Enoch I don't know what to say, Elijah has to come back so apparently you can't escape death. That said since Enoch did not die, he was probably taken and will likely get to have the same fun that Elijah gets to.

Peace
-Yates

Does anyone else find it ironic that churches have crosses hanging while they wait for Jesus to return? That doesn't seem very welcoming to me.

Maryology

2008-01-18T07:54:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, Kathrine and I were talking about this some last night. We mainly stayed to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, for those of you who do not know it is the idea that Mary was conceived without original sin. That when her parents had sex she was somehow filled with divine grace and saved from original sin. Some go so far as to say that she never sinned, I think that most of us would agree that his is an overstatement. I do not have too much of a problem with the idea of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. She was saved from original; however, this does not mean that she was saved from the other types of sin the St. Augustine describes. Thus, I believe that she did sin in her life, she was still held captive by sin like the rest of us, and that she had some point broke Torah.

I do not believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary. Since, I believe that James was the actual brother of Jesus and that he had other brothers and sisters. Also to quote Kevin Smith "to believe a married couple never got down is just plain gullibility." I know the arguments that people make that the word used does not have to mean brother or sister but just relative. But that is letting your Theology shape the Text instead of the Text shape your Theology. So what are your thoughts.

Another issue that I would like to bring up is the idea of the Assumption of Mary. The idea that Mary was taken up to heaven, some believe before she died and some after. I could possibly be convinced that she might have been assumed after her death; but I do not thing I could believe she was taken before her death. The Catholic doctrine states that Mary is in heaven both body and soul. Seeing as how I do not believe that people go directly to heaven when they die, if they even go there at all, I have a hard time believing the doctrine. I can see that this is a special case like Elijah and Enoch, if Enoch was really taken. But, if Mary was assumed after she died then that would mean that once she got to heaven she was possibly given some sort of special resurrection. Since, I think everyone will be resurrected at one point, except Christ since he has already received it, being the first born among many brothers (and sisters), but the texts seem to say that this will be a one time event. However, if Mary was assumed before her death then I could see her being in heaven both body and soul. But that means that she was sinless with some people believe but I have already stated that I do believe this. Maybe you all know some stuff that I do not and could help me out here. I look forward to some discussion on this topic.

Peace
Jesse T. Alexander IV

New Links and Other stuff

2008-01-09T14:09:00.001-08:00

Well if you look over at the lovely sidebar then you will find a few new links. Some of them are Podcasts that I thought you all would be interested to hear/read/see. The other link, Old Testament as Literature, is the blog that my OT as Lit. class has; people will be posting a lot of comments on there and I thought it might lead to some interesting topics that we could discuss here. Keep in mind that most of these people do not have the experience that we have had nor also that these are assignments for them so they may not go as deep as some of us do. We (in the class) only had to do about 400-500 word posts. So other then that I don't really have much else to post about or any big questions to ask.

But if you would like we can talk about one thing that came up on the Theology Rocks board on Facebook. It was did 2nd Temple Judaism believe in a mainly grace based or works based (I am hesitant to say salvation) so I will say system of justification? So you all can give your thoughts, I look forward to your answers.

Peace and Grace
Jesse

Quick Thought

2007-11-08T18:07:00.000-08:00

Hey just had a quick thought I know it has nothing to do with the blog really but it might be kinda fun to think about. Now that Beowulf is becoming a movie I was in a book store tonight and saw some promos for the books. I wonder how many high school students did not want or would not have wanted to read the book will now read it because there is a movie coming out about it?

I was also looking in the Mythology/Folklore section and could not find any Akkadian mythology. Which I thought was disappointing because I would have really like to have some so I could read about Gilgamesh and stuff. (Which I thing would make a great movie by the way, but no one knows about him so I doubt they will make a movie about it.) But there was a lot of Greek and Celtic mythology and stuff like that. Since I have been at UK I see that they have some interesting classes in the Classics Department about mythology and stuff like that which I had time to take or better that they had them at Western so I could have taken them there. I mean why does Western not have a Classics department, that way we could take Greek every year and Latin if they wanted it.

Oh well I digress and leave you with my random thoughts, I hope you enjoyed them.

Authority

2007-11-06T12:46:00.000-08:00

Well since we now have some more people on here I think we can get a pretty good spectrum of responses. So here is the question: Is the Bible the end all authority for Christians? In other words should/could Christians use other sources for authority other then the Bible? Such as the writings of the Early Church Fathers, Church tradition, Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books, or maybe there own common sense. I know of a few situations in which the Canonical Bible is silent and the Church has had to rely on outside sources. Such as Infant Baptism, the sacrament of confirmation, and the existence of monks. So I am asking what are you thoughts on the matter is the Bible the end all of authority or should we look to some other sources for authority also. And please defend your answer or tell why you think what you do.

Since it is not really working well that people are coming back to the blog to post what they think later on I will go ahead and post what I think. I think that the Bible is not the end all authority for Christians. I do not think that there is an end all authority for Christians. One example that might help is that I would assume that some early Jews thought that the Torah was the end all authority for them but then all these prophets kept coming up and giving them messages from God. Granted they went along with the message that the Torah had given. But they also gave new instructions to the people and helped to clarify the Torah. We have people now a days telling us new things and how we should live. I would be slow to put them in the same category or profession as the former prophets but I would say that there job is along the same line as the prophets. In that they help to build on what Scriptures say. For instance there are people writing books and giving speeches on how to live as a Christian in a modern world. (I know it is not the best example but it is the only one I could come up with off the top of my head.)

Also a lot of the New Testament are letters to churches that are screwing up. I am pretty sure that Paul, if he had known that this letters would later be collected and called Scripture, would have given us a lot more detail on his theology and the role of women in the Church. And all that other stuff that people want Paul to write about rather then calling some guy out for sleeping with his stepmother. Alas we don't have that, so did the authors of the New Testament letters really mean for there letters to be read by us and base our churches on them? I seriously doubt most of them did otherwise why would we have 2 and 3 John? Now the Gospels on the other hand I believe that they were meant to be read by many people since they were written a little later and the authors wanted to preserve the stories and oral traditions about the life of Jesus. Sorry I kinda got off on a tangent there but I think it is a good tangent and you can also talk about what you think about the stuff above in your responses.

So yes I believe that Christians can and should use sources other then the Bible for authority. I think that even now we can go to our priests, pastors, and ministers for authority. I mean that is why their there is it not? They are meant to lead us in the faith. So we look to them as an authority figure in the church and if they are good then there advice will come from the Bible, the Early Church, and there own experience or common sense. I mean we do not need the Paul telling us that we should not sleep with our stepmother or stepfather (I want to be gender inclusive here). As he says even the Pagans know that is wrong!

Alright, I think I am done here and now it is time for homework. I await your responses.

Did Jesus Have Original Sin?

2007-10-24T13:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, quite random I know, but through discussion on theology boards, this question came up. Now the guy I was discussing it with denies original sin altogether. Rather than try to format my post extensively, I figured an exert from one point would be more appropriate. And so my answer to the specific question:

imo... no. From conception, Jesus was void from any desire for self-indepenence from God. Whereas he was aware that such an option did exist, he was in a position much like Adam's (and so the similarities yet distinction that Paul makes between them is quite appropriate), but this just goes to show his sentience and ability to reason and choose I would think. If he was able to actually sin... well thats another matter of course. ;) But the first instinct for any human is to sin (original sin), whereas the first instinct for Jesus was total dependence upon God.

If you want to ask what makes Jesus so special as not have original sin... well, he IS God you know. That, and going back to his comparison to Adam, he really was humanities second chance. All salvation that would be possible would have to come through him, so a clean slate would be needed I would think for it to be- in a sense- fair. After all, if Jesus had inhereted original sin from Mary, then that would be like asking any one of us to go against our nature (self-reliance). Now unless your Pelagius (and a heretic of course) this is impossible, so believing Jesus was without original sin is crucial to the equation, if nothing else.

How Young is Too Young

2007-10-14T11:59:00.000-07:00

I thought this might be a good thing to discuss while people make their mind up about the soul and all that goes along with it. I will say more about this video after I hear from some of you.

I went on yahoo.com this morning to check my e-mail and saw this video on the homepage. Check out the video here. It is a four minute video about young preachers. One child is seven years old, the other is nine. Is this too young to be preaching. From what the video shows it seems that these kids at least somewhat know what they are talking about. I am going to try not too outright criticize these kids and their parents. But I really don’t think that these kids should be preaching. I mean really let the kids be kids for a while and then if they want to preach they can go to seminary and learn about the religion, then preach all they want. The kids say that they are the ones that want to do this, I am sure they really do want to, but I also think that adults may be pushing them a bit. It also kinda reminded me of Jesus Camp also, if you have not seen this movie yet you should. If you have a cheap video store around which I know you all in Bowling Green do, More Then Video, go see if they have it.

Grace and Peace to you.

The Soul of the Matter

2007-10-10T22:12:00.000-07:00

Well I'll get this rolling. It seems to me that much is made about a person's soul. Whether its the belief that the soul is what goes to heaven/hell or the problem of an innate immortality. Thinking about what makes us up, especially our personality, I believe is important for no other reason than no other reason but to better understand the reasons that God sees to love us so much.

-What support, if any, is there for an innate immortality for a soul?
-How important is the concept of the soul for understanding who we are?
-What exactly is a soul?
-Discuss a tentative definition that I will throw out: The individual personification of the breath of God.

I will comment more after a couple of other's thoughts.

Introductions

2007-10-06T11:44:00.000-07:00

Hey authors, I thought that it would be nice if we all kinda gave a brief introduction to ourselves.

So I am Jesse. I am spending a year at the University of Kentucky working on Greek and Hebrew mainly. I have a B.A. in Religious Studies from Western Kentucky University. Next year I plan on going to grad school. I want to study 2nd Temple Judaism. I am not sure what book or books I want to study during this period. I want to study the Letter to the Hebrews in Ph.D. studies. So I will mainly post on New Testament, 2nd Temple Judaism, and maybe some general Judaism stuff. Other then that I am about to be confirmed in the Anglican Church.

Alright the rest of the authors can either edit this post and put theres in here or start a new post.

What is this Blog?

2007-10-06T07:07:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone that will be checking out this blog or writing on it. I just thought I would let everyone know why this blog is here. The main reason is because I know that many people have trouble keeping their blogs up to date. I am one of those people. Between class, studying, and my other activities I know that I rarely have time to sit down and think about things that I want to write or post about. So I figured if we had more authors then we would get more posts. This is really meant to be a kind of discussion. One person will post something and hopefully that will cause discussion or ideas from the other authors. Mainly it will be a place to bounce ideas around. I want it to mainly be about religion and religious studies. I know that most of the authors on here will have had a major or minor in Religious Studies, taken some classes in this field, or know about religion. However this is not just for scholarly ideas or research or topics. We can discuss anything, I would like to keep it pretty close to religion. But I know that we will also post about stuff that is happening in our lives too.

I think that is a pretty good introduction to the blog. If you (who ever you are) are reading this and you want to be an author, you can contact any of the authors and we will consider it. You should however post a few comments or send an e-mail showing that you do know about religion in some way.

Also note that this blog is not just about Christianity any religion can and should be discussed. I know that others know a lot more about other religions then I do. Just wanted everyone to realize that they can talk about any religion not just Christianity.