“Good question for Tony, but he already said that he doesn’t want to study the original language, which would in this case be Hebrew, not Greek.”

Hebrew not Greek….. where have we read this before on the blog? Let me think for a moment.

And then there is Vynette on this thread. How interesting!

Report comment to moderator

Cleveland Jay,
I have a friend who says that all the heresies and cults and false religions in the headlines today are basically versions of the heresies of the first 500 years following Christ’s birth.

Spinoza,
I think you capture the benefits of those rituals quite nicely. It all turns on understanding, on whether people view the rituals as pointing toward God, or substituting for a relationship with him.

Fr. Bill,
Thank you for your blessing, and for pointing us to that principle, which is a thoughtful and conservative (in the good sense of that word) way to discern the understanding of the apostles and church fathers regarding Christ’s teaching.

KRM,
I imaging there’s someone far more educated than me to answer your question. I’d start in Genesis, meanwhile, and consider how blood is first introduced as a spilled substance (Cain murdering Abel), followed later by God instructing Noah and his family not to “eat flesh with its life, that is its blood.” So perhaps it’s not blood so much as the spilling of it (notice also the parallel in that passage to the Tree of Life, because of which God cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden, lest they eat of it).

Vynette,
Proverbs 8:22-36, as well as passages in Isaiah, certainly were the foundation of a binitarian view, and Christian theologians argued that they implied the Trinity, which was then explicitly revealed by Christ’s reference to the Holy Spirit.

I think you also have to grapple with the (reasonable, I think) argument of early church fathers that Christ the Logos made some aspects of the workings of creation evident before his manifestation as man, such that philosophers like Plato could discern some amount of truth. In other words, they would say it’s fair game to incorporate understanding available at the time of Christ’s appearance to interpret the meaning of that appearance, as well as His teaching.

I’m speaking to the doctrine of a soul having immortality after creation, which is separate from the notion of a soul without beginning or end, which of course some philosophers (and theologians who were ultimately ruled heretical) held to be true. The point is that I don’t know if you can rule a belief out of bounds simply because it was held before Christ’s birth.

Roger,
I agree with what you say. It implies a thoughtfulness surrounding new practices — and the abandonment of tradition — that is not, of course, always present. There’s also the reality that tradition carries with it tacit knowledge about what works best that we can’t always articulate or detect, which is why scholars like Friedrich Hayek urged caution when dismantling it.

Report comment to moderator

I’ve always been a little curious about it.

Report comment to moderator

It seems to me that when Tradition seeks to be trans-generational it becomes Traditionism. That is, if we assume that ritual is the structured, communal expressions of a common faith, then Tradition becomes Traditionalism when tradition takes on a moral imperative.

“This is what OUGHT to be done because this is what has ALWAYS been done.”

As each new generation seeks and ultimately finds unique forms of expression, which the new generation takes as its own, it’s only natural that the new generation will give expression to the common faith in those new forms of expression.

The former generation should not feel threatened when the ritual forms change as long as the substance of the faith remains.

Report comment to moderator

You said: “…there are very important early Christians thinkers including the Cappadocians and Augustine who provide wonderful insight regarding Christ and the Trinity.”

Christian ‘thinkers’ such as the those you cite have always been incorrect in their interpretations of the Hebrew God YHVH and in their characterisations of the Hebrew Jesus of Nazareth.

Doctrines such as the Trinity cannot be found in the Hebrew scriptures – they are a product of the syncretic theology of the Hellenist-Latin ‘fathers.’

The fact that Fusion still has to ask “do they go to hell if they get it wrong” vividly demonstrates just how deeply Christendom is embedded in unscriptural Platonic theories such as “immortality of the soul.”

Report comment to moderator

The man or woman who is like a tree planted beside the rivers of waters would be one who trusts in Christ & His righteousness, whose acts of righteousness are acts of obedience to God’s leading.

Report comment to moderator

And speaking of filthy rags, I wonder how– “He shall be like a tree, planted by the rivers of waters, which bringeth forth its fruit in its season, its leaf also shall not whither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”–how do these words relate to those filthy rags?

Report comment to moderator

is the above phrase copyrighted???

Report comment to moderator

I can only think of references to menstrual blood as having negative connotations. Menstruation made a woman impure, and anything or anyone who touched her became impure. Leviticus has half a chapter (ch. 15) on all the laws associated with menstual impurity.

What other references do you know of that show a “lowly view of blood”?

Report comment to moderator

Does anyone have a good exposition of why this low view of blood exists?

Report comment to moderator