Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
We know the story about Jesus. My point is that Christians believe this as independently observable fact, not myth. There really was a Jerusalem, there was the promise of a coming king, the "Son of Man" and the "Son of David" who would restore the former glory, and we Christians believe that there was a man named Jesus. We believe that He conquered sin, death, the devil and Hades. He is the true king.
Our history as Christians has thousands of years of observable and verifiable facts. Even the raising from the dead of Jesus Christ -- it is a fact that the disciples claimed to have seen Him and it is a fact that we the Christian polity believe their claims.
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One further point. It is noteworthy, I think, that there are 4 different and largely independent "gospel" accounts: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It is important that there are multiple witnesses. This was according to God's plan. It is important for us that there are the historical accounts in Acts, that Paul references them in his epistles, that Peter's epistle notes Paul's ministry and Paul's writings acknowledge his interactions with James, Peter, and so forth. We have not myth but separate accounts of history.
And this continued after the canon of the Bible was finished. There are voluminous writings from the first centuries, not only Christian but also Jewish and Roman historians and so forth. All of these textual witnesses independently corroborate and strengthen the gospel story.
As I have mentioned, it seems that a lot was ignored and even actively suppressed in the 4th through 10th centuries by "church authorities" who had their own agenda. When the RCC split from the Greek Orthodox Church, Luther & Calvin's "recovery" of truth in the 16th century didn't have access to a lot of post-canonical commentaries. They were left to their own logic and the text at hand; they'd look at scripture and say, "What does this mean to me, a reasonable believing person?", and the group consensus became "Calvinistic doctrine" and "Puritanism" and so forth.
Luther's "justification by faith" is arguably an improvement on the traditions and authorities of the RCC, but we should not say, "Okay, now we have fully recovered the truth". That is the WL fiction we were sold: WN supposedly had read all the old books and recovered their truths; now just read (LSM edition) WN and WL books and get the "completed NT revelation", the "high peak truths" etc.
Nonsense. That is like saying that since "Read with Dick and Jane" contains all the letters of the English alphabet and has been used for decades in the U.S. primary school system that now we have everything an have no need for any further reading materials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File
ick_and_Jane.jpg
Fun with Dick and Jane may be fun in first grade, but don't kid yourself and pretend it is post-graduate study. Shouting it repeatedly may be even more fun than reading it, but it still doesn't "constitute" anything but a loud first grader. And actively discouraging and suppressing people who want to go beyond that makes you a stumbling to others. Jesus said, "Woe to you; you neither enter in nor do you permit others to enter."