Forum for discussions on theology
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I haven't heard Churchianity till now, which is good I guess because it means that I am living in some Neanderthal cave. But I have heard completely wrong definitions of words being used to then paint people the wrong way.
I have personal experience with being called a racist using a completely arbitrary definition of racist. By the way, I am a person of color and the person who called me a racist was White. I hate using color terminology, but I can't help it here. This happened in my Men's group, and I was kind of forced to get out of the group.
Apparently, if you don't believe that inequality of outcomes imply racism, then you're a racist. I mathematically proved that racism is only one factor that contributes to inequality of outcome. These are Ivy-league educated guys who didn't want to go through high school level math to see the proof. They believed in something, and nothing is going to sway them.
I don't know where I was going with this because I lost my train of thought. The flood of bad memories with my Men's group didn't help. But the "bold censures of others" from John Flavel quote comes to mind: "O study your hearts, watch your hearts, keep your hearts! Away with fruitless controversies and all idle questions; away with unprofitable discourse and bold censures of others, and turn in upon yourselves. O that this day, this hour, you would resolve upon doing so!"
I believe in a Win-Win-Win God.
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David Paul said:
There is a large segment of church history that is despicable, with Jan. 6 being one of the more recent demonstrations. If one is not allowed to divest such actions and attitudes from the religion, then the religion is to blame. It strikes me as both counterproductive and self-immolating to reject the concept of Churchianity by disallowing it's mention or discussion. Sure, there will be debates about where the epithet is most appropriately used...no doubt it will always be applied toward the other, not one's mother. But almost everyone can agree that Christianity is beset with serious issues that are akin to identity crisis and crass impersonation. Even in saying what I am about this topic, I find myself resorting to euphemisms, which I have attempted to resist but which keep creeping in. Being polite is a fine virtue, but like most things, it can be abused and misused. YHWH, of course, is frequently not pleasant, polite, or kind, and there are reasons for His reactions. Insisting that our reactions be pleasant, polite, or kind under such conditions can be a serious problem, and might even be sin. "There is a time for..." discussing and identifying Churchianity, because refusing to acknowledge the elephant in the room can be just as inappropriate as casting unwarranted aspersions.
Hamilton wasn't specifying who constituted Churchianity; he merely said such a phenomenon exists. It does. For Christianity's sake, it better. Playing Three Monkeys at such a time is a serious problem of the "find sand...insert head" kind.
What does January 6 have to do with Church history? That's strictly secular politics in 21st century America. The Church is a 2000 year old mission started thousands of miles from America, comprising billions of people who serve only one King. America or any other country has nothing to do with it. The only relevancy America has to the kingdom of heaven is the same as every other nation on earth: It's inferior to the kingdom of heaven and destined for destruction. It doesn't matter what faction you're in or "side" you're preoccupied with. You must flee all of it. They're all evil, because the system of the world itself is evil. This is what the Church truly teaches. This is what Christ teaches - to not be of the world at all. This is what Christ testified to the world's political representative in Pilate: "My Kingdom is not of this world." And he called us to be a lights to the world. And the only way to begin that is to be born from above. Not born of the flesh or the will of man, but of God. America is just another in a long line of would be powers that's upholds usury and greed, wrath and warmongering, lust, gluttony, pride, etc.. All the deadly sins in a nutshell really.
Are you just associating the Church with some of these political events because some televangelist was associated or something? Have you ever looked at how these men live? They're in mansions and representatives of greed themselves. They're not the Church. I would dare say they're actually put there just to confuse people and turn them away from the Church. That's how I felt before I was saved - I was hostile to Christianity because of these televangelist images I saw on TV. I wasn't raised in church and this was my only experience. It really soured me from ever knowing about Christ. I thank God that he cared enough to give me a clear picture, because I would have never seen it otherwise.
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David Paul said:
Like I said in that post that got closed,
Let's be clear. I specifically requested that the thread be closed. There was no single post or individual that got it closed, or even that was the last straw. I come from a part of the country that is known for being nice but distant. We find that it is quite possible to be polite without linguistic contortions. It starts with good listening skills. Yesterday it struck me that internet interactions bear a strong resemblance to the childhood game to telephone - where a person whispers a message into the ear of one person ... who whispers it into the ear of the next person ... and so on around the circle. The final person then repeats what they heard and everyone gets a big laugh. In online community conversations, the final big laugh at the end is missing ... and one gets to read the intermediate messages. When those intermediate messages become sufficiently offensive as to not be allowed in my living room, and it is clear that the thread cannot be brought back on track sufficiently to serve a useful function, if I initiated the thread, I request that it be shut down. This is rather different than reporting an individual post/author as abusive -- no finger pointing, no implication that someone needs contacted or suspended , , , It is a close as I can come to deleting all my posts from a conversation I no longer want to have any part of. Think of it as me slamming the door as I walk out of the room. I think I've done it twice since we moved to the forum format. That's double the rate of people I've kicked out of my physical living room.
David Paul said:"There is a time for..." discussing and identifying Churchianity
Yes, there is - and it is not on the Faithlife forums.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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David Paul said:David Wanat said:
My concern over terms like “Churchianity“ was how it was a derogatory term and could be used that way to describe a behavior.
Some things are just unpleasant, ugly, mean, or obnoxious (among other negative traits), and it is just as much a problem to not identify such traits and behaviors as negative as it is to oversell the negativity when it's not appropriate. Calling any attempt at accurate identification of the negative as being "derogatory" or "demeaning" is both unfair and ill-advised. It's just a quirk of language and life that unflattering actions get unflattering descriptions. Like I said in that post that got closed, if Churchianity can't be allowed to be a thing (or can only be a thing unnamed), then Christianity is a monster. There is a large segment of church history that is despicable, with Jan. 6 being one of the more recent demonstrations. If one is not allowed to divest such actions and attitudes from the religion, then the religion is to blame. It strikes me as both counterproductive and self-immolating to reject the concept of Churchianity by disallowing it's mention or discussion. Sure, there will be debates about where the epithet is most appropriately used...no doubt it will always be applied toward the other, not one's mother. But almost everyone can agree that Christianity is beset with serious issues that are akin to identity crisis and crass impersonation. Even in saying what I am about this topic, I find myself resorting to euphemisms, which I have attempted to resist but which keep creeping in. Being polite is a fine virtue, but like most things, it can be abused and misused. YHWH, of course, is frequently not pleasant, polite, or kind, and there are reasons for His reactions. Insisting that our reactions be pleasant, polite, or kind under such conditions can be a serious problem, and might even be sin. "There is a time for..." discussing and identifying Churchianity, because refusing to acknowledge the elephant in the room can be just as inappropriate as casting unwarranted aspersions.
Hamilton wasn't specifying who constituted Churchianity; he merely said such a phenomenon exists. It does. For Christianity's sake, it better. Playing Three Monkeys at such a time is a serious problem of the "find sand...insert head" kind.
I'm not planning on carrying the debate over. I thought you were misunderstanding me. But if do understand and want to press on, I'll have to drop out as I'm not interested in debating contra the rules.
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Verbum Max0 -
David Wanat said:MJ. Smith said:
Bring back structured disputatio and its close relatives.
I imagine forum posts that read like the arguments in the Summa could be interesting 😉
[Y]
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Hello my Faithlife brothers and sisters in Christ!
I'm actually new to this forum. So I have a question:
1. Why do some of the forums have a lock on it. where a person can read the thread but cannot reply to any of the posts?
Thanks for your help.
Blessings,
Curtis
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Curtis said:
Why do some of the forums have a lock on it.
Someone reported an abuse of Forum guidelines and the moderator(s) locked the thread.
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David Thomas said:
Someone reported an abuse of Forum guidelines and the moderator(s) locked the thread.
Just for clarity - anyone can report abuse (it's on the upper right --first item under more); only Faithlife can lock a thread
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MJ. Smith said:David Thomas said:
Someone reported an abuse of Forum guidelines and the moderator(s) locked the thread.
Just for clarity - anyone can report abuse (it's on the upper right --first item under more); only Faithlife can lock a thread
Useful to know. I had wondered if MVPs could do that too, but I guess I was committing a post-hoc fallacy there.
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David Wanat said:
I had wondered if MVPs could do that too,
No, the MVP's have very little "extra" powers -- our role is to make sure that those who ask questions feel safe asking any question (i.e. won't get negative feedback for being Jehovah's Witnesses, Southern Baptist, Coptic ...) and get an accurate answer that helps them broaden their understanding of Logos and its resources. In other words, think of MVP's as tutors that you don't have to pay for because they are unpaid volunteers. We occasionally bring issues to the attention of Faithlife when we can't solve the problem -- installation specific problems, unidentified bugs, and very occasionally an unruly forum member.... But to do so, we use the same email addresses that you all have access to. The only advantage we have is that the person we email might, just might, recognize our name. Our reward? it is primarily watching forum participants expanding their use of Logos and starting to answer the questions of others.If we have done our job well, there is always someone with the knowledge to replace us.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Hamilton Ramos said:
Example: I looked in my Catholic resources to see if Church was near "hope of the world". Lo and behold, it does not appear to be a dogma of the Catholic Church the statement that "The Church is the hope of the world", at no point seems to be official dogma.
You are looking for a specific vocabulary which is not Catholic vocabulary. For hope (of the world) in the Catholic context see Jurgens, W. A., trans. The Faith of the Early Fathers. Vol. 1–3. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1970–1979. #581 (580-586) are all on hope. Hope this helps.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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I very much understand the desire to push the forum guidelines to speak about theology. I have been guilty of pushing it myself.
But the purpose of this forum is for Logos and Verbum users to discuss how to use the software, and provide feedback to Faithlife. As such, it needs to be a place where all users can ask questions without the flame wars we see all too often on the Internet.
There are more than a few long time users here who have shown that they have both the knowledge and patience for theological discussion - probably with minimal moderation. But there are also people who have not shown this history - and the history of internet discussion groups shows that discussions can easily go off the rails and need a LOT of moderation.
Faithlife tried for a while for a place for this. But it didn't catch on. I would much rather Faithlife continue their work on their software than try to meet this desire.
The Gospel is not ... a "new law," on the contrary, ... a "new life." - William Julius Mann
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Ken McGuire said:
I very much understand the desire to push the forum guidelines to speak about theology. I have been guilty of pushing it myself.
Noted and considered. It may have been an error in judgment but I had been accused of having "favorites" that I unfairly did not call out. I assumed that providing a Logos resource without referencing to its theological content, was a gentle rebuke. I may have overthought it for which I apologize.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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David Paul said:
Hamilton wasn't specifying who constituted Churchianity; he merely said such a phenomenon exists. It does. For Christianity's sake, it better. Playing Three Monkeys at such a time is a serious problem of the "find sand...insert head" kind.
Right on David Paul, notice that I never referred to the Saints in the Church, imperfect beings trying to love perfectly like Christ did.
I am referring to the structural part of it, at times including leadership, which stifles critical thinking, discipline too quickly legit questioning, and try for certain sheep to accept strange doctrines that not really are so according to the Bible.
I do think that even if we all have deep theological disagreements, the overall sense is that an apologetic guide would probably benefit all traditions, if they really are looking for truth to be communicated.
I rarely take the comments personally, because I know there is much room for misunderstanding in the kind of commo that goes in a Forum.
My expressing my views (which I understand is discouraged according to some interpretation of guidelines) was with the only purpose of having other believers share their view and summary of Apologetics, so I could compare and contrast, and research different angles that I have not thought about.
I still think an Apologetics guide is a great idea, and am very surprised at the decision to not develop further the investigation of different believers defiinition and use of the Apologetics concept.
When I wrote about my take on apologetics, I did it so that others could understand what my concept of it is, and what I think is useful for, so that evaluation and positive criticism, as well as sharing of other possible left out areas were pointed out.
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David Wanat said:
Well, my point in using the quote was showing how bias can be used in describing the same behavIor in a positive or negative way. I might call my own insistence on something being “firm,” but negatively label another person’s identical behavior as “stubborn” and attack a third person’s identical behavior as ”pigheaded”.
Yes, I understand David, and my further point is that we can be all considered colts carrying the Master Jesus, so not much to be able to point into others' faults, when we are way inferior to Jesus.
Let's not focus on our flaws, and instead being imperfect beings, let's look forward to how we can love perfectly like Jesus did.
An apologetics guide is a true work of love, and that is why I was very much in favor for it, I shared my view to elicit a civil conversation about its concept and use, and even usefulness. And not so much to start polemics.
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Hamilton Ramos said:
My expressing my views (which I understand is discouraged according to some interpretation of guidelines) was with the only purpose of having other believers share their view and summary of Apologetics, so I could compare and contrast, and research different angles that I have not thought about.
Unfortunately for me this had sad repercussions - it took less than a handful thinking along these lines to force me to request the thread be locked. As a result I made a proposal based primarily on my own take rather than representing the broader community as I had hoped. I can easily imagine an enjoyable discussion with you over some of your ideas, but this is not the place for that except when your ideas are expressed in terms of software capability.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Ken Thompsen said:
What does January 6 have to do with Church history? That's strictly secular politics in 21st century America.
Were it so! However, if you took away all the support for the previous POTUS that explicitly considers him to be (despite his list of unsavory personal traits) personally chosen by God to save the United States from "whatever", his remaining support would be inconsequential. He would barely register as a blip on the radar. There are documentaries that examine the "Christian" religious support that was the backbone and seed bed of his growth as a candidate who polled viable numbers for a successful campaign. There is a reason it is spoken of as the MAGA religion.
I think you may be taking my comments almost 180 degrees from how they were intended. Generally speaking, I agree with your assessment...which is again why my contention is that Churchianity is a real factor in the world. Perhaps you don't understand that the term "Churchianity" doesn't refer to the idea of the legitimate Church, but to those who claim to be the Church despite demonstrating considerable characteristics that belie their affirmation. It is intended to be a contrasting term to the word "Christianity".
Ken Thompsen said:Are you just associating the Church with some of these political events because some televangelist was associated or something? Have you ever looked at how these men live? They're in mansions and representatives of greed themselves. They're not the Church.
I agree, but they say they are. Your comments and argument fully support the point I was making regarding "Churchianity" as a real force and presence in our world. Just to be clear, I'm speaking generally here, and not attempting to create a list that identifies what is legit and what isn't.
Also, you may not be aware that this subject matter carried over from another thread that was closed, so there may be background details of the discussion that you aren't privy to. Some objected to the term "Churchianity" as being inherently offensive. Of course, some could say that the terms "murderer" and "adulterer" are offensive as well. My contention is that it describes a real phenomenon. In fact, considering that the original discussion was on the subject of apologetics, I would think that it would be helpful to those engaging in apologetics to draw attention to the fact that not all actors claiming--nor all actions performed in the name of--Christianity are in fact legitimate representations of Biblical thought and teaching. Churchianity is simply a term to describe the phenomenon of Isa. 58:2 NASB, where people think well of themselves and their religious behavior when YHWH has a distinctly contrary perspective.
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MJ. Smith said:
Unfortunately for me this had sad repercussions - it took less than a handful thinking along these lines to force me to request the thread be locked. As a result I made a proposal based primarily on my own take rather than representing the broader community as I had hoped. I can easily imagine an enjoyable discussion with you over some of your ideas, but this is not the place for that except when your ideas are expressed in terms of software capability.
You could always start a FL group and post the link in this thread for people that want to explore more into the angles suggested by other believers.
That way a more ample view on apologetics or people's perception of it would be had.
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