Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: lieuwen@cs.wisc.edu (Dan Lieuwen) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: no title given Message-ID: Date: 13 Dec 90 10:10:25 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 70 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu I sent you this last week, and have seen equally recent things published. Did it not get to you? Dan >I believe one of the basic messages of Christianity is that >there are no rules binding on a Christian. > Then presumably, there is no absolute command to love God or our neighbor. >However as you say, we have to live somehow. In principle I think >everyone has responsibility for their own standards. However in >practice I expect to start with standards from the Christian community >(my own, since Christianity is far from uniform). I use the Bible to >judge it. But what I expect to get out of the Bible is not final >judgements so much as examples of how a Christian makes decisions. >Unless my situation is the same, I won't necessary expect to get the >same result. However it should be possible to trace my judgements >back to the same starting point in the Gospel. > If my Christian community is church X in Nazi Germany, presumably I may use this standard to decide that helping round up Jews is the patriotic thing to do and hence the good thing to do--after all the command to love my neighbor is not binding on me. >The problem with this is that I'm not going to be able to say "this is >Wrong" or "this is Right" and have a clearcut way to prove it. But I >am not convinced God intended us to have assured truth. When you look >.... But you shouldn't expect to know for certain that you are >Right. To me that's what the Tree of Knowledge represents: a >guaranteed source of knowledge about what is right and wrong, that >would eliminate the need to depend upon God. > You are in the bind that all those who reject tradition end up in (I know from experience being raised Evangelical and still going to an Evangelical church). One must have a source of moral absolutes. The question is whether to accept them from an outside source wiser than oneself or from oneself. I think the Fathers constitute just such a source. Early Christians thought of themselves as a group that had very specific rules, an assured truth, to follow. Try the Didache, an early manual of Christian doctrine. It is very explicit on what is and is not acceptable. I'm convinced that those who reject the moral commands contained within are outside of acceptable Christian belief (they may be saved, but are in a dangerous position). The Didache contains very clear pronouncements on sexual morality, on abortion, etc... Our civilization has a lot of characteristics in common with the Greco-Roman world--decadent and without the religious teachings that had formerly been the underpinings of the society. Dan [Oh come now. I believe the context of the discussion made it clear that when I said I didn't believe in rules I was thinking of specific rules such as "women shall never be allowed to speak in church". I was not rejecting basic principles such as loving God and our neighbor. The issue is the extent to which specific judgements in the Bible are to be taken as final for us, vs. as examples of how one works out Christian positions from basic Christian concepts. I do believe there are basic Christian concepts. I have several times said that I do not agree with completely "free form" ethics -- which was at one point known as "situation ethics" -- where in each situation one is expected to develop a Christian response "on the fly", as it were. --clh]