Can You Be An Atheist And A Christian?

[lynx]

Originally posted by ZaZu@15 October 2003 - 11:53
Doesn't one have to believe in the concept
of an Supreme Being to have an opinion as
to weather one exist or not?

(does that make any sense?...i just got up)

Isn't that like saying that if something doesn't exist you can't think about it.

Rather rules out most of mankind's inventions, doesn't it.

[clocker]

Spong's primary question- "Can you be a Christian without being a theist?", seems nonsensical to me.

Analagous to asking "Can I be a great tennis player without ever picking up a racket and playing the game?"

Christianity IS theism.

[j2k4]

Originally posted by clocker@15 October 2003 - 10:35
Spong's primary question- "Can you be a Christian without being a theist?", seems nonsensical to me.

Analagous to asking "Can I be a great tennis player without ever picking up a racket and playing the game?"

Christianity IS theism.

Just so-

Rather a fancy way of asking whether one can live a principled, moral life without acknowledging a god, which question can be asked and answered without going to all that other trouble and debate.

Principles and morals have to be grounded somehow, though......hmmmmm......

[ZaZu]

Isn't that like saying that if something doesn't exist you can't think about it.

My point is if you don't think something exists how can you be against it

[Billy_Dean]

Originally posted by clocker@16 October 2003 - 00:35
Spong's primary question- "Can you be a Christian without being a theist?", seems nonsensical to me.

Analagous to asking "Can I be a great tennis player without ever picking up a racket and playing the game?"

Christianity IS theism.

That's why he's asking the question. Not everyone who claims to be a Christian believes in the Christian version of God. Many people say they believe in the teachings of Jesus. but not in the "Supreme Being" god. So, Clocker, are you saying that anyone who doesn't believe in the biblical god cannot be a Christian?

[Spong]
Theism is the historic way men and women have been taught to think about God. Most people think theism is the only conceivable way to think about God. The primary image of God in the Bible is a theistic image.

By that I mean that God is conceived of as a Being, even the Supreme Being, external to this world, supernatural in power, and operating on this world in some fashion to call this world and those of us who inhabit it into the divine will or the divine presence. This theistic Being is inevitably portrayed in human terms as a person who has a will, who loves, who rewards and who punishes. One can find other images of God in the scriptures, but this is the predominant and the familiar one.

Theism is also the primary understanding of God revealed in the liturgies of the Christian churches, including the various Anglican Books of Common Prayer. There the God we meet is described as a Being who desires our praises, elicits our confessions, reveals to us the divine will and who calls us into the spiritual life of communion with this Divine Being.

So dominant is this theistic understanding of God that if one rejects theism, one is thought to be an a-theist. An atheist is defined as one who dismisses the theistic concept of God and, since theism exhausts most people's definition of God, an atheist by definition is one who rejects the concept that God might be real.

[J'Pol]

I know a great many humanists, who are moral and ethical people.

They do not necessarily follow the teachings of Christ per se. That is to say they do not live their lives and make their decisions based on the teachings of Christ. In many cases they have not studied the teachings of Christ.

However the life they chose to lead is similar to the life Christ said that we should lead. At least in how we relate to other people.

There are other people who may chose to live their lives based on how Christ lived his. On the principles he taught in relation to dealing with our fellow man.

Does this make either of them Christians ? No it does not. Christ taught of a God, of a heaven and of everlasting life. An atheist does not believe these things, so they are not Christian.

[PcH]

I do not believe it possible to be an Atheist and Christian because Atheists don't believe in God. Christians believe in God and that Jesus Christ is their Messiah.

[j2k4]

Without insinuating myself betwixt you and Clocker, Billy, it would seem that someone who desired to live a life resembling that of a "Christian" would, of necessity, desire to refer to themselves as something other than "Christian" in order to avoid the linkage of terminology, would they not?

Is it your intent to question Spong's curious juxtaposition of the terms "atheism" and "Christian"?

Or do you contend that Spong is merely "stirring shit"?

[Billy_Dean]

Originally posted by j2k4@16 October 2003 - 02:48
Without insinuating myself betwixt you and Clocker, Billy, it would seem that someone who desired to live a life resembling that of a "Christian" would, of necessity, desire to refer to themselves as something other than "Christian" in order to avoid the linkage of terminology, would they not?

Is it your intent to question Spong's curious juxtaposition of the terms "atheism" and "Christian"?

Or do you contend that Spong is merely "stirring shit"?

Spong calls himself a Christian j2, I'm in no position to question whether he is entitled to or not. He's the bish, not me.

He goes on to say ...

If the theistic understanding of God exhausts the human experience of God, then the answer to the question of the EFM student from Vernon is clear. No, it is not possible to be a Christian without being a theist. But if, on the other hand, one can begin to envision God in some way other than in the theistic categories of the traditional religious past, then perhaps a doorway into a religious future can be created.

And this ...

The idea that somehow the very nature of the heavenly God required the death of Jesus as a ransom to be paid for our sins is ludicrous. A human parent who required the death of his or her child as a satisfaction for a relationship that had been broken would be either arrested or confined to a mental institution. Yet behavior we have come to abhor in human beings is still a major part of the language of worship in our churches when we speak of God. It is the language of our ancient theistic understanding of God. It is also language that is doomed first to irrelevance and later to revulsion. The real question then becomes, "Can Christianity be separated from ancient theistic concepts and still be a living faith?"

Remember, he is answering a question here. It seems to me that Jesus authorised no-one to use his name and teachings exclusively, no church, and no other organisation or individual. Who makes the rules? Who owns the copyright?

[Biggles]

I don't have any particular problem with the good Bish's thinking. The difficulty remains that it is nigh impossible for the finite to encapsulate the infinite in words (here I have some sympathy with Zen).

I think Lewis Carrol summed it up nicely when Alice asked the caterpiller how he managed to walk with so many legs - whereupon thinking about it he promptly fell over.

The views that Spong expresses are not new. Mystic Christian thinkers talked about such things almost immediately the Church was formed. Various councils were held and by 300AD a more rigid uniformity of belief was developed (helped further around 450AD by one or two faily authoritarian Bishops such as St Cyril - a particularly nasty individual). Free thinkers were discouraged not because what they were saying was wrong or contradictory but because it was confusing and disturbing to those who had difficulty with the concepts they were trying to expound.

The simple analogies used are effective because they communicate difficult ideas clearly. These always remained the most popular way of communicating them. Problems only really started when people started strapping other people to large sticks and setting fire to them for simply saying "that is all very well but it is actually a lot more interesting than that". It then became a little more difficult to have a really good theological discussion.

Bishop Spong's views, whilst unsettling for those whose bread and butter is the simple uncluttered approach, are not really a problem for the laity. He views are extremely academic and are the theological equivilant of Physics "are there 13 or 14 dimensions". Ultimately his defintion of theism may actually be the correct one but it is not going to set the heather on fire and is never going to be a populist religion.

Least that is what I think