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Monday, January 12, 2015

Holes In The Credo

Find the True Linen Threads, and Find the False.



An interesting thing about religious belief systems is that they do not really fall apart if some of the basic proposition of faith are denied or changed.

For example, there are many Christians today who have no use for the poor and homeless, and they are quite vocal about it. It is just as if they hear a Sermon on the Mount from the Anti-Christ.
Yet, their Christian lives are not impoverished, not materially changed, not spiritually transformed. They are considered Christian, and they live their lives accordingly.

Even though they seem like Christians with a big, gaping hole in their Credo.

ANd in Wikipedia, we read:

Nestorianism
Nestorianism is a Christological doctrine advanced by Nestorius (386–450), Patriarch of Constantinople from 428–431. The doctrine, which was informed by Nestorius' studies under Theodore of Mopsuestia at the School of Antioch, emphasizes the disunion between the human and divine natures of Jesus. Nestorius' teachings brought him into conflict with some other prominent church leaders, most notably Cyril of Alexandria, who criticized especially his rejection of the title Theotokos ("Bringer forth of God") for the Virgin Mary. Nestorius and his teachings were eventually condemned as heretical at the First Council of Ephesus in 431 and the Council of Chalcedon in 451, leading to the Nestorian Schism in which churches supporting Nestorius broke with the rest of the Christian Church. Afterward many of Nestorius' supporters relocated to Sassanid Persia, where they affiliated with the local Christian community, known as the Church of the East. Over the next decades the Church of the East became increasingly Nestorian in doctrine, leading it to be known alternately as the Nestorian Church.

Nestorianism is a form of dyophysitism, and can be seen as the antithesis to monophysitism, which emerged in reaction to Nestorianism...

Nestorians reached China and left their mark. Their lives of faith were not impoverished by their so-called heresy.

Arianism
Arianism is the nontrinitarian heretical, theological teaching attributed to Arius (c. AD 250–336), a Christian presbyter in Alexandria, Egypt, concerning the relationship of God the Father to the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Arius asserted that the Son of God was a subordinate entity to God the Father. Deemed a heretic by the Ecumenical First Council of Nicaea of 325, Arius was later exonerated in 335 at the regional First Synod of Tyre,[1] and then, after his death, pronounced a heretic again at the Ecumenical First Council of Constantinople of 381.[2] The Roman Emperors Constantius II (337–361) and Valens (364–378) were Arians or Semi-Arians.

This is one great difference between religious discourse and scientific discourse, this ability to transform.

The religious philosophers will have problems, but the faithful will not. The philosophers will complain of contradictions and inconsistencies, but not the faithful:  their faith transforms their lives and their lives flow from the past to the future...
It is all like a great river.

Science and Philosophy and Logic as we have developed them in our Western Tradition cannot allow holes in the Credo, or gaps in the Canon.

When we talk of "belief systems" we forget this.

We like to think that the proposition "I believe in X" must be true or false.
But that feeling of necessity is derived from the philosophers, from the scientists, and from the logicians.

The Faithful have demonstrated for all of human life that Faith is not "atomistic" and "axoimatic"; rather, it is a great carpet of many-colors with infinite selvages blowing in a ceaseless breeze.

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