User:Wesley/Talk

Help! I've made a mess of the Moria, Mordor, Evil Eye and Pippin articles. I don't understand the slash thing in Middle Earth/Moria for example.
Nice article on Moria. Was that off the top of your head?

Yes, the Moria article was off the top of my head. Forgot to mention the dwarven name Khazad-dum for the place... thought that looks wrong without the accent, and I'm not sure how to add the accent to it. Also I think that's where Gollum started following the company.... I'll try to look at a couple of the others, though I think others are helping too. The more the merrier, eh? --Wesley

You said when you edited Nicene Creed:

"Reorganized; When did U.S. Catholics start omitting the word "men"? Is this controversial?"

Unfortuneately, it has become contraversial in the U.S. Basically, a bunch of PC zealots don't believe that the word "men" can stand for humanity in general and for the plural of the masculine gender (homonym anyone?). It's really sad how the PC folks seem to want to revise history by doing such things as banning books like Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, because it uses the word "------" X times, and changing the Nicene Creed. Didn't anyone ever tell them, "Anyone who does not learn from the mistakes of past is doomed to repeat them."--BlackGriffen

I'm truly said to hear that. Changing things like that from the bottom up seems very Protestant. Hope the change doesn't last. --Wesley

Wesley, at the risk of further alienating LMS I think I owe it to you to respond, hopefully briefly, to some of your queries concerning the last thing I posted. I do think we pretty much understand each other and there may not be much need to continuing the discussion. Off-hand I would encourage you to draw selectively on things I and RK have written in the "talk" section in order to edit the article itself – I think as a Christian you are a better judge than either of us of what we have written that effectively communicates a Jewish position to non-Jews.

Wow. Thanks. Of course, that means I'll have to both understand and express your position. I'm flattered that you think I might be up to it, and comforted to know you'll correct me if I go too far astray in doing so. (grin) --Wesley

Anyway, you write

If you believe they were meant to incite physical violence, there ought to exist examples of such violence prior to the Middle Ages.

I was thinking of the desecration of synagogues by Chistians during Roman times that was alluded to in the passage I quoted from the Vatican document.

As I recall, that particular descration was part of a general trashing of pagan places of worship, which led me to think the Jewish synagogues were desecrated more because they were non-Christian than specifically because they were Jewish. And that was still several centuries after the New Testament was written. I suppose judging their actual motives is speculation on either side, in the absence of any documents saying "Synagogues should be destroyed because _____________ " --Wesley

Uh, no, I honestly don't see how. I think RK said elsewhere that Jews have reinterpreted parts of the Tanach (or Torah?) so as to have the effect of erasing them,

Well, I realize what works for us may not work for you, but I do not consider what Jews have done to be an erasure since those passages are still read, aloud, each year in the synagogue.

In any case, it is God, not any Christian, who passes final judgment.

I agree – my issue is when people claim to know what God's judgement is.

But when it encounters a religion that denies pluralism, it is in a quandary.

An excellent point, and this is a big theoretical problem with "liberalism" in general. All I can say, and you may consider this an ad-hoc response, is that I do think that the problem I have with non-pluralistic religions is fundamentally different from the problem non-pluralistic religions have with other religions. For one thing, it is only the claim that Christianity is the only path for all people that I contest. I do not at all contest the Christian liturgy, the Catholic sacraments, etc. as means to reach God. Don't you think this is different from someone saying that Jewish practices will not serve as a means for people to achieve a living, meaningful relationship with God? Put more personally, I merely express my discomfort with the Christian position towards me. But although you now express some questions about my position towards Christianity, in fact the whole discussion was motivated by the Christian attitude towards Judaism as a whole (and not towards Jewish attitudes towards Christians). Finally, I will not do anything to compel Christians to change. I know that you won't do anything to compel me or other Jews to change, and I know that most if not all Christians today will do nothing to compel Jews to change. Nevertheless, the historical fact is, in the past many Christian movements did put pressure on Jews to change – and this is one of the things I and I think RK want Christians to take responsibility for (and which I think the Catholic Church, among others, has done). – SR

Forgive me for ignoring the rest of your paragraph; I want to press the problem with pluralism further. The pluralistic attitude towards Christianity might seem fundamentally different, but only if one ignores the nature of the Catholic Mass or Eucharist, for instance. And that is precisely what it seems to me that pluralists do. IF the Eucharist is effective as a means to reach God, it is because God became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. Central to Eucharistic theology is that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ, and by eating them, Christ literally dwells within us, becomes part of who we are. As Alexander Schmemann put it in his book For the Life of the World, most food is transformed by us when we eat it, but the Eucharist transforms us instead. In part, it is an affirmation of the Incarnation. So to admit that the Eucharist is a means to God is to admit that Jesus Christ really was God in the flesh. If in fact Christ was not God, but a man only, then Eucharistic theology falls apart, and the Eucharist cannot bring us closer to God in the way that classical Christian theology says it does. You cannot have it both ways. Unless of course you say that the Eucharist and the other sacraments are a means to God only because we think they are, and not because of any basis in reality; this would be asserting that the sacraments (and all practices of other religions as well) can have a marvelous placebo effect, but beyond that don't actually do anything. --Wesley

Well, I think we have reached the end of our discussion -- I respect the sincerity of your convictions, which you have expressed well. And I am not sure I can add much to what I have written. The paradox of pluralism that you call attention to is not one I am capable of solving, although I am committed to learning how to live with it. As for your own spiritual life, I cannot ask you to sacrifice your convictions or practices. And although I understand your convictions and your reasons for them, in another sense I just do not understand them and perhaps never will (not for any fault in your attempt to explain them, but perhaps because our different traditions and languages simply lead us to some point where they cannot actually meet).

All I can offer is an what I take to be an analogous case and yet in effect it turns out not to be a useful analogy, given all that you have said. It is this: Orthodox, fundamentalist Jews really believe that God really revealed His law to us at Sinai, and cemented His covenant with us at that time. They do not consider this belief to be a metaphor or a surrogate or a subjective means to some transcendent end; they believe it really happened. And they believe that everytime they obey the law, they are living within that covenant, that relationship, that when they say "Blessed are Thou, of Lord," they are really speaking to God and God speaks back to them.

And yet, they do not believe that this covenant and its obligations extend to non-Jews. Moreover, they do not believe that this means that non-Jews are excluded from a relationship from God. They simply understand that God will have different kinds of relationships with other people(s).

And so from my point of view, the issue is not whether I believe that Jesus was God made flesh. The issue is whether it is possible that we Jews can believe that the Torah she Baal Pe (the Oral law) and the Halacha can be God's gift to us, and you can believe that Jesus Christ is God's gift to you. And perhaps He has or will offer other gifts to constitute other relationships with still others. I do not think I can add anything more to this.

by the way, I can now apologize for/correct a wrong assertion I made earlier, that early Christians did not believe in Jesus' resurrection. I reread the article in the New York Review of Books and this is not in question (really, I shouldn't be surprised since God brought Elijah to Himself, and someone else in Genesis -- I think Enoch. According to this issue, the question -- just as profound -- was whether Jesus was fully human, fully divine, half and half, or fully both. The article sugests that Christians debated all these views until the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The article also cites books by two scholars, Geza Vermes and Paula Fredriksen who apparently have explored some of these issues in depth.

Peace, SR

Well, SR, I have to agree that there's not much more to say, except that I feel I have personally profited greatly from this discussion. If there's ever a religious pluralism article, I hope to include this in its Talk page. I think we share many of the same prayers, both literally and more generally. The phrase "Blessed art Thou O Lord, teach me your Law" occurs repeatedly in the Orthodox evening prayer liturgy ("vespers"), with at least a similar understanding of what we're saying. Perhaps you can help me enumerate Judaism's liturgical contributions to Christianity/Orthodoxy some time on the Eastern Orthodoxy page.

Peace, Wesley

Hey, Wesley, just a nomenclature note - I was looking at your To Do list and thinking that, strangely, the name I've seen John of the Ladder under most frequently is the Latin version - John Climacus. Before you write him you might check around, or it might just be worth a redirect from 'Climacus' to 'of the Ladder'. On the other hand, Catherine of the Wheel is always known as Catherine of Alexandria in western sources, and the redirect should go from 'of the Wheel' to 'of Alexandria'. Mmmmm, nomenclature. --MichaelTinkler

To be honest, I've been wondering if John Climacus was the same John for a little while now; thought he might be, but wasn't quite sure. Thanks for clarifying. I'll try to remember to set up the appropriate redirects. How much difference does it make, as to which name gets listed on the List of saints page? There's a real risk of duplication if someone doesn't realize two different names are the same person. Should we start listing alternate names in parentheses? But beg people not to list every single name for The Virgin Mary? --Wesley

Wesley, I started an entry on Religious pluralism. Please join in; the material you wrote in the "Talk" section of the other topics will ber very valuble here. RK

Wesley,

Please feel free to reorganize the articles relating to sin, salvation, original sin, fall of man, Garden of Eden. Sometimes I go stub-happy, making too many of the little suckers. In particular, fall of man is a major topic in the Unification Church -- with Original Sin as a sub-topic -- but that's no reason the wikipedia should have to conform to my minority view.

I might want to argue about politics or sex, but there is no way I want to be contentious in the slightest when it comes to religion. Ed Poor