Originally posted by rwingett
No, there is no way out of the problem. Christianity is a text based religion, none of whose texts were written by its ostensible founder. All of its texts were written decades after Jesus' death by people who never met him. From its very inception there were a great number of "denominations" floating about, all of who had very different interpretations of ime trying to box Jesus into tighter and tighter compartments of their own flawed design.
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No, there is no way out of the problem. Christianity is a text based religion, none of whose texts were written by its ostensible founder. All of its texts were written decades after Jesus' death by people who never met him. From its very inception there were a great number of "denominations" floating about, all of who had very different interpretations of what it meant to be "Christian."
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You say the problem of divisions is a hopeless one. You branch off into some other issues which I suppose are the reasons why you feel that the denominational problem is hopeless.
I, however, do not believe that the problem is hopeless. And some of your inferences I also do not accept at face value. But they would be other discussions.
IE. The New Testament does not reflect the ideas of Jesus but of some other folks long after, who got it all confused and distorted.
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It is my personal opinion that Jesus' aphoristic style of speech was specifically meant to defy its ossification into orthodox rigidity.
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There may be some truth to that. However, leaping from that assumption even if valid, to postulate that He meant the exact opposite of what He taught, is a mistake.
So, yes, Jesus said things which were hard to take with systematic rigidity. That does not mean that we can say He was NOT the Son of God. That does not mean that we can say He did NOT rise from the dead. That does not mean that we can say that He didn't mean that He was the Savior of sinners.
I cannot use flexibility of application of the words of Jesus to pretend He meant the diametric opposite of some of His clearest teachings.
I can say that there are some things the disciples can be GENERAL about. Yet there are some things that we are not to be general about but specific about.
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It was meant to be a flexible approach, open to a variety of interpretations. As such, there can be no one correct denomination, or one correct interpretation.
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There are some things of which Christians should be GENERAL about. They should not, based upon different views, establish different kinds of
churches.
But for certain, there are many things which Christians should be general about. They are not sufficient grounds to establish a new kind of church on. Especially in the same locality.