Re:A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning
by bobwaycott on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @10:09PM
(#12083518)
I am exceedingly aware of the history of Christianity, its sects, its texts, and the many variations therein. I thought it was obvious the exchanges the parent was involved in were, from the parent's side, only referencing the canonical scriptures used by the church today. Thus far, the parent has given no indication that non-canonical texts or sects held authority. Moreover, non-canonical texts and discarded heresies hold little relevance to the primary matter being discussed. The multiple Christianities of history are a fascinating subject in their own right, but strike me as of little concern here.
Sorry, I didn't mean to take your remarks out of context.
Re:A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning
by bobwaycott on Wednesday July 13, 2016 @12:20AM
(#12083859)
Oh, no apology necessary. I find the points you brought up to be incredibly fascinating, and have spent quite a lot of time studying them myself. I probably erred in omitting mention of only referring to canonical scriptures. If this were a discussion on the subjective meanings found in various heresies—as deemed by the councils that won their debates—that'd be quite a fun conversation.
I'm not sure that all of those stories claim that; only four of these stories were accepted as canon by the later consensus of Christian churches, but others are known to exist, which have somewhat different contents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel
Also, Christian churches reached some kinds of consensus about what they say the canonical gospels said about Jesus, but not everyone who has read those gospels agrees with those interpretations; there have continued to be some debates about what Jesus said about himself and what his early followers believed about him. Some of those interpretations have been considered heresies in mainstream Christianity for a long time, but there have been a lot of such views which people have held to quite strongly, and often claimed were supported by their readings of even the canonical gospels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_heresies
After all, one of the reasons that Christianity even had all of those ecumenical councils and promulgated those creeds was that there were lots of people who claimed to be followers of Jesus and didn't believe some or all of those things. (And maybe there would be more today if there had been a separation of church and state throughout the Middle Ages.)