Heresy’s of Christianity

Heresy’s of Christianity

The word heresy comes from the Latin word ‘haeresis’ meaning ‘act of choosing. A heretic is therefore someone who actively chooses a different interpretation of the faith than the one that the church has proclaimed in its creeds.

Arianism

Alexandrian Presbyter Arius (AD 256–336) first proposed this heresy after the writing of the initial apostle’s creed (see the creed and notes on it as well as relationship to the heresy’s in a coming post) . Arius proposed that Christ is not truly divine but created because    

·         God alone is self-existent and immutable; the son who is not self-existent, cannot be God

·         The son as of the Gospels is subject to growth and change (e.g. He is born a child and dies as a man )

·         The son must, therefore, be deemed a creature that has been called into existence and has a beginning.

 Arius’ opposition to Trinitarian Christology, made him a primary topic of the First Council of Nicea, convened by Roman Emperor Constantine in AD 325.

Modalism

Modalism is the nontrinitarian belief that the Heavenly Father, Resurrected Son and Holy Spirit are different modes or aspects of one monadic God, as perceived by the believer, rather than three distinct persons within the Godhead, ,much like one actor playing three different parts.  Modalism differs from Unitarianism by accepting the Nicean doctrine that Jesus is fully God.

The heresy that modalism commits is that since there is no co-existence in the trinity. This means that when God was Jesus he was just Jesus not God which massively limits Gods power.

Gnosticism

Gnosticism is influenced by the philosophy of Plato and is the view that:

·         God is completely transcendent

·         The universe was not created by God but by a demiurge and therefore the existence of evil cannot be the fault of God

·         We are all little droplets of God or that we all hold a part of God inside our souls, salvation for humanity is to be returned to God and discard our worldly bodies (which are evil and corrupt) a view that is similar in ways to Hinduism. (expand)  

·         Jesus is a messenger of God not God. The Holy Spirit was inside Jesus’ body when he was on earth but left his body shortly before he died.

·         The incarnation is rejected because that would mean that God would no longer be transcendent, God is perfect and so cannot come into contact with the world which is evil.

This presents problems as if Jesus was not divine then his dying for our sins has no meaning, it stops Christianity being Christianity, Indeed Islamic belief accepts that Jesus was a prophet.

Massive problems are also presented as God is not the creator of the world, a heresy that completely contradicts the book of genesis furthermore it begs the questions- why would God care about humans and if God is omnipotent then why can he not come into contact with the universe, it also leads to the question why should we care about the world ? If God did not create the world then the concept of stewardship is complety removed.

Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's witnesses believe that the bible was inspired by God and that it is historically accurate. Jehovah's witnesses test any religious believe against the idea's or teachings of the bible if an idea or teaching doesn't agree with the bible then it is wrong. Jehovah's witnesses have their own translation of the bible known as 'The New World Translation of The Holy Scriptures' which is divided into the Hebrew Scriptures (old testament ) and the Christian Greek Scriptures (new testament )

God

Jehovah's witnesses believe that :

·         God the father (Jehovah) is the only true God.

·         Jesus Christ is his son who Jehovah created and is inferior to God.

·         The Holy Spirit is not a person it is Gods 'active force'

Rejection of Nicene creed as well as parallels with the Arianisn heresy

The Father

·         God is a single being whose name is Jehovah (other translations such as Yahweh are accepted)

·         Jehovah is alone and above all beings.

·         Jehovah created everything that exists.

·         Jesus was Gods first creation (How did they get that from the book of Genesis ? It would be intresting to try to find a copy of the 'The New World Translation of The Holy Scriptures' )

·         Jesus is not GOD and is not equal to GOD

·         Jehovah, after creating Jesus, created everything else through Jesus (Again where in the bible does it say/suggest this ? I'll probably do another post on the specific quotations)

Jesus Christ

·         Is a mighty being, but is NOT GOD

·         He is not equal to God in power or eternity

·         Jesus is inferior to Jehovah but superior to angels

·         Jesus Christ rules as part of Gods heavenly kingdom

·         Jesus is a lesser and SEPARATE SPIRIT being

·         When Jesus came to earth from heaven he was a perfect human being but not divine in anyway. His sacrifice while not divine was enough to make human salvation possible

·         Jesus' resurrection was a sprit resurrection not a bodily one

·         Jesus was appointed by God to judge each human being and decide upon their faith.

The Holy Spirit

Holy Spirit is not a person and is not part of a trinity but is Jehovah's active force. Jehovah's witnesses believe that the doctrine of trinity is inconsistent with the bible and contradicts what Jesus, the apostles, and the early Christians believed.

Who cares ?

Probably the saddest and most heretical belief that Jehovah's witnesses have is there believe that Jesus did not die on cross but rather on a single stake. Witnesses believe that cross is a pagan symbol and while at first may not seem that significant but when you think about the how important the cross is as a symbol is for Christians then it seems a bit more significant.

Death Heaven and Hell

When a person dies, their existence completely stops. This comes from a quote for the bible in which Witnesses believe makes clear that human beings do not have an immortal soul which survives the death of the body.

The living are consciuos that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all... for there is no work, nor devising, nor knowledge nor wisdom in (the grave), the place to which you are going

Ecclesiastes 9:5,10

Finally witnesses belive that Hell in the traditional sense does not exist, There is no place where sinners are tormented after death, since death is the end of existence nothing can be done to them or for them. Witnesses also argue that it would against Gods nature to torture human beings  which is one of the criticism of Augustine's theodicy, if God is omnipotent then why did he create a world in which evil and suffering is already built in .  

I'm trying to think of some good philosophy puns but I can't Kant, oh well I'm sure I can Russell some up, I think people who find them very Humeorous. Oh dear them seem to have Plato-ed .

Holiday Reading

First Book- 'Unholy Night' by Seth Grahame Smith 

Picked it up in Waterstons for entertainment weekly's review 'Akin to fusing Game of Thrones with the Gospel of St Luke' which is basically what the book is in a nutshell. The story follows a thief in his quest for revenge and his encounter with Mary, Joseph and their baby but essential is a fantasy retelling of the birth of Jesus and his escape from King Herod and the Romans. It's pretty interesting as it takes the traditional story of the 3 wise men and it expands it, the wise men are not wise men but rather on-the-run convicts disguised as wise men. Miracles and magic happen in equal measure and you are never really certain of the validity of each event due to some very trippy epically written dream sequences. As a brief warning the book is violent and well very Game of Thrones in places.    

The setting is interesting (if not historically accurate ) and historical characters such as King Herod, the puppet king put in place by the Romans to rule over the Jews during the rains of Julia Cesar and then after the civil war Augustine Cesar.

Second Book 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein

I have no idea why I'm doing this it is so hard to read and just so annoying as a result of it also being so interesting.

Quote from the introduction

'The whole sense of the book might be summed up in the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence'

thus the aim of the book is to draw a limit to thought, or rather - not to thought ,but to the expression of thoughts : for in order to be able to draw a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought ).

Do I understand much of it ? no not really am I going to try to at the expense of sleep and sanity YES. I will attempt to read a bit at a time over till I believe that I understand it and then I shall blog about it and then hopefully Miss Price shall tell me what it actually means.

Interesting side note the book is written almost in bullet points which I think reflects greatly on Wittgenstein's nature.  

The Language of Faith

 The Language of Faith

Aquinas while writing in a time before religious language ever came into question none the less was aware that religious language was not quite the same as normal language. Aquinas knew that God was not a person, and so therefore couldn’t be communicated about in the same way that an object which is inside the universe can be communicated about. After all God is an infinite being who is also transcendent and necessary human language is used to describe things which are contingent and is something that we experience through sight, sound, touch, taste and smell and give in turn a sound which corresponds to its nature. Linking back to Ferdinand de Saussure’s Semiotics we would say that something we experience with give a sign  e.g. A device I experience which disperses ink in links a give the sign ‘pen’. Pen is made up of the signifier ‘P’ ‘E’ ‘N’ which in turns refers to the concept that the thing corresponds to which is as stated earlier something which disperses link in lines.

Bit off topic but anyway thus if we say ‘God is heaven’ it is grammatically similar to, but logically different from saying ‘Moses is on the Mountain’. If it were not then we would be accused of anthropomorphising God. It is also a form of literalism which is a mistake when things are taken literally instead of metaphorically for example creationists or biblical literalists.

Religious Use of Analogy

Aquinas proposed that to avoid committing logical error we use analogy. An analogy is a literary device by which one thing is compared to another. Aquinas held that this was possible because we are in some way related to God (i.e. made in his image and his likeness ) yet we must be aware that language about God is bound to be as limited and inadequate as our limited understanding of God’s nature (epistemic distance ).

For Aquinas there were two kinds of Analogy

1)      Analogy of Attribution

2)      Analogy of Proportion

When we say God is wise or God is love we are using the analogy of attribution. In other words we are giving God qualities that are highly esteemed by human beings

An analogy of proportion is when we realise that God is proportionately greater than human qualities for example God Is omnipotent or God is omnibenevolent.

To sum up

Aquinas concluded that there were three ways in which God is talked about.

1) Equivocal (WRONG) this is to speak of God in a different scene from how we speak if earthly things. This is wrong as we don’t know about none earthly things it is beyond our experience (link to Hume)

2) Univocal (WRONG) this is to speak of God is the same sense as we speak of earthly things – God is limited

3) Analogical (RIGHT) this is to speak of God cautiously by comparison with earthly things- There are two types Attribution and Proportion.

Ian Ramsy preferred to talk in terms of models and qualifiers. To say that God is wise is to employ model ‘wisdom’ from everyday experience. To say that God is ‘infinitely’ wise is to use the qualifier ‘infinitely’ to describe the uniqueness of God. According to Ramsey this ‘lights up’ the meaning of God and leads to a ‘religious disclosure’ which in turn leads to a religious commitment.

Ramsy wanted above all to show that religious language is above all not descriptive but more evocative, meaning that its purpose is not to arrive at an accurate description but evocative meaning. Religious languages purpose is not to arrive at an accurate description of God, but to instead to move the believer to make a religious response to a being who is ultimately beyond words and whose significance is ultimately beyond the grasp of human understanding.  

(And yes I will be linking Ramsy to religious art just as soon as I can dig myself out of the biology paper hole I am currently drowning in )

Location: Home

Music: The Front Bottoms- The Front Bottoms 

Start: ???

Finish: Too late

Basil Mitchell              

Michell states that Flew makes an error in his analysis of the religious believer because the Christian attitude is not that of the detached observer, but that of the believer.

Mitchell is different than Flew as he is saying essentially that there is a bigger picture. Just because of one aspect of God may be put into question such as ‘God is omnibenevolent ‘when there is the existence of evil it doesn’t mean that all other statements about God are meaningless.  

For example a stranger may see two friends fighting. To the stranger it may appear that the two friends are in fact mortal enemies however this is not the true. The stranger applying the falsification principle would say that the friends are not open to being wrong and so that there statement ‘we are friends’ is meaningless however this no correct. While the strangers reasoning according to the principle is correct he is still in fact wrong due to his inability to see the whole picture, it is not through any fault of his own but rather just lack of experience.

Mitchell agrees with Flew in that religious language is an assertion however unlike Flew, Mitchell sees these assertions as explanations rather than pure assertions. Mitchell believes that these explanations when out together give a picture of God they are parts of a picture that makes up God rather than meaningless vague statements that a theist will fall back on when trying to justify a position

 ‘God loves humanity’ is not conclusively falsifiable but it can be treated in one of the three following ways.

11)      As provisional hypotheses to be discarded if the experience goes against them.

22)      As significant articles of faith, something of belief (but not of meaning?)

33)      As vacuous formulae (help what does that mean!?) to which experience makes no difference and makes no difference in real life.

Mitchell Summary

Religious language makes truth claims about the world

Individual religious statements need to be put in the border context of the whole belief system

Religious language is not open to falsification because it is a matter of faith  

Falsification Notes Right Up

The Falsification principle

‘In order to say something that is possibly true about the world we must say something that is possibly false’ -Anthony Flew

The falsification theory is that an assertion is meaningless if there is no way in which it could be falsified. The falsification principle is not concerned with what may make something true, but with what can in principle make it false.

For example it is meaningful to say that it will rain tomorrow as it is also possible that it won’t.   

Karl Popper linked the falsification principle to scientific theory after all after a scientific experiment is complete the results must be tested against a null hypothesis, in other words it must be proven that the data is not due to chance.

 ‘The scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, refutability or testability’ – Karl Popper

For example Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity was a scientific theory as it was potentially falsifiable; however the claims of mystic astrologers are so vague that they cannot be possibly wrong and so in the eyes of Popper or Flew are meaningless.    

So how does this relate to religion?

Well if the principle is drawn to belief statements such as ‘Jesus is the incarnation of God’ then they are meaningless as (most) believers are unable to accept that they are wrong. If these claims are too be ever verified than they must be put through the scientific method of testing… which we know will never happen  as God is outside the universe and so it is impossible to empirically prove his existence anyway.

Antony Flew goes on to say that even if there is evidence of Gods non-existence that it is near impossible to show it to a theist. It seems to flew that there is no event or series of events that would ever convince the ‘sophisticated religious person’ that there wasn’t a God after all. (Which I don’t believe is true as it is not unheard of for people to lose their faith after events of suffering)

Flew uses the Parable of the gardener to illustrate his point it goes as follows:

There are two explores out in the depths of the jungle when they chance upon a clearing containing many flowers. One explorer believes that the clearing is the result of a gardener while the other believes that it is merely a naturally occurring phenomenon. They decide to test the theory and so they set up their tents by the clearing and wait. No gardener shows, one explore says that they haven’t seen the gardener because he is invisible, and so they set up a barbed wire fence and electrify it (mabe that’s why they never find the gardener, because he come back to his garden and two men have put barbed wire round it not sure how I would react but I certainly wouldn’t try and go back in……) The men bring blood hounds to try and smell the invisible gardener but still they find nothing. The believer is not convinced he still insists there is a gardener just that he is now invisible, intangible, insensible (to electric shocks ) and also makes no sound nor gives off no scent. The sceptic at last despairs and says ‘But what remains of our original assertion?’

‘Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even no gardener at all?’

What Flew is trying to demonstrate is that religious people are like the believing explore. Flew suggests that God dies a ‘death by a thousand qualifications’

By this phrase Flew meant that when a religious believer is challenged about any statement to do with God his response is to always modify the way in which they talk about God in order to respond to the challenge. Believers change and alter their explanations by responding with an equally vague and unfalisifiable statement.

Flew argues that believers end up modifying their statements about God so much when challenged that the statements no longer resemble the original claim about God. (in other words what was said before God dies a death from a thousand qualifications )

Problems of the falsification principle coming soon

location : Library

Start: 2nd 

Finish 3rd

Music: Favorite Worst Nightmare -Arctic monkeys 

Can Conversations About God Have Meaning ? Notes

Ferdinand de Saussure Semiotics
A Sign = A label that we give to a thing in order to be able to communicate about them. For example a pen

A Signifier = The form the sign takes using the previous example 'P-E-N'

Signified = The concept or thing that the sign refers to.

Even if someone has the idea of the sign and the signifier,if they do not have a concept of the what the signified is then it still makes no scene. This is a massive problem for religious language. Hume would say that we cannot conclude on what is beyond our universe as it to is beyond our understanding and ability to verify. Even in religion there is an epistemic distance between us and God. There is a physical limit to how much we can come to know about God. No matter what we will never fully be able to comprehend fully what God is. As you can see if we cannot (fully) comprehend what God the Signified is then it makes no logical scene to meaningfully talk about the concept that is God.

Kant
In Kant's Conceptual Schemes he suggests that some signs are universal, and that some concepts are innate, meaning that there are somethings that no matter the experience that humans have a concept of.
This was taken by some theologians to argue that everybody innately has a concept of a divine being.
However
Kant believes that these things that we have innate ideas of aren't actually real and just how we perceive reality as a result it doesn't mean that God exists just we have a concept of what he is, which in turn however would be enough for people like Anselm to prove his existence.

Religious Language 
Religious language or 'God Talk' is being able to talk about God in a meaningful and coherent manner. The problem arises when we ask what can meaningfully be said about God ?
The debate over religious language is not concerned with whether God exists or what God is like or why there is evil in the world. The only thing the debate is interested in is working out whether said language actually means anything.

On one side there is the view that we use are reason and our language given to us by God to speak and write about God in a meaningful manner. For example theologian scholars such as Augustine, Aquinas or Anselm.

On the other side there are the logical positivists and those they influence who claim that statements about God have no meaning because they don't relate to anything that is meaningful.

What Can we Verify ?

What can we actually meaningfully verify about the world we live in ?

Well according to the philosophical idea of logical positivism the answer is very little .
Logical positivists emerged during the 1920s form a group known as the Vienna circle. Heavily influenced by the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russel and the work of Albert Einstein on general and special relativity. A.J Ayer set out the principles of logical positivism in his 1936 book language, truth and logic.
(which is currently on its way to may house off amazon )

The Vienna circle was made up of many forward thinking philosophers (most of whom who were also scientifically trained), mathematicians, social scientists and physicists. One of the key influences of the circle was the destruction wrought by world war one, having witnessed such events. These people were all committed to rebuilding society in way that they deemed proper. The circle focused on the question of how we know what we know.



Interestingly almost all the of the Vienna circle are said to have been socialist and live a area known as 'red Vienna'.

The Verification Principle and Religious Language 
'If a statement is neither analytically nor empirically true verifiable then it says nothing about reality and is therefore meaningless'
                                   A.J. Ayer
The verification principle stated that if we cannot ever prove a statement to be true then it is meaningless.
When applied to religious language and the question of if we can meaningfully talk about God the verification principle states that religious language is meaningless. This is a result of our inability to ever prove Gods existence empirically or analytically (although theists such as Anselm would argue otherwise )
The verification principle is NOT saying that God does/doesn't exist but rather it is saying that views on theism, atheism or being agnostic have no other meaning than personal importance. This is much like the view of Wittgenstein and language games, to him when people say that 'God does/doesn't exist' all they are saying is that they are playing different language games and debate on the subject is meaningless.

Types of Verification

Strong Verification

This is when a there is no doubt that a metaphysical statement is meaningful. For example a triangle has three sides

Weak Verification 

When there is no absolute proof but there is a strong likely hood of truth. ( Surely this is subjective ? who decides how likely something is to be true) 

Practical Variability

Refers to statements that can be tested in reality. The significance of this is that practical verification allows science to be meaningful. despite the subjectivity of our experience of reality.  

For example it is possible to test the effect of pH on enzyme activity note  however it is harder to test whether life exists on other planets.

The verification principle does not accept the existence of God proven through religious experience as it is impossible to test or recreate the experience as a result also this means that no historical, ethical or scientific laws can be absolutely verified although Ayer allowed that scientific laws have the potential to be one day verified and so are exempt .(Weak Verification )

So What Can We Know ?

According to the verification principle the only statements that we can hold to be meaningful are those which are analytically true or those that can be tested empirically . Statements which we know a-priori are meaningful as they are true by definition (tautologys) for example 'the circle is round'.

(responses to logical positivism coming soon)

(just cleaning up some bits )

would also like to share this link to a bbc podcast on logical positivism.

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lbsj3

Start time : 2:43 Tuesday the 11th of November 

Finish :

Record Playing: 'The 59 sound' The Gaslight Anthem 

Location: My room