LISTEN. In our Enlightenment Now course, zooming again this evening, we take up a number of questions prompted by Robertson's Very Short Introduction. Two in particular interest me:
- The "Enlightenment Bible" may not have undermined revelation (30), but what about the Jefferson Bible?
- What do you think of David Hume's view that Christians "supported their elevation of the next world above the present with a morality of self-denial," and that this is antithetical to what is naturally "useful and agreeable"?
I now want to say a few words upon a topic which I often think is not quite sufficiently dealt with by Rationalists, and that is the question whether Christ was the best and the wisest of men. It is generally taken for granted that we shall all agree that that was so. I do not myself. I think that there are a good many points upon which I agree with Christ a great deal more than the professing Christians do. I do not know that I could go with Him all the way, but I could go with Him much farther than most professing Christians can. You will remember that He said: ‘Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.’ That is not a new precept or a new principle. It was used by Lao-Tze and Buddha some five or six hundred years before Christ, but it is not a principle which as a matter of fact Christians accept... (continues)
Russell's major and most serious indictment is against the teaching of a punitive afterlife for those who've "committed the sin against the Holy Ghost" and must thus anticipate an eternity of torturous hellfire. "I really do not think that a person with a proper degree of kindliness in his nature would have put fears and terrors of that sort into the world."
And then "there is the curious story of the fig-tree" Jesus cursed to death even though "it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree." Buddha and Socrates would not have been so intemperate, nor would they ever have invoked supernatural powers to punish the innocent. And that's why Russell was not a Christian. He did not think Christ was the best and wisest, let alone divine. And, btw, he did not believe in God or immortality."In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine..." --Divinity School Address https://t.co/WzZJIQGlNy
— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) May 25, 2021
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