Search not the Book of Mormon for truly great allegory.

[All-American]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

I honestly believe FARMS is a dastardly organization that deliberately purveys lies. They are the propaganda arm of the LDS Church and they have about as much integrity as Joseph Goebbels. Their stuff on ancient America is just as bad.

THE propaganda arm? That's an awfully sweeping statement.

And regarding the previous quote: it states my point, essentially. Christianity, as first established, held important principles and ideas from both its Judaic and Greek roots; what we refer to as the apostasy is what happened when those ideas and principles died out. The point that I disagree with is the idea that Greek ideas won out altogether. The latest scholars will show that the so-called "Judiazers" had just as much to do with corrupting Christianity, especially in the beginning.

Nor should you use one man's work to represent how FARMS people work; nor should you use FARMS to represent the church.

[creekster]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

I honestly believe FARMS is a dastardly organization that deliberately purveys lies. They are the propaganda arm of the LDS Church and they have about as much integrity as Joseph Goebbels. Their stuff on ancient America is just as bad.

This is the second time this week that you have compared the LDS church or some person related to it as a nazi. Come on. Even for an experienced troll like you this is over the top and, quite frankly, offensive. Give it a rest.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by creekster

This is the second time this week that you have compared the LDS church or some person related to it as a nazi. Come on. Even for an experienced troll like you this is over the top and, quite frankly, offensive. Give it a rest.

Are you talking about when I compared Indy and woot to Hitler and Stalin? I don't believe that offended you.

[creekster]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

Are you talking about when I compared Indy and woot to Hitler and Stalin? I don't believe that offended you.

Maybe, but this one did. And it's not that its so offensive as it is silly and tiresome. Come on, Goebbels? Give it a rest.

[ChinoCoug]

Greek philosophy's hijacking of Christianity was a finding that dates back to the mid 19th century. Not an argument conjured by FARMS as Seattle would have you believe.

It was started off by German higher criticism, this guy in particular:

http://www.religionfacts.com/christi...le/harnack.htm

In this work Harnack traced the rise of dogma, by which he understands the authoritative doctrinal system of the 4th century and its development down to the Protestant Reformation. He considered that in its earliest origins Christian faith and Greek philosophy were so closely intermingled that much that is not essential to Christianity found its way into the resultant system. Therefore Protestants are not only free, but bound, to criticize it; for a Protestant, dogma cannot be said to exist.

Tell a Catholic or an evangelical that Christianity is the product of pagan philosophy, and he'll be up in arms. He'll just tell you that philosophy was the language used to explain Christianity to the pagan world.

[jay santos]

SU, don't you think it a little odd to criticize the BoM for lacking quality allegory to a group which primarily believes the BoM to be a true literal record of an ancient people. Would you similarly struggle to find quality allegory in a US history book? Certainly if you're writing fiction you have a better chance to create allegory.

That said, you've still got some decent stuff.

Tree of Life
Jacob 5 Olive tree
Alma on faith and seed
Lamanite-Nephite wars/stipling warriors/Captain Moroni
etc

Maybe it's worth another look for you.

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by ChinoCoug

Greek philosophy's hijacking of Christianity was a finding that dates back to the mid 19th century. Not an argument conjured by FARMS as Seattle would have you believe.

It was started off by German higher criticism, this guy in particular:

http://www.religionfacts.com/christi...le/harnack.htm



Tell a Catholic or an evangelical that Christianity is the product of pagan philosophy, and he'll be up in arms. He'll just tell you that philosophy was the language used to explain Christianity to the pagan world.

SU's been extremely inconsistent about his cricism on this Robinson article. First he slams generally on the lack of professionalism, but when pushed at the details of his criticism, it is not on the content but the opinion/commentary.

He would be stupid to disagree with the point made by Robinson, that Greek philosophy had an effect on the doctrines of the early Christian church. He would be stupid to disagree that Paul and others were already battling in mid to late 1st century to preserve the doctrine as they taught it, and that after they died there was a modification (or if it's unproven there certainly was a possibility of a modification) of doctrine over the next century.

What makes his blood boil is that someone would be so bold as to say this was BAD for the church. How dare you say my precious classic civilization had a negative effect on ANYTHING??!! This is just his opinion and it's silly to call someone else unprofessional for disagreeing with this opinion.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by ChinoCoug

Greek philosophy's hijacking of Christianity was a finding that dates back to the mid 19th century. Not an argument conjured by FARMS as Seattle would have you believe.

It was started off by German higher criticism, this guy in particular:

http://www.religionfacts.com/christi...le/harnack.htm



Tell a Catholic or an evangelical that Christianity is the product of pagan philosophy, and he'll be up in arms. He'll just tell you that philosophy was the language used to explain Christianity to the pagan world.

Greek culture and philosophy's intersection and collision with Judaic and Christian traditions has a long history of discussion in the theological world. What interests me in this discussion are the pejorative labels that some theologians necessarily attach to this event. However, what would peoples observing the intersection have otherwise predicted. You have the predominant "sophisticated" culture of the time interacting with an upstart religion and philosophy. Looking at it from a distance, one will necessarily see some weird results.

What is interesting is the tendency of religion to view things in binary, black and white, good and evil. The FARMS "commentary" is one the worst I've read but others have taken the same tact.

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by Archaea

Greek culture and philosophy's intersection and collision with Judaic and Christian traditions has a long history of discussion in the theological world. What interests me in this discussion are the pejorative labels that some theologians necessarily attach to this event. However, what would peoples observing the intersection have otherwise predicted. You have the predominant "sophisticated" culture of the time interacting with an upstart religion and philosophy. Looking at it from a distance, one will necessarily see some weird results.

What is interesting is the tendency of religion to view things in binary, black and white, good and evil. The FARMS "commentary" is one the worst I've read but others have taken the same tact.

Missing in this discussion are the assumptions that Robinson, FARMS, and most of the people on this board take for granted.

1. There is a God
2. There are some knowable facts about God and his plan, i.e. doctrine
3. At least some parts of the Bible, especially New Testament, should be taken literally
4. Jesus is the Christ, atoned and was resurrected, appeared and taught the gospel to the apostles
5. The early apostles had a set of doctrine taught to them directly by Jesus which was true and pure
6. Spreading this doctrine to the world and preserving it in its true form is important

If you accept those assumptions, then the mixing in of any other doctrine no matter how logical and scientific and advanced (for the day), there is a potential for damage to the doctrines taught by the apostles. This is a bad thing.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by ChinoCoug

Greek philosophy's hijacking of Christianity was a finding that dates back to the mid 19th century. Not an argument conjured by FARMS as Seattle would have you believe.

It was started off by German higher criticism, this guy in particular:

http://www.religionfacts.com/christi...le/harnack.htm



Tell a Catholic or an evangelical that Christianity is the product of pagan philosophy, and he'll be up in arms. He'll just tell you that philosophy was the language used to explain Christianity to the pagan world.

This is as ignorant as if someone were to say that Anglican culture hijacked America. In fact, the analogy between early Amricans educated by and drawing on an Anglo-Saxon tradition spanning thousands of years (back to the Greeks, actually) in founding the American Republic, including writing its seminal documents in their native English, and Jews educated by Greeks and drawing on an ancient Greek tradition spanning thousand of years in founding Christianity, including writing the Gospels, the Epistles of Paul, etc. in their native Greek toungue, is quite precise. Christianity absent the Greek is as unthinkable as America absent the English.

In the West, Greece was not just the mother country, it was the very embodiment of culture and education clear to the fall of Rome. Most of the great historians in antiquity through the Roman period wrote in Greek, were Greeks or Greek educated. Greek culture and eductation made Christianty possible and literally created it. So you have the Gospels written in Greek, with Christ ostensibly quoting from a Greek Bible, and a Hellenized Jew (Paul) paraphrasing Plato and Aristotle in generating the concepts of body and soul, spirit, the atonement, etc.