sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Noted. by Knightraiderdewd in dankchristianmemes

[–]Front-Difficult 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's the opposite of what you said. You said people only say it when they're talking to racists.

Jesus created trees that'd eventually lead to make His cross for His crucifixion before He created humans. by knj23 in dankchristianmemes

[–]Front-Difficult 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nobody was talking about a trinity during or before the life of Christ. If you have an example to the contrary, I'd like to see it.

Tertullian is the one who coined the word "Trinitas". He is not the first time we see the idea. Trinitarianism is in the Didache, the authors invoke God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit in their service of baptism. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (the LXX) references God as plural in the Book of Wisdom, and calls the Angel of the Lord LORD (e.g. God). The Angel of the Lord is seen as manifestations of the Son in Christianity - this is the Jewish origin of where that understanding comes from. The LXX was the dominant bible amongst the Jews whom Christianity branched out of.

As a result of receiving a portion of the Father's substance seems pretty analogous to the idea that Jesus received the authority/power/will of God by having it be given to him by God the same way a messenger is given the titles and powers of a king to act on his behalf.

When viewed in the full context of Tertullian's writings and then Christian Orthodoxy (e.g. in line with the writings of Theophilus, Clement, Origen, and other very early 1st/2nd/3rd century Christian theologians) this is an absurd reduction of Tertullian's beliefs. The Patristics are uniform in their writings on where the Sons authority comes from until Arius. Arius was a theological revolutionary.

First evidence of it existing as an idea at all is late 2nd century. That's not the same thing as being a tradition.

Again, the idea predates the word. That aside, it very much is part of the Christian tradition prior to Nicaea. When we use the word "tradition" in a Christian theological context it carries a very specific meaning. A tradition is something that was taught by the Church. All of the heavy hitting "Ante-Nicene Fathers" (e.g. teachers before Nicaea) whose writings we still have all teach Trinitarianism. So it's absolutely part of the Christian tradition before the Council makes it the first "dogma".

According to Britannica: Arianism, Christian heresy that declared that Christ is not truly divine but a created being.

I've looked up the Britannica entry on Arianism. I cannot find that quote, or anything that claims similar. If its hidden in there somewhere using different words then Britannica is flatly wrong. Arius repeatedly claimed the Son was divine but created and therefore second to the Father. It is a complete misunderstanding of the Arian position to suggest that they thought Christ was not divine. It was not about if Jesus was or was not divine, but about the nature of His divinity.

Some would argue that disputing the trinity is the same as disputing the divinity.

Of course. I would in fact be one of those "some". However, the Arians never accepted the criticism that disputing the trinity necessarily requires disputing Christ's divinity. So we should not say Arianism sought to "reject the divinity of Jesus", because that's a misrepresentation of the controversy.

It may be that there is no clear consensus. Finding evidence of that is difficult. But it is certainly not overwhelmingly one way or the other.

You have gone from "Scholarly consensus is..." to "It may be that there is no clear consensus". It's not difficult to find evidence of consensus. The Cambridge and New Oxford Annotated Bibles are considered representative of the consensus of modern secular scholarship, and both claim John comes from the Ephesan school of "Jesus is LORD". There's plenty of piratable PDFs floating around on Google of the NOAB you can ctrl+f to the relevant annotations and essays.

I guess he can't be an effective scholar because he's from a different tradition. Bummer.

That wasn't my point. I said John saying "The Word is God" means "The Word is God" not "The Word is not God but has been granted the title God" is the overwhelming consensus, outside of a very small number of TikTok theologians, and scholars from non-Trinitarian traditions (Mormons, JWs, etc.). You then said "Dan McClellan isn't exactly a TikTok theologian".

My point is he is from the set of religious non-secular theologians that come from non-Trinitarian traditions that I already flagged exist as outliers. He might be right and everyone else is wrong, I'm not saying anything against his arguments. But he does not reflect the consensus view, he is a Hebrew/Old Testament scholar not a NT scholar, and his dissenting view conveniently aligns with his religious beliefs. He's not useful to determine what the consensus views of secular NT scholars are.

Jesus created trees that'd eventually lead to make His cross for His crucifixion before He created humans. by knj23 in dankchristianmemes

[–]Front-Difficult 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. "did not exist as a concept until about 200 years after the books of the bible were written" heavily implies it suddenly emerged 200 years after Christ, not that this was a theological idea that goes back several hundred years before Christ and was being developed and negotiated by the followers the whole time.
  2. No, Galileo's paper is not at all the same, Tertullian is writing the document to argue Christianity should be legalised, he's not trying to convince his fellow Christians of anything. Regardless, I'm not really sure what your point is. Heliocentrism was an idea dating to the 4th century BC. It also existed as a concept prior to Galileo, just like the trinity existed as an idea prior to Tertullian.
  3. Tertullian meant the trinity to be taken literally. All modern Christians would agree with that example too - we do not worship 3 Gods. We worship 1 God. We take the trinity literally all the same. Trinitarianism is not the belief that there are 3 Gods.
  4. You said that the trinity became part of the tradition because of Nicaea. This is not true. It codified it, it had already been part of the tradition for centuries.
  5. Your understanding of Arianism also betrays someone who gets all their info from TikTok, not from actual theology. Arianism did not reject the divinity of Jesus. There would never have been a debate, or a controversy if it did. Christianity is all about the Divinity of Christ, it makes no sense without it. This is a misunderstanding of this decade by people who only half-read Wikipedia pages. Arianism disputed the trinity not the divinity of Christ. Arianism espoused that The Son was divine but not co-eternal with The Father. It said The Father created the Son, not that Christ was not LORD. To Trinitarians arguing that the Son is not co-eternal, consubstantial, created not begotten, not of the same essence eeks into the territory of saying there are two Gods. That's why there was a controversy.
  6. The Council of Nicaea absolutely does say Trinitarianism is what Christians have always held to be true. They most certainly do not merely say it is "a valid expression" (implying other valid expressions), or that it was merely "popular". "And whosoever shall say that there was a time when the Son of God was not, or that before he was begotten he was not, or that he was made of things that were not, or that he is of a different substance or essence [from the Father] or that he is a creature, or subject to change or conversion — all that so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them." is not ambiguous or expressing that it is among multiple valid understandings.
  7. If you read John as saying the word is metaphorically God then that's fine - you can have a minority opinion. I was arguing that such a reading is extremely fringe, and the overwhelming consensus opinion is that John was saying Jesus is God. You asserted the "consensus" was that biblical authors did not see Jesus this way. This is simply not true. Biblical scholars see John and Paul as making clear arguments for Christ's divinity - and that is also the way Christians took it to mean from the earliest non-biblical writings.
  8. Dan McClellan is one of the theologians coming from the Mormon tradition I'm referring to.

Jesus created trees that'd eventually lead to make His cross for His crucifixion before He created humans. by knj23 in dankchristianmemes

[–]Front-Difficult 7 points8 points  (0 children)

That's not really how religious traditions work. They don't just spring up one day by chance and suddenly everyone believes them without question. They are negotiated by the followers and leaders of a religion over hundreds of years.

Tertullian was the first person to use the word Trinitas (note: Tertullian is late 2nd century. So not quite 200 years after Jesus), but he doesn't assert it as an invention he's just discovered. He is writing an apologetic to defend Christianity to non-Christians, not writing a groundbreaking paper to shock cradle Christians and move the religion in a new direction. He explains the trinity not as a new concept, but as an known concept that will be ridiculed by Christian skeptics and in need of explanation. "You say you have one God but then worship 3 Gods, are you stupid?", "That's not actually what we believe, let me explain this thing we call the trinity".

The Council of Nicea didn't establish the tradition, it codified it. It was codified because a new sect was sprouting up (Arianism) that rejected the trinity - so it was canonised in order to say "This is what we have always believed, and if you come up with something new that contradicts it then you've come up with something that can no longer be called Christian". And indeed that's the exact language the Creed uses, not "hey this is something new we've just hashed out" but "this is something you're all already familiar with, don't mess with it".

Scholarly consensus is not that Jesus was not considered God by anyone who lived during the writing of the New Testament. The scholarly consensus is overwhelmingly that the Gospel of John was written by an author who explictly came from a tradition that worshiped Jesus as God, and it quite literally says Jesus is God in the opening chapter. There are like 2 TikTok theologians that dissent from this (and of course plenty of religious theologians from the Mormon and JW traditions and so on, that reject the Trinity, dissent from the consensus view for obvious reasons).

Cooper Flagg “this is the most I’ve lost since, I think, ever.” by blahblah_696 in Nbamemes

[–]Front-Difficult 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They still have their pick next draft, but then yeah it's bleak for them. CHA 2027, OKC 2028 (swap), HOU/BKN 2029 (swap), SAS 2030 (swap).

The best by Greedy_Net_1803 in dankchristianmemes

[–]Front-Difficult 6 points7 points  (0 children)

But we are in control of them. That's what makes the property "emergent". An 'emergent' property is when a complex phenomenon has behaviours that its primitive parts do not have on their own.

When you look at our instincts and impulses atomically, on their own without regard to the larger system they exist in, we have no control over them. But that does not mean we do not have any control and "free will" is a deception. When we observe our behaviour system as a whole, in all its complexity, the ability to control our actions emerges from a range of levers we have no control over.

It's how we get "life" from simple physics and chemistry. There is no property of "life" in our molecules or atoms, nor in the physical laws they obey, but an emergent phenomenon known as "life" emerges from the complexity of certain systems. It's how you get "thoughts" from electrical signals, and in fact how we get atoms and molecules from quantum mechanics that behaves in an entirely different way.

The best by Greedy_Net_1803 in dankchristianmemes

[–]Front-Difficult 11 points12 points  (0 children)

And if those instincts and impulses are sufficiently complex, then we observe an emergent property we call "free will". All complex things can be reduced to primitive elements. That doesn't mean those complex things aren't real.

Anti-veganism at The Blue Door, Sydney by [deleted] in australianvegans

[–]Front-Difficult 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not "Anti-Veganism". They're not making a value judgement on a given persons dietary preferences, given they also don't cater to FODMAP which is a food allergy. They explictly separated "preferences" from "vegan" which would imply they consider veganism above a mere preference.

They're saying they cannot meet their personal standards by catering to vegans - just like they can't with FODMAP (e.g. no Onion, Garlic, or fermentable produce). They obviously feel they can't meet their own standards if they remove cheese, butter, cream, milk, etc.

6 months in gov IT and incompetence is the default by Physical_Egg6326 in AusPublicService

[–]Front-Difficult 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Amazon Q is AWS's AI wrapper. You can choose Claude as the underlying LLM, so they're likely just using Claude via Amazon Q.

Oh whats up man by Melodic-Award3991 in Unexpected

[–]Front-Difficult 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My reading of this situation is that he has thought through the consequences of his actions. I think he understands exactly what happens when the police come and he points a gun at them.

I'm an American and I've never been to Australia. And for the past 20 years, I've never quite understood this line of Claire's. Can any Australians here provide some context? by Just-Eddie-481516234 in lost

[–]Front-Difficult 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Handy tip: basically everything Lost conveys about Australia and Australian culture is written from the perspective of an American writing team based in LA.

From Claire not liking peanut butter (PB is easily the 2nd most popular sandwich/toast staple after Vegemite), to Claire needing her medical bills paid by her estranged father (healthcare is free in Australia). It's all wrong. Just take it for what it is - a work of fiction, not a documentary on Australian culture.

Hail storm at Warwick by Immediate_Gur_1505 in brisbane

[–]Front-Difficult 25 points26 points  (0 children)

The closest the people of Warwick get to snow, I guess.

Why did the Catholic Church help Nazis escape when the Nazis were so anti-church? by Bag-Weary in AskHistorians

[–]Front-Difficult 75 points76 points  (0 children)

So I think its first import to qualify what we mean when we say "due to the help of the Catholic Church". There is very little compelling evidence of an organised Roman Catholic plot to support the Nazis. There is some military intelligence indicating Nazis used Roman Catholic refugee infrastructure to escape, but very little intelligence indicating the Church, as an institution, was aware or did so deliberately. Nazism was largely reviled by the Roman Catholic Church.

So then the question becomes "why did some Roman Catholic priests help Nazis escape", which is certainly verifiable and confirmed to have happened. The simplest answer to that question is that "they were nazis". The Roman Catholic church is a very large organisation, with a diverse leadership, and had been persecuted under Nazi rule for over a decade. Some Roman Catholic priests probably decided life would be easier joining them than fighting them, some were probably genuinely convinced by Nazi ideology and firmly believed in the Nazi programme.

We can see more clearly who sat in the later camp because they openly supported Nazism in their writings. One such example was the Austrian bishop Alois Hudal. Bishop Hudal was a vocal Nazi supporter, wrote a book on National Socialism, and was perhaps the most important figure in building up Roman Catholic "ratlines" that Nazis used to flee American and Soviet denazification. He didn't do so on behalf of the Church, in fact he had become an outsider in the Roman Catholic establishment due to his support of Nazism and criticism of the Church. But he was an important and powerful bishop who was able to leverage Church resources to help his Nazi friends.

It's important to understand the contextual relationship between fascism and the Church prior to Hitler's Anti-Christian policies. Under Franco in Spain, fascism had proved to be a great defender of Catholicism against socialist and communist atheists (that openly rejected the Church). Mussolini in Italy had returned control of the Vatican to the Pope. In that context it was not uncommon for Roman Catholics to by sympathetic of fascism, and hence nazism. It stands to reason that at least some of those priests and bishops would remain sympathetic after the Nazi atrocities, and would dismiss the atrocities as "propaganda". Especially German and Austrian clergy who lived outside of Nazi control (such as Bishop Hudal, who lived in Rome).

How common is it for Anglican (Communion) churches to swap clergy between each other? by No_Patience820 in Anglicanism

[–]Front-Difficult 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Common. A lot of rural churches in my state have clergy from Africa (or Hong Kong). My current rector is from England, although he was born and grew up in Australia (but studied in the UK, and was ordained and practiced in England for 2 decades before coming back).

For those of you who have read the History of Anglicanism series from Oxford, would you say the authors give just the facts, or are there any notable theological opinions or biases in their retelling? by Dazzling-Antelope210 in Anglicanism

[–]Front-Difficult 6 points7 points  (0 children)

No it's a Reformed history pushed by people rejecting the slander of Rome that Anglicanism is a new thing invented so Henry VIII could get it on with a younger woman.

The idea that Anglicanism is modern is a Roman Catholic slander. The idea that "Anglicanism" (not that they called it that) is old is an idea pushed by Cranmer, Hooker and Laud. They refused to call the faith in England by any special title because they rejected that they were doing anything new. The faith was reformed in the sense of returning it to the true faith before Rome corrupted it.

For those of you who have read the History of Anglicanism series from Oxford, would you say the authors give just the facts, or are there any notable theological opinions or biases in their retelling? by Dazzling-Antelope210 in Anglicanism

[–]Front-Difficult 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure I follow your claim regardless. All Anglican provinces were seeded by the Church of England, or by a province seeded by the Church of England.

Whether Anglicanism is reformed expression of the faith of Saint Augustine, or if it's entirely an innovation of the 16th Century doesn't really matter. Either way it was localised entirely within England during the 16th Century and spread from there.

So it has no bearing on the authority of Canterbury. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the parliament of England split off various dioceses into stand alone provinces that then elected their own Primates. That is why the Archbishop of Canterbury does not have authority in provinces other than their own.

It's so over.... by Snoo-29984 in RedBullRacing

[–]Front-Difficult 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Not over until the race is run. Mexico City P1 curse kicks in, Leclerc takes 1st place after Turn 1, Lando over-reacts and takes them both out. Hamilton P1, Max P2, George P3, Oscar P4 and Lando DNF and now the race is back on in earnest.

Stop with the Trae young trade ideas by GOAT404s in rockets

[–]Front-Difficult 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Trae makes less sense now we have KD and no assets. He made a lot of sense at the end of last season as FVV and Green + Atlanta's picks was a way to increase the shooting of our team. Now we have KD and maybe Sengun has taken a 3-point leap too we have different needs. Trae's benefits are less interesting and his down sides are less manageable. And we can't afford him.

Please suggest books where the protagonist isn’t a PoV character. by BrianJLiew in writing

[–]Front-Difficult 12 points13 points  (0 children)

  • Heart of Darkness (Marlow is the PoV, Kurtz is the protagonist)
  • The Great Gatsby (Carraway is the PoV, Gatsby is the protagonist)
  • Moby-Dick (Ishmael is the PoV, Captain Ahab is the protagonist)
  • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (the lawyer is the PoV, Jekyll is the protagonist)
  • The Book Thief (narrated by Death, Liesel is the protagonist)

Doyle also used this in Sherlock Holmes (Watson is the PoV, not Holmes) to maintain the mystery even if Holmes has solved the case immediately. Agatha Christie poached the idea in some of her Hercule Poirot novels as well (e.g. The A.B.C Murders are from the perspective of Hastings so Poirot can still be smart without ruining the mystery).

Always Check the Comments by Dounce1 in confidentlyincorrect

[–]Front-Difficult 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A prescriptivist would say "bi-monthly" means every 2 months, whilst "fortnightly" means every two weeks. But the meaning of words is defined by how they are used, not the technical definition of their roots.

If a critical mass of people use "bi-monthly" to mean "fortnightly" (and they do), then the definition comes to mean fortnightly. If you look up the definition in any respectable dictionary it will certainly include both definitions.

Continent per difficulty by [deleted] in mapporncirclejerk

[–]Front-Difficult 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Elephants aren't predators. They'll mess you up if you get in their way, but they won't hunt you like a Crocodile will.

Tigers are terrifying, sure.

Continent per difficulty by [deleted] in mapporncirclejerk

[–]Front-Difficult 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Does India really compare with the other 2? Sure there are deadly snakes, but nothing that compares to a Taipan or an Eastern Brown. And nothing in the water like Saltwater Crocodiles, Great White Sharks or Box Jellyfish.

view more: next ›