Our group's discussion centered around how Hecht states that the doubts of Christianity are derived from Greek and Jewish tradition. The Greeks doubts with their beliefs focused on truth and scientific inquiry. They wanted factual evidence about how the world came about. The Jewish community had more worries about the unjustness that was happening in the world. How could this higher power allow bad things to happen to this world 'he' created?
Another topic we found interesting was about divine justice. The analogy of if the potter has the right to make, out of the same lump of clay, some pottery deemed for noble purposes and some for mere common use was a large part of the discussion. God states, "I will have mercy on whomever I have mercy and I will have compassion on whomever I have compassion." (Romans 9:15) Paul does not think that divine justice is something we should question. We should just have faith.
Questions:
Who did the Hellenistic Jews look back to as a model of Jewish piety without Mosaic Law? [Abraham]
Is belief everything? Does the amount of faith you possess determine what will happen in the afterlife?
I know I'm not in your class, but I was glancing at your post and just wanted to point out something. This passage in Romans is talking specifically about how the Old Testament patriarchs were saved by grace rather than the fulfillment of the Mosaic Law. The following verse, (9:16) goes on to point out that it is not man or what we do that saves us, but only the grace of God, "So then it does not depend on human will or effort but on God who shows mercy." Many passages in the Bible are taken out of context. Think about it this way: Paul's "books" that he wrote were actually letters to specific early churches, if we were to write a letter to a friend or even government official as a means of reproach, you would have that main point in mind; this is where the context comes in. When anyone makes a good argument, they always mention counter points, as Paul does often. We can't just pull a verse out of a book of the Bible because too much of it is interwoven and intertwined. In order to get a realistic and accurate view of the overall message (seeing the whole Bible as a single letter) of the Bible, we need to see how it all fits together, how each verse fits in it's chapter; how each chapter fits in it's book; and finally, how each book fits as a whole.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds to me that this was an interesting discussion, it sucks that I missed it. Belief I don't think is everything. It has a major part in our life, but our lives don't revolve around it. This may seem kind of hypocritical, but I do think you have to have a lot of faith to get through things and that is where you would end up in the afterlife.
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