MadArchitect wrote:George responded to my question with two questions of his own, and I figure that my first reply should be to those two questions so that he can join the fray with impunity.
Which Christianity?
In all honesty, there can be no historic answer to that. The reason is that, if we're talking about redeeming Christianity, then ultimately we're talking about constituting a new Christianity. That new Christianity would have to demonstrate some ties to traditional Christianity in order to deserve the name, but any talk of reviving an older version of that tradition would require more suspension of disbelief than I could muster. Just about any familiarity with the history of Christian reform ought to demonstrate that there is no possibility of true return
ad fontes to a purer, better Christianity.
You are right that revival is not the path to redemption. Former models of the church were imbedded in unscientific belief systems which are obsolete. When wheat and weeds are mixed in together you cannot expect to find a past time when the good grain existed alone. The 'purer better Christianity' needs to be extracted by finding the true ideas among the many false ones, in the manner of the prophet Malachi who described how the refiner's fire finds the gold among the dross.
MadArchitect wrote:In that sense, asking "which Christianity" is a bit like turning the question back on me. But in this thread, I'm more interested in your answer than any answer that I would tender. So you tell me which Christianity, if any. I'm not asking what it would take to draw you back into the fold, but I do think it's in the Christian community's interest to have some non-members who smile on its institutions and mission.
The Christian community needs fundamental reform. Until its mission provides a clear path forward for the modern world, rather than a throwback to a dreamtime concept of heaven, if you will permit me this analogy with traditional indigenous Australian mythology, Christianity will remain disconnected from anything non-members should smile on. I like the Dreamtime, and think it should have a more honoured place in our culture today, but it won't get this honour by pretending to answer questions to which science has clear proven answers.
MadArchitect wrote:
For whom?
I'm soliciting your answer, so the answer has to be, "for you." That isn't to say that it has to be redeemed according to any particular agenda you might have, or that it ought to be the sort of club of which you'd be a member. But what would it take for Christianity to be the sort of community or institution that you didn't second-guess at every turn? What would it take for you to be okay with Christianity?
You may be right that people must be the judges of redemption, but this usurps the place traditionally assigned to God and requires people to play God. The risk is that I can believe something is redeemed 'for me', but I can be hurtling unknown on a path to destruction, in which case my blessing means little. Redemption must be 'for God' in the sense that if God is defined as eternal life, then those choices which support life can be redeemed while those which destroy life are irredeemable. As Jesus said, God is among the living not the dead (Matt 22:32). My sense is that Jesus got it right when he said, paraphrased, that the life path in tune with God is far from many paths valued in our world. (Matt 7:13). If the world comes to a crunch and people need to decide for or against life, there will be quite a shock in assessing which things are on the side of life. Dissident Heart points this out in his allusion to the sheep and goats.
Not being "the sort of community or institution that you didn't second-guess at every turn" requires integrity and honesty, but big myths in the church are wrong, so Christianity needs to recognise its error and repent in order to be acceptable in the way you ask. I think part of the beauty of the story of Jesus is his promise of forgiveness and mercy for those who repent. However, the church has got it wrong about the meaning of repentance by focusing only on personal morality and adherence to creeds rather than political systems or scientific truth. Disproven pre-modern views on creation and afterlife do not deserve respect as they colour and distort all the beliefs of those who hold them. The Pope's confession of error about Galileo went about 1% of the way needed - Christians need to also confess the error of believing in the virgin birth.
MadArchitect wrote:Robert Tulip wrote:This means things that are sustainable are redeemable while things which are unsustainable are irredeemable.
Why should that be the case? Why can't a thing be redeemed in the moment of its occurrence, without any thought as to whether or not it can extend into perpetuity? What you've provided looks much more like a criteria for evolutionary fitness, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether or not we're okay with a given institution. And if it turns out that there's a conflict between an institution's rightness and its survival, then I for one would rather see it stand
and fall according to its own interior consistency than to have it stand forever on a foundation of mixed motives. If it turns out that Christianity is an institution with definite limits in time, then can't it at least be what it claims it is for the brief interval before it slips back into oblivion.
Evolutionary adaptation has everything to do with whether something is redeemed for God. I think of existence as persistence in time, with the redemption of existence amounting to its capacity to continue. Being okay with an institution, being able to tolerate it, does not engage with the underlying problem of whether it has internal and external capacity to continue. Something can seem okay to me but be a hollow shell which cracks to dust when tapped.
I can't understand your comment about being redeemed in the moment of occurrence only, except through the highly limited idea of redemption as escape. I believe that redemption must somehow be about a connection to eternal life, but I think we need to completely recast eternal life away from the idea of the immortality of the soul. The rapture theory sees redemption as escape, but has unwittingly fallen for the false myth that the world is evil rather than the creation of God. Jesus taught that the world is good, but to continue in life we need to be attuned to eternal life.
The trouble here is that Christianity most definitely is not an institution with definite limits in time. 'What it claims to be' includes a hopeful expectation of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, built in to the framework of belief. I don't think we are going to get anything like a 'slip back into oblivion' while this unresolved question of eschatology hangs in the balance.
Further on your thought of extending into perpetuity, I think of eternity through the lens of Plato's three areas of study in the Academy, logic, physics and ethics. Logic is the domain of mathematical relations such as pi, eternal because outside time. Physics partakes in eternity to the extent that known laws of the universe last forever within time. For ethics, timeless values such as love and justice are unchanging in themselves, and are seen as they occur in the world, enabling the human soul to participate in eternal life. I think our redemption requires us to be true to the eternal dimension of each of these ideas of logic, physics and ethics.
Here is an analogy about instant redemption. I just read a wonderful book, The Magic Furnace, on how elements are made in the heart of stars. Fred Hoyle deserved a Nobel for his finding that an unstable beryllium atom exists for about a nanosecond when two helium atoms collide. If this pair is hit by another helium atom it turns into stable carbon, but otherwise it reverts to helium. All the beryllium matter is 'redeemed' in the sense of continuing to exist, but most exists as simple helium and only a tiny fraction as the more complex carbon element. There is a sense in which the continuing complexity (carbon) is a locus of redemption, and the unstable beryllium is only redeemed by what it becomes. So 'will we be redeemed?' amounts to 'will we retain our complexity?'