[MD] Terry Eagleton on Dawkin's God Delusion

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Case

A pleasure to see your well-edited posts. A relief from all these 
messy quips.

On 22 Jan. you wrote:

> [Case]
> My attitude to the MoQ is ambivalent but I think it is accurate to say
> I am not in lock step with orthodox interpretations.

After having ingratiated myself may I ask if you know my so-
called SOL interpretation and if it makes any difference?  
Regarding our respective interpretations of Jesus' role we don't 
differ that much so I proceed to this.

> [Case]
> This is a source of ongoing curiosity for me. Much of what the early
> church incorporated from the Greeks is not all that intellectual. The
> God-Man/Son of God business was clearly anathema to the Jews and
> common to the Greeks. Paul seems to have been familiar and sympathetic
> to the Greek mystery cults and practices of the Dionysian cults are
> mirrored in early Christian rituals. Certainly by the middle ages the
> scholastics embraced and incorporated Aristotle and neo-Platonism. As
> for the earlier history of the church I am not familiar enough with
> church history to say which specifically philosophical ideas were
> bandied about.

General agreement. Still I think I have some reason for my thesis 
that Jesus was a sensitive "antenna" who picked up the 
intellectual signals from Greece, there were after all a lot of 
commerce and travel across the sea. Admittedly, he spoke of 
fulfilling not overcoming the Law (change must be gradual)  but 
the essence of his message is "the Law is for mankind's sake" 
(how this is said in English?) and that was revolt enough then and 
there.             

> [Case]
> I do not know enough about the history of the East to say much about
> their wars or techniques of conversion so I am happy to take you word
> for this. But I doubt if conversion by the sword is unique to Semitic
> traditions it was certainly common in antiquity and not unheard of in
> the New World.

My knowledge is limited to say the least and I had to do a little 
research. Take Japan for example. When the Portuguese arrived 
in the fifteenth century they were much admired for their  
technology and the Japanese let themselves be christened in 
droves, not to save their souls but to get access to the said 
technology. To make it short, this changed by and by and the 
"samurais" saw their traditional values threatened and there was 
a closing of the Japanese mind .. and ports. Foreign ships were 
banned from their waters and the Christians were massacred. 
However this was not because of their being "infidels" but as 
representatives of the  foreigners.  Religious wars and/or 
missionary fervor was/is unknown in the (Far) East. That is not to 
say that they were particularly lenient in their warfare or conduct, 
to the contrary, but wars weren't fought over religious beliefs  ... 
perhaps because they didn't know "religions" in the Semitic 
sense. Still don't.   

IMO

Bo