Daniel Amos Message Board | Print: Attack of the Pulpit Masters

Posted by Lost Canine on 07-02-2002 at23:44:

quote:

Originally posted by Dr Rich

quote:

Originally posted by Lost Canine
there is more than one fundamentalist way to view Scripture. It's not about "picking & choosing," but about proper cultural understanding along with exegesis. And yes, Romans does rock in many ways.
LK-9

the Bible was written by folks who thought the world was flat. you have to read the text with that understanding.
d

This is another one of those debates that will never sway minds. However, you know how I feel on this Doc, and that I agree with you. Patti and I exchanged some private notes about the Jesus Seminar. I'm not quite to that extent, but I do agree with a lot.
LK-9

Posted by ™ on 07-03-2002 at01:43:

The Myth of the Flat Earth

-Doctor?

The Myth of the Flat Earth

How does investigating the myth of the flat earth help teachers of the history of science?

First, as a historian, I have to admit that it tells us something about the precariousness of history. History is precarious for three reasons: the good reason that it is extraordinarily difficult to determine "what really happened" in any series of events; the bad reason that historical scholarship is often sloppy; and the appalling reason that far too much historical scholarship consists of contorting the evidence to fit ideological models. The worst examples of such contortions are the Nazi and Communist histories of the early- and mid-twentieth century.

Contortions that are common today, if not widely recognized, are produced by the incessant attacks on Christianity and religion in general by secular writers during the past century and a half, attacks that are largely responsible for the academic and journalistic sneers at Christianity today.

A curious example of this mistreatment of the past for the purpose of slandering Christians is a widespread historical error, an error that the Historical Society of Britain some years back listed as number one in its short compendium of the ten most common historical illusions. It is the notion that people used to believe that the earth was flat--especially medieval Christians.

It must first be reiterated that with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat.

A round earth appears at least as early as the sixth century BC with Pythagoras, who was followed by Aristotle, Euclid, and Aristarchus, among others in observing that the earth was a sphere. Although there were a few dissenters--Leukippos and Demokritos for example--by the time of Eratosthenes (3 c. BC), followed by Crates(2 c. BC), Strabo (3 c. BC), and Ptolemy (first c. AD), the sphericity of the earth was accepted by all educated Greeks and Romans.

Nor did this situation change with the advent of Christianity. A few--at least two and at most five--early Christian fathers denied the sphericity of earth by mistakenly taking passages such as Ps. 104:2-3 as geographical rather than metaphorical statements. On the other side tens of thousands of Christian theologians, poets, artists, and scientists took the spherical view throughout the early, medieval, and modern church. The point is that no educated person believed otherwise.

Historians of science have been proving this point for at least 70 years (most recently Edward Grant, David Lindberg, Daniel Woodward, and Robert S. Westman), without making notable headway against the error. Schoolchildren in the US, Europe, and Japan are for the most part being taught the same old nonsense. How and why did this nonsense emerge?

In my research, I looked to see how old the idea was that medieval Christians believed the earth was flat. I obviously did not find it among medieval Christians. Nor among anti-Catholic Protestant reformers. Nor in Copernicus or Galileo or their followers, who had to demonstrate the superiority of a heliocentric system, but not of a spherical earth. I was sure I would find it among the eighteenth-century philosophes, among all their vitriolic sneers at Christianity, but not a word. I am still amazed at where it first appears.

No one before the 1830s believed that medieval people thought that the earth was flat.

The idea was established, almost contemporaneously, by a Frenchman and an American, between whom I have not been able to establish a connection, though they were both in Paris at the same time. One was Antoine-Jean Letronne (1787-184 Cool

, an academic of strong antireligious prejudices who had studied both geography and patristics and who cleverly drew upon both to misrepresent the church fathers and their medieval successors as believing in a flat earth, in his On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers (1834). The American was no other than our beloved storyteller Washington Irving (1783-1859), who loved to write historical fiction under the guise of history. His misrepresentations of the history of early New York City and of the life of Washington were topped by his history of Christopher Columbus (182 Cool

. It was he who invented the indelible picture of the young Columbus, a "simple mariner," appearing before a dark crowd of benighted inquisitors and hooded theologians at a council of Salamanca, all of whom believed, according to Irving, that the earth was flat like a plate. Well, yes, there was a meeting at Salamanca in 1491, but Irving's version of it, to quote a distinguished modern historian of Columbus, was "pure moonshine. Washington Irving, scenting his opportunity for a picturesque and moving scene," created a fictitious account of this "nonexistent university council" and "let his imagination go completely...the whole story is misleading and mischievous nonsense."

But now, why did the false accounts of Letronne and Irving become melded and then, as early as the 1860s, begin to be served up in schools and in schoolbooks as the solemn truth?

The answer is that the falsehood about the spherical earth became a colorful and unforgettable part of a larger falsehood: the falsehood of the eternal war between science (good) and religion (bad) throughout Western history. This vast web of falsehood was invented and propagated by the influential historian John Draper (1811-1882) and many prestigious followers, such as Andrew Dickson White (1832-191 Cool

, the president of Cornell University, who made sure that the false account was perpetrated in texts, encyclopedias, and even allegedly serious scholarship, down to the present day. A lively current version of the lie can be found in Daniel Boorstin's The Discoverers, found in any bookshop or library.

The reason for promoting both the specific lie about the sphericity of the earth and the general lie that religion and science are in natural and eternal conflict in Western society, is to defend Darwinism. The answer is really only slightly more complicated than that bald statement. The flat-earth lie was ammunition against the creationists. The argument was simple and powerful, if not elegant: "Look how stupid these Christians are. They are always getting in the way of science and progress. These people who deny evolution today are exactly the same sort of people as those idiots who for at least a thousand years denied that the earth was round. How stupid can you get?"

But that is not the truth.

Posted by ™ on 07-03-2002 at02:10:

that said

this is a great thread so I hope we keep the discussion going because I constantly ping-pong between trying to be like Jesus and realizing that saved or not I'm still a mess! (and isn't it okay to be honest about that?)

I'm working at a Christian bookstore again and oh man! I gotta tell ya there is NO corse talk or any indication that the old man's still alive in us while we're at woik allowed. We must present an air of "Holiness" for our constituants....

Confused

Shouldn't we strive for Holiness?

And yet,

Keith
"My son, My son, why are you striving,

You can't add one thing to what's been done for you,

I did it all while I was dying,

Rest in your faith, my peace will come to you."

Posted by Kaf-N-8ed on 07-03-2002 at10:21:

quote:

Originally posted by servantsteve
Paul did claim to be the chief of sinners, but he never reveled in his past sin or tried to pass it off as holy living. Instead, he asked, "Shall we continue sinning that grace may abound?" Then he answered, "May it never be!"

I agree. But the Apostle Paul was an apostle, a missionary, not a poet. It is my own belief that we must use whatever gifts God has given us to the best of our ability, and to let the truth of God's Grace and the Gospel shine through that. On it's own.

If God has given you the gift of being a poet (and I put in that category the modern musician like Terry Scott Taylor, along with the modern author of fiction, and the modern author of poety, and even the artist of visual works), then I think that's what you must be. You work with the skills God has given you.

The work of the poet is to create art that makes people look within themselves, look at the world, look at everything from a new perspective. The work of the poet is not to be an apostle or an evangelist.

That being said. This song is marvelous poetry. It is very good fiction. It is art.

quote:

Originally posted by servantsteve
Another issue is that if a Christian band wants to say, "Hey, we know we're sinners but we are relying on the indwelling Holy Spirit to overcome sin." Then that's good. If instead, they talk about the sin and show no shame or remorse, they send a mixed message that sin is somehow OK.

What makes it good art? The fact that it is authentic. If it were preachy, if it had to come out and say "we believe sin is wrong" then it would be really lame and unartistic and not the least bit interesting either. In fact, it wouldn't be art.

The fact is that many sinners are not the least bit remorseful. Many sinners don't know a thing about the Holy Spirit, or the Grace of God, or Divine Forgiveness. Authentic art will portray them just as they are.

And worse than that, many Christians do not know anything about the real world. They live in a fantasy world where sinners are "them" and not real people. Where sinners are creatures that were somehow cast from a different mold than them.

I think that the appeal of DA and SE and TST largely stems from showing Christians who have had enough of this fantasy world that there is a real world out there.

In fact, God interacts with that real world.

We see in the Scriptures that Jesus went everywhere there were sinners. In fact, people made the comparison that while John the baptist preached repentance, Jesus on the other hand hung out with sinners and everyone noticed that he "associated with them." Well, guess what? Jesus didn't yell and scream at the harlots and the theives and the tax collectors (another form of theif) and people like that, to repent. No, in fact who did he tell to repent? The scribes and the pharasees!

quote:

Originally posted by servantsteve
It's the mixed message that is the problem. The description of the song did not give a clear repentence for sin or disdain for it. We've got to be clear in our view on sin!

I think we have to be clear on our view of sin, one place, and one place only: in the home, with our family, and teaching our children.

Everywhere else, what we have to be clear on is our view of forgiveness and grace.

God will judge us only as severely as we judge others!

(Forgive us our tresspasses, as we forgive those who tresspass against us!)

You are more likely to enter the kingdom of heaven if you live a life as a profligate, and yet forgive and love everyone you meet, than you are if you try to live a holy life and think and act like you are better than everyone else.

Cheers!
Gus

Posted by Kaf-N-8ed on 07-03-2002 at10:28:

one more thing about why this (Attack of the Pulpit Masters) is good art...

I think you are not understanding the song. If you look at the song (at least this is my interpretation of it... keep in mind, I don't have the song, have never heard the song... I'm only going by the lyrics on the web site) it seems to me that the section:

quote:

we're swooning
we're sssspinning
a swirling eddy
a spinning sucking whirlpool of movie going, rock
'n' rolling beer
drinking, smoking, drug infested pornos
porno people
yeah we're the porno people
swooning and swirling and spinning
deeper under the spell of the pulpit masters
the spinning, sweating, gibbering, gyrating jumping

What you see there is the people in the audience at this crusade - the sort where an "evangelist" preaches at you that you are all sinners and are going to hell so must repent... REPENT!!!!!! (etc.)

And these people are admitting to themselves (because they are under the spell of this pulpit master) that they are beer drinkers, and movie goers, and drug infested porno people...

It makes me think that the pulpit master is mesmerizing these people and they are admitting to sins that they don't even have.

Well, poetry is often interpretted in different ways, but that's the way I understand it.

Cheers!
Gus

Posted by Bowling Pin on 07-03-2002 at10:45:

Thanks, Gus!

This actually explains it much better than your first response. I still have some thoughts about that, but I wanted to let you know first that this interpretation seems a lot more consistent with what I would expect from Terry.

Still, you made a comment before, "it's fiction for crying out loud. So shouldn't it be authentic fiction?" as if the fact that it's fiction makes it OK to hold or promote a viewpoint that we couldn't normally support. Like it excuses us from having a higher goal in mind. I don't know if you meant it that way, but that's the way it hit me.

Now that I see your latest post I think maybe I just took all of it the wrong way. But I still think it's a big problem with a lot of what passes for "art" these days. That's not to say that truly awful things can't be put in books or movies or whatever, but if there's no redemptive quality to the art, you've just thrown your reader or viewer into a ditch and left them there. Compare a good Russian novel to what passes for art these days. The subject matter isn't any less awful, just the place you're left at after you're done.

Posted by Kaf-N-8ed on 07-03-2002 at12:21:

quote:

Originally posted by Bowling Pin

Still, you made a comment before, "it's fiction for crying out loud. So shouldn't it be authentic fiction?" as if the fact that it's fiction makes it OK to hold or promote a viewpoint that we couldn't normally support. Like it excuses us from having a higher goal in mind. I don't know if you meant it that way, but that's the way it hit me.

Hmm... just more of my random musings. I hope nobody minds that I discuss this in terms of "poetry" and "art" - it's just easier for me to think of that way, because I consider myself a poet, although I've written more words in novels than in poetry.

I agree that there must be a "higher goal" - but in really, really good art, in my opinion, the "higher goal" is hidden. It touches you at the heart, and not necessarily the mind. When I write I want to show people God, but I don't want to mention Him... that's too much of a turn-off.

I think maybe that's why nobody buys my novel anyway. It's too full of God and too full of pornography all in one place - and it "turns off" both ends of the spectrum. But Stephen King's novels are full of both and he doesn't turn them off... so who knows...

Well, in my one published novel I do actually mention Him... but I try hard to hide my "higher goal." You don't come to some place in a novel of mine where it says: and the moral of the story is..." No, if you didn't "get it" then you "didn't get it" and there's nothing more I can do about that.

But let me say with poetry it is much harder to have a higher goal in an individual pieces. That's becasuse each piece standing on its own is a tiny vignette - doesn't necessarily tell a story, but really paints a picture.

So, it is possible to have a picture of sin (with no mention of God) hanging side by side on the wall with a picture of God (so to speak...) What I'm saying is: you have to take the album as a whole to see the "higher goal" - you won't find it necessarily in the tiny details.

In my novels I make sinful things so real, so true, so fresh and life-like, because (secretly) maybe my higher goal is to make you feel sinful by reading it... then you've identified fully with both the good and the bad characters, and maybe you can come around and see that all mankind is made of the same stuff. Because really, like Dostoyevsky, that is my ultimate higher goal.

Just don't tell anybody about it, okay?

Big Grin

Cheers!
Gus

Posted by servantsteve on 07-03-2002 at18:43:

Name that novel!

So, dude, what's the name of that novel you wrote? Can we buy it on Amazon.com? I know it blows the anonymity thing away so I understand if it's not cool Cool

to tell us....

Posted by Dr Rich on 07-03-2002 at19:30:

quote:

Originally posted by Lost Canine

quote:

Originally posted by Dr Rich

quote:

Originally posted by Lost Canine
there is more than one fundamentalist way to view Scripture. It's not about "picking & choosing," but about proper cultural understanding along with exegesis. And yes, Romans does rock in many ways.
LK-9

the Bible was written by folks who thought the world was flat. you have to read the text with that understanding.
d

This is another one of those debates that will never sway minds. However, you know how I feel on this Doc, and that I agree with you. Patti and I exchanged some private notes about the Jesus Seminar. I'm not quite to that extent, but I do agree with a lot.
LK-9

Wink

I don't expect you to be as much of a heretic as me Wink

Posted by Dr Rich on 07-03-2002 at19:42:

huh...
really? that early? that is not what I've been taught. Confused

well, at any rate, my point is the text was written by a person in another culture, and that text therefore requires interpretation...

quote:

Originally posted by ™
-Doctor?

The Myth of the Flat Earth

How does investigating the myth of the flat earth help teachers of the history of science?

First, as a historian, I have to admit that it tells us something about the precariousness of history. History is precarious for three reasons: the good reason that it is extraordinarily difficult to determine "what really happened" in any series of events; the bad reason that historical scholarship is often sloppy; and the appalling reason that far too much historical scholarship consists of contorting the evidence to fit ideological models. The worst examples of such contortions are the Nazi and Communist histories of the early- and mid-twentieth century.

Contortions that are common today, if not widely recognized, are produced by the incessant attacks on Christianity and religion in general by secular writers during the past century and a half, attacks that are largely responsible for the academic and journalistic sneers at Christianity today.

A curious example of this mistreatment of the past for the purpose of slandering Christians is a widespread historical error, an error that the Historical Society of Britain some years back listed as number one in its short compendium of the ten most common historical illusions. It is the notion that people used to believe that the earth was flat--especially medieval Christians.

It must first be reiterated that with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat.

A round earth appears at least as early as the sixth century BC with Pythagoras, who was followed by Aristotle, Euclid, and Aristarchus, among others in observing that the earth was a sphere. Although there were a few dissenters--Leukippos and Demokritos for example--by the time of Eratosthenes (3 c. BC), followed by Crates(2 c. BC), Strabo (3 c. BC), and Ptolemy (first c. AD), the sphericity of the earth was accepted by all educated Greeks and Romans.

Nor did this situation change with the advent of Christianity. A few--at least two and at most five--early Christian fathers denied the sphericity of earth by mistakenly taking passages such as Ps. 104:2-3 as geographical rather than metaphorical statements. On the other side tens of thousands of Christian theologians, poets, artists, and scientists took the spherical view throughout the early, medieval, and modern church. The point is that no educated person believed otherwise.

Historians of science have been proving this point for at least 70 years (most recently Edward Grant, David Lindberg, Daniel Woodward, and Robert S. Westman), without making notable headway against the error. Schoolchildren in the US, Europe, and Japan are for the most part being taught the same old nonsense. How and why did this nonsense emerge?

In my research, I looked to see how old the idea was that medieval Christians believed the earth was flat. I obviously did not find it among medieval Christians. Nor among anti-Catholic Protestant reformers. Nor in Copernicus or Galileo or their followers, who had to demonstrate the superiority of a heliocentric system, but not of a spherical earth. I was sure I would find it among the eighteenth-century philosophes, among all their vitriolic sneers at Christianity, but not a word. I am still amazed at where it first appears.

No one before the 1830s believed that medieval people thought that the earth was flat.

The idea was established, almost contemporaneously, by a Frenchman and an American, between whom I have not been able to establish a connection, though they were both in Paris at the same time. One was Antoine-Jean Letronne (1787-184 Cool

, an academic of strong antireligious prejudices who had studied both geography and patristics and who cleverly drew upon both to misrepresent the church fathers and their medieval successors as believing in a flat earth, in his On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers (1834). The American was no other than our beloved storyteller Washington Irving (1783-1859), who loved to write historical fiction under the guise of history. His misrepresentations of the history of early New York City and of the life of Washington were topped by his history of Christopher Columbus (182 Cool

. It was he who invented the indelible picture of the young Columbus, a "simple mariner," appearing before a dark crowd of benighted inquisitors and hooded theologians at a council of Salamanca, all of whom believed, according to Irving, that the earth was flat like a plate. Well, yes, there was a meeting at Salamanca in 1491, but Irving's version of it, to quote a distinguished modern historian of Columbus, was "pure moonshine. Washington Irving, scenting his opportunity for a picturesque and moving scene," created a fictitious account of this "nonexistent university council" and "let his imagination go completely...the whole story is misleading and mischievous nonsense."

But now, why did the false accounts of Letronne and Irving become melded and then, as early as the 1860s, begin to be served up in schools and in schoolbooks as the solemn truth?

The answer is that the falsehood about the spherical earth became a colorful and unforgettable part of a larger falsehood: the falsehood of the eternal war between science (good) and religion (bad) throughout Western history. This vast web of falsehood was invented and propagated by the influential historian John Draper (1811-1882) and many prestigious followers, such as Andrew Dickson White (1832-191 Cool

, the president of Cornell University, who made sure that the false account was perpetrated in texts, encyclopedias, and even allegedly serious scholarship, down to the present day. A lively current version of the lie can be found in Daniel Boorstin's The Discoverers, found in any bookshop or library.

The reason for promoting both the specific lie about the sphericity of the earth and the general lie that religion and science are in natural and eternal conflict in Western society, is to defend Darwinism. The answer is really only slightly more complicated than that bald statement. The flat-earth lie was ammunition against the creationists. The argument was simple and powerful, if not elegant: "Look how stupid these Christians are. They are always getting in the way of science and progress. These people who deny evolution today are exactly the same sort of people as those idiots who for at least a thousand years denied that the earth was round. How stupid can you get?"

But that is not the truth.

Posted by servantsteve on 07-04-2002 at08:11:

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH

Is it just me or are the long messages with lots of earlier messages enbedded in them impossible to read for others, too?

Posted by Kaf-N-8ed on 07-04-2002 at09:21:

quote:

Originally posted by servantsteve
So, dude, what's the name of that novel you wrote? Can we buy it on Amazon.com? I know it blows the anonymity thing away so I understand if it's not cool Cool

to tell us....

Ah, sure. If you are interested:

Nikki, by Gustav BenJava at Amazon.com

or (better still, because you can find the cheapest place to buy it)

Nikki, by Gustav BenJava at the author's web site

If you go to the second like there are more free chapters to read. Also, there are links to my second novel, the sequel, with free chapters to read from that one also.

Cheers!
Gus

P.S. It doesn't blow away the "anonymity thing" because Gustav BenJava is my "stage name." Smile

I write with a pseudonym, so that I can attempt to live a peaceful, quiet, anonymous life, even if I ever make it big time and become a famous author.
(Which, of course, I hope to do some day - not for the money, and certainly not for fame, but so that people will read my stuff... and think.) Regards!

Posted by Lost Canine on 07-04-2002 at14:00:

This a a great thread, and I'm off to enjoy my freedom of "burger bashing" and diet-Coke. However, some things being thrown up as "historical fact" is more philosophy than fact. Of course, a lot of theology goes into the realm of philosophy too. I'll post more later.
LK-9

Posted by BigDork on 07-05-2002 at10:02:

quote:

Originally posted by Kaf-N-8ed
Gustav BenJava is my "stage name."

I wish I had a cool stage name... Frown

Posted by BigDork on 07-05-2002 at10:07:

oh, and just for the record

Attack of the Pulpit Masters is a heck of a fun song to sing along with no matter what it means!

attack of the pulpit masters
they're coming again
look out look out look out look out
they are coming again
oh no we're swooning
swoooooooooooning
woah nelly
we're swooning again

Big Grin

BD

Posted by BigDork on 07-05-2002 at10:17:

quote:

Originally posted by Dr Rich

the Bible was written by folks who thought the world was flat. you have to read the text with that understanding.
d

and here I thought you were a educated man... Wink

It's funny how we ''learn'' things from schools or teachers even parents, that are just wrong. But since we were taught it by someone who ''knew'' the truth we are stuck with an untruth until we can re-learn things for ourselves........now, is the world flat or not?

BD

Posted by Dr Rich on 07-05-2002 at11:26:

quote:

Originally posted by servantsteve
Is it just me or are the long messages with lots of earlier messages enbedded in them impossible to read for others, too?

yes, well it's kind of a longstanding "thing" we do to bug each other...

another victim in the crossfire Crying

Posted by Dr Rich on 07-05-2002 at11:30:

quote:

Originally posted by BigDork

quote:

Originally posted by Dr Rich

the Bible was written by folks who thought the world was flat. you have to read the text with that understanding.
d

and here I thought you were a educated man... Wink

It's funny how we ''learn'' things from schools or teachers even parents, that are just wrong. But since we were taught it by someone who ''knew'' the truth we are stuck with an untruth until we can re-learn things for ourselves........now, is the world flat or not?

BD

I know that Columbus did "prove" the world was flat... that part of all our education is pretty much a lie, some book in the 1800's I think glorified that one.

I thought it was more like 300-400 AD that most people knew the earth was round.

also the OT was most certainly written by folks who thought the world was flat.

and no, I am not really that ed-u-ma-cated Wink

I just read too much Pleased

Posted by Lost Canine on 07-05-2002 at11:36:

The real irony of "learning" untruth is that many learn a lot of untruth from pastors. How's that for irony?
LK-9

Posted by Dr Rich on 07-05-2002 at11:40:

quote:

Originally posted by Lost Canine
This a a great thread, and I'm off to enjoy my freedom of "burger bashing" and diet-Coke. However, some things being thrown up as "historical fact" is more philosophy than fact. Of course, a lot of theology goes into the realm of philosophy too. I'll post more later.
LK-9

Hmmmmm.....
very interesting.....

Wink