Question
Where were the real christians in the medieval times? ie. 500ad-1500ad? I was reading “The End of Faith” by author Sam Harris(read to see what he thinks) and the terrible things these so called christians did to people. Like the witch hunts, the inquisition and also about how the word “almah” should be translated as “young lady” and not “virgin” as the famous verse “behold a virgin shall conceive…” in Isaiah 7:14 and how we should doubt that any book is divinely inspired and we should argue with evidence.
Generally the book just blasts major religions and attributes the problem of terrorism to our beliefs. Not only christianity, but islam and others as well. Of course, we can say it was the roman catholics that did all that in the middle ages and excuse it away.. but still, the question is where were the christians as we know it today? If Luthor (whom many scholars agree was like.. super anti-jew) didn’t get those 95 statements out, would we even exist? But at the same time, Christians don’t just mean the christians as we know it today with nice churches and all.. I’m sure there were people who were really saved during the time rome fell till the time when protestant christianity appeared. So.. where were they and what were they doing? busy running away from roman catholic persecution? This is so puzzling because in another 1000 years.. will Christianity look anything like it does today? And if it does change.. would that mean that I believed in something erroneous?
That said. I’d also like to highlight the fact that the bible was starting to get in circulation to the common people by 1550 and that resulted in the eradication of almost one millenia of so called “Christian” brutality, murder, torture and geonocide. Not too bad eh?
Still.. where were we in the middle ages?
January 28th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
actually wrt the Is 7:14 verse, i’m pretty convinced that it did not actually refer to Christ..
i say that having heard the arguments to and for..
without going into a whole long story.. i hold more strongly to the authorial intent.. and i believe it’s only because we have a complete canon that we can look back and claim reference to Christ but i’m pretty sure that Isaiah did not make direct reference to Christ in that passage..
January 28th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
ha.. since nobody has come to conclusion, I’m sure its pretty complicated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_birth_of_Jesus
Is quite interesting cos it has a few angles. The things we assume as fact are actually so debatable. And the fact is 100% implied quite obviously through his genealogies in the bible but never explicitly said.. unless you count Luke 1:30-35 when Mary says she’s a virgin.
I notice the more people dig into the bible from the reason point of view the more complicated and lost they get. haha.. if they would study the spiritual aspects and take everything else by faith and reject the secular humanist thinking they would be fine.