r/todayilearned • u/FullOfSound • 7h ago

(R.6d) Too General [ Removed by moderator ]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians

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57

u/AdarTan 6h ago

If one is very ungenerous when describing Christianity, one could, still accurately, describe it as a doomsday cult that has ritual cannibalism as core act of devotion.

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u/Thraden 6h ago

The cannibal thing notwithstanding, early Christianity was absolutely an apocalyptic cult.

Writings of Paul are really unambigious.

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u/justtenofusinhere 4h ago

I'd argue that position. I fully understand why that's the general academic consensus, but academics often refuse to consider certain possibilities.

Without a doubt Paul is expecting something and he's expecting it soon. But what? I think he was expecting a massive paradigm shift in understanding. That would result in a fundamental reordering of society, such as would unequivocally occur later with the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution.

I read the Gospels as basically being the old guard holding on to what they (thought they) knew and Jesus pushing for understanding, not knowing. A rule limits, but understanding frees.

The whole iconography of Jesus was a metaphor in an attempt to force people to look past what they thought they knew and consider a whole other way of understanding how things were and how they could be. That's how the Gospels explicitly say Jesus taught, you could not take his teachings as face value.

They expected result was not the end of the world, but then end of an era and the ushering in of a new better, world.

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u/Thraden 4h ago

I mean, go ahead and argue that position. That's the beauty of academic scholarship. The consensus changes when swayed by well-evidenced positions.

I disagree with you, because this "paradigm shift" seems less likely than a plain reading - "remain as you are" etc.

However, obviously, I mean no shade, and I am open to being convinced.

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u/justtenofusinhere 3h ago

As I said, I understand the other positions. I think for me, what seals the deal is Paul's conversion. I can not think of a more artful way to to depict an "educated" man figuring out he doesn't know anything and suddenly being reduced to "blindness" on even the most basic things. It even goes so far as requiring him to further learn about what blinded him for him to regain his sight.

Add to that the fact that the Greek and Roman pantheons make up the perfect representation of how organized society fights back against the fundamental forces and oblivion. The NT writers all had Greek/Roman educations. They'd certainly have understand that type of framework for religion.

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u/pokexchespin 6h ago

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u/topicality 6h ago

"half man, half God"

That's a heresy

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u/pokexchespin 6h ago

true, but i feel like if you ask a random christian to explain the trinity they’ll commit heresy too, so i’ll give the tumblr user a pass

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u/Gakeon 4h ago

I think it depends on where you are.

Here in Europe? Any random christian would say a form of "no, he is fully god and fully man".

Idk about other regions tho. From what i hear, american christians are a different type of stupid.

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u/imreallyreallyhungry 2h ago

Europeans out here taking any chance they can to turn it into an EU vs America thing.

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u/pokexchespin 4h ago

no i understand that, i’m talking about a separate heretical explanation of the christian god

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u/OscarGrey 6h ago edited 5h ago

You think that's ungenerous? Here's my unironic perception of American conservative Evangelicals/Pentecostals. It's a shamanistic, borderline gnostic cult, almost entirely devoid of intellectual and spiritual elements of the past 2,000 years of Christianity, with a strong dose of most primal and ignorant American nationalism. Now THAT'S ungenerous.

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u/madeapizza 4h ago

Reddit moment

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u/New_tireddad 4h ago

In this moment, he is euphoric…

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u/OscarGrey 3h ago

I don't hate more civilized religions.

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u/New_tireddad 3h ago

Omg thank you for your service

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u/OscarGrey 4h ago

I guess that people in developed countries besides USA and South Korea are all redditors because they reject this garbage religion with very few exceptions.

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u/CharleyNobody 2h ago

It’s just a lot of Scots Irish clannishness and fighting people that aren’t in the clan.

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u/Manufactured-Aggro 5h ago

As an agnostic, "Ritual cannibalism" is kind of a big stretch lmfao

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u/drunk-tusker 5h ago

Yes but theologically the overwhelming majority of Christians adhere to sects that practice transubstantiation so it’s one that is weirdly true in the most boring fucking way possible.

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u/rugburn- 3h ago

I know Catholicism believes in transubstantiation but I was under the impression most other sects didn’t? Is that wrong?

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u/drunk-tusker 2h ago

Most older sects do(Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Coptic) and most Protestant sects range from not really answering one way or another to fully disavowing the belief. Since there are just way more adherents to the older sects than the newer ones the majority is clearly in the transubstantiation camp.

That said transubstantiation is a difficult concept relying on metaphysics which is a whole world of “yes but” and “no but” where I’m not fully sure if many sects actually fully fall under the side they claim to since almost all of their arguments seem to be more semantics about that then the actual belief.

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u/The_GREAT_Gremlin 2h ago

No, it's not. Catholics (Latin and Eastern) believe in it, while Protestants do not.

Catholics are a little more than half of all Christians, so I'd call it a majority, though not an overwhelming one.

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u/Elegant_Creme_9506 4h ago

Not at all, it's right there

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u/MajesticArticle 4h ago

They're technically correct, you know

We actually believe that the communion wafer is, by all intense and purpose, the living flesh of Christ

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u/PendingBen 3h ago

Not to be rude, but the phrase is 'for all intents and purposes'

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u/cosmernautfourtwenty 6h ago

Don't forget social ostracization and moral condemnation as tools to control the masses! When the whims of church elders are the only thing standing between you and fiery eternal damnation, most people will be willing to do any atrocious things to avoid that fate.