Oh, sorry about that. There has been quite a lot of discussion in some critical literature about demons and thought forms in the context of first century beliefs.

You made a typo ("demoms")  in reference to your cold and I didn't know what you were referring to.  About casting out demons:  I don't think all (or even most) illness in that time period was thought to be caused by demons.  I only remember the "casting out of demons" in the context of mental illness in the healing narratives in the NT.  About the linking of illness with sin:  I don't think that was a constant, either.  There's the
"did this man sin, or his father" comment in one of the narratives having to do with healing but I think Jesus's response didn't address that issue. 

You don't know what demons are? When someone presented themselves to Jesus in need of healing, he removed the demons! They believed that illness and sin were linked. That's why people died - because of sin. That's why a sinless person did not have to die, and thus became attached to the exchange-theology of Christ - who did not have to die but did so that others could live. When the Kingdom would arrive fully, people would stop dying. People asked Paul about people still dying and what would happen - why were they dying?

It was commonly thought that rich and better living people had fewer demons: why Jesus's reverse ethics about them was a revolutionary message. Jesus healed the poor and said sin no more as a means of preparing them for a deathless life in the coming kingdom.

It's not a viewpoint we share - we die for biological reasons. We conk out, basically, and it is irrelevant whether we are good, bad, healthy or unhealthy (though being unhealthy obviously can tip you over into death). The rich still have more life chances.

Sorry to be talking so much, but Pluralist, one of the things about evangelicals is that we do have the opportunity to be with other people who think of the universe in a religious context when we can.  In groups like the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer, and Daughters of the King, and the Order of St. Luke we can lift each other up in prayer for whatever the needs are--a four week cold, the next election (guidance, not that any particular candidate be elected), parts of the world where bad things are going on, a son in Iraq (my situation), a difficult pregnancy, cancer, safety for a loved one travelling, guidance with a difficult decision, and simply thanksgiving.  Again, hope you are soon over your cold. 

Pluralist, I'm sorry you've had a cold for four weeks.  That is too long.  I hope you're over it soon.  I don't know what denoms are. 

Pluralist--if you're talking to me about atheists in a list, yes, there are atheists in the list I gave you and by no means was I talking about theologians.  I was responding to fellow linguist Tony's comment about the complexity of texts and ways they are understood.  Sacred texts and secular ones are all texts and some of the challenges in reading them are similar. 

John Goldsmith

To find my 5 assertions (31 July 2009) click on my name on any of my posts and scroll down until you find them.

The passages I have challenged Clare about, in various places, besides Luke 13:1-5 which you mention, include:

Luke 17: 20-37 (The OT portrays these events as acts of God’s judgment. I agree that Jesus does not explicitly confirm that they are. But he does not deny that they are either. The position that Jesus’ said these words but in Jesus’ view they were not the acts of God, or in Jesus’ view they were the acts of God but were immoral, is incredible to me.

It is a reasonable assumption, although I agree we are not explicitly told, that children were among those destroyed by the flood and among those destroyed in the overthrow of Sodom).

Luke 19:27

Matthew 13:36-43

Matthew 7:21-23

Matthew 25:40-46

Matthew 15:4

Matthew 10:14-15

Matthew 11:20-22

Did Jesus say these words? What do you understand them to mean?

Also, there are numerous other parts of the New Testament which also support my assertion

‘The wrath of God is a punitive wrath which is final for the objects of that wrath unless they are delivered from it’.

Hebrews 10:29-31

Romans 2:8-9

Romans 3:5-6

Rev 6:12-17

Rev 14: 4-20

Rev 19:11-21

Rev 20:12-15

2 Thessalonians 1: 4-9

What do you make of those?

I have given my view on the right understanding of Luke 13:1-5 in my 30 July post. I don’t think your (Tom Wright’s?) view is right.

Phil Almond

Some of those are hardly Christian theologians - 'new atheists' among them. Allowing for the possibility of transcendence, I'm basically a non-theist and that's the position I'm naturally going to reproduce.

People are very defensive when it comes to religion and belief, like they throw a switch when challenged and come up with all sorts of doctrinal belief. But then when they relax a bit they don't go around asking what God is doing in the weather or in the activity of business or trade unions. I've had a cold for 4 weeks now but no one has offered to shift any demoms. People simply do not think like this any more, including so called orthodox believers. It takes a pretty hefty sectarian to use religious language for the everyday. That wasn't the stance of Jesus and the first century believers - they really did think they lived in a religiously pregnant universe, with all sorts of stuff going on. It is completely different now and I just want to produce material that reflects such a shift in ordinary, everyday, perspective.

Iconoclast--I agreed with much of your last post, but still strongly disagree that "liberals" and "conservatives" can be as sharply contrasted as you seem to do, so much so that (in your words) "the Gospel preached by the Liberals is in the Conservative view a different message."  For instance, Bishops Breidenthal (Southern Ohio) and Marshall (Bethlehem, one of the Pennsylvania dioceses) are "liberal" on the sexual issues (they voted "yes" to the resolutions at the 2009 GC which led to +Mark Lawrence's recent statement, as well as reactions by +Wright and the ABC and many others).  However, they voted "no" on the consecration of Kevin Thew Forrester+.  They wrote independent, well-written expositions of why Forrester's Christology was incompatible with the teachings of the church as developed in the creeds and the Book of Common Prayer.  Have you read them?  So few "conservatives" cite them that it's hard not to think that the defining issues for some conservatives are the sexual ones, and they are not interested in orthodox statements on other issues by people they have tagged as "liberals." 

Tony--it's amazing how many posts there have been since yours of 24 Aug. at 3:44 PM, which at this point was hard to find!  You mentioned linguists' awareness of "the complex relationship between textual genesis and meaning."  I did take a course in the history of 20th century French literary criticism in 1986, which--for me--included a review of what had been going on in the field since 1960, when I had a course in Explication de Textes at Middlebury which I loved.  In that older course, we were taught a method which began with a brief statement of what we considered the purpose/meaning of the text to be after a cursory reading.  We were then to expound on the literary devices used to develop that meaning as we plumbed the text further. We weren't to read any commentaries on the text as a part of that course, since we were to concentrate on the text itself.   I've read texts that way ever since, and found it helpful as a springboard (by no means exhaustive, but a springboard) to further discussion of the text.  In the 1986 course we read de Saussure, Derrida, Genette, Foucault, Barthes (my favorite), and many others.  I thought of the Bible somewhat with Derrida's onion skin metaphor:  but where he thought the continued peelings revealed that there was nothing at the center, I thought that the continued peelings kept pointing to God, and that the act of revealing successive layers  was infinite (and thrilling, to refer to someone's thread on religious experience).  Anyway:  we also talked about metatextualism, which I think is important to this "unpacking" thread.  How do different people "unpack" a text when they write texts referring to an original?  As I have implied above, I do think the Bible has a unifying thread and although it was written by human beings, it was inspired by God.  I have a Lockean view, I think, of the Bible:  not all of it is completely of God then, and now, and to come (to borrow Phil's terminology), but most of it is.  Locke steered that middle course, and thought the church fathers did also (he referred to "the blessed Hooker").  And of more consequence than isolated individuals "unpacking" the Bible is how larger groups did and are still doing it (as someone reported to Pluralist above).  The church fathers' writings, the councils, etc. are all examples of pre-Renaissance unpacking.  Cranmer et al did post-Renaissance unpacking as they developed Anglican liturgy--AND, importantly, Cranmer made sure that Bibles in English were available in as many churches as possible. For Cranmer and similar reformers, it was of utmost importance for people to read the Bible themselves.    People who came to America (many groups) for religious freedom thought so, but they did all did their own "unpacking" of the Bible.  I would call all those "unpacking" texts "metatexts."  In the late 19th and early 20th century Charles Hurlbut told "stories of the Bible" which he eventually put into a well-loved, much read book (with successive editions).  That book had a great influence on me as a child and on many other people.  Chautauqua Institute in western New York (near our vacation place in NW PA) was founded to teach Methodist Sunday School teachers how to do a better job.  The building next to the theater (where we took grandchildren last week to see _The Winter's Tale_) is named for Hurlbut.  Chautauqua is no longer dedicated to a unified view of Christianity; the programs there have a very wide range.  But it began with the Bible and explanatory "metatexts" like Hurlbut's. 

What is being seen in the Anglican Communion? As far as I can see, those who have an inclusive view are still trinitarians, still focus upon the tradition of Jesus Christ and where it takes believers and the world, still operate within a narrow liturgical framework.

I don't. I don't regard Jesus as being in any sense exclusive, either morally or religiously, and in fact religion is about what we do. I want a wholly different approach to the language of worship, far more open and pluralist/ universalist (in the widest sense). But then this is not something I operate within the Anglican Communion, or recommend for it, and where anyone has come anywhere near it (for example Kevin Forrester) then it has been rejected.

Don Cupitt has stopped regular churchgoing now, Richard Holloway operates his agnosticism outside Anglicanism (apparently he preached recently in an Anglican church in a recognisably orthodox form - I found that quite disappointing if so) and no one is pushing for reform of the tradition, only some leeway in interpretatation according to biblical research and theological insight. There is no John Robinson today. Those who might say something interesting are just silent. That's why I'm going elsewhere in terms of creativity because as well as regarding Anglicanism as unethical it is also stuck.

There is more breadth in the US and in Scotland and some other places, but it's almost as if people are scared. It is now the rule of duplicity - thinking one thing and saying another, not even now the coded sermon whereby some hearers could hear orthodoxy and those with theological education could hear the code words.

Theology and biblical work is broader and wider than it has ever been, but it isn't reflected in Anglicanism. It is only reflected in the output of individuals. The difference now is that anyone can find out what these variations are, thanks to the Internet and search engines, but it is not reflected in church life which is tame and limited.

Now that I am writing my own service content into a structure and will write the sermon too, I feel quite liberated, but it would never fit within the boundaries of Anglicanism. I rarely mention God, Jesus or Buddha. It seems to me that Anglicans are quite close to each other and this idea of distance is only because evangelicalism has take such a swing to the right with its obsession over details, a position once held by very few within Anglicanism but which many an evangelical who wants the label finds difficult to escape.