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[Voldermot]

What's the general feeling on the external Christian mythos? For example, how Hell is very vague and poorly described in the Bible, but people as a whole have very concrete definitions of the place from external sources and concepts, primarily Dante but also a lot of the punishment fantasy aspects from the Greeks.

Or how the Horsemen of the Apocalypse aren't named in the Bible, beyond Death, the others being possibly related to Conquest/Conflict and the others maybe bringing plague and pestilience, whilst everyone knows they're Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence.

What's the general feel on stuff that isn't expressly official dogma, isn't expressly in the books near as anyone can tell, but everybody figures is canonical 'enough' to count as being a part of the religion.

[jimwalton]

Interesting subject of conversation for Christians. So let's talk.

> Hell is very vague and poorly described in the Bible

Actually, it's fairly uniformly and clearly described. The Bible uses five primary picture to speak of hell: darkness and separation, suffering and remorse, punishment, death and destruction, and fire. (Fire isn't necessarily the primary image.) We are told that it's a real place, that it's eternal, and that it's a place of agony (most of which is spiritual). So, what's unclear about that? And why is it automatically mythological? Some more dialogue would be useful.

> The Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Hm. What does it matter if they are named? They represent the things you have mentioned, and in the context of Revelation 6 they are portrayed as divine judgments on the earth. I don't understand why this is a problem (a shortcoming? mythological?). Apocalyptic literature is characterized by fantastical images and metaphors. In the 2001 war against Iraq, President Bush used "shock and awe." In the book of Revelation, John used 4 horses. Some clarification would be helpful.

> What's the general feel[ing] on stuff that isn't expressly official dogma?

Well, the existence of hell is dogma, but there are nuances of understanding it. The teachings of Revelation are wide open for interpretation, but still many things in Revelation that are part of what are considered dogma.

But to answer your question direction, if it isn't expressly delineated for us, we take it as our interpretation, but where it is expressly stated, it falls under dogma. Some things that are open to interpretation: how to run your church, how to celebrate communion, how to use your spiritual gifts, the place of women in leadership in the church, the interpretation of the book of Revelation, etc. Some things that are NOT open to interpretation: the character of God, the deity of Jesus, the reality of the Trinity, the deity of the Holy Spirit, salvation by grace through faith, the redeeming blood of Jesus, etc.

The cliche goes "major on the majors, and minor on the minors." Where the Bible is clear, stand firm. Where it's not clear, don't judge each other. Let's talk more, because I'm not sure where you're coming from, and what you really mean by the examples you've given.

[My Car]

> "Some things that are open to interpretation: how to run your church, how to celebrate communion, how to use your spiritual gifts, the place of women in leadership in the church, the interpretation of the book of Revelation, etc. Some things that are NOT open to interpretation: the character of God, the deity of Jesus, the reality of the Trinity, the deity of the Holy Spirit, salvation by grace through faith, the redeeming blood of Jesus, etc."

But there are historical examples of many of these being contested. From women not being allowed in leadership to the reality of the Trinity (some (all?) of the Orthodox churches). Your sect may have settled these questions to your/their satisfaction. But if the Bible lays them out clearly, how then were they debated over for centuries and how did the myriad of Christian sects come to be?

I'm not the original poster, and I'm partly playing devil's advocate here, but some of the things you list as "NOT open to interpretation" have been and/or are interpreted differently in different Christian sects. My understanding of the Biblical Hell is that it is more/less similar to the Jewish one, in that it is separation from God. Torment, pain, punishment come from either Revelation, which hasn't happened yet and won't until Revelation comes true (usually with the lake of fire being interpreted as oblivion, not burning/torture), or from the muddying of the waters from the Greek/Norse tradition and Dante's Inferno. The later of which crystallized Christian's view of Hell for the last couple hundred years.

Another example might be Satan vs. Lucifer. In the Bible they are separate characters, but in the Christian Mythos they are the same being. From Hebrew el-Satan might be translated Adversary, as Christians usually do, or it could alternately be translated as Accuser, something closer to God's Devil's Advocate or Prosecuting Attorney.

Many things like this are only a problem if you're a stickler for The Bible being the literal, inerrant word of God. And which Bible—NKJV / Catholiic / Orthodox / etc.? But that's another discussion.

[jimwalton]

Thanks for good discussion. It would help us to get something straight here. The Bible is more like the law than it is like science. It is literature, not reproducible in a lab under controlled conditions. As such, the law is a recognized authority, but it must still be interpreted as much as it needs to be administered. For that matter, language all by itself is already an interpretation. The legal system's (jurisprudence) approach to determining truth is very different from the scientist's, but that doesn't mean it's illegitimate. But let's be honest: even interpretations happen in science, and many things there are open to interpretation as well. There are at least ten different and empirically equivalent interpretations of the mathematics of quantum mechanics, and yet I doubt that you question either mathematics or quantum mechanics. Let's just be realistic about things and not have a double standard.

> My understanding of the Biblical Hell is that it is more/less similar to the Jewish one

The Jews don't really HAVE an understanding of the Biblical hell. In the Tanakh, there is next to zero information about hell. Almost everything taught in the Bible that we know about hell came from Jesus and the New Testament. Most of the talk about torment, pain and punishment come from the lips of Jesus. It wasn't crystallized through the past few centuries, but came right from the lips of The Man himself.

> Another example might be Satan vs Lucifer. In the Bible they are separate characters

This is a strange comment. "Lucifer" is only used once in the Bible (Isa. 14.12), but it's not really "Lucifer". It's the Hebrew word "Helel", and is usually interpreted "morning star". The Latin word for "morning star" is "luciferus", and that's where the word comes from. But it is not thought by many scholars and Bible interpreters that this refers to Satan, but to Venus.

Again, in the Tanakh, Satan is not personified as he is in the NT. In the OT, the satan is an adversary (particularly in Job), not the Devil. Satan is not delineated until the gospels and the NT. So it's not accurate to say "in the Bible they are separate characters." That's a misunderstanding, but we can talk about that more as you like.

> The Bible being the literal, inerrant word of God

"Literal" is a problematic word to apply to the Bible. The Bible is a rich literary collection, containing music, poetry, metaphor, allegory, archetypes, parable, hyperbole, metonymy, irony, simile, and many other literary forms, as well as genres such as prayer, prophecy, blessing, covenant language, legal language, etc. "Literally" quickly becomes a word with very little meaning or helpfulness. If a poet says the trees of the field will clap their hands and the mountains will jump for joy, is that literal? Of course not, it's poetry. If a man prays, "God, kill all those people", we may all understand that his prayer is inappropriate, and is not blessed by God, but is it literal? Well, how does that word even apply? And how does it apply to archetype, allegory, parable, and all the others? It's a word that should be dropped from the discussion because it doesn't take us anywhere except to the Land of Misunderstanding.

It's better to think that the Bible should be taken the way the author intended it to be taken. If he was using hyperbole, we're to take it that way. So also allegorically, historically, parabolic, poetic, etc. Our quest is to understand the intent of the author. In that case we'll take the Bible *seriously*, but "literally" doesn't take us anywhere.