Luke Breuer wrote: If I “couch” my statements in certain/factual language, that simply means that I am willing to defend what I say in a somewhat formal way. How could it mean more than that?
Fair enough. It would be interesting to see why you are so certain that the translated Jesus did not speak like the translated version of Eckhart. I mean apart from the obvious thousand years of differences in culture and context. This was my initial challenge, perhaps a bit pointy as response to the formal balloon your first post on the topic appeared to me as. But I do not need to "articulate and defend this statement" as you wrote earlier. It's you who has to defend the notion that Jesus did not speak about the same as Eckhart. Please note that I'm not aware of any claim they
have to derive in some way authority from each other. You need to explain that notion as well.
some corpus be identified as his sayings, and that he [Jesus] was consistent in his thoughts.
There's no doubt about the author of most of Eckhart's work. While the canonical Gospels already provide four differencing versions, making them
at most eye witness accounts but the evidence points more to composed works with a lot of influence from contemporary and wildly popular (at the time) Homerian drama in there. A dry original theological work with a reasonable clear authorship should not be judged by reading a collection of wise sayings from a thousand year earlier. They can be both read and judged on their own merits.
At least I was led to believe, by his writing, that he [Eckhart] thinks he is speaking for the God described in Christian holy texts.
Yes, he was a Dominican friar active as theologian and teacher. He is supposed to speak like he knows something. But interpretations can vary wildly, just look at the Schism, the heretical groups of all ages, the thousands of denominations inside the Protestant culture alone, with pretty large differences in how they treat the scripture. This has always been the case by the way, often underground or between religious orders.
Thinking freely does not mean one abandons standards of evidence, nor rationality.
Sure. What I meant is that
you personally still have to apply those standards. Although one cannot be an expert on everything to the degree of verifying each and every bit. In practical reality one makes judgement calls and lives to a degree "by faith", or by instinct or even "intuition". A practical consideration! And some of the topics here will have to be addressed ultimately that way as well, when rationality has exhausted all other routes.
Only you can decide who reads or sounds as someone with skill, with understanding about the topic. No one can help you there, you're all alone!
This thinking could be dangerous. On the one hand, I might be able to agree, but on the other hand, it sounds like justification to live however you wish to live, as long as you can soundly rationalize it. How do
you fight the rationalization instinct that is extremely common to the types of folks who frequent this forum?
A good question! It's dangerous and indeed might cause trouble for those "types of folks". Perhaps one could require some advancedness, and it
is required, but since it cannot be enforced without even bigger dangers, the forum ends up looking like
this.
When you say this, are you under the impression that you are inline with what the Bible says, or do you not care?
It's not that I don't care, I know a lot about the Bible and related issues, but the problem is what you mean with "what the Bible says". You're speaking probably from a certain tradition with an embedded theology, some culture and interprative system which put it all in a context for you? My studies inside and outside churches have led me to the point I realised how immensely rich and complex the history and meanings of each and every section was in all the books inside and outside the canon.
Only a few parts of the bible really go into the nature of reality, often in parables or according to "as above so below". So much of it is also culture, morality, nationalism, all retro-fitted to serve later cultures, the Romans, Western Christendom, etc.
I am saying that one must absolutely trash what the standard Protestant (I am not sure about the Apocrypha) Bible has Jesus saying, in order to support what Eckhart says.
You could start with an example of a saying of Jesus which has to be trashed for Eckhart to be supported. What about: "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. .....It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." While I'm aware of all the interpretations, it's important to note he didn't keep on asking the rich to give away their possessions but talked about being reborn, or take up the cross, etc.
He tries to explain all the surrounding stories, copies and events which have so many similarities in moral, story and execution by being "lesser" version of the real thing.
Is this
never a pattern found in human behavior? Clearly, one needs to establish which version was closest to the real thing, but you would appear to be dismissing the whole enterprise as useless.
The logical problem was to explain the
existence of so many versions before and after the supposed "fact". Instead of going with a logical, natural hypotheses that the story in the gospel was
one of those versions, Lewis asserts an unknown, unexplained mechanism of foreshadowing and echoing. But it doesn't take much looking around in literature and art to see how ideas spread, develop and vary over a few decades already. There is often not "the original". So which reason the rational Lewis has for his ideas here: none but an unwillingness to face a more simple, rational view.
It is equally valid to say that Lewis made assumptions that either A) most people miss, or B) were not explicitly stated, but underlay enough of his work to be sufficiently obvious to the competent reader. This makes the issue not at all one of logical fallacy, but challenging a premise, based not on consistency of a possible world, but by testing whether this actual world is that possible world, using evidence.
No, it's really a very clear fallacy which occupies a significant position throughout his apologetic work. Lewis assumes simply there's no other alternative way to interpret the teachings while there obviously are, even in this time. And as such it shows the limitation of Lewis the most clear: his emotional attachment to some orthodox core Christian teaching to be
factual as well as
historical. It's like holding on to a womb, like a baby not wanting to be born. All too human, all too understandable too.
