Sheldrake video

[IainH]

YouTube "Rupert Sheldrake - What does Jesus Christ symbolize? (Video lecture)
Illustrious Elders, I watched this and at various points "knew" what was incorrect about it. I got a problem, I ain't no writer so, on one hand I can say "man, he's missing something that I know in my heart to be true" but, I can't explain it. Why don't one of y'all do that for me. He makes some accurate observations but, misses what I see as the essence of truth. Take your time, my Faith ain't never been shook by intellectual dismissal so, it's not like I'm all aflutter. You guys can put into words what I cannot. Thanks
  It may be the continuing insistence that nothing is higher than the intellect and that everything can deconstructed.

[Ed Hurst]

1. He claims God scorned Cain's offering because it was vegetation, and demanded a meat offering. This is false; God has always demanded the first fruits of whatever you grow, be it animal or vegetable. God scorned Cain's offering because of Cain's attitude.

2. He goes off on a tangent in portraying God and sacrifice as a predatory relationship. God is the provider; we share with Him in feudal honor. He has no clue about feudalism. God actually demands the best, not the weakest. Dragons demanding their sacrifice is entirely pagan and the Bible militates against that. As a side note, it is a Western notion that one's virgin daughter is somehow more valuable and precious than any other part of your household. That's a Germanic thing that puts a higher blood price on women than on men.

I could go on about those kinds of issues, but the underlying flaw in his discourse is denying the Fall. He says up front that modern (Western) people see no need for salvation, and seems to agree with that. So instead of Christ restoring us to an eternal life outside this life, he suggests that Jesus came to "deify" humans. That's baloney.

[jaybreak]

Listening now. Sheldrake does what so many other Western scholars do, which is fill in a lot of the Biblical narrative accounts with whatever philosophical filter they put on, and it's almost always a Western filter. Instead of giving voice to the "silent" parts properly by putting the cultural and philosophical meaning of what He did, and what the gospel writers wrote--the non-Talmudic, Hebrew approach that was always there but in a corporate minority in Israel at the time--Sheldrake just writes in what he wants.

He has some good observations about general human and animal behavior, but they don't really apply exactly to what Jesus did.