what, exactly, is the suffering for, and for what purpose if it is necessary? — tim wood

My view is that suffering is an inevitable aspect of life , and so the question is, 'why?' Life can seem dreadfully unfair, and even for those in fortunate situations, suffering is inevitable. Childbirth is agonising and hazardous, accidents and illness are ever-threatening and even successful people suffer from emotional ills and dissatisfaction. So I think a large part, maybe the only real part, of religion, is learning how to deal with that, or at least frame it in such a way that it is not overwhelming.

Jung used to speak of 'voluntary suffering', which is the capacity to bear suffering for some meaningful reason, or on account of others. Looking at others, they all suffer as to we ourselves, which somehow makes it seem a bit less dreadful.

Note the etymology of 'salvation' - it is related to 'salve', which is to soothe or balm. I think the basic Christian belief, often badly misrepresented, is that Heaven is a state beyond suffering, but that suffering has to be endured whilst here on earth.

Christ is considered to have himself suffered, but being a God and knowing it makes that problematic. — tim wood

Recall Christ crying out on the Cross, 'father, why have you forsaken me?' That is deemed to have momentous theological significance, as Jesus reached the point of feeling totally abandoned. That is the 'self-emptying' of Christ. There is voluminous literature about it. So he by no means knew that he would be saved at that point.

I may be going out of my depth in getting into this discussion, especially as its after midnight, but I am writing from a genuine point of view. I was brought up as a Catholic and when I began University I was going to Christianity Union. I think that I was aware of a tension between the extent to which one was meant to suffer. I think I saw the idea adopted differently by people around me.

On one level, there was the whole emphasis on the whole tradition of those who had suffered for their belief, especially the martyrs. The whole idea of 'take up your cross and follow Christ'. On the other, there was so much celebration going on around me and people who were not suffering. I think the way I saw it was that the challenge would be how the people who I saw enjoying themselves would cope if they were really confronted with extreme suffering.

Of course, many people who are Christians do experience extreme suffering, as do other people. I would say that I think that, personally, I used to feel guilty for wishing to enjoy myself, so I probably internalised the whole emphasis on suffering.

My answer may not be the kind of level of theologicsl discussion you are hoping for, so I will accept it if you do not reply. So, if you do not engage with me again on this topic I will just throw in another angle. That is that I have read the book , 'A Course in Miracles' and even though it is not part of mainstream Christianity, I find it very interesting in the way in which it challenges the whole view that Christianity is meant to be about suffering.

Being witnessed as the one who suffers is the point Paul is making here. The idea that steadfast faith will be recognized by someone (even more important than Paul) who could notice the effort is combined with observing that "opponents" will be destroyed by seeking to destroy you who stands firm. Since everybody invited to the party will suffer, the emphasis upon who will benefit or not becomes the critical question.

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Note the etymology of 'salvation' - it is related to 'salve', which is to soothe or balm.
— Wayfarer
I don't find this. — tim wood

You're right, I went back and searched again, and couldn't find that etymology.

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Reading it again - it's one of the letters of Paul, who was, of course, setting up ('empowering', we would say) all of these congregations around the Mediteranean basin. He's exhorting the faithful not to loose faith, to stand firm, and not let the opposition of presumably other religionists or those hostile to Christianity to get them down - their stalwartness being a token of their faith. The rationale behind the acceptance of suffering is, I think, simply that, as Jesus was prepared to suffer for you (i.e. 'mankind') then you should be prepared to suffer for Him (which seems to me to be elemental to Christianity.)

That's all there is to it as far as Biblical interpretation goes, but I feel your question is deeper than that. But I still don't quite understand what it is.

The question here: whether it is necessary to suffer for Christ to be a Christian — tim wood

Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but if you’re asking whether or not suffering is required to be a Christian, I’m inclined to think so. Christianity teaches a sort of asceticism, which naturally leads to suffering; additional suffering if you think about. Extra suffering that serves no other purpose than to go to heaven. Christians are therefore expected to willingly endure this. Therefore, when Christians are seen suffering needlessly, it is celebrated. It’s a sign that they are devout.

so what, exactly, is the suffering for, and for what purpose if it is necessary? — tim wood

The purpose would be to avoid the evils of the flesh, and reap the rewards in the afterlife. I feel the concept of repentance ties in with this somehow as well. I guess intentionally harming yourself proves that you’re really sorry for whatever it is you did.

:up:

It seems simple to me. Just consider that time and place in history. Stand fast for Christ and His teachings. But these days, how much of a Christian are you? There are degrees of commitment.

There is the matter of Paul being a witness. Whether he can "see" you and be present or not, he can still "hear" of the suffering that comes from striving together in "one spirit" and "one mind."

Paul, on the other hand, did indeed suffer - so what, exactly, is the suffering for, and for what purpose if it is necessary? — tim wood

The point of the commandment of having no other gods before Jehovah is that the believer is willing to have no other gods before Jehovah even when it's not particularly convenient or popular to do so.

Meaning, he should be prepared to face some trouble when he makes an effort to be true to the commandments of God. This trouble is because he himself may have some evil inclinations in him which he will have to overcome in order to be true to God; and because the world at large isn't interested in being true to the commandments and is trying to lead the believer off the straight and narrow path -- which is something he will have to resist and also expect to be punished for by people.


The way I see it, the salient point of Christianity is that in order to be a Christian, one has to go against the ways of the flesh, against the ways of the world. And this going against necessarily entails suffering.

The Christian will feel turmoil as he, as a Christian, goes against the ways of the flesh (such as when he restrains himself from masturbating, adultering, stealing, etc. etc.).

Other people will seek to persecute and punish the Christian for not following the ways of the world, and instead following God (anything from atheists making fun of Christians to Romans putting them in gladiator arenas with wild animals).

Paul, on the other hand, did indeed suffer - so what, exactly, is the suffering for, and for what purpose if it is necessary? — tim wood

Early Christianity was people who were frustrated with the status quo, largely because the Romans dominated their world. The Messiah was supposed to correct that in some dramatic event. Instead he died, so they began to focus on a second coming, when their suffering would end.

It was during this first waiting period that Paul started his work as a charismatic preacher. He wasnt saying they should be suffering. They just were, and were especially blessed because of it.

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That is, I do not consider the Bible the inerrant word of God (I think the idea absurd). But I am aware that some people do, and their reasoning on that basis cannot be my reasoning, nor their conclusions; their criteria being the text, mine reason and judgement as best I can manage. This "use" of religion I surmise yours as well. All of which is to say that the problems themselves appear to transcend religion. — tim wood

In my first class in Comparative Religion we were asked to come up with a consensus on the definition of religion. The class started off thinking that this would be straightforward. But the wiley lecturer knew better, and after an hour it became apparent that the word cannot be clearly defined, as every attempt left something out that one or another 'religion' possessed.

In any case, I persisted with the subject. This was not academic interest, I was a classic 'seeker' type, but trying to go about it in an intellectually respectable way. My quest was driven by the intuition, not that there was a God, but that there was a state of being - namely, that of enlightenment, which was personified by various historical figures, of which Jesus was but one example. I still basically have this view, even though many ostensible gurus turned out to have clay feet in the intervening decades, and the difficulty of realising such a state has turned out to be far greater than my then-adolescent self anticipated

Anyway, as far as definitions go, I found a useful article on the Maverick Philosopher blog. He paraphrases some writings from the 19th C American Idealist philosopher Josiah Royce on what it means to be a religious person.

The religious person perceives our present life, or our natural life, as radically deficient, deficient from the root (radix) up, as fundamentally unsatisfactory; he feels it to be, not a mere condition, but a predicament; it strikes him as vain or empty if taken as an end in itself; he sees himself as homo viator, as a wayfarer or pilgrim treading a via dolorosa through a vale that cannot possibly be a final and fitting resting place; he senses or glimpses from time to time the possibility of a Higher Life; he feels himself in danger of missing out on this Higher Life of true happiness.

I think that description certainly applies to all of the religious traditions that interest me, which are Christian Platonism, Advaita Vedanta, and Mahāyāna Buddhism. (And note also the appearance of 'Wayfarer'!) But he goes on to say:

If this doesn't strike a chord in you, then I suggest you do not have a religious disposition. Some people don't, and it cannot be helped. One cannot discuss religion with them, for it cannot be real to them. It is not, for them, what William James in "The Will to Believe" calls a "living option," let alone a "forced" or "momentous" one.

Well, it does strike a chord in me, so I guess it makes me a religious person. Most here aren't. But I'm not a church-goer, and my philosophy is not oriented around the Bible in particular, although that is a source, and I have a culturally-imbued sense of Christian identity that I'm sure influences me in ways I can't be conscious of.

So, like you, I have a framework, although I feel that the one I've developed is probably a bit more robust and possibly more accomodating than your own. Through it, I have found a way to re-interpret the message of Christianity so that it makes sense in terms other than those it dictates; that the quest for 'salvation', however conceived, is a universal truth in human culture and society, and has a real referent. It's not simply a matter of belief, although unbelief is definitely an inhibitor to understanding it.

I end up concluding that indeed you ought to suffer for Christ, but only if you choose to, the choice itself being unnecessary. — tim wood

Well, if you really believe that there is something at stake, and it's not simply a matter of identity, a lifestyle choice, then a decision becomes unavoidable.

The notion - any notion - of "ought" or "should" outside their correct grammatical usage, is imo fraught. — tim wood

This was brought into sharp focus by Hume and his 'is/ought' dilemma, which we've discussed many times. But the point here is, Hume was one of the grandfathers of modernism, and this sense of division between facts and values is fundamental to modernism.

There's a lot of conflict, or tension, in Christianity, in particular, between belief and knowledge. Nowadays many people will say, and I think you would agree, that religion is always and only a matter of belief, and that science is always and only the reliable path to knowledge. But that, I think, goes back to the constitution of ecclesiastical Christianity, the way the religion was formed early in the Christian era.

At the time I did Comparative Religion, I formed the view that this conflict was rooted in the suppression of the gnostics in the early Christian era. Gnosticism is a lot more like Buddhism and Vedanta, in its emphasis on experiential understanding, as distinct from simple acceptance of dogmatic truths. I discovered the modern gnostic schools, and in particular Elaine Pagels, who's a Princeton professor of religious studies, and an expert in the recovered Gnostic scriptures found at Nag Hammadi. She argues that in the early church, there was a conflict between the Johannine (pistic) forms of the faith, and the Thomist (Gospel of Thomas, gnostic) forms. The former won out, with momentous consequences for the meaning of religion in the West. There's the Christ of 'believe, and you will be saved' - which forms the basis of pistic religion - but there's also 'you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free', which is the keynote of gnosticism. Politically, the former is far easier to manage.

The figure of the religious sage represents that 'higher knowledge' - the name 'Buddha' means 'knowing' or 'knowing one'. But there's a distinction between 'knowledge' in the sense of salvific wisdom (vidya), and scientific knowledge (episteme), in that the former embodies lived quality rather than quantitative analysis.

My last academic work was a thesis on the early Buddhist texts, from which this note is taken:

Buddhist discipline always had a component of cognitive skill understood in terms of the attainment of insight into the various emotional afflictions (kilesa) and taints (āsava) which are the cause of suffering (dukkha). This ‘path of insight’ is distinctly different to reliance on faith or belief as the expedient factor in the attainment of the goal of the Buddhist path.

The footnote to this passage is:

The sense in which this is a ‘religious’ view is a difficult question. As Paul Williams says:
In the Indian context it would have been axiomatic that liberation comes from discerning how things actually are, the true nature of things (yathābhūtaṃ). That 'seeing things how they are' has soteriological benefits would have been expected, and is just another way of articulating the ‘is’ and ‘ought’ dimension of Indian Dharma. The ‘ought’ (pragmatic benefit) is never cut adrift from the ‘is’ (cognitive factual truth).

Michael Fuller points out that the ‘is/ought’ distinction is a modern one, originating with Hume. The ‘is/ought’ distinction is now, however, very much a part of modern life, and it is generally taken for granted that science assumes a Universe which is inherently devoid of value; values are internal to human minds and are ultimately derived from, and reducible to, the requirements of survival.

The underlying issue - and it's a very deep issue - is that the secular outlook relies on a certain mental and cultural framework - there's 'framework' again. But I think naturalism embodies certain assumptions - and they are assumptions, not the proven scientific fact that they are taken to be - that are inimicable to any genuine spirituality. And we're all living and breathing in that world.

The best book I have read on the subject in recent years is Defragmenting Modernity, Dr. Paul Tyson (from a modern Christian Platonist p.o.v.)


//ps//

I do not consider the Bible the inerrant word of God — tim wood

Have a quick peruse of The Bible Made Impossible. There is such a thing as 'bibliolatory', which is prevalent in conservative American evangelicalism.

In essence seeming to say that you, in your beliefs and practices, or rather that your beliefs and practices, are constitutive of what you believe. — tim wood

I think Paul would have agreed with that. In describing it as a struggle with others who did not agree with that dynamic, there is a political element Paul developed that was central to the efforts of the first "Church Fathers" to keep the flock together. If the solidarity being called for so clearly in the Letters has no bearing upon the ideas being promoted, it is fair to ask why not.

Paul was writing a letter to Christians who suffered. Read 1st Corinthians chapter 3. Righteousness is temporary and we should assume Paul was the greatest but that Paul was the greatest for finite periods of time. Righteousness is temporary and 1st Corinthians chapter 3 (KJV) should provide some clarity to what you are saying. The NIV supports rape while the KJV does not. If you prefer the NLT that is fine too. The NLT is typically more accepted by modern churches. I suppose this discussion will digress into Women issues and White supremacy and all that stuff. oh well. Sometimes the only way to state you accomplished something is for you to state you accomplished something. Even Women state they've accomplished things at times. Truth is a strange thing about whether we should state it or not. In our modern society People "call a spade a spade" all the time. Paul's righteousness was over a finite period of time and we should take into account 1st Corinthians chapter 3 (KJV). As for Jesus Christ he obeyed over 600 laws his whole adult life (including "your heart shall not be above the hearts of your brethen") and he obeyed his superiours in his youth. He was physically ugly and he was a man of suffering (Isaiah chapter 53 KJV). "Seek the face of Jacob" (plain looking).

May you be removed from the pile.

Another thing to consider is "thou shall strenghen the hand of the poor" (not government handouts). Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7 emphasize that the old testament law and the prophets were still important.

I will say first of all that suffering of one kind or another is a necessary aspect of living. To think that we can or should avoid any suffering at all is unrealistic. And that anyone need suffer FOR nothing is more problematic than suffering FOR something in particular. We are called regularly to ‘suffer’ for our health, for our family, for our future and for future generations - the question here is: at what point are we suffering too much?

But I don’t think Paul is saying here that suffering for Christ is necessary in order to be a Christian. It is a privilege granted, not a duty required, to believe and to suffer FOR ‘Christ’.

Paul also advises the Philippians to ‘do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit’, and to ‘do everything without grumbling or arguing’ - and much of his letter suggests that this is his key message: that what they’re working together to achieve is worth a level of personal suffering beyond whatever they may have been complaining about.

I also want to point out that Paul seems to make a distinction between ‘Jesus Christ’ and ‘Christ’ - the latter referring to a human-divine relationship that he strives toward and encourages, and the former referring to the specific example of Jesus, who showed such a relationship was possible.

My difficulty as well. The notion - any notion - of "ought" or "should" outside their correct grammatical usage, is imo fraught. And to suffer for Him? How does that work?

At bottom, if the Bible were just any book I would agree with you 100%. But for a Christian it is not just any book (and just what exactly for a Christian it is has changed over the past 200 years). I am a default Christian — tim wood

A Christian with questions and problems! How capital!

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So I guess my question is, does this trick identified as such seem accurately described, ultimately a bit of mysticism, like a rope ladder attached to nothing that one may think to climb up? — tim wood

We take 'the world' to be real, but it only a fleeting shadow. What we take to be real and substantial is in reality empty of substance.

Thus shall you think of this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream. — Diamond Sutra

I will say first of all that suffering of one kind or another is a necessary aspect of living.
— Possibility
Inevitable? If inevitable, then suffering for nothing is just suffering, not in this context a problem. — tim wood

This is a common misunderstanding - that suffering of one kind or another is necessary does not mean that ALL incidents of suffering are inevitable.

It is a privilege granted,
— Possibility
The Greek reads, "that/because for/to you it is given." No granting, no privilege, those the sin of eisegesis, reading into, instead of reading out of. And my knowledge of Greek is thin, but enough to come to distrust and hate translations. I have zero fear of being contradicted if I say that a dependence on translation means such a person does not know the Bible. — tim wood

The point I’m making is that it isn’t necessary - it is given. And I’m with you on the translations of Greek.

My own experience, fwiw, with Christianity is that in terms of external substance it is a game of three-card monte, and never ever the right card chosen, because the trick is that when it comes to choose, the right card is never on the table. — tim wood

That makes sense as a range of options one could select from. Pascal and Kierkegaard included that condition of skepticism into their rhetoric. They argued that there was a universal condition that underlies how we talk about what we want.

Is that approach simply rhetoric or an attempt to understand something?