Say what you will about ER, but his brand of scripture is more theologically sound than the adult D&D club that BRTD attends every Sunday.
It’s incoherent to be atheist and claim one or the other sect of Christianity is more or less theologically sound.
Why?
Because there isn't a valid theological standard to measure them by.
There's internal coherence. It doesn't strike me as any different from claiming that there are more or less sound interpretations of a novel.
Not sure they're equivalent. I think theological claims are more serious philosophical truth claims than interpretations of novels, which are, yes, basically headcanon. Not to get all death of the author.
Yeah, pretty much what Nathan said. I would have compared it to interpreting the law-- whether or not you agree with a particular statute, you can still objectively assess whether certain actions or procedures conform to that statute.
I mean again the law is a social convention. Whether same-sex sexual relations are a sin or not is to Christians a truth claim about material reality.
I could easily say that I think ER's Christianity is on that score more faithful than BRTD's to my 'literary' interpretation of Christianity. This is what Paul said, what most churches said until the 20th century etc.. But I don't see how I could make that a theological claim, because I don't know how I would falsify BRTD's theological justification on the plane of theology, something I don't believe is a valid path to knowledge.
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