User talk:Wesley

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Hi Wesley, intersting your addition to my original note on Dogma. That is what I like about Wikipedia, I write something as best I can and someone else adds to it and I learn as a result. I presume then that the religious use of dogma is the original and correct use, and the political use is an extention of that? In politics, it is normally used as an insult, anyone being "dogmatic" has their head stuck in the party line and won't consider anything else - or some such similar sentiment. user:Perry Bebbington

Yes, Wikipedia is great that way. I would guess that the religious use of dogma came first, but I don't know that it's more correct than the political use. It just depends on whether you're talking about politics and religion. It's interesting how being dogmatic can be viewed as a good thing in one context and a bad thing in another. Wesley (11 July 2002)
  1. Help! I've made a mess of the Moria, Mordor, Evil Eye and Pippin articles. I don't understand the slash thing in Middle Earth/Moria for example.
  2. Nice article on Moria. Was that off the top of your head?

Ed Poor

Yes, the Moria article was off the top of my head. Forgot to mention the dwarven name Khazad-dum for the place... thought that looks wrong without the accent, and I'm not sure how to add the accent to it. Also I think that's where Gollum started following the company.... I'll try to look at a couple of the others, though I think others are helping too. The more the merrier, eh? --Wesley

You said when you edited Nicene Creed:

"Reorganized; When did U.S. Catholics start omitting the word "men"? Is this controversial?"

Unfortuneately, it has become contraversial in the U.S. Basically, a bunch of PC zealots don't believe that the word "men" can stand for humanity in general and for the plural of the masculine gender (homonym anyone?). It's really sad how the PC folks seem to want to revise history by doing such things as banning books like Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, because it uses the word "------" X times, and changing the Nicene Creed. Didn't anyone ever tell them, "Anyone who does not learn from the mistakes of past is doomed to repeat them."--BlackGriffen

I'm truly said to hear that. Changing things like that from the bottom up seems very Protestant. Hope the change doesn't last. --Wesley

Wesley, at the risk of further alienating LMS I think I owe it to you to respond, hopefully briefly, to some of your queries concerning the last thing I posted. I do think we pretty much understand each other and there may not be much need to continuing the discussion. Off-hand I would encourage you to draw selectively on things I and RK have written in the "talk" section in order to edit the article itself – I think as a Christian you are a better judge than either of us of what we have written that effectively communicates a Jewish position to non-Jews.

Wow. Thanks. Of course, that means I'll have to both understand and express your position. I'm flattered that you think I might be up to it, and comforted to know you'll correct me if I go too far astray in doing so. (grin) --Wesley

Anyway, you write

If you believe they were meant to incite physical violence, there ought to exist examples of such violence prior to the Middle Ages.

I was thinking of the desecration of synagogues by Chistians during Roman times that was alluded to in the passage I quoted from the Vatican document.

As I recall, that particular descration was part of a general trashing of pagan places of worship, which led me to think the Jewish synagogues were desecrated more because they were non-Christian than specifically because they were Jewish. And that was still several centuries after the New Testament was written. I suppose judging their actual motives is speculation on either side, in the absence of any documents saying "Synagogues should be destroyed because _____________ " --Wesley


Uh, no, I honestly don't see how. I think RK said elsewhere that Jews have reinterpreted parts of the Tanach (or Torah?) so as to have the effect of erasing them,

Well, I realize what works for us may not work for you, but I do not consider what Jews have done to be an erasure since those passages are still read, aloud, each year in the synagogue.

In any case, it is God, not any Christian, who passes final judgment.

I agree – my issue is when people claim to know what God's judgement is.

But when it encounters a religion that denies pluralism, it is in a quandary.

An excellent point, and this is a big theoretical problem with "liberalism" in general. All I can say, and you may consider this an ad-hoc response, is that I do think that the problem I have with non-pluralistic religions is fundamentally different from the problem non-pluralistic religions have with other religions. For one thing, it is only the claim that Christianity is the only path for all people that I contest. I do not at all contest the Christian liturgy, the Catholic sacraments, etc. as means to reach God. Don't you think this is different from someone saying that Jewish practices will not serve as a means for people to achieve a living, meaningful relationship with God? Put more personally, I merely express my discomfort with the Christian position towards me. But although you now express some questions about my position towards Christianity, in fact the whole discussion was motivated by the Christian attitude towards Judaism as a whole (and not towards Jewish attitudes towards Christians). Finally, I will not do anything to compel Christians to change. I know that you won't do anything to compel me or other Jews to change, and I know that most if not all Christians today will do nothing to compel Jews to change. Nevertheless, the historical fact is, in the past many Christian movements did put pressure on Jews to change – and this is one of the things I and I think RK want Christians to take responsibility for (and which I think the Catholic Church, among others, has done). – SR

Forgive me for ignoring the rest of your paragraph; I want to press the problem with pluralism further. The pluralistic attitude towards Christianity might seem fundamentally different, but only if one ignores the nature of the Catholic Mass or Eucharist, for instance. And that is precisely what it seems to me that pluralists do. IF the Eucharist is effective as a means to reach God, it is because God became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. Central to Eucharistic theology is that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ, and by eating them, Christ literally dwells within us, becomes part of who we are. As Alexander Schmemann put it in his book For the Life of the World, most food is transformed by us when we eat it, but the Eucharist transforms us instead. In part, it is an affirmation of the Incarnation. So to admit that the Eucharist is a means to God is to admit that Jesus Christ really was God in the flesh. If in fact Christ was not God, but a man only, then Eucharistic theology falls apart, and the Eucharist cannot bring us closer to God in the way that classical Christian theology says it does. You cannot have it both ways. Unless of course you say that the Eucharist and the other sacraments are a means to God only because we think they are, and not because of any basis in reality; this would be asserting that the sacraments (and all practices of other religions as well) can have a marvelous placebo effect, but beyond that don't actually do anything. --Wesley
Well, I think we have reached the end of our discussion -- I respect the sincerity of your convictions, which you have expressed well. And I am not sure I can add much to what I have written. The paradox of pluralism that you call attention to is not one I am capable of solving, although I am committed to learning how to live with it. As for your own spiritual life, I cannot ask you to sacrifice your convictions or practices. And although I understand your convictions and your reasons for them, in another sense I just do not understand them and perhaps never will (not for any fault in your attempt to explain them, but perhaps because our different traditions and languages simply lead us to some point where they cannot actually meet).
All I can offer is an what I take to be an analogous case and yet in effect it turns out not to be a useful analogy, given all that you have said. It is this: Orthodox, fundamentalist Jews really believe that God really revealed His law to us at Sinai, and cemented His covenant with us at that time. They do not consider this belief to be a metaphor or a surrogate or a subjective means to some transcendent end; they believe it really happened. And they believe that everytime they obey the law, they are living within that covenant, that relationship, that when they say "Blessed are Thou, of Lord," they are really speaking to God and God speaks back to them.
And yet, they do not believe that this covenant and its obligations extend to non-Jews. Moreover, they do not believe that this means that non-Jews are excluded from a relationship from God. They simply understand that God will have different kinds of relationships with other people(s).
And so from my point of view, the issue is not whether I believe that Jesus was God made flesh. The issue is whether it is possible that we Jews can believe that the Torah she Baal Pe (the Oral law) and the Halacha can be God's gift to us, and you can believe that Jesus Christ is God's gift to you. And perhaps He has or will offer other gifts to constitute other relationships with still others. I do not think I can add anything more to this.
by the way, I can now apologize for/correct a wrong assertion I made earlier, that early Christians did not believe in Jesus' resurrection. I reread the article in the New York Review of Books and this is not in question (really, I shouldn't be surprised since God brought Elijah to Himself, and someone else in Genesis -- I think Enoch. According to this issue, the question -- just as profound -- was whether Jesus was fully human, fully divine, half and half, or fully both. The article sugests that Christians debated all these views until the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The article also cites books by two scholars, Geza Vermes and Paula Fredriksen who apparently have explored some of these issues in depth.
Peace, SR

Well, SR, I have to agree that there's not much more to say, except that I feel I have personally profited greatly from this discussion. If there's ever a religious pluralism article, I hope to include this in its Talk page. I think we share many of the same prayers, both literally and more generally. The phrase "Blessed art Thou O Lord, teach me your Law" occurs repeatedly in the Orthodox evening prayer liturgy ("vespers"), with at least a similar understanding of what we're saying. Perhaps you can help me enumerate Judaism's liturgical contributions to Christianity/Orthodoxy some time on the Eastern Orthodoxy page.

Peace, Wesley

Hey, Wesley, just a nomenclature note - I was looking at your To Do list and thinking that, strangely, the name I've seen John of the Ladder under most frequently is the Latin version - John Climacus. Before you write him you might check around, or it might just be worth a redirect from 'Climacus' to 'of the Ladder'. On the other hand, Catherine of the Wheel is always known as Catherine of Alexandria in western sources, and the redirect should go from 'of the Wheel' to 'of Alexandria'. Mmmmm, nomenclature. --MichaelTinkler

To be honest, I've been wondering if John Climacus was the same John for a little while now; thought he might be, but wasn't quite sure. Thanks for clarifying. I'll try to remember to set up the appropriate redirects. How much difference does it make, as to which name gets listed on the List of saints page? There's a real risk of duplication if someone doesn't realize two different names are the same person. Should we start listing alternate names in parentheses? But beg people not to list every single name for The Virgin Mary? --Wesley

Wesley, I started an entry on Religious pluralism. Please join in; the material you wrote in the "Talk" section of the other topics will ber very valuble here. RK

Wesley,

Please feel free to reorganize the articles relating to sin, salvation, original sin, fall of man, Garden of Eden. Sometimes I go stub-happy, making too many of the little suckers. In particular, fall of man is a major topic in the Unification Church -- with Original Sin as a sub-topic -- but that's no reason the wikipedia should have to conform to my minority view.

I might want to argue about politics or sex, but there is no way I want to be contentious in the slightest when it comes to religion. Ed Poor

Note - I was moving user pages from the main wikipedia namespace to the user section and you have a page in both... are they the same page? If so you need to move or delete the information from Wesley to get it out of the main article space. ~ KJ

The stuff in Wesley(delinked) was identical to the first archived version of User:Wesley, so I assume that the move has already been made and a redirect just wasn't put in. I've put it in. (Is Wesley even around anymore?) Toby Bartels, Wednesday, May 22, 2002

Thanks, Toby, for putting in the redirect. Guess I failed to finish the conversion process. I'm still around, though not as active as I used to be. Just added a watch to this page so I'll notice when anything else gets added. ;-) Wesley
No problem. BTW, although nothing has been added between your last comment and this one, don't trust your watchlist to keep track of this for you; I've just discovered to my detriment that the watchlists don't handle [[User Talk:]] pages! — Toby Bartels, Monday, June 24, 2002

7-11-02 - Great modification to the Russian Orthodox Church article! As a day-2 newbie to wiki, I'm amazed at how harmonious the accretion of information is.... Guided by a spirit of scholarship and informed by the usage and neutrality provisions, it is somthing to see how articles are tuned and improved, without great debates or acrimony. The wiki community is really "something else," and after long years of Internet use, I think I've found an open-source endeavor that I can really sink my teeth into! -- Gjalexei

8/7/02 -- Wesley, thanks -- I think the changes you have made on the NT A-S article are quite good, Slrubenstein

Wesley: I followed your instructions and got 'The Virgin Mary' redirected to Mary, the mother of Jesus. I didn't put a cross-reference to the former in the latter, so if you want one, please make one. Nor did I move the Talk page, because I didn't know what the custom is for that, but I suspect it should be moved, too. Thanks for teaching me how to do a redirect. I wasn't sure where to leave this message for you, so I'm leaving it here. -- isis

I'm glad the redirect instructions made sense to you. I copied the Talk page over, since it makes sense to me and I think that's typical. Also did some organizing with headings, and can only hope I managed to stay neutral. Thanks, Wesley

I don't know about the rest of you folks, but I'm much happier with how it is now. Thanks much for humoring me. I'll probably post a couple more pix to it, because there are just so many old masters who did famous works of her. (BTW should you put something in this one to take them to Madonna?) -- isis

Personally, I'm neither Roman Catholic nor Italian, so the name/term 'Madonna' doesn't mean that much to me. If you want to add that, go ahead and do it; I doubt I would do it well. I already added Theotokos, which is the most common "title" for Mary used in Orthodox prayers. ;-) I like the pix you're adding. Any chance you could find any done in the Russian or Byzantine style, just to humour me? :-) I know where to find some online, but I'm never sure about the copyright status of the images and so far haven't taken time to inquire. Wesley

I'm using pictures from books, art post cards, and magazine clippings, all of which I've been collecting for about 40 years, so I can't be sure of what I'll run across, but I'll keep a special look out for some of the Asiatic stuff, just for you, because I like you so much. If you find some pictures you like, tho, please go ahead and put them in -- I'm pretty much doing it as a service for those who don't have pix at hand to go with their articles. -- isis

Thanks for reverting recently damaged articles. --Ed Poor

What is the tilde sig. feature? Where can I find a list of changes to the wiki, such as this one? -- Mbecker

If you're logged in to wikipedia, and you type three ~ characters in a row, it will be saved as your user sig. If you type four ~ characters, it saves it as your user sig plus a datestamp. I wish I knew where to find a list of changes; I just learned these from other users on Talk pages, same as you're learning right now. :-) For example:
  • three tildes: Wesley
  • four tildes: Wesley 13:39 Sep 18, 2002 (UTC)
Neat! Thanks :) -- Michael 14:49 Sep 18, 2002 (UTC)

Good clarifications on Neo-evangelicalism - mkmcconn

Thanks. You're doing a great job. Just keep sticking to NPOV presentation. I wonder if some mention should be made of that organization of Christian CPA's that does financial accountability certification for evangelical parachurch organizations? ECFA or something like that? It seems significant that there was a need for that since the normal denominational accountability mechanisms didn't exist, and that a new umbrella solution developed in response. Might also mention the role of parachurch interdenominational missions organization in missionary activity, and how some have evolved into overseas denominations. Wesley 18:38 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)
I don't know anything specific concerning financial accountability. I think you should move your suggestions from here into Talk:Neo-evangelicalism, and maybe someone will pick it up. I might be able to contribute a skeleton overview of the missions organizations. Mkmcconn 18:47 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)
good point. copying suggestions there. :-) Wesley 18:50 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)

To answer your question: Hebrews 12:1 describes a "cloud of witnesses," the spiritual aggregation of Old Testament saints who hoped for their reward in Christ. Jude 14 likewise reports of Enoch's prophecy that Jesus would come with "thousands and thousands of holy saints." This was the spiritual "cloud" upon which Jesus came. [1] --Ed Poor

I'm assuming Tokerboy had a software glitch. I don't think he meant to delete all those other deities, do you? --Ed Poor

It looked like a glitch to me, too. Didn't mean to imply otherwise. Wesley
Yeah, sorry--either a software glitch or my hand slipped or something. I only meant to add the link to scripture at the top of the page. I suppose that's why the revert function is there. Thanx for catching it. Tokerboy 20:13 Oct 4, 2002 (UTC)
Well, you are currently our most prolific contributor. We gotta take care of the talent :-) --Ed Poor

Thank you for the alert on the city data. Yes it is fixable. I'll have to write a script that parses the data and replaces the false data, but it should be easily automated. I will have to fix the mistake before adding more. -- Ram-Man

I think that the sola scriptura article turned out pretty well, with your help. Are you satisfied that it's an even-handed treatment of the subject? How about the predestination article; is it still too obscure or, do you think that it's getting better? Mkmcconn

Overall, I think it's quite good now. There might be a couple spots that could be edited for greater clarity, but I think the content is fairly well balanced. This sentence in the third paragraph might need some explanation: Sola scriptura reverses the order of the Church's authority, as it had been understood by the Catholic tradition. It's not clear what the order of authority is/was as understood by the Catholic tradition, and what the reversed order is. I haven't looked at the predestination article in a while; I'll try to get back to it in a day or two. So many articles, so little time. BTW, what do you think of the relationship between church and theater? Want to address it in the Church article? See the Church Talk page, most recent posts, the edits for the last couple of days there. ;-) Wesley

Thanks for the stub on Gregory Palamas. How about one on Maximus the Confessor? mkmcconn

Sure. <grin> This is one of the things I like best about wikipedia: inspiration to do more research. Thanks for the quotes from Gregory the Great in the Episcopalean article; I was able to find them at ccel.org, and lots more good reading there as well. I'll need to come back to it later to see how much any of that should impact the actual article, if at all. Wesley
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