If the supernatural claims of your religion were refuted, would you still adhere to the ethics?

[Vouthon]

I have heard Christians, predominantly of the Protestant persuasion I must admit, contend that if the miraculous claims of our religion - resurrection, virgin birth and so forth - were hypothetically refuted, then they'd have no reason to follow Christ's ethics or even view them as something worth following.

This all or nothing attitude has always befuddled me, since it was never the supernatural claims of the Christian Faith that drew me to it but rather the profound ethical framework and its impact upon the course of intellectual history in the West, that opened my eyes to the possibility of the religion maybe having a divine revelation as its source and ultimately leading me to that conviction, supernatural claims and all.

As such, I seem to approach this issue in an altogether inverted fashion to the thread title.

If it were one day conclusively proven that Jesus's unresurrected dead body had been found, thereby undermining the doctrine of the resurrection, or some manner of scientific evidence that totally excluded the possibility of a divine agent behind creation, I would naturally face an existential crisis like every other Christian and have to accept that the supernatural claims of my religion were bogus. (Now, I don't believe that either of these two scenarios are ever going to pan out, this is a purely hypothetical exercise).

However, that wouldn't make me any less a cultural Christian in the sense of, in the main, admiring the ethical framework and embracing it as my own. I could easily be a Jesusist. There is nothing that will change my understanding of the role played by the early Christian movement in completely overturning the theoretical justifications behind the ancient Graeco-Roman aristocratic values-system, in favour of a radical assertion of human equality and the privileging of the weakest members of society, for instance, or the innovation of the medieval church canonists in laying the groundwork for the concept of natural, inalienable human rights that no state has the power to violate.

I might have to justify these ethical beliefs, and others like them, on different epistemological or philosophical (and to my mind somewhat less certain) grounds - but luckily, the last three centuries of secular Western thinkers has already done much of the work in that respect! (thank you enlightenment liberalism and secular humanism!)

So, what say you about this? Would the Parable of the Good Samaritan be any less meaningful and poignant to you if the supernatural claims of Christianity were conclusively refuted? Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you? Turn the other cheek? The least among all of you is the greatest? The humble should be exalted and the exalted humbled? It is better to serve than to be served etc.?

I extend the same question to every religion.

 

[PureX]

A very interesting question.

I am not "religious" because I have rejected the supernatural claims made by the religion I was raised in, and would not accept those made by others. I simply do not conceive of the god-ideal as manifesting supernatural phenomena.

I also will not accept the assertion that I should "believe in" religious proclamations that I find unbelievable as some sort of act of "obedience to God's wishes". It's fundamentally dishonest and reeks of authoritarianism masquerading as religion, and it gives rise to cultism when practiced.

I do, however fully accept and try to follow the ethical imperatives I find being presented via religious Christianity as I understand it. Even to the degree that these ethical imperatives represent a "divine" ideology, and a pathway to personal, spiritual, and collective "salvation" (from ourselves).

 

[Windwalker]

I've approached important questions like these from a different angle before in asking Christians, if God were to unmistakingly declare to all of them, "There is no afterlife. When you die, you die. That's it," would they still follow the religion? Would they still follow Jesus? Interestingly, on the few occasions I've brought that up, most do not answer, and a few actually do have the wherewithal and insight to answer they would see no reason to anymore.

My point in asking this is what is their motivation. To admit they would not demonstrates they are not seeing beyond what is in it for themselves, for personal gain; their reward, their pleasure, their escaping damnation, their not having to face their non-being, their non-existence. This to me indicates a stage of faith where it is not yet a religion of the heart. They serve God for the sake of themselves. And that is not truly understanding and walking the path of love. It is not serving Love for Love's sake alone. It has an eye on themselves primarily, not the nature of the Divine for its sake alone. It does not fulfill Jesus' greatest commandment to love God first before all else. It has the small egoic-self still standing in place before God. It has not seen beyond itself quite yet.

So your question is somewhat similar. If the supernatural were removed, that we came to terms that these are metaphoric expressions of the transcendent nature of God through the eyes of the imaginations, the phantasies of the human unconsciousness expressed in symbolism (what I believe to be the reality of it), would there be sufficient reason to still consider oneself to be a follower of Jesus' teachings?

I think for many the answer if they were honest would be no. But to qualify that, you would have to understand some of why that may be true. I'm not sure if you're familiar with James Fowler's research work on the stages of faith development you can read about in his book Stages of Faith? What I find specifically to the point of this thread, and these important questions, for me is answered in how we see a major shift in how one approaches faith when they emerge beyond the earlier Mythic-Literal and Synthetic-Conventional stages (Stages 2 and 3) into the the Individuative-Reflective stage (Stage 4).

One of the particular characteristics of Stage 4 faith that leaps out to me is that for the first time it is able to see the meaning of the symbol apart from the symbol itself. It can find the same meaning in other symbols. For instance, and he specifically mentions this example from one of his research subjects, that someone at Stage 4, while being a Christian was able to see that the communion ritual she was participating in was actually a totem ritual found in other world religions. The meaning is still there, but being attached to a particular object was no longer necessary.

Prior to this stage however, there is an inability yet to "decouple" the meaning from the symbol. The meaning and the symbol are instead fused together inextricably. In their minds, for instance, the cross is a symbol of God's love for us. So if some rejects the cross, they are rejecting God's love for us. This is why you hear repeatedly here on RF, and in culture at large such statements from believers about atheists' rejection of the symbol of God, "Then what's to keep you from just going out and killing someone".

They are demonstrating in that question they are unable to understand the independent value of morality and ethics that can be found in other symbols. In their minds, if you don't have the symbol they access those through, you don't have access to them. You MUST have the symbol, as the symbol and the truth of the symbol are one and the same. Without the symbol, the truth of the symbol cannot exist.

So your question, if you reframe or strip away the literal understanding of the miracle story, "Jesus literally turned water into wine", you are rejecting God, you can't see God, you don't know God. If you knew God, you'd think like they did about it. You would see things as they do. So most obviously, were they to "not believe" these things either, they would be likewise rejecting God in their own minds.

It's a very difficult move from Stage 3 to Stage 4. But that's not to minimize the difficulty in transitioning between any of the other stages. Each time that occurs, there is a certain "death experience" that one goes through in the process of letting go of the old as you emerge into the new. I often directly link this to Jesus' teaching about putting new wine in old wineskins. You can't take a new paradigm and try to pour into into the old container of how you once held these things. You can't take a scientific understanding of reality for instance, and pour it into a mythic-literal wineskin. This leads to a failure of the vessel, it "bursts" as he says, and you lose both the wine and wineskin.

Interesting food for thought and discussion, isn't it?

 

[Quintessence]

Druidry doesn't make supernatural claims (or claims in general, really; same is true of Paganisms on the whole). So for those of you pontificating this question and follow a tradition that does make such claims, I can assure you it is quite possible to follow a religion without any such things. Supernaturalism isn't required, nor is making truth claims.

 

[Devaki]

I've often wondered about that when I heard people claim that "atheists have no morality".
Like why does morality require faith in a (particular) deity?
For me personally that IS what religion is primarily about. A set of values/ethics, a lifestyle.
Now of course I follow my religion because those values and ethics fundamentally resonate with me and I believe that this is the right way to do things.
I would still think that this is the right way to do things, even if all of the theology around it is disproven.
Matter of fact I'm fairly agnostic when it comes to the existence of deities or other supernatural entities.
I believe in them and I worship them but I am perfectly aware that there is no evidence and that they might very well not exist. So yeah for me personally, if any of my religious beliefs were disproven, that would not affect my moral views or how I lead my life.

 

[Vouthon]

Druidry doesn't make supernatural claims (or claims in general, really; same is true of Paganisms on the whole). So for those of you pontificating this question and follow a tradition that does make such claims, I can assure you it is quite possible to follow a religion without any such things. Supernaturalism isn't required, nor is making truth claims.

Great point, perhaps I should have rephrased the question to accommodate naturalistic faiths as well. Most religions appear to make at least some kind of 'supernatural' truth claim in respect of a god, gods, spirits, afterlives etc.

That said, doesn't Druidry tend to presuppose the existence of immanent nature deities? Wouldn't this be viewed by many atheists as 'supernatural' in the looser sense (i.e. not of above nature but of understanding nature in a less than purely physicalist, empirical way).

I haven't known many Druids in my life but of the few pagans that I've met, some commune with spirits or deities which I think would certainly fall under the above definition.

 

[Quintessence]

There's a weird thing in contemporary Paganisms, @Vouthon, that although acceptance of things like magic, gods, and the otherworlds is prevalent, these things are typically viewed as natural phenomena. There are a number of reasons why this happens. One is that the traditions are often cast as being nature-based, and have an "all is natural" philosophy where there is nothing "above" or "beyond" nature. Another is that traditions typically reject Western dualism, so the idea of a wedge between "gods" and "nature" is absent.

I've little doubt that others regard this stuff as "supernatural" regardless of how Pagans themselves view it, but using that language is awkward and could be more precise. I think the word "preternatural" fits better in most instances - it conveys something that is extraordinary or awe inspiring without implying some sort of dualism or non-natural aspect of reality.

 

[Sunstone]

I am not an adherent of any religion, nor do I think myself likely to become one (I imagine that's a fact that would be met by fundamentalists of any religion as -- at best -- unfortunately damning me, but which I am certain would be met by wiser religions and denominations as quite lucky and happy circumstances for them, if they only knew me as ex-wives did).

Having said that, I am as curious as the OP is why anyone would think removing the supernatural support for an ethics would necessitate kicking the ethics down the street. But even Nietzsche thought so, and in particular criticized the English intellectuals of his day as naive for not seeing it themselves. However, it seems simple enough to see there are more than one or two sufficient reasons why Nietzsche was wrong. I won't much go into those, though, because I don't want preempt the sport some us justly take in pointing out such things.

Instead, I'd like to briefly talk about an usually overlooked aspect of all of this. But first, a quick point. The traditional standard here is whether facts can provide a deductively necessary basis for asserting values. It's pretty settled they cannot. But I've all but never seen much exploration of the alternative concept, can facts lead to legitimate inductive grounds for values?

It seems to me that, if we marry our spouses lacking any deductively grounded assurances they will be good for us, then perhaps we might consider inductively grounded reasons for accepting certain values or ethics as sufficient reason to accept them.

Beyond that, it's an interesting claim that a god can provide a sufficient grounds for values or an ethic. Among other often overlooked things, the notion both overlooks the fact we have no sound (deductive) support for the existence of such ethics, nor even any reasonable weight of evidence (inductive) to believe they exist. How they would be created by the god is even something a mystery, for what can "an objective ethics" even really mean? About all we can seem to know is the ethics must exist on a metaphysical level, such as concepts in the mind of god, and thus are no more subject to any kind of demonstration that they exist than god itself is.

In other words, there can be no substitute for faith here: Religious faith that one's ethics are metaphysically real, and perhaps even some measure of a secular faith that one's ethics are in some kind of final calculation, well founded and good, for that cannot be genuinely known in practice, and yet it's quite an important consideration to some people.

 

[sayak83]

I have heard Christians, predominantly of the Protestant persuasion I must admit, contend that if the miraculous claims of our religion - resurrection, virgin birth and so forth - were hypothetically refuted, then they'd have no reason to follow Christ's ethics or even view them as something worth following.

This all or nothing attitude has always befuddled me, since it was never the supernatural claims of the Christian Faith that drew me to it but rather the profound ethical framework and its impact upon the course of intellectual history in the West, that opened my eyes to the possibility of the religion maybe having a divine revelation as its source and ultimately leading me to that conviction, supernatural claims and all.

As such, I seem to approach this issue in an altogether inverted fashion to the thread title.

If it were one day conclusively proven that Jesus's unresurrected dead body had been found, thereby undermining the doctrine of the resurrection, or some manner of scientific evidence that totally excluded the possibility of a divine agent behind creation, I would naturally face an existential crisis like every other Christian and have to accept that the supernatural claims of my religion were bogus. (Now, I don't believe that either of these two scenarios are ever going to pan out, this is a purely hypothetical exercise).

However, that wouldn't make me any less a cultural Christian in the sense of, in the main, admiring the ethical framework and embracing it as my own. I could easily be a Jesusist. There is nothing that will change my understanding of the role played by the early Christian movement in completely overturning the theoretical justifications behind the ancient Graeco-Roman aristocratic values-system, in favour of a radical assertion of human equality and the privileging of the weakest members of society, for instance, or the innovation of the medieval church canonists in laying the groundwork for the concept of natural, inalienable human rights that no state has the power to violate.

I might have to justify these ethical beliefs, and others like them, on different epistemological or philosophical (and to my mind somewhat less certain) grounds - but luckily, the last three centuries of secular Western thinkers has already done much of the work in that respect! (thank you enlightenment liberalism and secular humanism!)

So, what say you about this? Would the Parable of the Good Samaritan be any less meaningful and poignant to you if the supernatural claims of Christianity were conclusively refuted? Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you? Turn the other cheek? The least among all of you is the greatest? The humble should be exalted and the exalted humbled? It is better to serve than to be served etc.?

I extend the same question to every religion.

If its demonstrated that Vedantic Hinduism or Classical Buddhism is not true, I will go for an appropriately modernized version of Epicureanism. That will work fine.

 

[Vouthon]

If its demonstrated that Vedantic Hinduism or Classical Buddhism is not true, I will go for an appropriately modernized version of Epicureanism. That will work fine.

Yet if one had to abandon certain metaphysical claims of Hinduism - say, Brahman or Atman, reincarnation, karma and the gods - would you not still be attracted by the ethical precepts and linguistic beauty of the epics, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita?

Is Hinduism not more than merely a religion, is it not the glories of an entire culture, civilization and way of life?

Would one need to throw out the baby with the bathwater?

I do like many facets of epicureanism though, by the way.

 

[Orbit]

I have heard Christians, predominantly of the Protestant persuasion I must admit, contend that if the miraculous claims of our religion - resurrection, virgin birth and so forth - were hypothetically refuted, then they'd have no reason to follow Christ's ethics or even view them as something worth following.

This all or nothing attitude has always befuddled me, since it was never the supernatural claims of the Christian Faith that drew me to it but rather the profound ethical framework and its impact upon the course of intellectual history in the West, that opened my eyes to the possibility of the religion maybe having a divine revelation as its source and ultimately leading me to that conviction, supernatural claims and all.

As such, I seem to approach this issue in an altogether inverted fashion to the thread title.

If it were one day conclusively proven that Jesus's unresurrected dead body had been found, thereby undermining the doctrine of the resurrection, or some manner of scientific evidence that totally excluded the possibility of a divine agent behind creation, I would naturally face an existential crisis like every other Christian and have to accept that the supernatural claims of my religion were bogus. (Now, I don't believe that either of these two scenarios are ever going to pan out, this is a purely hypothetical exercise).

However, that wouldn't make me any less a cultural Christian in the sense of, in the main, admiring the ethical framework and embracing it as my own. I could easily be a Jesusist. There is nothing that will change my understanding of the role played by the early Christian movement in completely overturning the theoretical justifications behind the ancient Graeco-Roman aristocratic values-system, in favour of a radical assertion of human equality and the privileging of the weakest members of society, for instance, or the innovation of the medieval church canonists in laying the groundwork for the concept of natural, inalienable human rights that no state has the power to violate.

I might have to justify these ethical beliefs, and others like them, on different epistemological or philosophical (and to my mind somewhat less certain) grounds - but luckily, the last three centuries of secular Western thinkers has already done much of the work in that respect! (thank you enlightenment liberalism and secular humanism!)

So, what say you about this? Would the Parable of the Good Samaritan be any less meaningful and poignant to you if the supernatural claims of Christianity were conclusively refuted? Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you? Turn the other cheek? The least among all of you is the greatest? The humble should be exalted and the exalted humbled? It is better to serve than to be served etc.?

I extend the same question to every religion.

I gave up Christianity, but still very much try to live by its ethics--but it should be noted that those ethics are not exclusive to Christianity, that just happens to be where I learned them. I could have just as easily absorbed them from Buddhism or secular humanism.

 

[metis]

My response to the excellent question asked in the OP is "yes", and it has with me as I'm not a believer in miracles, even though I won't go so far as to say they couldn't or haven't happened.

As I've said quite a few times before on different threads, I do believe "Something" caused what has happened but I simply do not know what that "Something" is, but a very strange series of events took place in my life that I've posted about here in RF that makes me believe that this "Something" exists-- just don't ask me what it is (see my "faith statement" at the bottom of my posts).

 

[sayak83]

Yet if one had to abandon certain metaphysical claims of Hinduism - say, Brahman or Atman, reincarnation, karma and the gods - would you not still be attracted by the ethical precepts and linguistic beauty of the epics, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita?

Is Hinduism not more than merely a religion, is it not the glories of an entire, civilization and way of life?

Would one need to throw out the baby with the bathwater?

I do like many facets of epicureanism though, by the way.

No of course. The literature, the culture.. everything will continue to have value. I am talking about the philosophical lens I will use under such a scenario. The pursuit of eudaimonic life that is well lived and well reflected upon will continue regardless of how many lives I have. Experiential awareness will continue to be real, so will variations in its quality, from suffering to bliss. I am an experiencer (or there exists an experiential flux if one thinks the concept of self to be problematic ), and that certain truth is sufficient to ground most of the fundamentals of my current view of life and ethics.

 

[joe1776]

I have heard Christians, predominantly of the Protestant persuasion I must admit, contend that if the miraculous claims of our religion - resurrection, virgin birth and so forth - were hypothetically refuted, then they'd have no reason to follow Christ's ethics or even view them as something worth following.

This all or nothing attitude has always befuddled me, since it was never the supernatural claims of the Christian Faith that drew me to it but rather the profound ethical framework and its impact upon the course of intellectual history in the West, that opened my eyes to the possibility of the religion maybe having a divine revelation as its source and ultimately leading me to that conviction, supernatural claims and all.

As such, I seem to approach this issue in an altogether inverted fashion to the thread title.

If it were one day conclusively proven that Jesus's unresurrected dead body had been found, thereby undermining the doctrine of the resurrection, or some manner of scientific evidence that totally excluded the possibility of a divine agent behind creation, I would naturally face an existential crisis like every other Christian and have to accept that the supernatural claims of my religion were bogus. (Now, I don't believe that either of these two scenarios are ever going to pan out, this is a purely hypothetical exercise).

However, that wouldn't make me any less a cultural Christian in the sense of, in the main, admiring the ethical framework and embracing it as my own. I could easily be a Jesusist. There is nothing that will change my understanding of the role played by the early Christian movement in completely overturning the theoretical justifications behind the ancient Graeco-Roman aristocratic values-system, in favour of a radical assertion of human equality and the privileging of the weakest members of society, for instance, or the innovation of the medieval church canonists in laying the groundwork for the concept of natural, inalienable human rights that no state has the power to violate.

I might have to justify these ethical beliefs, and others like them, on different epistemological or philosophical (and to my mind somewhat less certain) grounds - but luckily, the last three centuries of secular Western thinkers has already done much of the work in that respect! (thank you enlightenment liberalism and secular humanism!)

So, what say you about this? Would the Parable of the Good Samaritan be any less meaningful and poignant to you if the supernatural claims of Christianity were conclusively refuted? Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you? Turn the other cheek? The least among all of you is the greatest? The humble should be exalted and the exalted humbled? It is better to serve than to be served etc.?

I extend the same question to every religion.

Vouthon, you made an argument and, although you didn't direct your question to non-believers, I can't resist the chance to debate.

Depending on the version, your Bible contains 600 to 800 thousand words. So, even non-believers like me can cherry-pick some good moral advice in it like the Parable of the Good Samaritan you mentioned. But, overall, your Bible has given terrible moral advice over the centuries. The older versions are worse than the newer because the obviously bad advice has been edited out.

How did later generations of Christians know that it was bad advice in need of editing? Obviously their ability to discern right from wrong didn't come from their Bible.

How did Pope John Paul II know that his church had made moral mistakes in the past when, during his reign, he made more than one hundred public apologies for past sins of the Church? Obviously, he didn't do it by interpreting the Bible differently than his predecessors.

Why did Christians join with non-Christians in abolishing legal slavery in the nations of the world? Pope Pius IX in 1866, long after most of the world had been morally upgraded, saw nothing wrong with slavery. He wasn't morally wrong according to his Bible.

I think that we humans, believers and non-believers, are moved by the very same intuitive faculty that we refer to as conscience and moral advances like the abolition of slavery and equal rights for women are conscience driven. And, despite scripture in opposition, your Bible has been powerless to prevent those advances.

 

[PureX]

I've often wondered about that when I heard people claim that "atheists have no morality".
Like why does morality require faith in a (particular) deity?

My answer to that is that it's in our inability or unwillingness to recognize the difference between "faith" as a doctrine, and "faith" as an action. An atheist can have faith in the healing power of love, forgiveness, kindness and generosity without adherence to the Christian religion. Just as Christian can adhere to the Christian religious doctrine and have little understanding or interest in love, forgiveness, kindness and generosity. And there are plenty of examples of both of these types of people.

To understand how this can be so, what we have to understand the difference between faith; as hope being acted on, and faith; as the pretense of truth.

For me personally that IS what religion is primarily about. A set of values/ethics, a lifestyle.
Now of course I follow my religion because those values and ethics fundamentally resonate with me and I believe that this is the right way to do things.
I would still think that this is the right way to do things, even if all of the theology around it is disproven.
Matter of fact I'm fairly agnostic when it comes to the existence of deities or other supernatural entities.
I believe in them and I worship them but I am perfectly aware that there is no evidence and that they might very well not exist. So yeah for me personally, if any of my religious beliefs were disproven, that would not affect my moral views or how I lead my life.

I think you understand and use those religious doctrines, icons, stories, rituals and so os as they were intended: that is as a practical means of gaining and maintaining your focus on the goals and ideals that they represent to you, and that you feel important. And when religions are used in this manner, I think they can be very positive for a great many people.

Unfortunately, religions can also be misused, and have been misused often, and to the detriment of nearly everyone they've touched. Which is why it's often necessary for people to jettison their religions in pursuit of their spiritual ideals, even though it's supposed to be the purpose of their religion to help them along their spiritual path.

 

[Vouthon]

Vouthon, you made an argument and, although you didn't direct your question to non-believers, I can't resist the chance to debate.

No worries, I welcome your intervention.

Depending on the version, your Bible contains 600 to 800 thousand words. So, even non-believers like me can cherry-pick some good moral advice in it like the Parable of the Good Samaritan you mentioned. But, overall, your Bible has given terrible moral advice over the centuries. The older versions are worse than the newer because the obviously bad advice has been edited out.

I think I made it quite clear in my opening gambit that I was referring to the teachings of Jesus in the gospels, and some distinctive ethical contributions of early and medieval Catholicism.

If I were no longer a believer in supernatural Christianity, I would be under no obligation to consider some unsavoury elements of the Old Testament as relevant to an appraisal of Christ, since the claim that he was the prophesized Messiah would be meaningless.

How did later generations of Christians know that it was bad advice in need of editing? Obviously their ability to discern right from wrong didn't come from their Bible.

My Christian tradition does not teach that our sense of right and wrong emanates from the Bible anyhow. We regard it as stemming from the primacy of conscience as a vehicle for mediating the dictates of the natural law.

How did Pope John Paul II know that his church had made moral mistakes in the past when, during his reign, he made more than one hundred public apologies for past sins of the Church? Obviously, he didn't do it by interpreting the Bible differently than his predecessors.

He knew that the church had made moral mistakes and engaged in miscarriages of justice due to the fact that these lapses often violated the principles of our own moral doctrine.

A revealing example, would be the Northern Crusades waged by the Catholic Teutonic Order against the unfortunate pagan peoples of the Baltic Sea, from the 12th - 13th centuries. This campaign of expansionist warfare and forced Christianization was in violation of the conventional norms of Catholic Just War doctrine and its strict prohibition of involuntary baptism as a justification for, or a consequence of, a military campaign.

Some four centuries prior to the onset of the first Baltic Crusade against the Wends, the highest religious authority in the Catholic world, Pope. St Nicholas the Great, in an 866 A.D. epistle to Khan Boris of the Bulgars:

Chapter XLI.

Concerning those who refuse to receive the good of Christianity and sacrifice and bend their knees to idols, we can write nothing else to you than that you move them towards the right faith by warnings, exhortations, and reason rather than by force, proving that what they know in vain, is wrong: [cf. Jer. 1:16] namely that, although they are people with capable intellects, they nevertheless adore works of their own hands and senseless elements, or rather they bow their necks and sacrifice to demons. For as the apostle teaches: We know that an idol is nothing, but whatever the nations sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons.[I Cor. 8:4; 10:20]...Yet, violence should by no means be inflicted upon them to make them believe. For everything which is not voluntary, cannot be good; for it is written: Willingly shall I sacrifice to you,[Ps. 53:8] and again: Make all the commands of my mouth your will,[Ps. 118:108] and again, And by my own will I shall confess to Him.[Ps. 27:7] Indeed, God commands that willing service be performed only by the willing. But if you ask about what should be judged concerning perfidious persons of this sort, listen to the apostle Paul who, when he wrote to the Corinthians, says: Why indeed is it my business to judge concerning those who are outside? Do you not judge concerning those who are inside? God will judge those who are outside. Remove the evil from yourselves.[I Cor. 5:12-13] It is as if he said: Concerning those who are outside our religion, I shall judge nothing, but I shall save them for the judgment of God, Who is going to judge all flesh.

Chapter LXXX.

You inquire how you should confirm and maintain a mutual peace with a nation which seeks to have a peace with you. Whatever nation wishes to offer you peace, do not refuse them; indeed, it is written: Pursue peace with everyone,[Heb. 12:14] and again: Having peace with all men.[Rom.12:18] When it says "all," clearly no one is excepted from mutual peace.​

I think it's abundantly clear that for the duration of the Baltic Crusades, this teaching must have been 'quietly' tucked under the radar or at least conveniently overlooked, because it clearly proscribes the very actions undertaken by the Crusaders.

Their offensive militarism and campaign of deliberate destruction of a non-Christian culture was in open breach with established doctrine as understood even at the time.

In medieval Catholicism, the consensus approach to this issue was very different:


Freedom Is the Birthright of All Humanity

A key document in the history of the legal recognition of universal rights was a Decretal, or legal pronouncement, issued by the lawyer Pope Innocent IV, about the year 1250. It concerned the rights of non-Christians.

I maintain … that lordship, possession and jurisdiction can belong to infidels licitly and without sin, for these things were made not only for the faithful but for every rational creature as has been said. For he makes his sun to rise on the just and the wicked and he feeds the birds of the air, Matthew c.5, c.6. Accordingly we say that it is not licit for the pope or the faithful to take away from infidels their belongings or their lordships or jurisdictions because they possess them without sin.[15]​

This doctrine of infidel dominium meant that the idea of offensive holy war against unbelieving societies never became orthodox in medieval or early modern Christian theology. It was articulated at the Council of Constance (1414):


Council of Constance

During the council there were also political topics discussed, such as the accusation by the Teutonic Knights that Poland was defending pagans. Paweł Włodkowic, rector of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, presented there the theory that all nations, including pagan ones, have the right to self-government and to live in peace and possess their land, which is one of the earliest ideas of international law:

• Communities have the right to determine to which nation they belong;
• Peoples have the right to decide on their own future and to defend their nation;
• Rulers are bound to respect the individual religious convictions of their subjects who cannot be denied their natural rights because of their belief;
• Conversion through the use of force and coercion is invalid, sinful and deplorable;
• Conversion can never be used as a pretext for war;
• Maintenance of peace required an International Tribunal to judge contesting claims. No ruler, not even the Emperor or the Pope, should be able to declare war without submission to due process;
• The principles of just war are always applicable and binding, regardless as to whether the state, nation or people against whom war is being declared is Christian or not;
• Non-Christian and non-Catholic nations living at peace with their neighbors have the right to have their sovereignty and the integrity of their territories safeguarded;
• Neither the Emperor nor the Pope could authorize anything that contradicts the principles of natural law;
• Poland was bound to the Emperor only when he acted as Defender of the Faith;
• The right of might erodes international relations like a cancer;
• Exercising its right to self-defense, a Catholic state can also engage non-Christians or non-Catholics among its forces.

And by the Spanish scholastic theologians of the School of Salamanca:


The School of Salamanca: Intellectual Roots of International Law

The beginnings of international rights and law are rooted in the work of sixteenth century University of Salamanca professor Francisco de Vitoria and is a testament to the rich intellectual history that the university boasts.

A Dominican theologian who assumed the role of chair of Theology at the university in 1526, Francisco de Vitoria was an immensely popular professor whose opinion was so well respected that it was sought out by Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor and king of Spain...

In public lectures to students and university and city officials, Francisco de Vitoria labeled each reason that Spanish nobles and public opinion had generated to justify their violence against them as immoral and illegitimate and denounced Spanish evangelization efforts as hypocritical in their forceful, brutal nature, emphasizing that faith must be an act of free will, not coercion.

Given the intensely religious underpinnings of Spanish society and culture at the time, these proclamations were especially bold and marked Francisco de Vitoria as a radical thinker very much ahead of his time. Indeed, in an article entitled “Dispossessing the Barbarism,” European medieval historian Anthony Pagden wrote that Vitoria’s was the “most detailed and far reaching discussion of the subject” and “the first to claim that ‘the affair of the Indies,’ as it had come to be called… was a question of the laws of nature.”

In that appeal to the “laws of nature,” he asserted his firm conviction in the intrinsic dignity of all people as a defining, inalienable characteristic of the human condition. Francisco de Vitoria and those who followed his school of thought and formed what is now known as the School of Salamanca advanced the right to life and the right to freedom of thought for all people—principles that seem so fundamental to current Western political thought but that in the sixteenth century were very novel in their application to indigenous people.​

I'll reply to your next two points in a second post, later today.

 

[Shushersbedamned]

What supernatural claims do you believe to be true?

 

[Vouthon]

What supernatural claims do you believe to be true?

Basically everything in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds.

On the basis of my faith: one single, omnipresent, transcendent, Triune Creator God.

Creation ex nihilo (from nothing).

The incarnation of God the Son in the person of Jesus, possessed of both fully divine and human natures.

Belief in an immortal soul, heaven, hell, the Beatific Vision....and so on and so on.

How long is a piece of string?

 

[Shushersbedamned]

Basically everything in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds.

On the basis of my faith: one single, omnipresent, transcendent, Triune Creator God.

Creation ex nihilo (from nothing).

The incarnation of God the Son in the person of Jesus, possessed of both fully divine and human natures.

Belief in an immortal soul, heaven, hell, the Beatific Vision....and so on and so on.

How long is a piece of string?

I've never believed any of those, nor did the priests I knew. I don't know what it up with that. Did no one ever teach you to comprehend the bible?

 

[Vouthon]

I've never believed any of those, nor did the priests I knew. I don't know what it up with that.

Well, good for you.

Did no one ever teach you to comprehend the bible?

Pardon?​