Who is the greatest theologian of all time? If all the great theologians had a debate, who would win, judging only on their theological/philosophical points, exposition, persuasiveness of their character etc.?
2 rules: We're talking theologians, not philosophers. Also, the person must have actually written something. So you can't say Jesus or Buddha, though their followers are fair game
Also, dubious writings (Like Lao Tzu's writings, or certain letters by Saint Paul) will be considered genuine as long as the far majority of their historical followers considered them genuine. For example, Paul's pastoral epistles are acceptable, apocalypse of Paul is not.
Charles Darwin, founder of the religion of Darwinsim
Nolan Collins
>See fresh blank thread >Can't resist urge to make the first post a shit post I don't blame you, I know its tempting
Camden Moore
Rabbi Moses Ben Nachman Girondi
Anyone who can win a rigged theological debate like the Disputation of Barcelona is going to win this challenge.
Parker Murphy
St. John Crysostom
Elijah Edwards
Augustine of Hippo. He pretty much invented biblical exegesis and was the first advocate to not take the bible literally especially when it comes to scienc ematters because that's just stupid
Hudson Brown
Maimonides wins instantly by telling every single Christian that they're interpreting their own holy books incorrectly. They all go instantly apeshit, but they know deep down he's right and their own teachings and customs have been irreversibly corrupted by Greek and Germanic pagan traditions.The Muslims soon realize that, if Christianity is bullshit, it necessarily follows that Islam is bullshit, and also go apeshit. Everyone else is confused, because they don't follow Abrahamic faiths.
Brandon Ward
>He pretty much invented biblical exegesis
>the first advocate to not take the bible literally
Christian Scott
Nice try
Tyler Martinez
Origen, the first Christian who can truly be called an intellectual. Even after some of his views that verge on the thin line, Christians cannot openly condemn him for his great contributions.
Jace Gomez
>verge on the thin line The guy was an absolute heretic, there are no two ways about it.
That said, also a genius and tremendous contributor to Biblical scholarship, and we can't get around being indebted to him for that.
Nathan Gomez
'sup?
Brandon Thompson
Between just the Abrahamic religions a Jew would be the most likely to win. The Christians are trying to reconcile differences and disputes between two different books. The Muslims three.
The Jews have the easiest task. Also the other guy's books are dependent on the Jews book for the foundation and its' the one the Jews are most familiar with.
I think a more intellectual religion like Taoism, Buddhism or Confucianism would be able to beat a Jew because it can take the high ground and deal in strict ethics/metaphysics while beating down the Jews for their superstition.
Gabriel Foster
JIDF detected.
Carter Reed
St. Augustine
Camden Hughes
Thomas Aquinas gets an honorable mention for being the only decent one in the West. Most of the good stuff in terms of religion comes from the East, so I'll have to go with Laozi overall.
Luis Murphy
muslims can simply say jews and christians corrupted the holy books. christians cant really say that to jews.
Carson Powell
>laozi Eh.
I'm more down with abhinavagupta.
Aaron Smith
He pretty much took that from the Neoplatonists Hence he didn't invent shit
"Whatever is good about Christianity is not new, and what is new is not good." Alain de Benoist.
Benjamin Williams
how do you 'win' a theological debate?
Cooper Brooks
This.
Parker Harris
Attack their epistemology.
Asher Rodriguez
By killing the opposition and burning their books
Nathan Moore
The same way you win any other debate.
Caleb Carter
Beat them with a stick.
John Perry
Shouldn't a debate be about self-reflexion and broadening your horizons, instead of 'winning'?
Kayden Peterson
buy burning them because you're a fucking idoit that believes in a sky fairy..
Sebastian Gutierrez
>said the atheist who would of gotten burned on the stake
Asher Thomas
>Between just the Abrahamic religions a Jew would be the most likely to win this is wrong Completely wrong. Rabbis always get rekt. Video related: youtube.com/watch?v=5xVkKkpo-lk
Andrew Kelly
You can cherry pick out examples but historically Jews have been the better Old Testament scholars (makes sense since it's their book and they are the only ones that speak the origenal language). Historically the top Jewish theologians have beat the top Christian theologians in debates.
The Jew won the debate so hard that they tried to censor the results. What an asskicking!
I think if you were to dig up a Neo-Platonic they would have a good shot at winning the whole thing. Since what are generally considered the top Christian, Jewish, and Islamic philosophers borrow heavily from his tradition, he could focus on the incompability of their book and Neo-Platonism (ie a supreme God would not get angry, nor directly do much of his own work he'd create servents)
Ayden Rogers
>hey are the only ones that speak the origenal language
Is this a meme? Are you implying Jerome, Augustine etc didn't understand Hebrew?
Joshua Gray
>I think a more intellectual religion like Taoism, Buddhism or Confucianism >a more intellectual religion
Oh boy..
Jacob Thompson
Not him, but there's no indication that Paul understood Hebrew, let alone later Christian scholars.
I mean hell, you never see things like noting how 1 Corinthians 15:54 doesn't match the Hebrew of Isaiah 25:8, despite clearly quoting from it.
Christopher Flores
>how do you 'win' a theological debate? The Jewish residents of Barcelona, fearing the resentment of the Dominicans, entreated him to discontinue; but the king, whom Nahmanides had acquainted with the apprehensions of the Jews, desired him to proceed. At the end of the disputation, king James awarded Nahmanides a prize of 300 gold coins and declared that never before had he heard "an unjust cause so nobly defended." On the Shabbat after the debate, the king also attended the Sinagoga Major de Barcelona, arguably one of the oldest synagogues in Europe, and addressed the Jewish congregants there, "a thing unheard of during the Middle Ages".
Parker Green
But Michael Brown is a Jew, too.
Julian Miller
>You can cherry pick out examples
Not him, but you haven't done anything else yourself.
Jason Rivera
The Jews frankly have a better background in Hebrew. They are only the race in the world that would speak it in normal conversations they would be the masters of the language. Old Testament is Hebrew home turf. The Christians are forced to wade through this and search for texts and make Jesus fufill a Messiah prophecy: something that historically they have been completly BTFO by the Jews in debates. Take the Disruption of Barcelona where the Jew shows on of the appearances of "Jesus" is actually refering to the collective Jewish people and the Christians have been taking it out of context for centuries.
Islamic likewise have to go into the Hebrew home turf and try to find evidence of Islamic theology.
Both the Christians and Muslim have an enormously difficult task, not only by having to constantly play in the Jewish home turf but a direct reading of the text tends to make them lose, their search for Jesus and Allah always involves more liberal readings of the text (metaphors etc). These are hardest types of readings to justify and the easiest to defeat since they often do not make sense in the context of the entire chapter.
Landon Young
I like how you completely ignored the point about why they would have an easier time winning and focused on your trigger.
Samuel Morales
No Karl Barth yet?
Connor Price
Arius
Isaiah Perry
In the Buddhist world it's gotta be Nagarjuna.
He reframed the faith into a logical system based on philosophical arguments and proofs, in order to counter all the Hindu schools around him who relentlessly attacked Buddhism for being too experiential.
His work would go on to have massive impact on every form of Buddhism one way or another, especially Mahayana, Vajrayana and Zen. If you have to sum him up in one way, think of him as the guy who formulated the "emptiness" doctrine.
Ian Carter
But i don't really care about his point, i'm not arguing against him.
Just noticed his bs statement.
Xavier Russell
>Also the other guy's books are dependent on the Jews book for the foundation and its' the one the Jews are most familiar with. The Christian would just argue that the old book need to be viewed with a Christian lens and that all along there were hidden Christian prophecies the Jews simply don't understand (posters on Veeky Forums do this constantly by the way). The Muslim would simply argue that the prior texts have been skewed over the centuries and only their book has truly flawless divine origin.
Daniel Bailey
Nahmanides is pretty goddamn impressive when you realize that "debates" back then were akin to passion plays in that they were just supposed to drum up jew hate.
Chase Bailey
this
Dominic Gonzalez
So every other scholastic theologian from the 12th century to the 17th century were bad according to you? Why ?
Caleb Lewis
says more about King James being a real man than Nahmanides's skill at debate. I imagine a much lesser king just torturing the poor guy to death no matter how impressive the speech
Xavier Gonzalez
The Dominicans had legitimate debates with the Cathars as well for a while before the church decided that it would just be easier to crusade them. The utilization of Aristotle in part came from that since Cathars liked Aristotle and the missionaries wanted to be able to debate and convince the Cathars on neutral ground, since appealing to dogma that they didn't believe in was'nt going to get them anywhere.
Andrew Murphy
That guy should have won. His arguments were scriptural and logical.
The only reason he lost is because a bunch of pissbaby bishops used what boils down to "muh feelings".
Isaiah James
In theory. In practice it's about beating down anyone who would dare step up to your opinions backed by fact and your semantic talents. The latter is much more fun and honestly, some people need their ideas to be shit on because they're wrong.
Thomas Anderson
...
Anthony Scott
seconded
Logan Bennett
Al Ghazali curbs stomps everyone with the TRUTH of Allah.
Landon Myers
Are you retarded? Jews spoke aramaic in normal conversations Hebrew was reserved for the synagogues
Adam Sanchez
>m-muh feels >w-why didn't the scripture agree with me >ow my face ;_; t. Arius
Lucas Morales
>>m-muh feels Literally the argument used against Arius. Try again, St. Prickolas.
Carter Howard
Up till like the 9th century; then Aramaic fell into disuse. And as a scholarly/theological language, it hung around for a long, long time.