Talk:Leslie Weatherhead

Virgin Birth

I have read Leslie Weatherhead's "The Christian Agnostic" - and have to say that I think Ian Paisley's criticism and condemnation of Weatherhead's explanation, was unnecessarily harsh. Even in the context of his very controversial presentation, Weatherhead still managed to describe Mary's decision (to go and stay with the High Priest Zacharias) using beautiful and very moving language.

In addition, Weatherhead makes some interesting points which cannot easily be dismissed. For example, Mary would surely have told her son about the very unusual (miraculous !) circumstances regarding his conception? - so why do the Gospels not contain any mention by Jesus of that all-important fact? DLMcN (talk) 18:00, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, flawed logic there. Two cases:

Case 1: Jesus was a normal human mortal, and not Son of God. Hence Virgin birth never happened and he would not need to be told.

Case 2: Jesus was the Son of God and Virgin birth did take place. In this case, he knew everything anyway.

In any case, what we think matters not, do you have a few well known scholars (outside the Moonie compound) who support Weatherhead? History2007 (talk) 15:22, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Taking your "Case 2", i.e., assuming that "Jesus knew everything anyway", Weatherhead makes the point that (as far as we know) Jesus did not ever mention anything along those lines to his disciples; Weatherhead argues (rightly or wrongly) that Jesus would have done so if he had known about his 'miraculous conception'.--DLMcN (talk) 18:49, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

In case 2, assuming that Jesus is the Son of God, "would have done so" would be an attempt to speculate on the intentions of God. Maybe Weatherhead is smart enough to second guess God, but yours truly is not. So it is pure speculation, with no historical backup. And Jesus may have told the disciples and they did not write about it, so a double uncertainty. In an case, Weatherhead does not have a single shred of historical support for his theory - as manifested by the lack of academic support. But again, this is diverging to speculation between us and not based on WP:RS sources. Leave it at that. History2007 (talk) 19:18, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Agree. Having recently reread The Christian Agnostic I think it's high time that Weatherhead was quoted accurately. The current Wikiquotes section (which is all most readers will see of the book I suspect) misrepresents it to say the least.

The theme of the book is not promotion of Weatherhead's theology, just the opposite. It argues that theology generally is hindering the Gospel. This is not so unusual a stand as you might think, Morris Kline said something similar about 20th century Mathematics in Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty (1980) and elsewhere.

Complex issues. Room for improvement.

I find the contrast between Weatherhead and his contemporary Fosdick particularly fascinating. To lump them together as liberal does neither justice. It's even possible to argue that Jesus had the same problems with the church of his day that Weatherhead had with the church of his. Food for thought.

And while I find Weatherhead's theology dated and seriously flawed, he was far more interested in Christology, Ecclesiology and Missiology, and still deserves a very serious read in these fields. Andrewa (talk) 20:51, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV

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