First of all, Jill is not an authoratative person as it relates to definitions and etymologies of words.
Second, she used the term in an extremely narrow sense, comparing the early church with the established religions of the day, which were primarily Emperor worship and the sex cults like Diana and others.
In this, she was correct, for all the other things WERE ABOMINATIONS to Christianity, as was Christianity an affront to the licentiousness of the "established " state religions.
However to extrapolate this below from what she meant is to take something clearly out of its context, and is patently illogical.
Originally Posted by
Vlad III
First, how can you say the word "cult" can be used to describe the early Christian church
AND THEN claim the word "cult" is a concise way to define teachings that are AGAINST the early Christian church? Logically that would mean the early Christian church is a cult because it both follows someone's interpretation of the Bible AND conflicts with teh Bible as well.
Britannica describes middle eastern cults thus:
In the cultic practices, humans fulfilled their destiny: to take care of the gods' material needs. They therefore provided the gods with houses (the temples) that were richly supplied with lands, which people cultivated for them. In the temple the god was present in—but not bounded by—a statue made of precious wood overlaid with gold.
from: Mesopotamian religion. (2008). Encyclopædia Britannica. Deluxe Edition. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.
No sane person would accuse Jill of promulgating this as early church practices, so that is why the "lauded logic" is quite illogical.
Originally Posted by
Vlad III
Second, people tend to add to the definition of a cult when it suits their agendas. In the case of anti-mormonism, I have seen attackers of Mormonism define a "cult" with many different definitions in order to cl***ify the LDS church as one. It's almost as though they find something they disagree with in LDS doctrine and then say, "A cultist is someone who believes 'X'."
In saying that, Vlad is not accounting for the connotative meaning of a word, described thus: "
the ***ociated or secondary meaning of a word or expression in addition to its explicit or primary meaning: A possible connotation of “home” is “a place of warmth, comfort, and affection.”
and the denotative meaning of a word, described thus:
"the explicit or direct meaning or set of meanings of a word or expression, as distinguished from the ideas or meanings ***ociated with it or suggested by it; the ***ociation or set of ***ociations that a word usually elicits for most speakers of a language, as distinguished from those elicited for any individual speaker because of personal experience."
from Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Therefore the word can be accurately described as referring to gang bangers, herion addicts, Moonies and JWs because it is not precicely described in either Jill's quote or in Vlad's response.
What I am getting to is that the denotative meaning of the word "cult" has to deal with something that is out of sync with the traditional, and established, especially as it deals with the religious realm.
In order to do that, I suggest that you first seek to establish what is true, and is consistent. In doing so, you are establishing a baseline of orthodoxy. After you do that, then you can describe the aberrant things deviating from the orthodox, and when you do that, you will be able to define exactly what is a religious cult.
It was a good try Vlad, but it was not hitting the mark, and I hope you can see why I say that.