NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/talk/origins/16646

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-24 | 5.4 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!morrow.stanford.edu!pangea.Stanford.EDU!salem
From: [e-mail] (Bruce Salem)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Who is Christian - a simple answer
Date: 24 Jan 1993 23:21:58 GMT
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
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In article <[e-mail]> rlg@omni (Randy garrett) writes:
>But Christ taught that He was divine.

    Did he now? Or do we simply misread out of all context the code
language of Jewish sects in the First Century. In one sense Christ was
divine, by definition, he was the heir of the House of David, the legitimate
theocracy, and would have been called divine by that virtue alone, by
birth alone, just at the Japanese would have called their Emperior
divine up until the end of WWII. It may have served the needs of later
movers and shakers in the emerging Christian order, long about the Fifth
Century, to change the context of Christ's divinity.

>  How can you accept His teachings
>and not accept that?

    It doesn't take a rocket scientist to make some useful
sense of what teachings are attributed to Christ, and according to
some, not much of what he said was new, if he actually said it at
all, but part of a tradition of teaching that was well established
then and to this day in that part of the world. Accepting Christ's
divinity does not suddenly validate what he said, afterall the Moslems
recognize Christ as one of the prophets, having recognized that his
teachings held value.

>   Or do you only accept some teachings and not
>others?  In which case, how do you choose?

    It seems to me that this hapens anyway, and that at the
crux of the problem of "Who is Christian?" is the extreme flexibility
of creeds, both its strength and weakness. It is not hard to see that
as Christianity spreads it adapts local traditions, even local patron
dieties in demigod form, a definite plus. The negative, as I see it
for this group, is not only is it good prehaps that people DO seem to
pick and choose what they want to accept from the spectrum of Christian
doctrines, but they do so in ways that do not clense that tradition
of errors or of degenerate activity. It is in fact hard to decide who
is Christian beyond the most external and superficial level.

    In a real sense there is a built in irony in all of this,
despite the claim that there is an external all-powerful authority
for what constitutes faith, the range of belief and the ways people
act suggests that in fact the greatest authority for belief is individual
choice, but acting as if it had in each case the most encompassing
authority. To me this is the greatest error. If belief and spirituality
and the coqnescance of the divine are individuated, then so is religion,
and in that sense the religions of the Far East are closer to the mark
than those of us who accept the theocratic authority of Near Eastern
religion.

>It seems to me that C.S. Lewis's Lord, Liar,
>or Lunatic argument holds a lot of logical validity:
>
>If Jesus were not divine, then given His clear claims, He must have
>been the greatest Liar who ever lived as well as the greatest
>hypocrite since He condemned very strongly the smallest lies.
>So, I certainly wouldn't want to have anything to do with the
>teachings of someone like that.

    It was fashionable during the 60's among some to imagine Jesus
as some kind of political dissenter who was murdered as a political
prisoner. He may have been regarded as much of a criminal by the
civil and religious authorities as the two theives who were crucified
with him. It is concievable to me that the whole story was an event
blown all out of proportion by subsequent legend. Note that the whole
story from the low circumstances of his birth through the missing
period and on to his ascent and sacrifice has many features in common
with the Hero myths discussed in Jeseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand
Faces".

>Or,
>
>He was simply a Lunatic, on the order of someone who says they're
>Napolean, a poached egg or some other more creative object.  In
>this case, I certainly wouldn't put any credence in any of His
>teachings.
>
>Or
>  We're in a heap of trouble if what He claimed was true ...
>

Or,

    The whole story is a metaphor, an embellished history, to
be a lesson for the spiritual cycle in each of us of having to begin
at a place of low attainment and struggle toward enlightenment where
we must go through trials and a sacrifice of our ordinary identity
in order to attain it. Many spiritual traditions, including our own,
have elements of departure from this world (ordinary life) and a
transformation as part of the passage toward full life. In older
traditions the rite of passage is more associated with life cycle
changes than with complete spiritual transformation.

    We make the mistake of taking spiritual metaphors too literally
and by giving them the necessity of authority and of moral force we
dilute or destroy their spiritual message and replace it with fear
of dire consequences. It may be that the only consequence of not
finding a purpose in one's life, or of living a life of dissipation
without spiritual growth is a waste of your life, not Hell, not
punishment. What is worse? To be punished for what you did or to
have wasted your time here? If there is no hereafter, than what is
the answer?

Bruce Salem