The Jesus Of History & The Christ Of Faith?

[Deborah]

By the way, I see that I have missed some of your posts, so some ideas are repeated in my post that may be out-dated, sorry about that. Please pick and choose what you respond to.

And I also am sorry for your loss Bill (and Wonnerful). I lost my mother to cancer, despite a praying church, so I know what you two mean!

[BillM]

Hi Deborah,

 

>>It is true that cherry picking is frowned upon by fundamentalists, but I recognize that we all cherry-pick...from fundamentalist to liberal.

 

Sure they do. They are big on Paul’s “justification by faith alone apart from works”, but they ignore what Jesus says in the Great Judgment about those who are declared righteous being people who have done works. They are against homosexuality (which Jesus didn’t speak about) but their divorce rate is as high as non-Christians (which Jesus did speak about). They are big on Jesus’ exclusive statement about no man coming to the Father except through him, but they don’t seem to know about Cornelius who Paul said God had accepted even though Cornelius didn’t know who Jesus was. We all cherry-pick.

 

>>So everything you two have written about the divinity of Jesus appeals to my mind and in summary I would agree that the concept of the trinity developed over time. Like the idea developed over time that slavery is contrary to the heart of God ... an idea that is now commonly accepted.

 

Certainly. And the Church has ordained women over the last 50 years, at least in the moderate and liberal camps. This goes against Paul’s teaching. But the Spirit leads us into new experiences, new truth. Some denominations now have gay bishops and pastors. This will no doubt continue.

 

>>So what I'm trying to say is, all the attempts to 'un-deify' Jesus, in my mind, are attempts at understanding our own connection with the Divine.

 

I think that is an accurate statement. I have no problem with considering Jesus to be divine (coming from God) as long as we acknowledge that we do also. If Jesus was, as CCs claim, a “God-man”, then he was not one of us. Therefore, he had a leg up on us and cannot serve as an example. The God-man walked on water. We cannot. The God-man turned water into wine. We cannot. The God-man raised the dead. We cannot (without medical assistance). The God-man rose from the dead after three days. We do not. And the God-man died. God cannot. God is immortal.

 

>>My heart tells me that there is something to this Jesus...a feeling I can't shake.

 

Mine also. That is why I continue to associate myself with Christianity, even if I am not an orthodox Christian.

 

>>Where all those experiences 'just in my head' with some biological/evolutionary advantage? Perhaps, but they don't 'feel' like that. It feels like there is more significance to them, would you agree Bill?

 

Yes, I would. But my mystical experiences were not of a Person, per se. In other words, I didn’t perceive “God” speaking to me within a supernatural framework. My experiences were more of a feeling, more of sensation. The problem that I have with “supernatural theism” is that it has a tendency to say that God only comes through the “supernatural”. In other words, if God shows up, it has to be a nature-bending or nature-breaking demonstration of power. Panentheism stresses that even nature is “in God” and that God speaks to us through nature as well as a multiplicity of other ways (relationships, conscience, science, etc.). Supernatural theism tends to limit God by insisting that God only works through supernatural means (i.e. God speaks through a supernatural book or a supernaturally anointed person). This makes God seem far away or disconnected, because we live in a natural universe.

 

>>Perhaps the natural is divine?

 

Exactly. Why can’t it be? Even the Genesis story says that the natural comes from God and God considers it good.

 

>>Along the lines of 'everything is spiritual'? We live and move and have our being in the divine? In which case you can stop and marvel and wonder at the smallest most natural things...a butterfly, a couple holding hands, an older brother protecting his younger sister, a dead flower that still manages to catch the eye with a certain kind of beauty...life.

 

Who is it that said you can live your life in one of two ways? The first is that there are no miracles (scientism). The second is that everything is a miracle. By miracle, I do not mean a supernatural occurrence. I simply refer to the fact that we are here against literally astronomical odds. There are so many factors that had to be “just right” (teleological argument) for life to be here. It seems to imply that More is going on than just random chance. I call that More “God”. But this is a consideration that each of us must make individually.

[Deborah]

Yes, I agree. The experiences I had were not super-natural in that they bent any laws of nature...instead they came through my senses and thoughts which moved my emotions...so I guess in that way it can be called neuroscience...I guess what gives it its mystical feel is that it felt like it came to me, from outside of me, through my human experience and changed the way I thought and felt about things. Goodness, it's hard to put into words! And yes, definitely something each individual needs to work out for themselves.

 

I like to see it in terms of language and inter-relational-dynamics. I have a personal and unique relationship with my husband and we have our own jargon that developed over the years and comes from insider knowledge. With other people I have a different kind of dynamic and insider language. PC has different jargon to CC.

What I'm trying to say is that the way I communicate with the divine is different to how my husband communicates with God. And I've noticed that when someone feels that God has showed them something, it's always very unique to them personally.

So when I experience God, I feel like He/She/It speaks my exact emotional, personal language...in such a way that I can understand it in my deepest being. The depth of such an experience and its profound impact gives it its mystical feel (speaking for myself). I guess that's just how I'm wired...and God uses my unique wiring to communicate in a personal way (in my opinion).

Some one may suggest that it's not God at all, but my sub-conscious that is communicating something. I guess that could be true. And even though I'm open to such attempts at explaining the mystical, I also feel like I wouldn't be staying true to my current inner sense if I "down-play" them. Perhaps my opinion on the matter will change in the future...as have many other things, but right now I'm trying to word my current understanding. Using logic to define something that feels intuitive...not an easy task .

[Wonnerful]

BillM,

 

Yea, I agree with everything you said. In fact, on the days I am feeling “spiritual” then panentheism is my theology of choice. I read Borg’s little book The God We Never Knew, and that is the only God concept that has room in my rational mind.

 

Deborah,

 

I like to say I am Wonder-Full, as in full of wonder, but wonnerful was the email name available J

 

You wrote, “So in that sense I have no problem with Jesus having been one with the Father or him being divine...perhaps we all are on some level? If only because we have the breath of God in our lungs...that already means that our spirit, our breath came from the divine / is divine.”

 

I think you’d enjoy the clip by Rob Bell titled Breathe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9unC6Hc6s8

and his talk, Everything is Spiritual:

 

I like Rob Bell along with Brian McLaren in the Emergent camp.

 

You said, “…perhaps Jesus is not different in kind, just different in degree. A kind of first fruits.”

 

You are right that we are not scum. The humanist in me denies that entirely. What I think Paul is saying (based on the scholars I referenced in my last post) is what you said, Jesus was the first fruits, the angelic being that came to earth and took the role of a slave to be crucified and inaugurate the general resurrection (the first fruits). For Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, the end is nigh and God wants to graft us Gentiles into his family by way of adoption, and we adopted into Israel by getting a new spirit body (a Christ-type-body) as our Adamic-body decays and dies. So when we die we are sown corruptible, raised immortal. Yet Paul was a Jew who would say I think that we all have the breath of God in us, as we read God breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life. We are nephesh, meaning basically God-breathed-creatures. We are not a soul in a body, but a God-breathed-soul body. In the OT the soul is the body and breath of God in us. Paul is not selling a new breath, but a new clothing, he is offering the taking off the Adam shell we inherited from Adam and putting on the Jesus clothes of immortality. This is why early Christians were baptized naked (I think that's correct) and put on white clothing, after they were buried in water and came out new beings symbolically. This also may explain the naked dude in Mark. Paul would then call the Christ Spirit to enter the initiate a that time of baptism. This is all in James Tabor’s book I referenced.

 

As to your heart Deborah, and connection to the Christ of Faith. I have no problem with someone's personal feelings about Jesus. You have the right to believe and feel whatever you do. Just as I do. When my Evangelical Christians share their faith in Jesus with tears I do not mock or reject, and when Mormons say they saw angels in the LDS temple and they know the Book of Mormon is true because of a burning in their bosom, I do not mock or reject, and when others share similar experiences of other religions or New Age ideas I have the same reaction. I do not mock or reject their subjective experience, I merely answer that these experiences are foreign to me. Perhaps I am of the sort that is just not supernaturally inclined. In fact, brain studies show that atheists brains react different in scans than believer's brains. I think if I underwent one of these brain tests that they’d find my brain is just different then the average believer. I have always looked at spiritually from a head place, it had to make sense. When Mormonism stopped making sense all the emotional pull was of no use for my intellect couldn’t tolerate it.

 

Regarding whether or not your spiritual experiences have a significance to them beyond the natural. I would add this to what BillM said, which I don't disagree with. I offer this merely for perspective, to get other's opinion. My honest answer, my opinion, is that I (me, one person who is not perfect nor a know all) thinks that those experience can be explained yes through neuroscience. I say this based on years of research on belief and the brain. I also think we are cultural mammals, and these neurological experiences we evolved to have are interpreted through the lends of our culture. Thus near death experiences for example, the details are determined by culture. One person sees Jesus, another the Buddha. I think these experience are REAL, I just think that yes they are products of the brain and not necessarily proof of anything external. That is my honest opinion. But hey, ask another person and they will have a different opinion. As to why you and BillM have had these experiences and I have not. I think the author of The God Part of the Brain puts it best, that all humans are on a spectrum. Some of us love rap music more than others, some of us enjoy risk more than others, etc. There are also abnormalities in the genomes. So yes, people like me are abnormal in the sense that these spiritual experiences appear to be the cross cultural norm. I have always been a deep thinker and a realist my whole life. Other family members were more idealists and dreams and from an early age I was more willing to just say that's Reality. And now I am the way I am as an adult. I think it is genetic.

 

Regarding your question about the tension I feel. The tension is between my studies that show many problesm in Chrisnaity versus the fact that I was raised on the Christian Mythos/Story, the symbols and parables, etc. I find it hard to let go of it and just stick with the sciences as my new Story. I crave what I had, the simple beliefs and comfort and security and social connectedness. But after Mormonism I chose the road the less traveled, the road of test all things as BillM says. I told myself, no matter how uncomfortable, how scary, I will face the unknown head on, I will read anything and everything no matter how scared I am to know that fact or idea. Whereas most Mormons are taught to avoid that, for me it was inevitable. And I have not stopped questioning and exploring. I am fearless when it comes to testing my ideas and throwing them out if they don’t make sense.

 

You also mentioned the historical Jesus. I just listened to this yesterday and completely agree with all she says. See Amy-Jill Levine - Who Did They Say He Was? Jesus in Text and Context - 03/31/15. Online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbE87SHRQ3A&list=PLftmpasLfCemGzKSVG2B-2RsbAwKOp53i&index=23

 

Thus, the historical Jesus, like the historical Buddha and Aristotle certainly should not be rejected. I side with John D. Crossan on Jesus, there is Mathew's Jesus and Luke's Jesus, etc. We all have our own Jesuses. Even atheist Richard Dawkins admires Jesus.

 

You wrote: “Perhaps the natural is divine? Along the lines of 'everything is spiritual'? We live and move and have our being in the divine? In which case you can stop and marvel and wonder at the smallest most natural things...a butterfly, a couple holding hands, an older brother protecting his younger sister, a dead flower that still manages to catch the eye with a certain kind of beauty...life. As you labelled it Bill: panentheism.”

 

If you just replace the word divine with the word Reality then we are on the same page. You see for me Reality is more amazing than anything described in the world’s scriptures. I mean just try and fathom how there is no closed system, that our universe is the origination of time and space. Well what is outside our universe? If our universe is like an expanding balloon blowing up, what is outside the balloon?That is a non-question in physics. For our universe is the origination of time and space! It blows my mind. This THIS/REALITY is bigger than our mammalian perceptions. Call it divine or call it Reality, there is something bigger than us. That is what I assent to. I know my mammalian imagination seeks to fill the gaps with answers, but I think we were not meant to fully understand REALITY. Our brains evolved to hunt and kill and gather and socialize, etc. Not understand what originated the multiverse if there is one.

 

In the end my studies of personality types show that we are all just different. I think this explains the difference in religion and politics, etc. I embrace diversity. I don't want all to agree with me necessarily, for that would be demanding they have my brain, a male brain, a left-brained personality type with all my experiences and my exact genome.

 

I see religion and spirituality as an artistic canvas to paint our heart's delight, I think most people evolved a God part of the brain thus one should not deny it but embrace it yet temper it with reason and science.

Edited November 3, 2015 by Wonnerful

[Deborah]

Taken or not...hi Wonder-Full , I can see why you would have chosen that one...I guess Wonnerful also does the trick!

 

Yes, I also enjoy listening to Rob Bell and Brian McLaren. I'll have to take the time to listen to your suggestion of Amy-Jill, I'm curious!

 

If it is true that it's a genetic cause...that I think I experience the divine (yes, part of reality for sure, perhaps even more real than our earthly experience?)...and that it's genetics that cause you to 'feel' nothing...then I am amazed that you can relax into it the way you do, I have respect for that! Perhaps you do not need it then...if it's born out of need...?

 

I enjoy sensing things while interracting with what I call God and because it's so enjoyable and beneficial I would wish it for everyone. But if you are right, and one can compare it with differing tastes...like I don't care much for death metal...some people thrive on it...then perhaps if you sensed something it would do nothing for you anyways? So if God exists then He/She/It communicates with you in a language that you understand...namely reality. Reality does it for you, so God goes with it?

 

And by the way, I do appreciate that you do not mock or reject my experiences and I respect your personal view on the matter. So thanks for that .

[BillM]

Where all of this leads us, IMO, is to ask the question of how did the historical Jesus (as best as we can get at him) experience the Reality or Presence of God in his life? I think he obviously felt that his ministry and message came from God. He had a few mystical experiences of his own (at his baptism and at the transfiguration). How much of these accounts is actual history, we cannot know. But it is interesting to consider Jesus' own experiences of God rather than arguing that he was "God in a man suit". I know that many (most?) CCs believe that this is what the incarnation is, but, to me, to elevate Jesus to actual Godhood is to lose what a remarkable, insightful, inspiring, and compassionate man he was. If he was "God with skin on", then what he taught and did is not so surprising. But if he was a human being who was sensitive to the Spirit, then not only is he remarkable and worthy of serious consideration, but he also serves as an example of the kind of people that we ourselves can be. Though I disagree with the apostle Paul on some issues, I think he was right about how we, like Jesus, can and should exhibit the fruit of the Spirit. Within the framework of panentheism, we know that the fruit is not something we accomplish on our own. It is something the Spirit bears through us. As one theologian has said, "Without God, we cannot; without us, God will not." It is our Oneness with the Spirit (however we define and experience it) that makes us, in some sense, like Jesus.

[Wonnerful]

Taken or not...hi Wonder-Full , I can see why you would have chosen that one...I guess Wonnerful also does the trick!

 

Yes, I also enjoy listening to Rob Bell and Brian McLaren. I'll have to take the time to listen to your suggestion of Amy-Jill, I'm curious!

 

If it is true that it's a genetic cause...that I think I experience the divine (yes, part of reality for sure, perhaps even more real than our earthly experience?)...and that it's genetics that cause you to 'feel' nothing...then I am amazed that you can relax into it the way you do, I have respect for that! Perhaps you do not need it then...if it's born out of need...?

 

I enjoy sensing things while interracting with what I call God and because it's so enjoyable and beneficial I would wish it for everyone. But if you are right, and one can compare it with differing tastes...like I don't care much for death metal...some people thrive on it...then perhaps if you sensed something it would do nothing for you anyways? So if God exists then He/She/It communicates with you in a language that you understand...namely reality. Reality does it for you, so God goes with it?

 

And by the way, I do appreciate that you do not mock or reject my experiences and I respect your personal view on the matter. So thanks for that .

 

I am not so arrogant to think I am absolutely right. Maybe my feelings and thoughts on Reality is God. I am open. As for me being content with my view and being OK being supernaturally tone deaf, it took 40 years to become content after trying to have a supernatural experience and getting nothing but static/silence. I am not closed minded though, maybe 41 years is what it takes, ... Yes check out Amy-Jill, she is surprisingly quite funny for an academic scholar. I think you will enjoy her talk even if you don't agree with her take on a thoroughly Jewish Jesus.

Edited November 5, 2015 by Wonnerful

[Wonnerful]

That would make a great chapter heading in a book Bill, "God in a man suit". I concur, Jesus was a human worth noting, even if Jesus is in the eye of the beholder, and each Jesus is different, from Mark to Luke to Mathew, as Borg, Crossan, and Spong point out, there is a trunk that led to the branches, meaning even the sayings and parables that were invented by the Evangelists, those were inspired by the memory of a good Jewish Rabbi who impacted those around him.

[romansh]

I concur, Jesus was a human worth noting,

 

I would phrase it differently because there is very little that we can be certain of as a human Jesus.

 

I would say ... the myth of Jesus should be evaluated with care, ...

[SteveS55]

Until Christians come to grips with what "Christ" actually "is", there will always be confusion and debate.

 

Steve

[soma]

As a Christian I feel I have chosen the powerful image of Jesus Christ to represent the expression of the tangential point between the predicaments of living in a duality that exists in this world and the unity encompassed in eternity. It is not that the material world will one day dissolve into Jesus Christ, but that my ego's extroverted tendencies will disappear exposing an ocean of diverse frequencies, vibrating, and communicating on different levels united in a whole. The Christ mind expresses this unity of self I feel in the same way as the quantum physicist says that joy and happiness increases as we move towards this wholeness or the quantum self. Erwin Schrödinger was an Austrian physicist and theoretical biologist, known as one of the fathers of quantum mechanics said, “Quantum physics thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe.” as Romanash said I look on Jesus as a symbol or methology symbolizing the paradox of duality in unity. My finite mind can grasp this symbol, which is not the only one so I can see the finite in the infinte.