Christianity (from the inside) 3.0

So, what will I do with my blog from now on?

I don't know. I love writing here, and I love reading other blogs. I have neither the time nor the intention to create some kind of apologetic database (check the links at the right for two guys who've already done this) but I would like to use this space to work out issues in the faith I struggle with or (think) I've worked through in part.

As I begin thinking along these lines, I realize I've made some leaps myself, meaning I've come to conclusions, or dismissed objections, based on brief examination and not detailed analysis. I was drawn by the Voice of Christ in the gospels, the force of his personality, the content of his message, once I established parameters which allowed me to believe the gospels were at least partly true. Do Mormons say the same, the burning in the bosom? have I not met people of all religious faiths who felt drawn to their sacred text in the same manner? yes. This is universal religious experience. Christians cannot disregard it. Are all religions like Christianity? Nope. Jesus is unique. But that's another issue.

I had to overcome a couple of final concerns to place faith in the Jesus of the gospel record. One was how do I know Jesus said any of this, or anything close to it? C.S. Lewis made a proposition others call the trilemma: here's this guy in Palestine who says he's the Son of God, who forgives sins, who says he'll judge the world: either he's nuts (I think Lewis compares this person to someone who believes he's a poached egg) or he's intentionally deceiving his followers, or he's telling the truth.

(Right after I posted this blog I found Holding's article here. Thought I'd steer you that way at the outset. Enjoy. My blog is still about my personal journey).

There are problems with the trilemma (what is the full nature of religious mental illness, for example) but the one that hit me right away, enough to give me a quadlemma, is how do I know Jesus said any of these things about himself at all? This was questioned in Lewis' time, before his time, and is questioned now. Yes, there is the press-hungry Jesus Seminar crew voting with their colored beads. Go have fun at their website via google. But other scholars, skeptics, Muslims, etc., have argued that Jesus didn't say any of these things also. He was a political opponent of Rome, a moral teacher in the highest Rabbinic tradition, something besides a self-proclaimed deity (before Abraham, I am) or at least someone who proclaimed to be related to the deity: his special relationship with the Father is stressed throughout the gospel strata, as is his apparently self-proclaimed unique role in history (by strata I mean Mark, Q mixed up with special L and M, John, the historical Jesus content in the epistles; see anything about the synoptic problem online to understand what I mean and to form your own views on the gospels' composition. I will say that if Mark was a religious genius in conjuring up the words and deeds of this amazing spiritual figure, as Harold Bloom asserts, so were the authors of Matthew, Luke, and John. Each has remarkable, unmatched and unique content).

Chesterton talks about this in Everlasting Man, and he's funny as usual, but is it possible...did Jesus get styled into something he historically wasn't by his later followers?

So far I have not found this argument strong. I'm more willing to believe the historical Jesus had an incorrect view of himself (was it Schweitzer who said this? you see I really am an amateur); not psychotic crazy, but genuinely deluded, like (maybe) Joan de Arc or the narcissistic and predatorial wackos in Under the Banner of Heaven. One problem, of course, is the miracles and the resurrection itself. The gospels are sprinkled with supernatural events. Only one of them had to occur to validate Christ's claims. If one wants to find the historical Jesus apart from the gospels' supernatural content, good luck. All one can do is wildly speculate. The gospel strata all, and I stress all, present a messianic and clearly supernatural figure.

Then there is the supreme quality, what one critic calls 'the lack of second-rate content' in the ethical teaching. That does seem hard to jive with narcissistic personality disorder, which usually leads to excessive and even destructive behavior (clearing the temple? what else from the gospels would fit?).

But the real clincher for me was simply the obvious historical faith of the apostles; I find it very hard to believe that they didn't believe themselves. I know other religions, Islam for example, boast a 'big bang' creation; suddenly, here's this new faith. But Islam began, as far as I know, on the poetry of the Quran and the ontological strength of monotheism; Mormonism on the revelations given to Joseph Smith and an extraordinarily strong internal culture (and a few early possible miracles, see again Under the Banner; I know little else about the origins of the religion). In contrast early Christianity presents a plual number of early witnesses who agree on remarkable essentials. Multiple public miracles, a resurrected man.

Think about Paul. I think Moreland describes St. Paul as a 'cool-headed intellectual of the first rank' or something like that. I disagree. Paul wasn't stupid, but he was a bit nuts. He had to be to take on the job he did the way he did. However, he writes that he met with some of the original apostles early on in his career. And that the gospel he received from God was the same as what the inner Jerusalem circle was teaching. Certainly we have undisputed Pauline epistolary evidence from the mid 50's which contains the kerygma, the central message of Christianity. The Lord's Supper was handed down to him like a creed, a key piece of oral tradition to be preserved exact. And Paul tells us he received this information, the Supper narrative and the resurrection appearances, in the past. He must have heard of the resurrection and Christian salvation with a few years of the crucifixion itself. But I've read this elsewhere.

Could James and Peter have fooled Paul? Could they have imagined the resurrection, or believed it through wishful thinking? And if Mark invented the verbal-historical Christ (as Bloom asserts) what about the other astonishing strata? What about special Matthew? What about John? John's gospel was probably edited/compiled by followers after his death (though this is speculation) but the recollections and dialogues it contains are unique in human history and, to this reader anyway, suggestive of an eyewitness source.

Take Bruce Lee. Bruce gets misunderstood all the time by people who should know better, many who knew Bruce personally, because they can't understand his central concepts. Bruce invented an approach to the martial arts by drawing on all martial arts ('absorb what is useful'; 'use no way as way') and developed a personal and changing fighting style in subordination to that. But there are still people who argue we shouldn't move beyond the techniques Bruce was teaching in the sixties. Please. Dan Inosanto, for one, has never had this problem. I remember training for a few months under Dan in the mid-80's. He said some things Bruce said and did. And you know what, I might make some mistakes now, twenty years later, in my recollection of those quotes, but the overall central theme of jeet kune do is very clear (it's true I heard it over and over later, but I can remember Danny's little lectures from the 80's still). The problem was not forgetting what Bruce said and did (and the little he wrote) but misunderstanding it.

Same with Jesus. Gnosticism grew out of the doctrine of a bodily resurrection, or so it has been argued.

And another point for me was the fact that Paul really believed, the other early Christians seemed to also, that Jesus was coming back any time. Paul proscribes sexual/marital behavior along these lines: the time is short, so act accordingly. Yes he was wrong. But how could any of them have been so sure of Christ's immediate return if they didn't actually believe Jesus had been raised from the dead? And wouldn't any new convert, in the first few years of the faith, wonder if the body was still in the tomb in Jerusalem? Could no one look for even bones? Perhaps the disciples stole the body? Oh, another possibility, but not a strong one. Would they really have stood up to the ruling Jews like that? Did the disciples make a mistake? Maybe, as Funk asserts I think, the body was eaten by dogs and somehow the disciples missed this fact when they went back to the tomb (and why that tomb, why any tomb, if Jesus was not buried in front of witnesses)?

Then one also has to account for the post-resurrection appearances, and above all, for the sudden explosion of the kerygma itself. What if some of Luke's sources are off? Possible. I heard Crossan deny the resurrection of Jesus (though he considers himself a Christian and teaches at a church sponsored college) because of the 'group' resurrection at the end of Matthew. I doubt that one myself. But discounting one event which may have been exagerrated, maybe rumored, years later, but which was included by an honest evangelist, is not the same as discouting the resurrection of Jesus as all four gospels present it. But I'm drifting maybe.

The bottom line is that I find it very hard to believe the apostles changed Jesus' entire zealot-against-the-Roman-occupation message into something completely more transcendent and beautiful after his death. And the central Christian message is exquisitely beautiful. Nor that the evangelists/apostles would have put such extraordinary self-superlatives into Jesus' mouth. He had to have made those claims about himself. And then, yes, he was either self-deluded, or knowingly lying, or some twisted combination of the two (David Koresh) or the possibility must be admitted that he might have been correct (the trilemma is no sure syllogism). But I really resent critics who try and make Jesus into something other than a self-proclaimed Messiah. He could have been wrong about who he was, but there is no evidence that he was a political activist or, is it Funk who says this, a Jewish comedian? Forget it. He preached the Law but put himself above it on more than one occasion, publicly. And every gospel is full of healings recounted in narrative style. Somewhere, in Miller or Holding online (see my sidebar links for the real pros, though I think these guys are both inerrantists) I read that some evidence from early Jewish literature describes Jesus as a magician. Could this possibly be a recollection of how his miracles were understood by those who refuted him? Tantalizing.

Yes I wish we had a contemporary account of Jesus which was not Christian. But we don't. What we do have is the richest religious literature I have read, an ethical message and individual personality which transcends anything in the Gita (can't get past the castes and the shifting of behavioral ethics onto karmic winds) or any other system I know. You want the philosopher's God? Jesus is it. The ontological, Formal absolute in a living personality. Love, the absolute foundation of all that is right in our race, is at the center of all things gospel, notably Jesus' mission itself. Problems remain, yes, but those are for another day. Maranatha.

t