SubscribeIt is hard... not only for those who have faith in Jesus, but also for those who have faith in humanity, to look closely at the terror of crucifixion in the ancient world. And when one does look closely, there is always the danger of prurient voyeurism, the vicarious thrill at another's horror.John Shelby Spong is another author who writes in the same vein as Borg and Crossan... I've read quite a few of his books, but have found Liberating the Gospels to be particularly worthy. And for a view of Jesus with a Buddhist feel, I recommend The Gospel According to Jesus by poet Stephen Mitchell.
"21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." (Romans 3)
"6 He will render to each one according to his works: 7 to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; 8 but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury." (Romans 2)If that's not punitive, I don't know what is. Either Jesus pays for my sins on the cross (and his righteousness is credited to me), or I pay for my sins under the "wrath and fury" of God.
This thread seems to tilt more into revisionist Christian scholarship than into the world of evangelicals who want to reject the politicized right wing. The former is an interesting subject, but, the proportion of evangelicals of all stripes who really give a hoot about it is far tinier than the bloc of liberal evangelicals. If we wanted to talk about the social and political influence of Christians who base their worldview on a fairly reasoned, progressive, scholarly critique of history and theology, those Christians exist in much larger numbers than "progressive evangelicals" — they are called Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Lutherans, etc.Matteo, as evidenced by his post and his conversation with Orkboi, seems to pretty much equate liberal Christianity with what Zurishaddai calls "revionist Christian scholarship". That bothers me a great deal, for some of the same reasons it bothers Orkboi, not for some others, and then also for a few particular reasons of my own.
What do you think needs to happen now?-- John Dominic Crossan interview, The Oregonian, Friday, December 03, 2004
We Christians need to take back Christianity and the Bible and morality [from those who would reduce it]. We have to make morality as broad as we can, to include poverty, gun control, capital punishment, a whole spectrum of issues if you're pro-life. Life begins and ends. Those are all moral values.
The theology of Paul is a theology for Democrats. If there is a monopoly on the Bible, on Christianity, on Jesus and Paul by right-wing Republicans, we can't deny them their integrity. That is one way of understanding it, but there is another way, a more fundamental way, from the Bible.
A Christian must do everything to lower the decibel level of violence and think of it really, really, really as a last resort. We've sort of reduced Christianity to a percentage of people who attend church every Sunday, but the level of biblical literacy and Christian knowledge is very low.
Is your book, with its "you-are-there" approach, an effort to get people to read Paul?
Yes, but only accidentally. Something happens when you read the epistles of Paul in the Mediterranean sunlight amid the ruins.
The titles Paul uses for Christ are not innocent. They are not even Christian. Paul is taking one of the titles of Caesar, son of God, and applying it to Christ. He was committing treason.
Now you stand in the midst of these ruins and realize that Rome's claim to be the savior of the world is empty now, broken, in ruins. Since 9/11, Americans look at ruins differently. They now sense that we are an empire and that this is how empires end. They've all ended like this. The Romans said they were destined to last forever, too.
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Mainline denominations have seen a membership decline of roughly 40% over the last 35 years. But most of the people leaving mainline denominations have not joined more conservative churches. They’ve simply dropped out. Presumably, a major reason many of them dropped out is that the form of Christianity they learned growing up ceased to make compelling sense to them. If it had made sense, they still would be in the church.
Another example: The vast majority of Americans, according to polls taken in 2002, cannot be religious exclusivists. Only 18% of people surveyed in two different polls taken in 2002 said yes to “My religion is the only true religion.” Another example: In a Gallup poll taken in 1963, 65% of the sample were biblical literalists. By 2001 that figure had gone down to 21%.
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Borg again (from the main link):
Salvation is about light in the darkness, liberation from bondage, return from exile, or reconnection with God. It’s about our hunger being satisfied, our thirst being quenched, and so forth. The identification of salvation with “going to heaven” in much of popular Christianity not only impoverishes the meaning of salvation but I also think really distorts what being a Christian is all about.
Whenever the afterlife is made central to being Christian, it invariably turns Christianity into a religion of requirements. If there is an afterlife, it doesn’t seem fair that everyone gets to go there regardless of what they do before death , so there must be something you have to do or believe. And then suddenly Christianity ceases to be a religion of grace and instead becomes a religion of measuring up to what God requires.
The Roman Catholic church during Vatican II essentially declared there is saving truth in all the major world religions. I think the majority of Episcopalians, Methodists, and Presbyterians would say that.
Is Christianity one of the world’s great religions, or the only true religion? This is the difference between the old paradigm and the emerging paradigm.
And John Dominic Crossan argues that
When I look a Buddhist friend in the face, I cannot say with integrity, “Our story about Jesus’ virginal birth is true and factual. Your story that when the Buddha came out of his mother’s womb, he was walking, talking, teaching and preaching (which I must admit is even better than our story)---that’s a myth. We have the truth; you have a lie.” I don’t think that can be said any longer, for our insistence that our faith is a fact and that others’ faith is a lie is, I think, a cancer that eats at the heart of Christianity
posted by matteo at 8:11 PM on November 19, 2004