Jeffrey Gibson

So much for the purported value of this assessment of Brunner, then. Or was the reviewer not accurate in describing the categories that Brunner worked from in order to come to the conclusions that he does about Jesus?

Jeffrey

No Robots

I am concerned with establishing Brunner's credibility, particularly among those who have dealings with Christological questions. I would also state that everything Brunner has to say is consistent with Spinoza, who may be considered the founder of modern Bible interpretation.

No Robots

From what I can see, what the reviewer means by "classic Judaism" and "classic Christology" is whatever he might have considered to be the standard scholarly understanding.

Jeffrey Gibson

Which Christological questions would these be? Ones asked by first century Jews? By Christians and others who lived during Origen's time? Who were attendees at Nicea or Constantinople? At Chalcedon?

Which is precisely why Brunner can and will never have any credibility as a NT exegete or a sound guide to 1st century Judaism, the nature and literary character of the gospels, or NT theology. Nor will credibility attach to anyone who thinks that what he says about these things is in anyway authoritative, let alone the key to understanding anything in matters NT.

Jeffrey

No Robots

Spinoza's importance for contemporary discussion of Christ can be seen by the fact that last week a conference on the Jewish Jesus at Johns Hopkins University included a discussion entitled, "Christ According to the Spirit: Spinoza, Jesus and the Infinite Intellect."

lpetrich

Why not start a thread on that?

Whatever those "independent" traditions are.

LOL. That's great.

:rolling:

How did you figure that out? And figure that out without quoting from the Brunnerian Scriptures.

No Robots

But I did quote Brunner on this, right there in that post. And now here is something from Carlyle:

Why, in thirty or forty years, were there no books, any great man would grow mythic, the contemporaries who had seen him, being once all dead. And in three hundred years, and in three thousand years--! To attempt theorizing on such matters would profit little: they are matters which refuse to be theoremed and diagramed; which Logic ought to know that she cannot speak of. Enough for us to discern, far in the uttermost distance, some gleam as of a small real light shining in the centre of that enormous camera-obscure image; to discern that the centre of it all was not a madness and nothing, but a sanity and something.--On Heroes, hero-worship, and the heroic in history, p. 3.

spin

Ahh, citing the great "great man" man! How utterly turned to sand was his turgidity.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: 'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'


spin
(It's Shelley)

No Robots

It cannot be precisely ascertained in what degree Jesus Christ accommodated his doctrines to the opinions of his auditors; or in what degree he really said all that he is related to have said. He has left no written record of himself, and we are compelled to judge from the imperfect and obscure information which his biographers (persons certainly of very undisciplined and undiscriminating minds) have transmitted to posterity. These writers (our only guides) impute sentiments to Jesus Christ which flatly contradict each other. They represent him as narrow, superstitious, and exquisitely vindictive and malicious. They insert, in the midst of a strain of impassioned eloquence or sagest exhortation, a sentiment only remarkable for its naked and drivelling folly. But it is not difficult to distinguish the inventions by which these historians have filled up the interstices of tradition, or corrupted the simplicity of truth, from the real character of their rude amazement. They have left sufficiently clear indications of the genuine character of Jesus Christ to rescue it for ever from the imputations cast upon it by their ignorance and fanaticism. We discover that he is the enemy of oppression and of falsehood; that he is the advocate of equal justice; that he is neither disposed to sanction bloodshed nor deceit, under whatsoever pretences their practice may be vindicated. We discover that he was a man of meek and majestic demeanour, calm in danger; of natural and simple thought and habits; beloved to adoration by his adherents; unmoved, solemn, and severe.--"Essay on Christianity" / Percy Bysshe Shelley.

spin

Next you'll be quoting Freud on Moses.


spin