Originally Posted by Peter Laarman of Progressive Christians Uniting

John Dominic Crossan, a leading figure in the new Jesus studies, will chair the anniversary gathering. ... Crossan was joined on the platform by a younger radical theologian who specializes in economics and power: Joerg Rieger, author of the well-received Christ and Empire (or via: amazon.co.uk) (Augsburg Fortress, 2007).

Back when I was a theological pup attending the mildly neo-orthodox Yale Divinity School, I was taught that it’s actually a better move to place your bets on the Christ of Faith than on the Jesus of History, about whom nothing conclusive can ever be known. Dom Crossan and his Jesus Seminar colleagues have been systematically challenging the “nothing can be known” assertion, along with its peculiar corollary: “Whatever can be known matters less than historic church teaching and church practice.”

. . .

But back to the difference their good theology makes. (Crossan himself uses the term “accurate theology” to describe the research-based work he has been doing for decades.) For myself, I do feel my head beginning to clear just a bit when I learn that what the Bible’s God abhors most is not poverty as such but the inequality created and reinforced by unjust power and greed. I nod that same head in sober and sad agreement when I hear someone like Joerg Rieger point out how so many millions on this Earth still suffer from the effects of malign theological economics: from the lash of free-market rules and precepts that mirror top-down and gravely mistaken theological concepts.

And as someone who has always found the fulminating figure of John the Baptist to be rather attractive, I find myself both humbled and strengthened to learn that Cousin John was stuck in an old and unhelpful paradigm. John thought that enacting a ritual purification in the Jordan would trigger redemptive divine intervention on behalf of the poor, whereas Jesus insists on a “collaborative eschatology”: Yes, God is eager to bring deliverance, but God is also still waiting for us to pitch in. Or as Desmond Tutu likes to put it, “Without us, God won’t; but without God, we can’t.”

Originally Posted by Toto

Happy birthday!

From Religion Displatches: Does the Historical Jesus matter?

Originally Posted by PAPAL INSPIRED CAPTION

Jesus and John

baptism of Jesus with a dove descending.
Jesus is young, nude, and quite small
next to the older, bearded John the Baptist.

Originally Posted by mountainman

From the sarcophagus located in Sta. Maria Antiqua, Rome....

Originally Posted by Amazon product description

There were four different portraits of Paul in the early church: the non-authoritarian Paul of the great Letters, the authoritarian, misogynist Paul of the Pastoral Epistles, the frenetic missionary who single-handedly introduced Christianity to the Mediterranean world, and the proto- Gnostic Paul of Marcion and the Gnostic commentaries on Paul s letters. Which is the real Paul? The Christian church opted for the Pastoral Epistles, and so read Paul letters through that lens. But that image has become so problematic in the modern world that many contemporary readers are either put off by Paul or simply ignore him. But was Paul really such a frightful figure? In providing a fresh reading of Paul s authentic letters, the SV translators have attempted to liberate his words from those of Augustine, and later Martin Luther, who used Paul to cover their own guilty consciences. This Augustinian-Lutheran tradition of interpreting Paul s discourses about justification by faith as a way of dealing with their own sense of moral failure, for instance, represents but one way of translating Paul s letters. The Greek of Paul s writings can be understood rather differently so that Paul s message is not about personal guilt, but about the trustworthiness of God, and Jesus courageous faith in God as a role model for others. This is how Paul s letters are translated in this book. Here readers will encounter a very different view of Paul and his message.

Originally Posted by Toto

The Pauline letters contain some good stuff that he likes (faith, hope, love, in Christ there is no east or west, no slave or free, no male or female, etc,) and then stuff he doesn't (all governments are ordained by god, slaves obey your masters, women keep silent in church and obey your husbands.)

The Jesus Seminar seems ro have figured out how to save the first part and dump the second