Freethought & Rationalism Archive

mountainman · 12-19-2010, 05:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

.... that quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson ....

"We must get rid of that Christ!
We must get rid of that Christ!

Please STOP recycling your old arguments years after they are refuted.

I made no argument, I simply asked a question.
Why did he write that?

Quote:

That Emerson quote was discussed in 2006 here.

I am interested why Emerson wrote this. The earliest citation I can find for it is from "The Christ" by John E. Remsberg.

What did Ralph Waldo Emerson mean when he said "We must get rid of that Christ!" ?

Did he actually say this or write this?
When in his career was this?
What were the circumstances?
Who attests to the above? etc.
How does it fit with Ralph Waldo Emerson's history?

I am very impressed with this author.
I am wondering if and why he said
what he did, and whether it was said once
or whether it was repeated twice.

From my understanding Emerson was once involved in BC&H.
Why did he want to "get rid of that Christ" ?

Quote:

It has nothing to do with mythicism.

Why are you so sure of this?

It appears that another Remburg book (or is it the same one?) is being published under the title of The Christ Myth - A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidence of His Existence by John E. Remsberg. This publication cites the duplicate form:

"We must get rid of that Christ! We must get rid of that Christ!

Quote:

This volume on "The Christ" was written by one who recognizes in the Jesus of Strauss and Renan a transitional step, but not the ultimate step, between orthodox Christianity and radical Freethought. By the Christ is understood the Jesus of the New Testament. The Jesus of the New Testament is the Christ of Christianity. The Jesus of the New Testament is a supernatural being. He is, like the Christ, a myth. He is the Christ myth.

No Robots · 12-19-2010, 06:18 PM

I have been unable to trace that quotation to anything said or written by Emerson. Here is one thing that he did say:

Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, `I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.' But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, `This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a man.' The idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece and of Egypt, before. He spoke of miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines, as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.--Harvard Divinity School Address, 1838

mountainman · 12-19-2010, 06:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

I have been unable to trace that quotation to anything said or written by Emerson. Here is one thing that he did say:

Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, `I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.' But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, `This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a man.' The idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece and of Egypt, before. He spoke of miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines, as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.--Harvard Divinity School Address, 1838

Thanks No Robots,

This address would have been early in the career of Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882). I would not be surprised to find this quote from Emerson sourced from the latter part of his life. I have not examined its references. It may be that it was preserved by another party recording a discussion, I have no idea what its source or provenance is, but I appreciate the reference.

Toto · 12-19-2010, 06:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

..

What did Ralph Waldo Emerson mean when he said "We must get rid of that Christ!" ?

Did he actually say this or write this?

IF he wrote or said that, it seems pretty clear that he meant that we must get rid of a particular version of Christ.

But I can't find any reference to this other than souces quoting Remsberg. You at one point claimed to have found this quote in Johnson's Antiqua Mater, but I can't find any reference there.

Quote:

...

From my understanding Emerson was once involved in BC&H.

No. He was a trained as a minister with a degree from Harvard Divinity School, so might have had some feel for Biblical Criticism. But he was not a historian.

Quote:

Why did he want to "get rid of that Christ" ?

A possible explanation is here. Emerson wanted to revise the Eucharist because he thought it was a dead ritual that did not reflect the real wishes of Jesus.

Quote:

Why are you so sure of this? [that this is not related to the HJ-MJ discussion.]

...

Because I can read, damn it.

mountainman · 12-19-2010, 09:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Why did he want to "get rid of that Christ" ?

A possible explanation is here. Emerson wanted to revise the Eucharist because he thought it was a dead ritual that did not reflect the real wishes of Jesus.

Here is a Stanford Article of Emerson and Christianity:

Quote:

2.4 Christianity

The son of a Unitarian minister, Emerson attended Harvard Divinity School and was employed as a minister for almost three years. Yet he offers a deeply felt and deeply reaching critique of Christianity in the “Divinity School Address,” flowing from a line of argument he establishes in “The American Scholar.” If the one thing in the world of value is the active soul, then religious institutions, no less than educational institutions, must be judged by that standard.

Emerson finds that contemporary Christianity deadens rather than activates the spirit.
It is an “Eastern monarchy of a Christianity” in which Jesus, originally the “friend of man,”
is made the enemy and oppressor of man.

A Christianity true to the life and teachings of Jesus should inspire “the religious sentiment” — a joyous seeing that is more likely to be found in “the pastures,” or “a boat in the pond” than in a church. Although Emerson thinks it is a calamity for a nation to lose the capacity to worship (Z: 122) he finds it strange that, given the “famine of our churches” (Z: 117) anyone should attend them.

He therefore calls on the Divinity School graduates to breathe new life into the old forms of their religion, to be friends and exemplars to their parishioners, and to remember “that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the few real hours of life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up into the vision of principles” (Z: 124).

spamandham · 12-19-2010, 10:07 PM

I suppose it's historically interesting what Emerson meant regarding that phrase, but unless we think he had some special insight on the matter, I don't see how it really has much bearing on BC&H - which centers on ancient rather than modern history.

mountainman · 12-20-2010, 03:15 AM

I would expect Emerson to have some special insight on the matter, relevant to today's issues in BC&H. He may have prefered Plato over Paul. He is often associated with the transcendentalism movement, and as such, perhaps saw "that Christ" as redundant ?

Quote:

Originally Posted by STANFORD

Skepticism about religion was also engendered by the publication of an English translation of F. D. E. Schleiermacher's Critical Essay Upon the Gospel of St. Luke (1825), which introduced the idea that the Bible was a product of human history and culture. Equally important was the publication in 1833 — some fifty years after its initial appearance in Germany — of James Marsh's translation of Johann Gottfried van Herder's Spirit of Hebrew Poetry (1782). Herder blurred the lines between religious texts and humanly-produced poetry, casting doubt on the authority of the Bible, but also suggesting that texts with equal authority could still be written.

It was against this background that Emerson asked in 1836, in the first paragraph of Nature: “Why should we not have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs” (O, 5). The individual's “revelation” — or “intuition,” as Emerson was later to speak of it — was to be the counter both to Unitarian empiricism and Humean skepticism.

Emersons opinions, if they can be illicited from the past, are just as valuable, as some of the modern apologetic dogma. I dont think he had a vendetta against "that Christ". I think he saw on a philosophical level that "that Christ" was cluttering up the world, and people were missing out on life and living.

Quote:

Originally Posted by STANFORD

3.3 Sources and Influence

Emerson read widely, and gave credit in his essays to the scores of writers from whom he learned. He kept lists of literary, philosophical, and religious thinkers in his journals and worked at categorizing them.

Among the most important writers for the shape of Emerson's philosophy are Plato and the Neoplatonist line extending through Plotinus, Proclus, Iamblichus, and the Cambridge Platonists. Equally important are writers in the Kantian and Romantic traditions (which Emerson probably learned most about from Coleridge's Biographia Literaria). Emerson read avidly in Indian, especially Hindu, philosophy, and in Confucianism. There are also multiple empiricist, or experience-based influences, flowing from Berkeley, Wordsworth and other English Romantics, Newton's physics, and the new sciences of geology and comparative anatomy. Other writers whom Emerson often mentions are Anaxagoras, St. Augustine, Francis Bacon, Jacob Behmen, Cicero, Goethe, Heraclitus, Lucretius, Mencius, Pythagoras, Schiller, Thoreau, August and Friedrich Schlegel, Shakespeare, Socrates, Madame de Staël and Emanuel Swedenborg.

Doug Shaver · 12-20-2010, 06:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

I made no argument, I simply asked a question.
Why did he write that?

I don't know and I care less. Emerson's opinions, and any reasons he had for them, are of no interest to me.

Toto · 12-20-2010, 07:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

I would expect Emerson to have some special insight on the matter, relevant to today's issues in BC&H. He may have prefered Plato over Paul. ....

Emersons opinions, if they can be illicited from the past, are just as valuable, as some of the modern apologetic dogma. I dont think he had a vendetta against "that Christ". I think he saw on a philosophical level that "that Christ" was cluttering up the world, and people were missing out on life and living.

...

Emerson was not a historian, had no particular insight into ancient history, and did not have the benefit of the last few centuries of scholarship on the issues that concern this forum. His philosophical views are of interest, but to other forums.

Just read anything he wrote - it's out of copyright and most seems to be online - and Emerson seems to assume that there was a historical Jesus whose views had been distorted by later Christians. The only way to make sense of that phrase is to put the emphasis on "that", we must do away with that Christ in favor of the Christ he preferred.

Sheshbazzar · 12-20-2010, 09:14 AM

Reads to me like the poets struggle with his own recognitions of the prevailing cultural cognitive dissonance.

12-19-2010, 06:18 PM	#2
No Robots Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Edmonton Posts: 5,679	I have been unable to trace that quotation to anything said or written by Emerson. Here is one thing that he did say: Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, `I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.' But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, `This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a man.' The idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece and of Egypt, before. He spoke of miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines, as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.--Harvard Divinity School Address, 1838

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12-19-2010, 10:07 PM	#6
spamandham Contributor Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Dallas, TX Posts: 11,525	I suppose it's historically interesting what Emerson meant regarding that phrase, but unless we think he had some special insight on the matter, I don't see how it really has much bearing on BC&H - which centers on ancient rather than modern history.

12-20-2010, 09:14 AM	#10
Sheshbazzar Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: On the path of knowledge Posts: 8,889	Reads to me like the poets struggle with his own recognitions of the prevailing cultural cognitive dissonance.

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