Gamera

It doesn't particularly make me feel good; it makes me feel free and authentic. That usually makes me feel something other than good.

Only if you define the quest for freedom and authenticy as illogical and unreasonable. That's like saying Shakespeare is "wrong." It's almost not intelligible.

I take it you don't get anything from Hamlet and King Lear, because I can assure you, they weren't real. So those texts aren't meaningful to you? And if they are, why?

lpetrich

A rewrite of the Bible.

Don't make me laugh.

The God of the Bible is consistently depicted as an anthropomorphic superbeing, just like some pagan god. And depicted as such without any attempt to argue that that depiction is metaphorical or allegorical, as Plutarch had argued in his On Isis and Osiris: "Therefore, Clea, whenever you hear the traditional tales which the Egyptians tell about the gods, their wanderings, dismemberments, and many experiences of this sort, you must remember what has been already said, and you must not think that any of these tales actually happened in the manner in which they are related."

And nobody in the Bible argues that the Biblical God is Pure Being or whatever -- or anything comparable to the Tao, which is consistently described in rather metaphysical and non-anthropomorphic terms in the Tao Te Ching. Consider how it starts:

The Tao that can be Tao'd is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name

Gamera

Origen, who was there at the beginning, saw no problem with not worrying about historical accuracy of the Christian texts. And indeed Paul said that the gospel (a story) saves us. Christianity is more complex than your cliff notes version.

You don't have to be a "relativist" (whatever that means) to realize that a truth in a text is different from a truth about gravity. Surely your realize that the world of texts is not your world. We are dealing with texts here and must address them as discourse, not as facts or fact-statements.

Again, if you're concerned about whether something is black, this might be true. But presumably Christianity isn't about a bunch of truth statement about your world. If it was, we could have dispensed with all this gospel nonsense and consulted a theologian.

You're simply confusing narrative discourse (a world of meaning) with your imperical world that involves verifying truth statement. It's a mixed up as asked is "Hamlet" "true." The question is almost meaningless, unless you gloss "true" in a way that makes it no longer relevant to why we read Hamlet.

Again, I don't know what you mean by "relative." You are imposing 20th century philosophical terminology to a historiagraphical condition that simply is: texts are texts and we read them for meaning, and your life is your life and involves discerning facts. Please consider that that the two aren't the same.

In fact, there are lots of Buddhists, and it's unclear whether Buddha ever existed. There were lots of Greeks who worshipped Dionysus or Zeus, who presumably never existed. A good story is all any religion ever has -- and is ultimately all you have as far as history is concerned.

One the hand, there's an almost humorous level of absurdity in this question: you're really asking this: If God didn't really send his Son in the flesh to save mankind, well, gosh, how could he possibly save mankind????.

I mean, if God could do the former (the premise of orthodox Christianity), the he could figure out how to save humanity with a narrative. I mean, really, the latter is no more miraculous than the former.

But more to the point, all humans ever have are narratives to understand the world and themselves. That's all you have -- a narrative that places you in a particular time that tells the "story" of "civilization." Christianity is no difference. We have a narrative, the gospel. It either has meaning or it doesn't. It has meaning for me. Apparently it doesn't for you. I can't argue that anymore than if you said you find Harry Potter meaningful, and I don't.

Texts have meanings. We're dealing with texts here, not scientific data.

Ah, plenty of people (the vast majority through history) have in fact acceptted the truths of mythological/religious stories about gods and their relationship to humans. It's the norm.

Again, texts are texts. We can discuss the significance of the difference between a purposely fictive text, like Hamlet, and a purposely biographical text like the gospel. But the differences, while interesting, don't affect whether the texts are meaningful to the reader. It just affects how they are meaningful.

As if you don't accept all kinds of narratives. You probably have a narrative in your head right now about the "progess" of science which informs your particular terminology about truth. Has it ever occured to you, that all you're doing is accepting a narrative?

Gamera

Actually it is my position, based on what Paul says about the gospel and my own experience, that the creation of a loving self, from the selfish self we fall into, is in fact what the gospel narrative accomplishes. So we don't disagree as far as that goes. And of course that's what Paul means by becoming a "new creation."

I just think the gospel does what it does, and we don't need to assume the historicity for the narrative to be accepted. Ultimately, historicity is just another construction that results from texts. Without texts, there is no historiography and hence no history, as we know it. So why worry about the historicity of Jesus, when we have what's necessary, his narrative?

No Robots

To everyone who is able to receive what the Gospels have to offer—which is the greatest gift anyone can receive—the main thing is the life of Christ, the man Christ. Moreover without the visibility and the vividness of the whole humanity of Christ, we can have no grasp of his authentic Gospel in its entirety; without it, we can use the Evangelists to prove anything we like—even that Christ only preached to the sick and to self-mutilators who tear out their eyes or hack off their hands, or that the Jews were all left-handed; for Christ says, "Whoso shall smite thee on thy right cheek," etc.—whereas we usually box a person's ears with the right hand, striking their left cheek! The main thing is the life of Christ, the man Christ, this most transparent human character, as I have said. First of all we see it stereoscopically as a single whole through the diverse portrayals of the Evangelists; then, detaching itself from the material bedrock and support of the visual images, it lives independently before us, with us, in us. It is only through our living with this life that the ideas which blossom forth from it have meaning; only thus does the Gospel have meaning; only thus do we understand that it is not that the Evangelists write about Christ and his Gospel, but that Christ is the Gospel!—Brunner, Our Christ

Gamera

But that's the radical genius of Paul. Jesus isn't here. He is absent. If he were here, who would need faith?

All we have is his narrative. To "beleive in Jesus" really means to accept and trust a narrative, a narrative whose meaning is that God's love, if accepted, transforms us into loving people.

Faith is only compatible with the gospel as a narrative of an absent Jesus. Hence Jesus comment to Thomas:

John 20: Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing." 28 Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" 29 Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe." 30

No Robots

For I judged not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ, and him crucified.--1Cor 2:2

Gamera

Exactly, it is the story of Jesus, not Jesus himself, that saves:

Romans 1:16 - For I am not ashamed of the gospel [i.e., the story of Jesus]: it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek

Romans 10:14 - But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? . . .So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ. 18

gstafleu

That's an interesting tack, one that accords with the purpose of myth in general. For me it then follows that (a) the existence of a Jesus is not really important, (b) nor is the existence of a god, and (c) other stories, about other people/circumstances, with or without (another) god can be equally saving.

Gerard Stafleu

No Robots

For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son; much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life--Rom. 5:10.