Iskander

I am an ignorant man, aa5874, and the church will ignore me. You are much better suited for the task and I am certain you would succeed in persuading them.

Good night

ph2ter

Paul the Apostle set us free from the Law, but MJ will set us free from Paul and his delusions and delusions of his followers. Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave, but of the free. Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

You know, for centuries my ancestors were in bondage and now I am first in my family set free and I am proud of that.

aspronot

Would that be true? A divine-only Jesus has no point of differentiation with God. He either becomes superfluous or he becomes synonymous with God. Such a brand of Christianity might as well be called Judaism.

judge

Christianity has a history of killing people with different ideas . More than any religion christianity has shown itself not able to absorb heretical ideas.
Heretocs dont lose faith, but it didn't at times stop them being kiilled.

There is no connection between an individual accepting an unorthodox idea and christianity itself absorbing that idea.

gurugeorge

It certainly doesn't apply for me. I'd be upset for believers if it shook a faith that had previously been keeping them sane in a difficult world.

But I think that for many believers, the real Christ has always been something in their hearts anyway (which I think is precisely what it was in the beginning anyway - visionary experience, which at its mildest level is just a sense of guiding, wise presence, an "imaginary friend").

I think it would be quite possible for people to carry on being Christians in this way in the absence of a historical Jesus, because the myth Jesus is still viable as a myth Jesus.

What would really be in trouble is some of the socio-political institutions of Christianty - particularly the Catholic Church - insofar as its "authority" is supposed to derive from a continuous lineage back to the fleshly instantiation of the deity.

In a sense, the bulk of the job was already done by Luther, but in another sense, the "historical" Jesus has been Protestantism's equivalent of the Catholic "apostolic succession" - some supposed link to something real. So the Protestant churches would be in just as much trouble, probably, not so much from people being upset with them, but because the wind would have been taken out of their sails psychologically.

aa5874

Protestants do not worship the "historical Jesus". The "historical Jesus" is NOT in the Bible of the Protestants it is the Jesus of FAITH.

There is a QUEST, A SEARCH, a PROBE, for the PRESUMED "historical Jesus" by those who REJECT the Jesus of Faith known in the MJ/HJ argument as MYTH Jesus.

MYTH JESUS, the Jesus of FAITH is SECURELY documented in antiquity, but today, PEOPLE are searching, probing, on a quest for the PRESUMED HJ of Nazareth who did absolutely nothing to develop the Jesus cult.

I hear the RUMOR that HJ of Nazareth is PRESUMED to be a rebel. So what??

"Paul" doesn't know about that.

"Paul" told people his Jesus was RESURRECTED on the THIRD day and that without the resurrection there would be NO REMISSION of Sins. See 1 Cor.15, Romans and Galatians 1

archibald

Interesting, and debatable. Me, I sometimes think the world would be saner without any supernatural beliefs. :]

It's the next level of human consciousness, don't you know? A natural evolution. Don't struggle against it. Cast aside the security blanket.

Solo

Quite the contrary, Toto, such finding would be a boon for Christianity's credentials in the struggle with Islam !

Best,
Jiri

No Robots

Protestants do not like the historical Jesus:

A Jesus who taught like a Jew and an early Christian community that looked like a Jewish sect troubled many 19th-century German Lutheran scholars, who preferred to envision a Jesus who taught a new and unique doctrine that overthrew the established tradition. In reaction to Baur, Albrecht Ritschl “solved” the problem by attacking the Jews. For him, Jesus did not reform or transform Judaism, he condemned it. Jesus the Jew, in Ritschl’s view, transcended Judaism by purifying Christianity of its Jewish elements. From the middle of the 19th century until World War II, numerous German scholars, including Adolf Harnack and Rudolf Bultmann, followed Ritschl’s lead in one way or another. None were Nazis, but reading them after the Holocaust leaves us with an eerie sensation.--"What Price the Uniqueness of Jesus?" / Anthony J. Saldarini. In Bible Review, Jun 1999, 17.

See also "Theology as a vision of Colonialism: From supercessionism to dejudaization in German Protestantism" / Susannah Heschel. In Germany's colonial pasts, Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz, Lora Wildenthal, eds.

Mythicism is simply the endpoint of the dejudaization of Protestantism.

archibald

A noble mission. Now, if you would only defend the other view at the times when it is mythicists who come up with the more dubious arguments, my admiration for you would be even greater than it already is.