Does it truly reflect the theology of Jesus himself or does it more accurately represent a theology created around that which evolved afterward?
Jesus' life and words were based on his apparent objective of teaching that God the Father and humanity are one - that "before Abraham was, I am." Jewish theology would not permit this and a case can be made that this was the primary reason for Jesus' referring to himself as the Son of Man.
The early followers of Jesus were first and foremost Jewish. Jesus himself had come to an understanding of humanity's truly mystical relationship to God and knew the difficulty of reconciling that relationship to the scriptural foundation and societal worship of a God in that highly monotheistic and monarchical framework. Those who survived the times around Jesus' death and ascension and lived on to spread the Good News would likewise have had the daunting task of absorbing a new and mystical understanding within a context of existing Jewish cultural assumptions about God.
Is it no wonder that instead of following Jesus they found it more logical in their cultural context to worship him as a more viable alternative to tossing aside the literal and legal assumptions that were part and parcel of their own society? That the society had killed their Master for declaring the very personal epiphany and evoking that same mystical epiphany in them had to have been the most immediate concern around their own physical survival and the survival of their Christ-born epiphany.
Alan Watts stated that they worshipped Jesus because "they still felt that for anyone except Jesus it would be pride, presumption and insubordination for a mere creature to be one with the Creator."
Watts continued:
"Christians dare not believe that, as St. John says, they have been given power to 'become the sons of God,' remembering that the expression 'sons of' means 'of the nature of.' The dubious uniqueness of the monarchical religions is that they overstress the difference between Creator and creature and, by making virtues of feeling guilty and frightened, inculcate a very special terror of death - which Jesus saw as a source of life.
...... From this point of view it would seem that the Church has rendered the Gospel ineffective by setting Jesus on a pedestal of excessive reverence and making him so unique that he is virtually isolated from the human condition.
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Arthur C. Ruger's Liberal Christianity topic, please visit the Discussions page.