JRT

About Me:

I find that my view of God, of Jesus and of salvation has changed profoundly since those long ago days when I was a fundamentalist. To many Christians today, I suspect my views would be considered unorthodox at best and heretical at worst. I no longer believe that blood sacrifice was ever necessary for the forgiveness of sin. In saying this I am also suggesting that our view of a God who needs sacrifice, who is jealous, who is vindictive is also terribly wrong. I am convinced that every human being who has ever lived can approach God in sincere contrition with complete confidence that his or her sins will be forgiven. This does not require the brokerage of a priest or the offering of a sacrifice of any kind. I no longer believe in the divinity of Jesus or in the notion that his tragic death was in any way a sacrifice or necessary for the forgiveness of my or anyoneâ€™s sins. What this means is that Christianity to me is no longer an exclusive way to God to the exclusion of other faiths. But even saying this, I do not believe that all faiths or even denominations are on an equal footing. Some have beliefs and/or practices that can actually make it more difficult for a person to approach God in a sincere way. I am also convinced that if we strip away the layers of miracle and mythology and christology in our new testament, we will find that the historical Jesus taught something close to what I have just said.

One of the heretical teachings that shape my understanding of God is Origenâ€™s concept of â€˜universal salvationâ€™. Origen argued that without the ability to save the entire world, God cannot be God, and without the desire to save the entire world, God cannot be God. Therefore, God must both want to and be able to save the entire world. I agree with this completely. The Christian God is a self-contradiction without a notion of universal salvation. In practice this means that Christians ought to make a conscious effort to understand others with compassion and justice, not condemnation and efforts to convert. This becomes easy when we recognize that our destiny is a common one shared by people of every race and faith and time.

WHERE I COME FROM:
I am a lay Christian whose avocation is Biblical scholarship. Quite a few years ago (~1980) I found myself in a crisis of faith when I realized the extent to which the scriptures disagree both with each other and "outside" sources on matters of both historical and scientific fact. With this I couple the innumerable contradictions and the many unfulfilled and mistaken prophesies. The study I undertook has had a profound influence on me. It has frequently surprised me, sometimes astonished me and always intrigued me. It has shaken the foundations of my faith and forced me to re-examine it in almost every aspect. It has also renewed my faith and enabled me to go on as a Christian. Someone has said that "the unexamined faith is no faith at all". This is certainly true in my case. I am now able to discriminate between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. I know that we will never be able to completely recover the Jesus of history but I also know that the Christ of faith is largely the product of believers speaking to believers out of a profoundly deep conviction. A mythology may not be true to history but it can be true to a loving relationship with God.

I believe in a God who has created the universe and sustains it in being. However this God does not in any way interfere with the evolution of the physical universe, neither in the grand scheme of things nor in the more petty physical aspects of our personal lives. Any effect God has on the universe is spiritually by and through us. In this physical sense then, I could be termed a deist. However this God is both transcendent and immanent. By transcendent, I mean that God is both greater than but also totally "other than" the universe. By immanent, I mean that God pervades the universe. In God we live, move and have our being with the consequence that God is always and everywhere completely accessible to every human person. God is indeed the very fabric of the universe. As Paul said â€œIn God we live, move and have our being.â€ In this personal and spiritual sense then, I am a panentheist. Note that this is not pantheism. God being totally "other" means that we can never hope to describe or understand the nature of God.

But what of the death of Jesus? Did he die for my sins and the sins of the world? No, unless you wish to view his death in a metaphorical sense as a symbol of God's intense love for humanity. He died for the simple reason that he was an inconvenience to the Roman authorities and the Jewish religious establishment.

To put a redeeming quality on his tragic death in the sense of a vicarious atonement for the sins of the human race one first needs to buy into the theory of original sin. It sets the framework for the whole notion of substitutionary sacrifice, upon which a very great part of orthodox Christian dogma rests. The theory also has a secondary role of justifying the subordinate role of women and the concept that sex is inherently evil .

Why is sacrifice necessary? It is necessary for the simple reason that sacrifice and tribute were the ways that people of that time tried to appease an absolute tyrant and that practice carried over into a deficient concept of God.

When one realizes at last that this entire edifice rests upon the Genesis mythology of creation and the fall, then the theory of original sin and all the theology following from it collapses like a house of cards. This explains why fundamentalist Christians and creationists defend Genesis so desperately. They realize in their innermost being that if Genesis falls so much else will fall with it.

What then of mankind? Are we inherently evil? Are we cut off forever from the love and forgiveness of God? Of course not! We are not a people fallen from grace, rather, we are an unfinished people. Evolution is not yet done with us. We arrive here carrying the evolutionary baggage of a six million years struggle to survive in a very thretening enviroment. We all carry the so called â€œselfish geneâ€. Every child born comes with an almost unlimited capacity for both great good and great evil.

Is it possible that Jesus was real AND a myth? Myth doesn't mean fake or fantasy.... For me, acknowledging the story of Jesus as myth is a way of recognizing the bigness of the Divine, and a way of articulating that. To talk of Jesus is more than just relating a set of historical details (that are open to question and/or interpretation); more than a statement of faith (which is a potential source of arrogance and a mistreatment of other's ideas and beliefs); and more than a set of structural rules to live by. It is the best of all of these and more.

I believe in the reign of God, and in the love, equality, justice, and peace for which it stands; and in Jesus, who proclaimed, and enacted, and embodied its spirit, and taught us all to live as Godâ€™s children, to help the poor and the helpless and the hopeless: and who died because the world was not ready for his message.

When the stories of ancient heroes came to be written decades or even generations later, a common interpretive device were signs in the heavens to announce the birth of the hero. Alexander the Great was said to have a comet announce his birth. I do not regard most of the Nativity Narrative as literal but rather as allegory or interpretive mythology. It is a wonderful moving story crafted in the Jewish literary tradition of haggadic midrash. But even knowing that in my mind, it never fails to move my heart and soul.

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