Suppose, I write a love letter to a lady I admire exposing deep thoughts on heart and love as I understand.
Now I`m writing a lot indeed, this is part of my work. Now suppose also, people discover me a deep guy with lots important to say 100 years after I died.
They begin looking all around trying to expose my life and thoughts. Dissertations are being written and congresses are being held.
After 1000 years they find parts of my love letter to the horny lady. Meanwhile there are only pieces and little parts left over. Sensation! A letter about love! What deep thoughts! Wow!
And because those people feel a religious devotion to the holy guy 1000 years ago they declare the love letter a holy heritage to all followers. Look, he is calling us to love!
You know, what I am talking about. A similar situation we must imagine with Christ and the holy writers. We tend to relate their words immediatly to us as contemporary readers in case we are impressed by the writer we call holy.
This is the deep reason of treating holy scriptures at first hand as literary sources which need to be investigated carefullyaccording:
style; form; history of tradition; occation; connotation with other writings and, and, and.
An old writing is not immediatly related to us, but at first hand is a source. Relation is always another question.
I`ll give a list of how Christ is differently considered. It might not be complete. It will reveal how manyfold Christ is considered in all ages and also according contemporary mind influences. From there you may see for yourself any try to force single minded and common views.
# Christ as satisfaction of the holy God being in rage of the sinful humans according his holy law
# Christ as mediator between humans and the deadly mighty God
# Christ as incarnated God in order to understand humans
# Christ as divinator making humans divine
# Christ as healer and helper, because humans are considered always in the status of help
# Christ as fulfiller of human wishes
# Christ as human jeanny in the bottle
# Christ as guarantee of success
# Christ as symbol of new life and being
# Christ as challenge of new consciensness
# Christ as problem solver
# Christ as invicible companion
# Christ as reminder of God
# Christ as human imagination of the divine
# Christ as liberation power (liberation theology)
# Christ as a spirit being being everywhere
# Christ as reason of arts
# Christ as opium of poor people
# Christ as ground of hope in this world and time
etc. etc. pp...
DESPITE ALWAYS HAVING TRIED TO FIND A COMMON FORMULA OF CHRIST TALK, THE CHRIST CASE IS ALWAYS A PERSONAL ONE AND THUS AS MANYFOLD AS HUMANS ARE.
FROM THERE CHRIST IS NOT PRELIMINARILY A DIFFERENT THING; BUT A CHIFFRE, A SYMBOL, A REPRESANTATION OF A BEING WHICH IS INDEED RELATED TO ALL OF US AS CHALLENGE TO GET HUMAN BY BEING HUMAN...
Btw, this pattern is similarily valid for all figures we consider most important and even divine thus being humans under impression...
You need to be a member of Ashtar Command - Spiritual Community to add comments!
Replies
What we can clearly see, is that:
The Jesus in the gospels is different than the Christ of Paul.
While in the gospels the son of a carpenter is pretty human suffering a terrible end, the easter story witth the empty grave is leading to Paul´s interpretation: he is not interested in an earthly Jesus but in the mandate called Christ; according Paul he is a living spirit. And while the gospel Jesus is simply calling for being merciful saying, that God will forgive as we forgive those who trespassed against us, Paul is developing a whole complex of redemption by the blood offering of Christ, and the follower must accept the blood of Christ. Thus Paul takes the jewish sacrifice service as basic pattern of Christ as the sacrifice of God.
Another approach takes the Gospel according Thomas - here is Jesus the teaching spirit explaing gnostic references - you may have a look in it.
Different is Osho - he takes Jesus as awakened one wanting to lead humans to enlightment and freedom.
Another try is Nietzsche - he calls Paul the genuine deceiver of Jesus` original message of mercifulness.
Albert Schweitzer calls Jesus a reason to become human - according him Jesus failed at the end causing to change eschatological approaches.
And the followers of The Kashmere theory related Jesus to buddhist teachings.
At least one thing can be said. The Jesus figure can not be used as war and fear monger...