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I don’t worry about the historicity of Jesus Christ. I’m not so arrogant to think I can reconstruct what happened 2000 years ago. It can’t be reconstructed.
Jesus Christ is a spiritual entity I sense in my mind when I read the Gospels. That’s it. My NIV Bible might as well be the source document–as far as I’m concerned it is. I didn’t find Jesus Christ by reading the original Greek manuscript of Mark. I found him in the Gospel record in my bible on my shelf.
When I read the story of his life and the record of his teachings, then I come to know him as the Word of God. And that’s what it’s all about. The story speaks the message and conjures the spirit of Christ, not the text.
Egor I think you’re half right. I am concerned about historical issues and the task of historians is to reconstruct the past as best they can. I don’t think that attempt is arrogant. But having said that you do make a good point. I am an atheist so the spiritual aspect of it doesn’t concern me but it is useful to remember that whatever else he may be Jesus is a character in a book. He is really only available to us through the medium of words and can come alive for us only through the active imagination. Of course you can regard this process as a spiritual exercise but the Jesus of imagination is available to everyone whatever their beliefs. I’ve been told I can’t really “get it” since I’m not a Christian but I doubt this is true.
Stephen said
Egor I think you’re half right. I am concerned about historical issues and the task of historians is to reconstruct the past as best they can. I don’t think that attempt is arrogant. But having said that you do make a good point. I am an atheist so the spiritual aspect of it doesn’t concern me but it is useful to remember that whatever else he may be Jesus is a character in a book. He is really only available to us through the medium of words and can come alive for us only through the active imagination. Of course you can regard this process as a spiritual exercise but the Jesus of imagination is available to everyone whatever their beliefs. I’ve been told I can’t really “get it” since I’m not a Christian but I doubt this is true.
Actually, I think you do get it. I think you get it perfectly. Jesus, whatever he was or did when he lived is one thing. What he is now is an aspect of the mind that comes alive when one reads the “story” of the Gospel. And the mind is what it is all about.
God is a monistic thing. God is the mind–ultimately. Maybe we should give it a capital M and say that God is the Mind of the universe. I am a modality of that Mind, so are you, so is Jesus Christ, so is the Holy Spirit. God may be ultimately more fundamental than Mind–maybe he’s Substance with a capital S, and Mind is only one of his infinite attributes. That doesn’t matter much to me, because I can only conceive of my mind and maybe a greater Consciousness in the universe–so that’s as far as God goes for me.
So, I get the historical search: The Gospel on the surface is like an historical story. A little deeper, and it is wisdom. A little deeper and it is a strange symbolic document of great revelation. Still deeper, it is transformative.
I know you say you’re an atheist. I’ve debated atheists for over 20 years, and the one thing I’ve come to learn about people through that odyssey is that there is what people say about themselves and there is what people do in their life. Holding a “right philosophy,” on Judgement Day, I am pretty convinced now, will be no more than a curiosity to anyone present:
Ah, I see you believed in a monistic God, Edward. How interesting. Now let’s talk about that homeless guy you flipped off instead of giving a dollar to.
I think it works something like that. Faith just has so little to do with what we think.
Anyway, thanks for your response, my friend. 🙂
Egor said
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I don’t worry about the historicity of Jesus Christ. I’m not so arrogant to think I can reconstruct what happened 2000 years ago. It can’t be reconstructed.
Jesus Christ is a spiritual entity I sense in my mind when I read the Gospels. That’s it. My NIV Bible might as well be the source document–as far as I’m concerned it is. I didn’t find Jesus Christ by reading the original Greek manuscript of Mark. I found him in the Gospel record in my bible on my shelf.When I read the story of his life and the record of his teachings, then I come to know him as the Word of God. And that’s what it’s all about. The story speaks the message and conjures the spirit of Christ, not the text.
So, I haven’t read all the responses. I’m just focusing on the OP here. Starting with the last paragraph.
Just for the sake of argument, let’s just say Jesus was not an historical person, that the gospels as entirely fabricated. Or perhaps there was some sort of historical person named Jesus, but the gospels are an entirely hyperbolic creation. In other words, the Jesus of the most reliable NT documents as they are reflected in your NIV Bible is an entire fiction.
I don’t then understand in what way you are reading the “story of his life and the record of his teachings” in the NIV. If these are an entire fabrication of later Christian writers and bear little or no remote semblance to anything historical, how do they speak the “message and conjure the spirit of Christ? The story you speak of comes from the text, in this case, the NIV. Without the text, some text, there is no “story”. The spirit of Christ is the fabrication of someones, mind, a fiction created from some personal perception of some subjective experience, either yours or someone else’s, or some group of someones.
In what sense is this “real”. It would be like conjuring the spirit of Frodo or Bilbo Baggins except there is no claim that story has any root in reality either historical or spiritual. Neither Frodo or Bilbo are “spiritual entities”. This is another question. What, for you, is a “spiritual entity”? What sort of existence does such an entity have? Are you simply talking about the ideal of the Christ? Some sort of set of qualities or principles or ideas that are embodied in this fictional character?
Help me understand in what sense there is any grounding in any sort of reality or existence here. Thank you.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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