The contrast can be seen between the Old and New Testaments.
In the Old Testament, the salvation hoped-for (e.g. from the Messiah) is groupish - of Israel, the nation.
It is not individual - the individual is mortal, disposable, and will die; and after death his depersonalized remnant will be go to the shadowy, ghost-filled, underworld of Sheol.
Only the group - Israel - is potentially everlasting.
(If it pleases God; if Israel is obedient to God).
In the New Testament (most authoritatively and clearly in the Fourth Gospel), the salvation offered by Jesus Christ is personal, individual; it is a choice/ decision/ action of each specific person.
The First Creation is groupish; but the Second Creation is individual.
4 comments:
This is very good.
Drifting a little from the exact topic, I was thinking about the problem of "evidence" to support the development/change in human consciousness through time (as if it were not already self-evident), and I inevitably focused upon the change in people's attitudes to groupishness.
Specifically, I thought about war and how kings/chiefs/generals/etc. nearly always accompanied their soldiers to the battlefield and often fought in the battles themselves. If my sense of history is somewhat accurate, this practice had severely tapered off by the 19th century. By the 20th, having "group" leaders on the battlefield fighting alongside their men had become a rare thing indeed. Yes, some lesser members of the former or in-name-only aristocracy still participated here and there, but I don't recall Churchill literally leading his men into battle or AH personally heading any sort of lightning campaign against the Allies.
@Frank - The thing is that there can never be proof of such things as the development of consciousness - it's an assumption.
And so is the opposite - i.e. to assume that people are always and everywhere the same in their relationship with the world.
I think quite a few people are liable to assume that consciousness changes, that for example hunter gatherers had a different relationship with the world. But such differences are typically explained as being secondary to social environment, and/or evolution by natural selection. Consciousness is caused-by other things, but not itself a cause.
But what is distinctive here, is the idea that change in consciousness may be primary, that these changes *drive* historical changes. In particular that there are historical differences in the consciousness of people who are incarnated, and also that there are presumably differences between different people around the world.
@Frank - The other thing is that the idea of a groupish consciousness seems bizarre, religious, impossible to the mainstream modern mind - or else it seems like a psychotic delusion.
The position of modern, Western, trad-type religious is very odd in this respect (not just Christians), in that there is often an assertion of groupishness of loyalty and motivation - as an ideal for oneself (nationalism, care for co-religionists).
There is a powerful nostalgia for this. But nostalgia does not make it a real and strong motivator or binder.
My favorite example of this is the book of Philemon. It's one of my favorite epistles. Paul sends an escaped slave back to his master. Paul doesn't rail against slavery. He doesn't say that Philemon should free Onsesimus. He doesn't say Philemon should not own slaves.He doesn't advocate social action. Paul's fundamental position is that the *individual* relationship between Philemon and Onsesimus as brothers in Christ trumps everything and makes social relationships, if not irrelevant, then simply tools for working out the more important individual relationships. Christianity is fundamentally about individual relationships -- between Christians and between the Christian and the Christ.
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