To become a Christian it would seem necessary that Jesus has an important, probably vital, role in your understanding of divine activity - in addition to God the creator. All Christians regard Jesus as divine and necessary - but most Christians are unable satisfactorily to explain why.
And this is something that each must workout for himself, it seems to me; in practice. Because of this, for a long time I found it hard to be a Christian in any theoretically solid way - explanations kept crumbling...
(The ability of Christians explicitly to defend and explain Jesus seems to be increasingly necessary in the modern world - since naive Christians are falling to secular materialism with sustained high frequency.)
I was not satisfied with any of the usual explanations of what Jesus did, because they were either incoherent, or depended on an understanding of God and creation that (on living-with them) I sooner or later regarded as mistaken.
For me, any explanation leads on to further questions - until eventually I reach an assumption, and I must assent to this intuition: it must seem right at the deepest and solidest way I can manage, by sustained and intense thinking. I've reached such firm ground with Jesus - at least for the past few years.
I regard all theories of Jesus that start with an omnipotent God (who created everything from nothing) as fundamentally and necessarily mistaken - because such a God can do, and does do, everything - so there is by definition no need for Jesus.
This rules-out the entirety of traditionalist Christianity - Orthodox and Roman Catholic, and Protestant.
The only large scale theology left standing is Mormon; with its God (i.e. Heavenly Parents) who is wholly good by constrained by time and that creation is ongoing, continuing, open-ended; and began with pre-existent unorganised 'stuff' and the primordial spirits of men and women (who were embryonic Gods).
But, in my view, mainstream Mormonism errs in making Jesus primarily about atonement. This falls into being a double-negative theology of Jesus that I regard as refuted by intuition as well as the Fourth Gospel. Jesus came to bring us something more, life more abundant; not merely to undo sins and errors.
Because if Jesus was essentially an undoer, a negative figure, then that leads back to why God created the situation such as to require an undoer, but that undoer cannot itself be God... It also diminishes Jesus to be an undoer rather than the bringer of a great gift.
Yet, the strangest thing is that the work of Jesus is explained, repeatedly and clearly (albeit poetically) in the Fourth Gospel, which is about 2000 years old. If it can be read without a superstructure of preconceptions - the answer is there.
7 comments:
How do you see the relationship between omnipotens and pantokrator?
I think you are right, that we need to understand Jesus as giving a gift of life, rather than an undoer. My way of seeing it is that Jesus was needed, among other things, to make it possible to not die of bad decisions before learning from them, in part by making life potentially eternal, and in part by putting off consequences to allow for maturation. This needed to be done by one of the children, rather than God, because of the way children learn better when they have siblings. I'm not sure I have the ability to explain this, but I see it everyday with my children. They don't get me, but they do understand better when they see my interactions with their siblings, especially younger ones. Parental motivations are too deeply hidden and must just be trusted until a child becomes a parent themselves. I don't really know why Jesus is "needed" other than that He did it right, He did what the Father directed, and we can't learn this just from living in families because earthly parents are not right in every way, not even close. They are often seriously mistaken because of the necessity of the continual learning of mortal life.
I really struggle with why God had to bring Jesus into the world, I really do.
"But, in my view, mainstream Mormonism errs in making Jesus primarily about atonement."
Is the problem that we focus *too-much* on atonement, or that we do believe in atonement? The problem cannot be that we fail to recognize the other things Christ's actions accomplished, since we equally believe in resurrection and eternal life. The reality of sin and the need for Christ to overcome it is as real as the reality of mortality and the need for Christ to overcome that. In an age that is evermore sinful the need for the transformative power of the atonement is evermore urgent, and the Saints have acted accordingly.
"If it can be read without a superstructure of preconceptions - the answer is there."
I don't believe any book can be read without preconceptions. Such an argument is no different from the many Protestants who believe reading the Gospels without preconceptions will lead to one realizing the truth of the Trinity, original sin, predestination, and so on. The world would have been cured of the Apostasy a lot faster if things were that simple.
Ultimately scriptures can only be interpreted by the spirit of revelation.
- Carter Craft
@Nemo - Omnipotence swallows-up everything.
@Lucinda - I like this line of thinking, although I don't fully grasp it.
But it is fascinating, isn't it, how we can be Christians although we don't really understand? As I read the Bible, the Fourth Gospel, Luke, Matthew, Paul, Revelations... each has different explanations of 'why Jesus' and what he Mainly did.
In particular, we can see Paul struggling with this (in light of the assumptions he brings to it) - we can see 'the workings', hear him thinking aloud. This is lost if we see the Epistles as a set of established principles for life; but it is pretty obvious if we regard Paul as trying to understand (rather than presenting his already-understanding).
@Carter
wrt atonement. "In an age that is evermore sinful the need for the transformative power of the atonement is evermore urgent, and the Saints have acted accordingly"
I think that is the exact reason why a focus on atonement as primary is inappropriate for this age. What makes this age the most sinful in history is that we do not recognise the reality of sin; and are en route to an inversion of sin and good. Conversion can only 'get a grip' on modern people if they are in a small time-situation window when they know the reality of real sin in themselves (for example, an alcoholic or addict brought down to the lowest point).
""If it can be read without a superstructure of preconceptions - the answer is there." I don't believe any book can be read without preconceptions. "
You are right - correction accepted.
"Ultimately scriptures can only be interpreted by the spirit of revelation."
Yes, and/but I would also add interpreted the spirit of God-within-us, that of the divine we bear (or contain) by virtue of being children of God... what I term 'intuition' from the true or divine self.
This is our inner 'compass', in addition to the Holy Ghost being our outer 'beacon'.
What I hope for, reading scriptures or any other 'real' book, is to be guided by these - to know goodness and truth, reject error and sin.
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