My position is that Jesus brought us the new possibility of resurrection to eternal life in Heaven - a Heaven that (unlike this mortal world) is a place of beings motivated by freely-chosen love; and therefore a situation free from entropy/death and evil.
Heaven is therefore a Second Creation.
And Heaven is a place where Men are wholly Sons of God, therefore not just observers or enjoyers; but active participants in divine creation.
Before Jesus this was not possible. Jesus's life, death and resurrection was necessary for this to happen.
And this is why Christianity is unique, and itself necessary for those who desire for themselves resurrected life in Heaven.
(It follows that Christianity is Not necessary for those who desire something else than resurrection and Heaven.)
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So why does mainstream, orthodox, traditional Christian theology fail to acknowledge this?
I think there are two main reasons.
One is the commitment to making Jesus's Jewishness into something theologically necessary. The other is the commitment to defining God monotheistically and as omnipotent.
When theologians are committed to Jesus's necessary Hebrew ancestry (including that he was the Jew's prophesied Messiah, the rightful King of the Jews on earth); then they are compelled to integrate the Old Testament with the Gospels (including the Fourth Gospel "John" which ought to be regarded as primary).
Compelled, therefore, to emphasize the continuity with Jewish monotheism, and a specifically racial (and this-worldly) account of Jesus's work and achievement (because the Messiah was the rightful King of Jews in this-world).
If Jesus is seen as part of an ancient and tribal process of a monotheistic God; then this apparently pushed some early Christianity theologians (whose view became dominant, then mandatory) to abolish Time from Christianity - which led them to elide, ultimately deny, the difference before and after Jesus.
(Because when Time is regarded as ultimately, divinely, unreal - then all Time is one, and there is no before or after: that sequential view of history is just an illusion from the mortal perspective.)
Instead of being something newly possible, Heaven became regarded something more like a return - resumption of a paridisal state of blissful contemplation, worship, and joyful gratification.
The difference between Paradise and Heaven is that Paradise is essentially static.
Paradise may be cyclically conceived (like the cycle of fights and feats in Valhalla), or a state of suspended-Time - with the abolition of Time.
But in Paradise nothing essential changes: Paradise is not going anywhere - it Just Is.
Whereas Heaven is properly understood as a transformation of this mortal life -- to become a life for all rooted wholly in love, having eliminated entropy/death and evil - such that love and all creation become everlasting, while remaining dynamic and growing.
Heaven is a continuation - in a new form - of divine creation (or rather divine create-ing).
Thus the term Second Creation for the work of Jesus...
Thus Heaven is open-ended, dynamic, and changes creatively - eternally.
Jesus can only bring something wholly new insofar as Jesus is a divine being distinct from God the primary creator.
If there must be One God, and Jesus is divine; then Jesus is merely a part of God (as with the paradoxical-mystical mainstream conceptions of the Holy Trinity) - and since the One God has always been, and was primary creator: then Jesus is nothing new.
If God is an Omni-God - omniscient, omnipotent, omni-present, impassible etc - then Time must abolished, and God must live outwith Time - therefore Jesus is nothing new, because there is nothing new.
From the above it can be seen that (unnecessary, mistaken) decisions about metaphysical assumptions - presumably introduced by some early Christian, and probably Jewish, theologians; had the effect of rendering Jesus Christ theologically dispensable.
(Whatever bald assertions to the contrary are so strenuously, but incoherently, asserted!)
This; because whatever Jesus did was also regarded as done by God the primary creator; and Jesus could not be separated from God the primary creator - therefore Jesus the mortal Man was inessential.
Indeed, because Time is ultimately illusory, whatever Jesus did was actually already-done before Jesus was conceived and born!
Consequently, through these and other stream of thinking that converged theologically; Jesus's work and transformative achievement was blurred, distorted and diminished; and this was done (I infer) in order to fit with Hebrew and monotheistic theological assumptions: assumptions that soon became theological dogmas.
13 comments:
"this [Old Testament incorporation] apparently pushed some early Christianity theologians (whose view became dominant, then mandatory) to abolish Time from Christianity - which led them to elide, ultimately deny, the difference before and after Jesus."
I don't understand how one thing leads to the other. can you say more on this? if anything, a serious appreciation for the Old Testament - which is, much more so than any other ancient spiritual text, a temporal narrative - would lead to the opposite conclusion. as it does to me, i might add, since i consider Yahweh to be Jesus (and NOT the Father).
@Laeth -
By filling most of the Bible with the OT, by making all the Bible (equally!) "true", by reverencing OT kings and prophets, by regarding The Law as the basis of Christianity (and that Christianity *is* its ethics), by regarding Christianity as a development of Judaism, by making Jesus The Messiah, by linking Christianity to the nation of Israel etc etc - all this obscures and diminishes what Jesus did, and how he changed things - and when he changed things.
For me, this is one half of a synergy with Omni-God that led us to miss the obvious and insist upon all kinds of anything else.
My main point is not to get embroiled in analysing the OT (a task of which I am incapable, anyway) - but to emphasize that none of it is necessary to understand or believe.
Jesus being a Jew, and the whole OT, is ultimately irrelevant at best, more often grossly misleading, to Jesus's cosmic role and work - and to being-a-Christian.
I *don't* mean we *have to* get rid of the OT or stop talking about it altogether - but we need to be clearer that its role in Christianity ought to be as a purely optional extra; fine when helpful, but to be ignored when it's hindering or harming. (Which is most of the time...)
As I've said, we need to be able to explain what Jesus did for us very briefly and clearly - as happens in the IV Gospel.
The vision of resurrected life in Heaven that you present is *exactly* that of traditional orthodox Xianity:
VI. Hope of the New Heaven and the New Earth
1042 At the end of time, the Kingdom of God will come in its fullness. After the universal judgment, the righteous will reign for ever with Christ, glorified in body and soul. The universe itself will be renewed:
The Church . . . will receive her perfection only in the glory of heaven, when will come the time of the renewal of all things. At that time, together with the human race, the universe itself, which is so closely related to man and which attains its destiny through him, will be perfectly re-established in Christ.
1043 Sacred Scripture calls this mysterious renewal, which will transform humanity and the world, "new heavens and a new earth." It will be the definitive realization of God's plan to bring under a single head "all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth."
1044 In this new universe, the heavenly Jerusalem, God will have his dwelling among men. "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away."
1045 For man, this consummation will be the final realization of the unity of the human race, which God willed from creation and of which the pilgrim Church has been "in the nature of sacrament." Those who are united with Christ will form the community of the redeemed, "the holy city" of God, "the Bride, the wife of the Lamb." She will not be wounded any longer by sin, stains, self-love, that destroy or wound the earthly community. The beatific vision, in which God opens himself in an inexhaustible way to the elect, will be the ever-flowing well-spring of happiness, peace, and mutual communion.
1046 For the cosmos, Revelation affirms the profound common destiny of the material world and man:
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God ... in hope because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay ... We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
1047 The visible universe, then, is itself destined to be transformed, "so that the world itself, restored to its original state, facing no further obstacles, should be at the service of the just," sharing their glorification in the risen Jesus Christ.
1048 "We know neither the moment of the consummation of the earth and of man, nor the way in which the universe will be transformed. The form of this world, distorted by sin, is passing away, and we are taught that God is preparing a new dwelling and a new earth in which righteousness dwells, in which happiness will fill and surpass all the desires of peace arising in the hearts of men." - Catechism of the Catholic Church (https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_one/section_two/chapter_three/article_12/vi_hope_of_the_new_heaven_and_the_new_earth.html#$1CL)
As for the authoritative influence of the OT, it should suffice that Jesus himself invokes it repeatedly (https://biblecentral.info/library/chapter/old-testament-passages-cited-by-jesus-christ/); indeed, he invokes it from deep of his agony on the Cross.
Just when I thought I'd already read your best post of the year...
Anyway.
You've written about Jesus' Second Creation many times (which is a great and memorable way to explain/describe what Jesus did), but this post made me realize just how much the reality and nature of this Second Creation is not fully acknowledged or understood as a creation, let alone a second one. For reasons I can't understand, Christians seem uninterested in "going there."
We all profess to follow Christianity, yet the vast majority of us appear perfectly content with Omnianity or Israelanity or some combo of the two. It's utterly baffling.
This is off topic (sorry!) but this news item https://corp.oup.com/news/brain-rot-named-oxford-word-of-the-year-2024/ immediately reminded me of your book "Addicted to Distraction".
@Kristor - But that is (almost) completely different from what I'm saying.
wrt Jesus and the OT - such evidence depends entirely on the assumptions with which one reads the Bible. As you know, I regard the Fourth Gospel as the primary and By Far most authoritative source; and one must also read the Fourth Gospel to understand its essence (oft repeated) from its contingent context (inevitably of its time and place).
And then, of course, for each individual person; the ultimate evidence is intuition in direct consultation with the Holy Ghost - which inner validity should be, for each person (regardless of intrinsically indirect external evidences), the bottom line.
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@Frank - Thank you. I increasingly feel that until we really Grasp the Essence, we cannot properly discern and use all the rest of it. The question ought to be: how ought we to grasp that essence?
@Bruce
"we need to be able to explain what Jesus did for us very briefly and clearly - as happens in the IV Gospel."
i agree.
but that is not the point of my question. i still don't see how the hebrew scriptures lend themselves to timelessness or any other of the hellenic/hindu abstractions. quite the opposite in fact (and i do think they are quite profitable to study, not just with regards to Jesus, though that too, but for a broadly cosmological view, provided we completely put out of our minds the abstract philosophy and just deal with the stories - as we do with, for example, fairy tales or other myths). i remain convinced that it was the hellenic stream who led to the timelessness and omni aspects - probably originating in Philo - and not any serious reading of the hebrew bible, who presents a very different worldview from the theologians and philosophers. incidentally, i also think Barfield was completely wrong on this aspect - the OT aspect - and for the same reasons. much like a lot of people cannot engage with the IV Gospel without all the baggage, the same i believe is true for the OT.
is it necessary for salvation? for most people, no. but i do feel a certain necessity to understand certain things. and i do think Jesus is the key to a lock which is presented (not exclusively) in the hebrew bible.
@Laeth - Were orthogonally at cross purposes. I'm not arguing that OT narratives lead to the timelessness - but that timelessness partly functions to integrate the OT with Jesus. To make them a unity.
Consider that the Psalms are the main focus of worship in much of the Catholic world (East and West) - and ask why and how it could be that the OT became the (often) primary material for Christian worship. And the problem of combining what is said in the Psalms (at least apparently) with what is done and taught by Jesus, so that there is no contradiction, so that the Psalms lead on to Jesus.
I think one of Joseph Smith's (and Brigham Young's) mistakes was to make Mormonism into a close recapitulation of Old Testament Patriarchal society - almost a new ancient Judaism; with major new roles for a new set of pre-Jesus prophets.
There has been a long history of projecting Christianity back before Jesus, so that ancestors became Christians in all but name. Time is negated, since they are so much like us. The linearity of Jesus's work, and its qualitative transformation, is badly weakened. The religion is also made ethical, rather than salvific.
This exacts many costs! One of which is to diminish the necessity of Jesus.
AH, now i see what you mean. and i agree. apologies for the confusion.
The first chapter of John refers to Jesus Christ as always existing with God (verses 1 - 10) and His foretelling by and fulfillment of the Jewish prophecies (verses 31, 38 - 49).
@A-G - https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2022/02/my-understanding-of-fourth-gospels.html
wrt prophecy, this is something about which you need to decide. Are prophecies the essence, or are they contingent? Could Jesus have done what he did if there had not been prophecies about him (or, as I think likely, prophesying some other "Messiah", who did essentially political things), or if the prophecies had been forgotten, or misinterpreted?
see: https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2020/01/jesus-and-messianic-prophecies-summary.html
It seems clear to me that the prophecies are Not decisive, and are inessential to the work of Jesus. The same with him being Jewish.
That's fine, but having narrowed things down to the Gospel of John, and now narrowing things down further to certain parts of the Gospel of John, you have arrived at the Gospel of Bruce.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it underscores the complete subjectivity of religious belief. You write in declarative sentences. What is the underlying authority for why you're right and say, Kristor at the Orthosphere, is wrong? And if you say, I worked it out in my head by logic, well, so can everyone else, and neither of us are in a position to judge another on their theology except perhaps by their fruits. And applying that metric, I'd say a pious Hindu with a loving family is as right as any of us.
@A-G - You always strike me as someone who wants to *use* some religion or another to create and sustain the kind of this-worldly society that you personally prefer - and you are looking around to find one that fits the bill.
I used to be that way myself, but have incrementally realized that this sequence is not true for modern Men - it cannot and will not work. And it does not make any different to the human condition, the basic situation in which we find ourselves in this world of entropy and evil, and in which everybody and everything corrupts and dies.
I've explained what you ask so many times I'm frankly sick of recapitulating myself! - If I'm bored with repeating myself, I guess everybody else must be bored hearing it.
The point is that I can explain and answer questions in many different ways until I'm blue in the face, but if the assumptions behind the question are different, and if the aim of the exercise in asking the question is different between us - then I am just wasting my time.
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