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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (16152)	1/25/2004 10:55:26 PM
From: briskit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

Let me give you the assessment of L Goppelt, German theologian. My typing of it will take longer than your reading, so I consider it a fair offer. CS Lewis with his extensive literary background in mythology would have other contributions to the discussion. (I believe he says that it is not surprising that there are many points of contact and agreement in mythological stories. In fact, that is one of the things that finally attracted him to Christianity, that the mythological aspects of many stories found agreement in a real person. But I may not remember the points of his discussion very well.) But Goppelt is well-acquainted with analogous stories, and offers a historical assessment of them. FWIW: "In the context of the ancient world in which Jesus lived, there are in fact, few analogies for sustained effectiveness after death under comparable conditions. Jesus was condemned not only by the governing powers, but also by his own people because he breached the accepted standards of the social order. After a short time, however, his followers, who had themselves abandoned him initially, began to interpret his very demise as the consummation of his work. With respect to the Jewish milieu, one could see a certain correspondence here in the Teacher of Righteousness at Qumran; or, regarding the Old Testament, in the prophet Jeremiah whose words and experiences were passed on by his student Baruch (Jer 36); or, regarding the Greek world, in Socrates who died a condemned man but lived on for centuries through Plato; or, regarding the Hellenistic world, in Julius Caesar who after his violent end became the guardian spirit of the empire, or in the Neo-Pythagorean peripatetic philosopher Apollonius of Tyana, a contemporary of Jesus, whom Philostratus in A.D. 217 portrayed in an aretology with the aid of surviving traditions. In none of these analogies--Is 53 excepted--has sustained effectiveness been achieved by a resurrection. The Teacher of Righteousness at Qumran was probably eliminated like Jesus by the ruling priesthood, but his followers held firmly to his interpretation of scripture and continued to reflect meditately upon it in the manner he taught. For them he was the prophetic figure standing at the brink of world calamity, but no one spoke of his continued existence in person. This closest analogy makes clear that the Easter kerygma (message) was entirely unprecedented in the Jewish milieu of Jesus. The kerygma would appear to come closer to the message through which Caesar's demise was glorified mythologically rather than philosophically by the heir to the throne, Octavius Augustus. Caesar's death became his apotheosis. Rising out of the ashes of cremation, his genius ascended to the divine world. In the Roman forum a temple was erected to him as Divus Julius Caesar. As the "divine Julius Caesar" he became, along with his successors, the guardian spirit of the Roman empire, the ideological Cosmokrator. The descriptive account of the apotheosis of Apollonius of Tyana calls to mind even more the accounts of Easter. He was snatched away from his judges through translation. He then appeard to his followers as one raised from the dead. He was revered by them as a "divine man," and so the traditions about this life and miraculous deeds were passed on from generation to generation. But none of the comparable figures of the ancient world sustained their effectiveness through the message of their resurrection. The Easter Kerygma is not the appropriation and adaptation of an idea generally familiar to the ancient world. That the continuation of Jesus' ministry should take its decisive expression in this form is utterly unprecedented. This observation prohibits us historically from discarding the New Testament representations as though they were examples of an obsolete supernaturalism. On the contrary, we must analyze them in terms of their own context. The really decisive question is whether the earthly ministry is in fact the essential--and not something like the psychological--basis of the Easter kerygma. Does the ministry of Jesus, in terms of its essential structure, lead up to the passion and resurrection so that the cross does not end up representing the collapse of a utopian dream, nor the resurrection a miraculous corroboration, but so that both become discernible as the fitting conclusion to his whole ministry? If it is possible to answer this question positively, it would also appear to be a contradiction historically to postulate a ministry of Jesus devoid of his death, and an Easter faith devoid of a transsubjective foundation as the starting point for the continuation of Jesus' ministry and, consequently, for New Testament theology.

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (16152)	2/4/2004 6:14:29 PM
From: briskit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

CS Lewis, while an avowed atheist and before investigating the gospel stories himself, agreed with you, and had always considered them simply another of the myths you refer to. Quoting from The Question of God, page 83, "However, an event happened that had a 'shattering impact.' One of the most militant atheists among the Oxford faculty, T.D. Weldon, sat in Lewis's room one evening and remarked that the historical authenticity of the Gospels was surprisingly sound. This deeply disturbed Lewis. He immediately understood the implications. If this 'hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew' thought the gospels were true, where did this leave him? He had considered the NT stories to be myth, without historical authenticity." After reading them, CS Lewis had this to say regarding equating the gospel stories with mythological stories, (quoted in The Question of God, Nicoli, p. 86) "I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths. They had not the mythical taste." He observes that they were different from anything else in literature. "If ever myth had become fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this." Many of these myths, such as those of Balder, Adonis, and Bacchus, contained stories similar to the one in the Bible--of a god coming to earth, dying to save his people, and rising again from the dead. Before studying them himself in Greek, Lewis had always considered the New Testament story simply another one of these myths. If they were true, he realized, all other truth faded in significance." Quite an interesting chapter on CS Lewis opening himself to investigate the question of God, and the intellectual process he underwent. At first he committed himself to theism, non-personal, pure and simple. Later, to Christianity. The Question of God is a pretty interesting discussion between Freud and Lewis, theism and atheism.

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (16152)	2/4/2004 9:25:12 PM
From: briskit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

"As a literary historian, I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the gospels are they are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend (myth) and I am quite clear that they are not the same sort of thing. They are not artistic enough to be legends. From an imaginative point of view they are clumsy, they don't work....Most of the life of Jesus is totally unknown to us....and no people building up a legend would allow that to be so." Lewis again on the literary assessment of the gospels as myth.