Robinson describes the Church fathers who opposed Gnosticism as "myopic heresy hunters." The future lies with inclusion.
(Bravo , tell it like it is ! Amen !)
spirit-wars.com
Gnosticism (heresy) and orthodoxy are two trajectories of early Christianity. What was a marginal position just a generation ago is now touted as majority conviction. Robinson encourages modern theology to extract values from both trajectories in order to produce a new formulation of Christianity for today.20 Robinson's 1985 manifesto explodes the constraining limits of the orthodox biblical canon. Koester readily admits that this is not value-free, objective science. The old liberal historical-critical method was, he grants, "designed as a hermeneutical tool for the libera-tion from conservative prejudice and from the power of ecclesias-tical and political institutions."24 In the same way, future New Testament studies should have as their goal "political and religious renewal . . . inspired by the search for equality, freedom and justice" in the "comprehensive political perspective" of our modern world.25
November, 1995 at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, victory was declared. Leading New Testament scholars rejoiced that the heretical Gnostic Gospel of Thomas had finally made it into the club, and that now we could disband the club. By club they meant the New Testament canon of Holy Scripture. They were referring to the elevation of Thomas alongside the four canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These backsliders from Christianity seem to be succeeding where their ancient spiritual cousins failed. In a second century list of New Testament books to be received as canonical, it is stated that the books of the heretical Gnostics have no place in the Bible because one cannot mix "gall with honey." James Robinson declared the elevation of the noxious Thomas into the life-giving Gospels as "the coming of age of American New Testament scholarship."
Christianity has been Americanized by infusing Gnosticism into the message of the Bible. In a parallel universe, scholars now speak of the Americanization of Buddhism. "It is something of an article of faith in US Buddhist circles that Americans are improving the traditions-by making [Buddhism] more democratic, more practical, more socially engaged, more [feminized]." The same goals mark this new Bible study. But there is also an aspect of triangulation here, since Marcus Borg's new vision of Jesus compares him to the Buddha.
Helmut Koester, in the epilogue of a collection of essays in his honor,21 gives his own prospective for future directions of the New Testament field. Early Christianity, he says, is just one of several Hellenistic propaganda religions, competing with others who seriously believed in their god and who also imposed moral standards on their followers.22
Bravo! --->tell it like it is ! ;-)
Only contradictory understandings of the Christian faith can explain the divergent evaluations of Gnosticism we noted above. Orthodox Christian-ity has always maintained the antithesis separating all expres-sions of paganism, including "Christian" paganism, from biblical truth. Liberalism has always tried to muddy the waters. Today liberals are claiming that ancient Gnosticism is an alternate, authentic expression of early Christianity.44 Is this estimation plausible? The early Church fathers said no. Modern liberalism says yes.
What would a modern Gnostic, with no pretensions to Chris-tianity either orthodox or liberal, say? Duncan Greenlees is just such a Gnostic, an adept of the theosophical/occult tradition. His evaluation of Gnosticism is therefore most interesting:
Gnosticism is a system of direct experiential knowledge of God . . . the Soul and the universe; therefore it has no fixed dogmas or creed. . . . In the early centu-ries of this era, amid a growing Christianity, it took on the form of the Christian faith, while rejecting most of its specific beliefs. Its wording is therefore largely Christian, while its spirit is that of the latest paganism of the West . . . [emphasis mine]45
Here is no claim that Gnosticism is a valid though alternate form of Christianity. On this issue modern Gnostics and ancient church fathers agree. Both affirm that Christianity and Gnostic-ism are different religions, even if they sometimes use common terminology. One religion is pagan humanism, the other divinely revealed truth.
Oh , there really is a difference ? Humanism certainly has its merits as we have all seen <G>
The program of the insertion of pagan religion into Christianity nevertheless is carried through in recent academic publications in order to deliver the real Jesus, the original Christian community and a radical redefinition of the Christian faith.
This has produced what Tom Wright calls
THE GNOSTIC JESUS:
Peasant cynic, Jewish teacher, social revolution, apocalyptic prophet, the first feminist, mystical guru. Robert Funk, founder of the Jesus Seminar has a new book, Honest to Jesus: Jesus For a New Millennium (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996). His new Jesus is a classic. Funk's goal is to liberate Jesus "from the scriptural and creedal and experiential prisons in which we have incarcerated him." This new Jesus is a teacher rather than a divine being, emphasizing forgiveness and freedom over punishment and piety, endorsing "protected recreational sex among consenting adults."
Marcus Borg, Conflict, Holiness and Politics in the Teaching of Jesus (New York/Toronto: Edwin Mellen, 1984) cp Jesus: A New Vision (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987)- Borg's approach is an interesting case study in the nature of this new Gnosticizing quest, and is wonderful example of scholarship that prepares the bed it intends to lie in, perhaps without even realizing that this is what is going on cp. the Liberal Jesuses of the 19th century.
In his writings, Borg begins by noting a "major shift," what he calls "the lessening interest in eschatology and apocalypatic." This, you remember, was what Schweitzer noted about the liberal 19th century Jesuses. Borg is a man with a mission. He believes his "charismatic" Jesus "radically challenges the flattened sense of reality pervading the modern worldview, and much of the mainline church," in other words, a purely this worldly, social reformer, the result of previous NT critical work!
the emergence of new questions-the questions are less specifically Christian, "more global," comparing Jesus to other religious figures;
new methods-past methods narrowly historical-now new insights from the history of religions, cultural anthropology and the social sciences
Here is scholarship preparing the bed it intends to lie in, for Borg then goes on to underline a new consensus. It is a consensus
Marcus Borg, another fellow of The Jesus Seminar and author of the recent book on Jesus, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time is also a deeply religious man. Raised an evangelical Lutheran, he now has discovered a new view of the Spirit and of Jesus. The Jesus he met again for the first time is not the Jesus of scriptural orthodoxy. Says New Testament scholar Borg, "Like Socrates, Jesus was a teacher of a subversive wisdom. Like the Buddha, he had an Enlightenment experience. Like a shaman, he was a healer. Like Gandhi, he protested against a purity system." Borg is not merely comparing Jesus with elements in the lives of other holy men.
In the above mentioned lecture concerning the critique of Bultmann, Funk stated that we do not need a heavenly redeemer, because Joseph Campbell, amongst others, gives us an "internal redeemer." Joseph Campbell, guru to George Lucas, one of the spiritual creators of Anakin, the "Balancer," and Star Wars, was an apostate Roman Catholic and Jungian, who sought wisdom in the pagan myths, and delivered much of it on public television. He describes the calling of every human being, though born in one sex or the other, to transcend duality. This is to be done, as in the ancient mystery religions, by undergoing a series of initiations [or mystical experiences], whereby the individual "realizes that he is both mortal and immortal, male and female." Campbell was enamored of the goddess story because in it
------->"the world is the body of the Goddess, divine in itself, and divinity is not something ruling over and above a fallen nature."
great stuff that , from out of the mouths of theologian babes .
thanks for posting . |
