What, if Anything, is Christianity?
See also, "What, If Anything, Is a Christian?"
To most people who identify themselves as Christians, their religion is "based" on the life and teachings of the historical Jesus Christ which, in turn, are a continuation of the story told in "The Bible", viewed as one "book".
This view is incorrect for many reasons.
The life and teachings of Jesus are based on Christianity, not the other way around. We know absolutely nothing of the life and teachings of Jesus except from the point of view of the early Christian Church.
The accounts in the New Testament are written to illustrate specific interpretations of His life and acts. For example, Mathew is concerned to show Jews of his time that Jesus is the Messiah. His arguments make no sense to a modern reader and they were vigorously denied by Jews at the time ("Christians" advancing this view were pursued as criminals by the Jewish authorities of the time and stoned to death as heretics. Indeed, Jesus Himself was executed by he Romans and/or the Jewish authorities for precisely his claim). Modern Christians systematically ignore the fact that what they call the "Messiah" has nothing whatever to do with the Messiah the Jews were expecting, nor the Messiah that Matthew claimed Jesus to be. The modern Messiah is as a creation of modern myth like Santa Claus -- not even the mythical super-Jew of the Bible. This isn't a simply an academic distinction. The key belief of he evangelical Christian is that Jesus is his personal saviour. The Biblical Messiah was supposed to free Israel and restore it to the glory. Obviously, Jesus did not fit the bill, so the myth needed a vigorous re-write, a process that is well under way in the early Church and is still a "work in progress".
There were several claimants to the office of "Messiah" during the time of Jesus and they all met the same fate. Their claims were treason from the point of view of the Romans and heresy from the point of view of the Jews. The messianic hopes of the Jews evaporated with the sack of Jerusalem in 70 AD, but such hopes were still alive in the time of Paul and there are numerous claims put into the mouth of Jesus that seem mysterious today. Re-working these claims (especially those in the Revelation of John) is still a 21st century cottage industry. For a few die-hards, the end of the world and the "kingdom of God" (whatever that is) is just around the corner. However, in the New Testament, what was expected was the defeat of Rome by the Messiah, something that was seen as preposterous even at the time by the great majority of Jews. Once it was taken seriously and the Jews rose up in revolt, Israel came to a catastrophic and perfectly predictable end.
Matthew invents a geology for Jesus and fabricates a birth story (the virgin birth, Bethlehem etc.) solely to connect Him to the line of David and Old Testament prophecies of he Messiah. These stories don't appear in the other three gospels. The whole argument makes no sense anyway, but it is why this particular Gospel was written. Connecting Jesus to David is a bit weird to the modern reader. David was notable as a war lord, who expanded the borders of Israel, putting Israel locally "on top" for a less than a century. David wasn't even a follower of "Judaism", which did not really exist until later. In the thinking of Old Testament prophets the Messiah was to save Israel as a nation. For those writing after David, the Messiah would need to be a descendent of David. Oddly Jesus wasn't such a descendent, even though his father was. The father of Jesus was (according to Matthew) God. Quite typically, the theology of Matthew winds up tripping over itself.
Like Matthew, the Gospel of John is a piece of early Christian theology, featuring Jesus going around and making claims for Himself that make sense only from the point of view of the early Christian church. The main point is that Jesus is/was a pre-existing god, but at the same time a son of God. The difficulties with this idea were not yet fully worked out in the first centuryand indeed were never worked out except at the point of a sword.
John's Jesus is not plausible on His own but makes perfect sense if you know the other side of the argument, which was (a) Jesus was born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem (b) Jesus was not of the "house of David" (c) Jesus was executed by the Romans and therefore did not save Israel from anything so (d) Jesus was not the Messiah. Because of all this, we are more than willing to stone you to death as a heretic, so get the f*k out of town. The book of Acts is the story of Paul being run out of one town after another from Jerusalem to Rome and all points in between, mostly by angry and murderous Jewish authorities.
The Gospels also go to great length to downplay the moderately successful religion founded by John The Baptist. From what we see in Acts, it's plain that the followers of John were not themselves convinced that John endorsed Jesus in a way that the New Testament portrays. Again, you can understand the "Biblical" John the Baptist best by understanding what the opposing view was.
The early Church split into (at least) two warring factions over the issue of whether Jesus was the "Messiah" just for the Jews (as the Old Testament clearly indicates) or for everyone. Should "Gentile" converts be required to follow the burdensome practices of the Mosaic code (such as circumcision)? "Conservative" Jews (especially those in Jerusalem) saw it necessary to convert to Judaism to be a Christian (even though they would still be considered heretics by orthodox Jews). Paul, being a "civilized" Roman Jew (from Tarsus, far from Judea), was willing to compromise. Eventually, his view won out by the simple fact that Israel was destroyed in 70 AD. The "liberal/Gentile" wing of Christianity prevailed by default. What we have in the New Testament (writings selected by this "pro-Gentile" school of thought) are dominated by Paul and his companions, especially Mark and Luke, who prevent a rather sanitized and tolerant view of Jesus (as opposed to the Jewish Jesus of Matthew, who claims to have come to "fulfill" the law of Moses and not to replace the law in any way).
Overlaying all of this is two millennia of further interpretation, theology and open warfare. The modern "Christian" reads the New Testament through goggles that take for granted (for example) the doctrine of the Trinity, an awkward political compromise between sects of "Christianity" that papers over the lively dispute over what Jesus was (A normal human? A separate God? An aspect of God (the "word")?). Ironically, these debates were shackled by Old Testament monotheism, which (from the point of view of the Jews) viewed all the claims of the Christians as heretical (punishable by death). Early Christians couldn't simply put up Jesus as an additional God, nor could they put Him up in place of the Old Testament God. According to the Greek way of thinking, he had to be a god of some sort. The divorce between the Jews and the Christians was not an amicable one, even to this day. Christians claim the Old Testament (parts of it anyway) but the Jews read the Old Testament in a radically different way. Millions of Jews have met their death at the hands of Christians for their stubborn but perfectly reasonable rejection of the arguments presented in Matthew. Unlike Christians, Jews have an annoying tendency to carefully read and debate their Bible.
Church leaders continued to debate (and still debate) just how Jesus and God are related. The question was supposedly settled by The Third Counsel of Constantinople in 680 AD, which condemned all dissenting opinions as heresy and is officially rejected by many large segments of Christianity to this day. Yet, most Christians consider this type of question to have been settled (in the Bible, no less!!) or irrelevant. If nothing else, this particular controversy should show that there is not now, nor ever has been a unified interpretation of the life of Christ. The seeds of disagreement are glaring in the New Testament and they have only grown with time.
(While this is not terribly relevant to my point, I should state my own view on his issue, best documented in "The Zealot". I think Jesus was a real human being who may or may not have believed himself to be the Messiah. Others around him probably did believe him to be he Messiah, enough to guarantee his unfortunate end. Along with others with similar claims, he was executed by the Romans for treason and/or the Jews for heresy. Based on a bit of logic and careful reading, we can offer a few negative guesses. He was not born in Bethlehem. His mother was not a virgin. He did not think of himself as divine, nor, of course, was he. He was not the Messiah for the simple reason that the Messiah is a mythical person, but also because he wasn't the "real" Messiah people were expecting. He did not come back from the dead, nor did anyone else of whom this claim was made at the time. He was an orthodox Jew, preaching to Jews. Evidence of his ministry to those outside of the Jewish faith is slim and unconvincing. Theologically, he probably represented a rather mildly liberal, reformist view of Judaism but certainly not a wholesale rejection of Judaism as the only true faith. I'm confident that most of this is wrong but I have no idea how any of it could be settled once and for all.)
Modern "evangelicals" cling enthusiastically to the Old Testament while shredding it into proof texts to support modern "take" on Christianity, which is at odds with "official" Christianity as taught by the Catholics. Evangelicals are remarkably ignorant of the Bible that they claim to have been somehow inspired by God. Ironically, it is the Catholic and "liberal" branches of Christianity that require their pastors to have a professional competence with Biblical criticism, even to the extent of a passing familiarity with Greek and Hebrew. Such familiarity creates a view of "Christianity" in a historical context which may or may not make sense of the idea of one true God acting in history. In any case, such training fosters a deep appreciation for the Bible that comes from actually reading it, not having read for you. Discussions among professionals are remarkable for the absence of "proof texts".
For one reason or another, modern Christians basically dump the Old Testament while still claiming it as part of their history and authority. This allows them to overlook the tangle of controversies within Judaism itself. In the time of Jesus, Judaism was itself split into warring factions (Sadducees and Pharisees). Paul himself was a Pharisee and many Pharisee doctrines (such as the resurrection) find their way into Paul's version of "Christianity". To a modern eye, the split between Pharisees and Sadducees has more to do with politics than theology, since one party or another controlled the temple and (subject to Roman approval) the money. This will be familiar to those who look for real differences between Republicans and Democrats.
All religion is based on claims of authority. Lacking any grounding in reality, such claims reach into an alternate universe, the creation of the human mind. It is not surprising that we wind up with competing and contradictory doctrines. Historically, these disagreements over what is "true" in the alternate universe have lead to centuries of warfare and destruction.
The alternative to religion is to ground belief on observable fact and experience. This still leaves us open to misinterpretation and even doctrinal disputes. But such disputes can be resolved in the theatre of actual, current, personal experience. If we believe that we all inhabit the same physical universe, it would seem that we have a better chance to stop killing each other on orders from the alternate worlds of religious authorities.
In the real world, we are faced with many who still take their orders from the invisible lords of the alternate universe. Tolerance is the only practical path to take. We should be willing to agree on what to do and put aside disputes on why we should do it.
In a cosmopolitan society, there is a broad consensus between modern Atheists, Agnostics, Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists over what constitutes a just society. People need to be free to call their personal philosophy by whatever name that seems right to them. It is by their actions we should know them.
To most people who identify themselves as Christians, their religion is "based" on the life and teachings of the historical Jesus Christ which, in turn, are a continuation of the story told in "The Bible", viewed as one "book".
This view is incorrect for many reasons.
The life and teachings of Jesus are based on Christianity, not the other way around. We know absolutely nothing of the life and teachings of Jesus except from the point of view of the early Christian Church.
The accounts in the New Testament are written to illustrate specific interpretations of His life and acts. For example, Mathew is concerned to show Jews of his time that Jesus is the Messiah. His arguments make no sense to a modern reader and they were vigorously denied by Jews at the time ("Christians" advancing this view were pursued as criminals by the Jewish authorities of the time and stoned to death as heretics. Indeed, Jesus Himself was executed by he Romans and/or the Jewish authorities for precisely his claim). Modern Christians systematically ignore the fact that what they call the "Messiah" has nothing whatever to do with the Messiah the Jews were expecting, nor the Messiah that Matthew claimed Jesus to be. The modern Messiah is as a creation of modern myth like Santa Claus -- not even the mythical super-Jew of the Bible. This isn't a simply an academic distinction. The key belief of he evangelical Christian is that Jesus is his personal saviour. The Biblical Messiah was supposed to free Israel and restore it to the glory. Obviously, Jesus did not fit the bill, so the myth needed a vigorous re-write, a process that is well under way in the early Church and is still a "work in progress".
There were several claimants to the office of "Messiah" during the time of Jesus and they all met the same fate. Their claims were treason from the point of view of the Romans and heresy from the point of view of the Jews. The messianic hopes of the Jews evaporated with the sack of Jerusalem in 70 AD, but such hopes were still alive in the time of Paul and there are numerous claims put into the mouth of Jesus that seem mysterious today. Re-working these claims (especially those in the Revelation of John) is still a 21st century cottage industry. For a few die-hards, the end of the world and the "kingdom of God" (whatever that is) is just around the corner. However, in the New Testament, what was expected was the defeat of Rome by the Messiah, something that was seen as preposterous even at the time by the great majority of Jews. Once it was taken seriously and the Jews rose up in revolt, Israel came to a catastrophic and perfectly predictable end.
Matthew invents a geology for Jesus and fabricates a birth story (the virgin birth, Bethlehem etc.) solely to connect Him to the line of David and Old Testament prophecies of he Messiah. These stories don't appear in the other three gospels. The whole argument makes no sense anyway, but it is why this particular Gospel was written. Connecting Jesus to David is a bit weird to the modern reader. David was notable as a war lord, who expanded the borders of Israel, putting Israel locally "on top" for a less than a century. David wasn't even a follower of "Judaism", which did not really exist until later. In the thinking of Old Testament prophets the Messiah was to save Israel as a nation. For those writing after David, the Messiah would need to be a descendent of David. Oddly Jesus wasn't such a descendent, even though his father was. The father of Jesus was (according to Matthew) God. Quite typically, the theology of Matthew winds up tripping over itself.
Like Matthew, the Gospel of John is a piece of early Christian theology, featuring Jesus going around and making claims for Himself that make sense only from the point of view of the early Christian church. The main point is that Jesus is/was a pre-existing god, but at the same time a son of God. The difficulties with this idea were not yet fully worked out in the first centuryand indeed were never worked out except at the point of a sword.
John's Jesus is not plausible on His own but makes perfect sense if you know the other side of the argument, which was (a) Jesus was born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem (b) Jesus was not of the "house of David" (c) Jesus was executed by the Romans and therefore did not save Israel from anything so (d) Jesus was not the Messiah. Because of all this, we are more than willing to stone you to death as a heretic, so get the f*k out of town. The book of Acts is the story of Paul being run out of one town after another from Jerusalem to Rome and all points in between, mostly by angry and murderous Jewish authorities.
The Gospels also go to great length to downplay the moderately successful religion founded by John The Baptist. From what we see in Acts, it's plain that the followers of John were not themselves convinced that John endorsed Jesus in a way that the New Testament portrays. Again, you can understand the "Biblical" John the Baptist best by understanding what the opposing view was.
The early Church split into (at least) two warring factions over the issue of whether Jesus was the "Messiah" just for the Jews (as the Old Testament clearly indicates) or for everyone. Should "Gentile" converts be required to follow the burdensome practices of the Mosaic code (such as circumcision)? "Conservative" Jews (especially those in Jerusalem) saw it necessary to convert to Judaism to be a Christian (even though they would still be considered heretics by orthodox Jews). Paul, being a "civilized" Roman Jew (from Tarsus, far from Judea), was willing to compromise. Eventually, his view won out by the simple fact that Israel was destroyed in 70 AD. The "liberal/Gentile" wing of Christianity prevailed by default. What we have in the New Testament (writings selected by this "pro-Gentile" school of thought) are dominated by Paul and his companions, especially Mark and Luke, who prevent a rather sanitized and tolerant view of Jesus (as opposed to the Jewish Jesus of Matthew, who claims to have come to "fulfill" the law of Moses and not to replace the law in any way).
Overlaying all of this is two millennia of further interpretation, theology and open warfare. The modern "Christian" reads the New Testament through goggles that take for granted (for example) the doctrine of the Trinity, an awkward political compromise between sects of "Christianity" that papers over the lively dispute over what Jesus was (A normal human? A separate God? An aspect of God (the "word")?). Ironically, these debates were shackled by Old Testament monotheism, which (from the point of view of the Jews) viewed all the claims of the Christians as heretical (punishable by death). Early Christians couldn't simply put up Jesus as an additional God, nor could they put Him up in place of the Old Testament God. According to the Greek way of thinking, he had to be a god of some sort. The divorce between the Jews and the Christians was not an amicable one, even to this day. Christians claim the Old Testament (parts of it anyway) but the Jews read the Old Testament in a radically different way. Millions of Jews have met their death at the hands of Christians for their stubborn but perfectly reasonable rejection of the arguments presented in Matthew. Unlike Christians, Jews have an annoying tendency to carefully read and debate their Bible.
Church leaders continued to debate (and still debate) just how Jesus and God are related. The question was supposedly settled by The Third Counsel of Constantinople in 680 AD, which condemned all dissenting opinions as heresy and is officially rejected by many large segments of Christianity to this day. Yet, most Christians consider this type of question to have been settled (in the Bible, no less!!) or irrelevant. If nothing else, this particular controversy should show that there is not now, nor ever has been a unified interpretation of the life of Christ. The seeds of disagreement are glaring in the New Testament and they have only grown with time.
(While this is not terribly relevant to my point, I should state my own view on his issue, best documented in "The Zealot". I think Jesus was a real human being who may or may not have believed himself to be the Messiah. Others around him probably did believe him to be he Messiah, enough to guarantee his unfortunate end. Along with others with similar claims, he was executed by the Romans for treason and/or the Jews for heresy. Based on a bit of logic and careful reading, we can offer a few negative guesses. He was not born in Bethlehem. His mother was not a virgin. He did not think of himself as divine, nor, of course, was he. He was not the Messiah for the simple reason that the Messiah is a mythical person, but also because he wasn't the "real" Messiah people were expecting. He did not come back from the dead, nor did anyone else of whom this claim was made at the time. He was an orthodox Jew, preaching to Jews. Evidence of his ministry to those outside of the Jewish faith is slim and unconvincing. Theologically, he probably represented a rather mildly liberal, reformist view of Judaism but certainly not a wholesale rejection of Judaism as the only true faith. I'm confident that most of this is wrong but I have no idea how any of it could be settled once and for all.)
Modern "evangelicals" cling enthusiastically to the Old Testament while shredding it into proof texts to support modern "take" on Christianity, which is at odds with "official" Christianity as taught by the Catholics. Evangelicals are remarkably ignorant of the Bible that they claim to have been somehow inspired by God. Ironically, it is the Catholic and "liberal" branches of Christianity that require their pastors to have a professional competence with Biblical criticism, even to the extent of a passing familiarity with Greek and Hebrew. Such familiarity creates a view of "Christianity" in a historical context which may or may not make sense of the idea of one true God acting in history. In any case, such training fosters a deep appreciation for the Bible that comes from actually reading it, not having read for you. Discussions among professionals are remarkable for the absence of "proof texts".
For one reason or another, modern Christians basically dump the Old Testament while still claiming it as part of their history and authority. This allows them to overlook the tangle of controversies within Judaism itself. In the time of Jesus, Judaism was itself split into warring factions (Sadducees and Pharisees). Paul himself was a Pharisee and many Pharisee doctrines (such as the resurrection) find their way into Paul's version of "Christianity". To a modern eye, the split between Pharisees and Sadducees has more to do with politics than theology, since one party or another controlled the temple and (subject to Roman approval) the money. This will be familiar to those who look for real differences between Republicans and Democrats.
All religion is based on claims of authority. Lacking any grounding in reality, such claims reach into an alternate universe, the creation of the human mind. It is not surprising that we wind up with competing and contradictory doctrines. Historically, these disagreements over what is "true" in the alternate universe have lead to centuries of warfare and destruction.
The alternative to religion is to ground belief on observable fact and experience. This still leaves us open to misinterpretation and even doctrinal disputes. But such disputes can be resolved in the theatre of actual, current, personal experience. If we believe that we all inhabit the same physical universe, it would seem that we have a better chance to stop killing each other on orders from the alternate worlds of religious authorities.
In the real world, we are faced with many who still take their orders from the invisible lords of the alternate universe. Tolerance is the only practical path to take. We should be willing to agree on what to do and put aside disputes on why we should do it.
In a cosmopolitan society, there is a broad consensus between modern Atheists, Agnostics, Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists over what constitutes a just society. People need to be free to call their personal philosophy by whatever name that seems right to them. It is by their actions we should know them.
Comments
Post a Comment