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David Harcourt
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Posted: 11 Dec 2008 08:44 pm |
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This is such an exciting time in Wellington, New Zealand, Southern Hemisphere, the World, the Solar System, the Universe.
Two weekends ago Ian Harris, writing in his Honest to God column in the Saturday Dominion-Post, observed that:
...Nor is there anything here to suggest that Jesus thought of himself as God. That idea seems to have emerged later. Some of his early followers found that Jesus rang bells with key figures and events in their Jewish religious heritage. Others saw exciting parallels in Greek thought and culture. And when they set down memories of Jesus some 40 to 70 years after his death, they retrojected those later perceptions back into their narratives. So the gospels interpret Jesus and convey the developing faith of the early Christian communities, rather than record what Jesus actually said and did...
This column attracted a predicably harsh response from religious conservative Graeme Davidson *, in his Religion and Ethics column last weekend. Davidson wrote, in part:
...There may well have been texts with Jesus's sayings in circulation in the 1st century. But to claim that texts no longer in existence, which some scholars think they can detect in the gospels, are historically more authentic than the earliest writings about what Jesus and his first followers said about his divinity and godly mission requires one giant leap of dubious scholarly faith. Sure, the gospels are written with this Jesus-is-God mindset. Even the two stories of the birth of Jesus are there to illustrate that God came amongst us. But gospel writers aren't the only ones with a particular religious mindset. It seems secular theologians want to reinterpret and diminish the importance of the divine nature of Jesus to fit their secular creed.
Which we can all decode easily enough: to paraphrase Dr Johnson, Ian Harris and his ilk are atheists, and that's an end on it.
Harris has promised to return to this subject "next time", which is this Saturday (tomorrow). I am looking forward to his new column, and reaction to it, with great eagerness.
* According to his website, Davidson is "an Oxford graduate in theology...an Anglican priest, theologian, columnist, journalist and foreign correspondent, psychologist, and author and has lived in the UK and US". He is currently living in Havelock North. Davidson's website is here: http://www.theologicaleditions.com/mainpage.htm
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 11 Dec 2008 10:05 pm |
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But why, I hear you cry? Who gives a toss about the fantasies of a couple of elderly white males? (Or, indeed, the fantasies this one, you might well add, were you less polite than I know you to be.)
Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's a bit more than that.
On the face of it, after all, it really ought to matter, shouldn't it:
* whether there is a "God"?
* whether there was an historical Jesus remotely like the Jesus worshipped since his death by so many of his followers?
* whether Jesus thought he was the son of said "God"?
* and whether, even if he said this, he actually believed it to be true?
Surely, these questions matter? After all, if it could be proven - a huge ask at this distance in time, but maybe there are more scrolls in caves near the Dead Sea - that Jesus never said he was divine - in fact, publicly stated the opposite - then it's difficult to see how he could remain just another religious cult figure, the fiercely-defended personal property of a slowly declining number of increasingly fanatical followers.
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 11 Dec 2008 10:07 pm |
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For this is the irony, surely: existing that Jesus was a kind of bag-carrier for "God" diminishes him at the same time as it inflates the "God" myth. And, surely, this was the precisely the agenda (conscious or otherwise) of those who came after Jesus.
He was useful, in that he added another dimension to the God story. Who, after all, could fail to believe in the existence of a "God" who had walked among us only a few years ago? A "God" who said palpably wise, intelligent and even beautiful things, in a poetic voice whose words flew straight to the heart.
This, plainly, was someone we simply have to have. All together now:
Sign him up.
Don't delay.
Make him ours.
Seize the day.
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 11 Dec 2008 10:08 pm |
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Think about it: there is a reasonable amount of evidence that:
(a) there was a Jesus, and
(b) he said at least some of the things attributed to him. (I seem to remember reading about a conference of scholars a few years ago whose consensus was that it could be shown to a reasonable standard of proof that Jesus said 19% of the things attributed to him.)
What evidence, however, do we have of the existence of "God"?
The answer is that we have no evidence. None. Unless, however, you count the (contradictory and often dismayingly strident) assertions of billions of people over three millenia.
Should this not count for something?
I don't think so, partly because no two people in this vast throng testifying over the whole course of history seem to have had exactly the same idea about what it is that they believe in. This is hardly surprising if you suspect, as I do, that what people like this are talking about is a figment of their imagination.
Many believers in "God" have nevertheless been prepared die for their belief, and to murder others in defence of it. They are still doing it now. In Iraq, yesterday, a suicide bomber murdered fifty people; many of them women and children. A week ago, a suicide bomber murdered 29 people in Pakistan. "God" has some very ruthless supporters, it would appear.
Of course, as Ian Harris implied, "God" only enters the picture at all because he/she/it was dragged into it after the death of Jesus. Jesus is - merely, simply, just, only - a man with an ethical message. That's all, or nearly all, for one needs to add that the message is so powerful that (despite the efforts of the agents of organised religion down the ages) it continues after 2000 years to reach with undiminished force into the hearts and minds of people of all faiths, and people of no faith at all, like me.
Lose the Son-of-God-in-the Sky stuff and Jesus becomes - merely, simply, just, only - the wisest and best person who ever lived.
So, you see, it's really no wonder that people get so excited about this stuff. After all, there's a great deal at stake. For a start, those working within the organised religions risk having to stop talking down to the rest of us. They risk having to look hard at themselves. They risk having to consider the extent to which their lives reflect the precepts of the person whose divinity they assert with such passion.
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