🚀 go-pugleaf

--- Forwarded from mailing list.  Reply to uus-l@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu ---

Tom:

While I agree with most of your response to Robert -- and acknowledge its
higher quality in breadth vs my response, which was quite particular -- I
must take issue with some of your points.

On Mon, 20 Apr 1998, Tom Tadfor Little wrote:

> Beginning with the assumption that historical truth is to be found in
> the few bits and pieces of his story that do not bear any taint of
> redaction by the early Christians--or any taint of the miraculous, which
> modern humanism rejects as impossible, the Jesus Seminar find
> (naturally) a Jesus who inspired by his witty words, rather than by
> exuding divinity. The findings, then, validate the nonreligious
> worldview that was presupposed in the research, relegating those who see
> divinity in Jesus to delusion or, as you imply, dishonesty.

My understanding of the Jesus Seminar is that it is looking for words
reliably attributed to Jesus, and simply not concerning itself with the
miraculous. An article in the UU WORLD suggests that the outlook of the
Seminar is Unitarian in theology -- looking at Jesus as a man, not as
divine (or any more so than you or I) -- but that is certainly a religious
view of Jesus, not merely a modernist or rationalist one. Within the
tradition of the Prophets it is not necessary to attribute divinity to
Jesus to attribute the miraculous to him.

Perforce, the Seminar assumes implicitly that there was such a man histor-
ically -- one must have a speaker to attribute reliability to his quotes.
This is a leap of faith that quite a few moderns are unwilling to make.

I believe Robert's reference to dishonesty was not relative to those who
see divinity in Jesus but those who, having learnt this kind of material
and method in seminary, leave it behind and preach the Literal Word of God
once they get into their pulpits. From a postmodern perspective I have no
problem with clergy who shift theological gears between the minster's
study and the pulpit, but I have a *big* problem with those who do not let
the "flock" in on the possibility of more than the latter gear. If only
for very practical, partisan purposes, if mainstream congregations for the
last 50 years had been hearing of these different frames of reference, the
Radical Religious Right would stand out very starkly as the panicked
millenniarists they actually are, and those mainstreamers would not be
nearly so slow to smack down the RRR for presumptuously claiming to speak
for all Christendom.

> I appreciate the Jesus Seminar's work. I think they do a respectable job
> of looking at Jesus from within the context of the modernist worldview,
> which is certainly an informative and interesting exercise. But I think
> it quite misses the point if we're interested in the religious meaning
> of Jesus (and what other meaning of him has anything more than academic
> relevance?).

I fail to see how application of the best scholarly tools to sort out the
reliability of sayings attributed to Jesus, can fail to touch the religi-
ous meaning of Jesus. If the core texts and the redacted texts do not
conflict, this might be properly called an academic exercise. But where
they do conflict, a difference is created between those who find they have
been following a Christianity rooted in Christ and those following a
Christianity rooted in early Christians. The latter may properly be seen
as having entered a religious crisis. Far be it from us to deny it to
them; some of these chickens have been waiting almost 2,000 years to come
home to roost.

> The religious meaning of Jesus is to be found in Jesus as he was known
> to those who chose to make him central to their religious life, such as
> the writers of the early Christian scriptures.

"Such as" here stretches over a bit of a gulf. Out of a community number-
ing in the hundreds at least, the writers of the early Christian scrip-
tures might have fit comfortably into one transcontinental bus. It can be
seriously questioned if any of them were eyewitnesses, and at least one of
them was a know bureaucrat and spinmeister. Surely they were inspired by
the total community, but did they represent it?

> That Jesus was a cultural construction of Christianity, just as the
> Jesus Seminar's Jesus is a cultural construction of modernism. Whether
> you are Christian or not, it seems that the former is a lot more
> significant than the latter.

Certainly the former has been the more significant in the years that are
now history between Jesus' ministry and the present. Which construction is
more significant henceforth will depend on the level of honesty, as Robert
uses the word, of mainline Christian clergy.

Dave B.