There is a sort of modern Christian parable in which someone receives a letter offering to wipe out any large debt if only the letter is brought to an obscure office in town. In the story, the person crumples up the letter as an obvious scam. This is supposed to represent the relationship between faith and salvation in Jesus: the debt remains because this person was unconvinced by the letter, and how sad too. His debt will remain unpaid.
But think how many believe that salvation is predicated on the being convinced of a particular idea, and not only that but that one's salvation is predicated on not having the wrong idea about how salvation works. How much does one have to understand about what a Messiah even is in order to believe Jesus is the Messiah and escape eternal damnation?
It is one thing for the Creator to draw his human creatures to Himself through the revelation of a certain people, through a certain rabbi among a certain religion among a small group of people in a small territory; it is another to commit to eternal damnation all that remain unconvinced of this. Why, the idea must be so convincing all on its own that everyone who doesn't come around to the truth must hate the truth (or so we tell ourselves) -- and we're convinced of this because otherwise it would mean that some cosmic injustice has been perpetrated on humanity.
Of course, this manner of thinking is often used as an excuse to deny any number of things about Jesus of Nazareth. It is more hip to believe that he was merely a compassionate rabbi who never suggested any metaphysically untoward things about himself. It is more hip to believe that he never made himself out to be anything special. It is more hip to think that he was an Hindu guru who was trying to shake the Israelis out of their provincial monotheism. It is more hip to declare him to be yet another political revolutionary. It is more hip to declare him to be merely a Marxist ahead of his time. Because nothing is more uncool than the belief that Jesus was a supernatural being from the Father God with a message that was connected to God's covenant with Abraham. In this Western culture's recommitment to secularism and to the Mammon of utopianism, nothing could be more uncool.
In spite of all these many ways to reject received wisdom about Jesus, we have so have some curious stories told in the Gospels. Contradictory sayings, if superficially so, bizarre generalizations, friendship with sinners and unholy, extreme grace at times and extreme law at others. There is such a diversity in Christendom about the relationship of God's free grace to holy living that one can pick almost any point of view about it they want. Some denominations will teach that salvation is has nothing to do with what you do and only with what beliefs you profess with conviction. Some denominations predicate one's salvation on paying the high cost of discipleship (as they envision it), effectively being as holy as the Father above. Grace is only in operation if you are perfect as your Father in Heaven; and so any number of modern day Pharisees (figuratively speaking) walk around believing they are walking uprightly, as they are assured of damnation otherwise.
Grace seems to be a critical concept to the New Covenant, but how can we generalize it? If anything can be generalized historically, from the standpoint of recorded Christian experience, is this:
Men that walked with Jesus were so convinced that he walked among them after his crucifixion, that they endured fierce perscution and even agonizing deaths themselves. There was a continuity between the ministry of John the Baptizer and Jesus of Nazareth -- one baptizing with water for repentance and one baptizing with the Holy Spirit. The written record of Jesus teachings and doings is scandalously scant and contradictory, as though his disciples were unconcerned with capturing the "words of life" for posterity. Yet they obviously believed he carried a critical message. When the Spirit baptism experience later falls on the Gentiles, the original followers of Jesus seem wholly unprepared for it, and yet they can only believe that it is the same experience they received. They can't seem to embrace the revelations of Saul of Tarsus completely nor renounce them totally as incompatible with the teachings of Jesus.Within the 2nd generation of the church, the congregation of Ephesus seems versed in both Pauline and Johannine theology. No explicit words of Jesus seem to ignite the Pauline and Johannine revelations of grace, other than "This is the blood of the new covenant," and "Love one another," respectively. There doesn't seem to be any sermon where Jesus says, "Okay, people, it's all about grace and now I'm going to teach you the fundamentals." Instead, he commends the faith of the Canaanite woman who believes that the Father's table is so overflowing with blessing that even a non-Israelite may receive. He tells us that the kingdom of heaven must be entered in the manner of a little child. He says, "Neither do I condemn you."
No one seems to have rounded up the apostles and said, "All right, boys, let's write a definitive statement of what the Teacher really said." Wouldn't that not have been useful to know? Or an affidavit from each of the apostles as to what they each personally remembered from their travels with him? They didn't produce the definitive edition of "The Teachings and Works of Jesus" and then decide what to do about the Gentiles based on their exegesis of that book. From the little that we have, it seems that Jesus told them not to worry too much about how to defend what they were doing and saying. The exposition of truth would come later by the work of the Paraclete whom their Father God would be sending in his place. And it is indeed the Spirit of Advocacy that approves the Gentiles through a vision to Simeon the Rock.
Concerning the words of Jesus, what do we make of "by their fruits you shall know them"? What, for example, do the fruits of Gandhi tell us about the man? Many of our theological interpretations condemn him in spite of many evidences of the "love of God burst about in his heart." A man that loved not his life unto death, who laid down his life for others, and who did not shut up his bowels of compassion. A man of true and undefiled religion. Yet, he does not seem to have received that gift of salvation that only comes by believing in the soteriological power of the Jewish rabbi Jesus.
What do we make of this? We have no clear indication in the scripture of what happens to children who have not "accepted Jesus as their personal savior"-- except maybe that "of such is the kingdom of heaven." If the "age of accountability" rationalization is true, then all children who die before they are accountable are infinitely blessed, since they are assured of escaping infinite torment. If it isn't true, and all souls not freely committed to Christ are lost, then one has an even more unthinkable state of affairs.
The Christian universalists hold that the early church was dominated by universalism for the first few centuries of its existence, and only later made the opposite view the orthodoxy. If people are being lost to eternal torment because of not hearing the Good News, then how can one be loving and not work tirelessly to let everyone know how to escape the hellfire? Then again, if the house of God can only be built by direct inspiration of the Spirit, then what can be built by fear-motivated and guilt-motivated representations of Jesus and his Good News?
There seems to be a diversity of opinion of what good news was preached before Jesus died. Jesus does not seem to have told even his own apostles that he was both the Messiah and the Son of God, but rather let it be revealed to one of them first. Here then, we don't see it acknowledged that he is not just Son of God but as much God as the Father himself, an idea that remains unacknowledged in both the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles of Paul, and idea that doesn't find much support outside the so-called Johannine writings of the NT. At one point Jesus sends out 70 apostles/emissaries preaching the good news about God's kingdom, and if this good news was more than simply that the kingdom is "like unto" a mustard seed or a seed-sower, then it still isn't obvious that people were hearing anything more than that the Father was present making his realm/kingdom manifest in the form of healings and forgivings and deliverances from supernatural oppressions. We have no record of Jesus telling the people more than that simply that the Spirit of God was upon him to announce "deliverance to the captives."
Even in the writings most supportive of the peculiarly divine nature of Jesus, he follows his apparently blasphemous statement that he is one with the Father with his intention that his followers be one with him and the Father, to be in the Son just as he is in the Father, so that, as Paul later says, we can be "one spirit with the Lord."
The only good news in the Sermon on the Mount (which by comparison with parallel sayings in Luke's account appear to be a structured compilation of sayings, rather than a dictated sermon) seems to be that the Father God (contrary to His seeming attitude in the history of Israel) is exceedingly forgiving and compassionate and forbearing. That the Sermon also seems to be saying that we cannot be His children without being like him has been a source of much turmoil for many, to the point that it doesn't much seem like good news but rather an unreachable moral ideal. How people walked away from that sermon (as written) with expectant faith for the "children's bread" (i.e. healing) is anyone's guess.
It would seem that in spite of Jesus' coyness, many did think he must be the Messiah based on the miracles that seemed to follow him. Many who come to him for healing call him the Son of David. Most of the apostles don't even mention this when Jesus asks them about the rumors of his identity. There are many ideas about Jesus being a reincarnation or kind of avatar of various Old Testament personages, as ancient as Elijah or as recent as John the Baptizer. Jesus has been so quiet on the subject that none besides Simon ventures on what they all must have been wondering. In the Gospel of the Beloved Disciple, Simon and Andrew and James and John all wonder whether the Baptizer's comment about Jesus means that he is the Messiah. Yet, it is hardly a revelation to Simon if that is what Jesus had been announcing all along.
Jesus says many things about himself, in somewhat indirect language as the "son of man," but the disciples are always uncertain of what it means. Surely, some direct statement about Jesus' "Messiah-hood" would have done wonders for people's faith. Instead, it seems that people's hopes for a political deliverance and a material kingdom was itself a sort of idol and impediment to faith. When Jesus tells the disciples (the Acts sequel to Luke's gospel) about what they are to do next, they are still asking about the political and material Messianic kingship of King David's heir, and he evasively tells them neither to expect it or to not expect it, but merely to keep their focus on the coming of the Holy Spirit.
In the gospel accounts attributed to Luke and John, and somewhat with Mark's account, the "good news of the kingdom" seems to be a taste of grace that will reach its culmination in the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. "Look at the forgiveness and healing overflowing from the heart of the Father: The kingdom of God is in your midst."
Having what seems like bits of Jesus' words and ministry pieced together almost as an afterthought, we torture them for the formula of eternal life: "How exactly do we obtain salvation? How exactly do we lose salvation?" The alternative seems to be a complete dismissal of what little we have in favor of reinventions of Jesus as some New Age sage or guru, who tried unsuccessfully to cure the Jewish people of their provincial and ethnocentric attachment to the judgmental Torah.
If most of the gospel accounts tell us that the female disciples discovered an already empty tomb while Matthew's gospel tell us that they saw the tomb open miraculously, what do we make of it? The idea that many of Jesus' closest followers were convinced they had talked to, eaten with, and physically handled him after his death seems to permeate the history of the early Christian church. In legal matters, important agreements between witnesses that conflict on lesser details are still taken to be significant; and there is much accord among the non-Matthean accounts.
For instance, if the accounts were so arbitrarily contrived without reference to fact, wouldn't the following be more expected:
When the disciples receive evidence of the resurrection, they immediately believe. They never abandon Jesus. They never deny him. (He isn't even betrayed by one of his own.) There is complete agreement from the very beginning about what happened. (Everyone has got their story straight.) There is a definitive statement of his passion and resurrection since everyone has got to believe in the definitive message of the definitively resurrected messiah. The gospel accounts show the heroic faith and superior piety of the apostles and make it abundantly clear why the Message of salvation was entrusted to their care.But this isn't what happened. The disciples seem too busy trying to continue his mission to define his mission. The remembrances of his life and passion emphasize the human frailty of his disciples and their collective shortcomings of faith. This has forced "modern scholarship" to conjecture political struggles between the disciples to explain it. But if the gospel accounts were not simply contrived to repaint the patently dismal end of a non-messiah into a glorious success story (if false--what use if a real resurrection to the "modern" mind), then what is the truth that can be gleaned from them? Something motivated the followers of Jesus to go from a state of defeat to being motivated to share "good news" in spite of
As mentioned earlier, the original disciples seemed unprepared for Gentile converts, in particular, a non-Judaic expression of the Spirit baptism of Jesus. Explanations and quotations from the Tanakh followed as they strove to keep up with the Holy Spirit, but they seemed unprepared for the Spirit from the Father to fall, as the prophet Joel forespoke, "on ALL flesh." They were unprepared for un-kosher flesh. They were unprepared for "sheep which are not of this fold." They were unprepared for worship to not belong to Jerusalem any more to Mount Gerizim. They were unprepared for worship in spirit and in truth. They were unprepared for laws to be written on hearts and not on tablets of stone.
Nothing in the Sermon on the Mount nor any other recorded sermon of Jesus seems to have quite prepared them for any of it.
If the righteousness of Christians surpasses that of the Pharisees, yet their love and peacemaking do not surpass that of Gandhi, what can we say about whether Gandhi was welcomed into the fellowship of Jesus the Anointed? But if all who abide in love abide in God, then how is Jesus the only way? And if most Christians do not excel particularly in love, what is the benefit of being "baptized into Christ"?
But if it is true that Jesus is the Memra (or Logos or Word) of God abiding with the Father since before the foundation of the world, then all that is revealed from the Father or from the Holy Spirit is in fact through him. If no person can approach the Father but by a revelation of his goodness, then no one in fact can approach him except through his Memra. If Jesus is in fact the express image of the God Who cannot otherwise be seen, then it was his glory that Moses saw when God told him, "You cannot behold my face, but you will be allowed to see the afterpart that follows after I make all my goodness pass through this place."
If all grace of God (whether named as such or not) is ultimately revelation of the Father's eternal Word, who was a living demonstration of Sonship grace on this earth, then there is only condemnation outside him. Yet it is far from obvious that all those acquainted with the spirit of love and compassion realize that he walked the earth. Do they need to know the facts about him to know him? Those that know him, can we recognize them by their works?
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