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actually

The earliest scriptures such the letters of Paul and the gospel of Mark is dated in the first century. Most of the other New Testament books are dated in the first century. Certainly there was contraversy but much of the early contraversy was between those who wanted to preserve Judahism and those who saw Christianity as a new faith. Gnosticism came later. It was primarily fom the interaction between Greek philosophy and Christianity.

There were times when gnosticism was more accepted by the eastern church than was the orthodox faith. As to excommunication,etc. happened not matter who was the prevailing doctrine. Early Christians treated doctrine as a life and death matter. We may not agree with their methods, but considering the fact that they also believed in heaven and hell, doctrine was a serious matter.

No one has ownership of Jesus Christ, if he was indeed the son of God. What he said and did is only known through those who witnessed him, and he himself. If he died and was not ressurected, then he is just another religious figure. If you take away his divinity you may have someone you can identify with, but he is no greater than anyone else in history.

HIs life as wonderful as it was, was only a precussor to his sacrificial death. His ressurection assured us that what he did was real. If you don't accept that then I think that you have missed the point. The Jesus as defined by scholars can only be an example. The Jesus of the gospel can also be a savior.

I apologize for arguing with you. You are probably much better informed as to the arguments than I am. The only persuasion that I have is my attempt to live my life as a Christian. Other arguments don't usually accomplish anything since we start with different assumptions. Assumptions can only be accepted or rejected rather than proven.

I think that the religious rights methods dishonor Christ. if you are secure in your faith then you don't have to dictate to others what to believe and how to live. On the other hand too many universities have completely shut out any viewpoint but their own, so that orthodox Christianity is never taught except by those who reject it. We no longer burn at the stake, we just refuse to allow you to teach.

Thank you for giving a thoughtful response. If I wasn't so lazy, I would learn more about it. I do believe in dialogue. It beats shouting and shooting.

posted by Make2short on June 14, 2005 at 8:11 PM | link to this | reply

make2short

my premise is this:
what we accept as religion
what was accepted as scripture
was formed in the first 150 years or so after the life of Yeshua.
these things I speak of were events leading to the formation of religious doctrine.
there was much dissension in the early Church over several issues.
one issue was whether to keep Jewish Passover or discard it in favor of Easter.
another issue was the divinity of Yeshua (Jesus Christ)
in both instances, these were Christians having direct information from the actual events in Yeshua's life and teachings.
the big question is: when and where did these teachings that we have now become "gospel"?
and, considering HOW they became gospel, through coercion of various sorts, threat of excommunicatiion, physical threats, etc., how valid are they?
the New Testament we have was canonized, or accepted, about three hundred years after Yeshua's lifetime by people with a set belief system that came from these divisive events.

posted by Xeno-x on June 13, 2005 at 11:01 AM | link to this | reply

My problem

with your conclusions is that it excludes the scriptures. After the ressurection, the friends of Jesus including his mother and his blood brother James, began speaking of Jesus with complete reverence. Although there were people who did not believe in the resurrection, they weren't his closest followers.

If you exclude the scriptures you can interpret it anyway you want. However, you are excluding the most ancient and best preserved documents of ancient history.

posted by Make2short on June 13, 2005 at 8:50 AM | link to this | reply

Hemlocker

I like your comment
I welcome more like it.
thoughtful and provoking.
keep it up

posted by Xeno-x on June 13, 2005 at 7:25 AM | link to this | reply

antichrist

painter--

I appreciated your wise comment to darrke re this subject. A few days ago I came across a post by Fr.Patrick Reardon on the Touchstone Blog. It was criticism of an essay by Dr. Peter C. Bouteneff that must have ventured a little too far to the left for Fr. Reardon's comfort and also that of James Kushiner, who had critiqued it earlier. The subject was "How Should Orthodox Christians Vote?" Fr. Reardon comments that Dr. Boutenff's "very confused and confusing essay, we regret to say, has now been posted on the web page of the Orthodox Church in America." Why is this a reason for regret? Might it stimulate a kind of discussion in which Fr. Reardon doesn't want his flock to engage? Anyway, Fr. Reardon liked a response to the essay by Dr. Jonathon Chaves, a professor of Chinese at the George Washington University, and sent Dr. Chave's "sage comment" around to "some friends. I'll recount some of it for you:

"The ideas that activate conservatives, certainly the traditionalist conservatives, are grounded ultimately in the great Christian heritage; contemporary liberalism is equally grounded in the Enlightenment and its essentially anti-Christian conception of human nature. A believing Christian today will have a very tough time accomodating to the current liberal doctrines, and will find that to do so will eventually necessitate relinquishing one Christian teaching after another."

I find it interesting that Dr. Chaves refers to "the current liberal doctrines" without defining what he believes they are, and referring to them as if they were part of a competing religion, as communism was once thought to be. I don't accept that the Enlightenment as a human phenomenon was "anti-Christian", and I don't understand why these believing Christians feel they must be conservatives. I don't believe in anti-Christs, Bush included: The only "liberal doctrine" as I perceive it is to revere and protect all life, not just zygotes and the unborn. Accept that humans are one of a myriad of species on this planet, all of which deserve our respect and protection; and humans, as the dominant species, have a god-given mandate to be responsible stewards of the earth. As such, liberals, at least traditionalist liberals, to paraphrase Dr. Chaves, cannot support those who value power and the bottom line over principle. Such liberals cannot countenance polluting our air and water, driving other species into extinction by depriving them of the habitats they need to live, and withdrawing the United States from crucial environmental treaties to which nearly every other civilized nation has subscribed, because it may be bad for business. Part of "liberal doctrine", if there is such a thing, is to care for fellow human beings, especially those who are in need. Didn't Jesus say "Whatever you do to these the least of my bretheren, you do to me."?

Liberals believe in such things as reasonable health and safety regulations to protect workers and consumers. Liberals want to see a real community of nations that works for the betterment of the planet, not just their own nations or tribes or ethnic groups I realize this is a form of heresy with conservatives, especially the neo-conservatives who not only don't want anybody not American to have any authority over Americans (deny the authority of the World Court,etc., unless of course we want to raise an issue about somebody else) but believe it is our mission to impose our beliefs about so-called "democracy" upon everyone else in the world, even if it means demolishing infrastructures and causing massive death and suffering. Of course believing conservatives will put their own spin on this, but I still don't see any Christian virtues here. I also find it amusing that many Republicans were arguing in favor of empire, even to the point that it was a Christian duty, in a time when Democrats were probably more hypocritical and corrupt than Republicans (keep in mind that I don't believe that a Democrat looks in a mirror and necessarily sees a Liberal, as Dr. Chaves might and other conservatives might want Americans to think).

When I was a student "radical" (a label proferred by others) in the 60s, one of our pet peeves was "liberals." God forbid we should ever be confused with those hypocritical assholes who held cocktail parties for James Baldwin and LeRoi Jones, and bewailed injustices against people they could not conceive of meeting socially. Heaven forbid we should be confused with ivory tower intellectuals who sat on their asses writing about the duties and necessities of humankind, while insisting on the prerogatives of traditional authority structures within the university, and defending the sanctity of "Western Civilization" as adamantly as any so-called conservative. Oh please don't let us ever make excuses for avoiding social activism based upon the potential consequences such behaviors might bring down from the ruling powers. There were those in the academic and business establishments who held so-called "liberal" views in many ways, who either said it out loud or believed in their hearts that student demonstrators killed at Kent State and slaughtered in Mexico, "got what they deserved." And like Democrat apologists and enablers today, enabled the Viet Nam warhawks to go on and on and on until 57,000 Americans and a million Vietnamese were dead, and a country was in ruins. Only people in the street by the hundreds of thousands finally stopped it.

During the past thirty years, I have known some truly honest, caring Christian people who insisted on dictates such as "As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord." I did not always agree with them when it came to God and Christ and all that, but we saw eye to eye on many things, and we were friends. They were staunch Christians who sometimes wore their faith on their sleeves more than I would have preferred, and they did not depend on some mandate that they had to be conservative or relinquish their beliefs in the Christian teachings they revered.

Oh well, that's all I can handle for now. I offer you blessings, and I apologize if they don't originate in the correct tradition. Hemlocker

posted by Hemlocker on June 12, 2005 at 1:38 PM | link to this | reply

Maybe it wasn't what they might have known

as much as being doubting Thomases. Maybe they were from Missouri! You know, the show me state. Just kidding, but the point is that if Jesus were walking among us today, how many of us who are true believers, believe that He was the Son of God walking among us. I do believe that, with all that history before us, that if we did believe that He was truly walking among us physically, that we would also believe in His divinity. Good, thought provoking post. Thanks.

posted by RAME on June 10, 2005 at 9:40 AM | link to this | reply

It only takes a generation for a new thing to be

engraved in the stone of Tradition... to create in a population the feeling that 'it has always been this way.' It only takes a child to be taught a thing, before the age of 4, that a thing is a fact, for that child to feel for the rest of its life that this thing is absolutely true and unquestionable.

posted by Ciel on June 9, 2005 at 4:20 PM | link to this | reply

arch

and they were driven out by the powers that be.
Christianity was not a consistent belief system from Yeshua and the original apostles to today.
It was molded in the image of early controlling powers that be

posted by Xeno-x on June 7, 2005 at 6:34 AM | link to this | reply

Gnostics, in my opinion,

were closest to the "spiritual truth" of Christianity.

posted by archiew on June 5, 2005 at 8:07 AM | link to this | reply

empty_handed_painter -- they knew two facts that the others refused to

accept and they are: All children ever born were/are conceived via doing the hibbidy dibbidy and the resurrection was a cover up to get the followers of Jesus off the hook for stealing his body from the tomb.