Quote from: David Pinnegar on August 17, 2012, 12:34:55 AM
Dear Tony and MM
It's great to see both of you expressing both sides of the same coin, and one that is of primary importance.
I have just had the good fortune to be in an organ room with a library of musical books. Among those is an edition of Dr Charles Burney's "History of Music".
The three volumes are extraordinarily comprehensive. What is specifically of interest is his documentation of Ancient traditions including both the Egyptians and ancient Greeks. As far as the latter is concerned, he details rituals beliefs and music attached to worship of both Apollo and Bacchus, the latter deriving directly from Osiris.
Please forgive vagueness on account of cursory reading scanning vast numbers of pages but of one of these deities, musicians were known as "Sons of" in just the same way as Jesus answers "who are my mother brothers and sisters - those who hear my Father's will and do it". This perhaps gives us a clue too to Jesus' own claim to be the Son of God: it was a common currency of belief and idiom to refer to someone doing the will of (a) God as Son of God.
It is in this way and context that Jesus is Divine that does not require an especial biological or spiritual pseudo magical connexion with God. God - Spirit, the idea, the communication of idea, of will of God - Son of God, the one who obeys the will of God.
Referring to earlier belief practices therefore gives us an indication of how our specific and narrower interpretation of Jesus as Divine may have been misunderstood and lost in translation.
History is a foriegn country. In assessing our scriptural texts and doctrines, it's important to be able to try to enter that foreign place with customs, language, concepts and idioms rather different than our own, however similar they appear.
It's in this way that there are ways, if we look for them, in being able to find common ground between apparently opposing points of view whether within Christianity or beyond.
In a parallel section in the thread "A Place for Exploration" I outlined a possibly radically different interpretation of the otherworld, the afterlife leading heaven and hell. Bearing in mind the Egyptians believed the Sun to die every night and be resurrected every morning, as we do when we apparently sleep but exist in a netherworld of dreams, concepts of an afterlife could well refer to this rather than a period when we are buried in the ground or cremated.
In many ways, the body is the empty tomb of Christ. Our bodies do nothing and achieve nothing without animation, animation of the Construction Force, animation of God. In rising from the tomb, Christ asks us to lift our perspectives and to rise with him above the materialism of earthly concerns and to animate our bodies so that they are more than an unliving place. "What do the birds care for what they will wear tomorrow . . . " and Jesus follows that question with an assurance that all who do God's will will be looked after by God. That seems a little optimistic but when one starts to rationalise god in terms of the force of construction of which we read in Genesis 1 and the way in which, if we choose to make circumstances be the circumstances of God's will, the nodes in the network of like-minded decisions makers doing god's will ensure that one travels along a rope of the net rather than falling through the holes. It's in this way that Christianity is a way of life,Quoteleading to a relationship with God - not just a religion.as you say.
Best wishes
David P
Dear David,
I recently used the "Son of...." symbolism to describe the people of the Netherlands, when I called them "Sons of the soil and the sea." Their eternal struggle to keep their feet dry is an epic story in itself. The normally resourceful Romans simply dismissed the Netherlands as "the great bog of Europe."
So it is not just who and what we are, but also where we are which defines us. That applies as much spiritually as it does physically, and to be "The Son of God" (the Creator), is to be creative, benign and inclusive. It is precisely because we are potentially "Sons of...." that the church can be considered the body of Christ....creative, benign and inclusive.....following in the footsteps of Jesus and continuing forward in the spirit of creativity.
The thing which I find fascinating, is the fact that this spiritual creativity is neither defined by sect, tribe (race) nor specific belief systems. It is open to all and available to all, and requires no specific faith other than a belief that what Jesus said was "of truth." ("Truly, this was the Son of God") Perhaps of even greater significance is the statement, "No-one comes to the father but through me."
Many would claim that in saying this, Jesus was declaring himself to be God, but actually, the more interesting prospect is that the statement demolished the prerequisite belief that one had to be Jewish.
"I am the way, the truth and the life" also pulled the rug on those who would claim exclusive truth and the idea of God having a "preferred religion."
We must never under-estimate the power of these statements, which effectively questioned theocratic religion of any kind, and even questioned the authority of the Romans, and by implication, the very fabric of the symbiotic relationship which existed between the Romans and Jews. Furthermore, it seems that Jesus was regarded as just another rabble-rouser in a land full of them, and as such, he would be target for the authorities, as we know he was.
When Jesus said "Keep the old laws" and "Render unto Caesar ", he was making the distinction between "truth", politics and religion. The "truth" was in establishing the personal relationship with the creator, as Tony rightly pointed out, and quite simply, it was and is revolutionary.
Perhaps the most challenging proposition is to ask a question.
Is it possible to be a Christian humanist, agnostic or atheist....perhaps even a Christian Jew or Muslim....perhaps even a Christian witch...God forbid, even a Christian organist?
Best,
MM