RE: OFF TOPIC: Apocrypha, Dead Sea Scrolls

From: Steve Adams <steve.adams_at_ixora.com.au>
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 12:29:05 +1000
Message-Id: <10736.126218@fatcity.com>

Hi Eric,

While I am sympathetic with your idealist epistemology and can understand you construing it as a social project, the implicit consequential denial of absolutes in ontology and kalology is fallacious.

No matter how the consciousness of humanity evolves in its perception of Jesus, all that changes is the degree to which that perception corresponds to reality. The truth about Jesus does not change.

That postulates about Jesus cannot be logically coercive does not vitiate the reality. Such postulates can be false absolutely, and can be tested to some degree both logically and empirically. Such postulates can also be true absolutely, and may be held with a certitude that exceeds the certainty of reason and empiricism. That extra certitude derives from the logic that attaches to the singular and personal. It is like the certitude I have that my wife loves me. The lack of rational and empirical certainty does not undermine my confidence. Similarly, a person can legitimately read the four gospels and be convinced about Jesus (and absolutely right or wrong) without regard for the perceptions of others or epistemic process.

@   Regards,
@   Steve Adams
@   http://www.ixora.com.au/
@   http://www.christianity.net.au/

-----Original Message-----

From: Eric D. Pierce [mailto:PierceED_at_csus.edu] Sent: Wednesday, 10 January 2001 6:56
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Subject: RE: OFF TOPIC: Apocrypha, Dead Sea Scrolls

Every faith tradition exists in the context of a spectrum of human conciousness ranging from "orthodox" (literalist, authoritarian, legalistic) to "mystic" (metaphoric, symbolic, anti-establishmentarian).

Within any tradition, there have been large historial battles between ideologies and political factions over the "position" that will dominate. And superstition has played a major role in the corruption of thought within most traditions, obviously including the "orthodox" forms. What is perhaps less well known by westerners is the existence of considerable corruption (and superstition) within some of the mysticism paths of the traditions.

Anyway, at this point (in history), the problem isn't "debate" *within* the traditions (which will basically continue until the end of time since neither "legaists" or "mystics" will ever "win" everything), it is the assult on the traditions from "outside" secularists/rationalists.

As you can see from looking at Habermas, the postmodern relativist attack on "meaning" (as it arises within the faith traditions) is itself based on flawed "logic", so secularism/rationalism does NOTHING but ultimately take the "seeker" back to the source of mystery, which is to say their relationship with "the Sacred" (God).

In other words, you can try to use "science" to clear out the underbrush of superstition in a faith tradition, (which is probably good, but not sufficient) but that still doesn't get at the main issue(s) - of spiritual relation.

Right now, there are a number of thinkers doing important work attempting to establish "integrative" paradigms that allow for respect of traditions, and also recognise the validity of "scholarship" (scientific research) that doesn't seek to destroy ("colonize" in Habermas' terms) the essence of the traditions that are being studied.

eg, Ken Wilber, Buddhist (? of Naropa Institute):

http://directory.google.com/Top/Science/Social_Sciences/Psychology/Psychology_of _Religion/Transpersonal
-

http://wilber.shambhala.com
-

http://www.khandro.com/kenwilber/index.html
-

http://members.ams.chello.nl/f.visser3/wilber/frameeng.html
-

http://www.khandro.com/kenwilber/visser0197.html

---

[Wilber is critical of narcisism in "New Age" thought:] excerpt:

"...As the hours go by it becomes crystal clear to me why he has always expressed in his writings so many reservations about most of the alternative and transpersonal world. As anyone familiar with his work will know, Wilber considers most, if not all, so-called New Age or New Science models of human development regressive or reductionistic, regardless of how much they present themselves as promising syntheses between science and spirituality. In his massive work Sex, Ecology, Spirituality he has openly expressed for the first time his sharp criticism of these dubious trends in contemporary 'spirituality' -- which has won him a few more enemies. In fact, at the conference the main point of many contributions was that he, as a spiritual authority, should know his responsibility and show more compassion and respect towards other views. Criticizing as he had done was considered to be unspiritual...

Sharp

When I confront him with this, he suddenly becomes sharp and very concentrated. In his opinion, the depth of the spiritual traditions is lost almost completely in the popular views of spirituality, from the Aquarian Conspiracy to the Celestine Prophecy. To point out in what way his view differs from all this, he explains these views often contain a highly dualistic worldview (contrary to their holistic pretentions). They talk of only two poles: ego and Self (Jung), ego and Ground (Washburn), ego and essence (Hameed Ali), ego and body (Lowen). (Interestingly, Wilber does the same in his first two books, Spectrum of Consciousness and No Boundary, where he writes about ego and Mind, FV.) ..."

---

http://www.naropa.edu/history.html
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http://csf.colorado.edu/sine/faculty.html
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http://www.noetic.org
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Templeton Foundation: http://www.templeton.org
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AAAS: http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/dbsr/default.htm ( text only: http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/dbsr/text.htm )

...and so forth.

My personal (Wilber influenced) opinion is that the history of the traditions can be seen in "evolutionary" terms, and that human conciousness developes in stages, and that we are just beginning to see the possibilities of looking at the "science/ religion" discussion in terms of a broader level of awareness of the importance of "transcendence" and "transformation" (love/healing) than has ever existed.

Here is some additional info:

http://www.ntgateway.com/Jesus
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http://religion.rutgers.edu/jseminar
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http://westarinstitute.org/JS/js.html
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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion
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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/tikkun.html
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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/symposium/historical.html

excerpt:

"...we should also recognize that Bornkamm's initial point comes as a result of two centuries of research prior to Bornkamm, which increasingly showed (as his statement suggested) how anachronistic were the traditional portrayals of Jesus in the popular culture of each age. Here's how Bornkamm continues that opening statement:

         Why have these attempts (to write a life of
         Jesus) failed? Perhaps only because it became
         alarmingly and terrifyingly evident how
         inevitably each author brought the spirit of
         his (we would, I think, say now "or her") age
         into his (or her) presentation of the figure
         of Jesus. In point of fact, the changing
         pictures found in innumerable lives of Jesus
         are not very encouraging, confronting us as
         they do now with the enlightened teacher of
         God, virtue, and immortality, now with the
         religious genius of the romantics, now with
         the teacher of ethics in Kant's sense, and
         now the protagonist of social theory. These
         are the different pictures that emerge,
         depending on who's writing the story.

And all these pictures, Bornkamm notices, are coming from the same set of sources: the gospels and the Christian tradition. How can all of these pictures be true? That's the basic question. That has always been the question that has plagued the discussion of the historical Jesus. And this is where we come to see the dilemma is still with us. One scholar has referred to it as the dilemma of finding

[]
[]  the [***]Jesus  of history[***]
[]
[]  over against the [***]Christ of faith[***].
[]
[]  And that's a classic definition of the problem that

persists, I think, in most scholarly discussions: the recognition that it is possible to have a faith tradition about Jesus that is different from the actual figure. And in some respects, we have to think about keeping both of those things active and operative as we look at the process.

Another writer, Henry Cadbury from Harvard, refers to it as 'the peril of modernizing Jesus'. And it has also been dealt with in a number of recent books. In fact, just a spate of new books have come out since the early nineties on various aspects of the study of the historical Jesus. One I'll mention is Jaroslav Pelikan's Jesus through the Centuries. Pelikan says that one of the best ways to get the spirit of any age is to watch how it depicts Jesus. This is true across the Christian centuries. What should you think, for example, when you see a Florentine painting of Madonna and Child, or Mary at the crucifixion scene, wearing a brocade Florentine gown, and the guards at the tomb are in the armor of the Swiss Guard? How does that tell the story? Jesus, Pelikan argues, becomes a mirror of each age, as each period reflects its concerns and its issues onto Jesus and reads from that Jesus a support for its concerns. ... "

On 9 Jan 2001, at 9:00, Boivin, Patrice J wrote:

Date sent:      	Tue, 09 Jan 2001 09:00:22 -0800
To:             	Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>

> Yesterday someone gave a clean history of how the early Church fathers
> decided what to put into the New Testament and what to leave out.
>
> Here is another version:
> ... it was in 325CE that the Council of Nicaea met to debate which of many
> books would be included in what was to become the New Testament.  There is

> no doubt that the men present at the Council brought to the task their own > prejudices and agendas, of which we are still reaping the sorry harvest.

...

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Author: Eric D. Pierce
INET: PierceED_at_csus.edu

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