By Jim Palmer
“What epitomized the degeneration of Christianity was the convenient conversion of Emperor Constantine after his victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312. Following this event Christianity was legalized under the Edict of Milan in 313, hastening the Church’s transformation from a humble bottom-up revolution to an authoritarian top-down empire.
Christianity took its definitive form in the fourth century church councils, creeds and canons. The theological assertions and descriptions of Jesus from these councils are mind-boggling, and Jesus would have not been able to make heads or tails of them.
When asked about his relationship with the Father, Jesus insisted: “The Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). In Luke 18:19 Jesus said, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” These and other statements of Jesus were meant to put the brakes on the formation of any kind of Jesus-worshipping cult. Jesus would not have been able to make sense of the Christology produced by the early church councils and would have failed miserably in being an orthodox Christian.
Jesus had a long and tortuous path to divinity, getting more than a little boost early on from a Roman Emperor and the church councils in the fourth century. At the conclusion of the Council of Nicaea, a council summoned by Constantine hammered out who Jesus was so that Christianity might better serve as a stable glue for his sprawling empire. It’s a real stretch to get from the Bible that Jesus ever claimed to be the Second Person of the Trinity, or that he ever claimed to exclusively be God in the way Christian orthodoxy holds.
But none of this is the fault of Jesus. Christianity made Jesus into God, letting people off the hook from coming to terms with his humanity, and coming to terms with our divinity.
The whole point of Jesus was to deliver the message that we all are divine and human. Our life’s journey is expressing our transcendence in a body-mind lived human experience. The mission of Jesus was to correct the religious falsehood that humankind and God are separated, and to bear witness to the reality that humankind and God are one. When Jesus said, “I and the Father are one”, he was not speaking as a 1st Century Jew in Palestine, he was speaking as a representative of the entire human race.
One wonders what Christianity would have become had Constantine not hijacked it and political church councils had not corrupted it. You will never understand Jesus or his first followers correctly until you disentangle them from the religious and political establishment that created the Christian religion as a tool for domination and control.”
WHO IS JIM PALMER?
My official bio says:
“Jim Palmer is the Founder of the Center for Non-Religious Spirituality. In addition to being a critically acclaimed author, Jim writes for professional journals and major publications. Jim is an adjunct professor of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Comparative Religion. He is a Spiritual Director, Founder of the Nashville Humanist Association, and Chaplain with the American Humanist Association. He is a trained religious trauma and spiritual abuse counselor. Jim’s personal hobbies include ultra-endurance sports, photography, abstract art, learning new things, and lots of coffee.”
My unofficial bio is that I’m just a guy who holds a genuine wish in my heart for the liberation of all humankind. I’m not a “Christian” but I am fond of the legend of Jesus. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything except that you are worthy of love just as you are. People ask me if I believe in “God”. It depends on what “God” we are talking about. Whether you are Christian-ish or Atheist, it’s all good to me and I value your thoughts and contributions on anything I post.
oOo
Ah, the “legend of Jesus”.
Never come across that phrase before.
Can’t argue, in relation to whomever Jesus was, with the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of “legend”:
A traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but not authenticated.
Meanwhile I’m fond of, if not bemused by, the phrase “Christ event”.
thanks for sharing, Jim. very resonant thoughts. all the best in your work.
Humanity going this way and that that way… creating ‘yarns’ and ‘wonders’. YET, for thousands of years those ‘yarns’ and ‘wonders’ enlivened Western civilisation.
Funny that!
Stories have amazing power.
At this time in history, we are needing another story with the power to lift us up… enlarge our thinking. Enliven our spirits.
Bev,
Tomas Halik, Catholic Czech theologian, offers some interesting thoughts in hhis book “The afternoon of Christianity”.
John Scoble
St Lucia Spirituality group
John,
Halik points to a meeting (or series of) between Jurgen Habermas (leading humanist & critical theorist) & Benedict XVI, in which they agreed that religion and humanism aint mutually exclusive spheres (as Nietzsche had said) and avowed enemies. We are inheritors of that dialogue, since both men are now dead. The mystics pursued this never-ending search. Its in the nature of our humanity to be forever engaged in that quest.
The attendant dilemma for me is that sometimes I want to say, “Stop the search; I wanna get off.” And the question has to then be asked as to why. The answers, when I’ve asked this, keep coming back: “I want a rest.” “The search is too cerebral & leaves many behind.” “What about the simple & deranged, whom Jesus is said to have consorted with? What’s in it for the ‘lilies of the field’? etc. etc. etc.
We ‘Chris Progs’, whatever we call ourselves, have yet to answer those questions. Where & how do we reflect, now that so many of us disdain the regular practice of prayer? How do we meditate? I once belonged to a body of self-help therapists who were quite content with meeting weekly (weakly?) to chant the hilarious mantra ‘I am what I am. Ah is what Ah is. And if its OK for the universe, its ok for me’. I laughed so hard, they threw me out!
In our explorations we should be careful we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. We all need ‘form’, so long as that form doesn’t detract from substance. That’s maybe where the fundos took a wrong turn. But we can’t all be popes or the last person to leave the church would be padlocking the door. (A cautionary tale: I read somewhere that so insignificant in importance had the lovely Gothic cathedral in Brabant, Holland, become that it had been sold off & converted into a discotheque).