Assessing the A Course in Miracles (ACIM) with the Historical Jesus liberal methodology and the "seven pillars of scholarly wisdom" employed by the Jesus Seminar

"Beware of finding a Jesus entirely congenial to you"

The Five Gospels, p. 5 

I'm a critic of the Jesus Seminar, and my comments about it may be seen in some of the articles about the historical Jesus published in this blog.

In this post, I'm not going to criticize the Jesus Seminar, but simply to apply the same liberal methodology, specifically the explicit working assumptions which the Jesus Seminar uses in assesing the 1st century Gospels, to the 20th century source known as A Course In Miracles (ACIM).

The purpose of this post is not to offend anybody, but to contribute to intellectual honesty in the study of the historical Jesus, providing examples of how wishful thinking, prejudices and methodological inconsistency is a serious problem for the searching of the truth, in this case regarding the Historical Jesus. Perhaps it will be an eye-opener to some...

In page 2 and following of the book The Five Gospels, the editors of the Jesus Seminar discuss what they consider to be the "Seven Pillars of Scholarly Wisdom", namely:

1-The distinction between the Historical Jesus, to be discoveried by historical investigation, and the Christ of faith which is part of the Christian creeds. (This distinction seems to be subtly question-begging, since it seems to assume that the Jesus of history is not the same Jesus of "faith". But how the hell do you know that in advance? After all, perhaps after you investigate carefully the evidence, you could find that the Jesus of history coincides with the so-called Jesus of faith... if it is the case or not, it is precisely what need to be investigated! However, charitably, we must to understand the Seminar' distinction as a purely methodological one, not implying any prior conclusion whatsoever.)

2-The priority of the synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), which are closer to the historical Jesus, and the Gospel of John which poses a "spiritual" Jesus. (Note the implication: The "spiritual" Jesus "later" view and hence is not historical)

3-The recognition that Mark is prior to Matthew and Luke, and that both of these sources used Mark.

4-The identification of as an early "Q" as a common source of Mathew And Luke.

5-The view of an "eschatological Jesus" (that is a Jesus who spoke about Final Judgment and God's future intervention) is fictional. Jesus was a mere teller of stories and parables, not a eschatological prophet.

6-The contrast between oral culture and print culture (like our).

7-The assumption that the Gospels are not historical until proven historical. (=The Gospels are historically guilty until proven innocent. Let's call this the "uncharitable principle" of historicity).

Assessing the A Course in Miracles (ACIM) with the "7 pillars of scholarly wisdom" of the Jesus Seminar

In this analysis, we're going to employ exactly the same scholarly "pillars" of the Jesus Seminar, but this time applied exclusively to ACIM.

Let's begin from the last pillar to the first one:

7-The assumption that the ACIM is not historical until proven historical (=the uncharitable principle of historicity).

The Jesus Seminar operates on the uncharitable assumption that the Gospels are not historical until proven historical by the criteria of authenticity. Therefore, if some tradition about Jesus don't pass such criteria, it is assumed to be non-historical = fictional = later invention put back in Jesus'lips.

But what would happen if you apply exactly the same "pillar" to ACIM? What would you get?

Exactly, what historical evidence, which pass some methodological criteria of the Seminar, does exist for the claim that 20th century psychologist Helen Schucman's "inner voice" was Jesus himself (the same person of the historical Jesus studied by the Jesus Seminar) and not other spiritual entity, interdimensional or extraterrestial being or simply (more consistent with the Jesus Seminar skeptical and atheistic naturalism)  Schucman's imagination?

There is absolutely not evidence at all that Schucman's "inner voice" was the voice of Jesus himself.

Moreover, there are exist other 20th century paranormal sources which claim to come from Jesus and which provide information incompatible with ACIM. Hence, any defense of the reliability of ACIM has to explain why the other competing and conflicting 20th century sources of Jesus are false or unreliable.

Therefore, on the consistent application of the Jesus Seminar's 7th pillar (uncharitable principle), we have to conclude that ACIM doesn't contain any factual teaching coming from Jesus and it is purely fictional.

Unless the ACIM can be proven as coming from Jesus, the uncharitable principle requires to conclude that such extremely late source is false and unreliable.

6-The contrast between oral culture and print culture (like ours).

This pillars don't seem to be very much relevant, except for the fact that the ACIM was written in a print culture. However, the source of information for such writting was (supposedly) a spiritual being which provided no evidence of its existence, or claimed identity, and who appeared as a purely subjective "inner voice", and not as an objective, historically verifiable Jesus (see pillar 2). 

 
5-The realization that an "eschatological Jesus" (that is a Jesus who spoke about the "end of the world", and the events connected with it, like the Final Judgment and other things happening on the last days) is fictional. Jesus was a mere teller of stories, aphorisms and parables, not a eschatological teacher.

A Course in Miracles contains putative Jesus' teachings about the Last Judgment. In fact, an entire section of the ACIM is entitled "The Meaning of the Last Judgment".

Consider this teaching:

The Last Judgment is one of the most threatening ideas in your thinking.  This is because you do not understand it.  Judgment is not an attribute of God.  It was brought into being only after the separation, when it became one of the many learning devices to be built into the overall plan.  Just as the separation occurred over millions of years, the Last Judgment will extend over a similarly long period, and perhaps an even longer one.  Its length can, however, be greatly shortened by miracles, the device for shortening but not abolishing time.  If a sufficient number become truly miracle-minded, this shortening process can be virtually immeasurable.  It is essential, however, that you free yourself from fear quickly, because you must emerge from the conflict if you are to bring peace to other minds.  The Last Judgment is generally thought of as a procedure undertaken by God.  Actually it will be undertaken by my brothers with my help.  It is a final healing rather than a meting out of punishment, however much you may think that punishment is deserved.  Punishment is a concept totally opposed to right-mindedness, and the aim of the Last Judgment is to restore right-mindedness to you.  The Last Judgment might be called a process of right evaluation.  It simply means that everyone will finally come to understand what is worthy and what is not. (A Course in Miracles, chapter 2, The Separation and the Atonement)

Note very carefully that the ACIM's Jesus doesn't deny the existence of the Last Judgment, it only changes its meaning. ACIM explicitly asserts the Last Judgment existence and even uses the same exact Chrsitian theology words ("Last Judgment"). The whole passage of above is a ratification that the Last Judgment exists, even if its meaning is wholly different than the one commonly thought.

By the way, in the Gospels, the phrase "Last Judgment" is, as far I know, never put in Jesus' lips!. However, ACIM put in Jesus' lips precisely such expression. (In this point, at least regarding the uses of such Christian terminology, the ACIM's Jesus seems to be more Christian theology influenced than the Gospels' Jesus).

How could a supporter of ACIM agree with the Jesus Seminar's skepticism about Jesus uttering such eschatological  teachings and expressions, and at the same time to give credibility to the ACIM's Jesus who, explicitly, uses the Christian phrase "Last Judgment"?

If according to the Jesus Seminar, the historical Jesus was absolutely non-eschatological and never thought nor taught anything explicit about the Last Judgment (whatever could such expression mean), why exactly we find the ACIM's Jesus using exactly the same theological expression and asserting its future, actual existence and even mode of operation?

If the Jesus Seminar were right that Jesus never thought anything about the Last Judgment, then why the ACIM's Jesus didn't mention that, clarifying explicitly that Christians put in his mouth such expression which he never uttered, instead of explicitly asserting, ratificating and trying to re-interpret what the expression Last Judgment means?

Again, the consistent application of the Jesus Seminar's non-eschatological Jesus as a pillar of scholarly wisdom implies that the ACIM's Jesus teachings which use eschatological expressions like the Last Judgment (even if devoid of any eschatological meaning) are fictional, false and contrary to the wisdom of scholars.

Note: The Jesus Seminar argues that Jesus was a mere teller of stories, aphorisms and parables. But if you read carefully the ACIM's Jesus, you will find that he almost never uses parables or aphorisms as particular modes of expression. On the contrary, such ACIM's Jesus enjoys providing categorical and dogmatic statements and long explanations about psychological, emotional and spiritual benefits of the new meanings and new interpretations of biblical expressions found in ACIM (biblical expressions which, according to the Jesus Seminar, Jesus never uttered!).

For any unbiased reader, it is clear that the Jesus Seminar's Jesus is a different person than the Jesus of ACIM, and that the ACIM's Jesus only have in common with the Seminar's Jesus the rejection of the Christian theology connected with Jesus (despite of ACIM's consistent use of the Christian theological expressions).

4-The identification of as an early "Q" as a common source of Mathew And Luke.

The Jesus Seminar accepts the hypothetical source "Q" as an early and reliable source of information about Jesus, and the traditions which don't belong to "Q" are seen as later, more unreliable traditions, specially if they pose more advanced theological concepts.

Now, consider this teaching in ACIM put in Jesus' lips:

The Son of God is part of the Holy Trinity, but the Trinity Itself is One. There is no confusion within Its Levels, because They are of one Mind and one Will.  This single purpose creates perfect integration and establishes the peace of God.  Yet this vision can be perceived only by the truly innocent 

Would the Jesus Seminar accept such teaching and expressions like "The Son of God" and the "Holy Trinity", as coming from the historical Jesus, if it were recorded in John's Gospel, or even in Mark, or even in Q? Obviously not.

But then why the hell a person who agree with the Jesus Seminar should accept such teaching as factual and coming from Jesus, when it comes from the extremely later, 20th century source like ACIM?

This grotesque double standard is unacceptable for any objective researcher about the life, teachings and identity of Jesus.This is a kind of slape to the face of serious researchers.

But let's that pass. From the perspective of the "pillars" mentioned by the Seminar, we have to note:

1-ACIM's Jesus teachings about the "Trinity" (and the expression "Holy Trinity") don't appear in Q. In fact, the expression "Holy Trinity" doesn't appear in any Gospel as something coming from Jesus' lips.

But ACIM puts such expression in Jesus himself.

2-If such expression doesn't appear in Q and doesn't pass any criterion of authenticity, then according to the Jesus Seminar, such teaching is fictional and false (remember pillar 7).

Therefore, in addition to the overall unreliaibility of the ACIM (due to the application of pillar 7), we have in this case additional specific reasons to reject ACIM's teaching about the Holy Trinity.

Again, the consistent application of the Jesus Seminar methodology is seriosuly damaging and destructive to the credibility of ACIM.

3-The recognition that Mark is prior to Matthew and Luke, and that both of these sources used Mark.

The topic of "priority" is very important to the Jesus Seminar. So, "Q" is seen as very early and hence reliable and John's Gospel as very later, and hence unreliable, even when all of such sources come from the 1st century.

Applying such view about "priority" and "reliaibility", what is the logical conclusion about the reliaibility of ACIM, which comes extremely late, namely in the 20th century?

From the "priority" perspective alone, is ACIM reliable?

2-The priority of the synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), which are closer to the historical Jesus, and the Gospel of John which poses a "spiritual" Jesus. (Note the implication: The "spiritual" Jesus is not historical)

Note the Jesus Seminar's subtle implication that a "spiritual" Jesus is later and therefore not historical.

With that "pillar" in mind, consider the fact that the whole of ACIM was given through a spiritual channel, namely, the mental channeling received by Helen Schucman in the form of an "inner voice"!

The reliability of ACIM depends necessarily on the falsehood of the above "scholarly pillar", since the whole of ACIM assumes Jesus' post-mortem survival and the actual existence of spiritual ways of communication from post-mortem people to earthly people (e.g. channeling). In other words, the whole ACIM's Jesus is not just extremely late (20th century), but it is also a SPIRITUAL JESUS in the strongest sense of the word.

But then, how could a supporter of ACIM to agree with the Seminar's skepticism about certain Jesus traditions (e.g. in John), based upon the pillar Nº 2, and at the same time to skip entirely such pillar when giving credibility to ACIM?

The egregious double standard becomes evident in this case too.

The Seminar largely rejects the Jesus of John's Gospel because it is too "spiritual" and later than the synoptics. On parity of reasoning, the whole ACIM should be rejected too, since it is spiritual and (extremely) late too.

If the supporter of ACIM claims to reject such pillar, then John's Gospel traditions cannot be dismissed anymore on such restriction.

Methodological consistency works both ways, but some people agree with the Seminar and ACIM not for methodological reasons, but for ideological reasons.

1-The distinction between the Historical Jesus, to be discoveried by historical investigation, and the Jesus of Helen Schucman which is part of ACIM

Since historical evidence (even the truncated one accepted by the Seminar) about Jesus exists, and since there is not evidence that ACIM came from Jesus, the Seminar's distinction seems to apply perfectly in this case.

The Jesus of history is one. Helen Schucman's Jesus is another one.

Additional inconsistencies between the Seminar's Jesus and ACIM's Jesus

Consider this teaching, put in Jesus' lips, in ACIM:

"No man cometh unto the Father but by me" does not mean that I am in any way separate or different from you except in time, and time does not really exist.  The statement is more

meaningful in terms of a vertical rather than a horizontal axis.  You stand below me and I stand below God.  In the process of "rising up," I am higher because without me the distance between God and man would be too great for you to encompass.  I bridge the distance as an elder brother to you on the one hand, and as a Son of God on the other.  My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I render complete because I share it.  This may appear to contradict the statement "I and my Father are one," but there are two parts to the statement in recognition that the Father is greater.

And consider this another passage in ACIM (found in Lesson 61, which is titled I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD):

I am the light of the world. That is my only function.  That is why I am here.

These passages (specially the sentences and expresions in blue) are astonishing, since ACIM ratifies the authenticity of traditions and expressions coming Jesus which the Jesus Seminar claims that Jesus never said and were put in his mouth by the evangelists.

Note that the ACIM' Jesus even defends the expression "I and my Father are one" (found in John 10:29-30) from the charge of contradiction, claiming that such contradiction is only apparent, and that the statement has two parts in recognition that the Father is greater!.

However, according to the Jesus Seminar (p.10): 

The words attributed to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel are the creation of the evangelist for the most part, and reflect the developed language of John’s Christian community.

In this interview, liberal scholar Marcus Borg comments:

The first is that Lewis’ statement depends upon accepting John’s gospel as a historically factual account of how Jesus spoke: “I am the light of the world,” “Whoever has seen me has seen God,” “I and the Father are one.” Most mainstream scholars today would say that Jesus never made those claims for himself, that they are the post-Easter testimony or witness of the early church, and when one no longer thinks of Jesus making those claims for himself, then Lewis’ argument evaporates.

Now, if "mainstream scholars" say that Jesus NEVER made those claims, then why the hell the ACIM's Jesus ratifies precisely such claims, expand their meaning and even defends them from the charge of contradiction?

If Borg were right, is not the ACIM evaporated together with Lewis' argument?

If tradition A is found in John, and such tradition is false, then if ACIM repeats the same tradition, it follows that ACIM is providing a false information.

This is what methodological consistency demands. You cannot applaud the Seminar when it is denying the historicity of the Christological expressions of Jesus, but then agree when the ACIM's Jesus when it repeats exactly (and with the same words) the same expressions.

This is simply unworthy of serious people.

 Conclusions

 Obviously, the Jesus of the Seminar is NOT the same Jesus of ACIM. There are serious inconsistencies between what "mainstream scholars" claim that Jesus said and much of what ACIM puts in Jesus' lips.

The reason why some people sympathetic to ACIM (and other sources about the historical Jesus) are sympathetic to the Jesus Seminar is because they find in such liberal portraits a view of Jesus that they find palatable (i.e. a non-Christian view of Jesus). Moreover, since such views are defended by some "scholars", they appear to them to be serious and reliable conclusions about Jesus.

But when you examine carefully the methodology being employed, you will discover the reality behind such "conclusions".

Supporters of ACIM who agree with the Jesus Seminar don't do it for consistent methodological reasons. Methodological consistency has nothing to do with it.

As shown in this post, methodological consistency with the Jesus Seminar's "pillars" would be extremely destructive to ACIM, so they're forced to appeal to a DOUBLE STANDARD according to which the ACIM is saved from the extremely skeptical methodology of the Seminar.

Some of the "conclusions" of the Jesus Seminar are straightforwardly incompatible with some of the contents in ACIM, since the former denies the historicity of Jesus' words which the ACIM ratifies as authentic and even expand their meanings.

The reason behind such egregious inconsistency is psychological, ideological (and, if Jesus' teachings as recorded in the Gospels were theologically true, spiritual too).

Psychological, because in a deeper level, these people don't want a Jesus like the one portrayed in the Gospels. Such view of Jesus produces strong feelings of fear and guilty (specially, according to my personal observation, such feelings become intense regarding Jesus' references to the "hell" and rejection from God's kingdom), that they find repulsive and hence false (=emotional criterion of truth).

Ideological, because the psychological point above tends to cause a rationalization (in the intellectual level) in which anti-Christian versions of Jesus are seen more sympathetically, specially if they come from "scholars". This causes the double standards, which are necessary for such self-deluding rationalizations.

In future posts, I'll discuss specific cases of the Jesus Seminar's uses of the criteria of authenticity, its rejection of specific traditions, more inconsistences between the Jesus Seminar and ACIM and how the information of ACIM stands on the consistent application of such criteria.

On God's infinite love... and infinite justice? New Age Spirituality's wishful thinking-based concept of God and self-deception about the historical Jesus

 God is widely assumed by everyone to be a perfect being. He is supposed to be the greatest conceivable being, with maximal properties (like maximal knowledge, maximal goodness, etc.).

Reading the works of New Age revisionisms of Jesus, I've found a curious emphasis on God's infinite love over other divine attributes (including over infinite justice), and this is used as an argument for the claim that God's punishment doesn't exist. 

You have to keep in mind the full context in which New Age revisionism works: They are appealing mostly to people who have been religiously injured during childhood, specially people who have suffered intense feelings of guilty and fear related to traditional Christian concepts like the hell, the final judgment and so forth. I've observed very carefully this again and again in many cases in USA, and I infer the same phenomenon applies to other countries.

This emotional injury and wound tend to predispose the injured believer to be strongly sympathetic to alternative sources of information about Jesus (radical liberal views, new age views, mystical sources about Jesus, etc.) which tell precisely what the believer wants and needs to hear, namely, that doctrines like the hell, sin, final judgment are false, that they are pure inventions of the Church in order to gain control of believers, that they are not doctrines rooted in the Historical Jesus himself.

Critique of the New Age view about God's punishment

Regardless of whether God punishes or not (I don't know), what it is true is that God's infinite love doesn't exclude God's punishment, since the latter is a function of JUSTICE, not of love.

When a criminal commits a crime, he is punished by society. This has nothing to do with "love", it is a pure function of justice. It would be extraordinarily unjust that the crimes of people like Hitler or Bin Laden were ignored by society... or by God.

If God is a perfect being, we would expect not just infinite love, but infinite justice too. A perfect being cannot be morally indifferent. Morality implies condemming evil acts and actions, and praising good deeds, people and actions.

The New Age revisionisms tend to create an unbalance between God's love and justice, in which only love counts. But why exactly God's love destroys God's justice? In a moral world of free agents, in which objective moral values exist, some kind of moral accountability for our actions would seem to be appropiate. Otherwise, morality would be just an illusion without any spiritual effects, and moral indifference would be a kind of divine virtue, which is absurd.

No rational and sane person would be morally indifferent to rapists of babies, child pornography or serial killers. Morally, they're bad persons and we want some kind of (moral) reprobation and legal measures against them. We want them to be in jail and to be morally castigated by society. We agree that some of their civil rights (e.g. freedom) be removed from them.

Likewise, no rational person would be morally indifferent to good people who do good actions. We admire and support such people, they are "good". We want the best for them, and even support their cause.

The point is that, besides cases of mentally ill or criminal people, most people are sensible to what is good and evil. Wer're NOT morally indifferent. And such moral awareness is translated into specific actions regarding the moral or immoral deed or person in question.

Now, if God exists and is a perfect being, why exactly such God should be morally indifferent? Why Hitler's evil deeds would be indifferent for God? Why is God's moral indifference an attribute of a perfect being like God? Why does God's infinite love imply moral indifference?

In some works of New Age revisionisms about Jesus, you can see a Jesus who portrays a God who is pure, infinite love, but God's infinite JUSTICE doesn't appear anywhere and is almost never addressed or mentioned. Apparently, love overrides justice (as whether they were incompatible divine attributes).

But a God who is not just, who is indifferent to cosmic justice regarding evils, is not a perfect being. He's morally indifferent.

The obsession of some New age believers with God's love, which bypasses his infinite justice, actually destroys the moral perfection of God.

The scholarly evidence for Jesus in the earliest sources contradict New Age revisionisms about Jesus and God's moral indifference

Believers in New age revisionisms about Jesus (who in general are people strongly prejudiced against Christianity and hence eager to believe that Christianity is false) either wholly ignore the scholarly evidence about the historical Jesus, or selectively choose only the passages which apparently support their view of Jesus and God.

They mention, for example, the evidence in Q (the earliest document about Jesus's sayings). But as I commented in this post, Q itself portraits a Jesus who is strongly judgmental, morally severe and discriminatory (in the sense of punishing moral evils and discriminating and excluding evildoers) and who perceives himself as someone with exclusive the authority of making moral reprobations of others and conditioning their ultimate spiritual fate to their personal response to himself.

This Q saying (Mattew 7:21-23 and Luke 13:24-27) is telling:

 In Mattew 7:21-23:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ ²³ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!

Luke 13:24-27:  

 
Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. ²⁵ Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’ “But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’ ²⁶ “Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ ²⁷ “But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!

The whole point of this Q saying is the strong moral reprobation, spiritual discrimination and severe judgment of certain kind of people. The whole point is that certain people will be saved and others (the "evildoers", note the reference to "evil" and hence to the moral aspect of the saying) won't. For the latter, the door is closed.

Note that "closing the doors" of salvation in God's kingdom is a punishment infinitely more important and severe than any imaginable earthly punishment (e.g. jail), because in the case of Jesus it is our whole spiritual fate which is at issue. If Jesus is right and we choose the wrong ways (=wider doors, instead of the narrow one), we won't enter God's kingdom, which is equivalent to the ultimate spiritual destruction.

Any earthly punishment, even the severest ones, pale in comparison with the spiritual punishment implied in Jesus' warnings. Clearly, Jesus' God is NOT morally indifferent: the evildoers won't enter God's kingdom.

This kind of Q saying causes strong cognitive dissonance to people who believe that Q provides a Jesus similar to the New Age versions. It doesn't.

Assuming for the argument's sake that the Jesus' teaching in Q is true, the New Age sources about Jesus provide a very dangerous, deceptive and misleading portrait of Jesus, which will tend to confuse a bunch of people of good will, pushing them into spiritual destruction.

You can find unpalatable this kind of Jesus' sayings (which, being in the early source Q, it is likely to be authentic according to modern standards of authenticity). What you cannot do is to misrepresent the evidence, and to claim that the Jesus in Q is similar to the "soft", "God doesn't punish", "Punishment is an human invention and God is beyond that", "be happy, buddy", "everything is an illusion", "consciousness is everything" New Age versions of Jesus. This is false and dangerously misleading.

Certainly, the best scholarly evidence and most reliable, early sources about the Historical Jesus clearly show that Jesus wasn't morally indifferent regarding to the fate of evildoers. And it doesn't refute God's infinite love... only testifies about God's infinite justice.

Feels good spirituality: More on the spiritual dangers, clever deceptions and misrepresentations by New Age Spiritualities about the historical Jesus

The working hypothesis that I've been developing in previous posts is that, due to the emotional wounds suffered by some people (specially American people) connected with feelings of fear and guilt related to the Christian doctrines of hell, sin, final judgment, salvation, religious exclusivism and so forth, people develop a kind of spiritual and emotional predisposition in favor of spiritual doctrines which tell them what they want to hear regarding such Christian doctrines. So, they became strongly predisposed against classical Christianity. (Major or minor qualifications are needed in each case, but they overall schema seems to be pretty much as postulated by this hypothesis).

When the above predisposition is in place, then the individual in question will tend to be sympathetic to alternative Christianities or alternative views of the historical Jesus: The Urantia Book, A Course in Miracles, Conversations with God, the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus, the Seth Material, and the "scholarly" expression of this predisposition, the Jesus Seminar, will be seen with much sympathy by anti-Christians.

The "Feels Good" factor appears, as a emotional compensatory need, which is exploited by these alternative spiritualities about Jesus and by religiousm pluralism in general. An egregious example of this is a letter which William Lane Craig recently received from a reader of his website. The reader asks: "First, from a philosophical perspective I know that the multiplicity of religious belief systems does not necessarily negate the truth of one or indeed provide for any logical inference to the non-existence of God. However I do find it at times rather unnerving when I see and experience the way followers of other faiths like Buddhism, Hinduism and even Islam seem to achieve the same sense of peace and authenticity I have come to associate with my own experience of Christianity in my own life and the lives of people I meet. It does tend to make me think that we might conclude, if not that God does/does not exist, that the christian path might not be the exclusive route to a real knowledge of God. The niggling thought does occur to me that perhaps one religion is just as good as another as far as God is concerned. Wouldn't it be the case that if God intended for Christianity to be true that other faiths would fail where ours succeeds? My observations tend to indicate that this isn't the case."

Note that the reader's question is based on the feeling or sense of "peace and authenticity" which he has seen in other religious' believers and in his own commitment with Christianity. The problem here is that the "sense of peace and authenticity" is used by the questioner, implicitly, as CRITERIA for determining what is true or false. (If it were the case, then atheism would be true too, because at least some atheists find comfort in the idea that God doesn't exist. I've received many e-mails from atheists telling me that they find emotional comfort and relieving in atheism and discomfort with the idea of God).

The questioner's commitment to Christianity is not rational, but emotional.  Hence, if the same emotions are produced by other religions, the questioner will tend to doubt the exclusivistic claims of his own Christian religion and tend to believe that other religions (at least the ones which produce the same positive emotions) are also true.

Such an emotional subjectivism, as a criterion of truth, is extremely dangerous, irrational and misleading, and such emotional aspect is astutely exploited by New Age sources about Jesus. As Craig correctly replies to the above questioner:  "With respect to your first question, it seems to me that it is based upon the faulty assumption that the purpose of religious belief is the psychological benefits that it confers on the believer. Let’s assume that you’re correct that many religions besides Christianity are effective in bringing “a sense of peace and authenticity” into the lives of their adherents. That would be troubling only if the purpose of Christianity were to bring a sense of peace and authenticity uniquely into the lives of Christian believers. But while many evangelists encourage people to believe in Christ because of the peace and joy and love that Christian faith brings, it seems to me that the purpose of Christianity is not to bring such psychological benefits, though they are a nice side benefit. The purpose of Christianity is not to help people feel good. The purpose of Christianity is to bring people salvation, forgiveness of sins, and eternal life. And I would argue that no other religion is as effective as Christianity in bringing those benefits to mankind. In that respect Christianity does succeed where other religions fail."

Even though I doubt that Craig has ever read my blog, it is surprising that he's using exactly my same phrase "feels good" as part of his reply. (I chose that phrase because I think it grasps the essential and major motivation of the believers in the New Age sources that I've studied about the historical Jesus).

If Christianity is true or false is besides the point here. Even if it is false, it is still true that you cannot determine what is true or false about spiritual maters only on the grounds of what make you "feel good", and how such nice feelings determine or influence what you're going to believe. Your whole spiritual fate could depend on such crucial mistake.

In this post, I'll summarize some of my findings about the New Age views about the historical Jesus:

1-As a rule, they come from the United States of America and are distintively an American phenomenon.

2-As a rule, they provide a largely non-Jewish Jesus. 

This second aspect is key, because contemporary Jesus scholars fully know that the historical Jesus was largely a hard-core first-century Jew. He quoted authoritatively the Old Testament, taught about sins and their forgivness (and was himself baptized by Jonh the Baptist), talked about salvation, about respecting and accepting God's will, about the spiritual dangers of disobeying God's will, final day's judgement, etc. A continuity between Jesus and the Old Testament clearly exists.

But the New Age source conveys the impression of a contemporary  (American?) kind of Jesus, who wholly or largely non-Jewish (i.e. the Jewish background of Jesus is almost never mentioned in these sources, or play no major effect in Jesus' New Age "teachings"). This is a kind of Jesus which fits perfectly in our contemporary, highly secularized, religious pluralist kind of society (specially the American society), in which astute atheistic intellectuals have undermined religion so strongly in the public space that it has become politically incorrect to have pretensions of exclusivity regarding religious matters. (These atheists have realized that it is unlikely to destroy religion as such; so they have designed another clever strategy: Put all religions in the same level of importance, that is, religious pluralism, in order to get that the exclusivistic pretentions of any of them are kept in check by society in general and even by the religious believers themselves. This is a very astute way to destroy religion in the name of religion, a kind of "all religions are correct, but not one of them is the truth", which clearly is incompatible with the exclusivistic claims of major religions).

It is precisely this kind of non-Jewish Jesus (and not the real, historically factual, hard-core first-century Jew called Jesus) which American anti-Christians with emotional wounds want to accept and are sympathetic to hear.

I consider that such New Age view about the historical Jesus is not only unscientific, anti-intellectual and unserious, but almost delusional.

3-When the Jewish concepts (like sin, for example) are mentioned, they are reinterpreted (in a non-Jewish way), or even entirely suppressed. Some of these sources, as A Course in Miracles or the Aquarian Gospels of Jesus, do use the Christian language, but strongly modified or reinterpreted in order to make palatable to the anti-Christian the concepts associated with traditional Christianity. This is what the anti-Christian wants to hear.

4-From a scholarly point of view, all of these sources are 20th century sources about a first-century man called Jesus. Therefore, they are much more later and hence prima facie less reliable sources than the first-century sources like the Gospels and Paul. No historian would take seriously a 20th century source over an early, much more reliable first-century source. It would be a mad and completely irrational historical methodology to have more confidence in much (centuries) later sources about an ancient person, than in the most early sources about him.

This fact is telling that what is happening is New Age views about the historical Jesus is motivated, not by rational factors, but by emotional ones. The emotional wounds, anti-Christian animosity and the wishful thinking connected to them, is the major factor motivating the acceptation or sympathies for these 20th Century New Age sources of the historical Jesus.

5-The New Age source pretends to skip the above scholarly objection claiming that the information comes from Jesus (or God) himself, hence its reliability. 

The problem with this reply is that no objective and sound evidence exists for such a claim. At most, the New Age source has CLAIMED to be Jesus, but not objective evidence has been provided to support such a claim.

Compare with Paul. Paul had an early experience with the risen Jesus, but more importantly (from a scholarly perspective) he had direct contact with the disciples (who knew Jesus personally and directly) and checked with them if the Gospels that he was preaching was accurate. As a product of this cross-checking, the early Christian tradition handed down by Paul includes, as the "first importance,  this teaching in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5:

For I passed on to you as of the first importance what I also received-- that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

Note that the early Christian teaching that Paul received (from the disciples or the early Christians) included:

-That Christ died for our sins

-That he was buried

-That he was raised from the death

-Jesus' post-mortem apparitions.

Now, from a scholarly perspective, what is more reliable? The information received by Paul in the few years after Jesus' death and which comes from Jesus' own disciples (whom Jesus chose himself), or to the 20th century New Age sources about Jesus coming from people who have never met Jesus and who were atheists and agnostics (and hence, prima facie hostile to Christianity) in the moment in which they received the "revelation"?

I think no rational person, without an axe to grind against Christianity, would prefer a 20th century source over the first century source about the historical Jesus.

The major motivation for preferring the extremely later, 20th century source over the extremely early, first century source is that the information provided by the latter is unpalatable to the anti-Christian. He doesn't want to hear about sins (let alone Christ dying for ours sins). He doesn't want to hear about divine judgments. He doesn't want to hear God's exclusive revelation in Jesus and only Jesus. He doesn't want to hear about hell.

On the contrary, he wants to hear about "emotional healings" (obviously, because he has been wound emotionally by the Christian teachings), he wants to hear about "forgivness" (not by God, but by ourselves... because New Age sources tend to be strongly self-centered around the believer's ego and personal powers, making him a kind of mini-god), he wants to hear about God's pure inconditional love (bypassing God's perfect JUSTICE, which is compatible with infinite love, but not with infinite irresponsability or indifference regarding evil deeds), about the view that human beings are "good", and no sin exists (bypassing the evils done by human beings, including evils in the name of God, which is something which a perfectly just God, if exists, cannot leave without any spiritual consequence... otherwise, Hitler, Bin Laden and the Mother Theresa would be ultimately on a par spiritually, Hitler and Bin Laden enjoying the "heaven" and not being spiritually accountable for their evils, which is clearly absurd, monumentally unjust and morally unacceptable).

The New Age sources about Jesus are, in my opinion, extremely dangerous spiritually. They're doing a great deal of spiritual evil, which tends to pass unnotice because the believer in question "feels good" subjectively, so he thinks he's in the right path.

An astute way to direct people towards the "wider" doors of destruction and away from the "narrow, small" door of salvation that Jesus warned us about (Matt 7:21-23/ Luke 13:24-27).

Obviously, the above argument implies that Jesus is telling the truth about the ways of salvation, and in turn it depends on who Jesus actually was, which in turn depends on the historicity of the resurrection. If the latter event is historical, then it is likely that his teachings are true.

Only In America: "Feels Good Spirituality", The American version of Jesus, and New Age Revisionisms of the Historical Jesus: A distinctive American Phenomenon

In previous post, I argued how well-known historical Jesus scholars (Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan) misrepresent the evidence for the traditional Christian meaning of Jesus' death, in order to create confusion about its actual importance in early Christianity and undermine the historical reliaibility of such traditional meaning (which is what anti-Christians readers of such scholars want to hear).

My interest in this post is not about "scholarly" misrepresentations of the Historical Jesus, but about misrepresentations coming from non-scholarly sources, namely, the so-called New Age sources, books and literature. I'll provide evidence for the contention that such New Age revisionism is primarily (but non-exclusively) an American phenomenon, that is, a phenomenon distinctive of United States of America.

In a series of previous posts, I've discussed and stressed the point that, as a rule, the most influential kinds of New Age revisionisms of the historical Jesus come from United States of America. I've suggested, as a working hypothesis, that it is not mere coincidence or accident, but the consequence of the particular cultural and social circunstances of USA, which provide breeding grounds for such phenomenon.

Specially: 

1)The dominance of Evangelical Christianity there, which is often taught in its worst, most anti-intellectual, dogmatic way which is at variance with the rationalism inherent to the philosophical theology of classical Christianity (e.g. as seen in Thomas Aquinas) and with the rational, philosophically rigurous way in which contemporary Christian scholars like Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, Richard Swinburne, David Oderberg, Edward Feser and many others defend the Christian worldview. (Some of these scholars, as I've shown in my blog, constantly debate "scientific" atheists and other supposed champions of rationality, and kick their butt often using rational arguments alone. This tells us a lot on which side is rationality being dominant and is a clear contrast with the Christian anti-intellectualism that most Americans are familiar with).

2)The emotional wounds (mainly, but not exclusively, suffered during childhood) caused by the teaching of Christianity, specially strong feelings of guilt and fear connected with the doctrines of hell, divine punishment, divine justice, sins and so forth. In my opinion, this is the MOST important factor.

3)The main consequence of point 2 is emotional need for having a spirituality which is disconnected from negative feelings related to Christianity. This creates a predisposition to be sympathetic to spiritual journeys which promise (what I call) the "Feels Good" spirituality, namely, a set of spiritual doctrines and practiques which produce EMOTIONALpositive effects in the individual, mainly telling him what he wants (and needs, due to his previous emotional wounds) to hear.

As the main Christian doctrines which are associated with such negative feelings are the doctrine of sin, the doctrine of hell, the doctrine of divine punishment and (sometimes) the doctrine of salvation, the individuals mentioned in point 3 tend to accept spiritual journeys which tell them, precicely, that such things don't exist, or that if they exist, they have a wholly different meaning which produces positive feelings, not negative ones like fear or guilty. In fact, such spiritual journeys tend to STRESS precisely such positive feelings.

This is what I (Jime Sayaka) have observed closely so far in a careful analysis of many cases, and I haven't found any exceptions to the above schema (it is possible that some exceptions could exist, however. But I haven't found it yet).

I've suggested in previous posts that such emotionalism and wishful thinking, as a criterion of worldview choosing, is extremely dangerous from a spiritual point of view. Not only because what is true is not settled by emotions, but because the "truth", often, is unpalatable. "Truth hurts" as sometimes it is said. Therefore, the fact that certain doctrines (like religious exclusivism or the hell) be unpalatable or disgusting or extremely disturbing, does nothing to prove that they're false or unlikely. We have to examine the evidence for and against them very carefully and adapt our worldview to such evidence (avoiding to stretch the evidence to support our prejudices, like using selectively some cases of NDEs to settle complex theological and spiritual questions, e.g.  about the hell, reincarnation or the nature or attributes of God).

The schema that I described above becomes painfully evident in the New Age revisionism of Jesus (i.e. New Age information about the historical Jesus). Just search, for yourself, who are the people behind the following influential New Age sources about Jesus (specially, the nationality of the people who founded these movements or were "inspired" to produce these works or claimed to have "received" such information from superior beings):

-Conversations with God

-A Course in Miracles

-The Urantia Book

-The Seth Material

-The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ

-Elizabeth Claire Prophet (Church Universal and Triumphant)

-Mormonism

-Christian Science

There are many other New Age sources about Jesus, but I've mentioned just the most influential ones.

What do they have in common?:

1)They were originated in the United States and were founded by American people. And their main influence seems to be still in USA (although certainly other countries have received such influence too).

Neal Donald Walsh, Mary Baker Eddy, Joseph Smith, Elizabeth Claire, Helen Schucman, the discoverer of the Urantia material, etc. are all AMERICANS, that is, they were born in the United States and "received" the information in the United States. Check for yourself carefully their biographies.

2)They claim a PARANORMAL origin (channeling, automatic writing, dreams, alien contacts,communications from superior spiritual beings or "elder brothers", "ascended masters", etc.) in order to give credibility to its source and authority to its teachings. Note that I said "claim", because in many cases there is absolutely no evidence for such a claim being true. But for the argument's sake, let's assume that that they were sincere in such claim.

-Neal Donald Walsch (automatic writing)

-Mary Baker Eddy (hearing voices and channeling)

-Helen Schucman (channeling and hearing voices)

-Elizabeth Claire (received information from "Ascended Masters")

-Joseph Smith (received the visit of an angel, and even of God and Jesus themselves).

-Urantia Book (information provided by celestial and spiritually advanced alien beings)

Just check for yourself the biography of them to confirm this.

3)They're radical or moderate revisionisms of Christianity, specially of the historical Jesus. In particular, they say what anti-Christians in their respective times want to hear regarding concepts like "sin", "the hell", "salvation", "God" and so forth, even though such teachings often contradict or are at variance with each other. (In the case of Mormonism, which is from the 19th century, it seems to be much more "Christian" like the others, but it defends a polytheism which is incompatible with Christianity and postulate that God, or the gods, are physical beings of flesh and bones, which is philosophically and theologically untenable).

4)They were founded by atheists, agnostics or people dissapointed with traditional Christianity in the moment in which they received the supposed "revelation".

So far, my argument is purely diagnostic and descriptive, and it says nothing about if such sources are credible or not.

But my opinion is that they are not credible, for several reasons:

1-There is not objective, solid evidence for the paranormal origin of such sources

2-There is not evidence that, even if such sources come from paranormal origin, they are TRUE regarding the historical Jesus.

3-There are evidence that they're likely to be false, since they often contradict the first century information about Jesus which comes from people like Paul who met the disciples (i.e. the people directly connected with Jesus, before and after his death and hence are first-hand witnesses), or the Gospels which are also from the first century.

Obviously, it would be an irrational, stupid and pseudoscientific historical methodology to give more credibility to an extremely later 20th century putative source about Jesus than to first century sources about him. These earlier sources are, historically, extremely more reliable than sources coming 19 centuries later from a bunch of atheists and anti-Christians. This "dating" question is the main reason why no major historical Jesus scholar accepts these sources as historically reliable sources about Jesus.

4-They contradict each other in crucial and basic aspect of spirituality (so, their mistakes and inconsistencies cannot be considered mere secondary discrepancies about irrelevant details). They contradict each other regarding doctrinal aspects which are essential for a sound spirituality and understanding of the spiritual world.

 As I mentioned here, Conversations with God contradicts the Urantia Book regarding reincarnation.

A Course in Miracles tells us this about reincarnation:

In the ultimate sense, reincarnation is impossible. There is no past or future, and the idea of birth into a body has no meaning either once or many times. Reincarnation cannot, then, be true in any real sense. Our only question should be, "Is the concept helpful?" And that depends, of course, on what it is used for. If it is used to strengthen the recognition of the eternal nature of life, it is helpful indeed... For our purposes, it would not be helpful to take any definite stand on reincarnation. A teacher of God should be as helpful to those who believe in it as to those who do not. (A Course in Miracles, Manuel For Teachers, Section 24)

I let to the readers to make sense of the above statements (which seem to give more importance to what is helpful in a belief than to what is true). But it seems clear that reincarnation is, when considered literally, impossible (and hence, not true "in any real sense", whatever it means) because it is meaningless.

On the contrary, The Seth Material and the Aquarian Gospel affirm reincarnation.

On this ground alone, it is clear that not all of these sources (regardless of whether they're of paranormal origin or not) can be true, because they are inconsistent with each other.

TELLING WHAT ANTI-CHRISTIANS WITH EMOTIONAL WOUNDS WANT TO HEAR

In a Course of Miracles, you can read:

Judgment is not an attribute of God... The Last Judgment is generally thought of as a procedure undertaken by God. Actually it will be undertaken by my brothers with my help. It is a final healing rather than a meting out of punishment, however much you may think that punishment is deserved. Punishment is a concept totally opposed to right-mindedness, and the aim of the Last Judgment is to restore right-mindedness to you. (A Course in Miracles, chapter 2, The Separation and the Atonement)

In Conversations with God, book 2, you can read this information coming from God himself:

In that realm there is naught but peace and joy and love... An outer world of judgment and condemnation. Others have judged you, and from their judgments you have judged yourself. Now you want God to judge you, and I will not do it. (p. 53)

According to Christian Science:

No final judgment awaits mortals, for the judgment-day of wisdom comes hourly and continually, even the judgment by which mortal man is divested of all material error. (Science and Health, 291:28-31)

Note carefully that Christian Science seems to contradict A Course in Miracles, which accept a kind of final judgment, but reinterprets it in a way which produces positive, nice emotions which compensate the emotional wounds of anti-Christians (e.g. "It is a final healing rather than... a punishment"). The Chirstian Science (and Conversations with God), more radically, simply denies the concept of final judgment altogether. (The Christian Science makes the final judgment unnecesary, because a day-to-day judgment is already in process hourly and continously, so not "final healing" is needed at all).

Note that a key aspect of the emotional wounds suffered by anti-Christians (namely, the feeling of guilt and fear of punishment) is here reinterpreted or suppressed. The three sources mentioned agree that God is not the author of the judgment. And since there is not punishment, there is not reason to having fear. This is exactly what the anti-Christian fearful of divine punishment want to hear, specially if such information comes (supposedly) from Jesus or any other "higher" source.

These New Age views contradicts the Old Testament's view about divine justice, sin and judgment (an Old Testament that Jesus, as a Jew, largely and strongly accepted, respected, often quoted authoritatively and not refuted, except when he changed or qualified a some few laws of it, a fact which in passing shows that Jesus put himself on the level of God's authority), and Jesus' own view about judgments of bad or wicked people who disobey God's will.

For example, in a Q saying in Matt 7:21-23/ Luke 13:24-27 (which being in Q is early, and hence likely to be historical), Jesus said:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ ²³ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!

(Compare with Luke 13:24-27: Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. ²⁵ Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’ “But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’ ²⁶ “Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ ²⁷ “But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’)

Does such strong, rigurous, morally severe, religious exclusivistic and judgmental Jesus in "Q" fit well with the "cool guy", "don't worry, be happy", "just keep positive thinkings, buddy", "forgivness is everything" view of Jesus of a Course of Miracles, Conversations with God, Christian Science and other New Age revisionistic views about Jesus? Any unbiased person would clearly see the obvious difference between the Jesus in "Q" and the New Age Jesus regarding the topic of judgment. (Note that not entering God's Kingdom, as Jesus warns, can be considered a punishment... in fact, this is the worst of the all conceivable spiritual punishments, namely, permanent separation from God, which is what Christian theology understands properly as the "hell", a spiritual state of being separated from God, and not the caricature created by atheists, anti-Christians and Christian anti-intellectuals as a "place" in which God sends people to be suffering while "burning on fire", which makes no sense regarding spiritual beings which are not physical and hence cannot be burned. The Jewish imagery of "fire" and "burning" is used metaphorically in several senses in the Old and New Testament, a point of biblical exegesis to be discussed in future posts).

But the anti-Christian, for emotional reasons, cannot countenance that. He NEEDS to believe in a Jesus which is not like this. Reading about such a Jesus produces in the anti-Christian individual a strong cognitive dissonance plus negative feelings and childish memories of fear and guilt. Therefore (so conclude the anti-Christian) it cannot be true, and other, more palatable and "nice" versions of Jesus are, a priori, more acceptable and credible.

Sheer delusion!. You don't discover what the real Jesus was and said appealing to your emotions, or how Jesus' teachings "make you feel". It is pure wishful thinking, ignorance, intellectual stupidity and dangerous spirirutal charlatanism.

You have to examine the evidence and accept wherever it can lead you, even if it leads you a unpalatable, disturbing, extremely disgusting spiritual conclusions.

I could continue endlessly with further examples from New Age sources (and their contradictions with each other), but I let my readers the task to research themselves these sources carefully.

In conclusion:

-New Age revisionistic sources of Jesus are unreliable, because no objective evidence supports them (except that they make to "feel good" some of their practitioners).

-Often, they contradict each other regarding crucial aspects on spiritual matters.

-They contradict crucial aspects of the historical Jesus which support the traditional Christian view and are known through the correct application of the criteria of authenticity (a fact which forces some liberal scholars to misapply the criteria, as I've shown here and here), and hence such sources are, on that account alone, likely to be false.

-They are extremely later sources (coming from the 20th century, most of them), and hence, applying the criterion of date, the first-century sources of information (Paul and the Gospels) are more reliable historical sources of information.

Finally, I must say that they are extremely DANGEROUS, from a spiritual point of view, because they astutely present themselves as authoritative sources, coming from God or even Jesus (or other "higher" sources), and hence have the potential to mislead a bunch of people of good will who, unfortunately, have had bad emotional wounds and experiences connected with dogmatic or irrational Christian pastors, ministers, relatives, etc.

After all, Jesus himself has been reported to say (again, in a semi-judgmental way):

"Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it.  For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand." (Matthew 24: 23-25)

If the judgmental Jesus portrayed in the early source "Q" turns out to be right, then the people who are strong believers in New Age sources of Jesus, despite their good will, won't have any excuse...

You are now aware of the trascendental importance which this topic has for our spiritual fate and the extreme risks which entails to try to settle it on basis on your emotions or ideological sensibilities or sympatheties for paranormal sources of dubious credibility.

It is up to you to research this.

Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan on the Christian understanding of Jesus' substitutionary death for the sins of humankind in The Last Week book

One of the main and essential features of revisionistic views of the historical Jesus is the rejection of the traditional Christian view that Jesus died for our sins. 

Since nobody wants to consider himself a "sinner", and the concept of sin is commonly taught (specially in USA) with strong emotional connections of guilt and strong feelings of fear and threats of "hell" or divine punishment, it is not surprising that the first line of attack of revisionistic views about Jesus be precisely the notion of "sin" (and divine punishment). They will deny such notion altogether, or (more astutely) will provide a reinterpretation of it, in order to avoid the emotions of guilt and fear typically connected with such theological notion. This freedom from guilt and fear is precisely what the revisionist wants to hear, and this is the main reason why he becomes sympathetic to revisionisms of Jesus, either in its New Age versions or in its liberal scholarly versions. (Note that this explanation says nothing about whether revisionism is true or false. This is only a preliminary explanation of the emotional causes which motivate revisionism, not to the truth or falsehood of it).

In this post, I'll focus myself in whether the revisionistic scholarly view is likely to be true or false (not in the emotional causes of it, although I'll supplement my arguments with mentions of such causes in order to clinch the argument and suggest a continuity between emotional wounds connected with Christianity (typically suffered by some Americans in an early age), wishful thinking and how it affects the choosing of worldviews and scholarly "conclusions").

In his book The Last Week, liberal scholars and Jesus Seminar's members Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan provide an interesting analysis of the last week of Jesus' life.

There are any things to say to this book, and a full review of it will need several posts to evaluate accurately its positive and negative points. I will focus myself on the topic of the Jesus' death, its Christian meaning as the death for our sins (i.e. the sins of humankind) and Crossan/Borg's "scholarly" intrepretation of it.

In the page 138 of the book, after explaining briefly the traditional Christian interpretation of Jesus' death, the authors comment (please read carefully each of the authors' words):

Hence it is important to realize that this is not the only interpretation of Jesus' death. Indeed, it took more than a thousand years for it to become to be dominant. The understanding sketched above first appeared in fully developed form in a book written in 1097 by St. Anselm.

Keep in mind that the authors' main argument above includes two contentions:

1-That in addition to the traditional understanding of Jesus' death, there are OTHER interpretations of it (note that, by itself, it doesn't refute the traditional understanding of Jesus' death, since several interpretations could be compatible with each other). In fact, the authors suggest the following additional meanings of Jesus' death (see below for the exact reference): 1)the domination system's "no" to Jesus (and God); 2)the defeat of powers that rule the world by disclosing their moral bankruptcy; 3)The revelation of the path of transformation, and 4)The disclosure of the depth of God's love for us.

Note that these four additional meanings (if they did exist) are not incompatible, but fully complementary with the traditional view of Jesus' death. Therefore, all of these meanings, if true, could be true simultaneously, because they refer to different aspects of the historical Jesus (the traditional meaning refers to a theological aspect; the first additional meaning to a socio-political aspect; the second additional meaning to a moral aspect and so forth).  

So, this first contention by the authors does nothing to refute or undermine on historical grounds that the traditional view of Jesus' death was a veridical interpretation of the early Christians (and hence, probably rooted, on the historical Jesus himself).

2-That the traditional understanding took more than 1000 years in order to be dominant among other interpretations. (The implication, very common among liberal scholars, is that such traditional view became dominant as consequence of a later development created by hundred of years of theological exaltation and colouring of Jesus by Christians, and hence unlikely to be rooted on the actual historical Jesus. The suggestion is that such understanding is, therefore, non-historical and not grounded on the scholarly evidence about Jesus).

This second contention tries to undermine the historical credibility and reliability of the traditional understanding of Jesus' death, making it a later (and hence probably invented or distorted) view of the historical Jesus, not grounded on the scholarly evidence of the New Testament.

The authors explictly say:

The common Christian understanding goes far beyond what the New Testament says. Of course, sacrificial imagery is used there, but the language of sacrifice is only one of several different ways that the authors of the New Testament articulate the meaning of Jesus' execution. They also see it as a domination system's "no" to Jesus (and God), as the defeat of powers that rule the world by disclosing their moral bankruptcy, as the revelation of the path of transformation, and as the disclosure of the depth of God's love for us (p.139).

The traditional understanding goes far beyond the New Testament, not in the use of sacrificial language (because the authors recognize that it exists there), but in stressing just one meaning of it above all the others, when actually several meanings are available and on a par. (Again, note that it doesn't refute the traditional meaning, because the additional meanings refer mainly to non-theological aspects of the historical Jesus and hence are not incompatible with the distinctive theological meaning of the traditional view).

PROBLEMS WITH THE AUTHORS' ARGUMENTS

The authors' contention that the traditional view of Jesus' death became dominant only  after 1000 years is highly misleading, historically irresponsable and telling of the anti-Christian prejudiced methodology of and mishandling of the evidence by many liberal scholars.

In the very early tradition handed down by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5, Paul says:

For I passed on to you as of the first importance what I also received-- that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. (Emphasis in blue added).

This early tradition is a dagger in the heart of the authors' contention, because such an early tradition already highlights and stresses as "the first importance" for the early Christian's preaching the view  that Christ died for our sins. Therefore, claiming that such view was "dominant" (among other interpretations) only after 1000 years is extremely misleading, dishonest, historically irresponsable and (if done on good will) is evidence suggestive of scholarly incompetence.

Moreover, note that as part of the "first importance" tradition what Paul received, not mention is made of all the other meanings that Borg and Crossan speculate were part of the early Christianity. No evidence at all exists in such tradition for the authors' speculative "meanings" in the early tradition handed down by Paul, let alone for the view that the traditional view was on a par, on importance, to these additional meanings nor that all of them were equivalent in importance.

The authors quote certain texts, by Paul or attributed to Paul, suggestive of the other interpretations; but such texts are later than 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5 and, in any case, fully compatible with the traditional understanding of Jesus' death already present in Paul's "first importance" tradition mentioned above. Moreover, these additional interpretations in the texts are not presented by Paul as being of "first importance" as the tradition in  1 Corinthians 15: 3-5. So, hardly one can make them on a par with that tradition.

But do Borg and Crossan ignore such tradition in Paul? No, they don't. In fact they mention and quote it in passing and cursorily among other Pauline material (cf p.141), omitting the part in which Paul says that such traditional view is of "first importance" (and hence, not on a par with other putative Pauline or non-Pauline interpretations of the death of Jesus), which clearly destroy their whole argumentation of Borg and Crossan.

Why do these authors try to undermine so crucial evidence? The reason is obvious: they need to undermine such evidence in order to convey the impression that the traditional view of Jesus' death hadn't a major importance among early Christians, but that was just "one among others interpretations" available at the time, and that only became dominant after a later (and hence, less historically reliable) development coloured by Christian theology.

When reading this book, I was already familiar with some of Borg and Crossan's work on the historical Jesus, and was cognizant of how they tend to (mis) handle the evidence for Jesus's life, and teachings, but I confess that reading their arguments in The Last Week made me angry. It bothered me a lot.

They simply and demostrably (but often subtly and astutely) are distortioning the evidence in order to create a view of Jesus which is anti-Christian, and present such view as the most serious scholarly opinion.

This kind of deception has to be fully exposed and intellectually castigated.

I simply has not intellectual respect for these authors anymore.

FACTORS SUPPORTING THE TRADITIONAL INTERPRETATION OF JESUS' DEATH

1-Jesus was a traditional first-century Jew  (not an American or californian new age cool teacher of yoga or vegetarianism who comes to preach the "don't worry, be happy" kind of American "soft" spirituality, as some revisionists seem to portray him).

As consequence, Jesus fully accepted the religious-theological categories of Judaism, including the religious notion of SIN and the sacrificial language connected to it. No contemporary religious pluralist ideology nor sophism about "metaphors" is going to change that.

In fact, as the evidence shows, Jesus was himself baptised by John the Baptist (an event which is likely to be historical, because it passes the criteria of multiple attestation and embarrasment).

So, Jesus was accepting and validating the key theological notions of "sin" (which is directly connected with violations of God's laws), "baptism" and forgiving of sins.

Claiming that Jesus' teachings (which makes reference to sins, salvation, God, and so forth) were wholly disconnected or independent of such theological-religious notions or categories that Jesus accepted in his own life as a Jew is simply false, wrong, contrary to the historical facts.

Try to "reinterpret" such concepts in terms of the secularism, religious pluralism of the 21th century society (specially American society) is clearly misrepresent the specific, concrete, Jewish-religious context and religious philosophy which essentially underly such notions as "sins" and that, as expected, pervades Jesus' teachings.

Contemporary anti-Christian revisionists, thinking from the perspective of a 20th century man living in the highly secularized and pluralist United States, understandbly makes no sense of notions like "sins", "baptism", "forgiveness of sin". But such notions are ESSENTIAL in the religious context in which Jesus lived and taught (and Jesus' teachings are full of them). 

The attempt by contemporary anti-Christians to discard, explain away, disregard or "reinterpret" such key concepts from the teachings of Jesus show that their motivation is ideological and emotional: They are trying to make Jesus palatable to the contemporary ideological categories and sensibilities.

2-As proved above, the earliest evidence for the traditional view of Jesus' death shows that it was considered as of "first importance" to Paul and the disciples. Paul met and knew the disciples and checked with them the accuracy of Jesus' life and teachings that they were preaching, in order to avoid misrepresentations of such an important task (this tells us that, contrary to the liberal assumptions, the early Christians were interested in preserving the truth about Jesus and avoiding false teachings connected with him).

Therefore, based on the evidence, we have to conclude that the disciples, like Paul, also considered as of "first importance" the view that Jesus died for our sins.  This is NOT a later development, but the information that the first-hand witnesses and followers of Jesus (e.g. his disciples) accepted and preached as of "first importance".

3-Given Jesus' acceptation of the category of "sin", his exclusivistic self-perception regarding salvation, the fact that he put himself often in the position of God (e.g. correcting or qualifying the Old Testament laws), his use of divine-like phrases like "The Son of Man" or "the Son of God" and his resurrection, it seems to suggest (if we think with the minset and religious categories of Jews like Jesus, not with the minset of Wyane Dyer or Ophra Winfrey in the 21th century) that his death was not a mere accident of history, but something with some theological meaning (i.e. a meaning in the overall schema of God's kingdom and salvation regarding which Jesus focused his teachings).

There is no sense in the fact that the Son of God is going to come to Earth and be killed, and that such a major event was not foreseen nor controlled by God nor his Son,  nor that the resurrection was a kind of "Well, I'm the Son of God but I couldn't avoid nor anticipate that mere humans were going to kill me. So, I resurrected in order to outbalance such unexpected event of my death and prove that what I was  claiming about my divine status and exclusive authority regarding the God's kingdom is true after all."

Obviously, if Jesus was really who he claimed that he was, and the resurrection happened (as his disciples became convinced), then you cannot think that his death was a mere historical accident or brute unexplained fact, without any theological meaning (specially, taking into account that certain kinds of "deaths" were explicitly connected in the Old Testament with sacrifices to God, and Jesus accepted largely the Old Testament). Thinking such a thing is to assume that God or Jesus were stupid, and that their whole project was based on improvising solutions to unexpected contingencies.

The inference that Jesus' death was foreseen (by God or Jesus), and that such death has some kind of connection with the forgiving of sins is, in the context of the religious categories of Judaism in which certain kinds of deaths have a sacrificial meaning, a very reasonable one. If the early disciples (who had first-hand contact with Jesus and learned much more from him of what we know in the Gospels) strongly believed such a thing, then we have absolutely no reason to doubt that what they were claiming was likely to be true. Why should us doubt such a thing?

This is why an increasing number of scholars, including liberal ones (once free from the prejudices of  early generations of atheistic and anti-Christian scholars) are open to this conclusion. As James Crossely comments:

Jesus did really practised healing and exorcism; and Jesus really did predict his imminent death and probably thought it had some atoning function." (How did Christianity begin? p.1).

(Crossley's overall view about Jesus is very complex, and on risk of oversimplification, I summarize it: he thinks that any exclusivistic interpretation or meaning of labels actually used by Jesus like "Son of Man", "Son of God", etc. is unwarranted because such labels were used in Jesus' times, with no extraordinary senses attached to them. As a naturalist, Crossley obviously doesn't accept that such labels have any actual supernatural implications, or that the resurrection actually happened, and he believes that such categories are valid or find parallels cross-culturally, so the historical Jesus is, qua spiritual teacher, nothing special above the others. Religious pluralism again. I'll examine in detail Crossley's views on future posts).

If Jesus predicted his own death, then it is clear that it was part of the plan (not a mere accident). This is what we would expect if Jesus was the Son of God or something of the sort. (Atheists and religious pluralists will disagree, of course, because they don't believe in God or in exclusive ways to salvation). 

As Crossley comments, it is probable that Jesus thought that his death had some kind of atoning function. Therefore, it is unlikely that it was an later invention by Christians without any root on Jesus' life, teachings, deeds and person.

This point is a bomb for contemporary revisionists, since what they have feared for years (i.e. that key aspects of the traditional view be correct) find new defenders, even among non-conservative scholars.

Assuming that the belief in Jesus divinity, his resurrection, and the "first importance" teaching that he died for our sins were pure fabrications by the early Christians (without any reason whatsoever provided by Jesus himself) is to suggest that God is stupid, that his plan was misrepresented and destroyed by the same people that Jesus chose (e.g. the disciples), and ultimately, it implies that Jesus was co-responsible of such a theological disaster.

Jesus can be risen from the death, can heal a bunch of serious diseases, can performance exorcism, speaks authoritatively about God's kingdom, and even can predict the future but couldn't predict that the bunch of people whom Jesus himself elected as his disiciples and representatives were going to distortion seriously and falsely his own teachings and keep ill-informed the humankind about the true doctrines of Jesus for almost 2000 years.

If it is the case, wasn't Jesus (and God, if we concede some special connection between them) co-responsible of such misleading falsehood named Christianity? Is not Jesus to be blamed, at least in part, for choosing a bunch of incompetent people who were incapable of preserving accurately even the basic tenets of his doctrine? Wasn't Jesus responsible for the post-resurrection apparition to Paul, who was one of the leading preachers of the idea tha Jesus died for ours sins? Why did Jesus choose such supposedly unreliable person? If all of this is false, is not Jesus (at least in part) responsible for such misleading deception? Was not Jesus actively incompetent in choosing specifically and precisely the people (i.e. the disciples and Paul) who were going to grossly misrepresent his teachings, destroying his whole original project and misleading the whole of humankind? Was not Jesus (and God) incompetent in not predicting, and hence not preventing, that major spiritual disaster from happening? Does it make sense?

The New Age revisionist of Jesus expects that we are going to believe that and, more astonishingly, that Jesus had to return in the 20th century in order to provide his true teachings (teachings which differ seriously of what he taught, or was claimed that he taught, in the first century).

Credulity withtout limits!

FACTORS MOTIVATING REVISIONISM AND MISHANDLING OF THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR JESUS

There are, at least, 3 factors which motivate revisionism of the historical Jesus:

-Atheism

-Religious Pluralism

-Emotional wounds (specially feelings of fear and guilt) connected with traditional Christianity

Since atheism and religious pluralism have been widely discussed in my blog, I'll skip specific reference to them in this post.

I want to focus my attention in the emotional aspect.

My current position is that (regardless of whether Christianity is true or false), the main reason for anti-Christianity, specially among Americans, is emotional: they don't want a Jesus like that. This is specially true regarding the concept of SIN (and more powerfully, the concept of hell).

When I wrote one of my first articles on the resurrection in this blog, I received dozens of e-mails from people (who mostly, as some of them confessed, know nothing about the technical literature of biblical criticism) trying to explain away the resurrection. They appealed to fraud, the etheric body, Jesus' spontaneous natural resuscitations like documented in some medical cases (which obviously have nothing to do with the resurrection, but that these people conflate due to their ignorance of the literature), Jesus' mastering of yoga or Chi Kung, red herrings about the Inquisition and the Pope and a bunch of other speculatives and irrelevant opinions which have nothing to do with the evidence of Jesus' resurrection. (Speculations that they wouldn's accept if used to explain away the evidence for the afterlife or parapsychology, and the they rightly reject when are used to explain psi away by "professional skeptics" like Randi, Shermer or Wiseman).

This was an eye-opener to me, because I was watching a bunch of bad pseudoskeptical objections coming, ironically, from people who strongly believe in ghosts, haunted houses, psychic healings, reincarnation, extraterrestial reptilians controlling the world, mysticism, orbs, mediums, psychics, 9/11 and Moon-Landing conspiracies, instrumental transcommunication, Deepak Chopra's teachings, and New Age spiritualities. Some of these same "skeptical believers" even used Hume's argument against miracles against the resurrection (when the correct and consistent application of Hume's argument would destroy a large part of the beliefs that they hold)!.

That some of the people even conceded that they know nothing about the technical literature related to the topic, that is, they conceded that they were making an opinion from ignorance, a point that they castigate in "skeptics" who feel qualified to criticize parapsychology from an arm-chair.

They same bad and prejudiced arguments from skeptics that I and other are refuting continuously, were coming against Jesus' resurrection.

Such irrationality cannot have any other plausible basis than ignorance, emotions and wishful thinking.

A second eye-opener to me was discover that most contemporary New Age revisionistic views of Jesus come from the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A third eye opener to me was to discover an atheistic background among the people behind such revisionism. Almost all of them were atheists (or were hostile to Christianity) in the moment in which they received the putative "revelation" about Jesus from some superior paranormal source (dreams, automatic writing, hearing voices, channeling, putative alien contacts, etc.) Also, often these people were previously Christians, very often of the most dogmatic kind, and left such position with an axe to grind against Christianity. Now, they "discover" the truth about Jesus.

Ironically, when you study the evidence for these New Age view about Jesus, you find almost no scientific or historical evidence. As consequence, and as a rule, no scholar takes these sources seriously.

Moreover (and this was another eye-opener to me) the believers in such New Age view of Jesus give more credibility to these 20th century sources about Jesus than to the earlier, first-century sources like Paul and the Gospels, which is (from a historical point of view) just mad. No historian would prefer a 20th century source about the teachings of person who lived in the first century over a first century source about him.

When you confront these people with these obvious objections, they appeal to the view that Jesus revealed himself in the 20th century, hence the source in question is a reliable and direct one. When you press the point and ask them how do they know that such source is Jesus himself, they simply say that the "source" has identified himself like that (or given hints in that direction), or that they feel subjectively and in their hearts that such source is telling the truth.

The problem with this kind of reply is that exactly the same was claimed by Paul and the disciples, who claimed that what they were teaching came from the Holy Spirit, not from their own opinions or experiences alone. Moreover, Paul knew the disciples, who had first-hand personal contact and continous interaction with Jesus before and after Jesus' death, making them the most reliable source of information about Jesus (more than the putative Jesus who is revealing himself in the 20th century through atheists who were inspired by "dreams", "voices", "channelings", "automatic writing" or alien messages... specially when such Jesus has little to do with the first-century data about him and more to do with the contemporary American culture, and clear key doctrinal inconsistences can be discoveried in the sources in question).

So, it is astonishing (or perhaps, not so much after understanding the American culture) that many people in USA prefer to believe in Conversations with God, the Urantia Book, A Course in Miracles, The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ , and other sources of a putative paranormal or spiritual origin about the historical Jesus and God.

Such kind of "soft" spirituality, irrationalism, double standards, wishful thinking and anti-Christian prejudices is possible in America, because USA is country culturally influenced by a certain kind of dogmatic Christianity (although some of the most brilliant minds like Alvin Plantinga, are Christians) and, simultaneously, this country is dominated in academy by hard-core atheists, skeptics and secularists with an purely negative, hostile, ego-based, destructive social agenda.

In the context of this cultural war in USA (and hence, in the countries culturally influenced by USA, that are many) is that we have to understand the contemporary versions of Jesus' revisionisms (like the Jesus Seminar) and most specifically the New Age "soft", "don't worry, be happy", "we'are all one and we're cool" kind of misleading versions of Jesus.

ONLY IN AMERICA!