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.
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.
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.
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.
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