Today, we're going to discuss about Jesus's teachings on God's kingdom.
NA: I've read and hear that all scholars agree that Jesus centred his teachings about God's Kingdom.
TS and Liberal (together): Correct.
NA: But then it is unexplicable why the early Church centred his proclamation exclusively around Jesus' person instead of around Jesus' teachings on God's Kingdom. It is the message, not the person, which is important.
Liberal: It is easily explainable: When the early Christians became convinced that Jesus was risen from the death and hence he was divine, obviously they centred their focus on God (=Jesus), and his teachings about God's Kingdom were forgotten or undermined.
Again, the exaltation and false divinization of Jesus in the minds of his followers explain why they talk more about a person instead of his message.
In other words, the early Christians wholly blinded by their (false) belief in the resurrection, tended to exalt Jesus into a sort of divinity and bypassed his teachings.
TS: I have to disagree with both of you.
Firstly, the teachings about Jesus are part of the Gospels. If the early Christians "bypassed" Jesus' teachings, then why the hell we find the Gospels replete with Jesus' teachings? In fact, the fact that we know that Jesus provided some teachings is precisely due to the information of the Gospels, the only historically reliable source of information about the historical Jesus.
So, saying that the early Christians "bypassed" Jesus' teachings is an overstatement, and in fact a falsehood. Considering that Jesus is divine doesn't exclude to accept and convey his teachings, on the contrary, it seems to make it more imperative to do it.
Secondly, in the historical sources, we cannot find ANY careful explanation from Jesus about what exactly was God's kingdom. He appeals to a bunch of parables and metaphors to convey some idea of it, but the exact nature, condition and detailed constitution of it is never explained.
For example, in Matthew 13:31-34 we read:
The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field:
32 Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.
33 Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.
34 All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them:
These parables convey information about some of the properties of the kingdom, but an exact and literal characterization of it is never provided.
In Mark 4: 2-9 we read:
2 He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: 3 “Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”
9 Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”
Jesus doesn't expand on the implications or details of his teachings, and even adds the qualification that the proper interpretation of his words depend, in part, on the "ears" of his audience (which is another metaphor, since obviously he's not referring to physical "ears", but to a kind of spiritual disposition to grasp or understand what he means).
In fact, it seems that Jesus chose such method intentionally in order to make his teachings to resonate only with the people spiritually disposed and prepared to understand his message, because in Matthew 13: 10-13, when asked by the disciples about his method of parables, Jesus said:
10 And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?
11 He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
12 For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
13 Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
Note the religious exclusivistic implication of such teaching (this is a topic for other dialogues). Not everybody is worthy of knowing the mysteries of God's kingdom and Jesus adapts his teachings accordingly, that is, according to the spiritual merit or condition of his audience. (Think about atheist philosopher J.J.C. Smart and his voluntary, intentional, deliberate and existential decision of rejecting God, even in the face of contrary evidence. Presumibly, given the above references, Jesus wouldn't teach Smart the mysteries of God, because he already knows that Smart won't hear and deliberately misrepresent and twist any information or secret related with God).
NA: But that is unjust! Everybody should have the right of knowing the mysteries of God!.
TS: Why? I see no reason to think why everybody, including hard-core atheists who willingly, consciously and deliberately reject God and teach others to deny God (like Smart), should have the right of knowing the mysteries of God. It is God's prerrogative to decide to whom accept or reject in His kingdom.
NA: But if all of us are sons and cretions of God, we have the right to know God and God cannot deny to us this right.
TS: But it is not God who denies to us this right, it is OURSELVES who decide if we accept God or not. It is a matter of freedom of the will and God (presumibly) respects this.
Consider atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel's opinion about his "desires" of knowing God:
I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and wellinformed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.
If it is what Nagel desires (and presumibly God knows such desire), then he will have precisely that: An universe without God. Therefore, he won't enter God's Kingdom and his eternal fate will be without God.
Is God denying Nagel the right of entering God's kingdom, or is Nagel himself who deliberately, willingly and purposefully is separating himself from God?
You have to reflect about it more carefully.
NA: I disagree. If I were God, I would allow everybody to enter God's Kingdom.
TS: Even the ones who DON'T WANT to be with you (God) and voluntarily decide to separate from you?
NA: Yes, even them.
TS: But then you're not respecting their free will and their moral and spiritual responsability about their decisions. You're forcing them to be with you even when they don't want that.
NA: It doesn't matter. I'm not sure that free will exists, anyway.
TS: Your view on God seems to be more authoritary than the Christian view that you criticize.
NA: I don't think so.
TS: In any case, both your views and mine about what God "should" do are sheer speculations. In these dialogues, I'm interested on the historical evidence about Jesus, not on theological speculations about how God decides to behave.
My comment on Jesus' teachings with parables was meant to support, appealing to the evidence, my second point mentioned above: in the historical sources, God's kingdom is never explained in detail and clearly by Jesus.
NA: OK.
TS: Secondly, that is, my second reason for disagreement with both of you, is that you seem to assume that Jesus' proclamation of God's kingdom excludes the crucial and dramatic importance of Jesus' person in such kingdom.
And such assumption is based upon religious pluralism (according to which what is important is the content of the spiritual message , and not the person of the messanger). In Jesus' case, such religious pluralistic assumption is demostrably false. Judaism is not a pluralistic religion, and Jesus (a first century Jew) definitvely was NOT a religious pluralist.
Such religious plutalistic assumption is at variance with the evidence of Jesus' overall teachings found in the Gospels, because part and parcel of Jesus' teachings had to do with his PERSONAL ROLE as the only intermediary between God and man. In other words, Jesus' message INCLUDES his own person as the only way to reach God.
We could schematize Jesus' teachings like this:
Jesus' teachings ------------ >; God's Kingdom ----------------- >; conditions for entering in it (repentance, obey God's will, the Sermon of the Mount's teachings, the function of the Son as the only and authoritative intermediary between God and men, and as evidence of the latter Jesus spoke with divine authority, put himself in the position of God in several intances, used the word "Abba" to refer to God implying a close connection with the Father, claimed to be the Son of Man and used miracles as signs of the inbreaking of God's kingdom. I'm not including here the resurrection, because we have not discussed it yet... but obviously, the resurrection of dead into heaven was also a prerrogative of God in the Jewish world, so the resurrection happened, you can imagine what Jesus wanted to convey, to his Jewish audience, with such event).
Some liberals and New Agers pretend that Jesus only spoke about God's Kingdom, but never mentioned the conditions for entering in it. This is false. Jesus taught BOTH as the evidence shows. (The reason why some liberals and New Agers bypass the conditions for entering God' kingdom is because they're religious pluralists who, for ideological and emotional reasons, don't like the concrete and specific conditions mentioned by Jesus which, if not accepted, won't make you to enter such kingdom. That's all).
Consider this Jesus' teaching found in the earliest Q material:
In Mattew 11: 27: "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."
In Luke 10: 22: "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
The above teaching of Jesus in Q, in addition of passing the criterion of date, it passes the criterion of dissimilarity too, since it is dissimilar to the early Church's belief that we can know God. In contrast, in the saying, nobody can know God except the Son.
In that early Q tradition, Jesus is not teaching about God's Kingdom per se, but about the person responsible to reveal God to men, namely, the SON. Like it ot not, Jesus is teaching that salvation is only possible through a single person, namely Jesus = The Son.
Consider this "Son of Man" saying in Luke 12:8-9 ( in general, such "Son of Man" traditions are likely to be authentic since they are used almost exclusively by Jesus, not by his later followers, so passing the criterion of dissimilarity), Jesus says:
In Luke 10: 22: "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
The above teaching of Jesus in Q, in addition of passing the criterion of date, it passes the criterion of dissimilarity too, since it is dissimilar to the early Church's belief that we can know God. In contrast, in the saying, nobody can know God except the Son.
In that early Q tradition, Jesus is not teaching about God's Kingdom per se, but about the person responsible to reveal God to men, namely, the SON. Like it ot not, Jesus is teaching that salvation is only possible through a single person, namely Jesus = The Son.
Consider this "Son of Man" saying in Luke 12:8-9 ( in general, such "Son of Man" traditions are likely to be authentic since they are used almost exclusively by Jesus, not by his later followers, so passing the criterion of dissimilarity), Jesus says:
I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God. 9 But whoever disowns me before others will be disowned before the angels of God
Again, this teaching is not about the nature or properties God's kingdom per se, but about the CONDITIONS for entering, or being rejected, from it.
Can any you, sensibly and objectively, to suggest that the early Christians, faced with such kind of radical exclusivistic sayings (specially in a Jewish context), should have disregarded the importance of the person of Jesus for salvation?
Is not Jesus teaching precisely that his person is crucial for salvation since THE SON (=JESUS) IS THE ONE ONE WHO CHOOSES TO REVEAL THE FATHER TO MEN and, more interestingly, his teaching that disowning Jesus implies to be disowned before the angels of God?
Does Jesus teaching imply the irrelevance of his person? No unbiased reader would conclude that after reading the above passages and many others in the New Testament.
No honest interpretation of the above passages would support something like this "Look on these teachings by Jesus: What amazing is to discover how they match exactly the teachings of Krishnamurti, Confucius, Sai Baba, Ron Hubbard and Paramahansa Yogananda! Jesus' teachings are great, specially when he says that what matter is the message, but his person is absolutely irrelevant. Poor Christians who didn't understood his actual teachings in the Gospels! I'm glad that I'll be saved following atheistic Buddhism and rejecting Jesus, because ALL OF US WILL BE SAVED regardless of our beliefs! Viva Jesus' teachings!!!"
Only a moron or retarded person would interpret something like this from the above passages in the Gospels. Jesus is teaching precisely the contrary to what the religious pluralist wants to hear.
No honest interpretation of the above passages would support something like this "Look on these teachings by Jesus: What amazing is to discover how they match exactly the teachings of Krishnamurti, Confucius, Sai Baba, Ron Hubbard and Paramahansa Yogananda! Jesus' teachings are great, specially when he says that what matter is the message, but his person is absolutely irrelevant. Poor Christians who didn't understood his actual teachings in the Gospels! I'm glad that I'll be saved following atheistic Buddhism and rejecting Jesus, because ALL OF US WILL BE SAVED regardless of our beliefs! Viva Jesus' teachings!!!"
Only a moron or retarded person would interpret something like this from the above passages in the Gospels. Jesus is teaching precisely the contrary to what the religious pluralist wants to hear.
If the early Christians would have omitted such crucial teaching on behalf of a generic and more or less ambiguous teachings about God's kingdom (whose nature is never carefully specified), they would have seriously distorted and misrepresented Jesus' teachings about his personal, crucial role in salvation, with dramatic spiritual consequences for Jesus' followers.
In conclusion, the person of Jesus is a essential and crucial part of his exclusivistic teachings, because they're exclusivistic precisely in the sense that only through the Son we can know God and that rejecting Jesus implies being rejected before God's angels (=religious exclusivism).
Liberal: You're assuming that such sayings are authentic and not were put into Jesus' lips by his followers.
TS: I'm not assuming it, I'm providing specific, concrete, positive EVIDENCE (the Q material, the criterion of date and the criterion of dissimilarity) in support of the authenticity of such sayings.
If you have any objection, which passes the criteria of authenticity and refute the above evidence, I'd like to hear it.
I challenge you to provide any evidence showing that the above well-supported sayings didn't come from Jesus.
Liberal: In most of the Q material, Jesus doesn't refer to his person.
TS: And how the hell that refutes the OTHER parts of the Q material which DO refer to Jesus' person (and the other traditions, not found in Q, which pass other criteria of athenticity)?
Liberal: It is more likely to think that such sayings that you mention, despite of being in Q, were later additions by the early Church and put back into Jesus' lips.
TS: Why?
Liberal: Because in the earliest source Q, we don't find evidence of an exalted or divine Jesus. Such exalted state is typical of later sources and hence suggestive of a later theological development.
TS: False. In the Q saying in Mattew 4: 1-7 and Luke 4: 1-11 Jesus is already seen as the Son of God with omnipotent powers (which is a divine property) by God's foremost heavenly enemy, the Devil:
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted[a] by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’[b]”
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted[a] by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’[b]”
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’[c]”
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’[c]”
7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’[d]”
Liberal: My goodness, do you believe in the existence of the devil? Astonishing! Now, I understand your level of credulity.
TS (noting the liberal's red herring and apparent sophistry): What I believe is irrelevant. I am not discussing my beliefs, but the historical evidence about Jesus' teachings and traditions.
The above citation is meant to refute your claim that in Q there is not evidence of an exalted or divine view of Jesus.
Your claim is demostrably false. Jesus' divinity is already present in Q.
Moreover, in my previous citation of a Q material about Jesus' exclusivism, I showed that such saying ALSO passes the criterion of dissimilarity, not just the criterion of date.
Liberal: I'm skeptical of such sayings. For me and a large part of independent scientific scholarpship, such sayings were put into Jesus' lips by his followers.
TS: That's your personal, subjective opinion. And I've proved here that you cannot support such opinion with any concrete, specific or positive evidence which passes the criteria of authenticity.
The application of the criteria of authenticity support such Christological traditions, but your skeptical opinion is not based on positive support from any criteria of authenticity, but on unproven and extremely biased conspiracy theories about the Christian sources, assuming them to be guilty until proven innocent.
They're sheer speculations, not based on any evidence.
Liberal: I accept mainly the Q material, and I repeat, most of it doesn't contain any mention of Jesus' divinity.
TS: And I've replied proving that other parts of the Q material contains mention of Jesus' divinity, and this fact is not refuted by the other aspects of Q which doesn't refer to Jesus' divinity.
It is like arguing that Mark didn't accept the empty tomb simply because the overwhelming majority of Mark's Gospel doesn't refer to the empty tomb. Such inference is fallacious and ridiculous: The parts of Mark's Gospel which don't refer to the empry tomb, even if overwhelmingly majoritary, DON'T REFUTE the other parts which refer to the empty tomb.
Implicit in your argumentation is also the (false) assumption that if something is not in Q (or in a large portion of Q), then it is not historical. If it were true, we would have to reject Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, because they don't appear in Q either. Does it mean that Jesus' crucifixion is not historical or that the earliest Christians didn't have experiences of the risen Jesus?
Moreover, I've shown that Q does already contain a divine view of Jesus and Jesus' exclusivistic claims about his person.
You have not refuted that evidence.
Liberal: You come again with your speculations about my "assumptions". Why don't you attack the assumption of conservatives? Why do you take the conservatives assumptions for granted?
TS (Noting again the liberal's defensiveness, lack of valid and historically supported objections and new red herring reply which speculates about TS' motives): Because the assumptions of conservatives does nothing to justify YOUR assumptions and my dialogue is with you (as a supposed representative of contemporary scientific scholarship), not with them.
By the way, who the hell is taking the conservatives' assumptions for granted? All my arguments in these dialogues are based on the criteria of authenticity and the critical rules of contemporary scholarship. They have nothing to do with conservatives, and all of my arguments so far are compatible with the hypothetical falsehood of Christianity and even with agnosticism regarding God's existence.
I haven't mentioned one single conservative scholar in these dialogues. When I provide a scholarly citation, I try to use leading liberal, atheist or non-conservative scholars as references, precisely to avoid the charge of using only conservative sources.
I'm not defending conservatives scholars, I'm attacking the conclusions and arguments of liberal scholarship using the same rules of critical evaluation of the evidence that liberals claim to defend!
NA: I have to agree with my TS friend here. I suggest you, my liberal friend, to read the previous two dialogues.
I have to agree with my TS that the way you use the criteria of authenticity, in this case Q, is very restrictive and inconsistent. For example, if we apply your views on Q to the A Course in Miracles (ACIM), which in my opinion contains the true teachings of Jesus, we would have to conclude that a large portion of ACIM (including the portions which speak about the Son of God, the Holy Trinity and the Resurrection) are false and fictional, inventions that Helen Schumman put on Jesus' lips after 19 centuries of evolution of ideas about religion, Christianity and Jesus.
Liberal: I don't know what the hell is ACIM.
TS: It is irrelevant that you ignore the ACIM. In fact, I myself am extremely skeptical and critical of it and I don't think you would consider it a serious reading relevant for your scholarly work on Jesus.
The point of our NA friend seems to be that your way of applying the criteria of authenticity and overall hypercritical methodology, when applied to alternative sources about Jesus' teachings like ACIM, would produce the same (and even worst) skeptical conclusions that you draw regarding the Christian sources.
Your hypercritical methodology (e.g. restrictive use of Q, negative use of other criteria, atheistic prejudice according to which theological evolution implies falsehood and prejudice that the sources are guilty until proven innocent) would put a large portion of ACIM into the category of "fictional inventions by Helen Schucman".
Liberal: Perhaps.
TS: Perhaps? No, it is sure (provided you apply the same hypercritical and skeptical methodology that you use against the Christian sources).
Liberal: I don't know, and I'm not interested on it.
TS: I invite you to read carefully ACIM, the Urantia Book and other New Age sources and applying to them the same hypercritical and skeptical methodology of the Jesus Seminar and other liberals.
Do it just for the sake of experimentation and intelletual curiosity, and see what you get.
End of this 5th dialogue: In future dialogues we will discuss some more questions about the historical Jesus.
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