Let’s say he came back as a Lutheran. Do you think he’d push Lutheranism as the One True Path and cut his fellow Lutherans a lot of slack? Or do you think he’d hold their feet to the fire the most and keep reminding them that, in his estimation, God doesn’t think they’re anything special?
My guess would be the latter.
I would tend to disagree that’s the best question to ask. Jesus and his disciples, as you point out, lived in the first century. The times they lived in didn’t allow for the average person to move to the other side of the world, for massive amounts of goods to be transported the same, and in most cases was under a political system vastly different. Certainly if the Christianity Jesus taught is truthful, then to a certain extent it is ageless, unaffected by worldly concerns - but to ignore the changes we’ve undergone in 2000-odd years entirely seems to me to be silly.
I would say the better question (and the question I used to answer this myself) would be “Which religion today practices Christianity closest to the Christianity preached by Christ, his disciples, and the church?” and that to an extent we need to adapt that to modern times. Entirely a personal and subjective adaption, of course, but I think that’s unavoidable.
He’d probably stammer and apologize in Aramaic for all the trouble he’d caused and tell us it was all just a ploy for attention. Then he’d see a tour bus, freak out and run shrieking down times square.
Eventually he’d be found by a Catholic soup kitchen and they’d get him a job cleaning up one of their warehouses. Then after he’d learned a little English, he’d get a job driving forklift at the local diocese communion wafer distribution facility. He’d meet a nice girl who works for FedEx and delivers stuff to the office. They’d flirt for a few months, and finally she’d goes right out and asks him to dinner.
Things go well and eventually he’d ask her to marry him, but she’s Puerto Rican and her mother would froth at the mouth if she’d marry a non-catholic. And he’s all, “I was baptized by John the Freaking Baptist.” And she’s all, it doesn’t matter unless they have it in church records. And he’s all, “It’s in the bible in the church!”
Then he relents and gets baptized into Catholicism. And they have the wedding and save a ton of money on catering because he duplicates one plate of seared Tilipia and Rice Pilaf to feed the 200 relatives at the Hyatt.
So Catholicism is what he’d choose.
He would be a Jew, I believe. Maybe a currently non existing kind of Jew, but a Jew nevertheless.
First, because, well…He was a Jew.
Second because of Matthew 5:18 :
How Christian churches can reconciliate this verse with the concept that the Jewish Law is mostly irrelevant has mystified me for a long time.
I think that’s the wrong question too. Christ seemed to be preaching a way of living, not a religion. Religion puts the social organization before the spiritual message. As soon as it becomes about group identity you are equally far from the original message. Churches are obsessed with maintaining their worldly presence. The very notion of Christ’s teachings was to not concern oneself with the things of the world for they are transient.
Like with evolution as humans we are all equally evolved, all of the Christians today are equally far from Christ’s message due to the passage of time. It’s more about living life a certain way and finding community in that. Therefore the worldly divisions we know of as denominations are, in and of themselves, the barrier to his teachings.
There is a particular passage that I think describes it, but I cannot remember what it is. It is about a man from another tribe who wants to drop everything and follow Jesus. He tells him that no he cannot follow him, that he should go back to his people, live among them and teach them what he has learned from within their culture. This is the core of the universalizing methods. He knew that every culture would accrete it’s own particular bias upon what he was teaching, so it is ‘The Way’, and not the social grouping that is important. So in otherwords some Catholics might get it better than others, while some Pentacostals get it better than others, but arguing about whether Pentacostals or Catholics get it right will send you into a recursive spiral.
That’s why I still hold to ‘Taoism’.
Supersessionism is highly contested even amongst Christian denominations.
That’s a good point, although I take certain parts of the Bible and quotes from Jesus to mean that while he valued the individual’s ideas of spirituality and did not necessarily prefer an organised structure and dogma, he did want to foster some level of working together. Communities of believers rather than communities of belief, if that makes sense. That’s why I went with the Quakers.
A passage from where? It doesn’t sound quite like anything in the Bible–the closest thing I can think of is Luke 8:38-39:
Jesus was a Jew. We still have Jews around. I’m not sure what’s so hard about this question.
Yeah, this thread really showcases a grand variety of misconception & ignorance. We’re getting to see what posters’ preachers tell them Jesus was.
And the OP is really going on some very superficial ideas of what Islam, Christianity, Judaism are, apparently without any sense of how diverse each of those is.
I was kind of mostly kidding about Yeshua being a Maoist. He was very opposed to the wealthy, though. He might find the idea of a peasants’ revolution appealing.
Christ wasn’t really much about militance.
This is a bit confusing to me. JW dont believe in hell and believe in the crucifixion as a ransom for mankind’s sins (something Jesus himself never taught), etc. Jesus never explicitly called himself the “begotten” son of God either. Oh, and dont the JW eat pork?
Other than their views on the trinity doctrine, I dont see anything which would separate them far enough from mainstream Christianity, not enough to consider them closest to Jesus’ teachings, anyway.
For anyone who’s really interested in the different ways Jesus has been viewed in American culture and subcultures, American Jesus by Stephen Prothero is a good read.
That’s what Muslims believe as well, since preservation of life is ultimately the point of existence.
There are no real doctrinal differences between Islam and Judaism, other than the fact that Muslims accept Jesus as the Messiah, while the Jews consider him to be either a magician, a madman, or altogether insignificant. It’s interesting that Maimonides, the ancient rabbinical authority, considered Islam to be a “valid” faith in light of it’s teachings, and even declared it permissable for a Jew to pray in a Mosque if there were no synagogues available to him, since both worship the God of Abraham and shun all forms of idolatry.
Also, a question we should ask ourselves is what Jesus called his way of life? I doubt he considered it Judaism, as that term has recent origins. If Islam literally means “submission to the one true God,” and that indefinitely describes how Jesus lived his life, then this seems like a no-brainer to me.
There are some pretty big doctrinal differences between Islam and Judaism, and Muslims don’t “accept Jesus as the Messiah”.
Like what, exactly? Differences of course do exist, but if a rabbinical authority of Judaism as significant as Maimonides can declare Islam to be valid in terms of its belief system, and even consider it permissible for a Jew to pray in a Mosque under certain conditions, I don’t think these differences between the two faiths are at all that stark. It would be anathema for a Jew to pray in a Church, by contrast.
and yes, Muslims do accept Jesus as the Messiah, and look forward to his return:
Qur’an 3:45 -
*(And remember) when the angels said: O Mary! Lo! Allah giveth thee glad tidings of a word from him, whose name is the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, illustrious in the world and the Hereafter, and one of those brought near (unto Allah). *
transliteration:
Ith qalati almala-ikatu ya maryamu inna Allaha yubashshiruki bikalimatin minhu ismuhu almaseehu AAeesa ibnu maryama wajeehan fee alddunya waal-akhirati wamina almuqarrabeena
I think he’d be most likely Orthodox Jewish, though maybe Conservative.
I don’t think he’d react to Christianity very well, though. I don’t know how much of the Gospels had anything to do with what he said, but it was more than Paul, and certainly more than Revelations.
All the crucifixes would go right out. Graven images are a big no-no for Judaism, and I doubt he’d be too thrilled at being the idol worshiped.
Lenny Bruce noted, in Christ and Moses, that Jesus, coming to St. Pats through Harlem, would wonder why the Cardinal was wearing a ring which could feed a dozen families for a year.
But actually I bet he’d be fed up with just about everyone. He got people to leave their jobs to follow him, his followers today reside in big fancy churches and drive fancy cars. If I understand anything, he was saying that salvation was the most important thing, which has kind of gotten lost.
Or he might say “you think I’m the son of God? You’re out of your flipping mind. God is my Father just the same way he is yours.”
There is a lack of consensus on what “messiah” means. From Wikipedia:
You go into town on Christmas telling people you’re Santa Claus and vandalize Bronner’s. See if they don’t crucify you… Hopefully you won’t get the Pharisee’s and Pontius Pilate, but you probably will. And then a hundred years later somebody will recognize you as the real incarnation of santa claus and they will revere you and there will be presents for everyone!