Who is Jesus to a liberal Christian?

Great Debates
21

The older I get the more I find my views have changed from when I was a callow youth.

As to moral issues, I haven’t changed much. But WRT to the proper interpretation of scripture, I have changed drastically (I grew up in an independent fundamental pre-trib baptist church. That is, the SBCs and ABCs were too liberal.)

WRT the logic of creation v. miracles. Creationists (6/24 variety, anyway) argue that Genesis tells us how God did it. There is ample evidence that creation occurred in ways other than what is apparently described in Genesis.

That is, we have reason to believe that Genesis ought to be and is intended to be interpreted as myth (in the classical sense of the word).

Miracles can be viewed as events that cannot happen but do. That is, dead men don’t rise again. One cannot make matter appear out of nothing (5 loaves and 2 fishes feeds 5000).

From our very sense of the word, we don’t expect miracles. We don’t expect to replicate them. We don’t expect to find evidence of them. If we explain how Jesus walked on water and teach Drew Carey to do it, then it wouldn’t be a miracle – except that a man 2000 years ago figured it out – a miracle of genius, only.

In addition, we don’t expect that there could be any evidence to exist that could falsify any of Jesus’ miracles. The most one can say is that those things don’t usually happen, and we can’t replicate or duplicate it --> which, implies the definition.

So, creationism is falsified and must be discarded. Miracles cannot be falsified, by definition, and can be accepted as a matter of faith without contradicting reason.

As to who Christ is, I am not entirely sure, to be honest. I grew up with the belief that he is 100% man and 100% God. But, perhaps this is true only inasmuch as God is realizable in all of us.

I believe that somehow the cross and resurrection are necessary. It could be because atonement is necessary (which nearly requires Jesus to be God in the traditional sense – that is, not as in my evquivocation above.) It could be only because he showed us how to live. (I say “only” because even if the first is true, he did do the second.)

At minimum, Jesus and the Holy Spirit point to God the Father. My salvation comes from God the Father even if facilitated by Christ. The results of “working out my salvation with fear and trembling” is a reward from God the Father even if facilitated by the Holy Spirit.

I am still inclined to the traditional views on Christ, but I do both question my reasons and the significance of my views.

Tinker

22

I’m a piss-poor excuse for a Christian but I amfairly liberal so here goes:

I believe Jesus was a guy with a nice philosophy but he wasn’t a god and NONE of the miracles occurred, including the Resurection.

I’m not sure there is a Big-G-God but I try to love my neighbor.

Salvation, as in going to Heaven, is totally unimportant to me as I don’t believe there is anything after this world. When Jesus talks about it I pat his head in a condescending way. However, earthly salvation in the form of personal satisfaction is available to all if they do right by others.

23

It is done “functionally”. That is, the foremost question is “How does this contribute to salvation?” Thus, matters of belief in literal seven-day Creation are just not given great priority. Whether God created the world as literally described in Genesis or whether that was a metaphor for what happened is not directly relevant to salvation. The closer one gets to the specific message of personal salvation, the more stringent the readings are.

The idea is that the function of the Church is to help lead to salvation through Christ, thus Scripture, which was compiled by the Church, is to be interpreted in light of that idea and Tradition.

One Orthodox nun, Maria Skobotsova said this:

So, if I’ve twenty dollars to spend on a bus ticket to picket the teaching of evolution or give to a food bank, the message to the Orthodox seems to be fairly clear.

24

Sister Maria has it right by my lights, too, Dog. Or would if I believed in the Last Judgement, but who thought we’d ever come THIS close to agreeing about religion? :wink:

25

Nope. Not hardly any. In fact, I am the only one I know of who has noticed. Tricky devil that Satan, huh?

Tris

26

I’m a liberal Christian. If you want to know what I believe it is fairly well stated in “The Christian Agnostic” by Leslie Weatherhead. That means not believing in just about everything from the creation story to the Trilogy. I acknowledge that I interpret the Bible in my own way, but that is my business.
:frowning: [sup]Please no threats about the wrath of God.[/sup]

Although she got piled on, I personally think that Guinastasia gave a very good answer to start things off. Those that criticized her were playing the same old game of making a big deal about the literal content, instead of the meaning and thought. If I were going to try and improve on what she said then I would use Mangetout’s Biblical quote.

Pleonast has some interesting things to say, especially when he says:

Those that do not doubt are taking the easy way out. James Kavenaugh called it “mental suicide”.

27

Well, I’d agree with you if I thought Satan were real! :wink:

28

Trinity, not trilogy. It was late; I had a senior moment and as stated I don’t have much interest in the concept.

29

There’s been a lot of good stuff in this thread, and I’m not going to duplicate stuff by RT, Tris, and Siege that I agree with. But I’d make the observation that a big piece of the problem lies in our inclination to establish mutually exclusive categories and insist that something is in an Aristotelian X/not-X dichotomy. Either George Bush won the election or he didn’t; either sea lions are carnivores or not.

This sort of analysis doesn’t work well in discussions of God. Presuming He does exist and is active in His creation, He almost always works through something or someone else to accomplish His purposes. In all of the Bible, only the Ten Commandments (first version) were written by the hand of God; everything else is done through men.

Jesus was a man, the son of Mary, taken by Joseph as his son. He was also the means by which God’s Atoning work and His guidance as to how one ought to live were so perfectly stated that He was Emmanuel – God among us, living and acting as a human being.

He’s not some kind of bizarre God/man hybrid like Herakles or Luthien – He is truly and totally 100% God, and also truly and totally 100% human. The question is not, is the apple red or green?, but rather, is the apple red or round? And the answer is, of course, both, and totally so for both.

As for the Resurrection, there is no question in my mind that something happened – something that was life-changing for His followers – and that that something was without precedent, beyond human experience. Paul gets very analytical with it in I Corinthians 15, and the points he makes are very valid.

For a First Century Jew or Greek, survival after death was a given – but nigh onto pointless. Faced with lekatt’s evidence, the typical First Century man would have said, “So? What’s your point?” Spirits were ghosts, wisps of ectoplasm impotent to influence anything, even their own fate. The body was what acted, and they were as firm as any modern Materialist that the death of the mortal body was the end of any ability to act or influence anything else.

For Jesus’s mortal body to have risen from the grave would have been interesting but of little consequence – legend told of many revivals from death. They would have regarded the First Easter as a sort of Night of the Undead Messiah, with the accounts characterized by the verb “to shamble.”

Instead, what happened was something totally new. The Risen Jesus, whatever the significance of it may have been, was someone with a body like ours, capable of eating fish, showing the wounds of the Crucifixion, but without human limitations – capable of appearing and disappearing, of passing through locked doors, etc.

That is why Paul’s insistence that without the Resurrection, “our faith is in vain,” – Paul fully expected to survive, but as a wraith, laden with regret and impotence. For everlasting life, full and abundant, a body was called for. And the Resurrection promised just that, a new, improved model, without the limitations of Adam Mark I.

30

I hope you fine Christians won’t mind a non-Christian interloper in your Great Debate. I just wanted to share my favorite Christian web site, for what it can contribute to this topic.

Liberals Like Christ
http://liberalslikechrist.org

The site title can be syntactically parsed two ways, and the author meant it in both senses. As he put it,

Politically speaking
If you are
a LIBERAL,
you should
“LIKE CHRIST”

and/or

Religiously speaking
If you want to be
“LIKE CHRIST”,
you should
be a LIBERAL.

31

Mangetout:

Actually that is not quite correct. I don’t care so much what various religious people believe but rather whether they have a good reason for believing it or not. With regards to liberal Christianity this belief seems to be based to a large degree on socialization from birth and what makes you feel comfortable/loved or whatever other selfish need you have that needs fulfilling. It is my thought that these reasons are not good enough considering the magnitude of the claims in the supernatural.

I thought this thread was tailor made for my position. I agree with the OP criticisms of liberal Christianity darn close to 100%. I think that the only thing preventing liberal Christians making the mythological slide to atheism or agnosticism is irrationality.

I think if you read my past posts my position has been consistent. However if it is still not clear I don’t have a problem with answering any of your questions in a new thread assuming you’ll do the same for me. Great debates is the forum I visit most frequently and since it is a religious matter I think it most appropriate.

Let me know if your interested.

32

Pleonast

You are using a different definition of the term miracle than I am using and what I think others in this thread are using. Should I get in any future debates with you I will be fine with using your definition but will then be forced to ask you why not worship Marvel comics as those superman tales sure do inspire awe and wonder, or at least they did when I was a child (much like god).:wink:

33

Polycarp

In agreeing with Siege it seems that you are jumping underneath some of my literary daggers? Do you think you can talk your way out?

Also are you ever going to answer those questions you promised me regarding the inconsistencies of your belief system or are out comfortable with the label I have given you for not keeping your word? That label BTW starts with the letter L.

34

OK, then if it’s not about salvation, you Christians have nothing to offer, and we can all just move along.

A proposed way of life is worth nothing unless there’s an accompanying reason to adopt that way of life. Buddhism claims its way of life will benefit you here and now (and for the Northern Buddhists, perhaps a reincarnation). Conservative Christians say their way of life will lead to salvation and eternal life.

If loving one’s neighbor as much as oneself doesn’t give a reward in the afterlife, there’s clearly no reason to adopt that way of life. It certainly doesn’t pay off in this life.

One loves something because they value it. As much as we’d like to think we consider all human lives equally valuable, it is irrefutable that we value some people higher than others, and for very good reason. We might have friends, family, or lovers whom we love as much as ourselves, all well and good. OTOH, my neighbor might be a total jerk who would never do anything for me. Even if I’m no better, clearly I can assign a pretty low value to the neighbor, since he cannot improve my quality of life and may quite likely detract from it. But were I to love him as myself, I would have to be willing to do something to better him just as readily as I would do something to better myself, or to better a beloved family member. My happiness and that of those I truly value would be subjugated to this principle, and I would be made a slave of all my neighbors.

If I was to adopt that way of life, which is clearly detrimental to my life on earth, then I’d need a darn good reason to do so. So if it’s not about salvation and the afterlife, then what reason would people possibly have to really love their neighbors as they love themselves??

35

Universalism? In contradiction to free will? Is that your belief? Might I inquire as to how you square this with the words of Jesus in John 3:18:
Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

Also, FYI, RTFirefly, as a fellow believer, I deeply, deeply resent the use of the term “fundie”. It is disrespectful, derogatory, and dismissive.

As to some of the other comments noted, I have to say I’m dismayed. It appears that to some people, their personal “feelings” determine the truth or inspiration of the Bible. Picture me shaking my head in confusion here, folks. Think about it: when you disregard the necessity that miracles actually be,well, miraculous and true, believe that man (read:science) has determined how creation began, thus giving science the upper hand when reading and accepting scripture, well…how on earth does one then begin to excise and cut-and-paste to arrive at some theology only loosely related to Christianity? Throw in a healthy dose of metaphor and allegory whenever a passage becomes difficult or confusing at first glance, and pretty soon what you’ve come up with can only by stretching be considered related to essential Christian faith.

As has been said before and with more cleverness: if God didn’t mean what He said, why didn’t He say what he meant?

Liberal Christian means to me (a firm Fundamentalist) accepting man’s thoughts on par with scripture, updating and revising that scripture, modernizing because after all, God couldn’t have meant what He said, and besides, times have changed, and we’re ever so much smarter and more civilized today, and gosh, if God would only have waited 2,000 more years to send Jesus, why, sure, He’d have been ever so open-minded and tolerant and non-judgmental 'cause we sure do know how darn awful those things are.

Completely disregarding inconvenient scripture because God perhaps, just perhaps, has a different concept of the purpose of His creation than we do.

36

When I was a child we sang a hymn that began, “I serve a risen Savior; he’s in the world today…”

That’s what I believe and that’s why I think that it is a good thing to trust our feelings and our thoughts to know what to do. When God answers prayer or speaks to me through art or nature or another person, I need to listen with an open heart and not just with an open Bible.

It has been so refreshing and deeply comforting here to be among friends who remind me of the humanity of Jesus. That is what makes me able to sense the brother and the friend in him. He becomes again the Jesus of my childhood that I used to talk out loud to at night, imagining him sitting at the end of my bed.

As I grew older, I began to understand terms like the Incarnation and the Sacrifice. At some point, maybe even in a moment of despair, I began to believe that if I had been the only person in the world, it would all have happened just for me.

I’ve had miracles in my life. I have no reason to disbelieve the miracles in the Bible. Even science is miraculous to me. I don’t believe in a literal Adam and Eve, but I don’t believe in the Creator – just more complex and stunning than we can imagine.

I believe that all paths of love lead to God and that we can learn from all of them. But I think I would be a Christian even if there were no promise of eternal life. It has added some measure of harmony and pleasure to my life.

I don’t believe in hell or damnation for anyone. I know what it is like to love a child unconditionally. And I know that God loves me more.

And I believe that loving God requires loving my neighbor and that doesn’t just mean having good feelings about the people next door. It does require personal sacrifice in terms of time and sharing and giving.

37

I wish to correct one BIG mistake. I DO believe in a Creator.

Sorry.

38

NaSultainne, not long before I posted in this thread, I explained the reasons for my rejection of the notion that only Christians go to heavenin this GD thread. Since you cited John, I’ll cite Matthew 25:31-46 again. I would also like it very much if you could post an opinion in a thread I started last week about why some people seem need to determine who does and does not get into heaven.

Thank you,
CJ

39

Certainly. I have twice put together a statement on why I do not see my beliefs as inconsistent, and decided they were inadequate to answer your comments, and therefore declined to post them.

Start a thread and I will answer specific questions and points. Feel free to quote your previous questions – but I will not re-address linked multipage threads; I want specific points on which you see inconsistency and error.

40

Na Sultainne, I can fully respect the idea that “fundy” is a derisive term which is offensive to you. For the record, I know several fundamentalists who try to live out their understanding of what God is calling them to do, and for whom I have immense respect. I personally use “fundy” to describe a few “Chevy Chase Christians” – those whose expressed views seem to carry the attitude “I’m saved and you’re not, so nyah, nyah!” This to me is far from the sense of humility and concern for the salvation and needs of others that should characterize one who follows Christ as Lord and Savior, IMO. I trust you can see the distinction.

However, I’d like to draw your attention to one thing. Whatever “inspired/God-breathed” may imply to various people and to what extent it applies to the Bible as a whole (both being arguable questions), the document we have between faux-leather covers is itself unquestionably the product of human beings. The theory that God inspired it verbatim is a human theory. It itself claims only that (a) God Himself wrote the first version of the Ten Commandments, (b) He spoke through the mouths of prophets, and © it records (some of) the words of Christ, who is seen by most Christins as the Incarnate Son of God.

That Ezekiel, Mark, or other people might have been in error in stating that X caused Y or in describing the origins of some natural phenomenon is not in and of itself a rejection of Scripture, far less of the God whom it presumes to describe. That a given passage may have been a parable, a metaphor, or otherwise not literal historical narrative is something on which we all agree – the question is which passages we apply that non-literality to. That you and I may disagree on, e.g., the historicity of Genesis 11:1-9, is no different than our agreeing that there was probably not a historical individual who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, was set upon by thieves and rescued by a man from Samaria.