From: Ant McWatt (antmcwatt@hotmail.co.uk)
Date: Tue Sep 27 2005 - 20:05:16 BST
Gavin Gee-Clough stated:
>>i prefer the gospel of thomas since it simply records
>>jesus’ own words, and thomas was his best and closest
>>disciple. oh and the emerging church cut it out of the
>>bible in the 2nd century ad. i wonder why?.......
Sam Norton replied September 9th:
>That’s highly debatable, and a bit of a modern conceit. If you’re
>interested in exploring it, have a look at this (if you’re in a hurry
>scroll down to ‘the new myth of christian origins’ as I think that is what
>you are articulating):
>
>http://www.spu.edu/depts/uc/response/summer2k5/features/davincicode.asp
Ant McWatt comments:
Sam, Gav, Case, Kevin & all fellow travellers,
I’ve had a look at Bishop Tom Wright’s speech given at Seattle Pacific
University last May (whose web address is given above by Sam) and have a
couple of comments to make.
Firstly, Bishop Wright creates a disingenuous comparison of the Gnostic
texts (which were written before the 4th century A.D.) with the fictional
“Da Vinci Code”. Only the latter is meant to be a “fantasy” so by comparing
the two as a similar kind of document is highly misleading (especially
considering, for instance, the number of fictional inventions in the
orthodox Bible’s Gospel of John).
Secondly, Bishop Wright sounds more than a little arrogant and zealous
(fanatical?) in at least one paragraph. Wright under-emphasises the
political reasons for why certain gospels were included in the modern Bible
and why certain ones were omitted. From King Hezekiah who used the Five
Books of “Moses” for political ends in the late 8th century BCE to the Roman
Emperor Constantine in the 4th century AD to King James in the 17th century,
you don’t have to scratch very far to realise that the Bible has always been
a useful instrument to support the power of male elites. Maybe when the
leader of the Church of England and the Pope are black women and the Gospel
of Mary Magdalene (helpfully still incomplete) is included in the Protestant
and Roman Catholic versions of the Bible, Sam might have justification to
think that it is indeed a “conceit” existing in modern everyday people to
question and analyse the various pre-4th century texts written about Jesus.
If there is conceit concerning this issue, I think it lies with Bishop
Wright’s speech. For instance, he states:
“Neo-Gnosticism is the philosophy that invites you to search deep inside
yourself and discover some exciting things by which you must then live. It
is the philosophy which declares that the only real moral imperative is that
you should then be true to what you find when you engage in that deep inward
search. But this is not a religion of redemption. It is not at all a Jewish
vision of the covenant God who sets free the helpless slaves. It appeals, on
the contrary, to the pride that says ‘I’m really quite an exciting person,
deep down, whatever I may look like outwardly’ - the theme of half the cheap
movies and novels in today’s world. It appeals to the stimulus of that
ever-deeper navel-gazing (‘finding out who I really am’) which is the
subject of a million self-help books, and the home-made validation of a
thousand ethical confusions.”
[Ant McWatt: I think the last sentences are a little patronising.]
“It corresponds, in other words, to what a great many people in our world
want to believe and want to do, rather than to the hard and bracing
challenge of the very Jewish gospel of Jesus. It appears to legitimate
precisely that sort of religion which a large swathe of America and a fair
chunk of Europe yearns for: a free-for-all, do-it-yourself spirituality,
with a strong though ineffective agenda of social protest against the powers
that be…”
[Ant McWatt: Considering the Church eventually lost most of its power and
prestige as did the Roman Empire and the British Empire, I think that shows
that any elite’s hold onto power is not insuperable. Moreover, Wright’s
phrase “strong though ineffective” sounds like an oxymoron used purely for
rhetorical effect.]
“And an I’m-OK-you’re-OK attitude on all matters religious and ethical. At
least, with one exception: You can have any sort of spirituality you like
(Zen, labyrinths, Tai Chi) as long as it isn’t orthodox Christianity.”
Ant McWatt comments on the whole paragraph:
Well, considering that William Tyndall was strangled by the Church
authorities for translating the Bible into everyday English (from the
original Greek and Hebrew which only a few scholars could read) in 1536, the
modern person has to ask themselves if we want these kind of authorities to
still guide us spiritually when they repressed the “Jewish vision of the
covenant God” from lay people for so long. The last thing the Church
authorities want is for lay people to look at the first accounts of Jesus,
Buddha etc and work out their own spirituality for themselves because that
would make the Church and all its acolytes largely redundant. It seems to
me that the modern Church authorities are just desperate to hold on to as
much power as they can (mostly for the benefit of a white male elite) for as
long as they can. For instance, in “The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus
and the First Woman Apostle” by Karen L. King (who is a Professor of
Ecclesiastical History at Harvard University Divinity School), it is shown
that the ‘Gospel of Mary’ (which states that Christian Church leadership
should be based upon spiritual achievement rather than on having a male
body) was excised from the orthodox Bible for political not theological
reasons.
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0944344585/ref=pd_sxp_elt_l1/102-0732735-7656934)
Moreover, note the following criticism by Dr Robert Beckford (who is
director of the Centre for Black Theology at the University of Birmingham,
England):
“I’m not the first scholar to argue that traditions of white supremacy and
superiority are still very much bound up in white Christian expression
within Britain,” he says. “And as far as I can see, there has been no
radical attempt in my lifetime to overturn those traditions.”
To support his claims Beckford observes that there are “10 times” more books
written by white Christian theologians that discuss whether animals have
souls than there are on how churches can be inclusive and tackle racism.
“Now, I haven’t got anything against people being nice to animals, but I do
think God will have something to say to a Christian theological community
that writes more about being nice to Fido the dog and Che Che the cat than
dealing with issues of race and ethnicity and the church’s complicity with
racial terror in its history.”
(http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,5500,1485019,00.html)
Moreover, personal spirituality must be experienced first hand. Other
people can guide you but the moment you take someone else’s word as a guide
for ethical behaviour (such as a minister in a Church) instead of thinking
it through for yourself, it is the start of the slippery slope where Dynamic
Quality eventually becomes gilded to death by static interpretations that
lead to the type of evils (such as the Crusades and the Inquisition) that
the Church instigated (in the name of “Our Lord”) over the last 2000 years.
Have the leaders of the Christian Church improved much? This is certainly
debatable as indicated by the recent cases of child abuse by the Christian
clergy and as Dr Robert Beckford observed with Dr Dick Land, a Southern
Baptist minister in Georgia, USA. For instance, in front of his
congregation, Dr Land took George Bush to task for not sending more troops
into Iraq, giving a chilling glimpse into the way the Christian
interpretation of the Bible has fuelled the Iraqi occupation. ‘I would have
sent 500,000 troops not 150,000’ Dr Dick declares.
(http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/debates/bible.html)
By simply comparing the Buddhist and Christian traditions, the historical
evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the various Christian churches (and
their controlling authorities) are, by and large, a static hindrance for an
individual’s moral self-development and that it’s much better just to take
the Buddha’s (MOQ orientated) advice to “see for yourself”.
Best wishes,
Anthony.
“And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good –
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
www.robertpirsig.org
.
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