Post by scottperry on May 23, 2015 14:11:41 GMT -5
Laura and Red, I must tell you how very much I enjoyed the discussion last night about Jefferson's views of Christianity and of the apostle Paul. I thought I would take this opportunity to try to develop this conversation a bit further....
Jefferson had great disdain for Paul. He called him one of the "first corrupters" of Christianity. That too was my initial reaction to Paul, once I first realized how vastly different Paul's teachings about "how and why we are forgiven" were from Jesus's teachings about "how and why we are forgiven". Jesus taught, as in the Lord's Prayer, that we are forgiven just as we learn to forgive others. Paul taught that forgiveness was some sort of a mystical thing that required some sort of a blind faith in some certain human-blood-sacrifice made to appease a certain God's apparent divine wrath that we poor humans must otherwise be subjected to. How different.
I can easily see why Jefferson felt this way, but while I agree that Paul seriously "watered down" Christianity, I also believe that if Paul hadn't "watered down" Christianity, Christianity might not have survived at all beyond the first 100 years beyond Jesus's death. For this reason, while I agree that Paul acted to seriously dilute Christianity, at the same time he may have been instrumental in preserving it so that the more "potent" form of Christianity, namely the "internal disciplines" that Jesus taught, are still accessible to us to this day for folks like you and I.
What do I mean by "internal disciplines"? I mean the actual "changes of heart" that Jesus seemed to be trying to teach again and again throughout the first 90% of the first three Gospels, but about which Paul says almost nothing. As Laura said last night, Paul was a legalistic-lawyer type of person, he liked to write "rules of conduct" to try to explain Christianity. Jesus was more of a "spiritual-moralist" type of person. Jesus tended to answer questions by describing the proper "internal attitude" one must culture within one's self in order to best address the problems of daily life. While the teachings of a legalistic-lawyer vs: the teachings of a spiritual-moralist do not necessarily have to be seen as being in conflict, they are still very very different.
I believe that the legalistic-lawyer type and the spiritual-moralist type might in some ways coincide with the typical phases of human development. When a child is say 6 or 7, his mother may teach him, "do not swear". At that point the child really has no understanding of why swearing is inappropriate, but he defers to his mother's greater understanding of the world, so he (hopefully) accepts his mother's "rule" and follows it to good effect. When the child grows to an adult, he then begins to truly understand that swearing is not all black and white. It has all sorts of shades of gray, and that certain words are generally seen as acceptable when say, he hits his thumb with a hammer, or perhaps when he is telling a certain "racy joke" at a party. Both the child and the adult are addressing the same question about how not to offend others with one's words. The child must act rather simply by following a rule apparently made by his mother. The adult must use his now greater reasoning powers and know exactly when the racy joke is just a bit too vulgar, and when it is not.
So which teacher is right and which teacher is wrong? The mother is the child's first teacher. The light of one's own inner understanding is the adult's teacher. Both teachers are hopefully right, but they are teaching two very very different things. That is my view of Paul vs: Jesus. I have a sense that some might now might be ready to "graduate" from the legalistic teachings of Paul, on up to the more moralistic teachings of Jesus himself. I think Jefferson was almost certainly of the same opinion.
Jefferson once predicted that the whole nation would become Unitarian within the next 70 years. Jefferson was also a wild optimist. I believe that it was Jefferson's wild optimism and faith in the nobility of the human spirit that enabled him to bring as many of us up out of the "dark ages" as he did. While his prediction about Unitarianism may have gotten the dates slightly off, it is my hope that this Jeffersonian Church thing may be an idea whose time has come, and that it might be able to ride on the shoulders of Jefferson's original brilliance to bring yet more of us up out of the "dark ages. Thoughts anyone?
Jefferson had great disdain for Paul. He called him one of the "first corrupters" of Christianity. That too was my initial reaction to Paul, once I first realized how vastly different Paul's teachings about "how and why we are forgiven" were from Jesus's teachings about "how and why we are forgiven". Jesus taught, as in the Lord's Prayer, that we are forgiven just as we learn to forgive others. Paul taught that forgiveness was some sort of a mystical thing that required some sort of a blind faith in some certain human-blood-sacrifice made to appease a certain God's apparent divine wrath that we poor humans must otherwise be subjected to. How different.
I can easily see why Jefferson felt this way, but while I agree that Paul seriously "watered down" Christianity, I also believe that if Paul hadn't "watered down" Christianity, Christianity might not have survived at all beyond the first 100 years beyond Jesus's death. For this reason, while I agree that Paul acted to seriously dilute Christianity, at the same time he may have been instrumental in preserving it so that the more "potent" form of Christianity, namely the "internal disciplines" that Jesus taught, are still accessible to us to this day for folks like you and I.
What do I mean by "internal disciplines"? I mean the actual "changes of heart" that Jesus seemed to be trying to teach again and again throughout the first 90% of the first three Gospels, but about which Paul says almost nothing. As Laura said last night, Paul was a legalistic-lawyer type of person, he liked to write "rules of conduct" to try to explain Christianity. Jesus was more of a "spiritual-moralist" type of person. Jesus tended to answer questions by describing the proper "internal attitude" one must culture within one's self in order to best address the problems of daily life. While the teachings of a legalistic-lawyer vs: the teachings of a spiritual-moralist do not necessarily have to be seen as being in conflict, they are still very very different.
I believe that the legalistic-lawyer type and the spiritual-moralist type might in some ways coincide with the typical phases of human development. When a child is say 6 or 7, his mother may teach him, "do not swear". At that point the child really has no understanding of why swearing is inappropriate, but he defers to his mother's greater understanding of the world, so he (hopefully) accepts his mother's "rule" and follows it to good effect. When the child grows to an adult, he then begins to truly understand that swearing is not all black and white. It has all sorts of shades of gray, and that certain words are generally seen as acceptable when say, he hits his thumb with a hammer, or perhaps when he is telling a certain "racy joke" at a party. Both the child and the adult are addressing the same question about how not to offend others with one's words. The child must act rather simply by following a rule apparently made by his mother. The adult must use his now greater reasoning powers and know exactly when the racy joke is just a bit too vulgar, and when it is not.
So which teacher is right and which teacher is wrong? The mother is the child's first teacher. The light of one's own inner understanding is the adult's teacher. Both teachers are hopefully right, but they are teaching two very very different things. That is my view of Paul vs: Jesus. I have a sense that some might now might be ready to "graduate" from the legalistic teachings of Paul, on up to the more moralistic teachings of Jesus himself. I think Jefferson was almost certainly of the same opinion.
Jefferson once predicted that the whole nation would become Unitarian within the next 70 years. Jefferson was also a wild optimist. I believe that it was Jefferson's wild optimism and faith in the nobility of the human spirit that enabled him to bring as many of us up out of the "dark ages" as he did. While his prediction about Unitarianism may have gotten the dates slightly off, it is my hope that this Jeffersonian Church thing may be an idea whose time has come, and that it might be able to ride on the shoulders of Jefferson's original brilliance to bring yet more of us up out of the "dark ages. Thoughts anyone?
