Posted: Apr 9, 08 4:13pm
Anyone who is familiar with the writings of Dr. Marcus Borg will recognize the Title of this discussion as having come from his writings. My source for many of the ideas herein is a website created by Cam Howard titled "A Portrait of Jesus" based on the work of Dr. Marcus Borg." It can be found at http://www.united.edu/portrait/index.shtml Dr. Borg, an internationally known biblical and Jesus scholar, has written many books that can help one to see the Bible and Jesus in a new way.
The pre-Easter Jesus is the historical Jesus, who was a Jewish mystic, healer, wisdom teacher, social prophet, and movement founder. The post-Easter Jesus is the continuing presence that his followers experienced after his death and which they spoke of as the light of the world, the bread of life, the Messiah, and the Only Way. An empty tomb was one way of speaking about that experience. These are all images/metaphors that people used to speak of their experience of Jesus. They are, as Dr. Borg says, profoundly true but not necessarily literally true.
The post-Easter Jesus is also the Jesus of the developing Christian tradition which emerged over time and was canonized in the Nicene Creed in 325 ce. However, the historical Jesus did not speak of himself in these ways. As the South African scholar Albert Nolan has remarked, "we consistently underrate Jesus as a figure of history, and when we emphasize his divinity at the expense of his humanity, we lose track of the utterly remarkable human being he was."
I would like to talk about the historical, pre-Easter Jesus and what he had to say and how his words (the actual words that can be attributed to him as opposed to those of Paul and other apostles) have affected the world. And I would like us to try to do that without getting into contentious theological arguments. This is a new vision of Jesus with a spirit dimension, wisdom dimension, and political dimension which leads to a vision of the Christian life with those same three dimensions.
For those of you who are agnostic or atheistic, I think you can participate in this discussion also. The historical Jesus was a real human being whose philosophies have impacted the world in amazing ways. We can discuss those philosophies from a social and political viewpoint without your belief in a God, so please join us.
