My Take On Jesus

[Bruce Burleson]

Hello. I’m from the Sam Harris “The Reason Project” forum, and just found out about you. I’m a Christian, practicing lawyer, ordained minister, husband, father, grandfather and Texan. I speak a little Spanish and Italian (lived in Europe about 4 ½ years), and I’ve studied a little Koine Greek. I play a bit of guitar, bass and mandolin, and occasionally write songs. I used to have a decent voice, but my range has decreased in the past few years. I’ve enjoyed debating non-believers on Sam Harris, and thought I would hang around here awhile. My plan is to post once every day or two, and pretty much confine myself to one thread. I look forward to the exchange of ideas and experiences, and I anticipate that I will learn a lot from you.
I’ve decided to entitle this thread “My Take On Jesus.” I’ll give you a brief overview of the basis of my faith, throw you a little red meat, and then see what happens. Bon appetit’.

I’m a non-denominational Christian, not affiliated with any church. I don’t feel bound by any particular interpretation of the Bible or any particular doctrine. I don’t really like the concepts of “Bible,” “Scripture,” “New Testament,” etc., but prefer just to look at the early Christian writings and evaluate each one of them on an evidentiary basis. Certain writings, such as those of Paul, appear to me to have a higher historical value than writings such as Revelation. The seven basically undisputed Pauline epistles have the highest historical value, with Mark, Hebrews and Luke-Acts coming second. The Pastorals, the other General Epistles, and Revelation are at the bottom as far as the historical reliability of Christian writings is concerned.
The Jewish writings known as the Old Testament are of less historical importance to me. While some of them appear to be accurate, many are not, and many fall in the symbolic or mythical class of writings. I don’t see the OT as having much value today as far as how I live my life. And, by the way, my interpretation of Christianity is just that, my interpretation. No attempt will be made to argue that it is binding on anyone else.

Generally, my faith has two prongs: 1) an objective prong based on what I understand to be historical facts about Jesus found in early Christian writings, which is subject completely to rational analysis; and 2) a subjective prong, based upon my own personal experiences and those of others whom I know, which I will discuss as a form of revelation. I’ll discuss these more as time goes on, but for now it is appropriate to point out that I neither consider the subjective, revelatory aspect of my faith to be 100% rational, nor do I consider it to be irrational. I like to use the term arational, simply meaning that it, like other aspects of the human experience, is in a different category in which reason is not the primary consideration. However, that does not mean that it should be shielded from rational analysis and critique, and I expect that you will do plenty of that.

Well, that’s enough to get started. I hope someone is interesting in engaging me in a lively discussion.

[TBickle]

What other aspects of your life are "arational"?

Sounds like just another escape route so you don't have to agree that your beliefs are irrational when pressed.

[Pombolo]

You've already declared that you use rational analysis when it suits you, and ignore it in favour of subjective acceptance of personal experiences when it suits you. Further, you have invented your own category (arational) specifically to host those experiences and revelations that you do not wish to treat differently. This smacks of a priori decision making: inventing new catergories and criteria in order to hold onto things - instead of using the criteria to decide whether you should be holding onto them.

There is nothing to debate with someone who does that. Anything that this forum sends your way can simply be filed into one of your categories that you consider different from objective rationality.

[week15]

I'm also interested in this "arational" category. Rationality seems an all or none endeavor. Could it be that you are re-branding base premises (which can seldom be proven) as outside of rationality? Do you use these "arational" premises as starting points of rational debate or as the end point?

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Welcome to Ratz, Bruce.

You seem to have some fairly clearly thought-out ideas about your own faith. I hope that we can make you question those ideas a little further; I did with my own and I found it lifted a huge burden of clutter from my life.

To those that have responded to this thread already, can I just say that I find your responses mostly unwelcoming and unnecessarily aggressive. This is not RD.net. We don't throw christians to the lions here - especially those that open with such a reasonable (albeit flawed IMO) opening. Bruce is not a 'fundie fucktard' to be impaled upon a spike outside our gates. Civility costs nothing and you catch more flies with honey than vinegar!

Everyone is welcome here as long as they are happy to participate and not too po-faced to cope with a little frivolous rambunctiousness.

IF Bruce returns to post again, I would expect a little more courtesy from our members, new or old.

[goodboyCerberus]

Civility costs nothing and you catch more flies with honey than vinegar!

Fruit flies, yes. Otherwise, vinegar.

Welcome, Bruce. I should warn you I haven't debated in quite a while and when I have things usually ended badly. I'll try my best to be civil.

For starters, I need some more clarification on your beliefs. Please define God, what it means to you, in your own words.

Also, would you please clarify why you don't put a lot of emphasis on the Old Testament? It seems like you would enjoy Thomas Jefferson's Bible (Full text: http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/). Jesus was supposed to fulfill a lot of prophecies from the Old Testament, was he not? If not, what makes him more special than an influential rabbi? Again, help me understand.

Thank you.

[Twoflower]

Welcome to Ratz, Bruce.

You seem to have some fairly clearly thought-out ideas about your own faith. I hope that we can make you question those ideas a little further; I did with my own and I found it lifted a huge burden of clutter from my life.

To those that have responded to this thread already, can I just say that I find your responses mostly unwelcoming and unnecessarily aggressive. This is not RD.net. We don't throw christians to the lions here - especially those that open with such a reasonable (albeit flawed IMO) opening. Bruce is not a 'fundie fucktard' to be impaled upon a spike outside our gates. Civility costs nothing and you catch more flies with honey than vinegar!

Everyone is welcome here as long as they are happy to participate and not too po-faced to cope with a little frivolous rambunctiousness.

IF Bruce returns to post again, I would expect a little more courtesy from our members, new or old.

I agree 100%. We don't jump on people here just because they believe in something, we engage them in polite and well thought out discussion. Please remember to play nice.
Welcome Bruce I hope you stay around as you your ideas are very interesting. I will read through them again when I am not so tired.

[Ameri Boi]

wait wait wait, you came from Sam Harris' website, yet you're a Christian...It's like someone said "Hi, I'm president of the Science club" only to say 5 seconds later "I have down syndrome." *cue the Sarah Palin retort* alright alright, jokes aside. Hi there

As a person seeking rational viewpoints of life, why are you more likely to trust the bible in comparison to other spiritual works or have you not experienced the various alternative faiths? do you find conflict between the claims of this book and observational reality? and finally, how do you come to the conclusion that there is a deity?

[FBM]

Welcome to Ratz, Bruce...
To those that have responded to this thread already, can I just say that I find your responses mostly unwelcoming and unnecessarily aggressive. This is not RD.net. ... IF Bruce returns to post again, I would expect a little more courtesy from our members, new or old.

I agree 100%. We don't jump on people here just because they believe in something, we engage them in polite and well thought out discussion. Please remember to play nice.
Welcome Bruce I hope you stay around as you your ideas are very interesting. I will read through them again when I am not so tired.

Thirdeded. Please try to play nice. I hope we can cultivate an atmosphere of mutual respect and tolerance. If there were more of that in the world, there wouldn't be so many wars.

Bruce, I hope you'll come back and discuss things with us. I'm particularly interested in your subjective experiences wrt the existence of a deity. I hope you'll elaborate on them a bit.

[Surendra Darathy]

Generally, my faith has two prongs: 1) an objective prong based on what I understand to be historical facts about Jesus found in early Christian writings, which is subject completely to rational analysis; and 2) a subjective prong, based upon my own personal experiences and those of others whom I know, which I will discuss as a form of revelation.

Two prongs don't make a rite!

[Azathoth]

Hi Bruce, I'm going to concentrate on one point in particular

The seven basically undisputed Pauline epistles have the highest historical value, with Mark, Hebrews and Luke-Acts coming second.

Why would these be undisputed? It was only the decision of a conclave of bishops in the middle ages that brought the book into it's current form dismissing swathes of conficting accounts to the apocrypha. Had they chosen some different ones would you would be debating the historical fact of those instead? There is also the matter of translation errors and the whole "chinese whispers" aspect of the whole thing where a lively political activist happened to get himself deified. I'm sure there was a renowned, battle-scarred veteran called Heracles once too.

EDIT:spelling

[Surendra Darathy]

Why would these be undisputed?

Right.

Generally, my faith has two prongs: 1) an objective prong based on what I understand to be historical facts about Jesus found in early Christian writings, which is subject completely to rational analysis; and 2) a subjective prong, based upon my own personal experiences and those of others whom I know, which I will discuss as a form of revelation.

What I've recognised about this approach is that it hedges on the subjectivity of Prong #1. Granting respect to dead authority is nothing if not subjective. It's a hedge on how something comes to be "undisputed" by the person who is offering it as something "undisputed". It defers to the authority of others who offer the same warrant based on their own subjectivity. It's a long chain of subjectivity, the whole chain of whispers.

I would not give a hard time to someone who said "I believe it because I want to". That takes personal responsibility. Trying to pass off Prong #1 as less subjective than #2 is trying to cajole MY respect for dead people.

[jd]

Generally, my faith has two prongs: 1) an objective prong based on what I understand to be historical facts about Jesus found in early Christian writings, which is subject completely to rational analysis;

Apart from him being a Jewish preacher called Jesus (or Yeshua), who was considered a follower of John the Baptist, came from Nazareth and got himself crucified by the Romans, what exactly would you suggest is rationally and historically knowable about Jesus?

[nonverbal]

Generally, my faith has two prongs: 1) an objective prong based on what I understand to be historical facts about Jesus found in early Christian writings, which is subject completely to rational analysis; and 2) a subjective prong, based upon my own personal experiences and those of others whom I know, which I will discuss as a form of revelation. I’ll discuss these more as time goes on, but for now it is appropriate to point out that I neither consider the subjective, revelatory aspect of my faith to be 100% rational, nor do I consider it to be irrational. I like to use the term arational, simply meaning that it, like other aspects of the human experience, is in a different category in which reason is not the primary consideration. However, that does not mean that it should be shielded from rational analysis and critique, and I expect that you will do plenty of that.

Hi, Bruce. You've now got a few questions to consider, and I hope you won't think I'm piling on here.

1. Do you think it's likely that Jesus, assuming he existed as a single person rather than as a composite literary character, had access to knowledge and understanding about magical tricks that were available to ambitious healers at the time?

2. Do you see your subjectively derived adherence to your faith as being entirely divorced from your reasoning functions? That is, neurologists can explain certain things about religious revelation that can tend to destroy it as a reason to adhere. How do you benefit by staying with your program, so to speak? Isn't it intellectually dishonest for you to remain a Christian?

[Bruce Burleson]

Wow, you guys really ARE friendly. I like you already. This is going to be fun. Personally, none of your responses seemed hostile to me. I've been called every name in the book on Sam Harris (paramecium, turd in the punchbowl of life, etc. - and those were the nice ones) - but they are a lawless bunch - sometimes the forum there resembles a drunken gun fight in a Dodge City saloon. Of course, I shot the place up from time to time myself. Don't get me wrong - I love 'em all.

As I indicated, I'm probably going to post once a day or so - still have to make a living, you know. So if I don't respond directly to one of your questions, it is not because I am avoiding you. I'll probably begin each post making a general response to the main questions, and then in the second part of my post I'll start building my case for my faith. The first prong of my faith is the historical, objective, rational prong. (By the way, whoever said "two prongs don't make a rite" made me split my gut laughing! Good one.) I'll get to the "arational" prong later, but since several of you commented on it, I want to emphasize that I consider that a starting point for conversation, not an ending point. In other words, I am not claiming that the subjective aspect of my faith experience is shut off from rational analysis. Sam Harris' brain studies are relevant, as are any other studies on human consciousness and experience. I call those experiences arational because they are not the product of deductive reasoning, but were mediated suddenly, unexpectedly. Without them, I would not have much in the way of faith today, as I do not think religious faith can be the product of rational processes alone. To use a metaphor from the Old Testament, reason, like Moses, can take you to the border of the promised land - the Jordan River - but it takes Joshua (Jesus) to reveal the other side. I'm not preaching, just trying to explain my experience. Any subjective experience is fair game for rational critique, but I do not think that something has to be the product of pure reason in order to be valid. If I meet one of you personally sometime (I've met several people on the Sam Harris forum), that experience will be a revelation to me about that person, but will not necessarily involve a rational deductive process. Information can be transmitted in arational ways, or at least that is my epistemological stance.

So now I will begin to build my edifice - beginning with the objective prong of my faith experience. This will take weeks, and I will build it one brick at a time. The objective prong of my experience deals with the historical Jesus, and what the historical evidence tells us about him. I assume that most of you reject the concept of biblical authority, of scripture being the inerrant and infallible Word of God. I have come to reject that myself. However, the writings that comprise what is called "The New Testament" are, nonetheless, historical writings that have some evidentiary value. I invite you to put aside the concept of Scripture, the Holy Bible, the Word of God, and the New Testament, and simply evaluate the early Christian writings for their historical content.

Someone raised the issue of what I referred to as the "undisputed writings of Paul," questioning why I made that assumption. Fair enough, I admit that I made an assumption there, because even the non-Christian scholars that I have read (including Bart Ehrman and Earl Doherty) seem to agree that the epistles to the Romans, Galatians, Corinthians (both of them), Philippians, and Thessalonians (the first one), and the letter to Philemon, were authentically Pauline. If you know of some reason to doubt this general consensus, by all means inform me. Someone wrote the letters, and the internal evidence says it is Paul. He clearly identifies himself, and the same personality and style of writing flows through each of them. Generally, these epistles are occasional and circumstantial, meaning that they deal with certain situations that were arising in the congregations to whom Paul ministered. This is not the style that is generally used by forgers - it is not a "once upon a time there was a man named Jesus" type writing. His references to Jesus are tangential, generally when something about the life of Jesus relates to the topic he is addressing. These are all hallmarks of historical authenticity. So, I stand by my position that these letters are basically undisputed. If you have evidence to the contrary, certainly I am interested.

Until you convince me otherwise, I'm assuming that Paul lived from the early part of the First Century CE to about the mid-sixties. This would have made him a contemporary of Jesus, if Jesus existed. The Jesus presented in the early Christian writings was about 30 years old in about the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar, which would have been about 29 CE. Paul is described as a young man in Acts 7 when Stephen was stoned, which would have been in the early to mid-30's (using the Acts chronology). So, these early Christian writings suggest a Paul who was a little younger, perhaps, than Jesus. The first point I want to make is that the available evidence indicates that Paul knew Jesus. This is not to suggest that he was a disciple of Jesus (he was not) nor that he knew him well or was his friend. But he had at least seen him physically and perhaps heard him, perhaps in Jerusalem. My objective evidence for this comes from Paul's second epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 16: Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. In Greek, the second phrase of the verse is ei kai egnoskamen kata sarka Kriston, alla nun ouketi ginoskomen. The phrase "according to the flesh" is used in early Christian writings to mean "physically." An example of this is found in Colossians 2:1 (see also 2:5), where "in the flesh" clearly means "physically." (Whether Colossians is Pauline or not - I think it is - it still gives us an example of how this particular phrase was used by Koine Greek speakers in the First Century CE). So, in II Cor. 5:16, Paul is saying that he is part of a group who had known Christ physically. He no longer knows him physically, because he understands that he now knows him spiritually. But previously, he knew him physically.

This is some evidence (Paul's own testimony) that he knew Jesus physically. There is, to my knowledge, no contradictory evidence. Therefore, the preponderance of the evidence is in favor of Paul knowing Jesus physically. It is rational to so conclude. This is important for later consideration of the historical claims of Christianity. I look forward to your comments.