The Easter Story

Were the Easter events able to be videoed or are they metaphorical narratives ?
The Empty Tomb
Note the difference between resustication and resurrection.
The former means a return to a past condition, the latter to taking up a new form of being.
What happened at Easter was not resustication. Jesus took on new form of existence.
The tomb, empty or not, was irrelevant, because Jesus was not rescusticated.

Note that 1 Co 15, does not mention an empty tomb
and that Jesus, after his death, was said to “appear” - a term used about apparitions in a vision.
Paul includes himself in the list of those to whom Jesus appeared, perhaps to bolster his standing.
He regards his experience, which he calls a vision, as equivalent to those of the others.
In the final part of 1 Co 15, Paul points to a change in nature between the resurrected and earthly body,
affirming the immaterial nature of the former. The resurrected body is in a different form.
This same principle can and should be applied to all the post-Crucifixion stories.
He was killed but we continue to experience the reality of his presence.

The death and resurrection of Jesus have always been seen together,- associated.
It is part of the ancient conflict between human domination systems and divinity
(or between religion and secular rule?).
The central claim of the Easter narrative is that
God through Christ disarmed and triumphed over the powers of this world,
(as we know that is not true, but has been a powerplay by the church).
Another understanding is as a disclosure of the way to new life:
"It is no longerI who live, but Christ who lives in me".
Following Jesus meant dying and being reborn to a new life.
The way of Jesus is the way of death and resurrection.
Another version presents the crucifixion as God giving up his own son,
That is how much He loves us!

"Jesus died for our sins" has two possible meanings:
1. God can only forgive us because Jesus died for us as a sacrifice for sin.
2. Jesus died because of human sin – because that is the way humanity responds to the divine challenge.
The first meaning is a product of the Temple system that claimed a monopoly on the divine interface.
This was the system that Jesus challenged, but which formed the foundation of Christian doctrine.

There are five primary understandings of the resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament.
Each makes different affirmations about Jesus.
1 and 2 emphasize that Jesus is Lord, and the domination system and the powers are not.
3 sees the end of Jesus's life as the embodiment of the path of transformation.
4 affirms that the death of Jesus as God’s only son is the incarnation of God’s love for us.
5 sees him as the once-for-all sacrifice
who brings an end to the law as the basis of the divine-human relationship.

What a tangled web we weave,
when first we struggle to understand the machinations of religion.

Images of Jesus

There is a strong connection between our image of Jesus and of our Christian life.

The popular image of Jesus is as the Divine Saviour:
He was the Son of God.
His purpose was to die for the sins of the world.
His message was about his identity and his purpose
We are then called to believe and put our trust in that message.

A slightly less common image is of Jesus as a teacher
This leads to following his moral teaching, in narrow or general terms.
We seek to live as Jesus said that we should.

Both of these images are incomplete.
This life in not about believing or behaving,
but about a transformative relationship with God.
BUT who or what is God? Is a relationship viable with such an entity?
This is the image that is developed in this book.

The book continues with memories of Borg's faith journey, which are not really very edifying.
By the end of his childhood, the popular image of Jesus was in place (as it was with me).
We had taken for granted the things that significant authority figures told us were true.
His first problem was with God.
He was said to be both ever present and up in heaven. How could that be?
He was experiencing the clash of cultures brought about by a materialistic world-view.
He stopped his daily prayers, was no longer afraid of hell, was perplexed but unconcerned.
A scholastic study of the ancient giants of faith legitimised his unbelief.
His childhood understanding of Christianity had collapsed, but nothing replaced it.
This was a pathway that many follow (as I did).

How to take Christianity seriously?
1. He learnt that the popular image of Jesus is untrue.
The Gospels are neither divine documents nor historical records,
but the developing tradition sof the early Christian movement
written in the first or second centuries and then modified in the next.
Much happened in those decades to change the traditional view of Jesus,
as early Christianity spread beyond Palestine and absorbed the concepts of other cultures.
The Gospels are not first-hand accounts for they reflect ideas developed at a later stage.
There is a large difference between the human Jesus and the Christ of faith
proclaimed in the Creeds of the fourth and fifth centuries.

This change is exemplified in the difference between the Gospel of John and earlier Gospels.
Both views of Jesus can not be true.
The image and words of Jesus in John's Gospel has no historical reality,
except that it portrays the form of Christianity developed in the second century.
(yet they are much valued by the Evangelical movement today.)
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Chapter 3. Chapter 3. .

rails of Predestination.

Chapter 4. Chapter 4.

Chapter 5. Chapter 5.

Chapter 6. Chapter 6. /a>

Chapter 7. Chapter 7.