For me, Jesus is the revelation of God. Ironically, Buddhism helped me see that in a way I never could have if I hadn’t listened to the wisdom of Buddhism - and thus I will always have a fondness for Buddhism.
Jesus is also “the fully Human one” (a phrase that plays well off of the oft used “Son of Man” moniker). I think we miss this in Christianity all too often when we emphasize Jesus’ divinity to a point that it is no longer really possible to call him human (example: if we believe God is “omniscient”, or all knowing, and we say Jesus is God, then how is it possible that Jesus was tempted? Temptation is not really possible if one knows everything.)
Agreed.
Not sure you understand how Wikipedia works - it is just as easy for you to go to one of those articles and dispute them. This is very important for recognizing just how reliable Wikipedia actually is. When there is an article with a long history of modifications - and articles like the ones I posted fit this bill - you are getting a pretty good representation of the modern consensus view. Of course, if I have caught your attention, I’d rather send you book recommendations that argue these points further and with much more detail. But for an internet discussion, it is more important to summarize, and hence, a Wikipedia article is adequate to introduce the concept, it seems to me.
Certainly. But we should take a majority like this seriously, and engage with their evidence and reasoning. Simply denying that they could be right about anything is…well, it’s denial. And that’s not healthy.
I do not think that it is impossible to be a Christian or to have faith and at the same time be realistic about the authorship of these books.
One thing to consider - while I do not believe John was written by an apostle named John, I do think it’s reasonable to assume that this gospel came out of a community that was founded by such an apostle - and perhaps the material that made up the book began with this apostle’s teachings. This is how an oral tradition works, and we need to keep in mind that the apostles were likely all (with perhaps the exception of Matthew) illiterate.
Must have fudged that - apologies. Let me try again - here is the article I wrote about the Nativity stories.
Not an accurate way of describing the way I think about the scriptures. I have written at great length on how I do think about the scriptures on my blog - especially in the series I’ve been linking in this thread.
Certainly. The way I think of this - particularly resurrection - may not match the way you do, but I absolutely believe in resurrection. I plan to write at length on the subject in “Book 2” of “Judaism and the Mystical Christ”, but for now: I believe that Jesus was resurrected into God. I believe that his disciples experienced his presence afterwards. Negatively: I think that when many Christians say “resurrection”, what they really mean is “resuscitation”, and I think these views impoverish the reality of resurrection.
Not a bad thing to believe in - and one a belief I have much hope in as well.
To the “bouncer” comment - I would say, to clarify, that I think it is possible that some are being drawn to Jesus without even knowing Jesus’ name. In other words - it’s not salvation by syllables. It’s salvation through the person.
Don’t have time to read the other two comments at the moment, but wanted to get to the last comment:
It really depends on what you mean by “pluralism”. We have to define the term. So, in short, yes - I’m all for pluralism. Now, do I mean that I think “all religions are the same”? Certainly not. Try to think of it this way: would you say that all languages are the same? It is certainly true that all languages have basic structures that are similar to each other, that quite often there are words that are nearly the same between langauge (parallel words, we might say), and that they are all capable of communicating the same ideas if we know how to translate well. But quite often, different languages draw out different nuances. And quite often, trying to translate a concept between languages results in things being “lost in translation”.
I find that Buddhism has helped me to think about consciousness in a way that Christianity never really did. I find that Buddhism has helped me to think about how important it is to “know thyself” - and to understand how I shape what I see, and I need to be aware of this so that I will not continue to block out things I do not want to see. And Buddhism has helped me to see things about Jesus that I never really saw before, as I mentioned before. But Buddhism and Christianity are certainly not the same. I will always be Christian - to suggest that I could be anything else would be as silly as pretending that I could somehow remove my “American-ness”. Can I grow through Buddhism in a way that many of my old Christian friends would not recognize me, in a sense? Yes - but I’m sure that if I were to begin to hang out exclusively in Buddhist circles (something I do not wish to do - though I love Buddhists and want to spend more time with them), they would “smell the Christian on me”, as it were.