NorthOfNorth wrote on Aug 18
th, 2011 at 8:15am:
Karnal wrote on Aug 17
th, 2011 at 12:06pm:
Mind you, this doesn't mean that the Pauline messiah myth ISN'T wrong. But without the Bible, how can you ever verify this?
But by using the term 'myth' you'd be suggesting that the story does not necessarily require adherence to any historical truth and need not appeal to the rational mind but to the emotional 'heart'.
By myth I mean a lineage of pagan sacrificial gods like Osiris, Dionysis, Attis and Mithras (myth?) - the thesis of Freke and Gandy in
the Jesus Mysteries - a very good read.
Myths are stories where truth, the obsession of Christianity, lies within the text itself - not in a historical person or series of events. Within paganism, the "truth" of the object of prayer/devotion is not so important. Your devotion is.
So yes, Helian, you're spot on.
As theologians like CS lewis have argued, Christianity can't be proven rationally or historically. And why would you want to?
This only becomes the point if you're basing your professed superiority over other faiths on the "truth" of your own. It becomes a legal question - a question that is not based in faith or the teachings of Jesus, but narrow fundamentalist dogma.
Conservative Christian fundamentalists lament how modern spirituality has become a supermarket, how people flick from Buddhism to Scientology to Christianity, etc, and blend them all into a post-modern soup. The problem with this is that the "truth" gets lost - that hard truths get avoided, that people will just do whatever they think sounds nice.
Maybe. But this is how Paul created Christianity, and it's how knowledge has travelled around the globe since the beginning of language, travel and trade.
Christian fundamentalists have no answers to the question of truth. All they can ever really say is that they feel Jesus in their hearts - that's the truth.
I have no problem with that.