Paragraph 1376 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Quote:

What would Billy Connolly say?

Movement Away from the Authentic Teachings of Jesus


     After Jesus' death, those who understood the genuine teaching of Jesus recognized him as one of a long line of savants within the Perennial Tradition 2--such as Hermes and Plato--who initiated chosen disciples into a mystical rebirth of the soul into a Higher Consciousness.

     Each Perennialist teacher interpreted the fundamental message about spiritual regeneration in terms of the needs of the people during their age. So we have the Hermetic teachings during the time of Hermes Trismegistus, the Mystery teachings during the days of Egypt and Greece, Platonism during the time of Plato, Neo-Platonism during the time of Plotinus--each an embodiment of the Perennial Tradition. The genuine, hidden teachings of Jesus--Esoteric Christianity--is one of those embodiments.

     Early Christianity developed in the crowded, poverty-stricken cities of Asia Minor, finding its adherents among the working class and slaves. Throughout the Roman empire, there was intense social ferment . In the century before Jesus, a widespread revolt of slaves led by Spartacus conquered most of southern Italy and threatened the Roman Empire.

     Within a short time, there came into being a new sacerdotal state-supported Church 3 which misrepresented Jesus as a god. Such genuine adepts as Paul, Clement of Alexandria, Marcion, Valentinus, and Origen, understood Jesus' true teachings and did not view him as a deity but as a mystical teacher. Those who instructed initiates in the authentic teachings of Jesus found it necessary to go underground, because a tyrannous, bureaucratic "church" was taken over by the Roman Empire and deformed into a "state religion."

       During this period, there developed a large number of writings which claimed to be authentic representations of Jesus' life and teachings. In this morass of confusion, these varied interpretations of Jesus' teachings vied for acceptance.

     One of the persons who first wrote about Jesus was a man who had been an enemy of the church until he experienced a mystical conversion. Paul saw himself as an apostle (one sent on a mission), perhaps "the" apostle, of Jesus. He believed he had actually experienced Jesus in a mystical encounter during which he was commissioned to spread the "good news"--the gospel of Jesus' teaching--presenting a conception of God as forgiving, loving, and wise.

     Paul was aghast when he learned that Peter and some of the other apostles of Jesus in Jerusalem and other cities were interpreting Jesus's message as an extension of Judaism, using the Hebrew Old Testament as a major scripture.

"Paul is the only one who had any apprehension of the real esoteric significance of the Christ Myth in its cosmic aspects, while at the same time he was obliged to base his teachings principally on the exoteric beliefs of his hearers which centred round the personal Jesus."

NorthofNorth the Big Fella is forgiving but not that forgiving. I don't do buses, as that would involve having to sit with the creep shows that inhabit public transport now.

Most probably have my lights punched by people like those moles on the Gold Coast recently.

Think I'll stick to the Mountain, decided lack of people here.

What about a Christianity as Bishop Spong imagines it, sans miracles, sans iron age beliefs, concentrating only on the goodness of its central character, hopefully leading us to realise that "we can because we think we can" do right by others without exception because we have a human incarnation of the golden rule. That we can be convinced, courageous and compassionate within that paradigm of "righteousness incarnate", encouraging us to attain ultimate goodness.

Like truth itself (the journey towards it being worthy of the effort without the expectation of fully apprehending it), so too goodness being worthy of the same journey.

In the end for us westerners, we'd be back to Plato (which the early Christian fathers so admired and absorbed) - his form of the good and his form of the true being the greatest ideals and the most worthy of pursuit.