Hey, huckelberry! Thanks for the thoughtful response. So, I think of the Gospel of John as a key Christian text of the late first century AD, one that was written by a community that was at odds with those Christians who identified with Thomas traditions. As such it tries to portray Jesus in a particular theological slant, one that clearly deifies Jesus to an extent unprecedented, as far as we know, up to that point. Noteworthy, however, is the fact that it does not provide a nativity narrative of any kind. Perhaps in pursuit of its high christology, it omits that stuff altogether. The human birth of Jesus only impedes our thinking of him as the Word of God.huckelberry wrote: ↑Wed Oct 05, 2022 5:17 amKishkumen ,I hope you do not mind if I find an invitation to expand a thought in your comment.
I suppose there may be some people who think John was watching a visual document of what is going to happen. It is possible that that is closer to Johns original belief, in that time. Actually it is possible I think that he did not, that he thought of it as I mentioned I do. People back then were not dumb. They understood poetic and imaginary narrative as communication of real ideas.
I am aware that it is possible to think of the entire Bible story as a fiction communicating some important ideas . The ideas can be about real relationships and principals of our life. God can be the potential for life that people have and have in community. There is something beyond just ourself in the human community which calls us to become more and better. It is possible to think of Jesus as a spiritual medicine to help people move toward that positive potential. We need forgiveness for error and self acceptance of our limitations for us to life with courage. The price and process of healing is in giving forgiveness to others and to help them overcome. As medicine to heal our weakness Jesus is the divine incarnate.
Now in truth I primarily believe these principals to be held in actually existing God , son and atonement. Their actual existence does not cover or diminish those basic principals but are surer foundation for them. Now I want to admit as a matter of true honesty I am not always as sure of this literalness as could be. I know of reasons to doubt and am actually a person who finds it difficult to not question and doubt. But to my mind if I am wrong about the literal existence of God I think the meaning of God and what God represents is something worth holding to .
I like to think of all of this in a way that puts together theology and philosophy, as much as I, being an amateur in both subjects, as well as New Testament, can. I do not believe that earliest participants in the Jesus movement thought that Jesus was literally the child of God, as the nativities would appear to describe. Instead, the narratives serve to explain, in story form, the superlative nature of Jesus' close relationship with Divinity. In this, these writers (Matthew and Luke) are following pagan precedents. I similarly do not think that Greeks really believed Alexander was the literal son of Zeus-Ammon, or that the Romans believed Augustus was the literal son of Apollo. Rather, a narrative explanation was offered to make sense out of the unique excellence of these figures.
I say this, and yet I am not suggesting that they did not believe in a kind of parent-child relationship between the gods and these historical giants. What I am saying is that the manifestation of their excellence was taken as evidence of such a relationship. In other words, "you can only be so marvelous by being the child of a deity." At that point, history does not matter so much as communicating the reality of that special nature. In my view, early Christology had Jesus adopted as the Son of God. That is what I think to this day, and it is the only thing that makes sense to me. Jesus was considered the Son of God because his followers experienced how amazing he was, and they wanted to express that amazing nature in a way that put him above the historical giants of that world: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Augustus.
This results in the obviously mythological but altogether meaningful and important nativity narratives. Jesus simply must have a story that explains him in terms familiar to those who knew about Alexander, Caesar, and Augustus, but his story has to make him better. His story must also conform to the moral niceties of the religious culture of the Jews. "John" brings in a touch of the philosophical sophistication of the Logos, and leaves out the nativities. But I doubt you would have John without the same impetus to describe Jesus as better than the competition.
I can only understand the incarnation through this lens. There is no way that I can make sense out of it by saying that the nativity narratives are literally historical accounts of what happened in the conception of the person Jesus of Nazareth. At the same time, for me it does not at all matter. But I think to most Christians who consider themselves orthodox Trinitarian Christians, it does matter. In a sense, I wish it did not, because taking it at face value seems so hokey to me. This does not mean that I reject Trinitarianism as a meaningful construct. To the contrary, I view David Bentley Hart's explanation of these things to be very attractive.
As human beings, we tell stories. Language is the tool we have to make sense out of our world and our place in it. Religious narratives are worthwhile in communicating and grappling with profound aspects of the human experience, and for those reasons I continue to care about them. But I have an extremely difficult time taking certain kinds of engagement with those narratives very seriously anymore. In this case, I know too much about the context in which Jesus was declared the Word and the Son of God to take those titles at face value.