{"id":10145,"date":"2019-04-22T11:56:09","date_gmt":"2019-04-22T15:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=10145"},"modified":"2019-04-22T11:56:09","modified_gmt":"2019-04-22T15:56:09","slug":"easter-greetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=10145","title":{"rendered":"Easter Greetings"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Easter column<\/a> by the New York Times’<\/i> Nicholas Kristof consists of questions put to the President of Union Theological Seminary. Most self-identified Christians will be startled by some of her remarks.<\/p>\n

\n

KRISTOF<\/b>   Happy Easter, Reverend Jones! To start, do you think of Easter as a literal flesh-and-blood resurrection? I have problems with that.<\/p>\n

JONES<\/b>   When you look in the Gospels, the stories are all over the place. There\u2019s no resurrection story in Mark, just an empty tomb. Those who claim to know whether or not it happened are kidding themselves<\/span>. But that empty tomb symbolizes that the ultimate love in our lives cannot be crucified and killed.<\/p>\n

[ … ]<\/p>\n

KRISTOF<\/b>   But without a physical resurrection, isn\u2019t there a risk that we are left with just the crucifixion?<\/p>\n

JONES<\/b>   Crucifixion is not something that God is orchestrating from upstairs. The pervasive idea of an abusive God-father who sends his own kid to the cross so God could forgive people is nuts<\/span>.<\/p>\n

[ … ]<\/p>\n

KRISTOF<\/b>  What about other miracles of the New Testament? Say, the virgin birth?<\/p>\n

JONES<\/b>   I find the virgin birth a bizarre claim<\/span>. It has nothing to do with Jesus\u2019 message. The virgin birth only becomes important if you have a theology in which sexuality is considered sinful<\/span>. It also promotes this notion that the pure, untouched female body is the best body, and that idea has led to centuries of oppressing women<\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good for Reverend Jones; the orthodox Christian story is so incandescently crazy that I marvel that anybody, anywhere, takes it seriously. Certainly, the average pew-sitter is there for something other than insight into the workings of reality.<\/p>\n

Albert the Pious, y’all will not be surprised to learn, is some kind of annoyed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

[W]hat we need to notice here is the incredible candor with which she speaks, the incredible candor with which she simply overthrows the entire edifice of orthodox biblical Christianity.<\/p>\n

She is inventing an entirely new religion<\/span> in the course of this conversation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No. Not really. It is true that her remarks represent a breach with orthodox, contemporary Christianity, but the humdrum truth is that the main lines of Christian thought were not settled until Augustine squelched the Pelagian heresy in about 420-A.D. with the invention of Original Sin; before that time, there were all sorts of people who believed all sorts of different things going around calling themselves Christians. You can read all about it in Lost Christianities<\/i><\/a>, by Bart Ehrman.<\/p>\n

For my part, I think that Reverend Jones’ frank disdain for the orthodox Christian narrative is refreshing. After all, when you reject the narrative the only thing Christianity has on offer is its cult-like ethics and club membership — both in decline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Easter column by the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof consists of questions put to the President of Union Theological Seminary. Most self-identified Christians will be startled by some of her remarks. KRISTOF   Happy Easter, Reverend Jones! To start, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10145"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10145"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10150,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10145\/revisions\/10150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}