Personal Jesus and New Testament Jesus
A man I know once asked a Catholic priest why the priest allowed himself to be addressed as Father when Jesus says Call no man Father. The priest at first denied Jesus ever said anything of the sort. When the man showed the priest Matthew 23:9, the priest said Jesus didnt mean that priests should not be called Father.
In Matthew 15:1-4, the Pharisees criticize Jesus because his follows break the tradition of the elders by not washing their hands before eating. Jesus responds by saying the Pharisees of breaking commands of God, specifically the command to Honor your father and mother and Gods command to kill anyone who curses father or mother. I recently mentioned the verses to two different believers in Jesus. Both denied that Jesus ever said that a child who curses a parent should be put to death. After being shown the verses, both denied that Jesus meant that a child who curses a parent should be put to death. (The Old Testament command about killing the cursing child is in Exodus 21:17 and Leviticus 20:9.)
Reflecting on the incidents led me to the idea that there are two very different types of Jesus: 1) New Testament Jesus and 2) personal Jesus. New Testament Jesus is the Jesus of scripture, the character described in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and other New Testament books. Personal Jesus is the Jesus as imagined by some person. Everyone who believes in Jesus believes in their own personal Jesus. The relation of the believer and personal Jesus is identical to the relation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Sherlock Holmes; its identical to the relation of J. K. Rowling to Harry Potter.
That personal Jesus is the believers own creation explains why the believer thinks he/she knows what Jesus has in mind. Think about it. The Bible is said to be Gods very own word. In the Bible, there are verses where someone (Moses, some prophet) says what God had in mind, and there are verses where God himself is speaking. Matthew 15:1-4 is (if you believe Christianity) God himself in the person of Jesus quoting himself in his very own super-duper book. Yet, believerswho sometimes dont know what their parents, spouse, or children believe or are thinkingclaim to know what God himself had in mind, what God himself means to say. Jesus may have said Call no man Father but, no worries, the priest knows what Jesus had in mind, what Jesus would have said if only Jesus could speak as clearly and understandably as the priest. God himself in the person of Jesus may cite with approval his own Old Testaments commands, but, no worries, random believers know what Jesus had in mind.
This is why personal Jesus so often agrees with the believer. Anns personal Jesus loves and forgives gays, just like Ann. Bobs personal Jesus knows that gays are going to hell, just like Bob. Carols personal Jesus realized abortion is sometimes the best choice and would never condemn a woman who had an abortion, just like Carol. Daves personal Jesus would never call abortion anything but murder, just like Dave. That list goes on and on.
Hardly anyone follows New Testament Jesus. After all, how can someone follow New Testament Jesus when they arent even aware of everything he said? Personal Jesus is a face the believer put on God. Its a mask over an indescribable Reality. Its a way of relating to Something that far exceeds our capacity to describe It. An ancient Greek philosopher said if horses had gods, their gods would be horses. Intelligent aliens who look like rabbits might worship the Great Furry Rabbit who sacrificed himself for the sake of all rabbits. Aliens who look like spiders might worship the Great Mother Spider who spun the web of the universe from her own belly.
Jesus as described in the New Testament is largely a product of the ancient Roman Empire, which changed the sabbath of Jesus from Saturday to Sunday and which changed his very name from the Jewish Yeshua to the Roman Jesus. (Jesus is a Roman name, like Marcus, Brutus, Cassius, Aurelius, etc.) Roman Emperor Theodosius would not have made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire if Christianity did not support the needs of empire.
Realizing their personal Jesus is a mask of God, may prompt a believer to desire experience what is behind the mask. They may desire to experience God directly. They may want to become a mystic and experience God exactly as an intelligent rabbit or spider might experience God.
In Matthew 15:1-4, the Pharisees criticize Jesus because his follows break the tradition of the elders by not washing their hands before eating. Jesus responds by saying the Pharisees of breaking commands of God, specifically the command to Honor your father and mother and Gods command to kill anyone who curses father or mother. I recently mentioned the verses to two different believers in Jesus. Both denied that Jesus ever said that a child who curses a parent should be put to death. After being shown the verses, both denied that Jesus meant that a child who curses a parent should be put to death. (The Old Testament command about killing the cursing child is in Exodus 21:17 and Leviticus 20:9.)
Reflecting on the incidents led me to the idea that there are two very different types of Jesus: 1) New Testament Jesus and 2) personal Jesus. New Testament Jesus is the Jesus of scripture, the character described in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and other New Testament books. Personal Jesus is the Jesus as imagined by some person. Everyone who believes in Jesus believes in their own personal Jesus. The relation of the believer and personal Jesus is identical to the relation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Sherlock Holmes; its identical to the relation of J. K. Rowling to Harry Potter.
That personal Jesus is the believers own creation explains why the believer thinks he/she knows what Jesus has in mind. Think about it. The Bible is said to be Gods very own word. In the Bible, there are verses where someone (Moses, some prophet) says what God had in mind, and there are verses where God himself is speaking. Matthew 15:1-4 is (if you believe Christianity) God himself in the person of Jesus quoting himself in his very own super-duper book. Yet, believerswho sometimes dont know what their parents, spouse, or children believe or are thinkingclaim to know what God himself had in mind, what God himself means to say. Jesus may have said Call no man Father but, no worries, the priest knows what Jesus had in mind, what Jesus would have said if only Jesus could speak as clearly and understandably as the priest. God himself in the person of Jesus may cite with approval his own Old Testaments commands, but, no worries, random believers know what Jesus had in mind.
This is why personal Jesus so often agrees with the believer. Anns personal Jesus loves and forgives gays, just like Ann. Bobs personal Jesus knows that gays are going to hell, just like Bob. Carols personal Jesus realized abortion is sometimes the best choice and would never condemn a woman who had an abortion, just like Carol. Daves personal Jesus would never call abortion anything but murder, just like Dave. That list goes on and on.
Hardly anyone follows New Testament Jesus. After all, how can someone follow New Testament Jesus when they arent even aware of everything he said? Personal Jesus is a face the believer put on God. Its a mask over an indescribable Reality. Its a way of relating to Something that far exceeds our capacity to describe It. An ancient Greek philosopher said if horses had gods, their gods would be horses. Intelligent aliens who look like rabbits might worship the Great Furry Rabbit who sacrificed himself for the sake of all rabbits. Aliens who look like spiders might worship the Great Mother Spider who spun the web of the universe from her own belly.
Jesus as described in the New Testament is largely a product of the ancient Roman Empire, which changed the sabbath of Jesus from Saturday to Sunday and which changed his very name from the Jewish Yeshua to the Roman Jesus. (Jesus is a Roman name, like Marcus, Brutus, Cassius, Aurelius, etc.) Roman Emperor Theodosius would not have made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire if Christianity did not support the needs of empire.
Realizing their personal Jesus is a mask of God, may prompt a believer to desire experience what is behind the mask. They may desire to experience God directly. They may want to become a mystic and experience God exactly as an intelligent rabbit or spider might experience God.
Comments (21)
I suggest that we might think of God/Jesus as an object seen from different 'perspectives.' A personality is a position in 'interpretative/hermeneutical space.' This or that aspect of the God-object may more or less visible to this or that 'perceiver' (intuiting soulsearching theologian).
The problem with God-behind-all-masks is the classic problem with Kant's reality-behind-all-appearence. It understands the given as a blanket thrown over the real. All we could even mean by what's under the blanket is built from looking at that blanket. Otherwise it's an empty intention, a mystified thought of nothingness. Yet surely people only care about a God under the blanket because they heard stories, imagine a kind of father or intelligible principle.
I suggest that appearance should not be understood as a blanket thrown over reality but simply as that reality from a perspective. Consciousness is not illusion or screen but the being of the world itself. Along these lines, God is already something we are looking it from different perspectives. Some people see God as an idea or a projection of the species essence, created rather than creator. Others think pretty much the reverse, etc. Perceiving the same God directly does not mean without error. I can think a passing car is a blue Dodge Charger until it gets closer, and then I change my mind.
There are eight million stories in the Holy Bible; pick whichever ones work for you.
That sort of thing has been going on for quite some time. I always think of that portion of Monty Python's Life of Brian, where those at the edge of the crowd listening to the Sermon on the Mount can't quite make out what Jesus is saying. Someone thinks he says "Blessed are the cheesemakers" and is corrected by another listener, who says "Well, you can't take him literally, you know. What he really means is 'Blessed are all makers of dairy products'" (or words to that effect). I mentioned this is a prior post and think some moderator deleted it, for reasons I don't know. Perhaps the moderator thought Jesus should be taken literally, or that cheesemakers are truly blessed.
Xenophanes
Regarding Kant, Schopenhauer noted that since we are a thing-in-itself, it should be possible to directly experience at least one thing-in-itself, i.e., our own existence. If God is our ultimate ground of existence (per Vedanta, Ekhart, & other mystics), we are capable of experiencing the God-behind-all-masks.
Quoting plaque flag
But some perspectives can be false, as when we see a mirage and think we are seeing water. If God is ultimate ground of all existence, then I agree that God is already something we are looking at. But most of the time, we don't see God. Rather, we see people and places and things.
If we already are the 'hidden' thing, then it's not hidden ? To me the deepest meaning of the incarnation metaphor is that we are God in mortal flesh --- timebinding softwhere/softwhen in an hardwhere (and a hardwhen) that's gory and wet and mortal. As symbolic being, discursive subject, I am an immortalish vampire cyborg.
I'll share [ part of ] my own vision of Incarnation, which is basically Feuerbach's, who is like a sunnier Schopenhauer, alive to the self-love of the human species, its delight in itself in the mental and bodily beauty of others.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/
I suspect that there's a third Jesus - that of the religious community a person belongs to. Often based on a priest's or preacher's version. Many followers are too 'frightened' to formulate their own notions and surrender to the account of a compelling and authoritative apologist or cleric. This may then come to be seen as personal Jesus, but is not one based on a significant and original interpretative act and is generally shared intersubjectivity with a religious community. In most cases, your Daves or Anns do not arrive at their Jesus without strong, persuasive influences and regular reinforcement.
Well, yes.
Does the blessing include those who make junket?
Would you say that about any other person? In what context is a person an object?
Consider the role of objectification and the dominance of the objective stance in modern culture. It is why we generally appeal to 'what is objectively the case' when attempting to establish a fact.
Within the objectively-dominated perspective, 'God' becomes one of another class of objects in the world. (Isn't just this that was criticized by Heidegger as 'onto-theology'?) Something like a cosmic film director or super CEO who can be conveniently blamed for all the bad stuff that happens in the world.
This is why any authentic spirituality, I contend, must necessarily be apophatic - the way of negation, the cloud of unknowing. The point is to enact loving-kindness, not to make it object of a theory about it. That is why any real spirituality requires participation, not just empty words, and requires an inner transformation, metanoia, real conversion (and not just flag-waving).
(See God does not Exist, Pierre Whalon, and God as Ground of Being. Also one of the very next books on my reading list, Religion and Nothingness.)
You are way too touchy about entity or object as mere pieces of terminology. Yes I myself am an entity or an object. Does not hurt my feelings at all.
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Quoting Quixodian
Note that you are giving another perspective on the same [s]intentional object[/s] referent of 'God.' You say : some people are seeing God incorrectly --- or not as well as they could. I see better, namely that :
Quoting Quixodian
But I already quoted Feuerbach, who pointed toward :
[quote="plaque flag;830426"]a belief in ...the inexhaustible love and creative power of Spirit
Sorry, I didn't mean to sound annoyed. I wasn't. I was razzing you is all.
The issue of real spirituality is, in a certain sense, the real issue period. This was my basic concern when I took up philosophy, and I've never stopped thinking about it.
I try to look through the surface associations of terminology with my X-ray structuralist goggles. The passionate communist is as 'spiritually' motivated as the born again Christian on fire with Jesus.
The heroic is the numinous. Or call it the ego ideal. Many phrases are good enough once the structural role is grasped. Stirner called it the sacred and the highest essence. It's as if we are programmed to decide upon and enact a heroism.
I'd say that a person's personal Jesus incorporates some of the religious community's picture of Jesus.
I think we agree. How we decide to count the number is not important.
Quoting Quixodian
Would you agree that the idea that personal Jesus is a mask implies that at least some of personal Jesus' characteristics must be inaccurate and, thus, should be negated? (Negated in the sense that a person ceases to believe those characteristics apply to the God behind the mask?
I agree but you did write - Quoting Art48
I have often been struck by a believer's impersonal Jesus - the important thing for me is the frequent lack of individual commitment - believers so often do not arrive at a picture of Jesus through deliberation, but often passively receive their messiah from a third party who did all the hard thinking and came to all the conclusions. Jesus is against homosexuality only in as much as Preacher Smith or Dad is against homosexuality.
In my discussions with Fundamentalists, I recall again and again believers with almost knowledge of the Bible and an account of Jesus so stunted and derivative that it scarcely counts as Christianity.
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That's a fascinating notion and rings true for me.
:up:
Thanks, and it's nice to feel understood.
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And that quote makes sense to me. Ill read the rest of that SEP entry. And I agree with your point about perspective - I only riffed on that sentence about objects to make a related point about epistemology and unknowing in philosophy of religion
@Art48 seems to adopt a 'Kantian' idea that God is hidden from us by our own looking at him. This is like saying that the trees are in the way of us seeing the forest. Having only ever known a world and anything it from a perspective, through eyes and as a personality, we can't know what we mean when we speak of an object from no perspective at all. The spider's perspective fixes this problem, but it's not clear why the spider should have a better view than human being.
Our language intends the God and not our private images of God. The 'private images' are the trees. God is just 'the trees' seen properly, from an ideal vantage point. I don't claim to see God from such a vantage point. What I'm saying applies to spatial objects seen perspectively, and I think Husserl's description of such seeing can be generalized to nonspatial entities like God, justice, and rationality. The entity is not behind or hidden by its appearances. It is this 'transcendent' system of appearances, transcendent because it is never seen from all sides at once, and it cannot be reduced to any single perception of it. We see that we only see it partially. We try to move closer, clean our 'glasses.'
Well your commentary on "personal Jesus" is exactly correct, since gods exist inter-subjectively, every god of every religion is, by definition personal. Of course most religions maintain sacred texts, in which their gods appear, but gods don't exist in texts, they exist in the (personal) minds of their believers.
They're especially blessed.