God Is Not 3 Guys

I'm responding to emails I’ve gotten on the subject begun with Man vs myth . How do I bridge Christian faith with universal spirituality? By distinguishing between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. For a full answer, go to God Is Not Three Guys in the Sky: Cherishing Christianity without Its Exclusive Claims , but you can also find answers by clicking on titles in my index. Try “Christ divine,” “Historical Jesus,” and “Myth.” I often find myself in the middle of religion discussions, challenged by both sides but also bringing them together. And I feel progress from comments like the following. An atheist said, I do feel that you have more in common with atheists than with fundamentalists of any religious bent. Evidence and reason matter to you as more than fallbacks to buttress beliefs placed beyond inquiry. Another atheist shifted from scorning spirituality to valuing it: Thinking spiritually does not mean giving up critical thinking, nor giving up reason and rationa...

My disagreements with conventional Christian theology clarified these distinctions I have worked out for myself: • Yes, God walked on earth two thousand years ago, but God walks on earth no less today. • Yes, Jesus was an incarnation of God. No, he was not the ONLY incarnation in human history, not the once-and-for-all event changing everything for all time. • Yes, Jesus had a particular mission. No, he did not found Christianity. • Yes, Jesus had an intimate relationship with the Mystery we call God. No, the universe was not qualitatively changed at his conception. • Yes, Jesus’ suffering and death contributed to universal salvation. No, his was not the ONLY salvific suffering and death. • Yes, Jesus had uncommon wisdom, strength, and character. No, his perfection did not exceed human perfection. • Yes, it is possible and helpful to relate to a living Jesus. No, he is not the only door to salvation and not the final, definitive revelation of God for all time. I can go along with J.D C...

I just finished a book that forcefully argues one of my points in God Is Not Three Guys in the Sky —the discrepancy between the teaching of Jesus and the teaching of Paul. In How Jesus Became Christian (copyright 2008), Barrie Wilson gives the Jewish perspective on that gap. Vividly he shows the conflict evident in New Testament letters between Paul, whom he dubs “a Jewish dropout,” and the Jewish Christians led by Jesus’ brother James, who continued Jewish practice while upholding the memory of Jesus. Wilson writes, So the human teacher . . . became elevated quickly into a Christ and then into a God. . . . How did a God come to replace a thoroughly human, Jewish Jesus? Wilson attributes Christian anti-Semitism to “guilt at having killed off the historical Jewish Jesus in favor of a Gentile God-human.” Jews were witnesses to this “crime,” the only ones who “could ‘blow the cover’ off” the crime, and this explains “the sustained attack on Judaism throughout Christian history,” accordi...