Tentmaker
01-03-2003, 05:47 PM
Jesus Lived in India: His Unknown Life Before and After the Crucifixion, Holger Kersten. Massachusetts: Element Books, 1994. ISBN 1-85230-550-9.
"... what is today called Christianity is in any case not so much the Word of Christ but something else: Paulinism — for the (Christian) doctrine as we now know it rests in all its main points not on the message of Jesus, but on the totally different teaching of Paul. Modern Christianity only developed when Paulinism was promulgated as the state religion.
"Manfred Mezger cites the Swiss Protestant theologian Emil Brunner on the subject:
Emil Brunner has called the Church a misunderstanding. From a call, a doctrine was constructed; from free communion, a legal corporation; from a free association, a hierarchical machine. You might say it became, in all its elements and in its overall disposition, the exact opposite of what was intended.
"A person appears in a time of darkness, bringing a message full of hope, a message of love and goodness — and what do people do with it? They turn it into documentation, discussion, contention and commercialism! Would Jesus really have wished for everything that later happened in his name? Hardly. During his life in Palestine Jesus actually made his disaffection with (Jewish) Church officialdom quite evident, distancing himself from the Church's laws and scriptural authorities, its insistence on preserving verbal niceties with conflicting interpretations as required, its convoluted hierarchy, and the associated cultic worship and idolatry.
"Jesus sought to create an immediate link between God and humankind, not to set up bureaucratic channels to go through." (p. 4)
"Traditional Christianity has taught that one of its essential elements is "an element that alone can give hope and solace: redemption from sin (which causes the suffering in the world) by the vicarious sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, for all those who acknowledge his teaching. But it is precisely this form of the doctrine of salvation in traditional Christianity that rests almost exclusively on the work of Paul, and was never taught by Jesus. Paul taught that the whole function of Jesus centers on his sacrificial death, that through the shedding of his blood he has absolved the faithful of their sins and released them from chaos and the domination of Satan. In fact, Paul does not relay on a single syllable of the direct teaching of Jesus in his epistles, nor does he tell a single one of his parables. Instead he builds up a philosophy of his own on the basis of his own personal understanding (or misunderstanding) of Jesus' teaching.
Tentmaker
"... what is today called Christianity is in any case not so much the Word of Christ but something else: Paulinism — for the (Christian) doctrine as we now know it rests in all its main points not on the message of Jesus, but on the totally different teaching of Paul. Modern Christianity only developed when Paulinism was promulgated as the state religion.
"Manfred Mezger cites the Swiss Protestant theologian Emil Brunner on the subject:
Emil Brunner has called the Church a misunderstanding. From a call, a doctrine was constructed; from free communion, a legal corporation; from a free association, a hierarchical machine. You might say it became, in all its elements and in its overall disposition, the exact opposite of what was intended.
"A person appears in a time of darkness, bringing a message full of hope, a message of love and goodness — and what do people do with it? They turn it into documentation, discussion, contention and commercialism! Would Jesus really have wished for everything that later happened in his name? Hardly. During his life in Palestine Jesus actually made his disaffection with (Jewish) Church officialdom quite evident, distancing himself from the Church's laws and scriptural authorities, its insistence on preserving verbal niceties with conflicting interpretations as required, its convoluted hierarchy, and the associated cultic worship and idolatry.
"Jesus sought to create an immediate link between God and humankind, not to set up bureaucratic channels to go through." (p. 4)
"Traditional Christianity has taught that one of its essential elements is "an element that alone can give hope and solace: redemption from sin (which causes the suffering in the world) by the vicarious sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, for all those who acknowledge his teaching. But it is precisely this form of the doctrine of salvation in traditional Christianity that rests almost exclusively on the work of Paul, and was never taught by Jesus. Paul taught that the whole function of Jesus centers on his sacrificial death, that through the shedding of his blood he has absolved the faithful of their sins and released them from chaos and the domination of Satan. In fact, Paul does not relay on a single syllable of the direct teaching of Jesus in his epistles, nor does he tell a single one of his parables. Instead he builds up a philosophy of his own on the basis of his own personal understanding (or misunderstanding) of Jesus' teaching.
Tentmaker