I am simply of Hebrew birth, a believer in humanity; but what can be more beautiful in the world than to follow completely the teachings of Jesus?
L.L. Zamenhof
CONSIDERING WHAT I SAID about agreeing with Luke Timothy Johnson's statement from the from the Preface to his book The Real Jesus that as a Catholic he found "the quest for 'the historical Jesus'" to be more of a Protestant concern, wrapped up in the Protestant claim that it was solely reliant on Scripture as a means of revelation of God, I'll go into that a bit as a series.
It is an irony that much of my introduction to the issues of historical-critical Scripture study originated in someone who had been, like Johnson, a Catholic monk and priest (a Servite) John Dominic Crossan, and a further irony that my decisive break with Crossan came through remarks from the great Protestant Scripture scholar, Walter Brueggemann critical of Crossan and the Jesus Seminar on the basis that their historical-critical method had misidentified what kinds of literature the Scriptures are and that he thought their conclusions wrong-headed. In this case I think Crossan can be more identified with Protestant scholarly tradition, now, while I think Brueggemann's position, though quite compatible with most of the Catholics who are non-integralist right-wingers I know of, remains quite Protestant. Luke Timothy Johnson, on the other hand, though politically opposed to much of the program of conservative Protestants - many of his positions on justice, charity and even morality would be considered radical by many of them - finds large areas of agreement on questions of the New Testament and the reliability of the Jesus and Paul presented in it.
I will confess again that no one other than, possibly, Hans Kung and the various liberation theologians (Protestant and Catholic) has been as big an influence on me than the UCC - through the Evangelical Lutheran arm of that - scholar and minister, Walter Brueggemann. Who, by the way, now worships with an Episcopal community. Understanding that I'm including the various feminist, womanist and other women-originating movements in Scripture and theology are ever more of an influence on me as I read more. Justice being one of the two rocks that all of this has to stand on to find any solid ground and the considered experience of all respected and heard and considered seriously.
The issue from some Catholic points of view (there is no more one Catholic or Protestant position on any of these things) relies on the conception of God as "the living God" whose manifestation in the universe is intimately involved in change and, if you will, development in history and in what we know as the physical character of the universe, a God who is quite present in the Scriptures - Brueggemann knows all of the passages in which God changes God's mind - and that human conditions are intimately tied up with change in the universe and continuing revelation.
As an increasingly radical vegetarian and now vegan, the changes to The Law forbidding the eating of certain animals is interesting to me (I'll point out that there is no explicit permission given to eat animals in Scripture until after Noah's Arc comes to a landing) is overturned in Acts when Peter has a dream allowing him to eat what the gentiles eat, it was one of the lectionary readings a few days back so it's fresh in my mind. I think, given the life endangering changes that human meat and dairy production have wrought, the contribution of that to global warming, deadly pandemics, other pollution, etc. not to mention the epic cruelty involved, it is quite clear that reading the signs of the times, it's time to reconsider those permissions.
As mentioned, I think there are two rocks to stand on in that change, both of them necessary for bipedal stability, those are the central Jewish commandment of Justice (which extends to all People and even in the Scripture includes animals) and the New Commandment of Jesus to love others as he has loved us. I don't think there is anything that can be valid in an claimed moral code now or forever unless it is an expression of those and unless it furthers those in the universe. I completely believe that what we, as humans can think of these things, those are fundamental to the character of Creation. In the context of human history and human experience, those might be considered as the means of bending the universe in the direction of God's intention, in so far as it is given to us mere human beings to do anything in that regard.
To date, I see absolutely nothing in the secular, materialist, atheist, scientistic view of life that can match that, and much in it that is entirely destructive of that. Any of that talk among the contented cattle of university and college faculties, their credentialed secularist product, and secularist scribblers is a mere remnant of the cultural heritage of religion that they retain in a lukewarm manner as they reject the source of how those "ethical" positions can be considered real and gain the status as mandates for our behavior and even public policy made into secular law. It is one of the ironies of the kind mentioned above that many secularists are stronger in that than those who spout religion the most loudly, SOME Protestant fundamentalists and white "evangelicals," SOME Catholic neo-integralists (among whom I would probably exclude the trad-Catholic cult which is more a billioniaire astro-turf As Seen On "Catholic" TV cult that has more to do with merchandising cults like AmWay and reminds me of nothing so much as Trekkies who can't tell the difference between a TV show and real life).*
This is an introduction to me going through a passage from Johnson's book that gives one view of the history of the historical-critical method and how it leads away from religion through what is a quite modernist view of texts, beginning with that man of the Renaissance (sharing in its limitations and biases), Martin Luther, another Catholic monk who went from fanatical Augustinian to the great heretic of Catholicism while founding one of the great Protestant traditions. I will begin with that tomorrow. I am having a hard time getting hold of more topical topics right now for purely mechanical reasons (haven't got my internet hooked back up and have to carry a laptop to my brother's if I want to go online, it's complicated).
* I would include the sappy, sentimental side of Hollywood and the theater in that. I was recently talking to another Catholic, an ex-catholic, about the terrible papacy of John Paul II and I told her I thought his election was due to the ridiculous movie The Shoes of the Fisherman in which a Russian Catholic Cardinal is acclaimed Pope and goes on to have a very non-JPII style or papacy in which he sells off all of the Churches wealth to feed the poor in Communist China. To show you just how out of touch with reality show-biz is. I think the trad-Catholic cult is largely a product of show-biz and other promotion that has more to do with infomercials than with anything remotely Christian. Which is why they want to return the Roman-Catholic liturgy back into a show instead of meaningful worship where The People (and probably the priests) can now understand it. I would bet that lots of the priests who pronounced the words on the page of the Missal during mass only had a vague idea of what they were saying. There's a joke that the difference between a terrorist and a liturgist is that you can negotiate with a terrorist. I would love it if while he still can Francis would overturn the damage to the Catholic liturgy in English that Benedict XVI's liturgist thugs did to it. Though I'll bet the roadblock to that is the US Catholic Conference of Bishops which is still dominated by JPII-Benedict era political hacks.
The movies and other shows that get it right are so few, though it's possible.
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