tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post1165374003865308525..comments2024-03-19T00:26:30.753-07:00Comments on The Jesus Blog: Jesus was NOT a Liberal: A Post-Trump ReflectionAnthony Le Donnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01282792648606976883noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-30226451861906127322017-01-30T21:35:13.352-08:002017-01-30T21:35:13.352-08:00Yes. A relatively simple agrarian people. Think Am...Yes. A relatively simple agrarian people. Think American Gothic, with a kippah and snood.<br /><br />Yes. What It Means bears a relationship to What It Meant. Which is why we can say with some confidence that Jesus probably would not have cared a whit about deficit spending. (I've heard the argument made to the contrary.) So when you point out that Jesus would not have separated church and state in his day (because religion and politics were not separate in Jesus' day), well, maybe. (His Kingdom was not of this world, and render unto Caesar, so maybe not.) He sounded more like Jonathan Edwards than Tony Campolo? Maybe. A stickler to the letter of the law? Sometimes. Were our liberal values akin in many ways to Jewish conservative values? More than maybe.<br /><br />Mostly, we can say that Jesus was of his time and place, and he cannot neatly be lifted from his context into ours. WWJD? YGIAGAM. If you want, we can leave it at that, but few ever have or seem to want to. So long as we don't assume that Jesus was speaking to our time, and so long as we don't apply the authority of God's word to our answer to WWJD, I don't see why we shouldn't ask how Jesus' teaching applies to the poor, the homeless, the imprisoned and the refugee. I appreciate your complicating my efforts to do so, but I still say that Jesus would be demonstrating against these executive orders, even if we couldn't read the sign he'd be holding.Larryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08976868079076669453noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-65405782342627078072017-01-30T15:27:23.078-08:002017-01-30T15:27:23.078-08:00Larry, as you know I am a fan of Stendahl. But his...Larry, as you know I am a fan of Stendahl. But his "what it meant" vs. "what it means" distinction isn't and cannot be the final word on the topic. But if I'm reading the second half of your statement here correctly, I think you'd agree that it is possible to take this distinction too far.<br /><br />You write, "...a relatively simple agrarian people..." Not sure how to take this. I will leave it alone for now.Anthony Le Donnehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01282792648606976883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8637125351921336084.post-68199934864665541922017-01-30T14:30:04.328-08:002017-01-30T14:30:04.328-08:00You wrote this just to provoke a lecture from me a...You wrote this just to provoke a lecture from me about Krister Stendahl’s systematic theology. Right?<br /><br />Stendahl’s most important contribution to theology can be boiled down to this simple understanding of Bible text. What it meant is not what it means. The Bible was written more than 2,000 years ago. Some of its original languages are no longer spoken. It was written for a culture so far distant from our own, we can scarcely put ourselves in the place of its original audience. If we are to respect the Bible, we must also respect this distance. Whatever it is we think the Bible means to our present situation, we can’t possible imagine that this meaning is the same as what it meant back then.<br /><br />Does this mean that Stendahl argued for the present-day irrelevancy of the Bible? No, no. He argued that, whatever authority the word of the Bible may have had when originally spoken or written, it does not have that authority now. What it means is not what it meant. But just as clearly, the Bible means something. We don’t ordinarily toss out our most important texts because of the passing of the years. Instead, we look in these texts for meaning in our current context and situation. This is necessarily a creative effort when it comes to the Bible, in that we are apply rules originally written for a relatively simple agrarian people and applying them to a radically different circumstance. As a result, we are forced to acknowledge that our creative application of ancient text to modern times cannot carry the same authority as did this same text to its own time.<br /><br />So … was Jesus a liberal? Would he have voted Socialist? Because he healed the sick, does that mean he would have supported Obamacare? We don’t know, and we cannot know. But … can we look carefully at the Gospels, and with a bit of creativity, translate Jesus’ concern for the “least of these” into a concern for the poor, the outcast and the refugee? I think we can. Can we imagine Jesus’ reaction to ordinary Americans who possess but will not share material wealth beyond the first century imagination, given the statements recorded in his name about camels and eyes of needles? I think we can. The danger here, as Stendahl would tell us, is not in the exercise of our creative imagination, but if we suppose that we can speak for Jesus today with the authority Jesus spoke with in his own time.<br /><br />So … I await a conservative to come forward and argue that Jesus spoke for the extreme vetting of refugees, and that we can refuse to help the stranger if we fear him or her. I mean, there are creative efforts and creative efforts.Larryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08976868079076669453noreply@blogger.com