kBOY Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> TheJewel:
>
> I plead guilty in promoting John Pavlovitz. He is
> just one of many voices ‘within’ Christianity
> (being identified by fundamentalists with the
> pejorative term as a ‘progressive’) that is
> seeking to recapture the heart of the GOSPEL of
> LOVE that was unfortunately steamrolled by the
> religion of Christianity.
>
> It is interesting you bring up the Jesus Seminar.
> My first exposure to it was studying the Gospel of
> Thomas shortly after my TLW departure. You may
> find it of interest to compare their take on the
> Gospel, along with another perspective, in the
> book, CLOSING THE CIRCLE, by Rogier Fentener van
> Vlissingen.
>
> [
www.amazon.com]
> l-Miracles/dp/184694113X
>
> It may also be of interest to you that there is a
> significant subset of Christianity that attributes
> the obfuscation of the GOSPEL of LOVE, and the
> formation of Roman Christianity to Paul, and view
> him with a very unfavorable eye.
>
> Great post and HAPPY hunting.
KBOY,
Thanks for the reply. No issue with John Pavlovitz, it is good thinking. I enjoyed reading the comments after the blog as well. I particularly like his Rule #11.
As for the writings of Paul, I came to this conclusion myself quite some time ago while trying to understand the treatment that women get in Christianity (particularly in groups like TLW and the infamous Fort Lauderdale Five New Wine guys plus many others). This all stems from the writings of Paul. I began to come to the conclusion that there is either something the matter with my understanding or perhaps he was just expressing his opinion.
I have now come to the point that one simply cannot take that stuff literally. At absolute best, you have to look at all of this stuff within the context of the time it was written and what was going on then (and we probably really don’t know). This drives you to a more scholarly approach (assuming you want to take the time) which is orthogonal to what JRS and TLW taught us with the aversion to seminaries etc. It is refreshing to see that others are tumbling to this same conclusion.
In light of this, one thing I find amazing is the Marylyn thing where TLW seems to come 180 degrees from the original teaching in TLW of the woman submitting to the man, the man being her covering, etc. JRS must be rolling over in his grave ad a rate of about 30 RPM with that. Cronquist must be spinning at 1500 (in fact there must be occasional earthquakes near wherever he is planted). I remember this submission thing being cornerstone to the thinking (at least when I was around anyway). Ha… even the perversion seems to have been perverted.
I have been thinking about picking up a copy of Thomas and maybe the Jesus seminar 5 gospels, I just haven’t done it yet. Most of my research has been confined to the web.
FWIW: my uncle in-law is Loren Fisher; he has an amazon page here:
[
www.amazon.com]
Jewel