diver dan,

<<But like it or not, the question of “who is Christ“ has as many answers as history has to any other subject.>>

If I want to know about "who is Hitler?"; "Who is Captain James Cook?"; "Who is Aristotle?", I go to the historical sources that deal with this historical information.

Since I want to know who Jesus Christ is, I go to the primary documents of the Gospels that deal with this information. I don't go to the pseudepigraphical Gospel of Peter and the "Cross Gospel" which John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar promotes.

<<Tradition is very much where the Liberals are. Viz Peter Selleck on this forum.>>

To the contrary, the Anglican tradition is with the formulators of the 39 Articles, which provide a very evangelical statement of beliefs in The Articles of Religion 1562, http://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/book-common-prayer/articles-religion.

They are not Liberal Anglicanism but support evangelical, Bible-believing Anglicans. I suggest you get your facts straight on this topic.

The heart of the Anglican doctrines is evangelical and does not synthesise with the teaching of John Shelby Spong or Peter Sellick. See: http://rune.une.edu.au/web/bitstream/1959.11/18335/6/open/SOURCE04.pdf.

OzSpen

*... Since I want to know who Jesus Christ is, I go to the primary documents of the Gospels that deal with this information...*

my point exactly.

And the authenticity of that literature is not infallible is it.
For the first twenty odd years of Christianity there is no literary record of what they believed..

In the end, it was so confused with congregations of splinter groups, innovations were necessary to focus attention on what was to be the core belief system.

That makes the current belief system simply an average forged by a consensus of the powerful; of which the Anglican Church is very much up there historically.

Dan

diver dan,

<<And the authenticity of that literature is not infallible is it. For the first twenty odd years of Christianity there is no literary record of what they believed.>>

You overlook some fundamentals in understanding basic Christianity:
1. All historical literature comes with a "not absolutely, 100% sure of the content." This applies to Manning Clark's History of Australia, the record of the ransacking of Jerusalem in A D 70, the birth, writings and death of Aristotle, and the biblical literature. It's the nature of historical science. We weren't there, so we depend on ancient sources.

2. Since you reject the supernatural God and his power to oversee the writing of Scripture, you won't accept what God has stated: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17). When something is THEOPNEUSTOS (breathed out by God) it emanates from the absolutely honest, pure and just Lord God.

3. How did God's Word reach human beings? What was the process of how the infallible God could produce inerrant Scripture in the beginning? "Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:20-21). Without your accepting the nature of God as revealed in creation and Scripture, I don't expect you to accept God's Word of describing how we get reliable Scriptures.

(continued)

(continuation)

diver dan,

For the first 20+ years of Christianity, there IS a literary record and that's contained in the Book of Acts. Leading Australian ancient historian (he has taught ancient history at Macquarie University) has a 2005 publication I have on my desk, "The Birth of Christianity: The First Twenty Years" (Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company).

Barnett's conclusion is "that the historian is able, with confidence tempered with critical caution, to make use of the data in Acts in pursuit of the task of historical reconstruction.... Few have so clearly stated the importance of Acts for early Christianity as Meyer, who was himself critical of Christianity.... We have the completely inestimable advantage ... of having access to the portrayal of the beginning stages of the development directly from the pen of one of its co-participants. That alone ensures for the author an eminent place among the significant historians of world history" (cited in Barnett 2005:204).

OzSpen

Sorry for the delay in response here. I just tonight noticed your reply.
Thanks for that.

What I’m not doing is nit picking a fight with you on any issue.

But in the current era of enlightenment, we must be confident in our belief systems to accept that science has taken the high road in researching the historic path of Christianity, by objectively and without bias I believe, presenting us with some uncomfortable truths.
Fitting Christ into a trilogy of Gods, and calling the conglomerate one God, is a hard sell.

I also believe the New Testament is more an example of failure than of enlightenment, without at least laying it beside known historical events.

But I want to say, I enjoyed your article, and it’s concerns are valid. Maybe the paragraph above is also a reason for declining church attendances.

Dan