waterboy,
I can agree with everything you wrote - it is more or less the standard reading of what the NT is all about - except where you seem to have misread what I said. I was not offering an evaluuation of the Gospel as such, only an interpretation of Luke 23:43. There are many other places in the NT where Jesus addresses one individual, or many individuals in a crowd, but never a crowd itself like Hitler, Lenin or other demagogues (and politicians?) did and do.

Of course, the importance of community and social justice are part of the message, but these things exist in many other messianic systems- whether or not we see them as being influenced by the NT - but not the promise of personal salvation that many Christians - I agree that nowadays not all of them - draw e.g. from Luke 23:43.

For instance, people accepting - voluntarily or not - the Soviet system were supposed to be looking forward to a paradise on this earth - called the communist society, with no state, no private property, everybody having access to whatever he thinks he needs, etc. - in the far future. However, there was nothing to replace the simple promise of Luke 23:43 that the Comrades could offer a dying person, and they were very well aware of this.

Yes, I know, today there are many people, Christian or not, who do not care about personal salvation, but there are also many who do, and miss this assurance in other (Western) systems that want to replace Christian faith. That was all I wanted to emphasise, certainly not that you can seek and attain personal salvation without loving your neighbour, living in a community and striving for social justice, however understood.

Hello all

What a fine discussion this has been.

Roch, I have enjoyed your enunciation of Teilhard's thoughts and work, and its place in this emerging age of faith/life seeking understanding. For me, Teilhard's thoughts opened the vista of an emerging world, and a single life, my own. It broke the static view of life being a test on a set stage, with a plot engaging a single and mundane hope; that I die in a state of grace so as to go to heaven, or more likely as a motivation to escape hell. Teilhard's notions of the static/dynamic, passive/active, natural/supra natural opened the vista of a purposeful life in the everyday. And of course, given his deep love and trust in Jesus, a reason for me to come to know more of Him. Then, Him. At least enough to know His love and respond; in His worship ( mainly via the Catholic Mass - Word and Eucharist) , service to the other and forgiveness (received / given) to lead to a far fuller, rounded, patient, persevering, happy and joyful bloke. I also write as one a bit bruised in engaging in the world where I found truth hitting up against the interests of others.

In this age of comfortable excess I believe we should focus more on the "here and now" Kingdom, at this place and this time as it is needed. There needs to be an urban ministry to the fat and comfortable ( intellectual/spiritual/physical) who are bloody miserable.

"I have come that so that they may have life, and have it to the full" (John 10:10). To die without knowing the loving intimacy of God through Jesus would be a life lived less, by choice. Such knowing, of course, will bring discomfort as has been promised. But to know the love is the great pearl.

Our western world has confused comfort for happiness, and places man as sovereign. The freedom and love Peter talks of in our Christian story have become, in the wider world, commodities attained and consumed through power

George,
As we are agreed, knowledge is an important pre-requisite for understanidng - so we should perhaps go back a little in history to see how different beliefs and ideas have been disseminated - relevant here is early Christianity. Marcion, an early Church Father, had considerable influence on Christian philosophy where he taught it was only the letters of Paul that taught true Christianity, and the god of the Jewish Bible was evil, as were the Jews. Some contradiction certainly arises when Christianity chose also to spread the Jewish writings of the Bible. Ironically, it was the Christian Reformation through using the same Bible to topple Church hierarchy and its 'evil' ways making the contradiction more apparent. The underlying, even if understandable, anti-Semitism of Luther (and others), were perhaps masked somewhat by the reformation. An evolving process of a better attitude towards Jews and Judaizing among Christians began. The Reformation, however, was only successful to a point.

Going back even further historically, we can recall the Ebionites, an early Jewish sect whose followers were amongst the earliest supporters of Jesus Christ. The Ebionites held a very early version of the Gospel of Matthew – this is where the entire Jewish Law needs to be kept, down to the smallest letter. It is worth noting in this Gospel, when a rich man comes up to Jesus and asks him how to have eternal life, Jesus tells him that if he wants to live eternally he must keep the commandments of the Law (19:17) Paul was not just wrong about a few minor points, according to the Ebonites, he also countered Matthew. He was the archenemy, the heretic who had led so many astray by saying that you could be saved even without keeping the Jewish Law, and who forbade circumcision. The Aramaic version of Matthew used by Ebionite Jews would have lacked the first two canonical chapters, which narrate Jesus' birth to a virgin - a notion that the Ebionites rejected.

Quite arguably, the Ebionites represented the views of Jesus better than many other early Christian groups.
cont’d…

..cont’d
The term Ebionite (from Hebrew 'Evyonim) means "Poor Ones" and was taken from the teachings of Jesus: "Blessed are you Poor Ones, for yours is the Kingdom of God" based on Isaiah 66:2.
Some key tenets of the Ebonites included:

• Yahshua (Jesus) was a religious Jew and not divine.
• His teachings were fully within the framework of Yahwism, yet may have conflicted with other sectarian views.
• He was a reformer, trying to recapture an earlier spirit and purity of Yahwism.
• He was not a Messiah but undertook a messianic mission – calling people to prepare for the Messianic Age by living through righteousness and loving-kindness.

Christianity is not just a religion but also the heir of Western culture enveloping vestiges from all of the ancient Near Eastern and European gentile civilizations. The arrival of Orthodox Christianity (and virtually every other form of Christianity), is far from the original syncretism. Original followers of Yeshua did not worship him or look to him for salvation. They did not turn away, add or subtract from God's commandments (Torah). They worshipped only the God of Israel.

The question of "being saved" is a Christian paradigm asking something based purely on a doctrinal derivation - often an anathema to a non-Christian who does not accept the basis for Christian belief or the Christian religion. The question of "being saved" is a bit like a Christian being asked, “ how many lives did you have until you became a (Buddhist) "bodhisattva?" As traditional Christianity has taught that mankind is basically "depraved" (and thus incapable of truly doing good), the idea of repentance is also different. The word teshuvah means "return." It is often mistranslated as "repentance." According to Judaic thought, Teshuvah is a return to the path God has set when we were born, the path that our souls know as homeward bound, and the path of goodness, of becoming a better person. A simple translation would be, we return from our mistakes on the basis of the law (Torah or teaching)– which in turn has its basis in love.

BOXGUM said – “Roch, I have enjoyed your enunciation of Teilhard's thoughts and work, and its place in this emerging age of faith/life seeking understanding. For me, Teilhard's thoughts opened the vista of an emerging world and a single life - my own. It broke the static view of life being a test on a set stage, with a plot engaging a single and mundane hope” – a hope “that I die in a state of grace so as to go to heaven, or more likely as a motivation to escape hell. Teilhard's notions of the static/dynamic, passive/active, natural/supra natural opened the vista of a purposeful life in the everyday. And of course - given his deep love and trust in Jesus - a reason for me to come to know more of Him - at least enough to know His love and respond - in His worship (mainly via the Catholic Mass - Word and Eucharist) – in service to the other and forgiveness (received / given) to lead to a far fuller, rounded, patient, persevering, happy and joyful bloke. I also write as one a bit bruised in engaging in the world where I found truth hitting up against the interests of others.”

ROCH – Thanks, “boxgum”!

BOXGUM – “In this age of comfortable excess, I believe we should focus more on the "here and now" Kingdom, at this place and this time as it is needed. There needs to be an urban ministry to the fat and comfortable (intellectual/spiritual/physical) who are bloody miserable.”

ROCH – Sadly there are none so poor as those who are spiritually empty. In “Build Soil” [1932] Robert Frost said, “We’re always too much out or too much in. At present from a cosmical dilation we are so much OUT that the odds are against our ever getting inside IN again – but inside IN is where we’ve got to get!” Many, it seems, sadly live their whole lives never discovering the inner dimensions of their own beings – infinite and eternal – made to be filled with the utter fullness of God!

relda,
Thanks for your interesting post. It very nicely illustrates what I had claimed, namely that “today there are many people, Christian or not, who do not care about personal salvation".

I do not see how this should conflict with the hopes of those Christians who do (whatever metaphysical and/or psychological dimension they associate with the term ‘salvation’, mostly probably rather naive). Unless, of course, somebody forces his way of interpreting Jesus on others, as it unfortunately happened too often in the past.

I am sure your interpretation can be convincing for many Christians. But so can the traditional interpretation; that is just how interpretations work. However I agree that for those outside the Abrahamic faiths the very concept of personal salvation, personal afterlife, does not make much sense, and I cannot see why it should.