A few years ago, Dr. Kirby Godsey, president of Mercer University, wrote a book entitled, When We Talk about God... Let's Be Honest. The Georgia Baptist Convention, which controls the university, branded him a heretic and actually had a heresy trial. They failed. The brand didn’t stick and he remained president. I chose some quotes from the book… These might be considered “progressive Christianity” or “liberal Christianity” but, as Hal Taussig showed, in A New Spiritual Home, views like these are becoming more and more mainstream, as the times have changed, as the world has changed. It’s important, especially in a forum claiming to be about the “historical Jesus,” not the “mythological Christ,” for the more fundamentalist/evangelical believers to understand that, within an educated world, they are on the fringe. I used this particular book because Dr. Godsey is a Southern Baptist, one of the most conservative of the Protestant sects. (In the Nazareth post of quotes, I used a Congregationalist pastor, a Jew, and a woman Catholic scholar, among a couple of others.)

This directly relates to the historical Jesus and the impact critical scholarship, freeing one of the supernatural "goddishness" of Jesus and more into the impact of his words has made to the more enlightened minds.

Let’s turn it over to a scholar…

The message of the Christian faith is not to worship Jesus.  It is to follow him.  (Introduction, IX)

Never trust a preacher that doesn't doubt what he or she is doing.  (Page 22) 

Dead language is usually the first symptom of a dead religion.  (Page 25)

The worst reason for believing is the fear that God is going to get you if you don't believe.  (Page 30)

Belief is not a substitute for knowledge.  (Page 31)

The data of history about Jesus is not conclusive. (Page 45)

...the elevation of (Bible, church, or personal experience) to the status of final authority inevitably leads to error and conflict. (Page 48)

For the Christian faith, the Bible is not the center of faith.  (Page 50)

Believing the Bible... should not be made a test of faith.  (Page 50)

To ascribe infallibility to the written words of the Bible is wrong.  (Page 51)

Turning the Bible into a rule book distorts the power of the gospel and misappropriates the teaching of the scriptures.  (Page 51)

The notion of the Bible's infallibility instead of giving honor to the Bible, actually leads to a treacherous idolatry.  (Page 52)

I believe that God lives within us.   (Page 54)

God has no gender.  (When it comes to creating a god, we have a vivid imagination.)  (Page 64)

Religion also distracts us from spirituality.  (Page 68)

God is not a vague, shadowy existence that floats above us.  God lives within us ‑ within everyone of us.  (Page 68)

Our road is never the only way to God.  That is sheer folly.  (Page 71)

The Christians' affirmation that God is love is not a verbal proposition to be accepted.  (Page 72)

The richness and power of the creation stories should not be lost amidst misguided efforts to make the truth of Genesis coincide with a recitation of the facts of history... Look to archaeology and scientific analyses to tell us about the facts of history.

(Creationism) efforts grow out of an unfortunate misunderstanding of the meaning and character of the biblical stories.  (Page 82)

It is immoral to account for the HIV infection as evidence of God's wrath toward gays.  (Page 97)

God is not the omnipotent one... (Page 98)

God does not abolish evil and suffering because God can not.  (Page 99)

The notion that "the devil made me do it" is nonsense.  (Page 104)

Even our drive "to establish" the Christian religion can be simply another form of greed and power.  (Page 105)

God has not come to judge and condemn.  (Page 108)

Determining what is right is a continuing process.  (Page 112)

Jesus is not a god to be worshipped or the founder of a world religion to be admired.  (Page 117)

Let there be no question about (Jesus') humanity.  To say that Jesus is God's word is not to say that Jesus is God's only word.  (Page 119)

The virgin birth is more truth than fact.  Clearly, there are many records of so‑called "virgin births" in history.  It is certainly not a novel image to denote an extraordinary event.  (Page 120)

Our feeble attempts at historical research to validate the deity of Christ will always fall short.  (Page 121)

The Christian faith is not about doctrine.  (Page 121)

Jesus was not a religious pied piper.  The goal of faith is not to get people to say "yes" to Jesus or to adopt a system of beliefs.  (Page 123)

Christianity is not about accepting the fact of Jesus' death or pledging to be faithful... (It) has to do with relating to Jesus as a follower.  (Page 125)

Jesus is not God.  Jesus is the Word of God.  (Page 128)

When we seek to reduce the Christian faith to a complete and final set of speakable doctrines, we work in vain.  (Page 130)

Each of us is God incarnate.  (Page 131)

It is best that we understand that religion is mostly a human creation.  (Page 132)

Is Jesus God's only word?  The simple answer is "of course not."  (Page 133)

Jesus' disappointment sprang from the failure of Judaism to listen to God as a spiritual presence in their life and culture.  The Christian church runs the same risk.  (Page 134)

Our faith does not require that we believe that God permits no knowledge of God except through Jesus.  (Page 135)

The arrogant assertion that all other religion's affirmations are pagan confuses our viewpoint with God's.  We have no basis for such absolute judgments.  (Page 136)

Religions are born of human beings.  (Page 138) 

Jesus does not come to pay off the heavy penalties for our sins.  (Page 142)

Jesus did not die to appease some abstract penalty for sin... Jesus died because people chose to kill him.  (Page 143)

(People) have isolated the death of Jesus as the saving act of God.  It is a serious and unfortunate error.  (Page 144)

The Christian religion should not be confused as the hope of the world.  (Page 145)

Accepting Jesus is not the basis of salvation.  Jesus came to say that we are saved.  We are forgiven.  (Page 145)

Whether it is global warfare in the Middle East or a personal prejudice toward a gay Christian, every rejection is an act against God.  (Page 153)

The Christian faith does not rest upon a cold and disinterested affirmation of belief in Jesus.  (page 160)

Prayer should not be confused with speaking words... Prayer calls us to listen.  (Page 167)

Jesus was clearly not concerned to establish churches.  (Page 175)

We speak far more of the church than we do the kingdom.  (Page 176)

Debates about whether the kingdom is present or future are largely irrelevant...  (Page 177)

The chief sins of the church are narrowness, exclusiveness, and institutional success... The church as an institution is of our own making.  (Page 184)

 The denominations of the church ‑ Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and all the rest ‑ are only monuments to our fragmented vision... These boundaries become most destructive when they become exclusive.  (Page 184)

Fundamentalists risk all their faith on getting the doctrine right.  (Page 193)

 The New Testament does not give an almanac of the end of time.  (Page 199)

Plainly speaking, heaven and hell are not places in space.  (Page 199)

Heaven is not a place in outer space.  (Page 200)

... hell should not be viewed as an arbitrary punishment of our sin.  (Page 200)

The doctrine of an everlasting evil lays waste the ultimate character of God in favor of an eternal dualism of good and evil... Evil persists for eternity.  (Page 201)

Oct 21, 2010 -- 12:34PM, whatson2nd wrote:

Historical Jesus sounds like as oxymoron. BTW, how's the quest for an historical Jesus going?

Could be considered that by many. To others, "Jesus" is as irrelevant as the legends found in the gospels. To yet others, they find a kernel of historicity in the gospels, generally based on aphorisms and parables. Other scholars, and these scholars, depending on their beliefs, find a wisdom teacher, a Jewish charismatic, a "Greekish" cynic, a revolutionary wanting to destroy temple worship, a peasant revolutionary, a Pharisee, and on and on. With the gospels being rather flighty and contradictory, many scenarios have been posited by modern Christian scholars. The most interesting and possibly the most accurate is that Jesus was a product of the literature, an amalgam of ancient Near East themes of the divinely appointed king. (That would be Thomas L. Thompson's view.)

Generally, a lot of the scholarship has moved forward, looking at Christian origins and the Paulines.

Oct 21, 2010 -- 2:50PM, Jenandew7 wrote:

Why isn't this on the Bible board instead of the Historical Jesus board?  It relates to liberal/progressive views of faith and impinges more on biblical hermeneutics.  What here relates to the quest for the Historical Jesus?

Because I put it here, not on the bible bored. The original post gets to the heart of historical Jesus studies and the stupidity of people who consider themselves "liberal" or "progressive" Christians, yet haven't a clue about the historical Jesus. In the posted views of Dr. Godsey,  he is a biblical scholar, but these views of the bible and the historical Jesus got him branded as a heretic. These views, however, run counter to those who consider themselves "liberal Christians" but who believe the fairy tales of the Bible. Maybe I'll post some of the views of Uta Ranke-Heinmann who had a similar thing happen to her from the Catholic Church or Gerd Ludemann, who had a similar thing happen to him within the Lutheran Church. It is extremely cogent to historical Jesus studies... And, makes one realize how little you know about the study and the politics that go with it. It has no place in the bible forum.

Ah, the prejudice shows... Baptists, incidentally have traditionally believed in the "priesthood of the believer." You are speaking of the Southern Baptist Convention, which doesn't represent all Baptist. This Baptist (and many others) have a grasp on the historical Jesus. You don't. It is extremely telling that you can look at the Christian denomination of someone and immediately make prejudicial statements... I bet you are the same way with minority ethnic and racial groups, too. Give us some of your "enlightened opinions" on Latinos/Latinas.