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Subject: Re: Thank you for introducing us the Ebionites Author: Liberal [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 10:39:02 08/12/04 Thu In reply to: XOX 's message, "Re: Thank you for introducing us the Ebionites" on 10:27:57 08/11/04 Wed >But putting the Judaism aside, that we rejected >because it is no longer application in this age, >theologically, we are very alike. Theologically, we are alike, but the motives are different. Ebionites rejected full Christian doctrines because they wanted to hold on to traditional Jewish laws ("Ebionites believed that all followers of Jesus...must adhere to Noahide Laws and Mosaic law..."). Basically, they are traditionalists. We question some Christian doctrines because, as you have rightly pointed out, we think that they are no longer applicable (even no longer meaningful) in this modern age. >We want to know Jesus as the historical Jesus instead >of the divine being who has sacrificed Himself to >Himself. I think there are more to be explored in this >area. Yes, the quest for the historical Jesus, such as the work of the Jesus Seminar, is very important. But, on the other hand, in the end, it might be the perfect character Jesus as portrayed in the Gospel books which we want to learn from and follow. That latter Jesus is not the real person, who might be flawed to some extent, but a deified character in which collective goodness of the human mind has been instilled by Gospel book writers and redactors. In other words, the Jesus in the Gospels is the real historical Jesus plus collective human goodness, resulting in a perfect human model Jesus Christ. In the end, we might want to be a disciple of this perfect human model rather than a realistic flawed man. You are right. We are closer to the earlier Christians than the fundies who resemble the Pharisees that betrayed Jesus in His time. They legalized, institutionalized, fossilized the once very humanistic principles to a set of anti-humanistic rules for people to blindly obey. One of the major themes Jesus taught was to reclaim the humanistic principles behind Mosaic Laws, rather than complying to the superficial wordings of the laws! [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]