I was friends with a priest who was in Mensa in Washington D.C. who was a big Jesus seminar guy. We had many discussions on this topic. Your critiques sounds similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Seminar ...The Seminar treats the canonical gospels as historical sources that represent Jesus' actual words and deeds as well as elaborations of the early Christian community and of the gospel authors. The Fellows placed the burden of proof on those who advocate any passage's historicity. Unconcerned with canonical boundaries, they asserted that the Gospel of Thomas may have more authentic material than the Gospel of John.[8] The Seminar holds a number of premises or "scholarly wisdom" about Jesus when critically approaching the gospels. They act on the premise that Jesus did not hold an apocalyptic worldview, an opinion that is controversial in mainstream scholarly studies of Jesus.[9][need quotation to verify] The fellows argue that the authentic words of Jesus, rather than revealing an apocalyptic eschatology which instructs his disciples to prepare for the end of the world, indicate that he preached a sapiential eschatology, which encourages all of God's children to repair the world.[10][11] The method and conclusions of the Jesus Seminar have come under harsh criticism by some[quantify] biblical scholars, historians and clergy for a variety of reasons. Such critics assert (for example) that the Fellows of the Seminar are not all trained scholars, that their voting technique doesn't allow for nuance, that they are preoccupied with Q and the Gospel of Thomas but omit material in other sources such as the Gospel of the Hebrews, and that they rely excessively on the criterion of embarrassment.[8][12][13][14] ==== My critique of the seminar is and was that the criterion on embarrassment is weak copy of the idea of declarations against interest. But, the converse of a DAI should not be discounted. If you start you critique overweighting declarations against interest you have no reason to expect an accurate weighting of the remarks of a truthful person. ===== Since you obviously put some time into your philosophy, I would like to hear more about your idea of what the gospel and salvation really is.
No thanks, you apologize first else you see nada from me. Tired of you fake news people who roam around and publish lies and falsehood and each time they are proven wrong they refuse to admit and step right to the next lie. People like you are a pest of this age.
lol, you ask a bible denier who knows nothing about Jesus Christ and His teachings about salvation and the gospel? Please get real for a moment. How about you go to the source and read what Jesus himself had to say about salvation. A good starting point would be John 14:5 onward. There you get the source. It makes zero sense to ask someone about salvation who denies the authenticity of the text that talks about the one who claims to be the only one to offer salvation. Think about it for a second.
Yes, that would be the group I was referring to. Here is some idea of "sapiential eschatology". "Apocalyptic eschatology is world-negation stressing imminent divine intervention: we wait for God to act; sapiential eschatology is world-negation emphasizing immediate divine imitation: God waits for us to act. – John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images (1998), p. 8" This would be a good example of a mental framework from which to judge, or give weight to, anything Jesus may have said. Perhaps my framework is similar but much more detailed. It's a lot like saying, "TODAY is the day of salvation", not tomorrow. It can be today if you fall in line with what Jesus did, what he believed, but more importantly, what he knew. In other words, there is zero time lapse between the time you meet the conditions of salvation, and the FULL experience of it. The apostate Paul was emphasizing a point in the future. People have been waiting for 2000 years, but it's counterproductive. If time is still ticking, you have not met the pre-conditions for yourself, in your own experience. Jesus met those conditions and did experience salvation, showing the "way". Salvation is the same for Jesus as anyone else. Same conditions, same process, same result. Christianity is having a major problem accepting this basic analysis. What and where is Jesus right now? That's what salvation is.
I can agree. let me see if I can put this in terms I suspect you might appreciate. Time is an illusion. We live in an illusion like a halogram God is the source of the Light of the Halogram... and is perfection. God and presumably salvation is outside of our universe (the halogram) and time. Jesus is the light that illuminates (from the Source) the halogram we experience. this is where we are probably going to begin to differ... Because Jesus is the light are perfect and because he was human he is the Way we can experience Apotheosis. He was a human and perfect and transcends time. If we could only be like him we would be transcendent and experience apotheosis. I have one problem with that... I don't think I can be the Light on my own. Its not up to me. I have no hope of personal perfection. I do not believe I am God or can be God on my own. So what is my hope? My hope is the Light.
Interesting that the Jesus Seminar gives credence to Gospel of Thomas and Q document. I'm not a member that group, btw. If you can believe it, the source of the 5% figure is the author of the Gospel of Thomas, which is also the source of the 70%/30% figure for his/her own book of quotations. That same source goes into more detail about the "Q" document than the Jesus Seminar people do. Basically, Q is another book of quotations put together by three breakaway deciples of James, the popular brother of Jesus, who gets an erroneous shout out in the Gospel of Thomas. These three students had indeed followed Jesus and heard the quotes first hand, which is how/why they eventually came to the conclusion that James was not going to carry on Jesus legacy faithfully, opting rather to ingratiate it with Judaism. One of the three students who authored the Q was Stephen, you know, the one that got stoned while Paul held the cloaks of the stoners. Poetically, Paul is still holding the cloaks of people like Zzzz1 who are destroying Jesus' legacy, and politically stoning anyone who would challenge the main stream narrative. Q, like it's author Stephen, has been destroyed. All four pop gospels borrow a little from it, but embellish it with a contrarian narrative.
So the good news, as I understand it, is that salvation is universal. (That, actually, was the more orthodox position, back when Origen was talking about it, before the orthodoxy evolved, and Origen was no longer considered orthodox. ) The bad news is that this world, as we think we know it, is the proverbial hell....waiting for a scattered mind's decision to ESCAPE (as in "overcome"). The good news is its possible to escape...if one would follow Jesus' example...and not the agenda of demonic middlemen. The good news is that perfection is the nature of "Christ". This perfection is not learned or attained. It is accepted, as is. This means all human efforts to improve are futile, since, as you suggest, all humans are "imperfect", and therfore irredeemable. Here then is the paradigm shift needed to meet the conditions of salvation: Salvation is for Christ, not man. Thus, the only way to be saved is to be Christ...that alone which is perfect. This is a matter of ACCEPTANCE. Jesus accepted, showing the way. Note well, Jesus no longer appears as a man, as that is contrary to the perfection.
You are one confused human being. So after all this religious bla you come to the conclusion that man can't be saved. Interesting. So in essence you are saying you deny Jesus Christian and his power to save and rather believe in a Buddhist concept where you can attain Nirvana by your own works and efforts. Not that I force you to agree or disagree with anything, I just try to summarize your wordy diatribes which somehow never got to any conclusion.