A netfriend (on a Usenet newsgroup) wrote:

So, now that we have eliminated the bible as evidence of God,

Moi: Have I?

Friend: how do you establish a God?

Moi: Jesus

Friend:

Would you like to expand some on that.

Moi:

I’m a little hesitant to begin what might (should?) be a long thread on an important subject like this, for several reasons:

1. I’m researching modern ‘progressive Christian’ authors on Christology (I’ve read about 15 of them so far, and there are more to go) and still have some unanswered questions of my own… particularly in areas of historicity…

2. We’ve been through quite of bit of it before

3. I’m mostly out of action from Christmas to the end of January

4. I’ve decided for various reasons that when threads become adversarial I’m bowing out. There are now several posters here who won’t be hearing from me. I’m here not to score points/ win battles/ play games like ‘yes you did no I didn’t’ but to mutually teach/learn from others…

With those caveats, here’s something to go on with:

The best way to assess the authenticity/integrity of Jesus and the claims of the early Christians about him is to simply read the stories without bias, inasmuch as that is possible. Exposure to the stories years ago after I’d done my best to reject the fundamentalism of my youth led me to an instinctive conviction that they were ‘true’, in the general (rather than a forensic) meaning of that term…

If they are ‘true’ in this sense, then what Jesus Christ says about, say, what we call the Hebrew Scriptures carries a unique imprimatur. And if Jesus makes claims about YHWH then they carry more weight than anyone else’s claims that I know of (including my parents, peers, theological teachers, scholars etc.)

So I believe in God’s existence because I’m committed to following Jesus, not for any other philosophical or subjective reasons

Is there a dimension of ‘faith’ in all this? Of course, but hopefully a reasonable faith…

– –

Shalom! Rowland Croucher

December 12, 2006

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• Jesus’ disciples
• JESUS AS LIBERATOR (Richard Rohr)

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