(Summarised by my liberal friend Mark)

From Robert W. Funk "Honest To Jesus: Jesus for a New Millenium" (Hodder & Stoughton: 1996) pp 300 - 314

A QUEST DESIGNED FOR A NEW AGE

...

1. The aim of this quest is to set Jesus free.

Its purpose is to liberate Jesus from the scriptural and creedal and experiential prisons in which we have incarcerated him. ... The pale, anemic, iconic Jesus would suffer by comparison with the stark realism of the genuine article. ...

2. The renewed quest prompts us to revamp our understanding of the Christian faith itself.

... Jesus rather than the Bible or the creeds becomes the norm by which other views and practices are to be measured. ...

3. The renewed quest also has serious consequences for how we understand the Christian life.

... the contrast between "creedal" and "ethical" ... Christianity at its heart is not moralistic. In its finest hour it is ethical. At its worst it is creedal - creeds are designed to exclude and expunge rather than include and nourish.

4. The renewed quest points to a secular sage who may have more relevance to the spiritual dimensions of society at large than to institutional religion.

As a subversive sage, Jesus is also a secular sage. His parables and aphorisms all but obliterate the boundaries separating the sacred from the secular. He can teach us something that has nothing to do with what we know as Christianity or, indeed, with organized religion as such. ...the Jesus of whom we catch glimpses in the gospels may be said to have been irreligious, irreverent, and impious. The first word he said, as paul Tillich once remarked, was a word against religion in its habituated form; because he was indifferent to the formal practice of religion, he is said to have profaned the temple, the sabbath, and breached the purity regulations of his own legacy; most importnatly of all, he spoke of the kingdom of God in profane terms - that is, nonreligiously. ... his insights should be taken seriously but tested by reference to other seers, ancient and modern ... and by reference to everything we can learn from the sciences, the poets, and the artists. ... the glimpse comes to those who are open to it and does so without reference to social station, education, or political prowess. The glimpse is no respecter of theologies, theological schools, or evangelists. The glimpse blows where it will - every which way.

BREAKING THE EASTER BARRIER

...in identifying the risen Christ as the object of faith, believers in effect hacve robbed Jesus of Nazareth of any real incarnate existence and have shifted the responsibility for the faith to those who experienced his resurrected presence. ... The Apostles' Creed implied that nothing worth mentioning lay between the miraculous conception of Jesus and his death on the cross. The creed left a blank where Jesus would have come. ... Americans have not been very interested in the subtleties of neo-orthodoxy. What Amnericans know far better is popular creedalism, a simplistic version of orthodoxy that has been packaged and marketted electronically like other mass-produced products. Popular creedalism insists on a miraculous birth, accrediting miracles, death on a cross understood as a blood sacrifice, a bodily resurrection, and Jesus' eventual return to a cosmic court. ... Creedalism is a religion that supersedes Jesus, replaces him, or perhaps displaces him, with a mythology that depends on nothing Jesus said, or did, with the possible exception of his death. ... Jesus [is] .. the subverter of theological litmus tests. ...

5. We can no longer rest our faith on the faith of Peter or the faith of Paul.

... true faith, fundamental faith, must be related in some way directly to Jesus of Nazareth.

6. Jesus himself is not the proper object of faith.

... Jesus called on his followers to trust the Father, to believe in God's domain or reign. The proper object of faith inspired by Jesus is to trust what Jesus trusted. For that reasonm, I am not primarily interested in affirmations about Jesus but in the truths that inspired and informed Jesus. ... Jesus pointed to God's domain, something he did not create, something he did not control. ... instead of looking to see what he saw, his devoted disciples tended to stare at the pointing finger. Jesus himself should not be, must not be, the object of faith. That would be to repeat the idolatry of the first believers.

7. In articulating the vision of Jesus, we should take care to express our interpretations in the same register as he employed in his parables and aphorisms.

.... Jesus quite deliberately articulated an open-ended, nonexplicit vision in his parables and aphorisms. He did not prescribe behaviour or endorse specific religious practices. ... Our interpretations of parables should be more parables - polyvalent, enigmatic, humorous, and nonprescriptive. Yet we are invited by his example to be equally bold and innovatiove. ...We need not and should not place blind faith in what Jesus trusted. ... nothing is protected, nothing is off limits.

RECOVERING THE ROOTS

Christianity as we have known it in the west is anemic and wasting away. ... A reformation is imminent when a movement reviews and revises the records of how it got started. ....

8. Give Jesus a demotion.

... He asked for it, he deserves it, we owe him no less. As divine Son of God, coeternal with the Father, pending cosmic judge seated at God's right hand, he is insulated and isolated from his persona as the humble galilean sage. ... With his new status, he will no longer be merely its mythical icon, embedded in the myth of the descending / ascending, dying / rising lord of the pagan mystery cults, but one substance with us all. We might begin by turning the icon back into an iconoclast. ...

9. We need to cast Jesus in a new drama, assign him a role in a story with a different plot.

The creedal plot in which Jesus has been cast is the myth of the external redeemer. In that story, the protagonist leaves a heavenly abode, enters human space, performs a redemptive function, and returns to the heavens. The movement is from and to an alien space. This plot is the essence of the Christ hymn in the second chapter of Philippians, the prologue to the Gospel of John ... It is also the plot of ... Superman ... The Lone Ranger ... Star Trek ... Wonder Woman ... Myths in this category tend to tranquilize, to function as escapist fare. ... There is another type of hero who belongs to a different story. The hero with a thousand faces, according to Joseph Campbell, begins by leaving home. He or she undergoes trials and tribulations in an alien space but manages a victory over evil powers, usually assisted by helpers. The hero then returns home and reintegrated into society, now able to bestow boons on others. We might dub this kind of story the myth of the internal redeemer. ... If [Jesus] arrived via a miraculous birth, knew himself to be the messiah and son of God, and had foreknowledge that his death would be reversed in a few days, he is not qualified to function as my redeemer. I prefer a saviour who understands my predicament - my double fettering that anchors mortals in both heaven and earth, as Franz Kafka put it - and is prepared to assist me in grappling with my insatiable longing for heaven while chained to earth and mortality. ... There is the plot of the prodigal. In that story one can come home only by leaving home. The prodigal reflects Israel's founding myth - the exodus and quest for the promised land. It also echoes Israel's exile and return. Departure and arrival, leave-taking and homecoming, are linked in inseparable tandem. ... enlist the arts ... in the search for new and revised myths ... Prometheus and Homer's Illiad and Odyssey ... King Arthur and the knights of the round table .. "Hansel and Gretal" ... J R R Tolkien ... Lord of the Rings .. The Return of The Jedi ...

10. We need to reconceive the vocation of Jesus as the Christ.

.... Jesus told his parables as though he were hearing them. ... To what divine manifesto did he succumb? By what vision was he both captivated and liberated? That is the interesting question. That is the determinig issue. As external redeemer, in contrast to an internal saviour, Jesus supplies our every need, fulfils all our fantasies. A steady diet of conception without sex, a salvific blood donour, and perpetual resuscitation goes together with fast food, soft ice cream, and the lottery. It's like a trip to McDonald's, where the menu is fixed, everything is cheap, and patience is not required. Such a diet has made the pious American fawning, flabby, and flatulent. Americans often don't want religion unless it is handed to them on a platter, effort free, sacrifice-free, but not fat free. The sanctimonious need above all to go on a theological diet to shed the cumulative biliousness that accompanies self-satisfaction. The historic Jesus is a reality anchor in a sea of unrealistic and potentially demonic dreams. ...

CHRISTIAN PRACTICE

... obvious discrepancies between Jesus' words and deeds and current "Christian" practice. Jesus was a social deviant. ... If Jesus was a social deviant, social deviancy may not be all bad. Recommending it is a kind of imitatio christi but with a different twist. In Jesus' company, rebels are welcome.

11. Jesus kept an open table.

12. Jesus made forgiveness reciprocal.

Jesus tells the paralytic, the blind man, the adulteress that they are forgiven, without exacting penalties or promises from them. Jesus forgives because his Father forgives and on the same terms: without penalty or promise. The only requirement is reciprocity: one is forgiven to the extent one forgives. ... Human beings can only have what they freely give away.

13. Jesus condemned the practice of piety.

Jesus makes sport of displays of piety. He regards religious posturing as hypocritical. ...

14. Jesus advocated an unbrokered relationship to God.

Jesus insisted that everyone has immediate and particular access to God. ... The inauguration of a priesthood and clergy therefore appears to be inimical to Jesus' wishes. ... the canonical gospels endeavour to authenticate the leadership of the church then in power. The authentic words of Jesus reject the notion of privileged position among his followers: the first will be last and the last first; those who aspire to be leaders should become slaves of all.

15. Jesus robs his followers of Christian "privilege".

As John Dominic Crossan so pointedly puts it, Jesus robs humankind of all protections and privileges, entitlements and ethnicities that segregate human beings into categories. His Father is no respecter of persons. Does that not include the label Christian? ....

16. Jesus makes it clear that all rewards and punishments are intrinsic.

... According to popular orthodoxy, we are promised eternal life following a bodily resurrection for believing the right things, for being theologically correct. How can that promise be anything other than self-serving? A version of Christianity that takes its cues from Jesus cannot be preoccupied witrh rewards and punishments.

NICEA REVISTED

... It is probably time to substitute right behaviour - orthopraxis - for right doctrine - orthodoxy. The mark of a Christian ought to be not what one believes but how one acts.

17. We will have to abandon the doctrine of the blood atonement.

... Jesus never expressed the view that God was holding humanity hostage until someone paid the bill. ...

18. We will need to interpret the reports of the resurrection for what they are: glimpses of what Jesus glimpsed.

Reject the claims to apostolic privilege based on personal appearances.

19. Redeem sex and Mary, Jesus' mother, by restoring to Jesus a biological if not actual father.

Virginity is not necessarily godly, except in an ascetic, pleasure-denying, dualistic world. ... Celebrate all aspects of life by giving Mary her rights as a woman, even if it means acknowledging that Jesus may have been a bastard. A bastard messiah is a more evocative redeemer figure than an unblemished lamb of God. .... We should endorse responsible, protected recreational sex between consenting adults. ...

20. Exorcise the apocalyptic elements from Christianity.

Apocalypticism at its base is world-denying and vindictive. ...The desire to reward and punish in the next world is self-serving in its most crass, pathetic form. ...

21. Declare the New Testament a highly uneven and biased record of various early attempts to invent Christianity.

Reopen the question of what documents belong among the founding witnesses. In a new New Testament, including dissenting points of view. Eliminate less deserving parts. In any case, the authority of an iconic Bible is gone forever. It cannot be restored. ....

These are my twenty-one thesis. If I had a church, I would scotch tape them to the door.

Mark Tindall

-- My Blog - MARK T - my thoughts on Christianity & links http://www.blognow.com.au/strooth/