Philosopher and the Gospels

Derek Wilson

Description

The teachings of Jesus Christ, as presented in the Bible, are familiar to millions, but do we really understand them? Keith Ward argues that, by scrutinising the Gospels through the lens of contemporary philosophy, we can discover a profound teaching that is not always apparent in traditional church teaching. Ward's analysis of what Jesus really said uncovers four central themes: - that the Gospel is for everyone (but not necessarily everyone will be saved); - that the Second Coming will lead to a future in the spiritual realm, not a physical world; - that Jesus presents a moral ideal for life rather than a literal set of rules; - that God is expressed initially through the incarnation of Jesus, but ultimately through the whole of creation.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Philosophy of religion

Informations

• Publié par: Lion Hudson
• Date de parution: 22 octobre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780745958552
• Langue: English

Extrait

From the author of
Is Religion Dangerous?
Is Religion Irrational?
More Than Matter: What Humans Really Are
Why There Almost Certainly Is a God
KEITH WARD
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE GOSPELS
JESUS THROUGH THE LENS OF PHILOSOPHY
Copyright 2011 Keith Ward This edition copyright 2011 Lion Hudson
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A Lion Book an imprint of Lion Hudson plc Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England www.lionhudson.com ISBN 978 0 7459 5562 9 (print) ISBN 978 0 7459 5855 2 (epub) ISBN 978 0 7459 5854 5 (Kindle) ISBN 978 0 7459 5856 9 (pdf)
Distributed by: UK: Marston Book Services, PO Box 269, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4YN USA: Trafalgar Square Publishing, 814 N. Franklin Street, Chicago, IL 60610 USA Christian Market: Kregel Publications, PO Box 2607, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49501
First edition 2011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 First electronic format 2011
All rights reserved
Acknowledgments p. 111 Scripture quotation taken from The Revised Standard Version of the Bible copyright 1346, 1952 and 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches in the USA. Used by permission. All Rights Reserved.
All other scripture quotations are from The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches in the USA. Used by permission. All Rights Reserved.
Cover image: James Whitaker
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents

Cover

From the author of

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

1 Approaching the Gospels

What can a philosopher say about the Gospels?

Can we know what Jesus taught?

The positive gospel

Reading the Gospels

The revelation of God in Christ

2 Universal Salvation: The True Gospel Parables of the Community of the Disciples of Christ

The kingdom of God

The way to the kingdom of heaven

The commandments of the heart

Parables

The sower

The mustard seed and the yeast of the world

The pearl

The lost sheep

The feast

The wicked tenants

The field

The gospel and the punishment of the unjust

The possibility of universal salvation

Christ as the way to salvation

The kingdom of God and its fourfold form

Summary

3 The Cosmic Christ The Eschatological Parables

Wise and foolish bridesmaids

Creation and consummation: The beginning and end of time

The imagery of the Old Testament

The fig tree without fruit

The parable of the fig tree

The great division

Apocalypse and the anticipation of the end of time

The end of history

The great division

Be ready

Summary

4 The Ethics of Personal Fulfilment Parables of the Spirit-Led Life

Jesus and the Torah

The virtues of the Christian life

The judgment

The use of money

The foolishness of riches

The unmerciful servant

Lazarus and the rich man

The workers in the vineyard

The use of God s gifts

On love of neighbour

The far country

Prayer

Hyperbole in the teaching of Jesus

5 Theosis : The Union of Human and Divine

John s Gospel

Eternal life in John s Gospel

The threefold God of John s Gospel

God as primordial, expressive, and unitive being

Spiritual metaphor in the teachings of Jesus

The Gospels of John and Thomas on the teaching of Jesus

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography
Preface

I owe a great debt to the many people who have helped to shape my thoughts on philosophy, Christian faith and my understanding of the New Testament.
The earliest major influences were Methodist ministers in Northumberland, notably Frank Froude and Gordon Bolderson, who first inspired me both in Christian faith and in critical thinking.
When, at the University of Cardiff, I discovered that there was such a subject as philosophy, Lynn Evans and Humphrey Palmer guided me towards thinking of academic life.
At Oxford, my tutors, Gilbert Ryle and Geoffrey Warnock, forced me to think even harder, and Ian Ramsey (later Bishop of Durham) convinced me of the moral and intellectual rigour of Christian faith.
When I later taught philosophy at King s College, London, Christopher Evans and Leslie Houlden imbued me with a love for the New Testament, together with an admiration for the work of modern biblical scholars.
Later still, back at Oxford, the New Testament scholar Robert Morgan was amazingly generous with his time and energy, reading the whole manuscript of this book and making it very much better by his comments, which seemed to be always exactly right, and to correct some of my aged exuberances. It is to him, in particular, that I owe my gratitude for making this book what it is - while exempting him from responsibility for the wilder things I say. I was particularly moved by his fairly frequent comment Oh! , written in the margin, which always warned me that something was wrong.
Finally, my wife Marian has always endured my long periods of absence in my study and has inspired me with a life that wonderfully exemplifies what I often boringly preach.
To all these, and to the many others who go unmentioned, I give thanks, hoping that they would maybe even be a little pleased, or at least (thinking especially, perhaps, of Gilbert Ryle) not too embarrassed by the influence they have had.
Part 1
Approaching the Gospels

What can a philosopher say about the Gospels?
I began this book by wanting to look at the Gospels as a philosopher, and see what emerged. In particular, I looked at the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and at the parables in the first three (Synoptic) Gospels, because they claimed to give the teachings of Jesus. Accordingly, I did not look at the miracles, the healing ministry, or the passion of Jesus, even though these are major themes in the Gospels. I wanted to concentrate on how the Gospel writers had presented the teachings of Jesus.
When I did this, three themes leaped from the pages of the Synoptic Gospels. It seemed to me that Jesus teaching was, above all, that God was a God of limitless and self-giving love. There are some passages in Jesus parables that seem to stress God s terrible judgment and God s exclusion of sinners from salvation. Clearly, this is a problem. Being a philosopher, I set out to explore the idea of a God of unconditional love and its implications, and to see if there was a way of interpreting the parables of judgment and exclusion that was consistent with such an idea. My first theme was in place, that the Christian gospel is one of universal salvation. Some theologians call this conditional universalism , because it says that everyone can be saved, but does not logically entail that everyone will be saved.
Then there are some parables that speak of the end of the age , of the judgment of God on the nations, and some that speak of the choosing of an elect people. These, too, seem very problematic, on two main counts. First, they seem to suggest that God only really loves a few people of faith, and leaves the rest to a terrible fate. Second, the world did not end within the first generation of believers, as a number of verses apparently say it should have done. The main problem here is one of interpretation. What do terms like the Son of man or his coming on clouds of glory with angels really mean? Can they be taken literally, or do they have a symbolic meaning, referring to real events, but not in a literal way? Here again a philosopher may have something to say, both about the nature of metaphorical or symbolic speech in general, and about how we can use language as a very inadequate vehicle to speak of the relation between an eternal and infinite God and a temporal and finite creation. This led me to the idea that Jesus was speaking of profound truths, but they are spiritual truths about the world to come, not literal truths about this physical world. And that seemed to me to make a great deal of sense of some of the most difficult parts of the New Testament. I have called this a spiritual eschatology , because it teaches that there is a future in which evil will be eliminated and Christ will rule (that is eschatology , the doctrine of the last things or the ultimate destiny of the whole creation). But it is not a future in this physical world. Rather, it is a future in the world to come, the new creation that is promised in the New Testament.
Finally, many parables seem to be about life in the kingdom of God. In modern moral philosophy, there is a great interest in what is called virtue ethics . Attention is not concentrated on moral rules or on ways of obtaining the greatest happiness of the greatest number (often called deontology and consequentialism, respectively). The focus is on what sort of person one should be, on the virtues or excellences of character that go to form a good person. Looking at many of the parables in this light, a good account can be given of them by seeing them as portraying the sort of virtues that we would have if we saw Jesus as our moral ideal, and if we sought to let the Spirit of God form in us the virtues that were fully actual in Jesus.
True religion is, a philosopher may say (at least this one would), a matter of practice. It is a discipline of the soul by which liberation is sought from egoism, pride, and hatred, and union is sought with the beauty and perfection of God. So Christian morality will be closely bound up with a spiritual discipline of the soul, and with belief in a God who, Christians believe, can bring the soul by the power of the Spirit to share in the life of Christ. Philosophers might call this a participative virtue ethics , because it sees the excellences of mind and character at which humans should aim as responses to, and participation in, the nature of God as revealed in Jesus.
When these three themes emerged, I decided to develop them by putting down in italics my own versions of the Sermon on the Mount and virt