How do we reconcile the experiential reality of Christ consciousness (as experienced by mystics and NDErs for example) with the apparent fact of Christianity as an invention? Was it invented by:
- The Romans to control the masses
- Jewish rebels trying to rally the troops
- Gospel writers trying to counterbalance the attempt by the Romans to influence Christianity and rewrite history
--or (as Alex thinks) some strange combination of all of these?
You know, I've been a bit baffled/nonplussed by the inside baseball that's been going on in the last two episodes of Skeptiko, but finally, Alex has got to his real point with this question (which it was hard to extract from his closing statement, so I hope I've got it right).
It's a good question, and one that has in some sense been marinating in my mind this last couple of weeks. Say what you will, but even in the canonical literature of the four Gospels, Jesus as an archetype comes across as a remarkable figure, despite any invention that might be inferred. I mean, even if the Romans were in some way involved in a conspiracy, why would they make of Jesus a metaphysical hero who in large part contradicted everything they stood for? A figure who in brutal times refrained from and condemned violence? Why would Jewish rebels create such a figure when they believed in a messiah who would come to bring them victory by the sword? And how would the evangelists manage to rescue the situation without invoking the ire of the Romans whose conspiracy they were apparently causing to fail?
See, we have the canonical books of the New Testament, and putative conspiracy theory, but what we don't seem to have, apart from Josephus, is any other historical memoir of what was going on. You'd think that the Romans, who were great chroniclers and recorded everything, down to the minutest details of everyday life, would have left a few sardonic hints here and there. One almost has to believe that if it was all a conspiracy, it was the most masterful example in all of history. Anyone who attempted to blow the gaff would have had to have been immediately suppressed, possibly executed. I can hardly credit the fact that everyone who might have done that would have been so perfectly erased from the record.
Alex's belief in the reality of Christ Consciousness is one I share. I also have no doubt that the NT is largely allegorical: beautiful stories, but which nonetheless manage to convey something of the character of, and driving force behind, a person such as Jesus. Such a person has a reality in the collective mind of humanity: a feeling of rightness, such that even if he didn't actually exist, he is the archetype of what everyone should be striving to be.
Doctrines such as the Trinity can be interpreted in useful ways, transposable to practically any religion. Man is more than man: he's also a facet of God, and Holy Spirit is the symbolic manifestation of the connection/communication between the two. Holy Spirit could be said to account for why many of us at Skeptiko feel dissatisfaction with a science that is devoid of recognition of something beyond the material. It's a shorthand term for that feeling, which expands into many areas of our scepticism, and tends to get lost in the dizzying multiplicity of ideas about our true nature. The very hostility of modern science to a transcendent dimension of reality is a potential sign of its truth. Does anyone become so vehemently against something unless, at some level, they suspect its truth? Fear its truth? Fight against its truth with every fibre of their being? The thing is, if it's true, the real fear is the apparent loss of control over one's own destiny. Better go to any length, even the denial of free will, and the acceptance of complete annihilation, than to take on board the possibility that we're all here for a reason which, ultimately, isn't under our absolute egoic control.
I don't know how our present idea of Jesus originated. I'd agree with Alex that all sorts of extraneous influences shaped the NT, but we'll probably never know how those occurred. Was there a master craftsman, or a few master craftsmen who managed to produce it? Possibly: but I don't happen to believe that it ended up being a spectacularly botched attempt to shape history in their favour by the Romans. If it was anyone, or a few people, I believe that somehow, despite all the historical forces in play at the time, they succeeded in their aim. They produced something that has influenced millions throughout history, and I believe that even if eventually no one ends up taking it as literal truth, it has dug into the psyche of humanity and will, in its very essence, persist regardless, deeply and inextricably embedded in our societies and laws.