Deriving a moral philosophy from Jesus.

[steve_bank]

To be religious Christian it is god, Jesus as your savior, and the resurrection. There are philosophical Chritians and combinations of Christianity and other traditions.

If you reject the resurrections of Jesus narrative then Christianity vanishes. There is no point to the faith if it lads nowhere.

If you reject god than you reject Jesus in other NT narrative.

If you reject Jesus as savior then again you eject the gospel narrative.

Anything else is a personal adaptation and a philosophic exercise. The gospel narrative is not philosophical supposition, it is presented as supernatural fact.

People who make it a philosophical debate involving semantics and meaning are missing or evading the fundamental foundation of the gospels, a supernatural being who fostered a human son.

There are people who accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but not as a divine being. And most certainly not trinitarianism. And old idea espoused for example by Thomas Jefferson. I have no idea of how many self proclaimed Christians hold this view.

What great moral teachings? According to the gospel Jesus fornication, divorce, and adultery are out. Sex outside marriage is forbidden.

Turn the other cheek, the meek shall inherit the Earth...passivism? He says you are supposed to be like children blindly love the Abraham god without reservation.

Don't see how you can derive any consistent secular moral philosophy. He was a Hebrew rabi quoting Hebrew prophets and calling all to worship god.

You can derive the golden rule found in different forms across philosophy and region. Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

 

[DBT]

It doesn't seem much in the way of morality to condemn people to an eternal punishment on basis of what they don't believe.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I don't see moral philosophy coming from a Jesus but rather a Jesus coming from moral philosophy.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Since when do Christians do the onerous stuff that JC ordered them to do? I love that passage where a young obsessed dude asks JC what he must do to be righteous and he is told to sell all his possessions and become a witness to the faith. Right -- paging Joel Osteen.....

 

[Politesse]

I note that many of Jesus' teachings have become popular phrases that many use in navigating their moral and social lives - "turn the other cheek" "the measure you give is the measure you get" "a wolf in sheep's clothing" "going the extra mile" "giving up the ghost" "the blind leading the blind" - regardless of their religious sympathies. For English speakers he is right up there with the Bard as a keen observer and expositor of human nature.

Neither Christians nor anyone else make a serious attempt to follow his teachings, though. Not outside of monastic orders or missionary camps. Most fail the same test the Young Man in the story did; they want the benefits of the religion, but do not wish to give up anything substantive for their faith. If you want to get the measure of a Christian, don't ask them if they like Jesus' teaching, they'll always say yes with at least one side of their tongue. But if you ask them specifics - do you reject wealth? do you reject war? do you surrender any right to vengeance or recuperation for remembered wrongs? do you consider the homeless, the druggies, the prostitutes, the foreigners to be as much your neighbor as are your close friends? Their hypocrisies are then revealed, just as their master long ago predicted that they would be. He did not preach a casual faith to be sandwiched between other concerns, or co-opted by the designs of the cruel and powerful. But he knew better than anyone that this is how things always end up going. His moral teachings go beyond setting up rules; you are called to genuinely desire the life that he's offering, not just to conform to a restriction. It's a very tall order, and one that very few are ready for.

His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?"

Jesus said, "Do not lie, and do not do things that you hate, because all things are disclosed in the sight of heaven. When all is done, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed."

...

Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits.

When you go into any region and walk about in the countryside, when people take you in, eat what they serve you and heal the sick among them.

In the end, what goes into your mouth cannot defile you; rather, it's what comes out of your mouth that defiles you."

 

[ruby sparks]

In my opinion, if one is looking for sources for stuff from which to construct a personal moral philosophy, Jesus, or words attributed to him, is/are one good source. Obviously, it isn't necessary to take the whole job lot, but that's probably true of any source.

Something similar could be said about taking stuff from the bible in general.

 

[ruby sparks]

A question that might have an interesting answer would be, which (if any) moral maxims that are attributed to Jesus were new or unique to him, at the time of being expressed.

Personally, I would not necessarily expect very many or indeed necessarily any. Not that it matters. People like Jesus for example may still have come up with new perspectives on older maxims, or rearticulated them or given things a new emphasis.

But there may also have been some genuinely new ideas.

 

[ruby sparks]

This topic might even be something the atheists (or the at times rude ones such as me) and the theists here don't need to have a big fight about.

Permission to cherry pick granted in this instance, imo.

Or maybe I'm just in a good mood because it's Friday afternoon.

 

[ruby sparks]

It doesn't seem much in the way of morality to condemn people to an eternal punishment on basis of what they don't believe.

Now, now.

Jesus, assuming he existed, was almost certainly (approximately 99.99999% certain or thereabouts) just a bloke like you or me, albeit probably not wearing trousers. As such, he was stuck, stuck in a zeitgeist for one thing, including as regards the lack of trousers. Even if he didn't exist, it's not that important, because the people who wrote the stuff down did exist.

It may be the case that 2000 years from now, the writings of someone currently alive, which contain a mixture of moral ideas, might elicit the response, in relation to one of them, "It doesn't seem much in the way of morality to condemn or even merely punish people at all, in any way, for anything".

Or, depending if by that time the thin, luxury veneer of civilisation that we enjoy today (in some countries) has survived the upcoming environmental catastrophe or not, we might be back at 'she's a witch, burn her alive!".

 

[Politesse]

A question that might have an interesting answer would be, which (if any) moral maxims that are attributed to Jesus were new or unique to him, at the time of being expressed.

Personally, I would not necessarily expect very many or indeed necessarily any. Not that it matters. People like Jesus for example may still have come up with new perspectives on older maxims, or rearticulated them or given things a new emphasis.

But there may also have been some genuinely new ideas.

If nothing else, I do not think it was common in the Hellenistic world to put "the last first, and the first last"; this is very contrary to what had been the normal way of thinking about power and social identity in the ancient world. On a similar note, accepting women as disciples was also very, very strange at that time. Women and slaves were property, not students.

 

[Horatio Parker]

I think the idea that salvation, used as a term of convenience here, is a matter for self realization rather than absolution from an authority, was a very new idea.

 

[Lion IRC]

It doesn't seem much in the way of morality to condemn people to an eternal punishment on basis of what they don't believe.

Many unrepentant sinners evil people don't believe they should be
prevented from committing sin evil.

 

[ruby sparks]

I think the idea that salvation, used as a term of convenience here, is a matter for self realization rather than absolution from an authority, was a very new idea.

I am not in a position to knowledgeably assess that, but to my ears it sounds like an excellent potential candidate. Personal, self-realised salvation.

Though....as expressed by Jesus, was it really all that self-realised? Was there not, at that time I mean, still an iron-fisted authority involved, from on-high?

It is more personal and self-realised nowadays, I think. Thought to be, I mean. Seen as. In popular culture. It's almost the unspoken maixim of the modern, post-Freudian, me-generation. 'If you dig it, it's cool'. Very 60's, I know. Still relevant, I think, possibly more so than in the 1960's, albeit, as it turns out, exploited and subverted by capitalists.

Could we call Jesus' version proto-self-realisation, or its precursor? Or is that just fanciful? It could be. It's easy to trace lines of development backwards with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, especially when reading old texts with modern minds. The 'If it's the case now, and this old stuff seems to precede it, there's a causal link' fallacy, perhaps. Maybe certain ideas were more or less 'always there' and some just gain traction when their time has come.

 

[ruby sparks]

If nothing else, I do not think it was common in the Hellenistic world to put "the last first, and the first last"; this is very contrary to what had been the normal way of thinking about power and social identity in the ancient world. On a similar note, accepting women as disciples was also very, very strange at that time. Women and slaves were property, not students.

Again, I am not in a position to knowledgeably assess, but those seem like good candidates also.

So, I'm wondering...how much of the former (the proto-marxist content if you like) was brand new (Jesus-new) and how much was Jesus merely the articulator of something that had bubbled up somewhere, possibly many times before, but possibly most relevantly in this/his case, among people or groups he had mingled with as an impressionable young man?

I am not trying to take anything, any credit, away from Jesus. Ideas evolve in a socio-cultural nutrient soup. If the soil is fertile, they take root. Otherwise they die. Maybe Jesus' (noble, progressive) ideas would have died alongside Mithraism were it not for eventual Roman sponsorship. I'm eschewing teleology here, obviously. I'm thinking more along the lines of random mutations and natural selection. Chance, to some extent. The natural, unguided, unfolding of the universe.

But anyhows, I guess I'm asking, in the first instance, that question that is sometimes asked of famous rock/pop stars. What were his influences?

Obviously, I am wondering about Essenes, for example.

And the women thing. Yeah. That seems remarkably egalitarian. I think the men who became the orthodoxy put the brakes on that 'dangerous idea,' and arguably rather cleverly, with the whole Mary thing. That's how it looks to me.

 

[DBT]

It doesn't seem much in the way of morality to condemn people to an eternal punishment on basis of what they don't believe.

Many unrepentant sinners evil people don't believe they should be
prevented from committing sin evil.

I made no mention of evil. Isn't believing in God/Jesus a condition for entry into eternal paradise?

 

[Lion IRC]

You're free to go to someone else's paradise if you don't like the one owned and operated by God.

 

[Lion IRC]

Just who exactly must I believe in if I want to get into the paradise owned and operated by God?
Hmmm. That's a tough question.

Whose rules must I follow if I want to be a member of Talk Freethought Forum?
Hmmm. Another toughy.

 

[DBT]

You're free to go to someone else's paradise if you don't like the one owned and operated by God.

Really? What other paradise might that be?

 

[DBT]

Just who exactly must I believe in if I want to get into the paradise owned and operated by God?
Hmmm. That's a tough question.

Whose rules must I follow if I want to be a member of Talk Freethought Forum?
Hmmm. Another toughy.

So the rule is to believe in the existence of God/Jesus as the condition for entry into eternal paradise or suffer eternal torment because a lack of conviction is considered intolerable or evil?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

It doesn't seem much in the way of morality to condemn people to an eternal punishment on basis of what they don't believe.

Frodo Baggins is a better role model than Jesus, if a person is looking for some kind of moral compass. That's because Frodo wanted to make his world a better place, which he did. There are tons of role models better than the gospel protagonist.

The Jesus character was all about getting your reward in the next world and didn't do anything for anyone in this one. Does Jesus ever tell us anything about how beautiful this world is? Does Jesus do anything but pontificate and then fly away into the sky? Where does the Jesus character help anybody and not just be all preachy? He even fakes his own death.

The authors who invented the Jesus character were merely creating a persona that reflected their opinions about the current state of woo. In that sense I think the Jesus character is more like us than we give it credit for in that it's a pretty weak and aimless person drifting along with the times and not doing anything of importance to change the path of human suffering. It's a character that's all talk, obviously owing to the experiences of the authors that penned it.

Jesus's basic message is to be meek, be holy, go to heaven.