A History of God

Chapter 3Light to the Gentiles

Gospels

• Gospel of Mark• First full-length account

of Jesus’ life• Written about 70 AD,

40 years after Jesus’ death

• Presents Jesus as “a perfectly normal man”

• Gospel of Matthew• Matthew addresses the

concerns of a Jewish audience.

• Written by a Jewish Christian.

• Jesus was promised Messiah, in him the ancient prophecies had their fulfillment.

Who was Jesus?

• Jesus never claimed to be God• Did not claim

to be God incarnate

India: Bhakti [personal devotion]

• Hinduism: Krishna• Krishna is a deity

worshiped across many traditions in Hinduism.

• Recognized as an avatar of Vishnu, he has been the object of personal devotion or bhakti

Bodhisattva

• An enlightened being who, out of compassion, forgoes nirvana in order to save others.

The West: Idealism

• The world is an illusion • Idealism is the philosophical theory that maintains that the ultimate nature of reality is based on mind or ideas.

• It holds that the so-called external or "real world" is inseparable from mind, consciousness, or perception.

Idealism: George Berkeley

• Berkeley was a talented metaphysician famous for defending idealism, that is, the view that reality consists exclusively of minds and their ideas.

• Berkeley's system, while it strikes many as counter-intuitive, is strong and flexible enough to counter most objections.

Gospel of John• Jesus as Logos • The Gospel of John identifies

Jesus as the incarnation of the Logos, through which all things are made.

• The gospel further identifies the Logos as divine.

• Second-century Christian Apologists, such as Justin Martyr, identified Jesus as the Logos or Word of God, a distinct intermediary between God and the world.

The Roman Empire

• Religion and Philosophy

Gnosticism

• Gnosticism is an ancient belief system whose basic tenets seem to reappear in many different times and cultures.

• Gnostics hold that this world is essentially a prison for the spirit.

• In Gnostic forms of Christianity, the creator god of the Bible is interpreted as an evil demiurge, who built the world to trap us.

Gnosticism

• The real God is on a higher plane entirely, and Christ is our connection to him, providing the possibility of reuniting the trapped spark of spirit within us with its divine source.

Early Christian Writers: Marcion

• Marcion (ca. 85-160) was an Early Christian theologian who was excommunicated by the Christian church at Rome as a heretic.

• He propounded a Christianity free from Jewish doctrines

• Jewish God too violent.

Early Christian Writers: Clement

Clement of Alexander (ca 150-215): Yahweh and the God of the Greek philosophers were one and the same.

Clement believed that Jesus was God.

Early Christian Writers: Irenaeus

• Irenaeus [130-200]: Jesus had been the incarnate Logos, the divine reason.

Origen

• Like Plotinus, Origen wrote that the soul passes through successive stages of incarnation before eventually reaching God.

• He imagined even demons being reunited with God.

• For Origen, God was the First Principle, and Christ, the Logos, was subordinate to him.

Plotinus [205-270]

• Plotinus is generally regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism.

• He is one of the most influential philosophers in antiquity after Plato and Aristotle.

• Ultimate reality was a primal unity, the One.

Neoplatonism• Neoplatonism is the

modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century CE, founded by Plotinus and based on the teachings of Plato.

• An enlightenment that was impersonal, beyond human categories and natural to humanity.

Triumph of Christianity: 4th Century

• 1. Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire

• 2. “Supremely a religion of adversity, it has never been at its best in prosperity.”

• 3. Next issue: the nature of God – the Trinity.