So they said to him,"What can we do to accomplish the works of God?"
Jesus answered and said to them,
"This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent."
(John 6:28-29)
To believe in Jesus is no more difficult for Moderns than it was for the Ancients. They were as prone to disbelief then as we are now. The difference is that when Jesus said something that the Ancients refused to accept, they stopped following him. We, Moderns, however, pursue a more nuanced path. We stick around and whisper through the crowds, "He really didn't mean that."
Today's Readings: Monday, May 1st, 2006.
3 comments:
Good point. Yes, we are used to the idea of an Incarnational Deity who "died for our sins". Can you imagine what it must have been like for the gentiles confronted with the idea for the first time?
“So far from this revelation being something believable only by the ignorant and credulous of ancient times but less so in an era of advanced scientific knowledge, this revelation is probably more believable [today]…for the simple reason that we, after two thousand years of Christianity, have become used to the idea of a crucified and resurrected God-man who has saved us from our sins and promised eternal life.”
—Kenneth D. Whitehead, One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic: The Early Church Was The Catholic Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 73.
fish,
I have often wondered why modern biblical scholars presumed that the claims of the Gospel were more palatable to the men and women of the first century A.D. than they are to our contemporaries.
Blessings,
Vaughn
Lewis called it chronological snobbery.
Post a Comment