Crucifixion
The report of my
death was an exaggeration.
-Mark
Twain, letter to the New York Journal, in response to rumors of his
death while in Europe
If there is a keystone to orthodox Christianity, it is the
doctrine of the crucifixion. However, if Christians expect others to adopt
their belief, they have to satisfy the demand for supporting evidence. Everyone
knows the story. Everyone knows the biblical record. But everyone also knows
that other myths have been propagated over longer periods of religious history,
and the duration and popularity of a deception in no way validates it. So while
many accept the crucifixion unquestioningly many others are not satisfied. Such
individuals read, "that Christ die for our sins according to the
Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3), and as "Umm, according to exactly which scriptures?" In
Carmichael's words "For that matter the whole insistence, in the Gospels
as well as in Paul’s Epistles, that everything had been accomplished in
fulfillment of the Scriptures seems puzzling. No such belief-in the death and
resurrection of the Messiah-is recorded among the Jews at all, and certainly
not in the Hebrew Scriptures,'?" 211
Paul himself invited criticism of the concept of the crucifixion
and its related mysteries when he wrote, "For Jews request a sign, and
Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a
stumbling block and to the Gentiles (Greeks) foolishness" (1 Corinthians 1:22-23).
In other words, "We preach something without signs and without
wisdom-who's with us?"
No surprise, then, that so many consider the crucifixion incompatible
with God's mercy. Muslims, for example, believe Jesus was saved from
crucifixion, in accordance with the following: "But they did not kill him
[Jesus], nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who
differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only
conjecture to follow, for of a surety they did not kill him: Nay, Allah raised
him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise ... " (TMQ
4:157-158)
Should a person believe Jesus to have been God, one wonders why
God would have allowed His own death when He had the power to save Himself.
Should a person believe Jesus to have been the "Son of God," why
would God not answer the prayer of His son, when Jesus is quoted as saying,
"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it
will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds,
and to him who knocks it will be opened" (Matthew 7:7-8). Jesus reportedly did ask-to the point of sweating
"like great drops of blood" in prayer (Luke 22:44)-and he clearly
sought to be saved. But nowhere is Jesus quoted as saying, "Everyone who
asks receives, except for me." Matthew 7:9 reads, "Or what man is
there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?"
Put another way, who imagines that God would answer a prophet's plea for rescue
with a short weekend on a cross instead? Plenty of sunshine and all the vinegar
a person can sip from a sponge? There's an incompatibility issue here; if
people believe God, or the son of God, was born in a bath of his own urine
(which is what amniotic fluid consists of), then they will have no problem
believing God committed suicide (and what else would the act of allowing
Oneself to die be called when, being omnipotent, able to save Oneself?).
Similarly, such people will have no difficulty believing that God turned His
back on His Son in the time of greatest need. The rest of the world wonders:
"Whose concept of God is this compatible with, anyway?"
Well, Tertullian, the aforementioned originator of the Trinitarian
formula, for one. The comment has been offered that, "Tertullian enjoyed
paradox. To him the divine character of Christianity was vindicated not by its
reasonableness but by the very fact that it was the kind of thing no ordinary
mind could have invented. The crucifying of the Son of God sounds ridiculous
and scandalous: 'I believe because it is outraqeous,"?" 212
I believe because it is outrageous. If such is the methodology God, are we not
justified in believing each and every outrageous theory of divinity-the more
"ridiculous and scandalous" the better?
Somewhere, someone is bound to say, "But Jesus had to die for
our sins!" One wonders, "Why? Because God can't forgive us otherwise?
Because God needs a sacrifice?" This isn't
what the Bible teaches. Jesus reportedly taught the message of Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy, and not
sacrifice." And not just once-the lesson was worthy of two mentions,
the first in Matthew 9:13, the second in Matthew 12:7. Why, then, are clergy
teaching that Jesus had to be sacrificed? And if he was sent for this purpose,
why did he pray to be saved?
Furthermore, why do we have to believe to be saved? On one hand,
original sin is held to be binding, whether we believe in it or not. On the
other hand, salvation is held to be conditional upon acceptance (i.e., belief)
of the crucifixion and atonement of Jesus. In the first case belief is held to
be irrelevant; in the second, it's required. The question arises, "Did
Jesus pay the price or not?" If he paid the price, then our sins are
forgiven, whether we believe or not. If he didn't pay the price it doesn't
matter either way. Lastly, forgiveness doesn't have a price person can't forgive
another's debt and still demand repayment. The argument that God forgives, but only if given
a sacrifice He says doesn't want in the first place (see Hosea 6:6, Matthew
9:13 and Matthew 12:7) drags a wing and cartwheels down the runway of rational
analysis. From where, then, does the formula come? According to scripture, it’s
not from Jesus. So do people believe teachings about the prophet in preference to
those of the prophet? The Bible condemns such inverted priorities, for Matthew
10:24 records Jesus having declared, "A disciple is not above his teacher,
nor a servant above his master."
What, then, should we understand from the verse, "Then he said
to them, 'Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to
suffer and to rise from the dead the third day" (Luke 24:46)? Given choice
between literal or figurative interpretation, only the metaphor makes sense if
we are to reconcile God not desiring sacrifice with Jesus having to
"die" for the sins of humankind. Furthermore, biblical reference to
death is frequently metaphorical, as in Paul's statement of his suffering as,
"I die daily" (1 Corinthians 15:31).
So perhaps "rising from the dead" doesn't mean literally
rising from the state of actual death, but from a metaphorical death, such as:
1.
Having been unconscious or sleeping (as in "He slept like a
dead man").
2.
Having been suffering (as in the many biblical analogies between
suffering and death).
3.
Having been incapable (as in "I couldn't do a thing last
night, I was just dead").
4.
Or having been in the tomb, left for dead, but in fact alive (as
in "He recovered miraculously-he came back from the dead").
In any case, Matthew 12:40 reports Jesus having taught, "For
as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so
will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the
earth." This simple verse opens the gates to a relatively uncharted territory
of thought. "Three days and three nights" must be assumed to mean
exactly what it says, for otherwise it wouldn't have been stated with such
clarity. However, if we believe the Bible, Jesus spent only one day and two
nights-Friday night, Saturday day and Saturday night- in the sepulcher
following the alleged crucifixion. Does this pose a difficulty? We should think
so, because the above quote is Jesus' response to the request for a sign, to
which he reportedly answered, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks
after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet
Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great
fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the
earth" (Matthew 12:38-40). The above, "No sign will be given to it
except ... " declares, in no uncertain terms, that this is the only sign Jesus offers. Not the
healing of the lepers, not the curing of the blind, not the raising of the dead.
Not the feeding of the masses, not the walking on water, not the calming of the
storm. No ... no sign
would be given but the sign of Jonah.
Many Christians base faith on something they perceive to be a
miracle, whether written in the Bible, attributed to saints, or borne of personal
experience. And yet, Jesus strikingly isolates the sign of Jonah as the only
sign to be given. Not the weeping statues, not the visions of Mary, not the
faith healing. Not the speaking in tongues, not the exorcising of spirits, not
the receiving of the Holy Ghost. Just the sign of Jonah. That's all. Those who
adopt different signs must realize that, according to the Bible, they do so
against the teaching of Jesus. And considering the emphasis he placed on the
sign of Jonah, we should examine it.
The Bible tells us that Jesus was crucified on a Friday, which explains
why the Jews were under pressure to expedite his death, along with that of the
two criminals crucified with him. Friday sunset ushers in the Jewish Sabbath,
for the Hebraic calendar is lunar, which means their days end at sunset. Hence,
Friday sunset heralds the beginning of Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The
problem facing the Jews was that Jewish law forbade leaving dead bodies hanging
overnight (either on cross or on gallows-Deuteronomy 21:22-23), but also
forbade taking the bodies down and burying them on the Sabbath. It was an Old
Testament Catch-22. Had any of the crucified died on the Sabbath, the Jews
could neither leave the corpse nor bury it. The only practical solution was to
speed the death of the condemned, and this is why the Roman soldiers were sent
to break their legs.
The rapidity by which crucifixion kills depends not only up the
individual's fortitude, which is unpredictable, but also upon his physical
strength. Most crosses were constructed with a small seat or a wood block for
the feet, to partially bear the victim's weight in order to prolong the
torture. In Jesus' case, Christian tradition has it that feet were nailed to
the cross. The reason for this brutality is that' condemned would be forced to
support his weight on impaled feet greatly compounding the agony. However, the
Romans would often expedite death by breaking the victims' legs. With no means
of supporting his body, the crucified would hang with his body weight suspended
on outstretched arms, which fatigues the respiratory muscles. Eventually, the
victim would no longer be able to draw his breath. The mechanism of death,
therefore, is slow asphyxiation-slower still in individuals with greater
endurance and the will to live.
The Bible records that the Roman soldiers were sent to break the
legs of the condemned, but upon their arrival, they found Jesus already dead.
Subsequently, he was removed from the cross and placed in the sepulcher. When?
Late Friday afternoon, prior to sunset.
Sunday morning, before sunrise, Mary Magdalene returned to the
tomb, having rested on the Sabbath in accordance with the law (Luke 23:56 and
John 20:1), and found the tomb empty. She is told that Christ is risen (Matthew
28:6, Mark 16:6, Luke 24:6). The arithmetic works out to one night (Friday
sunset to Saturday sunrise), plus one day (Saturday sunrise to sunset), plus
one night (Saturday sunset to slightly before Sunday sunrise). Grand total? Two
nights and one day-a far cry from the "three days and three nights"
referenced in Jesus' "sign of Jonah." Once again, a person either has
to admit that the evidence doesn't add up, or rewrite the rules of mathematics.
One more piece of this scriptural puzzle deserves consideration. The
quote, "For as Jonah ... " (or, as per the New Revised Standard Version,
"For just as Jonah ... ") compares the state of Jesus with that of Jonah.
Even schoolchildren know that Jonah was alive from the time his comrades
reduced the ship's ballast by the measure of his weight, to the somewhat rough
moment of regurgitation onto the sandy shore. Since Jonah was alive throughout
the entire ordeal, a person could speculate that Jesus, "just as Jonah ...
" was alive throughout as well. It is worth noting that when the tomb was
visited on Sunday morning, each of the
gospels describes Jesus as "risen," which is hardly surprising
given the fact that cold rock slabs, unlike warm, wave-suppressed waterbeds,
don't exactly invite a person to punch the snooze button and sleep in. What is missing from the Bible, however, is
the statement that Jesus was resurrected. Jesus reportedly said, "I
came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the
world and go to the Father" (John 16:28). But how is that different from
any of us? And where does Jesus say he would die and be resurrected in the
process? The word
"resurrected" is nowhere to be found. "Risen from the dead"
is mentioned a handful of times, but never by Jesus himself. And notably,
many second and third-century Christians believed Jesus didn't die.213
This may not change anyone's way of thinking, but it should at
least illustrate the reasonable viewpoints that result from assigning priority
to the recorded words of Jesus over those of others. The Islamic understanding
is one such viewpoint-one which affirms the prophethood of Jesus while pointing
out that his scriptural teachings not only discredit many elements of
established "Christian" doctrine, but reinforce Islamic ideology as
well.
In recent years, many have found their doubts strengthened by trail
of engaging theories in books of critical Christian challenge. One such work, The Jesus Conspiracy by Holger Kersten and Elmar R. Gruber,
is of particular interest with regard to the subject of this chapter, for the
authors present powerful evidence that whoever was wrapped in the Shroud of
Turin did not die. Kersten and Gruber proposed that the Catholic Church
realized the devastating impact this theory, if true could have. After all, if
the evidence suggested that Jesus had been wrapped in the shroud but did not
die, the church would be left without a death, without an atoning sacrifice,
without a resurrection and in short, the church would be left without a church.
In the words, First Corinthians 15:14, "And if Christ is not risen, then
our preaching is empty and your faith is also
empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God .... "
The authors claim the church responded by deliberately discrediting
the shroud, even to the extent of falsifying carbon dating tests.
Well. .. maybe. The authors' evidence is substantial, and ... their
logic is compelling, and ... they may be wrong. Then again, they may be right.
Chances are, we'll never know. About the only thing we do know about the shroud
is that the Catholic church has not taken a position on the authenticity of the
shroud, and we have to wonder why it objects to more independent testing. If
unauthentic, the shroud is little more than an oddity, so why not trim some insignificant
snippets off the edges and pass them around? But no, the custodians keep the
shroud under lock and key, and we have to wonder why, if not because they fear
the results.
In any case, Muslims believe that Jesus was never crucified in the
first place, "but so it was made to appear ... " (TMQ 4:157). If the
proposal sounds outlandish to those who have been raised to think the opposite,
the doctrine of the crucifixion sounds stranger still when placed beside Deuteronomy 21 :23, which states, "He
who is hanqed [i.e., either on a gallows or crucified] is accursed of
God." Simultaneous claims to biblical inerrancy and to the divine
sonship of the crucified Jesus cast a truly peculiar light on anyone who
supports such beliefs, for the contradiction is obvious. Either Jesus was not
crucified, the Bible is in error, or, according to the scripture, Jesus was
accursed of God. To hold that God's prophet, son, or partner (however a person
regards Jesus) is also accursed of God can only achieve acceptance among those
with synaptic sterility. The above pieces simply do not fit the package.
Something has to give-one or more of the non-conforming elements need to be
recognized for what it is-a sham-and cast out. Otherwise, the package as a
whole bears the impossible qualities of make-believe, or perhaps we should say,
"make-belief."
Similarly confounding is Hebrews
5:7, which states that because Jesus was a righteous man, God answered his
prayer to be saved from death: "In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up
prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able
to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent
submission" (Hebrews 5:7, NRSV). Now, what does "God heard his
prayer" mean- that God heard it loud and clear and ignored it? No, it
means God answered his prayer. It certainly can't mean that God heard and
refused the prayer, for then the phrase "because of his reverent
submission" would be nonsensical, along the lines of, "God heard his
prayer and refused it because he was a righteous man."
Now, while Muslims deny the crucifixion of Jesus, they don't deny
that someone was
crucified. So who do Muslims think was crucified in his place? It's a moot
point, and not terribly important. Some suggest that Allah raised Jesus up and
altered Judas' features to resemble those of Jesus, with the end result that
Judas was crucified in his place, to the deception of the audience. Well,
maybe. But then again, maybe not. There's no compelling evidence to support
this opinion, even though it does conform to the biblical and Qur'anic
principles of people reaping what they sow.
Notably, there are those who object to the suggestion of Judas
being crucified on the basis that, as per Matthew 27:5, Judas threw his
ill-gotten silver back at the priests and "went and hanged himself."
So he wasn't around to be crucified. On the other hand, Acts records that Judas
"purchased a field with the wages of iniquity; and falling headlong, he
burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out" (Acts 1:18). So
if the authors of Acts and Matthew don't
agree on the matter, what really happened is anybody's guess.
Perhaps we can look at this issue from a different angle. If the
idea of Judas being crucified in Jesus' place sounds technically strained,
maybe it shouldn't; God is described as
having restrained the eyes of two disciples (i.e., intimate companions who
should have readily recognized their teacher) when they met the allegedly
"risen" Jesus on the road to Emmaus, "so that they did not know
him" (Luke 24:16). Another biblical example would be that Mary
Magdalene reportedly failed to recognize Jesus outside of the tomb,
"supposing him to the gardener ... " (John 20:15). Mary Magdalene?
Shouldn't she have been able to identify him,
even in the early morning light?
Interestingly
enough, this concept of a crucifixion
switch isn’t entirely foreign to
Christianity. Among early Christians, the Corinthians, the Basilidians, the
Paulicians, the Cathari and the Carpocratians all believed Jesus Christ's life
was spared.
The Basilidians believed that Simon of Cyrene was crucified in his place, which
may not be an unreasonable suggestion, considering that Simon carried Jesus'
cross (see Matthew 27:32, Mark 15:21 and Luke 23:26). Typically, all of the
dissenting sects mentioned above were judged to have been Gnostics and/ or
heretics by the church, and were violently suppressed by a Trinitarian majority
that systematically burned dissenters into oblivion for the first fifteen
centuries of Catholic rule (the most recent roasting having taken place in
Mexico in 1850 CE).
To be fair, Gnostic ideology did have a place in many, if not most,
or even all groups regarded as dissenters from orthodoxy. But then again,
Gnosticism has a place in orthodoxy as well, for what is gnosis if not the belief that its initiates
possess some esoteric but essential knowledge necessary for salvation, which
can neither be explained nor justified? And what has this discussion thus far
exposed, if not the lack of scriptural foundation for the canon of Trinitarian
orthodoxy?
Of the above groups, the Paulicians (whose name possibly, derived from their devotion to Paul of
Samosata) hold special inter. Paul of Samosata reportedly took his teaching
from Diodorus, head of the Nazarene Church in Antioch. His teachings in turn
branched off the trunk of apostolic ideology through individuals such as Lucian
(who in turn taught Arius), Eusebius of Nicomedia, and even Nestorius (whose
influence expanded from Eastern Europe as far east as China and as far south as
Abyssinia). The Paulician influence eventually spread to occupy most, if not
all, of Europe and North Africa. Yet so complete was their annihilation by the
Roman Catholic Church during the period of persecution, both they and their
books were virtually completely destroyed. Only
in the mid-nineteenth century was one of their sacred books, The
Key of Truth,
discovered in Armenia and translated. From this document, a
view of their beliefs and practices can be appreciated.
The Paulicians may invite condemnation for their dualistic ideology,
acceptance of suicide and excess of asceticism. Notable is the peculiar
Paulician concept of Jesus Christ having been a phantasm, and not a man. On the
other hand, the Paulicians adhered to belief in divine unity, the virgin birth,
baptism, and other creeds and practices that date from the apostolic age.
Included in the list of their particulars is the apparent lack of an organized
priesthood or hierarchy of clergy. The leaders married and had families. Their
services were characterized by simplicity of worship and lack of sacraments:
they didn't even use holy water. The Paulicians
refused to adopt any visible object of worship-no relics, no images, not even
the cross. They considered the use
of images, whether two or three dimensional, to be idolatrous, foreign to the
teachings of Jesus, and in violation of the second commandment. The doctrine of Incarnation appears to have
been denied, as were the doctrines of original sin and the Trinity-all rejected
on the basis of lacking scriptural foundation. The Paulicians denied the alleged crucifixion of Jesus, and
consequently rejected the doctrines of the resurrection, atonement, and
redemption of sins. They also shunned
infant baptism as an innovation foreign to the teachings and practice of Jesus,
and claimed it was worthless since children lack the capacity for mature faith
and repentance. They boycotted Christmas
on the grounds that it was an illegitimate holiday constructed as a concession
to the pagans, who worshipped the rebirth of their Sun-god three days following
the winter solstice, on December 25, at the annual festival of Sol
Invictus (The
Invincible Sun). They neither solicited nor accepted tithes, maintained a strict diet, stressed
devotion to worship in all aspects of life and aspired to cleanliness of temper,
thoughts, words, and work.
A better model of the carpenter-King would be difficult to find, but
for their creed, they were killed. Over a period of centuries the Paulicians
were hounded wherever they were found. The Byzantine Empress Theodora
reestablished image worship in Constantinople during the ninth century and, as
Gibbon notes, "Her inquisitors explored the cities and mountains of the
Lesser Asia, and the flatterers of the empress have affirmed that, in a short
reign, one hundred thousand Paulicians were extirpated by the sword, the
gibbet, or the flames."214
The Paulicians eventually were driven from Armenia to Thrace, and
on to Bulgaria. From there they spread to Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovinia, then
north to Germany, west to France and south into Italy. By sea they found routes
to Venice, Sicily and Southern France. The rapid expansion of Paulician
theology, which seems to have been revived
in the Cathari (meaning "the Pure") in or around
the eleventh century, became a serious threat to the Catholic Church, and was condemned
at the Councils of Orleans in 1022, of Lombard in 1165, and of Verona in 1184.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux described the Cathari thusly: "If you interrogate
them, nothing can be more Christian; as to their conversation, nothing can be
less reprehensible, and what they speak they prove by deeds. As for the morals
of the heretic, he cheats no one, he oppresses no one, he strikes no one; his
cheeks are pale with fasting, he eats not the bread of idleness, his hands
labour for his livelihood."215
Nonetheless, the church condemned the Cathari, not for their ethics
and sincerity, but for their theology. Not until the Medieval inquisition of
the thirteenth century was the church able to act upon their condemnation, but
then, opening floodgates on the host of several centuries, they applied the
full force of their hatred with a vengeance sufficient to establish their
authority and destroy their enemies. The loss of the Paulicians, Cathari, and
the various other “heretic” Christian sects testifies to the terrible efficacy
of the religious cleansing of the Medieval Inquisition and subsequent periods
of persecution. F. C. Conybeare comments,
It was no
empty vow of
their elect ones, “to be baptized with the baptism of
Christ, to take on themselves scourgings, imprisonments, tortures, reproaches,
crosses, blows, tribulation, and all temptations of the world."Theirs
the tears, theirs the blood shed during more than ten centuries of fierce
persecution in the East; and if we reckon of their number, as well we may, the
early puritans of Europe, then the tale of wicked deeds wrought by the
persecuting churches reaches dimensions which appall the mind. And as it was
all done, nominally out of reverence for, but really in mockery of,
the Prince of Peace, it is hard to say of the Inquisitors that they knew not
what they did.216
That the
Catholic Church was so effective in eliminating their opposition
is of no surprise to those who study their methodology. Their degree of savagery did not even spare their own people, at
times sacrificing members of the orthodoxy to insure complete elimination of
the Unitarians. For example, the mixed population of Catholics and Unitarians
of the people of Beziers, in the South of France, were attacked mercilessly. In
his History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, Henry Charles Lea brings the
full horror of the invaders' overzealousness
into sharp focus:
From
infancy in arms to tottering age, not one was spared- seven thousand, it is said, were slaughtered in
the Church of Mary Magdalen to which they had fled for asylum-and the total number of slain is set down
by the legates at nearly twenty thousand .. "
A fervent Cistercian contemporary informs
us that when Arnaud was asked whether the Catholics should be spared, he feared
the heretics would escape by feigning orthodoxy, and fiercely replied, "Kill them all, for God knows his own!"
In the mad car- nage and pillage the town was set on fire, and the sun of that
awful July day closed on a mass of smouldering ruins and blackened corpses-a
holocaust to a deity of mercy and love Whom the Cathari might well be
pardoned for regarding as the Principle of Evil.217
The inquisitors' use of torture was equally horrific, for it did
end at confession. Once they procured a confession, they began torture anew, to
extract names of associates until the last drop of information was squeezed
from the mangled husk of what had once been a human being.
Once accused, the pitiful defendant was guaranteed to suffer. Torture
yielded the required confession-if not out of truth, then out of the victim's desperation to bring an end to
the pain. Horrifically, protestations of innocence and even
the oath of orthodoxy did not bring relief, for suspects professing
orthodox belief were committed to a test of faith, and here the church
demonstrated the full measure of its creativity. Trials by water and fire were
popularized and sanctioned by Catholic Church for the testing of faith by way
of Judicium Dei-Judgement of God, a concept
based upon superstition. It was believed the purity of water would not
accept a guilty body into its midst, so floaters were judged guilty and
executed, sinkers were considered innocent, and if rescued before drowning,
spared. It was believed that earthly fire, like the
flames of Hell, would not harm those who were (in their view) the faithful Christians bearing
the promise of paradise. The "hot iron test" was the most commonly
employed, as it was simple readily available. In this test, the accused was
required to carry a red-hot piece of iron for a certain number of steps,
usually nine. Judgment was offered either at the time of the test (those burned
were judged guilty) or several days later (those whose wounds were healing were
declared innocent, whereas those whose wounds became infected were deemed
guilty). Other variations existed, such as determining whether a person
suffered a burn when an arm was immersed up to the elbow in boiling water or
boiling oil.
.~.
Lest a person presume such insane methods were rarely employed,
the Council of Rheims in 1157 ordered "trials by ordeal" to satisfy
all cases of suspected heresy?"218
Now, why all this discussion about what are now little-known and dead
sects? Well, the intent is neither to glorify them beyond the merits of
their ideology, nor to evoke sympathy for their cause, but rather to draw
attention to the alternate Christian ideologies that have become obscure in the
shadow of prevailing Trinitarianism. The Corinthians, the Basilidians, the
Paulicians, the Cathari, and the Carpocratians may be little known today, but
they were dynamic Christian ideologies that shared a significant place in
history. But history, as the saying goes, is written by the victors.
"Moreover," writes Ehrman, "the victors in the struggles to
establish Christian orthodoxy not only won their theological battles, they also
rewrote the history of the conflict ... "219 The Catholic Church attempted to
systematically erase the memory of all other sects and scriptures contrary to
their own, and at this, they were largely successful. Given their vicious methodology,
we should not be surprised.
Additionally, historical attempts to vilify all other religions or
Christian sects prejudiced the minds of the populace. So successful were these
efforts that the records and holy books
of those who appear to have been closest to the teachings of the apostolic
fathers have been largely lost. Similarly, those closest to embodying the
practices and creed of the prophet Jesus have come to be regarded as heretics,
simply because they did not embrace the "evolved" doctrines of the
Trinitarian victors. In other words, they were condemned for nonconformity with
views which, though lacking scriptural authority, were selected by men of
position and propagated for reasons of political expediency.
One of the curious elements of Trinitarian history lies in the
fact that in all its travels throughout the Christian world, it had to be forced upon a previously Unitarian people.
The Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Vandals, the Arians, Donatists, and
Paulicians-all had to be muscled aside prior to the imposition of
Trinitarian rule. Even in England and Ireland there is suspicion that, contrary
to official historical accounts, a good
percentage of the population were staunch Unitarian Christian prior to
receiving Trinitarian "encouragement." Whereas Unitarians attempted
to spread faith through example and invitation, the Catholic Church spread
Trinitarian faith by shearing the populace with the sharp blades of compulsion
and elimination.
Reviewing unprejudiced historical accounts, a large population of
the religious throughout the known world voiced their opposition to Trinitarian
Christianity, and those who denied Jesus Christ's crucifixion and death were
not necessarily a minority. Many would argue that from a gut level it makes
more sense for God to have punished Judas for his treachery than to have
tortured Jesus for his innocence. The argument would be more convincing if the
doctrines of atonement and original sin could be shown to be invalid, for these
two doctrines hinge off the doorframe of the alleged death of Jesus. The first
hurt for many people in considering such revolutionary notions is the age-old
assertion that Jesus Christ was the "Lamb of God who takes away the sins
of the world" (John 1 :29) , for in the mind of the Trinitarian, this
verse can have no relevance other than to that of the doctrine of atonement.
Unitarians, however, conceive Jesus to have lived a life of sacrifice in order
to bear a purifying teaching which, if adopted, woould put humankind on the
path of God's design.
No comments :
Post a Comment