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The Essence of Christian Belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

John J. Shepherd
John J. Shepherd
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Theology and Religion, Weymouth College of Education
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Extract

In his powerful anti-Christian polemic, The Misery of Christianity, J. Kahl charges Christianity with suffering from a rock-bottom lack of identity. ‘Theologians…have been looking for a continuous thread which will lead them out of the maze of contradictory forms of Christianity…into the open. They would like to be able to say with binding force what Christianity really is.’1 But, he urges, they cannot. P. van Buren agrees, but sees in this no cause for concern. ‘Christianity has been changing since its beginning, the religion of the past constantly being adapted to the conditions of each new present. Once we see this character of Christianity, we are released from the misconceived task of trying to identify its unchanging essence.’2 Again more recently J. Hick has urged, in effect half agreeing with van Buren, that although there is an unchanging element in Christianity, it is restricted to ‘the originating events from which the moving stream of christian history has flowed’. ‘Christianity is an ongoing movement of life and thought, defined by its origin in the Christ-event and by its consciousness of that origin. It cannot be defined in terms of adherence to any doctrinal standard, for its doctrines are historically and culturally conditioned and have changed as the church has entered new historical and cultural situations.’3

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , June 1976 , pp. 231 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

page 231 note 1 Kahl, J., The Misery of Christianity (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971), p. 102.Google Scholar

page 231 note 2 Buren, Paul van, The Edges of Language: An Essay in the Logic of a Religion (London: SCM Press, 1972), p. 19.Google Scholar

page 231 note 3 Hick, J., ‘The Essence of Christianity’ in his God and the Universe of Faiths (London: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 111, 119.Google Scholar Cf. Sykes, S. W., ‘The Essence of Christianity’, Religious Studies VII (December 1971), 291–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 233 note 1 Cf. Owen, H. P., ‘The New Testament and the Incarnation: A Study in Doctrinal Development’, Religious Studies VIII (September 1972), 221–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Owen presents the implicit evidence for Christ's death from the synoptic gospels. I can only insist here by contrast that the evidence is at best ambivalent. One text frequently cited in this connexion, for example, is Mark 2: 5 where, it is claimed, Jesus assumed the divine prerogative, doing what only God could do, namely forgiving someone's sins. Yet Jesus does not say that he himself is doing the forgiving, only that the sins are forgiven (by someone, i.e., presumably, by God). Cf. Jeremias, J., The Parables of Jesus, 3rd edition (London: SCM Press, 1972), p. 209Google Scholar: ‘In Mark 2: 5 it is ultimately God who forgives. Hence Jesus says (the passive being used as a circumlocution for the divine name): “My son, God forgives your sins”.’

page 235 note 1 The Matthean rather than the Lukan version is relevant here, see Jeremias, Ibid. pp. 39–40, cf. pp. 135–6.