The Christ - The New Testament's Adam and Eve Story : Michael Morwood
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The Christ - The New Testament's Adam and Eve Story

by Michael Morwood on 11/08/15

The Christ – The New Testament’s Adam and Eve Story

Most people now readily accept that the story of Adam and Eve is myth and should not be taken literally. However, despite all the Scriptural scholarship to this effect, the Catechism of the Catholic Church insists that the story “affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man.” (#390) The reason for this stubborn blindness to reality and to the Church’s own scholarship is simple: the story props up a theological worldview that gives the institution power and authority.  The story of a God who withdrew friendship, the story of humanity exiled from God because of sin form the basis of the institution’s claim to have unique access to that God and to his forgiveness.  The story has formed, and continues to form, the basis for the institutional Church’s understanding of why it exists.

Disbelief in literal understanding of this story took a long time coming – and is still resisted, as the Catechism attests.

Jump now to the New Testament and lo and behold we have a story that mirrors the Adam and Eve story in so many ways: “the Christ” story. Again we have literal belief in a God who disconnected from humanity; a story abut humanity lost in sin. Again we have, on the basis of this “Christ” story, institutional claims to unique access to God – and  to “salvation”.

But “the Christ” is as much a myth as Adam and Eve.  It’s a theological construct shaped in a worldview that is given no credence today. Jesus had no concern for the issues the proponents of “the Christ pushed into prominence. His concern was for this world and how humans urgently need to get their act together.  Jesus was never “the Christ” figure. If he thought at all about being “anointed” for a task, it was about preaching “good news” to affirm, uplift and challenge people. He had no belief in a God withholding forgiveness or friendship. He certainly would have been aghast at the idea that God’s forgiveness was conditional on some “redeeming” act.  He showed no interest in the Greek religious focus on access to the heavenly realms. And it would seem, from respectable scholarship, that the idea of “the Christ” had no place in the minds of the Jewish followers of Jesus in the first decade after he died.

So, when will we get to general acceptance that the Christ-religion (as I now prefer to call Christianity) has side-tracked people down the wrong path the way the Adam and Eve story side-tracked people for centuries?  Don’t hold your breath would be good advice. The history of the Christ-religion in its institutional leadership throughout the centuries has displayed far more emphasis, brutal and fearful at times, on correct thinking about the Christ and on the Church’s power to condemn people to hell than on Jesus preaching the beatitudes.

“The Christ” has been cemented in creedal, doctrinal statements, never to be questioned. It’s the biggest mistake this religion ever made because it is all so far removed from anything Jesus gave his life for.

It’s time to purge our Gospels from “the Christ” influences on their writers decades after Jesus died and get back to what Jesus really preached.

 

Comments (1)

1. Noreen Townshend said on 10/24/17 - 11:02AM
I am loving your blog on the Adam and Eve Story, but I think there are print issues or is it just my iPad


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