My colleague Dr Celia Green is giving a seminar with this provocative title on Thursday of the week after next in Oxford. Details here. Entry is free and all are welcome.
(I believe her answer will be "no".)
She is planning to examine whether Christ may have had a different radical agenda from the one often attributed to him. Something more to do with psychology than politics.
Christ blessing bread and wine by John Constable, courtesy St James' Church, Nayland
7 comments:
I'm pretty sure he wasn't --- despite the never-ending attempts to convince us that he was some kind of proto-leftie.
Fabian, it does sound an intriguing talk. For those of us who won't be able to make it, do you think Dr Green might be prevailed upon to make the ideas behind her talk available online in some form, at some stage?
In reponse to your question, Ian, Celia writes:
"I am planning eventually to publish a book on early Christianity and the affinities or otherwise between Gnostic Christianity and modern existentialism and socialism. The purpose of the seminars is, in part, to see what objections people produce to my psychological interpretations.
Concepts such as social justice are seldom analysed, and what I shall eventually say in the book will depend on what seem to be the most cogent ways of defending my own position, in the light of what people say at seminars."
If you believe in not coveting and not stealing, you can hardly be a socialist.
Though not a Christian, I am pretty sure the individual Jesus lived and that his message was not socialist, for socialism is about the masses abdicating responsibility and being controlled by an elite.
I suspect the Churches are socialist, however for the reasons given above.
Fabian, thanks to you and Dr Green for that response. Does Dr Green see any merit in the suggestion that she may well also receive constructive criticism of her ideas through comment threads, were she to raise some of her points in the form of a blog post or posts? There may be an added advantage in that blog posts do provide the opportunity for a more considered response than might seminars (even if that opportunity is not always taken advantage of in practice...)
Socialist - nah, just Jewish!
Post a Comment