I'd like to begin our unit on faith and reason with Christianity. Christianity is of course
a religion and philosophy of life that originated in the ancient era not the medieval era at
the same time it is doubtless true that the developments that took place in the arts in
literature in philosophy during the medieval era has got to be understood against the backdrop
of Christianity since Christianity came in the West to dominate intellectually philosophy
literature and so forth so I wanna I wanna give some indications of what was new about
Christianity what kind of new way of looking at the world emerged with and through the
Christian movement. So as is the case with a number of the other people that we've studied
so far it's impossible for me to say anything completely uncontroversial here but I I do
think that there are some things I can say which aren't controversial or which are at
any rate a lot less controversial than they may have been at one point. One of these is
that you can't understand Jesus's teaching and life and the Christian movement as simply
being a a new form of ethics being introduced. There is actually not a whole lot of ethical
content to Christianity that is unique or original even the so-called you know golden
rule for which Jesus is famous, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," is something
that we can find in Confucius the the love, the forgiveness, the compassion emphasized
by Christianity can be found in non-Christian religions and philosophical systems to say
nothing of the the Jewish prophets that came before Jesus so you can't happily think of
Christianity even from a historical point of view as being the the presentation of a
new ethic there's another thing that I want to say about Christianity concerning it's
alleged otherworldliness. I think it's become more and more accepted that you can't think
of Christianity as sort of bursting onto the scene and presenting a series of timeless
theological truths. That is to say you can't understand the teaching of Jesus and the emergence
of the early Christian church as historical as as occurring in a kind of historical or
theological vacuum. Rather Jesus's teaching and his activity on earth needs to be understood
against the the backdrop of a historically conditioned reality, a a history within which
he finds himself situated. So one way to see this is to begin with Jesus's announcement
that the kingdom of heaven is at hand you know he was as soon as he begins his public
ministry he comes out saying "repent the kingdom of heaven is at hand the kingdom of God is
upon you this is the favorable year of the Lord" and so forth okay well, what's he mean
by that? Well you know nowadays if you were to see somebody say holding up a sign that
says repent the kingdom of God is at hand you're apt to hear them as saying something
like the end of all things is nigh, right? God's gonna blow up the world, the apocalypse
is coming maybe just you're gonna die soon so get yourself right with God so you can
go to heaven when you die. Now when Jesus says repent for the kingdom of God or kingdom
of heaven is at hand it's almost certain that his contemporaries would not have heard him
as saying something like you're gonna die so make sure you have faith in God so you
get to go to heaven when you're dead. That's not what they would've heard it all. They
would've heard something much more historically informed and much more concrete than that
so in a way like Confucius when Jesus discusses heaven he's talking about a a sort of way
of heaven okay so there's there's a similarity between Confucius and Jesus here but there
there is a difference for Jesus when he discusses the kingdom of heaven being at hand and so
forth he's not saying get ready to to leave the Earth and go off to a place called heaven
where you float around in a spiritual state. He's thinking in terms of the kingdom of God
of God's just and righteous reign coming back to earth and making an impact on the earth
in the here and now. In fact you may remember in the the great prayer that Jesus gave to
his disciples when they asked him "Lord teach us how to pray" Jesus says within that prayer
and has them recite every time they recited "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth
as it is in heaven" so Jesus's announcement was an announcement that was historically
directed and was to have an impact on the here and now. Just to reiterate even though
there is some external similarity between the ways in which Confucius and Jesus both
speak of heaven and the ways of heaven this similarity points out a difference in their
their particular historical frameworks and it points out another difference as well that
I think is important for all of the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
It it shows that they have a very different sort of philosophical orientation okay so
they're different as religions and as philosophies of life at least in the sense that they're
historically grounded. Here's what I mean by that is that the theological beliefs the
the dogmas etc. their beliefs about God and the world aren't products of sort of a priori
armchair speculation or meditation or anything like that they're supposed to be historically
grounded in the sense that they arise from certain actual historical events that took
place events within the history of the world where God breaks in and provides a kind of
self disclosure a kind of self revelation. This is particularly the case for Judaism
and Christianity and the message about the kingdom of heaven and so forth that Jesus
give needs to be understood against a pretty particularistic backdrop historical backdrop
so I I want to say some things about the history of of Israel and the state of things in Jesus's
own day. Right, so according to the the sort of story the way of looking at things that
that many Jews had during Jesus's day the history of Israel and the history of the world
is typified by is punctuated by certain encounters that God has with particular people and in
these particular encounters God makes covenant or promises bound by oath with particular
people Adam, Noah, Abraham Moses, David, and so forth. So these covenants do show that
the the tribes of Israel and later the Jews occupy a kind of a privileged or unique position
in the history of the world but its a position that comes with a kind of responsibility the
covenants made with the patriarchs and these forerunners were always outward looking as
well as inwardly directed so for example you know famously God calls Abraham tells Abraham
you know I'm going to make you you know father of many of your descendants are going to be
as numerous as the the the stars in the sky and I'm gonna them this land of promise but
he also tells Abraham that in your seed all the families all the nations of the earth
will be blessed. When Moses is given the law and Israel is constituted a nation under this
law you know the law is supposed to be exhibited in the sight of all the nations so that they
see the wisdom and the the justice that characterizes this people group and that are drawn to living
in accordance with the will of God themselves. This is extended dramatically when it comes
to King David the covenant with David you see this promise that you know his kingdom
is going to be kind of a city set on a hill that he's gonna be a light to the world a
light to the Gentiles and the nations would all stream forward and and and seek to learn
and to to conform themselves to the will of God and crucially, importantly David was promised
in return that a son of his would always occupy the throne. So all that sounds breathtaking
it sounds like an amazing story but how does reality matchup with this story if you're
in first century Palestine? Well, if you're a contemporary of Jesus's you're gonna see
a wide discrepancy between what you would expect given this history and these promises
and the reality on the ground so you know what had happened in the past was that not
long after David passed away the tribes of Israel underwent a kind of civil war, divided
into two kingdoms the northern kingdoms of of Israel was decimated by the Assyrians and
the Israelites were dispersed among the nations little bit later the southern kingdom is is
taken hostage is taken into exile in Babylon. Now you know the temple's destroyed the the
royal line has been disrupted and so forth. Okay now through time they're of course able
to come back to their own land they are occupying Jerusalem again the Temple has been rebuilt
and there's a kind of titular or puppet king on the throne but that hardly says that exile
is over and all the promises had been so filled because remember the promise was that Zion
would be the city on the hill and in effect raised up above all other nations and you
have the reverse of that in Jesus's own day. They are back in the land geographically but
they're under the pagan rule of Rome you know with Roman military boots on their neck and
the puppet ineffective king on the throne. So when Jesus breaks into the scene and says
the kingdom of heaven is at hand you know this is the favorable year of the Lord what
they heard was not we get to go to heaven when we die. What they heard was the overthrow
of the enemy and the vindication the long-awaited vindication and deliverance of God's own chosen
people. So now that we know the historically informed content of the message that the kingdom
of heaven is at hand the question then becomes by what means will it come to pass you know
given the way that the kingdom of God is intertwined with the kingdom of David it's no surprise
that Jesus's contemporaries would hear the kingdom of David is about to be restored and
it's also no surprise then that the New Testament writers cast Jesus in this starring role,
cast Jesus as the son of David and the son of Abraham in effect the anointed King that
was to reclaim and restore the kingdom of heaven on earth.