In order to ascertain the nature of Christianity today, it is necessary to bear in mind the distinction between knowledge which is arrived at by observation and deduction, and knowledge which is revealed to man through no power of his own. deductive knowledge is always changing in the light of fresh observations and new experience. It therefore lacks certainty. Revealed knowledge is from God. In every revealed message, there is a metaphysical aspect and a physical . The metaphysical teaches the nature of the Divine Unity. The physical provides a code of behaviour . Revealed knowledge has always been brought by a messenger who embodied it. The way he lives is a message. To behave as the messenger did is to have knowledge of the message, and in this knowledge is certainty. Christianity today is said to be based on revealed knowledge, but none of the Bible contains the message of Jesus intact, and exactly as it was revealed to him. There is hardly any record of his code of behaviour. The books in the New Testament do not even contain eye witness accounts of his sayings and actions. They were written by people who derived their knowledge second-hand. These records are not comprehensive. Everything which Jesus said and did which has not been recorded has been lost forever.

Those who seek to verify what is in the New Testament claim that even if by no means comprehensive, it is at least  accurate. However, it is significant that all the oldest surviving manuscripts of the New Testament , from which all the present translations of the Bible derive, were written after the Council of Nicea. The Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus date from the late fourth century, and the Codex Alexandrius from the Fifth century. As a result of the Council of Nicea, nearly three hundred other accounts of the life of   Jesus, many of them eye-witness accounts, were systematically destroyed. the events of the Council of Nicea indicate that the Pauline  Church had every reason to change the four gospels which survived. Clearly , the manuscripts of the New Testament which were written after the Council of Nicea are different from the manuscripts which existed before the Council. It is significant that publication of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, when they do not verify the post Nicene manuscripts , have been withheld.

The unreliability of the gospels appears to be admitted by the Church itself : The metaphysics of Christianity today is not even based on what is in the gospels. The established church is founded on the doctrine of original sin, of atonement  and redemption , of the divinity of Jesus, of the divinity of the Holy Ghost and of Trinity. None of these doctrines are to be found within the gospels. they were not taught by Jesus. They were the fruits of Paul's innovations and the influence of Greek culture and philosophy. Paul never experienced the company nor the direct transmission of knowledge from Jesus. Before his "conversion" , he vigorously persecuted the followers of Jesus , and after it he was largely responsible for abandoning the code of behaviour of Jesus when he took "Christianity" to the non-Jews of Greece and beyond. The figure of "Christ" whom he claimed taught him his new doctrine is an imagination. His teaching is based on an event which never took place, the supposed death and resurrection of Jesus.

Despite their doubtful origins, these doctrines form an integral part of the conditioning of anyone who is given a "Christian education" . Although many have rejected some or all of them , the magic they exercise is such that those who give them credibility are lead by their logic to believe in the notorious principle : Outside the Church, no salvation". The Church's metaphysical construct is this: The doctrine of atonement and redemption says that Christ who was of God took on human form and became Jesus, who then died for mankind to atone for all its sins. The Church guarantees forgiveness of sins and salvation on the Day of Judgement , for any man who believes in "Christ" and who follows the guidance of the church. Further ,it is believed that this contract is available to all people until the end of the world. The natural consequences of this belief are these:

Firstly , it implies that a man is not responsible for his actions and that he will not be held to account for them after his death ; for whatever he does he yet believes he will be redeemed by "Christ's sacrifice". However , this does not mean a life of joy on earth. his belief in the doctrine of original sin, which states that because of the fall of Adam, all men are born sinful , means that while he is alive it follows that his condition is one of unworthiness and incompleteness. This tragic view of life is reflected in the following statement of J. G. Vos, a Christian ,in which he compares Islam and Christianity :

There is nothing in Islam to lead  a man to say, "Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? " or "I know that in me; that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing". A religion with reasonable attainable objectives .... does not give the sinner the anguish of a guilty conscience nor the frustration of trying without success to attain in practical living the requirements of an absolute moral standard. In brief , Islam makes a man  feel good, while Christianity necessarily first, and often thereafter , makes a man feel bad. The religion of the broken heart is Christianity, not Islam  (A Christian Introduction to  Religions of the World , J.G. Vos, pp 66-67)

Secondly, belief in the doctrine of atonement and redemption leads to confusion when a Christian attempts to reconcile the other teachings God has revealed to man with his own belief. It implies that "Christ's sacrifice" and "message" are unique and final, and therefore he cannot accept the teachings of other prophets. At the same time, he can not deny the truth he finds in them. Thus , a Christian rejects Judaism, yet accepts the Old Testament ,which is derived from the teachings which Moses  brought to the Jews. He  puts  himself in the impossible position to having to accept two contradictory beliefs simultaneously , as this passage shows :

There are elements of relative good in the non-Christian faiths. While the call for separation from false religions is certainly  Biblical, and the demonic character of pagan religions is taught in Scripture.... still it is also true that  elements of limited relative good exist in these religions. While it is true that they are demonic in character , it is also true  (and Scriptural)  that they are products of man's distorted interpretation of God's revelation in nature. Even though they may  be works of the devil, still they are not simply works of the devil, but partly products of God's common grace and partly products of sinful man's abuse of God's revelation in nature.  (A Christian Introduction to  Religions of the World , J. G. Vos, p 27)

It is significant that Vos does not mention all the distortions the Bible has undergone.

Attempts to avoid the dilemma of simultaneous acceptance and rejection of non-Christian faiths has been made by arguing that some Christians "discern in them the influence of the 'cosmic Christ' who, as the eternal Logos or revealer of the Godhead, is the 'light that enlightens every man'. This view .... was summed up by William Temple when  he  wrote : "By the word of God - that is to say, Jesus Christ - Isaiah and Plato , Zoroaster , Buddha , ;and Confucius uttered and wrote such truths as they declared. There is only one Divine Light, and every man in his own measure is enlightened by it" (The World 's Religions, N. Anderson, p 232). The reasoning in this passage relies on the assumptions that the "one Divine Light" and "Christ" are the same. Since "Christ" is an imagination, the doctrine fails , and the dilemma remains. It can only be avoided by restoring to George Orwell's 'doublethink' .He defined it thus:

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously, and accepting both them. The partly intellectual knows that he is playing tricks with reality, but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated (1984 ,G. Orwell, p 220) 

Doublethink lies at the root of a Christian's basic assumption that Christ is God. It is around this assumption that the controversy of the two natures of  Jesus has raged. One moment he is human. The next moment he is divine. first he is Jesus, then he is Christ. It is not only by the  exercise of doublethink that a man can hold these two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. It is only by the exercise of doublethink that belief in the doctrine of Trinity can be maintained.

Article VII of the Thirty nine  Articles of the Church of England begins :

The Old Testament is not contrary to the New ... As Milton has so clearly shown, the Old Testament is full of passages affirming the One-ness of God. There is not one passage which describes the Divine Reality in the terms of the doctrine of Trinity. The act of affirming what is in the Old testament , and the gospels for  that matter, and at the same time affirming belief in the doctrine of Trinity, is perhaps the greatest illustration of the exercise of doublethink within Christianity today. Thus the logic of the established Church's metaphysics , based on doctrines  which were not taught by Jesus, obscures not only the nature of Jesus, but also the Divine Unity. The metaphysic of Christianity today is totally opposed to the metaphysics which Jesus brought. The physical aspect of what Jesus brought, his code of behaviour ,is today irrecoverably lost. To live as Jesus lived is to understand his message, yet there is virtually no existing record of how Jesus behaved. And what little knowledge exists is often ignored. The most fundamental act of Jesus was that of worship of the Creator, the whole purpose for which man was created. Yet it is evident that no Christians today makes the same acts of worship which Jesus made. Jesus usually prayed in the synagogue. He prayed at appointed times each day, in the morning , at mid-day, and in the evening. The exact form of his prayer is no longer extant, but it is known that it was based on the prayer which Moses was given. Jesus said that he had come to uphold the law and not to destroy it one jot or one tithe.  Jesus was educated in the synagogue in Jerusalem from the age of twelve. He preached in the synagogue. He used to keep the synagogue clean .No Christian today can be found performing these actions. How many Christians have even  been circumcised in the manner that Jesus was?  The services now held in today's churches were developed long after Jesus had disappeared. Many of them come directly from the pagan Graeco-Roman mythological rites. The prayers they use are not the prayers which Jesus made. The hymns they sing are not the praises which Jesus sung. Due to the innovations of Paul and his followers, there is no revealed teaching left as to what  to eat and what not to eat. Anyone given a "Christian education" today eats what he feels like. Yet Jesus and his true followers only ate kosher meat and were forbidden to eat pig's flesh. The last meal Jesus is known to have eaten before his disappearance was the Passover meal. No Christian today celebrates this longstanding Jewish tradition to which Jesus so meticulously held. It is no longer known in what manner Jesus ate and drank, who he would eat with and who he would not eat with, where he would eat and where he would not eat, when he would eat and when he would not eat. Jesus fasted, but again it is not known how, where and when he fasted. His  science of fasting has been lost. There is no record of the food he liked especially ,and the food of which he was not particularly fond . Jesus did not marry while he was on earth, but he did not forbid it. There is no passage in the gospels which states that a follower of Jesus must take a vow of celibacy, Nor is there any authority for the establishment of single-sex communities such as monasteries of convent, although these could owe their  origin to communities such as the Essenes. The early followers of Jesus who were married must have followed the code of behaviour in marriage which Moses brought. Their example is no longer emulated today.

The breakdown of the family structure in the West demonstrates the lack of an effective guide to behaviour with in a Christian marriage, of how a man should behave towards a woman ,and a woman towards a man. Extracting a moral principle from the gospels and trying to live by it is not the same as acting in a certain manner because it is known that Jesus acted that way in that situation . One course of action is the fruit of deductive knowledge, the other course of action is by revealed knowledge.

There is no record of how Jesus walked , how he sat, how he stood, how he kept himself clean, how he went to sleep, how he woke up he greeted people, how he was with old people, how he was with old women, how he was with young women,  how he was with strangers, how he was with guests, how he was with his enemies, how he conducted his transactions in the market place, how he travelled , what he was allowed to do and what he was not allowed to do.

The records of Jesus' message as revealed to him by God are incomplete and inaccurate. The doctrines on which Christianity today is based are not to be found within these records. The record of how Jesus acted is almost non-existent, and what little is known is virtually ignored. Yet the institution of the Church , in whatever form, has always claimed to be the interpreter and guardian of Jesus's message. The Church was not instituted by Jesus. He did not establish a hierarchy of priests to act as mediators between God and man. Yet the established Pauline church , from very early on , always taught Christians to believe that their salvation was assured if they acted and believed as the Church told them. From where did the  Church derive its authority ?

This claim for authority, in its most extreme form, is to be found in the Roman Catholic Church's doctrine of papal infallibility . Cardinal Heenan has summed it up in these words: 

This secret of this wonderful unity of our Church is Christ's promise that the church will never fall to teach  the truth. Once we know it must be true .... All Catholic priests teach the same doctrines because they all obey the Vicar of Christ. The word "vicar" means "one who takes the place of another". The Pope is the Vicar of Christ because he takes the place of Christ as Head of the Church on earth. The church remains one because all her members believe the same faith. They believe it because the Church cannot teach what is false. This is what we mean when we say that the Church is infallible. Christ promised to guide his church. One of the ways Christ chose to guide the Church was by leaving his Vicar on earth to speak for him. That is why we say the Pope is infallible. He is the Head of the infallible Church. God could not allow him to lead it into error. (Christianity on Trail , I ,Colin Chapman , pp 32-33) 

It is significant that Cardinal Heenan talks only of "Christ", and not of Jesus. He does not refer to the gospels to support his claims.

This dogma has often proved awkward. For if all the popes were infallible, why was Pope Honorius anathematised ? Does the recent papal encyclical which states that the Jews were not responsible for the supposed crucifixion of Jesus mean that all the preceding popes were not infallible after all ? 

Many Roman Catholics today have rejected the validity of "Christ's promise that the Church will never fail to teach the truth" which is not to be found in any of the gospels : The great gap between church teaching and practice troubles Cincinnati's Archbishop Joseph .L. Bernadin ... said Bernadin in an interview in U.S Catholic : "So many consider themselves good Catholics , even though their beliefs and practices seem  to conflict with the official teaching in the Church. This is almost a new concept of what it means to be a Catholic today.... Once it became legitimate (in 1966) to eat meat on Friday one could doubt the authority of the pope, practice birth control, leave priesthood and get married or indeed do anything else one wanted to" .  Greely writes, "The practice of abstaining from meat on Friday, meant  to emulate Jesus's fasting and to commemorate the day he was crucified, eventually became a church commandment and for centuries  served as a kind of Roam Catholic Badge".

The Vatican II, (the Second Vatican Council of 1962) , amazed me, wrote author , Doris Grumbach, in the Critic, "because it raised  the possibility of more , answers than one, of gray areas, of a private world of conscience and behaviour. But like all places in human experience of rigour and rule, once the window was opened, everything came under question. No constants remained, no absolutes, and the church became for me a debatable question. I still cling to the gospels, to Christ and some of his followers as central to my life, but the institution no longer seems important to me. I no longer live in it " ( Time magazine , May 24 ^th, 1976, pp 42-43)

The investment of authority in the church, if not its complete infallibility, still remains. It has taken root even within the churches which rejected the authority of the Pope over them. However, the validity of this authority is today being doubted and rejected on a scale that has never been known before. In the words of George Harrison :

 When you're young get taken to church by your parents and you get pushed into religion at school. They're trying to put something into your mind. Obviously because nobody goes to church and nobody believes in God. Why ? Because they haven't interpreted the Bible as it was intended. I didn't really believe in God as I'd been taught it. It was just like something out of a science fiction novel. You're taught just to have faith , you don't have to worry about it. just believe what we're telling you" (Christianity on Trial , I ,  Colin Chapman , p 37 )

Between the two poles of complex acceptance and complete rejection of the established Church's reliability as the guardians of the message of Jesus, lies every shade of opinions as to what it is to be a Christian. Wilfred Cantwell Smith writes :

There is so much diversity and clash, so much chaos, in the Christian Churches today that the old ideal of a unified or systematic Christian truth has gone . For this, the ecumenical movement is too late. What has happened is that the Christian world has moved into the situation of open variety, of optional alternatives. It would seem no longer possible for anyone to be told or even to imagine that he can be told,  what it means or should mean, formally and generically , to be a Christian. He must decide for himself  and only for himself. (Christianity on Trial , I ,  Colin Chapman , pp 51-52 )

This conclusion implies that there are as many versions of Christianity today as there are Christians, and that the role of the church,  as an institution which is the guardian of Jesus's message , has largely ceased to exist : A graduate student at U.C.L.A asks : "What is the point of a church if its always up to my own conscience "(Time Magazine , May 24 ^th , 1976 , p 46). However , the church remains an integral part of Western Culture today, and the relationship  between the two is an interesting one.

Vast amount of literature have been written in the West during the last few centuries, in the attempt to understand the nature of existence. They provide a catalogue of all the possible avenues of thought a man's mind will pursue when he does not have the certainty of revealed knowledge  to live and understand his life by. Some writers such as Pascal have realised  that the mind is a limited tool, and that the heart is the centre of their being, and the container of real knowledge :

The heart has its reasons which are unknown to reason .... It is the heart which is aware of God and not reason. This is what faith is : God perceived intuitively by the heart , not by reason (Christianity on Trial , I ,  Colin Chapman , p 63 )

In the attempt to gain access to the heart many have rejected Christianity and experimented with other means :

Mystical experience is said to lead to real knowledge of "the truth" about the universe. This truth is inexpressible in words, but it can be felt . The medium can be music, drugs, meditation....(Christianity on Trial , I ,  Colin Chapman , p 74 )

these alternative approaches to understanding Reality have been  adapted by people in the west on a vast scale, often only as a means of self-gratification.

The church has greatly accommodated itself to these new trends in the culture of the West. In their attempt to keep the churches, full, some  priests have introduced pop-groups and discotheques into their routine to attract young people. Concerts, exhibitions and jumble-sales cater for the more conservatives tastes. Charitable concerns help establish a sense of purpose for those who indulge in them. These attempts to "modernise" the church and keep it "up to date" are in keeping with the Pauline Church's  longstanding tradition of compromise by all means. It it cannot pass on the message of Jesus, it must at least provide a "useful social function".

This process of compromise, especially during the last decade, has resulted both in the continued absorption of the Church into the culture, and of the re-absorption of the culture  into this changing structure of the Church. It is a two - way process which has endlessly been alternating since Paul and his followers set it in motion. Many people have "returned to Christianity" as a result of their experience with music, drugs and meditation. They tend either to completely reject  these experiences , and adopt a puritannical form of Christianity, or else to incorporate their  new  way of life into their own updated version of Christianity. Both these trends cover up the prophethood of Jesus. He is either exalted as God or regarded as a charismatic cult figure who meant well, but was misunderstood.

The identification of the Church with the culture of the West is clearly apparent by observing how people live today. With the exception of those who have withdrawn into monasteries and convents to remember ,God, the life-style of those who call themselves Christians closely resembles the life-styles of those who claim to be agnostics , humanists or atheists. their beliefs may be different,  but their general behaviour is the same.

The laws which exists in the "Christian" countries of the West, the laws governing birth and death , the formation and dissolution of marriage , the rights over property with and outside marriage or in the event of divorce or death, adoption and guardianship ,commerce and industry , are not to be found in the gospels. They are not laws which have been revealed to man by God. They are the fruits of deductive knowledge. They are either inherited from the Roman system of law , or are based on the common practise of people over a long period of time, or are statutes erected and amended in accordance with the democratic method, which is the bequest of the ancient Greeks. No one in today's  courts of law can  refer to the gospels as binding authority in his dealings with another man, and have it accepted.

The Christianity of today is inseparable from the culture of the West. The Christian church and the State  are one. And the individuals who work within these institutions do not live as Jesus lived. The total sickness of Christianity today is due to the inescapable fact that the Christians of today lack a science of social behaviour and that lack has left them impoverished in this life  and unprepared for what happens after death. As Wilfred Cantwell Smith writes :

To say that Christianity is true is to say nothing significant the only question that concerns either God or me, or my neighbours is whether my Christianity is true ,and whether yours is. And to that question . a truly cosmic one in my case the only valid answer is a sorrowful "not very...... " (Christianity on Trial , I ,  Colin Chapman , p 61 )

It is scarcely surprising in the light of all this that as the churches of the world are emptying - the mosques of Islam are filling up.

Please click Next and know about Christianity   [ Back ] [ Next ]

[ Christianity ] [ Bible ] [ Christian Salvation Scheme ] [ Converts ] [ Prophesies ] [ True followers of Jesus ] [ Jesus-the Son of Man ] [ Jesus- the Son of God ] [ Women ] [ Bible and the Modern Sceince ] [ Holy Sins ] [ Comparative Studies ] [ links ] [ About us ] [ Contact us ] [ Site Map ]

 (ICRA) 

[ Home ] [ Christianity ] [ Bible ] [ Christian Salvation Scheme ] [ Converts ] [ Prophesies ] [ True followers of Jesus ] [ Jesus-the Son of Man ] [ Jesus- the Son of God ] [ Women ] [ Bible and the Modern Sceince ] [ Holy Sins ] [ Comparative Studies ] [ links ] [ About us ] [ Contact us ] [ Site Map ]