Paul,

On the babble: like Peter, I find the differences - even conflicts - a gift to be celebrated. On the positive side it reminds us that the idea of the body of Christ is not something that can be confined to one group, culture or time. But it seems that this isn't what you're aiming at. If I get you right, this point is a near parallel to the point that christians have been a force for evil in the world.

I struggle with the same point. It is to me a real question how a movement which was supposedly started by the power of God's Spirit, has produced such terrors through time. I've been thinking about this for a few years, and am no closer now to an answer than before. I keep coming back to one of your last points: in the midst of all this horridness, there's this incredible beauty. And that beauty is powerful enough to keep me hanging on, even when I think I've got every reason to jettison any form of faith. 

It does seem though, that the texts of the NT, while offering a way of betterment, don't make magical promises. The various tensions that I see operating in letters such as Galatians, Colossians, Philippians, Corinthians (big exclamation marks there), Hebrews, the pastorals, and of course the narrative history of Acts, tells me that while we may learn and grow in the way of Jesus, that it is no panacea or way to make bad things disappear. Like Ladd's now/not yet paradigm, the kingdom of God is something that's part here now, but not totally yet.

My own difficulty with this lies in what I also sometimes see as the absence/silence of God.  Peter's point about God's presence in Auschwitz touches this is some ways. But this, in my understanding of the message of the NT, is where Ladd's now/not yet comes back in. Part of the not yet is the fullness of God in human history. This seem too to be one of the main points in Hebrews.

Danutz 

 Thanks for your reply. While I agree that we can separate the ethical ideals of Jesus from the world view of his time (and I'm really tempted to just that at times), I find that the views of Jesus grew out of his view of God (and history). To totally disassociate with that is to cut essential parts away.

But you can do that. You do end up with an ethic about which I think you rightly question why it should be considered better than any number of other ideologies. I agree with Andrew, however, that at that point we no longer have anything that can be called Christian. You admit as much as that by stating that you want to disassociate the message of Jesus from the interpretations which grew up around him afterward. Part of that cycle of interpretation is the NT itself.

I'm not really conversant with Borg or Crossand (read some articles by both), so I find it difficult to say anything about that. I'd be interested in any books you might recommend as starting points for their thought. What has concerned me in what I've read is the degree of confidence with which they separate various pericopes from Jesus' own life. This is an old argument, but there are assumptions made by them about what can happen to a text (just as there are in any approach), and some of these assumptions bother me. To me it is not a question of liberal or not, but rather a question of the origin of the texts: was the community that followed Jesus acting coherently in line with the thought and life of Jesus himself? If they reinterpreted, did they do it in a manner that was consistent within that worldview? (not assuming that we have to adopt that world view). Borg and Crossan both seem to look more for places to divide Jesus from his society and the community that claimed to follow him, rather than to see if there is a cohesiveness. The cohesiveness, as offered by folk like NT Wright (genuflect and bow your knees, please!) is not comfortable, but it rings more like history to me. But this is moving far away from the jump off point of this thread, so I'd better stop here.