God Beyond Religion: Exposing a Weak Assertion of Orthodoxy

American, evangelical, fundamentalism has a great deal in common with protestants, and with orthodoxy both western and eastern orthodoxy. The flaw comes in an assumption. The assumption is that those who were closest to the first century have the most accurate knowledge of what the mission and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth was all about. Just a casual viewing of the history of the first four centuries, should cause even the intellectually limited to question orthodoxy’s assumptions and attestations.

I remember being a rebel at the onset of social media back in the “good ole days” of Yahoo Groups, anyone remember those? At that time, I was already challenging much of accepted dogma within evangelical and fundamentalist circles. Whenever I would go against the accepted dogmatic doctrine, there would always be those who would say, the early church and church fathers were much closer to the time of Jesus and therefore had the skinny on what He taught and meant. That is really an insufficient line of reasoning, and it should be painfully obvious.

When one looks at the overall history of the church beginning with the early heresy hunters, and then realize that they were sanctioned by the empire with the Christianizing event of Constantine’s mother and his subsequent acquiescence to his mothers wishes. The doctrine passed down by orthodoxy is very limited compared to the vast variety of Christianity’s that flourished during those years. Further, the history was written by the victors crowned by the empire and certainly was biased and skewed toward the findings of the councils that took place four hundred years after the Christ event.

One of the stories concerning the destruction of the Library of Alexandria accuses Theophilus who was the Patriarch of Alexandria, 385-415 CE (coincidentally corresponding with the time of the authority given the heresy hunters by the empire and church councils to enforce orthodoxy) seems very plausible considering what was done to the Gnostics by a group of the same mind set. The church has a sordid history of punishing, killing, sanctioning, and eliminating the writings of alleged heretics their revered recollection of Jesus teachings and the first century church are highly suspect which makes the assertion that due to their place in history are the most credible witnesses to what should or should not be orthodoxy and conversely, what should or should not be heresy.

I point this out because in my view one can get a very different view of what the Christian scripture means depending how one looks at it. For example, the doctrine of the Logos can be understood in a very different way simply by reading what John’s gospel actually says. The most important thing is that according to John 1:10-14 the Logos was actively in the world, was received by some before the Logos became flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It is also taught by Jesus that the same Logos that was flesh in him was also flesh in the rest of humanity. The Logos is simply creative consciousness, and it has always been in humanity though latent and unrecognized by most. While this flies in the face of the orthodox position it is far more in line with what was written in John’s gospel.

Another example is the Apostle Paul. It is obvious when one reads the bible without the lens of orthodoxy that we were given Paul was very likely a walking dichotomy. He was Paul the mystic who was carried with visions into the third heaven and given messages that he was not authorized to repeat, and he was likewise a trained Jewish rabbi that was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were a sect of first century Jews that had a very literal understanding of scripture and created much of the oral tradition that explained what the practical aspects of following the Torah was. This is a consideration that is most valuable when examining all of the writing Paul did. It appears that Paul’s stance on law and grace was very inconsistent and quite contradictory. Also, orthodoxy leaned in favor of interpreting scripture literally as opposed to a more esoteric understanding of it.

The bottom line is this. Both Jesus and Paul gave mystical revelation about source, the creative conscious source that is lost to those who have been influenced by the dogma of orthodoxy. It was carried forward even with the reformation. The reformation was far more about practices than it was about doctrine and revelation. This to me is sad because it may be that the toxic aspects of orthodoxy have so poisoned the well, that future generations will miss some of the important mystical revelation that explains that we humans have a divine nature that is the direct influence with being infused with the Logos. The more I progress in my awareness and thinking the more obvious it becomes that it is difficult to salvage the real message of first century Christianity which is Christ in you… that is “the Christ” in each of us.