The impossibility of Christianity

What is generally called Christianity today is not the only form of Christianity that sprung up after the death of Jesus. It is merely the form that suppressed all other forms by one way or another. One of the early main rivals for the dominant form of Christianity was the Gnostic faith.

Gnosticism was not related solely to Christianity. Rather it was a form of Greek philosophical thinking based on truth coming from within.

The early split between Gnostic and conventional Christianity came about because the Gnostics accepted the spiritual resurrection of Jesus and accepted his spiritual teachings. The followers of Paul (now called Christianity) insisted the resurrection was physical. For this “heresy” the Gnostic thought, and its later derivatives such as Cathar doctrines, were ruthlessly suppressed.

The majority of Cathars seem to have regarded him as a prophet no different from any other - a mortal being who, on behalf of the principle of love, died on the cross. There was nothing supernatural, nothing divine about the crucifixion - if indeed it was relevant at all, which most Cathars seemed to doubt.

In any case, all Cathars vehemently repudiated the significance of both the crucifixion and the cross - perhaps because they felt these to be irrelevant or because Rome extolled them so fervently, or because the brutal circumstances of a prophet’s death did not seem worthy of worship.

(The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, 1983)

What seems to have been missed in most discussions is that the differences between Christian thinking and Gnostic/Cathar thinking is not in its ideology, but in its way of thinking. A different thought process.

Christian thinking is solely external and material while Gnostic/Cathar thinking seeks to integrate the spiritual and physical worlds.

The genocide Christianity has practiced against the “heretics” has gone beyond the physical genocide of people into the genocide of thinking.

The Christian church is built on the epistleistic writings of its founder (Paul), with the life of Jesus relegated to a non-essential adjunct. Take away the Gospels and nothing changes in Christian teachings. Take away the life of Jesus from Christianity and we are still left with is the essence of Christianity. A very strange situation.

The reason why Jesus the man is secondary to the epistles is the special place the Old Testament has in the Christian Bible. The Old Testament is the section of the Bible that gives Christianity its authority. The Christian stance is that the Old Testament is the prophetic justification for the coming of a Messiah. It is taken literally that there was to be a Son of God sent to earth to be crucified as the culmination of God’s plan for humanity. Without the justification of the Old Testament, there cannot be Christianity. The only thing that happened to Jesus that makes him the saviour in Christian terms is that he was crucified. The epistles are built solely on the crucifixion, justified by a narrow and selective, literal reading of the Old Testament.

Christians also re-defined Jesus to suit their purposed rather than build their religion on the life of Jesus.

However this may be, his followers were united in the belief that God’s promises had been uniquely and decisively fulfilled in him. Hence they sought to interpret his life of obscurity and rejection, and especially the scandal of a crucified Messiah, as well as the Lordship which they had come to recognise through the Resurrection, by reference to the Old Testament. The Church thus depended for its understanding of itself, and of the Gospel on which it was founded, upon its interpretation of the Scriptures as a book about Christ. In that book it found the key to its understanding of the historical traditions about his deeds and his words, so that the subject of the apostolic preaching was Jesus as seen in the light of Scripture, and it was Jesus as interpreted by Scripture who provided the theme of the Gospels.

(The Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol 2)

An example, and perhaps the essence, of the way in which the teachings of Jesus have been “doctored” by Christianity for its own ends is the last two verses of the Sermon on the Mount.

The Christian version reads:

28 And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine:
29 For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

(Matthew 7, KJV)

The word “one” has been inserted by Christian sources. Without this insertion a correct translation would be;

28 And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine:
29 For he taught them as having authority, and not as the scribes.

Jesus did not teach as “one having authority,” but “them” (the people) as having authority. This one point alone destroys any claim that the church makes for acting in the name of Jesus. Jesus taught personal authority and responsibility, not blind obedience. This is in total contradiction to the teachings of Christianity.

The crux of the matter is that Christianity is not a religion, it is a legal system. It is a legal system inherited from the Pharisees via Paul. The premise of the Christian legal system is that the Christian church is the legal representative of God on earth, and that it cannot do any wrong because everything that it does is God’s will. This is why it has been possible for Christianity to be responsible for acts of genocide and brutal suppression and still claim to represent God. It is also why Christianity must never be allowed to get a foot hold back into our legal system.

The real problem for Christianity comes at the other end of Jesus' life. His “virgin” birth.

Jewish law at the time was extremely complicated, and it is uncertain just what the laws on marriage and legal status of Mary were at the time of the conception of Jesus, but it is possible to say that modern English words are not sufficient to explain her legal status.

In Jewish Law this was not the case at all. Two conditions were clearly distinguished: betrothal and marriage. Young people who had agreed with one another with a view to marriage were betrothed, but they would not be considered as truly married until the husband, according to the words of Deuteronomy, should have “taken her to himself.” The “taking possession,” the hakhnashah, was really the uniting of two beings for life; the word had both meanings. Thus, in Saint Matthew the angel says to Joseph, “Do not be afraid to take thy wife Mary to thyself” - that is: “Let her, who has been your betrothed, become your spouse.”

But although these two conditions were in theory quite separate, in fact they merged into one another. The fact is that the Law recognised rights and obligations during the betrothal that were almost the same as those of marriage.

(Daily Life in Palestine at the Time of Christ, Daniel-Rops, 1962)

It is likely that Mary was betrothed, but not legally married at the time of the conception of Jesus, and according to law still a virgin, even though Joseph and Mary were for all practical purposes husband and wife.

The really telling part of the whole thing about the virgin birth is that there was a major problem in it for the Christian church. If Mary had to be a virgin to be pure, then original sin could only have been transmitted by the male of the species. If Mary was pure until she lost her virginity, then all women are pure while they remain virgins.

This makes utter nonsense of the doctrine that all mankind inherits original sin from the female line at the moment of conception, and that physical woman is the cause of all sin in this world. Jesus had to inherit sin from the flesh of Mary whether she was a virgin or not. Without the doctrine of original sin, Christianity self-destructs.

A virgin birth was legally possible, and maybe even common, according to Jewish law. The real problem for Christianity came when the Christian church elevated the virgin birth to the level where Mary had to have an immaculate conception, if she were to be the mother of Jesus.

The concept of the immaculate conception was not part of original Christianity; it evolved over a period of several hundred years after the crucifixion of Jesus. Horton, quoting apocryphal texts, writes:

Of the immediate sequel to this happy meeting we know no more than “Joachim rested the first day in his house,” that Anne conceived and Joachim was readmitted to the temple; and that eventually a girl was to be born to them they called Mary. The coming of this child had been announced to each of the parents by divine messengers, and we know that this was the child who was to be the Virgin Mother of Jesus, the Mother of God. But as yet there is no suggestion that any special circumstances had to attend her begetting; which brings up a point in the story which is delicate to the extreme, for in later centuries the conception of Mary was required to have a far more subtle character: to be, in fact, the “Immaculate” conception.

(The Child Jesus, Horton, 1975)

And so Mary’s mother had to be pure if Mary was to be pure. “And once this point was accepted it was no great leap forward, and to eventually to establish, the theory that on this spot they had exchanged a chaste, and holy, and procreative kiss which had breathed into the mother’s womb the concept and substance of Mary her daughter; a kiss which precluded the need for any physical act of generation” (Horton). And if Mary’s mother had to be a virgin, what about her grandmother? And her great grandmother? And so on.

If Mary was pure because she was a virgin original sin self-destructs, and so does Christianity. This is a paradox that plagued the Christian church for 1,800 years.

When all else fails, use retrospective legislation, which is exactly what the Christian church did. On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX decreed, in bull Ineffabilis Deus, that by a special act of grace, Mary had been made utterly sinless from the moment of her conception. I wonder if Pius IX was able to keep a straight face when he made that decree?

It is worth looking closer at what this piece of retrospective legislation by “God’s lawyers” means.

For Christianity to stand up, physical woman has to be the blame for all sin and suffering in this world. Without that, original sin self-destructs, and Christianity self-destructs with it.

This piece of legislation re-affirms the position of physical woman as the sole cause of sin and suffering in this world. It does so by giving Mary absolution for being a woman.

If a woman claims to be a Christian, then she is accepting this hideous piece of legislation that brought the Immaculate Conception into being, and accepts by default that she is the cause of all the sin and suffering in this world. To me this is a ridiculous position to take.

Papal decrees have been very useful over the years for solving problems for the Church that cannot be solved by factual means.

It also brings out the place of theology in the Abrahamic religions. Theologians are the part of the organisation that plugs the holes in the ship as they appear by making up excuses. No doubt some “theologian” will come up with an excuse as to why everything in this article is wrong. The job of theologians is to bail like mad to keep the ship from sinking.

Theologians are also incestuous in that they only reference their own sources to support themselves. The use of external sources would prove them wrong.

This article does nothing to prove or disprove the existence of God. It is Christianity that is in question. It also has nothing to do with Jesus. Jesus is the excuse for Christianity, not the reason. Jesus viewed free of the Christian enveloped is a fascinating philosopher no matter who he or she was.