Friday, February 3, 2012

Is the person of Christ a moral example to humanity?

Who knows....

First we would have to define morality. And then we would have to ask how far we have succeeded in evading the charge of imposing a secular definition of said concept onto the Divine perogative.

"Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. (Matthew 19:17)

Such was the question that Jesus posed to a man who kept the law quite flawlessly from his childhood up. I believe that its appearance in the gospel signifies that we are to put the question to ourselves as well. Why do we ask Jesus about what is good? Do we have a clue what we mean by such a term? And if we did, would we not immediately ascribe glory to God alone, as Jesus did, rather than placing humans on the footing that was never claimed for them?

Faith in propositions.

It has often been said that Christians do not believe in any one proposition in order to be saved. They believe rather in a person (the heresy of so-called Christian monotheism suggests belief in God through Jesus). Some imply belief in a narrative; God's narrative of His saving deeds in Israel and Christ.

The sacred scripture of John speaks otherwise. It says: "But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (20:31; cf. 1 Jn.5:1).

To believe that Jesus is the Christ is to believe in a proposition about said person. Propositions are declarative or textually stated facts about an entity. Actually, the saying "Jesus is the Christ" meets the criterion of any definition one may propose for the word proposition. And we are told by the scriptures to set our faith in this fact.