Tom Harpur 4-Book Bundle. Tom Harpur
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it in this light, it was obvious immediately that Jesus could have been mad, bad, the Son of God, or else completely misunderstood! What evidence was there that he ever actually claimed in any absolute sense to be divine? Didn’t he once tell the rich young ruler that “there is none good, only God”? How could we be certain that the New Testament texts themselves were truly reliable documents? I had long been aware of the many contradictions within the Gospels. Why did it take Church councils almost five centuries to formulate a satisfactory (to the theologians of the day) definition of the Trinity and of Jesus’s coequal status in it? How could the sacrificial death or martyrdom of one person, however exalted and holy, wipe out the “sins of the whole world”? And so on and so on.
Finally, I got in my car and drove home. As I did, the questions only multiplied. This had been nagging at me for some time now and it seemed I was facing another crisis. But before long, once the furor over Harpur’s Heaven and Hell had quieted down, I realized that one way of dealing with this serious problem would be to research and write a book on the subject. Obviously my dilemma was far from unique to me, and this is what all my previous experience and training was really about: communicating a faith that makes sense to modern men and women. It was time for further exploration.
So, with Teleky’s keen support, I plunged eagerly into the task and began preparing for what was eventually to be the slim paperback For Christ’s Sake, published in the spring of 1986, again by Oxford University Press. I set out to examine the Gospels carefully to see for myself what they actually said rather than what the Church has traditionally claimed they convey. The book was met with a storm of controversy right from the start. Some former mentors wrote to tell of their dismay at my describing the virgin birth as a sacred myth and my doubts over the doctrine of the Atonement—salvation through the “blood” of Christ—and much, much more besides. Pastors denounced the book from their pulpits and in some cases even took out ads in local papers announcing upcoming sermons exposing For Christ’s Sake’s “heresies.” Ironically, some of these same critics were to reappear later, in 2004, quoting parts of this book in an attempt to refute claims made in The Pagan Christ ! The central position reached in For Christ’s Sake was that Jesus may have been the greatest person ever to have lived on planet earth but “he is also the most misunderstood.” Using the New Testament itself as the key witness, I was convinced I had shown how the Church had mistakenly taken Jesus the messenger—or in McLuhan’s terms, Jesus the medium of the message—for the message itself.
What is most surprising to me today, as I glance through For Christ’s Sake once more, is how much further, on the one hand, my thinking has developed and matured since that turbulent time and, on the other, how clearly the themes to be explored and elaborated almost twenty years later in The Pagan Christ were already there. For example, in the final chapter titled “Jesus From Now On,” I quote the verse from the Prologue of John’s Gospel that speaks of the Logos as being “the true light which lighteth every person who comes into the world.” This is followed by: “What is being so sublimely stated is that all of us . . . have within us a spark or seed (to use the Stoic concept) of divine light that is none other than God . . . Our true humanity lies, paradoxically, in our divinity.” That’s really what The Pagan Christ and its sequel, Water into Wine, are all about. Nothing could have been much further from the fundamentalist beliefs of my youth. But the final revelation was not the result of some sudden change of consciousness, but the product of a process begun long ago and simmering within for many years.
Writing and promoting Harpur’s Heaven and Hell had given me for the first time a truly liberating opportunity to express freely in a more permanent form my own opinions, research and analysis of religious/spiritual matters. It made me realize that the time had come to free myself entirely from the responsibility of only reporting what other theologians, religious leaders and experts in the field had to say. I decided to launch out into the deep, so to speak, as a freelance writer and broadcaster. The job of working for the Toronto Star had been quite remarkable. It was an adventure that took me many places I would perhaps never have seen and into close company with scores of leading personalities in religion whom I would otherwise possibly never have met. But a different challenge now was calling. In the fall of 1983, with some genuine feeling of regret, I handed in my resignation as religion editor. A few months later, early in 1984, publisher Beland Honderich wrote to suggest that I consider returning as a regular freelance columnist for the Sunday paper. I was more than happy to get the invitation. As it happened, I was to continue the column “Always on Sunday”—to use the title of a later collection—for over twenty years.
Now I was able finally to distill the lessons and experience of all the preceding years and to concentrate on the kinds of issues that truly interested me and on which I believed the churches’ message had been woefully unconvincing and garbled at best. There was much talk on all sides in Christian circles about “the Gospel” and the “Good News” supposedly available on Sundays from the pulpit and in the bosom of the “assembly of faith”—as indeed there always had been. But just what this alleged Good News was and how it was either “good” or “news” for modern men and women was anything but clear.
Already in the 1980s there was a falling away of those once assumed to have been stalwart in their commitment to church membership and attendance. In the 1990s and the following decade, the trickle running from the churches was to become a flood. Not surprisingly, the beginning of the third millennium of the Christian era has been accompanied by dire warnings of the likely total disappearance of some of the former major denominations in the Western world before this first century is over. Anglicanism, even though it may continue growing in the Third World, chiefly Africa, is the most obvious case in point. In Canada, for example, church pollsters have varied in their suggested timings, but all are agreed that unless current trends are reversed, the “last Anglican” will close the door and turn out the lights some Sunday well before 2100. Some experts predict it will come about much sooner.
Accordingly, it seemed important to focus on some of the key areas where “the faith once delivered to the saints” had formerly imparted a timely, relevant message. In the process of investigating and attempting to put the results in a communicable form, I had a further, perhaps even ulterior motivation as well: I wanted to clarify for myself what I actually still believed about each question. The journey of my writing from the very beginning has been an extremely personal affair. It became an unwritten principle: “Don’t try to take people where one has never been oneself.” That’s why even before the furor created by For Christ’s Sake had begun to settle down I had already conducted interviews in England (at Oxford) and elsewhere on the central question of “eternal life” or, as the resulting 1991 book was titled, Life After Death.
No subject is more basic to the Christian faith. It was part of the apostolic kerygma, or preaching, from the very beginning, and was one of the many reasons for the rapid growth of the Christian movement from the start. In its negative aspect, the development of the teaching that the Church alone held the keys to a pleasant afterlife, as well as the power to condemn one to everlasting fires of hell for heresy and a whole range of other lesser offences, gave this religion as it quickly expanded an incredibly potent hold on the human souls within its vast reach. Millions of people today are still in great mental and spiritual bondage to guilt and dread because of this unseemly grab for power and control. The major theme of the many hundreds of grateful letters received in response to The Pagan Christ has been the great sense of liberation from fear and guilt on the part of former fundamentalists, including pastors.
It is not my intention to expatiate further here upon the message of the earlier book, Life After Death; it speaks for itself. (A highly revised edition in light of the latest thinking on the subject and of changes in my own views entitled There Is Life After Death is being published simultaneously with this book.) But it is, I think, relevant to say that my exploration confirmed for me beyond a shadow of a doubt that not only the Church’s interpretation of what its original documents set forth but its further explication of them in its preaching and teaching down the centuries are at times virtual caricatures of what was meant to be communicated at the outset. Just one small example will suffice. It shouldn’t be surprising that the concept of eternal life has little or no appeal once you take the trouble to really