The latter views the Church more as a journey through history than as a final destination and acknowledges past mistakes on slavery, fascism, anti-semitism, Apartheid, segreation etc. It is interesting to note that these "errors" can all be attributed to viewing your community as somehow morally superior and the "out-group" - be they blacks, Jews, Communists, Women, Gays etc.- as somehow evil or inferior and thus deserving of a worse fate as God's punishment for that inderiority or sin.
There seems to be a deep human need (perhaps historically or religiously created or reinforced) to define Good and Evil, to identify yourself as belonging to the good, and some suitable outgroup as embodying the evil. Success or empowerment is then deemed a reward for virtue, and the weakness of others justified by their sin.
This paradigm lends itself to warlike, polarising, adversarial forms of politics. It's a great way to rationalise gross inequalities, exploitation and oppression.
It's interesting to note that this Good/Evil polarisation and labelling of the other as evil is not characteristic of Buddhism or some of the more metaphysical forms of Islam or Christianity. Indeed Jesus' intervention in Jewish tradition can be read as an attempt to end the Good/Evil : Insider/Outsider : Jew/Gentile duality of that tradition.
The common characteristic of sects is their need to develop very clear boundaries with non members on the basis that non-members cannot be "saved" without their special knowledge or virtue. Hence the strong trend towards a mystification of history, the natural world and current reality. Thus Evolution, tectonic plate theory, and climate change must all be opposed because they challenge the Good/Evil polarity as the driving force of history. They effect that Good and evil equally, and thus cannot be used as a basis for in-group, out-group differentiation.
. notes from no w here
Indeed Jesus' intervention in Jewish tradition can be read as an attempt to end the Good/Evil : Insider/Outsider : Jew/Gentile duality of that tradition.
AFAIK, the conventional wisdom among religious historians is that this is a post-hoc rationalisation born of the fact that Paul went and converted a whole empire full of Gentiles to the sect.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Or that he simply broke with the original doctrine over it, because he wanted to go and convert Gentiles, and the original doctrine faded into obscurity because limiting yourself to proselytising to a small and already devout group of monotheists is not really a smart way to increase market share.
The earliest texts of the New Testament (before the Gospels) are considered to be by Paul - certainly the first Epistle to the Thessalonians, and possibly even earlier, Galatians. This is the late '40s, early '50s. Jesus is held to have died in 33 (give or take a few years). The set of beliefs around JC's divinity and sacrifice for the sins of mankind grew very fast. Paul had a major hand in shaping them.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)
This is one of the earliest statements of Christian doctrine (again, written before the Gospels), and it's a declaration of the universality of Christianity. It goes considerably further than the Jew/Gentile question, since it includes slave/free and man/woman. I don't know whether Paul came up with it just because he wanted to evangelize Gentiles, or because he had a sharp eye on the marketing - but quite possibly he was consumed with passion for the revolutionary belief expressed there, and he was not alone in holding it, as early as AD 50.
My point being that the post-hoc rationalisation idea doesn't correspond to history; the earliest known statements of Christian doctrine are in fact universalist.
