(THE BIBLE AND CHRIST/JESUS [continued])[29th March 1987]

[Redbook3:68-69][19870329:1210r](THE BIBLE AND CHRIST/JESUS [continued])[29^th March 1987]

19870329.1210(BST)

[continued]

Christ is the key to the development of the inner sense. Despite all inaccuracies, contradictions and confusions, the figure of Christ shines through the Gospel descriptions of Jesus. Understand Christ as a way to develop Con-science: then use Con-science to re-examine his* words and actions as reported fallibly by the Gospels.

Jesus is depicted differently in [the Gospel according to] John, compared to to the other three Gospels. This does not make any of them necessarily inaccurate: we may be seeing a different aspect of Jesus, according to the perceptions of the author of St. John's Gospel. But inaccuracies and assumptions may well have crept in.

A great deal of time and energy is wasted on discussing the precise nature of Jesus. Jesus did not say that he was God the Son (unless I have missed it). So far as I can see, only in [the Gospel according to] John** did he say that he was the Son of God. What he did say, frequently, was that he was the Son of Man. He also said, if I remember rightly, that God was the father of all of us: making all of us the Sons or Daughters of God. Claims for an exclusively divine status for Jesus seem to rest less on theological than on procedural statements, e.g. about where he and his disciples would sit in Heaven. Even there, the exclusivity is implied only by Earthly logic.

*(i.e. Jesus's.) <[87]0401>

**{and in [the Gospel according to] M[ar]k.14:62.}

[continues]

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