                           19970717.00
Chuck Miller refers to me as:

>   someone who would want to argue against Christianity
>   in some way by drawing an uncomplimentary picture
>   of Jesus as any and every criminal, thereby inferring
>   the "foolishness" and ridiculousness of Christianity.

But I would respectfully remind him of Plato's description
of the perfectly just man (Republic II 361C), as the simple
and noble man who does not wish to seem, but to be good.

     " Then we must deprive him of the seeming....  So we
     must strip him bare of everything but justice,
     and make his state the opposite of his imagined counterpart.
     Though doing no wrong he must have the repute of the
     greatest injustice, so that he may be put to the
     test as regards justice through not softening because of
     ill repute and the consequences thereof. But let him
     hold on to his course unchangeable even unto death."

     Plato, in other words, considered the "uncomplimentary
picture" as an inescapable concomitant of perfect virtue.  In
describing the Man of God as despised and rejected, Plato did not
intend to "argue against Christianity," and neither, for that
matter, did Isaiah.  If we are incapable of understanding them,
that may be the case because of the extent to which we are
committed to a political and intellectual culture dominated by
the spirit of advertisement.

                            * * * * *