20071206.00
There occurred to me a persuasive anthropological-
sociological explanation for the political success of
Christianity.
If it is valid to equate divinity with inwardness, and
if, as the Scripture reports, Jesus was crucified because
he claimed to be the son of God, then arguably Jesus'
fault, his assertion of his divinity, was in fact an
assertion of his inwardness, of his subjectivity, of that
subjective essence which separated him, and continues to
separate all "individuals" from the community of men.
The Passion of Jesus, therefore, serves as a cosmic
demonstration of the contradiction, of the dialectic, in
which each one of us is enmeshed; a demonstration which one
is inclined to embrace with enthusiasm, because it reflects
the perplexity, if not the tragedy of ones own existence.
Given the awkwardness and inadequacy of our
understanding of ourselves and of our situation, that we
should resort to, and ultimately rely on myth, - in this
case the Christian "Gospel", - as an instrument of
cognition, seems not only plausible, but perhaps
inevitable.
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