Many of the characters who appear in the pages of the Fourth Gospel are literary creations of its author and were never intended to be understood as real people, who actually lived in history.
The Christ path is the path I’ve walked all my life, so it’s normal and natural. And I have no reason to abandon it because it leads to where I want to go.
I was baptized as an infant. I was confirmed as an adolescent; I was active in my church’s youth group and in my university student group. I was married before the church’s altar; trained at the church’s seminaries, ordained deacon and priest at age 24.
I don’t think much about my physical body going off into the long, green fairways of Heaven to play golf.
The cross reveals that we’re called to a deeper, fuller experience of what it means to be alive and open to new dimensions of life which our religious boundaries – creeds, atonement theologies – have kept us from experiencing.
Perhaps the most telling witness against the claim of accurate history for the Bible comes when we read the earliest narrative of the crucifixion found in Mark’s gospel and discover that it is not based on eyewitness testimony at all.
Almost any poll of regular churchgoers will reveal that their favorite book in the New Testament is the Gospel of John. It is the book that is most often used at Christian funerals.
I believe that God is very real. I believe that I live my life every day inside the reality of this God. I call this God by different words. I describe God as the source of life and the source of love and the ground of being.
I believe God is real, but I believe God calls me beyond myself to take responsibility for my life and to try top work to allow other people to be themselves and to take responsibility for their lives.
Was Judas Iscariot a figure of history? I do not think so. There is no mention of him in any source before the 8th decade.