Well, of course this is semantics; does "ordinary" equate to "natural"? I think you understand my reference to Jesus as ordinary was strictly in the sense that he was not supernatural, just a natural human being like you or I. Whether he was unique or special or inspirational like Ghandi is an entirely different argument.
Fair enough. I just wanted to clarify what you mean by 'just an ordinary human'. Yes, he was fully human, not an extraterrestrial, or some other superhuman being with special webbing on his feet that allowed him to walk on water.
Unless I'm mistaken, you didn't let on that you thought Jesus a non-supernatural being until after I responded to post #565. Even reading your entire #565 I always see you referring to Jesus as "the historical Jesus" which doesn't differentiate between the natural and the supernatural versions of him.
It's not a matter of me "letting on" anything. It's a matter of you do not understand the terminology. When I say "the historical Jesus" that is a specific term that is used in scholarship to differentiate that view of Jesus from the "theological Jesus", or the "Jesus of faith". The "historical Jesus" is meant to speak of the Jesus seen through the eyes of a historian, versus the "theological Jesus" which is meant to speak of the Jesus of faith, or the religious perspective. One is secular, the other is religious.
So I wasn't hiding anything. I was very specific that I was speaking of the secular, non-religious perspective of Jesus when I said "the historical Jesus".
Here's a Wiki blurb to affirm what I just explained to you:
Historical Jesus - Wikipedia
That is everything I have always been saying consistently so far.
Logically, I would have been under the impression at that point that you believed Jesus was a real God and thus my "accusation" that you were deliberately not differentiating between the two. If at point #565 you believed Jesus was a natural human being, then my apologies for misunderstanding.
Yes, you have misunderstandings about this topic, and about me. I hope what I am sharing here is bringing you up to speed a little better.
I'm the first to admit Jesus, if he existed, had to be an extraordinary person if only by virtue that his avatar inspired the largest religion in the world today. But you have to realize that it wasn't Jesus himself doing this, it was thousands of clever churchmen along with Constantine and Theodosius I who put Christianity on the map.
Not quite right. Yes, the political system helped to establish Christianity as the State religion, but the reason why they targeted it in the first place did not have to do with them. Christianity had become enormously popular in the Roman Empire among the masses
prior to Constantine, because they were active in creating social welfare systems to help the poor and needy, while their society had no programs in place.
All of that was driven by their religious faith which informed their lives. This made Christianity very popular. And when something is popular, then politicians will take advantage of that for their own desires for power and control. Many leading officials had become Christian, and so political power bases were beginning to emerge as a result. If you can get the masses behind you, because you support them, then you have power.
You see that same thing today, and through history, where politicians make themselves popular, by aligning themselves with popular movements or values. In the more insidious cases, they actually manufacture divides, such as whipping up people about things that were non-issues before, like abortion rights and gay marriage. That's a top-down, "divide and conquer" rule. It's just part of human nature and political systems.
But Christianity was a bottom-up, "grassroots" movement that was an ideology based upon love and helping your fellow person. It's was a social and spiritual movement that did not originally have the control of masses in mind. But like any good thing, it gets co opted and turned into that. I don't believe Christianity was ever meant to be separate religion of its own. It was more a philosophy of human love, a spiritual "
humanism" would be a more modern term for it. Humanism can be either secular or spiritual.