Two Gods

The importance of Christian Heresy
(lifted from an email by Ken Freeland)

Those who conspired against Jesus and brought about his execution, the Pharisees in particular, gained de facto political control of Judaism after the destruction of the Temple, which destroyed the power base of their rivals, the Saducees and their sacrficial cult. The new Judaism was based on the oral traditions, the same ones Jesus had remonstrated against because they were used to supplant the Law of God, and these were eventually formulated in the Talmud, which is now the principal scriptural authority of Judaism. Its essence is exophobic, and it represents the survival of that branch or tradition of Judaism which Jesus categorically rejected, and which in turn, necessarily, rejected Him. It harks back to a god of ethnocentrism and malevolence towards all who are not part of their biblical "tribe." The same god that tells them to love their friends and hate their enemies, and not only hate them but exterminate them root and branch. That Jesus explicitly repudiated this posturing tells us that Marcion was not far off the mark - the same god that tells his people to exterminate all their heretical neighbors cannot be the same Father of Jesus who commanded us to love our enemies. There is just no way to reasonably reconcile these two gods. It is remarked in the Gospels that the people hearkened to Jesus because he did NOT teach as the scribes and Pharisees (i.e., by citing unchallengable precedent), but "as one having authority," in other words, as one whose teachings were independent of that entire legal tradition. This is the moral revolution wrought by Jesus for everyone who had eyes to see and ears to hear. But of course, insofar as he moved people AWAY from the desire for the violent conquest of power, he was, in the view of the traditionalist leaders, an "anti-messiah." Because they were seeking a military hero/leader, one who would vanquish the Romans and the rest of the gentile powers. And Jesus had not the slightest interest in that (as he tried to convey to Pilate). In any case, we must see that both of these traditions, the late prophetic tradition revolutionized and universalized by Jesus of Nazareth, and the contrary exophobic tradition amplified by the Pharisees and their allies, continue today in the form of radical Christianity on the one hand, and Talmudic Judaism on the other. These two make OPPOSING claims to the nature of God and to the moral obligations of man, that form the real "clash of civilizations" in today's world. It is, at base, less of a political struggle (though its poltical ramifications are real enough) than it is a moral struggle between two diametrically opposed world views which are, as Jesus was the first to argue, totally incompatible. The universal ethic of Christianity, however much breached in practice, can never be reconciled with the exclusivist, particularist mania that permeates the Talmud. And while it is certainly important to examine contradictions that may be located within Christian doxology, they pale by comparison with this far more important OPPOSITION that must never be lost sight of. It is a foundational truth of Christianity, and is still playing itself out in the contemporary world.