Beyond Theology by Alan Watts

Author:Alan Watts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New World Library
Published: 2022-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

*If Jesus had had a very strong form of the common type of “cosmic consciousness” in which the individual feels that his own inmost Self, behind the superficial ego, is God, this would have been almost impossible to express in terms of Judaic theology without blasphemy. The best he could have done was to identify himself, publicly, with the orthodox image of the promised Messiah, both as Isaiah II’s Suffering Servant and as the apocalyptic Son of Man, coming to rule the earth with the power of heaven rather than force of arms.

*A major part of the Western Jew’s problem is that he has to live with Christians, and thus cannot simply ignore the crucial differences between Christianity and Judaism. His tradition is still repressing the question of why Jesus was handed over to Pilate, and there can be no peace for him until he faces it.

*Compare also the precept-shattering precept, “You have learned that they were told, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But what I tell you is this: If a man looks on a woman with a lustful eye, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27–28. NEB.)

*This is as literal a translation of the Greek as I can make of this crucial passage. The quotation from the Law is Psalm 82, “I have said, You [are] gods; and all of you [are] children of the Most High. But you shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” The AV, without justification in the Greek, translates the final phrase, “I am the Son of God,” the italic the signifying interpolation by the translators. The NEB skips the issue with “I am God’s son.”

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