Beyond Supernatural Realism: Jesus and the Call to Authenticity

By Robert High Baker PhD

For almost two millennia, Christians have struggled with the confusing language of the Nicene Creed and its strange intermingling of Greek and biblical traditions. And for the past several centuries, at the least, Christians have also wrestled with another challenge: the insistence in orthodox Christian doctrine that their faith depends on a belief in a supernatural realism that places God, truth, and ultimate reality itself somewhere other than in the natural, human world.

In Beyond Supernatural Realism, author Dr. Robert High Baker explores how these ideas about supernatural realism asserted in the Nicene Creed came to be, and he argues for another way to understand the meaning of Jesuss life and death through the lens of existentialist philosophy and philosophers like Heidegger and Kierkegaard. Existentialist thought gives us an alternative way to understand what we mean by God, the nature of faith, and the power of Christ, and it unburdens contemporary Christians from the limitations of antiquated cultural traditions.

For modern-day individuals, supernatural reality has no meaning for them in their day-to-day lives, yet these individuals are asked to accept such a reality as the basis for their faith. But by turning to existentialist thought as a way to leave behind concepts that no longer make sense in the modern world, we can instead discover what being a Christian might truly mean.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Feb 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781480859173

Robert High Baker PhD

Robert High Baker holds a PhD in English from the University of Texas at Austin (1979). His dissertation was entitled Aspects of Existential Phenomenology in the Works of Henry David Thoreau, and this focus in graduate school led to a lifetime of interest in existentialism as a hermeneutic approach that could be applied to many areas of study. Soon after graduation he left academia to enter the business world, but his interest in the humanities remained, including an ever-deepening interest in Christian theology.

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Copyright © 2018 Robert High Baker, PhD.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-5916-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-5917-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018901896

Archway Publishing rev. date:   02/16/2018

In memory of Marcus Borg,

a good and faithful servant.

Write what you have to, not what you ought.

—Henry D. Thoreau, Walden

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1   The Cultural Setting

Chapter 2   The Roots of Orthodoxy

Chapter 3   An Existentialist Primer

Chapter 4   Truth and Faith

Chapter 5   Existential Themes in Christianity

Chapter 6   Jesus and Spiritual Reality

Conclusion

PREFACE

Like millions of Christians over the past twenty centuries, I have been profoundly influenced by the words and actions of Jesus of Nazareth as described in the New Testament Gospels. Jesus’s parables about compassion, forgiveness, justice, and peace, as well as his willingness to defy authorities even at the cost of his own life, present for us our potential to live and act humanely. Jesus told his followers that his message was that of their father in heaven, the God of their fathers—but the message itself was about them, about how humans are to live. His reference to God is fully reflexive in its meaning, because it has no meaning extraneous to human life. How is it that for Jesus, and for us in the millennia to follow, God talk makes sense only in terms of human life? What do we mean by God, and can anything we say about God be separated from humanity?

The Easter story, the accounts of Jesus’s return to his followers following his death, brought in an additional element: an experience of events that could not be explained by natural causes and were therefore believed to be of supernatural origin. Soon thereafter, the post-resurrection Jesus and the pre-resurrection Jesus were proclaimed to be one and the same, and of supernatural origin. Jesus was therefore identified with the supernatural reality that both Hebrews and Greeks assumed to exist. This ultimate reality was described differently by these two cultural traditions, but its existence was affirmed by those who henceforth proclaimed themselves as followers of the Christ, who was then identified as fully partaking of this supernatural reality. Christians ever since have been asked to accept this as fundamental to their faith.

But what if the existence of a supernatural reality no longer makes sense for