A Bible-Reading Course for a New Post-Church Christianity - Part One: Enegesis

By Joachim Elschner-Sedivy

Over the last decades, a universal quality of spirituality has become increasingly pronounced, to a degree sidelining traditional religiosity. However, some have come to see the religious traditions in an altered sense continuing as treasure troves for qualifying and detailing universal human spiritual search with a true depth that tends to be neglected wherever typical postmodern "freestyle" spiritual search modes fall for the attraction of superficial magic mindset, esoteric, and gnosticism. Coming from that angle, the author presents a rightly understood "new", "post-church" Christianity as such a beneficial powerful corrective superbly serving the aim of arriving at an intellectually profoundly responsible, "cutting-edge" universal spirituality, and he does so by focusing on a significantly and often surprisingly new way of interpreting Christianity's biblical source, summarily treating both its parts, New Testament as well as Pre-Christian Bible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joachim Elschner-Sedivy
• Release date: Sep 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215222164

Joachim Elschner-Sedivy

Joachim Elschner-Sedivy, Lic. Theol., hat einen römisch-katholischen biographischen Hintergrund. Er wurde 1975 geboren. Seine Heimatstadt ist München.

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Chapter 1: What it’s all about

Countless has in the meantime probably become the multitude of those who decided to commence a book about Jesus with the words: „Two thousand years ago, a man emerged in the Levant, in Palestine, in Galilee. Well, doubtlessly that’s really the pivot point of „it all. But what does - or did - this apparition really mean?

Today, the whole of humanity is stuck in an utterly deep and utterly severe crisis. This crisis is seemingly multi-faceted, taking seemingly manifold and various external forms - political (a new era of autocrats), economical („absolute plateau of „growth), civilizational (for example, the problem of pandemics reaches a completely novel dimension under the condition of „total globalization), societal (rift-like divisions tearing the larger social units apart), and, not the least, environmental (devastating planetary climate change) -; nevertheless, to me it seems that at the true joint roots of this multiplicity of crisis aspects there is a cultural crisis: Because to me it seems a general mistake to believe that a crisis consists mainly in a challenging situation, rather it consists in our way and manner and stance of dealing with that situation. For example: When you have an energy crisis, and you focus on the external situation as such, which means you develop new technical ways of producing energy, the result will be that overall energy use and overall energy demand will just go further up, thus ultimately perpetuating the crisis - historically-critically it can reliably be demonstrated to always have been like that. Consequently, the only true way out of „energy crisis ultimately will always be to develop a readiness for „needing less - which clearly is a completely non-technical cultural task, in the center of which inevitably has to be seen „spirituality, which especially regarding its broad societal impact is traditionally mediated by religion. That is why I emphatically believe that precisely under the current historical cluster of mega-crises the most important thing to do is to come back on the old question(s) of religion - but precisely not in a „conservative, traditionalist or fundamentalist way, rather in a somehow completely novel and truly inspiring sense, which means in a „purely spiritual sense. I wrote „stuck in a crisis - of course basically the term „crisis by principle denotes something highly dynamic, but sometimes one can also be „stuck in empty dynamics, dynamics void of aim for quite a while, until the right way of solution is finally discovered. I firmly believe that the here presented suggestion for a profoundly „transformed return to the core issues of humanity’s religious history - admittedly with subjectively regarding biblical religion as the peak of that religious history (you may personally disagree with that, feel free, such disagreement would not damage the true meaning of this book) - is the necessary decisive discovery for coping with the totality of our global crises by tackling them from their joint cultural-crisis root.

So, for me, in a sense, the relatively best key we have for dealing with all our current crises is to first of all deal with the crisis of Christianity - which we therefore have to first understand properly (and much of this analysis may well be transferred to understanding the current crises of other big religions too). - I’d like to start by illustrating this crisis of Christianity by a few quotes. - „But that is precisely the misfortune, and has been the misfortune for long, long times in Christianity, that Christ is neither the one nor the other: neither who he was in his earthly life, nor (which has to be believed) who he will be when he comes again; rather one about whom one gets to know something by history in an unauthorized way, namely that he was such a big something. One has come to know about Christ in an illicit and illegal way - because what is allowed is to become grounded in faith. (...) Christianity abolished Christianity, without fully realizing this itself; consequently, if you want to achieve something, you have to try to reintroduce Christianity into Christianity. (Søren Kierkegaard, „Training in Christianity, 1850, Part 1, Paragraphs 33-34 („f), translation: mine) These words indicate the beginning of the great cultural crisis of Christianity. - Half a century after Kierkegaard, a theologian far more „specialist than Kierkegaard famously sharpened the Dane’s point: „Jésus annonçait le royaume, et c’est l’Église qui est venue - Jesus announced the Kingdom (of God), and what came was the Church. (Alfred Loisy, „L’Evangile et l’Eglise, 1902, chapter „L’Eglise, p. 111-112) But Loisy immediately goes on arguing that it could not have been otherwise: „There is no institution on earth or in human history the legitimacy and value of which cannot be contested if we assume that nothing has the right to be, except in its original state. The latter remark is very important because it means that on the one hand traditional church can not be blamed for having become as it is, while on the other hand from the factuality of ecclesial tradition no reason can be derived for any postulation that church would have to „forever stay the way it ‚is‘, or rather the way it happens to be at the respective present moment. Perfectly logical as this ambivalent insight is, „religious people have huge difficulty in practically dealing with it; whereas „spiritual people haven’t. - „Crises are tidying away; initially with a multitude of life forms from which life had long since vanished, and which otherwise could not have been removed from the world with their historical right. (Jacob Burckhardt, „World-Historical Contemplations - published in 1905 from the bequest of the author who died in 1897 -, part IV „The Historical Crises, towards the end, translation: mine) At the beginning of the third decade of the third millennium, for my taste we can not but think of traditional church when we read these words of Jacob Burckhardt. - „The proclamation of Jesus belongs to the prerequisites of the theology of the New Testament and is not a part of it. This famous opening sentence (translation: mine) of Rudolf Bultmann’s 1947 „Theology of the New Testament is indeed wrong for very factual reasons, because it assumes the existence of a homogeneous theology of the New Testament; however, the latter does not exist: The New Testament, like the Bible as a whole, is a product of numerous steps of editing, sometimes with very different theological agendas. The New Testament comprehends traces of authentic Jesuan sources as well as expressions of the very different Christ cult which authoritatively articulated itself already maybe ten or twenty years after the death of Jesus. It’s deplorably unmystical to declare authentic Jesus categorically „theologically unsatisfying only because he indeed remains fairly ungraspable for any „austerely academic approach. A truly spiritual theology will not be bothered by this paradox, on the contrary: It’s precisely his academic intangibility which makes the authentic Jesus so rich for a truly alive postmodern Christian theology. - In the same year 1947, Gustav Mensching wrote in his „Sociology of Religion: „In the proper sense, only the clergy belong to the Catholic Church. The laity only passively belong to the Church. (...) In the eyes of the priests, prophets lack the necessary legitimation of the authority they claim. Consequently, the priests fight every breach of tradition through the prophets, not only in doctrine, but also in cult and lifestyle. Priests are always conservative religious officials. (quoted in: Hubertus Halbfas, 2018, p. 85; translation: mine) I believe that Mensching’s diagnosis was not only right in 1947, but still holds true - and that this has become a completely impossible condition in a postmodern society and culture. However, the crisis of Christianity we’re talking about here is by no means limited to the Roman-Catholic Church. The deep structural problems of other churches are different, but not smaller. They all share a difficult heritage of Christian ecclesiastical tradition. - „He who is familiar with the jargon does not need to say what he thinks, he does not even need to really think it properly: The jargon eases him off that and devalues ​​the thought. (Theodor W. Adorno, „Jargon of Essentiality, 1964) That’s how I felt in church from early on. However, „religion has probably always been like that, and will probably always be like that; „spirituality is the only way out of this predicament. - „His gospel (authentic Jesus’ own preaching) is not a doctrine like Pauline theology, rather a mode of life, the evidence of which is subject to one’s own practice and not a derivation from scriptural exegesis. (Hubertus Halbfas, „Course Correction, 2018, p. 55, translation: mine) - „The name of this infinite depth and this inexhaustible ground of all being is God. It is this depth which is meant by the word God. And if the word does not have much meaning for you, then translate it and speak of the depths in your life, of the origin of your being, of what concerns you unconditionally, of what you take seriously without reservation. If you do that, you may have to forget some of what you have learned about God, perhaps even the word itself. For if you have recognized that God means depth, you will know a great deal about him. (Paul Tillich, „The Lost Dimension, 1969, p. 106, translation: mine) This, of course, raises crucial questions about the biblical personalism of God. I suggest the following interpretation: When we speak of „personalism, in general what we actually mean is the highest level of consciousness known to us; in exactly this sense it is appropriate to speak of a personalism of God - namely in the sense of a „vector, as it were, which is represented by the earthly superiority of human consciousness, and issuing from which starting point, „personalism of God can truly meaningfully be conceived as a prolongation of this vector into the supernatural (which means definitely more than a mere „analogy). It has turned out that any other understanding of God’s personalism remains disappointingly under-complex. That some product of a single-planetary biological evolution should represent the highest level of consciousness in the entire universe is a ridiculous assumption. At best, one may say (and here I am already „leaning myself far out of the window) that humans on earth represent the proverbial one-eyed who is king among the blind - nothing more than that. Of course this understanding of „God’s personalism is a considerable theological achievement, which includes the capacity to psychologically compensate Freud’s „three great narcissistic wounds of humankind (caused by Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud himself; 1917), an achievement which could not be expected yet from earlier centuries’ Christians who shaped the tradition of the church. - Utterly provocatively, Karl Barth wrote in his „Ecclesial Dogmatic (1/2, 1938): „Religion is Unbelief. That is Barth’s sentence’s most usual translation into English - however, I would rather translate: „Religion is Non-Faith. Following on from Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a series of letters from Nazi prison between April and August 1944, less than a year prior to his execution, developed the radical-spiritual idea of „religionless Christianity and „non-religious interpretation of the gospel. Two decades after Bonhoeffer, Catholic theologian Karl Rahner has put the basically very same realization in equally famous words that sound less radical in their appearance, but are by no means less radical in their essence: „The pious of tomorrow will be a ‚mystic‘, someone who has experienced something, or he won’t be anymore. (Karl Rahner, „Piety Then And Now, 1966) - These decisive reference-points outline a „Christian underground tradition I see myself belonging to, which beyond Kierkegaard has even older roots in, for example, Miguel de Molinos, Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, the anonymous „Cloud of Unknowing, Meister Eckhart and Thomas a Kempis, Francis of Assisi and the Desert Fathers. It is „from there", namely from a certain joint fundamental spirit behind all these admittedly each culturally-historically bound and conditioned utterances, that I respond to the Christian crisis of my days.

I see Catholic Christianity as a possible way into ultimate spiritual depth; once you recognize this and make use of that possibility, there is no longer any meaning in asking „Is Christianity true, is Catholicism true? But the way of making use of Catholicism’s spiritual potential does not necessarily imply to take part in any of the rituals of the church; it may also consist in a mere act of contemplation. An obvious objection against this stance will be that by this way Christianity’s historical-societal appearance as „the church is rather unlikely to remain preserved for much longer - however, the just as obvious counter-objection being that this historical form called „the church" is unlikely to be preserved for much longer anyway, as it already shows dramatic signs of crisis resembling downright agony, suggesting that without the alternative I’ve shown, probably little would remain of Christianity anyway within a couple of years from now.

This book aspires to deliver the foundation for a „completely new understanding of „Christianity. Of course one can put an assertion like this always only in brackets, as there is immediately a philosophical identity problem lurking behind it (what is „Christianity? what is „new?). In the third decade of the third millennium, I live in a time in which quest for spiritual orientation has become paramount for a vast number of humans, yet the ecclesiastical Christian tradition at least in Europe is fading rapidly. Spirituality without a religious tradition threatens to remain all too superficial, as religion means a tried and tested set of practices to exercise spirituality in the everyday, in order to be prepared for really „having spirituality at hand in an „operational sense of the soul when crisis comes, which in my opinion clearly means a certain structural or at least frequent disadvantage of religionless spiritual seekers; on the other hand, to really penetrate home-culturally alien religious traditions might grant the benefit of freeing one’s spiritual life from mentally and emotionally dragging along the burden of unconvincing, insipid or even disconcerting religious childhood and youth memories, yet it means a huge intellectual and psychological effort which many individuals are prone to fail with already for simple shortage of time and energy. That is why I’m deeply moved by the intention of offering „a new version of Christianity designed for a majority of 21st-century-CE spiritual seekers. I’m convinced it is „technically perfectly possible (on a serious biblical basis), as well as intellectually honest, to do so - otherwise I wouldn’t do it. I don’t want to speculate about the reasons why so far, after all I know, this has never been attempted the way I do it; but I know for sure that these reasons have nothing to do with any supposed intellectual superiority of „me, rather with complex societal dynamics of religious communities and their eagerness to keep in institutional control of people’s „faith. In this book, I’m employing reputable, quality academic biblical scholarly research as best I’m capable of; it’s only the goal of this book which doesn’t match university stance, as this book overtly has an agenda other than pure „rational-objective" insight. But, as you see, I’m candid with that; which, I think, is very decisive.

This book has two parts, which are „physically two books. The first part (this book) ist titled „Enegesis, the second one „Exegesis. The term „enegesis is, if at all, often used to pejoratively denote an attempt of reading a meaning into a text, and in all those cases the use of „enegesis usually wants to express that this attempt is perceived as illegitimate and illicit; in contrast to which the term „exegesis then denotes the „good way of getting a true meaning out of a text. But I use these terms here differently: I see the word „enegesis in its literal complementariness to „exegesis as the „natural expression for what in today’s academic world usually is labeled „introductory biblical studies or something like that. The latter term sounds a bit like a mere „auxiliary science, but it means actually far more than that: The whole range of utterly important fundamental literary-critical questions is to be assigned to that discipline. Who wrote the text? Which one was the text’s original language? Who were its addressees, and what seems to have been the societal context of the addressing (e.g., didactical, liturgical, legal)? To which points in time are the distinguishable editorial steps of the text’s emergence to be dated? Which ones are the oldest physical witnesses of the text or of fragments of it, and why and how have they been preserved and handed on? How do we, from today’s historical-critical perspective, have to assess the relation between historicity and theology in the text, and what is likely to have been the authors’ own perspective on that question? Which pieces of informations about general-historical background can we connect to the social, cultural and political environment in which the text emerged; for example, what do we historically or archeologically know about the conditions and workings of „media, „literacy and „education in that distant-past world? Has the Bible „sources, is there „intertextuality? And, last but not least, where do breaches of formal logic seem to appear in the narrative, and of which type are they, could they be dissolved by an information that „we merely happen to lack, or are they structurally fundamental (like, for example, when Cain by his „mark shall be protected from being killed in revenge although logically there’s no other human being around on earth except himself and perhaps still his parents; or when Moses is assumed author of the sentence „Moses was the most humble man on earth, which is a „Zeno-paradox; or when Aaron is said to have been three years older than Moses and must be the oldest kid in the family because he has the legal status of „firstborn, but sister Miriam is depicted as most cunningly arranging the rescue of her newborn brother Moses from the Nile, which sounds like an utterly remarkable case of precocity) - the latter phenomenon clearly meaning that the text must „anachronistically serve as a symbol or metaphor for an actually far later societal-cultural condition? So, this list is what I’d like to call the topics of „Enegesis. Because from my perspective, that „enegesis is the presupposition for every meaningful „exegesis. That is the new meaning that I assign to the term „enegesis. And that model expresses the notion that every search for truth can only work in an „inductive way, not in a „deductive manner; „pure deduction is illusory (that’s why Sherlock Holmes has never existed, whereas „inductive Lieutenant Columbo might well have existed). So, all you can reasonably do is to be very careful and very cautious and very responsible with what you read into the text first, in order to be able to afterwards get really good and valuable and valid „exegetic results out of it. Something always needs to be read into the text first; we always only see though a lens of some sort or the other, so the first thing always is that we have to put on our glasses; but we should do so very consciously and deliberately, in a deeply reflective and skeptical and responsible attitude. To me, that is what „Enegesis means. So, „Enegesis is what we are doing in this volume; while „Exegesis will be the second volume of this „Essential Course. -

As a human society, we need either true spirituality or we need strong authority. Because the core meaning of authority is to prevent everyone, all those „ordinary persons, from permanently judging one another: „Detached authority decides who is right and who is wrong, so that we can keep this sort of quarrel salutarily at bay or at least out of everyday productive societal routine. If a human society wants to get rid of authority, but at the same time has not yet arrived at a predominance of true spirituality yet, it is not going to function stably. As there are not, and have never been, any human societies dominated by true spirituality so far, consequently increasing dysfunctionality of human societies (despite of technological progress) is what we observe since about 1960 in the „western world, since the beginning of the great wave of humanity’s „anti-authoritarian external liberations that approximately marks the transition from „modern to „post-modern. As we certainly don’t want to turn back to the principle of authority - at least not if we can have something better -, we should feel great incentive to establish a hegemony of truly spiritually enlightened consciousness globally-societally. If we carry on missing to realize this goal, another major return of dark authoritarianism is logically almost inevitable. We may hope that this logic is wrong or rather that it might be „suspended by the universe - which for a truly spiritual person is not a paradoxical expectation -, nevertheless as human beings we do not live up to our responsibility if we are not following simple logic. What simple logic clearly tells us, not only as individuals, rather even as human society, no matter whether we like to hear it or not, is to, with a high priority, go after „spirituality.

Ultimately, religion will never attract followers by and for being „liberal. As long as you are „religious, you will always have a propensity towards being rigid. In a sense, ideological celibacy (even lay celibacy) and martyrdom was the price of success early Christianity paid for giving up observance of Torah. In the long run, the only alternative to the „natural" illiberalism of religion is to advance from religion to spirituality. True spirituality is always already challenging enough so that it will reliably satisfy your psychological need for austerity - without any ideology, strictness, forced behavior, drill and thought control. What an amazing option.

I’d like to put my most general explanation concerning my attitude towards institutional church the following way, relying on Hans-Joachim Sander (in the Austrian periodical „Die Furche, 48, December 2021): In every crisis that relentlessly demands far-reaching reforms, all those who want to preempt with a fundamental „yes-to-the-institution first - independent of what fixed settling-item exactly this a-priori „yes is supposed to refer to -, in order to first obtain or retain a safe institutional basis on which then to pronounce their „no towards the most obvious grievances of the institution, all equally fall into a trap, each in their own way: Because there are crisis situations in which with intellectual and spiritual honesty one can only immediately throw an unconditional „no at them, hitting the responsible institution without making sophisticated differences, and only then through this - so one hopes - to arrive at a great, and thus even all the greater, final „yes; but this ultimate „yes remains categorically an opaque mystery of grace to all our attempts of strategic anticipation, and we need to be able to unreservedly trust in grace, adding nothing by „ourselves to the outcome except a very basic benevolence, a very basic goodwill.

If you want to have a critical look at the message and teaching of a traditional religion, and by this I mean that sort of critical look that wants to preserve that which is truly worth preserving in times of cultural crisis, then there are three ways to do so: first, the doctrinal way, which means to, based on philosophy, reasonably and logically corroborate the religious message in its self-referential consistency, coherence and plausibility; second, the spiritual way, which means through meditation and contemplation and coming from the angle of the concerning religious teaching’s relation with an individual’s deepest inner personal experiences and resonances; and third, the academic way, which is supposed to have a methodical analytical look at the basic texts of the concerning religion and to critically figure out this religion’s objective history of emergence and development, as well as to assess it from the angle of scientific psychology or sociology or even natural sciences. Christian theology traditionally is predominantly based on the first one of these three options. Whereas this book essentially responds to the fact that in the 21st century many people worldwide (but particularly in Europe) have developed deep alienation with traditional Christian religion and traditional Christian theology; therefore, this book is predominantly based on a combination of the second and the third option. I intend this book to be a spiritual book for everyone, as well as a scholarly satisfying theological book for experts and broad public alike, as well as a piece of good, enjoyable, entertaining literature on an esthetic level which is again independent from all the aforesaid aspects, and all this at the same time - well, it will be up to the reader to decide whether this tall enterprise is successful.

In this book, a „type or style of spirituality is pursued which expresses precisely in an utterly sober and rational-analytical manner of beholding the biblical texts: It expects that there has to be found a very simple, straight and plain meaning first, which is fully convincing, elucidating and relevant by itself nevertheless, before our „twist of reading proceeds to assuming some „much more profound, subtle, sophisticated and mystical layer of meaning (the latter being always dangerously prone to drift off into esoteric, gnosticism and magic, by the way, which are all totally opposed to true spirituality). Because to this „style of spirituality which I advocate here, true mysticism does precisely not lie in using the word „mystical a lot. And this „style of spirituality is in fact deeply rooted in the whole and in the structure of the Bible itself. Because the biblical religious culture is based decisively on the axiom that the divine manifests itself and its effects in things that are visible on earth. This was not an assumption particularly common to ancient religions. Hence for example the remarkable lack of almost any „eschatology in original Israelite religion. To the one who makes that observation, it delivers a deep reason why the kind of biblical spirituality which I am trying to demonstrate here is very essentially based on a distinctly „disenchanted or, in a sense, deliberately „spiritually secularized approach of understanding the Bible. True biblical mysticism is pointedly free of „mystical ado. -

Spirituality does not consist in thoughts. That is a joint insight of all true great spiritual masters. Nevertheless, a certain form of occupation and dealing and altercation with certain thoughts can be used as a spiritual path of training. My book belongs into that latter niche of spiritual literature. This intellectual path is indeed not without danger of going astray. It needs to be emphasized that at least three other forms of spiritual practice are more important and more reliable: first, the practice of saying „yes to whatever is, to whatever shape the present moment takes, with special regard to facing suffering and facing death and following the call and trace of love facing whatever situation; second, the practice of stillness, of quiet, if necessary as silence, solitude or other practices of detachment; and third, the social spiritual practice of being with other humans, and it’s nice if an other human being you come into contact with happens to take the form of a spiritual master or an „Anamchara, which means someone with whom you mutually on peer level consciously accompany each other on the spiritual path, or the form of children, sick people, marginalized people or other particularly vulnerable ones with whom you may have contact while serving their needs, and whom you may feel to teach you spiritually a lot without them being formal spiritual teachers at all, but these others may just as well be ordinary fellow humans, and maybe even challenging or even obnoxious ones, and spiritually that’s in fact teaching you just as much; and if there are no other human beings around, they may be represented in their spiritual-teaching qualities to some degree by a truly spiritual great work of visual art, music or poetry, thus imbuing your consciousness with true spiritual energy. To go exclusively the intellectual path may spiritually not be safe enough. I’d like to be clear about that. The intellectual approach to spirituality is ambivalent, tricky and suspenseful. I simply wouldn’t regard it as relevant enough to write yet another book about those other three spiritual practices of superior importance, as there are already enough very good books existing about that and little new to say about these topics.

Is there spiritual development without particularly the initial stretch of it being decisively connected to a change in mindset, which means to „another mindset, rather than „pure no- mind? I believe there can indeed be something like completely „thoughtless spiritual progress in a beginner, but this is likely to be a rather rare phenomenon, and not even particularly desirable, because of the „imbalance between our capacities which is caused by such a situation - „enlightening without understanding -; while in the vast majority of cases spiritual awakening is intensely and intricately connected to a development in one’s manner how thinking is made use of. First of course there clearly must be an impulse from radically outside of any domain of the mind; but that initial impulse is immediately followed by a substantial amount of a specific type or style of mind occupation that evades the oversimplified binary concept of „mind versus no-mind. Without doubt in a later phase of the spiritual path that employment and involvement of thinking decreases in any case. But this question is relevant for our concept of spiritual pedagogy and even for our notion of spiritual self-education. For example, Eckhart Tolle, whom I regard a true spiritual master, in his talks does precisely not make use of traditional spiritual teachers’ more „usual mixture of mere silence, paradox, religious exegesis and „technical practice instruction, rather he offers quite rational explanations, talking continuously in a rational way. To me it seems and sounds as if Eckhart Tolle himself indeed would not have experienced his „own rare example of instant, abrupt, complete, sustainable „para-mind awakening as something particularly „helpful (although overwhelming not only with awe, but also with beauty), which is why it is precisely him who connecting to that experience developed the most „scientific talking and teaching style of all spiritual teachers I know. The Buddha gives the metaphor of the raft that must be left behind at the other shore; Meister Eckhart gives the metaphor of the ladder which needs to be dropped after climbing up on it. There might be a practical issue for the spiritual disciple to discern the right point for leaving the raft and dropping the ladder, in other words, for recognizing the point where the support which thinking may lend to spirituality proves to be exhausted - but that does not meaningfully justify a (pseudo) „spiritual attitude of „not and never employing thinking at all.

I perceive a global and cross-history „natural ecumenism of the true mystics, which like a five-leaf blossom encompasses Hasidism, Sufism, Zen, Advaita Vedanta, and, last but not least, what I call „Deuteronomistic-biblical and Deuteronomistic-Christian secular mysticism. Although I’m standing clearly and firmly in the Christian spiritual (though not necessarily ecclesiastical) tradition, this wider perspective is what my writing is decisively based on. From my point of view, what all meaningful theology depends on is ability and willingness to maintain intellectual polyphony and to cope with contradictions by relying on a lively dynamism of commentary and discourse, instead of becoming selective in one’s handling of canonical texts and dogmatic in explaining their meaning. Besides my intention to write a „popular spiritual book, at the same time I also tackle this topic from a properly scholarly and academic angle. Looked at from the latter angle, my „program reads as follows: All the theologically elaborate and sophisticated world religions include an interpretive strand which despite of dogmatic subtleties deliberately keeps very close to what from a philosophical standpoint usually is called „philosophia perennis, the „perennial philosophy. Their „perennial-philosophical interpretations can rightly be seen as the relatively most „properly spiritual and purely spiritual strands of the respective religions - however, to say so means quite a „dry minimalism and „lowest common denominator of true spirituality, which does not automatically also mean highest spiritual satisfaction. The intercultural comparison between the corresponding five spiritual „movements (to provisionally call them such) which I have identified provides me with a certain reduced, lean and concise „universal theological-analytical apparatus. My research interest is to apply this analytical apparatus to the interpretation of the Bible, including the latter’s historical-critical reading, in order to identify historical impulses of „universal spirituality; starting with the well-grounded hypothesis that the intention of the authentic Jesus from Nazareth was precisely such a „universalization of spirituality in one of those historically almost „normal societal situations in which spirituality was completely bound to a culturally narrowly defined specific formal religion - which religion, however, faced severe crisis at that time around the Turn of the Era. From the perspective of this hypothesis, Jesus’ message would have been a perfectly logical response to the societal circumstances he found himself in. At the same time, turning back, performing a „hermeneutic circle, as it were, from the comparison with other traditions of true spirituality to the cultural particularities of „truly spiritual biblical monotheism", means the true climax of spiritual enrichment. That is my particular appreciation of Jesus.

The Bible - either „Testaments - is a library full of stories which can be labeled „mythical in a wider sense. In a narrower classical-scholarly sense, „myth would mean a story that involves a „theogony-related drama, which means a story about „how the godheads came about and what the relationships between them are, and therefore necessarily an expression of polytheism; however, it clearly makes sense to relate the term „myth to the narrative stye of the Bible too, in which there is only One God, who has no life story. The ancients met myths with a mythical mind; which means, they may already have observed that the physics of water, for example, in principle can be predicted by human calculuses which do not need to refer to any immediate divine actions in any way, but they did not yet make any difference between this type of knowledge and the mythical type of knowledge; for them, both types of knowledge were absolutely the same, were absolutely one. The reality of water running, boiling or freezing by certain natural laws for them was a sort of reality absolutely no different from the reality of the Mount Olympus as the seat of the Pantheon. Whereas we moderns inevitably need to meet myths with a reflective mind: For us, there are two (ore more) very strictly different modi of „knowledge". The traditionalist-religious position that seems to aim back at a mythical state of mind definitely makes not the least sense any longer today; however the flat-rate anti-religious position is equally wrong which in its still relatively intelligent form of occurrence opines that myths did not lose all of their timeless life-relevant meaning completely, yet is convinced that modernity has become capable of alternatively translating the whole of the myths’ deeper meaning into a rational language of psychology or philosophy. The latter assumption is not true at all. Myths express deepest truths that farther remain inexpressible by every other way of expression. That perspective is the reason why people like me still occupy with trying to understand and interpret the mythical language of the Bible - and why every attempt to express our interpretation necessarily is far more lengthy, laborious and inelegant than the biblical expression itself which we try to interpret.

In order to foster a specifically Christian and biblical variant of the universal true spirituality, inevitably we need a certain degree of theological education - though not on a strictly academic level. We need an intellectual orientation about the emergence of the Bible, about the „authentic" Jesus of Nazareth, and about the events and dynamics of the era of the first Christians and the very early church. This intellectual orientation must lead to an imagination about these matters the historicity of which on the one hand does not need to be absolutely rationally cogent, but the critical acceptability of which must be scholarly corroborated, while on the other hand this imagination must be focused on its suitability to serve our main purpose here, which is to grant a solid, concrete and practicable intellectual basis for a certain culturally bound version of the one true spirituality, which was taught by the authentic Jesus of Nazareth, and therefore later on additionally also was recognized by Jesus’ followers retrospectively in a metaphoric deeper meaning of his historical crucifixion.

„The Universal Spiritual Teaching, which is not bound to any specific cultural background, and which all true spiritual masters from all cultures and ages have taught and teach, has to do with truly being aware, truly being conscious, living in the present moment and making the present moment your friend, not your enemy, surrendering to your life situation and being the space in which this situation „happens and unfolds, rather than being identified with the notoriously problematic content of one’s respective concrete life situation, „transcending suffering instead of merely trying to „overcome it, welcoming challenges and adversities as the decisive motive of one’s truest inner growth, simplicity, stopping to believe in one’s own thoughts, dropping one’s repetitive mental narratives, relying on non-conceptual knowledge more than on conceptual knowledge, more and more deeply and widely realizing and expressing non-dualism and nonviolence, which means the spirit of cosmic oneness, transcending the little personal or limited collective ego and becoming the „True Greater Self or „Deep I instead, thus developing from unfree reactivity to liberated responsiveness, and deeply manifesting compassion, mercy, forgiveness and heartfelt loving kindness as the only „thing that needs to be manifested. Jesus of Nazareth was one of the greatest masters of that „Universal Spiritual Teaching. Every master clothes this teaching into the peculiar language and imagery of his own specific religious and common-secular culture. In the cultural sphere of Judaism, Jesus of Nazareth was the first doubtlessly and unmistakably true great master of „The Universal Spiritual Teaching to become known as such to history, tradition and literature. And by his example it turned out that the fusion between „The Universal Spiritual Teaching and Jewish culture’s distinctive biblical monotheism was and is an interaction of particular elucidating potential. The latter remark does not mean that other cultures have brought forth only smaller spiritual masters; rather it means that for the followers of Jesus it makes relatively more sense to, in search of the spiritual truth, also take into account the whole of the traditional religious culture as such „behind" Jesus, compared to masters from other cultures, in whose cases their disciples usually do not benefit all too much from delving into such cultural-background studies. This consideration is indispensable for understanding the true meaning of the sheer existence of this book, as a biblical-theological book written by someone who is actually interested in spirituality, not in theological scholarship per se. -

No spirituality whatsoever can be based on the „historical Jesus (although of course he existed); but a self-sufficient („new) Christian spirituality can indeed be based on the „authentic Jesus. The „authentic Jesus is the one who offers an alternative to the Pauline „kerygmatic Christ; while the mere „historical Jesus doesn’t. This difference is very important to understand. The „historical Jesus is not what we’re mainly after in this book. The „historical Jesus is partly precondition, partly byproduct of the „authentic Jesus. The latter is the one we’re really mainly after. You may deepen your understanding of this difference by imagining „authentic Jesus a person whose core of identity is his deep inner identification with Torah and prophets of Israel, which categorically is nothing that you can directly find being reflected in this person’s „historical life, because it is a spiritual quality, not a „historical one.

This book needs to present the authentic Jesus of Nazareth to you in a convincing shape. But this „portray of the authentic Jesus can not be based on a „historical Jesus, because three big waves of historical-Jesus quest (late nineteenth century, beginning with „Vie de Jésus by Ernest Renan, 1863; mid twentieth century, involving the famous „Barth-Bultmann controversy; and since 1991, synchronously sparked through major publications by John Paul Meier and John Dominic Crossan) have ultimately not come up with enough „historical Jesus at all in our gospels. Therefore, paradoxically this book can not work based on the academic criteria of the university, although it is based on the latter principles as much as possible; but at the same time, in order to obtain its aim this book additionally needs to employ a creativity which is not acceptable at university according to the there valid rules of scholarly method. This reflection explains why university theological scholarship already since decades has come up with almost zero truly spiritually valuable contributions any more, and sheds an alarming light on the true „marginal-productivity and „marginal-utility situation of today’s standard university academic research within the subject of theology (and maybe within other university „humanities subjects too?). But the latter is not the topic I’m going after here, so I will not even go into three minutes of foray about this. I’d just like to state that the academic method in theology today has austerely restricted itself to exclusively coming from what is „positively" there in the biblical texts, and that this alone is clearly not capable of setting meaningful spiritual impulses - which, however, is this book’s goal.

In a historical-critical reality, the development of everything biblical begins only with Babylonian Exile (587-538 BCE). That means, everything biblical begins with a people that has already lost its political basis for being a people. In other words, everything biblical begins with a novel need to differentiate between religion and politics, a differentiation which had yet been unknown to all thitherto cultural history. Which is why neither the notion of „religion nor the notion of „politics can be directly expressed in the ancient Hebrew language, as the latter has no proper word for neither. The biblical revolution is very basically the revolution of that differentiation and separation. But we observe two fundamentally different school opinions in the Bible as to the question of how to handle the consequences of this crack. Following up in detail this basic biblical party dualism will be among the main occupations of this book, because this topic has enormous repercussions for properly understanding Jesus of Nazareth, by putting him into the context of „his" theological party, opposing the other one.

There was an Israeli philosopher until the 1960ies, whose name was Yehezkel Kaufmann. In his book „The Religion of Israel he expressed the secret of monotheism like this: „It is of the essence of (polytheistic) theogony that a given god is but one embodiment of the powers residing in the primordial womb of all being. As such, he meets with other independent offspring of the same realm. Consequently, Israelite religion was a total disruption of this principle. „It conceived, for the first time, of a god independent of a primordial realm, who was the source of all, the demonic included. (page 66 in the English version by Moshe Greenberg, 1960) There is no theogony in Genesis. Biblical creation is not a sexual or other procreative or warlike process like in typical mythology. We have to become fully aware again of how revolutionary this idea was; the supreme historical success of this spiritual revolution has become „all too habitual to us. In mythic religion, annual festivals usually celebrate something like the birth or death (and rebirth) of a godhead. This is radically dropped. Israelite festivals instead celebrate turning points in the story of God’s chosen people as such, and this story now appears as history, not myth. This was something altogether new. What goes with this idea is that nature does not constitute a bond between the human and the divine any more in the sense of „divine emanations. This is the deepest reason for why the relationship between Israel and her God is deliberately described as a covenant - with the imagery of something legal, not something natural. I said Israel and „her God, because in the Bible „Israel is frequently presented as feminine with regard to this relation - and if so, this covenantal relation is visualized as a marriage. This means, the biblical God’s creatures are not His „emanations, rather His „partners. The cultural repercussions of this idea are enormous. What’s probably most important among them: In polytheism your fellow human can be the spiritual client of a different godhead - maybe without you knowing it, which might prove dangerous for both of you -, which makes him actually come down to the equivalent of a different species compared to yourself. Even as a mere possibility this destructive idea already fundamentally estranges humans from each other. In monotheism this estrangement is spectacularly reversed: All human beings - and ultimately all beings - are really siblings, there can be no doubt about this. If this doesn’t mean something, then what else does? Furthermore: In consequent monotheism you do no longer have to observe scrutinously most menial details of your behavior in order to quite magically avoid fatal mistakes in your unexpected contacts with various deities and numinous forces throughout your everyday life - this is why monotheism becomes the first religion that is fervently anti-magical. And finally: Coming somehow from the same One Single True God - as mysterious as this appears to philosophy -, evil is no longer regarded as a metaphysical reality of its own, rather as a moral quality. Polytheism, according to Yehezkel Kaufmann, is categorically immoral in the sense that in polytheism ethics can never be convincingly derived from the divine, as different godheads are fighting against each other by all means. Only The One Single True God is strictly good and therefore moral, and so His universe is reliably organized in strictly moral ways. These deliberations led Yehezkel Kaufmann to conclude (not in his great book, but in an article published 1956): „The pagan idea does not approach Israelite monotheism as it diminishes the number of gods. This means, if instead of, let’s say, four hundred godheads you decide to reduce yourself to forty gods, or to four gods, this does not mean that you are in a process of developing into a monotheist in any way. Compared to polytheism, thoughtfully realized monotheism is an absolutely and categorically different overall mindset. The overwhelming abundance of concrete and special implications of this great discovery is what the Bible is all about. It is the discovery of a whole new mental and spiritual world, which fascinates the biblical authors boundlessly.

All humans have to be brotherly and sisterly with each other, magic is abolished, and the problem of evil is treated strictly morally: These three grand cultural features are in fact specific monotheistic achievements. - But doesn’t this annoyingly sound like: „The brilliant ancient Israelites got this, while all the other cultures of their historical period didn’t? It’s a little bit difficult to imagine that this is how cultural history really works, isn’t it? - Well, Yehezkel Kaufmann himself saw this problem, too. There is one very revealing passage in his book: „It is true that historical monotheism aspired to raise morality to the level of supreme law. Abandoning the amoral universe of magical forces, it conceived the idea of a moral cosmos, the highest law of which is the will of God. But this idea arose out of monotheism, and not the reverse. One can discern, therefore, a primary non-moral or supra-moral element in monotheistic faiths: The will and command of God is absolutely good. The doctrine of predestination held by some Christian denominations is the most striking form of this idea. God has foreordained who will be saved and who will be damned. At this point the absolute will of God becomes in essence immoral; monotheism approaches paganism. What is important in the present context, however, is the fact that exaltation of the One made it possible for cruelty to develop on a religious basis. God’s glory, name and sacra become the highest values; an offense against them is the supreme crime which justifies any punishment. Israel devoted the enemies of YHWH to destruction; Christianity destroyed idolaters and heretics for the glory of God; Islam fought holy wars. Precisely because of its exclusiveness monotheism can be ruthless. Hence there is no ground for viewing the laws of the ban and the dangers of contact with the holy as notions of an earlier age. (page 74-75) So, Yehezkel Kaufmann was well aware that monotheism had this potential downside to it. And this explains why the superiority of monotheism was not so obvious as to make polytheism totally incomprehensible in an instant after monotheism’s invention. But this downside of monotheism is more or less a consequence of mistaking it, whereas the spiritual weakness and inferiority of polytheism is built into its very essence - this is a big difference. However, Jesus of Nazareth, too, was fully aware of this problem - and that is the reason why he originally so explicitly and insistingly obliged his followers to take a radical pledge of nonviolence: Because he wisely recognized nonviolence to be the one big thing which monotheism fails to include „automatically; therefore, nonviolence has to be „added to monotheism consciously.

As The One Single True God of monotheism does not express Himself in „emanations, rather always remains „The Totally Other, logically there can categorically be no possibility for the human mind to learn something about God by „tracing back His emanations to their source. The latter old philosophical idea radically has to be given up. Consequently, any knowledge about God according to real monotheism always imparts itself to humans exclusively by way of „revelation. „Revelation means: Something comes to you from an absolute „outside of „yourself, which initially in absolutely no regard has anything to do with what „you are or do. („You here meaning the „little me, the „personal-individual me, not the „Greater Self; recognition of the „Greater Self is what stirred mystics to say „I am God, but they were mostly executed for saying that; however, here we are talking about the possibilities of achievements of the thinking mind, and the thinking mind clearly belongs exclusively to the „little-me dimension of human existence, compared to which the divine is the „totally other and totally outer. Of course, there remains an ultimate subtlety of truth that can never be grasped by human verbal language, no matter how philosophically skilled.) However, this message of „the totally other and totally outer must not be misunderstood as a contradiction to the super-comprehensive non-dualistic universal oneness of the monotheistic cosmos. Nevertheless - even if this might inevitably feel paradoxical -, revelation means „it’s not you. Revelation means it’s not „in you. Quite a number of people believe: „The whole of the divine truth is all contained deep inside myself. Well, that might be true - a little bit. But if you don’t counter that sentence by its very contrary, you’re bound to go terribly wrong spiritually. Paradoxically, you „are the divine and the totality of the cosmos - and at the same time you are not „it. The deepest truth, as far as human reason can conceive of it at all, is in this contradiction, is in the ambivalence, in the paradox, in the dilemma. That’s the furthest and uttermost outpost whereto logical reason can get when penetrating into the depth of truth. Within this ambivalence, biblical monotheism, which by its fundamental constitution is a consequently revelation-based religion, clearly stresses the „otherness of the Absolute, of God. This is interesting, because it witnesses to the biblical authors’ perception that the „intrinsicity, internity, inherence, immanence of the divine is actually quite a „naturally prevailing religious concept that „initially over millennia humanity-wide failed to be wisely counterbalanced by the „revelational admonition. We do not rightly understand the Bible’s intentions if we believe to have made a „plain cultural progress with the 20th century’s „religious-inwardness movement. Actually, looked at in the largest context, the latter is a „return movement - and also a „regress movement". It might not be totally unjustified, given the church’s century-long authoritarian and