Article 11:
Shaping A New View Of God
by Wendell Krossa
(From the series "Creating A Horizontal
God", Copyright, W. Krossa)
Rethinking Traditional Views of God
Views of vertically oriented gods have been used to validate vertically oriented social orders and relationships for millennia. One of my main arguments has been that social orders and societies in general are often the effort of people to replicate what they believe to be the divine order (1). The view of God that people hold, informs, validates, and supports the type of social order that they construct for their relationships and existence.
I am also arguing that the present orientation of most societies on earth is vertical with hierarchical domination as the main arrangement of human relationships in the structures or institutions of these societies. This would include families, schools, workplaces, religions, and a wide variety of other social institutions. I believe that, in part, the continued use of this vertical arrangement is due to the fact that many people still hold worldviews based on ideas of God as a vertically oriented and dominating reality. Such views of God include not only the elements of vertical relating, but also patriarchal domination with a male God controlling and determining all in the hierarchy below him. These inhumane views of God have been used to validate millennia of inhumane existence.
In rethinking these views of God we need to remember that the idea of God that most people hold is constructed out of a variety of things projected out to explain the mystery behind life. People project onto gods in the first place what they believe to be the correct order of things and then they use that self-created projection to validate the way they wish to treat each other. It works in a feedback loop manner. People project and create ideas of divinity, then over time come to view that creation as a divine revelation and it becomes the ultimate authority for human behavior.
While many contemporary institutions may not consciously ascribe their current orientation to a given view of God, these institutions do follow a hierarchical pattern of relationships that arose directly out of a past where dominating patriarchs and gods shaped all elements of societies.
Nation states have been major culprits in using views of dominating gods to justify their authority to control their citizens. Governing elites have long appealled to this highest of ideas and exploited people's natural respect for God as a means of social control. In this manner, people are kept subservient in hierarchical relationships despite the well documented damage that such control has to their own well being.
The humane God that we are all trying to know better does not control people by use of authority in hierarchy. This God does not control people through vertically oriented institutions, whether state or work or religious. Such a God also does not control people through the use of law or any other form of top down authority. God does not control at all. A controlling God is a fiction, a created myth. Control, as I've said often before, is an animal response that operates only within animal-like relationships where people give way to residual drives instead of responsibly relating as free and equal human beings. God is human and not animal.
Views of a dominating God have greatly influenced how people relate to each other and how they treat each other. Historically, the view of a dominating God has led people to engage in all sorts of inhumane treatment of other people. This runs through the spectrum of controlling family members all the way to large-scale movements of conquest and oppression. History is replete with accounts of wars and inhumanity committed in the name of a dominating God.
But in the same manner that a controlling God has profoundly influenced human social attitudes and behavior, so also a truly humane God will have profound impact on the way we relate to each other and on the social orders that we shape for our cooperative life.
Armstrong argues that a more humane God is evident in historical monotheism. She says that this God "demands mercy not sacrifice, compassion rather than decorous liturgy" (2). She continues, noting that both Jesus and Paul made it clear that religious observance was useless if it was not accompanied by love for others. Many people, she says, find it difficult to face the uncompromising demands for love made by God. These people find it easier to create their own Golden Calf, another God who makes no demands of them and is easily satisfied with traditions and rituals. Such a god will not challenge the status quo or the prejudices of his worshippers (3).
The next few sections will try to explore something of the possible nature of the more humane God.
Without apology I make the assumption that there is a God. Most of humanity throughout human history has intuitively and positively responded to god consciousness.
The complaint is often made that science is increasingly taking the mystery out of life and therefore undermining the need for God as an explanation to many things in life. But in fact, the opposite is true. The further science looks into the nature of life and reality, the more mystery it uncovers. Whether it be the nature of the atom or the larger universe, scientific discovery leads to an increasing sense of mystery and therefore inevitably to God as the explanation for life and reality. This is especially true when you look at the explanations for why. Why, for instance, is order and life emerging out of randomness and chaos? Why did human consciousness emerge? Why did the universe emerge in the first place? Why is there reality instead of nothing? Why did it evolve with the set of laws that it emerged with and not with others? These laws are essential for life and they emerged through extremely rare (some argue impossibly rare) chance events.
Scientists are increasingly recognizing that there is design and purpose in the universe.In a recent Newseek article it was stated that "Physicists have stumbled on signs that the cosmos is custom-made for life and consciousness. It turns out that if the constants of nature- unchanging numbers like the strength of gravity, the charge of an electron and the mass of a proton- were the tiniest bit different, then atoms would not hold together, stars would not burn and life would never have made an appearance. 'When you realize that the laws of nature must be incredibly finely tuned to produce the universe that we see... that conspires to plant the idea that the universe did not just happen, but that there must be a purpose behind it'" ("Science Finds God", Newsweek, July 20, 1998, p.48).
Having noted these comments on design I would add that evidence of design in nature is not proof of God's existence, even though this has long been considered by religious people to be a fundamental proof. I would argue that evidence of chaos, chance, and spontaneity are equally evidence of God's existence and his granting freedom to life.
Will science eventually explain everything and finally relegate God to oblivion? No. The scientific endeavor will continue to uncover more mystery and will continue to point to God as the explanation for life. We should remember that science, like most human endeavor, is ultimately a search for God.
We should not then fear ongoing scientific discovery as a threat to the existence of God. It is only a threat to traditional gods, gods that no longer represent the reality that we are all now becoming more aware of.
We need to beware of the fundamentalist view in science that argues there is no God because the existence of God can not be proven rationally through the use of scientific techniques of observation.
Rationality is not the final standard for perceiving all reality. It has been useful for exposing the irrationality of traditional mythology and it has been useful for discovery in the realm of material reality. But to insist there is no God because God's existence can not be proven through the rational approach of science is to fly in the face of common human wisdom though history. And what about the essential human faculties of intuition, imagination, and feeling? They are essential to perceiving the whole of reality properly.
As Norman Fischer has said, "A fully developed imagination enables us to live in a world that's ennobling without dwelling in some fantasyland... For a Bhuddist, enlightenment is the development of the faculty of imaginative vision that enables us to see the world in a transfigured way" (Fenton Johnson, "Beyond Belief" in Harpers, September 1998, p.53). Johnson has also quoted Einstein who said "Science without religion is lame... Religion without science is blind". Johnson adds further that "contemporary physics is rediscovering the revelation that mystical, often monastic writers repeatedly present as the culminating fact of the contemplative life: the understanding that science and art lead to mystery" (Ibid, p.54).
Also, we need to question the effort of rationalist science to separate the material from the whole as if material reality represented all reality. The material element of reality is then perceived only through the tools and methods of empirical observation- analyzing and quantifying what can be seen or perceived through the five senses alone. Imagination, intuition, feeling, and other important human faculties are subsequently ignored. No. What we see as so-called material reality is simply one element of a greater and more mysterious whole. You can not separate this reality. It has an unseen spiritual element which may be even more 'real' than what we see as the material realm. And the God who sustains all reality in existence is far more real than what we perceive in our realm. You can only know the whole of reality by inclusive use of all the human faculties.
Further, the unseen spiritual element of reality interacts so closely with the so-called material that we may be wrong in trying to conceive of the spiritual and material elements as separate.
Distortions in the Idea of God
Note: In the following sections I will make numerous references to various traditional Christian ideas. This is not meant to be some sort of attack on Christianity. It is simply an effort to take a hard look at control everywhere, especially at control as it is related to ideas of God and religion. Ideas influence behavior and relating and ideas of God do even more so.
I also want to look more closely at alternative emphases in the life of Christianity's supposed founder, Jesus. In reality, Jesus did not found Christianity nor do I believe that he would organize any institution or ideology. Christianity is, I believe, the product of Jesus' followers wanting to preserve a tradition for various reasons, including the concern to preserve the privileges and power that accompanied the new religious movement that emerged after Jesus' death.
Again, the following sections are not intended to be offensive, but I realize that the very nature of challenging what is considered the sacred will offend some people. I do not apologize for that because control must be challenged wherever we find it. Far too long it has been allowed to inflict immense damage to human well being.
Also, I intend to argue that horizontally oriented views of God more faithfully represent Jesus' own view of God.
Before we look at some defining features of a new view of God, I will review some of the central features of the traditional Western God, features which have rendered this God more animal-like than human. This will serve as a contextual contrast for exploring a new view of God.
As I noted previously, I am not really creating a new God. I am simply trying to discover and uncover a hidden reality that has always existed. I am trying to point to a more humane perception of what I believe has always been a truly humane and horizontally oriented God.
I argued earlier that the main features of the contemporary Western view of God originated in a primitive past. As early god consciousness emerged, that new consciousness was shaped by the primitive mentality and culture of the time and this led to the inclusion of very animal-like features in the earliest views of gods.
The new god consciousness led early people to view their own patriarchs as god-like rulers. Consequently, the main features of patriarchal rule such as domination of subjects and opposition to outsiders were attributed to the gods.
Throughout subsequent history people continued to project their own primitive understanding of life onto views of God. In later millennia, developing religious traditions would formulate holy books to embody their views of divinity.
Early humans, then, created gods very much in their own image and likeness. The resulting gods suited well the barbaric culture they emerged into and they were then used to validate the authorities and vertical social orders still in operation at that time.
The emerging gods gradually took over what had once been a central patriarchal function- the control of behavior by direct force or order. The chief role of the new gods became the tight control of behavior in hierarchical relationships of domination/submission. This made the earliest gods controlling entities very similar to the male patriarchs of all previous hierarchical order. Control, not egalitarian freedom, then became the essential nature of the newly emerging idea of God.
So the earliest social function of the emerging gods was to support the authority and rule of patriarchy. As I noted earlier, this role originated with the dead kings who were used even after their death as continuing authorities to control the behavior of their subjects. With emerging god consciousness, the dead rulers were gradually viewed as god-like and were then used to support the continued operation of ancient vertical hierarchies of control. And while my comments are directed mainly toward male gods I recognize that there was a tradition of goddesses that also emerged in a variety of ancient cultures.
Domination and control then became the defining nature and central function of the emerging gods. The new gods were simply divinized or sacralized replicas of the cruel tyrants of the animal and hunter/gatherer worlds. As direct descendants of primate patriarchs, those gods were a more sophisticated form of predator but predators nonetheless. They were quite simply animals given a supreme and formal place in systems of belief and in human institutions. In this process of divinizing patriarchs, basic animal features, then, were incorporated into the very earliest views of divinity. Those animal features, such as control, have been included in views of God ever since.
I would suggest that in a more ideal world, emerging god consciousness would have supported emerging egalitarian human mentality, relating, and existence. But instead, god consciousness was co-opted and diverted to support the continuance of animal-like forms of relating. It was one of the greatest mistakes and tragedies of early human history. The devastating consequences of that tragedy are still being suffered by humanity everywhere today.
The embodiment of control in God has rendered the traditional perception of God corrupt and it now needs to be replaced. Control is extremely damaging to human development and a truly humane God would never validate such damage to humanity. Therefore, we can safely conclude that a controlling God or ideas of God that express any element of control do not reflect the supremely humane reality that is God.
True freedom has little opportunity to operate under the controlling God I have noted above. Freedom is based on a mind space which allows the full and free operation of reflection, questioning of authority, and personal choice. That space was a break with dominating authority in traditional hierarchies. It was a break from the commanding authority of the old gods. Such reflective freedom leads to more egalitarian forms of relating among people. In this manner, a truly humane existence emerges out of the space or pause that was the initial emergence of modern human consciousness. Humanity itself was then defined by freedom from control more than any other single feature.
Modern humanity then, originated as a break with controlling gods. This fact in itself should call into question ideas of continued submission to controlling gods.
But that early freedom, expressed in reflection, challenging domination, and personal choice, would become the greatest evil or sin in the world of traditional religious authority. Reflection, questioning, and choice would become the greatest threats to the authority of the old gods. Questioning and freedom of choice would undermine the domination and control of religious authorities.
The survival of those archaic authorities therefore depended on the suppression of any expression of human freedom. That was done, in part, by condemning questioning and curiosity as the sin of unbelief. Early priests would therefore damn all questioners as unbelievers or blasphemers. Rather than viewing resistance and break with authority as freedom and an expression of human consciousness, it was condemned as the greatest evil. And to the contrary, submission to control by institutional superiors was glorified as the greatest good. It was called obedience and honorable submission to the will of God. Black was thereby made white and white was made black. Those ideas and practices of damning all questioners continued on into the later evolution of monotheistic religions.
There is now no possibility of reforming the old God nor the ideas and institutions created to support this God. The very heart and core of this God is animal-like domination enshrined in ideas of God predetermining all things and submission to the will of God. And because this control is such a complete distortion and corruption of what God and humanity are really about, we are now left with only one option- the creation of an entirely new view of God
Further, the theological arguments employed to explain the nature and characteristics of the traditional God are no longer useful for understanding divinity. Most of the old theological or doctrinal systems of religion are little more than endeavors to refine and validate the old vertically oriented God. They provide no credible insight into the supremely humane reality that is God. And far too long those systems have been used to validate the evil of control in the name of God.
Many of the traditional arguments used to support the idea of a controlling God are based on the Bible. And while the Bible contains a useful record of early people's insights regarding God those insights have been distorted by the ancient mythological worldview.
Note for instance, the effort of early Christians to explain the historical Jesus in terms of ancient mythical themes. This endeavor was prompted by the fact that the people of his time found Jesus too radically humane and free. Not able to understand and embrace such freedom, they reshaped him to validate the traditional systems of religious hierarchical domination and control that they were used to. The historical human Jesus was then eventually buried in vertically oriented religious existence.
Over subsequent centuries, the humane and egalitarian historical person was redefined and recreated to validate the vertical orientation of the newly developing Christianity. It was a radical reorientation of the horizontal orientation that the historical Jesus had advocated. Jesus was eventually presented as another controlling God in the same likeness as all previous dominating patriarchs. The result of the early Christian endeavor to refashion Jesus has been the widespread incorporation of archaic mythical themes into the worldview of Christianity and its Bible.
Despite the effort to recreate Jesus, the essential message of his life has not been entirely buried. God is a truly humane reality. Entering God's kingdom or realm is about becoming humane. To put it another way, God simply wants people to join the human race. And this God is not a dominating ruler or master but wishes to be known as a servant. There is absolutely nothing of control in such a humane God.
Contemporary societies value the drives of aggressive competition, opposition toward outsiders, domination of others, intense self-interest, control of resources, and destruction of enemies. Jesus emerged to advocate the radically humane values of endless forgiveness, scandalous inclusion and sharing, refusal to dominate, and living for the greater good of the human community.
Jesus Revealed a Supremely Humane God
The story of the historical Jesus offers convincing evidence that God has nothing of the animal in him but is supremely humane. Jesus in radical opposition to selfish gene theory, gave his life to love others and advocated the radical new insight that we ought to love even enemies. This insight broke the ancient tribal mentality of opposition to outsiders as enemies and pointed to a new understanding of all humanity as one family under a common God.
We need to take a fresh look at Jesus in terms of humane existence, an existence that is entirely non-religious. The teaching on humane response that is found in his life is far too important to neglect out of disgust for the religious extremism that has long surrounded him. In this regard, it will help to remember Ellul's argument that on all points Christianity is the exact opposite of what the historical Jesus stood for.
It is also important to note the life and teaching of Jesus because of his later association with law and the use of his life to support a law oriented existence. This emphasis on law has had an immensely damaging impact on human well being and will be noted in later chapters. The idea of law as a sacred reality to control human life is an idea that is deeply and widely embedded in Western thinking. It must be challenged if we are ever to discover and enjoy true freedom.
Emerging Humanity Informing Our Understanding of The Transcendent
The key point here is that God is supremely humane. As Schillebeeckx stated, God is the supremely human God (7). Brinsmead said, "Albert Nolan in his beautiful little book, Jesus Before Christianity, shows how the historical Jesus gives a true picture of God. And he summarizes it all by saying, 'If this is a true picture of God, then God is more truly human, more thoroughly humane, than any human being'" (8).
This view of God as humane points to entirely new areas of insight for developing an understanding of God. We can find much useful information on the humaneness of God by noting what is good about emerging humanity and the emerging human self. In developing an understanding of what it means to be truly humane, we can derive insights to shape a new and more humane view of God.
In saying this, I am assuming that what is best in emerging humanity reflects the image or likeness of God.
The old systems of religious theology contain almost no information at all on what it means to be truly human. They are not very helpful in informing us as to what God is like. These systems of religious doctrine tend to take a very negative view of humanity and the human self as something fundamentally evil and therefore to be suppressed or denied. This view of humanity as evil derives from the myth that ancient humans suffered a traumatic Fall and became inherently sinful.In a previous section, I noted a number of criteria that are fundamental to human existence, humanity criteria if you will. They are basic and essential features of the human self or person. They reveal the human self as oriented to freedom, equality, and diversity. These features are essential to the nature of emerging humanity and therefore reflect the essential requirements for truly humane existence. These same criteria also provide useful information for shaping a new understanding of a truly humane God. I will repeat these basic elements in the following section on God and in the later section on new social orders as these features will also provide the basic criteria for a more humane social order.
The fact that these fundamental criteria are grounded in what it means to be human carries a profound implication for all of us. It means that every human being potentially knows the nature of the humane reality that is God. The truth about this God is not hidden knowledge that can only be accessed by the religious specialists and experts. In fact, the old God specialists (theologians, priests, and religious leaders) may actually know far less about the humane reality of God than the average person. This is due to the fact that extensive knowledge about and commitment to something that is profoundly distorting will lead a person further astray than ignorance about that same distortion. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
The discovery of and the shaping of human understanding of God must never again be the work of groups of elite specialists or religious authorities bound within the parameters of ancient mythologies. The knowledge of God is not the exclusive domain of any single human group. No group can claim to be specially qualified to understand and to interpret the sacred secrets and then exclusively mediate this knowledge to other human beings.
In this regard we are reminded again of Armstrong's comments that "It follows that each human being is a unique epiphany of the Hidden God, manifesting him in a particular and unrepeatable manner...It also follows that the revelation that God has made in each one of us is unique, different from the God known by other innumerable men and women" (9). Each person has something unique to contribute to ideas of God that no other person can contribute.
Far too long religious elites have employed the idea of God to serve their own divisive and exclusive interests. The result of such misuse of God has been endless conflict among people of different religious backgrounds. It is now time for humanity to take back control of this fundamental reality and use it for the good of all humanity and make it an idea that is controlled and defined by ordinary people.
Further, the fact that the best that theologians and priests have produced is a dominating male patriarch testifies to their own profound ignorance of the humane God.
Over the millennia religious specialists have, in effect, created an institutionalized distortion of the free God of life and then used this creation to validate their own authority and positions of power in the hierarchies of the religious institutions that they are struggling to maintain. This religious God has been used to validate base drives to control which religious elites claim to be their God-given authority to lead people to submit to the will of God. In fashioning this religious God, religious leaders have used God as a tool to control others. This has seriously degraded the common understanding of God.
The most sinister element in this effort to sacralize a human creation is that religious authorities have exploited the profound respect that people have for God. They have manipulated that respect to maintain religious systems which validate destructive domination of other human beings.
Few honest people can relate to the old God any more. That God is now too disconnected from the reality of emerging humanity. Emerging consciousness has led humanity to a place where people can no longer tolerate the inhumane domination and control of the old God or the institutions claiming to represent the old God. Everywhere, human frustration and alienation is demanding an entirely new view of God, a more humane God.
But the creation of a new understanding of God must now be the work of every human being. It must be an effort by the entire human race. All human beings have the same opportunity and the ability to know God. There is no advantage to the self-proclaimed experts. The humane nature of God assures that every person has the same access and insight into the nature of God that any other human being has.Every person has equal insight into the nature of true humanity simply by virtue of being human. Every person has firsthand experience of what it means to be human. The fact that we are human means that all of us discover and express the image of God within our own humanity. That image or likeness of God is the emerging humanity that we all share. What is truly humane in us can be understood as the image and likeness of God. Every person, then, has the full knowledge of God immediately available to them.
The well-known psychoanalyst Jung made some interesting comments in this regard. He argued that Christ represents the self and "the self... is a God image, or at least can not be distinguished from one. Of this the early Christian spirit was not ignorant, otherwise Clement of Alexandria could never have said that he who knows himself knows God"(10).
Every person needs to realize that they potentially know God just as much as any other person on earth. There is no special secret knowledge to be mediated by religious specialists. Every person has the same insight, intuition, imagination, common sense, and human feeling necessary to understanding what humane reality is all about. This fact liberates all of us from mind or belief control by religious or other so-called experts.
As Robert Brinsmead has said, "Jesus shows us that God is encountered on the ordinary human level. God, who is spirit, is not found in a Book (as Fundamentalists think) much less in religious rituals, monasticism, mysticism, dreams, voices and visions of the bicameral mind, he is not found by scaling up to heaven and digging down to the deep. He is found on the ordinary level of human existence... The domain of God is discernible neither in the solitude of the desert or in the secret chamber. His presence is in you and among you, as you go about ordinary human affairs... If... Jesus was an ordinary human person, then ordinary human existence is the arena where God is manifested. God is not encountered by an escape from the human condition, but by real participation in it" (11).
Religious theology has offered humanity very little assistance in knowing the truly humane God because it has become a severely distorted discipline which clouds the humanity of both people and God due to its commitment to upholding the view of a vertically oriented and dominating divinity. Such a vertical orientation effectively clouds and distorts the perception of truly humane reality.
In this regard, there is no need for people to continue the endless shifting from religion to religion in an effort to find truth or to find the true God. Millions of people endlessly migrate to new emerging movements, looking for new techniques, rituals or teachings in a desperate search for God and truth. They do not appreciate the essential fact that God is a humane reality that it is readily and immediately available to them. Instead, they needlessly search for God in the same old mythologies and institutions which have distorted and buried human understanding of divinity for millennia. But those religious movements have only led people further away from God, not closer to God. Someone once wisely said that it is often true that people may have to leave the church in order to really find or know God.
It is a liberating discovery to realize that all we need to know about the humane nature of God lies within our own consciousness of humanity or what it means to be human. However, there are those who would argue that it could be misleading to try to find knowledge of God within our own humanity. They argue that knowledge about ourselves as human is very imperfect. This is true because our understanding of humanity is often clouded by residual animal drives and emotions. But this does not negate the fact that God is truly humane and can be known in some measure through our understanding of humane reality in our own existence.
So despite the fact that the image of God in humanity is often clouded by the presence of residual animal drives, it can still be seen in the emerging decency of people everywhere. It is especially visible in the love that people show toward one other in their daily mundane activities.
And for those from a Judeo-Christian background the knowledge of a humane God appears especially clear in the teaching of people like Jesus. But this knowledge of humane reality is unavailable to many other people due to cultural and religious barriers. For many, Jesus is too closely associated with Western culture, religion, and domination. So the appreciation of humane reality found in the life and teaching of Jesus is simply not open to those of other religious backgrounds.
I would therefore point people to the less inflammable information emerging regarding the human self and what it means to be humane. This more general information is sufficient to provide some general criteria for creating a more humane understanding of God.
Not only does emerging humanity provide information about God, but nature, life, the universe and even elementary matter also provide us with material to inform a new understanding of God. For instance, chaos or indeterminacy theory has undermined the ancient idea of a Calvinistic God who predetermines everything in life.
Chaos theory is now providing startling new insight into God's relationship to life and to the universe. It is chaos, not Calvin, that provides us with the more reliable view that God does not tightly control life but instead allows freedom, chance, and spontaneity to operate in life. Diversity and complexity in life also reveal to us a God who allows life to freely develop according to its own choices.
Fortunately, there is a widespread disillusionment with the contemporary religious view of God. There is a gut feeling among grassroots people everywhere that something is fundamentally wrong with both religion and the religious understanding of God.
However, many religious people are still fearful of questioning the view of the God held by their religion. Many of these people, trapped in a complex emotional web spun by religious authorities, are fearful of moving into the freedom of truly humane existence with an understanding of God as a supremely humane reality. But despite this fear, the feeling still remains that both religion and the old religious God are seriously defective.
Works Cited
- Geertz, Clifford. Negara: The Theater State in Nineteenth-Century Bali.
- Armstrong, Karen. 1992. A History Of God, p.392.
- Ibid, p.392.
- Ibid, 1992. "The Origin of the Human Self" in Forum, No.5, p.2.
- Ibid, 1994. "God's Journey to Personhood" in Forum, No. 34, p.2.
- Ibid, 1991. "The Nature of the Human Self" in Quest, No. 12, p.4.
- Schillebeeckx quoted in Dare to Blaspheme and Dare to be Free, Quest, Essay 1, p.8.
- Brinsmead, Robert. 1998. "The Status of Jesus Re-Examined" in Verdict, Essay 1A, p.10.
- Armstrong, Karen. 1992, p. 237-238.
- Singer, June. 1972. Boundaries of the Soul: The Practice of Jung's Psychology, p.239.
- Brinsmead, Robert. 1998. "The Status of Jesus Re-Examined", in Verdict, Essay 1A, p.11,15.
From the series "Taking The Vertical Out Of God" by W.
Krossa,
copyrighted material.
