Not the impossible faith

Credit: Julian P Guffogg

 

It just occurred to me that Richard Carrier´s form of Mythicism doesn´t threaten Christianity. Not really. Carrier claims that the early Christians believed Jesus to be a powerful angel crucified, buried and resurrected in the lower astral. As an atheist, he of course considers these beliefs to be nuts.

But what if somebody assumes they are true?

I think it would be perfectly possible to create a new form of Christianity based on these beliefs, indeed, it might not even be that different from traditional Christianity (specifically the sacramental Churches). Of course, the Gospel stories would have to be reinterpreted as teaching stories, but they are already used that way, and many other religions also have teaching stories of this kind. The literal salvific event would then be the crucifixion and resurrection of an angelomorphic Christ in the lower astral.

Traditional theologians insist that Christ must have suffered here on Earth in a physical body as an atonement for sin, by why really? The physical body will be discarded at the general resurrection anyway! Those dead before the Second Advent (most people) no longer have physical bodies, these having rotted away long ago. They will be given new heavenly bodies immediately as they rise. Those alive at the second coming will be “transformed in the blink of an eye”, their physical bodies being turned into heavenly bodies by a miraculous process – which presumably happened to Gospel Jesus in the tomb, as well. What need is there to suffer a crucifixion in a physical body? Because Adam sinned in one? But Adam´s sin was in the soul, not the body. The body is just a receptacle. Once again: there doesn´t have to be a continuity between the earthly body and the heavenly body, the first can simply be destroyed and that´s that (which is what happens to most people anyway). So Jesus might as well have suffered in an astral body. Indeed, isn´t the astral body closer in conception to both a soul and a heavenly resurrection body?

Evil may come from the lower astral (the kingdom of Satan, who according to ancient mythology rules the atmosphere), so it´s “logical” that Jesus has to purify it through a magical ritual/sin sacrifice. We could also speculate that the Earth has an astral body of sorts that needs healing/cleansing, and that Jesus accomplished this, too. That would explain how his death and rebirth could affect all of Nature (including animals and plants), redeeming them too, somehow making them immortal in a future Edenic existence. It would also explain how he could somehow be resurrected into his own Church, why the sacraments work, and so on. Yes, these notions are freely based on Anthroposophy, but they could easily be combined with all the usual Catholic beliefs on other issues. So what´s the problem, really?

Indeed, if Carrier is right, the above is (more or less) what the early Christians actually believed, so you just go back to this primitive theology. It turns out that Minimal Mythicist Christianity isn´t the impossible faith, after all! 😉