If Ideas Alone are Sufficient, Then Jesus is Dispensable

7/19/2024

This post addresses the much-touted and utterly misguided argument that ideas are ultimate and matter far more than people who express the ideas.

The argument comes in many shapes and flavors. Still, they all convey the same assumption—truth does not need people to be true. Ideas and truth exist independently of the person. Truth does not require any person to be true. It can be divorced from people entirely. Ideas are not contingent upon any person to be true. A person’s expression of the truth is of far more significance than the person expressing the truth. A person’s being only interferes with ideas and the truths they convey. Better to just separate the person from the idea altogether and focus on the idea because in the end, what is paramount is the idea, not the person communicating it.

And so on.

I’m not sure when Christians embraced this abstract Platonic-Enlightenment-democratic-academic-Hollywood bullshit assumption. Suffice it to say the vast majority have not only enthusiastically adopted this assumption but go to great lengths to staunchly defend it and vociferously champion it.

“Who I am as a person is irrelevant! they cry. “What is truly relevant are my ideas! And you don’t need to know who I am to consider my ideas because my ideas are greater than me! You don’t need to establish any relationship with me as a person to recognize and understand the truth inherent in my ideas. The truth inherent in those ideas is more than sufficient! Establish a relationship with that!”

Now, if any of the above is even remotely true, then the person of Jesus is utterly superfluous. If ideas matter more than the person expressing the ideas, then Jesus would not have had to live in this world. God could have simply allowed Him to implant the idea of resurrection and other Truths into people’s minds telepathically or some such thing.

But this is not what happened. The ideas Jesus expressed required His person to “back them up.” The two were indivisible, and they remain indivisible today. The personal is truth, and the truth is personal. You must know Jesus as a person to recognize and understand the ideas He expressed. You cannot separate Him from His ideas.

Any attempt to do so reduces the impact and glory of His ideas. Give it a shot sometime. Think about the truth Jesus communicated without thinking about Jesus and see how it goes.

More precisely, truth is not the recognition of some objective, impersonal fact; it is a personal, creative act.

The transmission of ideas and truth requires a creative relationship between persons for the truth to be true. Relating only to an idea can, at best, reveal only partial truths-- or worse.

Note added: Un-personing ideas is a material, reductionist, positivist approach to ideas and truth.

Better to side with Dostoevsky, who stated,

“If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.”

7 Comments

Wolfgang

7/19/2024 21:57:27

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
He didn't say: "We are the truth and everyone comes to the Father through his own truth".
Think about it, please...

Francis Berger

7/20/2024 03:47:17

@ Wolfgang - Not what I'm arguing.

7/20/2024 04:17:19

@ Wolfgang - "“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Note that Jesus did not say, "My ideas are the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through my ideas."

Jesus stresses that no one comes to the Father except through Him, as a person. The ideas/truth He expressed are not enough. Likewise, we cannot approach Jesus solely as an idea. We must approach him as persons and meet Him as a person.

bruce g charlton

7/19/2024 22:12:06

I certainly agree with your main point - but I don't think Jesus is a very good example of it.

Partly because Jesus was unique, divine and therefore not generalizable.

But also because my understanding is that the work of Jesus was accomplished by his incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension - and this would have changed reality forever - even if the whole thing was utterly forgotten, and nobody knew anything about it from history or scripture.

Your point does apply to Jesus as an authoritative teacher -- but I think that Jesus as Teacher can be separated from Jesus as saviour from death/ provider of the possibility of eternal resurrected life.

7/20/2024 03:55:12

@ Bruce - The work of Jesus was personal. It required Him to become/be a person. His personhood is indispensible to everything He did and accomplished. Without that, the transformation of reality would not have happened, at least not in the way that it did.

7/20/2024 04:52:13

@ Bruce - Yes, Jesus was unique and not generalizable, yet people often refer to Him to support their notions that ideas matter more than the person expressing the idea.

On the subject of anonymity in public discourse (a secondary or tertiary matter), for example, people will often say things like, "Yes, but we must assess an argument/idea on its merits, not on the person who made it" and then back up their support of anonymity in the expression of ideas/truth by referring to the times Jesus avoided danger and hid from the mobs without ever considering that Jesus would not have had to hide Himself had He not revealed Himself as a person. I don't know what Jesus hiding Himself from a potentially violent mob even has to do with the subject of anonymity in public discourse beyond the obvious implication that Jesus would not have had to hid if He had remained anonymous. But if Jesus had remained anonymous, He would not have communicated/taught fully or sincerely.

Jesus certainly did not want us to assess his teachings on their own merits alone. He demands that we also consider His person. His personhood (poor choice of word; perhaps personality is better) is indispensible to His teachings and His mission. Yes, his work changed reality forever, but He wants us to know about this, not solely through the ideas he expressed, but through His person.

Jesus is unique, divine, and not generalizable. No argument from me there. However, each one of us is also unique, not generalizable, and potentially divine, and we can only fully express this uniqueness and potential divinity through our persons (personality). We can only meet the unique, divine, not generalizable Jesus through our person, which is also unique and, as noted, potentially divine. It is a meeting of persons, not merely a meeting of ideas.

At a more mundane level, I think this lays waste to the whole notion of the superiority of un-personed ideas/communication/truth-seeking, what have you.

7/21/2024 21:19:28

T - I respectfully ask that you refrain from commenting here. I have made it explicitly clear that I do not welcome any sort of personal interactions with you. I view your continued efforts to interact with me as harrassment -- nothing more, nothing less. Leave me alone and move on with your life.

One more time. Stop harrassing me. Leave me in peace.

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If Ideas Alone are Sufficient, Then Jesus is Dispensable

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