Today’s “Ask a Progressive Christian” with ProgressiveChristianity.org Board Member Rev. Sharon Jacob - Do the Gospels Agree about Jesus?

Today’s “Ask a Progressive Christian” with ProgressiveChristianity.org Co-Executive Director Rev. Dr. Caleb J. Lines: Is the historical Jesus the same as the Christ of faith?

Ask A Progressive Christian - Q: Is Jesus God?

Ask A Progressive Christian - Q: Is Jesus the only Path to God?

Ask a Progressive Christian - Q: Is Suffering Redemptive?

Today’s “Ask a Progressive Christian” with ProgressiveChristianity.org Board Member Rev. Dr. Mark Sandlin Q: Is the Rapture Real?

The entire existence of Jesus is therefore based on a Jewish legend developed by Jewish preachers. Am I missing something?

My cousin is pressuring me to become “Born Again.” She says that it’s the only way to guarantee not being punished in hell for all eternity. That seems like a pretty harsh consequence for not uttering what seems like “magic words.”

I was brought up to understand that we meet God in church. What is it supposed to mean when people say that God is within me? I don't think I've found that to be true.

How can Christians get a firm foundation with scripture that has been influenced by the spirit of political influence by Kings and Popes and transcriptionists who were influenced by governments? A bit of a crisis of faith here. Can there still be a Divine Jesus without true historical knowledge of Him?

Accepting that the Gospel accounts of events in Jesus and the disciples’ lives are nonhistorical creations intended to reach Jews in a traditional Jewish liturgical framework,  what *did* Jesus do and say that made the God’s presence in human life so clear to his followers?

If Jesus did not die on a cross to cover our sin, then what was the purpose of him dying? What was the purpose of his life? Was it to show us how to simply be "good people?"

I have a question about the relationship of Progressive Christianity and Jesus.

I have to say that I have more respect for panentheism than classical theism because it at last respects the problem of evil and suffering more than classical theism. However, I want to ask a question: can God (from a panentheistic view) perform a miracle in history such as the bodily resurrection of Jesus? 

The question is how can we get the conservatives to accept the idea that we are responsible? Jesus showed us what to do. How can we get them to accept that now it is up to us to do it?

In researching different theologies of the Christian Faith, I came across your website.  I read through your 8-points, but see nothing about faith in Jesus as the Christ, or His divinity.  Does your organization have a ‘Christology’ or a Christological approach to the life of Christ.  I’m just looking for some clarification.

Pelagius’ view of Original Sin and his conflict with Augustine might be something one of our gifted writers would write about. The ninth Article of the Anglican 39 Articles don’t look very favorably on him and his followers.

What gets me miffed is using the word Christ without ‘the’ before it. The lack of this preposition before Christ denotes exclusivity, something, I’m definitely sure God also gets miffed at. This is a Greek word added to Jesus’ name in the early years of Christianity and had the preposition ‘the’ used. Who are we to be so arrogant that we can limit an infinite God to only Jesus, when we know in our hearts that the God-man has been on the earth more times in different guises than we can count. So, we need to get honest and not be hypocritical, since that action is the one action that God finds the most difficult to forgive.

Even though I find redemptive suffering to be horrible theology, it does seem to be the underpinning that 1 Peter's author is using to encourage Christian slaves to endure the suffering that they are subjected to under their masters. The larger implication, however, is that you are doing it because you are “following in [Jesus's] footsteps.”

Yes, the idea the Jesus died for our sins, or sinful nature, is really one of the causes for so many people turning their backs on Christianity today.

The truth is no one really has any idea what we mean when we use the term God. And when we use he and she or father or even “father/mother” we are just using terms that the ancient people used. We have to remember that they thought the world was flat and God was in the sky. They believed we could see god through the dome they believed covered the earth at night when they were in fact looking at stars that may have been 300 million miles away. They may very well have been “seeing” light from a star that had burned out several million years before.

I was wondering however, what the separation between Progressive Christianity and the Ba'hai faith is, if any. I have only just finished reading the study guide, and though I don't agree with all of the tenants set forth, it is a very interesting concept. It just seems very similar to the Ba'hai faith, and how different it is even from the standpoint of a Liberal Lutheran denomination.

From your website I have had many of my questions answered. I am a member of a relatively progressive Lutheran Church, but have more of a Methodist or Wesleyan concept of Grace. I could not find any ideologies on Grace or even Faith in your website or other sources on Progressive Christianity. Personally my faith is based on continuing my quest of “the Truth” or “the Logos” and I believe that salvation is by Faith, but it must be followed by a Discipleship much like that of Bonhoeffer. I could likewise not find a position on the Trinity, something that I feel is necessary in an absolute monotheism. Finally, the idea of a soul, immortal or not, was not revealed in your doctrine as I in my brief and incomplete review of Progressive Christianity. Thank you for any enlightenment or source of clarification.

The idea of a second coming of Christ is a mystery, if not explicitly controversial. Jesus’ followers apparently believed he would return during their lifetime after he was crucified. When that didn’t happen, later followers gradually changed the belief into an indefinite “someday.” After two thousand years of waiting, most Christians no longer look for it to happen in their lifetimes and acknowledge that Jesus may have been speaking metaphorically about his return. It is just as likely that those words were put into Jesus’ mouth by the gospel writers themselves. Wishful thinking?

Do you consider yourselves as followers of Jesus even though he came for the Jews, the lost sheep of Israel, and not to the Gentile dogs?