All of you will find
aspects of this book challenging. Those of you who are practicing Christians
will probably encounter a particular challenge, since some (but not all) of the
ways institutional Christian traditions have interpreted the gospels and other
religious texts vary quite a bit from what historians have discovered. If you
find this text threatening, it will be worth remembering two things:
1) Crossan is a leading theologian and a practicing Catholic; his purpose is not in any way to debunk his religion – he aims rather to understand and to deepen it.
2) A course at a public liberal arts college is a secular experience. No-one is asking you to change your spiritual beliefs or religious practices, or even to agree with the professor or the text about anything at all. Rather, such a course requires that you attempt to comprehend and follow the reasoning of a scholarly investigation, so as to grasp how and why some intelligent people who have thought deeply about these things draw the conclusions that they do. Once the course is over and you have succeeded in this intellectual exercise, you are perfectly free to think and believe whatever you please. This sort of challenge, and the freedom to think for yourself once you have met it, are of the essence liberal learning..
1) Crossan is a leading theologian and a practicing Catholic; his purpose is not in any way to debunk his religion – he aims rather to understand and to deepen it.
2) A course at a public liberal arts college is a secular experience. No-one is asking you to change your spiritual beliefs or religious practices, or even to agree with the professor or the text about anything at all. Rather, such a course requires that you attempt to comprehend and follow the reasoning of a scholarly investigation, so as to grasp how and why some intelligent people who have thought deeply about these things draw the conclusions that they do. Once the course is over and you have succeeded in this intellectual exercise, you are perfectly free to think and believe whatever you please. This sort of challenge, and the freedom to think for yourself once you have met it, are of the essence liberal learning..
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