(WR) Critical Thinking

I want you all to re-read the Philosophy Toolkit I gave you at the beginning of the semester, focusing particularly on critical thinking and the intellectual virtues. The material we are working with now is where the critical thinking rubber meets the long road of most of our upbringings in or near cultural traditions related to Christianity.

To think critically about something, you have to examine your most basic assumptions -- not to dismiss them, but to suspend them for the time being so as to consider a way of looking at them that is foreign, and that can even feel threatening. For example, many of you begin with the unexamined assumption that certain claims (Jesus as messiah, Mary's virginity, etc.) are identical with, and inseparable from, Christianity as such. However, the historical record tells us otherwise. In the early decades after Jesus' death, there were many different groups of Jews (and eventually, Greeks and Romans as well) who did their best to keep what they understood about Jesus and his work alive. Each of these largely insular groups had its own stories, its own theology, its own understanding of who and what Jesus was, and what the events of his life and death meant. Some (but not all) of these groups thought he was the messiah of Hebrew scripture, some (but not all) liked the idea that he was God, or God's son, some (but not all) told stories about his bodily resurrection, some (but not all) anticipated his return in an apocalyptic destruction and transformation of the world. In point of fact, there is no single story about Jesus of Nazareth that all early Christians agreed on. Some (e.g. the Gospel of Thomas) focus exclusively on sayings attributed to him, some view him as a kind of avatar (hence not really human, but a kind of cosmic projection, like Krishna), etc. ad nearly infinitum.

Instead of reading backward through the filter of the predominant varieties of Christianity in the modern world, I am asking you temporarily to set all those assumptions aside (remember, you can have them back if you like when the course is over) to look as clearly as possible at the historical events, and the historical person, which are the starting points of all subsequent interpretations. I fully understand how difficult this is, but I am asking you to give it your all.