I put it aside as I would put aside the gay figure
of a costumed officiating priest. The passage of time has made his
canonicals too strange, too unlike my world of common thought and
costume. These things helped, but now they hinder and disturb. I cannot
bring myself back to them...
But the psychological experience and the theology of Christianity are
only a ground-work for its essential feature, which is the conception of
a relationship of the individual believer to a mystical being at once
human and divine, the Risen Christ. This being presents itself to the
modern consciousness as a familiar and beautiful figure, associated with
a series of sayings and incidents that coalesce with a very distinct and
rounded-off and complete effect of personality. After we have cleared
off all the definitions of theology, He remains, mystically suffering
for humanity, mystically asserting that love in pain and sacrifice in
service are the necessary substance of Salvation. Whether he actually
existed as a finite individual person in the opening of the Christian
era seems to me a question entirely beside the mark.
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