Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Lüdemann on The Intolerant Gospel

Thanks to Gerd Lüdemann for drawing my attention to a new article on-line:

The Intolerant Gospel
Gerd Luedemann

It is from the February-March 2006 issue of Free Inquiry and located on the Council for Secular Humanism Website.

Just one minor comment:
The salvation or eternal damnation of individual human beings depends on whether they believe or do not believe in him. "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. But whoever does not believe will be condemned"-this is the clear message of the risen Jesus at the end of Mark's Gospel, the first of the four canonical accounts to be written.
The verse in question is Mark 16.16, part of the longer ending of Mark, in which case the mention of Mark as "the first of the four . . . to be written" is irrelevant, no?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That's funny. It spoils the impact of 'intolerant'. In "The Resurrection of Jesus" Luedemann calls Mark 16:9-20 'secondary' (26) and then when discussing Mark 16:1-8 he concludes that this is 'a meaningful end to the Gospel' (114).

Has he changed his mind?