Historical Muktinath

As I was taking points from Andreas Bsteh (ed.),  Christian Faith in Dialogue with Hindu Religious Traditions [Christian Faith in the Encounter with Hinduism 2],  Modling 2007, St Gabriel Publications several incidents related with the life and mission of the Lord, still put much challenge to my ‘Hindu mind’ which refuses to accept the ethnic identity of the Lord with the Jews and the status of the Jews as a some kind of special and privileged people called out by God.  Maybe my hidden brahminical pride refuses to accept anyone greater than us?!  However whenever I read such points, particularly related to the historical evidence related to the Lord, for me unless He comes and explains gently within us, it is impossible to understand and follow Him. Once we receive the inner revelation, all the external evidence becomes secondary to follow Him.  Then stopping taking notes I wrote this [BT] Song 676

Oberhammer: …If one goes a step further, one has to admit that as a Christian of the 20^th century one never reaches the historical Jesus, but only the faith in Jesus as it has been handed down. Thus, should the historical fact be so central, the question arises, what 20^th century people can do with their faith under such circumstances.  Was salvation not also attained by the contemporaries of Jesus through their faith?  Merely ‘standing beside’ the historical Jesus, as a fact, is not yet a special salvific event; on the contrary, it can turn into judgment and become fatal. As far as this is concerned, one could imagine that an analysis of myth and mythicizing transcendence and existence could really pave the way towards speaking on the same level with Hindu religious traditions.—ibid. Justification of Mythos in the Perspective of Bible Theology and Hermeneutics. Hans-Peter Muller.  Pp. 47-101, p. 100

…Not so long ago Vatican II declared that in Jesus Christ “can be found the key, the focal point, and the goal of all human history.” {Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World “Gaudium et spes,” art. 10}—ibid. Historical Thinking and Creation.  Elmar Klinger. Pp. 207-[220]252,p. 220

Schaeffer:…Should this be the case, we could not assert that history, as it is narrated in the Bible, is always our history only, the history of the devotees’ community within which and for whom these texts were written – an aspect of great relevance for interreligious dialogue.  Hence those to whom the word is addressed have a responsibility for humanity as a whole; they are also responsible for those who do not belong to this community.  Thus, in a Biblical perspective, this question about the relation between partial and universal history also belongs to the concept(p.230) of history: about the relation of the partial history of a certain devotees’ community (who hand on their announcements and their writings and perhaps also continue their writing of texts, and who are subjected to the judgment of and live in the hope of their tradition) to the history of those who are always included, even if they are not the direct addressees of the message. In this sense – and not in the one of Hegel – I would introduce the term of a ‘universal history.’—ibid. Historical Thinking and Creation.  Elmar Klinger. Pp. 207-[220]252, pp. 229-30

…Personhood and subjectivity, transcendental relatedness, man’s freedom and responsibility originate concretely in this world, time and history. In this way the salvation and well-being of man are actualized in this telelogically determined history. To that extent, salvation history and world history are co-existent in the understanding of the Church, without being identical or taken up in an eternal cycle. The person oriented towards his salvation lives within the reality of time and history, which for him may turn out as the time and history of salvation or of a fatal ending, as ‘yes’ or ‘no’ uttered to himself, to others, or to God. For Christian teaching also reckons concretely with man’s freedom to be wicked, man’s capacity for sin and guilt.  From a Christian perspective, it is precisely here that the difference between world history and salvation history becomes discernible….—ibid. Communio – Binding Community for All Human Beings? The Christian Perspective of Man in His Immediacy to God and to Others. On the Salvation-historical Meaning of Human Obligations and Rights in Man’s Relationships and Interactions.  Ilona Riedel-Spangenberger. Pp. 367-[382]409, 376

Mathigiri, 30-6-2017