Truth About The Crucifixion — Page 42
his mission as a messenger could have included within its scope anyone outside the house of Israel. His yielding to her entreaties in the end was no indication that he had misconceived the scope of his mission and that now he had a better understanding of its extent. It meant only that he had been moved to compassion by the depth and sincerity of her faith in him. His mission was a beneficent one, and even if a non-Israeli believed in him sincerely it would do him no harm, and nothing but good could proceed from it. . It is said that on another occasion he had exhorted his disciples to carry his message into all the towns and villages and to all the people, but there is nothing to indicate that by all the towns and villages and all the people he meant anything more than all the towns and villages of Israel and the whole of the. Jewish people. . He clearly directed his disciples to that effect, as would appear from: These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. (Matt. 10:5-6). . Thus, the concept of Trinity finds no support from anything that Jesus is reported to have said. It is a concept which bewilders reason, offends conscience, and affronts Divine Majesty. It is utterly inconsistent with the concept of the Godhead. . A body of distinguished Anglican theologians have described it as a myth, meaning,. A story which is told but which is not literally true or an idea or an image which is applied to someone or something but which does not literally apply, but which invites. a particular attribute in its hearers. . . that Jesus was God, the Son Incarnate, is not literally true, since it has no literal meaning, but it is an application to Jesus of a mythical concept whose function is analogous to that of the notion of divine sonship ascribed in the ancient world to a king. *. The writers of this book are convinced that another major theological development is called for in this last part of the twentieth century. The need arises from growing knowledge of Christian origins, and involves a recognition that Jesus was (as he is presented in Acts 2:22) ‘a man approved by God' for a special role within the divine purpose, and that the later conception of *The Myth of God Incarnate, Preface, p. ix. 44