World Religion and World Politics
The article: Pilate, Christ and Barabbas
Pilate, Christ and Barabbas
Chapter 1
The Easter gospel and modern man's temperament
As we know, Easter is a festival held in memory of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ and it is these events that are the basis of the services in Christian churches at Easter all over the world.
But the Easter gospel, like all the other great Biblical gospels and narratives, contains a far greater and deeper narrative than the historical one.
The Easter gospel is not merely an account of the crucifixion of Jesus and the other purely physical events concerning his Passion which took place in Palestine about 1900 years ago.
It also serves as a symbol of the mentality of the average, unfinished civilised human being.
If the gospel were not in itself a cosmic analysis, an analysis of eternal principles that are a link in God's creation of the human being, the Christ-story would hardly have survived up to our times.
We today would hardly have come to know Jesus of Nazareth or the God-like human being, Christ.
The Easter gospel is, as mentioned above, a purely cosmic analysis of the human mentality's epoch of evolution from animal to human being.
As this epoch of evolution is a scientific fact and the Easter gospel is the first account of this fact, this gospel, in its deepest analysis, is an expression of something eternal.
The Easter gospel is not only a beautiful account of a human being who sacrificed his life in order that the real truth, Christianity, could be born or implanted in the world culture; it is also an account of ordinary phenomena in the psyche and behaviour of the modern civilised human being.
So even if many believe that the Christ-story on Golgotha never took place and that Jesus never existed, this means absolutely nothing today.
For it is precisely in the psyche of the human being who is proclaiming this disbelief that there exists three temperaments, which constitute the deepest and innermost unveiling of the Easter mystery.
The human being who denies the Easter gospel becomes thus the greatest proof of the existence of the Easter mystery's unshakable truth.
We will therefore not waste time discussing whether Jesus of Nazareth existed or not, but rather look at the truths the Easter mystery contains and reveals.