Philosophy and Holy Bible: Cultivation of Healthy Humanity.

Philosophy and Holy Bible:

I was going through a book edited by Rebecca Samuel and Joel Carpenter, "Christianity in India: Conversion, Community Development, and Religious Freedom". While reading I came across a quote by a famous American philosopher Martha Nussbaum. The reading goes on like this...

"Three capacities essential for the cultivation of 'healthy humanity' in today's world.

First is an ability to critically examine oneself and one's traditions.

The second is the capacity to transcend narrow group loyalties and to extend to strangers the moral concern we typically reserve for friends and kin.

Finally, we need to develop a 'narrative imagination' that makes parabolic, plot-line connections out of sequences of human actions and their consequences".*

To my curiosity, I found that all the three essential requirements what the philosopher was demanding for a "healthy humanity" were fulfilled in the life and works of Jesus Christ.

Firstly, Jesus certainly did question the tradition which outdo and eclipse humanity on many occasions, for example, humanity over Sabbath rest, in Matthew 12:9-14, and in other occasion, questioning the credibility of a holy life who came to stone the woman caught in adultery, in John 8:3-9. Clearly, Jesus is pointing the jewish law to retrospect and introspect before passing a judgement. The lucid expression of Jesus words are a critical examination of His own traditions.

Secondly, Jesus healing people around and explaining about the Kingdom of God before the crowds, goes on to say as in Matthew 12:46-50, verse 50 reads, "For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (NIV). He doesn't want to limit His salvific redemption to His disciples, near and dear only, but to extend it to the whole world, verse 28 of Matthew 20: 26-28 reads, "the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (NIV). Clearly Jesus' words and works transcended narrow group loyalties here.

And finally, the plot-line, the disobedience of Adam and Eve and the consequence of their sin to eternal death was challenged by the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary. Apostle Paul summarises this sequence in his letter to Romans 5:15, 16 "But the two are not the same, because God's free gift is not like Adam's sin. It is true that many people died because of the sin of that one man. But God's grace is much greater, and so is his free gift to so many people through the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ. And there is a difference between God's gift and the sin of one man" (GNB). Paul continues in his letter, 1Corinthians 15:45, "it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living soul (an individual); the last Adam (Christ) became a Life-giving Spirit [restoring the dead to life]" (Amplified Ver). Here too, not in the narrative imagination sense of the action and consequence, but in a historical approach the salvific work of Jesus Christ in the sequence of the sin in action and the consequence is the "victory over sin". The aim and target are successful, the trajectory is perfect and on spot.

Therefore, the teachings, His life and the works of Jesus Christ in the Holy Bible are a complete guidance, for the brotherhood, peace, love and fraternity of a "healthy humanity" of the whole world.

*Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defence of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 9-11. See also Inga Clendinnen, True Stories (Sydney: ABC Books, 1999), 6.