But so long as Jerusalem and Judaea were the centre of Jewish learning, no terms of contempt were too strong to express the supercilious hauteur, with which a regular Rabbinist regarded his northern co-religionists. The slighting speech of Nathanael (Joh_1:46), “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” reads quite like a common saying of the period; and the rebuke of the Pharisees to Nicodemus (Joh_7:52), “Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet,” was pointed by the mocking question, “Art thou also of Galilee?” It was not merely self-conscious superiority, such as the “towns-people,” as the inhabitants of Jerusalem used to be called throughout Palestine, were said to have commonly displayed towards their “country cousins” and every one else, but offensive contempt, outspoken sometimes with almost incredible rudeness, want of delicacy and charity, but always with much pious self-assertion. The “God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men” (Luk_18:11) seems like the natural breath of Rabbinism in the company of the unlettered, and of all who were deemed intellectual or religious inferiors; and the parabolic history of the Pharisee and the publican in the gospel is not told for the special condemnation of that one prayer, but as characteristic of the whole spirit of Pharisaism, even in its approaches to God. “This people who knoweth not the law (that is, the traditional law) are cursed,” was the curt summary of the Rabbinical estimate of popular opinion. To so terrible a length did it go that the Pharisees would fain have excluded them, not only from common intercourse, but from witness-bearing, and that they even applied to marriages with them such a passage as Deu_27:21.

I may have to come up with another title, because I don’t think the typical relational theology is what we’ve been working through in the blog.

I just finished a paper on relational theology that I thought you might be interested in. Love to get your comments (once you are there, just click on the COMMENTS link:

http://sharktacos.com/God/relational.html

Derek

Much of your commentary is on the mark, but when dealing with a profound seminal text as this it is hard obtain its full meaning. I would suggest that we are to understand that Jesus is calling people to be both born from above (of the Spirit) and born again.

The concept of being born again indicates a radical and permanent change in our lives, as radical and permanent a change as when we were born the first time. That radical change occurs, as you say, when we see Jesus as Who He really is, the Messiah (Savior) Who calls us to love others as we love ourselves or to love others as He loves us.

Nicodemus recognized Jesus as a teacher or Rabbi, which was good, but he could not enter God’s Kingdom until he recognized that Jesus was the Messiah. This is not simply a mental decision, but a personal commitment which includes body, mind, and spirit. When we recognize Jesus as Lord and Savior, then we place Him first in our lives and allow God’s Holy Spirit to guide our lives.

When we stop trying to live our self-centered human way and accept receive God’s gift of forgiveness made through Jesus, we make way for the Holy Spirit to live in us, and through the Spirit have right relationship with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with ourselves, and with others. We are truly free as the wind to do right and to live right in the Holy Spirit.

Essentially, we are looking for a theology built entirely on God’s relationship with man, man’s relationship with man, creation’s relationship with both, et al. It is a different way of viewing things.

I love these ideas.