Tag: Margaret Barker

The Two Deaths in Mystical Christianity

Bryce Haymond5 Comments

I think that Christianity may have conflated Jesus's mystical experience of an ego death, perhaps at the time of his baptism when the "heavens opened," in which his individual psychological self "died" and he was was "reborn" of Spirit, or "raised up" (resurrected) to his identity in Christ consciousness (a consciousness of nondual union in God/Reality), with his biological death on the cross. These two deaths seem to have been conflated at some point, resulting in a supernatural conception of the resurrection.

Margaret Barker on the Radical Original Understanding of Resurrection

Bryce HaymondLeave a comment

The Methodist biblical scholar, Margaret Barker, wrote a book published in 1996 titled The Risen Lord in which she proposed that "the original understanding of resurrection may in fact be Jesus’ mystical experience at his baptism, when he was raised up and transformed into the divine Son."

Christians are Made Christs by Anointing

Bryce Haymond2 Comments

The ritual practice of anointing makes the person that is anointed an "Anointed One," which is what the word Christ literally means, and by derivation is what being a Christian means. Cyril of Jerusalem in the fourth century noted of those who had been baptized and anointed, "You have been made Christs, by receiving the anti-type [symbol] of the Holy Spirit [the oil]" (Catecheses 21.1). Receiving the chrism they are ritualistically made Christs, being clothed in that Name and Identity, taking it upon themselves in actual fact as their own Eternal Identity, their True Name/Self.