“The risen Jesus constantly modifies his message to meet the needs of new times and new audiences,” he writes. According to Korban, this is “because it is now a different Jesus, not a ‘returned’ historical Jesus” as described in the New Testament. However, as Karban reasons, if Jesus were now both male and female, then surely he would not now refrain from ordaining women in the Catholic Church. We might more accurately interpret Galatians 3:27-28 as meaning that in the eyes of God, true believers are equally acceptable, and have become unified in their faith in Jesus Christ. In other words, according to the commentary, Jesus now risen could not be considered the first-century Jewish man, carpenter, and “itinerant preacher” described in the New Testament. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” Karban bases his revisionist views of the resurrected Christ on what appears to be his misinterpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:17, which simply states that “…if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature…” What the Apostle Paul more likely meant in this context was that a true follower of Christ is spiritually reborn in terms of his or her own personal conduct, having made decisions to live a righteous, Christ-centered life.īut Karban goes further in his “new creature” interpretation, writing that “the person who rose from the tomb into a new creation on Easter Sunday was just as much a slave as a free person, a Gentile as a Jew, and a woman as a man.” He construed this idea from Galatians 3:27-28, which actually reads, “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Rather, it was Karban’s idea that the resurrected Christ represents a wholly “new creation” in the sense of Christ’s changed doctrinal understanding, and that the resurrected Christ is now a uniquely different person in his comprehension of all things spiritual-not the same historical Jesus that once lived in mortality among the Jews. We took some interest in the article because the vast body of historical records on Jesus Christ, mainly from New Testament scripture, contains absolutely no information indicating that Christ ever ordained women.īut it was not the ordination idea that was most unusual in the commentary by this Catholic writer and theologian. The title of his commentary was “Jesus and the Ordination of Women.” Today the Salt Lake Tribune published a theological commentary, courtesy of Religion News Service, by a Catholic priest named Roger Vermalen Karban, of Belleville, Illinois.
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