Is Jesus the Circular Messiah?

Not necessarily. The OP assumes that all belief is based on reasoning applied to canonical texts. It need not be based on reasoning or texts at all. Even where these are in the picture, their roles may be secondary.You may have a point to the extent that people claim they believe in Jesus because of fulfilled prophecies. Citing prophecies is a standard ritual in apologetics that never works as advertised. I have never met anyone who really believes on this basis. Rather, people believe prophecies are prophecies because they already believe in Jesus for other reasons.But that brings us to those other reasons. Here are two.

1. My dear old grandpa was good man who would never lie to me. And dear old grandpa taught me Jesus was my Messiah, Lord and Saviour. And all through my childhood I was surrounded by good, loving people who believed as grandpa believed. I experienced much together with this group--an extended family, really--and at every turn we were thanking Jesus as the one who made it all possible. Now, even today, whenever I get together with people who believe as I do, we can just feel Jesus there among us. I feel the same childlike trust I used to feel when grandpa was talking to me. These are good people, you know. They would never lie to me-especially not about something so important as my eternal existence.

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2. I'm ambling down the road one day, looking forward to a pleasant weekend of persecuting some heretics. Suddenly a light shines round about me and a being identifies himself as Jesus. I find this experience persuasive and today routinely stake my life on the assertion that Jesus is my Messiah, Lord and Saviour.

It would not be true to say belief in such cases originates in circular reasoning. It could be debated whether reasoning has much to do with it at all.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.

I believe because dear old grandpa would never lie, and dear old grandpa taught me about Jesus.Brian says, in toto: How so? Please show the reasoning, tracing the circle.This can't be 'circular reasoning' because it isn't reason at all. It's emotion. The speaker is describing a process of bonding.Child bonds with grandpa, grandpa introduces invisible surrogate, emotions transfer to the surrogate.Many cherished beliefs--political as well as religious--are arrived at in this way. The process is one of emotional conditioning. Lasting bonds of this sort are often made before reason can play much of a role.I believe because a light shone round about me and a being spoke to me and identified himself as Jesus.Brian says: I nowhere mentioned Saul or the Bible. I spoke in the first person.The issue is not whether, or where, Brian may have noticed a story like this before. The issue is how belief came to the speaker.In this case, the speaker credits a mystical experience. Many people credit such experiences for beliefs they hold. (People in many different faiths, let it be said.)Mystical experience cannot be 'circular reasoning' because it is not reasoning at all. Mystical experiences are irrational by nature.____Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.

Brian writes to Iano: Culture conditions the explanation. The experience itself is irrational.Note this detail I mentioned earlier:

[Belief] need not be based on reasoning or texts at all. Even where these are in the picture, their roles may be secondary.

The universe is a complex system. Many things go into making up an individual's belief system.The primary role in the individual's life is rarely played by texts or logic. Most often it is played by dear old gramps and the emotional transference he encourages. The bonding usually takes place before the individual is old enough to either read or reason. In other cases a key role is played by a mystical experience. Mystical experiences are sensory and subjective. They are intense experiences of transcendent, dreamlike images that are nearly, or completely, wordless. The content of the experience is unpredictable and often seems to defy orthodoxy as much as affirm it (which is why institutional religions often treat mystics with suspicion).Reason enters after the fact, seeking to explain and justify. An irrational experience comes first, then reason tries to catch up.That's why so many 'logical' arguments made for religion turn out to be rationalizations when tested. They are.But that's also why it's too simplistic to say 'all religious belief is based on circular reasoning.' Belief is based on many things. There are primary influences and secondary factors. For many people religious belief is not based primarily on reasoning of any kind.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.

Right. The belief began with the emotional bond.The belief does not arise from a reasoned argument, flawed or otherwise. The 'reasoning'--really just a description of the bonding-and-surrogate process--is assembled post hoc.The example serves to show how the hypothesis 'All religious belief is based on circular reasoning' fails the test of known facts. Religious belief springs from many things. It often has its origins outside 'reasoning' entirely. Belief may spring primarily from an emotional bond or an irrational experience, as I have suggested. It may spring from the involuntary effects of cultural conditioning, as you yourself have suggested.In such cases the individual believes on irrational grounds. The arguments enter after the fact when individuals try to explain why they believe as they do. Flawed logic is par for the course at such moments. One is, after all, trying to rationalize the irrational.(Experienced mystics know better than to bother. They understand that their experience is symbolic rather than rational in nature. So they communicate using paradox and riddles instead. They say things like 'I am in you and you are in me.' A statement like this is poetic, it's evocative, it's intimate, it's numinous--and logically, it's apple sauce.)You are on firmer ground if you submit a hypothesis like 'All arguments for belief in God are ultimately circular.' This gets you out of the business of making grandiose claims about single universal causes for complex real-life phenomena. It places the discussion in the realm of rational argument. This is obviously where you intend to operate, and it's where the hypothesis is demonstrated or disproved in any case.----Post Script (parenthetical)The hypothesis runs into other problems, too. Let's grant the premise that 'all religious belief is based on reasoning,' which it isn't, and move right on to the premise that the reasoning is always fallacious. Let's grant that, too. Now we want to examine the premise that the fatal fallacy is always 'circularity.'You say the grandpa bonding 'argument' sinks because it is circular. But you neglected to mention that it sinks on at least two other fallacies: (1) argument from authority, and (2) ignoring all possibilities, such as the possibility that even honest grandparents can be mistaken.We can as easily submit a hypothesis that 'All belief is based on argument from authority' or 'All belief is based on argument that ignores all possibilities.' Each hypothesis would appear to have as much going for it as your OP, and each would run into the same difficulties.____Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.Edited by Archer Opterix, : seplling!Edited by Archer Opterix, : seplling agina.Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.

Right. It isn't circular reasoning.You open a broad new topic: the self-renewing aspect of culture. Culture indeed shapes all of us. All of us contribute to culture and shape it in turn.Another example:

1: My culture heavily imprints a preference for simple linear explanations when faced with potentially complex phenomena.
2: I have a mystical experience in which an Aztec deity speaks to me while hovering in the sky over Teotihuacán.
3: I resolve to quit eating at Taco Bell, thereby sustaining my culture's simple linear explanation drive.

____Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.