$\S$ (From the Tractatus) Assume every possible scientific question is answered. Imagine your life under this assumption. Do you feel the central problems of your life are solved? Are there remaining questions?
$\S$ What the previous mental experiment bears out: there is an insurmountable gap between rational discourse and the meaning of life.
$\S$ The central problem in life is what is its meaning. The central problem of philosophy, to make rationally intelligible the statement «the meaning of life». Such statement is intelligible in the sense that everyone understands its meaning and is in fact confronted with it regularly. (In other words, it is intelligible in the sense that the statement «the conscience of oneself» is intelligible.) A surrogate question is whether all that is intelligible is rationally intelligible. The answer to this P-NP sort of problem is quite obviously no. However, we are yet to prove to which set the statement «the meaning of life» belongs to.
$\S$ An interesting movement of the mind: first, it finds the rigid and simple divisions of philosophy. (For instance, the four-fold division of nature of John Scotus Eriugena.) Then it finds science and scientific inquiry, which induces the feeling that nature cannot be so simply framed. (In science, every element of nature is infinite, in the sense that a complete characterization of it is impossible.) But then it goes full circle and returns to philosophy, for it realizes that it can impose a unifying ordering upon nature.
$\S$ Jesus did not write any book: he talked with the laypeople he met, and only many years after his death did people consider his teachings worth writing. Those who wrote down his doctrine were men of flesh and bone, and were many, and produced hundreds of works. The teachings of Jesus can, in principle, be considered sacred—but these texts cannot be considered sacred.
$\S$ The Gospels were selected by the Church, which is a human institution, among a wide array of similar texts, each of which surely had its virtues and flaws. It is therefore unreasonable to suppose that the Gospels are perfect. It follows that emphasizing certain elements of the Gospels and disregarding others is reasonable, and that not doing so is intolerable.
$\S$ In the teachings of Jesus as accounted in the Gospels, there is little reference to tradition. Some of the references to tradition consist of opposing it. The relationship between Christ and the Old Testament is extraneous to Jesus' teachings and was introduced by Paul of Tarsus. Jesus is not one in a long series of prophets starting at the beginning of the world.
$\S$ The teachings of the Old Testament and the teachings of Christ cannot be harmonized. The attempt to do so has led to gross misinterpretations of the latter.
$\S$ Any conceivable God worth the claim of perfection can communicate intelligibly and clearly. A necessary condition for a teacher or philosopher to be great is that his doctrine be intelligible and clear. I accept as undeniable the following disjunction: Jesus was either God or was a very great man. $\therefore$ Jesus' teachings are perfectly intelligible and clear.
$\S$ If Jesus' teachings are perfectly intelligible and clear, how can we explain the divergence of interpretations derived from his teachings? Everyone agrees what the teaching of Socrates or Seneca were.
$\S$ Since Jesus teachings are perfectly intelligible and clear, this divergence can only be blamed on interpretation. People tried to harmonize the teachings of Jesus with the Old Testament, and this cannot be done. Human institutions, moved by human interests, have also set up dogmas alien to Jesus' teachings, such as the Holy Trinity or the original sin.
$\S$ But Jesus teachings are perfectly intelligible and clear. So misinterpretations can be avoided by focusing on his teachings and ignoring what came after. The Gospels are the closest we can get to this. But the Gospels are not perfect and cannot be considered sacred. And it is unwise to read them without emphasizing certain elements and disregarding others.
$\S$ If a man believes Jesus was not God, but only a man—a great one, a regular one, a lunatic—he is confronted with a peculiar problem. This problem can be formulated as follows: Two thousand years ago, a homeless man said certain things. He was tortured and executed and forgotten, as many men are tortured, executed and forgotten. For two hundred years, the world ignored his existence. Then someone remembered what he said and told it to another, who told it to another, and some years later millions of people—dumb and smart, learned and illiterate—accepted this man, and no other man, was God.
$\S$ A historical understanding of Jesus cannot answer this question. Imagine we found out exactly that Jesus was of this or that ethnicity, that he was born here or there, that he was stupid or wise, that these or that were the conditions in Rome at his time, and what teachers or doctrines influenced him. Evidently, this would contribute nothing pertinent to the problem at hand. The question is to understand the teachings of this man, as exposed by this man and not posterior interpreters, and to ask what was so special of this doctrine that he was regarded as God by those who heard him and those that followed for two thousand years.