Eyre Lines

A friend (thank you, Anne) recently lent me Philip Yancey’s “The Jesus I Never Knew”, which I read as light relief from the current main event of Douglas Campbell’s “The Deliverance of God”.

A couple of chapters in, my reaction was “Was he not listening in Sunday School, or to many years of sermons?” as, in essence, this is mainly an exploration of the Synoptic Gospels from a very uncritically naive viewpoint (it introduces some bits of the Fourth Gospel later). In the churches I know reasonably well, this kind of reading would have been started by about age 10; it is the first level of reading comprehension of the gospels, before embarking on any exploration of (for instance) the difference in the pictures painted by the four gospel writers.

However, I paused and went back and reread Mr. Yancey’s short biography, and recalled the “suggested readings” put forward as a start point for reading the Bible in some evangelical circles. Fourth Gospel (highlights), Pauline Epistles (highlights), Genesis (highlights) more of the Fourth Gospel, Epistles and Genesis, then (and only then) carefully selected highlights from the synoptics (parables for the most part) and from the major prophets and psalms, by this time read entirely through the lens provided by the initial readings.

Then I thought about the direction of sermons and worship songs, banging out the basics of PSA and the exalted status of Christ-as-cosmic saviour to the exclusion of any consideration of his humanity. Yes, I thought, it could well be that people manage to remain quite a while in that kind of environment and never consider Jesus as really human.

Yancey does spend quite a bit of space on the Sermon on the Mount later in the book, as well. Aside from “be perfect”, this does not figure large in evangelical circles, it seems to me.

So, my conclusion is that while I am absolutely not Yancey’s target audience, for what I envision his target audience to be, the book is a helpful corrective for the overwhelming stress on Christ as atoning sacrifice and divine intermediary, which to me verges on docetism (a view of Christ which denies his humanity).

I just wish both that it wasn’t needed and that it went further – much further.