Eyre Lines

There is an article in New Scientist by a couple of eminent professors, one of Hebrew Bible and one of New Testament, dealing with a variety of leaders of Christian groups who ascribe the Ebola epidemic to a divine punishment.

I have absolutely no time for people who do this, and still less for people who do it and then fail to render assistance to those who are suffering because “it is God’s will”. I agree with everything the writers say, in fact.

But I am surprised that neither of them marshals specific arguments from the traditions they teach. Where, for instance, is the reference to the book of Job (by either of them) in which, inter alia, Job is afflicted with a number of diseases through absolutely no fault of his own, and his “friends” who suggest that this is divine punishment for him secretly having been a bad lad are roundly criticised by God? Where is the reference by Candida Moss to John 9:3, in which Jesus says “neither this man nor his parents sinned” in response to his disciples asking why a man had been born blind?

I rather suspect the authors of the Fourth Gospel of having minimised the acerbity of Jesus’ comment here; this was, after all, someone who consorted with all the kinds of people whom the ilk of leaders who make these remarks regard as “undeserving”, i.e. with agents of a foreign invader, members of despised religions, extorters of taxes, prostitutes and other sinners, and who healed profligately and in circumstances distinctly frowned on by the religious authorities of the day. He was quite commonly acerbic with those religious leaders, and (particularly in Mark) not terribly polite to his disciples when they failed to understand things (Peter being told “get thee behind me, Satan” springs to mind).

I can easily insert words which the Jesus of my understanding may have said and which have been left out here, such as “have you understood NOTHING?”

And that is pretty much my response to any leader describing himself as Christian who makes such crass remarks.

I’ve been reading Dale Allison’s “Constructing Jesus” and am struck by the force of his arguments in favour of Jesus as apocalyptic prophet.

Note that I say “struck by the force of his argument” and not “convinced that his argument is entirely correct”, because I see him as over-extending in an attempt to press home this main point. I suppose I have some past expertise in this business of “making an argument” from some 25 years as a lawyer; if this has taught me nothing else, it is that we shouldn’t ever just listen to one counsel arguing for a position, we should also listen to at least one opposing position and then weigh the arguments against each other.

My forte in court was to take the opposition’s case and show how it was almost entirely correct, and yet you should take a view which favoured my client. This was far more effective, I found, than setting up an entirely opposite account of facts and inviting a choice between the two. With the way in which the legal system actually operates, this was far too much like tossing a coin; my way allowed you to accept most of what the opposition said but just to interpret it a little differently, rather than forcing black and white decisions.

This is a technique I think I should commend to Dr. Allison. He starts really well, setting up the idea that you cannot say, for instance, that because Jesus plainly made statements typical of a social reformer, he could not therefore have been an apocalyptic prophet; because he talked a lot about living well in the present reality he could not therefore have expected divine intervention to instantiate the Kingdom of God in apocalyptic fashion. This is clearly right, and has founded criticisms I’ve made in the past of a set of commentators who have seen in Jesus, for instance, a social revolutionary (John Dominic Crossan) or a “spirit person”, in other words a mystic (Marcus Borg) to the exclusion or near exclusion of any other identity. There is a strong suspicion that they see in Jesus what they feel they are in themselves, and in the case of Dr. Borg, he is self-admittedly someone who has had his faith shaped by mystical experience.

Unfortunately, Allison then goes further and moves repeatedly towards the suggestion that “apocalyptic prophet” is the basic identity (adding into it self-designations which go beyond just “apocalyptic prophet”) and that really neither the social revolutionary nor the mystic are really the case; inasmuch as they are there, they are less important than “apocalyptic prophet”, and if anything flow from that base designation.

I think this is a mistake. I think that it is a mistake primarily because I do exactly what I criticise above, and read Jesus as primarily a “spirit person”. This is because I am a “spirit person” myself, and cannot see how, if one has had overwhelming mystical experience, that cannot be basic to whatever you then are. I can do thought experiments and consider the position were I basically an apocalyptic prophet or were I a social revolutionary, and none of the others flow naturally from that self-understanding. However, in the case of a “spirit person”, social revolutionary does flow naturally from the experience, and at least occasional prophetic vision flows as well, at least if the mystical experience is developed and felt reasonably consistently.

In terms of “social revolutionary”, I cannot see how this would not flow automatically from the dissolution of the felt boundary between the self and others. I can see how the depth of compassion engendered could be internalised and not acted upon (as it seems to me is often the case in Buddhism, and is a major reason why I have not pursued Buddhism more than I did in my dim and distant 20s), but I cannot see how the impulse not only to assist others as best you can but also to try to promote the dissolution or reform of systems which operate against the mass of people, particularly the poor, disadvantaged and marginalised would not be there.

Prophecy is perhaps a more difficult area. One thing granted by the constant practice of the mystical consciousness is, in my experience, an improved ability to discern trends and causes (sometimes without realising the fullness of the structure, intuitively). I do not on the whole see prophecy as “foretelling the future”, in the way in which it tends to be portrayed by, for instance, the evangelists looking for predictions of Christ, but in the more modern sense of speaking to the situation as it is and exposing it and its likely outcomes. The Hebrew scriptures have many examples of prophetic words which do not in fact come to pass when people change their ways, none more clear, I think, than the story of Jonah. Jonah is sent to predict destruction to Nineveh, and eventually does – but Nineveh changes its ways and escapes calamity (the book has also several other lessons which may need to be taken to heart by prospective prophets among others).

I’ve felt this in operation; I’ve only actually ever expressed any such prediction in small local matters, as I don’t think a wider scale prophecy would be likely to be heard in this day and age without a full scientific and rationalist work-up, and to date have never felt any compulsion to try to buck this trend. Jesus, however, lived in a different age, one in which prophets might perhaps be heard.

Now, one of the reasons I think liberal scholars are somewhat reluctant to label Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet is that at the least since Schweitzer (building on Reimarus) proposed this label to the exclusion of others, the end of the investigation says that he was a failed apocalyptic prophet, as the predicted apocalypse did not happen – and they take too high a view of Jesus to want that to be the conclusion.

However, thinking about that, and about a recent article I read about predictions made by Science Fiction writers whose predictions had to some extent materialised (the link to which I’ve sadly lost) and about Karl Marx and some of his followers (notably Slavoj Zizek) predicting trends in society, I’m struck by a number of factors.

Firstly, none of these presumably mundane and non-divinely inspired prophets has ever managed to be anything like accurate about timing. Mostly, they predict things far too soon. I sympathise – as a newly coined BSc in Physics some 40 years ago I was predicting commercial fusion within ten years. I gather it’s still being predicted within ten years. As an example, Marx predicted that industrialised society would not tend to level out income and capital, but would intensify the gap between richest and poorest. Pace those who still think that “trickle down” economics actually works, I think we are now seeing exactly that. Marx thought it would take place at least 60 years ago; 20 years ago I would not have agreed that it was actually the case, but we’ve now had more opportunity to study less regulated capitalist systems, and I’d now agree with him – and I think we are likely to see some of his other predictions within at the least my childrens’ lifetimes.

Secondly, they are far more accurate about trends than about specifics.Marx thought that first England and then Russia would be the cradle of his predictions bearing fruit; at the moment it seems most likely to be the USA, but I could put in a long shot of China considering the speed at which China is currently moving. (No, I wouldn’t ask the almighty for a predictive word on the topic; that’s all my own fault!).

I should point out that I don’t think God is omniscient in the conventional understanding of knowing everything which will happen, though I accept that God may be omniscient in knowing all the possibilities of any situation on which God focuses and their probabilities. I therefore don’t think that predicting the future accurately is possible even for God. However, God may (possibly through very bright or very inspired people) be able to predict events a lot better than the average man in the street could; at the least, one might expect God to know all of the factors which were at work, which we rarely can.

Within these parameters, what Jesus is said to have predicted begins to take a more sensible shape, particularly if one bears in mind that in part (and in the mid-term) he expected Judaism generally to adopt his path – and Judaism didn’t do that. I also bear in mind that just as a localised flood appeared a worldwide catastrophe to a small tribe in Mesapotamia, so the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion of the remaining Palestinian Jews qualifies as an apocalyptic disaster. 70CE (the first Jewish revolt) was the end of the world as Second Temple Judaism knew it, and if that wasn’t enough, 135 CE (the second) pretty much completed the job. By the end of 135, there was no Temple, there were no Jews still resident in Judaea and they were banned from returning. The heart had been ripped out of Judaism and the people scattered (again), and the religion could no longer function as it had been doing.

Now, I haven’t yet done the heavy lifting of going through Jesus’ reported statements which could be thought of as apocalyptic one by one and applying these ways of thinking (as Dale Allison has been doing with a more conventional outlook on apocalyptic prediction), but using Allison’s concept of a certain “fuzziness” in social memory as well, I feel reasonably confident that Jesus could reasonably have predicted utter disaster for Judaism and been right; they were “living in the end times”. I also have in mind that if the whole of Judaism had turned to following the non-violence of Jesus over the course of the 20-30 years after his death, there would have been no revolts and very probably no destruction of the Temple or scattering of the Jews. I’m seeing there a salvation which didn’t come to pass because the message wasn’t taken up, just as Jonah saw an apocalypse which didn’t happen because the message was heeded. It was, of course, a collective salvation rather than an individual one, the salvation of a nation, but I think the Hebrew Scriptures tend more to the collective than the individual salvation in any event.

I rather think that much the same result could be obtained by reassessing Paul’s statements, and possibly even those in Revelation.

In fact, though, I think that many of the sayings used to demonstrate that Jesus expected an imminent apocalyptic advent of the Kingdom of God can be better interpreted, via thinking of him as a mystic, as indicating that he viewed the Kingdom as being a present and growing reality, accessible already by some and in the future by many more. Yes, I agree with Allison that saying he was not an apocalyptic prophet is foolish, but I still consider that “mystic” grounds more of his basic nature. And, let’s face it, if we take him as being a person in whom God indwelt constantly in some way, whether the only example of God incarnate or as something slightly less unique than that, that is inevitably going to be the most dominant feature of his thinking, and the mystic (who feels oneness with God) is going to be the type of ordinary human being most similar.

As this has largely been a review of Allison’s book, I should conclude by saying that it’s wonderfully well researched and argued, and in the later chapters I think he makes an excellent case (in passing, as this isn’t his main thrust) for establishing Paul as a source for much of the bones of the passion narrative alongside the gospels; I was also intrigued by his bringing into play of the Didache as an additional early source, as well as Thomas.

 

For my Alpha group, here’s a debate between Zeba Crook (a non-Christian New Testament scholar) and Richard Carrier (possibly the only reasonably weighty scholar who argues complete mythicism). For our purposes, as none of us think the mythicist position is correct, the relevant portion is from about 11 minutes to about 31 minutes, which is Zeba Crook talking (No, it isn’t necessary to watch the whole hour and three quarters).

Zeba give a good overview of the position that the early Christians progressively mythicised an historical figure with a few excellent examples.

The church I attend most regularly at the moment is quite keen on personal testimonies. I rather like that.

However, quite a few of these relate to giving while trusting in God to provide for our needs, i.e. giving when we don’t actually have enough to safeguard our own future. Again, in principle I have no problem with that, aside the fact that I see a significant chance of throwing people onto charity where they might not have needed that, and I tend to see charity as better directed to those who have no hope of providing for themselves from their own means than those who have themselves given wastefully, given the state of the world as it actually is.

The issue I do have, however, is that consistently these stories end with the giver receiving out of the blue sufficient for their needs. Again, I am delighted that they have been provided for. I might like to hear more testimony from people who haven’t “got it together”, as in twelve step, which I think is a template which people should want to qualify for. Granted there are now twelve step programs catering for so many things that it takes a really well-adjusted person to avoid qualifying for at least one of them! I might like to see something like twelve-step openness tried in a church setting, however.

However, there is another problem, in that the impression is given (and sometimes underlined by preaching what seems to me close to a “prosperity gospel” that those who give profligately will inevitably receive sufficient for their needs. If you give a lot, the message is, you can be confident that you will be provided for. There is some scriptural support for this concept, too.

Much as I might wish this to be the case in reality, it isn’t in line with my experience, either following my own actions or those of others. Nor, to my mind, should it be a hard and fast rule; that message removes the possibility of truly sacrificial giving, as giving is then done in the expectation of return. At that point it becomes not a gift but a transaction.

It is argued, of course, that faith demands that we should trust the divine promise that we will be taken care of and should not think to store up things in anticipation of times of dearth. Matt. 6:25-34 is one example, though there are others. Faith also, arguably, demands that we should do as Jesus advises the rich young man in (inter alia) Matt. 19:16-22, and sell all that we have and give it to the poor, but I do see very few people actually doing this within Christianity. I certainly haven’t done it myself, and part of my thinking chalks this up as one of the ways in which I am a bad Christian, or not-quite-yet a Christian. Granted, six years ago I was worth a negative amount, but I hadn’t got there by giving things away except in a very inventive interpretation.

Another part of my thinking reports that the evidence of history is that the very early Church actually did practice these principles, and this very probably resulted in the need for Paul to go round taking a subscription for the support of the Jerusalem Church. A reasonable guess from general economic principles suggests that they were doing this, taking their possessions, selling them and giving away the proceeds (or, to some extent, holding them in common), and that they had run out of people prepared to do this in support of their community and had fallen on hard times. A few people or a small community can get away with this in a world which doesn’t operate that way, a large group can’t.

I see this principle operating as well in one conception of the crucifixion, that which is principally drawn from the Fourth Gospel. In the synoptics, Jesus is seen as agonising over his future in the Garden of Gethsemane (“let this cup pass from me”) and as experiencing complete abandonment on the cross (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”). In the Fourth Gospel, however, it is all seen as being part of the divine plan, and Jesus is completely aware of this and approaches his impending death with complete equanimity. Then, of course, on the third day he rises and a little later ascends in glory. What we have is a very temporary death, not a full blown extinction of the self.

To my mind, the Fourth Gospel somewhat torpedoes the concept that the cross can function as a valid sacrifice to the extent which is clearly desired by many atonement theories. In the synoptics, at least Jesus is seen as agonised by the prospect, and although there are hints that a resurrection is anticipated, this agony indicates to me that Jesus sees this as a hope rather than as a certainty. This is removed in the Fourth Gospel; there, Jesus knows throughout that his death will be very temporary and suffers no agonies of mind or spirit (as opposed to agonies of body).

I would contrast the situation in W.B. Yeats’ verse drama “The Countess Cathleen”, in which the Countess sells her soul to the Devil in order to save her tenants from starvation and to redeem their souls from him, having previously been sold by them. As this act is altruistic, the Countess is redeemed anyhow on her death. While the actual result there is also that she is not lost, she thinks she will be. Not so Jesus for the authors of the Fourth Gospel; he has no doubt of his resurrection and ascent. Of course, Yeats is there referencing a ransom theory of atonement in which Jesus ransoms humanity from the Devil, but cannot be held by him (this was one of the two early theories of atonement). I liken this to God buying humanity back with a dud cheque (three days to clear…) but will probably get flak for this. It is, incidentally, partly because it looks like God using a dud cheque that I don’t resonate with that theory.

This, however, doesn’t seem to me to work as well for the satisfaction theory (God is owed a debt in consequence of humanity’s sin, only a sacrifice of the magnitude of Jesus’ death will suffice, God accepts that as payment) because it’s not a lasting death. Granted, it can be argued that the death of God the Son, even if temporary, is of incalculable value, but that still doesn’t seem to me adequate. It works even less well for the penal substitution theory (God exacts the death penalty for sin on one life of incalculable value instead of myriad low value lives) if it’s temporary, but I suppose could be regarded as a real death and then a restoration.

I still think that a real sacrifice needs to entail a real loss, not just a temporary one.

So I return to sacrificial giving. Of course, I don’t in theory consider this a bad thing (“in theory” because I’m not very good at actually doing it), and there are two preeminent reasons for this. Firstly, it clears the decks for single minded trust in God and love of humanity, removing the obstructions of clinging to existing possessions and trying to get more. It represents, perhaps, a self-chosen equivalent of the twelve step “rock bottom”, from which there is no way but up and no valid action but trust in others. My own “rock bottom” involved loss of rather more than just economic self-sufficiency, but giving away all you have is likely to make those around you doubt your sanity and will probably damage your social standing as well, so there are other “benefits”.

The other is that it affirms that the Kingdom of God is already here. I may be somewhat unusual among liberal theologians in that I take Jesus’ pronouncement that the Kingdom was already present among his followers (Luke 17:21 is one of several relevant texts) as being accurate. I don’t think he was talking about some apocalypse to come, I think he was talking of an apocalypse within some of those who followed him, a personal transformation, a metanoia. I see the analogies of the Kingdom with the mustard seed (Matt. 13:31) and with leaven (Matt. 13:33) as indicating that this new way of living, which involved love of neighbour as yourself, and sometimes to the exclusion of yourself in sacrificial giving, even to following his path to the cross, had already started inasmuch as it was practiced (I also see the Kingdom statements as indicating another new form of consciousness, that of the mystical entering into the Kingdom; the two seem to me to go hand in hand).

Of course, as I indicated earlier in this post, significant numbers of the early church seem to have practiced this and to have ended up in a parlous economic position, needing to be “bailed out” by Paul’s collections. I don’t know whether, had the movement continued to grow apace and fill the earth with this practice, whether that could have been sustained economically; it hasn’t been tried in any sizeable society, and in smaller ones has consistently got into difficulty. In practice, I’ve regarded this as “counsel of excellence” and tried to balance it with the need to stay able to meet my obligations to my family and to society (and in the past my employees), and worked on the basis that I would keep only enough for myself and the rest could be given away; that has chiefly been my time as I was in a position to use my time to work for justice and equity for individuals and for the community.

And I still wonder whether my not taking the extra step was due to pragmatism or to fear.

 

I have a few friends who often talk of “Christ’s work upon the cross”. This, frankly, jars with me.

Let’s face it, what happened to Jesus on the cross was that he died, fairly slowly (but not as slowly as might have been expected from the method of execution, by some reports) and extremely painfully. Everyone agrees on “extremely painfully”. I don’t talk about my late father’s “work” on a bed in York District Hospital, I talk about his death. Death is something which happens to us, not something we “do” (unless we commit suicide, perhaps), although the Fourth Gospel goes some way towards portraying Jesus as a willing participant. Even then, it isn’t really portrayed as “work”, more as something necessary to which Jesus submits with good grace.

The interpretation as “work” comes partly from other parts of the Fourth Gospel but mostly from Paul. Paul clearly saw Jesus’ death as effecting a massive change in the relationship of God with man;  what exactly the nature of that change was is the subject of various atonement theories, about which I’ve written before – Paul is not necessarily completely clear as to what he believed in terms of systematic theology, so there’s been plenty of room for theologians to construct different interpretations over the years. Paul’s gospel was “Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2); he was not nearly so forthcoming about Jesus’ lifetime ministry, which leads some scholars to believe that he knew relatively little about what Jesus had actually said (and others to conclude that Paul merely thought the death, and presumably resurrection, to be more important).

The writer of the Fourth Gospel saw Jesus as effecting a massive change in that relationship as well, but saw that change as being from Jesus’ birth; “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Granted, he also considered it vital that Jesus be “lifted up” (John 3:14).

The writers of the synoptics are far more concerned with Jesus’ lifetime ministry, about which they write extensively, and less so about his death; Matthew and Luke are also concerned about the resurrection, about which Mark hardly writes at all (the best versions of Mark end with the empty tomb).

So, do I think that Jesus effected a massive change in God’s relationship with man?

Most of the atonement theories rest on the premise that at the point of Jesus life, death and resurrection, God’s plan for humanity was broken and needed a radical divine intervention to restore it to proper functioning. There was obvious scriptural precedent for this, not least in the story of Noah’s flood, in which humanity had become so depraved that the only solution was to wipe them out and start again, but preserving the family of Noah as the seeds of a new beginning (and, of course, a rather minimal breeding stock of wildlife).

This, of course, rests on the idea that Judaism was incapable of being the vehicle for man’s proper relationship with God. Paul goes into some detail in both Romans and Galatians as to how this might be the case (with the proviso that Judaism is not completely without merit – Rom. 11:1-11). I find this deeply problematic, given that God appeared to go into very considerable detail as to how Israel (at least) should interact with God in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, with a large number of additional insights from the Prophets. Did he really get things so wrong? Is this the action of an all-powerful, all-knowing and benevolent God, to lay down detailed instructions for his people to follow knowing that they were actually completely ineffective?

I think not. We have, I think, to read Paul differently – and in recent years, the New Perspective on Paul has been doing just this, through (for instance) E.P. Sanders, James Dunn, Douglas Campbell and most recently N.T. Wright. In particular, we should note that Paul was extending the conception of relationship with God from just Israel to the world in general. and in the process explaining why conversion to Judaism was not actually a prerequisite (I would add “rather than explaining why Judaism was deficient”). It’s interesting to note that in Judaism the Rabbis conducted the same exercise, creating by exegesis of the Hebrew Scriptures the “Noachide Laws”. (Noah gets a second mention!). Would that these had been available to Paul, but my best dating of the concept is early to mid second century.

So, Judaism wasn’t broken, it just needed universality. But was creation broken; was there a need for a reconciliation with God through an atoning sacrifice? Well, if you remember my “And God saw that it was good” posts last year, you’ll know that I don’t interpret Genesis in terms of a fall from a perfect state (which needed rectifying) at all. No original sin, no overriding need to fix that.

And yet, in the course of his rather convoluted reasoning in Romans, Paul maybe has a clue to a different understanding, and one where there was a need for a radical divine intervention. Paul wrote in Romans 3:24-26 “they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.” Note the wording in the middle and at the end there: “He did this to show his righteousness”, and “it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous”. For the purposes of this exercise, let’s forget the references to atonement and justification for a moment and concentrate on why Paul saw this as happening: it was to demonstrate God’s righteousness. Not to make it possible for mankind to be acceptable to God, but to make it possible for God to be acceptable to man.

There was a fault, but it wasn’t a fault in God’s creation or in God’s covenant with Israel, it was in mankind’s perceptions of God. They needed to be extended. In particular, for Paul, Gentiles needed to feel they could be accepted by the Hebrew God (who was the only God) without the need to enter into the Covenant; that they could be justified in his sight, and that he was and would be just towards them.

The writer of the Fourth Gospel had another point of view. He wasn’t talking about a feeling of justification, he was talking about a mystical participation in the phenomenon of the resurrected Christ (which was the Word, which was God), a participation which would cause a complete change in the individual. He considered that all that was needed was complete faith – and by that I am confident he meant a complete surrender to God-in-Christ, an identification way beyond what would be entailed in viewing Christ/Jesus as an exemplar, a teacher, a leader. A complete giving of the self in love and trust for the living God-in-Christ who was the mystical experience of the writer. John Spong has recently written persuasively of this view of the Fourth Gospel in “The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic”.

In fact, Paul also writes in this mode when he talks of us being in Christ and Christ being in us (Eph. 2:10 inter alia). It is a mystical understanding of the relationship of man with God (in Christ), as one would expect from someone who also talks of being caught up into the third heaven (2 Cor. 12:2).

So, are we looking at the beginning of a mystical understanding of God (God-in-Christ in this case) as a major development in the history of the relationship of God with men? Probably not this either; there are at least hints at mystical understandings of God (albeit not God-in-Christ, though sometimes God-in-Wisdom or God-in-Logos) scattered through the Hebrew scriptures, with concentrations in the Psalms, Proverbs and some of the Prophets.

The New Testament writers, however, are more unified in the concept that “in Jesus, in Christ, God had done something remarkable and different” than in any other non-concrete thing. Am I saying that no, actually he had not, this was merely another point on a continuum? It might appear so. There was a continuum of moral and practical teaching from Pharisaic Judaism into the Synoptics and Paul, there was a continuum of mystical conception from the Psalms and Prophets, the Wisdom tradition and Philo into Paul and the Fourth Gospel. There is also in the Synoptics and Thomas what I consider conclusive evidence that Jesus was himself a God-mystic, and there were God-mystics before him and have been God-mystics since, both in Judaism and Christianity and in many other world religions.

However, I share with some of the New Testament writers the conviction that Jesus was particularly the paradigmatic God-mystic, and that the Christ-mysticism of Paul and the Fourth Gospel takes that to a new level. In this, God was indeed doing something new, albeit not as dramatically new as might have seemed the case. I confess here that this view is coloured by my personal devotion to the figure of Jesus; just as do the New Testament writers, I love and trust the Jesus they talk of and the Christ which they make of him, and I am not able to be objective about this.

There is one more thing, however, and that is that with the brief ministry of Jesus and the explosion of followers after his death, world history changed radically. Only Mohammed might come close as an individual so pivotal in change, whether in the history of ideas or the history of nations. It may be that the depth of belief of the followers was the thing which precipitated this; what they felt, that Jesus was pivotal, they proceeded to impose on world history as a fact.

But I still don’t consider it was the cross which is central to that. The life, teaching, death, resurrection and continuing presence in the lives of millions cannot be separated. His work was his life and legacy more than it was the brief event of his passion and death.

 

At “By Common Consent”, there is a review of John Dominic Crossan’s “The Power of Parable: How fiction by Jesus became fiction about Jesus”.

This interests me particularly for two reasons, firstly because BCC is a Mormon site, and I don’t get to look at Mormon sites very often. The more important reason, though, is that I read this book last year and would unhesitatingly recommend it as a radical new look at the Gospels.

I go along with most of what that review says; I love the direction of thinking Crossan is pursuing, but do not think he supports his hypotheses sufficiently rigorously for me to say “Yes, this is the way it was”.

But Crossan tells a wonderfully engaging and convincing story about how and why the Gospels were written, and one which is well worth considering as a possible way of reading them, and a new way which gives an additional and sometimes surprising set of insights. At the least, it can be regarded as a parable of its own (about writing parables about a teller of parables one of which is perhaps itself about parables – which is even more “meta” than the comment which starts the review).

I’m not sure I want to try to suggest what kind of parable it is, though. In a way, it’s a challenge parable, the “marginalised person” here being parables themselves. In a way it’s a riddle parable, because the stories themselves become significant of something other than what they first appear to be. I don’t at the moment see any indication of example parable there, but wouldn’t be surprised if someone were to correct me.

One thing Crossan does do here, however, is use the texts we know well to tell us some stories about the early development of Christianity and its transformation from being a Jewish sect to being a religion crossing divides of ethnicity, and to underline a particular understanding of Jesus. It’s an understanding of Jesus which resonates extremely well with me, and I like the book fine for that. It is, however, too limited an understanding of Jesus to reflect all that I consider Jesus to be to us now, even if (as I rather suspect) it may reflect a very substantial part of what Jesus was during his lifetime ministry.

University of South Carolina have a magazine “Religion Dispatches” in which is an interesting article. It looks at “nones” in America, i.e. those who give “none” as an answer in questionnaires under “religion”. If it’s anecdotal conclusions are correct, the “social gospel”, i.e. the sayings of Jesus relating to how we should act and in particular how we should treat other human beings have a huge following outside Christianity.

I think, although I can quote no statistics for the conclusion, that the same applies in the UK, where a significantly greater proportion of the population are either “nones” or if pushed will answer “C of E” despite having visited an actual church at most a handful of times since they left school other than for weddings and funerals. We may not be as overtly “Christian” in our declarations as our cousins over the pond, but the social gospel is, I think, very deeply embedded in our society quite irrespective of religious practice or belief. This is not to say that we are particularly good at following the social gospel (and I happen to think we have become rather less good at following it over the course of the last 30 years), but that we accept it as being a laudable model to aspire to. Indeed, it may be that as overt religiosity has declined, the social gospel has leached out into society as a whole in a way which is no longer very dependent on professed Christians spreading the gospel.

Against this background, I am remembering the Alpha talk from Wednesday evening. Two things particularly stood out to me; the first was the speaker saying that Jesus spent a large proportion of his time talking about himself.

Well, if all you read is the Fourth Gospel, that is entirely correct. However, if you read the synoptics (the other three gospels), the picture is rather different – Jesus spends very little time talking about himself, and in Mark actually repeatedly asks his disciples not to talk about who or what he is. The major themes of the synoptics are the social gospel and the advent of the Kingdom (whether of God or of Heaven) on earth, in which the social gospel is actually followed. Where Jesus talks of himself, it is either referring to his forthcoming death (and resurrection) or of his judging at a point in the future.

It is interesting in that context to read Matthew 25:31-46. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory”, it does not seem that those who can put the best construction on his statements about himself are chosen, or those who believe that certain statements about his nature, purpose or relationship to God; it is those who actually practice the social gospel who are placed with the sheep on his right hand. Matt. 7:21 is relevant as well, and possibly John 14:15 so as to involve the Fourth Gospel at least somewhat.

The other thing which stood out was the emphasis on Lewis’ trilemma, the “either-or” trio created by C.S. Lewis in his recreational occupation of apologist. As a reminder, what Lewis wrote was:-

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. … Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.” (quote from Wikipedia; link above).

I am sure that most Christian apologists who use this (and it is in every edition of the Alpha manual to date) think that this is a slam-dunk argument that forces anyone who has a high opinion of Jesus (which, as we see above, is a very large proportion of the “none” population) to accept that he is Son of God and is God. I can testify from picking up the pieces after this tactic has been used previously on many occasions that this is not the case. A few do accept this, and I have no interest in giving them more complex arguments, but in my experience more don’t and in an increasingly scientific-rationalist world, often can’t.

The more inquiring and those who have been trained in logic will, of course, enquire whether the trilemma is valid, and find that it is not. Some of this I covered last year in “Will the real Jesus please stand up”, but in broad terms, the excluded options are (1) Jesus didn’t actually say these things (2) he said them, or something like them, but they didn’t mean what Lewis takes them to mean (3) he was a prophet speaking on behalf of God or (4) he was a panentheist mystic (which may amount to much the same thing as “prophet”), talking from a point of view of a personal sense of unity with God. Unfortunately, most of those who I have tried to help after the trilemma was fired at them have not been logicians or had sufficient tenacity and curiosity to arrive there.

Happily, only a few have said to themselves “OK, being God is excluded*, so he was mad or diabolical, and therefore I will avoid following any of his teachings in future”. “A few” is, of course, far too many, but I can count them on the fingers of one hand.

By far the most common reaction is “OK, God is excluded, being the Devil is excluded* and my opinion of Jesus is that he was clearly a great moral teacher who I look up to (and so not mad), so the trilemma is rubbish and therefore everything the person who put the trilemma to me is saying is rubbish and I will not listen to any of this stuff any more”.  Some of them are by then walking away so fast that I can’t catch up with them and persuade them that it isn’t that simple and that there actually is merit in sticking around to hear more…

[* “Being God is excluded, being the Devil is excluded” may need unpacking; for a human being to “be God” in most people’s concept sets requires a whole load of inventive theology which is not in evidence at the point where the trilemma is wheeled out, so this option is likely to be dismissed out of hand. For the Devil to be similarly constrained has similar problems, but the negative to this is usually that the hearer has far too high a view of Jesus to admit this as a possibility.]

But actually, if we look back at Matthew 25, this may not be quite so dispiriting as it seems – as long as they hold Jesus as a great moral exemplar, the chances are fairly reasonable that they may go on and do some things which will find them on the side of the sheep. They will, of course, miss all of the benefits to them of living as part of a community of followers of Jesus, and will probably not follow him as closely or in as dedicated a way, but they may well still follow him.

Perhaps we are in sight of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “religionless Christianity”? Richard Beck blogged some more about this on Friday after a series in 2010.

However, I think this misses encouraging one aspect of following Jesus, which is the experiential, sometimes mystical, always relational link with Jesus as a living force in the world. You do not have to be part of a community of belivers to experience Jesus in this way, but it is definitively easier. It is possible to do this without going down the route of the Fourth Gospel with all its implicit theological complexity, recognising that we are in relationship to Jesus also being in relationship to God in a particular way without the support of a group of others, but it is easier to walk in company than alone.

Lewis’ trilemma can, and in my experience is quite likely to, damage the possibility of someone walking in company in the future. So this is my plea to Alpha speakers everywhere – ditch the trilemma! It may well be a powerful weapon, but it’s likely to backfire…

 

 

At Tamed Cynic, Jason Michaeli is talking about Reza Aslan, Karl Barth and the Search for Spock,   and in particular about the Resurrection. He has a flair for titles!

Jason inveighs against historical Jesus scholars who arrive at one-dimensional pictures of Jesus, and I’ve criticised this previously. He then goes on to argue against modernism as a mindset and to talk of resurrection.

I’m shortly to start with a new Alpha course, and there’s a strong chance that I’ll again be asked “Chris, do you believe in the resurrection?” This time, it would be nice to come up with a reasonably clear answer, even if it does turn out rather long.

I think the first thing to say is that I have to agree that something radical happened to at least some of Jesus’ followers, and happened very shortly after the crucifixion. The earliest document we have is Paul, writing in 1 Cor. 15. This dates from 20-25 years after the crucifixion, but refers to Paul’s vision and him receiving the tradition about Jesus’ death and resurrection earlier; scholar tend to place this hearing of the tradition between 4 and 7 years after the actual date. Evidence from Suetonius is that the cult of Christ had spread to Rome by about 49 (19 years after the crucifixion) and was causing disturbance in the Jewish population there.

So, this was a very early understanding indeed.

Jason is right to focus on the sheer unlikelihood that Jesus’ followers would, very shortly after his death, be saying that he had been resurrected and be worshipping him as God unless there was some very strong basis for this. Even taking a very sceptical view of the evidence of the Gospels, I think we have to accept the accounts of a set of scared disciples scattering, disspirited after the crucifixion (and to some extent earlier, after Jesus’ arrest) as being an “admission against interest”, quite apart from being what happened after the failures of other more or less contemporary Jewish popular leaders who were for a time hailed as “Messiah”. The transition from that attitude to going out and boldly proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection and other elements of his message demands a really major convicting event. But what was it?

It is incredibly difficult to advance a physical resurrection in a modern, largely scientific-rationalist society. Jason may criticise scholars for being wedded to a modernistic world view, but that is the understanding of the world in which we live; it is impossible to forget it, and it works to explain and predict better than does any previous world-view. So much so, for instance, that one commentator has suggested that despite the colossal unlikelihood of Jesus’ body being removed from the tomb by space aliens, that is still more likely than a physical resurrection.

In the interests of clarity, though I might spend some time agonising over the choice, given a decision between little green men and a physical resurrection, I think I might thinly come down against a “beam me up, Scotty” answer. But only by a hair. On a good day, with the wind behind me…

The fact that Jews and Gentiles of that period experienced reality as, in part, magical and as driven by supernatural forces does not mean that that was the reality. Are we to argue that the magical view of reality should be reinstated, despite abundant demonstrations that apparently supernatural events are explicable either by natural mechanisms or by trickery? In order to argue that the way people of the time saw reality did in fact dictate the nature of that reality, you would have to conclude that a belief in magic makes magic work, and there is copious evidence that in no case does this actually operate in the world of today. There is, of course, no good reason to believe that there has been a shift in the nature of reality between 30 CE and 2013 CE such that supernatural forces worked then but do not work now (and in fact it would not date to 30 CE but to later, if we consider the reports of Peter raising Tabitha and Paul raising Eutychus to be correct). The dispensationalists may say that, but the only rationale I can see for them doing so is to explain why miracles happened then, but don’t appear to happen now. Far simpler to decide there has been no change, and look for another explanation.

The biblical reports of supernatural miracles may, it must be said, have actually been miracles (a negative cannot be proved and a miracle is by definition exceptionally unlikely), but there are feasible explanations for how the perceptions which led to most of them may have arisen within a scientific-rationalist word-view, and so those are preferred; assuming that they were in fact rationally explainable by those mechanisms, the people of the time would still have interpreted them as supernatural events. There is therefore no good justification for concluding that the witnesses were correct in ascribing the category of “miracle” to them.

There is equally, of course, every justification for concluding that the witnesses’ understandings of the events affected the way they then thought and acted. Had they thought that this was an “existential experience”, would they have acted as they did? Well, not if that expression is to be interpreted as dismissively as Jason seems to think it should be, but I think he horribly underestimates the impact of peak spiritual experience. Having had a number of peak spiritual experiences myself, I can attest that they can carry huge conviction even if the person experiencing them is intellectually completely confident that nothing supernatural is in fact happening, and that it is (probably) an event restricted to the neurological processes of the individual; how much more convincing would it be if they did not have those rationalist concerns. We are told, for instance, that Paul (who definitely did not see a corporeal appearance according to him) was transformed by it, and there is no good reason to doubt that. Indeed, Paul goes to some trouble in 1 Cor. 15 to say that the resurrection body is not a corporeal body (shortly after the passage which many rely on that “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain”).

Among biblical miracles, however, the resurrection of Jesus is the big one. Any of the others can be rationally explained without significant damage to the course of events which we can reconstruct using historical method apart from this one (even the parting of the Red Sea).

Something happened.

I would agree with Jason that the option of the disciples making up the stories is farfetched. Not only were they dispirited, but it is impossible to see how they could have lied sufficiently convincingly to persuade substantial numbers (even in a much more credulous age) and it strains credulity that they would have seized on resurrection as the claim.

However, I disagree with Jason in saying: “Not only did they not have a belief structure in place to posit something like one man’s (a failed Messiah no less) resurrection from the dead, that they would in their lifetimes start to worship this Jesus as God (with sophisticated, high theology) violates the most basic foundation of their faith: the first commandment.” Firstly, if there is any truth at all in the accounts of Lazarus, the Widow’s son and Jairus, the disciples already knew (or thought they knew) that resurrection was possible.

Secondly, there was no need to worship as God someone who was resurrected (there is no trace that this happened in the case of Lazarus, for instance), and there is strong evidence in the synoptic gospel accounts that in fact Jesus was not worshipped as God universally among the earliest followers. This did not, therefore, flow directly from the understood “fact” of resurrection, but from other causes.

Thirdly, this did not contravene the first commandment. It did, however, contravene the shema “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one”, which was by this time standard to Judaism. It is therefore necessary to explain how it was that a significant number of Jesus’ followers did indeed start worshipping Jesus as God, even though this does not flow necessarily from resurrection or non-resurrection. I think myself that this is adequately explained by considering the intertestamental literature in which the vision of two thrones in Daniel 7 was developed and which had given rise to a current of understanding that the messiah (son of man) would be enthroned beside God the Father. Once you identified Jesus as messiah, the possibility of at least quasi-divinity was established. [Note – since writing this, Daniel Kirk has published “A Man Attested by God”, which is a scholarly demonstration that the synoptic gospels’ view of Jesus was as an exalted human being.]

In attempting to assess what actually happened, I look at the accounts and, in fact, find them apparently contradictory as to what form this resurrection actually took. There is the empty tomb, a meeting during which the risen Jesus appeared to eat and, of course, the celebrated episode with Thomas touching Jesus’ wounds. All of these would seem to indicate a physical resuscitation. Then again, on a number of occasions people who knew him well failed to recognise him (Mary Magdalene in the garden in the Fourth Gospel) even after significant periods talking to him (for instance on the Emmaus road), he seems to have appeared to different people in widely separated places at more or less the same time, and (as in the Thomas episode) he seems to have been able to materialise and dematerialise at will. None of these are consistent with a physical resuscitation. The appearances to Mary and on the Emmaus road, indeed, seem to me to be instances of seeing Jesus in another person, which leads me to think of Paul’s description of the Church as the “body of Christ” and repeated use of “Christ in us” or “us in Christ”, not to mention what happens if you take a rather literal view of Matthew 25:31-46, which I have been known to, not least in musing on crucifixion (what if we are actually crucifying Christ again every time we do or allow some injury to another human being?).

So, if you are to attempt to harmonise the accounts through a resurrection, it has to be something beyond a resuscitation of a corpse or seeming corpse. The mortal remains would have had to be able to dematerialise and rematerialise or to teleport in order to appear suddenly in the upper room and to appear within a short period in Jerusalem and Galilee, as an attempted harmonisation would have us believe. Indeed, Paul is confident that the appearances he reports in 1 Cor. 15:3-8 are of the same nature, and in 1 Cor. 15:35-57 makes a strong statement that they are not corporeal. There is a reasonably in depth analysis of the appearances and argument in support of non-corporeal appearances as After Death Communications (ADCs) by Ken Vincent entitled “Resurrection Appearances of Jesus as After-Death Communication”, which I think demonstrates non-corporeality as the “best fit” for the evidence.

I can add to that my own anecdotal evidence. I have in fact on two occasions myself experienced a tangible apparition (without any drugs or other factors which might produce hallucination), one of them being of Jesus. (Incidentally, this is why I advise against Ignatian visualisatory prayer unless a spiritual director is available – the impact of such an occurrence is very strong). I have also been present when a group of people “saw” something which I knew not to be there (not Jesus!). I didn’t see it myself, not being particularly vulnerable to deindividuation, and would ascribe the event largely to deindividuation and contagious euphoria. I do not therefore have difficulty in crediting that all the reports of post-resurrection appearances could have been non-corporeal.

That still leaves me with a problem, however, and that is the empty tomb. It is correct to say that Paul does not mention an empty tomb, and he is the earliest witness; neither do the early kerygmas in Acts. I have no real trouble in considering that later accounts may have embellished in order to “concretise” the events (after all, there was a considerable slice of First Century Judaism which did not accept any body/spirit dualism and for whom the only resurrection would have had to be physical). John Dominic Crossan is firmly of the opinion that the body of a crucified man would not have been released to relatives or friends for burial, but would have been cast out with the rubbish, possibly in the valley of Ge Hinnom (i.e. Gehenna) which was the city rubbish dump and that that was what most probably happened; the stories of the tomb generally being a later decoration.

But what was it which sparked the first visions of the resurrected Christ? Could it have been anything other than the shock of a tomb being empty where it was expected to be occupied? Did Joseph of Arimathea and, perhaps, Nicodemus actually persuade the Romans to abandon normal practice and release the body to them? Without the known absence of a body, I would have expected any post-death appearances to be visions of Jesus enthroned beside the Father. Did they prepare a tomb and then fail to obtain permission and place the body in it? Was it removed by some other party?

We cannot, I think, do more than speculate. On balance, I think there has to have been an empty tomb, but that this does not explain the post-resurrection appearances, which were almost certainly not appearances of the reanimated, revivified corpse of Jesus (pace Thomas). However, I think this will have been sufficient to prompt experiences of the risen Christ, and those experiences could readily have had sufficient force to prompt the disciples to break free of their despondency, to have major transformative experiences and go on to spread the good news of Jesus throughout the then known world. We can, in any event, be confident that that is what happened to the disciples, and that is what they did.

Whatever the actual mechanics, that is enough miracle for me.

I am, in any event, not unduly worried about the form the resurrection actually took, as I have experienced Jesus (non-physically) myself as a living person.

Peter Enns recently posted a link to Joan Osborne singing “What if God was one of us”, commenting “Not a bad sermon, actually”.

Well, a little light on exposition, perhaps, but definitely up there with the points to ponder.

“If God had a name, what would it be, and would you call it to his face if you were faced with him and all his glory?”

The thing is, in Christianity, God was “one of us”, at least in the limited time frame of the first third of the millennium in Galilee and Judaea. In my panentheist vision, and taking Matt. 25:31-46 rather more literally than is normally the case, God still is “one of us” (and all of us), and you might call him Fred, or Jill, or Mary, or Bob. Or in the circumstances of the passage from Matthew, not call him anything to his face, not see his glory, as he would be a ragged-clothed beggar sitting in a shop doorway, a half-glimpsed hospital patient alone and groaning gently in a ward hurried past, a despairing face looking out from a barred window in a police van, a bloated-stomached African glimpsed on television, an addict shooting up in the park or your neighbour, normally surly and uncommunicative, who you haven’t noticed you haven’t seen for a few days as the unsolicited mail piles up behind his letter box.

But this isn’t going to be my normal guilt trip about not noticing the risen Lord in need of my help or company, or passing by swiftly with my head averted.

“And what would you ask him if you had just one question?” might at that point be “How can I live without pouring myself out to you in the form of all these people, and still making no significant difference to the ocean of need out there?”. But I can hear his reply already – “start with one or two”.

“What if God was one of us, just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home?”.

Wait – what have I just heard? “Just a slob?” You were pushing it with the beggar, the criminal and the addict, Chris, but that’s just insulting to the Lamb of God, the Prince of Peace, the Saviour of Mankind, the Name above all other Names, God incarnate. In all his glory… Isn’t that just a little (cough) blasphemous, Chris?

Well, it seems to me that the peasant craftsman from Galilee who wandered the countryside preaching the kingdom without food for today (unless it was given in charity or gleaned from the fields) let alone tomorrow, who sat down in fellowship with prostitutes, recovering mental patients, lepers and even the 1^st century equivalent of bankers would not have thought that. He preached time and again against wealth, against domination structures of all kinds whether they be the occupying Roman Empire, the rich and corrupt Temple hierarchy, the sanctimonious religious purists or even (Luke 12:53, Matt. 19:29, Mark 10:29) the family.

The earliest followers understood this. They practiced radical community, sharing everything with each other and the poor (Acts 4:32-37) and healed and comforted among the lowest of society, the outcasts from society, just as had Jesus. But then came theology, and a string of titles, and Jesus the Christ became kinglike (except more so) where he had cast scorn on kings, became emperor-like (except more so) where he had cast scorn on empires and God-like where he had repudiated any thought of equality with God (Phil. 2:7); he was teacher where he taught his disciples not to call themselves teacher, Prophet, Messiah and King where he had renounced the offers of these statuses in his temptation in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-13).

I think this is a case of title-inflation, of “my Jesus is bigger than your emperor (or high priest, or resistance leader, or…)”, and I think that it’s to some extent a mistake. God having bridged the gap, we open it up wider and wider with our thinking and our terminology until it’s too wide to cross or reach over, too wide for a relationship. We end up close to being docetists, docetism being a heresy which held that Jesus only seemed to be human, while being divine. And we replace an unreachable God with an unreachable Christ. Our Jesus is not greater than your emperor in the sense of being more emperor-like, he’s greater in the sense of being totally different from an emperor, a herald of the Kingdom of God on earth, a champion of those who are poor, afflicted, outcast. He triumphs through sacrifice of self, not through force, not by overawing but by showing the emptiness of mere power.

Let’s face it, if we are to think of Jesus as human, we have to think of someone who pissed, shat, had aches and pains and all the accompanying lowly features of human existence. I’ll go further here; in an attempt to justify Jesus as having been a perfect sacrificial offering after his death, the idea grew up that he was perfect, that he could not sin, that he must have been physically imposing and beautiful (though linking him to Isa. 53:1-3 should have been a clue there). I don’t think that can be correct; I think that we cannot think of him as human without also considering that he could be angry, lustful, proud, self-centered, arrogant, xenophobic and occasionally a male chauvinist (both of the last two of which seem in evidence in the tale of the Syrophonecian woman in Mark 7:25-30).

I do not think it is possible to be both human and perfect. If Jesus was perfect, taking into account his extended words about “thought-crimes” in Matt. 5:21-30, he could not even think of sinning, and if he could not think of it, not only could he not have been tempted (and resisted temptation), but he could not have understood those who are. He could not be “one of us”, and so God could not be “one of us”, and so relate to us; be such that we can have a relationship with him.

I know something like this from personal experience. I was very good at maths as a child; it was all obvious and easy to me through my teens. And I couldn’t teach it to anyone else, because I couldn’t understand how it was not obvious and easy to them; I couldn’t empathise with them, and any explanation I gave went straight over their heads. It didn’t stay that way, by the way; at second year university level maths stopped being easy and obvious ( almost catastrophically for my degree, which had to change slightly), and I suddenly found some comprehension of how it was possible to have difficulty. That made it possible to coach my mother when she took a course which required some maths a few years later.

How much more must the failure of comprehension be for someone who is perfect, who is not really “one of us”?

But, of course, God can be, and is, through Jesus then and in the panentheist conception now. And so in seeing his glory in the stranger on the bus and the beggar in the doorway and responding to the calls for help, one or two at a time, failing to fill the whole need, we can know that it is sufficient that we try to be a little more perfect than we are, rather than perfect all at once.

I’ll be paying more attention to a few of society’s untouchables again next week.

Anyone who has read around my blog generally (and I’m becoming aware that there is actually quite a lot of it) will appreciate that the reason I’m where I am, a panentheist contemplative mystic with a largely scientific-rationalist thought process trying to settle down into something like a normative form of Christianity, is because I found at an early stage F.C. Happold’s book “Mysticism, a Study and Anthology”. I was persuaded by that of a number of things:-
Firstly, I had somehow become a mystic (rather than some other explanation, such as “completely mad”);
Secondly, principally via the quotations from the Oxyrhyncus papyri (out of the Gospel of Thomas), Jesus was a panentheist mystic;
Thirdly, saints Paul and John were mystics of some description;
Fourthly, there was a long chain of respected mystics within Christianity, many of whom I could identify as panentheist in their experience even if restrained from anything like a full statement of panentheism in their words;
Fifthly that a wide variety of other religions around the world had also produced numbers of panentheist mystics, many of whom had felt able to express their experiences in more overtly panentheistic terms than the Christian and proto-Christian writers.

I later found that I could identify passages which sounded very strongly to me as if they were based on a panentheist mystical appreciation of the world in other gospels, notably in Matthew.

I wrote in “Mythicism and the Christ of Faith” “I have a clear conception of what he was (as an historical figure) in that he has to have been a God-mystic, as I am a God-mystic. I wish him to be the archetypal God-mystic on whom I can base myself…”. In other words, in reading the gospels, Thomas and to some extent Paul, I am looking for a template of a Historical Jesus who is a panentheist God-mystic. I can also look for the Christ of faith through, for example, St. John and St. Paul, but principally I am going to relate to that of Jesus which is most similar to my peculiarity (and I acknowledge that there do not seem to be vast numbers of panentheist mystics in Christianity, and even less who actually write from a panentheist perspective).

However, I read Historical Jesus study and am struck by exactly the conclusion which John Dominic Crossan came to in “The Historical Jesus”; that many of those seeking to find the Jesus of history “do autobiography and call it biography”, i.e. they find the Jesus who resembles them, which is the Jesus they want to find. Knowingly or unknowingly, when setting criteria for the authenticity or otherwise of sayings of Jesus, they set criteria which will privilege the view which, mirabile dictum, they then proceed to find is the authentic Jesus. I would put it as “seeking Jesus, they find a mirror”. Crossan found “a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant” from the subtitle of that book; I am not suggesting that Crossan is Mediterranean, Jewish or a Peasant, but I am suggesting that his preconceptions have led him to a substantially demythologised Jesus stripped of a lot of features which appear in the gospels, and that those include a distinct affiliation with the more marginal classes of society, a non-privileged background and, in all probability, feelings against imperial rule, all of which I suspect could well apply to himself.

So, am I doing exactly the same as all the eminent scholars who have preceded or paralleled my scholarly very non-eminent efforts? It does have to be an ever-present danger. It used to be the case that I could comfortably say “and if, on analysis, the author of these sayings were not Jesus, then there was in the process of redaction of the work a writer who was a panentheist mystic of great stature, and I do not need that to have been ‘Jesus’”. However, that is not so much the case now. I am considerably more invested in the community of believers or Christianity than I used to be, and I have also started finding substantial devotional value in the Christ of faith (about which more later). As the Christ of faith rests, in Christian tradition, almost entirely on the Historical Jesus, a separating between Jesus/Christ and the panentheist mystic or mystics in the equation would be less than optimal.

I do not, however, see the Historical Jesus (whether this be authentic or a construction of his followers’ memories) as a fairly one-dimensional “panentheist God-mystic” and nothing else. I am myself, after all, not merely a panentheist God-mystic. I don’t have a problem with him also being other things. Possibly, however, he was not all of the things which scholars have found him to be. After all, my base approach with most things theological is to champion both “both-and” and “neither-nor” explanations simultaneously. If anyone spots me talking like a postmodernist, however, I give you leave to call me on it in the strongest terms!

Actually, this thinking is basically forensic; I look at competing witness statements and attempt to assess what truth they may all be talking about, similarly with advocates; by and large, witnesses think that they are telling the truth and advocates think they are advancing the same (although in the second case, ethically all they need is not to advance what they know to be a lie). I can therefore sift through the products of great scholarship and form a reasoned opinion without, on the whole, having to have anything remotely like the scholarly learning and abilities which they have developed. Nor do I need to allege any conspiracies, cover-ups or deliberate fabrications.

So what are these pictures of Jesus? There is a fairly good list at Early Christian Writings, some of which I will quote, with the names of scholars who espouse these as given there:-

Jesus the Hellenistic Hero Gregory Riley Jesus the Revolutionary Robert Eisenman Jesus the Wisdom Sage John Dominic Crossan Robert Funk Burton Mack Stephen J. Patterson

Jesus the Man of the Spirit Marcus Borg Stevan Davies Geza Vermes Jesus the Prophet of Social Change Richard Horsley Hyam Maccoby Gerd Theissen Jesus the Apocalyptic Prophet Bart Ehrman Paula Fredriksen Gerd Lüdemann John P. Meier E. P. Sanders

I have deliberately omitted from this list those who chiefly see the Christ of faith, including the mythicists; I do not discount them, but they are talking of a Jesus founded, in my view, entirely in interpretation and not in factual personality (so far as it might be possible to do that), and I am not dealing with that Jesus here. I do deal with that Jesus devotionally, but have no problem acknowledging that Jesus as a human construct.

I have no problem at all in Jesus having been a Hellenistic hero-martyr, a wisdom sage or a prophet of social change as well as the “man of the spirit” which is the nearest any of these categories come to what I really think Jesus was, at the most vital level. Perhaps I would not arrive at these in exactly the same way as the authors listed, and I think that in almost every case they are too protective of their own viewpoint against others and go somewhat too far in stressing their preferred image, but the general direction of their thinking does not raise my panentheist mystical hackles.

Although not listed as a separate cagegory, numbers of these would also categorise Jesus as an observant Jew (granted with some slightly radical ideas), a Pharisee and a man more of the people than of the elite, and particularly attracted to the marginalised, the “lost of the house of Israel”. Again, I have no problem with these descriptions.

None, however, list “Messiah” or “Prophet” as possibilities, principally, I think, because both are thought to include supernatural elements and those are anathema to historical enquiry. I will be revisiting those later.

I do have problems with Eisenman’s “Revolutionary” Jesus, though I think that in fact even Eisenman might agree that his evidence comes primarily from Jesus’ brother James, who possibly was an active revolutionary. This picture does not fit well with the Wisdom Sage, Man of the Spirit or Social Prophet identities (individually or collectively), for a start. It requires too much material which stresses non-violent action and pacifism to be explained away or excluded (as does, for instance, Reza Aslan in “Zealot: the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth”). In addition, I can go to my template for a mystic and enquire whether active, aggressive revolution is consistent with this.

The most overwhelming feature of mystical experience as I see it described elsewhere and as I experience it myself is the removal of the perception of barriers between the self and the other, such that the self becomes one with “the all” (and with every individual part of it). It is nearly, but not quite, impossible to avoid equation of “the all” with God and make of this a theosis, with the proviso that “that which the self is one with” is experienced as immeasurably greater than the sum of “all that is” in any materialistic sense (thus becoming panentheism rather than panethism).

I stress that this is something which is vividly experienced, not something which is arrived at as a neat philosophical way of looking at things. For the mystic, it is subjectively not belief, it is fact; this is the way things are. It is also the case that the rest of the material world is going to be experienced vividly without boundaries; the other is in a very real way a part of you yourself.

This is a phenomenon known sometimes as disindividuation, the complete collapse of the boundaries of the self; it is not to be confused with the phenomenon of deindividuation, which although it has some similarities to disindividuation, involves merely groups of people, and prompts such things as “herd mentality”. Deindividuation seems always to be linked with the surrender of the self to the group; disindividuation may involve the surrender of the self to the All, but may also involve the sense of the All as within (and therefore in a sense subordinate to) the self. Most commonly, both are experienced either simultaneously or cycling so rapidly as to be nearly indistinguishable from simultaneity. The presence (and non-significance) of the boundaries of the self can also be felt simultaneously. Mysticism is not for those with difficulties accepting cognitive dissonance!

It follows that the mystic will feel immense empathy with and compassion towards the world generally and fellow human beings more specifically when in the mystical state; my own experience and that I learn from others indicates that this empathy tends to persist long beyond the peak experience itself. This will, I think, inevitably colour (if not dominate) the thinking and actions of the mystic.

Thus a “social revolutionary” who feels for, wishes to ameliorate the lot of and preferentially associates with the dispossessed, the marginalised, the social outcasts and the politically powerless is to be expected of a mystic; he is, after all, at one with all of them, and not (so far as he is concerned) in a metaphorical way. So too do we expect a scorn for the expoiters, the dominators and those who show little or no mercy or fellow feeling. It is, however, unlikely that he will propose violence as a general course, as he will also be at one with the exploiters and dominators while regretting their actions.

It would not, however, be inconsistent for him to carry out some limited act of violence (provided the end was sufficiently good) or similarly to anticipate a degree of violence in setting right some injustice; I cannot therefore completely rule out that Jesus might on occasion have contemplated an actual uprising, I can just doubt that he would have advocated it.

It will be completely consistent for him to consider his own life as disposable in pursuit of a higher end – after all, his consciousness of self extends far beyond the limits of his physical frame, and “his” survival is no longer completely dependent on the survival of the particular fleshly vessel in which his consciousness is centred. Thus the “hero martyr” image becomes more believable.

However, the empathy and compassion which he will feel will also be attributed by him to the All with which he is at one (and will be confirmed by his continuing experience). It is therefore somewhat unlikely that he will have visions of Godly intervention to provoke catastrophe. The mindset of “this is wrong, but God will act to correct it” is somewhat inimical to the mystical experience as I know it; the mindset of “this is wrong, but God will move to encourage people to learn from it and eventually be changed” is closer to the likely attitude. I therefore have strong doubts that Jesus was actually an apocalyptic prophet as this is normally understood.

Empathy and compassion will be joined with at least an occasional ability to be hypersensitive to very small signals. He is therefore likely to gain a reputation of being able to know peoples’ thoughts. This will also assist in, for instance, the diagnosis of psychological or medical problems. Not only perception will be affected, but also subconscious reasoning will be massively heightened, which may also assist diagnoses. A reputation as a healer is therefore to be expected, irrespective of any grossly supernatural effect.

The heightening of subconscious reasoning (in speed as well as accuracy), coupled with the knowledge element of the experience in and of itself, is, I think, bound to result in “wisdom” statements and statements which are not initially readily understood by those around him. I should point out that my attribution of enhanced reasoning to the mystical condition is very largely based on my own experience (and to some extent that of others) and not on any scientific study (I’m not aware of any). It would, however, seem to have analogies to athletes talking about “being in the zone”, archers talking about “being one with the arrow and or the target” and similar phenomena which do appear to have some scientific backing.

The same feature is also likely to improve the ability instinctively to predict the outcome of chains of events now in existence. At this point, I would like to revisit the issue of “Apocalyptic Prophet”. I admit that I start here with a bias; I do not think that the future is predictable in the long term, even by God. I do however think that prophets generally tend to consider the trends observable in their current societies and extrapolate as to what is likely to happen if nothing is done to change direction. This will be particularly marked if they are also mystics and therefore possess, sporadically, the ability to harness better the whole of their thinking processes and not just the conscious part. I think that, given this assumption and from what we know of the situation in the Palestine of around 30 CE, we can accept that it did not actually require supernatural power to realise that the political situation was grossly unstable, even without another movement of messianic expectations.

Given the known characteristics of Roman governors of the time, and in particular Pontius Pilate, who was eventually recalled (inter alia) on the grounds of excessive brutality, it seems to me that unrest leading to a Roman overreaction was predictable, and with a little additional foresight, that the destruction of the Temple was to be anticipated. There was, after all, precedent for that destruction; the first Temple had been destroyed by oppressive occupiers. Following from that, a major crisis in Judaism could also be anticipated. I think this is, in the terms of Judean Jews of the time, sufficiently apocalyptic to satisfy a suggestion of “Apocalyptic Prophet”.

Whether the details of any sayings by Jesus on this subject were anything like those we now see reported in the Gospels is, to my mind, less certain. Memories are reinforced by conformity to expectations and, indeed, are adjusted the better to conform to these. The expectation in significant sections of Second Temple Judaism was of a Messiah, and a substantial proportion of that expected divine intervention to establish the messiah. Much of it (probably overlapping other divisions) anticipated a kingly Messiah of the line of David who would restore the monarchy and usher in a golden age.

Assuming Jesus to have prophetically predicted such an apocalyptic (in the more mundane sense) event, I would expect the panentheist Mystic who felt all life to be a part of him, and whose pains and deaths he would suffer in sympathy, to want to avoid being the catalyst for the event himself. It does not surprise me therefore to see that in Mark and to a lesser extent Matthew, Jesus is found to instruct the disciples repeatedly not to speak of his wonder-working to outsiders. He would not, I think, have wanted to be viewed as “the Messiah” given the expectations of very many listeners unless he felt that he had extremely thoroughly transmitted the message that his “Kingdom of God” or “Kingdom of Heaven” was not an earthly empire, but a spiritual awakening which would spread through the people and which had already commenced. I write in “Kingdom Thinking” of what I consider (using my assumptions as to Jesus’ nature as a mystic) to be his message of the Kingdom.

I think he managed to transmit both the message that an overturning of the current order was imminent (in which he was entirely correct) and that the Kingdom of God was on hand, among his followers, experienceable by some of them at least in this lifetime and that it would spread. In this he was also correct; the timescale, however, was not the 40 years to the destruction of the Temple, and the Kingdom has still not come to its full fruition. May it come soon.

In sum, therefore, my own preconception about “what Jesus was” seems to me to fit a large amount of what scholars have extracted as their preferred pictures. In fact, it actually fits a fair amount of material which is normally attributed to some viewpoint of Jesus’ followers (probably the writers of the gospels), which does not therefore need to be too assiduously minimised. I may not be correct; I am not a scholar of the original texts. However, if I am correct, this is an understanding of Jesus which is, to say the least, underplayed by most scholars. I think if bears closer investigation by someone with more credentials than me.