You're Own Personal Jesus

"It is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd." - Tertullian, referring to the death of the Son of God

I’ve been listening to a Stanford University class on “The Historical Jesus,” taught by Thomas Sheehan (itunes U, totally free! Be careful, though, as this is a full-fledged attack on everything orthodox Christian’s believe, and is not for those who are ill-prepared.). Sheehan is a Jesus Seminar guy who is “Christian” according to only the loosest of definitions, who is lecturing on the Jesus of history as opposed to the Jesus of faith. This Jesus, according to Sheehan and the rest of the Seminar, didn’t say or do most of what is in the New Testament. He didn’t claim to be the messiah, he never thought of himself as the pre-existing, divine Son of God, and his resurrection corresponded to Siddhartha Gautama’s “awakening” (i.e. “Buddha,” the enlightened or awakened one). Obviously, this historical Jesus, a charismatic prophet by all accounts, cannot be reconciled with orthodox Christianity, and, if these ideas are true, those of us who take Jesus to be the Logos of God are naïve at very, very best.

I haven’t done much “historical Jesus” research, but it’s a field that totally fascinates me, because Jesus as God’s revelation, Jesus as the icon of our faith, is more important to me than Jesus as the worker or miracles, Jesus as the Davidite born in Bethlehem, Jesus as the apocalyptic preacher. But, like anyone with conviction and faith, I can only go so far. I get to an impasse where my gut says “Wait, I must believe points A, B, and C actually happened in space and time in order for the Gospel to have eternal value.” Let’s assume there is credibility to the Jesus Seminar’s conclusions and that the Synoptic Tradition – the Gospels as history – as well as the Pauline doctrines do not reflect in their entirety the message and life of Jesus. Of course, there is plenty of scholarly research that pokes major holes in the methods used by the Jesus Seminar, but let’s plays their game first. The questions must be these: What are the essentials (i.e. what must have happened in space and time for the Gospel to have eternal value)? If the historical Jesus is so vastly different from the Jesus of faith, should we re-interpret the Gospel according to history, or is our Christian mythology divinely inspired?

We can only tackle the first question according to denominational traditions, but certain doctrines are easy to label as “essential” to all orthodox Christians. First, the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead is perhaps the most important of all propositions. This is based on Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15, and is, in my perspective, unavoidable for those who accept the Pauline letters as authoritative. Let’s consider those who disagree, and who say Paul’s version of Christianity is a later development, manifesting itself some 20+ years after Jesus’ death. If that is the case, and if Paul is only expressing the legends and propaganda of his particular Christian community, then we can reject the necessity of the resurrection. Of course, this means we really don’t have much else to label “essential” because Paul’s letters are the earliest Christian documents we possess. All other Gnostic texts, New Testament Apocrypha, writings of the Church Fathers, as well as the rest of the Apostolic writings and Gospels, were written much later. So where do we start? We must start with an assumption about the bearers of Christian orthodoxy – the real Christian community that carried down the exact traditions of Jesus’ life and teachings. Whose community was it? Was it the community that created Mark or John, or Paul’s community, or some Gnostics? Were things really as organized as the episcopalian-governed churches (Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican) would have us believe to the point where the Apostles gave a “deposit of faith” to their successors who maintained true Christianity up through Constantine and beyond?

Maybe our answer is that we believe God divinely inspire the Bible, and so when Matthew writes that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church, and that when Paul writes the Church is the pillar and ground of truth, that God is communicating to the hearers of the Scriptures His promise to guide the Church into all truth, despite the Bible’s historical flimsiness. This would have to be our assumption, however, and we would be exercising faith in spite of the testimony of history.

What about the option of assuming nothing about Jesus, and choosing to experience him in the Scriptures and in the traditions of the churches? This is the method of Schleiermacher and the classic liberals who present Jesus as a personal, existential crisis that each individual incorporates and modifies according to his or her own preferences (and prejudices). This seems like a valid option, though it wouldn’t have any significance other than serving private feelings of fulfillment. It’s theology as therapy at its most evident.

Or there’s the option of rejecting the necessity of historical accuracy: we can admit the Jesus of history is entirely different than the Jesus of faith, but refuse to label one or the other as being the “true” Jesus. This would take a position on faith that it involves intentional rejection of historical, empirical data. Faith would become an act of rebellion against science, against empirical epistemology, and demand that truth be the product not of collected data or religious dogma, but of the person of Jesus. Faith would be total cognitive absurdity, staring at a 4, knowing it is a 4, and insisting it is a 5, believing it to be a 5. This is the position of fideism, but only initially. Only the leap of faith is absurd, but after making it, one enters a new world, an enlightened (awakened) world where the language of faith may be spoken of rationally, and where divine things become objects that can be spoken of.

This doesn’t seem any different to me than actually going insane. It is the foolishness of men, retardation to a state of mental infancy. In other words, it’s exactly what the Jesus of faith demands of his followers: God confuses the wisdom of men with foolishness, and only those with a childlike faith can enter the Kingdom. Of course, the idea that this is the biblical perspective does nothing but supplement the notion that the Scriptures and Christian orthodoxy are not historically sound. Perhaps God providentially caused the Jesus Seminar to push believers into a new arena wherein it becomes necessary to conclude the absurdity of the Scriptures as well as things like the Incarnation, Resurrection, Trinity, etc. It’s that last bastion of Christianity to which we have always attempted to apply reason and human wisdom, and maybe God’s just gotten fed up with it.

Again, all of this is just reflections on the situation at hand if the Jesus Seminar’s conclusions are true. That premise is still very much up for debate, and I plan on devoting a good amount of research to that very problem. All insights are appreciated, as always.