The feasts of Easter and Christmas invariably excite news magazines to bring forward an article or two on Jesus. This Paschaltide, Maclean’s, Canada’s preeminent weekly, featured an article by Brian Bethune on two recent works: Bart Ehrman’s Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Saviour, and Richard Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. It is not my intention to critique the offerings of professors Erhman and Carrier. However, on their topics of investigation I offer my own following reflections.
History is always a selective remembering, a choice of certain “facts” from amongst others not only toward building an understanding of events past and present, but of defining oneself or one’s community. A simple list can be made of all the political, diplomatic, military, and social manoeuvers constitutive of the War of 1812, but Canada, Britain, and the United States will continue to hold differing perspectives and evaluations of those events, varying interpretations of their importance and ramifications. While history is a selective remembering, memory is itself selective. We, at least we of a certain age, may adeptly recall our multiplication tables, but in larger part, our memories constitute merely a private history, something coloured not only with the recall of concrete events but of our emotive valuations and accentuations of those events. Thus, neither memory nor history are infallible realities. They are ways in which we as pragmatic and emotive beings function within our social networks. They may inform in great depth about our personal and communal perceptivity and values, but they do not, cannot, constitute the material of scientific, incontestable, mathematically certain knowledge. They may not be fictions, but they are fabrications.
It bewilders me that in an age of information, an age well past the trials of Galileo, so many still look upon Christian scripture as history in the sense of a list of incontrovertible facts. Religion is the realm of faith, trust, hope; it is not an assent to a collection of concrete data. Christian scripture has long been understood as “sacred history”, “salvation history”, history as seen from the vantage point of heaven, or through the eye of faith in heaven’s power and indefectible plan, but that only underscores its nature as an item of belief. Religion, in itself, rests upon an interpretation of an inner experience of one’s value. It may be tempered, occasioned, and coloured by the world and its passing events, but it is about one’s meaningfulness in this world, about the intimate understanding of the ultimate meaning of life. As ultimate, as something that transcends the quotidian world, that is capable of limiting—of de-fining–it, it presents as something that can be enrobed in images of a creator-god. Yet, is there any man who believes in a God who would dare demean his God by claiming his simple words, his simple mind, can define or confine that God? Any God worthy of the title is beyond words, and all religions have in one manner or another acknowledged that—at least in their theological tracts. Christianity has gone further, and enshrined it in its scriptures wherein God is glimpsed only experientially, only in and through the incarnate word, “the word made flesh”, be that of Jesus, or of his follower, who, says Paul, must surrender self into, not the role, but the very being of the Creator’s “appointed agent” in the world (in scriptural terminology: “Christ”). I counter all them that are wont to dismiss that as mythology by acknowledging all religion is mythological—as long as myth is understood as, not fabricated falsehood, but simple, imaginative (image-making) narrative conveying a profound insight into humanity and its world that psychology, philosophy, and theology would all belabour themselves to say in a single volume. Art, be it narrative, painting, dance or some other form, has long been known to convey the reality of a situation more forcefully than the most reasoned and crystalline argumentation. Few, if any, have read a passage by Aquinas or Jung on sin and wept. Yet, how many have looked upon an icon of the Crucified and known in the rupturing wells of heart the misery of sin and its consequence upon self and them beloved?
The focus on the reliability of memory in the composition of Christian scripture opens an interesting exercise, but in the scripture there is a very specific context to “in memory of me”. Luke places this line on Jesus’ lips as he shares a last meal with his disciples, a meal depicted within the framework of a Passover Seder, a ritualistic meal that is about remembering God’s deliverance of the tribes of Israel from bondage, formulating them into a covenanted “people” under a Law, and leading them into a place of promise. Luke engineers this format to proclaim to his charges that here begins a new religion wherein the deliverance is from bondage to sin to mutuality of forgiving, from duty under law to freedom into the very Spirit in which creation and its perfection are founded, a spirit of self-giving, healing, care for others, and concern for the world—the Christian characterizations of holiness and love. It is not a summons to a personality-cult centred on Jesus, but to remembering the very social and egalitarian mission that is here delegated. It is the continuation of the call to “follow me”, the last enunciation of the vocation to servant-hood, to “humility”, to selflessness in service of others, to taking up the life of self-giving–“the cross”.
To the point of the historical nature of the gospels, it needs be stressed they are not histories. They are theological compositions meant as spring-boards for preaching and teaching, a type of easily accessible and recountable catechism in narrative form. The thrust of every of the four gospels, and the dozen or so that never made it into scripture, is contoured to the community for whom it was composed. The four canonical gospels present us with very differing pictures of Jesus and the progress of his mission. Rome-rooted Mark knows the allure of contemporary mystery religions, and his version of the Messiah keeps his identity and mission a secret reserved to them initiated into its “dynamic” and unfolding power. Mark’s Jesus is the illusively named “son of man”, the apocalyptic figure from the Book of Daniel who acts as agent to oversee the transition into the time of God’s reign. Luke knows the stoic humanitarianism at base of his gentile audience, as Matthew the reverence for tradition at the heart of his once Jewish congregants. In Luke, healing, forgiveness and self-sacrifice define every passage with the cross the ultimate sacrifice. It is a summons to take up the mission to charitably dispel pain and suffering wherever it is found. Matthew is sensitive to the Judaic traditions of his charges. His concern is to present the “new way” as a respectful continuation of the past. The “sermon on the mount”, a collection of wise moral sayings attributed to Jesus, is constructed by rabbinical Matthew to present Jesus as the new Moses. As from a mountain top Moses delivered to Israel the law of God, Jesus gives to his followers a new set of directives. Matthew’s conservatism will be challenged by the Hellenistic, the universalistic, tendencies within the budding church. The deacon Stephen, Luke, and Paul will find it necessary to present the “new way” in non-Judaic terms. They will literally and culturally translate the Jewish idea of Messiah into the Greek Χριστος [Christ, anointed agent], and the Latin soter [Saviour]. They will initiate the move of the idea of Messiah out of its native cult and culture, and release it to be the defining element of every culture it encounters. While in Matthew and Mark the burden for the execution of Jesus falls upon the leaders of Judaism or Roman power, in John, written well after the Temple was destroyed and its rites terminated, after Judaism pointedly excommunicated the followers of Jesus, expelled them from the synagogues, and denounced them to Rome as a “new” and thus disallowed religion, the onus for the death of Jesus is placed simply on “the Jews”—a pejorative that has been misappropriated by generations of anti-Semites. For the once Jewish John, Christ is the supplanting of Temple and every Jewish rite, the incarnate locus of God’s presence and power until the end of time. In Mark, Jesus cloaks his identity, in John, he blazons it, telling his disciples that were the crowds not to proclaim him the very stones in the walls of Jerusalem would shout out his honours. The gospels give us no one vision of Jesus because their concern is with the God acting in Jesus, with the Spirit—not the history–of Jesus. They give us no one direction for action other than we meet our neighbour as brother or sister, that we remember we are called to serve the world God loves to the point of having endured for its well-being death upon a cross.
The very term “gospel” tells us what they are—proclamations of a “victory”! A victory over sin, or in more acceptable modern parlance, man’s incessant ability to act out of self-interest and disregard for the consequences upon others. Jesus represents, or more accurately according to scripture, constitutes in himself the present coming of a new era, one in which all are called to acknowledge their frailty (“all have sinned”), and their familial bonding (“our father”). Jesus is the initiation of this new Spirit, this new way, this new life. He acts as he sees his Father-God acting—ceaselessly, providentially, patiently weaving out the better, creatively drawing all humanity into a mutuality of embrace. He is the agent of God in the world (in scriptural terms: Messiah/Christ). His call is for all to take up his task and follow after him. The gospels are not about Jesus, but about the spirit he unleashes, a spirit that will not be bounded by laws, but defined by the care, concern and love exhibited for one’s “neighbour”, for the situation with which one is encountered. Thus, Paul shows little concern for any biographical material regarding Jesus. His thrust is to have his charges emulate this spirit, to “put on Christ”, to submit to Jesus’ call to “Be ye perfect”, to complete one’s personhood in giving oneself for others, opening oneself to others, to keeping love for the other and this world “God so loves” the outermost and foremost virtue in all one’s considerations and actions (Romans 13, Colossians 3). His vision of the Christ is cosmic because the mission is continuous and universal. In Paul, Christ is a dynamic composite coalescing around the divine vitality resident in Jesus, a holy and mystical union of all them carrying forward the sacred mission. The scriptures are not concerned with either history or chronology but with the “potentiality of a moment” [καιρός, kairos], with how, here and now, do you, can you, will you address your neighbour, your world, your situation.
While we cannot look to these theological texts for a biography of Jesus, we cannot use them to dismiss the historicity of Jesus. Paul may have, within a few decades of Jesus’ death, given us the earliest Christian writings, but before he became a follower, he was a member of a rabbinical class adamantly opposed to the Jesus-heresy which was flourishing throughout synagogues both in and outside of Palestine. By his prolific pen Paul may have muchly defined Christianity, but he did not invent it. Neither, think I, did an assortment of fishermen, a tax collector, a political revolutionary or two, a young priest, and some solicitous women. If these “disciples”—the earliest proclaimers of Jesus as Messiah–found themselves one day after the death of their master boldly reinterpreting and promulgating their native religion in a “new way”, is it so difficult for the world, in the experiences of the last few decades, to understand that their “radicalization” to the point of laying down their lives came from the fire and inspiration of a teacher of extraordinary power? Not some-thing, not some ennui with the status quo, but some-one stirred them to such faith. The one item Paul, Mark, Matthew, James, John, Peter, and Luke all agree upon is the importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus as the divine agent for the world: he died, and his mission is bequeathed to us to continue. That they speak of resurrection as his having been “raised up to God”, “hidden in God” until the end of time is Judeo-apocalyptic reference to the indefectibility of this mission: God is unstoppable, the “ever and without end”. Death will not deter his will.
Last, religion is always about images—be they narrative, rite, statue, picture, song, or dance. Religion is about utilizing such to convey an insight and to inspire authenticity of life. Religion is always in battle with the prejudices of the greater society in which it dwells, and too often it fails, becomes swallowed up by or subjugated to those biases, rather than transforming them. Nevertheless, religions, because they address man and seek to call him to the fullness of his potential, replicate certain themes, chief among them is sacrifice, specifically self-sacrifice, because holiness is always understood as in some manner a negation of self, either as the giving away of oneself to the service of others, or as a purposeful detachment of self from mundane desires and things. Thus, ideas of death (dying to self) and resurrection (finding a new and all-defining vitality) are recurrent themes. The ancient rites of the dying and rising divinities, particularly Osiris and Persephone, may well have influenced early Christian ritual, just as the synagogal system of Judaism directed its formatting. Early Christianity was a child of its culture. It incorporated its world into its enunciation of who and what it was. It has not, unfortunately, well exhibited an ability to recognize the boundaries and differentiations betwixt the culture adopted and its core vision and mission. It has not learned to prudently and astutely speak to the modern world disinclined to envision the foundational power of being as a wizened humanoid afloat on cherub laden clouds. It has not discovered how to present its visionary truths as visions, as pictures of life’s profoundest positivity without diminishing itself. It has not learned to reverse “God is love” and simply say “to love is to be godly”. It still wants to make knowing and upholding doctrines more important than knowing and embracing one another.
The mission, the meaning of Christianity, is to make “agents”, as says Luke, of comfort, healing, and a time of reprieve wherever there be disease, discomfort, disenfranchisement. No religion can supply answers. Christianity, in authenticity to itself and the world it exists to serve, can only induce one to live creatively, embolden one to open one’s mind and heart and arms. When it does such, it makes an extraordinary, a sacred space in this world wherein one may stand and be inspired for better things to happen.
Luke employed in his narrative of Jesus’ last meal a liturgical formula familiar to his charges: “Whenever you break bread together, remember me”, and they understood its moral meaning: whenever you share your life, remember you share God. How ought we Christians in this secular world to read the obverse of that? Wherever life is not broken open, Love is not to be found, seen, or sensed, and the meaning, the meaningfulness, of God is forgotten. In insularity—be it of churches, doctrines, or recalcitrant self-interest–God slips away from the world’s touch and memory. And what are we without memories? What are we when we forget the hopes and aspirations resident in things past? What are we when self-pillaged of our histories?