THE JESUS AGENDA - CHRISTIANITY FOR A
NEW CENTURY - by: Patricia A. Williams
Theology today, if it is to be truly today's theology, must accept contemporary knowledge. It must be scientifically credible, historically convincing, and globally relevant. It is my contention that the best way for Christian theology to accomplish these things is to focus on Jesus and embrace his agenda. It needs to represent Jesus as a human being who embodied and revealed the divine rather than as a divine being who came down from heaven (where is that?) and, once his divine mission was accomplished, returned there, leaving us behind. To focus on Jesus as fully human, as orthodox Christianity affirms he was, will be to confront some theological challenges. Many people, frightened, see such challenges as threats, foretelling loss. Exhilarated, I see them as opportunities prophesying greater theological understanding, forecasting gain. This article discusses some of the doctrines that must change and the reasons they must change. It depicts the losses the alterations will bring and then presents the concomitant gains. It begins with a subject that disturbs many people: the scientific credibility of Jesus.
Scientific Credibility
As a human being, Jesus is no more scientifically credible or incredible than anyone else. However, certain beliefs about him, credible in the first centuries of Christianity, are impossible to believe along with today's science. Moreover, scripture gives them little support. In this article there is only space to discuss two such beliefs: the virgin birth ofJesus and his resurrection/ascension.
The Virgin Birth
The virgin birth1 is unmistakably attested only in Luke's gospel. After the angel announces to Mary that she will "conceive in your womb and bear a son" (Luke 1:31), Mary clearly states that she has not had sex (1:34). The angel then reassures her that the Spirit will "overshadow you" and the child "will be called Son of God" (1:35). The only other birth narrative is in Matthew (1:18-25). In the original Greek, Mary's status is, at best, ambiguous. Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14. In English, the word is virgin: "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son" (1:23). However, there is no word for virgin in Greek or Hebrew. The ancient words traditionally translated as "virgin," almah (Hebrew) and parthenos (Greek), mean, approximately, a woman old enough to bear a child who has not yet borne one, whether she is married or not. So Mary has passed menarche, but not yet proven her fertility by becoming pregnant. Given Matthew's genealogy for Jesus, which includes four women with questionable sexual histories (Matt 1:1-17), Matthew may well have believed that a man other than Joseph fathered Jesus, but Joseph made him legitimate by adopting him.2 Paul, our earliest source, knows nothing of a virgin birth and twice states that Jesus was born naturally (Gal 4:4; Rom 1:3).
Moreover, the concept of God as a literal father is pagan, not Jewish. When women in the Hebrew Scriptures become miraculously pregnant, they have sex with their husbands and conceive in the normal way. God makes fertility possible when it seems impossible, overcoming old age (Gen 18:9-15) or sterility (1 Sam 1:20). In contrast, gods fathered pagan heroes by having sex with the mothers, sometimes posing as their husbands to do so. So, the mothers of heroes were not usually virgins in our sense; they had had sex with men. However, such sex failed to produce heroes. To the pagan mind, heroes required gods as fathers.
Pagans thought they knew how such births were possible. In normal conceptions between a man and a woman, they believed the male furnished the human spirit of the new child while the female supplied the flesh. Given those beliefs, for a god to father a child is simple: the god bestows the divine spirit; females provide the human flesh. The result is a spiritually divine, physically human child - part divine, part human. Christian doctrine, in contrast, makes Jesus fully human and fully divine. Is this possible?
Not according to today's knowledge of conception. In conception between human beings, science tells us the male supplies half the DNA and the female provides the other half. DNA is material, made up of atoms that form strings of chemicals, governed by the laws of physics and chemistry. Obeying those laws, the material strings of chemicals unite to form a zygote that, without complications, will grow into a fetus and be born as a baby. If the zygote has a Y chromosome, the child will be male, if an X instead, a female.
Thus, ancient and modern understandings of conception are incommensurable. For the ancient world, the gods are spirits, can assume any shape they please, and supply the spirit of a person much as a man does when a normal child is conceived. In the modern world, God is supernatural, that is, above and beyond what science uncovers or can discuss, whereas science understands a man's contribution to a zygote. It is natural and material, chemically DNA. In contrast, God is immaterial, neither made of atoms nor bound by the laws of chemistry.
Under contemporary biology, the virgin birth of Jesus by the spirit of God so that he is fully divine and fully
human is not conceptually possible. And because it is not conceptually possible, invoking miracles will not save it. If Jesus is to be divine today, he needs half his DNA and a Y chromosome from God-and that would make him only half divine and half human. Nonetheless, there are three logical possibilities worth exploring.
If God supplies something from beyond nature, from God's divinity (according to the Nicene Creed, Jesus is
"of one substance with the Father"), it is not material and therefore not DNA. Yet without the missing chemical DNA, no conception can occur, for nothing biological will function at the cellular level. There is nothing human here. Second, if God supplies human DNA, a string of chemicals such as Joseph might have provided, certainly a baby might result, but it will be human, just like the rest of us, for all its DNA is human. Here, there is nothing divine. Third, if God creates a supernatural, immortal soul for every human being, as many strands of Christianity believe, then God created one for Jesus, too, but his super natural soul is just like yours and mine, an extra-added and unnecessary ingredient.3 Under this view, everyone is divine. Nonetheless, like the rest of us, Jesus still needs his full complement of DNA. These possibilities do not negate the concept that Jesus was as divine as a human being can be - fully filled with the spirit of God - but they do refute the virgin birth as the vehicle that makes Jesus divine.
From this one loss, four things are gained. First is honesty about scripture. The original Hebrew and Greek quoted in Matthew said young woman (after menarche, before her first child). Theology cannot honestly insist on translating this as virgin. Second is the repudiation of a major pagan influence on Christianity. The pagans, not the Jews, believed gods fathered heroes. Luke, a Gentile writing for Gentiles, alludes to the pagan belief, although he is careful to insure that God does not literally have sex with Mary. Third, the doctrine of the virgin birth has made Jesus seem superhuman, too different from us to be a role model. Catholicism accentuates this distance when it substitutes human saints for Jesus as people to emulate. If Jesus were born just as we are, he could show us how to live, for he would be fully human, like us. In rejecting the virgin birth, we come closer to Jesus. Fourth, Jesus becomes scientifically credible, which means, among other things, that educated people will not be forced to construe him as a mythological figure, as they must if theology insists on Jesus' virgin birth and supernatural divinity.
The Resurrection/Ascension
Another scientifically incredible and scripturally suspect doctrine about Jesus is the ascension. The ascension is particularly vulnerable because almost everyone has seen pictures of the Earth and the heavens taken from space vehicles, so almost everyone knows that the cosmos is different from the one the Gospel of Luke envisioned.
When Luke wrote his account of Jesus' bodily ascent (the only such account in the gospels), he believed the Earth to be flat, the azure dome of the sky to be solid, and heaven, the abode of God, to be just above the dome. To get from Earth into heaven, one simply ascended from the ground (usually by riding on a cloud) until one reached the dome and then entered heaven through one of its open its doors or windows. In such a cosmos, Jesus' bodily ascent from Earth into heaven made sense. But in today's cosmos, where would Jesus' body go? If it ascended very far from the surface of the Earth, it would need a space suit to survive. Moreover, there would be no point in its going to the moon or Mars or Andromeda, for an omnipresent God would be no more or less there than here.
However, if Jesus' resurrected body were not a resuscitated corpse, it did not need to go to a physical place. If it were not a physical, reanimated body, but something spiritual, science can say nothing about it, so theology would need to rely on scripture. Scripture's strongest evidence reveals that resurrected bodies differ from resuscitated corpses. Our earliest source, Paul, says resurrected bodies are different from ours. The change is from mortal to immortal, from physical to spiritual (1 Cor 15:35-58). Paul does not picture resurrection as the resuscitation of corpses.
The original ending of the earliest gospel, the one attributed to Mark, has an empty tomb, but no resurrection scenes. So we do not know the details of Mark's concept of resurrection, although the empty tomb seems to imply resuscitation. Matthew records an empty tomb, the rumor that Jesus' body had been stolen, and two cameo manifestations that tell us little. Luke has Jesus seen twice. On the road to Emmaus, his disciples fail to recognize him, implying his appearance has changed. In Jerusalem, they think he is a ghost, different in appearance from a man, so he eats fish to reassure them that he is a resurrected figure, not a ghost. The gospel attributed to John has an empty tomb, thoughts of a stolen body, Mary Magdalene failing to recognize Jesus, and Jesus entering a room without going through the door, which is locked. In all cases, Jesus' body is changed; it looks different; it appears and vanishes; it penetrates solid objects; it is different from his pre-crucifixion body. Only the empty tomb vignettes imply that the resurrected Jesus is a resuscitated corpse, and all those are probably based on only one source, Mark's gospel.4 Paul and the gospel appearance stories, taken from at least three sources, imply or explicitly state that his resurrected body is different from his mortal one. About the resurrection, then, theology today should follow scripture's strongest evidence, which indicates that Jesus' resurrected body is not his reanimated corpse, but something spiritual.
To lose Jesus' bodily resurrection and ascension is to gain a great deal. First, it means theology can read scrip ture without doctrinal bias. Only Luke records an ascen sion; only the story of an empty tomb implies resuscitation Otherwise, the earliest sources are either silent about the resurrection and ascension or else they imply or explic ly state that resurrected bodies are not resuscitated ones Second, the doctrines of the resuscitation and the ascension push Jesus away from humanity. According to those doctrines, Jesus is resurrected, appears to his dis ciples, and disappears. Theology thinks he will return sometime, but when? Meanwhile, he is gone. Without the doctrines of the resus citation and the ascension, theology says God has raised him; he appears to his disciples; he remains present with them. Moreover, because his resurrected body is spiritual and immortal, he can be present with us, too. To lose Jesus'bodily resurrection and ascension is to erase the distance between apostolic times and ours. Our times, not merely apostolic times, are special, redolent with divine activity,safe in the compassion of God. And finally, theology gains scientific respectability. It can sit at table with those who are educated and not be ashamed.
Yet, the educated know history as well as science. What do scholars know about Jesus' historicity?
Historicity
To think historically about Jesus is to consider the work of historical Jesus scholars, which has been controver sial. One person with an ideal background to assess it is Raymond Martin, a philosopher of historical methodol ogy.5 After reviewing the books of major contributors, he concludes that the scholars are expert historians who fol low standard historical methods. He notes that they agree about many things and that, because the evidence is often thin and ambiguous and history allows multiple perspec tives, their very disagreements demonstrate their skill as historians.
Along with Marcus Borg, John P. Meier,' and Martin, I think theology today should retain Jesus' miracles - although not the nature miracles, which even the con servative Meier rejects. As Borg and Martin note, we do not know exactly what is possible and what is impossible. Thus, to reject Jesus' exorcisms and healings out of hand as impossible would be arrogant. Moreover, Jesus' miracles and the miracles attributed to other people of his time are not in scripture only; similar deeds appear in the major his tory of the period, Flavius Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews. Furthermore, theology should retain as historical the activi ties attributed to the influence of the Holy Spirit in Acts and Paul as well: the conversions, healings, and speaking in tongues. Similar activities occur today.7
Concerning Jesus' larger life, almost all Jesus scholars retain the central story. The scholars agree that the historical Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great, baptized by John the Baptist, underwent a profound spiritual experience at his baptism, and made his central message the reign of God. They agree that Jesus said the reign of God is present now and characterized it as one of forgiveness, compassion, inclusiveness, and egalitarianism. They agree that he acted on these beliefs, emphasizing especially his communal meals with social outcasts. Even the Jesus Seminar, which some consider to be on the radical end of Jesus scholarship, voted that twenty-three of thirty-five parables attributed to Jesus go back to him and that many of the shorter sayings do as well. Most scholars agree that Jesus caused a commotion in the Temple and many maintain that he ate a last supper with his disciples. Everyone agrees that he was crucified by the Romans with the connivance of the Temple authorities when Pilate ruled Judea, and that some of his disciples, who were deeply frightened after his crucifixion, later became transformed into stalwart preachers of Jesus' resurrection. Thus, they agree that the disciples believed God raised Jesus from the dead.
Therefore, the historical Jesus scholars retain much of the gospel story. However, using their work also brings losses. One loss is the historicity of the birth narratives. However, readers of the gospels do not need to be scholars to see that the narratives disagree with each other, so both cannot be historical, anyway. Moreover, Jesus was born before Quirinius became governor of Syria (despite Luke 2:2), and there is no extra-biblical record of Herod's killing all those babies in Matt 2:16 (mostly, he seems to have killed members of his own family), so parts of the birth narratives, if taken as fact, are false. It seems rational to agree with the Jesus scholars and view the birth narratives as theological treatises, not history.Another loss is the historicity of the Gospel of John. As any attentive reader of the gospels knows, it diverges in many respects from the story the synoptic gospels tell-dif- ferent are the style and content of Jesus' sayings, the order of events, some of the events themselves, and even the date of the last supper and crucifixion. Thus, John and the synoptics cannot both be historical. The reasons for choosing the synoptics as history over John are compelling.8
In disagreement with some of the Jesus scholars, but, making all in agreement with many, I think another loss is Jesus as an apocalyptic, eschatological prophet. I think the early Christian assemblies added apocalyptic messages to the sayings of Jesus in light of Jesus' resurrection.9
Happily, in these losses, much is gained. The largest gain, perhaps, is not needing to defend Jesus as a prophet of apocalyptic eschatology who thought the world would end immediately. If he thought this, he was wrong, as we well know. Moreover, apocalyptic eschatology, at least as it appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls, is vicious and self-righteous. By denying the likelihood that Jesus preached such things, we save him from self-contradiction, from engaging in meanness and selfishness in conflict with other characterizations of Jesus that are surely historical-his compassion and inclusiveness. Because a self-contradictory portrait is unlikely to be true, we have a truer portrait of Jesus without the eschatological passages.
Gained, also, is agreement with historical and biblical scholars who have spent their lives studying the texts and the times and who therefore know more about both than most people do. These scholars provide a deep understanding of Jesus-the man, the Jew, and the prophet. It is not a complete understanding, for the evidence is too slight and too ambiguous. Nevertheless, it is a better understanding than many, myself included, could have gained without them.
Another gain is a deeper understanding of the birth narratives and a better comprehension of the gospels. Once the birth narratives are read as theological works, they illuminate the minds of Matthew and Luke and, so, help us appreciate their gospels better. Marcus Borg1Q makes the profound comment that the Gospel of John is not lost, either. Rather, it is recovered. It shows usJesus as his followers experienced him and honored him after the resurrection. It is truly a great spiritual work.
Finally, we gain honesty and clarity. We know we do not understand the relationship between God and human beings. We base what we think we know on obscure Greek philosophical terms like substance, person, and logos, hiding our own ignorance from ourselves. We also base our ideas on metaphors. God is like a parent to children; God is like sunlight that provides illumination, warmth, and life; God is like a ruler whose very word makes things happen. The great mystics were wiser than theologians are. They said they did not know what God is like, only what God is not.
Yet, I think theologians must try to speak about the relationship of God and human beings, including Jesus. To do so, I will borrow metaphors from a Quaker tradition that is deeply biblical. The Quakers say that all people have a seed of divinity in them. In some, the seed is never nourished. It never develops. It remains a tiny potentiality. In others, the seed is so nourished it grows into a mighty tree, stretching out its branches to all around it, embracing all, making all at home. Alternatively, the divine in people is like a light. In some, it is tiny, hidden, and invisible. In others, it is a great sun, shining forth, warming and illuminating everyone. In Jesus, the divine potential was fully realized. In him, it became a magnificent tree, a brilliant sun.
Here is a way of speaking of Jesus' relationship to God that is simple, comprehensible, unmistakably metaphorical, and based on biblical images. It says Jesus is as full of God as a human being can be. He is full of God, and fully human. People can see God in him, so he is a revelation of God. Is this not the man of God who walked the Earth with other people, ate with them, spoke with them, and told them out of his own experience, with authority, that God is compassionate? Such a portrait can have global relevance.
Global Relevance
One of the things that irritates many people, Christians and non-Christians alike, about Christianity is its claim to be the exclusive way to salvation. Gospel scholars think that Jesus' alleged saying from John's gospel, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6), is unhistorical. The claim of exclusivity put on Jesus' lips here is probably part of the internecine battle among Jews that occurred after Jesus' resurrection in which some finally left the synagogues and began thinking of themselves as Christians.
The claim of exclusivity rests not only on scriptural passages of dubious historical merit, but also on the idea that Jesus' death was a sacrifice for sin - especially a sacrifice for the sins of believers. However, an examination of Jesus' Jesus behavior makes the claim that deliberately died as a sacrifice for anyone's sins dubious. In the gospels the historical Jesus first makes his appearance by the Jordan River as a follower of John the Baptist. John was baptizing people in the Jordan for the forgiveness of their sins, and he baptized Jesus there.
Presumably, Jesus understood what he was doing, that is, he understood John baptized him for the forgiveness of sin. In the wilderness with John, Jesus was far from the Temple. Yet, the Torah specified the Temple as the dwelling place of God and the exclusive site where Jews were to sacrifice for the forgiveness of their sins. In the first century, Jews (and pagans) believed that sacrifice was the means by which their sins were forgiven. Yet, Jesus did not sacrifice, ever, as far as we know from the gospels. When he wanted forgiveness, he sought John and was baptized. When he broke away from John's ministry and began his own, he did not even baptize; he simply told others their sins were forgiven. He used the Temple as a site for teaching, not for sacrifice. Moreover, it is possible that he celebrated the last supper as a substitute for Temple sacrifice, that he meant the bread and wine he blessed (as sacrificial animals were blessed) to be what he sacrificed, an alternative for blood sacrifice in the Temple." He could even have been mocking Temple sacrifice, and mocking it might have been the last straw for the Temple authorities, the reason they sought his death. His mockery of Temple sacrifice at the last supper could have been too blasphemous for Judas, too. It could be what Judas betrayed.
Whatever connection, if any, the last supper might have had with Temple sacrifice, Jesus apparently rejected the social system. He seems to have thought sacrifice unnecessary, that God forgives sins not because God accepts sacrifices, but because God acts like a compassionate parent who generously forgives sinful children and welcomes them back as the father welcomes the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). Indeed, Jesus portrays a God who is so generous that people resent it, resent it as the elder brother does in the story of the prodigal son and as the early-hired laborers do in the parable of the vineyard (Matt 20:1-I6).
If Jesus believed that God does not require sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins, we cannot believe that he deliberately died as a sacrifice for sins. He would have been out of his mind to do so. On the other hand, after Jesus' resurrection, many people, Jewish and pagan, who were eager to explain his crucifixion as God's will, could have interpreted it as a sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins, for this would have been an explanation that seemed obvious to them. However, a sacrificial interpretation does not fit Jesus' own teachings or actions.
Nor does Christian exclusivity. Jesus was notoriously inclusive. Repeatedly the gospels portray him as dining with the wrong crowd, with Galilean lowe-lifes, even women. The gospels also potray him as teaching in the pagan areas across the Sea of Galilee, being followed by crowds from that area, and healing a pagan's servant (Mark 5:1-20: Matt 4:15; Luke 7:1-10).
Theology today - a theology that embraces the historical Jesus - will need to give up its exclusivity and its claim that Jesus died for the sins of believers only. Indeed, it must give up its claim that Jesus died for anyone's sins. He died because he angered and frightened those in power, Jew and Roman alike. In giving up these claims, theology today will make three important gains,
First, it gains a Jesus who was consistent, who thought that God forgives sins freely and generously, from compassion, and who therefore believed that the sacrificial system was unnecessary. He thought that God does not need sacrifices - especially not his own human sacrifice - to forgive sin . Thus, it also gains an omnipotent God who can do what God wants, unconditionally.
Second, it gains the God Jesus preached, a God who is compassionate, generous inclusive, and forgiving, Jesus' God is different from the theological God who sacrificed' an innocent man in order to forgive the guilty. Put simply, theology today must discard its old, punitive God to secure a compassionate one.
Finally, theology today will gain global relevance. It can announce, as John does with his great spiritual insight, that Jesus is a light for everyone (John 1:4). No one is privileged; no one is elite in God's sight. All participate in the divine, some unknowingly, some knowingly, some like a tiny candle, others like a blazing star. In addition, it can rightly claim that Jesus is a blazing star, a sun to see by, a light to live by. Moreover, it can bless everyone by proclaiming that Jesus taught truly about God: that God loves, gives, forgives, accepts. And it may end it-, message of good news by saying, "Go now and do likewise." 4R
Endnotes
1. For a thorough discussion ofthe virgin birth, see Robert J. Miller Born Divine: The Births ofJesus & Other Sons of God (Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 2003).
2. This is what Miller argues, I think effectively. See pages 195-206 and 211-222.
3. In philosophy and theology, the soul has served many functions. It has been envisioned as a kind of life-force in all living things, or as what makes us uniquely human, or as what makes us immortal. Modern science, with its active, creative matter needs no extra ingredient for organisms to live. Given evolution, what makes us uniquely human is debatable, for we are a continuum with other animals. Today, the self and soul are interchangeable and natural, a function of memory and language. God only need remember us to make us immortal. Our immortality requires no extra-added ingredient.
4. Standard New Testament scholarship says that the synoptic gospels were not written separately. Rather Luke and Matthew used Mark and also another source, dubbed Q. Thus, information that appears in the three separate gospels might come from only one source. Scholars think information is more likely to be historical if it comes from more than one source, all other things being equal. Matthew and Luke probably got their empty tomb vignette from Mark - one source. In contrast, Matthew's resurrection appearances are different from Luke's and both their presentations differ from Paul's. It is likely that these appearances come from three separate sources or traditions. Indeed, we know Paul did not know the gospels we have, for he died before they were written. Nor did Matthew or Luke know Pauls letters. So Jesus’ resurrected body's difference from his mortal body is attested by at least three separate sources and therefore more likely to be historical than the empty tomb story.
4. Raymond Martin, The Elusive Messiah: A Philosophical Overview of the Quest for the Historical fesus (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999).
6. The Borg reference is in Martin, Elusive Messiah, p. 128; John P. Meier, A MarginalJew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. II, Mentor, Message, and Miracles (New York: Doubleday, 1994), Part Three.
7. Speaking in tongues (glossolalia) has been much studied. The best work I know of is Newton H. Malony and A. Adams Lovekin, Glossolalia: Behavioral Science Perspectives on Speaking in Tongues (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). For modern healings by spiritual means, see any work by Larry Dossey, who is a physician; for some information on such healings plus speculation as to how such healings work, see Russell Targ and Jane Katra, Miracles of Mind: Exploring Nonlocal Consciousness and Spiritual Healing (Novato, California: New World Library, 1998).
8. For a thorough, clear explanation of the position I reject, see Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1-123. For a clear exposition of the non-apocalyptic Jesus, see Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words ofJesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 1-34.
9. See Patricia A. Williams, Where Christianity Went Wrong When, and What You Can Do About It (Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2001), especially chapter 6.
10. Marcus J. Borg, MeetingJesus Again for the First Time: The HistoricalJesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 10.
11. Many scholars reject the historicity- of the scene in which Jesus calls the bread and wine his body and blood. Scholars who accept the historicity of this scene interpret its meaning in many ways. This particular interpretation is Bruce Chilton's in Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 253, and also my own in Where Christianity Went Wrong, 111-15.
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Patricia A. Williams is a philosopher of science and a philosophical theologian. She is the
author of Doing without Adam and Eve (2001), chosen as "Outstanding Academic Title" by Choice magazine, Where Christianity Went Wrong, 1Vhen, and What You Can Do About It (2001), based on historical Jesus scholarship, and Revealing God: A New Theology from Science and Jesus (forthcoming).
The Fourth R 23-1 January-February 2010
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