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Fall, 2005
Part One:
Jesus Before Christianity Versus Christianity
Before Jesus
The ostensible purpose behind Albert Nolan’s
1976
tome, Jesus Before Christianity,
is to deconstruct the Jesus of
Christianity – the Jesus we thought we knew – and reconstruct him in
such a way as to be relevant in our modern age. For Nolan, a
Dominican priest, the book began as a series of lectures to students
during his tenure as a university chaplain in the early 1970’s:
What
happened was that I wanted
to teach the university students faith and theology. That was
something very difficult to do since they were not interested in the
kind of theology we grew up with. So, I thought maybe the best
way to talk to them about theology and about faith was to talk about
the person of Jesus. So I tried to build everything around Jesus
as a person, trying to make him a live and lovable person. I
found that was very successful. People listened when you were
talking about a person. Also, remember this was the 1970’s, so it
was a time when there was a great deal of interest in Jesus – Jesus
Christ Superstar and all that kind of thing.1
In order to make Jesus a “live and lovable
person,”
Nolan finds it necessary to divorce him from the religion of
Christianity. In our modern world, this has become familiar
theological territory. The underlying assumption that this is
both a desirable and plausible goal has been the driving force behind
the so-called “quest for the historical Jesus,” and the theological
fruit that this movement has borne over the past three centuries has
served to push Christian religious thought ever farther in the
direction of secular humanism.
The tree in this garden of earthly delights
that Nolan plucks his plums
from is liberation theology, especially as it applies to his native
South Africa. It is in this arena that he has created the most
controversy, with his landmark book God
in South Africa drawing fire as
a study in populist Marxism, a term that Nolan himself denies,
preferring instead to describe his work more euphemistically as
“historical materialist” in orientation. 2 The socio-political,
liberationist Jesus that he recreates for us may best be described as a
“historical materialist” that bears more resemblance (at least
idealistically) to Che Guevara or, perhaps more appropriately, Nelson
Mandela, than he does the Christ of Christianity.
To accomplish this task of modernizing and reinventing Jesus for the
20th century, Nolan begins by telling us what his book is not to
be. At the outset, the reader is informed that, “The primary
purpose of this book is neither faith nor history” (p. 1). To
discover the truth requires one to some how reach behind the Christ of
the gospels and extract the “real” Jesus of history. And Nolan
proposes that, through “…the consistent use of strict historical
criticism and methods of research” (p. 1) he his going to do exactly
this. While the method for this discovery must be historical, the
goal is not history for history’s sake but rather the alleviation of
human suffering. And so, with the Christian religion neatly
set aside, Nolan is able to lay the gospel tradition open upon the
operating table of historical method and, with the advice of a
carefully assembled surgical team, stitch together for us a Jesus that
offers earthly liberation from humanity’s inhumanity in place of the
illusion of an eternal salvation in Christ.
Perspective for Nolan is a matter of
establishing the world in which
Jesus lived as a microcosm of our own. After a concise laundry
listing of the problems that plague our current situation, he concludes
with, “The fundamental reality of life today, on any reckoning, is the
prospect of a veritable hell on earth” (p. 11). Nolan then states
his intention to demonstrate to us that Jesus also lived in a time that
teetered on the brink of apocalyptic catastrophe, a contention that is
easily supported with the historical facts of the destruction of
Jerusalem at the hands of Rome in 70 C.E. and the near annihilation and
dispersion of the Jews from Palestine in 135 C.E. (p. 15). After
warning the reader against supposing that Jesus has all the answers for
our troubled times, he states that our day is so desperate that we
cannot presume Jesus’ insights to be irrelevant either: “Our situation
is so critical that we dare not leave any stone unturned in our search
for a way out” (p. 12). Nolan is adamant that Jesus is not to be
considered a savior on any level but that his situation in history, his
sitz im leben,
provides him a perspective that is particularly
pertinent to our times, and that our times “…have unexpectedly provided
us with a new perspective on Jesus of Nazareth” (p. 12).
To exploit this perspective requires knowledge
of the historical truth
about Jesus. Nolan makes no claim to being an ancient historian
or New Testament scholar, and so he encourages his readers to turn to
the major current players in the field of “historical Jesus” research
and scholarship. And so in note one to chapter two we see some
familiar names listed as authorities for “what scholars regard as
historically certain about Jesus:” Leslie E. Milton, John Dominic
Crossan, and John P. Meier. As direct support for the text itself
we find the likes of Geza Vermes, James M. Robinson, Jorgen Moltmann,
Edward Schillebeeckx, and Joachim Jeremias, among others. For the
Old Testament foundation upon which his New Testament work rests, he
draws almost exclusively from Gerhard von Rad. (pp. 173-185).
Standing on the shoulders of his selected giants, Nolan peers back into
the time of Jesus and constructs a synthesis of the history of this
period that produces a “demythologized” Jesus that is much along the
lines that we would expect given the above noted scholars. He
injects this Jesus with a religio-political activism and his own social
consciousness and Jesus the Liberationist is born:
Thus
healing, restoring sight and
hearing, bringing joy, setting free, proclaiming liberty or favor and
bringing good news are different
ways of describing liberation. It is particularly significant
that proclaiming or bringing good news has been understood as a form of
liberation. Jesus’ preaching must be understood in this
light. It was part of his liberating activity or praxis. To
evangelize or bring good news to the poor means to liberate them with
the spoken word. (p.56).
Though Nolan has promised “the consistent use
of strict historical
criticism and methods of research,” the historical background that he
gives us is extremely limited and, to be fair, has become dated in the
nearly three decades since this book’s original publication. In
the preface to this 25th anniversary edition, we are told:
Recent
scholarship has helped us to get a better understanding of the
cultural and social context in which Jesus lived and preached. I
have not had time to keep up with all of this, but as far as I can see
none of it makes any substantial difference to ‘the man who emerges’
and the significance of his life and words for us today. (p. x).
Had Nolan taken the time to keep up with all
of this, he would have
noted that much of the historical and associated research that has gone
on in recent years, particularly the ongoing study of the Dead Sea
Scrolls, has shed substantial light on our understanding of Christian
origins. This is particularly true of our perception of the person and
mission of John the Baptist, and since any comprehensive interpretation
of Jesus depends upon an understanding of the interrelationship between
the two of them, it will prove helpful at this point to add some
additional flesh to these skeletal historical bones.
Both the underlying and overriding thesis of
Jesus Before Christianity
is the viability of the historical man Jesus that has been submerged
beneath the religious construct of the Christ of Christian
religiosity. Ironically, for Albert Nolan is a Catholic Religious
Priest, he has little use for organized religion: “The type of religion
that emphasizes a super natural world in such a way that one does not
need to be concerned about the future of this world and its peoples…”
(p. 11). While Nolan’s intentions may be noble, he has painted
himself into a hopeless theological corner by decrying the “complexity
and insolubility of our problems” (p. 11) at the same time that he
argues against the hope of divine intervention from “a supernatural
world” where there resides a living and loving Christ capable of
intervening on our behalf. Perhaps the problem is, after
all, not theological but, rather, historical. Perhaps Nolan has
approached the problem backwards by going in search of Jesus before
Christianity, when what he should be looking for is Christianity before
Jesus.
Nolan’s version of the ministry of Jesus
begins as the more traditional
gospels do: with the person of John the Baptist. The portrait
that is painted of John, while sketchy, does describe him fairly as a
prophet of the Old Testament school with a message of individual
repentance as the antidote to national catastrophe. However, his
very title “the Baptist” indicates a priestly function that is too
often under appreciated or outright overlooked in favor of his more
spectacular prophetic utterances. And while it is certainly not
inaccurate to call John a prophet, it is certainly more accurate to
think of him as a prophetic-priestly figure.
Nolan briefly touches on the influence of
Essene thought on the
preaching of John, then parenthetically inserts and fails to develop
the “two-Messiah” theme that originates in the writings recovered from
the ancient Qumran community via the Dead Sea Scrolls. (p. 17).
The “two Messiahs” concept held that the restoration of Israel would
take place through not one but two Messianic figures, one a kingly
Messiah descended from the house of David and the other a priestly
Messiah descended from the line of Aaron. The former would
reestablish the legitimate kingship of the Davidic line, while the
latter would reestablish the legitimate Levitical priesthood.
Herod the Great and the descendent Herods of
the New Testament era were
Idumeans, descended from the Edomites and not of the tribes of Israel,
let alone the house of David. While it is impossible to give the
Kafkaesque intrigues of the Herods their due here, it will suffice for
our purposes to state that through these intrigues Herod the Great had
effectively usurped the right to the throne of the Hasmoneans, who
established themselves in the kingship of Judea as a result of the
Maccabean revolt in 166 B.C.E. While Pompey in 63 B.C.E. had
deposed the Hasmonean kingship, the priesthood remained under Hasmonean
control. And while Herod was able to secure the throne through
the brilliance of his political maneuvering within the Roman power
structure in 37 B.C.E., his marriage to the Hasmonean princess,
Mariamne, also gave him effective control of the Temple and the
priesthood, thus cementing his authority over Jewish life as absolute.
Herod, though universally hated, was able through the sheer force of
mutual interest to establish the Sadducees as the ruling priestly
party. This left the Pharisees in a marginalized position and
relegated the Essenes to the fringes of Jewish life socially,
religiously and even physically.
3
This is the world which John the Baptist and
Jesus are born into, a
world in which the basic constructs of both religion and society,
priesthood and kingship, had been so subverted and perverted that the
only solution to the general longing at all levels of Jewish society
for the restoration of Israel appeared to be the direct intervention of
God in the form of the long anticipated “Messiah King.” That this
expectation would take the form of a dual priestly and kingly
messiahship is perfectly natural. And that John the Baptist and
Jesus would fit these roles is perfectly obvious.
In Luke 1:5 we learn this about the parents of John:
In the days of Herod, King of Judea, there was a
priest named Zechariah
of the priestly division of Abijah; his wife was from the daughters of
Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.
4
“Abijah” was the eighth of 24 priestly orders
established by David. While not specifically spelled out by Luke,
his clear intention is to inform us that regardless of the authority by
which Zechariah was assigned his priestly role, he is a legitimate,
Levitical priest of Israel, and can trace his lineage (and thus his
true authority) to the reign of King David. While not spelled out
to us, this fact certainly would not have been lost on any first
century Jew. In addition, we are informed that Elizabeth also is
of the ancient, priestly line of Aaron; with a lineage that stretches
all the way back to the time of Moses. It is hard to imagine
anyone in all of Israel with more priestly pedigree than John the
Baptist, or more claim to the title of High Priest of Israel.
And, as Nolan informs us, “The priesthood was of course hereditary” (p.
17).
Additionally, this brings into focus an
ancient tradition that has its
source in The Protevangelion,
an Apocryphal gospel ascribed to James
the Lesser. In this account, a story is related concerning
Herod’s slaughter of the innocents as it pertains to Zechariah,
Elizabeth and John. As word circulates that Herod plans to
exterminate all the children of Bethlehem that are two years old and
under, Elizabeth takes the infant John “up unto the mountains” in
search of a place to hide him:
And there was no secret place to be
found. Then she groaned
within herself, and said, O mountain of the Lord, receive the mother
with the child. For Elizabeth could not climb up. And
instantly the mountain was divided and received them. And there
appeared to them an angel of the Lord to preserve them. 5
It takes little stretch of the imagination to
recognize the symbolism that is latent within this passage. The
mountain of the Lord is, of course, a reference to Mount Zion, as
witnessed by this passage from Isaiah:
And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the
Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and
shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto
it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up
to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and we
will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the
word of the Lord from Jerusalem.6
Within the context of The Protevangelion, it is clear
that Elizabeth is
not taking John to the temple mount in Jerusalem, as the story will
proceed to document the murder of Zechariah by Herod’s men within the
confines of the temple itself. To the contrary, she is running
away from the “mountain of the Lord” in Jerusalem. The obvious
question, then, is where could this other “mountain of the Lord” that
Elizabeth beseeches for safe haven possibly be? Barbara Thiering
in Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead
Sea Scrolls tells us the answer:
After
they had been exiled to the wilderness, the Essenes came to
believe that they were establishing their own ‘temple’ and ‘Jerusalem’
at Qumran. They began to call it ‘Jerusalem’ in the way that
expatriates name places in their new country after places in the
homeland.7
It now appears obvious that the Qumran community
thought of itself as the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 2:2, as
documented above: the “mountain of the Lord’s house…established in the
top of the mountains” -- a new Zion and new Jerusalem. This
information, combined with the now historically understood tradition
found in The Protevangelion,
brings us to a new and deeper
understanding of the life and ministry of John the Baptist. Taken
in by the Qumran community as an infant, nurtured, educated and groomed
to realize his destiny as the legitimate heir to the priesthood, he
becomes the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 2:3, “for out of Zion
shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” When
John appears in the desert of Judea, he comes not merely in the role of
prophet, but as the high priest of Israel – a high priest from a new
Zion and a new Jerusalem with a legitimate claim on the originals.
Less obscure is the claim of Jesus to the
throne of
Israel. Familiar from countless Christmas pageants is verse four
of the second chapter of Luke:
And
Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea,
to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the
house and family of David…8
Further, in Matthew 1:7-15 we are told that
Joseph’s
lineage from David runs through Solomon, which would give Jesus
legitimate claim to the throne, as would Mary’s descent through Nathan,
which we are informed of in Luke 3:23-31. Like John, Jesus’ claim
to the throne is legitimized through both sides of his family and it is
Luke that finds this information of such a significant value that he
presents it to his readers.
It is natural therefore, that
John, and in turn, Luke treats the baptism of Jesus as the anointing of
the king of Israel, a process that De Vaux describes in this way:
Anointing
is a religious rite. It is accompanied by a coming of
the Spirit: we would say that it confers a grace. Thus the spirit
of God took hold of Saul after he was anointed, and in the story of
David the link between the two is even more direct according to 1
Samuel 16:13. The king is the anointed of Yahweh. The king,
a consecrated person, thus shares in the holiness of God; he is
inviolable.9
Luke, and for that matter, the other synoptic
gospels and John, describe the Holy Spirit descending upon the newly
baptized Jesus “like a dove.” A grace has been conferred. In Luke
4: 21, Jesus reads to the congregation at Nazareth from Isaiah 61:1-2:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring
glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to
captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go
free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.’ And he
finishes this passage by claiming this anointing as his own: ‘Today
this passage is fulfilled in your hearing.’10
Three other aspects of the kingship of ancient
Israel are particularly enlightening for the understanding of Jesus’
self perception and the way in which he was perceived by others:
After being consecrated by his anointing, the
Israelite king is adopted
as the son of Yahweh and affirmed in this divine sonship: Verse 7
of Psalm 2, a psalm of coronation, reads: “Thou art my son, to-day I
have begotten thee” 11
which we can easily compare with Luke 3:22b, “You
are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”12
There is no
mystery as to where and why Jesus attained the appellation “Son of
God.”
Secondly, the kings of Israel assumed a
priestly/kingly role and here
too we discover the source of another famous New Testament title that
is applied to Jesus in the book of Hebrews:
The
fact remains that the king, sanctified by his anointing and adopted
by Yahweh, is a sacred person and seems thereby to be empowered to
perform religious functions. One often hears of the royal
priesthood in Israel. We recall that the kings of Egypt, Assyria
and Phoenicia were priests. In the Bible, Melchisedech is both
king of Salem and priest of El Elyon. And it is precisely Psalm
110:4, which we have interpreted as an enthronement psalm, which says:
“Thou art a priest forever in the order of Melchisedech.” 13
And, last but certainly not least, the king of
Israel is understood as the savior of his people:
The
king is ipso facto a saviour. It is a common idea among
primitive peoples that the king embodies the good estate of his
subjects: the country’s prosperity depends on him, and he insures the
welfare of his people.14
Thus we read in the first 4 verses of Psalm 72:
O
God with your judgment endow the king,
and with your justice, the king’s son,
He shall govern your people with justice
and your afflicted ones with judgment.
The mountains shall yield peace for the people
and the hills justice.
He shall defend the afflicted among the people,
save the children of the poor, and crush
the
oppressor.15
By now it should be obvious that the true meaning
of
the Baptism of Jesus is only understandable in light of the coronation
rites of the ancient kings of the nation of Israel. At the time
in which John the Baptist performed this rite of anointing and
recognizing Jesus in this kingly/priestly role, it had been over 700
years since the last Davidic king of the united kingdom of Israel had
passed into history. During this time, mourning for this
so-called “Golden Age” of the kingdom of David had turned into a
desperate hope and that hope had turned to the expectation that one day
God would restore this fallen kingdom to the people of Israel through
the advent of his chosen “Anointed One,” or
“Messiah:”
Further, “Anointed” and “Messiah” are
synonyms, being respectively the
translation and the transliteration of the same Hebrew word,
mashiah. The reigning king is, therefore a Messiah, and we shall
see that he is also a saviour. These elements were to combine in
the expecation of a future saviour who would be the Messiah King.
But it was only in the last century before Christ in the apocryphal
Psalms of Solomon, that this combination became explicit and that the
long-promised, long-expected saviour was called the Anointed, the
Messiah.16
The evidence presented so far shows conclusively
that Jesus, as witnessed to and consecrated by John the Baptist,
fulfilled all of the expectations and requirements of the long awaited
Messiah King. The gospel accounts testify that both Jesus and
John were born to fill these roles and some of the most familiar and
beloved stories from the New Testament bear witness to the fact that
their arrival upon the scene at the dawning of what was to become the
Christian age was anticipated and proved to be the fulfillment of signs
and prophecies that had preexisted their births by generations.
But Jesus also far exceeded the expectation of the
Messiah King of Israel, and while he understood this within himself, it
created a vast confusion in those around him who did not. Luke
spends chapters 4 through 9 of his gospel transitioning Jesus from
newly anointed Messiah King of Israel to ‘The Christ of God.’ (Luke
9:20b). 17
Luke follows this acclamation with the first prediction of the
passion:
He said, ‘The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the
elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the
third day be raised. 18
It has become clear at this point in the gospel
account that Jesus has assumed a role that far surpasses even the
concept of Messiah King. For Luke, this moment of the profound
revelation of a higher and more metaphysical mission for Jesus begins
the final journey to Jerusalem and the fulfillment of this
destiny. And to understand this destiny historically and
linguistically means that we must look from the near east to the far
east and from the Bible to the Vedas to the remarkable person of
Krishna.
The similarities between Krishna and Jesus are truly
striking. William Kingsland, a neo-gnostic and apologist for the
Theosophy movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries, referred to
Jesus and Krishna as “interchangeable characters.” Comparing
Krishna to Jesus he continues, “Yet he also has a legendary history
which is almost an exact parallel of the Gospel story. His mother
was Devaki, who was overshadowed by Vishnu and thus gave birth to
Krishna as that god’s Avatara. Kansa, the Indian King Herod,
sought to slay him and in so doing slew thousands of newly born
babes. His birth was announced by a star in heaven. He is
also said to have been put to death on a tree, and to have risen
again.” 19
According to the Vedic tradition, Krishna, under this
name, was last manifested upon the earth some 5,000 years ago.
And this name also means the “Anointed One.”
It is interesting to note that the greek word christos is thought of as a direct
equivalent to the hebrew word mashiah,
even though the etymology of the two words shows that they are
of very different origins. As we have seen, the hebrew word mashiah means “anointed” or
“anointed one as pertaining to a prince or
king.” The greek variation of this word, “messias,” is used
exactly twice in the New Testament, both in John’s gospel and both
times as a hebraism purposely inserted to equate the hebrew term to its
greek counterpart, christos. 20 The greek etomology of christos
runs through the word chrio,
“to anoint,” to chrisma,
“anointing.” Given that “m’s” and “n’s” are often exchanged in
translations between greek and sanscrit, we see that the word chrisma
in greek is almost a direct lifting of the word “krishna” from the
sanscrit. In those days when the idiomatic language of the New
Testament was in its infancy, the more hellenistically oriented of
those that received the gospel identified the concept of Jesus as
Divine Savior with the more familiar “krishna”
of the lands farther
east rather than with the Judaic term “messiah,”
and thus we are given
the term “Jesus Christ” or “Jesus Krishna”
even though the
transliteration Jesus Messiah
would be more logical.
And so it has been established that Christianity did
indeed predate Jesus; that all of the concepts and precepts that merged
together in history some 2000 years ago and manifested themselves in
the personage of this man from Galilee existed long before he drew his
first breath. If time permitted, then, it would certainly be
possible to follow this line of thought out to it’s ultimate conclusion
as the “anti-thesis” to Nolan’s claim that it is Jesus that predates
Christianity. And what, exactly, does establishing Christianity
before Jesus accomplish in terms of Jesus’ praxis? And the
answer, interestingly enough is: nothing.
Nolan states: “…remembering the kind of
“kingdom” that Jesus preached, we should not be surprised to discover
that on no occasion and in no circumstances did Jesus ever claim
directly or indirectly, that he was the Messiah” (p. 131).
Conversely, it has been argued here that Jesus could not possibly have
ever believed that he was anything but the Messiah. Yet
interestingly enough, these two totally divergent Jesus share the same
praxis! Nolan uses Isaiah 61:1-2:
The
spirit of the lord has been given to me,
for he has anointed me.
He has sent me to bring good news to the poor,
to heal the broken-hearted;
to proclaim liberty to captives,
freedom to those in prison;
[or: to proclaim new sight to the blind,
to set the downtrodden free]
to proclaim the Lord’s year of favor. (p.56)
And, of course, the Psalm of Messianic coronation,
Psalm 72, as already cited above:
O
God with your judgment endow the king,
and with your justice, the king’s son,
He shall govern your people with justice
and your afflicted ones with judgment.
The mountains shall yield peace for the people
and the hills justice.
He shall defend the afflicted among the people,
save the children of the poor, and crush the oppressor.
Like two ships, one sailing east and one sailing
west, we have circumnavigated the historio-theological globe and now
find ourselves standing face to face in a sea of human despair.
We both agree that something needs to be done to alleviate this
suffering of humanity whether the truth lies in Jesus before
Christianity or Christianity before Jesus. We have discussed and
debated history as a basis for determining the true right action.
We have even agreed on praxis. But we have expended our energy in
argument rather than in solving the world’s ills. We have created
our own microcosm of the world we live in.
Part
Two:
Blasphemy and Heresy versus Orthodoxy and
Orthopraxis
Through the preceding exercise, we have learned
that
it is more than just a truism that the historian is only as good as his
or her sources, and that the old saw that history is merely “his-story”
(or “her-story”) does have a ring of truth about it. Yet the
eternal Truth of God, like flowers in the spring, always manages to
emerge through the layer of manure that humanity continually spreads
over it.
One of the sources that Nolan recommends to his
readers for a summary of what is “historically certain” about Jesus is
John Dominic Crossan’s The
Historical Jesus: The Life of a
Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. Thomas F. Rausch describes
Crossan’s point of view within this text thusly:
Crossan claims that ‘early Christianity knew
nothing about the passion
of Jesus beyond the fact itself.’ He argues that Jesus was
executed by the Romans, not by the leaders of the Jews, and that his
body was probably eaten by dogs that scavenged beneath the
cross. 21
While it is tempting to digress into a
discussion of the wild and
groundless historical speculation that this statement represents, we
will save this for another day. The germane observation for
today’s discussion is that Nolan is directing his readers to an
historical “authority” that is purporting not merely highly
questionable history but outright blasphemy.
As for Nolan himself, he does not have the
courage and perhaps not the
conviction to come right out and formally deny the resurrection.
The tack that he takes is to bypass it as irrelevant by devoting little
more than a page to the concept and then spending this limited space
pondering whether or not Jesus predicted his own resurrection or not,
which truly is irrelevant. He ends this discussion with, “The
situation after Jesus’ death was completely different. Then, as
we shall see, resurrection became the central issue” (p. 142).
However, this is never developed and the book ends with a chapter
entitled “Faith in Jesus” that is, in actuality, a study in theological
doublespeak in which we are told such things as: “Jesus’ divinity is
the transcendent depths of his humanity.” (p. 168). In the end,
“…the faith which Jesus awakens in us is at the same time faith in him
and faith in his divinity” (p. 169). This translates to a faith
that is acted out only in human compassion. In short, there is no
debate about salvation through faith or works. Faith is works and
salvation is nothing more than the liberation of human beings from
their sufferings upon the earth. Jesus doesn’t save, we do.
Jesus, then, becomes merely an advisor to correct human behavior as so
envisioned by Nolan. This, too, is blasphemous.
Nolan’s thesis is that the only way to an
understanding of the “real
Jesus” is to find the historical Jesus that existed prior to
Christianity. It should come as no surprise that this Jesus, the
“man who emerges,” shares all of Nolan’s compassion for the poor, the
afflicted and the downtrodden. He also possesses the humanism
that, for Nolan, passes as faith. The assumption that is latent
here is that Christianity must have created a Jesus that does not care
about the plight of mankind, concentrating instead on only the heavenly
and the divine. “Pie in the sky, by and by,” as it were.
I constructed an historical argument that
showed that
Christianity, for all intents and purposes, existed before Jesus.
The point was to demonstrate a Jesus that steps into the role of Christ
that preexisted him and in so doing assumes the role of savior of the
poor, the afflicted and the downtrodden. Opposite approach, same
results. Seems that, when all is said and done, we all have
managed to maintain an abiding trust in the veracity of the Golden
Rule.
To accomplish this task, I cited a neo-gnostic
by the name of William
Kingsland to support my argument. Kingsland was a disciple of Madame H.
P. Blavatsky, the founder of the 19th century Theosophy movement, which
was a precursor to what we today call the New Age movement. In
the larger context of the quote I use, Kingsland is in the process of
claiming that Jesus is a manifestation of Krishna, an Avatara of
Vishnu, and as such was exploited by Christianity for its own selfish
purposes, one of which was to subvert the true divine knowledge, or
“gnosis.” In other words, Kingsland is a heretic. And, by
the way, I should mention that a check of the Bhagavad-Gita 22
(which
Kingsland claims as his source) reveals that Kingsland has largely
fabricated his claims from whole cloth. While there are some
thematic similarities between Jesus and Krishna, they are more
interesting in terms of the theological development of the concept of
the Christian Godhead than in understanding Christian
“prehistory.”
So I must confess that I have purposely and
with premeditated
intent used a heresy to refute a blasphemy. While, along the way,
it has been noted that the purpose was to show that my intentions were
humanitarian, it should be noted that the end does not justify the
means. And if Nolan understood that intellectual honesty cannot
be substituted for Christian spirituality, then he would realize that
he has traded the family cow for a hand full of beans.
And so if we end up in this plight where
scholarship becomes nothing
more than a blasphemy that is answered with a heresy, we have become no
better than the Lilliputians in Gulliver’s
Travels going to war over
which end of a soft boiled egg should be opened. And the plight
of humanity hangs in the balance: another point upon which we all
agree. There must be a means to identify and protect ourselves
against blasphemy and heresy if we are to understand not only our
obligation to our fellow human beings, but to recognize our obligation
to God and honor him with the same kind of love and respect – for they
are all one in the same.
And there is: Christian Orthodoxy.
Perhaps the greatest
flaw in Nolan’s thinking is that the human search for truth “is
primarily a search for orthopraxis
(true practice) rather than orthodoxy
(true doctrine)” (p. 169). The lesson that must be
learned is that there is no way to determine true practice but through
true doctrine. What we have witnessed is that false doctrine may,
on occasion, allow us to do the right thing, but it will be invariably
for the wrong reason and the end result will be doomed to failure.
Witness our world.
If we are to alleviate human suffering then we
must realize that human
suffering is not merely of the body but of the soul and that, in fact,
the pain of physical suffering is but a mere a symptom of this greater
internal torment. It is the torment of sin. Orthopraxis, by
Nolan’s definition addresses only the physical symptoms of
suffering. Orthodoxy
addresses the disease itself and it provides
the correct forum in which cures may be found that will ease the pain
of human suffering in this life and, more importantly, in the eternal
life that lies beyond. Liberation is not a substitute for salvation, it
is merely one aspect of it. There is no substitute for eternal
salvation and all that leads to it decreases suffering and increases
joy.
Back in the early 1980’s, Pope John Paul II,
in his concern for both
the unfounded criticism that was being heaped upon the church by
various liberation theologians, and because of this discipline’s
tendency, as we have seen, to ignore the spiritual dynamic involved and
thus fall prey to the errors of worldly political philosophies (mostly
Marxist), had Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, as Prefect for the Sacred
Congregation of the Doctrine for the Faith, address this issue.
The result was a document entitled Instruction
on Certain Aspects of
"Theology of Liberation,” which was published in August of
1984:
The
Gospel of Jesus Christ is a message of freedom and a force for
liberation. In recent years, this essential truth has become the object
of reflection for theologians, with a new kind of attention which is
itself full of promise. Liberation is first and foremost liberation
from the radical slavery of
sin. Its end and its goal is the freedom of the children of God, which
is the gift of grace. As a logical consequence, it calls for freedom
from many different kinds of slavery in the cultural, economic, social,
and political spheres, all of which derive ultimately from sin, and so
often prevent people from living in a manner befitting their dignity.
To discern clearly what is fundamental to this issue and what is a
by-product of it, is an indispensable condition for any theological
reflection on liberation.
It is only when one begins with the task of evangelization understood
in its entirety that the authentic requirements of human progress and
liberation are appreciated. This liberation has as its indispensable
pillars: the truth about Jesus the Savior; the truth about the Church;
and it is in light of the Beatitudes, and especially the
Beatitude of the poor of heart, that the Church, which wants to be the
Church of the poor throughout the world, intends to come to the aid of
the noble struggle for truth and justice. She addresses each person,
and for that reason, every person. She is the "universal Church. The
Church of the Incarnation. She is not the Church of one class or
another. And she speaks of the name of truth itself. This truth is
realistic". It leads to a recognition "of every human reality, every
injustice, every tension and every struggle."23
Cardinal Ratzinger, who now serves the
Catholic Church as Pope Benedict
XVI, is one of the truly great theologians of our time. While
space permits the reproduction of only a fraction of this document, the
excerpt cited here needs no further comment, as it speaks most
eloquently for itself. Even this greatly edited version of his
words will suffice to demonstrate the contention that orthopraxis is
only possible through orthodoxy. And Albert Nolan would do well
to recite this instruction in front of a mirror until he gets it
exactly right.
End
Notes
1. Ramos, Fr. Luis O.P. “Interview with Fr. Albert Nolan,
O.P.” Providence 2001.
Providence, RI. General Chapter Order of Preachers. July, 2001.
www.dominicans.ca/providence/english/documents/nolan-eng.htm.
2. Egan, A. “Does a Real Albert Nolan Need a Don
Cupitt? A Response to Ronald Nicolson.” IngentaConnect. Abstract
cited from The Heythrop Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 1997, pp. 180-190.
www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/heyj.
3. Frank, Harry Thomas. Discovering
the Biblical World. Maplewood, NJ: Hammond Incorporated,
1975 pp. 166-178.
4. The New American Bible for
Catholics. Iowa Falls, IA: World Bible Publishers,
1970. p. 1092.
5. The Lost Books of the Bible
and the Forgotten Books of Eden. Iowa Falls, IA: World Bible
Publishers, undated. The Lost
Books of the Bible. London: Alpha House, 1926. The Forgotten Books of Eden.
London: Alpha House, 1927. The
Protevangelion. Chapter 16: 4-8. pp. 35-36.
6. The Holy Bible: Authorized
Version. Nashville, TN: The Gideons International.
Isaiah 2: 2-3.
p. 623.
7. Thiering, Barbara. Jesus
and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls. San Francisco, CA:
Harper, 1992. p. 37.
8. The New American Bible for
Catholics. Iowa Falls, IA: World Bible Publishers,
1970. p.1095.
9. De Vaux, Roland. Ancient
Israel. Volume 1: Social Institutions. New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 1961.
p. 104.
10. The New American Bible for
Catholics. Iowa Falls, IA: World Bible Publishers, 1970.
pp.1099-1100.
11. De Vaux. Op Cit. p. 112.
12. NAB. Op Cit.
p. 1098.
13. De Vaux. Op Cit. p. 113.
14. Ibid. p. 110
15. NAB. Op Cit.
p. 587
16. De Vaux. Op Cit. p. 105-106.
17. NAB translates the
word christos in this passage
as Messiah. I have
changed it to
the more accurate transliteration Christ.
18. NAB. Op Cit. p.
1109.
19. Kingsland, William. The
Gnosis or Ancient Wisdom in the Christian Scriptures.
London: George Allen and Unwin, 1937. p. 156.
20. John 1:41 and 4:25.
21. Rausch, Thomas F. Who
is Jesus? An Introduction to Christology.
Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003. p.18.
22. Prabuhuda, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. Bhagavad-Gita: As It Is.
NewYork, NY: The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1968.
23. Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal. Instruction on Certain Aspects of
"Theology of Liberation"
Given at Rome, at the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, on August 6, 1984, the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord.
“Introduction,” paragraphs 1 and 2, and “Orientations,” paragraph
5.
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