Jesus

Background to the life of Jesus

A   The Temple (built by David's son Solomon, and rebuilt after the return from exile in Babylon) was the center of the Jewish sacrificial system. The notion of sacrifice as atonement for sin became important for understanding Jesus' death.

B   The Law brought by Moses was applied in different ways by different Jewish groups. Watch for Jesus' attitude toward the law, which seemed ambiguous, so that his followers had to figure out how to view the Law.

C   There was widespread expectation of a messiah who would restore the kingdom of David, whether by overthrowing Roman rule politically and in history (the Zealots), or by reversing the current world order and inaugurating a new age (apocalyptic vision). Watch for how Jesus fit into these expectations.

Jesus' life and teaching

A major theme of Jesus' life and teaching was the inversion of the present world's hierarchies and values. In this he fit the apocalyptic vision of what a Messiah should be. But Jesus said the new age was already (though not fully) somehow present within the current system, for those who had eyes to see it.

Read Matthew ch. 5, in the Bible. What kinds of hierarchies and values are inverted? Does Jesus uphold or invert the Law of Moses? Please answer the questions about Matthew 5 on D2L.

In the Gospel of John, this inversion is expressed in terms of life and death: the only way to true life is through death. Read John 12:23-25, in which the Son of Man being glorified refers to Jesus being killed: his death is his glorification.

Notes from class

First we talked about the mental process of abstraction that has to take place if we are to understand new observations in terms of what we already know. Here's an example:

• Particular observations:
  • At the Quaker meeting Christian saw that people sat in a circle.
  • We read in Genesis that Abraham nearly sacrificed his son.
  • At that level, there's no obvious connection, right?
• Abstraction: what do these particulars suggest about where people look to find truth?
  • The setup of the Quaker meeting suggests they may look for truth among themselves, not in some outside authority.
  • We noted that in Genesis Abraham blindly / in faith / unquestioningly obeys a totally inexplicable command from an outside source (God).
  • So we guess that Quakers are a kind of Christian who may not look to outside authority as much as most Christians do (e.g. in the Catholic Mass where everyone was looking forward to the image of Christ above the altar).
• Voila! That's a paragraph for your first paper. When you connect one of your observations to something from class by means of abstraction, sometimes your observation will contrast with what we learned in class (as in this example), and sometimes it will be compatible with what we found in class. If it's compatible, then you have a partial explanation for your observation; if it contrasts, that's even better, because then you have a new puzzle to solve over the course of the term: why do these Christians not fit what I expected?

Next we asked how our big contrast from last class (Islam is about guidance for good people / Christianity is about divine redemption of bad people) can help us accomplish the five goals we articulated on the first day of class.

1. Gain a basic vocabulary and mental map.
• This contrast is certainly a simple map! Of course, it is way too simple. We must not expect all Muslims or all Christians to always fit this simplistic dichotomy. Indeed I don't think there is any such thing as an essential "Islam" and an essential "Christianity" that all Muslims and Christians adhere to. But this simple map - divided into just two big regions - is at least a first step toward building a mental map of what Muslims and Christians are like.
2. Understand human beings.
   • This contrast tells us to expect a sermon at a mosque to be a warning to follow God's guidance, and a sermon at a church to be about God's saving activity. If that's what we hear, great: our contrast explains the "deep historical why" of our observation. If that's not what we hear, then at least the contrast tells us to look for other "why" factors.
3. Understand present conflicts.
• These contrasting anthropologies (views of humans and what they need) do help explain why some Muslims want a religious law to govern society (because humans can fulfill it and that's what their salvation hinges on), while many Christians do not (because humans can't fulfill it and that's not what their salvation depends on).
4. Become more aware of our own particular presuppositions and "lenses."
• We all probably have some expectations about what religions must do: maybe we think (like my teacher in Morocco) that religions must guide our actions, or maybe we think they must explain how God saves people. This contrast reminds us not to expect all religious people to be concerned about the things we think religion is about.
5. Explore different perspectives that people have on "religion as a whole."
• I think this contrast calls into question the very idea that there is any such thing as "generic religion," because it shows that religions are about fundamentally different things.
• I think understanding people "at eye level" means interacting from one cultural and/or religious tradition to another, not stepping outside our own culture or religion to analyze "religious people" from above.
• But the (very modern) idea of "generic religion" has become important in religions studies, and you should take a course with a professor like Tom Boyd who believes "religion" is a universal and natural part of human nature!

We then began our discussion of Jesus:

• We agree that Jesus was not trying to do away with the law of Moses.
• But some of us, doing just a simple literary analysis of Matthew 5, think that Jesus really wants people to actually obey the more difficult, more internally focused law that he preaches.
• Others point out, however, that Matthew 5 fits much better into the simple picture of Christianity we have developed so far ("God saves people who are incapable of being righteous") if we understand Jesus to be saying that the law is actually impossible to fulfill, and that he must therefore fulfill it (i.e. obey it) for us.

We'll pick back up with this argument on Monday.

{DAY 2}

Jesus' death and resurrection

Read Mark 14:12-26. The Last Supper, the last meal Jesus had with his disciples, is commemorated or reenacted in the Eucharist, which we will study later. It is rather enigmatic, and has been interpreted in various ways. At least this much is clear from Mark: Jesus' words at the Last Supper present Jesus' imminent death as somehow "for" his disciples. (In John's terms, his death will give them life.)

Read John 18-19. Strangely, Jesus' death became the central focus of Christianity. Christians regard Jesus' death as somehow bringing about their salvation or redemption. How this is true, and what it means, has been variously understood. We will study some of these interpretations later in the term. For now we may note one important early interpretation: Jesus' death was a sacrifice, just like the sacrifices performed in the Temple under Mosaic Law. This interpretation is developed by John and Paul.

Read Luke 24 and Acts 1:1-11. If Jesus' death is presented as the fulfillment of Jesus' life, his resurrection and subsequent appearances to his disciples were the point that his followers preached as they launched the Church.

A Qur'anic view of Jesus

In the Qur'an, read Q 5:109-120, which tells of Jesus' life and gives a different take on the story of the Last Supper. Note that Jesus explicitly disclaims divinity.

Read Q 4:153-162. Here the focus of Christian theology, the death of Christ, is said not to have happened. Can you recall from Sura 37 (see "Patriarchs and Prophets") why this would be important for a Muslim view of Jesus as a prophet?

Read Q 5:41-50. Notice how the Torah, the Gospel, and the Qur'an (= the Scripture in v. 48) are presented as similar revealed books. Are they regarded as books that provide theological information, historical information, or legal guidance?

Biblical Criticism

We have been describing Jesus and his followers as they are presented in the New Testament. Biblical criticism (particularly since the 19th century) has questioned the historicity of many elements of this picture.

Methods of biblical criticism.

Biblical criticism has especially identified claims about Jesus' divinity, interpretations of his death, and the accounts of his resurrection as reflections of the experience and thought of the Church, projected back onto the life of Jesus by the Gospel writers. Scholars have differed over which parts of the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life and sayings are historical. One problem that has plagued the attempt to reconstruct the historical Jesus is that scholars have tended to reconstruct portraits of Jesus that mirror their own values. 19th century scholars produced an image of Jesus that, as Albert Schweitzer pointed out, made him look rather like the ideals of 19th century liberal Protestantism. Today many scholars tend to stress the radically inclusive nature of Jesus' life and teaching -- his association with the marginalized, most notably with women.

We have focused on the picture of Jesus presented in the Gospels, as traditionally interpreted by most Christians (rather than as reconstructed by biblical critics), because we are trying to understand how Christians have traditionally understood Jesus (rather than trying to reconstruct the historical Jesus). Later we will look at biblical critics in their own right, because they too are an important part of Christianity.

(There are no D2L questions for Day 2.)

Notes from Wednesday's class

Two observations from your field visits are worth remembering, so that we can return to them during the term:

• One mosque had women prominently separated from men -- a few in the back of the room, and the rest off at the park preparing the food for a celebration of the end of Ramadan fast -- and one member of the mosque sought to preempt any negative impressions this might give. Let's look at different gender roles in all the churches and mosques we study.
• An Episcopal church had some distinctive Catholic features (first communion, images of saints), but a congregation member sought to distance the saints' images from the more Catholic idea that saints serve as intermediaries between God and humans. When we get around to identifying some major differences between Catholics and Protestants, let's try to sort out which the Episcopal church is most like.

Next we considered three very different interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:

1. It shows humans need God to save them.
   • Although Jesus says "do this," he does not expect that anyone will actually obey this higher and impossible law; he just wants people to realize that they can't do it, and that they therefore need God to fulfill the law on their behalf.
   • This makes sense of Jesus' incredibly difficult instructions by fitting them into the Christian view that humans are corrupt and incapable of fulfilling God's requirements and therefore need God to save them from the penalty of their sin.
   • This is perhaps the most common Christian interpretation of Matthew 5.
2. It is a call to faith.
• Jesus really wants people to do impossible-sounding things like always turning the other cheek, not out of sheer obedience, but as a natural result of "faith," which consists in believing that the world really is "upside down" as Jesus says it is--that blessedness and life really do come from giving up one's rights and one's life.
• This acknowledges that Jesus clearly says "do this," but interprets that obedience in a way that fits the Christian idea that salvation cannot come from obedience: just like Abraham's sacrifice, obedience is primarily an expression of faith.
• This also fits Jesus' teaching in with John's idea that Jesus's death is his glorification and a source of life, and with the story of the resurrection, in which giving up life is what leads to new life.
3. It is ethical teaching.
• This view has the virtue of really taking Jesus at his word when he says "do this," but it runs into one problem -- the obvious fact that Jesus' commands look pretty impossible to fulfill consistently.
• This fits Matthew 5 into the Islamic views that Jesus was a moral guide like all the other prophets who brought his own law, that humans are not essentially corrupt but good and capable of fulfilling the law, and that Jesus was not actually crucified.
• This also fits the remarkably similar Liberal Protestant view that Jesus was mainly a moral teacher, that humans are not essentially corrupt but good, and that Jesus' death, though real, was less important than his teaching.

This exercise helped us make progress on two of our goals from the beginning of class:

• Goal 4: Become more aware of our own particular presuppositions and "lenses."
  • We can see how each interpretation of Matthew 5 is designed to make the text fit into a certain set of religious presuppositions, and some of us see Matthew 5 in different ways precisely because of our own presuppositions.
  • One alternative might be to just try to understand Jesus, or Matthew, as historical figures and authors, instead of trying to fit them into a consistent theological system.
  • But even theologians generally try to understand historical authors and context as part of their theological interpretation, and even historians are greatly influenced (especially in their understandings of Jesus) by their preconceptions of what religion should be about; so theological and historical understandings of Jesus are both equally interpretations governed by presuppositions.
• Goal 5: Explore different perspectives that people have on "religion as a whole."
  • That point leads us to a general hypothesis about religions: religious people are always, naturally and inevitably, interpreters who try to make sense of all the confusing stories and beliefs and rituals their traditions have handed down to them, by fitting them into a more or less coherent view of the world.
  • Of course, secular historians are interpreters too; their views of the world are just less explicitly religious.

Then we tried to discern, from the way John tells the story of Jesus' death, how he interpreted it -- that is, how he fit it into his own theology and presuppositions about religion. We have three ideas so far:

• Jesus' death is the culmination of the story of God redeeming his chosen people and making them into his Kingdom.
• Jesus' death is a reflection of what Jesus taught in Matthew 5: the Kingdom of God is an upside down kingdom in which life comes from giving up life.
• Jesus' death is explained by John 3:16 -- that is, it is how Jesus gives eternal life to those who believe in him.

I'm still dissatisfied with these answers, however. Sure, they are three possible ways of understanding Jesus' death; but we didn't really find any textual evidence to show us which of these, if any, is how the author of John's gospel understands Jesus' death. On Friday, let's come back to this and find some textual evidence! To prepare for that, please reread John 18-19.

Also please reread Mark 14:12-26, and ask yourself: "how does Mark think Jesus' death saves people?" In class we will spend most of our time looking at the Last Supper in Mark, and also in a video of the Eucharist, which reenacts the Last Supper and gives us numerous clues about how Christians think Jesus' death saves them.

Notes from Friday's class

Our task today was to use our own background experiences and a video of an Episcopal Eucharist to expand our list of the many ways Christians have interpreted the death of Christ, without worrying so much this time about which interpretations Mark and Luke and John favor. We came up with quite a list of interpretations:

• Jesus' death embodies the teachings of Matthew 5.
• Jesus' death brings about a new Kingdom--but not the kind of kingdom his followers expected.
  • John emphasizes this.
• Jesus' death is a sacrifice that pays the price humans owe to God for sparing their life.
  • Just as the Passover lamb's blood spared the Hebrews' life in Exodus, and just as every firstborn son's life had to be redeemed with a sacrifice.
  • The Eucharist symbolizing Jesus' death is likewise called a sacrifice.
• Jesus' death is substitutionary punishment.
  • Jesus bears the punishment of death that would have fallen on humans because of their sin.
  • This idea is sometimes expressed by Christians with the analogy of a judge who declares someone guilty but then imposes the punishment on himself, or a father who has his son whip him instead of whipping his son, or a principal who smacks himself with the ruler instead of the guilty student (very old-fashioned analogies, to be sure, but still heard in many sermons).
• Jesus' death and resurrection are a victory over the whole problem of death that began with Adam.
  • [This too was echoed in the Episcopal Eucharist, I think.]
• Jesus' death reconciles people to God, so that they can relate to God directly.
  • His sacrifice "once for all" means people no longer need a priest to approach God and offer sacrifices on their behalf.
  • In Matthew's language, the curtain in the Temple that cut ordinary people off from God was torn open at Jesus' death.
• Jesus' death was an act of perfect obedience to God, fulfilling even the impossible law of Matthew 5.
  • This is how Jesus fulfilled the law on behalf of those who could not fulfill it themselves.
  • The Eucharist likewise was called an "offering of obedience," if I remember correctly.
• Jesus feeds people and nourishes them (in some spiritual sense, I suppose) with his own flesh and blood.
  • The Eucharistic ritual says to "feed on Christ in your hearts..."

This illustrates what religious people do: they take complex and even troubling stories and teachings and make sense of them by interpreting them in multiple ways. Different Christians emphasize different interpretations, and sometimes this can put them more at odds with each other than they are with members of other faiths. Today we encountered several of these important contrasts between Christian groups:

• Some Christians emphasize individual salvation and relationship to God ("Jesus' death saves me from my sin") while others emphasize corporate salvation ("Jesus is creating a new people for himself, or reconciling the whole creation to God").
• Some Christians regard every celebration of the Eucharist as a new sacrifice that saves people, whereas others (especially Protestants) insist it is just a memorial and a proclamation about the one sacrifice that took place "once for all" when Jesus died.
• Some Christians take very literally the idea that people are eating Christ's own body and blood in the Eucharist (this is the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation), whereas others take "this is my body" to mean "this symbolizes my body."