IN A TOO RARE online example of adult-level conversation about, among many other things, the Resurrection of Jesus, I'd recommend this archive from a debate among three scholars conducted by e-mail in 1996:
During the Lenten season of 1996, Harper San Francisco publishing company sponsored an e-mail debate which explored the significance of the historical Jesus for Christian faith. The seven-week debate took place between John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, both members of the Jesus Seminar, and Luke Timothy Johnson, the Seminar's foremost critic. Here are the messages from this contentious and intense debate. Each week except for the last consisted of a main message from one of the participants and replies from the other two.
In 1996 I would certainly have found Crossan's point of view most persuasive, having recently read his book The Historical Jesus, which I credit for my adult conversion. Today I find Luke Timothy Johnson the most persuasive of the three, oddly, the one who seems to me the least bound by an orthodoxy or or ideological agenda.
As an example, here are a couple of passages from Johnson's first response to the other two:
a) My strong reading of the resurrection as the originating "religious event" of the Christian movement, as the inevitable perspective from which all Jesus traditions were perceived and interpreted even in their earliest transmission, and as pointing to the "real Jesus" for christian faith ---that is as a living presence to the world even to this day, is by no means a denial of what Crossan calls Catholic Christianity, but the opposite, its grounding.
b) To affirm the resurrection this way does not imply a denial of incarnation, that is, the reality of Jesus of Nazareth as a historically locatable human person of the first century who lived a genuinely and fully human life, nor does it deny an essential continuity between that human Jesus and the resurrected one. But I would assert that the creedal statement concerning "born of Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate"--- while certainly a "historical affirmation" is not the same as a "historical Jesus" as currently construed, for that affirmation has a
"mythic" lead in (it is God from God who is so born) and mythic follow up (rose from the dead and will come again).
c) the strong view of the resurrection, indeed, is a way of affirming the value of the body and the world, for it holds out the hope of transformation of the body and the world, rather than seeking salvation in a mystic or epistemic flight.
and:
Crossan speaks of a dialectic between "Jesus then" and "Jesus now." Borg rightly notes that there is something too easy in the way the statement is framed. Very briefly, to respect the limits of our exchanges---and mine has already been too long extended--- I will again agree and disagree by making a distinction.
a) Crossan is certainly in agreement with my position if he means that the experience of the risen Jesus (through the power of the Holy Spirit, through the continuing religious experiences of people in the world) continues the process of God's revelation, and that these experiences must always be in conversation with the Jesus found in the Gospels ---as I argue in my book, the images of Jesus inscribed in the Gospels as literary compositions, images that are both diversely shaded and yet deeply joined on the issue of Jesus' basic character). To dwell only in the present experience IS to be Gnostic (or something). To dwell only in a historical reconstruction reduces Jesus, ultimately, to Socrates or Apollonius. I, for one, will not deny that the divine DAIMON worked through either. But for the tradition that I claim, Jesus' presence continues in a way more powerful than mere memory or mere
reconstruction. Here in why continuing conversation with JESUS IN THE GOSPELS is essential: for THAT Jesus is also one "read from the resurrection" yet grounded in the experience of him as well in his human existence. THAT mode of contact cannot be replicated, and those interpretations of Jesus retain their distinctively normative character for those wanting to claim the identity of Christians.
b) Crossan is wrong, in my view, when he says this conversation is between a "Jesus Now" (what does HE mean by this, anyway? I don't know how strong a view of the resurrection he espouses, but his language in his books is elusive), and a "Jesus then" WHICH IS A HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION. Indeed, Crossan's own textual example is a sort of midrashic conversation with the Gospel's diverse versions, rather than an attempt to "get behind the text" to HISTORY. What's going on here? Is what Crossan means by "historical" simply what I mean by the Jesus of the Gospels? If so, why did he write all those books that got to Jesus by deconstructing the four Gospels?
I will say that as one brought up in "Catholic Christianity" the assignment of a belief in the bodily Resurrection of Jesus to "conservative" as opposed to "liberal" Christianity is foreign to my thinking. I would guess that almost all of the "liberal" theologians in Catholicism would profess a real belief in the real Resurrection of Jesus, from what I've read of the radical tradition, which I am closest to as my mother was, Liberation Theology, I don't think that the "deistic" view of it in terms of the laws of physics is much gone into and would certainly be beside the point.
In no way is the typical barroom village atheist bullshit relevant to what the New Testament says on the matter which, when you carefully read every sentence and phrase, isn't describing a reanimated corpse. On that, alone, you fail to address what I was talking about. Neither does the merely metaphorical assertion that there was no, actual Resurrection of the person, Jesus, but that he "lived in the memory of those who believed." Or that his teachings living on were what was asserted. As other academic assertions of the reality of the Resurrection note, the phenomenon of the continuance of Jesus in the world surpasses that of the Socratic or other merely philosophical survivals of ancient philosophy. Though the one I'm thinking of, this morning, is by an evangelical theologian with whom I disagree about many things with. I don't have any great worries about non-uniformity of belief, there is hardly any area of thought, including science, which doesn't maintain many different, far more hostile differences of opinion than is demonstrated in this 26 year old debate from earlier days of online communication.
I will note that in addressing these two associates of the "Jesus Seminar" Luke Timothy Johnson is quite a contrast to the typical current practices of disagreement, argument and "debate" when he finishes:
I have enjoyed this first exchange. I will wind-up and pitch on Monday.
Luke Timothy Johnson
Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament
and Christian Origins
Candler School of Theology
Emory University
Imagine if secular "debate" online had been conducted in that kind of way. Instead we got the Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Lindsay Graham level practices of the new atheists and pseudo-skepticism, crap that wows the mid-brow, college-credentialed and high-school level wise guys who crowd out adult level discussion. The kind of stuff that dominates the culture especially through twitter. Who knows, if more online comment were like it maybe I'd even stop moderating comments here and let all the hate-mail through if it was written on this level.
Update: If you want an example of that kind of Senate Committee food fight style from an academic, here's Robert M. Price anticipating Lindsay Graham in regard to Johnson's book criticizing the Jesus Seminar which Price was a member of. Other than to style Johnson as old fashioned (see the quote from Jack Levine under the masthead of this blog) I don't see much in the way of refutation in the review from "The Institute For Higher Critical Studies."
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