Hardly the Last Word

Before I begin, I should be clear about what I’m writing about.? I do enjoy reading the left-leaning The Jesus Manifesto website, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.? (Incidentally, that site has done its own interrogation of Sweet and Viola.)? Instead I’m talking about the recent Jesus Manifesto by Sweet and Viola, which has its own website and which Tripp Fuller featured recently on the Homebrewed Christianity podcast.

I realize that, in Robert Burns’s terms that Richard Dawkins recently appropriated, I’m one of the fleas to Len Sweet’s dog.? He’s far better known than I am and is under no obligation to respond to this.? Nonetheless, I think the text of A Jesus Manifesto (AJM hereafter) exhibits some philosophical problems common in other Christian talk, and engaging some of them might offer avenues for broader reflection.

AJM’s preamble establishes that the text is mainly going to be a criticism of other people (common enough for a manifesto), and it diagnoses other people’s Christianity’s main problem thus:

We believe that the major disease of the church today is JDD: Jesus Deficit Disorder. The person of Jesus is increasingly politically incorrect, and is being replaced by the language of ?justice,? ?the kingdom of God,? ?values,? and ?leadership principles.?

On its face, one could hardly disagree that Christians should worship Jesus; the problem that immediately strikes me is that I can’t think of very many congregations that don’t. The poisonous “politically incorrect” lets me know that this is likely a stab at people to the left of AJM (folks invoke Mao with a fluidity that should get its own variation of Godwin’s Law), but once again, just about all of the congregations with which I’m familiar, because they’re Christian congregations, do in fact name Jesus.? So what gives?

Perhaps AJM has in mind specifically Unitarian traditions that deny that Jesus is a person of the Trinity, but since “the kingdom of God” seems to be central to Jesus’ teachings in three of the four canonical documents that purport to be “the gospel of Christ Jesus” (Matthew, Mark, and Luke for those of you keeping score at home), a reasonable guess here is that AJM has in mind instead some sort of lapse on the parts of those people who would think of themselves as in fact worshiping Jesus Christ.? (This is not a great surprise from Viola, an author who wrote Pagan Christianity as a polemic not against some syncretistic fringe but against the bulk of historical Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism and who seems to think of himself as a faithful remnant in a long Church History of unfaithfulness.? I’m not as sure about Sweet’s sectarian leanings.)? [edit: To be fair, I did read somewhere (can't find the place) that Sweet did note later that he should have kept "kingdom of God" out of that list because of its centrality in the gospels.]

The vagueness of the opening salvo gets repeated in the enumerated points of the manifesto:

• “In all other religions, a follower can follow the teachings of its founder without having a relationship with that founder. Not so with Jesus Christ.”
• “‘What would Jesus do?’ is not Christianity. Christianity asks: ‘What is Christ doing through me ? through us? And how is Jesus doing it?’ Following Jesus means ‘trust and obey’ (respond), and living by his indwelling life through the power of the Spirit.”
• “There is no disconnect between the Jesus of Mark?s Gospel and the incredible, all-inclusive, cosmic Christ of Paul?s letter to the Colossians.”
• “Jesus Christ was not a social activist nor a moral philosopher. To pitch him that way is to drain his glory and dilute his excellence. Justice apart from Christ is a dead thing. The only battering ram that can storm the gates of hell is not the cry of Justice, but the name of Jesus.”
• “It is possible to confuse an academic knowledge or theology about Jesus with a personal knowledge of the living Christ himself. These two stand as far apart as do the hundred thousand million galaxies.”

I recognize up front that there’s little in the content of these sentences to which any Christian would object.? Certainly one should relate to Christ as a subject relates to a King and as a friend relates to a friend.? Certainly the Jesus who walked about in Palestine is the Word of John’s prologue.? Certainly a familiarity with Greek grammar is not the same as Christian devotion.? But that apparent non-controversy is precisely what bothers me; I’d like to know what AJM actually purports to oppose.? If nobody would object to any of these things (perhaps Unitarians, but again, AJM refers not to Unitarians but to “the church”), why write the manifesto in the first place?? Why accuse “the church” of “Jesus Deficit”?? (I’m realizing as I write that the cuteness of the document also rubs me the wrong way, perhaps because I don’t like cute sermons in general.) My suspicions only increase as the vague and uncontroversial points pile up.

Perhaps the desire for a straight fight is a shortcoming in my patience, but whenever I read documents like this, I wish that the text would just state with some clarity and openness which people they’re picking fights with and what those people should change.? The last point in my list above is a classic, as far as I’m concerned.? After all, I’ve only encountered a few broad categories of historical Jesus scholars, namely those who would say that one should relate to Christ spiritually irrespective of what historical Jesus scholarship turns up, those who would say that historical Jesus scholarship should reveal that there’s nobody there with whom to stand in relationship, and those who say that scholarship is a means to the end of truthful relating-to-Christ.? Nobody I’ve ever met would hold that “academic knowledge or theology about Jesus” is itself the sum total of Christianity, and frankly, as much as I strain my brain, I can’t think of how such a philosophy would unfold.? My hunch is that AJM wants to pick bones with those folks who would encourage Christians to engage in some disciplined historical thinking about the person Jesus in order to clear up some of the mythologies that have accumulated over time, that they’re casting such critiques (inaccurately) as “equating” the critique and the devotion, but AJM never comes out and critiques any living theologian or Jesus scholar, preferring instead the vague reference paired with an almost inexplicable astronomical hyperbole.? Again, spare us the cute sermon, and say what you mean, O AJM.

Beyond those general vagaries, AJM states Jesus’ humanity but undermines the same by ruling out the sorts of questions that surround genuine, contingent, Dasein human being.? Again, the text of AJM is not objectionable on its face:

It?s possible to confuse ?the cause? of Christ with the person of Christ. When the early church said ?Jesus is Lord,? they did not mean ?Jesus is my core value.? Jesus isn?t a cause; he is a real and living person who can be known, loved, experienced, enthroned and embodied. Focusing on his cause or mission doesn?t equate focusing on or following him. It?s all too possible to serve ?the god? of serving Jesus as opposed to serving him out of an enraptured heart that?s been captivated by his irresistible beauty and unfathomable love. Jesus led us to think of God differently, as relationship, as the God of all relationship.

The same vagueness before happens here: perhaps where Viola and Sweet live, there are people wandering about talking about Jesus the Core Value (I’ve heard and read dumber names for Christ), but I’ve never heard such said of Jesus.? And again to concede a point, AJM is right to note the particularity, the contingency, the historicity, and all the other things that make Jesus of Nazareth human.? But the document implies over and over again that Christ’s humanity resides primarily not in first-century occupied Palestine, an alien place that demands study to understand (hence the Christian practices of congregational preaching and teaching that Viola so deplores), but in the imaginations of postmodern “Jesus-followers.”? None of these references could support that claim on its own, but the cumulative effect does rouse my suspicion:

• “The Jesus who walked the shores of Galilee is the same person who indwells the church today.”
• “Seek Christ, embrace Christ, know Christ, and you have touched him who is Life.”
• “Christianity is the ‘good news’ that Beauty, Truth and Goodness are found in a person. Biblical community is founded and found on the connection to that person.”
• “The center and circumference of the Christian life is none other than the person of Christ. All other things, including things related to him and about him, are eclipsed by the sight of his peerless worth.”
• Jesus Christ cannot be separated from his teachings. Aristotle says to his disciples, ‘Follow my teachings.’ Socrates says to his disciples, ‘Follow my teachings’? Buddha says to his disciples, ‘Follow my meditations.’ Confucius says to his disciples, ‘Follow my sayings.’ Muhammad says to his disciples, ‘Follow my noble pillars.’ Jesus says to his disciples, ‘Follow me.’ In all other religions, a follower can follow the teachings of its founder without having a relationship with that founder. Not so with Jesus Christ. The teachings of Jesus cannot be separated from Jesus himself. Jesus Christ is still alive and he embodies his teachings”

I’ll admit I chuckled as I read that last note; I know from reading Plato and Xenophon and Aristotle that’s not at all what Socrates and Aristotle were about, and I suspect that someone who’s read Confucius would make similar objections.? But that’s not the point here; the point is that, aside from a brief geographical reference and an acknowledgement that canonical texts hold that Jesus might have taught something to somebody, AJM (acting, at least in part, as a commercial for the Len Sweet book at the bottom of AJM’s page) seems to treat Jesus not as a person who lived in a world defined by what had been and what was to come, not as one who spoke words and enacted symbolic/prophetic actions that derive their meanings from the particulars of a historical moment and from a history of interpretations, not as a Palestinian Jew, but as some sort of abstract iconic figure, a Beatrice for a latter-day Dante.? Now I’ve got no grand objections to Dante, of course, but I do think that, given the two millennia that separate a Christian in 2009 from the Jesus of the provinces of the early Roman Empire, one would do well at least to tip a hat to the distortions that open themselves up when Jesus becomes unmoored from Second-Temple Judaism.

That AJM’s vague statements point (vaguely) to real offenses and shortcomings in modern Christianity I have no doubt.? But AJM does not seem interested in engaging real shortcomings and offenses.? AJM uses a fair bit of verbiage that makes me think that there might be books to sell, and AJM deploys hyperbole in service of its vague statements that no doubt rallies the troops against the encoded enemies, but there’s little there on which one could hang a hat.? At text’s end I’ve got a general idea which trends and disciplines I should not like (mainly because they interfere with the Buddy-Christ that I’ve created in my mind), but I’ve got no sense of what the alternative might look like.? So in keeping with the questions that my title promises, these are the questions that I’d ask folks who really liked (or who wrote) AJM:

1. Who is the Jesus to whom the document refers?? What moves would AJM make to differentiate the Jesus whose name keeps popping up from false iterations of Jesus?
2. Since according to AJM “to follow Jesus” does not mean (as far as I can tell in the text) “to perform those things that Jesus commanded” or “to live one’s life in a manner similar to Jesus’s way of life,” what in fact does it mean?? If Jesus is neither moral philosopher nor exemplar, to whom should human beings look for moral reflections and moral example?
3. Does the “to follow Christ” movement that AJM proposes have any guidance to give to people contemplating taking a promotion that will mean more money but less time with the children, to a man one click away from Internet pornography, to women facing hard work for a salary that cannot support her kids, or to any human being living in a contingent and difficult world, or is Jesus for AJM entirely the territory of latter-day middle-class mystics?

I’m certain that some folks would take my brief examination here as somehow “uncharitable” or contentious.? But those sorts of folks don’t read this blog very often anyway, as far as I can tell.? AJM does not scandalize me with its content; on the contrary, there’s nothing there against which to fight.? AJM does strike me as a bit of digital sophistry, the sort of text that says too little but implies too much.? I’m more than willing to read other folks’ responses to that central critique, but at the moment, in a manner that’s hardly the last word, I’m inclined to see this little Web-event mainly as a critique that never managed the courage to name any names, and there are enough of those out there already.

Other Responses to “A Jesus Manifesto”

from the Jesus Manifesto

from Julie Clawson

from Andrew Perriman

HBC Podcast interview

from Ken Bussell

by ngilmour