Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Was the simple Jesus of the Gospels replaced by the Complex Christ
of St. Paul?
I agree with Fr. Robert Capon's Assessment. Short answer? No.
Long answer? I bow to the wisdom of the good Fr. Capon below:
“In spite of the fact that the Good News of Jesus Christ (to give Christianity one of its own titles of preference) has been seen as a religion by outsiders and been sold as one by its adherents, it is not a religion at all. Rather, it is the announcement of the end of religion. On its plan, New Testament face, it proclaims that all the things that religion promised but couldn’t deliver have been delivered once and for all by Jesus in his death and resurrection. This is not to say that there isn’t plenty of old-time religion in the Bible; there are in fact enough creedal, cultic, and behavioral stipulations to gladden the heart of an Aztec priest. And those requirements can be found not only in the Old Testament (where they are obviously meant to be taken seriously) but also in the New (where they cannot be taken with anything like the seriousness they are often accorded). Nevertheless, on any final, Gospel-regarding balance, only one conclusion is possible: religion as I have defined it – that is, religion as something that human beings must get right in order to have a correct relationship with god – is a subject that shouldn’t be given Christian houseroom.
It has been argued, of course, that this “no-religion” aspect of the Gospel – this insistence on salvation by grace alone, not works (not even religious works) – is the invention of Paul rather than Jesus. You yourself may even have bought that bill of goods. For me, though, it just won’t wash.
In the first place, its fundamental proposition – namely, that the “simple Jesus of the Gospels” was surreptitiously replaced by the “complex Christ of Paul” – runs clear contrary to the evidence of history. The records simply do not support the nineteenth-century fantasy that a cosmic savior who reconciles all by grace through faith was somehow slipped over on a primitive church that previously had heard only of a wonder working rabbi with a few religious improvements up his sleeve.
The early church was reading Paul’s letters before he died in A.D. 64; it did not, however, get its hands on the Gospels as we now have them until sometime after that (65, say, to 110). The Gospels, accordingly, were written for the sake of the Epistles, not the other way around. At the very least, the two were accepted by the church in a process of mutual interaction: there was never even a hint that the first Christians thought one of them was seditiously infiltrating the other.
Paradoxically, moreover, the four Gospels the church finally settled on as “canonical” (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – their predominance is clearly evident by 150 to 200) were the four so-called “simpler” ones as contrasted with the other, more high-flown examples of the genre now generally referred to as the Apocryphal Gospels. It would seem, therefore, that however much the 19th (and 20th) centuries may have found this “simple-complex” combination indigestible, the early church, if it noticed at all, took it in as nothing more than two courses in the same delicious meal.
In the second place, the New Testament has a perfectly good answer to the charge that Christianity as we now have it is radically Pauline. And the answer is that God hired Paul (then called Saul) on the road to Damascus for the precise purpose of making Christianity Pauline – that is, of rescuing it from the overly “religious” orientation of the exclusively Jewish-Christian Jerusalem church. The main item in Paul’s job description was precisely that he knock religion in the head. Because whatever it was that Jesus may have thought or taught (and at the very least, the authorities who finally nailed him didn’t think he was teaching their brand of religion), it soon became evident that if the original Jerusalem church crown could have had their way, Christianity would have been swamped in a flood of religious requirements like circumcision, dietary laws, and other gentile-excluding practices. Indeed, in an odd moment, I once suggested that what Jesus actually said to Saul on the Damascus road was not, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” but, “Saul! Help! I’m a prisoner in a commandment factory.”
In other words, far from supplanting the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Paul actually rescued the Good News of Jesus from the danger of being converted into the bad news of religion. He was the one who saw clearly that if Jesus had indeed done whatever it was that religion had been trying to do, there was simply no more need for religion. Its job (which it couldn’t really accomplish anyway) had been done for it. The whole business was over. All that we or anyone had to do now was believe (have faith) in Jesus and we would be home free because the right relationship, so long and so vainly sought, was already a fact in him. There were no works of any kind we had to get right to achieve the relationship; we had only to trust him and be pleasantly surprised at the light burden he had substituted for the iron yoke of religion.
Admittedly – and legitimately – Christianity has long made use of the forms of religion in presenting its radically nonreligious message. It has employed the trappings of creed, cult, and conduct freely and without apology. But it has never used them seriously: at its Gospel-regarding best, it has always said that those trappings had no religious function. Christians used them not to do the job of establishing a right relationship with God but simply to remind themselves of what the job was that needed doing – and of the rib-tickling fact that Jesus had done the whole thing free for nothing. When we get right down to it, therefore, there is not a single properly religious act in the Christian “religion.” Our confessions do not earn us forgiveness by their sincerity or their exhaustiveness: we had it all along by Jesus’ gift.
Our prayers do not con God into being gracious: he conned himself on the cross. Our Eucharists do not cause Jesus to show up in a place from which he was absent: he is already everywhere – in all the fullness of his reconciling work – before the service starts. And our baptisms (to come finally to the root sacrament of the Good News) do not divide the world into the saved (us, inside) and the lost (them, outside). Baptism – and the church it constitutes – is simply the authentic, effective sign of the mystery of the Christ who has already saved all, whether in or out. Accordingly, none of these “religious” acts leaves room for a single, saving thing that is up to us. We erect the sacramental signs, yes; but the mystery beneath the signs is none of our doing. We have only to believe that we have all been drawn in for good by Jesus (“I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all to myself,” John 12:32) and laugh out loud.
That is why the Gospel alone is Good News and all the religions of the world – whether they’re about God or some lesser thing – are bad news. You would think, therefore, wouldn’t you, that the world would take one look at the “Gone Out Of The Religion Business” sign on the door of the church and come pouring in to celebrate the free gift. Well, if you did, you would think wrong. Because not only doesn’t the world knock down the church’s door; it actually prefers to sit outside in the cold wind of religion and make believe it’s earning its way home by shivering. Worse yet, the church – at most times and in all ages – has either not bothered to put the sign up, or has been feverishly busy taking it down.”
- Health Money, and Love & why we don’t enjoy them pp. 31-34
Long answer? I bow to the wisdom of the good Fr. Capon below:
“In spite of the fact that the Good News of Jesus Christ (to give Christianity one of its own titles of preference) has been seen as a religion by outsiders and been sold as one by its adherents, it is not a religion at all. Rather, it is the announcement of the end of religion. On its plan, New Testament face, it proclaims that all the things that religion promised but couldn’t deliver have been delivered once and for all by Jesus in his death and resurrection. This is not to say that there isn’t plenty of old-time religion in the Bible; there are in fact enough creedal, cultic, and behavioral stipulations to gladden the heart of an Aztec priest. And those requirements can be found not only in the Old Testament (where they are obviously meant to be taken seriously) but also in the New (where they cannot be taken with anything like the seriousness they are often accorded). Nevertheless, on any final, Gospel-regarding balance, only one conclusion is possible: religion as I have defined it – that is, religion as something that human beings must get right in order to have a correct relationship with god – is a subject that shouldn’t be given Christian houseroom.
It has been argued, of course, that this “no-religion” aspect of the Gospel – this insistence on salvation by grace alone, not works (not even religious works) – is the invention of Paul rather than Jesus. You yourself may even have bought that bill of goods. For me, though, it just won’t wash.
In the first place, its fundamental proposition – namely, that the “simple Jesus of the Gospels” was surreptitiously replaced by the “complex Christ of Paul” – runs clear contrary to the evidence of history. The records simply do not support the nineteenth-century fantasy that a cosmic savior who reconciles all by grace through faith was somehow slipped over on a primitive church that previously had heard only of a wonder working rabbi with a few religious improvements up his sleeve.
The early church was reading Paul’s letters before he died in A.D. 64; it did not, however, get its hands on the Gospels as we now have them until sometime after that (65, say, to 110). The Gospels, accordingly, were written for the sake of the Epistles, not the other way around. At the very least, the two were accepted by the church in a process of mutual interaction: there was never even a hint that the first Christians thought one of them was seditiously infiltrating the other.
Paradoxically, moreover, the four Gospels the church finally settled on as “canonical” (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – their predominance is clearly evident by 150 to 200) were the four so-called “simpler” ones as contrasted with the other, more high-flown examples of the genre now generally referred to as the Apocryphal Gospels. It would seem, therefore, that however much the 19th (and 20th) centuries may have found this “simple-complex” combination indigestible, the early church, if it noticed at all, took it in as nothing more than two courses in the same delicious meal.
In the second place, the New Testament has a perfectly good answer to the charge that Christianity as we now have it is radically Pauline. And the answer is that God hired Paul (then called Saul) on the road to Damascus for the precise purpose of making Christianity Pauline – that is, of rescuing it from the overly “religious” orientation of the exclusively Jewish-Christian Jerusalem church. The main item in Paul’s job description was precisely that he knock religion in the head. Because whatever it was that Jesus may have thought or taught (and at the very least, the authorities who finally nailed him didn’t think he was teaching their brand of religion), it soon became evident that if the original Jerusalem church crown could have had their way, Christianity would have been swamped in a flood of religious requirements like circumcision, dietary laws, and other gentile-excluding practices. Indeed, in an odd moment, I once suggested that what Jesus actually said to Saul on the Damascus road was not, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” but, “Saul! Help! I’m a prisoner in a commandment factory.”
In other words, far from supplanting the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Paul actually rescued the Good News of Jesus from the danger of being converted into the bad news of religion. He was the one who saw clearly that if Jesus had indeed done whatever it was that religion had been trying to do, there was simply no more need for religion. Its job (which it couldn’t really accomplish anyway) had been done for it. The whole business was over. All that we or anyone had to do now was believe (have faith) in Jesus and we would be home free because the right relationship, so long and so vainly sought, was already a fact in him. There were no works of any kind we had to get right to achieve the relationship; we had only to trust him and be pleasantly surprised at the light burden he had substituted for the iron yoke of religion.
Admittedly – and legitimately – Christianity has long made use of the forms of religion in presenting its radically nonreligious message. It has employed the trappings of creed, cult, and conduct freely and without apology. But it has never used them seriously: at its Gospel-regarding best, it has always said that those trappings had no religious function. Christians used them not to do the job of establishing a right relationship with God but simply to remind themselves of what the job was that needed doing – and of the rib-tickling fact that Jesus had done the whole thing free for nothing. When we get right down to it, therefore, there is not a single properly religious act in the Christian “religion.” Our confessions do not earn us forgiveness by their sincerity or their exhaustiveness: we had it all along by Jesus’ gift.
Our prayers do not con God into being gracious: he conned himself on the cross. Our Eucharists do not cause Jesus to show up in a place from which he was absent: he is already everywhere – in all the fullness of his reconciling work – before the service starts. And our baptisms (to come finally to the root sacrament of the Good News) do not divide the world into the saved (us, inside) and the lost (them, outside). Baptism – and the church it constitutes – is simply the authentic, effective sign of the mystery of the Christ who has already saved all, whether in or out. Accordingly, none of these “religious” acts leaves room for a single, saving thing that is up to us. We erect the sacramental signs, yes; but the mystery beneath the signs is none of our doing. We have only to believe that we have all been drawn in for good by Jesus (“I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all to myself,” John 12:32) and laugh out loud.
That is why the Gospel alone is Good News and all the religions of the world – whether they’re about God or some lesser thing – are bad news. You would think, therefore, wouldn’t you, that the world would take one look at the “Gone Out Of The Religion Business” sign on the door of the church and come pouring in to celebrate the free gift. Well, if you did, you would think wrong. Because not only doesn’t the world knock down the church’s door; it actually prefers to sit outside in the cold wind of religion and make believe it’s earning its way home by shivering. Worse yet, the church – at most times and in all ages – has either not bothered to put the sign up, or has been feverishly busy taking it down.”
- Health Money, and Love & why we don’t enjoy them pp. 31-34
