From John_Dominic_Crossan@info.harpercollins.comThu Mar 28 13:07:59 1996 Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1996 12:07:18 -0500 From: John Dominic Crossan To: JESUS2000@info.harpercollins.com Subject: Week 6: Response Message (Crossan) Dear Marcus and Luke: You asked me two direct questions, Marcus, and I reply in the order asked Your first question concerned the twin foci of Jesus' life as "Spirit and compassion" or "Spirit and Kingdom." Clearly, you or anyone else, may select whatever terms you deem appropriate as long as they are defined for others to understand, and I do not want to get into discussions about terms rather than concepts. But I reply first about "Spirit" and then about "compassion." About "Spirit." I use "Kingdom of God" because that is the term most deeply associated with Jesus in the tradition. The evidence for that conclusion is in Appendix 5 of The Historical Jesus and can be compared, for example, with the usage for "Son of Man" in Appendix 4. (As usual, of course, that presumes valid source criticism, for me, for you, for anyone. Different conclusions about sources will generate different conclusions about the historical Jesus but nobody evades that inevitability.) If Jesus spoke about the Spirit of God, that would be my central term and concern. But he did not. Or look, for example at the Baptism of Jesus. That Jesus was baptized by John is as sure as anything about him can ever be but that the Spirit's advent happened at that exact moment even as an ecstatic experience for Jesus alone is a very, very different question. If one judged that to be securely historical and if Jesus thereafter talked primarily about the Spirit of God (not the Kingdom of God), I would follow you in preferring an emphasis not on the Kingdom but on the Spirit. Are we simply playing word-games here? What is at stake for me is that Kingdom of God is 100% socio-economic and 100% religio-theological. It evokes the obvious correlative, the Kingdom of Caesar, and it asks whether they are exactly the same or radically different. My analogy is some German Christians insisting in the early 30s of this century that Jesus is "Der Fuehrer," meaning, of course, that Hitler ain't. Kingdom, in other words, is a political term. Spirit is not, even though it COULD be so explained. That is what you have to do by always speaking of "Spirit AND ..." or of Jesus as "Spirit-person" AND "social prophet." I do not know, in terms of the ancient traditions of Northern Israel, how to distinguish politics from religion or economics from theology in the cases say of Deborah and Barak or Elijah and Elisha. Neither can I distinguish them in Jesus' Kingdom of God. So that is my preferred term, Marcus, in honor of Jesus' own choice. And if the tradition transposes Kingdom into Spirit, I will always want to know why it did that, and what is lost or gained in the exchange. As I understand Jesus, the Kingdom of God is about radical justice for earth and that means something fearfully simple: radical egalitarianism here below. About compassion. Your use of that term has always worried me, Marcus. An analogy. As a Roman Catholic, I disagree profoundly with, among many other things, the present Pope's insistence that women cannot be ordained. I hesitate, however, to call that a lack of compassion. I see it rather as an abuse of power. He is, I presume, every bit as compassionate as I am and may even be more so. That is a waste of argument. The question is whether he is abusing his power, whether we are up against spiritual fascism or religious totalitarianism. I do not know how to argue whether Pilate was or was not "compassionate" but I can understand Jesus' insistence that the human normalcies of oppression and discrimination, exploitation and violence were radically opposed by the Kingdom of God (in Matthew's gloss: the will of God for earth). What is at stake, once again? Frightening visions and terrifying programs like Kingdom of God or divine justice as radical egalitarianism seem to get softer and vaguer as they transmute into Spirit of God or human compassion. Thereafter, one has to try and get some or all of that original content back into those new expressions. I see you having to struggle to do that, Marcus, that is, having to solve a problem you created for yourself. For myself, I hold to Jesus' expression, Kingdom of God, and use my understanding of it to judge all other terms taken as equivalents for it: Kingdom judges Spirit, radical egalitarianism judges human compassion. Your second question, Marcus, involved the gospel stories of Easter as essentially about apostolic authority rather than ecstatic vision. This, in baldest summary, is my basic evidence. First, Paul mentions three types of people to whom the Risen Lord "was revealed": a large community (the 500), leadership groups (the Twelve or the Apostles), and specific named leaders (Peter, James, Paul himself). I think of Paul's own experience as an ecstatic vision (absolutely typical within comparative religion). But when I turn to the last chapters of the gospels, I do not find anything characteristic of ecstatic vision. I find: appearances/revelations of Jesus (a) to the community (e.g., Luke 24 as against Acts 1); (b) to leadership groups (e.g., Acts 1 as against Luke 24, etc.); and especially (c) to specific leaders (the Beloved Disciple over Peter, Mary, and Thomas in John 20 or Peter over everyone else in John 21, etc.). I am absolutely sure there were all sorts of ecstatic experiences within earliest Christianity (more correctly: within the earliest companionship of the Kingdom), but that is not what is recorded in the last gospel chapters. Apparition or revelation is there about eventual authority and not about inaugural vision. Second, I find it very striking that the miracles of Jesus fall into two clear types of actions and recipients. On the one hand, there are healings and exorcisms primarily for "non-disciples." On the other, there are "nature miracles" primarily for "disciples." A good example of hybrid type is the multiplication of loaves and fishes for "non-disciples" but through "disciples" (compare Mark & John). It is, however, precisely "nature miracles" that turn up before and after "Easter": the miraculous fish-catch in Luke 5 and John 21 and that multiplication miracles in John 6 and 21. My working hypothesis, therefore, is that "nature miracles" and "risen appearances" arose as certifications of authority (for leadership group and/or specific leader) at an early stage before anyone was thinking of before Easter or after Easter, before anyone was thinking about a consecutive narrative when anything or everything had to happen in a before and an after. Hence they could end up ultimately on either side of the great Easter divide, once, that is, it had been constituted as such.