From Luke_Johnson@info.harpercollins.comTue Feb 27 12:41:07 1996 Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 08:34:25 -0500 (EST) From: Luke Johnson To: Jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com Subject: Jesus Debate Week 1, Reply (Johnson) Dear Colleagues, The pressure of events this week kept me from this machine until this morning, and I discovered that you, Professor Borg, anticipated perfectly my response to Professor Crossan! And since you posed the questions to me, I will pick them up and try to respond. For those who are "overhearing" this conversation, it may be helpful to note that Marcus Borg and I have never met, and John Dominic Crossan and I have had only one long conversation together. Our conversation has been joined by their shared constructive work in historical Jesus research, and my criticism of their books in my recent challenge to such efforts. I appreciate the irenic tone with which this debate has opened, and much prefer addressing matters of substance rather than of style. Finally, of all the authors I consider in my own book, Borg and Crossan (together with John Meier) are perhaps most clearly operating within a positive (if not easy) conversation with the classic christian tradition. Although much of my book was taken up with the question of what history can and cannot legitimately do (is "history" to be equated with "reality"? is "historical knowing" the same as "all knowing"? Does historical knowledge trump religious knowledge?), this opening volly takes up an issue that is very much "in house" to Christians. I. Crossan compares this debate to that in the ancient church between Gnostic and Catholic forms of Christianity. Borg correctly, I think, suggests that this implies my own position is the Gnostic one. To this, I reply: 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. II. Crossan asserts that the church chose "type 2" gospels over other competitors. As Borg suggests, Crossan is never less than stimulating, even when his casting of things enables them to be read different ways. To respond, I would like to distinguish. a) his assertion is wrong, in my view, if it is taken as meaning that such a variety of gospels were all contemporary contenders from which a conscious choice was made. In fact, there are no gospels of any type older than the four narrative gospels in the canon. Q, despite its hypostatization by scholars, remains a hypothetical document, or, at best, a remnant culled from material shared by Matthew and Luke (whose full extent or character can never be known with certainty from those elements which do appear in those respective compositions). The Gospel of Thomas may contain early traditions (MAY contain them), but in its composition certainly postdates even John. Type 2, as Crossan calls it, is earlier in composition and circulation than other types ---or at least that is the state of our evidence. b) his assertion is correct, in my view, if it means that the processs of canonization confirmed those gospels which correponded to a certain SENSUS ECCLESIAE concerning Jesus and christian identity. I agree that it is no mistake that only narrative gospels were included, for nothing so strongly refutes radical dualism than a savior who is part of a narrative, consecrating thereby the body, the world, and time itself. It is not by accident that narrative gospels (despite their many differences) also contained passion accounts central to their story, for such an emphasis agreed with the understanding of Jesus as one who in obedience to God gave his life in service to others. In a word< the character of these gospels agreed with the CHARACTER OF JESUS as apprehended in ortheodox Christianity. III. 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 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