What does it mean to 'know Jesus'? Conservative Christians answer with a formula - 'receiving Jesus as your personal Saviour, and witnessing for him in the world', or a dogma (Jesus is God) and/or as an experiential relationship (Alison calls this the 'intimist' approach, from the Spanish 'intimista' - a 'way of being spiritual to do with personal feelings'). Liberal Christians, says Rowan Williams in the forward, 'will dismiss all this as inappropriate, since our relation to Jesus is a pervasive (but rather elusive) one of being... enabled by his memory'.
James Alison urges us rather to view Jesus as the 'resurrected victim'. The world is essentially a mosaic of interlocking systems of oppression and 'victimage', reparation and/or settling scores. In contrast, the resurrection of Jesus frees us to engage in a lifestyle of forgiveness, equality and care for others - especially the oppressed.
This book is a brilliant application of the French critic and anthropologist Rene Girard's views (expounded especially in his 1972 'Violence and the Sacred' followed by 'Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World' 1978). Briefly: all archaic religions involve sacrifices of the innocent: from scapegoats to 'victim-gods'. Such sacrifices restore 'order' or 'peace'. Human society/culture continues at the expense of 'victims': whether victimized by humans or by the gods. We may not now offer bulls or lambs as sacrifices, and moderns have a sophisticated understanding of the 'victimage' of the oppressed, but wars are getting more ugly, more violent, and more widespread. Why is that?
James Alison's response is that we're all in great danger of 'missing the point'. Christianity (='knowing Jesus') is not essentially about dogmas (winning doctrinal battles) or mystical experiences (retreating to an inner peaceful world), but about imitating 'the self-giving victim'... 'drawn on by the intelligence of the victim which both sets us free to act gratuitously, reveals to us our and other people's outcasts... and empowers us to works of service, of solidarity with them...' Thus our whole person becomes formed by 'new desires' which is the only effective way to relate to a violent world with its 'rivalistic desires'.
'We become possessed by the crucified and risen one, by a slow process of entrancement... which has to pass through concrete acts of freedom and service' (p. 101).
This new 'understanding' begins with the resurrection of Jesus: it's only when disciples encounter the risen Jesus that they work backwards past the cross into his life and teaching that they finally 'get it'.
There's nothing here about the Jesus Seminar and other critical modern biblical scholarship. The inference from this, it seems to me, is that those people are also asking the wrong questions (like 'who actually said what to whom and when, for what purpose?'). The disciples did not invent a new 'theological schema' after they encountered the risen Jesus: rather they began to understand more clearly what Jesus 'was on about' from the very beginning of his public ministry.
James Alison has a unique adjective for Jesus - the 'intelligent' victim. This little descriptor is to be found on just about every page of this little (114-page) book. The idea here is that Jesus has a new perspective when he refutes the ways humans relate to one another (especially in destructive hierarchies) or solve problems (victimizing others so that their opposition to our schemes is supposedly neutralized).
James Alison is (was? - there is no clue here) a Dominican theologian and has lived and worked in Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile and the United States. He currently lives in his home-country England.
I can't wait to read his book about Original Sin - 'The Joy of Being Wrong'.
Rowland Croucher
February 2009. --
Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/
Justice for Dawn Rowan - http://dawnrowansaga.blogspot.com/
In his seminal work on Christology, Jesus - God and Man, Wolfhart Pannenberg emphasizes that the resurrection is the crucial event by which Jesus the man is attested to be also divine. Like Jurgen Moltmann (The Crucified God) Pannenberg sees the resurrection as absolutely vital to Christian faith - and this means the resurrection as, in some sense, a real historical event, and not simply a subjective vision or existential experience among the disciples, as 'demythologizers' would lead us to believe.
And here's another - Bishop N T Wright's - take on it -
It is easy to trawl atheist websites and come up with a conclusion like this, which I read somewhere on a Usenet newsgroup:
'More evidence that supports the fact that Jesus the Christ is pure myth and fable. For being considered the most influential person in all of history, it is strange that of the 29 first century historians who existed at the time of Jesus, none of them mention Jesus at all...
A learned friend responds:
1. Philo Judaeus
A philosopher, not a historian.
2. Apollonius of Tyana
Virtually no writings survive
3. Valerius Maximus
Not a historian - wrote a manual on "historical tales for rhetoricians" based largely on Roman history
4. Marcus Manilius
Not a historian - a poet and astrologer
5. Velleius Paterculus
A historian, but dead before the crucifixion (19 BC - 31 AD)
6. Quintus Curtius Rufus
Only surviving work is an autobiography of Alexander the Great. Oddly, Jesus doesn't appear.
7. Pomponius Mela
Not a historian - a geographer
8. Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Not a historian - a very bright man, but not a historian
9. Petronius Arbiter
Not a historian - a satirist
10. C. Musonius Rufus
Not a historian -- a philosopher, none of whose works now exist.
11. Aulus Persius Flaccus
Not a historian - a poet and satirist
12. Marcus Annaeus Lucanus
Only surviving historical work concerns the Roman Civil War. Oddly, does not mention Jesus
13. Hero(n) of Alexandria
Not a historian - a mathematician and engineer
14. Geminus
Not a historian - a mathematician and astronomer
15. Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella
Not a historian -- a writer on agriculture.
16. Cleomedes
Not a historian - an astronomer
17. Phaedrus
Not a historian - a writer of fables in imitation of Aesop
18. Dioscorides
Not a historian - a physician and pharmacologist
19. Plutarch of Chaeronea
A historian whose only extant works in this field focus on Alexander, Pliny and Herodotus. Oddly, does not mention Jesus
20.Justus of Tiberias
A historian whose work is lost and is anyway described by Photius as very brief and largely fictitious.
21. Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus)
His history is lost; the surviving work is a National History, discussing drugs etc.
22. Dio Chrysostom (Cocceianus Dio)
Regarded as a historian by his contemporaries but no historical works survive
23. Marcus Fabius Quintilianus
Only extant work is a textbook on rhetoric
24. Publius Papinius
Publius Papinius **Statius**, you mean? A poet, not a historian.
25. Dio of Prusa
Same person as Dio Chrysostom!!!
26. Silius Italicus
Not a historian - a poet. Only surviving work an epic based on the Punic wars
27. Sextus Julius Frontinus
Not a historian - a soldier and administrator
28. Marcus Valerius Martialus
Not a historian - read his "Epigrams".
29. Hierocles of Alexandria
Writing in the 5th Century AD by which time Christianity was the official religion of the Empire!!!
An online friend wrote: 'There are no prayers to Jesus in the Gospels.' I think he was wrong, and will post some material on that some time.
Meanwhile: at the close of the theatre production of Gospell the young players silently carried the corpse of Jesus from the stage. At that moment there's a pervasive feeling of despair - will this joyous production end with the triumph of the forces of evil?
Then all is transformed: the production ends with the caste back on stage joyously singing: Day by day, for three things I pray - to see Him more clearly, to love Him more dearly, to follow Him more nearly, Day by Day.
I heard a good sermon yesterday which suggested that part of the reason the Orthodox/conservative Western wing of the Church likes Paul (and often preaches from Paul more than from Jesus) is that Paul is discursive whereas the Jesus of the Gospels mostly uses narrative.
Figure this out, for example: why does Jesus never (never? can someone enlighten me?) use the term 'God' but descriptive terms like 'Father' in his prayers?
Another clue: why doesn't Paul cite any of Jesus' core narrative-based teachings/quotes in his letters (except perhaps for the Last Supper)?
We must remember that the apostles are to Jesus as Jupiter's moons are to the sun: multiple/different reflections of the Light of Christ. (I'm not an astronomer: but I presume Jupiter's moons give more light in total to that planet than our moon does to ours: does it?)
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