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well the cover story for Easter week at
Newsweek is written by Andrew Sullivan
who's a well-known a blogger and
political cultural commentator a
Catholic and who takes positions that I
would agree with many times but this
piece is about the crisis in
Christianity as he reads it
so Christianity thinks saddled with
supernaturalists doctrines that people
today have a hard time believing beset
by very bad and corrupt leadership
co-opted for base political ends is he
thinks on the verge of collapse just the
first comment though this would be a
whole other video to do is I don't know
how he squares that with the fact that
Christianity is also the fastest growing
religion in the world there's a little
bit of that Upper East Side vision of
the world and that observation but for
another video what he proposes as a
solution is a sort of reap rista nicing
of christianity to get back to the
fundamentals and that means the great
ethical and moral teachings of Jesus and
he takes as his patron saint if you want
Thomas Jefferson and I've spoken before
about Jefferson's Bible which you can
buy in bookstores today the original
Jefferson's Bible is one to which
Jefferson literally took a straight
razor and cut out any offending passages
now what Jefferson meant by that will
has past is dealing with the miraculous
the supernatural the divinity of Jesus
and the resurrection so we just
literally cut those out what you're left
with is Jesus the enlightenment-era sage
teaching a timeless moral truths about
love and compassion and forgiveness and
so on now
as the reference to Jefferson should
make clear there's nothing particularly
new in this proposal so that's going
back to the 18th century I would say
much of the Christian liberal theology
of the last 200 years
has been devoted to this kind of project
go back to Friedrich Schleiermacher the
very beginning of the 19th century who
proposes Jesus as a kind of exalted
religious genius it was a very pure
sense of God go to someone like Immanuel
Kant Jefferson's contemporary who argued
that Jesus is the sort of prototype of
the moral life the the pure exemplar of
the moral life look at someone like
Rudolf Bultmann very influential 20th
century theologian who proposes Jesus as
more or less a prototype of the
existentialist philosopher you have more
contemporary examples of this tendency
look to Deepak Chopra or to Eckhart
Tolle both of whom present Jesus not as
the Son of God risen from the dead but
is basically a New Age guru okay so this
Ari pristine izing of Christianity by
going back to Jesus the ethical teacher
is a very old project and Andrew
Sullivan now associates himself with
that now here's the first major problem
with this method it has very little to
do with the authentic New Testament and
again Jefferson's little exercise makes
that clear because once you've done what
Jefferson did what are you left with
you're left with fragments of the
Gospels take out the miraculous the
supernatural divinity of Jesus
resurrection you are left with a few
fragments see Matthew Mark Luke and John
were massively interested in Jesus
miracles and exorcisms they were
practically obsessed with his
resurrection from the dead
in fact the Gospels have been
characterized I think quite correctly as
passion narratives with long
introductions in other words what
they're really about is the dying and
rising of Jesus that's their central
preoccupation now broaden the scope from
the Gospels to the epistles of Paul what
do you find Paul telling you lots and
lots of things about the teaching of
Jesus I'm a contrary there's almost
nothing in Paul's letters about the
teaching of Jesus
what's Paul massively interested in
Jesus risen from the dead the
resurrection the Paschal mystery the
cross the rising of Jesus that's Paul's
interest look to in the evangelical
preaching of the first disciples think
of Peter's speeches in the Acts of the
Apostles what do you find there but this
affirmation of the resurrection and
flowing from that the lordship of Jesus
so you kill them but God raised him from
the dead which makes him the Lord and
that term of course
jaysus kurios Jesus the Lord which you
find all through st. Paul is a very
provocative title because the watchword
of the time was Kaiser kurios Caesar is
the Lord he's the one to whom your
allegiances do so what Peter and Paul
the others were saying was know Jesus is
the Lord the one to whom your allegiance
is due which of course goes a long way
to explaining why they spent a lot of
time in jail now this leads to the
second major problem with this approach
that Andrew Sullivan proposes it leads
to a harmless and non-threatening Jesus
here's what I mean you killed him
but God raised him so there's a there's
in a nutshell the charismatic preaching
of st. Peter you killed them
what does that mean that means the
Jewish establishment that means the
Roman establishment that means the
powers that be you kill them but God
raised them you see how provocative that
is meant to be it's the clearest a firm
ation that God is more powerful than the
powers of the world which relied and
still rely on their capacity to cow
people into submission to frighten them
what was the cross in the first century
but state-sponsored terrorism it was a
way to terrify people into submission
you killed him by means of the cross but
God raised him see and that's exactly
why the tyrants of that time and the
tyrants of any time are terrified by the
cross of Jesus
they're terrified by the good news of
the resurrection which means God's love
is more powerful than anything in the
world when the first Christians held up
the cross of Jesus it was meant as a
taunt the cross frightened everybody was
the means by which Rome frightened their
subjects into submission the Christians
held it up Paul says I preached one
thing Christ and him crucified well see
most people the time would have thought
he was mad to be preaching a crucified
criminal but see it was a taunt you
think that frightens us God's love is
more powerful than anything that's in
the world because you kill them but God
raised him think of the opening line of
Mark's Gospel he proclaims an e-1 Yeley
on good news gospel but that was a term
used to describe imperial victories in
the ancient world and you on gely on
good news about an imperial victory the
Emperor would send literally evangelist
out ahead of him with the good news mark
in a very taunting way very edgy way was
saying the true on going on has nothing
to do with you and Caesar it has to do
with someone whom Caesar killed but who
God raised from the dead and just stub
to rub it in a little bit he calls Jesus
the widow's to Theo the Son of God which
of course was a Roman title it was an
imperial title the Emperor proudly
carried that mark is saying in a very
edgy way you're not the Son of God he's
the son of God so again you see why this
early message of the resurrection was
precisely a politically charged
subversive message now go back to Andrew
Solomon again and again in the article
he says I want an apolitical Jesus all
this church and politics up I wanted a
political Jesus well quite right which
is just why the powers that be today
we'll find his proposal very amenable
the real Jesus is deeply political he
always was meaning he poses a challenge
to the powers that be that's why I must
say when I was reading the article I
smiled quite a bit because I thought I'm
sure the author thinks he's being very
edgy and very provocative
in making this proposal let's go back to
the real Jesus when in fact I would say
Oh contraire what he's proposing
actually is a privatized defined
spiritual teacher who really poses a
threat to no one and that's the problem
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