Feb 12
5
N. T. Wright – Simply Jesus
Who is Jesus? “What did he think he was up to? What did he do and say, why was he killed, and did he rise from the dead?” –N.T. Wright
Who is Jesus? Does he live up to the myth of the Western/Conservative Christian super-hero or is he simply a man much like us? Not worthy of worship, but certainly worthy of our admiration. In Simply Jesus Wright offers a third portrait of Jesus.
Two Myths:
First, the high-pressure system of conservative Christianity.
Here we find the classic Western Christian myth about Jesus, which is still believed by millions around the world. In this myth, a supernatural being called “God” has a supernatural “son” whom he sends, virgin-born, into our world, despite the fact that it’s not his natural habitat, so that he can rescue people out of this world by dying in their place. As a sign of his otherwise secret divine identity, this “son” does all kinds of extraordinary and otherwise impossible “miracles,” crowning them all by rising from the dead and returning to “heaven,” where he waits to welcome his faithful followers after their deaths. In the Catholic version of this classic Western myth, Jesus calls his close friend Peter to found the church; anyone who wants to be with Jesus, here or hereafter, must join Peter’s movement. In the Protestant version, Jesus commissions his followers to write the New Testament, which reveals the absolute truth about Jesus and, once more, how to get to heaven.
Second, is the new classic modernist myth,
which is widely believed in secular society and in several mainline churches too. In this new myth of Christian origins, Jesus was just an ordinary man, a good first-century Jew, conceived and born in the ordinary way. He was a remarkable preacher and teacher, but he probably didn’t do all those “miracles.” Some people seem to have felt better after meeting him, but that was about it. He certainly didn’t think he would die for the sins of the world. He was simply trying to teach people to live differently, to love one another, to be kind to old ladies, small children, and (that blessed postmodern category) the “marginalized.” He was talking about God, not about himself. The idea of being a supernatural “son of God” never occurred to him; he’d have been horrified to hear such a thing and even more to have had a “church” founded in his memory.
He certainly didn’t rise from the dead; yes, his followers, feeling that his work would continue, used careless language that seemed to imply that that’s what had happened, but of course it didn’t. Then these followers began to tell stories about him that snowballed into legends, which then sprouted fresh interpretations. The “gospels” we now have in the Bible are the product of that free-floating—and perhaps self-serving—inventive process. They tell us a lot about the new aims and agendas of the early “Christians” and about how they settled down and adapted the original message of Jesus to different circumstances. But if we want to find out about Jesus himself, we have to work our way back through the fog of subsequent hero worship and, above all, through the process by which he was “divinized.” We might even need to call on some of the “other gospels,” the ones that boring old “orthodox” Christianity left out of its “canon.”
Wright, N. T. (2011-10-25). Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters (pp. 17-18). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.