Searching for God # 103

 In the previous post, I introduced Robert Funk’s notion of a ‘new age’ for a renewed Christianity. Today, I would like to flesh out that concept, with his help.

Funk begins with the phrase, ‘The aim of this quest is to set Jesus free.’ And the freedom Funk addresses would liberate Jesus from ‘the scriptural and creedal and experiential prisons in which we have incarcerated him….The  creedal formulations of the second, third, and fourth centuries would be de-dogmatized and Jessus would be permitted to emerge as a robust, real, larger-than-life figure in his own right….The pale anemic, iconic Jesus would suffer by comparison with the stark realism of the genuine article. (Funk, Honest to Jesus, p. 300)

“Revamping our understanding of the origins of the Christian faith itself”….Funk continues: ‘We will find it necessary to reexamine trends tat led to the identification of certain documents as orthodox and authoritative and eventually to the formation of the canonical New Testament…This agenda takes us back to the beginnings of Christianity, to a time well before it assumed its classical form at Nicea. Just as the first believers did, we will have to start all over again with a clean theological slate, with only the parables, aphorisms, parabolic acts, and deeds of Jesus as the basis on which to formulate a new version of the faith. (Ibid, p. 301)

The renewed quest has..ramifications for how we understand the Christian life…Christianity at its heart is not moralistic. In its finest hours it is ethical. At its worst, it is creedal—creeds are designed to exclude and expunge rather than include and nourish. (Ibid, p. 302)

A secular sage who may have more relevance to the spiritual dimensions of society at large than to institutionalized religion. As a subversive sage, Jesus is also a secular sage. His parables and aphorisms all but obliterate the boundaries separating the sacred from the secular….When the name of Jesus is mentioned, ‘religion’ is assumed to be the subject. But in fact the Jesus of whom we catch glimpses in the gospels may be said to have been irreligious, irreverent, and impious. The first word he said, as Paul Tillich once remarked, was a word against religion in its habituated form; because he was indifferent to the formal practice of religion, he is said to have profaned the temple, the sabbath, and breached the purity regulations of his own legacy, most important of all, he spoke of the kingdom of God in profane terms—that it—non-religiously. (Ibid, p. 302)

Jesus himself is not the proper object of faith. Jesus called on his followers to trust the Father, to believe in God’s domain or reign. The proper object of faith inspired by Jesus is to trust what Jesus trusted. Jesus pointed to something he called God’s domain, something he did not create, something he did not control.  I want to discover what Jesus saw, or heard, or sensed that was so enchanting, so mesmerizing, so challenging that it held Jesus in its spell. I do not want to be misled by what his followers (Peter, Paul) did: instead of looking to see what he saw, his devoted disciples tended to start at the pointing finger. (Ibid, p. 305)

We should, in articulating the vision of Jesus, we should express out interpretations in the same register as he employed in his parables and aphorisms. Jesus quite deliberately articulated an open-ended, nonexplicit vision of his parables and aphorisms. He did not prescribe behavior or endorse specific religious practices. He never was programmatic in his pronouncements….Our interpretation of parables should be more parables—polyvalent, enigmatic, humorous, and non-prescriptive. Yet we are invited by his example to be equally bold and innovative….One tenet of the new creed for the post-Christian age is that nothing is protected, nothing is off limits. (Ibid, p. 305)

Give Jesus a demotion. He asked for it, he deserves it, we owe him no less. As divine son of God, coeternal with the Father, pending cosmic judge seated at God’s right have, he is insulated and isolated from his persona as the humble Galilean sage….A demoted Jesus then becomes available as the real founder of the Christna movement. With his new status, he will no longer be merely its mythical icon, embedded in the myth of the descending/ascending, dying/rising lord of the pagan mystery cults, but of one substance with us all.

Cast Jesus in a new drama. The creedal plot in which Jesus has been cast is the myth of the external redeemer. In that story, the protagonist leaves a heavenly abode, enters the human space, performs a redemptive function, and returns to the heavens. The movement is from and to alien space….A plot familiar to modern readers, Superman and American West where the cowboy hero rides into a town beleaguered by villain, has a shoot-out with the perpetrators of evil, rescues those who are unable to resc..ue themselves, and then rides off into the sunset. (Lone Ranger)…The hero is not one of us; he or she is qualitatively different from us. This feature of the redeemer suggests that the created world is basically flawed and must be redeemed from without. In this flawed world, evil is stronger than human powers and cannot be overcome without superhuman aid. Mortal men and women are powerless within the framework of the myth because evil itself has cosmic dimensions. Spectator religion, morality, and politics are the inevitable result. Human beings are pawns in the cosmic drama being played out on a stage wider than their own. We are encouraged to rely on the powers above us, alien to us. Myths in this category tend to tranquilize, to function as escapist fare….Joseph Campbell…. tells of a hero with a thousand faces. He or she undergoes trials and tribulations in an alien space but manages a victory over evil powers, usually assisted by helpers. The hero then returns home and is reintegrated into society, now able to bestow boons on others.  We might dub this kind of story the myth of the internal redeemer….A true savior incarnate---incarnate literally means embodied—a true savior embodied must submit to the same limitations imposed on the rest of us. If Jesus of Nazareth is a savior, it is only because he aspired to heaven as all mortals do but was sage enough to reject the temptations and accept the limitations of his finite existence. If he arrived via a miraculous birth, knew himself to be the messiah and son of God, and had foreknowledge that his death would be reversed in a few days, he is not qualified to function as my redeemer. I prefer a savior who understands my predicament—my double fettering that ancors mortals in both heaven and earth, as Franz Kafka put it---and is prepared to assist me in grappling with my insatiable longing for heaven while chained to earth and mortality…..We might try (a plot) Jesus suggested himself. There is the plot of the prodigal. In that story, one can come home only by leaving home. The prodigal reflects Israel’s foundational myth—the exodus and quest for the promised land. It also echoes Israel’s exile and return. Departure and arrival, leave-taking and homecoming are linked in inseparable tandem.(Ibid, pps. 306-7-8-9)

We need to reconceive the vocation of Jesus as the Christ.Jesus told his parables as though he were hearing them. He was not so much calling on God as God was calling on him. He was not making claims; he was being claimed….To what divine manifesto did he succumb? By what vision was he both captivated and liberated? This is the interesting question. That is the determining issue. As an external redeemer in contrast to an internal savior, Jesus supplies our every need, fulfils all our fantasies……The historic Jesus is a reality anchor in a sea of unrealistic and potentially demonic dreams. The renewed quest is a reality check. It discourages self-indulgence and pandering. It represents the end of apologetic posturing and evasion, It demands honesty and candor. The real vocation of Jesus will displace the contrived vocations assigned by later generations. (Ibid, p.309-310)

For those who are continuing to read, along with this scribe, we have shared in a theological tutorial, offered, in precis form, by the founder and member of the Jesus Seminar. His life-long faith, and embodied scholarship, imagination and pursuit of the historic Jesus, as opposed to the one generated by credal and dogmatic debates and documents, (getting back to the narrative of the life of the Jesus of history of Nazareth) offers refreshing insights, propositions, proposals and hints at new ways, not of capturing another equally dogmatic, prescriptive and constricting Jesus, or a Christian faith based on such ‘principles.’ He offers a set of foundational notions from which we might begin to re-envision what we understand, imagine and are set free by and from, as we pursue God in  the twenty-first century.

If you want to read between the lines of these precis, you can find them on the pages in the footnotes.

Next, we will take a look at Christian practice, as Funk offers some ideas for our reflection.

To be continued……….