Jesus’ distress was because of the prospective rift and separation from his Father and the Holy Spirit, a bond of love beyond all human imagining. And we dread and feel pain at the prospect of separation from or loss of loved ones! There is no comparison.
I know, right? i mean, it would be another thing entirely if Mark made it seem like Jesus knew in advance about, say, being mocked and spit upon and flogged and killed and then rising on the third day…
Of course they are in Mark too but John is in hyperdrive. The human Jesus has been mostly lost. In Mark, he still shines through.
And I affirm Jesus had an understanding that his death was coming. I don’t think he knew it at the beginning of his ministry as if it was the plan all along. But even without divine knowledge it’s easy to see where things were heading. He came to understand he had to do this.
I mean, we’re the apostles really that stupid? Maybe the first really are last and vice versa. God literally chose the stupidest people on the planet to inaugurate a new dispensation.
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having listened to letters from the trenches on the centenary of the first world war and wanting it to come sooner even in the knowledge of their likely death I find it hard to believe Jesus to lack the same determination to get it over and done with.
As I explained elsewhere, in the Seder ceremony you ask the master of ceremony to take the glass of you so it can be refilled, indicating that you emptied it. In is case this would be equivalent of egging God on to get on with it and refill it with the new covenant, e.g. his blood. Knowing that it was inevitable it was understandable, similar to that wish put into that letter from the trench.
It is not however the only exception of which I can conceive. The death of a comrade can also inspire the rest to fight that much harder.
I think your idealization includes that of perfect soldiers.
Like I explained there is one rather obvious thing which Jesus’ death and resurrection did accomplish: changing his disciples from those who could not even say awake to pray with Him, to those on fire for Christ who would die for the accomplishment of His work.
Exactly! In particular I am reminded of Jesus parable in Luke 14:31-33. What we are talking about is not some magical power of the death itself, in which case your example of jumping into the line of enemy fire should be sufficient. It is about what could actually be accomplished by what you do – even changing the course of history.
I certainly believe Jesus is 100% human with all our limitations in knowledge and power. Where we disagree is that fully human in every way requires Jesus to be a reluctant savior for the simple reason that I can see many many better examples of human beings than this in history – people whose only regret is that they can only die once for a cause far smaller than that which Jesus died for. I see people throughout history who would only pray for another way because the results are better and not simply because the personal cost was cheaper. It is not a question of whether Jesus is fully human but whether He is a human being which I would admire and look up to. Your reluctant savior would have me looking for a better religion with higher ideals than that.
If He could get through to those idiots, He could get through to anybody… except they weren’t the most idiotic by far it turns out. We must have an apostasy gene, whatever we can misconstrue, we must.
I admit that this theory is a better one than the usual human weakness nonsense. But I don’t believe this either. I don’t think it even make sense in the context of the doctrine of the Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one – separate and distinct persons, but only one being, and one God. To claim that they can be separated is absurd. Few Christians would credit any such idea. To be sure it comes from Mark 15:33, when Jesus says “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Human weakness again? No. It is called a literary reference (Psalm 22), where we say part of a passage in order to bring to mind to those who hear it all the words of the psalm. Just like in verse 8, they mocked Him saying “let’s see God deliver Him now!” and the answer to this challenge is at the end of the Psalm:
27 All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before him.
28 For dominion belongs to the Lord,
and he rules over the nations.
29 Yea, to him shall all the proud of the earth bow down;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
and he who cannot keep himself alive.
30 Posterity shall serve him;
men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation,
31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
that he has wrought it.
I would not say it was absolutely required, just that it is only natural to fear death for everyone. Anxiety over death and being anxious and nervous are natural human emotions. Some may even be uncontrollable responses to our environment. Some men put their convictions above that fear when the time calls for it. Jesus was one of them.
The first definition of reluctance is unwilling. That’s not the case. Jesus was willing, just understandably nervous and anxious about his impending fate. That should be enough to admire him. Luke even says he was in agony and an angel strengthened him. The most human thing you can do is pray to the Father in your time of need.
The problem is the Gospel of John and post Easter traditions makes it seem like Jesus knew in five minutes he would be in heaven playing harps with absolute, unquestioning certainty. He is serenely transcendent and always in total control in John. The other evangelists don’t paint that picture. Mixing post-Easter theology and retro-fitting it onto the actual historical Jesus is the problem for you. The problem is the church lost the humanity of Jesus despite paying lip-service to it doctrinally.
I’m sorry Jesus, a man who willingly accepted a horrific fate and was sinlessly obedient to God’s will, doesn’t live up to your standards. Your idealized trope is highly questionable in light of Jesus’ humanity. I find Gethsemane and Jesus’s words on the Cross highly comforting. God himself felt pain, despair, fear, abandonment and agony. What did he do? He prayed. He showed us the way to live even unto death. The solidarity these actions create between God and man is second to none. They speak to what God was willing to endure for us. They tell us how genuine and real the incarnation actually was. It seems you want a superhero over a Savior.
Vinnie
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John also contains his trouble in heart about the upcoming death, and it is also the gospel that contains arguably the most poignant demonstration of Jesus deepest humanity.
these neat and clean categories and theories of the Jesus seminar simply don’t hold up is well when held up to the actual texts.
I think we can all agree that it was essentially the resurrection that accomplished that. By any measure, and by what we know of the record, Jesus’s death in and of itself did not exactly inspire these disciples to go out on fire and change the world… rather the opposite, no?
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews…
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I’d say you have that a little backwards. The neatest and cleanest theories are those of the harmonzationists. The rest of us tend to understand how messy these texts are and how diverse the theology behind them can be. With that being said dismissing sound scholarship as “Jesus Seminar” is disingenuous. Crossan and the Jesus Seminar certainly have their faults, but his exegesis is spot on at times. It is easier for conservatives to dismiss scholarship that disagrees with them whole cloth as opposed to actually engaging in their arguments. The presentation of Jesus in John and Mark is strikingly different not only in the places I mentioned above but countless others.
Vinnie
I agree with this too. As much as I hold some of the Jesus seminar anti-supernaturalistic presuppositions at arm’s length; I have nonetheless heard interesting and insightful analysis from people like Crossan or Marcus Borg (though I wouldn’t be able to recall specifically what that was here at the moment). But yes - we should be engaging with them rather than dismissing them whole cloth.
The messy realities of the world also shouldn’t be seen as precluding the genius, or the necessity, or the righteousness embedded in what may appear to be a simplistic narrative, though. Instead, it should just help keep it in its truthful perspective.
Jesus was making literary references while on the cross. I don’t think so. He was expressing the real agony of his soul. And you got the order backwards. Psalm 22 is what is called a Messianic Psalm, a prophesy, and in this case, a prophesy of the profound, mysterious, and real rift that occurred.
I have engaged very extensively and deeply with the Jesus seminar - did much of my undergrad senior seminar on it… which is exactly why I dismiss them whole cloth. Their methods and procedures are not simply problematic, but rather are downright laughable. That is at least regarding those times that they even follow their own stated methods, which I found to be rather haphazard. I could write for pages, though not interested at the moment.
But consider their basic core principle/method is simply laughable. Classify any saying of Jesus as inauthentic if it sounds similar to 1st century Judaism, or if it sounds like something that the later church would also have said. So Jesus, a man unquestionably shaped and familiar with 1st century Judaism, and whose life and teachings were carefully embraced as the basis for beliefs of the church - somehow magically only said things that were dissonant from both from the Judaism that shaped him and the church that he established and shaped.
Try that with any other historical figure… Only the sayings or deeds attributed to William the Conquerer will be considered authentic if they bear no resemblance to the Norman culture from which he came, and if they bear no resemblance to the later English culture that he so heavily influenced…? Seriously?
Their other problems are so legion and egregious that yes, I indeed dismiss them whole cloth - after having engaged very deeply. There comes a point where one can recognize that something is so off-base, egregiously wrong, biased, and problematic that it simply isn’t worth engaging with them.
In my humble opinion, of course.
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It sounds like you’ve done a lot more than I have then - I’ve seen a few Crossan and Borg videos and read a book of Marcus Borg’s many years ago that I can’t even remember the title of right now. And I had much the same reaction you express here except that I remember thinking (during a video) that Borg was make a good salient point here and there.
But no - I’ve no dog in this fight. If you find any works of theirs offensive then I happily turn toward more productive and scholarly engagements with you. But if others have listened to what they say (and some here apparently have) - then it is good to be aware of their material as a good reflection of the spirit of this age (which I have yet to be convinced you’re entirely free of yourself). Of course - none of us are, though.
Not every member of the Jesus Seminar is of the same caliber. I have Crossan’s The Historical Jesus, the Birth of Christianity, Who Killed Jesus and his abridged, Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography. I disagree with him on many points but his works are anything but laughable. Ive also read his detailed review of Raymond Brown’s Death of the Messiah.
The Jesus seminar believes the burden of proof is on anyone who thinks a saying of Jesus is authentic to demonstrate it. Why do they believe this? Because of source analysis. They believe a careful study of the gospels shows that we have the original sayings of Jesus adapted to new times and situations in the church. The evangelists and early church were also redactors and creators of material (before being accused of lying they could simply be prophetic utterances attributed to Jesus in the post-Easter church). Distinction might not be made in some oral traditions that made it into our Gospels.
As far as source analysis, for example, many consider much of the portrayal of Jesus in John as reflecting later theological developments. The controversy accounts in Mark are another example. There are lots of reasons here. This is normal for historical studies. We don’t just assume the historicity and accuracy of a document. You have to provide evidence and vet your sources.
I’ve never quoted “the Jesus Seminar,” just occasionally some of Crossan’s very scholarly works. His HJ methodology seems sound and his critique of criteria poignant, but his overall source analysis is problematic which impacts everything. To be honest, I prefer John Meier by far. I find his scholarship to be extremely high. And it’s strangely amusing to see a conservative defender of inerrancy complain about laughably bad Biblical scholarship. Any reconstruction an inerrancy advocate makes is dictated and blinded by this doctrinal a priori belief. Inerrancy hasn’t been relevant in scholarship for a hundred years.
Vinnie
The reality is this so called “horrific fate” looks pretty tame to those not dedicated to Christian apology and excuses. Some of us just don’t believe that there is any power whatsoever in blood sacrifice where any poor lamb will do. Any atheist can compare what Jesus experienced to any number of examples of suffering and death by innocent children and see nothing but empty hype in such talk of extra-ordinary sacrifice on the part of Jesus… unless you buy into this medieval thinking that the suffering of nobles is of greater worth than that of ordinary plebes. The failure of such apologetics is not just the low view of Jesus but the low view of human beings altogether. Human beings are very much capable of extra-ordinary feats of love and sacrifice and so many of us simply cannot close our eyes and ears to such a degree that we can buy into this sort of reasoning. This is reality not idealization.
However comforting you find such a low view of humanity suitable to middle class comfort and entitlement, if you cannot inspire the far greater limits of human capabilities for dedication and sacrifice, your religion is dead. It is almost as if you have taken Jesus’ place in his conversation with the man in Matthew 19 to assure the man that all is well because you cannot even expect Jesus to do so much for human salvation.
Of this I have no doubt. I see all of that in the words of God in Genesis chapter 6. But that is in response to seeing hell on earth. I can even see this as a possibility in the garden if Jesus had hoped for a better result. But I cannot see it without such a hope because I wouldn’t myself – to have a chance to die under torture for the restoration of our relationship with God and our salvation from sin – “God let me drink a thousand such cups!” Your talk of “idolization” sounds ridiculous when it is simply what I and at least thousands of others if not far more would have done ourselves.
There is a good analysis of three times when Jesus doubted his mission (this is one of the three) in this article by two NT scholars (one is a friend). I found it quite honest and helpful: Jesus Was the God-Man, Not the God-Superman | Christianity Today
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The truth is that I believe in less of a superman Jesus than most Christians. I do not believe Jesus had any super powers. None. Why? From Jesus’ own words: John 14: 12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; 14 if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.
What about the miracles then? John 5, He only does what He sees the Father doing. I frankly do not even believe any of these were breaking the laws of nature. Any magician (let alone doctors, scientists, and engineers) can impress people like that without breaking any laws of nature. Was Jesus a magician? No. They were miracles because the Father did them – so if anyone was the magician it was the Father who made such things happen.
Frankly, it seems that the real difference in the above discussion is that I know quite well the extra-ordinary things and sacrifices which ordinary people are capable of. It may not be the majority or the average, but plenty are better than what people above have been making out to be human limitations. I am sorry but I see no inspiration whatsoever in the idea that Jesus was no more than the average joe.
Great article! Thanks for the pointer. I’ve always been fascinated by the connection between the temptation in the desert and the cry of dereliction from the cross. Both Satan’s temptations and the taunts of the crowd share a common theme: If you are the Son of God …
The doubt of Gethsemane wasn’t simply fear of physical torture and death, but the doubt that he was right about his mission and self-understanding. “What if I’ve misunderstood and gotten it all wrong?” The same doubt and resolution are expressed in Isaiah 49:4,
“I have labored in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing at all.
Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand,
and my reward is with my God.”
Your assertion would be true if Jesus had absolute certainty and never had doubts about his mission. But the point of the article is that he doubted his mission at least three times in the gospels.
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Interesting that doubt is inferred. I don’t think the case was made, just presumed.