Richard Beck nominates Isaiah 53:12 as containing the most subversive idea in the Bible.
I mean, can any church or Christian ever be smug, safe, contented, moralistic or self-satisfied in light of Isaiah 53.12? Just when the dust settles Isaiah 53.12 comes along, taps you on the shoulder and says, “By the way, God is over there. Yes, with those people.”
I enjoy the thinking behind this, but it’s not the most subversive idea in the Bible. Not by a longshot. The most subversive idea in the Bible is that God doesn’t care about rituals. Let’s take a look at Matthew 6:5-8, shall we?
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
I submit to you that this flies in the face of the prior tens of thousands of years of human existence. Our first inkling that humans were religious tens of thosands of years ago is the practice of ceremonial burial. From then on, the practice of religion was characterized as a communal, public activity. Public sacrifices. Public prayers. Public feast days. Public activities.
Jesus is basically saying here: No, that’s not it at all. Hypocrites pray in public so people think they’re righteous. People do good things in public so people will think they are good. Don’t brag about your good deeds. Don’t brag about your love of God. Just do good deeds. Just love God.
This also ties in with what Christ says about having your sins forgiven. You don’t do it by sacrificing animals. You don’t do it by saying the right prayers. You have your sins forgiven by forgiving those who sinned against you. Period.
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
I consider this concept — Christ’s condemnation of ritual in favor of love; his condemnation of identifying yourself as righteous — to be the central message of the New Testament. And yet it is consitently ignored and has been since the early centuries of the Church. He said it all in John 13:34-35.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Love is how you should know someone follows Jesus Christ. Not their fish logos. Not the stained glass in their churches. Not their willingness to fast and pray all the time. Not the giant cross necklesses that they wear or the Christian rock bands they listen to.
Just love.
And that, I contend to you, is the most subversive idea in all the Bible, because it flies in the face of our very nature. Humans want to use religion as a means to personal identity. They want to build giant cathedrals and monuments to show how devoted to the gods they are. They launch sacrifices and crusades. They use their faith as a means to separate themselves from everyone else.
And there’s Jesus in the Gospels, saying “NO!” to all those ideas. “No!” to Crusades. “No!” to public displays of piety. “No!” to Christian rock.
To love God, he says, is to love each other. And that is all.
Alex Knapp writes about pretty much everything under the sun, including politics, art, religion, philosophy, sports, music, culture, and science. He also actively writes about politics at the political blog
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If you ask me, the whole of the Gospel is far more subversive than most people realize or acknowledge.
Agreed. The diminution of the radical leftist Church in America, and the West generally, while quite understandable/explicable, has been nevertheless unfortunate. And I don’t think it’s inevitable, either.
“radical leftist” as in anarchist, not communist/statist.
If there’s a bigger heresy, in the truest sense of the word, than the “Prosperity Gospel”, I’ll eat my hat.
It is, in fact, so subversive as to have been practically ignored by every institution that has grown up around it.
I blame Constantine.
Constantine, Augustine and Jerome are my triumverate of culprits.
Alex: Have you read Charles Freeman’s Closing of the Western Mind? Now, admittedly I’m a complete novice when it comes to the early Church and theology and at this point I’m an agnostic former Catholic, but I thought that book was an extraodinarily worthwhile account of how Christian doctrine was ultimately developed to serve the Roman State. I’d be curious to get the thoughts on that book of someone with a much better understanding of theology than I (this is, I must emphasize, an extremely low bar).
I’d also be curious to hear about this. I thoroughly enjoyed that book but never really delved into any critical discussion of it to inform my thoughts any further.
I too thoroughly enjoyed the book. And too, never had the opportunity to to engage in discussion of the ideas therein. The book has added to my limited understanding of doctrinal issues but a dialog with others would be most enlightening.. Could that be something the League might foster?
No, but I’ll put it on my reading list.
I blame Paul. Constantine was just following in the footsteps.
I blame Paul for almost everything I don’t like about Christianity.
That’s unfair to Paul. Equality, preaching to the gentiles, getting rid of Mosaic law, getting rid of circumcision — Paul pushed the early Christians into those directions.
Alex have you read Garry Wills’ “What Paul Meant?”
It’s similar to your arguments above in that Wills tries to rehabilitate Paul’s image from a liberal-humanist perspective. It’s pretty interesting (but I haven’t finished it).
I’m not saying he didn’t have good things to offer. But many of the passages I find particularly problematic are attributed to Paul.
This is a really popular idea, but it isn’t really one that’s supported by the New Testament, even if we restrict ourselves to the Gospels.
Jesus instructs his disciples to baptize people. (Matthew 28) If all he cares about is love, why do this? Jesus also instructs his disciples about the Eucharist. (Luke 22) Again, why? It’s because, on some level, God does seem to care about rituals. Otherwise he wouldn’t prescribe them.
This is not to say that there aren’t problems with ritual for its own sake. Jesus does spend a lot of time criticizing people who think they can earn their way into God’s good graces by adherence to the law, whether that be obedience to ritual or outward displays of piety. It’s also not to say that ritual, in and of itself, is really what God is after. There’s evidence in both Old and New Testaments about that. But part of loving God does and has always seemed to involve something which looks a lot like ritual.
Look, even the ancient Jews understood that ritual wasn’t really what God was looking for. (Psalm 51) But that didn’t stop them from thinking that the rituals in the law were really important. Likewise, while love for God and love for people is clearly the fulfillment of the law, there’s no reason supported by Scripture to say, flat out, that “God doesn’t care about ritual.”
Really, I think a lot of what you’re objecting to isn’t “ritual” at all. Ichthus bumper stickers? Stained glass? Bizarre, ghettoized cultural manifestations? Completely irrelevant to the Gospel if not downright detrimental. But the whole “love is all you need” thing has a lot more to do with the Beatles than with any serious reading of the New Testament, let alone the Old.
There’s a difference between a public ritual and a private one.
There’s also a difference between celebrating a particular moment (e.g., your entry into the Church) as a particular moment in public, and celebrating your everyday existence in the Church as a public display.
Very nice, Ryan, and a quite bit more nuanced than the original.
“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Mt 18:20
Clearly, all prayer is not urged to be private.
Neither am I sanguine with Beck’s exegesis of the passage. “Numbered with the transgessors” likely means [and plainly reads] “he” was considered one of them, not that he was one.
Both Jews and Christians largely believe this passage is prophetic of the Messiah. Jesus Christ is crucified with criminals as if he were one ["numbered" with them] ,
“For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.”
as the next verse reads. [The "died for our sins" thing, according to Christian theology.]
I’m all for “experimental theology” like this Richard Beck fellow’s, but geez, like the man sez, read the whole thing.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+52%3A13-53%3A12&version=NIV
Two things of note:
1) Re: Baptism, you may have a point, but I would second Pat’s comments on the subject. I don’t think that baptism is necessary, except as symbol. But then, I don’t put a lot of stock into the Bible’s post-Resurrection stories about Jesus, either.
2) Re: the Last Supper “Do this in rememberance of me” seems to be much more of an “eat this bread now to remember my sacrifice”, than “repeat this in the future.” The context supports the prior interpretation more than the latter.
1) If you’re going to go on record as not putting a lot of stock in the Bible’s “post-Resurrection stories about Jesus,” then I ask in all honesty, why bother? I mean, if you freely admit that you’re going to pick and choose the parts of the Bible you like and don’t like, why even bother making an argument that other people are reading it wrong? It’s completely impossible to take you seriously at that point, and if I’d known that, I wouldn’t have commented in the first place.
2) See above. But a proper response is that the rest of the New Testament indicates that no one who was actually in that room at that time seems to have agreed with you. Every single one of the apostles, and then Paul, seems entirely on board with the idea that Jesus was talking about something that was supposed to happen more than once. 1 Cor. 11 is all about it. Again, if you’re going to punt on the epistles, you’re free to do that, but you don’t get to turn around and criticize Christians for Doing It Wrong when you won’t even agree with us about what the relevant authorities are. Again, there’s no incentive to take you at all seriously when you pull stunts like that.
Because I think Jesus was an important thinker, and that the Bible is an important work, and that the ideas in it are worth considering.
But I am definitely mulling over your baptism comments. I do take them seriously.
I grant you Paul, but the rest? It’s not mentioned in Acts at all.
And I’m not “punting” on the Epistles, but it’s pretty clear that more than a few of them water down Jesus’ more radical teachings so that the Church can get bigger. (see e.g. “Adam, Eve and the Serpent” by Elaine Pagels on this subject with respect to sex).
It’s not mentioned in Acts at all.
The references to “breaking bread” in Acts are traditionally understood to be referring to the Sacrament, particularly 2:42 and 20:7. Considering that the terms “Eucharist” doesn’t appear in Scripture at all and “Lord’s Supper” only shows up once, it isn’t unreasonable to think that this term could mean that, particularly as in Acts 2 it’s in the context of preaching and prayer, and in Acts 20 they gather on the first day of the week to do it.
Again, not a completely undeniable reference, but that’s how theologians have understood those verses for millennia. Only if you start with the proposition that that can’t be right is there any reason not to believe that.
Either way, there’s a dozen-odd references to baptism throughout Acts.
it’s pretty clear that more than a few of them water down Jesus’ more radical teachings so that the Church can get bigger.
No, it isn’t.
Oh, and re:
I counter with this.
Everything else Jesus says is, to paraphrase Hillel, commentary on that verse.
Just because there are no “greater” commandments doesn’t mean that the other commandments somehow disappear. Jesus himself never indicates that.
Thou shalt not steal is still in force.
Further, one must apply at least a little bit of reason to what Jesus says.
Everybody can’t become itinerant preachers! The model breaks down after Jesus dies and the loaves and fishes thing with Him. Thereafter, it’s back to baking and casting nets.
“one must apply at least a little bit of reason to what Jesus says.”
I’m not a believer so my 2 cents are worth less than that, but it always seemed to me that the real power of Jesus as a moral philosopher or spiritual savant was that he tended to advocate things that are seemingly utterly unreasonable. In general, reason and religion don’t seem to co-mingle often without mutual corruption, imo.
Elia, pls do make the acquaintance of one Thomas Aquinas. Good guy, and quite a reasonable man, whose attempt to reconcile revelation and reason helped build Western Civilization and “human rights” as we know them today. “The dignity of the human person.”
And that some “experimental theologian” can play shallow Cliffs Notes games with the Bible regardless of context and one of the giants of human thought remains virtually unknown, well, I chafe sometimes, Elia.
It just doesn’t seem right. Nothing personal here.
You don’t have to be a “believer” to acquaint with Aquinas. He is accorded a seat at the philosophers’ table on merit, by the philosophers themselves.
Heh, I’d argue that sometimes he DOES indicate that …. and some times he doesn’t. I can find verses that support both ideas.
But if we are to read his various statements as being consistent with each other, one cannot simply throw out the portions one does not like. And that means taking what he has to say about holiness, obedience, and, yes, ritual, seriously, all without ignoring what he says about love for God and love for neighbor. Remember
If you’re going to accuse the church of picking and choosing, you don’t get to do it yourself.
Seriously, read the whole verse:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.”
The problem with the Pharisees is not that they had too high a view of the law, but that their view wasn’t high enough. They thought that minute observance of arcana was sufficient. Had that down pat. But it isn’t. Loving God means doing all of that and having it change your heart.
I’d say the most subversive idea in the New Testament at least is its flagrant stance against ownership. De facto: What “Christian” owns nothing? What Westerner owns nothing? For me, this is one of the many internal contradictions of Western Civilization.
I tend to agree with you. This is, by far, the most radical (and ignored) aspect of Jesus’ preaching.
It’s so subversive that no one follows it. Outside of non-Christians in scattered places like Namibia, the Amazon, the Australian Outback, certain Pacific Islands, and New Guinea of course.
Christopher -
There are Christian Communes out there. I know at least of Reba Place in Chicago off the top of my head.
I’ll check it out.
Regardless of the words of Christ it seems clear that the very early Christians were concerned with rituals and the churches in various cities, hence the Letters to….
It seems hard to argue that Christianity was designed to be solo worship.
Oh, sure they were. But that’s human nature re-asserting itself.
Okay, well, obviously Christ’s teachings must have been somewhat subversive given the response, but I’m not sure that word quite gets at it for me- I feel like, if anything, he’s deepening and expanding the requirements placed upon believers, instead of undoing them, which is what I think of when I think of subversion.
Now subversive of established norms today? Absolutely.
This atheist thinks Jesus was as likely as not a real person — a preaching rabbi and a late exemplar of the Israelite tradition of prophets delivering moral challenges to the authorities of the day (a la Elijah, Ezekiel, etc.), albeit a mortal man. And that rabbi had some really remarkable things to say, things worth thoughtful reflection even today.
The idea that making good moral choices is what’s important, and outward demonstrations of piety and fetishized observance of ritual is not a substitute for morality. I’m not sure this is the most remarkable thing Jesus preached, but it sure tends to make an ecclesiastical hierarchy look superfluous.
I don’t recall the exact wording, so I’ll paraphrase: “The law was meant to serve man, not the other way around.” This, too, was a direct challenge to the authorities
But IMO, the most daunting moral challenge Jesus gave, and the least observed, was to tell people to love their enemies. Wow. What a difficult thing to do!
I’ve also always thought the commandment to love one’s enemies is the most radical and difficult thing “he” ever “said.”
The argument that Jesus wasn’t a real person is one that has never really made sense to me. For there to have not been a Jesus requires a conspiracy that is one heck of a lot more intricate than what would be required for there to be a guy who disturbed the peace and got the death penalty for it.
“For there to have not been a Jesus requires a conspiracy that is one heck of a lot more intricate”
Not really. The texts that are reasonably proximate to the purported events are Paul’s letters, and they are quite vague about what kind of objectively real person Jesus might have been. The biographical details in the Gospels were written down much later, and unsurprisingly they contain all manner of legendary stories. Having said that, though, I have no strong opinion on the historicity issue.
I don’t mind Jesus being vague. It’s the whole “I sat down with Cephas and slapped him around” thing in Galatians that makes me say “yeah, there was probably some dude”.
Couple of things. First, assuming that these texts are genuine (for instance, all the words are Paul’s and not later interpolations) the level of evidence is on a par with the evidence for Bigfoot; Paul says that he knows people who knew Jesus. Even these most proximate writings were several decades after the purported fact, so the hypothesis that there was no historical Jesus is not an implausible conspiracy theory. Second, one must wonder at what point historical Jesus, stripped of most of his personal characteristics that we’ve come to know in the Bible, is still Jesus. For instance, suppose we accept that a real person named Jesus existed, who wandered Palestine in the first century and did some preaching and got himself crucified, but we don’t accept any of the miraculous claims, and we’re skeptical that any of his purported words and relationships are genuine; in what sense is this the same Jesus as the mythical figure?
Having said all this, I don’t have a strong opinion on whether some nominally Jesusy person really existed. When I even think about it I frankly tend to think there was, but it’s not a strongly held opinion and not one I think is terribly important anyway. The Jesus that we have, the one of the New Testament, is the only one we are ever likely to have. Speculating on his objective personhood can make for entertaining popular novels and movies but probably has no utility beyond that.
in what sense is this the same Jesus as the mythical figure?
To say that there was a dude named Arturus who fought the Saxons is not the same thing as saying that the Green Knight picked up his own head and told Gawain that he’d see him in a year and a day.
“Utility” is one of those diff’rent strokes things.
Funny; when I speculated on wandering into this sub-thread, Arthur was one of the analogies that occurred to me. Robin Hood was another.
Oooh, Robin Hood. Good one.
Having spent too much time in archives studying historically factual people who we all know definitely existed just about 200 years ago, I can say you’d be surprised at how many historically factual people have existences that can’t actually be verified in the first-hand documentary record. So, the fact that Jesus can’t actually be verified in the first-hand documentary record doesn’t bother me at all.
I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more blood spilled at Biblical Archeology sites.
“To say that there was a dude named Arturus who fought the Saxons is not the same thing as saying that the Green Knight picked up his own head and told Gawain that he’d see him in a year and a day.”
I’m not saying it is, I’m genuinely asking the question; at what point does it cease making sense to say that some historical figure (that at present we have little evidence for), who resembles a famous mythical figure in only the most nominal ways, is in fact that mythical figure? Contra the OP, I don’t think that “love” is the central message of the New Testament at all. The very first sentences of two of the Gospels emphasize the divinity of Jesus, in the other two Gospels the first biographical information we learn about Jesus is that he is divine. Paul’s letters begin with salutations emphasizing the divinity of Jesus. As far as I can see, if there is a central message to the New Testament it is that Jesus was divine. So, if we strip the divinity from our nominally Jesusy fellow we strip a good deal of the meaning of Jesus. Sure, we all like the image of the auburn-haired hippie confidently delivering the Sermon on the Mount, but without his divinity he’s just Jerry Garcia without the guitar solos. We certainly wouldn’t have any ideas about Jesus at all in 2011 if he wasn’t allegedly divine, would we? Point being, finding the historic Jesus, sans the divinity, would be just finding another dude. As always, YMMV.
Yeah, but if there *WAS* a dude who ran around yelling stuff about The Kingdom of Heaven and how it was among us and mustard and all that stuff and then he gets whacked and then this guy Paul writes about how not only did he yell stuff but he was Seven Feet Tall! Shoots Fireballs From His Eyes! Lightning From His Arse! then I don’t think that that is necessarily Yeshua’s fault.
I’d like to explore who Yeshua *REALLY* was before the English beheaded him.
The fact that the stories get taller between then and here is no reason to say that there wasn’t *REALLY* a dude.
“I’d like to explore who Yeshua *REALLY* was before the English beheaded him.”
Sure, if some new information came to light that would be interesting. But nothing contemporaneous about Jesus has turned up in 2000 years, and not for want of everybody and his brother looking for it. I have to rate the chance of anything interesting on putative historic Jesus turning up during my lifetime as very low, so I’m not holding my breath.
“The fact that the stories get taller between then and here is no reason to say that there wasn’t *REALLY* a dude.”
I don’t disagree, I was taking issue with your characterization of the no-historic-Jesus hypothesis as a conspiracy theory.
I’ll tell you this much: The first time I read the Gospel of Thomas was like… I don’t know what it was like.
It was the bottom of a bucket, broken through.
This was *SOMEONE*. Not just an icon but a someone. A someone who said things. Whoa.
Jesus, in dissing the importance of ritual qua ritual, wasn’t being a radical here. He was well within the tradition of Judaism.
Micah 6:8
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Amos 5:21-24
I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs. I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!
And Rabbi Hillel, of course, who espoused the Golden Rule 100 years before Jesus did.
Jesus would be remembered as a great prophet and teacher if only his followers hasn’t mixed his message up with a lot of idolatrous blasphemy.
Jesus also said, regarding the Pharisees, “whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do.” He also said, “one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” One would almost think that the text was cobbled together from a multiplicity of sources with divergent agendas, and that speaking of a “central message” or “most [this or that] idea” in the Bible is problematic at best.
good post.
Why does everyobody take potshots at the vanity of giant cathedrals? Arent they beautiful? Maybe that is the difference between protestants and catholics, the distaste for beauty?
Neither is subversive. Neither was ever intended to bring about revolt. The Isaiah passage is prophetic/eschatological. The Matthew quote goes to character. It’s not the location which matters, but the “to be seen” and “to be heard” which is important. One may pray in public but one may not, not without God’s criticism, pray in public for the purpose of getting attention.
The term for “love” is agape. This term never a matter of sentiment. It is a concern for the best interests of the other party. It is difficult to bring this out in the English language. The best translation, imnsho, is the KJV use of “charity” in I Corinthians 13.
Of course, one needs to examine the original of each passage to see which “love” term and form is in use. Translations often become quite convoluted.
I’d vote for a different set of verses as the most subversive, because it’s a stronger statement of the same theme as the one you’ve chosen: Matthew 25:31-46, the famous “even as you did (or did not) do it to the least of these…”
What Jesus says here is that in the end, what matters is not what you professed or believed but what you did. Membership in a specific church, observation of specific rituals, recital of specific words–all piffle, weighing for nothing in the eternal balance.
The early Quakers described this difference as being between “professors” and “possessors” of the word. It was one of the reasons they rejected all ritual and outward sacraments.
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