Jesus: a new vision

by Marcus J. Borg

  Second, there has been a renaissance of historical Jesus scholarship in the past decade. The period of “no quest” which dominated the middle portion of this century has given way to a new interest.27 Fueled in part by a fresh emphasis on incorporating insights and models from the study of social and religious behavior provided by many disciplines (especially the social sciences, anthropology, and history of religions), the present quest seeks to broaden the somewhat narrow focus on literary and historical method that has marked traditional scholarship. As one scholar put it, “The interdisciplinary quest for the historical Jesus has just begun.”28

  Third and finally, there are signs that the extreme historical skepticism that has marked most Jesus study in this century is abating. Though it is true that the gospels are not straightforward historical documents, and though it is true that every saying and story of Jesus has been shaped by the early church, we can in fact know as much about Jesus as we can about any figure in the ancient world.29 Though we cannot ever be certain that we have direct and exact quotation from Jesus, we can be relatively sure of the kinds of things he said, and of the main themes and thrust of his teaching. We can also be relatively sure of the kinds of things he did: healings, association with outcasts, the deliberate calling of twelve disciples, a mission directed to Israel, a final purposeful journey to Jerusalem.

  Moreover, as we shall see, we can be relatively certain of the kind of person he was: a charismatic who was a healer, sage, prophet, and revitalization movement founder. By incorporating all of this, and not preoccupying ourselves with the question of whether Jesus said exactly the particular words attributed to him, we can sketch a fairly full and historically defensible portrait of Jesus.30

  The portrait sketched in this book is organized around two primary categories: Part One treats Jesus’ relationship to Spirit; Part Two treats his relationship to culture. The choice of Spirit and culture as the two organizing principles is not arbitrary, for they were the two central realities in the life of Jesus. He had an intensely vivid relationship to the world of Spirit, to that “other reality” sometimes spoken of as the sacred, or the holy, or the other world, or simply as God. That relationship was the source of his power and teaching, his freedom, courage, and compassion, and of his urgent mission to the culture of his day. For Jesus, culture was basically the historical life of his own people, the “social world” of first-century Palestine. With that social world he was deeply involved, not only living in it and to some extent shaped by it, but also intensely concerned with its shape and direction. He radically criticized it, warned it of the historical consequences of its present path, and sought its transformation in accord with an alternative vision. A person of Spirit, he sought the transformation of his own social world.

  In addition to Spirit and culture, there are four other organizing categories. These four are what might be called “religious personality types,” and are known cross-culturally as well as within the history of Israel. Though the terminology varies from culture to culture, they are the charismatic healer, sage, prophet, and renewal or revitalization movement founder. The term charismatic has a diversity of meanings, some of which can be misleading. Most basically, it means a person who is in touch with the power of the Spirit and who becomes a channel for the power of the Spirit to enter the world of ordinary experience.31 Sages, known in all traditional cultures, are teachers; they are “the wise” who teach a way of life. Prophets know the “mind” or “will” of the other world and announce that to their people. Finally, a revitalization movement founder stands within a tradition and either calls it to return to some earlier form or to a radicalized form. Jesus, we shall see, was all of these.

  By looking at the traditions about Jesus in the illumination provided by these categories, we will not only be able to see him with considerable clarity as a historical figure, but we will also be able to see his extraordinary relevance for both contemporary culture and the church. He provides us with a way of seeing reality that is very different from and yet more comprehensive than the modern vision, and a model of being human at sharp variance from the modern model.

  Thus Jesus has an intellectual as well as spiritual relevance. Indeed, he challenges much of what we take for granted. For Christians who seek to mold their lives of discipleship around what it means to follow Jesus, what Jesus was like should be of more than passing interest. To follow Jesus means in some sense to be “like him,” to take seriously what he took seriously. Though this is primarily a historical study, it is done with the recognition that the figure of Jesus has been significant to generations of Christians, and with the conviction that he is of continuing and indeed crucial importance to the life of both church and culture. With this conviction in mind, this book seeks to recover the vision of Jesus, a vision which can provide us with an alternative vision of life.

  NOTES

  I. JESUS AND THE SPIRIT

  2. The Context: The Spirit-filled Heart of Judaism

  When I was a young teacher in my mid-twenties, an older colleague delighted in characterizing modern theology as “flat-tire” theology—“All of the pneuma has gone out of it.” The irony of his comment depended on the double meaning of pneuma, a Greek word meaning both air and spirit.1 I understood his point, but I wasn’t sure I agreed with it. For me, modern theology was a joy: insightful, challenging, liberating.

  Though I still see modern theology as a treasure of great value for both church and culture, I also see that my colleague’s statement was (and is) largely correct, not only about theology in general but also about biblical scholarship and historical Jesus studies in particular.2 Within scholarly circles, Jesus’ relationship to the world of Spirit is seldom taken seriously.3 Attention is directed to what he said, and sometimes even to what he did, but seldom is attention paid to what he was.

  What Jesus was, historically speaking, was a Spirit-filled person in the charismatic stream of Judaism. This is the key to understanding what he was like as a historical figure. In an important sense, all that he was, taught, and did flowed out of his own intimate experience of the “world of Spirit.”

  THE “WORLD OF SPIRIT”

  The notion of a “world of Spirit” is a vague and difficult notion in the contemporary world. By it I mean another dimension or layer or level of reality in addition to the visible world of our ordinary experience. This notion of “another world,” understood as actual even though nonmaterial, is quite alien to the modern way of thinking. The modern worldview or “picture of reality” sees reality as having essentially one dimension, the visible and material realm.4 Deeply ingrained in all of us who have grown up in modern Western culture, this worldview makes us skeptical about another reality. For most contemporary people, believing in another reality requires “faith,” understood as affirming that which on other grounds is doubtful.5 The “world of Spirit” is not part of our taken-for-granted understanding of reality, not part of our worldview.

  But the notion of another reality, a world of Spirit, was the common property of virtually every culture before ours, constituting what has been called the “primordial tradition.”6 Appearing in a multiplicity of cultural forms, indeed in virtually as many forms as there are cultures, it was almost a “cultural universal,” the “human unanimity” prior to the modern period. Essential to it are two claims.

  First, in addition to the visible material world disclosed to us by ordinary sense perception (and modern science), there is another level of reality, a second world of nonmaterial reality, charged with energy and power. This basic division of reality into two levels can be spoken of in many ways—as the sacred and the profane, the holy (or “numinous”) and the mundane, God and “this world,” and so forth.7 What is most important is the notion of another level or levels of reality rather than any particular set of terms. Moreover, the “other world”—the world of Spirit—is seen as “more” real than “this world.” Indeed, the “other reality” is the source or ground of “this world.”
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br />   Second, and very importantly, the “other world” is not simply an article of belief, but an element of experience. That is, the notion of another reality does not have its origin in prescientific speculation about the origin of things, or in primal anxiety about death or the need for protection, but is grounded in the religious experience of humankind.8 It is not merely believed in, but known.

  To put this second claim somewhat differently, the world of Spirit and the world of ordinary experience are seen as not completely separate, but as intersecting at a number of points.9 Many cultures speak of a particular place as the “navel of the earth,” the umbilical cord connecting the two worlds.10 Some cultures speak of the two worlds intersecting in particular historical events. But it is especially in the experience of individuals that the “other world” is known. In every culture known to us, there are men and women who experience union or communion with the world of Spirit, either “entering” it or experiencing it coming upon them. Those who experience it frequently and vividly often become mediators between the two worlds in a variety of cultural forms: as healers, prophets, law-givers, shamans, mystics. Such men and women are charismatics in the proper sense of the word: people who know the world of Spirit firsthand.

  THE PRIMORDIAL TRADITION IN THE BIBLICAL TRADITION

  The cultural tradition in which Jesus lived took for granted the central claims of the primordial tradition: there are minimally two worlds, and the other world can be known. At the heart of the Jewish tradition, indeed constituting it, was Israel’s story of the intersection between the world of Spirit and the world of ordinary experience. For that is what Israel’s scriptures were. The Hebrew Bible is Israel’s story of events which were seen as disclosures of Spirit, of people who were experienced as mediators of Spirit, of laws and prophetic utterances which were believed to have been given by the Spirit.

  This multilayered picture of reality runs throughout the Bible. The opening verse of Genesis portrays the visible world as having its origin in Spirit, in God: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Importantly, Spirit is not seen as abstract and remote, as a hypothetical first cause.11 Rather, the world of Spirit is seen as alive and “personal,” populated by a variety of beings: angels, archangels, cherubim, seraphim. At its center (or height or depth) is God, often spoken of as personal: as father, mother, king, shepherd, lover. Nonanthropomorphic terms can also be used: fire, light, Spirit.

  It is difficult to know how literally we should take this language. Language about “the other world” is necessarily metaphorical and analogical, simply because we must use language drawn from the visible world to try to speak of another world constituted by very different realities and energies. If anything is to be communicated at all, it must be by analogy to what we know in the ordinary world, or in images drawn from the ordinary world. Thus God is like a father or mother, like a king, like a shepherd, like fire; but God is not literally any of these things. Yet, though the language is metaphorical, the realities are not.

  Moreover, this other world is not literally somewhere else. It is not the localized heaven of the popular imagination. Though God can be spoken of as a being “up in heaven,” the tradition makes it clear that God and the world of Spirit are not literally elsewhere. Rather, according to the tradition, God is everywhere present. To use somewhat technical but useful theological language, for the biblical tradition God is immanent (everywhere present, omnipresent), even as God is also transcendent (not to be identified with any particular thing, not even with the sum total of things). As omnipresent and immanent, God and the world of Spirit are all around us, including within us. Rather than God being somewhere else, we (and everything that is) are in God.12 We live in Spirit, even though we are typically unaware of this reality.13

  BIBLICAL MEDIATORS BETWEEN THE TWO WORLDS

  Israel affirmed that the world of Spirit was known. It intersected with “this world” at many points: historically, especially in the exodus and the return from exile, though also in other central events of her history; cultically, in the temple of Jerusalem, which was seen as the navel of the earth connecting this world to the other world which was its source; and personally, in the devotional and spiritual experiences of ordinary people and especially in Spirit-filled mediators such as Moses and the prophets. It is this tradition of Spirit-filled mediators that is most significant for understanding the historical Jesus.

  From start to end, the Bible is dominated by such figures, beginning with the Genesis stories of the patriarchs, the “fathers” of Israel. Abraham saw visions and entertained heavenly visitors. Jacob had a vision of a fiery ladder connecting the two worlds, with angels ascending and descending on it. Afterwards he exclaimed, “This is the gate of heaven”—that is, the doorway into the other world.14 In the last book of the Bible, the vision of John begins with a similar image: “I looked and lo, in heaven, an open door.”15 What is true of the beginning and end of the Bible is also true of its great figures throughout the tradition.

  The first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch) center on Moses, the central human figure of Israel’s history, indeed her “founder.” According to the brief obituary at the end of Deuteronomy, he “knew God face to face.” According to Exodus, he repeatedly ascended the mountain of God (symbolizing the connection between the two worlds?) and there was given the words which he imparted to his followers as “divine law.” On one occasion after coming down from the mountain, we are told, his face actually glowed with the radiance of the holy which he had encountered.16 Throughout the Pentateuch, Moses functions as a mediator between the two worlds: as divine law-giver, as channel of power from the world of Spirit, and as intercessor on behalf of his people.17

  The experience of the other world and the role of mediation are also central to the prophets, including Elijah as well as the classical prophets. Though a much more shadowy figure than Moses, Elijah was one of the central heroes of the Jewish tradition. Like Moses, he was frequently in the wilderness and sojourned to the sacred mountain, where he also experienced a theophany (an experience of God or “the holy”). Even as the stories about him emphasize the issues of social justice and loyalty to God which characterize the later prophets, he is also clearly portrayed as a “man of Spirit”: he traveled “in the Spirit” and was a channel for the power of Spirit as both a healer and rainmaker. At the end of his life he was carried into the other world by “chariots of fire.”18

  One hundred years later, in the eighth century B.C., the mission of the prophet Isaiah began with an overwhelming experience of the other world:

  In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the Temple. Above him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet; and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.19

  In the temple, the sacred place connecting the earth to the other realm, Isaiah momentarily “saw” into the other world: a vision of God upon the divine throne, surrounded by strange, unearthly six-winged creatures. But he did not simply “see” into the other world; he was, in a sense, in it, for he became a participant in the scene: “Then flew one of the six-winged creatures to me, having in his hand a burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said, ‘Behold, this has touched your lips.’ ”20

  The image of seeing into another world is also used to describe the origin of Ezekiel’s mission as a prophet some 150 years later: “In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the river Chebar, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.”21 Alternatively, prophets spoke of the Spirit descending upon them: “The Spirit of the Lord fell upon me,” or “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me.”22 The
direct encounters with the world of Spirit reported by Isaiah and Ezekiel generally characterized the prophets. They spoke of knowing and being known by God, of seeing visions, of being present in the “heavenly council.”23

  In Jesus’ day, the stream was not frozen in the past, but continued to flow. In the century before and after Jesus, the charismatic phenomenon continued in a number of Jewish “holy men” active primarily in Galilee.24 Known for the directness of their relationship to God and the length and effectiveness of their prayer, they were delegates of their people to the other world, mediating the power of the Spirit especially as healers and rainmakers. The two most famous, Honi the Circle-Drawer and Hanina ben Dosa, were both compared to that earlier person of the Spirit, Elijah.

  They had power over demons, who recognized and feared them. Among the healings credited to Hanina, active around the middle of the first century A.D., one involved a cure from a distance. He healed the son of Rabbi Gamaliel who was mortally ill with a fever, despite the fact that Hanina was in Galilee and Gamaliel’s son was in Jerusalem, some one hundred miles away.

  These charismatics were known for their intimacy with God. Some were even heralded as “son of God” by a “heavenly voice”: “The whole universe is sustained on account of my son Hanina.”25 The role of intercession characteristic of the Spirit-filled tradition appears in a saying attributed to Honi (first century B.C.) which also uses the language of sonship: “Lord of the universe, thy sons have turned to me because I am as a son of the house before thee.”26 As “son of the house,” he was sought by the other “sons” as an intercessor with the world of Spirit.27