Jesus: a new vision

by Marcus J. Borg

  The most famous follower of Jesus in the generation after his death was also a Spirit-filled mediator. Near the middle of the first century the apostle Paul wrote about his own journey into the world of Spirit:

  I know a man in Christ [Paul is referring to himself] who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into Paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.28

  Notable is the picture of reality as having several layers, the image of entering it, the uncertainty whether the experience was “in the body” or out of it, the notion of Paradise as a realm that can be entered in the present, and the ineffability of the other world, which is filled with realities that cannot be adequately described in language drawn from this world. Paul’s conversion is also best understood as a charismatic experience,29 and he was, according to Acts, a healer, a channel for power from the world of Spirit.

  Thus the stream in which Jesus stood, going back through the prophets to the founder and fathers of Israel, as well as the stream which issued forth from him, centered on Spirit-filled mediators who bridged the two worlds. The stream was the source of the tradition; its literature, both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, clusters around them. Indeed, in the specific sense of the term used here, the heart of the biblical tradition is “charismatic,” its origin lying in the experience of Spirit-endowed people who became radically open to the other world and whose gifts were extraordinary.

  THE COLLISION WITH OUR WAY OF SEEING

  Even people familiar with the Bible are often unaware how much the experience of the other world pervades it. Because the notion of another realm or dimension of reality, and of people who can be mediators between the two worlds, is alien to our way of seeing, we need to return to this theme as we draw this chapter to a close.

  Those of us socialized in the modern world have grown up in a culture with a largely secularized and one-dimensional understanding of reality. Though remnants of a religious worldview remain, the dominant worldview in the modern period flows from the scientific and technological revolution of the last few centuries. For us, perceiving reality within the framework of this worldview, what is real is essentially the material, the visible world of time and space. What is real is ultimately made up of tiny bits and pieces of “stuff,” all operating in accord with laws of cause and effect which can be known. Reality is constituted by matter and energy interacting to form the visible world. In short, there is but one world.

  As we grew up, the process of learning this worldview was largely unconscious. We were not directly instructed in the subject of “worldview,” but it was the presupposition for all subjects. Moreover, we are not normally conscious of its presence or function within our minds. As a fundamental picture of reality, the modern worldview is like a map laid over reality, conditioning both our experience and understanding. We pay attention to what it says is real. The depth of this worldview in us, the taken-for-granted way in which it affects our understanding, is remarkable, even in people with a religious upbringing.30

  This nonreligious one-dimensional understanding of reality makes the other world and the notion of mediation between the two worlds unreal to us. Though we may grant that unusual healings do occur, we are inclined to think that some psychosomatic explanation is possible. Though we grant that exceptional people may indeed enter a trancelike state and experience a journey into another world, we are inclined to view their experience of nonordinary reality as purely subjective, as an encounter with merely mental realities within the psyche, or as hallucinations. To put it mildly, the “other world” is no longer taken for granted as an objectively real “other reality.” Indeed, within the modern framework, frequent and vivid experiences of another reality mark a person as clinically psychotic.

  Even biblical scholarship in the modern period has generally not known what to do with the category of “Spirit.” Most biblical scholars work within the modern academy, whose canons of respectability include a methodology that assumes the truthfulness of the modern worldview. Typically spending eight or more years in college and graduate school and often remaining as teachers, we often measure our time in the academy in decades rather than years. Texts that report “paranormal” happenings, whether they be visions of another realm or miracles, are either largely ignored or else interpreted in such a way that they do not violate our sense of what is possible or real.31 Thus, because we do not know what to do with the world of Spirit, we tend not to give it a central place in our historical study of the biblical tradition.

  But the reality of the other world deserves to be taken seriously. Intellectually and experientially, there is much to commend it. The primary intellectual objection to it flows from a rigid application of the modern worldview’s definition of reality. Yet the modern view is but one of a large number of humanly constructed maps of reality. It is historically the most recent and impressive because of the degree of control it has given us; but it is no more an absolute map of reality than any of the previous maps. All are relative, products of particular histories and cultures; and the modern one, like its predecessors, will be superceded.

  Already there are signs of its eclipse. Within the theoretical sciences, the modern worldview in its popular form has been abandoned.32 At macro and micro levels, reality behaves in strange ways that stretch the popular worldview beyond its limits. The “old map” is being left behind. Of course, this does not prove the truth of the religious worldview, but it does undermine the central reason for rejecting it. The worldview that rejects or ignores the world of Spirit is not only relative, but is itself in the process of being rejected. The alternative to a one-dimensional understanding of reality can claim most of the history of human experience in its support. People throughout the centuries, in diverse cultures, regularly experienced another realm which seemed to them more real, powerful, and fundamental than the world of our ordinary experience. Not only is there no intellectual reason to suppose the second world to be unreal, but there is much experiential evidence to suggest its reality.33

  In any case, quite apart from the question of ultimate truth, it is necessary to take seriously the reality of the world of Spirit if we wish to take the central figures of the Jewish tradition seriously. To try to understand the Jewish tradition and Jesus while simultaneously dismissing the notion of another world or immediately reducing it to a merely psychological realm is to fail to see the phenomena, to fail to take seriously what these charismatic mediators experienced and reported. For many of us, this will require a temporary suspension of our disbelief. As we shall see, Jesus’ vivid experience of the reality of Spirit radically challenges our culture’s way of seeing reality.

  NOTES

  3. The Spirit-filled Experience of Jesus

  Given the subsequent historical importance of Jesus, it is remarkable that his public activity was so brief. The synoptic gospels imply that his ministry lasted only a year, the gospel of John that it lasted three years, or a bit more. Which is correct, we can no longer know, but both agree that it was brief, extraordinarily so. The Buddha taught for forty-five years after his enlightenment, Muhammad for about twenty years. According to Jewish tradition, Moses led his people for forty years. But Jesus’ ministry was brief, a light flashing momentarily but brilliantly like a meteor in the night sky. What was he like?

  Jesus was born sometime during the waning years of Herod the Great, who died in 4 B.C. Nothing is known about his life prior to the beginning of his ministry as a mature adult, except by inference.1 He grew up in Nazareth, a hill town in the northern province of Galilee, some twenty miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea, fifteen miles from the Sea of Galilee to the east, and roughly one hundred miles north of Jerusalem. Most of his neighbors would have been farmers who lived in the village and worked the fields nearby, or workers in the relatively small num
ber of trades necessary to support agricultural life. He may or may not have been a carpenter; both “carpenter” and “carpenter’s son” were used metaphorically within Judaism to mean “scholar” or “teacher.”2

  We may surmise that he experienced the socialization of a typical boy in that culture. Growing up in a Jewish home, most likely he attended school from roughly age six to at least twelve or thirteen, as a system of “elementary education” was widespread in Palestinian Judaism. His “primer” would have been the book of Leviticus. Whether he had formal training as a teacher of the Torah3 beyond the schooling given to every boy, we do not know.

  As a boy and young man, Jesus almost certainly attended the synagogue (a place of Scripture reading and prayer in local communities) every Sabbath, and perhaps on Mondays and Thursdays as well. As a faithful Jew, he would have recited the Shema upon rising and retiring each day, the heart of which affirmed: “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”4 Presumably, he participated in the Jewish festivals and went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem. From the gospels, it is clear that he was very familiar with his Scriptures, the Hebrew Bible. He may have known it from memory, a feat not uncommon among the learned. The Psalms were probably his “prayer book.”

  That is about all we can know about Jesus prior to his emergence as a public figure, despite attempts to fill in the missing years in later apocryphal gospels and occasional scholarly speculations. Suggestions that Jesus lived among the Essenes,5 or studied in Egypt, or traveled to India, or somehow came in contact with the teaching of the Buddha, are not only without historical foundation but also unnecessary. We need not go beyond the mainstream of the Jewish tradition to find a “home” for everything that is said about him.

  THE SOURCE OF JESUS’ MINISTRY: THE DESCENT OF THE SPIRIT

  When Jesus does appear on the stage of history as an adult, the first episode reported about him places him directly in the charismatic stream of Judaism. His mission began with a vision from the other world and the descent of the Spirit upon him. At about the age of thirty, early in the governorship of Pontius Pilate,6 something impelled Jesus to go to a wilderness preacher of repentance named John and known ever since as “John the Baptist.” All of the gospels (as well as Acts) connect the beginning of Jesus’ ministry to his baptism by John.

  Known to us both from the New Testament and from the Jewish historian Josephus,7 John stood in the charismatic stream of Judaism. His style of dress emulated Elijah, and his contemporaries compared him to a prophet.8 Renowned for his eloquent and passionate call for repentance, John proclaimed that it was not sufficient to be “children of Abraham,” but called the Jewish people to a more intense relationship to God sealed by a ritual of initiation.9 Crowds flocked to this charismatic, some to be baptized.

  Jesus was among them. As he was being baptized by John, he had a vision.10 It is very tersely described: “He saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove.”11 The language recalls earlier experiences of the other world in the Jewish tradition. Like Ezekiel some six centuries before, Jesus saw “the heavens opened,” momentarily seeing into the other world, as if through a door or “tear.” Through this door he saw “the Spirit descending upon him,” echoing the words of an earlier Spirit-filled one: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”12

  The vision was accompanied by a “heavenly voice” which declared Jesus’ identity to him: “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well-pleased.” About the historicity of the baptism and the vision itself, there is little reason for doubt. Unless we think that visions simply do not happen, there is no reason to deny this experience to Jesus. However, about the “heavenly voice” there is some historical uncertainty, simply because the words so perfectly express the post-Easter perception of Jesus’ identity. As such, they must be historically suspect as the product of the followers of Jesus in the years after Easter.

  Yet how we interpret the words affects the historical judgment. If “beloved Son” is taken to mean “unique” Son of God in the sense in which the church uses that term, then the phrase must be viewed as historically suspect. But if it is given the meaning which similar expressions have in stories of other Jewish charismatic holy men, then it is historically possible to imagine this as part of the experience of Jesus. For they too had experiences in which a “heavenly voice” declared them to be God’s “son.”13 If read in this way, the words not only become historically credible but are a further link to charismatic Judaism.

  Whatever the historical judgment concerning the “heavenly voice,” the story of Jesus’ vision places him in the Spirit-filled heart of Judaism. It reflects the multi-layered understanding of reality which was part of the belief system and actual experience of his predecessors in his own tradition. Indeed, standing as it does at the beginning of his ministry, the vision is reminiscent of the “call narratives” of the prophets. Like them, his ministry began with an intense experience of the Spirit of God.

  THE COURSE OF JESUS’ MINISTRY: A PERSON OF SPIRIT

  Jesus’ ministry not only began with an experience of the Spirit, but was dominated throughout by intercourse with the other world.

  VISIONS

  The vision of the descent of the Spirit was followed immediately by another visionary experience or sequence of experiences. According to both Mark and the tradition behind Matthew and Luke, the Spirit “drove” or “led” Jesus out into the wilderness. Mark’s account is very brief: “And Jesus was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him.”14

  Matthew and Luke agree that he spent a forty-day solitude in the wilderness, where he was tested by the lord of the evil spirits and nourished by beneficent spirits. They add that Jesus fasted and had a series of three closely related visions.15 In the first, Jesus was tempted by Satan to use his powers to change stones into bread. In the second and third, Jesus and Satan traveled together in the spirit world. The devil took Jesus to the highest point of the temple in Jerusalem, and then “took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.”16 Throughout, Satan tempted Jesus to use his charismatic powers in self-serving ways and to give his allegiance to him in exchange for all the kingdoms of the world.

  Both the setting and the content of the visions are noteworthy. Like Moses and Elijah and other Jewish holy men, Jesus journeyed into the wilderness, alone, beyond the domestication of reality provided by culture and human interchange. There, in a desolate desert area near the Dead Sea, he underwent a period of extended solitude and fasting, practices which produce changes in consciousness and perception, typical of what other traditions call a “vision quest.” Indeed, the sequence of initiation into the world of Spirit (the baptism) followed by a testing or ordeal in the wilderness is strikingly similar to what is reported of charismatic figures cross-culturally.17

  The synoptic gospels report one more visionary experience of Jesus. According to Luke, in the middle of the ministry, a group of Jesus’ followers exclaimed: “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” Jesus responded, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”18 The passage uses language typically used to introduce a vision (“I saw,”), though the passage could also be a metaphorical exclamation about the defeat of Satan.

  We do not know if Jesus had other visions. The fact that none are reported may be without significance. Presumably, Jesus would not routinely report such, but would do so only if they served some purpose in his teaching.19 The rest of the New Testament frequently reports visions, suggesting that the early church continued to experience reality in the same Spirit-filled way that Jesus did.20

  PRAYER

  Among the reasons that we in the modern world have difficulty giving credence to the reality of Spirit is the disappearance of the deeper forms of prayer from our experience. Most of us are aware primarily of a form of prayer in
which God is addressed with words, whether out loud in the context of public prayer, or internally in private prayer. Such “verbal prayer” is typically relatively brief, ordinarily no longer than a few minutes, perhaps sometimes longer in private devotion.

  But verbal prayer is only one form of prayer in the Jewish-Christian tradition. Indeed, it is only the first stage of prayer; beyond it are deeper levels of prayer characterized by internal silence and lengthy periods of time. In this state, one enters into deeper levels of consciousness; ordinary consciousness is stilled, and one sits quietly in the presence of God. Typically called contemplation or meditation, its deepest levels are described as a communion or union with God.21 One enters the realm of Spirit and experiences God.

  For a variety of reasons, this form of prayer has become quite unfamiliar within the modern church. Though preserved in religious orders, by a few groups such as the Quakers, and by individuals scattered throughout Christian denominations, it has largely disappeared as part of the experience of most people in modern culture.

  The tradition in which Jesus stood knew this mode of prayer. Moses and Elijah spent long periods of time in solitude and communion with God. Nearer the time of Jesus the Galilean holy men regularly spent an hour “stilling their minds” in order to direct their hearts toward heaven.22 Meditation also is found in Jewish mysticism. Though most familiar to us from the medieval Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism stretches back to the merkabah (“throne”) mysticism of Jesus’ time and before.23 For the merkabah mystics, contemplative prayer was the vehicle for ascending through the heavens to the ultimate vision of beholding the throne of God—that is, of experiencing the kingship of God.