COMMENTARY: A good media week for Jesus

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and sociologist at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. His home page on the World Wide Web is at http://www.greeley.com. Or contact him at his e-mail address: agreel(at sign)aol.com.) (RNS)-Media-wise, Jesus is doing pretty well these days. He […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and sociologist at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. His home page on the World Wide Web is at http://www.greeley.com. Or contact him at his e-mail address: agreel(at sign)aol.com.)

(RNS)-Media-wise, Jesus is doing pretty well these days.


He made the covers of Time and Newsweek magazines during Holy Week, no small achievement. Unfortunately he had to share space in these well-written stories with the members of the Jesus Seminar, a group of biblical scholars who meet regularly to cast votes on what parts of the Gospels represent the actual words of Jesus and what events in the Gospels actually occurred-including whether Jesus rose from the dead.

Making the covers of Time and Newsweek is a public relations triumph for the members of the much-publicized Jesus Seminar-perhaps because they consciously desire to trouble the faith of those who don’t understand how biblical scholarship works.

Neither article was particularly easy on the boat-rocking tactics of the Jesus Seminar. Both pointed out that they represent only a small faction within the much larger group of respected and professionally trained scriptural scholars, most of whom reject the methods of the seminar and the whole”quest for the historical Jesus.” I doubt that this criticism will trouble the publicity hounds among the Jesus Seminar folks. Inevitably, they emerge in a hasty reading as tough-minded radicals-and those who cling to the tenets of the Christian faith appear to be stuffy traditionalists who are afraid to face the facts of historical inquiry.

Thus John Dominic Crossan, once of De Paul University, in a caricature of the village atheist, explains that the body of Jesus was eaten by dogs- hence the empty tomb. To make such a judgment would require a time machine-and I wonder if the Jesus Seminar will take a vote on Crossan’s contention the next time they meet.

As I read the two articles, I felt like shouting that most of the debate missed the point completely. Christians do not”believe”in the resurrection of Jesus. Properly speaking, they believe only in God. Belief in anything else is idolatry.

Thus during Easter Week, we who are Christians celebrate our belief in the love of God, which was revealed in the triumph of Jesus over death and the promise of our eventual triumph with him. Early Christians borrowed the notion of”resurrection”from the Jewish Pharisees, as Christians borrowed all their notions, because that was the religious vocabulary that was available to them.

They changed the meaning of the Pharisees’ ideas of resurrection to apply to their encounter with Jesus who had died, but was still alive. They believed not in something less than resurrection but something more. They believed in a love so powerful that not even death could overcome it. They believed in a love that sustained Jesus in life despite his death-and will some day sustain us too.

This is a major leap beyond one man coming back to life, to say nothing of escaping the hungry Judean dogs of Crossan’s imagination. But that is what faith is-a leap beyond empirical evidence. And it is what Christianity is all about-a fundamental trust in God’s death-defying love that cannot be refuted by a group of scholars casting votes.


That the Jesus Seminar’s pronouncements trouble some of the easily confused faithful is less their doing than the fault of educators and teachers who have missed the point of the Easter experience, by insisting on a literalism that has nothing to do with faith.

They have taught people a faith that accepts too little when the real issue is whether faith might involve too much-in this case our own triumph over death in the power of God’s love.

Arguments over the precise nature of Jesus’ new life are rather beside the point in the face of this central mystery of the Paschal season. By focusing on the details, they ignore the splendor and the wonder of the mystery.

So to John Dominic Crossan and his ilk, I say this: Tells us we are fools for believing that God’s love conquers death. That is the real issue-not the behavior of dogs more than 1,900 years ago.

JC END GREELEY

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!