Customer Reviews

Jesus Against Christianity: Reclaiming the Missing Jesus

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The author (N-P) fervently believes that ancient and modern social ills are most often the result of forceful subjugation of large numbers of the peoples of the world by an exploitive elite and that, again most often, this has been done in the guise of religion as, supposedly, the will of God. The author wants to find out why Jesus is missing from Christian worship. For example, why is it that the Apostle's Creed declares that Jesus Christ was born, suffered and died with no mention how he lived, or what he said. N-P thinks that it is important to look into why he was killed and what his message said about God --- a message which, evidently, inspired and energized his followers to live as if he was still with them.

The book can be divided into three sections.
1. The first examines images and expectations of God in O.T. and N.T. scriptures and concludes that, far from giving a consistent, monotheistic picture of One God, it doesn't take a degree in psychology to recognize that many different Gods are pictured, often behaving in widely inconsistent ways and all too often demanding actions that are pathological and violent.
2. The second section details the sociological, political and religious situation in which Jesus lived including both domination by foreign powers and by the Temple elite. N-P points out how the oppressive and violent domination systems which the Jewish people had endured for centuries coupled with a belief in an Almighty God led to Messianic expectations involving a violent intervention by God.
3. The third section examines Gospel narratives and parables to find evidences for Jesus' non-violent opposition to Rome and to the Temple authorities. Jesus' opposition is rooted in his faith in a god of unconditional love rather than a God of vengeful justice. N-P rejects images of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet who preached God's ultimate wrath for wrongdoers. Jesus' God desires justice but, since coercion is incompatible with God's nature, he is powerless to enforce it through violent action. Violence and injustice can only be defused by non-violent means --- including sacrifice (as Jesus himself demonstrated), if necessary.

The Bible verses referenced below illustrate the all too common presence of passages supporting troubling images of a kind of God who, in the O.T.:
1. orders parents to murder disobedient children [Lev.20:1-2a, 9],
2. orders a test of faith by one's willingness to murder one's child [Exo. 22:2, 9b-12],
3. is angered and so commits worldwide genocide [Gen.6:13,7:23],
4. steals land from its rightful occupants [Gen. 15:18-21],
5. steals land and orders "ethnic cleansing" of the occupants [Num.21:31-35],
6. is a Holy Warrior killing those who follow other Gods [Exo. 11:4-6, 14:27-28],
7. destroys his own people [Jer. 21:3-6; Lam. 4:4,9-10]
To dispel the notion, held by some smug Christians, that this behavior is only found in Jewish scriptures, we find in the N.T. troubling images of a God who:
8. is a wrathful judge [Matt. 3:7-12],
9. kills the disobedient [Acts5:5-9],
10. is the violent avenger of injustice [Rev. 11:17-18]

To summarize, then, although there are beautiful and inspiring passages regarding the merciful and compassionate nature of God in the Bible, by far the most numerous and dominant Scriptural assertions about the nature of God are concerned with: 1. God's power (violence) is superior to that of our enemies, but 2. God withholds using violence on our enemies, thus allowing us to suffer, in order to chastise and redeem us (in answer to the question "did God fail, or is this a punishment for our disobedience?" when we are in a crisis of faith). Redemptive violence saves God's reputation of all-powerfulness when we are forced to live under conditions not in our best interest.

This all leads to N-P asking "So what do these insights lead to with regard to the ways in which Christians should live and worship today?" and he goes on to describe how Christians can revise their outlook. Perhaps the greatest reinterpretation he calls for is his rejection of all aspects of the atonement theory of Jesus' death. Jesus was killed by the Romans with the cooperation of the Temple elites because both parties viewed him as a dangerous subversive leader whose teachings undermined Roman political domination as well as Jewish religious authority. The dogma, perhaps arising in Paul but emphasized particularly by Augustine and others, that a sacrifice of life, no matter how precious or divine, was required to appease an otherwise unforgiving God is diametrically opposed to Jesus' foundational teachings about God and the nature of God's kingdom. Such a prerequisite would be inconceivable by a God of infinite love. [My note: An immortal being gains or loses nothing from the physical death of another immortal being, especially if this lost mortality can be resurrected!]

N-P sees a re-ritualization of present Christianity is necessary:
1 The Last Supper should drop all references to atonement or substitutionary guilt and become rather a celebration of God's abundance in community where we rededicate ourselves to lives of service and sharing.
2. Baptism should drop allusions to original sin or the remembrance of the great flood and become a dedication to accept and care for God's abundant gifts.
3. The Lord's Prayer should reword its paternalistic and heavenly director images and address the real notions of debt forgiveness along with our gratitude for God's abundance.
4. The Apostles Creed should be rewritten to include Jesus, his life and goals and reject the images of "almighty" God in favor of "all-compassionate" God.
5. [My note: Hymnody should omit or rewrite those hymns whose major thrust seems to focus on declarations of violence or of punishment or of exclusivity.]

For years I have been troubled by the discongruity between the God portrayed in some Scripture as going out of God's way to "seek and save the lost sheep" ... only to find other passages imaging God as a wrathful entity hungry to visit judgment on we mortals. Nelson-Pallmeyer, while clearly committed to the Christian faith, looks at some of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures and says the God portrayed in some of them is a pathological killer. But he is not willing to stop there. He sees in Jesus' life and teaching a relationship with a God we can embrace. The author looks at who Jesus was and how he related to God and then sets that as his standard for evaluating whether an image of God resonates with the God Jesus knew and experienced. He helps the reader understand the apocalyptic views of some of the Biblical authors and his evidence on why he thinks Jesus broke with that view that was shared by one of his mentors, John the Baptist. Jesus embraces a God who is non-violent and one who suffers along with us rather than the omnipotent, all-knowing deity people believed in until our world was confronted with the horrors of the Holocaust, Pol Pot, Rwanda, and other tragedies. The message of this book is crucial in a world obsessed with violence and environmental devastation. If our image of God is distorted, so will our values. This book will disturb you, challenge you, and hopefully give you substance to live a life of grace and mercy in the midst of one's commitment to justice. If we really want to change our image of who God is, we will have to do a lot more work not only in changing the language of worship to be more inclusive, but we must re-visit (and reject) the blood sacrifice/atonement theology found in much of the contemporary church scene.

I think this is a phenomenal, eye opening book. I read it while working at a bible camp having been stigmatized for taking the kind of views that Jack Nelson Pallmeyer did in this book. It is a fascinating exegesis on the gospels and on the old testament with some good eye opening historical information. However, it is not a book for the light hearted and i think it takes the miracollous wonder of the resurrection away. Pallmeyer seems to want to focus merely on the life of Jesus, which i think is a legitimate topic in more progressive circles. However more literature needs to be done focusing on both issues of Christ, not claiming a conservative or liberal agenda. Pallmeyer really did not provide much new information or insights in the book. While it might be good for a religious scholar to read, I would suggest Walter Wink's books for anyone who wants a good solid introduction to the issue of power and dominance in the church.

Professor Nelson-Pallmeyer is idealistic, compassionate, intelligent, creative and intentional about living out his faith in the real world. In this text he makes a noble effort to interpret scripture through the life, actions and sayings of the historic Jesus of Nazareth.

Unfortunately, he attempts his hermeneutic task with a degree of certainty unjustified by the evidence. What Professor Nelson-Pallmeyer forgets is that neither Schweitzer nor any of his successors, up to and including the Jesus Seminar, have been able to define the life and sayings of the historic Jesus with any degree of certainty. Consequently, Professor Nelson-Pallmeyer projects back on the historic Jesus concerns that are more appropriate to the twenty-first century a.d. than to the first. The result is that Professor Nelson-Pallmeyer interprets scripture through a Jesus of his own making. Sadly, he has succeeded in recasting Jesus in his own image.

Nevertheless, Professor Nelson-Pallmeyer's concerns about the subordination of faith to culture are important and worth pondering. His response, forged through years of focusing his scholarly and personal life on issues of justice and peace, is worth considering. Read this text and take Professor Nelson-Pallmeyer seriously, just as he attempts to take Jesus seriously. However, take him with a grain of salt.

When I picked up Mr. Nelson-Pallmeyer's book, I was intrigued by the synopsis. I, myself have had the very same questions as to why God in the OT is portrayed as vengeful and bloodthirsty, yet in the NT "God is Love". But "Jesus AGAINST Christianity? Hmmmmm. So read the book I did.

What I didn't like about the book:

While the author brings up interesting questions and gives some vital information into Jewish history and mindset, I felt the book was to repetative and he could have easily conveyed his message in half the words. I kept thinking, "yes, you made this point many times in previous pages and chapters". In reading it I noted his obvious axe to grind with Catholicism and I feel that bias is reflected in his writing. I also feel his interpretation of the scriptures from only a literalist/historical perspective (without tempering the spirituality or various literary styles of writing in the bible) and the conclusions he draws are strictly of his own opinion, and not necessarily accurate. While he does make some good points, I feel he misses the forest for all the trees.

What I DID like about this book:

As any good professor would like to do for his students - it gets under your skin and opens up your mind and challenges your beliefs so that one will take a good hard look at what he does believe. And this book does that very well. And we need to critique our beliefs in relation to God, our concept of him, how we manifest our belief/faith in our lives and in the world. But in the end, I just don't find Christ as missing or as mis-portrayed by the Gospel authors as Mr. Nelson-Pallmeyer suggests. So I give it a 3 1/2 stars.

I consider this a very brave and honest book that needs to be wrestled and engaged with, especially in the light of 9/11. There aren't many books that thoroughly document and discuss the ethically problematic passages in the Bible as this one, especially from someone inside the faith that believes in it's emancipatory possibilities.

Because of the comprehensive amount of "pathological", violent passages found within the Bible, one cannot easily duck the implications that they raise. Nelson-Pallmeyer quotes Raymund Schwager: "There are "600 hundred passages of explicit violence in the Hebrew Bible, 1,000 verses where God's own violent actions of punishment are described. 100 passages where Yahweh expressly commands others to kill people, and several stories where God irrationally kills or tries to kill for no apparent reason (e.g. Ex 4.24-26)." And that's just the Hebrew Bible!

Part of N-P's thesis is "either God is a pathological killer because the Bible says so, or the Bible is sometimes wrong about God". N-P believes Jesus is the one who authoritatively corrects the Bible's faulty images of God by showing his Abba Father as a God of love and redemption not of retribution and violence. Jesus taught a non-violent ethic ("love your enemies") that was very much at odds with the retributional passages throughout the Bible and congruent with a God of absolute love.

N-P relies very much on a Jesus Seminar-esque portrait of the historical Jesus. The Gospels actually contain a fair amount of the troublesome passages N-P wants to free Jesus from. After all, Jesus talked a good deal about judgment and hell. More liberal scholarship has seen these as the early churches' interpolations in addressing their own contemporary situations, not the verbatim words of Jesus. Thus, Jesus is exonerated and freed from any implication which supports N-P's attempt to rescue faith in Jesus' teaching alone. I am of the persuasion that is a very thin line to dangle on but am appreciative that N-P does his best to come up with his best solution. After all, in light of the issues raised, what would anyone sympathetically suggest?

Overall, I agree with N-P's assessment that "the Bible is sometimes wrong about God." The Bible was written within a specific cultural context that very much colored the perceptions of the biblical writers. They weren't simply God's dictational secretaries. That does not rule out that they were truly God inspired, but that like us, they were also fallibly human. Obviously, most Christians would prefer to believe in an infallible/inerrant Bible and thus gain absolute certitude. But under more open-minded scrutiny, that just doesn't seem to hold water in light of NP's discussion (and many, many other's). I am not as skeptical as N-P, that the other portions of the Bible, besides the Gospels, can't be mined more for the profound revelational insight they do contain. But can we continue under the illusion that the biblical writers always got it exactly right? Vibrant Christian faith doesn't necessarily fall under such conclusions.

This is a challenging call to the church and believers to seriously wrestle with this perplexing issue. I don't think it helps much to side-step the implications of this problem and simply chalk it up as a mystery of God's inscrutable nature or the thinking of an avowed troublesome liberal. God's alleged promotion of the genocide of whole groups of peoples: men, women and children (Joshua 8:24, 10:26-43 etc. etc.) simply won't allow that to wash. (And if one has no problem with these type of passages, then how can one say religiously driven terrorists are automatically evil? If God's goodness is incomprehensible to human sensibilities, then maybe we have no entry point to understand what is or isn't God's justice.)

As "people of the Book" we need to have the courage to be forthright about our own pathologies that come from that Book. The current global terrorism, often in the name of religion, calls all faiths to purge away their destructive elements. (And some Christians have no difficulty that it's all the others who have the problems -- strange!) Perhaps God's revelation is ongoing in the light of the supreme revelation in Christ?

In conclusion, I would like to compliment N-P for raising the issues that many of us would not have the audaciousness to raise. Many conservatives, no doubt, will have little patience for N-P's questioning because he undermines their core belief in an inerrant Bible. But can we just listen to his legitimate line of questioning above the din of our demands for orthodoxy? Perhaps for most, the answer is no but if some can entertain the question seriously, perhaps it will enable the way forward.

For years I have been troubled by the discongruity between the God portrayed in some Scripture as going out of God's way to "seek and save the lost sheep" ... only to find other passages imaging God as a wrathful entity hungry to visit judgment on we mortals. Nelson-Pallmeyer, while clearly committed to the Christian faith, looks at some of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures and says the God portrayed in some of them is a pathological killer. But he is not willing to stop there. He sees in Jesus' life and teaching a relationship with a God we can embrace.

The author looks at who Jesus was and how he related to God and then sets that as his standard for evaluating whether an image of God resonates with the God Jesus knew and experienced. He helps the reader understand the apocalyptic views of some of the Biblical authors and his evidence on why he thinks Jesus broke with that view that was shared by one of his mentors, John the Baptist. Jesus embraces a God who is non-violent and one who suffers along with us rather than the omnipotent, all-knowing deity people believed in until our world was confronted with the horrors of the Holocaust, Pol Pot, Rwanda, and other tragedies.

The message of this book is crucial in a world obsessed with violence and environmental devastation. If our image of God is distorted, so will our values. This book will disturb you, challenge you, and hopefully give you substance to live a life of grace and mercy in the midst of one's commitment to justice. If we really want to change our image of who God is, we will have to do a lot more work not only in changing the language of worship to be more inclusive, but we must re-visit (and reject)the blood sacrifice/atonement theology found in much of the contemporary church scene.

This book is great. I recommend it to anyone interested in liberal theology. It is almost an apologetic for non-fundamentalist thinking.

This book I highly recommend for one group only- serious Christians who are willing to subject their faith to reasonable criticism in order to grasp more accurately what God is and what God expects from us. Non-monotheists will find it boring. Non-Christian monotheists and uncritical Christians will find it very threatening.

The author, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, claims to be a Lutheran Christian. He is definitely in a minority in his faith community- of course, being in the majority or the minority has no bearing on the truth of his views. But as a Christian he should be considered as an insider to the Christian faith. This reviewer, a Roman Catholic Christian, thinks that most people who seriously challenge long established Christian teachings do not know Biblical history nor the official teachings of Christianity. But this author does know both very well. His views deserve serious attention.

He starts with an assumption about Reality (God) and then proceeds carefully to deduce the implications of that assumption. Assumptions are necessary for all human beings to think, reason, argue, and prove. Without assumptions we would not be human. But assumptions cannot be 'proven' to others who do not share those assumptions. Very rarely does someone change his/her basic assumptions about Reality- this is classically named a 'conversion'.

The author's basic assumption is that Reality (God) is nonviolent-totally and permanently. He claims that Jesus somehow detected this during his lifetime and glimpses of this insight are found within the New Testament- if it is properly interpreted. Armed with this assumption, the author then states that the Christian creeds and even the Bible (both OT and NT) have seriously mistinterpreted what is the truth on the issue of violence. He points out, in some detail, the huge differences within the Bible on the issue of God's violence, and His authorization of violence to His followers. He then cites many of the atrocities that God's permission of violence has produced in history. He then says that a real follower of Jesus must choose between these competing views of violence. Nelson-Pallmeyer is honest enough to say that his view of violence cannot be 'proven', but neither can the opposing view be 'proven'. He claims the support of some very notable liberal theologians.

If he is right, then far reaching conclusions emerge for today's Christians. He names the spirit of the world (past and present) and most monotheists as constituting the `domination system'. This label indicates the idea of various kinds of physical violence used to dominate other human beings, contrary to what Jesus wished. This system corrupts both its direct perpetrators and most religious people who are indirectly supporting it. God's compassion is overwhelmed by the alleged God's (violent) justice. What Jesus wanted was for all humans to detect and live the `abundant life' that God makes available to us in the present. By so doing, we can possibly slowly remake the world to be the nonviolent environment that mirrors God Himself.

However, this reviewer disagrees with the author's basic assumption. If you assume that monotheism is correct, then consider the following: if God created the universe that we experience, then how did He do it? By some smooth gentle process? No! If modern science is substantially correct, then He did by a process of unimaginable violence (big bang), and this evolving universe is constantly being changed by violent processes. Even on earth, elements violently collide with each other, nature is structured as predator and prey (nature `red in tooth and claw'), all that we humans eat to sustain our lives are the bodies of living animals (meat) that we kill or living plants that we kill. History is full of examples of people being violent to one another. Why would a completely nonviolent God create such a violent environment for us? To say that God is totally and permanently nonviolent is an assumption without much historical and empirical evidence.

To say that violent images can be distorted is another matter. Most Christian scholars in history have noted the different images of God regarding violence in the Bible. But their response was to try to harmonize the differences rather than to eliminate the differences. For Christians, heresies were usually the result of some process of reductionism- eliminating troubling ideas from scripture, instead of integrating things into a higher unity. This author is continuing a long tradition, usually credited to a scholar named David Strauss, of trying to separate the `Jesus of History' from the `Christ of Faith'. Those who disbelieved in supernatural events would simply eliminate them from scripture- thus eliminating whatever they disagreed with. When applied to the foundations of Christianity (Bible and Creeds), all such attempts are reductionisms. The issue of God's violence is so central to the faith that just wars and apocalyptic thinking and actions hang in the balance- the author is correct about the importance of this issue. Can God's compassion and justice be balanced, and His abundant life be realized, without some kind of violence? Classic (theistic) Buddhists and the author's Jesus think so. Although this reviewer thinks not, Nelson-Pallmeyer's kind of faith, if it becomes widespread, would be a welcome improvement on the typical uncritical behavior of many Christians. Orthopraxy trumps Orthodoxy--- if you can't have both.

This book reflects the views of an individual who envisions a world of peace and justice. Isn't this what we all want? But to ignore the fact that there is evil in the world, or to blame that evil on the God of the Holy Bible being vengeful, murderous, insane, and even schizophrenic in nature, is not only an exceedingly unjust act itself, but simply AND profoundly incorrect. The author is an Assistant Professor of Justice and Peace Studies, but he completely lacks knowledge of history. Over and over, vengeful, murderous, greedy individuals, people who were created in the image of God but who chose paths of violence to suit their selfish interests, have come into power and oppressed people. He acknowledges this about the Romans, but then tries to make oppression and violence appear as outgrowths of a God-fearing people. (The Romans were a pagan culture.) Every brand of religion as been subjugated as a means of controlling people by individuals attaining and then misusing power. While the God of the Holy Bible did indeed allocate land for His people, you need to learn more history than this book or any other single book could cover to discover how it truly began and how it played out. (The story began long before Abraham. Remember, the first words in the Holy Bible are "In the beginning...") It is hypocritical, and in the long run, harmful to his cause, when authors like Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer promote their utopia of a just society by being untruthful and by advocating injustice (even if it is passive), rebellion, and revolt toward people who do not share his views, as you will find in the final chapter. Late in the game, he's trying to hijack Jesus to further his vision just as so many he opposes have done.