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When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making Moral Choices Today

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In the Boston area at least, many people are reading Harvey Cox's WHEN JESUS CAME TO HARVARD. Cox is a familiar name in the religious circles in the area, and his book is a great read. With this book we get the level of scholarship one should expect from a professor at Harvard, the insights of a gifted teacher who engages students and shares some of their reflections and insights, and a very readable book that proves what so many already know, the message of Jesus Christ is always relevant and has something to say for our world today.

Cox did not intend to ever write such a book. He was asked to teach an undergraduate course at Harvard a number of years ago on the moral teachings of Jesus Christ. The university was concerned that while it was preparing the world's future leaders, it did little to shape moral education and began requiring at least one semester in ethics. The university in its wisdom decided that Jesus should be included as well, which caught many at this bastion of secularity by surprise. It also asked Harvey Cox to be the instructor. Cox was reluctant, but agreed and it has since become one of the university's most popular classes. This work is basically a summary of the course and the story of the class itself.

Cox's basic stand in the book is that the moral teachings of Jesus Christ are similar in many ways to other moral teachings and one can find common ground in the teachings of Jesus Christ without being a believer. He also stresses Jesus' Jewishness and how he was similar to a rabbi of his day which is not original to Cox, but he is able to stress his being a rabbi in a manner that is respectful to Judaism while at the same time acknowledges Jesus' unique role. The book does not give easy answers to the most pressing moral issues of our day, but can help us try to imagine a response that would be the response of Jesus if he lived today. We also see how the course challenged Cox's faith. At first he had decided he would avoid potentially controversial situations such as the resurrection, believing that this is a matter of faith and not objective study. He also believed that in doing so he was being respectful of those who are not Christians. He discovered that one cannot disconnect the faith aspect of Jesus Christ and his teachings. While he did not set out to "convert" any of his non-Christian students, his looking at the faith aspect seems to have strengthened his own faith.

I do know some of Professor Cox's former students. One jokingly complained at the time that THE SECULAR CITY was published that the book contained insights derived from Cox's classes including one he enrolled in, but he was not getting any royalties from the book. After reading WHEN JESUS CAME TO HARVARD, he made the same claim again. He also purchased a number of copies of the book and gave them as gifts to friends. For people of faith this book offers the challenge to live Jesus' moral teachings, and for people who are not Christian, the book does show how Jesus' moral insights can be insightful for everyone.

Based upon his Harvard course called "Jesus and the Moral Life," Harvey Cox allows the reader into his struggles with making Jesus' teachings applicable in the here and now, a world much different than that of Jesus a couple thousand years ago. This book is intended for anyone dissatisfied with moralistic fundamentalism as well as "do your own thing" relativism. There is no sense of elitism in Cox; rather, he admittedly struggles over what many passages mean, illustrates an open minded give-and-take with his students, and offers alternative interpretations to many of the Gospels.

His most important conclusion is to understand that Jesus was a Rabbi, and was a master of the respected rabbinic practice of "midrash"--of imagining what is not explicit. This method of imaginitive exposition frequently relies on analogies, and it's purpose is to be an instrument for imparting contemporary relevance to biblical events.

Cox tackles a breadth of tough issues, from the embarrassment or resentment people have about money, to what it means to love one's enemy. In the end, Cox calls for new spirituality to link the spirit to action, prompted by his perception that students today are lacking the "fire in the belly." Referencing great Christian leaders of the recent past like Martin Luther King, Cox states there was a "tone" in religion then, "an idealism in Christianity that linked Jesus' concerns for the poor and the outcasts of society to social action."

This is a thought-provoking work that is highly recommended. While Cox does not force his views upon anyone, he will make everyone think about what the Gospels mean today.

This is both the most provocative and most powerful book I have read about Jesus in a long time. It's both a great relief and a joy to immerse oneself in this story - in the midst of a culture that makes the following of Jesus seem either really stupid or far too facile. Cox's fine writing, stellar knowledge of Judaism, good humor, and personal honesty are the gifts here.

I approached this book with some suspicion, since I'm not a traditional Christian and not quite open to unfounded beliefs. However, Cox uses his experience as a professor to write a script that anyone can play out. It doesn't force Cox's or Christianity's view of life upon you, but rather opens the door for Christians to start using their minds and non-Christians to look for some non-scientific guidance. It isn't a fundamentalist Christian novel, and you might be offended if you are a literalist (whom he openly refutes). Also, Cox tends to get off-topic quite sometimes (I'm not sure why I read the chapter on alternative medicine).

Those looking for a spiritual guide, a devotional, or a refutation of modern or traditional Christianity will not find it. However, this book provides a useful look at a way of looking upon religion and ethics that fuses humanism with deism, that allows us to be free but grounded morally. It's not the end-all, but it certainly is an interesting way to look at things.

One of the many things I learned in my eight years as a campus pastor at Stanford (1995-2003) is that, contrary to a common but powerful misperception, religion is alive and well on university campuses. True, you can find rock-ribbed secularists, and political-correctness codifies what passes for acceptable discourse, but among the graduate students and faculty that I worked, and far beyond in other religious communities at Stanford, many people enjoyed lives of vibrant faith. Professor Harvey Cox has written a book that documents his similar experiences based upon over forty years of teaching at Harvard Divinity School.

In the early 1980s Harvard created a Moral Reasoning division in the undergraduate curriculum, and stipulated that every student had to take one course in moral reasoning as a graduation requirement. They asked Cox to teach what became known as Jesus and the Moral Life, a course which met with overwhelming success and overflowing classes for the nearly twenty years that he offered it. Before then, the last course that Harvard had offered with "Jesus" in the title that Cox could find in old catalogs had been taught by George Santayana who had left in 1912. After the first three years, with burgeoning enrollments of seven to eight hundred students every year, no wonder the president took Cox to lunch to discover how and why the course was so popular.

Cox has written this book for those whom he describes as "dissatisfied seekers" who have a genuine interest in Jesus and religion, but who rightly despair of conservative, self-assured, and smug literalists on the one hand, and "wimpy 'well whatever' laxity" on the other (pp. 8, 319). Most of his students, he observes, were "benevolent but uncomfortable relativists" (p. 3) who clearly longed for a different alternative. The plan of the book allows us to eavesdrop on his course, and look over his shoulder, as he took the students through the life of Jesus, his death, and the resurrection accounts as they are contained in the four Gospels. His goal is to make the Jesus of "back then and there" relevant to moral choices to us "here and now." Central to his entire method is placing Jesus in his first-century cultural context as a rabble-rousing, boundary-breaking rabbi who announced that in His own person God's reign of shalom was coming to earth.

Critical questions and intellectual scrutiny play an important role for Cox, as well they should for any believer. To his credit, he never felt like he had to answer every question his students raised, or eliminate all their (or his) gnawing uncertainties: "They were in the process of growing up, as we all are, as long as we live. And growing up means learning to live with unsatisfying and incomplete endings, with people whose lives are cut off before they should be, or spin out in unexpected directions and sometimes crash in flames. No matter how ordinary they are, all our lives end with a kind of question mark as we reach the threshold of the final mystery" (p. 168).

Cox's love for his students and for the Gospel shine through on almost every page. His candor is disarming. He recounts how at times he dodged difficulties like Jesus's healings or the resurrection accounts, only to have a bad conscience for doing so and consequently addressing those matters, and many others, head on. Unlike many intellectuals, he is comfortable talking about his own Christian faith story, beginning as it did in a small town in Pennsylvania where his non-church-going parents sent him to the Baptist church next door. He writes not only about what he thinks his students gained from the course but what he learned.

Perhaps the best compliment I can pay to this book is to say that with two college-age kids, I found myself wishing that they might be fortunate enough to have a professor like Cox, whatever the subject.

I consider Harvey Cox to be one of my mentors. In this book, he picks up a theme from his earlier work: "Imagination" (Feast of Fools) and leads the reader along with his students and others in a welcome encounter with Jesus the Rabbi. I actually felt as if I were in the classroom or on the campus with Professor Cox and his students, joining in the ongoing response to the "parable" of Jesus' life.

Jesus now "belongs to the world," Cox writes, and this book goes a long way toward helping us all sort through contemporary stories about Jesus, whether "toxic" or "salutary."

Jesus lives!

As a teacher, I rarely come across summer reading as interesting and theologically provocative as Dr. Cox's image of Jesus the rabbi. He begins where he finds his students, with a vast array of relgious backgrounds. He is not deterred by the skeptics, but relentlessly develops an identity of Jesus among his students. He has cultivated a wonderful course and brings the historical Jesus to bear on today's current moral issues. I only wish I could take the course!

My Profile: 45 yo, unemployed, living in Perth, Australia

As someone who had an unexpected failed second marriage last year, I went into a depression that made discover my faith and touch with God again. Although I am still wondering in the desert, I have retaken all interest in ethics again, that is why at reading the preface for this book, I thought I was going to meet lectures on present day moral issues that were not present (at least in their actual form) in the days when Jesus was walking here. It turned out that the approach was rather hands-off, since the author was not inclined to convincing his students with any moral stance, rather, tod display the problems and report how dis the students react to the issues. I must admitt that sucha an approach represented a sort of a dissappointment for me, slowly I began to appreciate it as showed me an unbias report of how students, of even different religious background, felt about moder day ethical dilemmas.

The book first of all tought me not to shoot out my standing on any moral issue, but to approach it from the point of view that the rabbi of Nazareth (as well as the classical rabbinical style is), to present it with a twist that invites to review your own personal stance on the matter. At least, that is the apprach I will take with my son, as I found out in this book, the fog of ignorance or of wide open confution is more vast than I though of.

I must say, that the book did not help me find comfort to my personal problems, but it did raise my ethical awareness that was dead asleep.

This is a wonderful book and I would recommend to every christian. Instead of throwing out empty slogans, this book drills deep down to the inside of Jesus's ministry. It is insightful. It does not show you the five habits or eight principles to be a faithful christian. It encourage you to think and yes, that is what Jesus wants us to practice. There is no book that can cover every message from God. This one is no exception. But it surely brings Jesus closer to us. Jesus is no longer a character existed then and there. Jesus is also living here and now. For non-Christians, please forget about the images of tele-evangelists and believe that is what all christians look like. Read this book and you will find Jesus is departed from the common image portraited in the mass media and his messages are closer to you than you ever imagine.

Actually, I couldn't put it down! I found it extremely interesting, and it definitely helped me refine my ideas on who Jesus was, His teachings, and the Bible in general. I have never read anything that approached these topics in the same way (or that approached Jesus in the same way).

I highly recommend this book if you are interested in learning about the life of Jesus, His teachings, and the writing of the Bible in a new way. I can't wait to read other books by this author!