They Called Jesus a Blasphemer Didn’t They?

For ten years I have been teaching a Saturday seminar titled “How Jesus Read His Bible” (in fact I will be teaching it this coming Saturday at St Andrew’s Church in Kildwick). In that seminar I show how the themes of sacrifice, holiness codes, zeal, atonement and an apocalyptic dualism form a matrix of understanding within Second Temple Judaism and it was this matrix critiqued by Jesus who has a very specific hermeneutic. I end the seminar exegeting Galatians 3 arguing that Paul has Phineas (Numbers 25) in mind as the back story which he is using to argue against the position of the Jerusalem church which sought to develop Christianity in terms of ingroups/outgroups.

I follow up that seminar with another titled “Nonviolent Atonement” where I show that the default position of Western Christianity, particularly Protestantism, is still enmeshed in this logic of second Temple thinking, and how PSA (penal substitution) is actually the exact opposite of the trajectory of the gospel. Just as Israel sought to bring the revelation of Ha Shem under the controlling matrix of a sacrificial interpretation (which they derived from the cultures around them) so too Christianity has bit by bit also succumbed to a sacrificial reading of the Bible. We should not be surprised. Christianity is in this sense no better off than her historical ‘mother.’ We both, Jews and Christians, have all too readily turned our backs on the God of peace, of mercy, of compassion, of forgiveness freely given apart from sacrifice, to a Janus-faced god, an idol that looks just like us in our need for retribution and blood.

Last year in a Facebook post I argued that there are four pillars to the Protestant sacrificial interpretation of the Bible: inerrancy or infallibility (a flat reading of Scripture), PSA, the eternal conscious torment view of post mortem judgment and the ethical justification of violence. Knock down any one of these four pillars and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. Each of these four pillars has been mightily challenged for the past several hundred years. It is in our time, however, that young adults are beginning to see that the god proclaimed by this tradition is not Jesus-like but in fact is more satanic than it’s proponents have recognized.

And they hate having their theology unmasked. Those who have a vested interest in sacrificial religion come onto Facebook and blogs like this and decry this unveiling. They yell “heresy” and other such epithets as though they themselves were not the ones who in fact, have turned the God of the Gospel of Jesus Christ into a vampiric deity unworthy of human worship. They despise that anyone would seek to re-interpret Scripture through the same critical lens as Jesus or Paul. They accuse us of “twisting Scripture” when it is they who have a 500 year history of reading the biblical text through the distorted lens of a sacrificial lens.

The walls are finally coming down on this way of reading the Bible. From the emergence of historical criticism to the application of anthropological research on sacrifice, this sacrificial reading is finally tottering on it’s pedestal. The walls are shaking, the foundation has developed cracks and is wracked in the midst of a seismic theological earthquake.

Those of us who count ourselves as Progressive Christians should not be surprised at the vitriol, angst, and accusations that are thrown our way. Just as happened to the great prophets of Israel, just as happened to the apostolic church, so also we will be the ones who will be vilified by the keepers of a faux orthodoxy.

Our task is to speak truth to power.

Our methods must be intellectually rigorous and honest.

Our goal is the healing of Christianity and the revitalization of Christian community.

Our end game is peace.

We will be the objects of disdain not only by Internet trolls but by pastors with big ministries who have their pocketbooks and place on the mimetic ladder to defend.

We will be mocked and scorned by the millions of sycophants who are only able to parrot what they have learned and who are afraid to think for themselves.

We will be called every name under the sun.

None of this matters, for it is the gospel breaking through. Light shining in darkness.

It means that people will once again be turned on to the Living God, the God revealed in Jesus.

It means that hope will once again be brought into a world where the church has too often brought despair.

It means peace will be brought into a world and a church torn by conflict and strife and all manner of scapegoating violence.

Let us then preach the true Gospel of our Lord Jesus in season and out of season knowing that we are indeed beloved of the Abba, reconciled by the Son and sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Let us be and speak and act as sons and daughters of the Living God.

(If you click on the link you will hear one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite artists!)