One of the great advantages of living in a modern capitalist economy is choice: If you have enough money, you can buy just about anything you want. Take cars, for example. If you like luxury, and have the cash, you can buy a Mercedes S-class. If you prefer a sportier ride, Porsche will be happy to give you what you want. If you want a more macho image, a pickup truck might be just right for you. And if you want the status of rejecting status symbols, Dacia will be happy to sell you a cheap but good car.
When I teach my students about marketing, the message is simple: Segment the market, select the segment or segments you want to serve, and offer them the products they want at a price they’re willing to pay. The theme song of a 1960s countercultural movie told listeners, “You can get anything you want, in Alice’s Restaurant!” That described the economy back then, and describes it even better now.
The consumer mentality isn’t just restricted to goods and services: In our post-modern, post-truth society, we can also believe whatever we want. Are you a political progressive? Then you know giant corporations, the Koch Brothers, and Republicans are all that’s standing between the people and a bright future filled with prosperity and social justice. If you’re a conservative, you believe that Donald Trump is a modern-day miracle-worker, who will restore manufacturing and mining jobs, protect America from unfair competition, and keep us safe from Muslims and Mexicans.
For years, now, the idea that we can believe whatever we want has applied to religion as well. Since the founding of the republic, we Americans could choose the church we want to belong to. This freedom of religion is a wonderful thing, and I’m very glad we have it. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Since at least the beginning of the 20th Century, you could choose your church AND your beliefs.
Once upon a time, if you believed that Jesus was a great moral teacher, but not the Messiah, savior, or Son of God, you pretty much had to become a Unitarian. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that: Unitarians are fine people and have had a long and distinguished history. But if you want to write about a non-divine Jesus, you’ll gain a lot more attention if you’re a member in good standing of a non-Trinitarian church (or are Muslim and get interviewed by Fox News). After all, we expect that from Unitarians. But if a Lutheran, Episcopalian, or Catholic scholar claims that Jesus was just a man, well that’s news! Or at least it used to be, before it became so common.
The quest for the “historical” Jesus goes back to the Enlightenment, with the writings of Hermann Reimarus, who died in 1768. Reimarus argued that Jesus was a Jewish reformer who became increasingly fanatical and political and failed in his quest. His followers reinterpreted him as another type of Messiah, and Christianity resulted. In the 19th century, David Friedrich Strauss argued that the early church embellished Jesus’s story to turn him into a divine Messiah. Then, in 1906, Albert Schweitzer published his magnum opus, “The Quest for the Historical Jesus”, in which he critiqued the previous searchers and argued that Jesus was an eschatological prophet who believed in the imminent end of the world. The famous theologian Rudolf Bultmann, in turn, argued that the gospel record was invented by the early church, but no matter: Whereas the Jesus of History is unknowable, we believe in the Christ of Faith, as proclaimed by the church. So, we could be agnostic about the historical Jesus but remain Christians through belief in the Christ of Faith.
In other words, Christians could be like Michelle Bachmann, who said that America’s Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery, even though many of them, like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, kept slaves until they died. We can believe whatever we want, regardless of the historical facts.
The so-called Jesus Seminar shows us how to do this. The four gospels, along with the epistles of Paul and, possibly, some non-canonical writings, such as the Gospel of Thomas, are the main sources that tell us what Jesus said and did. And Paul’s epistles don’t provide much detail here. One of the “Seven Pillars of Scholarly Wisdom” promulgated by the Jesus Seminar is reversal of the burden of proof: The gospel writings are so embellished, that we need evidence to conclude that anything in them is historical. So, if something in the gospels doesn’t fit our view of Jesus, we can simply reject it, based on reversal of the burden of proof!
The Jesus Seminar does, of course, have somewhat objective criteria for evidence, such as multiple attestation and embarrassment. But multiple attestation alone isn’t enoug: Even though Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem is attested by both Matthew and Luke (with some significant differences of detail), the Jesus Seminar argues he was born in Nazareth. On the other hand, community issues, where a statement or action of Jesus would reflect the concerns of the early church, is evidence of inauthenticity, as is self-reference, such as “I am the way, the truth and the life.” In other words, anything that the early church COULD have made up, it did make up, and Jesus never talked about himself at all. The result is, eighty-two percent of the words ascribed to Jesus in the gospels were not uttered by him, according to the Jesus Seminar.
While this may be shocking for orthodox Christians, it’s good news for religious consumers. You can cherry-pick the sayings and actions of Jesus to fit your desired image of Jesus, and reject everything else as “inauthentic”, added by the early church.
The Muslim Reza Aslan, for example, argues that Jesus was a proto-Zealot, whose goal was to free Judea from Roman rule, by force. Jesus, of course, failed (in contrast to Mohammed and his successors, who conquered much of the Eastern Roman Empire). An opposing view is provided by John Dominic Crossan, who argues that Jesus opposed Rome, but was non-violent.
In other words, you can believe that Jesus was a violent (Aslan), or a non-violent (Crossan), opponent of Roman rule – take your pick. If you prefer, you can make Jesus a liberal social justice warrior – look at his concern for the poor! Then again, maybe you want a more law-and-order Jesus, such as the one who said “not one jot or tittle of the law will pass away”. And if you don’t want your taxes to go to help the poor, Jesus said “the poor you will always have with you”. All the other sayings about helping the poor must have come from the early church. Moreover, if you care a lot about the “right to bear arms”, Jesus said “if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” As for his rebuke of Peter for using a sword, you can call that an inauthentic addition by a pacifist early church. See how easy it is to have exactly the Jesus you want?
It’s certainly possible that the early church embellished what Jesus said and did before the gospels were written, and in the case of Mark’s longer resurrection account, even thereafter. But the gospels are the best sources we have for what Jesus said and did, so reversing the burden of proof of authenticity means we can know very little about him. And so we can cherry-pick our evidence and make Jesus whoever we want him to be.
An old joke has a businessman looking to hire an accountant. He asks the first two applicants, “How much is two plus two?” When they answered “four”, he dismisses them politely. The third applicant, when asked the same question, replies, “How much do you want it to be?” And if we’re free to reject what we don’t like, we can do the same!
We can choose our favorite Jesus by accepting the biblical evidence that fits our presuppositions and rejecting the rest. Or we can accept Jesus as presented in the gospels, a very complex man who is also God, and grapple with his actions and sayings that we might prefer to reject. For followers of Jesus, the choice should be clear.