For on a time when a cardinall Bembus did move a question out of the Gospell, the Pope gave him a very contemptuous answer saying: All ages can testifie enough how profitable that fable of Christe hath ben to us and our companie. — [[John Bale]], “The Pageant of the Popes,” 1574

***

Christians arguing with other Christians about the “true” nature of Jesus and the church always makes for entertaining reading, but even more so when it comes from an openly gay Catholic whose own intellectualism should undercut his own faith in the first place.

In his new essay for Newsweek, “Christianity in Crisis,” Andrew Sullivan says that we should eschew the influence of politics and power that has crept into religion and get back to the “radical ideas” that spring from what Jesus did and said, including loving both our neighbors and enemies, turning the other cheek, giving away all material possessions and loving God the Father, whom Sullivan calls “the Being behind all things.” Presumably, this being is distinct from Jesus, yet Sullivan admits that he believes in the “divinity and resurrection” of Christ. That’s at least two gods in which Sullivan believes. We can imagine that there are three since most Catholics believe in the Hoy Spirit, which, when assembled, they call the Triune. Since the Holy Spirit is really just God the Father in spirit, I don’t really count that, so let’s just go with the two. So, Sullivan believes in two distinct beings, one that came to earth as a human but who was also divine and eventually was resurrected and another god who was behind everything that is. From any monotheistic viewpoint, this is troubling, but this is what every Jesus-as-divine believer must admit, that they believe in two distinct gods. Or not … depending on which verses one reads. Christians often support the Triune business by quoting the John 10:30 line that reads, “I and the Father are one.” Yet, the verse directly before it claims that, “My Father … is greater than all.”

But who knows. And that’s the point. Biblical scholars now have a clearer understanding of which parts of the gospels may be authentic, and in turn, which quotes attributed to Jesus he might have actually uttered (if he existed at all). One thing we do know: the gospels were written decades after the events took place, and there is not one contemporary source that attests to his existence. Further, the non-contemporary, extra-biblical texts that mention Jesus may point to a figure by that name roaming around the desert, but scant references to a Jesus by Josephus or some other early historian is a far cry from evidence that he was supernatural.

Sullivan knows this. He also knows that Jefferson, whom he rallies to the call in defense of Jesus’ simple truths, was not a Christian in any modern sense and rejected Christ as a divine being. On Jefferson, Sullivan declares of the Jeffersonian Bible:

And what he (Jefferson) grasped in his sacrilegious mutilation of a sacred text was the core simplicity of Jesus’ message of renunciation. He believed that stripped of the doctrines of the Incarnation, Resurrection, and the various miracles, the message of Jesus was the deepest miracle.

While the latter is a clever sentence, Jefferson clearly saw no miracles and was only attempting to get after the rote details of Jesus’ life and the core precepts that he espoused. Jefferson said he was a “real Christian,” but only to the extent that he thought some of Jesus’ words were laudable, and that’s as far as Jefferson was willing to go.

Yet, despite what Sullivan describes as

a century and a half of scholarship that has clearly shown that the canonized Gospels were written decades after Jesus’ ministry, and are copies of copies of stories told by those with fallible memory

he still seems to hold these works in high regard and for reasons that escape comprehension. If he readily admits that the gospels contain embellishments, how is he to trust the parts that he likes? How does he know that those parts — love they neighbor, turn the other cheek, etc. — authentically sprang from the mouth of Jesus and are not creations of equally fallible memories. How does he even know that those high precepts originated with Jesus, or the gospel writers, in the first place, or that most of the key episodes of the New Testament (virgin birth, ascension) were even New Testament constructs.

Indeed, many of the great ideas of Christ predate his uttering them. As for other elements that were likely copied from other religions, here’s a handy guide.

Sullivan conclusion doesn’t get any better. Earlier in his essay, he claims that

The thirst for God is still there. How could it not be, when the profoundest human questions—Why does the universe exist rather than nothing? How did humanity come to be on this remote blue speck of a planet? What happens to us after death?—remain as pressing and mysterious as they’ve always been?

But the profoundest human questions are quests for knowledge independent of faith or religion. God, in short, is not the author of the questions or the answers. He’s a distraction from them since to assume a god in contemplating these questions makes the calculus even that more convoluted because we must then explain where God came from. The “thirst” that Sullivan no doubts feels in his soul can be rightly explained simply as a thirst for knowledge and truth, and while I have no doubt that Sullivan is a deep thinker, he seems to be also in deep denial. It is hard to tell whether this is out of fear of hellfire or merely out of devotion for the things of faith. If he already admits that the gospels are copies upon copies containing story “told by those with fallible memory” what is stopping him from throwing the whole thing out with the bath water?

Perhaps David Wimberly has it right. Here is part of his comment posted under the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s refutation of Sullivan’s article: