Talking About Today's World of Religion - A Single Christian Woman - Open Memoir - Gifts of the Spirit - Judgment Versus Love

 

Do you personally know anybody who is a Christian? Do you know any people from the Jewish faith? Or of Muslim faith?How can you tell? Did you meet them in a Church? A Synagogue? A Mosque? Maybe worked with him or her? When I was younger, I became involved with a group that was active at that time in Morgantown, It was Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship. 

Not once did anybody question me as I walked in and sat down. Not once was I asked if I were a Christian. Not once did anybody tell me to go because I was a woman... And, not once did anybody turn me away when I asked to be anointed at a meeting and received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. We met in a meeting room in a local motel. It was informal, people roamed around, or sat praying... 

Then one night I saw a man come in and I knew who he was but did not know him personally. Suddenly I heard a word of knowledge for him. I waited, just to be sure. The man continued to stay, looking around. I was urged on. I spoke to the man: "You are worried that if you receive gifts of the spirit, that your congregation may not accept your change. I went on, your gifts are between you and God and you have no need to speak of them unless you find it appropriate... I think I shook hands with him and walked away from him. I have no idea what happened after we left. That really didn't matter. I had given God's message to him. That was to be my only role in his life...

I did invite two individuals from work with whom I'd been sharing a small fellowship during lunch. Both came, at different times. One spoke in tongues at his first meeting. Both of these individuals were involved in another God Incident, which I'll be writing about.

 

Although I had spoken in tongues and had received a word of knowledge to share, none of us got actively involved with this group. In fact, for me, which I thought was quite interesting, it was through a book (!) that I received the full blessing and blanketing of His Love... I was reading a book by Catherine Marshall Something More...

I remember that I was reading  in bed, which is normal for me, of course. Suddenly, heat started coming into my body, it seemed to start in my head and slowly encompassed my entire body. I was totally submerged in His Love! God's Love! And tears of joy flowed, as I spoke words I did not know, some over and over. I remember, I wrote down "Ascil-li-up Tito" down in my Bible later, spelling out the words by sound. (Of course, I've searched to find those words. I did find Tito. I had thought that Tito might be Jesus in some language, but, finally, I decided it really didn't matter.)I have no idea how long I lay there with a body temperature well above normal but feeling so blessed. As I calmed, I began to pray for everybody that I knew...just saying their names, sending out God's love to them... Until I felt Him leave, the heat was gone... In a few minutes, of course, I went back to reading--wondering what would happen next...

Now, I am back at the beginning, it seems... I wasn't really away, but all of the above was not what I planned to write about today! So, it seems that, perhaps like I do for writers of non-fiction religious books, especially, I want to share their "credentials..." Could that really be the reason I felt a need to let you all know that I am truly a Child of God?! I don't know. You'll have to decide. But I do know something that I can now say, after reading Dusenbury's book, I Judge No One.

And yet, as Christ did before he had been blessed with His resurrection and became fully a part of the Holy Trinity--God, the Father, Christ, His Son, and The Holy Spirit who abides in us, if we allow...

I know that I am a human...and I do judge. I judge actions. Sometimes for personal reasons, but also as part of the political world in which we live.

You see, I know that God sees us as humans. Jesus had been human for a very short time, in order to fulfill His Mission given by His Father. When I say I do not judge, I speak of Christ's global love for all of mankind. If I believe that we are all made in God's image, then I believe that I am to extend love to all, no matter what religion. It is those times that I am most close to how I know that God wants us to be.

But, I am still human, and I falter, fall, and sometimes get confused. So, let's now look at Today's World of Religion...

Oops! This morning as I was waking, I began to think about all those books I have read in which somebody had shared their personal lives--and, in particular, their faith or religion. I knew one book in particular I wanted to mention, but, in the search it didn't come up, but another did... It was my 2014 interview with Lee Harmon, who wrote, among others, The River of Life as an agnostic christian... Even I was amazed at this second God Incident. Please, if you have the time, click over to first read that discussion with Lee. For one, it felt to me, that I was given the "affirmation" that many suggest should be received that God wants us to speak on a topic. And, second, it has so much more to say than I planned to include in today's article--yet very relevant and important!

I have now read and shared about two books by Dr. Michael Brown, Donald Trump Is Not My Savior and The Political Seduction of the Church. (You can search on Dr. Brown's name and bring up all of the blog posts that were done while I read these two books.) Although both of these books were informative for those who are interested, I did not feel that any of the questions about the role of The Evangelical Church's alignment with the Republican Party had been successfully addressed.

Somewhere along the line, I read that at least one writer felt that we of the Christian Faith were at least due some form of accountability. It is clear, to me, that most involved individuals do not feel they owe anybody anything. Indeed, in the last book, where Dr. Brown continues to repeat that Donald Trump is not his Savior, he never acknowledges that there was anything significant that he, himself, did not agree with. And there's the issue, isn't it?

Since Dr. Brown's book was published, we have gone through the January 6th Insurrection, the Supreme Court's overthrow of Roe-Wade and its concurrent and very real distress, anger, and disruption that has occurred in the lives of not only pregnant women, but in doctor's, nurses, clinic staff, et.al. Not only has elections been shrouded in misinformation and fear, but from, traditionally, red states, we are hearing of all that is happening at the local level that is clearly prejudicial between non-white citizens of America.

In I Judge No One, one of the parables shared by David Dusenbury, was one that I've often thought and wrote about... It is about the woman who was caught having sex...

Early in the morning Jesus came again to the Temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery. Making her stand before all of them, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They said this to tempt him (Greek peirazontes auton; Latin temptantes eum), so that they might have some legal charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her.” And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, lord.” “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” (John 8:2–11) The first thing to note is that this temptation is framed by Judaean law—not Roman law. The legal charge that Jesus is in peril of is a Judaean one—namely, that of subverting the divine law-code of “the truly sacred Moses,” as a second-century Egyptian Christian philosopher calls him.14 The question put to Jesus—Now what do you say?—is a lure for him to cancel a Mosaic statute. But there is also a temptation for Jesus to implicate himself in the machinery of Judaean law and politics. In effect, Jesus cannot release a woman caught in the act (in flagrante delicto) without committing blasphemy, and he cannot condemn her without becoming a punisher of the body—and a political Christ. Hostile observation of Jesus by the “the scribes and the Pharisees” is noted in much the same language in the synoptic gospels.15 In Mark, for instance, certain Pharisees ‘tempt’ Jesus by asking him: “Is it legal for a man to divorce his wife?” (Mark 10:2). There are numerous “legal episodes” of this sort in the gospels.16 And read with sufficient care, most of Jesus’ healing narratives have a legal aspect—they occur on the sabbath day, they render a person ceremonially pure, and so on.17 Nevertheless, the Incident of the Adulteress is one of only two scenes in the gospels in which Jesus is formally requested to render a judgement. The other is in Luke 12 (the topic of chapter 10). Yet the unique scene in John 8 should not be read in isolation. Wherever it may have originated, its original location in the gospel collection is in chapter 8 of John. And this means that Jesus’ non-judgement of a condemned woman can be read in light of a later scene of judgement in John’s gospel. Namely that in John 19, where the prefect of Judea takes a seat with ritual intent on his “judge’s chair”, and then sentences Jesus to be crucified (John 19:13, 16).18 The penultimate scene of Jesus’ natural life, in the fourth gospel, is a legal ordeal in which an innocent man is condemned to death by a guilty judge. In dramatic terms, John 8 is the inverse. Here, a guilty woman is not condemned by a uniquely innocent judge.19 There is no hint in the received text that the woman set before Jesus is falsely accused. The charge brought is that she has been trapped “in the very act” (John 8:4)—or, in one commentator’s gloss, in coitu.20 The text introduces this charge without comment (John 8:3). Further, there is no sign that Jesus doubts her guilt. On the contrary, he says to her, in parting: “Do not sin again” (John 8:11). This implies her guilt. It is striking, further, that there is no sign that Jesus doubts his right to judge. He is seated on a ‘judge’s chair’ when the pericope opens, and he seems to remain seated throughout the ordeal, even when he bends to write—more than once, and with his finger—in the dirt.21 “He Bent Down and Wrote” Before we ask what Jesus wrote in the dirt, we should pause to note a couple of curious parallels which are rarely noted.22 For the fact that Jesus writes is immensely suggestive. (i) Like Socrates, Jesus is not a writer. In both cases, however, there is one exception to the rule. Socrates traces geometric figures in the dirt, in Plato’s dialogue Meno, on behalf of a slave-boy who (per Socrates) has an immortal soul.23 And Jesus writes in the dust, in John, during the ordeal of a woman he refuses to condemn.24 (ii) Like Pilate, Jesus writes during a trial. The only place in the gospels where Jesus writes is in John 8, and the trial of Jesus in John 19 is the only place in the gospels where Pilate writes. “What I have written,” says the guilty judge, “I have written” (John 19:19–22). But what the innocent judge may have written, we are not told. We can nevertheless ask: What did Jesus write in the dirt during the adulteress’ ordeal? “Nothing certain can be stated,” according to Cornelius à Lapide’s baroque Great Commentary.25 This is true. Yet J. D. M. Derrett reminds us that “writing with the finger was symbolic of divine ‘legislation’” in Hebrew culture.26 Patristic commentators had already made this connection. And Derrett reconstructs the dramatic logic of Jesus’ leaning down to write, not once but twice, with his finger, in this way: The effect of his writing, and pausing after writing, was to produce from those in a position to watch him an insistence upon his giving his sentence … What he wrote was not unintelligible, but it did not satisfy them. This need not mean that it was irrelevant … It made them more anxious than ever to hear what he would say.27 “Has No One Condemned You?” And what did Jesus say? Of course, this is the question that marks the centre of the pericope. “The law Moses commanded us to stone such women,” say the hardliners. “Now what do you say?” (John 8:5). After he writes in the dirt—and before he resumes writing in the dirt—Jesus lifts his head to say to them: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her” (John 8:7). This is Jesus’ sentence—and it is, in George Steiner’s phrase, a “radiant challenge”.28 Is it a judicial sentence that Jesus utters? In a novel sense, yes. For the lawbreaker figures in Jesus’ sentence. Yet the sentence which he pronounces is only obliquely concerned with the one who is to be punished for her crime. The subject of Jesus’ sentence is not the lawbreaker, but rather her would-be punishers. Her executioners, says Jesus, must be wholly innocent before the punishment sanctioned by Moses can be meted out—beginning with the first, who ‘legitimates’ the cascading violence of a stoning. The pitiless enforcers of Mosaic law must be flawless observers of that law—and this, Jesus claims, no one is. (My italic emphasis.)

And here is the key I found in Dusenbury's book that was lacking in both of Dr. Martin's books, et.al. Let's consider the difference between the three books. Dr. Martin's is written as an Evangelical Christian, dealing with the presidency of Donald J. Trump. While Dusenbury's book is purely a scholarly analysis of the Life of Jesus, and, in particular, as He related to those with whom he lived and met during his life.

The authority of Jesus to judge came as His Role in The Holy Trinity. As such, he was concerned ONLY with the souls of those who God had created. That's all of us who were born in His image.

On the other hand, while Christ was living as a human and before He was Baptized, his judgments dealt with how our souls were being treated. To explain further, if I can, when Jesus became angry at those selling and buying within the front of the Temple where He taught, it was anger for their blasphemy. Jesus knew that the Temple was dedicated to God and should not be defiled.

Because of the role of the Evangelical Christians in their willingness to support Trump--if he did what they asked--I am using them as an example at this critical time in our lives. That is not to say, that there have not been others within religious facilities and/or as their members who have not also acted in ways not pleasing to God. Using the parable of the adulterous woman, Jesus did not take a role in open judgment of her... Let me repeat that. God knew the woman's heart and finally spoke to her as to how He wanted her to act in the future. In a way, even then, there was little emphasis on what she must do. Did He know, perhaps, that the woman had only turned to selling herself because she had no husband and had no way to eat, to live? Did He realize that, perhaps, it was the man with whom she was involved, that should have, at a minimum, also been there to be punished? We don't know... do we?

And that's the whole point. Insofar as possible, we, as Christians are asked to love--to give aid--to give food and shelter if needed. It was quite obvious to Jesus that there had been no love involved in what had been discovered. There was no search for the Truth of why she was involved in a forbidden action. There was nothing to be done by those who were willing to stone her, except to...stone her, or, in this story, use her to try to trick Jesus into becoming involved with Moses' Law...

Ok, let's get really serious about what happened during this decade. The conservative republicans either went to the Evangelical Christians, or vice-versa, and made a deal to work toward being able to ban abortion once again. And to rig the courts by placing conservatives totally thus attempting to ensure that conservative issues would be handled as they wished. It would have been the same process that occurred decades ago when the pro-choice; pro-life debate began (and even earlier than that). However, somehow the authority to abort was given... Could it be that this issue was only made into law because of those conservatives who wanted laws to follow which supported their own agendas?

Let's now look at what Jesus did with the woman caught having sex. His concern was mainly with those who judged the woman... And so it was that when the pharisees, even Judas, and others chose to attack Jesus, it was a judgment made for which Jesus felt they had no right to make, was it not? And yet they did because of the human laws that were being used to accuse Him.

I believe that the issue of abortion or any other part of the medical activities surrounding a pregnancy is part of the will that God has given to us. It is a choice that is made by the human whose soul belongs to God. And if that choice is wrong, then any judgment will be by God toward that individual. Bluntly, the federal government should never have been involved with this issue...

And we all know that those who are conservative "anything" want what they want, no matter what damage might evolve out of their own personal opinions and/or beliefs. I don't think I'm wrong. but I'm going to stop now. I feel anger, frustration, and, yes, judgment of the merged Evangelical Christians and the Republican Party...that now are daily causing unknown tragedies as well as beyond those which we do find out about...

In order to clear my mind of emotions, I took yesterday off from writing. First thing this morning, the name Frank Shaeffer came to mind. It was one of his earlier brief videos which talked about his being at the meeting where the Evangelical Christians and Donald Trump met. He finally left, saddened, but after he had already heard the conditions which were then demanded by the leaders of Evangelical Christians. After Trump agreed, Frank indicated that they more or less told Trump that he could do anything he wanted... I think the above two videos speak well about what had occurred pre-2016 presidential election. Indeed, Schaeffer Frank Shaeffer, himself, accepts accountability for his role in spotlighting abortion and other prejudices, for example, against gays and others different from white protestant conservatives. 

I must admit I was relieved when I heard Schaeffer talk about the republican party. Indeed, I remember, once, when a niece talked about anti-abortion. I started crying. The following is a summation of what I said: How can this be logical? How can abortion be so wrong at the same time that incest, child sexual abuse, human trafficking is so rampant? I then said that some homes don't deserve to have a child there. Indeed Schaeffer uses similar documentation to judge what the merge of Evangelical Christians and The Republic Party has resulted in.

As can be seen, it is the women of this world that would be those who rose up against Trump. Not only because of his loose sexual references, which demeaned women... From what we learned from Frank Schaeffer, it was a quest for power, recognition, and prejudice that brought the topic of abortion out once again. Noting that, when emotions are incited globally rather than individual as should be, then humans are making judgments that either contradict the laws of the land--constitution--or by the use of misinformation and/or the scripture to claim that they are doing only what God teaches us...

It is clear, over and over, that Jesus acted totally the opposite. He came to the Samaritan woman to speak of Himself and what He offered. Indeed, that what clearly we are called to do, tell others about Jesus... There is NO law in America that says that Evangelical Christians and The Republic Party have the authority to reign over the rest of us via coercive actions! 

Consider how the former administration began their term... It started with Jeff Sessions referring to this scripture: (Excuse me for "more than" the Sessions announcement. Sometimes a little light message gets the point across...

So let's go back to Dusenbury's review of Jesus judgment versus the judgment of humans... For, indeed, it is quite clear since the merge of Evangelical Christians with The Republican Party, that certainly humans are doing the judging...NOT God!

Kant criticizes Reimarus’ theory of Jesus by distinguishing two ideas of the state. One he calls juridico-civil, the other ethico-civil. A juridico-civil state is one in which humans live together under a system of “juridical laws”, all of which are coercive. To belong to such a state is to belong to an ordered system of coercion. An ethico-civil state, however, is one in which humans are united by laws without being coerced, which is to say, “under laws of virtue alone.”29 In a less rebarbative (objective) terminology, Kant holds that a “political community” is by definition one that “compels its citizens” in a host of ways. An “ethical community”, however, is one that has “freedom from coercion in its very concept”. What Kant means is that what he calls “ethical ends” can only be chosen. Virtue originates in the heart, a place where—Kant stresses—“a human judge cannot penetrate”. Only a divine mind can be the judge of human hearts, because human judgments cannot reach “the depths of other beings”.30 (my emphasis) This is a Kantian idea which is deeply rooted in the gospels. For Kant, the Jesus of history hoped to inaugurate an ethical community, a new form of order in which, theoretically, all humans could be united by laws without coercion. Numerous caveats could be made here, but this new form of order is what Christians call the church, and what Kant calls the “invisible church” (giving the phrase an Enlightenment-style meaning).31 In Reimarus’ telling, the Jesus of history hoped to revolutionize the political community of first-century Judaea, by installing himself at the summit of an apocalyptic system of coercion. Reimarus’ Jesus failed because his political revolution was crushed, and his political faith was traduced by his cadre of disciples. The gospels, for Reimarus, are a testament to the disciples’ final betrayal of Jesus. It is in these writings that they systematically corrupt the memory of Jesus’ life and hope. Kant’s Jesus, no less than Reimarus’, is revolutionary. But his Jesus did not ultimately fail, because an “undeserved yet meritorious death” became the symbol of an ethical revolution,32 and because the ethical faith of Jesus is still with us. Kant writes that Jesus “brought about” through his life and death “an incalculably great moral good in the world, through a revolution in the human race”.33 At the heart of that revolution is the idea of what Kant calls “a kingdom of virtue”.34 And what is a kingdom of virtue? It is one which has “freedom from coercion in its very concept”.35 It is a ‘kingdom’ which must be freely chosen. Before Jesus, the idea of a kingdom of virtue—one which is still contentious—had never been articulated with the force and urgency that we hear in some of the sayings in the four unsigned texts which we call, in keeping with tradition, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This book offers a political life of Jesus in the broad and variegated tradition of Spinoza, Kant and Nietzsche. With them, it resists the modern notion that Jesus’ life, sayings and death are in essence political. Against Reimarus’ idea of a political Christ—one which has been revived countless times in the last 250 years—I will try to show (i) that the modern theory of a political Christ is utterly incongruent with the dramatic structure of our earliest texts on the life of Jesus; and (ii) that something like Kant’s theory of an ethical Jesus, whatever its limitations, is far more philosophically interesting. For the divergent philosophical traditions which Nietzsche, Kant and Spinoza represent, the modern idea that Jesus is nothing but a failed, first-century rebel is doubly problematic. It blurs (or destroys) the structure and meaning of our earliest witnesses to the life of Jesus, and it is philosophically inert.36 I believe that if the figure of Jesus is to be thought-worthy in future, we must break with the modern tendency to reduce him to his milieus. In the city of his youth (Nazareth), in the tetrarchy to which he legally belonged (Galilee), in the Roman province he visited (Judaea) and in the holy city where he died (Jerusalem), Jesus remained—in Nietzsche’s words—a “strange figure” (fremde Gestalt).37 It is this strangeness that shaped his political life, and that led—I will argue—to his death as a political criminal. It is this strangeness, too, that makes Jesus’ life intriguing and his sayings still worthy of reflection.

When reading a scholarly analysis, it is sometimes not easy to pull out the fragments which deserve more than a first-time read. Going back to the parable of the adulterous woman, we find a simple illustration that speaks to the point of Dusenbury's book. Jesus did not judge the adulterous woman. As mentioned earlier, we humans could never know what was behind the decision of the woman to commit adultery. Yet, there was a law that clearly defined that she was to be stoned. Jesus prevented the law to take place to stone the woman. Yet, after it was all over, Jesus then judged the woman as He saw her soul. Yes, she was guilty, but there was to be a difference from applying the law of stoning and what judgment Jesus ultimately gave. Bottom line, Jesus chose to not agree that the archaic law was a satisfactory judgment upon the woman... And then, bid her leave and consider other options, perhaps?

To me, this logical separation presents us with where Jesus wanted us to be. He had no desire to coerce us to follow Him. He had no desire to interfere in our God-given will to make our own decisions. Yet, he did realize that there would be those who chose to act in an evil manner and that political laws would be required to ensure that those who did harm to others could be identified and punished...

Therefore it seems to me that what has traditionally happened, going back to even the Crusades historically. Those leaders felt that all must follow Jesus and would force--coerce--their opinions of their christianity onto others. I recently read a book by an indigenous friend of mine where he spoke of how Christians began to force their religion upon those natives who very obviously had their own beliefs. Why? If we are to show God's love through our actions towards others, then by what political reason should we require others to forcibly act as conservative christians wish... And, as we have seen during the past six years, anybody who is different than white evangelical christians and/or a member of the republican party...must...be...controlled. Thus the republican party has turned into a purely judgmental group that does not act to love and be concerned about their neighbors, but, rather, to control, even through elections, so that, they are not even willing to recognize as our constitution clearly says... That we are all equal... 

During the period between 2016 and today, I have been continuously urged to go about my Savior's bidding. It has caused friction within my own family, as I understand has happened with others. But, even then, you and others have a right to question what I've shared with you... I believe that once, a major portion of Christianity has acted to gain political power through the election of a United States president, that the nation is floundering in the attempt to have coercion controlling our lives beyond the need stated and made into laws of our country.

Indeed, there is every evidence that love for our neighbors is not even a consideration by this merged group. We have seen personal freedoms stripped from us. We have seen attempts to change American history to hide how the white conservatives actually have acted in the past and are still not acting to discriminate against anybody that is different from them. And, to be even more specific, we have seen those who committed an insurrection against the U.S. Capital and the constitution, continue to lie and claim that what happened is NOT what actually happened.

We are confronted with evil leaders who are telling us that they can use force against small children. We are confronted with children who are abused sexually through incest and/or other leaders, such as within the church. We are told that non-christians are to be banned, controlled and have a loss of their freedom of speech, religion, and more...

And we are once again told by an extensive study and research of the Bible that Jesus Does Not Judge... that God is Love... That we shall love one another as ourselves...

Surely you can see that the logic coming out of the merged group--Evangelical Christians and The Republican Party is totally opposite of what is taught by Christ?

 

Conclusion of Review and Discussion of I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus - By David Lloyd Dusenbury

 

“The state, or rather, the whole world is in such error that it persecutes good and just men—torturing, condemning, and killing them.” 

– Lactantius, Divine Institutes

With remarkable mastery of scholarship, this fresh understanding of the figure of Jesus shows that traditional interpretations fail to understand the true nature of his activity. In twenty-one tersely-written chapters, which one reads as the unfolding elements of a thriller, Dusenbury succeeds in turning the tables. The work of Giorgio Agamben on Paul is perhaps the closest parallel I can think of. ----Guy Stroumsa, Professor Emeritus of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions, University of Oxford, and Martin Buber Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

~~~

For this book, I have included a number of reviews by esteemed colleagues of the author. I was especially interested when I read "In twenty-one tersely-written chapters, which one reads as the unfolding elements of a thriller, I was intrigued and wondered just how a non-fiction study of the Life of Jesus could ever be read as I might a thriller! And, yet, readers will indeed find the routine sense of build up and movement toward some explosive ending that we might expect to find in a thriller!

Indeed, now that I have read it, I wonder just how Dusenbury had written it. Did he use an outline? Was it planned right from the beginning? In any event, I was amazed as the author began to prove his theory, while moving from one Book to Another from the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the central Biblical references.) Of course, because each shares the story from four of Jesus' Disciples, who were right there as actions led toward the ultimate crucifixion of Jesus.

I want to start by sharing that I received an answer to what I've been wondering about for at least six years. I'll be discussing that issue next as a separate post rather than as part of this discussion in order to fully give justice to this quite amazing display of knowledge of the Bible and Jesus in particular. Readers will find an extensive index of the books and other references that was used in the creation of the story of Jesus, honing in on just the short time period leading up to His crucifixion.

This is the key, however, as it is used in this book. The title of the book is "I Judge No One." Dusenbury then begins by moving forward as those who oppose His teachings begin to speak against Jesus. You may recall that it is the Pharisees in the Temple that Jesus frequented that, perhaps, from jealousy begin to ask direct questions, trying to get Jesus to speak of something that they could find illegal by Temple Law.

During this time, I learned that Judas had actually gone to the Pharisees to offer to help them find Jesus. It was the disciples who wanted to know more. Why they didn't leave Jerusalem, away from the danger. Dusenbury even introduces that even Jesus might not have known at that time exactly why He must face the danger that all knew was coming...

The notion that Jerusalem incurs its ruin in 70 CE, by Jesus’ death in the year 30 or so, is rooted in the gospels and many early Christian traditions. It is worth noting, however, that in Matthew and Luke, Jesus’ lament for Jerusalem is not only occasioned by his sense that he will be killed there. Rather, it seems that in Jesus’ mind, his holy city is doomed because “killing the prophets” is a recurring drama in that city. His death belongs to a history of Hebrew prophet-martyrs.23(My emphasis) This must be stressed. For a first- or second-century pagan philosopher such as Mara, ‘killing the philosophers’ is a recurring drama, which crescendos in the gods’ destruction of Mediterranean cities. And for a first-century dissident rabbi such as Jesus, ‘killing the prophets’ is a recurring drama which includes himself, and which calls down God’s judgement on Judaean cities.24 Beyond this, there seems to be a recognizably Syrian physiognomy to Mara’s Jesus. We catch this by glancing at a later text by the dazzling Syrian satirist, Lucian of Samosata. “New Mysteries”: Lucian of Samosata Writing circa 180, Lucian contemptuously refers to Jesus as “the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced new mysteries (kainēn … teletēn) into the world”.25 Note that Jesus’ crime, here, is innovation (Greek kainotomia). The gospels do not list innovation as one of the crimes with which he is charged.,,

~~~

Even with the unique Biblical review of the four Books, which takes readers in and out from each of the books, showing how one disciple includes this, but another does not, but includes this instead... Actually, readers will become somewhat confused afterward, but as we read, there is so much new "knowledge" being gained, at least for me, that awe, but also understanding is being found for future reference. Obviously, my ebook glows with so many highlights being marked! But one thing comes very clear. When you hear the various stories considered in, say, a sermon, you learn much about that individual topic. But, Dusenbury takes us through a sudden, maybe for the first time, awareness of just how quickly, boldly, and utterly disturbing that Jesus Christ was... murdered...

Detail after detail is explored as it relates to Jesus as a part of the political world at that time, which included an explanation from Jesus:

Jesus describes both phases—if my reading is correct—as human. And yet the prophetic context seems, to me, to intimate that both powers which punish him are human in precisely such a way that they, like Peter (in Mark 8), have not discerned the rupture which Jesus introduces between “the things that are God’s” and “the things of humankind”.14 It is precisely because both Judaea and Rome are temple-states that Jesus stresses their humanity. Far from enhaloing the religious character of Caiaphas’ tribunal, Jesus refers indifferently to the “human hands” of the Judaean and Roman temple-states. That is to say, in light of his God–Caesar contrast, neither Caiaphas nor Pilate seems to represent ‘God’. By stressing their humanity, Jesus seems to have placed the Judaean elites who reject him under the rubric of ‘Caesar’. This, ironically, is where they place themselves in the last phase of John’s Pilate trial.

 So what does stating that actions are human really mean? Quite simply, Jesus is totally aware of what many have known all our lives. That Jesus was indeed the Son of God and had a mission on behalf of His Father. Let's make it abundantly clear: The title of the book is entirely correct. Jesus judges No One. He allowed his capture and did not resist, even though He could have. 

Yet, we do know that God did and does judge. All we need do is remember the scene in the Temple where moneychangers and animals were chased out... Once I say it, you will immediately understand. Jesus does not judge actions because they are made by humans. However, once Jesus arose from the dead, he was no longer human... Jesus does judge also. He judges our soul! It is clear that only He has the authority to see, know and judge each of our souls which were given to us by God. He knows our hearts, He knows whether we follow His commission to love one another...

But I'll be exploring my thoughts on this in my next post. It's not normally a good idea to share how a book closes, but I think it is appropriate for sharing the final story:

The ‘religion of love’ is not a negation of political reason, but it is a challenging reminder that our highest desires lie beyond the political. And our sense of that beyond owes incalculably much to the one who, misjudged to the end, never judged—but tried to save.

Back in 1970s, I spent many hours listening to the original Jesus Christ Superstar and, of course, learned much of the specifics characters and their actions in this, one of the most fateful dramas that has been experience by humans. I must say, however, while I've always depended upon music to complement the emotional impact of God's role in my life, this one book has been instrumental not only in seeing how real the Bible can be by somebody who has a deep and committed desire to share Truth - God's Truth! This book should be required reading for all seminary students, instructors and lay staff. It has been an honor for me to meet Jesus through the eyes and words of David Lloyd Dusenbury

God Bless

GABixlerReviews

Continuing Review and Discussion of I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus by David Lloyd Dusenbury

 

A wholly fresh perspective on the story of Jesus, this book argues that the life and teaching of Jesus represent a direct challenge to all our human political agendas. The faith that stems from Jesus’ words, acts and sufferings is not one that turns away from politics, but one that exposes the workings of power, and both demands and promises a fuller, more fully communal human experience in love beyond judgment. Radical, learned and inspiring, this is a very important study indeed for our times.--Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury

JESUS THE STRANGER 

We no longer know how to think about Jesus. In one of his memorandum books, Ludwig Wittgenstein mentions that he cannot call Jesus Lord for the simple reason that he cannot meaningfully “utter the word ‘Lord’”. However, he remarks: “I could call him ‘the paragon’, ‘God’ even—or rather, I can understand it when he is so called.”1  

In Human, All Too Human, Friedrich Nietzsche refers to Jesus disarmingly as “the noblest human being”.2 He writes in a later book that “one could, with a degree of license, call Jesus a ‘free spirit’”.3 In Nietzsche’s lexicon, there is no higher praise. Immanuel Kant’s idea of Jesus is that of “a person whose wisdom, even purer than that of previous philosophers, was as though descended from heaven”.4 And Benedict de Spinoza makes this arresting confession: “I believe no one has achieved such perfection compared to others as Christ, to whom the decrees of God which lead humankind to salvation were revealed directly.” If the legislator Moses met God “face to face,” the philosopher Christ knew God “mind to mind”.5 (See fig. 1.) A book could be written about this sequence of fragments on Jesus—and other texts could be brought forward.6 But this is not that book. Rather, we can take these fragments as a bare indication that even many of Christianity’s harshest critics have held Jesus to be thought-worthy. If we no longer know how to think about the enigmatic figure who moves through the four gospels, the fault may be ours. 

H. S. Reimarus and the Modern Idea of Jesus  

One reason for our lack of philosophical interest in Jesus may be confusion. We tend to confuse the person of Jesus with the legacy of Christianity, and to confuse mere denunciation with critique. Nietzsche is clarifying. He finally decided to call The Antichrist—his 1888 tirade—a Curse upon Christianity, and not a Critique of Christianity, as in early drafts.7 A curse is not critique. And critique is not the root of any culture. 

In a volume of her lectures and conversations, Julia Kristeva suggests that there can be no culture of pure critique. The deepest sources of any culture must be not only interrogated, but—in a highly nuanced way—believed. She argues that Christianity “has introduced and continues to diffuse radical innovations … we have not done taking the measure of”, and that we “do not dare recognize … as ‘Christian difference’”.8 

But there is, to my mind, a more specific cause of our philosophical disinterest in Jesus. It is that late modern historians often envision him in the terms described by Anna Della Subin in the first pages of her shimmering book, Accidental Gods.9 Subin writes that “scholars who search for the man-in-history” behind the gospels find Jesus to be immersed in “the politics of his day.” He is “a Jewish dissident preacher who posed a radical challenge to the gods and governors of Rome.” And this is how Subin fleshes out her modern idea of the Jesus of history: He practices the rite of baptism as liberation, from sin and from the bondage of the empire that occupied Jerusalem. Jesus, like many in his age, warns that… the current world order, in its oppressions and injustices, will soon come to an end and the kingdom of the Israelites will be restored, the message for which he will be arrested for high treason.10 Here, Subin is restating a theory which was first formulated in secret notebooks kept in the 1760s by a scholar of the high Enlightenment, Hermann Samuel Reimarus, and only printed a number of years after his death. (See fig. 2.) What made Reimarus’ theory iconoclastic is not the idea that the Jesus of history is, in Subin’s words, a Jewish dissident preacher. He manifestly is that. It is rather the idea that Jesus is not a dissident. According to Reimarus, the historical Jesus held a relatively orthodox conception of Israel’s divinely chosen liberator, or “Christ” (from the Greek Christos or Messias, from the Hebrew Mashiah and Aramaic Meshiah).11 But Reimarus’ Jesus is not a liberating figure. He is himself a captive of the first-century political imaginary.12 In Reimarus’ words, Jesus is not “a spiritual deliverer of humankind”, but a hill-country rebel who longed to become the “worldly deliverer of Israel.”13 His Jesus—the exemplarily modern one—is not a mystic visionary of a divine kingdom “within you” (Luke 17:21), but a Zealot-style aspirant to sovereignty in a last-days kingdom of Israel. 

What happens when a stranger comes onto th scene and immediately begins to share his opinions... Jesus was from Galilee but began to move around and then ultimately came to Jerusalem where he visited the Temple. And began to talk...

In the sample of the first few pages in Part I: A Place to Begin, we find that there are many wide and critical opinions that arose across the world of philosophers in the area who were used to having new faces, new voices come and go. But slowly, little by little there were those who listened, stayed to listen more, and then started coming back again and again. Jesus soon had a following...

As, unfortunately, we are seeing today, people began to formulate definite opinions and to choose whose words were most relevant to them. Note: it is assumed that, at this time, there was no concerted actions on anybody's part to speak deliberately to deceive; i.e., to provide false or misleading statements.

As we move forward, the author shares exactly what he believes and hopes to show:

(i) that the modern theory of a political Christ is utterly incongruent with the dramatic structure of our earliest texts on the life of Jesus; and (ii) that something like Kant’s theory of an ethical Jesus, whatever its limitations, is far more philosophically interesting. and concluding with

It is this strangeness that shaped his political life, and that led—I will argue—to his death as a political criminal. It is this strangeness, too, that makes Jesus’ life intriguing and his sayings still worthy of reflection.

Chapter 2 leads us to explore the great wisdom that Jesus was to become known for. Many called him a wise philosopher such as they had come to know, including Socrates, Kant and many others that speak to the area of religion...and politics... Dusenburg spotlights his support of Christ as a philosopher using scripture written later: The first scene to which I referred is in Mark, where the inhabitants of Nazareth ask where Jesus obtained his wisdom. It ends with him saying: “A prophet is not without honour, except in his own country” (Mark 6:4). And, indeed those in Galilee soon began to question Jesus who was "just a carpenter" shortly before...

One of the things I've always enjoyed about the Bible is the use of stories to provide examples; i.e., parables. This is the first teaching found in this book:

As [Levi, a tax collector,] reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining at table with Jesus and his disciples; for there were many who followed him.27 And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that Jesus was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are strong have no need of a physician, but those who are ill. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:15–17)28 This image of Jesus as a divinely skilled healer—Christus medicus, in later tradition—has a rich history, not only in theology but in art.29 Yet Jesus’ saying about the physician’s calling—to visit the sick, and only then to heal them—may also have an intriguing prehistory.30 

One final chapter, Jesus The Philosopher, in Part 1 is significant for setting the stage for everything thereafter... as the author makes his goal clear:

The risk taken in this book is a return to the old idea: that it is Jesus’ resistance to the political which makes his life and death, unexpectedly, redemptive. Jesus can only judge the political world in a world-historical way because he can say, resolutely, “I judge no one” (John 8:15).

Moving on...In the meantime, please pray that I will be taught what He wants all of you to know about... I Judge No One. Watch for conclusion tomorrow...

God Bless

Gabbie

I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus - By David Lloyd Dusenburg - A Review and Beginning of Discussion in Relation to Today's Chaos in America

 

“The state, or rather, the whole world is in such error that it persecutes good and just men—torturing, condemning, and killing them.” 

– Lactantius, Divine Institutes

 

“The just man will have to 

endure the lash—
and finally, 

after every extremity of suffering,
 he will be crucified.” 

– Plato, Republic

Yesterday, I pointed out a personal caveat in reading the book, Donald Trump Is Not My Savior. It was that I believe the Holy Bible was God Inspired but not spe The Word of God. It would appear that, once again, a God Incident has occurred in leading me immediately to a book, I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus. You will also recall that in that caveat, I pointed out that when I started reading the Bible upon my baptism at age 13, I quickly realized that I could not understand much of what was being said. At that time, I purchased a number of Bibles in different versions. Finally, I found The Way. That became the book that I used and began to learn more. However, there was never a time when I totally understood what was being said...

And, then, in one book, I got my answer... It is an important statement. One that responded to me about what is happening within Christianity in America.

Let's learn a little about the author...

David Lloyd Dusenbury, MPhil, MPhil, PhD

I am senior fellow at the Danube Institute, visiting professor at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, and current holder of a joint chair at the University of Antwerp.
My newest book, I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus (2022), is out now with Hurst in London, Oxford University Press in New York.
I have held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Leuven and Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and visiting professorships at Loyola University Maryland and Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele. I have lectured widely in Europe on topics in philosophy, religion, law, and the history of ideas.
My essays and criticism have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Corriere della Serra, Los Angeles Review of Books, American Affairs, and other cultural and political reviews.

~~~

Dusenburg begins his latest book, I Judge No One, with an extensive literature review which explores how Jesus was written circa the time of His life and death, together with philosophers who were writing during the same time period. From a purely technical standpoint for reading this book as an ebook, I want to point out that, for me, I would have preferred to have the literature review footnoted at the bottom of the pages, so that we could have immediately read what was clarified in the footnote. That is practically impossible to do in standard text in ebook form. 

One of the more interesting for me is the comparative analyses with Socrates and Jesus. From the standpoint of placing Jesus within the world of philosophers as opposed to religious leaders, I was able to read writers speaking related to religion, in particular, without a dogmatic approach of ensuring that what was written "jived" with the Bible or other religious-oriented books. That is not to say, though, that Dusenburg does not have  a specific goal in mind as he reviews these writings and, in particular, in relation to the first four Books, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, from the Bible.

This first-century dating is contested, however.16 Mara’s allusion to the fall of Jerusalem and other catastrophes might have been occasioned by the second Judaean revolt of 132 to 135, and not the first revolt of 66 to 73 CE.17 But whether Mara’s Letter is dated to the first or second century, it is a pagan philosophical text, composed in Syriac, in which Jesus’ death seems to be remembered.18 Anticipating Nietzsche by as much as 1,800 years, Mara links the deaths of Socrates and Jesus. Unlike Nietzsche, he sees their deaths as belonging to an august history of philosopher-martyrs. This ancient Syrian philosopher believes that it is culpable human error which led to the executions of Pythagoras, Socrates, and Jesus—and the ruination of the cities that put them to death. Here is the text in question: What else can we say, when wise men are forcibly dragged by the hands of tyrants, and their wisdom is taken captive by slander, and they are oppressed in their intelligence without defence? For what benefit did the Athenians derive from the slaying of Socrates? For they received the retribution for it in the form of famine and plague. Or the people of Samos from the burning of Pythagoras? For in one hour their entire country was covered with sand. Or the Judaeans [from the slaying] of their wise king? For from that very time their sovereignty was taken away. For God rightly exacted retribution on behalf of the wisdom of these three. For the Athenians starved to death, and the people of Samos were covered by the sea without remedy, and the Judaeans, massacred and chased from their kingdom, are scattered through every land. Socrates did not die, because of Plato; nor yet Pythagoras, because of the statue of Hera; nor did the wise king, because of the new laws that he gave.19 Mara’s brief meditation on the deaths of Pythagoras, Socrates, and Jesus is ultimately redemptive. For he tells his son that, despite a confusing tradition about Pythagoras’ death-by-fire, the spirit of Pythagorean thought is honoured, in some way, by the great Samian shrine to the goddess Hera. And despite the poisoned cup that killed him, “Socrates did not die”; rather his wisdom lives on in Plato’s dialogues. And despite Jesus’ passing, he is still present in the observance of “the new laws that he gave”. What Mara calls new laws, here, we would now call Syrian Christianity—a rich and long-suffering tradition.20 That Mara’s wise king is Jesus is suggested by his claim that Judaeans were punished after his death, by the destruction of Jerusalem, just as Athenians were punished after Socrates’ death, and so on. There is nothing untoward about this notion of “divine nemesis”, per se.21 In chapter 2, we glimpsed the pagan conviction in Dio of Prusa’s Orations that Socrates’ death is “the cause” of the Athenians’ later misfortunes. Similarly, Josephus tells us that many Judaeans interpreted Herod Antipas’ humiliating defeat in 36 CE, by a Nabatean king, as divine retribution for the murder of John the Baptist.22 The notion that Jerusalem incurs its ruin in 70 CE, by Jesus’ death in the year 30 or so, is rooted in the gospels and many early Christian traditions. It is worth noting, however, that in Matthew and Luke, Jesus’ lament for Jerusalem is not only occasioned by his sense that he will be killed there. Rather, it seems that in Jesus’ mind, his holy city is doomed because “killing the prophets” is a recurring drama in that city. His death belongs to a history of Hebrew prophet-martyrs.23 This must be stressed. For a first- or second-century pagan philosopher such as Mara, ‘killing the philosophers’ is a recurring drama, which crescendos in the gods’ destruction of Mediterranean cities. And for a first-century dissident rabbi such as Jesus, ‘killing the prophets’ is a recurring drama which includes himself, and which calls down God’s judgement on Judaean cities.24 Beyond this, there seems to be a recognizably Syrian physiognomy to Mara’s Jesus. We catch this by glancing at a later text by the dazzling Syrian satirist, Lucian of Samosata...

Still, I want to be clear on my part that I, too, have a goal in reading. That is to move toward some type of rational and logical understanding of what is now occurring within American, and in particular, in relation to that division I see within the Christian faith. 

Hopefully, you, too, might become just as interested as I am; therefore, I'm including the following lengthy video since many of you may not be able to read the book itself...

To Be Continued...