The Man Jesus (Part 7): Jesus Overcame all Forms of Authority-Thinking

Chapter 17 "The Man Who Emerges" (Jesus Before Christianity)

Continuing with the section on "Confrontation", we come to chapter 17, a powerful chapter on the uniqueness of Jesus. The opening paragraph reads,

"Jesus is a much underrated man - underrated not only by those who think of him as nothing more than a teacher of religious truth but also by those who go to the opposite extreme of emphasizing his divinity in such a way that he ceases to be fully human. When one allows Jesus to speak for himself and when one tries to understand him without any preconceived ideas and within the context of his own times, what begins to emerge is a man of extraordinary independence, immense courage and unparalleled authenticity - a man whose insight defies explanation. To deprive this man of his humanity is to deprive him of his greatness.

The author explores the meaning of the term "Son of man" that Jesus used for himself. Nolan argues that because of his teachings in general, Jesus would not have intended that term to be a title of any sort but to have more to do with his great esteem for humans as humans and his solidarity with all humans. He so identified with humans that he eventually acquired a 'bad reputation'..."even John the Baptist (was) scandalized by the way he mixed socially with sinners, by the way he seemed to enjoy their company, by his permissiveness with regard to the laws, by his apparent disregard for the seriousness of sin and by his free and easy way of treating God..."

Much of the chapter focuses on how, unlike all others, Jesus insisted on not using any titles for Himself...Jesus wanted nothing to do with the whole idea of acting and speaking 'with authority' (the right to be obeyed by others): "...did Jesus claim authority, any kind of authority at all, even implicitly? Would it not be closer to the truth to say that what makes Jesus immeasurably greater than any other human being is precisely the fact that he spoke and acted without authority and that he regarded the 'exercise of authority' as a pagan characteristic. 

"Jesus was unique among the people of his time in his ability to overcome all forms of authority-thinking. The only authority which Jesus might be said to have appealed to was the authority of the truth itself. He did not make authority his truth, he made truth his authority...(He) did not expect others to obey him; he expected them to 'obey' the truth, to live truthfully.  ...by avoiding all authority-thinking, he released the power of truth itself - which is the power of God and indeed the power of faith.

"Somewhere at the heart of Jesus' mysterious personality there was a unique experience of intimate closeness to God - the Abba-experience...We know that the Abba-experience was an experience of God as a compassionate Father..."

The chapter ends saying, "The secret of Jesus' infallible insight and unshakeable convictions was his unfailing experience of solidarity with God, which revealed itself as an experience of solidarity with humanity and nature. This made him a uniquely liberated man, uniquely courageous, fearless, independent, hopeful and truthful. What would make anyone want to destroy such a man?..."

The Man Jesus (Part 6): Jesus Did Not Die for a Cause...

Chapters 15, 16 "Confrontation" (Jesus Before Christianity)

Continuing with the section on "Confrontation", we look now at chapters 15 and 16:

In chapter 15, the author proposes that there were two main temptations to violence for Jesus in the form of two particular incidents that Nolan views as attempts to get Jesus to take on the role of Messiah and lead an overthrow of Rome. (These would have been during the time of His hiding from and avoiding the authorities.) The first incident was the gathering of 4-5,000 men on the deserted hills near Bethsaida, which Nolan suggests may have likely been a gathering of men to persuade Him to lead them in a rebellion against Rome. (This gathering is typically known for the miracle of the loaves and fishes...)

The second incident was with Peter; a strong quarrel ensued over Jesus' talking about rejection and suffering while Peter saw the perfect opportunity for him to seize power and become Messiah.

Both incidents were real temptations and while there were likely practical reasons why Jesus knew such a revolution would never work, there was a greater reason for not yielding: "To have accepted the kingship over a people who had not transferred their allegiance to the 'kingdom' of God and to lead such people in battle was to play into the hands of Satan. It would have meant accepting power from Satan over a 'kingdom' which was itself without any loyalty to the 'kingdom' of God and encouraging them to use violence against another, albeit more godless kingdom. Nothing could be achieved for God's 'kingdom' in this way...Jesus would presumably have been willing to be Messiah-king if Israel had changed its ways and the 'kingdom' of God had come. Messiahship would then not have been a title of honor, prestige and power but a form of service, and the Gentiles would then have been brought into the 'kingdom' not by the power of the sword but by the power of faith and compassion."

In chapter 16 Nolan says that Jesus viewed suffering and death differently than the Jews: "The Jews had a long tradition of persecution and suffering. Theoretically the righteous person always suffered on account of his or her righteousness, and every faithful Jew was willing to die rather than disobey the law...The early Christians did not invent the idea of martyrdom nor the idea of an atoning and redemptive death; it was part of their Jewish heritage..."

Nolan speaks about the "paradox of compassion": "The one thing Jesus was determined to destroy was suffering...but the only way to destroy suffering is to give up all worldly values and suffer the consequences. Only the willingness to suffer can conquer suffering in the world...(Mk 8:35; Mt. 10:39; Jn 12:25; Lk 14:26)

The author goes on to say, "The Maccabean martyrs died for the law; the Zealots died to defend the sovereignty of Israel's God; other people have been willing to die for other causes. Jesus did not die for a cause. As he understood it, one should be willing to give up one's life for exactly the same reason as one gives up possessions, prestige, family and power, namely for others...Jesus was fully alive because he was willing to suffer and die not for a cause but for people...It is a willingness to die for all people. The willingness to die for some people would be an expression of group solidarity. The willingness to die for humankind is an expression of universal solidarity...(it) is a service rendered to all people."

And Jesus knew that in order to be in solidarity with suffering people, He would have to suffer, meaning He would have to come out of hiding and face those who were seeking to get rid of Him.

The Man Jesus (Part 5): Jesus Was Not Busy with a Religious Revival but with a Revolution

Chapters 13, 14  "Confrontation" (Jesus Before Christianity)

The next section of the book is comprised of seven chapters about the climax of Jesus' life and why he became such a target for both the Jewish leaders and for Rome. Nolan is attempting to peer into how the people in Jesus' day would have understood him and how he himself understood things before his followers later interpreted his life and words through an "end-of-the-world" lens. In this post we will look at chapters 13 and 14.

Chapter 13 looks at "politics and religion". The fact that Jesus of Nazareth was killed for high treason by Rome did not make him unique, because many thousands of Jewish revolutionaries were crucified by the Roman rulers of that day. Although the revolution that Jesus wanted certainly involved liberation of the Jews from oppressive rulers, his greater concern was that Israel have a change of heart. "...This is not a matter of resigning oneself to Roman oppression; nor is it a matter of trying to kill them with kindness. It is a matter of reaching down to the root cause of all oppression and domination: humanity's lack of compassion. If the people of Israel were to continue to lack compassion, would the overthrowing of the Romans make Israel any more liberated than before? If the Jews continued to live off the worldly values of money, prestige, group solidarity and power, would the Roman oppression not be replaced by an equally loveless Jewish oppression?..."

Unlike what many of us have been led to believe about the man Jesus, the men of his day would not have "thought of him as an eminently religious man who steered clear of politics and revolution. They would have seen him as a blasphemously irreligious man who under the cloak of religion was undermining all the values upon which religion, politics, economics and society were based...

He disapproved of (Rome's) way of 'making their authority felt' and their way of 'lording it over their subjects'. But he envisaged changing this by changing Israel so that Israel could present the Romans with a living example of the values and ideals of the 'kingdom.'"

"Jesus' social mixing with sinners in the name of God and his confidence that they (sinners) had God's approval while the virtuous did not were a violation of all that God and religion and virtue and justice had ever meant. But then Jesus was not busy with a religious revival; he was busy with a revolution - a revolution in religion and politics and everything else."

Chapter 14 deals with the dramatic confrontation between Jesus and the Jewish leaders which was the turning point in Jesus' life: the Temple incident. Up till this point he was confronting the men of religion but now confronts the men of affairs, the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem who were exploiting the poor.

This chapter tries to answer questions such as how did Jesus and his intentions become sufficiently well known to be of national concern so that the authorities wanted to arrest him while the people wanted to make him king? Why did he have to withdraw and become a fugitive? The timing of the temple confrontation has much to do with the answers to these questions.

The gospels are confusing concerning when this temple incident took place, but Nolan cites sources and proposes that it took place early in Jesus' public ministry as told in the gospel of John (rather than just before his death as Mark, Luke and Matthew tell it). This confrontation propelled Jesus into the national limelight. Because of this angry demonstration by Jesus towards the economic exploitation of the people's devotion and piety by the Temple system (for example, the widow giving her last penny), Jesus and his disciples were forced to change their whole way of life because of the danger they were in.

Jesus had been preaching about the need for Israel's change of heart in order to escape the coming catastrophic destruction of Jerusalem, but it was this confrontation in the Temple that made him a figure of national importance and forced the leaders to make a decision about taking action concerning him. They were further worried about the fact that he seemed to have great influence over the people. All of this caused Jesus to avoid going to Jerusalem and also to Galilee (where Herod was after him too) and when he did go to Jerusalem, it was under cover.

The Man Jesus (Part 4): Good News about a Reversal of Fortunes in the New Kingdom-Society

A personal comment to start this section - as I considered afresh the implications of the "reversal of fortunes" that Jesus' kingdom society brings, I saw in a new way that this "good news" isn't necessarily heard as "good" news by those in power in earthly kingdoms (which is why Jesus was put to death). Ultimately all people are blessed by living according to the values of God's kingdom but fear of scarcity hinders the powerful from seeing this.

Chapters 6-12 "Good News" (Jesus Before Christianity)

The third section is comprised of seven chapters (chapters 6 through 12) about "Good News" in which the author focuses on the "kingdom of God" and how utterly different it is from all of the kingdoms of this world.

In chapter 6 Nolan writes of how Jesus understood the kingdom of God; the most common ways Jesus talked about the kingdom of God was through the pictures of a household or a walled city: "The fact that his way of speaking about the 'kingdom' is based upon a pictorial image of a house, a city or a community leaves no doubt about what he had in mind: a politically structured society of people here on earth. A 'kingdom' is a thoroughly political notion...The difference is between a community of humankind in which evil reigns supreme and a community of humankind in which goodness reigns supreme...Jesus was convinced that the 'kingdom' of God would eventually triumph over the 'kingdom' of Satan and replace that 'kingdom' here on earth."

The next four chapters are chapters dealing with the value system of God's kingdom and how radically different God views these matters; the author presents all of this in light of the world Jesus lived in and gives insights to what Jesus' words and actions meant in His day: 

Chapter 7: The "Kingdom" and Money: "(Acts 2; 4:32, 34,35) This then is what selling all one's possessions means: giving up the surplus and treating nothing as your own...Jesus did not idealize poverty. On the contrary his concern was to ensure that no one should be in want, and it was to this end that he fought possessiveness and encouraged people to be unconcerned about wealth and to share their material possessions...Jesus dared to hope for a 'kingdom' or world-wide community which would be so structured that there would be no poor and no rich."

Chapter 8: The "Kingdom" and Prestige: In Jesus' world prestige was even more important than money. "Status and prestige were based on ancestry, wealth, authority, education and virtue..."
In Mark 10:14 Jesus says his kingdom will be one of "children" or "of those who are like children because in society they are insignificant; they lack status and prestige."

Chapter 9: The "Kingdom" and Solidarity: Group solidarity - loyalty to those in our group - is something that all societies understand, even our western individualistic society. "Jesus extended one's neighbor to include one's enemies. He could not have found a more effective way of shocking his audience into the realization that he wished to include all people in this solidarity of love. The saying is almost unbearably paradoxical: the natural contradiction between neighbor and enemy, between outsiders and insiders must be overlooked and overcome so that enemies become kin and all outsiders become insiders!"

Chapter 10: The "Kingdom" and Power: "Society and power are inseparable. A society must have a structure and that structure will have something to do with power. The issue of power and the structures of power...is what we today call politics." Jesus' words in Lk. 6:20; 14:11; 12:32; 22:29,30 all indicate that "there is going to be a reversal in fortunes...The power of this new society is not a power which has to be served...It is a power which has an enormous influence in the lives of people by being of service to them."

Chapter 11 deals with the idea of "time". This is a fascinating chapter in which Nolan contrasts the way Westerners view time (more quantitative) with the way a Hebrew views time (qualitative). "For the Hebrew, to know the time was not a matter of knowing the date, it was a matter of what kind of time it might be...Time was the quality or mood of events...When individuals reach a fixed point, for example, the Passover festival or a time of famine, they become in a sense contemporaneous with their ancestors and their successors who have passed or will pass through the same qualitative time. The individual's ancestors and successors share the same kind of time, no matter how many intervening years there happen to be between them."

Jesus was announcing that there was coming a time qualitatively different from anything that went before. "It will be a qualitatively new time, not a new measurement of time" (as we westerners would assume)...The newness of Jesus' time can hardly be exaggerated." We are not to confuse John the Baptist's message (of doom) with Jesus message (of good news). "Goodness is triumphing over evil." This can be seen in all that Jesus did and said: "God has come down from the heavenly throne, the highest position of prestige in the world, to be intimately close to men, women and children, who may now address God as abba...The success of the cures and of all Jesus' liberating activity showed him that God felt with those who suffer, that God wanted to live in solidarity with humanity and to use the godly power to serve them and protect them."

In chapter 12 Nolan concludes this long section on "good news" by talking about the coming of the 'kingdom' as miraculous: "In view of the extraordinarily high values that are supposed to reign supreme in this 'kingdom', it should not be difficult to appreciate that its coming would be a miracle...This kind of 'kingdom' can only come, it cannot be built...The 'kingdom' itself cannot be achieved, it must be received - as a gift."

Although Jesus didn't know the time of the coming kingdom, the urgency in His preaching was because He understood that if there was no repentance, for sure a catastrophe would come; and the catastrophe did come with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 CE, to be followed with a merciless massacre in 135 CE when the Romans completely destroyed the nation of Israel and expelled the Jews from Palestine.

Nolan ends the chapter by saying that in order for us to recover what Jesus meant to the people of His day (before Christianity), we need to read the gospels without the "apocalyptized" process being applied to them. He attempts to do this in the following chapters.

The Man Jesus (Part 3): The Company of Jesus was Sheer Joy for Anyone Not Too Hung up on Respectability

Chapters 3,4,5 "Praxis" (Jesus Before Christianity)

Following up from the previous post (Jesus Identifies with John Baptist), we'll look at the second section of Albert Nolan's book which deals with the activity of Jesus in light of the conditions of humanity in His world. There are three chapters in this section.

In chapter three Nolan tells about the sort of people that Jesus gave most of His attention to. Scripture uses the following descriptors for them: "the poor, the blind, the lame, the crippled, the lepers, the hungry, the miserable (those who weep), sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, demoniacs, the persecuted, the downtrodden, the captives, all who labor and are overburdened, the rabble who know nothing of the law, the crowds, the little ones, the least, the last and the babes or the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

The author gives a description of the different classes in society in that day and says that Jesus was from the middle class (not to be mistaken for what we call "middle class" in our day). "The remarkable thing about Jesus was that, although he came from the middle class and had no appreciable disadvantages himself, he mixed socially with the lowest of the low and identified himself with them. He became an outcast by choice."

Nolan's main point in chapter 3 is that "what made Jesus different was the unrestrained compassion he felt for the poor and the oppressed."

In chapters 4 and 5 Nolan continues to explore Jesus' actions towards the disenfranchised by looking at healing and forgiveness. Chapter 4 contains some very interesting insights on His healing work, pointing out how different Jesus' approach to healing was from other healers of His time.

Chapter 5 is about forgiveness and how Oriental people of the first century looked at sin and its link with sickness and trouble. This is a beautiful chapter about Jesus' friendship with "sinners" and how He enjoyed being with them and they with Him. 

"It would be impossible to overestimate the impact these (festive) meals must have had upon the poor and the sinners. By accepting them as friends and equals Jesus had taken away their shame, humiliation and guilt. By showing them that they mattered to him as people, he gave them a sense of dignity and released them from their captivity...Moreover, because Jesus was looked upon as a man of God and a prophet, they would have interpreted his gesture of friendship as God's approval of them. They were now acceptable to God. Their sinfulness, ignorance and uncleanness had been overlooked and were no longer held against them....There can be no doubt that Jesus was a remarkably cheerful person and that his joy, like his faith and hope, was infectious...The poor and the oppressed and anyone else who was not too hung up on 'respectability' found the company of Jesus a liberating experience of sheer joy...He made them feel safe and secure...His very presence had liberated them."
 
In healing and forgiving and befriending the disenfranchised, Jesus had no motivation to prove anything but was simply moved by deep compassion.