The Real Jesus

My friend is feeling down and doesn't want to talk right now. Separated from his wife by death after fifty years of marriage, that's perfectly understandable. Though I confess I'm a little worried about him alone in that house with all those memories.

But what prompted this post was Mark Shea making comment on the latest Real Jesus. My friend made a couple of references to him (the Real Jesus, not Mark Shea) in our meandering conversations. Given that he rejects the New Testament as history (because it involves miracles) I'm puzzled at his mild attachment to the idea that there is a Real Jesus, the memory of whom has been corrupted by Christians. Maybe it's the Bertrand Russell quote about Jesus being bloodthirsty and judgemental (from, I think, Why I am not a Christian).

Anyway, what Mark Shea says here certainly rings true with me:

One good rule of thumb whenever one encounters a "real Jesus" who is radically at odds with the picture offered by the ordinary Tradition, Scripture and magisterial teaching of the Church is to examine the dominant fixations of one's own age and see how much of a Rorschach ink blot test that new "real Jesus" is. Oddly enough, when liberal Protestantism went gaga for the Social Gospel a hundred years ago, the Real Jesus looked very much like a Social Gospel Protestant a la Albert Schweitzer. When the world went nuts for Marxism, a new Real Jesus suddenly appeared on the scene as the First Marxist preaching the Sermon on the Barricades to the Oppressed Proletariat. Nazism was fond of discovering a Real Jesus who was "really" an Aryan eager to condemn Judaism and not beholden to his Jewish ancestry. Ironic postmodernity sees an ironic postmodern Jesus, feminism sees a feminist Jesus and New Age "prophets" see Real Jesus who offer the same sort of pantheistic tapioca they offer. Of the making of "real Jesuses" there is no end.