Jesus Against Christianity

by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer

Book Overview

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer explores how the historical figure of Jesus has been separated from the Christ of faith, and how that has radically disconnected the church from the Jesus of history.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1563383624
• ISBN13: 9781563383625
• Release Date: June 2001
• Publisher: Trinity Press International
• Length: 386 Pages
• Weight: 1.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A Call to Wrestle

I consider this a very brave and honest book that needs to be wrestled and engaged with, especially in the light of 9/11. There aren't many books that thoroughly document and discuss the ethically problematic passages in the Bible as this one, especially from someone inside the faith that believes in it's emancipatory possibilities. Because of the comprehensive amount of "pathological", violent passages found within the Bible, one cannot easily duck the implications that they raise. Nelson-Pallmeyer quotes Raymund Schwager: "There are "600 hundred passages of explicit violence in the Hebrew Bible, 1,000 verses where God's own violent actions of punishment are described. 100 passages where Yahweh expressly commands others to kill people, and several stories where God irrationally kills or tries to kill for no apparent reason (e.g. Ex 4.24-26)." And that's just the Hebrew Bible! Part of N-P's thesis is "either God is a pathological killer because the Bible says so, or the Bible is sometimes wrong about God". N-P believes Jesus is the one who authoritatively corrects the Bible's faulty images of God by showing his Abba Father as a God of love and redemption not of retribution and violence. Jesus taught a non-violent ethic ("love your enemies") that was very much at odds with the retributional passages throughout the Bible and congruent with a God of absolute love. N-P relies very much on a Jesus Seminar-esque portrait of the historical Jesus. The Gospels actually contain a fair amount of the troublesome passages N-P wants to free Jesus from. After all, Jesus talked a good deal about judgment and hell. More liberal scholarship has seen these as the early churches' interpolations in addressing their own contemporary situations, not the verbatim words of Jesus. Thus, Jesus is exonerated and freed from any implication which supports N-P's attempt to rescue faith in Jesus' teaching alone. I am of the persuasion that is a very thin line to dangle on but am appreciative that N-P does his best to come up with his best solution. After all, in light of the issues raised, what would anyone sympathetically suggest? Overall, I agree with N-P's assessment that "the Bible is sometimes wrong about God." The Bible was written within a specific cultural context that very much colored the perceptions of the biblical writers. They weren't simply God's dictational secretaries. That does not rule out that they were truly God inspired, but that like us, they were also fallibly human. Obviously, most Christians would prefer to believe in an infallible/inerrant Bible and thus gain absolute certitude. But under more open-minded scrutiny, that just doesn't seem to hold water in light of NP's discussion (and many, many other's). I am not as skeptical as N-P, that the other portions of the Bible, besides the Gospels, can't be mined more for the profound revelational insight they do contain. But can we continue under the illusion that the biblical writers always got it exac

Precis of Selected Passages

The author (N-P) fervently believes that ancient and modern social ills are most often the result of forceful subjugation of large numbers of the peoples of the world by an exploitive elite and that, again most often, this has been done in the guise of religion as, supposedly, the will of God. The author wants to find out why Jesus is missing from Christian worship. For example, why is it that the Apostle's Creed declares that Jesus Christ was born, suffered and died with no mention how he lived, or what he said. N-P thinks that it is important to look into why he was killed and what his message said about God --- a message which, evidently, inspired and energized his followers to live as if he was still with them. The book can be divided into three sections. 1. The first examines images and expectations of God in O.T. and N.T. scriptures and concludes that, far from giving a consistent, monotheistic picture of One God, it doesn't take a degree in psychology to recognize that many different Gods are pictured, often behaving in widely inconsistent ways and all too often demanding actions that are pathological and violent. 2. The second section details the sociological, political and religious situation in which Jesus lived including both domination by foreign powers and by the Temple elite. N-P points out how the oppressive and violent domination systems which the Jewish people had endured for centuries coupled with a belief in an Almighty God led to Messianic expectations involving a violent intervention by God. 3. The third section examines Gospel narratives and parables to find evidences for Jesus' non-violent opposition to Rome and to the Temple authorities. Jesus' opposition is rooted in his faith in a god of unconditional love rather than a God of vengeful justice. N-P rejects images of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet who preached God's ultimate wrath for wrongdoers. Jesus' God desires justice but, since coercion is incompatible with God's nature, he is powerless to enforce it through violent action. Violence and injustice can only be defused by non-violent means --- including sacrifice (as Jesus himself demonstrated), if necessary. The Bible verses referenced below illustrate the all too common presence of passages supporting troubling images of a kind of God who, in the O.T.: 1. orders parents to murder disobedient children [Lev.20:1-2a, 9], 2. orders a test of faith by one's willingness to murder one's child [Exo. 22:2, 9b-12], 3. is angered and so commits worldwide genocide [Gen.6:13,7:23], 4. steals land from its rightful occupants [Gen. 15:18-21], 5. steals land and orders "ethnic cleansing" of the occupants [Num.21:31-35], 6. is a Holy Warrior killing those who follow other Gods [Exo. 11:4-6, 14:27-28], 7. destroys his own people [Jer. 21:3-6; Lam. 4:4,9-10] To dispel the notion, held by some smug Christians, that this behavior is only found in Jewish scriptures, we find in the N.T. troubling images of a God

A must read

This book is great. I recommend it to anyone interested in liberal theology. It is almost an apologetic for non-fundamentalist thinking.

Discovering the God Jesus Knew

For years I have been troubled by the discongruity between the God portrayed in some Scripture as going out of God's way to "seek and save the lost sheep" ... only to find other passages imaging God as a wrathful entity hungry to visit judgment on we mortals. Nelson-Pallmeyer, while clearly committed to the Christian faith, looks at some of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures and says the God portrayed in some of them is a pathological killer. But he is not willing to stop there. He sees in Jesus' life and teaching a relationship with a God we can embrace. The author looks at who Jesus was and how he related to God and then sets that as his standard for evaluating whether an image of God resonates with the God Jesus knew and experienced. He helps the reader understand the apocalyptic views of some of the Biblical authors and his evidence on why he thinks Jesus broke with that view that was shared by one of his mentors, John the Baptist. Jesus embraces a God who is non-violent and one who suffers along with us rather than the omnipotent, all-knowing deity people believed in until our world was confronted with the horrors of the Holocaust, Pol Pot, Rwanda, and other tragedies. The message of this book is crucial in a world obsessed with violence and environmental devastation. If our image of God is distorted, so will our values. This book will disturb you, challenge you, and hopefully give you substance to live a life of grace and mercy in the midst of one's commitment to justice. If we really want to change our image of who God is, we will have to do a lot more work not only in changing the language of worship to be more inclusive, but we must re-visit (and reject) the blood sacrifice/atonement theology found in much of the contemporary church scene.

Reclaiming the God Jesus Knew

For years I have been troubled by the discongruity between the God portrayed in some Scripture as going out of God's way to "seek and save the lost sheep" ... only to find other passages imaging God as a wrathful entity hungry to visit judgment on we mortals. Nelson-Pallmeyer, while clearly committed to the Christian faith, looks at some of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures and says the God portrayed in some of them is a pathological killer. But he is not willing to stop there. He sees in Jesus' life and teaching a relationship with a God we can embrace. The author looks at who Jesus was and how he related to God and then sets that as his standard for evaluating whether an image of God resonates with the God Jesus knew and experienced. He helps the reader understand the apocalyptic views of some of the Biblical authors and his evidence on why he thinks Jesus broke with that view that was shared by one of his mentors, John the Baptist. Jesus embraces a God who is non-violent and one who suffers along with us rather than the omnipotent, all-knowing deity people believed in until our world was confronted with the horrors of the Holocaust, Pol Pot, Rwanda, and other tragedies. The message of this book is crucial in a world obsessed with violence and environmental devastation. If our image of God is distorted, so will our values. This book will disturb you, challenge you, and hopefully give you substance to live a life of grace and mercy in the midst of one's commitment to justice. If we really want to change our image of who God is, we will have to do a lot more work not only in changing the language of worship to be more inclusive, but we must re-visit (and reject)the blood sacrifice/atonement theology found in much of the contemporary church scene.