Mere Jesus
Is Howard Dean really Christian, and does it matter?

Recently, presidential candidate Howard Dean declared that he is a Christian for whom Jesus is an important figure, and that in future campaign speeches and ads he will make his faith a more prominent feature.

I am quite okay with that. I do wonder, though, how the eastern establishment media will handle it if Dean does make specific Christian religious claims. After all, they generally were pretty unfriendly to President Bush for doing the same thing in the 2000 campaign. Methinks those media will be much more comfortable with Dean’s faith claims than they have been with Bush’s.

In fact, however, the unfriendliness toward Dean’s faith claims has already started - from the right. Michael Totten has some insights on Dean’s claim, and an even more pointed fisking of Cal Thomas’ unfriendliness toward Dean’s claim.

Thomas, in a piece in The Washington Times, seems dissatisfied with the depth of Dean’s faith, insofar as Dean’s single statement reveals the depth of his faith. Thomas infers that Dean sees Jesus as nothing more than a moral guide:

If that is all Jesus was (or is), then he is just another entry in Bartlettìs "Familiar Quotations," to be read or not, according to oneìs inspirational need.

While I see what Thomas is getting at, I think he’s trying to make a banquet out of mighty thin gruel. It seemed to me that Dean was not terribly comfortable with speaking openly about his religious faith before national media. I frankly expect a northern congregationalist would not be as comfortable about that as, say, a Southern Baptist - or a southern United Methodist, which is what Bush is.

Perhaps some reporter will one day ask Dean directly whether he believes that Jesus "was crucified, dead and buried," as the Apostles Creed puts it, "and on the third day he rose from the dead." How Dean responds to that - if he is ever asked - will say a lot more about his Christian bona fides than the single statement he has made so far.

Thomas quoted C. S. Lewis’ famous passage to buttress his position, that merely admiring Jesus’ ethics was inadequate:

C.S. Lewis brilliantly dealt with this watered-down view of Jesus and what He did in the book "Mere Christianity." Said Lewis, who thought about such things at a far deeper level than Howard Dean, "Iìm trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'Iìm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I canìt accept His claim to be God.ì That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God or else a madman or something worse."

Mr. Totten quite rightly assails Thomas for this tactic. I happen to think that Lewis was right, but he addressing the personal faith of individuals or the corporate confessions of churches, not presidential candidates.

Obviously, I hold the ethics of Christ in the highest esteem, but as Michael, who says he is not Christian, explains, it is not necessary to profess the divinity of Christ in order to follow the ethics of Christ.

What Christian confession may spring from Dean’s heart is a subject in which I am studiously uninterested in judging his fitness for office. My only interest in the potential reporter’s question, above, is whether he is truthful rather than pandering. But that is true for any question, religious or not.

Now, having said that, I wish to wade in a little further.

First, as admirable as Jesus’ ethics were (and remain), they were not original with Jesus. They sprang in whole cloth, "fully armed," as it were, from the rich history of Judaism, Jesus’ own religion. As I wrote in my long essay, "Jesus the Jew,"

Although gifted with unusual verbal fluency, Jesus' teachings reveal nothing that is not already taught in the Law, the Prophets and the Writings of the Jews. Jesus' ethical teachings may not have been in step with the mainstream of his day, but they were in lockstep with the prophetic tradition of Jewish faith. Jesus' ethical and religious teachings are wise and good, but frankly not exceptional. If you wanted to construct a religion based on Jesus' ethics, you'd simply wind up with a very admirable form of Judaism.

What made Jesus distinctive in his Jewish practice, in his day, was that Jesus intensified the universal ethical norms that Judaism had always taught and he relaxed the norms, such as dietary and fellowship laws, that Jews used to separate themselves from others. (Properly, it was the Pharisees who did this more than anyone else.)

Jesus’ ethics accorded with historic Jewish teaching and practice, so his ethical teachings really just encapsulize Judaism’s ethics. What CS Lewis was getting at was this: as a matter of religious devotion, stopping with Jesus’ ethics gets you nowhere. Purely from an ethical point of view, Jesus is not religiously necessary. So if one is to make Jesus the object of worship, it is Jesus personally who must be worshiped, not his teachings.

Taking Jesus at only his ethical word forces one to be cognitively dissonant about the rest of him. Jesus had a rather high opinion of himself, claiming bluntly that he would judge harshly those who refused him personal loyalty. In essence, Jesus claimed that it was not enough simply to be a Jew (his cousin, John the Baptist had preached that God could make "sons of Abraham out of stones").

Jesus said that one could be either Jew or Gentile, makes no difference - as long as you acknowledged his personal divinity and followed his own set of commandments. Jesus was clear that faith in him and discipleship were a "both-and" package, not "either-or." And he said that he personally had cosmic power to determine who was doing so.

Hence, Lewis was right. This is the sort of claim that only a madman makes - unless the claim is true. Clearly, Jesus’ claims were extraordinary and so must be rejected by thoughtful people - unless there is extraordinary proof.

That is what his resurrection does, provide extraordinary proof.

So the primary question in any rational inquiry about Jesus, from any angle, is not, "What did he teach?" because what he taught, while admirable, was unexceptional. The primary question is, "What did Jesus do?"

To that question there are only two possible answers:

First, he preached self-exalting, babbling nonsense, hence he was a nut case whose inspiration of billions across two millennia makes no sense.

Second, Jesus was raised from the dead by God, proving conclusively that not only are Jesus’ ethical teachings God-endorsed, but so are his self proclamations, including claiming equality with God. So maybe we’d better listen to him.

Mr. Totten says, "I used to be a Christian. I left the religion more than a decade ago." He does not say why, but since he immediately follows by saying, "For a couple of years I hated Christianity and looked at Christians with contempt," I am inferring that he left because he was disgusted with either Christian people or Christian practice, or both.

Gee, Michael, take a number and get in line - behind me.

Some smart theologian remarked that Jesus called forth the Kingdom of God but had to settle for the Church. Not only do I think that the Church is seriously deficient in many respects, I have detailed many of my perceptions thereof on this blog over the last couple of years.

But Christianity is not about the Church. It is, or should be, about Christ. I have had those days when I wanted to throw the whole pastoral thing in. When still in candidacy for ordination I even typed a three-page paper to myself listing the reasons to resign from the whole shebang. And they were darn good reasons, too.

And then the much shorter list of reasons to remain, all three of which reduced down to one: I know Christ crucified and risen.

The central, and only really important, claim about Christ is that. The rest is merely commentary. That is what Lewis was getting at.

In a pastoral sense, it does matter to me whether Howard Dean knows Christ as risen Lord, not just as ethical guide. But as an American voter, it doesn’t make a lot of difference to me.

Update: I meant to add that reading the comments appended to Michael's post is pretty interesting, too, including a comment from a Conservative Jew who figures that Dean is a "cultural Christian" who "is now claiming to be some sort of born again Christian when he is clearly not." How do you know?

And another commenter who says, "What is truly risible is that [Dean] has 'found Jesus' as he reflects upon the Southern primaries coming up. Most Christians are quite adept in recognizing hypocrisy (we have great opportunities to practice within the church), Dean's will shine like Times Square at midnight last night. He truly needs a minder." So is Dean's confession mere political opportunism?

Update: Here's an excellent site that summarized every president's religious affiliation.

by Donald Sensing, 1/2/2004 08:58:49 PM. Permalink |