© 2005 The Brotherhood of Man Library
Are “radical” Urantia Book teachings having an impact on the current “popular” theology as taught in most Christian churches?
Judged from the hymn list scheduled for a three month period at a local Anglican (Episcopalian) Church, the answer must be in the negative–for just over half make some reference to Jesus dying as a sacrificial offering to God for the forgiveness of our sins. What does The Urantia Book have to say?
“The barbarous idea of appeasing an angry God, of propitiating an offended Lord, of winning the favor of Deity through sacrifices and penance and even by the shedding of blood, represents a religion wholly puerile and primitive, a philosophy unworthy of an enlightened age of science and truth. Such beliefs are utterly repulsive to the celestial beings and the divine rulers who serve and reign in the universes. It is an affront to God to believe, hold, or teach that innocent blood must be shed in order to win his favor or to divert the fictitious divine wrath.” (UB 4:5.4)
The teaching that Jesus’ death on the cross was as an atonement offering for the sins of the world is as strongly held today as it was when The Urantia Book was first published in 1955. Surely then, this fact is indicative of the complete ineffectiveness of that great revelation. But is it?
Recently I had reason to dig out from under the dust it had gathered, a book I purchased as a reference work to help me understand the mind-set of first century Jews. I also remembered that its author disagreed with the concept that Jesus had died for the forgiveness of man’s sins.
I read the whole work then, impressed with its conceptual similarities to much of what I read in The Urantia Book, I re-read it, looking for any indication that its author held to concepts that were contradictory to what is contained in the “life of Jesus” component of those Urantia Papers.
I failed to find any. First published in 1987 and hailed by Huston Smith, a well-known author and commentator as the “The book I have been waiting for,” the work is titled, “Jesus, A New Vision,” its author being Marcus J. Borg. And the fact that there were more than 100 references to modern authors is indicative that Borg is not alone in his opinions.
For the benefit of all those Urantia Book readers who have been disappointed at the apparent lack of acceptance of our great revelation, the remainder of this issue of Innerface and part of the following issue is given over to a condensation of Borg’s work. Borg, incidentally, is an associate professor of religious studies at Oregon State University, is the author of several other religious works, and is well known in scholarly circles for his contributions in scholarly journals.
Condensed from the book by Marcus J. Borg (Harper, San Francisco, 1987)
Preface
The two focal points of this work, Spirit and culture, enable us to see some of Jesus’ significance for our present time. In popular understanding, minimally there are two worlds, one the Spirit world where God lives, the other where we live.
Whether we are church people, or not, Jesus’ life is a vivid testimony to the reality of Spirit–a reality affirmed and known in every society prior to the modern period. However, this reality is poorly understood in the modern world, both in the academy and in the church.
For Christians in particular, what the historical Jesus was like can be a potent source of renewal. Not only is he a witness to the reality of Spirit as an element of experience, but his passionate involvement in the culture of his own time–his “social world”–connects two realities which Christians have frequently separated.
Throughout the centuries as well as in our own time, Christians have tended to view culture as having little or no religious significance. But it was not so for Jesus. He sought the transformation of his social world–its culture. (The term “culture” in this work refers to any distinctive grouping of people that has developed habits of living by which it can be identified as a functional group.)
The Jesus who emerges in these pages is thus deeply spiritual and deeply political.
He was spiritual in that his relationship to the Spirit of God was the central reality in his life, the source of all that he was; we cannot glimpse the historical Jesus unless we take with utmost seriousness his relationship to the world of Spirit. (UB 2:6.2; UB 103:4.4; UB 140:10.5; UB 142:7.4; UB 143:1.3)
For example, The Urantia Book has: “The one characteristic of Jesus’ teaching was that the morality of his philosophy originated in the personal relation of the individual to God–this very child-father relationship. Jesus placed emphasis on the individual, not on the race or nation. While eating supper, Jesus had the talk with Matthew in which he explained that the morality of any act is determined by the individual’s motive. Jesus’ morality was always positive. The golden rule as restated by Jesus demands active social contact; the older negative rule could be obeyed in isolation. Jesus stripped morality of all rules and ceremonies and elevated it to majestic levels of spiritual thinking and truly righteous living.” (UB 140:10.5)
And:
“Jesus next explained that the ”kingdom idea“ was not the best way to illustrate man’s relation to God; that he employed such figures of speech because the Jewish people were expecting the kingdom, and because John (the Baptist) had preached in terms of the coming kingdom. Jesus said: ”The people of another age will better understand the gospel of the kingdom when it is presented in terms expressive of the family relationship–when man understands religion as the teaching of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, sonship with God." (UB 142:7.4)
And:
“I have come into this world to do the will of my Father and to reveal his loving character to all mankind. That, my brethren, is my mission. And this one thing I will do, regardless of the misunderstanding of my teachings by Jews or gentiles of this day or of another generation. . . .But I declare to you that my Father in Paradise does rule a universe of universes by the compelling power of his love. Love is the greatest of all spirit realities. Truth is a liberating revelation, but love is the supreme relationship. And no matter what blunders your fellow men make in their world management of today, in an age to come the gospel which I declare to you will rule this very world. . . . ” (UB 143:1.4)
Jesus was political in the sense that the mainstream of his tradition was political: concerned about creating a community within history whose corporate life reflected faithfulness to God. What happens in history matters to the God of Jesus and his tradition.
This work is simultaneously polemical and apologetic. It is polemical in that it is critical of much that is central to modern culture, and apologetic in that it seeks to show how the gospel portraits of Jesus, seen historically, make sense. From his life and teaching flows a convincing and persuasive understanding of reality.
The challenge which the historical Jesus presents is not the sacrifice of the intellect but the sacrifice of something much deeper within us. It has everything to do with taking seriously what Jesus took seriously.
For the interested inquirer this work sketches a credible picture of the historical Jesus. For the reader who wishes to reflect about what it means to follow Jesus, it also sketches a picture of the life of discipleship.
Despite the fact that Jesus is a household word, and despite his importance for the Christian life, what Jesus was like as a historical figure before his death is not widely known, either in our culture or within the church itself. Instead, what he was like is seriously obscured by two dominant images of Jesus, one dominating the popular imagination within both the church and culture, and the second dominating much of New Testament scholarship in the 20th century. Each of these images provides its own answer to three central questions about the historical Jesus—his identity, his message, and his mission.
Jesus was both deeply spiritual and deeply political. His relationship to God was the central reality in his life—the source of all that he was. His politics were concerned about creating a community whose corporate life reflected faithfulness to God. TUB has: Immanuel to Jesus: “Exhibit in your life in the flesh as it has never been seen before in Urantia the transcendent possibilities attainable by a god-knowing human during the short career of mortal existence.” (UB 120:2.8)
The challenge that Jesus presents is to take seriously what he took seriously.
By the end of the first century Jesus was hailed as Son of God; one with the Father; the Word made flesh; the bread of life; the light of the world; the one who would come again as our judge and Lord; etc.
This is the image most familiar to Christian and non-Christian alike—a divine or semi-divine figure whose purpose was to die for the sins of the world and whose life and death open up the possibility of eternal life. Its answers to the questions of his identity, his message, and mission are clear. His identity was the divinely begotten Son of God, his mission to go into the world to die on the cross as a means of reconciliation between God and humanity, and his message was primarily of inviting his hearers to believe what he said about himself and his role in the salvation of humanity.
This image has its roots in the gospels of the New Testament: “I am the light of the world,” “I am the bread of life,” “I am the way, the truth and the life,” “The Father is in me and I am in the Father,” “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” “Before Abraham was, I am,” “I and the Father are one.” And in a single verse, the fourth gospel sums up Jesus’ identity, purpose, and message: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
The image of Jesus as seen by Scholars in the 20th century: The dominant image held by scholars in the 20th century is that we can know little about the historical Jesus other than he saw himself as an eschatological prophet who believed the end of the world was at hand.
Towards a third image: The majority of scholars no longer think that Jesus expected the end of the world during his generation. This was because the eschatological concept was based upon the coming of the son of man statements such as Matthew 24:27,30, 37, 39; Mark 13:27; 14:62; Luke 2:27; John 5:25. These are no longer considered to be authentic but are probably the product of the early church.
Though we can not ever: certain that we have a direct and exact quotation from Jesus, we can be relatively sure of the kind of things he said, and of the themes and the thrust of his teaching. We can also be relatively certain of the kind of things he did.
Furthermore we can be relatively sure of the kind of person he was—a charismatic healer, sage, prophet, and revitalization movement founder.
The first part of his work treats Jesus’ relationship to ‘Spirit,’ the second part treats his relationship to ‘culture.’
Jesus had an intense relationship to the world of Spirit, the “other reality,” or simply “God.” That relationship was the source of his power, his teaching, freedom, courage, and compassion—and of his urgent mission to the culture of his day.
The Spirit-filled Heart of Judaism. What Jesus was, historically speaking, was a Spirit-filled person in the charismatic stream of Judaism. All that he was, taught, and did flowed from his intimate experience of the “world of Spirit.”
The world of Spirit is another dimension of reality in addition to the visible world of ordinary experience. This world is not simply an article of belief but an element of experience. It is not merely believed in but it is known. (its scientific reality has recently been demonstrated–see Innerface Vol. 11 No. 5.)
The knowledge that there are at least two dimensions of reality was the common property of virtually every culture before ours–constituting what has been called the “primordial tradition.”
The cultural tradition in which Jesus lived took for granted the central claims of the primordial tradition–that there are minimally two worlds, and the other world can be known. Language about ‘the other world’ is necessarily metaphorical. If anything is to be communicated it must be by analogy. Yet, though the language is metaphorical, the realities are not.
Moreover this other world is not literally somewhere else. God, for example, is everywhere present even as God is also transcendent. God and the world of Spirit are all around us, including within us. Rather than God being somewhere else, we, and everything that is, are in God. We live in Spirit, even though we are mostly unaware of this reality.
Those of us socialized in the modern world have grown up in a secularized culture with a one dimensional understanding of reality. For us, what is real is essentially the material, the visible world of time and space. Reality is constituted by matter and energy interacting to form the visible world–in short there is but one world.
This nonreligious one-dimensional understanding of reality makes the other world and the notion of mediation between the two worlds unreal to us. But the reality of the other world deserves to be taken seriously–for the modern worldview is no more a map of reality than any of the other previous images.
Within the theoretical sciences, the modern worldview in its popular form has already been abandoned. At both macro and micro levels, reality behaves in strange and incomprehensible ways. The “old map” has been left far behind. Though this does not prove the truth of the religious world-view, it does undermine the reasons for rejecting it.
The world-view that rejects or ignores the world of Spirit is not only relative, but is itself in the process of being rejected. (see Innerface Vol. 11, No. 5)
The Spirit-filled experience of Jesus: We know almost nothing about the boy-hood and early manhood life of Jesus prior to the commencement of his brief public ministry. This commenced with his baptism by one known as John the Baptist when he was about 30 years old and is described by Mark as, “Coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him. And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” According to Mark, this experience was private to Jesus. But Matthew and Luke change the text slightly to make it more public. In doing so, they bring it into line with the post-Easter perception of Jesus’ identity. As such their version must be historically suspect.
Whatever our judgment concerning the “heavenly voice,” the story places Jesus in the Spirit-filled heart of Judaism, the vision being reminiscent of the “call narratives” of the prophets. Like them, Jesus’ ministry began with an intense experience of the Spirit of God.
Jesus’ ministry not only began with an experience of the Spirit but was immediately followed by a further experience in which the Spirit led him out into the wilderness. Mark’s account says, “And Jesus was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.”
We do not know if Jesus had other visions. Presumably he would have only reported them if doing so served some purpose in his teaching.
Among the reasons that we in the modern world have difficulty giving credence to the reality of Spirit is the disappearance of the deeper forms of prayer. Mostly we indulge in brief verbal prayer–which really is only the first stage of prayer. Beyond it are deeper levels characterized by internal silence over lengthy periods of time. In this state, one enters into deeper levels of consciousness; ordinary consciousness is stilled and one sits quietly in the presence of God. Called contemplation or meditation, its deepest levels are described as communion or union with God.
The tradition in which Jesus stood knew this mode of prayer. Moses and Elijah spent long periods of time in solitude and communion with God. The gospels portray Jesus as a man of prayer who practiced this form of prayer–now increasingly unknown in the modern world.
The image of Jesus as a Spirit-filled person in the charismatic stream of Judaism is perfectly crystallized in the words with which, according to Luke, Jesus began his public ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” Jesus followed up with, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”Luke 4:18
Thus far we have been speaking about Jesus’ internal life; his prayer life, the visions he experienced, his sense of intimacy with God. We also see his connection to the world of Spirit in his public life, in the impression he made on others, his claims to authority, and in the style of his speech.
The impression Jesus made on others: A verse in Mark’s gospel (10:32) vividly conveys the impression Jesus made on others: And they were on the road going up to Jerusalem and Jesus was walking ahead of them; and they were amazed and those who followed were filled with awe.
Also as a teacher Jesus made a striking impression: They were astonished at his teaching for he taught as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. (Mark 1:22)
Jesus’ own sense of authority: Jesus was aware of the power of the Spirit flowing through him. In the context of ‘casting out demons,’ he said: “If it is by the power of the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” (Luke 11:20; UB 138:8.5; UB 145:2.11; UB 165:2.10) On another occasion after a woman had touched his garment in order to be healed, he perceived that ‘power had gone out of him.’ (Mark 5:30; UB 152:1.2)
The style of Jesus’ teaching also showed an awareness of a numinous authority not derived from tradition. It is seen in his emphatic and unusual ‘I say unto you’ statements. Six of these follow one another in Matthew’s gospel: You have heard that it was said…but I say to you. Three of these are accepted by scholars as historical, the whole six are accepted by others. Regardless of which we accept, the language of Jesus indicates an awareness of a tradition-transcending authority, one from the mouth of the Spirit.
Though it was relatively common for a teacher within Judaism to have devoted students, the phenomenon of discipleship is different and uncommon, involving an uprooting and a following after. The stories of the call of Jesus’ disciples describe with compact vividness the imperative of Jesus’ call, the immediacy of their response, and the radical rupture from their previous lives: “And passing along by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus saw Simon and Andrew casting a net into the sea. And Jesus said to them, ”Follow me.“ And they immediately left their nets and followed him. And going on a little further, he saw James, the son of Zebedee and John, his brother, who were on their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.”
Later, one of them exclaimed: “Lo, we have left everything and followed you.” (UB 163:3.4)
In his own home town of Nazareth, he remarked: “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country.” (UB 150:9.1) And later he said, “It cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem,”–thereby identifying himself with the prophets. Jesus saw himself in the tradition of those who knew God. (UB 171:4.7)
The first century Jewish social world was grounded in sacred tradition. At the summit of the world of Spirit was Yahweh, the creator of heaven and earth. Yahweh had entered into a special relationship with the people of Israel constituted preeminently by the covenant given through Moses. Their scripture contained regulations for individual and group behavior and its laws included not only ritual and moral laws but also what we consider to be secular law: criminal law, civil law, household law, even tax law.
The primary source of conventional wisdom, however, was the Torah, the “law” of Israel. Most of it became part of the consciousness of individual Jews simply through the process of growing up within the culture. Additionally there was a special group of people who were the custodians and interpreters of the tradition. Known as sages, they drew mainly upon the Torah itself with its 613 written laws for their interpretations.
Jewish conventional wisdom saw reality as organized on the basis of reward and punishments. Reality was built that way. Living according to the Law and the path of righteousness brought blessing. Following the way of wickedness brought ruin and death. Most also believed that the righteous would flourish and be blessed with children, a good name, possessions, and a long life. Live right and all will go well was the common belief. If life does not go well, it is because one has failed in some way.
Two social worlds in collision. By the first century, two social worlds, the social world of Judaism and the social world composed of Hellenistic culture and Roman political power, were in deadly collision. There was no way the Jews could win. They had to compromise or perish. Roman imperial strategy demanded her presence and power in Palestine, both as a buffer against the Parthian empire to the east and to ensure the security of Egypt, the breadbasket of the Roman empire.
In response to the threat produced by the Roman occupation, the Jewish social world became dominated by the politics of holiness–expressed succinctly by the holiness code, “You shall be holy, as I the Lord your God am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2)
Holiness however was understood in a highly specific way, namely as separation. To be holy meant to be separate from everything that would defile holiness. The Jewish social world became increasingly structured around the polarities of holiness as separation–clean and unclean; purity and defilement; sacred and profane; Jew and gentile; righteous and sinner. Its origins went back to the suffering of the Jewish people during the Babylonian exile. Being holy was their response, having as its aim the avoidance of another outpouring of the divine judgment.
The politics of holiness was intensified by Jewish renewal movements active in the first century Palestine. Historian Josephus wrote of four such movements. One, the Saducees, was a conservative and aristocratic group that favored compromise with the Roman occupiers rather than confrontation. The other three, the Essenes, the Pharisees, and another incorrectly known as the Zealots, were renewal movements. Each asked the question, “What does it mean to be a faithful Jew in the present circumstances?”
The Essenes believed that a life of holiness within society as then constituted was impossible. Their response was to withdraw from society by retreating into the wilderness.
The Pharisees had a different response–they sought to counteract the Roman threat by radicalizing the Torah in such a way that the Pharisees effectively became a “kingdom of priests.” Becoming a Pharisee meant undertaking that degree of holiness required of priests in the temple. Purity and tithing were the major focus for the Pharisaic program–for example, they would not eat untithed food. Their accomplishment was that they provided a way of being faithful to God and the Torah even under foreign rule and without leaving society. Most even tolerated the payment of the Roman taxes by adopting an attitude of resigned acceptance.
The fourth group was really responsible for the disaster that resulted in the war with Rome in AD. 66-70, the destruction of the temple, and the expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem. (UB 176:1.) The point of view of the group was such that it could only succeed by expelling Rome. In effect they radicalized the first commandment, “You shall have no other lords besides God,” such that it became, “God is Lord, not Caesar.”
Jesus as Sage. Jesus was not primarily a teacher of either correct beliefs or right morals. Rather, he was a teacher of a way or path–specifically a way of transformation. His teaching involved a radical departure from the Torah wisdom that lay at the core of the first century Jewish social world.
The sayings of Jesus include many pithy one-liners, proverbs, parables, and observations from nature which, when taken together, provide an invitation to see things differently. Deep within all of us is a picture of what reality is really like–a picture that shapes how we live. We are the products of modern western culture with its essentially one-dimensional understanding of reality which, unless transformed by some convincing experience, simply adds on even our religious beliefs–if we have any.
The pervasive sense of meaninglessness of our times is to a large extent, the result of how we see reality. Jesus saw reality very differently both from us and from most of his own contemporaries. In common with his contemporaries, he saw reality as ultimately Spirit, not ultimately material. What distinguished him from both his contemporaries, and from us, was his vivid sense that reality, God, was ultimately gracious and compassionate. And God’s grace and compassion was extended to all, even to sinners, and not only to practicing Jews. (UB 2:4.2; UB 142:7.17; etc.)
Examples from The Urantia Book are: “God is inherently kind, naturally compassionate, and everlastingly merciful. And never is it necessary that any influence be brought to bear upon the Father to call forth his loving-kindness. The creature’s need is wholly sufficient to insure the full flow of the Father’s tender mercies and his saving grace. Since God knows all about his children, it is easy for him to forgive. The better man understands his neighbor, the easier it will be to forgive him, even to love him.” and:
“How long will it be before you discern that this kingdom is a spiritual kingdom, and that my Father is also a spiritual being? Do you not understand that I am teaching you as spiritual children in the spirit family of heaven, of which the fatherhead is an infinite and eternal spirit? Will you not allow me to use the earth family as an illustration of divine relationships without so literally applying my teaching to material affairs? In your minds cannot you separate the spiritual realities of the kingdom from the material, social, economic, and political problems of the age?”
Though Jesus did not use the word “grace,” the picture of God’s ultimate character as gracious emerges everywhere in his teaching.
Poetic imagery from nature made the point. “Look at the birds of the air,” Jesus said, “They sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns–and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” And again, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. The toil not, neither do they spin; yet I tell you Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” (UB 165:5.3)
With words such as these, Jesus invited his hearers to see in nature a glimpse of the divine nature. The image of God as gracious also emerges in Jesus’ parables. In that of the prodigal, a son goes to a far away land and squanders his father’s resources. Having become a desperate outcast, he returns and unexpectedly finds his father overjoyed to greet his return. Clearly, the father is an image for God–loving the prodigal from afar, welcoming him, not judging him upon his return but rejoicing with him–in short, gracious. (UB 169:1) The same picture is painted with the vineyard owner who paid all of his workers a full day’s wages even though many had only worked a small part of the day. And when those who worked for a full day complained, the owner asked, “Do you begrudge my generosity?” (UB 163:3.5-7) As an image of God, the meaning is clear–God is like that.
This image of God’s graciousness is implicit in one of the most striking features of Jesus’ ministry, the meals which he shared with “sinners” and “outcasts.” No practicing Jew would dare do such a thing as to do so would automatically defile him. It must surely have been an extraordinary experience for an outcast to be invited to share a meal with one who was rumored to be a prophet. Implicit in the action is an understanding of God as gracious and compassionate, embracing even the outcasts. (UB 138:3; UB 169:0.1)
From the Urantia Book: "The Pharisees and the chief priests had begun to formulate their charges and to crystallize their accusations. They objected to the Master’s teachings on these grounds:
Jesus’ image of God challenges the image of reality contained in conventional wisdom cross-culturally, including the conventional wisdom of the church and modern culture. Modern Christianity is a form of conventional wisdom in which God is imaged as the judge whose standards must be met. But whenever we assert that God’s love depends on requirements of any kind, one has abandoned grace as the dominant image of our reality.
If we see reality as hostile, indifferent, or judgmental, then self-preservation becomes the first law of our being. But if we see reality as supportive and nourishing, then another response becomes possible–trust. God loves and is gracious to us prior to any achievement on our part–but we rarely see it that way. Typically we live our lives as if reality were not gracious.
“The concept of God as a king-judge, although it fostered a high moral standard and created a law-respecting people as a group, left the individual believer in a sad position of insecurity respecting his status in time and in eternity. The later Hebrew prophets proclaimed God to be a Father to Israel; Jesus revealed God as the Father of each human being. The entire mortal concept of God is transcendently illuminated by the life of Jesus. Selflessness is inherent in parental love. God loves not like a father, but as a father. He is the Paradise Father of every universe personality.” (UB 2:6.4)
The broad and narrow ways: the four central concerns of conventional wisdom in Jesus’ time were family, wealth, honor, and religion, the latter being the most central. Yet many of Jesus’ most radical words were directed against each of these. “How hard it will be for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!” were his words. (UB 163:3.1) Likewise he ridiculed the pursuit of honor, mocking those who sought places of honor at a banquet, the best seats in the synagogue, or salutations in the market-place. He chastened religious practices which were motivated by the desire for social recognition: “Do not sound trumpets when you give alms,” he said. (UB 175:1.9-20)
Especially instructive is the parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector. The Pharisee’s prayer of thanksgiving referred to his religious behavior: “I thank thee, God, that I am not like other men; I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.” It is important to note that the Pharisee was a model of the faithful Jew. Significantly, the Pharisee’s opposite in the parable, the outcast, rested his security solely in God, laying no claim to righteousness: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” (UB 167:5.1)
Anxiety as part of the broad way is implicit in much of Jesus’ teaching. He saw people as anxious to receive what they believed they deserved, anxious about holding on to what they had, anxious about social approval. He saw people of his day as being dominated by the quest for security–as being profoundly selfish. Anxious about securing their own well-being, whether through family, possessions, honor, or religion, people experience a narrowing of vision, become insensitive to others and blind to the glory of God all around us. God is not absent; rather we do not see. (UB 142:5.2; UB 165:5) But Jesus taught another way.
The narrow way of transformation: Jesus used a diversity of images both in his diagnosis of the human condition and to speak about its cure–the path of transformation. Among these there is a new heart, a centering in God, and the way of death.
In ancient Jewish psychology the heart was the self at its deepest center. It was the source of perception, thought, emotion, and behavior, all of which were subject to it. The ‘heart’ was the fundamental determinant of both ‘being’ and behavior. So what really matters is what kind of heart you have. The things which come out of a person are what defile him. “Cleanse the inside” he said, “and behold everything is clean.” Jesus consistently radicalized the Torah by applying it to the inner self rather than to outward behavior. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” he said, “for they shall see God.”
When centered in God, in the Spirit, the heart was good and fruitful, but when centered in man, in the “flesh,” in the finite, the heart was bad and became deceitful above all things.
How does the self become centered in Spirit and not in itself or culture? Not by trying to change the heart with the mind or will. Rather this inner transformation and radical re-centering involves the path of death. (UB 153:3)
The way of “death:” The “way of death” did not mean physical death. Rather it was a metaphor for an internal process. On the one hand it is a dying of the self as the center of its own concern. On the other hand it is a dying to the world as the center of security and identity. The path of transformation entails a dying to both. The “world” to which one must die is the world of conventional wisdom. The self that must die is the self-preoccupied self. Then can be born a self which is centered in God, in Spirit, and not in culture.
However, the central movement in such dying is a handing over, a surrendering, a letting go, and a radical centering in God–the path of transformation is a “dying” to the self and to the world. (UB 153:3)
From The Urantia Book: “Thus did the Master elect to discuss and expose the folly of the whole rabbinic system of rules and regulations which was represented by the oral law–the traditions of the elders, all of which were regarded as more sacred and more binding upon the Jews than even the teachings of the Scriptures. And Jesus spoke out with less reserve because he knew the hour had come when he could do nothing more to prevent an open rupture of relations with these religious leaders.” UB 153:3.7
Jesus was not the first in Jewish history to criticize conventional wisdom. The authors of Ecclesiastes and Job protested against the concept from Proverbs that the righteous would prosper and the wicked wither. They were subversive sages who challenged the popular wisdom of their day.
Jesus stood in this tradition of subversive wisdom, using the conventional forms of the wisdom of his day to subvert their own reality. For example his picture of God as gracious undermined the conventional belief that God rewarded the righteous and punished the wicked–which easily became a snare enticing the self to become preoccupied in external material matters. UB 4:3;
Jesus taught an alternative way of being shaped by one’s relationship to God. He was thus not only a subversive sage but also a transformative one.
There is a connection between Jesus’ experience as a Spirit-filled person and the path which he taught. His intensity of perception and conviction together with the vividness of his language surely have their origin in Jesus’ personal experience as a Spirit-filled person. And unlike the subversive sages of the Old Testament who tended to carry out their criticism in scholarly circles, Jesus carried his criticism of conventional wisdom directly to the public. He founded a revitalization movement which sought the transformation of the historical path of his people.
Jesus as revitalization (transformation) movement founder: Jesus was political in the important sense of the shaping of a community living in history. His concern was not simply the individual and the individual’s relationship to God–though obviously he was concerned about that. But the way of transformation he taught included the particularities of his social world and the crisis which was convulsing it (Rome). He challenged both the conventional wisdom of his social world and its politics of holiness–dedication to the Law and the Torah.
We commonly think of Jesus as the founder of Christianity but strictly speaking this is not historically true. His immediate purpose was the transformation of the Jewish social world. Christianity as a religion separate from Judaism came into existence as the result of a historical process over several decades following Jesus’ death and resurrection. As a transformation movement within Judaism, it failed. Though most of its members were Palestinian Jews, it did not capture the allegiance of the majority of the Jewish people.
The major factor leading to separation was the success of the Jesus movement in the Mediterranean world outside of Palestine. There it quickly became a mixed community of Jews and Gentiles, and the more Gentiles the movement attracted the more it became distinct from Judaism.
A charismatic movement: The early Jesus movement was grounded in the Spirit. It came into existence in part because of the crisis faced by Judaism due to the Roman occupation and partly because of the Spirit-filled experience of its founder. However, the power of the Spirit was present in some of its followers–both Peter and Paul being examples.
The ethos of the Jesus movement: This movement had a different vision for Israel than was present among practicing Jews such as the Pharisees, the Scribes, and the priests of Jesus’ time. Jesus expressed this difference as an imitatio dei, or “imitation of God.” But the content of Jesus’ imitatio dei differed–whereas first-century Judaism spoke primarily of the holiness of God, Jesus spoke primarily of the compassion of God.
Jesus repeatedly emphasized the compassion of God. The father of the prodigal son “had compassion;” the good Samaritan was the one who “showed compassion;” the unmerciful servant did not act in accord with the compassion that had been shown to him by his master; the tax collector in the Parable of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee appealed to the compassion of God. Aspects of Jesus’ healing ministry point to the same quality–consistently the motivation was compassion. Moreover, Jesus sometimes healed on the Sabbath, a practice that typically generated criticism. Within Judaism, the Sabbath was “holy” and permitted healing only when there was danger to life. But for Jesus, even when life-threatening conditions were not involved, healings–the work of the compassionate Spirit–took precedence over the demands for holiness. (UB 148:7.2; UB 164:3.1)
The substitution of compassion for holiness is strikingly clear in a passage from Luke 6:36 in which Jesus says, “Be compassionate, even as your Father is compassionate,” Just as God is compassionate so people who are faithful to God, who are children of God, are to be compassionate. Just as God is moved by and feels with “the least of these” so the Jesus movement was to participate in the pathos of God. Indeed the pathos of God as compassion was to be the ethos of the Jesus movement–and, ideally, of Israel.
The ethos of compassion profoundly affected the shape of the Jesus movement, both internally and its relationship to the world. The shape of the alternative community was visible in the constituency of its membership which stood in sharp contrast to the rigid social boundaries of the Jewish social world; boundaries between righteous and outcast, men and women, rich and poor, Jew and gentile. These boundaries, established by the politics of holiness and embodied in the culture as a whole, were negated by the Jesus movement. The negation pointed to a much more inclusive understanding of the community of Israel. (UB 169:1)
At the center of the worship life of the Christian church stands a meal, known as the Lord’s Supper, that is manifestly a post-Easter development. Yet it has its roots in the ministry of Jesus.
Many texts refer to meals which provoked strong criticism from Jesus’ opponents. “Look–he eats with tax collectors and sinners;” or “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them;” and “look at him! a glutton and a drinker, a friend of tax gatherers and sinners.”
As used by his opponents, the term “sinner” referred to a specific social group, the “outcasts,” consisting of the chronically non-observant and including many of the poor. Eating with such outcasts would have shattered the social world which had pronounced them unacceptable.
For a charismatic person to say, with both his teaching and behavior, that the outcasts were accepted by God was to challenge the central ordering principle of the Jewish social world–the division between purity and impurity, holy and not-holy, righteous and wicked. The table fellowship of Jesus called into question the Jewish concept of holiness as the cultural dynamic of their society.
What was at stake, from the stand point of Jesus’ opponents was the survival of the people of God. Indeed, some scholars have argued that Jesus’ acceptance of outcasts was the primary source of the hostility which Jesus’ ministry generated.
Thus, the simple act of sharing a meal had exceptional significance in the social world of Jesus. It was seen as a challenge to the whole Jewish concept of holiness as derived from the Law and the Torah that describes Israel as an exclusive community–rather than Jesus’ vision of an Israel that that was all-inclusive and one which reflected the compassion of God. (UB 147:5.10; UB 138:3; UB 147:5; UB 167:1; etc)
From The Urantia Book: “to you who stand about criticizing me in your hearts because I have come here to make merry with these friends, let me say that I have come to proclaim joy to the socially downtrodden and spiritual liberty to the moral captives. Need I remind you that they who are whole need not a physician, but rather those who are sick? I have come, not to call the righteous, but sinners.” UB 138:3.6
One of the most remarkable features of Jesus’ ministry was his relationship with women. Rigid boundaries between men and women marked the world in which he lived. Although intensified by the politics of holiness, such boundaries were not unusual in most cultures of those times. However, practicing Judaism in Jesus’ time had its own peculiarities.
Although a good wife was much appreciated, women as a group were not thought well of. The synagogue prayer recited at each service included the words, “Blessed art thou, O Lord, who hast not made me a woman.” In synagogues, women were required to sit in a separate section and were not counted in the quorum of ten people needed to hold a prayer meeting. Neither were they taught the Torah. Young women were often completely secluded until marriage and even after marriage, they could go out in public only if veiled.
A respectable Jewish man and especially a teacher of religion was not to talk much with women, apparently for two reasons. Women were viewed as not being very bright and as preoccupied with trivia. Also they were considered to be seductive. Thus women were systematically excluded from both the religious and public life of the social world.
Against this background, Jesus’ own behavior was extraordinary. The itinerant group of immediate followers included many women. The sight of a sexually mixed group traveling with a Jewish holy man must have been very provocative. Similarly, the particular occasion on which a woman who was a “sinner” washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair as he reclined at a banquet given by a Pharisee was, to the Pharisees present, quite shocking. (UB 147:5; UB 150:1; UB 150:5)
From The Urantia Book: “Of all the daring things which Jesus did in connection with his earth career, the most amazing was his sudden announcement on the evening of January 16: ”On the morrow we will set apart ten women for the ministering work of the kingdom." At the beginning of the two weeks’ period during which the apostles and the evangelists were to be absent from Bethsaida on their furlough, Jesus requested David to summon his parents back to their home and to dispatch messengers calling to Bethsaida ten devout women who had served in the administration of the former encampment and the tented infirmary. These women had all listened to the instruction given the young evangelists, but it had never occurred to either themselves or their teachers that Jesus would dare to commission women to teach the gospel of the kingdom and minister to the sick . . . It was most astounding in that day, when women were not even allowed on the main floor of the synagogue (being confined to the women’s gallery), to behold them being recognized as authorized teachers of the new gospel of the kingdom. The charge which Jesus gave these ten women as he set them apart for gospel teaching and ministry was the emancipation proclamation which set free all women and for all time; no more was man to look upon woman as his spiritual inferior. UB 150:1.1 UB 150:1.3
This was a decided shock to even the twelve apostles. Notwithstanding they had many times heard the Master say that “in the kingdom of heaven there is neither rich nor poor, free nor bond, male nor female, all are equally the sons and daughters of God,” they were literally stunned when he proposed formally to commission these ten women as religious teachers and even to permit their traveling about with them. UB 150:1.3
The whole country was stirred up by this proceeding, the enemies of Jesus making great capital out of this move, but everywhere the women believers in the good news stood staunchly behind their chosen sisters and voiced no uncertain approval of this tardy acknowledgment of woman’s place in religious work." (UB 150:1.3)
Again, on an occasion when Jesus was a guest in the home of two sisters, Mary and Martha, Martha played the traditional woman’s role of preparing the meal, while Mary related to Jesus as disciple to teacher. Jesus endorsed Mary’s behavior. In a first-century Jewish social context, it was a radical point. Jesus treated women and men as equally capable and equally worthy of dealing with sacred matters. (UB 162:8)
In a time when a respectable sage was not even to converse with a woman outside of his family, and when women were viewed as both dangerous and inferior, the behavior of Jesus was quite startling.
This radically transformed attitude toward women continued in the early church for the first several decades, according to both Acts and the letters of Paul where women in many of his churches were prominent enough to be greeted by name. Paul’s own position was consistent with the radicalism of the Jesus movement: “There is neither Jew nor gentile, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) (UB 150:1.3)
Good News to the Poor: In Luke 4:18 Jesus states, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.” Matthew understood poor to mean “poor in spirit,” but Luke has simply, “Blessed are you poor,” and “Blessed are you that hunger now,” and makes clear that he has the economically poor in mind by contrasting them to the materially wealthy: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”
Jesus challenged the connection between righteousness and property derived from Torah wisdom with the corollary that the poor were poor because they had not lived right and thus were unworthy children of Abraham.
Many of the poor arrived at their state because of the system of double taxation, first to Rome and then to the temple. Rome enforced its tax by confiscating property. The temple had no authority to do the same but those who did not or could not pay became non-observant of Torah law, hence sinners and outcasts. By accepting the poor, Jesus, as one in touch with the Spirit of God, would have enabled the poor to see themselves differently. It is the same dynamic operative in his banqueting with outcasts.
The application of Jesus’ teaching to his social world is seen in the fact that his movement was the peace party within Palestine. Just as Jesus spoke of the imitatio dei as compassion, he also spoke of loving our enemies: “You have heard it said, love your neighbor,” but I say to you, love your enemies." (UB 150:8.2)
“Love your neighbor” comes from the holiness code of the Torah and was understood within contemporary Judaism to mean, “Love your fellow member of the covenant,” that is, “love your fellow Israelite.” In this context, the opposite of neighbor is “non-Israelite,” and so loving one’s enemy must mean: “Love the non-Israelite enemy,” including the gentile (Roman) occupiers.
As the peace party in Palestine, the Jesus movement thus rejected the path of violent resistance to Rome. And the early church for the first three hundred years of its existence was pacifist.
The Jesus movement visibly and radically shattered the norms of the Jewish social world. Strikingly, the imitatio dei as “compassion” transcended the cultural distinction between Jew and Roman, righteous and outcast, men and women, rich and poor. The source of this radical relativizing of cultural distinctions is found in the charismatic grounding of the movement. Because Jesus saw God as gracious and embracing, the “children of God” could and did embrace those whom the politics of holiness excluded. The relationship to God was primary, not whether one was outcast, female, poor, or enemy. The experience of the Spirit disclosed the relativity–in a sense, the artificiality and arbitrariness–of cultural distinctions. The intense experience of the Spirit generated a new way of seeing and being which stood in sharp contrast to the boundaries and rivalries that were created by culture.
Spiritualization of central elements: In yet one other way the Jesus movement differed from the conventional wisdom of the Jewish social world. Specifically, Jesus denied that purity was a matter of externals, concerning pots or pans or hands, or whether one ate food that was untithed. True purity was internal. What mattered was an internal transformation, “purity of heart,” which was possible even for those whom the social world placed beyond the pale. Similarly, the notion of righteousness was internalized.
In The Urantia Book we have, Jesus said: “I declare it is not that which enters the body by the mouth or gains access to the mind through the eyes and ears, that defiles the man. Man is only defiled by that evil which may originate within the heart, and which finds expression in the words and deeds of such unholy persons. Do you not know it is from the heart that there come forth evil thoughts, wicked projects of murder, theft, and adulteries, together with jealousy, pride, anger, revenge, railings, and false witness? And it is just such things that defile men, and not that they eat bread with ceremonially unclean hands.” UB 153:3.5
The Pharisaic commissioners of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin were now almost convinced that Jesus must be apprehended on a charge of blasphemy or on one of flouting the sacred law of the Jews; wherefore their efforts to involve him in the discussion of, and possible attack upon, some of the traditions of the elders, or so-called oral laws of the nation. No matter how scarce water might be, these traditionally enslaved Jews would never fail to go through with the required ceremonial washing of the hands before every meal. It was their belief that "it is better to die than to transgress the commandments of the elders . . . All of this can the better be understood when it is recalled that these Jews looked upon eating with unwashed hands in the same light as commerce with a harlot, and both were equally punishable by excommunication. (UB 153:3.6)
Jesus also spiritualized the very notion of Israel. Membership in the people of God was not determined merely by descent; Israel was not to be equated with “children of Abraham.” Neither was “Israel” defined by conventional wisdom’s distinctions between righteous and outcast. What mattered was being a child of God, whose fundamental trait was compassion.
Yet Jesus remained deeply Jewish, even as he radicalized Judaism. He neither advocated the social world of the gentiles, nor dissolved Judaism in the name of a more universal vision. His movement, the Jesus movement, was concerned with what it meant to be Israel.
Comparing Borg with what we find in the Urantia Book, we surely must note the many similarities–and some differences. Perhaps the major difference is whereas The Urantia Book gives the impression that only a small group consisting mainly of members of the Sanhedrin plus the Pharisees were violently opposed to Jesus’ teaching, Borg indicates that this opposition was much more widespread–which he states in these words: "As a transformation movement within Judaism, the Jesus movement failed….it did not capture the allegiance of the majority of the Jewish people.
We pursue this further in our next issue.: Part II