In a chapter on “Politics and Religion,” Albert Nolan, as for many theologians who followed him, reminds us that the fact that Jesus was executed on a charge of high treason does not make him unique. Many thousands of Jewish rebels and revolutionaries were crucified by the Roman rulers of Palestine during this period.
Furthermore, Jesus did not found an organization; he inspired a movement. It was inevitable that the movement would quite soon become an organization but in the beginning there were simply people, scattered individuals and groups, who has been inspired by Jesus…..
Each remembered Jesus in his own way or had been struck by a particular aspect of what they had heard about him. There were at first no doctrines and no dogmas, no universally accepted way of following him or believing in him. This is Jesus and church or gathering before the Christian empire.
Jesus had no successor…Jesus was obviously felt to be irreplaceable. If he died, the movement died. But if the movement continued to live, then it could only be because in some sense or another Jesus continued to live. This seems to be the basic meaning of the “Resurrection.”
The early Christians were those who continued to experience or began to experience, in one way or another, the power of Jesus’ presence among them after his death. This is the primacy of spirituality over religion—experience over structures.
Many also experienced the continued leadership and inspiration of Jesus as the inheriting of his Spirit—the Spirit of God….The prophecy of Joel was being fulfilled in them through Jesus: the Spirit had been poured out among them, making them all prophets who see visions and dream dreams (see Peter’s sermon in Acts 2:14-41). Jesus remained present and active through the presence and activity of his Spirit. Here lies the promise that we are all prophets, as Rabbi Heschel reminds us, that “in the recesses of every human existence there lies a prophet.”
Getting to those recesses is what matters. Going deep. What are the signs that we are going deep? Undergoing the via positiva, being struck by the awe and wonder, joy and delight in life; the via negativa, both silence and suffering and heartbreak; the via creativa, our creativity; and the via transformative, our passion for justice and healing, celebration and compassion. Here lie the recesses of our existence.
See Albert Nolan, Jesus before Christianity, pp. 92, 134f.
Adapted also from Matthew Fox, Original Blessing.
And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion.
To read a transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.
Banner Image: “Christ of the Breadlines” by Fritz Eichenberg for The Catholic Worker. Uploaded to Flickr by Jim Forest
Queries for Contemplation
How important is it that we recognize the Jesus who came before Christianity itself? And before the church? And before the time when the church took over the dying Roman empire?
Recommended Reading
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
6 thoughts on “Nolan on the Jesus Story, Politics and Religion”
Matthew, Today you continue your reflection on the work of Albert Nolan. He shows us that the fact that Jesus was executed on a charge of high treason does not make him unique. Many thousands of Jewish rebels and revolutionaries were crucified by the Roman rulers of Palestine during this period. In the beginning there were simply people, scattered individuals and groups, who has been inspired by Jesus. There were at first no doctrines, no universally accepted way of following him or believing in him. This is Jesus and church or gathering before the Christian empire. If the movement continued to live, then it could only be because in some sense or another Jesus continued to live. This seems to be the basic meaning of the “Resurrection.” You ask us, “How important is it that we recognize the Jesus who came before Christianity itself? And before the church?” I feel it is very important to see that the whole patriarchal structure of the Church wasn’t part of what Jesus envisioned for the movement he started. So, for us what are the signs that we are going deep? Undergoing the via positiva, being struck by the awe and wonder; the via negativa, both silence and suffering; the via creativa, our creativity; and the via transformative, our passion for justice and healing, celebration and compassion. Here lie the recesses of our existence. And here is where I want to take our Jesus movement !!!
The SPIRIT moves as She wills. We intuitively sense Her presence, hearing the voice of Her essence, yet we know not from where She comes or goes.
Opening the heart, being receptive in mind and surrendering in trust with our Soul, we receive and welcome Her. We need no other teacher, for She will teach us all things, bringing remembrance and understanding of the deep things of the Great Mystery. She will lead us in Her Wisdom ways to all truth, comforting, consoling and wisely counselling us in all things. This is the movement that Jeshua revealed, made known and walked the talk of, the Original Blessing of the anointing of the Spirit poured out upon all. Most of the religious and political rulers of his day, fearing their loss of power and control over others; rejected, denied, condemned and attempted to crucify this reality then and most still attempt to do the same today; however the Spirit still moves as She wills! She is still present in Her presence and essence to those whom have ears to hear and eyes to see!
Thank you Matthew for recommending Albert Nolan’s book, “Jesus Before Christianity,” and briefly explaining its message that Jesus started a spiritual movement, not an institution. I’m sure the book will explain further, like you have in your many books, that the main church became another patriarchal social institution, like many others, with mainly unbalanced, toxic, dualistic, egocentric, racist, secular, patriarchal values losing for the most part the spiritual message and Spirit of Jesus. That Spirit and message of Jesus that has historically and currently mostly been lost is that the Divine Living Spirit, Cosmic Christ, is Present within every living being and in All Creation/Cosmos especially our sacred Mother Earth. This historically ongoing separation from the Sacred within and among us has always contributed to our personal and societal problems and injustices, and now the existential survival of so many sacred species, including our own, because of our global industrial pollution/destruction of the natural environment/climate of our Sacred Mother Earth. Spiritually humanity and Mother Earth are going through a painful process of death, healing, transformation, and renewal/rebirth towards a more compassionate humanity in our relationships with one another, All Living Creation, especially Mother Earth, in God’s Merciful Loving Diverse Oneness in our eternally Evolving co-Creation Cosmos….
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Jesus as he lived( love,compassion, inclusion, justice) showed us the way. Profoundly simple and extremely complicated.
So succinct and so profound: “This is the primacy of spirituality over religion—experience over structures.” The church as we know it today has an obsession with structures. It exists primarily to creat structures, judge those violating the structures, and to force the structures upon people who don’t want them. I hope we see a shift away from this and towards trusting experience in the next couple of decades.
Those interested in reading Nolan’s book “Jesus Before Christianity”, it is available free online in pdf format. Just have to look around a little for it. : – )