'NOLI ME TANGERE': WHY JOHN MEIER WON'T TOUCH THE RISEN LORD

John Meier distinguishes ‘the real Jesus’ from ‘the historical Jesus’. Meier claims that whatever happened to the real Jesus after his death, his resurrection cannot belong to the historical Jesus because that event is in principle not open to the observation of any observer. But why think that the resurrection is not observable in this way? Meier finds justification in Gerald O'Collins' view that although the resurrection of Jesus is a real event, it is not an event in space and time and hence should not be called historical, since a necessary condition of historical occurrences is that they are known to have happened in our space‐time continuum. Is this a good argument for the resurrection's being in principle excludable from the historical Jesus? A close examination of the argument reveals that it is not and that Meier's adoption of such a procedure contradicts Meier's own historical methodology.     

Crossan on the Couch, Along with the Rest of Us: Part Two: Six Proposals Toward a New Paradigm for a Psychologically Realistic Approach to the Search for the Historical Jesus as Suggested by the Work of Hal Childs

Building on the theoretical basis spelled out in my first article on Hal Childs' The Myth of the Historical Jesus and the Evolution of Consciousness, the present article engages in dialogue with Crossan's 2000 autobiography, A Long Way From Tipperary. The dialogue focuses on six proposals emerging from Childs' work that advocate the inclusion of psychological realism in rethinking the task, practice, and outcome of historical Jesus research. The six proposals are as follows: first, that psychological realism is an essential part of historical realism; second, that unconscious factors are to be considered at work in the viewer as well as in the viewed in historical Jesus research; third, that every reconstruction of the historical Jesus is mythic; fourth, that the preunderstanding that the Jesus scholar brings to historical Jesus research is generated within a hermeneutical circle constituted by a vast web of relationships, purposes, and meanings that include every aspect of the scholar's life; fifth, that the final goal of historical Jesus research is not the facts about the historic Jesus, but the meaning of these facts as archetypal images for self-understanding, world-understanding, and the evolution of consciousness; and sixth, that the purpose of the Gospel is to evoke new archetypal projections in the reader that can lead to new incarnations of the archetypal Self awakened and informed by the story of Jesus, often as recovered by the Jesus historian.     

THE IMAGO DEI AS THE MIND OF JESUS CHRIST

In this essay I examine David Clough's interpretation of the imago Dei and his use of “creaturely” language in his book On Animals: Volume 1, Systematic Theology. Contrary to Clough, I argue that the imago Dei should be interpreted as being uniquely human. Using a neuroscientific approach, I elaborate on my claim that while Jesus is the image of God perfected, the imago Dei is best understood as having the mind of Christ. In regards to language, I make the case that using terms such as “creature” when referring to nonhuman animals is problematic in that it can serve to alienate human beings from their capacity to image God. In addition I argue that “creaturely” language raises concerns for the African American community given Western Christianity's history as it relates to their valuation of black bodies and human enslavement.     

Reply to Psarros: Popper and Chemistry

In this article I reply to criticism of my published work by N. Psarros (Journal for the General Philosophy of Science 28: 297–305,1997). I show that I had already answered the first criticism in my published work and not overlooked his supposed refutation. However I offer a plausible argument which he could have used to strengthen his claim. Psarros cites my work on Hopkins in his opening paragraph, but then makes no further reference to it in the text. I indicated to Psarros verbally at Ilkley 1994 (and reiterate the message here) that Hopkins' work on Vitamins is the exemplar of a Popperian historical episode and must require addressing by the opponents of critical rationalism. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Buddy Christ and Jesus Action Figure

Two diminutive, mass produced statues of Christ, Buddy Christ and Jesus Action Figure seem intended as postmodern anti-Christs to offend Christian sensibilities and mock the image of Christ. I suggest, however, that the statuettes have an excess of meaning that is remaindered as a residual respect for Christ as a spiritual guide, whose enduring political leadership subverts religious hypocrisy. An atheistic/Marxist defence of Christology provides my theoretical base to explore the statuettes, the cult of the Sacred Heart provides an historical example of subversive piety and an editor of the Gay Times' supplies an urgent challenge to reclaim the Christ of Faith as a spiritual and cultural inheritance from the religious right.     

Theologizing the Human Jesus: An Ancient (and Modern) Approach to Christology Reassessed

Many contemporary Christologies, while paying lip-service to the primacy of the human Jesus, devote little attention to the theological status of his humanity. They may be deflected from this task by such factors as preference for experienced-based symbol; the fragmentation of biblical studies and dogmatics; the imperatives of contextual hermeneutics; and the preoccupation with methodology rather than substance. But the human Jesus is only theologically meaningful when viewed on a larger canvas than that of either idealist metaphysics or historical reconstruction. The classical doctrines of the anhypostasis and enhypostasis of Jesus' humanity offer a still useful way of highlighting the primacy of grace, and, contrary to common caricature, do not undermine the density of his human experience. Such an account needs to be supplemented, however, with a robust pneumatology in order to specify the relevance of the human Jesus for revelation, salvation, anthropology, ethics and eschatology.     

Theologizing the Human Jesus: An Ancient (and Modern) Approach to Christology Reassessed

Many contemporary Christologies, while paying lip-service to the primacy of the human Jesus, devote little attention to the theological status of his humanity. They may be deflected from this task by such factors as preference for experienced-based symbol; the fragmentation of biblical studies and dogmatics; the imperatives of contextual hermeneutics; and the preoccupation with methodology rather than substance. But the human Jesus is only theologically meaningful when viewed on a larger canvas than that of either idealist metaphysics or historical reconstruction. The classical doctrines of the anhypostasis and enhypostasis of Jesus' humanity offer a still useful way of highlighting the primacy of grace, and, contrary to common caricature, do not undermine the density of his human experience. Such an account needs to be supplemented, however, with a robust pneumatology in order to specify the relevance of the human Jesus for revelation, salvation, anthropology, ethics and eschatology.     

An Author's Response

Honored by the colleagues who celebrate Jesus ACTED UP with their reflections on the book's twentieth anniversary of publication, I respond briefly to each other them in turn. I frame my response with recollection of the trauma of the 1980s and both governmental and ecclesial homophobia and AIDSphobia at the beginning and a brief portrait of ways I am still “ACTing UP” in partnership with my husband Joe and the members of MCC in the Valley, especially in relation to ecology and US–Mexican border violence. With Michaelson, I reflect on the necessity of confrontational activism in the pursuit of social justice reforms. With Cheng, I consider the role of Jesus ACTED UP in inspiring the continuing development of queer theology. With Jordan, I emphasize the interdependence of silence and the speech of protest, of spiritual disciplines and social activism. Finally, with Hunt, I recognize my own journey of spiritual development and growth in relation to the diversity of LGBTQ communities and the intersectionality of the structures of dominance against which we contend.     

Doctoral Dissertations in the Nordic Countries 1999

First, in order to understand historically how the formative beliefs about Jesus emerged, one must begin with the interpretations of Jesus' death, as Dahl so clearly pointed out. Second, the “quest of the historical Jesus” in all its varieties suffers from the fallacies of a peculiarly modern conception of human identity, which has now been abandoned in many areas of social science and critical theory. In our age we will understand the identity of Jesus in the early church better if we adopt a social model of the self and conceive of identity not as essence but as transaction and process. Third, the process by which Jesus' identity was formed in the communities of his followers was at its heart an interpretive process.     

‘The Indivisible Whole of God's Reality’: On the Agency of Jesus in Bonhoeffer's Ethics

In conversation with Karl Barth, this article explores Bonhoeffer's account in his Ethics of the character of the agency exercised by Jesus Christ in the world today in relation to the principal task of theological ethics: namely, the engendering of the most humane form of existence possible within the mandates of work, family, government and church. The article argues that the theological work undertaken by the command of God ensures that these mandates remain christologically determined spheres in which concrete obedience is enacted, and thus the places in which the reality that Jesus Christ is achieves social and historical form.     

CAN I KILL MY YOUNGER SELF? TIME TRAVEL AND THE RETROSUICIDE PARADOX

If (backward) time travel is possible, presumably so is my shooting my younger self (YS); then apparently I can kill him – I can commit retrosuicide. But if I were to kill him I would not exist to shoot him, so how can I kill him? The standard solution to this paradox understands ability as compossibility with the relevant facts and points to an equivocation about which facts are relevant: my killing YS is compossible with his proximity but not with his survival, so I can kill him if facts like his survival are irrelevant but I cannot if they are relevant. I identify a lacuna in this solution, namely its reliance without argument on the hidden assumption that my killing YS is possible: if it is impossible, it is not compossible with anything. I argue that this lacuna is important, and I sketch a different solution to the paradox.     

Kant and the creation of freedom: a response to Terry Godlove

In his review of my book, Terry Godlove raises some robust objections to the exegesis of Kant that I present in my recent book, Kant and the Creation of Freedom: a Theological Problem (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). I respond to these criticisms in this article. Properly to locate Godlove’s exegetical objections, I dedicate the first section to setting out the arc of the argument I trace. I then set out and treat in turn Godlove’s main objections to my exegesis: that it depends upon an interpretation of transcendental idealism which makes the doctrine ‘flatly inconsistent and probably just silly’; that I neglect the most plausible account interpretation of Kant’s various statements about transcendental idealism; and that I ‘pick and choose’ supporting texts too narrowly, leading to an unbalanced presentation, which is too convenient to my thesis. I conclude with some general methodological reflections—stimulated by Godlove, but not aimed at him—about how historical philosophical texts are often treated. I express some anxieties about the principle of charity that underlies much current exegesis, and ‘rational reconstruction’ of historical texts, and I propose a case for what might be called ‘creative decomposition’ (not of the text, but of the self).     

The Vanishing Mother: Reply to Commentaries

In this response to discussions by Aron and Boyarin I draw attention to the instability of the figure of the mother within Freud's presentation of his life, as well as within psychoanalysis. I link this instability to the figure of a “spectral” mother and perhaps subversive aspects of femininity. Whereas Aron links castration anxiety with prevailing anti-Semitic ideas, I look to the Jewish ritual of the Brit Milah and the laws of Niddah, which further reveal attempts to control and contain femininity. Boyarin raises a concern between historicizing and psychoanalyzing Freud that I consider a misreading. I believe my hybrid method of moving between historical, cultural, religious, and psychoanalytic planes, as lived by Freud within his family, is not so different from Boyarin's own approach.     

A twelfth‐century Muslim biography of Jesus

The biography of Jesus as it appears in Ibn ‘Asakir's Tarikh madinat dimashq comprises material which originated from the Qur'an and from the Bible (the Old and the New Testaments). It also comprises material that is neither qur'anic nor biblical: material reflecting an image of Jesus whom the Sūfi order in the medieval period was using as the prophetic authority for its ascetic teachings, and whose purpose was to make him a prototype of the ascetic (al_zahid). Furthermore, Ibn ‘Asakir, writing at the time of the Crusades, believed in the imminent qiyama of Jesus to lead the Muslims to victory and to defeat the invaders. Ibn ‘Asakir's biography of Jesus reflects the extent to which literature about the earthly career of Jesus had developed in Muslim lore by his time.     

Murakami,Connoisseur of Uncertainty: Commentary on Paper by Thomas Rosbrow

My discussion embroiders around Thomas Rosbrow's view of Murakami as a “trauma analyst.” I highlight the ways in which Murakami's writing reflects his keen sensitivity to existential uncertainty and how he seems to understand trauma, much as I do, as a shattering experience that destroys the certainties that organize psychological life and generates efforts at self restoration. Although I share Rosbrow's view that “After the Quake” depicts a character's awakening from the dissociative manifestations of trauma, I spell out how my perspective on this process differs from his.     

Social identity, status envy and Jesus'Abba

The historical Jesus grew up as a fatherless son. The aim of this article is to focus on two issues. It is argued that Jesus' fatherlessness should be taken into account when one considers his social identification. Secondly, a social-scientific explanation is given of his a-patriarchal ethos, his behavior towards endangered women and children, and especially his trust in God as his “Abba.” The theory of identification which is regarded as a model for interpretation of the data is the so-called “status envy hypothesis.” This paper was presented at the SBL International Meeting, Dublin, July 21–24, 1996.     

Paradigm shift in religious education? A reply to Gearon,or when is a paradigm not a paradigm?

This article responds to Liam Gearon’s reply to my article Misrepresenting Religious Education’s Past and Present in Looking Forward: Gearon Using Kuhn’s Concepts of Paradigm, Paradigm Shift and Incommensurability. In maintaining my critique of Gearon’s use of Kuhn’s terminology, I question his claim that ‘incommensurability’ does not necessarily imply ‘incompatibility’, and challenge his view that ‘faith-based’ approaches to religious education and ‘inclusive’ approaches are incommensurable and deeply incompatible. I also question Gearon’s placement of particular scholars within his constructed paradigms, noting that those identified by Gearon with specific paradigms do not necessarily share the same views concerning the nature of religious education and its pedagogy, and that various scholars, associated by Gearon with particular paradigms, draw on a variety of disciplines in their work. I argue that Gearon’s construction of paradigms is a device he uses for ‘separation’, leading to his misrepresentation of the work of researchers. I argue for the benefits of collaboration, in research, teaching and policy development. Finally, I give reasons for writing the article, which do not result from any engagement in ‘paradigm wars’, and I draw attention to pressing issues relating to the future of ‘inclusive’ religious education which are not addressed by Gearon.     

The origins of the phenomenology of pain: Brentano,Stumpf and Husserl

The following investigation aims to determine the historical origins of the phenomenology of pain. According to my central thesis, these origins can be traced back to an enthralling discussion between Husserl and two of his most important teachers, Brentano and Stumpf. According to my reconstruction of this discussion, while Brentano defended the view that all feelings, including pain, are intentional experiences, and while Stumpf argued that pain is a non-intentional feeling-sensation, Husserl of the Logical Investigations provides compelling resources to resolve the polemic between his teachers by showing how pain can be conceived as a pre-intentional experience. According to my argument, this largely forgotten discussion is of significance not only because it enriches our understanding of pain, but also because it modifies the phenomenological conception of consciousness. Thus in the concluding section, I show why the Husserlian resolution of the controversy between Brentano and Stumpf is of importance for our understanding of the central phenomenological theme—intentionality.