The Savoyard Vicar
During and after Holy Week, the historical significance of the Resurrection and debates about the authenticity of the Gospels become quite popular. I genuinely appreciate the many efforts made by Catholics in the public square to defend the reliability of Scripture and other proofs that establish the truth of the Resurrection. It is this event more than any other that occupies the central place in the wider debate over the divinity of Christ.
While subtracting nothing from these efforts, which are necessary now more than ever, I also came across a different approach to the question that somewhat mirrored my own pre-Catholic thinking on the nature of Christ. It comes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, specifically the Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar (223&224). While there is no question that Rousseau held the Church in contempt, the way in which he argues for the divinity of Christ is unique and interesting all the same.
Especially since, for Rousseau, His divinity can be established without miracles or even the Resurrection. By way of comparing the life and teachings of Socrates with Christ, he comes to the conclusion:
“[I]f the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God”
Why is this? He considers that Socrates had it easy: many of the virtues he taught had already been exemplified and taught less perfectly by contemporaries, he lived in a culture that already supported many of the things he believed, and he died relatively peacefully, philosophizing among friends.
On the other hand, Christ taught a doctrine that seemed to be entirely incompatible with the corruption and violence of His time and place, the social and intellectual climate was not at all conducive to His “pure and sublime morality”, and he willingly died a miserable and humiliating death for others.
One of the most important differences was the nature of the act of forgiveness said to have been performed by each:
“Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, blessed indeed the weeping executioner who administered it; but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors.”
One would indeed have to choose between Jesus being “lord, liar or lunatic” given these facts, and since the latter two seem preposterously out of the question, what else can one conclude but that “the life and death of Jesus are those of a God”?
Of course in our day and age, the “lunatic” explanation becomes more plausible for many, since an act of sacrifice of that magnitude seems quite absurd to people who are practically choking on their own comforts and pleasures. But then, even in the time of Christ, those enjoying the bread and circuses, the origies and vomitoriums of Rome, must have looked at such a life in a similar way: here in the midst of all these glorious pleasures we have made for ourselves, there is a man who actually chooses to suffer, and not even for himself, but for others! Madness!
Comments are closed.
The “Lord, liar or lunatic” argument works only if Jesus, as a matter of historical fact, claimed to be the Lord, or claimed to be divine. Most scriptural scholars now say that he did not.
My problem with the “Lord, liar or lunatic” argument is it is poor in understanding what a “lunatic” is or is not. I think one can make good Scriptural claims for Jesus making divine claims, implicit or explicit. But even if one found him to be a “lunatic” in regards to it, that’s too quick to assume he can’t have come up with good ideas worthy of respect. Indeed, the whole idea of the “holy fool” and the “divinely inspired lunatic” found in most cultures before the modern era suggests that it was expected that the “lunatic” was “filled with the divine” so that they would do just that. It was often seen their encounter with the divine broke them, but gave them wisdom. Of course, I don’t think Jesus is a lunatic, but again, this is where the Lewis-based argument falls short.
“Most scriptural scholars now say that he did not.”
Depends on whose noses one deigns to count.
More to the point–talk about gnosticism!
One certainly has to be carefully initiated into a scholarly elite with “true knowledge” to come to the conclusion that the texts are bunkum.
“The texts are bunkum” is not what most scriptural scholars would say. But the language of the Johannine Jesus would be seen as more expressive of the perception of the meaning of Jesus from the point of view of the Spirit-led post-Paschal Church than of Jesus’s own self-presentation. If one confines oneself to the Synoptics it becomes much more difficult to find utterances of Jesus that betoken a claim to equality with God (though actually even in John that would be very hard to find) or to pre-existence (as in John 8 and 17). The claim to Messiahhood is in the Synoptics, but this does not entail a claim to divinity (even the messianic title ‘Son of God’ does not have that connotation). Historically, Jesus may have called himself Son or Man rather than Messiah.
I notice that C K Barrett, Jesus and the Gospel Tradition (SPCK, 1967), dismisses the idea that Jesus claimed to be Messiah in his public teaching. He does not refer to Matt. 11:2-6. Martin Dibelius, Jesus (Berlin 1949) recognizes that Jesus’s entire pattern of activity implies a Messianic claim.