Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God [Paperback]

To those whose profession is to either inflate or deflate the gospels as a representation of actual history, this literary critique of the gospel account of Jesus' life may appear to be asking all of the wrong questions. But while the historical scholars duke it out over whether the gospels can be treated as history, the meaning of the gospels, in the broader context of the relationship between God and the Jewish people (and, later by extension, to the rest of the world). After five centuries since the promise of a restoration of the kingdom was first offered and no hope of it yet being fulfilled, a redefinition of the relationship was in order.

The gospels portray a redefinition of this relationship in ways that shocked the conscience of the average Jew. Not only would God come down in the form of a man (something that hadn't been done since the days of the early patriarchs), he would come not to conquer the world, but to re-enact the Passover, only this time, God would play a completely different role: the Sacrificial Lamb. The literary methods highlighted by Miles depict a story in which Jesus reveals only a little at a time, sometimes speaking in parables and other cryptic language, in order to pique the curiosity of his audience so that they can fully appreciate what he said at the right time.

As with his earlier book, God: A Biography, Miles looks at the text without the theological gloss of later religious commentators, and analyzes the text solely for its dramatic and literary value. Miles expressly makes the point that in the gospels, everything is mentioned for a reason. For example, Miles points out that the Devil's temptation of Jesus indicates more is implied than just an interaction between the Son of God and his archenemy. The Devil's questions and tests resemble those that a people who had been waiting a long time for God to restore them would ask. The post hoc theological worldview and the misplaced emphasis on the need for historical authenticity have dulled this edge of this passage.

Miles closes the book with a defense of the literary criticism method of analyzing the gospels, which he admits is the exception rather than the rule in the historical-critical vs. Christian apologetic debate. While the paucity of helpful archaeological data does little to help solve (or refute) the historical meaning that orthodox Christianity has made the primary focus, Miles' literary method gives us an evenhanded glimpse of what the message in the gospels must have been like to the original audience, which bears much more fruitful meaning, at least to the question of why people would dedicate their lives to Jesus Christ even when they were not relying on a historical record of an actual event.

Whether you are a true believer, an athiest or an agnostic, this is a piece of literature that will enrich you mind, and perhaps your life!

In the "sequel," Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, God breaks his silence. God had promised his chosen nation, Israel, that he would return them to their homeland out of exile and demolish their enemies with glorious military victory. This was the currency of the day for gods, and Jehovah was not one to be one-upped. However, the crisis in the title deals with the fact that God does not keep his promise. Being the creator of the universe, one does not suspect that he can not keep it, so the only other option is that he chooses not to. Indeed, a Nazi-equivalent holocaust will soon strike his people and his nation. God not only will go back on his promise--he will do so in spades. But why? The answer to this question is to be found in reading the whole book, and a synopsis cannot do it justice, but in a phrase: he has thought of a better way.

God comes to earth, in the form of a baby, turning his sublime Self into the ridiculous humiliation of an infant being born with all that blood and pain, entering the world to the smell of manger droppings -- the Lord of Hosts, completely dependent on the world just to stay alive. And it is just that dependence that is the point God (and Miles) is trying to make. God doesn't just want to kick military butt for his people, he wants to win a greater victory--he wants to conquer Satan, which means he wants to conquer pain, sorrow, shame and, ultimately, death itself. God wants to identify with his people by becoming a person. And not only that, he wants to suffer the most horrific, humiliating death imaginable so that he can relate to all of his children, not just Israel.

Miles does Christians an immense favor by starting his book with the reminder that the Crucifixion is supposed to be one of the most disgusting scenes imaginable. While it has been sanitized in most popular religious artwork (even to the point of calling the day we commemorate it "Good" Friday), the truth of the matter is that God is butchered like a lamb who, unlike a lamb, walks into his death with full knowledge of what is happening to him. The French subtitle of the work is "The Suicide of the Son of God" drawing attention to what some recent French theologians in an Appendix call Suicide Theology. The purpose again is to shock, not for the sake of shocking, but to re-create what the disciples must have been going through to see their God going through the death of a criminal.

Speaking of the Jews of the time, much attention is given these days to what is called "the Historical Jesus." While much of this scholarship and research may be valuable, the more and more we try to track this misty figure down, the more diminishing seem the returns. One wonders what the actual effect would be if we were to have a documentary of the life of Christ filmed in living Technicolor. Would it increase our faith? Or would it disappoint? The reactionary reaction to the radical re-thinking of Jesus of History is to focus on the Christ of faith. Whereas conjecture and history are the guides of the former, the church and tradition are the guides of the latter. Doctrine and dogma, rule and questions are eschewed in exchange for the comfort of faith. This is the Christianity that most people are familiar with, yet, as Jaroslav Pelikan in Jesus Through The Centuries has shown so cogently, there is no one Christianity that you can point to; no Christ of faith that exists, but many Christs. No matter on either side of the debate, Miles says, what we have is a book (a series of books, actually) that shows a third way (as genius often does), leaving the two bickering schools in his literary dust.

In an Appendix to his work, Miles compares the two schools to people who try to see through a rose window in a cathedral, one school trying to remove the stain, the other trying to stain everything. Miles prefers to look at the window: the Gospel story, taken as a whole. The work of art this is the Bible is, after all, what captured the imagination of the world. Neither the Jesus of History nor the Christ of Faith is nearly as worthy of our attention as the character Jesus Christ of the Bible.

Miles writes that he was first inspired to write his two books by Bach's brilliant masterwork St. Matthew's Passion. Which brings us back to the half-facetious title of this review. Is Jack a saint? Perhaps. Perhaps not, but he is, in my estimation, performing as important a translation job as did St. Jerome back a thousand and a half years ago. By bringing the story (and both of the contending schools must remember that this faith has always been based on storytelling) of Jesus Christ back into focus, Miles has given us a Newer Testament: something fresh, despite the age of the story, something creative despite the re-hashing of familiar scenes, something that can truly bring the Spirit of God as close to us as our breath.