The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Come Back Alfred, We Love You

In 1904 the French Catholic theologian, Alfred Loisy, published a book called L'Evangile et l'Eglise, The Gospel and the Church. In it he, channeling Augustine, pithily phrases the central fact of early Christianity: "Jesus foretold the Kingdom, but it was the Church that came." Loisy was attempting to refute the individualism of the Protestant theologian, Adolf Harnack, by pointing to the historical necessity of an ecclesial organisation. For his trouble, he was censured and eventually excommunicated from the Catholic Church for the arch-heresy of Modernism. No one was sure how to define Modernism, but the churchly authorities were certain they knew it when they saw it in the writings of Loisy.

It is now generally recognised that Loisy was correct. Jesus expected the arrival of the Kingdom of God within his generation. And not only Jesus. Throughout the next two Christian generations, at least, it was presumed that the end was nigh, that the Messiah would return with a terrible swift sword. The protagonist of this 'imminent eschatology', as it is called, was Paul of Tarsus. It is Paul's letters that are by years, often decades, the first Christian Scriptures and undoubtedly influenced how the later gospels were written.

Nonetheless the 'tension', as theologians call it, between the Pauline Christ and the Jesus of the gospels is real. This is most apparent in two specific areas. First in the universal ethic of love propounded by Jesus, not just among human beings, but also between God, who was all forgiving, and humanity. In Paul, this ethic is made conditional upon something called pistis, faith, and becomes organisationally controlled by his authority. Second, Jesus makes clear his sole concern is with Judaism and the continuation of the traditions of the Torah. In opposition to the Apostles who actually knew Jesus, Paul claims Jesus's message as equally applicable to Gentiles as well as to the Jews; and he, quite contrary to the words of Jesus, unilaterally abrogates the eternal covenant with the Jews and any necessity to follow Jewish traditions.

Although Paul's expectations of the return of the Messiah were unfounded, he did a fairly good job of creating the organisation that would be its substitute, just as Loisy had quipped. Paul, not Jesus, it has often been said among theologians, created Christianity. And he created it not as the carrier of the ethical message of Jesus but as the emblem of the triumphant Christ who, despite sensory experience to the contrary, had already conquered evil in the world, freed the world from sin, and now led, from the grave, a new worldwide religion, whose spokesman was Paul.

Pullman's book captures this difference between the evangelical Jesus and the ecclesial Christ by the simple device of Mary, wife of Joseph, having twins, one called Jesus, the other Christ. Jesus is more or less the figure we know from the gospels: human, uncertain, complex, sometimes contradictory, but always on message. Christ, the younger brother and favourite of his mother, on the other hand, plays several roles in Pullman's narrative. 

Christ is first of all the recorder and, progressively, the augmenter, of Jesus's preaching, a sort of composite evangelist. He also is the betrayer, the Judas figure, who is convinced by the mysterious Stranger, obviously the Deceiver of old, to play Abraham to Jesus's Isaac and instigate Jesus's death. And, finally, he is the Pauline figure, the spiritual entrepreneur, who establishes a Gentile-oriented organisation which is, in his mind, a version of the Kingdom on earth. His modifications and interpretations of Jesus's remarks and mis-quoting of the Hebrew bible (a Pauline vice) conveniently endorse and support this organisation.

Pullman's theology therefore is well grounded even if his literary portrayal seems radical. The points he makes in casting Jesus as confronting Christ are important ones that true believers would prefer not to be raised or discussed. "It's a matter of faith," they typically say. But their faith is a faith in Paul and his literary hero, Christ. What they really mean is that they do not have sufficient faith in Jesus to confront the very real inconsistencies, not to say paradoxes, in the creation of Christianity. The possibility that Paul betrayed the man he never met and sacrificed him to establish his own position of power is too unsettling to be taken seriously.

Pullman isn't having it. By making such a dramatic distinction between the Jesus of the gospels and the Christ of Pauline Christianity, he is putting down a challenge squarely to those who call themselves Christians. No longer, thank goodness, does the threat of excommunication which hung over Loisy mean much a century later. It’s safe now Alfred; you can come back.

Postscript: first more on Paul, see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

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