The Christian Way—Reality or Illusion?

By Alexander J. M. Wedderburn

Is Christianity but a selection of stories, as some suppose, or is there more to it than that? Are its adherents guided by something real or simply following their own fancies? That there are communities of Christians is itself real enough, but is their mere existence its own justification? Events like the birth and death of Jesus are for the most part real enough, though they have been overlaid with stories that may at times be helpful symbolism but may also distract or distort. The very human way Jesus and his disciples followed during his ministry was also real enough, though again overlaid with interpretative material; however, the circumstances of his followers then varied, and those of Christian communities in succeeding generations differ still more. On the eve of his death Jesus sought to bind his followers together with one another and himself rather than offering them a way of otherworldly salvation. He may yet have expected such a salvation, as did the Apostle Paul, but it is more fruitful to follow the latter in seeing "life" to be gained in "death," in a "dying to sin," in this life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Jan 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781498202503

Alexander J. M. Wedderburn

Alexander Wedderburn is retired Professor of New Testament at the University of Munich and the author of Baptism and Resurrection (1987), The Reasons for Romans (1988), Beyond Resurrection (1999), A History of the First Christians (2004), Jesus and the Historians (2010), and The Death of Jesus (2013).

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The Christian Way —Reality or Illusion?

Alexander J. M. Wedderburn

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The Christian Way—Reality or Illusion?

Copyright © 2015 Alexander J. M. Wedderburn. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

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ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-0249-7

EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-0250-3

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Wedderburn, A. J. M.

The Christian way—reality or illusion? / Alexander J. M. Wedderburn.

viii + 80 p.; 23 cm—Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-0249-7

1. Jesus Christ. 2. Liberalism (Religion). 3. Christian ethics. I. Title.

BR1615 W435 2015

Manufactured in the USA.

©New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

Like my previous work The God of Jesus—Our God? this little book is written under circumstances that prevent me from having access to libraries, except electronically, and from coping with printed matter in any quantity. The result is again a book that makes little reference to secondary literature and avoids any amassing of detail, but that may as a result be rather easier to read. Or so I hope.

In a sense, too, this study takes up from where that earlier work left off. For that left open the question how far Jesus’ God could ever be ours. If one could no longer invoke any supernatural or other-worldly power as Jesus did or if any power that there may be is so ill-defined and mysterious that it offers little practical orientation, does that mean that the entire Christian movement is based on an illusion, namely that the way followed by Christians is guided by some such power and has in that its raison d’être? Or does the Christian tradition offer a different basis that does not presuppose the other-worldly, but is rooted in the this-worldly and still makes sense and is of value? Tentatively this little study dares to answer Yes.

Again I am very much indebted to Cascade Books and Wipf & Stock Publishers and their staff for undertaking to publish this work, but especially to Dr. Robin Parry who has edited it. I am very grateful, too, for the support and encouragement of a number of friends and colleagues (although probably very few of them will agree with my conclusions), but above all, once again, to my wife Brigitte.

1

In Quest of Reality

Reality is a somewhat elusive term. For a start, that elusiveness is not helped by the way in which real and unreal are used in more or less clearly subjective senses. The statement that the experience was very real to me more or less gives itself away by the superlative. On the other hand, there are experiences that may seem unreal, but are in fact real, as in the case of many natural wonders: a sunset may seem as if it could have been painted by someone, or the plumage of a bird may be so exotic, as in the case of a bird of paradise, that one could think that some human hand had stuck those splendid feathers on. Very real experiences of the sort alluded to above make us ready to make confident assertions about them, and what we have experienced is then, for us, real, reality. And often we may be right to claim that, but at other times we may be mistaken, not about our feeling of certainty or conviction that something is the case, but mistaken about the truth of what we assert to be true. The truth may then dawn (I could have sworn that X, I was sure that Y, or the like), but sometimes it may not.

Again, modern media have clouded the issue with talk of reality television and virtual reality. The former actually often or usually involves situations that are unreal in the sense of being artificial or contrived, recalling animals on display in a zoo or performing in a circus, except that the participants are conscious human beings who are allowing themselves to be put in the situation in question (and being paid for it). The reality involved is thus in some considerable measure unreal. The latter expression covers thoroughly pragmatic and beneficial uses of media technology in training programs such as flight simulation for pilots, but also the use of the expression for such technologies employed in the service of computer games and the like, where the reality involved may seem very real, but where the experience involved is of more questionable benefit. This is particularly the case when the distinction between the virtual and the real is blurred or when the virtual even becomes more real than the real world for the person concerned.

Yet there is, too, a sense in which we subjectively have confidence that we are in fact dealing with what is real, and correspondingly the language of reality may be used in a more objective sense, particularly of things in the present, and especially when our experience of these things is shared and corroborated by others. Of things in the past, on the other hand, it is better to speak of what is more or less probable or, at best, beyond all reasonable doubt. In the present, however, some things seem to be certainties—that it is daytime (at least where we are located on the globe), that it is cloudy or rainy (unless we happen to be in the make-believe world of a cinema set), that we live in a town or the country (unless we find ourselves on the outermost edge of an urban sprawl in which the distinction can get blurred). Such things are, at any rate, pretty tangible or recognizable by the senses and are inter-personal in the sense that we find others who share them and confirm them.

It is true that there are problems in linking reality with the experiences of our senses. In the history of philosophy there are those who have preferred the trustworthiness of the immediate experiences of our senses and have reduced reality to a world of sense-data. Today the opposite is more often the case in that physicists have taught us to regard seemingly solid objects as in fact made up of myriads of forces and particles that are not detectable to the senses left to their own resources. Nonetheless, that has not prevented most of us from treating the objects that we see and touch as in varying degrees solid, so that we are often prepared to commit our weight and our lives to them. We are, in short, prepared to treat them as part of the real world in which we live.

It is, however, altogether another matter when we come to talk of what is sometimes referred to as the world of the spirit or of spiritual things, and at first sight that is the case when we come to speak of the Christian church and the Christian faith. Nonetheless, it is an undeniable reality that there exists in the world a great number of persons and groups that claim to belong to the Christian church. Their existence and presence seems tangible enough, whether they mark their presence with imposing or not-so-imposing buildings or advertise themselves and their existence less obviously. Sometimes