Jesus against Christianity : reclaiming the missing Jesus /

In a polemical book, Nelson-Pallmeyer articulates arguments likely to interest general readers. Against Luke Timothy Johnson and others who dismiss the search for the historical Jesus as misguided, he argues that it is an important corrective to historical distortions of Christianity and to the "pathological violence" of the God(s) depicted by the Bible's "messy monotheism." Nelson-Pallmeyer's biblical criticism is consistent with a Lutheran tradition interpreting all Scripture through the lens of one part, most often the Gospel, and routinely creating a canon within a canon. Nelson-Pallmeyer's Gospel canon is nonviolent, and he applies it rigorously. His "messy monotheism" is rooted in Luther's definition of God as that in which we place our trust. Without clearly responding to the argument that no access to a Jesus of history unshaped by Christian faith exists, he rejects distinctions between a Jesus of history and a Christ of faith. More surprising than his response to Johnson is his running dispute with a mentor of his, Dan Berrigan, against whom he argues that Jesus rejected apocalypticism and that nonviolence cannot consistently be rooted in God's history-ending violence. In another running argument, Nelson-Pallmeyer criticizes the readings of the Jesus Seminar and John Dominic Crossan as insufficiently political. Anything but passive, Nelson-Pallmeyer's radical pacifism sends sparks flying in all directions. --Steven Schroeder

"Jesus is missing," says Nelson-Pallmeyer, assistant professor of justice and peace studies at the University of St. Thomas. The historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth has mostly disappeared from the church and from the lives of most Christians. In his place are a pathologically violent God, muddled thinking and unjust living. The real Jesus is missing or has been banished and Nelson-Pallmeyer, a scholar, activist, author and regular contributor to Sojourners magazine, wants to find him again. In this book, Nelson-Pallmeyer draws heavily on clues left by other Jesus scholars (Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, etc.) to find what was central to the life and thought of Jesus. He methodically argues that the Bible is full of contradictory and distorted images of God, and rife with stories attributing to God violence, abuse and murder. These images and tales must be jettisoned, for they conflict with the nonviolent God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, who preached and worked against the domination culture of his era. No accommodationist, Nelson-Pallmeyer cannot find any place for violence, even when exercised against evil. He is by turns prophetic and passionate, redundant and reckless. In a telling passage, Nelson-Pallmeyer jokes about reading his Bible and "crossing out the parts I don't like." Cast as a mystery in which Nelson-Pallmeyer discovers why and how the real Jesus disappeared, this volume is interesting, but overly defensive. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved