The Godless Gospel: Was Jesus a great moral teacher?, by Julian Baggini

Author: Julian Baggini. Review by John Lampen

I found this a very stimulating book. It asks whether Jesus was ‘a great moral teacher’, as Richard Dawkins has called him, and whether his ethics are still valid for us if we remove all the divine and supernatural elements. You may think this is rather a narrow, even irrelevant, quest today. Our society’s values may have a Christian foundation, but Julian Baggini is surely right to say that ‘most people today have only a vague sense of what Jesus actually taught, a thin recollection from childhood education’.

But his inquiry leads him into questions that are of wide interest. Are morals dictated by culture or are they universally valid? Are we still obliged to behave morally if there is no divine sanction? Is it right to praise heartfelt actions more highly than the dutiful observance of an ethical code? What is the relationship between morality and the law? Should politics conform to the same standards as our private lives? How do (or should) we give moral guidance to our children?

‘If you limit yourself to what Jesus said,’ said one of several theologians he consulted, ‘you wouldn’t be able to construct a moral system to live by.’ Baggini confesses: ‘When I started, I expected [Jesus’] stripped-down moral philosophy to consist of little more than a call for charity and forgiveness, neither of which is particularly original or controversial in today’s world.’ But he continues: ‘What I actually found is a belief system which goes against the gentle image of Jesus as an advocate of homely moral truths that we can all easily and warmly embrace. Much of his teaching is discomforting, and quite a bit is objectionable… It recasts him as an iconoclastic revolutionary so threatening that he was crucified.’

The ethical teaching

Jesus sometimes states a moral principle. On pacifism: ‘Here there is little wriggle room to avoid the conclusion that he rejected the use of all lethal violence.’ Similarly on wealth: ‘If we took Jesus’ teaching seriously we could never be morally comfortable with being materially comfortable. I find it extraordinary how many Christians try to dilute this message.’ He asks why Jesus insisted that being rich is incompatible with leading a good life, and concludes that Jesus saw wealth as a burden and an obstacle, so that renouncing our dependence on it brings ‘a lightness and a liberation’.

Generally Jesus focused not on ‘How you should act’ but ‘How you should live’. So we mustn’t look for a rule book, though the churches have so often tried to create them. Much of his most significant teaching is demonstrated through his behaviour – good moral judgement must be sensitive to context. ‘It is not a question of whether the law should be followed. Jesus is clear that it must be. The question is what following the law means.’ So instead of giving a list of prescriptions Jesus told a story and asked: ‘What do you think? What would you have done?’ He responded generously to a child, a sick woman, a tax-farmer or an occupying soldier – or furiously to a religious leader – and left his followers to work out why he behaved like that. As Friends proclaimed long ago, Jesus placed moral authority not in divine commands (and the hierarchies which interpret them) but within ourselves.

The question of politics

Was Jesus a socialist? He clearly condemned the oppression of the poor, but Baggini finds little evidence that he believed in pursuing his concerns by political means. If wealth was a burden and distraction, a radical redistribution of property would be inconsistent. ‘Jesus taught and modelled what we now call bottom-up social reform rather than top-down political change. [His] challenge to the status quo [was] made not by manning the barricades but by humbly defying the hierarchies of power and wealth.’ Even this made enough impact to get him executed.

The author is puzzled by sayings like ‘The last shall be first’. We know from his other passages that Jesus did not think that by being humble you will become important, or that right behaviour will make you rich eventually (as some ‘prosperity gospel’ churches teach). ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’ is the core message. ‘We should seek to transform and enrich our hearts, not our wallets… If you accumulate wealth, you almost inevitably end up placing value on it and that means your heart becomes set on the wrong things.’ The book also explores the apparent ambiguity in the command ‘Judge not’ and quotes Jesus’ words to the adulteress (‘Neither do I condemn thee: go, and do wrong no more’) to suggest that he didn’t hesitate to attack the sin – but not the sinner.

The basis of morality

The last chapter of Part 1 is called ‘Goodness without God’. It is lucid and gentle, a fine example of good philosophical argument. The author argues against those who believe there would be no solid basis for morality if it were merely the product of human evolution. He counters: ‘The wonder of evolution is that it can give rise to things that take on a meaning and value that are greater than simple evolutionary advantage. We make music solely thanks to evolved auditory sense organs and brain circuits, but Beethoven’s late quartets are more than just evolved noises.’

He contends that ethical claims do not need transcendent underpinning; they are supported by ‘reasonable reasons’. These do not give certainty, or there would be no such thing as moral debate. But the mixture of confidence and doubt that they provide corresponds pretty well to our human experience.

So Jesus is ‘a bona fide moral teacher [who] does not ask us to accept his teaching on the basis of mere authority, but rather invites us to attend to the needs of others, to his own example and to our own frailties. He wants us to think for ourselves, which is why his parables require us to work out their meaning.’ Baggini likens these to the ‘thought experiments’ of modern science and philosophy. Jesus understood that compassion drives personal and social change.

Some reservations

I was disappointed not to find ‘women’ or ‘children’ included in the index. Jesus’ behaviour towards them is one of the keys to understanding him. The author dismisses miracles in general, but I wonder if he was right to deny the strong evidence that Jesus was a healer. The book seldom questions the authority of the Bible text, and there were a few places when I felt he need not have accepted a particular saying as authentic.

The second part of the book is an attempt to rewrite the records of Jesus as a single narrative ‘godless gospel’. I think that this is a mistake, like those Quaker writings that present George Fox as a universalist with the Christian elements in his teaching reduced to mere accidents of the time he was born in. However universal Jesus’ message might be, he was a man of his place, time and religion; one cannot remove all reference to God and expect the result to be intelligible. For example, the disciples once asked him in astonishment, if it was so hard for even the rich to enter the kingdom of God, who else could do so? In Matthew’s gospel Jesus replies: ‘With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.’ In Baggini’s rendering Jesus simply says ‘All things are possible’. This is not just a secular version of Jesus’ words; the sense of the two phrases is quite different.

The author uses the King James version of the Bible for his rewrite, which obscures his attempt to pick out what Jesus might have said today. I wish he had based his experiment on a punchy modern translation. To discover how challenging a demythologised gospel can be, I prefer The Gospel According to Jesus by Stephen Mitchell.

Teaching morality

Julian Baggini concludes with a description of the kind of moral teacher who speaks to people directly rather than writing treatises. First, they will have a clear sense of what is right and wrong in many situations. Second, they will appreciate that rules are not enough and people have to develop a moral sensitivity of their own. To do that, teachers often use stories that enable people to see right and wrong in action and to imagine themselves facing similar dilemmas. Third, they will practise what they preach, modelling goodness in part because showing is more powerful than telling. Fourth, unlike most parents, they will have something clear to say about what the point of being good is…

‘Anyone familiar with the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth will recognise him in this description, even if they do not recognise his divinity.’

---

Comments

Thank you, John, for pointing me towards Stephen Mitchell’s telling of the Gospel.

By gturner on 4th February 2021 - 16:36

---

Please login to add a comment