From Marcus_Borg@info.harpercollins.comTue Feb 27 12:40:47 1996
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 16:14:15 -0800
From: "Marcus J. Borg" <Marcus_Borg@info.harpercollins.com>
To: jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: crossan's first entry

Let me begin by mentioning that I have never met Luke Johnson.  So I
want to say "hello."  I also want to acknowledge that I have admired
your work for some years.  In particular, during the two years I was
a visiting professor of NT at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley,
I used your intro to the NT as the required textbook.  I thought it
was the best in the field (even though I disagreed with some things,
such as your argument for Pauline authorship of the pastorals).  

Because my response to Dom Crossan's first contribution involves his
assessment of Johnson's argument, let me begin by stating briefly
what I understand to be most central to Johnson's The Real Jesus.
His book has two central arguments.   1) He criticizes the work of
contemporary historical Jesus scholars (including Crossan and me),
finding our reconstructions to be inadequate.  I may comment about
this in a later entry, but in this one I will focus on his second
point, which is: 2) He argues  that any (and every) historical
reconstruction of the Jesus behind the gospels is a mistake. Thus,
for Johnson, it finally doesn't matter how adequate or inadequate
various reconstructions are; even a superbly persuasive and
compelling reconstruction would be irrelevant.  Instead, what matters
for Johnson is the Jesus who meets us on the surface level of the
gospels and the NT.  This Jesus (the canonical Jesus, or the
narratival Jesus) is "the real Jesus."  (And if I've got this wrong,
I trust that Johnson will correct me).

This is the background for understanding Crossan's rather striking
claim that Johnson's position is "gnostic."  As I recall, Crossan
doesn't say explicitly "Johnson is a gnostic," but it seems to me
that that's the upshot of Crossan's analysis of four gospel types in
early Christianity.  The charge (as I understand it) is that Johnson,
by denying the significance of historical reconstructions of Jesus,
has severed the connection between the gospels and history.  It is
this separation that, for Crossan, makes Johnson's position
"gnostic."  

We are not accustomed to using the word "gnostic" this way,
especially of someone who like Johnson takes the canonical gospels so
seriously.  We tend to think of "gnostic" as referring to a body of
literature containing "gnostic ideas".  But Crossan is using
"gnostic" to refer to a way of doing theology, and it refers to
"process" as much as (or even more than) "content."

So I'm curious about a couple of things.  To Johnson, three
questions.  First, what do you think of being called a gnostic? 
Second, how would you respond to the claim that your position severs
the connection between the gospels and history, between the gospels
and incarnation?  Third, what do you think of Crossan's claim that
the canonical gospels themselves provide the warrant for "that
peculiar interpenetration of past and present" whereby they "always
go back to the historical Jesus and speak thence to new situations
and problems," so that "Jesus-then becomes Jesus-now"?

To Crossan.  Sometimes I find myself admiring and intuitively
agreeing with some of your marvelous rhetorical flourishes, and then
realize that I don't know what they mean.  Specicically, I would love
to hear you say more about your concluding paragraph: "The `real'
Jesus. . . is neither Jesus-then or Jesus-now but the dialectic of
them both.  The `real' Jesus is, and always has been within Catholic
Christianity, BOTH Jesus-then AND Jesus-now, but so integrated that
they are Jesus-then AS Jesus-now.  And, please: more than an
aphorism.

Best wishes to you both.    Marcus.