The Pagan Christ – Recovering the Lost Light
Tom Harpur
Thomas Allen Publishers
There is, it seems, in popular culture a sense that when it comes to religion we have been cheated. The church has lied to us, has betrayed us, and has held the story of Jesus hostage. But, the story is a universal story; the story is ours. The church does not own it. Recently, books like The Pagan Christ, The DaVinci Code and others have brought that deeply held suspicion and conviction to the surface and have got people talking. These books and the many, many web sites that exist on this topic, offer a new way of experiencing good news that is despite the church and apart from it. For many (though by no means all) middle class, relatively wealthy (by world standards) North Americans, there is a strong sense of being oppressed by the church, and the possibility of 'taking back the story' from the church is attractive. It symbolizes breaking the church's hold on spirituality.
The Pagan Christ – Recovering the Lost Light marks a huge shift in Harpur's own faith journey. A once passionate evangelical professor at Wycliffe College in Toronto, he now argues that Jesus never existed. Beginning in the second century, the church sought to capture and control a story that it inherited from ancient sources, particularly from Egyptian mystery religions. In Harpur's view, the story of Jesus is not history, but an archetypal myth.
(Curiously, Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code also argues that the church co-opted the historical Jesus for its own paternalistic power grab. In his own way, Brown believes he is clarifying the true Christ.)
Joseph Campbell has said, "Myth is what never was, yet always is." The debate about the Bible's approach to fact has had a thorough airing over almost three centuries from the pioneer studies of Hermann Reimarus in the early 1700's to the Jesus Seminar of recent years. This debate has sought to disentangle the Jesus of history from the layers of myth that have accumulated in scripture and over the centuries of Christian history. It has also led to wrestling with issues from the literal story of creation in six days, to the role and ordination of women, to same-sex orientation. Not a pretty picture. In moving in the opposite direction, Harpur offers a much more appealing path through the debate by re-mythologizing the whole story. There is no need to seek the historical Jesus, or the historical Moses, or David for that matter, because they never existed. What is important is to find in these stories the spiritual truth, which links them to the universal myth, which can be found at the heart of all religion.
Yet, when Christianity has been spiritualized – severed from a historical connection to a Jesus who actually lived, died violently and who, Christians believe, defeated death by rising from it to proclaim newness of life – then it has been co-opted by the powerful to justify oppression and impoverishment. It suggests that Jesus didn't mean it when he stood against authority, oppression and suffering in the here and now; that Christianity is all about the next life; that this evil world will pass away and we must not concern ourselves with the messy realities of injustice.
It is interesting to note that in impoverished communities in Latin America, Asia, and Africa the effort has in many cases been one of re-claiming the story from a spiritualized captivity of those in power and the religious leaders who blessed that oppressive and unjust power. For these people it is the historicizing of Jesus that is freeing.
In both cases it is about re-claiming the story.
All in all, this seems to be an important and worthwhile conversation to be having. Not one that is relegated to the fringes of polarized frenzy. Can thoughtful people find another path through the reception of Harpur's book, and others? The New Testament credits the Nazarene whom Harpur denies existed with affirming a seminal insight: it is truth that makes us free, you and me. While the truth involves risk, often costly risks for today's church, and the people within them, Jesus is also reported to have said, "do not be afraid".
A group of us gathered for lunch at a Toronto eatery to talk about this book. For better or for worse, there was no one sitting at the next table. But we tried to imagine what the conversation might have been if this group of church people had engaged a group of non-church people on the common ground of The Pagan Christ. At the very least, we could say that some of us are reading that book too, and open to what is challenging there, but also to what can be challenged.
