On Wednesday night, Seth, Benji and I made the plunge into an icy Lexington to attend John Dominic Crossan's lecture at Transylvania University. His topic was: "Finding Jesus: His Matrix and His Message." Though "matrix" seems to be just a fancy synonym for "context," Crossan was clear that context often comes with the same baggage as "background." That is, whereas background and context seem to include elements that can be ignored, matrix seems to imply that every element in an event's makeup is intertwined and necessary.

With this as his foundation, Crossan proceeded to show how "properly" understanding Jesus' matrix should lead to properly understanding his personhood and message. Of course, Crossan worked from certain presuppositions: the miraculous is to be discounted, and Jesus' divinity is a non-issue. Jesus was simply a Galilean peasant (Crossan even stated that he won't call the 12 "disciples" since that implies that Jesus was a teacher; instead, he calls them Jesus' "companions"). Once this is established, one can begin to assess more accurately Jesus' message and mission.

Crossan is an expert at mixing intriguing historical observations with logical loop-holes, which results in the listener/reader almost liking what Crossan says without really knowing why. I can see now why he's garnered such a following. What he says sounds good...but when you scrutinize the content (and the implications of that content), things don't match up.

Among other things, Crossan discussed the nature of apocalyptic Judaism, especially the fact that the apocalypse never seems to refer to the end of the world, but to a mass non-violent "cleanup" of the world. This makes sense. However, in these regards, the book of Revelation almost seems to be a manifesto for those who felt that God should have acted violently the first time around - an incarnational "do-over," as Crossan himself labelled it. Yet, is this what Revelation is truly about?

Crossan also compared and contrasted the ministries of John the Baptist with Jesus. Whereas he said some insightful things, in my opinion, regarding the activity of John, he boiled down Jesus' ministry to seeing what didn't work for John and acting contrarily. This is easy to do when you completely discount Jesus' divinity, of course...but since Crossan does believe Jesus was divine, there are no problems there. Good grief.

At the end of the night I remember thinking, "Well, if Jesus isn't divine, if he isn't the Son of God, then why are we even here talking about the matrix of his life and message? Can't we get the same message out of the life and message of Ghandi, or Thoreau?" And yet, Crossan believes something about God. I'm just not sure what...neither were Benji or Seth. There must be a way to reconcile Crossan's historical investigations with the faith passed on by the Church. We just need to find an adequate way to do this, I suppose.