Did Jesus come before Christ? Or Christ before Jesus?

I read, and enjoyed, a book that called Christ a scoundrel. The book is by Philip Pullman, a well known atheist. Pullman isn’t being subtle about his name calling, Christ is referred to as a scoundrel in bold print, in the book’s title.

Initially, I wasn’t sure if I should be blogging about a book that calls Christ a scoundrel, I'm not here to offend people. Then, I found that the Church of England Newspaper called the book “magnificent” (while noting that five hundred years ago Philip Pullman would have been burnt at stake as a heretic). The former Bishop of Edinburgh wrote a thoughtful and positive review in The Guardian. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s review found in it “a voice of genuine spiritual authority”. My blogging about the scoundrel Christ should be okay.

Pullman’s book is a retelling of the life of Jesus, with a twist.

In Pullman's telling, Jesus is born with a twin brother called Christ. Jesus is a passionate, charismatic idealist. Christ is a clever, careful pragmatist, an apparatchik. Jesus connects with real people, and moves or exhorts them to a more fulfilling life. Christ hero-worships his brother Jesus, diligently records his words, and conceives of an institution he calls “the church” to celebrate and immortalize Jesus, an idea Jesus despises.

Jesus says “if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the left as well...love your enemies, and pray for them...The road that leads to life is a hard one, and it passes through a narrow gate, but the road to destruction is easy, and the gate is broad...do to others as you hope they would do to you.”

Christ says “think of the advantages if there were a body of believers, a structure, an organization already in place...I can see the whole world united in this Kingdom of the faithful...local groups under the guidance of a wise elder in the region, the regional leaders all answering to the authority of one supreme director, a kind of regent of God on earth...I can see Caesar himself having to bow down before this body, and offer obeisance to God’s own kingdom here in the world...I can see the majesty and splendour of the great temples, the courts, the palaces devoted to the glory of God, and I can see this whole wonderful creation lasting for generation after generation.”

Pullman makes no secret of his contempt for the church, his anger about “the Crusades, the witch-hunts, the heretic-burnings, the narrow fanatical zeal that comes so swiftly and naturally to some individuals in positions of power when faith gives them an excuse”. His character Christ is written to be the object of this contempt, this anger. Pullman explains: “I wanted this Christ to embody as much as possible of what the church later did to alter, edit and ignore the words of Jesus, and to benefit from his death and supposed resurrection.”

So, in Pullman's story, Christ betrays Jesus to the Romans. The church needs the crucifixion to happen, to serve as its founding myth. Pullman sees the church as the judas who betrays Jesus.

Yet, paradoxically, by writing Jesus and Christ as distinct characters, and by juxtaposing them, Pullman liberates the good man Jesus from the scoundrel Christ. Jesus' greatness is so much more apparent when the evil that has been done in his name can be decanted into another character.

Even his portrayal of the scoundrel Christ is kinder than it might have been. Pullman explains, “Christ developed in a way I hadn’t expected, and found himself with a human conscience, tempted and torn and compromised”. The modern church has good reason to be so relaxed about Pullman’s heresy.

I find I can relate to this tension - between an ideal and an institution that claims to stand for that ideal - more directly, more emotionally, by porting it into an Indian context. These lines from Tagore’s Gitanjali are often cited as the animating spirit behind India’s freedom:

"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action---
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."

Unsurprisingly, the Republic of India doesn’t always live up to Tagore’s ideal. That isn’t a reason to lose faith in either Tagore’s ideal or in the Indian republic.

Perhaps the only certainty with any institution is that the institution seeks to enhance its own power. This is true for nation states, churches, business corporations, NGOs, universities, armies...the whole shooting match...they’re all out to turn themselves into something majestic, splendid and glorious, lasting generation after generation. In the process, they can do terrible things. Limiting their power, so terrible things happen less often, is good. Yoking that power to a higher ideal, doesn’t always work, but is not bad.

So, just how much of a scoundrel is Pullman's Christ, thought of both as a character in this story, as well as a metaphor for the church as an institution?

Pullman's narrative starts at Jesus' conception. The story continues along Jesus' noble path - rejecting Satan's temptations, the sermon on the mount, the cleansing of the temple - until it descends to the squalor of Christ taking money from Caiaphas to betray Jesus. That narrative arc feels like the fall of man. it shows Christ as a scoundrel.

However, Jesus is not Adam. His story didn't begin at his conception. Jesus was born into a context, a context which is apparent even in Pullman's tight narrative. Jesus was born into a world of brutal Roman oppressors, of the rigid and corrupt Jewish establishment, and of any number of transient spiritual cults. These cults, however transient, gave people something they valued - a sense of purpose and belonging. In that context, creating an durable institution that would provide people with some of this value feels like the right thing to do.

Was it worth betraying Jesus to create such an institution? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Pullman's Christ is like one of John Le Carre's spies, Smiley's people, doing shady deals that may or may not work, for a cause that may or may not turn out to be just, like Kim Philby, the upper-class Englishman who betrayed his people to spy for the soviets because he sincerely believed in the communist ideal. Maybe Christ's dilemma was like Brutus': Brutus loved Caesar, but loved Rome more. History judged Brutus kindly. Either way, Christ seen in context is an ambiguous character, not obviously a scoundrel.

Or maybe (I don't like this thought, but it is too strong to resist) it comes down to youth. Jesus had the charisma, idealism and moral clarity of youth. Like John Kennedy, Jim Morrison and James Dean, like Gautam Buddha, Adi Shankara and Swami Vivekananda, Jesus died young, and remained pure. Christ lived on, to be tarnished by an imperfect world, to be called a scoundrel for his troubles. Looked at this way, the benediction that follows most naturally from the life of Jesus and Christ are the words of another man who was once called Judas: "may you stay, forever young".